Cars Yeah!

• Let’s talk about the who/what/where/when and how of Mark Greene, the petrol-head. How did you get your start in the automotive world? Did you come from a car family? Racing family? What were some of the cars that influenced you as a child (aka “the poster on the wall car”)
• You mentioned racing a few times, let’s talk about your racing and performance driving history?
• The one that got away: The Porsche 930 “Orange Crush” story
• You were the president of Griot’s Garage and part of the company for nearly 20 years. What was that like? What changed/inspired you to create CarsYeah!
• If people aren’t aware of CarsYeah podcast, it’s one of the leading automotive podcasts out there, on the air for over 8 years and 2100+ episodes – so for those that are hearing about it for the first time, what is CarsYeah all about?
• Before we wrap up, Let’s put you in the hot seat, how about some CarsYeah inspired PitStop questions?

and much, much more!

Mark Greene: [00:00:00] Rev it up and welcome to Cars Yeah! Show number 2, 141. Be prepared to be inspired.

Advertisement: This is Cars Yeah! Where you’ll enjoy interviews with inspiring automotive enthusiasts. Mark Green is here to provide you with a fuel injection of automotive inspiration. So get in, sit down, buckle up, and get ready for a wild ride here on Cars Yeah!

Mark Greene: Hello, inspiring automotive enthusiasts and welcome to cars yet today. I’m in Westminster with a very special guest by the name of Eric Mantra. Stele, Eric, welcome to cars. Yeah. Do you have any gear and are you ready to release the clutch?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Mark. Let’s send it.

Mark Greene: All right. I love it. Ladies lay some stripes as they say.

Now, before I give you a proper introduction, what’s one little thing that people may not know about you.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you know, I feel like I live this, you know, duality in my life, you know, [00:01:00] IT nerd by day and ultra car enthusiast by night. So it’s a little bit of Bruce Wayne and Batman, but yeah, I come from, uh, I guess a long line of grassroots car enthusiasts, you know, uh, and it stems going back to my grandfather, who was actually a chauffeur for the Belgian ambassador here in the United States.

And that’s where my dad got hooked in cars and then I got it through my dad.

Mark Greene: Wow. What a job. That must be very interesting. Think about people that are chauffeurs of, well, anybody as they sit up there and they just listen and the stories that they hear that they can never share, but the stories that they hear, uh, I’m sure are quite fascinating, especially, uh, carting an ambassador around.

So

Crew Chief Eric: not only that, but the chauffeur back in those days, especially in the fifties and sixties, they were responsible not only for driving the ambassador around, but taking care of the vehicle. It’s maintenance and the look of the car, right? Making sure it was clean and detailed. So there was a lot to that job of being a chauffeur.

Mark Greene: Yeah, I was, uh, where was I? Oh, I was down in Orange [00:02:00] County and there was a line of Uber cars. I was waiting and there was a guy I noticed at the end of the line, all of the other folks were just sitting in their cars and he was out, uh, speed shining or, you know, quick detailing his car, you know, and I’m thinking I want to get in that guy’s car.

You know, he has a pride of ownership and, and lo and behold, I was, I got in, he had a water bottle there waiting for me. He was very professional and I made some comments to him and he just smiled and yeah, so a little pride of ownership. Love it. So let me give you a proper introduction. Eric Montristelli owns Grand Touring Motorsports, an online website where he and his team of exceptional riders spread the motorsport enthusiasm.

He is the producer and co host of the Brake Fix. Podcast where he and his co host Brad Novak spent years in racing, wrenching and motor sports, tuning that experience into a top notch collection of stories and information and GTM and brake fix was born each week, Brad and Eric interview motor sports and automotive enthusiasts, sharing their stories and their [00:03:00] enthusiasm.

Why? Well, they like to say, because everyone has a story and I’m honored to be a guest in the future on their show. So I look forward to sharing that with you listeners. Uh, when the show pops up, we’ll have some fun, Eric, before we start with the show, a word from our sponsors. So give them a little love.

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Go to AutoGeek. net to get yours. for the best product selection on the internet today, along with their skilled technical support. Autogeek. net is where I go for all my detailing needs. That’s Autogeek. net. So Eric, let’s dive a little deeper in the corner. You mentioned in the intro that you were kind of a professional.

Bruce Wayne, one thing at night, one thing during the [00:07:00] day. Uh, I’m going to touch a little bit on your day job before we get into grand touring motorsports and break fix podcast and why you guys started this, but what’s your day job? What do you do? You said you’re into it.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. So. I guess maybe another little known fact, I actually started in web development when the web was new.

So, you know, when you look back over the history of it, that wasn’t that long ago, right? We’re talking to early to mid nineties. And as an aspiring developer, one of the things I wanted to do was be always, obviously involved in the automotive world. How do I bridge those two together? I got involved with the local DC area car club.

So. Chapters of the Porsche club, SCCA and others. And I started reaching out and they’ll go, Hey, that kid, he’s, he’s got some skills. He can write code. He’s doing this web development stuff. Do you want to run the club website, which we’re now in the process of building? So sure. I’ll try that, you know, and like with everything, it’s all iterative, right?

You go through these cycles, you go through these periods. What we built in the nineties is very different than what we build now in the 2020 is way more complicated by in today’s [00:08:00] standards. That said, that propelled me into those worlds. I ended up working for Audi club nationally. I ended up working for, I was the Porsche club national webmaster for many, many years, so worked in those environments and that allowed me to network with other people that allowed me to meet a lot of other people and see different parts of the automotive enthusiast world from behind the screen per se, you know, from behind, behind the curtain and then learn, where did I want to take that?

Where do I want to go with this? So I’ve always. Sort of try to bridge the it world with the automotive world that got me into the timing and scoring I was I wrote my own software for that and supported many autocross organizations over the years That also led to a passion for autocross which then got me into time trials And i’ve been a trialer for many years that also led me into coaching I’ve been a high performance driver’s education coach for 10 years, but i’ve always found a way to give back to drive back But also loop in technology And GTM Grand Touring Motorsports, when we [00:09:00] brought it through, it’s, I guess, third iteration, right?

It’s been through several evolutions over the last 20 years. We started a car club out of it, out of social, you know, a social group of enthusiasts, and we got together and we leveraged technology. We’re all technophiles. A lot of us came from the department of defense and jokingly, people referred to us as the car club of the DOD, but we were always very technical.

Tech heavy. And so, you know, complicated custom code and this and that, and, you know, we started virtual racing and built this whole scoring engine, all this kind of stuff. So, so for me, it was my vocation, but cars have always been my passion and I’ve always found a way to blend the two together.

Mark Greene: You know, this is a wonderful mix.

And that’s exactly what I was going to say. It sounds like you found a way to mix those two and create something that evolves around your passion, but you can handle it. When I started doing my podcast, I had to figure out all this techie stuff. Cause I was running a business and had all these people to do it.

And, oh, at first it was a bit of a challenge cause I don’t come from that world, but it’s getting easier versus going way back to [00:10:00] the days you were coding because I ventured into that coding sandbox. I call it, I don’t like it very much. It’s a scary place. You can really mess some things up, but it’s kind of interesting.

So I love how you develop this into what you guys are doing a Grand Touring Motorsports and brake fix podcast. Let’s focus on GTM first. What exactly in your guy’s world. Is that for the person listening that maybe hasn’t found you guys yet? And how do they interact with that? What are you guys doing with it?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So GTM as it stands today in its eighth year in its current iteration. So like I said, it’s gone through several evolutions. If you go back 20 years ago, we started as grand touring Audi and a lot of the content there was actually merged into the Audi club. So that exists in its new form over there.

Then we spun off and became this parts distributor company that my dad Ran under the same name, catering to the Volkswagen Audi and Porsche community, specifically for track drivers, autocrossers, high performance people supplying them with, you know, new control arms and brake pads and rotors and [00:11:00] all the stuff they needed to keep the track cars going weekend after weekend.

And then after my dad passed away about 10 years ago, now we were kind of sitting around talking and Brad and I go back 20 plus years. Cause we were in high school together. And he said, And he said, you know, we can leverage technology like I mentioned to keep all of us budding track rats together and not go to the track alone.

That was one of our things. You never want to go to these events by yourselves. You want to go with friends. It makes it more enjoyable. You have all these stories, all these adventures that you go on. And so we started leveraging that and it started to grow. And so we built this car club. Now, granted there’s car clubs all over the place, but they’re super specific, right?

You have the Porsche club and the BMW club, and then you’ve got the guys that own the Ford Fiesta club of New England. Okay, great. We looked at ourselves as what we call non denominational petrol heads. We were accepting of everybody. You got a Miata, you got a GTI, you got a Porsche. It’s all good. The idea was, are you here to promote motorsports and the enthusiasm behind it?

How do we get young people involved? How do we give [00:12:00] back to the community? So initially we were comprised of a lot of racers and instructors, and our way of giving back was getting in the right seat, working with people, cultivating, you know, our experiences and things like that. So that also led us to sit down and go, well, why don’t we share some of these stories with other folks?

So we started writing. We wrote over 300 articles in the first six years that GTM as it exists today. And it could have been on anything. Weekend recaps, field trips. We were taken reviewing, you know, a movie or a documentary that came out. We just wanted to share our experience and our knowledge with other people.

And the podcast break fix had always been on the back burner for a while. The joke in break fix, it’s, it’s not even the build, break, fix, repeat that everybody tends to use over and over again. It goes back to the relationship that Brad and I have. He tends to break things and I was always fixing his cars.

So that’s where that comes from. Nice. But what we decided in 2020 because of [00:13:00] COVID a lackluster, you just. Motorsports year altogether, whether it was on the professional stage or the grassroots stage, we looked at each other and said, everybody’s at home right now. Nobody really wants to read. A lot of our members in the club had said, you know, it would be really nice if we could hear these stories, right?

Do you guys want to talk about them? And we sat on that for a while. And then again, COVID hits Brad looks at me and goes, you think we should do it? I’m like, yeah, I guess so. And then his next question was, do you think anybody cares what we have to say? And I’m like, I think they do. I really do. And obviously we look up to folks like yourself as a mentor.

You’ve been in this business forever and we’re like, yeah, we, we, we got to get these stories out there because we realized that motor sports, especially in the grassroots level is very transient. It’s a sport of convenience, not necessarily of loyalty. And there’s some great adventures out there. There’s some stories that, Hey, do you remember when Pat was talking about blah, or when this happened or that happened?

And then three years later, people are going, what happened to Pat? Do you remember when Pat was coming to events? So again, we want to capture [00:14:00] that. And so the podcast was born 2020 and we’ve been going strong ever since just aggressively, you know, getting these stories out there and getting them in front of people.

Some of the things that I wish I knew, you know, what Andy Pilgrim’s background story was. Well, you know, that episode’s out there too, if that’s what you’re interested in.

Mark Greene: Right. No, it’s fantastic. It’s interesting how COVID so radically changed everything, but it did spur some growth in different areas. I saw a lot more unique downloads as we measure, uh, so called subscribers in the podcast world happened during COVID because people just had more time.

I think is the reason why if you say they were stuck at home or, uh, perhaps they were diverted from other things they were doing. So I love that you guys did this and being in the podcast world has been so enjoyable to me because I get to bring inspiring people like you aboard to share stories with people that are maybe doing what they don’t like and they go, wow, okay, Eric read, they figured out how to do this and they just did it.

And is that in your guy’s case and you’re an IT expert. Expert, but just [00:15:00] stepping into it and doing it. Is that the key to moving forward on these projects? So

Crew Chief Eric: yes, and no, right. So a lot of folks that we talk to, cause we do have friends that are in this world and they, they do podcasts in different genres, right?

Genres that I speak of. Would say are easier, maybe it’s TV and movie, maybe it’s true crime. I mean, those are always the popular ones and they always say, you know, just like we say at the track, Oh, just send it. You know, once the wall falls over, your subscribers will come and this and that. And it’s not that easy, right?

It’s not that the hardest part honestly, is the business development part in the beginning, you get a lot of nose because who are you, why are you, I don’t know who you are. It’s the people that took a chance on you. Those are our season one guests, right? Just like you have, I’m sure in your long list of folks have been on the show.

It was harder in the beginning now. Oh, so and so was on while I’m friends with them. And it becomes that whole, you know, system of everybody knows everybody and then it becomes easier. So the recording with the guests. Isn’t the hardest part. [00:16:00] That’s actually maybe the easier part is having that conversation.

The next hardest part is after the fact. It’s what you choose to do with the content, how you choose to relay the story, how you get it out there. Are you going to spend the time editing? You know, that’s for me where the technology comes in. Again. I enjoy that editing part. You know, Brad calls it the editing magic.

He’s not as involved in that side of it as he is the business development side and doing the research into our guests and things like that.

Mark Greene: He might break it. You know, and

Crew Chief Eric: I got to fix it. Right.

Mark Greene: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s where I enjoy that side, but there’s, there’s a lot to it, you know, just kind of recording it and sticking it out there.

That’s one way of doing it, but it really depends just like a car. What is it you want to get out of it? You know, when you buy that Porsche or you buy that Ferrari, what is it you’re Choosing to do with it. Is it just going to be the cars and coffee car, or are you going to spend time modifying it and making it a track weapon?

So we look at the podcast, we look at the articles that we’re writing. We look at GTM in the same way. It’s this iterative evolution process. And it’s the [00:17:00] same mentality that we take when we’re modifying our track cars.

Mark Greene: Yeah, it’s very cool. I like the way all this is, is tying together, which is really, really nice.

So if somebody wanted to be involved with GTM side of your business, do you accept people who have something they want to share and write? Does it work that way? Or do you solely write all the stories?

Crew Chief Eric: So absolutely we’re we’re always looking for people to come and contribute to let’s say the media side of the house, which is going to be the journalism and podcast side.

We’re always looking for references. We’re always looking for guests. If you’re interested in coming and writing for us, we do have a small writing team. They’re not as active as they used to because a lot of the bloggers that we had have transferred now over to sub series on the podcast and they enjoy it as well.

So you still see the mountain view, which is run by our, one of our members, we call him mountain man, Dan. We have the drive through series, which my sister took over, which is our monthly news episode. Then we have, you know, interviews with drivers and people in industry and things like that. There’s always a follow on article that goes with that, but there are [00:18:00] other ways to get involved with GTM.

So we also have what we call the clubhouse where you can become a member of GTM. And. You know, mix it up with other track rats, autocrossers, rally drivers, and these folks. So if you’re looking to go to an event, especially here on the East Coast, because we travel far and wide and you’re like, Hey, I’m going to be at Carolina Motorsports Park.

Anybody from GTM going, yeah, we’re going to be there. Let’s all paddock together. You know, let’s share resources. Are you bringing the jack? Oh, I’ve got the cooler. You know, all that kind of stuff. You can also contribute into another product that we have called. Nimsa, which is the National Motorsport Safety Association.

So if you’re a sanctioning body, you want to get your rules out there. You want to share. We built this single resource for different disciplines of motorsport, where you can share your rules, your regs, lessons learned, things like that, because we do want to continue to perpetuate safety in motorsports.

And there’s a lot of different disciplines that are not. Up to par with others. There’s a lot of difference between let’s say dirt track racing. Then there is the time trials world or HPDE or [00:19:00] autocross. So we’re trying to normalize all that, get the information out to people in a central resource. So if you nerd out on that kind of stuff, we’re looking for that.

We also have another product that we put out there called paddock pal. It’s a track side assistant. The idea there is to. Correlate all this data together. Not only just, you know, how to get your fastest lap time, how to attack turn one at summit point. It’s about the experience, right? When I go to V. I. R. I go to Watkins Glen.

What are my expectations? What are the amenities? What’s the camping like? You know, what are things to do when I’m there for the weekend? You know, again, spreading that enthusiasm because it’s not just us going by ourselves or with our friends. It’s our wives, our kids, our spouses are significant others.

Now, What do we do with them when we’re in the middle of Watkins Glen, New York, right? What are there things to do other than watch the cars go around and do laps? So we’ve got other things like that where people can get involved in our organization. So whether you want to be a writer, you want to be in the club, you want to participate in safety, you want to work on paddock pal, we’ve got something for everybody.

So my

Mark Greene: question is, when the heck do [00:20:00] you sleep?

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, not very much.

Mark Greene: Wow. I mean, holy cow, you guys have so many parts to this magical machine here. Lots of gears and valves going up and down and pistons and all this kind of thing. Uh, very cool. We’re really proud of what you’re doing. I mean, an immense amount of work and pieces and, but the best part is what I’ve learned after eight years of being a podcaster is it really is about the people.

Yes. Cars are just the catalyst. So I like to ask my guests about driving inspirations, people who are key mentors Influential people in your lives that have helped you become who you are today. Is there somebody like that in your world?

Crew Chief Eric: I’d like to thank the academy.

Mark Greene: Oh, my fellow podcasters.

Crew Chief Eric: Obviously I would, I thank my parents for instilling a hard work ethic in me.

I mean, I come from an immigrant family, so we all, we’ve always had that. Roll up our sleeves, tenacity. If something needs to get done, you buckle down and you do it. So I bring that to every project that we work on, whether it’s in my personal life or if it’s within GTM, things like that. But within, [00:21:00] if we just focus in on the podcasting community alone, I’d like to give some shout outs to a couple of people that I’m very thankful for working for.

Obviously we look to you, Mark at cars. Yeah. As an inspiration, you’re the godfather of these car related podcasts.

Mark Greene: Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m very kind of you to say that. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: But on top of that, you know, I look to our friends, Steven Izzy out in California who run everything I learned from movies, right?

They have been on the air for many, many years like yourself. And they came to our rescue and said, this is how you guys do it. This is how you get it done. You know, we don’t know the car world and every time we need help or we ask for something, they’re the first ones to say yes. And they’ve been awesome.

A shout out to Brian Stever over a take two podcast. We went to school with him as well, and he started many years ago and he was one of those people that said, guys. Stop overthinking this, stop being the analytical engineers that you are, knock the wall over and get it done. I also got to thank Don Weberg over at garage style magazine.

He’s been a huge influence. You know, he, he knows a lot of people and he’s a great resource when it comes [00:22:00] to, you know, getting over the writer’s block. How do you talk to these people? Things like that. And an inspiration as well for me has also been Chuck Bennett over at Zymal. I mean, talk about. A parallel story in a way he started in I.

T. He found his way out. He was able to become a scientist and become passionate about car care and things like that. And I look up to Chuck. His story is inspirational and we have it on our show and I want to be like Chuck, right? I want to figure out how do I stop doing I. T. How do I do this car thing for real?

You know, as my day job and things like that. So those have been people that have been extremely influential in the last two years, you know, getting us off the blocks and getting us to where we are now.

Mark Greene: Very nice. Well, both Don, Don’s a friend of mine and Chuck as well. I’ve known him way back when I was at Grails.

We competed, of course, against them all, but they started before, uh, we started Griot’s garage and developed the car care line and yeah, he, he developed a very interesting, unique brand, uh, really kind of a masterful job, uh, what he did with how he. Put his product [00:23:00] into a special container, made it very unique and special and all that.

So great to have wonderful people around you. We’re going to take a short break and thank our sponsors. We come back. I’m going to ask you about what I call the challenge question. So keep your seatbelts cinched tight and we’ll be right back. Jim Canova is a past guest here on Cars Yeah, and he’s detailed over 8, 000 vehicles, and that kind of professional experience leads to innovation.

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So the challenge question, this is really more about the lesson learned from a big challenge. Maybe it’s a big failure. So walk us through a little tough time on the track since you’re a track track jockey, I guess I [00:27:00] could say, uh, and tell us how you overcame that and what it taught you.

Crew Chief Eric: One of the.

Constant challenges for any high performance driving instructor is that we have to Adapt on the fly and what I mean by that is we’re presented with all different sorts of people that come from different Maybe disciplines of motorsport or have zero experience what we call never nevers Weekend after weekend, so you don’t No, really ahead of time, the type of personality or the type of person you’re going to be sitting in the right seat with on that, you know, Saturday morning or Sunday.

I often joke that, you know, I go into any track weekend with the Klingon battle cry. You know, today is a good day to die. But that’s how I say that’s how I psych myself up. But in reality, what I’ve learned from my students is how to become a better educator, how to become a better communicator. And that translates into other things, you know, being super concise, you don’t have a lot of time on track, but more importantly, I also took from the DOD.

Customers that I work with, especially the Marines, it’s a philosophy of adapt and overcome. [00:28:00] I have to be very quick on my feet, learn how these people are learning. You know, are they a kinesthetic learner? Are they a visual learner, an auditory learner, all these kinds of things. And then adapt my style to them to make sure that not only are we safe, but they’re learning, they’re growing, they’re having fun and they want to come back.

So that’s always a struggle for every instructor. And it comes with time. It comes with time in the right space. Not necessarily time in the driver’s seat.

Mark Greene: I don’t know how you guys do that. I, I had this idea. I wanted to race cars way back when I bought an E36 M3 and I went to a driver’s instructor’s day with BMW club.

Uh, that was actually down in Portland, but we have a great track here. Actually a couple of them and about a third one coming up here. And I just remember jumping into the car with that guy. And I thought about that. I went, man, this guy’s brave to get into a car with complete strangers. He has no idea what they’re about to do.

And get them around the track safely and himself, uh, at the end of the day and be happy. And so my hat’s off to you for that. I love the [00:29:00] correlation to the Marines, DOD, and how you got to act on your feet, because I assume there’s always the hot shoe. Who thinks he knows way more than he does. And just because he brought the fastest car doesn’t mean he knows what the heck he’s doing because sometimes those are the guys to be most afraid of.

Crew Chief Eric: And the learning moment comes there when they’re forced to give a point by to a Miata that’s been dogging them for over a lap.

Mark Greene: A little humility gets built into the equation. Yeah, I did that. I decided I tried riding bikes again and I went to the track with a motorcycle group and I had a bike I should not have been on.

It was a very fast MV Agusta F4 and we went out and I was being very careful because I knew I didn’t have the skill sets and I realized very quickly the way they had posed this. event was not what it was. It was supposed to be a beginner thing. And there were guys out there that were far from that. And they were passing left, right.

And they’d go by me and bump my shoulder. I’m like, what is going on here? And I think that’s the other part of it is to know when to get off the track and go, okay, this isn’t right. This isn’t working. How do [00:30:00] you work with people like that, that get out there and then realize, I don’t think I should be here.

Is there a way you kind of work with them to get them back out, to give them the confidence that, okay, we’ll take a different approach?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So around the country, there are sanctioning bodies that certify instructors, especially for high performance drivers education or HPDE for short. Some of those include the SCCA, NASA, the motor sport safety foundation and other organizations like that.

So we go through rigorous bootcamps, much like the club racers do when they’re, you know, getting their driver’s licenses. Yeah. For track racing and whatnot. So we go through that. We also go through recertification year after year. And what we do is we work on use cases. Like some of the classic ones are the timid driver.

There’s the engineer who overanalyzes things. And then there’s the overly aggressive drivers. So those are the three big ones. And then you kind of go. So we’re trained to deal with that, adapt with that different techniques, emergency situations, what happens if somebody passes out behind the wheel, all those kinds of things.

So it’s sort of on par with the department of state training sometimes [00:31:00] where, you know, things like that, but it’s, it’s a great experience, but it also teaches you a lot about your own driving because you start to analyze. The mistakes that the newbies are making. So you grow while they grow, but in the beginning it’s tough and there’s a lot of mentoring going on.

So as a senior instructor myself, I take on, you know, instructor candidates every year and work with them, you know, put them in difficult situations, get them out of their comfort zone. You know, if it’s a front wheel drive guy, I’m going to stick you in a high horsepower, you know, Viper, because I want you to be uncomfortable, but you need to learn one of the greatest.

Things that I think Hans Stuck bestowed to us grassroots drivers, which is the best tool you have behind the wheel is what you’re sitting on. And so these guys need to learn how to drive by feel. And as an instructor, if you can’t do that, you can’t instruct because you don’t, you can’t anticipate what the car is doing ahead of time.

Mark Greene: I never thought about somebody passing out. Oh my gosh, that’s gotta be horrifying that it’s ever happened to you.

Crew Chief Eric: It has not happened to me, but it has happened to other instructors. We’ve had people have heart attacks. I mean, there’s been some unfortunate situations.

Mark Greene: Wow. [00:32:00] Yeah. I can’t even imagine. Well, I like to ask people about bucket list, looking for you, looking forward because racing is much about that.

Looking way down the track. Not just what’s in front of you. It’s akin to life. You should always be looking way down the track. It sounds like to me, you may have already answered this question. How to transition at a full time IT into what you’re doing now. Is that, that’s your, your goal looking forward?

Crew Chief Eric: It is because i have to think about you know what is what’s my retirement job look like i’ve been in it a long time and you know some of these careers for folks you know we go through evolutions oh you know you hear about it as an example andy pilgrim is one of my heroes he didn’t become a factory driver until he was forty years old and here he is at sixty four and he’s still out there racing but before that.

He was a programmer. He was also in it. He ran his own company, you know, things like that. So I asked him on the show, you know, how did you make that transition? And he walks us through that journey, but I look at that as well, but there’s something beyond that. If we kind of hone in on the bucket list for, for the podcast itself for break fix, [00:33:00] we have this.

You know, vision board in, in the, in the writer’s room. And we talk all the time, we call it Mount Everest, right? Who’s at the summit, who’s at base camp, you know, and, and in between. And for me at the top of our Mount Everest vision board, I would love to sit down with kind of two, two guests. And I guess one’s a pair and one, she’s by herself.

I would love to interview one of my heroes as I grew up in the group B era. And that would be Michelle Mutong from Audi. And on the other side of that, sort of in line with that, keeping with the Audi theme, I would also love to sit down and talk Trans Am and IMSA with Hurley and Hans. I think that would just be a fantastic conversation.

So for me, that’s the summit of Mount Everest.

Mark Greene: Very cool. I love it. So we’re going to talk about your special vehicle, a car that you’ve had that really stands out for you. Take us on a little ride.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’ve had a lot of cars over the years. We actually did an episode about this called Regrets in the Desert Island.

You know, the one that got away and things like that. Yes. But I think the better answer to this is, [00:34:00] The experiences I’ve had with my heroes, because I throw it out there and I know it’s a con I’m a hypocrite when I say this, never drive your heroes. It’s like meeting a celebrity in Hollywood, right? Never meet your celebrity.

Cause you’re going to get your heart broken. And I think the same is true of some of the vehicles I’ve owned and the vehicles I’ve driven, cause I’ve driven a lot of them. And I’ll start with one. I owned, I, I went, when I was in college, I drove an 83 Audi. Quattro coupe, right? A you are quattro, right? You know, homologated rally car, you’re the only one in the state.

I think things like that. And it was, you know, it was a head turn. People ask me all the time, why are you driving that old car? And I’m like, just look at it. It’s super cool, but it came with its gremlins. It came with its shortcomings. You know, the fantasy I had of the car that Michelle drove, you know, up Pike’s peak was not the car I was driving every day.

It was riddled with issues, you know, things like that. And I, and I, you know, never drive your heroes. And then here I go smoking and banded Trans Am nine 30 turbos, Renault turbo two Vipers, you know, and I’m [00:35:00] just, I, I’m like so excited to drive them. And I walk away from them and I go, Oh, that was just a regrettable experience.

So those are the special vehicle.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Oh, well, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And those old Audi’s, you know, we, we had one in our family. Oh my gosh. What a horror. Uh, they’ve come a long way now, but, um, yeah, it was a hundred Ls. My parents bought. It stranded us in the middle of the desert over Thanksgiving. Oh, that’s terrible.

So I’m going to be your car psychologist. I’m going to crawl into your skull a little bit here, Eric. If you were reincarnated, pun intended, manifest as a vehicle, not what you want to be, but how you perceive yourself as a vehicle, what would you be? But more importantly, why?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since I talked about that duality in my life, there’s two cars that come to mind.

One of which is It’s a car that has kept me passionate about cars for the longest time ever since it was introduced. The Ferrari F40 has been that car. It’s the poster on the wall. It’s the temptress, right? It’s what has kept me excited. It’s just so raw. It’s just so [00:36:00] perfect. I mean, people will take issue with it.

Oh, well, the F50 is better. Oh, well, the Enzo, the FXX. But the F40 is what started it all. And I kind of look at it. It built the new empire of Ferrari, right? It’s that point in which everything changed. They were building cars to a certain point. The F40 came along and so on. So I look at it as a representation of my life as well.

Like we’re talking about it now is that evolution from the IT nerd doing web and working with the car clubs. And now here we are doing the podcast. So the F40 is, is that point for me. But then I also. See the other side of it and I’m very much like the DeLorean where it gets your attention and everybody talks about it, but sometimes took too long to get there.

It was over complicated. It was this. It was that there’s mystique. There’s story behind it. And so I view my life in the same way, right? It took a minute to get there. There was a struggle to get there. There was a lot of things that built up and culminated to that moment to when the DeLorean was born.

And then there’s the Ethos behind it. So I see myself in both camps in the same way. I see myself in two different camps in [00:37:00] real life.

Mark Greene: Very interesting answer to that question, but I like it. It makes a world of sense. Yeah. The F 40. Yeah. Be careful. Never drive your heroes. As I say, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So how about a great read a great book?

Uh, you’re a writer, so I assume you’d probably like to read.

Crew Chief Eric: I do. And we’ve interviewed a few authors on the show. And one of the books that has taken me aback, I mean, I could list off things like Colin Chapman, the man and his machines by Cromback. Fantastic book. If you want to get under the hood of Lotus on a clear day, you can see GM, right, the story that John DeLorean dictated to Patrick Wright about what was going on behind the scenes at GM in the seventies and why he left and started DeLorean great read.

You’ve got the unfair advantage by Mark Donohue, you know, things like that. But another book. That really stood out and was, uh, the author was a guest on our show was little Anton, which is written by John W. Warner, the fourth famed for being the son of Senator John Warner from Virginia. His stepmother was Elizabeth Taylor.

You know, all the things behind [00:38:00] that are a real life Bruce Wayne, if you think about it, but the story he crafted around the Porsche family, you know, bringing in these aspects of these fictitious characters and blending in, you know, You know, Hans Stuck senior and what was going on during World War Two and all these kinds of things.

He created this entire world in a series of four books and it’s, it’s absolutely captivating. And if you’re in any sort of way, a historian or an automotive enthusiast, it brings it all together. In not a dry way in an exciting way. It’s like this Indiana Jones type of tempo to the books and I can’t recommend that enough.

So check out Little Anton. And there’s also a podcast that goes along with that called Beyond Little Anton. And you can hear from John Warner’s perspective, you know, why he wrote the book, how he developed the characters and all that. And then we featured him on our show as well.

Mark Greene: Very cool. I’ve had hundreds of authors and over 2, 500 books recommended.

Nobody’s ever recommended that book. So Bravo, Eric, for bringing something new to the car show, [00:39:00] a recommended guest list, a book guest lists, a lineup. I love it. So I’m going to enable you to go on the ultimate drive. This could get a little scary. I’m going to buy you any vehicle. You can take it anywhere and you can be with anyone.

Even somebody. Who’s not with us anymore, which opens up a world of interesting options. Where are you going to go? Who are you going to go with? And, uh, what are you going to be driving?

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re going to go to brands hatch in the UK. One of my bucket list tracks and who will be with me? Sir, Jackie Stewart, who is still alive.

He’s still with us. What are we be driving? It’s a toss up between the original Renault sport Clio or the new Megan RS, because I have to drive a French car at some point in my life. And I would be driving not Sir Jackie Stewart and I would appreciate it if he was coaching me and at the same time kind of inner, we would be talking about his origin and things like that.

And the reason I picked Sir Jackie Stewart is early in my coaching career. As an, as an HPD instructor, I happened upon an episode of top [00:40:00] gear where Sir Jackie Stewart was coaching James May and it all clicked for me at that moment. I learned a lot from that. I picked up a lot of his style. I call that my Sir Jackie Stewart mode, especially when I’m working with advanced drivers.

He’s very direct. You know, he’s driving the car from the right seat. I love that. I don’t do that with my beginners, but I would love him to coach me at brands hatch, you know, on his turf, uh, in a French car.

Mark Greene: You know, this is a very cool answer, Eric. And it’s something that I learned a long time ago is, uh, hang out with people that are a lot better than you.

Cause you can learn a lot more from them and that’s pretty cool. You being a higher level coach, if you will, and having somebody like that, who’s way up there in the racing world, obviously be your coach, uh, just gives me a little inclination of who you are, that you can always learn. I always get better.

It’s great. You’ve taken us on a wonderful drive today and I can’t thank you enough for, for reaching out and being my guest here. I can’t wait to be a guest on your show. This has been really great. And I get to meet Brad, of course. Before I let you [00:41:00] go, could you share maybe an inspirational thought, some words of wisdom for our listeners?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So it goes back to the title of our show break fix. I mean, jokingly, you know, I said, it refers to Brad and I, but more importantly, it refers to a racers mantra that you hear around the paddock all the time, run it until it’s broken. Then, you know, what needs to be fixed. And people are like, what do you, what do you mean by that exactly?

And it’s actually something that I’ve translated for my daughters. And I tell them all the time, as they’re growing up, stop being afraid of what could go wrong. And start being excited for what could go right. So if you compare those two phrases, they’re exactly the same thing. And so that’s what we tell people all the time.

Just go out there and send it. Have fun. Safety first. Learn. The speed will come. It’s all a building process. It’s all a learning process. And to your point from before, I’m very much about never stop learning. So if I could pass on one piece of wisdom, I think it’s those two things. The racer’s mantra or the other one.

Because you can incorporate that into. Your everyday life into your career, you know, stop [00:42:00] complaining, stop worrying, stop stressing about so many things that could go wrong. You know, the things that are keeping you from being successful, get excited about what could go right and what doors that will open up and what, what that will lead you to next.

Mark Greene: Powerful words of inspiration. Yeah, absolutely. Not easy to do, but it’s doable. And just knowing you can do it is what makes the difference. I love it. Fantastic. How can people learn more about Grand Touring Motorsports and Brake Fix podcast?

Crew Chief Eric: So really easily, you can jump over to www. gtmotorsports with an S that’s G as in Grand T as in touring motorsports.

org, or you can search for the show. Break fix by either grand touring or break fix on all your favorite pod catchers or music apps, whichever you prefer and check out the 135 plus episodes. We already have published with a ton more coming with awesome guests. We’re also supported by way of patrion. So if you’re looking to help us out, you know, you were talking about giving back and.

Being involved in GTM, you can find us on patreon. com [00:43:00] forward slash GT motor sports.

Mark Greene: I love it. Pod catchers. Is that what you said? Pod

Crew Chief Eric: catchers. Pod catchers. Yep.

Mark Greene: I like that. Very cool. I want to do a shout out. Thank you to our mutual friend, Don Weberg for introducing me to Eric Don. Hey, thank you. Uh, Don, I’ve known for a long time.

Uh, he supports me. I try my best to support him the best I can. So that’s very, very cool. Eric. Hey, thanks for being so generous today with your time, your expertise and sharing your experience. Really proud of what you guys are doing. Can’t wait to be on your show and meet Brad, a tremendous bit of juggling you’re doing in your life.

My hat’s off to you, my friend. Cause this is, this is not an easy feat. What you and I do, and you’ve added a lot more complex complexity to your life. So Bravo to you. And to you and I talk again, I’ll see you down the road or on break fix podcast. Thanks Mark. You’re welcome. This was fun.

Advertisement: Thank you so much for joining us on today’s ride here at Cars Yeah!

Drive on over to CarsYeah. com to find show notes and inspiring automotive fun. Download your free copy of [00:44:00] Filler Up, a fun book filled with gorgeous photographs of fuel filler fun, including quotes from more inspiring automotive enthusiasts. Download your copy today and we’ll see you next time on Cars Yeah!

I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Our guest calls himself an incurable automotive enthusiast, interviewing successful entrepreneurs who live a lifestyle around their passion for vehicles of all types. Be it cars, motorcycles, trucks, or something more. Guest interviews include industry leaders, celebrities, racers, artists, builders. If it’s related to the automotive world, you’ll more than likely find it in his huge catalog of episodes.

Crew Chief Brad: Our guest takes you on his journey, gets under the hood and aims to provide his listeners with inspiration with us [00:01:00] tonight on break fix is Mark green, the founder, producer, and host of cars. Yeah. Cars. Yeah. Is a five day a week podcast where Mark talks with inspiring automotive enthusiasts, people who have wrapped their passion for automobiles into their careers and lives, and we’re delighted to be sharing his story with all of you, so as he puts it, sit down, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad. And welcome to break fix mark for this boomerang crossover episode.

Mark Greene: Guys, Eric, Brad, thanks for having me break fix. Let’s see, what are we going to break and fix today? I’ve got some tools handy and I’m ready to go. So thanks for having me. This is awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: If there’s a claw hammer in your toolbox, you’re definitely ready to work with us in the pit crews.

Mark Greene: Wait a minute, a claw hammer?

Crew Chief Eric: The sign of a real mechanic.

Mark Greene: Okay, well I do have one of those too, so no worries.

Crew Chief Eric: Like every good story, there’s always an origin. So let’s talk about the who, what, where, When and how of Mark Green, the petrol head, how did you get your start in the automotive world? Did you [00:02:00] come from a car family or a racing family?

Mark Greene: Not a racing family and kind of a car family. My father grew up on a farm in Texas and was the only one of five kids that came West, went out West. He became an architect, met my mom in college. Actually in Oklahoma, and then they came out west and I grew up in La Jolla, California, which is in Southern California, just north of San Diego.

It’s kind of a beach community, grew up surfing at the beach every day, that whole lifestyle skateboarding, biking. But my father, when I was about. Five. I think it was, he bought a 1949

Crew Chief Eric: MGTC.

Mark Greene: And when you’re a little kid that age, you’re used to, I think we had a, he called it a Pontiac lemon. It was a Lamar, but it was a lemon.

It was the worst car. One of the worst cars we ever had. The other was an Audi long time ago though. And when he brought this little car home for me as a little boy, I just went. Is this for me? Because it was like a little toy compared to that car. And then the later car, we had the first gen of the Oldsmobile Vista [00:03:00] Cruiser.

I thought it was the coolest thing. Plus it had the steering wheel on the wrong side. It was on the right side. So when you got in the car, you set where the driver was. My dad had a spare steering wheel and those old cars had these Banjo steering wheels that were really unique, cool, super lightweight.

And he used to give me the spare one and we would drive, I would sit there and pretend like I was driving. And we pull up next to people and they’d look down and go, who’s that kid driving the car? And I’d hold the wheel up and laugh. And we had a great time. I really think that car is what put the bug into me for sports cars, especially European sports cars, which we’ll talk about today.

And I always remember and remembering five years old, it’s getting harder and harder at this point in my life. But I do remember one day we went to the hardware store and we went inside. My dad was an architect. He was always building things and designing things. And they had this little display on the counter called Matchbox pre Hot Wheels.

And I said, dad, look at the cars. And he said, well, I’ll buy you one. He bought me the first one, which was a red Jaguar XKE [00:04:00] coupe. And I still have it. And that was kind of the beginning of the collection of the Hot Wheels, which led to Matchbox, which led to building model cars and go karting and minibikes and motorcycles and cars.

And there we go. And that’s where it really all took off from.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re entrenched in the car world from a very early age. That’s awesome.

Mark Greene: Well, yeah. And it’s interesting, my mom was never into cars. My dad was into his car for a while. And then as I got older and his responsibilities grew, the idea of an MGTC to drive to work every day was a little bit ridiculous.

Car. Many mornings had to hand crank the thing. My mom didn’t like it because in the sixties, women were those big, what’s the name of the Simpsons? Wife? The beehive. Yeah. The women wore the teased hair and my mom would have to put a scarf on because otherwise the hair would fly all over the place. She didn’t really care for that car that much, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I remember the big grill and the dashboard was. Supposed to be wood, but the guy he bought it from had taken that off and put an engine turned [00:05:00] aluminum dashboard. You know, back then I didn’t know how that was made, but all these little circles and these beautiful Jaeger gauges that were kind of green tinted old fashioned, and it was super cool.

And when my mom and dad would take my sister and I, there’s a little platform behind the seats. There’s no back seats in those cars, of course. There’s a little platform where you actually sit up above the driver and the passenger. My dad bought us these, he went into the surplus military store, these goggles and leather caps, like flight caps.

And there was a little bar across the back of the seats. And he used to say, If you’re a chicken, you’ll hang on to the bar. That’s the chicken bar. Now, of course, these days he would have been arrested for child endangerment because, you know, super dangerous. I mean, if we’d already been hit or something, we got flying out of that thing.

No seatbelts. It was like going on a rollercoaster ride. Every time we went for a ride, it was super fun. Good memories.

Crew Chief Brad: Looking, you know, in your background there, I see you’ve got the nine 11 on your wall. Were there any other cars that maybe your family hadn’t owned that influenced you as well as a child?

What were some of the posters on your wall?

Mark Greene: Posters were [00:06:00] Porsche racing cars primarily because I’ve just been a Porsche guy forever. That started with a neighbor up the street. He was kind of this cool dude because he was a bachelor. I would say he was probably in his mid twenties or something. I’m thinking he was some kind of a trust fund kid because we lived in La Jolla, which was a more affluent neighborhood.

He had his own house. He wasn’t married and he had cool cars. And one of them was a 58, 59 Porsche Carrera. Speedster, that car was cool. And I just say, take me for a ride. And he was a surfer. So he would take me down to the beach and we’d stick our surf boards. Believe it or not. Now, back then the boards were short, but we’d stick them behind the seats, nose down, and he’d put this strap around.

I mean, we drive down to the beach. We were just five, six blocks away and go surfing. And I think that influenced me along with many of my friends, parents, fathers had very nice, Sports cars. A lot of them were doctors and lawyers and business owners and finance guys. And so I would go to friends houses and the first thing I would do is what’s in your garage?

And I’m talking about things like Miras and Jaguar XKEs and [00:07:00] the first 450 SL Mercedes and old Alphas and these cars that these dads would have. And I’d go visit friends and I’d End up in the garage with their dads. In fact, junior high girl, I was very smitten with she invited me to her birthday party.

I thought, Oh man, this girl likes me. And I went over to her house and she said, you know, my dad has a Porsche Speedster and I know you like cars. So I went out in the garage. And the whole rest of the birthday party, I didn’t even attend. I was in the garage. She was very mad at me. Never invited me over again, but I spent the whole time out in the garage with her dad because he was getting it ready to take it to a Concord event.

And so I was helping him clean it. I remember Q tips in the tires and we put these wrappers on the tires. And next day I actually, my dad took me down to the car show where it was and he let me sit in it. Very fortunate to grow up in that community where there was lots of very cool cars. So you could see them Southern California.

There’s cool cars everywhere anyway. So, yeah, but on the wall for me, we’re either surfing pictures and posters at a surfer [00:08:00] magazine or posters of European sports, racing cars, mostly nine 11s, of course, nine 17s, five 50 spiders, three 56s, all those kinds of things. And the, the, on the wall here is a painting from a listener in Russia.

And he painted that for me and mailed it to me, got a picture of me in my Porsche 930 turbo. And I called my orange crush. We’re going to be talking about that car today, I think. And he sent that to me and that’s me in the car. If you look at it, look, actually it looks like me. And I thought, what a nice guy.

I invite him to be on the show, but his English is still, he’s working on it. We’ll get them on the show on these days. Yeah. And if you walk through my house, I have a wife who’s a saint. We’ve been married 38 years in about a week. And all the pictures and paintings in our house are all past guests, photographers, artists, painters, and so forth.

So the whole house is car stuff and a couple of guitars. Cause she’s played guitars a lot. The fender straddle in the back is a limited edition hot rod. Fender [00:09:00] Shadowcaster. So makes it kind of cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So Mark, I think it’s time for our first pit stop question of any in this episode.

Mark Greene: All

Crew Chief Eric: right. So what we like to do is throw in these just random off the cuff opinion questions.

And in this case, you’ve named dropped some serious cars. If our listeners were paying attention, things like three 56 speedster and Mira and Alfa Romales and all sorts of other things. So that begs the question in your opinion, what is the sexiest car of all time?

Mark Greene: Now this is very difficult because I have a saying, if it rolls on rubber, I probably love it or some aspect of it.

But boy, sexy is a specific word. So I’m going to stick to that. And I’m probably going to answer this in a way that a lot of my regular Cards Out listeners may go, what? But there’s a reason for this. One would be Lamborghini Miura. That car when it came out, and I remember there was a doctor in town in La Jolla that had one, it was orange, and I just couldn’t believe that thing when I saw him drive by.

And I wanted to go find that guy. I did end up finding him actually. To me that car [00:10:00] is sexy because it just got these curves and the eyelashes and the headlights. And the way it’s designed. I grew up with a dad who was an architect and a designer. He really influenced me from a design aesthetic. And I ended up going to school and getting a degree in both business administration, but also in design.

And I worked in design for 11 years. That would be one. Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale. Again, round, voluptuous, kind of the same as one of my favorite cars, 550 Spyder, although I guess I could call the 550 Spyder sexy, but the Stradale goes to a whole nother level. I mean, it’s just, it’s Italian. I mean, hey, the Italians know how to make sexy cars.

Now let’s go to England because the Aston Martin DBR2 has a lot of those same feelings. You see what’s going on here. 50, 60 sports cars, kind of my background. So that Aston Martin to me, and there was a local guy up here that is in the Pacific Northwest that had one of those cars, used to bring it to the historic races when I was racing.

And it’s just, That [00:11:00] car to me is just so, so cool. Of course, you can’t forget the Jaguar XKE, probably one of the sexiest cars ever made. The Series 1. Although I had a detailing business, I 14, and one of my clients had a 72 V12. I used to ride my bike down to South Mission Beach and drive it back home. And when I drove that car, I just, I still feel it, smell it.

That started to get a little clunky, those 72s, that third gen, I think it was, but the first gen Jaguars, I mean, it’s so delicate. It’s just little, wonderful little piece of automobile that I think everybody has to say it’s one of their favorites. So I could go on and on, but those, I pick those as kind of my first choices when you use that word.

Crew Chief Eric: And the best part about the last one that you selected, which does come up quite often. The E Type Jag is probably one of the best looking designs of all time, right up with the Miura and some of the other ones you mentioned. But the irony in the E Type is that as beautiful as the cars were that were coming out of Ferrari, Enzo always said that the E Type, [00:12:00] Was the best looking car.

Mark Greene: Some people are probably saying why there is, is there not a Ferrari in there? But to me, one of my favorite Ferraris is the 250 short wheelbase, but that’s not a sexy car. That’s a masculine car. I mean, it’s a little bulldog. Got that sense of feel. And I love that car. It’s spectacular. The GTO, I guess you could say sexy, but again, I think of that more as a masculine race car type thing.

The TRs, 250s, I mean, I don’t know, but I’ll just limit it to those. Cause we could talk on that question for a long

Crew Chief Brad: time. You hinted when we asked you that question that you could find something you like about pretty much anything that rolls on rubber. So we’re going to ask you what’s the ugliest car of all time and put that statement to the test.

Mark Greene: Yeah, I live by a motto that my mom taught me, and many people have heard this. If you don’t have anything nice to say. Don’t say anything at all. I’m not going to answer that question because there’s lots of them that I think were probably cars designed by committee and you just kind of look at them and go, what were [00:13:00] they thinking?

And even some of the new supercars, I kind of went. Okay. How many people got into this kitchen and threw some salt and spices into the pot? They kind of went a little bit the wrong way, but ugly, every car has something about it that has an element that’s interesting. And when you have a design background, you always look for that in everything, even if it’s something that’s not so great.

Take a great piece of art, for example, you go, that’s a really Weird painting. When you start looking at little elements of it, you’ll find something you kind of like, or you think is kind of interesting. So if you’ll allow me, I think I’m not going to answer that question, or at least I answered it the way I just did.

If you’ll let me get away with that.

Crew Chief Eric: I believe that’s the automotive equivalent to pleading the fifth mark, but we’ll take it. It’s okay.

Mark Greene: Yeah. I hate those guys to plea the fifth, but I’ve never been on, I’ve never been in court in front of a judge. I’d probably do the same thing. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: That was the wrong answer.

The correct answer is Pontiac Aztec.

Mark Greene: [00:14:00] Here’s something funny about that. My wife and I just started rewatching the breaking bad series. And I remember that car, of course, in that, and I chose that car. I’m sure for a reason, but yeah, that’s a tough one to like, I’m still trying to find the right angle on that thing. I shake my head and go, who, what, why?

I wasn’t in the room. And when you start getting into General Motors, and I’ve had a lot of designers, car designers on my show, and they talk about the difficulties of being in a big company and you think, Oh, this guy designed the car. It’s never that case. Now, maybe back in the day, Scaliette, Vittorini were designed the Bertone’s.

I mean, all those guys, DeGiario’s. The lure car, there’s just too many people in the room and it’s kind of like that scene out of Ferrari versus Ford and that great line where he’s in the office with Mr. Ford and he said, you know, I saw that red envelope get passed around among five or six hands. That’s not how you do things, not how you win races.

And I would assume it’s also not how you design cars. [00:15:00] We’ll leave it at that.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So let’s jump back in the timeline a little bit here. And you foreshadowed a couple of things. You talked about working with your friends, three 56 and preparing it for a concord. Then you dropped a hint about starting a detailing business at 14 years old.

So a lot of people may know you now for cars. Yeah. But some of us remember Mark Green as the president of Griot’s garage. So take us on the journey of how you went from From this inspiring automotive enthusiast at the age of 10 or so to being the president of Griot’s garage.

Mark Greene: I studied graphic design at a state of business in college.

And my first job was actually in a design firm in San Diego. Part of our many client lists were catalogers back in the day. This is pre internet. So that’s how you, your mailbox was full of catalogs. And I received a catalog in the mail from a guy named Richard Griot, his first one. And in fact, I had a white 72S on the cover, which ended up being my car for a while.

[00:16:00] It’s back in his garage now. However, we were designing catalogs at Warner Design. I worked with another Richard, Richard Warner. So I called on Richard because I get this catalog. My wife said, I came home. She said, Hey, check this out. You guys should be designing this catalog. And I looked at it and I went, yeah, we should.

It needs some help. So I contacted him multiple times. He was very busy back then. There was just. He, another guy and a lady answering the phone. That was it. It was the very beginnings. And so I think I had to call him seven or eight times. And I finally, he just said, I have somebody, I don’t need you. Well, our firm was the first company in San Diego to use Mac computers.

Now it was the Mac SE, if anyone remembers those little goofy box, but you could design things on it using PageMaker. There might’ve been another software before that. I talked him into allowing me to come up by saying, I’m going to come up and buy a bunch of stuff from you. I’m not going to pitch you. I just want to buy some stuff.

And what’s he going to say? No. I was driving an 84 Porsche Cabriolet at the time. I drove up there in that car, parked right in front of his window. So he would [00:17:00] notice it. I figured this guy’s a car guy, has a Porsche on his first catalog. Long story short, got to know him, landed the account. We started designing the catalog for him and we became friends.

After a couple of years, he said, you know, I’d like you to come on board and help me build this brand. I still need somebody to do the marketing. And Wear a lot of other hats. I always say I wore so many hats at Griot’s. I wore all my hair off, which is pretty true. And so I decided to leave the firm I was with.

I’d been there for 10, 11 years. And now I worked with Griot’s for about two and a half years before I became a real employee. In fact, for about three, four months, I was working both jobs. I would do my job in the design firm. And then at night I would do stuff with him. And I did that for like three months.

It was not easy. Didn’t want to leave my old business partner in the lurch. He was trying to find somebody new. We built that business up. So we had a lot of clients and I joined Griot. So I was there for over 20 years, essentially. And initially I was, we all had titles, but we did everything. I did all the graphic design and advertising, [00:18:00] started traveling around the world, looking for products that we could brand.

We were trying to develop. The brand, part of it was pretty quick for me to see that the real value was the car care. There was only three or four car care products. When I started there, we were selling a lot of hard goods. The problem with hard goods is when somebody buys a tool, they break it and they expect a new one.

They never buy that tool again. But when you buy a bottle of wax, you use it up and you buy it again. We started steering down that path. Long story short, I was there for a long, long time, did a lot of things, eventually became the president of the company and ran the company. And as the company grew, we decided very quickly, he’d already had in his mind, we were going to move out of the state of California.

We were some of the earliest APs from California because it just wasn’t conducive to business taxes, name it. There was a lot of challenges, even 30 years ago, not as many as are now. So we came up here to the Northwest and I came up here kind of crying and screaming because I had this. Porsche Cabriolet that when it rained, it leaked because those old Porsches didn’t have [00:19:00] waterproof tops.

Believe it or not, they got saturated water, started dripping right through them. I remember in the owner’s manual, it said top is not conducive to inclement weather.

Crew Chief Eric: Very German explanation. I love it.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, there’s no cup holder either. Shouldn’t be drinking while you’re driving. I sold that car.

I bought a, 911 coupe Carrera 2. We moved the business up here. Eventually we ended up buying a company that was making products for us so we can make our own car care products. We moved the manufacturing to the Midwest because of shipping. We had a warehouse that we built. Shipping was a lot less expensive from the Midwest than Pacific Northwest.

Most of our clients were California, Florida, that region. Learned a lot, traveled a lot, did a lot, did everything. And during that time started racing, which we may talk about vintage racing. It was a wonderful experience. I learned how to do so many things in business. We built brands, we built products. I traveled and met people.

We branded things. We find people in Germany that made screwdrivers and we’ll help them redesign them. In a way we thought was better and put our name on them. So I learned [00:20:00] a massive amount of information and knowledge in that time period. And it was really, really fun. We were fortunate because Richard had the means to expand the business whenever we needed to.

So he bought this old Coca Cola bottling building, and he tasked me with designing it into our new corporate headquarters. Kind of said, do whatever you want. And so I got to bring that old design aspect into my career, marketing, passion for cars, products, travel, racing, associating with clients. It was, it was really a really great time.

Crew Chief Eric: So since you have that design background and the vision, and you got started with Griots from the very early days, are you responsible then for the current logo? And if so, there’s a debate always about what the car actually is. Cause it’s kind of ambiguous. Sort of think it’s British, could be an AC, could be a JAG, could be an MG.

So what’s the answer? What’s the secret?

Mark Greene: Well, I’m not going to reveal the secret because I didn’t do the logo. The logo was already designed when I came on [00:21:00] board. They had printed the first catalog and mailed it to me. We started producing, I think it was the Third catalog. Now, keep in mind at that time, Grails was doing four catalogs a year.

And then there were three titles of each catalog. So at one point we were doing like 17 or 18 a year. However, that was already done. I wouldn’t say I was stuck with it because I think it’s a nice logo and it’s great. But I had an ongoing debate with Richard all the time that that was a Jaguar. No, it isn’t.

It’s no car. I go, yeah, some car it’s, you know, and I would even overlay some of the Profiles of one twenties with that car. And they almost were exactly the same to this day. I don’t even know who designed that logo. I’d like to talk to them and find out where they got the inspiration because you don’t typically design in a vacuum ideas come from your surroundings or places you go as a designer.

I know that. So I don’t, I wish I could reveal the secret, but, and if Richard knows that he never revealed it to me in all the years I was there, he vehemently said, no, it’s not a Jaguar. But in my world. [00:22:00] It’s a 120. So

Crew Chief Eric: see, so this is what makes it fun. And maybe one day we will find out and listeners, if you know the secret, we’d love to hear about it.

Mark Greene: Yeah. I don’t think anybody out there knows except Richard. And if he really doesn’t know, then whoever designed the logo. And again, I have no idea who that was. Yeah. Cause we were involved so early. I mean, I wrote. The copy from almost the first time I got involved there, we were taking the photographs, designing products, page layouts, and so forth.

In fact, the difficult thing for me, and it’s a funny thing, Richard originally wrote the copy first person. I came from a world where copy for selling products was problem solution based. His was I’m using it. Therefore, You should. When I started writing all the copy, I had to think like he thought, which not the way I think.

So I actually had a hat that had Richard on it and I would put it on and try to, okay, if I’m him, how would I think? You know, I traveled the world with him. We spent massive amount of time. I was at work 10, 11 hours a day. I mean, seven days a week sometimes. So I got to know him really well. So [00:23:00] I got the flow down.

The trap was that it kept me writing long into much Further past, I should have been spending my time on that, but I did a lot of that at night at home, but it was fun. I always wanted to keep that creative side going because that’s where I came from. And I still get to do that with cars. Yeah. I designed my own website with cars.

Yeah. All the photographs you see on my site. I shot all those. I write all the copy, the scripts for everything. I’m kind of a one man paper hanger here sometimes with one leg. So,

Crew Chief Brad: Well, the griot story is very fascinating to me, but I want to hear more about the racing. You know, you’ve mentioned, you mentioned the racing a few times.

Yeah. So let’s talk about your racing, dare I say, career and your performance driving history

Mark Greene: wasn’t a career. Well, I’ll tell you how it started. Uh, Richard Griot had some vintage race cars, but he wasn’t running them. He worked at Skip Barber way, way back before he started Griot. And one day he said, Hey, how’d you like to go racing?

And I go, well, yeah, but you know, it’s very expensive and I kind of work a lot. I don’t know when I’m going to have time. He goes, well, we’ll figure it out. So I [00:24:00] ended up getting a car that he actually had restored 1960 Lotus formula junior 18, but I’m going to back up from there because when you decide to go racing, it’s not a good idea to just buy a race car and go race because you may not like it, you may not like racing.

You may not like. Or be comfortable at speed. You may not like the race car you bought. You know, you hear these stories about a lot of guys get to the point in life where they can buy their high school dream car and they buy it and they get in it and they go, this thing sucks.

Crew Chief Eric: Never drive your heroes.

Mark Greene: There you go. Yeah, exactly. So I started in an E36 M3. Now I’ve had four M3s. I was always driving 911s and I had a lot of them. But I bought an M3 from a college student, a gal whose dad had bought her a car and then she hardly ever drove it and she had to go back to China, I think is where she was from.

So I ended up getting her car for really cheap. She had to unload it. I was at the right place at the right time and it was a really nice car and I went. These M3s are kind of cool. And at the time I was in part of many car clubs, member of many car clubs. One was BMW. And so I met [00:25:00] a guy and he said, why don’t you bring it to the track?

It was specifically Pacific Raceway. Say that five times, twice, 10 times fast. And so he said, why don’t you come up and try it? So I went up and I did a driving school where they took us all out for a day. We’re all novices. Taught us all these different skill sets and helped us learn if we wanted to be up speed.

Well, this is where it gets interesting. And they had all these instructors, one for each driver. At the end of the day, the instructor would take around the track in their car at speed because they’re much faster. And they said, this is what’s where you’re going to be going. When you do this more, you’ll get up to speed.

This guy had an M3 just like mine. I went, okay, cool. So we get in the car, we take off. And if you’ve ever been to Pacific Raceway, it’s a wonderful track elevation changes, kind of a Laguna Seca ish, but not as cool is smaller and tighter. And you’ve got to be really careful. There’s some very bad places to go off there.

So all day, they had told us through this one corner five, a five B that you had to be in this one location. So we went through it and he was in the lead of all the other, the master driver, master trainer, whatever they call him. [00:26:00] Chief instructor. There you go. And so, well, I’ll call him something else in a minute.

So we went through that corner and I went, that’s weird. This guy’s in the wrong location. He told us to be over there and he’s going in here. So we went around and we came out of that screeching and I’m like, whoa, this guy’s going fast. Went around again. He went through there and completely lost it. We spun the car 180 degrees.

And all I remember was coming around and seeing this train of cars coming. right at us, eyes as big as saucers. I grabbed the armrest. We didn’t get hit. We almost got hit by the guy behind us. Went off the track backwards, car flipped upside down and went down the hill upside down. Whoa. Yeah. And we stopped and the car’s running and I looked at him.

I said, does this part of the lesson? And he uttered some, uh, Uttered some words we can’t say here. And I said, you might want to turn the engine off. So he turns the engine off and the mirror had folded and shattered the window. And this is where I learned, if you ever go on a track and do a track day, even if it’s hot, keep your [00:27:00] visor down because when a window shatters, that glass goes everywhere.

And I had my visor up and it went in my face and ended up cutting my mouth and my lip a little bit, a glass in my mouth and stuff didn’t get hurt. Cause he had four point harness. So we were pretty good. pretty safe, but he messed his car up pretty good, crawled out of the car. So, uh, yeah, that was my first experience.

So I kind of came home and, you know, Jill, my wife, she said, so how was the day? And I said, Oh, good. Anybody crashed? None of the students.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Mark Greene: And she looked at me and like, and read me like a book. She goes, so what happened? And I told her, and so that was kind of the beginning, but I realized, okay, well this guy, for whatever reason, you made a mistake, pick one.

There’s a lot of reasons to crash on a racetrack. So I decided to buy some slicks and start taking my E36 to track. So I did racing here down in Oregon, not racing, but track days. High speed performance days where you could do passing and things. And after doing that for, I think about a year and a half, maybe two years, I bought another E36 M3 and I went, you know, I think it’s time to buy a car.

So ended up getting the Lotus and started [00:28:00] racing that. If you know a Lotus 18, it’s a small, tiny car. This was a junior. So it had a thousand CC motor drum brakes. I mean, It can’t go that fast, but it can bite you. I never felt safe in that car ever because you were so vulnerable. Colin Chapman was known for lightness, right?

He didn’t care about his drivers, I don’t think. So my shoulders were way above the sides of the car and never crashed that car. Went off a few times, but never crashed it. So yeah, we got to do that with Sovereign, Pier Pacific Raceway, interbracing that car at Sears Point, Thunder Hill, different places in California.

And then we ended up doing three day driving school, Skip Barber back at Road America and got to drive some cars back there. Richard has some real fast, cool race cars and ended up also getting, uh, actually it was Richard’s, but I got to drive it 67 Lola T290 sports racer. It was supposed to have a two liter, but it had a 1.

7, but still way faster giant slicks compared to my little Lotus, a whole nother experience. All of a sudden I was at the front of the pack versus. The back of the pack and the Lotus, they’d lumpy in with Formula Fords, which were 1600 CC cars. You couldn’t [00:29:00] keep up with them. So it was a little disappointing, but there were two other guys at Sovereign that had 18s.

John Shirley was one who has quite a car collection up here, including a GTO and is what I call garage mahal. He calls it spinner garage, but it’s the garage mahal. And there was another gentleman we’ve since lost him, but he had an 18 too. So yeah, the racing I did for 10 or 12 years, something like that.

Super fun, super expensive, but. It was a nice escape from work because when you’re racing, kind of like, and we may talk about motorcycles because I got into those a little bit. When you’re on a track, you can’t think of anything else. All of us know that when you drive to work in the morning, sometimes you get there and you don’t even remember what the drive was like because you’re thinking about work or whatever.

I can’t do that in a race car. So the focus factor there was really cool. I had some great instructors. Met a lot of cool people, got to do a lot of fun things. So yeah, if you have the means, I highly recommend it as far as Buehler said in the movie.

Crew Chief Brad: And then you just touched on motorcycles a little bit.

Tell us a little bit about your, your motorcycle, I guess, experiences.

Mark Greene: Well, I’ve always [00:30:00] loved motorcycles. When I was real little, my parents got us, uh, my sister and I each a Honda trail 70. Because we used to take a camper down to Mexico camp on the beach. And we’d ride those things up and down the beach.

And to this day, in fact, I saw one down at car week that was for sale. And I’m like, Oh, I’d love to buy one of those. And I think they’re like 5 grand now or 6 grand. And then I go, what the hell am I going to do with one of these things? Nothing great little track bikes. But I had a friend in junior high and high school, Bobby, who.

Raced motocross and he had a garage full of bikes, he and his brothers. So I’d go over there and he’d loan us bikes. We go, we could ride from our house out to Miramar neighbor layer station, because back then there wasn’t as much development San Diego, and you could ride, do canyons and get out there and ride all day long.

Or we take them out in his van and go riding. So bikes were always a big part of my life. But then when I grew up. They went away and life gets busy and then met my wife, we got married, had kids, and so I wasn’t into bikes, but then I kind of got back into bikes and I love Italian stuff, so I ended up getting a Ducati Monster, a [00:31:00] 750, and also an MV Agusta F4, which was probably one of the most stupid bikes I could have ever bought.

Just insane. I think they revved to 19, 000 RPM or something. Just wicked crazy bike. They were so beautiful and I wrote them for a little bit on the streets, but I realized after a couple of years, everybody’s out to kill you. There’s too many people not paying attention. Every time I went out was a close call and I tried to ride on roads that were out elsewhere.

And if it wasn’t a, somebody in a suburban trying to hit me, it was a deer jumping in front of me or a dog chasing me. Or every time I came back, I’d go, you know, I’ve got kids. I got to put through college and a wife and this is a little bit silly. So, uh, yeah, common sense took the better of me. So I sold my bike to a guy in my office who really wanted it.

And the MV ended up going to, uh, Butch Denison of Denison International. His wife, Nancy bought it for him as a gift. He has a collection of Italian bikes in his home and it ended up. living in his house. I think it’s still in his entry. Appropriate place. I should have kept it and put it in my office right here behind me.

I didn’t know I was going to be doing this back [00:32:00] then. So there you go. But I love bikes. Every time I see one, I, I like to have another one of those, but I don’t know, maybe that’s the best idea these days. I did take both bikes to the track once thinking maybe I’ll get out and do high speed. But the group I went with, they said it was a beginner’s group.

These guys were crazy hot shoes. After about an hour, I went, I’m in the wrong group of people because these guys are like, you know, knee drop sliding two corners. And I’m going to die out here. I’m going to wreck my bike. Uh, this was a bad idea. So, um, I came home. That takes time to ride a bike like that. A motocross, you know, fly around, fly in the dirt.

You’re fine. No big deal. But I loved motocross. You know, that’s another time I probably should have taken up instead. Was motocross pretty fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Your knees probably thank you for not doing it though.

Mark Greene: Yeah. At this point in my life, a lot of parts of me, thank me for not doing that. But you know, I had a couple of friends who got hurt really bad and actually a couple who died on bikes, not by their own fault, somebody hitting them.

And so you just kind of go, Oh, Uh, [00:33:00] yeah, I had this thing called mortality and like I said, I had children I needed to take care of and sent to college and a career and a job and a wife and family. And, uh, it seemed a little selfish, uh, kind of vintage racing was a lot selfish. I’ll put it that way. And that’s part of why I quit doing that.

Cause college was looming. I always say my sponsorship. Money changed to a couple of private colleges out of state. So I’m happy to do that though.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And I totally agree with you. Like, I love the idea of bikes. I’ve had a couple of bikes in my past as well. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. If you can get that similar feelings in a car,

Mark Greene: you’ve got a little baby now.

So you’ve got a, you’ve got a whole nother line of responsibility. You got to really think about because that little, little boy, right? He needs to have you around for a long time. So, uh, yeah, your priorities change, but you know, there’s other ways to get out there and have fun. Exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: And speaking of getting out there and having fun, are you still tracking and what’s your home track?

Mark Greene: No, I’m not. After I stopped racing, getting on your street car and attract just didn’t seem fun anymore. And that may sound a little silly, [00:34:00] but when you drive a purpose built race car on a track and you get in a street car, there’s so many differences. And I love my street cars, man, I enjoy driving them spirited, but you beat them up on a track.

And at that point I had started focusing more and more on work because I’d become the president of Griot’s. I had a lot more responsibility there. My children, like I said, college was coming and my wife had retired long ago to stay home and raise the kids. So I was the sole breadwinner, if you will. So I just thought, you know, I think I’m not going to do this anymore.

Every once in a while. Get out there and have a little fun if I got invited to something, but no, but my home track here would be the Pacific Raceway. There’s also one out in Shelton. They’re building a real track just north of me here. That’s going to be real racetrack. And, uh, I call Laguna Seca my home track because that’s where I got my racing license.

I love that track. And I got to race on it a few times. I’ve driven on it many times. That track to me is I feel at home when I’m there. And so, [00:35:00] yeah, I would say those two, but I’ve got to drive on a lot of different tracks, road America. I did a three day open world driving school. That track was awesome. I mean, so long and there’s so many technical aspects, but then now I can say that about Sears point.

Cause I raced there a bunch. So here’s point, that’s delicious too. So, yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: well, that brings us to our next pit stop question. Oh, okay. Any bucket list car and track combo. And I’m going to throw in bike as well. Are there, is there any bike car track combo on your bucket list? You’d want to drive or ride.

Mark Greene: Oh, sure. A nine 17 S bar. Um, now some may go, that’s kind of. That car is spa. Hmm. You know, not endurance car spa. I don’t know. You guess you could say spa endurance racing, but there’s other tracks, but the portion nine 17, because it’s a Porsche nine 11 heritage, I never been able to drive one. I’ve been able to sit in one, but that car to me would be pretty darn cool.

I’ve become friends with Bruce Kanepa, who’s credible driver, and he’s got one and is driven one. I’ve spent a fair amount [00:36:00] of time just talking to him about what that car’s like. Compared to the nine 11 and, you know, he’s an incredible driver and spa to me. I mean, so many great tracks, but spot to me is just one of those tracks that has some magic to it.

And it has that elevation change in the backside. And of course, coming down the front and up the Hill. Yeah. So I do that. I can’t say I would want to do any track on a bike at this point, maybe back when I was younger, but, uh, yeah, portion nine 17 is Bob would be. You throw me the keys. They haven’t have keys.

Maybe, uh, throw me the keys to that and say, take it around. I probably wouldn’t be very skilled at, at this point, but I certainly would have fun.

Crew Chief Eric: So that leads into a follow on pit stop question, which is, do you follow any motor sports disciplines? Do you watch any of the racing on TV or live?

Mark Greene: You know, I used to a lot.

This is an interesting question. I’m so busy with what I’m doing now. I just kind of try to steer as much away from television as I can, focus more on what I’m doing and [00:37:00] people. And I, I interview a lot of authors and books and things like that. So I don’t, you know, I say that to people, they go, what’s wrong with you?

Now I used to follow F1 religiously from when I was, before I was even married and all through that time period. Now here’s a funny thing. My daughter is the oldest of two. He’s 33. My son’s 28. And I try to get my daughter into cars. I took her to vintage races. I introduced her to Christie Edelbrock. I took her to car shows, took her to Monterey car week when it was only three days, when she was one carried on my back.

I mean, I tried so hard, never interested, just. Eh, yawn. Not interested, Dad. They came out with that series a couple years ago, where they did a documentary on Formula 1. She is now, and her husband, who has no interest in cars, they’re Formula 1 fans! So when I say, oh, Dad, did you see the race this weekend?

Could you believe he did that corner like that? I’m just, oh, I get, and I’m like, Who are you? That series I think has done more. And I’ve talked to Zach Brown. He’s been a guest on my show. I saw him down at car week [00:38:00] and talked to him about this very thing that has done more for formula one in the United States than anything ever.

And if you think about it, people love drama reality shows, and that turned formula one into a personal reality show about the people, not the cars. And that’s why I think it’s exploded. And now they’re talking about doing that for NASCAR, motor GP. I mean, all these other elements, because now when people see the people behind it, they’re interested.

Otherwise it’s just a car going around a track. You also talk about going to races. My wife’s never been into cars at all, but we lived in Delmar, California when we were first married and they used to have the IMSA races that the. Delmar racetrack. It was basically in a big parking lot, but still we could hear him from our house.

And I talked her into going with me one time and she was just, I want to do that again. So I’ve always said to people, if you’ve never been to a race, my dad used to take me to drag races in Orange County when I was a little kid. And I was like, In fact, I met Evel Knievel at one of them, which was pretty cool.[00:39:00]

He jumped a bunch of school buses at the end of the drag races, but Don Garlitsch was there. He ended up being a guest on my show. So it’s kind of cool. I remember you, you signed a picture for me when I was like eight years old. Going to races is cool, but yeah, I’ve just, I’ve kind of. Excuse the pun, steered away from it of late.

I guess I’m just so busy doing other stuff that I just haven’t gotten back into it. I kind of watch it from the outside a little bit, and sometimes I’ll go back and watch a race. But I probably just blew my whole career and the weeds. Thanks to that question, guys. Cause at all, he’s not a car guy. Stop listening to cars.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Geez, for anybody that’s listening, that may not know. I believe the TV show he’s talking about is on Netflix called drive to survive. Yeah. And that is a show that we are desperately trying to get Eric to watch, but he is very adamant that he will never watch it. I think I’m going to, the next time I see him, Eric, you can mark my words.

We’re going to have to pull a clockwork orange on you. Sit you down, hold your eyes open and you’re going to, you’re going to watch it.

Crew Chief Eric: I got disenfranchised from the beginning because the [00:40:00] title alone drive to survive. I thought it was about world rally championship, which is my discipline of choice, and then when I realized it was about formula one, I was like, I’m done with this noise.

Mark Greene: You know, give it a chance. Give it at least three episodes. Okay. Just give it three and I think you’ll find it interesting and perhaps it will broaden your world a little bit like it did mine. Get you energized about that discipline.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Senna and Schumacher fan

Mark Greene: from

Crew Chief Eric: way back.

That’s where it stops though. That’s the thing after Schumacher retired, I was like done.

Mark Greene: It’s gotten to be a bit of a circus, but I think this is why I got into it. And that is I’m about people. Karjaz about people. It really isn’t. I should have called it people. Yeah. But. You know, who would listen to that?

Cars, yeah, if you’re a car person, makes sense. And cars are the catalysts that bring people together. Car Week is a great example. You know, I spent six days down there. The friend [00:41:00] I go with every year, poor Bill, he just rolls his eyes and walks away because I can’t walk five feet. feet without meeting somebody that’s been on my show or has listened or I get to talk to about their car.

And he just, in fact, I went to one of the shows with him and I said, Bill, I’m going to walk the show the way you walk the show. I can 20 minutes. We were done. I’m like, you didn’t even talk to one person. He’s like, well, I don’t talk to people. That’s not what I do. Yeah. Just give it a chance.

Crew Chief Eric: All right.

Mark Greene: All right.

Okay. I like the clockwork orange reference. That’s good.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, speaking of giving chances and one of Brad’s favorite questions, we did a whole episode around this called Regrets in the Desert Island. I want to talk about the one that got away specifically.

Mark Greene: Ouch.

Crew Chief Eric: Your Porsche 930. And what’s unique about this car is first of all, if you don’t put Mark Green and the orange crush together, it’s all over the internet and social media and everything.

I don’t know that I’ve seen another 930 in that color. So let’s talk about. Is that a factory color? Was that a factory acquisition? [00:42:00] What led you to that car? And then the question that everybody’s been asking you now, why did you get rid of it?

Mark Greene: I know. Okay. Let’s go back to the beginning. That car was ordered by a guy in Ohio named Mr.

Four tens who owned. 410s Porsche Audi back in the 80s. He saw a car that was a Porsche press car in 86, a turbo that Porsche brought out. It has since vanished unless someone out there knows where it is in that color. It was not a stock factory color. Porsche painted. It’s a three stage metallic pearl orange.

And so he called Porsche and he said, I want to order a car in that color. And they said, nah, we’re not going to do that. It’s too complicated. We not going to do that. And so he said, well, please. And he kept bugging them. They finally said, if you can find three customers who will buy cars in that color, turbos, we will do three cars.

He had a little trick he used to play with Porsche back in the day. If you ordered, or your customers were ordering a lot of special cars, you got better allocations. You got more [00:43:00] cars. So he would tell Porsche that people were ordering these cars, but they weren’t. And then he would get them in and sell them.

And that gave him better allocations. So in the case of this car, he invented three people to buy the car. They were people that worked for him. He sent them to Germany. So they were European delivery. And I don’t know this for a fact, but I do know for a fact that back then, if you bought a European delivery car, it was cheaper.

Even if you just gave the keys back and they shipped it home, it was less money for us buyer. And so he bought these three cars. Well, he sent his employees over. One of them was a woman and her husband, her husband was the finance manager, and she pretended to pick up her new turbo. And then she handed the keys back and said, I don’t want to drive it, ship it back.

He did that with all three cars, my car, there’s a sister car to my car, exactly the same, but not as many option. My car was highly option. And then he ordered a slant nose, which was an expensive. addition to the options. So the story goes that he was trying to save [00:44:00] money and he called, I think it was Lufthansa, and he said, I can’t want to fly these cars back.

I don’t want to put them on a ship. And so there was a ability to be on a waiting list. So they shipped the cars over to the Lufthansa shipping center and they sat there for a while. Along many weeks and he goes, why are my cars not here? Well, because all our loads are full and you said you wanted discount load.

Well, he finally had to give up and ship them all home. They all came home. He brought them to his house. He didn’t want people to know he had three in the same color. So he put the first one in his showroom. which was not my car. I think it was a slant nose and he sold that car. Well, here’s where things start to get really crazy and bear with me because the story is much longer than we have time for today, but I’ll narrow it down.

The buyer of the slant nose ended up being a guy named Russell Flurry. Russell Flurry started a company called Road Scholars, which is now owned by the Ingrams. He was a Porsche guy. He bought that car and had it while his wife, and he had other Porsches, his wife ended up getting cancer. And so he had to sell all of his cars so he could stay home with her.

When she was essentially [00:45:00] dying. We lost Russell last year. Great guy. I became friends with him. He was a guest on my show. Awesome man. Sadly COVID got him, but his car ended up going to Richard Sloan, a Sloan cars. Now Richard’s another guy we lost to cancer several years ago, but his son, Brett runs Sloan cars.

And so he had that car when he had it, it only had like 14, 000 miles on it. He or his son, Brett, I don’t know which ended up selling the car and it’s vanished. It’s in a collection somewhere in a garage. Somebody that’s not on social media. The second car, not mine, but the second car, the twin to mine was then sold next.

And that went to a family in Texas. It’s still with that same family. The gentleman who bought it died and left it to his daughter. His daughter still has it. His daughter’s husband contacted me when I sold my car to talk about it because there’s. thinking of selling it. My phone just started ringing off the hook, but they’re not sure, but they’re not really car people, but there’s a sentimental value there.

But my car was sold last. Now, the reason I share the [00:46:00] story is I have since met Mr. Fortenza’s son, Marcus, who works at Penske Porsche. He was in high school at the time. He reached out shortly after I got my car. And when I left Griot’s, I had it for about A year and a half of grios and I left grios. I had it for 13 years and I started using it on social media, calling it my orange crush because I had a crush on it.

And he reached out to me and he goes, where did you get that car? My dad ordered a car like that. And I used to sit in it in our garage at home because it sat in our garage for four or five months before he sold it. And he used to dream about. owning that car. And I said, yeah, this is one of your dad’s original ordered car.

So I’ve met all these people around this car. As the story goes, you asked me, why did I sell it? We all know what the car market has done lately. It’s gone crazy. And I don’t buy cars to hope to make money. I buy cars because I like in the eighties. I wanted, well, in the seventies, I wanted a turbo because I was a kid.

I couldn’t afford one. And then in the eighties, I wanted one. And I was the so called adult with a new house and a. wife and a baby. I [00:47:00] couldn’t afford one. So I always wanted one. So that car fit the mold. But when I saw that car on eBay, which is where I bought it from, from a broker in Florida, and I won’t get into the story of how it got down there, but it basically was a one owner car.

But if you look at the car facts, it shows. Some woman who owned it, i. e. the lady whose husband worked there. Then the original owner who was in Indiana, who had it most of the time. And then he sent it to a broker to sell it. The broker sold it on eBay. And that’s how I got it. The car shows all these ownerships, but really when I got it, it only had one owner.

There was all these convoluted stories behind it. And this onion that I kept peeling away every year, as I learned a little bit more, a little bit more, just became kind of a blossom of this story. Which added to the, the wonderful story that are all cars have, but it had become too precious. I’ll put it that way.

I like to drive cars. It had become very valuable. It was all original, never damaged. It was an [00:48:00] incredible shape, although it had 41, 000 miles on it. I just couldn’t drive it without freaking out. So I was afraid somebody was going to hit it. I would never leave a park somewhere. Somebody might steal it or back into it or maliciously scratch this car just because, you know, and so it just sat in the garage way too much.

And I finally, at the beginning of this year, told my wife, I said, I think I like the idea of owning the car more than I like owning it. And she never really liked the car anyway. So she goes way too flashy for you. Thanks, dear. We decided to sell it. I got smart. I found a guy who was the past guest on my show, Rafi Manasian.

He handled the whole deal for me. He sells cars for people. He’s a car designer on bring a trailer. I know Randy, he’s been a guest on my show twice. And so we did this whole thing. I had Randy on my show the day the car went live. And to this day, that car still holds the record. I’m bringing a trailer for an 87 turbo for achieving the highest price point.

Now here’s where it gets even more fun. The car lives an hour north of me with a collector and it sits in a garage that I’d like to live in. [00:49:00] This guy’s house is insane. It lives amongst a whole bunch of its brethren and sister and other brightly colored Porsches. This guy likes to drive his cars and his curator.

He worked for me at Griot’s when I picked my car up originally, his name’s Tim. So now he is taking care of Orange Crush and it’s kind of like, I feel like I’ve loaned it to a museum and I’ve got visitation rights. And, um, probably if I go up there, I could even give it a drive. So it’s a wonderful rounded story.

And honestly, I don’t miss it because it’s in its new place. We all know cars are going to their new caretakers and they always will. We’ll be long dead and the cars we’ve had hopefully still be around and people will be enjoying them. Maybe they’ll all be in museums if they outlaw gasoline, but they’ll still be around.

So that’s a long winded and there’s a lot more to it, but I tried to be as brief as I could, but it’s a very complex story, but that’s what cars are so cool about.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why we say everyone has a story, right?

Mark Greene: They do. [00:50:00] Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So that begs the question, did you replace it with anything?

Mark Greene: Not yet. I will. I have an E46 M3 that I bought new.

It was my fourth M3. I bought new in 05. It’s just a wonderful car. And what I’ll be doing is selling that car, because it’s now worth probably what I paid for it. If you look at bring a trailer M3 prices and my car is pristine, highly option. It’s got the competition package option. It’s a really, really nice car.

Sunroof delete. I will sell that car when I get the next car and the next car will be a Porsche. It won’t be an old Porsche. It’ll be a newer Porsche that I will drive even when it’s raining, even when it might be snowing. I’ll put snow tires on it. I’ll enjoy it. I’ll park it and walk away. I’ll still look back, but I’ll walk away and not fret about it sitting in a curb somewhere.

Yeah, that’s what’s going to happen. So I’ve got a couple in mind. I know what you’re going to ask me, I think.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you? Will it be a petrol powered [00:51:00] Porsche or an electric Porsche?

Mark Greene: No, it won’t be electric. Nothing against electric cars, but no, it won’t be electric car. Now this could change because things change.

It’ll probably either be a 911 GTS or more likely because all my 911 diehard fanatics are steering me towards this car, a 718

Crew Chief Eric: Those are both solid choices.

Mark Greene: You know, I’m long done with the wing stuff. I’m not going to get a GT3. I’m not going to get a GT4. I want a car that’s comfortable, but fun. The challenge for me is color.

I want a crazy color. And I talked to Porsche about painting it orange crush orange. And they said, well, we can do anything for the right price. It’s a very complex problem. Very expensive. It’s way more than the 11, 000 they charge for paint to sample. I don’t think I like it that much when they started quoting me 25, 30 grand, if maybe.

And the process takes seven to nine months for them to even determine if they [00:52:00] can do that or not. Because the surfaces are all different now on cars and not just metal anymore. So that’s kind of where I’m leaning right now. I used to have lots of cars, bikes, and I’m trying to simplify my life. My focus is on cars yet.

And I’ve got a new grandson where a lot of focus is now. Hopefully we’ll have more grandchildren. I’m trying to simplify. I want a car I’ll get in and drive and enjoy the Porsche 930. I just wasn’t doing that. And it was just a shame. I know it sounds ridiculous to some people, but I’m very picky with my cars.

And yeah, I’ll be picky with a new one, but at least if something happens, it’s like, eh, okay, fix it, move on.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve simplified and added lightness to your life. So yeah,

Mark Greene: yeah, yeah. I, I, I follow this guy on YouTube. I think his name is Joshua. Who talks about minimalism. We’ve always lived kind of a minimalistic life.

We have a contemporary home, but even minimal, minimalizing your life more. I’ve been a pack rat my whole life, and I’m trying really hard to change that, to lighten all those, what I call burdens, I’ll tell you, it’s freeing. And I’m trying to focus more [00:53:00] now on experiences instead of things, which Well, I don’t think I know it’s a lot healthier way to live a life.

My son has taught me that lesson. He’s very much an experienced guy versus a thing guy. I was always a thing guy and I was sacrificed experiences for things. And I realized now that was not the right thing to do.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, speaking of experiences, we got to jump back into your timeline a little bit. So reminding our listeners, you were the president of Griot’s garage for nearly 20 years.

Mark Greene: Well, let me correct that because I wasn’t president for 20 years, but for about the seven or eight years I was. But again, it was always a small company, so we wore lots and lots of different hats, but when I ended there, yeah, I was president. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So that said, I never realized how much competition there was in the world of car care and detailing and all that.

And there’s all sorts of names. Yeah, exactly. The craziness that goes on there. So I would suspect that after 20 years, like you’ve been talking about, it was time to downsize, it was time to purge. It was time to change your latitude to use your terms. Right. What [00:54:00] inspired you to do that? To create cars.

Yeah. How did that all come about? And where did the name come from?

Mark Greene: Great question. We had kind of a three part catastrophe in our family. For one thing, agree is I’ve been there a long time and I was starting to go, you know, been here a long time. Maybe there’s something different to do. Richard was changing his focus and things.

And it was just like, you know, maybe it’s time to do something, but I’ve always done this. I don’t know. It’s fun. What do I do? Well, my father was 80 at the time he fell and broke his neck. His C2 vertebrae. That is the doctor said the Christopher Reeve break. My dad was always very active, very physical. He did yoga.

He ate well for an 80 year old. He exercised every day. He was always working on his home and he fell off a deck that he was building, smashed his head and broke his neck. Luckily he wasn’t paralyzed, but he was in a bad way. Then my wife’s mother. got cancer. And so we had these double whammy going on. And then my wife ended up having what’s called a large cell tumor in her leg.

And so that required a major [00:55:00] surgery and required her to be in bed for quite a while, months. I just felt like I need to stay home and focus on her. and take care of her. At the same time, we had just gotten through putting my daughter through college. So she was off in a career. My son was in his first year of college.

I went, okay, time for me to sell back my shares of Creoles were and come home, take care of her and find something different to do. And my son came home from college and I said, look, Blake, I’m trying to figure out what I can do from home so I can care for your mom. And also I need to make some money because your tuition is really expensive.

You know, so he was on the East coast and private school. And he said, dad, you’ve been taking me to car shows my whole life. My son’s been to pebble beach car week, 18 times. I’ve been 32 times. I’ve taken him to car show. Now he was a car guy. So I got to do all that with him versus my daughter. And he said, dad, I always tease you.

You can’t walk by somebody without stopping and asking them about their car and their career. Cause I’m in a business, entrepreneurship, how do businesses work and asking questions of people, which is what I do all day long. He said, how [00:56:00] about a podcast? And I, this was about nine years ago. And I literally said, what’s that?

I was dad, get with the times. Now I was not a tech guy. I had people at Grills doing that for me. I was running the business. I was trying to focus on brand building. And Product development, all this different stuff. And then remember this nine years ago, things have changed a lot in nine years in tech and in the world.

So I said, okay, well, let me look into that. So I started investigating what a podcast was, studying it, calling people who do podcasts. If they would talk to me about it, ran into a guy named John Lee Dumas, who does a wonderful podcast, very successful entrepreneur on fire, joined his group, learned how to do it.

And three months later, Launched cars. Yeah. One year from the day I left griots May 28th, 2013. You asked about the name, try to find a domain name. That’s not taken with the word cars in it. I’m a creative guy. I’m a writer, a designer. I’d come up with hundreds of names. And every time I go to go daddy or wherever you go, blue dot or whatever, and it’s taken, it’s taken.

Well, one night my wife and I were watching TV [00:57:00] commercial was for hotels. com I think. And we were sitting there and I was pretty like, well, I got to. Come over the name. I’m designing this whole concept of what I’m doing. And they said hotels. com hotels. Yeah. And Jill looked at me and she said, Cars. Yeah. I said, what?

She goes, cars. Yeah. That’s your name. Yeah. And I went, yeah. And she goes, yeah. So I ran in and I looked and it was not taken. I couldn’t believe it. So I bought up, you know, every version of it. I could. And I’m like, okay, that’s the name. It just makes sense. And it flows. So I designed the logo because I’ve designed hundreds of logos.

Maybe obviously the six gated shift gate with the microphone is, and it’s kind of cliche, but it works. And that’s where the name came from. And so it took about three months for me to figure out how to do it, how to learn, how to record. I mean, you guys know all the technical side of this. This is not easy.

And I’ve had lots of people call me and say, I want to be a podcaster. Go great. In fact, I’ve even been paid to help people get their podcast up. I did one for a guy who wanted. [00:58:00] Yeah. He mimicked what I did, but for golf and I said, okay, if I don’t mind call it golf. Yeah. But once we got into it, they all say the same thing.

And you guys know this, this is a lot of work. I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts to this thing. You don’t just these so called YouTube stars. Put a YouTube out, you’re rich. That doesn’t exist. Podcasting, it really doesn’t exist. So I had to learn all these components while Jill was back in the bedroom convalescing, I’d be up all night learning how to code, build a website.

I’d never done that before. How to record, use Adobe audition, how to move tracks around, and then Put it all together with this deadline. I set for myself. Cause I’m all about deadlines and business. I’m very methodical, set up how I was going to do it, practice with a few friends of mine and Rick Cole, who did the first auctions at Monterey car week was my first guest.

Thanks to a lady named Cindy. She was handling his PR and she called me and said, Hey, Mark. I knew her from before. She goes, you’re doing this cars. Yeah. Thing, but. Like who’s going to be on your [00:59:00] show? And I said, well, I’m trying to find people. But every time I call somebody, they go, what’s a podcast? I mean, nobody knew what a podcast was.

She said, well, I have a client. Would you like Rick Cole? And I said, yeah, I know Rick. And so he was the first guest. I decided to do five shows a week because nobody in the automotive sector was doing that. I don’t think they still are. And everybody said I was crazy. Just like they did to John Lee Dumas, he did seven a week.

But I said, I want to just get into this and I need to start to monetize as fast as I can. And within about four months, I had a first sponsor and it kind of went from there. So that’s how it all happened. And now it’s just like you guys know, tenacity and bulldog in this. Don’t quit. Sometimes I get up and go, this is crazy, but don’t quit.

And I’ll tell you, I’ve only missed one show and that was my dad died. It was rather sudden. I learned a lesson to have what we call shows in the can, because back then I would maybe record a show on Monday that would go up on a Wednesday. And I was always kind of trying to catch up. Now I’m two to three weeks ahead of myself.

So [01:00:00] that taught me. So I was really upset. I needed to go down to San Diego and I. Said to Jill, I don’t have a show for tomorrow. And she goes, Mark, your dad just died. People will understand. Your sponsors will understand. Just do a rerun. They do it on TV all the time. They do it on a radio. So I reran Jonathan Ward of Icon because I thought it was a cool show at the time.

While I was down there, I was able to edit another show. And then, but that was the only time I’ve missed a show. Thanks dad, but not thanks because you died. I don’t mean that. Just thanks dad for making me realize there’s an alternative way. He was such an awesome father and he taught me my work ethic because he grew up on a farm.

And as my grandpa said, the cows and horses don’t go on vacation. Yeah. That’s where that all came from. Here we sit. I just did this morning, Oh, 161st show. Yeah. Crazy. It’s fine.

Crew Chief Brad: For people that aren’t aware of the cars yet podcast is one of the leading automotive podcasts out there I mean you’ve been on the air for what eight years.

You just said a little over eight years over 2, 100 episodes

Mark Greene: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: so [01:01:00] for those that are hearing about it for the first time, what is cars? Yeah all about what’s your thing?

Mark Greene: What’s my thing? Well, there’s a couple things since I come from this marketing background and I overdo everything I built a whole business plan for this Podcast.

But the first thing I had to figure out was the why. And if you ever listened to Simon Sinek, great series, Ted Talks, he does YouTubes. He talks about the importance of your why. This relates to everything. Why are you doing that? Now we went through this at Griot’s and we were trying to come up with what our slogan was, which became have fun in your garage and understanding why people buy from us.

There’s a whole nother backstory to that. But for me, I decided that was going to come down to three words, inspiring automotive enthusiast. I was going to interview inspiring automotive enthusiasts so that together we could inspire automotive enthusiasts to help them realize they can work in a field that they’re passionate about.

And that came from many of my friends who were very successful neurosurgeons, real estate brokers, bank owners, finance [01:02:00] guys, business owners, but they loved cars and they weren’t working in that field. And they would always say to me, Mark, you’re having so much fun. You’re working around cars all day. I was at Griot’s.

It was all about cars. I want to do that. But I live for the weekends or I live for retirement. Well, if anything, COVID taught us is you may not get the weekend. You may not get retirement because we’re all mortal. Things can happen to us. And I think that COVID, if it did anything good, did a few things good.

And it didn’t do them good. But it taught us valuable lessons that you don’t have as much time most of the time as you think you might have. And we all do this. We think, oh, I’ll start it next year. I’ll go do that thing next week. I’ll do it when I retire. I wanted to show people by interviewing people who figured out the secret sauce to life, that there are a whole lot of people.

And I remember my mom, when I started this thing, aren’t you going to run out of people? And I said, never, never run that. There’s so many people in the automotive industry. And the great thing now is for the last few years, I don’t have to chase people. They come to me now because I’ve got all these relationships with PR firms, [01:03:00] publishers, racetracks, concourse events, celebrities, and they bring people to me.

So that cuts down one big hassle and that is trying to find, there’s still a few people I reach out to, but most of the time, my weeks are filled with people that are. coming to me. So yeah, that was the whole goal in that discovering your why is the idea of in your business. What is your mantra? You know, the proverbial 32nd elevator ride, you get an elevator with somebody, you can tell them everything about what you do by the time the doors open.

A lot of people can’t do that. And I worked a long time on this podcast of how to do that. So I say, I’m a podcaster cars. Yeah. Is a five day a week podcast for an interview, inspiring automotive enthusiasts, people who have figured out a way. To wrap their passion for cars, trucks, and motorcycles into their lives, their careers, and their businesses.

And I’ve interviewed over 2, 100 people. The door is going to open in another 15 seconds. Cause I’ve got it all out. What I just gave you took a long time to get squeezed down to that, but that’s what I think everybody needs [01:04:00] to do. We did it at Griot’s. Our goal there was to sell products so people could have fun in their garage.

That’s why our mantra was have fun in your garage. That’s why we sell products. So if you can do that with your career, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it now with people, even people haven’t figured it out to show them what theirs is all about. That’s what the whole thing is all about. And the best thing is I get to talk to people from all over the world.

This morning, I was up at five o’clock talking to a guy in Thailand, who’s building electric motorcycles, high performance electric motorcycles. Then I was in London. Talking to a broker. And then I was in New York talking to a guy who’s an investment banker, who’s getting into investing in electric cars.

And then I was in Florida and now I’m talking, where are you guys by the way? We’re

Crew Chief Eric: in the DC area.

Mark Greene: And while I’m back on the East coast, so you know, you just travel all over, but that’s the other thing COVID did. It taught us that we didn’t have to go places. I’d love to get my private jet and fly around and do all this, but the motors are always broken.

Every time I call the airport, they go, Mark, you don’t have a private jet. Quit calling us. So there you go

Crew Chief Brad: on that. [01:05:00] Do you have any favorite moments from your 100 plus shows favorite guests perhaps? Or is there anybody on your Mount Rushmore that you haven’t had yet that you’re you’re striving to get?

Mark Greene: We’ll start with the easy one. Yeah. I I’d love to have Jalen on the show. I’ve walked up to him four times in the line of Pebble. Very nice man, handed him my card, trying to get to him. I don’t know him personally. I, I can talk to his secretary about once a month and hello, Mark. How are you? Uh, he doesn’t need me to do anything.

So maybe one day he’ll have mercy. I’ve tried mailing him stuff and stuff. Jay, if you’re listening, throw me a ball in here. You know, I would love to have you on the show. Chip Foose is another one I really would like to have. I’ve just. I’ve had him booked several times. He’s had to cancel and just haven’t been able to get him back.

I ran into him at Car Week. We were at a private event that Radford Motors put on at the racetrack Tuesday night. He was there. Talked to him again. He’s always super nice. Yeah, no problem, Mark. Some of these guys are so well insulated, trying to get their phone number or email is a [01:06:00] bit of a challenge.

Those are probably two guys I can think of. There’s so many more. I’ve had a few that I had lined up. They were all scheduled and we lost them. Dan Gurney was one of them. Another one was Sir Sterling Moss. And so those are people that I wish I had had, I had them all scheduled, talked to them. They said, yes, we were all booked and agents or whoever called and said, I’m not feeling very good today.

And eventually they passed. Denise McCluggage. I had her on the show about a month before she passed. I didn’t know she was so sick. She didn’t mention at the beginning before we recorded that she’d not been doing well. I didn’t know she was that ill and we lost her. So I’m grateful for the people that And it’s sad because I’ve lost 10 past guests this year alone,

Crew Chief Brad: 10.

Mark Greene: The good thing about that is I record, this is in perpetuity. And a good example would be Nicole McGuire, Barry McGuire, Car Care King. His daughter was on my show. We lost her a few years ago. And Barry, I remember he called me on her birthday last year and said, Mark, I want to thank you because we realized the only recording we have in Nicole is your show.

So we can go listen to her on her birthday and we relisten to the [01:07:00] show and we get to enjoy that. So thank you for doing that. I tell you favorites is a tough one. It’s like your favorite kid or your favorite car. I’ll answer this without getting myself in trouble because when you have 2150, 60 people, why did you mention me, Mark?

You know, I like guests that go into a different path than I ever thought they would go because I have a script that I work with my show that I send people in advance for a very specific reason. Cause most people are very nervous being interviewed. In fact, I don’t even call it an interview. I call it a conversation.

But they’re very nervous. And if they don’t know what you’re going to ask them, and you guys know this with your show, they kind of freak out. And a lot of people are more likely to say no, but the scripts can go many places. And I’ve had guests where the scripts have gone, where I can’t even believe I’ll mention one, Tim Medvitz.

He was a guy that built choppers for movie stars. He dated Cher for four years. He was going to marry her. This guy was a hell’s angel. He was a pretty wild, crazy party dude. Dude building choppers for the Hollywood stars. He was in a terrible motorcycle accident, almost [01:08:00] lost his leg. And during recovery, he became addicted to pain pills and alcohol.

He was very depressed because he couldn’t walk. He needed to have care. He felt like his manhood was gone. And he really went down a black hole. Now I was interviewing him to talk about his motorcycle bill. And all of a sudden we went down this other path. And I just let him go. And you know this, when you interview people, sometimes if you just let them go, they’ll take you places.

Now, this is something that I wish I’d known in high school when I was dating, ask some great questions and shut up, right? So he took me down this path. We went where he’s doing the heroes project and he ended up going to the top of Mount Everest, climbing Mount Everest. He didn’t make it the first time he got within 300 yards, you could see it.

And they made him come back because they said, if you go to the top, you’re not going to come back. You’re going to be dead. Because you’re out of oxygen, you’re worn out, you’ll never make it back. And so he came back two years later, he went back and he made it. He has since started helping veterans who’ve lost limbs go hiking.

And in one case, he helped a [01:09:00] guy climb Mount Everest who had no legs. The best part of this story is Tim figured out And this is where I’m going to share the secret to life, the real secret to being happy in life. And this is what I’ve learned after all these interviews is Tim learned that life was not the Tim show.

Life was about helping other people. And when you figure that out, you make your life so much better. And that’s what I’ve learned because those serious talks I’ve had with guests that have gone through really serious things, had a guest on the show whose father killed her mother. He was a violent man and she learned that if she went out and helped other women get out of those relationships, she could save them another woman whose husband died and she started a car show so they could detect prostate cancer in men before they died like her husband did all of these people.

that figured out what really makes them happy, figured out how to do something to help other people. And so I try really hard with the concept of Kharjah that by sharing stories, I’m helping people find a better path in life [01:10:00] so that they don’t go to a dreary job every day. They don’t wake up going another day.

I wish it was Saturday. I mean, I see people that go, it’s Friday. Yay. And I’m going Friday to the weekends here. I still have too much to do. I mean, I don’t care if it’s Friday. That’s the real big secret I’ve learned. And when I’ve been hired to go do keynote talks at Concord events and people’s businesses, that’s what I talk about.

And I get into more in depth about the specific stories. They’re much more convoluted than what I’ve done here, but probably the wrong word to use, but that’s the secret. And I will tell everybody listening here. If you haven’t figured out how to help somebody in some way, go figure out a way to do it.

Because you will discover what you probably never knew is how good that makes you feel. It’s like we go back to, I talked about instead of things, experiences. And if you look at one of the three top ways to be happy in life, it’s helping other people. And a lot of people never figure it out. We know selfish people in our worlds, right?

That they never figured that out. It’s always take, take, take. But the ones who [01:11:00] figured out how to help, whether it’s just tithing at church or going and helping in a soup kitchen or whatever way you do it, pick one, there’s so many ways to help people, that’s it. So that’s the real secret to our discussion today, how to be happy.

That is how to be happy.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, in addition to teaching people how to be happy, do you have any words of wisdom for young aspiring podcasters specifically that you’d like to share? Maybe some do’s and don’ts.

Mark Greene: That’d be a long winded answer, but what I will say is you need to be realistic about it. Number one, it’s like starting any company, you need to have a runway in front of you.

If you think you’re going to start a podcast and within the next month or two, you’re going to be making money, probably not going to happen. You need to save up some money, maybe do a side hustle. First, keep your main job. Hopefully you’re doing a job you really like, but do that on the side and start to build, because you guys know this, you got to build an audience.

And unless you have a lot of money to go out and advertise, I did this all bootstrap. I’ve never spent any money on advertising. [01:12:00] I figured out creative ways to co brand, promote a magazine, get an ad in a magazine. Promote a company, get them on my show. Promote a concourse, get guests on the show, get free passes to the concourse, meet people at the concourse, invite them to be on your show, meet potential sponsors, get to know people face to face, go to SEMA, all those things.

I would say you’ve got to build that runway first. Financial runway is what I’m talking about, the term runway. Have some money out there. Secondly, Study people who’ve done it successfully. Entrepreneur on fire, John Lee Dumas, that guy is a rock star. He makes a ton of money. And so I followed him. I joined his group and I basically tried to mimic what he’s doing.

Still have not reached his high level of success, but I just look to him as, okay, what did he do? And how can I relate that to what I’m doing? When I was in advertising, Tony Robbins, we all know who Tony Robbins is. I landed him as a client in our advertising company. This is way back when he was just starting.

He did his personal power cassette [01:13:00] tapes. I met him one morning when I was coming out of the ocean. I’ve been surfing and he was running down the beach. You don’t miss Tony Robbins. He’s a giant and ended up doing his marketing for him. We came up with this whole new look for this packaging and he goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I wanted to do this. I’m doing this stuff with Gunthy Ranker. This is what we do. And I said, well, that’s what everybody does. And he said, well, yeah, because it works. And I remember him saying, don’t reinvent the wheel. Look at what other people have done. Mimic them, but do it in your own style. That’s what Tony Robbins has built his entire career around that.

He just tells you that I read a hundred books. I picked the best things out of a hundred books and I did all those things and I repeated it and I shared the message. That’s all Tony did. And I say all he does, does a lot more, but that’s the simplified version. Now, if you ever get around Tony Robbins, Ooh, that guy’s an energy package.

Um, incredible person. And it’s done a lot for people. He’s learned if you listen to him. The secret to his life’s happiness is giving back. He’s feeding people, millions of people, because when he was young, they had no food. They didn’t have money. And [01:14:00] so he learned that I’m going to help people by feeding people.

And he has this whole program. So if you’re going to start anything, I think study the masters. Talk to as many people as you can. Maybe go work, offered to work for them for free. The first three months, I was a great as I worked for free. Cause I was doing my other job and show them that you have wherewithal.

They may be able to give you some insight and perspective and help steer you down the right path, but be realistic because this superficial world of social media, we see of all these successful people. I I’m a firm believer that if it looks fishy, if it smells fishy, it’s fishy. And most of this stuff is fishy, you know, it is.

I mean, cause now I know cause I’ve done it and how hard it is and it’s always hard. To this day, I’ll call people about being sponsors and they’ll go, what’s a podcast? Okay. Now I need to educate you on, but that’s part of learning your craft and learning how to do something for somebody. And again, when it comes to advertisers, you got to think about what do they need?

Not what you [01:15:00] need. What do they need? Can you do that for them? Realistically? Can you really do that for them? I learned that in advertising because that’s what we had to do all the time. When you work in advertising, you What are your needs? When you used to work in real estate clients, we need to rent this building to tenants so you learn about what tenants want, what do they want in an office space?

So you gotta be realistic, but follow experts, determine who the real experts are too, because there’s a lot of so called experts that really aren’t.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Mark, we have a little bit of a surprise for you before we close out the episode. Oh, good.

Mark Greene: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: I know that you’re accustomed to being on the air all the time, but you’re usually listening to people recounting their stories rather than being the interviewee.

So we figured we’d put you in the hot seat and ask you some Karzya inspired pit stop questions. Okay. Why don’t we get under the hood? with a challenge.

Mark Greene: All right. Here we go. Oh, he looks really serious. If you were a car, if you were a car, what kind of car would you be? [01:16:00] If you were a car, what would you be?

And more importantly, why? Where did you come up with this question?

Crew Chief Eric: Imitation is a sincere form of flattery, Mark. Well, thank you.

Mark Greene: I appreciate it. That question was quite interesting. If you’ll indulge me. That was not my original question. That question came from Harold Kleeworth, who’s an artist. When I asked him the original question, he said, I don’t like that question.

Why don’t you ask it this way? And he gave me that question, which is a much better question. It’s more about getting into the mind of somebody versus just what’s your favorite car. And so I’ve said, okay, Harold, I’ll ask it that way. And he had a very unique answer. You can go back and listen to his podcast on the car show website.

I actually interviewed him twice, very talented guy. So if I were a car. Not what I want to be, but who I am. And this is going to probably, people are going to go, Eh, you’re chinstapped. But no, I’m a 911. And a 911 is because a 911 is very purpose built. It’s not flashy. I’m not really a flashy person. Like I said, my wife looked at my orange crush and [01:17:00] said, Why are you driving a bright orange car?

That’s not you at all. Always driven silver cars. And I’ve always been very conservative and safe and, you know, done things the right way. I was the kid that sat in the front of the class and raised my hand every time and try to be a good kid and not get in trouble. And so the 9 11 to me is a purpose built car that has lasted through time.

Think about it. 65 66. That car came out. It’s still around. You can only name two other cars that kind of done that, I think. And that would be the Mustang, which I think they’re about to kill off. And why they named that E thing a Mustang, I have no idea. And that must’ve been a boardroom nightmare. And the Corvette, which I think Corvettes really come a long way, baby.

The new Corvettes to me are Ferraris and like, wow, that’s pretty cool. So for me, it would have to be a 911 purpose built, not flashy, gets the job done very well when it has to. It can be some different things. It can be a great street car. It can be a great race car. It can be a great track car. It’s always [01:18:00] been pretty much the same.

And my friends tell me that to this day that have known me since I was a little boy. You’re the same guy. You’ve always been the same guy. I mean, I started a paper route. Who does a paper route for five years? I’m an idiot. I mean, I had a reason four in the morning delivering papers so I could go to Don Patrol surf before school.

So there was kind of a reason behind that. My point is the Porsche just, it gets in, it starts. Bruce Canapa has become a friend. I was at his shop one day and there was a Kona SIG in his paint booth. And I said, Oh, somebody already wrecked their Kona SIG. He goes, no, these guys buy these cars and they think they’re going to be great driving cars, but they’re one hour cars.

I mean, they’re marvelous cars, but they drive them for an hour and they go, I can’t use this for anything. Park it in my garage and it’s a trophy. I’ll take it to a cars and coffee. That’s about it. But he said, I always tell people, if you really want to drive a car, buy a nine 11. And if anybody knows it’s Bruce, cause that guy can drive.

He can race. He builds and restores probably some of the best cars on the planet. The guy has a meticulous eye for design [01:19:00] impeccable taste and nine 11s. Porsches are the cars for him. So I’m definitely a nine 11. I’ve got some German heritage in me. So there’s kind of a little bit of that. Germans are known for doing things away, getting it done, being very orderly and focused.

I’m that way. Everything I do is that way. Just ask my wife about the sock drawer, or she plays games in the pantry and twist the labels after I straighten them all. You know, I think there was a movie about it. Killer that did that, but I’m not that guy. Um, yeah, I think it was called the stranger within, or I don’t know.

Anyway. Yeah. I’m very spit spot. That’s just the way I have to be. Maybe there’s the term for that OCD. Is that what that is? A little bit. Yeah. I get a little upset when things aren’t in the right place and Porsche’s have everything in the right place and they always have, and they probably always will, at least I hope they always will.

Crew Chief Eric: So one of your other questions you ask your guests all the time, because as you said, you’re an avid reader. What about some great reading? Share a great book or two that you’ve read [01:20:00] and you believe others would learn from as well.

Mark Greene: Boy, there’s so many and I’ve interviewed probably if you look on my category, my resource tab on my website, authors and journalists are the best.

Biggest category by far of people I’ve interviewed. I guess tomorrow, the day we’re recording is tomorrow is an author of a great new book about the 51st breakthrough wins of NASCAR drivers. Cool book. But there’s a couple, one of my favorites, Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I read that book a long time ago.

I still go back to that book. The best part is number five, which I paraphrase first, listen to understand, then speak to be understood. If only everybody would do that. And I’m guilty of not doing it. I try to do it. If you first really listen to people, and that’s something that podcast, when you guys are great at it, really listening to someone and not be formulating the next question or an answer or a comment before they’re done speaking so that you really understand what they’re saying.

And then when you do speak, speak eloquently and speak to be [01:21:00] understood, that would be one. Uh, the E myth by Michael Gerber is another. Game changer for me in business. It was, he’s written several books about business and about structuring your business and so forth. That’s an excellent book. Uh, Jordan Peterson’s, I think he’s written one since, but the 12 rules of life, I think is the title might be wrong.

My son gave me that book and I really enjoyed that book. And I know he’s become a bit of a controversial person and I. I kind of understand why, but the other part of me goes, no, this guy’s just telling you how to be a better person. And especially specifically a better man, a better husband, a better boyfriend, a better business leader, whatever it might be.

I really love that book. And when I first read the first chapter about lobsters, I had to stop and reread it. I’m like, what is this guy talking about? I think it’s marvelous. And I really enjoy watching him and reading him and watching YouTubes. His whole philosophy and focus and so forth, I think is really spot on, especially for the time.

So that’s a more modern, I guess, more modern book, but there’s so many, I [01:22:00] always tell people go to my resources tab on my website. I’ve, I’ve got an Amazon affiliate made it really easy for you to click and buy books. They send me a little stuff. Diapans every month, which is kind of nice net for coffee.

Maybe I’ve amassed such a massive library because of all my guests. My wife said, have you read all these books? I’m well, no, I have to be honest. I haven’t, but someday I’m going to be too old and decrepit to cruise around maybe, and I’m going to sit and read and enjoy all these books. I think it’s really important.

And I think a lot of people don’t read anymore. They get all their information from these little headlines and these snippets. And I always encourage people pick something you like and sit down and really get into it. You know, you think of Napoleon Hills, think you grow rich. I mean, I think that title is terrible for that book because it messes up what the real message is in that book.

Here’s a little secret, another secret. Ah, another scoop for you guys. My wife learned this. You can get books for free. You don’t have to go through Audible, nothing against them, but you can get free audio books from your library. She gets [01:23:00] three, four books a week. If they don’t have it, they’ll get it for you.

And they’re free and they come to your tablet. They come to your phone. All you have to do is go in and get her a library card. You do it all online. It’s incredible. I tell people that and they go, what was the last time you went to a library? Never. Well, why not? Well, cause it was kind of weird and stinky old books.

Well, no, they’ve come out of the dark ages. And some of them, if you can get into like the Phoenix library, Oh, that’s the good one. There’s a couple around the country that are even better than others. So read books, listen to books. You can do it while you’re driving or walking or exercising, which we should probably all do more of.

So, There you go.

Crew Chief Brad: So we’re going to close out the surprise section here with the ultimate drive. And if anybody who’s listened to the show knows what my ultimate drive is, it’s riding with Eric 13 hours to Kentucky. Neither one of us saying a word. That is like the pinnacle of the ultimate. [01:24:00] Well, I’m not sure what that says about him.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a miracle because I never shut up.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s either absolute silence or we’re listening to NPR. That was the ultimate drive. But for you, if I could wave a magic wand and arrange for you to go on the ultimate drive, who would you be with? What vehicle would you be in? Who would be driving and what would you talk about with this person?

Mark Greene: Okay. This is going to be a little bit of a challenge to get through. Um, be my dad and it would be in a turbo S a brand new one. And we just talk about life, you know, what I’ve done and what he did for me. Yeah, that’s who

Crew Chief Brad: it’s a good answer. Would the Turbo S be a drop top or a coupe?

Mark Greene: No, I, you know, we’re both follicly challenged.

It doesn’t work very well. I got that from my dad. You know, I lost him about five years ago too soon. And he’s the one that [01:25:00] initially we started the whole talk with him. instilling that passion for not only cars, but for doing things right, having integrity, honesty, hard work, all those things he instilled.

And that’s why I was a paper boy for five years in detailed cars all through high school and college. And even into my first job, I did it on weekends. So we could save up for a house. I mean, I think back how many years I’ve worked a lot of years, I mean, just constantly, but he taught me all those things.

I love Porsche. So it’d be a brand because that’s a car that You can speak in it’s quiet. I could say, look, look at what I, cause he never, you know, I lost him as I was just kind of starting to make this podcast thing work. And he was always a champion of that. I think he’d be pretty proud of where it’s gone.

Also, he’d be able to meet his first great grandson. So that’d be kind of cool. Maybe throw Gunnar in the back seat. He’s not quite talking yet, but he could blab a little bit and throw some food around. Yeah, that would be it for sure. And as far as the drive, it doesn’t matter. I mean, there’s so many great places to drive in this country.

And the cliches are always, you know, up and down the coast, but I’ve done that thing so many times, even [01:26:00] did it on a bike once. So bicycle. Yeah. It’d just be with him. Yeah. Just talking about life. And yeah, he kind of choked me up there a little bit. I have a guest on my show named John Nikas. I ran into him again.

Claim to fame is the, is the only guest. It’s gotten me to cry on air and he wrapped me around an axle. And every time he introduces me, he goes, Hey, I’m the only guest in cars. Yeah. They got Mark to cry. So you guys got a little close. Today. Oh close. Okay. All right.

Crew Chief Eric: Mark, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover this far?

Mark Greene: Well, you guys, thank you for doing this with me. It really an honor to be on someone else’s show and get a different perspective. It helps me learn some things. I learn every time I’m on another podcast, how to be better. At talking with people and you’ve taught me some great things. Of course, Eric’s been a guest in the show.

Got to get Brad on next. Most definitely. So the invitation remains open to you as far as shout outs. I just, you’ve not heard of cars. Yeah. I’m easy to find cars yet. com. I have a website. [01:27:00] All my shows are there. You can listen to them all there. You can find Carja on virtually every mobile podcast app. I think I’m on 85 of them now or something like that.

You can find them on YouTube, although you’re going to go to YouTube and go, nobody listens to this show, not on YouTube, but you guys know it’s free to load it there. So I load it there and I’ll encourage everybody go to my website, click on the free book button so you can sign up to get my weekly emails.

I promise they’re very fun and easy and fast. The blog that I do also, I’ll send you my free ebook, which is called filler up. Which is an ebook I designed from photos. I’ve taken a very cool gas filler caps and I’ve surrounded the design. I know it sounds silly, but they’re really cool. I’ve designed it in a way that it’s multiple pages and it’s surrounded by some of the great inspirational quotes from guests who’ve been on my show.

So you can go there and sign up for that. I encourage you to do that. And, uh, yeah, just listen. Also, if there are people listening out there that work. Or have careers or lives in the automotive sector. I’m always looking for inspiring automotive enthusiasts. So reach out to me. I’m easy to find mark at cars yet.

com and [01:28:00] we’ll get you on the show and expose your life and inspire others with your story.

Crew Chief Brad: You can enjoy over 2000 interviews on cars. Yeah. Hosted by Mark green. He aims to bring you something new to think about each day. Answering the tough question. How do I link my life and my work into my passion through the stories of others?

You can tune in to Cars Yeah! today on all your favorite podcatchers or music apps. Log on to www. carsyeah. com to learn more. Follow Mark and his guests at Cars Yeah! on all your social media platforms.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Mark, I cannot thank you enough for coming on and doing this boomerang crossover episode. So with us here on break fix, and I have to say, you know, you talk to inspiring people all day long, but you also have to realize that you’re one of these inspiring automotive enthusiasts in the community, folks like Brad and I have been looking up to you for years and what you’ve been doing.

And obviously we hope to imitate and if we get half as good, maybe that’s good enough, but truly seriously, what you’ve done for the greater [01:29:00] community over almost a decade now is just amazing. And we look forward to what comes in the future.

Mark Greene: Well, now you’re going to make me cry again. Well, thank you. That means the world to me, this world of podcasting.

You guys know, this can be lonely because you produce these shows. And typically even the best shows you listen to, how many have you ever reached out and said, great job? Most people just don’t. I mean, we just don’t do that. You can go to Apple podcast and click on the five stars and do that. And that’s kind of nice and fun, but most people you don’t get feedback from, but I really appreciate that because.

Every once in a while, I will, I’ll mention Ramsey Potts. He’s a guy who was listening to my show, hated his job. And one morning his wife said, why don’t you just do what Mark says, go work in the car industry, Ramsey. And that’s what he did. And he has built in a burgeoning career. Now he works for Broad Arrow Group.

He worked for RM. He came up to me on the lawn at Pebble again this year, gave me a big hug. Thank you, Mark. You changed my life. And you realize you can do that. And we talked about that, helping other people. [01:30:00] That’s what makes it all worth it. So your words are awesome. Make me feel really great. And I really, really appreciate it.

And mostly I tell everybody this, I appreciate your time. You gave me time today. That’s the other thing I’ve learned. Time is our most valuable asset. Don’t waste it. Do something you love every moment of every day. And you know what? It’s possible. It’s not a cliche. You can do that. You get to choose what you do from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, choose wisely.

Crew Chief Eric: With those words. Thank you again, Mark.

Mark Greene: Thank you guys. This has been awesome. Really appreciate it.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. Listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a follow on pit stop, mini sowed. So check that out on www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve [01:31:00] heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www.

gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email gtmotorsports. org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.

And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster.

[01:32:00] Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com. patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports and remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Mark Greene: [00:00:00] Rev it up and welcome to Cars Yeah, show number 2, 174. Be prepared to be inspired.

Advertisement: This is Cars Yeah, where you’ll enjoy interviews with inspiring automotive enthusiasts. Mark Green is here to provide you with a fuel injection of automotive inspiration. So get in, sit down, buckle up and get ready for a wild ride here on Cars Yeah.

Mark Greene: Hello, inspiring automotive enthusiasts and welcome to Cars Yeah. Today I’m in Midlothian, say that 10 times fast, Virginia with a very special guest by the name of Brad Novak. Brad, welcome to Cars, you have it in gear and are you ready to release the clutch?

Crew Chief Brad: Let’s go for it.

Mark Greene: All right. We’re going to have some fun.

Now, before I introduce you, what’s one little thing that maybe people don’t know about Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, well, my, most of my friends know, I think, but, uh, I am a musician. I played [00:01:00] saxophone from elementary school through college.

Mark Greene: And do you still play?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, unfortunately, I had to sell it to buy one of the many cars that I’ve owned.

You. But now that I have a child, I do plan on getting another one so I can kind of teach him.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the new little baby. Uh, know how that goes. Sleepless nights. Uh, is he sleeping through the night yet?

Crew Chief Brad: For the last three nights, yes, but he’s, he’s actually finally healthy. He’s been sick since January with various, uh, daycare ailments.

Mark Greene: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Well that happens to building up the immune system as they say. I’m glad he’s the little guy’s doing well. Yeah, I get back into that music. Um, as you can see, we’re talking to each other. I’ve got a guitar hanging on the wall here and I need to pick it up more often. Used to play a lot.

Used to teach guitar to little kids when I was in high school to make money in the summertime. But I’ve had a large number of guests on the show in the automotive field that are musicians. And it’s kind of interesting. Some that were professional musicians in the back. And of course, uh, probably one of [00:02:00] the more famous ones is, uh, John Oates of Holland Oates, who was a guest on the show.

Which was pretty cool. I didn’t know he was a car guy until I met him at a Rennsport events and he’s quite the car guy. So, uh, very cool. Well, let me give you a proper introduction here. Brad Novak is the break. Yeah. The break in the break fix podcast. He produces and hosts with his business partner, Eric, who’s a past guest here on cars.

Yeah. Every week, Brad and Eric interview motorsports and automotive enthusiasts. I’m very proud that I’m going to be a guest on their show next month. That’s pretty cool. Sharing their stories and their enthusiasm. His career of the past 22 years was in finance, uh, working in credit unions and financial institutions, but he’s a lifelong automotive enthusiast who has been a drag racer, a road racer, HPDE, driving instructor, autocross, off roader.

And he rides motorcycles too, just about everything. It’s pretty safe to say that if it rolls on rubber, Brad loves it. We’ll be back in just a moment. But first a word from our sponsors, they keep the fuel in the tank here. Give them a little love, please. And we’ll be right back. Covercraft’s newest three layer [00:03:00] all climate cover is especially engineered for moderate weather conditions, and it’s treated with an extra UV resistant formula.

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So Brad, we are back. So I’m going to dive a little deeper into the corner. You need to have this background in finance, but your passion was with cars and sounds like you finally decided to kind of make a bit more of a move. And I want to talk a little bit about all the different automotive things you’ve been doing.

And then we’re going to dive into the break fix podcast, why you started it. What it’s all about, because I know a little bit about the podcasting world here after doing this for a while, uh, but cars, bikes, everything that rolls, what gives,

Crew Chief Brad: you know, I don’t know where it started. I mean, I have an idea, but when I was a little kid, you know, my brother and I.

Would play with our Matchbox cars and our Hot Wheels, but it didn’t come from my father. I mean, he’s not very much a [00:06:00] car guy. He was in his teens. You know, he, he built and destroyed an AMC. Uh, I can’t remember what it was, but he, he had an AMC that he took to a buddy. You know, cause we all have a friend that we take our cars to, to hop up.

Uh, and, but since he got rid of that car, he’s been more into like trucks and boats and fishing and things like that. So I didn’t get the car bug from him. My only. Guess is that I got it from my mother who when I was born. She had a late 70s v6 Camaro That I remember a little bit I don’t remember going for very many rides in it because I was just a baby But I if I had to guess where in my family I got the car bug from it would be my mom But other than that, nobody else in my family’s really into two cars.

So I don’t know how I gravitated towards them, but it just kind of happened from, from the Hot Wheels and Matchbox car days when I was a wee, a wee little tot. I remember my brother and I used to debate, you know, because I was like seven and he was, you know, three years [00:07:00] younger than me. He was four, so if you can imagine what an elementary school debate sounds like.

Um, the Lamborghini was always the fastest. This followed by the Ferrari and then the Porsche. And that was, that was the end of the debate. That was it. And all three of them were red. So,

Mark Greene: well, of course they have to be what you’ve gotten into a lot of seriousness with a lot of things. I mentioned in your intro, a lot of driving stuff, racing stuff, uh, instructing other drivers, autocross off roading motorcycles.

Uh, when you started getting into this, how did you start and where’d you start driving and what were you driving?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, so my first car was a Honda Civic, a 91 Civic that I inherited from my father, um, but I always used to, to tear up, uh, the highways with this 90 horsepower, you know, four speed Civic, uh, and from there, I mean, I obviously I didn’t do any racing or anything with that.

That was just, you know, my, my being dumb in high school car. Um, but from there I, I upgraded to a 2001 GTI, [00:08:00] which was the first car that I bought for myself just out of high school. Uh, and I remembered Eric was, you know, my, my cohost, Eric, that he’s already been on your show. Um, he. Was in autocross. I mean, you’ve got his car background and his whole family was in the cars and from birth, he came out with an Audi badge on him or a Volkswagen badge.

I can’t remember which one it was somewhere

Mark Greene: on his rear end. Yeah, his

Crew Chief Brad: birthmark is a Volkswagen badge somewhere. I won’t, I won’t say where, but so I, I, I rekindled like a friendship that I had with him because we met in high school, you know, your freshman year, uh, Spanish class, you know, and everything.

And, I remember he autocrossed and he was like, yeah, you should bring that car out and we should go autocrossing. So, you know, 2001, 2002, I kind of did, you know, autocrossing with him and his father ran the, if I’m remembering correctly, he ran the Potomac region of the Porsche Club here in Maryland or where I used to live in Maryland.

And he would, they would hold autocrosses at [00:09:00] Tipton Airfield near Fort Meade. So we did that for an entire summer. Unfortunately, then 9 11 happened and they shut down. The access to the airfield and auto crosses, especially with PCA kind of move around a little bit. So we kind of got out of, I got out of autocross a little bit and started getting more into the drag racing.

Some of the friends that I had met made in college were more into drag racing. They had Camaros and Mustangs and there was an errant Chevy Cavalier running around with us too. But I always had this feud between my, my four cylinder turbo GTI and this other guy with a V6 Camaro. Uh, and we were going at each other all the time, you know, I ended up getting the better of them, you know, on the drag strip and then he got mad, put a supercharger on his car and everything like that.

I’ll get you. Exactly. But that led me to the, the, the drag racing. Uh, and then at one point, because they all had Camaros, I kind of, you know, I was like, Every, every once in a while I get the, the, the bug to keep up with the Joneses. So I got rid of the GTI and bought it a Z 28, [00:10:00] which I drag race as well.

You know, once I got to Z 28, the V six Camaro argument between me and him were, was pretty much killed. So that is where I guess I started the drag racing. Then I started following my friends and kind of started flipping cars. I had the Camaro for a couple years. Unfortunately, that car I had to retire. Um, because I ran it into a horse trailer.

Uh oh. Not, not on purpose, obviously, but I was driving on some back roads. And then they, uh, it was a, it wasn’t a dark, it was, you know, during the day on a Sunday. But there was a blind corner, uh, and I was coming up over this hill, and this truck was making a left turn. You know, hauling a horse trailer, he turned right in front of me.

Thankfully, there were, there were no animals in the trailer. It probably would have Much worse accident if there were, but the car was totaled. I knocked the trailer completely off the truck. Um, if anybody knows me on socials, my, my handle everywhere is Mr. Ed killed my Z. Oh my gosh. That’s pretty much where, where that came from.

Um, but, but from there I, I, [00:11:00] I dabbled with Mustangs. I got back into a GTI. I got out of a GTI. I’ve had STIs I’ve had, you know, trucks. I’ve got a Tundra now I’ve had Suburbans, you know, a couple of different Camaros. I mean, I’ve been all over the place. I’ve run the gamut. Uh, when it comes to vehicles, I’ve had a couple Jeeps, uh, which led me into the off roading, um, for a little bit.

I don’t know, I’ve just, on, I just love, you know, cars and they just give me a feeling of freedom and I can escape. You know, it’s just nothing better than hopping into a car, going on a nice drive, or a, a, a vehicle, a Jeep or something on the trail and just putting on some good music and just hanging out with your friends.

They kind of bring, bring people together.

Mark Greene: You’re a bit addicted, my friend.

Crew Chief Brad: I am. Unfortunately, my, my wallet hates me for it.

Mark Greene: Oh, no, it loves it. Wallets are designed to be open and emptied. That’s what they’re all about. Filled, filled, emptied.

Crew Chief Brad: You can’t take it with you, right? So you might as well just spend it all.

Mark Greene: Well, and

Crew Chief Brad: then, yeah, I guess. And then on top of all that, uh, I sprinkled in [00:12:00] a couple of motorcycles just because I thought I wanted to be a motorcycle writer. Um, so I, I had, uh, my first bike was a 99 Ducati 748, uh, that I loved. I bought it used from a guy, he just, sometimes things just align. I had in my head, you know, I want this motorcycle, I want a Ducati.

And then a friend of a friend said, Oh, I know someone who’s selling one. Then they just, it just happened. And then my, my next bike was a Hayabusa, uh, and then I almost killed myself on that. So I scared myself to the point where I wanted to, yeah, it was, One night on a dark highway, I was doing about 160, 170, and I, I could barely see what was going on in front of me.

The trees look like just a blur. You know, the highway itself, the lines on the road were a blur. So once I survived that ride, I parked it, I listed it for sale and I got rid of it like a week later. Smart. This is just not for me. I did get back into a bike. I got a Yamaha Raider for a year or so, but at that point, I [00:13:00] love the idea of owning a motorcycle.

I don’t actually like riding them that much.

Mark Greene: There’s just so much. Yeah. A lot can go wrong, especially today. With all these, uh, people that are, you know, watching their phones so much, and 748 Ducati, uh, sometime when we have a longer time together, asked me about a guy that worked with me, and he rode his 748 through the plate glass window into my office.

Uh, yeah, that was a crazy, Oh my, that was crazy day. Well, let’s talk about break fix. Now I know why you’re the break in break fix. I get it now. And it all comes clear. The break fix podcast, you know, having been a podcast for, for as long as I have, I’ve learned a lot. And when I started. I tell people I was a podcaster and they say, Oh, what?

They had no idea what it was. Most of the guests that are on my show had never even listened to one. Some still haven’t, uh, which is amazing to me because there’s so many out there, but you and your buddy, uh, Eric started this break fix podcast. Why’d [00:14:00] you start it? What’s it all about?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, it started, we talked about it for a while, um, and it’s just, I don’t know, we, we, we wrote a whole bunch of articles that we put on our website, it didn’t seem like, some of them would, they’d hit or miss, but a lot of people don’t like to read, you know, for some reason, because in this new day and age, um, with people, the way they consume media, it’s, it’s gotta be really quick.

And it’s got to hit really fast, uh, and the reading of the articles, and it just didn’t seem to be doing it. But we still had a bunch of stories that we wanted to tell. Um, we still had ideas and things. So we thought, you know, maybe we just turn it into, you know, something, uh, I thought either like a podcast or even like a YouTube channel or video.

Um, but like doing video production is even more, you know, time intensive and complicated than, than even podcast, um, production, which. You know, Eric knows all that, but that’s complicated in and of itself. Um, but we were going to the track, [00:15:00] we had all these stories that we gathered from all these people that we were hanging out with, and we wanted to tell those stories, but we never really got, we never really got the bug to do it until COVID happened, and we weren’t going to the track anymore.

Suddenly, everybody’s schedule freed up, and it started, really, we just started doing a couple Zoom happy hours to keep everybody engaged, and people were still talking. I’m telling stories about the good old days, you know, the back in 2019 so far away when they could go to the track still and then we just started recording things and we thought, you know, we could turn, we could turn this into a show.

Um, so we, we ultimately did. I think it was June of 2020. Yeah, June of 2020. June or July, Eric and I just sat down and, you know what, let’s just do it. You know, let’s just put on our microphones, let’s just start talking and see what happens. And then that’s where our origin story kind of came from. Uh, on our very first episode, we had a lot of criticism from, you [00:16:00] know, people in our families, a lot of opinions and advice on how to change it.

So we kind of re recorded the pilot episode and made it more, you know, podcast friendly with the advice that we, we received more, I guess, listener friendly. And then we just kind of, we’ve just moved on from there. The show has, you know, It’s evolved a little bit. It’s changed more from kind of silly stories and, you know, joking around and what ifs and what should I buy.

We still have some of those episodes, but now it’s more about telling the stories of other people. It’s not just telling our stories, it’s other people in the industry that may not have an opportunity or a platform to get their story heard. You know, that’s, so now we’re here, we’ve developed this fan base, we’ve developed this platform, and now we want to help others.

Their story out there.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s the way to do it. That’s, that’s was my whole why story is sharing other people’s inspiring stories. Uh, cause you, you found out real quick and many people do, you only have so many of your [00:17:00] own stories to tell, and then you start retelling the same stories and the fishes get bigger and then the stories lose credibility and all that kind of stuff.

Have you had a, what I call a driving inspiration in your life, some type of mentor or influencer?

Crew Chief Brad: I have a couple. I would definitely list Eric as one, uh, because, I mean, as he mentioned on his interview, uh, he, his work ethic and everything he got from his father and his family, um, he, uh, his work ethic and his ability to just get stuff done inspires me.

I swear he never sleeps. I think he closes his eyes from like 12 to 6, um, but he’s not actually sleeping. I think his mind is still working and churning out the next great idea. Uh, and then, uh, My wife, for one, she inspires me because she’s a much different person than I am. I used to be a very pessimistic and cynical person.

She’s very much more an optimist, uh, and just a happy go lucky, you know, person. And she’s kind of brought, brought me out of my shell a little bit when it [00:18:00] comes to my pessimism. She kind of, she’s always quick to, to stop me when I start going down that path. And just, well, think of it this way, and she’s always right.

And then another is, yes, my wife is always right. I’m sure every husband that’s listening to the show right now will say that.

Mark Greene: Well, yeah, that’s how you stay married for a long time.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly. Exactly. Uh, and then I just recently found this guy over the last couple of years and I’ll talk about him when we get to the book section of your, your, your interview, but David Goggins, uh, he, he’s a fascinating guy.

Person and an amazing individual. And he’s just kind of, he inspires me to just never give up and never think that anything is out of reach or out of grasp.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah. I know who he is. So that’s very cool. We’ll talk about him in a little bit. We’ll take a short break. We come back. I want to talk a little bit about some challenges.

Love the challenge question here. Sometimes it’s a little, uh, rough to go down that road, but it always ends up very positive. So keep that in mind. And we’ll be right back. I’ve teamed [00:19:00] up with auto geek because. Well, they’ve been the leading source of auto detailing products accessories for more than 20 years.

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That’s techforce. org. So let’s talk about this challenge, obstacle failure, something that kind of stopped you in your tracks, perhaps. But more importantly, what was that lesson learned? If you take your wife’s way of looking at things, you know, even if something seems bad, there’s some less in there, maybe another door opening.

I like her spirit. That’s pretty cool. So let’s talk about that. Is there something in your life that you learned a really valuable, positive lesson from, even though the experience wasn’t so great?

Crew Chief Brad: One thing I’ve [00:22:00] definitely learned over my career and you know, in life is that the grass is not always greener.

When my wife and I got married, we bought a house that was a significant distance from where I was working at the time and I had to make a decision, either I was going to do a 60 plus mile one way commute, or I was going to find a new job. And I, I put some feelers out, found a new job. It was actually with somebody that I had known before, you know, that I thought I had a good relationship with.

Well, it turns out that was not a good situation for me. It was a terrible six months of my life and my professional career, uh, and I, I spatially spent the whole time. And Trying to get out of it and then ultimately I ended up just leaving. I just left the company. Luckily, my wife was able to financially support us and I was able to find a part time job just to get me by until I could find something else.

And then the next job after that, I mean, I had a string of a couple. Like, not so great, you know, jobs in the finance [00:23:00] world. That really made me rethink whether I even wanted to be in finance anymore, period. I started looking for other career paths. I didn’t have the knowledge or the experience to jump into something like IT, which all my friends are doing.

At one point, I thought about going back to school and becoming a nurse. Um, because that’s something that, that’s what my mom was. I knew many people that were nurses. Uh, Back in elementary school, they had those, you know, silly little vocational tests. Oh, sure. Yeah. My mind told me in fifth grade that I should be a nurse.

Really? So I was like, yeah, very interesting. Very weird. Um, but so I, I looked into that while I was doing that, I was still looking for another job. I found a job that I actually love now. I’m back in an industry that I care about, you know, the credit union world, the finance world. Uh, and so basically the, the moral of this story or the failure was that I left the job.

for something that I thought was going to be ideal. It doesn’t always turn out that way. The grass is not always greener, uh, but don’t stop looking. Uh, I learned that, you know, just keep [00:24:00] going. Uh, you’re going to fail, but it’s just a minor blip in the, in the grand scheme.

Mark Greene: Yeah. You know, the other obvious lesson and you’re in finance, you know, this is always have a bit of a laning pad set up, you know, a savings account, something on the side, you know, We hear it all the time.

Unfortunately, they don’t teach finance in schools unless you get into the college level stuff. I wish they did even back to elementary school, just simple lessons on compound interest and why it’s important to have some money set aside. Not always spend every allowance you get. Although I never got an allowance.

I

Crew Chief Brad: mean, they could, they could, they could teach an entire course on what your credit score is and why, why your credit score, how it moves, why it’s important, why you need a good credit score. I mean, that’s a, that’s a. Entire semester worth of, uh, education right there.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah. But of course they don’t, I think the, the school system is designed just to create robots out of all of us.

So it would be really good workers for somebody else, which, uh, uh, no thing,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, I think the school, the school system is [00:25:00] designed to pat itself on the back and it’s all these standardized tests, but that’s, that’s another topic for another, we could

Mark Greene: spend hours on that discussion for sure. So looking ahead with the break fix podcast, I like to ask about bucket list.

Items, where do you see this going? Have you guys thought past the next year, two, three, or are you just still ramping this thing up and trying to feel your way through and adjust and move, just like being on a track in a new car?

Crew Chief Brad: We, we have thought about it. I believe we do have kind of a rough. Draft of a strategic plan and what we want to do, but we want to grow the podcast into more than a podcast.

We want to be able to tell people’s stories, obviously sticking with the podcast platform. But we want to grow into, as I touched on earlier, video. If there’s a way we can figure out how to do the video production, we want to do on site. We’ve actually already started doing this on site. Recordings and interviews at live races with some of the drivers and things like that find other methods to [00:26:00] Reach people and get the stories out that may be greater than the podcast.

We’d love to get hooked on Partnerships with with like, you know, we do the crossover episodes with you and with other podcasters to I guess bright This, um, widen our reach and we just want to continue widening our reach even outside of the podcast, uh, world.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah. It’s cool. There’s a lot of different ways to go with this platform than people think.

So, and you know, things are changing so much. I had a. I talked with Wayne Carini from Chasing Classic Cars yesterday. He’s going to be a returning guest. He was a very early guest of my show, number 36, and he’s going to be on the show. Yeah, he’s going to be on the show next week. And so we were talking about cable and what’s happening.

You know, his, his TV show ran, he goes, I never drained. My show would run as long as I did. I thought after the first year, it’d be over. Who would want to watch me? And I think it ran 16 plus years still in the air, but he said something pretty Profound because he’s about to do some new things with his career.

And he said, he goes, I guarantee [00:27:00] you in the next four or five years cable, there will be no cable TV. It’ll be gone. It’s just, it’s, it’s so outdated, not working Roku platforms and other streaming platforms are the way to go. And I think you and I you’re much younger than me, but I’m trying to be young in my knowledge of it is that there’s so many other ways now.

And I, I think of how little I watch TV because there’s some great, uh, YouTube channels I like to do that are content created by amateurs that do a fun job and it’s enjoyable and there’s a whole world out there. So, uh, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot more to do. It’s, it’s pretty, pretty, pretty cool. So special vehicle story for you.

I mean, for a guy who’s had so many, so many things that roll on rubber. Holy cow. If you could pick one and share a story. That would be cool, other than running into horse trailers.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, so I’ve already told that one. I actually had three. Okay. But uh, so we’ve already talked about the 99 Camaro. That, I miss that car.

I had a 99 Ducati 748. That was my first motorcycle. My first looked like what I [00:28:00] thought was a cool vehicle. You know, nobody I knew had a Ducati. It sounded amazing. Yeah. Those motorcycles just sound phenomenal. I regret selling that, but I always try to, I don’t always, when in my younger days I tried to keep up with the Joneses and try to get something else, or I wanted something, I always wanted something else.

But again, the grass is green, the grass is always greener, even though it’s not. So I always wanted it, so I sold it for, I don’t even remember what I bought, but. Uh, and then I had a, a 98 Jeep, uh, Wrangler TJ that was lifted on 35 or 32 inch tires, open axles. I mean, I didn’t put a lot of money into it, but that was just a lot of fun, you know, driving around, taking the doors off the top off.

Uh, I beat the, the crap outta that thing and it just kept taking it, it just loved it. Uh, those are, those are the three vehicles that of probably the 30 or 25 or 30 that I’ve had that I miss the most, I would say. And then a runner up or, um. Honorable mention would be my first track car, which is a 2003 GTI, we dubbed Eddie because my racing number is [00:29:00] 666, um, and Eddie from Iron Maiden and Number of the Beasts and all that.

Um, that was, that was my, my first track car. I, I miss that car too, but when I, When my, my son was born, I decided that I needed something less, you know, track oriented and more like something I could drive on the street and have some fun because my, my time is limited and being able to get to the racetrack and having a track, a track only vehicle just wasn’t going to work for me.

So I had to sell Eddie, uh, then I bought a Mark 5 R32, uh, which is kind of what I have now with my Tundra.

Mark Greene: Well, welcome to parenthood changes all perspectives for sure. Yeah. I was writing a seven 50 Ducati monster and a MV Augusta at four and had little kids. And every time I, I talked my wife into jumping on the back of my Ducati cause you could take the seat off and there was an extra space for her in the back.

One time. And I was very careful. We went for a ride and do anything silly. And we came back and she got off and I said, what do you think? She said, all I could think about is our kids being [00:30:00] orphans the entire time I was on this thing. And so I, you know, it kind of puts your perspective in a different place.

And as we said, bikes are dangerous, but they sure are fun. Maybe off road stuff. I’ve got lots of friends who have families of little kids are riding off road little motorcycles. It’s a lot safer. And, uh, Maybe that’s in your future. I have a feeling it might be. So I’m going to be your car psychologist here.

Uh, this is an interesting place to go. We do this here on cars. Yeah. Is into your mind. If you were reincarnated pun intended manifest as a vehicle, not what you want to be though. This is how you perceive yourself. You got to dig a little deep for me here. I’d have to get the tissues out and do a little analysis.

Uh, what would you be and why?

Crew Chief Brad: You know, I thought about this question a lot over the last couple days, you know, preparing for the, for this interview. And I, I ultimately came up with two options. Um, they’re both kind of about the same, but the one I’m going to go with is the Mercedes Benz CL

Mark Greene: 600. Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: And the big V12 huge, huge horsepower.

One of the ones from like the early [00:31:00] 2000s. They’re quiet. You know, they’re, they’re unassuming. They just look like any other, you know, Mercedes coming down the road. Um, but if you pick a street fight with one, you know, you’re going to get annihilated. And I kind of feel that’s kind of me. I’m, I’m a, I’m a big guy, you know, like it’s a big car.

I’m kind of quiet and, you know, unassuming. I don’t stand out with the exception of my size. You know, I don’t stand out with my voice or my persona or anything, but. Yeah. Yeah. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t want to mess with me.

Mark Greene: That’s pretty good way to say it. Yeah. Well, you know, uh, what was it? Walk quietly, carry a big stick, you know?

I mean, that’s what that, that CL600 does. And you know, they’re all, there’s all sorts of cars like that, that do that. I kind of think about, I have an E46 M3, that car is kind of that way. Uh, people just saying, oh, it’s another BMW, but you hit the sport button and you go and the thing takes off. And, uh, there’s other cars in the world that are like that as well.

Even to think about the wonderful Mercedes black series. Cars. Yes. You don’t know what those are, but holy mackerel, don’t pick a street [00:32:00] fight with a one of

Crew Chief Brad: one of my all time favorite cars is a CLK black series. If I could, if I could scrounge up the money and convince the wife that I need one of those cars, it would be in my, my garage right now.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Well, you know, there’s a thing about need and want. My listeners know this. My mom taught me this. I used to say, mom, mom, I need a new bike. She goes, no, you want a new bike. You already have a bike. And I go, yeah, but I want what I need and I need what I want. And she’d look at me and go, go to your room.

Smart kid. There you go. How about a great book? Love to share books that people have enjoyed here on cars. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: All right, so books. Yeah, great books. I have three, well, two books in a series of books that I’m going to say one is performance thinking by Dr. Jacques Dallaire. If you listen to the break fix podcast, we actually interviewed him at one of the SRO races not too long ago, but it’s all about.

Getting out of your own head, you know, and finding being able to [00:33:00] operate at your, your highest peak performance all the time, not just in practice, but in the big game, you know, you know, if we use the sports analogies or the big race, you know, or that big speech that you’ve got coming up in the boardroom, you know, it helps you get out of your own mind and stop.

Mark Greene: Yeah, he’s great. He’s been a guest here too and I love that book. He’s helped a lot of drivers get over mental, uh, moves. Do you think about even great athletes like, um, Tiger Woods who went through a really bad period of mindset, you know, failures and then came back strong and yeah, shock is great. Great book.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, he’s, he’s got a, he’s got another one that’s also geared towards helping your, your children reach their, their full potential as well. I have both of them obviously because I’ve got a son and I want to make sure that I, I help him grow and support him in the best ways that I can and whatever he wants to do.

Um, the next book is obviously, we talked about David Goggins, [00:34:00] his book, Can’t Hurt Me. Uh, that book is, you gotta callous the mind. It’s, it’s an amazing book. His journey is just fascinating. All the things that he’s accomplished, you know, in his life and from the childhood that he had that was not the greatest of childhoods, um, to be able to, to be who he is and become, you know, what he’s become.

And it’s, it’s a fascinating book. It’s very eye opening and it’s just, he’s a wonderful person. I love that guy. I would love to actually interview or talk to him, just sit down and have a beer with him and just pick his brain. The next one is not inspirational, it’s more just, you know, because I like to read.

Uh, and I’m very big into like fantasy books like Tolkien and George R. R. Martin and stuff. Uh, this is the, uh, the series is called the Stormlight Archive. Uh, it’s part of the bigger overarching Cosmere series by Brandon Sanderson. The first book of the series is called The Way of Kings. Fantastic read.

Very, very fantasy oriented. I just, you know, I love those books, so.

Mark Greene: [00:35:00] Yeah, you can escape in those kind of books. Very cool. Exactly, exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: All right,

Mark Greene: we’re gonna have some fun today because I’m gonna be your benefactor. I’m gonna open the checkbook and I’m gonna park anything you want in the driveway so you can go for what I call the ultimate drive and you can take it anywhere, anywhere in the world.

Or if you want to be like Elon Musk, we’ll launch out into space, uh, playing rocket man forevermore. Wonder where that, wonder where that car is now that he sent out there. And, uh, I I’d love to thought that someday an alien will fly up next to it and look over and go, what on earth is that? Uh, I’m sure he’s thinking that way too.

And, uh, you can take anybody with you. Even somebody who is not with us anymore. Someone who’s deceased, which opens up the world of opportunities. So what’s the ultimate drive look like for you today, Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, well this one’s going to be a little bit of a tear jerker.

Mark Greene: Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Um, so the person is going to be my mother.

She passed away from complications from lupus. She had lupus. She’s dealt with that for several years. A lot of people don’t know. Yeah, a lot of people don’t know what lupus is, but it’s a autoimmune, uh, disease. Uh, it’s very, it’s very, it’s [00:36:00] terrible. It is, it’s, it’s a terrible thing. My

Mark Greene: mother-in-Law had that.

It’s, uh, yeah, it’s terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Go, go look up the Lupus Foundation for more information and please donate if you can. Sorry, I didn’t mean to, to plug there, but, so she would be the person that I would, uh, I would drive with. Um, she was my closest thing in my family to a car enthusiast, so. The car would be a Ferrari 250 GT California, long

Mark Greene: wheelbase.

Crew Chief Brad: I say long wheelbase because I’m a big guy and probably I can fit in the long wheelbase more than the short wheelbase. Uh, and then we would drive up and down Pacific Coast Highway.

Mark Greene: Well, nice choice of car and nice choice to drive and of course taking your mom and again, my condolences for that loss. Uh, yeah, that disease is just horrible.

I mean, there’s so many terrible diseases, but a lot of people mentioned that they don’t have any ideas. So, uh, yeah. My wish is that. That gets eradicated from the world. Uh, so people don’t have to do that, but that Pacific coast highway drive have done that many times. Uh, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. Beautiful.

Uh, the key there is to [00:37:00] take your time and enjoy. And if you do a little series, turn around and go back and drive it down and go in the other way and then turn around and drive back around. On the other way, uh, did that a couple of times with my son, for sure. You’ve taken us on a fun ride today, Brad.

This has been great. Uh, your court in, uh, your endeavors at break fix podcast, Eric. Um, he did a great job too. So for you listeners that miss my talk with him, that you’ll find that on the cars you have podcast or any mobile podcast app before I let you go, could you share a success quota mantra? Maybe some type of words of inspiration for our listeners.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, I have a couple. Um, one is, uh, it’s actually a quote from one of Quentin Tarantino’s films, Four Rooms. Uh, it’s the less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect. Um, so basically just keep your mouth shut. Uh, and then, uh, what’s behind you doesn’t matter.

Obviously, the Enzo Ferrari, the famous Enzo Ferrari quote, things that happened in the past, yeah, they, they shape you and they make you who you are, but they don’t matter when it comes to what’s coming in the future. Just look forward and keep plowing ahead. And [00:38:00] then the thing that I thought of, uh, is actually one of Eric’s favorite quotes.

It’s, uh, we’re looking for the thing that gets us to the next thing. You know, you asked us what we were looking to do with the podcast. You know, where we want to go. We want to go to YouTube or whatever, you know, comes after the podcast, you know, to grow the channel. You know, and grow our footprint, our platform that’s going to get us to, you know, the next thing after that, you know, we’re always looking ahead, you know, trying to see what the next great platform is, how we can get these stories told, uh, and then how we can reach the maximize our reach, you know, to, to make these, uh, these stories told and then heard.

Mark Greene: A couple of these have great, they’re great metaphors for racing because as you know, uh, when you race, you’re always looking way ahead, not in front of you and yeah, it doesn’t matter much who’s behind you really. Um, you’re just always looking way down the road. I have a great quote that ties into what’s behind you doesn’t matter from Ayrton Senna.

The past is just data. I only see the future. And I put that on my business card when [00:39:00] I started this podcast so that instead of dwelling on what I used to do. Focus on what’s way ahead of me and how am I going to get there and, uh, and so forth. So, uh, great inspiration there. How can people learn more about you and the break fix podcast?

Crew Chief Brad: Um, they can catch breakfast on all as Eric likes to say the pod catchers. I

Mark Greene: like that term. I never heard that term before. I might have to stop.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, by all means. Go for it. We’re on, you know, Spotify, Apple, you know, wherever you can find your, wherever you get your, your podcast fix. Um, you can reach us on our website, www.

gtmotorsports. org. Um, you can catch us on your social media. We’re on Instagram, Facebook. Um, GT Motorsports, um, just look for us anywhere.

Mark Greene: I’ll put links to all these on Brad’s show notes page. Check out the Break Fix podcast and uh, you follow me on social media listeners. Uh, as soon as my show pops up on theirs, I’ll make sure I post that so you can listen to me with the mic flipped a little bit.

That’s always a little awkward for me is to have the mic flipped and have to answer questions. It’s, uh, but it’s a fun thing and I had a a great [00:40:00] time with you guys recording that show. You did a. Marvelous job. So I’m really looking forward to the finished product, Brad. Thanks for being so generous today with your time, your expertise, have fun with that new little boy.

What a great new adventure you have coming in your life. You have no idea what’s ahead of you, but it’s pretty darn great being a father of two wonderful children and now a grandfather, which is even cooler. You can spoil them and send them home. So that’s kind of neat until you and I talk again, my friend, I’ll see you.

Advertisement: Down the road.

Crew Chief Brad: Alright, thank you.

Advertisement: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for joining us on today’s ride here at Caria Drive on over to caria.com. To find show notes and inspiring automotive fun. Download your free copy of Filler Up, A fun book filled with gorgeous photographs of fuel filler fun, including quotes from more inspiring automotive enthusiasts.

Download your copy today and we’ll see you next time on cars. Yeah.

Um, [00:41:00] uh, Um, uh, Um, uh,

Mark Greene: [00:00:00] Rev it up and welcome to cars. Yeah. Show number 2, 405. What happens when two car guys get together to create something new today? We’re going to find out, be prepared to be inspired.

Advertisement: This is cars. Yeah. Where you’ll enjoy interviews with inspiring automotive enthusiasts. Mark Green is here to provide you with a fuel injection of automotive inspiration.

So get in, sit down, buck. Cool up and get ready for a wild ride here on Cars. Yeah.

Mark Greene: Hello, inspiring automotive enthusiasts and welcome to Cars. Yeah. Today. Well, today I’m in a couple of places at the same time, the magic of the computer. Uh, I’m in Maryland and I’m in Texas. That’s quite a stretch with two, a very special returning guests who have decided to collaborate on something that I’d love to share with you.

Don Weberg and Eric Amantra. Don [00:01:00] Eric, welcome to car. Yeah. Do you have it in gear and are you guys ready to release the clutch?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, we do. Thanks for having us back. Mark.

Mark Greene: Thanks Mark. Now I figure with two guys on the show, like you two motorheads, we’re at a drag strip, so you’re both lining up, getting ready to drop the clutch and watch the Christmas tree change to green.

Um, now what I’m going to do here is this would be a little bit interesting. I’m going to introduce you for people that don’t. No of you, perhaps. And if you didn’t listen to these two guys when they were last on the show, you can go back. In fact, Don is a little bit of a show hog because he will be appearing his third time.

Right, Don? That’s right. Three times is a charm. There you go. A three Peter, as they say. But first I’m going to ask each of you kind of a fun, silly question, and I’m going to start with you, Don. What’s one little thing that maybe people don’t know about you?

Don Weberg: Oh, uh, I love glass art.

Mark Greene: Glass art. So you should be out here at the Chihuly art museum with me, right?

Don Weberg: Yeah. Yeah, no, we, we got to visit the [00:02:00] Chihuly exhibit at a museum out there a couple of years ago. It was fantastic. In fact, that was one of the things my wife and I bonded over, a very strange little story. We were at a swap meet and we both reached for the same piece of glass art at the same time. We weren’t even looking, we were just, we saw something.

And as we’re reaching, we looked away, we both grabbed it at the same time. Kind of an interesting little story. It turns out she was a glass art aficionado too. Well, there you go.

Mark Greene: That works pretty cool. You know, they, you guys both know about my, uh, my past love with my orange crush and a Michael Allen Ross, the photographer shot that car over at the glass museum.

You may have seen that cover and the pictures in Porsche Panorama magazine. Maybe. Did pretty cool. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Now eric, how about you and share a little secret?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, so For those that know the acronym afol. I am an adult fan of legos That’s kind of a weird thing to say because i’ve been playing with them since I was a kid And more recently, my daughters are of the age where they’re [00:03:00] very much into Lego.

I actually took them to Denmark to Lego headquarters this year, which was pretty cool. And I’ve been on a crusade with them to resurrect a lot of these kits that I have from back in the eighties, early nineties and things like that. So missing some pieces here and there, but these aren’t just. Little small Lego kits.

These are 24 to 30 inch scale models of full size cars. And so I’ve got them in my office now going back to 1986, one of the earliest Lego Technic sets. And I’ve been going back through that and the girls are like, these are like expert builds. This is amazing. And so that’s kind of blossomed into a newfound passion that I can share with my daughters, but still keep it car adjacent.

Mark Greene: Well, that’s pretty smart. Lucky you. So we’ve got one guy into Legos, which are virtually unbreakable. And another guy that is into very breakable collectible. So there you go. Well, let me introduce you guys. And we’re going to dive into this because you’re going to do something new here. And I’m really excited to share this with the world.

Don Weberg and Eric [00:04:00] Amatrice Stelli, say that 10 times fast, have both been in the automobile industry for years. Don launched Garage Style Magazine in 2008. And Eric has been involved in motorsports and automobiles, founding Grand Touring Motorsports in 2014 and his BrakeFix podcast, which I was a guest on.

Very cool. Both men have teamed up to create an affiliate network with five digital publications and are working towards creating a single company. That will house all their businesses entities under one garage roof. The plan includes publishing specialty books and cultivating new clients to help facilitate their marketing and PR needs, providing a multitude of services.

Very interesting. We’ll be back in just a moment, but first a word from our sponsors. So give them a little love. Buckle up. We’ll be right back. Years ago, when it was time to renew my collector car insurance policy, my carrier’s rates went up. Way up. But my usage was the same and I never made a claim. I didn’t even have a ticket.

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They cover the automotive world and the people who share our passions. And Linkage Magazine is grown, mailing you six issues annually. Join me on this journey with Linkage. They’re geared for the automotive life. You can subscribe at linkage, mag. com. All right, guys. So before we get into this new entity, I want each of you to just talk a little bit about your backgrounds because it’ll set the format for what each of you are bringing to the garage.

As this collaboration, this new build as we dive into car world here. And I’m going to start with you, Don. Garage Town Magazine is a [00:07:00] publication that I’ve received and now get online for a long, long time. I met you. I’m not even sure when I met you. It’s been so long. I feel like I’ve known you forever.

Let’s talk a little bit about your background first, and then we’ll dive into Eric talking about what he’s doing. And then we’ll meld all these things together to create something. Much cooler than a Frankenstein build. Right? So Don, uh, tell us a little bit about your background.

Don Weberg: Okay. Uh, yeah. Car guy from birth.

Literally. Both my parents were car people. And so it was in the DNA. They were all about the American iron and drag racing. And I came along and. Decided it wasn’t just about a straight line. It was about anything with wheels. If it looked good, that was what was, what was interesting to me. And it just kind of kept going with cars.

And then the writing came along. I was constantly reading books as a kid. Uh, it didn’t matter what the book was. I was probably reading it. And so media became a big passion of mine. So in college, uh, as a journalism student, I decided, you know, [00:08:00] I really wanted to work for the car magazines. So I took an internship at Motor Trend and Truck Trend magazine, uh, that turned into a bit of a small career for a while until Prime Media was bought by EMAP.

I think that’s what happened. And, uh, all of us basically lost our jobs. So that was that. So I ended up freelancing. And, uh, meeting all kinds of different collectors and seeing different garages during the freelance pool. And, you know, you slowly realize there’s something here. There’s something about these garage guys.

I mean, yeah, we’re all car guys, but we’re garage guys. And, uh, there are a few things that happened all at once that made it, you know, the aha moment of this is what we need. And that was Garage Doll Magazine and we’re, I mean, one of the stories that’s the most fun to tell about forming it is when a manager calls me and says, uh, I need you to go shoot a 57 Chevy.

Okay, no problem. So he gives me the address. It’s in a town called Burbank over in Los Angeles County. [00:09:00] So I drive over there, guy opens up his garage door and he has a complete. 50s diner. It looked kind of like, uh, what was that diner on Happy Days? I believe it was called Arnold’s Diner. Yeah, the checker floor and the little jukebox and, you know, very, very 50s.

And smack in the center is this hot red 57 Chevy convertible fuel injection. I mean, the whole nine yards. It’s the king of the 57 Chevys. So we bring it out. We take it. We photograph it. Have a great day. And then he started telling me about his garage, and everything he did, and all the people he hired, and the artists, and the contractors, and the laborers, and just everybody to put it together.

And that was, that was a lot of fun. The next day, I had an appointment in Pasadena, which was on the other side of L. A. County. And, uh, this guy was a, uh, the owner of a Ferris Bueller Ferrari, as I always call it. Except it was black. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a black California, but they are…

Absolutely exquisite when they’re painted black. But here’s the thing I [00:10:00] roll up to this guy’s house. And if you know, Pasadena, it’s filled with old craftsman style houses. And I roll up to this little craftsman style house. You look down the driveway, there’s this little single car craftsman style garage.

And you’re thinking. This can’t be the place. You know, there’s no way 250 is living in that garage, but you know, maybe I’m picking him up and we’re going somewhere else. I go knock on the door. This guy opens the door. Uh, no kidding. Pocket protector. The glasses are on like kind of sideways. I mean, this guy, he just, he looks like a scientist.

So I’m thinking, yeah, this is not my Ferrari guy. I say, hi, I’m Don. I’m, I’m here to photograph, um, uh, a little sports car for a magazine. And the guy says, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, just. Go around the back and meet me in the back. I’ll be darned, it’s him. So I go off the porch, walk around down the driveway, and I meet him in the backyard.

And he says, um, yeah, it’s right in that garage. Let me just get the key. And I’m thinking, you’re kidding me, you know? So he unlocks it, opens the two little [00:11:00] barn doors, and there she is. Smack in the middle, you know, her back is out and no kidding. You know, those boxes people use when they get fired, those little white

Mark Greene: boxes,

Don Weberg: everybody uses.

Okay. Those are literally stacked all along each side of the left and right side of the Ferrari and across the top. And I’m thinking this is earthquake country. You know, one good jolt and this whole thing is coming in on this, you know, at the time it was only, you know, a million dollar car and he says, I know, I know, I, I just got through a divorce.

I just got through selling my company. I just retired and, you know, this is the house and this is all I’ve got and blah, blah, blah. So it’s okay. Well, how do you get it out of here? Cause the car was in there so tight. You couldn’t open the doors. Something. What do you do? Do you crawl over the trunk and get into the car?

No, no, no, no, no, just if you’ll help me grab the bumper and just lean back. Yep. And that’s literally how we got the car at the garage. So, okay. So we take it out. We shoot it. Have a great day. And, [00:12:00] uh, we get back and he’s, he’s telling me he really wishes he could, you know, make over his garage and do this, that, and the other.

Do you know anybody who might be able to help with that? And I thought, you know, I just met a guy, he’s got a 57 Chevy, but he’s got a garage that’ll knock your socks off. Let’s call him, see if we can go over there. So, okay. So we call him and he’s more than happy, you know, come on over, I’ll show you the garage and be happy to have you over.

So much to my very pleasant surprise. I think we’re going to jump in my Toyota and just head over there. The guy says, no, put your stuff in the Toyota, lock it up, hop in the Ferrari. Let’s let it breathe a little bit. Okay. So yeah, we got to ride in this Ferrari from Pasadena all the way back over to Burbank on the freeway, and that was, that was fun, but, but I got those two guys together and I’m just watching just to fly in the wall.

Just watching these guys talk and share stories and look at this and look at this and look at this. Next thing you know business cards are coming out. This is a guy who painted my ceiling. This is a guy who did my floor. This is a guy who did the the [00:13:00] jukebox. This is a guy who did this. Next thing you know all this is coming together and that was part of what started to hit me of this is what’s necessary because this guy didn’t know where to get his garage stuff.

That guy had put it all together. But he had to work for it. He had to go out there and find all these people to put it together. And that was kind of when garage style started percolating and bubbling. And next thing you know, we’re going to garage collections to find cars to write for other editors.

And then I’ll pull the owner aside and say, so I’ve got a weird request for you. And they’ll say, what? And I say, can I shoot your garage? And then you tell them this cockamamie story. I’m going to start a magazine and it’s going to be all about garages. And they look at you really funny, like, yeah, okay, that’ll last five minutes.

And. You know, they let you shoot just to shut you up, but yeah, that was kind of

Mark Greene: where garage style came from. It all started. Ferris fuel day off. Now, Eric, it was, you kind of took a different path. I know your it tech guy by, by the day, your day job, right? Uh, but you started this other [00:14:00] entity and you were kind enough to have me on your break fix podcast.

So how did you get into the world of cars besides playing with Legos?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, so I’m going to do a smoky burnout right through episode 2141 of cars. Yeah, so to skip over some of those gory details and kind of hone in on exactly what you’re talking about. Mark is how it and cars really became a bridge for me.

So in 2141, what I talked about was, you know, my grandfather was a chauffeur. My dad was into racing or changing an engine on the weekend was like normal for me. And I thought it was strange that other people didn’t do that. But reality of the situation was, When my dad stayed here to go to school, he went.

And became a developer. He was a mainframe programmer. And so I grew up around not only cars, but Unisys mainframes with, you know, hard drive cabinets the size of industrial refrigerators, and processors, and big, uh, big printers, and all this stuff. And so, for me, Staring at a green screen at five years old was no [00:15:00] different than staring at a 13 millimeter wrench.

But what my dad kind of pushed me to do was follow in his footsteps as a programmer. And at that time, the web was still being sort of developed by Al Gore, DARPA, whoever claims that they came up with it first. But I glommed on to that. I realized, Oh, the parsed languages, you know, all these kinds of things.

And so I learned a bunch of different languages, not only not only assembler so I could program on the mainframes, but these new web languages like HTML and PHP and things like that. But being. The crossroads of all this was really the car club that I was involved in as a kid with my dad. And so, you know, the web was new and they were like, we got to get the Porsche club websites up on the internet.

People need to know about these things and the Audi club and the BMW club and all these places. And they were like, we’re looking for people that know how to do this. And I’m here I am as a preteen teenager going, well, I know how to program in this stuff. I know how to build websites. Like I’ve been doing this actually for a while in my basement, kind of like the Google thing.

Right. So [00:16:00] people are asking, you know, they’re asking for help. So 20 years ago, 1999, 2000, I started. Grand Touring Audi and what that was was centralized around the cars I was passionate about because my first car was an Audi Coupe GT and so I wanted to build my own car club, my own community, I was getting people together, I had a very interesting group of people especially from the UK that would come to my forum and we would talk and we would share and oh can I get these parts and can you ship me and what do you have in America and all this kind of stuff and oddly enough if you look at our first 50 members in the top 20 Is javad shadzi from o34 motorsports with his original audi 80.

He was a member of grand touring audi So that kind of changed hands a couple of times because then I took on responsibilities at audi I took on responsibilities at porsche club And so I kind of took that website apart and I pushed it into those other resources And then later my dad wanted to resurrect the name because he wanted to resell parts.

I said, what about [00:17:00] grand tori motorsports? Okay, cool. We’ll do that. So that was version two And then after he passed away came version three in 2014, which stands today. So it’s been this whole idea of partnering cars and, and technology, but also building community. I’ve always been about building car clubs and getting information out there, sharing information, even as a driving instructor, that’s part of what fuels me is to share the love and passion of driving with other people and to help educate.

So. That’s a long winded way of painting the larger picture of Grand Touring Motorsports and why it stands the way it does and it’s been broken into multiple properties and all this kind of thing. But the story of how Don and I got together, I’ll leave to Don to tell.

Don Weberg: Don? Oh, me? Yeah. Yeah, you. Why me, Eric?

Okay. Yeah, so once upon a time, Eric was giving a podcast to one of our favorite people. He’s having a podcast with this gentleman. And this gentleman drops my name, drops GarageStyle’s [00:18:00] name, and Eric drops it down for future reference. And the next thing I know, I’m getting, you know, this text message from, uh, one of the ladies I work with who says, uh, do you want to be on a podcast?

Well, sure, why wouldn’t I want to be on a podcast? That sounds like fun. So, okay, you know, here’s a number, here’s an email, I’ll set you up. Okay, great. So it’s all set up. And I end up going on the Breakfast Podcast. And Eric and I kind of quickly clicked, we just, you know, it was sort of one of those moments where you sort of realize, yeah, you’ve kind of just become a fast friend here.

And, you know, Mark, you know this, you’ve known me for a long time off and on, I don’t know if you know this or not, but I’m not one of those guys who latches on to people immediately. I’m kind of a standoff kind of guy. I’m very friendly, big friendly Don. But there is definitely a wall up there that’s like, yeah, you’ve got to go now.

Bye Eric. I didn’t sense that with Eric. It was sort of a, you know, Eric seems like good people. So I was getting along with him. We blasted through his podcast. I think we spent two hours on that thing. [00:19:00] It ended up being a double

Crew Chief Eric: episode.

Don Weberg: So, yeah, we, we were talking about where it came from, where it is. And, you know, at the moment it was very interesting because, uh, you know, 2020 was hard on everybody. I don’t know anybody who wakes up in the morning and says, man, 2020, what a great year. Let’s do that again. Yeah. So for us, it was the same thing.

We were all in the same boat and we had a lot of family situations going on. The magazine was struggling because it was getting more and more and more expensive to print because of supply chain issues with paper and even ink was getting hard to get a hold of. So our printer, bless his heart, he was doing everything he could.

And I’ll tell you, every time I, uh, sent out for bid, uh, to different printers, my old printer always came back with the best bid. So I stayed with that guy because he always had the best price, always had the best service and he’d been there since day one. So, uh, I knew he was doing everything he could, you know, and it still just wasn’t enough.

Plus on the personal side with [00:20:00] everything going on, we had two senior citizens we were taking care of at home. We were in the process of trying to move to Tennessee. We were in the process of getting rid of stuff. I mean, it’s just a whole soap opera of what’s going on. And it was stressing me out big time.

And I, I finally, you know, something had to give. Something’s got to break and we got a print bill. And it wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it. It was just for the first time in GarageStyle’s life. We didn’t want to afford it. We just didn’t want to. So, okay, you know, we’ll pay it because the work has already been done.

Let’s just get this one done and we’re going to rely on our newsletter. Because that’s what we have digitally. Pretty much free it, you know, we get stuff out there. It’s wonderful and it’ll lighten the load a lot. So, uh, that was kind of what was going on shortly before I met Eric and then the move happens.

We ended up moving to Texas, not Tennessee and Eric’s podcast comes up and I basically tell him, you know, we’re, we’re trying to go digital. And of course I. You know, I, I see a [00:21:00] ticonder of a pencil and think, man, that is the coolest piece of technology ever. You know, when it comes to computers, et cetera, I’m kind of a rock.

So here’s Eric, who is basically a missile when it comes to technology. He just click, click, click, click, click. He just knows it. So I’m looking at him like, I wonder if I could hire him to run this stuff. And apparently he was looking at me for whatever it is I can do and thinking, you know, we should come together and make things happen.

And I thought, yeah, that’d be fun. What are we going to do? So that’s kind of how we got together.

Crew Chief Eric: Go ahead. The funny part of that story is I had. Very nonchalantly mentioned to Don, I said, you know, I looked at Garage Sale’s website to do some research for your show notes and this and that, and I just let it slip.

You know, if you need some help with the website, you know, just give me a buzz. We’ll, we’ll talk about it. A couple of weeks go by, I’m on my way with a fellow instructor to Palmer Motorsports Park. We’re trailering BMW up there to go race and do all this kind of stuff. And Don calls middle of the afternoon.

I’m like, I wonder what he wants. And, you [00:22:00] know, a little bit of pleasantries and he goes, so how serious were you? About, you know, helping with GarageDial. I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, I really need a webmaster. I need, we need to overhaul this thing. And I said, okay. And then well, you know, when I get back in town after the race, we’ll talk and we’ll go from there.

And I put together a prototype for him and I’ll never forget. This is the only time I think Don in his entire life has been completely speechless. And I thought he was super angry. And I showed him what GarageDial looks like today, if you go to GarageDialMagazine. com and he just kept staring at it. And then he says, can you, can you scroll a little bit more?

It’s like, okay, can you, can you show me something else? Yeah. Okay. And then he’s quiet again. And I’m like, and I, and at this point I’m, I’m afraid I’m like, um, I must have really made you mad. And so what do you think? He’s like, I love it now. What do we do?

Mark Greene: Yeah, having no clue. So it’s kind of beauty of the beast.

We’ll call it that way, but not that one of you is beautiful. One of you is beastly or vice versa, but in that case, okay,

Don Weberg: Mark, we all [00:23:00] know I am the gorgeous one. Yes,

Mark Greene: of course we do. But the idea here is one has a skill set here. One has a skill set here and it’s a blending. Of those skill sets. So let’s talk about this a little bit when you blended these things together.

And, and I’ll, I’ll start with you, Eric. What’s the vision here? What’s the company premise.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So initially it was really, let’s, let’s tell the world that garage style is still here. It’s here to stay. It’s completely digital, all the awesome things that it can offer, but on the same token, grand touring had morphed into a digital magazine years prior to.

To GSM. So it was sort of like, let’s borrow some things, you know, borrowed blue and new and all those types of cliches and bring it over to GSM. And then we started to realize that though our worlds are completely disparate, motorsports and collector card, there’s a juxtaposition right when you start collecting.

Old race cars. So we have this overlap. We were running in similar circles We knew similar people and don’s [00:24:00] like hey, do you want this person to come on the show? And i’m like don i’m not going to say no So absolutely So we started even to blur the lines Of the show and some of the other things that we were doing and projects we were working on and things that we were Helping each other out doing and then we started to realize well I know this person and they have a website and I know that person and they have a website and it’s like well Why don’t we?

They’re a source of authority for exotic cars and they’re a source of authority. They have a national database of events that are going on around the country. If we all link up and we do some mind melding and some sharing, we’re running similar platforms and all this kind of stuff. It’s not, it’s all database magic.

So why don’t we? Set up this affiliate network and see how it goes and I’ve always subscribed to the idea as a community builder that rising tides lift all ships So why do I want to compete with my friends if to your point? Mark, they have a skill set that not necessarily can be leveraged but can be shared And so we’ve we put together these what would be seemingly disparate websites [00:25:00] when you go out there I like exotic car and collector car guide net and GSM and GTM and so on but there’s this awesome ecosystem of sharing of information, whether it’s auction data, exotic cars, motorsports news, the brake fix podcast, the GSM articles in the garages and all that kind of stuff.

And so now it’s become almost this like mega magazine, right? And then from there that got the attention of other people that are like, so, so what are you guys doing? What, how exactly does this work? So if, if I advertise with. One of you, I advertise with all of you and I’m like, yeah, that’s kind of how the family works and how we’ve partnered and how things are going.

And so to answer your more direct question, the idea is to put that under one umbrella. So envision some of the other publication houses that are out there that own major properties. Like, you know, they’ve got, you know, 17 magazine on one side in Vogue and they’ve got Hot Rod over there and they’ve got something else in their portfolio.

And so the idea is to do the same. thing, but we only specifically cater to the automotive industry or to the autosphere. So you’re not going to find us working on, you know, the local pet store, [00:26:00] you know, dental office or that kind of thing. Although, you know, those help pay the bills too, but our expertise is in the car world.

When you want to talk about carburetors and fuel injection and wheel sizes and all these kinds of things. You come to us, right? We’re the guys that can do it. And so that’s where we’ve used our skills to then say, we are specialists. We’re subject matter experts in this. Not only can we do publishing, can we do web development?

Can we do social media? Can we do all these other things? Our sweet spot is cars.

Mark Greene: Yeah, that makes sense to me. And Don, have you guys come up with. An entity name as the, I knew, I knew this was going to take us down a bad path here because I have to tell you, listeners, you know, I’ve talked with these guys before a little bit about this, but I had to bring it up.

Do you have an idea? Like, is there going to be like, you know, cars and then. So, so what’s the joke around the office, Don?

Don Weberg: Yeah, well, right now we’re working with something called no name media. Because none of us can really, none of us can really agree on a name. We all pitch out there very, in fact, [00:27:00] Eric even said it, he said, you know, rising tides lift all ships.

And we thought about rising tides media. We thought about that and that’s still a contender. It’s still out there. There’s nothing wrong with it. We thought about autosphere media. We thought about, Oh my God.

Mark Greene: Well, maybe we don’t give away too many, unless you’ve already researched these on blue dot or go daddy.

Don Weberg: But it’s funny though. We keep going back to no name media, which is really, really weird. But, you know, going back to the marketing background and mark, you know, a lot about this too. You want something that’s very memorable, very recallable to people. And, uh, there, there is a power in the way certain words are formed.

And if you look at no name media. My God, it rolls right off the tongue. It’s got a little comedy to it. Uh, so I don’t know, that might be, that might be the way we go for now. We’re just acting as affiliates with each other, which has been working very, very well. But we are taking, you know, step by step by [00:28:00] step, bringing it all together and forming that one company.

I always, you know, it’s funny. Cause as we go through this, there’s a lot of insecurity, I think both on. Uh, especially Eric’s and my end, because we are kind of the spearheads for this whole thing and I keep going back and I, I probably shouldn’t, it might be, you know, making more anxiety than not, but I love Richard Branson and I’ve been listening to a lot of his discussions and interviews and, and even his little motivational things.

One that always keeps me going is the fact that when he was forming, um, God, I think it was a, the record label, he says that he was the one in the room surrounded by a bunch of corporate sharks who knew everything. And he didn’t know what gross profit was versus net profit. And he had to ask because he’s got to know.

So even though it brought funny looks from everybody in the room, he had to know what is this? Well. In a way that’s kind of me and Eric, uh, you [00:29:00] know, going at this, like, well, what is this? Or what is this? Well, we got to figure these things out. So we need to get a room full of smarter guys, you know, who can kind of fill us in with this stuff.

Mark Greene: You know, I’ve got just the group of smarter guys, Cars Y’all listeners. That’s right. There you go. And maybe we have a little fun here, you know, for each of my guests, I have a show notes page and you can go to that page on my website. In this case, the show would be called Don and Eric, and there are a place to put messages down below there.

So I would encourage listeners. Having learned a little bit about what these guys are doing and also put contact information so you can reach out. Maybe we have a little contest going here and people suggest ideas for the umbrella. What do you think? Naming

Crew Chief Eric: and logos are probably one of the hardest things to do.

And obviously we’re getting into a business where we’re going to be doing this for other people. But I find that it’s actually easier to do for other people than do for yourself. Right. It’s kind of like naming your kid and you’re just like, does that, what I want to be a shout out the door when I’m angry, [00:30:00] seriously, you know?

Mark Greene: Yeah. Yeah, no, I understand. Well, I did, you know, for 11 years before I got into the car world and I became a part of Griot’s garage and helped build that brand. I worked in advertising, marketing and advertising, and I designed lots and lots of logos for people came up with names and so forth that we didn’t have that little thing called Google, uh, back then to, uh, or GoDaddy or BlueDot or all these different ways to come up with entities.

I will say that when I was trying to come up with a name for my podcast, trying to find, and this was 10 years ago, a, uh, URL that had cars in it that wasn’t already taken. It was very, very difficult. I probably had a hundred plus names figured out that I liked every time somebody else had it. A few of them didn’t even weren’t doing anything with them and I tried to reach out and they wouldn’t respond.

And one guy wanted to see an amount of money and I’m like, well, I’ve never even done a podcast. I don’t even know if I’m going to make a dime. So I’m not going to pay you, you know, 50, 000 for this name. But I would encourage you guys to look at it this way. I always say when you’re creating something, [00:31:00] come up with your why, W H Y your Simon Sinek.

Why, why you’re doing this? And that’s one of the last questions I’m going to ask you guys today is the why, because I think that’s really important and out of the why could come the name. I don’t know, but I’m going to start with you, Eric. Why?

Crew Chief Eric: Because as a small business owner, and I think Don shares in this sentiment and a lot of other people listen to this probably due to, there is.

A level of freedom and autonomy to doing it yourself. But then at the end of the day, the only person that’s accountable, responsible, and is doing all the work is you yourself. And sometimes you reach a point where the load becomes too much and you see the weakness in others and the strength in others, and if you can recognize that, embrace it and.

And work as a team, then you can achieve all sorts of really awesome things. And I think that’s what’s going on here, especially with these families of sites coming together, Don and [00:32:00] I leading the charge on this is we’ve recognized what we can achieve together instead of what we’re limited in achieving on our own.

And to me, that’s super important is that. All of these things, whether it’s Grand Touring Motorsports, Garage Doll Magazine, Exotic Car Marketplace, et cetera, that they’re not blips on a radar, that they’ve become something bigger in the autosphere and they’ve left a presence and they’ve left a memory behind.

If that’s, you know, let’s say 20 years from now, but they’ve made a positive effect and have, we’ve been an agent of change in the automotive industry because it is changing around us, uh, whether we like it or not. So it’s important that we be part of it as it changes.

Mark Greene: So you inspired me for your first name idea here.

Uh, I’m sure it’s not available, but the word I come up with is tools. I know, but it doesn’t quite work, but it could, but it made you laugh. I knew it would. Good one, Mark. Yeah. You like that? Yeah, that’s a double entendre, I know

Don Weberg: delving into my old psychology training here, Mark, I want you to think more about how you [00:33:00] really think about me and Eric, coming from the name like tools.

I want us to examine that, you know, let’s, let’s go back a little and talk. This

Mark Greene: is a work in progress. So this is the, you know, this is the creative thing. So Don, hey, you tool, Oh no, not me. Go back to Eric. Yeah, go back. Why collaborate with someone else?

Don Weberg: Well, I get, you know, here we go.

Mark Greene: You don’t worry. This is only a, you know, a half hour show, which we’re, we’re at about 35 minutes now.

So

Don Weberg: let me tell you why, um,

Mark Greene: by the way, this is, this is not Scotch. I’m drinking. This is iced tea. Just so you know,

Don Weberg: that’s right. I, I have my, uh, my, you know, Coke, you know, we DeLorean people, we drink Coke. That’s right. You love DeLorean. So the Y that’s right. Okay. So why together everyone achieves more T E a M team.

I would never a sports aficionado. Never. My whole family is very [00:34:00] athletic. They’ve all, I mean, two or three of them were literally being recruited for the Olympics. I mean, these people are something else and you know, I come along and my father’s all proud. Yes. The first male Weber, you know, and. I have no idea what to do with a football, a baseball, a pole vault, none of it.

I have no clue what to do with that stuff, but I can read Shakespeare at seven years old. I mean, figure that out. So my dad didn’t know what to do with me. He, you know, whatever. So. But when I was working at Blockbuster, one of the big shot managers came in and he threw that at me. Together, everyone achieved more.

It just always stuck with me. Garage style speaking selfishly has hit that moment with me where, you know, if you think of yourself as a balloon. If you blow it up anymore, I’m going to pop that said, we’re just maxed out. There’s just nothing else I can do. There’s nothing left. We’ve been through the ups and the downs.

We’ve hit the IRS. We’ve hit the bankruptcy. We’ve hit, you know, everything [00:35:00] and yeah, it had to go digital. And I wasn’t quite sure how to, you know, get the people who were already helping me to. Go that much further with me. I think they were also at that point of the balloon. And then along comes Eric and Eric knows how to do this stuff.

Click, click, click. I mean, without even thinking about it, he’s putting it together and we realize, yeah, like, I mean, we made a joke of it. You know, the brands that we’re talking about here are a lot like the Audi emblem. You know, you have your circle and it overlaps a little bit with that other circle.

But there’s not so much overlap that they’re pure competition. We don’t really compete with one another at all. In fact, if anything, we enhance one another. And I, I think that speaks volumes. And as Eric said, the autosphere is always changing. It is just constantly going through something, going through something, and it’s going a lot faster for some reason.

I don’t know if it’s the dawn of the electric car or, uh, you know, new collectors who are following, you know, arguably in Jay [00:36:00] Leno’s footsteps, who, you know, he was really one of the first ones to step up and say, just drive it. You know, who cares what it works, just get out there and drive it and enjoy it.

Cause. You know, when you’re, when you’re in the box in the ground, what kind of story do you have to tell? Oh, do you know how many times I polished that fender? Nobody cares how many times you polished it. They care about when you drove it down highway one, or you drove it through that sandstorm on the way to the show in Phoenix.

And you were all nervous because you went through the sandstorm. And I think a lot of people, especially younger people. Yeah, that’s how they feel. They get a car, they want to enjoy it. They don’t want to just sit there and look at it. So as such, we need to be a media company. That’s going to be able to move with that.

That’s going to be able to morph with that. And yeah, you know what Eric on his own, he’s doing fine. Me on my own, I’m doing okay. All the other guys that we’re teaming up with, they’re doing okay too, but we all realize. Together, everyone is going to achieve more. Well, what is more, you know, what’s the ultimate end game?

I think is really what I get into. And is it one of those things where we build up a [00:37:00] nice solid media brand? You know, Eric’s daughters want to come in and work with us. My daughter wants to come in and work with us. Who knows where it’s going to go? You know, I, I think why. There are so many ways you can answer that question.

And I know I’m sure Mark, I’m frustrating the hell out of you because where you’re a Porsche 911, I’m very much more an Alfa Romeo. So it’s, you know, it’s, you’re going to have a very different philosophy of looking at things here. So I don’t know. Does that kind of answer your question? Eric was a lot more eloquent about it than I was.

Well, you

Mark Greene: inspired me again with the visual, cause I’m a visual guy, the Audi emblem with the overlapping circles. So. Since you are Eric and you are Don, ED, your company could be called ED because, you know, we all, Oh, wait a minute. What is it with this guy? Wait a minute. Why don’t we just call it blue pill and get it over with.

Tools and ED. Okay. Bad. Okay. Maybe you need to hire someone else to help you with the name. And that’s why.

Crew Chief Eric: You did stumble upon a code term we had internally originally when we, we called it four rings for that very analogy [00:38:00] for that very. Symbolism. Yeah, but we’re like, eh, that’s a little too cliche It needs you know needs to don kept saying needs to come off the tongue better.

It needs to sound better

Don Weberg: Well, now wait a minute, you know if you take if you take both of mark’s seemingly weird ideas And you put them together you have tooled Which is not? Too bad. I mean, it’s tooled up, tooled up media.

Mark Greene: Well, see, this is how the creative process works. Eric’s just covering his face. So again, you Cars Now listeners out there, you’re all very smart.

You’re all dialed in to the car world. So we’d love to have you, uh, go to the website, type in some ideas for these guys or reach out to them because I think collaboratively. We’ll come up with something here for you guys. So, uh, we’ll just kind of leave it at that before I let you guys go today. Is there anything else that you would like to share with the listeners about what we could see as the first collaborations, or you want to leave that for when the name is created, the website and all of that?

Crew Chief Eric: [00:39:00] Well, I’ll take a minute to promote one of our newest clients. Uh, if anybody’s interested in checking out probably one of the most interesting Startups that, uh, is U. S. based out of Georgia. It’s ESE Carbon Wheels. They’re at www. esecarbon. com. And so Don and I are working with them every day to really get the message out there.

These are one piece carbon wheels made in the USA. It’s a key differentiator from a lot of other companies that are out there. They’re designed for a lot of German cars, a lot of in their upcoming Italian cars. But originally they were designed to reduce rotating mass. Save weight, improve efficiency and braking and performance, things like that.

For of all vehicles, the Teslas, the Model S’s and the Model 3’s. And so they’ve been involved with Electrify Expo and a lot of other organizations. And so we’ve been working with them to help them out, get their name out there, and so people can learn more about them at ESECarbon. com.

Mark Greene: Will they be at SEMA?

Crew Chief Eric: I believe so, yes.

Mark Greene: You know, I just had RJ [00:40:00] DeVera, who’s the vice president of marketing for SEMA on the Cars You Have podcast yesterday. So you can listen and learn a lot more about that magnificent show that’s coming up. So Don, based on what Eric said about collaborating and working and supporting clients, how else are you?

Dovetailing those folks into all the different things that you guys are doing.

Don Weberg: Well, one way we’re doing it, Mark is, uh, and Eric touched on this, but, uh, the advertising approach, the promotional approach that we can offer with all of our different affiliate brands, you know, instead of just going to garage style or grand touring, you have a multitude of them with the exotic car, the collector car, et cetera.

So we can really bring. Client a lot of value there. So when you come to us and you say we want you to do our website, we want you to do our advertising. We want you to do our promotional printed material, etc. We can also set you up with a promotional package on the other side. Of the house with the magazines or rather the websites that we [00:41:00] can put you out there with the social media.

So you’re getting a lot more than just okay. Here’s your website. Now. Now we’re going to take your website and we’re going to get it out there in a multitude of different ways. Now we’re going to take all your social media and because we’re already. So heavily versed with the social media because Google is already so familiar with all of our brand.

We have good numbers. Your numbers are going to be good too. They’re just going to kite right off of ours, which is terrific. So I think we bring that to clients a lot. So we are definitely looking for. Clients who need help getting some marketing done.

Mark Greene: Yeah, I love it I think it’s a great idea

Crew Chief Eric: and not only that one of the things we’ve also introduced and leveraged is our discord in the ability to bring our clients into that And hear from people on the street directly because discord is more of that conversational style than a facebook or social media post where you just throw it out there and somebody gives you a heart or a thumbs up Or and you have no reaction this way You throw something out there and people say, well, I like that.

I want to learn more. Maybe I don’t like that. And if they [00:42:00] don’t like it. Then you can get that immediate feedback. You can have that direct message with a potential client or with an existing customer or whatever So we’re still building community and we’re doing that through our discord and that’s available through both our websites It actually goes to the same place and then we also bring in Information from all of these different parts of the autosphere that we’re tied into so now you’ve got this direct line right to the vein of information to Fellow petrol heads that want to absorb it.

They want to be engaged with it. So that’s been an interesting spin on, you know, engaging the base as, as well as the clients themselves.

Mark Greene: Brian, I love it. I think it’s great. You know, back to the tools name. I got another idea for you. T W O L Z, cause the word tool is taking probably, okay, I’ll stop, nevermind.

How can people reach out to each of you guys individually?

Crew Chief Eric: Sure. Well, for me personally, you can go to [00:43:00] gtmotorsports. org. That’s G as in grand, T as in touring, motorsports with an S dot org. Obviously you can follow us on break fix podcast. You can search that pretty much. Everywhere, good podcasts are found and even rubbish ones too, by searching for break fix grand touring or vehicle enthusiasts.

That’s the quickest way to find it. And then we have other subsequent properties and publications that go along with that, but everything stems off the GT motor starts. org website. And then on social media, it’s at grand Tory motor sports everywhere to include threads now. So we’re, we’re everywhere you want us to be.

Mark Greene: That’s pretty cool. And can, how can we find Don tucked away there in Texas?

Don Weberg: I think it’s best to just call Eric and tell him you want to talk to me, that’s best,

Mark Greene: you know.

Don Weberg: He’ll

Mark Greene: get the message over. I see, see this, already the delegation, he’s already made you his secretary, his assistant, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I’ll follow that up by saying it’s pretty easy to remember too, because it’s garagetilemagazine.

com and on social it’s at garagetilemagazine. And Don frequently co [00:44:00] hosts on BreakFix, so he brings in folks from all over the collector car side of the world to the show and we collaborate on some Other really interesting topics lately. He’s also a guest panelist on our what should I buy series and a lot of other things and be on The lookout for our upcoming holiday shopping guide, which is a collaborative Project between garage tile and grand touring because we both independently put out our recommended wish lists for our loved ones To buy for us every year.

So we’re doing that together and lots of other fun things, you know, between our websites and social media and whatnot, but again, it doesn’t matter which one you go to, you’ll find either of us and you’ll also find our partners, exotic car marketplace and collector card guide done that.

Mark Greene: Oh, absolutely. And again, all your listeners know you can come to the car show website, find all my guests, including these two characters, these two tools.

I still think tools has not, we got some going here. I think we can, you know, maybe it’s T O O L Z tools.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a ratchet and spanner. [00:45:00]

Mark Greene: Well, I think we had click. Yeah. Well, again, listeners, we need your help. So, uh, yeah, cause maybe my, uh, marketing days are behind me when it comes to great ideas, I don’t know you guys, this has been really fun to catch up with you and I wish you both the best of luck.

The best wishes. I have no doubt this is going to be a success because when you bring two smart brains together, you create one giant brain. So there’s another name, the giant brain. And we’ll just keep it going. The giant brain. The giant brain. I can see the graphic now. You guys are wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for coming back on the show and spending some time with me today.

Always fun, as you can tell, to catch up with Eric and Don. You guys, until next time we talk, I’ll see you too. Down the road.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, mark.

Mark Greene: Thanks, mark. Awesome guys. I think we had some fun. Today’s vehicles are essentially computers on wheels, and it takes more than a wrench in oil to keep ’em humming.

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