Brian Scotto: Media's Struggles; Algorithms; RWB Drama; Farming; Crazy Audi Parties

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Brian Scotto: Media's Struggles; Algorithms; RWB Drama; Farming; Crazy Audi Parties"

Release Date: November 19, 2024
Podcast: The Smoking Tire
Hosts: Matt Farah & Zack Klapman
Guest: Brian Scotto

---

1. Introduction to Brian Scotto and His Media Journey

In this episode of The Smoking Tire, hosts Matt Farah and Zack Klapman welcome Brian Scotto, the creative force behind Hoonigan and a seasoned media professional. Brian delves into his extensive background in the magazine industry, contrasting the American and British models. He highlights the reliance on newsstand sales in the UK versus the U.S.'s heavy dependence on advertising revenue.

Brian Scotto [27:00]: "To be able to get out there [in the UK], they were still seeing a larger percentage on sort of the newsstand than the advertiser side."

2. The Impact of Algorithms on Content Creation

Brian passionately discusses the current landscape of content creation, emphasizing how algorithms have shifted power away from creators to platform controllers. He reflects on the early days of Hoonigan, likening their content strategy to pioneering a new media frontier. However, as algorithms began to favor viral, clickbait content over quality storytelling, Brian observed a decline in genuine audience engagement.

Brian Scotto [32:43]: "You're now building algorithmic content. So you're now like clickbaiting, like you're worrying more about your thumbnails and your actual content."

He further explains how this algorithm-driven approach prioritizes negativity and sensationalism, aligning with human psychological biases but ultimately degrading content quality.

Brian Scotto [33:05]: "It really just justifies the type of content that people don't want people to make. And... it also means that makes you mad shit that, like, causes drama or whatever."

3. RWB Drama: Controversies within the Community

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the RWB (Rauh-Welt Begriff) community and recent controversies. Brian recounts a viral incident involving Nakai gluing a tow hook onto a car, which sparked widespread debate and backlash. He defends the artistic freedom and craftsmanship of RWB, contrasting it with more rigid automotive standards.

Brian Scotto [68:57]: "But it's okay, cuz, like, parking's all right, magazine's good and whatever. And so it's all just like, you know, one or more will collapse under their own weight or the algorithm or whatever. And, and then there will be other things to do."

Brian criticizes the superficial hater culture that often misunderstands the profound artistry behind RWB's modifications, advocating for a deeper appreciation of their craftsmanship.

4. Navigating Personal and Professional Challenges

Brian opens up about his departure from Hoonigan following the tragic death of Ken Block. He shares introspective insights into his struggles with ADHD and the pressures of managing a large media company. This period of personal turmoil led him to seek therapy and reevaluate his career path, ultimately transitioning into the world of animation and further content creation.

Brian Scotto [86:24]: "I think, you know, and at that point, Hoonigan was already a little too. A lot. Right. There was a lot of Hoonigan. There was a lot to a little of Hoonigan."

He emphasizes the importance of focusing on a dedicated audience through platforms like Patreon, where deeper connections with core fans can sustain creative endeavors beyond the fickle nature of algorithm-driven platforms.

Brian Scotto [87:37]: "But build a business off of those people."

5. Farming and Personal Life Insights

Interwoven with professional discussions, Brian shares anecdotes about his personal life, including his experiences on his farm and interactions with his young son. These stories humanize him, providing listeners with a glimpse into the balance between his high-octane media career and grounded personal pursuits.

Brian Scotto [56:29]: "He's really more into trucks. I mean, he's. If he's real close to tall socks."

6. Crazy Audi Parties and Networking Events

The episode also touches on the vibrant automotive community through tales of extravagant Audi parties and high-profile networking events. Brian reminisces about exclusive gatherings, road closures orchestrated for filming, and the camaraderie among automotive enthusiasts.

Brian Scotto [167:50]: "We locked down almost a section of the 110 freeway, and it was one of the most iconic moments for rally racing."

These stories highlight the lengths to which automotive media personalities go to create engaging content and build community bonds, showcasing the blend of creativity and logistical prowess required.

7. Reflections on Content Creation and Audience Engagement

Towards the end of the episode, Brian and the hosts reflect on the evolving nature of content creation. They discuss the saturation of the media market, the challenges of sustaining a creative career, and the shift from broad to niche audiences. Brian advocates for personalized content strategies that prioritize meaningful interactions over sheer view counts, stressing the importance of authenticity in building a loyal fanbase.

Brian Scotto [121:37]: "Think about what that does to the content world. Right. So now there's a certain type of content that does well. Right. And like we saw this, like you get something where like if you blow your engine up or your car catches fire, that episode's gonna do better."

Conclusion: Navigating the Future of Automotive Media

In wrapping up, Brian Scotto shares his vision for the future, including launching new podcasts and documentary projects that align more closely with his personal passions and the desires of a dedicated audience. He underscores the necessity of adaptability and the courage to pivot creatively in an ever-changing media landscape.

Brian Scotto [133:24]: "But I think it's a broken model to me because."

The episode concludes with an optimistic outlook, emphasizing the resilience of authentic content creators in overcoming systemic challenges posed by algorithm-driven platforms.

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Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [00:00]: "Free content is failing because the audience is no longer in control."

• Brian Scotto [32:43]: "You're now building algorithmic content. So you're now like clickbaiting, like you're worrying more about your thumbnails and your actual content."

• Brian Scotto [87:37]: "But build a business off of those people."

• Brian Scotto [133:24]: "But I think it's a broken model to me because."

This episode offers a comprehensive look into the complexities of modern media creation, the pitfalls of algorithm dependence, and the enduring spirit of automotive enthusiasts striving to retain authenticity in their craft.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

But so what did you mean by that? Free content is failing because the audience is no longer in control. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. This episode is brought to you by off the Record. Man, do we love off the Record. And boy, do I have a news story for you. I got a friend down in Texas, got himself a new car, and on the way home, boy, did he have a little bit of a problem. Folks had a biggin. He called me, I set him up with off the Record, and boy, was he excited when he texted me back this morning, just this morning. And he goes, I cannot believe it. I got pulled over doing a number that was. Whoa, it was a big one. And off the Record got it dismissed. Fully dismissed, not even just reduced. Off the Record is the best. They are a service that connects you with a qualified attorney in the jurisdiction where you got that moving violation. Could be a big one, could be a small one. Doesn't matter. Don't plead guilty. Get off the record. Go to offtherecord.com TSA or use code TSTPOD on the off the Record app. Again, go to offtherecord.com TST or download that off the Record app for iOS and Android and use code TSTPOD that will get you 10% off any legal services booked through off the Record. I've used them a whole bunch in my career. I tell my friends, I tell my family, I tell you people. And when you use them and come through for you, you guys tell me back. It helps me do these promos. So I like it both ways. So offtherecord.com TST or code TSTpod on that off the Record app. Have it in your pocket, ready to go. If you get pulled over, you're using them confidently and you're not pleading guilty. All right, on this episode of the podcast, by popular request, Hoonigan, creative director, former. Anyway, and all around genius, Brian Scotto is in studio. He's got new podcasts he's talking about. He's got new videos he's talking about. He was, of course, one of the founders of Hoonigan, and so he has lots of stories. We're talking about Volkswagen, we're talking about Audis, we're talking about RWB controversy. And this one is the longest podcast we have ever done, beating the Johnny Lieberman record from just a little bit ago. So let's get straight into it without further ado. Brian Scotto is on the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go.

[Brian Scotto]

It's like, you know, you gotta Prepare. It's like boxers not having sex before a fight. You gotta just like me and him can't even talk right. Like a month leading up, especially if.

[Zach Klapman]

You want to go four hours or whatever.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, it must like. Do you see Lieberman more often? Is he like in your group of people?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I see him around.

[Brian Scotto]

So is it hard to do a podcast with him because you already talk about a lot all the time, or.

[Matt Farah]

Is there enough that's a person where there's always. Same with me. There's always something going on that can drive conversation. And he does like, you know, study stuff. He's not always. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but he does, he does research things a lot. Talk to like engineers and things like that.

[Brian Scotto]

Before you hit the button. Do we want to open packages now?

[Matt Farah]

The button has been.

[Brian Scotto]

The button's been pushed.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, we just started rolling, but you can open the package.

[Matt Farah]

The fucking snacks. I mean, are we really in for some kind of a marathon? Because you have four Red Bulls in front of you. These are the craft services. This is the devil.

[Brian Scotto]

It's the king. It's the king.

[Matt Farah]

Peanut butter pretzel filled nuggets are the fucking devil. I swear.

[Brian Scotto]

I prefer them in the plastic case because then when you're done, you can put nuts and bolts in them. I like 90 of those in my garage. But this is. This is king.

[Matt Farah]

I'll tell you what, you know, I've gained and if I. If I did. A chart of gain and loss.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Weight over my life.

[Brian Scotto]

You look good right now. So you've lost. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

You know what it is? It's the vest. Turns out.

[Brian Scotto]

Is that what it is? You're a vest guy.

[Matt Farah]

Turns out it hides the good part.

[Brian Scotto]

Hides me in the best parts and.

[Matt Farah]

Accentuates the good part. But of all the weight I've probably gained and lost. £250 over the course of my life. Up and down.

[Brian Scotto]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Right. Probably a third of it is from that. It's from fucking craft service. Peanut butter pretzel nuggets. Them shits are the devil.

[Brian Scotto]

They're so simple. I just introduced my son to him the other day and he breaks the pretzel off and just eats the peanut butter inside. And I'm like, you're missing the point.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, you just get peanut butter.

[Brian Scotto]

He's like, I just want the sweet part. He's not into the savory part. He just wants the sweet, you know?

[Matt Farah]

You know, if he had a TikTok account, people would be like, cobby would.

[Zach Klapman]

Be like, what does he love Easter? Because you can get the eggs. Just open it and there's candy inside. It seems like he likes the extraction creme egg.

[Matt Farah]

Does he just like scoop it out with a spoon?

[Brian Scotto]

Well, we don't give him much candy. So when he gets it, it's like full. Just like full. Addicts.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

He's just. It's just uncontrollable.

[Matt Farah]

Be careful.

[Brian Scotto]

He'll take like a bag of candy and run into another room and lock the door. And we have to loc. I had to like sit there and like pick to the door to get in.

[Matt Farah]

Ridiculous.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Be careful with that strategy because I had. I ended up. My mom didn't really keep anything bad for you in the house. And I was allowed to have desserts once in a while.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

But then a neighbor moved next to me and he went. He was in my school, in my class, and we became friends.

[Brian Scotto]

And his house, he had the double stuffs. He had everything.

[Matt Farah]

You name it, they had us. They were the first house that I'd ever seen ever to have like a beverage truck drop off. They had a weekly delivery, Snapples, Arizona's everything. And then like it was like on the route that they did a convenience store. Wow. Like the same truck that would go to the deli by our high school.

[Brian Scotto]

Would bring my childhood friend. He was one of four. Right. So it was four brothers. Yeah. And at a certain point they just started shopping for everything at like the beer distributor. You know, this is like pre costume.

[Matt Farah]

Before Bez.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, like before salmon, all that. And it was like he would go to the beer distributor and they would just come home with like racks of like off brand soda, you know, crush them as a kid.

[Matt Farah]

Oh my God. The weird soda brand.

[Brian Scotto]

What was the brand? What was the brand in New York that was like. It was like Whitestone or like white. Something was a soda brand.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I don't know.

[Brian Scotto]

And they had like black cherry. They had like all the stuff.

[Matt Farah]

Dr. Brown's is the legendary one. Dr. Brown is like, if you have old Jewish relatives, they will crush Dr. Brown.

[Brian Scotto]

That's like. I think that's. That's a. That's a step above.

[Matt Farah]

It's more mainstream.

[Brian Scotto]

This came like in a can. It was like white rose or white. I forget. Something like that.

[Zach Klapman]

Not New York seltzer, right?

[Brian Scotto]

No, no. New York Celtics. Fancy stuff. This was like they sold in wall bounds, right? Like if you were wall bounds, this was the type of the rat soda that you would get. White rock. White rock. I think It's White Rock, so maybe something like that.

[Matt Farah]

I must. I'm from.

[Brian Scotto]

You lived on the Richie Rich. You lived north of the boroughs. White Rock.

[Matt Farah]

White Rocks, I think. But when I went to college, I mean, you want to talk about fucking generic brand beer, I go deep.

[Brian Scotto]

Where'd you go?

[Matt Farah]

I went to Penn, but I was in a fraternity, so we go with the Dakota Dakota and Dakota Light. The Beast. You have the Beast.

[Brian Scotto]

The Beast is a classic beast.

[Matt Farah]

You have Natty Schlitz.

[Brian Scotto]

You have.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, all of them. Dakota was by far the cheapest beer I've ever bought, ever. A 30 rack was $4.

[Brian Scotto]

What was the one that was just called 30?

[Matt Farah]

This was in 2002. But nevertheless, it was a 30 rack of Bud Light was probably, you know.

[Zach Klapman]

28 tealight was like, 33 cents a beer.

[Matt Farah]

This was like a quarter of the price of Bud Light.

[Zach Klapman]

That's. That's unsafe.

[Matt Farah]

It was crazy.

[Brian Scotto]

The. What was. There was one beer at that point that was just called, like, something Ice. It wasn't even, like, a brand name.

[Matt Farah]

It was just like, Natty Ice.

[Brian Scotto]

It was Natty Ice, of course, but this was just like, beer Ice. Like, they weren't even trying. Like. Yeah, there was no. There was no logo design. They were just, like. They just printed it. It was like Times New Roman. Beer Ice. You're like, okay, I'll drink that.

[Matt Farah]

I do like an ice. Oh, you. I just looked up at the screen. Now I remember the logos.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. You know, the White Rock Ginger Ale was a good time.

[Matt Farah]

The White Rock ginger ale was good. And the tonic water was all right, too. That was back before we had fancy tonic water. James May just sent. Do you like gin? You know, do you drink gin?

[Brian Scotto]

Are you sober now? Yeah, but, I mean, I never was a gin guy to begin with.

[Matt Farah]

James May sent us the biggest goddamn case of gin. So if you'd like to take a bottle home.

[Brian Scotto]

How. How was he, by the way, exactly.

[Matt Farah]

The James May you want in your fucking studio?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Yeah. Did not disappoint, I bet.

[Matt Farah]

100%.

[Brian Scotto]

Great. I got to work with him on set for Top Gear.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, really?

[Brian Scotto]

And he was like, my favorite. What were you doing? We did with. With Ken. They wanted him to roll a Reliant Robin. Oh, yeah, Robin. Reliant Robin. Yeah. The three wheel thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And we went out there and it was kind of a crazy day because, like, you know, for me, those guys were like. They were, like, meeting my idols. I mean, so much of what they did inspired 0 to 60 and then later inspired what we did with Hoonigan and getting to, like, hang out with them, but they were, like, just being, like, normal people, but also still being them.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, like, well, they're themselves on camera.

[Brian Scotto]

Same people, 100%, which you don't get often, you know, like, they were those people, but getting to kind of spend that time. But then I spent, like, three hours sitting in a transit van with the Stig and.

[Matt Farah]

With Ben.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, with Ben. And he had his helmet on the whole time. And, you know, at the time, like, at the time, the Stig was still. You know, this is like 2000. Maybe like 12 or something. Like, the. The confidentiality of the Stig still pretty big.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So, like, he's talking to me, but he's got the helmet and the visor down the whole time, and we're just sitting, sitting, like, in a Transit van together, just chatting about life. And then, you know, it's like, oh, weird vibe. And it was, like, really weird because he never was like, hi, I'm. I'm bang.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm talking to superheroes.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Yeah. It was like, basically, like, just sitting there having lunch with Superman. And I'm sitting there, like, chatting him up, and we're talking, you know, and then at the end of the night, I get an email from him, and it's from Ben Collins. And it just says, nice meeting, and it just says, nice meeting you today. And it was like, finding out that, like, Santa Claus didn't exist. Like, I almost wanted, like, I love. I love that he stayed in character.

[Matt Farah]

He didn't even have, like, a stig@top gear.com email address, like, only to break.

[Brian Scotto]

It at the end of the day.

[Zach Klapman]

That's so funny.

[Brian Scotto]

You did it all day long. Like, we were in. We were cosplaying the whole day together, buddy. And then, like, you called the safety word. There was no reason to.

[Matt Farah]

You had. He went visor down all day just.

[Brian Scotto]

To ruin it with an email at.

[Matt Farah]

The end of the day, fucking write you from I am the Stig at Gmail.

[Zach Klapman]

How did he not create the Stig at Gmail?

[Brian Scotto]

It was like [e-mail] it was like, the most British email ever.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Did we talk about it last time you were here? We. I've had this conversation with somebody about celebs, celebrities that have easily guessable email.

[Brian Scotto]

Addresses, or, like, your net worth is $100 million. Please get rid of your AOL.com email. Right. Like, Brad [e-mail] is not acceptable.

[Matt Farah]

That's how you determine, like, when someone got really rich.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Because if you earned 100 million in 98, the world's coming to me.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, exactly. And someone else deals with like, you actually only get like four emails a day because no one else is allowed direct contact with you.

[Matt Farah]

I told you what my dad did for a very long time.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

My dad would have his assistant print out all of his emails and divide them into three piles. Today, this week. And like, eventually.

[Brian Scotto]

That's amazing.

[Matt Farah]

And he would hand write responses and give them back to her. And she would then type them and.

[Zach Klapman]

Say, does he have really good handwriting?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it's pretty good.

[Matt Farah]

It's not like that. Like, Carl, we know Constitution, but Yeah, you could read his writing. Yeah, yeah, but it's a. It's a boss move. He also used to turn off his cell phone when he wasn't actively making a call. This was like in the night, late night, early startac. He'd make a call and then turn the phone off and put it away.

[Brian Scotto]

My phone number is the same phone number I had from my first digital StarTac. I remember, like, it was probably because as a kid, I didn't grow up with a ton of money or anything. So for me, having a digital StarTAC in 1998 was like the first baller thing I ever had. Like, I remember you'd pop it and people look and be like, oh, you'd.

[Matt Farah]

Snap it like extra tight when you'd close it.

[Brian Scotto]

And it was the black one because the gray one was the old analog StarTac. You know, you don't want to be on that poor man train. The digital StarTAC was important. But by the way, don't call me until after 9.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I'm. I'm a little younger than you. So my first phone was the Nokia.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. I mean, that's the classic.

[Matt Farah]

Which is the classic indestructible. But I did have the skytel before that.

[Brian Scotto]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Did you ever have pager?

[Brian Scotto]

No. I had a pager, but I didn't have the service. I just had a fashion age where you could spell asshole upside down. But I didn't have the one where you could actually send messages. But my uncle did.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Which was the coolest thing ever was like, to send someone a message.

[Matt Farah]

You'd have to call the receptionist and tell them your message.

[Brian Scotto]

Which was always fun to, like, say. To call them to say something inappropriate.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. When you're in high school, that's like all you do.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Because there's just some nice lady on the other side and she's like, thanks, for calling skypager. Like, what is your message? And you're like, suck my nuts from the back.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, my God, I never did that.

[Brian Scotto]

And she's like, is that N u T? Yes.

[Zach Klapman]

Those people must have the best stories. That's incredible.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, The Sky Tell receptionists, they were all right, and then everyone got the next tell.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Did you have the next tell?

[Brian Scotto]

Of course. I had the Nextel BlackBerry.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So it was like business with a side of hood.

[Matt Farah]

That's the mullet.

[Brian Scotto]

Yes. Because, like, I would be in. I'd be in meetings. This is like, early rides. Zero to 60 days. I'd be like, in real serious meetings, and my, like, shithead friends would chirp me the most inappropriate shit.

[Matt Farah]

Pass that blunt.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Yeah. I wish it was that good. Usually something.

[Matt Farah]

Nextel BlackBerry.

[Brian Scotto]

That's the one. The one right there that says in stock on eBay. Second over from the top.

[Matt Farah]

That's one of them today.

[Brian Scotto]

And what would you do with it?

[Matt Farah]

The fuck would you do? I mean, 39 bucks. Would you. Melting it down and getting the copper out of.

[Brian Scotto]

I missed the chirp, though.

[Matt Farah]

Like, I did. Look, it was a.

[Brian Scotto]

It was a good feature. Like, you don't have time to call someone, especially for driving. Like, if you're all rolling together as a crew, it's like a walk in your pocket, which is kind of nice.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

I just did this road and track event. We do the guided tours.

[Brian Scotto]

And how was that?

[Matt Farah]

It was really fun. Everyone had a great time, and it was beautiful weather. And, man, did I hammer the shit out of the Bentley gt. Speed on the track. That car slides so good. It was great. Great time.

[Zach Klapman]

Amazing.

[Matt Farah]

But we use radios, and it's a game changer when it comes to driving groups.

[Brian Scotto]

It's the motorcycle.

[Matt Farah]

People all know this, of course.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. No, it's the best. It, like, changes everything. And then you always forget to bring them with you.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Because I'd always be, like, going somewhere and. Or I'd be the guy who brings them. Like, with, like, my group, like, Vinnie and Ron or whatever, we'd be going somewhere, and I'm, like, handing out the walkies, and they're like, okay, dad.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And then, sure enough, like, they don't turn them on. Everyone misses the exit. I'm like, could you have the walkie on? We could have just done this.

[Zach Klapman]

We always did tons of chatter on the road trips. Like, it was almost like, so much that eventually you just turn it off for, like, half an hour to kind of get a break.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, man. When we Would, you know, they road and track. I lead the big group when we're driving it and I make the route and so I'm mostly doing directions and like there's a mattress in the road, like, move right. Stuff like that. But our old editor, Mike guy, did you know Mike?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah. So he just live off the block for me.

[Matt Farah]

He's great. And he used to be Hunter Thompson's assistant and he's got like stories coming out of his ass, you know. But he would get on the radio and tell these like winding ass stories. Like he's doing a podcast. And I'm trying to be all like, turn right in a mile. And you can't like. I can't like boot him off the radio morally and technically I cannot. But I'm trying to be like, yo, there's like a spike strip in the road. And he's just like not getting off the radio, so.

[Brian Scotto]

Amazing. Yeah, the walkies are the best for that type of stuff. But yeah. Anyway, I miss, you know, what I saw the other day speaking of old technology. And I saw this and I think that's like, I'm starting to realize I'm getting old because, like, I have like a nostalgia for a particular era of tech. Like, I'm not anti tech, but like, it's like tech's gone too far.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

I saw like second or third gen iPod that had been converted for Bluetooth.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Brian Scotto]

I was like, I kind of like that, like to go to the gym or to go for a walk and not bring my. But still be able to use my AirPods, which like, I live with you.

[Matt Farah]

Do you use do not Disturb on your phone?

[Brian Scotto]

I do, but imperfect. I don't. It's not that I'm worried about people disturbing me. It's that I have zero self control where it's like, I look at my phone, I'm like, I wonder if anyone texted me 100%. There's, you know this on Instagram.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Like an actual. Just a regular ass ipod might be a good thing to have.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

I was just. It was 300 bucks. I was like, wow.

[Matt Farah]

The. Speaking of like old technology, I was just at. John Ward from Icon did his Icons of Design thing this past weekend, which is basically it's this charity event that also celebrates things that are made in Los Angeles. It's about. It's all about handmade things in la. So everything was beautiful because of course, it's John Ward. It was. Everything was insanely expensive. I almost bought like a pocket knife. There was a pocket Knife company there. I picked it up and it was $1,400. I was like, why not?

[Brian Scotto]

Everything is artisanal.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, mad artisanal. So I made a donation to the charity, but there was a guy there selling, like vintage, you know, just a bunch of, you know, stuff. And he had set up almost like an apartment, you know, there was a couple of couches and a coffee table and like a motorcycle and like a, you know, whatever, it's all for sale. And he goes, I got something to show you, and takes me to the back of his car and he opens it up and he goes, I went to the Clint Eastwood estate sale. And I'm like. And I'd actually read about this. There was a Clint Eastwood. He's not dead.

[Brian Scotto]

Which is. I was about to say, I was like, did I miss this?

[Matt Farah]

No, no. So it's not. He didn't die. He sold his first house in la.

[Brian Scotto]

Can I just stop this for a second? If you're not dead, you're just having a garage sale, right? You just went to the Clint Eastwood garage. But the state sounds nice.

[Matt Farah]

No, but here's what happened. He sold his first house in LA to his friend. His friend, who was like, possibly mildly obsessed with him. Kept the house exactly the same.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, weird.

[Matt Farah]

Didn't take the art off the walls, didn't take shit out of the closets. He was like, here's the keys. Fucking see ya. And so this guy died. And so it's basically like, it is an estate sale, not for Clint Eastwood, but it's all Clint Eastwood. It's his stock from like the 80s. So. So what I was talking about is this guy fucking goes to his truck and he goes, look, it's Clint Eastwood's cable box. He's got it.

[Brian Scotto]

It's not like the gun from Dirty Harry. It's like, look, it's his to come receiver.

[Matt Farah]

Like, here's his like TV remote from like 1984.

[Zach Klapman]

I would tell him to prove it. I'm like, prove it. Well, Eastwood toiletry kit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And then he had like some. A bunch of VHS's other shit.

[Brian Scotto]

It's amazing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's wild. But he had that, he had that, that TV remote that was on the long wire and it almost looked like a keyboard. Remember that? Early 80s? Yeah, that was old school. Anyway, here we go.

[Brian Scotto]

Jonathan's great, by the way. The thing I always loved about him was in like early sort of Hoonigan content days, like, he was really keen on doing stuff with us and I. He's so the Polar opposite of our, you know, what our design aesthetic was and what our style was. But he just.

[Matt Farah]

He's the anti dirtbag.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, but he loved it. Like, he loved us. He loved all of that. And it was like he was. And our audience loved him too, which was really interesting because we brought him on. I'm like, man, is anyone really going to care about this? Whatever. Like, you know, and people did. Like, people just, like, there's something about him.

[Matt Farah]

He's a very good storyteller.

[Brian Scotto]

He's a good storyteller. And I think that you enjoy people who care that much about anything. Yeah, right. Like, if someone came in here and told you the history of pretzel nuggets. Right. But they fucking care, you'd be like, man, I didn't realize that there's different ratios of peanut butter. And that makes sense why the Costco ones don't taste as good.

[Matt Farah]

I have listened to deep, deep podcasts on incredibly minor details of life and history.

[Brian Scotto]

That's my favorite thing is, like, the weird, weird deep dive that people will do. And you're like, oh, yeah, this rabbit hole is. I don't know why you would do it, but whatever, I'm here for it. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Did you guys have him on for build biology or something like that?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, we had him on for build bio. I forget with which vehicle. Maybe it was one of the. One of the Broncos or one of the icon trucks he did early on. I forget what it was.

[Zach Klapman]

You guys showcased so many cars that were incredibly unique. Incredibly. Like, not ornate, but, like, complicated at times. But I think it showed, like, hey, one person, like that crazy Firebird super wide fender cage thing, like, this person cared this much about this vehicle and took it further than anybody. And I think John obviously does that. He just does it over and over again with the Broncos.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And, like, the whole concept of that show was like, you know, the first show we do daily transmission. Like, the best way to explain it is just. It was like Jay Leno's garage for shitheads. It was like, bring your car on instead of showing me how the steam engine works, like crashing into a fence. And that worked really well for us. But then we started to realize that some of these cars that were coming on were so good that they needed a better story, and they didn't just need to be burnouts. And we were also losing people who didn't want to come on, because in the early days of the show, someone come on, they do a little burnout. I remember you wouldn't do a burnout Right. I think. Or did you?

[Matt Farah]

No, no, I did a burnout. What would I not do?

[Brian Scotto]

There was something, whatever it was, but.

[Matt Farah]

There was something someone asked me to do and I was like, absolutely.

[Brian Scotto]

But in the early days, it acceptable to just come on and do a 15 second smoke the tires. Everyone cheers by episode 300.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I did that.

[Brian Scotto]

Our level of kink was so high that it was involving toilet stuff. Like it was really next level and like it wasn't gonna just be normal. And it got to the point where people who were building these really, really cool cars didn't want to come on the show. So we started that show to kind of talk to that audience and it was one of the most interesting things like that I look at now and I geek out on this. Is that that show early on our audience hated because they're like, where are the burnouts? Like the vocal audience. But if you go back and look, that show has way more views than the other show. Well, yeah, because it had like a longer. Yeah, like a longer.

[Matt Farah]

The subscribers and whatever. And I wouldn't, wouldn't be surprised if that show shows up in people's like.

[Brian Scotto]

Algorithms still to this day because it's still just like cool car build, easy, very like formulaic to watch, simple show. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I don't know what's new, guys.

[Matt Farah]

That's how. Well, that's how you. We get you. You texted me the other day when I said, save it for the show. I'm gonna put up the text, I'm gonna call, I'm gonna get the text out right here. It says, because I was like, you'd asked me about Patreon and of course we Love our Patreon. Patreon.com the Smoke entire podcast. You can watch the show live, you can ask questions, you can. You get ad free, you get extra podcasts, et cetera, et cetera. And let's see, I said patreon might be all that's left after the rest of it goes to hell. And you said, free content is failing because the audience is no longer in control. The free part was too tasty for them to realize what they were swallowing. Which I think that second sentence is bigger than just content. But so what did you mean by that? Free content is failing because the audience is no longer in control. Guys, we got to take one quick break for Delete me. I have been using deleteme for a couple of months now and I gotta say, the number of robo calls and spam has gone down noticeably. Particularly the robocalls. And that was my biggest concern, right, because we put so much of our information out there online, right? We're shopping for stuff, we're filling out forms, we're buying airplane tickets, we're tickets to stuff. We're doing E commerce. It's Amazon. It's everything. But your data is a huge profit center for all these companies. You can't control whether you're a target. You can't control whether your data is getting sold through data brokers. Until now. Now you can protect yourself with Delete me. I signed up for Deleteme and it was super easy. I filled out their survey. I filled out all this personal information from my address and phone numbers and email, my previous ones of those, my employment. They ask me all these questions about my history and then Delete me goes to work, not just right away, but in an ongoing basis. And they find all this stuff at these data broker websites and then you get rid of it. Use a couple clicks and it's just gone. It could be stuff that's related to you and your job or your house or your utilities or whatever. You want that stuff gone. And so Delete me will do it. And then they'll send you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. And it's not just a one time service. It's always working for you. Constantly monitoring and removing the personal information that you don't want on the Internet. Deleteme does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. So we got a special deal for you. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to JoinDelete me.com tire and then use promo code tire at checkout. That's 20% off. Go to JoinDelete me.com Tire and then enter code tire at checkout one more time. That's joining DeleteMe.com Tire and then use code tire. Thank you to Deleteme for sponsoring today's episode. And now back to the program.

[Brian Scotto]

So look, my career started in the magazine world. Yeah, right. And I remember being an American magazine and being envious of the British mags. Right. The reason the British books were better was because Newsstand was still like 75% of where they're making their money. Really? Yeah. And it has to do with one, they didn't have to print as many because they have a small. Like the amount of money it costs to move magazines across America is really expensive. Right. It's not the same issue in the uk.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

To be able to get out there. So they were still seeing a larger percentage on sort of the newsstand than the advertiser side. The US also just had more ads. Right. I mean the advertising in the U.S. especially in the automotive space is one of the biggest. Right. It's why every single ad agency in the world needs a car. Like if you don't have an automaker, whether. And you learn this if you watch Mad Men, if you don't have an automaker, you're not an ad agency. And it's like because of how much advertising there is in the automotive space. So. But still there was like this 50, 50. Right. Like I would get into fights with my publisher because, you know, Cadillac wanted this or GM wanted us to do more of this or they wanted this car on the COVID in order to do a two page spread and be like, we're not going to sell as many issues. And like selling the issues was still the thing that had to happen to do the other part. Right. And there was still enough money coming in from selling the issues that the audience had say. And the audience got that say in a very different way back then because it's not like they had comments, it's not like they had as much interaction, but they had sold not buying any issues. And this one didn't not buying it. Nowadays the algorithm has so much of that say that the audience is actually not having that say. So you could put out a piece of content that if your audience actually saw, they would love.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Which we have done over and over. Yeah. But because it doesn't check some algorithmic box, they don't get to see it. Right. So like for me, and I mean, I don't know how long you want to go. I could probably go three hours on this alone. But like, you know, you know, catch up. Right. I left Hoonigan over a year ago. Right. I left Hoonigan last really September. I didn't announce it till November. But you know, I left and I went. Worked in a different industry for an entire year, a completely different space, but still in media. Right. Just not automotive, but in the world of animation. And kind of got to like take a step back and you start to see like the same problems are here that there were in the automotive industry. And you start to realize like, okay, there's just a problem generally of what's going on with Content and, you know, and also get to sit back and kind of watch everything that happened. And we can kind of get into that at some point. I mean, it sounds like Motor Trend's done, too. As of yesterday. Yeah. $41 billion in debt for the parent company. Right. We're like. Which is going to trickle down to them and all that. And by the way, fact check me on all this, because it's just I. I learned this from Instagram.

[Matt Farah]

All I saw this morning was roadkill canceled, which is a bad canary in that coal mine.

[Brian Scotto]

Canary is their coal mine.

[Matt Farah]

That's true. The coal mine has collapsed.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. So, you know, and. But, like, why did all that happen? And for me, I can't help but go back and say, you know, this model of the Internet, and you were in the early phase of it, right? Because you were at Drive.

[Matt Farah]

Early medium.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And we made videos, me and JF for three years before Drive.

[Brian Scotto]

But you realize, like, you guys are the cautionary tale.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Because we were all sitting there in.

[Matt Farah]

The print don't work for Emil.

[Brian Scotto]

We were sitting there in the print world going, hmm, this is interesting. It's interesting to see what those guys are doing. And then you guys started crushing, Right. You had all the different shows. Everything was doing really well. Chris Harris. It was this thing that, like, man, YouTube is a potential place to be. Right. You guys really, I think, set that standard. And then you did a pay wall. And the pay wall was a cautionary tale.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Because the paywall was this cautionary tale of if you do this, the audience won't follow, but instead someone will fill your void instantly. Right. So if you look at the success of Hoonigan, partially is the paywall for Motor Trend. Yeah, Right. Like, we were doing our thing. Motor Trend was doing their thing. But Motor Trend all of a sudden went behind a paywall. And we picked up a ton of their audience. And I know we did, because all of a sudden our audience skewed more like American car V8 than they were before. It was two JS and things like that. And all of a sudden they wanted to see more of the American cars. That stuff was doing better. And, you know, and it was because we filled that void. And then, you know, that kept happening. And I think at first, the promise. Right. Like, you know, and I have three ways to think about this, but I think at first, the promise to media companies, whether it was Drive or it wasn't really our goal in the beginning, but it became our goal whether it was Hoonigan or Motor Trend or donut or whoever else. I think the promise was like, you're going to build this massive audience and then you're going to sell a tech multiplier.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Right. And that's. And then. But no one really knew how they were going to make money.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Right. I think everyone just thought, we'll figure it out, like you do with all new emerging technology. And what happened through that period was everyone tried a different thing. So for me, I think there's three ways to make money in the content business. Maybe four. The first one is to depend on the platform. Just the platform. Right. If you depend on the platform, it's very dangerous. And I think this is something that a lot of people don't understand. One is that the. What it was paying five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, is greatly reduced.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Two, they can tweak the algorithm a little bit and all of a sudden you make no money that month. Also, different months pay differently.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

End of the year, December is a great time, but putting content out in January through March is really slow. So it's hard to build a career.

[Matt Farah]

And the platform favors new creators to them hooked on creating. And they know if you're an old creator, how much they can pay you. Right. Before you quit.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And on top of all of that, you're now building algorithmic content.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So you're now like clickbaiting, like you're worrying more about your thumbnails and your actual content. Because honestly, once someone clicks in, as long as they watch for 30 seconds, you get the view that's all that really matters. And you know, you're looking at the math of this and it really justifies the type of content that people don't want people to make. Yeah, Right. It's the content that people hate. But. And it also means that makes you.

[Matt Farah]

Mad shit that, like, causes drama or whatever.

[Brian Scotto]

Because negativity, we are, as humans, we love negativity bias. Right. I just read this book and I don't get too heady on this. I dread this book called Stolen Focus. And it's all about, like, how the algorithms weren't intended to be bad, but humans are bad.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, this sounds like the kind of thing that would make me really mad.

[Brian Scotto]

I'll put my reading list. The whole position of it is this idea that, like, if you're driving down the block, on the left hand side is a little boy giving his mom flowers. Right. Which is a sweet moment. And on the right side is a little boy who got hit by a car. You're gonna look on the right side. Right. You just are. And the reason is because our brains are wired to negativity. Because negativity is danger. And danger could prevent you from surviving.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

So you're more likely to focus on things are negative. So like that's all of a sudden becomes like what most of the Internet became.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Right. I mean, and we don't have to get into what that became for our entire society. Downfall of everything. And the reason why America hates America is all because of the way that that's sort of built.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Because if you tweak all the levers for engagement above everything else and you don't care about anything but that engagement, you're going to end up with a bunch of fucked up people and fucked up motivators.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

For all kinds of stuff.

[Brian Scotto]

So think about what that does to the content world. Right. So now there's a certain type of content that does well. Right. And like we saw this, like you get something where like if you blow your engine up or your car catches fire, that episode's gonna do better.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

People are more likely to click on it. It might not be the best content, but it's just gonna do better. So that, that's one side, right. Is like you just service the algorithm. Right. And you just do that. And look, there's still, there's still a business there and there's still ways to do that, that work. But I think it's become more and more difficult and I think that the platform itself.

[Matt Farah]

Unstable.

[Brian Scotto]

It's highly unstable. You're successful today and you are at their whim. I don't know if you guys remember when Facebook completely changed. It was like January of 2016. One of the reasons we launched YouTube was because we were crushing on Facebook. Our Facebook content was hitting massive numbers. And then all of a sudden one.

[Matt Farah]

Day they were like, our Facebook growth instantly stopped and never, never continued to.

[Brian Scotto]

It completely shifted and we just gave up and then went to, went to YouTube.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And that's really difficult when you're one. If you're a single creator, that's dangerous. But you're nimble. You can do whatever. But you have 40 employees. It's really difficult to forecast that kind of stuff. Especially when you have 40 employees who are 401ks and healthcare and all these things to sit there and go, how do we do all this? And then, then second piece of it is the advertising side, the ad integration. And I don't think you have to explain too much there. The minute that someone else is paying for your content. You're not in control. And to what point? It depends on who your partners are. I'm sure you guys work with great partners. They don't care what we say on here. You've never told me. You can't say this to me.

[Matt Farah]

No, and we make it pretty clear. And it's probably to our own financial detriments, but we don't want to do a show that is. We call it the Noah's Arcade a lot. We won't have ads, advertisers on the show like shit. Like I think we did it once. We had one person on the show one time that had advertised with us.

[Zach Klapman]

Dealership, tech stuff or sorry, dealership data.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, the sale. No, the salesforce person. Maybe that was it.

[Zach Klapman]

We didn't have them on. But we content was sponsored by.

[Matt Farah]

We had one sponsored segment once.

[Brian Scotto]

And look, I think that that sometimes can work out really well. We worked with partners at Hoonigan and with Ken that were great partners and they gave us money to go do awesome stuff. Right? Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's not mutually good or. Hovensky just did a really good one with Continental. It was a new car on old tires versus an old car on new tires.

[Brian Scotto]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

The point. The point comes across. Even though Continental paid for it, like they're Continentals. It's on like, all right. Still a decent thing to.

[Brian Scotto]

But like, I think one thing, especially for the content that Hoonigan was making was like we definitely had to start to kind of like clean up our act a little bit because it got to that point where. Well, for two things. One.

[Matt Farah]

Mr. Scott. Oh, this is. This is just too dirt baggy.

[Brian Scotto]

It's a little too dirt baggy. It's a little too, little too dangerous. We don't want to be attached to that. You know, I mean one of the.

[Matt Farah]

Things this engine explosion is brought to you by Motel.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Well, the funny thing about it was like the fan base forever used to be like, why didn't you guys keep making daily transmission? We could never sell a single partner to that show. No one wanted it. No one wanted. It was the most popular show we had in the beginning. Nobody wanted that show. And you know, it's like there's reasons obviously why was like that. No one wanted that. And it was difficult because you'd be like, this show does really well. And they're like, yeah, but you know, and it's like, all right, like I get that. And you know, so it becomes all things where like we self funded that as the company and Then a certain point that can't go any longer, right? So anyway, I think the next part of it then is like the merch route, right? And the merch route only works to a certain point because all of a sudden you then have a company that you never intended, you never intended to be a manufacturer or producer of whatever wares. And now all of a sudden that business actually gets bigger than your content business.

[Matt Farah]

You guys had the biggest merch business of all.

[Brian Scotto]

But we started as a company that was apparel. So we were sort of built for that. But I mean, there was a period of time where the people who were working on the apparel side, there was more of them than there were like on the content side. Because, like, there was just, we were making so much of it and like, so that becomes this thing where you're like. And even then, then it didn't cover the costs. It was just crazy. It was just supplementing the cost, right? So we went at it from like a three headed way of like, we didn't really care about the YouTube numbers. They weren't big enough to matter, right? But we, you know, we took that piece and then we took the advertising route and then the merch kind of supplemented that. But the other part that we took was like, we weren't, we weren't taking money out of the company, right? We were paying ourselves at least like, Ken, we're paying ourselves low salaries, below market salaries, and we weren't taking money out of the company with the idea that like, eventually it sells and you make your money there, right? And like, and then when you do that, the future of the brand is like, you don't know where that's gonna go, right? And also, you were running the company so nimble and so lean that you have companies come in that are like, it can always be more lean. You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised. And I think that this is this unfortunate model because we have asked the consumer to pay for content in years, right? Like, yeah, they might pay for it on Netflix, they may pay for it for some of those places. But like, I think in the direct relationship of like, I make content you should buy it has gone away. And it's a really sensitive conversation. Like, I even just realized having this, like this conversation, people be like, oh, fuck him, he wants to charge for content. It's like, no, it's no, I want to make the content that you want to see. Yeah, like, that's it. Like, I want to make the content I want to make and I want to make the content you want to see. And that is unfair, unfortunately. Every year harder to sustain than it was 10 years ago.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Brian Scotto]

And I think that that's really, like, where I think Patreon's interesting. I launched. I literally hit you, asked you a few questions, and I launched my Patreon afterwards. And I've just been using it as, like, hey, if you want to see what I'm doing with my new thing, like, come watch. I still realize that, like, content has to live outside the paywall.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You can't have all of it all live there.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, you can't. But I can put things there that I know won't do well.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Brian Scotto]

On regular platforms that people want to.

[Matt Farah]

Watch, that they exist at all, there is something extra for those people who are.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And I like making content for the people who really want it. You know, Like, I think, like, you know, as we grew at Hoonigan, you know, you start to, like, not make content for the core audience anymore because you're thinking, like, how do we get over a million views? How do we get over 2 million views? We're in the gym. Connoisseur. How do you get over 50 million views? Right. And then it's like, you have to start thinking this broader and broader and broader and broader way. And, like, there's a fun challenge to that. But I really enjoyed making content that I knew only 100,000 people would watch because, like, it was very focused at those hundred thousand people. And 100,000 is still, like, a big number. Like, I do realize that. But in the way that we. Our numbers were back then, that was a smaller video. So. Yeah, I don't know. And I think it's not just us. Like, there's actually a great. There's this podcast that I love called. It used to be called Reply all, and now it's called Search Engine.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, they relaunched.

[Brian Scotto]

They relaunched and they had Ezra Klein come in and he basically explained, like, the downfall of news media because the platforms were never built for anyone to make money but them. And that they just don't sustain companies operating on the platforms because it's. And in where it's all gone. And, you know, and they talk about things like substack and, you know, Patreon, similar stuff for the print world. And it's really interesting kind of listening to that because he's talking about the news world, but if you just replace the word news with automotive media, you're like, oh, yeah, this is exactly what's happening to our space right now, where either the content is so focused on a click that it's not really the content you want, or it's so advertiser heavy that it's either neutered because it has to be, or it's maybe leaning a little bit too, you know, positive for something corporate. Yeah, corporate kind of feeling where I think that, you know, and I'm not saying everything's going to be on Patreon. Like, I don't think, I don't think the model will ever go back to paid content. But it's very interesting that we live in a world where like, it's not only the paywall isn't just like, oh, I don't feel like paying for it. It's like, ah, like you put up a paywall. How dare you make money for a living.

[Matt Farah]

That was me in 2013, I bet. And it was me and Harris. Everything about the paywall, even though we didn't choose it, was our fault.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, of course.

[Matt Farah]

Because you're the face and so it's like you get the credit. Nobody was talking about the camera guys or the editors. It was like, great job, Farah Harris.

[Brian Scotto]

But you also take the blame.

[Matt Farah]

But you also take the blame. And going to making those one take videos, really low budget and high volume was my response to. Oh, you don't think film crews should earn a living? Well, here we're going to get rid of them and show you how that.

[Brian Scotto]

How this works out, what that looks like.

[Matt Farah]

Turns out it worked out well, but only if you can crank out, you know, four videos a week. Five videos a week, which is a lot.

[Brian Scotto]

I just think we've created a creative world right now where burnout is really high. Right. Like inevitably, like your likelihood of making a living in this space as a new coming creator to it not working for a company that can protect you and can give you these things when there are downtimes. Seems to be about three to five years.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, Right.

[Brian Scotto]

And then there seems to be a ceiling that you hit and there's a few guys who blow right past it. And there's people who have done very well at this. Right. Like obviously Cletus, but Cletus has a whole pay side of what he's doing.

[Matt Farah]

Well, he has a whole other side.

[Brian Scotto]

He's got the pay per view and he's got the event side of it that works. And you know, obviously Adam lz and Weston Champlin, like a lot of these guys have broken through, but for every one of them there is, there's hundreds of other people who have just kind of Hit a wall where at first it seemed like it was doing well, and then they. It's like, it's like the old drug trope of like their first hit is free. It's like that first couple videos you put up do really well.

[Matt Farah]

When you. When YouTube is what one thing they're doing is favoring those new creators they'll get. Cause I don't know about you, but like, I'm like a quote, victim of this as well. Not as a creator, but as a viewer. I don't really pay attention to any subscriptions anymore. No.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

But you know what I do is I go to YouTube.com on my browser and I just see what's there. And so I as a viewer am so susceptible to now. I also literally, old school, go to the search bar and I have like five channels that I like and I actively check what they've made. But so much of it is just what's fed to me. And they have total black box control. And I don't know if it's this channel's first video where they're fucking 500th or 5,000th.

[Brian Scotto]

And like, look, I will obviously am all supporting of like the ability for new creators to get access because otherwise you end up creating a world where you don't get back in again. Sure, right. Like, I get that, but I think that there's. It's sort of a churn, right? Like, bring the new ones in, get rid of the old ones. Bring the new ones and get rid of the old ones. And for people who've dedicated their lives and a ton of money to doing this, and then for it to kind of just end, and then it's like, then where do you go from there? Yeah, you know, like, what's next? It just seems like a broken model to me because. And it's not just affecting us, it's like sort of effect. It's affecting everything in the media space. I mean, even if you look at. Hollywood is screwed. Netflix is screwed. Everybody's screwed right now in content, you know, there's too much of it.

[Matt Farah]

We had just enough time for mainstream society to understand that being a content creator was a career. Just enough time for that to happen, only for it to like, not be possible for it to be a career anymore.

[Brian Scotto]

I mean, look, as a guy who went to college for magazines and then watch the magazine industry crumble eight years out of college.

[Matt Farah]

I gotta tell you though, of all the shit I did, like, working for the actual print magazine is like one of the more rewarding things. I do.

[Brian Scotto]

You know, I'm now a Road and track contributor.

[Matt Farah]

Are you?

[Brian Scotto]

I've now written two artists. What did you write? The first thing they had me write was the Audi 4000. It was like our top was, like, our favorite driver's cars.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. From, like, a couple issues ago. They interviewed all the people.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. So I had my Audi 4000, which, like, they basically asked me for my list, I gave them my list, and.

[Matt Farah]

Then they actually write.

[Brian Scotto]

And then they write about me, what my personal cars were. And, like, I'm like, I have a shitbox 4000. But I put it on the list because I just said, like, there's something about it I like. And it was like the beater was the angle for that. And then I wrote a story on, oh, my brain's not working, but another Red Bull, maybe. No, no, no. Yeah, seriously, right? It was part of the leman's package.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, okay.

[Brian Scotto]

Is that out yet? I'm not sure. It was the. It was part of the LeMans package in the Specialized episode issue.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, there's a couple.

[Brian Scotto]

A couple where everything was super Specialized.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I wrote the one on the. I'm blanking on their names now, but it was like two designers from Peugeot who built the car that would. The only goal was to set the fastest speed on the muscle.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And honestly, I do it because I miss writing for magazines. And there was also a small part of me, me that I went through this really weird circle of life with Road and Track, which is when I was a kid, I liked Road and Track and had a subscription to it. It was the. One of the buff books I had a sub to. And then when I was building the concept for zero to 60, I was taking 1970s road and track and 1970s car and driver. Right. And using that as sort of a template of what I wanted to make because the writing was really good and stuff like that. I mean, especially the car and driver, because they were living. Well, they were living in New York. They were living in New York City and rubbing elbows with the guys who were writing for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. So they, like, held themselves to, like, a much higher level than just the standard auto journalist. So I looked at that as a thing. And then obviously we went. We did 0:60, and we were this weird sort of bastard mag that then kind of became an industry darling. But, you know, we were never like the buff books. And then when Larry Webster read designed Road and Track, he said to me, oh, 060 was like a big part of my inspiration and design, you know, in the rework of road and track. And that's crazy to me to think, like, this book, which is such an institution.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Was something that inspired me and then inspired that. So, you know, when they come talking to write for it, I was like, oh, this feels like a circle. I should be a part of it. I enjoy it.

[Matt Farah]

That's cool.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. I still write my 15 minutes before it's due. That hasn't changed.

[Matt Farah]

But, you know, when they asked me to set lap time for the. For a group test, that's when I was like, I'm in this game. All right, we have passed this test.

[Brian Scotto]

Nice. Nice.

[Matt Farah]

That one's coming out.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I don't get that to that level. I get to, like, go do some research and write about something.

[Matt Farah]

All I ever cared about was being quick enough to do that job. That was it. I don't need to even win races. Just be the guy they put on the. In the cars for comparison test.

[Brian Scotto]

And let's be honest, not that many journalists are quick.

[Matt Farah]

Not that many are.

[Brian Scotto]

No, no.

[Matt Farah]

And I'm only. Okay, there's ones that are quicker than me. But.

[Brian Scotto]

And I haven't been on, like, a regular racetrack with you, but I've been carting with you, and you were, like, way faster than you should have been in a cart. I was really good at that 250 pounds that you talk about cycling. You had, like, 75 extra pounds on back then. It was a big part of that then. And I remember showing up and you worked me at gpny and I was like, okay.

[Matt Farah]

I was also. I was club champ at gpny.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that was.

[Matt Farah]

That was my home track. I won the over 200 pound class.

[Brian Scotto]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thems were the days.

[Brian Scotto]

The thing I want to go is check out talk swing of carding. You see the K1 circuit thing that they built?

[Matt Farah]

No.

[Brian Scotto]

So K1 has built a thing called K1 circuit out, like, riverside area. And it's like a proper, like, outdoors, outdoors competition level Harding track. And you can bring your own cart there. And they're renting garages.

[Matt Farah]

Get the.

[Brian Scotto]

Which, like, makes me like, I think I want to buy a cart now. I think I might buy because it's only 40 minutes from farm.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Is it like, do they buy atoms or something?

[Brian Scotto]

Look at this thing.

[Matt Farah]

What?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, exactly.

[Matt Farah]

Like, how did they build this in our backyard?

[Brian Scotto]

We don't know. No one knew about it. I got worse, by the way, in.

[Matt Farah]

The history of marketing.

[Brian Scotto]

Speaking of algorithms, I got served it on Instagram. So.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, for real.

[Zach Klapman]

This is awesome.

[Brian Scotto]

This looks sick.

[Zach Klapman]

This is like thermal, but for carts and.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, dude, Zach, we might need a company card.

[Zach Klapman]

Let's do it.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Except the question is, do we buy a company Legends car? Yeah, Ezra Dyer bought a Legend.

[Zach Klapman]

He bought it to, quote, share with his kid, and then he just runs hill climbs with it.

[Matt Farah]

Well, the thing I was actually ran a hill. His car and driver stories. Great.

[Brian Scotto]

I was actually gonna ask them if I could run a Sierra car there.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Brian Scotto]

Because the Sierra car there would be good fun. Like if you have a few of them. Well, I would get one.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

If I could go there.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So can we go. Go to the. Let's see the track. Let's see what? The track. Sorry, sorry. We get a little inside baseball here, folks, but there is a new f. Racetrack in our city and we need to cover well.

[Brian Scotto]

And here's the thing. Even if you're not from our city, since K1 speed is across the country, they could be opening ones elsewhere, which, you know, promote that.

[Matt Farah]

Wow, that reminds me. Remember in New Zealand we went to that sick go kart track.

[Brian Scotto]

11 meters of elevation gain. Wow. Someone do the 33. There you go. Three times.

[Matt Farah]

Where is this? Is in Riverside.

[Brian Scotto]

It's like outside of Riverside. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, man.

[Brian Scotto]

So that's far enough.

[Matt Farah]

I'm not going every weekend, but that's pretty. That's still doable.

[Brian Scotto]

You can come out. You can come to the farm, have some avocado, hang out.

[Matt Farah]

I thought your farm was, like, more south.

[Brian Scotto]

It is, but it's only a 40s. Like, the way. Yeah, it's like three hours. I'm off the 15, so. Okay, so once you're out there, you're out.

[Matt Farah]

Wow.

[Brian Scotto]

So.

[Matt Farah]

All right. Look at that.

[Zach Klapman]

That is no joke.

[Matt Farah]

God damn.

[Brian Scotto]

By the way, I like that they have the little. Like Paul Richard.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, they do run off there for the drone shots.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it makes it for that.

[Matt Farah]

That's fucking cool. I wonder if they're gonna have autocross on there too. They'll run cars. Autocross. That could be fun.

[Brian Scotto]

And you do that. Next thing you know, them dirty drifters are there.

[Zach Klapman]

That's right.

[Brian Scotto]

Next thing you know, it's Adams. And then after that, it's a rallycross track.

[Matt Farah]

Adams is a good level of grime, though. Shout out to Troy Adams. He's all right. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

All right, well, now we have something new to look forward to.

[Brian Scotto]

Go.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, we should. We should definitely go. Are there rental carts? Gas or electric?

[Brian Scotto]

I think electric is the Rentals. But they'll also let you run gas. I mean, there's Harding class glass. No.

[Zach Klapman]

Hell yes.

[Brian Scotto]

Those go up.

[Matt Farah]

Those will look electric.

[Brian Scotto]

I saw a radiator on it.

[Matt Farah]

Is that a radiator or a battery?

[Brian Scotto]

That might be the battery.

[Matt Farah]

That looks like a battery in the floors.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Because it's usually. Yeah, that's electric. Because usually the engine's on the other side.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Gas cart, so.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Dude.

[Brian Scotto]

But I thought it was cool that you could bring your own cart because it's like. Yeah. I mean, I think they're just open. Having like open practice or whatever. But we could create our own internal race.

[Matt Farah]

We could definitely waste some money on this. Sec for sure.

[Brian Scotto]

I like that every time I'm here, we talk about a new race series we're going to do. Last time it was the Toyota Previa.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, yes. I don't. That is the most response I got from this podcast. Like, just either trying to sell me their dad forever, right? Or people who were like, I'm in. Like, you say it. I'm in. And I'm like, you live in Wisconsin. They're like, I'll buy a trailer too. I was like, okay, this thing's got legs. Yeah, yeah, that one. The mid engine van race series.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that would be great. Previacross would be. Would be excellent as well. I'm still formula Hogwala, I think could be a great video series, you know.

[Brian Scotto]

No, what is this one?

[Matt Farah]

You know what hagwala is in. In. In Saudi and Dubai. The front wheel drive, where they just.

[Zach Klapman]

Like send it mile an hour zigzag.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

My goodness.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Pro. We could make this a pro.

[Brian Scotto]

Do you have mannequins on the side of the road that you get points for killing? We could just fill in with like bags of fake blood. Dude.

[Matt Farah]

Just have Papadakis build us a fleet of Camrys. Like, let's go.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. It's Ultimas versus Camry.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. It's the.

[Matt Farah]

Nothing left to live for. Negative credit. I'm upside down in this camera.

[Brian Scotto]

EQE Bomber.

[Zach Klapman]

You need walls on both sides so it doesn't get too out of hand.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. So that's. But we could do. We could definitely do a karting series.

[Brian Scotto]

We need to do that. That'd be a good one.

[Matt Farah]

I need a new sport to get into. Played pickle ball for the first time yesterday.

[Brian Scotto]

How was that?

[Matt Farah]

Made me feel very old.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. It's basically like geriatric tennis. It is.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it is.

[Brian Scotto]

It's like tennis for people who have had knee surgery.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's like slow tennis or big picture. Ping pong is basically what it is.

[Zach Klapman]

It's less running than tennis.

[Brian Scotto]

It's definitely a sport that's built to also still hold a can of beer while you're playing, though. You can play.

[Matt Farah]

In fact, it was like my neighborhood got together and play and there was a lot of alcohol there. Like, I wasn't drinking because there was a charcuterie board and a bunch of booze while they were playing. Yeah, but I need a better sport than that.

[Zach Klapman]

Did your hand eye coordination go up for the first drink and then fall off?

[Matt Farah]

I didn't drink, but it took me a minute to. I'd never played before and it took me a minute to get this pacing of a wiffle ball.

[Brian Scotto]

Is it a sport or an activity?

[Matt Farah]

It's a game.

[Brian Scotto]

It's a game.

[Zach Klapman]

I think they're trying to make it a sport. They're trying to push it on ESPN and stuff and like make a league.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, they're trying.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it was like, it's fun enough. It's, it's. It's enough like tennis, but like, I'd rather be racing go karts. Brand new go kart track. That sounds a lot more fun.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, I've got a little boy now who will soon be of racing, so you gotta get feeling like. That's the timing cadet cart. Yeah, get going. How old he's gonna be Five in a month from now.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, wow. Can you get like Josh Kalis's drift power wheels?

[Brian Scotto]

I'm sure, I'm sure that would be.

[Matt Farah]

A good place to start. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Although right now he's really into heavy equipment. Like, he like cars. The other day he told me, I said to him, whose car do you like more, mine or Mommy's? Like our main car. And I drive an RS2 wagon every day and he and my wife drives an LR4.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

He's like, mommy's. I'm like, why? He's like, because it's taller.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, when you're small.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

When you're small, tall. Yeah. But you got a tractor and too. So.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I've got a. I've got a Kubota with a backhoe.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. If you're a kid and there's a tractor on site, who gives a about digging holes?

[Brian Scotto]

Something tells me, I gotta tell you, fuck being a kid. If you're an adult and there's a tractor, you're like, well, that looks pretty fun right now.

[Zach Klapman]

Look, how long has dig this been open In Vegas, successful business construction fantasy camp.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I know exactly what it is. I really think like if you're at the track, if you're at a track and they're like, okay, you have an option. You can either take this Corvette Z06 around the track or we will let you use this massive excavator. Just what would you choose?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, choose the power.

[Brian Scotto]

You've driven enough Z6 around track and.

[Matt Farah]

I've driven excavators and they're way better. I knocked the building down that was here. I personally knocked it down.

[Brian Scotto]

God, about that. Yeah, that's cool.

[Matt Farah]

It was I. And I. And I knocked it down by side swiping it with the bucket like it was the best imaginable.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it was so great.

[Matt Farah]

I could see everything. I wish you could just do. You could. Could you do that? There'd probably some insurance thing. You couldn't have that experience that the public could get behind you.

[Zach Klapman]

Set up a wall. Knock it over. Set up a wall. Knock it over.

[Matt Farah]

If you got a new control demo, they could have, you know, they could have it.

[Brian Scotto]

Demolition Groupon, come on down.

[Matt Farah]

It was very fun though. Yeah. But if you got a five year old, the tractor is. That's it.

[Brian Scotto]

He loves the tractor.

[Matt Farah]

Can you drive the tractor?

[Brian Scotto]

He can't drive the tractor, but he can operate the actual excavator. The part. Yeah, yeah. Like because it's just joysticks. You can figure that out.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Like a 5 year old.

[Brian Scotto]

I'm sure CPS is on their way to my house now saying that.

[Matt Farah]

But you can do it.

[Brian Scotto]

So. Um, he can't really. Like he could sit on my lap and run the controls but he's not big enough for that. But he can drive. I let him drive the like the UTV we have on the property, like you know, on my lap and stuff.

[Matt Farah]

That's awesome. Yeah, it's important.

[Zach Klapman]

Is the tractor steering wheel very easy to move or hard?

[Brian Scotto]

It's pretty simple. Yeah, it's like. It's like a hydro power assist kind of thing.

[Matt Farah]

So five's pretty young though for a tractor.

[Zach Klapman]

No, Totally. I was just curious like if it's a muscle thing and when he hits.

[Brian Scotto]

It, he can't really reach the pedals kind of thing.

[Zach Klapman]

So put those blocks on his feet.

[Matt Farah]

But he like understands how to drive?

[Brian Scotto]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean he's got power wheels and all that kind of stuff.

[Matt Farah]

Of course, as is tradition.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it's hard because you don't want to be like the football dad and be like, you Love racing cars, but between myself and my wife, who both like cars, it's kind of hard for him not to like them, so. But he's really more into trucks.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. I mean, he's. If he's real close to tall socks.

[Matt Farah]

Well, there's a lot of time to.

[Brian Scotto]

There's time to bring them back.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, there's a lot of time to pivot, so. Okay, so we've got the Kubota tractor. We've got the RS2, which you drove up here, and I haven't seen that car in a very long time. Don't you also have an S?

[Brian Scotto]

I had an S2 bomb, but I sold it to a friend.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

I came home from Europe with two of the same car. One had an R. The other one just was an S2. I had an R and an RS2 in the same color.

[Matt Farah]

And did they drive noticeably different?

[Brian Scotto]

The RS2 slightly quicker, if I'm being honest. The S2 was in better condition. Like, the RS2 was a little bit more rough. Not visually, it looked really good, but it just had a ton of small, little problems with it kind of thing, so. But they're pretty much the same car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And. Okay, and then you have that old green rabbit.

[Brian Scotto]

Is that.

[Matt Farah]

Is it a GTI or a Rabbit?

[Brian Scotto]

No, it's a Rabbit. So it's the first year they came in here. So 75 swallowtail, which basically means the rear. The rear, like, panel has a. Like a swallow cut in it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Which just makes it more unique. So I have that, which is a whopping 50 horsepower. And then that's it right there. Yeah. And we should do.

[Matt Farah]

What year is it?

[Brian Scotto]

75.

[Matt Farah]

50 horsepower. The pow is 57.

[Brian Scotto]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

We should have a drag race.

[Brian Scotto]

Let's go.

[Matt Farah]

One liter, 57 horsepower.

[Brian Scotto]

This is 1.5 liter.

[Matt Farah]

How many gears do you have? Four.

[Brian Scotto]

Four speed.

[Matt Farah]

Four gears.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Tops at 90 miles an hour.

[Matt Farah]

Hannah's does not. It tops at 73 speed auto.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, well, you're losing everything to that.

[Matt Farah]

It's not good.

[Brian Scotto]

Torque converter is eating everything there so slow. Got a manual swap that, baby.

[Matt Farah]

They sold them as manuals. Yeah, but Hannah just. It's a brunch car, so. That looks great, though.

[Zach Klapman]

That's a great looking car.

[Brian Scotto]

I love it.

[Matt Farah]

That's been repainted, right?

[Brian Scotto]

No, that's original paint.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's got some rough spots on it. It's had some rust on it.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

It looks really good in photos. It photographs well. It's one of those photos.

[Matt Farah]

It's a 12 footer with a cell phone.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. But it's like I bought it. I bought it with the intent of immediately swapping in a 16 valve and doing all the stuff and whatever. And then, then like, I get it. I get weird about things sometimes and I'm like, oh, you know what though? I really want it to run under its own power first. Like its original power. It was like really close to running but wasn't running. So I spent like a few months just like sorting all these like random parts to get it running. And then it was up and running and I was like, I'm gonna drive it for a week and then I'll tear it apart. Like, just drive it for a week. And that was three years ago and I've just been driving it as it is.

[Matt Farah]

Did you just like be like, actually this is fine or did you. As long as I don't, as long.

[Brian Scotto]

As I don't leave Long beach, it's great, right? Like, oh, just cruising around Long Beach. It's like the perfect cruiser.

[Matt Farah]

Like it's, it's one step above a golf cart.

[Brian Scotto]

It's just peppy enough to like merge.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But the other day I drove out to San Dimas with a friend and like I was just like, you know, maxed at 75 miles. Just like in the car, the hallway. And you're like, eh, maybe it needs a bigger.

[Matt Farah]

Driving a car at V Max sucks.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And also there's no tax. You're just like, I hope. I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

Is there a revolution limiter?

[Brian Scotto]

No, there's.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, there's nothing. Right.

[Brian Scotto]

Just a carbureted car. Like. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So yeah, the engine stops when it explodes. Yeah, exactly.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. You just listen. You're like. That sounds more metallic. Or let me bring the revs down a little bit. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

You're listen for valve float.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, exactly. So it would.

[Matt Farah]

I mean even if you put like the most basic ass later, you know, Mark 3 swap or something in it.

[Brian Scotto]

Even just a so fast GTI 8. Because I, I also have a Mark 1 GTI that's on the east coast and that is great. It's really good as it is. I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

It's a great. This little Rabbit is.

[Zach Klapman]

It's great looking good color.

[Brian Scotto]

It's become a weird. I actually just. I wrote a column for performance, Volkswagen magazine, pw. And I wrote my whole column about this thing that was like, I bought a Ferrari. But like I realized that my identity is a Rabbit.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Brian Scotto]

Like I was able to get to A successful point in life. I mean, I bought a used Ferrari. It's a 360, but like I was able to get that right.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

It's the most expensive car I've ever bought. And like, I don't drive it. It just doesn't like, appealing. I'm not saying I don't like it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like every time I'm in it, I'm like, I should drive this more often.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But I like walk past that and my 911 and get into my rabbit or my RS2. I like the like the if you know, you know, kind of vibe of cars. Like, or just. That's one. I mean, this is the car that makes old ladies happy.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Y. Everybody loves this car. Like, they just smile at it. The color works. It like it hits. Yeah. But yeah, I just kind of got to a point where I was like, you know what? Like, I think I'm, you know, I built. I mean I've built some monster machines and things like that and they're all just a pain in the ass. They're all just like an absolute pain in the ass. That's probably how you feel about your Mustang was probably that too, right?

[Matt Farah]

No, the Mustang. Well, I think I've. I think it was a pain in the. And I think I've pushed all that out of my head and I only remember the good times now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

It's like a psycho, but like.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but I, I don't really have a desire for like these big custom projects anymore. I mean, even my. What we. We put a different engine in my Porsche, but it was like, yeah, you take it and call me. You know what?

[Brian Scotto]

It's done.

[Matt Farah]

I'm not physically dealing with that.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I'm not that far through therapy yet. Like, I still dream of the most insane main engine swaps. I mean, I have a Toyota A86 Corolla that I'm putting a VR6 in.

[Matt Farah]

An old one.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, an old Corolla. Like a Hachi.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

With a VR6, except technically mine's a coupe, but.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but that'll fit.

[Brian Scotto]

Sure. Yeah, sure. I wouldn't say it fits easily, but it's fitting. I have to run a dry sump on it to get it to fit. Like the levels of like now it's a full blown race car just to get the engine to fit in. Just because I wanted to do something different. Yeah, that's it right there.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, dude, that's awesome.

[Matt Farah]

And I saw your other Audi's not even done. Your coupe, not your Coup.

[Brian Scotto]

No, it runs, but it doesn't drive. Yeah, it's actually sitting at bbi.

[Matt Farah]

I saw it last week when I went for an oil change, which, by.

[Brian Scotto]

The way, is the shittiest thing I did to Batim, because I just. We. I was like. I was moving all my stuff out of Hoonigan and there was a bunch of stuff there, and Batim's trailer was there, and it was empty, and I had nowhere for the couple to go. So I just put a trailer and then I did. And then, like, I meant to tell him I wasn't like, that. I wasn't that much of a. I wasn't that much of a prick. But I meant to tell him, like, oh, hey, by the way. And then I just forgot. And like, life went on. And a month and a half later, they went to go open the trailer. Like, it got brought back to bbi. It was parked against the wall. Cause it was around holidays, you know, and it gets parked against the wall. And they just forgot about it. Like, they just forgot that, like, you know, and I forgot about it. And then they opened it one day and he just sent me a photo and was like, do you know this is here? And I'm like, oh, yeah. Sur. So I now have.

[Matt Farah]

Surprised you now get to figure out how to make this run?

[Brian Scotto]

Well, it's like I. My. The story of my 911 was. My 911 was the car that I never had off the road.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, right.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, of all the other cars, cars would go down. The 911 was like. It was just. I wanted it to always be simple.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

I wanted to be able to just drive it. So, like, if something broke on it, it was the one car I would. I bring to BBI and I would just be like, fix it. Yeah, right. Like everything else I try to fix myself and I just open a can of worms and break it more. Right. But with that car was like, yeah, like, I just want to keep this thing running. So I had what seemed like a boost leak at 7 pounds of pressure, like, it would just open up, right? So I'm like, all right, bring it to Batim. He's like, oh, we'll smoke it. We'll see what the problem is. He's like, oh, it's. It's. You know, unfortunately, it is intake manifold gasket, like, engine out. I'm like, all right, fine. So he's like, I'll pull the engine. We'll get. We'll get it sorted. We'll have it back in there real quickly. Two years later, the engine goes back in for two reasons. One, we also started the Hunipig project. Oh, yeah. And like, I'm on, like, the buddy favorite program.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And now all of a sudden, like, we're building this big project. So, like, all the efforts gone into that. But second, you know, by the way, I had 53,000 miles on this engine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But Tim opens up and goes, you know what? While we're in there, While we're in there, we rebuilt the whole thing, forged internals, the whole thing. So he finally, like, said, I haven't heard from from him for like four or five months about my car. Like, I've talked to him every day about the hoonipig. And he just texts me, hey, do you want to order the motec or should I? I was like, for the pig? He's like, no, for your car. I'm like, wait, why are we putting motec in my car? And he's like, well, this will be like. He's like, I'm thinking like 800 to like, 1,000. And I'm like, no, this is supposed to be my normal car. Like, no, no, no, no. Like, I don't want to start it with a laptop. Like, just come on. And he's like, all right. So I now have an 800 horsepower capable, 400 horsepower car.

[Matt Farah]

Great.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Probably run for a long time. Yeah. I just drove it the other day. I hadn't driven it in four months.

[Matt Farah]

400 horsepower in that car is a lot.

[Brian Scotto]

I have very fast. If you do not have fun with a knife, if you don't have to drive a 911 with 400 horsepower, you don't know how to drive an i11. Like, 400 horsepower is. In an air cooled car, is a ton of fun. So no traction control, no nannies, no nothing. It just does its thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's so much.

[Brian Scotto]

And I've got, you know, I've got like 315s out back. Like, the thing just grabs and rips. It's super fun. Yeah, that's a good car. I hadn't driven it in four months. And I just actually just filmed this video with Vinnie. Vinnie made a video about rwb because, you know, everyone's talking about RWB right now. Are you. Are you not paying attention to this?

[Matt Farah]

No. Why is everyone talking about rw?

[Brian Scotto]

Do we live in a different algorithm maybe?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah. So my algorithm feeds me. Like, I give you political shit. What does yours feed you? RWB videos.

[Brian Scotto]

Mine feeds me RWB Conspiracy and civil war. It's pretty and really good farm stuff.

[Matt Farah]

What is conspiracy?

[Brian Scotto]

All right, I'll back it out a little.

[Matt Farah]

All of this is a leg.

[Brian Scotto]

I'll back it out a little bit. So it's not even conspiracy, but I'll back it out. So about a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, a video hit the Internet of Nakai gluing tow hook on the front of a car. Right. And it went viral. And everyone started making videos about not.

[Matt Farah]

Screwing it into the tow hooks like.

[Brian Scotto]

Up high on tape holding it in place. Video of Nakai putting this, this toe hook on. And that obviously goes viral. And there's always been like this hater group of people who just hate raw well for whatever reason. And all of a sudden like you start getting a lot of people, a lot of kind of talking heads, the classic like Internet pundits being like, I would never let him hack my car. He's a complete hack and uses a saw. And like you don't have to start.

[Matt Farah]

By paying him 50 grand or getting.

[Brian Scotto]

On a three year waiting list.

[Matt Farah]

Let him.

[Brian Scotto]

But you know, the whole thing kind of like blew out from there. And I actually reached out to my friends at RWB USA and I was like, hey man, what's the deal with this? Because like it's a bridge too far to try to defend like a glue on tow hook. I defend everything else because from my perspective, when we first discovered RWB at Zero60 magazine back in like 2008 and no one was talking about in the US we were the first magazine to do a story on it. You know, Bernoull and Tony Harmer went over to Japan to cover that. And you know, that was this era that like first of all, 911s weren't worth anything.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So that's the first part, right?

[Matt Farah]

Like, yeah, 964s were like sub 10.

[Brian Scotto]

Grand for a C4.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

No one was before. Nine grand you get us get that for. And I, you know, and I bought my Turbo famously for 35,000 and which.

[Matt Farah]

Was market price at that point.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And like no one was like, yeah. I mean like the joke always was you should have bought an Evo instead because it wasn't as fast as an Evo when I bought it. But. But when, you know, when Roll Welt was first there, like they were building cars the way that race cars were built in the 90s. Like drywall screws.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like caulking. I mean, like I know that like we all now look at Singer and you know and all these other brands, Gunther works. And everyone who's. Every single person who's building a customer. And they are craftsmen building work of amazing machinery. Nakai is more like, to me, a fashion designer who built something that you can't explain but people love. Right. It's like, I'm not saying, like, I think the kits look really nice. I think aesthetically they work. But, like, yeah. Does he cut everything off with a sawzall? And, like, does he even tape the lines? Like. No, it's a little rough around the edges.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it says rough in the name.

[Brian Scotto]

Exactly. And that was kind of the point. So Vinnie and I went and filmed a whole video just kind of talking. I think it comes out this week or something.

[Matt Farah]

Wait, did he glue the tow hook on or.

[Brian Scotto]

Okay, so I'll get to that. Because this is where every. This is where everyone was like, oh. Because that was definitely the one where, like, it goes. Apparently. The backstory, from what I heard from the people from RWB usa, was that there was an owner who hadn't who had the car on airbags. And because of the airbags, they were unable to mount the tow hook to where he normally mounts a toe. Maybe the tank was in the way. I'm not sure the full detail, but they wanted to take the footage photos. So with the tow hook. So Makai just cut the tow hook and glued it on. And the owner of the car thought it was funny and videoed it. And, like, it has been like. I mean, the past month or so, like, every time I post my rwb, like, I'll get comments now. People are like, oh, it's a hack.

[Matt Farah]

Job, blah, blah, blah, to be forever on that one.

[Brian Scotto]

And the thing that kills me about it is that the Internet made RWB something. It wasn't RWB, where these rough race cars, they were taking old 911s and tracking them with the idlers. In Japan, the cars came over here and the initial cars were like, you know, kind of in the same mindset. Right. Like, mine marks a bunch of other ones. And then they kind of became really like, status symbol show cars as the price of the cars went up. And it's like. But if you think about it, like, Nakai hasn't changed what he's done.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, he has made the Nevermind album every single year. He's made Appetite for Destruction every year he keeps doing the same thing. So when people started saying this, the thing, I was like, why? It's 15 years later. Why are we still complaining about the same thing. There were people who hated it when my car came out, and there are people who hate it today.

[Matt Farah]

I think there are people who just.

[Brian Scotto]

Want to hate things.

[Matt Farah]

Well, they want evidence that the thing that they thought was true is true.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

And so if they already thought, here's this guy cutting up Porsches, putting these quote, ugly body kits, not my, you know, whatever, you know, ruining the sacredness of the Porsche, blah, blah, blah. And now here's a video of the guy literally taping or gluing something on.

[Brian Scotto]

Of course. It's everything they wanted.

[Matt Farah]

It's everything they want.

[Brian Scotto]

I know. Yeah. And it's unfortunate because, like, I mean, I really, I like Nakai and I understand, like, what he is. And I also understand what my car is because people were like, should have brought it. Like, someone actually commented me on something and I don't know why I fight with people on the Internet. I really have to stop that. But I went and kind of said something to what someone else was saying. And someone else came back and was like, maybe you should have bought a singer, Scott. Oh. And I'm like, yeah, you don't understand where I live financially and where someone who can afford a singer lives. It's a very different world. But it actually got my car when it was way cheap.

[Matt Farah]

But that's actually kind of a revealing comment that someone looks. Looks at you and looks at your car.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

And their go to is, should have bought a singer. I mean, the implication is that one would be cross shopping those two things as equals.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, and I think where you can actually compare it to the two is like in Back to Fashion is like, you could go somewhere and wear something from Louis vuitton that cost $5,000. Or you could get a thrifted T shirt that someone could say is worth 5,000.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Brian Scotto]

And like, they're both. Someone would pay them for it. But like, one is like a luxury designer thing with the perfect stitch, and the other one is an old band shirt that was originally $16 and screen printed.

[Matt Farah]

40 years of wear and tear right.

[Brian Scotto]

Now is like the thing. And someone's willing to pay for it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I think that that's the difference. It's like. And by the way, on all that, I do want to say, like, my car is 13 years old. I've had no issues with it. None of the caulking is cracked. The body kit hasn't cracked. Like, it's still great. Right. Like, there's like, it's amazing how well it's held up versus, like, Other cars that I've built where in three years, the body kit's falling apart, it warps in the sun, like, all that kind of stuff. Like, so, like, quality is there. I just think, like, his aesthetic of putting it on, which, by the way, is the reason people sit around and watch him.

[Matt Farah]

Bro, they sell tickets.

[Zach Klapman]

It's crazy.

[Matt Farah]

If he's the only body shop body person on the planet that can literally sell admission tickets, that's fucking crazy. Forget the cars. That's crazy.

[Brian Scotto]

But I think that this is that part that, like, people want to hate it because it's almost like. I think people look at it and go, oh, he got there the easy way because it's just. It's. It's, you know, it's easily done versus, like, the. The amount of work company, like Singer or, you know, we both know Matt from AI. Like, when you look at a car AI builds, you're like, I know that they did everything on this car. They Zinc, every bolt. They. They did everything. They care so much. And I think when you're. When you either support a company like that or you are that company, you can't. You. It frustrates you so much to watch someone cut something with a saw and then be more famous than you.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Like, I think that that's a difficult thing called personality. I mean, there's a guy who looks like fucking the Japanese Doc Brown Wiley ass hair. He's got a Sawzall, a carton of fucking Marlboro Reds, and the dudes just going at it, chain smoking, and people are videoing.

[Brian Scotto]

I had this. I had this random. I had this random thought. It's not a theory, it's thought. But imagine like, a year from now, because apparently he's almost done with his list.

[Matt Farah]

With his list.

[Brian Scotto]

He has, like, a list because it's like, it's so back order.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say, like, he finishes the car and then, like, commits seppuku on the hood.

[Brian Scotto]

But imagine instead, like, the menu. Imagine it. No, imagine instead. Imagine instead we find out that all these years he spoke English, he's from Flushing, Queens. He's not even from Japan. And he just. And he just. He just pulled it on everyone. This has been a troll for the past 15 years. He used to work at Willits Point, next to Shea Stadium, and he was doing body kits there. And then he came up with a thing, and we all bought it. Came with a backstory.

[Matt Farah]

Real. It's the long con.

[Brian Scotto]

But that being said, I absolutely.

[Matt Farah]

He's got, like, a goomba accent.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just a kid from Flushing, lives off the seven line. That is the story. Like, if that ends that way, I would be. And like, I just watched the value of my car do this. I couldn't be happier. I wish my car was worth 30 grand again.

[Matt Farah]

It'd be so great.

[Brian Scotto]

I'd be street parked outside right now.

[Matt Farah]

If it was just all.

[Brian Scotto]

It's like the end of. Like usual, sun suspects.

[Matt Farah]

You're like, twin.

[Brian Scotto]

That's. That's how I want the story to end.

[Matt Farah]

Or what? I mean, what if he can only do these builds in 24 hours because he had a twin that would he go out for a cigarette that the twin would pop in, he'd tag the.

[Brian Scotto]

Something like that. It needs something like that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. A fictional retelling of the Nakai story.

[Brian Scotto]

It's. It. I haven't had a chance. I mean, it's funny because the Internet thinks, like, oh, you must talk to Nakai all the time. I'm like, I haven't spoken to in years. Yeah. And I see Toshi, who's his business partner, more often. But I kind of want to, like, eventually, at some point, sit down and say Nakai. Like, do you like what this has become? Like, are you happy where this is at? Like, where is your head at? Because I don't think anyone ever asks them.

[Matt Farah]

That's funny.

[Brian Scotto]

Or how you won't answer it. Or how. Or yeah, like. Or how he answers it. And like, I'm sure he's probably pretty bummed right now that there's like all these videos calling him a hack. Or he's got the bag and he don't care.

[Matt Farah]

Think that he doesn't know of their existence. That's right. That's what I want for him is to, like, there's people that look at the Internet. I just chain smoke and cut fenders. Let's fucking go.

[Brian Scotto]

So here's a good question. This is a good little segue. Do you guys read your own comments on your content? Like, do you pay attention to any negativity from what you get? Or do you. Or do you separate from that?

[Zach Klapman]

I look at it like the first day, but I only focus on if the negativity is constructive in some way.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Zach Klapman]

If it's just like, I fucking hate you or whatever.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I think. I think I was lucky enough to watch you go through the big negatives in the early years, and now that I'm older.

[Brian Scotto]

What was your big negative in my early years?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I got called fat Like a thousand times a day. It was like horrible for my self esteem and everything and yeah. Led into like deep, deep depression and stuff.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, the Internet's really dark.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, you would also, and you would respond, you'd respond to every comment because you were trying to answer questions. Yeah, but even if those questions were negative, not like the fat stuff, but if it was just a negative comment about the video, you would spend so much time responding.

[Matt Farah]

I didn't have the right strategy.

[Zach Klapman]

It's whack. It's whack. A mole that won't end. So I think I learned from that and I just try not to now.

[Matt Farah]

I'll, I'll take a look at Instagram comments, but I won't look at YouTube comments at all.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it's definitely a different swamp there.

[Matt Farah]

It's, it's equally bad.

[Brian Scotto]

It's tough for me because I prided so much in the early days of Hoonigan of like the joke, like my title was Chief Creative Officer cco, but Vinnie used to call me chief Comment Officer because I was the one who was in there commenting. Like people would think, like there was a community manager was like, no, I was there because I wanted to see what was working, what was resonating with the audience, what wasn't resonating, like real customer service kind of aspect to it. Right. Ken recommended me this book when I first started Hoonigan called Raving fans. It's like 70 page book, but it basically was a book written in the time of the expansion of brands like Walmart. And like how do you compete with Walmart as a mom and pop shop? Right. And the way you do it is just better customer service. Right. Like people will pay more money to work with with you if you get that customer service. And one of the stories in the book very quickly was there was like a big, you know, bookstore in the mall that this company was in. And they were a small bookstore and someone came in and asked them for a book. They didn't have it. They looked online very quickly and they saw that the store down the block had it. And they had two choices. They could either send that person to the store or just say, sorry, we don't have it. But instead they sent another store clerk to the store to buy the store to buy it and then sell it to them for a loss. Yeah, right, sell it to them and lose money because they wanted to bought a customer. Right. And I, we treated our audience that way in the early days. It got a lot harder as the company got bigger and Our audiences got bigger. And that's actually back to, like, my conversation before of, like, you know, I. Do you know who Foster Huntington is by any chance? Foster Hunting. He has an Instagram, so he's actually famous for hashtag Van Life. So his backstory actually might have been he was either working for Ralph Orion or Calvin Klein, one of the two. I know you obviously your family connection on years ago, but he was working for one of them. Was in New York City as a. Yeah, Foster Hunting was in New York City as a. As, like, a designer and, like, woke up one day and was like, I hate this. Like, I don't want to live in the city. I don't want to do my job. Sold, like, all his worldly belongings, bought a Volkswagen Vanagon and started traveling. And this is like 2011 or something.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

So it's like before, like, the overland and like, expedition thing really of explodes, and he starts calling it Hashtag. And it was right as Instagram launched. So he's on the.

[Matt Farah]

He literally invented Van Life.

[Brian Scotto]

So he kind of started the hashtag Van Life. And then the New York Times wrote a story on him.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

About Van Life. And he kind of exploded from there. Anyway, long story short, we were Instagram friends. I'd never met him. I had this similar. I had this similar moment that I was going through, actually, right before Ken died, where I wanted to just, like, I just need to bug out for a few weeks. I was, like, super stressed. Like, I was unhappy with how things were at Hoonigan. I wasn't really enjoying my job there anymore, and I was thinking about leaving. So I was like, I need to just go clear my head, just kind of get away from everything. So I bought this Audi 4000 in Canada, as you do. I actually bought it during the pandemic. I might have talked about this on the last. I don't want to repeat myself, but I bought it and the car sat for two years.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I think you meant.

[Brian Scotto]

And then I bought it. I drove it down. Anyway, I ended up stopping at this guy's place. He has these really cool tree houses on his property. He built these, like, sick tree houses on his property. So I went and he's like, yeah, come by. Come stay in the tree house. You know, so on and so on. And so I came there.

[Matt Farah]

Is that the tree house?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that's a tree house.

[Matt Farah]

Sick. Yeah, it's super tree house.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it's really, really cool. So, hey, look, there's. There's me, Ryan Scott, commenting there, but went there, stayed at his tree house. And like, I had never met this kid before. Like, we talked on Instagram and that was it. And he's like, he's 10 years younger than me. And I never had a conversation with someone who was so much younger than me, but I felt like I was having a conversation with a mentor. Like it was of those things. And what I realized was we were very similar in the way that we looked at life and creative, but we did it differently. He was working for this big company and left and went and did it on his own. And I went and started this thing and tried to grow it really big and then kind of got sucked into that side of it. All of a sudden. The reason I first got there wasn't the reason I was still there. My mom has a famous quote that she said to me. I don't know if it's hers or she stole it from someone else, but don't fact check her because it'll crush me. But that be careful how high you climb the ladder because you'll forget why you got on the first rung to begin with. Because, like, remember, like, in my magazine days, I was an editor in chief at 25. Like, I was pretty young to be doing what I was doing. And I was a little. As a kid who was a college dropout, I was pretty proud of what I had accomplished. So I was kind of really enjoying enjoying the, like, I'm the editor in chief of not one, not two, but three magazines. You know, by the time I was 26 and I had all these like, I'm gonna own a 911 before I'm 30. And like, you know, I created all these things of like this, this road to success of all the things I wanted. And my mom just was like, be careful because you're gonna get to a point where you get so high up that like, you forgot why you got on. And that definitely happened.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. When you're Talking about the 401ks and all that shit and the.

[Brian Scotto]

No, you're just a business manager and you're not. And then you're like, I didn't even want to do this. Like, I'm a mediocre manager at best, you know, and now I'm a piss poor creative because I'm spending all my time worrying about management. So anyway, I went and had this conversation and I was like, I. At that point in my life, I hadn't seek therapy yet, so I just needed someone to fucking talk to. And this dude was like, yeah, you can come stay at my house. We can listen to music or you want to talk about life? We'll talk about life. And he said this one thing to me and, you know, I don't think it's uniquely him, but it stuck with me. And he said, you can either mean a lot to a little or a little to a lot.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Right. And that I think, I think, you know, and at that point, Hoonigan was already a little too. A lot. Right. There was a. There was a lot of Hoonigan. There was a lot to a little of Hoonigan. But for the average guy who's driving a Tacoma right now that has a Hoonigan sticker on the back that doesn't even know I left a year ago.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

That's the little. Right. And I. But I enjoyed when we were a lot to a little. I really. That was my favorite era where like I knew a lot of the fans names. Like, I connected on that side. And that's where I think like the Patreon stuff and all, that's a lot more interesting.

[Matt Farah]

Patreon is better for that. When we have. When we have folks that ask us questions for the pod from the Patreon, you know, there's new ones every time and people come up with fun, you know, usernames or whatever.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But there's also the same like 30 or 40 people, right. That come up with a pretty good question for almost every show.

[Brian Scotto]

And his business. Business model was like, super. Serve those people right? And then whatever else happens, it's fine. But build a business off of those people.

[Matt Farah]

That's what this business is. The. At Westside, it's, you know, in the whole company's history, four years history, we've had about 300 customers. Yeah, that's it.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean that's not a lot.

[Brian Scotto]

You could remember all the names.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

If you didn't have any.

[Matt Farah]

Remember.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And you know, and I know their cars and I know what they want and. And whatever.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And so it's. And to those people, we're fucking clutch.

[Brian Scotto]

I mean, think of how insane the content thing is of like. I used to work for a magazine that was one of the top. This is crazy. By the way, Rides magazine was one of the top selling magazines in America. In the. In the automotive space. We outsold Car and Driver and all of it, really. Because we were so heavily Newsstand.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So Newsstand Car and Driver crushed us because every dentist in the world had a subscription. But subscription.

[Zach Klapman]

That subscription.

[Matt Farah]

They crushed you.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. I'm sorry. Subscription.

[Matt Farah]

They did.

[Brian Scotto]

But Subscription, they crushed us. But Newsstand, we were one of the top selling magazines. You had strong kids who weren't buying subscriptions. And we're just buying every issue that came out. Which also made the magazine really profitable. Yeah, right. And this again is part of the. We talked about before the European model. Like more people were buying at the newsstand than getting subscriptions because the subscriptions aren't cheaper in Europe. Like a subscription is like $120, you know, so you just buy at the newsstand.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So my road rat subscriptions like £50 a year and it's four issues.

[Brian Scotto]

It's a nice book. It is very nice book.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's. That's magazine as a luxury item, which I am all about.

[Brian Scotto]

And that's one of the things I want to do next, is that type of stuff. But, but I, you know, nothing, I didn't say that. I said, are you hiring? What's up? Let's get to that because we haven't even talked about what do next. We'll get to that. But I mean, what was our time count now?

[Zach Klapman]

Like, we're 124.

[Matt Farah]

We barely even touch.

[Brian Scotto]

Have we started the show yet? Did we hit record yet? We're gonna hit record, but no. Back to that. The concept of like make sure to keep it going. You got a little Red Bull there.

[Matt Farah]

Sugar free Red Beezy.

[Brian Scotto]

So. But you know, I think that looking at that model, it really kind of shifted the way like I want to make stuff. Like I want to make stuff for people who really, really, really care about that one thing. There's this famous episode that I get made fun of for that happened on Hoonoon. Again, it's called the Rusty Bolt episode. That's not the actual name of the episode. But I spend the entire time, I spend the entire episode fixing the rusty bolt. Right.

[Matt Farah]

This is the Chinese restaurant episode of Seinfeld.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And it's like, and it's like there's an entire group of people who are like, I fucking hate that. Like, he didn't get more done. And then there's the other audience. It's like, I hate that. I watched the whole episode and I think that that for me is enjoyable. Like, can I. Can you make an episode about a rusty bolt and make it a whole episode versus, like, okay, in this episode we swap in a hellcat engine into a Rolls Royce where you're like, well, of course that's gonna do well. Right. But can you do storytelling in a way that people like the other stories.

[Matt Farah]

But like man, just think about the fucking margins on an episode about a bolt versus an episode about an entire car build. The margins are so good.

[Brian Scotto]

I was just. I was just on. Do you know the grind? How the grind Hard plumbing, guys, man. We live in a different world of automotive. So Grind Hard is a group. They got famous for the Barbie cart. So they built.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, they made a full size Barbie car.

[Brian Scotto]

They made like a Barbie, like quad, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And then the thing that they had at SEMA was the monster bike, which is like. Which basically like. Yeah, that thing on top was what they built. And it went like mega viral. Sure.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. It went so viral that they weren't the ones who got it viral. Like it was like lad Bible and everyone else's ripping their videos went viral. Right. But they kind of work in this area of like, they like building just dumb stuff like most of its cart base. They build some Hummers.

[Matt Farah]

I think I may have seen some silly shit that they've built for sure.

[Brian Scotto]

They. They build weird stuff.

[Matt Farah]

Long as fuck.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Anyway, I went on their. Their podcast last week and one of the things that I spoke to them about was that I think we got to this world in. And I don't want to say the same thing. If you were listening to the podcast, I apologize, but this is going for four hours, so we're good. And by the way, I'm also launching my own podcast. I'm going to give you guys all my material before I even get there. Plug my own thing. So then from there we were talking about this idea of have you ever gone to a stadium to watch sports? And every. Everyone's standing and you're kind of like, if we all sat down, we all could see the game, but now we all have to stand.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

I think that's what happened to automotive content. YouTube, which is like, we all started putting Viper engines in Miatas and now you can't just do a cool simple build anymore because it's just not gonna work because everyone's. We one upped each other to the point of like we're putting rockets in cars.

[Zach Klapman]

Video hyperbole.

[Matt Farah]

Freddy has now pigeonholed himself into having to make a P wave hurricane flooded by.

[Brian Scotto]

I know. It's like, how much more insane is it going to be, you know? And I think that this is where.

[Matt Farah]

We'Ve hit the edge.

[Brian Scotto]

We've hit the edge. And I don't know if the viewers are actually happy with that or if the algorithm is just servicing it. But. But the but. And that's part of the algorithmic problem is that if you were just to build a really nice E46 and there's an audience that really wants to see that, like, it's not gonna. It's not gonna bubble up. You're not gonna get this. Good to know, right? Yeah, no, you're right. But you know what I'm saying, like, it's just. That's not gonna be the type of content that does. Well, do you watch anything of Vinny's content?

[Matt Farah]

I watch a lot of his, like, Instagram reels and stuff. I don't watch a lot of his YouTube content, but it seems like he's doing well.

[Brian Scotto]

Do you watch his YouTube content?

[Zach Klapman]

Infrequently. Like, one out of five.

[Brian Scotto]

I'm. I don't want me to put him on blast, but, like, he. I'm so proud of what he's done and also somewhat surprised because Vinnie was the guy at Hoonigan who was like, I want to do something other than be on camera, because I don't see being on camera being my future after Hoonigan. And then after Hoonigan, he's the guy who's, like, crushing it. Right. Like, I think he's the one that's, like, really figured out a space for himself and he started doing these, like, comparison videos. And I think he's done this really good job of taking, like, the old comparison video of yore, which was the motor trend kind of model. Right. Or the Hagerty model, and mixed it with, like, a more intimate vlog type of casualness and personality that, like, I think always misses on those. On everyone else's videos. And, like, I don't want to call anyone else out. They're all really good friends, but they're still making TV shows for the Internet.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I think, like, he's figured out the show that when I watch it, I'm getting this, like, comparison. Like, he did this one where he compared three levels of 9, 11. So he compared Bernoull's C2.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And then someone else's, I think, modded whatever, 997. And then his GT3, and basically was like, which one is like, of these? I think. I think he called it worth it or something like that down there.

[Matt Farah]

Base, it's Corvette.

[Brian Scotto]

Worth it. Well, he has more Ferrari worth that one.

[Matt Farah]

Sweet spot. That one.

[Brian Scotto]

That was a different one. That was the built on one. I don't know. He's making stuff every week, the dudes crushing on that. But, like, you know, I think that this is one of those Things where, like, there's a sweet spot there. But I've had conversations with him because he was doing. I'm probably airing too much personal business. But like, I was talking about, like, this stuff is really, really good. Like, I think, like, as someone who was in charge of content for Hoonigan, I look at this and I'm like, I know that this gets better. Like, I know that this audience, like, it may not feel like it's there now, but in two years from now, like, this is the thing that can keep growing. Like, you've got the right energy for it, and it feels like it can keep growing. I like, the problem with him doing car builds is his bro is boring as fuck. He builds the most simple, nuanced cars that you and I love. Yeah, but like, it's a GT3. Like, I'm happy that you modded it tastefully in the way I would do it.

[Zach Klapman]

But like, but it's competing against the customer.

[Brian Scotto]

It's competing against the guy who's like, I took a GT3 and I got a motor out of a P51 Mustang and put it in the front. And you're like, well, I want to watch that abortion. So you don't watch. And I think that that's. It's difficult for creators where, like, people like Vinnie, they watch Vinnie because they like Vinnie's personality.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But I think it's hard in that world of like, yeah, is this build important enough? Is this whatever. And I got into what he's doing.

[Matt Farah]

A good job of, I think is. And I haven't, you know, Vinny, I love you.

[Brian Scotto]

Don't apologize. I don't watch anyone.

[Matt Farah]

I don't watch anyone.

[Brian Scotto]

I subscribe to your Patreon, by the way, and I subscribe to a bunch of people's Patreon because I felt like I couldn't tell people you need to support automotive content and not do it myself.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you. I appreciate. I'll subscribe to you.

[Brian Scotto]

It wasn't.

[Matt Farah]

Entry level plan.

[Brian Scotto]

I only have one plan. I don't offer much.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, really?

[Brian Scotto]

Six bucks?

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

It was the. It's the initial one. I'll eventually shut it down once it's up and running. But like, right now, ipo. I'm launching two podcasts, which is probably a dumb thing to do and you guys will probably tell me so. But I'm watching one podcast, which is like a banter style podcast, like what you guys do here. And then I'm watching. I'm launching, like a very formulated concept, two different shows. So the one show which I'm calling Very Vehicular is not bad, is it? Yeah, pretty good. That's kind of whatever is. It's a V. So I'm going to be all the way down the line. That's. Yeah. Or do you call it a Very Vehicular podcast? Yeah. To bump it up, you call it. You know, but what I've been doing is I've been recording practice episodes and just putting all that on Patreon. Sure. Right. Like the first one, I literally. I had never. You guys have much nicer equipment, but I have a rodecaster.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, those are nice. That's. That's what we use for portable.

[Brian Scotto]

Portable stuff. Yeah. So I basically have like a portable setup I recorded in my friend's bakery the other day. I like put my. I didn't even have a stand for my iPhone. My iPhone's just sitting in the corner and you can like see the zipper of my bag. Oh, my God. And I. But I want it to be like that because I'm. I can be too much of a perfectionist where, like, I would. It would take me six months to release my first episode. But there's something about the world I created for this Patreon audience that like, I'm just gonna pump it out. You guys get to see.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. They're not gonna judge you.

[Brian Scotto]

Watch me as I grow it and as I get to the point where I'm like, okay, cool. I feel like I'm ready to start actually doing episodes on YouTube and kind of go there.

[Matt Farah]

So.

[Brian Scotto]

But anyway. But the point I was. I don't know, I bounced around what.

[Matt Farah]

Vinnie's doing that I think really works. At least what I've seen from his Instagram content, which is just cut down versions of his YouTube content, is that he seems to be like buying, selling, wrenching. Comparing a lot of cars, you know, from that period.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Where people our age could. Could buy one.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, you know, their company is called Driver's Error.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So him and Ron started a company called Driver's Error. I'm not involved. Everyone thinks I am, but I just like my buddies and I support them, so I wear their stuff. But they started coming Driver's Error. And that term came from a conversation that we were all in, which was like, this is the last of the Driver's era cars. Right. Like 2008, 2010, when like the Mitsubishi Evo all of a sudden came with a DSG style transmission. Was the shift out of it. Right. Like, yeah, the Evo 9 is probably still part of that. Maybe the Evo 10 isn't. Maybe it still is. But the idea that all the nannies, all of that stuff started coming in, and then by the time you get to, you know, 2020, it's all kind of gone. And we didn't realize it was leaving and that. So this, like, night, like, late night, mid-90s to mid. To late or early August, late.09?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Is this, like, the last of the drivers era? And that was, like, the whole concept of their car, because their company. Because we started looking at all the cars that we started caring about. Right. And we started talking about. Which is the classic thing. Right. The car you want in high school is the car that's gonna be worth money. So it's like you start looking at, like, STIs, and they're like, oh, those are starting to go up. E46s, like, those are starting to go up. And you start going, oh, all these cars are really starting to catch on. And the way that the 80s and 90s cars did a few years ago, but that these are, like, still new enough that they feel newish to drive. But, you know, there's a reason I drove my 1995 RS2 here and not my Swallowtail. Yeah, right. Because, like, it's still fine in traffic. It's still a regular car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I just did 150 miles in the NSX this weekend. It was great.

[Brian Scotto]

It's great.

[Matt Farah]

Absolutely.

[Brian Scotto]

And that's a perfect error. Like, driver's arc.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I think there's a whole audience right now that's looking for that type of content. Right.

[Matt Farah]

And they're for. You know, we've mainly filmed new cars and there are very few of them.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. That's a great combo. Let's change that, because I just went to my first press event.

[Zach Klapman]

You did? You went to the Scout. I saw.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Friends with Jamie over at Scout. He was at Vortex back in the day. He used to have to ban me all the time from the Vortex forums. And I went to the Scout launch, and that's about. Right. That's about the right face. And it was very interesting to be at a press launch and had not been at one in a really long time and saw pretty corporate.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, this one was a little bit different because there was a ton of people. There was a ton of people there who were, like, more in the influencer space. Plus, they invited out, like, a ton of Scout enthusiasts to be there, which was cool. But there was just guys who, like, I felt like I literally saw them. I'M like, oh, I haven't seen you since the R8 launch, which was the last launch and the first R8. And you're like, they're still doing the same thing. Like, that's that. I saw Tamara Warren, who. I love her. I haven't seen her in forever. And she had disappeared for a while and was kind of back. Saw Mark Vaughn, like, you know, just a bunch of like, just career auto journalists. Your auto journalist. And it was like, funny, because it's like I walked away from it, came back. It's a little different. The rooms aren't as nice as they were when we were younger.

[Matt Farah]

They're spending their chickens a little colder.

[Brian Scotto]

Than it used to be. Spending a little less money, but except.

[Matt Farah]

For a couple of brands which are really over the top.

[Brian Scotto]

Yes. Text me those because I love you.

[Matt Farah]

Want to catch a ride? When, like a luxury brand is under new ownership, like when Stroll bought Aston, then you want to go on the launch for the next car.

[Brian Scotto]

That's the move.

[Matt Farah]

They rented a fucking hotel on the cliff over Monaco for a month and they had 18 DB12s. And I was. And there was like seven or eight waves of like three days each. It was Michelin this and the wine pairings, and it was fucking crazy. It was millions and millions and millions of dollars.

[Zach Klapman]

And their total debt as of June 2024 is $1.7 billion.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that's not that bad.

[Zach Klapman]

It's not too bad.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that's not that bad.

[Zach Klapman]

It's not bad.

[Matt Farah]

But that's where you want to catch them.

[Brian Scotto]

Do you remember when Audi used to have what they would refer to as Audi bubble? Like if you went to an Audi event, they wanted to make sure that you never left.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like you'd be staying at a hotel and you wouldn't get on an elevator with someone else from that hotel who wasn't part of the Audi trip.

[Matt Farah]

And then they program your tv. Everything was Audi.

[Brian Scotto]

Everything is super programmed. One of the. I'll tell this one quickly because I love the story. I. So it was actually. I joking about the R8 launch. It was the R8 launch. It wasn't. It was the launch. The V8, R8 launch. And so it's the first. It's the international launch being held at the Sanctuary. Remember the Sanctuary? Great.

[Matt Farah]

I was there a week ago. In Scottsdale.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, in Scottsdale.

[Matt Farah]

With the road and track of it.

[Brian Scotto]

Fantastic. Fantastic resort, boss. So I don't know, I like miss my connection. I fly in, I get in super late and I'm going to check in. And they're like, I'm sorry, sir, we don't have a room for you. I was like, okay. Like, I don't even. Like, it's late, so I don't even know who to call.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And this woman who was the head of pr, I think her name was Christine Wilder or whatever, she. She came out, she was head of pr, Germany.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

And she said. She's like. She starts, like, just yelling at these people. Like, what do you mean you don't have a room for him? Like, you need to figure this out.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Such and such and such. So I basically get put in the presidential suite.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

So I'm in my early 20s at this point, like mid-20s. And I have a lot of friends who lived in Scottsdale and Phoenix. Phoenix area. So I just start calling everybody up, being like, guys, I got four rooms. One has a hot tub in it. Like, I have about 100 Heinekens I've ordered to the room on Addie's tab. Like, come on over, let's go. And like, so we party. Like, have like a ton of fun. I go to the drive the next morning, party again that night. Like, skip dinner goes. Actually, I made cocktails. And in cocktails, I was hanging with Christine and I was beer drinking at the time and all the other journalists at this hour. Like, this was. This is an area to kind of put this in time. Like, I was the youngest person there.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

By a decade.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Everyone else, this was at the very beginning of YouTube.

[Brian Scotto]

They weren't inviting the blog. Yeah, Right. I was getting in because I was.

[Matt Farah]

Jalopnik was not getting any.

[Brian Scotto]

Johnny wasn't getting an invite. Davey wasn't getting an invite. But because I was a magazine, I would get the invite. And so anyway, I'm there and Christine, you being German, was like, oh, finally someone who drinks beer. So her and I drank a bunch of beers together. And then the next morning I'm checking out and I see her and I know I had made a good impression. So I said, hey, I realize that you probably don't have any spare R8s, but I'm in town for the week. Can I borrow an S4 or whatever or something else? Right.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And she said, oh, we'll get something sorted for you for sure. Where are you staying? I was like, oh, I'm going to go to the Valley Ho in town. Why aren't you staying here?

[Matt Farah]

Best hotel ever, by the way.

[Brian Scotto]

Valley Ho is fantastic.

[Matt Farah]

Valley Ho is my favorite, favorite hotel in the state. Of Arizona, possibly in America.

[Brian Scotto]

Mid century modern, like, and they were mid century modern before. Mid century modern was cool again. Right. I mean, they've been doing it for years.

[Matt Farah]

Bull Run 2010. We went there and it was amazing.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it's a great. It's a great hotel. First, My first press launch of all time was at the Valley. Ho.

[Matt Farah]

No way.

[Brian Scotto]

For the Dodge Caliber SRT4 launch. That was my first press launch. 2000.

[Matt Farah]

That is the biggest mismatch of great hotel. Shittiest car ever.

[Brian Scotto]

I don't. Yeah. Anyway, we'll get back to staying at the Valley. So I'm like, I'm staying at the Valley. And she's like, that's ridiculous. We'll just extend your room. And they don't downgrade me to the normal room. All the other journalists are. They keep me in the five bedroom suite that I'm staying in that has its own, like, private indoor pool kind of thing. And I just.

[Matt Farah]

Was it one of, like, the houses?

[Brian Scotto]

It was a lot of house, like, down, like, staying in my own, like, villa. And we partied every night.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I thought by the end, only.

[Matt Farah]

Scottsdale trash can do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, we. What's the. Like, what's the statute of limitation? We stole a taxi cab.

[Zach Klapman]

My God.

[Brian Scotto]

When I say we, I wasn't the one driving, but I may have been in the back seat. And the people behind us had to pick up the taxi cab driver and bring him to the. To the house.

[Matt Farah]

No way.

[Brian Scotto]

Because we were out at the bars and this girl was like, we need to go here. And the gu. Was like, I don't know where that is. And she was like, get out. And he, like, got out of a car and she got in and I'm in the back seat and she just takes off with the guy outside the car. And then like, my other friends had to bring him. So he came back to the. To the. He came back to the sanctuary with us.

[Matt Farah]

Buster back.

[Brian Scotto]

Buster camp. But we brought him with us. And then he partied with us at the sanctuary.

[Matt Farah]

It was amazing.

[Brian Scotto]

It was amazing. Yeah. Stole his car. It was great.

[Matt Farah]

I never been in the presidential suite before. What do you got in there?

[Brian Scotto]

And then at the end. End, I'm like, like, they're like, I'm going to check out. And I'm just like, they're going to hit me with the room charge. Not the room charge, but they're going to hit me with a booze charge.

[Matt Farah]

Nada.

[Brian Scotto]

Covered. I mean, this was just like epic. I was ready for like, because I said to my friend the night before, like, hey, man, you might have to help me on this. Like, we went pretty wild last night. Like when they. When they're just delivering bottles of scotch to the room. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

You know, hundreds of drops.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

[Matt Farah]

If you order a bottle of scotch, room service, that's.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, bring the whole bottle. Can you bring the bottle and 19 shot glasses, dude.

[Matt Farah]

Zach and I went to, I want to say it was the second gen Hyundai Genesis coupe launch, the facelift in Vegas. Mandarin Oriental in Vegas, which is a hotel most people don't even know exists in Vegas. It's a hotel within another hotel.

[Brian Scotto]

It was the hotel, didn't. It wasn't it called the hotel for a while or something?

[Matt Farah]

It might have been, but it's like.

[Brian Scotto]

The tall one inside the other one.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's like there's like seven floors of it inside. Whatever the fucking. So we get. I mean, they put it's mantle, so every room is all right. At least at a pretty high baseline level. But Zach and I, this was in our room sharing phase. We would get the double and share the room, which we did until we were about 30, by the way.

[Brian Scotto]

Ken Block and I shared rooms in the early days. Yeah, yeah, no, he was a multimillionaire, but we still shared rooms because it was a budget, because he was good about following a budget.

[Matt Farah]

But the room, the adjoining room that our room was connected to, they left the door open and I fucking peaked. And it turns out that we were like the seventh bedroom of the Jay Z Suite. And they had not. And nobody was in that bitch. And it was literally like 10,000 square feet. There's a gym, there's a pool in it, there's a full bar, like where you would have a bartender and full liquor bottles and nobody. And we were like, okay, how do we handle this? And we're like, well, we're gonna go to the dinner, we're gonna go to the presentation and all that. And if we come back at like 9, 10 at night, nobody's in. That's our room.

[Brian Scotto]

That's our room. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

We fucking did some damage in that bitch.

[Brian Scotto]

So good.

[Matt Farah]

But we couldn't like tell anybody.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trust me. This is the first time I'm telling the story. I'm never getting invited to an Audi event again.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, dude. Sanctuary in 20 in 2009. It must have been brand new.

[Brian Scotto]

It was brand new. Yeah, yeah, it was great.

[Matt Farah]

That's a good hotel.

[Brian Scotto]

Did you do bull run in 2006?

[Matt Farah]

No, I did 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, we did 2. I did 2006. The Z06 had just been launched. We convinced. I don't even think was out yet. Like, no one had seen it yet. We convinced GM to give us a Z06 for the week. And it was a ton of fun. But we got to Vegas, and we actually separated from everyone from Bull Run because we were just kind of, like, done with everyone else on Bull Run. And we knew some girls in town. We called them, and next thing you know, we were partying in the actual Rain Man Suite.

[Matt Farah]

Like from the movie.

[Brian Scotto]

From the movie. Like, it was. I don't even remember. I remember it was one of those nights, but I remember that was one of those moments you're like, yeah, this is a crazy life we live. Like, here I am partying in the Rain Man Suite.

[Matt Farah]

I heard that. You. Can I forget which one of the. In, like, old Vegas. Like, Fremont Vegas is the hotel that's Biff's Pleasure palace in back. And I've heard you can get the. The Biff Tannen Suite in that hotel, but I've never actually tried.

[Brian Scotto]

Isn't the Elvis Suite still in Westlake?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I don't know. I've never tried. But I'm down with Fremont street, though. Old Vegas.

[Brian Scotto]

I like Fremont way better, though, than actual Vegas. Yeah, I don't like how hard it is to get around Vegas.

[Matt Farah]

And Thad lives in Vegas now.

[Brian Scotto]

Wait, I didn't know that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. He went to Vegas. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

He's just like, what are you doing out there?

[Matt Farah]

Freelancing for one of these, like, autono racing teams that's participating in this. Bahrain.

[Brian Scotto]

He's a dad now, too. He's a dad.

[Matt Farah]

He's a huge baby. He's a huge Viking baby.

[Brian Scotto]

Yes, that sounds about right.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. And I'm fucking store. He got to come get his goddamn E36. He bought that E36. S54.

[Brian Scotto]

Swap.

[Matt Farah]

It's been sitting at my fucking garden store for three months. He's gonna come get it. Dude, what is. Three, two, one, action. Action.

[Brian Scotto]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

It's on your Instagram profile. And I was like, what the fuck is that?

[Brian Scotto]

So it's my new production company, slash shell company, slash creative agency.

[Matt Farah]

So basically, Cayman Islands.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, Cayman Islands, of course. No, so basically, I. Delaware. No, actually, I think it's California, which is the dumbest thing ever. But so, you know, I stepped away from. I mean, I left Hoonigan and just kind of like, kid eject. I was just. It was just. It was exhausting. Hoonigan was exhausting. Dealing with Ken's death was just tough. And I was just felt like I was pulled in a thousand different directions. And I was also, like, trying to be a dad, and it was like, a lot going on at once. And I was just like, yeah, I'm just not in this anymore. And I probably ejected way too far. Like, I went, like, full opposite side. I call like, and by.

[Matt Farah]

You bought a farm.

[Brian Scotto]

I bought a farm.

[Matt Farah]

It's a pretty hard eject.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, Yeah, I bought a farm. But when I went to go work for this. This other company, which, by the way, a company called Super Plastic, I did this, you know, Area 15 in Vegas.

[Matt Farah]

That's. Wait, what is that?

[Brian Scotto]

Area 15?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. What is it?

[Brian Scotto]

Area 15 is like an experiential. They have experiential place. So they've got everything. Everything from. Like, it's definitely somewhere you should go high. Like, it's definitely like, you go there and you walk through and you're like, I can't imagine being here sober. But the Meow Wolf is an artist that has a thing called Omega Mart there, and it's like a fake supermarket with, like, all weird items for sale. It's all like an art installation thing.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, cool.

[Brian Scotto]

I just.

[Matt Farah]

Fun.

[Brian Scotto]

I just designed and was sort of the lead creative on a project there called Dopamine.

[Matt Farah]

Good name.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

[Matt Farah]

You come up with that?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Matt Farah]

God, you're good at naming shit.

[Brian Scotto]

That's one of my social tastes.

[Matt Farah]

You are good at naming shit.

[Brian Scotto]

So Dopamine, and it's all about, like, the chase for dopamine and, like, all the different things we do for it. And it's this experience that you go through. And I don't want to give too much away. It's going to open like a few weeks. But I did that with them. It was a ton of fun. But I sort of like, was. I, like, woke up one day and, like, great company, great people. Actually, Jen Van Dyke, who was the CEO I brought into Hoonigan right before, before we sold the company, who really helped us, like, kind of fix the culture problem we were having. Like, she was great. I went. She was there. I went to go work with her. It was a ton of fun. But I sort of had this moment where I woke up one day and it was like I realized I was in a rebound relationship. Like, I was like, sitting there looking at the girl on the couch being like, I don't love you. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then so I was like, all right, I need to leave. I don't. And I needed to leave in a way that I didn't up. You know, I didn't do any damage to the company I was at.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But also, I needed to kind of, like, get back into what I was doing. And I think two things. One was, when was the last time you worked for somebody, like, other than.

[Matt Farah]

I work for on track right now?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. But, like, really, dude, I was just.

[Matt Farah]

Doing customer service for a week. I wasn't. I wasn't writing articles.

[Brian Scotto]

So you have a boss?

[Matt Farah]

I was leading a group of 50 paying customers around the state.

[Brian Scotto]

So you have a boss.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, yeah, I can be fired.

[Brian Scotto]

Right. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

I have. There's. There are people who can tell me what to do.

[Brian Scotto]

So I think one of the things I learned after being an entrepreneur for 13 years is I don't make. I'm not a good employee.

[Matt Farah]

I'm definitely not a good employee.

[Brian Scotto]

I'm, like, ungovernable.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I'm not ungovernable because I do genuinely want to help, and I do. And I do. Good customer service.

[Brian Scotto]

I don't stay in my swim lanes, though.

[Matt Farah]

I don't either. Yeah, I don't either.

[Brian Scotto]

I still think, like, I'm the head of the company even when I'm not. Right. Because I'm still going, why are we doing it like that? And they're like, that's not your job. And now that you said it, like, this person's upset with you 100%. Right. I'm used to people being upset with me, but not being able to do anything about it.

[Matt Farah]

If I couldn't. Like, if I couldn't do the exact thing that I do, I couldn't do anything.

[Brian Scotto]

So.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So I woke up one day, and I was like, okay, I'm not happy doing this, and I want to go back to doing automotive, but, like, I don't know exactly what that is. And so I, like, I went about it in, like, a very. You know, I have severe adhd, but I can keep it under control at some points. But, like, I'm kind of all over the place. And I started to, like, I spent the past year, and we don't need to talk about my therapy too much, but I, like, spent the last year, like, really looking at ADHD and, like, what it meant. Like, what is adhd? Right. So I was never diagnosed with it as a kid. I clearly had it. I was the ADHD joke to all my friends at 0 to 60. We used to do this thing. I think, actually Spinelli started it, or Richard Chang started it, where I would just start talking and they would do this, which meant I was going on a tangent. Like, Scott, I'll get back to where you tangent. Because I was all over the place all the time, right? And. But I never dealt with it. Right? I never dealt with it. And then Hoonigan, I just. You know, I just got my dopamine hit from Hoonigan, and just. And the ADHD thing helped. Like, oh, Scott wants. Scott likes lowriders today. Scott likes donks. Scott likes Indy cars. Like, what else does Scott.

[Matt Farah]

Huge team of people that can go.

[Brian Scotto]

And crush all of it. And then I went to go work for a company where my ADHD was. Was troublesome because I wasn't able to. It was like, no, we need you to do this today. Like, this. And I'm like, I'm gonna go do this instead. You know? So I sat there, and I was like. So last year, I was like, okay, I need to figure out what the hell's going on with me. I'm 44 years old, and I need to figure out, like, how, like, to deal with. Because I was actually really starting to have, like, a dark, negative side to it, right? And I. We don't need to get. And I think we talked about this a little last time, how, like, you know, Ken's death was not just Ken's death, but it was this time where, like, I had. There were all these other deaths. I didn't deal with Rachel's. I mean, all these other people who died in my life that I was just like, I'm working. Yeah, yeah, I'll deal with it tomorrow. But Ken's death. My world stopped. I had no choice but to deal with it. It was like everything I did, I couldn't. I couldn't work out of it. I didn't really know how to deal with it, and I didn't really. I. I just. Once I. Once I got through the initial part of it, I just dug back into it, and then the work didn't give me what I wanted out of it. Maybe kind of whatever. And then I was just trying to manage all these things in life, right? Like, why do I own 27 cars? Right?

[Matt Farah]

Like, why 27.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Bad. I own 27 cars and, like, more of them.

[Matt Farah]

How many are at now? Still at 27?

[Brian Scotto]

No, I'm a 27 today.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Scotto]

Actually, one of the content things.

[Matt Farah]

Pain in the ass.

[Brian Scotto]

It's such a Pain in the ass. I got into the RS2 today and I'm like, what is that noise? I popped the hood and I look and the like, AC clutch is sticking. And I'm like, that's not an easy fix.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Porsche decided that the Audi AC clutch wasn't good enough, so they had to make their own, which are NLA now. So now I gotta go search it down in like a WhatsApp. You could to go find one. But anyway, you know, I started to kind of look at, like, my life and started to realize that, like, yeah, you're really creative and that part has worked for you, but you're also kind of a nightmare for people. And, like, people, like, I had this weird relationship with everyone at Hoonigan, which is like, I really think everyone loved working with me, but they were also like, we don't know what we're getting into today. Right? Like, what is Scott, I'm gonna be today?

[Matt Farah]

I think there are a lot of leaders that become leaders but then can't handle being leaders for those exact reasons. I think you inspire people to follow you because of the ideas, but then when they're there, it's like, what am I supposed to do with any of this?

[Brian Scotto]

Right. And also I think that's one part of it too. And then also the blurring of, like, what is leadership and what is management? Which is like a whole other world of things. And it's like, I don't want to be a manager to anyone.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, I want to inspire you, but I don't want to yell at you for being late to work today. Right. Like, that's the part that's I didn't want to do. And I got way too involved in that side of it. But I sat there and I was like, okay, I spent the past year, like, reading books about adhd. Better understanding, like, how it was affecting way more things in my life than just, oh, you're forgetful, or you spin off and realizing why it was affecting my moods and all this other stuff. And also why I was also why it makes me buy 27 cars. So I was like, all right, knowing this, knowing everything about myself, I'm just going to write a list of, like, what I want to do in life and what makes me happy.

[Zach Klapman]

Right?

[Brian Scotto]

Right. And for me, the first thing is, like, I'm just not money motivated. It's just not who I am. I like to be secure, but, like, I'm not the person who's like, oh, I made this much money. That meant it was a successful Year for me, it's like, oh, I got to do these things. That made it a more successful year.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

I would say for me, my most successful years were probably not my most financially successful years. Right.

[Matt Farah]

And you don't have enough money where working is optional, right?

[Brian Scotto]

No, I mean, I don't want to get too much into it, but that bankruptcy that happened at Hoonigan also bankrupted all of my equity.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Brian Scotto]

Which was about 70%. So I lost most of what I sold the company for. So, like. Yeah, so it definitely was a little bit of a reset of like, oh, shit, it's not going to be as easy as I thought it was going to be to walk away.

[Matt Farah]

Vultures.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. So anyway, okay. So I sat down, I kind of said, you know what I like doing? I love doing different things. I love doing different projects. I want to be able to do a podcast for six months and then maybe sunset it for a little bit. Go do something else. I want to go do a documentary. I want to be able to create a cool product with somebody. I want to go. And that's one of the reasons why I asked how the running track drive was. I used to do that with my car club autocreg when I was 19. I love doing planning and running drives.

[Matt Farah]

Those are really fun, actually. And I. And the people who come do seem to really enjoy them.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

There's a lot of little things that go into it.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. But.

[Matt Farah]

But they are a good time. Like, I look at Robbie does them too. Matter of fact, he went to. He was in Sedona with a group of 30 cars. The day after we were in Sedona with a group of 30 cars, he texted me, goes, were you just in Sedona? And I was like, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Why?

[Matt Farah]

He's like, I'm. I'm here with like 30 cars. And here's the hotels we're staying at. And I was staying at this other one.

[Brian Scotto]

But, you know, for me it's like, I just want to be able to do all these different things and, you know, and you have like a very diversified life.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, you've got the road and track thing.

[Matt Farah]

I have.

[Brian Scotto]

You've got this as a podcast you've been doing for how long now?

[Matt Farah]

12 years.

[Brian Scotto]

12 years.

[Matt Farah]

This is like episode 980 something.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, congratulations. It's huge. And then you also have like west side collectors, like, which is like a whole other business. And although it all lives in automotive there, all individual businesses.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And all of them are hedges against, you know, cuz all. All four aren't through the roof at any one time. So right now, like, YouTube's in the. But like, it's okay, cuz, like, parking's all right, magazine's good and whatever. And so it's all just like, you know, one or more will collapse under their own weight or the algorithm or whatever. And, and then there will be other things to do.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. So for me, I was like, okay, I need to build a base company that can do all the things I want to do because I treated Hoonigan.

[Matt Farah]

You could have like a fucking race service, basically.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, like automotive production house.

[Brian Scotto]

And it's like, for me, it's like, well, I treated Hoonigan like this for a bit. And it was a, it was problematic in that I probably stretched Hoonigan broader than it should have been at points. Like, we did everything from the race of gentlemen because I thought pre war fucking hot rods was cool, man.

[Matt Farah]

You want to talk about instant content death? Yeah, I, I'm totally with you. I wanted to go do it too, but not.

[Brian Scotto]

And I love Mel and those guys. I love that whole crew and I enjoy it and I would love to go make up the right piece of content for them, but it wasn't really the right piece of content for Hoonigan. Yeah. And you know, and I, I, I.

[Matt Farah]

I just the, the, the street race in 120 year old cars.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Me and Zach do in Newport. It's a good.

[Brian Scotto]

I don't know about this.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Pre 1907 or earlier. And it's like a 50 mile. I mean, it is a street race.

[Brian Scotto]

They do a Model T race in Long beach where they race up to the top of Signal Hill.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Brian Scotto]

Like old Model Ts.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, get in on that. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But like, I like all that stuff. So for me, it's like, hey, how can I go broad but then keep a company that works all together? So basically I'm gonna do client work and consulting. One great thing about having 20 years in the business is people will pay you. People will pay you to do stuff for them like that, but then help use that to help sort of fund the projects that like, I just want to do. And like, I don't really care. Like, I. And I actually don't really want a ton of other partners involved because it's like, it's a thing I just want to do on my own. We're, we're in talks right now putting together like a documentary on Ken or obviously something that I'll take some time to do that. And I Think that's footage. Yeah. And I think that that's part of the thing for me is I want to be able to like, do this for three or four months and then change and swap over and do this and do that. Because in some ways I had that at Hoonigan. But then the other thing, like every day, even when I was filming Gymkhana, I was still running a company. Like, I didn't have that ability to like, just go do this one thing and be hyper focused on this one thing and not have to like, also worry about all this stuff in the background. So.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Do you. Are you able to like, do you want to chase what you think the audience wants, or do you just want to like Rick Rubin? It where make the content that you want to make and just like hope they find it?

[Brian Scotto]

I mean, I love Rick Rubin. I just read his book. Yeah. I.

[Matt Farah]

He has like contempt for the audience.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, see, I don't have contempt for the audience. I have contempt for the algorithm.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, me too.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, I believe that there's an. I know there's an audience that's there that wants to watch what I want to watch. What I realize is that the. We got on this when we lost track for a second, but the audience is inflated from what it really should be. So before I was riots, one of the biggest magazines on the newsstand. Right. It was doing around 200,000 plus Cirque. 200,000. It was one of the biggest automotive newsstands. That's blah numbers on YouTube, right?

[Matt Farah]

Well, yeah, but if they're spending seven bucks an issue, it's a different story.

[Brian Scotto]

It'S a different relationship. But I think we all got to this expectation of a million plus. I'm looking behind you and there's a plastic on the wall that says, you know, smoking tire for passing, you know, 1 million subscribers. Yeah, I don't even know how many subscribers Hoonigan had in total. We're done. Six, seven. All with all different channels. Right.

[Matt Farah]

A lot.

[Brian Scotto]

But like, like that number is sort of out of control. Like if you put all those people in a room, you'd be like, this is a lot of people that we can't actually like. You can't really connect with them on the. On that way. So for me, part of it. Are you trying to. Did Zach just leave?

[Matt Farah]

I just like Slate. Like, if Zach leaves to go to the bathroom or get water or something, that's normal. But he's been gone for long enough where I'm like a little concerned.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, like, do you Want to pause and check on him and make sure he's okay?

[Matt Farah]

Maybe, like, it's one thing if he.

[Brian Scotto]

I can also just keep talking by myself. I'll talk about.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, Zach. He might be on the phone and he was talking to. I don't. He was talking to someone earlier when you got here, that was, like, important, and maybe he had to take that call, and if so, that's fine.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. I just want to make sure I open the door.

[Matt Farah]

He's like, in a. Fucking. Today's the day we learn he has type 1 diabetes and he's on the floor.

[Brian Scotto]

He's having a seizure.

[Matt Farah]

I guess, like, the status.

[Brian Scotto]

It'd be weird to be like, we set the record and Zach died. Zach died, but Zach had to die for it. But we set the record, guys.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It was a feat of endurance.

[Brian Scotto]

I hope that's the cutout.

[Matt Farah]

No, but I think so. The point you were making was, like, it's inflated because it's being fed to people algorithmically, but it's not finding the people who really want to watch it.

[Brian Scotto]

There's like, this thing that has become a meme, which is, like, if 50 people told you today they liked you, you would feel amazing. But if you only get 50 likes on Instagram, you feel like you suck. Yeah, right. Like, we have moved into this world where, like, we just expect a certain level of validation in the digital world, but if you actually compare it to the validation in a regular world, like, if you.

[Matt Farah]

And I said, I used to frame video view counts in the context of Wembley stadiums.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I used to go, oh, shit. Like, four Wembley stadiums.

[Brian Scotto]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

You know, same thing.

[Brian Scotto]

And we would try to explain to people how big Gymkhana was.

[Matt Farah]

We would go with the AC Slaters.

[Brian Scotto]

We would compare to populations of countries. Like, this is the population of Ireland.

[Matt Farah]

Aggressive.

[Brian Scotto]

This video has done the population of Ireland. But, you know, like, if we said, hey, you know what? Let's do this podcast live. Let's do it in front of a live audience.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And if 500 people showed up for that, even if they only paid five bucks a piece, ten bucks, we would high five each other going, man, that was great. We got 500 people to stop what they're doing today. Yeah, but you're gonna get, you know, 10, 15. Well, I don't know what your viewership is, but you're gonna get a lot more than that. Right. Like 100 times more than that, maybe on an episode. And, like, it's still, like, we compare it differently, you know? And I'M trying to be.

[Matt Farah]

It's hard to make those. The digital numbers feel like real people, right? And it's hard to bring those digital numbers to any other medium, whether it's an in person event or selling a magazine or selling a fucking experience thing or anything like that. That's why Patreon is a good barometer, because it's like the 1 to 2% of your biggest fans will basically contribute as much financial resources as selling ads to the other 99%, but they're much more involved.

[Brian Scotto]

My whole concept for like what I want Patreon to be for, for everything I'm doing and whether that's the podcast or stuff I'm doing with three, two, one or other things is like. Is almost like they're like an advisory group, right? Like, if you're paying for this, you should have a say, right? Like you should say that doesn't mean that everything you say I'm going to do, but like, I'm going to wait.

[Matt Farah]

But I'll listen.

[Brian Scotto]

I'm going to wait your comment more than I'm going to wait a comment on YouTube because you cared enough to essentially your critique, right? Especially your critique because you cared enough to say, this is worth it for me to pay for the person who watches five minutes of your video and is like, I fucking hate Scotto. I don't know how much I should wait that. Have they been watching me for months and all of a sudden don't like me in that episode? Well, then I should care. But I don't know, you know, probably. But if you. But if you've been subscriber for three, four months or three or four or five years for you guys, and then all of a sudden someone's like, hey, I don't like the direction you're going. I think that gives you like a better like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

We should change that so. Because you learned that in the magazine world, when a magazine doesn't sell you like, hmm, guess no one wants minivans on the COVID of the magazine. They're not doing that anymore. You know, there goes the previa challenge.

[Matt Farah]

So Previa challenge probably wouldn't.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Who did? Was it the rally cross guys? Did the van pre.

[Brian Scotto]

Van pre. Yeah. So that's done by actually the guys who. One of the head of marketing at Dixon does it, which is Jim York. Jim York is like. I mean, Jim York is his own kind of crazy person. Jim York. And I love you, Jim, but Jim York is a man of no skill. Who does very dangerous things. Right. Like Jim York's the guy who's like, who's gonna jump that? Jim's like, I will. And his whole. His whole tagline is, I'm never gonna die or I'm gonna live forever.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Brian Scotto]

And I'm like, hopefully that ages well, hopefully that age as well. But he. He is a man who hangs out with some of the most talented people in the world, like Travis Pastrana, and really has no talent, but just like, does the fear gene. Yeah. So he's doing the same stuff as Travis with. Without really the skill of understanding how to do it. So he's. So that famous video from Cletus of the van jumping.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Really, really big one. That was him. Like, he's. Of course he's that guy, but he kind of runs the van Pre stuff, which they were doing at Nitro Rallycross, but I think Nitro Rally crosses no more now.

[Matt Farah]

Are they really.

[Brian Scotto]

It's kind of a bummer.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Rally's had such a hard time in America, so it's just they keep trying.

[Matt Farah]

To find ways to make it a better spectator sport, but it never quite sticks, does it?

[Brian Scotto]

So.

[Matt Farah]

Thought rallycross was promising.

[Brian Scotto]

I thought rallycross was the best option because Americans want their, like, paint bucket of soda and sit in the stands and watch cars go door to door and crash into each other. Like, I really thought that that was going to be the piece. I think that it struggled in that. Why rallycross is so good in Europe is that the tracks are built specifically for rallycross. They're not like temporary racetracks. So they, like, are really, really good tracks, which gets better racing gets more passing in the US in the early days of Rallycross, once you were out, like, if you didn't get the whole shot, you're.

[Matt Farah]

You're done.

[Brian Scotto]

You were done. Right. Like, it was very hard to pass. Like, maybe you could time a joker lap properly and get ahead, but otherwise that wasn't there. WRC has been talking about bringing the WRC to the US in Tennessee. So the rumor is Chattanooga area or Nashville area. And I think that there's. I don't know a lot about what's going on internally there, but I think they're kind of looking at the Formula one success in America. Right. I mean, holy, huge. Like, do you watch Formula one?

[Matt Farah]

A little bit?

[Brian Scotto]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

I watched. I watched a lot of. I've watched all the Drive to survives.

[Brian Scotto]

Okay. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So obviously the edited version of Formula one.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And I. I watch the races. If I catch them, I don't wake up at four in the morning to watch.

[Brian Scotto]

So I was really into Formula One in the zero to 60 era, right? Like, so that was like the Braun era, like Lewis Hamilton coming in in like I was, I was really enjoying that era. And I was the guy who was like going to the bar that would like show the, you know, show the race at four in the morning and stuff like that. And then I just got too busy.

[Matt Farah]

It was, it was convenient to watch.

[Brian Scotto]

It wasn't that the sport changed. It was just like I got too busy. And now I'm in this world where like I go to some like, barbecue in my neighborhood and every guy there knows more about Formula One than I do and they're expecting me to know as much.

[Matt Farah]

You're the car guy, right? You should know this.

[Brian Scotto]

And I'm like, I don't know who they all walk because they're all like, they're loving it. And I think the FIA is looking at that and saying, okay, how do we now import wrc? But instead, we all know who the audience is for Formula One, right? The audience for Formula One is particularly more elite audience. But if you look at wrc, you're like, WRC fits a little bit better in like similar to a NASCAR audience than sort of where F1 lives. And I think that that is like, it. And it'll be questionable of like, how they position it. Right.

[Matt Farah]

Like, I'll be interested to see if that works.

[Brian Scotto]

What makes wr? Because in order to enjoy rally, you have to be the kind of person who wants to like, get hit by rocks and dirt. And by the way, I am the kind of person who likes getting hit by rocks and dirt. Like, that is my people. Like, I like that.

[Matt Farah]

You stay. You stand in the spray area.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Fuck.

[Brian Scotto]

Machine gun.

[Matt Farah]

I once took to get that shot of the rally car passing. I once took a rock to the nuts at probably 110 mile an hour wheel speed. Oh, yeah, Close range. Tom Morningstar has the video of me going down. I fucking get the shot, I pan and then I drop on the ground. I think it ended up in the actual video we made.

[Brian Scotto]

We were in Mexico once. It was me and Ron. We were. He was shooting photos and I was shooting video. Or vice versa, it doesn't matter. We were standing right next to each other and there was this like over crest, like left hand turn. Pretty fast. It's probably like a 4 or 5. And there we were on the other side of a barbed wire fence, right? And the first five cars come through and everyone is Basically running the same line. Pretty shallow. Pretty shallow. We're like, okay, Ken's sixth on road, he'll be the sixth car through here. And he comes through like it was a straightaway.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Just full flat out over the crest into the barbed wire fence. So we immediately start running. And I was like. It was like, you know those like those toys from the 40s where like everywhere, like you have three people in a row and their hands all move together like an elf toy or something. We were basically that where we were.

[Matt Farah]

Running like a foosball table.

[Brian Scotto]

Like my kneecap was in the back of his knee as we were running. Like we were basically playing like the elephant game while running. Right? And we were just running and the. I remember listening to the barbed wire whipping over our heads because he. Cuz Ken caught the barbed wire and started ripping the barbed wire off the.

[Matt Farah]

Fences like out of a fucking Michael Bay movie.

[Brian Scotto]

So do you know Magic Johnson? Have you ever met him? He's a basketball player. He's. We call him Matt Johnson.

[Matt Farah]

Matt Johnson, Yeah, I met Matt Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So Magic was up on the hill, caught the whole thing. So he's filmed this whole clip. It exists somewhere where the two of us are running. What we didn't realize was Ken also hit a massive boulder about this big that was in the air behind us. And like, I was like, I'm gonna die. It was totally I'm gonna die feeling. And then we didn't die, right? And it was like, okay, we didn't die. Great. And then we see Magic. And Magic's like, you gotta see this footage. And we're like. We're like, oh, that's great. We didn't die. And then the next morning we wake up and the COVID of the local newspaper is the photo of us running, like just running with a boulder in the air. Barbed wire ripping. And Ken just like sideways passing. Like that's rally racing.

[Matt Farah]

Great shot.

[Brian Scotto]

That's rally racing. Like you might die. Yeah. And like that's a different type of audience. Like at F1, it's like you might. It might rain. You might get wet.

[Matt Farah]

No, it's like the fucking running of the bulls.

[Brian Scotto]

It is like. It is running of the bulls.

[Matt Farah]

It's the running of the bulls with cars. I've watched rally in person before.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And there's a lot of places that you can stand where you will.

[Brian Scotto]

You could die in like in Mexico, you go down there and they just yell, you know, buro at you. Yeah, right. Like you're in like you're an ass.

[Matt Farah]

I think a couple people died.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, I just heard about that. But not even in the pits. In the pits.

[Matt Farah]

That's crazy.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Guy was, I guess, revving his engine and. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Slipped off the clutch.

[Brian Scotto]

I don't really. I don't understand. I mean. Yeah. I don't understand the detail of what happened or thought he was in neutral and was.

[Matt Farah]

But Baja's. I mean, they.

[Brian Scotto]

It's a scary place.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. It's also really scary when something does go bad down there because you realize that the chance of people showing up to save you in a timely manner is pretty rough. Yeah. There's a. There's a hill climb down there that I really want to. It's operating now. We. We sponsored it when. Well, Hoonigan sponsored it when we did the. We did something with Fiat down there and it's mostly motor.

[Matt Farah]

I remember that. With the 1, 2, 4 apple, right?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. What was it? It was the San Martin San Pedro Martier hill climb. It's like 24 miles long and I really want to do an event there, but I've looked into a bunch of it and like the number one thing that you get into is like, you have to medevac to San Diego. Right. Like, you have to be ready for that. Right. Like, there's just not a good enough trauma facility close enough that you have to like sit there and be like, okay, we have to pay for a helicopter.

[Matt Farah]

Is it off the peninsula?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it is. Okay. So I mean, you know, you can probably go up to Ensenada, but like, at a certain point, you know, once you got them in a plane, you might as well just fly the extra flight up to san Diego.

[Matt Farah]

But 24 Mile Hill Climb, though. Serious.

[Brian Scotto]

It's a really, really fun road. It's a really fun road.

[Matt Farah]

Did you get to drive it when you were.

[Brian Scotto]

I did in a Dodge Ram 1500 and I was running a pretty good time like by. Because I drove up and down it like 17 times. So by the time it was done.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, you're a good number.

[Brian Scotto]

I was pretty good. I think I might have been faster than one of the 9 11.

[Matt Farah]

How's the tarmac?

[Brian Scotto]

All right. It was great. It's like. It's a national park. Oh. It like goes up to like an observatory. So it's like. It's a drive up, drive down. There's no back out way of it. And they had like just paved it when we were there. Yes. Beautiful road.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

One day. One day. The Scotto Invitational.

[Matt Farah]

That's when you. That's when we buy a legends car and bring that.

[Brian Scotto]

Go there for that. Yeah. The Scotto Invitational would be very soon, so. And then if it's. For me, it's like, it's not just motorsport. Has to be like a full, like, content thing, like you gotta go do and make a movie about it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

It's like, go.

[Matt Farah]

It's like an endless summer vibe.

[Brian Scotto]

I like that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So, yeah, that'd be fun. Motorsport. And Thad keeps talking about doing La Carrera over and over and over. And he's. In typical Thad fashion, he's like, oh, like, all we have to do is, like, buy, like, a car that exists, that qualifies, and then, you know, we'll do the event and then we'll sell it. And I'm like, so. So what you're saying is we just, like, buy, like, a hundred thousand dollars race car? Yeah, just that. That's where we start that?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, that's the start.

[Matt Farah]

And he was like, yeah. And I was like, when we buy the race car, which. Who's. Who's writing the check?

[Brian Scotto]

Sounds like a West side sponsor. Yeah, I see where this is going. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I wrote this down.

[Brian Scotto]

Do you have. You have a list of things?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I just, you know, if we're gonna do long radio and you can't. I can't go fucking unprepared. What do you think?

[Brian Scotto]

I wrote a few things down.

[Matt Farah]

Did you?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Go for your list.

[Matt Farah]

Well, what did you. What do you think? That, like. Okay. Things are sort of moving away from long form to short formula live. All right. Sorry about that, kids. Zach had to go do a thing, and we'll check in with him later. Let's. Now that we were slightly thrown off kilter, let's go to the Patreon because it's very important. First things first, Scott, O. Pass me that pen that's sitting on my notebook. Our new Patreon collab is coming Tuesday the 19th. That's tomorrow if you're live, or today if you're listening to the recorded. The day comes up. Tactile turn pens. I love these things. This is our new collab, Scotto.

[Brian Scotto]

I'm a big pen guy, dude. These are cool.

[Matt Farah]

These are sweet. Titanium and aluminum.

[Brian Scotto]

What would you call this, like, sir?

[Matt Farah]

Like, it's ribbed.

[Brian Scotto]

It is definitely ripped for your pleasure. It is definitely ripped for your pleasure. I like the action. It's kind of nice.

[Matt Farah]

That bolt action thing is great. So Patreon patrons only, exclusive collab just for you guys. And you can get it on the link is on the Patreon Tuesday morning. And of course, if you're a [e-mail] the Smoking Tire podcast, you can get the show early, you can ask us questions, you can watch the live stream, you can get an extra show every month. You can get exclusive access to collabs like this and others. And we're going to go to some of your questions now. We have probably a lot.

[Brian Scotto]

Yep, let's go through.

[Matt Farah]

We have a lot. Let's see, let's see. Let's just start at the beginning here. Jeremy says, is the end of Motor Trend TV shows and the restructuring or whatever of Warner Brothers Discovery an indicator that TV as we know it is dying or dead? Is it just the first of many to fail?

[Brian Scotto]

Can I answer this?

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Brian Scotto]

Hollywood is dead. Yeah, Hollywood. And Hollywood is dead. And then that is a trickle down of all other things being in a bad place because I think everything aspires to be Hollywood, which was probably a mistake. It's funny because the Motor Trend, very similar to the Hoonigan bankruptcy. Hoonigan ended up getting swept up in a much bigger company's issues. Yeah, right. Like, like Hoonigan.

[Matt Farah]

It wasn't like Hoonigan.

[Brian Scotto]

Hoonigan didn't lose $1.2 billion.

[Matt Farah]

I wish, I wish it would have.

[Brian Scotto]

It would have been a lot of fun.

[Matt Farah]

You lost a 1.2 billion.

[Brian Scotto]

You would have had to burn a town down. It would have been fun. Right. But I think, you know, the same situation you have here where Motor Trend is just caught up in the Warner Brothers issue that they're dealing with and they're just going through and hacking whatever makes sense. I mean, I, the conversation for this was probably a bunch of people in a room who didn't even know what roadkill was.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, right.

[Brian Scotto]

Like that's just the unfortunate of how things like that get lost in huge companies. I guess it's like to me, like TV already feels dead and I think streaming is sort of the became the new tv. But I also think streaming is dead, which like, I don't think anyone wants to admit yet. But I think that we move through this.

[Matt Farah]

Know how many people are watching?

[Brian Scotto]

It's not even how many people are watching. It's the quality of content.

[Matt Farah]

Like, are you saying that Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson wasn't the pinnacle of sports entertainment?

[Brian Scotto]

No, but, but Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson is a perfect example of not really knowing what to do. Yeah, right. Like, like it took Jake Paul to pull an Internet level stunt to shut down the Netflix servers. But then in the end. But this is the algorithm problem, right? In the end, the content wasn't good.

[Matt Farah]

In the end, it wasn't.

[Brian Scotto]

It wasn't a good fight. It was.

[Matt Farah]

Not only was it not a good fight for fighting Steak, like the commentating wasn't good. Like the quality of the product was particularly bad. Noticeably bad. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I think that that's where that goes to, which is the expectation that things need to do. I couldn't even imagine how many tens of millions had to tune in to do that to their servers. Right. And figure that out.

[Matt Farah]

But I also said 60 million, I read.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds all right. But you know, you look at like the height for me of good programming was the Sopranos kicked off. Right? The Sopranos, the Wire, like those shows kicked it off early hbo and it went to like Breaking Bad, the Walking Dead before episode, before season five or whatever, like the Mad Men. Right. Like there was this era that wasn't really streaming, but it was streaming, supported. Like you were either watching it on TV or you're watching wherever. Game of Thrones, all those kind of things was this era. And then Netflix obviously had plenty. I mean, Ozark is a fantastic show. Right. You had this era of where that was all delivering and really delivering really well. And then it just became just like YouTube, it became a game of quantity over quality. And I think at first people are.

[Matt Farah]

So excited about it, they're doing things that could be like a 90 minute documentary and it takes. It's five 50 minute episodes. And it's just because they fluff and shit.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And I think that in general, I think that's one side of it. The other side of it is we moved into this model of the $400 million film.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

In the Hollywood side. And because that's the type of money you need for capital, like, you know, for venture capitalists to get their money back and investing in a way that matters, like the $10 million film or the $1 million film, like the movie Swingers, like that stuff just doesn't exist anymore. And I think the only thing that may save TV right now, and I'm gonna give it away, my sauce here, but I think the one thing that may save is me. No. Is the world of the indie show that lives on Netflix. I think Netflix and all of them have also become too algorithmic to sit there and say, if this show doesn't do this many views and the first three episodes is not getting another season. Right. And it's all built like that nothing is given time to breathe anymore and get good. Right. Like Top Gear Season 1, 2 and 3 were not good.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. But it was just. And then it became default car show and they. Awkward that I'm sitting in Z. I'm.

[Brian Scotto]

Only turning around to look at the names.

[Matt Farah]

It's just a weird. I needed. I needed a way to read the questions.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, and I think that, that, I mean, Top Gear is a perfect example. Like, why is Top Gear. Why was Top Gear so good for so long? Was because it checked all the boxes that I was talking about before in a way that you don't think about. Like it was a government funded. A government funded show by the people that wasn't controlled by anything. They could just call over a manufacturer and not hear the repercussions from it. There was no advertising on BBC that was gonna get mad about what they said about the new Porsche or whatever they could do what they weren't depending on an algorithm because it was just on broadcast and they were basically allowed to do whatever they wanted. No algorithm.

[Matt Farah]

Algorithm and no advertisers because what a luxury.

[Brian Scotto]

People have asked me like, oh, could you make a new, you know, a new Top Gear? Like, you know, next generation Top Gear? I'm like, I just don't. Unless it was to go make it for the BBC, where you had that same ability. But even now I think the BBC is too afraid of making things that are upsetting people. I just don't think it's possible you.

[Matt Farah]

Would need the same conditions to exist that created the first Top Gear, which those conditions do not exist anymore.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And matching their chemistry.

[Matt Farah]

Right? Well, that's. Yeah, it's a whole other problem. Dustin Bateman says, how do you feel your directorial skills have evolved over the years? Do you think you could direct a feature film?

[Brian Scotto]

First off, Dustin Bateman literally like cost, if not customer number one at Hoonigan, he's definitely in the top 100 customers.

[Matt Farah]

I was customer number one.

[Brian Scotto]

You were customer one at the store? Yeah, I was actually going to bring the dollar with me today to take a photo and I forgot. But he like when we started selling stickers, he was like one of the early guys and has stuck through and was also like one of the first people to sign up on my Patreon. Oh, okay, cool, dude.

[Matt Farah]

Shout out to Dustin.

[Brian Scotto]

But how do I think they've changed? I had no idea what I was doing when I started this. I was a magazine guy who showed up to be like, yeah, I guess I can be a filmmaker. And it Was guys like Ben Conrad, who was. Who was directing with Logan at the time. He's actually the guy that went on to start Donut. You know, those guys helped me kind of become that. So I would say the number one thing that's changed is confidence. Like, I don't second guess myself as much. Like, I kind of know what I need and what I want. And I think the other thing is I've learned to trust other people. Like, in the beginning, I felt like I had to like, double check everything and like look it through everyone's lens and just not trust that people were gonna do something. And I realized that instead what I needed to do was to develop trust with people so that they could do the job I needed them to instead of, like, micromanage them. And, like, it's really difficult for me to do that. Like, I'm a very kind of controlling person. And then I also think you get enough. This is like a weird thing to say. And I try to say this as humbly as possible, but, like, you have enough successes that you become a little less afraid to fail. Yeah, right. Like your first few times, you're like, this is my one chance up at bat. And if I don't hit the ball, they might not ever ask me to. To be up at bat ever again. Right. You're very imposter syndrome. You get a couple in, you're like, okay, I'm willing to try something different this time. Because if this one doesn't do well. Yeah, you might only be remembered by your last trick. But I got a lot of other things I've done. You kind of build that. So that would be one. And just learning from the other people around me was a big one for me.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, Derek's question. Derek has a seven part question, but it boils down to, do you have any tips for improving your creative eye when. When it comes to photography or cinematography beyond just practicing more? Work with good people and watch what they're doing?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I mean, seat time is a big part of it. The other one for me was I didn't really watch a lot of our competitors. Meaning I've only watched two episodes of Donut my whole life. One of them was because I was on it, and then the other one was because someone was like, you need to watch this episode. And it wasn't because I didn't respect or appreciate what those guys did. It was that I wanted to not be tainted by the other stuff people were doing in my space.

[Matt Farah]

I used to do that too. Not want to watch because of that.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I've switched. I've started watching a lot of stuff this past year because also, I'm out of the industry. I'm not doing it as much. And it's kind of interesting to see where people are today. But in the early days when we were pioneering it, I think it was looking at stuff that felt adjacent to my space, but, like, done in a different way. Like, I will be honest, there were makeup vloggers who influenced the way we did things at Hoonigan. Like, I was just looking at things that were successful, that were doing well or had a particular look. Casey Neistat was a huge, huge influence on us early on. Do you know Casey Neistat?

[Matt Farah]

I know who he is. I've never met him.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, but I never met him either. But, like, his content and what he was doing and the way he was going about doing it was huge. So I think the same thing goes for, like, especially for automotive photography, I have a basic rule which is, like, if you remove the car, is it still a good photo?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

Right. Like, yeah, like, is it still a good photo if you remove the car? And I think that that's really important sometimes. Not every shot, but sometimes, like, if you watch a gymkhana and you pluck the car out, you're like, that's still a pretty photo.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, it's not Ansel Adams, but, like.

[Matt Farah]

But it's visually.

[Brian Scotto]

Visually, like, do the lines line up? And I think a lot of times people get so caught about the car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

That they forget that, like, the whole scene tells the story. And that is the other one for me. For me. Does this. Does the shot tell a story? And if it doesn't, then it's just pretty. Like, the shot has to help tell the story. And I think when you start thinking about it that way versus thinking about it as, like, you know, is it the. Does it follow this rule of thirds? And, like, there's all these, like, things you can learn about cinematography, but for me, I just like the story. Like, you know, move the camera a little to the left because I want to catch a little bit of that. What that sign says. Because even if your eyes don't notice it immediately, like, maybe it reads. You know, it'll read differently.

[Matt Farah]

Slightly richer frame kind of thing.

[Brian Scotto]

What do you got next?

[Matt Farah]

JDM fanboy. Top three cars you own that have the least likely chance of getting built.

[Brian Scotto]

This is a true, true follower of mine. Like, this is Disciple level favorite three cars that'll probably never run. I don't know if I to feel complimented or insulted in that.

[Matt Farah]

What are your three favorite non running cars right now?

[Brian Scotto]

I have a 1985 or 86, I'm not sure, synchro Quantum wagon. And I have this dream of building it into 100 grand to make that.

[Matt Farah]

Car worth 9,000 bucks.

[Brian Scotto]

Exactly. So that's one. That's one. I hate to say this, but my Toyota Corolla I was mentioning before with the VR6, there's a lot of work to get that thing finished and to get it there, but that's probably another one in my head. I have this other. I also have. I have an F600 Ford F600, 1975 Ford F600 crew cab that has been put on a different chassis. I bought it from a friend. It sits like that now. And I also have. I have an engine. I'm not give away too much. I have a famous engine from a Hoonigan car that I ended up somehow. Like the weird things you get in a divorce. Like, I somehow have this. I never wanted it, but now that I have it, I might as well put that engine in this to this F600.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

But it's one of those things where in my head I'm like, oh, I could build that in a weekend. And then like I go and look at other people who build these cars and they're like, yeah, it took me like seven years to build this thing. I'm like, so I don't know. That's probably my list.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, cool. Lemon head, assuming no maintenance needed, what's the cheapest way to get the V12 experience in a car? V12 experience is in quotations.

[Brian Scotto]

No maintenance. No maintenance. I mean, that's obviously an eight series fantasy land.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

What would it be for you?

[Matt Farah]

I mean. Yeah, to get the. The V12. Because like you could buy a Mercedes s, an old S600.

[Brian Scotto]

That's probably.

[Matt Farah]

You could buy an old Jaguar like XJ12.

[Brian Scotto]

You know, you can buy an E type with a. True.

[Matt Farah]

But if you want literally the cheap, like the cheapest. You could buy cheap cars with V12s in them, but they won't give you the V12 experience you're probably looking for. Right. Like I would say the cheapest way to really get a VTOL experience will be like Aston DB7.

[Brian Scotto]

That's a good one.

[Matt Farah]

Is a pretty good one. I mean, maybe you could do a Mercedes 600 if you put like that Zonda exhaust on it, which would sound terrible.

[Brian Scotto]

What about the. The maintenance, the problem? The minute you said no maintenance needed.

[Matt Farah]

No, maintenance is like just.

[Brian Scotto]

And then the word cheap. This is like the old. I mean, dude, I have a good. You can have it fast or you can have it cheap, but you can't. You can only have two.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Like, you could probably get. There's downstairs in the underground level of Westside Collector Car Storage, Playa Vista. Right now, I have an Espada that hasn't run for 30 years.

[Brian Scotto]

So, like, is it yours?

[Matt Farah]

No, no, it's a customer. She inherited it. And so it hasn't run. It's. It's a project for Aaron Robinson. Says that if I can get it to a lift, he could get it running in a weekend.

[Brian Scotto]

I believe that.

[Matt Farah]

And that's probably true.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But anyway.

[Brian Scotto]

It's such an ugly, beautiful car. Oh, they're weird.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, they're funky as hell. But. But you get them one that doesn't have the big bumpers.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, they.

[Matt Farah]

They're cool. The right wheels. They look rad.

[Brian Scotto]

They actually look like a Volkswagen Quantum Coupe, but that's a whole other story.

[Matt Farah]

Same family.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Well, here's a question on that, though, is. Well, I guess it's not technically a V. It's a dumb W. But, like, am I crazy to think that the. That the Continental GT, because that's a. That's a W12.

[Matt Farah]

W12.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Right. Is a V12 experience.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think it's the one that people are really looking for because it's.

[Brian Scotto]

A W. It's a. It's basically two VR6.

[Matt Farah]

It doesn't sound like a V12. It doesn't revolve around.

[Brian Scotto]

Those are incredibly cheap right now.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, it doesn't mean they're bad cars. You can get one with 60,000 miles on it for 18 grand.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Which is absurd.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And here's what it needs.

[Brian Scotto]

Everything.

[Matt Farah]

It needs a $30,000 set of ceramic brakes, a full air suspension reboot, and.

[Brian Scotto]

The dash removed to change a fuse because Audi built it.

[Matt Farah]

I fucking love Bentley GTs. So I just. That Arizona trip, I was just driving the new one. It's unbelievable. But I would not want one used that. That used. We have. You know, Hannah drives a 91 Bentley.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Six and three quarters. And it's awesome. But that's a different thing. Meh says, are there any mods someone can do to their car that would make you more likely to buy their car than if it was stock? Conversely, what mods would make you walk away? So if I saw a car that had a certain set of mods would I be more likely to buy it than if it was just stock?

[Brian Scotto]

A really good set of wheels could help. And, like, a basic suspension. Like, if went to go look at. Let's even talk about, like, a 911.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, right.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, if I went to go look at 911 and it's got a ton of mods on it, I don't want it. But if it had, like, a set of KW coilovers and, you know, whatever a set of speed lines on it like that, it's pretty good. Mainly because the wheels would probably be worth more if they sold them separate from the car. Right. And also it makes it look nicer on day one. Nothing's worse than being a guy who works in the car world and then buying a car that's, like, not modded at all and having to, like, show up somewhere and be like, why are you not. Why? Yeah, like, the first day, like, cool, lower wheels, bro. Yeah, that's probably it. But anything more than, like, I am now the kind of person who wants to find a car that no one's ever touched.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That's the problem. The problem with. With. With being someone who modifies cars is that the person who wants to mod it and the person who wants to keep it stock are looking for the same car.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know, I would do. I would buy if it was a. Like, a mid 2000s BMW and it had, like, a Dinan package.

[Brian Scotto]

But that's. I think that that's brand name stretching the modding.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Brian Scotto]

Brand name. To me, that's just a Dinan car. Like, you know, I think there's certain things.

[Matt Farah]

It was a Scirocco with a Callaway.

[Brian Scotto]

Turbo that I'd buy. That I buy. That's actually another good one. If it's a mod that was super period correct and rare.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Brian Scotto]

And knowing that it's all in the car makes it complete. Definitely that. There was a Callaway Turbo GTI that sold for like, 50,000 on branch rail. And I was like, yeah, that was.

[Matt Farah]

A really nice one.

[Brian Scotto]

That was really nice.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Find another one.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, exactly.

[Matt Farah]

Good luck.

[Brian Scotto]

Exactly.

[Matt Farah]

Mr. Meowge said. Scotto, are you still in touch with Dr. Reuven since he moved to Lamborghini?

[Brian Scotto]

I have spoken to him since he went to Lamborghini, but I haven't spoken to him much in the past year. He actually has a shrek valve cover of mine. Mine for an eight valve. Like, I literally. This is a valve cover that doesn't even go. I mean, I guess I could put on My Swallowtail. But, like, it's a car as a valve cover I have to build an engine for. That's like my level of depravity at this point. You have one part you have to build. I should text him now. So I remember, but I haven't spoken to him much in the past year. But Dr. Crazy, as he's known Reuven. Do you know Reuven?

[Matt Farah]

No.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh, really? He was at Audi and then was like a test driver slash engineer. I don't really even know what his job is. And now he's like. I think he's like C suite at Lambo now or something like technology or something like that.

[Matt Farah]

Good for himself. I hope Matt likes my username. My sports car experience begins and ends with a Miata. What car should I turo for a weekend to expand my horizons that contrasts a Miata experience.

[Brian Scotto]

If you were short enough to fit in a Miata, it's probably the best experience. Bang, for the buck. I don't fit in one.

[Matt Farah]

If you want to expand your horizons, I would find a Hellcat, a 911.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Or a 60s muscle car.

[Brian Scotto]

Definitely a 60s muscle car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

That's like a whole different.

[Matt Farah]

If you go from Miata to Hellcat.

[Brian Scotto]

I don't recommend anyone go drive a 911 because I feel like the driving of a 911 is so superior that then you have the 911 bug and then you live in a world of cars you can't afford. Like, that's just. That's just like my take on that. But a Miata is, like, pretty good. And I'm not a Miata boy because I don't fit in them.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but you get it.

[Brian Scotto]

But I get it. Like, I get it. I totally understand, like, what makes them good. But the muscle car one is pretty good. A good slot. Like a car that, like, has, like, a lot of tank slap in it when you have to correct it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

There's something fun there.

[Matt Farah]

Real sloppy steering, Chef. Neil, you have 20,000 bucks a year. A year, which is like 16amonth. 1500amonth to spend on a door dash car. So a car you're delivering food in a couple nights a week, never goes over 40 miles an hour. Needs to be engaging manual transmission.

[Brian Scotto]

Got it. Got it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. What do you got?

[Brian Scotto]

Toyota Previa, manual transmission. Toyota Previa with a supercharger. Go.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Because here's the thing. If you pull up with too fancy of a car, a door dash, I'm not giving you a good time.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, for sure.

[Brian Scotto]

So you Rolling an old Previa. If you know, you know. But if you roll up in a Previa, slammed on some Volkswagen and I see it, you're getting a tip and a high five.

[Matt Farah]

A huge tip.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

20K a year, too. You could buy Previas and just throw them away when they're done.

[Brian Scotto]

Or you could have the most batshit 2J.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Previa.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, I'd have to. You have to go hot. I'd have to go with a hot cheat.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh. Just because it's the ultimate delivery vehicle.

[Matt Farah]

Delivery vehicle. How do you not have a hot shoe? The blacktop.

[Brian Scotto]

Here's another. Another good one. Audi S8D2. Because you're the transporter.

[Matt Farah]

God, they're so good.

[Brian Scotto]

Like if you had, like I saw you bought one. I have one.

[Matt Farah]

Does it work?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, it works. I was gonna drive it up here today, but.

[Matt Farah]

Is it good?

[Brian Scotto]

It's 2002 good.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like it's. I'm gonna manual swap it.

[Matt Farah]

Are you. Can you?

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, they. I mean, in Europe they came manual, so I bought an entire manual swap from Europe. So it's like, it's OEM swap.

[Matt Farah]

Does it basically feel like the S4? When can you do that?

[Brian Scotto]

I don't know. I haven't driven one yet. But the gearbox in it is the letdown because really it's the 4.2 V8. It's the engine that Clarkson said is one of the greatest engines of all time. It revs to eight grand. The thing's fantastic. But the torque converter is like. Yeah, it sucks four speed, maybe, or five speed. And it's pre intelligent automatic. It's good old fashioned slushback auto. So I'm going to manual swap that. It was my Ronin was like such an influential movie for me, so I loved that car as a kid. So that is a great delivery vehicle, though, because that is what the Transporter was. Although it might have been a D3, but I don't remember.

[Matt Farah]

I was working at a Porsche Audi dealer when those cars came out and driving them around, I mean, they were brand new, rolling off the truck, brand new. They were some of the best driving cars I'd ever.

[Brian Scotto]

Because they drive small, despite the size of them. I mean, you look at them and because they look like an A4.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

You don't really realize the size of them. And then you park it next to something like my RS2 and you're like, oh, yeah, this thing is kind of.

[Matt Farah]

And all the S8s were short wheelbase.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Because there was.

[Brian Scotto]

And then they had the L, which was the longer wheelbase model. But the S8 has the better. It has the five valve engine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. I love they. When they were new, those things were the silver Avis wheels. Suede Headliner. Sick.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, mine's all. Mine's black on black.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, that's all right. Westside Collector Cat Storage. Always shocked how in gymkhana 7 your team was able to shut down large parts of downtown Los Angeles. What did that process look like? When I saw that shot that you guys did on the 110 freeway when you shut that shit down, I was like, that might be the greatest road closure for a YouTube video in history.

[Brian Scotto]

It was pretty amazing, by the way.

[Matt Farah]

It was a Michael Bay level road closure.

[Brian Scotto]

You want to feel old? Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of that video of that video. No way. 10 years. 10 years of the introduction of the unicorn. Yeah, all of that. That part was. I mean, at that point we had already shut down San Francisco. So I went from I can't believe we're doing this to I can't believe you won't let me shut this down. Like I shut down a bridge. What do you mean I can't shut this down? But it was still. I actually have this one photo of me and Ken that I've been meaning to post of us, like me grabbing a selfie with them. We weren't really like selfie guys. Like, that wasn't our thing, like to be like, oh, let me pop a selfie one. We were always around professional photographers. We just had professional photographers taking photos of us together. And I don't know, like, I'm just in my fucking 40s. Like, even then I limit. Like my generation was not as much like, let's pop a selfie together. But we popped the selfie together on that road. Because it was. I knew at the moment. Moment how just amazing it was that we were able to do that and how iconic that moment of the 110, 105 interchange was. And at that point, I'd only been living in Cali for a couple years. I didn't even realize the extent of traffic and mayhem we had created by doing that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, probably. What did that permit cost?

[Brian Scotto]

The permit's not a lot. It's the police that cost a lot. The permit's just the regular filing. It's everything else that comes with it. Because they're like, oh, you're going to need 127 officers in cars to deal with this. And you have to pay them by the hour.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, you know so adds up. Yeah, but when you're. Man, when you're hiring the cops, boy, do they love to tell you they shouldn't be telling you, yo, the homies, when you're paying them that much.

[Brian Scotto]

By that, they're also. They're also, like, the number one person to do a burnout. Like, you know what? You know how much. You know how much coaxing it takes to get a cop to do a cop car and a burnout? Tell you how much coaxing. I won't show the number on the side of the car. Just in it. In it. And it's like. It's like you. They, like, not only are they in it, but it's the perfect amount of brake versus throttle pressure, which means they've done it before.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, they know exactly what it takes to smoke a cruise every inch of.

[Matt Farah]

That V6 charger, dude.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

We once shut down the 74 in Palm Springs, that beautiful road, to do with a tuner car shootout. And fucking. I had bbis, that GT2 with the sequence gearbox. Project Swan, maybe.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, Project Swan.

[Matt Farah]

And I lit that thing up so hard up that road. The cop came back down. He goes, dude, what is in that car? And I go, I don't you want to find out? And he goes, yeah, he got in the car, and I probably did 150 and a 35 with a cop in the car going, yeah, bro, it was crazy. Sorry.

[Brian Scotto]

What I was gonna say, we shut down paiuma Canyon once, and that was a great road. And the cops are the same way. They were just like, yeah, man.

[Matt Farah]

Just.

[Brian Scotto]

How did you do that for Rs200 video with Ken for Ford, you know, it was really cool. So, yeah, I also had a cop once shut down the FDR drive for me when I had the Ford GT before. Like, 2000. Like, it's like 2005. Like, it is not out yet. And I was. We were sitting in traffic, just doing, like, quick little launches, and the cop pulls up behind me with the lights on. I was like, you know, I was just smoking the tires for a second.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

He's like, hold on a second. He's like, is that the new Ford G? And I'm like, like, on the. Like, you know, New York City cop. Like, hold on a second. And he just starts going back and forth.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, he does? He makes you a gap.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, it makes me a gap. And then he's like, let's run it. Let's run it. And he was like, behind me with the lights on. And I was like, this is cool.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Let's see. Roth V wants a daily driver. 400 horsepower, under 75,000. No manual gearboxes, good handling and comfort, comfortable seats, preferably a two door coupe or a cab. 75 grand daily driver, 400 horsepower. I mean comfortable seats. Good. These are pretty reasonable requests, right?

[Brian Scotto]

This is really reasonable. This is like too reasonable for me.

[Matt Farah]

So it's not a two door coupe but if you want a brand new car, I'm gonna go audi RS3. The new RS3 is a nice fantastic car. It's a nice choice.

[Brian Scotto]

And the drift mode. Yeah, it works, really works and is a lot of fun.

[Matt Farah]

It.

[Brian Scotto]

I smoked a set of tires on one.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Really good.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The new ones.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I've got, I've got your full support there. And if you want to be an absolute shithead, that thing will make 1500 horsepower.

[Matt Farah]

If you go to IROS.

[Brian Scotto]

If you go to Hank, I Roz.

[Matt Farah]

It'Ll make 1500 horsepower. Those cars are so fucking fast. That's what I would do. If you want. That's, that's like literally I think, I think it's 72 out the door auto and it's 400 horsepower. So it's got two, two extra doors but I think you're good there.

[Brian Scotto]

The other thing is, is it, it's one of those if you know, you know cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Which I like. It blends. It blends in really nicely.

[Matt Farah]

Disappear in that car. Get it in a non bright color.

[Brian Scotto]

Well, Hank said that one of the. His number one consumer for those cars are guys who own Lamborghinis. Oh yeah. Because they own. Sounds kind of own a really fast car but they want something that they can drive to a business meeting but still have a thousand horsepower and smoke their friend's Ferrari when they're on the road with them. But they also want something that just looks like a normal car.

[Matt Farah]

That was what Marcel from HPA told me. You know HPA in Canada and I drove their twin turbo VR6 fucking Golf R and it was 750 horsepower, ran nines. It was awesome.

[Brian Scotto]

I love that. That's my kind of car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And speaking of which, all wheel drive bias says Brian. Are there motors better than the VR6 and which version of the VR6 is your favorite?

[Brian Scotto]

No. And obviously 3.2, 24 valve. By the way, I don't actually think the VR6 is that incredible of a motor. I think there's obviously better motors of just stating that fact.

[Matt Farah]

Sounds good though.

[Brian Scotto]

But bang for the buck. They Sound good. And they're kind of like the, I hate to say this but like they're the Volkswagen ls.

[Matt Farah]

Kind of like you can throw a.

[Brian Scotto]

Ton of power at them. Iron block. Like you can build turbo cars that make a thousand plus horsepower. And in the past five years like people started to realize it. So now there's like really good support and technology behind it. Like it's one of those engines that when I was a kid and I was building them, if you could get to 500 horsepower, it was, it was crazy.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Now it's like guys are doing billet block ones that make 2000 horsepower and they run on, you know, they run.

[Matt Farah]

On really good manager, 2000 horsepower, front wheel drive Volkswagen.

[Brian Scotto]

No, people do it.

[Matt Farah]

Not drivable.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. But no, I think it's, I mean it's a great sound. It's, it's a great sounding, unique sounding engine. Like no one's ever like, what was that like? If you know engines, you're like, oh yeah, that's a VR.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

It has wookie noise to it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Ryan Morris says just saw a video of a tuned Taycan 4S. That's the electric Porsche making 640 horsepower. The GTS and Turbo make over 800. It's a physical ECU swap that can be done in a few minutes. Apparently. 5,000 bucks. What EVs would you like to see tuned next? I could not give less of a fuck about tuning EV EVs for more power.

[Brian Scotto]

Can I, can I give another hot take? I think the Taycan is one of the better looking cars that Porsche has made in the past however many years. I agree and I was ecstatic when I heard that they're considering putting an ICE engine in it. Did you hear that?

[Matt Farah]

I don't know if they can do it with Taycan. I think they may can. They may offer it with Macon. I don't think they can do it in the Tycoon.

[Brian Scotto]

Oh really? Because of the way they slow.

[Matt Farah]

Because of the, the way that they. It looks. But I think they hedged a little bit with the Macan and they can make a gas one. I think they can definitely. There's going to be gas and electric versions of the next Cayenne and the next Panamera.

[Brian Scotto]

I mean I think that like the Taycan, I look at it and I'm just like, especially what is it? The Sport Turismo or whatever. It's a beautiful car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But there is.

[Matt Farah]

So I've driven all of them.

[Brian Scotto]

Are you anti ev?

[Matt Farah]

No, no.

[Brian Scotto]

But you just are like, not.

[Matt Farah]

No, it's not that I like EVs for the things that they're good. I don't like EVs for as being sports cars typically. And I've driven all the Taycans beyond the stock 4s, right. Which is like 560 horsepower, which is so much beyond that the faster ones don't, like, get you anything.

[Brian Scotto]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

There's only so fast you can go anywhere.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know, I've driven the Turbo and the GT and the fucking. The Taycan GT made me so physically ill. Yeah. And it's just like, what am I? And it's not like we've talked about this so many times. But, like, if you take out your. Let's. We'll use the example of Dodge Chargers. You're driving a V6 rental Dodge Charger. It has a frequency of how it sounds. It has a frequency of how it revs. It sounds a certain way. Okay. Now you go to the V8, the Hemi. Okay. Yeah. That. Now it sounds different. It feels more powerful. Now you. You go to the Hellcat. Even in a traffic jam. You can tell the difference between those three.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

They feel different all the time. A base Taycan and a Taycan GT are exactly the same until you get to the last 10% of the pedal, which even the base cars are so fast with so much instant torque. You're almost never doing.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So I don't give a fuck. I mean, thank you for sharing, Ryan. I'm happy me this exists. But, like, I've never been in any EV ever.

[Brian Scotto]

Where I went.

[Matt Farah]

You know what this needs?

[Brian Scotto]

More, like, more.

[Matt Farah]

More power. Never. Not a one.

[Brian Scotto]

You've driven the 5N.

[Matt Farah]

I liked it.

[Brian Scotto]

That's like the right amount of power.

[Matt Farah]

It's great. It has great balance, handling and power. And. And the synthetic gearbox lies to me convincingly.

[Brian Scotto]

But it's one of the few times where I got to drive it at Laguna before the press launch. We went there to help them do some photography for it. So I drove it last December.

[Matt Farah]

I was there with Vin and Ron.

[Brian Scotto]

You got.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I was Next day or whatever.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. And we. I hated that. I liked the audio input.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But it made me understand the speed of the car going into a corner. 100%. One of the problems I dislike about an EV, whether it's on a canyon road or on a track, is I. I have a hard time judging my speed. It's like playing a simulator with the volume off.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like, I'm going into a corner. I'm like, whoa, whoa. I'm carrying way too much speed, where if I'm going into the corner and I'm like, man, like, even if it's a fake noise, I'm like, man, that works.

[Matt Farah]

This is a third gear corner. This is a fourth gear corner. This is second gear corner. Frames of reference are.

[Brian Scotto]

Frame of reference. I mean, that was a big thing that for Ken on Electricano. The first one we didn't have a simulated gearbox. The second we put a simulated gearbox in and it was like a different car for him because otherwise it's like there's just no understanding of reference of, like, how fast am I going? How fast are the wheels spinning? I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

It makes an enormous difference.

[Brian Scotto]

But at the same. Same time, it's really cringy, like, to sit there and like pipe in, right, fake audio noise into the car to get that experience. But it works.

[Matt Farah]

It does work.

[Brian Scotto]

It works.

[Matt Farah]

Fake titties, lie to me.

[Brian Scotto]

Also work. Yeah, also work. Good point.

[Matt Farah]

Let's see. Alex Brown, best budget friendly wheel brand, looking for under about 4,000 a set. You know anything about that? I buy really expensive wheels.

[Brian Scotto]

I'm sorry, I'm just. I'll be honest, I'm a used wheel kind of guy. Like, you could go and buy a nice set of wheels for 2500 or three grand and then have them refinished and barreled to fit perfectly on your car. And that's like almost a better spend. But I guess it depends on how new your car is and what you're looking for that you want out of it. You know, it's a cool wheel company. Augmented wheels. Have you seen them?

[Matt Farah]

I don't know.

[Brian Scotto]

They basically take like. They basically take like old classic wheel designs and then like build better, sizing better fitments for them. So, like phone dials, like, you know, like things like that. Like they make a 17 inch phone dial, which is like, if you have a 944 and you want to keep it on, like, things like that, that's pretty cool.

[Matt Farah]

I like that. I like that. Josh, what's your take on the B7 Audi RS4? I like that.

[Brian Scotto]

Let's not talk about it because I don't want the prices to go back up. The prices jumped after Covid, like they all did, and then they stayed high for a little bit and they've recently dropped. Like, you can buy a sub $20,000 one now. Really? You can get like an 18 to 19 grand one for like 120,000 miles. That is a fantastic car.

[Matt Farah]

Especially as, like, A highway car.

[Brian Scotto]

It's a great highway car. When they launched the one. When they launched the car in the US, we used it as the preview guide for zero to 60. I put 7,500 miles on that car in one week. Drove it for. From LA.

[Matt Farah]

Did you tell them what you were doing?

[Brian Scotto]

We told him we were going to bring it. We told him we deliver it to the New York office.

[Matt Farah]

7,500 miles.

[Brian Scotto]

We had to do an oil change while. Because it was breaking oil. We had to do an oil change at a Jiffy Lube on the way because I called Alan. I don't remember Alan. I'm blanking on his name, last name at the moment, but Alan Hall. Remember Alan?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

I had to call Alan and be like, hey, man, like, I'm getting all these lights on that, like, I need to, like, do a service. Can I bring it to Audi? And then, like, we couldn't. We were like, in the middle of, like, no audi dealership for 100 miles. We brought like a Jiffy Lip. But anyway, I did it. Like, we went from LA to Pikes Peak to. To Atlanta to then drive back to Chicago and then like, loop all around to New York. So. And then I went. I did that with the. The sedan and then the Avant I picked up in. We did a story, Nurburgring to Le Mans, comparing the two. And midway through the trip, it's like 2008. It was before I worked for Ken. Ken said, hey, I'm at. He. He's like, I saw you were in Europe because I like, posted something on, like, Facebook, whatever. He's like, I saw you're in Europe. What are you doing? I was like, oh, we're doing this thing. He's like, hey, I met Colin McRae's house. He said, if you want you.

[Matt Farah]

And you told us.

[Brian Scotto]

I went and did that on the way. So because of that, I've been. So I've actually been shopping one right now. I've been shopping one because I like the convertible.

[Matt Farah]

Nobody likes no convertible.

[Brian Scotto]

I think we said this last time, the convertible I is kind of cool. Like, you know, it's a really.

[Matt Farah]

That's a invisible car.

[Brian Scotto]

I'll tell you the weird swap I've been dreaming about is RS is RS B7, RS4 with the V10 in it. Oh, it's probably doable.

[Matt Farah]

You did it in the ace in the S6, right? You basically get an entire S6 powertrain.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, yeah, you could do that. Or would it fit or. Yeah, I mean, probably tight. Or the new 4 liter twin turbo V8 which is across multiple Audi. But like, like you could build that thing 800 horsepower all day. Because the one thing, if you drive a B7RS4 today, it sounds great. It revs to 8500. It is a fantastic driver. It has amazing steering. The steering feels really good on the car.

[Matt Farah]

No torque.

[Brian Scotto]

But it's just a little slower compared to what you expect out of that type of car today.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So anyway.

[Matt Farah]

But they're so nice.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Here for Matt's cats. Is it nuts to intentionally buy an unreal reliable car with the intention of learning and growing as a shade tree mechanic? Something like a used seven series that can be had cheap and is notorious for issues. I like where your head's at, but I don't.

[Brian Scotto]

Know. Everything you're saying is right. Everything you're saying is right. Honda Civic. Maybe a Volkswagen golf something something pre two. Like oh, pre OBD.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. 95 or where it's still a lot.

[Brian Scotto]

Easier to work on. The minute you went seven series was like, I don't know how to swim but I want to get dropped in the middle of the east river and try to make it to Roosevelt Island. Like that's a lot. Seven series is a lot. You should do it. You should definitely do it.

[Matt Farah]

So much electronics. Like that's the problem with those. You're talking about a luxury sedan with gadgets and shit in it.

[Brian Scotto]

Well this is the problem. My D2S8 is that, is that the biggest issue is all the electronic issues. I have like a bunch of like my engine temp light will go on even though my car is not hot.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I've replaced all the sensors. But it could be because it's original can bus. It could be because my hazard light is out. Like you just don't know with those cars. It's like too, too much pioneering in those cars for automakers that they're doing everything for the first time and they built it for an audience that was going to sell a car in three years.

[Matt Farah]

Right. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Like they, they knew that.

[Matt Farah]

That's every car from that period police era. Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. That's it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The biodegradable Mercedes wires say hello.

[Brian Scotto]

The. The. The mouse. The mouse. Fetching soy material.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay. Here's one. Chris says I stumbled upon a 95 JDM two door RAV4.

[Brian Scotto]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

And I'm considering buying it to replace my crew cab Tacoma. I have a 40 mile round trip commute and have your typical Pacific Northwest hobbies. Don't care about right hand Drive. I know where to get parts and I have a local shop to work on it. Am I missing something or should I buy?

[Brian Scotto]

First off, typical Pacific Northwest hobbies.

[Matt Farah]

Go hiking, smoking weed, kayaking, kayaking, drinking craft beer, drinking Craftsman, smoking more weed. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Flannels.

[Matt Farah]

Skiing.

[Brian Scotto]

Skiing. Eating fish. Eating fish. That's a good one.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Talking about farms and how the food gets to the table. What are other. Okay. I just wanted to kind of understand what we were doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, got it.

[Matt Farah]

So, I mean, look, we have hunting.

[Brian Scotto]

But only like elk, vegan hunting. Like, I don't normally hunt, but when I do, I kill a massive animal and then I eat the whole thing for a year and a half. Okay. So now that we got that figured out.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, cool.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I think the RAV4 is perfect.

[Matt Farah]

Can I just say that I saw in Arizona Last week a, a, a like a 90s two door soft top RAV4 cruising down the highway on rims with the soft top actually down. And I was like, that's pretty cool. In a Bentley. And I'm kind of jealous of that guy.

[Brian Scotto]

Nothing is better than driving a really fancy car and taking photo of a box. Do you know that? I love that because one, there's someone.

[Matt Farah]

Stole that from me and it was a meme and it went everywhere.

[Brian Scotto]

Right?

[Matt Farah]

It's me from a Ferrari press car.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And it's. And I posted this on Instagram and I took a picture of like a wagon. Like a wood sided.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like I wrote Caprice. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And I was like, I'm the guy in the $400,000 Ferrari taking a picture of this old wagon and someone screenshotted it from my Instagram and out, absent the context of. It's Matt Farah driving a press car and it gets stolen and shared around like twice a year.

[Brian Scotto]

It's better. It's better. It's better without the context because it's better to think that that was the owner.

[Matt Farah]

It is. But I was like, you stole this and provided no context, you fucking assholes. But yeah, but you're right. That is that it is the best.

[Brian Scotto]

Have you been in Steph's RAV4?

[Matt Farah]

No, but I've seen it a lot and it seems awesome.

[Brian Scotto]

He took me off road in it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

It's fantastic. It's like every, like it's so simple and it just works. It's pretty great.

[Matt Farah]

I'm taking that. I have downstairs in the, in the underground level right now. I have the Electric G wagon that I'm gonna take off roading on Friday.

[Brian Scotto]

It's the one that does the, like.

[Matt Farah]

It does the donuts thing. The tank turn.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

[Matt Farah]

And based on the tires, this one's been off roading a few times.

[Brian Scotto]

It's got that full press treatment level, so.

[Matt Farah]

See, by the way, it is now three hours and two minutes of podcast. The record is 249 easy. It's. It is easy when you're friends. Yeah, 249 is the.

[Brian Scotto]

I mean, we lost Zach and we're still going. If Zach was here, we'd go to five hours. We'd go to five hours because he hasn't even started asking questions yet. Yeah, maybe he can text them in.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Chris says the Bugatti Tourbillon is, in my opinion, the coolest car name. What other cool car names come to mind? And what would you name a supercar if you were head of marketing at a car manufacturer?

[Brian Scotto]

Mitsubishi Stereon. It's the coolest car and I don't.

[Matt Farah]

Know, story of it.

[Brian Scotto]

Is it true? Yes, it is true. Because, like, it sounds. It's a little racist.

[Matt Farah]

It's. If it sounds racist, it's because it's probably true.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. The Stallion to match the star. To match the Mustang. It was a Mustang competitor.

[Matt Farah]

I can't possibly beat Starion.

[Brian Scotto]

You can't.

[Matt Farah]

You came up with that so fast. And what is the worst. The worst name of a supercar is, of course, the Ferrari LaFerrari, which is. You cannot believe that such a talented company came up with that trash.

[Brian Scotto]

But do you think. See, but was that a bet? It was like a bunch of guys sitting around, like, drinking, like, you know, what's that? Lemon drink.

[Matt Farah]

It was like, Mr. Agnelli, do you really think they will buy anything and we sell them anything at all? Yes.

[Brian Scotto]

Yes. Is there a special allocation for it? Yes. Call it Ferrari La.

[Matt Farah]

The Ferrari.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Bad gardener says, once a month or So, I drive 500 miles in a round trip in a weekend to coach. Presumably that means kids sports. What car would be good for the trip and have baller presents when I show up for 30k or less?

[Brian Scotto]

Toyota Previa for sure. No, 30k or less. I give you a good Bentley turbo R. Well, D4 Audi A8L.

[Matt Farah]

Is that the outgoing one?

[Brian Scotto]

No, that. I think they're like D6 now, but it looks so similar to the new one that you don't realize that it's a 2015 or whatever. So it's almost 10 years old. But it's still sort of. If you can get one sub 100,000 miles, you can get it with the 4 liter twin turbo. So it's also a highway monster. You can get the TDI as well. You can get as a highway monster. And most people just see and get it in black. Most people just see. Big Audi sedan, looks baller. But the L means you got plenty of room in the back for kids bags. And if you have small kids they can't kick your seat. It's pretty good for a road trip that I love and for a driver.

[Matt Farah]

500 miles.

[Brian Scotto]

You can crush miles with that thing.

[Matt Farah]

500 miles. You might want the diesel if you.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah. If you need the pocketbook side on it. But. But I will also say during the pandemic I went from San Diego to LA in an hour in that car. It's pretty amazing. Full autobahn.

[Matt Farah]

Oh dude. I just had a new post pandemic high score I got from my front door which is right over here to Scottsdale. Okay. It was 382 miles and I did it in UN under five.

[Brian Scotto]

That's really good.

[Matt Farah]

It was moving. But I left my, I left my house at 5:30.

[Brian Scotto]

Perfect timing.

[Matt Farah]

5:30 in the morning.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Left my house. I was gone.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And Bentley GT.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

26 miles a gallon.

[Brian Scotto]

The other thing, 26 thing I'll say about the Audi, for some reason cops don't want to pull it over. They just look at you and go, you have a lawyer, you'll get out of the ticket. He'll make me show up to court and you show up to court and explain, I know how to use this machine. I'm good.

[Matt Farah]

Yo, by the way, shout out to off the record, our, one of our, our biggest sponsors here on the Smoking tire, my buddy Chris. Shout out to him, you know Big, you know Big Chris down in Texas. He, he's on Team Richard Rawlings. British Chris.

[Brian Scotto]

I don't 66 big dude usually all talk. We all talk. Guys are on a WhatsApp.

[Matt Farah]

So I'm wrong. Homie buys a GT2,996 home from buying it, he gets a whopper. He gets a, he gets a biggin. And the cop comes up to the car and goes. First thing he says is this a real GT2. So he's knows. Yeah, he knows. And the ticket was deep in the triple digits. Chris called me like bro, I am having a problem here. Off the record, dismissed, full dismissal. And if I told you the number on the radar gun, you wouldn't fucking believe me. I Mean, and it was.

[Brian Scotto]

And those are painful. Tony Harmer on bull run in 2006. Got a 155 in Moab in Utah.

[Matt Farah]

In that vet.

[Brian Scotto]

In the vet.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And I had just been behind the wheel and I had sustained 180 for over three minutes, which, by the way, there's a really long time to be going that fast.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the 06 Bull Run. That was the one where Rob and Noah had the Gotham 4 GT. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

And that was the year that Rollins didn't go. He showed up to go and then went and set the record instead to, like, surprise everybody at the end. Yeah. But he spent, like two years dealing with that ticket. And the cop, by the way, was super cool. When the cop caught us, he was like. He thought we had killed someone. Like, he didn't understand why we were going that fast. He was going in the other direction, and the minute he popped the lights on, like we weren't going to try to out. We just pulled over, turned the car off, and put the keys on the hood.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So he walked up and was just relieved that we didn't try to shoot him. And then apologized for ruining our vacation. He didn't really understand what I was trying to explain to him. That we were, like, working and then said, I'm sorry, I would let you go, but I thought you guys were making a run for the border. I literally thought you killed someone.

[Matt Farah]

I've already called.

[Brian Scotto]

I called an air support and. And literally, like 10 minutes later, a helicopter comes flying over the top of us. And they arrested him, put him in jail. I had to go bail him out. Yeah. But then it happened right then and there. We got back in the car and got back on the road.

[Matt Farah]

I never got any tickets that were written for a huge number on board.

[Brian Scotto]

I got a lot of talks, dude.

[Matt Farah]

I got so many fucking driving while stickered. People called in a whole bunch of cars.

[Brian Scotto]

You guys are racing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And I'm doing 67 and a 65.

[Brian Scotto]

Tony caught a. Caught a great contest of speed at 75 miles an hour in a 70 or in a 65 in Michigan.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

Because so many people called it in, and we weren't even with other people. We just had stickers on the car.

[Matt Farah]

I went to jail in New York for alleged street racing. And I was. I was absolutely not street racing. Me and a friend of mine were just going real fast up the west side Highway. Yeah, there's a big difference.

[Brian Scotto]

There's a big difference.

[Matt Farah]

Going real fast and racing. Yeah. It was. I sat in jail, didn't want to call my dad to bail me out.

[Brian Scotto]

See that one?

[Matt Farah]

You know how easy it must. Everyone had knives and weed in jail. I got searched. I don't know. All these fucking guys down there looking at fucking three strikes.

[Brian Scotto]

Prison purse, bro, you weren't thinking.

[Matt Farah]

Homie's asking me for a match to fucking light a joint. I'm like, we're in jail right now. Not only that, we're in the Tombs in New York underground fluorescent light jail.

[Brian Scotto]

That you got to put in your prison person.

[Matt Farah]

No windows. You're just going to light a fucking joint in a closed room.

[Brian Scotto]

Crazy.

[Matt Farah]

Last one. And then we will call this podcast. Having now set an endurance record on this program. Tim A. Love you. Tim A. It feels absurd, but the new CARRERA T is $150,000. What used Porsche would you buy new for Carrera T money? Now hang on a second. I don't think is. I don't think this car, I'm just looking it up is a starting price of 100 and we don't have the, we don't have the 992.2 price yet. Zach went on the launch. Oh, here we go, Coop or so the Carrera T Cabriolet starts at 100, 149,000. The Carrera T coupe starts at 136,000. Now I'm not saying that. Can I fucking bring this up? I'm not, I'm not saying that that isn't a lot, but it is not quite 150. So the coupe starts at 136. So but anyway, back to Tim's question. New Carrera tees are in the neighborhood of 150 grand. What used Porsche would you buy for Carrera T money?

[Brian Scotto]

I would either buy a nicely spec'd air cooled only because I don't. As sad as it is, I don't think the value is going to go down on them. I think everyone thought they were going to drop and they just seem to kind of keep going back up. So I think that's a car you buy that you could drive for five years and sell for the same thing you bought. Yeah, which is, which is an amazing thing.

[Matt Farah]

There will not be any more of them. There are all the ones that ever will exist, exist now.

[Brian Scotto]

Otherwise I would say a really, really nice spec 997. I think the 997 is the greatest of the water cooled to me the other ones that got bigger. The 997 feels like it's still connected to the lineage of the air cooled everything else to me feels like it's a different car. Sure. I get that the car just feels. Not saying it's a bad car, they're still great. But it feels like it's not the same car. You couldn't have afford a GT3 at 150.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

But a really good spec.

[Matt Farah]

You could do a 997 GTS.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

150 will get you a very good.

[Brian Scotto]

And get it in a great spec, get it in a weird color with a weird interior because that'll be worth. That's going to be the car that'll be worth 200, 250 in a few years from now, which is crazy to think.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean that's a great choice. A990. You might be able to get a993 4s for 150 grand. It will have miles else on it, but it's possible. I mean also my Spider, you know, I love my Spider. It's the right size and you know it's, it's big on the inside and small on the outside and it looks great and it does everything well.

[Brian Scotto]

And so I recommend the other option would be. What was that? 150.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Brian Scotto]

So like 2944s, that's, that's always an option.

[Matt Farah]

990.

[Brian Scotto]

Just run an entire nine. Run an entire 944 racing series of your own. Yeah. So yeah, that would, that would be it. All right.

[Matt Farah]

Well that is our three hour program. Make sure to come on. Oh, I was trying to put your up on the screen here, but it's.

[Brian Scotto]

No, it's all right.

[Matt Farah]

I don't know why it's not working. Let's try now. There we go. It's up on the screen. Brian Scotto on Instagram is your, your.

[Brian Scotto]

Patreon and also my, my YouTube because I will start uploading to YouTube in like a couple of weeks.

[Matt Farah]

Great.

[Brian Scotto]

I was going to try to time it where I was going to be able to announce today, it's coming up tomorrow, but I'm not that organized.

[Matt Farah]

It's okay. Yeah, this will go off. This will go up tomorrow Tuesday.

[Brian Scotto]

Awesome.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you to all of our patrons. Of course. Patreon.com the Smoking Tire podcast is where you do all of those things ad free, early access, livestream, the whole shit. And we've got our tactile turn pen collab. We've got the titanium, which this is. We've also got an aluminum if you don't want to spend this much money. But but you still want a good, lightweight, lifetime guarantee pen. Made in America, patrons only. I will post the link on the Patreon if there's any left, because we made 100 of them. If there's any left at the end, we'll sell them to the public. But, Scotto, the record hubby, Johnny Lieberman.

[Brian Scotto]

Suck it. Suck it. Records mine. And if you want to come back for it, I'm just getting started.

[Matt Farah]

And we didn't even open the pretzel nuggets.

[Brian Scotto]

No. We barely even tapped into this.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Thank you for bringing the snacks.

[Brian Scotto]

One Arizona on a green tea and two Red Bulls. Got me.

[Matt Farah]

That's it. That's it. Yeah. Dude. Well, always good to see you.

[Brian Scotto]

Definitely.

[Matt Farah]

I said hello.

[Brian Scotto]

We'll do.

[Matt Farah]

And. And I can't wait to see what you end up doing with your Patreon. I will join your Patreon today.

[Brian Scotto]

Now, I feel like it's a pity, but I. I'll still take your six bucks. Yeah. So I enjoy it.

[Matt Farah]

I got six on it.

[Brian Scotto]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

All right.

[Brian Scotto]

I'll make you a free member by giving me some storage. I got, like. I got 27 cars.

[Matt Farah]

All right, thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.