Steve Dinan

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Smoking Tire – Episode with Steve Dinan

Episode Details:

• Title: The Smoking Tire
• Hosts: Zack Klapman, Matt Farah
• Guest: Steve Dinan
• Release Date: October 29, 2024

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Smoking Tire, hosts Matt Farah and Zack Klapman welcome automotive legend Steve Dinan, founder of the renowned BMW tuning company Dinan and the innovative tuning firm Carbon. Steve shares his extensive 44-year journey in car racing, engineering, and tuning, offering listeners a deep dive into the complexities of modern automotive performance in an era shifting towards hybridization.

Racing Insights

Steve Dinan discusses his rich history in endurance sports car racing, emphasizing his commitment to GT and prototype classes over open-wheel racing. He reflects on the evolution of competition, noting:

Steve Dinan [05:11]: "I’m back to Michelin Pilot GS again and we’re back in a BMW M4 now. So I haven’t raced a BMW for a while."

He highlights the heightened competition and technical demands in higher-tier racing classes:

Steve Dinan [06:14]: "The engineering is so high and the driver quality is so high and the execution is so high that you just have to be on your game almost perfectly all the time."

Suspension and Handling

A significant portion of the discussion centers on suspension setups and tire dynamics in racing versus street cars. Steve explains the importance of optimizing spring rates and damping to enhance tire longevity and vehicle handling:

Steve Dinan [10:06]: "The softer you can set it up and still have it be drivable, the longer the tires are going to last because that energy from the spring rate or the dampers gets transmitted into the sidewall of the tire and makes the tire warm and makes the tire die."

He contrasts this with street car setups, which prioritize ride quality over performance:

Steve Dinan [11:09]: "Street cars are always so much softer because of the ride quality concern that they always have good tire dig."

Engine Tuning and Modifications

Steve delves into the intricacies of engine tuning, discussing methods like tune stacking and the challenges associated with increasing horsepower without compromising engine integrity. He warns against unreliable aftermarket modifications:

Steve Dinan [59:38]: "Tune stacking is a really great way to break your car."

He advocates for robust engine builds over precarious tuning practices, sharing his experiences with high-performance engines:

Steve Dinan [63:00]: "It's a complete usable motor. Just like the S65."

Impact of Hybridization

The conversation shifts to the automotive industry's pivot towards hybrid and electric vehicles. Steve expresses mixed feelings about this transition, emphasizing the challenges it poses for performance tuning:

Steve Dinan [37:56]: "It makes the whole tuning process a lot more complicated and a lot more expensive."

While acknowledging the environmental benefits of hybrid and electric cars, he voices concerns over their suitability for high-performance applications due to increased weight and complexity.

Testing Regulations and Technological Approaches

Steve critiques the current testing regulations in racing, arguing that they inadvertently favor well-funded teams with access to advanced technologies like shaker rigs and wind tunnels. He explains how these limitations restrict smaller teams and amateur racers:

Steve Dinan [25:44]: "I think allowing that and not allowing testing is a silly rule."

He also touches upon the evolving nature of testing, including the use of inerters and mass dampers in high-tier racing, illustrating the technological arms race within the sport.

Future Projects and Developments

Looking ahead, Steve outlines Carbon's expansion into tuning Audis and Mercedes, aiming to integrate the best technologies across different brands. He shares exciting projects, including:

• High-Performance RS5: Enhancing suspension and engine performance with stroker motors and advanced dampers.
• Custom Classic Builds: Combining modern engineering with classic car aesthetics, such as retro-modern hot rods with V10 engines.

Steve emphasizes the meticulous engineering and substantial investment required for these projects:

Steve Dinan [67:42]: "We're making a stroker motor, a 3.2-liter V6 turbo to make it make 700 horsepower like the M4."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the state of modern automotive performance, the balance between technological advancements and driver engagement, and the enduring passion that fuels the tuning and racing communities. Steve Dinan's insights offer a nuanced perspective on maintaining performance excellence in a rapidly evolving automotive landscape.

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Notable Quotes:

• Steve Dinan [05:11]: "I’m back to Michelin Pilot GS again and we’re back in a BMW M4 now. So I haven’t raced a BMW for a while."
• Steve Dinan [06:14]: "The engineering is so high and the driver quality is so high and the execution is so high that you just have to be on your game almost perfectly all the time."
• Steve Dinan [10:06]: "The softer you can set it up and still have it be drivable, the longer the tires are going to last..."
• Steve Dinan [37:56]: "It makes the whole tuning process a lot more complicated and a lot more expensive."
• Steve Dinan [59:38]: "Tune stacking is a really great way to break your car."
• Steve Dinan [25:44]: "I think allowing that and not allowing testing is a silly rule."
• Steve Dinan [67:42]: "We're making a stroker motor, a 3.2-liter V6 turbo to make it make 700 horsepower like the M4."

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the intersection between traditional automotive performance and modern technological trends, guided by Steve Dinan's expert perspective. Whether you're a racing enthusiast, a performance tuner, or a general car lover, the insights shared provide valuable understanding of the challenges and innovations shaping today's automotive landscape.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

Hybridization, you know, is coming in the new, the new M5.

[Steve Dinan]

Not excited.

[Matt Farah]

So, but from your perspective, okay, there's whether you, whether you like it or not and whether, but how does it, you know, what does your company, you know, carbon look like in a world where these cars are hybridized?

[Steve Dinan]

Look, I'm also, and this sounds weird, I'm kind of an environmentalist for a car guy, which is why all my stuff's emissions legal. I don't take the catalytic converters off of it because we all have to live in this planet. So I'm fine with electric cars, I'm fine with hybrid cars, but I think there should be percentage of the car market that is not.

[Matt Farah]

Hello and welcome to the Smoke and Tire podcast. I am Matt Farah and today's episode is, as always, brought to you by off the Record. We love off the Record here at the Smoke and Tire because they are in it for you. They're looking out for you. If you make a little boo boo on the highway, or maybe a very big boo boo on the highway, you're gonna need good representation. And if you're somewhere outside of your normal comfort zone, you may have trouble finding it. That's where off the Record comes in. They set you up with a qualified attorney where you got pulled over. In order to fight that ticket on your behalf and keep those points off of your record, all you have to do is go to offtherecord.com TST or use code TSTPOD on the off the Record app. Just download that app, have it handy in your phone. It makes using off the record even easier and more seamless than if you do it on the web. I have used it many, many times and they have kept me motoring on points free. It is the best. Go to offtherecord.com TST or use code TSTPOD on the off the Record app to get 10% off all legal services booked through off the Record. All right. On today's program, it's a leg in the studio. Car builder, engine builder, BMW guru, racer, and all around nice guy. Steve Dinan is in studio. The founder of the legendary BMW tuning company with his name on it, but he no longer runs is legendary within BMWs and his new company, Carbon is frankly making even better stuff. Their kits are amazing for BMW, Mercedes. And coming soon, Audi legend. Get right to it. Steve Dinan is on the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go.

[Steve Dinan]

Cal Poly engineer, worked for me for.

[Matt Farah]

About 11 years, so he used to.

[Steve Dinan]

Work at the Airbnb.

[Matt Farah]

So try to not talk like this so much. Even though Zach is over there. He'll know you're talking to him if.

[Steve Dinan]

You'Re talking to him.

[Zach Klapman]

You gotta do this move where you're.

[Steve Dinan]

Like, yeah, you do. The have a theory that you could gus at something. You use FEA and you can do all this finagling to make something stronger. Or he could just make it bigger. He would say that every time we talk about making something.

[Matt Farah]

That's the American racing engines version of things. Right?

[Steve Dinan]

Exactly right. That was his thing. So he would get a little more sexually graphic about just getting equality.

[Matt Farah]

Just fuck it harder. Wait, what? How did I end up here? What?

[Steve Dinan]

That was kind of his thing though.

[Zach Klapman]

He rather have been a well buttressed gentleman. Otherwise you could have thrown all the jokes right back at you.

[Steve Dinan]

I don't know. I've never seen it.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, no, you don't want to. That breaks HR rules.

[Matt Farah]

Are we live? We exist?

[Zach Klapman]

We are good.

[Matt Farah]

All right, Vil come in. Anybody who's checking us out live. We got going about 30 minutes early. And that's because what happens with this program a lot is people are so considerate or they have to check out of their hotel in your case. And they come to the studio early, which is. I appreciate, I'm a timely gentleman myself. But then you know what happens? Steve Dinan, we fucking do the show in the lobby before we start recording. We talk about everything. And so I have to go run away, hide in my office so we don't give away what we can sell.

[Steve Dinan]

I don't mind waiting either. I'm just a long time.

[Matt Farah]

And Eric, my manager downstairs who was talking to you, the Armenian homie, he's a huge fan of your entire career. He owns like six BMWs and he's a big fan. So I said let eric have his 15 with Steve. Welcome back. Nice to see you.

[Steve Dinan]

I always love being here, man. I love your deal.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you.

[Steve Dinan]

It's awesome.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you. We tend to feel the same way about the things that you build. There's a lot going on. You're now back in racing.

[Steve Dinan]

I am back.

[Matt Farah]

They were out. They pulled you back in. But somebody else this time.

[Steve Dinan]

It's the same group I've been with since 2018. It was Audis. And then we went up to Weathertech from Michelin Pilot in the Lamborghini Huracan. Then we lost our sponsor to IndyCart Racing. So it's now an Errol McLaren. And so now we're back to Michelin Pilot GS again and we're back in a BMW M4 now. So I haven't raced a BMW for a while.

[Matt Farah]

So you've competed or you've been principal or in charge of teams that have competed in GT cars, prototype sports cars. What else? Do we have any Indy in there? Is there anything open wheel in there?

[Steve Dinan]

Involved with Chip when he was in Indy, But I never have been involved in. I've always been an endurance sports car guy. But yeah, it's GT cars and prototype cars for. This is my 44th year in car racing.

[Matt Farah]

Do you have a different approach? Because, I mean, between if you're doing 24 hours, a Daytona or a whole season, GT car versus prototype car, do you have to be in a different mental state of preparation or. Not really.

[Steve Dinan]

I don't think it's a different mental state of preparation. But I will say that when you get to the faster cars, all the teams and all the engineers are better and you better know what you're doing. Are you going to get your clock clean? People sometimes think because there's less cars in the faster class, like 10 cars as opposed to 25, that there's less competition, right? No, there's just less cars.

[Matt Farah]

Toyota's got five. And they put equal amounts of money behind each of them.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, but the engineering is so high and the driver quality is so high and the execution is so high that you just have to be on your game almost perfectly all the time. Where in the lower levels, there's enough people that are, I hate to use the word, pretend to be professionals, but.

[Matt Farah]

They'Re Pro Am series. Right.

[Steve Dinan]

They're not on the same level that you can make some mistakes once in a while and you can still win. But at the lower level it's harder. But that's the only real difference is the quality of the people and the amount of money you have goes up.

[Zach Klapman]

Is the spread of money spent in the lower classes wider than it does upper tiers? Like the upper tiers is the minimum X and the highest one is just a little bit higher or is there always a big spread?

[Steve Dinan]

I don't think it makes a difference whether you're in Formula One or Indy car racing or, you know, your local SCCA club racing, the really good teams always spend about 20% more than the average team.

[Matt Farah]

I think in Formula One, it's more than 20% more than the lower team.

[Steve Dinan]

Spend it 40% less. But the average team is 20% less in the winners. I mean, there's a price. I always tell people when they want to get involved in racing, there's a Price to show up. And there's a price to win, and that's not the same price. And you can maintain the car, you can make it run, and you can finish in the back half of the pack for half as much money as you can win. But, you know, it takes more than everyone else, from both an engineering and a financial standpoint, to win consistently.

[Matt Farah]

Why do you think. I mean, do you think there's enough passion in racing that people are just are comfortable spending enough to get there, but knowing they can't spend enough to win and wanting to race anyway? Is it because they think that on any day it could be their day, or is it just the passion of the sport?

[Steve Dinan]

A lot of people are a little delusional about what it takes to win. You know, it's not all about money. You have to spend the money in the right places with the right staff and skilled engineering and drivers. And some people who have a lot of money to spend on racing don't understand what it takes to win racing. Right. So money is not the only solution to the problem. Okay. It's just one of the many factors you have to have. Correct. Right. But, yeah, it takes engineering skill, it takes driving skill, and it takes management skill and money, and you have to have all those together. And any racing series, there's even Clinic for one, there's four or five teams that are capable of winning. Right. Every weekend. And then they have everybody else that's racing also.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And of course, some of those people aspire to move to the top, like Haas does in Formula One. They're getting better again, like McLaren did. They were out for a while. Now they're back in again. Probably the fastest car in Formula one. Some people aspire their whole lives and never get there because they don't understand what they don't know. You know what I mean? The definition of ignorance. I don't know what I don't know. So I don't know how to get there. Right. And look, it took me a lot of years. I mean, I've been racing 44 years. It probably took me 15 to understand what I needed to do to get to the front.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, it's not. It's not a. It's not an easy thing to learn. It's very complicated.

[Matt Farah]

Was there, like. Do you remember, like, any, like, light bulb moments that happened during years 12 through 15 where it really started to, like, come together and you were like, oh, shit. Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

The biggest lightbulb moment I ever had was when I used to think you had to have the fastest car to win a car race. And when I went to work with Chip when we were doing engines for BMW corporate for Chip Ganassian prototype racing, they would win half their races when they didn't have the fastest car.

[Matt Farah]

But maybe they had the most fuel efficient car or the fastest pit stops or the most best tire wear or something.

[Steve Dinan]

It was their total execution. Yeah. I mean their tire degradation was lower than everybody else's. They made less mistakes, their pit stops were better. Their strategy, they compensated for the fact that the car was a little off that day in a more consistent way than anybody had ever worked with before. And that's. That light bulb went off in my brain that was like 2010. I go, ah, you don't have the fastest car to win a car. Right. Yeah, it certainly helps, but it's not a requirement.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach Klapman]

You see that especially earlier this season with formula one with Max was much better at tire dig than. Well, I mean then Checo, but then some of his competitors competition, you know, I mean they could be right with him, but as they got to lap 24, 5, 6, 7. Yeah, just he was using less tire somehow. But also going faster.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that literally happens in days of thunder.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, really like one of my fortes and it's one of the things I learned from the gassy guys is how to have low tire dig when you set up a car. Yeah. And so I always have the lowest tire DEG in my series. So I have really good long run car. Like in Indy, we finished, we qualified fifth. But by the end of the race with everybody else with their tire deck, we just drove away from the field. I mean we had so much pace on at the end of the race.

[Matt Farah]

Does that apply, whatever theory that you're using in racing apply to how you set up street cars or is it such a different set of requirements that it doesn't really cross over?

[Steve Dinan]

You know, street cars are always so much softer because of the ride quality concern that they always have good tire dig. The problem with race cars is people think that stiffer is better.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Steve Dinan]

People think that sometimes in streetcar suspensions too, but in racing it's very extreme. I'll give you an example.

[Matt Farah]

Streetcars, they're usually wrong.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, and streetcar's usually wrong. But like for example, the M car out there, the spring raise like three, 400 pounds race car which weighs 600 pounds less 1,000 pounds, you know, so a stiff and a soft race car is like a 900 pound parade spring versus a 1200 pound parade spring, it's still three times as much as a street car. So it doesn't really correlate that much.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Steve Dinan]

It's just a ride quality issue on a street.

[Matt Farah]

Right, right, right.

[Steve Dinan]

But a race car, the softer you can set it up and still have it be drivable, the longer the tires are going to last because that energy from the spring rate or the dampers gets transmitted into the sidewall of the tire and makes the tire warm and makes the tire die.

[Matt Farah]

What starts to happen with the car dynamically to be able to determine that it's too soft? What is the symptom of that line.

[Steve Dinan]

Being crossed when you turn the steering wheel? The car's response characteristics are so quick. When the car is soft, it kind of tucks and then you have to catch the back end that the car becomes very hard to hang on to. And part of the reason, professor, that's.

[Matt Farah]

Not what I thought he was going to say. I thought you were going to say it was pushy or it was slow.

[Steve Dinan]

No, no, no. It's the response characteristic of the car transition from left to right. It becomes so sensitive that you have to be super smooth and very quick at catching the car. When you make a stiffer car, it becomes more benign from a characteristic standpoint, but it will flat slide earlier and it will kill the tires faster. And this is also why professional race car drivers get paid a lot. A professional race car driver can hang on to a free soft car and an amateur gets scared and he wants the security of making the car stiffer so it doesn't move around so much on him.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Steve Dinan]

So yeah, that's why pros are pros. I mean, that's.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I never thought that softer would make. I mean, I guess, yes, you have more weight transfer, so it makes it a little sloppier. Right. But that's not what I would have. I would have thought that it stiffer meant twitchier, but maybe it just means it reduces that gray area between grip and slip.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, remove it removes movement when the car is different. And less movement means the car is not going to do anything I don't want it to do. Right now. You can make car so stiff that will skip like you're talking, it will go sideways. You can make it way too stiff. But I'm not talking that kind of stuff. I'm talking about, you know, a 900 pound per inch spring on a GS car versus 1000 or 1200, you know, kind of thing.

[Matt Farah]

And then when there's that discrepancy between the Pro and the amateur. Who do you favor?

[Steve Dinan]

That's a tough one. You know, I mean, we.

[Matt Farah]

The guy writing the checks or the guy cashing them.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, you always win the race with the closer, and the closer is always the pro. So if you want to win a race, it has to be good for him. But it also can't be so bad that the starting driver. And it depends on the quality of your starting drive. We haven't have a very good one right now. Sean McAllister, he's amazingly good, actually, that he has got to be able to hang onto the car so the pro gets in. Because if he wrecks it, you don't have anything to finish the race with. Right. But you can also do some things that make them both happy. You know, for example, my closer, Jeff, he likes a freer car. Sean likes a more understeering car. And I did too, because I was never a real pro. I was just pretty good as a race car driver. I liked a little bit more understeer, especially on corner entry. But I found that I can dial in a more understeer on entry to the car by the spring shock bar relationship in the back of the car. That makes Sean happy. That doesn't hinder Jeff on the way out. What Jeff doesn't like is an understeering car and exit because he has to wait and wait and wait to get on the power.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

So I found that I makes the car secure an entry for Sean and make it what we call pointy or more free on exit for Jeff. And I can get what they both like, and I can get them within a few tenths of each other. Oh, that's pretty lap time wise. You know, like three or four tenths.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's pretty good.

[Steve Dinan]

And they're both happy. That's a hard combination.

[Matt Farah]

That's a tough one. Super.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And that's on this GS car.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Which. Is this a good race car?

[Steve Dinan]

It's a great race.

[Matt Farah]

Is it?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. It's one of the best race cars I've ever had.

[Matt Farah]

Really? In what way?

[Steve Dinan]

Well, first of all, excuse me. It's very kind to the tires. And since it's so big and tall, you'd send it to.

[Matt Farah]

Sensing a recurring theme here, but it is.

[Steve Dinan]

And then I'm good at setting up long run cars. And me and the car get along really well. We have a relationship, you know, which you get with a machine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

You know, people think machines don't talk to you, but they do. You just have to know how to listen how physically?

[Zach Klapman]

That's what I drove at Thermal, actually. I mean, Ford GT4. It's a big vehicle.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

The other nice thing is it has a really great air conditioning system. I know that's important. It has holes in the seats with a grid and it blows cold air on your spine.

[Zach Klapman]

It was 90 degrees outside. I had to turn off and on.

[Steve Dinan]

So when you're, when you're hot and tired at the ends of the race, it makes all the difference in the world in your freshness.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I drove Will Turner's M8 a couple years ago that had that and it was kick ass. Yeah, it was a great time. So how actually big is this car compared to like the old M8 or the M6 race cars? Guys, gotta take a quick break. The holiday season is coming up and now it's time that you think about the Smoking Tires. Longest running sponsor. You know them? I love them. Dylan optic sunglasses. Made right here in the usa, Arizona. They are the best. I've been wearing these things since 2010. I wore them before they paid me to, literally. McConaughey gets that line. But I lived it. First I bought a pair of Dylan optics. They saw me wearing the Dylan optics. I love them so much. And they said, hey, we're a new company and we want to sponsor your channel 2010. We're looking at almost 15 years later. Dylan is still here. They are always expanding styles and offerings. They've got over 10 different frame styles and then all the different colored lenses. You can make a totally unique pair of sunglasses. You'll never see another one like it out in the crowd. And if you go to the smokingtire.com on the partners page and click on that Dylan banner, we'll give you a free TST T shirt for ordering a pair of sunglasses. Holidays are coming up. Get a pair for the one you love. Get them a gift certificate. Let them customize them themselves. They make awesome gifts because they're awesome glasses. Everywhere I go, people are like, are those fogged up? I'm like, no, they're just more awesome. And then I let people try them on. They can believe you can see through them because of the matte finish. And then you can. And then they're like, oh, my God, this glass is so good. So get them through our website, the smoking tire.com and the partners tab and we'll send you a free T shirt as a little token of our appreciation. And before we get back to the action, we have a new collaboration coming. I love doing collabs with people who make really good stuff. And I love a good pen and I love the tactile turn pens. Found them a couple years ago, started buying pens and after we did the watch thing with notice, it was like, hey, can we make a smoking tire pen? And we did and it sold out very quickly. So we're making another one. New color, new fun, fidgety, clicky mechanism you can annoy your co workers with. We don't have the the actual item to share just yet, but it's going to be for patrons only. So if you're interested in that, you must be a TST patron, which you [e-mail] the Smok Smoking Tire podcast. And now back to the program.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, it's smaller than that still, but it's big compared to an old 3 series like an E46 or an E36. But it belies its way. Yeah, there's Sean and Jeff.

[Matt Farah]

Well, what is it? What does the race car weigh?

[Steve Dinan]

Oh, these days like 32, 3300.

[Matt Farah]

That's a lot lighter than the street car.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, my street car is 3750. So it's like £500 less. Yeah, but it's still a big car. I mean when I was a kid, race cars weighed 2,000, 2,500 pounds. They had side drive webers in them. I mean it was like lightness was the thing. Right now the cars are a lot faster even though they're a lot bigger and a lot heavier. Just because the technology has improved so much in every way aerodynamically, tires, dampers, shift speeds, abs.

[Matt Farah]

They're using the factory automatics in these.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it's eight speed automatic zf.

[Matt Farah]

Great gearbox, which is wild, right, that the race car is using that it works really good. And what is the powertrain difference from a street car?

[Steve Dinan]

It's detuned 150 horsepower. So the race car has 400 horsepower. The street car comes with 550. And then the road car you're testing is 750. So the road car has 350 more horsepower than the race car. It used to be the other way around when I was. Well, the good news is an engine lasts a year. Yeah, like you put one in at the year and it lasts the entire season. Other than changing spark plugs in the oil, you don't have to do anything with it, which is why they do it. But the other reason they do it is they're racing against all kinds of different cars like Porsche Caymans and stuff that don't have of 600 horsepower. So they take the fast cars and slow them down, the slow cars and speed them up to try and make them all the same. So the racing is better. You know, have they done a good job?

[Matt Farah]

Is the racing better?

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, it's closer than it used to be. In the old days. It used to be if you had a dominant car, you could like lap the whole field every race. And it was like legal. You don't get away with that anymore. As soon as you start outperforming everyone, they reel you back in. But do they make them all exactly equal? No, they have a problem with equalizing lap times, but not equalizing how they make the lap time. You know, so for example, this car is the slowest car on the straightaway. So we get to plays like road Atlanta, mile long straightaway. It's, I mean, literally, we qualified fifth and by the time we were 30 minutes in the race, we were ninth. Every time we get in the straightaway, somebody just motor bias and pull back in. It's not race.

[Matt Farah]

So the formula isn't optimized for every track. But if you're on some super short track with a short straight, you might actually, the advantage might actually be potentially.

[Steve Dinan]

In your favor or even the characteristic of the track like Indianapolis, we won. It has a super long straightaway too. But there's a right hand corner on the straightaway and the car was handling so well. We were flat through the last corner. Everybody else was lifting. We were coming onto the straightaway two or three miles an hour more top speed. And then it didn't look like we were down on power.

[Matt Farah]

But that's a pretty, I mean, but you gotta admit, that's a pretty tough job for the regulators because every track is different. Like there's just no way they could know.

[Steve Dinan]

No.

[Matt Farah]

You know, this set of compensatory measures will affect on these three tracks, but not these three tracks will have the opposite effect on those three tracks.

[Steve Dinan]

It's tough. It is very tough. Like we were at Watkins Glen and Watkins Glen has so many long fast corners and we had such a good handling car. We had a half second on the entire field just because of the characteristic of the racetrack.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

Then we get to road Atlanta and we get motored by nine people down the back straightaway and we honestly wound up finishing third at Ronald. What I did was I, I pulled him out of the pack. We got to our go home point and put him in clean air because the car would turn a lap time. And by the time everybody pitted, we were back in second place.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, okay. So then you know, you were able to strategize back in the game.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, but sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't. Depends on how the race flows. Right. And then the good news is there was no yellow till the end of the race. So we had a two second gap on third place and they would gain a half second down the straight. We'd pull a half second back in the corners. We did that for like an hour. But if a yellow flag would have come out, nine people would have passed us again on the restart and we would have been back to 9th or 10th again. So it said it's a hard way to race.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

The best thing about BMWs and the road cars and the race car is they're so benign on the limit. You know, like a lot of cars, especially mid engine cars, you lift up the gas, they want to, you know, Porsches and Lamborghinis because all the mass back there with the motor and everything. But these things, because they're a little bit nose heavy when you lift up the gas, they just understeer less.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, right.

[Steve Dinan]

So they don't want to spin out on you ever. So they're super easy cars on the limits. Friendly cars to drive fast. You could argue ultimately a card smooth, more sharp edge. Mid engine would probably be faster, but they've taken care of that with a bop. Right. So in the end all cars are performing about the same and the BMW is the easiest one to drive and the coolest on the inside, which fatigues you less. So it's just a very user friendly car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Well that's good.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, I agree. What is the front tire size you're running?

[Steve Dinan]

We run 300 millimeters all way around.

[Zach Klapman]

So I drove this car, well, not that car, but I went to this Hoosier event and when we got in the car they say do not try to slide this car or don't do it by accident because you don't have much steering angle correction because the front tires are so wide. I mean, so the U turn, you know, if you wanted to U turn the race car would be, you know, you need an extra lane compared to the street car. So I was just curious how much wide.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean they do limit the steering lot to lock but the race tires on it. But in the racetrack we've never had a steering limit. It's got plenty. Of course they have never tried to parallel park it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but they were telling 30° like drift with one.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it'll do that.

[Zach Klapman]

No, no, they Were telling us like, don't do that because it won't do that. And you'll hit that wall where people hit that wall. Like they pointed at a specific wall. So I was just curious how wide the.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, it's been a great race car. I've had a lot of really good race cars, but that's a great race. I've had some bad race cars, but I don't want to say bad things about people, so I'm not going to mention who they are. I bought some race cars I would never recommend buying.

[Matt Farah]

That's awesome.

[Zach Klapman]

How much downforce does this car make and how does that come into play with the spring rate?

[Steve Dinan]

Not a lot. We're running, we pull about 1.5 GS. And to give you a reference, the road car I gave you pulls 1.2.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

So both impressive numbers though. Yeah. I mean, that's an impressive number for a road car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, but if you're trying, if you're going past 1.2 on the street, you've got some fucking mental issues. Probably, yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, depending on the asphalt, that car does 1.1 to 1.2 G's.

[Matt Farah]

Well, it's on Cub 2R.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. The tires probably 2/10. That's the tires. Yeah, but these are full blown Michelin slicks. You know, racing Michelin lacing tires. And it fills 1.5 with whatever arrow we have. It's not a lot. I've never taken it to the wind tunnel. It's not legal, but it has some downforce.

[Matt Farah]

Do you guys have in this series limits on testing other than wind tunnel? Can you rent a racetrack all you want?

[Steve Dinan]

No. In addition, pilot, you can test as much as you want as long as you don't test at the race track. You're going to race at within 10 days of the race.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

I think is what the exact rule is. Sure. But. But yeah. So we.

[Matt Farah]

Because the conditions of a racetrack change that rapidly?

[Steve Dinan]

Yes. Yeah, they do.

[Matt Farah]

Sure. I get that. Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

But we don't. We're not allowed to do simulations. So we can't do shaker rigs, we can't do wind tunnels. So what the big guys do is they go shaker rigs and wind tunnels and they're not allowed to do testing. I would argue that testing costs less money than the shaker rig and the wind tunnels. So I'm the original reason they supposedly made testing legal. To reduce costs.

[Matt Farah]

You can do one or the other.

[Steve Dinan]

No, in the big cars, they can't do testing like the LMP1. Oh, the LMP1. Like when I was in GTD, which is GT3, the Lamborghini Huracan, we were allowed four test days a year. That's not four tests a year. That's it. Yeah, but you're allowed to. If you're an amateur racer, you can't do Shaker or wind tunnel. You only get four tests. If you're pro gtd, then you can do wind tunnel and Shaker rig testing, and you get 10 test days. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to limit the cost. So the Pro Am combination, you're allowed to do less simulation, less testing to keep the cost of the Pro Am program. Program down. Then you have to race against the pro cars on the track at the same time. The same car, which is kind of lousy. Like, they give the people with more money and more pro drivers and more technology more tests so they can beat you even more. Yeah, so when you run with them, it's really fun. I mean, you know, the headlights come.

[Matt Farah]

Up from behind real fast.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, I mean. I mean, when you can race with them. We raced at Road America in the Lamborghini GTD car, and we were, you know, I think it was us and Turner were like, second or third or third and fourth behind the two pro cars closing down on them like we were going to pass them. And these guys had twice the budget we did. That's always really fun when that happens.

[Zach Klapman]

It's happened this year a couple times. I've done some races where the AM cars caught or passed. It's finished a lot better than some of the pro cars. It's wild.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it's neat. It's neat when that happens. I would argue that testing is a lot less money than Shaker rigs and wind tunnels and simulations. And so I think allowing that and not allowing testing is a silly rule. But that rule was created a long time ago, before we had Shaker rigs and wind tunnel testing available to people. And the rules kind of just stuck over the ages.

[Matt Farah]

It's so funny. It seems like an easy one to change.

[Steve Dinan]

You would think.

[Matt Farah]

Wonder where they draw the line at test day. Like, what is the. What is the. Is it. If you start the car at a racetrack, is that a. Is that a test day?

[Steve Dinan]

You can't go to a racetrack and run the car at all, even one lap. But there's also these little loopholes, like, if you know you're gonna race in WeatherTech next year in GT, but you haven't Signed up for the racing series and you bought a car in July. You could test for four months until.

[Matt Farah]

You enter the series.

[Steve Dinan]

Enter the series in December. You've already done a whole season.

[Matt Farah]

I support, I support this scam. That's a good scam.

[Steve Dinan]

There's a lot of things, like every.

[Matt Farah]

Year you keep them hanging. Are you going to run next year? I don't know. Maybe. I'll let you know in like September.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. And the, all the old days before there was a testing rule when we were in pro racing. We would go to every racetrack two weeks before the race and get us set up for the race, do the full races. We do, we do a full tour of the whole. So we do 24 races a year.

[Matt Farah]

Wow, that's awesome.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I wonder, are there, have you heard? I mean, I'm sure you deal with a lot of high end clients. Is there anyone who has one of these teams that has like a membership at a Thermal or an autobahn and just like just test their car like straight up at the country club?

[Steve Dinan]

And that's the other thing too is you can buy another car exactly like it and say it's my track day car.

[Matt Farah]

Right. That's a good scam too.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes. But the problem with that is Michelin regulates how many tires you're allowed to have. So you have to run on like Pirelli's or so you can't get it exact.

[Matt Farah]

You can practice, but it's not.

[Steve Dinan]

You can learn some things about the car, but the tires change the characteristics of the car a lot. So you can't get Michelins to run if you're racing in the Michelin series.

[Matt Farah]

Right. That's fun. See, that's a good. Okay. I support both the scam and the response.

[Zach Klapman]

I'll tell the story. I'll tell the story quickly because I know Matt's heard it. But I went to this racing school and this one guy was six seconds faster than everybody else in the school. And I said, how are you so fast? And he's like, oh, well, I used to campaign a Hendrix time attack car and I couldn't find any information about that. So I text a friend of mine who races NASCAR and I say, what's a Hendrix time attack car? And he said, oh, early 2000s, NASCAR started limiting the amount of test days you could do. So Hendrix started selling consumer grade time attack cars and boy, gee howdy, did their road course work get real good that year.

[Matt Farah]

So yeah, yeah, I think good scam, good response, I like it.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. So what the big teams do is they just put it like in Formula One in IndyCar, they put a shaker rig in the building, and then they put the simulate on the racetrack at the shaker rig before they go to the racetrack and the door is closed and there's not spies inside the building looking to see what you're doing. So how effective is that? It's effective. Shaker rigs have gotten quite good over the years. If you have a seven poster, I mean, they'll simulate downforce and yaw and. I mean, I don't know what they cost these days. Last time I priced one, the machine was a half million dollars. You need five people to run.

[Matt Farah]

Is there any driver involvement in Shaker rig, or is it just a simulation of the track done autumn and fully automated?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, they just put weight in the car to simulate the driver, and the car runs without anybody sitting in it. Now we go to the shaker rig every time we buy a car. We went with this one. We just do what we call sign sweeps, where you just oscillate the car up and down and you get the damping to match the springs so the car doesn't bounce. And you can also figure out which damper setting gives you the most amount of grip and which one gives you the most pitch and roll control. And you can get like, a window like this. Makes the car more secure and easier to drive, like we were talking about earlier. This one makes the car have more grip. It's hard to hang on to. This is my softest and my stiffest window. And then on my setup sheet, I have a maximum minimum damping number. And it adds up all the damping forces together and comes up with a value. And is it. And it lights up red when it goes outside the window. So I know that I've gone outside the window.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Are you guys showing up to this rig with like 30 dampers, each one incrementally different? Are you taking apart, rebuilding, reinstalling?

[Steve Dinan]

In this class, damper change is illegal. Oh, and the dampers are sealed.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Steve Dinan]

So what do you.

[Matt Farah]

What can you adjust?

[Steve Dinan]

Well, they're adjustable compression rebounds.

[Matt Farah]

That's it.

[Steve Dinan]

You got.

[Matt Farah]

Not like knobs, like consumer shit, like consumers. How many clicks?

[Steve Dinan]

Eighteen.

[Matt Farah]

So you got 18 clicks a corner?

[Steve Dinan]

Yes. That's all compression, rebound, and all of.

[Matt Farah]

This shit is to choose a click?

[Steve Dinan]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Listen, you people at home cannot be trusted to adjust your own goddamn suspension. There's no way. Imagine they're just selling this shit to people. People are going, you know what I like seven clicks, like you don't know shit, homie.

[Steve Dinan]

We go to the shaker rig for two days to find the click window. And then we do six days on the racetrack to do dynamic characteristics. So we've got like $300,000 in to figure out where the clicker should be on the car.

[Matt Farah]

And then, and then. Let me ask you something. And then when you get, what do you do? Paint, marker, dot?

[Steve Dinan]

No, it's slightly different per track. And I just have a setup sheet and it says this track needs 17, this one needs 15.

[Matt Farah]

Right. And you have to fucking go to zero and go 1, 2, 3.

[Steve Dinan]

They're marked 1 through 18 on a wheel, at least they're marked.

[Matt Farah]

And so the consumer ones, you gotta wind it back to zero and go, which way was zero? I don't know.

[Zach Klapman]

It's like a rotary phone.

[Steve Dinan]

Now when you go up to weather check and gtd, they're three way dampers. You have a high and low speed compression rebound.

[Matt Farah]

All right, so a little more, but still knobs.

[Steve Dinan]

Still knobs. And you're still not allowed, allowed to revalve the dampers. And then when you get to lmdh the prototype cars, I believe dampers are five way because I think you have a high and low speed compression rebound and a blow off valve. I think revalving is open. I don't know. I haven't raced in that class in a long time. So you can get more creative in that class. And again, as the class goes up, the amount of engineering you can do goes up and part of what engineering.

[Matt Farah]

You have to do goes up.

[Steve Dinan]

They're assuming you don't have a damper engineer on staff if you're racing a GS car. Excuse me. And they assume that you do if you're running an LMDH car, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

Because you need a damper engineer. And if you're an Indy car racing, and I think Formula one still too, they have inerters. You know what that is?

[Matt Farah]

A what?

[Steve Dinan]

Inerters.

[Matt Farah]

Inerters, yes. I N E R T, what is an inerter?

[Steve Dinan]

It's like an energy absorbing flywheel that's inside the damper that when the push rod goes down, it spins and it stops the car from bouncing up and down based on the inertia of the mass of the car that's unsprung.

[Matt Farah]

So wait, so is it a gyroscope effect or is it a stabilized.

[Steve Dinan]

It has like a ball screw going through like a, like a CNC machine. And you take a small mass, you spin it very high.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

It simulates the mass of the things you can't damp.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, wow.

[Steve Dinan]

And so what it does is it keeps the aeroplatform more consistent so the car doesn't bounce. So you're downforce and the car is more consistent.

[Matt Farah]

So there's like 1200 bucks a set.

[Steve Dinan]

I don't know, but I need cars in 41. They have an inerter damper guy and a hydraulic damper guy. And they have to get together and decide, is this an inerter problem or is this a damping problem they also.

[Zach Klapman]

Have or could just go to space.

[Steve Dinan]

This is, you know, I mean, it's like.

[Matt Farah]

That's the most boring conversation.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. I'm sorry, but it's really.

[Matt Farah]

No, no, not.

[Steve Dinan]

You can really geek out on it.

[Matt Farah]

Not you talking to me about it. I'm talking about the inerter talking to the hydra to the hydraulic guy. That will put a crowd to sleep. Really.

[Zach Klapman]

But I would love to see a fist fight between those two people. If they're like, it's inert, it's a fight.

[Steve Dinan]

You definitely get it wrong. And the car can bounce. Like, the relationship of the two is really important.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I bet.

[Steve Dinan]

And then they also have a nerves now that use like little paddle wheels. So instead of having a mass, that paddle wheel goes through the fluid and damps the upper air.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, like swimming with one of those gloves on. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. But either way, it's a valve or a piston goes up, down, and a rotational mass or hydraulic rotational paddle wheel that damps the part you can't damp because the unsprung parts are not damped.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Steve Dinan]

So they also have what they call mass dampers. This is what Red Bull got in trouble with years ago when they had. What was the guy's name before Verstappen?

[Matt Farah]

Vettel.

[Steve Dinan]

Vettel. When he won Ford championships, they put a big heavy weight on a spring inside the nose of the car, and a body at rest once remained at rest. So when the car would move up and down, the mass had a spring on it. It would stay stationary. It would stop the oscillation of the car.

[Matt Farah]

That's a good one here.

[Zach Klapman]

This will really explain how an inerter works.

[Steve Dinan]

Oh, yeah, There you go.

[Matt Farah]

There it is.

[Steve Dinan]

Calculus.

[Matt Farah]

Cool.

[Steve Dinan]

So what happened is they made. And by the way, they have mass dampers in high rise built to stop from swaying.

[Matt Farah]

That I've seen.

[Steve Dinan]

So they made that same thing in the nose of the car. And then finally, like after they won Ford championships row, they found out they had it and so they made it illegal. But then what they did, they put a nurse inside the damper so you couldn't find them.

[Matt Farah]

Wow. This is like the seakeepers on the boats. Have you seen those? You ever see a seakeeper on a boat?

[Steve Dinan]

No.

[Matt Farah]

It's a huge gyroscope. That is depending on how big your boat is, it starts at maybe the size of a beach ball for like a 25 to 30 foot boat. And then it could be as big as a fucking Volkswagen. If you have a 200 foot boat.

[Steve Dinan]

It stops the boat from rocking and.

[Matt Farah]

It stops the boat from rocking.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, same kind of thing.

[Matt Farah]

It is. I have experienced it myself. It is the coolest. You hit us, you Turn your boat 90 degrees to the waves so they're coming across your side, right? Hit the button and within about five seconds the boat stops moving.

[Steve Dinan]

That's cool.

[Matt Farah]

It's crazy.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, anyway, so when they finally put in the shock and then they got away with it for three or four more years in both IndyCar and Formula One and they finally gave up and said, okay, nerders are legal because they just figured out they couldn't police them. Which I think is what the reality of it was.

[Matt Farah]

They were pulling the shocks apart, which would be kind of a built allowed to pull the shock. I guess if they inspect a car.

[Steve Dinan]

They could tear down, I can inspect anything they want.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

But in our class we have spec dampers and the dampers are sealed from the manufacturer of the damper and they have a sticker on them and a QR code. I'm sure some people are getting crazy. There's so many things you can do to the car that make it handle well and we don't have the money. That's part of the problem with this kind of class is we don't have the money to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars cheating on danvers. We don't even bother. Sure, they come the way they go.

[Matt Farah]

There's cheaper ways to cheat is what you're trying to say.

[Steve Dinan]

There's always cheaper ways to cheat.

[Matt Farah]

Let's talk about street cars. Race cars are good, but you're also in the streetcar business. You know, you have always sort of been able to move with the times. Moving from the old school BMW six cylinders to the forced induction stuff. And now we've got hybridization is coming in the new M5.

[Steve Dinan]

Not excited.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And Zach and I recently drove the new Mercedes C63. Talk about not excited. Yikes. So what is your company, you know, car bond look like in a world where These cars are hybridized.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, I mean you can always make a car go faster and handle better. Right. So we're still going to modify them because that's what we do for a living. Are we excited about the change? No, I truly believe that. Look, I'm also kind this kind of weird. I'm kind of an environmentalist for a car guy, which is why all my stuff's emissions legal. I don't take the catalytic converters off of it because we all have to live in this planet. So I'm fine with electric cars, I'm fine with hybrid cars, but I think there should be a percentage of the car market that is not. Yeah, like, I mean, if half the cars in the world are commuter cars and are like big golf carts, that's fine. That electric cars are great for driving around town. They're clean, they're quiet. I get it. You know, if I was commuting every day in a big city, I'd want an electric car too. Like if I was stuck in LA traffic, I'd probably want one, honestly. And a hybrid car is great for long trips because it gives you range and great gas mileage. But for a performance car that you want to stop and turn, a car that weighs 5,300 pounds is a bad thing. And it seems to me like we should get enough carbon credits for the electric and hybrid cars that we could make some good old fashioned gasoline cars that would still be illegal to sell. I'm not sure if they have to make it hybrid or they're just doing it to bring the tax down, the gas council tax down the car. I'm not sure what the motivation is. I'm not a car company, so I don't know what world they have to live in, which I'm sure is much more difficult than the world I have to live in. But it seems to me like we should be able to make super performance cars. Light and good handling and stop. I find that electric cars and hybrid cars are one dimensional from a performance standpoint, which is always a straight line.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, certainly some of them do handle well enough. I mean, I've driven, you know, Taycan Turbo GT and stuff that will is so, you know, fast that I made myself kind of sick driving it. Yeah, but your point is valid nonetheless. I mean, a McLaren, you know, at £3,000 or £2,800 is, in my opinion, and I'm sure this could be measured very easily, although I haven't done it myself, is probably a similar amount of fuel efficiency to a Ferrari 296 with its hybrid system and downsized engine.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So, but from your perspective, okay, there's whether you, whether you like it or not and whether. But how does it make your job? How does it change? Okay, now I've gotta integrate what I'm doing with a hybrid system. Does that add a whole level of fuckery? That is not fun.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it makes the whole tuning process a lot more complicated and a lot more expensive. And honestly, if we just took the hybrid system off the car and saved 800 pounds, it would probably do as much as anything I could do to tune the car. That's probably true. You know, I mean, the problem is it's so integrated into the car now that removing it without setting a plethora of faults and warnings that you could never get rid of is virtually impossible. It's tough.

[Matt Farah]

To what degree can you modify the internal combustion engine on a car like that without really touching the hybrid system?

[Steve Dinan]

You can.

[Matt Farah]

You cannot.

[Steve Dinan]

You can.

[Matt Farah]

You can.

[Steve Dinan]

We've already done the new XM and the new X5M and XXM Hybrid, which was now an S68 and 7S63, but it's essentially the same 4.4 liter Twin Turbo V8 that has a hybrid system attached to it. And we've already tuned them and they make power just like the old ones do.

[Matt Farah]

And it doesn't confuse the hybrid system.

[Steve Dinan]

Doesn't seem to. Okay, doesn't seem to. So you can add the same 100 or 150 horsepower to it.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

But you're starting with a 5300 pound car instead of like my M8 that you had last time here. Yeah, it was 4150 pounds and the M5 is 5280. So it's like 1130 pounds. I mean, you know, much power you have to add to compensate for 1130 pounds. Yeah, I mean, a lot. A lot.

[Matt Farah]

Hundreds.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, hundreds. And then. And then still won't stop and turn because it weighs 1100 pounds more. So I'm hoping they don't do it to the little cars like the M2, M3, M4. I think if they do, we'll end M. I'm hoping Porsche still keeps 911 Turbo S's and GT3s pure. I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

I think that their GT cars will remain naturally aspirated as long as they can and will remain, even if they have to become turbocharged at some point. I think they will continue to build naturally aspirated GT cars.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, I think they'll go turbo because you almost sort of have to because the power density of them. But I think they'll stay away from hybrid as long as possible.

[Matt Farah]

I did drive the 911 GTS Hybrid, which only adds 160 pounds.

[Steve Dinan]

That's not bad.

[Matt Farah]

Which is not terrible. I mean it's, it's more than you'd want, but dynamically you don't feel like you're driving a house. And it does make the power band incredibly broad and useful. And they've done some creative things in terms of okay, well, we have a battery which adds weight, but we can run with one larger turbo because we can fill it here. So they've at least, least done. It's not terrible. It's not terrible.

[Steve Dinan]

A lot of the supercars weigh like 150 to 250 pounds more, the Artura and stuff and they run great. And I think that's a really good compromise for performance car. Why the M5 had to gain over a thousand pounds to become hybrid. I'm confused.

[Zach Klapman]

My guess is, does the 911 have any EV only range?

[Matt Farah]

No, I think that's so I think it's the difference of do you want to be able to drive on electricity only or do you not? So the supercars, for the most part you can't drive on electricity only. The Artura is probably the longest range and you can drive for 10 miles or something. It's not. But if you want to put a car where you can go 40 or 50 miles, that's where you get your 1000 pound battery.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean like the 919 prototype car they ran, it was electric in the front, gasoline in the rear and it didn't weigh very much more and it made like 1000 or 1200 horsepower. It was really cool. You can do a really neat performance job of that. But I don't think a mainstream electric only version of cars should be a high performance car. I'm not against hybrids. No, I totally agree.

[Matt Farah]

Like a regular 5 series hybrid that has 50 miles of range and a regular inline six for whatever.

[Steve Dinan]

Great. It's a commuter car, it's a daily car. But a performance car should be a performance car and weight should be part of the criteria. I agree. So I mean honestly, I think that's going to be a huge market for the pre hybrid cars like my M8 and the last M5, which is the lightest one they made, it was £100 lighter than the previous M5, the F10. Even with the all wheel drive because of all the carbon and stuff they did to the car. So it's the lightest big car they ever made, with the most amount of power, with all wheel drive. I think those are going to be instant collector's items.

[Matt Farah]

Interesting prediction.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, I'm keeping my M8, the one you drove. As soon as this car came, I go, that's the last good car I'm ever going to own. I'm going to keep that one.

[Matt Farah]

That one was nice. I liked that one. I really like what Alpina was doing with the 8 series too. B8 was rad. Really, really good car. I really enjoyed that.

[Steve Dinan]

No, I like that generation of BMW, honestly, the generation of BMW we just went through. The M4 you have downstairs, and the M5, M8 before the F90 I think is the best M cars ever made.

[Matt Farah]

You know, you're not alone in thinking that, but I don't love the current M3 and M4 series. They just, they're fast, they're well executed, but they just don't excite me at all. Yeah, they don't do anything for me. I don't know, they feel too big. They're either too stiff in some ways and too technical with too many features and buttons and it's hard to find enough room to really run them as fast as they can go. And I don't think they're that fun at lower speeds. I think they're just too big and heavy and, you know, they don't do it for me.

[Steve Dinan]

See, I like the all wheel drive on the new ones because when you get up north of 500 horsepower, two wheel drive becomes unusable. It's just sideways all the time, you can't hook it up. So I like the all wheel drive and I like the level of sophistication that that brings to the car from a traction standpoint and the usability standpoint. Like this car I've driven a lot, obviously, I've had it for 18 months, is the fastest car in a two lane country road from point A to point B I've ever built. And I'm not talking by a little bit, I'm talking by a lot. Sure, Right. So if your goal to make a performance car is make more performance, it checks that box better than any car I've ever made.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's fine. I don't. For me, the fastest cars that I drive aren't always the most interesting or exciting and the ones I relate to the best.

[Zach Klapman]

Are there cars that you love, Steve, that may not be the fastest thing, but in your past even are like, oh, that's really enjoyable. Or that had the right amount of spice and flavor, even though it was.

[Matt Farah]

No, he said his favorite car is always the next car.

[Steve Dinan]

Last time you were here, the last time I was here, I Talked about an E46 M3 I did for my.

[Zach Klapman]

Right.

[Steve Dinan]

One of my sponsors, kids remember that he did a coil rig in it. That's still a phenomenal car because it's so light and so tactile. I mean it's not super powerful, but it's just really enjoyable to drive. It does everything you ask it to do. It's pre computer, almost everything except for the engineering. Yeah, a manual gearbox. I like that car a lot.

[Zach Klapman]

What do you think of like E30 if you drive an E30 today?

[Steve Dinan]

I used to have an E30 street car, you know, the S14 four cylinder M3. And I also had a race car, an SCCA race car with that same thing. And it was a really fun car to drive. I mean underpowered. Yeah, I mean significantly underpowered. But. But I also did a turbo kit for that back in the day. So I made. I made a 350 horsepower S14.

[Matt Farah]

That was a good time.

[Steve Dinan]

It was, it was a neat car. And we put a wing on and a splitter and it was really quick. But like I say, I always like the new car because they're always better. But because of what's happening with the new M5 and if it happens with the M3 M4, they go with a heavy hybrid. I think my next time you see me, my answer will be different. I think will be the last one. Because I'm a road racer and I like weight and I like stopping. I like turning as much or more than I like going in a straight line. And if I can't do that anymore, then for me the car is not fun anymore.

[Matt Farah]

Well, you just said before we were. Before we started recording downstairs, you said, can you believe that Chevy is selling an almost 1100 horsepower Corvette? So that car is pretty light or is going to be pretty light for what it is. It's mid engine. It seems to have the goods. Does that kind of stuff excite you?

[Steve Dinan]

I think a car with that much power should be all wheel drive. No, I'm serious. I. With two wheel drive and the mass of the engine in the back and the turbos, that car is going to be a real handful.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it might be.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean if the electronics are very good, then maybe people won't crash them. But I.

[Matt Farah]

The electronics are pretty good. I mean that performance, traction management thing that GM does, like, is pretty good. It's got a bunch of incremental settings, and they make it pretty hard to turn off. There's not so much. You got to go through enough steps where you can't do a hold my beer situation because you really. You have to think about how to get to full off.

[Steve Dinan]

It's harder than you think.

[Zach Klapman]

I would wonder.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, that's probably wise of them. Yes, definitely.

[Zach Klapman]

I would wonder at what point, like, at what speed is that car actually deploying its full power? Because, you know, it's not first, second, third gear, maybe third, fourth.

[Steve Dinan]

I would assume it has torque management.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, definitely.

[Steve Dinan]

But you know what the aftermarket will do? They'll reprogram and turn the torque management off so it will lay rubber all the way up through fourth gear. And then the car is completely undriveable. Just because they can.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You know, we had the Z06 with the naturally aspirated engine for, you know, five days, and, you know, that's a ton of car. It's. It's. I mean, obviously there's a. Because they can about this, and they, you know, Corvette likes to come in with a. With a big gun and, you know, one up everybody and, like, cool. But, like, I don't know anybody who's driven a Z06 and go, you know what I'm thinking? Like, maybe like, 400 more horsepower is what we need in this same car. Car, like, no, that's so much power, that car.

[Steve Dinan]

To me, power should be usable. And part of the reason I told you I like the new car is because they're all wheel drive. If that car was all wheel drive and you could actually hook that up and it would drive away with that kind of power. I go, okay, that's neat.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, well, it's definitely going to be boost by gear for launches.

[Steve Dinan]

No, but that's also like the 919 Porsche we were talking about. And a lot of the other supercars are hybrid in the front and gasoline in the rear. And they use the computer to manage the torque split. And you can make some 800, 900,000 horsepower cars that are honestly, are actually usable.

[Matt Farah]

The Lamborghini Revuelto is a new one that has three motors. Two in the front and then one in the dual clutch gearbox, or it replaces the flywheel, and then it's got a naturally aspirated V12. And it does that pretty effectively, actually. And you can launch it, and you actually can really, you know that it's working because that naturally aspirated engine has, like, no balls below 5,000 rpm. So the electric motors are really doing a lot of work at the bottom.

[Steve Dinan]

It's not the American way though. The American way is always more cubic inches.

[Matt Farah]

But I understand because I'm not a race car driver. I like a car to be a little sketchy. I want a car that I should get a medal for not dying in it.

[Steve Dinan]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

I like Carrera GTs. You stuff the early 911 turbos, the stuff that people are like, you're driving that. I like that.

[Steve Dinan]

See, I like the car. You lift off the gas, you turn it goes exactly where you put it. Sure. It pulls 1.2 decent corner and you put your foot to the floor and it dries up the corner and doesn't go anywhere.

[Matt Farah]

That's why you win races.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, that's true.

[Matt Farah]

My strategy does not win races. My strategy is like, there's a car sliding out of turn four. Like, what are you doing? You could have just done that if you.

[Steve Dinan]

I raced a car back in the day with 750 horsepower, 900 pound feet of torch torque and with two wheel drive and it was terrifying. But I. But it was still. I agree. It was fun.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

It was crazy. It was exciting.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

It's not efficient. No. The modern car with half the power is 10 seconds a lot faster.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

Just because of how everything works better. Of course.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, there's on the street then like the maximum attack mode doesn't really matter. So if we want to get the excitement at a lower speed or lower commitment. And that's when you get to sketchy.

[Matt Farah]

There's not much you can do with over 500 horsepower on the street. Realistically.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Beyond that, it's. You're just. You're either doing something so deeply antisocial that you probably shouldn't be doing it.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, I'm okay with that too.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, look. Yeah. You and I both have a level of moral approval that's like beyond most people. But still, you know, deploying 1300 horsepower on the street, you're probably not doing something that the neighbors will be okay with.

[Steve Dinan]

Probably not. And it's an interesting thing you bring that up is when I was a kid, hot rodding was a big thing. You know, Beach Boys were in Southern California. They'll all the songs about all the neat cars, right. And you would have a car and you'd, you know, come out of the Steak and shake or In N out Burger. You do a burnout, they'd scream and thumbs up. Now it's like you what's the matter with you? They shake your fist, they call the police. It's like, it's like a completely different. As far as, like, people don't seem to enjoy your exhibition of speed anymore like they did when I was a kid.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of videos of people, like, crashing and, you know, doing ruins.

[Zach Klapman]

More like there's 4 weeks ago, a guy had an LS swapped M3 and he left a car show and he's going a straight line and he accidentally, like, shift one, two, shift burnout. Crashed into a building and rolled the car. Like, went up on a lawn, rolled the car. And I think it, like, the consequences are more frequent because of video and the police presence at car shows. So you get a car show shut down, you hit people, you mess up the scene.

[Matt Farah]

I think the outrage machine takes over. I saw that. And I'm not saying necessarily that it's unjustified outrage. Like, if you're not into cars and this is going on and they crash into your business. I get it. Like, you're gonna be annoyed. But once you once. It's not just the people who were there to see it once. Now there's a cell phone video, it gets shared. Look at this. Then it's like, yeah, look at that asshole. Then it's like, this is happening all over our town. And then, you know, and then.

[Steve Dinan]

Probably isn't, but. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

No, it probably is. Well, I just had an experience. I mean, I just had this exact experience with, let's fucking say what it was with Pagani, of all people. I went to go drive the new Pagani, and they said, specifically, these guys are from Italy. They don't know local roads. I do. So I said, here's where we want to go. This will be the best for capturing footage and film of the car. Okay, we don't want to go there. Why? Because it's dangerous. Why do you think it's dangerous? Because look at this video. And pulled up a video of a car crash that happened there, like a month ago.

[Steve Dinan]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Now, like, yeah, it's a car crash. It's a road. Car crashes happen on roads. You know what I mean? And so it this person, then, they didn't feel safe going there with an expensive car because a crash happened. And they only know about it because it was on video and widely shared.

[Steve Dinan]

Is there a road in the world that hasn't had a crash? No, of course not.

[Matt Farah]

Of course not. And the roads that they wanted us to go on have homes, cyclists, commuters, and where I wanted to go. Which was, yes, admittedly near where this crash happened has none of those things.

[Steve Dinan]

See, when I drive fast, I drive 45 minutes out of town. Just a country road that has almost no traffic on it. I memorize all the driveways and cross streets and I slow down when I get to them.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

And I go out there and I drive very fast, I think in a very safe way. And I've been doing that my entire life, since I was 15 years old. And I've never killed anybody.

[Matt Farah]

Well, it's time and place, sexual awareness and some sort of moral compass for the fact that people live there.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

It's not that hard.

[Steve Dinan]

It's not that hard. It's amazing how people don't have that kind of compensation. For sure. Like the guy that crashed into building.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, for sure. But just like, you know, not everyone leaving a car show and lighting up the rears is Steve Dinan. Most of them are very, very far from Steve Dinen. Even if they may have bought a lot of your products to put on their car.

[Steve Dinan]

The moral outrage, it's certainly increased a lot in the acceptability.

[Matt Farah]

Well, the sharing of content for clout, whatever, however you want to call it, has accelerated that so rapidly.

[Steve Dinan]

I get videos emailed to me from customers. I put all your stuff in the car and I went out at 2 o'clock in the morning on the highway in Dallas, Texas and I did 212 miles an hour and they have a video in their car and they're going buy cars. Okay, cool. I mean, what do you say to that? It's like, you know, and they do it on the highway.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

Like I go out and find these two lane roads in the middle of nowhere where if I lose control, I wind up in a field with some cows, knock down some barbed wire and that's about the only thing I'm going to hit maybe is a cow or a barbed wire or fence. But I don't do it on the highway.

[Matt Farah]

That's a Texas, that's a Texas thing. Texas, Florida is the highway roll. That's what they've got there. Big turbos, small brakes. That's how they do it in Texas.

[Steve Dinan]

I had a customer that had a house in an apartment in Miami and a house over in Tampa and they're whatever the.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, Alligator Alley.

[Steve Dinan]

Alligator Alley. He called me up, he had a seven series with a turbo and stuff on he goes, you told me the speedgoat was just. And I hit 189, it won't go any faster. And he's like commuting back and forth from. I won't mention his name. He's a famous celebrity. We just put it that way.

[Matt Farah]

We've got a bunch of BMW press cars that supposedly had speed limiters but then easily went past them.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, so what.

[Matt Farah]

What is the deal with that? They just print that on the sticker even though it's bullshit.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, the 155 governor is no longer 155.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, what does that mean?

[Steve Dinan]

Well, 20 years ago they had. I've heard this anecdotally, so I don't know this for a fact, I'm not a lawyer in Germany, but I heard that the government in Germany wanted to put a speed limit on cars of 155. Well, just a speed limit, period. And all the car. German car companies lobbied and said, look, we have the best cars in the world because we have the Autobahn and we can drive faster. And as soon as you make us all go 80 miles an hour, then all of our cars will turn into American cars and nobody want to buy them anymore. It's pretty much the. Just exactly like Germany, too. It's a very German thing to say. It's probably true, too. So they negotiated 155 mile an hour, governor with the German government. And I'm told that Porsche said, no, I won't do it. But Mercedes and BMW now, and he and Volkswagen all agreed to this and somehow Porsche didn't get forced into doing it. I don't know why that is either. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

But anyway, so not limits to Porsche.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. So anyway, so slowly, over time, the 155 turned to 158. Then the 162. And my new M4 does 168 stock on the governor. It has a governor.

[Matt Farah]

It does 13.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it's turned off now. Yeah, but. And that car will do 192.

[Matt Farah]

What I'm tell you?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, what I tell you before we did this. I'm sorry.

[Matt Farah]

I told you, you won't even know. You won't even know. You're banging on the table.

[Steve Dinan]

All right.

[Matt Farah]

That's why I put the sign.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. Anyway, we'll do 192. 194.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

It's only got 700 horsepower, so it's 750. So it's.

[Matt Farah]

Are you hitting.

[Steve Dinan]

What is the gun? Wind resistance? Wind just won't go any faster.

[Matt Farah]

I read something on Carbon's website that I never heard a term I've never heard of before. And they're probably about eight people in the listening audience.

[Steve Dinan]

That'll go.

[Matt Farah]

You're a moron for not knowing what this is. The term was tune stacking.

[Steve Dinan]

Oh, yeah. Tune stacking. Yeah. That's not a mention of me. That's something I got asked to comment on.

[Matt Farah]

But it's something that people do and that you don't do.

[Steve Dinan]

I've done some tune stacking. I never heard the term until recently. It didn't have its own vernacular, but it does now.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

Tune stacking is. I've put software in the car. I don't know enough about the software to make it make any more power, so I put a piggyback box on top of the software.

[Matt Farah]

And how does the car know when to listen to which one and when.

[Steve Dinan]

It listens to both simultaneously? This is how. This is why people blow up cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I'm already.

[Steve Dinan]

Tune stacking is a really great way to break your car.

[Matt Farah]

Is it?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

Because basically you've already extracted a lot of power out of the song software. And then because the software is smart enough to tell you that you shouldn't turn it up anymore, we're going to lie to the software so we can turn it up more and circumvent whatever it's trying to do to save you from yourself.

[Matt Farah]

Got it.

[Steve Dinan]

That's what tune stacking is.

[Matt Farah]

That's when the rods exit the engine.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. Now you can do a good job of tune stacking. Like you can do tune stacking with a meth kit where you have a smart controller that when the meth is flowing, it turns the piggyback on and turns it up. And if the meth has a problem or it runs out of meth, it lowers it back down to the software, and that's a safe way to tune stack. Got it. But what people have a tendency to do is they act like the meth is never going to go bad. And I'm always going to be running on race gas with meth. And they stack three or four things together until it makes a thousand or twelve hundred horsepower, and then one of them is empty or one of them fails, and then that's when the rods come out the side of the motor. Sure.

[Matt Farah]

I don't like meth. Do you like meth?

[Steve Dinan]

I'm not a huge fan of meth, but it does work. I mean, it does make a lot of power. I mean, there's no doubt.

[Zach Klapman]

Flipping that for social media, I just don't like.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, it does work.

[Matt Farah]

I'm not. I just like those added. It just seems like a lot of headaches.

[Steve Dinan]

It's very corrosive. It requires a lot of maintenance. I've been playing around with it for three years trying to make one that can't break the car. It's very hard to do because they, they're not reliable devices. So I've made a processor that does exactly what I said. You know, determines if the meth is flowing and not by.

[Matt Farah]

It's called the tune stacker 4000.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. Well, what we did is instead of using like what other people do, they use like current flow of the electric pump to see if that. See if the meth is flowing. But that's not reliable too. We actually put a little turbine in the meth discharge.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

And a little turbine measures meth flow.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Steve Dinan]

And we went back to a process that said is it flowing enough meth to be safe? And if so, we're going to leave the power turned up. If not, we're going to turn down proportional to the. To the Turbine RPM. It's making a $3,000 meth kit out of a thousand dollar meth kit. So it's smart. So it's smart enough not to the car.

[Matt Farah]

But.

[Steve Dinan]

But the engines are 20, 30.

[Matt Farah]

Is it just like a little bit that goes inside of a hose?

[Steve Dinan]

It's inline and hose. It's got a little like a little turbine wheel in it and the meth flows through it and it's got a little RPM counter and it goes to a processor and. But the sensor is $400 and the processor to count it as a thousand dollars and then you have to add that to the meth kit. Then you have to have logic to turn the boost up and down and, and so you can do that a lot less expensive way. But it's normally not reliable. My engine shop is full of engineering engines to prove that.

[Zach Klapman]

So you want to buy a $3,000 meth kit or a $20,000 engine when your meth kit blows up your engine.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, that's the deal. Yeah. And I much prefer just a larger engine like the M4. And I didn't bring it because of the price point, but we have a stroker 3.2 liter motor for that.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you do?

[Steve Dinan]

Yes. And it's combined with a big turbo. And the reason we didn't put the big turbo now is the turbo, that's 1,000 rpm of turbo lag. And I love the response characteristics of the car. It's so user friendly, especially in traffic and around town. But when we add the bigger engine, it makes more exhaust flow and more exhaust flow spins the bigger turbo up at almost the same rate as the. As the smaller engine.

[Matt Farah]

So it brings that.

[Steve Dinan]

So it brings that back down to 400. So we're combined two together, but the engine's $25,000 stroked, and the turbos are $10,000 installed. So we're talking $35,000.

[Matt Farah]

That whole plus your end. Plus I bring you my car that already has an engine in it. Right. Or you sell.

[Steve Dinan]

No, no, that's on top of the car. On top of the car, on top of this package. This package we have now is just over $20,000.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

So just over $20,000. That entire package. Suspension, aero, wheels, everything. It more than doubles the price right now. It adds another 110 horsepower. So the 735 winds up being 845.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And without meth and has great torque with the big displacement. It's just a wonderful car to drive. But now my $25,000 package turns into a $60,000 package for 100. Yeah. And you can. You can put meth on it for $1,000.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

And add the same hundred horsepower. You just have to do this to make sure it doesn't blow up.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but you can still do the same brag on the forum. Yes, the forum post looks the same.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes, it does. And this is the problem. The meth will do the same to make less money. It's just a lot less reliable.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

Now you can also add meth on top of the motor, and you can make a thousand.

[Matt Farah]

I like, go back to the. Zach, you were just there. The engines, you've got some. You've got some good. So you've. You got my favorite stroker motor of all time, the S65. That. Is that similar to the one you used to sell?

[Steve Dinan]

Exactly.

[Matt Farah]

Exact same. Oh, great.

[Steve Dinan]

They were $25,000 20 years ago, and now they're 30,000 because of inflation, of all the cost of parts.

[Matt Farah]

They were a value at 25, though.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

They're rad, those. That 4.6 is a beat.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. I mean, everything in life is 20, 25% more. Even our racing budget went 25% in the last few years.

[Matt Farah]

And then you've got the 5.8 liter V10 stroker kit, which I would really like to have a go in one of those.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Is that just nasty?

[Steve Dinan]

It is.

[Matt Farah]

And we still drive, like, usable.

[Steve Dinan]

It's completely usable. Just like the 65.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. Neat car. We also made a six liter version of that.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Steve Dinan]

With two ring short pistons, long rods, like, we ran the prototype Race car with Canassie with racing cams and it makes 800 nacho aspirated.

[Matt Farah]

Whoa. And you just throw that in an M6?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. What else can you put it in? What do you mean? What else could you put in?

[Matt Farah]

I mean, will it fit in anything else?

[Steve Dinan]

Well, you can put it. Put it in the. I could put it in the M3, but it's kind of nose heavy with that big motor. But. Yeah, but you put that in an M5 and I would argue it's way better than any modern turbo car. It's got instant throttle response with 10 throttle bodies and just it's. That's my favorite engine of all time. A large displacement V10. The sound, the torque, the power.

[Matt Farah]

Does it sound more like an. Like a Huracan or R8 or more like a vibration Viper?

[Steve Dinan]

Sounds like a big Formula one car. Really turning less rpm. It's got this really raspy high RPM kind of just cool technical sound to it. It's just.

[Zach Klapman]

Didn't Mike essa put a V10 in an E46? A white one?

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Zach Klapman]

That'd be a fun shoe arm.

[Steve Dinan]

So we can make an 800 horsepower E46. That sounds usable, don't you think?

[Zach Klapman]

I'll call you.

[Matt Farah]

How does that compare to like the Judd V10? Same kind of idea.

[Steve Dinan]

I think a Judd V10 is a much smaller displacement race engine.

[Matt Farah]

I think it is.

[Steve Dinan]

This is a six liter motor.

[Zach Klapman]

So we basically took Judd's a four liter.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, yeah. This is a six liter engine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That's. It's big.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And that's 36k plus a running well.

[Steve Dinan]

You got to put drive ribs on it to be able to run the long rods and the short pistons. Take the hydraulic lifters, but solid lifters and buckets and shims. I mean, it's a.

[Matt Farah]

But again, that's not. But this isn't a crate engine. This is applied to my existing.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. You bring me a worn out V10.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And I replace everything in it but the castings.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And it's. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

What do you need that kind of performance, do you need to upgrade the gearbox or the clutch?

[Steve Dinan]

What's interesting is because it's a natural aspiring motor, it doesn't make torque like a turbo. So the gearbox will take it.

[Matt Farah]

Cool.

[Steve Dinan]

I'm working on a project.

[Matt Farah]

It'd be a fun thing to blow 36,000 bucks on. Yeah, for sure.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, that's another like 15 with the dry sump and the brace and then the install.

[Matt Farah]

Wow.

[Zach Klapman]

You're in there.

[Matt Farah]

You have A very. You've ended up really very expensive. Can you then convert the SMGs to manuals?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, you can do that too.

[Matt Farah]

They do that?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. You still make them.

[Zach Klapman]

And customer for this one. How many customers for these do you get a year? And is it a person who is dyed in the wool loves BMW or they love Dinan or they like having Franken cars of all kinds?

[Steve Dinan]

You know, we don't do very many of those kind of cars. I mean maybe a half a dozen a year. You know, people that want to spend that kind of money on an old car. Like we just did a prototype engine S62 and an E39 M5.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you did? I was going to ask if you've made any more of those DPDs.

[Steve Dinan]

Another one last year.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. Yeah. So I get it.

[Matt Farah]

You can make that engine streetable, like no problem.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, that's really fast. So I'm working on a project right now. If you can google group 5. I don't know if it'll come up right or not.

[Matt Farah]

What is the biggest engine you can put in a Z1. No, that's not like an S54. Is that probably the biggest There it is.

[Steve Dinan]

No, that's not it. That looks like it. On the right. G, R, U P, P, E. Anyway, what they're doing is they're trying to do a Singer kind of thing. So they're taking old E20 series. Good looking car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Sharknose.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. Yeah. And we're putting 800 horsepower V10 in it.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Steve Dinan]

So like the engine.

[Matt Farah]

That's what I'm talking about.

[Steve Dinan]

So that's going to be the application for the motor. Yeah, that's exactly. And they're doing really cool little tasteful flares. It's going to be like a single, like a million or a million two. Wow. You know transaxle, a carbon fiber structure reinforced but also classic car looking like gauges and. And aerodynamics. So it kind of looks like a cross between a 3.5 CSL Batmobile and these. Yeah, no, that's an oil peanut car. They may not have anything up on the web yet, but I gave them a proposal. So they're coming up with the concept of what they want the car to look like. And I'm building the whole thing, the chassis, the motor. And we're going to do like 24 cars a year, like two cars a month kind of thing.

[Matt Farah]

And there are enough donor cars for that.

[Steve Dinan]

Oh, there's a lot of. Because you can run a 635 or an M6. It's the same chassis.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And we're only using the frame.

[Matt Farah]

Can you do us like a 735? Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

You can do a 735.

[Matt Farah]

It's the super sleeper, like early 80s. 735 would be.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. I mean, is there any use for.

[Matt Farah]

The quote 50v12 from the 850 or the 750, anything that's like worth keeping those around for?

[Steve Dinan]

No. Yeah, it's an old two wheel, two valve hydraulic, big, long, heavy motor. The V10. So much.

[Matt Farah]

Can you put the V10 in an eight series?

[Steve Dinan]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, didn't someone just do that?

[Steve Dinan]

I don't know. That would be a neat car.

[Matt Farah]

No, no, someone else. E31, BMW V10.

[Steve Dinan]

There's us kissing the bricks at Indy.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah. There you go. That's cool too. But let's talk about V10, E31. No, the guy did one.

[Zach Klapman]

I think it was a rain speed. Rain speed shop.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So it's like silver or grand. Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

This guy, he just needs an 800 horsepower V10.

[Matt Farah]

Well, he could do it, but actually it looks. I think it looks pretty cool.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it's neat.

[Matt Farah]

This guy also had. And look, he did it looks like he swapped most of the interior from that E60 M5 into the inside of the car too. That thing looks fucking cool. I would very much like to drive that. And I'm pretty sure we stored this guy's other car at South Bay. He had that 3.0 CS that had a S54 powertrain in it. That was pretty rad. That looks great, though.

[Steve Dinan]

Well, we're doing a hydraulic version of this car. Hydraulic lifter, mildly tuned wet sump. That's going to make like, you know, 650 horsepower in that little car. That's a 6 Series. And then we're also doing the 800 horsepower style lifter dry sump. So you get, you know, version A, version B kind of. That's awesome. And it's got a little wing on the back like an old 3.5 C with a little roof spoiler that goes down over the wing. So it's nice.

[Matt Farah]

Air dam in the front, something.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. So it's going to be. It's really cool looking. He sent me artist renderings of it. I should have brought one with me. The guy's name is Tom Zajak and he's trying to find funding for the company. Now is the problem he's struggling with because it's a lot of money to build 24 cars a year that are a million dollars. A car, you have to have a lot of capital up front to get that going.

[Matt Farah]

But the market is there for modernized 80s and 90s 80s neo classics.

[Steve Dinan]

No. And we're gonna have a manual gearbox in it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

You know, a six speed like the one you talk about that came on the V10.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And so it's. We're gonna take the trailing arm suspension, put upper and lower wish button on. So it handles like a modern car. But it looks like an antique car.

[Zach Klapman]

Modern electric, which everyone. No one's mad about. You're choosing a gorgeous coupe.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Great looking car and just bringing it up to like perfecting every sensation and, you know, a little bit of joy and adrenaline people get from driving it and people will like that.

[Steve Dinan]

It's expensive though. No, it's a very. I mean it's all hand built. It's going to be super expensive, but it's going to be a one off. And you know, several people say, why don't you just. Why doesn't Guy just buy a McLaren? I said, well, if you wanted a McLaren, you'd buy one for one, you know.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It's not.

[Steve Dinan]

It's a different.

[Matt Farah]

It's a completely different thing. And it's definitely also not either or.

[Steve Dinan]

It's both. Right. That's what I was going to say. The Guy probably has a McLaren in the garage and he wants this also like he wants his retro modern hot rod and he wants his modern modern hot rod because he's got enough money to buy a million dollar car Singer.

[Matt Farah]

Or a Gunther or any one of the Chimera launch things. They've already been through the standard stuff. Yeah, they're not.

[Steve Dinan]

This is, I think this is a lot more interesting.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it certainly is.

[Steve Dinan]

But I mean that kind of feats your requirement of. I can. It's like an old, raw, tactile kind of car. But it satisfies me too because it has all the modern things to make it really fast. So yeah, it kind of does it all. I think I would love to have.

[Matt Farah]

A go in that.

[Steve Dinan]

I bet it's.

[Matt Farah]

It'd be great.

[Steve Dinan]

But we'll bring you one if we can get a job. Please do.

[Matt Farah]

If you build one. We've worked. We had a customer that had a 635 and needed some light restoration work done. Though the bills were horrifying. It was such an expensive car to have things done on.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. This won't be bad. Cause this is A natural aspirated V10 probably.

[Matt Farah]

It wasn't engine stuff, it was, oh, chrome window trim is $3,000 and stuff like that.

[Steve Dinan]

We are gonna make the glass flush like a modern car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And so we're gonna make custom glass for the car. And custom. It's probably gon like a $3,000.

[Matt Farah]

That's. That's where you get to that.

[Steve Dinan]

That's how you get to the $1.2 million. We're gonna put carbon fiber reinforcements in the door for structural reasons as well as making it look cool.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

You know, so it's. Have you seen the Singer Turbo?

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, so it's gonna be that kind of style. The BMW version of it. Cool.

[Matt Farah]

You know whether Singer Turbo looks good?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, Yeah, I like it too.

[Matt Farah]

Should we go to the Patreon while we have Probably a lot for Steve.

[Steve Dinan]

Right.

[Zach Klapman]

18 or 16. I chopped out some ones that we covered.

[Matt Farah]

All right, well, let's focus on the ones for Steve and then we'll come back to general stuff if we have time. Of course. We've got. The Patreon is up and you should get in on [e-mail] the smokeentirepodcast. That is where you can ask us questions for the show, get the show early, watch the live stream, eliminate ads from your viewing diet, and of course, get an extra podcast every single month. Let's see. Well, David. Steve has already answered David Bodenstein's question. You do like the F80, the modern M4s, the turbo cars?

[Steve Dinan]

I do, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You're pro that.

[Steve Dinan]

I'm pro. Modern cars up until the point where they weigh 5,000 pounds.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And he says, is the auto M4 terrible or decent? Well, the F80 was dual clutch, and now we've got. Right. And now we've got the. So do you have a preference? One or the other?

[Steve Dinan]

Automatic's better.

[Matt Farah]

You think the automatic's better?

[Steve Dinan]

A lot better.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

It's faster shifting. It's smoother. And part of the problem with the double clutch, the clutch left, is kind of. When you leave traffic, it's kind of jerky. It's hard to be smooth with the torque converter. It takes it up smoothly, and the car is nice in traffic. It does everything right. I mean, it's just really good.

[Matt Farah]

I enjoy the snappiness of the dual clutches downshifts. Although I will concede that everything you're saying is true.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. It's just a better gearbox. And even the race car has it and makes it a good race car too. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, let's see. Okay, so Sean says, what cars are currently in Steve's personal garage? And what are your favorite non BMWs to tinker with?

[Steve Dinan]

Boy, I have a lot of cars. Boy, I have the M8, I have this M4, I have a new M2, I have an Audi RS5, an Audi RS3 and Audi RS6 because we're starting on Audi parts. So you'll see some Audis from me next year. I like the RS5 a lot. The new competition version that comes with freeway hydraulic dampers.

[Matt Farah]

We had one of those. It was cool.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, it's a nice car. It has some things that could have been done better, I'll put it that way. But we're going to turn into a better car, let's put it that way. So we're going to keep the three way dampers on it but improve the overall coilover kit. The interesting thing about Volkswagen Audi Group, I love the styling of the car actually better than the M4. I love the seats are more comfortable. I think the user interface is better inside the car. I think for a daily driving car it's honestly a better car than the M4. But BMW always goes this little bit extra on all the little performance things that make the BMW just a better performance car has a little more power, a little bit better weight distribution, a little bit less overall weight and even little things like they take the rubber bushings in the rear upright and they replace them. What's called limb forwarder bearing which is like a through ball joint to take the rubber out of the rear suspension. So the car is predictable on the limit and just. And this is like things that cost $50 when you make a car. But BMW is just very detail oriented way. So we're going to take those bearings and we can buy them directly from the company. I think they're made in Holland. BMW just use them also Porsche uses them on GT3s and GT2s and Turbos the same bearings. So all the high end German car companies use these bearings to get rid of play from rubber. We're going to put those in the RS5.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

We're going to make a stroker motor, a 3.2 liter V6 turbo to make it make 700 horsepower like the M4.

[Matt Farah]

I'll be interested to see how that sounds.

[Steve Dinan]

It's going to be a neat car. And then. And it has some good things. It has an upper and lower wishbone in the front instead of a strut. So the suspension geometry is better in the front so the front will have more traction. So I have high hopes for the car. So that's, that's What I'm working on right now is a lot of Audi stuff. I'm also taking the stroker motor. I told you, with the big turbos.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

I'm putting the M2. So that's the next car I'll bring you.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, good.

[Steve Dinan]

It's going to be 125 horsepower. M2.

[Matt Farah]

That's going to be so sketchy. I drove the stock car has way more power than tire.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, just stock. Well, we actually made functional aero in the car.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, good.

[Steve Dinan]

And big tires like this car and the suspension like this car. Because this suspension fits on the M2 as well.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

So, yeah, that's kind of what I'm working on right now is a crazy M2 and an RS5 is the next two things up from me. But I have 14 cars right now, so I.

[Matt Farah]

Well, because everything you're developing, you know, for you buy one.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, I buy one to develop it and then I do the media tour. And if I like the car like the M8 or I like the Sempor I and if I don't, I sell it and get the next one. Got it.

[Matt Farah]

Aiden squires. Imagine it's 1987 and you're looking for a Euro third party tuning company to upgrade your 325. I do you pick Hartke, Schnitzer? Alpina. Who are you sending your car to in 1987?

[Steve Dinan]

Well, I was tuning in 1977. You should bring it to me.

[Matt Farah]

You had a kit. I had a turbo E30.

[Steve Dinan]

I had a much better product than all three of those tuning companies. But Alpena is more of like an oem. It's a small batch company now than an actual aftermarket tuner. But also their stuff is the most refined and probably the best quality. So if you're going to buy 1, the B3 would probably be the best car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, they do great road cars. That's what they do. Andreas is awesome.

[Steve Dinan]

They do.

[Matt Farah]

And I really like their cars a lot.

[Steve Dinan]

I got for a ride down the autobahn with Andy Boat and seaton in a B5. We went to dinner and he wanted to show me how stable the car was. And we're doing like 195 miles an hour with an autobahn and he's like weaving back and forth. Look how good the car handles. Oh, my God. Thanks, Andy.

[Matt Farah]

He picked me up at the airport in a V8 grand coupe with 800 horsepower and he hit almost 200 miles an hour on the way back to the factory.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

The guy was awesome.

[Steve Dinan]

He's on point on the way to dinner and back.

[Matt Farah]

The guy's so cool. I really. If he ever will. I don't think he'll ever let it go. But he did a. An Alpena Z1 that I would love to buy. It was a concept that they never really did and I'd love to buy it off him, but.

[Steve Dinan]

And their M6 race car had my engine.

[Matt Farah]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They did have the M6. We had a relationship back in like 2011, right?

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, 2011 they won the GT Masters champion. Germany, where they dined in Race motor.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

Actually that's out of the Ganassi prototype car. We took that engine and put it in his GT car. It was really awesome.

[Matt Farah]

I saw that car when I was over there. It's still in the collection.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I think we already sort of talked about Jim Connor's question. Okay. Zach's M3 says I currently have an F36 430i. Is that the current one or one before current? I don't know. Who knows what. I don't know what F30 is.

[Steve Dinan]

F would be the last generation GS.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, so 430i, it's a four cylinder. It's a great daily, but feels a little tired. Do you have any advice for the four cylinder BMWs with around 87,000 miles on it? Major service? I don't know. I don't know. Do you do anything with those four cylinder cars?

[Steve Dinan]

I don't, I don't. I find that people that want to buy modifications typically buy the car with the biggest engine already and they look for modifications. So I find the market very small for those kind of cars.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

So we try not to do those.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

It's just a business decision. Unfortunately, it's not that I don't like them.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Sean says. Steve, what cars do you think get it the most right from the factory.

[Steve Dinan]

As far as a brand, models, model cars? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think BMW M and Porsche rss are always the most buttoned up, best designed cars when they come out of the factory. As a general rule, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Var. The VAR says some enthusiasts are pining for more feel and engagement rather than more horsepower and grip. Is it possible for the aftermarket to step in and fix the numbness of some modern cars? For example, could Your engineers retune EPass systems to provide more feedback and feel more like traditional hydraulic steering?

[Steve Dinan]

There's two ways to answer that question. One is, I think when you'll drive this M4, you'll think you'll see the engagement is there and the tactile feel a lot like an old car. So a lot of that is not the steering, a lot of that is how the suspension is done. So we've done a lot in this car to make the suspension feel connected to the road in the tire, like an old car. Now, that makes a little bit more noise, makes it a little bit stiffer, but I think the connection is really there. But the problem with the electric steering and everything else, new cars is so integrated into the stability control and keeping in the center lane and the lane departure, all that kind of stuff is it's so difficult to take that stuff out and not get just a plethora of warnings on the dashboard. So it could be done. Is it worth it money? Probably not. You'd probably have to spend six months on software to make it compatible to work, and then you'd lose all the extra features that it gives you. So probably not going to happen.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I find that good electric steering feels better than hydraulic steering anyway. There's a lot of pining for hydraulic steering, but a really good electric system I think is better.

[Steve Dinan]

I don't think it's any worse. A lot of people think hydraulic is better. We run electric steering in all the race cars. The prototype cars are electric power assist. I think what makes it numb is not necessarily the fact that electric versus hydraulic. It's the fact they try and make it give steering wheel shaking feedback and lane departure. They have motors running things. I think that's what makes it feel numb, not the fact that it's electric, because race cars have electric steering in them.

[Matt Farah]

Nathan says what is Steve's thoughts on the S65 engine and its rod bearing and other mechanical failures? Was it negligence on BMW's part, consumer error or Internet overexposure exposure?

[Steve Dinan]

A little bit of all the above. I mean, definitely the bearings had problems, BMW got it wrong, the Internet blew it way out of proportion, and a lot of customers didn't maintain the car as well. Didn't change oil enough, let the oil get low, took it to the racetrack and it lost oil pressure. And so it's all the above. There's a lot of very good aftermarket replacement bearings now from two or three different companies, and we sell them too, where you can just slip those bearings in there and make that problem go away. But if you let it run low on oil and you go to the racetrack and it goes around a corner, it loses oil pressure, it's going to go bad. No matter what bearing you put in it. And there was also a lot of hype about how they all went bad and they didn't all go bad.

[Matt Farah]

Well, outrage machine again. Same thing with, I think, Porsche IMS. Bearings was like a 1% fail rate. It was a very low percent. But the consequence of failure was so high.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

You know, it was. Well, they go bad and you need a $25,000, $30,000 engine rebuilt.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. I mean, the thing to do if you have an S65 or an S85, it's the same bearing, is to do your Blackstone oil test and as soon as you get metal in it, slip new bearings in the car. It's a lot less money to drop the oil pan and put bearings in, wait for the engine to go bad.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I do a Blackstone test every time I get the oil change in my Spyder. It's cheap. Cheap reassurance.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. I mean, my new M4, it has a very good oiling system with three pickups in it now, so it takes a lot of GS. But current drivers took it last month to the skidpad at Chrysler Proving Ground and ran around circles for a couple hours at 1.1 GS. So I was curious to see if there was any. So I did a Blackstone test when I got back to California before I brought down to Yugo guys, and it was good. There was no metal in the oil, so the oiling system is good. I think it's a good thing to do once in a while anyway, especially if you're tracking a car. Yeah, especially with a wet sump system because oiling is always an issue.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Get your Blackstone test. Zach saves Joel's question for off air. I'm sure Steve can answer. Chris says, well, that we already. Chris, Carbon does tune cars besides BMW. They do Audi and Mercedes also, so we don't need to ask that one. Although what was the thought when you. When you restarted a tuning company, Carbon, and you said, okay, we're going to do more than BMW now, was that just because you felt in the past that you were limited by the baggage of your brand, that you could only do BMW, or did it just seem like other companies were making products worth playing with?

[Steve Dinan]

A little bit of both. In the old days, I didn't think the Audis and the Mercedes were very good, but the new RS Audis and the AMG Mercedes have gotten to be really good cars as we were talking about downstairs, and they're on. On par with the BMWs. I would still give the BMW MS, a little bit of an edge in overall product quality and performance, but they're very close. So that made it. So they were interesting. They weren't interesting to me before. And the other thing is, we do the same thing for your whole life and I've been doing this 44 years. You kind of want to do something different. It's like eating the same meal every day. And so I thought it'd be fun. And the other thing that's been interesting about it is I said, I looked at the. I have a Porsche, a couple Porsches as well. I looked at these Lenporter bearings, I looked at them in the M cars, I went to the Audi and go, they have them. Well, here's an opportunity. I can make an Audi handle like a Porsche or a BMW. And so I'm cross pollinating each one of them has its technology that's better. I'm cross pollinating the technology from one brand to another and making all the brands better. And I'm learning from each one of the OEMs because they're all doing something slightly different.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Steve Dinan]

So that's fun too, because they all have their own perspective and in some cases they're better, in some cases they're worse. It's not that one car is always better in every area that's not the case.

[Matt Farah]

Well, then they each have their own models that are better and worse at certain things.

[Steve Dinan]

But even the technology within the models, their approach is different.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Do you have to expand or did you have to expand your team size as well, like back when you were only BMW to branch out into other OEMs, would you have to add an exponential number of staff to start doing R and D on those cars?

[Steve Dinan]

I definitely will. I haven't yet because Carbon's a startup and it's small. So Dinan is still bigger than used to be, bigger than Carbon is now, just because they don't have enough revenue to have that much and stay in business. So what I'm doing is I'm doing all the BMWs first and I'm doing Audis and then I'm doing Porsches and then I'm doing Mercedes and it's going to take me four or five years to get through them all. At that point the staff will continue to grow, so at that point I can maintain them all and keep them moving forward at the same rate. That's the plan.

[Matt Farah]

Is it more important to all offer packages for new cars as they come out or to offer stuff for E46M3s and E39M5s.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah. There's almost no market for old cars. It's always the new car. And not just that I like new cars, which I do. People who have money to modify cars have money to buy new cars, and so they are the customers. I own Dinan. 80% of my revenue was the current model.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Steve Dinan]

And 20% was the older cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And I don't think that's really changed. Yeah. So, you know, the other thing too is people will spend about 25% of the value of the car and modifying it. So that's why that package is $21,000. It's $110,000 car. It's like 20% of the car's value. When you get to 25 sales, just they stop, you know, or they slowly down. If you take a car that's worth $15,000.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

What can you do to it?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

I mean, the engine overhaul that it probably needs is probably more than the car is worth, you know, unless it's just a labor of love and you love the car and you want to restore it, which people do. Yeah, yeah. And I get that.

[Matt Farah]

You'll get some of that. Well, that and it may if, you know, if BMW makes all of their car lineup plug in hybrid, it may drive people backwards to.

[Steve Dinan]

That's what I think. I think the previous generation people are going to get driven into that if they all go hybrid because of thousands pounds of weight. And I think they're going to become collector's items almost immediately, which is why I'm saving my M8. I'm working on a 2002 Turbo right now.

[Matt Farah]

Cool.

[Steve Dinan]

Original 2002 Turbo. 1974. Four. I think three.

[Matt Farah]

Four. Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

So a guy brought in this country and the turbo went bad. And it's an old kkk and it doesn't have a wastegate. Those old cars.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

So you can't buy the turbo anymore. So somebody put a modern Garrett on the thing without a wastegate.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Steve Dinan]

I won't say what shop did it. And they told the guy to watch the boost gauge not over boost it. That was their boost control methodology. So he left the shop and blew the thing up immediately by running like they made like 30 pounds of boost instead of like 7. So they ship this. So they shipped me the engine to rebuild, and I rebuilt the engine. Then he calls me up and says, well, it has all these issues. It's not going to last. And so he ships me the entire car. So I put an inlet restrictor on to control the boost and I put a split second electronic injection system on to feed fuel because it makes boost a lot sooner than I put a digital programmable distributor on to retard the timing when it goes in the boost. And so I've got like six months into this car now, like $30,000. But it's really cool. And it's got like 14,000 original kilometers on it. This thing looks new. There's not a mark in the interior, the exterior. It's a car worth spending some money on. I don't know what those things are worth. Probably 100,000.

[Matt Farah]

Probably at least 100 grand. Yeah, they're pretty rare.

[Steve Dinan]

Honestly. We're losing money fixing it, but we're all having a lot of fun doing.

[Matt Farah]

It and marketing value in it and.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, we're going to shoot some videos of it on the dyno and stuff. Yeah, it's pretty neat.

[Zach Klapman]

Speaking of expensive old cars, did you see this auction that ended a week ago?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah. 23, 117, five plus buyer's premium.

[Zach Klapman]

And it's got 80,000 miles on it.

[Steve Dinan]

That's more. The car cost new with a. That's neat.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it's a nice example. It's in, it's in. Looks like pretty good shape. It's in a good color.

[Steve Dinan]

And those are the wheels we were talking about. Yeah. So the wheels in the car downstairs, I don't have a picture of the new wheels are a modern version. We just ran the spoke out to lip and made a modern version of the new wheel because we like that style.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

And we just did an upgrade on it. I don't know. Those are tailing wheels. Those are not. They're not on the website yet. Oh, they're only on the car. Unless you have a picture of the car.

[Zach Klapman]

Find one.

[Matt Farah]

But these have held their value and.

[Steve Dinan]

They'Re in production right now because we're making them ourselves. And the tooling just got done and they're. And they're being forged and so they should be out like in about 60 days.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, cool.

[Steve Dinan]

So you have the only set in the world on that car.

[Matt Farah]

So don't curb them.

[Steve Dinan]

Don't curb them.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm parking it in the garage tonight.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

But we like that wheel. We wanted to modernize it. So we had the spoke all the way out to the lip and I think, I think they look cool.

[Matt Farah]

Have you put those wheels on an E40?

[Steve Dinan]

No, they're too wide.

[Zach Klapman]

I'll try.

[Matt Farah]

You're only making them in M3, M4 sizing.

[Steve Dinan]

We're making M2, M3, M4. If it's an all three, then we're making them for M5, M8. Okay. And then we're gonna go down to the M340, 240, 440. We're also making a set for the Audi RS5.

[Matt Farah]

Try a Z3 manual yet new Z3.

[Steve Dinan]

I have not.

[Matt Farah]

It's pretty fun.

[Steve Dinan]

Is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's a good little car. Good. It's a. It's not a race car, but it's a very nice.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Fast and fun road car.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

The Z4.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

So there's the new wheel.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Steve Dinan]

I don't have any way to zoom in on that. But it's.

[Matt Farah]

We don't. But it looks good and it's on car. I'm sorry, we do.

[Steve Dinan]

Yes, apparently we do. See this? It's the same wheel, but the spokes go all the way out to the edge. Same style.

[Matt Farah]

Our browser is no longer supported. How terrible. Yeah, no, it's a good looking wheel.

[Steve Dinan]

It'll be out in about 60 days. And they're available in what we call that smokey bronze, anthracite gray and then traditional silver and black.

[Matt Farah]

Nice.

[Steve Dinan]

You know, so $40 as well.

[Matt Farah]

So if you've got a modern BMW, Audi, Mercedes carbon's got something for you. You can go to their website, carbon.com C, A, R, B A, H N. And they've got tuning stuff, they've got suspension stuff, wheels, brakes, entire engines.

[Steve Dinan]

Yeah, Carbon fiber bits these days.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, lots of carbon fiber.

[Steve Dinan]

You can see our carbon fiber stress brace on that car. Have you seen that, have you? Haven't opened the hood on that thing yet.

[Matt Farah]

I haven't yet, no. We'll make sure to get video of it.

[Steve Dinan]

Don't. So. Pretty awesome.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you very much for spending time with us today. Steve. Always a pleasure. Always good nuggets coming out of this side of the table. And thank you to our patrons for such great questions today. Really appreciate you. We will see you guys next week. Goodbye.