We Bought Willow Springs Raceway

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Smoking Tire – “We Bought Willow Springs Raceway”

Release Date: April 29, 2025

In this special episode of The Smoking Tire, hosts Matt Farah and Zack Klapman delve deep into the acquisition of the iconic Willow Springs Raceway. Joined by automotive enthusiasts and industry insiders Sam Byrne of Cross Harbor Capital and Maz Fawaz of Singer Vehicle Design, the conversation unpacks the significance of this purchase, the future plans for the racetrack, and its profound impact on the Southern California car community.

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1. Introduction to Willow Springs Raceway Acquisition

Matt Farah opens the discussion by expressing his excitement about the episode's focus:

Matt Farah [00:26]: "This is a very special episode of the podcast because I've been waiting to talk about this in detail for months. Today we're gonna go out to Willow Springs."

The hosts set the stage by highlighting the importance of Willow Springs Raceway to the LA, San Diego, and broader SoCal automotive scene.

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2. Meet the New Owners: Sam Byrne and Maz Fawaz

Sam Byrne and Maz Fawaz introduce themselves, emphasizing their passion for motorsports and commitment to enhancing Willow Springs:

Sam Byrne [02:24]: "Pleasure. Nice to be here."

Maz Fawaz [02:25]: "Yeah, thanks for having us."

Matt acknowledges their recent acquisition:

Matt Farah [02:26]: "Big news. You guys own a racetrack now. Good times."

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3. The Acquisition Journey

Sam Byrne shares the story behind acquiring Willow Springs Raceway, detailing his background as an enthusiast and investment strategist:

Sam Byrne [03:39]: "I'm an enthusiast and collector to begin with. For the last decade, we've seen a lot of track deals... but something about the Willow Springs’ scale and proximity to LA was super appealing."

He highlights the challenges other tracks face, such as lack of soul in private clubs and the threat of tracks being replaced by commercial developments like Amazon warehouses.

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4. The Significance of Willow Springs Raceway

Maz Fawaz underscores the unique position of Willow Springs in Southern California, contrasting it with distant tracks like Laguna Seca:

Maz Fawaz [06:39]: "We think of ourselves as sort of of California... Southern California can have a racetrack, a real racetrack."

Matt emphasizes the community's concerns when the track was up for sale and his trust in Sam and Maz's vision:

Matt Farah [04:52]: "That was a fear too, when the track sold, that it might not remain a racetrack."

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5. Future Plans and Upgrades

The guests delve into their comprehensive plans for Willow Springs, aiming to balance public access with private club amenities:

• Safety Enhancements: Upgrading to FIA 2 standards for improved safety.

  Sam Byrne [12:04]: "We're going to be FIA 2, which means there's going to be a tremendous amount of improvements... to make it more safe."

• Facility Improvements: Building proper paddock setups, corporate support areas, and potentially hospitality facilities like a hotel.

  Sam Byrne [25:11]: "We will have to build a proper paddock setup to support corporate, to support public events."

• Membership Clubs: Introducing private club memberships that offer exclusive access without restricting the racetrack to a select few.

  Maz Fawaz [29:02]: "No, absolutely not. You don't have to have a Singer Vehicle Design car."

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6. Balancing Public and Private Use

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around maintaining public access while cultivating a vibrant club community:

Sam Byrne [14:07]: "We will lean at least as much into the public and OEM as we will the club side."

Maz highlights the importance of community over exclusivity:

Maz Fawaz [24:51]: "The community is what matters. Pure private places don't have a soul."

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7. Business Model and Sustainability

Sam Byrne outlines the multi-faceted revenue streams essential for the racetrack's sustainability:

1. Public Access: Hosting track days and public events efficiently to maximize usage.

   Sam Byrne [60:13]: "The public vertical... make a lot of these improvements... these are big revenue generators."

2. OEM Partnerships: Leasing space to manufacturers like Singer Vehicle Design for customer experience centers.

   Sam Byrne [60:43]: "We'll rent space to the OEMs. Singer will have a customer experience center here."

3. Club Memberships: Establishing a break-even model through memberships that fund track improvements and operations.

   Sam Byrne [62:29]: "The club model to be a break even model. That's all you really are trying to achieve."

Maz adds that optimizing track usage and strategic location are pivotal:

Maz Fawaz [64:24]: "The location of this place can't be ignored. It's kind of perfect."

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8. Enhancing the Southern California Car Community

The new ownership aims to create a hub for automotive enthusiasts, fostering events like cars and coffees and ensuring the track remains a vibrant, accessible venue:

Sam Byrne [35:10]: "We're gonna try to kick off that activation in early October, and we hope to have a great community out here."

Matt reflects on the benefits compared to existing facilities:

Matt Farah [08:58]: "You don't have to stay out here. You can be home by dinner."

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9. Comparisons with Other Racetracks and Global Standards

Maz draws parallels with prestigious tracks worldwide, emphasizing the unique opportunities Willow Springs offers:

Maz Fawaz [32:44]: "We've been to McGaragawa in Japan... It looks like something Dubai would do."

He contrasts this with the limited configurations and noise restrictions of local tracks:

Sam Byrne [12:14]: "There's nothing there yet. So we can make track related improvements... beyond that to build hospitality oriented stuff like potentially a hotel."

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10. Insights into Singer Vehicle Design’s Craftsmanship

Throughout the episode, Maz and Sam highlight Singer Vehicle Design's unparalleled restoration quality, setting a benchmark in the automotive world:

Maz Fawaz [44:25]: "Rob dedicates a tremendous amount of time to detail... Everything has been massaged. It's very, very deliberate."

Matt shares his firsthand experience driving a Singer Turbo:

Matt Farah [46:46]: "What made that car special is that it's the first time I've ever driven any restored car... you genuinely couldn't tell there was a car there before."

Sam elaborates on the meticulous engineering and unwavering commitment to excellence:

Sam Byrne [70:26]: "If you're not spending literally tens of millions of dollars on engineering with Bosch and everyone else to make it perfect, it's not going to be this car."

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11. Community Engagement and Future Events

Listeners are informed about upcoming track activities and the integration of community events:

Sam Byrne [77:58]: "We'll get you back in September and October. We hope to roll out a lot more information about what's going to be possible here."

Maz emphasizes the intention to cultivate a welcoming environment for all enthusiasts:

Maz Fawaz [30:21]: "It's an experience that we've been to a bunch of private, fully private clubs. They can be really quiet."

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12. Conclusion and Future Outlook

As the episode wraps up, the hosts and guests express optimism about the future of Willow Springs Raceway. Matt anticipates exciting developments and personal experiences driving at the newly revamped track:

Matt Farah [78:23]: "It looks anything like that when they're done, we're in for a real big treat."

Sam and Maz convey their gratitude towards the community and collaborators, ensuring ongoing support and enthusiasm for the project:

Sam Byrne [79:15]: "Like, Zach Brown turned us on to Alex Wirtz... It's been great."

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Notable Quotes

• Matt Farah [08:11]: "They put up the little banners like you put up for the photo shoot. Absolutely nothing else."

• Sam Byrne [12:30]: "Safety is like the number one thing. So we're running the track very carefully right now."

• Maz Fawaz [25:11]: "We will have to build a proper paddock setup to support corporate, to support public events."

• Sam Byrne [44:25]: "We do that on the, you know, underneath the skin as well. So everything is really, really deeply considered."

• Matt Farah [46:46]: "You genuinely couldn't tell there was a car there before, which to me was a real turning point in modification of vehicles."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Smoking Tire provides an in-depth look into the transformation of Willow Springs Raceway under the stewardship of Sam Byrne and Maz Fawaz. With plans to enhance safety, foster community engagement, and maintain public accessibility, the new ownership promises to preserve the racetrack’s legacy while propelling it into a vibrant future. Whether you're a die-hard motorsport enthusiast or a casual car lover, the developments at Willow Springs are poised to offer something exciting for everyone in the Southern California automotive landscape.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

What up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire podcast. You know it and I know it. Your favorite car podcast. This podcast is brought to you by off the Record, as always, but asterisk very important. We are getting rid of the app code. It's been problematic. People have been having problems using the code on the off the Record app. Instead, you want to support your favorite podcast when you use off the Record the best legal aid service. Legal Aid service is probably not the right term service to help connect you with a lawyer. To fight your tickets and win 97% of the time that's off the record, go to offtherecord.com TST they'll get you all legal services 10% off when you book through us. Right. Offtherecord.com TST they're the best. But ditch the code on the app. You can use the app once you make an account. Right? The app is still good, but something about the software and the code through the app, it just, it was causing problems. So it's gone. Banished. Right. Like your tickets, like the points off your record. Offtherecord.com TST Love em. All right, this is a very special episode of the podcast because I've been waiting to talk about this in detail for months. Today we're gonna go out to Willow Springs. Zach and I are gonna sit down at the famous Willow Springs Diner with Sam Byrne of Cross Harbor Capital, my new friend, and with Maz Fawaz of. And they are going to talk about all of the plans in detail of Willow Springs of what's happening. They've bought this place. What are they going to do with it? Long form on the Record. Also some really interesting tidbits about what's going on at Singer Vehicle Design. Maz gives us some inside baseball there and we learn who Sam is. Who is this guy who shows up out of nowhere and buys one of the most famous racetracks in the country. So this is a really interesting bit of radio. Zach and I out at Willow with Sam and Maz, who own the track. All right, here we go at the D, the legendary diner surrounded by a photorealistic cactus and a Corvette with Sam and Maz. Thanks for doing this, guys. I appreciate it.

[Sam Byrne]

Pleasure. Nice to be here.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah, thanks for having us.

[Matt Farah]

Big news. You guys own. Own a racetrack now. Good times. You know, there's certainly this, this podcast may be a little bit inside baseball to Los Angeles because of what this track means to this car community. Not just LA, but San Diego and the, the whole SoCal area. But I think even if you're not from Southern California. It's, it is important to like recognize how important it is for LA and San Diego and everyone in this area to have a world class motorsport facility. And so when they announced the track was going to be sold and when they announced that Sam's company, Cross Harbor Capital, was partnering with Singer and Maz is representing Singer today to purchase this, it was, oh, no, don't take it away, don't make it private. But the thing is, I already knew Sam and Maz and so I was confident that they were not going to mess this one up. So, Sam, let's start with you. Who are you? I'm just kidding. Sam Byrne. I'm not going to throw you on the spot, but what, what, what about you and acquiring this racetrack? Tell me the story of, of you seeing it and then following through.

[Sam Byrne]

Sure. Well, first off, enthusiast and collector to begin with. And I think that's kind of where I started. And for the last decade as a, as an investment firm, we've seen a lot of track deals shown to us typically de novo, new places being built in more obscure areas, trying to get financing, largely modeled around private clubs. And we had financed a bunch of stuff in the private club business. You visited a couple of them and I, we thought it was a really interesting business, except that the clubs didn't seem, the ideas didn't seem to have much soul. They didn't really seem to appeal to me as an enthusiast because they didn't. Beyond not having any history, the idea of being in a place that was purely private seemed just a little awkward to me, particularly given the scale that you can achieve with these facilities. And so, you know, we had looked off and on at various places around the country, continued to see more tracks that were close to major urban areas go away basically become the Amazon warehouse, as we know is going on.

[Matt Farah]

That was a fear too, when the track sold, that it might not remain a racetrack. Forget being a private track.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. And this sort of dropped in our lap. We. I saw this, I, I'd known about Willow and I saw it advertised in one of the, you know, I think it was podcasts and blogs and things like that. And I couldn't, I sort of was shocked that something of this scale was being publicly offered. It was being sold by a broker who was in the. Largely in the mobile, residential mobile home business. Right.

[Matt Farah]

Well, there were some mobile homes here.

[Sam Byrne]

So yeah, there were.

[Matt Farah]

Maybe that's how they got through it.

[Sam Byrne]

But right from the start, given the scale and given its proximity to L A this was super appealing to us.

[Matt Farah]

Really interesting mass Singer has. Singer vehicle design has been like really. I mean the. The sort of a figurehead in the modern Los Angeles customization, restoration, modification culture. Inspiring lots of imitators and other people that were. Are not imitating. But we're clearly inspired by the. The early and continued success of. Of Singer and what they're doing. I just went to your fact your new factory. It incredibly impressive stuff. I drove a little taste of Sam's new Turbo last time I was here. We're draw. Zach and I are driving your Turbo on Friday. But a club. What are we. What First. First it was like when you guys did the watch two years ago. I was like car guys watch guys. I get it. But like a complicated watch, not like a cross brand and you know, and that was like crazy. And you stuck with that and now a club. Talk to me, what's going on here?

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, we. We. We think of ourselves as sort of of California. I mean we're made.

[Matt Farah]

We're.

[Maz Fawaz]

We wouldn't exist. It's not like this could. We don't think this could have happened anywhere else. Singer could have happened anywhere else. It's like it's, you know, Louisiana and Malibu. The whole thing that's really. It's sort of ingrained in our cars. The idea that, you know, this. This is the. The excitement for us really is the idea that Southern California can have a racetrack, a real racetrack. We think of the nearest one as Laguna. So we go there all the time. We've been, you know, it's eight hours.

[Matt Farah]

Guys with a trailer. That's eight hours.

[Maz Fawaz]

No, it's. Yeah, it's a. It's all. But that's, you know, the idea that. That la, Orange County, San Diego could have a motorsports facility, one where we could be, you know, be a part of it is like a fantasy.

[Matt Farah]

You get so crazy that we went so long without.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's so crazy we went so long without this place operates. I've raced here a few times, but it's, you know, it's. It's just hasn't been touched in so long. I would argue that, you know, when it was built, cars were a lot slower. Tire technology sucked. Maybe it was fine.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, they shot Ford versus Ferrari here and didn't change anything.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah, that's right.

[Matt Farah]

I was on the elliptical yesterday. Not because we were doing this today, but I'm on the elliptical and Ford vs Ferrari is in the Netflix. It's just. Just put up on Netflix. I'm like, you know what That's a good cardio. And I watched it and the Ken Miles Willow Springs scene with it with the wrench and I'm going. They put up the little banners like you put up for the photo shoot. Absolutely nothing else.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's, it's incredible. And so, so I think for at least from from a personal perspective, the idea that I could, you know, drive an hour and a half from I live in Santa Monica and go to us, go to a racetrack that we're a part of that just to be a part of the story and be a part of the noun, part of the ownership. I mean it's the coolest thing. Just from a car lunatic perspective.

[Matt Farah]

Well, it's the. If you're in la, this is the right amount of distance for a racetrack. Right. It's far enough where you've got a real racetrack. No disrespect to the kind folks at the Concourse Club who are fabulous people who've done a great job. Aaron is the best. But it's in the city and it's limiting what you can do there. But here it's still, it's still a day drive. You're out and back. You don't have to stay out here.

[Maz Fawaz]

You can be home, you can be home by dinner. You have a fabulous day out and you've got a real racetrack and there's no noise restrictions. Right. I mean it needs a lot of development so on. So I think, I think the, the first, first for us it's being part of a Southern California racetrack. The private club side really came after meeting Sam and understanding what Yellowstone Club.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Has become.

[Matt Farah]

Well, my next question was Singer and Cross Harbor. How did that, how did that happen?

[Maz Fawaz]

So, so Sam is a car. I met him through. We have, we have investors who, who he's known for a long time, but he's also a customer and I met him at Le Mans last year and that's where the conversation started. The idea that Singer could have a private club wasn't something that, you know, had been brewing for a long time in a, in a weird way. We do have, you know, we have private get togethers. We have our clients get together. There's just, it's a kind of a club element. Right. That really, that really when we started looking at the idea of Willow Springs being an actual thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, it could host a private club, it could remain a public circuit, but have a private club. And of course we could be at the center of that.

[Matt Farah]

Which aspect of this, of this, of having your Name on a portion of this is most appealing to Singer. Is it the club. Is it that you can have a testing and development center here? Is that you can have a customer experience center here, A sales center is. Does any of those branches of business appeal to you guys? More than any other.

[Maz Fawaz]

So Singer gets to participate in Willow Springs becoming a thing in Southern California, which again, we're sort of. Sort of made of. We get to have a, a be part of a private members club, which is kind of cool.

[Matt Farah]

It's.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's a, it's sort of a. It's a step for our brand. Right? It's a thing we, we've been trying to. Our little brand has been trying to punch above its weight for a very long time. To me, it's just another, you know, it's another thing to participate in. But of course, having now a facility here where we can keep cars, we can service cars, we can come out and do development and testing. We, you and I can just go out and drive like that's, you know, we can just leave Torrance with a few customers or just ourselves and go out to the circuit.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, and you can make a really nice road drive here. You go over Bouquet and Spunky Canyon to get here. You can make that drive nice. Yeah. Sam, let's talk real quick about the sort of division of public and private. This is the, the major concern for a lot of people when they talk to me and I've been saying people for weeks. Wait, just wait, just trust me. Wait. Trust me. No, no, trust me. Sam's cool. He's not going to hose. He's not going to hose us. Right? So talk to me about, about how, how we're going to, how we're going to divide up the usage as well as the physical property Y.

[Sam Byrne]

Well, we're still working through some of the usage pieces and oh wait, by.

[Matt Farah]

The way, sidebar, the renderings that you showed, are we allowed to show those? Can we.

[Sam Byrne]

Is that probably not? Okay, But I think we can by, by September we'll give you stuff that we absolutely know we can do and build.

[Matt Farah]

Right?

[Sam Byrne]

And we're, we've been working with the county. The county's been fantastic, but we have lots of work to do there.

[Matt Farah]

But just even, even as like insp. Like non committal inspirational visuals. When, when I saw the photo, the, the renderings, I was like, oh, that it could look like that. Oh.

[Sam Byrne]

And certainly around the track like the track will. I think we came to the conclusion yesterday that we're going to be FIA 2, which means there's going to be a tremendous amount of improvements to the big willow that will make it more flexible, make it more interesting, and first of all and foremost, make it more safe.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Which is really safe, not just for human life, but also for people's property.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. This is, this is, this is a bad place to have an off.

[Sam Byrne]

I was fortunate enough to sit with a bunch of car enthusiasts last year in Monterey, and I sat with Danny Sullivan and he said the reason why we stopped testing there wasn't because we were killing drivers, but we were destroying cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And we just couldn't. We couldn't. We couldn't afford it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's bad. So. But I got away from it. So. Public, private. Talk to me about the plan.

[Sam Byrne]

My best politically, to work away from the question.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, you can, you can, you can. So, so what are the five Ds of Dodgeball Dodge?

[Sam Byrne]

Well, I led with, I led with this idea that pure private places, you know, don't really have a soul. Don't feel like they have a soul. And I think I shared the, the anecdote with you that I might have a dozen cars and I meet a guy who has the 73Rs lightweight, and I'm going to talk to him for three hours, and it's the only car he has, and he's been, you know, he's owned it for 40 years. And that's the community. And I think that a pure private experience would lack, dramatically lack community. They also are very difficult to make. Make money. So from a pure business perspective, having public access here is, Is really important. And so we, we, we will lean at least as much into the public and OEM as we will the club side. What we're fortunate to have here is these multiple facilities. That's a really. That was the thing that was most, most unique when we looked at de novo land outside of any big city. First of all, prohibitive.

[Matt Farah]

You use that word twice and I've never heard it before.

[Sam Byrne]

What is undeveloped new of nothing Is that.

[Matt Farah]

That's an acronym for something. For what?

[Sam Byrne]

It's Latin.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, okay.

[Sam Byrne]

I think. And they're gonna. Someone's gonna correct me on there, but it's basically of nothing.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

There's nothing there yet.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

So you're starting with a fresh piece of dirt. Okay. First of all, permitting. Second of all, anybody, you know, complaining about noise for any number of reasons, they're just not getting built in any place where people can drive to comfortably. Sure.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And so the, from my perspective, having the public element is really important now. People that are going to spend the money which is going to drive the revenue to make a lot of these improvements, they don't want to be exclusionary. They, they maybe want a slightly more comfortable vertical. That's fine. Let them pay for it, you know, and we'll provide it. We're good at where we know the club business.

[Matt Farah]

I see it more of like, instead of like opening like a members only, like supper club, you're putting a VIP section in a, in an already hot club.

[Sam Byrne]

It's a really good way to describe.

[Matt Farah]

And I think more people, there are certain type of people that don't literally don't want to be around the regulars. But I think there's more people, particularly in Southern California, who are looking for, like you said, maybe a more comfortable VIP experience. But at the thing that is cool because the reg, like if you cut this off and wall this off from people, there's no racing, there's no track days. People stop caring.

[Sam Byrne]

No one cares.

[Matt Farah]

What is a lap time? No offense to them because they do a fine job. What is a lap time at 3 thermal mean to anybody? Nothing. Because who's ever driven it, who can compare? But when you've got a race car and when you've got a public track day and all the YouTube videos and now you're a member, it actually means something.

[Sam Byrne]

And you will be able to run, at least in our current design scheme, you'll be able to run the original Big Willow course. That won't necessarily always be the course at Big Willow because a lot of people won't be capable of driving that in a really, you know, a really fast modern car. But you will be able to run that course and be able to talk about your lap time compared to something in 1958 or 1961.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, track configurations, I mean we're still under development and there's a bunch of racetrack folks that are here driving around in suburbans today. But, but I, from what I understood, you guys largely plan to keep the layouts that, that exist now, add a little bit where, where necessary and, and Maz, why don't you speak to that?

[Maz Fawaz]

What's adding optionality.

[Matt Farah]

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[Maz Fawaz]

So big willow will remain, streets will remain with a tiny few adjustments.

[Matt Farah]

But can we keep the 4 foot orange cone where if it's not there, you drive into a deep hole and if it is there, you get to avoid the hole?

[Sam Byrne]

The answer is no.

[Matt Farah]

You should keep it and put it in like a glass box at that table. That Anthony Bourdain actually pretty funny. And you could, you could like turn that cone into like a trophy for like a championship on that track. That would be pretty fun.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's not a bad idea.

[Matt Farah]

You should keep the cone. The cone has to.

[Sam Byrne]

We're not throwing anything away that we.

[Matt Farah]

You need to hire a hat. You need to hire my wife for sentimental whimsy and she'll go around and find interesting stuff to keep before you bulldoze things. Seriously, you've met.

[Sam Byrne]

We're not bulldozing things or that's not us.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's the next question. What are we bulldozing?

[Maz Fawaz]

We're going to start today.

[Matt Farah]

Please let me. Have you ever, have you ever knocked a building down? It is fun.

[Sam Byrne]

When the time comes, we'll let you here with a D8 and let you do it. Okay, so we're very little right now. We're going to actually make some improvements for early activation. So another Concern people had was, is the track going to close for three years?

[Matt Farah]

We're.

[Sam Byrne]

We are continuing to operate on the schedule that the Hoot family committed to through the end of the year. They hadn't booked anything into 2026 yet. We'll start taking bookings for 2026 based upon what work we need to do around it. And so we will be.

[Matt Farah]

We will.

[Sam Byrne]

Like. Streets will probably close for two months this summer because we actually will be focused on streets first.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

In terms of improvements, are you guys.

[Matt Farah]

Going to do a. A sort of intermediate improvement before you do the big thing?

[Sam Byrne]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

So early activation. This will change a little bit, but we'll stay here. It'll just be a little. Well, you have.

[Matt Farah]

Don't take away my.

[Sam Byrne]

The montage to Bill Hoot here on the wall. So we'll leave that. We'll do some stuff up at the Budweiser clubhouse. I'm not sure. Allowed to talk about booze on tv.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah, no, no. We don't have an fcc.

[Sam Byrne]

You don't have anything. So we'll. We'll make some improvements up there to get early activation out of. We'll build some temporary storage for cars. We'll improve security. We have a whole safety. Safety is like the number one thing. So we're running the track very carefully right now. I think you. You mentioned it earlier, our partner, Speedway Motorsports, and they run and own Sonoma and Las Vegas. This is like the perfect triangle for them.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And I think you. You know the Smiths.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I do. They know what they're doing.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. Some of our. Well, you saw. We were just at Laguna at a Sonoma with me last year.

[Matt Farah]

I did. And. And Zach and I just got to try out 1010 in Charlotte. We were there two weeks ago, and it was really cool little roller coaster of a track. Have you been?

[Sam Byrne]

I have. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's a. It's a good time. You get to drive a roof scr, which is a really neat.

[Sam Byrne]

Fantastic.

[Matt Farah]

Really neat little car. And we learned later the rear tires were about 8 psi too high. So the thing was like insanely tail happy.

[Sam Byrne]

That looked like a really good. Did you guys go to the event? Yeah, it was nice. I did the Bruce Meyer award and the whole thing. That looked like there was some great cars there as well.

[Matt Farah]

There were some great cars at the concourse. But you know what? H. When you do an event like that, even at a. At a relatively small racetrack, it's amazing. You go, there's 5,000 people here, but with that much space, it's like amazing how fast they sort of disperse. So they could probably triple the size of that event and it would be just fine. But what a beautiful racetrack.

[Sam Byrne]

So two points to your prior comment. One was, you know, some people want to be excluded and want to be private. That's probably not the right person for us if in our club membership that person is not going to necessarily be happy here ultimately because that's not the community and the culture we want. The second point was to the Smiths. You know, their ethos as a business and as a family, just the quality of human beings they are fits so perfectly with Maz. And my philosophy and why we get along so well is just we, we want to create something special that has longevity that we, that our kids can be proud of long term here.

[Matt Farah]

So run down the, the, the list real quick of we, the tracks. FIA 2 Fabulous. But there's so many other amenities that you guys have talked about putting in here. To the extent that you feel comfortable saying what will be here? What are we talking about?

[Sam Byrne]

We will have to build a proper paddock setup to support corporate, to support public events. We'll have to build something like that. The scale of what that is, how big it is. We're sitting where it's probably going to be ultimately.

[Matt Farah]

There's only so many places it could go.

[Sam Byrne]

We can make track related improvements. So garages, support facilities, paddock facilities, potentially clubhouses with the current zoning that exists today. Beyond that to build hospitality oriented stuff like potentially a hotel, which I think would be great down the road where we have to go through a process with the county and, and, and find a way that we, that it works for both of us.

[Matt Farah]

Is that changing zoning or is it conditional use permits?

[Sam Byrne]

It's probably changing zoning. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Fun.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. So when the track was developed, there wasn't zoning in Kern. So imagine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

You have California sequin, you have all kinds of things you have to go through. So we want to do a bunch of improvements that can get us a quality experience out of the gate.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Sam Byrne]

And then we'll go through that process which could be as long as 18 months to two years. Even with all the support from the county, assuming we, that, that we come to a conclusion on what the right things are to build.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, well, this is like a majorly long term project.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

This is like we're talking about a decade or something.

[Sam Byrne]

I would hope in five years that all those public facilities are basically completed or you know, far along in their development. There may be other pieces of it that you Know, we, we have a lot of land here. Yeah, that would be down the road, but that's. That, that would probably be in the second half of the decade.

[Matt Farah]

School for sure.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Drivers, drivers educational facilities.

[Sam Byrne]

School. Yeah. I think you, you saw we're planning on building a, a large format training facility on one of the two ovals. We'll keep one of the ovals. One of the ovals will become a, a training facility with kick plates, skid pads being the ability to water the entire facility. We'll be able to do insurance training, police and fire training, young kid driver ed, that type of stuff, which is a good business.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And if you look at the European tracks and how they're operated, they all run those types of programs as well as race training and continuing ed for younger drivers, that type of thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, this, a facility of this size is, has been criminally underused. I mean, with three tracks. How many. Five tracks are here right now?

[Sam Byrne]

Seven, actually.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's you.

[Maz Fawaz]

Even if you.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, my experience, I've been to a million track days here. One private, public, whatever. If there was a club and that club had access to streets on Wednesdays and I'm in a public track day on big track. My experience is not any different than today. In fact, it's much better given what you're talking about doing. So, you know, what are those, what are the, what are the techno guys like to say? You know, two thirds of a huge pie is way better than a hundred percent of a tiny pie. Right. Even if you have, you might have.

[Sam Byrne]

You might have a commercial being shot on the horse thief at the same time. Right. That's a, that's a sort of iconic. If you go into any McLaren dealer, service, shop, that's the photographs that are on the wall.

[Matt Farah]

So many commercials.

[Sam Byrne]

Not that I've been in it. You might have to find the bathroom in one once.

[Matt Farah]

You might have to stripe that. Like a road. That's what they do out at the Hyundai Proving Grounds. If you want a racetrack that looks like a road, the Hyundai Proving Grounds has one that they've striped. And so it looks like you're shooting a commercial on a road, but it's a track. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Actually for production. Could be, could be fun. Maz, have you guys thought about, I'm sure you've thought about, but to the extent that you're willing to share, what does a membership look like? What, what does a membership get you? Do you have to have a singer vehicle Design car?

[Maz Fawaz]

No.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. No. No.

[Maz Fawaz]

Absolutely not. So these guys run maybe the finest.

[Matt Farah]

You've been there, Yellowstone Club. My head exploded. My head exploded. It is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.

[Maz Fawaz]

The idea that you could translate that. It's not just the facilities. Right. Translate that to the. To the car world. The kind of concierge.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's wild version of, you know, dealing with your. Dealing with your equipment, dealing with your race suit, your helmet, your gloves, sort of all of that. All that being taken care of so you can come in, arrive and drive. That's that. That convenience making it very, very easy. Right. To come in. You have a little bit of a home, a home base, whether it's a. A clubhouse or eventually, you know, a place to stay overnight or store cars or whatever, that kind of thing is something that's not limited, obviously, to just our customers. I think anybody in. Anybody in sort of the business of having a bunch of cars and wanting to use them and, and, and saving some time and convenience and coming out to a place like this, imagine a public event, a race or a, you know, whatever it is, and you have the ability to kind of go back to the. It's a private area.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

If you feel like it. Where your. Where your stuff is or come out and mingle. I mean, the whole thing is. It's an experience that we've been to a bunch of private, fully private clubs. They can be really quiet.

[Matt Farah]

They are really quiet. Often they're really quiet. If you're looking for quiet, you go.

[Maz Fawaz]

Out with 10 people, there's only 10 of you. Right.

[Matt Farah]

Like I just said, how. How hard is it to fill a racetrack? You need so many people to make a racetrack look busy. So. Okay, but we're. But as of now, we are not suggesting that to get a membership you will have to buy a property. Right. Those are separate things. Right.

[Sam Byrne]

There's no. There won't be a connectivity between those people that are members ultimately will have the first rights to buy garages, for example. The things that we can build today as of right. With our billing permit, we. Those would be things that the members would get access to first.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. What. Other than the history and the general track layout, as you wander the property and look at stuff, do you find anything where you go. We should keep this.

[Sam Byrne]

This is.

[Matt Farah]

This is something cool.

[Sam Byrne]

I think overall, the answer is yes. Like for. I mentioned keeping the original big layout so that we can. That's kind of a nod to history, because it's not. We could, we could make it better, we could change it, but then it wouldn't be the same. So there'll be options to run the track in both directions. For example, there'll be options to have different configurations of the track. You could potentially even split it into two. But at, at, at its core, you could eventually, you can still run the same track that was being run in 1960. Yeah, I think, you know, the more time I spend here, the less I want to scarify the earth. Build tall buildings, big. Build big things. Outside of maybe this western side of the property. You know, the landscape is historically beautiful. It's cool. I mean, you know, these, these, these foothills are very cool. We're going to have some off road tracks in there as well to supplement the ones that are here today. But I don't want it to look like a large scale development. I want you to be able to continue to see all of Big Willow from almost any locust around the track. For me, that's really important.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

So sort of limiting the height of anything that does get built here.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. When you guys said that you had looked at so many other tracks, private clubs, what it. Did you see anything around those where you went, oh, that's a, that's a really good idea. We should do that. McGaragawa in Japan, that's the Japanese one, right?

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah, we've been there a few times.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

What, what a spectacular and huge scale project that is. It looks like something Dubai would do.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

I mean there's Giant retain. They, they carved a racetrack out of mountains. It's beautifully executed. It's quiet. I mean it's, it's purely, purely private. But the, the way some of the, some of the things flow. I'll give you an example. They have condos there and, and some of the owners have. Their, their car is stored in there, but they're all glassed in. So if you're a member, you can sort of walk through a gallery of everybody else's car.

[Matt Farah]

That's pretty cool.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah, there's some, some, some pretty. They have an indoor pit lane which, which may not, may not work here, but it's magnificent indoor.

[Matt Farah]

So you drive into a tunnel that goes into a building.

[Maz Fawaz]

You go to a building, there's a plastic, sheer plastic roll up that goes up super quick. You pull in.

[Matt Farah]

Wow.

[Maz Fawaz]

If it's hot, if it's cold, whatever.

[Matt Farah]

Is it air conditioned?

[Maz Fawaz]

It's fully climate controlled. You get out of your car, there's like sofas and drinks. It doesn't look like a pit lane. But it just, you just drive into.

[Matt Farah]

A nice living room and it looks.

[Maz Fawaz]

Like a fabulous car gallery.

[Matt Farah]

It's crazy. Until you have a car fire in there, man. Whenever you pull into a pits and all of a sudden the car's on fire. And now you're now your clubhouse.

[Maz Fawaz]

You can tell they're, they're expecting it. There's a bunch of ventilation and all that.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that's pretty cool. I got a. It's too bad we don't have a visual aid day today. Normally we've got our screen, we could look at stuff, but. Damn, that's sick.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's. Yeah, you can, you can look it up. It's, it may not be practical here, but the, but the, it's, it's really the idea of that experience.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Something, you know, that's very, I mean.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, to their credit, I, I lightly crapped on them before, but to their credit, Thermal does an amazing job in their pit lane with the, the swamp coolers, the misters, the chilled towels, the pit crew that checks your tires and does your windows, the fridges of drinks. All right there. I mean, that's great. The big shades, like, that's, that's pretty good stuff. Yeah, that's all a level stuff, right?

[Sam Byrne]

Sure.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

That's the blocking and tackling.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Sam Byrne]

Perspective in terms of what we have to deliver to a member to make that experience value.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And I also, I remember, I, I, it was sort of in casual conversation, Sam, but you said something to me about you wanted it to be open to a place where we could have cars and coffees and you could allow, you know, car clubs or Whoever, you know, SoCal people to come use the parking lot. Like, you know, there will, there will be a, A restaurant that the public can come in and eat.

[Sam Byrne]

Restaurant.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Basically the time.

[Matt Farah]

Basically.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. In the short term, food trucks. We're gonna, you, we'll, we're gonna try to kick off that activation in early October, and we hope to have, you know, a great community out here and then have regular cars and coffee opportunities. A little bit more family oriented maybe than some. You know, we don't, we don't need a lot of people creating accidents on the way out of here. Yeah, I mean, it's limited, but it's what you see online.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I'll tell you. I mean, I think, I think one of the ways that you could probably, that you might be able to admit just the fact that we're, you have this long driveway between here and the road. No one's gonna like, rip it in the paddock, I think. I think.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah, I think.

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, then it's all gonna happen on that.

[Matt Farah]

Some is gonna do it.

[Sam Byrne]

But if the road is so far.

[Matt Farah]

Away that no one's showing up off.

[Maz Fawaz]

Way over there because the crowd's here.

[Matt Farah]

You know, that's the problem with the cars. How about you do a launch box on property one at a time. You get a launch right here.

[Maz Fawaz]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Just do. Just.

[Maz Fawaz]

It is a racetrack.

[Matt Farah]

Just ha.

[Sam Byrne]

You.

[Matt Farah]

It is a racetrack. Just let people do that before they get to the public road.

[Sam Byrne]

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, that would be.

[Matt Farah]

That would be. Yeah. You'd be the first people to go, you know what? Here you've. You've got a little skid pad between here. Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

But you need to run into something. So we could set up like bushes and some other stuff from.

[Matt Farah]

Listen, Australia is very inspirational in this regard. Let's go. Oh, man. I mean, that would be a fun one.

[Sam Byrne]

It feels like it's close enough to LA that you could do something every month and really make it special.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. It's not too far and it's such a great. For me and I'm jaded. The cars and coffees I go to are the ones that have a good drive to get there. I don't go to the ones in the city because I don't need to go up Fairfax to go to a cars and coffee. I love you, Peterson Museum, but that drive stinks up little Ethiopia. The one in a coon trash. Kill me. Sam, I want you to brag for a minute. That's not a thing you do. You're. You're. You're a mild guy, but you're. You are a car collector. I have two of your cars under my care, which is a real treat. They're. They're two of my favorite cars to look at. The 73 RS Lightweight and the 1952 Hudson Hornet NASCAR, actually. I got to. I'm gonna throw me and Sam under the bus.

[Sam Byrne]

He.

[Matt Farah]

We were out here a month ago when they first were doing things, and we brought out this Hudson Hornet and I ran like two laps in it. It's like any car from 1952. It runs beautifully, but like. And like seven different people try to get it into reverse to back it into the garage. Sam eventually did, but it took him a long time. I was unable to. I could. All the cars I drive couldn't get this thing in reverse. Two other people tried. They couldn't do it. Back at the shop, I talked to my three guys at the Shop. And I go, hey, guys, you boys ever have a problem getting this car into reverse? And they looked at me like. Like Lawrence asked if he had a case of the Mondays in office space. Like, no, like, why would we have a problem with that? Like, of course goes into reverse and they proceed to, like, right away and just like, three point, back it up into its spot. All right, that's why you guys have.

[Sam Byrne]

I'm gonna need a lesson in that, because I've signed that car. I got accepted to do the Going to the Sun Rally in that car.

[Matt Farah]

No. Is that the one where you're like.

[Sam Byrne]

Bozeman, where you go, like, flat?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, no. Going to the sun.

[Sam Byrne]

Going to the sun. Not the brand.

[Matt Farah]

That's the. I'm thinking of that Sun Valley.

[Maz Fawaz]

That's the top.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. 52.

[Sam Byrne]

Let's.

[Matt Farah]

Let's see what I'll do.

[Sam Byrne]

I'm gonna go do go into the sun in September in that car with my son.

[Matt Farah]

What are the requirements for that event?

[Sam Byrne]

50 year old car.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

And then it's just. They have a. They have a committee that picks who gets to go, and I think they limit it to 30 cars.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, cool. Yeah, that'll be great.

[Sam Byrne]

It should be fun. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

As long as you find reverse, that.

[Sam Byrne]

Car will live out here. Okay, that's. This. That. That car is an interesting story. I was looking. I got. I answered an ad for someone who had a low mileage purple 944 Turbo. And I was like, I got to go see this thing. And when I got to it, I was like, oh, the colors. I just can't handle it. I can't drive that. It was just too much. The interior was purple, too, but it was cool car. And. And I looked in the corner of the building, and I'm like, what is that covered up over there? And I said, oh, this is this 51 hornet. That was a Herb Thomas tribute car built out of three cars. And it was the first car built by a guy called Mark Allen who had left Paul Russell and company.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

22 years ago for a dealer in Massachusetts. And it's been sitting for a long time. And I was like, that thing's just spectacular. We've got. We've got to get that thing out to Willow. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's. It's. It'll be perfect, like, as a. As a display.

[Sam Byrne]

It's not subtle with the.

[Matt Farah]

No, but you should, like, cruise pebble beach in it.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah, I'm taking it. We're taking it to Monterey.

[Matt Farah]

Are you?

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. Oh, that'll be and we'll put a willow spring sticker on vintage livery. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Hell yeah. That's gonna be so fun. Okay. What else is in the garage though that I haven't seen you?

[Sam Byrne]

I, you know, I draw. I, I collect what I love and I drive them. So I'm not like they're not total garage queens. I wish I had more time. This weekend I drove. I was an all P car weekend. I just come back from Maz and I went to talk to some OEMs at Bahrain for F1 and I just come back and I was like, I got to get out driving. So I took out, you know, I took out a classic 993 that got me going again and then I got my ST out for the first time it has not been driven yet.

[Matt Farah]

Oh really?

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. And I was trying to. I couldn't remember if it was 7,000 rpm and I was jet lagged. I went the wrong way on the highway and didn't realize I'd gone the wrong way. But pretty impressive. And so that was Saturday and then Sunday I took out the 2019 Speedster, which Mads and I both. Mads and I both agree is maybe it's definitely in the top five all time Porsche cars for us.

[Matt Farah]

They're. They're good.

[Sam Byrne]

It's a great car. And so those two. I'm a 993 guy, so we've talked about this. I have a number of unique993 and you know, turbos and C4s and weird stuff and then early rally cars. Early Porsche rally cars. So I have one of the rally package cars from 70. Is it 72 that has the oil filler external?

[Matt Farah]

Oh yes, I think, yeah, I think that's 70.

[Sam Byrne]

That car's. Yeah. One of my favorites to drive.

[Matt Farah]

Sick.

[Sam Byrne]

And of course the lightweight as you said. I only got that car. Joe Makari found me that car this year. Who was another relationship I met through Mass. We were ice driving in at Richard Todd Hill's place and I overheard him talking on the phone about taking it in trade and I sat him down with a bottle of wine. I said we're not leaving here until it gets. It cost me a pretty penny but I had to have that car.

[Matt Farah]

That car is unbelievable. No, no radio, no, no any. Just.

[Sam Byrne]

You got to drive it here, right? Did you get to drive?

[Matt Farah]

I didn't drive it cuz Dwayne was driving in and the shifter linkage was wonky or something. The most I've done is I, I unloaded it from the trailer and parked it in its space. But you just. You look at that car and you go, every Porsche sports car of the last 50 years is just chasing this. This is the thing. They're all trying to be that.

[Sam Byrne]

And once you're in it, you realize it's a sublime driving experience. It's so good. It doesn't. You don't think about it. It's completely timeless. Yeah, well, you saw. I had a will. My John Wilhoit 57 Speedster, which was a great car before, but now is like, that's a sublime driver with the Wilhoyt 2.2 and his. His suspension in it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's a monster car.

[Sam Byrne]

It's just a wonderful car.

[Matt Farah]

I think Spike's car is similar. I think he has the same suspension in that will, and it's a. It's like 160 horsepower.

[Sam Byrne]

I don't know if you were here when Jimmy Johnson had it going 140 miles.

[Matt Farah]

No, I was here the next day.

[Sam Byrne]

The next day. He got in a lot of trouble for that. No hel. No helmets. And a supermodel.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Jimmy Johnson can do pretty much whatever he likes.

[Sam Byrne]

Not here, apparently. We didn't own it at the time. Oh, yeah, he got in a lot of trouble.

[Maz Fawaz]

Twice.

[Sam Byrne]

Twice. Yeah, he also took. Was that the Turbo?

[Maz Fawaz]

He and I were chasing each other once, but he was out. And, yeah, he got yelled at.

[Sam Byrne]

No helmet. And by the way, that was just stupid. And he would be the first to tell you it was stupid. He wouldn't do it again.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but, like, you get in the. You get in the zone, what are you gonna do? You got this car, you got this model next to you that you're on an empty racetrack. Come on.

[Maz Fawaz]

Wear helmets.

[Matt Farah]

We've all been there. No, they wore, like a leather hat.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah, football. Leather. Football helmet. Exactly.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And they wanted to be thrown clear if it. If things went wrong. Maz, can I invite you to talk a little bit of. Why is it that so many people are trying, in my opinion, unsuccessfully, to either copy what you guys are doing, and some people do different things and do them well. Oh, no. I'm gonna grab a napkin. Hang on. I have a long microphone. Why? Some people do them well, but so many people are trying to crib this. Doing a poor job of it. And what do you see as the real special sauce that makes it uncopyable about a Singer vehicle? Design restoration. Because I do feel that no one's gotten there.

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, I mean, there's some folks out there that are chasing something they, they think is very cool and they're inspired and they're having fun. There are some people out there that are clearly just kind of doing it for the money or trying to make a buck or. It's a, it's a business. It's a business plan and we can go do something like these guys and sell a few of them and, and it, to me, they're fairly obvious. They're easy to, you know, easy to tell apart. Why are we good at what we do? I mean, part of it is just, it's been, you know, 15 years of committing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, it's a loaded question. Why are you good at what you do? I mean, there's the everything is important philosophy, but it just seems that what you guys sell is a more complete product than anybody else.

[Maz Fawaz]

Thorough.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Like, so we, so it's, it's. So Rob and I are. I mean, it's, it's like a place to get our OCD out, but it doesn't, it's not limited to just how the car looks right now. I would say it starts with how the car looks.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Rob has the ability.

[Matt Farah]

He's like, someone is like falling asleep on their horn outside, but it's okay.

[Maz Fawaz]

He's a guy who can write hit songs. Like, he's, he's, he's one of the best designers in the world, maybe one of the best ever. That's not something I just made up. We interact with the design teams from. I mean, we get visits from everybody.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Name, name, name a car company or a shoe company or whatever who hasn't visited us to, to want to understand, like, how we go about getting our point of view into this, you know, into these things. So he's really, really talented. And he's also, and I would say this is what happens in the rest of the business. He dedicates a tremendous amount of time to detail. So think about the exterior of a car. Could be 150 components. Every single radius, every single part is deeply, deeply considered for a lot of time. It takes a vast amount of time, which a lot of people don't have, even other car companies don't have. They need, they need to get to the next job, in the next job. So we do that on the, you know, underneath the skin as well. So everything is really, really deeply considered. Even things you'll never see unless you have a terrible accident or whatever. We really pay attention.

[Matt Farah]

It's.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's kind of like a watch movement, right? Yeah, you, you know, it's in there. You can't really see it, but, you know, we develop to that level.

[Matt Farah]

When I drove Sam's Turbo, which was very brief, 10 minutes in the wet, on. On the stability control, on the worst place you want to be in the wet, it was fine. And I was. And it was a very new car, so I was not doing anything that was strenuous on it. But I came away from that. And the overwhelming experience was that what made that car special is that it's the first time I've ever driven any restored car at any price point in any manufacturer where you genuinely couldn't tell there was a car there before, which to me was a real turning point in modification of vehicles. I've just. I've never experienced that before. I imagine that's not on accident.

[Maz Fawaz]

No, I mean, every. Every single thing has been addressed. It's still. There's 964 under there. Trailing arms, control arms.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, but you can't just sit in it and like touch stuff and look at stuff and hear the engine and turn the. You cannot tell anything was there.

[Maz Fawaz]

Everything has been massaged. It's very, very deliberate. Whether it's a pedal pressure or the. What you feel in a door panel.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

How it feels when you push on it. Inspired by a Chiron. Actually, if you go sit in a Bugatti feel, some of these things feel like they're made out of. There's, you know, leather is covering granite or something.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Like, we really wanted that. That, you know, old school German highway cruiser. Feel like. It felt like you were driving a piece of marble down the road.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Maz Fawaz]

That was. That was very deliberate. It's not. There's nothing. There's nothing in there. That's by accident.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. At all. It's a. As a. I really look forward to our. Our longer drive in the dry on. What are we driving? The Tokyo. The white one?

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah, it's white Tokyo.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Sporty sports seats. Yeah, that's. It's a great car. It's actually the very first one.

[Matt Farah]

Are we. Are we out of names for cars yet? We're. We're out of major cities.

[Sam Byrne]

Certainly buyers name them.

[Matt Farah]

Are they repetitive? Have you. Have you. Do you allow people to repeat?

[Sam Byrne]

Wouldn't let me.

[Matt Farah]

You wouldn't.

[Sam Byrne]

I tried, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

What did you. Oh, what did you get? What is your car called?

[Sam Byrne]

My first. The first one is called the. Is the Rock Lake Edition.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

Which is a lake in Montana that I go to.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. And what's the Turbo? Does that have a name?

[Sam Byrne]

Oh, that is the Turbo Classic is called the Corono because it's the city in which where Laura Piano was formed. And they've helped us with that car.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

All right.

[Maz Fawaz]

Some of them are cities, Some of them are just cool names. Some of them are just numbered.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

We obviously have a numbering system internally and it's. It's really for the customer to. To do that or not.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, so, Sam, what. What do you want to, you know, say to someone who is listening to all this and rolling their eyes and going, you know what? All that sounds really nice, but like, there goes my affordable track day. You know, what, what. What do we. What do you have for those folks?

[Sam Byrne]

I think if you're a PCA member, a POC member, FCA member, you know, any one of those, you're gonna have the. You're gonna have the same access you had here and it's going to be better and you might pay a little bit more for it, but it's not going to be unobtainable. This is. And we're talking about a lot of fancy stuff and, and. But that is not the. That is not the bread and butter business that you have to be in to make these things work. It can't just be dues supported. You can't run food and beverage outlets just off of a couple hundred members that come 25 days a year. It just doesn't work. So that will be a big part of the business. There'll be this section of the track that we're in now that's the sort of public section that will continue to be the public section of the track.

[Matt Farah]

Do you see for members, because you have so many tracks here, three legit road courses. Do you see it being like member 365 track access? It'll. It'll rotate which track based on day of the week or whatever to keep it variety. And the other ones will be available for rent. Or do you. Is that kind of how you see it or is it. Is there going to be a more reduced number of member days?

[Sam Byrne]

You'll always have a motorsports experience available to you when you come as a member. So it might be an off road.

[Matt Farah]

Gotta read between the lines a little bit, but okay.

[Sam Byrne]

It's not meant to. It's. When we look at it, we. I originally come at it thinking we're gonna have one track that's always going to be available to members. That's what you and I talked about. They don't really want it.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Sam Byrne]

You know, and really there's no like it's not like on that random Monday in the summer when it's 115 degrees out here. They may. We might want to have a photo or a film shoot going on. So I wouldn't say 365. But you will never come and not have something you can do and your kid will never not have access to a experience for them, something that they can do. Whether it's simulator training, whether it's on the cart track, whether it's going and wrenching on something in the service side of the facility. There'll be some programming that will always be available to you. And virtually all the time there will be one of the tracks available at least on a half day basis to.

[Maz Fawaz]

Members and any exceptions. Any. Maybe imagine a multi day event.

[Sam Byrne]

You'll know, you'll know you had speed week here. You know we only talked about the. There seems to be a gap in the schedule in January and February in motorsports and the US just doesn't have this place where enthusiasts can all go that's not brand specific. Where you can, you know like a Goodwood where you can go and all the brands all feel like they need to be there. You know, in a long term vision here that's we would love to create, have the place making that allows for something like that to happen.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. A few people are trying to do a quote Goodwood. No one's quite gotten it yet.

[Sam Byrne]

It took them 20 years. Right, right.

[Maz Fawaz]

I think it takes a long time.

[Matt Farah]

To do that as well. Yeah. I also think a. It's a different look. It's all. It's like grass and trees and good litter there.

[Maz Fawaz]

Goodwood is a place.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Right.

[Maz Fawaz]

But to have, to have a, to have a multi day motorsports event or you know, with historic cars and new cars and all of that in Southern California. I mean it's doable. Dying for it.

[Matt Farah]

Totally doable.

[Sam Byrne]

We think there's a lot of places we can build to get people out of the sun. We can, we can have facilities where people. There's camping here now. Right.

[Matt Farah]

There's.

[Sam Byrne]

There's RV pads, there's. There's a lot of things we can do to make for a great experience in that regard.

[Matt Farah]

Well, velocity is cool, but it's far.

[Maz Fawaz]

I mean from SoCal it's 8 to 9 hour drive. It also doesn't have a home base. Right.

[Sam Byrne]

It doesn't have a home base.

[Maz Fawaz]

It does move around but it's like.

[Sam Byrne]

The places it has been have been.

[Matt Farah]

In Northern California which is quite far.

[Sam Byrne]

From the SoCal car community.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

The. Do you. Do you guys see other like mixed use, such as, like having concerts and stuff like that here or not?

[Sam Byrne]

We don't, we don't see music because I don't think the county really is supportive of it. So we're gonna. We want to be a good neighbor and that when they've tried in the past, they've had some chaos here. So we'll probably sit back on that one and just focus on the motorsport enthusiast.

[Matt Farah]

Sure. Yeah. Have you, as someone who has bought an old building and renovate it. You've bought a very old place. You're going through it, you know, without being too mean about it. Has there been any. You're not going to believe what we found in here conversations?

[Sam Byrne]

I've. I have given my business. I was a liquidation guy, a workout guy, a d distress that guy. I've seen so much worse. I had much lower expectations. Turns out things are pretty good here. They just haven't been improved. They've been maintained. They just haven't been improved in 60 years.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

During the course of my life, we found nothing yet that shocked us.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

And we've dug lots of holes. I mean it took. You knew. I think I talked to you. We. We got together in August.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And I said we were buying it and everyone was giving me kind of strange looks. But we got together in Monterey and it took us this, this long to get it done.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It's like eight months. Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

There were a lot of things that. That the own. The former owner had to clear up.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Have you inherited any fun and interesting vehicles that were scattered about the property?

[Sam Byrne]

There's one. What did I tell you? We found a Bianchi.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

An Autobian Auto Bianchi.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. A micro car.

[Sam Byrne]

I don't know if it's still. Still here, but I think I've shared with you that I have this weird affiliation for. Affinity for post war micro cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And so are we talking about the micro car museum? There's a micro car museum somewhere.

[Maz Fawaz]

I don't care.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. My wife would tell you it's in my warehouse.

[Matt Farah]

Oh yeah. You have it.

[Sam Byrne]

I have a few assettas and I have Fiat Multiply.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Hannah drive. Hannah really tried to get me to bid on the four seat, four passenger. I think it's an. I said a 600.

[Sam Byrne]

600. They call it the limousine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Imagine how painful the death would be.

[Sam Byrne]

It's gonna be quick though.

[Matt Farah]

Your head would be crushed and then you would be trapped and then you would burn to death.

[Sam Byrne]

We go to family.

[Maz Fawaz]

14 miles an hour.

[Sam Byrne]

We go to family dinner, but we never leave our hometown.

[Maz Fawaz]

As fast as you can run.

[Sam Byrne]

We go to family dinner in the. In the multipla. We put six people in the multiply and take it to dinner. It's fabulous.

[Matt Farah]

If you have never seen a fee. Is it the weird one that looks like it's going backwards?

[Sam Byrne]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay. If you Google Fiat Multipla van and it is the strangest looking. It literally looks like it's driving down the road in reverse.

[Sam Byrne]

It was so. It was designed when they were trying to support post war Europe to be a car that a. A tradesman could use during the week and. And then on the weekend they were trying to support the middle class. So it was a. It was the most affordable sort of post war Marshall planning type thing. And it. It was important for Italy for that reason.

[Matt Farah]

I've only ever seen a couple of them on the street. They're rare now, but, man, are they cool.

[Sam Byrne]

You see them over there?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

You see them over there?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Micro. We should. Where are all the micro cars? They Montana?

[Sam Byrne]

No, Boston.

[Matt Farah]

They're in Boston. Oh, man. I got. If we. If I have a reason, me and Hannah have to come drive that I set up. That'll do a show that'll. She won't have the urge anymore. She won't want one. She has the little. This little Nissan Pow, which is the Japanese version of that. And 57 horsepower. Oh, yes.

[Sam Byrne]

Still looking for the Messer Schmidt.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you know who's got them is Bo Bachman at Galpin. He's got a couple of Messerschmitts. Yeah, he likes. He likes. He's got a couple peels also. He's. What else does he have? I think he has an auto Bianchi too. He's. He's got at least like 10 micro cars.

[Sam Byrne]

I'm gonna go look for the autobiography. It's.

[Matt Farah]

It's.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we do. We did get it. I don't know that we'll ever be able to find a title, so we'll.

[Matt Farah]

Have to go, oh, we got a bond. Let's go. Whatever. It put a cage in it and exoskeleton would be amazing.

[Sam Byrne]

There's something so satisfying about trying to work on and restore one of those cars because you can actually do it. You know, there's. There's something that I'm actually capable of doing in my garage and distracting my brain from everything else that's going on. Are you. You're a wrench I try to.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. I try to.

[Matt Farah]

Good.

[Sam Byrne]

Got a couple. I have. I have the One of the asset is the 300 is taken apart right now and I'm struggling with a.

[Matt Farah]

The 300 is the traditional Steve Urle ey setup.

[Sam Byrne]

I don't.

[Matt Farah]

Two door. We keep saying two door. It's one door.

[Sam Byrne]

Two is the. The two door is the 600 limousine. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And that has what, one side in the back? One side only one side in the back opens. Yeah. Funky. Yeah. Really crazy. They're so cool though. Yeah, they're. Oh, they're amazing. If you, if you want to ask questions of our guests for the show, if you want to listen to the live stream when we can do it. We don't have live streaming Internet here in Rosamond yet. We will soon, I imagine. If you want to get the show ahead of time, if you want to get the show without ads, if you want to get access to special merch drops and collabs. Patreon.com the Smoking Tire podcast is where you do it. And we have some good questions from. For the show today. And I did not get my glasses. Oh, we're. We're back. Okay. Grilled Tale of the Dragon. Are are they have used fun usernames. So as someone who recently got into HPDE events and had a hard time figuring out what to do, are there plans to do and some events organized by the track itself rather than third party track day companies? This is a question that comes up a lot apparently, like doing a track day with a track day. Like that's not an intuitive process at all.

[Maz Fawaz]

You mean, you mean through a club throughout.

[Matt Farah]

Basically the question is, will the track be organizing its own track days as opposed to renting itself out to a club who then sells individual space? Most of the events here on the.

[Sam Byrne]

Weekends were done by like speed secrets. They were. Yeah, they were, yeah. This idea that I was, you know, reading a lot on social media that people would just come up and make a payment. They weren't. They weren't paying the Hoot family. They were paying somebody else who was renting the track and providing the insurance. Yeah, we, this was a big topic with speedway of conversation yesterday. So we want to try to do it and it's just a question of how it fits into the schedule and when you can, they would, you know, some sort of test and tune thing or some form of ability for people to run the track safely.

[Matt Farah]

This is interesting. We are going to need more Advil. That's the username also true for me. Wants to know about big picture racetrack solvency issues. For instance, my local track just went to a rather pricey membership model only offering basic single lap HPDE one day a week to non members in a racetrack. What keeps the lights on and what are the big costs? Generally speaking, would love to have even a basic explanation about how a track stays in business versus folds.

[Sam Byrne]

So let's take three different verticals. So the public vertical where however they access it through a pca, fca, POC or through somebody who puts on track days, that's one vertical. Right. So that's a, that's a big revenue generator. And you're making money with food and beverage, you're making money with track rental. You're trying to run the track as efficiently as possible. In the US they typically don't let two people run simultaneously on a track even though they may only use it in 20 minute increments of each hour. And so in Europe they do it differently. They run in Austria they'll run all three 20 minute intervals with three different people. We're going to try to be more efficient than the traditional track and make that business more sustainable. The second piece is what we're calling our OEM or our, our, our, you know and we'll, we'll rent space to the OEMs. We'll rent, you know, Singer will have a customer experience center here that will be really cool. I can't talk about the other ones yet, but there will be others that are here that will have facilities here, both the vehicle level manufacturers and then people that support them tires and whoever else it might be. And so that will be a more permanent revenue source leasing space to those folks. Car storage, huge thing I think I've shared with you, we do have a partnership I can't announce yet but it's not around so much storage but around someone who's a big name in the industry. And that'll come out in September. But the having, we may have, we may have as much as a thousand cars of storage here for, for both entities and for individuals. And that's the ultimately the goal, really good business to store cars for people, look after them as you're, you're in the business and you're sold out.

[Matt Farah]

Very well aware.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. And hopefully we'll do something with you and I have talked about maybe doing something together. And then the club business, we really want the club model to be a break even model. That's all you really are trying to achieve in that. And it takes a while to get to that natural Break even point. But you want it to break even. But you want that dues. I'm sorry, the membership deposits that people are paying to. To get access to basically go to build the improvements and to do a lot of the track improvements.

[Matt Farah]

So if you don't have any one of those hoses going into the bucket, does the model. Not really. I mean, because that's a whole bunch of stuff.

[Sam Byrne]

You know, it's. If you talk to. Look, it's an. It's a complicated business to run.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And it will be a real business. But if you talk to Speedway and you look at the operating performance of Vegas and Sonoma, they're the best comps for us. They're great businesses and they run them very efficiently. They used to. They take, they took over the operation entirely at Sonoma in 2019. And it's a real business.

[Matt Farah]

Do you think that the. The success or the failure of a racetrack, assuming it's in a good market has to do really with how well they're optimizing the use of that. Of that? I mean it's very basic to say that, but.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. And capital.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Right.

[Sam Byrne]

They're under, they were under capitalized. Yeah. And also, you know, the market has changed. Maz was, you know, the amount of people who have bought cars that need to be stored. You and I talked about this. Maz and I have talked about this. The amount of people who want to have an experience with their car that you cannot have on the road. That has increased dramatically in the last decade. Like the numbers more of those cars have been sold in the last 10 years than the entirety of history. Prior track day cars. High, high end performance collector cars, for example, new new builds or high end restaurant mods.

[Maz Fawaz]

I would also argue that a lot of tracks are, are not in the. Not in the easiest areas.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

They're far in Buttonville's far.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Right. This is you. I mean the location of this place can't be ignored.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's kind of perfect.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Right.

[Maz Fawaz]

It was an hour and a half out of town.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

There's 18 million people with a 90 minute drive.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

And there's. With two hour drive. There's 23, 22 and a half hour drive. There's 23 million people.

[Matt Farah]

I've never driven from San Diego to here. Is there a better way to do it than through la?

[Sam Byrne]

No, there isn't.

[Matt Farah]

I don't. This question I don't think is accurate. But nice cams says why are the noise ordinances in California so restrictive? I don't think it's California. I think it's Laguna Seca and only Lagoon. What other tracks have noise restrictions in California? They don't hear California.

[Maz Fawaz]

I don't know.

[Sam Byrne]

They heard yesterday from the speedway that they don't. It's Sonoma.

[Matt Farah]

They don't. At Sonoma. They don't. They've never had noise restrictions.

[Sam Byrne]

Sonoma, I think it's. I think it's just Laguna, where you have neighbors.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Our planners are the people that built that large community, the reserve or the Santa Lucia preserve, around that track. And it wasn't until that neighborhood got established that they started to have real problems.

[Matt Farah]

I. When I run for president, any racetrack that was there first, you don't get to complain about that's. I'm running on that. If they. If they build the racetrack after your house is there, like, okay, complain, but, like, if it was there first, first, you knew it was.

[Sam Byrne]

Man, you got my vote.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That's my platform. Ted Stryker. We may have already. We may have already covered this sort of. But what would need to be done to have a future where NASCAR, IMSA, or IndyCar has a Willow race on their calendar?

[Sam Byrne]

You'd have to spend some money to get them here.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. NASCAR dates are worth a fortune. It's the date that has value, not the track.

[Matt Farah]

Say that again. It's the date.

[Sam Byrne]

The date has value. Owning the date is the valuable thing. So if you talk to Speedway, for example, they rent out Coda for the date that they own for the. For the race in Texas.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Sam Byrne]

And. And there's more road tracks being used in NASCAR now, which I think is great.

[Matt Farah]

Obviously, I went to that Texas race. That's where I met Marcus. That Texas race was awesome.

[Sam Byrne]

Fantastic.

[Maz Fawaz]

And I think we're there at the same time, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I think Jensen was racing.

[Sam Byrne]

I think the product is great, and they're. They're doing a lot of cool things with it. They've sort of solved the economic model. And so we would love to see something like that here, but I think it's. It'd be very hard to get a date. People have approached us because Southern California is lacking for major events, so might be MotoGP or something like that. But the question is, how much money do you want to put into giving your track away and having it cost you money and taking all the risk on ticketing? And I think that's something we'll have to just consider down the road. Smaller format stuff, I think would be great.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Well, you said earlier that the Safety.

[Maz Fawaz]

Will be built up to FIA 2 eventually.

[Sam Byrne]

Not in this first phase. We're just putting in. We're spending a bunch of money on tire walls and a whole bunch of stuff to make it safe enough.

[Maz Fawaz]

That's right now.

[Sam Byrne]

Right now. But then when the. When the full renovation of the Big Willow gets done, and that isn't necessarily every one of the tracks is FIA 2, but the goal would be ultimately to have the big Willow BFIA 2. So those are the types. So you can't have Formula 1, but you can have virtually anything else.

[Maz Fawaz]

Got it. SRO.

[Matt Farah]

Cool.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Tim A. Which is pronounced Timmy Seinfeld, guest on episode 999 a couple weeks ago, is not a fan of resto modded Porsches. What Singer vehicle design build would you put him in to convince him he's wrong?

[Maz Fawaz]

I don't know I'm at all. But I said don't.

[Sam Byrne]

He must not have driven one yet.

[Matt Farah]

I would say. I would say. I think a DLS would probably do it.

[Maz Fawaz]

I mean, the DLS is. Is. Is kind of an exaggeration. I mean, it's. It's pretty spectacular.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Turbo is. Well, you've driven a Turbo, but.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Well, he. Because it would pro. The turbo would seem this. The turbo really does seem like if Porsche were allowed to build a 930 Turbo today, that's what they would do. It really does seem like that. So he'd probably. It is that good.

[Sam Byrne]

That's probably why I. I was telling a friend of mine, a good friend of mine is a collector back east. I said, don't drive this when it comes because you're gonna have to find a way to buy one.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's what I just.

[Sam Byrne]

You're gonna need it.

[Matt Farah]

That's what I just told Graham about my Spider because Graham smith has a GT Cayman GT4. And he like, oh, can I try that? I was like, listen, you. You better be ready because you don't try this car and then you don't end up buying.

[Sam Byrne]

Convinced me to buy one on the cheap and I'm grinding it into the ground before I send it to Demon. And having.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you are. You're starting with a car you already have, correct?

[Sam Byrne]

Oh, now I have it. But it was after watching one of your things in the fall, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go out and source one.

[Matt Farah]

It's a GT4 or a spider GT4. Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah, it's.

[Matt Farah]

You're gonna love it.

[Sam Byrne]

It's the best. My color, it was exactly what I wanted.

[Matt Farah]

So what color?

[Sam Byrne]

It's deep sea blue metallic.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

Sort of my, My, my conservative thing.

[Matt Farah]

It's a good color.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. Great color.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're. You're going to love it. Is there. It's. It's awesome. Okay. Okay. The Pink Pony Car Club has, Has a lot of words here, but basically I'm gonna. I'm gonna pivot the question slightly to. I'm sure Maz gets asked all the time. The Singer vehicle design treatment for cars that are not 911s, they're not Porsches even. I'm sure you've. People approach you. Why don't you do it? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? And there's a lot of reasons not to do things. There's a lot of reason not.

[Sam Byrne]

But, but alcoholics, I would say that would be the car I want.

[Matt Farah]

Alcoholics. Does a nice job. Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

Amazing.

[Matt Farah]

They do a nice job. Yeah.

[Sam Byrne]

There's one at auction in the next two weeks.

[Matt Farah]

There's other folks that do great jobs at doing other cars as well.

[Sam Byrne]

I would just, I would just make a point there, though, that. And this is the thing that I've had to understand better is the amount of money these guys spend on engineering.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Sam Byrne]

Is. It's a whole. It's one thing I just, I just did arresto mod with a great builder in Chicago, Tim Olson. Fantastic car, but it's basically taking components that other people build, and you're taking a chance on what they're all going to feel like when you.

[Matt Farah]

This is a Porsche.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah. Pre varium 993, 95 convertible. All right, so it's a good times. It was a gift for my wife's big birthday.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay.

[Sam Byrne]

And so. But that is not anything remotely like what they do. And so that you can rest them on a whole bunch of things. But if you're not spending literally tens of millions of dollars on engineering with Bosch and everyone else to make it perfect, it's not going to be this car. No.

[Maz Fawaz]

That's what it takes.

[Matt Farah]

Well, how much? Okay, but back to the question. How much of your company's ability to do what they do stems directly from the fact that you're starting with Porsche 911s?

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, I mean, this sort of. It's the most iconic sports car ever.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Maz Fawaz]

That helps. But, but significantly, it's a tremendous car.

[Matt Farah]

That's. I mean, that's what I was.

[Maz Fawaz]

Very, very, very good.

[Matt Farah]

That's what I mean, starting with a fundamentally good car, car versus poor John Ward over here doing Broncos. I mean we, we unboxing is the.

[Maz Fawaz]

Is the worst we talk about and fantasize. You have a DB4 GT and a K and a and a, and a. And a Ferrari Daytona. How fabulous would it be if we could. I mean it would take everyone would take five years. Right. But they're not what a 964 is, which is like. Like I said, a fundamentally fantastic thing. So it's, it's kind of cheating. Right. So you get to go and take this thing that's already great and start to, you know, make improvements where you can make improvements.

[Matt Farah]

Plus because the 911 from the factory was so, was changed so little for so long that things like backdating, even if you're not using the actual backdate parts and you're implying a backdate from across the room. Right. You can do that with a 9 11. How do you back date a Ferrari that has a new body style every seven years? They're totally new bodies. You try to put Testarossa side strikes on a, on a 458, it'll look insane. It won't look right at all.

[Maz Fawaz]

No, I mean they iterated that car from 1963 to 1998.

[Matt Farah]

So what other cars have. They have. What other cars had hugely long production runs where in which you could mix and match visual elements to create a best of. In the way that. To totally diminish what you're doing. But visually it's sort of a best of.

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, the only things that. That have. That have continued are Mustangs and Corvettes.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Maz Fawaz]

911 and pickups. Well, things where you have this car that just iterates.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

In one, one form or another. But Porsche did something in. In 1988. The 3, 2 Carrera and then they did the 964 in whatever. 89 under the same bodywork you had a completely different car, which is unheard of. I don't know that that's ever been done. You can just go, you can open up the same.

[Matt Farah]

I'll give you one because you have challenged me. The Ferrari Mondial, they turned the engine from transverse to longitudinal when they went to the Mondial T. Huh? Yeah. So in 80, in 8, whenever, when they went from Mondial to Mondial T, the powertrain went from a 328 powertrain transverse to a 348 powertrain longitudinal. And the exterior bodywork exactly the same.

[Maz Fawaz]

So if you take a 3, 2 Carrera and 964, put them next to each other, open the front Same piece of metal. The entire stamping of the entire chassis is completely different each other. Everything's. The suspension is different. Everything is fundamentally different. But you can take the doors and exchange them. I mean, that just. I can't imagine that's been done somewhere else. And I don't know if that was done, you know. You know, if that was the sort of financial condition of Porsche at the time. I know that that had a lot to do with. With. With the limitations to the 993 changes, but it. That's really the opportunity. That may be why there's a bunch of people backdating 9 11s because.

[Matt Farah]

Because it's possible.

[Maz Fawaz]

Can't really do it on. On. On other stuff.

[Sam Byrne]

So.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Maz Fawaz]

And those cars, you know, the original cars, the 60s cars, were. Were beautiful. They were very pretty. Right. And you know, you kind of want to go back to that. Some of them got kind of plasticky and, and big over time. Right.

[Matt Farah]

Can we real quick talk about interiors? Because of all the things I saw at your factory two weeks ago, saw a lot of pretty cars. A little disappointed with what your customers are choosing to paint their cars, but I understand that this is their subtle car for a lot of people. So it's a subtle colors. I like. I like them.

[Sam Byrne]

You want a little flashier?

[Matt Farah]

A little flashier for that? For that kind of money? For that kind of. I would go. Go big. But. But that's just me. The most impressive thing I saw was the guy who turned woven leather into Pasha. How.

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, that guy is us.

[Matt Farah]

Well, that's the guy.

[Sam Byrne]

But there was.

[Matt Farah]

There was a guy working on it when I. But, but you know, Pasha, the stripes aren't even. They get wider and more narrow. And someone had woven that into leather. And I don't actually know how this.

[Maz Fawaz]

Is installed in the orange car.

[Matt Farah]

I didn't see it in the car. I only saw it. I saw it.

[Maz Fawaz]

That car's done yesterday.

[Matt Farah]

The craziest.

[Maz Fawaz]

It's fantastic. Super cool.

[Matt Farah]

When what you guys have done with weaving leather, when you went first from just the weave till then, you made plaid out of woven leather or a tartan where it's a gradient and stripes and nuts to now do that. What is pushing the. What's pushing the evolution of weaving leather?

[Maz Fawaz]

Well, it's not, it's not just really weaving leather. But see, part of the experience for our customers is that they get to go and really thoroughly design something. They really, really get to make it there. Sometimes they bring in their, you know, their family, their wife, they're a designer, whatever it is. But, you know, that's, you know, there's some folks always sort of pushing, you know, how, you know, can we try this? Can we try that? So, you know, and we'll do that certainly on things like interiors. We won't do that with. With, you know, with bodywork or anything heavy. But, yeah, the pasta thing was something we looked at. It might have been. I forgot who first got us to look. It might have been Dario first. He never did it, but I think he asked us if we could.

[Matt Farah]

Dario is a man of taste. I'm not surprised.

[Maz Fawaz]

Yes, for sure.

[Matt Farah]

He is a man of taste. We got to get him back here.

[Sam Byrne]

Yeah, yeah, we'll have him here.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, he's the man. He just did some content with Johnny Smith. That looks like fun. Yeah, I love Johnny Smith. We got to get him back here, too. Boys, we're gonna. We're gonna wrap this one up. And I really appreciate your time this morning, and I'm so excited to see, you know, what happens here. I will be utilizing the place all the time. You're gonna have to kick me out. I'll pitch a tent somewhere. Where. Where do you want to leave this? What? Where. Where do you. Where do we want to walk away from this conversation? The Southern California car community. A few might be able to afford memberships. Most can't, but they all want to see this place.

[Sam Byrne]

There'll be a home for you. Yeah, it'll be a home for you. Like, it really should be about a great enthusiast place. And I want to thank you. You've been super helpful in referring me to people. There's been so many people that have come out of the woodwork that I didn't know over the last year that have been helpful in giving us advice. I would say, like, Zach Brown turned us on to Alex Wirtz, who's been a gift to us in terms of safety and experience, having run all these tracks in Germany and Austria, historically. Historically. And then just so many others. It's been great. So you've been a contributor there, so you'll always be welcome here.

[Matt Farah]

Matt. Woohoo. Yeah, we will. We will take your track time. Thank you very much. And Mads, thanks very much. I can't wait. We're going to go out on Friday with. With the white car. There will be video, and I'm just. I'm super stoked to spend a little more seat time in that. It was. The taste I got was fabulous, but also a little bit glazed over with pressure because it was his brand new car.

[Sam Byrne]

Mine might have been. Mine might have been overly conservative, too. It was. That is.

[Matt Farah]

It was in the wet. It was very much don't break this.

[Sam Byrne]

Because they're meant to be driven.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, draw. Yeah, Driven.

[Maz Fawaz]

I think it got it that day.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I know, right?

[Sam Byrne]

I got it. I got it one track day prior. You know, there was plenty before, but I did. There was still plastic on the carpets, which is. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Well, this was great. Thank you, guys. Thank you to our patrons for some good questions today. And of course, if you know, if anyone has any very specific questions or needs or we can. We can ask them later and get you information.

[Sam Byrne]

We'll get you back in September and October. We hope to roll out a lot more information about what's going to be possible here.

[Matt Farah]

Cool.

[Sam Byrne]

And we're excited for it all.

[Matt Farah]

And did you guys. Did. Someone took back over the Willow Springs Raceway Instagram and was posting on it? Somebody was doing. Was that you guys?

[Sam Byrne]

I think Khan is running it with us.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, great.

[Sam Byrne]

And the speedway, folks.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, cool. So, yeah, follow the Willow Springs Waste Raceway Instagram for. For updates and all that. And. And I can't wait to be back out here driving some stuff. And. And trust me, I've seen the renderings. Even if they're not 100% accurate to production, if it looks anything like that when. When they're done, we're in for a real big treat. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next time. Bye.