February 18, 2025 • 45 mins
Click here to tell us about your favorite car, car story or automotive trivia !
Join automotive enthusiast Tom Yang for an immersive journey into Ferrari restoration, where vintage era craftsmanship and precision vehicle design come to life. Explore hands‑on restoration stories of iconic models and classic cars, delve into craftsmanship discussions and automotive technology, and uncover the dedication behind every chassis and engine rebuild. Perfect for fans of automotive culture, classic cars, and the art of vehicle restoration within the broader automotive universe.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You have found to all the cars I've loved before,
your authoritative podcast onautomotive nostalgia, where
every car tells a story, everymachine has a soul, every car
has a culture.
It's time to plug in, dust off,get a little grease on the
hands and memories in the mind.
Welcome to new listeners.
Oslo, norway, salt Lake City,utah, north Liberty, iowa,
(00:28):
ashburn, virginia, close to DougOkay, I love saying this one
Etobicoke, ontario, I think.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Does that sound good?
Does that sound right?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
You got it perfect.
Etobicoke Nailed it the firsttime.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Where else Dallas, texas, easy one.
Where else dallas, texas, easyone to say, reykjavik, iceland,
that's in there.
Reykjavik, reykjavik, reykjavik, miami, florida, and allentown,
pennsylvania, allentown greatsong by billy joel.
I am christian, he is doug.
Good evening, partner.
How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
great doing christian at carslovecom, that's right,
christian at carslovecom.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
He's doug at carslovecom.
That's right, christian atcarslovecom.
He's Doug at carslovecom, andwe have a really special guest
today.
Can't wait to introduce him.
Today's theme restoring history.
Why are details important whenrestoring history, when
restoring a vintage car, avintage Ferrari or a vintage
(01:21):
church built about 800 years ago?
We'll get into that in just amoment, so get into calls to
action here real quick.
We continue to see trafficmovement on our link tree,
linktree, far as love.
That's where you can get to allour online presences.
(01:43):
So Facebook, instagram, youtube.
Where else, partner?
Where else are we Our?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
website, our blog, our form to submit yourself or a
friend to be a guest on theshow.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Absolutely.
We also started a newsletter,of which I first I wrote the
first edition and it's sittingsitting in my editor-in-chief's
inbox, right, editor-in-chief,it's still there.
It hasn't been forgotten, it'sjust been ignored, beautiful.
So what else is going on withour outreach efforts here?
Anything new going on?
I know that YouTube still.
We still get in traffic there,yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
YouTube.
We've been having fun with theyoutube shorts.
Um, we did put out an entireyoutube episode with, uh, speedy
cop aka jeff block, a greatfriend of the show, amazing guy.
We'll have the full audioepisode out in a few weeks, I
think by the time people listento this and, let's see, been
(02:46):
updating the blog.
And on that note, christian,I've shared in the past that
cars that are important to me,of which I own now I have a 1990
Nissan 300ZX Z32.
It was not the car I had inhigh school, but it was the car
I wanted.
A close friend of mine, who'sno longer with us, had one.
(03:11):
He really got me into cars, sothat car is special to me.
It's about five differentcolors, because it got hit a
bunch of times so it needs to bepainted.
And then, of course, the 1981DeLorean, which I can't say
enough great things about it.
I've made great friends, I'vetaken it to events, made people
smile, people laugh and pointand smile when I'm going down
(03:33):
the road, and I've done so manythings with it.
I've taken the interior out.
I just replaced the fuelinjectors pretty much myself, on
a very antiquated mechanicalfuel injection system by Bosch
and the car is running betternow.
So everything I fixed, nothinghas broken permanently.
(03:53):
It's all fixable and it's thegift that keeps giving.
So what about yourself,christian?
Tell us, oh, yeah, well, yeah,we were just chatting about how
I uh banged up my vintagepontiac.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Little little, little painful one talk about this
2007 green a lot of fun, a lotof fun um, we've been uh
interviewing a lot of peopleabout uh air-cooled vws, vintage
vws, and I'm thinking a lotabout it wasn't air-cooled, but
but my VW Rabbit GTI 1984 fromthe 80s.
(04:28):
It was not.
That car was so much fun.
So much fun in there Highschool and into college, just
piling great people into itgoing to have fun.
Very sporty car and yeah, Ithink I need to.
I'm looking at the the new onesonline.
I just don't think there aremany, many old ones there to be
had.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
But they're out there .
They're out there.
They want me to look for you uh, yeah, please do.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
And if you get sick of the 300zx in your uh garage
dog, just box it up and send itdown we'll take it.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
We'll park it right next to the boat that I gave you
.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's right, it's on the list too.
It's on the list too.
All right, moving on.
Okay, we have a great guesthere today, but before we
introduce him, a little prologue, a little preamble.
There's a through line.
Bear with me for just a moment.
Today's theme restoring history.
Why do historical detailsmatter?
Well, about a week ago, I waswatching a documentary about the
(05:27):
Cathedral of Notre Dame Burneddown 2019.
Just reopened it and I sat downto watch this and I thought you
know, they're going to bringeverything up to code Steel
trusses, titanium struts, thisand that when they're rebuilding
the church, especially thespire that fell, all that had to
(05:50):
be fixed.
It's not the case.
That's not what happened at all.
They found these Parisianartisans and sent them all out
in France and said you got tofind a certain kind of oak,
certain kind of height, certainkind of diameter.
You're going to bring it tothese sawmills, and all these
sawmills around France, pitchedin free, started milling the oak
down, sending it back to Paris.
So it was not the latesttechnology, it was the original
(06:15):
technology.
Church was built 800 years agoand still use these old
techniques to fix it, these oldtechniques to fix it.
And so there's a through linein preparing For today's show.
Our guest is Tom Young, whorestores vintage Ferraris.
Same thing, okay, and we'regoing to get into that.
(06:35):
But, tom, good evening, goodafternoon, how are you Welcome
to?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
the show.
Hi, thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
What did you have?
You know anything about NotreDame, or did you?
Speaker 3 (06:45):
do you remember it burning?
Yes, actually I was in Parisbefore the fire.
So when we heard about the fireit was just so upsetting
because it was just I think itwas only about six months prior
to that that we were there Wow.
But again, you know, justheartbreaking.
When the whole world saw thevideo of that collapse, it just
(07:07):
seemed like it was beyond repair.
I mean, it was just acatastrophic failure and fire.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
That's right.
That's right.
And it was kind of theheartbeat of the city and what
their people that are religious,not religious people from
outside of the country, outsideof the city Money just poured in
.
It didn't matter what stripeyou were.
It was that important to thecity, rebuilding it and getting
the historical details right.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And in New York we have a cathedral that's been
still being put together.
So it's just as the artisansare learning how to do these
Gothic cathededrals.
It's like, when you think aboutthat, notre Dame has been
around for so long and then ithas to be rebuilt again, and I
totally agree that you'd thinkthat they would do with modern
(07:56):
materials.
But no, absolutely.
You have to preserve theoriginal.
I mean for it to survive somany hundreds of years.
You know, there's nothing wrongwith the way it was originally
built you know Well put, sothat's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Is that St John the Divine, by the way, that you're
referring to?
Yeah, exactly, and because ofthe price of it, it may never be
finished you know because ittakes so long.
But, Tom, please tell us alittle bit about what you do and
how you fell into it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So I guess I'm a mechanic.
I'm a mechanic on vintageFerraris and I usually, when I
first meet people, I tell peopleI work on pre-'72 Ferraris,
anything built before pre-'72.
And people say, well, what'sthe cutoff at 72?
And I usually say it'scarbureted.
I like working on carburetedferraris.
(08:45):
Um, so pre-72 most of them werev12, um uh engines and uh, they
were kind of classified asvintage ferrari.
Although vintage keeps moving,the goalposts keep moving.
Now you know, a testarossabuilt in the 80s is considered
vintage um, yes, it is, and andall those things.
So so I guess, uh, at some pointdo we start calling them
classic Ferraris.
But so that's kind of what I do.
(09:07):
I started I guess a lot of usstarted because we just fell in
love with the car.
I was always a car guy, so eversince I was a teenager I've had
cars.
But when I saw a Ferrari forthe first time I just said, okay
, what I think is cool about allthese other cars that I have
(09:27):
and own and all I don't knowanything that's going on with
vintage Ferrari and I've got tolearn everything about it.
Because just the beautifulshape the first one that I saw
in person was a 250 short oilbase, which is kind of a high
watermark to kind of surpass,and I just couldn't believe how
beautiful it was.
It was so low and the shape.
(09:48):
And then once they fired up theengine, it was like I never
heard a 12-cylinder Ferrari.
I mean, just running like thatjust sounded so like just
menacing and beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
What did it sound like?
Oh, that did you say menacingand beautiful.
It's like.
Yeah, I mean like when you getthis.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Ferrariacing.
It's like, yeah, I mean like,when you get this ferrari, it's
like it's a.
You know, a ferrari isbeautiful, it's.
It's like I used to joke aboutit like okay, so let's go back
to the story, right?
So I meet my mentor at his shop.
That's the first introduction.
So my mentor's name is francoissacard.
He is a fairly well-knownferrari restorer in the in the
70s and 80s he worked forCanetti Motors, which is the
(10:26):
story of Ferrari coming toAmerica and establishing a
foothold and dealer in America.
And François worked for Canetti, so he learned all the ways of
putting Ferraris togetherApprentice at the factory in the
60s, came to america and andstarted his career at ferrari.
So by the time I met him in thein the late 90s, um, he, he was
(10:50):
, he was fairly well known andand, um, I was introduced to him
at a shop and he had this shortwheelbase and I remember it was
under a cover like a, a, like agaussian cover, and as he
pulled the off, it almost feltlike you were lifting a skirt,
because it was like the, the,the, the fender, is, is, is
basically this, this, thisbeautiful feminine shape, and
(11:13):
and I almost made the epiphanywhere it's like, oh they sneaky
Italians.
They just they're just formingthese, these Rubin esque shapes
of of Shapes of sculpture.
But then you take that andyou're kind of like, ok, so
that's why all these dudes likethese cars.
And then all of a sudden you goand fire it up and it's got this
like mechanical anger and furyand just like I'm ready to go,
(11:35):
and you just basically meld this, this, this attraction, like
look at these guys who ridechoppers and they have this big
tank in front of them andthey're like, think of all that,
like subconscious stuff thatthey're doing, right, so it's
the same thing.
It's like and you put all thepower to it and the noise and
the vibration, so that's.
That's kind of like my wow,this is, this is really cool.
And and so, um, I, I just Imade that decision.
(11:58):
I said I don't know how I'mgonna get, how I'm gonna get one
, but I, I to get one of thesethings.
And you made it and I made it.
I found one and just kind oflooking back and I guess if it
hadn't been that meeting, thatchance meeting, I may have gone
another direction.
But it was pretty, pretty wildhow my whole life changed course
because of that one epiphany.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right and required reading for this journey is
Tom's website, tomyoungnetT-O-M-Y-A-N-Gnet.
So he's got so much informationstarted about what 20, 25 years
ago is a collection for Tom'swritings, podcasting, interview
(12:42):
pictures, stories, his lifejourneys is.
Is he so?
When he got his car, it reallychanged his life?
And can you talk a little bitabout how continuing to put
everything in one place becamethis sort of clearing house for
great information?
But the first part.
Second part is do you stillupdate it to?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
this day.
Sure, sure, I still do it.
I think you know I startedblogging before they were called
blogs.
So in 1999, my nephew was acomputer science major in
college and I had him write thisscript so that I could actually
how do I do this?
So I could get pictures and putit in there and I could just
fill the type in.
And he created this littlescript and we created this
(13:26):
script before there was bloggingsoftware.
So in 1999, that really didn'texist.
But I didn't start it to thinkof what a blog was or anything.
It was just this thing calledthe World Wide Web that had
picked your place.
You could put pictures andstories, and I was learning so
much from this mentor, I waslearning so much from Francois,
and he was so generous to shareall this information and I was
(13:49):
just blown over by the coolness.
You know, digital photographywas also getting affordable and
accessible to all of us withdigital cameras, so I just
(14:11):
wanted a place to put it, evenif it was just for my own
collection of photography andand and talking about how cool
it was.
But then other people I foundthat people all over the world
were interested in the samething and I I would find things
like especially with Ferrari,because all cars are fun and
watch the journey, because Iwatch YouTube channels.
I have a YouTube channel.
(14:32):
I look at other people'sjourney and how they start and
how they fix it and they succeed.
There's some real journey ofsuccess stories of people doing
that and it's all like humantriumph and all this stuff.
So there's a lot of reasons whywe watch this stuff, but also,
for me, the ferrari stuff.
I used to say there's a millionwebsites to show you what a,
what a color, what theirfavorite color, ferrari is, but
(14:53):
there's nobody that shows youthe hammer marks on the bottom
side of the fenders.
That was done by a craftsman 50, 60 years ago and those marks
are still there.
It's kind of like what you'resaying with Notre Dame.
It's like when they recreatethose beams, those hand-hewn
marks in the beams.
Although destroyed, thatcraftsmanship still exists as an
(15:17):
artifact of that person's work.
He may be gone and forgotten,but his mark on the world is
still there and it's your dutyto preserve that.
And so for me, I'm not soundinghokey about all this stuff, but
I wanted to celebrate thosehammer marks because it's like
this guy's gone, but he in this.
You know, in Maranello or inModena was in there with a
(15:40):
little hammer panels off and youcould look underneath it and
those little hammer marks arestill there.
Pretty cool and modern carswhen they just stamp another one
(16:00):
and boom, it's another one.
Stamp another one, boom.
It really doesn't have thatallure to just this hand-hewn
piece.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So well stated.
Yeah, so well stated.
I know Doug wants to hop inhere, but interestingly, we
really take for granted that themodern contrivances all around
us are all made by massproduction.
Right, assembly montgomery tookmy kids completely amazing
(16:31):
place and you know, there thereis an assembly moving very
slowly and people are kind ofcrawling in there and no
assembling this and assemblingthat and you just watch as this
whole thing kind of kind of noart to it.
It's completely a business,it's complete.
But that's how, uh, in this dayand age, we get these amazing
machines brought to us for forsome sort of reasonable price.
(16:51):
Let's bring Doug in.
Doug, you wanted to getinvolved here.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Just to think about the hammer marks and whatnot,
and I'll tie it into my DeLoreanbecause that's what I have to
tie it into.
So in the DeLorean world wehave what we call cave art, and
(17:20):
so that's where whoever wasworking on the car that
particular day, behind a panelon the inside of a panel, on the
inside of the stainless steeldoor, they might have signed
their name on it with the date.
And my car has some of those Iwas nice enough to let my kids
go ahead and take, not on thepanel itself, but just on the
inside of the interior part, andwe all signed our names on
there and put the date on it.
So some future owner will get tosee it.
But it's so neat and someowners have found even original
(17:41):
tools from the factories in thefactory in Ireland.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So I mean that nostalgia it kind of never goes
away and I know, in the historyof DeLorean is really neat
because when you think about howmuch excitement there was, I
remember when, when, when johndelorean was going to create
that car and they had createdthe factory in ireland and all
that it was going to bring, allthat, all that work, you know,
and jobs and everything and andthere was so much excitement.
(18:07):
Unfortunately it went the waythat it went but at the same
time the history is so rich ofthat when you think about seeing
hand sign, because that handsigning of pieces from people
who worked at the factory waspart of that wave of excitement
and new beginnings of a factoryto build this wonderful car that
they put together.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, and it was a social experiment, right,
protestants and Catholicsworking together during the
troubles.
They had separate entrances butinside they worked together
side by side.
It would have been great if itworked out.
But I know after we spoke toKat DeLorean, john's daughter,
and he loved the Irish peopleand what a great experiment that
(18:49):
was.
And it lives on to this day,just like your 1963 Ferrari 330
America.
No, I think all cars have that.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
They all have that great history.
I mean, I think that every oneof them, you know, talk about
the culture.
We talked about it earlier.
It's each car represents theculture.
It represents art.
It represents, you know, thetimes.
It's not.
You know, some people look atus car guys and they're just
like, oh, what's the big dealabout times?
It's not.
You know, some people look atus car guys and they're just
like, oh, what's the big dealabout cars?
It's just, you know, peoplelook at them as appliances or
they just get them to work.
(19:18):
It's like no, it's a lot morethan that.
There's art, there's history,there's manufacturing, there's
engineering, there's design.
There's so much to it and it'sall wrapped up in one thing.
You know it's, it's a, it's ait, it and you can drive to the
store in it.
You know, but at the same time.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's very usable, yeah, or you could just stare at
it Right, right and walk aroundit and find something new.
And you know I want, I wantedto ask you as a vintage restorer
how do you and I saw this postthe other day from you on a, I
want to say it was Facebook Ithink you were looking for a
glass cover for a light, sure,sure.
(19:57):
And somebody said why don't youjust 3D print it?
And I think your response wasno, that won't work for this.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
No, how do you balance?
I think that there's certainthings you can do in 3D printing
, but I also think that 3Dprinting is not the end all.
You know, people have this ideathat you know, you just scan it,
print it, hit.
You know, hit, return and itspits them out.
Um, that's that.
It's not really that.
It still needs a lot more.
You know finesse to dosomething like that, but for me
(20:23):
it's like um, I took I don't Idon't know if I put the video,
because you know I do so muchdifferent media for different
things but one and I may and itmay not have been out there yet,
but when I took the glass pieceapart and you take a little
screwdriver and you just goclink, clink, clink, you know
it's glass.
Yes, yep, I heard that you madeit in print, you know it doesn't
(20:45):
have that sound and like, ifyou know what you're looking at,
it's like, wow, you getdisappointed.
You know it's like it's likeseeing somebody with a fake
Rolex.
It's like, oh, nice watch.
And you look at it and thewatch ticks.
Oh, it's like disappointmentbecause it's a fake.
You know it's like.
It's like you want real, youwant you.
There are certain things thatyou can just be assured that
(21:06):
it's real and it's the littletells that, if you know, if
you're around this stuff longenough, like I know, watch guys
can tell a watch from across theroom.
And why would I want to fool?
those guys you know, or like aguy who could look at a car from
, I mean, like my friends whoare into ferraris.
We stand at a show field fromliterally across the fields, oh
my god, and we all know exactlywhat we're looking at, you know
(21:29):
that's wrong sore thumb so.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So how do you, how do you balance, um, you know,
speaking of these uh, old parts,and you know things from the
factory that maybe weren't quitedone right?
I mean, my car has a thousandexamples of that.
Sure, um, when you're doing arestoration, right, do you try
and make it as good as new alittle bit better?
(21:51):
I think it's probably varyingdegrees.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's coming back.
I mean, I used to blame, youknow, and I hope he doesn't get
mad at me but I used to blameRalph Lauren, because Ralph
Lauren was, you know, everygeneration has, like the new guy
that makes so much money, he'swilling to overpay.
You know, we had John Shirley.
We had, you know, like whenMicrosoft, you know, made them
(22:33):
when, when, when, when, you know, never going to pay that kind
of money for that car, but hewas the guy who overpaid like 10
years prior to that, you know.
So each generation kind of getsto these guys and and so what
happened with with, uh, withRalph Lauren was when he got a
car, he just said I want it tobe done to my level of standard.
So he had them restored to thepoint where his car showed up at
a car show and it just knockedeverybody's socks off.
(22:53):
I mean, the paint was flawless,the chrome was flawless,
everything was like perfect,because that's the standard that
he had.
Then what happened was the showfield says, oh Jesus, if I'm
supposed to compete with that,my car needs to be at least as
good as Ralph Lauren's.
And it kind of set through the80s that they were
over-restoring andover-restoring and that they
were over-restoring andover-restoring and it was just
this arms race ofover-restoration until at some
(23:14):
point people just kind ofstarted to appreciate original
cars and we sort of say, well,that's not how they originally
looked like.
And so it's kind of come aroundto the point where there's
certain people who are startingto adopt for over-restoration.
But I don't think it's wavedaround as a threat for restorers
to remember that let's notover-restore these cars.
(23:36):
So we're constantly changingthe goalposts or the bar to
figure out what is a good car.
But we are trying our best tocome back to terms and say they
don't have to be perfect.
Perfect, you know, because theyweren't perfect when they came.
Perfect perfect, you know,cause they weren't perfect when
they when they came.
You know.
(23:59):
The other problem that we haveis that, um, these cars are not.
You know when, when the Ferrariwas new, any of these cars were
new, there were $10,000 cars, alot of money back in the
sixties.
But now that same car is wortha quarter million and a half
million dollars.
Well, you know, people have acertain like, they have a
certain idea of what a half amillion dollar car should look
like, and so you can't paint itlike with crappy paint and you
know, or just try to make likeorange peel and say that's the
(24:20):
way it was.
It's like oh, it's still got tolook kind of like.
So there is a certain level inwhich people want to make it
look good, so it's constantly.
I don't know if I can answerthat question specifically.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a balance, right, and it's a
varying balance.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Sure, yeah, that's a good point.
Now Doug wants to hop us in histime machine and bring you back
to the beginning, tom, butbefore we go there, I love this
line of thinking right heretalking about the restoration
process and what attention todetail.
We talked about this a littlebit before, but on on your
(24:56):
website you go into these.
You have these little vignettes, these little stories, your
writings and pictures aroundwhat you look for in the process
and how you look at the supplychain and source parts and
products that you need for yourcar.
And and I would urge listenersto go and check out um, where
you talk about the interior of acar, which is really something
(25:17):
you know you don't think a wholelot about.
But once you get into the car,you think about the leather, you
think about the carpet, youthink about the dashboard and
all of these surfaces around youand what it takes, the hides of
a cow and the quality and doesthe grain mesh, because it takes
a whole lot to do the, theinterior of a car.
(25:37):
And and there are trade-offsbetween all right, are we going
to treat this letter leather,not treat this letter?
If we treat, it will lastlonger for an application like a
car.
But will it, you know, will ittake the stain the same way
between hides?
So I don't know.
Just a thought when you go downthe rabbit hole and think about
(25:59):
that.
I guess it goes back to whatDoug was saying.
It's a tradeoff.
When do you know, when you talkto suppliers, if you've got the
right one or you just keepmoving?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I mean, we are constantly looking at good
suppliers.
There are people who study thisstuff, thankfully.
It's like we have specialists,you know.
It's like I look at the guyswho are really good at leather.
They live, drink, sleep, eatleather, you know, and those are
the guys that you want to haveconversations with.
You know.
It's like the painter.
There are guys who are reallygood painters.
That that's all they do.
(26:27):
They just look at paint, youknow, and and and.
That's who you try to surroundyourself with and have
conversations with.
Where you're not, you're notsounding too demanding when you
say I got to get the leather tohave this feel, or it's got to
have this grain pattern, or it'sgot to have this thing, and
they say, yeah, absolutely, I'llshow you what I have.
You know and, and and it's thatvernacular that I did my
(26:56):
interior.
It was told to me that interiorwas $15,000.
I was like $15,000 for aninterior.
What do they do?
They stuff the seats with gold.
I mean, what is going?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
on here.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
So I spent some time with my upholsterer and when he
showed me all the handwork andall the patterns and laying them
out, you weren't just going to,you know, to whatever Scott
Drager, buying like an interiorfor a Mustang and just slapping
it on there and stretching itonto the seats.
You were literally taking thethreads and picking out all the
threads and taking each panel ofleather out and then laying
(27:33):
them on a cow hide and on aleather cow, I mean on a cow.
You get on that car with afour-seater.
It's five to six hides, five tosix cows.
And the reason is because a cow, when you think about the
smooth leather, the back is thesmoothest.
The belly of the cow tends tobe a little bit more puffy
because it's fat and there's fatunderneath the skin.
(27:54):
So it makes the skin.
Now these days they're, they'reprinting leather on it, but but
there's still a certain amountof leather that has a shape of
the cow.
So the smoothest part is thebackside of the cow.
They're right along the back.
So you want to take that pieceand put it on the stuff that you
really see, like the centerconsole or the, or the, or the
dash pieces or the big rearpanel and then the rest of it
(28:17):
you don't throw away but you puton the side pieces you don't
see as much.
So you have to selectively laythese patterns that you've taken
apart of the old one and cutthem out.
And then you have to look forscars because you know there's
barbed wire.
This is a natural product.
So you'd get a scar and you'dhave to mark the scar to make
sure that when you laid youryour seat cushion, the scar
(28:38):
wasn't in the middle of the seatcushion.
So you have to juggle thingsaround.
All that takes time and and sothen you certainly understand
okay, I get it, because it'slike that's what you're paying
for now.
If an upholsterer chose, ohwell, if that guy's charging
fifteen thousand dollars,then15,000.
No, that's not how it works.
Are you actually going to giveme the quality that we put into
a $15,000 interior?
(29:00):
These days it's not $30,000.
But it's what I was so excitedto share on my website, because
we used to have this thing inNew York.
There was this company, a suitmanufacturer or a sales.
They said they had this modelwhere it was like an educated
consumer is our best customer,and I used to say that that's
(29:22):
what I wanted to show.
Ferrari people was like educatethem to what you're paying for.
You're not just paying Ferraritax because it's Ferrari tax.
You're paying for this becauseof the quality that you're
paying for, and that's what Iwanted to show.
I wanted to show thecraftsmanship and that's what
you're paying for.
You're not just paying itbecause it has a Ferrari logo on
it.
(29:42):
You're paying for it becausethere's six hides that were cut
out and laid and hand sewn andput in this thing piece by piece
.
That's why it costs that muchmoney.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's so good.
Thank you for that.
When it comes to restoringhistory, the details matter.
The details matter.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
And celebrating those people who did it.
I think that we're doing thesame thing.
The guy who did those interiorsyou're just doing, you're
trying to keep up with his levelof craftsmanship.
You study how he did it andthen, okay, I see what he did.
He cut this back and I have todo the same thing, so you're
just doing the same following.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Reverse engineering.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Good point, good point, all right.
So Doug wants to get in the wayback machine and let's talk
about your first car, tom.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Okay, first car.
Officially, I have a twinsister, so we had to share a car
.
Okay, so I don't know if Ishould count that because that
was just an Aspen station wagonAlthough you know nothing wrong
with a Dodge Aspen station wagon, they'll slant six.
But my first, like my own car,was a 66 Mustang Coupe.
And so I was in high school andI bought my brother-in-law had
(30:47):
an old 66 Coupe and it was aplain Jane Mustang Coupe coupe.
It was an automatic, um, no airconditioning, no peristerion,
just a regular.
But it was a v8 and uh, and Idrove that all through high
school and uh and and basicallyI think I I didn't really hang
out with him, I just was agearhead.
I would spend all my timefixing the mustang, you know.
So I spent my whole high schoolcareer.
(31:08):
Instead of hanging out at the7-eleven, I'd be at my buddy's
shop like taking stuff out orfixing stuff or all that other
stuff.
So I cut my teeth on my 66Mustang.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Okay, okay, going way back, and your parents were
good with that.
They had no fear about lettingyour son in an E8 Mustang.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, kind of my parents coming from a Chinese
family.
It's like they wanted me to goand become a doctor or something
and I was always just messingaround with cars.
And I think I tell everybodythat I'm the black sheep of my
family.
I have four sisters and they'reall older than I am, including
my twin, and I'm the only onewith just an undergraduate
(31:48):
degree.
They all are doctors, lawyers,judges're literally like
overachieving chinese family.
And I'm the youngest and I'veonly have an undergraduate
degree.
And on top of that it's an artschool, it's a, it's a bachelor
of fine arts, so like if youwanted to support your parents,
like that, that was what I did.
And the joke about it, when Ijoke about it with my sisters,
(32:08):
is like, yeah, but I'm probablythe only one in the family
that's having more fun thananybody else.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So I don't know at all.
100%, yeah For sure, but Imanaged to succeed.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, I mean, the main thing about it was, I think
I took that work ethic and says, well, I'm not.
I'm going to prove them wrongand show them that I can succeed
at a degree, doing what I loveto do, as opposed to the path
that they would choose for you.
All right, yeah, yeah, so if Ihave to fix the floor pans on a
(33:02):
fastback or a coupe, it's goingto cost the same amount of money
, but the fastback is alwaysgoing to be worth more money.
So I need to, as much as itkilled me to sell the coupe to
buy the fastback.
I knew that the smart thing wasto put the money in a car
because, you know, repairing itis the same.
I mean, mechanically they werethe same car.
But I knew that a four-speedfastback was going to be worth
(33:23):
more money, even if it cost thesame amount of money to fix it.
So I ended up selling the coupeand and kept that and I still
have that fastback today.
Yeah, um, and and, uh, and andit's and it's proven wrong.
I mean I, I mean proving meright.
I I haven't put much money init, but I built the engine and
today it's like money in thebank, yep.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yep, and good memories too, of course, sure,
in the way back.
So I did want to ask you.
So I think your daily driver isa 03 996 Porsche.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
So it's one that I use more often.
It's my daily, believe it ornot, because people ask me well,
what does a Ferrari mechanicdrive?
And I drive an Acura.
I would say you need a carthat's reliable and doesn't need
any work ever.
You know, so I've always been abig Honda and Toyota fan of
(34:16):
daily drivers and you know, nooffense to anybody out there,
but I would say like if they, ifthey poo poo the fact that I
drive a Honda or Toyota, it'slike, well, my other car is
Ferrari, so I don't really notreally worried out of pressing
anybody.
But the thing is I dodefinitely feel like, you know,
it's being in a way, I'm showingto my customers that I'm
pragmatic.
You know, I don't need to youshow off with it with an
(34:37):
expensive car and, uh, you know,and charge it, charge you
higher rates because I need tokeep the uh car payment up on my
s-class, you know.
So, uh, but, uh, yeah, but myother car is a 996.
I've always been a porsche guy,I mean I went.
So I guess we wanted to talkquickly about my, my automotive
career or or journey.
It went mustangs, so I learnedamerican pony cars and then from
(34:59):
there, after the Mustang, theFastback, I bought a Sunbeam
Alpine, which is a littleBritish roadster and I kind of
felt like it's my journeybecause I really was always like
British cars.
I thought they were cool but Iwanted to learn about them.
So I found this great littleSunbeam and I remember seeing
one on school campus when I wasin college.
So when this one came up forsale I was like, oh, I'll go buy
(35:20):
that.
So I ended up buying theSunbeam.
And then after the Sunbeam,I've always been into Porsches.
So at one point one of mysisters my overachieving sister,
is a physician.
So she had bought a new 911 andshowed up all the other kids in
the family.
So we're all like, well, one ofthese days I'm going to get a
Porsche, I'm going to get a 911.
So another sister got one.
So they had two Porsches of thefamily and then, and then I
(35:45):
ended up buying one.
But I bought one, of course, asthe mechanic of the family.
I bought like a uh, uh, and atthe time they weren't worth a
lot of money.
I bought a 72 911 that neededsome work but I paid $2,200 for
it because that's what they wereworth back then in the 90s, and
who knew that they would gocrazy in price?
But I drove a 911 and trackedit and fixed it and got
(36:08):
introduced to 911s.
And so the story with the 911is I sold it for Ferrari parts,
Because at the time I was in themiddle of a story that Ferrari
and Ferrari parts are expensive.
So I ended up cutting loose the,the, uh, the nine 11, and
regretted it ever since.
So about five years ago, um, Iwas looking at cars and I and I
(36:32):
as much as I didn't admit that I, I, would drive a water cooled
car, I was really impressed withthe nine, nine, six and um.
So I bought it and and I'vebeen just loving it ever since.
I mean it's, it's, the it's.
I mean I mean I wish I stillcould afford to have a 72 911,
but the 996 drives.
I mean, if I'd done the stupidthings I did in the in the 996
(36:54):
in my 72, I would have been inthe trees you know the 996 is so
much better stuck to the groundthan the 72.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Agreed yeah, and so you just reminded me of a story
and I think you'll appreciatethis about kids and school and
achieving.
So I was at a holiday partyover the weekend and I had heard
this story.
But I finally had a chance toask the son.
So the father had a 1992 964Porsche and he had told his son
(37:26):
maybe his son begged him, Idon't know.
He said if you get into collegeand get a full scholarship,
this car is yours.
And the son did it.
The son got the car, didn'tkeep it too long, ended up
selling it.
He's like man.
I just keep kicking myselfbecause it would be worth like
five times as much as what Isold it for.
That's right and his dad's.
(37:48):
Like he had to learn he had tolearn so it was a good lesson
for him yeah, who knew?
Speaker 3 (37:53):
you know it's like, it's like I, I uh, I kicked
myself for selling the 72, butat the same time I still kept
the Ferrari, so I think I didokay.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, yeah, and it's been about.
It took you about eight yearsto restore it.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, yeah, no, I bought and the thing is On and
off.
Yeah, I always tell people I wasan idiot when I bought my car,
because I was probably the onlyidiot that would be willing to
pay that kind of money.
Because you know, at the time,ten thousand dollars more would
have bought you a running anddriving car.
But I didn't have 10 grand more, so I had to buy what I could
(38:29):
afford and and spent.
You know, what I thought wasonly going to take a year to put
it together ended up taking meeight years to put it together
and a lot of time and money.
But at the same time, you knowit's only now in a relationship
that you look like you're agenius, because the prices of
these cars just kind of keptgoing higher and higher and
higher.
But I didn't buy it expectingit to go up in value.
(38:51):
It's just that's what they cost, that's what I had to buy them
for and that's what I did, right.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
And it made your career right.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I think, to quote you , it changed your life right,
yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that'sthe part who would have thought.
I mean it's like you buy a carand, as hokey as that sounds, it
literally changed my life andI've had offers.
I mean, now the market has goneup and it has calmed down a
little bit, it's gotten a littlesofter.
But I remember having dinnerwith my, my, my wife and
(39:18):
daughter and I'd come home and,okay, guys, I just got offered
150 000 for the car, you know,and my wife, oh, we don't need
to sell it, it's okay.
And then, like about a year ortwo later, I was like, okay,
guys, I just got 250 000 off andon the car, and my daughter at
that time was probably eight ornine inches like oh, you can't
sell the car.
(39:39):
I wanted that car, I love thatcar and I was like Ellie.
One day, when you're old enough, you're going to understand
what a quarter million dollarsactually is.
You know it's just like.
It's just funny when you knowthose kind of numbers start
coming up and you never expectedit to do that.
So as the market starts tosoften and the car value, you
(39:59):
start losing value on those cars.
You know it just can happen.
I don't regret it because itnever was about the value A car.
People get so upset when carvalues go down and I look at
them and I ask them you know thecar that you loved in your
garage didn't all of a suddenbecome 20% less enjoyable.
(40:19):
I, it's still the same car,it's just the market that has
changed.
I don't understand why you'reso upset about it.
You know it's still a good car.
So, uh, it's because people arefocused on value as opposed to
just what brings them joy yeah,yeah, yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
So, as we guide the podcast gently towards the off
ramp here, tom, two lastquestions for you.
Why are the Italians so good atdesign?
What is it about their innate?
I think you said genetics,which made me laugh, but I think
you made me right.
What is it?
Speaker 3 (40:53):
about them.
The renaissance, I mean, like,look at the renaissance, I mean
since the dark ages, since sincewe've created a society where
we no longer had to be farmersand we had time to make things
beautiful.
I mean it started in italy.
I mean just that it I don'tknow what it is, is the water,
is that?
The people is whatever, but itjust they.
They have this innate sense ofdesign.
(41:14):
You know you go to italy, theydress nicer.
You know they don't do anythingwithout like, without thought
to aesthetics.
You know I used to say that andI love german cars.
But if a german car is pretty,that was by accident.
You know, I mean like in thesense of like, when you look at
a gearbox and the way they putit together, like if it's pretty
because of the ribbing, it wasjust not, it was by, it was
(41:38):
because they deal with it first.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Because the form follows function.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
But the Italians will just sit there and says no, no,
no, we can't, we can't, we gotto add this.
And you look at the way theyput the casting.
And they do that not because Imean they have.
They have European engineering,but they still have this innate
design sense and I think itcomes from just it's.
It's in their, it's in theirsouls.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Oh, great answer.
Great answer Last question Okay, so the way you learned from
Francois Sicard, who are yougoing to teach, have you?
Ever given any thought.
I know there's going to be someyoung buck.
Yeah, oh boy Doug's on his wayto your house with a push broom
now looking to volunteer foreight hours.
(42:20):
For for one question?
Uh, for for one hour ofinstruction.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
But it has been.
It has been a question that hasbeen asked and discussed among
my friends, among among peoplewho who have foundations that
support this kind of stuff, whowant to do it.
I mean, it really has been thisdiscussion and it's been on my
mind.
Personally, it's tough becauseI'm a one man show, so I do all
this stuff by myself.
Francois basically did too, andI and he was very generous to
(42:47):
give me the time and I shouldgive back to do the same, and I
and I have been doing it with,with, uh, a couple of people
here and there.
Um, but the issue is, you know,if you have to find the right
person, because you know a lotof I get, I get, I do get emails
from people that says I want todo what you do, I would love to
do what you do, and I was like,well, what is it that you think
(43:07):
that I do?
Because what you see on YouTubeand what you see in social media
is me going to car shows anddriving these Ferraris, these
million dollar Ferraris, andhaving, you know, wine and
cheese and these places.
You know.
What you don't see is when I'mlaying under a car and I'm
getting dirty and my hands arepermanently stained from oil and
(43:29):
grease.
But I mean not that I hate that, I love it, but it's not what
it's.
What do people want to do?
And to find the person thatloves it to their soul, it takes
some time and the investment ofthat time especially when I
only have one person that caninvest that time it's a struggle
.
So I don't know, maybe theright person will come along.
(43:53):
Maybe, I was the right person tocome along for Francois and it
just happened.
But it took us 25 years tofigure that I was the right
person.
So I don't know.
I I I would like to try, but Ialso think that the reality of
what we do um might not be forall those people who think that
(44:13):
they want to do it.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yeah yeah, people like the trophy.
They don't like the sweat.
You can't really have onewithout the other.
But great answer, great answer.
Well, tom, thank you so muchfor spending some time with us.
I would encourage everyone outin listener land to check out
TomYoungnet T-O-M-Y-A-N-Gnet somuch fun.
(44:35):
You will fall down the rabbithole.
Tom's a great writer and youknow what I want to do.
You have any t-shirts left, tom?
Speaker 3 (44:42):
I do, I do.
I'll definitely have to sendyou guys some Thank you for
Definitely I think you say $16plus a couple bucks for shipping
.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
I think sure the prices have gone up.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
but yeah, I haven't really been pushing them that
much, In fact, because everybodynow has all these like setups
where you could just hit abutton and do it.
I'm still packing them myselfand sending them, so I haven't
really been doing better, itwould make sense.
Yeah, the vintage guy does itthe vintage way, are we?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
surprised.
We're not surprised, that'sright.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Well, thank you guys for so much for inviting me.
This has been a lot of fun.
Great to talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Thank you, this was fantastic and listener land.
You had just heard the highrevving, low mileage, late model
heard around the worldAuthoritative podcast on
automotive nostalgia.
He's Doug.
Reach him at Doug atCarsLovecom.
I'm Christian.
Reach me at Christian atCarsLovecom.
Leave a review if you like theshow.
He was Tom.
(45:36):
You know where to get himTomYoungnet.
Please follow.
Tell a friend, check out ourlink tree L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E
slash Cars Loved.
I'm sure we'll see you at thenext local car show, showroom,
race trip or concourse.
Thank you for listening.
Keep the rubber side down andwe will see you in a week.
Take care.
You have found to all the cars I've loved before,
your authoritative podcast onautomotive nostalgia, where
every car tells a story, everymachine has a soul, every car
has a culture.
It's time to plug in, dust off,get a little grease on the
hands and memories in the mind.
Welcome to new listeners.
Oslo, norway, salt Lake City,utah, north Liberty, iowa,
(00:28):
ashburn, virginia, close to DougOkay, I love saying this one
Etobicoke, ontario, I think.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Does that sound good?
Does that sound right?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
You got it perfect.
Etobicoke Nailed it the firsttime.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Where else Dallas, texas, easy one.
Where else dallas, texas, easyone to say, reykjavik, iceland,
that's in there.
Reykjavik, reykjavik, reykjavik, miami, florida, and allentown,
pennsylvania, allentown greatsong by billy joel.
I am christian, he is doug.
Good evening, partner.
How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
great doing christian at carslovecom, that's right,
christian at carslovecom.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
He's doug at carslovecom.
That's right, christian atcarslovecom.
He's Doug at carslovecom, andwe have a really special guest
today.
Can't wait to introduce him.
Today's theme restoring history.
Why are details important whenrestoring history, when
restoring a vintage car, avintage Ferrari or a vintage
(01:21):
church built about 800 years ago?
We'll get into that in just amoment, so get into calls to
action here real quick.
We continue to see trafficmovement on our link tree,
linktree, far as love.
That's where you can get to allour online presences.
(01:43):
So Facebook, instagram, youtube.
Where else, partner?
Where else are we Our?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
website, our blog, our form to submit yourself or a
friend to be a guest on theshow.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Absolutely.
We also started a newsletter,of which I first I wrote the
first edition and it's sittingsitting in my editor-in-chief's
inbox, right, editor-in-chief,it's still there.
It hasn't been forgotten, it'sjust been ignored, beautiful.
So what else is going on withour outreach efforts here?
Anything new going on?
I know that YouTube still.
We still get in traffic there,yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
YouTube.
We've been having fun with theyoutube shorts.
Um, we did put out an entireyoutube episode with, uh, speedy
cop aka jeff block, a greatfriend of the show, amazing guy.
We'll have the full audioepisode out in a few weeks, I
think by the time people listento this and, let's see, been
(02:46):
updating the blog.
And on that note, christian,I've shared in the past that
cars that are important to me,of which I own now I have a 1990
Nissan 300ZX Z32.
It was not the car I had inhigh school, but it was the car
I wanted.
A close friend of mine, who'sno longer with us, had one.
(03:11):
He really got me into cars, sothat car is special to me.
It's about five differentcolors, because it got hit a
bunch of times so it needs to bepainted.
And then, of course, the 1981DeLorean, which I can't say
enough great things about it.
I've made great friends, I'vetaken it to events, made people
smile, people laugh and pointand smile when I'm going down
(03:33):
the road, and I've done so manythings with it.
I've taken the interior out.
I just replaced the fuelinjectors pretty much myself, on
a very antiquated mechanicalfuel injection system by Bosch
and the car is running betternow.
So everything I fixed, nothinghas broken permanently.
(03:53):
It's all fixable and it's thegift that keeps giving.
So what about yourself,christian?
Tell us, oh, yeah, well, yeah,we were just chatting about how
I uh banged up my vintagepontiac.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Little little, little painful one talk about this
2007 green a lot of fun, a lotof fun um, we've been uh
interviewing a lot of peopleabout uh air-cooled vws, vintage
vws, and I'm thinking a lotabout it wasn't air-cooled, but
but my VW Rabbit GTI 1984 fromthe 80s.
(04:28):
It was not.
That car was so much fun.
So much fun in there Highschool and into college, just
piling great people into itgoing to have fun.
Very sporty car and yeah, Ithink I need to.
I'm looking at the the new onesonline.
I just don't think there aremany, many old ones there to be
had.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
But they're out there .
They're out there.
They want me to look for you uh, yeah, please do.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
And if you get sick of the 300zx in your uh garage
dog, just box it up and send itdown we'll take it.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
We'll park it right next to the boat that I gave you
.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's right, it's on the list too.
It's on the list too.
All right, moving on.
Okay, we have a great guesthere today, but before we
introduce him, a little prologue, a little preamble.
There's a through line.
Bear with me for just a moment.
Today's theme restoring history.
Why do historical detailsmatter?
Well, about a week ago, I waswatching a documentary about the
(05:27):
Cathedral of Notre Dame Burneddown 2019.
Just reopened it and I sat downto watch this and I thought you
know, they're going to bringeverything up to code Steel
trusses, titanium struts, thisand that when they're rebuilding
the church, especially thespire that fell, all that had to
(05:50):
be fixed.
It's not the case.
That's not what happened at all.
They found these Parisianartisans and sent them all out
in France and said you got tofind a certain kind of oak,
certain kind of height, certainkind of diameter.
You're going to bring it tothese sawmills, and all these
sawmills around France, pitchedin free, started milling the oak
down, sending it back to Paris.
So it was not the latesttechnology, it was the original
(06:15):
technology.
Church was built 800 years agoand still use these old
techniques to fix it, these oldtechniques to fix it.
And so there's a through linein preparing For today's show.
Our guest is Tom Young, whorestores vintage Ferraris.
Same thing, okay, and we'regoing to get into that.
(06:35):
But, tom, good evening, goodafternoon, how are you Welcome
to?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
the show.
Hi, thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
What did you have?
You know anything about NotreDame, or did you?
Speaker 3 (06:45):
do you remember it burning?
Yes, actually I was in Parisbefore the fire.
So when we heard about the fireit was just so upsetting
because it was just I think itwas only about six months prior
to that that we were there Wow.
But again, you know, justheartbreaking.
When the whole world saw thevideo of that collapse, it just
(07:07):
seemed like it was beyond repair.
I mean, it was just acatastrophic failure and fire.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
That's right.
That's right.
And it was kind of theheartbeat of the city and what
their people that are religious,not religious people from
outside of the country, outsideof the city Money just poured in
.
It didn't matter what stripeyou were.
It was that important to thecity, rebuilding it and getting
the historical details right.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And in New York we have a cathedral that's been
still being put together.
So it's just as the artisansare learning how to do these
Gothic cathededrals.
It's like, when you think aboutthat, notre Dame has been
around for so long and then ithas to be rebuilt again, and I
totally agree that you'd thinkthat they would do with modern
(07:56):
materials.
But no, absolutely.
You have to preserve theoriginal.
I mean for it to survive somany hundreds of years.
You know, there's nothing wrongwith the way it was originally
built you know Well put, sothat's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Is that St John the Divine, by the way, that you're
referring to?
Yeah, exactly, and because ofthe price of it, it may never be
finished you know because ittakes so long.
But, Tom, please tell us alittle bit about what you do and
how you fell into it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So I guess I'm a mechanic.
I'm a mechanic on vintageFerraris and I usually, when I
first meet people, I tell peopleI work on pre-'72 Ferraris,
anything built before pre-'72.
And people say, well, what'sthe cutoff at 72?
And I usually say it'scarbureted.
I like working on carburetedferraris.
(08:45):
Um, so pre-72 most of them werev12, um uh engines and uh, they
were kind of classified asvintage ferrari.
Although vintage keeps moving,the goalposts keep moving.
Now you know, a testarossabuilt in the 80s is considered
vintage um, yes, it is, and andall those things.
So so I guess, uh, at some pointdo we start calling them
classic Ferraris.
But so that's kind of what I do.
(09:07):
I started I guess a lot of usstarted because we just fell in
love with the car.
I was always a car guy, so eversince I was a teenager I've had
cars.
But when I saw a Ferrari forthe first time I just said, okay
, what I think is cool about allthese other cars that I have
(09:27):
and own and all I don't knowanything that's going on with
vintage Ferrari and I've got tolearn everything about it.
Because just the beautifulshape the first one that I saw
in person was a 250 short oilbase, which is kind of a high
watermark to kind of surpass,and I just couldn't believe how
beautiful it was.
It was so low and the shape.
(09:48):
And then once they fired up theengine, it was like I never
heard a 12-cylinder Ferrari.
I mean, just running like thatjust sounded so like just
menacing and beautiful.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
What did it sound like?
Oh, that did you say menacingand beautiful.
It's like.
Yeah, I mean like when you getthis.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Ferrariacing.
It's like, yeah, I mean like,when you get this ferrari, it's
like it's a.
You know, a ferrari isbeautiful, it's.
It's like I used to joke aboutit like okay, so let's go back
to the story, right?
So I meet my mentor at his shop.
That's the first introduction.
So my mentor's name is francoissacard.
He is a fairly well-knownferrari restorer in the in the
70s and 80s he worked forCanetti Motors, which is the
(10:26):
story of Ferrari coming toAmerica and establishing a
foothold and dealer in America.
And François worked for Canetti, so he learned all the ways of
putting Ferraris togetherApprentice at the factory in the
60s, came to america and andstarted his career at ferrari.
So by the time I met him in thein the late 90s, um, he, he was
(10:50):
, he was fairly well known andand, um, I was introduced to him
at a shop and he had this shortwheelbase and I remember it was
under a cover like a, a, like agaussian cover, and as he
pulled the off, it almost feltlike you were lifting a skirt,
because it was like the, the,the, the fender, is, is, is
basically this, this, thisbeautiful feminine shape, and
(11:13):
and I almost made the epiphanywhere it's like, oh they sneaky
Italians.
They just they're just formingthese, these Rubin esque shapes
of of Shapes of sculpture.
But then you take that andyou're kind of like, ok, so
that's why all these dudes likethese cars.
And then all of a sudden you goand fire it up and it's got this
like mechanical anger and furyand just like I'm ready to go,
(11:35):
and you just basically meld this, this, this attraction, like
look at these guys who ridechoppers and they have this big
tank in front of them andthey're like, think of all that,
like subconscious stuff thatthey're doing, right, so it's
the same thing.
It's like and you put all thepower to it and the noise and
the vibration, so that's.
That's kind of like my wow,this is, this is really cool.
And and so, um, I, I just Imade that decision.
(11:58):
I said I don't know how I'mgonna get, how I'm gonna get one
, but I, I to get one of thesethings.
And you made it and I made it.
I found one and just kind oflooking back and I guess if it
hadn't been that meeting, thatchance meeting, I may have gone
another direction.
But it was pretty, pretty wildhow my whole life changed course
because of that one epiphany.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right and required reading for this journey is
Tom's website, tomyoungnetT-O-M-Y-A-N-Gnet.
So he's got so much informationstarted about what 20, 25 years
ago is a collection for Tom'swritings, podcasting, interview
(12:42):
pictures, stories, his lifejourneys is.
Is he so?
When he got his car, it reallychanged his life?
And can you talk a little bitabout how continuing to put
everything in one place becamethis sort of clearing house for
great information?
But the first part.
Second part is do you stillupdate it to?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
this day.
Sure, sure, I still do it.
I think you know I startedblogging before they were called
blogs.
So in 1999, my nephew was acomputer science major in
college and I had him write thisscript so that I could actually
how do I do this?
So I could get pictures and putit in there and I could just
fill the type in.
And he created this littlescript and we created this
(13:26):
script before there was bloggingsoftware.
So in 1999, that really didn'texist.
But I didn't start it to thinkof what a blog was or anything.
It was just this thing calledthe World Wide Web that had
picked your place.
You could put pictures andstories, and I was learning so
much from this mentor, I waslearning so much from Francois,
and he was so generous to shareall this information and I was
(13:49):
just blown over by the coolness.
You know, digital photographywas also getting affordable and
accessible to all of us withdigital cameras, so I just
(14:11):
wanted a place to put it, evenif it was just for my own
collection of photography andand and talking about how cool
it was.
But then other people I foundthat people all over the world
were interested in the samething and I I would find things
like especially with Ferrari,because all cars are fun and
watch the journey, because Iwatch YouTube channels.
I have a YouTube channel.
(14:32):
I look at other people'sjourney and how they start and
how they fix it and they succeed.
There's some real journey ofsuccess stories of people doing
that and it's all like humantriumph and all this stuff.
So there's a lot of reasons whywe watch this stuff, but also,
for me, the ferrari stuff.
I used to say there's a millionwebsites to show you what a,
what a color, what theirfavorite color, ferrari is, but
(14:53):
there's nobody that shows youthe hammer marks on the bottom
side of the fenders.
That was done by a craftsman 50, 60 years ago and those marks
are still there.
It's kind of like what you'resaying with Notre Dame.
It's like when they recreatethose beams, those hand-hewn
marks in the beams.
Although destroyed, thatcraftsmanship still exists as an
(15:17):
artifact of that person's work.
He may be gone and forgotten,but his mark on the world is
still there and it's your dutyto preserve that.
And so for me, I'm not soundinghokey about all this stuff, but
I wanted to celebrate thosehammer marks because it's like
this guy's gone, but he in this.
You know, in Maranello or inModena was in there with a
(15:40):
little hammer panels off and youcould look underneath it and
those little hammer marks arestill there.
Pretty cool and modern carswhen they just stamp another one
(16:00):
and boom, it's another one.
Stamp another one, boom.
It really doesn't have thatallure to just this hand-hewn
piece.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So well stated.
Yeah, so well stated.
I know Doug wants to hop inhere, but interestingly, we
really take for granted that themodern contrivances all around
us are all made by massproduction.
Right, assembly montgomery tookmy kids completely amazing
(16:31):
place and you know, there thereis an assembly moving very
slowly and people are kind ofcrawling in there and no
assembling this and assemblingthat and you just watch as this
whole thing kind of kind of noart to it.
It's completely a business,it's complete.
But that's how, uh, in this dayand age, we get these amazing
machines brought to us for forsome sort of reasonable price.
(16:51):
Let's bring Doug in.
Doug, you wanted to getinvolved here.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Just to think about the hammer marks and whatnot,
and I'll tie it into my DeLoreanbecause that's what I have to
tie it into.
So in the DeLorean world wehave what we call cave art, and
(17:20):
so that's where whoever wasworking on the car that
particular day, behind a panelon the inside of a panel, on the
inside of the stainless steeldoor, they might have signed
their name on it with the date.
And my car has some of those Iwas nice enough to let my kids
go ahead and take, not on thepanel itself, but just on the
inside of the interior part, andwe all signed our names on
there and put the date on it.
So some future owner will get tosee it.
But it's so neat and someowners have found even original
(17:41):
tools from the factories in thefactory in Ireland.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So I mean that nostalgia it kind of never goes
away and I know, in the historyof DeLorean is really neat
because when you think about howmuch excitement there was, I
remember when, when, when johndelorean was going to create
that car and they had createdthe factory in ireland and all
that it was going to bring, allthat, all that work, you know,
and jobs and everything and andthere was so much excitement.
(18:07):
Unfortunately it went the waythat it went but at the same
time the history is so rich ofthat when you think about seeing
hand sign, because that handsigning of pieces from people
who worked at the factory waspart of that wave of excitement
and new beginnings of a factoryto build this wonderful car that
they put together.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, and it was a social experiment, right,
protestants and Catholicsworking together during the
troubles.
They had separate entrances butinside they worked together
side by side.
It would have been great if itworked out.
But I know after we spoke toKat DeLorean, john's daughter,
and he loved the Irish peopleand what a great experiment that
(18:49):
was.
And it lives on to this day,just like your 1963 Ferrari 330
America.
No, I think all cars have that.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
They all have that great history.
I mean, I think that every oneof them, you know, talk about
the culture.
We talked about it earlier.
It's each car represents theculture.
It represents art.
It represents, you know, thetimes.
It's not.
You know, some people look atus car guys and they're just
like, oh, what's the big dealabout times?
It's not.
You know, some people look atus car guys and they're just
like, oh, what's the big dealabout cars?
It's just, you know, peoplelook at them as appliances or
they just get them to work.
(19:18):
It's like no, it's a lot morethan that.
There's art, there's history,there's manufacturing, there's
engineering, there's design.
There's so much to it and it'sall wrapped up in one thing.
You know it's, it's a, it's ait, it and you can drive to the
store in it.
You know, but at the same time.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
It's very usable, yeah, or you could just stare at
it Right, right and walk aroundit and find something new.
And you know I want, I wantedto ask you as a vintage restorer
how do you and I saw this postthe other day from you on a, I
want to say it was Facebook Ithink you were looking for a
glass cover for a light, sure,sure.
(19:57):
And somebody said why don't youjust 3D print it?
And I think your response wasno, that won't work for this.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
No, how do you balance?
I think that there's certainthings you can do in 3D printing
, but I also think that 3Dprinting is not the end all.
You know, people have this ideathat you know, you just scan it,
print it, hit.
You know, hit, return and itspits them out.
Um, that's that.
It's not really that.
It still needs a lot more.
You know finesse to dosomething like that, but for me
(20:23):
it's like um, I took I don't Idon't know if I put the video,
because you know I do so muchdifferent media for different
things but one and I may and itmay not have been out there yet,
but when I took the glass pieceapart and you take a little
screwdriver and you just goclink, clink, clink, you know
it's glass.
Yes, yep, I heard that you madeit in print, you know it doesn't
(20:45):
have that sound and like, ifyou know what you're looking at,
it's like, wow, you getdisappointed.
You know it's like it's likeseeing somebody with a fake
Rolex.
It's like, oh, nice watch.
And you look at it and thewatch ticks.
Oh, it's like disappointmentbecause it's a fake.
You know it's like.
It's like you want real, youwant you.
There are certain things thatyou can just be assured that
(21:06):
it's real and it's the littletells that, if you know, if
you're around this stuff longenough, like I know, watch guys
can tell a watch from across theroom.
And why would I want to fool?
those guys you know, or like aguy who could look at a car from
, I mean, like my friends whoare into ferraris.
We stand at a show field fromliterally across the fields, oh
my god, and we all know exactlywhat we're looking at, you know
(21:29):
that's wrong sore thumb so.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So how do you, how do you balance, um, you know,
speaking of these uh, old parts,and you know things from the
factory that maybe weren't quitedone right?
I mean, my car has a thousandexamples of that.
Sure, um, when you're doing arestoration, right, do you try
and make it as good as new alittle bit better?
(21:51):
I think it's probably varyingdegrees.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's coming back.
I mean, I used to blame, youknow, and I hope he doesn't get
mad at me but I used to blameRalph Lauren, because Ralph
Lauren was, you know, everygeneration has, like the new guy
that makes so much money, he'swilling to overpay.
You know, we had John Shirley.
We had, you know, like whenMicrosoft, you know, made them
(22:33):
when, when, when, when, you know, never going to pay that kind
of money for that car, but hewas the guy who overpaid like 10
years prior to that, you know.
So each generation kind of getsto these guys and and so what
happened with with, uh, withRalph Lauren was when he got a
car, he just said I want it tobe done to my level of standard.
So he had them restored to thepoint where his car showed up at
a car show and it just knockedeverybody's socks off.
(22:53):
I mean, the paint was flawless,the chrome was flawless,
everything was like perfect,because that's the standard that
he had.
Then what happened was the showfield says, oh Jesus, if I'm
supposed to compete with that,my car needs to be at least as
good as Ralph Lauren's.
And it kind of set through the80s that they were
over-restoring andover-restoring and that they
were over-restoring andover-restoring and it was just
this arms race ofover-restoration until at some
(23:14):
point people just kind ofstarted to appreciate original
cars and we sort of say, well,that's not how they originally
looked like.
And so it's kind of come aroundto the point where there's
certain people who are startingto adopt for over-restoration.
But I don't think it's wavedaround as a threat for restorers
to remember that let's notover-restore these cars.
(23:36):
So we're constantly changingthe goalposts or the bar to
figure out what is a good car.
But we are trying our best tocome back to terms and say they
don't have to be perfect.
Perfect, you know, because theyweren't perfect when they came.
Perfect perfect, you know,cause they weren't perfect when
they when they came.
You know.
(23:59):
The other problem that we haveis that, um, these cars are not.
You know when, when the Ferrariwas new, any of these cars were
new, there were $10,000 cars, alot of money back in the
sixties.
But now that same car is wortha quarter million and a half
million dollars.
Well, you know, people have acertain like, they have a
certain idea of what a half amillion dollar car should look
like, and so you can't paint itlike with crappy paint and you
know, or just try to make likeorange peel and say that's the
(24:20):
way it was.
It's like oh, it's still got tolook kind of like.
So there is a certain level inwhich people want to make it
look good, so it's constantly.
I don't know if I can answerthat question specifically.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a balance, right, and it's a
varying balance.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Sure, yeah, that's a good point.
Now Doug wants to hop us in histime machine and bring you back
to the beginning, tom, butbefore we go there, I love this
line of thinking right heretalking about the restoration
process and what attention todetail.
We talked about this a littlebit before, but on on your
(24:56):
website you go into these.
You have these little vignettes, these little stories, your
writings and pictures aroundwhat you look for in the process
and how you look at the supplychain and source parts and
products that you need for yourcar.
And and I would urge listenersto go and check out um, where
you talk about the interior of acar, which is really something
(25:17):
you know you don't think a wholelot about.
But once you get into the car,you think about the leather, you
think about the carpet, youthink about the dashboard and
all of these surfaces around youand what it takes, the hides of
a cow and the quality and doesthe grain mesh, because it takes
a whole lot to do the, theinterior of a car.
(25:37):
And and there are trade-offsbetween all right, are we going
to treat this letter leather,not treat this letter?
If we treat, it will lastlonger for an application like a
car.
But will it, you know, will ittake the stain the same way
between hides?
So I don't know.
Just a thought when you go downthe rabbit hole and think about
(25:59):
that.
I guess it goes back to whatDoug was saying.
It's a tradeoff.
When do you know, when you talkto suppliers, if you've got the
right one or you just keepmoving?
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yeah, I mean, we are constantly looking at good
suppliers.
There are people who study thisstuff, thankfully.
It's like we have specialists,you know.
It's like I look at the guyswho are really good at leather.
They live, drink, sleep, eatleather, you know, and those are
the guys that you want to haveconversations with.
You know.
It's like the painter.
There are guys who are reallygood painters.
That that's all they do.
(26:27):
They just look at paint, youknow, and and and.
That's who you try to surroundyourself with and have
conversations with.
Where you're not, you're notsounding too demanding when you
say I got to get the leather tohave this feel, or it's got to
have this grain pattern, or it'sgot to have this thing, and
they say, yeah, absolutely, I'llshow you what I have.
You know and, and and it's thatvernacular that I did my
(26:56):
interior.
It was told to me that interiorwas $15,000.
I was like $15,000 for aninterior.
What do they do?
They stuff the seats with gold.
I mean, what is going?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
on here.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
So I spent some time with my upholsterer and when he
showed me all the handwork andall the patterns and laying them
out, you weren't just going to,you know, to whatever Scott
Drager, buying like an interiorfor a Mustang and just slapping
it on there and stretching itonto the seats.
You were literally taking thethreads and picking out all the
threads and taking each panel ofleather out and then laying
(27:33):
them on a cow hide and on aleather cow, I mean on a cow.
You get on that car with afour-seater.
It's five to six hides, five tosix cows.
And the reason is because a cow, when you think about the
smooth leather, the back is thesmoothest.
The belly of the cow tends tobe a little bit more puffy
because it's fat and there's fatunderneath the skin.
(27:54):
So it makes the skin.
Now these days they're, they'reprinting leather on it, but but
there's still a certain amountof leather that has a shape of
the cow.
So the smoothest part is thebackside of the cow.
They're right along the back.
So you want to take that pieceand put it on the stuff that you
really see, like the centerconsole or the, or the, or the
dash pieces or the big rearpanel and then the rest of it
(28:17):
you don't throw away but you puton the side pieces you don't
see as much.
So you have to selectively laythese patterns that you've taken
apart of the old one and cutthem out.
And then you have to look forscars because you know there's
barbed wire.
This is a natural product.
So you'd get a scar and you'dhave to mark the scar to make
sure that when you laid youryour seat cushion, the scar
(28:38):
wasn't in the middle of the seatcushion.
So you have to juggle thingsaround.
All that takes time and and sothen you certainly understand
okay, I get it, because it'slike that's what you're paying
for now.
If an upholsterer chose, ohwell, if that guy's charging
fifteen thousand dollars,then15,000.
No, that's not how it works.
Are you actually going to giveme the quality that we put into
a $15,000 interior?
(29:00):
These days it's not $30,000.
But it's what I was so excitedto share on my website, because
we used to have this thing inNew York.
There was this company, a suitmanufacturer or a sales.
They said they had this modelwhere it was like an educated
consumer is our best customer,and I used to say that that's
(29:22):
what I wanted to show.
Ferrari people was like educatethem to what you're paying for.
You're not just paying Ferraritax because it's Ferrari tax.
You're paying for this becauseof the quality that you're
paying for, and that's what Iwanted to show.
I wanted to show thecraftsmanship and that's what
you're paying for.
You're not just paying itbecause it has a Ferrari logo on
it.
(29:42):
You're paying for it becausethere's six hides that were cut
out and laid and hand sewn andput in this thing piece by piece
.
That's why it costs that muchmoney.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
That's so good.
Thank you for that.
When it comes to restoringhistory, the details matter.
The details matter.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
And celebrating those people who did it.
I think that we're doing thesame thing.
The guy who did those interiorsyou're just doing, you're
trying to keep up with his levelof craftsmanship.
You study how he did it andthen, okay, I see what he did.
He cut this back and I have todo the same thing, so you're
just doing the same following.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Reverse engineering.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Good point, good point, all right.
So Doug wants to get in the wayback machine and let's talk
about your first car, tom.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Okay, first car.
Officially, I have a twinsister, so we had to share a car
.
Okay, so I don't know if Ishould count that because that
was just an Aspen station wagonAlthough you know nothing wrong
with a Dodge Aspen station wagon, they'll slant six.
But my first, like my own car,was a 66 Mustang Coupe.
And so I was in high school andI bought my brother-in-law had
(30:47):
an old 66 Coupe and it was aplain Jane Mustang Coupe coupe.
It was an automatic, um, no airconditioning, no peristerion,
just a regular.
But it was a v8 and uh, and Idrove that all through high
school and uh and and basicallyI think I I didn't really hang
out with him, I just was agearhead.
I would spend all my timefixing the mustang, you know.
So I spent my whole high schoolcareer.
(31:08):
Instead of hanging out at the7-eleven, I'd be at my buddy's
shop like taking stuff out orfixing stuff or all that other
stuff.
So I cut my teeth on my 66Mustang.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Okay, okay, going way back, and your parents were
good with that.
They had no fear about lettingyour son in an E8 Mustang.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, kind of my parents coming from a Chinese
family.
It's like they wanted me to goand become a doctor or something
and I was always just messingaround with cars.
And I think I tell everybodythat I'm the black sheep of my
family.
I have four sisters and they'reall older than I am, including
my twin, and I'm the only onewith just an undergraduate
(31:48):
degree.
They all are doctors, lawyers,judges're literally like
overachieving chinese family.
And I'm the youngest and I'veonly have an undergraduate
degree.
And on top of that it's an artschool, it's a, it's a bachelor
of fine arts, so like if youwanted to support your parents,
like that, that was what I did.
And the joke about it, when Ijoke about it with my sisters,
(32:08):
is like, yeah, but I'm probablythe only one in the family
that's having more fun thananybody else.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So I don't know at all.
100%, yeah For sure, but Imanaged to succeed.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah, I mean, the main thing about it was, I think
I took that work ethic and says, well, I'm not.
I'm going to prove them wrongand show them that I can succeed
at a degree, doing what I loveto do, as opposed to the path
that they would choose for you.
All right, yeah, yeah, so if Ihave to fix the floor pans on a
(33:02):
fastback or a coupe, it's goingto cost the same amount of money
, but the fastback is alwaysgoing to be worth more money.
So I need to, as much as itkilled me to sell the coupe to
buy the fastback.
I knew that the smart thing wasto put the money in a car
because, you know, repairing itis the same.
I mean, mechanically they werethe same car.
But I knew that a four-speedfastback was going to be worth
(33:23):
more money, even if it cost thesame amount of money to fix it.
So I ended up selling the coupeand and kept that and I still
have that fastback today.
Yeah, um, and and, uh, and andit's and it's proven wrong.
I mean I, I mean proving meright.
I I haven't put much money init, but I built the engine and
today it's like money in thebank, yep.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yep, and good memories too, of course, sure,
in the way back.
So I did want to ask you.
So I think your daily driver isa 03 996 Porsche.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
So it's one that I use more often.
It's my daily, believe it ornot, because people ask me well,
what does a Ferrari mechanicdrive?
And I drive an Acura.
I would say you need a carthat's reliable and doesn't need
any work ever.
You know, so I've always been abig Honda and Toyota fan of
(34:16):
daily drivers and you know, nooffense to anybody out there,
but I would say like if they, ifthey poo poo the fact that I
drive a Honda or Toyota, it'slike, well, my other car is
Ferrari, so I don't really notreally worried out of pressing
anybody.
But the thing is I dodefinitely feel like, you know,
it's being in a way, I'm showingto my customers that I'm
pragmatic.
You know, I don't need to youshow off with it with an
(34:37):
expensive car and, uh, you know,and charge it, charge you
higher rates because I need tokeep the uh car payment up on my
s-class, you know.
So, uh, but, uh, yeah, but myother car is a 996.
I've always been a porsche guy,I mean I went.
So I guess we wanted to talkquickly about my, my automotive
career or or journey.
It went mustangs, so I learnedamerican pony cars and then from
(34:59):
there, after the Mustang, theFastback, I bought a Sunbeam
Alpine, which is a littleBritish roadster and I kind of
felt like it's my journeybecause I really was always like
British cars.
I thought they were cool but Iwanted to learn about them.
So I found this great littleSunbeam and I remember seeing
one on school campus when I wasin college.
So when this one came up forsale I was like, oh, I'll go buy
(35:20):
that.
So I ended up buying theSunbeam.
And then after the Sunbeam,I've always been into Porsches.
So at one point one of mysisters my overachieving sister,
is a physician.
So she had bought a new 911 andshowed up all the other kids in
the family.
So we're all like, well, one ofthese days I'm going to get a
Porsche, I'm going to get a 911.
So another sister got one.
So they had two Porsches of thefamily and then, and then I
(35:45):
ended up buying one.
But I bought one, of course, asthe mechanic of the family.
I bought like a uh, uh, and atthe time they weren't worth a
lot of money.
I bought a 72 911 that neededsome work but I paid $2,200 for
it because that's what they wereworth back then in the 90s, and
who knew that they would gocrazy in price?
But I drove a 911 and trackedit and fixed it and got
(36:08):
introduced to 911s.
And so the story with the 911is I sold it for Ferrari parts,
Because at the time I was in themiddle of a story that Ferrari
and Ferrari parts are expensive.
So I ended up cutting loose the,the, uh, the nine 11, and
regretted it ever since.
So about five years ago, um, Iwas looking at cars and I and I
(36:32):
as much as I didn't admit that I, I, would drive a water cooled
car, I was really impressed withthe nine, nine, six and um.
So I bought it and and I'vebeen just loving it ever since.
I mean it's, it's, the it's.
I mean I mean I wish I stillcould afford to have a 72 911,
but the 996 drives.
I mean, if I'd done the stupidthings I did in the in the 996
(36:54):
in my 72, I would have been inthe trees you know the 996 is so
much better stuck to the groundthan the 72.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Agreed yeah, and so you just reminded me of a story
and I think you'll appreciatethis about kids and school and
achieving.
So I was at a holiday partyover the weekend and I had heard
this story.
But I finally had a chance toask the son.
So the father had a 1992 964Porsche and he had told his son
(37:26):
maybe his son begged him, Idon't know.
He said if you get into collegeand get a full scholarship,
this car is yours.
And the son did it.
The son got the car, didn'tkeep it too long, ended up
selling it.
He's like man.
I just keep kicking myselfbecause it would be worth like
five times as much as what Isold it for.
That's right and his dad's.
(37:48):
Like he had to learn he had tolearn so it was a good lesson
for him yeah, who knew?
Speaker 3 (37:53):
you know it's like, it's like I, I uh, I kicked
myself for selling the 72, butat the same time I still kept
the Ferrari, so I think I didokay.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, yeah, and it's been about.
It took you about eight yearsto restore it.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, yeah, no, I bought and the thing is On and
off.
Yeah, I always tell people I wasan idiot when I bought my car,
because I was probably the onlyidiot that would be willing to
pay that kind of money.
Because you know, at the time,ten thousand dollars more would
have bought you a running anddriving car.
But I didn't have 10 grand more, so I had to buy what I could
(38:29):
afford and and spent.
You know, what I thought wasonly going to take a year to put
it together ended up taking meeight years to put it together
and a lot of time and money.
But at the same time, you knowit's only now in a relationship
that you look like you're agenius, because the prices of
these cars just kind of keptgoing higher and higher and
higher.
But I didn't buy it expectingit to go up in value.
(38:51):
It's just that's what they cost, that's what I had to buy them
for and that's what I did, right.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
And it made your career right.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
I think, to quote you , it changed your life right,
yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that'sthe part who would have thought.
I mean it's like you buy a carand, as hokey as that sounds, it
literally changed my life andI've had offers.
I mean, now the market has goneup and it has calmed down a
little bit, it's gotten a littlesofter.
But I remember having dinnerwith my, my, my wife and
(39:18):
daughter and I'd come home and,okay, guys, I just got offered
150 000 for the car, you know,and my wife, oh, we don't need
to sell it, it's okay.
And then, like about a year ortwo later, I was like, okay,
guys, I just got 250 000 off andon the car, and my daughter at
that time was probably eight ornine inches like oh, you can't
sell the car.
(39:39):
I wanted that car, I love thatcar and I was like Ellie.
One day, when you're old enough, you're going to understand
what a quarter million dollarsactually is.
You know it's just like.
It's just funny when you knowthose kind of numbers start
coming up and you never expectedit to do that.
So as the market starts tosoften and the car value, you
(39:59):
start losing value on those cars.
You know it just can happen.
I don't regret it because itnever was about the value A car.
People get so upset when carvalues go down and I look at
them and I ask them you know thecar that you loved in your
garage didn't all of a suddenbecome 20% less enjoyable.
(40:19):
I, it's still the same car,it's just the market that has
changed.
I don't understand why you'reso upset about it.
You know it's still a good car.
So, uh, it's because people arefocused on value as opposed to
just what brings them joy yeah,yeah, yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
So, as we guide the podcast gently towards the off
ramp here, tom, two lastquestions for you.
Why are the Italians so good atdesign?
What is it about their innate?
I think you said genetics,which made me laugh, but I think
you made me right.
What is it?
Speaker 3 (40:53):
about them.
The renaissance, I mean, like,look at the renaissance, I mean
since the dark ages, since sincewe've created a society where
we no longer had to be farmersand we had time to make things
beautiful.
I mean it started in italy.
I mean just that it I don'tknow what it is, is the water,
is that?
The people is whatever, but itjust they.
They have this innate sense ofdesign.
(41:14):
You know you go to italy, theydress nicer.
You know they don't do anythingwithout like, without thought
to aesthetics.
You know I used to say that andI love german cars.
But if a german car is pretty,that was by accident.
You know, I mean like in thesense of like, when you look at
a gearbox and the way they putit together, like if it's pretty
because of the ribbing, it wasjust not, it was by, it was
(41:38):
because they deal with it first.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Because the form follows function.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
But the Italians will just sit there and says no, no,
no, we can't, we can't, we gotto add this.
And you look at the way theyput the casting.
And they do that not because Imean they have.
They have European engineering,but they still have this innate
design sense and I think itcomes from just it's.
It's in their, it's in theirsouls.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Oh, great answer.
Great answer Last question Okay, so the way you learned from
Francois Sicard, who are yougoing to teach, have you?
Ever given any thought.
I know there's going to be someyoung buck.
Yeah, oh boy Doug's on his wayto your house with a push broom
now looking to volunteer foreight hours.
(42:20):
For for one question?
Uh, for for one hour ofinstruction.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
But it has been.
It has been a question that hasbeen asked and discussed among
my friends, among among peoplewho who have foundations that
support this kind of stuff, whowant to do it.
I mean, it really has been thisdiscussion and it's been on my
mind.
Personally, it's tough becauseI'm a one man show, so I do all
this stuff by myself.
Francois basically did too, andI and he was very generous to
(42:47):
give me the time and I shouldgive back to do the same, and I
and I have been doing it with,with, uh, a couple of people
here and there.
Um, but the issue is, you know,if you have to find the right
person, because you know a lotof I get, I get, I do get emails
from people that says I want todo what you do, I would love to
do what you do, and I was like,well, what is it that you think
(43:07):
that I do?
Because what you see on YouTubeand what you see in social media
is me going to car shows anddriving these Ferraris, these
million dollar Ferraris, andhaving, you know, wine and
cheese and these places.
You know.
What you don't see is when I'mlaying under a car and I'm
getting dirty and my hands arepermanently stained from oil and
(43:29):
grease.
But I mean not that I hate that, I love it, but it's not what
it's.
What do people want to do?
And to find the person thatloves it to their soul, it takes
some time and the investment ofthat time especially when I
only have one person that caninvest that time it's a struggle
.
So I don't know, maybe theright person will come along.
(43:53):
Maybe, I was the right person tocome along for Francois and it
just happened.
But it took us 25 years tofigure that I was the right
person.
So I don't know.
I I I would like to try, but Ialso think that the reality of
what we do um might not be forall those people who think that
(44:13):
they want to do it.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yeah yeah, people like the trophy.
They don't like the sweat.
You can't really have onewithout the other.
But great answer, great answer.
Well, tom, thank you so muchfor spending some time with us.
I would encourage everyone outin listener land to check out
TomYoungnet T-O-M-Y-A-N-Gnet somuch fun.
(44:35):
You will fall down the rabbithole.
Tom's a great writer and youknow what I want to do.
You have any t-shirts left, tom?
Speaker 3 (44:42):
I do, I do.
I'll definitely have to sendyou guys some Thank you for
Definitely I think you say $16plus a couple bucks for shipping
.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
I think sure the prices have gone up.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
but yeah, I haven't really been pushing them that
much, In fact, because everybodynow has all these like setups
where you could just hit abutton and do it.
I'm still packing them myselfand sending them, so I haven't
really been doing better, itwould make sense.
Yeah, the vintage guy does itthe vintage way, are we?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
surprised.
We're not surprised, that'sright.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Well, thank you guys for so much for inviting me.
This has been a lot of fun.
Great to talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Thank you, this was fantastic and listener land.
You had just heard the highrevving, low mileage, late model
heard around the worldAuthoritative podcast on
automotive nostalgia.
He's Doug.
Reach him at Doug atCarsLovecom.
I'm Christian.
Reach me at Christian atCarsLovecom.
Leave a review if you like theshow.
He was Tom.
(45:36):
You know where to get himTomYoungnet.
Please follow.
Tell a friend, check out ourlink tree L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E
slash Cars Loved.
I'm sure we'll see you at thenext local car show, showroom,
race trip or concourse.
Thank you for listening.
Keep the rubber side down andwe will see you in a week.
Take care.
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