VinWiki founder Ed Bolian on Cannonball records, exotic car collecting strategy, and the generational shift reshaping the collector market

Speaker 1: The...

Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Chris. Talk to you. Goodbye. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. And up next, we have Ed Bollian from BinWiki, the founder and CEO. His YouTube channel is also VinWiki. Ed, how are you doing? Welcome to Palate cleanser.

Speaker 1: How are you

Speaker 2: all? You've We're great. We talk about a lot of AI. We also talk about a lot of cars on this show. Very excited to have you on here for the first time. Thank you so much for joining. We'd love to start with just a little bit of your backstory for those who are watching who might not be familiar. Can you give us the high level, summary of of the VinWiki business, but also the the the fantastic Cannonball records that you've set. Just kind of take us through some of the career.

Speaker 3: By all means. Yes. I... We started VINWiki about ten years ago, but prior to that, I was director of sales at Lamborghini Atlanta. And before that, I had started an exotic car rental company out of my dorm room at Georgia Tech with some stated income loans back before the financial crisis. And so I've had a long journey in the world of interesting cars and interesting things to do with them. Back in 2013, a co driver and I set the Cannonball Run record. So there was a real Cannonball Run of the nineteen seventies that inspired the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie, but there are still crazy people like me that occasionally go out and, see how fast it can be done. And so we did it in twenty eight hours fifty minutes back in 2013. And then, through COVID, that was able to be, massively advanced. And so now the record is twenty five hours thirty nine minutes. It seems like it's quite an advantage if the cops aren't working and, nobody else is commuting on the road. But, now we... At VINWiki, we tell car stories and kind of have tried tried to change the way that the world looks at vehicle history reporting and automotive history to try to empower people to immortalize the best stories that they can about their cars.

Speaker 2: Is, are we at the end of the cannonball era? Will we never see a new record? Because I... It is... COVID was so unique in that there were no no trucks, no no cops on the roads. But at the same time, like Well, it's definitely advanced. Cars are getting faster. It's... It presents a new risk, which is that car enthusiasts might try to start a global pandemic to create the Yes. To create the environment that they could beat the record. Yes. Yes. That's a good conspiracy theory. There you go. Whatever means necessary.

Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because it may have, you know, sufficiently flipped the sandbox over that no one decides to go out and try it again. Mhmm. Certainly, under the current technological paradigm, it is problematic to really set out a plan that gives you a really high likelihood of success against that mark to beat. One thing that's been amazing in the, you know, years since 2013 when we set the record is that the enthusiasm for Cannonball has been made manifest in a lot of different ways. So we've had electric car records and self driving records and truck records and motorcycle records and three wheeled records and coast to coast to coast records and southern route records. And so it's become more interesting for people to just find their own way to sort of have their cannonball record. That doesn't have to be averaging a 110 miles an hour across the country, but it can be their own husband and wife record or, you know, whatever they wanna do. And so I've enjoyed

Speaker 1: that as well, big to see it all come back. Yeah. There's not... Isn't there one mean there's there's forever gonna be opportunities to have the most niche Yeah. Cannonball. Oh, well, is there... Wasn't there a a Cannonball that was I think we under a 100 horsepower? No. I know what we do. I know what we do, John. Yeah. We do the the tour bus cannonball record. Tour bus. We do the show the whole time. Oh, I like that. Through. Fastest tour race. The whole thing. Yeah. We did do a sub 100 horsepower race Yeah. Where,

Speaker 3: everybody had to show up and it... That we would dyno the and assess penalties for those that went beyond it. I ended up just renting a Corolla for it because that was the easiest way to get a 100 horsepower car up in White Plains. And, but it was, it... A lot of fun. To be honest, I've done it about 10 times now. Most of them not, you know, in earnest trying to set a record, just going out as crazy as we can. A couple years ago, did it in the 1976 Rolls Royce dressed as chicks like Jamie Farr and had a blast. You know? It's a very, very different pace, but,

Speaker 1: a whole lot of fun. Especially when there's a fun. Love that you're like, you rented a Corolla. They're like, yeah. Just bring it back with a full tank. And you're like, yeah. Tell

Speaker 2: everyone what the punishment was for cars that dynoed over a 100 horsepower.

Speaker 3: There was... There were several different ones. One was that you had to assemble, like, a thousand piece puzzle and glue it to the hood of your car, which essentially meant that you didn't get to sleep the night before. You had to do the... One was either a ballast, so you had to carry a lot of weight, like bags of cement or keep a lobster alive since we were starting by the ocean. So

Speaker 2: I don't... No one chose the lobster, but there was definitely some, cement transported or sandbags. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And we... When when you did the Cannonball, did you have a a a spotter plane or spotter cars? Like, what was the actual team? Because you said you had a co driver, but was it just two people in the car or three? And then were there other people involved? I I know that there's, like, sometimes whole teams that go after the records.

Speaker 3: Correct. And the most recent record involved 35 spotter cars driving at pace with the organizers of the run, the drivers agreeing to pay tickets for them if they get stopped. Yeah. So I started planning this in high school, at least ideologically, about trying to find the right recipe to do it. And the record at that point, this being 2004, had not been advanced since 1983. Mhmm. And so while I was sort of thinking through this, two efforts were made, one by Alex Roy and Dave Maher in 2006 in a BMW m five that did involve a spotter plane. That's right. I did not have any friends with airplanes, and so none of them were volunteering to, fly ahead and Yeah. Let me know what was up ahead. And so... And then Richard Rawlings and Dennis Collins from Gas Monkey Garage did it in o seven and a 550 Maranello. And so I had a couple of guys that agreed to drive, like, hours ahead and let me know if there was any new construction or new hazards that I Sure. Might run into. But, no. Nothing of the sort that in terms of planes or people ready to, you know, go to jail for me. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Switching gears to to, car collecting. I'm interested in the in the story of the LP six forty, but also VINWiki and how those two things fit together. How much of your your choice in collection is driven by what you discover when you're doing VINWiki work, which you can kind of just describe and and and explain some of the some of the realizations that you have that actually impact the market versus how much of it is just you like what you like and sometimes you get lucky.

Speaker 3: You know, that really is it. You have to start with something that you really, really like. Whenever you're thinking about something that might be defined as, an alternative investment class Yeah. It's it's not something that you set out like Dave Ramsey style. Like, you should go get some gigantic loans for rare exotic cars and just see what happens. One thing that I learned early on while I was selling cars is that the ones that... The guys that seem to be sort of beating the game were the ones that were buying cars further along a depreciation curve where stability was a little bit more likely. And the way I used to phrase it is that I tried to look like I won the lottery ten years ago. Yeah. Because with rare and interesting cars, generally, there will be some initial depreciation as people are trying to buy the newest, latest, greatest, biggest, baddest, whatever. But I wanted to try to avoid depreciation. I call that my greatest allergy is automotive depreciation. And so I was looking for cars that seemed rare, but also seemed like they were at a point where they were a lot more stable and potentially starting to go back up, which it was still relatively unheard of, you know, in the early, you know, 02/2009, two thousand fifteens when I was selling cars every day. And so I loved the Lamborghini Murcielago since it came out. I just thought it was the coolest car. I love the heritage and lineage of the v 12 Lamborghinis, especially the manual transmission cars. And I learned that they were a lot more rare than really anybody seemed to know as manufacture... Manufacturers started to bring out these sequential manual paddle shift cars Yeah. The thought was that it was about a 90% take rate, but it turned out... Now we've now learned that it was about 99%. So for the Ferraris and Lamborghinis where there was a manual versus a paddle shift option, almost all of them were paddles. And so that made them much more rare than, you know, we expected. And usually rare just means nobody bought it when they were new. And that's true because back then, the only way that they could make cars faster was to make the transmissions work better. And so now I realize that they were rare, and that's a lot of the ideology around the VINWiki app is how do we document rarity and significance in cars that might eventually, you know, have something to do with the value. Is manufacturer data getting more reliable over time?

Speaker 2: Because it feels like there were... That, like, that 90 to 99% discovery, that was unique. That's a gold mine. But is that also gonna happen in a 2026 car run that... Where, you know, some manufacturer, they're vague about it or they give incorrect information. And then ten years down the line, we discover through chronicling the VINs that there's some oddity with some spec that's, extremely limited.

Speaker 3: There is some chance that there will just be something that's overlooked as being important. Lamborghini didn't think it mattered for anybody to know how many of specific cars they were doing. Yeah. In the same way that, like, Porsche wouldn't necessarily think about how it... How much it matters of how many they build of a certain paint to sample color Mhmm. Or something like that. Those are the types of granular data points that might be uncovered later down the road. Because it is... There is a lot more documentation now. The companies have grown up through all of the different ways that they have combined corporately, and so it's a little bit less likely that that sort of thing will happen. And the cars are a little bit more homogeneous. Mhmm. You know, with some exceptions being, like, nine eleven's range from $150 up to $400, and they... You know, there's different permutations of how they're configured and, obviously, the profitability changes alongside that. Yeah. How are you thinking about

Speaker 2: Ferrari's depreciation curve, their their changing strategy? Because there's sort of two lenses. Like, we've seen the run of, like, the four thirty and many other from that era, the sort of mid two thousands onward, cars, skyrocket in value at the same time when the SF 90 has has collapsed. But I can't help feeling like in ten, twenty years, there might be a new class of 30, 40 year old guys who are like, oh, the SF 90 is when it was the best. And how much of this is just a generational thing versus a structural change in the way Ferrari is producing and selling cars?

Speaker 3: So you're exactly right that the generational aspect is huge. And, you know, right now, anything built pre 1980 is either going down or at least flat as a best case scenario, even the most significant of prewar cars and stuff that that has always been kind of the headline of auctions. And that's because most of the people that love those cars growing up have already made the decision about whether or not they're gonna engage there as collectors. And so today, we're seeing the people that grew up with the posters on their cars of the iconic eighties, nineties, and two thousands cars really coming into a position where they can engage in that marketplace. Yep. And that is what's driving us. That's why the four thirties, you said, are starting to go up and why the SF 90 just isn't there yet. It isn't old enough yet. And we just brought out the eight four nine. So what what we're seeing with Ferrari is always gonna be kind of on the cutting edge of what the collector hobby is going to do next. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Do you think there could be a sort of a lost generation? I'm thinking, like, you know, the 2015 to 2025 where, like, no one ends up, you know, really wanting to to collect these cars. Because I have felt like in the last year, like the the manufacturers have like all got the message that they've like went through this era of making heavier and heavier cars with Hybrids. Hybrids and and basically like every... It was like the most infuriating era even as a casual car enthusiast where you're like no one is listening to my like requests, right? And then now they're getting points because at least I'm giving them points because it's like, okay, like, well, you didn't make like a true like gated manual, but you made something that feels like it. Right? But to ground the 2015 era, what are you talking about? Like Hertz? Well, just... Think like the the SF90 is like using that as like the sort of... Okay. So yeah, more to... The 2020s feels like it's sort of sort of peak of this of like not listening and obviously dealing with the pressure from various regulators. Regulators. Yeah. But now now with Mate being like, alright, we're in our we're in our... Effectively saying we're in our courts crisis era. We need to play our own game. It it feels like it feels like we're headed back to... The future looks more like the past, which I think is, like, kind of good and bad. Like, the the good is that, like, it feels like there's no more innovation. Right? It's just, like, figure out how to make cars like we used to make cars. Look at the Mission S. I mean, it's like a

Speaker 2: nod to that after a lot of, hey, maybe it's gonna be all electric. Yeah. That day, that that Thursday felt like

Speaker 1: monumental On the road. Because of the the fork in the road. You had like this kind of kind of like performance from Tesla and and a very different direction,

Speaker 3: plus, like, Mission S, which is, like, hey, we're just gonna make the thing that you've always wanted. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We're listening. It took us a while, but we are. And I think you're right that we may have this sort of alienated generation of cars mostly based on hybrid long term reliability concerns that we're just gonna run into cars that are a lot less functional at some point than we'd hoped for, and there may or may not be engineering workarounds to make them into more drivable or usable cars at that point. And, you know, sometimes that's a very healthy thing for the market at large because when the goalpost doesn't move aspirationally, when there's no new cars that you have to dream about or chase, it allows you to focus on the cars that are more genuinely or earnestly sought after, and the the competition there does drive up prices. And so sometimes having that lost generation, it kind of emboldens the enthusiasm that is made manifest in, you know, the collector's attitude towards these cars. And so now some of these things like an electronic gated manual transmission, they... It may work and it may succeed, or it may come off as a little bit patronizing that, oh, here's that manual thing you asked for. Yeah. It really just sits in the cup holder and you get to shake it around a little bit and to make room room noises the same way that, you know,

Speaker 2: speakers making exhaust noises felt that way. Yeah. The end state is just you're in a driving simulator, and and and the car is driving itself wherever it wants to go. You make a good point about hybrid systems maybe being unreliable, but it's call... It's kind of fallen on deaf ears from the guy who drive daily drives Bugatti Veyron. So how have you squared those two? Because I thought that car was the king of unreliability,

Speaker 1: but maybe I have it wrong. How has it actually been daily driving a Well, the interesting thing is, like, it's so daunting to think about personally maintaining, like, a Ferrari hybrid system. Sure. Whereas, like, these other these other vehicles where it's like, yeah, they're fundamentally, like, just a mechanical Okay. Machine with more limbo electronics. Is that how you see it?

Speaker 3: Yeah. There's not really a monster in the closet with a Bugatti of something that's, like, going to bite you one day inevitably. Oh, okay. There's plenty of things that are very, very proprietary and very, very expensive if they go wrong. Yeah. But, fortunately, with all cars, the more you drive them, the more reliable they are regardless of how high strung they are, potentially even more so if they're super high strung. So my 2012 Bugatti Veron that had not been well cared for prior to my ownership by a variety of rappers and entertainers and things like that who owned it. Lil Uzi for while. Been great for about 15,000

Speaker 2: miles now. You've you've put 15,000 miles on it already. Had no idea it was about high. Two years. Wow. And and is is most of that rallies and and and actually driving it, or are you are you genuinely daily driving it?

Speaker 3: It is more big trips. Okay. Yeah. It's a it's a lot to take it somewhere just because you don't get anywhere fast. Everybody wants to stop and talk about it, and I enjoy that too. Yeah. But, like, you you have to really plan when you're going to get somewhere based on the likely obstacles in the road to... On that journey. So I drive it every chance I get. I give anybody a ride that really wants one. It's like it's... To me, that's what makes it all fun. That's what perpetuates the hobby anyway. And, you know, generally, my attitude with car buying is that I'll buy the worst examples of the coolest cars on earth. Mhmm. And in those cases, because kind of the cloud of their backstory becomes more difficult or problematic, you know, in terms of the storyline, you're sort of redeeming the value of the car by using it without calamity. Sure. So if the car is not expected to be in good shape, but then you put 5,000 miles on it in a year, generally, the audience is gonna say, okay. Well, this thing's probably okay. We don't need to worry that much. We can trust the car rather than worry about the backstory.

Speaker 2: And so, you know, it's it's easy to get scared off by that, but but it's also pretty easy to overcome it. Yeah. I I I love buying the the the worst example of a great car looking like you won the lottery ten years ago. These are hilarious phrases and ways to think about it. But how much of that goes into the spec? Do you do you have do you have particular opinions about color and interior? Red over red is a particular choice. Actually leads was really my choice. But Yeah. But, like, does that just not factor into it? Or does it actually just add to the lore and it's just even wilder so you're going for it? Like, how do you think about that... The aesthetic piece of it? Because Bugatti can be relatively understated when it's spec to per... Certain way. Not yours. But it's not mine. But it's it's almost it's almost more fun that way. And that's what the point is of these vehicles.

Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, you don't get to go to the used car factory and spec out exactly your dream every time. And so I do wind up with some pretty wildly specced cars. This car certainly being a key example of that. It was actually specced by Bugatti. It was the one they showed off at the Frankfurt Motor Show back in 2011. So red over red with red wheels was a thing. Okay. And so, yeah, it's... I wouldn't expect one that way, but it it does work really well for YouTube. The thumbnails work great. The contrast is nice and... But the cops do not miss it. Telling you. Well, the funny thing the funny thing is, like, I just... I think that

Speaker 1: just, like, color color matching interior to the body to the wheels is, like, starting to be really hot. Sure. Yeah. Even in like, you know, I've seen it with with restomods. People that just like seek this out. So Yeah. You kind of No. No. It's going back in vogue. Maybe maybe maybe you're part of the You're early. Part of driving. It's like the skinny jeans. What do you what do you think about the various manufacturer programs where you basically give the car back they'll reset the mileage to zero and then make the spec whatever you want it? It feels like it feels like great for the actual owner of the car and but potentially bad for or somewhat equalizing like it basically levels the playing field. I have a friend who was put a million you know bought a 09/18 put a million miles on it drove it like absolute crazy, know was actually dailying it all over Europe and then you know knows that he can just send it back and they'll reset the mileage to zero and they're gonna change the color and change the interior and it's like very, very, like... Honestly, I think they're charging too little because the... What the the ultimate value of the car will be after that is like you have a basically nine eighteen with zero miles on the dash and the craziest spec. Yeah. All refreshed.

Speaker 3: And you get the privilege of seeing all the other specs before you spec yours again, which you didn't have if you ordered the car new. Yeah. I think you're right that that is certainly now in vogue, most of the manufacturers are offering some sort of a program to do so. Lamborghini is probably lagging the most in that regard, although they will, in theory, do whatever you want. Bugatti now will take any Veyron back, and it's about a million dollars for engine overhaul, paint, and interior. But, again, you can respec it to the moon and back if you so choose, and I think that is exciting. Courage ETs are the first one we saw, like, an... A real ROI on that. Certainly, other nine elevens are following suit where you are... You'll spend $500 or a million dollars and somehow you've doubled the value of your $3,000,000 car. So that to me is interesting, and I think it's driven a lot by the fact that they're not taking too many of them. I think they've said that they've sold out the next three or five years of slots for those levels of recommissioning. And so it's relatively unheard of that you modify a car and make it more valuable. It doesn't matter if it's turbochargers or underglow or, you know, a factory repaint. Generally, it is seen as a detraction. But this seems, at least at the moment, as potentially not that case. Now if they all get redone, then certainly the ones that remain original will be a thing. But your friend's attitude is exactly the right one to take. It is to say that I get to use my car completely,

Speaker 1: and then I can go get it properly. Get out of jail free card. You know? Exactly. I actually think it's I think it's I think it's great because it just means more of these cars will just be on the road. Mhmm. Like even even in, you know, we live in Southern California, there's like an incredible density of some of the coolest cars ever made. And yet, I'll see, you know, thousands of, like, base Carreras before I see, like, one of these special cars on an average day on PCH, you know. Even on a Sunday when they should be all out and about, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 3: And if that... If it cures the anxiety of utilization, then it's ideal. Right? Because it gives you the chance... Even without a reset, if it's just known that they're totally redone, that's one thing that I'm not crazy about Porsche's decision is the odometer reset because, I don't know, I'm always the guy that loves having a high mile odometer. I actually, you know, driven my... One of my Mercy's on a long, long trip choosing it against other cars because I knew that that miles would put it as the highest mileage one in the world. Yeah. And so I wouldn't want them to reset all my hard work if they, you know I'm sure that's an option. I charge you back at 10 k for it. We won't reset it for 10 k. Roll it up. Give me an extra 100. I I earned bonus

Speaker 2: miles this week. How how do you feel about this new this new sort of wedgie angular aesthetic, the stainless steel? I'm thinking of, like, the Audi Nouveau Lari, the Jaguar type zero one, the... Or the ultra limited Cybertruck. The ultra limited Cybertruck. You gotta get that on VINWiki. There might be less than 79,000. They might be going up in value. But but put aside put aside the internals, and I just wanna hear you talk about what that design language. Does it speak to you as someone who grew up and has owned many Lamborghinis and and engaged with more aggressive designs? Is this is this a is this a welcome step forward for design language, or is it a detour along something that you are not interested in? How have you been dealing with that?

Speaker 3: Well, the fortunate thing is that it it really doesn't matter that much what we think of them despite how much we all like to comment on them because we're not usually the ones that are going to sustain the values of these cars over time. Mhmm. The goal is to appeal to the inner 13 to 17 year old kid that is dreaming and reading every bit of media, watching every YouTube video. Sure. Those are the guys that you really want to make love the cars. And if... As long as that happens, then the hobby and the enthusiasm sort of sustains. I love simplistic designs. You know, Lamborghini used to always have silhouettes that could be drawn with one line, and that means that the cars are much more easily recognizable in a sea of other cars that when one passes you on the highway, it makes a greater and more immediate impact. I like that a lot, and I think we are seeing more of that in these iconic silhouettes and a little bit more restrained design language. You kinda think the opposite of the Pagani retooling. Right? Now there's still a demand for that sort of thing that's got eight different colors and four shades of carbon fiber and all of the customization that you could ever dream of. But sometimes, you know, taking up one extra piece of Johnny Depp jewelry off and may... You know, leaving it maybe just slightly less done makes a lot of sense. And so when I find cars, like, good looking, it's usually because they're not so overstyled and overthought that that is something that you can immediately visually at least digest.

Speaker 1: Yeah. When the car market inevitably sees a correction, how do you think it'll be different than the sort of post 2021 era? Because in that case, you had people... Let's use the SF90 as another example. People spending a million dollars on an SF90 take, you know, basically, instantly, as it started correcting, having, like, negative equity where they just owed, you know, they were... There were all these viral videos in maybe 2022 and 2023 where people are like, I gotta pay you $400 to give back my s 90, you know, because they had, like, some super low interest rate and they financed like the whole thing. This time, it's been interesting this run up that we've seen in so many cars is not really debt financed or some of it some of it could be, but it's people that are like, I'm paying six, 7%, you know, and which which means that I think it will be, like, maybe less violent of a of a of a correction. I don't I don't really know.

Speaker 3: It might give us a softer landing if that's the case. The bigger reason that it would be a softer landing is that most of the debt available in cars that are ten or more years old and are sort of classified as collector cars is around 60 to 70% loan to value. Mhmm. So even in the event that there was a pretty meaningful contraction of value, most of that equity is not going to be or that, you know, the lien is going to be able to be satisfied regardless of those conditions. What I believe we're going to see is a stronger fork in the road between cars that are legitimately rare, collected for the right reasons versus just everything's for sale, everything's hot. The way that we saw, you know, made most clear in the twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three zone where we also had inventory shortages and ship shortages and people not able to spend money on travel and other things, that was all just going into hobbies and cars and stuff like that. So at that point, the... Most of the debt was heavily overleveraged because it was more so built on how somebody buys a new truck or a Toyota because they had to be able to loan a 120% of MSRP for anyone to buy a new car. And so that sort of trickled up into the exotic car world and was more problematic. Now that really doesn't seem to be happening. We are seeing sort of cars get king made more or less now where collectors will come in that may have almost no experience in the car hobby and are treating it much more as an asset class or an investment option. And they'll come into dealers with just a gone in sixty seconds looking shopping list and say, want a nice one of everything, and there's just not nearly enough supply for that. So you combine that, whether it's their own money or out of a family office, sometimes they're representing private equity, but that's not super common in the space just yet. It would, you know, massively change it if we started to see the way that they've engaged in art and stuff like that. But better debt and more debt available under proper terms is helping. And then, of course, there's just a crazy transfer of generational wealth right now that is fueling the hobby. Yeah. How how do you think

Speaker 2: the track only cars are going to evolve? It feels like there's... Willow Springs is going through a renovation right now. There's, like, more track clubs, and motorsports is... Can be very expensive on the tracks, but that's part of that k shape that you described. And so there's a world where manufacturers lean into that more. Do you have any view on on where non street legal vehicles from major manufacturers might go?

Speaker 3: My hope is that it always looks like a Bugatti Bolide that is so obviously not road eligible Sure. That it allows them to do crazy stuff like Aston's car built for Ken Griffin that with a no money, no object, like, what can you do? Yeah. And I like it when on a very low volume manufacturers do that as kind of a thought exercise to say, like, alright. If we didn't have to worry about you not dying in a crash, we could do this. And if we didn't have to comply with any government's rules, we could do that. Yeah. And to me, when it's insane, it's at its best. Yeah. When it's like a track version of a car that just sort of is, you know, has crazy aerodynamics and no ground clearance, nobody cares. But when it's nuts, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm just wondering if,

Speaker 2: if, like, the rise of self driving cars and speed cameras or something would take some of the energy out of, like, the fun that you can have with a road legal street car canyon carving on the weekend because it's... You're you're 100% gonna get a ticket or you're gonna get stuck behind someone that's, you know, in self driving mode or something.

Speaker 1: And so it pushes people to the tracks more, but I don't know. Well, yeah, that's top of mind for us. Our our... You know, my kids are all under five, and I assume that they will never drive themselves on the road. Mhmm. And... But I will want to give them the experience of, like, the joy of driving sports cars. And so Yeah. The track. Yeah. The and the beauty of it, if you're just a pure enthusiast, is, the car that looks like it costs $5,000,000 is like 600 k because you can only use it at the track. Oh, sure. So it feels like the value you get for a lot of these things ends up being like It has a crazy weight if you don't care about flexing it at Cars and Coffee or in the gross... You know, driving your Yeah. You know, with a bunch of air out of the grocery store, like, you're in a pretty good spot.

Speaker 3: Exactly. Now we are seeing an issue, especially in The United States with these cars that The United States does not have a good program to, like, have an independent adjudicator decide that a car could be street legal the same way The UK always did. So, like, you know, especially with rally cars and things like that, you could put proper turn signals and proper lights and proper seat belts in them and go get the car MOT checked and and run it on the road because it was sort of approved for road use. In The US, we don't have a system like that in any state. However, various states have much more relaxed rules about what constitutes street legal or what constitutes title eligibility. And so we're seeing a lot of these cars popping up that were built as race cars that have got titles. And, you know, that opens up a tremendous amount of legal liability and things like that. And so once again, that's why I prefer that they be nothing close to a road looking car because it it decreases the temptation essentially.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard crazy stories about, track only cars getting license plates and driving around,

Speaker 3: because of just, like, an error at the DMV almost. Like, it's crazy stuff. Right. Yeah. They just took in the MSO, and they they gave them one even though they weren't supposed to. And, yeah. When I when I was like...... Super convenient to make it easier to transact them because you're not doing bill of sale only. Yeah. But we gotta use our powers for for good, not evil. Right? Yeah. The funny thing is sitting in a Valkyrie,

Speaker 1: you know, with the with the engine so loud, you gotta wear you gotta wear ear protection. I'm like, this thing can go on the road? That feels so wrong. Which

Speaker 3: a Valkyrie is showing displays, so it's not really supposed to go on the road. It can, 2,500 miles a year. Yeah. But it it still found another way,

Speaker 1: thanks to Bill Gates, around the rules. That's right. That's right. Oh, that's good. That's good context. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Congrats with all the progress on You know, my my final parting thought is now it's it's getting a lot faster to make video games. Somebody needs to make a, like, a really pure enthusiast version of of Cannonball Simulator. Oh. But it takes the full... It's like The full time. The full amount of time. So you're driving at normal pace on the Kind exact like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but for driving. Yes. Yes. IRacing, but for the Cannonball, somebody build it. Yeah. You got at least three people that