CMS Motorsports is Making AMG Dreams come True

What up everyone? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you as always by Off the Record. We love them over here and as I drive around the country, I know that Off the Record is always looking out for me. If the V1 doesn't get them, if the Waze doesn't get them, Off the Record's gonna get them. Off the Record sets you up with qualified attorneys in every state in America to fight moving violations on your behalf. Don't let it ruin your day, don't let it ruin your vacation, and certainly don't plead guilty. Get Off the Record. Go to offtherecord.com slash tst to get 10% off all legal services through Off the Record. Again, that's offtherecord.com slash tst to get 10% off all legal services through Off the Record. All right, folks, on this episode, I've got the homie, Shant from CMS Motorsports in Studio. We're talking about AMGs. We're talking about what it's like restoring them. We're talking about the demand for them. We're talking about what Shant and his team are doing with my car and a whole lot more. It's Vintage AMG Day on the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. Guys, the Smoking Tire is giving away a 992.1 Turbo S in partnership with Dream Giveaways. We're giving away a $275,000 car with some slick choice mods. The proceeds benefit charity, and you don't have to buy any merch. It's a straightforward entry process. So hit the link in the show notes and get entered to win today. What's happening, Shant? Welcome. Not much, man. Thank you for having me. Welcome in. My neighbor, about a quarter mile up the road from the studio here. CMS, which you won't see, because the sign says Marina West Auto Body on it. Business within a business, if you will. Well, we have the other side, which was CMS, which is smaller. Now we've grown to a bigger facility in downtown. So now we officially have a showroom, and we're building out. So I'm building out the showroom to where when you walked into AMG, you had a car. It's a huge office with all the seats, the wheels, and everything on display. So you can specify your sheet. So, all right, reverse it. Reverse it some years. We met eight, nine years ago, probably, but you'd already been in this game for a long time at that point. Why pre-merger AMGs as an area of expertise? I've always been passionate about just AMG, the pre-merger. I mean, back in the 80s, if you had anything pre-merger AMG or tuner, it was like you were the king of the road. So my first experience with an AMG car, so my mom, she designs custom wedding dresses. She's retired, but she used to, she was a private designer that used to get hired through all these like very high-end, wedding gown businesses. And when someone wanted to design a custom wedding dress, they hired my mom to come in and design it. So some brand name, you know, needs the specialist to actually do the thing. So her main clientele was based out of one bridal shop in Beverly Hills, which I probably still there right next to Sacks. I don't know if it's there or not, but they used to have a parking lot in the back with like a gazebo smoking area. So in the summer, when I was on summer break, when they used to contract, you know, my mom to go out there, I just used to go hang out, walk around and go eat. So I was sitting in the back of the shop one day and, you know, in the parking lot comes this white SEC, just AMG white pentas, brand new car. This was like late 80s, mid 80s, 85, 86, you know. And I see them rolling up and they just parked and they were probably engaged. So she walks inside and then he stood out there and was smoking a cigarette in the gazebo and I'm just staring at this car. And he finally comes up and he's like, you like the car like with some European accent. I don't remember what he was. And I'm like, yeah, I love it. So the guy opened the door and told me, you know, go ahead and take a seat. And this was, you know, whatever, eight, nine years old. I'm like, I'm in core memory. And I remember like gray rikaros, fully trimmed the whole night. And that was was like, wow, yeah, this is what I like. This is what I want. And then, you know, the whole the whole thing with Miami Vice and all the, you know, drug dealers driving all these. So I dress like them guys now when you go to car shows too. Motherfucker dress like, you know, Radwood and all that. Yeah, you have to understand it was good on you though. It was a great time. It was a great time. And I started, you know, watching, you know, Miami Vice when it was when it was, you know, the show and I used to record it and rewind and play back all these parts with the and then my parents were wearing, he's wearing out the tape like an old porn. But it's like, but it's like Don Johnson getting out of a testarosa. So all these clips that had these, you know, all these clips that had these benzes, I used to rewind and replay to a point where my parents looked at each other like, is our son growing up to be a drug dealer? What's going on? You know, so he's just sexualizing Mercedes vehicles. That's where it started. That's hilarious. A guy let me sit in a coontosh when I was like seven. And it was like, you know, the next level. Yeah, there was a place in Atlanta. I lived in Atlanta at the time when I was a little kid. And there was an importer called like a gray market dealer called Formula One Imports. You might remember these motherfuckers because they were on the back cover of every DuPont registry in the 80s and 90s. They own that real estate. That was the expensive magazine. That was like eight bucks back then. That was where you bought fancy fucking cars from. That's how you knew what was for sale on the other side of the country. They had the back page of it. So that was when I was a kid, it was around the corner from them. And I was a real nerd about cars. So he would let me sit in all the cars. You know, I still have all those magazines. Of course, we don't do this. Just the best. It's too bad they have like zero value to any other persons. You know, about once a week, somebody's like, would you like my entire collection of road and track? And I'm like, I know I already have one. Right. What's you have? Like, what am I going to do with it? Where are you going to store it? Yeah, it's just I don't want your garbage. But thank you. And I say, you have your own garbage. My own garbage. I've had to build fucking warehouses for my own garden. Believe me, I know. Right, right, right. It piles up quick. So did it, did you like become a body guy, a body shop guy in in because you wanted to build custom shit? Or did did you decide to build custom shit once you got into the bodywork industry? Well, my my uncles both were in the business from back home. I'm Armenian originally born in Syria. So back in Syria, you know, with not having parts available like you do, you had to fix everything. Every every body shop was a fabricator. And they used to, you know, sit there and beat the metal, heat it. And that's the way you fixed cars, because you just didn't have a parts department where you called. So my uncles were real crafty with their hand when they they came to the States. They they flew to Boston. And my my dad's cousin owned an Osmobile dealer in Boston called better GK on Osmobile. And they worked there for a few years. And then my uncle bought 69442 brand new and they drove it to Los Angeles. Cool. And that's where they opened up their first body shop in Hollywood called stallion auto body. It's a better it's better than the name that Osmobile dealer. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then they opened up their second facility. And then eventually, you know, grew into, you know, retirement. And then that's when I kind of took the business over and continued at Marina West. Did you go like work with them? I was there in the summers. Yeah. I mean, I have photos of me like, yeah, five, six years old, like pounding on metal. Like it's, you know, I loved working with my hands. So they used to come pick me up in the summer and take them with them to the shop. And I just used to dabble. And I remember like, back in the day, they used to heat up the paint. And that's how they sprayed it. It was like, they were spraying glass right even back then. But it was just solvent based pungent. You could smell it like after you painted a car, you could smell the paint for like three weeks after it was serious stuff. So it seems bad. And he used to be in the booth with, you know, smoking a Marlboro just in the fucking pain. It's like, yeah, it's flake. So that's kind of how I grew into it. Yeah. What kind of flake? It's a camel. It's a camel blue flake. Camel light. Oh, it's camel lights, for sure. So that's kind of how it all started, man. And then why Mercedes, you know, I was always passionate about Mercedes. My dad's first car was a 57 Mercedes 180 pontoon. Yeah, Racktop. And ever since then, there's been a Mercedes in the family, whether it's a diesel or whatever it is. And the whole, you know, movement with Mercedes and the tuners in the 80s was exciting. Yeah. I mean, it was just, you know, the car. Did you start building cars like you're building more like you're building now? My first car that I built, this was right out of high school. I bought a 1986 300e, a grandpa gold on Palomino interior, Bonstock, the guy worked for JPL. At the time, my brother worked for Rusnack and he brought it in as a trade and this thing was like spotless. So my brother called me, he's like, listen, you want a car? It's not that expensive. It's, you know, the color's not too exciting. It's smoke silver. Do you want it? I said, fine. So I ended up buying that car. And would he have that exact car in high school? Yeah, might have been a 320, but it was a 124. This was an 86. Okay. You know, just bare bones, you know, gray bumpers, just real basic. Yeah. But it was amazing transportation. It ran great. So I ended up buying that car. And then a year later, you know, after flipping through magazines, I'm like, hmm, let me make this thing look like a hammer. Yeah, like the six liter hammer. So at the time, I couldn't afford to buy the AMG parts because they were super expensive. So there was a shop that used to sell, it was called Euro, Euro Imports. It was in the valley and they had replica AMG parts, which were amazing. Yeah. And then there was another company called Performance Autosport. So I bought European headlamps. I bought this AMG kit. I found monoblocks for it. So I made this thing exactly like a six liter clone. And that's what I drove, but it was grandpa gold. And everyone used to be like, why this color? That's all. You only wanted to paint the bumper. Right. The whole car. Right. Actually, a hammer in that color, like today would be pretty rad. I still own that car. Oh, you do? I still own it. Did you put a V8 in it eventually? Not yet. But eventually I am. Oh, you do? I'll do you when you both did. Folks, taking a quick break for Mac tools. You know, Mac tools, you've seen the Mac tools truck at shops before. But have you ever thought of being the one who actually owns that route, selling those tools to those shops for anyone already into cars, working on them, being in and around shops, or at least spending your weekends wrenching on something. This is perfect because Mac tools franchisees run their own mobile tool business selling directly to shops and technicians. It's a relationship business. It's repeat customers that you service every week, but you're not left to figure it out on your own. 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That's mactols.org mactools.org slash tire to learn more. We also got support today from Factor and for me, eating healthy isn't a willpower problem. It's a setup problem, right? Until I found Factor because here's what happens to me. My setup is a mess. I do not put time to eat in my calendar. I got four jobs, I got a lot to do. I'm running all over the place. I don't put that hour or whatever to deal with lunch in that schedule. But with Factor, I can hit the nutrition goals. I can eat on time. I can eat correctly without the planning. The grocery store runs the cooking because the Factor food, it's already in the fridge, right? Factor's got meals built around goals, right? That could be weight loss, it could be over on nutrition, it could be protein, it could be GLP1 support for strength and recovery. They've got the Muscle Pro collection and every meal is crafted with those functional ingredients like lean proteins and colorful veggies, whole foods, healthy fats. 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One more time, factormeals.com slash tire50off, that's 50, tire50off and use code tire50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box. And now back to the show. 18. Wow. So that would have been like 1790. This was 97. Yeah. 97. Yeah, cool. Yeah, late 96, early 97 is when I bought the car. That's pretty rad. That's pretty good. And I still own the car and I actually took my wife on the first date with that car. That's cool. You should do the 55 powertrain thing that I'm doing. Eventually. When Matt frees up a little bit. Practicing on my car. Yeah, no. We've done it before but I took my wife on the first date with that car. That rules. And when I picked her up, she's like, what is this? I said, well, this is my Benz. And you know, she was used to, you know, her parents leasing her new cars and she had a new Benz at the time. And I mean, it was amazing how humble she was. I mean, the car was spotless. But it's an old Benz. I think it's clean. I think you could have an old car or a cheap car as long as it's clean. Yeah. I think a lot of men put too much thought into what women think about their car and all they really give a shit about is, is it clean and like in good condition, good enough condition. And at the time, I mean, that's all I had. Yeah, you know, that that was my car. And you know, fast forward, you know, now we're married. And I built her that wagon. 47 cars. Yeah. 109 actually. Get the fuck out of here. 109. So I built her that wagon, that 124 wagon. And then now her daily driver is the 500, the six liter car I came with. She doesn't want a new car. We originally kind of met because of that red wagon. Yeah. Which because I had and I suppose I still have, although I'm running out of money, I still standing off her to buy that car for Hannah. She loved it. That car is just badass. Yeah, it's awesome. I love that thing. And every time I drive it, I mean, she won't allow me to sell it. She's just like, it's a, it's a red, essentially a 500 E wagon. Yeah, it's, it might be on my Instagram. Oh, it's, it's on the floor. It's some hard way down there. Okay. Yeah. It's really, I mean, you can't miss it. It's awesome. It's exactly the thing you think it is. It's badass. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Great car. Yeah. Okay. So the, the, the, the trends of these cars kind of, I mean, you know, it, it, it dipped for a while. They were out of trend and now partially because of stuff like Radwood, partially because of, you know, once Mercedes expanded AMG to a full model lineup, plus a, a sub lineup of the AMG, you know, light with the wheels and but not the engine and blah, blah, blah. You know, everyone, you know, then flocks to the sort of purity of the original vehicles. Yeah. Even if, and they're so, they're so rare, the original ones, the true original is so rare that there's plenty of room in the market to create accurate recreations using original and, and, and, and, and period parts and whatnot and handmade stuff. Right. That splits the difference. Absolutely. You know, even, even if you were to find like, let's say an original body kit, it's 35 years old. That's been repaired multiple times. And just like, you know, the Dinos for a while, when they had no value, when people were building these cars, they didn't dump much money into them. Oh, dude. So I own a Kuntas and a fucking, I had a 328. You're telling me. Yeah. I got those two cars were more full of more Mickey Mouse trash that I've spent more money on fucking. Yeah. You know, and, and the thing is, I used to go collect parts from like Pickapart and back then they didn't have online where you got a, you know, you knew a car was coming. I literally after school, I used to go, you know, twice a week and walk. Yeah. And I've bought AMG kits, wheels, AMG wheels, all kinds of stuff from the junkyard, because people just didn't care about them. And the condition of these parts is horrible. Yeah. Bonded and drywall screwed, they used to put pieces of wood and, you know, just destroyed. So is there in today's world in 2026, is there any, unless a car is a, you know, it's one of these cars you see at Gooding that's right $700,000. And it's, you know, it's on it's as, as delivered on, you know, outside of that, is there any real value in saying this is an original AMG body kit versus, you know, wherever you're getting the stuff that's going on my car, for instance. So if you're building an original AMG car, something special, whether it's a 6-liter or a hammer, having original parts on that car does make the difference. However, if you see the condition, I mean, I have an 84 500 SCC factory wide body car with 23,000 miles. The car's untouched. And if you look at the body fitment of the body parts on it, you know, over the years, they fatigued. Yeah. And the car's never been repaired. It's just perfect condition, but they fatigue and the technology they had back then building the, you know, the body kits and the body panels isn't what it is now. There's no one that's recreating these as far as on a factory level. There's, you know, AMG has a classic program, but it's not meant for parts. It's meant for like, you know, record keeping preservation. They have this whole like, you know, a certification process now that they do. And which is great. But when it comes to manufacturing parts, there's no one doing them. So I've purchased new body panels, new bumper kits, like for the 500E, I have brand new fenders, brand new bumpers, everything brand new in boxes that I've purchased years ago. I bought the last of the stock of everything that's that they had with 500E. The back glass is different on a 500E. It's thinner. The defrost lines are different. I have two brand new rear glasses. And I just bought everything. This was probably about 10 years ago for pennies to the dollar because they didn't want them anymore. And that's what I'm popping molds out of because they're just not available. So if you have a 500E or you have a wide body car or you have anything special, God forbid that gets wrecked or you want to restore, there's no one manufacturing these parts. Yeah, yeah. We're recreating them, you know. And I don't see anyone worldwide that's doing it. I there's people in Russia and Ukraine and all these people that are manufacturing parts. But I see some of these parts that they bring and they're just not usable. Sure. The QC is just garbage. It's garbage. What about, okay, so that's if you have an original car that gets damaged or the body kit is warped and needs to be replaced or whatever. That's a small percentage of the people we're talking about. And you do that stuff. You restore those original cars. Absolutely. And that's a real thing. You also do stuff for people like me. Right. Who go, I want a thing that is a fictional product. That hasn't been done. That hasn't been done. Or, you know, I would like you to recreate a wide body SEC hammer. Right. But I don't have one, you know. And so it's, you know, a third or a half of the price to make one from scratch. Right. In that case, is there any value to putting a premium on real parts? There's only if it's a whole part of the whole. There is no value to go original in that, in that case. And are the reproduction parts that you're like, it'll look, it looks better. They're actually more perfected than the original. I mean, and everything is made out of steel construction. Like the wide body SECs were doing, they came fiberglass bumpers and fiberglass quarters. The later SECs, very few of them came with the metal quarter panels because people were complaining. They were cracking, you know, it's a pillarless coupe. We do everything out of steel construction. It's welded to the car. The body kits, the spoilers, the cladding fits perfect. So if you look at it, it's kind of overly restored, but that's just the way I like doing it, you know, to make it look perfect. Yeah, I went down when your, your homie, what's that guy's name? Your, your, your metal worker who was working on the car? Attila. Attila. Yeah. Attila. How do I forget that? Awesome. Yeah. Name. That guy's, that guy's on a different level. I had the picture of it. He was, he was at the halfway mark where he had them tacked on and was just starting to blend it into the one. And then you sent me, you know, the photos of it up primered. Yes. And it's got a really, it's just got a beautiful curve to it. It's going to look unbelievable. I mean, once the car comes back from Tennessee, there's a lot of massaging we still have to do to the metal. Yeah. Wait. Okay. So let's, let's, let's talk about my car for a minute because I'm so excited. So I'm excited that I'm building this. I've wanted, well, I've wanted to, if I couldn't buy the fucking red car from you, I was going to have you make me my own red car. There you go. And it just so happens. I mean, that I might not have pulled the trigger had I not gotten a free red one to four. It's the perfect color. That's what it is. It's the perfect color for what you're doing. I mean, bless you. You don't understand the red in a 124, like the wagon. It's just gorgeous. Any, any red Mercedes is just same on the 129s on the S L's. Absolutely. You know, a silver 129 is like a $20,000 car and the same car in red is a 30,000. You had a silver one. I had a silver one and it was beautiful. Yeah. And I only got it because I couldn't find a red that I liked. Yeah. So now we're doing a red. Yes. Okay. So I came to you with the concept, which is 500 e cabriolet and we didn't have to say much more than that. You're like, I know what to do here. Oh, yeah. So, but we did when we post things about it, you know, people are a lot of this, you should have done that, you should do this, you should do that. And oftentimes, there, there isn't even a real debate because the reason we are making certain choices become very obvious once you learn why the choice was made. Right. So take me through, from when I came to you and I said, here's what I want to do. What are the challenges and what do we do to overcome them in making the convertible look and feel and sound and drive like Mercedes had done it, right? But in a way that is reasonably cost effective, given the challenges and, you know, returns the best possible result. Right. Now, as far as the exterior goes, there's really not much you can do. I mean, the 500 e looks pretty badass. The way it is. I mean, with the bumper and everything the way it's set up, the fender flares, they just, they just make the car. It's not really a challenge, but the difference between doing the coupe versus the sedan or the wagon that I did is the flare in the back is, is kind of different on the sedan on the original car, because you have the dog leg molding, which is a separate piece. Yeah. That has the flare. So just taking that design and what we did was we 3D that that's that's what I did originally, I 3D that and I made a mold out of it as a separate piece without the dog without the dog leg. And then we, we created that same shape in a 3D model. And then we reconstructed it out of steel. That's what we did to her. So in essence, it does have the same flare, but it's one piece. Yeah. The side cladding, obviously the quarter cladding is one piece as opposed to a separate dog leg molding and the door cladding. So that we basically scanned and we recreated a piece of cladding, which has that, that taper, which meets with, that meets the body. Yeah. The front fender cladding is the same. Yes. And then the rocker molding is the most challenging part to take the four door rocker molding and recreate it into a size of a coupe that has the taper both in the front and the back. The whole point is to make it look like as if Mercedes created a 500 CE. Yeah. That's what it would be. And that's the most challenging part is to make it look factory. See, the wagon was a bit easier because it does have the Sadan is the same right. Yeah. Only the fuel door was a little challenging because the sedan has the fuel door on the top and the wagon has it on the side. Okay. But we figured that out. And that's basically what it is. You know, it's just that back section of the coupe. Yeah. So that's what I pay attention to, to perfect because the rest of everything else is bolt on the fenders, the bumpers. And actually, we got super lucky because a bunch of the bits on my car that were shot like the bumpers were stuff that we were throwing in the garbage. Right. And a bunch of the stuff that was in good shape, like the trunk lid and the hood, all that stuff. And the doors. Yes. We're like, Oh, we're keeping those. So and those were actually in really good shape. Lucky there. There he is. Yeah. Get at it. Attila, the fucking blend on that is real nice. And then so I already kind of knew I'm not as much of a fan of I am as the 500. Yeah. I having owned that my SL 500, my one twin, I was the one 13 that I had. I knew that for the kind of driving we were doing around, we weren't going on the Autobahn in this car. I'm rolling around LA. That's what I'm doing. Maybe I'm going on a road trip on the weekends. Like that's what we're doing here. The four cam engine was not going to be that beneficial to me in the first place. And then you said, by the way, it won't actually fit. Folks, one more break because support is coming in from blue chew. You know what it is. 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Like, that's why they're saying function because it's like it used to be like, oh, you have a problem and this can fix it. Now it's like, you don't have a problem, but you can be Superman. I think that's where it's and I like that thought process. It's a reframe folks. And boy, do we have a special deal for you right now. Get two months of blue chew, gold. You get the third for free with promo code tire. That's promo code tire at blue chew.com for more details and important safety information. We thank blue chew for sponsoring the podcast again, code tire, get a third month free when you get two months of that blue chew, gold, baby. Guys taking a break from the action because support is coming in fast like Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, who's now got a podcast and you're always asking me what I'm listening to when not recording this show. And right now it's this, the new season of drive with Jim Farley. In it, the Ford CEO talks to some of his favorite people about what they're driving and what drives them to succeed. Like formula one driver Daniel Ricardo. Listen, there's a well-worn trope about racing drivers not being interesting to listen to. But if there is one that is interested, interesting to listen to, it is Daniel Ricardo. I think this guy's takes on stuff and life are great. And look, Jim is a racing driver also. I personally raced against him like two months ago. And it for me, a CEO that drives race cars on the weekends is about the pinnacle of CEO Dumb when it comes to car companies. So the two of them together, obviously have a lot of things to discuss on drive with Jim Farley, which you can get on your podcast app. Very easy to find drive with Jim Farley. Check it out. Right. And so explain why we went with the five and a half liter from the 2002. So the 500 E the 400 E and the 500 E was manufactured by Mercedes. And they reconstructed the firewall for that engine to fit in there because essentially the four cam engine is a bigger engine. Yeah. And the way it sits in there, you need to basically cut away the firewall from a 400 or a 500 E and re-weld it with changes, everything dash, everything comes up. I've we've done that before too. And it's a lot of work. It seems like diminishing returns. Yeah, it's at that point, it's just it's, you know, financially, it's not the smart thing to do. Yeah. Other than that, you're going to have to sit there and beat and I've seen this happen where people have literally beat the, the, you know, hence the name hammer. That's where it kind of came about. Get the fuck out of here. No, they literally beat the firewall. That's where the name came from, because they hit the firewall with hammers. Yes. That's, that's where the name originally, there's like an Instagram clip right there. We learned something. Did you know that? No. Yeah. If, if you have a commonly known thing and I'm the last one to know, do your customers know that shit? Very few people that are like real aims, you guys know that that's what they did to fit the six liter in there. They literally hammered the firewall to make that fit. That is, you know, from a company that is famously unfunny, you know, that's, that's like nobody takes themselves more seriously than Mercedes except maybe Ferrari. That is a very funny inside joke. If you hear some of the funny company, if you hear some of the stories, you know, I got a chance to meet Hart Muth. Oh, he's, he's different. And, and he, well, he tells me some stories of AMG and what they did. Like when they did the road America shoot out and all the stuff they did to that hammer, when they brought it to the States, that's a whole different story. But he told me some of the stuff that they did. I mean, it's, it's amazing that they thought of all this stuff back in the 80s. This is 86, 87. But yeah, they're gonna have spent time with Hart Muth in Florida. Guy doesn't fuck around. No, no, he doesn't. He doesn't. And he's actually in the process of building like a set of SCCs. Oh, yeah. Which is pretty wicked. Yes. You have to knock the firewall back even further. He's really, he's really recreating those SCCs, which I'm so happy that actually someone is reimagining this thing. Hartman, don't forget your fucking boy when it comes time to do content on that car. Yeah, that's going to be bananas. It's going to be bananas. Okay, so, so anyway, the the the the 500 e engine is neither practical to install, right? Nor in fact, I think is it practical for my use case, actually, it's not because the parts are becoming obsolete. It's becoming harder to find people that want to work on these engines. You know, like if I didn't have, you know, the network that I did, or as a matter of fact, my brother, which has been with Mercedes almost 40 years, you know, 38 years, he knew these cars when they were brand new. So I'm very grateful for that. But a normal person that wants to own a 119 powered four cam Mercedes, it's becoming very few, you know, far in between to find someone that knows those engines. And that's when the the 113 engine comes to play, which is a much newer engine. It's a much more dependable engine. And it has a lot more power. Yeah. And it's a smaller package. Yeah. So it fits beautiful more power and torque. Yes. And because we got a donor car, this 2002. Yes. We get a five speed gearbox. Yes, we get a better diff. Yeah, get the E 50 we get the entire powertrain from the E 55. Right. I mean, that's a 350 horsepower out of the box. Yeah, smog legal smooth as butter. And with, you know, ECU tune with the exhaust, I mean, you can easily pull close to 400 horsepower and still be a daily driver, which gives you 2025 miles per gallon. And let me tell you something, man, you're looking for a weekend cruiser. This thing is going to be a hot rod. No, no, I don't I want to have balls. I just like the with four cam engine compared to a two cam engine or a single whatever, a single over a cam engine. The up high power band, where when you have a car with a fucking slush box, right? I'm I going to just keep the power up here effectively. You know what I mean? It's not it's not like I'm talking about a Ferrari. I'm talking about a big heavy cruiser. So right. Yeah, I want some power. I want some torque. Oh, yeah. I don't I don't need a dual overhead cam power profile for that type of driving. And and with this car, you know, once it's all dialed in, like I I've driven plenty of 124s with a 113 swap. I've you know, I was working on one last year and they took it to Monterey with a six speed gearbox that's pretty cool. Yeah, dude, that car was zesty. That when you do a car, we have one. Sorry, am I in the one when you this shout out to Matt quick, quick classics in Tennessee, he's doing our powertrain swap. Yeah. And we should be getting the truck, the truck going there like very, very shortly. Now that we now that we have sorted the 55 can be driven onto the truck. That's a detail that I did not know and is good to know. I thought it was more crash than it is. No noise, right? Okay, cool. But so he's done he's kind of known for doing the manual swaps. We have one at our other store, a black series that he did a CLK series with a manual that is fucking spicy, really nice. And so we're not doing a manual swap. I don't know this. There's no need. It just doesn't fit the character of the car. It's not LA. You don't need it. It's a cruiser. We're giving it an extra automatic gear, which is the right move. And so so he's going to make the whole put the whole E 55 underneath my car. He says, including HVAC, he's also going to do the suspension. He's going to do the the the Bilstein damper with the H&R spring, which is what the E 500 had. Yes. I saw my homies at HRE came up to laser scan. They did. They did do that. Some pretty. The laser scan is good. I like the laser scan. Yeah, no, they I mean, they they got some pretty high tech shit. I mean, the guy and the guy is pretty knowledgeable. Sean. Yeah, came by a really nice guy. So what they are doing is and we'll get a photo of it up when Zach, who will come back from the bathroom, I guess. Everything all right, buddy? Oh, that's problematic. That's problematic. There's a lot of pollen in the studio. Zach, will you pull up a photo? You're talking about pre merger AMG's in your nostars. Yeah. We did not talk about stash pockets. The HRE 544 wheel, please. So I had to HRE has had to restart production of the 17 inch version of this wheel. Oh, so they are going to go 17. They're making them in a 17. That's why they had to laser scan. Amazing. If they were doing them in an 18, they could have gone off the route. No, no, we're 17 is the correct move. So it's the it's the 544. It's the same the two piece FMR, which is it looks like a three piece, but the barrel is a forged barrel, which is actually a two piece stronger and lighter. And we're going to do the I haven't I haven't chosen the finish yet. But I you were right, we need to go with like the brightest silver with like the liquidiest clear coat right on it to make it like like with with that red almost like a platinum silver glow. It does right. It does not clear. Yes, like something like that. Frozen polished clear. It does need to pop. Yeah, yeah, without a blink. Yeah. So I'm going to have to go down there and look at finishes in person again. Yeah, the the the the configurator is helpful. Oh yeah, we have do you have photos on there on the 124 black one, the black one, the second row, second. Yeah, that that's a 124. Yes, that looks badass. That's actually a 500. Yeah, with the Lorenz or front bumper on it. That's rare. I mean, I think that looks correct. Don't you gorgeous. That's the best looking wheel on the car, like the monoblock, whether it's the arrow one or the OZ three piece, you know, you have to keep the car within its within its era. Sure. That's why when I have clients that tell me, Oh, I want to put a newer E 55 wheel on it, it just doesn't work. Zach, third from the right in the bottom, the top row, there's a whole car photo. I mean, that looks that's on a coupe, too. That's on a coupe, man. That's why I bought it. That looks fabulous. That looks great. That's that's that's our look right there, doesn't it? Yeah. If I mean, if I can get it, but that's an 18 inch, you know that you think so. That's an 18. You see the distance between the floor and the rocker. Yeah, that's too much because and also what they did to this car, not to knock the car, but there's no there's no side skirt. You see how the bumper and rear bumper sits lower? Right. To me, it looks incomplete and the center looks empty. So but that's an 18. It's too big. I would go 17 and your car is going to be squatted down a little more. You want it to look. The car you brought outside is the car I wanted to sit like and that's exactly how you want it to sit. But that is the right style of wheel. Yes, that's exactly the right wheel. Absolutely. Oh, and speaking of style, you see what I have it arrived today. No way. That is beautiful, man. You're looking at the wrong side. That's the back. This is the front. That is awesome. So this is our I love our fabric for the seat inserts and the doors and I think it's going to look nuts. This looks will look great with the black leather. Absolutely. And it's got this matches this one tone matches the car. And then this brightness will will do nice with the silver trim. Yeah, right. I think it will look great. Yeah. And it's like it's it's aggressive but not not like psychedelic. You know what it is? Once it's once it's in there, we're going to have to pick and choose the stitching. I would probably go with like a gray stitching and or piping because the original seats do have piping. Now, what I'm going to do with your car, the 500 E has perforations on the bolster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like your car. So we want to do the 500 style seat. It's an actual recaro seat. So they my guy can take the factory seat and re bolster it to where it looks like the 500 to give it a little bit more support. It's really like that's actually important to me is why I have a hard time with old cars. I need a new I need a brand new seat. You sat in my car. Yeah, yeah, it's it's so we need that. If you want to take it to the next level, maybe we should talk to recaro because they do make a newer seat, which does look like the classic, but it's it's a different design. So on the you the one like yours is perfect. So the one like mine is the 500. Yeah. And what I did with mine is this it's not a spring yet the original 500. It has a little firmness to it. That's what we need. And you want that support. Yeah, more structure and with with the cloth insert that I have on my 500, it gives you a lot more. It's grip grip. Yeah, yeah, I that's I love a cloth seat because you have that actual tension on your clothes, right? You don't slide around, right? But yeah, more more support on the bottom or firmer bottom. Yeah, so it doesn't you know, you need that support. Every old Mercedes on earth, the front left of the seat is like completely collapsed. And it's fucking destroys my spine. The early models have the spring. Yeah, the late models like your 94 95 model has the has the foam which has a lot more support. It's still it's so old now. It's all fucked. It's fatigue. Yeah, so and then all right, what else? So we've got the 500 suspension. Who did you say is doing the who did Matt say is doing the exhaust for this car? Super sprint. Yeah. Yeah, it's out of the UK. He said all the age age fact will work. Like factory, which I was great. And my top is in okay shape. It is. Yeah, the hydraulics probably would need to be rebuilt. Yeah, because those have a tendency to leak, which my guy can do. Okay, I would do that because you're going to put the top up and down. It has like things that you need. Yeah, it has to be done. But good part is the top is good. The cam is good. The headliner is nice. You know, I would I wouldn't I wouldn't put a brand on the top on it because you're not going to drive that car with the top up. You're going to constantly put it down. The top doesn't leak. It doesn't have tears. It's in decent. It was replaced maybe like four or five years ago. It needs a good cleanup. Yeah, we can clean it up. And that's it. I'm so excited about this car. I think it's going to be so cool. Brother, you're going to love this car. You don't understand. It's going to be so fun to drive. You have no idea. I mean, this is going to be your first experience with a V8 powered Mercedes that didn't come with a V8. That's the whole thing around it. You're going to be like, wow, this car can do this. I like old school hot rodding shit. It's going to be a hot rod. Yeah. And the beautiful thing is you can drive the shit out of the car. It's not a car that you have to be afraid of. It's just the mileage like whatever you lay in this thing. Yeah. And then it's going to, you know, anytime like my first experience with the swap, I sent my SEC to Matt Quick and I sent them an SEC and a 2005 S55. And he swapped that with a Supercharged Engine transmission. I mean, we were driving, we were going to drive this thing to Monterey. I sent him both cars and literally three weeks later, he drove my SEC down from Tennessee. And the second day I drove it to Monterey. This thing is an absolute beast. Yeah. 550 some horsepower. Yeah. And it's like the first time I drove this thing. I'm like, I couldn't believe this car can go this fast. And the same thing with the 124. With that V8 in it, you lay in that thing. It's just going to lay rubber. Like, yeah, I mean, the stock engine is 220 horsepower. This is going to be like 380 400. Close to 400 horsepower. Yeah. Yeah. In a little car. Super slow. In the little ass wide body. Yeah. Yeah. It transforms it. Which, you know, some people have asked, do we have to reinforce the structure of the car for this? You know, listen, if you're going to track it, I get it. If you're going to drive it on the street, you're going to be fine. The convertible already has the chassis, which is super strong. I mean, you lift this car from one end, the whole side of the car goes up. It's pretty beefy. You know, it depends on your use. I mean, if you're going to drive it on the street and your wife is going to drive it around, you're not going to need to do any that. As long as your brakes are good, you have good brakes. Well, Matt Quick said we're going to use the R129 SL 600 brake, which is the OEM upgrade. It's plenty. That'll be fine. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a pretty straightforward, but he did say he talked about maybe doing dry ice underneath. Maybe we talked about and he was going to, you know, when he takes the motor and everything out, he was going to do all the seals and service the motor, service the gearbox and stuff. So, you know, it's not just like he, he's expensive. I mean, he, and he's, he's, he, he's, he's giving me friends and family, which I greatly appreciate. And this is, he's like the guy for this from what I gather. Listen, he's, he's getting it done. But I was like, you know, this is, this is quite pricey. And he was like, well, let me literally run down the whole thing. And when you do it all out, it's like the bushings and the seals and the, this and the, this and you're like, fuck, and just, yeah, I can see it. Yeah. I have to keep in mind, it's not just the engine swap. You know, I had a heart, you know, in the beginning, I was kind of figuring it out. And, you know, he's doing a lot of work to the car. It's not just dumping the engine. Oh, no, for sure. Yeah. Suspension breaks. I mean, the super sprint exhaust system is a full stainless steel. I mean, that, that on its own. No, I had to send a deposit for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he does pretty good work. You know, you, you get the super sprint and then the, the, the continuation all the way up to the manifolds he does himself. So he's putting a lot of time and effort and he's the only one that I see that's doing it now. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that claim they can do it. I mean, look, my brother, which, which works for Mercedes doesn't want to really get into it. He's kind of figuring it out for his own, but it's quite a bit of work, man, to do it the right way. It seems, well, there's also like the merging of two cars wiring harnesses in order to like make the from two areas really. Like, yeah, I mean, to make the gauge cluster work. The key, the gauge cluster all, you know, he said we're going to use the key from the E 55. Yeah. He said he's going to change the ignition over and it's going to be the key from the E 55, not the old. It's probably better. I mean, my car has the original key and the, and the clusters original and the shifters original. Yeah. You look at the car from the outside and you won't know that it's, if I pop, if I don't pop to it, you won't know it's been sure, but I don't, I don't mind if the shifter is different. It's close enough that it wouldn't stand out as being like different. Did I send you the picture of, uh, of, uh, I sent it to Matt of our buddy Marcus Smith's, uh, 280 SC with an E 55 swap. I don't think I posted it on his drill. What was that? A local dude, but it looked, Matt did the power train. Oh, he did. Quick. Did the power was it a convertible car? Huh? Is it convertible? No, no, Matt didn't. I'm sorry. Matt did not do the power train. Um, someone did it in North Carolina, but it was a really beautifully done thing. I'll show you a picture later. It was a 280 SC with an E 55 and it had the E 55 shifter in it, but it surrounded in a burl. The rest of it looked pretty factory and, and it didn't, it, it didn't stand out. It wasn't like, oh, right. They blended it nice. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. As long as it's tastefully done, you know, that's, that's the important thing for my car. You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the shifter. Yeah, it's going to be. And again, the shifter, the difference between the E 55 shifter and yours, the E 55 changing the gears is like a blip. Oh, the drive. See yours has the drive, the snake and then the snake. Yeah. This doesn't. So you, oh, it's driving and then left, right, left, right. Oh, so I don't know if he's going to do that. If he's going to give you the left, right option, but if he paddle shifter the console box called twist machine paddle shifters, the E 55 does have paddle shifters too. Oh, so you're going to incorporate that. You can literally put buttons in back of the wheel and start downshifting. I mean, you can do that. It's kind of sweet. Money's fast. Money goes fast. Shit. That's pretty expensive. He's just adding up the tally. Exactly. Right now. Yeah. While you're in there, it's going to be fun. I'm super, super stoked. It's going to be crazy. It is. And what's the name of it? I just call it red, but what is the color? Is it? It's actually signal red signal red is the color for the car. What are the other reds that there's imperial red, which is from what? It's the same year, but it's more of like a ready red. Yeah. Here's this more of like a burgundy, not burgundy, but a darker red. Yeah. You're what's your wagon? Same color as your signal. Okay. That's signal red signal red. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is nice. Yeah. It's a beautiful shade of red, you know, I'm stoked with the interior and the top, the wheels. It's, I mean, it's, it's going to look gorgeous. Yeah, it's going to be crazy. I'm super fucking stoked. Do you think, I mean, because you, you've, you were building these cars before they sort of became trendy. Yeah. Again, what, how, how has the trend? I mean, is it just like, let me tell you, as you can build them now, this, I mean, right now we have 18 cars in production. Whoa. It's a combination of 124s, 126s. I have a 123, 116. And after the pandemic, it's just things just started to blow up. You know, it really put Mercedes on the map, partially because like people really started to understand how legendary these cars are. They started to realize these were really special back in the day. And they've been forgotten about because everyone's after the Porsche and the BMWs. And Mercedes was always kind of one step behind when it came to the 80s and 90s tuner game. Yeah. Now BMW was racing, you know, 80s and 90s. And so was Porsche and AMG was like a separate thing that was cool, but also sort of like gauche. If it wasn't for AMG, then Mercedes wouldn't have a motorsport program. Sure. At all. It would just, you know, they, they still are riding on AMG. But prior to the merger in 94, AMG was the one that was racing the DTM cars. They developed all the black series cars, you know, they, they put all that together. BMW, Porsche, even Audi had their in-house performance sector that was doing these. But after the pandemic, you know, things started shifting and even the prices of these cars started to increase slowly. Yeah. The first time a wide body cracked 500K, it was like, I'm sorry, what? I think the hammer was on the Hagerty's list in 2020 or 2021. Because I filmed it for them whatever the series was, like the investor bull market thing. But like, it was about six years ago and it was like, Hey, we should start paying attention to these. Sure. How many actual hammers were built by AMG? It's undetermined. Really? Yeah. It's on, they say there was 50, six liter hammers built, but I don't think that's an accurate number. I think it's lower high. It's higher. It's higher. I mean, it could be, I know for, for a fact they built a lot more engines because the heads were just leaky. They were, they weren't that dependable. People that were buying these six liter hammers were eventually pulling the heads off and putting a singular over it, cam head on it to make it more dependable. That's so funny. Every 3000 miles, you had to adjust valves. And so it was a race motor. Technically, it was a race motor that they wanted to introduce for the street. So there weren't many people that knew about it here, you know, and it was becoming to a point where that's where the cars lost value, you know, where, yeah, once they're, if they're just too annoying to maintain. Yeah. And too expensive. People don't know how to work on them. And that's when they just start dipping in value, you know, but just kind of like researching them worldwide, I would say probably 75 to 80 of them that were built, true actual six liter, some of them were non wide body. There's a handful of them that came, you know, six liter with the regular sec body, or, or the four door, like I own a four door SEL that came with a six liter four cam in it. And no wide body, no wide body. It's a four door car. I bought that car for, I mean, I was going to park that car out. It was the story on that car. Is the is the I mean, okay, we don't know exactly is the documentation on the cars good? Like if you if you that's that six liter car, is it is it possible to document an AMG as being authentic or not authentic? Yes, they have a certification program now that they only have record of the special cars that they built. Yeah. But there's a handful of like cars that came with body kits, wheels and seats, there's really no record behind it. But the six liter cars, most of them are documented. The really high specced cars are documented. Like the 86 that I bought, I bought this car literally from someone who was thrown on a field in San Diego. And I went there to buy a six liter engine from the guy. And I ended up buying the engine. It's a 30,000 kilometer motor. And I see this car in the corner. And it was just it's hit from the back poor shape. So I said, what are you doing with that car? He said, Well, I bought this car to part it out, because I'm going to put together another SCL that I have. And he goes, I just lost interest. So I said, do you want to sell it? He goes, Sure. So I went and I'm looking at this thing, AMG gauges, AMG steering wheel, AMG body kit, Penta wheels. But the cars just just torn apart, like it's just poor, poor quality. Interior is all intact. It had a it has like a purple leather interior, purple wood, wood everywhere. So I ended up buying the car for like 1500 bucks. And I was going to park this car out. Okay, I didn't know what it was. Yeah. So I brought the car to the shop, a buddy of mine came by, and I showed him the car. He's like, what are you going to do with that? I said, it's a parts car. He goes, don't tear this car apart. Don't do anything to it till I get back to you. Let me do some checking. So a week later, he comes by the shop with full documentation on this car. Apparently, this was the highest specced SCL course, it was bought by Texas oil well, Tycoon. And he brought me the bill sheet on it, which I have $138,000 worth of AMG upgrades in 1986. Jesus, car was a six liter Gleason Thorsten Rirand Nakamichi sound system. The guy checked all the boxes. Yeah. When he ran out of options, he didn't want Ricciaro seats because it wasn't good for his back. He put SCC seats in it, coupe seats, which fold forward for Norris. How much an option was that? How much in options did you say $138,000 in options? Yeah. And the car at 86 is crazy. My Kuntas was 110 for the whole car. That's 400 grand in options today. So that car, I sent all the documentation to Germany a few years ago. MKB is a company in Germany, which is run by Melker, the M&AMG. He sold it, but he originated that company. After the merger, everyone split, and Alfred opened up HWA and then Melker went to MKB. And they have a certification program through AMG Classic. So I got the certificate. I sent everything in the VIN number and photos, and they had the car in their database. Cool. So they sent me the full certification on that car. So is it worth restoring? I'm doing a full, I mean, full blown restoration on the car. It's an incredible car. And I mean, I had no idea what it was. I knew what I had, but I didn't know what it was. That's cool. So you thought you had an interior. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, yeah. So I got, you know, that car, it's rough. It needs a lot of love. But now that I certified it, now it's time to really throw balls out and just make it bitchin'. Well, as we've seen with so many of the classes at Pebble, like, you can restore it from being on fire. And if it's restored well, the VIN's there, then it's got a story. If you have a VIN number and a paper trail, you can build the car from dust. Yeah. Yeah. That's so cool. So. And I think, you know, it's got, well, it's an SEL. So it's a sedan, right? It's a sedan. Okay. Yeah. It's a four door sedan. Long wheelbase. Long wheelbase. Just badass. If you see the car, you know, there's something special about it, but you just can't, like, I don't. Wheels are Pentastar? They're Pentas, Staggart Pentas, Nines and Eighths, which were Arrero. I mean, the car was fully, fully optioned with everything. Leather curtains, leather headliner. Leather curtains? Leather curtains. That's aggressive. Texas. You know, it's got cows. That is some Texas shit. Yeah. That's crazy. When I went, so a couple years ago, we went to the 233 West meet. This was something they put together in Chicago, like a little AMG meet. 233 West was the address for Westmont Chicago AMG. Okay. So they're doing another one in a few years, but I actually took my 124 Coupe there. And it was like a gathering of all these AMGs. And Richard Bucksbaum, which owned the Chicago, you know, AMG sector was there. And I told him about the car and he goes, Oh yeah, he goes, I know who that, you know, who that car was specced to. He goes, we built that car in Germany. He goes, most of the six liter cars. So the real AMG cars, they say, were built in Germany. Yeah. And there was some built in the US as well. And there was some built in Chicago. And then, you know, Andy Cohen, which owned Beverly Hills Motor Accessories, was an official AMG, but they mainly did body kits, wheels, suspension. Germany is where they did all the heavy duty stuff. And that's when Hartmut actually came down from Germany to service all these cars, the six liter cars. Yeah. Is there any other, like outside of either restoring or replicating original AMG models? Right. Is there demand for other stuff? Are people, do people want Lorenz or stuff? Do people want schnitz or stuff? Is there really a demand for that kind of stuff today? There is. I mean, people are wanting anything that has to do with Mercedes tuning. Like I bought a Koenig, one of one Koenig a few years back from an elderly couple out of Oregon. And the guy gave me, so he knew Willie Koenig personally. So they designed a one off body kit for him. And when he shipped the car down, he shipped the body molds with the car. So I have all the original molds to that car. And I can tell you maybe four or five times a month, I get people wanting me to pop a body kit for a Koenig, which I won't do, obviously, because I'm not going to devalue my car. A and B, Koenig is still an operating company. Yeah. Yeah. But could you use the molds to build a whole car for somebody though? Everything. But you would do that. It's just you just won't sell the body kits. Well, I won't do it because that body kit is specifically for my car. It's the one of one. But I have people, people want a Koenig, people want the Lorenz. I don't know. One of one. I feel like if you have the molds, you could operate like a stud farm. The yours is still one of one. But you could issue a run of 10 recreation body kits. But yours would still be the one of one. So you could extract max value. It's just a lot of fiber so much. Zach and I had a go in the Koenig Testerosa, which was supposedly a thousand horsepower. And I think it probably actually was. It was psychotic. The brakes were terrible. But it had like 400 extra pounds of fiberglass on it. Yeah. How did it drive? I felt heavy because it was. But also like steering was heavy, but it was very I'm sure that thing has a thousand pounds of fiberglass. Lifting the hatch was serious effort. We think we're filling out with gas or something. We had to open the rear clam shell to put fuel in it. And there was no rod for it. So like it was tiring on the shoulders. How would you do that by yourself? Oh, you could. It would not be possible. You'd be out of gas. That was no rod, no. I mean, it probably came from the factory with a rod, but this one didn't have one. It was really shockingly heavy though. The power was insane. I mean, really insane. And when it when you got on it, the amount of black smoke that came out of the exhaust when you it was why it was a listen. Koenig really built some radical cars. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They were very performance driven. Yeah. And if you had this body kit made out of like carbon or something, like it would probably be okay. But like it was just so heavy. The amount of breaks. Yikes. The amount of bondo that they use on these cars is insane. Yeah. Like I have an older Koenig four door car that is in restoration. I'm restoring slowly. I mean, there's areas that have literally an inch and a half. Whoa, it's because the fiberglass was just wavy and shitty. Or they kept adding it just to smooth it out. And in the joints, you know, where they wanted them rounded it literally like the corner has an inch of bondo and it just kind of feathers out to the body. But eventually this is going to crack. Yeah, I mean, there's that's all quarter inch of bondo cracks everywhere. It's ridiculous. That's terrible. You know, is there a side from, you know, something like you just talked about a barn find restoration of an original car and you know, you score the car for no money and it turns out it's a thing worth saving. Outside of that, do you have like a dream build that you haven't gotten around to yet or you know, the one of the cars that I wanted to build was the shooting break, which was the one we did for my brother. It was something that like just was never done before. Yeah. And it was something that's kind of like, you know, what if Mercedes made a shooting break? It's so cool. I love that car. And people either like it or hate it. You know, it's you get mixed reviews on the car. I feel like if someone hates it, they probably just don't understand what you've done with the interior. If it had a fucking tan interior or something, they probably wouldn't even think. Yeah, I love this interior. I think it rules. It was a color that my brother chose. I mean, it was a collaboration we did on this build. He did all the mechanical. He did most of the assembly I did, you know, we did the coach work. That's real glass. It's not plexi. So it's not tinted blue. It's not clear. It's totally clear. But it does look everyone thinks it's, you know, blue tinted glass, which it isn't. Yeah. And the car is just breathtaking. Every time I still look at it, it just kind of just it's unreal. Yeah. It is the dopest shit ever. Yeah. So did you did you take a roof off of like a 124 wagon or is that fully handmade? So the roof is off of a four door car. Okay. Just because of the flatness and the continuation, but everything else is hand fabricated. The pillars, the door, the reinforcements, everything is handmade. Just the skin of the center portion of the roof is the one we used off of a sedan. Yeah. And that's because we wanted the same flow. But everything else is custom made, man. Those side moldings are all handmade. The drip rails are all handmade. And these are all intricate aluminum pieces that we had to weld and shave and bend the, you know, all of the roof from the inside getting it reinforced. So when the car's twisting, you're not cracking glass. We literally built like a cage within the roof to give it reinforcement. That thing is stiff. The rear hatch is completely custom fabricated. The hinges and the struts are off of a 124. So if you break your hinge, you can buy another one off of a 124 wagon. But everyone thinks it's a donor roof, which it isn't. You know, everything was handmade. Wow. I'm making the second version of it, which is called a speed tail, which has a bit more of a slope to it. And that one's going to get a 6.3 in it. I don't know. It's a 156 with the manual six speed. Oh, cool. It's going to be meant more for performance. It's a 156. That's the 6.3 from like a 20. S63 ML 63. It's the naturally aspirated 500 horsepower. It's what comes in the black series. And they do have a black series tune, which with the cams and everything, which will make it pretty beefy. And that's going to get no backseat leather wrapped cage. It's going to be pretty wild, you know, once it's done. And then, you know, when we built the car, we were like, you know what, let's just kind of get creative with it and see where it goes. And this is what we ended up with. You know, I love how this car looks. And I know you don't want to show it publicly, but you did show me the rendering of the second car. And yeah, the roof line is badass. It's badass. Yeah, it's going to look wicked once it's done. It's not a, it's not in a different universe from this one. But it's just, it has a bit more of a slope, a bit more aggressive. That one's going to be all black, which is going to be kind of like the sinister version of this, you know, that's tough. So if you're trying to build a car, black hides body lines, you know, something about a black, white body just looks, it does look tough. It looks unbelievable. You need to be in the right light to see it, but it does the other black one that we drove to Monterey, which we did the white body on. And you know, everyone kind of gravitates to the black. Like you see the black one, it just looks, it looks vicious. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's got a much more vicious look to it. And that's kind of what I want with this one. I want it to be kind of like if, you know, if Dr. Evil had a shooting break SEC, that's what it would be, you know. I mean, the Mercedes is kind of the bad guy of the luxury brands, right? Yeah. Part of it is like, they're driven by bad guys in movies, but also like they're fast. They look good in black. I think they've probably used that color for a lot of the flagship cars, black series. Like it's just associated with that. Ferrari's got red and yeah, it's a real like Russian gangster car. Yeah. It's an earned reputation. I'd say. Yeah. But yeah, the shooting breaks looked magnificent. Yeah, it's very, it's a breathtaking car. It is. I mean, it's just, it turned out right. But like a good Mercedes shouldn't be like friendly looking. It should be pretty mean. See, this is like my brother's car is very, it's a joyful car. Like it just looks happy. Like the interior color, the whole thing, which is great, you know, and that's where people really are astonished about the color of the interior. Like my brother blew it out of the park, choosing that color. It's a custom shade of leather that we, he had tinted and that's the color he wanted. It's like a cerulean blue sky blue. There's really no name for it. He chose that color and he had it dyed in that color. I mean, we, he looked at like maybe 15, 20 different shades and that's the one he put his finger on. And in the beginning, I had second thoughts, but he had a vision and I might go with it and he was right on the money. It looks unbelievable. Because there's a lot of it. It's like every surface in the car. If it wasn't every surface, I think it might not work so well. Like if it had a black console or a black dash or something like that. I think you're absolutely right. It has to be not just the color, but like an egregious amount of it. It's full boogie. But like you said, I remember we had dinner at that Italian place in Monterey car week and we walked out and the car was across the street just by happenstance. Park profile under one lamp, like so dramatic. And it looked like the windows were blue tinted because every single surface, I know you said it's like is covered in this, I don't know, BVI Tahitian Ocean blue and from, from floor to ceiling. And but the contrast of that with the all white car and having the huge window, I don't know, I mean, it's like a sneaker or something. It's just so striking. So that, that color, even the exterior color is a pure white. Yeah. There's no pearl or anything. There's nothing in there. And the panel roof really makes a big difference when the sun hits it, it like glows inside. Which, which looks awesome. I get that. Absolutely. But when you have a color that is so ubiquitous in your interior, that it appears the windows are tinted that color. That's a pretty powerful use of color. It is true. And, you know, it works. He knocked it out of the park with choosing that color. And I mean, it, and what the, it's got the blue matching wood grain, you know, everywhere, which makes it nice. And going back to what you said, where it's all one, it makes it look a lot more complete and desirable. Do you think you've built a lot of cars and we've seen you at Radwood for years with all kinds of cool stuff. Do you think this car puts you on the map more than others, or is it just a step? Yeah. I mean, this is just the showstopper. Wherever you take it, it just people gravitate to it. I mean, when we first took it to Monterey last year, it, it might, my phone was blowing up like people worldwide were noticing this car because it's just never been done before, you know, it, and it's still till today. Like we were at a Mercedes event this Sunday and it just, it creates a crowd. Sure. There's no other body like it. There's no shape like it. And then without the interior, it would probably have that effect. That is like a beacon for everybody. It is, it is. We're, we're building now. I'm kind of changing it up. I'm redesigning a wide body now. Like I want to make my own design that mimics the AMG, but something a bit different, something a bit more CMS, like a custom build. I'm in the process of building an SEC for myself, which is a body swap. It's going to be based on a E 63 S 2022, where you have the donor and I want it to be more performance driven with the newer interior, just something, something different. You know what I mean for people? Because the, the wide body SEC, it's, it's becoming too diluted in a way now. You know what I mean? Because it's, you know, you start to see more of them and there's more of them around and people want a change. You know, people want something different. I'm also in the process of building the Jag. I have an XJS and we're putting a custom wide body on it that we've already created. And we're putting, I bought an XKS that's been wrecked. So we're putting that whole drivetrain in there with the six speed and making it just a badass Jaguar. Cool. We saw really one of those Lister Jags at Radwood in Charlotte that was pretty fun. Let's go to the people. We got a few questions from our patrons over at patreon.com slash the smoke tire podcast. If you want to ask questions of the show, listen to the live stream, get the show early, get extra show, get access to exclusive collabs and things like that and more patreon.com slash the smoke tire podcast is where you do it. And we thank the lot of you. Our patrons have odd usernames. So get on board. Fikachi, a country day school says, I'm trying to rescue a S123 turbo from a neighbor. What are your favorite ideas to mod or build this type of car? What is an S123 turbo? It's probably a sedan. The S stands for a sedan. Like an S class? It's the 123 is like the 300d. Oh, okay. All right. So turbo diesel? I'm assuming it's a sedan. All right, gotcha. You know, with diesels and performance, I don't know much about them, but I do know in Europe, they have like tons of upgrades to get these diesels going. I mean, the newer style diesels like the most desirable one, I believe is the model that's out of the 210 to the 210, which is like the E 55 body. Yeah. The blue tech was at the first year of the blue tech. No, there's I don't know the engine code for it, but that particular diesel is the most desirable one that people build from from what I know. Again, I'm not much of a diesel guy, but I mean, they're pulling 6700 horsepower out of those engines, which is incredible. That's crazy. But as far as upgrading, I would probably, you know, swap it with like a newer style diesel and turbo it, you know, and that would be the best. Yeah, just a newer, a newer diesel. Yeah. Yeah, but definitely faster. Beef up brakes and suspension on that. 390 bullet in the head says, what gives you more gray hairs finding a missing piece of a 40 year old Koenig fiberglass or trying to explain to a purist why classic Mercedes needs 600 horsepower. I mean, gray hairs just, you know, dealing with Mercedes parts and finding parts and locating parts is probably the the toughest part of getting gray hair. But, you know, the purist guys, you know, with Mercedes, the guys that are the purists are mainly the people that are driving the Gullwings and the 300 s else, you know, anyone that has a Mercedes from the 70s and 80s because being a tuner was accepted back then for Mercedes, it's not really the purist, but it's just finding the parts for these things is the toughest part. Sure. LL Cartier says, if you were to acquire a decent 210 E 55, that's like what we bought, right? Right. Right. And wanted to make it the ultimate mile munching hot rod, what could be done and at what budget? I would manual swap that car. I mean, I I've always wondered why Mercedes didn't manufacture something to compete with the M five because that automatic transmission is horrible. Yeah. I mean, it's just a slush. If you're going to cruise it around, it's fine. Yeah. But they were they were an AMG meant for the wife, you know, they were something as a grocery getter, the shifting is smooth. So something four door naturally aspirated V eight manual would be the most desirable. And that's what really wakes that car up. Every early 2000s and Mercedes that I've driven that came with an automatic that I drove that had a manual swap was much better. 100%. I drove a CLK 430 with a manual swap that was like lovely. The black one. No, the fourth. Oh, the color of it. Yeah. Maybe that's my cousin, David. You did. Yeah. Yeah, you did a review on that. Yeah. Yeah. So he manual swapped that himself. He did himself. Yeah. And it was a car better price. Yeah. Crossfire gearbox, crossfire gearbox. Yeah. And it totally changed the whole driving experience. Yeah. Yeah. And then we drove a SL 55 that had a manual swap that a guy saw that. Yeah. I saw that episode. So good. Very good car. Yeah. It's what they need is that transmission is so terrible. Yes. Okay. Actually, I like I like Duffel shuffle retirement clubs is what is Mercedes up to with the door to door screen in the C class. Dude, then you see the news and it came out. The most aggressive use of screen I've seen in interior so far. No, I didn't. What news came out today? I'll find it real quick. Is it good news or bad news? Bad news. Zach is shaking his head. It is bad news. Oh, it's the 2012 and 2027 C EV. Okay. The C class. Wow. I mean, there's a there's a couple of problems with it. I can think of one. There's so many. One is that front grill. Two is that is a grea just screen. It goes beyond the frame of this photo, Matt. The screen literally goes there you go. Oh my gosh. Crazy. Wow. I mean, at this point, it's just you're not driving a car anymore. That's a crazy phrase. This is the C class. So you're telling me it's cheaper to make screen than just dashboard. But this this is literally screen from one end of the dash to the other. Yeah. Only bookended by two vents like. Are you seeing Lincoln? That Lincoln has a curved dude pull up the Lincoln navigator. This just doesn't make it seem like you're driving a car anymore. No, you know what I mean? It takes away from the driving experience. And then the exterior like the grill is just horrible. The grill. I see what they were trying to do, but it doesn't work. Does it seem like you know, in order to have it work, you have to have the vertical bar in the middle and then a hood ornament on top. They're combining two styles right here into one. It's like SilverSau plus the newer drive and just your go to go back up to the tail lights though, because those looked kind of decent. I mean, this is what BMW. Other than the Mitsubishi stars in the middle. And this is what BMW did too with the grill. It's just not it's not working. Mercedes showed a concept that had this shape of a grill, but had the divider. But it looked more like the the original, you know, chrome Mercedes. This is just, you know, yeah, that's weird. That's not great. And what's with all the Mercedes signs on these? They're everywhere. They must know. Like the, like the the the Maibach SL. It's all over the hood. The interior, the convertible. It's like the Louis Vuitton overkill. Yeah, they're trying to have their own like pattern. Yeah. Tim A says, what's your opinion on MB text and its reputation for being indestructible? It's fantastic material. Yeah. I mean, it's durable as hell. It doesn't crack. It just doesn't color, you know, it doesn't fade. It's I have my 300 E 86 is original MB text and it looks like it's brand new. Yeah. You take care of it to medium mile ones and it just looks great. It's incredible what they've created with that MB text. I mean, the Mercedes leather is leather, but eventually leather cracks, you know, especially on the convertible course, but the MB text stuff is just unreal. I mean, my 300 E it literally looks like it's brand new. Yeah, I like it. It's good. We already got to Darian's question earlier. Can you notice these nuts? Why do automakers not prioritize driver seating position when designing a cabin for non specialized cars? I would disagree with the sentiment. I think they for the most part do prioritize driver seating position. I mean, now they do. I mean, sure. Mercedes 512 boxer did not 348 my 348 my feet, you know, my hips are right. Right. Right. Now they do. They do. Yeah. I'd like to hear why this commenter thinks that because the vast majority of cars I sit in have a pretty decent. They do. I think that used to be, I think they used to put packaging first. So then like they go, oh, the person's legs will aim a little over here or the seat will be off center because we have to fit engine trans in these hard points. I mean, the Italians weren't, were like famous for that. Oh yeah. They were in the 90s Italian cars. They didn't give a shit about your seating position, whether you could see out the back window or it's just same with the Germans when they were forced to build right hand drive cars. Yeah. They built them shits out of spite. That's right. But like I mean, I mean, look, if you I drove like my friend had like an 88 Corolla or something in high school that he like inherited from his grandma. And I thought I was okay. Like Hannah, you know, we've got the Delica, the Mitsubishi Delica 91. Very comfortable. I mean, it's only, it only goes up and down and back and forward, but but the seats aren't that bad. No, they're not. I'm not. I'd like to hear what the basis is of that comment because I think most cars actually do a reasonably good job. Merkin ball run out of curiosity and maybe you don't know the shot. What, what could I expect to be the cost of a manual swap for an SLK 55? That would be a Matt quick question. That is a Matt quick question. You don't really do the power. I don't deal with the mechanical. I mean, you know, and again, what I think the fucking guy for the drove, he was about 20 something. I think it was 25 to 30 for the swap. Wasn't it? No, he said he was into the entire car for 42 grand. Oh, yeah. He bought the car for like 25. Yeah, I think it was maybe 20, but he also did a major service while he was in there. Yeah, I think it sounds about right. There was around 20 prices of parts have gone up because everyone's like kind of woken up to what's going on. So I can tell you like now to try to find the manual gearbox where Mercedes are out of a crossfire. People know like what they have, you know, before you could buy the whole Chrysler crossfire for 1500 bucks, right? Yeah, just pull everything out of it, pedals and all. But that would be a Matt quick question for sure. Yeah. Chubba Red Bar Cheddar. Have you ever considered producing a watch without limiting the number made or at least producing more so that they reach the public? You know, we do these. Yeah. And we make limited numbers of them. Well, so we can't really because we are limited by the number of the amount of moot or I shouldn't say we can't we could. We haven't so far because this watch that we've made uses the Lejeu Perrette Swiss movement. They will only sell us 250 of them a year. Wow. That is the maximum that they will sell us. Period. Now, is that face color mesh to your Porsche? Yes, that's beautiful. And in fact, this is the prototype of the one that we're releasing next. In fact, it is painted with my Porsche paint. That's how we got it right with the guilt dial and everything. Sorry, guilt hands and with the red. That's beautiful. Isn't that cool? So, so these are going to be 1200 bucks. It's not bad. Yeah, we're doing 100 of them. So, we're limited by we will have sold every movement that they will have. And that's the combination that's coming in. This is the sixth color we've done. We've done we did the mint green, the orange, the dark blue, the British racing green, the Tahitian black pearl and now this one. Very nice. Yeah, yeah. It's gorgeous. So, and then we have an all new watch we're coming out with later in the year. Okay. That one will that other watch we are less limited by movements. And so we're going to make more of them regardless. So, that's why they were so limited. We literally couldn't make more. So, if you were a patron, I hope you I hope you got one. If not, I hope you join and get one now. Okay. I don't know if this is okay pearl love bone of the mad green dog, maybe slightly different from the question you answered earlier. Okay, sidebar. They are good to reschedule to load tomorrow before noon. Beautiful. Can you get that other car down here? Okay. Yeah. Thanks, hubby. You're the man. Is he a hubby bee? No. He's the whitest dude ever. I just bug him out. He doesn't like when I talk like that. Yeah. Okay. What unique project would you like? Would you most like to have a well funded customer bring to him? Meaning, what is your cost no object build? That I've done so far or that you want to want someone to bring to you? Geez, I mean, that's kind of a hard question because there's so much you can do. I mean, I would love to build like a v12 stroked v12 powered just badass build your own Zonda motor kind of basically, you know, in a six speed and a custom basically what Hartmut's doing to the sledgehammer would be like my dream build. You know what I mean? There was a fairly decently substantiated rumor that every time an SL 60 or an SL 73 came up for auction, it was fucking Horatio buying them back to strip them from motors. Really? That's interesting. They were paying a lot of money for them too because you turn one was Zonda. Sure. What did he do with the parts? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I've got to call him. Yeah, we got to find out. Out of like Russia somewhere. I mean, listen, I wouldn't doubt it because it's probably cheaper for him to do that than to develop the motor from scratch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The M 120, I think, is what is based off of the v12. You can't find them anymore. You know, so it is a fantastic motor, by the way. It's just everything else around that the wiring harness and every and the support is horrible. Yeah. The engine itself is a badass engine. I just actually got on someone's Instagram. I don't remember the name, but he's actually like turbocharging these things, twin turbocharging them, putting them with the manual. And he did an SL 600. Dude, it's wicked. I bet it's nasty. It's nasty. That's a good time. It sounds amazing. I'm so fast. Yeah, it's not so at the time when these were new, my buddy bought one in 96, 95 or 96. It was a purple special colored SL 600, which he took to CEC and he had it supercharged. And he drove this car and then he ended up selling it and now he wants to buy it back. So he has no trace of the VIN number. He has no trace of anything on the car. So I told him, listen, what month did you sell it? And he kind of remembered the month and year and he remembers putting it in the DuPont registry. And you found this. So we went on eBay and we found the month to seek us. Sometimes they put the VIN numbers in there and it wasn't there, but he's still trying to look for that car. So there's gonna purple SL 600 with a Lorenz or supercharged. Yeah, from CEC. Back then, I mean, it was kidded Lorenz or body kit, the RSK wheels, supercharged. It was pretty wicked. I did the bull run with Klaus Ettenburger a few times. He is not a normal person. Klaus is crazy. Is he? I mean, I've met him a few times, but I've never in my entire life. I respect him a little bit. No, I do respect him and I respect him as a businessman and as a fucking crazy German. Yeah. He did. He did one of the most dangerous things I've ever seen anybody do. He had a he did bull run in 2009, I think with us. And he drove a C63 with some other lunatic fucking German friend of his. And he had a smoke screen in it. Like he put a legit. Yeah, he installed a smoke screen. I've never seen anything like that used in real life. Crazy. And he had the smoke screen on the highway and it was just instafog. Wow. Like instafog. I couldn't cross how many lanes. The whole highway. Wow. Why would you do that? Like because we was because bull run was stupid. It's like long. It was long distance endurance street racing effectively. It was deeply irresponsible. That's pretty dangerous, dude. Well, because these guys would out do each other in the crazy land. It was like him and fucking Richard Rawlings and these these. Did he ever use it while running from police or was he did he make it? Like this is a fun gimmick to have. I personally witnessed him use it the one time and I was like, hold, I am I am out of my league. Was it like those DJ foggers? Yeah, maybe. No, it was apparently it was a very simple system that just dumped baby oil into the catalytic converters. Oh my god. That's nuts, dude. That was crazy. That's puff daddy injection. He's puff daddy injection. Yeah. And he fucking hit the smoke and I was just like, I just I couldn't believe it. It was one. It was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen on a boat. Yeah, it's super dangerous. Two, I'm pretty sure like everything about this was dangerous, by the way. This is like this was the most dangerous thing of so was it an actual race for time or was it just a run? It's not. Yeah, but like tell these fucking psychos that all these guys were all these guys including me at that age were out of their minds. But some of these guys were out of their minds and also like insanely rich. Right. So there's no consequences. There were no there were no smartphones really. So no one's really not going to get a lot of evidence filmed about you. Right. And Klaus, there was this unbelievable video. He did get pulled over once and him and his buddy who were German, you know, Kaus has lived in Beverly Hills for who the fuck knows how long. But he's, you know, they just start screaming at each other in German. It's on video and the cops just like I just I just I just I don't know. Doesn't know. Doesn't even know what to do here. You know, they give him a license, but it's a German license and it doesn't know what the fuck. And they just and they're screaming at each other for like five minutes at the top of and the cop just gives up and walks away. So like they would, you know, they do shit like that. And they can't fucking 50 G's in the glove box. If they got they expected to get arrested. It was nuts. I can imagine the client tell these people had. Oh, yeah. In the 80s and 90s. His client must have exclusively coca psychos for sure. For sure. Sure. People don't hear no ever. So I got a chance to meet Chris Han, the owner of SGS. Yeah. When I went to Retro Automobile, he was there because there was a going SEC for some and I spent a few days with him and he was telling me the stories of his clientele man. And he was selling like 200,000 plus cars back then goings, which I own a couple of and convertible conversions and all that. Dude, these people were like on a different level. Yeah, like they were on some shit. Dude, you know, and the configurators. Yes. Yeah. And you look at some of these bills and you think you had to be a different individual to 47 way seats. Even think about the shit. It's like panels that go up, up, up and then onto the ceiling and like behind you. They had what are all the switches like a tape player up here and one equalizers everywhere and you know, Clary on decks on the dad. I don't even know all this shit does. So I have a limo like a little executive stretch. Yeah. And this thing is like, it's got the whole Pioneer deck in the back. It's got the TV and it's got all these gadgets. Yeah. And it's like you don't know what the hell they do. They're just there. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a carrot du chalet model. Yeah. It's badass. The thing is badass. But like you sit in it and you look and you're like, you're sitting at a circuit city. Yeah. What do you do with all this shit? You know what I mean? I need to fine tune my EQ right now. Yeah. Of course. So I can imagine and I'm sure it builds. Well, all the Porsche like BB and Gimbala and all that stuff with Porsche's. It was not exclusive to Mercedes, but they were Gimbala was doing some crazy shit. And I think they're still like creating some. They are. They have like new stuff. And there's what's his name? The son. Mark Philippe Gimbala or something like that. Who's got that off road. That's called the Marzine. The Ui. Yeah. Yeah. Ui. Anyway, so yeah, Gimbala GTR Evo R by Turbo. Yeah. Apparently they're introducing this new Gimbala car in Monterey this year. Sure. All right. Good times. Good times. Cold air intake on my soccer mom SUV says people often complain about the complexity of repairs on Mercs. When doing builds, do you take steps to simplify or improve some of the common frustrations? Definitely. I mean, wiring being one of them, the wiring harness, obviously on the mid mid 90s early 2000 cars were like via degradable wires. They do they did sell an upgraded kit. And if they don't sell it, we run through the wires and get all that strained out. The cars were built pretty solid. I mean, suspension wise, braking wise, they're pretty solid. The drive cranes in them are bulletproof. It's just the support, you know, with especially the 80s and 90s with the Bosch fuel injection systems and the CIS units are becoming our, you know, archaic. If there's any way to EFI, I know that they do have kits which EFI those which they go, you know, instead of the mechanical, it's electronic fuel injection. That would be the biggest improvement. Where you can actually adjust and, you know, take all the bugs out of it. But other than that, I mean, it's just mainly the fuel system and the wiring. If you upgrade a to an EFI on like an old right us on a six liter motor or something, can you get a lot of extra power or a lot more smoother and power, reliability, smoothness, more support, efficiency and every way. Yeah. Is that a pricey thing to swap? They have kits that they sell in Europe. I've seen for like $2,500. I've never really pulled the trigger on one, but I'm tempted just to see what it does, you know, and I don't know why they went mechanical, you know, why they went with that CSI versus CSI. Everybody was doing that shit at the time. Yeah, everybody. I mean, the Japanese were doing, you know, EFI. These guys are going the opposite direction. Every 80s European car I've had has had the Lambo, the Ferrari, the Porsche. It's the same system. It's all the same shit. It's the same. You don't drive it for a while. The shit gets gummy and the fuel too doesn't help the situation and the fuel nowadays is just horrible compared to back in the day, you know, run that non ethanol. Yeah, that good shit. Yeah. ZR1 X go and give it to you. It says people in California who run Montana tags due to not being able to smog their old car. Why don't they just registered in a county that only smogs a title transfer? All right, sorry, I should have read this before reading it out loud. I'll finish though. We've registered our old truck at my parents' place in Eureka and don't have to smog it unless we sell it. We don't all have parents who live in Eureka. Yeah. I mean, I, I, well, yeah, there's two in your right. There's two answers. One is we don't all have parents that are in a county or like I've heard this before. If you don't live in a county or a place in the county, you can't do that. The other reason some people don't do it is because registering Montana saves the taxes. Whereas I think registering in Eureka, you probably still have to pay the California sale. Well, I think the question is targeted at people who would register their cars in California if California provided them a path. Yeah. But what you're also suggesting is buying a property in a different county specifically for this purpose, which is a far more inconvenient and headache inducing solution than, by far, than, than the Montana tag, which I'm not officially endorsing. But I mean, how about this? How about this? You write me a lease and I'll rent your parents' house for a dollar a month. There you go. And I'm on the lease, baby. Let's go. That's like the bill, like all the Montana tags. All of them are from like one office building. Yeah. We could run the office building in Eureka. This is like that whole hospice scam going on. It's like, you know, I mean, eventually there's going to be another loophole. People are going to find another loophole. Yeah. I mean, no, I genuinely think that if you, if you have a car that cannot pass smog and it's a collector grade vehicle or it's a, it's a, it's an old work vehicle or whatever, there should be some kind of a path. There should. It might be money. It might be something, but like, or some sort of like some sort of program where it gives you the opportunity to at least make it smog legal or something that's going to, because some of these guys, you know, that have these cars, they have no choice, man. This is kind of the car they own. And well, that's, that's a problem is that it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a hardship if you have your car that you need is not able to pass smog. Yeah. And also, it's represents an escaped value for the state. Sure. If someone with a collector vehicle, like my Kuntosh, which has never been able to pass smog, if I can't register it in California, but I would, and you could have my tax money, right? Well, what do you want me to do? Exactly. I'll give you the money. And that's what I'm saying. There's people that, that will be able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And they will, and they will, and there's people that can't do that, which wants some sort of an, like some sort of a package or a program where they can at least drive this car. Like take the money that you give me the, you give me the pass for under 2000 miles a year, and then take my money and have a, a, a program that retrofits old cars with better emissions. Yeah. Yeah. When I run for a f***ing mayor, that's what we're going to do. Until then, we roll around in red benzos. Right. I can't wait to actually once, when I had my silver 129, I would drive around and play picture me rolling by Tupac. And I'm excited to get to do it. What are we doing with the sound system on that car? I will leave it up to you. What is important to me is that it has a car play screen. So if my wife needs the GPS and s*** that it will mirror the phone, but like, I don't want, I don't want a whole trunk full of speakers. No, just something nice and crisp and clean. We can eliminate the ashtray and put like a, a screen in the, you have like the backup camera. Wait, no ashtray. We're going to ask these blunts. No. We, I wouldn't be opposed to a bazooka tube. I would, I would f***, I would f*** with a bazooka tube. Remember those, they, they, they came with straps. So they don't slosh around in the back. I remember that. The strap. Yeah. Those things bumped pretty good. They did. And you know, the company's still around. We can get them. Are they still around? They looked it up last year. Oh yeah. Oh, they're, they're around. I'm not, I'm not even f***ing around. I remember they, they bumped really well. And we should maybe get one, but someone had asked us on a previous show, like if we were to do like a rest, oh, mod Fox body, what would it, what would it include? And I said, it would have to be, you know, it would have to have less rattles and a coyote motor and this and that, but it would also have to have a strap down for sure. F***ing. You know, it's funny. I don't realize that. You have like the leather tie downs, you know, real, real nice, like John Ward would make. You know, those old school ones were just, I mean, they were just the simple tube with, with the speaker and they sound phenomenal. Yeah. They were great. For what it was. It was a boomer. So my buddy had one in the back of an IROC and that crevices. As one does. And that thing used to resonate off the glass. Yeah. Larry had it in the hatchback of his five, oh, and it turned your whole, it was like a hatch into a thing. Yeah. Then you'd have to put the sponge behind the license plate. Otherwise it would wrap. Softball for Fox bodies. I have five of them. I love them. Do you really? I love Fox bodies, man. It's America's one, two, four. I mean, thank for the buck. It's just, you've seen my Dominator, the white one, the white one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That one's got like the IMSA body kit on it or whatever the f***. Super wild. Super wild. You got, we, we could do a whole other show on all the non-Mercedes sh**. You have 109 cars, but we'll come back to it when my Mercedes is done. Definitely. Thanks, Sean. You're welcome. I appreciate you coming. I appreciate you guys for having me. That's so great. CMS underscore motorsports on Instagram. How the f*** do you pronounce your last name? I've never had to speak it out loud. Meshafagian. Boy. Yeah. Meshafagian. 13 letters. Yeah. It's a good thing you don't have an Oldsman Beale dealership. You'd be a deep sh**. I need a big building. Meshafagian. That's a good one. Meshafagian. That is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like a delicious entree that I'm going to order. It does. With a side of rice. F***. Get me some Lama June, like right now. Oh yeah. We got to go have some good Armenian food. 100%. That's the dinner, man. 100%. So down. I grew up eating Lama June every day. Or you guys come to my place for a barbecue, then we rock and roll. Can you do skewers? Oh, hell yeah. Can we make the skewers? Absolutely. With the swords? Yes. That sh**'s hard. It's very hard. And it's just the way you line it up. And you've got to use the metal skewers, and they have to be the right thickness. So when you're putting it on the fire, that metal heats up and cooks the inside of the meat too. So that's like the whole thing behind it. You try to do it, the meat kind of disintegrates and falls off the skewer. It depends how you're actually mixing the ground beef. So the butcher I go to knows the correct fat content versus the ratio. And it's how you kind of put it on there. It's, you know... Ali said he's going to teach me. Yeah. Yeah. My other, my Persian friend is going to teach me. Oh yeah. See Persian barbecue is too. Yeah. They did not add it down. Well, he's the one who took me to the spot in Glendale. Which... What did you go to? Rafi. Rafi? Rafi. Yeah. Oh dude, you went to like the... That's a good spot. No, it's a very good spot. I also fuck with Twin Lomajo in Burbank, the Lama June spot that has the special oven. That place is the, that's the banger. So I'll take you to, you know, you got to go to the little local spots. Rafi's is like the... It's big. It's big. The superstar. Yeah. You go to the little mom and... Oh, it's phenomenal. But you go to the little mom and pop spots where, you know, they have the special cut of meat for you set up over there. There's also the spot in Gardena by our other store that's like next level. Borge Star, if you fuck with Borge Star. I don't know much about that place. This is the shit. Is it? Yeah. Gardena is a secret. Is it Persian? Armenian? It's Persian. But Gardena is a fucking super secret. There's a lot going on down there. Really? Yeah, because nobody wants to go down there. I haven't been to your other spot. I don't want to go check it out. It's gonna be, it's, it's great. Are you guys gonna do the events there? Are you guys... We're working on it. Working on it. Yeah. The city isn't happy about it. The city doesn't like you doing anything. They're very resistant. Yeah. Yeah, but there's not much going on. Why wouldn't they want it? Like, it's direct traffic to the city and it's obviously quality people that are going there. It's like... I think they're, I think they're nervous because the fucking there's like takeovers down there at night and you stay anything with cars. Anything with cars. They're really on edge down there. We'd like to bring a bunch of cars to industrial area. At night time. Yeah. Yeah, they're really out of edge about it. All right. Well, I can't wait. We got the, we've sorted this. The truck is coming to take both cars tomorrow morning to send them down to a quick classics in Nashville. I was talking to Matt. I may, when he, once he's got like things sort of like maximally apart or start, I'm going to find the right time to go down there and see what's what. Yeah. You know what? Let me know when you're going to go down. You want to go? Maybe I'll go down with you. All right. Yeah. All right. We can, we'll make, we'll make a weekend out of it. Actually, there... Do you have a white suit in my size? Yes. We'll walk in there with a briefcase of the couple white suits. But there, I think he does his cars and coffees there. Oh, he does? Yeah. Let's figure that out. Yeah. One of the weekends when he's doing it, just kind of the car community in Tennessee is really growing too. It is. No, Tennessee is great. Knox feels great. Nashville is great. He's, and we got my boy Cameron Weiss is down there, although he's in Switzerland right now training watchmakers. How to make his shit. Wow. Interesting. He's like, he's like, I can't find any watchmakers. So I'm just going to go to Switzerland and train my own. Okay. Sounds good. But we'll have to figure that one out. And then he said like, I think he said two months and then the car comes back to you for paint and interior. You finish it all out. Just like that. All right. CMS Motorsports on Instagram is basically where you find what you need to know, right? Yep. Is that, that's where they find you. That's it. Yeah. Have, have Sean build you something. He's pretty good at it. I lost it. Don't I can't fucking wait. Thanks to our patrons for asking such good questions today. We appreciate you all. And Zach and I are going racing. So when you hear from us next, you will have the, the racing wrap up for you. And that's all I got. Goodbye. Thank you guys.