To All The Cars I’ve Loved Before | First Cars
Christian and Doug explore automotive nostalgia & personal car memories on our podcast— featuring true automotive stories and childhood car memories from everyday enthusiasts.
To All the Cars I’ve Loved Before shines a light on everyday enthusiasts, from father‑daughter/father-son duos and automotive brand launch managers to the restoration students and expert-level instructors at McPherson and Weber State Colleges. Real stories, real people, real passion—thats why our car podcast stands out from others.
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To All The Cars I’ve Loved Before | First Cars
SpeedyCop – Junkyard Engineering, Auto Adventures & Automotive Nostalgia
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In this auto-adventure-packed episode of To All The Cars I’ve Loved Before, hosts Christian and Doug welcome SpeedyCop (Jeff Bloch)—YouTube/TikTok sensation, retired cop, and master of turning junkyard cast-offs into rolling masterpieces. From his very first car, a 1967 Chevelle station wagon “family heirloom,” to his world-famous upside-down Camaro and amphibious helicopter race car, SpeedyCop shares the craftsmanship skills and creative spark behind each build.
The conversation takes us through Jeff's greatest hits: the world-famous upside-down Camaro that's still running 11 years after being built in three weeks in his driveway; the "Spirit of Lemons" street-legal airplane car made from an abandoned 1956 Cessna 310 that runs 12-second quarter miles; and the sideways Volkswagen camper that generated over 156 million views online. With each story, Jeff reveals the thinking process behind these seemingly impossible creations, giving listeners unprecedented insight into where creative ideas truly originate.
Jeff's favorite episode is "V12 Visions – Tom Yang’s Life Restoring Ferraris and Chasing Vintage Dreams" - https://pod.link/1733902541/episode/fe508d92b0cc8ff001a8da00cba9286b
Whether you’re into car restoration, classic cars, or simply love a good car story, you’ll be inspired by how an overactive imagination and a love for vintage lifestyle vehicles can transform rusting hulks into beloved cars that melt faces at every show.
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Listener land, you have found the best car podcast you've never heard about. But you know what? I think we have to change that partner because I checked the stats. Yes, they have stats for this sort of thing in the modern world. We live in Stockholm, sweden, india, germany this is just within the past week or two. Iceland, canada, around the world this is To All the Cars I've Loved Before. Carslovecom. Check out the link tree L-I-N-K-T-R, l-i-n-k-t-r dot E-E slash carslove. I think I got it. Is that right?
Doug:You got it right.
Christian:This is the first time for everything you have found podcast, where every car tells a story, every machine has a soul, every car has a culture. I'm Christian at CarsLovecom my real name no first, no last. I'm kind of like Cher who's out with a new book. He's Doug at CarsLovecom. Reach out to us, especially if you're an international listener. We love to hear from our folks internationally and that's one part of the show that we want to continue to explore as we reach out to different people via different vectors. So we are on Spotify, apple Podcasts when else, partner? Where else are we Get us?
Doug:from their website Castro Buzzsprout, amazon Music, youtube Music, youtube Podcasts Unbelievable.
Christian:How do you get us? You name it, we're on it. How do you get us in all these?
Doug:Do you just?
Christian:kind of slide them a little. Bitcoins breeze the palms.
Doug:How do we do that? How do we get there? I can't reveal.
Christian:Can't reveal. Sorry, you might take my job if I tell you no chance, no chance, you might cut my salary.
Doug:Let me say it, we are so well, we have a fantastic guest today.
Christian:Can't wait to introduce him and we're going to revisit the theme for today. Theme for today is where do ideas come from? Because today's guest is a bit of an engineer, artist, performance artist. He's a mashup of all these disciplines. Really fun guy to talk to, a true polymath, if there ever was one. But let's see a little bit more housekeeping before we cue him in. Uh, do we want to talk about uh being ranked on that, on that uh feed spot article? Done anything more out of that? I know we sort of we sort of teased that at some point. But getting a little traction, getting a will notice.
Doug:Yep. Yep Number 37 out of 90, I believe.
SpeedyCop:Out of 70.
Doug:Even better 37 out of 70. Right in the middle of that Top automotive podcasts. So thank you, Feedspot.
Christian:Yeah, and thanks for the people who are writing reviews for the podcast too. That helps us out a lot, helps spread the word and what else? We talked about the link tree. Again, the YouTube is being stood up. Doug is throwing snippets out there. He's really got it to kind of a succinct, succinct, fine art of teasing out the fun part and the. It's great the way the audio goes and you see the words beneath and it's a little less than a minute clip and we're putting that on all of our social presences. So you see us on Facebook. Where else? Instagram? Definitely on YouTube, et cetera, et cetera.
Doug:Yeah, you name it. Yep, we're doing our whole digital transformation, although we started digital, so it's pretty easy.
Christian:Yeah Well, as long as I don't turn into something analog, we should be okay. Here I am standing up a newsletter, I wrote it and got it to Doug and it's sitting on the editor's desk. Please don't yank out the red pencil, but look for that in the coming weeks. Can't wait. That's about all I got. Do you have anything else in the way? A housekeeping partner can?
Doug:we can can we dig in and yeah, no, I would just say um, so for the newsletter we we need emails. That's the plan to distribute it. Um, you have several different ways. You can send us an email right, send it to christian or myself at lovecom or on our link tree there's's actually a um subscribe button for email in the upper right.
SpeedyCop:So if you just want to subscribe to the list directly.
Doug:Go that way. Um, really looking forward to this. I'm glad Christians jumping on this, taking the ball and love your feedback.
Christian:Yeah, and if you really don't want to get it by email, call me up. I will print out the email, fold it up, put it in an envelope and mail it to you. We can also use carrier pigeons if that's a little easier for you. But on to today's guest. On to today's guest, doug. You want to talk a little bit about how he came into our orbit, or how he fell, unfortunately, into our orbit.
Doug:Sure, oh, it's not unfortunate for us, indeed, maybe for him. So we have Jeff Block, better known internet sensation YouTube TikTok you name it as Speedy Cop and we found out about Jeff. I'd seen some of his videos, especially the upside down camaro that's been floating around for a while. Uh, he goes back farther than that, but, um, we found out about jeff and got connected with him through another good friend of the show, andrew blackwood, who he himself, I think um could probably take up some room in, uh, in jeff's garage and probably do some welding for him and whatnot. He's, he's on the creative side as well.
SpeedyCop:There he is.
Christian:We'll introduce him. For Christ's sake, jeff Nice and drumroll Jeff Block aka Speedy Cop. There he is. How are you today?
SpeedyCop:Good gentlemen, how are you?
Christian:Excellent. So happy that you're here. So happy that you're here. Thanks for having me. So the weather's a little balmier than where Doug is, which is much cooler than where I am, but thank you for being in a safe place. He's got his posse of canines there with him. He's got a great shirt that says I pulled me over, which made me laugh out loud in real life, which I love. Today's theme Jeff, what do you think? Where do ideas come from? How did they strike you? When did they first tickle your?
SpeedyCop:fancy. How did it all start for you, Can we ask? So that's one of the questions I get asked the most Like I have all these unusual vehicles that I drive all over the country and people always like what are you on? How can I get some of it? You know what?
SpeedyCop:I mean, I've never done drugs in my entire life. People say, oh yeah, right, you did this, that in high school, never in my life Always been kind of straight laced that way, as I'm a Christian and I just have never done drugs. So I have all this creativity. I don't know where it comes from, it's just God given. But I have this really overactive imagination. So I can't look at things without seeing how I could alter them and make them more unique and personalize them and make them more fun or what I think is fun. And I can see mundane objects and figure out ways to turn them into something creative and fun and cool. And what I really like to do is take stuff that people are casting off, that's being scrapped and discarded, and turning into something that like drops jaws and melts faces and, like you know, it's seen around the world. So I take it as a challenge. Yeah.
Christian:And that's really interesting. Like my kids and I uh passed a junkyard and I tried to uh been a while since I've been in one and I tried to explain to my kids well, yeah, this is where old cars go and they sit there and then you can kind of mine for pieces. They looked at me like I had six heads sitting on my shoulder. It makes no sense. We're in such a throwaway society we don't fix anything anymore. A lot of times it's cost prohibitive to do so. So I think it's it's it's it's I don't know. I feel like it's this sort of throwback to the past to be able to to find something new and something old.
SpeedyCop:Right. I always say repurpose, recycle and reuse. We just take, cast off things and make them fun. And you know most people wouldn't take a discarded Vietnam attack helicopter that wasn't just stripped for parts, actually washed away in a flood, and make a race car out of it. That was also amphibious and street legal. But that's the kind of thing we do.
Christian:So where was the?
Doug:talk.
Christian:It takes a certain mind for that and determination and before Doug gets going here it's got to be a little wacko, I guess Well yeah, I mean, and it's here, you put it out there, jeff, for the whole world to see speedy cop dot com. You really want to read some interesting stuff? Go to speedy cop dot com. Yes, there's Instagram, youtube and all this good stuff. But kind of kind of go back to the source here. And if you go to the home page here, at the end of the second paragraph, at top of the page, it says a new speedy cop era has begun. Last sentence of the second paragraph says my overactive imagination has no shortage of bad ideas and many new projects are already in the works. And I love that, because the creative mind really never stops. It just kind of keeps going and going and success breeds success. So so I applaud you for seeing the creative in the everyday and having art match machinery. I think it's beautiful.
SpeedyCop:I'm sure my unmedicated extreme case of ADHD has nothing to do with this whatsoever right.
Doug:Well, but you do finish projects, so that's a good thing I do Now.
Christian:That's what makes him different from so many people.
Doug:Including myself.
Christian:Yeah, doug, that's such a good point. So, jeff, has there anything you've left behind? Is there anything you've got a third of the way or half the way through and either you or your team kind of said I don't know about this time, I don't know there are a lot of them.
SpeedyCop:I'll get cars and I have an idea in mind for them. I want to build something with them, and then my plans change, budget doesn't allow it or whatever, and I'll get rid of them, whatever, actually having built it. And um, I'm seeing videos the last few weeks of upside down motorcycle which I had planned out 11 years ago and didn't do it. And now my uh counterparts, carmageddon out in italy I think, did one and it's gone stupid, viral and I'm like I should have done it you know, next time you'll get there's no shortage of bad ideas.
SpeedyCop:It's just time and money and now'm retired, I have more time. Still, finding the money has been a challenge, but as I try to grow my brand and stuff like that, hopefully it will start trickling in and I can do more. I've got several lifetimes worth of projects here. You guys ever come visit me in Tennessee. I'm right by the tail of the dragon in Maryville, tennessee, and I've got a 20-acre mountaintop. It's absolutely beautiful. It's private. I've got a whole bunch of project cars and trucks here. Like I said, a lifetime's worth of projects I may have to fend the herd or bring in some help.
Doug:Oh.
SpeedyCop:I hear that Each and every one.
Christian:So do you know what Cadillac Ranch is in Amarillo, where all the Cadillacs are stuck in the ground.
Doug:I just think that's like driving Exactly.
Christian:Even better, driving up to your house would just be like driving up to Cadillac Ranch. So how does that work? Is there a barn or a hangar over here where everything is? Is there, just like everything is in states of artistic work?
SpeedyCop:So I've got what I call the field of dreams. We just recently had our driveway paved and it's so steep up our mountain that not everybody could make it up, and when I would have a trailer with cars on it, I couldn't always make it have to get a neighbor and a tractor and stuff and pull it up. So, um, we bit the bullet and sunk our life savings in asphalt. So now we've got a paved driveway no life savings, but that'll survive. Um, we have a big, beautiful shop. It's absolutely a dream garage, don't get me wrong. We have a large mortgage to go with it, but it's 60 by 100 steel building like a 21 foot piece in the center, so I have lots of room, two post lifts and a four post lift there.
SpeedyCop:And of course the four post lift is an oversized one because the weird stuff that I build requires that. So it's extra long, extra wide, kind of 14 000 pound four post lift, which is perfect to bend pack. It's really nice. Um, then I've got. I call it the field of dreams because right now it's literally just a field that I cover with plastic because we had to get all the cars off the gravel areas that were going to get paid. So right now they're still sitting on this plastic in this field and it's raining right now so I can't pull them back off it just yet. But there are two airplane fuselages for future builds. One's going to be a limousine, one's going to be basically a drag-and-drive car. It's another 310, like the Cessna I drive now, except it's going to be a lot faster and the one I drive now is no joke. But this is going to be like a single-digit drag-and-drive street car.
Christian:Where do you get the airplane fuselage? Where do the airplane holes come from? Facebook?
SpeedyCop:Marketplace. They pop up periodically and you have to go and get them. One of them was in Ohio and I think one was in Kentucky, but both of them were a good drive away. And I just met a guy a couple of days ago on a brand new Ferrari the tail of the dragon that said I used to own Atlanta air salvage or whatever, and he's got this huge fleet of like Learjets and stuff. I'm like, dude, I'm going to upgrade, I'm not going to use my the chassis for that limo project because I want it to be a licensed limousine. You know, I want to actually make it a commercial limousine. So yeah, and that's been done before, but I want to do it my way. You know what I mean.
Christian:I love it. Well, doug, I'm speechless. You're gonna have to take over for a little while my mind just bent, yeah, no, uh, did it ditto.
Doug:I'm loving the, uh, loving the garage, the shop, yeah. So if we go back just a little bit, jeff, well, way back, you were telling us in the pre-show about your first car and what we didn't talk about, and maybe I'll let you talk about your first car and then I'll get into the if you modified that or where the modifications start on what car. But tell us about your first car, how you got it, what you remember about it. I think it was really a family heirloom, so to speak.
SpeedyCop:Heirloom is a strong word for the shape that car was in when I got it. It was a 1967 Chevelle station wagon. I had no idea in high school in the late 80s, early 90s that I had a unicorn, because a Seville wagon from 67 is truly a unicorn. You just don't see them anywhere. And my grandmother bought it brand new on the showroom floor in 1967. Three on the tree, manual transmission, straight six I think it was a 230 straight six, and she drove it off that showroom floor. My mom learned to drive on it, my older sister learned to drive on it and then I my mom learned to drive on it, my older sister learned to drive on it and then I was the second oldest of the nine kids that my parents had and I learned to drive on it.
SpeedyCop:By the time I got this car, we were in upstate new york. Road salt had done a job on it. Uh, my dad didn't really wash cars so road salt would eat them up and he'd get another one. Well, this being an heirloom still running and driving, it had holes so large you could literally reach inside the vehicle from outside and wave your hand around. Because this, it was just gone. So he said you can have this car. It's still running and driving. It just looks terrible. So I put it in the barn and for four months this is my first automotive project I took bondo and chicken wire and did what I had to do and covered up those big holes, spraddle, canned it, you know, and it looked much better than it had before but it turns out you know, at that, timeons being very uncool, women didn't want to ride nothing.
SpeedyCop:Girls in school thought it was just awful. They had no desire to go on a date in that car. I wish I still had that car. You know how it is with your first car and you get rid of it and you wish you kept it. And some smart people will keep their first car, but I'm not that person. Apparently, when I sold it, the engine had just died and it was high mileage and rotten and in rough shape and I think it got scrapped. I don't really recall because that was a long, long time ago. Um, but that was a fun car. I had painted it at first blue and then red with black stripes like racing stripes and, uh, it was a turn. You know, any car you could spin the tires out the parking lot with was all right. So, yeah, round it up enough and drop the, drop the clutch, it would spin. Yeah, and it was certainly not a ball of fire, certainly not a race car, but it was adequate for you know at the time.
SpeedyCop:Yeah, yep, good and good memories and um, so that it had to be like, uh, late 80s when you got it, so it would have been late 80s, right and I spent, like I said, a good four months just filling the holes and stuff in that barn and just trying to remodel the interior a little bit and things like that.
Doug:So that means oh. I'm sorry.
Christian:I was just going to say that that means that for a couple of decades this thing was on the road and drivable, and that's pretty neat, that's pretty neat neat.
SpeedyCop:That's pretty neat. It was probably 91 when it finally died. Uh, completely so. And then my grandmother helped me buy a four-cylinder mustang coupe and I loved that car. That got me a good bit of the way into college I would say through college. But I changed cars like I changed clothes.
Doug:So good deal yeah, no, um and um. Go and maybe step in a little farther back. Growing up were you always building things, whether wood, metal.
SpeedyCop:I absolutely did. I always had that creative bent and that desire to kind of engineer. Now my grandfathers were both grandfather on that side was an electrical engineer. He retired from RCA Televisions but he worked for no, sorry, he worked. My other grandfather worked for Mobile Oil. He actually worked on the Minuteman space missiles. So he was in the Navy, world War II and all, and he worked on the Minuteman space missile program, which is really cool, and they were both brilliant and I don't know what happened to me, but I still have that.
Christian:You're telling me you're descended from rocket scientists. Okay, fantastic, we're seeing. We're seeing a little where it all comes from.
SpeedyCop:But please continue. This is fantastic, yeah, so, um, when I was little and I want to say I was only like five my uncle was a classic car collector and he was of the mindset that it had to be 100 original. Um, that's the only way he would accept a classic car. Any kind of alteration was just wrong.
SpeedyCop:You had to keep it as perfectly original as possible, um and he never understood the things that I do with the cars because it's so different, but I just like to, you know, personalize this to the absolute max. At any rate, he took me for a ride in his model a rumble seat roadster when I was like five years old and I was hooked on cars at that moment. Now, my dad wasn't a gearhead of any kind, he didn't really change his own oil, um. So it's not like I grew up around it, but I would visit my uncle from time to time and we would do parades and things and he had all these cool antique cars that I just loved. So this model a rumble seat that's the car where the trunk opens up backwards and it's a seat a rumble seat.
Christian:I've never seen a rumble seat.
SpeedyCop:They called it the mother-in-law seat back then because you'd put her back there outside the car. So that car got me hooked on cars and he had a really cool collection. I actually have a few of his cars now that my aunt graciously gave to me after he passed, and amongst them I've got my post-zombie apocalypse car. It's a diesel Mercedes 200D. Zombie apocalypse car it's a diesel mercedes 200d. It's completely gutless, zero to 60 in like two weeks. But it'll run on vegetable oil or waste motor oil, you know, after an emp or anything else. So that's my you know you can't kill it kind of car.
SpeedyCop:And then, uh, I've got a few of his other ones, including a 36 packard which is an absolutely gorgeous whoa. It's to be restored but it's an original survivor and I would never dream of altering his cars. He he would never want that. He was very clear about it. It's going to be pristine once we finish restoring it. We've just started on it. But beautiful old car with dual side mounts where you have the spare tires on both fenders, looks like a Bonnie and Clyde.
Doug:Yeah, that's what I was picturing.
Christian:That's not out in the field, is it? Is that in your?
SpeedyCop:garage tucked away. No, that's indoors. No, I wouldn't dare Gotcha.
Doug:So it's a true survivor too, especially coming out of New Jersey where he lived. South Jersey, Excellent, excellent. Those are great stories going all the way back to age five. So you ended up scrapping, I think you told us and there's some irony there right, you scrapped your grandmother's car and now you buy scrapped cars and other scrapped vehicles.
SpeedyCop:Right, sometimes we'll buy actually from the junkyard and sometimes I'll buy from people who are selling them for scrap just as project cars. I can kind of look at anything and see the potential in it for something weird and different, because that's what I like. I was at the junkyard one day and somebody had dumped a pop-up camper out in front of it. That was in horrible shape, but they just abandoned it there in front of the place and I said to the guys what do you want for the pop-up camper? He said, well, it's junk, but we knock the body off of it and we sell the frames for utility trailers. We the frames for utility trailers. We get like $150 for the frames. I said, well, what I have in mind, I don't need the frame. What if I just give you the frame back? He said take it, just bring the frame back when you're done. Okay, we made that a race car.
SpeedyCop:We raced it on the NASCAR track in New Hampshire and you have never seen faces melt like those NASCAR flaggers. They had no idea there's 100 cars. Come on the track, start circulating, waiting for the green to drop, so you have a full course. Caution. You know 100 cars circulating. All of a sudden the green drops and everybody just goes. And I pull on track in this pop-up camper.
Doug:It looks like a pop-up camper and you only saw the two side wheels that I had put on.
SpeedyCop:Um, you know, just like a regular camper with a, I had made a breakaway hitch out of like flimsy aluminum. You could have broken it off by hand because I don't want to spear somebody's gas tank with you know back tongue of a trailer. But it looked the part it really did and their faces melted, their jaws dropped, their eyes popped, the flags fell down and the next lap around, everyone had their phones out like waving and thumbs up and all that. It was just. I love seeing a good face melt reaction like that. We strive for that with each of our builds and, uh, that was one of the better ones. You know, just just a free free camper in the junkyard. Go, melt some faces.
Doug:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, you don't see that every day, or or ever.
SpeedyCop:Right, no, that's funny Like creative. You've got a farm truck in Asia. Asia's a friend of mine, the guys from Street Outlaws and they did a camper car a couple of years ago and people tagging me in and saying you should do that.
Doug:I did that in 2011 or 2012.
SpeedyCop:He blazed the trail down the road following my friend's truck and then he went straight and I turned right in the camper and we just were being silly with it.
Doug:But we had some fun yeah, what was the uh camper mounted to? What was the frame chassis?
SpeedyCop:so it was on a suzuki x90 and we had a guest driver for that race.
SpeedyCop:He was a ride and drive, so they helped us pay the bills they pay a fee and race the car with us and helps us cover our costs. But he was trying to win the race in this pop-up camper and we were out there just to do kind of like exhibition race, where you're not winding it to 7,000 RPMs and floating the valves and so it burned a hole in the in the head itself and popped the head gasket and we spent the night fixing it, cobbling it back together enough to get back out there the next day and, uh, it died. I think we had to get pushed across the finish line.
SpeedyCop:The whole place was cheering um it was kind of the crowd favorite for the weekend, you know but a little ccp x90.
SpeedyCop:They were pretty gutless and we took that car and later raced it. Um, we put a miata engine in it like a 180 and we raced it with, uh, numerous themes, including we did a titanic, um, an iceberg theme where the iceberg and a bmw was a titanic and we had the four big stacks. You know, on the bmw for the smoke stacks we had to even put a little deck railing on the hood. We had little like string and too good, we drilled into the hood and we went all out with it and then the iceberg chased the titanic around the track that race weekend. We had fun with it.
SpeedyCop:So that thing wound up getting re-bodied as a hot dog stand and we raced it to raise money for a dog rescue right in new jersey and raised a bunch of money for dog rescue by giving away hot dogs all weekend taking donations. But that freaking hot dog stand beat two-thirds of the cars in race because it rained so hard. We got traction when they didn't, so it finished like top third. It never should have happened. You know, a little gutless X90 carrying a building around was beating all the 944s and E36s.
Doug:Yeah, all that extra weight, that's funny. So you actually answered one of my questions, which was is a car ever done? When do you take that car and say this is perfect. And maybe it's the Camaro, because I don't think the Camaro has changed too much, but I could be wrong weeks in 2013, that summer in my driveway and I sprayed it in my yard. I'm still driving it 11 years later which is absolutely insane.
SpeedyCop:I never dreamed it would last much more than the race weekend if we were lucky. And here it is. I mean, it's a world famous car. Jay leno drove me around in it for his show in san francisco. Yeah, it's been all over the place. I actually drove it cross cross-country. I took it to sima a year ago and then from like the san franc area and then drove it back to Tennessee and had a blast. It was a cold ride, no roof, but I had a great time. It's just a fantastic experience. And you were talking about Cadillac Ranch there in Amarillo. I pulled up in the upside down Camaro and there was an employee there. Of course, they have the gates closed and locked and everything, because you park out in the street and then you walk in and I said any chance we can put this car in there by those Cadillacs and take pictures.
SpeedyCop:And the employee said absolutely, unlock the gate, open it. And I drove all the way and parked next to the Cadillacs and of course all the other visitors freaked out and there were people climbing inside the Camaro and stuff and taking photos.
SpeedyCop:It was a good time beautiful, beautiful, yeah but yeah, to your point um, the cars have never actually done and that poor camaro being sprayed in the yard 11 years ago, it looks rough. I mean it needs a good paint stuff. So I actually bought the paint. I haven't painted it yet. But I only see the flaws when I look at my cars. Other people just see the overall usually and just say, okay, that's pretty cool. Um, I see what I haven't done yet that I intend to do and that's part of the ADHD I guess you know he's an artist to be done.
SpeedyCop:Yeah, yeah. So I still want to correct a lot of things on that car and on every other car that I've built and, um, you know, it's kind of a shame because that's what I see when I look at them. I see the flaws, the things I haven't guess, but yeah, they're never really done. Gotcha, gotcha.
Doug:And I know we were talking about a lot of plans that you have, but the Volkswagen bus and camper right, and maybe that'll beg the next question. I'm always jumping ahead. What do you think your most popular build has been? Is it I? I would guess it's the trippy hippie camper.
SpeedyCop:But we're boss hippie hippie van is a sideways 76 Volkswagen camper mounted on an 88 rabbit um, both of them low buck. The camper shell was 600 sitting in the field and the rabbit underneath was a 500 car. That was already a caged race car. Was just really ragged out. Um that. One's been stupid viral. One of the videos I put up on facebook with that got like 156 million views and it's just wow, just organically, which is insane, right?
SpeedyCop:um, that's been really popular a lot. I think the most iconic one, uh, it's got to be my airplane car, the spirit of lemons. Um, I've been driving it since early 2013. It's street legal. I've driven it all over the us. It's been in countless magazines, tv shows and things like that. Um, it's, it's kind of one of those builds that, um, I don't know, it just gets. It keeps on giving. I drive it everywhere to this day.
SpeedyCop:I just had it in florida a couple weeks ago doing a burnout competition at the freedom factory in bradenton and it was melting faces, like it's done for almost 12 years, like that's kind of. You know, it's sitting on an 87 toyota van chassis and people say why? I say because a race car and like, wait what? Since the van had a mid-engine rear drive layout. It had torsion bars in the front, stennis truck towers because they would be too wide for that narrow fuselage. It had a narrow track and short base, so it checked every one of my boxes. So I went looking for an 80s toyota van to use as a basis for this race car with a plane that I wanted to build. I knew in my head before I found the fuselage, what I wanted to build, I looked once.
SpeedyCop:I looked all over the country and I was willing to go from maryland, where I lived at the time, to nevada, to a boneyard if I had to, to get a nice fuselage. I couldn't find anything affordable. Um, a single engine, wrecked, cessna, missing the front, cowling, and I was bringing 10 grand. And I mean, I don't have deep pockets, I use whatever scrap I can find to make stuff cool because we do whatever it means. So I went to a local airfield just to ask and the guy said I've got two old planes out back behind the hangar. Do you want to see them? I said sure.
SpeedyCop:And the first one was the same story. It was no front engine, no cowling, anything. And the second one was a 56 Cessna 310, missing the engines, missing the fuel tanks and the tail and everything, and it was in rough shape. It had been abandoned for 40 years. But it was perfect sleek, streamlined fuselage, exactly what I was looking for. So that's the one I bought and it was $2,000, which for me was a lot, but it came with the instruments which are really worth more than the $2,000 I paid for the whole thing. And it had the wings still still on it. They just weren't in great shape. So I have basically 16 inch winglets on it now that act as front fenders and they also act as a step to get inside that thing. It runs a 12 second quarter mile. I've got a mustang ecoboost and now a four cylinder um 2.3 liter ecoboost making about 330 horsepower.
SpeedyCop:It weighs just under 2700 pounds, all the weights on the front wheels. I'm going to try to redesign some things because I want to move weight rearward, because I have to baby it off the line on the quarter mile. But to run a high 12 second quarter mile on street tires in an airplane sitting on a Toyota van chassis is not too shabby and it's a really fun street car.
Doug:It's an accomplishment.
SpeedyCop:Yeah, I take it down the tail of the dragon here in Tennessee and people have trouble keeping up with it. You know, and I'm never anywhere near the limit. It's just always, like you know, well in control and you'll see motorcycle guys griping online. I don't want a damn airplane in my way. When it comes to the dragon on my crotch rocket, they have trouble keeping up. Well, I used to pull offs and I'll pull off to let them go by me. Every single time they pull off with me and they get out, they walk up and they want to take pictures and talk about it and stuff like that. So kind of pointless. They'll use the pull-offs when they all pull off with you. But that thing, it really is the gift that keeps on giving. It's just been so much fun. It's a parade on wheels everywhere I go. You get like you know I love your spaceship and things like that when you drive around in it and it actually gets a really good fuel economy, like 25 or 30 on trips too shabby for an old cessna that was getting scrapped yeah, well, it's very streamlined, it is very dynamic very aerodynamic extremely
Christian:do you keep everything that you've done? Do you everything that you've ever done? Is it sitting in your? Is it sitting in your garage?
SpeedyCop:I so wish it was. There's a bunch of them I've gotten rid of over the years.
SpeedyCop:Um, I've lost a few on the racetrack, because that's part of the risk when you're racing cars you know, yep I was thinking that some of them I used to for a while there I would sell one to pay for the next one and I've actually made it to get. Um. I've got the jurassic park explorer back and I bought the camaro back. I sold the upside on camaro to my friend that owns the lemon series, jay lamb, and he uh, he had kind of loaned it out to everybody and their mother they wanted to use in the west coast and it went to different shows and things in different hands. But he was still the owner and um, we had.
SpeedyCop:We had made a deal when I sold it to him that I'd have the first right. I refused to buy it back so I hounded it for years and he finally sold it back to me. So it's back in my stable and that's one of those cars that I had regretted really badly selling after I sold it. Um, I still want to get my wagon queen family truckster from vacation back. That was a really fun race car. We cut the cage out, sold to a fellow in new york city and um, hopefully he'll um work me up a deal and let me get it back in my fleet here, because those were a couple of the iconic cars that I really missed, you know you remember the vacation.
SpeedyCop:The green ugly station wagon yeah, thank you, family truckster yeah.
SpeedyCop:So we had the vintage luggage on ebay back in 2014 was like 10 bucks, five bucks a piece. Nobody once finished samsonite. So we had everything on the roof looked just like the movie car. We had the dead head remember she dies and they tie her on the roof in the movie on the roof. So we go to south carolina carolina motorsports park and we raced it for 16 hours all weekend from maryland to south carolina race all weekend back to m. Nothing moved. She was up there the whole time. It was a really fun car Just hideous but so ugly. It's cool, just brilliant, iconic. Everybody knows that car, even the young kids, because the remake had that car in it.
Doug:That's right. That's right it did.
Christian:They kept making those movies every few years, and now they just play them in sequence. They're in syndications, especially around there.
Doug:And they're still funny. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And speaking of movies, sorry to interrupt you, christian, do it. I did want to hit Jeff's dream car, which he has already. It's in the works. Right, it's partially there. Tell us about Eleanor.
SpeedyCop:So Eleanor is a 67 Mustang Fastback. The movie gone at 60 seconds. Now this is not an actual movie car because I could never afford that, but this car has one of the 500 kits that Cinema Vehicle Services, who made the movie cars, actually produced. So the movie came out. The cars were hugely popular. All of us said, oh, I want that car so bad and Cinema Veh bad. And cinema vehicles said, okay, we'll make body kits and we'll sell them. So they made 500 body kits, each one serialized, so if you got authenticity and stuff came with it. So I have one of those 500 kits on this car. So it's closer to an eleanor than most, right? Um, and it's a true fastback mustang.
SpeedyCop:I got out of rochester new york back in wow 2004. So I've owned that car for 20 years. That's the longest I've owned any car. Like I said, I changed cars like I changed clothes, but I was smart enough to hang on to that one. I need to finish it. The body kit's on and the car is painted. There's a few flaws we'll have to fix, but it's painted. I need to do the interior, but I really want to do like road trips and also I want to put ac in it and everything, and I want to be able to set the cruise at 75 and drive to florida if I feel like it. You know what I mean. So, yep, money's not there to finish it. The car just sits and waits. It's indoors, it's insured, it's killing my friends because they have. They know I have a dream car just sitting there but it's not going anywhere?
Doug:yep, we're doing it. It's on the list, all right.
Christian:So as we wind down here and guide the podcast gently to the off-ramp here, Jeff, I have a couple last questions for you. The speedy cop name can you chat about that for a minute?
SpeedyCop:Sure, so I spent 27 years as a cop. I just retired a year ago. I talk really fast. Obviously I used to run really fast. I can't say I do anymore.
SpeedyCop:I've got metal in both legs but I used to be able to catch suspects that were known for always getting away because they were very fast on their feet. I even ran down a track star one time in a neighborhood in Hammond, louisiana, where I worked, and I had never had this happen before. But as I brought him back in handcuffs, I ran him down and tackled him and the people were on their porches and they were just ragging on this poor young man. Like you're supposed to be a track star. You let that white boy catch you. What's wrong with you, man? What's wrong with you? And they were actually clapping and stuff like that, which was pretty funny.
SpeedyCop:Um well, yeah, talk, run and drive fast. I've held my own with some of the best. I've actually beaten a few really notables um on the racetrack itself and I've got a few overall wins in different series both 20 parts of lemons and lucky dog and a couple of national championships. But bear in mind, those are more volume than they are driver skill. So you enter enough cars and enough races, you can win those national championships and lemons. But we, I like to have fun behind the wheel and you know, like I said, talk, run and drive fast. That's where speed cop comes from.
Christian:I dig it. Thank you for that Last question. Uh, retirement you mentioned, so are we going to see the the shop? Pop these things out faster. You're going to take a break. What's what's in the?
SpeedyCop:future for you. What are these take a break words you're using? I never heard them before.
Doug:There's your answer Eight days a week.
SpeedyCop:Yeah, I have a lot of vehicles in the works here. Time and money has always been the constraint, so now I have more time being retired the money we're still working on that. It's difficult to do things on a meager budget, but we're making it happen as my stuff, as my brand and stuff grows. Hopefully I'll have more income and more ability to do more and get more help here to crank more out. I have multiple lifetimes worth of projects just sitting and waiting, so one of them is the em50 from stripes.
SpeedyCop:I've got that same model, the full armored stripes version with. And then I want to make a miniature of it to actually race in like lemons. So we're gonna do it like a russian nesting doll. It'll carry it as an internal ramp truck and then you back it out. You have the little one. Race the race, the little one. I think it'd be really cool. I've got an Airstream motorhome I want to restore. I've got two more fuselages One will be a limousine and one will be a drag car. I just have a lot of big dreams, a lot of big plans.
Christian:I'm going to keep working until it happens. Well, we are so happy for you. Yeah, Doug wanted me to mention to everybody out there the next time you see a plane on the road, it is probably Speedy Cop. So check him out on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram he's everywhere. Yeah, Speedycopcom, that's my favorite speedycopcom. Check him out. Well, Jeff, it has been a tremendous pleasure meeting you. It was a blast. Thank you for making time.
SpeedyCop:It's an honor, Jeff. Thank you for making time. It's been an honor, Jets.
Christian:I really appreciate your time yeah.
Doug:Thank you again. Thank you, Jeff Yep. We'll be looking for you on the road. Sounds good.
SpeedyCop:I won't be hard to miss Yep.
Doug:And if you're ever either Pensacola, where Christian is, or Maryland Annapolis area if you're heading out, let us know we gotta go see this guy.
Christian:There's no way. We gotta go see the tennessee.
SpeedyCop:Oh yeah, oh yeah, I didn't realize I've also got an 800 foot zipline, because I'm a big kid. So I saw that I saw that it's legit, it's fast, it's fun. It's not for everyone, it's definitely scary, but um, yeah, it's, why not. We've got the road trip. Okay, we're road at.
Christian:Jeff's place, book it.
Christian:But, until then. You have just heard the high revving, low mileage, late model heard around the world. Authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia. He is Doug at CarsLovecom. I am Christian at CarsLovecom and he was Speedy Cop. Check him out. Please follow, tell a friend and let us know what you think. Reach out, review, review, review and help us spread the word. Our link tree is the switchboard where you can start L, I, n, k, t, r, dot, e, e, slash cars loved. It's a bit like the old yellow pages. I refer to it as our switchboard. So I'm sure we'll see you at the next local car show. Thank you for listening. Keep the limit side down and we will see you next week.
