Brad Phillips on The Great Race, Ferraris, and Vintage Porsches

Welcome back to All the Cars I've Loved Before, the podcast where we park the data at the door to focus on the stories that matter 🎙️.

In this episode, Doug sits down with Brad Phillips, a globally recognized collector car expert and hardcore gearhead who firmly believes that classic cars are meant to be driven 🛠️. Brad currently serves as the Director of Events for Coker Group and the Great Race 🏁. From wrenching on a 1965 Mustang 2+2 Fastback as a teenager 🐎 to MacGyvering a right-hand-drive JDM Toyota Century across the United States 🗺️, Brad shares his incredible, lifelong journey through the automotive hobby 🚗.

We dive deep into what it takes to navigate a 1916 Hudson Speedster across 2,500 miles of backroads ⏱️, the thrill of reviving a seized 1968 Porsche 911 T 🇩🇪, and why he still regrets letting go of his Saab 9000 Turbo 🇸🇪.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The Great Race 🏆: An inside look at the 2,500-mile time speed endurance rally for pre-1974 vintage cars, including details on the upcoming Route 66 centennial route starting in Springfield, Illinois 🛣️.
• First Rides 🚗💨: Brad’s memories of his 1965 Ford Mustang 2+2, painted Rangoon red, and its unfortunate demise in a slow-speed race against a Dodge Dart 💥.
• Cross-Country Classics 🏜️: Pushing the limits of cargo capacity and reliability by road-tripping an '83 Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole and a V8 Toyota Century 🚙.
• Pre-War Projects 🕰️: The unique challenges of driving and maintaining century-old vehicles like his 1917 Willys-Overland 90BT 🔧.
• The Ones That Got Away (and the ones that stayed) ❤️‍🩹: From a 400-horsepower Saab 9000 Turbo to a fully modern-equipped 1966 Sunbeam Tiger 🐯.
  
  

We caDon't miss our full episode with Brad's good friend and classic Ferrari restorer, Tom Yang for more stories: https://buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes/16626040

If you’re enjoying the show, the best way to support us is hit subscribe and leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts, share this episode with a friend, or shoot us an email ✉️ to stories@carsloved.com

Connect with Us: Got a great car story? Email us at stories@carsloved.com. Find all our content and social links here: linktr.ee/carsloved.

Podcast News:

• Our co-host, Doug was a guest on the Driven Radio Show Podcast to share the origin story of our podcast and connecting with his late father through his DeLorean project.
• Check out the amazing article about the podcast by Elevate Society and Tal Gur, author of "The Art of Fully Living"
• Feedspot selected To All The Cars I've Loved Before in their list of Top 100 Car Podcasts and 31 Best Road Trip Podcasts For Your Drive
• Our co-host, Doug was featured in this magazine article along with his DeLore...

Transcript

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Welcome, Updates, And How To Help

Doug 0:01

Welcome back to All the Cars I've Loved Before, the podcast where we park the data at the door to focus on the stories that matter. Those are your stories. It's time to get a little grease under your nails and step back in time to that first sense of pure freedom, the windows down, the music peg, and your best friends piled in the back. Whether it's that forgotten beater, the one that got away, or every car reveals exactly who we are. We're driving into the personal history behind the metal today. So let's get into it. I am Doug and I'm going solo today and gonna share a few updates and then we'll get right back into our new guest. We are quick podcast update. We are revamping our blog. We're gonna use it to get the word out about recently released episodes and new recordings for each week, as well as past recordings that have not been released that are coming up in the near future. Check it out when you can every week, carslove.com slash blog or subscribe, and you'll be the first to see that update. In terms of podcast reviews, the first review we have, the review for today comes from Gerald. And Gerald says, this is a bingeworthy podcast, just letting it roll for the last couple days. I keep smiling, nodding, and learning. And thank you, Gerald. And if you're enjoying the show, the best way to support us is leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend who still misses their first ride, or shoot us an email at stories at carslove.com. So

Meet Brad Phillips And The Great Race

Doug 1:27

jumping into our guest, how did we find our guest? So many of our guests come to us just as referrals, in this case, past guest James McCray and a good friend of the show, a car restoration professional from season two, episode seven, titled Restoring the Past, referred me to today's guest, Mr. Brad Phillips, who, like me, hails from Maryland. And so welcoming Brad, a little bit about Brad's background. He is a globally recognized collector car expert, and he has held top executive roles at Haggerty America's Car Museum and RM Sotheby. Today he's more in a corporate figure. He's a hardcore gearhead who believes classic cars are meant to be driven. He's a respective Concourse jug, veteran of the grueling great race and founder of the Amelia Island Bus Tour. Amelia Island or Bust Tour. Having road tripped everything from a hundred-year-old peerless to a Ferrari 308, Brad's ultimate mission is to champion inclusivity, fun, and friendship throughout the automotive hobby. And welcome to the podcast, Brad. Thanks very much. Nice to be here. Yeah, as we talked about, I am the first one to ask you about your first car in a while. And with your great idea, and we'll get into it in a couple minutes, we're going to talk about your first firsts of cars. And that's going to be a lot of fun to go through. Now, Brad, you currently serve as director of events for the poker group and the great race. Can you tell us a little bit about the Great Race and your role in it? And just background for our listeners who've never heard of that event. Happy to.

Brad Phillips 2:59

And thanks for the the walk down the memory lane of my LinkedIn, which is hilarious. I usually try to keep up and updated about every five or six years or so. It's nice to hear some of the other stuff I've done. Great Race has gone on for 40 years, and it's a 2,500-mile time speed endurance rally. I've been the director of it and for Coker Group, which owns Coker Tire Company and a whole bunch of other great brands just since October of last year. I've been a competitor in the Great Race since 2008. The vast majority of my knowledge about this type of racing in this particular event is from driving a 1916 Hudson Speedster across the country in it for a big chunk of those years, but I've driven a whole bunch of other different vehicles in it over time. But it's meant for vintage cars 1974 and earlier. It's a lot of crazy back roads. I mean, we're on the back roads of the back roads typically, dodging Amish buggies and that kind of thing to get where we need to go. And it's an absolute hoot. And I just love it when people use cars for fun things. I don't like static displays. Anything I think all of us as a community can do to get people out driving, I am 100% on board with.

Doug 4:04

It is a continuous race when it's running, right? Like I can imagine in some of these old cars, it takes quite a bit of time to get to where you're going.

Brad Phillips 4:12

We run two, it's about two weeks. So it's nine days of competition on the main race with several days on either end for other festivities and banquets and all that kind of stuff. It's okay.

Doug 4:21

And the big competition is get to point from point A to point B. That's competition A. Would that be fair? Then B to C something along those.

Brad Phillips 4:31

There are hidden checkpoints throughout the day, either nine of them pending. And you're if you get an absolute 0.00 at the end of the day, you've done it right. The first person across the finish line is not always the winner of the day. Matter of fact, they may be way off pace if that's the way they come in. Okay. It's it's all about just very exacting standards of stop watches and following speeds. It's really cool, actually. You know, I can even show you because we've been working on a whole bunch of new routes.

Doug 4:57

So every every year it correct me if I'm wrong, it starts in starts and ends in the same place, but the routes are totally different. All different. Every year it's different.

Brad Phillips 5:06

So this year we're celebrating the centennial of Route 66. Okay. And it's, you know, so we're starting in Springfield, Illinois, which is on Route 66. The actual beginning of Route 66 is in downtown Chicago. So we're all the way to the Santa Monica Pier just because of the last traffic and all the civilians, we call them when we're out racing. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then next year is not released yet. We typically release the next year's route at the opening banquet of this year's great race. So in late June, we'll announce what next year's race is. But we've been all over the country. I mean, every little corner, we have great memories of different places we've been. And the idea is really epic back roads and fun for the 300 to 500 hotel rooms we take up a night. I mean, it's a big event.

Doug 5:54

Right. A lot of planning involved, I can imagine. So wow, awesome. Awesome. So before we get into it, I forgot to ask you what has been your favorite episode? I think I know because it's another mutual friend. My my friend Tom Young that you interviewed, he's a Ferrari mechanic.

Brad Phillips 6:11

He and I have had a lot of great adventures over the year. And honestly, I think that one of some of the pictures I sent you may have been of our adventure cross-country in a car going to Monterey Car Week. And Tom and I just spent, we just drove down in my old 9-11 down to the Amelia Island Concour together, and you spend three or four days just running amuck. And then we get back in the car and we head back up. So he's a he's a really, really good friend, and I always like to hear what good friends are doing.

Doug 6:37

He just fell into this really amazing, he's got a lot of passion for it, but amazing business, restoring vintage Ferraris. And he likes lots of cars, and we're gonna talk in a in a minute that your car and his first slash second car, your first car, were of the similar lineage. I think it's really great.

Brad Phillips 6:54

I mean, you can focus on a particular mark that you really like the best. But I think a real enthusiast, you know, you have to have an appreciation for almost everything. Because if it connects somebody to their passion, that's how you make good friends out of it. You understand what's on the other side of the aisle a little bit, you know? So it's it's always fun to do that.

Doug 7:12

Indeed. And his background like yours is unique, right? He worked on the Tonight Show, if I remember correctly. You, like myself, are have an IT background, IT sales.

Brad Phillips 7:23

You know, I think we we talked about it back in the the the dark ages when I was in IT and and technology consulting, building data centers. I mean, every time I walked into some server room, I just prayed that somebody would have a picture of a race car on their desks. I would have anything else to talk about. I got out of that back in the in the very early 2000s, and I'm very happy to have been in car stuff ever since.

A 1965 Mustang Fastback At Sixteen

Doug 7:46

Great pivot for sure, right? So tell us about your very first car. What was it? How'd you get it? What are some great memories about it, about that car?

Brad Phillips 7:54

Well, if I wind it all the way back to more dark ages, back in about 1986 or so. And I grew up in a car crazy family. So my dad had had a Corvette that was very similar to the one that he had when as a new car before yours truly came along and it had to be traded out for something a little bit more family friendly at the time. But as soon as he could, he went back and he got another, you know, C2 Corvette big block. I've always grown up with having something around that I could take apart or play with or be a part of as a project. I remember my grandfather's 1950 Dodge that was in my grandmother's garage. That was just always there, sitting on a flat tire, hadn't been driven in years, but it was just part of the family like an old dog's. Every now and then we'd fire it up as a kid. And I just will always remember that kind of thing of just noodling with cars. So it was kind of natural for us when I was 16, trying to figure out what am I gonna drive, what are my interests, wanted a vintage car. And what's really funny is when you go back and you say, okay, this was we looked at a lot of stuff, but what we settled on was a 1965 Mustang 2 plus 2. So the fastback body style. And I think it was kind of common for a lot of people to drive stuff like that. It was kind of like that was your fallback to not buying something more modern, like from the 80s, which was a modern car at the time. And I loved that car. And the thing that it really represented to me was, of course, freedom and getting out and driving. And it didn't bother me that it didn't have a four-barrel engine or a highpo motor in it or whatever. It really represented something that my dad and I, we took it over an entire summer. And, you know, in retrospect, I may have made some other changes, but we took it. It was originally a forest green car. We painted it Rangoon red. It had a black interior that was kind of roached out. We put a Palomino interior. So we kind of made it our own. You know, as you know, in Mustangs, even back then, had the catalog for Virginia Mustang supply. And you could still, you know, you could buy almost everything for these cars. You can go new old stock, you could find lots of used stuff, or you could just buy a kit. I think we bought an interior kit. It came in one box, and here's your new tan interior. And they're relatively inexpensive to mess with back then, and even in compared to some other cars, they they still are. It was just the greatest thing, and automatic transmission was fine. I really, as a young guy, just needed to figure out about let's let's what's this car gonna mean? And I could flip up those seats in the back and I could put four people in it with me, you know, if I really pushed, you know, three plus me was really the way they wanted it to go. But we spent a lot of time at the beach going surfing in that car, doing big road trips, going back and forth between Virginia and Alabama. It was great. It was unbelievable except for its unfortunate demise. Tell us what happened to the Mustang. Well, somewhere part way through my senior year of high school, a friend of mine had been we'd been mutually running each other's mouths about who had the faster car. And of course, in retrospect, now we're we're all older, a 289 two-barrel cruisomatic with a 280 to one rear end was probably about the slowest way that you could go down that way. I mean, it was a bit lethargic, but it was a V8. Oh, it's gotta be a fast car. You know, everybody else is driving, you know, Honda Civics that were, you know, that back at that age very slow. So whatever. It seemed seemed like a fast car to some of us. And my friend had a Dodge Dart with a 318 two barrel, equally as slow. So we we turned out we were very well matched in our slowness, and we got into a little speed match after high school one day and knocked both of our cars into each other and totaled both cars. No one was injured, but we we ruined both of our cars. Not good.

Doug 11:32

It wasn't a game of chicken, though, was it, Brad?

Brad Phillips 11:34

You know, somebody somebody merged in, and as I remember it, we both hit our brakes and everybody had drum brakes all around, and we took both the cars got completely squirrely and banged into each other and then went off the side to the road. In their teenage high school years, and you know, there's always some reason you should have something worse should have happened and it didn't, and then later on in life you're thankful for the experience.

Doug 11:55

You know, sorry it was a fastback and another, but if we lived through it, and Tom Yang's his second his first car was a Mustang, and his second car, which he still has, I think, is a two plus two Mustang fastback. You bet. Right? And I think it's red.

Brad Phillips 12:10

A great car. They're I recommend hanging on to them and not wrecking them. Fastback Mustang is very prized. I had a whole bunch of different ears over over the years, and uh I've never had another fastback. They got very prized, and I'm never gonna find another one for $3,500. I can tell you that.

Doug 12:25

And I I I think you have to be at least our third guest that had a Mustang 2 plus 2 fastback because John Davis from Motor Week, who was on, that was all his first car. So you guys are onto something. Well, there's a lot of utility in them.

Brad Phillips 12:39

And with the seats folded down, you can just carry. And I'll admit that one I've always liked cars that I could carry stuff in, like sports cars that you could all load with gear if you had to. And those early fastbacks are you know, they're great cars for that. Wonderful cars.

Doug 12:55

And you know, sorry, Tom, I got so excited about the Mustang, I forgot to ask our trivia question, which you'll probably know the answer, but we'll save it for the end. Okay. So hopefully our listeners will learn more about the great race, and this will excite them. In addition to your wonderful introduction about how the great race came to be and how it's continued since 1983. Founded by The Great Race, founded by Tom McRae and Norman Miller with a grid of 69 pre-World War II vehicles that took took off across the country to complete, compete for a massive $250,000 prize purse. The race started at Knottsbury, let's see, Knottsbury Farm in California. And our trivia questi question will be where was the finish line? We'll we'll save that, but there you go. $250,000, a lot of a lot of money back in 1983. So what a great idea. It you know, the early days of this race, that was a lot of money now.

Brad Phillips 13:56

Um the prize fund is still, I think it's $165,000 in prize money that we still give in various classes, whether you're an expert or a sportsman or a rookie or a grand champion. You know, and we get daily wins, you have overall winners. It's sliced and diced a whole bunch of different ways, but it is it's a big, it's the Super Bowl for this type of competition behind the movie.

Doug 14:18

And what what are I should have asked this earlier, what are the year ranges? Like what's the a car can be as old as it can be, but what is the newest that a car can be cut off?

Brad Phillips 14:30

Yeah, 1974 is the newest. And there's a slight bigger bit of wiggle room in that. If you've got a 1975 car that you wanted to enter, but it was identical in its manufacturing specifications to the 1974 model, would kind of look at that and say, okay, that's probably all right. You run on different factors based on how old the car is. Really, anything that is a 1958 and newer will kind of run straight up. Like whatever you go through a checkpoint, that's what you're gonna get. That's your time. If the earlier cars than that get a breakdown, like the 1916 Hudson that I've been driving, I think our factor is like a 0.68 or something like that. We get a little bit of a break on the timing because they assume that it's much harder to drive this car. It is. We've got a non-synchronized three-speed and it's great.

Doug 15:21

It's it's it's there's some work involved getting that car going and getting it across the finish line. And it does not hustle through a corner.

Brad Phillips 15:28

It's a big matter of fact, that's it. Like a friend of mine made me that's this great poster, which was a complete joke from Amelia with the posing on the front. That was all put together. That's the car we've been driving, and that's owned by the Stahl Automotive Foundation in in Chesterfield, Michigan. And I'm a board member there and a good friend of the family, and they're all big, big supporters of Great Race and all the efforts. So it's it's really been an honor to race with them for all these years. It's just been great.

First Fun Purchase A 1968 911T

Doug 15:53

So we're gonna move on to your next car, and this was not your second car necessarily. There's no order in this. What was the first car that you bought with your own money as a fun car, not as a utility. What car was it, if you remember? Oh yeah.

Brad Phillips 16:10

That got me down the road of it turned into a big love that I didn't even realize how bad it was gonna get. This was probably, you know, this was around in the 90s or so. There's always that leap that a car person had gets a chance to make, hopefully, at one point in life, because you know you can take it apart and not have to have it back together by eight o'clock in the morning to then drive to work. I was at the time looking in newspapers, and you know, you you'd go to the 7-Eleven and you'd open the sheets, and it was the you know, the the the nickel sheets and all this sort of stuff on what the when you look for all these car sales and things.

Doug 16:42

That's right. That's right.

Brad Phillips 16:44

Now it's Facebook Marketplace and it's Craigslist. This was the paper version of those things. And I was living in Wilmington, Delaware at the time. So I was kind of looking in a radius around that. And in Woodbury, New Jersey, there was a 1968 Porsche 911 T. And I didn't know at the time anything about what a T was or an E was or an S was or any of that stuff. Just knew that it was $7,900 and it looked really cool. And I went to go look at this car, and I had a friend drive me up there. And I mean, now these cars, you know, this is what they call a short wheelbase 911s. Anything 1968 and older is the very first iteration of the Porsche 911 and Porsche 912, wheelbase wise. Okay. They are, you know, they extended it by some small amount of millimeters to make them the long wheelbase cars as they extended, and they made them handle a little bit better every time. The track got a little wider, tires were bigger, you know, all this sort of stuff in the evolution of the Porsche 911 to where it is today. But where it started was this incredibly lightweight sitting on 165 R15 tires. It was originally built as an Irish green with a brown interior sport-matic 11T, which was the lowest horsepower one that they that they made. So great car. The least desirable specification that anyone could have ever ordered one, you know, back in that time. The fact that it had a five-speed in it was great with me because that's what I wanted, and it was an easy conversion. And and truthfully, most people converted them from those early sportomatic, automatic-y things, which was really a manual transmission, but it had a solenoid on the top of the shifter. So first tiptronic, first whatever. It didn't, again, it was slow. The parts were non-existent to fix them at this point, and it was much better that it had a five-speed in it. The thing also that was really fun about the car, and it had been brought into the country and was was seized from from some enforcement action and auctioned by the U.S. government. And there was all this paperwork with it that said it couldn't stay in the country. It did, it had to get rid of the kilometers per hour speedometer. They had all this other stuff. But that's why. I mean, this car had had a life. Like it was, it had already like really lived and was not had not been taken care of and loved until Mark had it and made it, made it a pretty good runner. So it all seemed great to me and had it when I met my wife and I moved it to four different states with me on the back of U-Haul trucks moving from and it eventually got painted silver. I eventually found a set of correct Fuchs wheels for it with and over time it became we were really able to personalize it. And I built it the way I would have ordered it if I'd had the opportunities. The silver, it I had a red interior that I'd gotten out of a parts car. That was perfect. It was you just don't find those opportunities anymore. Things are so expensive, and not just in Porsche's, but in lots of things. But but in this era in the 90s, it was easy. And I joined the Porsche Club in in in every every state that I lived in and learned. Um, I still have I have my original letters that I would write into the Porsche Club asking about, I was moving to Colorado. And how do you, how do I tune these Webers? What like how would I jet them for high altitude? And I would get a letter back. And it's printed in some you know compilation book from that Porsche Club puts out. But that was the way that you learned. And over time you would get on message boards and things and the Ren Lists and stuff, and the the early S Club was a really big one for me for those early, early 9-11s. I realize it's a long story, but but this car, because it was mine, drove it everywhere. I drove it all over the country in the snow, in the rain, in the deserts, coast to coast. And every time I drove it, it put a big smile on my face. And it really created, you know, having a Porsche is something that I will always have if life goes, continues to go the way I want it to. But, you know, I have an 87 911 now because I and I had two other short wheel-based 9-11s. I had a regular 9-11 normal long after I'd sold this car to then upgrade to one that I really I thought I could keep kind of moving up. The problem was when I sold my last one in 2011 of the old ones, thought I was gonna take that money because I sold it for like $37,000. And I'm like, whoa, somebody knows the worship market now. 20 minutes later, they were 130,000. So what did I know? Like to know what car to invest in. Ask me what I've sold recently, because it's sure to just skyrocket, you know? All right. But I did flip and I went and I got this Carrera, this 87 Carrera that I have now, and it has turned out to be an absolute dream. And I do all the same stuff with uh I did with the earlier ones, except it's got air conditioning kind of on a on a fall day. And you drive and you drive it everywhere, right? You drove it to Amelia most recently, right? And and the the really fun thing, again, Porsches are pretty easy to deal with anyway, no matter what year they are. They they're set up okay. I don't know another more reliable collector car to own. I mean, once you get the bugs sorted out of a 9 11, they're usually good for a long time before they need something else. And I've done the motor on this car. My friend, my friend Keith Martin at Martin's German Service in Roanoke is an expert. He built the motor for me. He Who I bought the car from. It was hers by him for 20 years prior to me buying it from him. Knew the history. But it just goes and goes and just love him.

Ferrari 308 Reality Check

Brad Phillips 22:08

Wonderful. Well, what was your first and I believe only Ferrari? So I like these color combination, I guess. I bought an 83 Ferrari 308 GTS Quattra Valve. And this was back in I had a note, 2016, 2015, something like that. I bought it. You know, everybody, it's just something you go through. I I was cruising eBay one day and saw this car listed, and it had a story that I didn't really believe. That it was an original owner car. It had 55,000 miles on it, which to me is nothing. Apparently, to a lot of Ferrari people, that means the car is used up and done and needs everything. It's such a difference between sometimes of a Porsche's and Ferraris, you know, there's a there's a rivalry there, of course, sometimes. But anyway, this seemed like a great car. And I had a good friend who lived in Tucson where this car was, who went and looked at it for me and said, it exists. The guy's great. He bought it new, and now he can't get in and out of it anymore. So he's selling it. And I'm like, I bought it. And I still to this day don't know why I was the only one interested in it, because I put probably 15,000, maybe 20,000 miles on that car, which again, unheard of. But I really wanted to prove that you could drive it all over the country. And I did. And it was great. It was different for me because it it just didn't have a lot of cargo capacity. And I know, you know, you can be like, all right, you didn't buy the Ferrari for cargo capacity, but the trunk that it did have, everything you put into it would become super heated. You know, you'd you'd take a duffel bag for for the weekend, you go into a car event and it and it would be a pressed brick of cloth that you'd then have to figure out how do you how do you unfurl the stuff and it'd you know make the clothes wearable because they were just, you know, it was humid and it was just done. And if you had a passenger with you, there really wasn't much of anywhere to put much of anything. And that was the thing. It the utility for me was hard. It was gorgeous, you know, it was silver with that black box or bottom, really rare color combination. Yeah, that is for an 83. And had the 14-inch wheels on it, which I thought I think they look better. Here's my pitch on this wheels and tires mean everything on an old car. I think I think you gotta have the right look. My 87911 has got 15-inch wheels because I like that original fat sidewall look. That's what it's got. That's the way it came, sevens and eights. And this Ferrari had those 14-inch wheels. And the tires are were very difficult to find, very expensive, put it that way. You can buy them, but they're very expensive. But it was worth it to me to have them because it just looked right. It looked like, you know, a fat tired Hot Wheels type slot car, you know? And I just don't, I you know, when people put modern rims with the with the little small on an otherwise completely stocked car, I always kind of want to go, think about it. Is that the is that really what you're is it gonna handle the way you think it's gonna handle because it's got 16s on it now?

Doug 24:57

Right, right, exactly. My cross to bear, I guess. My my DeLorean still has original 14s and 15s, and a friend of mine just went to they made somebody else made reproduction. They look original, but 16s and 17s, and to me, those are too big. They just they don't match the car. Never been used to there are X number of companies out there that just are reproducing different parts, they're improving new parts, they're very creative people who are coming up with solutions to get rid of the I I know you're familiar with this, the Bosch Hey Jet, which which my car still has, which it's worth more money with it, but man, it's annoying. Just the just all the emissions thing. It's I'm still troubleshooting what I did this weekend, and seems like every weekend I'm trying to find why when the car is warmed up and I'm decelerating, generally, like after coming off a highway or whatever, by um decelerating, step in the clo step, step on the engine, the RPM drops just low enough that the oil light flashes and the car almost stalls, not quite, and then you lose your power brakes for like that split instance, which is always the worst time to do it when you're decelerating because there's probably a car in front of you. So I'm still trying to figure that out, but they make LS swap kits for them. I mean you can do anything with those cars. But there's a limited amount, and there's a limited amount of appeal, right? Very, very different than the Ferraris and the 9-11s, whatnot. Oh, I I think the DeLoreans are absolutely iconic.

Brad Phillips 26:27

Everybody smiles. And what's the point of all this stuff? Do you want people to smile when you drive by in whatever it is? I'm sure you get grins and thumbs up everywhere you go in that car.

Doug 26:37

Everywhere. Gas stations, you you name it. It's it's great to see people's response, right? A Lamborghini you wouldn't get from most Ferraris. It's a good segue to to you know accessibility and trying to use cars. You know, are you interested in cars? I don't know. It just comes up in passing. And I say, well, I do own a DeLorean, and they're like, okay, I guess you're a car guy. Like, that's enough. Right. Or or you really like Back to the Future, one or the other. Or, or in my case, both. What was your first JDM

Toyota Century Road Trip MacGyvering

Doug 27:04

car?

Brad Phillips 27:04

That one was uh was related to the story with with Tom and I when we cross country. And I was very fortunate in my, you know, my worked, I I was in specialty insurance for a long time, still, still am. And I've gotten to know this guy, Gary Duncan, who owns a company called Duncan Imports. And I would go to Gary's place all the time, and I would wander these long aisles of weird right-hand drive stuff that a lot of it never came to the States, but because of the 25-year rule, there's always this rolling sort of, okay, these types of cars are now starting to come in. And I was walking down and I saw a car, and it was called a Toyota Century. And in Japan, they are some of them are taxis, some of them are executive limousines, some of them are owned by Yakuza mob bosses. But the point is, they were built on a completely separate assembly line at Toyota. They had, they must have had 20 coats of paint on it, all hand rubbed, beautiful the wool interiors. I mean, they were just, they were the Rolls-Royce of Japan. And that's the way they were advertised and sold. But beautiful, beautiful car. And long, you know, four-door. And mine was the one I'd picked that I thought was just the coolest was like this dark royal blue. Anyway, it was just really, really neat. And drove it back from Virginia back to Maryland. And I'd never, I'd never owned a driven right-hand drive car. So I've never like owned one in a practical sense of understanding the the differences in that. And, you know, there are some things to think about. You know, if you're going to the drive-thru at the bank or anything else, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I gotta like, we, I gotta be way over there to to figure it out.

Doug 28:44

Or go orgo park. Right.

Brad Phillips 28:46

Orgo park. But that was my first JDM. And again, everyone was really friendly about it. We did, you know, I can go on about our our big trips. We did a Vin Wiki video. If you go out and look at, you know, Toyota Century cross country to Monterey, whatever, however, you type stuff into Google, you'll find it. But my friend Tom, Tom Young and I drove this thing all the way across the country and then took it to Monterey Car Week. And we went to Bonneville in it. We we had a great adventure at the Bon on the Bonneville Salt Flights at Speed Week in it on the way out there. Drove it through Yosemite. But the hard part was that it sort of started to self-destruct the longer, the longer we drove. If you're gonna buy one of these, you have to understand there's some MacGyvering of when certain electrical things start to go bad because they just don't, Toyota doesn't support it. Toyota says, we built this car 25 years ago. We don't care. We're selling new cars. It's a completely different mindset on some of these things. And I and I hope that the community catches up with it, they can survive. But you know, the those we were kind of squatted going the last leg into into Monterey. But it worked. You know, we got some we got some GM F body air shocks and got it level again. So we found one hack to replace the shocks to get it yes it and that car has a V12, right? The new ones do. So anything post-1997 is has a V12. When I had mine, it was a four-liter V8, a little Hemihead V8. Very cool. Okay. But they but but now the V12s are in. It's the only 12-cylinder engine Toyota's ever made. And essentially it was two of their really good six cylinders mated at the at the crank, right? And unbelievably smooth. I think it's almost it's like you know, upper twos, maybe 300 horsepower, somewhere in that range, a lot of torques. They're very smooth, and and you there's several that people drive around in the States now that you can see.

Doug 30:43

And I know somebody in Denton that has one. I've seen one at Katie's Cars and Coffee in Northern Virginia. Did yours have a TV in the back?

Brad Phillips 30:52

I I la I laugh because I called mine the sport model because it had two buckets, I had a console, and I had the doily delete. It did not have the little doilies on all the seat covers. Okay. Mine was the slightly shorter wheelbase one, not the one with the curtains and the extended rear.

Doug 31:09

That's the sport model, like you said.

Brad Phillips 31:10

That's right, the sport, the 6,000 pound sport model. Right. See, mine would be like a Nakamichi stereo system that was all factory, and the the person who was being chauffeured would could control all the stuff in the car, electric headrests and all and must and you know, what do you call it? You know, the muscle memory seats and all this kind of stuff you're massaging all the time. All this was controlled by remote control in the back. It did not have a TV, but it had every kind of audio and sensory thing you could imagine.

Doug 31:37

And this thing is hilarious. Well, I I got I need to find that video and watch it because that just sounds like fun.

Brad Phillips 31:44

It was great. And you know what again, when you do an adventure like this with a friend and you're experiencing this together, you know, Tom had never been in one of these cars before. So we were like, every mile was like this, wait a minute. And and we would have, we talk about this in the videos some, but you know, you can do Google translate on your phone, right? So we were we were just basically holding our phone up around the car, translating what all the buttons did while we were on this trip together.

Doug 32:11

You you hadn't had the car very long when you took it on this cross country trip. You just picked it up, drove it home.

Brad Phillips 32:17

Had a around a little bit, amused, and we'll just enjoy ourselves in it.

Doug 32:21

It's perfect. Nice. Well, that's that's on my list to go cross country one day. So maybe maybe as part of a caravan. That would be fun. Not in my DeLorean, but because you that clutch, that clutch is heavy. My goodness. Really? It's the heaviest clutch I've ever had. I actually it's speaking of all the parts availability, uh, company called what is it called? DPI, and I forget exactly, DeLorean Parts International, I think. They make a kit with a just reduced effort master enslaved cylinder. And that kit has been at my friend's house in Jarrett'sville, Maryland, since like December. So we're just trying to coordinate a time to get my car up there and he's gonna install it because I I it's just never been the same. So that car in traffic is not fun at all. It's a Renault engine, a Peugeot engine, uh 2.85 liter PRV. It's got Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo parts, to your point. Similar to your Porsche. I there was a guy, you know, we all watch YouTube. I have a guy I like to watch, the legit streetcars guy. Oh, Alan. Yes. And he did no, and he, the guys who helped him, that's where I bought my DeLorean, actually, in so if you're good on time, I want to ask you about a few more cars, a few more firsts. I am, but I feel like I'm talking a lot. Should I be letting you ask me more questions? You are lit up and you are doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. For for everybody who's listening to the episode, Brad is great when you're listening to him, but if you watch him on the YouTube video when it comes out, even better. And the backdrop in his place is phenomenal. Just all the great pictures, the quintessential Porsche 911 turbo in the background, a lot of automobile memorabilia.

Owning A 1917 Overland In Real Life

Brad Phillips 33:59

So with that said, my first pre-war car that I that I have owned, I had a 1917 Willie's Overland 90BT. So that was a five-passenger touring car, and it was absolutely bizarre. You know, that one wasn't great. But you made it halfway. We made it to Ohio before the production people finally shut it down and said, We you we do not have enough budget for you to put to run 10 quarts of oil to this thing every hour. It was like, whatever. We would have done it. I wanted an old car. And you know, you'd referenced when we first started talking about this peerless. Haggerty at the time owned just peerless. I think it was a 16, I think, a 16 or a 17 peerless, first V8 car, all that kind of stuff. And it was not a car that I ever drove, but we had some talented people that were on our staff that did drive that particular car in great races when I was first getting started with all of it. Really, really great. And I knew something, or if it was gonna be a full-bodied touring car, but but there's just a certain difference. When you say I have an old car, and most people think of a 50s something. I'm sorry. A 50s something car or a 60s something car is not an old car. They have automatic timing. You're just gonna drive it. It's basically gonna do what it's supposed to do. When you get earlier than that, 40s, 30s, 20s, you really start to roll back and you and you have to have a different level of mechanical understanding about what's going on. And you're listening for engine for the change in tone. You are. And when I moved to Maryland, because you're in Annapolis and I'm in Salisbury now, I moved here in about 2012, I think. There was a car museum that was in town, and it was in Ocean City, Maryland. And it was a wheels through time, or not not wheels through time. That's that fantastic one at Maggie Valley. Wheels of history wheels of yesteryear. Anyway, one of those types of wheels of type things. And it'd been there a long time, and it was owned by the Trimper family, who owned all the amusement parks in in Ocean City, Maryland.

Doug 36:01

You know, all the big I I didn't know. Is this still there?

Brad Phillips 36:04

No. It is now a Hampton Inn, which is but it did give you the opportunity to own the car because they were liquidating everything. And you would go, I basically went on Craigslist, and there was this random ad for a 1917 Willie's Overland, and along with a whole bunch of other cars. And I'd been in this museum before. And I was like, I kind of think I know what that car is. So I went and checked it out. And what I didn't know, I mean, I thought I was gonna drive it out of there. I was like, oh, we're gonna put some air in these white, hard as a rock tires, and I'm gonna drive it back on old ocean city road, and I'm gonna have this car. And it was not very expensive, but anyway, I bought I bought the car. And the the funny thing about it and why I ended up loving it for so long, I think I don't know, but maybe eight years or something like that. And when I brought it in and I was excited, I went to one of my first car club meetings for my local AACA. And I said, I'm Brad, I moved here, just moved here from you know, Colorado and then Nashville, and now here, and I own a 1917 Willie's Oberlin. Half the club was like, Well, I used to own that car. I hey, that was Billy's old car. That was Jack's old, whatever. This thing had been the village bicycle of pre-war cars around this club, and it had always been on the eastern shore of Maryland, which is weird. I think it was sold. It was just kind of around. But the funny part is I'd talking to these guys, hey, everybody in the club for some reason had spare parts to it. That told me how many times this car had been apart. Right. I'm not sure what part of you know George Washington's axe I actually had here. But it did it is a bit of uh a project for many, many people. Although it still had its original engine stamp and original chassis. At least it seems like they had put it back together with at least the main original stuff over time. But anyway, so I get it home and I realized that the guy that I had bought my house from, this gentleman, Jack Graham, had all owned this car. And when I brought it home and put it in the garage, it went right back over its original, its oil spots that had been left there 30 years ago, which was when he had owned it. The oil spot lined up. It was just really wild when you think of all the little connections that went around what this car kind of was. And I loved it. It was, you know, it was a three-speed crash box. You know, you had to set your timing and all this stuff on the steering wheel. It was a little four-cylinder thing. I learned a lot about taking care of that kind of a car, leather cone clutch. But it was always fun. I used to do videos with it and, you know, about the prairie chokes at the top. You know, if you hadn't driven it in a while, they had these little brass cups on top of the engine that you would fill with a little dab of fuel and you'd open each one to put fuel directly in the cylinder. You know, that was the way they did it instead of spraying ether down into it to fire it up. If it was cold, you just it was built to do this. Right. I don't know. I I designed that has made me really love, love these cars. And yes, I I I worked with the LeMay folks, America's Automotive Trust and America's Car Museum for a stint. And we were considering moving, and I was like, I cannot take this car with me to Washington State. And in a weak moment, to a person in the Willie's Overland nightclub who immediately carted it up, put it in a container, and took it to England. Okay. Right. But I'm looking for something else. As a matter of fact, I've been talking to a friend of mine about a Franklin. And I think having a Franklin would be fun because they're air-cooled, and I could have an air-cooled pre-war car with my air-cooled 9-11 stuff. And I think that'd be Which was funny because Benny was known for Maxwells. And everyone always said it was a Maxwell, but this the car in the video is actually this car.

Doug 39:36

And did you find that out through the local local guys? Is that how you learned it?

Brad Phillips 39:41

I did because it was advertised as the Jack Benny ironclad chain of ownership document. But I do still have a picture of him in the car hanging in my garage. Cool. It was that.

Doug 39:50

That's awesome. Didn't make it worth any more or less. I couldn't account for it. For you, it's special. What was back to first?

The Parts Porsche He Regrets

Doug 39:56

What was your first parts car that you wish you had kept it, you had restored it instead of taking parts off of it?

Brad Phillips 40:03

This is one of those things that, you know, people restore cars now. They'll start with a more of a rusty hulk than people used to take the time to do, you know, as things, as as time has moved on. This is kind of still along the vein of the Porsche stuff. I was visiting with a guy who had a museum in in Tennessee back when I lived in Nashville. And he was talking, I was we're talking about cars, and this is what I got now, and yada yada. This guy actually like a movie car museum. It was just kind of it was completely random. And he goes, Well, I got an old Porsche out back. I Porsche, I got a Porsche, it's out out back in the trees that fell down, the trees fell on it in a tornado in the 80s. And I was like, what? So I hiked back in this guy in the woods, and there was this 1965 or six. He didn't really even know what year it was, but I could tell that it was old. It was certainly pre-67 from some of the towels on the car. And you sure enough had a tree laying across it. But somehow it was fairly complete. I thought, I don't know, but it was stuck down in the mud. It was full. I mean, leaves. I mean, it was your classic car left in the woods for 25 years thing. 25 years. Wow. And I and I said, I'd love that car. You know, I could maybe, maybe some of the parts can help my cup, my projects. And he goes, Well, and a scrap guy offered me 200 bucks for it. So if you'll give me $200 for it, you can have it. And I said, I'll give you two. And I'm looking at the thing, I'm like, one gauge, if that still works, I could sell it on eBay and recoup the investment from this or whatever. Easily. I went back the next day with a trailer. And much to my dismay, he had already helped me out by cutting all the trees out of the way, wrapping a chain around the front of it, and hauling it out of the woods with his four, what do you call it? Four runner thing. And I was just like, and the whole front of the car now was now pulled out. Right. But now you could get a look at it. And it was rusted Swiss cheese from the door handles all the way down to the thing. I mean, this was just taper, paper thin metal. But we got it pulled up on the trailer and I ended up putting it in the garage and build a big platform for it. And actually, I harvested everything I could off of that car because it turned out to be, once I got it home and could research, it was the 500th Porsche built that year. It was 351500. So a very early car. Everything on it was still date coded, 1965. And it was, it had some really neat, I think it was a five-dial car, but it was not restorable. So I got the pieces that I could use. And I actually have a friend. You know, the the door sill plates were different for those early cars. So any reproduction parts you buy, they're shaped just a little different. No one in a million years would notice, but if you know, then then you know. My buddy Logan out in California, a good friend and a guy I used to work with, he had an early 12. And I was able to salvage these things, clean them up, and give them to him for his projects. He now has the correct soul plates for his car that came off this thing. So there were a bunch of little parts that I got off it that I sent to other people that I knew would need them and then eBay'd the rest. But now I think with how old the car actually was and the fact that it still had all its VIN numbers on it and the engine case and stuff like that, I'm pretty sure to restore it or at least rebody it in some way with maybe another Hulk in slightly better condition. But I don't know. I I don't think I could ever part another car out again. But in my defense, you had to have seen it back then. And when they hauled it unceremoniously out of the woods, it was tough to say.

Doug 43:25

It was ready to go. And for our listeners, a and correct me if I'm wrong on these facts, the 911 came out first, I think. They had a bunch of leftover engines from 356, and that became the 912 to make it a little bit cheaper because the 356 had been the I don't want to use the word poor man's Porsche because my gosh, there were they made a budget version of the 911, which became the 912. Is that pretty accurate? You're right, pretty accurate.

Brad Phillips 43:54

I mean, there were there was actually a time when the Porsche the 356. And the 912 were actually in the same dealerships. There was a little bit of overlap there as they were phasing out the old and putting in the new. And the a Porsche 912, where it used to be, oh, the poor man's Porsche and all this sort of rig and roll from back then. They're just as prized for a different reason. They're a little bit more economical to run, a little bit. I mean, 90% of the restoration parts you need are the same as on a 9-11. So it's not like it's cheaper to restore one. But they're, you know, they have a different lightness to it. It's a 90 horsepower engine and in a very light body. It's still a lot of fun to drive. And I think it's it's found its own audience with people that appreciate it for what it is, not as a less viable alternative to a 9-11. Now a 912 is really accepted as its own thing. I think it's it's wonderful. And they are, they're beautiful cars. They're just as pretty to look at. Deep into the apex of a corner, if you lift, you may want to wish sometimes you had a little less weight back there.

Great Race Cars And Smart Upgrades

Doug 44:58

So many more, if if a couple more, if you don't mind. What was your last brake race car that you were competing in before taking over the event? That would be the 1916 Hudson Speedster that you can kind of see back there. And that was owned by Haggerty. Do I have that right?

Brad Phillips 45:15

No, no, no. This car is owned by the Stahl Automotive Foundation. Yes. The they have a uh Ted and Mary Stahl have a fantastic museum being kind of reborn as an experience center. And it is in Chesterfield, Michigan, outside of Detroit. If you want to go and see Dusenbergs and all kinds of really, really incredible cars, it is, you know, even a even the Chrysler Turbine car they have up there. They've done videos with it with you know with Jay Leno. And it's it's really unbelievable the types of things that you'll see up there. And I'm um I'm proud to to be associated with them as a as part of their museum board. And it's just great. The family's wonderful. I've had a lot, a lot of good times with these people. But but this particular car, I will miss. I I appreciate and the gravity of running this whole crazy, crazy event across the country every year. I'm honored by the opportunity to do it from you know the folks at Coker that that own it now. But I will miss piloting that big Hudson. It was quite a quite a trick learning how to do that. And it was tricky too, because not only is it a three-speed manual, you know, crash box non-synchro, it did have some tips and tricks to it. We actually have a gear vendors over-underdrive that hangs off the back of the tail shaft. If you're on a big long transit, you can kick it up and drop the revs down so it'll survive going, you know, 55 or 60 miles an hour for really long stretches. There's some there's some cool little things that you can do. Like, you know, again, with any pre-war car, lots of them have, you know, different types of overdrive, Mitchell's and Columbia rear ends and all this that that kind of extend the range past what the cars were able to do when they were new. So it's super neat.

Doug 46:55

No, that's just just like resto, resto mod, so to speak, right? Like just finding a way to keep the car going in modern times for at speeds it was never intended to go.

Brad Phillips 47:05

There are a lot of really good companies now that are out there that are doing modernized versions, you know, resto mods or or whatever, of Mustangs, of Broncos, of K5, blazers, you know, all this sort of stuff. It's really fun when you have to kind of look twice at it. And, you know, if it's got a modern Coyote V8 in it or something, or an LS, but it looks the part. Like a lot of these things, they'll have like a Dinacorn, which is a a Ford, an official Ford tooling sort of product, a completely modern, brand new sheet metal. And underneath it is, you know, this modern powertrain. I think that's pretty slick. Like I really like it. I used to not be as interested in it when I was younger. Now that I'm in my 50s, all of a sudden, you know, a car with air conditioning is not the travesty that I used to consider it to be.

Doug 47:55

Very happy to have. Agreed. Agreed. He was our first guest on our pilot episode. My friend Devin is, he just got his wife, and I can't remember the brand, but it is a it looks like an original Bronco, but fully modern. It's they can't even call it a Bronco. I forget the name, but Coyote V8 in it. It's uh hopefully I'm gonna review that car sometime soon. So it's a pretty, pretty impressive vehicle.

Brad Phillips 48:22

The people at Velocity, Velocity Restorations in Florida, and they make the Broncos and they make a lot of these things, and they're really, really good. You're right. There are several companies that make them. I've been to the the plant, like the restoration facility where they where these guys make them, and it's a compl it's a computerized assembly line. It is absolutely unbelievable the tech that they have to build these things and make them come out the other side. The way they look and drive is the assembly line's fully modern. These things are 300 grand now? You know, that's what I've heard. And the way options go and everything, but if you want it absolutely turnkey, they they sell like hotcakes.

Doug 49:01

Speaking of newer vehicles and older ones, what is in your garage right now?

Brad Phillips 49:06

Right now, I have my 8711 Carrera. It is still largely original and untouched, which I really love. It's guards red, faded, you know, it's like every now and then, every few years we'll buff it out. It'll be nice and shiny, and then it'll sort of climb back down to a nice faded red again with a black interior. Really, really love the car. It's kind of an annual thing that we just trade the cars around. We do a lot of touring in the car. Number on it, right? Delivery. You have a for after any event. I'll leave the stickers on it and stuff, and then I'll peel them off. But I've driven it in our uh our two-lane touring events that's a company a couple of friends of mine and I have, and we've been putting on events around the country. I drive it at other people's events all the time, and we just have a really nice time with it. So the Carrera, and my wife drives it. My wife will get in that thing and I'll just come home and she's gone. And it's again perfect. You just fire it up and go. Exactly. How a modern 9-11 works. I have a 1966 Sunbeam Tiger, okay, which is a little British roadster with a Ford V8 in it. Right. Ford V8. This is the second one of those I've had. I've had this one 10 or 12 years. It's taken it apart, I've taken the engine out of this thing at least three times. I've tried to make it a hot rod. It didn't want to be a hot rod. The whole car, I I twisted it like a pretzel by doing a clutch drop in it after I put a Hypo 289 in it a few years ago. I didn't like that. I will I will say shredded everything. Shredded every every mount in the car, shoved the the I mean it twisted bad. The radiator got into the fan, broke both motor mounts. I mean, everything. It just was not happy. So now it's got the original 260 cubic inch V8 back in it. The only thing that is not stock is I've got a what they call an Edelbrock F4B, which is a vintage four-barrel manifold from from the period that was actually part of an options package that you could buy for Sunbeam Tigers called the LAT1 package. So I have that on it with a first generation Holly Sniper EFI system. And I really wanted to see if I liked it, if I thought the EFI was incredible, better than a carburetor. And I think the jury is out. It's certainly a lot more complicated. Before it had points distributor and a two-barrel carburetor or a four-barrel, and it just did what it was supposed to do. It's faster. It absolutely runs better with the EFI on it. And it's there's no stumbling, and it's a nice, snappy car. But I had to do a lot of complex things to it and actually have some professional help even from another buddy of mine who actually helped put it all together with this fancy MSD distributor, computer controlled, all this stuff. I mean, it is as high-tech as a Sunbeam Tiger can be, but I don't know. I liked it just fine with the two-barrel, too. So, you know, whatever. It's an experiment.

Doug 51:43

A bit of a Frankenstein, perhaps.

Brad Phillips 51:46

It looks stock. You know, that was again my goal. I've still running wheels with hubcaps, and all the whole thing's a little patined at this point. I am having the seats done. I'm supposed to drive it to the Sand Hills Motoring Expo in Pinehurst, North Carolina in May. I'm the Grand Marshal of that event. I drove the 9-11 down there last year. This year I promised I'd bring something else. We'll see if I can survive it. It's got it's hot. Top, top doesn't go up. I haven't pulled the top up on that car in years. So I just am just out in the weather, whatever's going on in it. It's fine. Neat, neat car. Yeah. And then I guess the last one is a I've got an E46 BMW that is not really even an old car. It's an 01. You know, it qualifies for historic tags in Maryland, and I keep it around and drive it like I would any of the other old ones. But the reality is if I'm going to a car event and it's boiling hot outside, I know that's the one with the good air conditioning, and that's probably why I'm taking it. It's a convertible, right? It's a 330 CI. And, you know, if you want an E46 BMW, it's the heaviest way to go. There's no doubt about it. It is probably any power gain I'm getting by having a 330 over a 325 is negated by the extra 200 pounds of machinery I'm hauling around for the power top. But it, you know, for people that don't mess around with old BMW stuff, and I say old, anything pre-turbo, I think, is kind of the sweet spot for BMWs. Any of the naturally aspirated sixes that they had through the E30, E36, E46, that kind of that sweet spot from the mid-80s to about 2005. You are really hard-pressed to not enjoy yourself in whatever spec, a 325 or 330 or whatever you pick. It's just a great era of BMWs. So I just appreciate them for what they are.

Doug 53:33

Those engines are smooth at inline six, nothing fucking.

Brad Phillips 53:37

And easy to service, you know, but they're they're easy to maintain for a DIY guy. They're not terribly complex from a computer standpoint, really, yet. I would really love, you know, that G-body sort of era of turbo. And by the time they got up in the late 80s, they had tamed a lot of the ills on the the first versions from the 70s. They were quite as, you know, widowmakery-ish as what they'd said. But you've really got to, I've never had the experience. I've driven one, maybe two, didn't do anything in anger, just sort of was on a tour and somebody was willing to swap with me so I could play around. And there's just something about a 930 turbo. I'm again as a kid of the 80s, the poster cars, Lamborghini Kuntash, Porsche 930 turbo. Those are the two big ones of that era for me. And the 930 is ultimately usable. The Kuntash, of course, is how do you not love that? What an icon that is. But know what I use cars for at a 930 would be perfect for me.

Doug 54:34

Right? There's something about the whale tail and the wide fenders as I stare at the picture in the background. What

The Saab He Misses And Final Notes

Doug 54:40

is this? I I swear this will be the last car question. Burnett. I'm hoping you'll come back. What is the car you wish you had never sold and would love to buy back? And who knows? Maybe the current owner's listening and they can get in touch with you.

Brad Phillips 54:54

You know, I actually know where this particular car is. Okay. If I think this is the one I'm thinking of. I've had a lot of, I've had probably 40 or so of them had a lot of time, but I love Saabs. And I don't know why I love Saabs so much, other than they're just a little different. And many years ago, I actually drove a Saab 9000 turbo as a daily driver back when it was just kind of a daily driver car. And now time went on and I said, I really want to revisit that. I love that car. I never had one with a stick. And a nine and a 9000 turbo with a stick shift is a different animal. The engine computer is tuned differently. It's got a little bit more boost. It's probably 25 more horsepower or something. And that's you know that's a number you can generally feel. So again, Craigslist somehow. This is the you can tell the area, like where my bottom feeding this on when I'm looking for cars. And there was a 9,000 turbo in near Washington, DC, just a couple hours from me here. It had something big. It was a downpipe. It had a three-inch exhaust on it, like off a bluebird bus that went out, but it terminated under the bumper just as it should have. So you really had to kind of look at it. Built steam shocks, really, really nice build, but looked like a stock car. And it was in really nice shape. So I bought it, played with it, and found all the correct arrows, you know, air, and it was an you know, the arrow model of it. So it was just awesome. Had the good seats, everything was cool. If you like 9000, they kind of look like the box a Ferrari would come in. That's like the old joke because they're just these kind of weird square, angular four-door hatchback things. But if you but they're beautiful to me, I love, I love these cars. And the fun part about it, the way these cars were geared, they were actually in all the the road tests of the day, they were faster than a Lamborghini Diablo on a third gear pole. And they, and of course, they, you know, they rigged these tests, like, okay, what's the one category we can say this car is faster than a Diablo? And that was it. But even stock, like this car, gearing-wise, you'd put it in third gear and you'd drive and you'd you'd idle it down so you're going about 40 miles an hour and you're in third, and just squeeze it. And by the time your foot got to the bottom of the floor on the squeeze, that needle had gone to 105 before you needed to shift into fourth gear. It was fun, such an exhilarating rush from this car that you did not think it had in it. And I would just do that incessantly all the time. Well, I should have kept it, but I was on one of the great races, and I had driven it to the start that year. And the son of one of our other great great race friends, who was another competitor, was there, and he was a young kid, and he was going to McPherson College in Kansas with their fantastic auto restoration program. And it turned out he was an enormous fan of sobs and had always loved the sob 9000 arrow and all this stuff. His name Cash? No. Okay. We uh one of them is a sob guy, Cash Cash Nab. They are, well, if they're there together, they are they're probably working on this car together. But I got sweet talked out of it. That his dad, Brett, came and said, Well, what do you want for it? I was like, I don't know. I put some money into it, I paid this for it, whatever. I don't know, six grand? Okay. But he then has taken the motor apart. Now it's probably got 400 horsepower, and he loves it. While it's a bittersweet that I don't own this car anymore, and I'm always looking for another Saab 9000, and I can never find one that's in as good a shape as what this one was. There are a thousand roached out ones out there that are just hanging on by a thread. I I'm sure. But but anyway, that one I wish it went to a good home. And maybe one day it I can cajole it back into the garage again because I know where it is. But I I did, I loved that car. I and it was we did tail the dragon in that car. Okay. I gave the keys to my 9-11 to a buddy of mine, and I drove my sob and we said, Do you want to s we'll go up and then we'll switch on the way back? I said, I'm good. I said, Let me, I'll stay in this sob, baby. I had the best time in that car. Should not have been that good, but it would be.

Doug 58:42

Is it fair to say Saab? A Saab today is or the equivalent today is a a Subaru? And I'm saying that from the cult cult cultness, if you will.

Brad Phillips 58:51

It can be, yes, cult of personality of a car. They it yes, they don't have quite the you know, the I mean, you've got a WRX STI guy or something that might be in that same class of crazy person with early sob turbo people, you know. The rivalry back then with sobs, actually, because I was driving them back like we would always like in the snow, you couldn't beat it. Because you'd watch a guy in a five series BMW get a crab walking sideways up a hill in the snow, knowing he's going for the ditch. And you go right by in the front drive sob. Good point. It was it was fun. You know, everybody's gotta have a rivalry doing different for sure.

Doug 59:31

For sure. We're starting to close out, but I wanted to revisit the answer to the trivia question about where the first grace rates, great race started in California in 1983. We know it started there, but where did it end? And don't know if you know the answer. I'm not gonna give it away. All right. That's for the that's for your listeners and viewers here. Very appropriately, the Indian Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana. There you have it. Different places all the time, different routes. You're planning some of them. With all that said, Brad, are there any special causes? I'm sure there are many, but special causes that are important to you that we can share with the listeners. Well, that's awfully nice of you to do that.

Brad Phillips 1:00:11

You know, our our great race, we have what's called the X Cup Legacy Fund, and it promotes scholarship. And in our race community, we have teams from high schools and technical colleges that come participate with us, and it helps defray those expenses for them. I really like that. That's kind of one of our internal things that we do. Me too. Love it. You know, I've got I've got a lot of friends that are involved in lots of different sorts of things out there. So really why I love car museums. I will tell you that that is a thing. If you have a local car museum, support it, be a member of whatever membership thing they have. And you wouldn't believe how meaningful that is for a for a museum is to say, okay, I'm gonna they're gonna pay 50 bucks for the whole year and you get these great benefits or something. And that that kind of recurring revenue really helps a lot of museums, and many of them struggle. Some are more funded than others. Just find your local car or airplane or boat museum, whatever you love the most, and support it. Okay. Wonderful.

Doug 1:01:08

And when is the great race this year, 2026? End of June.

Brad Phillips 1:01:12

So we go the last couple of weeks of June typically to the very first part of July is the general slot for the event. Okay. Well, yeah, be looking forward to it and following it online as closely as possible. Come see us on uh on Route 66, and we've got a lot of really great people. The Peterson Automotive Museum is running a team. Wow. Metal Rock, Summit, JEGS. I mean, you've got kind of all the big names of anybody that you have going on in the automotive world, and they all run their own social media around it. So you can follow a lot of different teams on this whole thing all the way across. It's epically fun. And our great race content is on on YouTube, on the web, Instagram, all those great things.

Doug 1:01:53

Awesome, awesome. Well, we'll be sharing all those links with your episode, and I can't wait to start watching it, especially now now knowing you. Awesome. Great to spend some time with you. Indeed. Indeed. Our listeners can find you at thegreatrace.com. Is that the best place? And on YouTube. My main gig is running this event.

Brad Phillips 1:02:11

If they find us, find us there, that's perfectly fine. I am very easily found.

Doug 1:02:16

Okay. And come see me at the Sand Hills Mattering Expo in May. Hopefully our listeners will stop by and look for you and say, heard you on the podcast. That's right. All right. As we slowly and gently we avoid the curbs, steer the podcast into the pit lane. I want to thank our sensational guest, Brad Phillips. It was an honor to have you on the show. And I hope our paths will cross in person very soon, whether it's going to be an event you're MC or just a local car show in the Maryland area. You are a true car guy, and we'd love to have you back. I'd be happy to be back. I love doing this stuff. I'll interview you. You've got some good stuff you got to talk about. Okay. You spent too much time talking to me. Okay. All right. Well, you can be our guest host and you can interview me. I'd love it. It'd be an honor. And for our listeners, you have just heard the high reving, low mileage, late model, heard round the world authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia.