Prototyping EVs, 115 MPH in Grandpa’s Cadillac & Building Rivians with John Gravelyn

What is the difference between engineering vehicles at a 100-year-old legacy automaker versus a high-speed EV startup?

In this episode of To All The Cars I've Loved Before, host Doug sits down with former Ford and Rivian engineering manager turned real estate founder, John Gravelyn. From fixing his own beaters out of pure pragmatism as a teenager to working in top-secret prototype shops, John shares an incredible insider look at how modern vehicles get built—and the hilarious personal car stories along the way.

What We Cover in This Episode:

• First Car & Pure Freedom: The 300+ horsepower 1997 Cadillac STS gift from his grandfather, keeping it waxed, and the terrifying moment he tested its top speed at 115 MPH only to discover aerodynamic lift!
• The Practical Ranger: How a basic 1998 Ford Ranger 5-speed manual launched his teenage lawn care business and taught him hands-on repair skills.
• Worst Car & Commute Nightmare: Losing his clutch in a Mercury Milan on I-94 during a 1.5-hour Detroit rush-hour commute, stalling 20 times, and trading it in for $300.
• Inside Ford's Prototype Shop: Working on top-secret builds like the Bronco in a historic 1950s Lincoln shop, plus testing Mustang Mach-E range in the emissions lab during COVID.
• The Rivian EV Shift: The stark culture contrast between Ford's established systems and Rivian’s fast-paced, "bootstrapped" prototype environment where custom parts were needed instantly.
• The Future of Auto Techs & AI: Invaluable advice for the next generation of technicians on using problem-solving frameworks and AI tools to diagnose complex modern vehicles.
• Dream Cars & First Principles: Why John’s ultimate dream car is a mid-70s Lincoln Continental Mark IV, and how he now uses an engineering mindset to help analytical professionals with real estate at First Principles Partners.

Connect with Our Guest:

• First Principles Partners: thefppartners.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:

• Check out the amazing article about the podcast by Elevate Society and Tal Gur, author of "The Art of Fully Living"
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Transcript

Intro, Sponsor, And Reviews

Doug 0:02

Welcome back to All the Cards I've Love Before, the only podcast that shares life lessons through the rear view mirror of your favorite cards. It's time to get a little grease under your nails, grab your favorite car theme t-shirt or hat, jump into our DeLorean time machine, get it up to 88, and get back to that first sense of pure freedom. The windows down, the music cranked, and your best friend piled in the back. Every car tells a story, whether it's the forgotten beater or the one that got away. We're diving into the personal history behind the metal, so let's get into it. I'm your host Doug, going to Silos today, and looking forward to our fantastic guest. But before we do that, I want to tell you about our sponsor or common issues in the Ford e4 automatic transmission that was in the last of the ODF or body style for products that you might be considering. And our podcast uses CarCurious's web player. So you can take it for a test drive here at CarsLove.comslash listen. And in addition to our show, they have over 250 automotive podcasts indexed, which includes 2,500 cars and over 340,000 moments explained. Best of all, it's free. So be sure to give CarCurious a try at get CarCurious.com or again on our own web player, carslove.com slash listen. And I'd like to read a recent review on Apple Podcasts. This review actually comes from a past guest, Tony Funk. Tony was on episode 86, The Lost 1983 Mustang and Mopar Rusto Mod Nightmares. And he had quite a few. So from Tony, I have been listening to podcasts for years and talking cars for years, and never thought I would be invited to do both at the same time. I love the fact that Doug gave me the opportunity to talk about just a few of the many cars I've owned over the years. And for our listeners, if you're enjoying the show, the best way to support us is to leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts, send us a note via social media, email us at stories at CarsLove.com, or share this episode with a friend who misses their first ride. And now today, how we found our guest. So our guest found us via a friend. He was looking for some car-related podcasts, and he's not your traditional, and I'll let him explain it once we do the intro. He's not your traditional car guy. He doesn't want to talk about the specs on his latest Ferrari that he probably doesn't own. He wants to talk about the old beaters that he owned in the past or what he's got in his garage or what he's thinking about in the future and hint, it's not a Ferrari. So without further ado, today's guest is John Gravlin. John is a former Ford and Rivian engineering manager, turned real estate founder at First Principal Partners, where he helps analytical professionals approach real estate with the same rigorous, data-driven precision used in their careers. So welcome to the show, John. How are you today? Hey, thanks for having me, Doug. I'm doing great. How about you? Doing doing great. And I I see you have one of your former employer shirts on. For everybody who who's watching, you can see John is dressed up today and he's got a Rivian shirt on, one of his past employers. And we're going to talk about lots of things in the car realm, including John's career, but also his first cars. So, John, with with that, can you tell us about yourself and your automotive journey?

John Gravelyn 3:21

Yeah,

Meet John Gravlin And His Journey

John Gravelyn 3:22

my name's John Gravlin. I've loved cars since I've gotten my own car. I I was a bike fiend when I was a little kid, when I was a younger kid, because it gave me freedom. And that bike went away real quick when I had ultimate freedom to the highways. And started fixing my own cars kind of out of pragma because I had to. There was no one else to fix the car, and I didn't have the money to fix the car, and I was hard on my cars as a teenager. So kind of fell in love with the process and with the complex machinery that is any any vehicle and made it my goal to become an engineer at Ford. And decently far into my career, the goalposts had moved, and the big car companies were the tech startups like Tesla, which had already rose. I mean, it still has risen since. But Rivian was a big one on my radar because I liked I liked their product a lot. I liked their ethos. And yeah, I was able to move my dream from Ford to Rivian there, and then eventually hit my final dream of starting my own business. So yeah, that that's little step of just starting fixing my own cars to hey, how do I solve the problems and build these cars? And then I got really fortunate in both jobs. Got to work with prototypes, which is probably the coolest engineering job. Getting my eyes on the vehicles before the the public did and everything else. And especially at Ford during that time, they were doing Bronco and and some other exciting new builds that were top secret. And your phone came out in the factory, you're you're in big trouble. But it was fun to kind of have that in the back of my head of like, I know what everyone else wants to see, but I get to see it every day.

Doug 4:46

Yeah, yeah, that's that's exciting. And would you you grew up in Michigan, you're still in Michigan. Would you, and I'm asking for myself, but also our listeners, since you mentioned Ford, would you mention, would you recommend a visit to the the Henry Ford museum?

John Gravelyn 5:02

Oh, absolutely, yes, a hundred percent. That I've gone, we bounced around the country a little bit in my career, and I've tried other museums of similar caliber, and none come close. Henry Ford is still my favorite museum. I get to take my kids there now. They've got so many unique industrial. It's a museum designed for American, for America, American history, and to tell that story, not the stories of rich men from Europe and other things. This is America's story.

Doug 5:29

For sure. And some of the prototypes that you worked on are probably there, correct?

John Gravelyn 5:33

Yeah, actually, I don't I I'm not that old, unfortunately. So nothing that I have is there that I would work on, but some of the the prototypes that would have come out of the same shop that we did, because our prototype planet Ford was actually the it was in the 1950s. It was made for Lincoln Continentals, a lower volume vehicle, and then Ford converted it to a prototype vehicle when the boats went away. That's a great endorsement.

Doug 5:57

No, you you mentioned the Bronco, and I and I thought the the Bronco prototype was there, just thinking out loud. So they may have.

John Gravelyn 6:04

I was last time I was there, kids love the farm equipment this time. So I gotcha.

Doug 6:09

I gotcha. Yeah, they they do have a bit of everything, and I'm hoping to make my way out there. And uh speaking of of history, real quick, when I asked you about in the pre-show about a couple of your favorite episodes, you had mentioned the one with with Kurt, which had his 1981 DeLorean, not only is 1981 DeLorean, also a 1984 Chrysler Laser XE.

John Gravelyn 6:29

Yeah, they're just they're fun vehicles that aren't like I mean, obviously everyone has their DeLorean knows DeLorean, and I think the DeLorean story from a historical standpoint is so and the Chrysler Laser as well. Just they're the first ones I listened to, and it got me so excited about the podcast and and just it had me reminiscing constantly. I I couldn't, I shouldn't stop smiling.

Doug 6:51

Yeah, it I was gonna say, Andy's uh he's giving back to the community, so he's uh I think electrical engineering background, so like I think he will take your old Chrysler whatever trip computer and you could send it to him. I think it's him and maybe a couple other guys, and they'll repair it for you. Get it working better than so they don't make them anymore. So what do you do?

John Gravelyn 7:12

Exactly. And it's guys like that. I I don't I need to find more guys like that because I got a jukebox downstairs that needs a bunch of electrical work. I'll have to get Kurt's number from you after this. But yeah, I I think that's what's so fun about this stuff too, is you can 3D print a lot of stuff, but you can't always make a replica. You can't replicate something that's it's better to restore old cars than it is to replace the parts, you know. It's a lot easier and a lot more practical, and and you get the original functionality back, and it takes the electronic wizardry of electronic engineers to figure that out.

Doug 7:42

Yeah, I was uh listening to another podcast that I enjoy called Grumpy Old Geeks, and uh they they had a guy on there. It's a real funny podcast, and they're they're around my age, they're in their 50s, and one of their regular regular guests was talking about his he's got some electrical engineering background. I my dad was an electrical engineer, so I've been soldering since I was seven, but not very good. Not not not to the extreme that my dad is was, I should say. But he was talking about how he used Chat GPT to help him trouble do some troubleshooting, like taking pictures of the diagrams themselves, the wiring diagrams, and said, well, if I have this problem and I have this, and then there are specific icons, if you will, for lack of a better word, for a diode, for an anode, and it was he said it did a pretty good job in his troubleshooting and helped him fix something. So I forget if it was an old toaster, I don't know what it was he was talking about, but it was something pretty old.

John Gravelyn 8:38

Yeah, uh the electronics they're they're beautifully simple on the older vehicles, too. When you when they're so big and and you start to really examine the logic, they're almost like a Swiss watch, but electrically engineered.

Doug 8:50

Yep, for for sure. Yep, and they yeah, and they just work sometimes well, yeah. Solder joints fail, those are easy to fix, and uh maybe maybe we'll chat on later about to repair and all that all these interesting things in the automotive world, as well as where you've gone. I do want to bring up a trivia question, which you probably know the answer to because it involves one of your former employers. We'll we'll save the answer to the end. I'm pretty sure you'll know it. But so with that said, the trivia question is before they became known for their building the famous rugged off-road electric trucks and SUVs, what type of vehicle did Rivian spend its first two years developing? So it's might surprise some

First Car Freedom In A Cadillac

Doug 9:31

people. So we'll see. But I want us to go back in time and talk about your first car. Tell us what it was.

John Gravelyn 9:39

Yeah, my first car. It was uh a red 1997 Cadillac STS. It was a a gift for my grandfather and kind of the deal he had with me and my sisters when we turned 16. He didn't get a car of some sort that was his car that he had, and he wanted a new car, so it worked out really well. It was a boat, it was a lot of fun. I was way too no 16-year-old should have 300 plus horsepower and got into some trouble with it, but at the same time, and it it was just it was my ticket to freedom. So that car meant so much to me at the time. And just just thinking about driving it to school, and I kept that thing, cleaned it every week, waxed it every other week. It was my baby, and fortunately didn't have too much trouble with it. I think I was in and majorly mechanically what wrong with on it when I had it. Eventually, the car went to my sister, and then the 32 valve did its thing, and the water the the gas head gasket went, and it just became too too expensive to repair at that point to justify a car that wasn't worth it anymore. But it was probably too fast on the highway, and I had a lead foot at the time, and it was it did whatever I wanted to do, and everywhere I went, very small compact cars, and then I have this thing that's bigger than the SUV I have now, but it was a sedan. But it just kind of made my love for that that type of vehicle that's just so long, and it was just fun. And it had all it had little fancy features, heated seats, and all the for 1997. That was like a fancy seat. Yeah, the way I was driving it. It was funny, it went down about four MPGs from my going for my grandpa to me.

Doug 11:05

Yeah, just yeah. No, I I remember when those cars came out, and yeah, that was Seville Touring Sedam and basically performance version of the Seville with a Cadillac North Star 32 valve V8 and front front wheel drive.

John Gravelyn 11:20

Yeah, yeah, it was thankfully it was front wheel drive. Uh, that was at the time I really wanted a Cadillac CTS V. I think when I had my STS, that was kind of the Cadillac flagship coupe. And if I had rear-wheel drive in a Michigan winter with that Cadillac STS, I I would have it would have been wrapped around a pole like that first winter, absolutely. I already had enough trouble with it.

Doug 11:43

It's it's it's funny you you mentioned that. I was every time I hear the Led Zeppelin song Rock and Roll, I think about that commercial with the CTS when it came out. And I think it was just it was doing donuts all over the place, and it was a big return to Cadillac to or maybe first first start for Cadillac going to small rear-world drive cars when that came out.

John Gravelyn 12:05

And it was a cool performance car. And but then I think I never at the time that they were popular and new, I I'd never dreamed of affording one. But I think by the time like I had looked into it, they stopped selling them in Michigan for the area. It was harder to get them in Michigan because the the rear-wheel drive just was so so dangerous in the winter.

Doug 12:25

Yeah, and the rumor I hear about the roads in Michigan that they are bad. Is that true? They're all destroyed from the the winners and niggle acting.

John Gravelyn 12:35

Yeah, it it's there's a lot of different theories. I we're also one of the few states that still allows um, like I think double-loaded trucks. There's some things with the trucking as well, because we have the Canadian, the Canadian trade route here through here that they allow certain things to get some more truck fees and stuff like that, and that beats up the roads. But I I don't understand it. I drive we drive out of the state a lot. We drive a lot, and there's plenty of states that have winter. Or not only one, so I I don't know what's going on. I like the the roads in other states better.

Doug 13:03

Yeah, noted, noted. Yeah. So I uh in your from your intake form, I did want to ask you a funny question. I think you intended it to be funny. It was something about what speed a Cadillac STS has to reach in order to achieve lift.

John Gravelyn 13:19

Yeah, yeah. I like I said, fortunately, it didn't go too far. But yeah, around 115 miles an hour, just being stupid with my buddies. Of course, I had to have five people in the car because I couldn't just kill myself if that were the case. I was a teenager and we we were just seeing how fast the thing could go because it's got a VA that should be able to go really fast. And well, didn't really take into consideration that whether it's got the horsepower to go that fast doesn't mean it has the aerodynamics to stay on the ground. And I brought 115, it starts to like kind of lift and get gets real squirrely, and I just let off the gas and luckily was able to coast down to comfortable 90. Yeah, don't go over 115, 120 in your Cadillac SDSs if there's any still out there. But can we quote you on that? Yes, please.

Doug 13:58

We'll definitely put that in the show notes. Maybe Car Curious will index that as well. So yeah, so you got the car from your grandfather. Obviously, you're having a lot of fun just reliving the past, and you had that car eventually it went down to your sister. What car replaced it? And what was the besides your sister needing a car, what was the impetus to replace that car?

John Gravelyn 14:21

So I was doing a lot of like lawn mowing, manual labor, just odd jobs for folks. And I was working at Menards at the time as well. But so I'm working this cashier job. My buddies are all working, you know, we're all working minimum wage jobs. At the time, gas was four dollars a gallon the first time, and so that it's kind of funny now looking back at it. But the I wanted to make my own jobs as I want to have my own company do my own thing, and I was gonna be a lawn care guy. And so like I can just start my business with this truck. I'm helping this this older gentleman out with his yard all the time, and he's got an old he had a

A Ranger, A Hustle, And DIY Fixes

John Gravelyn 14:56

98 Ford Ranger five-speed manual with the four-cylinder, just very basic, single cab, most basic Ford Ranger you can get. And he was getting older and he was he had used it to help out the other folks in the neighborhood, the other elderly folks. They'd I helped him replace a toilet with it when he still had it and stuff like that. And I looked at that and I'm like, that's my ticket. I can pick up the lawnmower, I can put it in the back, and that's how I started my business. Lawnmower in the back, lawnmower out of the back at 15 different houses all the time. And looking back, I don't know how I had the energy to keep up with that. But that's why I got that. It was it was a practical car that I could start my business with, and as much fun as the Cadillac was, kind of saw the deal of like my grandpa's looking at giving my sister a car. Let's solve that problem. Her car that she she has no interest in doing lawn care, the Cadillac. She loved she liked the Cadillac. I bet I had driven her around in it plenty when she was not quite old enough. And and the deal just worked out great. And and the Ford Ranger was uh cheaper than probably anything he was looking at for her, so it was pretty, pretty easy deal to make with them. And so we got that truck and I started cleaning it up, and that became my vehicle for probably about three or four years there, maybe not quite three. And I just used that for finding odd jobs. I could bring some equipment with me, power washing, and just drove it all over the city and went to a bunch of different lawns, worked with a couple different couple different companies there. And I I just had the time of my life, but senior year summer to college, I had pretty much absolute freedom. Just had to make sure a few lawns were cut every week to make sure my money kept coming in. My friends all had jobs where they had they had shifts and everything else, and they're making minimum wage, trying to buy four dollar gas. I probably wasn't I was figuring twenty, twenty five bucks an hour by the time I was done, and I was just it was far superior to the alternative and allowed me the freedom and to fix that car multiple times. I there was one time we had I had it and turned on the lights and it died. And so I was like, okay, pulled over. I don't remember that to have it jumped or not. I think I did have it jumped, but then I decided not to turn the lights on until I could get the auto parts store, and I changed the alternator out in AutoZone's parking. And the lights worked again after that without shutting the car down. So that car, like it was by no means sexy. I I did race another six-cylinder ranger once, and I did lose. And that was a funny. It was actually probably the best thing. It's probably why I'm still alive. Is that thing maxed at 90 miles an hour? So I could just go everywhere, the pedal on the floor, teenager, do whatever I want. I could have that feeling of the pedal on the floor, but it really never got that dangerous. One of the cylinders went out, and then it couldn't do over 75, and it was ideal for me. Yeah, perfect.

Doug 17:28

Too bad it didn't work in the alternate way. Start it, maybe start at 75, and then you did the other cylinder work. And as you're more mature and you're like, I'm not gonna drive that fast. I don't need I could go 90, but I don't need to.

John Gravelyn 17:40

Yeah, I looking back, I don't know what what I was thinking back then. I sometimes drift to 90. I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta slow down. And back then I I had to get to 90. Let's get to 90 as fast as I can.

Doug 17:51

I'm I'm with you. I same I've slowed down considerably. So with what's we we have these, and and we'll we'll talk about ribbon, of course. We have these super fast electric cars, and even your average miniban, what do we need that for? Like, like I run my Tesla in chill mode, and uh my friend who likes fast cars, he's like, Why even have it? I said, I don't need a car that fast anyway. Like, why if they sold me a more detuned version, I would buy that too.

John Gravelyn 18:21

Yeah, I I actually so my journey has taken me a few different places, and when we were in California, I had the opportunity to get a Mustang because I'm like, I'm not doing anything else with I don't I'm certainly not mowing lawns anymore, and I needed I wanted a California car. And I was looking at G Mustang GT versus the 2017 four-cylinder at 330 horsepower, give it give or take 323 to Rand Premium, I think. And I had recently driven a couple years before my my mom's boyfriend's Mustang GT from 1990, the depreciation curve. So I'm like I've been in California, I'd rather have a convertible roof than a V8 Mustang that and from what I'm told, they they actually handle a bit better. I'd driven them side by side, and I'm not a handling expert by any means, but I can tell you on American roads, you don't really notice the difference between 500 horsepower and 350 horsepower because you can't use all of them. For for sure.

Doug 19:15

Yeah.

Inside Ford And Rivian Prototyping

Doug 19:16

So can you can you tell us about your career and how you uh obviously you're interested in automotive, but how did you end up at Ford? What did you do there? Same with Rivian.

John Gravelyn 19:26

Yeah, I I got into Ford out of college. I I got into uh what would it be called? An agency that that supplied Ford with with employees or whatever, and then was able to convert to a whole Ford employee pretty quickly thereafter. There was some hesitation due to my my college record wasn't stellar, but I I showed them quickly that I could do the job and went in as what's called a prototype planner and quickly was moved over to the prototype build site as a prototype build engineer to help bring all the different engineering teams together and the program teams and all of these different functions that it takes to build a car, which and you got the one guy's focusing on the headlight, the other guy's focusing on reducing weight, and then the prototypes delivered, and everyone worked together to make sure that they got delivered on time because everyone's on time crunch as well, and to solve the problems that between when we last seen them to when they would be seen again, and kind of fun watching their whole life cycle that way because they would they would come through our shop and I mean I I I won't call out any specific programs, but it it was pretty funny that the programs that had more issues in our shop in the prototype typically that would transfer onto the production line and more recalls and everything else. So so we had to do our best to catch as many of the the the problems in-house as we could before you start making uh a couple hundred vehicles for a whole new Bronco line. But when you're just doing a couple new headlights on an F-150 and maybe you're trying to sell it on a new market, you might do 30 prototypes or depending on what the targets are and what the goals are. I did a brief stint and the emissions lab. I got there like a week before COVID hit, and then they sent us all home. So I was technically a emissions engineer for about nine months, but I don't claim to be one because I wasn't there that often enough to learn as much as I to learn as much as I would have loved to have learned there. But I did learn about actually that was when Ford started their mock-e program, and a lot of the emissions lab was actually being used for electrical electrical range testing rather than emissions testing. Interesting. That was kind of the side that I lobbed onto a little bit, and I was there nine months, half that time I was knew I was going to Rivian, so like it was end COVID. It was it was a weird time, but then I got to Rivian and then things really cranked up fast because I got back into my prototype environment. I loved it there, and it was like Ford, but and my job was to find the parts that we couldn't make in house. So we're moving from a prototype at Ford, it's kind of easy for the most part because year to year you have a pretty like even when you have a full change, a full engineering change, you have stuff that carries, you have something that carries over. You have an existing portfolio of products, and sometimes those. Parts get used on the new vehicles, on a different vehicle, like in Ford Fusion. There's a lot of crossover. So a lot of the vehicles. But when when I was at Rivian, we were when I started at Rivian, they had gotten through the first phase of prototypes for the the trucks and SUV. The trucks. We didn't build as many SUV prototypes, especially not any early ones. Early prototypes are typically like chassis verification prototypes and true verified. The we were working on the vans though, and so I had to find ways to make custom parts as quickly as possible. And we had to iterate, try again, and hey, this works in here, this one doesn't. That's not going to be strong enough. And really built all these different supplier relationships with Rivian that allowed us to do the work that the compressed timelines and everything else because we had to have them done faster because we weren't testing as many vehicles. It was much more bootstrapped than Ford was. The parts are harder than they look. All the mechanics of building cars is far harder than it looks. And I think that's where some of these tech guys come in and think they can handle everything, and then they get into the real the nitty-gritty of building such a complex machine that's not just software. And that combination it it makes for some interesting vehicles because yeah, they're they're so defined by software, and the mechanics aren't normally that difficult. Honestly, I mean they're not they're not, but at the same time, you're you're a couple software bugs and other things, and there's more sensors and this and that. I mean, it it's they're more reliable overall, but they're very hard at the beginning to prototype because there's so many that's so much software that's still being written. And that's what's even crazier is vehicles from five years ago to put new parts on it, but with software, you send it over the the air, and it hey, all of a sudden your light, your lights are you get a few more miles of range, car's more efficient, and it's actually been a really interesting, I don't know, a little s interesting switch that we see.

Doug 24:42

Yeah, yeah, for for sure. And as a three-time Tesla owner, but also own a 90 300 ZX, which is very analog. Yeah, complicated and analog, and then 81 DeLorean, which is complicated, extremely analog, very comp complicated more from the sense of the emissions of the time, and that that Bosch computer. I it's not even fair to call it a computer, but like if one measurement goes off, it throws everything else off, and the idle goes crazy, and it's but yeah, it's been amazing to see just the new car companies popping up, which I think was using GM truck bodies, I think, to build them in Ohio, if I remember correctly. Yeah, that because there was awardstown, Ohio. Yeah, something like that. And at a at a former plant, but uh and you were probably ideal to come over from Ford. So you weren't an old school Ford guy, you were knowledgeable in that area, and then you went to Rivian, that's this upstart gonna do things very quickly and differently, and you can kind of help balance them out.

John Gravelyn 25:46

Yeah, that's what was extremely exciting moving there because I I had gotten I started working on getting becoming more of a manager type at at Ford and and really putting it together. But one thing you'd hear often at Ford that you'd never hear at Rivian is we've always done it this way. We haven't always done anything. We have over 15,000 employees now. The the company's grown tremendously, and I would argue that it kind of ruined me at the beginning because at the end, we were trying to become more of at the end of my tenure there, we were becoming more of like a Ford. And I guess at some point the company had to grow up and make some money, but it was a lot less fun.

Doug 26:24

For sure. And uh yeah, I can speak, I could tell long stories about my first Tesla purchase, my second Tesla purchase, my third Tesla purchase was horrible. And uh I just I was telling the sales manager, I said, Tesla makes great cars, but some things have broken along the way. And to scale, all these people, the cars are themselves, but when there's a problem, you don't have the at least from my experience, you don't have the like they they've solved this problem at Tesla. They're they gave me a template and it was for two weeks. They're like, We checked the wrong box and we told I'm like, but that was like one of like five different problems. And I wanted to say, like, at a traditional dealer, I don't think I would have had this problem. I really don't. On the yeah, delivery side, but on the delivery side, yeah.

John Gravelyn 27:11

But this is one company, so that's interesting because I've I've always disliked because the thing is, most Ford dealers I've been to, I don't like, but I love Ford as a company, and I don't like the fact that they're separate businesses, and I think that Ford Chrysler I had an issue. Chrysler dealer too. No, a lot of dealers and fuelers, yeah, and like Ford dealers reflect poorly on the car, and it's like I don't rate the brand or or the car company, but like because I normally don't tell them when I come in that it's like, yeah, I know everything about this car.

Doug 27:38

It's right, of course, yep. Yeah, so great, great car, delivery and repair, not so great, but they they have to scale, they have to move product. I get it. So it's like you said, growing up and selling cars and making money and and scale. So yeah, we did we talked a lot about that. I am curious about your current car. You mentioned in the pre-show that you're a dad, I think you have twins. Tell us about your your current car, how you ended up there, how you feel about it.

John Gravelyn 28:09

So I I've got a fun car still for now, anyways, and and another car because when I moved from California to Illinois, I had sold the Mustang and used the and bought a 1996 F-150 for my daily driver. I was gonna be driving less, and it's a go-kart. I can fix anything on it that goes wrong, and it's just a cool looking, it had no rust. So that's why I bought that one. And then my wife had a RAV-4. Eventually, I got to the point where we just needed more space for longer trips, want to go camping with the boys and stuff, and the RAV4 trunk was okay, but we almost always relied on when we were just a couple with no kids, we always relied on the dog laying. We'd lay the seats down, the dog would lay back there, we still put all our stuff back there. But the minivan came in. I studied all the minivans and I figured out which ones. I like Toyotas, I love Toyotas after working at Ford and Rivian and working at two car companies, and everyone always talks about we got to do it like Toyota does it. You start just buying Toyotas if you want a that type of car. It's probably the least fun car I've ever had, but it's it's reliable and it works. But I ended up with a Chrysler minivan because I want I kind of wanted a hybrid. I was looking at the options out there at the time, and I know my way around a car, so I know like if a switch goes out or something, they're not the most reliable minivan, that there's going to be little, little issues with it here and there, but I can handle those little issues. Fortunately, for the market sees them as the most problematic minivan. It's probably the nicest minivan, but it's the most at least reliable. It kind of sits where where Rivian sits, where it's like everybody loves Rivians, but they're not reliable. Everyone who owns one. And that I kind of dreamed about because I had a coworker who had an F-150. He's like, You just gotta get a truck. Get a truck, you're gonna like the truck more. And he's not wrong, I would have liked a truck more. But like, I just I want my kids to be able to get in and out of the car easier, and for sure. The truck, it's I just hit a button on the remote, two buttons, I had a double hit to both buttons, the doors slide open, the kids jump in, we just latch them in, and it's easy. And it's like it is, yeah, it's not sexy, but I can just fit a four by eight sheet of plywood in the back, and I and it's a dark gray car, and I'm I love color for vehicles, and uh it's hard to find here. Yep. Sitting here, and I I I'll complain about the lack of color in vehicles all day. And I'm like, I've got two dark gray vehicles in my driveway and a white one, a white old pickup truck, at least, so that's at least fun.

Doug 30:28

Honda Odyssey, and yeah, I totally agree. Getting the kids in and out, man, what a piece of you press a button, the door opens, they get in, buckle them up, you go.

John Gravelyn 30:38

I I think we'll keep this until yeah, until they're responsible enough to not not ding a door in the parking lot. Because I think my my buddy's son was like three or four at the time, and he comes in one day, he's like, I always thought that you were overly cautious, foolish, full of it. When you were worried about the car, they're three or four, get cuss custard wind, they're gone with the door.

Doug 30:56

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's part of life, but yeah, I I'm with you. I'm super careful about that stuff and cognizant. Even with older kids, I'm like, be careful.

John Gravelyn 31:05

Oh, yeah, exactly. With older kids, I can you can tell them to be careful with the age my kids are now, though.

Doug 31:10

Yeah, but for you have the truck and you have the minivan. So I didn't ask you, and seems like you're kind of a Ford guy. What was your least favorite car?

John Gravelyn 31:20

My Mercury Milan. I didn't have it for long. That's probably why it's my least favorite. I bought it, and it probably had some issues when I got it. And I was driving from so I when I moved from Grand Rapids to Detroit to work at Ford, I didn't really know where to live. So I lived about 30 minutes away from Ford. That didn't sound too bad. However, I live on the other side of Detroit, so that 30 minutes turns into about an hour and a half at rush hour because I had to go through the city and not not always that day. It was a rough day. My clutch goes out on 94 and up, down constantly because you're getting out to 70, and then everyone's stopping for some reason. Never figured out why that works that way. But the clutch goes out, and I'm like, I I'm not in an area where I'm gonna stop and look for help. And so there was maybe just enough that I could the speed going up and down. It was I installed that thing at least 20 times, but I got it to the dealership, traded it in for 300 bucks, and I bought a slightly upgraded version of that in a Ford Fusion Sport, but come to find out later, I like that one for a reason because it was a very different vehicle. It had a very different, it had a totally different motor in it, the Ford 3.5 V6 that they had pretty much perfected by then. And I I drove that thing for probably 60,000, 70,000 miles, and then I was doing better at the time, and like it it was a good car, but it just wasn't worth much. And I knew it was a good car, and so I told my sister, I'm like, look, the dealer's not gonna give me anything for it, just just take it. And she ran it for like another 30,000 miles, so it broke 200,000 miles, and for that car was very good though. Really good to me and my family.

Doug 32:49

So I yeah, you know, it was the same body style, it turned out okay. Yeah, so that that would be a car you would buy back conditions, yeah.

John Gravelyn 32:57

Oh, absolutely if you needed it, yeah. If uh she traded it in for a few hundred bucks a couple years ago, and I'm like, man, other than the fact I would have had to take care of it, I wouldn't make sure I didn't really have a price for it. I'm like, I'm almost kind of kicked myself for letting her let that go.

Doug 33:10

Yeah, yeah. She should have given you first refusal or something.

John Gravelyn 33:13

Sister. I I did refuse, but should I refuse? She did give me that, but it was yeah.

Doug 33:19

So we we talked about a lot of American cars, and that's a theme here, of course, on this episode, which is great because Rivien being another American car company. What's your dream car?

John Gravelyn 33:29

Yeah, so my dream car, I I want 1970, in the mid-70s Catalan or Lincoln Mark IV Continental. I love that body style. The the just black on black would be my my preferred. I knew a guy that owned a old Chrysler LeBaron like that that was black, and there's just something about it that just screams like boss. I I don't know, and it brings me back to my first car a little bit and just the hard angles on it, and it's it's just what I've always wanted, and it was always kind of it's kind of always been a practical dream because they're not like it's not like a 1970 Camaro SS or something. They're they're in five figures typically, and it'd be a fun car for me to work on. But as my boys are growing up, they're getting into different things now, and their dream car is they love jeeps now. And I've personally always never liked Jeeps, but with my son in a couple years says he wants to work on a Jeep, we're probably gonna get a Jeep.

Doug 34:20

Yeah, I hope he gets his wish.

John Gravelyn 34:22

So that's exactly it's yeah, big couch on wheels with too big of a too big of an engine and a bunch of displacement, and yeah, that's it's just been the dream. So I don't want to like I said, I I'm not into the fast as much anymore, and more about comfort. I've same the other thing about working on the prototypes that's kind of ruined me, is watching the customer the the internal audits that they do. And they take apart these prototypes that I'd like to take apart and look at and say, Oh, this looks pretty good, and then do like, oh, the the gap here isn't on it, and it's too loud when you drive it. And now I'm just like a total snob about driving a car that doesn't have acoustic glass or other things. I'm like, the wind noise on this. Well, I'm like, I used to just care that it drove. Why am I worried about wind noise now?

Doug 35:04

Yeah, you eat too much now. Yeah, yeah. Classically trained, but but mature. Yeah. With the times. So cool. No, thank you. That that was great. And yeah, I appreciate the what a what a great list, including ending with the the Mark IV. So for our trivia answer, we keep looping back to Rivian here. The question was before they became famous for building a rugged off-road electric truck and SUV, what type of vehicle did Rivian spend their first two years developing? It was a two-door sports coop. Yeah. What it said, what it found was it was a mid-engine hybrid sports coop. It was an interesting I seen pictures of it.

John Gravelyn 35:45

I think they were called mainstream motors back then too. Yeah.

Doug 35:48

Out of Florida, correct.

John Gravelyn 35:49

Yep. And then Rivian actually,

Family Cars, Dream Rides, And Next Steps

John Gravelyn 35:52

it's funny because my sister actually lives where they where the founder is from. Like it's kind of crazy how that all came back. And and she lives by the river that Rivian was named after. It was named after the Indian River. I guess they might call it Rivian down there. I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, that's that's the part of Florida they started out in, and then they came up to Michigan to find automotive talent. They they really put their base in Plymouth, Michigan, which is where Plymouth is one of the suburbs that like the the engineers move out to as they they move up at Fort.

Doug 36:19

Okay, gotcha. Moving on out. Yeah. Up and out. Yeah. Gotcha. Tell us what you've been doing in your life since you've left Ford and Rivien. You kind of changed careers, took some of what you put it into a different industry.

John Gravelyn 36:33

Yeah. So I I've started first called First Principles Partners. Our website's the FPPartners.com. And being an engineer, working with engineers and everything else, I in my personal life, I bought houses. I love buying houses, love real estate, but real estate left a lot to be desired as an engineer, as far as agents and stuff go. And I actually had an agent laugh at me for sending him a spreadsheet once. And I'm like, this isn't how engineers talk. Engineers talk in spreadsheets. So built built this company to help engineers find the best agents for them and to help them make the best decision for themselves as well, because certain repairs and understand what you're really getting into. And currently we're expanding into real estate investments as well as is insurance and other things that I'll say have been kind of tainted by sales, where you buying a house that can be mathematically good for you, mathematically bad for you, but like sales says it's always good for you. And same thing with a lot of these other things that I'm getting getting into is they've been so tainted by sales that it's like the math works for certain people. I'm not gonna sell the people or the math doesn't work, but if the math works for you, it works. I don't have to be salesy. I just get to present the math to people and help them make the best decision for themselves so they can come out ahead in a couple years.

Doug 37:45

Okay. Nice. And how long how long have you been doing that?

John Gravelyn 37:48

I see. Started the company about six, six months ago, I'd say. This year, mostly when I started, I took a little break after Rivian last year and really got it going this year. It's been a lot of fun.

Doug 37:58

Awesome. You're a startup guy.

John Gravelyn 38:00

Yeah, I I am I'm in my element now. I I like I said the last couple years at Rivian where it was like, okay, now we're a real company, we got to do things. I I uh so I like working with a wide range of products and people and and helping others find what's best for them.

Doug 38:16

Yeah, that's that sounds great. Great, great use of your talents and like you said, being this startup innovator.

John Gravelyn 38:22

Yeah, yeah. It's I'm a little more serious about it this time.

Doug 38:26

Of course. Of course. Yeah, you don't add the ranger anymore. So yeah, you got a full, full-fledged F-150. So we we talked a lot about your experience in automotive. And of course, we I love to talk to people about their automotive backgrounds and how they got into it. And we've been lucky enough to have students and instructors from Weber State University as well as McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas, both four-year automotive programs. So I think a lot about AI in my career in network engineering, and but also I hear a lot with cars, you hear a lot about to repair and fear of jobs being lost. What would you say to somebody who's considering a career in it but has some worry about that happening?

John Gravelyn 39:10

Be open to pivot, regardless. But but go at it, because I would say that there's not a big difference in the fact from repairing the cars. So how Vivian was going, how a lot of automotive companies are going, is they want to automate the manufacturing of the vehicle as much as possible. But when those things get to the end of the line, they still need a lot of work. They still need updates, they still need troubleshooting. And it doesn't matter if humans built them or robots built them. So if you are if you want to troubleshoot vehicles and you can use AI and maybe some of the other tools that are coming, coming on board to be a better problem solver. And I think that applies to everything in everything going forward is the better problem solver you are, the better you are at asking questions. I tell everybody you have to be good at asking questions because all of the answers are in your pocket if you're not asking the answers. So don't worry too much about the answers anymore. Worry about your process and understanding the questions. And if you have to pivot earlier and you have to or later and use your automotive skills to whatever else comes, I mean, there's great, there's great opportunities and controls and so many other things that you can pivot off of once how to fix a car. That if you have a four-year degree in in troubleshooting diagnostics and all these other things, you you're probably my secret weapon as an engineer was talking with the technicians because they always knew one of the engineers did for sure. Go go at it full force and you'll find something. You you will make a great career out of those problem-solving skills, no matter what.

Doug 40:35

That's that's great advice. No, thank you, thank you. Total, totally agree. And I know thinking back on our episode with Weber State, they uh they actually partnered closely with Ford and other automotive manufacturers. Yeah, in fact, some guy, some couple of the guys who were on an episode told us how they got jobs in 2019 before COVID, and they moved to Detroit and they were working on Ford and taking those troubleshooting calls from the dealership. And uh but their their time was a little tainted because of COVID, like like everybody else who lived through that time period, of course, included. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. So as we gently steer the podcast down to the off-ramp, we want to thank our sensational guest, John Gravlin, for sharing his stories, his love for cards, and how it led into an amazing set of different careers. John, it was truly a pleasure. And where can our guests find you again?

John Gravelyn 41:28

Yeah, I'm on dfppartners.com is our platform website that we're building. And then I'm on Instagram, TikTok, all the other things, various forms of first principles in John.

Doug 41:38

Wonderful. No, thank you so much. And we will put all that in the show notes. And for our listeners, you have just heard the high revving, low mileage, late model, heard round the world authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia. If you or someone you know has a great story to share about their cars, please drop us a line via email at stories at CarsLove.com. That's how John found us, or via social media. And of course, the easiest way to find all of our content, including those links, is via our link tree, l-ink-r.ee slash cars. And I want to leave you all with one final thought. Telling car stories is contagious. Just go ahead and ask your friends and family, neighbors, or the owner in the next cool car you see about their favorite car memories and watch their reaction. I guarantee they will find everyone.