Jonathan Ward, a self-taught leather artisan and automotive designer behind Icon, shares his shift from vintage restorations—like the $750K BMW rebuild—to EV retrofits, critiquing Tesla’s closed hardware policies while praising DIY innovators like Stealth EV and Movement Motors. He laments California’s regulatory burdens, including $20M+ business thresholds and emissions mandates for pre-1975 cars, calling them unsustainable for small creators. Both Rogan and Ward celebrate passion-driven work over rigid career systems, urging listeners to embrace self-made ventures despite economic and legal challenges. [Automatically generated summary]
Jonathan, you're the first man, not only the first man I've ever met who made his own leather jacket, but absolutely the first man who made his own leather jacket who's ever been on the podcast wearing that jacket.
So I've been also in my travels in the last 10 years or so, or maybe five, I've really been focusing on Always have been focusing on like getting immersed in that local culture.
But now I've stepped that up a notch and I'm doing like these deep dive travels into different art forms of different cultures.
So leather craft, I've been visiting tanneries and studying for masters in the U.S. and in Morocco and Mexico.
And it's zen because for me now at this point, the scale of the shop is such that I'm actually doing a disservice if I'm out there actually building your car, right?
Because that's what I used to do.
I'd weld it and shape it and I was on the floor.
But at our size, I'm not.
And our fill rates, as you recall, suck.
It takes forever for us to finish anything.
And there's something about...
Just literally putting on your podcast, going in my spare bedroom at home, because my son's off at college, so the second his ass was out of there, it was like, leather studio?
And I totally built that sucker out with really good audio and lighting and stuff.
So being able to come from sketch to a finished good within a matter of weeks, 100% myself, independent of everything, I needed that.
I really kind of felt I was losing that tactile craft connection at work.
There's other people that do innovative things with automobiles.
But what you're doing is at a level and with an obsessiveness that is, to me...
Deserves to be rewarded.
I love it.
I love the fact that you make these fucking...
I love the fact that you do those derelicts where you leave the patina on the cars, where you take these beautiful old cars that have, like, they're gorgeous because of the life that they've lived.
But for me, one thing that I'm keen to do with everything that we build, you know, be it the derelicts or the reformer one offs or the production models.
More and more, I'm pulling back on my redesign on the cosmetics to make sure I'm not creating something temporary or trendy in that I want to honor the original design language of the era in which a vehicle was built.
Now I may want to elevate that and geek out on it and do unnecessarily cool shit that the production, you know, car company wouldn't have done.
But I'm trying to be super careful not to do something that like in 10 years is like, you know, some fuchsia graphics, 80s hot rod all smoothied out that just represents a brief moment in time.
I mean, you know, it's got coilovers and a couple things here and there, but, you know, at the end of the day, it is what it is, and it wasn't built to do that.
Usually they were command cars, commanding officer cars.
So the back area on the interior was generally kitted out, quarter sawn, dovetailed, fumed, white oak, with like a teletype machine and all their early correspondence gear.
No, there was one that made the rounds, I think it was last year I saw it at SEMA, that did more of a sort of conventional, contemporary hot rod, street rod build, but they kind of, not the way you and I are thinking.
Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to do one because if you look back on the design history, they were...
The design team and executives at GM designed that car basically in reaction to trends in European touring cars and sports cars.
So there's a lot of Ferrari, direct Ferrari inspiration like 275s and stuff.
So I always thought it'd be interesting to do...
The elevated, more European perspective version of that Gen Camaro, like devoid of badges, not like all smoothied out like everyone does, but just like elevate the trim, like that kick-ass egg crate grill and all those details, but like do it more the way a small coach builder would have done it than production.
Was it the Norwood P4 or was it GTO Engineering in LA and the UK? They do a lot of GTO builds, but they stay pretty true to the original form.
But Phil Norwood, who used to actually race for Ferrari...
I don't think he's doing them anymore, but he for a while in Texas, I believe, was doing what they called the P4 Norwood, and those are so badass.
So like Monaco, Superleggera, lightweight, and they were using modern, I think at the time they were, what are they taking, like Rectasterosas or something, some modern Ferrari powertrain.
I'm not sure what companies doing it, but what they were doing essentially was making everything that you could remove and put it back to the original stock form, including the engine, including the suspension, including the transmission, including the brakes.
But everything was aftermarket, so they weren't cutting anything.
They were sort of replacing stuff, but making this way better, way more high-performance version.
It might be GTO. And also, man, if you look at one of their recreation cars that are scratch built, and, you know, the value of the original GTOs is so nuts that now, like, a guy goes, oh, well, yeah, I'll leave that in the collection, and they'll call GTO and say, build me one that looks just like my car, and I actually want to drive it.
And if you sit them side by side, the only difference is the GTO one has better fit and finish intolerances.
Otherwise, you cannot tell them apart, hands down.
So right now, unfortunately, you know, there's that new law that Tom and myself and a lot of other builders in our space have been very active in trying to get passed that was for Ultra Low Volume Vehicular Manufacturers Act.
So if we made under 350 units a year, we'd be exempt from crash and many expensive regulatory limitations.
But we had to be responsible for emissions.
So it's turned into a complete shit show and it's already three years beyond posting.
In fact, SEMA just filed suit against the federal government for inaction because they're well outside of their legal time frame to actually create the damn paperwork to enact the law.
And Tom's caught up in the middle of that.
So right now he's been putting General Motors LS3s into the Mustangs because it's the only thing that's smog legal because Ford Racing hasn't bothered, doesn't seem to see any importance or value in creating a mission certified powertrain.
I agree, but to a point, I think if we look forward, that's changing.
Because as it is today, your Bentley is your BMW, is your Kia.
Everyone's sharing the same pool of suppliers anyway.
And a lot of these cars are just badge cars nowadays anyway.
So I think there's a...
A wider acceptance as time passes to oddities.
But, I mean, look at that 49 electric Mercury I did.
We purposely, like, dressed the quote-unquote engine bay to look like an old speed-equipped V8, you know, vintage, thin, kind of Fenton header look, you know, cast.
To try and keep those old dudes engaged and not to look out and go, oh no, there's a room.
Well, it's a long story, but we were honored that Goodyear invited us to have it be the feature vehicle on their large booth at the Geneva International Auto Show.
Now that is one of the things that I love that you do that I don't think anybody else is going to do.
I don't think anybody else would take that level of engineering and to rebuild something to that spectacular level of detail, but yet keep the fucked up paint.
Like, look at that thing.
If you saw that rolling down the street, you wouldn't have zero idea what that is.
Especially when that thing, because it has no transmission, so it's dual electric motors, just under 500 foot-pounds of torque, no shifts, so it moves like a freight train.
We put the 80 array in that with American racing motors and dual Reinhardt controllers and thermal management network that we engineered a whole bunch of stuff.
I can't afford to do fancy misleading federal testing, so I literally just make sure my flatbed is at hand and just drive the piss out of it until it can't go, and then I go, okay, there you go, there's the rain.
Well, but the EPA or whoever is doing the tests on the Taycan, apparently they sold it way short.
And all these automotive journalists that have driven the car are saying, no, we've gotten, you know, 270, 280. They've gotten quite a bit more than, I think, whoever, the government rated it 201. Yeah, so it's quite a bit more than that.
But it speaks to how weird it is that you're doing that in the first place.
Because most people who are high-dollar restoration, air quote, resto mods or whatever you want to call them, Everyone wants them to be beautiful and pristine with handles that disappear.
But, you know, going all the way back to the beginning of Icon, even further back to the beginning of the first brand TLC, they all started with personal cars.
Like the icon idea was just another dumb idea that was rattling in my head.
It was literally keeping me up at night and it got to the point that I need, and this happens to me often, like when I did my watch and then all the different products that I've designed, generally it'll start with something that gets to the point that I'll lose my remaining sanity if I don't actually create it.
So I had the concept for Icon.
I could see it clearly in my head.
I had like a full-on 3D detailed model in my head and like my version of jumping over sheeps at night in bed was like sitting there and zooming in on an element and changing that radius and scaling this and trying that.
And it literally got to the point, I told my wife, I'm like, I got to build it.
Well, your company, it's sort of symbiotic with social media, in a sense, particularly YouTube, because so many people on YouTube are interested in unique builds and interesting companies that are doing cool things like Revology.
But your company in particular, it's so perfect because you do all those videos and you drive around the cars with this incredible detail.
And that's one of the first things that got me very attracted to your company was the fact like, I go, look at this motherfucker.
No, but from a consumer perspective, I understand the appeal of not having to wait and not having to pay as much.
But at best in this industry, you get what you pay for, and frankly, even that is a rare equation.
What I'm more pissy about is companies that go, oh, now we can charge more for it and let's just deliver something that looks as close to that and copy as much of its trade dress and style and kick it out at a fat margin at what's deemed to be the most acceptable price point.
We're doing another one, too, that's, you know, again, sort of looking at how we've done what we do and, like, how else could we do it or how further could we evolve it?
Which, as you've seen and working with me, like, I'm doing that all the time in all the little things.
But, like, holistically, conceptually, how do you do it?
So we're doing an early C20 Chevy truck.
And we were going to do our usual thing of engineer a chassis, engineer the axles, and call Brembo, design the brakes.
And then you've got like umpteen purchase orders from umpteen different suppliers and a big pile of cost.
And at the end of the day, you could say, I mean, we don't have hundreds of millions of dollars in development.
So we're building hopefully a well-functioning what is in essence a prototype.
So this time for the Chevy truck, I'm like, screw it.
I'm going to the dealer.
So I just went and bought the WT, which people call the white trash edition, the WT series Chevy pickup.
So we bought a three-quarter ton, four-wheel drive, brand new Chevy truck off the dealer floor for like $36,000.
Took that apart.
And we're rebodying it with its grandfather's body.
So now, like ABS, Hill Hold, many of the perversions of modernity, everything is integrated.
And literally, the client could go to a Chevy dealer, although they'd probably cringe, and say, no, no, no, no, it's not a 70. You know, look, here's the ID tag.
So the gauges, we're working with classic instruments to design an IP, an instrument panel that has the original design aesthetic, but then integrates the little 3x3 digital screen for all of the, you know, all your prompts and digital interface.
So the only way that it's come to fruition for me is like with your FCJ80 by maintaining the original ABS system, or such is the case with the C20, by keeping the entire modern vehicle active and just rebodying it.
But I mean, I'm dying for the aftermarket to come up with a standalone ABS module that's tunable.
I think it's such the missing link.
There's so many missing links, as I was bitching to you earlier.
The automotive aftermarket.
Quite frankly, my dear, it's an absolute whole house, in my opinion.
There's just so much garbage on the market, and it's like, where's the quality?
And the market's there.
I think consumers are ready for elevated consideration and execution.
Yeah, and it had the same mechanical engineering integrated in it, but it was a much different style, more of what I call my old school style, where all my mods, like even the badging on it where it says icon, was CNC'd and stainless in the original typeface that Blazer was written in.
So...
If you don't know, you don't know, and it's like super under the radar, mellow colors, but really good leathers and materials.
It's such a mechanical thing when you drive that car.
That's what I love about it.
Sometimes if I don't drive it for a week or two, I kind of forget.
Then I get in and it's like...
Everything is like you feel everything.
It's like there's a thing about modern cars like I really do love my Tesla It's it the way I describe it it makes other cars seem stupid like they're stupid like this is how cars should drive like you hit the gas It's almost telepathic.
It just goes somewhere.
It just moves.
It's in the gigantic navigation screen everything about is amazing and I was supposed to be in Detroit right now for the Bronco launch, which they delayed because of Corona.
But the difference between that and, say, the Bronco is you don't feel it.
Like, the Bronco, it's a manual transmission, and you literally feel every gear.
There's all these moving parts that you kind of sync up with.
So there's all this sensation that's going into your brain through your hands.
But I think more and more as the world turns to autonomous vehicles, ride share, infrastructure, community development is even starting to go a different direction.
I used to be concerned about that in regards to the future of our company.
But now I realize, like, that's great.
Like, because the more that happens, the more there's going to be plenty of people who for the weekend, for the whatever, like, demand a manual tranny and a visceral man-machine relationship.
Yeah, like the new M3 is almost becoming, there's like too many nannies.
It's too technical in a manner that makes the stats improve, but not the connection to the driver feel more dynamic to me.
It's like I've got a 96 993 twin turbo, and that to me is one of the most perfectly engineered vehicles that was designed by a core group of people who had a singular focus on what its purpose was and what it should do, what it should evoke, and what it shouldn't.
When I first came out to California in the 80s, I remember, and I think it was Newport or Manhattan Beach, there was like ex-BMW dealership looking space, but it was an independent BMW dealership and service center.
And they had one in the factory tricolor livery, and they had it for sale.
And I remember begging my mom to pull over in our crappy Dodge Area's rental car and going in and asking.
And it was for sale.
It was like 11 grand.
And the guy was like...
There it is.
Hoping and begging I was serious because they couldn't give them away back.
He's so funny, too, because, like, as you know, I'm a big watch geek, and he's, like, the antichrist in the watch culture because he's all about quartz, like vintage quartz.
So, like, for a short time, Patek made quartz watches.
And everyone shuns them, but now they're immensely collectible.
Well, even Ressence is one of my favorite of the weirdos of modern brands.
Is that your watch?
Yeah, not my design.
This is Ressence or Ressence is the brand.
These are super trippy, but they just came out with a smart watch where when you're on the plane and you're in a new time zone and you land, it'll reset itself.
What?
I have a thumb and an index finger that work pretty fucking good.
There's this new company on Bum, because when I went to the Geneva show, I was going to go meet with him, but David Rutan watches that are doing watches that are CNC'd out of a solid chunk of meteorite.
And not like some bullshit EDM meteorite dial on your 90s Daytona.
The entire watch case, the crown, and everything is meteorite.
Yeah, there's different grades of them and stuff, and it depends on the metallurgic content, if they can be machined, and they eat machine tooling left and right.
Years ago, I developed a concept that I called the Helios.
I don't know if you ever saw that.
So I love like design challenges.
I like framing things, right?
So I was like, all right.
Let's do a revisionist history approach to car design.
So, what if electric cars had remained predominant in the late 1800s, early 1900s?
What if we had taken inspiration from aircraft design a couple decades prior to when the industry actually did?
And then what if after he did the experimental plane, the H2 I think it was, what if Howard Hughes had sat down and like he couldn't get that last starlet to go out with him right before he lost his mind completely?
What if he, Buckminster Fuller and Gordon Bureig, sat down and did a napkin sketch after too many martinis?
What would that car look like?
So that was my stupid pile of questions around which I framed my design.
And I designed it to work on the, at the time, a P85 platform.
And, basically, I received a copy of a letter that's titled, like, Peanut Butter and Chocolate, that was written by Elon's core engineering team, begging him to allow them to support me to do the build.
And, like, since day one, my launch was, I don't need your money!
I'll go to the dealership.
I'll buy the damn car.
I need y'all's back-end support on the software because they're super shitty about any repurposed or pried Teslas and Elon never addressed it.
But in the last two or three quarters, there have been major gains.
Honestly, I think due to Rich and due to the community that rose up around him, that shit's been hacked now.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Now people can open source, hack the CAN data chain, and people are repurposing Tesla components.
Like, I use Tesla batteries, but I haven't been using their motors or planetaries or anything else because, again, what do I tell my client when the client needs an update or a part?
You go to the dealer, they're like, what's your VIN? And you're screwed.
But yeah, like Stealth EV in fact has this new setup that they just started marketing where you literally take that IRS apart where the electric motor is built in, there's a little access door, you pull out a little circuit board, you put in another one and voila!
Is there a setup like crate engines where, you know, or do you envision a setup where, because, you know, you know that the new Hummer is now going to be an electric vehicle, which is really interesting.
And there's going to be a bunch of other electric vehicles that are coming out from Volkswagen that are really cheap and a bunch of different companies are jumping in.
Do you envision there being some sort of a crate engine option for people that want to...
Proof in the pudding to this point is that everyone's focusing on the do-it-yourself market, therefore also on the cheapest possible equation, which leaves a lot of, in my opinion, a lot of safety issues completely unaddressed and they can get downright nutty.
So the other issue is they're all for ease of installation and conversion.
Everyone's thinking about doing kits that literally are a spud plate and a short shaft to go where the engine used to be, put an electric motor to a bellhousing adapter to the stock transmission, which is stupid because electric cars going through manual transmissions, there's a lot of scavenging of energy.
It's bad enough to go through a ring and pinion.
Doing a right angle gear displacement of power, you lose so much efficiency.
And the best EVs, in my opinion, are transmissionless or go through planetary set, you know, for gear reduction.
Like that the Merck is the, to my knowledge, the first sort of retrofit EV that, you know, being the goober that I am, like, I was like, okay, we've done a couple EV builds, but if we're going to keep doing them, like...
I want to do them our way.
Like, I want more safety.
I want more performance.
I want more range.
I want dedicated thermal management networks for the batteries, the controllers, the motors, and all that.
And that the scale of technology shifts changing so quickly in the EV space that as we were building it, suppliers of key components came out with another generation that's infinitely better than the V1 or V3 I already had.
So even before we could finish that car, we were backing up and updating and updating and updating, which really if you put sort of a marketeer hat on, I'm so proud of the value retention in my vehicles.
And I'm proud of our foundation of taking something that in essence a lot of people would think is at the end of its already usable life cycle and upcycling it and breathing new life so it's good to go for decades again.
But now with EV, stuff is moving so quickly that am I like making iPhones all of a sudden?
So in two years, it's totally worthless because the tech is outdated?
So look at, you know, internal combustion engine development cycles.
What I put in today is still relevant in a decade.
But with electric, it's a whole new space to consider.
So AEM is like well-known in racing and aftermarket for engine management electronics.
They just at PRI and at SEMA made a fair bit of noise about coming out with a full array of EV retrofit conversion systems.
So these seem to be the first ones entering the field that are going to offer a comprehensive suite of products and solutions.
But then again, being that it's part of this industry, I go grill the dudes at their trade show booth and they're like, well, it's something we're working on.
You know, just all these press releases and all that.
And Volkswagen claimed with that vehicle that you noted earlier that they were going to make the platform shareable.
And they were going to make it available to many different manufacturers, large and small.
But I've heard stories like that over the years from, you name it, from Faraday was claiming the same thing.
And so much of it's bullshit.
Because now it's like, I don't want to say vaporware, but it's so much of that like...
VC money, don't worry, we'll be profitable one day and we're worth a billion multiple of nothing today, so buy in.
And then it's like so many of these EV startups and retrofit companies come to the scene looking for that elusive FedEx fleet contract that everyone thinks is going to be easy to get.
And none of them get it and then they all go belly up.
So I just think we're at that point in history where not only is the tech moving forward so quickly and not only that but the likes of predominantly only due to Tesla.
It's proven the viability in the market.
Now there's purists and traditionalists and everyone's starting to poke at it and I see exponential more interest.
So I think, you know, for the next five years or so, it's going to be a bit tumultuous, but I definitely think it's the future of hot rodding.
I imagine within five years, I imagine probably half of my client builds will be electric.
Like nationwide to various levels of price expectation, range expectation, etc.
But I think that's a really, it's a lovely community too.
I've noticed it's much more open than the conventional automotive community is about sharing information and suppliers and knowledge and helping one another.
And there's a really nice camaraderie within that community.
There's like Movement Motors and Austin's doing really nice retrofits and Oh, yeah?
So depending on, to increase the versatility of it, you had a supercharger fast charge compatibility, and then you had the more widely distributed municipal format charger.
And then there's just two different pigtail adapters.
I think the reality is any EV project I build, I have to...
Not only do I anticipate, but I've lost many clients because I'll be super...
Blunt about managing their expectations that, look, you're going to spend a lot of money to have me do this.
And trust, I will geek out and do the best of the state of the art that is available to us.
But in a year, that might all be garbage.
So you have to understand, either you're cool with this moment in time and the range in the performance and it is what it is, or you're a tech geek like most guys that are engaging in that.
And you're going to be hammering money then coming back every couple of years for us to upgrade and evolve as the sciences evolve.
Oh, you know, we build on a submodular, even like your Bronco is submodulally built.
So your powertrain, the electrical network for your powertrain goes to a two single Deutch Tech 26 pin connectors, aerospace connectors.
So one day when that powertrain is no longer relevant, but your truck still has good platform value, unplug that, yank it out and put in the hydrogen or the microcapacitor or whatever the hell's working at the time.
But then they were also making them for automotive and they had a prototype.
I was so excited.
I don't remember, it's been years, but it was some sort of, I think it was a ionic transfer process that went through a series of elements within the shielded box to create the energy, but they were like self-sustaining and super groovy.
And then that same guy, I saw him once at a trade show, and I was exhibiting at the show as well.
So I was there on setup day.
I was bored out of my gourd.
I was already set up in the Ford booth.
So I was just walking around, sort of sniffing around.
I see this trippy...
Scientist guy in his lab coat in this shitty little booth.
It was like, you know, six by 10 foot booth.
And, you know, at a show where people have like 200 by 60 foot boots.
And it's got this odd little toroidal thing and then a bigger toroidal thing and literally like a chalkboard.
So I'm like, dude, what's going on?
So I started talking to him about it.
He starts explaining the technology and what he was doing.
And like the smaller one had 300 foot-pounds of torque, the larger one had 2,000.
And he was looking to develop it for rail cars, for semis, for...
The car is like on and on and on.
He's like, yeah, the biggest problem is stopping it once it gets going.
Because the toroidal structure meant that the compression cycle from, you know, 12 to 2 of that first cylinder was such that when the combustion occurred and it propelled the next piston into the next combustion cycle and kept going.
So getting that power out of the central crank was a challenge.
And then how to stop the damn thing was like the bigger challenge.
But they'd run on like horse piss...
Ionic charged particles, diesel, gas.
They didn't even need spark plugs.
So I'm like blown away by this.
I go back the next day.
Where'd he go?
Booth gone.
Empty.
Done.
And I have the guy's info and I try to reach out to him.
Website gone.
Website I'd looked at the night before.
Gone.
Got gobbled up.
Five years later, I see him again at another trade show with another kick-ass design.
And man, was he a bitter man.
He's like, yeah, never again.
Because they bought it and they shelved it.
I'm never selling anything again.
Fuck them.
I'm licensing to specific channels of applications and that's it.
Then he had another product where you would replace the alternator in your car with a generator and you had a small battery in the vehicle, right?
So this is a retrofit system.
The retail model was brilliant because you'd have like a pretty cheesy and expensive three-axis mill and A shit ton of CAD files and one product on the shelf.
So in a lightweight car, it was like an electric supercharger.
So you'd replace your alternator and it had a toothed cog for the pulley.
And then your crank pulley would add a toothed cog to it and then toothed belt.
So the idea was it would assist the internal combustion engine through its compression cycle.
It would negate the parasitic load of all the Fiat, all the front engine accessory drive mounted things, you know, your alternator, your smog pump or whatever.
By pushing the engine through the cycle with the captured electrical energy from the deceleration.
And then in bigger cars, it gave you like pass assist and range increase and did great things for MPG. And then the story I got on that one was BMW put them under a big contract for it to license it and use it.
And then the guy disappeared off the face planet again.
Do you remember there was a video that was circulating many years ago about a guy who created a car to run on air?
No, excuse me, water.
He created a car that runs on water and then this car that ran on water, I mean he apparently had a viable engine and it was really working and then he had a heart attack and as he was dying he was saying, they killed me, they killed me, and then he died.
See that shit happens and I don't even like the term conspiracy theory because I think that's something created by the machine to negate things that are disruptive and innovative so we can put them in a little box and call it a conspiracy theory or whatever and therefore it never happened.
Well anyone who doesn't believe in conspiracy theories I say look at Jeffrey Epstein.
It's real clear.
Meyer said that his invention could do what physicists say is impossible, turn water into hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to drive his dune buggy cross-country on 20 gallons straight from the tap.
He took a sip of cranberry juice, then he grabbed his neck, bolted out the door, dropped to his knees, and vomited violently.
I ran outside and asked him what's wrong.
His brother Stephen Meyer recalled, he said, they poisoned me.
Well, there's also a story that I read that I've tried to substantiate, that apparently he was...
He was so frustrated by sexual desires and a love affair that he had and the distraction that it presented that he, in quotes, destroyed his sexuality.
I mean, you know, have you heard of the Selden patent?
Very interesting piece of American transportation history.
This prick named Selden was one of the richest people in the country because he was like one of your early patent trolls who like sat back one day and went...
You know, we got these horse carriages and we got these new motor things.
And, you know, at some point there could be a horseless carriage.
So he like literally did like a chicken scratch bullshit drawing and filed it and got awarded the patent.
So Henry Ford and his first two companies, as well as the Dodge brothers, all the early pioneers in the transportation sector in the U.S. had to pay this prick a massive royalty to even produce the vehicle.
And it was Henry, after he went down and under and he was reborn and came back out with Ford Motor Company the second time, that he said, you know what?
Fuck him.
Fuck that.
I'm not paying this shit.
And it was like eight years of court battles to overrule it in the National Automotive Dealers Association.
want any trouble and everyone was paying.
And Henry was the one who had the gall and the balls to say, "No, no, we should not pay this prick." And they finally got it kicked out.
But they say that hindered innovation and transportation for a good decade.
Yeah, and it was only the electric starter, the Magneto starter that Henry Ford integrated into his cars that really made the massive shift away from predominance of electric cars to internal combustion.
So when you flash forward and you look at Mr. Payne's film, Who Killed the Electric Car?
And you look at Firestone and who was it?
Pacific Oil, but it was an oil company, a tire company.
And they created that bus company and then they did all the lobbying to privatize municipal transport so that then they could slowly buy them all up.
And, you know, California had an incredibly successful electric trolley system through the west side.
It was brilliant.
It was pioneering.
It was ahead of everyone.
They're the ones that ended up stacked in the desert.
I also, for a while, like, I wanted to do, there was a Dow Corning and somebody else, there was a big consortium that was doing a bioderivative molded plastic concepts.
So, like, for your city trash cans and stuff, and the durability and the life cycles and everything were epic.
And I was thinking for a while, like, how badass would it be to invest all the money in the platform of the vehicular engineering and then make the body literally...
By design, almost disposable.
So when it's at the end of its life cycle, it literally could turn into mulch and go on the ground and be totally neutral.
Or, more interestingly, more liberating for a consumer and a designer.
Like, let's say that same platform you had, you could have, like, a dune buggy style.
Like, okay...
I'm going to take it out to the desert and we're going to go elk hunting or whatever the hell you're going to do that weekend, right?
And you want like a buggy-truggy style.
Or, you know, we're doing construction at the house and we're going to use it for, you know, hauling soil or whatever.
So you could have like modular bodies and different applications used on the same platform but all bioderivative materials.
Yeah, I would think, I mean, see if you can find that Lotus, the hemp Lotus.
They had it where the front stripe down the center was clear coat.
So you could see the actual hemp fiber in the Lotus.
But no one's ever done anything.
I mean, they still make Corvettes out of plastic.
I'm still making them out of fiberglass.
I would think that that would be like a real straightforward approach, especially now that hemp is legalized and you can grow it in the United States and most states.
They're making such a disgusting amount of money in licensing, like key chains and bullshit, that like the core, even the engineering, tier one engineering aspect of Lotus and then the production, they're like, fuck that.
I would think that for a guy like you, who's building cars the way you're building them, the real challenge would be staff.
I think that would be the real challenge, is finding people that understand what you're doing, finding fellow artisans that also understand how to build cars, that really get what you're doing.
They don't want anyone in California making anything except maybe solar-assisted bicycles.
The business climate in the state of California and the associated HR costs and insurance and workman's comp and liabilities, like every couple weeks there's another absurd ruling that we get an update on that like, Wait, what?
It's like, you mean to tell me if I catch a dude smoking crack while on the clock stealing my inventory, I can't fire his ass on the spot?
Now if you do, you have to give him a week's pay at the time of letting him go, and you can't make him sign anything that indemnifies nor protects you.
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You have to put them on probation and offer therapy and resources.
I'm like, you see this plaque on the wall, the congressman, councilman, and the mayor?
You see this picture of me and the mayor when he did the ribbon cutting?
Here's the email record showing the mayor's aide personally delivered me all my occupancy permits.
He goes, yeah, not my problem.
I'm like, what about the last nine years of inspectors coming in all the time and saying, you guys have the cleanest, most professional, above-board shop, kick-ass, well done, thank you so much for making my life good.
He goes, yeah, they're idiots, I'm the new inspector.
I think at this point, too, the amount of costs related per employee should be going to my employees, not to insurance companies and all this bullshit that gets tagged on top of.
It's like for every dollar you pay someone now, there's another 32 cents that should be going to them that's going to sucker fish in industry insurance.
But I mean, literally, I honestly think they'd rather have a commercial weed facility in that building kicking out a hell of a lot more tax revenue than us.
And just about any small business owner I know in the state of California, the challenges we're facing are getting to the point of making us We wonder about our own intellect for staying in the state.
They're telling kids that, here, if you run this scan tool, you'll make 150 grand a year as a lead tech at a BMW dealership.
What they're not telling these kids, while sucking all their money out of them with crazy student loans and stuff, Yeah, that's like the kids in the street in Brazil all wanting to grow up to be Pele.
There's not that many Pele's.
So there's plenty of dudes at that dealership that are making minimum wage or thereabouts or dealing with the politics of flag hours or whatever.
But what I'm having a hard time with is we charge $100 an hour for our labor.
I can't just keep charging more and more and more at the level of what we do with projects that can run thousands of hours per job.
The math is, it almost doesn't make sense.
Like I honestly have guys that I think should be, I should be paying them 70, 80, 90, 100 grand a year to do what they do because they're artists and they deserve it.
The bullshit of running a business in California and all of the exponential costs that are added on top, they even de-incentivize overtime now.
If I give a dude overtime, it ups his tax rate and they take even more out of the overtime.
Well, whatever happened to GDP and employment and productivity and keeping everything rolling, they're de-incentivizing us even to offer our employees more money with more hours.
It's tragic.
And I've lost several guys now that have gone to do jobs that they hate.
But like the Department of Water and Power, I've lost several employees at DWP because they get a pension, they get killer health care, they get 90 grand a year to pick their nose and watch other people work.
I think it might be the uber-green side of democratic because I think the whole two-party system is a shit show as it is anyway.
I don't think it's about which party so much as I think we've empowered attorneys to such an extent that it's downright sinful because it's hindering industry.
It's hindering innovation.
There's just so many constrictions because everyone has their hand out.
No one's self-accountable, but everyone's liable.
So then you need a policy for that.
We had an employee once sue us.
He jumped in a dumpster to stomp on everything to compress it in the dumpster.
It started moving across the ramped parking lot, and he jumped out of it, clipped his leg on the way down, and shattered his arm in four spots.
Well, he sued me.
It's like, well, it's not in your job description.
Did someone tell you to jump in the dumpster and stomp on it?
No.
And then we discover the guy had embrittled bones due to chemical agent exposure in the military.
But it's my problem?
Like, what?
People, whatever happened to, like, be proud of what you do, be respected, be well-paid, everyone's content, everyone's, like, inspired and engaged.
And I just feel like more and more there's just so much noise and Lawyers and policies, all this crap.
It's like, we're just here to do something we love and get rewarded and pay people.
I mean, I'm stoked that we support directly 58 families, plus all our sublets and everything else.
But it's hard to retain people when we know we can't pay them what they're worth in this business environment.
But I tell you, man, more and more, a surf shack with my own little garden out back and my little leather studio and sell shit on Instagram, simplify life.
My wife got diagnosed with cancer last year, and we've been in the throes of...
everything in a perspective.
We really made a stop and sit back and go, okay, all right, that doesn't fucking matter.
Like a lot of the bullshit, a lot of the noise in our modern world does not matter.
It doesn't mean a fucking thing.
So that kind of reinvigorated, but also refreshed my perspective to remind myself if someone's panties are in there, not because their icon's been in storage for six months, They didn't plug it into the tender and the battery's dead and they want to call and yell at me about it.
And it's like the, you know, the homeless challenge that we're facing.
And, you know, when we try and address that, in my opinion, when that's addressed on a state level, it's going to fucking fail because then you're going to overburden that state.
Even if they're innovative and brilliant in their solution, then the whole country tilts to that state and they all come a sliding over.
And then there's a problem with particularly the state.
The state is so progressive-minded.
And I'm a progressive.
I'm a very open-minded person.
But you can't...
You can't remove responsibility.
You can't remove the consequences for actions.
You can't do those things.
You can't give people participation trophies, and that's what you're doing.
Yeah, I agree.
And that attitude that people have, by thinking they're being open-minded and kind and nice, you are just enabling people to keep fucking up their life by not— Just get an award by showing up.
They have no consequences.
And, you know, you can't litter, right?
So how come you can put a fucking tent filled with shit and just park it under the overpass?
But if I throw a can of Diet Coke out my window into that same spot, I will get a fine.
And I will get arrested.
Rightly so.
But why can this asshole park his fucking tent filled with crack there?
How come you can have cardboard boxes just scattered out all over the place that you sleep on?
I don't know what to tell that guy and how to change his life once he's got a tent, once you camp down under the overpass.
There's a lot of things that have gone wrong to get you to that position.
But what I do know is you shouldn't be allowed to have a fucking tent.
You shouldn't be allowed to have these tent villages.
I went to dinner the other night in Venice, one of the last times I could go to dinner for the next couple months, I think, in a restaurant.
But when we went down there, there's a nice house, like a beautiful house in Venice.
Across the street, there was 50 tents.
Just filled with shit, broken bike parts and garbage and just things piled up.
And you're like, this is the problem with being open-minded.
This is the problem.
And this is why people like when Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City with this totalitarian approach, like, the people that live in New York City that weren't homeless were like, fuck yeah, finally.
Take these homeless people off the street.
Do this.
Fix that.
Make it harder to be a criminal.
Make it more difficult.
You know, and the downside of it, a lot of people got arrested that probably shouldn't have.
A lot of people got frisked that probably shouldn't have.
A lot of people got harassed that probably shouldn't have.
But on the plus side, you've got to crack a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.
And they cleaned up New York City.
And they cleaned up the homeless problem that they have there.
Our culture, our society, meaning, do you think it would ever be viable?
And I'm so politically ignorant, so maybe you're just going to laugh me out of the room.
Could you socialize, legal defense, education, and healthcare?
Like, do you think that would be viable as a hybrid where it's a democracy, it's a capitalist-driven system, but you take the money, therefore the corruption that takes us, like the business of medicine versus the art of medicine are completely different things.
You know, now...
Give you a pill so you can live and then we'll give you another pill to deal with the ramifications of the side effects of the pill we gave you versus the cure got fucking shelved, you know, because there wasn't a rev model behind it.
Look, if someone is excelling at something, whatever that is, whether it's teaching or being an orthopedic surgeon, they want to be rewarded for their efforts.
Plus, they've probably acquired a massive amount of debt.
If you're an orthopedic surgeon, you've gone through medical school, there's a strong chance that you're deeply in debt by the time you start cutting people.
And that's a real problem.
It's a real problem because that also incentivizes them to perform surgeries that are unnecessary.
And you hear about that all the time.
I mean, there's a lot of doctors that just want to start cutting people, you know, and they don't have proactive solutions.
Like, listen, this might take a long time, but let's try to rehabilitate this first, particularly with, like, back issues.
Yeah, I remember when I first started having my health issues, you know, I'm epileptic.
And when I first started looking into that, and they were throwing darts at the wall for a decade, like, I don't know, could be this, could be that, endocrinologist, cardiologist, all these different specialists.
And literally, the cardiologist sits me down and is like, okay, so here's what life with a pacemaker is like.
We're going to do this.
I'm like, whoa, back...
The fuck up.
Like, show me the math.
Like, I'm far from a doctor, but I'm kind of an engineering guy.
So, like, show me the math.
Like, this is a result of that, which causes that as indicated by this.
I did just to the extent of doing some Google research promptly after our discussion.
And I also was looking into medical marijuana approaches to it.
But again, the beautiful state of California is such that I lose my license if I don't take the chemicals that big pharma promote because they do biannual blood tests.
Especially with all the proof in CBD solutions, right?
And it's been medically verified, but the state won't acknowledge it.
So if you choose to go that route, not only obviously your insurance company won't pay for it, but you lose your license and everything else related to its regulations.
I mean, that is literally the benefit of a healthy diet and exercise, is your body functions better and it can ward off attacks.
And that's what people have to think about when the flu comes around or anything comes around.
That's an attack.
It's an attack by a viral entity.
And if you have weak defense, if you have a poor immune system, if your body is already compromised because of tobacco use and drugs and all these various things that can wreck your system and you don't exercise, and you're gonna get around to it, but you never do, and you eat like shit, well, guess what, man?
You have no fucking tools.
You have no weapons to defend yourself against this entity.
I'm just really hoping that it's a wake-up call for some people, that they really understand how important it is.
There's so many intelligent people that I know that treat exercise and diet and just your own physical well-being as if it's a frivolous pursuit of shallow-minded people.
That want to, you know, the egotistical vain people that want to have nice bodies.
And it's for fools.
You know, the intelligent person concentrates on the mind.
But I think that's a really, that is in itself, it's an unintelligent way to approach it.
It's not holistic.
You should treat your mind as if it's a part of your body.
But again, it's more of that polarization that unfortunately we're seeing in the last 10 years that's just growing exponentially.
So that's one thing I hope out of this is that us amongst ourselves as Americans and as a larger family of people who only have one globe to live on, I hope there's more...
I hope to see this create more cohesion, more of a unification amongst all mankind.
To realize we all are dealing to different extents with the same challenges, the same potentials, the same liabilities, and get people back...
And it's such a reminder, because I've always felt this.
It's all so fragile, right?
Like even our Western reality, like, OK, just from a small business owner, right?
Like I think it's probably fair to say that nationwide, any business that's under, say, whatever, 20 million a year are kind of hand-to-mouth, give or take a couple months.
But I hope, again, that there's a positive spin to that where people can...
Understand and acknowledge that and therefore learn and connect and have greater consideration for our neighbors, ourselves, our own bodies, our mind, our spirit, but like get people more connected and like face out of their fucking phones.
I think, like you said, back with Reagan, that there not being a forcible state, multiple state lawsuits against the federal government because of the load put on the state systems by that federal change and the limit of health care for mental issues.
I mean, I grew up in New York City in the 70s, and it was a fucking zoo.
But that now even pales to what you're seeing.
Like, I went to visit a supplier. - I'm not sure.
Three weeks ago in downtown LA and, like, just trying to drive down his street to get in his parking lot, it was like a circus, man.
And, like, they've not only taken over the curb in the street, they're walking down the middle of the street with an attitude like, I shouldn't be driving on the street.
And, like, half the businesses on the block literally gave up and closed down.
And they can't even, like, my friend wanted to move his company and the realtor's like, you're fucking dreaming.
Like, I'm never going to sell this building right now.
Like, should I be closing or am I breathing into – it's like I'm torn between this is social media gone wrong, too much hype and too much bullshit versus speaking to friends, a friend who's a scientist in the viral field and what she's telling me and friends who are doctors and a friend who's a doctor in Milan and the shit show he's dealing with.
It's like – Okay, no, it's not just like, but it's very interesting trying to, I think all of us in all of our lives right now, picking our paths, picking our priorities, how do we address this?
But then as a business owner, again, in California, there's liabilities to how you address or don't address it.
Having said that, I need to listen to the capitalist pig on my right shoulder versus the creative geek on my left shoulder in that we've been quite successful as a company.
I'm honored how many people know the brand.
But I haven't like amassed some, you know, great personal wealth.
If the shit blows up tomorrow...
You know, I'm looking for a job, you know?
So I need to figure out how to cash in, so to speak, on the equity the brand has created in ways that don't step on the brand's wee-wee.
So, like...
I'm dying to get into all different aspects of industrial design.
I'd love to do that on my own or through collaborations, but I think my goal would be to diversify my product line, to keep revisiting classic design in a modern context, but in many different ways and many different product segments.
So, like, I am right now, and part of the trip to Mexico and to Morocco, Those trips were – and the last three years of practice and building prototype wallets and sort of side hustle on Instagram and stuff is really getting granular with it because I do want to start a leather goods brand.
I mean, when someone looks at something that you create, like an Icon Bronco, and they look at the expense of that thing, and how, boy, it must be nice.
Like, that's crazy.
Like, this guy must be making money hand over foot.
No, like, literally, we ranted about this, if anyone wants to listen to our first podcast when we first met, and just we geeked out for hours and hours, but like, the whole educational system alone, like, should be focused on helping our youth understand what they're passionate about.
If someone finds their passion and can make it their life, they're a happier individual and they're going to break new ground and be of great value versus trying to fit everyone into these bullshit social silos, most of which are broken and overflowing now.
Like the Watson computer is better than general counsel.
At a huge percentage difference, AI can outdo these lawyers in like coming out of school in six digits of debt and they can't get jobs.
That model doesn't even work anymore.
So let's get back to like honoring tinkerers and craftsmen and free thinkers and innovators.
But one of the things I figured out early on is I spend the most time with my friends when we sit down and do podcasts because then there's no phones involved.
It's just three hours of just talking to each other.
Whereas, you know, if we go to a restaurant, we'll talk for a little bit, but we only do it once every now and then, and they're on the road, and I'm on the road, and so getting together was like a communal thing, and then it became like a clubhouse thing, and then we started doing it at the Ice House, so it was at a comedy club, so we'd coincide with shows, and that was a lot of fun.
And then slowly but surely, the numbers started growing, and as the numbers started growing, then I started getting guests, and then as I started getting guests, I started understanding what I'm actually doing and getting better at talking to people.
And then realizing that what you're doing is linking up with one person.
The less distractions, the better.
The less bullshit, the better.
It's just you and a person talking.
And then I got better at that.
And then I started thinking about what I'm doing wrong, what I'm doing.
And then I realized, oh, this is a skill just like everything else is a skill.
Being annoying to listen to is a failure to do the job right.
It's not just that that's who you are.
That's not what it is.
It's just you are who you are because of a lack of attention.
While we have the power to say no and to control what we do, what we say yes to, and what we say no to, as long as the market allows both of us to do that, we'll stay in our little happy place.
What I hope out of this coronavirus thing is other than people stay healthy, of course.
Is that people do revisit what they do with their lives as well and recognize the fact that all this shit can go away and even if you're a good boy and you show up at work every day for some fucking job that sucks and you feel like you're putting in your time and you're doing the right thing, they can take that shit away from you.
But I think once someone understands the importance of being impassioned about what they do, even like what relationships they're in, how they spend their time, what they schedule their day about.
Once you really own that to a deep extent, like the risk, it's not even debatable to leave the shit job, leave the unhealthy relationship, take better care of yourself, your body or whatever.
But like once you make that first acceptance and understanding, the rest of it's a breeze.
It'll be such a happier world if people have that connection.
I'm just happy there's people out there that are living that example.
And I really do hope that some people, I mean, it's not for everybody, but some people out there that are hearing this, That are in this situation like fuck like I did all the right things and my job is still gone now and my You know my pension 401k tank blah blah blah The real problem is people with families people with families and people with mortgages and they can't jump they have leases they have you know rent to pay and It's still argument nights and weekends stay up a little later nights and weekends nights and weekends Even if it just gives you the
But, man, nights and weekends, staying motivated and excited and thinking and stretching and trying versus just plugging in and watching the same shit being forced on our throat by media.
There's so much that can be done even just at that level.
I mean, Mayor Villagosa found me the damn building personally.
Like, they were great, but I don't know.
I think, you know, what a lot of people are telling me, and we're seeing this even at Bureau of Automotive Repair, California Resource Forces, there's a lot more regulation occurring now.
Because since California and the Trump administration have gotten pretty deep in this argument over does California have the right to create its own air quality control mandates or not, that it's sucking so much money out of the California system that they're having to scramble to come up with new rev models.
So like a lot of the aftermarket automotive like for off-road use only – We're good to go.
I mean, I understand the desire to keep air quality high, but I don't understand that you're using all these cars that are, you know, you're using these emission-compliant engines.
I mean, these LS engines that you're using, these crate engines.
But from what I understood, the distribution of hydrogen was the big deal breaker in that the hydrogen that is readily distributed, if I recall correctly, was a lower grade that would not work in the systems required for hydrogen-powered automobiles.
So it was a complete infrastructure shitshow to get it to the point of viable.
Same with Capstone that was doing those micro-turbines out in Chatsworth, Canoga Park area.