Season 2, Episode 42 - SEMA President Mike Spagnola

 

 

The following transcription of The Truck Show Podcast was generated using a speech recognition software, and will contain errors. Please review the timestamp and listen to the corresponding audio for accuracy. 

Quick Link to Previous Episodes

 

0 (3s):

Excuse thumbs down.

Sean P. Holman (20s):

All right. This is ridiculous. And it’s in my neighborhood at nighttime while people are sleeping. Oh my God. I’m walking away. What an idiot. I’m literally walking away. Like if my neighbors didn’t hate me enough, I got Jay coming to my house once a week. Great. My 5-year-old told her Mom, the police are here. Nope. What? She said, mommy, what’s going on outside? She goes, I don’t know. I think Jay’s here. And she’s like, is he an idiot?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53s):

Did

Sean P. Holman (53s):

She really? Because when I went upstairs to talk to my wife, she goes, she’s saying the I word now. Oh no. and I go, what’s the I word? And she goes, idiot. and I went, well, I mean, it’s appropriate. She’s not wrong for this moment. She’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 4s):

Not wrong. I’ll take it. That’s funny. Yeah. I’m enjoying my new Phoenix PA system. I gotta hook up the not

Sean P. Holman (1m 10s):

Wait for you to get shot at. Oh

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 11s):

Yes. I have not had a chance to tell someone to turn their lights on. So the single reason that I got that Phoenix PA system was So. I could tell people to turn their lights on and it hasn’t happened yet, but it

Sean P. Holman (1m 25s):

Will. What’s funny about that is that may be the single reason that you got that product for, and it will not be the majority of the use of that product. No.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 33s):

I’m gonna be annoying people and just like I did you. ’cause it’s hilarious. The one that’s hidden is that I haven’t found yet. I can’t figure out how to access it, but I know what’s on the box is the night writer theme. Dun. Oh my god. So stoked, so excited. You didn’t like Theo Horn from a Ghostbusters.

Sean P. Holman (1m 52s):

I didn’t like that in my neighborhood. My nice quiet middle class neighborhood.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 56s):

You didn’t like the fact that I had 200 Watts speakers facing in 45 degree angles out the front under the bumper. No, that was so good.

Sean P. Holman (2m 2s):

No, it was not so good. Not good. Not good at all.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 5s):

Lightning and Holman. It is The Truck. Show Podcast. This is a very special episode because we have

Sean P. Holman (2m 12s):

A PA system on Lightning’s T Rx. Nope,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 14s):

Because we have the president on the show.

Sean P. Holman (2m 17s):

Yeah. I’m gonna say that I’m very excited to have him come to the pod shed. We actually have the president, the president making a trek all the way down here to the coast to engage us and delight us with his knowledge and his insights with the automotive industry right here in the pod shed.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 37s):

His name is Mike Spag. So You. Guys are thinking the president, Mike Spagnola, the president of the Specialty Equipment Market Association.

Sean P. Holman (2m 45s):

And I’m gonna go ahead and say right now that we’re not gonna do anything else on the show, but talk to Mike because it’s not that often that such an important guest. We get as much time with him as we want. So I’m dedicating the show to, to Sima and the upcoming SEMA show, which we’ll be at. By the way, we will be doing a podcast from the EGR booth on Thursday. So if you happen to be at SEMA between two and four, I think

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 9s):

You ink the deal. It’s two and two and four.

Sean P. Holman (3m 11s):

Two and four on on Thursday. So if you happen to be at the SEMA show, we’ll have some stickers and stuff with us Come on by and say hi. And, and come check out the products for EGR. I know we’ve been talking about how awesome the the roll track tonne cover. Yep. Tonne covers are, and you can come see ’em in person. And just wanted to shout out and say thank you to those guys for, for asking us if we’d wanna go hang out in the booth and, and do some pod.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 32s):

Mike and Justin are are my man over there. So yeah, we’re, we’re excited to hang out for a couple of hours. and I think there’s beer when we’re

Sean P. Holman (3m 38s):

Done. I think there’s beer while we’re doing it, isn’t there?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 40s):

Oh, is, oh, were we at Happy hour I? Think it was after work. You wrap. There’s happy hour.

Sean P. Holman (3m 44s):

Sure.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 46s):

Dude, I’ll drink. Do a podcast. I

Sean P. Holman (3m 47s):

I. I was gonna say I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 48s):

I gotta twist my arm.

Sean P. Holman (3m 49s):

Listen, my HR department has no issues with that whatsoever. So, so yeah. Anyway, we’re getting, we’re gonna bring you some SEMA content. Lightning and I will be there all week. But again, this episode that we’re gonna do right now, we are awaiting the arrival of Mike Bagla, the president of SEMA. And I’m really excited to talk about a range of topics. I’ve got a whole lot of different things that I want to hit because a SEMA iss doing a bunch of cool stuff right now in the industry that you guys should know about. But also I have a bunch of just random questions like, what’s your take on this and what do you guys feel about this and how does this affect the business? and I want to see You know what, what Mike thinks. I think last time we had him on was a quick phone call and then the time before that was we, what, a half an hour or 45 minutes at the SEMA show where he was super busy.

Sean P. Holman (4m 32s):

So we kind of get him to ourselves a little bit

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 34s):

Right now. And so three SEMA ago, remember we got him at the top of the staircase. We did. He was like, I’m supposed to be in a meeting. And we’re like, we literally pinned him up against the wall. Holman and I are like bodyguards, like pushing him against the, the wall and would let him leave. So, hey, do you think he’s gonna roll up in his fly? Yellow Nissan three 50 Z

Sean P. Holman (4m 54s):

Dude. It’s the Nissan Z Proto and I think it’s actually, it’s got wheels, tires, and tuned and stuff. So it’s a, I know it’s a a three liter twin turbo. V six. I think it’s a stick too. Like I said, I think the Wick’s been turned up a little bit. ’cause he is the president of SEMA. So why would you not be driving a modified car?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 15s):

I mean, he represents us. He’s supposed to. So, so he he rips.

Sean P. Holman (5m 19s):

Yeah. I. I, I. Love those these. Anyway, So I think he’s, he’ll be pulling up shortly. So why don’t we thank Nissan. It’s a great opportunity for us to say thank you for being the presenting sponsor of The Truck. Show Podcast. And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 29s):

Thanks for making the Z by the way. Cool car.

Sean P. Holman (5m 31s):

I had that blue one for a little while then. Nissan. You did? Yeah. You remember It was like I don know, probably six months ago or maybe a little bit longer, where Nissan’s like, Hey, you wanna drive one of the cars? And They. Send me the Oh yeah, yeah. Love that car, dude. It’s so much fun. Anyway, if you’re looking for a truck you wanna head on down to your local Nissan dealer. And of course the Nissan Frontier is one of the hottest and best looking mid-sized trucks. So head on down to your local Nissan dealer, or you can type in Nissan usa.com on your browser and you can build and price and check out all the features and options and find that right Nissan pickup truck for you.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 3s):

You know what’s, you’re got a trip on this Holman, is that we have a frontier coming to Banks tomorrow, which we’re doing some pedal monster testing making sure, ’cause we haven’t had reverse safety for the latest generation of the frontier. And we’ve been getting a lot of calls. Legitimately, like I have Frontier. I want the pedal monster. I’m excited about reverse safety so it’s stock when I back up. Yep. So we’ve got one we’re gonna ma that’ll mean we can probably have it out before Christmas. So if you’ve got a frontier, the pedal monster does work today for you, but it doesn’t have reverse safety. So by Christmas they’ll have reverse safety pedal. Monster is the smartest. I know there’s some other guys claiming to be the most

4 (6m 40s):

Advanced

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 40s):

Throttle controller Bs not true. It’s absolutely not true. They don’t have reverse safety. They don’t have active safety. When the other guys fail, they could fail to full throttle or just put you dead in the middle of the highway pedal Monster is the most advanced, the smartest throttle control. And it makes driving fun again because it, it restores that response that you lost when you went to bigger tires. There’s hundreds of applications for almost every truck on the road. Hit Banks power.com. Type in your year make and model to find your pedal monster.

Sean P. Holman (7m 5s):

And right now the truck Show Podcast has joined forces with Helwig products where we are going to fight saggy bottoms together. So You have the rear of your vehicle sags while you’re hauling your trailer or your camper Helwig Helper Springs can help you level out that load. And of course, no more white knuckle rides if you have a tow vehicle or a truck that drives like a teeter-totter or has a high center of gravity, or it just doesn’t feel confident around corners. Helwig products way bars can help alleviate the unwanted body roll and make your next road trip smoother. Also, it’ll give you a lot more sure handling around those corners. Hellwig products are made in the USA, they have been since 1946. So I think one of their latest applications that they are excited about is their new Ford Bronco application.

Sean P. Holman (7m 45s):

So if you ride a bucking Bronco on a

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 49s):

Come on

Sean P. Holman (7m 50s):

Thank you on a regular basis, then you wanna check out the rear sway bars from Helwig for that application. If you wanna know more about Helwig products, just head on over to helwig products.com,

4 (8m 1s):

The truck show. We’re gonna show you what we know. We’re gonna answer What? The truck, because truck rides with the truck show. We have the lifted, we have the lowered end. Everything in between. We’ll talk about trucks that run on Diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show. The truck show. The truck show. Whoa, whoa.

6 (8m 33s):

It’s the truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman.

4 (8m 40s):

Holman is the big

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 41s):

One. I’ve got a proper intro for our next guest.

7 (8m 50s):

In fact. I was looking outside the door and there’s two guys in suits. Well-fitted,

Sean P. Holman (8m 55s):

But it’s dark outside right now. ’cause we recorded in the middle of the night. And. they have sunglasses on.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 59s):

Well, I am seeing one of them has a blinking LED in his right ear. Did you

Sean P. Holman (9m 3s):

See the other guy with the briefcase? And the briefcase is also blinking.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 7s):

There’s something going on outside. Let him in. Let Mike in. Mike. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mike Spagnola, president of the Specialty Equipment Market Association.

Sean P. Holman (9m 20s):

A president I can get behind.

8 (9m 27s):

Five Star welcome. Two

Sean P. Holman (9m 29s):

Is awesome. The Truck, Show Podcast. So this is the first time you’ve been in my backyard. What do you think this is a,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 34s):

Is that a euphemism? What? Well, no, it’s,

Sean P. Holman (9m 37s):

It’s ad It’s actually a shed. And we’re actually in my backyard.

8 (9m 40s):

This is, I watched you put this together on, on social media and this is amazing. Yeah, this is very cool. Thank you. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (9m 45s):

Yeah. You like my cork ceiling? I. I

8 (9m 47s):

Love the ceiling. I love the

Sean P. Holman (9m 49s):

I Halo Lights. We got our steer horns. Steer

8 (9m 51s):

Horns. It’s,

Sean P. Holman (9m 52s):

We’ve got a air freshener of Mr. Gale Banks hanging from there as well.

8 (9m 56s):

You do, dude.

Sean P. Holman (9m 57s):

Oh man. And then we’ve got this, this is our shelf of things people have gifted us from. Listener.

8 (10m 3s):

Well, I brought gifts. I came briefly, so, oh wow.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 5s):

These boxes.

Sean P. Holman (10m 5s):

Let’s see here. All

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 6s):

Right, let’s see. And Micah get, get close up on those right there.

8 (10m 9s):

How’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 9s):

That? Oh, perfect. There you go. This

Sean P. Holman (10m 11s):

Is, this is gonna keep my Dr. Pepper cold.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 13s):

All right, hold on.

Sean P. Holman (10m 13s):

You should take your Dr. Pepper and pour it in your new Tumblr. Sir,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 17s):

Check this out. Brought

8 (10m 18s):

You a couple tumblers. Love

Sean P. Holman (10m 19s):

It.

8 (10m 21s):

Complete with the SEMA logo.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 23s):

This is not. All right. I’m gonna do

Sean P. Holman (10m 25s):

The entire show while speaking into my

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 27s):

Tumblr. Please do not do that. That’s a good use of Mike’s time right here.

8 (10m 31s):

He

Sean P. Holman (10m 31s):

Hasn’t had a long day

8 (10m 32s):

Or anything. No. Right. Yeah. Hey, it’s great being with you guys. It’s always fun. This is awesome. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since you invited me. Look at that.

Sean P. Holman (10m 42s):

Does it taste better from a double wall

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 44s):

T Mike? Because it’s so much better. My Dr. Pepper outta the SEMA tumblers. Awesome.

8 (10m 49s):

Thank you. There we go. Your, your royalties coming.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 52s):

Am I at the court jester now? Yeah. All. Oh, so Mike, we’ve spoken with you, I feel like at the last, at least two or three SEMA shows in Las Vegas. Yeah. and I I. Can’t remember if we’ve had you on the phone for some random event or not. We did, but like did I I? We did. Yeah. First time you’re in the pod. The pod shed, right. Digging it.

8 (11m 14s):

That’s digging it, man.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 15s):

This is you Were not expecting this. Be honest. I

8 (11m 17s):

I wasn’t I. I was so amazed how beautiful this is.

Sean P. Holman (11m 20s):

Like, it’s actually professional looking. It’s it is. Yeah. I I took my entire nut and then some And made, made a place for Lightning and I to, to keep doing the podcast. We had some help from one of our listeners, rich Hol hold away from Hollister came down with his crew. He Tough. Shed built the shed and he did the drywall. And then my buddy Mark, who’s a contractor locally helped wire it. And just so many friends and, and listeners who all kind of pitched in to, to make this a reality so we could keep the

8 (11m 49s):

Show going. and I I I lacked to see the building permit that was hanging on the wall When you put, you put it together.

Sean P. Holman (11m 54s):

So what’s awesome about the city I live in, how

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 56s):

Dare you bring that up. No,

Sean P. Holman (11m 58s):

I got, as long as you are under 120. Okay. Something square feet and lower than 10 feet. You’re good. You’re good. So it’s, it’s called an a DU and outside of the those dimensions, so guess how big this the Shed is? I got the biggest floor footprint.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 15s):

I could get one inch under the legal limit.

Sean P. Holman (12m 16s):

Yeah. It’s when you, because you do the, the space, I think from the interior. So it’s actually a little bit smaller. Right. and I actually had the roof on this particular one, flattened the pitch a little bit so that we could be under the, the height. And my old neighbor who finally moved away the day this went up, he was already calling the city on me and stuff. No way. And he was emailing me the code and I was ready for him. and I go. Yeah, buddy, you guys

8 (12m 39s):

Have stepped up. You know, I knew you guys when Yeah. And now look at this.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 43s):

Well, I mean, so we were at MotorTrend for how long? And that was cool. ’cause there was some, there was some cache to MotorTrend and being in the big studio and all that stuff. But I think this has given us the freedom. A we can say what we want. We don’t have corporate

Sean P. Holman (12m 56s):

Overlords. Right.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 57s):

No overlords anymore. No Board of directors. You can’t say this and can’t say that. So that’s been really, really cool. Holman officially owns the company. Nice. I’m just some hired hand. Yep. But it’s, it’s cool. I’m digging it. And people we’re Wes awesome still here. 300 plus episodes

Sean P. Holman (13m 12s):

In 40. We’ve done 40 episodes plus in this room.

8 (13m 15s):

That’s awesome. It’s so awesome. I mean, last time we talked we were standing outside at the SEMA show. We were standing in the, in the silver lot out front. Yeah. Oh yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 24s):

That’s right. Yeah. So

8 (13m 24s):

This is a step up for sure.

Sean P. Holman (13m 26s):

We, we were, we are actually I think in the MotorTrend booth out there. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 30s):

Oh, that’s right. Exactly. Yeah. So this is, this has been great. But like we, we still do a lot of stuff outta the studio. So we love to get out and about. We’ll be at SEMA again doing interviews. Thank you. In fact.

Sean P. Holman (13m 40s):

We’ll be in the EGR booth doing a show for live, basically from, from Vegas. So EGR called us and said, Hey, what would it take to get you guys here? And we said, let’s do it. so that

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 50s):

Sandwiches, like if you bring us sandwiches and

Sean P. Holman (13m 52s):

Dr. Pepper. Cool. Dr. Pepper, that’s an our writer by the way. Okay. So speaking of writer, you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 58s):

Know, here we go.

Sean P. Holman (13m 58s):

We are doing some, some prep for PTE and I. Get this email. And now you,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 6s):

You guys don’t know this, but Mr. Spanel is a jokester.

Sean P. Holman (14m 10s):

And, and the, the email said, you know, a writer and then I I get a text from your guy, Zane. Yes. And Zane’s like, Hey, what’s your email? So I’m like, personal or business. And he goes, oh, Mike wants to send you something. and I’m like,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 27s):

So

Sean P. Holman (14m 27s):

I open up the document that says a Spagnola writer and it says Mike Spagnola, hospitality writer. So these are, these are the things that we had to provide. Yes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 36s):

By the way, a writer, for those of you that don’t know, is what the band or the band’s management will give to the venue to say, this is

Sean P. Holman (14m 43s):

Before we, before we, our guys have to be comfortable before they’ll do this.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 46s):

You’ve heard like, like the green room, Kanye West will say, I want all white roses. Yeah. And the windows must be shut. It’s gotta be 64.5 degrees. Like those will be in the things that write. And if those things aren’t met, he just bails doesn’t even play the show. That’s a writer.

Sean P. Holman (14m 59s):

So we both wrote back, I wrote back, I’ll see, I’ll have my people on it. And then Jay writes back something like, what was, what was your response? So. You had like some longer

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 9s):

Response. No, no, no. Mine, mine was relatively short. Be because it also included sound. Oh, I

Sean P. Holman (15m 14s):

I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 14s):

Will aware. No, no. Just the food. Yeah. Well, he, I said that you’ll, he asked for a, a veggie platter and I said, you’ll get a warm veggie platter half eaten. And then he had this whole thing about sound. I said, you’re gonna get a pair of 1977 a KG headphones, slathered in, in crusty, be sweat and I.

Sean P. Holman (15m 30s):

I and I did tell Zay. And he’d be lucky to get a warm Dr. Pepper when he comes. So, all right. So let’s go to the writer here. It says, please provide a clean, private, lockable green room with ample and comfortable seating for four to six people. So this is our green room. Thank you. There’s clearly four chairs here and a lock on the door. So I. Think we met That one? Yeah. Check Must be temperature adjustable and have quick accessible wifi. We’ve got the AC unit check and our wifi is right there. So we got full

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 55s):

Bars. Okay. All right. Oh, you don, you want to do the bell? I’ll let Mike do the bell. That’s fine.

Sean P. Holman (16m 1s):

And it says, must include full length mirror and access to private restroom. So my backyard is the biggest restroom. I saw the tree. Yep. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 9s):

Okay. Hand gimme a bell. He got it. Yep.

Sean P. Holman (16m 11s):

Okay. Hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap should be readily available. I would say that’s readily available upon request. Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 17s):

Right. Yeah. Update. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (16m 20s):

And now we, it says green room please refrigerate all appropriate items that we do have a refrigerator, So I. Feel like we’ve met that. Okay. This is where It gets dicey for me. Veggie tray with organic spinach, kale, or mixed greens.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 33s):

Now is that what? Dicey vegetables. Oh, look at that. Thank

Sean P. Holman (16m 36s):

You.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 37s):

Ah, geez.

Sean P. Holman (16m 38s):

Fruit tray. And this is a or seasonal assortment of berries plus five bananas. Now is there a reason that five bananas is, is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 48s):

There’s only three of us. You know what? There’s something weird about five.

Sean P. Holman (16m 50s):

He only eats two of ’em. He puts one in his cup holder for later and takes the other home. Two to his family. Right. Ah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 55s):

Okay. Alright.

Sean P. Holman (16m 56s):

Two small apples. Red delicious, two green apples. Granny smith. Now he wants red grapes, blueberries, and strawberries. Here’s the thing about all this. I have a five-year-old. I have all of it. I I can go right into the other room across, across the backyard there. and I can deliver

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 11s):

It. Mike was not expecting this. I

Sean P. Holman (17m 13s):

I. I’m not, I’m not kidding. My wife I thought I had I, thought I had you guys. My wife is leaving this weekend. ’cause she’s got her trip before I just got back. She goes, and then I get go to SEMA. But they literally went to the grocery store today, brought back all the fruit. So, I can feed Abby while, while my wife is away. All of these things in the refrigerator right now. Organic cheese. I think Lightning has enough organic cheese for all of us.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 37s):

I, I, I. Got some in my shoes. I can give you.

Sean P. Holman (17m 41s):

I just meant the cheesiness. Oh, okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 42s):

Gotcha.

Sean P. Holman (17m 43s):

The gluten-free crackers.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 45s):

Yeah. No. Now this

Sean P. Holman (17m 46s):

Is what’s interesting. A a few cans of sardines. No, there’s no, there’s no number. It’s just, it’s a feel. Okay. All

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 52s):

Right. No, no, we don’t have those.

Sean P. Holman (17m 54s):

Oh, okay. Assorted mixed nuts. Cashews, almonds, or Brazil nuts. Raw. Now Mike’s gonna be surprised by this.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 2s):

Oh, don’t pull out. No. Hold on a second. What do you have here in the Dr. Pepper look? Oh wow. Macadamia macadamia. All right. Close, close. Ish. That’s a half a bell.

Sean P. Holman (18m 12s):

More, more than you thought, right?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 13s):

Yep.

Sean P. Holman (18m 14s):

I mean, this is protein bars, perfect bars, organic granola. No jar. This is where we fall apart, by the way, bag of tortilla chips and salsa. No three bags, M and ms, no green ones. Everybody wants the green ones. Mike wants us to pick them all out.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 28s):

No, no. Green m and ms.

Sean P. Holman (18m 30s):

Three kids cold pressed pouches. I I think I can handle that. Three lemons. One to two bottles of sparkling water. I like still myself. So, but he has diet, Coke, Coke, Sprite. There’s no Dr. Pepper. He knows. This is a Dr. Pepper Pepper venue. This is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 44s):

Dr. Pepper. Only I did that on purpose. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (18m 48s):

And then I like this for the interview. He wants three black stage towels.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 53s):

What you plan on sweating in here, Come on.

Sean P. Holman (18m 55s):

Now look at his audio request here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 57s):

This is like, dude, he wants a 64 channel board, which nope, I got a, I got a six channel board. That’s not gonna work. Look at all these. A ES in and out stereo. You got an like four ox buses on. You see, I figured you’d like that. None

Sean P. Holman (19m 10s):

Of this. You’d know this stuff. Like

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 11s):

I got, I got none of this. you

Sean P. Holman (19m 13s):

Do have a board that lights up multiple colors. I,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 15s):

See that? See he wants in your monitors. No, you got headphones.

Sean P. Holman (19m 17s):

You got

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 18s):

Headphones. Deal with this, right?

Sean P. Holman (19m 19s):

You know what’s funny, I haven’t given him my SEMA writer yet. For the hosting the panel moderating I, I Can’t wait now. So I, I’ll send that to you. CC our friend Gary Vigil, and we’ll let you guys know what to have for me in the, the media room. I. So,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 32s):

Okay. Okay. So listen, listen, listen. There are many reasons why you’re here, but I think the number one, let’s do this first. Normally we do the, like, the, the plugs at the end. Sure. I wanna do this first because it’s this major. We’ve been talking about the SEMA show. You know, SEMA is the trade organization for the aftermarket. You make wheels, tires, suspension components, whatever. Everything is represented at the SEMA show. And because over the last how many years? 50, 60. How long is that? 56 years. 56 years. Okay. If, if I make a suspension system and I wanna show it off, I’m going to put it on the coolest truck that I can possibly get my hands on. Therefore, the SEMA show by default, has turned into the greatest automotive event in the world

Sean P. Holman (20m 17s):

On Earth.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 19s):

And you can’t go as our listener. You, you can’t, you haven’t been able to go

Sean P. Holman (20m 23s):

Until,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 24s):

Until a couple of years ago, you opened up Fridays kind of like typ, like just testing the waters. Okay. It’s still Fridays, the, the, the consumer can go, you guys can go. But now you have SEMA Fest. Dun dun. So we talked about

Sean P. Holman (20m 41s):

This last year at SEMA, and you said, Hey, listen, next year we’ve got a a, a party that’s gonna roll all weekend, all all weekend. And you said, this is the vision, we’re working on it. And here we are just short of a year later, and you have some just phenomenal lineup. Every time I see a SEMA press release with a new act that’s coming on, or a, a new function that you’re, you’re holding a new activity. It’s just like, it just like guys, at some point, it’s only three days long. Yeah. Like, how are you going, how are you getting squeeze all this into three days. Yeah.

8 (21m 11s):

So CMA s it’s this idea where, again, where we can now have consumers. So SEMA show is business of business only. It’s about 160,000 people that show up to the SEMA show. And that’s

Sean P. Holman (21m 22s):

What the second or third biggest conventions in Yeah.

8 (21m 25s):

Last year we were the largest. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (21m 26s):

So

8 (21m 26s):

Yeah. So people want to get in and, you know, let’s face it, some guys find ways to sneak in. But this really started about 2016. We started with a parade coming outta the show. What we found were people, consumers were showing up and just putting their lawn chairs outside to watch these cars come outta the show. They just leave first time and then just leave.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (21m 48s):

I remember years of that, like literally launch,

Sean P. Holman (21m 50s):

Well, I used to have That one parking lot where they had like a car show. So everybody who was in the show would drive on the streets of Vegas. They’d get ’em shut down by the police to a lot, and then people could come see the, and it was kind of a party on that Friday night. And then that kind of morphed over time. But the parade of leaving SEMA has become the thing to do for locals who

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 9s):

Wanna see everything, what, around around noon on Friday, you would start setting up grandstands. Right? And it’s all grandstands. So all the vehicles that can drive that don’t have Bluetooth drive shafts, which is the thing we’ll talk about later, but which is most, most, meaning, most can drive. They will take their time leaving all the, because it’s north, south, north, central south. And the new hall, what’s the new hall called? West Hall. West Hall. They all funnel into one lane basically. And make this the most incredible parade. Right. And it is from Hot Rods

Sean P. Holman (22m 40s):

To Yeah, you’ll exotics the, the amount of variety that comes outta the show. You’ll have a vintage one-off Restomod, million dollar something followed by a giant Florida truck with like train horns in every orifice. I, I.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 1s):

But I love it. Like the, the Ring Brothers, right? They’re cla they’re famous for making super high

Sean P. Holman (23m 5s):

End

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 6s):

The like Ridler cars, right? Yeah. They award-winning cars. They just drive it right down the street. Yeah. Las Vegas Boulevard, right to the, and you can go And, they goose it a

Sean P. Holman (23m 14s):

Little bit. Right?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 15s):

People like to

Sean P. Holman (23m 15s):

Hear

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 16s):

It, right? Yeah, they they do. But there’s, you know, you can’t do burnouts, can’t be crazy. All that stuff. You can’t

Sean P. Holman (23m 19s):

Be crazy. But people, you know, course. And you don’t want a mustang cars and coffee incidents. So, You gotta, you know. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 23s):

Well, no, they have a no Mustang policy. Oh yeah,

Sean P. Holman (23m 25s):

That’s right.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 27s):

Because they’ve got spectators along the, the sidewalks there. So tell us, it started 16 and it’s come along. So,

8 (23m 33s):

So we, so we had this sea ignited and this parade and all of that, and we saw that consumers wanted to be part of this gig, right? We started on this path where we were gonna do a festival, right? And then it’s called SEMA Fest. We took another 40 acres down the road. It starts Friday afternoon. We’re doing music, we’re doing, you know, Hogan’s gonna be there, nitro Circus is gonna be there. Formula

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 55s):

Drift.

8 (23m 56s):

Formula drift. We’re gonna be doing all these just wild car events followed up by just amazing music. And if I were being truthful, that writer came from one of the, one of the, one of the bands. I just, I I I assign every contract for all the bands. and I just laugh at some of these writers. I just laugh at some of these writers. But I I stole that from one of the bands.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (24m 15s):

So, so

Sean P. Holman (24m 16s):

Hold on a second. If you go to SEMA fest.com, that’s where you can even get tickets and g info. Friday night, incubus Wiz Khalifa, third Eye Blind, Bush, ludicrous Chase, Matthew Roman Duddy, Aaron Jones Bones UK star Crawler Paper Idle. That’s a, that’s a hell of a lineup. And then there’s Saturday with Imagine Dragons as the headliner who a JR Walk the moon, the struts, bad fire of Meg Meyers, dead Sarah run for short. Brooke, Alex. Hot, crazy, good boy, Daisy, the Foxes. And again, formula Drift, nitro Surface. Hogan. I mean,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (24m 49s):

Dude, I’m a strut, strut fan, dude. You’re gonna do, you know the struts I do struts. Rad

8 (24m 53s):

Struts. I’ll tell you. Struts or Rad and Dead, Sarah, I was really surprised I like dead Sarah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (24m 57s):

Yeah. so that female fronted not a Screamo band. They’re on the Not hardcore. How would you describe Dead Sarah? Yeah, they’re kind of like at a late nineties sound right? But with female fronted.

Sean P. Holman (25m 9s):

But at 11.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 10s):

But she, no, she’s got an incredible melodic voice. But then she just screeches. That’s

Sean P. Holman (25m 14s):

What, that’s what I’m saying. It’s like that nineties vibe. But then it’s like at 11, like there’s, anyway, if you haven’t heard of it, Bush awesome.

8 (25m 22s):

They’re all good. Bush

Sean P. Holman (25m 23s):

Is

8 (25m 23s):

Awesome. You know what was funny because Gavin

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 24s):

Rodale, by the way, is a super cool dude.

8 (25m 26s):

Really?

Sean P. Holman (25m 27s):

Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. Third Eye Blind I mean that was the last time.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 31s):

He’s not a cool dude. No,

Sean P. Holman (25m 32s):

He’s not. I was gonna say Steven, Steven Jenkins hired

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 34s):

Story about you. He’s not a dick. Yeah. Does he? No. You’re, you’re paying him. So be,

Sean P. Holman (25m 38s):

Be great to you. But. no, incubus used to be as good as you could get in the, in the two thousands, early two thousands, late nineties. that was

8 (25m 45s):

The people are rocking about Incubus. I mean I’m watching all the social media and it’s all over the place. Right? But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 49s):

They just played Hollywood Bowl and killed it. Killed it. Killed

Sean P. Holman (25m 53s):

It. And the cool thing is, there’s a lot of bands here that are good bands, but a lot of these are good bands life. ’cause you don’t always get that. And so that this, this is gonna be incredible. I mean yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (26m 3s):

So, I wonder. So Mike, who was doing the call, who was doing the a and r so to speak, like who was booking this event? And, and, and the follow up is gonna be when they, when Imagine Dragons, Dan Singer, whoever their agent gets the call and he goes, wait, you want us to play a a car Car show? Show car

8 (26m 18s):

Show? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it was interesting. I gotta tell you, first year out of this stuff, and I’m outta my league here. I mean this is, this is your guy stuff, right? Lightning, this is you. But we brought in some experts. We, you know, we weren’t gonna try to do this all on our own. And we brought in some experts. We did kind of go through the list of bands and you know, and some of Mike honestly didn’t know, but when I played their music, you know, like I I went to YouTube and I’m like, oh, that’s them. You know, I’ve heard that song. Right? And so it’s, this has been a year long project to get here. And the negotiations have been interesting

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (26m 50s):

Because you teamed up with Live Nation, right? Yep.

8 (26m 52s):

Yeah. And some of those guys, well, and I was gonna ask some of those

Sean P. Holman (26m 55s):

As you’re approving bands and contracts and, and people are bringing, Hey, how about these guys? How about these guys? Do you have it in the back of your mind or did you say up front, I want Car people, I want people that love this. Or

8 (27m 7s):

Tried to, but it wasn’t always Right. Okay. It, it wasn’t always that way. And it was more about You know what is the demographic we’re trying to get to. Sure. You know, because some of this is really, it’s not just so that Yeah. Do we want consumers to love semen and Yeah. Have a chance to come to the SEMA Show and all that For sure. But obviously we’re trying to get a different generation as we move forward. Yep. And and new generation of car lovers and people that are car curious but are music lovers. Right? Yeah. And we’re thinking we can turn some of those car curious people into car lovers.

Sean P. Holman (27m 35s):

Well, and I’m thinking if I’m one of the bands and I’m a car guy, I’m going, who just called? Hold on. Yeah. That tour is going on. Yeah. Move those dates. ’cause I’m I wanna be a SEMA. ’cause I I guarantee you there’s people that are in the bands who’ve always wanted to go to SEMA never went. Right. And now they’re getting the opportunity. Well, we already got

8 (27m 49s):

Some of that. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Yeah, we did. We have some of that for sure. So, you know, it was that. And then the other reason is we’ve gotta connect closer to consumers as we go forward, just so that we can generate those leads and know who they are because we’re under attack in this whole car industry. Right? Yeah. And we’ve gotta make sure that we can connect to consumers as we see legislation comes up that we need some help on. And we’ve gotta, we’re gonna have to pull everybody together Yep. As these things go forward and be able to have a voice in, in where we’re going. And so that’s a huge piece of where I want to go in the next couple years is, you know, when Ice vehicles, they wanna shut down to off road. You know, you guys saw the work we did in Oceania Dunes, that’s

Sean P. Holman (28m 31s):

Huge because they Pismo

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28m 33s):

Beach, you guys know that they’re

Sean P. Holman (28m 34s):

Now, they’re now going after the state. Brought in some witnesses that weren’t factual Right. In their point of view. And you know, there’s other industries that I’m sure if you listen to the show, you can figure out where there’s been some good court winds and there’s, there’s, there’s almost seems like there Car Guy and some things that go well with cars. There’s been a change where Common Sense is coming back and you know, we talk about it all the time.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28m 58s):

That band never went outta Style Common Sense just played the opening of did they really? Yeah. Grain Works Down and

Sean P. Holman (29m 3s):

I know you say they’re playing opening up for SEMA Fest.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 5s):

They’re not. They’re

8 (29m 6s):

Not. There is nobody at SEMA that’s got

Sean P. Holman (29m 8s):

Common sense. Common sense. Yeah. Right.

8 (29m 11s):

Just walk around the show. But

Sean P. Holman (29m 12s):

We’ve, we’ve talked about I know you guys have been, and by

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 14s):

The way, that’s a bad reggae band from Inside California

Sean P. Holman (29m 16s):

Sense. Anyway. We, we’ve talked before and, and obviously you guys have started to embrace kind of the ev ’cause you see that’s coming and that has to be part of it. But lighting and I have talked on the show and I have a lot of experience with modern EVs and driving them and testing ’em and there’s definitely a place for them. There is, but you look at the mandates coming through and those are the problems I have. You know, there, we just played a clip a couple weeks ago from somebody at the American Truckin Association was talking about a landowner wanted a near Joliet, Illinois wanted to put in a 30 truck distribution center with charging. And the power company came back and laughed at him and said, that’s more than the whole town takes. Right. And I’m not inherently against ev I think last mile delivery, I think some performance stuff I think drag racing could benefit from ev especially ’cause of noise.

Sean P. Holman (30m 0s):

So there’s places where EV makes sense. I think the kind of the niche far end of enthusiasts that there’s some people playing in that space that’s pretty cool. I think some rest mod stuff is pretty cool. Right. But I don’t wanna be mandated into it because I feel like you still should be able to have consumer choice. And when people live in really hot climates are really cold climates, or do they tow, that’s not the right tool for the job.

8 (30m 22s):

Well you took the talking points right outta my mouth. It’s a, you know, it’s a common topic here on the show.

Sean P. Holman (30m 27s):

Yeah. I mean we, we try, we try and we try to be open-minded and fair for sure. I’ve driven Rian cross country. I’ve been in the Lightning, I’ve driven Teslas off road. I’ve, I’ve lots of different experiences. I know. But one of the things that really kind of got me was we’ve got one nuclear power plant left here in California and that’s Diablo Canyon up in, in central California. And the governor of our great state wanted to shut it down and realized, oh, we can’t because that’s two gigawatts of power. And we sort of need that if I wanna be pushing this agenda. The problem is we’ve, we’ve seen studies where if we were to change to ev overnight And, everybody lost their gas cars, we would need 18 gigawatts of power. We need nine more nuke plants and we haven’t built one in the state in 50 years or Whatever.

Sean P. Holman (31m 8s):

It is. And so, and I look at, you saw my driveway when you walked up. Yeah. I’ve got a C rv, I’ve got a plug in hybrid Grand Cherokee and I’ve got a 3 92 Jeep Wrangler. So like I, you can have it all, you can have your efficient car, right? You can have your plugin car. You know, my wife loves her plugin. It’s perfect. Her, her commute is within the, you know, 25 miles of battery range that she gets. She drops, you know, the little one off and goes to work and comes back and she can, some days her whole day is on ev power, on battery power. It’s perfect for that use case. For me, I like to go out and romp around the desert and I don’t want that in that particular, and so as a consumer, I feel like I’m doing my part because I’ve looked at the landscape. We’ve chosen the right tool for the job, for our family. That’s right. Exactly. But, but we had the choice.

Sean P. Holman (31m 48s):

We, nobody had to mandate that we had to have a plugin in the driveway. Nobody mandated that we have to have a, a Honda four cylinder in, in the driveway. And I’m still able to have my V eight and feel okay about

8 (31m 58s):

It. Yeah, that’s what we’re saying. We’re saying, look, number one, they think the mandates are coming too hard and too fast. Yeah. You know, they’re talking about by 20 26, 30 3% of the cars and there’s no

Sean P. Holman (32m 7s):

Way

8 (32m 8s):

We don’t have the infrastructure, consumers are not buying ’em in the, in the rate that everybody thought they would. No. You know, there’s still a lot of technology. It’s cool stuff. It’s coming. We think it’s one of several technologies that meet the future. We’ve got a couple things going on at the SEMA show this year and we’re, I feel like we’re the only guys that can talk about this. Right. You know, some of the other automotive shows are all in with ev. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (32m 29s):

Well they’re all about the, the oe. Right. And the OE is their customer. Right. And their customer’s trying to push that agenda. So if you’re at a normal local auto show, you’re getting one side of the coin. SEMA seems like we are trying to embrace everything, but be realistic about, that’s all the fingers that go out into the automotive world.

8 (32m 47s):

So there’s two things about this. There’s obviously, we think that hydrogen’s got part of the future. Sure. We think that there is E 85 still. Of course there’s propane, there’s synthetic fuels,

Sean P. Holman (32m 57s):

Natural gas,

8 (32m 58s):

There’s natural gas. There’s all these different fuels that we think are gonna be part of the future. And the government shouldn’t put their thumb on the scale and say it’s ev and only. And so we’re gonna, we have a future tech studio at SEMA this year that’s gonna have embrace all these different technologies that we’re gonna talk about ’em and we’re doing a round table and we’ve brought in a guy from hydrogen, we brought in a guy from ev, we brought in a guy and we’re gonna talk about it and we’re gonna talk about all these technologies going forward. So that’s one piece of it. The other piece of it’s just the economic impact. Yeah. If we really were to try to shut down and say it’s ev and ev only the, the economy for the automotive world would collapse. I mean

Sean P. Holman (33m 36s):

Immediately

8 (33m 37s):

We, we are a, we just did our economic impact study and we are $353 billion to the economy and we estimated 353 billion.

Sean P. Holman (33m 47s):

Is that the the US economy? Yeah, the

8 (33m 48s):

US economy. And that’s just the aftermarket. That’s just the SEMA aftermarket.

Sean P. Holman (33m 51s):

And imagine I mean SEMA may be a US organization, but you stretch worldwide. Right? I mean you look at the show and you’ve got I, I, I would imagine you probably know the metric, you must have 50 or 60 countries represented or more.

8 (34m 4s):

Yeah. About 80 companies show SEMA show. Yeah. So yeah, $337 billion we’re 1.3 million US jobs. So And, they, so we just did this study, we’re more than $104 billion worth of wages over. Yeah. 1.3 million jobs US wide. So, and we pay 24 billion in taxes. That’s huge. So, You start to shut that down. Well

Sean P. Holman (34m 25s):

This is what worries me too, right? So You talked about hydrogen fuel cell I think hydrogen fuel cell makes way more sense for over the road trucks than battery does, for example. Right. Exactly. And you can fill ’em up fast and you can create your electricity and you don’t have to worry about the discharge pulling 80,000 pounds up a grade, all that kinda stuff that you would with batteries that would get, you know, roached by having that kind of power release and all that. But the thing that I worry about is here in California, and not to be California pompous, but you know, this is where we are and we’re the kind of the, the tip of the spear of dealing with all this stuff. And you guys say, oh, I I live in my, you know, little enclave here in the middle of the country. It’s coming to you too. So it’s important for us to talk about it. So, You can see what’s coming your way and be prepared. But here they want this high density housing.

Sean P. Holman (35m 6s):

So they’re knocking down schools and they’re knocking down, you know, old apartments And, they, and they’re putting like 300 unit places that go vertical. That go vertical. Yeah. Because they want to urbanize suburbia. The problem with that when it comes to car culture is you already don’t have a parking space for every tenant there. And there’s no way physically possible for you to have a charger for every tenant as well. Right. So you’re pushing people into these high density housing that might have, you know, some sort of restrictions so that it’s a affordable housing unit. So now you’re asking somebody in affordable housing unit to have, for them to have transportation, they have to buy a vehicle that has a base price that’s way more expensive than what they can use And. They can’t charge it at home anymore. Right. And to me, that’s, that’s a massive, massive loss for everybody.

Sean P. Holman (35m 48s):

The consumer loses the experience, loses and I think they’re just trying to force everybody into mass transit, which in our area isn’t as well developed as it is in other places where you could live without a car. You can’t do that in Southern California. You know, a place like New York City started from a central place and grew out And. they have trains And, they have mass transit that grew with it. Southern California is very unique because it was a bunch of disparate communities all over a, you know, a thousand square miles or Whatever. it happens to be that all grew together into a metropolis. And each one of these little pinpoints where something started isn’t the same as the next one and that it touches. And so we’ve never had that kind of infrastructure here. It’s always been about the car.

Sean P. Holman (36m 28s):

The culture is here. Even today as manufacturing has moved away from California, it’s still epicenter for design. It’s still epicenter for trends. It’s still an epicenter for all those things. You see, Asima, you guys are California based and we are at the leading edge of both trends and also regulation. And it’s this really weird place to be because it’s like on one end you’re excited about the future. On the other end, you’re fighting off the things that could kill your future.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 51s):

It’s the epicenter of liberal politics. You know, it’s Tell us about Washington. You’ve been there, you’ve fought for this.

8 (36m 58s):

Yeah. It’s, so look, the other thing is we’re on the right side of this deal. So we’ve been doing a lot of studies to understand what consumers want. And consumers still want ice vehicles. They still wanna be able to customize, they still wanna be able to modify, they still wanna be able to have their individual vehicles and go where they want to go. And the politicians are starting to stay, pay attention to this. So that’s the other reason we did this economic study. Yeah. Because, you know, we’ve been for so long almost saying, yes sir, may I have another, right. I mean, I mean lightning, you’ve worked with car, but You know what it’s like. Oh

Sean P. Holman (37m 31s):

Yeah, you’ve been playing nice because you’re like, well if I’m gonna, if I can placate them and be a partner with them, maybe they’ll gimme some concessions in the future. Yeah. The problem is nobody ever gave you concessions. Yeah. They just want to steamroll and take everything away. So,

8 (37m 42s):

What the politicians understand is economics. Yeah. Right. When they understand. So when we did the study, we did it by state and then rolled it up to the, so now we can go to every one of these politicians and say, look, you’re either with us or, or you’re or you’re not. And this is the economic impact in your area. And these are the voters and these are the people and these are the jobs that you’re affecting. And we’re taking a seat at the table and we’ve had some really, really good successes because of it. We’re coming out swinging now and we’re, we’re taking a stand and we’re picking a lane. You know, we’ve gotta come out and say this is what it is and this is what we stand for.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (38m 17s):

So, but you are the president of SEMA. You are there at the table in the seat. Yeah. What is that like? I mean, take, you know, take me through it. You,

Sean P. Holman (38m 26s):

Well he’s got a captain’s hat and he is got this big wooden steering Wheel and

8 (38m 31s):

You know, I, it’s been, I’ve been,

Sean P. Holman (38m 32s):

He yells at a hoard

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (38m 33s):

Full

Sean P. Holman (38m 34s):

Of ahead and there’s a guy about four deck below moves a lever.

8 (38m 37s):

I was man I, think I, flunk government politics, you know, all of that in high school. But it’s been a, it’s been a fun ride. We, you know, we, we beefed up our DC team. We’ve got a great team in DC now. We, we literally put a few more million dollars in just of the team and the tools they needed and those sorts of things because we had to, we had to stand up, we had to swing back now and we had to go after ’em. And that was, and and we’ve always said, well, we’re not gonna, you know, we’ll do our work behind the scenes and we’re picking a lane. I don’t

Sean P. Holman (39m 4s):

You can do behind the scenes anymore. We, we can’t. No. I and I don’t mean to, to bring it up over and over again. But I I feel like there’s a lot of parody between the automotive industry and the firearms industry. Right. And then you’ve got somebody like NRA who is very vocal and very visible out there. and I think a lot of people, whether you like NRA or not, it’s a different conversation, but they’re there and they’re fighting at the consumer level even though, you know, they’re a lobbying organization, they feel like they have their back. Whereas I feel like CIMA is known, but CIMA is known more as the show. and I don’t think the average car person might know what SEMA the organization does for them at the consumer level. And So I love these discussions with you because Yeah, we can talk about the show, but the show is really just the marketing, right. And the, and the celebration of the industry.

Sean P. Holman (39m 45s):

Well, I think the real work comes from what you guys are doing year round when you’re not talking about the show and the things that are pushing that ball forward for us, enthusiasts and I don’t think the average person sees

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (39m 55s):

That. They know, they know the SEMA, they know SEMA because they see the Instagram, the Facebook, the YouTube, all that stuff. Right. And, they don’t, the the politicking and helping small businesses grow into bi medium and large businesses. That’s not really sexy. so that doesn’t get shared on social media, but that’s really what you do 99% of the day.

8 (40m 13s):

Yeah. That’s what I say with this. We do the other 360 days a year. Right, right. We’re doing, you know, you guys have been to the SEMA garage and we got SEMA data and we got all that. But yeah, this, this thing with walking in and talking to senators and Congress, it’s kind of fun. It’s kinda neat.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (40m 26s):

Can can I ask you, are they receptive or are they just, are they, are they just like, these are the talking points and this is what I’m gonna spew? Or do they actually listen to words that come out of Mike s spa’s mouth? Yeah,

8 (40m 38s):

They do. So it just depends, you know, some of ’em, like, I know we’ll meet with ’em. We’ll give our list to ’em. We’ll talk about our talking points. I know when we walk out the thing’s going in the trash can. Mm. But there are others that for sure. I mean, I get emails back from ’em, I get phone calls from ’em.

Sean P. Holman (40m 52s):

Are you surprised at how many of them might that you didn’t know are actual automotive enthusiasts? Yeah. And when you go and talk to them, they go, wait a minute. What? Yeah. I had no idea this was coming. Wait, my, I turn my own wrenches. I have a classic car. My grandpa, my my uncle and I did that. I mean is are you finding that personal connection where

8 (41m 9s):

Absolutely. So, so SEMA this year we’ve got over 30 politicians coming to the show. Whoa. Legislators that are gonna show up. We’ve got, you know, some, some pretty cool stuff happening. But I gotta tell you, probably the funnest one was last summer and you guys probably saw this, but I took Richard Petty with me to, to DC and we went knocking on doors. He was like Elvis, I mean he showed up and these politicians, you would know big name guys at uc on CNN and Fox and whatever else. These guys were fumbling over themselves. I mean they, they brought number 43 cars with ’em for ’em to sign. Oh, that’s awesome. No kidding. Yeah. We couldn’t walk down the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (41m 43s):

Hall. They fan, they

8 (41m 44s):

Fanboyed out. Oh my. It that was awesome. I love it. It was awesome. And you’re like,

Sean P. Holman (41m 47s):

Hey, we’ll trade you a signature of Mr. Petty for a signature on this bill. Right.

8 (41m 52s):

And you know, he’s in his eighties and he was number one. He got there. He, he flew in, you know, he charges to go to places. Right. I mean he’s, you know, he’s obviously he gets paid to go places. Yeah. I called him, I said, we got these things we need to talk about. He said, send me some information. He called me back, he said, I’m in. I said, let me work with your, your staff and we’ll pay you for whatever. He goes, Mike, I’m coming up for free. Yeah. And he came up, spent the day with us. It was so cool. We met with 12 different offices during the day and at five 30 he’s like, what’s next? That’s awesome. and I’m like, that’s

Sean P. Holman (42m 26s):

A real car guy right there.

8 (42m 27s):

Yeah. King, we’re done. He’s like, let me know when you wanna come back. So he

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 29s):

Felt like I I

Sean P. Holman (42m 31s):

Owe this. It’s his legacy generation.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 33s):

Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (42m 34s):

Well I, I, I’m reading the tea leaves and, and you look at all these companies that have, because they’ve been forced into it, have made these rash decisions about Oh, we’re only gonna go ev. And all of a sudden now you’re hearing bips and bleeps from people like, oh, GM just approved the sixth generation small block development. Right. ’cause it’s not going away in trucks. And all of a sudden that keeps those crate engine dreams alive. And there’s some other stuff that comes with it. Porsche synthetic gasoline. And they’re going, well wait a minute, we can build synthetic gasoline and essentially recycle, you know, carbon from the atmosphere. Yep. And go have fun. And then you’ve got people like Toyota who went, Hey, we’re sticking with hybrids because we really think hybrids are the future. I honestly think from my heart of hearts, reading the landscape on the OE level, those who go the hybrid route are gonna win the day.

Sean P. Holman (43m 19s):

and I think, so

8 (43m 20s):

Farley’s come out now at Ford. Well

Sean P. Holman (43m 22s):

He went on that F-150 Lightning road trip on Route 66. Right. And across the country went well, that was way harder than I thought. Yeah. And that was great for him to do.

8 (43m 29s):

But he’s doing hybrid. He’s mentioning hybrid now. So they’re talking hybrid

Sean P. Holman (43m 31s):

So. I just got back from the F-150 launch for the 2024. Their mix in hybrid is something like, I think they said 15, 10 or 15%. They want to double it going forward. And so kind of the cool thing with trucks and hybrids is you get, you know, that that torque down low and you also get the exportable power, which allows you to do a campsite or plug your house in, in a storm and have your vehicle run it. and I think they said on the, on the base pro power system, you could run with a full tank of gas for 84 hours or something like that in power, whatever you want out of the back of it. So Ford started to embrace That Too and realized, wow, you know, they separated their business, they’ve got traditional Ford and then they’ve got the EV side of the business because I think they realize that That one is sucking a lot of money and could be a risk to the other one.

Sean P. Holman (44m 19s):

And so I’m looking at all this going, I love the technology. Yep. I like the innovation, but I also like companies that are now starting to come back and push back on that like 2035 mandate and say, well wait a minute, our customers, they’re not quite ready for this yet. And we’re not ready to dismiss all those engineers that have that institutional knowledge of, of what we’ve been doing. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (44m 41s):

Are they also, are they admitting that the infrastructure is not there because they don’t talk about

Sean P. Holman (44m 45s):

It? All the above? Yeah. All,

8 (44m 45s):

All the above. Well, even, even if you look at the battery needed, right? For an ev, you can build 10 hybrids for every one. ev. We’ve

Sean P. Holman (44m 53s):

Said that, we’ve said that on the show where I said I’d rather take all of that rare earth minerals that could be coming from countries that, that we’re not involved, that we’re not allies with. And I’d rather have 10 plugin hybrids that you can spread that around to everybody rather than the $100,000 vehicle. Now you have 10, 25 to $35,000 vehicles that can have that technology. That just seems like such a better win. And like with my wife’s car, we drive around, we plug every night, we drive around ev but You know what, we go to Colorado to visit our friends tomorrow. We’d have zero issues with taking that, that vehicle on a road trip. Right.

8 (45m 29s):

And I don’t know if you’ve seen, you know, like the new Jeep, the ev, ev g the Yeah. The, the hybrid Jeep. Yep. You know, starting January 14 states, that’s the only thing they’re gonna have on the lots.

Sean P. Holman (45m 38s):

Well, and then that’s bogus too, because the way they did that was five companies made a deal with carb. Right. And those five companies get to have their EV sales basically calculated from Nationwide. And everyone who didn’t sign that agreement only has their sales calculated from California plus the 14 or whatever. And so Stellantis has basically said, well, we’re gonna game the system even though we don’t have to do this till 26, and we’re gonna make sure that we’re not selling anything ICE that has a hy that has a hybrid. Only hybrids can be stocked. Now you can still get an ICE only vehicle. You have to shorter it, but have to order it. Yep. And then all the, all the vehicles that are not in those 14, the California plus 13 or Whatever, it is, they’re only stocking ice vehicles.

Sean P. Holman (46m 19s):

Right. And, They have to order the hybrids. And so it’s dirty. And so if your Jeep though, but how, you know, you go, somebody goes in and says, well, I don’t I don’t want it. Well you can order it in six to eight weeks. We’ll be here Ford. Because they signed that agreement and told Carb, oh, well we promised to play better. They can have ice only Broncos. Yeah. So, I. It’s, it’s really disrupting the playing field. ’cause the consumer’s not gonna understand the nuance that’s going on behind the scenes. They’re only gonna know that this manufacturer doesn’t offer the vehicle that I want anymore.

8 (46m 45s):

And, you know, there’s so much more to all this. I mean, we went and read the new regs that are coming out. And for example, it used to be, I call it cradle to grave, but you know, the, the footprint of manufacturing the vehicle to all

Sean P. Holman (46m 57s):

The way to recycling

8 (46m 58s):

On all the recycling on the EVs. They’ve now taken out the manufacturing carbon footprint and they’ve taken out the recycling. What? Yeah. So it’s only,

Sean P. Holman (47m 7s):

So it makes it

8 (47m 8s):

Look better. So it makes it look better.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 9s):

Yeah. And who’s raising the red flag and saying, you can’t, you can’t.

Sean P. Holman (47m 12s):

We are, I was gonna say Sima, right?

8 (47m 14s):

Yeah, we are.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 14s):

Can I, can I loop back? That’s amazing. I didn’t know that. I wanna loop back to something that Holman said a few minutes ago when he drew the analogy between the NRA and SEMA. So this is a great example. I don’t own, I don’t own a firearm, but I’m aware of the NRA

Sean P. Holman (47m 30s):

None.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 30s):

So. I Don’t I I want to just haven’t got around to it. I’m probably gonna need one here soon. Oh,

Sean P. Holman (47m 34s):

I can. Do you wanna

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 35s):

Borrow? I might borrow one. Yes. Oh yeah. I

Sean P. Holman (47m 37s):

Don’t have any. Sorry. You know

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 37s):

What’s crazy? All my friends, I think I’m the only one of my friends. It doesn’t, anyway, so, so the NRA though, I feel like the NRA represents my, my what I stand for most of what I know about the NRA. But the consumer doesn’t have that on the automotive side. Now, SEMA Specialty Equipment Market Association represents the industry. Me at Banks. Right. You as a, as media, all the things around the aftermarket and automotive and, and OE to, to an extent, they, they, they lean on you for some stuff, right. But there’s no one out there defending the guy racing his car. Right. Who ta who, who is doing a, a, a case swap, whatever. Yeah. The grassroots guy, the grassroots guy, whatever.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 17s):

There’s literally no one. And EPA is just whack-a-mole and boom boom. Nothing about the EPA right now, but it’s like, well,

Sean P. Holman (48m 24s):

I will say that a lot of that is that justice is delivered unevenly. Right. So people don’t, I think the problem with that government alphabet agencies aside, the problem with that is when it’s not consistent, you don’t know how to act and you don’t know what’s gonna run a foul of what. And that can, consistency of how things are enforced has been awful for the past five to 10 years. But I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 46s):

Guess I, what I wanna stay on Mike, is that the consumer doesn’t have anyone looking out for them. They just have to watch it on CNN or Fox. They just have to be like, oh, I guess there’s a new law with this or that regulation or whatever. And, they don’t get a chance to vote on stuff. It just happens. Because if they live in California, guess what? The law that tells you you gotta do something in your car is gonna get passed. And, and if you’re in New York, it’s gonna get passed. Or,

Sean P. Holman (49m 12s):

Or they feel like they don’t have any recourse or they don’t have anybody fighting for them. So with SEMA going forward is they’re going to be a consumer component to what you guys are doing. ’cause that hasn’t been the case in the past, but I think there’s opportunity there Yep. For you to,

8 (49m 26s):

To, yeah. So it’s in a couple areas. You know, we’re, we’re doing this individual membership thing where you can join now as a consumer and be a, a SEMA individual member. It’s $40 a year and you’ll get a lot of information along these lines. But then we wanna be able to contact you when a rule or potential law is coming up in your area. So we’ve gotta be able to ignite and initiate those sort of conversations with consumers. ’cause we’re gonna all have to band together. Yeah. Kinda like the NA we’re gonna have to all band together. But, you know, some of these guys are listening. Governor Yokum in Virginia right now, you know, there’s 17 states that have taken on California’s Yeah. Deal Yoakum is running for governor. He’s, we saw the commercial. He’s standing up and saying, you know, the, I’ll just say it.

8 (50m 9s):

He’s Republican, the Democrats. Yeah. Signed on to be the California deal. Elect me and I’m gonna repel it. Yeah. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re not gonna do

Sean P. Holman (50m 17s):

I think I think the thing about Glenn Youngen is he has proven himself to be a common sense person. and I think whether you’re right or you’re left. I think most people today just want to see a common sense approach. Right. And, they don’t wanna see the things they love attacked over and over again until there’s nothing left to beat of the horse. And it’s like, you get that, you know, there’s, there’s gonna be regulation and you get that, you know, we all wanna leave, you know, live in a place with clean air Right. And all that kind stuff. It’s just like the offroad side of it. I would argue that most off roaders, especially the ones that I know are conservationists. Yep. And the conservationists wanna make the off, roader out to be this horrible person tearing up the world.

Sean P. Holman (50m 58s):

But the reality is, is those people are trying to close down more and more areas and then they force you into more people into smaller areas, which means more impact rather than having everybody spread out. When I’m off road, I’m picking up trash, I’m picking up Mylar balloons, I’m picking up, you know, all sorts of stuff off the side of the road. We don’t go off the trails. We stay where we’re supposed to. Right. But yet we’re still the bad guys when we can see some of these people like, oh, well we, we can go in the wilderness area because we’re with such and such organization. Like, no, those laws apply to you. You close that off for you too. You can’t be there.

8 (51m 30s):

No. You guys know, I mean, you know, we have the SEMA garages and we do all the emission studies and we work with EPA and I’ve got 21 people that just work on emissions compliance right now. Right. In at SEMA. But you know, we’ve, and look, we’re for clean air. Yeah. We’ve done studies now and SAA just did a study where it says that if we deploy all these different technologies, if we look at hydrogen, if we look at synthetic fuels and we look at all these different fuels that are available and ev we actually get to clean our air sooner than if we wait for eeb to take over.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 2s):

Interesting. But

8 (52m 2s):

Some of these other areas are not getting the chance they need to now, like you said, Porsche just put a hundred million dollars into the synthetic fuel deal. Right? And so how can

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 11s):

People ignore that? Like if, if as a journalist, if I’m on CNN, how do I ignore that story? That to me, that’s, it’s gonna be biased to ignore it. Right? Why can’t they say Porsche, one of the most revered

Sean P. Holman (52m 27s):

Stories enthusiast brands in the world, in history, right?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 30s):

Ever, ever is doing this thing they’ve invested. I’m just saying that they could’ve taken that money and given out to executives and all that stuff. Right? They didn’t. They they reinvested ’cause they believe in it. Right. And how, how does that get ignored? How does it get glossed over

8 (52m 42s):

You know what I gotta tell you, I think the pendulum’s swinging, you know, this is my favorite podcast. You guys are my favorite. Right? Thanks. Thanks. But I’ve done literally 15 interviews in the last three weeks on this sort of stuff. And it, it, people are waking up to it. Love it. They’re waking up to the fact that, you know, they wanna talk about the UAW strike and of course and all that. But in all of that, they then want to talk about ev and then they wanna talk about alternative fuels and those sorts of things. It’s coming around. I’m telling you, you guys have all seen this in several things. The pendulum swings one way and then it kind of comes back to the other. I’m telling you, we’re on the right side of this deal and people are waking up to it. What

Sean P. Holman (53m 17s):

What worries me is, and I always like to joke that you’ll never take the steering Wheel outta my hand. My dad and I just went to Utah to go watch the eclipse. We took 3 92. Nice. Is that what Yeah. Yeah. We drove 11 hours camp two nights. We drove 11 hours home to wear

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 29s):

Paper sunglasses,

Sean P. Holman (53m 31s):

Man. Well we saw, we saw it was, it was 89%, by

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 34s):

The way, I saw it from my front. Awesome. From my front yard with it.

Sean P. Holman (53m 37s):

Sunglasses was only 78%. So, but we drove and it’s the love of the road trip. Me and my dad in the Jeeps singing it along, music talking about guy things, talking about whatever, grunting, crappy fast food, you know, all the things and packed up and there’s so many vehicles you couldn’t do that to, we couldn’t have a road trip and, and make it there in a day. We would have to take a couple days to get there. It would change the experience. America is such a vast country. Anybody who’s flown over it or traveled by air understands anybody who’s driven across the country. Like I have 10, 20 times. and I always try and take a different route. The southern route, the northern route, go, you know, different states because I always wanna see how different it is.

Sean P. Holman (54m 17s):

There are such vast dis distances before between cities, I think there’s so many people today that think about, oh, I’m commuting inside the city center. They don’t understand how many people are commuting across great distances. Or think about the rodeo guy who’s taking his prize horses a thousand miles. Think about the outside sales guy who his whole life is driving around, signing up new customers in different cities. Think about people in RVs who have retired and want to go see the best of what this country has to offer. You’re taking those experiences out of these people’s hands and they’ve never done anything wrong. Like why are you ruining their lives?

8 (54m 55s):

Right. And you said it earlier, it’s you, there’s different vehicles for different purposes. Right. I mean, people ask me all the time, what’s my favorite car? For what purpose? Yeah. Right. Well I love my truck for doing truck stuff. Right. I love my sports car for Flying around corners. Although I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 10s):

Love my truck for doing sports car stuff. Yeah.

8 (55m 12s):

So. you know, it just depends on what you’re using it for. Right. And, and so all those choices are gonna work, but give us choice. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (55m 21s):

I just feel like you’re don’t mandate. You’re pulling freedom away from people. Yeah. One of the greatest things about this country is the freedom of movement. And if you overlay the United States over Europe, it’s about the same size roughly. And you think of how densely populated a lot of Europe is, how close borders are between countries. How little time you can spend on the road and be through multiple countries in a day. It’s not like that in the United States. You’ve traveled across three days and you’ve gone through, maybe there’s some day You’re in Texas, you’re in Texas the whole time. Yeah. Right. And and I think that at the very core, for me, car culture is the very essence of American freedom. Liberty, freedom of movement, the freedom of expression.

Sean P. Holman (56m 2s):

It’s all those things. You think of all these things that, that America should stand for. You get all of that in car culture and I hate the idea that somebody wants to take away my ability to be free. Alright,

8 (56m 14s):

Well just look at the differences. I mean, look at, when you go to the SEMA show, pick up any Magazine, right? Low rider. There’s,

Sean P. Holman (56m 20s):

I like OVR by the way. Yeah.

8 (56m 22s):

OVR. I mean look,

Sean P. Holman (56m 24s):

Atr mag com

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 25s):

Plug

8 (56m 25s):

Yeah. Over landings come from, from five years ago there was nowhere. Right Now it’s the thing. Right? Right. So So You, look at all the different ways people wanna modify and enjoy their vehicles and be different and be unique. You can still do it with an ev. I mean I’m not, you know, you take a, take the new lightning, you can still put all the truck stuff on it, right? Sure. You can still take a Tesla and put wheels on it. Yep. You know, all those sorts of things.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 47s):

I have a question. Let’s go back to that email or, or the call I. I. Guess it was a five star hotline call that we got a couple weeks ago. Holman, where a guy raised the question. He says, in 2030 years, will there be enthusiasts, be car enthusiast, truck enthusiast? Because this caller felt that the vehicles were getting so homogenized and boring that the cars themselves, the trucks themselves would just slowly lose

Sean P. Holman (57m 15s):

Personality, lose

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 16s):

Personality to the point where there is nowhere enthusiasm. and I

Sean P. Holman (57m 19s):

Said it’s a matter of soul I. think

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 21s):

I said. ’cause my first couple cars were Honda Accords And. they were incredibly boring daily drivers. and I lowered them, put wheels and tires, did the whole thing. and I made them cool. and I So I said, I think you can, I think there will always be car culture, even if it is electric or hybrid or whatever. I mean, hell, I have friends that mod bicycles. Sure. So anything can be maed and made your own. What is your feeling?

8 (57m 45s):

Yeah. So it’s, you know, I read this article that said, does the aftermarket have five more years? And it talked about government intervention, it talked about the technology on vehicles and you know, how much more complicated it would get to work on a vehicle. Talked about the next generation. Would they be interested in vehicles? And it’s taking longer for kids to drive cars. And, they don’t have the interest we did. And all those sorts of things. That article was from 1975.

Sean P. Holman (58m 9s):

No.

8 (58m 10s):

Wow. Yeah. And here we are. Right? Here we go. So I’m with you. I I think that people will continue to want to be different. That are gonna want to individualize, that are gonna want to look different, feel different, see different. I mean, look at tennis shoes growing up I had, you know, you had two pairs of tennis shoes, right? And one was black and one was white. And now today, you know, people wanna be different. They want to have uniqueness. They were willing to pay for it. They want to customize. They, you know, again,

Sean P. Holman (58m 36s):

Freedom of expression. You know

8 (58m 37s):

That, that’s why we’re a $353 billion industry,

Sean P. Holman (58m 40s):

By the way, to put that in perspective, a typical new NFL stadium is a little bit over a billion dollars. That’s kind the going rate. Some will be more, some will be less. Figure a, a major sports arena, it’s around a billion dollars. That’s 350. That, that is enough money to build a new stadium for every soccer team, every basketball team, every football team, every major league baseball team. And then the training grounds. And probably all the hotels will go around with it. I mean, just think of like how much money that is. That’s how much people are, are love

8 (59m 12s):

This. So like a couple more fun stats, but at least for me they are, you guys may not feel the same, but you know, we are twice the number of people in the aircraft industry. There’s more people in in our industry than there are in the entire motion picture and video production.

Sean P. Holman (59m 25s):

That’s interesting. God

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 26s):

And everyone talked about the strike as if the world was on fire. Oh my gosh, I’m not gonna, stranger things is gonna be delayed for six months. This is the worst thing ever. It’s was so awful listening to that. And having worked in Hollywood for 20, just shy of 26 years. It’s disgusting. The self-righteousness of these

Sean P. Holman (59m 49s):

S Wow.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 50s):

I’m telling you. It’s was freaking awful. There’s a lot of them. So there are, you know, extras aren’t paid that much. Yeah. But the writers do you understand the at, at the writers Start at over six figures start. You can be 21 coming, 22 coming outta college. You get a writer gig, you’re making it more than attorney. You’re good. Wow.

The. Truck Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and Jay Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar Kahn. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple Podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than by patronizing our sponsors. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.