MATT FARAH OF THE SMOKING TIRE'S COLLECTION

Hi everyone, I'm Matt Farah, host and producer of the Smoking Tire video series and the Smoke and Tire podcast. Welcome to my new dream garage, collector car storage on the west side, here in Playa Vista, California, where just three days ago we got our certificate of occupancy that allows us to open, so forgive me if it's a little unfinished here, We are just starting out with a new business and a brand new facility but I wanted to invite you to give you a little taste of the tour and show you a couple of my personal cars so let's start where we are now is what I call the cathedral room this room has capacity for 90 vehicles in 18 parking stackers plus quads this is the first quad stacking system in southern california this is the first time these quads have been placed indoors this is the first time these quads have been placed on a basement is the first time they have had battery backups and the first time they have had sprinklers there are many firsts in this room it is a custom installation just for that so imagine two weeks from now these stackers are shooting colors up to the ceiling.

You can see, on my lamborghini, how well the light bounces off the cars in this room. We have also designed it to ventilate it with filtered air. from our hepa filters in that window we have our details bay and we have much more. I'll take you through the rest of the tour, but let's start with a couple of my cars because I didn't. I didn't build this place as an entrepreneur, I didn't see an opportunity to make money, it's not about that, obviously we would like to make money here, that's a goal, but I live on the west side of Los Angeles and like many other people, I had more cars and the desire to have more cars than available space, there's just not a lot of space, so it was very important for us to selfishly put these facilities in Playa Vista so that I can put my own cars here, let's start again.

Here, where for some reason my gas cap is inexplicably open, I must press the button on the way out. This is my 2003 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish. This is a beautiful car in titanium with a camel interior. It has a V12 engine and they made 1800 of these. 2002 to 2006. What's interesting about this particular example is two things: One, the first owner of this vehicle was Ralph Lauren. Yes, we took that Ralph Lauren off around 2005 when it only had 2,000 miles on it, it now has around 15,000 miles on it because I try to drive it as often as I can in 2011 or 12.

I don't remember sending this vehicle to the Newport factory Pagnell in the United Kingdom, where it was converted from a semi-automatic gearbox to a six-speed. manual gearbox to be able to do that they have to redo part of the interior, reprogram the engine, add a pedal box and of course since this car was from Ralph Lauren he ordered it new with a special purple leather tag so We had to have Ralph Lauren, who was a family friend, send some extra leather to the factory so we could make a cover for the gear shift and things like that.

What's cool is that if you look at the door sill of this car, Ralph Lauren's name is stamped on the door, hand-built in England for Ralph. lauren so it's really cool there's um there's a lot of uh what you might call provenance this car this car is what I call uh it's a member of the hold right this is a long hold the victor right now has minimal value Some of these cars are cheap, they're not modern and fast enough to be worth big bucks, and they're not old enough to be true collector's items, but I think this car, besides the fact that I love driving it.

Besides the fact that I like to see it and own it, I think this car, at auctions in 20 or 30 years, will be a very desirable car. They are very nice cars that look good and sound good, they tend to remain valuable and with a the provenance that this car has should be, should be good and, by the way, it is so nice, it is so pretty and it sounds so good, a One of the things I did when we sent the car back to England was that I had them. hook up the exhaust to open it up you know it has like a two mode exhaust so I had them run it on high all the time so you know it's not a straight pipe it's got mufflers and everything but it's on high mode and if you have a v12 and a stick, why wouldn't you want it on loud mode all the time?

This car is my 1987 porsche 911 enthusiast project safari car. This is actually my daily driver, or it's as close to a daily driver as any vehicle I have. Three vehicles here are literally the only cars I have. I don't know, I don't have a modern car of any kind right now, so this car started out as a Cassis Red Low Mile 87 911 Carrera with a G50 transmission and a 3.2 liter engine, then I shipped it to Atlanta, where a guy named Lee Keen, former racing driver turned automaker, has something he's doing called the Keen project where he's converting 911s into these safari cars.

I had gone driving. his personal safari for a story I did a few years ago. I immediately fell in love with the car. I drove it on asphalt and I drove it on dirt. It was absolutely incredible and was everything I wanted from an air-cooled 911 for the city. I live in the city and when I'm in the canyons doing my

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job I'm usually driving new sports cars that I'm testing so I didn't need an air cooled 911 to attack the canyons or hit the race track I wanted a 911 air-cooled car that excels at the things I need a car to do every day, so we've got big upgrades in the

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s, we've got a raised suspension with four extra inches of travel, just we've got braided sport wheels, we've got the crash bars and the skid plates, we have the fog lights, the roof rack and we have also redone the interior, this is all part of the package that Lee makes with his enthusiast project. cars, you really just decide if you want a 3.2 liter car or a 3.0 liter car and then what you want your interior to look like here check this out.

My interior is super fun. I love really aggressive fabrics and for me it is one of the best. The cool thing about this car is that it's the city bus material, it doesn't just look like it is and um, it's UV resistant, it's stain resistant, uh, it's got that texture, that nostalgia, it's got the kind of pattern. crazy and aggressive which I really like. I like it and we paired it with some bucket seats, but this car has air conditioning, a sunroof, it has bluetooth, it has a great Clarion stereo, this car, even though it's 30 years old, really has everything I need for everyday driving.

I have snow. tires for it, so I go skiing at Mammoth several times a year, I bought the ski bars for there. There's nothing better on a loose surface when it's raining on those five days a year it rains in Los Angeles. It doesn't apply to me, I'm skidding on the street, this like you've never seen. We have a super tight uh quafe lsd limited slip differential on this car, so you can really put that power down. It only has about 260 horsepower. It's a 3.2 hot rod. built by tlg auto north hollywood marco is the big engine builder phenomenal uh power plant but as you know it only weighs 2 900 pounds so it actually goes pretty well um it's awesome on loose surfaces it's great when you're going through speed bumps or potholes and of course the most important thing is the valet, when you approach the valet to go to a nice dinner, of course, already covered and you are rolling all the ferraris, all the bentleys and all the lambos, out of the way .

So the guy in the pink Porsche SUV can park right in front and this car is so gangster, I mean, if you look at me and the first impression you'd get from looking at me like some kind of tough guy or whatever, right? and then you see a purplish pink Porsche with all-terrain tires in crazy casino city bus fabric. You have no idea what to think and I love giving people something to go to, what was that? And um, it's also a lot of fun to drive. It's different, it's different from your standard air-cooled street 911, it certainly has some more truck-like elements, but it's absolutely fun in its own way and once you try it and realize how much fun it is, you'll never want to know if You don't drive something like this and immediately say take my money you'll never get it but I drove leaves and said take my money and once I said take my money by the way it was two and a half years to understand the waiting list is even longer long now this is number 14.

He just gave birth I think 21 or 22 and there is a waiting list until 40. Like it's years if you want to get one of these from him right now so I have mine about a year and a half ago and I put I don't know six thousand seven thousand miles on it and uh, I love it and from time to time we go to the heavyweights, the big impact cars, the 1988 Lamborghini Countach 5000 valvolet. it's uh, for many car collectors i myself included the game this is where it ends i mean this for me i'm 38 and i grew up with that alpine stereo poster on my bedroom wall looking at the countach it was white on the poster but but um, to be able to own this now, to be able to see it in person, come, look at it, touch it, sit in it, drive it, um and see, yeah, that's mine, this is something very crazy to me, um, this car is absolutely spectacular , it's the same Countach that I personally would like some guys who are older than me to prefer narrow body, wingless cars when they were kids of the 80's, this is the best thing ever, you've got the gold phone dials, the fender flares the wing and the big engine, but you have the old style interior and you don't have those ugly side skirts and stuff that changes for the anniversary.

This specific Countach is one of 607 quattro valvolets built between 1985 and 1988. It is one of fewer than 200 cars built. with fuel injection for the US market, so this is an original US spec vehicle. What's really interesting about my car is that it has some things that other cars don't have in other countries, for example, it has a built-in escort radar detector. The dash that was installed when new has the original Alpine CD player, which was the first CD player ever installed in a production car and cost five grand in 1987. Five g for a CD player in 87, too It has an aftermarket exhaust built by a guy named Albertoni who was a very famous Lambo tuner in the late 80's.

I also have the original exhaust. I've never put it in this one, it sounds pretty good and installed in periods. I'm also about that. something i have that no one has really seen this, electric doors that were installed as a mod at the dealership in 1988 when the car is new, both sides work and it works from across the street, you have never seen a drop until you open the doors doors of your countach across the street, this car is so hot it's actually pretty dirty right now because I drive it every week. The really important thing about owning an old Italian car is that you have to drive it a lot and I mean really. like I have something on my agenda called a lamborghini exercise day where I go out for half a day and do 50 to 100 miles in the car, go for a nice walk in the hills, have a coffee, look at it a lot and and and that's really important because I make the car run wonderfully it starts when I need to start it works I need to run it's like it's like a big fiat it's great the air conditioning actually works it's once I take off my shoes it's actually quite comfortable the ride is beautiful it has a trunk and the most people will tell you this car is really terrible to drive they don't know what they are talking about these are not people who have driven it and if they are, they are not people who have driven a sleazy overheated car it handles beautifully it has big power is probably as fast as a modern corvette c7 and yes the brakes are a bit 80's you know but it's a pre nurburgring supercar back in the nurburgring days they actually cared about things like brake quality It runs, so this car is actually the best driving car I have.

It has double front and rear wishbones. In reality, the original shock absorbers on the Porsche are not the ones it has now, but the ones it came with. with the porsche and lamborghini they come with the same brakes and the same factory shocks, they actually share parts which is very interesting, but this car is my dream car, it is absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite things is every time I brought it in I bought it for myself I didn't buy it for anyone else but every time I take it out of the garage I meet someone who says it's the first time they've seen one every time they leave the garage someone says oh my God, I've never seen one seen one before, so to be able to be the guy that gives people the first Countach experience, you know, watching it race, watching it drive, listening to it, you know, that kind of stuff is cool and driving it is.

Great, these are my cars, they're fun, let me give you a quick tour of the rest of the facility, this is our lobby. Obviously it's not finished yet, but you can get oneidea. Engine block. Coffee table. Large leather loungers. coffee bar the drill right inside we have themed everything basically around Porsche colors, we started with bahama orange for this handrail but ended up closer to a hell and then we have Mexico blue for our elevator lobbies and Dalmatian blue for our little logos. racing simulator in this corner there will be a car book library on this wall our shelf will be installed next week and then here this is our members wine and whiskey room with our lockers tvs bentley w12 engine block table next This week we will be furnishing the cigar area outside on the deck here and of course the best view of the house here is the new

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tire podcast studio where my friend Jay is helping us set up the electronics in this room in It was actually built just for this.

We've been doing the whole little podcast for 10 years from a terrible place with terrible acoustics and we decided we'd finally take a really serious approach in the studio so the walls are soundproof the door is soundproof the table is four inches thick solid oak uh uh it's live not live oak it's black walnut sorry we have these beautiful shure sm7b microphones jay built this amazing studio lighting rig and uh all of our The new cameras are iPhones because the new thing, the podcasting newbie, he doesn't use anymore a computer, uses iPads and iPhones so this is our new studio and I can't wait to start recording there and then here is my unfinished office but you can see how.

It's going to be a real G corner. All I wanted my whole life was to be able to sit in a chair like this and rotate, those will be my cars, my stacker is that one, so all my cars will be there, yeah, this is it. our underground level at wccs we have storage for 40 cars underground and although I can't show you that way because we have a privacy policy and we have some member cars here, we can't show you that, one thing I do want to show you is my ramp I'm very proud of my ramp.

This may sound really silly if you don't live in Los Angeles, but if you do, you probably know that we don't have gutters here, so all the driveways and ramps are terrible. for low sports cars, not in my house, we have evaluated this ramp based on a corvette zr1 c7 which at the time was the longest, lowest and most annoying car you could go down a ramp because there is no low slide, no There's nose rise, a big carbon splitter, right? we got the GM specs compared, we made money and now this ramp to get to this underground level, it doesn't

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er how low your car is, you could drive a bagged e36 m3, you could drive a big 62 impala, you could drive an aventador. svj a porsche gt3 rs with a track edge it doesn't

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er and by removing the drain from there and putting it here what we have done is improve the angle but also create a cant so that the water runs through here and boom in that drain compared to The Countach may not be that special, but my dad and I bought this Jaguar F-Type V6S coupe in a beautiful British racing green over tan.

We gave it to my mom for her birthday. Now my mom was very excited, but she didn't really drive it much, she drove it 2,000 miles in four years and then like your parents do, they downsized the houses and went from a three-car garage to a two-car garage. , so one day this thing showed up on a truck. and she apparently she now she lives with me so my wife and I have been using it daily and doubled the mileage in three months. beautiful car um here we go I wanted to thank you all for stopping by and visiting me at west side collector car storage this is I like my dream place so I love showing it off.

I'm glad you like cars. The Aston, the Safari 911 and the Countach are all super fun and the Countach should be on display very soon at the Peterson Museum in the upcoming supercar show. in uh when they're allowed to open again, so until then, if you're in Los Angeles and need a place to store your car, we have some open spaces to reserve. wccs.com is where you can do that and if you liked listening to I ramble, check out my videos at thesmokingtire.com tire on youtube or on the smoke tire podcast wherever you find podcasts, bye.