Joe Rogan's 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Restomod - Jay Leno's Garage

Woo, that was good, the sound, welcome to another episode of Jlon's

garage

, today we feature a unique

1965

Corvette that unfortunately does not belong to me, but belongs to a good friend of mine. You know, my favorite guests are comedians and also car people, Jerry. Seinfeld Adam Jeff Dunham these are comics who make a living doing comedy and wisely invest all their money in cars, motorcycles and automobiles uh this gentleman follows that theory exactly Joe Rogan Joe come see you buddy pleasure now Joe is a uh Well, you did Fear Factor for years, of course, an excellent comedian.

He works in clubs all over the country, but you are also a commentator for the UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship. Yeah, look, Joe is the guy you call when someone is stealing your stuff because most comics are. basically cowards we get into comedy because we don't know how to fight so we make the bad guy laugh so he doesn't hit us while joe can really kick your ass now you were new england what a karate tawo champion tawo champion , OK? Back in the day, look, and every time someone was stealing comedy material, you'd send Joe to talk to the guy.

Joe talks to the guy and makes him see the error of his ways, but that's really good, fantastic. You just returned from Brazil. right, yeah, yeah, I was there, I just landed yesterday morning with the Ronda Rousey fight, it was an incredible fight, right? It was crazy. The Brazilians go crazy, don't they? They go crazy, but she is so good that they applauded her fighting. a Brazilian I had never seen before and when she won, usually when a Brazilian loses they would get discouraged, they were cheering her on, it was amazing, that's cool now being a supreme wrestler and being a comedian, is it different dealing with hecklers?

I know, well, idiots are always idiots, so even if they know they are idiots they're just not wise. I remember years ago I was at the Improv and I was on stage and I was talking and a bottle swishes past my head. and I go all what a coward what a coward I dare to come up here and this huge guy about 6'4 stands up just comes to walk towards the stage and goes look I'm so sorry, I'm ashamed I was drinking I didn't mean to do that, I want to I mean, he couldn't have been nice, I went okay, sit down and the crowd was like, but I was scared to death because he was a huge, he was huge and I thought, oh.

Oh my god, this is like the stupidest thing, but he really felt embarrassed, he felt bad for doing this and he came up to apologize, shook his hand, okay, come back down and watch the rest of the show, okay, continue with the view. but that's my big story. Stitch's Comedy Club in Boston. My good friend Greg Fitz Simmons. Hello. Greg. Greg got into a physical fight with a boy. A boy jumped on stage. There were some boos and Greg made fun of them and the audience. was on Greg's side so the guy jumped on stage and got into a fight with Greg, they were filming and the bouncers came to grab the guy, they took him out, Greg dusted himself off and left, someone else wants some of this and then come back. to his act look, that's it, that's what you see, doing comedy is not an easy business, now let's talk about your car, might you know that I follow some of the legendary cars that you built, you had that deal with Fish rcuda that did? the magazines that was great, you bought your Porsche, the Shark Works car, the Shark Works car, yeah, yeah, but today we're talking about this, this is a

1965

Corvette Stingray, right, yeah, this is a beautiful car, this It's one of my all-time favorites. looking for cars, I always wanted a 65 and um, I ordered this car from rkade Motors in Charlotte and I had a guy come inspect it and it was a really good car, very well made, was it a Resto mod like they say it was? a Resto mod, no it wasn't original at all, it has an LS1, a really nice suspension setup, uh, if you look at it on a raised frame and everything, it's nice and clean, but it had a burgundy interior I thought. that looked kind of gross and it had Grand Sport wheels from a 2007 Corvette, which is the same year the engine came in, and there's a few things I just wanted to check out, so I took it to Steve Strope, uh. in pure vision, okay, and he's a guy who took care of my uh, my Barracuda too, the Barracuda had a lot of problems, well, see, this is the thing when you buy someone else's project, you don't just get their taste, like that obvious guy loved it.

Burgundy and loved the other wheels you hate so you can save money because you don't want to pay for that. You know, I'm talking about restoration mods, many times they cost more than Restorations and sell for much less. Because unless the next guy has the exact same taste as you, it's going to change everything, yeah, I mean, and there's also a lot of money in stock cars and I appreciate that and I love your collection of stock cars, but always I've been a guy that I love the old look, but I love the new fundamentals. I also have a lot of retro mods here.

The problem is that a lot of times people do retro modifications and you have to go to someone like Steve to fix it. What was wrong with this? I mean, obviously it looked good, it ran good, but what didn't solve what the problem was, the handling was great, there are some issues, the fuel tank was funny, it was leaking, there were quite a few things I'll do. In fact, let Steve explain everything we bring to you. He will give you the technical explanation of everything. He's my go-to person. He's just a great guy and he knows a lot about the cars he built.

That famous hammer. Have you seen that car. before, he's okay, he just built a lot of really cool, beautiful, high-end muscle cars and these are my favorite types of cars of all time. I love American muscle cars, that was the year the 396 was, I guess it wasn't. I think that was what it originally came with and I didn't come with that hood either. This is a different hood. I think this is my favorite body style. I never like the later mako shark looking body style. You know, this is for me the first generation. I know the C1, the C2, then the C3 Corvette, after that I didn't like it as much, I think it's just iconic, what a beautiful car, yes it's one like I said, I think it's one of my all time favorites.

The cars I look at tell me about these wheels. I've never seen a solid wheel like that on a Corvette and I like it, it looks good, where did the idea come from? Well, these are Center Lines Auto brakes and we had actually seen some. other centerlines that they didn't make for this mount because it's so wide, the rear tire and we decided since they didn't make that, I saw these and I just said wow, that would really look good with the one that actually fits. With the classic look of this car, it has such a beautiful shape that complements it.

I'm glad you didn't modify the body because the guys who designed us knew what they were doing. I mean, if this didn't have any modifications, it's so subtle I can't see it properly, these are the modifications, they're okay, they weren't on the original car, but it's tastefully done, it's really nice. I always liked that on the old Thunderbirds the 62's had that, yeah me. I go a little bit back and forth on the ones I like and then sometimes I say ah maybe it would look better if it was smooth but I don't know what I'm going to do about it but overall what it did with the car.

It's absolutely stunning, bring it to Steve stro, ladies and gentlemen, Steve stro, come in, Steve and Steve has had his hair done and put on a dress, I'm much better now, a clean t-shirt, wow, there you go, great. So how long did you have this business? He started around '98. Well, uh, that was it. Cars were being built in my shared underground parking lot at my apartment in Studio City, don't tell my landlord, oh, okay, um, wow, so I was. Pure vision then and I had my first hot rod top 10 car of the year and built it in the underground parking lot wow and then the second top 10 about a year and a half later was built in a friend's driveway. he did a lot of the work and I helped with all the design so probably around 2001 2002 I moved into a building and then I had an actual building where my tools would be located and I finished my bed. next to the elevator I threw a piece of plastic on the bed to keep the metal shavings out of my bed, that's all you need, you just need the bed and what keeps the metal shavings out of the bed and you'll be fine enjoying yourself 24 hours.

Fitness, so you have a place to shower and you're a good man, that's right, yeah, that's right, so let me ask you, how did you get connected with ch? You called me through a friend, yeah right, my good friend Bud Brutzman, uh, I knew Steve from the show rides were free, yeah, yeah, they featured the car you were talking about, Hammer, they had done an hourly special on that car, so Bud knew me and recommended that I, uh, Joe, bring in a car that needed some work and Bud knew it. You have to trust me on that, so a guy like Joe brings your car and says, I bought this car, I love it, you look at it and say, oh man, this is going to be necessary, I mean, you see that things are needed that he and I do not.

Look how difficult it is to tell the listening client, this is going to be, there is no way to tell them. We were both aware of the ISS, that's how bad it was when I pulled the car into the driveway. I was going 70 M. One hour on the highway in Cuda stopped in my driveway and the car just turned left. I went out trying to figure out what happened and the suspension had come off the frame in my driveway 10 minutes after I was there. I remember the phone call and I just got fine so I called Bud Bud says you have to go to Steve stro he's the man so I call Steve we bring him the car and the job started that's the problem with many Rest. mod stuff, you know they're not using very well 30 30 30 to 35% of the workload in my shop is being undone and remade, it's not up to par, workmanship or quality, this vehicle had a list of wishes, there were some driving problems, but There were other things that were personal.

I wanted to completely change the color of the interior. Change the interior. Many things were changed. The roof was changed to black. There were things like that in the results list and there were service and driver issues. When we took the board apart to, you know, change the color and re-wrap it, we discovered that the wiring was done by an 8 year old. Wow, I sent him a picture saying, "Please notice the rat's nest under your gauge cluster, yes, so I redid that and there's a steel brace that goes from side to side under the C on these stock cars. factory.

Yes this car is an LS engine with a bit of an ECU. Yes and the space granted is under here but you find the appropriate places whoever built this. the car didn't and they cut the center off that bracket just to put the ECU right in the middle of the bracket. Wow, so we got rid of the frame, so we re-welded it, so it's a perfect example of "Never not even not unless you took apart the dash, never you would know what they did to this car and unfortunately we find a lot of that, so we have a growing number of return people, like Joe, who buy vehicles and immediately take them in for safety checks. that's the biggest problem, that's the problem a lot of times you see people aren't really car people and that's too much, just make it look good, just make it do this and so on, I don't necessarily always blame the previous builder because That owner just wants it to look good and roll down the road so they can push it onto the next one, so always be careful, you know.

I'd say I'd be okay with that until the part about cutting the bracket to put the E called You know what? On the builder's side, if it's a safety structure issue, they should say: So I can't work on your car, right? I can't let it leave my workshop and in good conscience it's unsafe or unsuitable, so there you are. I know there are responsibilities, as you know, on all ends, but I have to respond to get back to the main thing: we have a lot of cars that come in their vehicles modified, not 100 point restorations and we have to give them a very complete sweep because people do make everything look good here and you never know what's behind the green door you know you have to look and usually you'll find unfortunate things because that's where people just rush to go and so we get there.

To look for those things, let's take a look under the hood and see what we have here, basically for all we know because we never opened the engine. It's a stock LS1, but Joe wanted to add the Supercharger, so it's a Magnuson kit for an LS1. but the funny thing was there's no Magnuson kit for an LS1 on a Corvette 6, so we had to make some brackets, we had to do some things to make it fit within the limits and here on this chassis, because the chassis is a tube so the chassis is not a 65 stingr not an LS so okay so the previous owner spent some money on this car right?

Yes, this was not a cheap vehicle, it has it like it's saying it has it. a full IRS chassis, so I had a good structure to start theaccidents, you're in a speeding car on Wy Road and we're taking selfies, okay, it doesn't get any stupider than this, okay, first of all, Joe Rogan is wrong, this car doesn't need anything. Otherwise, you know, we're having this discussion, when you have a car like this and then you switch to your modern Porsche or something else, you keep thinking, oh, I have to do all these little things to make it drive better, but it really does. drives very well.

I mean, it's a car that drives well, does exactly what it's supposed to do, really comfortable on the road, handles well in corners, obviously when you push it hard you can feel some of that, but spending a Lots of money to do that. I think you lose it at the other end, so I think this car is perfect. Well, I'm going to listen to Jay Leno. The car is perfect. The car is perfect. But we haven't traveled on the highway. We will do a little. cruise and then we'll go back to the

garage

and do our sum sum sum woo that was good the sound then you put it in sixth gear and it's perfectly quiet yeah, like now it's fine, that's the good thing about these cars in a six-speed, yeah, well that was a lot of fun I want to thank him.Joe Rogan and Pure Vision also for doing a great job on this car yes Steve Stro is a real Mastermind he did a fantastic job yes but like I said don't change anything it's perfect.

I won't do it and I want to do it. Thank you, it's an honor to be on your show. Really Jo, thank you very much if Joe is in your town, go see him, very funny guy, serious guy, but also a funny guy, so see you next week, bye.