Hootie Rashidifard launched the popular Instagram page @valveandpiston in 2016, growing it into a community of over 370,000 car enthusiasts. Known for curating some of the coolest automotive content on the internet, Hootie has forged strong connections with a global audience while also building an impressive personal car collection. His garage includes a heavily modified 1973 BMW 2002 Touring, a 1995 Porsche 911, and a 2006 Land Rover Discovery as his trusty recovery vehicle. Recently, he expanded his ventures by founding the 24 Hours of Montauk, a Long Island rally that brings together influential figures from different domains, all uniting over their love of cars. Past participants have included visionary artist Daniel Arsham, the Oilstainlab twins, and renowned US collector, Jas Dhillon.

Archie Hill interviews Hootie Rashidifard for The Apex by Custodian. Recorded and produced by Archie Hill. Transcribed by David Marcus.

Hootie, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks for taking the time, how are you?

I am great, thanks for having me.

I wanted to start by talking about the cars that I just mentioned in the intro, specifically your recovery vehicle, the Land Rover, because I saw on your story it was on the back of a flat bed lorry.

Land Rover in general has a spotted track record. When I went to go buy this, I did do some diligence around what would be the most reliable. I bought an LR3 or a Disco 3, as you mentioned, intentionally, because from 2006 to 2009, they were owned by Ford, so the entire drive train is a Ford product. If there is a problem with your Disco 3, you can go get parts from a Ford dealership, which is kind of amazing. Those drive trains will last 300 to 400,000 miles. But in typical Land Rover fashion, just as electrical issues and stuff like that, and to be fair, I did just park the truck last year, so last year my wife and I moved, we were temporarily in Vermont. We bought a house in Connecticut and I Just dropped the truck. I just put it in a garage, I did not do anything that you are supposed to do if you are going to leave a car for a year, thinking that I would be back a month or two later to come pick it up. Now my wife and I had a kid a month later and I just forgot about this truck. So I went back last week, which was almost exactly a year later, the battery was flat, lots of Christmas tree on the dash, the transmission wouldn't go into drive, so I had it towed down to the house, which was in some way always the plan. AAA Premium, shout out to them, they give me one annual 200 mile tow, and I used it on the Land Rover and the distance between the two houses was 187 miles, so it was just under that 200 mile limit, which is phenomenal. That truck has been great. I have had a bunch of great experiences with it. Obviously built it up, it's a fully kitted off-roading truck. I got it back down to my house here. There are a couple of things I want to change and get it into good shape, then it is going to be up for sale. If Custodian wants a fully kitted Land Rover, I don't know how we would get it over to you, but we can put it up for sale.

What was the inspiration behind the BMW and the Porsche, why those two cars?

Oddly enough I have always been a really big classic BMW fan. My dad grew up driving 2002s. My uncle and him owned a 74 2002, which is what I learned to drive manual on. I loved the ethos behind BMW, the BMW Motorsport brand. the aggressive styling that they had, the fact that the E28 M5 was the fastest sedan on the planet, all these things, I was enamoured by it. My first car was an E36 M3. I have had a couple E30s, built one into a track car with my brother. I own an E34 M5, and I always wanted a 2002. This was in 2015, I was just browsing eBay. At the time I had an E34 M5, I bought it from the original owner in Palo Alto, California. I lived in San Francisco at the time and I found this 2002 Touring, which I'd never seen a touring version of the 2002 before, it didn't get shipped to the US, and this one was totally built, it has an S14 engine, dog-leg transmission, Frankenstein of BMW parts. I actually have the binder sitting on my desk because I was looking up brake parts for it, and you literally have to go, it's all in German, so I just use Google translate or I'm Googling part numbers to figure out what brakes it has. But I found on eBay, it was owned by a collector down in Orange County and I went and bought it. That car is a total unicorn car in terms of the parts it has on it, in terms of the way it drives. It's like a 1900 pound go kart. I bought it, I then moved to New York and I brought the car with me for a year. I stored it in my brother's garage. He said I needed to get this thing out of his garage because he only had a one car garage. So I sold it back to the guy who originally imported it, and within a month I regretted that decision. So I just texted him every single month for a year and a half, then finally he sold it back to me. So shipped it back, and now I have it again. I always loved BMWs so I needed to have a classic BMW.

Porsche, when I lived in San Francisco, and actually before I bought the 2002, I was looking for another car, clearly. I was looking at 911s because I like this ethos behind the brand. It's very motorsport derived. It's very moddable cars. I liked that component of it. I wanted an air-cooled because that embodies my style of car, that classic less complex mechanical car, instead of being water-cooled and all that other stuff. At the time I bought the '74 2002 and that was great, but then a few years later, I bought a '79 911 SC hot rod, which was a built out engine to a 3.2 carb, no interior, roll cage, race harnesses, stuff like that. I had the interior refinished and stuff, but that ended up being really aggressive. I owned that car when I lived in New York City, so my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, we would go on these three to four hour drives, you know how small the inside of that car is, you are six inches and you couldn't even hear the person to the passenger seat. There's no AC, no radio, nothing. I think at one point we drove from New York City to Cape Cod and when we arrived there, my ears were ringing, and I was like, this thing has got to go.

So I actually traded that car to my friend and got his 993. The 993 has interior and stuff, and while no engine modifications outside of exhaust, I can talk about that later if you care, but it's been lowered and has different wheels on it, so it has a little bit, I changed the shifter and stuff like that, but it's still compliant to drive, is better to drive. The 993 is still air cooled, but it's the most advanced version, so it has the best creature comforts. I've always wanted a long hood too, so maybe I'll pick one of those up in the future. Porsche and BMW both have this same motorsport derived moddable culture about them, and I really liked that about cars. Obviously I like to mod my cars. I like to buy driver cars. I don't want to buy a 2000 mile example that needs to sit on pillows in a garage and what am I doing with this thing paying insurance for it for 20 years to get some meagre return, I'll go buy Google stock or some index and never have to change the oil on that and it will probably return me better, and it doesn't take up the space.

Getting into Valve and Piston, did you set that up to connect with fellow enthusiasts, what was the intention there?

I started the account in January of 2016 so it's been over eight years. The intent behind Valve and Piston was really a way to evangelize what I found beautiful and pretty about cars and car culture. The account is a curation, a lot of the content is not my own. I obviously give credit to all the photographers or videographers that take the content, but I really just wanted to showcase what I find pretty about cars. It could be something as simple as the NACA ducts on a Ferrari F40, or it could be the arches of a Jaguar E-type. All these different things that I think a lot of people just see cars as something that purely functional, it gets me from point A to point B, but in my opinion this is functional art. It has a static beauty to it parked somewhere, then it also has a dynamic beauty to it. So how does it sound, how does it smell, how does it drive. I like infuse both of those things into my account. Then with the distribution I have, now I can become a little bit more of a megaphone for the things that I really like. I think one thing that's different about the account, and this is something that I have tried to hold true from the beginning, is that the account is not my job and I don't monetise it. It will never be my normal income, so I can be unbiased in that way. I am not at the whim of a sponsor or saying something that will make a sponsor upset. So I can be a little bit more honest with folks. I think that is an advantage that I have that I definitely flex and sometimes it pisses the audience off, but it's an unbiased opinion. This could be something as simple as what torque wrench should I buy? I'm not sponsored by Snap-on, I'm not sponsored by Craftsman, I'm not sponsored by Matco, so I can I think objectively find the best torque wrench in different price ranges and let my audience know, or any thing, car cleaning products, wheels, specific products for cars, so I try to be very unbiased in that point of view.

Obviously you talk about it's not your day job and there's benefits to that, but obviously the account has grown enormously, 370,000 followers, that's a hell of a lot, what was it like in the early days though, I am trying to remember what Instagram car content was like in 2016, how quickly did the account grow?

There's a specific advantage starting an account back when Instagram was nascent, because Instagram was growing so quickly that you would get the tailwinds of new entrants, new users joining Instagram. I don't know what Instagram's user count at the time was, but let's just say it was 100 million and let's just say today it's a billion, I am just making these numbers up, I have no idea. Instagram's user growth would then 10X from 2016 to now. If you start an account, your account should also have 10Xed, if it's normally distributed, which it probably is. I think back then you could really get away with being a broad account because there weren't that many car-specific accounts. So if you were just broad you could capture these people who liked cars. Now you really have to be very specific in what you are doing and your style. Maybe it's around a particular car type, maybe it's around this particular type of content. One account that is doing really well, and I give them a shout out all the time, this guy named Roman runs it, it is called Patina Research.

He has a very specific style, which is he blends music with vintage racing footage or obscure car footage. I think that niche would never survive in 2016, it would have been too narrow, but it works now because all of the other niches have been explored, and this is one that hasn't been explored. In terms of growth, I think the biggest thing you can do to grow an account, I have said this time and time again, is just post content regularly. There's this meme that's this guy who is reading a book and it says what do I have to do to make money? He opens up the book and it's work and then he is crying in the last slide, and it's just post regularly, that's all you have to do. If your content is good you will get out there and if not, then you will learn from your posting as to what you should do. That's what I did, I would post once or twice a day for eight years and that's where you get. Posting regularly has probably been the most consistent means of growth. I made some tweaks over time where my rate of growth would get higher, but then the Instagram algorithm would change and then I would have to readjust and do some other stuff.

I always find that nostalgia on Instagram seems to have a strong emotional resonance, is that something that you tapped into as well?

I think I did it unintentionally. I just posted the things that I liked about cars. I didn't go out and say this account is going to be a nostalgic account. But to your point, Instagram really has become an evangelist for nostalgic items. Whether that is cars, watches or other categories, it really has done that. I think the reason why is because Instagram in its early days was only photos, this was back before even video existed. You would see these static photos of a vintage watch, purse, furniture or cars, and it looks so pretty and cool and it's got this whole allure and aesthetic, and that really warms people's hearts, it makes you feel good, but in reality it's not always that good. These things require care. They definitely require more care than buying something new. They are old, they are made on materials or parts that are less reliable than what you could have today. I think it really opened up the aperture for people to want this nostalgic aspect in their life. I don't know that everyone was prepared for what that means. So many friends over the years have asked me, I really want to buy a classic car, what should I get? I would give them a suggestion and they would say is that going to be a problem, do I have to maintain that a lot? I would say yes, you are not going to have AC working all the time, the thing is not going to start, buy a set of tools and you will figure it out. Then they immediately turn around and say on Instagram I see this Series One Land Rover parked on Bond Street in New York City and would say that would be so cool if I owned one of those. Then they would go and buy one and say this thing doesn't go faster than 40 miles an hour. This thing creaks and rattles and it leaks water when it rains. It's basically a tractor that you should not be driving around, then you get people that are stuck with these things.

The broader question there is what role do you think social media plays in terms of influencing car culture? In my view I think it influences people's tastes, opinions, the cars they aspire to own, do you think that is fair to say?

Absolutely. I don't mean to say that social media is only bad, I think that once again, this is like a bell curve. There are people who care just about the nostalgia and not really about the cars, but then there are people who through social media get to learn about this stuff and they become enamoured with it. Maybe they liked vintage watches and now they like vintage Porsches, or maybe they like furniture and then they like this, so you can pull from other areas where people are passionate about, and really care and understand the care that an old thing requires. I don't mean to say it's always bad. I would say the one thing that social media has done is it has expanded the market. These are really things that you would find on the forums. When I was 12 years old I was on Bimmer forums and I was reading everything on Bimmer forums, and that was the only place where you could get oh, you can modify your E36 M3 with LTW wheels and this is the suspension that you want and these are the lights, but there was no broadcast mechanism where you just open up your phone on Instagram and go to your explore tab, and maybe you are all into golden retrievers and all of a sudden the E36 M3 pops up and you think oh, that's neat, look at the clear side markers and look at the LTW wheels. There was no discovery that existed, it was all just held in these like little secret forums, which is kind of awesome. Now you have opened up the market, the problem is all of this stuff is limited, There will never be another 1983 Rolex or an F40 made, so prices for this stuff have just gone up really prohibitively because demand has increasing and supply has stayed the same.

I am a bit of a Porsche guy and a big fan of 996s, and if I had never joined Instagram would I feel the same way about them? It's not a bad thing at all but just a recognition of that, it does have quite a big impact in terms of what people aspire to own or influencing their tastes.

This is something that I try to incorporate into the account when I am curating content. If you think about the adoption cycle of these ideas, I want to curate things on the earlier side of that. If I post Oilstainlab's car, I know you talked with the Bridan brothers, I want to be the early one to post that car and people would say that's really cool and then they see it everywhere. Not to say that Oilstainlab is going to experience that, I think that they are going to do really well, but I don't think you want to be on the late side of that thing because then you just become an account where you saw that on a different account earlier, so you want to be on the earlier side of that. I think if this is your idea adoption cycle, posting things at the peak is going to get you the most likes or engagement or whatever, I think you have to diversify your content across that stream so that you constantly have new ideas. The people who are really innovative who follow you, they are going to follow you for that stuff on the early side of the curve, then you have a mass appeal at the top. It's something that I definitely try to think about, I can't just post Ferrari F40s and F50s all day, I would kill myself and shut down the account.

If you were to set up Valve and Piston today, how would you approach it?

I actually wouldn't create an Instagram account. I would create a YouTube account and my YouTube account would be, I really like working on cars as you know from my stories. Here we go, we are going to get into it. Instagram back in the day when I first started my account, you could get away with being this general account. Now you have to be hyper-specific, hyper-niche, or you have to drive people around you as an individual. You need to post as you as an individual and people follow you for you as an individual. This is something that Mike at Stanceworks does really well, Kris Clewell does really well, Alex, he now works at FCP Euro, but he does these crazy BMW projects, and then there is a bunch of other people, Chris Harris, Matt Farrah, they all drive it to them as an individual largely. That's what you have to do to create this unique content, Stradman, all this other stuff. However Instagram does not tie to monetization very well. So a lot of these people, if you want to monetisse Instagram, you have to do sponsored posts and this and that, and once again, that creates biased content in my opinion, which I really don't like, I like to be unbiased.

The thing about YouTube is YouTube aligns views with monetization really well. So I f you have a good subscriber base you can monetize these things. The most interesting stuff on YouTube, in my opinion, are the things that have evergreen content in them. When you typically post something, whether it's Instagram or YouTube or whatever, you get a lot of initial views and then that drains over time. That long piece there is what's called a tail. So in my opinion, you want to try to find pieces of content that have fatter tails. You get a lot of evergreen views. I think people that do this really well are Doug DiMuro with his car reviews. I think Larry at Ammo does this really well, because if you want to detail your car, he might have a video on how to get rubber off your car, how to get something off your car, and that video is going to have really fat tails, because when you search it on Google, it's going to pop up at the top. Or Doug DeMuro, I want to buy a 2002 Honda Odyssey. He has probably reviewed one, I can search and then it will come up. But something like a Whistlin' Diesel, and I love Whistlin' Diesel, I think his content is crazy and ridiculous, that doesn't have as fat tails in my opinion, the content really decays quickly. I want something that has fatter tails. What I would do is I love working on cars, I love fixing cars, sometimes to my own detriment.

You look pretty handy with a spanner.

To my own hatred. But what I would do is basically create an account that buys cars, fixes them up myself, and then sells them afterwards and just goes, and then just try to level up to crazier and crazier cars. I think one day you could have some exotic car, some Diablo or something. Change the oil on a Diablo is really interesting, so you would blend this content together, is how I do it. It hits all those pieces. One, it's content that includes myself as an individual. Two, it's content that aligns with monetization. Three, it's content that has fatter tails; and four, and most importantly, it's content that I like, that I would be happy to produce consistently. I think that's what I would ultimately create.

Similar to the channel you just described - it reminds me of Mat Armstrong. I don't know if you are familiar with his content. He is buying these crashed cars, fixing them up and he has built this incredible collection of cars now. Your Whistlin' Diesel point is interesting as well, because I love YouTube and I think it's a fantastic platform, but with Whistlin' Diesel's Cybertruck video, the production on that video was insane. If you watched the opening of that video, it's literally like a movie. The scale of production on YouTube videos is going through the roof, and where they are going to be in five, 10 years is insane.

That's probably the hardest part of cracking into YouTube right now, you really need a multi-person production team. To get off the ground 10 years ago, all you really needed was a camera, and not even a nice camera. Now you need multiple people, and shout out to those folks on YouTube who don't have, I think the Stradman used to have someone help him and now he just does it himself again. Obviously Mr. Beast being the most successful YouTuber, he has a full team of employees, a bunch of people, so you really need high production quality.

Marques Brownlee and the Autofocus Channel, they specifically make their videos on an iPhone or a smartphone or something to demonstrate the tech element of it. YouTube is an interesting platform, but I think at the end of the day it boils down to there will always be a demand for great quality content that is authentic, you can not t escape from those key ingredients, they underlie the whole lot. Talking of recent ventures and what you might be doing, you have kicked off the Montauk rally, which I am keen to learn a bit more about, could you touch on what that actually is and why you set that up?

In part it has something to do with, obviously it has to do with the Valve and Piston, because I created it through that account. Valve and Piston lives online, it lives digitally, so this I wanted to be an in-person event that was very curated. The 24 Hours of Montauk obviously is a play on 24 Hours of Le Mans. It's a rally that I host every summer with my friend Rory. We have done it 2021, 2022, 2023, and then the 2024 rally is in two and a half weeks. We do this every September, it's an event, it's held the day before this car show called The Bridge. The Bridge is held on Saturday in Bridgehampton and we do ours the day before. Essentially it's invite only, it's a car meet in the morning. Everyone comes, parks their cars, we have coffee, pastries and stuff. We do a drive and we get to an end location where we have lunch for everyone, we have gifts and stuff. The event has gotten more and more complex every year, in my opinion, better and better every year. More complexity doesn't necessarily always mean better, but we have now brought in core sponsors for the event, which is pretty cool. I won't reveal who the sponsors are for this year because we haven't revealed that yet. Maybe by the time this airs, people will know, but last year we partnered with Leica, the camera manufacturer, we partnered with La Marzocco, we partnered with a watch brand called De Bethune. And we integrate them into the event.

Leica at the beginning of the event, they gave everyone loaners, cameras so they could shoot on Leicas throughout the day. Then at the end of the day, they actually gave away an M11 camera. It was a $20,000 camera and lens combo. La Marzocco was serving espressos or cappuccinos from the back of a Unimog, which is kind of crazy. We drove that truck with their machines in the back. DeBethune make these really expensive watches, $100,000 plus watches, and so they brought six of those watches and strapped it to people's wrists for the day so people could enjoy it. It's gone crazy and crazy. It's about 50 cars and we really try to curate the event. You might ask why do you do this? The first reason is, I talked about this before, cars have both static and dynamic beauty. Car shows are great, I think everyone loves them, but I think car shows really only exhibit the static beauty of cars. This event, the bridge, they get really amazing cars there, multi-million dollar cars, but they just come in on a truck, they go off, they go sit on the lawn and you can enjoy their static beauty, but then you don't really get to see these things drive. So I was like, why don't we create a driving component to this weekend where you can enjoy both the static beauty, but also the dynamic beauty for those that want to drive their cars. That's really what we strive to do.

The owners of those cars that bring their stuff and they want to exhibit, they want to drive their cars, we allow them to do that. It is to the extent that last year we had this collector, his name is Jas Dhillon, he brought his Porsche 962, this late in the house, Teal livery 962, this was an actual Le Mans car that raced at Le Mans. It was driving on our rally. When are you ever going to see a 962 on the street, it's absolutely crazy. You see this thing go through a small town in the Hamptons, through Sag Harbor and every head turns, it's the craziest thing. Those are the kinds of the cars that we want to embody there and display their dynamic beauty. The second thing that we really want to do is we are trying to bring together, the reason why we curated and it's invite only and all this other stuff. We really try to curate. Some of the people there are like dedicated car people, but a lot of car people are like me where cars are like your hobby that you're really, really passionate about, but you're often times professionally for your career doing something else. But if you have really nice cars, you are typically really good at your career and you are top notch. We try to bring people from different areas, whether it's artists like Daniel Arsham or watch experts like Ben Clymer, Ennery, Vincent Burcesco, Justin Reiss from Watchbox, or whether it's finance people or tech executives, we try to bring these people who are experts in these other crafts, but everyone overlaps in cars. Because we really spend a lot of time curating this, obviously we bring dedicated car people too, but because we spend a lot of time really curating this, I think you get interesting collaborations that you wouldn't otherwise see. We have done this three years now, the fourth year will be this year, and we have seen people that we invited that didn't know each other in earlier years, and they have since collaborated on things because of this event. They met there, they have connected, and that's a really special thing for us. We strive to just make it a really laid back day, with a bit of driving and a bit of socialization.

It sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a conscious yes, Valve and Piston is very online, but let's not forget that we also love to just meet up and go for a drive, that's online versus offline, balancing the two kind of things.

Right, it's like bring all of these connections that we have digitally. I comment on your pictures and you comment on my pictures, let's bring us together in real life at an event that we are all already there, so we will do it. I think the first year we did it we only had 10 to 11 cars there. It was really a trial run, get the blessing of the Bridge founders, they have been very supportive of us. I think this year we have 60 cars, that will be 120 participants, not including sponsors. We have dedicated content people coming, it's a whole thing. Sponsors that I dreamed of having multiple years ago and now they're here. It's pretty crazy and it will be really fun.

That sounds pretty epic and I look forward to seeing pictures of it, I am sure you will post about it on Valve and Piston.

Of course.

Before I ask you some quick fire questions, I actually wanted to pick your brain on whether there are any trends you are seeing in the automotive world at the moment that are getting you pretty hyped up and quite excited?

This is on the last topic around 24 hours. I think the trend that's getting me most excited, so I will preface this. Instagram has evolved a lot over time. Obviously I spend a lot of time on Instagram, so I'm most familiar with that social platform. Other social platforms have evolved too, but Instagram, if you look at your feed right now, you go to your feed, most of the content in your feed is not actually people you follow, so your feed has effectively become your old explore tab, and if you go to your explore tab, I don't even know what that is now. Then you go to your stories and that's who you follow, but the ordering is totally arbitrary as to what content you see. I am sure Instagram says oh yes, this increases engagement on the whole. Instagram used to be this chronological feed of people you only follow, has really broken down. It's gotten to the point where people might post things and I miss it because I don't see it in my feed ever. That upsets me. That is part of the reason why 24 hours is so successful is because people just want that. These are the people that they want to see, so they want to see them there, and they don't care if that content got two or a thousand likes, they want to see what their friends are up to.

There are other events that are popping up around this. Someone who does it really well is the Overcrest Production guys. They created the Overcrest Rally. Kris Clewell is the guy I know best there. They put so much effort into this. Kris will go do a week long scouting trip, really find the best roads, mark everything down, and then they have an application for it, so it's invite only. All these things are limited by space ultimately, which we are limited by space, we want to expand it every year, but we are. They really host this really interesting event. I haven't had the ability to join one just because I have had conflicts every time, but they are hosting in Arkansas this year that they host in Utah one year. I think they really put on a good event. Similarly I think other events are doing really well. I think Goodwood is a good example of that where popularity is increasing, and there are other driving events. People have asked us to do rallies around Monterey Car Week, they have asked to do rallies around Amelia Island. I think people are really yearning for physical connection and physical experience. I think people are getting a little bit Instagrammed out because the digital relationship is only going so far. I think that's probably one of the trends I am most excited about, even though that's not really a digital trend per se.

To round up, I was going to ask you some quick fire questions to finish on. Modern or classic cars?

Classic.

Who is your racing hero?

Ayrton Senna. See this.

Is that 1:18 scale?

1:8 scale, it's two and a half feet long, it's made by DeAgostini, which is a die-cast company. They actually send you kits every month, for 18 months they send you pieces and you build it. I bought this one already built from Japan because the kits aren't made any more. I actually reached out to DeAgostini, I thought this was such a good idea and their marketing was so terrible. I said please, I want to work with you because I need more people to know about this, you are the best kept secret. They responded to me and we had email back and forth and then they just ghosted me. I posted this story about this, I got hundreds of messages, people asking me what is that, I want that, I need it for my office. Then I had to dig for hours and hours. I looked at Tamiya sets, I looked at high detail sets, DeAgostini makes 1:8 scale stuff. If you are listening to this DeAgostini, which you probably aren't, respond to my email.

If you can keep only one car from your collection, which one is staying?

2002, everything else can be replaceable. I think that's the only one that I cannot replace it. That's why when I sold it back to the guy. I had bought that car and then I sold it, then I bought it back again. When I sold it I regretted that and I really went on a pursuit to get it back. This car is the craziest mix of BMW parts that would take, once again, you can tell what I like. I like things where someone has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about something. I get to get that at such a discount. That is to me what I really enjoy. Whether that's content, knowledge or objects. This car has X5 front brakes, E 28 callipers, it has a certain bracket that this person, do you know how many hours of testing and testing and testing and testing and testing it would take to even come up with this craziness, it's insane. That's just the brakes, then every single part of this car has been tweaked and customized and changed and adjusted with different spacers, and everything has such a tight tolerance, you just can't replicate that. I could replicate my 993 or I could go buy a 993 RS or whatever – I can't replicate that.

What is in your dream three car garage?

Ford GT40, probably the road-going version. There's a light blue road-going version with wire spoke wheels. Ferrari F40, non-cat, non-adjust. I think I will go with the 2005 Carrera GT, all black, preferably.

All black, including the wheels?

With black wheels, yes. I think I could go silver on natural which is the press photo colours, but I think there is just something so interesting, black looks really good on that. I am not picky, whatever you want.

That is one hell of a dream garage man. Thank you so much for coming on Hootie and thanks for your time. The best place for people to follow you and find you is Valve and Piston?

Yes, Valve and Piston. If you shoot me a DM, I almost always respond to them. Ask me questions, whatever connect.

If you are listening to this and you want to learn more about Custodian as well, you can do so at www.custodian.club. We are also on Instagram at custodian.club. We have recently launched insurance as well, so I am sure if you are listening to this, that probably applies to many of you, it could be of interest. Thank you very much for listening. Hootie, thanks again for your time and I will catch you in the next one.

Thank you, thanks Archie.

Thanks, man

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Episodes

Episodes

Valve & Piston: The Apex Interviews Hootie Rashidifard

Valve & Piston: The Apex Interviews Hootie Rashidifard

Valve & Piston: The Apex Interviews Hootie Rashidifard

Valve & Piston: The Apex Interviews Hootie Rashidifard

Credits