Cars Yeah With Mark Greene

Bruce Thomson feels compelled to paint. He attended the Ontario College of Art, graduating from the Industrial Design Program where his favorite subjects were automotive. It was at this time that Bruce saw a painting of an F1 car in a store window and thought; “I could do better than that”. And he did. Thus began his obsession with the visual archiving of automobilia through sketching, illustration, and painting. Not satisfied with this, Bruce attended the Royal College of Art Vehicle Design Program in London, England where he sketched, conceived, drew and learned from some of the most talented and creative people in the design field. On graduation, he worked for Ford of Europe in Köln Germany, before returning to Canada to work as a Professor in the Industrial design Department at Humber College in Toronto where he teaches, amongst other things, automotive design.

Michael Dorvillier is the Chairman of the La Jolla Concoursd’Elegance. This is a fantastic event that takes place overlooking the Pacific Ocean above the La Jolla Cove just north of San Diego. The event is one of the The La Jolla Historical Society’s major fundraising events. A Registered Principal and Financial Advisor with Symbio Financial Partners and LPL Financial, Michael is a passionate antique car collector who is committed to the ongoing success of the La Jolla Concours d’Elegance. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Michael moved to New Hampshire in 1979. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1989 and relocated in Southern California to start his professional career in finance.

A.J. Gordon overseas the daily news stories, interviews, and articles for CarsStories.com at The Petersen Automotive Museum. It is their enthusiast portal which currently attracts over 50,000 unique visitors per month. Prior to joining the Petersen Automotive Museum, A.J. worked in radio at Los Angeles stations 955 KLOS, AMP Radio, Jack FM, and The World Famous KROQ K Rock. He produced interviews for radio stations' websites and coordinated concert live-streaming.  

Bill Thomas has over 26 years in the automotive business and he is an ASE, Automotive Service Excellence, Certified Master Technician. His love of classic British sports cars moved him to open William Thomas Roadsters in Hunterdon County, New Jersey where he and his team restore and care for British cars. Bill also operates Performance Garage Club in Frenchtown, New Jersey where they created a wonderful automotive storage facility. It is a place where members can keep, and work on their special vehicles or just hang out with friends. But wait, there’s more. Bill’s Draken Cars East is another venture he’s embarked upon where he’s building a custom formula car concept roadster that is really cool. And then there is LTW Motorsports where Bill provides track car services from tech inspections, proper set ups, storage, and more.

Michael Knab founded and operated an advertising agency in Chicago for over 30 years. Among his his many well known clients was Revell Monogram, the toy model company. His passion for automobiles lead to launching the Diecast Zone, one of the first online hobby community sites. The audience was geared toward collectors of precision scale model cars and trucks. Soon Michael created Legacy Motors, which became the leading online retailers for scale model cars, trucks, motorcycles, and military vehicles. From there he created an art gallery called Legacy Motors Automotive Art Gallery. Today his focus is dominated by his online art gallery representing the best automotive artists of today at Legendary Cars Life.com.

Anyone who’s watched motorsports on television over the last 30 years will recognize the face and voice of today’s guest here on Cars Yeah. Bob Varsha’s career in automotive broadcasting goes back to 1980 when he was invited to cover the Peachtree 10K Road Race. He hosted MotorWeek Illustrated on CNN and covered Formula One racing on ESPN. He has been a television host on a multitude of sporting events from gymnastics to track & field to skiing. While on Speedvision he covered F1, sports cars, motorcycles and the Tour de France racing. He’s been the voice at Barrett-Jackson auctions, IMSA sports cars, the MotoGP World Championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He sits on the Board of Advisors for the Motorsports Vehicle Technology Program at Lanier Technical College in Gainesville, Georgia, and he is an honorary member of the Road Racing Drivers Club.

Brian Ghidinelli owns and runs MotorsportReg.com, an online registration service and marketplace that makes it more fun to organize and attend motorsports events. He has helped more than 700 clubs, racetracks, and sanctioning bodies organize, promote, and manage over 3,500 events annually. He’s a racer, a championship winner and finisher of a 25-hour endurance race. Brian serves on the board of directors for Thunderhill Raceway Park and he’s been quoted, featured and photographed in numerous automotive magazines and newspapers. Brian lives near Sonoma Raceway in San Rafael, California with his wife, dog, racecar, motorcycle, and shifter kart.

Michael Culver is the Chief Executive Officer, Managing member and Chairman of the Board of Skip Barber Racing School. Headquartered in Braselton, Georgia, Skip Barber is the world’s largest racing and driving school, operating in more than 20 race tracks across the U.S. and Canada. Michael raced for 12 years after taking a 3-Day Racing School in 1990 and he has won several Skip Barber Formula Masters Motor Racing Championships and he competed in the 24 Hours of Daytona. Prior to taking control at Skip Barber Michael had over 20 years as an entrepreneur in investment banking and as a manager specializing in aerospace and motorsports.

Dirk Layer is a guy who never really planned on a career in the automotive field, it was always about his love affair with cars and racing. But along the way he has found his life engrossed in collector cars, racing and much, much more. He’s driven at Le Mans, podiumed at the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, was a race winning Pro, competed at numerous vintage races, autocrosses, driven Grand Prix cars plus GT and Sports Cars. He’s been a racing instructor and featured in automotive enthusiasts publications. Dirk’s been involved in numerous restoration projects and he is a professional broker, consultant, buyer, seller and appraiser of exceptional collector cars when only the finest will do. And he’s judged in many concours events, including Pebble Beach. Dirk has wrapped his passion for fine cars and the track in to an inspirational life in the car hobby.

Ingrid Steffensen discovered a passion for high-performance driving and a desire to write her first non-academic book about how a professor and dance mom found her inner speed demon at the racetrack. Fast Girl: Don’t Brake until You See the Face of God and Other Good Advice from the Racetrack is a funny, fast-paced, romp through the noise and stink of the male-dominated sport of amateur sports car racing. She went on to become an instructor with the BMW Club and when she’s not teaching men how to drive like Juan Manuel Fangio she can be found writing for a wide variety of publication including the New York Time, Popular Mechanics and others. Ingrid is a woman who stepped outside her comfort zone, shrugged off the shackles of suburban conformity, and changed her entire perspective on life through the unlikeliest of means: racecar driving.

Bob DeKorne has been involved in marketing classic car insurance since 1998.  He has been fortunate to attend nearly every major concours event in the country, as well as every major classic car auction for the past 17 years.  His career brings him into some of the finest private collections in the world, as well as many of the major automotive museums we all love to visit.  He’s part of the Heacock Classis Insurance team and has been an automotive enthusiast since he was about three years old. His earliest childhood memory was sitting on dad’s Zundapp 150 motorcycle every time he got his hair cut.

Chuck Beck has built numerous projects from dragsters to race cars to street cars and more. He is renown among automotive enthusiasts for his 550 Spyder, a replica of the iconic Porsche 550 Spyder from the 50s. He started producing the cars in 1982 and built 2,500 of those wonderful cars. In 1990 Chuck jointly developed the Shogun concept car and produced a competitive racecar with his replica of the Lister. In 1998 he developed the Beck 904 prototype, a replica coupe based on the original Porsche Carrera GTS that was launched in 1963. After selling his company Chuck continues to spend most of his time in the shop building cars and more recently a Lamborghini powered motorcycle.

Rob Angelo is spearheading content creation for a variety of different brands through his new media production company and YouTube channel, Roads & Rides. In addition to creating branded automotive content for high profile clients, Rob is also collaborating with numerous partners on various other projects. In 2014, he held a variety of positions ranging from Director, Assistant Director, Cinematographer and Producer on multiple automotive based TV commercials and shows. While at NBC Digital he worked on award winning interactive experiences for The Voice, Jimmy Fallon, and Saturday Night Live. Rob has also created and produced segments for Jay Leno’s Garage where he received an Emmy Award.

Sylvain Tremblay is the owner and a driver at SpeedSource. He’s raced since winning the first race he ever entered-an SCCA autocross at the age of 16. Over the years his love of racing turned in to a business, and in 1995 he established SpeedSource. Today he runs the Mazda Prototype factory program. 
After finishing second in the Grand Sports Championship several times in the late 90's, in a Mazda RX-7 Twin Turbo, Sylvain put together a winning season in 2001 scoring 7 wins on the way to the Triple Crown Championship. In 2004 he took home his second professional Championship when he won the Grand Am Cup Sport Touring title.

Randy Pobst is a road racing driver with over eighty wins on the track. He’s had factory driving contracts with Porsche, Audi, Mazda, Volvo, and he currently races with Mazda, racing a Mazda MX-5 Miata in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge. Randy is also a journalist and has been writing a column in SportsCar magazine for over ten years, and he conducts extensive testing with Motor Trend magazine. At the time of this interview Randy had just came off a victory in the Thunderhill 25 Hour in the Davidson Racing Norma sports racer and was preparing for another race as we talked.

Stacey David has his own custom shop called The Rattletrap that specializes in engine building, custom paint, suspension work, metal fabrication and everything in between. In the late 1990s he hosted and produced a new TV show called Trucks where he designed and built fantastic rides. That show became one of Spike TV’s highest rated shows. Today his successful Gearz television show is on the Velocity channel and MAV TV. His website and Stacey David’s Gearz Nation is a fantastic place for gear heads and automotive enthusiasts to go and learn tech tips, watch episodes, shop for cool products and have fun in the Gearz garage. Stacey's favorite catch phrase is “What are you working on?”

Jeff Braun is the Competition Director on the LMP2 Cars in the Tudor United Sports Car Series for SpeedSource Engineering and Mazda Racing. He attended his first race at the age of three and started karting at seven. He earned his Mechanical Engineering degree in 1981. After going to work to manage the Transact racing team he purchased the business after only two years and created a race engineering consulting business and Transact engineered has been a part of almost every kind of racecar in the world. He’s won 7 Sports Car championships along with the Daytona 24 Hours, seven Sebring 12 Hours and four Petit Le Mans. With fellow engineer, Paul Haney, Jeff wrote the racing engineering technical book, Inside Racing Technology.

Leslie Kendall is the Curator at the Petersen Automotive Museum. He was born in San Diego, California and has had an insatiable interest in automobiles and automotive history from an early age. After earning his MBA he entered mortgage banking, but left the lending profession after just seven years to volunteer full-time at the San Diego Automotive Museum where he was hired to be the curator after only eight months. He was invited to join the team responsible for creating the Petersen Automotive Museum in April 1993 and in October 1995 was named curator. He is a regular contributor to automotive media outlets (both print and broadcast), a concours d’elegance judge at events around the country, and frequently consults on automotive history related, public- and private-sector projects.

Jeff Koch has been the West Coast Editor for Hemmings Motor News for over ten years. He has been a professional automotive writer and photographer for more than 20 years and has written and taken photographs for magazines as divers as Hot Rod and Super Street. Jeff worked for the Johnny Lightning die cast car company, and he’s an avid collector of die cast cars himself and has collected for over 20 years. Which ties in with today because it happens to be Christmas 2014! So pour yourself some eggnog, sit down next to the fireplace and we’ll have some fun talking and playing with cars.

Seattle resident and racecar driver Don Kitch Jr. has been involved in motorsports for over 25 years. He is a veteran of over 200 professional and amateur racing starts. In 1987 Don and his wife Donna founded ProFormance Racing School at Pacific Raceway where he is the Chief Instructor. In 1997 Don founded Team Seattle focusing on the 24-Hours of Daytona Sports Car Race as a fundraiser for Children’s Hospital of Seattle and in the past 12 years they have raised nearly $6.5 million for the hospital. In 2009 Don teamed up with Patrick Dempsey and Joe Foster at Dempsey Racing in a Ferrari 430 GT2 at the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans. Don is always looking ahead down the road as Pacific Raceway expands and grows and he enjoys his involvement in Sports Television Color Commentary and the creation of Motorsports Videos.