Cars Yeah With Mark Greene

James Egozi is a 15 year old Formula 4 racer who is backed by Giovanni Minardi of the Minardi racing family racing PHM. James is a mentally tough, rising star who is from Miami, Florida and currently living in Brescia, Italy competing in the F4 Italian Championship and driving for PHM Racing. He started in karting winning multiple U.S. National Championships prior to moving to Europe where he won two European Championships in the World Series of Karting. James is a first-generation, self-taught racer who has overcome many challenges including a broken femur at the age of 10 and he started training at SPMI back in 2014 when he was only six years old and today he has his eyes set on Formula 1.

Paul Ehrmann is an author whose book, Arc of Triumph, a novel about courage, cars, and love. It is emphatically a novel with automobiles at its beating heart. His book is the culmination of a passion for motorcars Paul has embraces throughout his life. This novel is about the French Grand Prix drivers and their involvement in the Resistance during World War II. Arc of Triumph is based on the true story of these brave and selfless efforts to defeat the Nazis during their occupation of France. This was Paul’s first novel and the publisher is Donald Toms at Dantes Press in Florida.

Tom Nault’s passion for entrepreneurship, management, and turnarounds began when he was in college. Along with his fascination for companies that did great things, Tom also had a fascination with failures, how they happened and more importantly, and how they could be fixed. When COVID struck Tom wrote a book titled How To Not F*ck Up Your Own Company: Lessons I Learned by Screwing Up. Today we have a unique show to talk about the current state of EVs.

Mike Narx is the creator of Drag-N-Drive Addiction, a source of news and entertainment from the drag and drive community. It’s a weekly Live Stream covering events, racers, and stats from events world-wide. He began selling cars at 19 years of age and in 2013 he hosted his first car event, something he’s done more than 40 times since, raising more than $60,000 for local Northwest Arkansas children’s charities. In 2016 he and his brother began wrenching for customers and opened Narxoleptic Customs. They created YouTube content, with over 400 videos, and a podcast. Today his brother has a full-time auto shop building a variety of vehicles from LS Swaps to 4 wd conversion.

David Silberkleit is the CFO (that’s Chief Frogeye Officer) of the Bugeyeguys, the world leader for Bugeye Sprite sales, restoration, and parts. In 2022 he purchased the first production Bugeye Sprite, a car he imported from Australia. David and his team have sold their 400th Bugeye Sprite this week, an amazing milestone when you consider that in 2007 he started this business from his tiny home garage. Today, Bugeyeguys is a team of seven people in an 11,000 square foot restored Quonset Hut full of classic British sports cars and lots and lots of Bugeye parts. David added the Bugeyeguys parts business in 2017, and has now shipped more than 15,000 boxes of Bugeye bits around the world. Every one of the 400 Bugeyes built by David and his team has been unique and different, from completely stock to fire breathing, plus a recent electric conversion with Tesla Batteries.

Jay W. Pennell has been a part of the NASCAR industry for over fifteen years. His career path has taken him from that of an independent journalist, to social and digital marketing, to team public relations, and to NASCAR gaming. Jay has written for outlets including FOX Sports, NASCAR.com, Playboy, and Athlon Sports, and was one of NASCAR’s first citizen journalists. He also worked with Richard Childress Racing (RCR), handling public relations, content creation, and partnership management. Jay also served as the General Manager of the eNASCAR Heat Pro League, later moving to Brand Manager, NASCAR and INDYCAR with Motorsport Games. His new book is titled Start Your Engines, from Sports Publishing, contains 34 chapters describing different inaugural accomplishments that have taken place throughout NASCAR history.

Igor Polegkiy is a Sales Executive at Classic Recreations located in Texas. They build licensed and authentic 60s Shelby Mustangs with modern technology, some with full-carbon fiber bodies. His career path has been in the automotive industry and ranged from photography to consulting services in the exotic and hypercar industry, connecting people with the cars they loved. Today at Classic Recreations he works in a family-owned company and with a team of dedicated professionals who are fulfilling enthusiast’s dreams.

Jeffrey O’Neill is the Founder of The Velocity Invitational, an auto racing event that showcases the evolution of motorsports technology and ingenuity. The event started in 2019 at the Sonoma Speed Festival and after the COVIC-forced pause in 2020 the vent came back with a vengeance and new name. The new event took place at Laguna Seca as a three-day weekend filled with hundreds of iconic race cars, historic racing, special exhibitions, food, wine, and more. This year’s event returns to Sonoma Speedway on November 10, 11, and 12 and expects to attract over 10,000 visitors. Jeffrey has always had a passion for race cars alongside his passion for wine and distilling. He is the Founder and CEO of O’Neill Vintners and Distillers located in California’s Central Valley.

Jerry Cox is a Washington-DC based lawyer and crisis communications advisor with 40 years of experience with airbags in automobiles. He played a substantial role in implementing the airbag requirement and has represented numerous auto industry organizations, including the used car dealers’ association, auto auctions, Carfax and state motor vehicle administrators. Takata Corporation hired him in 2014 to help explain a problem the company was having with its airbags. They were blowing up in driver’s faces, shooting shrapnel, killing and severely injuring people. Jerry wrote a book titled, Killer Airbags: The Deadly Secret Automakers Don’t Want You to Know, how that turned into the biggest recall of any consumer product in history. Today he returns for some potentially life-saving updates on this airbag disaster.

Karen Brown is the Vice President of Events and Experiential Marketing for the Motor Trend Group, part of Warner Brothers Discovery. She is a powerhouse communicator, collaborator, innovator, and ideator. Karen continues to cultivate an expansive variety of events and initiatives while leading the internal team in development and execution of high-level events and sponsorship activations. She has had an extensive career in account management, experiential marketing, sponsorship activation, digital account management and program creation within such organizations as The Garage Team Mazda, Deutsch, David & Goliath as well as Disney ABC Television Group prior to joining the Motor Trend Group.

Dr. David Whyley is recognized as the world’s leading authority on Austin pedal cars. His previous book on Austin pedal cars has become much sought-after and his new book titled The Austin Pedal Car Story is a fascinating history of Austin’s J40 and Pathfinder from 1946 to present day. David has owned and restored several classic Austins and is an acknowledged expert and advisor for the rare Austin A40 Sports and Austin Atlantic Convertible. He has also written a number of books about the Austin Counties cars, such as the A40 Dorset, Devon and Somerset models, from 1945–54 and writes regularly for the Austin Counties Car Club magazine. 

Brian Jones is the Vice President of Engineering at Hennessey Special Vehicles and Hennessey Performance Engineering. He oversees all engineering and development applying his experience and expertise to advanced Powertrain development integration, testing, regulatory certification, and manufacturing of the Hennessey Venom F5 hypercar plus the range of high-performance vehicles modified by Hennessey Performance at the company’s Texas production facility. 

Colleen Sheehan is the Sales Manager at Ferraris Online, a company her father Michael Sheehan founded in 1972, 49 years ago. They offer decades of experience as specialty brokers of exotic cars including Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati. Colleen’s passion for cars started at the age of 8 when her father gave her a 1930 BMW 3/15 DA2 that they restored. In 2003, when she was 11, that car was accepted onto the lawn at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and she drove it across the podium to accept an award setting a record as the youngest to ever do so. Today she shares her passion for cars while helping clients achieve their dream car or selling to the next caregiver.

Don Weberg and Eric Monterestelli have both been in the automobile industry for years. Don launched Garage Style Magazine in 2008 and Eric has been involved in motorsports and automobiles founding Gran Touring Motorsports in 2014 and his Break-Fix podcast. Both men have teamed up to create an affiliate network with five digital publications and are working toward creating a single company that will house all their business entities under one roof. The plans include publishing  specialty books and cultivating new clients to help facilitate their marketing and PR needs providing a multitudes of services.

Jasper Drengler is a racer who last spring became the first driver to race in all 50 states. Since he could crawl, Jasper has been infatuated with cars and the first 17 years of his life he attended the Indy 500. He spent most weekends at Wisconsin short tracks watching races and after finishing school he hopped into a race car and started racing himself, sometimes as much as 5 times a week. Over the last 23 years he’s earned some championships at local tracks, touring series, and an SCCA conference championship. Jasper also spent several years racing professionally.

RJ de Vera is the Vice President of Marketing for the Specialty Equipment Market Association, known as SEMA. It’s a nonprofit trade association founded in 1963 that represents the $51.8 billion specialty-automotive industry. RJ joined SEMA in 2022 after 12 years at 3M Company, a multi-national Fortune 100 organization, helping lead the Meguiar’s Car Care Brand under various roles, including Global Leader of Communications & Digital Marketing, Leader of Customer Engagement Group, Associate Director of Public Relations & Event Marketing, and Business Development & Product Marketing Manager.

Luiz Veiga is an automotive designer, fine artist, and a musician. His long career includes working at General Motors Brazil, Volkswagen, Chrysler, and he worked as a professional marketer, illustrator, stylist, senior designer, director of design, and as a member of the Volkswagen Design Group in Germany. Luiz has worked in numerous design studios around the world including Sao Paulo, Wolfsburg and Berlin in Germany, Detroit, Italy, China, Mexico, and the United States. He was awarded with the IF Design Award in Germany and today, among other projects, Luiz is developing exotic electric vehicles for AQUAM, a United States startup.

Nathan Hecht is the Founder and CEO of Cario, his latest venture that recently spun out of Rodo, another company he founded. Cario as a transformational platform to digitize and transfer the vehicle title in a matter of minutes on a blockchain infrastructure. Nathan founded Rodo after his first attempt to lease a car from a dealership. Nathan’s past projects and roles include Founder and CEO of Dstrux, acclaimed platform for self-destructing files on the web, as well as Kurrenci, the internet’s first virtual currency platform. 

Alex Qi is the Chief Executive Officer at Pontosense where they are at the forefront of driving innovation through cutting-edge sensor technologies that enhance your driving experience and can save lives. Pontosense was founded with a mission to fundamentally change everyday technology by expanding the relationship between humans and machines. Pontosense is the first company in the world to adhere to EuroNCAP regulations. 

Dan Palatnik is a graphic artist whose career included freelance illustration for ad agencies in the 80s. What began as a new technique evolved into a full time occupation. Since 2003 he has been creating classic car 3dmodeling for restoration projects, real builds, scale models, and custom cars plus visualizations for clients worldwide. He made renders for various local classic car chapter events and contributed with visual information creating cars that became extinct along the course of History. A passion turned into business, having created more than 300 US, European, Brazilian, and Japanese car models, in stock, custom and phantom concept form.