Nobraking

Austin Hironaka from Hiro's Hotrods is our latest guest a native from the Pacific Northwest, Hironaka was raised in Tacoma but post graduation found himself traveling the world as a professional snowboarder. However while looking for his next magazine cover or film Hironaka was always thinking about his next car project. Hiro's Hotrods combines his passion for both his love for Japanese cars and the knowledge of customizing classic cars passed down to him from his old man Moe.

This week we went down a different path with two of my friends, Designer Walter Franco and Builder / Host Big Mike to talk about the Automotive Community. But first let's take a look at what a community is. The word “community” has a strange power to it, conveying both a sense of togetherness and positivity.So click to listen where we describe what we think the Automotive community means? And more importantly why is it important to us?

Today’s guest is the Hoonigan Design Director Jon Chase, however you might also know Jon for being the person behind DSTROYR, a lifestyle brand he created. But you might ask how did Jon start on this path? It all started by working incredibly hard at an industrial rubber company. Then things took a turn as Jon started at Famous Stars and Straps working under Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. Jon spent time at Maisto as a designer working on diecast vehicles before some serious arm twisting from Hoonigan's Brian Scotto. This arm twisting had Jon join the growing band of Hoonigans and led to what is now his current position as Design Director. 

Steve Hogue is a Coach Builder living the dream working on and fabricating vintage car bodies for a living. Steve Hogue Enterprises opened more than 25 years ago when Steve started working on muscle cars and hot rods. As Steve gained experience over the years his shop developed a reputation for both coachbuilt vehicles, sports and classic cars. The rare breeds that pass through his workshop include Shelby Cobras, early Porsches and anything else you could imagine.

Walter Franco was born and raised in the heart of Seattle and is passionate about both Japanese cars and fixed gear bicycles. However, having graduated from ArtCenter College of Design with a degree in Automotive design, Walter decided to elevate the car community through NAMSAYIN, his lifestyle brand that encompasses automotive projects, community events and clothing. Currently, Walter continues to work with small businesses with brand development, collaborative art and vehicle design projects. Some of those partners include Hiros Hotrods, Speedfactory Racing, Think Bigger Project, KASE Real Estate, JP+CO and Swarovski.

Ian Baker is the CEO of World Time Attack Challenge, however he originally got his racing career going first as a race car fabricator. It was during this time as a fabricator Ian was on the forefront of turbo charger installations in Australia. In 2007 as part of the Hi Octane Racing team he took a car to the Tsukuba Circuit in Japan, after seeing the race he wondered why they didn’t have anything like that in Australia.As his interest and participation in the format grew, Ian saw an opportunity to re-create the event on a scale previously unseen in the sport of time attack. The idea was to create a truly international event where the best of international time attack teams compete on the same track at the same event. In this format, the teams represent not just the tuning shops behind the car but also their country.The inaugural World Time Attack Challenge was held in 2010 at Eastern Creek Raceway and proved to be a huge success. It was the first time Australian teams competed against the international time

Albo Agunday is a Canadian film-maker, Youtuber and story-teller who has lived in Japan since 2010. Originally he made the move to Japan to teach English as part of the Jet Program. As luck would have it Albo was whisked away to his new school in Gunma prefecture home of "Initial D" immersed in the world of street racing and drifting. Inspired to document the underground scene, in 2014 he created the documentary series “Drift Hunter” which is an investigative documentary series on Japanese automotive culture from a western perspective. 7 years later Albo made the move to Tokyo and during that time Albo has made the switch to ALBO Media where he aims to capture the sense of adventure and excitement of living in Japan to share it with his many hundreds of thousands of fans.

Charlie Noble is the Visual Effects Supervisor for the latest James Bond film No Time to Die. He has over 30 years experience in the visual effects industry and is one of the co-founders of DNEG.No Time to Die is the 25th in the James Bond series. It stars Daniel Craig in his fifth outing as the fictional British MI6 agent. Development began in 2016 and it is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga from a screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Fukunaga, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Principal photography was from April to October 2019 under the working title Bond 25. The final title No Time to Die was announced in August 2019.Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Rory Kinnear, and Ralph Fiennes reprise their roles from previous films, with Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, Dali Benssalah, Billy Magnussen, and David Dencik joining the cast as new characters.

OG Moto Show is back!The Outlier’s Guild Motorcycle Show is a celebration of custom bikes. It is now in its fifth year and came about as a response to similar shows in Austin and Portland. Los Angeles didn’t have a similar show, and the organizers, Ralph, Stand and John felt Los Angeles was ready. Five years in and four shows later (thanks Covid), Los Angeles is still enjoying the show. While a lot of motorcycle shows feature Harley-Davidson customs, and the OG Show accepts those, too, the focus of the OG Moto Show is a more diverse range, specifically: café racers, bobbers, classics, scramblers, old school choppers, trackers, modern choppers and full customs to name but a few. More importantly however each bike is hand-selected by the organizers. Also as in previous shows, there is more going on than just the bikes as there are a number of artists on hand, as well, displaying their creations.In this two part podcast we have a selection of creatives from the show in part 2 you will hear from:Wayne Elmore - Wa

OG Moto Show is back!The Outlier’s Guild Motorcycle Show is a celebration of custom bikes. It is now in its fifth year and came about as a response to similar shows in Austin and Portland. Los Angeles didn’t have a similar show, and the organizers, Ralph, Stand and John felt Los Angeles was ready. Five years in and four shows later (thanks Covid), Los Angeles is still enjoying the show. While a lot of motorcycle shows feature Harley-Davidson customs, and the OG Show accepts those, too, the focus of the OG Moto Show is a more diverse range, specifically: café racers, bobbers, classics, scramblers, old school choppers, trackers, modern choppers and full customs to name but a few. More importantly however each bike is hand-selected by the organizers. Also as in previous shows, there is more going on than just the bikes as there are a number of artists on hand, as well, displaying their creations.In this two part podcast we have a selection of creatives from the show in part 1 you will hear from:Craig Marleau - K

Darryl Hollenbeck is an acclaimed custom car builder and elite painter. However this all came from years of hard work, sanding, priming and painting that all started in the family business before he was 13. Darryl works out of his own custom shop, Vintage Color Studio in Concord, California. Throughout his career he has had the chance to work with some of the greats including Roy Brizio, Rick Dore, Steve Moal some of these cars ended up in the collection of James Hetfield, Eric Clapton and Neil Young. Darryl has also had the chance to work on many concours vehicles that have won awards across the globe including the famed Pebble Beach. In 2016 he and his wife Terri had their biggest car related achievement with their 1932 Ford Roadster which won the coveted AMBR award - America’s Most Beautiful Roadster at the Grand National Roadster Show (GNRS). The GNRS started in 1950 and is the longest-running indoor car show in the world, and the AMBR, a towering eight-foot-tall trophy, is considered the ultimate recogni

James Owens grew up in Detroit with family members involved in the "industry" so you could say James has been around cars his entire life. However his automotive journey really started when he decided on the Center for Creative Studies to study for a BA in illustration before transitioninto into the field of commercial advertising. After a long successful career James needed a change of direction, moved out of Detroit to Knoxville, Tennessee where he started acting this move to acting eventually led to a move to Los Angeles. It was during his time in Los Angeles and between auditions James decided to start painting and spurred by the esthetic of the late forties, fifties and sixties he set off on a path to create his own style of fine art. James has been lucky enough to have his paintings in galleries around the world.

Tom Utley is the man behind Von Industrial, and is also known to the restoration community as KingTutley. What Tom creates are machinery tags for vintage equipment and machinery that can be used as part of a restoration project. It was the restoration of his own personal South Bend Lathe that was his introduction to the art and science of tag creation.

Mark Arcenal started his design career as a Jr. Designer and over the past 24 years he has climbed the ranks working as a Designer, Jr. Art Director, Art Director, Sr. Art Director, Creative Director and Design Director.He has worked with many of today’s Fortune 500 Companies including the likes of Nike, Gap, Adidas, Hot Wheels and Electronic Arts. With them he has developed and created brand experiences and partnerships. In his different roles he has built brands from the ground up as well as led global teams and he is known to many as one of the pioneers and influencers in street style.However what Mark may be best known for is creating and starting Fatlace and Illest where he drew inspiration from graffiti, music, clothing and car culture to launch two global brands.

Our newest guest is Andy Bell, a former Extreme Sports Athlete. He competed professionally on two wheels in Motocross, Supercross and he became the first ever “factory” sponsored FMX athlete in the world with KTM. While riding in FMX he joined the team of Nitro Circus as one of the Daredevil athletes and as a result now has a number of Guinness World Records under his belt. He is also pretty handy on four wheels as a Baja 1000 winning Off-Road racer and precision driver. Andy is also an experienced stuntman and stunt choreographer working with bikes, cars, skies, bull riding, and on top of that he is an experienced television host and personality. As you can probably guess Andy never shies away from a challenge so after completing two seasons of Nitro Circus he started his own company called Sweatpants Media which is a full-scale, independent film production company specializing in unique creative content from Super Bowl commercials to long running web series and everything in between.

In this episode we talk to Jack Fields, who had an affinity for cars from a very early age. However it wasn't until he partnered with Edgar Hernandez when they were able to move out of family workshops and created Starlite Rod and Customs. After several years of building both a clientele and honing his craftsmanship Jack decided it might be time for a break to focus on himself.In taking a break Jack stepped into the world of Television heading up the team working under Troy Ladd and Courtney Hansen on the tv show "The Ride That Got Away". The show has a simple concept: viewers submit their stories about a beloved car that their family had to let go and it reunites deserving people with their ride “that got away”. However it was during those days on set that Jack thought about starting his own place, and that is where he is now at Kraftsman Autoworks.

Rakel Karlsdóttir was born and raised in Iceland and originally grew up riding horses. After moving from Iceland, she has lived in various cities around the globe including London, Paris, Milan, New York and today she is based in Copenhagen where she has her creative studio.During that time Rakel has earned a master degree in Architecture, studied at the Royal Danish Academy and obtained a bachelor degree in Architectural Technology and Construction Management. Her work as a creative consultant primarily involves designing housing and working on collectable design pieces of projects. Between her work in architecture, design and art Rakel continues to travel the world on her old Harley Davidson.

In the episode we talk to the Driving La Carrera rally team which is made up of two American brothers, Chris and Jeff Mason (The Rally Brothers). The Mason brothers grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, a quiet, leafy suburb 30 miles west of New York City but they both had a love of adventure, a competitive spirit, and a passion for life that in later years has taken them around the globe together. In this incarnation a passing mention of a rally in Mexico has led the brothers to delve down a rabbit hole of vintage racing in which they now race a 1965 Volvo Amazon 122S (Vintage Racing Services) called The Mzcalero in the La Carrera Panamericana.The original La Carrera Panamericana, now remembered as one of the most memorable motorsport events of the time ran from 1950–54 and promoted Mexico’s newly completed Panamerican highway. Over five races, 27 people lost their lives, including racers, officials, and fans. After the tragic crash that killed 80 spectators at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June 1955, La Carrera P

We have writer and author Sam Mitani back to talk about what went into publishing his debut novel, The Prototype. Sam has not rested on the merits of his award winning book and instead chose to dive right back into writing. His second novel on the horizon is Red Mist, which based on the chapters Sam released to gain interest in early 2020 will be another great read. Red Mist will be out January 2022 from Force Poseidon.

Tom Gilroy is the Founder of Purpose Built Moto. Tom spent countless days in the family farm shed fixing and modifying old dirt bikes. Today, Purpose Built Moto is focused on creating motorcycles built with the future rider in mind. In essence the clients tell Tom what they want the bike for and based on this idea he shapes that concept into a functioning, rideable piece of rolling art. However that is not only the goal of Purpose Built Moto as the company has a wide range of parts that riders can outfit their own bikes with, always with a goal of creating something special.However Tom not only spends time at the office, he actually enjoys riding the bikes he creates, this can be seen in a project called Wide of the mark. This was created out of a desire for an adventure in its purest form. Tom even decided to make it more challenging, building not only an adventure bike out of an everyday commuter to handle harsh terrain, but one for another rider to handle two weeks of riding around Tasmania.