mike spinelli: welcome to"after/drive." you may think this is "road testament." it'snot "road testament." it's "after/drive." and i've got billcaswell here, automotive adventurer, self-taughtracer, and fabricator. and we have an awesome show. right, bill? bill caswell: we do. mike spinelli: hells, yeah. stay with us.
[music playing] mike spinelli: welcome to"after/drive." [bleep] bill caswell is here. you know him as a stickerjunkie, and one of the most inspiring automotive stories ofthe last 10 years, i think. you know him from internet. @drive on twitter,facebook.com/drivetv. comments below. bill caswell--
one of the top articles onjalopnik ever was your $500 rally car experiencein mexico, whereby you took this e30. bill caswell: yep, bought offcraigslist for $500, built in my mom's garage, by me and myfriends, not professional fabricators or mechanics. and after nine months of racing,i decided i'd enter the world rally championships. mike spinelli: which--
bill caswell: whichsounds absurd. mike spinelli: i'm sureeverybody thought that that was a good idea. bill caswell: no, my friendstold me that i was stupid. and they wouldn't taketime off from work. and they wouldn'tcome with me. it's how i ended up downthere by myself. mike spinelli: right. bill caswell: they're likeyou're never going to be
allowed to race. your car-- you bought it offcraigslist for $500. we built it ourselves. it's not going topass fia tack. like you're going to waste yourtime doing 3,000 miles for nothing. i mean, you're there next to$500,000 wrc rally cars. bill caswell: yes. mike spinelli: and you pull upin this thing, and what do
people say? bill caswell: i think theylaughed a lot the first day. and there's definitely a lot ofpointing, and kind of like what is this guy doing here? but by the second day, we hadkind of a small crowd around us in service. by the third day, we hadlike a mob scene around us, and it was fun. and we also cranked music duringour service stops.
we caused a bit of a scene. we weren't kind of theproper rally drivers. but we had a lot of fun, man. mike spinelli: i mean, what wascool about that completely is that the knock on racingin general is it's too corporatist now. and it's not that much fun. and you come rolling in in a$500 car, and with the roll cage that you built yourself.
bill caswell: part of it wasthat my first ever rally was rally tennessee. and i was convinced to bringmy road race car there. and on the second stage, i putit off the road at like 90 miles an hour. now i kept it under control. i didn't damage it. punctured a radiator,and was out. but i realized i'm notreally that good at
rally driving, right? so i looked then for thecheapest version of that same car that i could find,which was a '91 318is bmw v30 chassis. and it's just like vm3 withcheaper parts, lower engine, all that kind of stuff. it doesn't look as cool,but whatever. it was a great carto practice with. so i figured i'd be stuffing itan event or two later, and
have to build a new one. but the car survived, andit's still around today. it's been to mexico threeyears in a row now. mike spinelli: wow. bill caswell: so apparentlyi got better fast. and now i'm still racing that$500 car, which was meant to be more like a practicevehicle. mike spinelli: well, it'sinteresting, because you're-- to go back to the beginning ofyour story, your story is
actually really inspiring forsomebody who wants to get away from the typical job situationand out of their cubicle, and into this world of racingand adventuring. [bleep]. bill caswell: yeah, ilearned from books. my dad's a lawyer. i grew up in the suburbs. the nearest welding supplyis 45 minutes. no one i really know buildstheir own race
cars where i live. but if you buy enough books andread enough stuff on the internet, you can kind of dowhatever you want in life. so i was an investment banker. i was doing mortgage-backedsecurities and ceos, and what they call securitization-- basically the bonds that becamethe toxic waste of our current economy. now we kept everything.
we didn't sell it to middleamerica and ruin banks like wall street gets punished for. mike spinelli: well,that's good. so karma's on your side. bill caswell: i guess. we had a huge portfolio of thestuff when the crisis hit. and the bank took awayour capital. and nine months into it,i'm like you know what? this is not that fun.
and a lot of my friends werelet go and laid off. and i'd been dating melaniefor seven years-- mike spinelli: you lookedat your hand. bill caswell: i'venow married. mike spinelli: soyour wife now. bill caswell: my wife now. i proposed to melanie. and i said give me nine monthsto go live my dreams. really i think i askedfor a summer.
in my head, it was a year. she says it was a summer. i say it was a year. right? mike spinelli: argue aboutthat one later. bill caswell: it was aboutjumping cars sideways through the woods with my friends. there was no other goal than togo check out some rallies, which take a day to getto, a couple days to
race, day to get home. and it was about running throughthe country in a rented panel van and gettingdrunk in small-town america, and having fun throwing acar sideways on dirt. i always wanted to do it. i watched it on tv since i wasa kid, like the isle of man videos and just driving. it's just so much fun. and so nine months into it,melanie is just like all
right, this is enough. it's time for you togo back to work. you got to go get a job. mike spinelli: you're an adult,man, and you got to-- bill caswell: and imean, it's not-- i'm not trying to paint abad picture of melanie. it's just that we met eachother in business school. we're both very driven people. and here i am justpartying nonstop.
mike spinelli: takinglike a 180-degree turn into the oblivion. who knew how that wasgoing to turn out. did you think you were goingto go back to work? bill caswell: oh, absolutely. mike spinelli: oh, ok. all right. bill caswell: and i stillmight have to. mike spinelli: ok.
bill caswell: right? i mean, we've been doing thisfor four years now. but back to that, she's likebill, seriously, this was supposed to be a summer. you been driving abunch of rallies. time for you to go find a job. and i'm like yeah,that makes sense. you want to start a family,this kind of thing. we're engaged.
we're supposed to get married. so i'm like all right. one last race. and i start searching theinternet for the largest race that i can find. and i realize the world rallychampionships are coming back to mexico. and i see this rallyamerica class. and i'm like oh, i racein rally america.
i didn't realize that that wasthe name of the rally prior to wrc back in 1979. that's what the eventwas called. mike spinelli: yeah. bill caswell: and they'reallowing a national class of competitors from mexicoto enter the race. they still had to befia legal cars. they still had to be proper racecars, still hundreds of thousands of dollars.
but i just assumedthat was for me. typical, self-centeredamerican. oh, it's all about-- but i decided i was goingto enter that race. and i said melanie, let me gorun this one last race. and when i come back,i'll go get a job. mike spinelli: out with abang, and there you go. bill caswell: yeah. it was someplace, right.
mike spinelli: so at one ofthe-- by the way, one of the best rallies in the world--this is like a really well known and well loved, and likea giant spectator base, and a really cool-- bill caswell: it is the coolest,most passionate race i've ever seen inmy entire life. the le mans without a doubtbigger, but it's like not everyone there'sa die-hard fan. mike spinelli: but youkind of roll in--
bill caswell: people arecrying at wrc mexico. they're so excited to seeloeb do 100 miles an hour over a jump. bill caswell: jumping upand down, freaking out. i've never signed autographsmy entire life. but because we were in the race,we signed hundreds, if not a thousand or moreautographs that weekend. it just feels big. it feels bigger to methan the indy 500.
it feels bigger than le mans,just because of the way the whole scene is opening. ceremonies at night, andturntables with confetti and underground tunnel stages. the streets are lined for miles,getting to the opening ceremonies. it's cool. mike spinelli: ok, so now thatsounds like you just sort of walked in there anddid your thing.
bill caswell: we showed up. i picked up ben slocum, myco-driver in missouri. i knew ben from rallying herein the states, but didn't really know him all that well. and he jumped in the van. and the two of us headed on downto mexico by ourselves, with no team, no crew. so it wasn't just that we ranthe full three-day wrc mexico event, but we did it withoutany service crew.
so we'd pull into our stops,and jump out and change our tires, weld the shock back in. sometimes we didn't have time. we actually just-- we'd takestuff out of the car that was broken, and we'd put it backin later at the next stop. it was a mess. it would have been nice to havea proper service crew, but no one wantedto come with. because they all said i wouldn'tbe allowed to race.
and when i got down there, theofficials were like you know? the cage looks safe. and he's got all theproper safety gear. and he's here. maybe we should justlet him race. and so we got to runthe full wrc stage miles all three days. it was the longest, largestrally i've ever run. and we finished third in ourclass, but still would've beat
wrc cars if we'd beenclassified in the proper fia wrc class. so it was cool, man. and i come back, and my textmessages to sam smith get organized into a story andpublished on jalopnik. so now sam puts that storytogether, puts it on jalopnik, and the thing explodes. and i think it could be-- ifit's not the top story-- bill caswell: it's the second.
second largest story jalopnik'sever published. mike spinelli: so whatthe hell happened? what happened after that? i mean, did the phone justring off the hook? bill caswell: nah,man, don't even-- it's like my facebook blew up. but no one called me tocome race porsches. but you know, at that point, i'mlike this is kind of fun. and maybe i should dosome more of this.
and i think really what promptedwas that i sold-- a bunch of people from hollywoodreached out to buy the life rights to the story. and i sold the story to jeremyrenner and his production company combine to turn intoa full hollywood movie production. and i'm like well, wait asecond, they're going to make a movie about me racing cars. maybe i should keep doing thisfor a little bit and see how
that movie thing shakes out. the movie needs an end. it needs a kind of characterdevelopment. bill caswell: well, the moveis about me quitting investment banking and goingafter my dream of being a rally car driver. and it's about me having funwith my friends and overcoming obstacles, and going after thedream that isn't necessarily society's dream.
and so it's thatkind of thing. mike spinelli: it'sa good pitch. bill caswell: yeah, with all theguys that lost their jobs or were laid off, or all of asudden forced into a sudden switch in their careers. and you're midlife and you takea look around you say is this really what i planned ondoing when i was a kid. i don't know. i mean, most of us were likei want to be an astronaut!
i want to be a firefighter! most just sit at cubicles andplay with spreadsheets. so it's about reestablishingwhat the dream is and going after it. and for me, it's huge, becausei've always been into racing. and i did some wheel-to-wheelracing before i got into finance. and i had a shifter car thati practiced with, and that kind of stuff.
but to me the motor sport dreamin america is broken. there's a disconnect. if you're a 15- 16-year-old kidgetting your license, want to be a pro driver? it's just not going to happen. and so the fact that someonecan take a $500 craigslist car, build it in their mom'sgarage, and go enter epic races, is kind of cool. whether you get sponsoredor not, you at
least get to go play. and that to me is awesome. mike spinelli: it is awesome. and a lot of other peoplethought it was awesome too. and thus, the caswelllegend is born. what did you do after that? this looks like baja. bill caswell: this is baja. so in the next nine months--
mike spinelli: so wait a minute,that's also an e30. tell me about what youdid to that car. bill caswell: thiswas kind of-- so the original story. you said people startedcalling. well, miller welders realizedthat like-- i happened to just walk into amiller welding store and just bought everything. because i didn't know.
i needed it all at once. so i bought miller this-- and miller called me and saidcome up and see us. and i drank too many beerswith them in the sponsor meeting thing and theysaid well, what do you want to do next? i'm like well, there's thisfrenchman schlesser, and he built his own schlesser buggyand he went to dakar. so i want to build my caswellbuggy and go to dakar.
and the room went silent, andthey kind of looked at me and like whatever. and the next morning, they'relike why don't you build that caswell buggy, but runthe baja 1000. you're going to have twoweeks to build it. it starts on thefloor of sema. and so i'd never been to sema. i tried to go the year before,but they told me i wasn't in the industry andwasn't allowed.
bill caswell: right, becauseit's like industry-only, which i thought was really funny. mike spinelli: i mean, that'sthe big aftermarket show in las vegas every year. bill caswell: correct. yes. mike spinelli: i mean,the thing is giant. it's insane. bill caswell: especiallyequipment manufacturers
association. it's every single floor spaceof las vegas is covered with cars and all the tuners andall the accessories. basically anything you buy fora car after it leaves the dealership is whathappens at sema. bill caswell: but it's notfor the general public. it's not like a northamerican auto show. bill caswell: right. so i wasn't allowed to go.
my first time there, i wasbuilding a car on the floor, which i thought wasreally cool. mike spinelli: itwas very cool. bill caswell: and i got tocall all my friends that helped me build the$500 rally car. i'm like you guys, we'regoing to sema. oh, really? how'd you get passes? well, we're goingto be working.
what are we going to be doing? mike spinelli: 24 hours a day. bill caswell: we're going totake an e30 and build it for the baja 1000. and they're like what? and i'm like, yeah,it'll be fine. mike spinelli: i love it. if i had a recording of allyour friends and how many times they've said what?
bill caswell: the emailsthat they send out. they're like, no, you'rekidding, right? i'm like no, seriously. so we dragged a e30 shell intosema, which was great, because it didn't have any wheels. it was on a forklift. it was like teeteringon the forklift. and there's niki lauda,formula one ferrari. and the guy's like going nuts.
don't move that. and they're like all these fansin the green hornet cars going, and all thesefamous cars. and we're rolling in thispile of junk, right? and in 14 days, we gave it like18 inches of suspension travel and 33-inch wheelsand kind of caged it. and we basically builtthe roll cage in and around the unibody. so the full unibody'sin there.
and the engine and thedrive line sits attached to the unibody. the occupants are a partof the unibody. but the suspension's tied intothe cage, which is then tied into the unibody. it was the only way to reallybuild the car at the show. if i did it differently,it would've looked a lot different. but i needed to build iton the floor of sema.
but then when i was done withthe four days, i had no plan. so we towed to san diego, andwe're going to finish in a walmart parking lotdown at the beach. and i swear to god, millergave us a generator. and we were just going to weldin the parking lot all night. and i realized i wasin huge trouble. by the time i towed to sandiego, i had something like eight days or something likethat to finish the car, take it to score and get the chassistag, tow to mexico and
make the start of the race. bill caswell: soi found a srd-- strategic racing designs ofvista, and these guys worked until 5:00 in the morning withthose two guys, plus my four or five friends. one guy's in marketing. one of the guys is a plumber. another guy used to be a serviceadvisor with bmw. we're all just like dudes withregular jobs welding this
thing together. and we finish. we finish the car, madethe start of the race. and sure, we ripped the steeringrack off 180 miles into the race. but i knew that'd be a problem,so i put two more steering racks behindthe seat. and we just changed them in thedesert by a campfire and kept going.
but the second rack we putin was pretty damaged. and by that point,we blew that out. we were like, we justneed to call it. and we were freezing too. you have no idea-- mike spinelli: and inthe desert, it's-- bill caswell: i didn'tthink about that. it's like mexico and baja. i've been to cabo.
it's warm. i wear flip-flops. i've never been so cold. there's no windshield. you're like 80 miles an hourthrough the desert in like 30 degree weather upover mountains. yeah, we were freezing. so yeah, this is what the carkind of turned out like. we mounted two big wheelson the back.
mike spinelli: but that'sreally cool. because baja's sort oflike that anyway. there are a lot of amateurs andpeople that have their own crews and go down there. bill caswell: yeah,but i didn't know. mike spinelli: but it's alsotrophy trucks and stuff. bill caswell: hugetrophy trucks. huge teams and helicoptersand planes supporting it. we just watched "dust of glory"like four or five times
in a row while buildingthe car. that was our only research. mike spinelli: that'sone of the best-- bill caswell: they madeit look a lot easier. there's paved roads, andthere's big pits. and the teams are everywhere. i thought it'd be ok. mike spinelli: but best-- by theway, i don't know if it's on netflix.
but "dust of glory"is a must-watch documentary about baja 1000. it's amazing. bill caswell: agree. bill caswell: totally agree. mike spinelli: all right,so you did baja. it didn't work out so great. then from there, you went--so what happened-- bill caswell: well, that wasall in the first year.
so the first year, i finishedwrc mexico. i decided we wanted to go watchpike's peak, because tajima and rhys millenwere battling for that 10 minute time. bill caswell: and when i waslooking at the spectator information, i realized i couldactually drive in the event, because there wasa class for rally cars. so i called my friends, and i'mlike hey we're going to pike's peak.
and so we took the same $500car, and it was kind of slow going up the mountain. but i went and ranpike's peak. and then the miller thinghappened, went to baja. and then from then on, i've justbeen racing and entering rallies, and having fun anddoing some wheel-to-wheel stuff here and there. like i took some of the cars andentered nasa events at the local track just for fun.
i got to tell you when you drivesideways over jumps in the woods, lapping your localracetrack becomes a little less interesting. and then one of my other bigbucket lists was targa newfoundland which i ran thisfall with vr performance out of michigan. i've known them forever. back when i was a banker,i used to go to their track days.
and horst reinhardt, jr., oneof the owners, called me and say hey, why don't you drivemy e46 m3 in targa newfoundland. i mean i don't getcalls like that. none of my friends getcalls like that. mike spinelli: that'sa good call to get. bill caswell: it's agood call to get. and not to mislead anyone,it's not like i'm a great driver and they're like we'responsoring you to drive.
i paid half the fees. it drives me nuts when peopletalk about getting the call. they get in the seat, andit's really they paid to get in the seat. i mean, i split it with horst. but he gave me a proper wellprepared modern fast car to drive, which was nice, and wefinished second in class behind acp-- andrew comrie-picard.
pro-rally driver, sponsoredby scion, racing the scion x-something or other,lunch box car. mike spinelli: yeah,the xd, right? bill caswell: it's likea lunchbox on wheels. sorry, andrew, it is. it's like a little lunchbox. mike spinelli: so had you-- i mean i'm assuming you'ddriven in a tarmac rally before, right?
or no? bill caswell: the very firstevent that i went to was a tarmac rally-- and anders green, who basicallyis the reason why i'm rallying. we showed up like two hoursbefore the race, and he still got us into it. and he said to me most roadracers never make it past the second stage.
i'm like huh. and he's like if you're havinga moment at every corner, you're going too fast, andyou need to back it down. well, i rolled the window up,and i looked at sam, my co-driver, and i'm like i don'tthink he knows what he's talking about. sure enough, second stage there,we are just sliding right off the road. so he was like spot on.
so this is my first time goingback to a tarmac rally. and it's five days acrossnewfoundland, like northeastern nova scotia. and it's wild. every year, hurricanes come in,so you can see the roads are crazy wet. you have to run onstreet tires. you can't use fancyrace tires. you get six tires for theduration of the week.
we finished second in class. we did it on the dunlopdirezza zis, which i think are cool. and i ran the lastrally in street tires too, just simply-- anyway, so finished second. we beat everyone in theunlimited class above us which was cool, saw the highhorsepower, high-turbo cars, the semi-factory fiat 500 carsthat show up in a semi truck
with samuel hubinetteand jen horsey. mike spinelli: the chryslerteam, was it-- maybe-- mike spinelli: itwas a factory-- bill caswell: to call it thechrysler team might be a little strong. but is it a semi truck with abunch of chrysler engineers? like yeah. mike spinelli: well, perhaps.
bill caswell: and so our car hadair conditioning, nav, and a co-driver who had neverraced before. tons of laps on a racetrack,but had never actually ever competed. bill caswell: and horstis great, man. the guy's been inthe military. he's as cool as can be. but the first stage, i don'tthink he said a word. he was just smiling.
but i was ripping through thesethings, like horst, you got to keep talking, man. mike spinelli: you got togive me some direction. bill caswell: even if you don'tread notes, just talk. just getting up thereand talk. tell me about the shipin the harbor. tell me about the boatthat's out there. just talk into themike, right? but he was having such agood time just smiling.
by the second day, horstwoke up just dialed. and he's reading the notes,and it was just spot on in the odo. and to give horst credit, wedidn't have a rally computer. and i've never useda rally computer. and i didn't realize how--because you have pace notes. so you have a corner and acorner and a corner, and you check the corners offas you go through. well, they give us two noteswhich would be like two miles
off is a hard right. another three milesis a hard left. and you kind of need to know,as you're clicking down that mileage till you get there. so we bought a garmin gps andstuck it to the windshield. but the odo was likeeight-point font. so horst is reading thiseight-point font odo. so we're coming up with stuff. he's like "you have acaution over crest.
jump in, in--" andi'm like horst? like now? or in like a mile?"in, in point--" and, he's like [inaudible]big shaking. he's like it's coming up, butyou're not that close, in 0.8. in 0.8, you've got the jump. all right, man, i gotit, i got it. 0.6, 0.5, 0.3, and he's readingdown the thing. i mean, we were just-- itwas really cool to--
he's a good friend of mine,and it was really cool to watch how quickly thetwo of us synced up. and by like the second daywhen the hurricane came through and started pouringrain, we were just on and it was a blast. and it's fun. it's like pouring rain. you're 120 miles an hourover mountain roads. mike spinelli: it's reallydramatic scenery too.
bill caswell: it's beautifulup there, man. absolutely-- mike spinelli: it mustbe very cool. bill caswell: it's probablyone of the most beautiful places i've ever been. it's pristine. it's clean. it's immaculate. the people are really nice.
you have these like-- you cometo these small fishing villages, and they feedyou lunch for the day. you get to hang out andsee what's going on. i mean, it is sucha good time. they breathalyze youevery morning. and i'm being serious, right? it was a big concernfor my team. i was going to say. bill caswell: but i had a planwhere every time we finished
the stage on the way back to theservice park, we went by the grocery store and filledthe trunk with beer. so we just started drinkingright at 5 o'clock, so that we could go and get a full 12-hoursleep and be rested for the next day,which was fun. mike spinelli: because peoplemake that mistake, where they'll go out-- bill caswell: oh, there'sa bunch of people-- mike spinelli: --get wayloaded at night and--
bill caswell: --that blew overthe breathalyzer, that blew the breathalyzer andcouldn't race. you're out of the race. and so to spend all the moneyand go up there, and then screw that up becauseyou drank is stupid. mike spinelli: because i meanyou're serious about the-- bill caswell: i'm deadserious about it. once i get in the car, i'mdialed and focused. it's just what happens up andto then is a problem.
so someday there'll be a proteam that'll like wall me off, and not allow me to go out andhave fun and this and that. i mean, for example, crawfordperformance. i'm now working with them, andthey're developing their turbo brz, 530-foot pounds of torque,510 horsepower. i think when he put it out indecember, it was the first fully-built internal engineturbo brz in the states. i think there might havebeen an frs in japan. that's it.
the car absolutely flies. and it's fast, man. it's one of the fastest carsi've driven, and i get good night sleeps. and i don't party beforei drive this thing. mike spinelli: but you'redriving this in time attack. bill caswell: that's correct. so it's time attack. so it's one car at a time.
fastest lap wins. mike spinelli: what eventshave you done so far? bill caswell: we did like ared-line time attack, at button willow. we've done some track days todevelop the software, we're playing cool games withthe-- we deleted out-- i don't know if i should betalking about all this. we deleted out the factory-- we deleted out thefactory traction.
controlling and programming ourown software into the ecu that calculates like wheelslip and then adjusts characteristics of the engine tomake it easier to drive as the car starts to slip, withoutgiving away too much of what's going onover at crawford. but all i can tell you isthat the first time-- mike spinelli: oh, by the way,there's your caswell sticker. bill caswell: yeah, exactly. mike spinelli: [inaudible].
bill caswell: i can tell you thefirst time we took it out, the car was a monster and wouldjust light up its wheels all the way down thestraightaway. i mean, you were slightly outof-- you hit a bump, whatever, the car just whaaaa. i mean it was likea drift machine. i think if i had to drive thiscar before doing the rally stuff, i would have beenreally concerned. but the rally sort of helpedyou with the traction.
bill caswell: thecar is sideways through most of the track. it's just makingtoo much power. and we're on street tires. and so it's just the nature oftime attack and what we're doing with the streetcar,street interior and stock seats. the next phase is a properlydeveloped-- i mean, this is a properlydeveloped chassis, but it's
not meant for a full-on race. it's not caged. it's not like crazyrace spring rates. this is meant to be a turbopackage that you can buy from crawford, drive around town,drive to work, take to the track, enter time attack inlike a street or somewhat modified class, and thendrive back home. so it's meant to be usable anddriveable and fun, not like at the limit, knife-edge,fastest car possible.
mike spinelli: not giant wing. bill caswell: butthat comes next. no, i'm serious. we have a new chassis that we'repicking up next week that is getting fully guttedwith like active aero and cage, and probably a wide bodyand full ground effects, and giant splitters and will be, iguess, my car to drive until i screw it up. mike spinelli: and crawford'shad some serious drivers.
bill caswell: yeah,it's an honor. it's actually-- for me, it's ahuge honor to be working with crawford, because his previousdriver was tarzan yamada out of japan. he's got video games in japanafter him where you get to race tarzan. tanner foust drove for himbefore signing with scion and doing drift. and prior to that, he workedwith ken block on the gymkhana
subarus before kenwent to ford. and for me, the crawford thing'skind of special, because i built my rallycar in june of '09. i then went to california,because we were looking at apartments, and i saw xgames was going on. so i went and saw my firstrally cars at x games. and then i saw somecrawford stickers. and i knew crawfordbuilt ken's car. and i wanted to be faster.
this is my practice mule. and later i was going to builda proper rally car. so i actually wentto crawford. and i went in. i stopped by his shop. and i said hey, i'mbill caswell. i built my first rally car. i haven't run itin gravel yet. but i'm going to go out tochicago, and i'm going to need
a shop to build me aproper rally car. and i know you build fastcars, and sat down and talked to them. and i said all right, i'llsee you in two years. and i'm serious. it was two and a half yearslater that crawford called me and asked if i'd come in to talkabout driving his cars. bill caswell: so it was reallywild to go there. mike spinelli: so you didthat, the babe ruth--
bill caswell: i mean,i didn't know. i thought i was going to be inthere like buying stuff, not asking to work with them todevelop these cars, which i got to tell you, dude, that isthe most fun i've had on a racetrack in a long, longtime, at the brz. mike spinelli: oh,it's got to be. it looks insane. bill caswell: it's just 01corvette fast down the straightaways.
it was just stupid fast howthe power comes on. and it doesn't let up. i mean, i'm not a turbo guy. i'm used to drivingbmws, and they're all naturally aspirated. i drive this thing, and itfirst reminded me of the stories you hear about the 930porsche race cars back in the day, where they just comeon like a cannon. straight engine, thecar just goes.
i actually love red line. because i get a second tobreathe, before i have to grab the next gear. i'm serious. just [inaudible]. ok. so yes, the crawford'sthing's cool, man. mike spinelli: so, let's talkabout the 30 for a second, because that's been yourpredominant car.
bill caswell: it has been. actually, i've just switchedthough for rallies. so i left e30, and i wentto the e36 hatchback chassis, the ti. mike spinelli: the ti that youjust ran at the-- we were going to mention this before. we forgot. and we kind of blew-- we've beengabbing this whole time. it's the empire state--
bill caswell: performancerally. mike spinelli: performancerally. bill caswell: espr. mike spinelli: notthat far from-- bill caswell: 90 minutes. mike spinelli: --wherewe are in new york. bill caswell: rockhill,new york, 90 minutes west of manhattan. running through subdivisionsin sort of a foothill.
i don't even know, hills-- it's like mountainy andhilly up there. it's by monticello raceway. yeah, it's wild. i think one stage, we wentthrough 150 driveways. seriously. i only had a couple of momentswhere i actually looked away from the road. and i thought i was putting amailbox through wyatt's side
of the car. mike spinelli: wyatt knox. bill caswell: yeah,wyatt knox. two-wheel drive, national rallychampion, rally america in 2011, i guess it was-- team o'neill chief instructor. one of the fastest guys in theus in at least a two-wheel drive rally car. i'd like to see what he can doin a proper open class car.
wyatt can drive. he's a friend of mine. he's been doing me a favor andco-driving with me, just so i can work on gettingbetter i guess. and we just have a goodtime racing together. so wyatt and i went to espr. for me, it was a differentsort of rally. i've got a trailer,and this and that. but i decided i would try todrive the race car from
chicago to the rally, rally it,and drive home, because it's a tarmac rally. mike spinelli: tarmac. it's tarmac. bill caswell: it's big roads. mike spinelli: it's[inaudible]. bill caswell: andthen of course-- am i allowed to plug-- i'm allowed to plug companiesand stuff, right?
i mean, that's like fair. am i supposed to be looking atthis camera the whole time? mike spinelli: you lookat anything you want. you're killing the floor. no, actually, i forgot. there's a caswellsticker on it. bill caswell: yeah, there is. mike spinelli: you might wantto-- yeah, just take that off. there you go.
bill caswell: so anyway-- but we did so well in targanewfoundland on those dunlops. and i loved them. they weren't full-onrace sticky tires. but they're so driveable thati was able to do things in that e46 m3 and slide andrecover it because they had a lot of feel. so i called up dunlop and waslike, hey, i'm going to run in this tarmac rally.
can i try your new zii tires? so they sent me the direzza ziiswhich are the really the newest iteration of the onesi raced on at targa. and i drove on thosesame set of tires all the way out there. i raced on it. and then i hit a littleguardrail on the end of the day saturday. that's such a minor hit.
mike spinelli: we gotto show that. bill caswell: i wasjust so tired. mike spinelli: i mean, youjust come flying in. it's so hot. and you know something'sgoing to happen. bill caswell: i nailedit the stage before. mike spinelli: you did,right, you did. bill caswell: nailed itthe stage before. mike spinelli: to yourcredit, you did.
bill caswell: i wasin california. i flew to chicago. i had like 36 hoursto prep the car. i got four hours of sleep. i then started drivingto the event. the battery died. first, i got pulled over. and it wasn't even for me. it's just the cop turnedthe lights on.
i assumed because i'm drivinga race car on the road. and it's street legal. it's got a cat, registered,insured. but i assumed he waspulling me over. i went to go restart the carand the battery was dead. yeah, i know. thanks to that batterycompany. anyway, so i don't needto nail them. it's fine.
they're good guys. but the battery dies. it's like 3:00 in the morning. we call a tow truck. i sit there for an hour. truck shows up. i bribe the tow truck driver togo through a 24-hour truck stop, where i run into the back,and i find a mechanic who gets me this likesemi truck battery.
it's the biggest damn thingi've ever seen. but luckily my wiring'sredone. i just dropped it in theback of the car, and hooked it back up. i also gave him $20 for his voltmeter in his toolbox, so i could make sure the alternatorwas running. and once i checked that in themiddle of the truck stop, i went back inside and saidhey, can you tow me to holiday inn a mile up?
so they unloaded my brokencar at the holiday inn. i got like three and a halfhours sleep, woke up, hooked the new battery up, andstarted cranking back east to new york. got into that stupidhurricane monsoon thing that rolled through. and i should have checkedthe maps. i drove with the eye of thestorm for like 12 hours all the way across.
if i'd just waited anhour, i could have driven in clean weather. but no, i stayed in thestupid eye of the storm the whole way. and thanks to dunlop-- your tires rule. the car is actually driveablein monsoon rain. i know i'm plugging them. but, dude, they'vebeen good to me.
i don't take product fromcompanies i don't believe in. so if i'm talking about aproduct, it means i would've paid money for that product. it's what i race on. it's not like i'm just whoringmyself out to sponsors. i just don't do that. so i feel comfortable. well, anyway-- mike spinelli: well, real quick,because the e30 is such
an icon car. bill caswell: yeah, i know. mike spinelli: they'regoing up in value. bill caswell: that's partof the problem. i can get the e36 ti cheaper. mike spinelli: well, yeah, butwhat was it about the e30 in general that made the carthat you were going to-- bill caswell: it's the firstcar i ever owned. it was my car in college.
bill caswell: and so back inchicago, when it would rain and snow, i'd take thecar out at 2:00 in the morning and drive. there were these bigsubdivisions being built at the time, and they hadno houses in them. and sometimes they had chainsand stuff on the front gate. i shouldn't be talkingabout this stuff. but the point is i go in thesnow and just drive this thing sideways all day long, andused to just love it.
crank the music upand have fun. and so that motor blewits timing belt. and then i went back-- i went and got my job,and i was working. i lived above a barnes noble. i was playing chess. i was playing allthese chess-- i was reading chess books. i go running on thelake front.
there's a chess pavilion. i'd play the homeless guys,and they'd beat me. mike spinelli: yeah, becausethey're great. bill caswell: andi'd giving these homeless guys my dollars. and i'm like i've got a graduatelevel education, and i can't beat the homeless guy? so i went to the bookstore, andbought a book on chess and started studying.
bill caswell: till they wouldn'tplay me anymore, and kind of ruined it. but so then one dayi got looking for anything else to read. and i found a chilton manualon how to repair cars. so i towed that e30 home, andthat was the first time i ever worked on a car. i went to sears. i bought some tools.
mike spinelli: so you'recompletely self-taught. i mean just literally youcouldn't get more self-taught than you. other than asking otherpeople and stuff. yeah, i don't know. i mean, i don't-- mike spinelli: but you didn'tgo to like lincoln tech or something-- bill caswell: no, man.
i don't even have friendsthat are mechanics. i don't know anyone-- now, i know people that workon their own cars. but at the time, my momwas like you should be playing more golf. mike spinelli: thanks, mom. bill caswell: i know. and so i got done buildingthe car. and i'm like now whatdo i do with it.
it's still worth $500. and someone's like well, youshould go autocross it. and i was like i don't wantto race through cones. and i went there and got crushedby the competition. so i bought a bookon autocross. mike spinelli: on autocross. bill caswell: i'm serious. mike spinelli: because you livedabove barnes and noble. bill caswell: soloto competition.
it was like this old 911 on thecover going around a cone. and did that for a little bit. and started doing really,really well. and then they're like you needto go to the race track. because like a local bmw shop,this guy leo franchi was like it's time for you to go to thetrack and come through my shop on saturdays. and i'll give you myold racing parts. and you can go to the track.
and that started with that. so originally, i only knewhow to work on the e30s. it's the only car i've evertouched with tools. it's what my book taughtme how to work on. so i don't reallyknow subarus. mike spinelli: so you're justcomfortable with it. bill caswell: yeah, i cantell people how to fix those over the phone. i know them cold.
bill caswell: usea 13 mill bolt. take this out. then take that. i can see the whole carin 3d in my head. so it's easy when we haveproblems to be able to repair the car. like when we hit the guardrailin espr, we had an hour to repair the car. and we just took it out,stretched the frame.
we hooked up to a truck,stretched the frame thing back out, put the radiator backin, patched the radiator. mike spinelli: and like when youwent to mexico, that was-- whenever stuff happenedin service, you guys knew what to do. you could just-- i mean, there's only a few otherguys i'd actually want helping-- that i think arefaster than me on the car. bill caswell: like,i built it.
i know the car. i know what's in it. i can tear it apart quickerthan most of my friends. so why shouldn't ibe wrenching on it, working on it. mike spinelli: and real quick,because this is-- so these stickers-- so thecaswell sticker mafia is just like really, really, really-- bill caswell: it gets startedin the baja 1000.
bill caswell: i was told thatthe guys in the service band, they were going to beroaming around baja. they needed to bring stickers,porn, and i think some beer. something like that? they're like the best thing youdo is buy a bunch of porn mags and a bunch of stickers,and fill the car with them. and as you go through all thepolice checkpoints, you just throw porn and stickers outthe window and keep going. mike spinelli: that'sa kind of bribery.
bill caswell: that'swhat all the-- that's what the oldguys told me. that's what the oldguys told me. like, bring stickers and porn. i'm like all right. we didn't actuallybring any mags. but i printed 10,000caswell stickers. and we handed those out. and people loved them.
and they went all over the bajaplacing them everywhere. and we had fun. i had no idea how much fun itwas to stick a sticker on something, like a child. it's really fun. mike spinelli: it's fununtil you got-- tell me about that time youwere in the bar and the-- was it the bar owneror the bartender? bill caswell: is thatthe missouri one?
mike spinelli: i don't know. was that missouri? where was that where youhad a little trouble. bill caswell: it wasat 100 acre woods. and one of the locals at 100acre woods, and the dude-- he also races a rally car. he runs the [inaudible] subaru car, evan cline. absolutely freaked out.
(surfer accent) so angry atyour goddamn stickers. (normal voice) i'mlike really? they're just stickers, man. they're just stickers. mike spinelli: and theypeel off fairly easy. bill caswell: yeah, they'rehigh-quality vinyl. they leave no residue. they're not like permanenttagging. but yeah, i walk into the bar,and i'm seeing all my friends,
and he just knocks me down. i get up. i'm like dude, really. and he pushes me and knocksme down again. he's like fight me! mike spinelli: stickers! bill caswell: no, he'slike fight me now! and i'm like really, evan? they're just stickers, dude.
and then his buddy is one of thelocal guys there, comes in and he's like i've beenpissing on your stickers all night. and i'm like what? and i'm like you reachedinto the urinal to put my sticker there? i'm like yo, dude, thank you. it's like one of the nicestthing anyone's ever done. you realize now everyone inthe bar has now seen the
caswell sticker? mike spinelli: yeah,a few times. that's probably the bestplace to put it. bill caswell: i'm stilllaughing, because i just can't believe someone could get soangry over the stickers. so the bar owner throwsthe local guy out. and he calls a bunchof his friends. and there's 20 of them waitingin the parking lot outside the bar.
and so the other drivers arelike, dude, i think you might have a problem. and one of the guys pulls up andsaid a guy was shot dead in the parking lot like ninemonths prior at the same bar. mike spinelli: oh, crap. yeah. bill caswell: and i'm likethere's no way and we pulled the news story. it's like "man killedat the roadhouse."
we're like holy [bleep]. yeah, so who knew? bill caswell: so i goto the bathroom, and i call state police. and i'm like yeah, there'sa posse waiting in the parking lot. i know someone was killedin this thing like nine months ago. we're ok taking ourchances, but like
you've now been warned. and if another guy gets shot,and you guys didn't do anything, it's probablylike a problem. so i hang up. and like 10 minutes later,the state police roll in. they're like who's caswell? i'm like i am! and so paul donlin, who's myco-driver at the time-- the cops walked us out.
and they're like all right,so where's your car? and paul and i lookat each other. and neither of us can drive. we were going to catcha ride out of there. so the guys are now yelling atthe police about the stickers. and the state police are likeare you guys kidding? and we just jump inthe back of this-- there's like this couple andthey've got their suv and a bunch of friends.
and we just open the doorsand get in with them. and they're like whoare you guys? you just got to take usinto town, drop us at the holiday inn. please. so we end up catching a ridewith some total strangers. we're like, dude, see all thisstuff that's going on? it's actually really stupid. it's kind of embarrassing thatpeople get so upset, they want
to start a fightover stickers. mike spinelli: over stickers. bill caswell: but imean, i get it. the issue now is that it's notreally me doing the tagging. i think i printed like 90,000 or100,000 of these stickers. so they're on the signs ofthe equator in kenya. one of the guys-- mike spinelli: that'sthe cool thing. because they're everywherenow.
i mean, they're allover the world. bill caswell: yeah they are kindof all over the world. someone's actually swears thatthey put it in one of the cargo containers andit's up in the international space station. i mean, i'm like dude,there's no way. and he's like yeah, dude, ipromise you it's on the inside of the last shipment of cargocontainer that's sitting up in the internationalspace station.
mike spinelli: so there maybe a caswell sticker. bill caswell: i know that whenwe toured the rahal letterman alms haulers, we taggedall the drivers' lockers on the inside. but they did reallywell at that race. so it's like a superstitionwith drivers. and the stickers actuallystayed up. and i think they might still bein the haulers right now. so the drivers' lockers, thefire suits, so it's like
sorry, joey, bill. but that's fun. mike spinelli: yeah, yeah. bill caswell: but no,we're just having a good time with it. it's not meant to be anythingmore than just fun. mike spinelli: cool. so what's the very next thing? so you're doing thecaldwell thing.
bill caswell: the next thing isdriving for crawford this summer in time attack. mike spinelli: didi say caldwell-- i meant crawford. bill caswell: crawford,yeah, it's all good. i'm caswell. he's crawford. caldwell's in the middle. no, so driving for crawford.
crawford's doing some coolstuff for the brz. the next event i'll be atis rally west virginia. it's 170 miles of stage milesbased out of snowshoe mountain at the top of this resortin west virginia. it's going to bea great event. so yeah, i'm kind ofexcited for that. and then we'll see whereit takes me. mike spinelli: yeah, man. bill caswell: oh.
what i am doing is next week-- i don't know when this comesout-- or next month, sorry. next month, i'm going to 24hours in [inaudible]. and then we're driving downthrough the alps to f1 monaco, all in one week. cool. bill caswell: yeah,why not, right? mike spinelli: yeah, why not? bill caswell: i can takevacations from my vacation.
mike spinelli: so you're stillon vacation, technically? or you do some work though. bill caswell: i do work,but it's all kind of behind the scenes. i sell my caswell shirts andbuild, race, party pint glasses and we'll ramp-- mike spinelli: build,race, party, by the way, is this sticker. you'll see that sticker,i'm sure.
bill caswell: so i've beenpaying rent by selling stickers, pint glasses. i have skateboards comingout, that kind of stuff. but the next goal is to finda way to monetize this lifestyle, so i can keepracing and having fun. otherwise, it means maybe goingand getting a desk job, which would be a bummer afterfour years of doing this. mike spinelli: thatwould be a bummer. bill caswell: it's ok, though.
i mean, i could sit in a cubiclefor 20 years now, just living off the memoriesof what i'm been able to do with my racing. mike spinelli: well,that's cool. that's very cool. and you do a lotof cool stuff. and i'm sure you're goingto be doing more cool stuff, mr. caswell. bill caswell: i hope so.
thanks. mike spinelli: goodto see you, man. bill caswell: good to see you. mike spinelli: i'llsee you very soon. "after/drive."facebook.com/drivetv, @drive on twitter, comments below. i will see you guys next week.
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