“You Can’t Fail - Impossible to Fail” - TJ Hunt’s Journey and What’s Next
6/10/20263 hr 4 min
For the final episode of season 3, Very Vehicular is delighted to present none other than TJ Hunt! Rolling up to the studio in a minty white V8 Vantage, with the all-time longest Very Vehicular episode record firmly in his sights, TJ hasn’t come to play, he’s here to win! In a departure from form, Scotto has the mic turned around on him as TJ unleashes his pent-up questions in desperate need of answers. This reverse interview has it all: origin stories, the dawn of YouTube, the art of growing a business (and what happens when you lose one!), love, loss and identity, even movies: it’s practical therapy, people! So unhook your phone (shout out, landline generation), slip out to grab some milk & cigarettes, do whatever you must - this episode is not to be missed! Most of all? As ever, enjoy.
Partners:
Vyper Industrial
FCP Euro
Heatwave Visual
Wera Tools
KW Suspension
Producer: Nick Rutter @nickrutterarts
Music: SlikSound
Patreon: https://patreon.com/u37266647
https://bio.site/321actionaction
00:00 - Welcome & Introduction
00:36 - Heat Wave Visual & KW Suspensions
02:15 - The Name’s Hunt… TJ Hunt (that new Vantage)
05:10 - California Cop Stories
08:45 - That Time TJ Was in a Ford GT Commercial
10:45 - Early Days on YouTube and Vlogging
19:11 - BRZ Forums and Blackjack
23:22 - A Shift of Business Mindset
30:30 - GT3 Conversions. For When You’ve Run out of Kinks
38:29 - Cars as Trading Cards
39:07 - Why Builds Beat Driving
40:34 - Back When TJ Was Kinda Hating on Hoonigan
44:37 - There’s Always a Bigger Fish
50:03 - How the Hoonigan Zumiez Deal Happened
50:48 - Sponsor: FCP Euro
01:05:23 - How Daily Transmission Happened
01:13:12 - Studying Ken Block’s Playbook
01:15:31 - Formula Drift or NASCAR?
01:17:46 - Getting Back to Just Having Fun in Cars
01:21:14 - Dreams From Magazines to Movies
01:24:38 - Hollywood Gatekeepers and Indie Film
01:29:40 - Trauma, Burnout, and Identity Therapy
01:48:55 - Scaling the Business of TJ Hunt
01:51:59 - Would Hoonigan Survive Today?
01:57:38 - Skills Learned Building Hoonigan
01:59:44 - When I First Met Ken Block, I Wrote This Down
02:03:56 - Sponsors: Vyper Industrial & Wera Tools
02:05:12 - Wheel Pros Renaming - TJ’s Take
02:07:52 - Why YouTube Beat TV
02:11:01 - Just Down the Block from the Berrics
02:16:45 - Is Racing the Next Chapter?
02:23:40 - Competitiveness And Hyperfixation
02:26:33 - Building Hunt & Co and Street Hunter
02:28:42 - Culture Vultures - When Collabs Aren’t the Real Deal
02:42:55 - What’s After YouTube for TJ?
02:59:10 - Would Scotto & TJ… Make a Film Together?
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBrian Scotto· Host0:00
What's up, and welcome back to another episode of Very Vehicular, brought to you by Viper Industrial. And as always, I'm your host, Brian Scotto. Today, we have TJ Hunt, and he came to win. Yeah, that's right, we set the record for the longest Very Vehicular podcast ever. And he kinda turned the table on me and asked me a bunch of hard questions. We get into the business of this thing that we do. We also get into a little bit of a therapy session together, and lastly, we talk about cars. Yeah, we actually, we, we did talk about cars as well. Anyway, like I said, this is gonna be a long one. I'd go grab a snack. Everybody knows wearing sunglasses at night is for douchebags. Fortunately, Heatwave Visual also makes apparel. They've got great designs on everything from hats, hoodies, T-shirts, and even socks. But what they really kill at is their collabs. For example, they have an ongoing series with Chevy that includes the Heartbeat of America shirt I'm wearing now, plus a rad series with Chevy trucks. They've also worked with my friends at Eisenhower Racing, and who knows, maybe one day there'll be a Scotto edition. And if you wanna see that happen, head on over to their Instagram @heatwavevisual and get to pestering them. Thanks. What's that old saying? Don't ever meet your heroes. Unfortunately, this applies to cars, too, as my buddy Ken Block discovered when he bought his Ford RS200. To say it politely, the suspension sucked, so we went to KW to fix it on their seven-post suspension rig. Some say it was misappropriated in the middle