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Welcome to the Yoga Nation The Spread of Gratitude Podcast on the OneTech platform.
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Hello friends, my name is Yogash Patel, and this podcast explores the themes of bullying self-awareness and the power of our inner spirit, including the silent battles we all face.
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Join me every week as I invite high-profile guests as we explore how adversity shapes us, how gratitude lifts us, and how we can all uncover the inner strength that we all have within ourselves.
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Join the conversation.
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I appreciate you listening in.
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How many people do you know who can take apart and rebuild every nut and bolt of a century-old car?
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For all you history lovers and car buffs, my next guest is someone very special.
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Alan Travis isn't just a collector, he's a storyteller who brings 100 Euro cars back to life piece by piece.
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His passion, and you'll see why on this episode, has reached over 50 million views online in just the last two years, as he's been featured on Jay Leno's Garage, The Guild in Canada, and ESPN Radio.
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But here's what makes him unforgettable.
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Alan opens his door on his Scottsdale, Arizona home, which he calls a collection, to share these treasures to everyone, and boy, is it impressive.
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When he restores a car, he just doesn't tune it up.
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He takes them apart, sometimes over 3,500 individual pieces, and brings history roaring back to life.
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With that, with gratitude, welcome to the podcast, Alan.
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Thank you.
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Absolutely.
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My pleasure and my honor.
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So got a side question to ask you, Alan.
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Have uh could you take apart a modern F1 car driven by the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen?
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No, because it's not exciting.
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You know, that's was created just a few years ago.
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Most of my cars are and vehicles are 125.
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You know, my newest ones are 110 years old, and they're kind of boring.
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I like the ones that are 120 to 125 years old.
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Um and the the masters of and the inventors mind all in one piece created those.
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And and I try to put myself back in the same mindset as those people back then.
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That's why I read all my 8,500 books and magazines.
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Um and then all those magazines are 1895 to 1915.
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So if I'm going to do a 1902 car or motorcycle, I'll get out a hundred magazines, 1902 and earlier, and and 50 hardbacks, and then I'll read those, put myself in my that mindset.
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And then what I've learned to do is make sure when I'm doing the 1902 vehicle, I don't look ahead and get some 1903 and 1904 magazines out because maybe they've perfected something a little bit better.
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I don't want to be there.
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I want to do it.
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Well, what's the appeal?
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Is it is it the engineering behind it?
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Is it the historical record at the time?
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What draws your interest to these very vintage uh uh uh treasures?
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Well, these I I choose and I seek all over the world, is what I've done.
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Is the the first and the oldest of each invention production vehicle.
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You know, and most of the time the people, if it was a Dirac vehicle or a Renault vehicle or a Bugatti vehicle, you know, Andre Michelin was there working on it.
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Mr.
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Itra Bogatti worked on that car, and his ignorance his initials are on there.
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So it's the passion of those people creating that vehicle for the next person to own.
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Um, and the next person to own, they created these cars for a lifetime.
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That's why there's so much hands-on craftsmanship, and then you're taking that apart, maybe for the first time in 120 years, and then you're you're not trying to modify it, you're not trying to make a hot rod, you're rebuilding that what they created for you to have.
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That's amazing.
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And if these cars can talk, what would they say?
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They they do talk.
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Um, you know, you you find trials and tribulations, and after you get one done, you read the next year's magazines or books, you find out what they changed.
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And all and they uh like Iotropagati, we have the oldest Bugatti Grand Prix car.
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Um he he decided that he'd only sell them to the pilots, the aces at the time, the 1912, 13, 14 pilots, because those are the people that are courageous enough to race his Bugatti.
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And then to get a car from him, you had to go to a chateau in France, you had to ride thoroughbreds in the morning, and then in the afternoon, you you flew your airplane a little bit in the airfield that was around there, and then you had a lesson or an hour or two with a car, and you you repeated that for 30 days, and when he thought you were eligible and worthy of the car that he created for you, you could have it.
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But there weren't there's no dealerships, there's no car lots.
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You know, you you you maybe you had an agent that would talk to you that you would be a likely candidate to own one, but you didn't, you couldn't just go get one.
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You couldn't just go get one.
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There's there was no manufacturing at the time.
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So that's what my cars and motorcycles are.
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So you feel the weight of history.
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Well, I do.
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And when I when I start a car, when I start a restoration, for example, the Bugatti, since we mentioned that one first, um, there's you know, hundreds of people in the world know that, okay, Alan Travis has the oldest Bugatti Grand Prix car, and he thinks he's gonna restore it.
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So it's like everybody in the world is watching me, and if I screw it up, Alan Travis screwed it up.
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So that's why I spent so many hours on that one, and then I got it all done, and it's perfect.
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And I've raced international Bugatti Grand Prix at Lime Rock and Washington's Glenn and Laguna Seca.
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I've taken it on 500-mile tours, I've done mountain climbs so they they know they know that I got it done.
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In fact, something bad happened a couple years ago.
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We were on a tour in Pasarobos, California, and then we were driving it spiritedly in the mountains, in the mountain roads.
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And I broke an axle on it, you know, going fast on the high-speed roads, which means if you break an axle, you're tired and a wheel fly off and you're skidding on the road.
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And so people were, you know, online would say, Alan Travis ruined a multi-million dollar car, say.
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I mean, they do some a few said that.
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And then other people would chime in and say, Yeah, but he's the one that restored it.
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Just wait.
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So within a month, I had it all repaired, and I just had to wait for the fender to get paid painted, but and now we've we using it again, it's perfect again.
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So I you you live the same history that they lived back then because it's not different, it's the same.
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And the last uh answer to that question is every one of my 25, you know, 100 and some year old vehicles, they exactly run like they did back 120 years ago.
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You know, the same driving experience.
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If I gave you the owner's manual and you translated it from French or German or whatever it is, the same buttons you push, the same levers you you you toggle, or is exactly what you do today.
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If it didn't have a windshield back 125 years ago, it doesn't today.
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And you you have the exact same experience.
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So if I gave you the magazine and gave you the experience, it's the same.
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Well, and again, you just don't fix these vehicles, right?
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These cars.
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You research their history and honor the owners who come before.
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And I think you mentioned that earlier.
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What's the most moving story you've uncovered while restoring one of these classics?
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Um, I guess my 1905 Mitchell was the first car in Northern California.
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It was bought by the uh mine superintendent for the Orville Mines in actually in the Dredgerville, which is in the stream.
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Uh it was it was the first car in Butte County, and then uh the the lake or the river it in Oroville flooded in February of 1906.
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Uh that when it flooded, it killed 25% of the people in the town in Dredgerville, which is right 100 yards from Oroville.
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Uh but in the summertime when the water receded, they the townspeople went back and got the car out of the river.
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So it was submerged in the river for six months.
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The car only had a few thousand miles on it, but the townspeople and the family cherished it so much they drug it out, they put it in a basement of a house, it stayed there until 1990.
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This car, and then it's right behind me.
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I it's it's that one there.
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In fact, I give you, I'll get a picture real quick.
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This is the picture of how I got it.
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And then I told them when I when I bought it that I would have it done in a month or so, a couple months, and I'd bring it back to them and give them all rides in their car.
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Why did it stay in the basement from 1906 to 1990?
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Because nobody was born in their family that could fix it and restore it.
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So they kept waiting for other people to be born.
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More and more and more, you know, they had many generations, and my title for the car is 1905, and the same title has the title of the house on it.
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Same address, same property.
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So I I got it all done, I brought it back to them, and then um I dressed them all up in in fancy hats and lace and all that stuff, gave them all rides.
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Um that that just that's just one story that and that every one of these has the same story.
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It wasn't a wealthy family, but they had so much passion for that car, even in that condition, they kept it in the garage for 115 years before I even got it to restore it.
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Incredible, incredible.
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Well, and what do you think are the parallels in restoring a car and restoring a person's life from a hardship or challenge experience?
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Because again, what this podcast aims to do, Alan, is to provide inspiration, education, entertainment, which I'm getting a lot of that right now.
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But more importantly, discover something about yourself.
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And so what I like to do is I like to bring these diverse guests and with their passions be able to connect the dots in terms of how what they do on a regular basis influences and affects their self-awareness, their inner spirit, their sense of gratitude.
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So curious to find out again, going back to the original question, the parallels that you see in restoring a car versus uh restoring a person's perhaps mental and or physical health.
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None of my vehicles have been restored from derelicts.
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You know, they were always cherished, they were always, even if they got in derelict condition, they were always kept back in their barn or their building or their garage somewhere or another for a hundred and some years.
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So I've when I restore a car, I do complete vehicles and I don't hunt things.
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So they're I start with at least the mass of the vehicle.
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I guess the only time I've ever had any issue ever, you know, when you ask if I ever had a hardship, I don't count it as a hardship.
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I'm an engineer, but I had a triple bypass 21 years ago.
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And then um they do the they take your heart out and they put new veins and that kind of stuff in.
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And then my worst, the worst thing that anybody ever told me ever in my whole life was when I woke up, you know, an hour after I woke up, they said, Well, now from now on you can start doing scrapbooking and you can um you'll be fine if you scrapbook, but you need to just do that, relax, don't.
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And that was the worst possible thing somebody could tell me.
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So in the hospital bed, I started entering uh triathlons, marathons, you know, 10K's.
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I even entered Iron Man.
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So I was not gonna do scrapbooking.
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So the same thing on the cars, you know, there's you know, maybe you could take apart any of the cars um and make something else out of them, but the cars are the same, the same core of them being perfectly fine, just a little bit of effort put onto them, then they're exactly as brand new again as I was by starting to do my running and my marathons and my triathlons and things.
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So I never ever did the scrapbooking.
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I guess to me it also speaks to don't listen to your detractors.
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And Dr.
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Dietrich himself did the surgery, and I've outlived all of the doctors.
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I'm I'm doing really I play pickleball every day, I do everything.
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I we hike, we do all of it.
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So I and the same thing as my cars, they do all of it.
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You know, if I want to take any car, that an 1895 car, and I want to go to Costco tonight, in fact, Mary's at a my wife's at an event tonight, I may take one of the cars that's 120 years old, I might go out to dinner with it.
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Because there's they're back to perfect again, like what I am from 21 years ago having my triple bypass.
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It's the same thing.
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That's the parallel that I draw.
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And you've dreamt about owning cars ever since uh you were a young teenager.
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Oh, way earlier than that.
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It was it was in the 1950s.
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I was five or six years old.
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Wow.
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Well, what does it look like?
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I mean, what is give us that sense of perspective, Alan, when you wrote down the cars that you were dreaming of owning, you happen to have it.
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So, what does that journey of from imagination to reality teach this next generation about dreaming big with the power of belief?
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In when I was four or five years old, I would write poems and little short stories for the outside, the back cover of the Arizona Republic next to the crossroad puzzles.
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They would also, in that same back page, they would have comics of antique cars.
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And I got interested in antique cars at five years old by those comics, which were Tad Burness drawings.
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They weren't actual photos of cars.
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And then I started reading all the specs because I was always an engineering type kid.
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Um, and then I got a book.
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My grandfather in the 50s, 1958 or 59, gave me the Tad Burness book, and get and I put all my killippings in that book, which I still have today, which I showed you, and then I started writing down the cars that I wanted, which is I wrote down 25 cars, which is about what I have today.
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Now I've learned a little bit from when I was four or five years old to in my 70s.
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So I have replaced a few of those names and brands with other names and brands.
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So in my in my overall simple mind, I've got 17 or 18 of those cars.
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In fact, I have none of them, but I have the the start of the conversation by my handwriting when I was five years old on this car and that car and the other car.
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But I've gotten in the last 50 years, I want to go older and older and older.
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So I want the oldest ones in the world, which weren't actually presented to me when I was five years old.
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Yeah.
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Do you think you're just you're just lucky that you found your passion early on?
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Because again, what I'm trying to do is also draw parallels to folks that perhaps may not know what their North Star is, and you know, finding uh avenues like this podcast to help them explore or rediscover their passions.
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I think there's something to be said about what you're good at internally and letting that shine.
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I had five or six times in my life that I simple sentences or simple uh motions led my life the way where it is today.
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You know, Boy Scouts, merit badges.
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Okay.
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You can get merit badges, you can be an Eagle Scout, and every one of the merit badges you learn not tying electronics and this and that and the other.
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So when I was eight or nine years old, I took a merit badge for electronics, and then that was great.
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So when I was uh well, seventh grade, I started studying for my first class FCC license, which is the highest level engineering license for being an engineer at a radio and TV station, and I got that license when I was in eighth grade.
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So the little little hint of of achieving something really meant a lot to me.
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I could if I could achieve something.
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Uh something my my father said, or my mama and dad said when I was 13 years old, when I was kind of looking at cars, you know, 10 way too early to drive, but my parents said, Well, you can't have a car unless you have a brand new car and you have to have enough money saved for your insurance and all.
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So that next day I started doing yard work for people.
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I took I planted people's petunias, I took care of pets, I was a substitute for paper routes, and by the time I was 14, I had enough money to buy a new car and to loan my parents enough for a motorhome.
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So just a little bitty, little pushes, like the hearted triple bypass thing with a little push of the scrapbook, you know, in my rebellious nature, allowed me to be an achiever.
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Well, I don't think it's necessarily rebellious, I just think that it was uh good parenting along with environment and a little bit of perhaps stubbornness, as I like to call.
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This is great.
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This is this is amazing, Alan.
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Thanks for sharing all this perspective again.
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Uh, for those listeners that are out there, I mean, what we're seeing is really history in motion and history in the making through the lens of what Alan is doing to help restore these classic and vintage cars.
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And speaking of which, you're part of a Bugatti, well, I like to pronounce it Bugatti car club that that helped raise and donate a lot of money towards uh McPherson College in Kansas to inspire students.
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And so why was it so important for you to tie your legacy to education?
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Um, somebody's got I've got to instill my passion into these vehicles.
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Otherwise, where are they gonna go?
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If they go to a museum, they die.
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You know, because there's nobody in a museum, there's no docent that can start these and run these and drive these and jump these and do the things that I've done.
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You know, I've crossed the Australia the Outback, we've done the Great American Race many times, I've done London Brighton.
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I mean, it's not that they look good, you have to use them.
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So what I what a the um the parallel for McPherson College is that McPherson College, we gave them a lot of money, and they we instructed, I didn't, but the people in the Bugatti Club instructed them to make a manual for the race cars for the pre-World War I racing Bugattis.
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So they spent six months, the students did that.
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And it only it turned out I have the only one in the world that's running.
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So there's none, there's none of them.
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So I decided that since I was going back to Watkins Glenn for International Bugatti Grand Prix, Watkins Glenn is in New York, I would bring my car, and then I know Kansas has to be halfway or along the way.
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So I called McPherson College and I said, I'll bring a Bugatti to your college.
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I don't know what you have for me, but I can just drop it off or I can you know talk about a little bit.
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So the um we go there, and then they say, you can have a half hour from 9 to 9.30 in the morning on the Friday that I got there.
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So I got there Thursday night, I dropped it off, and then I had a lot of students surround the car and ask me questions.
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So the next morning I got there at 9 o'clock, and then I had a hundred and fifty students around me asking me questions.
00:19:46.240 --> 00:20:08.799
And it continued for another hour, and I had two or three hundred students in the round, as it turned out, and then the the students, the dean was going to have a dean report or a dean uh celebration at noon, where the dean talks to all the students and encourages them to be good and to you know continue their studies and learn restoration and all.
00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:12.799
So it as it turned out in the round, it kept going on.
00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:23.759
10, 10:30, at 11 o'clock, I they released every one of the classes, all 800 students, to me and to this big room that the Bugatti was in the center of, and I was in the center of in the round.
00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:32.079
So then at 11:30, the dean came to me, and two of the teachers that had been there for 40 years, and they said, We've never seen this before.
00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:49.279
We we know the students know you, and we know that they know you know for every aspect about restoration and the history and the passion and in painting and the parts and rebuilding the engines and all, but we've never seen students ever be so incredibly interested in it in a speaker.
00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:59.039
Normally our students in five minutes they start kind of rotating around, in six minutes they start looking at their phone, seven or eight, nine minutes they start giggling or or whispering.
00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:01.920
We saw none of that, and there's hundreds of people around you.
00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:04.559
I'm gonna make an announcement, the dean said.
00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:07.599
I'm gonna make an announcement that we're canceling the dean's talk today.
00:21:07.680 --> 00:21:10.319
We're gonna continue with you till 12 or 12:30.
00:21:10.400 --> 00:21:16.079
Whenever the students get tired of this, we have never seen this in 40 years, where the students are so interested.
00:21:16.319 --> 00:21:28.160
So that's that's a one of the many, many goosebump times in my life that sharing information on what I learned and what I love is really helping people.
00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:32.240
And then the next year, so let's skip that a minute, that it was pack fabulous.
00:21:32.319 --> 00:21:44.480
So the next year, McGherson College called and they said, we'd like to bring 12 of our top students, 12 of our top donors, and 12 of the top families with those students and the five or six teachers.
00:21:44.640 --> 00:21:56.000
We want to fly them all from Kansas to Scottsdale, and for you to give our group a presentation of your collection, um, we think that's the best thing in the world.
00:21:56.160 --> 00:22:01.119
And they did that, and there was another goosebump minute which lasted two or three hours, also.
00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:15.119
So it just, you know, sharing is really important because I know that the at least 800 students in that go to Kansas to McPherson College are gonna be uh nice stewards of our hobby and our vehicles.
00:22:15.359 --> 00:22:26.799
Yeah, and I'm sure just seeing these students as light and the their eyes light up, I'm sure that probably was one of those goosebumps moments that you just mentioned.
00:22:27.039 --> 00:22:34.640
So so in our hobby, you know, to me, money and what something might or might not be worth has nothing to do with it.
00:22:34.799 --> 00:22:37.359
It's all of the stuff, all the other stuff.
00:22:37.519 --> 00:22:44.559
You know, so it's somebody just the opposite of me, but somebody might, somebody that uh people might think is similar to me.
00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:52.559
Somebody might buy a car for a million dollars at an auction and put it in their living room and then show people from time to time, look at what I have in my living room.
00:22:52.799 --> 00:22:59.920
Well, my cars aren't in my living room, my cars are driven, get dirty, leak, or registered, insured.
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:09.599
We go on rallies and tours and take them to elementary schools, and you know, we really, really enjoy and use our vehicles.
00:23:09.920 --> 00:23:13.680
Do you think there's a uh parallel?
00:23:13.759 --> 00:23:15.279
Maybe not not the right word.
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:18.079
I'm just trying to think of the idea that I'm trying to express.
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:36.880
And so you have the old that is maybe brushing against the new, the new being what today's technology is computers, social media, you know, the F1s, the modern F1s, as you said, that they're boring because of all the computer stuff.
00:23:37.119 --> 00:23:40.640
But there seems to be a romanticism, right, of the past.
00:23:41.119 --> 00:23:52.480
And I think that's what uh you bring out in your talks and in your in in these field trips that that people come to your uh uh your collection.
00:23:52.799 --> 00:23:58.240
I a good story in that is Penske has a beautiful museum really close to us up here in Scottsdale.
00:23:58.480 --> 00:24:04.240
They have 20 or 30 million or 50 million, a lot of value were the cars.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:06.640
Next to it is the Bugatti dealership.
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:13.200
Uh three years ago they brought out the new Verone, you know, the new$5 million Bugatti.
00:24:13.519 --> 00:24:24.079
And then they had uh Penske had contacted me to greet the guests and have something in the parking lot of one of my things as a as kind of a VIP.
00:24:24.319 --> 00:24:29.359
You know, they had Bob Bondarant there too, and so I brought the Bugatti, just brought that.
00:24:29.519 --> 00:24:34.480
So the Bugatti dealership, which is right next to the Pinski Museum, had the new Veran.
00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:57.599
So they decided they came out and said, we'd like to park our new fancy, unbelievable Bugatti next to your Bugatti, because we're gonna have tomorrow, we're gonna have all the dealers from all over the world come to our dealership to learn the car and learn the passion that we're going to place on our car, but it hadn't learned, but we're gonna place on our car, and they can see yours too.
00:24:57.920 --> 00:24:58.640
Okay, fine.
00:24:58.799 --> 00:25:06.799
So they bring that, and they're both parked out there, and there's there's two spots in between the two cars, and I got there an hour, an hour and a half early.
00:25:07.039 --> 00:25:16.720
So everybody that was showing up was around my 1913 Bugatti, and it seemed like they were almost standing on the Varone looking at my car.
00:25:16.880 --> 00:25:18.559
Nobody was looking at it at all.
00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:24.319
And they had prior, they had invited me to the breakfast for the Bugatti dealers the next morning.
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:28.799
They finally came out about half hour later and said, We're taking our Bugatti, we're putting it back in.
