The Talent Tank

EP 29 Jim Marsden

June 08, 2020 Jim Marsden Episode 41
The Talent Tank
EP 29 Jim Marsden
Show Notes Transcript

A play on the triumph and losses in performance and life.  The Talent Tank podcast will navigate the inner workings of lifestyle, lives, family, teams, careers, programs, and technology in and around the offroad motorsports industry.  What breeds success with your Talent Tank on full, failures when its on empty.  From the journey to the Starting Line to take that Green Flag, on to exploring trials and tribulations on and off the track in pursuit of victorious achievement and the Checkered Flag.

From across the pond, to close out this Spring 2020 season we have only the second Brit to grace The Talent Tank.  We landed the dashingly handsome, almost James Bond 007'esc smooth talking linguist announcer for ULTRA4 Racing.  As well as he's possibly the winning-est across all motorsport events he's competed in, none of other than the "Kingpin of Gigglepin", Jim Marsden @jim_gigglepin_marsden.  Everything's on the table, from building furniture, working in the nightclubs, to figuring out how to wrench, being your own boss, winches, did we mention we talk winches specifically these dual motor crazy units Jim builds.  Mix in some mudbog racing, numerous Ultra4 Europe Championships and the pilgrimage to Johnson Valley and how he got his break with a microphone in his hand to announcing for King of the Hammers and the Martelli Brothers The Mint400

After the Checkered Flag-
The Sir John Cass School of Art, abbreviated as "The Cass" and nicknamed the Aldgate Bauhaus, is an art school in Aldgate, London that forms part of London Metropolitan University. It has a history stretching back to the 1800's via its various predecessor institutions.  Learning through practice, playing with process and working with clients; students at the School gain real-world experience in both individual and collaborative projects, engaging with professionals, communities and companies. There is a strong emphasis in the teaching studios on socially engaged architecture, art and design applied to both local and global contexts. The many specialist facilities available to students include wood, metal and plastic workshops, darkrooms and digital manufacturing technology.

Headshot provided by: Paolo Baraldi

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Intro/Outro :

Let's drop the green flag on this episode of the talent tank podcast with your host Wyatt Pemberton bringing you the best, fastest, most knowledgeable personalities and ultra4 and off road racing.

Parker Pemberton :

Hey guys, real quick. Thank you to everyone who listens to my dad's show. This is the last episode until fall. Seriously, I hope racing has resumed by then for everyone. cng make sure you've all subscribed on your streaming platform as my dad hopes to pull off a few cool things this summer. You won't want to miss. He needs to thank some people for making this season happen. You got some people listening and driving content to get so many amazing visuals. Gary, the editor Thank you. You've been a lifesaver for us and freed up my dad for him. Which he doesn't love at all. And most importantly, these three companies have amazing supporters that foot the bill for the production of the talent tank. Without them these past 12 episodes would never be able to happen called a custom spice. Jason at magnitude performance and Stan and Brandon at brand machine thank you for believing in my dad and the content he runs himself ragged to pull up. Oh, my dad wants me to make sure you're leaving some ratings. You wrote down social proof and social validation for me to say so do that. Okay, on to the episode enjoy.

Wyatt Pemberton :

All right, all right. All right, here we go. The finale of this kind of run this, this spring run the end of it. Bam. You know, it's been a really great rain this spring. I've had a lot of amazing guests on a lot of fun people on we've got a lot of really great stuff. I absolutely have loved it. I've loved every bit of of it and it's really cool. I've got to think I know you guys heard the pre roll with a about custom splice and about branding and about magnitude performance. Those guys, let me tell you, I have finally you know, have the opportunity. Like I am now listening to the talent tank myself again. Now, as it goes out live, I can listen to it while I'm driving. And it's now really exciting. I'm no longer like bored and frustrated by all the hours I've spent editing. But here we go. Let's do this. We're gonna take off a little bit of time for the summer, and then we'll be right back at it. But you need to go out there. Make sure you're subscribing where you're listening to it because there are a couple things that I'm trying to pull off this summer and you won't want to miss it. I know you'll follow on social media on the insiders page or something. But right here, what you dialed in for why you turned on your streaming this morning or today or this afternoon or today while you're listening? Jim Marston I swear. He is the winningest

Jim Marsden :

Individual and ultra for and people may want to dispute that he's shaking his head like well, you know, you got Eric Miller and you got some guys. I think Lauren's got me. Your trophy room is huge. But Jim, anyway, welcome from Great Britain. Thank you for getting on here with me. What's going on? Oh, good night. Oh, good humbled to be talking to you right now. This is very, very cool. Thank you. So, I meet you. We're there in hammer town. We're having a conversation. It's Wayne Israel son, handsome J. yourself, Karen Sam. And we had a little conversation about getting this set up. Yeah, no, it's very cool. Indeed. As I say it, wasn't expecting it. And like everyone, we're all big fans of talent tank. We like to listen to hear the stories, hear what people have been having to say. And so to get the opportunity to talk to you, man, it's awesome. So thank you very much. It's sometimes when you're trying on a certain timeline or a certain timeframe. You're trying to pull off things in a certain order. You couldn't have been more prepared and

Wyatt Pemberton :

Ready for this? That and when I asked you, you're just like spot on and we made it happen and, you know, just in quick order. Thank you. That's a pleasure man opportunities don't come around too often. So make hay while the sun shines. So Jim, I know you have a day job outside of announcing for ultra for I kind of know some of the stuff that you're into with with your business giggle pin winches, and I think you have some do some Land Rover repair work. But how has the current pandemic that we're seeing here in the United States? I know it's globally. How is that affecting you? They're in Great Britain. Have you guys like quarantine? Have you done like work? You know, I don't know if your wife Karen works or any of that work from home stuff. How's what's going on, impacted you guys over there on that side of the pond? It's been crazy. I mean, it's a worldwide pandemic. And I'm sorry, Great Britain has been suffering just as much as anyone else. In fact, we probably had one of the worst death rates, if I'm honest, but but it's a little bit surreal. I think it is for everybody else.

Jim Marsden :

mean, one minute I found myself as over. So I'm lucky enough to commentate at the mint 400. And so one minute I'm in Las Vegas, commentating on the mint 400 the next one on airplane, everyone's wearing face masks, and we're talking about shutting down countries. And the very next second, I'm back in the UK and it's really full, but you're gonna love this. I mean, I am. So the Antichrist of curve COVID-19 if you like, I like to arrive back from Las Vegas, and they're talking about locking down countries. By then get back that day, I then fly to Ireland the following day to collect a vehicle or fly back from Ireland. I then have to I've got to collect a vehicle from in Europe and by this time, they're shutting down Belgium, they talked about shutting down all the other countries as well. And but I've got my choice. I've got to get this car so I shoot across to Holland. So I'm going to go through France. I'm going to go through Belgium, shoot up into Holland. Stay there with a friend and another friend of mine in Denmark phones me says, Hey, you know, you've got to get up here like now they closing the border of Denmark tomorrow. And so I'm having dinner in Holland and thinking, wow, what are we going to do so, so I sat down to dinner, and I was with my friend Simon said, Mike, I've got to go. I can't spend the night. I've got to drive now. It's still an eight hour drive to get into Denmark. Here's Okay, come on, I'll come with you. So his wife makes some sandwiches we jump in the rig. We haul it all the way across out of Holland into into Germany, up into Denmark arrive at my friend's house in Denmark at 330 in the morning, so have a couple of beers. Because why wouldn't it right? Absolutely. exactly exactly. how to go about asleep get up the next day, pick this car up, have to head down our demo. By this time the I mean, the borders are full of soldiers and everything like this and we're heading out of heading out of Denmark. It is crazy going on down through Germany. I traveled through Germany a lot and occasionally you see the old deer by the side of the road or something like that, but this time We're coming through and we see 120 what we start counting when we get to 120 deer, there's just deer all the way down the sides of roads pockets are twos and threes. It's just because there's no one on the road. So these things are coming out during the daylight. It was amazing. And then we drop back into Holland and, and I was like something of a war scene. We're trying to assign his daughter she's she works in a supermarket, and they're limiting people to two loaves of bread and one bottle of milk goes on what is going on? So I stay the night there. And next morning, I'm up early. And I find that they're closing the borders on Belgium. So I Oh my god. So but I mean, this is crazy. As people who lived in Belgium, they couldn't go to restaurants or anything like that. So they're traveling up Belgium, into Holland to still go to restaurants because Holland was Oh, wow. Yeah, exactly. But this is all happening. And it's changing literally on the hour is the most strange thing ever. Anyway, so we're coming through that and and I saw I had at home And in Belgium but by now there's no we're open so there's no way to buy food is you can still get fuel but all the fuel stations are bad there's no food the fuel stations and hammer across France and there's nothing there he does get out a bag of crisps or something and fries as you call them and get to the Channel Tunnel which is the tunnel that links France and Great Britain. Now this is really really busy. I mean, this place is absolutely random Normally, the only car Oh no. Oh my god. It's like something like zombie watches or something. I don't know. It's like Where the hell is everyone gone? The whole terminal shut down. Everything's just computerized you arrive is anpr cameras take registration. No one talks to you. You go through you sitting there waiting, waiting for somebody to come up on the screen. And there's no one there and you're like, have I got the right time. I'd like to have the right thing here. Went through again. It's all automated. You just follow your way through get to the train. There's actually somebody there to wakes me up to try a drive. To the try and drive straight to the front. It's just you still just a sign. Wow, this is a bit weird. Anyway, get back to the UK. And then literally the day after I get back, they start locking down hard days, you know, it's like it's been everywhere for everyone around the world. We were shut down for, I think five weeks, just you know, properly hard lockdown. I mean, I'm very fortunate our business is based in the countryside. So, you know, and we also work on so there is a key workers vehicles so gatekeepers doctors, farmers particularly, and so we've furloughed all our staff, but I was going in just making sure that anyone had any troubles they could we could sort of fix their vehicles and get them out on the road again, obviously taking loads of care and just making sure that we're just doing the bare minimum to so they've always stayed safe and, and sources and so, yeah, yes, it's a really interesting time, that's for sure. I'm not sure I want to do it again.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Right yeah it was cool. Now do they have for you guys the like the designations like essential worker or non essential worker like so? Yeah. So automotive business which you're in automotive business is so your central so you guys stayed open throughout the whole thing? Well we stayed we stayed open, I was working all my staff were furloughed so all my staff was saying at home, it was just me there on my own and then Karen would come in on the occasional day just to pick up paperwork and stuff like that, but it was just it was me and, and you know what it was like dropping back 23 years to when I first started out and rolled into work on my own, pick up my spanners and get on with it. And it was it was

Jim Marsden :

kind of weird to say, but I kind of enjoyed it. It was it was no one around you know, I took out cycling again and which I haven't done for years and out for that kind of stuff. And so so startling to cycling to work with you sort of eight miles a day. Well, there's no traffic right? So no one to hit you. Yeah. There's no one there. And, you know, I'm counting down to a couple of words on the way down through and seeing deer and all kinds of other stuff all over the place. And yeah, it's it was it was pretty cool actually I have to say and and we we hope to have some people you know, we had some, some customers who we'd love for years old problems farmers gatekeepers, people like that people are putting through looking after you know the land and looking after the animals and stuff and when the vehicles break they need those vehicles. So we were just there to pick up and pick up the pieces and shove them back together. It was good fun. I always love talking to you got you I say you guys like it actually anyone that's outside of more or less the state of Texas and how your dialect is different, not necessarily your accent, but the dialect and different uses of things like we say y'all for many things or for driving by like a parking lot. And it's full, it's covered with you know, there's every parking spots full. They say it's covered up, right. Working, busy, but you know, you're tired.

Wyatt Pemberton :

About a wrench and you're like, Oh yeah, I can pick up a spanner. And it always catches me every time like Spanner and you know, when I'm reading through kind of your bio and stuff, and how you speak and you type different news, you actually speak in a dialect that's almost you know, separate and I'm reading through it. I'm like, oh, man, I don't know if I'm prepared to talk to these guys. Yeah, this Brit you know,

Jim Marsden :

we could be a whole lot worse. my accent is actually reasonably easy to understand. Some of the dialects here are really really tough and some of them even I struggle to understand.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh, yeah, like, like drew right. I can understand drew right. Ian cheery, I can understand me and cheery but when I talked to rob Butler, I struggle talking to rob Butler. Like and I love Rob he builds awesome stuff. You know, I've had to you what is it I've had to collect his bonnet from from the Houston Ship Channel.

Jim Marsden :

That's good. Yeah. We're going to be saying tomorrow shortly.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Right, right. So I had to pick up his his car got shipped over here for King hammers a couple years ago, maybe 2017 eight somewhere in there and leave I surely drove down from Kansas and picked it up from my shop. But so I've talked to rob a few times and I just I struggled to understand him, but I understand you very well. And obviously a lot of people understand you because you know enough people believe you enough to put you hand you a microphone and let you talk to millions. So

Jim Marsden :

yes, it's still a little bit surreal if I weren't completely honest. At first. I also forget when GM at its COVID-19 thing, I was just actually rebuilding my race car we'd provisionally sold it to a guy from New Zealand and again Whilst this was just happening on all of this stuff was just closing down Italy got it really bad. And I had a friend of mine he actually flew from Fernando and he flew over from Italy to help us work on the car. We had to fly for Rome because the close to the northern airports in initially our map we booked a we were so Like the Yeah, the COVID antichrist. We also had two friends fly over from Malta at the same time, and it was all allowed, you know, and we didn't expect everyone to be shut down. So we had where guys from Italy, we had guys from Malta, we had Stan from New Zealand come all the way from New Zealand, then we had some other people there as well. Oh, it was absolutely nuts. And then to say, I just got back from the US. So we had this melting pot of international people all at my place. And, yeah, I'm sure if the authorities found out they probably wouldn't have been amused. But I just to be clear, it was before we were locked down. So yeah, it's amazing how the welds all of a sudden changed. It's like I've got a friend of mine held a devotion. I've got his race car sitting in my places, and he lives in Portugal. He can't come and get it. He can fly to England, but then he's got a quarantine for 14 days. But the most difficult part is he can't actually get the car back through France or back through Spain to get it back to Portugal. So his race cars just sat here. So there's just another example of how the pandemics affecting us all And from my standpoint you know, I'm trying to do a you know this the show weekly show on racing and when we don't have racing, I don't know how like ESPN even keeps going right now. You know, they're showing like the cornhole championships it's hard to talk about for for when we don't really have anything to talk about. Oh, I think there's always something stood out before we go so much history I mean, back to 2007 and so many amazing races that have come through there and there's so the history the innovation, I mean, we could let's be honest, we could talk for a week on innovation and cars I mean, look back at that very first race those first vehicles and then just look at where we are now that you know this there's so much content.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I'm gonna easter egg this this is this is the easter egg drop. That's something that we're working on for the summer is something of a tech show. That's going to be I think that the idea right now that's on the table is going to be like a round table with a handful of guys that are very much in the middle on the you know, on that bleeding edge. Have innovation in over four. And that's one of the things we're going to try to pull out this summer and see if it's successful. I mean, that's the thing, you know, that we've seen, certainly in racing in Oak Forest, you do something, if it works, then awesome. If it fails, you cut it off and you make a new one. So we're kind of, you know, applying that logic to this podcast genre of this medium sort of speak for our, for our industry. We're gonna try something we're gonna try a couple things this summer. If they don't work, we'll cut them off.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, looking back at the innovation is worth three or four in the last sort of like, you know, 30 years is incredible. When we first started, you saw huge differences. The cars were almost unrecognizable year on year, the changes were so vast, but now what we're seeing is we're getting close to that pinnacle of greatness. And so we're seeing small changes my new changes within the top drivers tweaking geometry on already proven setups to try to At the end degrees try and stay ahead or to try to get ahead. And and it's amazing there were before the engineering was, you know, if you could pick up a grinder on a bit of tube and you could cut it and weld it, you had a chance nowadays, though we are so aiming at that Pinnacle is a different kind of race engineering to where we were 13 years ago. And I find it amazing, but there is still that opportunity for that guy at home sitting in a garage, to put something together and to bring it out there and stick it on that Racecourse and be successful. And that's what drives so many people

Wyatt Pemberton :

know you're spot on and this just this landed in front of me this week, and it was someone put out, I wanna say they're 2011 2012 somewhere in there. And I believe they were Roush Creek pictures, and it was a bunch of them as like a picture dump. And one of those in there as I noticed, because this was the obvious you know, we see Eric Miller show up every year, and his card looks the same, right? He doesn't. He hasn't changed sponsors a Munch. It's the yellow with the map. buttons and the black on the bottom. The cars all look the same. They're very similar. But it was fun. Yeah, that picture you know, if you look at Eric Miller 2020 versus 2019 versus 2018 it all looks like the same car. It might be the same car. We don't know everyone, you know, the speculation that he changes cars every six months. Yeah, whatever that is. But this one when you look back, this is eight years ago or so. The car looked the same, except for is about six inches taller. The wheel proportions were different, you tell. Wow. Wow. Eric's car still has the same livery. But Wow, the proportions are very different setup.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah. It's really interesting watching Eric's evolution as he comes through. He keeps these cards very close to his chest, which was why wouldn't you and but he's just always looking for those little tiny degrees of magic that make the difference. And, you know, he's one of the very few that stuck with solid axle and is absolutely determined to prove its worth but, you know, let's just let's just drop onto the list. pause for a minute I mean everyone was sitting there saying you know solid X was done we finished with solid axle only good for King of the hammers. Then we get to Reno, which is a full on irfs short course everybody's talking about the IFRS cars and then rusty Viola turns up and completely flips the form book on its head qualifies having rolled over multiple times qualifies second just by Deb wyrick and then he lays it down in the main leading for I think three laps was incredible.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh yeah, absolutely. Exactly. And then that was then something took him out.

Jim Marsden :

Guys time he did a talk. I mean, he was he was chasing down Paul Herschel and you know put we'll know Paul's packing way under 150 horse and and every time they go on that long hill climb. Just you see Paul just easy the way from rusty and then rusty obey, slamming back into him again on the rest of the lap pulling back that distance again. It was a fantastic race to watch. And unfortunately he had a tire biting in the end but but I mean increasing absolutely incredible.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And I don't want to I don't want to gloss over this but we still have another is another famous solid axle hold out and that's Randy Lawson and the bomber bomber series. Yeah,

Jim Marsden :

well, brand new courses famously races co he doesn't so do so much of the short course stuff which I think is a real shame because he got that back and drive. I mean I remember the first time I ever saw him in the rocks, and I was I was broken up, I think it's highway 19 or 20. And I was kind of licking my wounds. And we heard the bomber coming. And it was like holy mother, God, look at the seed of this. We've never seen anything like it. And it's all very well watching the videos and it's all very well watching the guys come into hammer town. But when you actually see them on those trials when you actually see them out there on the hammer trials themselves. That's when you understand how false these guys are on the rocks. It's unbelievable.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, they're skipping, right? I mean, look, when we say skipping rock, it's not skipping rocks across the top of a pond. It's their tires, skipping and Touching every seventh rock.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, I mean, we call, I like to call that flow. And they've got this flow, they've got this way of just making that car kind of rabbit across the rocks. So they're feeling it in their feet. And when you try to explain to people how these guys drive and their left foot braking constantly to load up the car, so you're always getting that little bit of a launch every single time. And the drivers do it instinctively, without even realizing they're doing it. When you as you say, you get this kind of rabbit effect where they're hopping across the rocks. And when you get a guy's really on point, you're just feeling that car. It's just that perfect flow right way up through when you see other guys smashing their cars to bits. And they'll just be that one guy or a couple of guys who just make it look like a cakewalk every single time.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And they're the ones whose names are always in the conversation.

Jim Marsden :

Absolutely. Yeah, that's why the you know, the most winning is cause I mean, he was saying earlier about me being the most fun to see i don't think i am i think that's Lauren Haley's or challenge. Got, I've got that but The ala those. That's why these guys are always superb and supreme at what they do. They are just magicians in those environments. We talk about irfs. And we talk about solid acts of Do you know what it makes no difference what car you put those guys in. They are going to excel it's solid axle or IFRS. It's not at their level. It's not just the car. It's about the guy behind the wheel. And it's as simple as that. They choose what they want to race, but put them in anything. They'll still be at the top

Wyatt Pemberton :

kind of like a Robby Gordon.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, but without the attitude. I gotta go to put this right. I love Robert Gordon. I this is one of my favorite films where this man was cringing stories ever. I was at hammers a few years back and there was Robert Gordon DeCosta Hey, Jim, come on over. So we've gone over and I'm like, like a really big fan I think are amazing. And you could see him just roll his eyes into the back of his head and just go Great. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker :

It was Yeah,

Jim Marsden :

yeah, it's super sucks. Oh god, why did I do that?

Wyatt Pemberton :

You've got to start somewhere right? You've got to meet them at some point and start having a conversation with them so that by the time your conversation 10 or 12 they recognize you that they are they kind of recognize you at least they know who what you do, and that you're somebody who is kind of in that circle of trust that they can have a conversation with that you're not going to walk them be like, I need to sign this for my kid or my neighbor's kid three doors down his nephew. I said very true. Very true.

Jim Marsden :

I'm going to go back to the garden so I met Bob Gordon in Mexico in Cabo back in 2014. We just done the North thousand is amazing experience and I got introduced to Bob Gordon on the beach by the prize giving Wow, one amazing man he gave me an error you know me from it didn't know me from Adam didn't have a clue who I was. stood there. We just talked to drank and have fun and he told me all about his life story, basically. for an hour, it was incredible. So I was very, very sad for her to be passing. So critical man.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I think that says something about you though. Jim is your inner approachable guy that you could have a conversation with and that you legitimately are engaged in conversation?

Jim Marsden :

Yeah. How can you not be excited by these people with these cars, the the action, the stories, I mean, when you're standing there and talking to Bob Gordon, and he's telling you about how the hell he he picked up a drive because pernilla Jones had basically been kicked off the team and he'd won something the week before, like, slammed him into a car and he went on to win the Baja. I mean, this is the stuff that dreams are made of legends are made off, and it changed his life forever. And you take those little stories away with you anything, you know what maybe maybe one day that could be me. And I think it's those dreams that that make us love this Motorsports so much.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And I think if we're they call that butterfly effect or something along those lines, I think that is the right word for it. Could you imagine had parnelli Joan's not been kicked off that team Bob Gordon didn't end up in that car Robbie doesn't end up being the who Robbie is like you know what a world without Robby Gordon

Jim Marsden :

a world A world without stadium super trucks so many other things without planet Robbie for a start which is gonna be my favorite thing on youtube I think

Wyatt Pemberton :

yeah I mean they'll make your head explode when you start thinking about it in that form of fashion

Jim Marsden :

yeah it is it is it's a it's incredible but yeah it's these little chances that completely change lives around you know just like that guy Lauren Haley turned up a few years ago you know the ran the CQ one that to replace and have as a neighbor It was like Who the hell's this guy? Next thing he wins it bang have some of that guys oh yeah, by the way. My name is Lauren Haley. All right, incredible. Guy What a story and and that's what we love it but we say this all the time. We yes you hear about the heroes but when you walk around hammer town at Every single team in hammer town or any of these races, for that matter, they all have a backstory, they all have a story about the fact they've been working on their car for six months and the, you know, the guy across the street has been helping fund it and the, you know, the grandmothers in the hole around the back making lunch for them. And, you know, everybody has that kind of story. And that's what's so exciting. That's why I decided to get out there get into pits go and talk to these people because they all have fascinating stories. And you're proving that with this podcast.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I think to come out of that is some of the small guy stories that don't get told that end up being just amazing. Like, you know, jumping back to like Nate Williams, Nate Jesse, you know, his story from hammers 2019 like burning the truck down, you know, his 18 Wheeler to El all his adversity to just you know, stuff. You know, just this past week, you know, carrying rob you snake. And a lot of people you know, Rob's even retired from you for for the most part, who show up and drink beers on occasion. But people are like, Whole my gosh that guy's you know just the the fact the story gets out there and then they actually hear it and they're like, I love being a part of this community that the characters that who are involved and I want to evolve back with you let's let's go to where you're from Jim Mr. Jim Marrs in here who we throw it out earlier. You're in the UK. You're in Great Britain, but you live in. I'll price it around. Tunbridge Tunbridge Wells,

Jim Marsden :

live in separate wells. Yeah, so Rosewall town. We're about now south of London. And about an hour from the south coast. So yeah, we're in a nice place.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Now. Did you grow up in Tunbridge? I

Jim Marsden :

did. Yeah, I grew up in this area. And if I lived in a little village called lie with my mom and dad, and it was a very small, very quiet place. Well, it was quiet until we were old enough to buy motorbikes and then it was quite an noisy place. Yeah, no, it's great. And we just grew up and is basically one of those sort of perfect childhoods, you know, I had some great friends around me and we were just into anything hunting, fishing. If it moves to flight, it died and, and we spent hours down to the river catching up and then found motorbikes and then sort of our cars and it kind of went on from there. Really?

Wyatt Pemberton :

I mean your mom and dad is that kind of area they're from you guys have multiple generations within that area or

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, what in fact my dad's parents came down from North so they were up sort of Liverpool kind of way. So Lancashire and then they moved down after the war. My granddad worked in a in a Harkin factory use a foreman, they're helping to produce aircraft for the war effort. And then they moved down to Hampshire which is a another South Southern County, and they raised their family their their three kids and my mom comes from a Kentish family and which is where we still live in Kent. And if I was still live, literally doors away from where my mom grew up, and she has three sisters and a brother and an incredible family. Yeah. Because it's just really nice and that they met that, you know, there's this sort of No, there's no money involved. My dad worked at a fish and chip shop, and my mom sort of sort of Pandaria and a few years later they got married.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh, that's awesome.

Jim Marsden :

So yeah, and then, but I just, I really respect my mom and dad, my daresay my favorite people, they're just so happy. And they have a lovely house in lie. They worked hard for them. They're just enjoying their time. And they're both retired now and it's Yeah, I was when my mum retired. I do wonder if she would kill my dad. But in fact, quite the reverse though. They've never been happy so happy and and unfortunately, this covert thing they've they've been in proper lockdown. You know, they're, they're high risks. They're over 70 or my dad is and, and so they're just saying out of the way of everything if I flew back from Vegas, but my dad phoned me, he said, he said, Hey, just want to tell you that we Really proud of what you did? Oh, fantastic. But don't come round.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Okay, okay. We canceled Mother's Day in my family because of that this year and that was because I went to go hang out with the tribe guys for in JT Taylor we met in Fort Worth for like three like a couple hours we were together like me two hours a week. My filming the canceled Mother's Day because I've been interacting with people. But you've been in Vegas? Yeah. What

Jim Marsden :

do you got? Well, to be fair, if you're gonna hire a surrogate mother, then JT is probably the man. Yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Man. Yeah, I don't want to get off on tangent on that. But I did. I even talked to JT today he's such a good guy. You people know for for?

Unknown Speaker :

Stay tuned. Your talent tank isn't full yet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

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Unknown Speaker :

Now back to the show.

Wyatt Pemberton :

How were you as a kid? Were you like a Motorhead, a gearhead were Is that what you're into? Or were you more into sports or where were you kind of leading through school?

Jim Marsden :

Well, my dad was he wasn't a sports person until he didn't do shoot in the desert. We went fishing and holiday. But that was all, you know, he was very much focused on. We have an older, an older house built in the 18th century. And so he was really focused on working and getting the house straight, you know, and it took 10 years for him to get the house straight. And he was working every weekend. And he had a we had a small yacht, I mean, really nothing flashy at all, you know, and we all had to work hard and scrub the paint off every year and paint it all up and there was nothing given for free you know, every every penny had to be worked hard for that. It was it was tough times when we were growing up and then he blew the socks off one day and I always love motorcars and things and I think I was 13 and I came home one day, out the back. There was a a motorbike trial bike and I wouldn't get close to it, but I was looking at it and I'm thinking my dad was at work and I'm looking at it I'm thinking Who the hell does that what why are we looking after this bike? It was an old one, but I'm like wow, I knew that I didn't go near it I get a strap across me if I touched it so imagine my shock when the next day Sam does his car we're gonna have a look at this bike so get down there and he went to you was like what? And he was like for you. As I was just dum dum couldn't stop crying for about a week and I think that was incredible but it Yeah, it was it was hard work as a Why is it 125 and someone stuck 100 cc barrel on it and man I've rebuilt the engine was cast it must have felt like 100 times and we are known. So it was called a trial dollar my right bagger was and like Carson I beams with a hand hacksaw to make a frame to go on the back so that we could take this back bike down to a local bike track and race it around. And I have to say I was truly the worst motorcycle rider in history. If there was a lump or a bump, I would hate it if there was a way to fall off, I would find it I was truly shocking. But I couldn't start smiling. It was incredible. And and that sort of went on. For that bike broken, I bought my saved us some money and bought another one that was even worse, but me and my mates would go into the fields and I shouldn't say that when you think about the locks of the gates and put our own padlocks on so we could get into these fields. And then river wide open and everything was that we'd have to take the bikes back down but break the gear leaves off taken to the local garriage getting the world up again and give them a couple of beers from my dad's fridge. Good idea. It's normal stuff. And I don't know Is that normal? It was normal for us. And, and it was great. But yeah, I mean, genuinely, it was all done with you know, just laughter and fun. And very very little money in dude and then when as we got older that disappeared

Wyatt Pemberton :

I was wonder where the hook was set on guys you know like is we come across our friends and you know our acquaintances and whatever in this genre Where did the hook get set because it got set somewhere and so it was you and an old triumph is is kind of where yeah

Jim Marsden :

you're thinking tribes sports cars yeah

Wyatt Pemberton :

okay I was thinking

Jim Marsden :

about was this like boxy little old cars horrible thing then we could afford and the bike was is I still don't know where my why my dad bought it for me it was incredible. But that led me on and then we all grew up a little bit and I went to take my driving test and I was 17 you gotta love this. I filed and found my driving test and I was so pissed. I was convinced I passed I just that they failed move progressing round a corner not enough observations or something And finally, so I was like god damn. Oh so upset I didn't tell my driving test for three years dialogue that's kind of how stubborn I am stupidly and then in my 20s when I just turned 20 I took my driving test again passed and and that's when it all started really cuz I bought an old 1969 you're going to hear that word number a lot, but a 1969 series to a Landrover it would do 45 mile an hour if you throw off a cliff, two and a quarter days. Oh, man, it was shocking. What a piece of junk. We blew the guy sir. Don't wait. I blew the gearbox up over five miles from where we bought it to rebuild the gearbox with literally just a car I had very little money, not spend it all on this bloody car. And so we rebuilt this gearbox put it back together and you know what that car was amazing. It was a heap of junk but we took the roof off and close out this old wax tarpaulin Well, I packed it up when I was at work and that was working in pubs and stuff. And the boss says pull up outside shocks on wax off all over the top because we're in England, so it rained. But it was so cool to have no roof. So check this top all over long run back out when it finished work total cooling off and start driving. I worked on the theory that if you were driving, you wouldn't get wet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Right? Don't as long as you don't stop.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We do. Yeah, we have some great ties with that vehicle. And then, and then no, Jason, we have these things in this country called green lines. So these are unofficial roads, or they're off road roads, basically. So there's no tarmac or anything. And some of these are road legal. They're green lanes. And we sort of scour the maps and look for these green lanes around us and stuff. And we went out to a great light one day and I was driving down the gear lever snapped off at the base, or it literally at the base. So you can't make this up. Oh, well how am I gonna get home so When we find a friend and he came down to gas, and he actually had a, what we call a Landrover 90, which was only about probably six years old. And he told me up this hill faster than I could have driven up and I was like, that's it. I am having one of those. I don't care what I have to do. I'm having lunch. And so it started like I sold the other one bought a new of excitement money, bought a new vehicle. And then I started off roading dare I say properly, had some bigger tires and more horsepower and used to hang out with friends and go to some amazing offroad sites around us all plan day stuff you pay and play style stuff. Nothing serious, you know, no competitions or anything. And we just have an absolute riot. It was it was great fun. Good times all downhill from there. Yeah, yeah. That's what

Wyatt Pemberton :

year was this? mid early 90s.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, that would have been early 90s, mid 90s. somewhere around there. And it was Yeah, it was. It was awesome. And we just get to some fun and I was at a time I didn't really have a career I was messing around, I was working helping out on local pheasant shoots and in exchange for a bit of free shooting and you know, getting to speed in the last year the rabbits and stuff like that, because I was really into that. Then I was working in bars and working on golf courses and just generally anything I could do to earn a few quid you know,

Wyatt Pemberton :

back back a little bit, and maybe botch all this up. But I think you went to school like formal education to be a cabinet maker. Is that right? Like good working with wood?

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, well, but my granddad was a cabinet maker for a very, very good one. And my dad was a although we had the family business was like fish and chip shops. He was he learned a lot from his dad as well and he was an empty store, very high end antique store in his spare time and doing stuff like that as well. And I kind of picked up on that when I was at school and started doing all those kinds of things. I found myself at the age of 16 at the Sejong cast Faculty of Arts, London College of furniture in London. And

Wyatt Pemberton :

so I literally it is a college of furniture.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, there's it's an amazing place to learn today. And, and they teach, you know, they teach you how to make up depending on which courses you're on how to like classical music instruments, or classical furniture and all this kind of thing. And the minimum cost requirement was 18. But I got in on the quality of my work at the age of 16, which was fatal if I'm honest, I yeah. Yeah. 60 year old being let loose with lots of older people in London. wasn't really a good look, if you think about it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

That didn't work out for you though, right? I mean, so

Jim Marsden :

you finish. Well, I kind of finished but in the first year, I passed with distinctions in every lesson that I was I was on it, and I was Let's do that I just got out of high school. So I was I had that that school mentality where you were given a job and you just got it done. Then the second year came and I realized that there was a big world out there full of things, alcohol and women and other things and, and, you know, I barely scraped a pass the next year, and then I kind of fell out of that, and continued my life of sort of still working on shoots and farms and hanging out and, you know, working in bars and stuff like that, working for pocket money, really. I mean, around that time, I was sort of semi pros probably a bit high, but we used to do a lot of clay shooting and out of body. We used to go clay shooting together and anything we used to when we taught together so cost us and stuff like that and split it so if one of us is having a bad day, it didn't matter because the other one was doing good and vice versa. That worked quite well for a couple of years. It was a crazy time again, as I say when I was about 21 was the big change. I just got away from my first ever kind of holiday, my friends come home and my busted ass Landrover. I've given it to another friend to do some work on. And, and he basically, he gave me a much bigger bill than I was expecting and I was like shit, then I lost my job at the same time as Oh man. And then he says, I tell you what, why don't you come away from the Atlanta trade? And I was like, Well, I don't really want to be a mechanic. And he was like, we're not doing anything else and you owe me money. I was like, well, I see. That's a very valid point. So I went to work for him and I was earning well be the equivalent of like, four bucks an hour, it was really painfully low. And at the age of 21, you know, but I started to learn about mechanics, and I started to learn about cars. And I wasn't the sharpest tool, but what I was is I'm a fast learner. And when I do things, I like to do things well. So I started learning Robin started to really teach me and that's where it all really Started cake. And it all started to make sense. And some lines became to form in my what had been a very tangled youth. So you transition there pretty quickly from making four bucks an hour to making probably less as being a business owner. But you right, you

Wyatt Pemberton :

know exactly what I'm talking about. So

Jim Marsden :

yeah, God. I mean, this is the crazy thing is I mean, it must have been 20 at the time when I went to work for him thinking about it. Because literally Three years later, he suddenly turned around and said, I sold the house, myself, Carrie and Jennifer, who's his other half and daughter, or stepdaughter, so we're moving to Wales. That was what he said, Yeah, we're moving down to Wales. Now Wales is a country on the side of Great Britain. And it's for three and a half, four hour drive from where we live. And I was like, wow, that's, well, what am I supposed to do? So we'll come with me.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, that's Chris bowler country over there.

Jim Marsden :

That is Yeah, yeah. In fact, it's a little bit closer than Chris. Chris is in LA concern This was in clinically, and which Chris will know well, because he has to drive past it to get to Lampeter. But the Yeah, so I moved down to Wales for six months and help Robin and his family set up their business down there. And it was cool. I mean, it was amazing place. And, you know, I was still batshit crazy about shooting. So while we say another workshop, shotgun load against the side, just in case the pigeons blow over. Oh, it's madness. And we were building these outbuildings and putting up workshops. And yeah, it was it was a great time, but I realized that you know what, all my family and my girlfriend and everything was sitting Ken. So after about six months, I said to Robin, thank you so much for the opportunity. But

Wyatt Pemberton :

so for me to go home and you didn't speak well, did you? No, no, no. That

Jim Marsden :

is a great story about that. We went into a pump that one night and Amir robina walked in their classic country pump water in there everyone goes silent. We're like yeah whatever brought to the bar by order two pints of beer we sat there with talking amongst ourselves on the three guys in the corner of the bar and those terriers and then they start talking when they start talking I guessing as well haven't got a clue no other night goes by turns out that and they were trying to speak in Welsh light goes by and anyway we finally break into conversation with these guys and turns out that they were trying to speak Welsh but one of them doesn't speak Welsh the other one only spoke a little bit why only one of them actually spoke any at all, but they don't like outsiders so they were determined to speak Welsh Why? We ended up back at our farmhouse at about three o'clock in the morning drinking some God knows awful spirits and they go firm friends after that it was hilarious.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I can see that you pub relationships are always good you always find out you know, either you're gonna meet really cool people like again, this goes back to the birds of a feather flock together theory or unit fighting.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah. This is very Thankfully, I've always avoided that one. Although you're gonna notice that there's always in most of these stories, there's always alcohol involved. So I do apologize for that.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And that's just the way it goes. So you end up backing can't girlfriend and what do you do for a living there for in the interim before hitting 23 when you decide to hang your own shingle?

Jim Marsden :

Well, this is the thing. I mean, I came home and I had no money. I mean, had literally what was in the bank and which wasn't very much, unfortunately, but I did have an ace in the hole, which is a terrible thing, actually. Because in 1990, my uncle passed away he was killed in a motorcycle accident. And his estate was broken up and myself, my cousin and my brother, were given a little bit of money from the estate, and I took that money. And I said, in fact, before this, I was talking about getting jobs and stuff and and to be honest, that kind of tasted freedom working for Robin Robin was a Robin is an amazing person. He's this phrasal verb, you know? He ran a great little workshop and still doesn't. And he taught me that you know, some important life lessons and I thought I don't actually want to go and work in another garriage with someone breathing down my neck on timescales and stuff and my dad is a very positive person and he said look just you know, if you want to do this, just go and do it. So I took my little bit of money I'd been left up I think it was 8000 pounds. And I got a friend of my round who worked for a local motor factors were motivators, his place the sales tools and parts and stuff, and we kind of come up with a plan to buy a full post hoists and some trolley, Jackson some, you know, toy drive, bed stuff you need to start small garish. And then I saw an old family friend rented a barn on a very small barn on his farm, then bug me in October 1997. I didn't open the doors to Google going, independent Landrover specialists it's short now didn't have a clue what I was doing crows. How

Wyatt Pemberton :

did you come up with that name though? I when I initially heard the name before even knowing you, how does giggle ping become the name?

Jim Marsden :

Well, there we are where we got this business concept which is I am going to start a business with less than three years of mechanical knowledge. Okay, fixing other people's Land Rovers. It's madness when you think about it now, but we were sat there we're trying to come up with names and things like autos and motors, and I hate that I really hate it. And anyway, we're setting up the local village pub just around the corner from my mum and dad's house with a with a few friends. My dad books, his apartment, he never comes in the pub, and they said, got something. We will go pin. Really What's that? And he won't just hold his finger up for silence. We went silent, but think about it. bought out a pub. We also just went have ridiculous. Anyway, three points later. It was absolutely good. companies. That's where I came from. It's incredible. And by either some things in my life just happened that way. And my dad in 1997 pulled a name out of the hat that Google friendly even to this day.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, yeah, there's, I don't know anyone else name. And no one's gonna take it from you, right?

Jim Marsden :

No, no, it's, it's kind of what it is. It's a it's a Google pen is everyone knows what it is. If you know the thermostat, you get that a little pin on the side that jumps and jiggles around. That's a gigabit Simple as that. They have other uses as well. And but yeah, that's basically what a giggle pin is. And, and it was just like, yeah, it's kind of quirky. It's, it's kind of cool. And it's, it's a blessing to have chosen that name at that particular time. And here we are 23 years later, and it's incredible. You can travel around the world. And if you go into a Friday course, it's pretty good. Just tell us how to do

Wyatt Pemberton :

that. No, absolutely. Very, very common and well Now we it's very synonymous with Jim Marston as well. But so yeah, yummy gigapan today though, I mean, you guys do everything from change a light bulb to completely redo rebuild a

Jim Marsden :

land re. Yeah, well, this was still an independent Land Rover specialist. So we have no nothing to do with Land Rover whatsoever. But we have a six by double workshops or six double by workshop now. It's fantastic. We get to work on, you know, customers cars from all over Europe. And and we do exactly what you say, you know, one minute we're working on a little old lady's car down the road and we're just getting ready for its yearly tests. And the next minute we're working on some pretty funky stuff with some pretty big engines in so yeah, it's very, very cool. It's very varied. And, you know, I go to work every morning with a spring misstep. It's absolutely wonderful. And then the other side of the business, we had the the Winches. And so you know, back in, you knew

Wyatt Pemberton :

where I was going, that was gonna be my next segue like, what made you get into that business?

Jim Marsden :

Well, in 1997 I started getting open and I always said I would never start racing because I'm that kind of personality that I have to do everything to access I have to do it well if I'm going to do it at all, and I always knew that so my grandmother to fund a racecar

Wyatt Pemberton :

That's funny. Yeah,

Jim Marsden :

yeah, I know what my personality is like. So I avoided it. Then in 2000 I mean, so friends that in fact you know, will Overton you probably bumped into will overturn through co H and things like that

Wyatt Pemberton :

yesterday as

Jim Marsden :

well, myself will overturn a guy called Ben sodam. We jumped into two Land Rovers and we headed out to Sweden for the Swedish off road tour. Now this is really before the internet. So we'd seen a little a little article in an off road magazine, and we went we're going to Sweden so we booked a ferry and we went. It was crazy. And so we we get to Denmark and then from Denmark. We go to into Sweden, and We start trying to find this bloody place and we found it. And we found some other Brits there and we met. We met people from all over the world, we met some very influential people, particularly a Dutch guy called Rob gossamer and they a Hungarian guy called Andrew rash. Both had defend the 90s and but opposite ends of the scale. So roses like brand new bats, big roll cage and huge 916 tires. Then we have an rashes, which was like from the late 80s. But every conceivable extra note of man on it and he was there with his 10 year old daughter. And it was I was incredible. We both voted our way across Sweden for a week. And we met some people up there that I still am great friends with to this day. Sam Sylvan, for example, is just about to start racing with a sailboat for Europe. And Sunday adventures with him in Africa and other places and, but we met him there first and then people, other guys like Richard ever served in our world? these are guys that the from the old scenes inland in in the UK and Darren mcgillis it was it was an inspiring trip and we came back from that. And this is really where it started we then that was in the summertime early summer, I would get a phone call from from Robin from Andrew saying, hey look this the Belgian national Landrover meet in Belgium, obviously. And in September, let's meet there. So we're like, Yeah, let's do it. So we dived across there and two different land drivers from the UK. And we met out with Andrew Ashton andressa bought another friend of his from Hungary as well. So we had two Hungarian vehicles, a Dutch vehicle and two British vehicles. And this year they decided to do is this is 2000. They decide to put on a asik stream off road competition. And it was like whoa, man, do we Ready want to get involved in a sec stream? And I'm dressed just looks at me and goes silly boy. Extreme extreme what is the difference we race? So we find ourselves Cheltenham to this event we haven't got a clue what we do. We got some pretty trick vehicles. We got some two TD five defenders that are like nearly new. They're both a 900 per sixteens and have modified turbo diesel engines and got Andretti's things got air lockers and a 274 winches and then Ben's car which I was in and active seven for ours hours, it was crazy. It was nuts. After two days and two nights and I don't think we had any sleep anytime. We want this bloody thing. Yeah, we went over we're like, what the hell happened here? And that was it hooked? Absolutely. That was the that was the start of the the next 20 years of my life. And I came home from there. I sold my current car that I had I had this beautiful defender at the time it was brand new sold that I bought a what's called an sc 90. Now you but you guys probably remember the nas 90s from 1994. So it was a soft top defender 90. Then they came in either white, red or green. I think it was yellow as well. And they had a VA in it with a full speed auto but full roll cage and soft top a standard that in fact I still believe to this day that it was that vehicle that inspired Jeep to make the JK I really strongly believe that there was a pros the first lifestyle four wheel drive in my eyes. But you got that incredible nas 90 in America. Yeah, yeah, we got the S v 90, which was nearly as good but not quite because instead of a nice big 3.9 va auto box. We got a smoky, smelly 2.5 Turbo Diesel with a five seat manual was like Wow, thanks Landrover

Wyatt Pemberton :

now. Now, isn't that the one like the guys in the United States want? They wanted to import the diesels, even though you guys were like we want to get rid of them. We still couldn't import them. We could only have the gas ones over here. Yeah,

Jim Marsden :

you couldn't have them. In fact, the army had an S 90s for a year because then California state law changed. And that basically made them obsolete. They couldn't conform to the airbag laws. And so that's why they're so rare over there. I mean, the defendant has 90 years of the problem now, I believe there are over $100,000 if you can find one. Strong money for an old car, right. So yes, so I bought this sv 90, and their limited edition but I bought it because out of rollcage standard out a winter standard. I started racing this and then from 2000 to 2006. I think it was I abused be worked played, I had really no money because I'm really starting a company so I used to we have a fencing club. Girls gonna be I hope they don't hear this, these silos working on Well, when I first started working, I worked in a little bar for the first three years and then 2000 and moved out to my friend's industrial site, which is no second world war army barracks called the Gaza industrial estate. And there's about between 14 and 20 businesses out there, and it's brilliant. We're still there to this day, middle of nowhere or someplace. And but one of the places out there is a fencing company. I have no money to buy metal materials. So all my rock sliders and all my winch mounts and everything I was to jump the fence and find fence posts over the fence and get the grinder out and modify them or change them or change them from fence posts into rock bars and underbody guards. And yeah, you know that that that's how we wrote it was it was cool.

Wyatt Pemberton :

No, that's cool. urinating Still in the same place, I mean, you know, so many people through through that much growth. I mean, you're talking 23 years of growth that you're still there. That's pretty cool.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, it was 20 years in the same place. So the first three years, we did a little bump, and then I got the opportunity to move up there. And it's been, it's been a hell of an odyssey. I mean, when we moved out there, we had two little babies, and that were working. I honestly didn't think we'd ever survive, you know, the money was really tight. And I was doing you know, I was no businessman, I was still only your early 20s and really didn't have a clue. And I, you know, my mentor, Robin was down in Wales and my dad didn't have a clue about mechanics. So, you know, as much of a lovely guys he is and a great help and inspiration. He couldn't help me with that. So I had to learn and it was hard and worked every day and worked every night who it was tough, but you know, there was good fun as well. Then, all my friends were always there. So I always had, we're also early 20s, and none of that got married at that point. So everyone was getting into off roading. So everyone was you know, at the weekends they'd be down by shop with their cars and would become bumpers often modifying the back ends and moving radiators. So we could put winches further back and changing electric systems to funky 24 volt systems so that we could make our which is faster and stronger. Extending winch drums and this is where it all starts to tie in to the winch stuff, which is I know you're trying to get

Wyatt Pemberton :

no no I think you're spot on that you knew where I was going. Is I'm very intrigued by the the design of it and what you've done

Jim Marsden :

well back in those days, I mean, it's, it was a case of, you know, every time you tiny little difference made a big difference. So we're doing some cool races done a while. I mean, as I said, we didn't have the money for haulers and trailers and stuff. So it's the drive by race car to Wales with all my camping equipment in it. I used to strip the car down or take the whole soft top off take the back part of the roll cage off take the spare wheels and tires out Didn't take what camping equipment out. And then that was the race car ready to race. The thing is, I couldn't afford to break it because I still had to drive 300 miles back home again after the race. So if we broke CV joints or anything, we had to fix them before we could go home or during the race, or we always used to laughter You know, we need to change your CV joint in the shop. It costs the customer two hours, but when we're in the field, and in a month, we could change it in 15 minutes.

Wyatt Pemberton :

That's that's the book versus reality, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Marsden :

But that's what we call our teeth was in those boggy marshes and standing whilst at a place called Tom's farm. And we learned so much we met some incredibly inspiring people, whether it be you know, the old gentleman Tony basketball, or the Welsh, the Welsh, Quinn, green Lewis, and we started learning things and, and in fact, it was the tough trucks trophy. 2004 Yeah, 2004 I broke a wall, a 274 main shaft. We're in this massive bog Modern Pete coming up over the bonnet. And as with a guy called Paul church use it do restore hammers this year. See, it's all linked together. And that's his main shaft on the winds just blew apart just just snapped in half. And instead of winning the race, we can afford them. I was mortified. I just couldn't believe it. We might come through Who cares? I was I was mortified. And I got home. And I was like, well, this can't happen again. You know, sit down, I don't want to lose. So I took the shaft down. I looked at it. And we have a couple of villages away from us. there's a there's a really eccentric guy called Dave. Now Dave as the most beautiful country cottage. At the end of his garden. He has a shed and one side of it. It's not a very big shed, it's probably only not even 30 foot long, probably 20 foot long. One side has a bench with windows that look down across the Eden Valley and or you can Is the river and trees and fields come cheap? In the background? There's a clock just go Tick tock, tick tock, and on the radio is classical music. He wears his shirts always usually button two buttons row usually has odd socks or if not old socks or shoes. Okay, but the man is a twisted genius. Okay? If all else fails you go to Dave.

Unknown Speaker :

Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full yet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

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Unknown Speaker :

Now back to the show.

Jim Marsden :

And so I went to Dave and I said Dave, I've got this problem. I've broken the shaft and I need to find way of fixing this problem. And so we sat, we chatted and we talked, we had ideas and everything. Anyway, the long the short was that we came up with a new design for the shaft and the shaft was we supported the gear as well, we do love we made loads of changes, right? Let's go for it, make it and they said, Well, you can have one of them. And it's this price. Or you can add 10 of them. And it's this price, though. Well, the price is exactly the same. He went exactly. off site. Ah, well, I'll take 10 then. Exactly exact so off he went on my 10 of these shots. Alright. But And anyway, so I got these shots back and we mechanically made them stronger, and we'd engineered them stronger as well. So we changed forts on the shop. I kept a suit for myself and I found a few friends and said, Look, I've got some shots you want to buy? And they were Yeah. Then next week, the phone started to ring. Hey, I heard you made some shots with the 274. So yeah, how Can I buy samples? Oh, well, no, I mean, had 10 though Oh, well, if you make some more, we'll buy them. So I made another 20. Then my 50. Now about 100. Wow. So this is this is crazy.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I love the snowball effect.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah. But while this was going on, we were playing with other things as well. So we worked out that on the wall native set before the drum diameters really big. We were like, how do we get more power from these winches? We're like, well, if we reduce the dome diameter, then obviously that's going to make it more powerful, because every wrap of rope on the drum excellent, you know, makes the winches less powerful. Oh, yes, brilliant. So we might narrow diameter drums. But the problem with that was that if you had lots of rope on there, you still saw no benefit again. Ah, damn, what can we do? What can we do? I know what we'll do is we'll make the drum longer, but we use the same amount of rope. Damn. Yeah, that way. We're going to be Lower rock. So what we were doing is we come into these really hard areas, and the other guys would be having a winch through and it wasn't a case of you could drive it. I don't care if you had Shannon Campbell's car, you're not driving through there. Okay, so but most of the teams because the winches weren't powerful enough for us to put a slash block on the line back to the car, so they can then double the power of the Winchester Winchester, we wouldn't do that. We had our narrow diameter, long winch drum. So we pull the rope out, then we stack it on one side of the drum just as we come on load which switches to the empty side. So we got maximum power, hit the Go button, and that way we didn't have to use a snatch block. Bring me the trophies baby. works. And that's how we started so we, this is this is hilarious. You'll see that we offer three different sizes of winstram and we are the short which is more nine to seven for 10 inch drum. Then the next one after that is the plus 76 plus three inch. Now this has become an industry standard. Anybody who bikes winches, copies that size, okay? Okay, find a size that we come out with. And the only reason is that size has become the industry standard. This is the God's honest truth is on my sv 90 that I was racing at the time I'd made a bumper for I wanted to put a little drum in it. And the longest drum I could put in there without having to remake my bumper was three inches. And that's where it came from.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And that's where it is.

Jim Marsden :

Now, most particularly you see these winches coming out of China you see it coming out of Germany in great other places in Britain and all these guys like, yeah, guys photo just copied what I did 20 years ago.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And, you know, they say, you know, that's kind of the sincerest form of flattery, right, you know, the knock.

Jim Marsden :

Don't get me wrong on the pitch and all that. I just think it's really funny,

Wyatt Pemberton :

but it's, I mean, I think that's a cool story to tell that you can make sleep Test the DNA of that whole design to exactly Jim Marrs done in Great Britain doing his gig open witches, because in this size box, it fit in this bumper.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah. And then he started to move again. We needed more power. We needed more of this. And there was this a wonderful guy called David Bowyer who one at a time is running a company called good wind. She actually retired about two years ago. And he was a massive innovator. And he bought in bigger motors and better solenoids, and all of this kind of good stuff. And we're using his kit. And he had these big motors called the bow motor to Now, most people these days would know them as a bone motor three, but they're actually a bone motor to Batman, though a much, much bigger. This motor I had on my vehicle was incredible. And it was the reason that we used to do so well at these events. You know, it was just so much power. We're using 24 volts through it. It was awesome. But he all of a sudden announced that he couldn't get them anymore and I was like, holy shit. Go. I'd like to see my winch business disappear. And I've been working hard on it. All of a sudden, if people couldn't get stronger motors, they wouldn't buy my main shafts or anything. So I was like, Okay, I need to find another big motor. So I started spending the money that I had, playing with old starter motors and doing all this kind of stuff, trying to make bigger motors go into motor winding companies. And God, I went all over the place and I couldn't find anything that worked. And then we sat down one day, and we went, do you know what? These are crazy? This these motors are like three times four times the price of the motors that were our standard motor. Why don't we just use two standard motors? Surely, that's just that they're cheap. They're easy to use. We just use two motors when I buy how we're going to fit them back to my man, Dave. So if I go into his quirky workshop, so put two motors on the page with the top housing, said I need to fit that to that with that. He looked at me Anyway, so we had a cup of tea that we chewed over, and then came back and shoot it over again a couple of times, and we came up with this funky adapter plate, and we bolted it on. And it was incredible. Suddenly two motors on a standard wall, eight to seven volt top housing. It was mental. And off, we went and then started testing. It was mind blowing. People started to hear that I'd done this, and they started sending me their top housings for modification. And so I started doing these. And one of the biggest events in the year the Argyle forest challenge was June anytime. And it was two vehicles and each team, okay, racing over two days. And the lineup was I think the top three teams or the top four teams had both cars had the modified eight to seven four winches on them, and it was higher. Wow. Okay, here we go. Yeah, well, this is it. I was like, Go man, this is gonna be Incredible see what happens. The best guys with all the big hitters we're playing there is going to be incredible. Every single winch was broken, either by at the beginning of day two or the end of day one, every single one. All the top hasn't gears have just shut themselves. They couldn't cope with the extra load, ledger blew the teeth off and smashed the bearings to pieces. And I was like, Oh my god, and I'm done. You know, these people are going to be screaming at me. But you know, the amazing thing. And this was the amazing thing. All of those cars broke, okay, all of those winches broke or domination of the event with those vehicles before they broke was so total, those teams still took the top three places.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Okay.

Jim Marsden :

euphoria, and also this, oh my god, I'm going to be bankrupt tomorrow. So it's crazy. And so I had to do a lot I'm really sorry. And I we didn't know this was going to happen and so I ran away with my tail between my legs with lots of promises that would fix this and sort it out. And when I went, Oh my god, what am I going to do?

Wyatt Pemberton :

I was just having this moment you should tell my story thinking about, you know, like, that's Shannon Campbell when he shows up the first you know, King hammers with an IFRS con 2009. It was like, Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what is this this game changer. And there it is. Only it worked out. I guess it didn't work out that much different for him. He blew transmission up and they changed it. And then he kind of got a disqualification and but it's still historic, right? And yours is same kind of.dot.it was not optimal. But it was historic.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, it was an amazing moment, and it changed everything. But then all of a sudden I had this problem on my hands. I had unleashed Pandora's box, everybody saw the potential of what was there. Everybody at that rice at that time, realized that we were on the pinnacle of something really important. So I ran away back to Ken from Scotland. My tail between my legs and sat down thought and thought and thought and thought there was a guy who'd been coming into my shop could dial. Now dial was a work for a company called quake engineering. Now quite engineering, he bought a herd of motor there. They make racing gearboxes, and they make racing differentials to rally cars and all this kind of good stuff. And they make gearboxes for Gt 40s, you know, high end engineering, or dioxygen. They said, Well, why don't you come down and talk to my boss? You know, it's a gearbox? Yeah, why not? So I went on how to chat to, to microwave and I walked in there and the big shiny offices and amazing workshops packed with the latest most modern machinery. And I'm like, wow, I'm a real little fish here. So I sort of took my cigarette package offerings, you know, drawn out a bit of paper in there. And so please, sir, can you look at my drawing, sir, and he looked at them and he went on Awesome. I'll give you a call in a week. It was like, okay, so he phoned me and I went back out there for a meeting. And he showed me some designs based on what I'd given them. When I was like, Oh my god, and he was like, No, we can do this. Or I got it. And I'm like, wow. And he said, Okay, well, this is the initial cost for the to make them to make the molds for the castings. I was like, Oh my god, there was numbers on that piece of paper I'd never seen before. And I was like, shit, where do I go from here? And then I was like, Ah, great. Thanks. Yeah, so we come up with a plan and I signed my life away and ran away again guys shit, how am I gonna pay for this? But we did and the first 25 twin motor giggle pin top housings full production, cost units with billet gears, billet m plates, cast bodies came off the line. They were just a game changer. They were just there was nothing else out there like it, it was, you know, it was just mind blowing. But then we started kept learning because we'd copied the the ratios from the 80s. Before we very quickly realized that these weren't fast enough. The other problem was, is that the eight to seven, four is actually so incredibly agricultural. there's so few bearings in it and the tolerances are so loose, that actually runs incredibly freely. So it gets that maximum power for that single motor. What are some I created this top house that these big barriers and and massive gears and we suddenly found they weren't as fast as the standard worn stuff? And we were scratching our heads going, Well, why don't they fast as fast and we just realized there's a huge load of huge rolling mass that we had with these bigger bearings and extra bearings and everything. So yeah, it was we were able to learn as we went really quickly. So it was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Wyatt Pemberton :

It's kind of cool the trials and tribulations you went through kind of from your in service, you know, something business development, you know, your prototyping your.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, it's the same as the same all the way through. I mean, the thing is, is that like back then it was see the path stuff. I mean, it really was the ideas came forth, we made it, we went, we tested it, we tried it and put it out there. And now everything's a little bit more. You know, we now work in CAD and SolidWorks. And everything is, you know, what I'm working on today, you won't see that probably for 24 months, by the time we've prototyped it production is there and everything like that. So the things have really changed me back then I could have something in from an idea from an idea to prototype to conception in less than three, four months. Now, that's just not possible. It's particularly to get stuff to the price point that people want to pay for. They say you know, it's it's a massive changes shift and now we do things but we are producing some people Critical stuff and, and pretty much the whole way through all our product line, if you've got that, that learning right the way through it started as a problem in a field or a bug somewhere, and then we'll be taken that problem we've turned it upside down and turned it into something that now is a piece of art that will never let you down. And that's what we take pride in doing. In fact, this is cool. I actually had a winch come in for service this week from a customer in Scotland. And I scraped in the mud off it and getting everything putting it through the cleaning tanks. And that's the other thing I mean, back in the day, we didn't have cleaning techs. Now we have these amazing multi thousand panel cleaning tanks that just scribbled the crap out for us. That is incredible. I am veal on violent the pot, the serial number, serial number on that housing is 7001 which is the very first production to embody gigapan How cool is

Wyatt Pemberton :

that? The mechanics

Jim Marsden :

just came back literally came in last week for service. And it's still operational, all the bearings that are like brand new sail, which is amazing because the thing's full of water and slot and everything, but I don't need to change those bearings and the top housing still they're incredible. Small you might be very proud.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Is there been any design iterations between that point in time between that unit 7001 and what you would see today?

Jim Marsden :

Oh, God, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely not. And I mean, we the the those first housings, they then morphed into what we became the 80 series Winches. So we started designing whole bottom ends for winches, originally besides using worn gears, and then we started making our own gears, and it was the GP 80 series of winches were incredible. And they ran run away from 2007 right the way up until 2016. And we build something in there. Have to sell 100 of those. And most of those are still own operation around the world today. In fact, that's one of if I if you're gonna say, is there a flaw with your business plan is yes, we make stuff too good, it keeps going.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Good. I mean, then that is the name that you have.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, absolutely. We take great pride in that. And then in 2016, I was with quite for the whole period of time from sort of 2006 2007 right the way up to 16. And they were doing again, I'd be running in there were bits of paper with my designs on and they would they get a grown up to draw it and CAD and then and do all of those things, which is cool, but we needed to take control of that design process. So in 2015, we invested in SolidWorks technology for the design studio in train some staff including myself, when we started to redraw a redesign every single product in our catalog and then the hundred series when she's born and which is still current to this day. Here we are about three years now we've been three to eight years we've been producing those, we've now done something in the region of about 650 units. Yeah, just that one. So we've actually overtaken in three years or entire or we sold of those winches before but but on top of that, we've also got single motor winches and all kinds of other stuff as well going on so yeah, it's full it's really cool

Wyatt Pemberton :

come the first time I really they landed on time I render because what you guys do in Europe is kind of what you guys do in Europe right? You know, here in the states we we have this view, yes, do things a little bit different. You know, you do it your way. And

Jim Marsden :

this is the crazy thing to say America is in its own, particularly Northern America is its own little bubble of off road. Okay, and I don't mean that in a horrible way, but genuinely you all if we go, come on away from Northern Northern America, you Ultra for you have caught a desert racing, then you have a bit of trial whaling, I think is the best way you don't really have any other competitions outside of sort of that oh two four and desert racing there isn't sort of any creamy if I'm wrong, you don't sort

Wyatt Pemberton :

of rock bouncers we've got rock bouncers oh yeah sorry rope bouncing yeah i mean he didn't want to forget those guys don't know Don't forget that the good wolf our asses.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah I was gonna say come around and kill me but that's kind of your race culture there you come away from that and if we look at Russia we look at Australasia we look at Asia we look at Africa we could be Europe and there's a lot for it offered saying that he's very much involved around winching and, and sort of multiple day events, etc. And pretty much all of those other and even South America. In fact, there's some pretty big things in in some of the countries down there that they do when challenges and those kinds of things. A lot of this was all born from certain events back in the day. It is 90 Yeah. Do you ever guys ever come across the cattle trophy?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh yeah, I remember those like they'd be the like the yellow Land Rovers with the with the like the Canton you know, the camel cigarettes right and they had well today you'd see him and you'd be like oh, that's an O you know that's a glorified Overlander right has the roof rack in the in the guy wires? What do you call it? pre saber

Jim Marsden :

brackets?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Okay Yeah, and they just directly over yet

Jim Marsden :

that's it they push the push the leaves out of the way and that's what they're for. So that's that was the adventure and in fact it wasn't actually camel cigarettes I always thought it was but it wasn't just a different camel brand but

Wyatt Pemberton :

it's a different camel is a different character we do.

Jim Marsden :

Anyway, someone's gonna correct me on that so hey, wait for the internet to Lyle, but they

Wyatt Pemberton :

I get facts like really close but then so far away, you know, like, his perception like Well, I I bought the rumor. You know? Um, you sell the fat.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, exactly. Now we I get that all the time and always say something. I said, Dude, some guy will come up and say, Hey, man, that's completely wrong. Who's like Well, sorry about that. So we'll put it right later. But yeah, going back but this camel trophy. These were the adventurous. So basically they took like 40 or vehicles. They put crews in them from different countries around the world. These crews had to qualify to be able to get to the camel trophy, and then then chuck them into a jungle in the middle of Africa or in South America. They had to cross a certain amount of terrain. And they had to build bridges to get these vehicles across rivers and it was the whole off road adventure. And everyone was hooked on it and everyone wanted their own off road adventure. And so these events started popping up around the world. Outback challenge Australia Malaysian rainforest challenge, the Borneo Safari, okay. And other things are crazy trophy Transylvania trophy, all of these things we're wanting to be replicants of those camel trophy days. That's what people wanted. And it was it was amazing. And so all of these events started popping up to give people the opportunity of a venture. And that's where these events are started is good to come from. And the great thing was, of course, back in the 90s, we could go and buy a Land Rover, buy a Jeep, you could buy a Nissan, you could buy a Toyota, all of these vehicles are readily modifiable. You could buy a winch off the shelf, you could put some big tires on it, some aftermarket lockers from a rb, and go be an off road superhero. And that's what people did.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And that's kind of what you guys are coming into, though. I mean, that's kind of where you've kind of driven all the trophies that are in your trophy case are kind of around that, you know, like the Croatia trophy, any of the rain forests stuff that you've been into. I mean, that's kind of that when I mentioned in the very beginning, like the winningest driver involved with over four, you have so many trophies in the trophy case. From these I don't want to call them some of them are definitely which events but

Jim Marsden :

but their trophy rate events that wind challenge events they're all of that so let's let's let's start the basics What the hell is a wind challenge or what is a trophy? Right? Well trophy rates I first started reading about these in the 90s the transplanted trophies this the sense of a new trophy is crazy trophy Okay, um, what these are seven day off road extravaganzas. Okay, you have road book navigation. So like rally star navigation, and you are in a meant to rank so we're talking about the wilds of Croatia, Romania, Poland, Germany, wherever, okay, it's irrelevant, but you're in the wild. You'll give them a road book. You can be doing one minute you can be doing 60 mile an hour down a track. The next you go to river that's 100 feet or 200 feet or a wide deal with it. Come around the next. Another couple of kilometers. There's a cliff in front of you do With it, that's what trophy rights are all about. On trophy rights. They can be traveling from point A to B. Or they can be unusually R or they can be circuits. Or like the Croatia trophy. We can do like two days of rulebook there will have like a day of special stages, where we might have to work together with other teams and bits and pieces and to explore that team spirit thing that happens as well. So there's many different aspects to it. Like the brizola rally, for example, we're covering nearly 2000 kilometers over seven days, and the rain is gnarly. I mean, prop anomic we're talking full water jumps, tank traps, you know, these are all millage. Some of this is on military sites. So there could be 60 ton battle tanks. We've just got through these water hose day or so before us and we're holding four wheel drives in there. And it's fair to say that a fair few just don't come back out. So that's the trophy right style stuff seven days of between four and seven days a week. Racing, okay, then we have wind challenge now winds challenge is exactly what it says is which challenge. So we will be having punch cards usually attached to the vehicle. And we are trying to get close enough to an orienteering punch that will be put on on my rocky out clear for Apple to a tree, and there'll be a preset route that you've got to follow to get to these other big time stages, or they'll be punches scattered over a wilderness area, or you have to collect as many of these as possible. Some times there'll be coordinated by GPS, sometimes they'll just be a map at the beginning. And you'll have to, I mean, back in the days, we didn't have camera phones, you'd be drawing the maps out on hand and and then chasing after these things and trying to find, but invariably, the terrain would be incredibly brutal and not able to drive so driven forward, driving is not going to take place, so you'd have to use your winches to be able to achieve these punches. Some of these things are so bad that we'll be using a front winch or rear winch ads. Sometimes even a sense of winches, well, it's got a pendulum of vehicles up into there to get to these things. That's what Chris bowler, I mean Chris bowler, he shocked me on this like, I guess I, I needed to walk my mind through one of these competitions and you know with any competition the human, we're gonna make things harder and harder and harder. And he walked me through like they the punch that you used was up a tree or up between two trees and you had a winch off of two trees and pull your vehicle all four tires off the ground winching it up a tree to get your you know, the your punch card that was mounted to the roll bar close enough to the punch to punch it, and then lower the vehicle down and you could go on about your day. Yeah, I mean, if you really get some really horrible nasty side hustlers, they will they'll do is they'll pin them on the floor. So you have to roll your car onto its side to hit it. Okay, but you're controlling it with the winches, say roll the cartilage on its side to get the punch card now to get the pouch there for your car back over again. and off you go. But these are the things Variations on themes and and and these are all particularly the trophy right events are adventure events, okay? And I've met some of my closest and dearest friends even today, you know, these events because there's unfortunately there is a an element of risk and unfortunately people sadly do get hurt. Unfortunately, loss of life does happen and has taken place and nasty injuries have happened we're playing with big toys and gaming stuff does go wrong occasionally. So there's a lot of safety elements there but it's also I think that's that kind of danger HDS also appealing as well, I think people they want that element of risk in the racing I think and I think that's one thing that's also what attracts people to desert racing into ultra for as well there is that that excitement of it being dangerous and it's the same with trophy raid and and winds challenge as well.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I want to see that like added to the UTV class like the punch card where it's bolted to the ground somewhere. They roll up math to flip their side by side on its side, punch in them, flip it back on watch that.

Jim Marsden :

It's great to be fair. I mean, there's a guy called Alex POTUS and Philip Morris, and a few years ago, did you remember the very first races, they bought one of those, like, brought it to me and they said, Rob, we want to kick off fast winch on this thing. So I modified a low line, Chinese windfall. And listing used to have a retrieval rate the same speed as possible walking, and bolted to the back of a UTV and then at a shoot that went out the front though the thing is, it was it was amazing. And they were doing very well at the wind challenges with it because no one expected these little golf carts to turn up and do that and with these winches, and then, after that happened for a couple of months, it's the organizers started to put in some pretty nasty traps for these little golf carts and couldn't do that anymore, or certainly not as easy. So rightfully so. Yeah. Haha, exactly. But the utvs I mean, this is the crazy thing we come to America, and utvs are like locusts, they're everywhere. You come to Europe, and you're gonna struggle to find them unless you go to certain events. And some events, particularly Germany and Poland. There's lots of them out there. But they're very, very localized in the areas that they are. But they're getting more and more popular. What we're starting to see actually, is some of our older generation of drivers are now crossing over to them, because they've got older vehicles and they don't want to spend, you know, 100 and $150,000 pounds, building new cars when they can go and spend 30,000 on a UTV spent 10, putting some cool stuff on it, and go and have a great time with their friends for seven days. And so that's starting to really grow over here. We're starting to see a growth in that UTV market and I hope it can. Yeah, exactly. And I really hope that happens that that's they're gonna save us. They're gonna say bye motorsport in many ways, I mean, it's getting tougher now. The environmentalist's are starting to close down. Whereas we used to go to Poland and particularly Germany. We used to race a few days in Germany, and then we used to go into Poland. Germany is basically a shut shop now, which is really sad. Some of the other countries and they're starting to shut down as well. It's getting difficult to find areas where we can truly do what I'd call wild off roading where we're having to go push further east or push further south. So you know, crochet is even becoming tougher as well. It's getting harder to get licenses over there. And you know, because of rock up off roading, you know. So it's my advice to anyone out there who wants to get involved in trust you right? Do it now, because it's not going to be many years before those environmentalists start shutting us down. And that will be a very sad day. Indeed.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I mean, we're absolutely worried about that here in the States, any of us that have been involved in off road for you know, 20 years, we've seen those happen we saw teleco you know, get shut down. We saw you were shut down. We've seen all these places we've seen you out west swaths upon swaths upon swaths of land closures. From the BLM, we've seen trails get closed down, it's, it's a global issue. It's,

Jim Marsden :

it is Yeah, but I don't get it. Personally, I strongly believe that having lived in the countryside all my life that you can take a barrel, a piece of forest. And if you drive a vehicle through it, and the vehicle turns over the soil, that's where you're going to find the insects first. And that's where you're going to find the birds. And then when you find the birds, that's where you'll find the predators and that's where you find everything else. But you by turn it we don't have back in days gone by we had big animals that roam these forests that dug up the ground constantly and kept this life cycle going on. We don't have the wild boar anymore walking around. We don't have to buy some of the cows and stuff like this that did all of that. Those four wheel drives actually replace those and I strongly believe that in the US correctly that these vehicles actually do good to our forests and By turning over that ground by moving that multiple leaf mulch has been down on the ground for years turn up with bringing the bulb back up to the surface that have been buried for ages. It's, you know, that's something I strongly believe I just don't know how to prove that in to be able to put that into words that environmentalist will understand and I don't think I ever will stand a chance they've got their own agendas and they certainly don't cross the line.

Unknown Speaker :

Stay tuned.

Unknown Speaker :

Your talent tank is in full yet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

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Unknown Speaker :

now back to the show.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I want to jump back just a little little bitty bit you brought up you know as we were talking winching which truly fascinated by you're talking about these guys that brought you a UTV to, to kind of retrofit which is on their UTV jumping even further back giggle pink kind of first hit the radar for me was been Napier that the Aussie been had out a bomber and he wanted he had to have a giggle pin on it. And it was like this big deal and Randy slawson saying yeah, I can't fit that big huge with a winch in my chassis. He ultimately did. Right. I think it had it and then Oh, he did. Oh, he did. He did. He ended up putting it in the pinhole and the pedal the pinhole. Got it. And then this is this

Jim Marsden :

is really cool, because Ben contacted us and now on a massive fan of Australian off road racing, particularly their wins challenge saying now let's go back to 2007. Okay, the birth of King of the hammers. Let's look at Australia off your guy's radar entirely. But let's talk about that right now. They are running modified Nisar patrols, okay, they're running Bipasha They're running coilover suspension. They're running 6.2 and up to seven liter engines with supercharges. Okay, and hidden speeds of over 100 mile an hour across their deserts. Okay, they're doing events like the outback challenge, okay, which was seven day races. Okay, working round do huge marches and racing across incredible terrain. Okay, and their vehicles dare I say we're far more advanced. Now. I'm gonna say they were far more advanced at that time than the vehicles that first arrived at King of the hammers. But they had a reverse. They had a change in policy of by the government, which basically stopped off road racing, off road, they or motorsport off road. And so what was booming, motorsport in Australia to something literally just just petered out overnight, and the world lost. I personally believe it's Australia has never recovered from it. Remember, looking back to those guys were to be rolling Canavan Kimbo or no Walters. birdie and God knows how many guys did watch the videos for our amazing guys to watch. And I know the guys that are universally the max is trapdoors on and they're running the creeper crawlers and all other things. And they were doing these crazy ideas with Nissan axles and a lot of this stuff and making that King suspension work for them really well, in an environment that's completely alien to anything that those shock absorbers had been thought about before. And, and it was a real shock couple.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, here's the thing, Jim, that I think I find, you know, this is, as, you know, majority of the listeners of the show, and a majority of you know, the ultra for population that are fans. We're here in the United States. We're getting a story from a Brit, you about the Aussies, on a completely other continent. So we got three continents involved here. That is this cautionary tale of something that could very easily and very quickly happen here. Without an off road shut down here and we should we shouldn't be so arrogant as to think that us Americans we are we are we are that the Brits know it. The Aussies know the Aussies have first and witnessed it. And here we are, we kind of need to get our, for lack of better words, our proverbial shit together here in the states that when it comes to our land use or risk following the steps with all these. I think

Jim Marsden :

if there's one thing that to that 2020 of shoulders, you know, expect the unexpected because you know, who would have thought that the world would shut down for a virus? Yeah, it's I mean, who would have thought that's even possible to you know, someone said, Can you turn the internet off? Well, this year we turn the world off.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, completely.

Jim Marsden :

Nuts.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So I know we got off a little bit of a tangent there, but we're essentially gone with Ben Napier was the Segway being leave I surely leave. I had came and done a bunch of Europe stuff and he came back and puts giggle pin in his Campbell car is that

Jim Marsden :

I'll just get a cup of Ben for a minute. But there was a moment with Ben Napier that I thought was going to change my life. There was in 2014 ben davia turned up in his car. And you know, everybody had heard about it. Everybody seen everything. Ben was very vocal about the fact that this was the future of ultra for and he rocks out and he very famously dived in to backdoor first lap. He's coming in there and there Derek West is winching on the winter when there's four cars behind him waiting to go on the left hand line. Ben Napier drive straight up to the right hand line. He has a game plan. His co driver jumps out. He runs up over the top and hooks the winch line. Derrick West is still winching. Ben connects out orange rope gets to go from his co driver hits the bottom winches up onto the top Derrick West is still winching, gets to the top slows the winch cable. Derek West is still winching and drives off. Yeah, I was like, Oh my God. Just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring Not a single phone call.

Wyatt Pemberton :

No one realizes that they just assume that they didn't know how to run a winch I don't know it was like

Jim Marsden :

I thought that was a I thought it was gonna be my breakthrough in America I thought oh here we go no no single phone call it was hilarious. Yeah but it just it was an interesting moment because Ben came from although Ben wasn't a wind challenge guy himself into that wind challenge mentality of brought it to ultra for and made it work in that thing. And yeah, the thing is, is people in America are a little bit scared of that because we also Jason share it Do you remember what Jason chose to winch back door? Shannon nailed it on one. So I think after that everyone was scared to reach for a winch and and I think that was a very seminal moment in offroad history personally that that little jewel

Wyatt Pemberton :

in our kind of in this situation where I call it like almost the Chinese water torture of King of the hammers is the truth. Continue to get easier and easier and easier and the bypasses continually can be accepted as you know, the fastest way through the trail is the acceptable way. One of the things I

Jim Marsden :

don't enjoy the most is the fact that I constantly have people coming to me saying Hey, come on look at this guy's tracker trail. Hey, come on, look at this guy's tracker track. You know, this guy's clearly off course in disguise of course eliminates like, dude, you know, I'm not a referee. I'm an I'm an announcer you know, you've got an issue with someone you need to go and speak to resolve some. It's a difficult one. I mean this with all kind of racing. There is a world gentlemen and ladies the race I'd like to think that and I'd like to think that nobody would intentionally cheat I you know, why would you do that you're cheating yourself. But I'm equally I know that, you know, it's people don't take the wrong route because they maybe they misread it. I don't know, press. I'm trying to make excuses for people but you're right. There needs to be something done. about some of the bypasses that are appearing in these ama trials. How you do that or public land? I'm not sure right?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, exactly. I'm fully with you there. I don't know what the solution is. But I'm sitting there thinking back from the standpoint of being a winch manufacturer you know which modifier you know, aftermarket to the winch aftermarket. And you're like, Wow, my market is somewhat drying up from the from as far as the United States guys are concerned because they keep making the the competition's easier and easier and easier.

Jim Marsden :

Well, I think there's also a lot of the fact that it's not just getting a slot is just easier. The cars on the cruise again, better off for sure. The best off road racing. The best ultra full offered races in the world are American. Dumb. That's it final. And I it's we've got some great guys over here. We can really kick off on all day. But you know, when you've got Lauren Haley racing, Jason Shearer basic Eric Miller racing, Jason racing Levi Raul Gomez and Marcus and God The list goes on, on a day to day basis. Okay barbers this time of year, the level of these guys is just getting better and better and better and better. And as I say when we're now sitting there and it's not so much we're not changing cars to make the difference, we're changing geometry to make the difference on all existing cast, then you know that we're reaching the pinnacles of what we can achieve and a lot of somebody will come along and blow the doors off and I think they're probably going to do it with electric but who knows and who knows then that

Wyatt Pemberton :

we talked about it right, some hybrid. Yeah. Well, you know, Jim, we've talked about a bunch of things you know, as far as like competition has gone as far as vehicle designs, you know, engineering designs, on multiple continents all around the globe. But the one of the things that I want to get to with you, and I think a lot of people want to know, as you've announced for them at 400 this year, you've been the king of the hammers. Announcer for Bunch of years you've raced kicking the hammers as 4400 competitor. How did the door get opened? Or are you put your foot in for this announcing gig? How did you graduate into a microphone in your hand and being so well versed?

Jim Marsden :

First rise to 13 and a crazy accident Pierre Sony won the very first kick in the valleys in Europe. Okay, which was the our first ever race and human robot that robot came second. They won the opportunity. Don't call say, bring your cast stickman container were taken into America. You are racing amis. Noah Wow. Well, Rob's call was like a little moon buggy thing. And he said, Look, you know, I'm not in a place where I want to go to hammers right now. So they said, Well, Jim, do you want it? I was like, Well, yeah, damn rod. I do. So I phoned my mate, Wayne Smith in Australia said and said, Oh, gee, other habits. We've got 5058. Let's make this happen. It's a once in a lifetime. Long story short, we ended up a habit with all our fantastic crew and we're like rabbits in headlights man. We didn't know what to expect. And it was crazy and long story short, and we won the USA then got disqualified. And then finally, the next day. And then the next year we went back when we were racing in the spec class in the Odyssey cup. Again, we had a fantastic time qualified second by Shannon Campbell when the spec class cars then smoked him going out into the desert, which is one of my favorite moments of my life. And yeah, anyway, they will tell you every day that the suspension ship but it was shot on my car as well. I'll tell you the anyway, we blew up but we were leaving that race. Then we blew out here and that 17 miles yeah did the same story everyone else's. I was winning and then

Wyatt Pemberton :

up until

Jim Marsden :

that, but yeah, anyway, so that was my hammers race history. Then the next year I went back and Danko has become a good friend at this point. He said, Look, Jim, would you just jump on stage and just give a bit of color? Just tell the drivers story of what it's like for these guys out there. I was like, Yeah, no problem at all. So I went up on stage in the afters, you know, part of I forget what aspects of the race it was now, chat Raglan was on stage. And transfer to chatting, talent, all these big lift heroes. Wow. So I've got out there and chats. Oh, man, thank God, you're here. And I'm like, What do you mean? I'm just here to help out? And he's like, Yeah, man. Yeah, I feel ready. I've got to go and start taking these microphones off out of these jumper and stuff and shoving them up a shirt and everything. And I'm like, really early said, Yeah, man. You know, you've got this, you'll be fine. Okay, right. Okay. And then all of a sudden, I got the earphones on. And I get this little voice in my ears go. Hey, is that Jim? light? Hi. Yeah, who's this is it Hey, my name is Tim I'm a production at the back. And welcome to King of the hammers. All right, well thank you my friend. Yeah, this is this is a great place to be. And is it right yeah, just taking nice and easy. We're at commercial break at the moment we're going to be coming back in about eight seconds. When we come back I want you to welcome the crowd back to hammer town and then toss it down a miles is in the past and that's in three to one online one month. Whoa, well, I'm only come up with this this Garmin, a sink and swim time, sink or swim. So I stood there. I looked across the crowd in front of me gotten 1000 people some blur I haven't got a clue. But it was just a blur. just picked up the microphone wants to swim. Good afternoon, have a town or Welcome back to the 2015 nitto king of the hammers Parbat Optima batteries miles is down on the person's got some news for us miles. What do you got? I couldn't stop shaking.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Like I've heard you say it a million times.

Jim Marsden :

I couldn't stop shaking for about 10 minutes. The other guy who's supposed to be on stage comes back up on stage with two drinks. Oh, hi, how are you? Oh, bless it. They go. Shit, man. I was up there for a few hours. Came offstage. And I was just like, that is the best thing ever. It was amazing. And then Dave said, Hey, you come back next year. No, sorry. Yeah. Oh, I'd love to. And then. Yeah, that was mental. And then, three years ago, the Martelli brothers reached out to me and said, Hey, would you like to come and comments? I know rice called the mint. 400. Men 400. I know that no, now you're gonna laugh. Okay. I'm a Brit. Okay, so I didn't really know what the main 400 was. I heard of it. But I didn't really finally get how important it is in the grand scheme of things. Get you've got to remember that. This is the same brick that I think it was in 2015. I was on stage with me. Whoa. And this guy called Rob Mack was brought up on stage. I don't know any Hall is melting. She's acid. Oh my god, it's Rob Mac. And I'm sitting there going Who the hell is Rob Mack? I haven't got a Scooby Doo is no clue. Not did I realize that he's the poor only the greatest fruit racer of all time, with the most trophies ever. And so he put me right on that one pretty quick. And it was kind of the same with the men. I had no idea of the importance of it. And and then so all of a sudden, I find myself in Vegas calling for a desert race. And I must apologize to my family actually, because we spent two weeks before the import where I only had a week or so to do any research. I knew nothing about desert racing like I do probably Gordon, but knew another couple of names, but that was there. So we spent the next couple of weeks three years ago. There's been Two weeks watching YouTube videos of desert racing trying to find out about all of these people and what they want in life very soon found out that you need to fish just takes a long time before he arrived.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh absolutely foreigner, Austin fish. Yeah, you're hitting the strides here that I think it has become painfully obvious to me from listening to you announce and listening to miles is your voices are different. You have a different voice. So when you're only hearing the audible, you still know there's still this comfort level of who you're who's talking to you. And it's, hey, when I hear your voice, I know hey, that's Marston. He knows what he's talking about. I can trust what he's saying to me. miles

Jim Marsden :

same way. Something that may last me miles is is Shannon Welsh, and mouse. So Chris, no more about ultra for racing that any other human beings on the planet. That's a fact. And working with both of them is an absolute joy. And don't get me wrong other amounts are incredible as well. But wonderful, wonderful human beings but miles is knowledge is vast. And he can glance a car sideways. I know who it is, and tell you all about their life, who they were, who their family were, who they used to race with what they do as a danger.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Okay, and what flavor beer they drank the night before. Exactly. It might Myles knows that he puts in his homework, you know?

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, exactly. But we do this site when I take a great deal of pride from working with miles on. But we're also taught that to each other as well. We're always backing each other up. It's just you know, when you just get that you meet that person and you just bounce off them. miles is that guy I bounce off, and we never tread on each other when we're working together. It's, it's I in fact, I thought this was Ricky Johnson as well. We never tread on each other. We're It's other than answers I can trade on accidentally. And I don't mean to, and I apologize to them. But there's just when we're Ricky, miles flow is so nice and, and cam as well, for that matter. It's just whether there's just because they're really good. They might be looking, I don't know. But they just,

Wyatt Pemberton :

ah, brilliant. But if we're being honest, what you guys are tasked to do, and I don't I think there's a this is lost on a lot of people is when you're talking about an eight or a 10 hour race and there's eight or 10 hours or 12 hours of air to fill. It's quite difficult to fill that by yourself. It requires a team.

Jim Marsden :

Well, we actually had a really bizarre so you're not wrong. This year, we actually had an almost reverse of that. Well,

Wyatt Pemberton :

it was constant changing. You're right. There was no like a drama in the 44 grid.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, but we this this year, we've always had, it's the coolest coverage. The changed is that this year, we've always worked with sort of like between 3040 and 50 And outwards to sort of like 60% coverage, of course. Okay. And so there's always going to be holes in the coverage that we're seeing. So we're always having some eyes on what we're looking at and what we're seeing. This year, our hammers, production was just so incredible thing, cause coverage was just so unbelievable. I think we're up to I forget what it was. Now. There's 73% course coverage. Who cares? Oh, it was nuts. I mean, don't quote me on that figure. But it was ridiculously high. And all of a sudden, we have so much to talk about the we're actually missing stories. And I know people were saying come on at home what you're getting texted, I say, Hey, man, why don't you talk about such and such. And it was able to get a chance because we're watching on leaders. And I'm looking at charts to kind of fill that hole in behind. And so it was a it was another dynamic that came in this year very much and we actually found that we were almost out Too much to talk about those times said that the commentating is evolving every every year and and it's changing as well and the guys behind the scenes what you don't see is our amazing production crew who are working so hard to make the background perfect. I mean probably my like craziest moment commentating Okay. Do you remember when they we lost all power a couple of years ago we had the the leaders, the leaders coming in literally coming into habitat they were coming down towards backdoor somewhere around there. And we lost the generator gone to blew up who lost all power to all the live feeds show everything done, and wasted that guy. Oh my god, what do we do now? We've got like, 3000 people stood in front of the fire pit and we can't tell him anything. What do we say? So it was like, Wow. So I just kind of jumped up and said, Hey, everyone, but everyone just went silent. It was Wow. Oh, it's just like, Guys, this is the word. We're sorting out a spare generator. It's coming up online in a few minutes. Please bear with us. As we get information for racers, I will relay it to you verbally. Fingers crossed. Thank you. The whole crowd were, were amazing. And as I got information coming through, and as long as I say on my PCI race radio, and the accent was coming through on shout it back to the crowd. labor was going wow. And then all of a sudden we just power came back on again. There's Travis hooked up, they pulled out the big plugs, and Jared went to another generator and got it running again. And out. So there was so much drama, there was incredible. phone was a meltdown from people around the world. What's happened is that America just exploded or something. Where's the internet God? Yes, but there's this so many stories like that. It's incredible. Love coming To the United States is because it's it's a lie. offroad isn't a hobby, it's a lifestyle you choose to live it. And that is very, very special indeed. And you don't see that in any other country. Spot on.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I would be remiss if I didn't make this next statement. That's kind of a question. We talked about how recognizable Your voice is and miles voices and the comfort levels, but there was a fella that got on to the live feed this year in the 4400 race with a very unmistakable voice and he killed it. Absolutely killed it. We talked about him a little bit ago. Ben Napier.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah, it wouldn't be good. Ben has incredible way of taking a visualizing what he sees so well. And he also verbalized

Wyatt Pemberton :

visual,

Jim Marsden :

yeah, and he brings that in, it turns into something else and he just has these quirky little one liners as well. But what he also has is a depth of knowledge of the For from those early days, and he's great friends with so many of the teams that are there that he has those brilliant little background stories. So, I mean mammals. We've been doing this for a long time. So there's a good chance you probably heard a lot of our stories already. Ben was able to come in with this whole raft of fresh and interesting information. Just drop it on the crowd. It was fantastic to be part of it was really cool.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I was in the truck and I had to sit there, pull my phone out and text him and be like, you killed it. Well done. Awesome. Awesome. Like I was when he started talking. I was like, Alright, Ben, Ben. Oh, my gosh, you are on fire. Hopefully you guys, you guys, they're in production. In the announcing crew. setups of cameos for him in the future man became on to hear him some more.

Jim Marsden :

The thing with it is is this. Yeah, we're all very blessed to get our opportunity to do it. None of us have got big enough egos that we're saying, Hey, we're going to do this forever because We understand that there are people that who can do a bad job or as good a job. And we also understand that sometimes you need change. Okay? So, like I came, I came in as a breath of fresh air three years ago, four years ago, whatever it was five years ago, maybe even I don't know. Okay, I know it's a breath of fresh air. Okay. And I've actually gone from probably being a color commentator to now I lead commentator and so it's now my job to make sure that as a commentator, to make sure that I am leading into my color commentators. So Ben Napier, Casey shear, whoever those might be. Les Johnson, z Johnson, who's he is a competitive person. Somebody doesn't even exist, but the all of these people and making sure that they get to tell their stories. So my jobs kind of changed that a little bit. And, and it's understanding that and equally, it's also understanding that handles is massive and it deserves the perspective, all of us and, and if I, my time comes and it's time to pound the mic up and move on, then that's what we do. So we have to be able to, you know, to pass the baton on to other interesting people who have great stories and things to say. And I know that Dave Cole will always be trying constantly to bring new storylines to the Amazon, and get people who have those stories up onto stage so they can tell the world all about their experiences. And that's very cool. Indeed. That's my mo right. Their modus operandi, right there spread the word about our community in the stories and the amazing people. And Jim, you're one of those. Thank you so much for coming on today. I swear. You're a guy who you've been a part of it, you've lived it, you've breathed it all. All of your time in the shops, you know, spin and spanners. I don't think it's as as the same ring is spinning wrenches. Just Good spinning spanners. That's a tongue twister. With my element. Yeah, did.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Hey, did we cover all the stories that you wanted to make sure we got out today?

Jim Marsden :

Oh, I wouldn't be here another day. What got through those being made? Where do you want to start? We've got snakes in tents in. In Croatia. We got our we haven't even touched on Portugal, Portugal, to the any Portuguese, they're listening. I love your country. The Portuguese are motorsport mental. If you ever get a chance go to racing Portugal, then nuts.

Wyatt Pemberton :

gt has said the same thing JT has said that is the that's the pinnacle of it.

Jim Marsden :

It is and it's actually one of the few places where you can actually still go off roading or thousands of miles of open track. free of charge. It's a it's an incredible country. And but then, you know, Europe, okay, we're not America. And the same way that America is so incredibly beautiful for us. Come over to Europe, come and visit us. We've got some money Amazing things over here some amazing racism. We'd love to see more of you guys over here come into play in the dirt.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, Mr. Marston, Mr. Gilpin, Jim, thank you for coming on the talent tank. Thank you for telling, you know a snippet of your story. This flash in time where we're kind of starting to liven up the world is starting to open back up kind of post COVID. We're planning on racing starting again sometime in the near future I saw Crandon is canceled, but there's a I think there's been a pivot to some guys have started. Got a race going here in Texas at a text Plex, just south of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. I see this in desert racing coming up, which is really great news. Yep.

Jim Marsden :

Yeah. I mean, we've we're supposed to be racing here in end of July. But it's still really early days yet. And that's all just keep our fingers crossed. There's a lot of madness going on in the world at the moment. But you know what motorsport fixes a whole load of problems. So let's hold it close to us. Let's support it. Let's make it happen. And I look forward to seeing everyone on the racetrack very, very soon. All right, well,

Wyatt Pemberton :

thank you, Jim. I appreciate you coming on.

Jim Marsden :

Thank you. It's been absolute pleasure, man. Steady.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, we are out. I hope you guys really enjoyed the season man. It was a good one. It was a fun one. We covered a lot of ground. We've covered a lot of stories. We've covered a lot of people all without racing going on. That's insanity at its best. Kind of hard to do, but we pulled it off. I really have to thank my my three partners on this custom splice. Those guys, if you do anything for offroad recovery or even on road recovery, or any projects, please hit Todd and his crew up at a custom splice.com give them a call. machining. Whoa, my gosh, branding machines Stan and Brandon those guys over there in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They do it all if they can't make it. I don't know who can if if you need it made they will do it. Hit those guys up. They are a big supporter of the talent tank and I value their involvement. And then last but not least, magnitude performance. Jason Yoder and company their neck enosis, Texas and everything that they've done for for the talent tanking getting behind and supporting this. This venture in this project and everything give them give them a call for your suspension needs. These guys do magic with springs and then the parent company mass motor sports engines and they have a they have engines on lock handbill, lots of horsepower. There your guys. Thanks guys. We'll catch you guys next season. Have a good summer.

Intro/Outro :

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