Welcome to Cars Yeah Show Number 714. We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. This is Cars Yeah, where you'll enjoy interviews with inspiring automotive enthusiasts. Mark Green is here to provide you with a fuel injection of automotive inspiration. So get in, sit down, buckle up and get ready for a wild ride. Here on Cars Yeah. Hello, automotive enthusiasts. I am a revved up and so excited to introduce today's very special guest, Chris Follon. Hey Chris, are you buckled up and ready for a fun ride? I'm ready to go. Air cooled ready. All right. Love the air cool. It goes way back into my youth. Chris Follon is the owner of classic VW Bugs in Congress, New York. He's created a global following with his vintage VW Bug Restorations and his how-to restoration video tips educating enthusiasts like you and me around the world. Chris has earned numerous awards with his beautifully restored VWs, including being accepted as the first bug ever to the Fairfield Concorde Allegons. His cars have also been on the lawns of the Green Witch Concorde Allegons, the Lyme Rock Concorde and the Hemmings Concorde. His restorations have appeared in Hot VW magazines, Air Cool Classics magazine, VOLKS World, Fox News, USA Today and the Journal News. He's also worked on Collector and Celebrity Jerry Seinfeld's 1956 AW. So Chris, I've told our listeners just a little bit about you. Would you take a brief moment, share a little bit more about your business and of course, your passion for VWs and automobiles? Absolutely. It all started back in college. I went to school for Fine Arts to be an animator. I grew up on Looney Tunes cartoons and I want to meet these neat cartoons. That's it. And I always thought in college that the artist needs a bug and I wanted to be the artist with a bug going to school. So I commuted to college back and forth and it was my mission to find a beetle during my college years to hold my gear, my portfolio bins that I would take, you know, to and from class. And I was even starting filmmaking at the time too. So I would have camera gear and tripods and things like that that throw in the back of the car. I just wanted to be that person with a bug. And you know, I did 10 years of film after college. I wrote and directed my own stuff for a while and I wanted to be like Spielberg. But you know, realizing that when you get older, you get a little wiser. And that is a lottery ticket, you know, it's not guaranteed. So towards the end of my short career there, about 10 year career, I started looking towards internet marketing and starting a business on the internet. I did not want to work for anybody. So I have two older sisters that have their own businesses. My father had his old business after he was retired from NYPD. So I wasn't built to be under a roof, you know, under somebody else. So I looked towards eBay and I told my dad, you know, while we were, while I was filming, I was, I was tinkering with bugs here and there. And I never really thought to turn it into a business. And so one time I sold a film internationally and the money I needed to pay my lawyer and my film rep that was out in California, the fees for selling that film. I didn't have it. So I was a starving artist. So I said to my dad, you know, I think I got to sell one of the bugs we got. And sure enough, I turned towards eBay and I honed up on some courses and had to do it right. And I said to myself, you know, I have, I have a film background, I got gear, I got an editing suite. Why don't I film the car and cut it to music titles and effects and throw it up on eBay. Well, long, you know, long story short, we did that. We made money on that car and we looked at each other and said, you know what? Maybe this could be something. A business is born. That's it. And you know, from there on, I mean, when I first told my dad, I wanted to do an eBay business. He looked at me like, what are you crazy? I don't even know what that is, you know, yeah. And that's old school. So it was a wonderful thing. And that's how we started pretty much and started out of a one car garage. And my parents were living in a gated community. I was living with them still. Oh, okay. And, you know, after a while, those people in that community did not like to see four, five, six bugs parked around. No, the homeowners association was probably coming down on your folks pretty hard. Exactly. So, but we had to start somewhere. Yeah. So many great businesses have started in the garage. And when you look back at some of the incredibly famous people like Steve Jobs with Apple and Hule and Packert and Walt Disney, I mean, all these great companies started out of garage. So you had a great start for sure, even though you got kicked out of the gate community. I understand. Well, as we continue on your journey, I always like to start by asking my guess for a success quote. This is some kind of saying it's been instrumental in forming your life and your success. And it's a very nice way to get the inspirational tires turning here on cars. So Chris, take the wheel. Quote that I've been following, I guess for a little while now is we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. Love it. So that's from George Bernard Shaw. And I saw that quote, my girlfriend works as a vet tech in an animal hospital. And I saw that quote on a picture with two dogs playing in the beach. And I said to myself, that's like me and my dad. And I said, when I come to work, I'm playing with toys. It doesn't feel like work. I come here, I look forward to my Mondays to come here and say, what are we going to find this week? What adventure are we going to trek out to to go bring back from a garage or a barn out there? Or what do we get to dig up on a car that we're stripping that we find underneath the carpet or the mats or something? There's always something very interesting with these cars. They have such history. People have such memorable times with them. It's very nostalgic. Anywhere I go, I go pump up gas with a beetle and there's somebody coming up to you to talk to you. Oh yeah. You found the secrets of life, my friend. That's for sure. That's what Carzia is all about. People that have found their passion and wrapped it into their vocation. And boy, when you can do that, life is definitely bliss for sure. And I love your comments about finding things in cars. I bought an old car once and I took it back door panel off to correct something and down inside there, it fallen through an aftray opening was a little match box car that kind of thought that some little kid was sitting in the back, lost that car in there and where did my car go? Aftray aided. So yeah, lots of great things. I've had some friends that work in Restoration Business that have collections of coins and things they found from cars and all the cool stuff. A few years ago, we found and it was actually showcased on our local news here. I found Army dog tags. Oh my God. Yep. And it was in a 54 beetle that we grabbed out of Mississippi. And I threw that up on Facebook and I mean, I had the media here the next like an hour. They were wondering and sure enough, they looked up those tags and that fellow was still alive. Oh my gosh. And we communicated with him and he knew the numbers verbatim off that tag. So it was really funny was he was a dent above the like the front header with a sun visor of his. Oh yeah. And he said he's like, is there a dent there? I'm like, yeah. He's like, well, yeah, that's that's my head hitting that when I went off a cliff with the car. No way. Yep. And the car hit its nose and stood straight up after it hit the bottom. Oh my gosh. That's incredible. You know, I have a good friend who's going to be a future guest here on cars. Yeah, he works for Dennis and international, which Dennis has been a guest on the show. His name's Tim Willard and he works on some really fascinating old cars. And just last week he posted a picture on Facebook. He was working on a 1951 Kaiser and inside the door handle, which was wrapped in leather. They took the leather off. It was a plastic door handle underneath was a note. And it said built by T.V. Smith, Toledo, Ohio, 8863. And so obviously that car was restored again in 63 and somebody rebuilt that door handle. But yeah, there's also to magical treasures we can find in old cars. Yeah, very, very fun.