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MIKE SPINELLI: Welcome to "After/Drive." You may think
this is "Road Testament." It's not "Road Testament." It's
"After/Drive." And I've got Bill Caswell here, automotive
adventurer, self-taught racer, and fabricator.
And we have an awesome show.
Right, Bill?
BILL CASWELL: We do.
MIKE SPINELLI: Hells, yeah.
Stay with us.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MIKE SPINELLI: Welcome to "After/Drive." [BLEEP]
Bill Caswell is here.
You know him as a sticker junkie, and one of the most
inspiring automotive stories of the last 10 years, I think.
You know him from internet.
@Drive on Twitter, Facebook.com/driveTV.
Comments below.
Bill Caswell--
one of the top articles on Jalopnik ever was your $500
rally car experience in Mexico, whereby
you took this E30.
BILL CASWELL: Yep, bought off Craigslist for $500, built in
my mom's garage, by me and my friends, not professional
fabricators or mechanics.
And after nine months of racing, I decided I'd enter
the World Rally Championships.
MIKE SPINELLI: Which--
BILL CASWELL: Which sounds absurd.
MIKE SPINELLI: I'm sure everybody thought that that
was a good idea.
BILL CASWELL: No, my friends told me that I was stupid.
And they wouldn't take time off from work.
And they wouldn't come with me.
It's how I ended up down there by myself.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: They're like you're never going to be
allowed to race.
Your car-- you bought it off Craigslist for $500.
We built it ourselves.
It's not going to pass FIA tack.
Like you're going to waste your time doing 3,000 miles
for nothing.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
I mean, you're there next to $500,000 WRC rally cars.
BILL CASWELL: Yes.
MIKE SPINELLI: And you pull up in this thing, and what do
people say?
BILL CASWELL: I think they laughed a lot the first day.
And there's definitely a lot of pointing, and kind of like
what is this guy doing here?
But by the second day, we had kind of a small crowd around
us in service.
By the third day, we had like a mob scene around
us, and it was fun.
And we also cranked music during our service stops.
We caused a bit of a scene.
We weren't kind of the proper rally drivers.
But we had a lot of fun, man.
MIKE SPINELLI: I mean, what was cool about that completely
is that the knock on racing in general is it's too
corporatist now.
And it's not that much fun.
And you come rolling in in a $500 car, and with the roll
cage that you built yourself.
BILL CASWELL: Part of it was that my first ever rally was
Rally Tennessee.
And I was convinced to bring my road race car there.
And on the second stage, I put it off the road at like 90
miles an hour.
Now I kept it under control.
I didn't damage it.
Punctured a radiator, and was out.
But I realized I'm not really that good at
rally driving, right?
So I looked then for the cheapest version of that same
car that I could find, which was a '91
318iS BMW V30 chassis.
And it's just like VM3 with cheaper parts, lower engine,
all that kind of stuff.
It doesn't look as cool, but whatever.
It was a great car to practice with.
So I figured I'd be stuffing it an event or two later, and
have to build a new one.
But the car survived, and it's still around today.
It's been to Mexico three years in a row now.
MIKE SPINELLI: Wow.
BILL CASWELL: So apparently I got better fast.
And now I'm still racing that $500 car, which was meant to
be more like a practice vehicle.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, it's interesting, because you're--
to go back to the beginning of your story, your story is
actually really inspiring for somebody who wants to get away
from the typical job situation and out of their cubicle, and
into this world of racing and adventuring.
[BLEEP].
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, I learned from books.
My dad's a lawyer.
I grew up in the suburbs.
The nearest welding supply is 45 minutes.
No one I really know builds their own race
cars where I live.
But if you buy enough books and read enough stuff on the
internet, you can kind of do whatever you want in life.
So I was an investment banker.
I was doing mortgage-backed securities and CEOs, and what
they call securitization--
basically the bonds that became the toxic waste of our
current economy.
Now we kept everything.
We didn't sell it to middle America and ruin banks like
Wall Street gets punished for.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, that's good.
So karma's on your side.
BILL CASWELL: I guess.
We had a huge portfolio of the stuff when the crisis hit.
And the bank took away our capital.
And nine months into it, I'm like you know what?
This is not that fun.
And a lot of my friends were let go and laid off.
And I'd been dating Melanie for seven years--
MIKE SPINELLI: You looked at your hand.
BILL CASWELL: I've now married.
MIKE SPINELLI: So your wife now.
BILL CASWELL: My wife now.
I proposed to Melanie.
And I said give me nine months to go live my dreams.
Really I think I asked for a summer.
In my head, it was a year.
She says it was a summer.
I say it was a year.
Right?
MIKE SPINELLI: Argue about that one later.
BILL CASWELL: It was about jumping cars sideways through
the woods with my friends.
There was no other goal than to go check out some rallies,
which take a day to get to, a couple days to
race, day to get home.
And it was about running through the country in a
rented panel van and getting drunk in small-town America,
and having fun throwing a car sideways on dirt.
I always wanted to do it.
I watched it on TV since I was a kid, like the Isle of Man
videos and just driving.
It's just so much fun.
And so nine months into it, Melanie is just like all
right, this is enough.
It's time for you to go back to work.
You got to go get a job.
MIKE SPINELLI: You're an adult, man, and you got to--
BILL CASWELL: And I mean, it's not--
I'm not trying to paint a bad picture of Melanie.
It's just that we met each other in business school.
We're both very driven people.
And here I am just partying nonstop.
MIKE SPINELLI: Taking like a 180-degree
turn into the oblivion.
Who knew how that was going to turn out.
Did you think you were going to go back to work?
BILL CASWELL: Oh, absolutely.
MIKE SPINELLI: Oh, OK.
All right.
BILL CASWELL: And I still might have to.
MIKE SPINELLI: OK.
BILL CASWELL: Right?
I mean, we've been doing this for four years now.
But back to that, she's like Bill, seriously, this was
supposed to be a summer.
You been driving a bunch of rallies.
Time for you to go find a job.
And I'm like yeah, that makes sense.
You want to start a family, this kind of thing.
We're engaged.
We're supposed to get married.
So I'm like all right.
One last race.
And I start searching the internet for the largest race
that I can find.
And I realize the World Rally Championships are
coming back to Mexico.
And I see this Rally America class.
And I'm like oh, I race in Rally America.
Right?
I didn't realize that that was the name of the rally prior to
WRC back in 1979.
That's what the event was called.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah.
BILL CASWELL: And they're allowing a national class of
competitors from Mexico to enter the race.
They still had to be FIA legal cars.
They still had to be proper race cars, still hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
But I just assumed that was for me.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah.
BILL CASWELL: Right?
Typical, self-centered American.
Oh, it's all about--
but I decided I was going to enter that race.
And I said Melanie, let me go run this one last race.
And when I come back, I'll go get a job.
MIKE SPINELLI: Out with a ***, and there you go.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah.
It was someplace, right.
MIKE SPINELLI: So at one of the-- by the way, one of the
best rallies in the world-- this is like a really well
known and well loved, and like a giant spectator base, and a
really cool--
BILL CASWELL: It is the coolest, most passionate race
I've ever seen in my entire life.
The Le Mans without a doubt bigger, but it's like not
everyone there's a die-hard fan.
MIKE SPINELLI: But you kind of roll in--
BILL CASWELL: People are crying at WRC Mexico.
They're so excited to see Loeb do 100 miles
an hour over a jump.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah.
BILL CASWELL: Jumping up and down, freaking out.
I've never signed autographs my entire life.
Right?
But because we were in the race, we signed hundreds, if
not a thousand or more autographs that weekend.
It just feels big.
It feels bigger to me than the Indy 500.
It feels bigger than Le Mans, just because of the way the
whole scene is opening.
Ceremonies at night, and turntables with confetti and
underground tunnel stages.
The streets are lined for miles, getting to the opening
ceremonies.
It's cool.
MIKE SPINELLI: OK, so now that sounds like you just sort of
walked in there and did your thing.
BILL CASWELL: We showed up.
I picked up Ben Slocum, my co-driver in Missouri.
I knew Ben from rallying here in the States, but didn't
really know him all that well.
And he jumped in the van.
And the two of us headed on down to Mexico by ourselves,
with no team, no crew.
So it wasn't just that we ran the full three-day WRC Mexico
event, but we did it without any service crew.
So we'd pull into our stops, and jump out and change our
tires, weld the shock back in.
Sometimes we didn't have time.
We actually just-- we'd take stuff out of the car that was
broken, and we'd put it back in later at the next stop.
It was a mess.
It would have been nice to have a proper service crew,
but no one wanted to come with.
Because they all said I wouldn't be allowed to race.
And when I got down there, the officials were like you know?
The cage looks safe.
And he's got all the proper safety gear.
And he's here.
Maybe we should just let him race.
And so we got to run the full WRC stage
miles all three days.
It was the longest, largest rally I've ever run.
And we finished third in our class, but still would've beat
WRC cars if we'd been classified in the
proper FIA WRC class.
So it was cool, man.
And I come back, and my text messages to Sam Smith get
organized into a story and published on Jalopnik.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
So now Sam puts that story together, puts it on Jalopnik,
and the thing explodes.
And I think it could be-- if it's not the top story--
BILL CASWELL: It's the second.
Second largest story Jalopnik's ever published.
MIKE SPINELLI: So what the hell happened?
What happened after that?
I mean, did the phone just ring off the hook?
BILL CASWELL: Nah, man, don't even--
it's like my Facebook blew up.
But no one called me to come race Porsches.
Right?
But you know, at that point, I'm like this is kind of fun.
And maybe I should do some more of this.
And I think really what prompted was that I sold--
a bunch of people from Hollywood reached out to buy
the life rights to the story.
And I sold the story to Jeremy Renner and his production
company Combine to turn into a full Hollywood movie
production.
And I'm like well, wait a second, they're going to make
a movie about me racing cars.
Maybe I should keep doing this for a little bit and see how
that movie thing shakes out.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
The movie needs an end.
It needs a kind of character development.
BILL CASWELL: Well, the move is about me quitting
investment banking and going after my dream of being a
rally car driver.
And it's about me having fun with my friends and overcoming
obstacles, and going after the dream that isn't necessarily
society's dream.
And so it's that kind of thing.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's a good pitch.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, with all the guys that lost their jobs
or were laid off, or all of a sudden forced into a sudden
switch in their careers.
And you're midlife and you take a look around you say is
this really what I planned on doing when I was a kid.
I don't know.
I mean, most of us were like I want to be an astronaut!
I want to be a firefighter!
Most just sit at cubicles and play with spreadsheets.
So it's about reestablishing what the dream is
and going after it.
And for me, it's huge, because I've always been into racing.
And I did some wheel-to-wheel racing
before I got into finance.
And I had a shifter car that I practiced with, and
that kind of stuff.
But to me the motor sport dream in America is broken.
There's a disconnect.
If you're a 15- 16-year-old kid getting your license, want
to be a pro driver?
It's just not going to happen.
And so the fact that someone can take a $500 Craigslist
car, build it in their mom's garage, and go enter epic
races, is kind of cool.
Whether you get sponsored or not, you at
least get to go play.
And that to me is awesome.
MIKE SPINELLI: It is awesome.
And a lot of other people thought it was awesome too.
And thus, the Caswell legend is born.
What did you do after that?
This looks like Baja.
BILL CASWELL: This is Baja.
So in the next nine months--
MIKE SPINELLI: So wait a minute, that's also an E30.
Tell me about what you did to that car.
BILL CASWELL: This was kind of--
so the original story.
You said people started calling.
Well, Miller Welders realized that like--
I happened to just walk into a Miller welding store and just
bought everything.
Because I didn't know.
I needed it all at once.
So I bought Miller this--
and Miller called me and said come up and see us.
And I drank too many beers with them in the sponsor
meeting thing and they said well, what do
you want to do next?
I'm like well, there's this Frenchman Schlesser, and he
built his own Schlesser buggy and he went to Dakar.
So I want to build my Caswell buggy and go to Dakar.
And the room went silent, and they kind of looked at me and
like whatever.
And the next morning, they're like why don't you build that
Caswell buggy, but run the Baja 1000.
You're going to have two weeks to build it.
It starts on the floor of SEMA.
And so I'd never been to SEMA.
I tried to go the year before, but they told me I wasn't in
the industry and wasn't allowed.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: Right, because it's like industry-only, which
I thought was really funny.
MIKE SPINELLI: I mean, that's the big aftermarket show in
Las Vegas every year.
BILL CASWELL: Correct.
Yes.
MIKE SPINELLI: I mean, the thing is giant.
It's insane.
BILL CASWELL: Especially Equipment Manufacturers
Association.
It's every single floor space of Las Vegas is covered with
cars and all the tuners and all the accessories.
Basically anything you buy for a car after it leaves the
dealership is what happens at SEMA.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: But it's not for the general public.
It's not like a North American auto show.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: Right.
So I wasn't allowed to go.
My first time there, I was building a car on the floor,
which I thought was really cool.
MIKE SPINELLI: It was very cool.
BILL CASWELL: And I got to call all my friends that
helped me build the $500 rally car.
I'm like you guys, we're going to SEMA.
Oh, really?
How'd you get passes?
Well, we're going to be working.
Right?
What are we going to be doing?
MIKE SPINELLI: 24 hours a day.
BILL CASWELL: We're going to take an E30 and build it for
the Baja 1000.
And they're like what?
And I'm like, yeah, it'll be fine.
MIKE SPINELLI: I love it.
If I had a recording of all your friends and how many
times they've said what?
BILL CASWELL: The emails that they send out.
They're like, no, you're kidding, right?
I'm like no, seriously.
So we dragged a E30 shell into SEMA, which was great, because
it didn't have any wheels.
It was on a forklift.
It was like teetering on the forklift.
And there's Niki Lauda, Formula One Ferrari.
And the guy's like going nuts.
Don't move that.
And they're like all these fans in the Green Hornet cars
going, and all these famous cars.
And we're rolling in this pile of junk, right?
And in 14 days, we gave it like 18 inches of suspension
travel and 33-inch wheels and kind of caged it.
And we basically built the roll cage in
and around the unibody.
So the full unibody's in there.
And the engine and the drive line sits
attached to the unibody.
The occupants are a part of the unibody.
But the suspension's tied into the cage, which is then tied
into the unibody.
It was the only way to really build the car at the show.
If I did it differently, it would've
looked a lot different.
But I needed to build it on the floor of SEMA.
But then when I was done with the four days, I had no plan.
So we towed to San Diego, and we're going to finish in a
Walmart parking lot down at the beach.
And I swear to god, Miller gave us a generator.
And we were just going to weld in the parking lot all night.
And I realized I was in huge trouble.
By the time I towed to San Diego, I had something like
eight days or something like that to finish the car, take
it to Score and get the chassis tag, tow to Mexico and
make the start of the race.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: So I found a SRD--
Strategic Racing Designs of Vista, and these guys worked
until 5:00 in the morning with those two guys, plus my four
or five friends.
One guy's in marketing.
One of the guys is a plumber.
Another guy used to be a service advisor with BMW.
We're all just like dudes with regular jobs welding this
thing together.
And we finish.
We finish the car, made the start of the race.
And sure, we ripped the steering rack off 180 miles
into the race.
But I knew that'd be a problem, so I put two more
steering racks behind the seat.
And we just changed them in the desert by a campfire and
kept going.
But the second rack we put in was pretty damaged.
And by that point, we blew that out.
We were like, we just need to call it.
And we were freezing too.
You have no idea--
MIKE SPINELLI: And in the desert, it's--
BILL CASWELL: I didn't think about that.
It's like Mexico and Baja.
I've been to Cabo.
It's warm.
I wear flip-flops.
Right?
I've never been so cold.
There's no windshield.
You're like 80 miles an hour through the desert in like 30
degree weather up over mountains.
Yeah, we were freezing.
So yeah, this is what the car kind of turned out like.
We mounted two big wheels on the back.
MIKE SPINELLI: But that's really cool.
Because Baja's sort of like that anyway.
There are a lot of amateurs and people that have their own
crews and go down there.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, but I didn't know.
MIKE SPINELLI: But it's also trophy trucks and stuff.
BILL CASWELL: Huge trophy trucks.
Huge teams and helicopters and planes supporting it.
We just watched "Dust of Glory" like four or five times
in a row while building the car.
That was our only research.
MIKE SPINELLI: That's one of the best--
BILL CASWELL: They made it look a lot easier.
There's paved roads, and there's big pits.
And the teams are everywhere.
I don't know.
I thought it'd be OK.
MIKE SPINELLI: But best-- by the way, I don't know if it's
on Netflix.
But "Dust of Glory" is a must-watch
documentary about Baja 1000.
It's amazing.
BILL CASWELL: Agree.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah.
BILL CASWELL: Totally agree.
MIKE SPINELLI: All right, so you did Baja.
It didn't work out so great.
Then from there, you went-- so what happened--
BILL CASWELL: Well, that was all in the first year.
So the first year, I finished WRC Mexico.
I decided we wanted to go watch Pike's Peak, because
Tajima and Rhys Millen were battling for
that 10 minute time.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah.
BILL CASWELL: And when I was looking at the spectator
information, I realized I could actually drive in the
event, because there was a class for rally cars.
So I called my friends, and I'm like hey we're going to
Pike's Peak.
And so we took the same $500 car, and it was kind of slow
going up the mountain.
But I went and ran Pike's Peak.
And then the Miller thing happened, went to Baja.
And then from then on, I've just been racing and entering
rallies, and having fun and doing some wheel-to-wheel
stuff here and there.
Like I took some of the cars and entered NASA events at the
local track just for fun.
I got to tell you when you drive sideways over jumps in
the woods, lapping your local racetrack becomes a little
less interesting.
And then one of my other big bucket lists was Targa
Newfoundland which I ran this fall with VR Performance out
of Michigan.
I've known them forever.
Back when I was a banker, I used to go
to their Track Days.
And Horst Reinhardt, Jr., one of the owners, called me and
say hey, why don't you drive my E46 M3 in Targa
Newfoundland.
I mean I don't get calls like that.
None of my friends get calls like that.
MIKE SPINELLI: That's a good call to get.
BILL CASWELL: It's a good call to get.
And not to mislead anyone, it's not like I'm a great
driver and they're like we're sponsoring you to drive.
I paid half the fees.
It drives me nuts when people talk about getting the call.
They get in the seat, and it's really they paid
to get in the seat.
I mean, I split it with Horst.
But he gave me a proper well prepared modern fast car to
drive, which was nice, and we finished second in class
behind ACP--
Andrew Comrie-Picard.
pro-rally driver, sponsored by Scion, racing the Scion
X-something or other, lunch box car.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, the XD, right?
BILL CASWELL: It's like a lunchbox on wheels.
Sorry, Andrew, it is.
It's like a little lunchbox.
MIKE SPINELLI: So had you--
I mean I'm assuming you'd driven in a tarmac rally
before, right?
Or no?
BILL CASWELL: The very first event that I went to was a
tarmac rally--
Rally Tennessee.
And Anders Green, who basically is the reason why
I'm rallying.
We showed up like two hours before the race, and he still
got us into it.
And he said to me most road racers never make it past the
second stage.
I'm like huh.
And he's like if you're having a moment at every corner,
you're going too fast, and you need to back it down.
Well, I rolled the window up, and I looked at Sam, my
co-driver, and I'm like I don't think he knows what he's
talking about.
Sure enough, second stage there, we are just sliding
right off the road.
So he was like spot on.
So this is my first time going back to a tarmac rally.
And it's five days across Newfoundland, like
Northeastern Nova Scotia.
And it's wild.
Every year, hurricanes come in, so you can see the roads
are crazy wet.
You have to run on street tires.
You can't use fancy race tires.
You get six tires for the duration of the week.
We finished second in class.
We did it on the Dunlop Direzza ZIs,
which I think are cool.
And I ran the last rally in street
tires too, just simply--
I don't know.
Anyway, so finished second.
We beat everyone in the unlimited class above us which
was cool, saw the high horsepower, high-turbo cars,
the semi-factory Fiat 500 cars that show up in a semi truck
with Samuel Hubinette and Jen Horsey.
MIKE SPINELLI: The Chrysler team, was it--
BILL CASWELL: Yeah.
Maybe--
MIKE SPINELLI: It was a factory--
BILL CASWELL: To call it the Chrysler team might be a
little strong.
But is it a semi truck with a bunch of Chrysler engineers?
Like yeah.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, perhaps.
BILL CASWELL: And so our car had air conditioning, nav, and
a co-driver who had never raced before.
Tons of laps on a racetrack, but had never
actually ever competed.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: And Horst is great, man.
The guy's been in the military.
He's as cool as can be.
But the first stage, I don't think he said a word.
He was just smiling.
But I was ripping through these things, like Horst, you
got to keep talking, man.
MIKE SPINELLI: You got to give me some direction.
BILL CASWELL: Even if you don't read notes, just talk.
Just getting up there and talk.
Tell me about the ship in the harbor.
Tell me about the boat that's out there.
Just talk into the mike, right?
But he was having such a good time just smiling.
By the second day, Horst woke up just dialed.
And he's reading the notes, and it was just
spot on in the odo.
And to give Horst credit, we didn't have a rally computer.
And I've never used a rally computer.
And I didn't realize how-- because you have pace notes.
So you have a corner and a corner and a corner, and you
check the corners off as you go through.
Well, they give us two notes which would be like two miles
off is a hard right.
Another three miles is a hard left.
And you kind of need to know, as you're clicking down that
mileage till you get there.
So we bought a Garmin GPS and stuck it to the windshield.
But the odo was like eight-point font.
So Horst is reading this eight-point font odo.
So we're coming up with stuff.
He's like "you have a caution over crest.
Jump in, in--" and I'm like Horst?
Like now?
Or in like a mile? "In, in point--"
And, he's like [INAUDIBLE] big shaking.
He's like it's coming up, but you're not that close, in 0.8.
In 0.8, you've got the jump.
All right, man, I got it, I got it.
0.6, 0.5, 0.3, and he's reading down the thing.
I mean, we were just-- it was really cool to--
he's a good friend of mine, and it was really cool to
watch how quickly the two of us synced up.
And by like the second day when the hurricane came
through and started pouring rain, we were just on and it
was a blast.
And it's fun.
It's like pouring rain.
You're 120 miles an hour over mountain roads.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's really dramatic scenery too.
BILL CASWELL: It's beautiful up there, man.
Absolutely--
MIKE SPINELLI: It must be very cool.
BILL CASWELL: It's probably one of the most beautiful
places I've ever been.
It's pristine.
It's clean.
It's immaculate.
The people are really nice.
You have these like-- you come to these small fishing
villages, and they feed you lunch for the day.
You get to hang out and see what's going on.
I mean, it is such a good time.
They breathalyze you every morning.
And I'm being serious, right?
It was a big concern for my team.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
I was going to say.
BILL CASWELL: But I had a plan where every time we finished
the stage on the way back to the service park, we went by
the grocery store and filled the trunk with beer.
So we just started drinking right at 5 o'clock, so that we
could go and get a full 12-hour sleep and be rested
for the next day, which was fun.
MIKE SPINELLI: Because people make that mistake, where
they'll go out--
BILL CASWELL: Oh, there's a bunch of people--
MIKE SPINELLI: --get way loaded at night and--
BILL CASWELL: --that blew over the breathalyzer, that blew
the breathalyzer and couldn't race.
You're out of the race.
And so to spend all the money and go up there, and then
screw that up because you drank is stupid.
MIKE SPINELLI: Because I mean you're serious about the--
BILL CASWELL: I'm dead serious about it.
Once I get in the car, I'm dialed and focused.
It's just what happens up and to then is a problem.
So someday there'll be a pro team that'll like wall me off,
and not allow me to go out and have fun and this and that.
I mean, for example, Crawford Performance.
I'm now working with them, and they're developing their turbo
BRZ, 530-foot pounds of torque, 510 horsepower.
I think when he put it out in December, it was the first
fully-built internal engine turbo BRZ in the States.
I think there might have been an FRS in Japan.
That's it.
The car absolutely flies.
And it's fast, man.
It's one of the fastest cars I've driven, and I get good
night sleeps.
And I don't party before I drive this thing.
MIKE SPINELLI: But you're driving this in time attack.
BILL CASWELL: That's correct.
So it's time attack.
So it's one car at a time.
Fastest lap wins.
MIKE SPINELLI: What events have you done so far?
BILL CASWELL: We did like a red-line time attack, at
Button Willow.
We've done some Track Days to develop the software, we're
playing cool games with the-- we deleted out--
I don't know if I should be talking about all this.
We deleted out the factory--
we deleted out the factory traction.
Controlling and programming our own software into the ECU
that calculates like wheel slip and then adjusts
characteristics of the engine to make it easier to drive as
the car starts to slip, without giving away too much
of what's going on over at Crawford.
But all I can tell you is that the first time--
MIKE SPINELLI: Oh, by the way, there's your Caswell sticker.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, exactly.
MIKE SPINELLI: [INAUDIBLE].
BILL CASWELL: I can tell you the first time we took it out,
the car was a monster and would just light up its wheels
all the way down the straightaway.
I mean, you were slightly out of-- you hit a bump, whatever,
the car just whaaaa.
I mean it was like a drift machine.
I think if I had to drive this car before doing the rally
stuff, I would have been really concerned.
MIKE SPINELLI: OK.
But the rally sort of helped you with the traction.
BILL CASWELL: The car is sideways
through most of the track.
It's just making too much power.
And we're on street tires.
And so it's just the nature of time attack and what we're
doing with the streetcar, street
interior and stock seats.
The next phase is a properly developed--
I mean, this is a properly developed chassis, but it's
not meant for a full-on race.
It's not caged.
It's not like crazy race spring rates.
This is meant to be a turbo package that you can buy from
Crawford, drive around town, drive to work, take to the
track, enter time attack in like a street or somewhat
modified class, and then drive back home.
So it's meant to be usable and driveable and fun, not like at
the limit, knife-edge, fastest car possible.
MIKE SPINELLI: Not giant wing.
BILL CASWELL: But that comes next.
No, I'm serious.
We have a new chassis that we're picking up next week
that is getting fully gutted with like active aero and
cage, and probably a wide body and full ground effects, and
giant splitters and will be, I guess, my car to drive until I
screw it up.
MIKE SPINELLI: And Crawford's had some serious drivers.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, it's an honor.
It's actually-- for me, it's a huge honor to be working with
Crawford, because his previous driver was Tarzan
Yamada out of Japan.
He's got video games in Japan after him where you get to
race Tarzan.
Tanner Foust drove for him before signing with Scion and
doing drift.
And prior to that, he worked with Ken Block on the Gymkhana
Subarus before Ken went to Ford.
And for me, the Crawford thing's kind of special,
because I built my rally car in June of '09.
I then went to California, because we were looking at
apartments, and I saw X Games was going on.
So I went and saw my first rally cars at X Games.
And then I saw some Crawford stickers.
And I knew Crawford built Ken's car.
And I wanted to be faster.
This is my practice mule.
And later I was going to build a proper rally car.
So I actually went to Crawford.
And I went in.
I stopped by his shop.
And I said hey, I'm Bill Caswell.
I built my first rally car.
I haven't run it in gravel yet.
But I'm going to go out to Chicago, and I'm going to need
a shop to build me a proper rally car.
And I know you build fast cars, and sat down
and talked to them.
And I said all right, I'll see you in two years.
Right?
And I'm serious.
It was two and a half years later that Crawford called me
and asked if I'd come in to talk about driving his cars.
MIKE SPINELLI: Wow.
BILL CASWELL: So it was really wild to go there.
MIKE SPINELLI: So you did that, the Babe Ruth--
BILL CASWELL: I mean, I didn't know.
I thought I was going to be in there like buying stuff, not
asking to work with them to develop these cars, which I
got to tell you, dude, that is the most fun I've had on a
racetrack in a long, long time, at the BRZ.
MIKE SPINELLI: Oh, it's got to be.
It looks insane.
BILL CASWELL: It's just 01 Corvette fast down the
straightaways.
It was just stupid fast how the power comes on.
And it doesn't let up.
I mean, I'm not a turbo guy.
I'm used to driving BMWs, and they're
all naturally aspirated.
I drive this thing, and it first reminded me of the
stories you hear about the 930 Porsche race cars back in the
day, where they just come on like a cannon.
Straight engine, the car just goes.
I actually love red line.
because I get a second to breathe, before I have to grab
the next gear.
I'm serious.
Just [INAUDIBLE].
OK.
So yes, the Crawford's thing's cool, man.
MIKE SPINELLI: So, let's talk about the 30 for a second,
because that's been your predominant car.
BILL CASWELL: It has been.
Actually, I've just switched though for rallies.
So I left E30, and I went to the E36 hatchback
chassis, the TI.
MIKE SPINELLI: The TI that you just ran at the-- we were
going to mention this before.
We forgot.
And we kind of blew-- we've been gabbing this whole time.
It's the Empire State--
BILL CASWELL: Performance Rally.
MIKE SPINELLI: Performance Rally.
BILL CASWELL: ESPR.
MIKE SPINELLI: Not that far from--
BILL CASWELL: 90 minutes.
MIKE SPINELLI: --where we are in New York.
BILL CASWELL: Rockhill, New York, 90
minutes west of Manhattan.
Running through subdivisions in sort of a foothill.
I don't even know, hills--
it's like mountainy and hilly up there.
It's by Monticello Raceway.
Yeah, it's wild.
I think one stage, we went through 150 driveways.
Seriously.
I only had a couple of moments where I actually looked away
from the road.
And I thought I was putting a mailbox through Wyatt's side
of the car.
MIKE SPINELLI: Wyatt Knox.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, Wyatt Knox.
Two-wheel drive, National Rally champion, Rally America
in 2011, I guess it was--
Team O'Neill chief instructor.
One of the fastest guys in the US in at least a two-wheel
drive rally car.
I'd like to see what he can do in a proper open class car.
Wyatt can drive.
He's a friend of mine.
He's been doing me a favor and co-driving with me, just so I
can work on getting better I guess.
And we just have a good time racing together.
So Wyatt and I went to ESPR.
For me, it was a different sort of rally.
I've got a trailer, and this and that.
But I decided I would try to drive the race car from
Chicago to the rally, rally it, and drive home, because
it's a tarmac rally.
Right?
MIKE SPINELLI: Tarmac.
It's tarmac.
BILL CASWELL: It's big roads.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's [INAUDIBLE].
BILL CASWELL: And then of course--
am I allowed to plug--
I'm allowed to plug companies and stuff, right?
I mean, that's like fair.
Am I supposed to be looking at this camera the whole time?
MIKE SPINELLI: You look at anything you want.
You're killing the floor.
No, actually, I forgot.
There's a Caswell sticker on it.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, there is.
MIKE SPINELLI: You might want to-- yeah, just take that off.
There you go.
BILL CASWELL: So anyway--
but we did so well in Targa Newfoundland on those Dunlops.
And I loved them.
They weren't full-on race sticky tires.
But they're so driveable that I was able to do things in
that E46 M3 and slide and recover it because they had a
lot of feel.
So I called up Dunlop and was like, hey, I'm going to run in
this tarmac rally.
Can I try your new ZII tires?
So they sent me the Direzza ZIIs which are the really the
newest iteration of the ones I raced on at Targa.
And I drove on those same set of tires
all the way out there.
I raced on it.
And then I hit a little guardrail on the end of the
day Saturday.
That's such a minor hit.
MIKE SPINELLI: We got to show that.
BILL CASWELL: I was just so tired.
MIKE SPINELLI: I mean, you just come flying in.
It's so hot.
And you know something's going to happen.
BILL CASWELL: I nailed it the stage before.
MIKE SPINELLI: You did, right, you did.
BILL CASWELL: Nailed it the stage before.
MIKE SPINELLI: To your credit, you did.
BILL CASWELL: I was in California.
I flew to Chicago.
I had like 36 hours to prep the car.
I got four hours of sleep.
I then started driving to the event.
The battery died.
First, I got pulled over.
Right?
And it wasn't even for me.
It's just the cop turned the lights on.
I assumed because I'm driving a race car on the road.
And it's street legal.
It's got a cat, registered, insured.
But I assumed he was pulling me over.
I went to go restart the car and the battery was dead.
Yeah, I know.
Thanks to that battery company.
Anyway, so I don't need to nail them.
It's fine.
They're good guys.
But the battery dies.
It's like 3:00 in the morning.
We call a tow truck.
I sit there for an hour.
Truck shows up.
I bribe the tow truck driver to go through a 24-hour truck
stop, where I run into the back, and I find a mechanic
who gets me this like semi truck battery.
It's the biggest damn thing I've ever seen.
But luckily my wiring's redone.
I just dropped it in the back of the car, and
hooked it back up.
I also gave him $20 for his volt meter in his toolbox, so
I could make sure the alternator was running.
And once I checked that in the middle of the truck stop, I
went back inside and said hey, can you tow me to
Holiday Inn a mile up?
So they unloaded my broken car at the Holiday Inn.
I got like three and a half hours sleep, woke up, hooked
the new battery up, and started cranking
back east to New York.
Got into that stupid hurricane monsoon
thing that rolled through.
And I should have checked the maps.
I drove with the eye of the storm for like 12 hours all
the way across.
If I'd just waited an hour, I could have
driven in clean weather.
But no, I stayed in the stupid eye of the
storm the whole way.
And thanks to Dunlop--
your tires rule.
The car is actually driveable in monsoon rain.
I know I'm plugging them.
But, dude, they've been good to me.
I don't take product from companies I don't believe in.
So if I'm talking about a product, it means I would've
paid money for that product.
It's what I race on.
It's not like I'm just *** myself out to sponsors.
I just don't do that.
So I feel comfortable.
Well, anyway--
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, real quick, because the E30 is such
an icon car.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, I know.
MIKE SPINELLI: They're going up in value.
BILL CASWELL: That's part of the problem.
I can get the E36 TI cheaper.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, yeah, but what was it about the E30 in
general that made the car that you were going to--
BILL CASWELL: It's the first car I ever owned.
It was my car in college.
MIKE SPINELLI: OK.
BILL CASWELL: And so back in Chicago, when it would rain
and snow, I'd take the car out at 2:00 in
the morning and drive.
There were these big subdivisions being built at
the time, and they had no houses in them.
And sometimes they had chains and stuff on the front gate.
I shouldn't be talking about this stuff.
But the point is I go in the snow and just drive this thing
sideways all day long, and used to just love it.
Crank the music up and have fun.
And so that motor blew its timing belt.
And then I went back--
I went and got my job, and I was working.
I lived above a Barnes Noble.
I was playing chess.
I was playing all these chess--
I was reading chess books.
I go running on the lake front.
There's a chess pavilion.
I'd play the homeless guys, and they'd beat me.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, because they're great.
BILL CASWELL: And I'd giving these
homeless guys my dollars.
And I'm like I've got a graduate level education, and
I can't beat the homeless guy?
So I went to the bookstore, and bought a book on chess and
started studying.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: Till they wouldn't play me anymore, and
kind of ruined it.
But so then one day I got looking for
anything else to read.
And I found a Chilton manual on how to repair cars.
So I towed that E30 home, and that was the first time I ever
worked on a car.
I went to Sears.
I bought some tools.
MIKE SPINELLI: So you're completely self-taught.
I mean just literally you couldn't get more
self-taught than you.
Other than asking other people and stuff.
BILL CASWELL: I guess.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I don't--
MIKE SPINELLI: But you didn't go to like Lincoln Tech or
something--
BILL CASWELL: No, man.
I don't even have friends that are mechanics.
I don't know anyone--
now, I know people that work on their own cars.
But at the time, my mom was like you should be
playing more golf.
MIKE SPINELLI: Thanks, mom.
BILL CASWELL: I know.
And so I got done building the car.
And I'm like now what do I do with it.
It's still worth $500.
And someone's like well, you should go autocross it.
And I was like I don't want to race through cones.
And I went there and got crushed by the competition.
So I bought a book on autocross.
MIKE SPINELLI: On autocross.
BILL CASWELL: I'm serious.
MIKE SPINELLI: Because you lived above Barnes and Noble.
BILL CASWELL: Solo to competition.
It was like this old 911 on the cover going around a cone.
And did that for a little bit.
And started doing really, really well.
And then they're like you need to go to the race track.
Because like a local BMW shop, this guy Leo Franchi was like
it's time for you to go to the track and come through my shop
on Saturdays.
And I'll give you my old racing parts.
And you can go to the track.
And that started with that.
So originally, I only knew how to work on the E30s.
It's the only car I've ever touched with tools.
It's what my book taught me how to work on.
So I don't really know Subarus.
MIKE SPINELLI: So you're just comfortable with it.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, I can tell people how to fix
those over the phone.
I know them cold.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: Use a 13 mill bolt.
Take this out.
Then take that.
I can see the whole car in 3D in my head.
So it's easy when we have problems to be able
to repair the car.
Like when we hit the guardrail in ESPR, we had an hour to
repair the car.
And we just took it out, stretched the frame.
We hooked up to a truck, stretched the frame thing back
out, put the radiator back in, patched the radiator.
MIKE SPINELLI: And like when you went to Mexico, that was--
whenever stuff happened in service, you guys
knew what to do.
You could just--
BILL CASWELL: Yeah.
I mean, there's only a few other guys I'd actually want
helping-- that I think are faster than me on the car.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
BILL CASWELL: Like, I built it.
I know the car.
I know what's in it.
I can tear it apart quicker than most of my friends.
So why shouldn't I be wrenching on
it, working on it.
MIKE SPINELLI: And real quick, because this is--
so these stickers-- so the Caswell sticker mafia is just
like really, really, really--
BILL CASWELL: It gets started in the Baja 1000.
MIKE SPINELLI: OK.
BILL CASWELL: I was told that the guys in the service band,
they were going to be roaming around Baja.
They needed to bring stickers, ***, and I think some beer.
Something like that?
They're like the best thing you do is buy a bunch of ***
mags and a bunch of stickers, and fill the car with them.
And as you go through all the police checkpoints, you just
throw *** and stickers out the window and keep going.
MIKE SPINELLI: That's a kind of bribery.
BILL CASWELL: That's what all the--
that's what the old guys told me.
That's what the old guys told me.
Like, bring stickers and ***.
I'm like all right.
We didn't actually bring any mags.
But I printed 10,000 Caswell stickers.
And we handed those out.
And people loved them.
And they went all over the Baja placing them everywhere.
And we had fun.
I had no idea how much fun it was to stick a sticker on
something, like a child.
It's really fun.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's fun until you got--
tell me about that time you were in the bar and the--
was it the bar owner or the bartender?
BILL CASWELL: Is that the Missouri one?
MIKE SPINELLI: I don't know.
Was that Missouri?
Where was that where you had a little trouble.
BILL CASWELL: It was at 100 Acre Woods.
And one of the locals at 100 Acre Woods, and the dude--
he also races a rally car.
He runs the [INAUDIBLE]
Subaru car, Evan Cline.
Absolutely freaked out.
(SURFER ACCENT) So angry at your *** stickers.
(NORMAL VOICE) I'm like really?
They're just stickers, man.
They're just stickers.
MIKE SPINELLI: And they peel off fairly easy.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, they're high-quality vinyl.
They leave no residue.
They're not like permanent tagging.
But yeah, I walk into the bar, and I'm seeing all my friends,
and he just knocks me down.
I get up.
I'm like dude, really.
And he pushes me and knocks me down again.
He's like fight me!
MIKE SPINELLI: Stickers!
BILL CASWELL: No, he's like fight me now!
And I'm like really, Evan?
They're just stickers, dude.
Right?
And then his buddy is one of the local guys there, comes in
and he's like I've been *** on your
stickers all night.
And I'm like what?
And I'm like you reached into the urinal to
put my sticker there?
I'm like yo, dude, thank you.
It's like one of the nicest thing anyone's ever done.
You realize now everyone in the bar has now seen the
Caswell sticker?
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, a few times.
That's probably the best place to put it.
BILL CASWELL: I'm still laughing, because I just can't
believe someone could get so angry over the stickers.
Right?
So the bar owner throws the local guy out.
And he calls a bunch of his friends.
And there's 20 of them waiting in the parking
lot outside the bar.
And so the other drivers are like, dude, I think you might
have a problem.
And one of the guys pulls up and said a guy was shot dead
in the parking lot like nine months prior at the same bar.
MIKE SPINELLI: Oh, crap.
Yeah.
BILL CASWELL: And I'm like there's no way And we pulled
the news story.
It's like "Man Killed at the Roadhouse."
We're like holy [BLEEP].
MIKE SPINELLI: Wow.
Yeah, so who knew?
BILL CASWELL: So I go to the bathroom, and
I call state police.
And I'm like yeah, there's a posse waiting
in the parking lot.
I know someone was killed in this thing
like nine months ago.
We're OK taking our chances, but like
you've now been warned.
And if another guy gets shot, and you guys didn't do
anything, it's probably like a problem.
Right?
So I hang up.
And like 10 minutes later, the state police roll in.
They're like who's Caswell?
I'm like I am!
Right?
And so Paul Donlin, who's my co-driver at the time--
the cops walked us out.
And they're like all right, so where's your car?
And Paul and I look at each other.
And neither of us can drive.
We were going to catch a ride out of there.
So the guys are now yelling at the police about the stickers.
And the state police are like are you guys kidding?
And we just jump in the back of this--
there's like this couple and they've got their SUV and a
bunch of friends.
And we just open the doors and get in with them.
And they're like who are you guys?
You just got to take us into town, drop us
at the Holiday Inn.
Please.
So we end up catching a ride with some total strangers.
We're like, dude, see all this stuff that's going on?
It's actually really stupid.
It's kind of embarrassing that people get so upset, they want
to start a fight over stickers.
MIKE SPINELLI: Over stickers.
BILL CASWELL: But I mean, I get it.
The issue now is that it's not really me doing the tagging.
I think I printed like 90,000 or 100,000 of these stickers.
So they're on the signs of the equator in Kenya.
One of the guys--
MIKE SPINELLI: That's the cool thing.
Because they're everywhere now.
I mean, they're all over the world.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah they are kind of all over the world.
Someone's actually swears that they put it in one of the
cargo containers and it's up in the
International Space Station.
I mean, I'm like dude, there's no way.
And he's like yeah, dude, I promise you it's on the inside
of the last shipment of cargo container that's sitting up in
the International Space Station.
MIKE SPINELLI: So there may be a Caswell sticker.
BILL CASWELL: I know that when we toured the Rahal Letterman
ALMS haulers, we tagged all the drivers'
lockers on the inside.
But they did really well at that race.
So it's like a superstition with drivers.
And the stickers actually stayed up.
And I think they might still be in the haulers right now.
So the drivers' lockers, the fire suits, so it's like
sorry, Joey, Bill.
They're just stickers.
But that's fun.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, yeah.
BILL CASWELL: But no, we're just having a
good time with it.
It's not meant to be anything more than just fun.
MIKE SPINELLI: Cool.
So what's the very next thing?
So you're doing the Caldwell thing.
BILL CASWELL: The next thing is driving for Crawford this
summer in time attack.
MIKE SPINELLI: Did I say Caldwell--
I meant Crawford.
BILL CASWELL: Crawford, yeah, it's all good.
I'm Caswell.
He's Crawford.
Caldwell's in the middle.
No, so driving for Crawford.
Crawford's doing some cool stuff for the BRZ.
The next event I'll be at is Rally West Virginia.
It's 170 miles of stage miles based out of Snowshoe Mountain
at the top of this resort in West Virginia.
It's going to be a great event.
So yeah, I'm kind of excited for that.
And then we'll see where it takes me.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, man.
BILL CASWELL: Oh.
What I am doing is next week--
I don't know when this comes out-- or next month, sorry.
Next month, I'm going to 24 hours in [INAUDIBLE].
And then we're driving down through the Alps to F1 Monaco,
all in one week.
MIKE SPINELLI: Wow.
Cool.
BILL CASWELL: Yeah, why not, right?
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, why not?
BILL CASWELL: I can take vacations from my vacation.
MIKE SPINELLI: So you're still on vacation, technically?
Or you do some work though.
BILL CASWELL: I do work, but it's all kind
of behind the scenes.
I sell my Caswell shirts and Build, Race, Party pint
glasses And we'll ramp--
MIKE SPINELLI: Build, Race, Party, by the
way, is this sticker.
You'll see that sticker, I'm sure.
BILL CASWELL: So I've been paying rent by selling
stickers, pint glasses.
I have skateboards coming out, that kind of stuff.
But the next goal is to find a way to monetize this
lifestyle, so I can keep racing and having fun.
Otherwise, it means maybe going and getting a desk job,
which would be a bummer after four years of doing this.
MIKE SPINELLI: That would be a bummer.
BILL CASWELL: It's OK, though.
I mean, I could sit in a cubicle for 20 years now, just
living off the memories of what I'm been able
to do with my racing.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, that's cool.
That's very cool.
And you do a lot of cool stuff.
And I'm sure you're going to be doing more
cool stuff, Mr. Caswell.
BILL CASWELL: I hope so.
Thanks.
MIKE SPINELLI: Good to see you, man.
BILL CASWELL: Good to see you.
MIKE SPINELLI: I'll see you very soon.
"After/Drive." Facebook.com/DriveTV, @drive
on Twitter, comments below.
I will see you guys next week.
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