When I received Jeff’s submission I almost didn’t believe that a 21 year-old kid could produce a submission video this professionally made. It turned out that one of his friend’s was a film major and that they had spent 2 days working on filming and editing it together for FINE TUNED. Throughout the entire submission, Jeff repeated over again that all he wanted was to turn his aging 1997 BMW M3 into a performance car so that he could beat his best-friend Tom (who has a similar car) just once in a race. I think most car people all have a friend who continually beats them ever time they race, so much so that most of us have become obsessed with shutting that friend up once and for all, no matter what it took. For that reason alone, along with the fact that anyone who has gone through this much trouble to make such an extraordinary submission should get the opportunity to get their car Fine Tuned. As our first European Fine Tuned car, I knew we had to go above and beyond in making Jeff’s M3 into not only a high-performance car while also taking the aesthetics to a different level in terms of paint, suspension, interior and audio. Jeff’s couldn’t stop screaming his head off, and Tom, well Tom was heart-broken.
When I received Art’s submission, I thought to myself there is no way a 19 year-old guy could be selfless enough to have one of the crown jewels within the Tuner world, as in the Toyota Supra yet somehow resist pouring every cent he had into it instead of doting every dollar he made to help support his family. His submission DVD was sincere to direct: please help me and my car become cool, I can’ do it on my own because everything I make goes to my family. This was the exact reason that I created Fine Tuned in the first place, car guys helping car guys. Art is 1 of 8 children, who had just graduated from trade school to become an electrician, however when most teens and young adults get their first jobs and start making a little money they usually blow their paychecks on themselves, but it was so refreshing to know that there are young people out there that still respect and will sacrifices for their families. In addition to Art’s amazing character, he owned a really special car that I felt could be turned into a beast of a car. When we were done Fine Tuning the Supra, we were told by many people within the industry that we had built one of the baddest Supra they have ever seen; Art, was at a loss for words.
