Vaughn Gittin Jr. Let a Tire Shop Owner Drift His Mustang… Bad Idea?

We're at Vaughn Gittin Jr.'s race shop right here in Concord, North Carolina. So if you don't know who Vaughn Gittin Jr. is, he is a professional drift race car driver. We're about to go in the shop. Let's go. This is the Mustang one right here. That one. That's it.

This is it. This is yours.

That's it right there. It's just raw. This is, uh, you're never getting rid of that, huh? No, no, I wouldn't either.

I've had a couple people ask.

Yeah.

Um, this is the car that had Ken— is why Ken asked us to build it.

Oh yeah, yeah.

This is our first. This is the older brother to the Hoonicorn, uh, the older brother that would get whooped by his little brother, uh, if the Hoonicorn was that. Um, yeah, this is one of my favorite creations we've ever had. It was such a different time for RTR when we had this. Um, it was We did not have this. Yeah, it was, it was me, my father, you know, my now wife, um, and I just, you know, this was a dream opportunity that we got with Need for Speed, the video game franchise. And, um, yeah, I mean, the whole car is metal except for the flares, so all this is all hand-formed metal. This is all metal and lead, which is, uh, you know dying art these days.

It's got a what, Boss 302 in it?

Yeah, it's got a Coyote. So we did this in 2010 when they first came out with the Coyote, um, and, uh, yeah, so, so it's got a full—

look at the engine.

So we put the 8-stack on it. We work with Kinsler to make this for that, for that car when it came out. It makes about 450 horsepower. It's nothing absurd, but it's perfect. Oh yeah. And, uh, so it's got a full custom front clip, tubular front clip, and the rear is all custom. And it's got the cantilever suspension you can see there in the back. Yeah, got it.

Tight situation.

Yeah, yeah, it's moved a little bit too because I've driven the car, so it's, it's definitely moved a bit. It's been, it's been used and abused, but it's part of a, it's part of the story. Yeah, this is all kind of like our special vehicles to the brand.

Um, that's one of the original ones, right?

This is the first one. So this, this body style is the first time I even gave Mustangs the time of day. I was not a Mustang guy growing up, and, um, we bought this car. We thought it was a good opportunity to bring some American muscle into into an import-dominated sport. And, um, it, it just changed my whole perspective. Like, I was into imports and I got engaged in the Mustang community and really just fell in love with the community around it. Um, when I got this car, people thought I was crazy to go drifting with it. Yeah. And then I brought— I won the USA vs. Japan in 2005, the year we brought it out. And people, I mean, it was like they shot her around the world in a massive catapult for me. Um, and so I saw an opportunity, and the opportunity I felt was like, I didn't like Mustangs because I really didn't like resonate with the way they were presented, right?

Traditional 5-spoke wheels, louvers all over, racing stripes over the hood, big sailing wing, all that stuff.

Yeah, it just, it wasn't, it wasn't my vibe. And so I kind of had this idea to create what I— my vision of a new generation of Mustang. And so we launched the brand with this car, um, that's our first prototype. And then we launched it with this too, which is the RTR-C. So this is all carbon, carbon fiber. We wanted to show like our engineering prowess, our styling. I mean, it's got carbon HREs.

Look at the carbon right there. The full— the whole car's carbon?

Dang. Yeah, we took all the metal off. We used our race car molds from that year, and we even got the seams to line up pretty good.

They did the seams.

I got that inspiration from a Pagani Zonda. Yeah, you know, not a— not a million-dollar car, but I actually sold this at Barrett-Jackson to help get some money when I had the opportunity to buy a Ford GT. Yeah, and the owner didn't know us. He's like, but I just, I had to have your passion that you, I had to have the car. And he called me a couple years later and he's like, you need to buy this car back from me. He's like, you need it for your story. I'm like, man, I don't need that car. Um, anyway, long story short, he basically more or less made me take it back, and I'm really happy to have it. Um, and you know, you'll appreciate this as an entrepreneur. So when I saw this opportunity You know, I was just starting to work with Ford to create the RTR brand. And I took this, I just had a relationship with Ford. It was like 2007, 2008-ish. And I got a meeting with Ford and I went, I'll never forget this. I went up to like their meeting room at Regent Court, which is their old marketing building. And I walk in, hat, t-shirt, jeans. I mean, there was a conference table, 15, 20 people. You know, I walk in and throw down my papers. I'm handing my papers out and I'm like, you know, this is what we need to do. You know, I'm 28 years old telling Ford, you know, hey, this is what we need to do to make your icon— yeah, cool again. And you know, there's a lot of head nods and, and a lot of, you know, interest, but they were just basically, look, if we take what's on this paper and put it through our processes and regulations, and it's not going to be this. And so You know, they agreed to kind of help me with CAD data and early access and kind of being in the room. And basically I left that meeting, I kind of like checked my pockets like, you know, shit, how am I gonna do this, you know? And anyway, I ended up figuring out how to build our first prototype. And that's basically, you know, we debuted that car roughly a year after that meeting. And that became our first production car. So we've saved all those. So yeah, just a bit of, bit of the history that we, that we keep here. Um, this is the GTD. Have you seen one of these?

Oh, not in person, no. Yeah, so this is right here's the new brand new GTD. What do these cars run new if somebody's trying to buy one?

I think, I think they start, um, I think like base base is like $350,000. Yeah, but you know, I did custom paint, of course. Uh, we actually just have a brand new wheel that we're coming out with that we, we put on it as a, as a test. Um, but it's absolutely— I mean, this is how big the brake caliper is. True GT3 race.

Look how big the brake caliper stuff is on this thing.

Yeah, carbon ceramic. I mean, it stops like—

what's that?

Oh, like a parachute.

Yeah.

Um, and so you see the cantilever suspension on the RTRX. So there's a cantilever in this.

Um, oh, and see through, look at that.

And so, you know, first sight's like, oh, it's a Mustang, but it's got full custom front subframe, double A-arm suspension versus the single, you know, um, you know, standard strut of the Mustang. The rear subframe's custom, it's transaxle. There's no trunk if you look in there, right? This is all—

look at this.

To go into the, to the coolers.

Yeah, I mean, look at that. Leave the suspension stuff on it.

It is pure, pure race.

Crazy. It's all clear.

You get a better view if you just go like— you can get in there. You're good, don't worry.

It's got a big dash. Yeah, get up in there.

Oh, I don't want to.

Yeah, it is, uh, that's pretty dope. You see everything. It's like a super—

it's a super— it's a supercar. Yeah, yeah, it's a supercar. Car.

Um, so what do these run like? They what, 1,000, 1,200 horsepower?

No, it's, uh, 830. Okay. Um, but the thing is, when you start getting into more horsepower, you run, you know, cooling's a challenge. I mean, this is a Roots supercharger, um, and so, you know, it, it's, it makes a lot of heat. And so they've done a good job at managing it. And I feel like with too much more power, then you're not going to be able to do the 15, 20-minute track sessions and stuff like like that. Yeah, but it, it is unbelievable to drive. I just did a— I raced Cletus in his, uh, Corvette recently. He beat me by 0.4 of a second.

Um, he's getting into— what is that? That's— he's not in NASCAR, he's one under that, right?

Yeah, he's in, uh, well, he's doing O'Reilly and ARCA.

Okay. Yeah.

Um, this is our RTR that's just coming out from Ford, so this will be coming directly out of the plant. So this is, uh, starts at $40,000. It's a turbocharged 2.3-liter. It's got anti-lag, it's got Dark Horse suspension, sway bars, adjustable camber plates, comes with a drift brake, active exhaust. It's, uh, this is a dream. Like, when I started the brand, we've got a pretty cool graphic that comes up in a minute. There you go. That's pretty dope. Got the Hyperline accents, the seat belts. And so this is like, you know, one of our sayings at RTR is available to all, yeah, not for everyone. Yeah. And this allows us to have something truly available to all because our spec vehicles— so the difference between this where it comes off the Ford plant and our spec vehicles, like this is our one of our Spec 3s. So this is a fully custom paint, this is called Blue Corsa, it's actually a Ferrari color. This is 810 horsepower supercharged, but we basically get the vehicle from Ford. It goes to our upfit partner Fox Factory, who then upfits it with the parts that we've designed and engineered, and then it goes straight to the dealer. So this is a true Ford product, whereas this is, you know, a Ford approved at some level, but, you know, you, you, we do the build of this And then we manage the warranty side of our stuff, whereas this vehicle is fully, fully warranty from that, you know. And so before this, our vehicle started at $70,000. This car is probably— Josh, what, $110-ish? $110,000-ish. Yeah. So this car with the paint is $110,000. Yeah. So this car is around $110,000.

Um, I like that color. That color is really good.

Interior in it, so full leather, all custom, you know, two-tone setup. This is our quick fit harnesses, so you can easily throw them in the back, or you just snap it in to the seat belt, and it's all certified and belt angles are correct and all that. So, um, and then this car, unfortunately, it's getting torn apart, but this is the Spec 5 that we were talking about. This is my personal Spec 5. I would love for you to see it not one part, but we doing some testing and future, uh, future kind of future product development with it. Um, we just came out with it and now we're, you know, we're adding some more bits that customers can get. Tire guy looking at the tire. But you can see they're wearing perfect. This is from a track day, so I mean, they're just perfect where they're set up. And, um, but full wide body, uh, this is our Urban Bamboozle color, so it, you know, really shifts color. Is beautiful. All this carbon, all the body stuff you see, we invested in metal tooling so that it comes out of the tool perfect. The fit is perfect. Um, everything is—

yeah, it looks factory, right?

That's the goal. Yeah, you know, we consider ourselves OEM plus. Like, everything that we try to do is in the mindset of Ford. Um, we obviously don't have as much, you know, red tape internally, but we also are doing, you know, 50 of these a year. They're hand-built versus Ford obviously has to do most things on a production line. Aside from the GTD, that's also hand-built. Oh yeah, it's 870 horsepower. It's got our coilovers on it, our full technical performance suspension, and it is absolute, absolute unit engineering and development. In fact, you can see our exhaust. So we developed this exhaust with Borla specifically for our TR. Yeah, so you can see our mid-pipes. I'm very particular about sound, and a lot of Mustangs you hear are very raspy and like annoying, like ear piercing. And this is just a very clean-sounding car. In fact, you'll hear it. We'll take you for a rip in the Spec 3 there. But you can see we've got a— which Borla calls their Switchfire. We've got some custom work done here to tune out the harmonics. You know, if you look at a lot of exhausts, they don't have these things in there. So we worked a little magic with them to really tune the sound to what we wanted. And it almost sounds exotic.

So when they flatten it out like that, what's the purpose of getting it flat and everything?

Basically, you know, instead of— it basically separates the air a bit. Okay.

Instead of everything going into one, it's kind of like the boom tooms of NASCAR, sort of.

Yeah, yeah, yes, to an extent. Yep. And so, you know, it comes out of the headers, it goes into the, you know, goes through the cats and then splits back out. And it has something to do with like managing the frequency and vibration. Of sound. Yeah, um, that it, it smooths it out, it separates it, and then reconnects it, and, and the output is really incredible. Uh, these little things really help with a lot of rasp. Um, so we, we spent almost 8 months just tuning the exhaust. Dang. So yeah, so this is where all R&D, product development, uh, future product stuff goes on. This was one of the samples, and then we made some changes, and you'll see the spokes on the GTD are a lot bigger, but This was one concept that we just, you know, we have the ability in-house to print it, see if we like it, make changes before we go and invest in the mold and stuff like that. So, um, so we're, you know, we get CAD from Ford. You know, Ford helps us out with engineering vehicles to do testing with. There's our first production sample of a new wheel coming out.

Yeah, that's sort of like the one you have. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, that wheel that's on the GTD, that's a forged, you know, forged sample. This is a production version. Um, so yeah, this is where a lot of the magic happens. And this is our Built by RTR. So, uh, this is a Spec 3.

That's factory paint or y'all paint?

Yeah, this is one of our paints. So this is Leadfoot Gray, same color as my GTD, but we're also starting to do PPF here with Lumar. Um, and So, uh, this is Leadfoot Gray and we just had it wrapped with their matte finish. Um, 6-speed car, again 810 horsepower.

This is what you like, she wants the Bronco. How do you feel about the Broncos?

Pretty good. I love the Broncos. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I've never been a, you know, a Jeep person before, but now that Bronco came out and having driven some Jeeps Bronco absolutely crushed it. Yeah, with respect to the ride quality and the higher speed capability, and they still have the slow speed rock crawling capability. Uh, so that's our Evo 6 wheel. This is what we call the Rover. So it's a full— this one's Mystichrome, so leveraging our paint, you know, this was a Mustang color we brought back from the old Cobra. But this is our fully loaded Rover package. It's got the you know, full roof rack. It's got Fox shocks, 37-inch tires, all of our protection, our rock sliders. Um, this is all MOLLE panels, so you got tons of accessories you can put on this. Got our rear tire carrier, which is a lot beefier. This also slides out so you can pack stuff.

This is something they go through Ford and like buy this package buy the RTR package for these things?

Basically, we have about 250 dealers across the country. Yeah, so you can come to our website, find our dealers, or if you're at that dealer, they'll have it. So you, you know, unlike the RTR, which you can— the, the turbocharged RTR, you can go directly to Ford's website and get it. This goes through our website and then, you know, our dealers. Yeah, we have financing for it, we have full warranty. You know, it's the experience for the customer is buying an OEM vehicle. Yeah, you see the new Spec 5. This is our previous gen Spec 5. So every year our Spec 5 is kind of a representation of like our greatest capability. So this was from '18 to '23, um, and you can see obviously we have hardware exposed where that car is— all the hardware is on the back end. Um, you know, still looks very good, you know, like that car we made our own felt liners just like Ford. This car has like plastic extenders under there, so it's just not as, you know, great a quality.

More raw, like race cars.

More, more raw, exactly. I shouldn't say great quality, I should just say, yeah, it's more just more raw. We didn't have the ability, you know, the pockets frankly, to do the type of tooling for the car like that. Yeah, yeah. And some people love the hardware and other people are like, yeah, no, Yeah, so, you know, that is a very much more refined representation of where we are now in, in 2026.

I like it.

And so this is motorsport. So the two, two teammate cars are at Formula D Connecticut right now. They practice tomorrow. Uh, that's Ben and James Dean. James is our last 2-year champion. Um, this is my Formula Drift car. I actually just won in Atlanta in May in it. Um, I'm only doing 2 rounds of FD this year, so I'm 1 for 2 at this point. So this is, uh, this car is built strictly for business. Yeah, this is arguably right now the most competitive drift car in the world. Um, it is, it is a unit 455 cubic inch Ford Racing, uh, Roush Yates RY45 motor. Yeah, um, we work with Wilkins Engines, uh, here in, in the North Carolina area to keep these bad boys going. It's about 900 horsepower NA, and then we put like a 300 to 500 shot of nitrous through it depending upon what we need.

Yeah, it's like when y'all coming out of Road Atlanta, you know that big long stretch before you go into the curve? Yeah. So how fast are you going when you hit that thing sideways? Yeah, you hit the nitrous there or not?

Yeah, the nitrous is, is always on.

Okay.

Um, when we're running, it's always on, and it's basically actuated, you know, based on command. Yeah. So, you know, we're asking for throttle, it's adding nitrous, and it basically just makes this motor feel like a big block. I mean, it's got power.

Y'all do road race or something with this thing too? Because you have a wiper.

We don't, we don't. Uh, why did you ask that?

Because the wiper. I was like, all right, because I know y'all, you know, a lot of times it's slick, and I'm like, they ain't really racing, you know.

No, sometimes it'll rain.

Yeah.

And we gotta, we gotta I run in the rain. Okay. Although it would be a really good road race car. Yeah, we'd run a different alignment and maybe change some of the front end geometry a little bit, but I mean, it's 3,000-ish pounds, it makes plenty of power. I'd love to do like some hill climbs or something with it. That to me would be a ton of fun. Yeah. Um, this is, uh, T-Pain's car, friend of the brand. He's got a—

he just recently got in the drift, not too long ago, right?

Well, 2018 we talked about a drift Yeah, and you know, he's been evolving and he's actually gotten really, really good. Uh, he started a brand, Nappy Boy Automotive, that's, that is, uh, you know, connected to, you know, his, his Nappy Boy brand as a whole. This car, um, has a Coyote with a supercharger. This is basically the same setup that we run on our Spec 5s and Spec 3s.

It's getting a ton of air.

Oh yeah. Oh, it's— this thing is nasty. Um, and we gave, we gave him this motor because those motors are extremely expensive to run. Yeah, uh, they need tear-downs every year. And this motor, I mean, this is a Ford Performance crate engine. It's got a Gen 4 Coyote, and they're just absolute tanks. Yeah, this thing makes like 850 to the tire, and you can just beat on it and go anywhere with it. Yep. And that's the thing, you know, drifting is just the—

now that motor in the race car, y'all tear it down every race to go through?

Not every race, no. We do it every year. We've got a system now where The motors last a full season, um, and, uh, then they get torn down. And, you know, teardowns on these things are like $30 grand.

Yeah, you know, like the dragsters, every, every pass on the race, they're like tearing the whole engine out within minutes.

That's gnarly. Yeah, they— I mean, they're running at the absolute, absolute ragged edge on those things. And yeah, we can't afford to do, do motors every, every round. Um, so yeah, through here we've got our fab shop, uh, vinyl facility, and then we've got, um, two paint booths over there. One of them is like a turn-to-machine shop. This is another one of T-Pain's cars. This was, uh, this sat at, um, he had a residency in Vegas, so this was a promotion vehicle.

So he just kept it on like in the casino or something?

Yeah, casino and just promoting the residency.

Yeah, but there's a logo.

Yeah, he's a great, great human and a very talented man. Nappy boy.

About to take a drift ride with Vaughn Gittin Jr.

Yes, this is our— this is a Bone Production RTR. Yeah, and a lot of people think, oh, we build drift cars for the street, and you know, ready to rock is a— for me is a mindset. Yeah, it's ready for anything. So our cars are literally built with that, that mindset. So it's not a drift car, but it can drift. Yeah. You know, we sell these cars a very neutral balance, awesome on the street, great for the back roads, fun on a road course, but it has fully adjustable suspension. Yeah. So you can fine-tune it, you know, if you want to add grippier tires. You know, we use the Nitto NT555 G2. In my opinion, like, it's the best all-around Mustang tire. You can beat them up, they handle heat. They don't come apart, and so that's why we put them on here. I love it! Let's go! Oh yeah! Oh, now that's how you drive.

That's it.

Love that. Oh yeah.

Yes sir, appreciate you. That is crazy. So if y'all want to buy one of these cars, go to Ford, go to Von Gittin Jr.'s website. You got to get you one. Get on the track, or you, you take this thing down to Florida, don't matter.

And they're actually really good in the rain too.

Yeah, now that's how you take the damn stickers off. Yeah, because all these young kids always want to leave them on to let people know they got new tires, which is Crazy to me.

'80, they teamed up with McLaren because they wanted the 4-cylinder turbo cars to beat the V8s. So McLaren built a couple of the IMSA race cars, and then Ford and them decided they were going to build 249 of this car.

Yeah, I didn't know McLaren never did anything with Mustang.

Yeah, yeah. And so they ended up doing this, um, they ended up only doing 10 of them. This is the only black one.

It's that classic—

I put the wheels on it. Yeah, um, I said I wasn't gonna do anything with it, and then I got it, and I'm like, man, it needs wheels because they were so sunk in. Yeah. And, uh, so anyway, I saw this on Bring a Trailer. One of my media guys showed it to me. I didn't know what it was, and I started to research it, and I had to have it because we're coming out with the 2.3 RTR. And when I look at this, it's like very much— if we were doing cars in 1980 80, this would very much been our vibe. Yeah, I also always love Mad Max. Like, if you look at the car from like here, it's like, it's like the Interceptor. It's the front end, you know. I, and I love that movie, and so I have interesting ways of justifying to myself. Yeah, to get one. Yeah.

All right, now this is the inside of the showroom. Like, look at that, you got to hit something hard to be bending all that. It's a big old beadlock right there for the wheels. That one, that one's done added too. These are all the trophies. So of course, one of the best drift racers.

Oh yeah, so all the like different iterations that the designer did at the time, and then obviously we ended up here. So it was pretty—

that's what I kept. I kept a little drawing of the new shop that I just did. Did you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just these little things that, you know, you, you look back on. You know, these are shoes I wore for the 2007 World Championship which I ended up went in, and, um, RTRX, the Mega Bloks setup. My Ford GT tail lights, I had to get those replaced at some point, you know, little things. Yeah, have a seat.

If y'all want to buy one of these cars, go to Ford, go to Von Gittin Jr.'s website. You got to get you one. We got some big things coming up with Von Gittin Jr. and the RTR team. Of course, had to get me a shirt while he was here, but we got some big things coming and we'll let you know in the future.