with Chase Lautenbach, Co-Founder, Street Car Takeover | 1320 Video Alumni
How Chase Lautenbach turned 1320 Video roots and a Sonic parking lot conversation into an $8M+ race series, a high-horsepower dealership, and one of grassroots motorsports' most powerful brands.
Co-Founder, Street Car Takeover | 1320 Video Alumni
Chase Lautenbach got his start with 1320 Video, traveling the country covering grassroots motorsports and watching one of the most influential media machines in the aftermarket take shape. One phone call later, Street Car Takeover was born in a Sonic parking lot. Today it's an 18-race season, an $8M+ operation, a high-horsepower car dealership, and one of the most authentic communities in the automotive aftermarket.
Automotive Advantage: Chase Lautenbach. I’m going to say your last name one time.
Chase: He did. That was perfect. That was good.
Automotive Advantage: Thanks for having me. We got a ton of stuff to talk about. But for the folks at home — you’re 35, very successful entrepreneur, you’ve got multiple businesses. We’re going to talk about all of your businesses, how you do it, how you keep up with all this stuff. And then on the way here, we might get into talking about the work-life balance.
Chase: Yeah. I think we should. I like work-life balance.
Automotive Advantage: You’re in the middle of an 18-race season with Street Car Takeover. I think with you, it’s important to understand how we got here. So you want to talk a little bit about what makes you roll and how you’ve built these businesses?
Chase: Absolutely. So a lot of people kind of know me from back in the day. I got my start with 1320 Video long, long, long time ago. And from there, we were just traveling all over the country. We got to see the ins and outs of all these events because obviously we’re the guys with the cameras and covering all these crazy races that are happening everywhere.
I literally just looked at Kyle one night and I was driving home from a day at the office, so to speak, from my job that I had then. And I called Kyle and I was like, “Man, I hate this.” And he goes, “What?” I was like, “We have so much fun on the weekends going to cover all these races. We know all the ins and outs of it. Why don’t we just do our own?” And that’s literally how it started.
In fact, before it was called Street Car Takeover, it was actually going to be called — not a lot of people know this — it was actually going to be called 1320 Video Invades whatever city we go to. Because we just wanted to go street race, allegedly, with our friends all around the country when we were dumb kids. That’s all we wanted to do. We just want to go play with cars.
And then Street Car Takeover just grew into this monster of a series that we travel everywhere and do it. So that’s how it started. It literally started in a Sonic parking lot with our buddies hanging out, saying we should do this for real.
Automotive Advantage: Do you have a perspective — because of the timing and Kyle’s passing — on the 1320 empire? Can you tell people how big this empire is that you guys built?
Chase: Man, I don’t think anybody really can. It’s one of those deals where that’s been something that’s been asked to me a bunch of times, especially over the past couple of weeks. I think I have 360 missed calls on my phone right now. So if you’re hearing this, I didn’t miss your call. I’m sorry.
I’m sure that there are lots of people who have been listening to this right now who are in the spot they’re in in this industry because of Kyle, and they don’t even know that.
That’s how big of an empire and how big of a thing 1320 Video has become, especially from the grassroots side of things. Obviously we have professional motorsports, but 1320 Video and what Kyle started really is the root to even some of that stuff too. Discovery Channel and racing cars — that would not be a thing without Kyle.
I am confident to say that that man and some of the things that I got to be a small part of have pushed billions — with a B — billions of dollars through this industry. And that’s something to be proud of. I don’t think that we’re ever going to truly know how big it is, but it is that big. I believe that for real.
Automotive Advantage: Even three weeks ago if you said, “Well, who’s the biggest media company in automotive?” I don’t think anyone would pick 1320, but it is and it has been.
Chase: Especially on the grassroots side of things, there’s no one bigger. And it’s wild how far it splinters off into just everything — literally everything. Garrett wouldn’t be a thing. Cletus, Street Car Takeover wouldn’t be a thing. Street Outlaws wouldn’t be a thing. Tons of aftermarket companies that push parts wouldn’t be a thing. It’s just crazy as to how far back you can actually look at the roots of that thing.
The reason why so many things from 1320 Video have been so successful throughout the years is because if you look at it, 1320 Video has always been about the people. Kyle has always been about the people. The cars are cool, don’t get me wrong, but the people part has really been the focus ever since the beginning. It was always about catapulting the next person up. And what can Kyle do for everybody else? He was in such a position where if he wanted to do all these crazy things, he absolutely could have, but that was never his concern. It was always capturing the story about this person and then enabling them to build a platform off of that.
Automotive Advantage: Describe Street Car Takeover for someone who’s never heard of you.
Chase: Man, that can be as deep or as light as you want it to be. You want the deep answer?
Automotive Advantage: Deep.
Chase: Okay. I’d say it’s the gateway to motorsports and drag racing, in my opinion. The coolest thing about Street Car Takeover is we have a spot for the 17-year-old kid that all he can afford is some three-grand F-body that he found on Facebook that he’s doing everything he can to put together to come race. I have a spot for that kid. Or I have guys that are going threes in small tire with full-built race cars. We’ve done events with $50,000 payouts.
Street Car Takeover is a spot where everybody has a place where they can come and party with us and have a good time. And the cars really bring everybody together. We’ve always tried to make it about the people and the racing second. You know, the racing is fun, but come to one of our night meets, man — like the night we’re about to have in Charlotte, we’re going to blow that place out. But it’s going to be about the people that night. There’s going to be 6,000 people at a Twin Peaks parking lot. It feels like high school again, back with your buddies in a parking lot. And that’s something everybody is still chasing.
Automotive Advantage: Rattle the numbers off for us. 18 events this year — what does a great year of Street Car Takeover look like?
Chase: Top line revenue — I would probably say eight million, maybe a little across everything. Obviously that’s not counting merch. Just purely events.
Automotive Advantage: That’s not counting the biggest money maker.
Chase: Yeah. Eight million without the thing we make money on. Yeah. People-wise, we’ll sometimes have 2,500 spectators at an event — those are the hard ones. But when you have 18, they can’t all be bangers. And then we’ll go to Charlotte this weekend and we’ll see over 20,000 people throughout the weekend.
And it’s been a learning curve, especially with the economy. I mean, really — we’re at the point now where I’m 35, but we started this when I was 22. So I’ve done a lot of my big growing up in this. Seeing how the economy actually does affect your business — that’s been huge. You can do everything right and it’d still be a tough year just because of everything going on. Because when you’re in a business that is purely a luxury item — we are not a need, we are a want — you can have tough years even when you do everything right. And that’s scary as a business owner.
Automotive Advantage: The other insane thing you do — and I say that with all due respect — is you guys race your own cars at your own events. How are you physically able to do that?
Chase: We have a group of really good guys that travel all around the country with us. They all know what they need to do, they’re dang good at it. So that gives us more freedom to run some of the races. And if something’s burning, we can jump out of the car and throw our helmet off and just roll up our sleeves and get right back to it.
Not a lot of promoters race at their own events, but we absolutely do. Every person who works for us races. And I think that sets us apart because I can tell you why this works. I can tell you what ain’t going to work or what a racer isn’t going to want to do. We know how to work our lanes because, well, we do it.
Automotive Advantage: You’ve got Race Ready Autosports, a car dealership. And I think you’ve got a really interesting position — you have no problem selling modified cars.
Chase: That’s what we like. And a lot of other places won’t touch them. But one of the reasons why we’re not afraid to touch them is because it’s what we do. Our whole premise is the 1% of the 1% of cars. So it’s pretty rare that we’re going to have a stock anything. I probably have one that makes over 1,500 horsepower.
When you get a car like a Lamborghini Huracán — lots of guys are twin-turbo-ing these cars right now — and you take that to Lamborghini Miami with 2,000 horsepower, they’re not even going to know where to start. But you know, we race those cars ourselves. The guys that work in our shop have owned and raced almost all of these platforms. So unlike other dealerships, I’m going to go drive mine home.
Automotive Advantage: Take me through the mechanics of selling a modified car. What’s the sales mechanism — is it just your social platform?
Chase: Pretty much. We don’t use Bring a Trailer, we don’t use AutoTrader, we don’t use CarGurus, we don’t use anything like that. Because the guys looking for those types of cars aren’t getting on CarGurus to find a 2,000-horsepower GTR. They’re not. So where are they looking? Facebook Marketplace or Facebook groups. And over the years, we’ve had so many of these platforms that I’m already in all those groups. So if you’re trying to sell your high-horsepower GTR, we’re already in all those groups. You stick it right in front of them instead of them having to go find it.
The coolest thing about modified cars is they are worth whatever somebody will pay for them. And if you’re good at selling the dream, you can be really, really successful. We’ve actually had dealerships call us that have modified cars that came in on trade — they just can’t get them moved. So they call us.
Automotive Advantage: Give me a forecast for the used supercar market — a couple vehicles you think are going to be on the rise in the next 12 months.
Chase: R8s — Audi R8s. Huracáns. GTRs. Anything with a Porsche badge on it — literally anything. One of the biggest questions I get all the time is what can I drive for the summer and not lose money on it. Those right there. The GTR gets a little asterisk because you can’t buy one that’s been too far gone.
The V10 platform — they killed the V10. And so right now it’s such a hot thing that we’re just seeing values on those cars spike. I can’t keep those cars in stock right now. Feels like I make a post once a week saying I need twin-turbo V10s bad. And they just fly off the shelves. A lot of them are sold before we even get them in stock.
Automotive Advantage: You’ve mentioned Sam and Ryan — your business partners. They’re very different from you. How does that work?
Chase: Yeah. Ryan and Sam are a massive part of our success. And while I’m super focused on having fun, those guys are over here with the leash yanking me back.
We have our dreamer — which is me. We have our numbers guy — which is absolutely Ryan. And then we have our processes guy — and that’s Sam. So I’ll figure out, hey, I want to have fun. And then Ryan is going to be like, all right, this is how we afford to have the fun. And then Sam goes, okay, this is how we execute the fun and make it repeatable.
We all really play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses very well. What Ryan can do, I can’t do. What Sam can do, I can’t do. But what they can’t do, I can do. So it just works very, very well.
Automotive Advantage: How do you attract great talent? How do you keep it? How do you develop people?
Chase: Caring, I think, is a huge thing. Caring about the people around you — if you treat them right, they’re going to treat you right. And we just genuinely care about our people and their families. That’s a big driving force behind everything we’ve been doing.
As far as development, it just all goes back to reps and just getting out there and doing it. Most people can do it as long as they’re having fun. And in our industry, that’s such a big thing. It continues to push people to want to come back, and the more you do it, the better you get at it.
Automotive Advantage: What do you look for — because I’m sure a million people want to work for Street Car Takeover?
Chase: Somebody that fits the group. You can just tell when somebody walks in — you can tell right off the rip if they can jump in, joke with everybody, keep up, not get offended. You know how racers are, man. We’re a very welcoming group, but we’re not exactly the most PC group ever. If you can keep up, you’re going to be all right. You can just tell.
Automotive Advantage: For people that have never seen you guys operate — you all pulled up to Vengeance. It was like a troll dumpster fire.
Chase: But everyone’s a part of the dumpster fire. You know? It’s not like I showed up in a twin-turbo R8 and everyone else showed up with the truck and trailer. We’re all there doing everything together.
There’s been lots of times where I’ve been at an event and got stuck working the front gate because we were missing somebody — and I’ve worked the front gate literally all day before. Ryan’s done that same thing. Sam’s done that same thing. No one’s too good to handle any part of it. If the trash needs to go out in the merch trailer and you’re walking by it, just do it.
At the beginning of every event, we all fold shirts together. One, because it gets done faster. But two — there’s a lot of fun that happens when you’re folding merch with your boys. Nobody wants to miss that.
Automotive Advantage: I think many people have an idea that to become internet famous, you can do it entirely on the internet. What I’m hearing you say is it’s absolutely not the case.
Chase: Yeah, it starts off the internet. 100%. Meeting people is the biggest thing you could ever do. So go to everything you can. Show up. Walk around places like HPX and just meet everybody, shake everybody’s hand.
You want to talk about organic reach? I was just sitting there and thinking we needed one last big final push into Charlotte. I was like, you know what, the car’s ready — I posted a picture of the GTR just sitting in the shop and said, “Is it even worth me bringing this thing to Charlotte? Is there anybody out there worth my time? Tag your heroes.” That post went a little nuts.
That’s one of the things that we do well — because we just have the balls to say it. Let’s do it. Why not? Worst case scenario, we have fun.
Automotive Advantage: What advice do you have for a little promoter — someone running a couple events at their local track — who wants more people there?
Chase: Go race. Race with as many people as you can. Meet everybody. One of the biggest things that has driven what we do is we will sit down and talk with anybody. There’s no one that you meet that is too small to have your time. Everybody matters and you can learn something from everybody you ever talked to.
A lot of people get skipped over because people brush them off — “They don’t have a big enough following.” Well, maybe they just don’t have one yet because no one knows about them. They could be the next big thing and you wouldn’t even know because you didn’t give them the time of day.
1320 once started with one follower. Garrett started with one follower. Street Car Takeover started with one follower. And then it grew. But it’s the people you meet along the way. Cars are great. Racing is great. The people are better.
Automotive Advantage: You’re going to be on stage at HPX. What are you going to talk about?
Chase: I think it’s just finding the right people to put in the right spots. Finding that person who can execute it, lead your brand in a good direction, gain attention on that one specific thing, and make it their baby and drive it home.
So many people are so focused on efficiency that they miss out. Sometimes things don’t have to be efficient — they just have to work. A lot of people miss that.
And quit being stupid and just go freaking do it. That’s 90% of the battle — actually going to execute what you’re trying to accomplish. People spend so much time learning about what’s going to happen when they try to do something instead of just going to figure it out. Some of my biggest learning moments have been from throwing myself into situations where I had no other choice but to learn how to get through it or else we’re going to have a big problem.
We actually have a saying around our shop — those who can’t, teach. We’re doers. I can still teach you how to do it, but you’re going to come do it with me. That’s the important part about HPX — the people up there teaching are the people who are actually doing. And that means something.
Automotive Advantage: How do you deal with the potential of failure — do you even think about it?
Chase: Yeah, I mean, failing is always something that’s on your mind. No one likes to fail, but it’s a reality of winning too. You can never win if you haven’t failed.
We’ve tried a million different things within SCT and in the car industry that have just bombed completely — but it’s all right. Especially now, in this social-driven world where people’s attention spans are this long: don’t be afraid to fail. Because no one’s going to remember it next week anyway. It’s going to be on to the next guy’s failure. Failing while it sucks — yeah, also don’t be too scared of it. Failing is actually a good thing if you think about it.
Automotive Advantage: What do you think the week holds for someone thinking about coming out to Charlotte?
Chase: I think it’s going to be busy. There’s going to be so much to do and so much to see, and there’s going to be so many different sectors of what people like in the automotive world that it’s just going to drive the whole thing as a whole.
The cool unique part about HPX this year is not only are we going to talk about racing — we’re going to go freaking do it. What other trade shows, what other business trips have you gone on this year where you can say, all right, we went and did business, but then we went racing? We’re going to go talk to tire manufacturers, turbos, superchargers — and then they’re going to come to the race too and actually see the people who are buying their products race them on the track. Rub elbows and shake hands. That’s something that’s very unique to what we’re doing.
Automotive Advantage: Folks are going to hear this and have never heard of you before. How do they get plugged into what you’ve got going on?
Chase: Just go find our socials. Street Car Takeover everywhere. Race Ready Autosports everywhere. My stuff — Chase Lautenbach everywhere. We ain’t hard to find. I promise you that. We tend to make a little bit of noise. So if you’re looking for us, chances are you’re going to find us. I just couldn’t find your stuff. It’s like, well, then you really weren’t looking that hard, now were you? Pretty easy.
See you at HPX. See you at Street Car Takeover, Charlotte.
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