it's like driving a piece of the future even Tesla owners will see these cars and say what is that absolutely nothing I would rather drive than these I just think that this car is going to be more than a million dollars one day because this is going to become known as the car that killed the internal combustion engine this setup that has never existed for any collector car in history I'm in Phoenix Arizona and I'm going to visit Gruber Motor Company I'm a car guy and I've been driving Tesla roadsters
for more than a decade now but recently I realize that they're more than just fun they're an investment so I purchased two more and one of them I have never seen before so now let's go take a look at my latest investment Pete how are you doing why good to see you again good seeing you thanks for coming by yeah so um I'm here at Gruber Motors in Phoenix Arizona it's one of only two places in the world that Services the Tesla Roadster the original vehicle that started the electric car automotive
industry uh it's been since back in the 20s that the public was actually buying electric cars Pete here is the guy that really uh has taken on like a mission in life of preserving all of these cars that are very very important cars so Pete uh tell me about your operation about the roadsters and then let's take a look at mine yeah before we get started I have a question for you okay I just recently saw some pictures of a Tessa Rosa accident that you were involved in yeah and it was a miracle I
looked at the car and I said how could Mike have walked out of this car and snapped some pictures after his accident so my question for you is why would you buy three more roadsters well you know I bought that first Roadster that was a 2010 that was car number 963. uh you know all the Roadster owners know their VIN number uh because there's so few of them so you know what number your car is but that was 963 met that untimely death and uh but I loved that car and I lived up in the Malibu mountains with all these great curvy
roads that you know there's these mountain ridges and there will be this road draped across that thing like a piece of spaghetti with bank turns and everything and I love driving and so that was like one of the highlights of my life I'm so glad I made the and I see it now as an investment and recently I realized that these cars are an investment I expect enormous gains appreciation in these cars in the future so that is why I bought more of them my second one number 1290 for I bought just
to replace 963 because I missed that car so much there was nothing else that I could nothing available that I can drive on a street that uh I thought was as fun and as special and it it really feels special to you know it's like driving a piece of the future even today I get in the cars and the sound that they make you're imagining this is what the future should sound like then I got my Model S and I went wow the future actually has no sound but uh yeah these are very very special cars I just uh love them and people don't
realize how rare they are most people have never uh seen a Tesla Roadster before even Tesla owners will see these cars and say what is that and you know when I first got the Tesla it was before Tesla was very well known and somebody would stop me and go wow what kind of car is that Echo it's Tesla no no no not what model is it what what's the brand Tesla and no no no what company makes the car they're saying and I go Tesla it is the fourth American Car Company there is General Motors Ford Chrysler and
Tesla it really took something to get this across that this was an electric car being made in the United States and now the model S and three at X are the most American cars made right yeah right more American Parts in those cars than any other their car made but there was this big gap in the electric car production from 1928 to 2008 so there was 80 years there where there were no electric cars that were successfully sold to the public the Roadster is the first to be said to reach that right balance of
price range performance charge time and battery life and the public bought it and without this car there would be no battery electric vehicle being made today because the rest of the automotive industry does not want to make electric cars they want to continue building internal combustion cars profitably all of those of the other companies General Motors and and Ford when they build an electric vehicle there it's at a loss and they're consuming a they're cannibalizing a potentially profitable
sale of an internal combustion vehicle but anyway so the reason I bought these this this little car uh sort of saved my life it's got the you you know you take them apart yeah but there's these giant aluminum box frame rails that car hit me sort of offset and then the frame guided the uh other guy's car around my car and um the the door is not supposed to come off but because he hit me so hard it ripped uh part of the firewall away the whole door jam was gone there were actually a bunch of
scratches on my arm from the front of his car that's his car brushed my arm at 50 miles an hour amazing yeah so anyway show me my cars we are very honored that you have chosen our company to contain your cars and service them and uh where are you one of our best customers any customer I think that brings three roadsters here is one of our best customers we have another one by the way too Dan who also has three yeah Dan's my producer director and uh I used to let a few select people drive my Roadster so this
blue one number 1222 I bought simply because it was below Market uh 5 10 possibly fifteen thousand dollars below market and so I think um in you know I have two types of investment bets now for years my only investment was Crisis investing getting ready for the next financial crisis and so more than half of my net worth is in Precious Metals but now I'm doing what's called us if you're an options investor you would call it a straddle betting that it'll go up or it'll go down is what options are I'm
either betting on a crisis or a very bright future for Humanity this is my bright future one of my bright future events so one of the things that we do of course is we have the Roadster matchmaking service and you're one of the investors that actually triggered a purchase before we even got it to social media we have about 340 now pre-qualified buyers on that list and when it gets sent out sometimes those buyers immediately contact the seller before we even have a chance to advertise it and it sounds like that's
what you did with this yes as soon as I got your email I called this guy and said I'll take it that was something then then I flew there and saw it because I could tell from all the photos and the the battery condition that this was going to be a a good car and then I realized that these are really an investment and I've let all of my insiders which are clients that they get to find out what I'm doing with my investments and I let them know about about this a few months ago and now we are
I'm finally getting to see this car this is a car I've never seen yeah and uh this one I paid a little bit over market for but there was a reason so this so what makes this car so unique I know the answer but I want to do a ton it has just over 1 300 miles on it it's radiant red which is one of the higher demand colors uh and uh it hasn't got us it's only got a couple of scratches underneath the front lip from coming out of a driveway other than that it's a museum piece I'm really interested to
see the difference between driving this one and driving this one I did a lot of I had a lot of work done on this one you'll notice when I hit the fan like that Fender there and then um this there's sound insulation I redid the interior there are being such a low volume car uh with you know 2400 examples you said right uh and it's based on a Lotus chassis people sometimes thinks it looks like a Lotus but that's because of the lotus windshield it it shares what seven percent or ten percent seven percent of
the parts uh with a Lotus this body's carbon fiber and it's made in France right it is yes this is not made by lotus and uh it's also four inches longer I believe I believe so yeah and so it's a very very different car uh to me the Lotus looks like a Japanese anime cartoon of a bug it looks like some happy happy little bug going down this looks like a shark they they kept the sports car vibe that Lotus is famous for because if you look at the later model Teslas now their four-door grocery
getter sedans basically granted they're extremely fast they're extremely powerful and you know Model S and they're all stylish in some way but this truly is the only convertible brightly colored two-seater Tesla that's available right now right and with that Lotus steering the manual rack and pinion steering it's like you can it's almost like driving by Braille you can feel the texture of the road through the steering wheel and that is just with with all of the you know now it's dry everything's drive
by wire and if they're trying to give you feedback it's fake and yeah yeah it's simulated yeah right right and Mike I remember when the car arrived here we of course go through them carefully and uh but you were very insistent this is not a car that we're going to test drive in fact you told me that when you get this car you're going to take it around the block maybe three or four times per year and that's about it because that 1300 miles is right this value is all about right yeah I expect that I just
think that this car is going to be more than a million dollars one day and the reason for that is because of the number of Teslas that will be on the road by like 2030 there should be about 40 million Teslas on the road and if a certain percentage of those owners have serious resources there will be another percentage of those that then our car people and a certain percentage of those that will actually want to acquire the funnest Tesla the original Tesla and one of the four really important cars in
history that changed the automotive industry because this is going to become known as the car that killed the internal combustion engine and so I'm seeing it as a you know there might be uh market crash and a dip coming up and then you'll see some people that have a lot of toys they need to get liquid because all of their Investments are on the side where they go down in a crisis so they need to get liquid and a lot of their toys is it'll be throwing the baby out with the bath water
they're going to if there's a bad crash you might see a few deals on on these out there but after that is over when the economy comes back and everything I think that this is going to be one of the best performing collector cars available when it comes to the appreciation simply because of the story behind them I'm like you're probably aware of this and it wasn't intentional as you've said but you do have a patriotic series of roadsters we have red white and blue and one here is white
yes yes this one was my daily driver from 2011 to 2017 when I moved to Puerto Rico and this one I'm not as concerned about the appreciation because I decided a long time ago I'm going to die with this car it's not for sale I did some modifications to it to make it safer to make it more comfortable and their modifications that you most people would not be able to see there's the headlights on these were somewhat insufficient up in the Malibu Mountains go into a hairpin turn and the
headlights are set so deeply into the body that they don't shine to the sides and so uh I had some motorcycle headlights embedded into the grill and they sort of cross and they pick up exactly where the regular headlights leave off so I've got these great cornering blades I always needed the seat to go back another couple of inches well turned out there's you depressed the petals all the way and there's about three inches behind them so I had the pedals reformed so that I've got enough
leg room in it I had the door panels reworked re-sculpted so that there's an extra two inches of clearance for my foot to get in and out because you really need to be a yoga Master to get in and out of these cars but believe me it is worth it and so uh yeah and then it's here for some of Pete's Famous upgrades uh you're doing the you've done the pems on all the cars or you're doing it you've done all the Pens have been upgraded so the Power Electronics module is a failure
Point you'll notice this whole shop look at the floor there's not an oil spot on it look at all of these roadsters this is more of an Electronics shop than it is a mechanics shop yeah there are some nuts and but the heart of these cars is really the electronics but it's really the Driving Experience this is a vehicle that makes you love driving uh and that's the reason that I bought three more after my first one uh was completely totaled I can just picture you doing some Canyon carving in the
Malibu Hills with a car like this it's got to be a pure joy well this one I've actually have taken this down dirt roads and stuff too I mean this one I've put some serious miles on it I've really used it well the red one so this is 12. the first one was 963 this is 12.94. this one is 1410 and they ended production at 1500 in the U.S it was uh 1463 I believe the final five 1459 was the last production roaster in the U.S okay and then they built the final five okay and so this is very
close to the end of production and then uh my business associate Dan rubach has number 44 here which is one of the signature 100 editions tell us about the carbon fiber plate that's in the in the center between the seats is a carbon fiber plaque that has a autograph of the first 250 employees at Tesla and then engraved below that is the series so Vin 44 in this case of 100. this car also has a custom factory paint job and you can see the red metallic speckle in that paint when the light hits it just right yeah
the only one like this exactly yeah so something else that makes this Vin 44 signature Roadster unique is that in the early days there is a short video clip that's available that shows Elon walking through and it was either San Carlos or Menlo Park and this car was sitting on the floor and it said Vin 44 on a piece of paper on the windshield so the car actually was at Tesla at one point in time of course with Elon Musk in the same shot yeah yeah and then uh Dan's got you know the car that we pulled up
in is uh one of Dan's roadsters but he's got another one over here this is car number 578. now anything before 964 was built as a 1.5 or a two what um under Vin 500 500 and under was a 1.5 okay and then they went to two until the 964 or 960. my 963 was a 2.25 so it was a car that was built as a two and then taken apart and the adjustable and I think what happened was um Tesla had there there were cars that were ordered and built and that they had not been delivered to customers when the
customers found out oh there's this new version that's got this great looking front end right an adjustable suspension and a revised uh Dash and some other features and uh this car uh a customer paid to have it converted from a two to a 2.5 haha there it is I just these are the most fantastic little cars and when I say little I mean little when when you pull up next to a Porsche 911 your eyes are right at the door handle of the Porsche 911. so I'm going to get in this now it takes you got to be a bit
of a yoga expert to get in and out of these okay [Music] you sort of fall into it so this is a 2.5 Roadster they did a redesign there was about uh 500 that are this really aggressive looking front end and adjustable suspension quite a few improvements in them and then they've got this great push button transmission and then they're silent as you pull away and I used to I've given hundreds of people rides in my Roadster and in uh I probably let a few hundred people drive my Model S but they've got amazing
acceleration oh this one's in max range mode I'm gonna change it to performance because um max range but they're just this little tiny go-kart there's um an aftermarket roof on this one called a visium roof and uh it's got some squeaks still it needs to be adjusted but uh I used to go through this Spiel there are 6831 little Lithium-ion batteries in a battery pack right behind us and that when this car came out they did zero to 60 in the same uh time as a Lamborghini Gallardo in 2008 and it gets the energy
equivalent of 125 miles per gallon it's silent and they almost never break it's an incredibly reliable car but so much fun to drive and just feeling that road through your fingertips is just awesome and they don't have power steering and so um uh but that just makes it even better you don't need power steering is absolutely nothing I would rather drive than these and it's been you know since I moved to Puerto Rico uh my white one has been on the mainland so I haven't really
driven uh one of these much since moving to Puerto Rico and that was quite a number of that was seven years ago and I can't wait to get my white one back to Puerto Rico and it's good enough okay and the interesting thing is the cars are so silent when the fans aren't running uh you know I have my office in Santa Monica One of my we had tandem spots and I was parked in front of one of my employees and I give them the key and he comes back about uh 10 minutes later and he goes it won't start
because when you turn the key it seems like nothing happens but all you have to do is push the drive button and accelerate and it goes so you don't actually start it you just turn the switch on and it's ready so that's it I hope you enjoyed the ride so Mike we often Get Low uh VIN number roadsters in our shop here I have been number five for example and it usually Summers here because when it's over 100 and 510 outside it doesn't like the heat in my garage anyway but the lowest Vin
that we currently have in the shop is actually not just a signature Roadster but a Founders Roadster Founders number three wow now Elon has Founders number one Martin has Founders number two and this customer owns Vin founder yeah Vin three founder Series so Martin Eberhard was actually the one that sort of started the idea of Tesla and then got Elon Musk in very early as a an investor correct correct so what we have here is Tesla Roadster Founders VIN number three remember elon's got one Martin's got two
this is number three and this is for sale currently along with a second car that this owner purchased which was also a Founder series Model S so what we have here is a pair of matching Founders series three Model S and Roadster in virtually the same color so this will eventually sell to a appreciative appreciative investor yeah I had 2012 signature so I had already had 963 replace it with 1294 and then got signature 599 by the end of 2012. I was already on my third Tesla so I was one of those early adopters right
you know what was great about back then all of the Roadster owners used to get invited to all of the Tesla events so when they unveiled did the unveil for the model S I was down at the Hawthorne Design Center and Elon Musk he's come down and mingle with the crowd uh you know I do a stage presentation but then he'd be available for people to talk to for the next couple of hours it was really something so I was I saw the unveil of the supercharger Network the model X yeah so it was great it was like
a private club when I went to the unveil of the model S there was you know maybe 100 roadsters in the parking lot and people would fly in from all over the world you had Roadster owners coming in for from Japan and Saudi Arabia and and there were a lot of roadsters in Norway they did a lot of tests cold weather testing when they were developing the prototypes and I the Norwegians I think just fell in love with these cars right yeah for some reason uh Norway has a a disproportionate population of roadsters
there's an affinity for EVS there yes I think they are the top ranking country for Eevee ownership TV adoption yeah yeah percentage-wise right so both of these cars are available on our website under Roadster matchmaking for those of you that are into investing this kind of a deal will never come along again right these are the early Founders three cars being sold as a set yeah and like I said you know look at some of the numbers behind this the numbers are there's most likely going to be about 40 million
Teslas on the road by the end of this decade a certain percentage of those if you pick 10 percent might have serious resources ten percent of those might be car people and let's say five percent of those that's still 20 000 people trying to purchase a thousand cars and so uh I just think that this setup that has never existed for any collector car in history so the demand will drive the price yes right and when that you know and as these cars every year there's one or two more that become unroadworthy and so
there's fewer of them and uh when people discover how important the car is yeah the price I think will go astronomical and how many miles on on this founder Series 3 2500 I think 25 54 or something yeah this is a couple million dollar car I believe someday in the future well Mike let me show you the auto shop of the future we have a lot of visitors that come in here and the first thing that they're astonished is that this is an Electronics lab thanks for watching part one of our new series on the original Tesla roadsters
part two is available to watch on the Gruber Motors Channel by clicking the link in the description box below we had a lot of fun making this video so let us know in the comments section if you'd like to learn more about the vehicle that in the future will become known as the car that killed the internal combustion engine and as always thanks for hitting the like button and subscribing we'll see you soon
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