One of the pioneers of the import tuning car culture, Jason Whitfield takes over the Behind the Wheel podcast and talks to Scott (Konig Wheels, Marketing Director) about his legendary killing-time CRX, go back to the NOPI days, the deal with General Motors, the state of the scene today and so much more!
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FOLLOW: Jason Whitfield: @whitfieldmfg https://www.instagram.com/mattvankirk18/
Scott Weiss (Konig): @scott_Konig https://www.instagram.com/scott_konig/
There are some people that help shape a scene. Whether they intend to or not they end up impacting the entire future of a culture, Jason Whitfield is one of these people. Jason was one of the pioneers of the import tuning car culture that came out of Southern California.
In the mid-to-late 90’s his influence helped lay the groundwork for what would become the fast and furious boom that exploded this culture to the mainstream. His hundreds of personal and customer builds pushed envelopes and set some records that lasted for decades. Jason pushed boundaries with speed but also ventured into, then, uncharted territory with OE’s like General Motors back in the Nopi days.
Jason Whitfield is the owner and operator of Whitfield Manufacturing. They offer a wide range of general metal fabrication services. However, they are most noted in the automotive scene for their custom exhaust manifolds, weld-in cages, tubular subframes, custom wings and other components with a specialty in Hondas.
In this podcast, we go far deeper than just Jason’s personal story. We share real car build tips, talk about the progression of the sport compact segment of the automotive industry and so much more!
As always you can use our timeline cheatsheet (below) to jump around in the podcast and hear what you like the most.
Thanks for all of your support and listening!
And please, if you like the podcast and what we’ve been doing here, please subscribe! We’re on iTunes, Google Play and we always put the full video interviews on our YouTube Channel (links below)! Thank you for listening!
CONTENT CHEAT MENU (podcast audio): 0:20 | Intro / 10 question quick-fire 1:55 | Who is Jason Whitfield 3:09 | Why Jason Whitfield 4:35 | Let’s go back to the mid-90s 6:00 | Fastest 1.5 liter Honda! Killing time CRX 8:45 | NO forums! NO google! NO youtube! 12:06 | Ahead of our time! 13:45 | Turbo Magazine 15:45 | TRUE 1.5L NON-VTEC 20:29 | Remembering Shaun Carlson 37:08 | Was Shaun the reason you opened a shop? 45:50 | How many small shops survived 46:48 | Comradery amoungst racers…it’s too easy now! 48:31 | Stephan Papadakis & How it use to be 50:08 | How your shops have evolved…it’s not the size of your shop, its how you use it! 54:00 | Customer base in the beginning & it’s progression 59:16 | First time Jason and Scott met…Nopi Nationals 2006 59:45 | The sickest and one of the fastest Chevy Cobalts 1:00:25 | Building cars for GM (General Motors) 1:10:32 | GM DEAL taught me so much business wise 1:12:03 | Here’s a stock Chevy Cobalt…Make it run 10s! 1:14:48 | Running 9’s in a Cobalt ?!?! 1:16:56 | Trying to make a Cobalt have Civic type following. 1:25:15 | More than just a car build 1:30:11 | The Cobalt today 1:30:45 | ** PRO TIP!!! ** DOT LINE instead of vacuum line. 1:38:25 | Favorite builds 1:40:49 | A focus on safety 1:45:44 | Not worth being reckless 1:49:20 | All Wheel Drive Craze! 1:50:40 | Choosing a shop is your responsibility! 1:51:26 | Where to find Jason / outro
FOLLOW: Scott Weiss (Konig) Instagram: @scott_Konig https://www.instagram.com/scott_konig/
Jason Whitfield: @whitfieldmfg https://www.instagram.com/whitfieldmfg/
