Dave Codrea and Grant Brewer on Why They Started a Car Podcast in Atlanta

Throttlecast is a car podcast about real cars, real stories, and the drivers and owners of the Atlanta car scene. The first episode has no outside guest. It’s the two hosts, Dave Codrea and Grant Brewer, telling their own stories on the lounge floor at The Ride Lounge in Peachtree Corners.

Dave has spent his career in real estate and is one of the people behind The Ride Lounge. Grant has spent nearly 20 years in the car business, selling brands like Lamborghini, McLaren, Rolls-Royce, and Porsche. Between them they cover the cars that hooked them as kids, the one that got away, and why a car club needed its own building.

Dave Codrea: fix it up, sell it, repeat

Dave’s career has always been real estate. His first attempt at making money, though, was a car. In high school he and a few friends bought an old Honda CRX at a salvage auction for about $500 and fixed it up. “It’s kind of been my story with everything,” he says. Fix something up, sell it, try to make some money.

He had a Mitsubishi Eclipse in high school too, before JDM was a term anyone used. The moment it all clicked came at 16. He heard the Berlin Turnpike in Connecticut, outside Hartford, was worth seeing, and drove about four hours to get there. There was no internet to check. He didn’t know anyone. He found around a thousand cars cruising the strip: classic cars, hot rods, motorcycles, imports, each group in its own parking lot. He met a lot of people that night and was hooked.

His garage still runs on variety. He has imported two cars from Japan, one from Australia, and one from Germany. The German one is a 1984 Mercedes fire truck that tops out at 45 kilometers an hour, seats nine, and has working sirens. The plan is to turn it into a tailgate rig. His daily is a Sprinter van, which doubles as a place to take conference calls.

Grant Brewer: a red Power Wheels Corvette

Grant grew up in Pennsylvania in a Corvette family. His dad had a 1984 C4, which Grant now calls “kind of a terrible Corvette” because of its Crossfire injection. When Grant was about three, he got a matching red Power Wheels Corvette for Christmas. He pushed it up the neighbor’s driveway and coasted down until the battery died, over and over.

His first real car was a 1991 Civic hatchback. A friend had pulled the airbox off his Nissan Altima and fitted a cone filter, and Grant couldn’t get over the sound. So he pulled the airbox off the Civic. It didn’t go any faster. It was still one of the most memorable mods he’s made.

A friend once told Grant something he now thinks about every time he drives a car. It isn’t about the stats, the 0 to 60, or the price. It’s about how the car makes you feel when you drive it.

The car that got away

For Dave it’s a Ferrari Testarossa. The first Ferrari he ever saw was a red 1989 Testarossa at a dealership when he was 12 or 13. About six years ago they sold for around $75,000, and he didn’t buy one. Everyone warned him about the maintenance, and prices have climbed since. He knows it was built in bigger numbers than most Ferraris. He still thinks it’s the coolest one they made. “Everyone complains about maintenance. Like that’s kind of the fun part of it.”

Grant got to drive one during his sales years, on the way to a repair shop. His memory is the odd seating position, with your feet offset to the right, no power steering, a gated manual, and a V12 about a foot and a half behind your head.

A GTO MR from Barrett-Jackson

The car behind the hosts on set is a right-hand-drive Mitsubishi GTO MR, the Japanese-market version of the car Americans know as the 3000GT. Dave loved it as a kid in the ’90s. He found it by accident. He went to Barrett-Jackson for a few days and left on Friday, before the car crossed the block on Saturday. He kept watching the online auction, saw what he thought was a good price, and bought it anyway. Then he had to figure out how to get it home.

The plans are simple: more power, work on the turbos, and a front-mount intercooler. In Dave’s view, every ’90s JDM car needs one.

Why The Ride Lounge exists

Grant has sold cars to clients with five, ten, and in one case 60-some cars. Collectors all hit the same question: where do the cars live? Dave’s question was where car people get to spend time together. A parking lot meet works until the property owner decides it doesn’t.

About nine months before this car podcast launched, Dave decided real estate and cars could work together. The Ride Lounge is the result. “It really comes down to community,” he says. The goal is the best car social scene you can find. It will never be a showroom of the rarest cars, because the members are out driving them.

A few things set it apart:

• It owns its buildings. The club buys its locations instead of leasing them. “We’re not going anywhere,” Dave says.
• Social comes first. Social memberships are for people who already have lifts at home and just want a place to be around other car people. Storage can be added later, for a new car or for the extra cars that show up once the kids start driving.
• The cars get driven. Members move cars in and out almost every week. Some wash and detail their cars in the work area, which Dave hadn’t planned for.
• Access is keyless. Members get in with facial recognition and Bluetooth access, with cameras throughout, and the building is open basically all day.

Dave’s Berlin Turnpike night still shapes the place. He wants muscle cars next to hot rods next to imports. On the day they recorded, the floor held a couple of Lamborghinis, an Airstream, and a right-hand-drive JDM car.

Many members have finally bought the car from the poster on their wall. “Whatever that car is that you wanted when you were 16, you are not getting when you’re 16,” Dave says. Once you have it, you want to drive it and talk to someone about it.

Events built around one kind of car

The club skips the invite-a-thousand-people approach. Every month there are specific meets, open to the public, built around a single make or type. One of the best was a Land Cruiser meet that drew 30 to 40 trucks, including FJ40s and FJ60s. One owner had bought his FJ40 as a pile of parts and rebuilt it in his garage.

The best way in is Final Lap Fridays, from 3 to 5 p.m. Members bring cars by, visitors tour the space, and plenty of people bring their kids.

Where it goes from here

At the time of recording, The Ride Lounge had one location in Peachtree Corners, with more in the works, including Midtown. The next phase is about five locations, with events that move between them. Visitors from out of town have already asked about Dallas and Houston.

Dave measures it by people, not square footage. “The more people we can have that their life is now better because they came here, they met great friends, they’ve had great experience, they feel more connected in their community. That’s our goal.”

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Dave Codrea and Grant Brewer is above and on YouTube, including Dave’s college road trip to Daytona Beach in a seatless ’90s Dodge Caravan. For every guest since, browse all Throttlecast episodes.

The Ride Lounge is a private car club with climate-controlled car storage in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta. It was built for exactly what Dave describes: a place where car people can show up any week and find someone who gets it. Final Lap Fridays are the easiest first visit. See what’s coming up on the events calendar.