James Kirkham Shows Off His Car Collection | These Pieces

- What's up? I'm James Kirkham, co-founder of Race Service. On this episode of these pieces, I'm gonna show you my cars. (upbeat music) (cool music) We'll start with this one. So this is a 1977 Mercedes-Benz 280E. It's actually my housekeeper's husband's, unfortunately, he passed away. This was his pride and joy and we saw an opportunity to make like the Ultimate Family Cruiser with a big V8 engine in it. So, it doesn't have that yet. It's like a mix between American NASCAR and a German family s

edan. As you can see, it's got its interior all intact. This is very stock car, so the whole back is chopped off. It's really clean, but this is like what you see at short tracks in North Carolina. So this is a 1991 Ferrari 348. (cool music) The reason why this thing is cool, it has the looks of a Testa Rossa, but it's the race car. It's actually the first year of the Ferrari Challenge Race series. So back in 1991, I guess Ferraris weren't selling very well and in order to make them sell, they s

tarted a race series called "The Ferrari Challenge One Make" series. That year, there was only 12, 12 challenge cars made in America, and that means, there was only 12 roll cages. I found one of 12 roll cages. (car revs engine loudly) The Beverly Hills Police loves that one. (cool music) Same year, 1991. I don't know why, but everything, I gravitate towards 1991. I guess it's like the core of my childhood. So this is Roger Penske's second ever chassis. So this Penske racing style is 002. Everybo

dy was buying NFTs during COVID, and I bought this. This is my NFT and I think I did a good choice, but yeah, it's a full cup car. So this is like the top American racing series NASCAR Sprint Cup, NASCAR cup. This is the Winston Cup era back when cigarettes could be advertised. And yeah, this is Rusty Wallace. He was one of the most polarizing drivers. He was one that would compete against Dale Earnhardt Senior. He was really good at road courses. And this is a road course car actually initially

was a mile and a half car, is what they call it. But yeah, this has been converted to road course and I bought it to drive. So it's been restored by the same person who restores all the cars for the NASCAR Hall of Fame in the museum. I even found this little badge right here. It says Penske RS. So Roger Penske is like the most famous racing team owner in Motorsport in America. It is Penske RS and we're race service and somehow, I found this badge that's fits perfectly into the car to kind of ti

e it all together. So it takes about 45 minutes to heat up and when you fire it up, here's nothing like it. It's very tight. I can barely get in it. Once you're in it though, safe. (cool upbeat music) This is my daily driver. This thing is the first ever chassis that Mercedes, AMG which is a performance division of Mercedes. This is the first ever chassis and car that they developed completely. So right here, you see the Affalterbach badge. I had no idea what Affalterbach was, but in the recent

months, I've spent a lot of time there. It's where they make all these cars and there's a lot of love and passion that go into to the development of this and you know, it might seem like a doctor or lawyer's car at first sight, but it's extremely fast. You know, I'm more of a race car kind of person but, you know, cruising with the top down wasn't so bad and you still go fast. If I could only have one car for the rest of my life, I think it would easily be a G63 AMG. (cool upbeat music) I think

when you look at like what, like a spectrum of why cars exist, right? You have the very far side of it, very purposeful. And that's this, like, this thing could go to the moon. It's the most insane car on the planet. It defies physics, it has so much power, and yet, it could go off road and rally and do all the things, so. This right here is a also 1991, 190E Mercedes. I saw a big opportunity to bring Mercedes into our world. They weren't speaking to car culture really at all. And you know, this

car in particular, I think they do a really good job speaking to pop culture. But this car in particular is the car that inspired probably the most culturally relevant car. That's the competitor's car. The E30 M3, the one that's on the Frank Ocean Nostalgia orange cover. That car was built by BMW because of this, this car was savage. This is a, basically the same chassis as you see it right now. It was a pretty beautiful car when we got it, not too long ago. And the first thing I did, like I do

with a lot of my cars is to take them back to the frame. This is the 190E Cosworth. So, it's a pretty special car. When we have the right momentum and the enough time, this will become something really special and it'll be a race car. Like all the cars you see. Speaking of race cars, this is the crown jewel of all vehicles. And when you talk about being on a spectrum, this is literally the furthest example of purpose built. (dramatic cool music) This is the most road relevant race car, the most

advanced race car. This is actually the winningest race car chassis in sports car racing history. It's also called the 190. No relation to that 190. We are starting a project that was inspired by a good friend of mine, late friend of mine, Ken Block. We're launching, as you see, we have a bunch of clothes right behind me. We are making a clothing collection with a race car program attached to it. Our plan is to do a live runway stunt where we'll be in fashion week in June with this car and driv

ing through Paris at speed and do a pit stop in order to launch our apparel brand. So yeah, this is a really, really important car for, you know, what we do here at Ray service and our vision. You can see the engine, this completely refreshed brand new engine from AMG. You can see all the downforce like this downforce is really what makes this car, this car corners at a speed that like if you were riding passenger, which we'll put a passenger seat in this, like it will hurt your and bruise your

ribs, you know, it's that high of cornering speed. Full race car. They've literally used the same buttons as fighter jets. Like this couldn't be more overthought. (laughs genuinely) This is a perfect car. It handles like a complete dream. Can take corners at an insane rate and yeah, can go forever. (breathe heavily) That's my car collection. Thank you for watching. Be on the lookout for race service apparel and yeah, we'll see you next time, peace. (cool upbeat music)