Hello, Kansas City. Welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast, one of the highest and most rated Kansas City Car Detailing business. We are so glad that you joined us today.
If you haven’t yet, make sure you go on to bespokerefinement.com and check out our gallery. We have a wide variety of cars and services that we offer that I think will just leave you wowed and surprised. Today we have with us Thomas Thill, the founder of Bespoke Automotive Refinement.
He is truly the number one Kansas City Car Detailing expert. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me on.
You know, I just always love coming on here and talking about all of the Kansas City car detailing services that we offer and how we can benefit the community with our services. I remember it was early summer this past year. We were driving from Branson to Tulsa and along the drive in the middle of nowhere, we came across this used car lot that was more of like an overgrown grass area and you immediately stopped, pulled off to the side and like, we need to go check out this car.
Now I, not being a car enthusiast, had no idea what this car was, but you were very excited about it and the guy that owned it knew a lot of the details. It was not an American car. It was a nice, pretty red color, but outside of that, I didn’t know what was special about it but you knew immediately what it was and what made it special.
Can you tell us a little bit about this unique car that we saw? Well, if you’re a car guy, you’re always looking for something. You’re always looking for, well, I assume, I don’t know. I’m always looking for something rare.
So like, I’m always looking for the taillights for an R34 Nissan Skyline or I’m looking for the front end of a Lamborghini Diablo. Like, I’m always just looking for that shape and it’s like my mind’s a computer sometimes. You know, I can just spot something far away and be like, oh, that’s a C5 Corvette.
That’s a Porsche 911. And so we were coming through this little town in Missouri and I mean, when I say little, I mean, I don’t even think they had a stoplight. Blinking through the town.
And I saw at first what looked like a Corvette, a C5 Corvette, the front end of one. And that already looked a little odd to be sitting in a grass lot. And then the closer we got, I thought, oh my goodness, that’s a TVR.
So it’s called a TVR Cerbera, Serba, or something like that. I don’t know exactly how to pronounce it, but it’s a car that was never actually sold in the United States. So it’s a car that either had to come in under the show and display law or they had to wait until the car was 25 years old to be
shipped in under the antique law.
So after the car’s 25 years old, it then becomes considered an antique. And at that point, it’s no longer held to the laws that our government puts on certain vehicles. So this was a car that wasn’t legal to be sold in the United States because it didn’t pass emissions.
So whether the windshield was not shaped properly or didn’t come with proper headlights, whatever reason, these just weren’t legal to be sold in the United States. It’s not that it had too much power or it didn’t have a, you know, it wasn’t safe. It just didn’t reach the EPA standards of the United States.
So I saw it, I’d never seen one in person before. And it was so bizarre seeing one sitting in the middle of nowhere with grass growing around it. So these cars, if I’m not mistaken, come either with a twin turbo V8 or they actually come with a V12.
So these cars are like 500 horsepower out of the box, which is, even to today’s standard, that’s a lot of power for a two-seater sports car. But back in the early 2000s, I mean, that’s Lamborghini, Fiato, Ferrari, V12 territory. That’s more power than an F40.
So back in the day, I mean, these were cars that were in video games like Forza, Gran Turismo. These were cars that I drove in video games. So I recognized the look of it immediately.
And so, you know, I went and talked to the owner of the car. And the big thing about this car that I couldn’t let go of even after we drove off was it had clearly been sitting outside for months. It had been rained on.
The sun was beating down on it. It had bird droppings all over it. And what I could do with this car, I almost wanted to come down and do it for free just because it was so dirty that paint needed to be corrected.
I mean, this would have been the perfect before and after for a YouTube video or, you know, for an enthusiast to see that has never seen a TBR. Because like I said, this is the first time I’d ever seen one in person. Have you ever had that happen again where you’re out and about and it completely surprises you when you come across a hidden jewel? Literally amongst the weeds was that one, but.
There have definitely been times. I grew up in Western Kansas, which is practically like a desert. I mean, there’s nothing out there.
There’s no cities. There’s really no trees. And there’s really no cool cars.
And there were a couple of instances where I saw supercars that were out from the middle of nowhere. One particular instance that I remember, I have an uncle who has a huge farm in Western Kansas. And we were dove hunting.
And one of his old pastures, and there was this barn that, this barn had been abandoned for probably 30 years. I mean, there was wood falling off of it. It looked like it was getting ready to cave in.
And I saw a little glisten of something shiny inside. And I walked back there and sitting in this barn in the middle of nowhere would have been a, that year would have been a 2013 Shelby GT500 Super Snake that had just been detailed. Not by me, I was actually offended.
But I mean, it was black with red stripes. I mean, this is probably a $130,000 car. It was very bizarre seeing it sitting in an old barn in the middle of nowhere.
So my uncle had just bought it and he didn’t have any room for it. I think he was actually trying to hide it from my aunt because he bought it at a farm auction. So he just shoved it in this old barn and there it is sitting in the middle of nowhere.
At that point, pretty much a brand new car. So I had that happen. And then another instance when I worked in the oil field, also in Western Kansas, I was driving down a dirt road headed to a big oil field.
And my dad had warned me that the owner of this property kind of comes into a lot of money, rags to riches type deals. And he said, you’re gonna go down this dirt road. It’s a dead end dirt road.
You’re gonna come to this huge mansion that this guy built. And this rig is straight to the south. So I’m going down this dirt road.
And I mean, this was like five miles of dirt road to the nearest paved highway. And I passed a brand new Ferrari 458 going down this dirt road. It was black and it was just very dirty.
And I’m assuming it was the owner or it was a relative of the owner, but this was just in the middle of nowhere passing a Ferrari on a dirt road. Something to know about Thomas that really makes Bespoke Automotive Refinement the number one Kansas City car detailing business is he is constantly looking at cars. If you spend more than two minutes with him, you’ll probably notice a cool car way beyond the natural eye visual.
The thing that you need to know about working with Thomas is that he absolutely loves working with cars and he absolutely loves what he does. Every time you’re with a car, you give it your absolute all and your 110% effort goes into it. So if somebody wanted to get that level of Kansas City Car Detailing service, that level of excellence for their Kansas City car, how would they get a hold of you? Let’s say they just even wanna talk about cars.
How would they just get to be able to talk to you? Yeah, so if you just wanna call me and just chat about cars, I could talk about cars all day. You can give me a call at 620-282-0402. You can also go online to bespokerefinement.com. I have a gallery of all of the cool cars I’ve worked on.
I’ve worked on everything from classic Rolls Royces, fully restored Chevy pickups, all the way to
Jaguar XJ220s, Ferrari F40s, all sorts of different cool hypercars and supercars. You can also go on there and look at all the different Kansas City car detailing packages and services that we offer.