Chris: Who were the role models and influences on your life?

Stacey: Well I am a deeply spiritual person so obviously God is the biggest influence on my life. He has laid out so well in the Bible how we are to act and treat people and talk and conduct ourselves. If anybody wants to know the real secret to success and happiness, all they need to do is get a Bible, read it, believe it, and do what it says. After that, I would say my Dad was my biggest role model. He's the one that raised me and taught me discipline, and so many other things, it would take pages to describe it all. Now, as far as automotive people, there are a lot that have influenced me and the list grows all the time. There's Carroll Shelby, Ron Covell, George Barris, Darryl Starbird, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and the list goes on and on right up to today and some of my friends like Chip Foose and Troy Trepanier.

However, I have to say my favorite designer was Tom Daniels and all that crazy stuff he did for Revell and Monagram, and Hot Wheels. Things like the Red Baron, and the Paddy Wagon, the Iced "T"... those were wild! However, probably one of the biggest influences on me as a gear-head was a guy that nobody has ever heard of. He's a guy that graduated high school with my Dad. His name is Jim Williamson and he's down in Texas now. When I was about 13 years old or so, I spent a couple weeks with Jim. He had a custom shop in Twin Falls, Idaho. I went and spent some time with him because I was a huge gear-head. My Dad knew it, but my Dad was never much of a gear-head. He liked cars and stuff, but he wasn't much of a wrench turner. He grew up in the era (the 50s) when stock was king. If it didn't come from the factory that way, then it wasn't that good. "Factory is always best!" is what he always said. Well, I was totally the opposite. The first thing that I would do is tear things apart and try to make them better. Dad didn't understand that, but he knew Jim did.

I was into go-karts at the time and I had this off-road go-kart with big knobby tires that I'd built. Up to that point it had a little weenie 8HP Briggs and Stratton engine on it (all I could afford). I went to Jim's place because he had a 350cc, triple lung, two-stroke Kawasaki motorcycle engine he said he would put on it for me. And you know what? He did! There are some pictures of it on our website. This thing would run way past 100 miles per hour... it had no roll bars, no seat belts, and just go-kart type brakes--this thing was insane... and I was running it down the street! The thing is, it had the brake, clutch, and gas pedal in the right places... a shifter lever on the left side, everything. It was a great piece of engineering!

I not only got to watch Jim engineer this thing, but I also got to see what else he was working on. He was dinking around with Jaguar XK150's, and all kinds of other vehicles. He was putting rotary engine Mazda motors into Jag XKE's and welding up the front bonnets and putting pop-up headlights in them... just crazy stuff! I remember looking at the nose of a Jag XKE and he had welded up the stock headlight openings and put Corvette flip-up style headlights in their place. It sounds insane today, but it's what guys were doing in the late 70s and early 80's. I remember looking at it and saying "what's up with this?" He calmly said, "this is what the customer thought he wanted, but I think it looks terrible. So we're just going to weld it back up and start over." I remember thinking at the time, "Wow! you can DO that? How cool is that to just cut into something and change it, and if you don't like it, you can change it back and you didn't ruin it!" It was an epiphany for me. It opened up a whole new world and way of thought for me. I realized how important having the right tools learning the right techniques really was. It gave you freedom to create! He influenced me way more than a lot of these guys in the magazines because it was such a hands-on thing. Watching him work and the way he approached everything was incredible. He was the one that introduced me to Carroll Shelby. I'd never seen a Cobra before, and he was going to build a Cobra kit car. I took one look at that car and said, "Holy cow!... what's that?" It also taught me that you have to keep learning... always learning. For example Ron Covell is a friend of mine and has been working metal for 30-some years and he says he still learns every day. That's definitely the way I am too. There's always something else to learn. It's how you have to be... always learning something. Somebody's always got another approach... another take on something that you can learn from. The day you think you can't learn any more or think you know it all is the day you become an idiot.

Chris: What are your favorite TV shows to watch?

Stacey: Obviously I like most of the stuff on the History Channel, but as far as shows go, there's not much because I usually watch movies. I don't watch many reality shows because most of them are full of ridiculous setups and deadlines that are all conjured up. I would much rather see something informative that you learn from, or somebody doing something well. I also like extreme sports, and X-Game stuff. Those guys are nuts!

Chris: What happened with the "Trucks!" TV show?

Stacey: It was just time to move on. I did "Trucks!" for 8 years and we had a great run, and it was a good show. However, there were some limitations, most of it being the very title itself. There's only so much you can do with trucks and they're only so big in the overall automotive world. You also have to be very realistic about it. No TV show lasts forever and one day it will end, so you need to be ready for the next step. You have to approach every show like you do your life... every day, every moment, every project, every breath could be your last. So you need to give it the best you've got while you've got the opportunity. I was given a tremendous opportunity on"Trucks!", to build some wild stuff and do some cool things, and learn so many things about television production. It was a great experience. It encouraged me to keep asking myself, "What have I learned here and what would make this show better?" If I was to do a show that was more all-encompassing of the gear-head, what would it be? Well, it couldn't be called "Trucks!", that's for sure. It needs to be something more universal. So that's where the idea for "GearZ" came from. It encompasses everything from tractors to go-karts, to boats, to rockets. If it is mechanical it is fair game for "GearZ", but the majority of the projects will be based around a car or truck because that is the main thing that a gear-head works on.

Chris: How many episodes of "GearZ" have you produced?

Stacey: We're getting close to 50 now. We were on ESPN2 for the first season, then we went to SPEED because ESPN2 just kept moving us around too much. We just signed with SPEED again for our third season and another 13 episodes and we are very happy with SPEED. They are all about the automotive world and what is going on in it. Our time slot on SPEED is early--it's Saturday morning at 8 o'clock CST, which is actually a good time for a gear-head because they're usually getting up, having their coffee, and haven't gone out and done anything yet... so it's not a bad time. I'm sure it's a little rough on the West Coast guys because that puts it at around 6:00. Whew!