Our Motto is:
It's not just good, it's good enough. The Somewhat Uncommon Founding of Grand Touring Concepts.
-Darren Lynch
Grand Touring Concepts (GTC) is my real-fake performance company. It’s real performance, fake business, to state things simply, but why have a fake business is the question many ask. The answer of course, is what makes this entire enterprise, “Somewhat Uncommon” and to explai
n that, we have to go back to a time when the internet was a different place. Facebook was a fledgling start up, Myspace was still a thing, and for the common gearhead, forums were the social media place to be. They were everywhere, and still privately owned by whichever enthusiast took the time to register a domain and install some Vbulletin software. At the time I was the Administrator of a particular Canadian Mustang Forum which was running full steam ahead, we had a large membership, a well-structured forum, and face to face social circles, things were doing great. The site had even begun to pay for its own operating costs through memberships and local businesses being permitted to do paid promotions. The paid promotions guidelines were clearly defined, and simple to follow, anything business owners wanted to post in their own sections or threads were fair game, however they were not permitted to hijack or otherwise do promotions inside the discussions started by others. This was done to prevent a member’s personal yearlong build journal from becoming an advertising platform by an overzealous business owner. However, despite the guidelines, one business owner continually had problems following the rules. A member would discuss a particular part or process they used on their car, describing to other members the success and failures of their experiences. Moments later, this guy would burst in like Billy Mays, shouting in ALL CAPS about a vaguely similar product or service his company offered, and then would spam the thread with product videos, technical data, and how to order. It really got out of hand, I and the other members of my staff, spent a lot of time and correspondence privately trying to educate this individual on not only was this against the rules, it was unappreciated by our users, and we had been receiving complaints. Over the course of months, without gaining any headway, we simply began to remove the offending posts without notification. This of course caused absolute indignant outrage, which was almost immediately followed with one of the most insanely idiotic things I had ever seen put to virtual paper, and both the site owner and I stood in awe of his emailed list of transgressions. At no point during this rambling, incoherent, response did he even come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought, and to top it off, his main complaint was that I was allowed to freely advertise my business all over the forum, while he was an innocent victim of oppressive forum tyranny. The site owner, calmly and politely informed him, that I did not, nor had I ever owned a business, and that he and his business were to be permanently banned from the forum, effective immediately. Where did this confusion come from? Throughout my time spent on forums, I would always author and publish interesting stories or technical articles on the projects that I or my friends were doing. These write-ups would be presented in a variety of formats, and some were written with a tongue-in-cheek fashion like a car magazine columnist, or with other light hearted angles. We all thought that the obvious joke was obvious in the articles, but it appears our own “Billy Mays” genuinely thought I was running a competing business to his, and was using my position as an Administrator to muscle him out of the market. After the not so silent departure, I decided that maybe it was time to have some fun with this idea, maybe to antagonize my “largest competitor” after the fact. I invented a legitimate sounding name and crafted a few crude logos, and just like that, GTC came to exist. I continued to log the builds of my friends and I, while launching a Facebook business page, and generally referring to things in the manner that a performance shop would. The builds continued to be reported and updated, and my friends were now referred to as “customers” which added to the legitimacy of my 440 square foot shop. This air of legitimate business has caused some funny misunderstandings over the years, I have more than once, received phone calls from clients attempting to book our services for rather ambitious builds, as a result I had to pull my cellphone number from the Facebook listing. Another time, Canada Revenue Agency called me looking for the details of my business due to the several thousand dollars of Lada parts we were importing from Russia via the Netherlands over the span of Shawn’s Lada Niva restoration. It took a lot of explaining to clear that up, especially as they did confirm that I was Darren Lynch, owner-operator of Grand Touring Concepts. To date we have never billed anyone for our services, and the GTC shop is quite literally my friends and I operating out of my 2 bay detached garage, or whichever dirt parking lot things break down in. We have always been a group of enthusiasts working on vehicles because we enjoy the hobby, and had our brand fostered into existence by the ravings of an internet madman.
