Who are you and where are you from?

My name is Austin Jesus and I was born and raised in San Diego, California, home of the best Mexican food and if you wanna fight about it we can certainly do that.

What do you do for work?

I am a Catalog and Content Manager for AutoZone. I am responsible for making sure the vendors know what we need from them and making sure they give it to us while also making sure what they give us is good, worthwhile data and that it gets displayed correctly. Before that I was a data analyst at SEMA, yes that SEMA. I built, formatted, and standardized automotive data for 400 vendors like Edelbrock, HKS, and Whipple so they could properly display their product on sites like Summit and Jegs.

How long have you been driving/into cars?

It all started at a young age just like I think it is with most boys. My mom and dad bought me hot wheels, I played Gran Turismo on the original PlayStation, I even managed to flip a power wheels in my driveway when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. My dad is and was a big truck/jeep guy. When I was born he had to sell his RCSB lifted K1500 that he bought when he was 18 (sorry dad) and then through my upbringing he had several jeeps. We would go on trails up in the mountains or in the desert. In fact the first car I technically ever drove was a jeep. But that was my first experience with cars as a genuine hobby. The first car I bought with my own money was a Jeep XJ so I definitely wanted to follow in his foot steps but then one day I went to a Good Guys Rod & Custom show and that’s when it all went south. I was lucky enough at that point to have people in my life that had a solid amount of automotive knowledge and I started working on vehicles as a hobby which went from changing a valve cover gasket to pulling engines. Just to put it into perspective, at that point I had no idea what an engine swap was, I thought what you had in there was what had to be in there. Boy was I wrong… but over time I just kept wanting to do more and learn more and that’s how I ended up here today. 

what is your current car?

Well my daily is a 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was my first big boy purchase and it was amazing in Southern California where I could take it to watch King Of The Hammers then take it to the slopes. 

But my demon hell child is a LS swapped E36. It’s wide, it’s angry, it’s loud, and it’s the coolest thing I’ve done to date in my own opinion. It started as a roller I bought for $500 and over the last 18ish months I built an engine for it, installed that with the help of my sister (thanks Ash), and it’s really just been a passion project to see how much I can learn, how much I can do, and how far I can push the envelope.

What has been your favorite event/track?

I’m going with eventS, sorry Lauren this is my show now. I absolutely love the Gridlife festivals. It’s really what the car community is about. We compete to see who’s better, who’s faster, who’s got the cleanest car, but it’s all love. You’re competing but at the same time you will help a complete stranger fix his car to get back on the track. I’ve been a part of some amazing events and have made the most amazing memories at Gridlife, I think it’ll be very hard to beat those especially with the intent to be more and more involved with those events

What’s been your favorite build?

Definitely my E36. It has tested me, my patience, my knowledge, my ability to figure it out and it has honestly turned out just how I wanted it to be. I laugh because there has been more than one occasion where I have gone to sell it but then I go to start picking the photos for the ads and I just can never do it because it’s so cool to me. I’ve proven a lot of people wrong with this build and I can’t wait to just keep making it better.

What’s your take on the car community?

…This is going to be a fun answer for everybody to read. Personally, I think 80% of the car community sucks. You’ve got takeovers on one end, you’ve got people that just flat out won’t drive their cars on another end, and then for the cherry on top you have people that think they’re better than others because of their paint job, their wheels, their this or that which is absolutely ridiculous to me. The car community should be a safe haven, the amount of people it has saved is immense and who knows how many other people could’ve been saved if it weren’t for pretentious assholes that wanted to have these exclusive communities just because they have HRE’s. I would rather welcome that camry driver, tell him that car sucks but we’re gunna make things better than flat out them. Being 100% honest, I don’t know if I would still be around if it weren’t for the car community and I want to share the love, the camaraderie, the inclusive feeling that I have received time and time again from people that were strangers at one point. So if you wanna shit on somebody because they’re on reps or because they’re paint is peeling, take a good long look in the mirror. They can go buy some deep dish blitzes one day but you’ll still be a douche.

What’s next for you?

I have two things I really want to focus on. Number one is I want to compete, compete, and compete some more. I definitely am going to run as much of the Good Guys AutoX series as I can and I want to run trackmod in Gridlife track battle with the E36. 

Number two is I want to focus on my business 988 Motorsports. For those who don’t know, 988 is the suicide hotline and what this small business is, is a representation of combining those who experience those feelings with a community that will care for them. Like I said, cars saved me and I want to save as many people as I can. Mental health will never get enough attention but I’m going to do what I can to make sure nobody has to feel the same things I have. So merch that resonates with them, ride alongs at every event I’m at that I can do, a parts plug where part of the revenue is donated to the lifeline, and most importantly, a community of like minded individuals that has their back. I hope to grow 988 Motorsports into a huge movement where we have a whole crew of drivers competing or driving events across the country and spreading the positivity we all desperately need. Please check it out at 988motorsports.co, tell your friends, your family, buy some parts, buy a hoodie, and lets support each other.