Full Breakdown on the Goodyear Sponsorship.

In the latest episode I finally got to show off the newest sponsor, Goodyear. Honestly it's so sick that they reached out to me and wanted to get on board with the build.

I figured as well as just posting all the nice photos here, I'd also explain how it all came about because it's still honestly pretty surreal. There's loads of talking but as always, I use this Patreon as a bit of a place to yap since I don't do it in my videos, but feel completely free to just look at the pretty pictures, I genuinely don't mind. You're supporting me just by being here, do whatever you like.

When we were looking at actual group C cars from this era, they all had more or less 1 of 3 brands, Goodyear, Dunlop or Michelin with some exceptions. Of these Goodyear really did kind of stand out and that signature yellow sidewall lettering became about as iconic for the build as the bodywork itself.

So all our day 1 renders had that Goodyear stenciling on them, even though at that time we had no idea which tires we'd eventually end up using. It was just a great way of adding that extra 'race car' look without a full livery.

Turns out putting giant branding on your renders as a genius move because these renders eventually made it to the desk of the big boys at Goodyear and for some bizarre reason, I got a direct message on Reddit from someone claiming to be the head of the social media and marketing team at Goodyear, telling me they wanted to talk about a collaboration

As anyone with common sense would have done, I immediately assumed this guy was full of shit so sent back my polite reply basically telling here's my email, get in touch with your proper Goodyear email and then we'll talk.

Then 2 weeks went by with nothing and I carried on because frankly I get quite a lot of fake sponsorship deals, but then out of the blue I see an email pop up from the head of the global social media team at Goodyear. Turns out he wasn't lying.

And then from then on we spent a good couple months back and forth going through their tyre options and figuring out which ones would be the best fit for the build. It was actually quite tricky as we've got some pretty weird sizes to try and get the best mix between what sizes the real group C cars were running at the time, and what would actually fit on the MRS.

We settled on a set of tyres just as I was at the end of my first visa here and was about to fly back to NZ to renew the visa and come back. We decided rather than rush and try to get the tyres delivered before I left, we'd just pick it back up once I got back.

So I spent 3 months in NZ, telling my friends and family and random people at the supermarket that I'd just been sponsored by Goodyear. I've had sponsorships before, obviously we have Revopoint with the 3D scanners, and Elegoo and the 3D printers and more, but not many people really recognize these brands. Everybody recognizes Goodyear.

So I finally get back to Japan after about 3 months, and send off an email to let him know I'm back and we can arrange shipping, but the email bounces back saying this address is no longer available.

I emailed him a few times, reached out to Goodyear through Instragram, even DM'd him back on Reddit and nothing. I even sent through a handful of emails to different addresses listed on the Goodyear websites but wasn't getting anything.

For a moment it did occur to me that it was a super elaborate scam, but they didn't get anything from me, all they'd achieved was wasting my time. And I knew it was real because we had calls with him using the official Goodyear Instagram page, they even follow me and you can check that's still true.

Finally after a couple weeks of panicking I got an email back. And what it turns out happened is that in that 3 months I was gone, they had completely restructured, the guy I was speaking with had left to work with a different company, and someone new had taken over the role. They'd also massively cut down on the budget and so I was told that they weren't really offering the sponsorship anymore.

So that was a bit devastating. After communicating with them and showing them all the ground work we'd already put in they decided on a compromise, to send me some tyres that were completely different to what we agreed on, that were also completely the wrong size and wouldn't work at all.

This was when someone else took over again. Clearly there was some major miscommunication going on because once this new person took over, things started going smoothly again. We finally got back to the tyres we agreed on and they told me they would start shipping them out soon.

And while I'm obviously grateful for anything at this point considering I thought I'd lost it all for a few weeks. Now the sponsorship was only going to cover 1 set of tyres, whereas before I was told it would be full sets of tyres for every car I own indefinitely, a lifelong sponsorship.

So still cool, definitely can't be unhappy about that, but a bit of a step down from what it was. Still though at least we were able to save it at all.

Then this news with Japan hit right as the tyres arrived. With this Japan build now going on hold, and shipping everything to NZ not really being an option, I did ask if there was any option to send another sent over to the NZ build, but that was pretty quickly shot down.

So in short I managed to get sponsored, lose the sponsorship, get the part of the sponsorship back, then lose it again.

And so that leaves me in the slightly awkward situation where now I have these awesome tyres, for a car I'm no longer building, and the build that I'm going to be starting up in NZ I'm going to have to get my own tyres for, and those are probably going to be something completely different.

So no doubt I'm going to get a few comments when the time comes to buy some Yokohamas or something saying "I thought you were sponsored by Goodyear?" and so this is the story behind that.

Still, can't be mad. These tyres are sick and the most expensive tyres I've had on a car.

And this brings me to something else that I want to talk about because it relates to sponsorships and Japan.

So sponsorships and support from Patreon and YouTube are sort of what keep these videos moving. International shipping prices killed my fiberglass sales (along with shipping my moulds to Japan only be told to gtfo) and so trying to secure sponsorships is something I put a lot of effort into.

And I just wanted to point out this kinda crazy trend. In the past year, I have had 5 different companies reach out to me, offer me a sponsorship, learned that I live in Japan, then told me their product was not compatible with Japanese power supply or plugs or couldn't get through customs, and then pulled out.

These people contacted me, and then they pulled out of the sponsorship. I just sat here while they did a full 180 and left.

It's wild. Just living in Japan has cost me so much in lost sponsorships because of this stupid 100V system that nobody in the world uses. I've looked at upgrading to 200V, but right when I started looking into that was also when the government starting talking about these visa changes. I'm not about to spend thousands of dollars upgrading my power supply so that I can leave in 7 months.

It's been driving me absolutely crazy, because these are not small sponsorship deals, some of the things people have offered to send me are worth more than I make with my entire annual YouTube revenue. And they cancelled because of 100V.

There's so much more I could say but I hate doing this whole sit here and complain even if in my opinion these are valid things to be annoyed by. Just don't like the negativity.

This sort of thing has played a massive role in my decision to just give up on trying to make it work here and move back to NZ.

So yeah kinda a whole bunch going on behind the scenes making me pull all my hair out, but that's life I guess eh.