Ed Bolian started an exotic car rental company as a college student by learning all he could about how to finance high end cars. He went on to become the Director of Sales at Lamborghini Atlanta and in 2016, he launched the VINwiki app as a tool to crowd source vehicle history. He runs their YouTube channel as well. Ed also holds the world record for the Cannonball Run. He lives in Alpharetta, GA with his wife, Megan, their son, Graham, and a boa constrictor named Sunny the LamBoa.
Q: How and when did your lifelong love affair with cars begin?
A: My love of cars certainly wasn’t genetic. I don’t have childhood memories of messing with cars. When I became a more impressionable youth, I remember seeing a Ferrari 355 Spider pass us on the highway and was just blown away by the presence of the car on the road. Once I learned to drive and got my license, I began going around to exotic car dealerships and convincing them that my albino iguana breeding business was far more successful than it actually was and conning my way into test driving all types of interesting cars. It was those short exposures to dream cars that created the interest in starting an exotic car rental company that could sell that idea as a product.
Q: How successful was the exotic car rental company that you ran in college?
A: The rental company was extremely successful for me personally but not always financially. It is a very difficult business because you never know if you are making any money. You can create a lot of revenue and then have a car break in a significant way and wipe all of it away. The success was really in the lessons learned, the stories to be told later, and the thrills of early entrepreneurship in such an awesome industry. It started me down the road to get to where I am today. The risks were insane and it is amazing that they never really caught up to me but looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Q: What’s the most important lesson you learned about exotic car buyers during your years of selling at a dealership?
A: 15 years ago, when you wanted to buy a cool car, there were only a couple options. Now, there are dozens of exotic cars to choose from so you can really find a car that fits what you want to use it for. I loved listening, advising, and revealing some unique options that would offer a more tailored and enriched ownership experience than customers might have imagined were possible. With more reliability, better livability, and companies like Premier that make financing simple; it is easier than ever to buy and use a supercar. Showing people that from a sales perspective was a ton of fun.
Q: What’s VINwiki’s value proposition and business model? How is it different / better than CARFAX?
A: VINwiki is a social vehicle history reporting platform that crowd sources the story of a car. It allows anyone to post any information to a car’s timeline by the VIN or license plate. Where CARFAX and Autocheck rely on institutional data sources and dealer supplied information, VINwiki tends to have more comprehensive insights about a car’s rarity, modifications, and the ways it was used. It allows owners to express their passion for their cars and third-party posts show aspects of a car’s life that were extremely hard to figure out before our app launched. The business model is really in the data. VINwiki will remain free to users but the data is valuable, either as a special sauce to put on top of a larger data set or to process analytically and learn more about how the car market behaves. Less than Three years in now, VINwiki is still young but it is growing fast and continues to reveal amazing things about the stories of the cars we love.
Q: What types of video topics are people most / least interested in? Do you worry about running out of topics to cover?
A: Obviously exotic car stories and Cannonball stories are very near and dear to my heart. There will continue to be a steady stream of those. Having told almost 100 of my personal stories on the channel at this point, certainly I will run out at some point but new things happen every day, so I never expect it to be an issue. I also really enjoy the more adviceoriented stories that explain how various aspects of the car buying process work. I have always told one of my personal stories per week and that might back down to a couple a month at some point but for now, I have plenty left. In terms of other people telling stories, I get about 50 requests per day from people who have stories they want to share. No shortage of opportunity there.
Q: You’re very adept at using your videos to “even the score” involving situations where you’ve been wronged.
A: Stories are only as good as the lesson they can teach or the secrets they can reveal. I don’t set out with an agenda to hurt anyone’s business. I just want to educate people while they are hopefully entertained. I made a fairly comprehensive video about getting burned on a Range Rover purchase where the dealer explicitly lied about some issues. I didn’t share that in order to smear anyone’s name, I did it because it revealed the risks of the ways I buy cars – generally fast, with lowball offers, no pre-purchase protection, and the acceptance of a lot of risks. Generally, it works out great for me, despite the odds. This was a perfect example of what can actually happen. It was also a perfect example of how anticipated legal remedies and consumer protections don’t really help when so many actors in the industry are unscrupulous and dishonorable.
Q: What has surprised you most about the VINwiki venture?
A: When we set out, I thought that an active VINwiki user would post 1-5 times per week. It turns out, our active users sometimes post 100 times per day. They use it for car spotting, building registries of interesting cars, and documenting the stories of the cars they love. The enthusiasm for the community aspect of the app has been very exciting to see, and we are working to enhance that part of the user experience. Having people use your app a lot more than you thought they would is a great problem to have.
Q: Why a passion for Lamborghinis, compared with other exotic marques?
A: As I started loving cars, I grew to love Ferraris. When I was courted by both the local Ferrari and Lamborghini dealerships, I actually went to Lamborghini because I knew they were harder cars to sell. Being a good Ferrari salesman meant having access to a good portion of the new car allocation for the dealership where you worked. As you work at a dealership, you always drink the Kool-Aid to some extent, but my love for the Murcielago was always there. I remember the first one I saw, the first one I drove, the spec of every one I sold, and to me there is nothing else that has the presence of the Murcielago for less than $1 million.
Q: Any estimate on the number of cars you’ve owned in your lifetime? What’s your all-time favorite car, or one that you wish you had never given up?
A: I have owned 29 cars in the 17 years I have been driving. Years and years ago, I started keeping a list of all the VINs on my personal web site so I could have them conveniently when I wanted to check the CARFAXes. It also allowed future owners to Google their VINs and find me. I learned that my first Gallardo got exported to Hong Kong, one Rover went to Russia, another to Puerto Rico, several of the exotics got crashed and they all moved around the country. It was awesome to have a way to learn those things and it is really where the idea for the VINwiki app came from. I am on my fifth LP640 now, and it remains my favorite. I had a gated manual 360 Spider for the rental company and I have kept track of it. I might buy it back at some point.
