You have some facts wrong. I'm John's only son, and I never built any 911 engines when the shop was in Florida... I was a teenager when I moved to Kernersville NC about a year before my father moved to Charlotte. I worked at a Porsche/VW/Audi/BMW shop in Winston-Salem for about 5 years before then moving to Charlotte where I ran a exotic shop working on McLarens, Ferraris, Maserati, Porsche, etc. I left there to take over BFR in 2014.

I dunno how I can make it any clearer than that, thats the deal.

Scroll through our Instagram and look for pictures of any 914's being restored, the most recent is in 2016:
https://www.instagram.com/blackforestracing/

Theres a few 914 race cars in there, but thats it in recent history. Certainly not in the time frame this guy is talking about.

Send an email to john@blackforestracing.com and tell me what the auto-reply says. Look for the Facebook post from April 12th 2017 making the announcement.

Yes, I do still see my father on a personal basis, but I do not have ANY business association with him. He has cost me far, FAR, too much money.

Hi all,
I can personally vouch for Cody here. Some of you that have known me for a long time know of the issues I had with John Forbes through the years. I went MANY years without even talking to him I was so pissed off at him. Cody was not around then - he was working at other places including GMP Performance (for those that know the Charlotte area). A few years back, he came to take over Black Forest Racing from John... and YES, he fired John. Not that John was actually working on anything at the time, but yes, he was told to not work with the business and Cody any more. Yes, they are right next door to each other (that in itself is a novel of a book to disucss over beers) but John does whatever he's doing, and Cody runs Black Forest Racing. In fact, the company of Black Forest Racing International (John's company) was dissolved and the new company is technically JCForbes LLC dba Black Forest Racing. So yes, a completely new company not associated with John.

I know all of this as fact because 1) my business NaroEscape Motorsports is across the parking lot from him, and 2) I help Cody out with the business from time to time making sure everything stays legal and above board. Cody is WAY more honest and WAY better of a mechanic than his father. He works on all our personal cars from our 914's to our GT3 (I think he did stuff on the GTI too). John is not allowed to touch any and is quite honestly not allowed to touch ANY Black Forest Racing cars.

Is it an odd arrangement? yes. But...if Black Forest Racing did work in the past couple years or does work into the future, you can be guaranteed that John Forbes did not and will not touch your car, only Cody or his mechanics (I've been known to hold tools now and then ;-) )

This is certainly one of the times when the kid took over and made the company better!

So I posted that about Cody before I read all the details of Ian's post. Ian...man I feel for you. I felt like I was reading MY story from many years ago!! And I live in NC and could go to see John and the car every day!! The end of it all was when we were signed up for a track weekend and John was re-building the engine for the 10th time or so (it wouldn't make it through a weekend without failing). we spent A TON of money trying to get it right. The week before he said "I'll have it ready on Monday". I gave him until Wednesday (Leaving for the track Thursday) and called him Tuesday afternoon to ask. "Sure, bring you're trailer we'll load it up" OK, so I did...and when I got there Wednesday night, not only was the engine not in the car, it was still in pieces on the workbench! John was eating a burger when I kept pushing him "WTF John!!" At one point I pushed a bit hard yelling LOUDLY and he got up, threw his chair across the room and yelled "Will you let me eat my F'ing dinner without you bothering me?"

At that, with one of his guys I boxed up all my stuff, pushed the car on the trailer, loaded up my engine parts, and left. Didn't talk to him for probably 7 years.

We ended up with a bigger engine, so I went to sell the parts and learned that none of them were what we paid for. Cams, heads, rods (which he still owes me money for), P&C's...nothing was the NEW stuff I bought.

So no, John has NOTHING to do with Cody's Black Forest Racing anymore, and hasn't for years. If he did, Cody would never see me or our cars (or anyone elses in the Charlotte area for that matter).

Now that is an interesting turn of events.

....and now the rest of the story....

Yikes!!!!

I have a lot of respect for Cody posting this. Wow.

I'm awaiting an upcoming 20/20 episode.



Oscar

Click to view attachment
Ian Im sorry to hear this happened to you

I guess the question now is to the original poster, was he dealing with Black Forest Racing, or thought he was, or John Forbes. Who did he pay?
Going back through emails John was operating as Black Forest until at least 2015, that's my last email.

...Just to confuse things a bit more.... who is this guy? He says he's from Denver, NC too!

https://youtu.be/yYfUOoWgs_E



...For the love of Pete, you guys have a population of 2,300 people in your city, and, at least 3 shops that work on 914's....does everyone's brother-in-law own one?

As in my original post John was here through 2017. We split ways in April of 2017. I did not help myself by allowing the john@blackforestracing.com email address to stay active for a bit after that, but currently it auto-responds that he's not here any longer.

I have spoken with Ian on the phone at length over this and he understands the situation. Further, I was able to press my father to make contact with Ian.

I invite Ian to post photos of any receipts he has, or (obviously redacted) credit card statements showing the business name that charged him. They will say John's Speed and Custom on them, not Black Forest Racing. Actually I shouldn't say that factually, I don't know what name he has his banking stuff under to be honest... But i know it's not Black Forest Racing. John's Speed and Custom is what it says on the door of his building that Ian entered.

LOL... yeah...and there's that... that is all in the bays RIGHT NEXT TO my space (again, across the parking lot from BFR and John Forbes Speed Shop)
Yes...its kinda 914 heaven...or hell depending on how you look at it.

Peter (video) has like a dozen 914's in there. He SAYS he's going to restore/rebuild them, but I've only seen him here once since I moved in (last July). He lives in Colorado. The guy that he hired to work on them died... so now they just sit...

Oh the stories I can tell about our little 'Peyton Place' neighborhood.

That guy is literally in another unit of the complex we are in. Out of the 7 people occupying the two buildings at this address 5 of them are 914 owners. It all started when one of our customers in 2010 made us aware of this place availible which was an upgrade from the previous location. The location is so awesome that we convinced other people we knew to snatch up units as they became available, including Bob from NaroEscape who posted here.

With regards to comments about email addresses... right now anybody on the planet can make any email address they want. I can make an email address "BillGatesMicrosoft@gmail.com" and use it however I want. That doesn't make me the former CEO of Microsoft.

You are correct, it's literally right next door. Sounds like this isn't the first time you've had to clear the air on who Black Forest is, I don't envy you that.

If you only knew.

Yes,
I found this to be quite confusing. John did keep using BFR as a reference, I do recall doing business with Cody, Makes more sense to me now.

Disinterested 3rd party.

Someone needs to move. I'm not sure who but the fact that you're each that close to each other's business can only lead to misunderstandings of this sort.

It is almost the same thing a a URL that changes only 1 character in the URL address to a common mispelling in order to ensnare the unsuspecting in malware, virus, or ransomeware attacks. I'm not saying that is the case. Only that you are too close for each others own good.

Wow. This bumblebee hive is abuzz!

First...I had a nice chat with Cody. There's no doubt in my mind that he's had a greater dose of John's BS than I have and it caused him to "fire" his Dad. However, John did not go out of his way to distance himself from Black Forest Racing. When we first did the deal, his email was johnblackforest@gmail.com. Funny how where the @ falls can make a huge difference. Kinda $hitty that he would do that after his son clearly broke ties, but...

Cody's shop is, in fact next door to John's (name du jour.) I remember meeting him when I went down there and he had some cool builds going on.

Cody says he laid into John when he read the thread a few hours ago. Tellingly, but not surprisingly, John didn't pick up the phone to call me. I know that if my son came in, fuming about how my behavior was impacting his business, I'd do whatever I could-as fast as I could-to make things right.

I clarified what went down and asked Cody for his help. About five minutes later, John called. I won't bore everyone here with the dozens of excuses (literally) that were flying, but the winner was "I haven't been able to get into my shop because of the Covid shutdown." He was CALLING from his shop! It's like he was trying to sell excuses like an old-timey barker hawking wares out of a suitcase. You want a tie? No? How about these warm socks? No? Here's a wonderful belt...

I've noticed that one telling behavior of people who frequently have conflicts is their speaking tone stays the same, even when the other person is yelling. (I don't scream-I just become very, very intense- though my wife calls it yelling). It's as if these people are so used to hearing that raised tone, it doesn't affect them anymore.

Anyway... John should finally understand that his time is up. But time will tell. He told me that he would go through his shop and send me the missing parts by the end of next week. As to compensation for the garbage paint job and other stuff, he says he will try to find some stuff of value he can offer to balance the deal. The refund train unfortunately left the station long ago. And I wouldn't want to potentially gut some other poor ba$tard's project...if he even has one. I just want this over and will take a fair trade.

Thankfully, Cody seems to understand all angles of this situation and has offered to do whatever he can to help keep John "honest". I'm going to edit the original post and make the distinction between "John Forbes" and "Black Forest Racing." Fair is fair. Especially since Cody also wants to see this resolved satisfactorily.

I did tell John that I would update this thread with what he said. And if he ghosted again, I'd post that too. I only wish I could've recorded the call...now THAT video could have gone viral.

I can't thank you all enough for the support. You guys rock.

Ian

I agree, but we are stuck in a situation where the location is great so neither wants to leave. The landlord is a Saint, the rent is low, the geographical location is good, the supporting business around us are great (including mine there are 3 dynos on this street, there's 3 paint shops, two interior shops, 2 machine shops, 3 fabricators, 3 parts stores, all just on our actual road). The road is secluded enough that I test drive race cars here without issue.

At this point my father is 70. It's only a matter of time before he retires and I can take over the entire building. Not only that, but in the meantime there's nothing preventing him from telling anybody anything he wants regardless of where I'm located. As is I've commonly heard reports of him blurring the lines with statements like "that's the water cooled division and I do the old cars". He would be just as likely to say he was simply a remote location, and I wouldn't be around to put a lid on it.

If my 356 body ever reappears let me know, I'll come pick it up.

Fair point. But, if I were running a high class physical therapy & massage business right next door to a known whore house, I wouldn't be surprised if a customer or two came in every now and then expecting "full service".

The real question is if one business can outlast the other.

A good chunk of the value of business is it's good name and repuation. If you constantly have to spend time working on clean up in Aisle 2, that in turn costs you money one way or another. Is that hidden cost more than what you would pay to lease elsewhere? Only you can decide and I fully acknowledge that only you know the answer and can set your own operational strategy.

I respect the fact that Ian has made peace with the situation and my hat goes off to anytone trying to help Ian. Unfortunately this is a sitaution no one wants.

Reminds me of the old saying. The only ship that never stays afloat is a partnership. It's even worse when the partnership is family. I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling though this whole affair too.

Especially when there are videos like this out there...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B7mMaxJk6I

The title is "John Forbes Black Forest Racing - March 2019" and features him in a BFR jacket.

That actually used to happen to a friend of mine who had a film lab in NYC. The place above her was a Japanese "Full Service" place that mostly catered to Japanese businessman tourists. It was a problem because a lot of times there wasn't a lot of English understood so getting across to horny dudes that there are at the wrong place was challenging. My friend would find herself screaming, "there is no Happy Ending here!!!"

In more ways than one. Sorry I'm bad. I could't help myself. I really do feel for both Ian and Cody.

I may know some people...heh heh...

Filmed on a Saturday when I was not here and wearing a jacket from 2004... perfect example of situations that I'm completely powerless to prevent and would be even worse if I wasn't around at all.

Out of everything in this thread THIS POST is the one that's got me the most pissed off. Flat out lie about *ME* when I was still in high school. People like this that can't understand that we are two different, distinct, human beings are the sort of people that I just can't comprehend. The very reason that I left Florida a year before my father was somebody like this. Dude found my home address, came to my house looking for my father, and when I opened the front door he dragged me outside and beat the shit out of me in my own driveway because *my father* did who-knows-what. I packed my shit and moved 1000 miles away the very next day. It was several years before I spoke to him, and 10 before I decided to take over BFR.

This kind of thinking is dangerous and toxic. This kind of thinking has literally caused my blood to spill on my driveway. Its completely fucked up and needs to end.

Cease and desist order? Buyout?

4 or 5 Vallium with breakfast OJ?

Don't mean to be poking fun at a bad situation (well maybe a little - humor humor helps ease the pain). You've got a really bad situation on your hands.

Guilt by association isn't right especailly to the point of violence. I had a period where I didn't speak to my father for years and it was over a whole lot less than that. Had that happened to me I'd probably have then walked over to my fathers and beat him.

Already did the buyout in 2014, have a signed contract. Also have one from when we separated in 2017.

As for the second option...

In all seriousness my wife used to work for a seriously wealthy guy. He never bought or sold a business without the following:

If buying - a non-compete clause with whoever he was buying. Usually free for the asking since he was buying distressed businesses.

If selling - a non-compete clause. In this case he was usually selling the business from a strong postion and was then getting paid anually or in lump sum to not compete with his old business he just sold.


In your case it's worse, he's competing and taking advantage of proximity. Second buyout with an appropriate non-compete clause?

It sounds like Cody is having the same problem everyone else is, John's word doesn't mean much, he will promise to do something and then change his mind. I don't think any amount of signed paperwork will change that. Most signed documents are essentially Gentleman's Agreement's, meaning both men must be honorable.
I don't envy the situation he is in, the blurred lines are crazy.
In a perfect situation he would move, change the business name, and try to put as much distance between him and his father as he could. Except all that costs money, and owning a small business means money is not always flowing, especially not in a way to make a move like that. My guess is Cody plans to run out the clock with his dad, and let time take care of things. I wish him the best.

Wow, Cody. That's some intense shizz.

If it makes you feel any better, when I read "little boy mechanic" I didn't even consider that he was making a reference to you/John's son. I took it as an inexperienced young tech. But hearing your story about someone coming to your house and hurting you??? Wow. I'm so sorry that happened. Ugh.

That is the Cease and desist part. The courts exist to handle contract violations. Generally speaking, they are pretty good at it. However, a poorly written contract is indeed a gentleman's agreement that the courts will have trouble with. Previouly mentioned business guy was definately lawyered up and always had at least one on staff.

However, now we're talking about lawyers and more money for a guy like Cody. I go back to it all depends on what the hidden costs are. Sometimes they are far higher than you might think. Lost business that could have potentially materialzed or business that simply avoided you is a hard thing to measure. I've done that analysis before and at best it's educated guesswork.

I suspect you're correct on your overall assessment of the dynamics at work here though!

Let's be real here... It's easy to talk about legal action etc on a forum, but in the real world would any of you actually be ready and willing to sick a lawyer on your own father?

Cody - Thank you for the explanation and we wish you the best.

Man I have been there. Had to fire my own mother years ago & a brother just last year. Rough stuff but I can't believe the $hit your having to still deal with. Plus the guy coming to your place. I hope that son of a bitch did some time for that. That is ridiculous

What amazes me the most is John Sr has, apparently, been screwing over people for years....at least since Cody was young. However, he has apparently been able to keep enough business coming in to earn a living.

One would have thought his reputation would have caught up to him by now. Yet, people have been recommending him on this forum and other Porsche forums since I've been a member. I don't know if that means he can do some jobs well but gets in over his head on others or if some people have lower expectations and are easily satisfied.

There was a guy like this in the parts business for decades, he was slick, he didn't rip everyone off, probably every 10th person. So while there was a long long long line of people he had screwed there were enough he hadn't screwed to sing his praises. He is now out of business, finally got bought out by someone else. The really funny thing is as soon as he got bought out a long line of people showed up trying to get money out of of him, one guy even waved a pistol around. The new owner had to dodge that waving pistol. True story.

I feel for you, I really do - you are in a difficult situaiton of being a stand up guy and trying to protect your business.

Short answer - yes I would.

Backstory. I grew up in a dysfunctional family. I went into the Military at 17 just to get the hell out of that house.

If my father were in a postion where he was disrupting my income stream I wouldn't hesitate to take legal action but that's just me. Each family is different. Each person is different. I'm not passing judgment on you. Just sharing my situation.

Great book: Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. Henry Cloud. I only wish I had read it at 17.

John...So sorry to hear all of this.

A small token of similarity with our spouses...(I don't scream-I just become very, very intense- though my wife calls it yelling)

I tell her I am passionate...but I get the same reaction..

It's tough to do business with family. 1st hand experience. There seems to always be issues that are more difficult to resolve.

To John Jr.: You sound to me like an upstanding member of the community. It takes determination & courage to jump into a Gauntlet brimming with angry customers. You've clearly separated yourself & business from your Dad yet continues to wreak havoc upon your reputation. I won't forget this story and in the future should someone slander BFR I'll post a link to this conversation so that they can separate the wheat from the chaff themselves. BTW, sounds like you live in Porsche Heaven.

Cody - you need to change your name here from "JohnBFR" to "CodyBFR".

^^This

This was my first thought suggestion, to creates some difference between the 2 Johns.

Re: the replies about my fathers tendency to screw people over:

From my point of view there's several factors, and it's never seemed to me to be purposeful. He gets in over his head on jobs and then has to cut corners to finish them. It's definitely been a thing that has grown worse over the years, and frankly no matter what in any business there will always be unhappy customers. In 1985 it was probably a tiny percentage of unhappy VS happy. In 1995 it was maybe 10%. In 2005 it was more like 20% and enough people were starting to have issues that it was having a serious effect and he knew it; he moved to NC at the behest of one of his friends from the 1980s who remembered the 'old john' and thought he could help do a reset and get back to the way things were. In 2008 my father was sitting at an intersection in a customer's 1971 911S and a teenager who was late to return a rental car came over the hill and rear ended the 911 so hard that the seat itself broke in half and my father hit the rear window. Ever since then he's had health issues that have slowed him down, but a) he won't actually revise his work habits to accept he can't get as much done, and b) he fell into using various health issues as a constant excuse for why he isn't getting things done, when in reality he's just wasting more time then working, but won't/can't acknowledge that. I'm certain that some percentage of it is legitimately that he's 70 and having been wrenching since he was 20 his body is just falling apart, but at the same time I see him doing other things that aren't productive with the time he does spend working. I belive that when he tells someone he will do xyz he believes he can and will, but then fails to put in the effort required or fails to accept that he doesn't actually have the money to do it. He absolutely 100% fails to understand that things are more expensive in 2020 than they were in 1985. In 2015 he quoted a customer $25,000 to buy a 914, 5 lug convert it, color change the body, install flares, color change the interior, AND INSTALL A 6CYL WITH A/C. He believes that a cheap paint job is $300, a good paint job is $1000, and you should win Amelia Island with a $2000 paint job. A donor 911 6cyl engine should be $1000, and a rebuild won't need new everything because it's not worn out because a 3.2 is "the new one", rather than understanding that it's a 35 year old antique with 200,000 miles. No amount of telling and showing him that's not the case seems to break through.

I knew Ians car's paint was crap because it was mentioned to me that my father found this new "awesome" painter that will paint a car for cheap and I was curious to see the result in case I needed a cheap paint job on a Chump/Lemons car or such. When it came back I went to look at it and it looked pretty decent, then a couple of weeks later it started bubbling. At that point my father has fucked himself and Ian over because now the car needs another paint job, Ian sure as hell shouldn't pay for it, and my father has no money to pay for it. It was his fault he didn't first quote Ian* what a reputable painter would charge, and it's his fault he didn't use a reputable painter, but now everybody is left unhappy. The same MO applies through the whole deal: each and every piece needed ends up costing far more than my father believes, so before long there's no money left and only half of the parts have been purchased and/or shitty Chinese/used parts are left. He doesn't set out from a place of "hmm how can I screw this person for a profit", he means well, but for fucks sake he can't learn that that ends up screwing everybody over even worse.

* - I don't have any knowledge of any dealings between Ian and my father, I'm just assuming from past experience that my father under quoted the job