The Vitour P1 drama is getting spicy today...

Grab your popcorn and a drink, this gets spicy!

Let's start with "VU Development", the official and only US supplier of the Vitour Tempesta P1 tires. They helpfully list their address on their website.

Google maps does indeed agree that VU has one of the 37 business listings in the directory for that commercial building.

A check of the Clark County business license data however shows that there is no VU at that address...

Well that's weird. Normally a retail sales company needs a B&O license for their location. Well let's search the state database for VU Development (and every other permutation and by address, etc).

Well that's weird. There's no state business license, either. How are they importing these tires, selling them, and collecting sales taxes? Well we know that VU was founded by the permaneperm-banned-from-the-SCCA Sammy Valafar, let's see if he's an agent for any Nevada business. 

Woof, that's not good and also not surprising. Luckily we know of another agent for the company, a previously unrelated, and then sponsored, "racer" named Robert DeuPree. 

He got "hired" to be the CEO of VU Development as of Sunday 1/14/24, so let's see what businesses he's involved in...

Looking for Robert DeuPree nets us a couple of Nevada businesses, none of which are located at VU are affiliated with them.

Well it's not Capstone and it's not WBMCI. Let's check for Sammy again real quick!

Well no, that's a dead end again. Weird, it's almost like VU Development isn't a legitimate business! They claim that they are a corporation (which require Articles of Incorporation and annual filings), yet they have no business licenses at all.

Hmmm, well, let's keep looking up the other guy. 

Woah, weird. The guy that's claiming to be the CEO of a company that doesn't exist and is fraudulently claiming to be a corporation is the actual CEO of Sunfood Inc in California! I wonder what their Board of Directors would think of this?

So that's the first half of the spicy...

TLDR - VU Development does NOT have a valid business license in their state, does NOT have a business & occupancy license for their location, and is fraudulently claiming to be a corporation with a CEO that is an actual CEO of a company in California that has SEC filings (ie - consequences to corporate fraud).

Hehehehehe I knew this thread would keep delivering. 

I thought people learned to quit screwing around with grm. We're old and mean. 

In reply to Javelin :

Boy, it would be a shame if SCCA and/or Vitour were to find out about that.

Now let's do part 2, the tires themselves! For a little background, the Vitour Tempesta P1 came in 2 15" sizes in 2023, and despite only getting 100 total sets into the country, won an SCCA National Solo title before getting banned for 2024. 

Vitour of course is a legitimate company that's part of a constellation of companies overseas that's probably owned by another conglomerate, etc. Funnily enough, Andy Hollis was able to determine that the Tempesta P1 was manufactured by a completely different third party. 

Well come December 2023 and suddenly people are claiming that there's dozens of sizes in stock and the ban should be lifted! No one of course could prove that they physically had the tires until January 2024.

These larger sizes people noted looked an awful lot like Tempesta's Japanese grip tire, the Tempesta Wraith.

Well now I'm familiar with Tempesta being Japanese drift and US Formula D with the V-01R and V-03R, but not the Wraith. A little digging and google translate got us the information that the Tempesta Wraith is a 100TW tire!

Well, that's interesting. Surely these people, one of whom was permanently banned from the SCCA for blatant cheating and another of whom claims to be the CEO of a company with no business license, wouldn't cheat by importing sketchy 100TW tires as 200TW legal tires? Surely they wouldn't ensure that the best compounds only went to the people they want? Surely consumers are fully protected by this totally legitimate business operation, right???

TLDR - The Vitour Tempesta P1 is a 100TW track tire being imported to the US as a 200TW streer tire by a company without a business license ran by a banned cheater and a neurotic "CEO".

Driven5 said:

In reply to Javelin :

Boy, it would be a shame if SCCA and/or Vitour were to find out about that.

Do you think the SCCA would thank me for my input if I wrote them a letter?

In reply to Javelin :

I love you.

In reply to Javelin :

Fantastic Sleuthing

Mndsm said:

I thought people learned to quit screwing around with grm. We're old and mean. 

Yeah, that's what threw me over the edge. I really couldn't care less about this tire or either of these yahoos, but accusing Andy Hollis and GRM of cheating and some giant conspiracy means I'm going to set the record straight. 

Vitour: The Rich Energy of Autocross.

In reply to Javelin :

Dang Javelin, the lot of us owe you a beer or three...

Mndsm said: We're old and mean. 

And petty... Don't forget petty.

Anybody posted this yet?

[edit]  I see they have; sorry.

NickD said:

Vitour: The Rich Energy of Autocross.

Bwhahahahaaa!!! I'm gonna need to make that a shirt!

Here you go:

The old hands are always going "Autocross was much better when it was just Hoosier tires." Ahhhh, but did we get this level of excitement back then? I think not.

Seppokku complete. My post on the P1 page was deleted, and I've been silenced (I can read the whole page, but can't comment or react) on the SCCA Members- Official page (with no DM from the mods btw).

In reply to Javelin :

Mndsm said:

In reply to Hoppps :

" cool car guy" or not, the FASTEST way to make sure someone like myself absolutely, positively NEVER even gives your product a chance is to act the way he did. No amount of "I've got a fast car" "i'm better than you" I'm the...CEO" makes up for being like that. 

Those tires could be 10 seconds faster than the field and I could be chasing records, and I wouldn't put them on my car after having seen that. No way. I've known too many "CEOs" like him and they do not change their stripes. He's only apologizing now because someone likely told him to get his E36 M3 together before he lost his ass. 

Agreed. The way he's been acting has ensured he will never get a dime from me. 

 

I didn't know anything about any of this until I saw a post on the SCCA Members FB group and specifically linked this thread.  Thanks for nicely passing a little time at the end of a Friday workday.

In reply to HilaryAndersonRacing :

That nicely illustrates the difference between a 'cool car guy', and a 'narcissist with a cool car'.

In reply to Javelin :

Boy, it would be a shame if someone were to make a competing FB page explicitly for sharing all of these screen shots from and about VU Development and their 'CEO'.

Javelin said:

Hmmm, well, let's keep looking up the other guy. 

Woah, weird. The guy that's claiming to be the CEO of a company that doesn't exist and is fraudulently claiming to be a corporation is the actual CEO of Sunfood Inc in California! I wonder what their Board of Directors would think of this?

Hey Javelin,

Don't know enough about business fillings to know if the CEO needs to be listed there or not but what looks to be Sunfood's website does have a blog post about Robert that calls him their CEO. No idea how legitimate it is but with all of the good research you are doing I didn't want someone to bring this up as a gotcha of you not looking at all things.

https://www.sunfood.com/blog/fatherhood-reflections-from-sunfood-ceo-robert-deupree/ 

As a point that I am not here to defend Vu/Robert here is an additional amusing anecdote of them not being transparent in who is who in this orginization. 

This is the kind of quality content I come here for. Bravo Javelin for bringing the receipts.

I'm going to send this to a few people as a lesson on how *not* to handle a product review situation.

In reply to caSSino :

Lol that's hilarious! (The Amy Jo thing)

But if you read it, I said that he *is the actual CEO* of Sunfood. I found the SEC annual filings and it's true (not just a blog post). That's why I said it would be a shame if Sunfood's Board of Directors found out...