BUILT FOR THE LOVE OF THE RIDE

Carmen Chiusolo is the kind of car guy who doesn't need a title — but he's earned one anyway. Since 1994, he's been deep in the culture: wrenching carburetors, chasing shows, building relationships, and developing the kind of eye that only comes from three decades of living it. Street rods, road shakers, classics, muscle — if it runs and it's built with pride, Carmen respects it.

Carmen grew up in the era when you learned a car by feel — by the smell of a rich mixture, the sound of a cam loping at idle, the way a well-tuned big-block settles into a cruise. He came up wrenching carburetors and reading plugs, and he never stopped learning. As the game evolved — fuel injection, ECU tuning, nitrous systems, supercharger programming — Carmen evolved with it. He's as comfortable talking boost controllers and data logs as he is discussing a period-correct restoration or a custom chop job.

One of the highlights of his younger years was hosting an exotic car show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center — a full-scale event that put some of the finest machinery in the country under one roof and drew car people from across the region. That experience planted something deep: the understanding of what it means to bring a community together around the cars they love, and the energy that fills a room when the right people and the right machines are in the same place at the same time.

Life took Carmen away from the show circuit for fifteen years. A sabbatical — not from the love of cars, but from the grind of the scene. When he came back, he came back all the way. Back in the driver's seat, back on the show floor, and back to building the relationships that make this culture what it is — men and women from all over the United States, connected by the same obsession, the same pride in their builds, and the same hunger to compete and be recognized for what they've created.

His personal garage tells the rest of the story. A Duster, a Porsche, and a delivered '66 Mustang are the builds he calls his own. But the one that lives rent-free in his head — the car he dreams about putting miles on personally — is a white 1923 T. Road-rumbling, loud, and everything a hot rod should be. That car represents what this whole thing is about: the build you chase, the one that keeps you up at night, the one that makes every other car feel like a warm-up.

Carmen has driven and accompanied some of the finest iron on the road — Ferraris, Chevelles, Lamborghinis — the kind of company that sharpens your eye and raises your standard. When you've been in those seats and stood next to those builds, you understand car culture from the inside out. Not as a spectator. As someone who lives it.

deepdishnbigblox.com was born from all of it — the early shows, the PA Convention Center, the sabbatical, the return, and thirty-plus years of relationships built with car people coast to coast. Carmen saw a gap: no national platform existed that genuinely welcomed every corner of car culture under one roof. He built this for the carburetor guys and the ECU programmers. For the lowrider hydraulics crowd and the drift missile builders. For the exotic collector and the guy who's been chasing the same build for fifteen years. One open class. Four regions. Real prize money. Zero gatekeeping.

As the creative visionary behind the platform, Carmen brings every one of those years to the table — from how the competition is structured to how the community is treated. This isn't a corporation running a car show. It's a car guy who built something for car people, because nobody else was going to do it right. When he's not running the platform, you'll find him at a show somewhere, standing next to something loud, talking shop with anyone who'll listen. That's always been the whole point.

"I stepped away for fifteen years. When I came back, I came back for the love of it — and for every man and woman across this country who builds, wrenches, and shows up. That's who this is for."