Redpants, Red Aston Martin, Red Lined

Lots of people dream about buying an Aston Martin.  Some of those people even end up doing it.  But there is one man who ended up building his life and business around his dream car. 

Enter the world of Richard Seidlitz – the man who started Redpants, a man whose passion for Aston Martins runs as deep as his signature style. Richard has built a name for himself by challenging convention. His bright red Aston Martin isn’t just his car—it’s his statement. It’s been meticulously modified, thoughtfully engineered, and transformed into a machine that balances track-ready aggression with street-driven elegance.

In this exclusive interview, we dive deep into his story: how he turned a simple DIY project into a full-fledged business, why VelocityAP has been a game-changer for Richard & Aston Martin owners, and what’s next for RedPants in Japan. We also explore the philosophy behind his builds, & his approach to performance tuning.

Buckle up—this is Redpants, Red Aston Martin, Red Lined.

Brandon: Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?

Richard: I was in the US Marines (my first day of boot camp was the day before 9/11), then went into the defense sector as a linguist, then analyst, then systems developer. I bought my first Aston Martin, the one I still have today, to replace a BMW after a chance test drive. After a couple shockingly high service bills getting the maintenance done at the dealership, I decided to start doing it myself. I used to do engine swaps in driveways so I figured I could handle it, and it turned out most of it was pretty easy once you knew how to do it. There was extremely little information online about doing services yourself on these cars back then, so I started posting on forums to show what I was doing, and got a small following. Eventually I designed my own products, and that turned into a [very] small business, which is based on helping owners and enthusiasts with repairing, maintaining, and modifying their cars.

Brandon: How did you come up with the name “Redpants”?

Richard: Most companies in this industry are either a set of initials (mine are RS, which are the most generic and overused initials for anything automotive), or the owner’s last name (nobody ever spells or pronounces mine correctly), or seem to be taken out of a grab-bag of words based on speed, racing, or something similar – kinda like Chinese food restaurants in the US, but for cars. When I decided to start my company, I wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t some big shop, or trying to compete with race teams, or anything like that. I’m just a guy in my garage. I was living in the Washington DC area at the time and was known for a pair of red pants I had worn to a car event, and the pants had their own backstory, so I figured I’d use that and called it Redpants.

Meanwhile, the ‘ dot com ‘ domain was taken but Google had just created the .lol top level domain, so to really drive home the “I’m just an enthusiast” message, I went with redpants.lol for my website.

Brandon: Can you tell us about your Aston Martin Vantage and what makes it special to you?

Richard: It’s one of the most heavily modified Aston Martins on the planet. It may not look like it because it isn’t “wild” visually, but just about every aspect of the car has been changed, and I still have plans for lots more. I built it so I could drive it to the track, have fun all day, then park it in front of a nice restaurant. I want to get the most out of the car without making it unpleasant in any way. I had a 1993 Mazda RX7 (FD3S) a long time ago and overmodified it to the point that I didn’t even like driving it anymore – I learned my lesson there and have kept practicality in mind for modifications ever since.

It still has all the creature comforts and functionality of the original car, except for the seats. The A/C, power steering, nav/infotainment, full glass, etc etc, are all still there. The seats are non-reclinable buckets so they don’t have the adjustability or features of the factory seats, but I chose them specifically because they’re the easiest I’ve found for ingress and egress, I can still use the factory 3-point seat belts, and I had them wrapped in Aston Martin’s factory leather to make sure they perfectly match my interior. When I had my lightweight battery kit in the car, I was able to shave 100 kg of weight out of my car without any hit to driving comfort.

Aside from loving the car itself, which I absolutely do, it’s also quite literally led me to the life that I have now. I ended up leaving my career as a defense contractor to run Redpants full time, and I also met my wife while visiting Japan as a tourist several years ago when I went to check out a widebody V8 Vantage. She was the translator for its owner, and after a strange turn of events, her and I ended up going out for a drink afterwards and we hit it off.

When I moved to Japan a few years ago, I brought my car with me. I’ve owned it for 14 years and don’t ever plan to sell it!

Brandon: On your website, you have a very impressive list of modified cars you’ve been a part of building, can you tell me what you think your specialty is now that you have helped so many drivers & how was it being able to work on a list of cars such as this: https://www.redpants.lol/builds

Richard: Something I’ve done since the beginning is researching and testing things myself, not just regurgitating whatever I hear on the internet as if it’s fact. This may come as a shock, but a lot of what you see online isn’t real, or is misleading, or is inaccurate or blatantly false. When I started selling things through my company, it gave me a chance to test a lot more products than I normally would as a just a consumer. Sometimes that’s checking out a performance-oriented product, sometimes it’s testing the cross-compatibility of parts from other vehicles to find cheaper alternative sources for the exact same parts. Either way, I’ve learned enough that I take very, very few people’s word on a given part and prefer to do my own testing. Because of that, I often get people coming to me asking about recommendations for modifying their cars, sometimes to the extent of full builds.

I randomly came across a picture of my car being used as someone’s avatar online, and saw someone asking about it since they knew it was my car being used as someone else’s avatar. The person using it said it was his inspiration for how he wanted to build his own car. That gave me the idea to share more details about my car and others to help show the possibilities for people that wanted to modify their cars or do a larger build. I reached out to a few people I’ve worked with and they let me share info about their cars, which led to the Builds page.

Brandon: How have Velocity AP’s products enhanced your Aston Martin ownership experience over the years?

Richard: The very first thing I tell people when they come to me and say they just bought their car and want to start modifying it is, “Live with it first and see what stands out, especially the things you aren’t satisfied with. Then, start there.” A lot of them come back after a few weeks and have much more targeted questions, asking how to fix the things they’ve noticed.

Velocity AP has made some key products that fix some of the factory’s shortcomings, like the clutch. The clutch used in the V8 Vantage was entirely due to keeping the costs low to help them stay below that £100,000 mark when the car was first debuted. It wasn’t chosen for performance and, compared to the rest of the car, it’s garbage. The engine tuning was done to satisfy all markets where the car is sold, including accounting for low quality fuels and strict emissions. Then there’s the sluggish throttle response, which makes the car feel much slower than it is. Getting a VelocityAP clutch and engine tune fixes all of that. As many of my customers say, “It transforms the car.” It’s amazing how a few changes can completely improve a car and change someone’s mindset about it in general. As someone that’s been using these products from Velocity AP myself for several years, I can say it’s absolutely a game changer and they make the car as a whole so much better.

Stuart’s also been a member of the Aston Martin community since I first joined, and I was already buying parts from Velocity AP before I started Redpants. Given my experience with Velocity AP and its products, I knew I’d want to be able to sell them – especially since I was already recommending their parts to people as a consumer.

Fun Fact: When I bought my car from the original owner, it had a several prototype and early market products from Stuart back when he was with RSC Tuning – my car (with the previous owner) was a test bed for them. So, even my car has some history with Velocity AP.

Brandon: In your opinion, how has Velocity AP grown and evolved as a company during the time you’ve worked with them?

Richard: The obvious change is that VAP has gotten so much bigger and are able to make such big investments, and it’s great that us Aston Martin owners get the benefits of it, too. One of the big ones was investing in their own clutches which resulted in a massive savings for customers facing their biggest single maintenance bill. Even though VAP’s main business isn’t Aston Martin anymore, they haven’t dropped the brand and are still supporting and doing development for them. It really helps customers have confidence in the company when we can see that they aren’t just chasing trends and dropping something when it’s no longer their #1 revenue stream. From the beginning, VAP has always been a very “grounded” company that’s earned its success.

Brandon: Can you share any memorable experiences or moments with your Aston Martin that Velocity AP helped make possible?

Richard: Ages ago, I got a set of headers from Velocity AP and installed them with a buddy of mine. During the installation, we fired up my car before hooking up the rest of the exhaust to see how crazy it’d be – it was just the headers dumping to atmosphere. We propped up a GoPro and fired it up, revved it a couple times, then turned it off. I was way too worried about the underside of my car to go any longer than that. My buddy passed away a couple months later, and that video is the last pic or video I have with us together.

Other experiences are just making my car better overall…

I have a bad knee from my time in the Marines, and the factory clutch was so heavy that I’d be in excruciating pain after long drives. I can drive my car endlessly with the clutch I got from Velocity AP.

Japan has strict noise limits for cars, and my car was too loud when I brought it over. I put on a Velocity AP Touring muffler and factory cats to make it quieter, but it was so quiet that I hated it. I ended up getting another set of Velocity AP high-flow cats and now I love the way my car sounds again.

I had two V8 Vantages at the same time for a couple years. My heavily modified one, and a virtually stock one. Same year, same transmission, just different colors. Driving the two back-to-back was eye opening for seeing how much the car was improved with the VAP parts on my modified one.

Brandon: Is there any projects on the go we can look forward to?

Richard: A big project I did not too long ago was changing the way my car looks. I loved the factory Mercury Silver paint, but it made the car completely invisible in pictures here in Japan. There’s just too much grey. So, I had the car wrapped bright red. I used to have another V8 Vantage that was factory-painted Ferrari Rosso Corsa red, and I miss that car so much that I went straight back to red when I needed to overhaul the look of my grey V8 Vantage. I’m also fixing a lot of issues that developed from my car being in storage and transport for so long while I was in the process of setting things up in Japan and getting my car over here – that’s been taking a lot of what little time and energy I have these days.

For upcoming stuff, the main thing is producing parts again. Even though most people know me for DIY maintenance, I actually started Redpants to make and sell my own parts. I’m reviving most of my Redpants products while also revisiting all of them to make improvements where I can based on using and abusing the original iterations myself for several years. I set up a new company in Japan (www.redpants.jp) to do that. I keep most maintenance parts in stock in Japan, like I do with Redpants in the US, but the main purpose of Redpants Japan is manufacturing.

Also, I’m going to get back to making YouTube videos. I know I say this every six to nine months, but I’m serious this time. Really.

Links To RedPants

Redpants US website: www.redpants.lol

Redpants US Instagram: @redpants.lol

Redpants Japan website: www.redpants.jp

Redpants Japan Instagram: @redpantsunzipped