A man on a mission
Larry Kosilla has a problem. He hasn’t been able to clone himself. The future of AMMO NYC – the car care company the 44-year-old founded 15 years ago – depends partly on that scientific leap. Because while his products are good, Larry is better. He’s the secret sauce, the glue, the je ne sais quoi that keeps 2.3 million subscribers to his YouTube channel coming back for more.
On a recent fall day, we find Larry at his suburban headquarters in leafy Danbury, Connecticut, headphones on, face mask taut, eyes locked in, hovering over a 1915 Detroit electric car, which looks more like a carriage with wheels than anything automotive.
The owner of said piece of automotive history has asked Larry to bring the machine back to life, so here he is – not some underling or staffer – buffing the blue bonnet back to life. In fact, there are only two actual full-time employees at AMMO NYC: Larry and his right-hand man, Jordan Walker, who handles everything from tip queries to shipping inquiries. But when it comes to the detailing, from supercars owned by very famous names to fairly basic wash and wax jobs, it’s Larry on the case.
Not that he isn’t paid well for his magic touch; at the low end, $350 for a quick detail to upwards of $50,000 for a week-long performance that often requires this family guy to leave his brood and hunker down in a billionaire’s warehouse. He’s not complaining, don’t get him wrong. But he knows something’s got to give.
“We’re stretched thin,” he says during a quick lunch break conversation, his staccato patter rapid fire and unfailingly precise. “It’s purposeful, though; it’s my weakness. Like many entrepreneurs, I like to oversee everything.”
Right now, Larry is interviewing folks who might be able to lend a hand and amplify his already impressive social media presence. What’s more, he would really like to sink some money into producing – at his pace and not some media company’s pace – a 30-minute TV pilot that would showcase a multi-week detail job.
“With a lot of these shows, they try and have you do a car in a week, but that’s not going to be as interesting as really watching things unfold over time,” he says, taking a moment to stretch out his back since it often gets locked up thanks to hours hunched over cars. “I feel like the TV model is starting to crack, because it’s so expensive. So I’ll produce it and then go to people and say, ‘If you don’t like it, fine, but if you do, let’s talk.”
Who is Larry?
For the uninitiated, Larry is to car detailing what Taylor Swift is to live performance. Obsessive, perfectionist, and also plain fun. Watching his videos, you almost want to pick up a random orbital yourself. And at the very least, you look at whatever car or cars are in your garage and know they could look ten times better if only Larry could come over.
The man’s obsession started young. By his own account he’s always been persnickety about cleanliness and details. Not that he knew that tick would lead to this life. In fact, after attending the University of Virginia, he wound up as part of President Bill Clinton’s advance team (one of the many pieces of artful Larry lore at AMMO’s headquarters is a framed collage of his time with the president), and then on Wall Street trading natural gas commodities.
“I thought the only way to get all the cool cars I wanted was to make a lot of money, but I quickly realized that was not the life for me,” he says.
The beginning of the journey
Life indeed had other plans. For a while, Larry helped production companies source exotic cars, which put him in touch with famous New York-area collections. Then, with some of his Wall Street savings, he and longtime pal Matt Farah – himself now a famous automotive presence on social media – bought a car wash, which in turn put Larry in touch with folks who made soaps and other car care products in bulk.
What happened next was purely the result of Larry’s innate drive and curiosity. He began experimenting with tweaks to car care products, eventually landing on formulas that he felt met the needs of his van-based car detailing company. He never thought of selling the stuff until, as is often the case, customers and friends started asking if they could have some. And the name, AMMO NYC? Larry laughs.
“There’s a very famous collector whom I won’t name. I’ve been doing his cars for years, and I’d show up and have all these products and tools arrayed around me, and one day he joked, ‘Man, that’s a lot of ammo for the job,’ and it stuck with me,” he says.
By around 2011, Larry knew AMMO NYC would be his passion. With his products slowly getting curious buyers, he took note of YouTube’s growing presence and sunk some money into making videos that showcased him working on a range of cars. “What I do is inherently visual, so it seemed obvious to do this,” he says.
He was onto something. In fact, while his car care videos could not initially compete in terms of views with videos of famous blokes thrashing about in brand new exotics, what he quickly learned was that while those racy videos saw their views diminish as the cars got older, his views kept growing.
“It was simple,” he says. “With mine, you’d think, ‘Hey, what was step three of what Larry was doing,’ and then you’d go back to the video, over and over, and have to rewatch the ads.” And that’s where the money is.
The present
Fast forward more than a decade, and Larry’s boyish enthusiasm for his craft has not abated. He’s pumped out more than 800 videos, he says, and AMMO NYC currently ships to 73 countries and has a standalone branch in car-crazy Australia.
Where before he spent time sleeping in his old Impala, now he’s reaped the spoils of success, which include a few automotive dreams: his “never-going-to-sell-it” Porsche 964, a “ready for Armageddon” Eurowise-built Porsche Cayenne Overlander, a prized Audi R8 and until recently a Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo that he still regrets selling “but with all the commuting I do to customers’ garages I had to stop too often to recharge.”
When he’s not detailing cars or working on new AMMO NYC products or plotting his TV pilot, you’ll likely find Larry at home with kith and kin, a doting baseball-dad who also likes to play ice hockey in his spare time. “The family is everything,” he says.
Always on the grind
But don’t confuse that with Larry letting his foot off the AMMO NYC gas. In fact, after attending a recent SEMA gathering, he’s more convinced than ever that there could be a reckoning coming in his business.
“There are so many products out there now, which in some ways is great, people are into taking care of their cars, I love it,” he says. “But I also feel like the detailing world is almost getting oversaturated, and increasingly consumers are going to be looking for guidance from a few people they trust.”
Many of the most respected car collectors on the East Coast consider Larry their go-to guy, not that he’ll name names. He will drop everything to work on their steeds, although sometimes hypercars aren’t his favorite detail jobs. “I had (an Aston Martin) Valkyrie recently, and while that car is totally insane, I’m also being hired to bring that car from 97% to 100%, and in many ways it’s more satisfying to take a barn find car from zero to 50%.”
If you’ve got a car that could use Larry’s touch and a wallet that can handle his fees, step right up. But just know that, as much as you might be checking Larry and his skills out, he’ll be doing the same. “I like to talk to people first, because we need to understand what success looks like, whether I’m spending one hour or 150 hours on your car,” he says, recalling one client who regaled Larry with tales of the many detailers who had disappointed him.
“I might not have a crazy IQ, but I have pretty good EQ, and I can feel if something’s going to work out or not,” he says. “If I spend three weeks on a car and it’s perfect, and the guy walks in and says, ‘Yeah, it’s fine,” is he right or am I right? I want people to be happy when they leave.”
To keep sane, Larry largely keeps to himself and his work. He laments that many in the detailing world “are quick to slice someone’s throat (online) if they use a different technique on a detail,” and long ago stopped reading comments on his YouTube channel since “some will say ‘I love what you do,’ you’ll see others going ‘Why is your hair so stupid.’”
Final thoughts
Ultimately, Larry is simply all about the cars, bringing them, if not back to life, then looking as good as they’ve ever looked. His eyes beam at the end of those detailing videos, radiating a joy that is genuine. Whether it’s fixing the paint on a brand new Ferrari (he’s critical of the finish quality of some exotics, while praising the surfaces produced by the likes of Bentley and Koenigsegg) or buffing out an old BMW at the behest of sons looking to surprise their father.
“Look, at this point I’m getting old in this game,” he says with a laugh, finishing up his sandwich before heading back to polish the 1914 Detroit so his customer can pick it up in the morning. “But you can say this, I’m still in the trenches, that’s the difference. The CEO of this company is still out there polishing the cars, and if I ever stop doing that, that’ll be bad, because that’s where it all began.”
With that, his filtered mask pops back on, goggles are set in place, ear buds relocated, and his random orbital is fired up. Back to grind, the oh so delicate and glorious grind.
About the author
Marco Della Cava
Contributing Writer, Autoblog