First car bought
Olivet had the Lincoln Continental throughout college and it was also his ride to numerous trips to Vegas. "It didn't fare so well after a while," he admits. After graduating from college, Olivet needed a car for his first job at Bain & Co. After doing his research, he bought a 1984 Mazda 626.
"I wasn't making a lot of money, rent was quite expensive in San Francisco, so I had a budget for the car. It needed to be utilitarian, reasonable gas mileage and be able to take my roommates to work as well. Rating the little four-door sedans at the time, Mazda had the reputation for being slightly more sporty than the others," he explains. "There weren't many of them around. It was actually desired at the time."
Olivet taught himself how to drive a stick shift in the one area of the country most novices would stay away from -- the hills of San Francisco.
"Dive into the deep end," he laughs. "The problem with an automatic in San Francisco is if you go up some of the bigger hills and you don't have a decent head start on it, you don't make it up. While it's much harder to parallel park with the stick, it's actually easier to drive around town in a stick. I did burn the clutch relatively early. You're a little hard on the brakes and the clutch while you're learning on those hills."
Favorite road trip
Olivet loves the twisties from the Bay Area to Big Sur on Hwy 1. "When I lived in San Francisco, I probably did it two weekends a month," he says. "Now I only get to do it a couple of times a year. I've taken my Mercedes and all sorts of friends' cars, anything that is pretty quick, good handling and is a convertible, is the car you want on the 1. It's a fun drive, but at the same time you're seeing the ocean and beautiful view. Never too hot, never too cold. It's the perfect drive for a weekend."
The Oakley Way
Most of Oakley's sunglasses are made in America. "There's a few select parts of the eyewear that are made elsewhere with special materials, but most of the eyewear is done at Foothill Ranch. We make the lenses, we do all the coating, we do all the assembly, we do all of our injection molding."
At Oakley, they pride themselves on quality and UV protection. "We're big believers that you can protect your eyes, have the latest technology, but also look great at the same time," he says. "They're not mutually exclusive. We have the highest UV protection, but the real big difference is because of the patents we hold. We're the only ones who provide both sun protection as well as impact protection and not hurt the optics."