By day, Benjamin Sloss Treynor is the guy Google hired to make sure its websites never go down. But that's not his only identity. On another part of the web, Treynor is a kind of automobile-collecting demigod who enjoys the worship of car-obsessed minions from across the globe.
Over the years, he's bragged about his Mercedes Benz SL65 hitting close to 130 mph in a race against a Corvette Z06 on North California's highway 280, posted photos of his six-car garage, and started a collection of drool-worthy threads about so many other exotic automobile acquisitions, often naming them something like "one more reason to hate Treynor."
Treynor – a Google vice president of engineering who's also the company's Site Reliability Tsar – was hired nine years ago by the company's infrastructure chief, Urs Hölzle. Treynor is the guy who ultimately helped the search giant rethink its approach to uptime, as we reported earlier this year.
But in his posts to the Ford enthusiast forum SVTperformance.com, he comes off as an unrepentant car lover who just can't contain his excitement for every new toy he acquires. And having come aboard Google in its pre-IPO days, he obviously has a boatload of cash to spend buying toys.
"Reading through this entire thread it's easily seen that you are a grown up in a candy store, just like anyone of the rest of us would be if we had the means," wrote one of the forum posters during a recent 550-comment post about two of Treynor's latest acquisitions, entitled "Two more excellent reasons to hate Treynor."
"I'm trying to thread the needle between 'here's pictures of cool stuff for a group which loves cars' and 'here's my shameless brag thread full of expensive toys,'" Treynor wrote in a Friday forum post.
But his demigod status was called into question on Friday, when a handful of posters questioned whether one man could really own so many outrageously expensive cars. After all, this is a man who claims to own two Ferraris, an extremely rare McLaren 12C Spyder, and the brand-new high-performance Ford Raptor truck.
"I don't think you're real. I request a picture of your new 12C Spyder with a piece of bread on the hood," wrote one poster, named Kyle Hirschi.
In an email interview, Hirschi said he knew Treynor was legit, but came up with the bread on the hood idea as a sort of inside joke after the Google exec was called out by someone else on the forum. In the past, Treynor had been called out and subsequently proved the cars were his, often in a colorful fashion. "Treynor is easily one of the more genuine and down to earth people on SVTP," Hirschi said. "He's never condescending or arrogant when showing off his toys, and he's clearly a genuine car enthusiast. Many, many well-off people will buy these types of cars and let them rot in a garage or drive them like old men. Treynor has posted videos of him drag racing his wife in her 458 Italia at a drag strip, as well as a video of him ringing out his McLaren at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca."
Treynor was quick to oblige, as soon as the weekend Bay Area rains stopped. On Sunday, he responded with photos a Ford Raptor, a Ferrari 458 Italia, and a McLaren 12C Spyder, each one with a loaf of bread on the hood. There was a loaf of New York rye on the American Raptor, a long loaf of Italian on the Ferrari, and crumpets on the British-built McLaren.
Over at the Jalopnik car blog, the headline read: "Google Exec Proves His Identity On Car Forum In Most Hilarious Way Possible."
We reached out to Treynor for an interview, but Google said he couldn't come to the phone. No doubt, he's busy road testing his McLaren somewhere ... or making sure Gmail doesn't go down again.
Take a ride with Ben Treynor's McLaren Spyder here:
This story was updated to include comment from Kyle Hirschi
