B/F: The Drive Thru #18

• Crighton CR700W motorcycle brings the rotary engine back into production
• Bugatti expands way downmarket with an electric scooter
• The Cannonball Motorcycle Record Has Been Broken, Consider Not Attempting It Again

• GM was America's largest automaker for nearly a century. It's about to be dethroned by Toyota
• Chevy Performance Reveals 10.4-Liter V8
• The new 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 turns up the dial with a Ferrari-style engine
• Retractable Exhaust Tips Star in New Ford Patent
• 2023 Ford Bronco DR Is A V8-Powered Baja Monster You Can Buy
• The Future of Custom Vehicles: Ford Unveils All-Electric F-100 Eluminator Concept with New EV Crate Motor Customers Can Now Buy
• Ford Ranger With Mustang Face Transplant Looks Surprisingly Awesome
• Ford has unveiled a retro '70s concept electric pickup
• Ford beats out Tesla to become the auto industry’s top growth stock in 2021
• Ford F-150 Lightning Pricing Announced
• 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV Revealed with 664 HP, 400-Mile Range

• Nissan reveals electric pickup with transparent grille
• Lexus ROV Concept Debuts As Hydrogen-Burning Side-By-Side
• Sony shows off an electric SUV and says company may start selling cars

First Drive: Pininfarina Battista

• Former F1 champ Jacques Villeneuve to run 2022 Daytona 500
• Frank Williams, Williams F1 team founder, dies at 79

• Toyota Tacozilla off-road 'micro-house' camper revealed

• WORLD’S ONLY FERRARI-POWERED BOAT NOW FOR SALE AT $15M
• 400-Mile 2000 Chevrolet Metro Fetches $18,200 on Bring a Trailer
• Would You Buy This Lamborghini Gallardo For $35,000 Despite Its Sordid Past?
• Hazel Chapman, Co-Founder Of Lotus Cars, Dies Age 94

• Watch this BMW change colors
• Mercedes says its electric concept has 620 miles of range and seats made with mushrooms

• DEAR DRIVETRIBE COMMUNITY
• New York Will Now Fine You $1000 For a Noisy Aftermarket Exhaust
• Video shows drivers reversing on I-395 to access Express Lanes and avoid minor backups
• So my package is late…
• A car parked for 47 years in the same spot on an Italian street becomes a monument
• Wait, Are Apple And Brad Pitt Planning To Remake Driven
• Scientists train goldfish to drive a fish-operated vehicle on land

• Mustang and Corvette GT3 pony car wars coming in 2024
• The Daytona 24 Will Host Its Largest Grid In Years
• iRacing buys Monster Games, teases racing games for the ‘broader market’ like consoles

• Dmitry Mazepin Buys Son New F1 Chassis to Compete with Haas' Mick Schumacher

• Dodge Bombshells: Charger, Challenger Gone By 2024, EV Arrives Soon
• Dodge Is Back With More Cringe and Tire Smoke
• STELLANTIS' LATEST DEAL WILL ACCELERATE THE ELECTRIC MUSCLE CAR DREAM
• Stellantis, Jeep's parent company, is teaming up with Amazon
• Contemporary Dodge Daytona SRT Super Stock Looks Way Too Good to Be Real
• Explosion At Chrysler Minivan Plant In Canada Was 'Intentional'
• Stellantis Is Still Trying To Fix Its Smelly Jeep Factory
• Ram 1500-Based Aznom Palladium Heading to the Middle East to Make Babies Cry

Alfa Romeo NIVOLA rendering

• Tesla Raises Prices on All Models
• Hertz deal isn’t just tipping point for Tesla and EVs, but car rentals in climate change era
• Tesla Cybertruck order page no longer mentions a 2022 production estimate
• Tesla to pull plug on letting drivers play video games after federal investigation
• Rather than pay $22K to repair his Tesla’s faulty battery, the owner decided to strap dynamite to the car and blow it into smithereens

• Marcello Gandini Says No to the New Lamborghini Countach
• Charging a Porsche Taycan 4S Using Pikes Peak Mountain
• 2022 Porsche 911 Safari Is in a Class of Its Own
• Bugatti is the jewel in Volkswagen's crown. This 33-year-old is taking it over

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The drive-through is GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like h hpde junkie.com, garage riot, american muscle.com, hooked on driving and many others.

If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org under about and then advertising and sponsorship. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grantor Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. Welcome to Drive-Thru episode number 18.

This is our monthly recap where we’ve put together a menu of automotive motorsport in random car adjacent news. Now let’s pull up to the window number one for some automotive news. And tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 99, 19 99. You’re only a couple [00:01:00] decades late. No, no. Our 99th break fix episode. Can you believe it?

And guess what folks rejoining us tonight is the one, the only, our resident biking. The return of the Brad. What’s up Brad? What’s going on everybody? I’m glad to be back. I see that our listenership has grown so much. During the time that I was gone, I thought maybe I should just stay away. Is that how it goes?

Is that how it works? That’s it. You guys did so well when I was gone that I thought maybe I just won’t come back. You know, speaking of things that might not be coming back, that’s actually our showcase this month. In honor of the winter recap, I think we need to talk about cars that are headed to the graveyard for 2022.

If we’re gonna talk about cars that are headed to the graveyard, can we also talk about cars that should be headed to the graveyard? Absolutely. So what’s on this wonderful listicle that we’ve been provided by MarketWatch? Well, this one’s sad to me. The Toyota Land [00:02:00] Cruiser. Is the first one listed here, because I’m always so prepared for these drive-throughs.

As our listeners know. I don’t know if this is just in the US or if this is across the board. Now. The Land Cruiser in the US was a bit of a hard pill to swallow because it was 90 grand. I don’t know who was paying 90 grand for a Toyota that didn’t have a an L badge on it. Yeah. So the, the Land Cruiser is going away.

I am not sad to see the next vehicle on this list going away. That is the probably worst looking car that we’ve seen in the last 20 years, which is the BMW I three. No, I don’t, wouldn’t say it’s the worst looking car and. You know, it has normal sized grills for bmw, so already it looks better than the new BMWs.

These are little grills compared to bmw. I mean, if they put the new grills on this thing, it would just be grill in the front one for the sevens grill. I grill. I think Apple patented that terminology. The eye grill, plug [00:03:00] it into your iPhone, but mm-hmm. You know, on this list to no one surprises all of the Volvo station wagons.

I mean very handsome vehicles, but they just didn’t sell. They’re beautiful. Oh, the V 90. I thought when it first came out was a gorgeous wagon. The problem was you couldn’t get a V 90 unless you special ordered it. You could get cross countries or cross order whatever they called ’em. You could get those on the dealer lots.

But the V 90 had to be a special order. That one’s not going away apparently. So not all Volvo wagons are leaving. We drove the, the smaller one, I think it was the V 60 when that one came out. And it was cool. The price tag was hefty. I think the only problem because we had some very specific shopping criteria was the cargo space was pretty small and the roof line was pretty low slung, so it made it kind of cramped compared to other vehicles we were looking at.

It’s not a surprise. We’ve talked about this on our, what should I buy? Station Wagons episode where it’s diminishing returns in terms of manufacturers making station wagons. Right. And as we know, [00:04:00] everybody’s in love with SUVs, but they’re just giant hatchbacks, I guess say Lavie. Right. And along with that hatchbacks that are going away, or CUVs, I guess you wanna call it the short-lived CX three by Mazda, to no one’s surprise.

Yes. But it’s being replaced by the CX 30. What exactly is the difference? I thought that was their weird rotary hybrid thing that we had talked about a few months back. The CX 30 is not hybrid. It runs on gasoline. Does that have that holy grail motor that they came out with that sky, I dunno, it listed as a sky active G 2.5, turbo engine two 50 horsepower, 220 foot pounds of torque, 93 okane fuel.

But I thought we reported on them using that same chassis and body to put in a rotary hybrid. They were working on some experimental something rather, but it’s never come to fruition. Sorry, Tom. They’re not bringing back another rotary anytime soon. Yes, but this is a car you can buy today and it’s replaced the Mazda CX three and they look the same.

Oh, okay. Says the Mazda CX three is [00:05:00] replaced by Mazda. The Mazda CX CX 3 3 0. It must be like three zero. People will buy it. It must be like two inches bigger. I don’t know. On that list also includes the Mazda six. I haven’t seen one of those in a while. There’s other cars like the Pole Star by Volvo, which was a cool, I didn’t know that it was gonna be a real car.

I thought it was a concept. I think it’s neat. But you know, the days of the two door coop are pretty much dead. And on this list are two cars that are also quite similar. One we talked about I think almost a year ago, and it’s not the Honda Civic, it’s the Volkswagen Golf. Obviously the two, our golfs are already gone.

Volkswagen is leaving behind the G T I and the golf R. And along with that, Hyundai is following suit. By leaving behind the Veloster N and killing off the rest of the veloster line and models and packages that were available. So that rounds out like the top 10 cars that are dead for 2022. All of these are ice cars, right?

There aren’t any hybrids leaving this list, but. The future is electric as we know. [00:06:00] So, but there is, there is a On here, there is the Honda Clarity’s leaving. Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot about that. Just like I forgot about, you’ve got a blind spot for Hondas, period. You just, you just read Honda and it said W you didn’t bother reading the rest.

I, I feel, I apologize to the three and a half people that bought Honda Clarity’s. I didn’t even know they existed. I thought they were like, it’s Honda does this weird thing where they come out with these really innovative forward-looking vehicles and they release them in Calabasas or, or like one small section of the country.

This is a California only car, A fuel cell. I think they had some propane cars. They had some hydrogen cars. Everything is California only. So I’m not sad to see it go cuz I wasn’t around to see it here. I feel like it was a soft launch. There wasn’t any big hubbub about it. Or maybe there wasn’t, we missed it.

It’s just something that’s not on the radar. It’s not the most attractive car in the world. I mean, from certain angles you’re like, yeah, it kinda looks like the new Integra, like you said. I’m not gonna be [00:07:00] sad to see it go. Yeah. To me it looks like a maxima. Okay. Let’s say that’s the only EV on the list.

There’s five other EVs or more that are gonna replace it. And those are also on a listicle provided by car and driver. So what’s on our list here of new and expected EVs? The Audi A six E-tron, yet another e-tron. Woo. The Audi q4. E-tron. E-tron. Yeah. I saw an Audi A three E-tron the other day, and I was almost thinking the guy just stuck a badge on the side of an A three.

That was the first e-tron. Outside of like the race cars and stuff, it was like the E Golf and it was yet again, like the clarity a car that they didn’t really advertise. I actually rode in an A three e-Tron. Friend of mine owns one in California, and I was actually pretty impressed with it, bragging about all the numbers and all this kind of stuff, but it’s one of those deals where it was kind of like a zombie car, and we’ll talk about those in a moment where they couldn’t sell ’em.

They were sitting on lots forever, but the markup was so high [00:08:00] that nobody was gonna buy ’em. I mean, if you’re into it for the California credits, you know, absolutely. Go for it. The non surprises are on this list are yes. All the trons, all the, the numbers are coming. Well, the, the next one is the BMW I four e-tron.

And the, and the, and all the i, all the numbers of the eyes. BMW even know the I three is going away. The I four, the I seven, the i s we get it. The Germans know their vowels. We get it. The e and the is, they’re all coming. Yeah. I owe you. And sometimes why I think Y goes to this Bollinger B one and b2. Cause wait, I believe we talked about a while ago, maybe very utilitarian, very geometric.

I mean, how do you make an old Land Rover uglier? Uh, it’s, it’s very simplistic. Two and a half people might buy this. Uh, I mean it also starts at 125,000, so, oh, that hurts. It’s a gonna be a niche market nonetheless. But you have your choice of the B one or the b2? The B2 being the pickup truck, [00:09:00] are they both greenhouses?

Like are you guys seeing this roof? Oh yeah. They, it looks to me like they took a, an old British phone booth and put wheels on it and then they, they called it a, a rain truck turned it on its side. They, I feel like they missed an opportunity to call it TARDIS one and TARDIS two pretty much. And then we have like three or four entries from GM that all look the same on.

Well, do you think the Buick Electra looks the same as what? I mean it’s got that same snout as the lyric and the Celeste, what, however you pronounce that, and the trailblazer and the blazer and the Equinox, they all kind of just look the same, especially the Equinox and that Buick, they got almost the same beak on them.

I would not say that at all, but they are reminiscent of each other. But this Buick is very angular in the front. Yes, it is. It looks more like a Mazda CX three that’s leaving. If you had just shown this where there’s no badging on this car, cover the wheels, I wouldn’t have known it was a GM product. I would’ve guessed it was Japanese.

I don’t [00:10:00] like those doors. I think that is totally useless. They’re like double-sided scissor doors, meaning the back and the front? Both. Both. Scissor for all your passengers. I doubt the production model would ever come like that. Probably not. Even though that’s space savings and parking lots and things like that.

That’s never actually ever come to fruition on anything but a hyper car. So yeah, I don’t see it passing N H S T A standards or something, some law. No way. Without a B pillar. No way. But I do have to say, I mean we’ve talked about the GM products. Boring. I found my next vehicle right here under the GM products.

It’s the canoe. Alright. All right. Okay. That cab over pickup truck looks really, really legit to me. I like, I think a lot that’s a really slick in a sort of Jurassic Park was the future, 25 years ago sort of way. Like, I think these look really cool. Mm-hmm. These are the futuristic renditions of what we think in the year 2050, which is [00:11:00] like around the corner.

Everything was gonna be Jetson’s. Like these are the vehicles that would’ve been driving. The van version of the canoe definitely looks like a renos fast. I mean that’s, that’s Brett’s next tow vehicle. What are you talking about? That’s the equivalent of the church van for the, it just is the Korean writing on the side.

There are some vans right now that are very similar and I don’t think they’re made by canoe or canoe or however it’s pronounced that are running around doing autonomous testing, delivery vehicles and things like that. Particularly in California right now. So, you know, who knows what the future of this is.

Those wacky Californians, since you’re a Chrysler fan. Yeah. This airflow looks really nice, like. It’s reminiscent of the 200 a little bit. I like the back too, except for the C pillar, or actually I guess it would be the D pillar. It’s kind of oddly cut, but I understand, you know, that’s the way now with these weird angular rear windows and stuff.

But I, the back of it is reminiscent of an e-tron of all things, but I, I like the way it looks. [00:12:00] It’s, it’s very Italian, it’s not very Chrysler, but you know, like we speculated in months past, Chrysler may be the rebirth of these EVs cuz the brand doesn’t really have anything right now when you compare it to Ram and Dodge and the other offerings that are under the same umbrella.

I think this is a good opportunity for them to capitalize on the EV space. I wanna know why there’s no Chrysler ev PT Cruiser.

I have no answer for that, and my mind immediately says Mach. When I hear that combination, I’m just like, no, it’s not happening. I mean, this list goes on basically in the alphabetical order of manufacturers, A through Z essentially. You know, some of these aren’t anything new cuz they’re. We’re already known to be expected this year, so hopefully they should be coming out this year barring hashtag chips.

Others are 23, 24, 25 and things we’ve hit on already before. Some of the [00:13:00] offerings from like Hyundai, Hyundai and Mercedes as well. You’re right, I think there’s a couple surprises on here. I would say like the Fisker u V made me give it the hairy eyebrow because I’m like, Fisker is not known for building a C UUVs suv, so I’m like, I don’t know, stick to building the Aston market competitor, cuz that’s what Fisker is kind of known for is the sporty coops and those convertibles.

But really going into the S SUV market, I’m, I’m almost like. Just stop. What about the laa? It confuses me cuz. Is that an Aston Martin or is that just its own thing? Aston Martin spun off the name as their electric luxury brand. Again, there’s some stuff that’s undercover here. There’s some entries by Volvo, the new Porsches, to your point, Tonya, things that we’ve talked about.

I will say one of the coolest things on here is probably this Rivian. Again, we’re pretty excited about that and we’re gonna talk a little bit more about the Sony vision s later on in the show. And the thing I think that did surprise me because it was gonna be my hot take this month, you know, where is Subaru in the next five years?

They are finally [00:14:00] coming to the table with an EV expected this year known as the Solter. Uh, I can’t say I’m a fan of the body cladding, but I’m glad to see that, you know, Subaru’s doing something cuz I was afraid that they were gonna be the way of the dodo bird here in the next, you know, couple of years because they just, there was no talk around Subaru producing anything in the EV space.

To just piggyback off that for a hot second, apparently a couple days ago at the Tokyo Auto Salon, they unveiled a 1073 horsepower S T I E r A electric track car that is supposed to spank all records of electric race cars on the burging or some crazy thing like that. So they might not have. Held their cards out yet what they were doing, but clearly they’ve been doing something in the background.

I mean, I am wholly certain that even though it’s electric, it will find a way to spin a rod bearing. So, you know, it’s just tradition within the halls of Subaru. But, you know, hey, whatever. We’ll, we’ll see how it turns out. Now, I will say this as you go through the list. I did realize that the Subaru [00:15:00] entry, and they have done cross work with other manufacturers before the Toyota BZ four X and the Subaru Soterra look a lot alike.

And the dead giveaway is that front clip. It actually says the Soterra will be based on the same platform as the Toyota BZ four X electric. Cross over. Well see. There we go. Good job, Brad. Welcome back. Because I had the exact same thought and I went back and I was like looking at it and then I saw, oh yeah, Toyota be four.

Yes. So it’s, it’s basically a rav4, which they already have a hybrid RAV4 now, so, alright, whatever. Which, by the way, Toyota, I saw a commercial earlier today for a Toyota Corolla cross, basically a RAV4 four. Reba is a Corolla cross. I don’t know if they’re keeping the RAV4 name, but there is a Corolla S U v coming to the market that nobody wanted.

Okay. Why? Just, yeah, you have your rav4 make it a RAV three. I don’t know. I, I think my biggest question about everything on [00:16:00] this list, I mean, and this spans the gamut, right? From the Tesla cyber truck to, you know, the Chevy Trailblazer to everything in between. How many of these are going to be sub 40 K for the everyday user?

For the, you know, the driver that’s just starting out, or maybe even the, you know, now newly minted professional college graduate who’s looking for their first, you know, kind of adult car that isn’t a hand-me-down from their grandparents or their parents. Where is that sub, I guess now by 2022 standards of inflation, $40,000 car.

I just, I don’t see it yet. You know what I mean? As, as an ev a lot of people have complained about that because it’s just, everything’s way too expensive. So what they’re doing is instead of a sub $40,000 car, they’ve got longer loan terms. Seven to 10 year loan terms are gonna take over for the more expensive vehicles.

I’m gonna leave that where it is to tease up Brad’s favorite section, lost and Found. We’ve got some zombie cars that are still for [00:17:00] sale of dealer lots. Before I go further into these zombie cars, they should probably just start dismantling them cuz nobody wants ’em in the first place and start using the chips.

Hashtag chips in the newer cars. Can they do that? Can they retrofit the chips? You know, I would think that they’re be, can they double dip their chip? Never double dip your chip. I often wonder if they could recycle some of the cars from the last five years and reuse some of the chips that enter there.

Like everything else have to have the Snap Dragon 12 cord because the eight core isn’t fast enough. In the automotive world, none of the gear that we really used in the cars I feel is that sophisticated. And there’s probably chips that can be reused for even 10 or 15 years ago to get some of this stuff done.

Zombie cars. Cars that are discontinued but still brand new on dealer lots. What do we got Brad? We’ve got a BMW six series. They sold 55 BMW six series. And when did they stop making that car? 2019. Mm-hmm. There’s another BMW on this list. The BMW I eight. When did they stop making that? I don’t know. I don’t even know that it was sold.

[00:18:00] Whatever. Yeah. Right. But they only person sold. I know that has one is James Clay and he admitted that when he was on the BM W episode. No, it is. Just so you know, two people that had one because, uh, what’s his face from H Ho D had one. Oh yeah, yeah, you’re right. The total sales number here. They discontinued the car.

And then how many they’ve sold brand new since discontinuing. Is there a number here that’s like maybe they shouldn’t have discontinued it because my least favorite car, the Impala is on. Just about to go there. Go. Apparently still sold 750 of ’em last year. That was seven 50 last year. According to the, I mean, that is a very small number in the grand scheme of cars sold for the years.

That’s 750 more than you expected to be sold. Yeah. Is this because these car manufacturers are saving these turds from the wrecker because they can’t put newer models on the lots, so dealers are going around and finding these other cars that they can sell as new. I’m also wondering, what’s the threshold on the demo [00:19:00] cars?

Don’t they have to exceed a certain mileage before they’re considered used, but they can still be new even if they have like 300 miles on ’em or something like that? I don’t think the mileage has anything to do with it. I think if it’s titled in anything other than the dealership, then it’s considered a used car.

Oh, so then there you go. So I’m wondering if maybe some of these impalas were demo cars on the lot that were just never sold. So 750 dealerships in the US that still had one Impala doesn’t seem too impossible in the grand scheme of things. There were seven 50 people that wanted that car. I’m going the other way.

It was one dealership that had 750 Impalas. They doubled down on the Impalas. They shorted the Impala market. The Chrysler ones of are of no surprise. Right. The the 200, the town and Country, the Dart, again, those are all feel like loaner cars that just never sold. And the, the numbers are so small. 15 four and 10.

I mean, shoot, I think there were. 10 of them at the [00:20:00] local dealership here, you know? Yeah. The Dodge Viper sold four total sales. Two of them went to Andrew Bank. We’ll talk about more on that in a couple weeks. So the award on this list for the oldest new car goes to the Toyota FJ Cruiser. I know, right?

Apparently some dealership kept one on the lot since 2014 and finally sold it last year. I mean, there’s some other interesting surprises on here. The Patriot, I’m, I’m shocked. There’s still some around that are new, but I think the three 70 Z out of all these cars got my attention. I mean, the Viper, we joke about it every month and then I’d say right behind the three 70 Z was that there were 51 total sales of the Fiat 500 last year, and they stopped producing that car like a couple years ago as well.

And it’s like really? I guess the Fiat 500 maybe isn’t a stretch because it wasn’t that popular unless. You lived by yourself with three cats and didn’t drive anywhere? Well, I was gonna say the Vipers the only one on this list that actually makes sense to me because it’s such [00:21:00] a low volume vehicle. It’s such a niche market that of course there’s gonna be some that are hanging around.

I learned a super fun fact about the Viper, which we’ll talk about more in the coming weeks. They only produced roughly 32,000 vipers in the entire run of the Viper line from generation one to generation five. That is less than the total number of Corvettes that are producing a single year. To wrap all that up, if you are not interested in an ev, not sad that any of these cars are going away and you’re not.

Interested in buying a zombie car. Jalopnik put together an article, the top used cars that you should buy in this used car craze that’s going on. And they just happened to be, let’s see, we got the PT Cruiser, the Economical Family Hauler, one of my personal favorites, the PT Cruiser. We’ve got the lap of Luxury car is the, uh, the PT Cruiser, which is a little bit nicer.

It’s got the chromed out wheels and the pristine metallic paint in the plastic bumper [00:22:00] covers for the raucous hot hatch. We’ve got a competitor to the H H R Ss, the PT Cruiser s RT four, which is basically a Dodge Neon SRT four, oh, excuse me, a Dodge SRT four. It’s not a neon. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Even though it looks like a neon and talks like a neon and it’s a neon.

I didn’t even know there was a PT Cruiser gt. What? Oh yes. Yeah. Yes. It’s a tur, five different models of the PT Cruiser. It’s amazing. My God. But if you’re looking for something low mileage and a collector piece, you can look at the PT Cruiser. And finally, if you want some of that summer vibes drop top action.

What should we get, Brad? Well, you can opt for the Nissan Murano cross Cabriolet, but if you can’t find one of those because they’re so desirable and hard to get, You can get yourself a PT Cruiser. So I gotta admit, you know what’s cool about the PT Cruiser convertible that I just noticed now? Did it, I dunno, it’s still well that it’s, you [00:23:00] know, like an S RT four neon.

That isn’t a neon, it’s actually two-door. I was just about to say it’s two-door. It’s still stupid, but you know, Hey, whatever. I mean, well, what’s the, the PT Cruiser convertible. Turbo is only $4,700. That’s value for money all things considered. But look at those. It’s very selling in a car market where cars are selling for three or four times their actual value, that you can get a PT Cruiser convertible for $4,700.

But look at those wheels. I mean, those are some sporty wheels. Talk about a hot take. The used car market is so crazy right now. A friend of mine actually told me the other day, he was like, do you think it makes sense to purchase your leased vehicle and then go resell it yourself like on cars.com or Autotrader or something like that, Brad, as a money guide.

Do you think that’s a viable option for somebody? It depends on your car. I mean, if you lease a PT Cruiser, then no, you don’t wanna buy out your lease and resell it. But if [00:24:00] you lease like a ca, like a bm, like a BMW four series or something like a BMW three series, cuz those are lease cars all the time by the lower level executives and stuff like that, companies lease ’em out for their people to give company cars and then yeah, it could be worth it.

You’d obviously have to do the math on that, but it’s gotta be a car that, I mean, check the prices of what cars are selling for, right? And then check what the lease buyout is. And if one number is higher than the other, then yes, do it. If one number is lower than the other, then no, it’s not a good idea. So you have to do a little bit of prospecting, right?

You gotta do your research. You can’t just say, oh well I got this card, I’m gonna, you know, buy it out and then I’m gonna flip it. It’s not like flipping houses, although some people equate it to that. But to your point, you gotta do the legwork and look into it. One other thought did cross my mind, especially when you talk about all these EVs and you know, I mentioned, where’s that sub $40,000 vehicle for that entry level driver?

And not necessarily the teenage driver, but that newly minted professional got me thinking because I just recently watched the new show that just aired [00:25:00] called American Auto. One of the episodes was about this $10,000 car and, and what hit me was that they said, if you can’t afford a $10,000 used car, why would you wanna buy a low cost brand new car?

Like what are you getting for 10 grand? And it kind of got me thinking, maybe next month we take a look at some really top value cars in that 10 to 20 grand range and pick those out for lost and found. What do you think, Brad? I think that’s a great idea. I can tell you what I’m gonna do right now. I’m gonna come back with a whole slew of formerly a hundred thousand dollars luxury cars you can get now for $9,500.

And it’s gonna be a terrible idea. And nobody should ever take my advice when I do that. Yeah, because it costs you a hundred grand to fix ’em, right? At the end of the day. Well, yeah, a hundred thousand dollars car. You may buy it for $9,500, but it’s still a hundred thousand dollars car with a hundred thousand dollars car in maintenance.

Or maybe we spin it off into a what should I buy episode looking for the best bang for the buck. How about that? Actually the best car to buy is [00:26:00] a Volkswagen Faan. You’ll, you’ll thank me either a Faan or the V 10 diesel tore. I hear those cars are as reliable as a Swiss watch. Well, that’s a great transition into Volkswagen and Audi News.

So what’s hot, or maybe I should say what’s now considered not so hot? Apparently the new Lamborghini Kunta is not so hot according to Marcelo Gandini. And who is this Fable Gandini? This is probably the first time people are hearing his name. He’s the guy who designed the original one. What? Whoa. Mic drop.

And he’s saying, Nope, I do not approve. Dang, I put my name next to this one. We have mixed feelings about the new Kunta. It’s either love it or hate it by a lot of people. But when the original designer of not just a Kunta, but the Diablo and the Miura comes back and says, Uhuh, what does that say? What does that mean?

It would probably be an indication that they shouldn’t have made the [00:27:00] backside view look like something from Michael Bay’s transformer movie. Just saying. I just love the fact that, as it says in the article, the design icon makes an official statement distancing himself. From the limited production supercar.

I’m like, wow, that is phew. Damn. I mean, that speaks volumes. I personally, I’m a huge fan of the new Lamborghini Kunta, although it could have been a Lamborghini, whatever the hell. It didn’t have to be called the Kunta, but I am sensing some sour grapes here that maybe Mr. Gandini hadn’t been consulted. On the new car and he’s throwing shade at Lamborghini or at Volkswagen because they didn’t reach out to him for his input when they were doing this retro version.

That would be a very Italian thing to do. So you know what? You might be right. So what else is going on in the Volkswagen out in Porsche world? Apparently there’s more [00:28:00] Pikes Peak record breaking. Uh, you know, that’s a bit of click bait, so you wanna know what that’s all about. A gentleman drove to the top of Pikes Peak out in Colorado Springs and realized he only had 12 miles of battery range left in his tacan decided, well, we’re gonna ride the brakes the whole way down, or use the regen and see how far we can get.

And actually his test was pretty cool because it was twofold. And I think what was more impressive than anything else was that when they come down to about 11,000 feet from the summit of Pike’s Peak, there’s actually a mandatory brake check and the cops, you know, won’t let you go and things like that.

They seem, you know, numbers as high as like 900 degrees coming from brakes and the tecan, because it’s using the regen system instead of using the brakes and it, plus it has those big P C C B ceramic, you know, ridiculous Porsche racing brakes. Anyway, it was like 67 degrees on the rotor. It was like ambient air temperature.

And he said by the time he was done with it all reached the bottom, he had like regen something like 45 miles of range and. [00:29:00] They went from having 12 miles of range left to get back to the top or wherever to when they got down to the Colorado Springs, they had over a hundred miles. Yeah, I was gonna say it was in two phases.

The way he rode, he’s like, we had X amount when we reached the bottom of Pike’s Peak and because it continues to go down into the city, then they regen even more and they had about a hundred miles of range left. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. So I mean I think, you know, yeah, it, it’s a little bit misleading at first.

What, which records were broken? It was a record for the brake temperature basically, and then maybe even the brake regeneration since that’s obviously new and specific to electrical vehicles. But that’s pretty cool in terms of the capability of the brake region. Yeah, absolutely. Granted, granted your everyday user’s not gonna see that because we don’t, we don’t commute from the top of Pike’s Peak down.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and the other thing too is if those brakes are anything like the ones on the Cayman GT four, I’ve heard from owners that you know, we’ll convert to steel rotors cuz you know, for track use and stuff like that because those P [00:30:00] C C B rotors are almost $1,500 a piece. I mean, can you imagine, I mean, I wouldn’t wanna wear out a set of those rotors coming down off of Pikes Peak on a regular basis.

That would be insane. You know, Pikes Peak is famous for rally and little known fact Porsche entered cars like the nine 11 sc, the 9 59 group B, and then there was an alternative to that known as the 9 53 that they campaigned back in the eighties and they’ve been hinting for years. And now they’re saying that in 2022, Porsche may release a limited production package known as the Safari nine 11.

I’m just thinking about why Anybody cares, right? What’s the point of this? I don’t know. Because if you look into the specs, it’s a nine 11 that’s lifted. It loses a bunch of the features of the nine elevens, typical suspension. Nothing else has really changed the car. They did widen the hips a little bit to put bigger tires underneath of it, but it’s ascent and descent angles or garbage.

You would never use this off-road. So the folks that are [00:31:00] buying it are driving where with it again, they’re driving to their temperature controlled storage unit to flip the car in about 10 years. Yeah, I just feel like Dr. Ferman, Porsche’s like rolling over in his grave hearing about this. I’m like, good god, this is terrible.

Yeah, this, this is purely a collector car. Nobody’s actually going to buy this to drive and it looks awful. I mean, it just looks like at nine 11, it looks like a listed nine 11. Yeah, it looks terrible. Not a fan, but there’s some news coming out of Bugatti. You know, Volkswagen’s Crown Jewel, as they present themselves, is now being run by a 33 year old, but not just any 33 year old.

It’s the head of Rimac. And I actually learned something really important about this article cause there wasn’t any content in it that was of any value other than learning how to properly pronounce his first and last name. When you read it in English, it reads mate Riak, like we’re used to pronouncing Riak.

But apparently the formerly Yugoslavian born now, you know, [00:32:00] Bosnia, Hertz, kava, Croatia, you know, it’s like changed names like 10 times. It’s pronounced Matty and the last name is Rema Rema. I, I mean it’s not Ash and all these other Rimac and all these variants we’re talking about, but you know what, I’m just gonna continue saying Rimac cuz it’s easier and I’ll fumble over it a lot less often.

But one other piece of Golden Nugget inside that article that I pulled was a quote where he talked about how he got started and I thought he was quite ballsy walking up to Kig Zg and saying, Hey, I wanna design an ev, what do I need to do? I’m like, damn, dude, that’s pretty cool. So he’s seen as this like prodigy, right?

He’s seen as kind of like Ferdinand Porsche reborn type of deal. And so this marriage, you know, between Rimac and Bugatti, and obviously with V A G behind the scenes with, you know, 45% of the controlling stock is, is awesome for them putting a lot of money into the companies. And there’s two companies.

There’s Rimac Automotive and there’s the Rimac technology branch and all this kind of thing. But one thing I thought was interesting [00:33:00] personality wise, he tends to run very hot and cold on a lot of things, and he’s very upfront about the things that he talks about. But I like that he realized kind of upfront, and it took a stab at companies that we’ve talked about on previous months of the show where he says that he quickly realized putting electric motors into old cars wasn’t a viable business plan long term.

So he decided instead that he would engineer his own high performance electric cars from the word go. And I’m like, we’ve talked about this a bunch of times, you know, taking an old Aston Martin like DB six and retrofitting an ev, you’re doing a disservice to the collector car market. You know, some people would call ’em an abomination or whatever, but I just, yeah, I agree with him.

I don’t think it’s a viable business solution long term. Good for him. I, I’m glad I like to see this. I think it’s cool. Yeah. I’m excited to see where Bugatti goes. And, and one of his other quotes was, Bugatti has been around for 112 years and he’s here to usher Bugatti for the next 112 years. I mean, that would make him a [00:34:00] total of 145 years old if he makes it that far.

But hey, you know, you never, it could happen as long as it doesn’t come with a Bugatti S u v. I’m perfectly happy with this. Oh God. Well, what’s going on in the rest of lower Saxony? Our friends over at Mercedes and B m W, there’s things coming, right? We’ve got all the, the I variants. M w we got some Mercedes that we’re gonna talk about later.

I guess the most interesting thing, maybe at the Consumer Electronics Show a week or two ago, BMW debuted their technology for color changing paint. You have my attention. Their car. Oh my God. No way. What was that movie? What was that movie where the lady was sitting at her desk and like changing her fingernail colors?

Like with like a pen, like she would tap her fingernails. Do you guys remember that? Yes, I do. I do not remember what movie it was. Some, it was some scifi some show or something, right? Yes, it was a, there was, yeah, I remember exactly, but that’s immediately where my mind went. When [00:35:00] I saw this, I was like, dude, this is gonna be so cool.

Yes and no. Right now it’s limited to gray scale, essentially, so you can shift between black, white, and gray. And the reason is it’s actually using e-reader e ink technology. So that’s why it’s not even paint. It’s a, it’s a wrap. It’s, it’s literally, yeah, some sort of wraps. It’s basically Kindle screens all around the car.

So you’re able to manipulate those, but only in a, in a gray scale, right? You can display your favorite book on the outside of your car, and you can read this as you’re driving by and see, and this is where the problem would lie in, because if this technology expends and they’re able to color or not color right, and people now somehow gain the ability to put inappropriate pictures on the side of their car at will as they’re driving, you know what’s gonna happen?

We don’t need that as a society. You know, as much as I wish I had sometimes letters that I could make magically appear in my rear glass of the car to give them point, [00:36:00] don’t follow me So closely ability, you know, we don’t actually need that ability. It would cause much more problems than, there’s a positive flip side to this.

If it works, it could be implemented on the sides of metro buses and things like that where they could now do changing advertisements rather than those stationary things or those power consuming l e d panels, right? Because this, this EIN stuff is so low power and whatnot. Now again, I’m with you. Once that happens, you know, all of Vegas is gonna turn into that and then it’s gonna get hacked and it’s just gonna be a free for all.

Exactly. Especially during Black Hat and Def Con. Right? And you know, the other space you could see an application for this is. Billboards camouflage, right? Yeah. That’s cam the military and being able to instantly camo vehicles and and things like that. But mainstream society, do we need this? No. No, we don’t need, so is this the verge of like stealth technology yet another like Star Trek technology coming to life?

Right. Well and that’s [00:37:00] another thing we don’t need really. People already can’t drive and we’re gonna cloak a car. They into it. Like really? I, I’ve, they’ve been working on that before, trying to use mirrors and TV screens and stuff. Yeah, I mean there’s definitely scientists out there that are working on the i, I want three things from this technology.

I want three things from this cloaking technology, a card that’s called A Defiant, and I want my g p s to sound like wharf and then it’ll be perfect. Just be like deep space nine. It’d be amazing. Alright, let’s move on from BM W to the world’s fourth largest auto manufacturer. No longer part of the big three STIs.

So they put all these brands together and now they’re fourth largest. I mean, when you go from these microcosms, I mean you suddenly finger, right? I know. You know, win winner or, and you know, we talked about months ago, I think, Brad, you were still here, right? The party was over. The end is nine. The end of the muscle car.

Dodge says, time to go home, pack up your kids. Go. [00:38:00] Well that’s not exactly true because as we know there’s zombie cars and Chrysler lots all over the place. So that means. By the math that they’ve projected here, the Chrysler Charger will now officially be gone by 2024 with EVs arriving sometime in that time period to replace them.

But as we discovered earlier, they’ll be for sale six or eight years from now as well. Right? So I know what Dodge is doing, so they’re gonna create a huge backlog or surplus. Of zombie cars so they can say, yeah, yeah. We stopped making those cars in 2024. Yeah. We’re still padding our bottom line with these cars because we built hundreds of thousands of them in the last three years and they’re still selling, but Yeah.

Yeah. We stopped making ’em, they shouldn’t count against our, our gas, I guess, uh, our miles, my mpg or whatever are, are regulations. And the year 2049, you’ll still be able to buy a viper, you know, it’s, that’s all good. No, but it, it’s fine. So y’all are upset because, oh no, they’re not [00:39:00] gonna make their 10,000 billion horsepower gas gulls anymore, blah, blah, blah.

But it’s okay cuz they’re, they wanna make EVs, which just means they’re gonna make some 9,000 gigawatt atrocity. That is way more power than you need. So that’s fine. Well, I, I mean, dodge is synonymous with idiocy and tire spoke. I mean, let’s just, let’s just boil it back, right? So, I mean, yes. To your point.

Yeah. 9 trillion gigawatts and it’ll just blow the tires off of anything now. Maybe they’ll call it the Hellcat Thunder Cougar, Falcon Bird, red Eye Demon Widebody, big Dick Energy special edition. You know, that’s what it’s gonna come out with later. But this whole never lift campaign that they’re starting to do is their new marketing thing for the next couple of years.

I just don’t get it. It’s like they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth. You know, on one hand if you go back in time and look at some of these articles from like Reuters, you know, they were allegedly fined like hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, you know, for the cafe fines and things like [00:40:00] that because of the Hellcat and other engines and this and that.

And then here we are, you know, still doing all these ridiculous ads and they’re talking about muscle cars and I’m like, this is such an oxymoron, folks. Hot take electric muscle car. Uh, the point of muscle car is big engine, little car, all that kind of stuff. We just need to take all that out of the vocabulary, like we need to just.

Put it to bed. What about the Porsche taking in Turbo Electric Turbo non turbo turbo car. The turbo rotator. Yeah. Yeah. The turbo flux capacitor. Yeah, exactly. How do you have a turbo on an ev? Unless it’s a hybrid turbo. What? I, uh, whatever. I think it’s one of those things where they’re trying to ingratiate people because people understand turbo means it’s better than the regular one.

Or, you know, muscle means better than plastic. Cause people are dumb. Yeah, exactly. It’s all marketing bullshit. In that comes a little ray of like, please tell me it’s a new Dodge Dart. No, it’s not. [00:41:00] The Pojo e legend. Have you guys seen this thing a while ago, right? Yeah. But now they’re talking about actually making it and I’m like, wow.

It is a good looking car. The only, the only downside, it’s a two door. It does look like it’s based sort, sort of on the challenger. But I thought we were done with two door. I mean, I’d drive that. I would too. Now some other news coming outta STIs. And I’m gonna read this, the international automaker that owns brands like Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, Ram, and Pau have entered at a wide ranging agreement with Amazon.

The deal will put Amazon software in STIs vehicles and will also put STIs Electric vans into Amazon’s delivery fleet. I mean, you’ve already seen the Blue Ram vans running around that Amazon bought, so whoop be due there. What I am wondering though, is all Mopar products from this point forward are gonna be Alexa, Alexa.

Turn on Car Bra Alexa, send the coordinates that I just drove to my mistress house, to my wife. [00:42:00] That’s the wrong website. That’s the wrong Alexa. Alexa, please report to my insurance agency that I just did 95 and a 60 and add a loaf of bread to my shopping list. So there’s always renderings flying around.

There’s some pretty cool ones out there. A team put together a rendering of what the Dodge Superbird would look like based on a current Dodge Challenger, and I thought that was pretty neat. Although I don’t think we’re in an era anymore of the big nose and big tail of the Superbird. I mean, that’s a cold throwback, but I couldn’t see parking that at the local Walmart.

Superbird is one of my favorite cars of all time. It’s just so long. I mean, I guess it’s like an F150 or a Silverado right at this point. No, I think they’re longer now. That Alfa Rome male, NEDA, that was floating around for a while, a video link that was out there on YouTube and we posted in our show notes.

I think that’s a really cool re-imagined. Combination of the four C and the eight [00:43:00] C. I think it’s a cool looking car. There was a version of that that I actually posted out on Garage Riot recently where they took that same Nala and redesigned it yet again. Kind of put this, you know, Milan sad, sad clown kind of face on it.

I think it’s a cool looking car. It’s just, I don’t think Alpha’s ever gonna build it. This is that guy that does the Volkswagen renderings. Yeah. And he does a really cool job. So I like them. I like looking at these, you know, they’re a lot of fun, but you know, don’t get my hopes up like that. Don’t tease me.

Don’t. The front end almost looks like the Maserati Mc 12 or whatever. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s where he probably got his inspiration from. And the back is reminiscent of older alphas as well with the big round lights and all that kinda thing. I think it looks cool. I think it does. I I, I can dig it.

So what else is going on in the world at Lanis there? Tanya? Sounds like they’re still having odor problems. Wait, what? In their cars? No, at their factory. You know, there’s some weird stuff going on. Explosions and smelly factories and things like that that we link to in our show notes. But [00:44:00] there’s also this really, weirdly, I’d say almost stupidly named vehicle coming up called the As nom.

And it’s based on a ram. Looks like, I think they misspelled Amazon. Looks like a Bentley got smashed. It’s pretty freaking. It’s terrible. This is the new Aztec. Yeah. And hence the name I suppose. God, I mean, the interior isn’t terrible other than like that weird bubbling seat looks stupid, but the rest of it isn’t even horrible on the inside.

But the outside is just god awful. I mean, you ha you have like wine glass holder in the back, it looks like How luxurious. Rich. Rich people doing rich people things. I mean, I’m gonna say it cuz I figured one of you two were saying what kinda asshole is gonna buy this as? No.

Oh, moving on. So it’s time for us to move on to our traditional domestic news, which is all Chevy and Ford based. Our Chevy and Ford News brought to you in part by american muscle.com, your number one source [00:45:00] for Mopar, Chevy and Ford Parts. So if you’re looking for something new to spruce up your gm, Ford, or Dodge this winter before the track season starts off, remember to head over to american muscle.com.

So what’s going on in the world of gm? Well, it looks like the automaker is going to be dethroned as the number one auto seller in the US and I don’t know that it’s necessarily, we’ll see if it sticks. Toyota is. Feeding them out to be the number one car seller. But given the chip shortages and all the supply chain issues we have had over the last year and whatnot, maybe this is a short term thing and they’ll regain control of their kingdom.

I think it’s a little too early to tell. I feel like those ratings are somewhat misleading or somehow inflated because when we looked at that world map at the end of last year about the top manufacturers in the world, Toyota seemed to come out on top regardless of all this. And I mean, if Chevy’s still selling Impalas and whatnot, zombie cars, I mean, I [00:46:00] still get it.

Toyota is above them in global sales. So I think, oh, so this is America’s largest hobby. This is just America. So global sales, it’s Toyota versus Volkswagen. They passed GM like a long time ago. Toyota. This is just American sales. So GM is number one or was number one and is about to be passed by Toyota.

But a lot of those numbers, 30 plus percent down sales, I think Toyota, but GM had 40 plus percent down sales. Right? And a lot of that’s all driven by the car shortages and this, that and the other. So does it stick or not? I think remains to be seen over the next year or two. Right. So I’m gonna ask this.

What about the F-150? I thought that was like the best selling vehicle of all time in the galaxy and the Milky Way, but that’s the only thing from Ford. Oh, ok. That makes sense. Do they sell anything else? I don’t think the F150 sells very well overseas either. Right, but this is, this is North America.

Right. So it’s just American sales. They’re all in Texas. Exactly. It’s a big state. It’s a big [00:47:00] state. It is a big state. To continue that thread on gm, it makes sense in a way if Toyota’s surpassing them because they’re wasting time on things like, A 10.4 liter V8 as a direct response to the Dodge Elephant crate engine.

No, I’ve gotta say here, anytime you’re building a thousand horsepower motor, it’s not a waste of time. I don’t care who you’re what, what do you need if we, okay. Okay. A hundred horsepower per liter. Is that really that good? Should that thing be making like 10,000 horsepower at TED Leaders? I mean, I don’t understand.

If it was a bmw, it would, but then it would blow up every 5,000 miles. Well, you know that, that’s, that’s true. I just, I don’t understand why they would waste the time. Again, we’ve talked about this before. I feel as though, despite the list that we revered earlier in the episode, Chevy’s like late to the party on this whole EV thing, even worse is the irony that Dodge is like, all right, we’re done.

Party’s over. And you know, there’s always that one guy in the back going, well, my glass ain’t empty yet, so I’m gonna [00:48:00] hang out till I’m done drinking. That’s what I feel Chevy’s doing right now with this 10 liter v8. I just, I don’t understand. I mean, it was because nobody’s buying their cars. So they’ve gotta sell motors instead.

Drag racing is still a thing. People still drag race and street race and everything and then they’re putting these motors in, you know, after they blow up their Camaro SS motor, they’re gonna go and replace it with one of these, I suppose. So make it completely undrivable. Not everybody wants to put a 1.8 T and everything.

Eric, I thought that’s very true. You know, I wanna make big power out of a small displacement. It’s like the genie from Aladdin, but, but speaking of other things, gm, what do we think? You know, the new Z oh six came out during the winter. What do we think? The C eight I think is cool. The Z oh six is just a more cool version of it.

Whatever. Could you tell me the difference between the two? Nope. Um, the Big Wang, oh, is that, oh, okay, cool. I got it. This is zero six wing got aerodynamic stuff. It’s got more power. I don’t know, we’re gonna dig into that a little bit more, but you know, as much as there was so [00:49:00] much hype and oh, they released it early and they didn’t do that on purpose, te he, he, he, I feel like it fell on deaf ears.

It was like the same thing as when Volkswagen announced the new golf R during the reelection and it was just like, yeah, nobody cares, dude. It’s like, yet another golf R you know, yet another zero six. Show us something different. Granted, the new C eight is different enough being a mid engine Corvette.

What I wanna see though, does the I S A Corvette. Get an upgrade because of the advancements they’ve made with the zero six. How does that change the race cars in the future? I, I think that goes the other way. I think they did the development on the s acar and it’s trickling down to the zero six. You know, that might make more sense.

You’re right. Speaking of things that were developed and trickling down to cars, did you hear about Ford? They developed a retractable exhaust tips. I have one question. Why? Yep. That’d be it. I mean, and the answer someone would probably give you is why not in the era of the Ford Lightning and EVs, why are we dealing with, you know, [00:50:00] retracting exhaust tips?

What would it do? It’s for off-road mode. They’re probably gonna put this on like the new Raptor or something to give it more approach angle or whatever the rear angle is. You retract the exhaust so it’s not like directly under the bumper or whatever. And if you slam the tail down on a rock or something like that, because Jeep guys do that shit all the time, then you’re not gonna like destroy your exhaust.

All right. But they’re coming out with the new Bronco, Dr. Which is the V8 powered Baja monster that apparently you can buy based on the Ford Bronco. Yeah. So this is probably gonna be a feature on that. And it’s, it’s, it’s for, I mean, it says in the article, it’s for off-roading to help give you better clearance.

Why not just make a shorter exhaust or with side exit or something else? Because then maybe a permanent shorter exhaust might not qualify or again, pass government regulations. And so all the aftermarket guys are gonna do what with their stock exhaust. Throw it away. Okay. Just wanted to make sure [00:51:00] when they put their Chevy crate motor, you know, to keep, that’s how you make a fast forward.

You put a Chevy motor in it. If you listen to Bobby Parks, one of our former guests moving on, we talked about the Chevy crate motor. Did you guys hear about the new Ford crate motor that’s coming out? No. Oh, it’s called the, is it a term new term new, uh, what is it? Terminator? No. Dominator or they call it the illuminator.

It is an EV crate motor. The people can buy to retrofit into whatever vehicle they like. So see, that’s a step in the right direction. 10.4 liters of whatever that cast iron thing is or this, which would you buy? 10.4 liters. Whatcha talking about? I already knew that answer. I knew you were gonna sit that.

Oh man. It depends on how expensive this is and how compact it is. Cause if you can put one of these at each wheel, then you got something. Yeah, that’s, that’s true. That’s be hotness. You know, STIs isn’t the only one that’s got fans doing renderings and things like that of vehicles and coming up with really cool concepts.

And I tell you what, I [00:52:00] am really in love with this Ford Ranger that was modded with a Mustang face. What do you guys think? I think this looks slick. I can dig it. You gotta get rid of the Mustang logo or the, the Mustang icon. That’s the Mach T. You didn’t know that. That’s the Mustang Mach T. It’s the pickup truck.

The mock trash. I think it looks cool with the Shelby stripes. It looks super aggressive. I mean, how they did that running the flares. I, I just like all of that. The big wheels. I mean, yeah. That’s pretty cool. I can, I can dig it. I like it. I don’t hate it. Wait, that, wait, you don’t hate it. Your pickup truck.

You don’t hate Tanya. Think of all the mulch. Gosh. Wow. So then if you don’t hate that, what do you think of the seventies retro inspired vintage pickup electric that they came out with? I don’t hate that because I don’t hate the concept of taking the old cars and making them new again and electrified. I don’t necessarily love it cuz I don’t think it’s a particularly good [00:53:00] looking pickup truck to have done this with.

But they have. I also don’t think that’s ever gonna happen. Yeah. Other than the one they’ve built. Because there’s no way it would pass any safety regulations because. It is essentially the original but with an electric motor inside. And so there is thin ass door cards and, and the roof liner and all that.

And I was just thinking from a safety aspect, how could you actually mass produce this? The thing would become huge because there’s no room for the 1800 airbags that we need in the cabin. Yeah, no, you’re a hundred percent right. You know, this is right along the lines of what Hyundai did with the pony when they kind of brought it up to speed and did the ev.

I think everybody’s doing these heritage pieces. You’re even starting to see some things like that now from Audi with Ken Block where they’re, you know, taking old Audi Cuatros and doing some stuff like that. I think it’s cool. I think you’re right. If this had been the Ford, the F 100 that was in like the Expendables Stallone’s pickup, yes.

That would’ve been super cool. Yeah. This is just some boring, [00:54:00] blocky, like whatever I hate to say, it’s like Ford Square body. It’s like whatever. Mount Mannan doesn’t like it anyway, so it’s all good. It’s a Ford. Well, they didn’t do it themselves any favor with like the kind of bland ish color. Or those, those wheels, oh my god, I know those are the original hubcaps, but there’s more news about Ford in this past winter.

What’s going on? They finally released the new F-150 Lightning price. So if you were looking to order one of those, oh, what’s it gonna cost? What’s it gonna cost? Well, they got four variations. They’ve got the pro that comes in starting at 39, 974. So you were asking for that sub 40,000 ev. Here you go.

You’ve got the pro model at 39, 974, which you’re forgetting about the 9 75 destination charge. Oh, and you want floor mats and you want a bedliner and you want wheels and headlights. Yeah. Yeah. You mean actually the. $1,695 destination charge that they list an article as well. [00:55:00] Ooh. But it is eligible for $7,500 federal tax credit.

So Booya still sub 40,000 now. Whoa. Wait, so is the pro the base model well after the dealer markup? No, just kidding. So, all right, so we’ve got the pro, and then we’ve got the X L T at 52, 974. That’s a huge jump. Well, you’ve jumped from 230 mile range to 230 mile range in the X L T SR version or 300 mile range with the X L T E R.

Is that 80,000 for that? No, no, no. This is all, well, you know what, they don’t differentiate the those SR. And er. Price differences. So I don’t know. Uh, my guess is the, the xr, that’s the, the lower range, that’s the 52, 974 plus $1,600. And then the other one, the ER is probably 60, which bridges the gap to the next version, which is the Lariat.

And how much is that? 1 [00:56:00] 67. 4 74. But now we’ve gone to 230 miles of range or 300 miles of range. But you get your leather seats and your navigation. Ah, now if you’re feeling real bullish, you can get the platinum a hundred grand, right? No, boy, it’s lower. 90,000. Oh my god. 8 74. And you’ll get 280 miles of range.

Range and you’ll get a 10 year car note speaking of a hundred thousand dollars vehicles. Right. We were out in Ohio recently and walking through the parking lot of a Meyer, we spotted a brand new Grand Wagoneers driving my old, you know, what would be considered old school by now, you know, WK two Jeep Grand Cherokee.

And I told my wife, I said, Hey, look, it’s the new Grand Wagoneers. And she stopped dead in the parking lot. And she looked at it, she goes, and she just didn’t say anything. And I said, what, what are you thinking? And she goes, it doesn’t say anything. And I said, you know, that’s a hundred thousand plus dollars.

Right? And she’s like, [00:57:00] Why, and then just turned and walked away. Like she didn’t understand it. And I’m like, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen her have that reaction to like a car. Normally she says, ah, it’s ugly. It’s this, I don’t like it. I don’t like, you know, the cut of the back or whatever it might be.

But she just stood there and like didn’t say anything. She goes, Why, but I will say it is bigger than I thought it would be. I mean, I know that the new Grand Cherokee is big, and I’ve seen those on the road, but the Wagoner, for some reason, looks time and a half wider just because of the way that nose is and the cut of the back.

And it’s just, it’s big, real big. I have to say the gr, the new I’ve seen the Grand Cherokees, I think they look terrible. They look so disproportioned. It’s that reverse angular nose, like an old B M W that it just doesn’t look like it looks like ProMag. It’s just very strange. Yeah, it’s very strange. They, they’re not good looking at all.

I’m, your model was definitely the last good looking Grand Cherokee. I mean, and take that and multiply it out on that grand wagoneers. Cause I mean, granted, they’re all basically the same underneath, but I was just like, [00:58:00] dang, it’s more grand. Well and the other thing too was with that whole front, with all those LEDs, like we talked about stuff, cause we saw it at night.

She’s like, is that an ev? And I said, no. And she’s like, a hundred grand for what? And I’m like, it’s a Jeep. I don’t, I don’t know what to tell you, but you know who just announced yet another ev a brand nobody cares about cuz they’re not on top anymore. Gm. Yep. They announced the new electric Silverado again late to the party.

Right. How long have we been talking about the Lightning and talking about all this other kind of stuff? GM comes to the party and says, oh, we’re gonna have an electric Silverado. Okay. In two years? Yeah. 2024. Great. Awesome. Hopefully it’s not as bad as that hybrid suburban that came out with like 10 years ago.

I was gonna say It does. It does come with a destination charge of 1695 too. But they swear that any resemblance to the avalanche is purely coincidental. You noticed that, right? Yeah. Even though it has the folding mid gate tail like the avalanche had, that’s the [00:59:00] only you know that Yes. Is like the avalanche.

But otherwise, It’s not the avalanche, it’s a coincidence. There was one last bit of domestic news that I wanted to cover because it was super Click Beatty. I think it is the most click Beatty thing we have ever had on this show. And oh, by the way, folks, if I have a moment to point it out, we have covered well over, I believe the number was 550 articles on this show.

So as we plow through these, This one came across my desk and it reads, Ford beats Tesla for best growth performing auto stock in 2021. And I said, wait, what? So according to the article, you know, Ford’s stock grew 140%, this and that and the other thing. And I wanted to compare the stock prices $6 to, I mean, yeah, the big, the big three has always been the same.

It’s like, it’s a $20 stock. It hasn’t really budged. STIs stock has changed significantly from when it was Chrysler to FCA and so on, on the line. They’re, they’re actually doing really, really well. But to say that your stock is doing [01:00:00] better than Tesla, who’s sitting at like $1,100 a share and you’re coming in at $25 and 16 cents.

Yeah, good try. You know, MSNBC money, whatever. I get it. If you play with the numbers, We made a dollar more. So it’s like 150%. In reality, Tesla’s stock is the highest grossing automotive stock on the planet at, at a four digit number. I mean, nobody’s in that range. I mean, granted Audi and Porsche, you know, they’re in the multiple hundreds of dollars per stock, but, you know, traded on the Nasdaq, Tesla’s where it’s at.

I guess we gotta wrap out that domestic news with some domestic adjacent news by talking about JDM News. And Toyota’s got some cool stuff. They unveiled or revealed the Taco Zilla and no folks, it is not a giant burrito or taco you would get at your stand down the street. I was thinking it was like the Oscar Meyer wiener van when I read the, when I read the [01:01:00] article title, you know, they could sell these as food trucks and to Taco Di.

The owners should buy these and sell food out of their taco zilla and they, I think it’s cool. It’s a off-road version of the Tacoma with a camper on the back. It’s not earth shattering or groundbreaking by anything like that. It, I guess, pays homage to the Toyota Chinook from 1976, the versatile convertible wagon.

Oddly enough, I was out in Phoenix not too long ago and I actually, I drove from the mid 400 to Phoenix as a matter of fact, and I saw one of those old school Toyota campers. Out on the highway because out there they don’t rust and it never snows. And I was just like, I was kinda chuckling to myself going, man, that old Toyota’s still running.

You know, it’s like a Camry engine, it’s the old taco, you know, all that kinda stuff. I think this is cool as a throwback, I just don’t know who’s gonna buy one. I mean, the van Life market’s pretty. Small, but the people in that, you know, subculture are [01:02:00] pretty serious. So there are people that do this themselves to big like Ford, F four 50 s and stuff like that, which is a terrible vehicle if they actually take it offroading, cuz it’s way too big to fit in those little tight places out in the wilderness.

This is more believable as one of those overlanding type. As a motor home slash off-road. Yeah. Yeah. But my question is, you know, with Covid being where it is right now, right? It keeps kind of bouncing up and down. Has the van Life RV market plateaued, or is it still on the rise? Like it was, let’s say in 2020, I had a friend that was looking for a van before Covid, and he could not find one.

So he waited and then after Covid he started looking again and prices were double what they were when he was originally looking. Actually, one of our members, Andrew, he just bought a van, he bought a transit to transport. His ailing mother took him forever to find a van. He couldn’t get anything he wanted, he couldn’t, he got a transit, he couldn’t get eco-boost, he couldn’t get all wheel drive because [01:03:00] they just didn’t have ’em anywhere.

The vans that he would call the dealerships about, he would schedule an appointment to go look at it, and then it would be gone before he even gets a chance to get there. It essentially bought the first one that he could actually set his hands on. Wow. So the, the market is just terrible. It’s, it’s terrible.

If you’re looking to buy anything, I keep saying this, there’s tons of used cars to go around, so there are a million PT cruisers out there to choose from all kinds of lifestyles. Andrew Banks’s. Next car should be a PT Cruiser, not a neon. He needs a pt. A neon cruiser painted like his Viper sitting next to it in the garage.

No convertible, you know, so he can let that fro blow in the wind going down the road. We’ll talk more about Andrew in the coming weeks for sure. We have some news for our friends on two wheels. Oh my God. Two wheel news Creton CR 700 W Motorcycle brings the rotary engine back into production. Why I, I know there’s [01:04:00] die hard rotary people out there, but I’m with you.

I keep saying it. If the Germans thought it was a good idea, they would’ve kept with it. They don’t abandon things. I mean, just look at the nine 11. They think it’s a good idea. They keep going at it with that motor hanging over the butt. This is right up there with that jet turbine motorcycle. As far as just bad ideas, I mean, the Viper motorcycle was a bad idea too, but that’s hella cool.

I mean, you got a V 10 between your legs. It’s kinda neat. That’s what she said. But on the other end of that pendulum swing, Bugatti is revealing a motorcycle. Well, Bugatti’s revealing an electric two wheel apparatus. What do you mean apparatus, which is a medical device. Mode of transportation. It is not, does it look like that Mercedes we talked about?

No. So this is actually scooter, not like a moped scooter, think razor scooter. But before [01:05:00] you make that face, this is the best looking razor scooter ever. I give them props for a hot little razor scooter. Like this thing is sick looking, but it’s just a fricking scooter. I mean, but it does have a sport mode.

You unlock it with the key. No, just kidding. But it does have a, a sport mode. And how much does it cost? Yeah, that’s the bigger question. It costs so much that they had to leave the price out. Oh, typical. Typical. First of all, is this actually now the baby one because it’s the electric, you know, for children.

But two, I thought the coolest thing about this is that l e d that puts the Torre Bugatti logo on the ground, like that rear light, I think that’s like the coolest. It’s got ground effects. Yo, what? Razor scooter didn’t have ground effects. It is pretty slick. Would I pay the $97,000 that this probably costs?

No, I can’t write it. I don’t fit. [01:06:00] I love it. It’s answer to everything. I’m looking at the weight ratings right here, and yeah, I don’t, oh, damn. But the funny thing is, it says it takes, its styling cues from the devo. Oh, stop is the band. No, the, oh, you weren’t here for that episode. We talked about this 40 run Bugatti.

They only made 40 of ’em. It was called the Devo. It looks like it was made by Lego. Say no more. I, I thought it was kind of neat actually. But you know, since we’re talking about oddballs, why don’t we jump right into Lost and Found. Brad, your favorite section Lost and Found, brought to you by the Dodge Dart Best Selling 2016 car of 2021.

So apparently there’s a Ferrari powered boat for sale right now. It’s the world’s only allegedly Ferrari powered boat. You can pick it up for a cool fifth. Million dollars. This thing is slick though. I mean, this is [01:07:00] handcrafted all wood speedboat built in the fifties with a Ferrari power plant. This is old school.

Awesome old world. Awesome. I, I love this thing. Now I think it’s funny that this came across our desk and about a week or two later just happened to turn on motor trend and there was an episode of Phantom War’s Garage where they were building a replica of this thing. And I thought, oh man, I mean, I, I guess it’s targeted advertising.

Who knows? It’s the internet doing its thing. Skynet. I think this is cool. I think this is neat. Well, I like the fact that you can buy a smaller version of it if you want. It’s called the Baby two i I, it’s called the, it’s not called anything, but you can get a one eighth scale model for a modest $8,500.

Oh, nevermind. I’ll buy Miata 16, 1600, $1,600 destination charge. The answer is always Miata. This thing’s cool though. I would, I would rock it. I don’t, probably don’t fit, but I would rock it. So yes, if you’re in the market for a used vehicle, you’ve missed out on this one. You can [01:08:00] still buy your PT Cruiser, but you can no longer buy your car of your dreams.

The 2000 Chevrolet Metro, is it a coop or a cab? It’s a hatchback. Oh, it’s an egg. It’s an egg. It’s an egg. It’s a white egg. 400 miles on it. This thing was pristine, perfect specimen, really, of the automobile, and it sold for a whopping, you know, I hope you’re sitting down. $18,000, $18,200 for a geome That’s 22 years old.

Geo Metro? Yes. Oh, what are people thinking? It says here the buyer is Andrew Bank. So with only 400 miles, then it qualifies to be, you know, top spot on, bring a trailer. So that should easily, like, guy should double his money by listing it immediately. Right. Yeah. Here’s a question for you. What do you think is more ridiculous that this car sold for [01:09:00] $18,200 or that E 30 sold for an astronomical amount of money back when it’s sold for a quarter million bucks for that M three?

Yeah, I mean just the numbers are insane. I talked to Donovan all the time about this cuz you know, he’s in that market and he’s always looking at stuff and you know, we go bounce ideas back and forth and it’s just the bring a trailer stuff is nuts. And I hate to call them out all the time, but it’s just, I don’t know, it’s insane.

And the conversation I had with like Chris Bright about the things they’re doing over at, you know, collector, part exchange and stuff like that, it’s just such a weird world right now with all these online marketplaces and you know, bring a trailer used to be the place where we’d go and salivate over cars going, oh man, I wish I could buy that.

It’s actually pretty reasonably priced now. You go there and go, what the hell are they smoking? Like, what is this? It’s nutty. You know, the same is true of eBay and a lot of those other sites that they just. Suddenly get out of control, you know, when they’re self-managed and and whatnot. But I hate the fact that Bring a trailer has now become this, you know, high watermark litmus test for when you’re selling a car.

It’s like, well, what is it? What’s it worth on? Bring a trailer. You know, what did the last [01:10:00] one sell for? And it’s like, that’s like saying, what did the last Camaro sell for on Barrett Jackson? I’m not gonna pay that kind of price for your Yeah, because your Camaro is not that Camaro. Exactly. Exactly. And so shut up.

I know what, I have no low balls. Don’t low ball me, bro. But speaking of low ball offers, we have a new, I guess, subsection of the Lost and Found. We’re calling it the Andrew Bank question. And how does that work exactly, Brad? Basically you pick the most expensive car you can find for the cheapest price you can get it.

Oh, so you sort from lowest to highest. Yes, yes. What can we put in the bank? What can we put in the bank? A Lamborghini Gallardo for $35,000. All right. That’s a good deal. So what’s the catch? It’s been stolen a handful of times. It was a drug. No, I may have been. It ran and drove when part, you know, every great ad starts that way and repay it twice.

It’s not the most pristine Lamborghini out there on the market. Convertible [01:11:00] top doesn’t work, eh? It’s just win resistance. Anyway, leave top up. You’re good. It’s probably a $30,000 fix right there. Pay $35,000 for the car and another 30 grand to fix the convertible top. You know, I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t want a convertible supercar for whatever reason, none of them appeal to me.

Whether it’s the Ferrari, the Porsches, the Lamborghinis, I just, I don’t want any of them. They’re the only ones I fit in. Think you’d want the extra structural rigidity for when you crash it. Not you, but the yous that crash them. You know, the, the two yous that crashes. The Andrew Bank. If you’re listening, you can go buy this car.

You should sell both the Dodge Vipers that you’ve purchased and buy this car. Yeah, I’ll pass. But moron put it in the bank. Maybe that’s what we should call it. Put it in the bank next month as we look for more of these hot deals. So not just the lost and found, but what’s the best, cheapest thing you can find?

It’s some sad news since I like to cover historical things, and you guys know I’ve mentioned many times [01:12:00] before about Lotus and the Lotus family, you know, the Chapman’s and whatnot. Unfortunately, the late Colin Chapman, his wife outlived him by many, many years. Colin Chapman died in 1982. His wife, Hazel Chapman, finally died at the age of 94 here during the winter of 2021, leading into 22.

You say finally, like you were hoping or expecting to die any minute she finally did it. She finally kicked the bucket, that old bag, she finally died. Probably wrong choice of words, but the sad reality of all that is she is the legacy of Lotus. She inspired Colin. He built the first Lotus race car for her.

There’s a lot of stuff that goes around her story, their marriage, the company, and the one still secret that has now gone to the grave. Is, where does the name come from? Nobody knows that. And the family, I guess, is under oath to not disclose it. It was something very personal to Colin and I was just kind of hoping that maybe [01:13:00] we would find out the secret.

But, you know, sad day for the automotive world because she was a huge influencer. Both of them obviously, you know, big parts of Formula One and things like that. So our, our hearts go out to the Chapman family and on that comes news of New Lotus EVs and, and things like that of the future. So we’ll see where the brand goes.

I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. It really has survived, you know, the trials and tribulations of, of war and, and economy and racing and, and everything. But I guess that’s a great segue to talk about the future since we are kind of dabbling there with the future of Lotus. Let’s talk about new random EVs and concepts, the Pininfarina Batista.

Okay, so of course I’m gonna like it because Pininfarina, you know, famed for styling new numerous Ferraris over the decades, but did you look at those specs? Seems like it’s gonna be pretty slow. I mean, 1900 brake horsepower. That’s it. The new Dodge will have 9,000, so it’ll be okay. I think it’s cool looking.

The price tag is, the price tag is hefty. I mean, two and a half million [01:14:00] dollars for this thing. It’s considered, it is what it is. It’s considered a hyper ev It is very Ferrari esque because obviously Penny Farina Penns so many Ferraris and whatnot over the years. I, I, I think it’s a good looking car more than you can afford, pal.

Yeah. Pin ferena. I would buy one if I was in that market and then Nissan revealed an electric pickup truck. What? You know what, yes I did. And you know what? I will give them profs for saying B m W. Let me show you how it’s done. You wanna make your grills bigger? We’ll screw you. We’re just gonna make the whole front end a grill.

That thing is heinous. It’s even see-through, I’d love to see the women that drive this wearing a skirt. That would be great. They all wear yoga pants now. Brad. Nobody wears skirts. Oh, true, true, true. Lululemon. By stocking them, I mean, it’s athleisure wears, no, excuse me. I mean, it’s ugly from every angle.

The color is ugly. The wheels are ugly. What? This thing is awesome. What you talking about? It’s, [01:15:00] oh my God, it’s the definition of ugly. No, Nancy, you can write words on the back. Put the words in the Microsoft, on the Nissan. I wanna do that, but we shouldn’t be allowed. Oh, the little heart emojis. Oh, I love the cap.

Oh, this thing is awesome. The, uh, the cap looks like a Nissan 200 or 300, 200 SX or whatever, 2 50, 2 70 sx whatever. The one That’s a drift car now. Oh, I know what you’re talking about. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a 200 SX or something like that. That’s terrible. This thing’s cool looking, man. I mean, it’s a concept car.

All right. Like it looks like what? It is a concept. Okay. I I, this concept is awesome. I, I get it. But I want, I know that concepts are not supposed to be functional, and I understand that the grill is the entire front end of this thing. Do those headlights actually work the way they’re laid out? Probably. I wanna see it to believe it, but let’s move on.

It’s, it’s horrible. There are no headlights. It’s just Nissan. That’s, it’s Well, that’s my point. Like do they actually work? No. So here’s two things [01:16:00] that I never thought I would hear in the same sentence, and I gotta get your take on this, Brad, because I know you live in the Toyota Lexus Camp Hydrogen off-road.

Lemme say that again. Hydrogen off-road. Hmm. Why not? I mean, you can do an electric off-road. Apparently they’re proving all of that. The thing I find more interesting is it’s a Lexus side by side. I was wondering if we were gonna get to that. It’s a, looks like a re rebadged can-am or, or any of those. I mean, we have a couple side by side enthusiasts in the club here, and I’d be really curious to find out what they think about the Lexus hydrogen off-road.

This is another vehicle that begs the question why, why? The answer is probably, why not? No thank you. I’ll pass. I, I mean, it’s Toyota doing Toyota things. This is very true. I will give you, what do you do when you’re the number one manufacturer? Whatever the hell you want. You throw hydrogen bombs and two side by sides I mean mean they’re the, they’re the only ones really trying to develop hydrogen [01:17:00] technology.

Yeah. In cars. So for them to just stick, extend that to this isn’t really a. Shocking. All right. I would wanna keep this away from Daniel’s square body, though. A thousand percent. But let me, let me put it to you this way. In, in light of Betty White, and you know, everything that’s happened in the last couple weeks, so picture it, Florida 2022, the Lexus hydrogen golf cart, that would’ve made more sense to me then, whatever this is.

Right? But then they, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t even have bothered with the hydrogen. It would’ve just been electric. Oh, bing binging. When I looked at it, it kind of looks like a funky golf cart anyway, because it’s, you know, it’s more upright side by side than like the sportier ones that are out there now.

These UTVs and stuff that exist. It kind of made me wonder why the big brands haven’t gotten into luxury golf carts for some of these retirement communities. I think people would buy Lexus. Electric or hydrogen golf cart, wouldn’t you? I think their customers all die before they take delivery because [01:18:00] chips moving on.

Tanya mentioned earlier she wanted to talk about Mercedes again. They had unveiled that, I don’t even remember what it was, but it was heinous looking. The E Q s, it looks like a suppository, as Mark Shank said. Yeah, unfortunately. But now in their whole EQ line, cuz that’s gonna be their electric line vehicle.

They’ve unveiled a new concept. I don’t know how I feel about the way it looks. It doesn’t green Mercedes, but it screams vintage ASIN or something. I agree. I agree. The interesting thing about this, which is going to be the EQ XX or something like that, the vision EQ XX is, I guess it’s concept name, it’s claiming on simulation.

To get 620 miles on a single range. So that would outpace everything available right now if they could actually do this in production versus simulated on, on a computer. So the question is, what has Mercedes unlocked right or not unlocked? And who are they getting their batteries from? Right? [01:19:00] Because I’m hearing a lot lately about, you know, Tesla and Panasonic partnering up, things like that.

They say that drag co-efficient on this thing is super low. It’s like 0.17 to 0.2 depending on where you read. The more I look at this thing from the different angles, to your point, reminiscent of an astin, it actually reminds me even more so of the new McLaren long tail. It just has that look to it, especially from the rear, the front, from certain angles.

I love it. And other angles I sort of hate it. It, it’s got a weird like sour C nine thing going on for me, for the front. It looks kind of like a race car, but it’s not. It’s just, it’s big. I think that’s the issue I take with it. It’s like I wanna, it’s like those Mercedes from like 10 years ago where it was like, we’re gonna do the low roof line on a four-door to try to make it look small.

But in reality it’s like a limousine or my box or something. I’m like, I don’t know, the, the wheels take away from it. Give me those manhole covers from like the late nineties and, and stuff like that. Like even something [01:20:00] retro would look better than what’s on here. I don’t know. I’m not sold yet. I’m intrigued not just from the technology standpoint, but.

Even this design, there’s so much room for improvement and knows what this would actually turn into given it’s still in a concept form. And we already know how concepts never end up looking like the real thing, but Mercedes is in fact doing things and you know who else is still doing things? Sony, and I hear it’s not the PlayStation five.

Well, you can’t find one of those, but you can find a Sony electric car. What? What? Well, not yet. Those are still concepts too. However, we talked about, so it’s the PS five.

We talked about a while ago, which I think it was two years ago at ces, Sony unveiled the vision s their possible entry into electric cars. And this past year at the Consumer Electronics Show, they unveiled the vision S zero two, which is their S U [01:21:00] V entry if they actually ever do this. Right? First things first, they put the vision S one in a trash compactor, right?

I mean, that’s what this thing looks like. It looks like they squashed it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, cool. Unfortunately for me, they look better, sort of, but they look too much like Teslas. I think the front of the vision S one, let’s call it, that looks like a tecan, which I’m okay with. I like the fact that it has like legit wheels, stuff like that.

I mean, kind of re-reviewing this car now looking at it, you know, side by side with the other one compared to the original, like, you know, auto show debut pictures that we saw at C es and whatnot. Here’s the biggest problem I have with these EVs. They have so much power and we talk about it, you know, many times, you know, who needs a grocery getter that goes zero to 60 in two seconds and all this kinda stuff.

Aesthetically, why do we need these heinous freaking wheels? I mean, it makes the cars look like hot garbage. The vision [01:22:00] S the original one. I think it’s understated. I would drive that. If you told me that was a Sony, I wouldn’t believe you. I would tell you, oh that’s like a Hyundai. Or that’s, you know, some sort of other, maybe Toyota or something like that.

I just, I don’t know. But this other thing, it’s redeeming value is not the outside. I think the interior is super cool. I’m even a fan of this big ridiculous Star Trek dashboard that’s in it. I dunno how I feel about all these new dashboards that are nothing but screens. But the seats look like they, uh, would cradle you quite nicely.

I’m not saying these screens aren’t gonna break, I just think aesthetically Sony’s done a good job. It looks cool. Well, and we should expect that from them. If anything, this thing should have a killer sound system in it. I, I agree with that. And really good display systems, right, because that’s what they know how to do.

Exactly. And I mean, the other interesting thing. Where he who shall not be named Musk, refuses to use technology. You know, we’re still using camera technology, like [01:23:00] literal cameras for the, you know, all the sensors and all that stuff. Sony’s like, nah, we’re doing lidar. Nice. It takes a combination of all those things, right?

Well, it does, but certain folks, Musk refuses basically Ha has said that he’s not gonna use it, and it’s like why? It’s. More advanced than anything else. Who knows what those reasons are? I don’t recall. At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see. You know, again, I think what we said is, you know, this is more about the technology versus the actual car.

So this is a way for them to showcase to all the other auto manufacturers. This is what we bring to the table. Do you wanna come buy our dashboards, our sound systems? Da da da. Oh, hey. And also our LIDAR sensor technology for autonomous driving is, Super cool. Yeah, and that goes back to what the guy from Rimac was saying as well, where that’s part of how he got his start, was licensing some of his ideas and his technology to other companies.

So this is an opportunity, not for Sony to make cars, but license some of their ideas. So I [01:24:00] agree with you there. Get to sell their te sell their technology. Now, I will say this about the Teslas from a business perspective, it makes a thousand percent sense to not retrofit the lidar into the cars. Because if you look at it from the perspective, like the big three, how much it takes to make a change on a vehicle, it’ll cost them probably $200,000 to figure out how to put in one LIDAR sensor on one corner of the car.

If they’re trying to minimize and maximize like their profits and stuff and, and all the, you know, cost and profits and all that, it’s not advantageous for them to go back and redesign the model three right now. No, but he could have already put the lidar in. That’s part of the point he like refuses because it’s not like Lidar just came out last year.

So he had opportunity cuz since he’s been building cars from the ground up. Yeah. To have started with that technology. And he’s refused so far for whatever the reasons are, would need to investigate it. That actually is a great segue into, we would be remiss, since we’re already talking about it, Tesla’s raising their prices yet again.

Yes. [01:25:00] Which is, you know, there’s never a reason. Fine. Probably supply chain chips, the moon phase, climate change, who knows? But yes, the prices on all their models at the same time are increasing. Believe it’s like two to four grand depending on, on the model, which isn’t a lot, but it’s not insignificant either.

Right. And it kind of pushes that model three that I thought was supposed to be this entry level, low priced vehicle to almost mid 40 thousands now, which I don’t know about anybody else, but 40 plus thousand for a car is pretty fricking expensive. They’re raising their prices because Home Depot prices went up.

Ooh damn. The cost of plywood is pretty expensive these days. It’s true, it’s true. Bazinga. But then they’re going into partnerships with companies like that’s a little bit misleading cuz they’re not going into a partnership with Hertz. There’s no contract apparently between Tesla and Hertz. But Hertz has put in orders for a hundred thousand Teslas model threes and and Wise, [01:26:00] or maybe they’re all model threes, basically to have on their lots as rental cars.

And you can in fact already rent Teslas from Hertz facilities. I don’t know which ones, but if you’re flying into LAX at any time, I did check and you can reserve Currently in model three, the Model Ys are sold out or rented out. You know, I looked at the price and at first I was like, dang, that’s expensive.

But then I’m like, well, is it really? So it is really expensive. So my bigger question is, Do they still ask you to prepay for the fuel on return? Cause they, well they gotta charge it up when you return it to the airport. Right? That’ll be an interesting question is how much they, you know, make it a premium.

If you pre-fill, you always end up paying a little bit more than if you’ve got your fuel on yourself before you returned it. So I don’t know what they’ll do with the electrification, but you find yourself in lax believe my rental dates were, I’m sure they won’t change, but I was looking sometime at the end of February for giggles for $125 and 35 cents a day.

You too can rent [01:27:00] a model three standard range. Tesla. I mean that’s the level where you can rent like the upper luxury cars when you’re paying, you know, 120, $150 a day. I mean, at this Hertz you could rent the elite sports car. Ooh. Which is a V4 from the picture Camaro charger or Mustang for a hundred thirty three eighty five a day.

You could also rent the premium sports car. Convertible, which shows a picture of a Camaro for $145, 58 cents a day. I think at the end of all that, I would still take the Tesla. I don’t wanna force cylinder Camaro and I still get a Chevy Impala for $15 a day. I her spot, seven 50 of ’em recently. Yes. No, that was budget.

I mean, the hundred $25 a day is pretty expensive. If you’re on a budget, you’re not gonna spring for that. I mean, granted, the cheapest vehicle that you could rent right now on the days I chose at LAX is an economy, two or [01:28:00] four door, and they show a Chevy of AO two door in the picture, no, sorry, Chevy Spark in the picture.

$81 and 27 cents a day. I mean, that’s LA prices. I mean, if you were LA prices, if you were in the middle of Omaha, it’s like $12 a day, like Brad was saying. But you can buy a lot of gas at 125 bucks a day, you know? So in the rental car world, and, and you gotta look at how renters use rental cars. I mean, unlike my trip from the Mint to Phoenix where I was putting on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles for the person that’s, you know, flying into town, buzzing around, doing some meetings and whatever, is it really worth renting a Tesla?

I don’t know. I mean, it obviously would depend on what city you’re flying into. Cuz if they don’t have a good charging network, you don’t wanna have to be dealing with that hassle of you’re in a new city that you don’t know and you’re gotta run to meetings or do this, that and the other. And no crap. The dude before me left it empty.

Now I, I will say this, there is an upside to this, the more I think about it, the zip card business model would’ve really worked well for this in the sense that if you could drop the Tesla off at a charging [01:29:00] station and then pick up another one somewhere else, just by maybe using like an ID card that says, Hey, I’m a Tesla subscriber, or something like that.

Boop, jump in the car and drive away. So, so you steal someone else’s car while they’re.

Okay, it’s gonna work good. But any rate, depending on the city, if you wanted to see what the fuss is about a Tesla but aren’t ready to commit to one, you could go rent one for a couple days. That’s a solid plan. Still cheaper than, than committing. So moving on the cyber truck, which was, you know, coming soon to garages, nowhere cause it can’t fit apparently on their website earlier this month or in the last couple weeks, has removed everything saying production 2022.

Basically it’s like up in the air. I guess you can still reserve them, but question mark when you would actually get it. So it sounds like they’re delayed yet again. Who knows why? There’s never a reason. Sounds like the windshield wiper blades could be a reason [01:30:00] or lack thereof. They’re going to laser beams, remember?

No, apparently they’re trying to do like a single wiper blade and Musk himself has said that it’s troubling. Mercedes figured a single wiper blade out in the eighties on the one nineties. I mean, come on, everyone figured wiper blades out how many decades ago? Like, seriously, just put fricking wiper blades on this thing.

I don’t, who know? I don’t know. He can do all these things, but can’t put wiper blades on. Well, it, well, the problem is this, right? If you do the basic math, I mean, we all took like some form of trigonometry or I don’t know what, in school, if you look at the width of the vehicle to use two blades, they would never reach the top of the windshield and they would probably come below your nose.

So they would be totally ineffective. So I get why he’s gotta use one wiper blade. But the problem is the wiper blade is six feet long. So where do you mount it? It doesn’t make any sense. Like the whole design is terrible. It is on the list of cars yet to be [01:31:00] released that we should all be looking out for.

On that article we talked about at the beginning of the show, it’s still listed there. Hot Wheels has gone as far as to release cyber trucks. That’s the only place you can buy a cyber truck right now at every Walmart and Target. I seen them, I had in my hands, but if you’re dying to get one in your garage, even though it won’t fit, you’re gonna have to wait.

So you can buy my reserve spot, double down on that 200 bucks. You know, I, I feel like they are missing an opportunity here. They just need to go to Home Depot and buy a six foot long squeegee, like the window washer use and just put a little arm from the center of it straight up and it pulls it down and pushes it straight up and it pulls it down straight up, pulls it down.

They have these at gas stations. Why can’t Tesla get one? If this thing wasn’t shaped like N 64 starfox and it was more like that Mercedes E Q X X, we were just talking about maybe it had a low coefficient of drag, because you can’t tell me that angular design is streamlined in any way. You probably wouldn’t even need a [01:32:00] wiper blade.

Like think about some of those ins, ACARS where, you know, the prototypes where it’s like they’re going so fast, they’re so slippery, the rain just flies off the windshield. It could be the same thing, but when you’re trying to drive a brick through the air, it’s, it’s not gonna happen. They just need rain.

Nobody’s driving that quickly to have the rain bead off and fling off. Like if you’re crawling at 20 miles an hour, I don’t care what your coefficient of or angle of windshield is, it doesn’t work that way. We could use tear offs like on helmets, right? That’s all they need on the cyber truck. It’s just tear offs.

So you get out, reach around, but then yard reach a pillar. Yeah. Reach out with the eight pillar and just rip off. How are you reaching out? You’re like getting out. Like put it in autopilot. You crawl out like no, you, you use a windshield arm, you use a windshield wiper arm to reach up and tear it off. Or you use normal fucking windshield wipers.

You idiots. Maybe the real holdup is that laser technology. I think it’s the lasers. The lasers are the answer. The lasers in your lidar. [01:33:00] In good news though, how this was ever a good idea. Apparently Tesla will stop allowing drivers to play video games while driving in their car. They, they have that gigantic touchscreen, right?

And so they have passenger play. So in theory, the idea is your passenger can amuse themselves by playing. Whatever on the screen, but there’s nothing built in to prevent the driver from using it while driving, which of course, normally that stuff is turned off by the fact that the car is in motion, the car is in motion.

Your passenger can’t play either. I mean, so it’s like, why is this even an option? It’s an option because you, you put it in self-driving autonomous mode 12. No, and you played Pokemon Go the whole time. It’s amazing. No, because even according to Tesla, you’re supposed to still be watching the road and maintaining your hands on the steering wheel, so you shouldn’t be playing Pokemon.

I need one hand to hold the steering wheel and one hand to throw the poker ball. I can prove this. Allegedly just gimme a Tesla. I’ll prove it to you. I feel like we needed this option when we went to n cm, [01:34:00] but the radio didn’t work for like 11 hours. It was ridiculous. Yes, we, we had NPR and then we had nothing and then we had church and then we had nothing and there was just 12 hours of awkward best friendness.

Wow. But that’s an epic trip. And we have a story to tell about it, so there we go. That’s true. True, true, true. But you know, it lowered our expectations, didn’t it? Lowered expectations, which this last one sort of straddles that line. A gentleman in Helsinki got very upset that his Tesla broke down.

Something happened with the batteries or some fault. And then I guess because he did some mods on the car, it was at a warranty or out of Tesla Careness. It was a $22,000 repair bill. He didn’t wanna pay that. Apparently this guy’s got lots of money and he decided instead of paying that he was just gonna blow his car up.

And so I [01:35:00] don’t know the the finished guys, that’s. I think they got a YouTube channel and they go around basically blowing stuff up. They’re the bomb dudes or something like that. I guess somehow I got in contact with them and they strapped 66 pounds of dynamite to this Tesla in like this rock quarry and then proceeded to blow it to Smith Res.

And there’s a video of this explosion top gear level of excitement right there. That’s something they would’ve done on top gear for sure. And the old, the old top gear, I mean, I don’t know why you do it. I mean, I guess it was a 2013 MO model S so you could say it, it’s 10 years started out, but that’s kind of stupid.

There’s something to be said about that, right? You hear these people all the time, though, I drove my Tesla 400,000 miles and I had not a single issue. I mean, there’s the other end of this swing as well that people don’t maybe necessarily talk about all the time. So this is, you know, something interesting now that I think about it to your point 2013, it’s, you know, 10 years old and it’s gonna cost 22 grand to get that car back on the road.

You know, that’s the half the cost of a new model three, right? Do you cut your [01:36:00] losses and then what do you do with a Tesla that needs $22,000 worth of batteries? Nobody’s gonna buy that as a used fixer upper. You’re still on the whole 22 grand. You know, what were they gonna do with the car? Take it back and recycle it.

Like is there a plan for that? So I can see this from multiple angles, so it’s not totally out of the realm to say, well screw it, we’re just gonna blow it up. What was the alternative? Now granted there’s the hazmat side of this, like blowing up a car. I don’t condone this, especially in Ev cuz of you know, all the lithium and all the stuff.

But still I’m kind of like, all right, well there were worse options I suppose. I mean, if nothing else, it’s kind of interesting to see how it exploded in all the bits and pieces, which then they had, they went and collected and put into a giant pile. The bigger question is for how long did it burn afterwards?

I mentioned top gear a moment ago, maybe sad news, or maybe I want want. But for the folks out there that are fans of Clarkson Hammond, and May you may recall that in [01:37:00] 2016 they spun up their own social media network, known as Drive Tribe. Fortunately for us, we’re huge fans here at G T M of the old Top Gear, and Brad was such a big fan.

He actually got us in on like day two and we were one of the earliest tribes on Drive Tribe. And we’ve been, you know, consistently posting there and things like that. You could say what Drive Tribe, what’s Drive Tribe or have gone to Drive Tribe. There’s not a whole heck of a lot going on there. Well, folks, sad News after five years of being in service, they’re finally shutting down Drive Tribe here at the end of January.

So if you need to, you know, pull down your posts, grab your pictures, whatever have you drive Tribe will be no more. It is morphing into an Instagram only, you know, kind of like swag. Type of marketing thing. So that’s what it’s turning into. But that is no more. So I will say this, it’s also a great opportunity for folks to maybe go and check out one of our partners, garage Riot.

You know, garage Riot is a social media platform for car [01:38:00] enthusiasts and petrolheads and whatnot. It’s a free of charge based here out of the United States, but very similar to other social media platforms that you’re used to. You know, like Instagram and Facebook, et cetera. But designed for Petrolheads by Petrolheads.

So check out garage riot.com when you get a chance. So I spent a lot of time looking at posts on Instagram and most of my feed is full of car stuff and tuners and wheels and rof, FORMM this and you know, center line that, and this and that. And the other thing, it popped on my feed not long ago. Somebody posted that the infamous.

And slightly cult classic Ron Teddy Bear Wheels were making a comeback in the used market or new, new, no price. They didn’t say who, you know, if Ronnell was gonna make them, but there are images or renderings of what they would look like today. A deep dish wheel, which is uncommon these days with high offset wheels coming on pretty much every car.

Gold rivets, you know, they actually paint the caricatures of the bear in black instead of [01:39:00] just the traditional all silver wheel that they had created, you know, back in the eighties and nineties. You know, famous on all the mark three Volkswagens, all those folks, they, they love those wheels. But yeah, apparently the ronnell teddy bear might be making a comeback.

So I am definitely gonna give up my spot in line for those to anybody else that would like it. Those only look good on May marked three Volkswagen, pretty much. And you know, there’s been some other interesting wheels I’m gonna call them interesting that have come out lately. Like the new, um, I think they were rho deforms that they’re square, but they’re Harlequin so they look like waffles.

They look cool on like this big Atlas Torre, Harlequin thing that they did. But I’m like, I don’t see the application except for this one specific build. I don’t think it would look, go into my car, you know, I think it would just look silly. These things are cool if you’re building a specific type of style or look, but yeah, definitely not for me.

It would be cool, like in a paper weight size key chain, I go with key chains. I would memorabilia type stuff. It would be pretty slick. My daughters would love this. So other things that [01:40:00] lowered our expectations here over the winter. There was a gentleman that broke the motorcycle Cannon Ball record, and basically he was quoted as saying, when interviewed, you know, what did you think?

He goes, I would not recommend. Well that’s just because he wants to keep his record intact. Maybe. But I mean, there’s no other way to say this. It’s gotta be a ballbuster to ride cross country like that nonstop on a motorcycle. I mean, not even even that, I mean, cuz there are some comfortable motorcycles but to, to do that, it’s dangerous as hell.

I mean, he had an average speed of almost 87 miles an hour with stopping for fuel and everything. His average. It was 87 miles an hour. I mean, he must have been flying. Yeah, he was booking and took, what, 36 hours for him to do this? Yeah, 35 hours and some odd minutes. I mean, he’s driving through the night and doing 90, a hundred, 150 miles an hour in some stretches.

No bueno. No, thank you. Yeah, no thanks either. And can you imagine the noise that [01:41:00] motorcycle made at wide open throttle for 35 hours? That alone would drive me insane. Right. But, but it would also get you a hefty fine in New York. New York is cracking down on loud exhaust because they’ve got the, the straight pipe people were straight piping their cars, cutting out the muffler and cutting out the, uh, the catalytic converters.

You know, and straight piping their cars to sound like gunshots. And it’s dangerous around the city in New York and pedestrians and all like the homeowners there are so scared of these cars. It sounds so terrible. So New York is finding people for loud exhaust, aftermarket exhaust thousand dollars if they don’t impound your car.

Well, they also said that because of lockdowns and because people being bored, there were people street racing down the streets in very loud cars, which was disruptive. Now I get their civil liberties, get their feelings hurt, and they should be allowed to have as loud a car as they want. But sometimes when you go home and you’re [01:42:00] done dealing with the BS and stupidity of people, you wanna retire to your home in silence and peace and not have morons doing burnouts at 2:00 AM waking you up in the middle of the night.

All right? But if there are morons street racing and doing burnouts at 2:00 AM their exhaust is not the problem. The problem is that they’re doing burnouts and street racing at two in the morning. We’re avoiding the fact that this is all, I’m not gonna say all, it’s probably 90% mark seven and Mark A G T I owners, right?

That all sound like gunshots because do you know any other car that has that? Duid feature that you can do it from idle and everything. That’s like every third freaking video on TikTok is some G T I making that sound all the time. It tries to be nuts. It does. We don’t need, that Feels like it’s all bag products to me.

But you know what, I’m, I’m hating on my own kind, but I think they sound like shit. I’m just gonna be totally upfront about it. Speaking [01:43:00] of stupidity on the roads, if they’re not making noise, what’s happening on 3 95? Lately? They’re driving backwards. Wait, what? You heard that right? To avoid traffic jams, people are driving backwards.

So they’re reversing on 3 95 in DC in Northern Virginia to to go where? Cuz they missed their, and you charged it. Into another traffic jam. To go back the, you have to go back to the previous exit that they passed. So you’re driving through a traffic jam. So that would imply cars in front of you. Cars beside you.

Cars behind you. No, they see the traffic jam ahead. So they put it in reverse, then go the wrong way At speed. Yeah. Which your automatic won’t let you do. Okay. So they slam on their brakes, come to a stop, quickly throw it in reverse. They get the arm over the seat. Rest backup camera. Nobody does that anymore.

Boomer backup camera. Okay. So two hands on the wheel backup, camera [01:44:00] steering left and right cuz they don’t know which way the car turns when it’s in reverse, which way the steering wheel goes. So they’re confused. They’re slaloming to get to the exit ramp so that they can back down the wrong way on an exit ramp.

So the public service announcement here is, they may have changed the laws about driving on the shoulder, but it is still illegal to back up on the highway and then take an exit ramp. Oh, they’re on the shoulder doing this. I thought they were in the lanes of traffic. They’re, they’re in the lanes. Oh, they’re the lanes lane.

I understood it as backing up the shoulder, which is technically illegal, but whatever. Backing up anywhere is illegal unless it’s into a space or your driveway. It’s illegal to do on a public road. You know what could be causing these traffic jams forcing people to back up on 3 95 and take an exit ramp?

What Florida man? Florida man tractor, trailer driver, uh, not adhering to the clearance restrictions for the bridge he’s about to drive under. That never [01:45:00] happens. That didn’t happen and a bridge didn’t shift in Georgia. Well, in this particular case, it happened to be an Amazon semi-truck, and now explains why my package has been marked lost.

So I, he was just trying to like, You know, pull back the top of the truck so you could access the packages quicker, you know? Ah, like Santa Claus, just, it’s, you know, throw ’em out there. Woo. He’s just opening the can, which is literally what it looks like now. This next one made me smile and it’s just so Italian.

Why not car that has not moved in 47 years. It has earned its right to become a monument just like all the other piles of rock that are left randomly in places. I love the fact that this gentleman, Angelo, who is now 94 years old, parked his car in front of his house in 1974 and has never driven it since.

Damn. That’s awesome. You know why he’s never driven it? Cuz it’s Alanya. It is a 62 [01:46:00] fia. It is a car that is slightly sought after, even though it is kind of boxy and utilitarian, but I just think it’s hilarious. And you know what? The next time I’m over in Italy, I’m gonna go get my picture taken with this new monument.

And this is a monument to Petrolheads. This is awesome. So Italian. What does this monument say about petrol heads though? The fact that it hasn’t moved in 47 years. Hey, it ran and drove when it was parked. It ran, went parked. I know what, I have no low balls. So there was some rumors that Brad Pitt was going to be making some sort of Formula one movie and that, you know, oh, maybe Louis Hamilton was gonna be in it or, or somehow consult on it or something like that.

You know, it was all very fresh at the time. But as the weeks go by, we’re getting a little bit more information and now we’re learning that Apple. So I guess this will end up on Apple tv. Apple and Brad Pitt are working together on this Formula one kind of inspired drama. When this was first announced, I actually [01:47:00] made the comment, what is this just gonna be driven with Formula One cars, which was that Ste Vester Stallone hot trash movie where they were driving Indy cars around whatever the hell city it was.

Which allegedly, I think that movie was originally supposed to be Formula One car. So we’re finally making the movie we intended to make back then, but with Brad Pitt starring in it. So we know it’s just gonna be better, right? Uh, no, I’m always down for a car movie. Good, bad or whatever. I mean, we’ve started an entire sub show of break fix where we review bad car movies.

So I’m gonna add this to our list when it comes out. It’ll be interesting to see as this progresses and we learn more, what exactly it’s going to develop into. It’s not looking, I like it should be Tom Cruise. Wait, we already did that movie too. I feel like this is gonna be Troy with helmets. That’s what this is gonna be.

Can Eric Bana play the bad guy? At least he’s a car guy. So this last one is pretty interesting, I think speaks [01:48:00] very badly for humans. Because when your goldfish can successfully drive its fishbowl tank and you can’t even navigate to the grocery store without hitting something, I think we need to reassess ourselves.

I am so confused by all of this. Scientists trained a goldfish to drive a fish operated vehicle, which was their little fish bowl on like wheels. Essentially, this is life aquatic. When does Bill Murray pop out? But they tested this in different ways to see if it was like the fish just picked up the routine because I don’t it like where the fish looked is where it went.

It’s fishbowl drove apparently. And so I think they did something with like colored lights on the ground and, and so they were trying to get the fish to go somewhere and the fish followed the route and it, if they changed the route, it followed the route. It understood the directions and could do it. It wasn’t [01:49:00] just like, oh, I did it once.

It just kept doing the same thing over again. So I can destroy this whole grossly overpaid government grant in one move. All I need to do is put a plastic castle in the middle of wherever this thing is, and suddenly you will see that goldfish just doing donuts know. But what’s interesting though, and fascinating to learn more about, I didn’t know that a gold fish’s vision was that great and now consider the fact that it’s seeing everything so bizarrely twisted through the water and then the glass bowl and the surface reflections and the curvature, but it could drive its fish bowl successfully to its destination.

I mean, do you remember Drew Carey’s glasses from the Drew Carey show back in the day? I mean, that’s probably the equivalent, right? He’s allowed to drive a car.

In his defense he has gotten laser, but Oh wow. Yeah. Anyway, I, these are what some [01:50:00] scientists are doing lately. Getting fish to drive their fish holes. Oh, your tax dollars at work. And that is why Covid is still a thing. Speaking of both of those things, cause we’re teaching fish to drive, I mean, speaking of both of those things, your tax dollars at work and Covid being a thing, why don’t we talk about Florida man stories while we’re at it?

Florida Man. Florida man. We don’t have any rich people doing rich people things this time. Not this time because that razor scooter hasn’t gone into production yet. So actually I would say the Dimitri Maupin buys Sun new F1 chassis kind of qualifies for rich people doing rich people things. You know, you’re right about that.

You’re absolutely right about that. You compete with his own teammate, Jesus. Terrible. I mean, it’s about as terrible as this limousine, this record setting a hundred foot long Cadillac limousine is the world’s largest [01:51:00] limo. And it is in the hands of a Florida man. It is currently being restored. Yeah, it’s bonkers.

It’s got a helicopter on the back. Uh, so I quickly lost interest in that when I saw that there was a Ferrari. F 40 with 10 wheels. Yeah, that’s way cooler. An eight seater. And I’m like, why? That’s actually a firo. Don’t even go there. It’s made to look like a, I mean, the fricking Ferrari symbol’s like three feet long on the hood.

I mean, and then there’s that double wide, I don’t even know what that thing is. It’s like two cars conjoined twins together and it’s got like a swimming pool in the back. And this is all stuff I would see in the kids. Part of Hershey Park. Like they all look like amusement park rides. I mean, they’re just, they’re insane.

Where did these come from? Like, I’m disappointed that the article didn’t explain like the history of these bizarre cars that apparently were on display somewhere. Because there’s like, even fricking like the American Dream, [01:52:00] j Oberg, star Cars, Hollywood, California, what? There’s even like a model that like stands in front of them and stuff.

I think my favorite though is the Pepto pink Mercedes with the heart-shaped hot tub in the trunk. That thing is legit awesome. Although I’m easily distracted and there was a Haggerty ad with a carrado on it. So I clicked on that and I, I kind of moved on from this pretty quickly. Wanted to see what that was all about.

So what else is going on in Florida? Speaking of moving on, so we’re in Florida again. Of course. Now say you get into, I don’t know, a little parking dispute. You’re angry, your neighbor’s parking habits. It’s happened to all of us, right? Sometimes you’re just like, who is this joker parking their car in front of my property, even though I don’t own the street there, I don’t want your car parked in front.

How would you, as a normal person, as a non-flu handle that I’d piss and moan and stomp my feet and do nothing about it? None checks. Have you thought about a flame thrower? [01:53:00] Damn. Is this guy Charles Bronson? Yeah, he’s Andre something. And he decided to get himself three counts of felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with attention to kill as he brandished the flames from the flame thrower at his neighbors who parked in front of his house.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Was the neighbor in the vehicle at the time of the offense? Yes, unfortunately. Oh, okay. They were like teenagers getting out of the car and he like turned the flame thrower on on them. That is, this is like the ultimate get off my lawn. That’s some buck wild manure right there.

Wow. That is, that’s intense. He denies of course targeting them, but don’t park in front of my house. The char marks on the side of the car weren’t evidence enough of this, of the assault. They said they wanted to add flames. These Florida man stories play out like people’s court also in Florida. [01:54:00] So I think too many Fast and the Furious movies too many of these, uh, what was the other one?

With Statham, with the transporter movies. Yeah. Yeah. Drives the, drives the Audi out of the parking garage and all that stuff. Well, for reasons unbeknownst, somebody drove off an eight story parking garage. Yes. And, uh, how, how did that end? You know what he lived. Don’t know why his 2015 Ford Explorer. It’s always a Ford, isn’t it?

Yeah, right. Apparently it was like in the middle of the afternoon and it happened to like, I don’t know, it landed upside down. Was caught in like a cable was also like hanging off. Maybe that helped. Smooth the impact. Yeah. No real explanation. I don’t think drugs is the explanation. Probably because flew off a building, landed upside down.

He got out of the car and ran away two blocks. Is this the automotive equivalent of what people throw shoes on? The power lines, like you just throw your car on the power lines looking at this car. How the hell did he get out [01:55:00] of it? I don’t, don’t know how he survived. I love his wheel studs. They’re like three inch long spikes Bo to seer spikes, right?

I haven’t noticed those the first time. I mean, good on him. Did he survived? Who knows what that story is, but only in Florida. I don’t think good on him. It was a failed suicide attempt. That’s what that was. No, I hope not. Well, you wouldn’t have gotten out and ran physics through people. Physics pay attention.

Well, they’ve, they’ve definitely beefed up that rollover capability of the Ford Explorers. If nothing else, stealing cars, not a good thing. Shouldn’t do this. Right. Everyone has their own way of doing it. I think we talked about the guys that went with a front loader, forklift, steal motorcycles or something.

Right. And then drove whatever it was. Cross railroad tracks on, and it’s always ballsy when they’re stealing ’em from dealerships, right? Versus parking lot or something like that. What if you went to the dealership to steal the car naked? This [01:56:00] brings us to our sub-segment of Florida, man. It’s naked Florida, man, you know, he just somehow was there naked at the dealership, got into a 2021 Ram truck that was in a painting booth, backed it out, and drove it off.

I mean, if I was the sales guy and it was a Dodge Dart, I would’ve just given him the keys. I’m like, man, you really need this. You really need to go away. But he stole it outta the paint booth. Was it his own truck? Was he stealing it back? Who knows? Like that guy from New Jersey who came out running with the guns naked.

There’s a picture of this guy clothed. They’re not clothed to answer everybody’s question. Drugs. It’s always Florida, man, right? We give the Florida man a hard time then that’s not fair. To spread the joy a little bit here and, and to be fair, how about Florida woman? Oh, and how about a Florida woman leading police on a wild golf course chase [01:57:00] and not in a golf cart?

Oh, no, in an S U v. Looks like a Toyota 4runner. It does look like a Toyota 4runner. It doesn’t say what it is, but it does look like a 4runner. So something of that nature. She’s doing a little offroad. She looks like when Lieutenant Weigel for Reno 9 1 1 does the prostitute bit like, I don’t, what is this outfit?

Take a look at it and that you don’t even need to talk anymore. What is she wearing? She looks drugs again and she led a police chase on a golf course and not a golf cart. This just hurts so much. It’s a Florida watch out. Florida man. Florida woman. I will say that’s the most off-roading that that Toyota has done in its entire life.

So there you go. Round out the women here a little bit. Texarkana or Texarkana Potato, potato. This woman in her Camaros orange Camaro with black stripes. Please, these are important details was stopped for I think, something [01:58:00] minor, so to speak. Felony forgery charge. Not minor, but minor compared to how this turned out.

One could argue relatively speaking, so she’s pulled over, resisting arrest. She doesn’t turn her car off, which you’re supposed to do when you’re pulled over. She locked herself in her car, et cetera, et cetera. Cops come up, you know, get outta the car. No, no, no. The police officer being savvy as he was pulled out some spike strip, put it down, presumably in, I don’t know where, in front of his cruiser as he’s going back to his car to do whatever, and then she decides she’s gonna make her brake, reverses the Camaro into his cruiser enough, or at least wherever he put, maybe he put the spikes directly behind her car.

She blows out three of the four tires on the Camaro. But this does not stop the Camaro. This does not stop whatever tires were put on this car from the factories so propped to those tires because she proceeds to get on the highway going a hundred miles an hour. Three that flats. With three spike strip blown out tires [01:59:00] and one good tire till.

Eventually she exits the highway, the car becomes disabled. Presumably the tires are OnStar by OnStar. Trina Gas, she’s on the side of the interstate. When they catch up to her, her foot planted. As the article says, her foot planted firmly on the accelerator as the wheels spun uselessly. Damn. What did she break?

All of it. So not only did she have the felony forgery charge, she also had evading arrest and resisting arrest. So good on you. All of the fun facts and figures. The super fun facts of this article are all negated once you reach the comment section of the article, which I will not repeat any of them except for maybe one.

I mean, the one that got me though is. The guy who says, I’d buy that car from salvage, fix it up and park it in front of the jail. Oh my God. Oh my, [02:00:00] oh my dude. Really? Jesus. They’re they’re pretty, they’re pretty rough. Look at ’em later. You know, I had not looked at them. You will be in tears. And for anybody that wants to see them, they’ll be in the show notes when you click on the, well, we will end Florida, man, on a good note, which we don’t normally do that.

That never happens. You know, this is a good hearted Florida man, and I’m not saying that in any way that this is gonna turn funny, but, you know, back in, you know, December or whenever it was, those horrible tornadoes that leveled parts of Kentucky, this Florida man with his tractor trailer was taking donations, filling up his truck with food items and other necessities, and he was gonna drive all the way up from Florida to those folks in need and deliver all those items before Christmas time.

So look at that. Nice. Heartwarming. That is awesome. Round of applause for that Florida man. Good job. Thank you. Thank you for redeeming. All of the previous sins of the year. You sir, are a saint. [02:01:00] Well, I guess it’s time for us to go behind the wall and quickly talk about motor sports news. The racing season ends for us here locally, usually around the late October, early November timeframe.

But in other parts of the world where there’s lots of sand and no ocean, you know, they’re still running Formula One races and you know, Dakar and all this other kinds of stuff. And so there’s always little tidbits of news here and there. But as we lead into the opening. Of the next racing season, which Rolex is right around the corner, January 29th and 30th weekend here in Florida, yet again.

So maybe some interesting Florida stories. The news from the NASCAR world is Jacques Ilne former Formula one Champ and IndyCar 500 Champ is gonna make a run at the Daytona 500, which is coming up after Rolex. So curious to see how that turns out. I mean, he is basically kind of coming outta retirement to go run in nascar.

I mean, yay. Cool. So let’s talk a little bit about Open Wheel [02:02:00] News. What’s hot and what’s not in IndyCar? Formula One, what’s not hot is that Williams died. Frank Williams, the uh, I guess the team founder for the Williams F1 team. He passed away at age 79. His daughter was, I think it was daughter or granddaughter.

His was running the team and knowing the team, and I think the Williams team sold last year to an investment firm, Dolton Capital. So, and they’re still gonna be the Backies Backmarker team of all Formula One, right? Well, they’re gonna have some competition with Haas. I was gonna say they’re doing, they’ve been doing pretty well.

They’re not that, but also they’re losing George Russell, cuz George Russell is going to be Louis Hamilton’s teammate for the coming season. So they’ve got the new I, I think they’re the ones with the new Chinese driver from Formula two. That’s, that’s moving up. So who knows? They’ll be battling for worst five.

But there’s other sad news in Formula One. The king has been dethroned. [02:03:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lewis Hamilton lost. He is no longer the reigning champion. That title has gone to Max for Stepin due to some late lap final race. Heroics on his part was a complete force. And I mean, whoever camp you’re in, you’re not completely happy, I guess, unless you’re a max for Stepin fan, but whatever, Daniel Ricardo wanna wanna let race this year, so I’m happy.

Any podium, that’s all that matters. Yeah, and I mean, there’s lots of memes and lots of stuff. I mean, people are even posting about, Hey, don’t forget about science. You know, he had a great year despite all the drama that’s going on. So I don’t know, maybe I’ll pay attention next year. You’ll have to convince me if you’re looking to pay attention this year coming up, you would like to know that Come February the teams start unveiling their new cars for the 2022 season.

So the schedule goes Aston Martin’s first on February 10th, then McLaren on February 11th, Ferrari is the 17th. And then Alfa [02:04:00] Romeo is to be announced along with everybody else, Alfa Alpine, Alpine, Haas, Mercedes, red Bull. They’re all, you know, after those dates. So once I see the first one, I’m good. Right.

Basically, yeah. All the cars are, because of the new regulations and everything, all the cars are, should be very close to each other. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m sure there’s silliness in Chicanery about all of them that, you know, ridiculous wings and, and all that kind of stuff. If, if you, if you watch Aston the Aston Martin, then it’s gonna be the exact same car as the Mercedes, cuz that’s what they got in trouble for.

Yeah, right. Last year I, I just wish Formula One would go back to the old days where they could build their own chassis and their own bodies and do their own engines and, and be all over the map. I mean, I just feel like, you know, it’s like iroc, they’re all in little go-karts and they’re all the same and, you know, change the paint color from red to Pepto to green and you call ’em a different team.

I don’t know, it’s basically the NASCAR of the open wheel world. Wait, that’s IndyCar. Oh wait, yeah, nevermind. Cuz some people were saying for a while there, you know, a car was the hottest thing on tv. It was the, it was [02:05:00] the racing to watch and still have a hard time believing that. I still think i s a is, is the way to go at some of the best racing.

I mean outside of a race like the mid 400, you know, and some of the, those big off-road races where you can get really close to the trucks and the drivers IMSA’s the same way. There’s just this 10 foot pole between us, the fans and the racing itself. And it feels too marketing heavy and just, it’s too much of a circus.

And I don’t know, it’s, it’s kind of turned me off. I mean, granted in the W R C world, you can’t get close anymore, you know, because of the deaths and the safety and all that. And it’s still, they’re just. Bonkers WRC is absolutely nuts. I gotta tune in cuz Finland and on all those big races in Sweden and what are happening now here in the middle of winter.

So I’m, I’m looking forward to WRC season kicking off, you know, tuning into Red Bull’s coverage. They do an excellent job for those that are probably gonna work. And I watch a rally race. I’ve said it time and time again. Red Bull TV for free in 4k. Check it out. There is some exciting news coming for I s A and that would be that the Pony Wars [02:06:00] kickoff again in 2024.

So Team Corvette versus Ford. I mean they’ve had it rumored for a while that with these Reclassing they’re gonna be able to merge GT four cars and et cetera into the SSA series. So it’d be cool to see Corvettes go against Mustangs, although that’s kind of like apples and chainsaws, in my opinion, to be seen.

Yeah, it should be Camaros. Yeah, for Mustangs and Camaros for sure. I would love to see the return of the Ford gt, but that’s not on the horizon anytime soon. At least not from the news that we’re seeing. So curious to see where that goes. But I feel like it’s a day late and a dollar short. Like all the big names are showing up for the hundredth, they’re all showing up for 23.

Ford, what are you waiting for? You know, put a car in GT three or, or GTLM or whatever it is now and go for it. I mean, what, what are they waiting for? I don’t, I don’t get, you know, I’m holding out hope like much like the reveal of the four of the most recent four gt. It was a complete surprise. Nobody knew it was coming.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they do something like that [02:07:00] for Lama. Then 2023. Yeah, but this is saying 2024. That’s too late. Nobody cares. Right? I mean the hundred and first is just as important as the hundredth, but you know, whatever. But let’s talk about other firsts as in the 61st running of Rolex. Uh, they say it’s gonna be the biggest field in years.

There’s currently 60 cars on the roster. I mean, it’s a good round number. It’s better than previous years. It’s been kind of wah wah. I mean, I watch Rolex religiously along with Lomans and the petite and things like that. It’s been a bit of a bummer when, you know, you do look at the GTLM field especially, and Porsche’s pulled out and so on and so forth, and it’s just Corvette running around.

So to see more cars in there is great. When I looked at the field and I’m like, LMP three, and I’m like, yeah, just what we need, you know, more cookie, cookie cutter, LMP cars. But you know, I, I’m still gonna watch it. It’s still gonna be entertaining and, uh, we have some really cool things planned for that weekend, so stay tuned for more news on that.

And in the virtual world, there’s been some big news, a bit of a shake up there. iRacing has always [02:08:00] been kind of off on its own doing its own thing, you know, keeping up those Xbox 360 graphics that it’s known for. And they made an announcement recently that they bought Monster games, teasing that they’re gonna make things that are more appealing to a broader market like consoles.

So you might see things like iRacing come to your PS five or your Xbox Series X that you can’t buy in stores. I’m actually really happy about this because I do think that as good as iRacing is, it needs influence from some other parties that can bring higher quality graphics and things like that to the platform.

Better ui, I mean, everything feels. I hate to say kind of klugy and, and really dated, you know, when you look at it, it doesn’t have that fresh look that like a Codemaster’s platform has, or Forza or something like that. So they definitely need a facelift. The physics engine is good, but they could do with a little bit of help.

So, switching gears really quick to local news. Uh, as I mentioned, Rolex is coming up here the weekend of January 29th and [02:09:00] 30th. It’s the 61st running and because of everything that’s going on in the world these days, it still seems okay. We’re a little bit hot and cold on Covid. We’ve decided that instead of holding our traditional Rolex viewing party, which is usually hosted by Brad and his lovely wife, we’re gonna go back to virtual this year and we’re gonna make it an action packed weekend.

So if you go to our website and you look at club events and click on the Rolex 24 hours weekend, you’ll see that we’ve packed in there several virtual races. Uh, we’re doing awards nights and happy hours viewing parties. We’re even getting together with the folks from Garage Riot for a soft. Relaunch of their new platform.

Let’s talk about that. You get to meet Donovan, things like that. So it’s a lot of fun. We have a lot of things planned for that 24 hour race, and obviously it’s gonna be centered around the Rolex, and so that’s a lot of fun. So look for more details on that. We’re still planning out the rest of the year, so look forward to events like Summer Bash and Animal House and the Cannonball Run and all these kinds of things as we look at the bigger schedule.

And we get our [02:10:00] information from our friends over@hpdjunkie.com. So a quick H P D junkie, Trackside report, you know, what’s coming in February, March. Well, you know, I caught up with Dave Peters recently. I spoke to him and he said, right now they have over a thousand events loaded into their system, and they’re looking at nearly doubling that number by the end of January.

So right around Rolex weekend, the database should be fully loaded and they’re capturing events from all across North America. So that’s the US and Canada combined and you know, all your favorite providers, you know, be it hooked on driving pca, ra, S C C A, you know, nasa, whoever, all of that information, all in one spot.

You know, search by the date, search by the location, by the provider, and then figure out what your schedule looks like. So now’s a great time to do that. And just know that they’re loading more and more information in there. And if you are a track event provider and your schedule isn’t on h hpd junkie.com, reach out to Dave Peters and get your information out there because there are so many eyes looking at that site every day, every [02:11:00] week, every month to try to plan out what our calendars look like.

So always a great resource. We love working with Dave and we look forward to seeing him again this year at one of the events we got together with him at Carolina Motorsports Park. So we’re hoping to do that again this year. And in case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired earlier this winter.

We talked all things B M W with Donovan from Garage Ride and James Clay from Bimmer World. David L. Middleton from m i e Racing returned to the show and introduced us to B T C C Pro Racer Rob Holland. We learned about the oldest off-road race in America, known as the Mint 400. And our guest, Matt Martelli, also gave us the inside scoop on Jim McCaugh.

And growing up Ken Block on our bonus Patron Minnesota, we went shopping with Hill tread and petrol box and learned about fire safety with up and coming brand pmx. You would be remiss if you missed out on our all Tesla retrospective from last month. We talked collector cars with Chris Bright of collector, part exchange, C P X, and not so collector cars with our BSides.

Ugly cars, Patreon [02:12:00] re-release and stories about the compound with Nate and Emily. And finally, we learned about the history and evolution of our home, away from home, where else? Summit Point, Motorsports Park. Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and please look forward to more great episodes this spring.

Big shout outs to our new Patreon supporters. Who do we have, uh, this winter we’ve added Emily Fox, Romano Conti, Brett Nervy, Sam Harrington. Andrew Maureen. Very cool. And thank you guys for supporting GTM Supporting Break Fix. You know, without you folks, none of this would be possible and every little bit helps.

And remember, as a Patreon subscriber, it gives you early access to behind the scenes content, bonus content, mini sos, all sorts of other things that we post out on Patreon first. So we want to reward those folks. Obviously, we design also special swag and there’s other giveaways and things like that gives you access to all sorts of other perks, part of being a G T M supporter through Patreon.

So we appreciate everybody doing that, and we look [02:13:00] forward to your help in the future. In addition to our Patreon supporters, we’d like to shout out our anniversaries. We’ve got Marissa Cannon, Mike Pepitone, Chris Shaw, and Sean Roberts. That’s right. And a special thanks to our guest, host me for coming back.

Yay, Brad.

We love having you back, Brad. It has been too long and it’s good to have your voice on the radio with us and you know, it hasn’t been the same. We’re glad for you and Adrian, your voice, happy and healthy and all that, and we look forward to seeing them at the track and to the next, you know, break Fixx episode.

So welcome back. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you Tanya for, uh, putting this all together for us. Our executive co-producer. Oh, sorry. We ran outta time for Matt Damon. You’ll have to catch him next week and until next month, bye.

In the drive through line, me and her cars in front of us, cars in back of us all just waiting to [02:14:00] order. There’s some idiot in a Volvo with this bright sun behind me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, watch your trying to do Blind Me, my wife says, baby, we should.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our [02:15:00] Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

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