B/F: The Drive Thru #31

• A Chevrolet Camaro is less expensive to lease than a Malibu right now

• 2024 Polestar 2 Adds More Power and 300-Mile Range
• Lightyear's Operating Company Atlas Technologies Declared Bankrupt
• Amazon's self-driving unit Zoox puts driverless taxi on road

• First Images of Alfa Romeo C43: Goal for 2023 F1 Season is to 'Aim Higher'
• Side-by-side: Compare the 2023 Ferrari SF-23 and 2022 F1-75
• Hamilton in the process of selecting Brad Pitt’s co-star for F1 movie

Ford returning to F1 with Redbull?

Ford Announces Return to F1!

Netflix reminder - Drive to Survive Season 5 starts Feb 24, 2023

2023 F1 “car launch” - did ANYTHING really change?

• 'Barn find' 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am driven just 37 miles up for auction
• Danika Patrick's ARCA car is still for sale on Facebook Marketplace

The Boomer Special

• Mercedes-Benz cars to have 'supercomputers', unveils Google partnership
• 2024 BMW X5 M and X6 M Gain Hybrid System and Go Full Competition

• The Grand Tour Cancellation Ends Jeremy Clarkson's Post-Top Gear Era
• Dealership Makes Woman Sitting Right In Front Of Them Confirm She's Not A Robot
• Catalytic converter stolen from Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in Las Vegas
• Hertz to Pay $168 Million in False Arrest Settlements

• Hendrick-built Garage 56 Le Mans entry hits track in VIR test
• Alfa Romeo teases a return to Endurance Racing after exiting F1
• Forza Motorsport Looks Fantastic, But the Release Date's Still Up in the Air
• Unimproved/Off-Road Course coming to Summit Point!

WRC Season is heating up, added 2 new venues to 2023 Schedule

Tony Kanaan is Retiring!

• All the Superbowl 2023 Commercials
• Safety Concerns as More Maryland Drivers Flock to Historic License Plates

KIA “Binky Dad”

Will Ferril is back with GM EVs

Jeep “electric boogie”

RAM premature electrification

Fast & Furious X (10)

Anti-Tesla FSD

Honorable mentions - Weathertech

Honorable mentions - Uber One Jingle

Honorable mentions - Travola T-Mobile

• Elon Musk reportedly fired a Twitter engineer on the spot after the worker told him his popularity was sinking on the site
• Here’s What We Could See at Tesla’s Investor Day
• Tesla coming back to California, Musk announces

• Volkswagen design chief ousted over retro designs, replaced by Bentley design head
• ICYMI - VR & W engines Explained!
• The Wild 2024 Lamborghini Invencible and Autentica Are a Fitting Farewell to the V-12

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The Drive-Throughs GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like H P D E junkie.com, hooked on driving American muscle.com, collector car guide.net, project Motoring Garage style magazine, and many others.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org. Click about and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Gran Touring Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. Welcome to drive-through episode number 31.

This is our monthly recap where we’ve put together a menu of automotive motorsport and random car adjacent news after some minor technical difficulties. , are you guys ready for this? Yes. I can [00:01:00] now bully, concentrate on my unpreparedness that my technical difficulties were resolved. All you did was buy time, so Brad could read the articles this month and you know how many articles I read?

Zero . How many more is that than usual? Bingo. Now let’s pull up to window number one for some news. Just news. Just news. That’s it. All we have is news. Well, we’ve got news about some of the stuff we’ve been doing. Let’s talk about Rolex. Oh yeah, let’s do that. I’m not talking about the watch, although the watch is involved.

I mean like the actual race, the Rolex 24 hour race in Daytona. It has been five years since we have been to Rolex in person, although we religiously watch it every year. Regardless of what’s going on. This is the first time we’ve been there on purpose, right? in person. That’s right. This is also Tanya’s, if I’m remembering correctly, her first official professional race, attendance, endurance.

Race, sports, car race. No, not [00:02:00] professional. Cause I’ve been to F1 twice. Well, that’s true. Endurance. That’s right. Endurance specifically and, and let’s get her thoughts. Florida side. No, just kidding. , you’ll be talking about Florida, man. No, it was fun. I think it’s more accessible is probably the first word that comes to mind.

More accessible to someone versus having had the experience multiple times of going to a Formula One race where now the tickets are even way more expensive than when I ever went. And then you are there for such a brief time, you don’t get access to anything. This is the complete opposite where basically if your feet can take you there, you can go there and it’s way more affordable in terms of ticket price and what that’s granting you access for.

And even if you went all out on everything that you could get access for, it still pales in comparison to a Formula One ticket. I don’t know how that compares. to NASCAR or other [00:03:00] forms. Cause I’ve never been to a NASCAR race either. But it was definitely an interesting experience. I will say what I didn’t expect was the car show that was happening at the same time.

Oh, in the paddock? In the paddock parking lots. And even like the parking lot outside of the venue, it was like everybody came from somewhere, tons of different, out-of-state tags or you know, different specialty place. They pulled their garage, Queens out of the garage and. It took ’em for a stroll to Daytona.

That’s aside from Marks that had specific corrals, like the Porsche Corral, BMW had a corral and et cetera, et cetera, where they’re showcasing, you know, members cars and whatnot. But still like you, if you’re just walking around the parking lots, people had some pretty cool stuff. And so I wasn’t expecting that.

I didn’t know that was a thing, but that was pretty cool. So there’s a whole other experience of not just watching the race, but car watching as you walk through the infield and around the outside. I always feel like events like Rolex, [00:04:00] petite Sailings, other ones that we’ve been to, it’s more family feeling.

Because even when you wander around the infield or the outfield, like places like Road Atlanta, there’s people everywhere. They’re camping all over the place. Bonfires parties. I mean, the longer the race, the more chaotic it is, but you don’t get that same experience, like you said, in an F1 race that’s 90 minutes and it’s over.

I mean, there’s other races that happen, you know, headliners and things like that that go on at those other races. But it’s very different in that endurance IMSA setting. Yeah, there’s other races, cause they’ll normally have like Porsche Cup races or vintage races, blah, blah, blah. And like the Saturday before Formula One and or in the morning, those go by really quick too.

They’re 45 minute hour races or something. It’s like, okay, by the time you’ve found your seat and sat down, it’s like half the races over. Cuz it’s a lot harder. Well, at least the Austin track, it’s a lot harder to kind of navigate around. You know, Tanya mentioned how the track was very accessible, much more accessible than.

Say Austin, but dare I say, it wasn’t really [00:05:00] from a walking standpoint, it was kind of one way in, one way out to get to the infield, which is kind of frustrating. Basically, if you’re on one end of the track, you’ve gotta basically walk all the way around the entire infield to get to the outfield or to get to the stands and vice versa.

So if you do decide to go to Rolex Daytona, make sure you bring your walk-in shoes with you cause you’re gonna need ’em. Or take the trams or take the tram with 15 million other people that are doing the exact same thing. That’s pretty simple to navigate around Daytona and it’s a 24 hour race, so there’s always something going on.

So there’s always something to see, and the visibility of the track is pretty good. Multiple spots. You’re always with the action, so to speak. That helps that there’s zero elevation change if they don’t . Yes, you are. The elevation change when you’re in the grandstand. The elevation change was like walking through the tunnel to like go under the oval and come back out.

The o other side. Yeah. [00:06:00] From that perspective, you’re right. Daytona plus the infield, it’s a pretty simple configuration compared to something more challenging like the Glen or Road Atlanta. But still the experience when you go to those other tracks is very similar. Though those races are shorter, the support races are quite long.

I mean, well let’s take walk-ins Glen as an example. The official race is six hours long, but the Tioga Downs race is four hours. So you’re there in the day for 10 hours of GT racing. Even though it, you know, they’re not consecutive. It’s just different groups running throughout the day. And then there’s the other support races and headliners that go with that.

So I s A events are just action packed from sunup to sundown. In some cases, multiple times over. You can’t knock the value for money. No. It was like what, 75 bucks for the tickets? $75 for how many hours of actual legitimate racing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s ridiculous. On top of that, this year was the biggest field.

In Rolex history in like the longest time, 61 cars started on grid. [00:07:00] Amazingly enough, Daytona is so big, it didn’t feel like we were watching cars on the beltway running around and getting in each other’s way. And obviously traffic splits up throughout the day and throughout the evening and conditions change and things happen and cars break.

But it was pretty exciting to see everybody mixing it up. And obviously we have new classes, new cars, new everything. I felt the racing personally, it was like a long test weekend because there were so many breakages, so many new cars. Some of the cars I think were a little disappointing and maybe they’ll get better throughout the season as, especially as we get closer to la.

I’m not as familiar with that whole balance of power thing or balance of performance, excuse me, whatever you want to call it. It was just often frustrating to watch because to watch lap after lap of Go Iron Dame, the all female team driving the Lamborghini Huracan to watch that car lap after lap, not be able to get around a nine 11.

I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me, , when in real [00:08:00] life that Huon would destroy that nine 11 after other conversations. Tanya was very disappointed in the lack of a manual transmission in any of the vehicles. . That’s been a while since they’ve had manuals in those cars. Wait, what the hell kind of race cars are these?

What’s the point? They don’t even shift their own gears. Exactly. We need another point of failure. Maybe we should throw some amateurs out there. It would make the racing more interesting. You miss a shift. I mean, you’ve blown that lap, right, and somebody gets around you. That is frustrating. That’s what we complain about a lot.

Complain is a strong word, but I have an issue with it. I mean, some people like it. Balance of power is great for television, but I feel as though, you know, interviewing drivers over the course of this last season and talking to other people, the consensus often seems to be that, you know, a, it’s out of their control.

The sanctioning bodies make all those decisions, but it’s not racing as racing was intended to be years ago. It’s like if your car can’t compete, build power to weight or whatever, build a better mouse trap. When it comes [00:09:00] down to it, it hampers innovation and the technological leap, and I guess that’s.

Racing series like F1 and IndyCar come into play because they do have those less restrictions and they don’t have a balance of performance and stuff like that. It’s a giant b o p because they’re basically spec races. All the formula cars are the same. We’re gonna talk about them more when we talk about the unveiling of the 2023 cars and stuff, and the indie cars are the same.

It’s like, eh, it’s two chassis and you know, two motors and everybody basically drives the same car. So sports car is always been grounded in, the manufacturers are coming to the table to do battle with one another, but as soon as balance of power became what it is today, I think we lost some of, to your point, Brad, that ingenuity, that imagination.

Like I’ve joked before, you don’t see the six wheel Teals and the Chaparrals with the fans on the bottom with the front wheel drive Nissan. Exactly. All that stuff is just gone, you know, watching the Corvette C eight. I’m not really impressed with that car. I’m a Corvette, a [00:10:00] team Corvette fan, but I’m not really impressed with the C eight R, bring back the C seven R.

Although I will say the pit crew was doing a phenomenal job. The car would get passed two or three times by the Aston Martin, kept getting around them, and then they’d pull into the pits. At the same time. The Corvette was consistently out in front of the Aston Martin. Every single pit stop. Yeah, so the pit crew was on point, but the car itself just could not hold it.

Disappointing. I will say it’s more fun to watch on TV with a group of friends sitting around smoking and joking as they. But one thing I do love about the EMSA series is the speed differentials between the classes. The prototype one. The prototype two cars. The fact that they’re after, what is it? Three or four laps, they’re lapping.

The GT cars is insane, and they’re all out there racing together. It’s just phenomenal Coverage on TV is better, right? They’re giving you all the angles, but you can’t really fathom the closing rates, you know, the breaking speeds into the corners, things like that when you see [00:11:00] it live. And the sound itself, we’ve talked about that before, a totally different experience.

Speaking of the sound, something was missing this year, and I think you know exactly what it was. Yeah, it was the other Corvette and the Corvette’s Old motor. Yes, the C seven R. The sound of the earth ripping itself apart, trying to stay together. When the Corvette pounds down the road, it was just gone. We used to say that the Lexus sounded as good and the Mercedes sounded as good.

Correction. The Mercedes sounds. Better. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. See that’s where you’re wrong. But I digress. So the C seven R was missing, I think some of the LM p whatever the, the top class LMD H. The G T P cars, some of the, the L MD H cars sounded really, really good, but they still didn’t have that pounding on your chest.

Right. You know, really throaty. Nice growl. So I missed the C7 R sound, which is a big part of going [00:12:00] to these races that, as you mentioned, the auditory feelings and everything, you get the faster cars. Yes. The speed differential is insane. The flashing of the lights when you’re coming up on traffic, uh, it’s so annoying.

If I was a GT car driver, I would purposefully sit in the middle of the road and make you fucking go around me at the worst part of the corner. You can sit there and flash me the restarts for no reason in the last two hours of the race, three hours of the race. That’s new too, right? The way they’re doing restarts now, where they’ve adopted the whole NASCAR idea.

S r O does this too, where they’re Reg Griding, dude, we lost how many laps watching them reg grid up and then go to green again. And then it was like, oh, we have had any action for a while. Let’s throw a yellow. Well, not even that. It was also cuz the Porsche, uh, l n d h car was trying to catch up. Yeah. So I’m sensing a bit of Porsche emsa collusion.

Forever. Unclean. One of my favorite parts of the race was after every yellow and after every restart, the [00:13:00] safety car coming around out of the bus stop would floor it and you can see it just kind of take off. And I was like, God damn, that McCann has some legs on it. Holy. . So I was pretty impressed with both the ct, the black wing and the uh, the McCann or whatever the McCann Turbo or Cayenne or whatever it was, they were ripping coming outta the final turn.

That was always fun to watch. The checkers outside the track was greater than the concessions inside. It was good value for money actually. That was good Eats great value for money. Yeah, the weather was phenomenal. I think this is the first year that the weather was clear, the entire race and warm too. It was actually very, very pleasant.

I don’t think he got any lower than 55, 50, 55 even at night. It was really nice. Would you do it again and if the answer’s no, would you consider a different M S A race? Both ? I would do it again and I would go to a different one. Maybe v i r, the Glen, mid Ohio. I’m hoping to go to v i r myself, with my car,[00:14:00]

I need a new shirt. , as you mentioned, there were way more people than 2018, so that did kind of take away from me from the experience because we didn’t get to do as much as we had in 2018 because there was just too many people to wade through. I, I did say that it’s better to watch on TV with a bunch of friends, but I do want to go again and actually stay in the infield and camp just once.

Yeah, I think that would be fun. I feel like that could add to have a home base. actually in the infield to go to and from, I think would make the experience a little bit better on site. Do you see the appeal of endurance sports car racing now, now that you’ve seen it in person versus on tv? I don’t know that I needed to to see it in person, , right?

It’s not that I was unaware of this discipline of racing or have never seen it before. Road racing tends to be far more interesting sometimes because the top prototype cars. Lower class. It’s like it’s an nine 11, it’s a Mercedes, it’s a Lexus. I can relate to these cars like even a [00:15:00] hurricane, technically you could relate to it, but that’s a little bit outta my price bracket.

Right? That’s what makes road racing a little more interesting. Cause it’s like, Ooh, look at that. Audi A four. Yeah, I have an Audi, I don’t, but I have an Audi A four, I have this bmw. Right? Versus like Formula One, it’s like I don’t have a fucking formula car. , , you know? And then it’s like NASCAR’s, like okay, yeah.

And I don’t have a NASCAR and okay, cuz it says Camry on the front ain’t no Camry. That’s like that super that they have in NASCAR. Now I don’t un, that has no relation to the real thing. That’s all I’m saying. But yes, I hope that as more people, you know, maybe shift their attention or maybe getting bored of other disciplines that they turn their eyes to endurance sports car racing.

Because to your point, it is really relatable and it’s really exciting too. I look forward to the rest of the season. I mean, obviously I’m looking forward to Lamont’s. I’ll be, you know, recording from France and things like that while I’m there. So I’m super excited to be at the crown jewel of sports car endurance racing this year.

So looking forward to more on that. But we do have to move [00:16:00] on. We have to talk about some other things that happened in the last. I know we’ve covered this in another special episode that people can tune into on our Patreon, but some quick thoughts on the DC Auto Show. Well, that about wraps that up, and if you wanna know the full report, you can check it out for free on our Patreon.

I just wanna say I went to the Richmond International Auto Show this weekend. Oh man. Because we’re kind of in the market for a larger vehicle to replace her. If the DC Auto Show is Wamp, WAMP, wom, the Richmond Auto Show was , the DC Auto Show to retract. My statement was actually the Toyota Auto Show. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Oh, nice. If you were looking for a Toyota, you needed to be at that show. They had every model possible and then some on display. And if you were tired of Toyota, you could go look at all the Hyundais. Toyota had probably 20% of the entire area, which unlike the DC Convention Center. The Richmond Convention [00:17:00] Center is one floor.

Toyota had 50% of one whole convention room area. Yeah. Wow. That’s crazy. See, I did try and sit in a supra, and one thing that really grinds my gears about these auto shows is they disconnect the batteries. So all these vehicles with power seats, they have them set to someone, Eric or Tanya’s size. The person that moved them into the the arena.

So someone like me who wants to put the seat all the way back and you know, get in and fiddle with things, every car in the place is uncomfortable because I cannot adjust any of the seats. I thought there was a solution to this. It’s like police academy. You just come up and rip the seat out and you sit in the backseat.

Isn’t that how you do it in every car? Oh, I totally think I broke the third row seed of this Toyota Sienna that was allegedly sold to somebody. So , if you’re listening to this, you know, I hope it’s covered under warranty. I’m sorry, . Speaking of Hyundai’s, we got to see a new one that we actually wasn’t even on our radar and they call it the ION six.

And so we had some choice opinions about it, maybe some choice words. If you [00:18:00] wanna really summarize it down, it looks like a sob. It looks like a SOB 900 from the eighties and you’ll never convince me otherwise. But what was shocking was the other day I spotted a commercial with all people, Evan Bacon, talking about how he loves his Aion six, and it includes his daughter, but I don’t know what her name is.

But the punchline of the commercial was you. Like Kev, what? ? Yeah, I don’t understand. You know what this car looks like to me. It looks like the Oldsmobile Aurora with that giant swooping cabin. At first glance, John Capi and I from Project Motor Inc. We came down the stairs and we said, what is that nine 11 looking thing?

And then when you saw it in profile, you’re like, that’s AAB 900 Turbo. But no, the reason I bring up commercials is because other things that happened in parts of the world where they don’t care about things that go v boom, vroom, they go, Omaha, 43 Hu hu hu. We’re talking about the Super [00:19:00] Bowl and the commercials they’re in.

So let’s get your guys recap on the 2023 Automotive Super Bowl commercials. I have to be completely honest with you, I watched exactly 15 minutes of the Super Bowl before I was asleep. Was that the Rihanna part? So I missed the halftime show completely . I watched one possession for each team and that was it that I was done.

That’s all you needed. So I can’t really speak to any of these commercials. So there was a bunch, I mean obviously there’s lists out there that have every commercial that was designed for the Super Bowl that aired before, during, and after, but they’re specifically car ones and we’ve tried to highlight some of those.

They come from Kia Jeep, et cetera. So why don’t we run through some of these really quickly, Tonya, and get your thoughts on the commercials. It felt like there were less car commercials in general than in past years, or maybe they were not quite. Impactful in general. I, I don’t know. They felt different.

The main hitters that are usually there were missing, so maybe that’s what kind of made the whole [00:20:00] thing feel a little off. In terms of the commercial experience when watching the Super Bowl last year was the one with Eugene Levy and the Nissan. The Nissan Z and yeah. Yeah. And you always get the Audi ones.

Would you think is like the next transporter movies coming? Like there’s these just kind of epic commercials out there? No, and this time we had Blinkie dad with Kia and Blinkie being the little child’s baby’s pacifier. And this family that’s gone somewhere in the mountains and then gets to the hotel and realizes that baby’s missing blinky.

And Dad takes off in the Kia Telluride Ex-Pro all Terrain edition super all-wheel drive suv and he’s tearing through the mountains and I forget if he’s going across dirt snowed roads and hills and all this stuff. And at the bottom there’s a disclaimer that says, professional driver on a closed course do not attempt at home.

No, the disclaimer says don’t drive your Telluride off road. It will break like, like is this actually meant to be some Bronco whatever or Jeep Wrangler that can handle all this? [00:21:00] I don’t know. Maybe they had it shooting out of a cement, like the Italian job water pipe launching out of him. Like, yeah, Laia, let’s see what happens.

It is a cool looking truck, don’t get me wrong. But yeah, I don’t think it’s marketed as like trail rated, rugged off rotor, you know, substitute for other brand here. But yeah, the Binky dad thing, I don’t know. Will Ferrell was back again for like the third year in a row, pedalling. Some EV from General Motors.

He was pedalling all the EVs from General Motors. I like this commercial because it was the GMC whatever version, cuz that’s how much I pay attention to GMC pickup trucks. I thought it was funny because it was GMC EVs and Netflix and so he was driving through different Netflix TV shows. So there was the Walking Dead, there was WID games, there was Bridgeton, there was Stranger Things.

There’s like characters, actors, actresses from the actual like episodes that are like cameo in here because in the beginning he gets bit by a Walking Dead zombie in the end. He is a zombie driving the [00:22:00] ev. Are they trying to tell you something because I’ve said that about driving Hondas for a long time.

did you become Numb? Yeah, , exactly. They followed up with the Jeep Electric Boogie commercials. They’ve got variations of that for the four XE platform. You see ’em now all the time. The Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee and you know, snow up to their door handles doing 80 miles an hour. Yeah, this one wasn’t bad at this one was going through a safari, going through the forest, going up the mountain, things like that.

It was an upbeat commercial. It had the Electric Boogie Woogie music playing. So you were happy. It had fun, animals smiling, that whole kind of thing. So it was a different tone than some of the other commercials and it was just, You know, Hey, look how much fun you’re gonna have in our electric Jeep. You too can smile with giraffes.

I will say the four XE commercials, the new hybrid Jeep platforms do have my interest. I am curious to go test drive one to see what the torque is like, how it puts down the power, how it uses it. I mean, obviously we’re accustomed to the Pacifica hybrid and how it [00:23:00] functions. I am really curious how the Jeep works and that kind of stuff.

So you got my attention. Lantis. Speaking of Lantis, the premature electrification commercial. Hmm. It’s like one of those pharmaceutical drug commercials for pre Yes. Yeah. But having these couples talk about how they bought electric trucks and they’re always running out of juice and everything. It looks like it has the potential to be an excellent commercial.

But does it have our disclaimer? If you suffer from S STIs for more than four hours, please consult your nearest physician. Probably not. , this commercial was all about the new Ram 1500 Rev, which they debuted at CES earlier this year and whatnot. So it’s like how much better the Ram Rev is gonna be in your life versus, you know, everything else.

It was a pretty good commercial. Just definitely go back and watch it. If it’s not named after a prehistoric lizard creature, nobody’s gonna. and then there was 10. Okay. The only good thing about this movie was the scene of the Alpha and I was like, okay, it’s another one. I don’t think I saw [00:24:00] nine. I don’t know if I saw eight.

I can’t remember. And then 10 gonna be two parts. So it’s really 10 and 11, just like five and six were, and if you don’t know what we’re talking about yet, fast and ne Furious. Yes. Yes. I’m excited now. That’s what I call Fast and De Furious. 137. Oh yeah. It is gonna be like those now CDs, they’re just gonna go on forever.

It’s gonna be fast. And the Furious 20 and it’s gonna be that scene from Days of Thunder where they’re racing in the wheelchairs. Except they’ll be geriatric racing in the wheelchairs. Well, no, now they’re bringing in Jason Mamoa to replace God knows who. So we’ll just keep adding action heroes. It’ll become like the Expendables after a while.

Okay. I think he’s replacing the rock because the Rock has not been back for like one or two movies now. The rock’s too busy making turds like Black Adams. So come on. That’s because the Rock and Vin Diesel can’t work together. That’s, yeah, that’s the real reason The Rock and Tay digs. They gotta do an argument.

Then there’s multiple people cuz there was definitely a beef with the Vin Diesel. I think it all centers around Vin Diesel, . Just saying all I’m gonna say. I haven’t watched [00:25:00] Slumberland. . Okay. Which also stars Jason maoa, which is based off of the cartoon or comic strip. Little Nemo. Yes. The kid on the flying bed or whatever.

There was original Nintendo game based on it too. Blah, blah, blah. I don’t know the full story. I don’t care. He’s in that and when the first scene of him sitting in the car, I swear to God, I was like, oh my God, it’s Slumberland . Except he’s like gonna race a car. That other movie, Slumberland that you mentioned, the Little Nemo story that’s gonna end up like the Aladdin Sinbad movie from the nineties.

Of course I had that thought. It’s the Mandela effect, like we all know it exists. It happened. It was a real thing. There’s a trailer for it, and yet there is zero evidence that it ever existed. If you ask Sinbad, he’ll tell you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s lies. It’s a conspiracy. The evidence is here and now we’ve said it.

There was a movie Slumberland with Jason Mamoa. You heard it here first, based off Little Nemo and the Flying Bed. There was a commercial that [00:26:00] spoke to you. Did you get up outta your chair? Were you cheering at this? Kinda laughed and not because it’s funny to see what was being depicted, but it’s just like, Funny because of all the troubles that they’re facing.

And who are we talking about? Prey till Tesla. Oh shucks. So the thing about this commercial actually is it did not air across all states. So this was Maryland and like I think two or three other states that this actually aired in. So the majority of people didn’t see this commercial. That’s okay. We have a YouTube link for it too.

And it’s this dawn project and it’s basically the anti, a full self-driving some sort of advocacy group probably based outta California, since California is actively trying to sue against the false naming of that. And they put together this whole video and they’ve got like little dummy toddlers and children that like are walking across the street and just get run over by Teslas that aren’t stopping.

Now. I didn’t make the video so I am skeptical I can be, [00:27:00] were they really in full self-driving and didn’t see them or is there a little bit of BS going on here to paint them in a bad light? I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. There has definitely been other videos. Of Tesla’s doing safety drives and whatnot, where they have hit objects that have gone in front of them because they haven’t seen them.

So it’s not out of the realm that this is possible. But then on the other side of the camp, you have all the Tesla people, there’s been reports of people literally putting their own children in front of the car and letting it stop. And I’m like, you’re a psychopath because you must not love your child.

Cause I wouldn’t trust anything right now to like not run my kid over, like how dumb are you? But anyway. Wow, that’s intense . I was not expecting this commercial . You rejoiced, I’m sure of it. I don’t like that it’s advertised as something that it’s doing something I can’t do. Oh yeah. Like just changed the name.

Oh our. Our fans know, I mean there’s a whole retrospective episode about this exact topic that you can review. No, I’m not part of the tone project, [00:28:00] but send her some leaflets. She’s definitely interested. No, all kidding aside, there are some other honorable mentions on this list. We gotta tip our hat to Weather Tech.

Obviously they sponsor IMSA and other racing series out there, so it was one of those, Aw that’s sweet moments where they talk about, you know, the factory and Baden U S A and all that kind of fun stuff. So great support weather tech. They make good stuff and they support racing. . Awesome. The next one was the Uber one Jingle.

I very much enjoyed this. I thought it was cute. Similar to the YouTube short that’s floating out around there about the Windows theme song and how Microsoft got it right. If you’ve seen that, it’s like a Microsoft Azure type of commercial. But there was one other one that was pretty damn awesome, and it goes back to one of our crossover episodes from season three, and that’s the T-Mobile John Travolta.

Musical commercial garbage, hot garbage. I heard about this commercial, like there was gonna be some John Travolta thing and I don’t know why I had it in my head from what I misheard that it was going to be Saturday [00:29:00] Night Fever. And I was totally confused when this commercial was going on. Cause I’m like, this is not Saturday Night Fever, , what’s the two dudes from Scrubs?

Right? And then Travolta shows up. Yeah, Donald Faison and Zag braf because those two aren’t a bunch of T-Mobile commercials recently together. Yeah. He has neighbors in this neighborhood that they’re showing and then suddenly randomly John Travolta’s here. I don’t know. Why isn’t he moving in? And then they bust out in Greece song.

It made me smile cuz it made me think of Steven Izzy and the review of Trading Paint that we did back earlier in this season. So I’m not sure where his spray on hair went though. He was bald. Well he was bald in trading paint. That was a wig. He wore a hat. He didn’t have hair. He had a like a bad toe. Did he?

Yeah. I’m gonna pull it up. We’re gonna pull it up as part of our Season three retrospective. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. There was hair. It’s right on the cover. Art . So as we wrap out our showcase, let’s talk a little bit about season three highlights. This is the first time you’re dialing in to the show.

I wanna let you guys know this is the last [00:30:00] episode of season three officially, and it’s. Episode number 82 for season three. That’s not counting all the bonus material that went out on Patreon. That won’t come out way later, maybe in season four at some point. So record setting number of episodes for us, you know, more than one a week for sure.

We doubled down and triple down some of the weeks throughout the year just to get content to you guys as fast as we could. And there’s some really great stuff left to come, and I’m sure you guys have some great memories from season three as well. I wanna start off with one that Tanya and I did together, which was the Xmal episode with Chuck Bennett.

Talk about an incredible storyteller and what an epic journey his career has taken. Yes, that was definitely a very fun episode to listen to the man. Is a wealth of knowledge and experiences. And it’s interesting to have heard a story of like where he started in his career and his life and how he switched to Zol and everything he knows about it.

And you got to flex your technical skills too, especially the [00:31:00] episode we did with Rick Lee from Evolve and other things like that. So you get invested in different ways in the show too. So it’s always a lot of fun. I like the bonus content when he started talking about Ralph Lorenz, Bugatti and Einstein’s car and all this kind of, these other projects that he worked on.

Those are really, really cool too. I mean, just fascinating guy. Again, to your point, wealth of information and, and again, a great storyteller. I was really fortunate. I did a one-on-one with Barbie the welder. Her life’s journey is another one that is just like, you just sit in awe and you’re like, wow. How she pulled herself up from her bootstraps and how she’s become this noted artist in the community.

And she is related to the motorsport and vehicle community. She’s done work for sema, she’s done things for Harley Davidson and things like that. So if you’ve missed that episode, what a great and inspiring story that she told about her life’s. We were really fortunate this year just by chance. We met Don Weiberg from Garage Dawn Magazine and he introduced us to the world of [00:32:00] Auctions, classic cars, private collections.

This whole idea that he’s got that he calls the Garage Lifestyle in general. I have to say, Don’s been a great addition to our team and he brings some immediate comedy to every episode that he is on, especially the what should I Buy episodes. Those are always fun. And those group of folks that have been in some of the more recent add a lot of color to

So what should I buy? . I mean, the Collector car one, I was telling everybody, he’s pretty crazy episode. You’re gonna have a lot of fun. You know, Don’s doing impersonations and Chris and Mark are going at it and there’s, you know, it was great experience. And I know, I know Brad enjoys getting together for each one that we come up with.

But the Italian episode, I’m telling you guys right now, if you haven’t listened to. , all I gotta say is crack pipe, and it literally starts from that point and it goes downhill very, very quickly. , absolutely insane episode. I mean, on the other side of that, we had some real superstars. Wish. We have some big names that anyone you [00:33:00] know remotely tied into motor sports probably would recognize Andy Pilgrim, Lynn St.

James, Randy Lanier, Dennis Gage, John Davis from Motor Week Kat DeLorean. Bill Warner from the Amelia Island, they all shared their own personal stories and it’s very interesting. Yeah, very inspirational. A lot of ’em, people wonder, they know these people by name. I know so-and-so. Yeah. You’ve seen him on TV or you know, John Davis, we’ve known him for 42 years.

He’s been on the air for that long. Dennis Gage for almost 30. But do you really know them? And when you get to hear their stories and how they became who they are and the steps and missteps that they made along the way, I mean, it’s really, really quite amazing. So hopefully that shed some light for other people.

And there’s some other stories out there that they’re just like that even more tragic in some ways. If you look at the. Epic coming of age stories of pro driver like Andy Lee and then of SRO driver, Joey Jordan iv, who’s related to Jim Jordan, who’s also on the show. They take us through [00:34:00] their life and Joey especially, he goes on this 29,000 mile journey from LA to the tip of South America.

You know, looking at Antarctica in a van that he bought, sight unseen from Japan. Just incredible. Buck wild, buck, wild. I mean, that’s top gear level stuff right there. The journey through South America was just buck wild, and he did it mostly by himself, which was risky, but just amazing too when you listened to everything that he went through on that trip.

So Brad and I were super fortunate this year. We got to do something pretty cool, right? Yeah. I mean, we were on a crossover episode with Mark Green, her cars. Yeah. We double crossed with Mark. He came on our show. We went on his show. I have to say, the crossovers are probably some of my favorite episodes that we do.

We had on another podcast, Kate and Nicole from Two Girls, one Formula. They’re bringing Formula One to the masses. Mm-hmm. very popular. Uh, I think more crossovers should be in our future. I, I think they’re some of my favorite. Those in the, what should I [00:35:00] buys for sure. Our listeners might not know, but we also do a quarterly with Steven Izzy From everything I learned from movies where not only do they review bad movies, they’re willing to review bad car movies with us.

I was gonna say trading paint, R e I L F M, crossover. Steve and Izzy crossover episodes with them are always quite enjoyable. They’re a fun bunch. If you haven’t checked out their podcast episode is everything I learned from movies, so it’s always a good time with them. The movie itself was Convers Trip

Spoiler alert, consensus of that review. Um, but check it out. It’s on Netflix, huh? So we look forward to getting together with them. Be on the lookout for more between us and everything I learned from movies, but we have to congratulate our. We broke the record. The record was held by Chuck at Zeal for the longest episode it took to get recorded, but that was defeated by the guys over at the Pontiac Aztec Owners Club.

Yes, folks, we did it. We said we were gonna do it. We finally got Aztec owners on the show to talk about why they love the car, what’s so [00:36:00] great about it, and Mount Mandan. And I actually had a lot of fun recording with Paul and John and that episode turned out fantastically. So if you haven’t tuned in for that, I highly recommend it.

That was a good episode. I did learn a lot more than you probably ever wanted to know, more than I thought I needed to know . But I gotta say my favorite episode is the next episode, cuz our episodes just keep getting better and better. We’re getting great guests, great stories. Yeah, I think the next episode is always gonna be our best episode.

You know, that’s a good way to put it. I like that. That’s very, uh, forward thinking. Uh, you know, very . Yes. The thing that gets us to the next thing, . Absolutely. On that note, one of the other things as I look back over season three, which actually takes us into season four without giving too much away, is our long-standing partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center, and now in partnership with the Society of Automotive Historians, we’re bringing you a new mini-series every month we’re gonna put out episodes surrounding the history of [00:37:00] motor sports.

These are coming from different sources, academics, X racers, you know, things like that. And it’s very fascinating material, a lot of it older things that you were like, I always wondered about that. And so we’re really, really fortunate to be partnering with both the I M R C and the s A H to bring you that kind of content and kind of mix things up from our standard fair.

So look forward to more of that and a lot of other surprises as we go into season four. If you wanna leave us feedback on any of the 82 episodes from season three or anything from prior seasons in our catalog, you can join us very easily on our Facebook group or on our new Discord. All those links are available in the show notes on our websites all over the place.

We’re pretty easy to find. So if you. Also have ideas for stories that you’re interested in us exploring. Please don’t be bashful. If you have a great story that you wanna share, come on the show. Really easy. You’re just sitting down and having a conversation with friends. So if you enjoy what we’re doing, let us know.

We’re not fishing for compliments, but it’s [00:38:00] always good to hear from our fans, you know, what they’re interested in so that we can dig a little bit deeper. And as always, if you really, really enjoy the show and you wanna help us out, drop us a cup of coffee over on Patreon. He’s talking to you, Mark Hewitt,

That said, it is time we move on to Volkswagen, Audi in Porsche News. So what’s on the docket this month? Or should I say, who’s no longer working? . Apparently their design chief got the boot. Oh, you’re outta here. He designed one of your new favorite cars as you told us about, from c e s. I don’t know what they’re thinking.

Well, obviously they’re thinking that the ID buzz isn’t all the buzz right now, but Tanya wants one. Everybody I’ve talked to that’s seen it says the same thing. That’s super cool. I wanna buy one. It was really cool to see in person. I hope to see them on the road, feel like Volkswagen does this every time.

They tease us with something and then everybody goes, that’s really cool. I will line up like it’s the Apple [00:39:00] store in 2005 for the next iPhone to buy this thing, and then they never produce the thing that we want. Then we get the next Passat. That looks like it was made from cardboard and X rental cars.

Exactly, because the headline of this article from Haggerty is Volkswagen Design Chief Ousted over Retro Designs replaced by Bentley Design Lead. So he was fired because he’s trying to do retro redesigns. Hello. That’s what sells. That is the thing right now. That’s what a lot of us now who maybe are in a better financial position to buy another car or something.

Kind of want, because you’re going back to stuff that we wanted to obtain in the first place. In the first place when we were first starting to drive. But it was like, oh, you can’t, because they’re unobtainium or they’re gonna be, you know, piles and rust buckets and pieces of crap that you guys sink a lot of money into.

And it’s like, now I could have like this kind of modern day, all the bells and whistles retro feel to it. But we’re gonna get rid of that. Cuz again, I’m saying, how dumb are you? [00:40:00] The beetle again, which is like every time it’s just a retro of itself I guess. I don’t know. But like an electric beetle. Oh my God.

How easy is this? Nope. We’re gonna replace that with the guy that brought you the ben. A stupid car with a stupid name and a stupid design. Right. How could you ruin a Q seven ? It’s like, it looks terrible. I feel like there’s a space for the retro stuff. It doesn’t all need to be vanilla, that they all just look like passats.

Even Toyota is taking a step away from that. The new Prius is actually starting to look like a normal car. Then they have the crown and some other EVs and things like that. It’s like if Toyota’s making ’em look more normal, well, I don’t, that’s a stretch to say look more normal. , I’m not. I’m not sure some of those design lines were all that great, but they are definitely differentiating.

Like that Crown did not look like a Corolla. Definitely not. You know, even them, they’ve kind of gotten into [00:41:00] like the Camian Corolla. It’s like until it passes you on the road, you’re not sure which one it is. Sometimes from like, mm-hmm. , the front end. We had that period in Volkswagen too, where the Passat and the Jetta and the Gulf, they all just looked the same.

I, I believe it was the Mark five period and the Mark four period. No, the Jetta was square in the front. So yeah, the Jetta looked nothing like the golf. Although you could interchange all the parts. They look nothing like each other. It is a sad day in Volkswagen history because this month signifies the end of an era.

As Volkswagen moves deeper into electrification, that means there is no more room for motors like the Venerable VR six. My heart is broken. Let me tell you. Did you know that the VR six has now officially been around for 30 years? Started in the early days as a lowly 12 valve, 2.8 liter, and now exits with over 300 horsepower out of 3.6 liters.

Naturally aspirated a hell of an engine, a hell of a sounding engine. It’s been in just about everything. When you look at the article that we’re talking about here, that was put [00:42:00] together by the drive, it’s astounding the number of cars that they put the VR six in. Some of them carrying badges like K. So you think, oh, I got this Mighty six cylinder in here and it’s actually a VR six in your Cayenne, or whatever it is.

The VR six great engine. Sad to see it go. I understand why they’re sunsetting it, but maybe in the future, who knows? Maybe the VR six will come back. It is a engineering marvel in the fact you can put an engine that big in such a tight space. I’m just glad to have been able to NAB one. Oh, the price of all VR six has just went through the roof.

Yep. Now they’re $2. Bob, $2 . $52. . I got 50. Well, we talked about this before and I feel like we’re in the middle of this weird, grateful Dead Rolling Stones unending farewell tour. Here we go. Lamborghini. Once again, we have another car that is gonna be the ultimate final [00:43:00] car with a v12. It was supposed to be some other evented door.

This, that and the other thing. I can’t even keep ’em all straight anymore. And now we have Invincible and Authentica. Yes. And I’m like, no one care. and I don’t like the way it looks. , how is this different than a hurricane? I feel like we’re back to the eighties where they only make one car for 20 years at a time and then you know, the next one will come out.

How many years has it been since Jeremy Clarkson did that vignette on the Aston Martin that he drove where he said This is the end of an era, the end of the big v12. Yeah, I mean, like I said, this feels like a farewell tour that’s never gonna end. Everybody keeps talking about the last of the V12 s and all this kinda stuff, especially the Lamborghini.

Here we are all over again and it’s never gonna end because people keep buying them. Yeah, exactly. So they keep trying to find ways to sell them and offset their carbon credits and no better way to stir a buzz and get people interested than to say, this is it. This is the end. This is the last one [00:44:00] we’re gonna make until the next one we make, then that’s gonna be the last one we’re ever gonna make.

Yeah, it’s, it’s a terrible sales paradigm there. I don’t care about this car. All I care about from Lamborghini right now, and usually I don’t resonate with his designs, is the Magnus Walker redesigned Kuta. It looks so good. He put out another rendering the other day with a maral livery on it from like the old school formula one days.

Not the Maral f1, which was, you know, Senna has anything to do with Lamborghini, but it looked, damn. I’m good. So, I mean, whatever Lambeau you do you, that being said, it’s time for some dues from lower s. Why, why not ? I don’t care about either of these brands. Let’s move on. Wow. Well, you know, which is really sad cause I used to love Mercedes.

Some of our listeners might still care. I, I mean, I care a little bit. Does it have two doors and a swooping rear end? I mean, then you have my attention Mercedes, or is it a [00:45:00] wagon? What, yes, Mercedes. As good as those two things. The S SLS GT model series there. The coop and the wagons. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Well anyway, the latest Mercedes news, aside from whatever their latest model is gonna be, eq, this, that, and the other, I think they’re even actually changing their platform name and dropping that whole EQ s thing. I’m not sure what they’re going with because it’s dumb . I mean it was weird, but it’s fine.

Their cars are getting more techy essentially. Of course they have to, to compete against the Teslas of the world and also probably to work out all their subscription models that we’ve talked about in the past. That’s not what this is about. You know, this is about higher computing power in the electronics.

I think they’ve already been partnered with NVIDIA for a while, but the latest partnership that was announced, which isn’t all that new for this entity, cuz they’ve already partnered, I think with the likes of Ford and others. Google is coming to. [00:46:00] A Mercedes near you? No, W specifically, it’s their navigation that they wanna embed in, in the navigation system.

So Google maps for you because Audi and B M W have the lock with Garmin, so we gotta go with somebody else. Right. I mean, that’s how that works. I mean, I trust my Google overlord, so fine. No thank you. It never driven me into a lake. So . Although I did hear a report of apparently some dude’s driveway got labeled as a road and people are legit turning on it from like navigation systems.

must have been in Florida . That’s awesome. And then there’s some news from B M W, which might be some good news. They’re already talking about their 2024 models, specifically the new X five M and X six M, and they’re kind of expanding their hybrid models a little bit. Cuz right now they only have like four.

So they’re gonna add hybrids to these as well. So that’s kind of exciting. That’s good hybrid [00:47:00] compromise between gasoline and being full electric. But I think the more interesting thing is the facelift or rather nose job that these two have gotten because the grills are not as monstrous. So they’ve toned them down a little bit.

They’re still pretty heinous. I think the other duct work that’s going on in the lower part of the bumper now is distracting. Maybe. Have you seen the guy that mounted like the X seven grills to an E 36? He redid the whole front end. It looks ridiculous. Let me guess. It’s taller than the height. No, it’s literally the whole height of the front end, the hood to the bottom of the balance.

It looks insane. . I gotta give him props for one thing. Massive cooling. There is no excuse for getting air into that radiator at that point. Well, you know what guys? Here we are closing out season three. We have to just bask in the awesomeness of this next segment. Complete silence [00:48:00] from STIs. Take a moment.

I mean, that’s not true. Not necessarily. We had the electric Boogie Woogie. That doesn’t count. It doesn’t count. Count. We had the, uh, premature electrification doesn’t count. No, it does count. . You know what the recent news is though? Their stock prices have gone up and they’ve had record profits most recently, so that is actually the latest.

So they’re doing quite well. Well, we can shift to what’s left of our domestic news brought to us by American muscle.com, your source for OEM performance parts for your Mopar or Chevrolet product. Did you guys know that a Camaro is less expensive to lease right now than one of Tanya’s least favorite cars on the face of the earth?

The Mali. Would you do it? If my choice is anything with a Camaro or Malibu, Camaro, , are you sure about that? I mean, if my choice is anything other than Impala verse Malibu, [00:49:00] it’s going to be anything. , . Brad, would you lease a Camaro? I’m not really into leasing period, but to Tanya’s point, anything is greater than a Malibu.

I would lease a Camaro versus renting a Malibu, . But when I read between the lines, what this says to me is the Camaro’s not doing well. Don’t they get rid of it? Yeah. Isn’t this the last year, ding, ding, ding to try to get them out the door? Now we have to lease them cuz we can’t unload them quick enough.

And also like we saw at the DC Auto Show, they were really touting the Camaro convertible, which seemed not necessarily a first for that body style, but it just seemed like we hadn’t seen the Camaro convertible in a while. And the same is true of the Challenger, right? Dodge is putting out a convertible now in the last set of the production run, which sort of boggles my mind because it costs extra to get that through safety and the tooling for the convertible and all the extra stuff they had to come up with.

And I’m like, this is craziness. So [00:50:00] would I lease a Camaro? Why wouldn’t lease anything? I’m with you, Brad. I mean that reasons and seasons for doing that, right? But if that was my only choice, Maybe just maybe is walking an option. walking is always an option. I mean, it seems to be the option at Ford. Cause they just reported 2 billion.

That’s billion with a B. Like the show with Paul Gati. Billion dollar loss because chips Ah, that’s not a good thing. I did pass a lightning on the road today, but they do exist in the wild. Although I was wondering if something was wrong with it. Cause I swear it had like his, his hind legs were up. I was like, what is this thing doing?

It was raked. My wife passed a rivian today and she texted me and she goes, what is a Rivian? And then that led to an explanation which ended with her going, huh? It should have led to a question. Why do you not listen to the show? Season three is [00:51:00] full of Rivian. Full of R. Yes. So it’s the Rivian season because chips like we’ve been talking about for over a year now, there’s still supply chain issues.

There’s still this and that. But the Machi as cool as it can be despite the name. It is a pretty cool car price. Are the problem, $50,000 for an entry level vehicle is a hard pill to swallow for most people. So I can understand why sales are down. And then if you’re not in the economy car market, you’re interested in buying the latest F-150.

You know, not even talking about the lightning. I mean, these trucks are out of control. Who’s got 70, 80, $90,000 to spend on these trucks? You can’t think of it like that though. You gotta think of it more like who’s got $1,200 to spend on it a month or $1,500 a month? Because you can get the financing for any of that stuff.

Well, that’s true. I mean, we got a letter in the mail even today where Chrysler was like, if you trade in your car for a brand new one, your new payment is only [00:52:00] $121 more than the last one. And I’m like, are you outta your freaking mind? It’s already bad enough as it’s, I do like the way that the article starts out by saying that General Motors and Tesla both recorded record profits in 2022.

Well, Tesla’s been reporting record profits for years now and. , I still don’t understand how that math works except for the carbon credit part that we’ve already covered several times. Right, right, right, right, right. Chevy’s on the up. Maybe it’s the truck divisions that are really where the numbers are coming to play, because other than the Camaro and the Malibu, as we saw at the auto show, they don’t have anything.

Right. So they’re not selling cars. The Corvette, I mean the Corvette’s are 30 to $40,000 more than they used to be. So let’s talk about that for a second. I wanna go back to our special DC auto show episode where we talked about this and we speculated about even last month, the Corvette, s u v in the four door.

So here we go. Cadillac Black Wing becomes the Corvette sedan, and the [00:53:00] Blazer Ss becomes a Corvette, S u v. Although you guys saw the latest spy pictures that lifted Corvette, s u v thing, and I I, it was, it was a rendering. It wasn’t, yeah, yeah. Whatever. It wasn’t a real car, but still, I was just like, it’s still a blazer with the Corvette nose and tail on it.

Whoop doo. It looks like a bowler bobcat, or whatever those exact Exactly, exactly. A bero. In reality, what General Motors is gonna do is rebadge those other two cars, the Blazer, SS, and the Black Wing, and those will have Corvette badges and a Jake on the side and the whole nine yards, and that’s the end of that fine whatever.

But overall, I think the car market is just down. We’re in a weird transition period. New cars are what they are. Like Tanya said, the design language right now, when we look back 20 years from now, I don’t know what we’re gonna think. Well, the cost of everything’s up. You shouldn’t be out buying a car for the sake of buying car unless you absolutely have to because your current car does no [00:54:00] longer function.

Or it’s irreparable, right? Like right to just willy-nilly be like, I feel like a new car today. It’s sunny. Hey man, that was the two thousands when the stock market was strong, those days are gone. That is not the days right now. So these EVs cost significantly more than a Kia, Toyota, Corolla, and like what are you getting for that?

Cool to say you have an electric vehicle if you’re going out to buy a car, just. for no reason, but I’m gonna just replace my car that still runs that I’ve paid for, blah, blah, blah. I don’t know that you’re ever going to break back. Even spending $80,000, I don’t care what the cost of the electric ferries is, right?

To fill the pixie dust in your car. That’s a huge chunk of money to break back even on like the price of gasoline has to go astronomical. Well, the price of electricity has also like basically doubled because of everybody, you know, consuming more electricity and it costs more to generate more. So it’s a [00:55:00] lose losee situation.

The way I look at it, you know, without getting into all the details, it’s like, is it cheaper to produce fuel than it is to produce electricity? But then obviously there’s the, you know, the environmental impact of all that. I mean, it’s just, it’s craziness. I still hold true, and I’ve said it throughout the course of the season, hybrid is the way to go.

Hopefully we’ll see more of that as we go along. You know, maybe the tides will turn synthetic fuels, you know, we talked about it earlier this season with Porsche, you know, things like that. So, you know, the sky is still the limit from a technology perspective, but what we’re still missing is standardization.

We don’t have that model T of EVs and. Maybe Ford will come up with that car. You know, they can regain that title, but who knows? They better . Yeah, right? Yeah. If they want to stay in business, they better. You need a mixed bag. They say if you’re doing your financial investments, it’s good to diversify, right?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Well, gotta diversify my portfolio. Why? We all have to, it’s either light switch, gasoline, diesel, or [00:56:00] electric. One or the other. Nothing in between. Well, it depends on different strokes for different folks, there’s times if you can afford an $80,000 EV and you live in the city and you go three mile commute or barely use your car, that might make perfect sense.

And you have charging stations everywhere. If you’re out in rural America and you’re driving, yeah, 70 miles to go to work, it probably doesn’t make sense. But a, a hybrid or a traditional ice does. So we’ll see how this all plays out. Maybe they, the powers that be have it right and there is only one to rule them all.

I don’t think so, but yeah, I don’t think so either. There was another article that came across my desk that maybe posed the question yet again. How is this still a thing Honda? Is still dealing with toccata airbag recalls. And these aren’t on the old cars, these are on newer cars. How have they not nipped this in the bud yet?

It feels like this has been going on for forever. The problem is, so if this was gm, they wouldn’t have this problem cuz their cars don’t run that long. But this is [00:57:00] Honda where they made the mistake of making a vehicle that can run for longer than 20 years. So now the vehicles are outliving the useful life of their components, aka the uh, The death airbags, the mortars.

Yeah, the claymores. Yeah, the claymore mines. Yes. Is what you said reminds me a hundred percent of that meme that was floating around about all the Camry owners from like 1996, how Toyota was recalling them because they’ve been on the road for too long. It’s like, buy something else. They’re unstoppable.

And to your point, they’re just so under stressed. Not necessarily that they’re well-built, it’s that they’re under stressed. Those cars are, and so they just last forever. But there’s the neglect side of that, right? They run forever. Nobody takes care of them. But you don’t have to. Yeah, because you don’t have to.

It’s like a lawnmower. As long as it starts and cuts your grass, you even sharpen the blade. I mean, what hell was wrong with you? So that’s a waste of time. The grass is cut. In this instance, I mean, this takota thing is just man, but they issued a do not [00:58:00] drive warning to 8,200 owners. I mean, that’s pretty severe now.

That seems to be the growing trend with recalls these days. Everything is do not drive, park it in a target parking lot and run away. Throw a Molotov in the window and just bolt. No, just light a candle. . Yeah. Oh yeah. Like that Florida man, whatever. Speaking of, how is this still a thing? We’re gonna talk about this freaking Hyundai again for like the sixth or seventh month in a row.

The N 74 concept. They are playing. It’s a hokey pokey. One minute. It’s in one minute, it’s out. It’s a rolling lab. No, it’s not. It’s a concept, you know, it isn’t, and here we are again. Well, they didn’t say they’re gonna make it, they just said that they’re not possibly gonna make it. They put a price tag on it.

they’ve estimated what they think. This hydrogen, hybrid, electric, whatever this thing is. I nearly had an aneurysm when I saw the price tag. And it will not be affordable by [00:59:00] anybody. . Yeah. What what they did is they threw out an f u number. So they’ve been listening critics, the critics have been saying, all you gotta make it, you gotta make it, you gotta make it.

And they’re like, all right Ari, we’re gonna make it. And if we make it, this is the cost. If, um, FERS want this car, this is what it’s gonna cost you. You know what, this might be a bold strategy cotton, because I bet there’s gonna be some rich people that are be like, hell yeah, sign me up one car pre-order.

And, and then in hy they should just be like, hell yeah, here, here’s three of ’em. And then it’ll depreciate faster than a veloster so the rest of us can afford one. Yeah. So, so what they’re doing is they’re doing the Tesla model where they take on all these deposits and then they’re like, uh, then we’ll produce a car for you in five years.

You can have it in five years. 150 GS is a big pill to swallow for anything. But I think it’s even harder to swallow on a Hyundai that would be the most expensive Hyundai. Ever. All they have to do is just take the body and put it on [01:00:00] like a Genesis Coop, a Genesis or something. It’s built on top of a stinger, but the stinger’s on its way out.

Who cares? Put that body on a stinger and people will buy it. Okay. It doesn’t need to have NASA propulsion in it. No, it doesn’t. It’s like Mr. Fusion in that thing, right? So, uh, factory five, stop making replica cobra registers and start making replica in 75 cars. If it was 50 Gs, not 150 Gs, if it was 50 grand and out.

Now with the Nissan, which we’re not sure if that’s out yet either, and the Supra and everything else, I would really consider it because it is so cool because everything’s so expensive. That 50 grand price point, you can kind of make it work for a sports car. If you’re dedicated and you’re an enthusiast, but $150,000, you’re in Porsche territory at that point, or low end Ferrari territory.

I mean, you better have a killer car. It can’t be all looks, that’s all I’m saying, [01:01:00] that it looks damn good. Well, what about. EVs and concepts. Tanya, our friends at Volvo Pole Star. Oh, okay. I was confused. Yes. No. Well, you know Pole Star Volvo technically. Yeah. So Pole Star is unveiling its next model for next year, the Pole star two, and they’re gonna be adding even more power and 300 miles of range.

And these things are cool. Are they though? I think so. Are they the whole star one? Eat you up. That was the one that was at the DC Auto Show, and its numbers are just like ridiculous in terms of performance. But it still looks like an S 60 though, right? Which I don’t have a problem. I don’t have a problem with that.

I don’t have a problem. It’s always the price tag. It’s always the price tag. Well, that’s the problem. Like I can’t afford a pole star. , you can’t afford the Pole star one. Talking about $150,000. I think it’s up there in that neighborhood. Yeah. One 50 to 180 I think you were saying. [01:02:00] I mean, it’s, it’s ridiculous.

But I have seen more regular, let’s call them entry model pole stars on the road lately. And they kind of catch me by surprise because at first you’re like, ah, it’s a Volvo. And then you see that symbol right on the back and you’re like, that’s, that’s a pole star. And at night they’re more obvious because of the way the lights are shaped.

They’re kind of, they really do stick out, which is kind of cool. They’re not offensive looking because they do hark back to the Volvo that they’re based on. But again, it’s like, uh, you know, may maybe we could just gotta drive one. The problem is where do you go to go check one of these cars out? I, I don’t know.

I’ve never looked into it. I were they the ones that basically like you do everything and they like show up with a car for you? I think so. And that’s a growing trend now. And actually segues into something I wanted to talk about, which is another article I read the other day, I think, believe it was from a grassroots Motorsports and one of them, and they were talking about dealerships being a thing in the past.

Why do you wanna go to the dealership spend all day when you could just fill out the forms online? You can get the credit [01:03:00] pre-app applications now for just about everything online. And you could order the card the way you want it. So then the dealerships just become service centers, which people choose not to go to.

Like we talked about with the toccata airbags, you have your choice. Do you wanna take it there to get service? Do you wanna go somewhere else? Whatever. But I am personally done with dealing with dealerships and you know, no offense to the sales guys, everybody’s gotta make a living. I’ve said it before, I want what I want and it would just be nice to use the configurator online.

I want those wheels, I want that color, I want that trim. Send it. And it’s not necessarily, here run my credit card like it was in the nineties. You know, people are putting houses on their credit cards cause it’s getting the points and stuff. It’s not that kind of thing. But all the loan application stuff can be done online now.

I don’t get it. So if Pollstar is in fact doing it that way, I don’t have a problem with it. No, no. I had a what. Moment when I saw this next one. Why? What do you mean? Who’s lightyear? Why do I [01:04:00] care? And they’re suddenly outta business. What we’ve talked about them before on a previous episode, who? Well, buzz Lightyear.

Sure. I mean, they’re like a Dutch company that was trying to do the whole solar panel on the whole top of the car and all that stuff, and it was gonna be the solar powered ev. How did that work out for them? Again, apparently not very well because I would imagine their cost of manufacturer was way too high and unsustainable.

Ah. So the bigger question becomes who? will absorb their technology, their patents, and all the factory that they were using and all that kind of stuff. So that’s the thing I wanna pay attention to. It’s not necessarily the fact that light year is going out of business or, well, and there’s all the whole, that whole bankruptcy whole scene is all bright.

Yeah. Just cuz they’re bankrupt doesn’t mean the company closes and who knows how they restructure and then suddenly they’re still there. And I, I don’t know, because they talk about building cheaper solar EVs than like this Buick size, like limousine length, light year one, it looked like. [01:05:00] So I don’t know.

I have no idea. Well, since you brought up restructuring and bankruptcy and we’re not sure how it all works, that leads us to Lotus . If you look into the history of one of Britain’s finest engineering companies with a long racing pedigree, I mean, all jokes aside about Lotus, there’s some interesting stuff in their past, but now they made the announcement that they’re going to move to EV’s as well, because I was sort of wondering what was gonna happen to Lotus.

Lotus has always sort of said, I kind of don’t care what everybody else is doing. We’re gonna build sports cars or race cars or whatever. They’ve always been focused really on the enthusiasts and motorsports and here they come. with the Electra because everything has to start with E at Lotus for some weird reason.

It used to be numbers, you know, type this, you know, Lotus seven and all that kind of stuff. Now we have all e names since, you know, the Alat and the early cars and the Espree and all that. So the Electra, ah, it’s Electra, Booy, Booy. I mean, it’s built in China. It’s ugly. Yeah, that’s all I gotta say. It looks like a really bad UUs.

[01:06:00] I was gonna say, it looks like a UUs and that’s not a good thing. No, it doesn’t look like a lotus. It just doesn’t, it uh, it’s probably a Geli or whatever they’re called underneath it is by the Geli Group G bought Lotus six years ago. Wow. Has it been that long? Mm-hmm. , this thing is awful. If somebody out there buys one, I’d be curious to dig a ride in it, but mm, not so much.

So speaking of other random EVs and going back to our Dawn project and self-driving Uhoh , maybe it’ll be a PSA on this too, but however, Amazon, and it’s been going on for several years, that they’ve been trying to do small little robo taxis, full self-driving, yada yada. Apparently in whichever this sub branch of Amazon Zoox that it’s called, it’s developing these driverless taxis for use on the road.

They have done it. Done what? They’re on the road. These things don’t have steering wheels, no controls. And they’ll drive you around. Right [01:07:00] now they’re only driving you around like a mile back and forth on campus. . Are they utilizing a tunnel under the road? No, I don’t think so. It’s kind of like a moment where it’s like, oh cool, we did this, but it’s like, well, they’re getting closer.

Maybe not. Not really. They really just have like a beta test here with humans in the corner. . Johnny Cab. Johnny Cab. And if it demolition Matt, if it works anything like their streaming service, I’m not convinced. I mean that’s where the future’s going so you know, not my future. The real question is are they able to make the technology work?

Cuz if they can beat you know who and actually have something that works reliably, doesn’t mow down small children or animals. There’s other variables at play at the other manufacturer cuz there’s a whole tailspin going on there too, which we’ll cover here in a little bit. Well it’s an interesting, like these, like a little robo taxii and I don’t know like how big this thing is cuz there’s been some other ones that like Pizza Hut or Dominoes or like delivery [01:08:00] services have been trying, you’ve got the canoe and the postal services using Oshkosh, so canoe is still coming out.

They haven’t gone under, unlike some of the other ones you see. There’s a place for everything. If you’re at like a large distribution center, maybe like an Amazon or any other big manufacturing plant that would require people to like move from one end to the other. Any point if you had like this little robo Taxii one, two, seater, three seater, I mean that’s a pretty.

Means of transporting your people around without having a lot of downtime and waste. I don’t know if it would work in the city streets of New York City yet, which is likely the end goal for people. But there could be applications where it could make sense. I sometimes think moving sidewalks in New York City would be faster than taking a cab.

Well, there is a company that has moonwalks, I think they’re called something like that. It’s like these bizarre rollers, skate bases that you, you step into and it speeds up your walking. Why can’t we just have the hoverboards like they promised us it back to the future? Get this, it [01:09:00] senses like your body motion.

So like if you pull back a little bit, it like it’ll slow down. Like that’s how you stop. But then I was like, how the hell do you go up like stairs or downstairs with these things? Right? You just bounce your way up. No, so what you do is when you approach the step, and I forget which way is which, but you click your heel out to like lock them and then you click your heel in to unlock them.

So imagine bicycles where you have clip-ons, . I’m just thinking like the number of people are gonna like fall over at the top of a staircase with this , but we digress. They can’t all be Crocs, that’s for sure. Don’t give any ideas. Healy Crocs. It’s time to move on to Brad’s favorite section. Lost and found.

Mm-hmm. , did you tally up how many Dodge Dart we found over the course of season three? That’s an important statistic for our listeners. I believe it’s zero, but if there is a joke in there for the longest running car not sold, there is a 1988 Cadillac Deville base still for [01:10:00] sale like Gray Chevrolet. Oh my God.

Somebody buy this thing please and report back. We would love to have you on the show that four GT is still out there and then there’s a brand new 2008 Scion. XB Scion is not a company anymore, but you can still buy a brand new Scion XB for 4,800 hours at VW of Clarksville. You can buy a Toyota at a Volkswagen dealer.

That’s brilliant. And obviously the joke is that these dealers, they put so many cars on them, these websites, they don’t pay attention, new used, whatever. So it’s definitely not a new vehicle. But also I was looking at bring a trailer. Oh. Uh, trying to see what’s going on. Our favorite outrageously priced chopping place.

Yes. Right now, current bid ends in 15 hours, A 37 mile 2021. McLaren Elva. Ooh. Which is a car I didn’t even know existed. Right. Current bid is 1.6 million. Ooh. I’ll get two, but if that doesn’t tickle your fancy. Also closing [01:11:00] in 15 hours, a 1993 Volkswagen Carrado, S L C V R six five Speed. That just went up in value because no more VR six s exist.

The current bid is $7,600. You know, if it’s in really good shape, actually not bad for a carrado. It has to be in really good shape to be on, bring a trailer. So now the disappointing part about the carrado is, and believe me, I’m a fan so I can throw shade and we’ve owned one of these cars is everything that isn’t the body because it’s a mark two underneath.

It’s a 12 L V R six, the gearbox is whatever with the stupid seat belts in very nineties interior. I mean, it is a cool car for a period. I wouldn’t throw one away if somebody gave one to me, but you’re faced with all those early nineties Volkswagen. Stuff. The other problem with the carrado is it’s super specific.

Everything about that car is for that car. There is some interchangeability with other stuff, but whatever the, the bigger point here, $7,600. I actually feel like the values come [01:12:00] down because carras were almost untouchable at one point for less than five figures. And to see one under that low mileage and great condition, that’s a steal.

Grab that thing. Get your checkbook ready. 2004 Volkswagen. R 32 oh. Bidding ins in 15 hours. Current bid is $11,000. That’s really low. Well, it’s, it’s not stock mod. It’s got a Magna Flow exhaust. The aftermarket intake. Alcon headliner. KW variant. Three coil overs 18 inch B B S wheels. So it’s got some tasteful mods done.

We have a barn find in the mix too, right? For our resident car enthusiast, car Flipper, Andrew Bank, have we got a car for you? 1967 Chevrolet Corvette 67 Custom Stingray. That is the title. No, that is not the title of this car. It literally says, The Boomer special. That’s what the meme says. But the Craigslist ad says 67 Chevrolet Corvette 67, custom Stingray [01:13:00] 67.

67 67. It, it has 6,700 miles, 6,700 miles on a 67 body on a 2010 chassis. This thing looks terrible, looks disgusting. I mean, it’s supposed to be a c2, but the roof line is completely wrong cause the roof line is c6, right? And the worst part is, despite the way it looks, is the cost. I mean, I get it. It’s modded, it’s custom, it’s this, it’s that, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If it suits your fancy fine, but 125,000, no low balls. I know what I have. But on the other side of that, there was a 79 Firebird TransAm that showed up in a barn find. It only has 37 original miles on it. It’s up for auction. It is a production beautiful car Mountain Manan found for you this month. Your next race car.

Brad. What’s that? Dan Kirkpatrick’s old ACA car. You know, if I ever get back into tracking like I used to, maybe when the kid gets older I could see picking up something like this. Although I wouldn’t do a car, I’d probably do one of those Craftsman [01:14:00] series pickup trucks. Yeah, those are pretty slick. Wow.

This thing’s sold for $5,000. That’s cheap. Right, right. This is back in her god daddy days. Exactly. Cause there’s no motor. It’s just the chassis. I mean, you can pick up a motor for like 200 bucks. Come on. It’s just a three 50. No, they’re trans. Yeah. I mean that’s cheap stuff though. Still now, like we’ve done throughout various drive-through episodes this season, we have yet another candidate for our uncool wall.

I don’t knower mothered. Is that actually how it came or someone? Retrofitted, uh, tarp on the back of it? No. Don Weiberg sent us this one as a candidate this month. It is a 1978 Pontiac Phoenix with the camping package. Cool. Going back to our friends in the Aztec community, it looks like the Aztec was not the first Pontiac with a add-on camping package for their vehicle.

But what boggles my mind is how you access this. It’s consider. A [01:15:00] hatchback lift back bet. This thing is like 150 feet long . It used to be a four door and they turned it into a two door hatchback, so it’s 11 million feet long. The Phoenix was available as a two-door coop, a four-door sedan with a three door hatchback that was available in 1978, all on the same chassis.

So there you go. It’s huge. So they literally just took the rear doors off and then put a tent on the trunk lid. This is Aztec level engineering and the tent is secured by pulling the bungee cord Yes. Into the door and shutting the door on it, apparently. I mean, how do you think the Aztec one works? ? It’s the same stuff.

It’s actually not terrible looking. It’s terrible in that color. Although the tumors not bad. It’s like a bigger version of the citation X 11 and the all those cars from that era, they all sort of looked the same. Before we move on from Lawson found, I don’t know if you all saw Doug DeMiro started his [01:16:00] own trading site, his own auction site called Cars and Bids.

Yeah, that’s been for a while now. Yeah, well he just got a multi-million dollar cash investment from some firm that I saw on one of his posts on Instagram or something. Good for him. So what are we doing wrong, ? Well, we’re not selling cars, that’s it. No, you had to have started on YouTube when you were like five years old and then you know, just

We would be remiss, you know? Oh, is it that time again? It is that time again. Do we have any Tesla news or is it just Elon Musk news? We do. We have to separate now after 31 episodes. Yeah. Tesla doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just Elon Musk. It’s just the Elon Musk circus. Twitter still sucks. There’s no cyber truck.

Those are the highlights. You know, . Next in seriousness, though, didn’t use Twitter before. I’m sure as hell not gonna use it now. Well, even less people are gonna be using Twitter soon because now they’re gonna start charging for API integration, [01:17:00] which means everybody that was, let’s say, orchestrating or automating anything with Twitter dead, all that stuff’s gone.

Really? Yep. Oh, I hadn’t heard that yet. I don’t know what he’s gonna do when he fires. Everybody keeps firing the engineers and the people doing the work. , is he Willy Wonka? Like he just comes down and like. Fire and out you . I don’t know. Because the latest firing was like employee mentions how the polling results say that you’re unfavorable and you’re like, you’re fired.

Don’t know if that’s how it really went down, but Sounds like a Simpsons Mr. Burns thing, like I don’t get it in that vein. They’ve literally like just announced engineering headquarters is moving from Austin. Wait, wait, hold on. Didn’t pump the brakes a second. Didn’t they just get there? They just displaced like tens of thousands of people.

Yes. Yeah. Isn’t, isn’t it kind of expensive to move your headquarters? Not only did they just displace a bunch of people in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic, they also gave people an [01:18:00] ultimatum after they went to fully remote work where it was like, you’re gonna show up in Austin in the next two days, or you’re fired.

So there’s a theme and now they’re moving the engineering headquarters back to Palo Alto, California. California, yes. California. And people say, this guy is a business mastermind. Tesla’s gonna be the company to rule them all with stuff like this. Seriously, he makes you scratch your head. I don’t think the true answer of why this is happening has been revealed.

Is it all part of the. Master plan? Well, well, here’s the thing. One source or whatever is questioning. Is it because we’re moving it. So he’s now closer to Twitter, but then this whole Twitter thing, he’s like, I’m going to find a new c e o by the end of 2023. Like blah, blah, blah. Like are you really? You set that two weeks after you took it over that you were gonna replace yourself and you still haven’t.

So I don’t know, like why are you moving back and forth, back and forth. You just built this whole Giga. [01:19:00] Austins corporate headquarters I think is still gonna stay there, but everyone in engineering’s gonna go to Palo Alto, which cause we wanna be back in the tech Silicon Valley, California version. Wamp.

Wmp. That’s what I’m gonna say about that, Juan. I dunno. But maybe we’ll learn more about the reasoning and the rationale on March 1st at the Tesla investor’s date, where he will unveil his part three to his master plan. Is he gonna do it with like a mini version of himself next to him? Well, the way he is spending money, it’s like, who needs billions?

You could have millions , who is the c e O of Weather Tech? Who is the C E O of A? Any number of successful companies. We have no idea who these people’s names are, yet their companies are still massively and wildly successful. Did he just go to Mars? Please just hop on one of his stupid little SpaceX penis missiles and go to Mars.

I’m so sick of this tool. . Give me back my hundred dollars [01:20:00] for a cyber truck. . That’s what you’re really bitter about. Yeah, there it’s there. It’s the promises, the bait, the bait switch, all that Dogecoin. It’s the earliest we might see reports are saying the cyber truck at the end of this year, at the earliest, but probably not

I love those headlines. Hela will be outta business and they’ll still be promising people that cyber trucks are coming. I mean, come on. The cyber truck is becoming the new Chinese Democracy Album from Guns N Roses. It’s coming. It’s coming. Didn’t it come out like 20 years later? It did eventually come.

Yeah, you’re right. No, it did. It did. Because everyone’s speculating that the production level model will unveil and Well, there’s one really crappy video that someone. Of I guess a cyber truck running through Austin. Is it the one with the mirrors or without the mirrors? Got the mirrors on it, baby. It’s got, does it have the lasers?

Make sad mirrors. And I also noticed something as this person was filming on like fricking [01:21:00] Nokia flip phone from, I don’t know, when, whatever the person, it’s like the NASA videos, right? We have these high intensity, high definition cameras and every picture of the moon is grainy as all get out. Like it was taken in 1986, I don’t know what camera this was, when really bad.

They were taken in 86. They just are just now getting back to us. . But what struck me as it was like cyber truck was passing in front of this person, the reflections in the side panel. I was like, what kind of glare, blinding in your eyes is this thing gonna do on the road on a sunny day? Were the panels straight?

No , the sheet metal from Home Depot is not very straight. You gotta like really bang it out and, and everything to get it nice and perfect. So I’ll say this to its credit, if it’s stainless, like the DeLorean were back in the day, it’s actually not that bad in the sun. The, it won’t completely blind you. It is very noticeable, but yeah, I, I [01:22:00] don’t know.

But the DeLorean didn’t have giant sides for the sun. They’re like 10 foot tall, awful. It was very angular and kind of more, it makes sense that the DeLorean wouldn’t, this thing is just a giant skyscraper and if anybody’s driven through a city on a nice sunny day, I mean all those windows and everything, you’re blinded.

You can’t drive through the city. You’re gonna hit the pedestrians with your fully autonomous car, or not . Cause you can’t see. And the cyber truck is the size of the Empire State Building, and it’s gonna do the same thing. It is very, very, but with lasers, let me lower your expectation. Fully, hadn’t, hadn’t gotten there yet.

So they’re expecting to see the latest version rolled out at the Investor’s day, March 1st. The thoughts are, there’ll be several tweaks to. Don’t know yet about if a windshield wiper is getting put on there or not, or if it’s lasers, but the sides will be boxier. How is that even possible? Thank you. That was my first reaction.

I was like, how do you make a box more square? Hardboard IKEA proves that every [01:23:00] week with everything they make, so I guess it’s doable. You know what? It’s gonna have so many changes. They’re gonna roll it out and it’s gonna be a Silverado with a Tesla badge gonna roll out. It’s gonna look like an F-150 Lightning.

Yes. here. It’s, here’s the cyber truck. Thank you Ford for doing all the work for us. You’re gonna have a model y front end. It’s just gonna be a pickup truck. Yeah, it’s gonna have that platypus front end . It’s gonna be duct taped on cuz you can get the duct tape pretty cheap at Home Depot. Quack, quack, . Buy two, get one free rolls.

That’s terrible. I mean, Thoroughly lowered my expectations, lowered expectation. We’ve gotten there. And you know what, I’m gonna finally grind this one into the ground. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Last month there was all the speculation about Jeremy Clarkson’s latest childish tempered tantrum. And we said, well, it’s about time that we closed the chapter on this.

And you know, all the excuses aside, I feel like the drama, [01:24:00] it sort of played out similarly to the way it did on Top Gear. It got old. And so we had to create this thing. And then Jeremy Clarkson and Team left Top gear and did the Grand tour and the Grand tour, a bunch of drama, and we’d punch people in the face.

And then we canceled the show and we went to the long format movies. And now because the movies are sucking, we’re gonna create some more drama and we’re finally canceled for real. This time Amazon has said, we’re done. It’s it. It’s over. We are now in the post top gear era, which. Whatever. I thought we were already there like 10 years ago, but did it say anything about some of the offshoots, some of the other shows, not related to top gear, like Clarkson’s Farm and stuff like that?

Because season two just came out. Yeah, but that was already filmed a while ago and I think with his latest just idiocy, there’s been threats about canceling Clarkson’s farm as well, so we’ll see how that goes. I mean, he’s doing nothing but pissing off his neighbors, that’s for sure. If you watch the show, I mean, it’s entertaining enough.

Well, the first season was really good, but it wasn’t about him just making his [01:25:00] neighbors mad. It was him about actually trying to learn how to farm. I guess now that he’s done that, I don’t see that last take very long. Yeah, or long term. It’s not, it’s not like a top year thing. It’s like, all right, cool.

Two seasons max. So se season two is done a third, but you’re stretching it. What’s he gonna do? Right? True. He’s gonna retire credit Were credits too. He’s getting up there in age. They all are. It’s like fine bow out gracefully. You could have gone out on a high note when they exited top gear, cuz I think some of that whole publicity stunt was staged to bring in a new crew and all that kinda stuff.

I mean whatever. Maybe he is a megalomaniac. I don’t know, but I’d like to. Maybe not. Maybe a little bit. There’s a little bit of a human in there. I don’t know. My point is, okay, I’m just glad I don’t have to hear about it again. So who’s a worst human at this point? Jeremy Clarkson or Elon Musk? Both of them are basically man children, so, but Jeremy Clarkson just has a big mouth and doesn’t know when to shut up.

But Elon Musk actually believes the shit that he says feel like we’re [01:26:00] watching Boiler room every time we talk about Tesla news. Right. ? I just, we’re watching fucking Wolf of Wall Street. Moving on. This next one speaks to also why I think the days of dealerships are over with. Apparently a dealership made a woman right in front of them that was, you know, buying a car, filling out paperwork, basically prove that she was a human.

Can confirm this happened to me when I bought my tundra. No, swear to God. They had the little electronic things like we have to make everybody do this. Just sign you are not a robot. That’s insane. I’m right here in front of you. I am not a robot. I can’t even do the robot. I am not a robots. They’re just preparing us for the future of Androids.

Yeah, or the cybercrime that will ensue when you can order your car online and somebody has your identity and your credit card and suddenly, yeah, they just bought it $150,000 Hyundai . I mean, if that showed up and I didn’t have to pay for it. No, I’m just kidding. , [01:27:00] drive it around the block once or twice and then how many different screens the captured you would have to go through to buy a car online.

Oh, I just realized something. What if it was like Amazon’s return policy and it showed up and you said you didn’t actually order? . And so they said keep it and they refunded you the money. No, they would never do it on that. Such a big purchase, seen weirder things happen with Amazon, and then some of the cheapest thing you’re like, gotta go through hoops to return it.

Another thing that I don’t understand, and we know it’s become sort of an epidemic in the car community, and maybe this is why we need to move to EVs, which has catalytic converters being stolen from vehicles. You know, you hear these stories about guys sliding underneath trucks, cutting ’em off with the sazo.

They’re in and out of there in, you know, 90 seconds and you know, they’re turning in catalytic converters for the, you know, whatever they’re worth in precious metals. But I gotta say, you gotta be pretty ballsy to steal the catalytic converter off the Oscar Meyer. Wiener Mobile. I [01:28:00] mean, who does that? A delinquent

Who does that? It was Vegas. And what happens in Vegas apparently gets sold on the black market. , apparently, if it’s a Cata converter, doesn’t stay in Vegas. I wanna know how big the catalytic converter is on the Oscar Meyer Wiener, because nothing thing is huge. I was wondering, I think it’s just like a school bus or something.

So it’s whatever the catalytic converter would look like on a school bus, big. It’s worth a lot of money. They fitted the truck or the wiener with a temporary cat. So in November, the FBI in Las Vegas arrested two men on charges of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property in the resale of 71 catalytic converters for more than $16,000.

That’s good money. I think I found my new side job. $225 a catalytic converter. Is that good money? Is that a good use of your time? It is for 90 seconds. With a SA all, I mean, the blades don’t cost a whole lot, [01:29:00] I guess. I mean, if you’re highly sophisticated, you got a creeper. So you can roll out under the car, roll out the other side with your catalytic converter.

Who are you Slenderman or are we rolling under like a, have you seen these trucks? They’re stealing ’em from pickups. You can get under there and do all sorts of stuff without getting ’em off the ground. Alright? If it’s a truck, sure. But there’s been plenty of like Hondas that have had their cattle of converters taken out.

Somebody come take the Cata Litta converters out of my car please so I can so I can get insurance to pay the $5,000 or whatever it costs to put a new straight pipe It. Well, you know what else is crazy? Our favorite rental company hurts. Well, maybe not our favorite. Not because it usually hurts my wallet to rent from them.

They have to pay false arrest claims. So this is them renting a car to someone and then thinking that that person stole it, huh? Top quality service. So they were using the same computer system the Southwest uses. Yes. I was gonna say, when [01:30:00] did Elon Musk become c e o of Hertz? Well, didn’t they have a relationship with Tesla?

They are buying a bunch of Teslas, so he clearly has a hand in this. And you’re fired. And you’re fired, and you’re fired. You brought the car back. You’re fired. It’s like an episode of the Apprentice NASA employees operating government rented vehicles, where some of the victims by Herz. See, I’m telling you, collusion, SpaceX, conspiracy, you can’t get us to work.

Yes. Telling you Elon Musk is the devil. Well, there you have it. Well, you know what they say? The devil goes down to Georgia. But in our case, we’re gonna a little further south and talk about alligators, mayor.

You know what? We’re gonna start up north. We’re gonna start in Michigan. This is a cute one. It’s called Holy Cow. Michigan Man rides cow across [01:31:00] Woodward, meaning like a street, Woodward Avenue, not Dave Woodward. . No. No , no will the cowboy and his pet heifer hope we’re caught crossing the intersection together.

On cow back, who was writing who? . Why did the cow cross the road get away from his owner? In fairness, I believe he works for like a farm that does sort of like petting zoo type stuff. So he is actually trying to train the cow. Heavy petting. To be rideable. I’m, you know, I, I don’t know. Maybe that’s what he was doing to be what?

I missed it.

I love hearing the headlines before I click into the article. This is my new favorite game, . Oh God. So that was a little bit of lighthearted humor. So now we can take a trip down south to Florida, man, where this one is. . This one’s a public safety announcement. You know, don’t do drugs. We’ve been fighting [01:32:00] that war since the Bush administration, , you know, don’t drink and drive, don’t do drugs and drive and don’t do so many drugs that you drive through a cemetery, mowing and all the tombstones, headstones, and then exit the cemetery and drive into somebody’s house.

Wasn’t that a scene in like Evil Dead, like, I feel like this is like a Bruce Campbell film. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Driving to Delta 88 through a cemetery, knocked over tombstones. So what Florida man drove through, cemetery, damaged headstones crashed into house. Oh, that’s the best part. Was it the undertaker’s house?

I don’t know. But he cleared the cemetery, crossed the street, went through a fence, and then into somebody’s house. You hear the owner of the house thought the neighbors were quiet. I wanna know what he was driving. He mowed down some cement blocks. It was a 78 Pontiac Phoenix Loopback. Went through a fence and wasn’t stopped until he went into a.

It was a [01:33:00] Kia Telluride Ax four Pro. You know what it was? That person’s driveway was on his GPS , and it said it was a road through the cemetery . Meanwhile, the Nera Comic-Con was on his backseat, but we’ll leave that for another episode. Meanwhile, he stole that car, so it wasn’t even his. So we’re gonna stay in Florida.

Couldn’t decide who was better. Florida man, or the Washington woman. Oh boy. But since we’re in Florida, let’s stay in Florida. This reminds me of our early drive-through episodes and the lady that set her boyfriend’s Jeep on fire with the . Yeah, I’m having, I’m having flashbacks. So Florida man, doing donuts at intersection, allegedly hits patrol car before crashing his own car.

Two questions, cars and coffee. Tesla must Mustang . No. This appears at least by the photo to have been laid at night. He was found driving recklessly ahead of this. Drove over a raised median. [01:34:00] Went into a slide. I don’t know. At some point then I guess, F it. Let’s do donuts. . In his Chrysler Seabring, it actually says he, he got stopped and then he reversed backed into the police car, so he knew it was there while he yells out the window.

I drive a Dodge Stratus. I don’t know. I’m thinking he was driving this pickup truck. It’s a Dodge Ram. He rammed it. Yeah. So he hits patrol car before crashing his own. It’s a little confusing. The order of operations. Yeah. Wouldn’t hitting the patrol car constitute a crash? It was rubbing cuz he was drifting.

Who’s his rubbing was racing. I didn’t even think they said he was under the influence of anything. So go figure. He was under the influence of Florida. He was hooning. It’s called hooning. So I don’t know what to do with this last one. I think it takes the cake. It’s not, I don’t know if it’s as good as as casting a spell on your boyfriend’s car, lining it up.

Fire with candles. But passenger [01:35:00] suspected d U I. Driver calls 9 1 1. On the Washington State Patrol. Wait, what? The driver argued, her constitutional rights were being violated by the pursuit. So a drunk driver’s driving a car and they’re being pursued by the state patrol and they called the police on the police that their constitutional rights were being violated.

That’s a bold strategy. Like they’re, they’re calling to say they’re being harassed by the police , but they call the police. You’re driving illegally. How do you know that? You don’t know that I’m drunk. I may be driving on the wrong side of the road, sideways with a kid hanging out the back, but you don’t know that I’m drunk.

It’s like that tatter salad joke, right? I wasn’t drunk in public. Until you put me there, . Yeah, exactly. I wanna hear the 9 1 1 recording of that. Like, Ed’s gotta be absolutely [01:36:00] insane. It’s got to be because this person was in an F-150 doing like over a hundred miles an hour. They can go that fast.

Apparently. We even in and out and stuff. And this is like at midnight 30. And then the other passengers called the cops on the cops because they thought the law had changed. That the cops can’t pursue you anymore at high speed 9 1 1. What’s your emergency? Yes, I’m being followed. . My driver’s, uh, under the influence.

She’s had a couple 10 beers and uh, the cops are after us. It’s this like the sound rules. Uh, you can’t make noise after 10 o’clock. The cops can’t chase you after 80 miles an hour. Like, what the hell is that? Well, there has been some of that, right? Yeah. The police aren’t allowed, in some cases, they’re not allowed to enter into a high.

They should really back off because all it does is endanger the officers and other people if they go on these crazy high speed pursuits. But there’s caveats to this. It’s like when we know you’re driving drunk, we follow you . It’s like [01:37:00] need for speed. Hot pursuit. You, you don’t get a free pass. We deploy the spike strips on you.

You know what I learned from this article when you said the truck did a hundred miles an hour? It proves a very important point that sometimes you need to haul. And haul ass truck. Life ass gas or grass. Don’t be that person either. Public safety announcement. Well folks, it’s time we go behind the pit wall for some motor sports news.

This next one is actually really interesting because we saw this car in person while we were at Rolex and that’s the Hendrick built and sponsored garage. 56 Lamont’s Camaro. This car is going to do NASCAR and the 24 hours of Lamont’s. I think this is super cool and entering a Camaro in the GT class.

Interesting to see how it all plays out in June. I think it’s cool. I can’t wait to see it race at Lamont. And last month we also spoke about Travis Pastrana returning to nascar and I’m [01:38:00] sure a lot of people were probably thinking who, what, where. I mean, you know, he’s took over doing tricks and whatnot for Subaru and you know, global Rally cross and all that kind of stuff a while ago.

But we have some results information for you and I am happy to report that Travis did a lot better than probably any of us expected. He ended up 14th in this month’s. Daytona 500. I guess he did better than Kimmy, right? Who didn’t finish . He never made it to the 500. That’s true. I meant just at a NASCAR race in general.

Yeah. Not so good. Kimmy. Try again. Let’s talk about open wheel racing. So where are we at in Formula One? We are just a few short days away from the season opener in Bahrain rain on March 5th. Pre-season testing is about to start. Formula One’s kicking off, but like every year we have to have the big revealed mc cars.

Oh my God, so many memes. I have to [01:39:00] agree with Eric. This year’s a little different, but in years past, yes, the reveals of the new deliveries, I would get so excited just to see the McLaren that looked exactly like the McLaren from other McLarens, but stickers, bra stickers. This year’s reveals were actually quite a bit dramatic.

The Mercedes car went back to black, you know, cue the Amy White House song. You know that everybody’s playing everywhere and all their memes. The Mercedes looks amazing though. I really like it. I’m teen. You know why they did that? Because that was the last time you won. No, because apparently it saved them grams of weight.

Yeah, I heard that too. So they did it as a weight savings to just like flat black or whatever. Raw carbon fiber or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. So that’s some Mercedes trickery there. So they’ll get penalized for that. I don’t think there’s a rule that says you have to paint your own, but like I watched the Ferrari reveal and I watched these two guys doing their podcasts over, so that told you nothing.

That was like fanboy [01:40:00] salivating over the Ferrari, which honestly I think I liked last year’s better. I think the red was nicer. I liked that it was all red. I’m not a fan of how they like splotched black chunks. Not even accents. It looks more like the Apro Nigel Mantle era of Ferrari. They were darker red.

Oh, they put Ferrari on the spoiler and the spoiler is black. And I’m like, yeah, all that stuff existed like 40 years ago. Okay. Big deal. To me, I couldn’t tell the difference between the previous car and this car. And if you look at the two car side by side, there’s a lot of differences. Actually. The front nose end cap is shaped differently.

The wing on the front nose actually extends further from the nose itself. The side pods are very different. How they’re channeling the air, how they’re venting the air, all that stuff. I think the wing looks slightly different. The louvers all on the sides are flowing the air differently. So they made a lot of engineering changes.

So hopeful. Make a better performing [01:41:00] handling car. Yeah. They appear very subtle. Uh, I guess to, if you just saw it by itself, you go, okay, it’s a different paint job on the same car. But if you look at them side by side in the same front view, side view, top view, quite a bit different. There’s a lot of changes.

Yeah. It looks like the wing is smaller too. It’s narrower. Like they were on the old cars in the old days. They had those skinny boxy wings. It’s so what’s old is new again, in some respects. I mean whatever. And next year it’ll be something else. The different, you know, shade of red or, or whatever. Yeah.

That’s what happens. But there’s some other news. Lance Stroll is out, well he’s out of preseason testing, apparently had bicycling accident. He is a reserve driver now at the helm. Felipe Dragovich. Hmm. Do we have high expectations for him? I have no idea, honestly. But he’s about to have a job interview, so he better do well.

Yeah, right. . So there’s been a lot of other rumors flying around the F1 paddock in the last month, and that has to [01:42:00] do with a for letter word. It’s not a rumor. It’s been announced. I know. But there’s other rumors that go all along with the announcement because there were rumors before then they were announced and there’s rumors again.

And we’re talking about Ford, F o r d, Ford. Returning to Formula One, and the first question I have is they just lost 2 billion in passenger sales. How the hell are they gonna afford to run in Formula One? This is where it went. . Ah oh, got it. Okay. Done. So I’m seeing things like partnerships with Red Bull Ford is supplying the power plants like they used to do back in the, you know, the sixties and seventies for like Lotus and stuff like that.

So it’s not the first time Ford has been in this level of racing in the past. Good to see them come back with everything else that’s going on. I’m just a little curious. Maybe we’ll have another rich energy fiasco. Ooh. And then it’ll give Elizabeth Blackstock and Alans king an opportunity to write [01:43:00] another book.

The Ford Saga. Yes. Pixer Repaired daily. Speaking of sagas, Hollywood is dipping their toe in the pool. Talked about this before, cuz I believe it is still Untitled, is Brad Pitt’s new venture of this formula one movie. Nobody knows exactly what this is gonna be. Then he’s working with Lewis Hamilton in terms of directing, producing.

Apparently he’s been listening to the auditions of whoever’s gonna be Brad Pitt’s CoStar shooting is supposed to start later this year for whatever this formula one drama movie is. It’s called Drive to Survive and it’ll be out on Netflix. Apparently they are gonna be taking footage live at race weekend.

So maybe it’s the Traumatization. , maybe it’s just driven. It’s just the movie Driven again, probably seems silly to take live footage at a race when live footage is already being. For you. It depends what [01:44:00] footage they’re trying to take, but also if you’re bringing your actors in to like stand in the garage while nothing’s going on kind of thing, right?

Mm-hmm. , it wouldn’t be the same footage. They also need to get footage of the cars. Shifting gears 15 times. Yes. With the stick shift. In this case, with the stick shift, yes. Yeah. Like all American drama movies, you have an obligatory toilet scene and that is not usually recorded during the live broadcast, so they’ll have that too, right?

Yes. You brought up Drive to Survive, and I swear to God, Netflix is taunting me. Every time I log on, it’s the first thing I see is a reminder for drive to Survive, which kicks off February 24th. I’m gonna coordinate with your wife and you’re just gonna walk into the room one day and it’s gonna be on and you can’t do, we’re gonna a Clockwork orange You No, not gonna do it.

Not gonna happen. Meanwhile, in open wheel news, our last little bit here, Tony Canan is finally retiring from IndyCar. That’s great. Doesn’t mean he gives up his seat in any of the other racing [01:45:00] series. He’s in like IMSA or W E C or anywhere else. He’s got a. Yeah. It’s like, okay, whoop, be do, we’re, it’s not like we’re never gonna see you again.

He’s retiring from IndyCar so he can do more of the eSports than he’s been doing. Hi Racing champion Tony Canan. It pays better I guess. . Yeah, right. It’s that monster energy sponsorship there. But speaking of energy, drink sponsorships, let’s switch over to Red Bull TV and talk about W R C News. Now, if you want to skip all this, go right ahead.

But here’s the brief. Just like Rolex is the kickoff to the season and, and the Daytona 500 and all that rally, Monty Carlo kicks off the 13 event schedule into W R C series and they’ve added two new races this year for anybody that’s really interested. Rally Chile and they returned to Mexico as well, but they’ve also added rally eu, which will be held in Germany.

I [01:46:00] enjoy watching the recaps on Red Bull because it’s an easy way to digest the race, cuz otherwise if you try to watch it in real time, it would be absolutely mental. It takes four days and you know, usually it’s like 18 to 20 stages. Rally Monte Carlo was won by Sebastian Oje. This makes him the most winningest rally driver in Monte Carlo rally history, he was.

So excited. He didn’t even show up for Rally Sweden, which was the next event two weeks later. But overall, the whole race was pretty interesting. There’s a lot of back and forth between some of the old timers who I think might be on the edge of actually needing to get out of W R C and making way for folks like Alvin Evans and oic.

The end result of Rally Monte Carlo was that Toyota took a one two right out of the gate, which was pretty awesome for the madman of W R C Yaari Monte Latvala, who is now a team owner, you know, principal as they call them in Formula One for GAO racing Toyota. So that’s [01:47:00] pretty awesome. Not a lot of snow this year in Monte Carlo because as we’ve seen even here in the United States, it’s been a pretty mild winter.

So Europe up the same thing, lot of tarmac that they were running on, so that made running money. Carlo very different than usual. And the other thing that was pretty cool is we saw the debut. Of the new Ford Puma put out there by teams like M Sport and so on, they’re having issues with the car. The drivers are trying to learn it.

It’s a different chassis obviously than the fiesta that it replaces. And Hyundai was also having problems with their new hybrid system. All the rally cars this year are actually hybrids and Turbocharged makes for an interesting power delivery system in the race cars. If anybody watches Monte Carlo, I think Alvin Evans is hilarious to watch.

He is so hyperfocused on everything he does. He leans forward like he’s playing a video game when he is driving and he has this look of complete terror and bewilderment all at the same time. It’s super comical when you watch the in-Car Review and [01:48:00] unfortunately the support races like WRC two and WRC three, they don’t get as much air time as the WRC one.

The big guys the pros do, but in W Rrc two right now, Scota a k a Volkswagen is kick an ass with their new car and there are some American drivers in WRC too. So I’ll be keeping an eye out for them and checking out their progress cuz it’s been a long time since we’ve had Americans running in wrc, so that’s pretty cool to.

Now I know Brad, you took some time to engage in WRC in the last couple of weeks. So you caught up on Sweden, didn’t you? I did. I don’t know exactly what I watched. Um, it was a recap of some sort. . I have to agree that if you’re a Rally fan and you want to know what happened, yes, the recaps are fantastic cuz they do condense four days worth of racing and drama into a short, like one hour episode of Drive to Survive.

What I don’t like is [01:49:00] I, I sometimes I just wanna log in. I don’t care that I’m not gonna see the whole thing. I just wanna see a rally stage from start to finish. Like I just wanna see the driver. Like I just wanna see the racing. I don’t, I feel like you miss a lot. Well, it’s sort of like watching an autocross though.

Do you really wanna watch every driver make a run because they are offset Yes, they are by themselves, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yes. It’s something about just watching because how long in the stages. They’re super long, like it takes all day. They run from sunup? No, no, no. But I mean for, I mean for one driver, one run.

How long is that? I didn’t pay attention to the times I got on the simulator after Sweden and ran some of the segments on my setup. And some of the stages are six minutes full boar. Uh, because they’re short. Some of the other ones like a 21 kilometer section, which is like a longer power stage. You’re on track for easily 10 to 15 minutes if, depending if you have any mess-ups or things like that.

So you’re out there for quite a [01:50:00] while. Yeah, I would totally watch a couple people making a complete run of the stage or whatever. I don’t need to see the whole stage. Yeah, I don’t need to see four days of rally. Yes, the recap would help me there, but just to, to see some. I feel like the recaps don’t show enough action.

We’re on different ends of the pendulum swing. I’m so used to watching it that I just want that bite size. Give me what I need so I can keep track of what’s going on versus watching Pecka Lapi do his full power stage run. Like I don’t need 12 minutes of him driving. Just show me what he did and we’ll kind of move on with life.

Right. Well, I, yeah, because I’m a new to rally. Yeah. You’re learning. We’ve been talking about this for, you know, three seasons now. I’m trying to give it a, an actual legit chance. I would do the same thing for nascar, but I’m choosing to do it with Rally right now. Yeah, I want to give it a chance, but it just, I don’t see enough in the recaps to actually make me care.

So what I think would benefit you [01:51:00] and maybe any of our listeners that are interested in exploring the world of Rally is to check out another program they have on Red Bull tv. It’s about an hour long and they call it the ABCs of Rally, and it actually walks you through the different sub-disciplines of rallies.

There’s W R C that you know, we’re talking about now, which is like sports car racing, right? Versus T1 raid, which is like all the big trucks and then there’s Decar and there’s all these different types of rally from the buggies up through the cars and whatnot. So it’s cool to like start with that and get your 1 0 1 down and then once you’ve watched enough of how it works, and you can always go back into the vault and watch the runs, but they’re a little bit more raw.

Again, having watched this for years, I like the condensed version. When you get to that stage, you’re like, man, I watched all of Sunday in 37 minutes. I’m good because I didn’t need to watch 18 hours of content to kind of figure out what was going on. Right. I do like that Red Bull this season has.

Deliberately included [01:52:00] content from the special stages, which are the two on two overlapping kind of road courses that they develop. You saw a lot of that in Sweden. It was totally iced over. It was really, really cool to see the cars go head to head. And if you kind of want a mind bender is, try to follow the track and how it, you know, runs over itself and how the cars don’t end up hitting each other.

They’re really running the same lap. It’s a two-part lap. It’s not like a, a pro solo where it’s mirror image courses. They’re on the same track at different points and they’re chasing each other basically. So it’s pretty cool. And I’m glad they’re showing more of that because that used to be like bonus content that you had to go find versus now they’re including that in the recaps.

So that was pretty cool. Yeah. But so you watched Sweden, what’d you think? I thought it was comical what was going on with Craig Breen and, and Dear Newville. Yeah, I thought that the last state, what was it? What the stage 18? Yeah. Where, where they, uh, Newville, he was fighting for points, you know, in the Stanleys.

Yeah. Cause he’s what, he’s like second or third, didn’t he? Right. But it’s [01:53:00] only the second round of racing anyway, so it’s like, I know, but, but still, like they, they made like all kinds of like strategic changes and then he still crashed. , like he finished the stage, but he still backed into the snow drift and slowed him down enough and then his teammate beat him anyway.

Well, here’s the best part about all of that situation, which I love the fact that they actually brought this to light and they didn’t cover it up. Formula One is not the only one with a bunch of politics kind of dictating the outcome of the race. It was all team orders. But the other thing is teary neuville, the whole time was just complaining about how much his I 20 was under steering.

Under steering, it won’t turn, it won’t do this, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, and he was just pitching a fit. Then, I don’t know if you paid close attention, but they forced them to switch cars. That was the bigger thing that Craig Green got screwed. Yeah. So he did the same thing that Maman was trying to do to Schumacher.

He was like, ah, you got the better car. Let’s switch cars. I I [01:54:00] I’ll beat you in your car. Exactly. And then to your point, he still screwed it up. Yeah, he still, so was it the car or was it the driver? Because Craig Breen was flying and he got his first stage win like ever. I mean, he’s not a newbie either. He is been around for a couple of years.

I’ve been keeping eyes on him. All the new guys, oy, tan, espec, Lape, Elvin Evans, Craig Breen, all those guys. I mean, they’re the up and comers and W R C right now, obviously they’re running at the higher ranks. Terry Newville, multi time champion, whatever, not as many as Seb and some of those guys, but he’s sort of the old dog in this fight.

And so when they did the car switch and the team war, I was just like, this is ridiculous. And then when he couldn’t pull it off, you do. I mean, even, even in the last interview, Craig Reena just finished his run and the, and the reporter was there telling him what happened, and he just kind of smirked and smile.

Yeah, it was great. I was loving it. It was awesome. It was so good. So, so that was fun. I could, you’re getting me interested. Yeah. And I, I’m seeing one here on our notes. a quote from Tanya and it [01:55:00] actually makes a ton of sense. So watching WRC is like watching the Olympics, but I think that is 1000% true.

You know, you need the recaps. I mean, cuz there’s just so much content. Yeah, to digest you need the recaps. But still sometimes when I watch the Olympics, I just wanna log in and see. You wanna watch the figure skating? Yeah, I know how it goes. I guess I want to see the speed skating. There were two other things that came outta Sweden that I thought were pretty cool and I hope you picked up on this.

That rally is really volatile. Like one minute a guy’s eight seconds ahead going into a stage and suddenly he’s 20 seconds behind and the guy that was like in sixth place is suddenly first. It’s really, really crazy and that’s why you gotta hang on and sort of keep track until the end. And those last couple stages are important.

Now, the special stage versus the power stage, those are points games versus the overall time. So it gets a little complicated. Bec kind of like IMSA and stuff. There’s [01:56:00] multiple races going on, right? Are you racing for points? Is it for manufacturer? Is it for personal time? You know, all that kind of stuff.

So it becomes interesting. But the other big thing about Sweden was TA Emoto’s rollover. That was bonkers. And he’s in the yas. He catches the back end and the thing goes ass over t kettle like four times or whatever, and then they’re in the car and the snow comes in through the window. The, it’s, the navigator just gets nailed.

Right? And then I love when he puts it in gear. And he tries to take off and keep going but he can’t see. And the freaking car’s turtle, I was like, it couldn’t get more comical than that. That’s rally right there. You just never know what’s gonna happen. The stage is constantly changing. Correct. Especially in uh, on a snow stage or something like that.

I mean every car that goes through there is on a completely different track than the car coming behind him that bit. Craig Breen in like stage 16 or whatever cuz they did the reverse grid because he ended up winning the previous one and then he was like at the back and he [01:57:00] goes, I’m dealing with ruts that, you know, up to the door.

And it’s like it’s, the car wouldn’t do anything for him. I mean he did the best he could, but that one was a, a stage they had already run and he’s like, I got this. And he had killed it and they ran it again and it was just like he couldn’t do anything with it. So you start taking those times and you averaging them out and it gets really complicated from a scoring perspective, but it’s what makes it exciting because it’s not Well he was a 10th of a second off of his last lap.

Right. It’s super variable. No, yeah, every, everything changes then. That’s why they need 18 stages. . I, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I can totally see why you like rally because of all the scoring. It’s super complex. You totally nerd out on that shit. I’m sure you know what else I nerd out on and talking about things that are constantly changing.

Alpha Rome, Romeo, part of Lanis. If we haven’t forgotten the car looks so good. Well, they’re getting out of Formula One. As we talked about throughout season three, how Audi’s gonna take over the SAL team, which Alfa Romeo currently heads up. Now the interview given with the [01:58:00] race director at Alfa Romeo is saying that they’re gonna take a gamble and head into endurance sports car racing.

So you may see an Alfa Romeo at Lamont’s in 2024 and beyond. I will totally root for this car. It’s pretty sick looking. Yeah, alpha Grill is just something about it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it’s the Ferrari that’s supposed to be out at Lamont’s this year. Rebadged, and good for them. They get to keep the investment going and the car that they built because Alpha and Ferrari do share a lot, but I’m excited to see Alpha Romeo coming to the big stage.

That’d be really, really cool. It’s been a long time since there was an alpha at Lamonts. Well, in other racing news from the virtual world, there’s still no definitive release date for the latest installment of fours a motorsport, which I wish they would just call fours a Motorsport, eight, because whenever you search four is a Motorsport release.

You get the original Forza Motorsport. So you still have to like Google search Forza Motorsport eight to find anything related to [01:59:00] this latest installment. It alleges sometime this year before or after the cyber truck. It’s a race. Which one will be first? That’s, that’s a good one. What comes out first?

Cyber Truck or Forza Motorsport, whatever. It’s becoming like Grand Temo where it’s like they promise a new one every year and then it takes 10 years for it to release. Meanwhile, somebody else has come along and you know, usurped all the popularity of that particular genre of game or whatever. You know, they definitely have not been advertising Forza Motorsport eight until like the last two years.

Like what was the Motorsport seven didn’t come out and they weren’t like the next year, like eight’s coming. There was silence. We’re still seeing effects of the pandemic. Well, the effect too is that it’s gonna cost a hundred dollars when it comes out and you’re gonna have to buy a new system to run it, cuz it’s only gonna be available in the Series X or in your pc.

I have one lucky it’s you. It’s a hundred dollars anyway, because if you want to get the v i P pass or whatever to get all the cars that come out in D L C months [02:00:00] later, you need to pay for the ultimate version, which is a hundred bucks. Anyway, so that’s nothing new. Well, as we close out the show, we need to wrap up with all our local news and all that.

So Brad, what’s on the docket? So for upcoming local news and events, brought to us by collector car guide.net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiast. So let’s see what’s coming up for March import. Expo 23 is coming to the Washington Convention Center on March 12th. The Sugarloaf Mountain Region swap meet returns to the Westminster Maryland Ag Center on March 24th and 25th.

B M W C C A kicks off a series of autocross schools on March 25th and the Mid-Atlantic Indoor Nationals. Part of the Motorama series of events will be in Philadelphia on March 25th and 20. And tons more of events like this and all their details are available over at Collector Car Guide dot Nets.

That’s right, and it’s time for the [02:01:00] hbd junkie.com Trackside report. And as Dave promised, the database is full. It is the end of February so you can figure out where everybody is and wants to be this track season on tracks all across North America. That’s the US and canada@hpejunkie.com. So here’s some highlights and some interesting news from the track side Summit Point.

Has brought back their off-roading links on motorsport reg.com right now where you can sign up for these off-road events and off-road courses, you know, run what you brung site the deal. This is not to be confused with S E c Rally Cross or anything like that, which was brought back to Summit Point a couple of years ago now.

Pretty cool that they’re doing that. So now we have somewhere close to go off-roading. Obviously there’s other facilities out there like Roche Creek, et cetera, where you can do this sort of thing as well. But Summit Point joins them as a new facility to be able to go off-roading with your Jeep or whatever.

The S E C A W D C R region is hosting its first combined time trial and H B [02:02:00] D event of the year, and that is set at Summit Point as well on March 4th, the fifth, the Audi Club, Potomac Chesapeake region has their first event of the season. Also at Summit Point. Hmm. I wonder that we got a theme here, on March 11th and 12th.

Meanwhile, Charlie Stryker, a spoiler alert for season four. He’s a guest on the show several times. He’s from Max Track time and they kick off their schedule with their first event at Carolina Motorsports Park on March 20th and 21st. And you can get all the details about that@maxtracktime.com and get a pre-release of the episode we did with Charlie on their website as well.

The second annual death trap event, , which is a free event for veterans and first responders Saturday and Sunday. March the fifth is gonna be held at Carolina Motorsports Park. So come hang out at a great track with fellow veterans and first responders and enjoy an exciting session riding with veteran H P D drivers at speed.

So those are always a lot of fun. That’s like what we have here. Helmets off to heroes [02:03:00] and other events through like Vet Motorsports, et cetera, that you can check out throughout the season. Also as a thank you to everyone for being loyal supporters of Grand Tour Motor Sports and fans of Break Fix podcasts in season three, Mike and Amona Arrigo from Hooked On Driving are offering a discount for the entire season of H P D events on their schedule.

You can use Code Break Fix 23 to receive a discount on your event registration at checkout. So thank you all again for being loyal supporters of all our efforts and tune out through the year for more promotions from our sponsors like this one from Hooked On Driving. In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired this month.

We closed out season three with the art of Chris Dunlop, a former Marylander who specialized in paint and body work for exotic and classic cars now finds himself creating masterworks in the automotive and motor sports genre. We went behind the scenes at DeLorean Next Generation and the DeLorean Legacy Project with Cat DeLorean to talk about her new initiatives [02:04:00] and the supercar built from love.

Everyone has a story. Yes, but each of your vehicles has one too. Learn why you should tag all the things with Katie and Paul from Autobi. Two more episodes launched from our I m Rrc and S A H mini-series of Motor Sports history, both coinciding with the Daytona 500. The first is called Moonshine and its connection to the automotive industry by Buzz McKim, and the second the Queen City and the NASCAR Hall of Fame by Hannah Thompson.

There’s also a few pre-release episodes out there, such as the Green Grand Prix, shipwrecked and Rescued, or Bob Garretson and the Apple 9 35. Learn more about how you can access these through our Facebook group, discord or Paton. Thank you to all the guests that came on the show this month. We hope you enjoyed season three of Break Fix.

And if you’re tuning in for the first time, you’ve only got 183 other episodes to catch up on new episodes, drop each week on Tuesday. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter in the rear view, or join [02:05:00] us online to continue the conversation and share stories. We’ll see you again next month when we kick off season four of the drive-through.

We don’t have any new Patreons this month, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want more of them. So if you like what we’re doing, like we’ve mentioned before, sign up today. patreon.com/gt Motorsports. Every penny helps. We have all new plans and perks available, so check ’em out, review your current subscription change tiers if you want to.

And again, we wanna thank you for all the support and all of it helps to keep us to win what we’re doing. And for other shout outs, we’ve got a large list of anniversaries or this is a big milestone anniversary for a few of us crew chiefs, Brad and Eric. Hey, that’s us, the executive producer Tanya Mountain, man.

Dan, the guest that just keeps on coming back and Porsche Al are all celebrating nine years with G T M. Sadly to say there would be one other person on this list. Unfortunately, if he hadn’t passed [02:06:00] away last year, Matthew Yip would’ve been celebrating nine years with G T GTM as well. That is very, very true.

If you’d like to become a member of gtm, be sure to check out the new clubhouse website@clubgtmotorsports.org to learn. . And special thanks to the guest host. We didn’t have a guest host this month, but if you would like to be a guest host, please reach out. We’re always looking for new voices to help make the conversation better.

And if you’re funnier in us, you definitely gotta come on this show, . Well, that’s not hard for anybody. . We’re not very funny at all. And of course, our co-host and executive producer Tanya. Thank you. That’s right. And for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available@gtmotorsports.org and all the members who support gtm.

Without you, none of this would be possible. Oh, true. , that is a wrap. 82 episodes in the bag. Can you believe it? And we finished right on time [02:07:00] after 31 drive-throughs the tradit. Remains the same. And what is that, Tanya? You’re never more prepared than when you’re not prepared. perfect. We’re getting better.

never better, never worse. After these messages, we’ll be right back

when. Here we are in the drive-through line. Me and her cars in front of us, cars in back of us all. Just waiting to order. There’s a idiot in a Volvo with us. Bright son behind me. Hi Lena. The window and scream. Hey, watch ya. Trying to do blind me. My wife says Maybe we should park.

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. [02:08:00] Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call our Texas at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from. Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM 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 Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

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