B/F: The Drive Thru #36

• 2023 Barber Vintage Festival

• Ford Tried To Be Tesla, And It Cost The Company Billions

• EU passes law to blanket highways with fast EV chargers by end of 2025
• 10 EVs That Should Last More Than 300,000 Miles
• Most cars still cost more to charge than to fill up with gas — when you take other expenses like home charging and fees into account

• Max Verstappen Disqualified From Sim Race After Revenge-Ramming Another Driver
• Formula 1 Is Selling United States Grand Prix Tickets At Costco Now

• Sneak Peak of the Production Hyundai N74
• Honda S2000 Electric Revival Coming Later This Year: Report

• 30 Cool Cars That Were Discontinued in the Past Decade (2011–2020)

• Nissan Owner Paints Their Brake Rotors, Has to Be Towed to the Shop
• Front Mount Fiero? - So Many Questions.

• Shane van Gisbergen Is Coming Back To Teach NASCAR Another Lesson
• Neuville disqualified from Safari Rally Kenya
• Autocross Tragedy Kills Two Racers in Washington State
• Two SCCA Members Pass Away from Incident at Packwood ProSolo

• Hyundai Is Bringing Carbon-Fiber Wheels to Its N Cars
• GSM Monterey Garage Tour 2023

Koenigsegg making 280mph carbon wheels

• Aston Martin Valkyrie Costs $464K to Service Over First 10,000 Miles: Report
• The 2024 Cadillac Celestiq Will Start at Around $340,000

• 2025 Dodge Stealth: All About the 3-Row Durango Replacement

• Under new state law, Texas will bill electric vehicle drivers an extra $200 a year
• Tesla Cybertruck seen next to Ford F-250 giving size comparison
• Silent Tesla Semi trucks run long and far as Pepsi tips how fast they charge on 750kW Megachargers
• Tesla is facing a lawsuit from customers who claim the company exaggerated vehicles driving range, citing a bombshell press report

• Audi Creates Spunky Electric Restomod from Classic 1971 NSU Prinz
• 1073-HP Porsche Vision 357 Speedster Loses Roof, Gains Electric Power

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing to break into something motorsports related. The drive-through is GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like h hpt 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 weird, weird music, whatever Eric has.

Welcome to the drive through episode number 36. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive motorsport, car adjacent news, and wherever Eric has been this last month. So let’s pull up to the window number one for some automotive [00:01:00] news. Eric, where were you this month? Ah, Our week drained me.

What day is it, by the way? Like I am in a time warp. I don’t know. Let’s do the time warp again. Too early. Although Halloween is out already. Can you believe that Halloween was out after Easter Summer isn’t even over yet. And people are already stocking the shelves for Halloween soon. Christmas decorations will be out Valentine’s Day.

That’s if they ever take ’em down. That’s the secret. Just have a Christmas section done. Yep. You never have to take it down. Just leave it up. You could take away 10% of the women’s clothing section and still have plenty of room for a Christmas section. A holiday section. I think Kim Kardashian has something to say about that.

Maybe. Maybe, maybe. But you know what it is, 24 7. Christmas at Bronner’s. Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan. So if you’re on your way to the middle of nowhere, stop by. So there you go. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re not here to talk Christmas. That’s for [00:02:00] later in the year. But wait, speaking of the Kardashians, how is California?

I might have bumped into them. Wait. You’re fine. You couldn’t miss them. You know, last time we got together, I recapped my epic journey to the European Union. This time I went to the completely opposite side of the country, thanks to Don at Garage Style Magazine. And we did 10 days. Of the Monterey Peninsula for Car Week.

Last time I checked a week is only seven days. You know, I wrote an article about that too. That’s them California Weeks, because you get stoned the first three and California’s famous car week is becoming really two weeks. Soon it’s gonna be car month. It’s absolutely insane. And I will say I’ve had people invite me out time and time again to go and I’m like, man, I, I don’t know if I can put aside 10 days.

I don’t know if I can put aside a week. I don’t know if I can go, you know, works in the way, you know, real stuff. But this time I couldn’t pass off the opportunity, especially to go with a press team, with photographers, with everybody that was there contributing. It was an awesome experience and a once in a [00:03:00] lifetime to do it that way, to really do it up.

I’ll just summarize it for you, 10 days, 37 events, over 5,000 photographs. Unbelievable. People, places, and cars. We’re gonna do some show and tell this time. So if you’re watching this on Patreon, you actually get to see what I’m showing off here because every event I went to, I got something and I kid you not, I paid an extra a hundred bucks to send my luggage home because in a mid-size suitcase I was at 60 pounds.

That’s my normal packing. Just your shoes, right? Just my shoes, my socks, and my underwear. So the Monterey area is cut up into these little towns and it starts with like Seaside and you work your way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and then there’s Carmel Valley. Then there’s the City of Carmel. Then there’s Pacific Grove and all these other places that are connected.

Even Salinas, where Laguna Seka is. It’s all right there in in this conglomeration of different towns. At first I was kinda getting spun around. I’m like, where are we? Where are we going? It was a lot of driving and we were actually staying in [00:04:00] of all places, garlic Town, U S A, which is Gilroy, California because we couldn’t get a place in downtown Monterey.

We were commuting in about 40 minutes or so with our Lexus LX 600 press vehicle, which I’ll talk about here in a little bit. But I wanted to highlight some of the events we went to in the first little town that’s quite charming is Pacific Grove. It’s full of like different things to do. There’s a motorcycle museum there.

There’s some great places to eat. It seems to be a repeat offender when it comes to car shows. There’s the little car show, there’s a couple others, and then there’s the classic Motor Sports Car Show. They’re the authors of not only classic Motor Sports magazine, but one we’re all too familiar with, which is Grassroots Motor Sports Magazine.

Why I mentioned that it’s debated whether or not the beginning of Car Week is actually a week from Pebble, or if it’s longer, is that the quote unquote kickoff event for many, many years was the classic Motorsports Concor in Pacific Grove. Now we back that up almost a week prior. Car Week really kicks off with [00:05:00] the Pasadera Concourse, which we had Rick Barnett on the show last year to talk about.

And I bumped into him several times while I was there in Monterey. What I liked about Classic Motorsports, it was one of those, anything goes, kind of shows all sorts of stuff showed up. You’re talking nine elevens to Camaro, swapped Mgs to Alpha Montreals to Jaguar, X J R, homologated Race Cars. It was actually a really great show.

I really enjoyed it. Mad props to the classic Motor Sports Guys and Free magazine. So I’m gonna flip through it. I’m gonna take a look at this thing. Lots of really cool stuff in here. Also in Pacific Grove, I mentioned the little car show that was a lot of fun. We returned for that. It’s historically been cars with 1,601 ccs or less, so we’re talking 1.5 liters.

1.6 liters. Rounded up this year they opened it up to 1.8 liters, so 1,801 ccs, which kind of opened up the field a little bit. Allowed some Miatas in and Nissan Pulsars, like all sorts of crazy stuff in the eighties because as engines got bigger, so did the little car show need [00:06:00] to grow. So that was a lot of fun.

We saw a lot of microcar, Japanese imports, you know, stuff like that. So I, I thought that was pretty cool. How many Mark four, 1.8 ts did you see or does the power adder take it over? It doesn’t ’cause they’re just classified by displacement and technically were 1787, but I saw absolutely zero Mark Force.

Because they were all at Rad Wood. No, but you know who did represent us from the Dubber side was a G 60 Parrado that was in excellent shape. So one of the other events that I think I have to say when I look back was maybe one of my favorites, and that’s Radius by Broad Arrow. And so Broad Arrow got bought by Haggerty.

So it’s part of that whole, you know, they bought Motorsports Re, they bought Rad Wood, they’re putting all this stuff together. So they’ve relabeled the Broad Arrow auction to Radius and they’re gonna be doing this at Amelia as well and a couple other places. And what I liked was it was set at the Monterey Jet Center, which is the airport there in Monterey, and they made it look and feel like a late fifties, early sixties Hollywood movie set.

It [00:07:00] just had this appeal to it. It had this feel of luxury. It also doubled for the location for the motor luxe, which was later in the evening, which is more of like a black tie type of gala event. But the caliber of cars they had. I thought was pretty awesome ranging from, you know, the big doozies and the Packard and stuff like that.

All the way to crazy concept cars like Weigert’s Vector or an Isra 1 0 8, which I’m wearing the t-shirt and a little show and tell here as well. And really everything in between. The big three cars up on stage, Ferrari, F 50, Ferrari, 2 88 G T O, and a Dyson Porsche. Those were like the headlining cars. Wait, wait, wait.

Did did you just say F 50? I did say five zero. Five zero, okay. The most undesirable of the F cars is what you’re trying to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was a highlights of the events. I know you love that car. I do. It was the only one F 50 apparently up for auction in all of Car Week where there was half a dozen F forties for sale.

People don’t get rid of ’em, they keep ’em. [00:08:00] They didn’t make that many to begin with either. Right, right. Whatever. It was cool seeing one again in person. I mean, I haven’t seen one in years. They are pretty rare, so I got all sorts of pictures of that. It’s actually that headline photo of the Radius article that we wrote, and that’s part of what made this week stressful too.

We were averaging four to five events a day over 10 days, and then we were writing every night processing pictures, so we tried to highlight events that were really unique and really different. Radius was one of them. It just had this champagne and roses type of feel to it that other events didn’t have.

But all the events are different and that’s part of the awesomeness of Car Week. I did pick up a copy of Haggerty’s Driver’s Club magazine, which I’ve been wanting to get from anybody that had Haggerty Insurance, but I figured, hey, it’s available for free so I’m gonna check it out. And this particular issue covers Porsche’s 75th birthday.

So I’m looking forward to flipping through that and reading the articles. As many of our listeners probably know, we had John Kramon on from Mecu. We did a special pre-release through Patreon. A couple [00:09:00] other things if you wanted to go behind the scenes of the auction, get some pro tips from John. We got his Road to Success story, but what we ended up doing was when we went to Mecu to see their Monterey, what they call the daytime auction, we actually ran into John again.

He said, Hey, lemme take you behind the scenes of the auction and show you how it runs. Unbelievably busy, super chaotic, and we have all that footage. It’s up on our YouTube. It was really nice of him to do that. We got access to all sorts of stuff that you don’t normally see. Met a bunch of people like in the production studio, other commentators, you know, just watch the auction unfold live.

And it is more of that traditional, you know, standard American auction where you got the guy up there. I mean, it’s just this constant. Never ending cycle of cars coming in and off the block. And if a car spends more than two minutes on the block, it’s too much. And so it’s this just parade and this commotion and it’s very different.

It’s very lively, it’s energetic. And when you go out on the field, then you can see the cars that are still up [00:10:00] for sale, the ones that have sold what they’ve sold for. It’s very interactive. So that was a lot of fun. And again, really appreciate John taking us on that tour and showing us how the auction runs and how it operates behind the scenes.

I did actually watch some of the Mecu M auctions because they had coverage on MotorTrend app. So I was able to catch some of that. And you’re right, like I didn’t see any car go across the block and spend more than like a minute and a half, two minutes. They were boom, boom, boom, get off the block. Even if they weren’t sold, you know, they put the little graphic up, the bid goes on.

Yep. Uh, yeah, I, I like watching those auctions. I like watching them with older people, like my father-in-law and my dad because they live the reminisce about the vehicles and then complain about how much they sell for, you know, I’m glad you brought up the bid goes on. John took us over there on the behind the scenes.

That’s actually a separate section of the auction where you can continue to bid on the cars once they’re off the block and actually negotiate a price rather than the whole, you know, 50, 51, 52, you know, all that kind stuff. You can settle down and say, okay, I’m offering this, are you willing to take [00:11:00] it, negotiate with the owners if they’re there, stuff like that.

So it’s really interesting how they run that. But to your point, Brad, a minute and a half, two minutes, every car on the block, they got 600 cars to go through in like three days. So they gotta keep that thing moving. I gotta give a shout out to Steve Catrell at Veloce Media. We ran into him so many times, whether it was at his place at the premier of the new beer rally time at Concorso.

At Italiano, which I’ll talk about here in a minute, to some private parties that were at his place. I felt like we were bumping into Steve every two minutes, and especially thankful that he opened up his place for us to take a photo shoot for our Lexus press car. It came out really cool. He is got this awesome octopus mural in the background.

There’s actually a jellyfish, one buried in the back behind where the kitchen is and stuff like that. They’re, you’re gonna see those photos in a garage style article coming out where we feature the Loche media and their building. It’s really cool because it’s unassuming from the street. You drive by and not even pay attention to it, and inside it’s a wooden roof and all this glass and that mural.

And it was the really great [00:12:00] backdrop to take photos of Lexus and they came out really, really awesome. So I gotta give a nod to Steve at Veloce, but also because this happens almost all the time, you’re like so tired. You’re done with the day, you’ve done all these events, and then the phone rings. Don’s like, Hey, we just got invited to two private parties, or three private parties.

Which one do you want to go to? And you’re like, none. You know, I just want, I wanna go home and process pictures. But we would do that in the evenings, go where people invited us. And so we ended up back at Steve’s one evening for the Avant Party. And so Avant is a lifestyle brand and magazine. Every issue is about 140 pages.

Beautiful photographs, really, really nice stuff in this magazine. The one I have here is the Monterey Edition. So I got to actually meet Avant, I got to meet those guys and while we were there chatting and looking at Ferrari two fifties and Wide Body Nine Elevens and all this kind of stuff that was in the showroom.

In walks Matt Farrah from the Smoking Tire and Jason Camisa from Haggerty. We stood there for a while and I kept thinking, Brad [00:13:00] wants me to talk to these guys. Like I gotta talk to these guys. And I’m there with Mike Pone from E S E Carbon, who we’ll talk about here in a minute as well, and he’s like, let’s go talk to Jason.

Let’s do it. So we’re standing there like two fools. And Matt, Farrah and Jason are having this conversation. I snapped a photo. I don’t know what they were talking about, but the expressions on their face was really, really funny. But Brad, that’s as close as I got because we unfortunately got pulled to another party.

I know that Mike went and talked to Jason. So if you guys are listening, love to have you on the show. Would love to get your road to success stories on break fix. So look forward to an email that’s gonna go to SPAM in the near future. I had to go to my more familiar stomping grounds, the racetrack, the Monterey Historics at WeatherTech, Laguna Seka Raceway.

They sort of run autonomous from concurrently with Car Week, but traditionally there was a race around Pebble Beach back in the fifties as a Grand Prix, and then eventually moved to Laguna Saca in 1957. It was always the [00:14:00] lead up to the Pebble Beach Concord. The idea was you go race your car and then you go show your car.

Now what they do is what they call the Tour de Elegance, which we have a video of that as well. It kind of simulates the old days racing around Monterey on 17 mile drive and around Pebble Beach and things like that, and then they end back at the Concord and get the car stage. Meanwhile, the historics are going on at Laguna Seca 300 cars.

There were 13 classes of cars running every day, either between practice qualifying, and then there was Race one and race two. So I went on race day, hyper-focused on group four, which was. 1981 to 91 TransAm, IMSA, G T O, all the big body cars V eight stuff. Was hoping there was gonna be a five cylinder fire breathing dragon of an Audi there, but it was still fun, Corvettes, and there was a Newman Nissan in the mix, so that was good.

And then group six was vintage Formula One cars, which was just, Ear shatteringly. Awesome. And then group 13, which was my absolute favorite. We had to stick around [00:15:00] to the end of the day to watch them. You had Pat Long in his Celeste Green, Bianchi blue, whatever you wanna call it. Porsche nine sixty two.

Amongst other nine 60 twos Audi R eight, you had Jaguars, you had Buicks, you had spice, Budweiser cars, all sorts of stuff. Basically Lamonts prototypes, G T P cars celebrating, you know, the hundredth lamonts that was. Spectacular to watch, especially big turbo cars running around. Laguna Seca, absolutely amazing and Laguna’s one of those awesome tracks where you can see from everywhere, but it requires a little bit of hiking to get to different vantage points, but absolutely amazing to be there on race day.

You were there for motorcycles too, weren’t you? There were bikes there, but I didn’t see them. Were they running in the same day? Just different group. We got there a little later in the morning ’cause we had to cover Porsche works first, which I’m gonna mention now. And then we ended up at Laguna lunchtime on, because we had looked at the schedule going, these are the three groups that we really wanna see.

So I missed the bikes and, and all that kind of stuff. But as you [00:16:00] wandered to paddock, there was a little bit of everything. You’ve got a note here for Corvette’s 70th. Do you want to touch on that or, that’s a really great reminder. You know, we’ve mentioned many times, we have a special episode that we did with the I M R R C about the 70th birthday of Corvette.

It coincides with Porsche’s 75th. They’re always trying to one up each other. So I kind of split hairs on thoughts I was having while at the track. I did a coverage of the Monterey Historics, but I also did an article called Porsche versus Corvette. Trying to decide whether or not one or the other is the every man’s sports car.

And you’ll have to read it to find a conclusion. Is that the sequel to Ford versus Ferrari? Yeah, I think so. It’s Porsche versus Corvette. Yeah. Yeah. But what was nice is they had a really cool display of Corvettes I’d never seen in person. Some of the prototypes, the Avett was there. They had Ben Keating’s Corvette that I saw live at Lamont’s, the winning Corvette.

So that was fun to walk through that outdoor museum that they set up and photograph that I have pictures of, of all sorts of different Corvettes that were there. And they were making a big to do celebrating Corvette. And like I mentioned [00:17:00] before, Porsche works, which is the P c A sponsored event. They were celebrating Porsche in style.

Some of the craziest cars you’ve ever seen, some of the craziest colors you’ve ever seen. I ran into the current executive director and former executive directors. That’s Vu and Manny from P C A. We had a chat. So they’ve agreed to come on the show in the future and do a crossover with us. But it was good to reconnect with them.

They’re in the same region that we are in here on the east coast. They actually did a segment on the crazy colors of Porsche’s at Porsche works. So there’s a video there on pca.org to check out. So that was a lot of fun reconnecting with those guys. And Porsche works was a great show to attend. It was free to anybody that wanted to go and check it out.

So you answer your question online on Instagram, the answer’s always green. Always. It’s always green, yellow, no lemon versus lime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s always lime lemon just doesn’t look right on a nine 11 to me. Well, this’s a yellow bird. Well it’s funny you bring up lemons ’cause I did go to the.

Concourses lemons. Yes. Please touch on that. It’s exactly what [00:18:00] you expect. It’s the hoopty, it’s the rust buckets. It’s the undesirables. It’s the ugly cars like we talked about on our, what should I buy? Ugly cars episode. It’s everything you can think of. And then some other stuff you didn’t even know existed.

I feel like you missed an opportunity to win something with your former Aztec. Wasn’t mine. Didn’t own it. Well, there was an Aztec there along with a silhouette. The Dustbuster of Minivans and, and other stuff like that. Oh, the silhouette. That’s the one that basically looks like a Lumina. Yep. The guy actually had a Dustbuster on the windshield.

It was hilarious. I was like, this is awesome. So the thing about Concord’s the lemons is, Thank God it’s free because you get exactly what you pay for. I did a video of it. It’s on our YouTube, it’s compressed. I literally, it’s concourses dilemmas in 60 seconds. ’cause that’s really all you need to understand what happened there.

So a lot of fun. It is a bit of a circus too. Prizes and giveaways and the announcers are making fun of [00:19:00] each other. Making fun of the cars. And there’s a guy on top of his vehicle riding a bucking bronco. I mean this, the weirdest stuff you’ve ever seen is at this show. So why not just enjoy it? Right? It’s part of Car Week, it’s part of car culture and that’s what Car Week’s about is this celebration of car culture.

So then we step into the more serious side of car week. As we get closer to Pebble. Once you get to the Wednesday, Thursday, that’s when everybody starts to arrive in town. The celebrities start to show up. Things are getting more serious, cars are getting ready for the Tor de Lagon, like all this kind of stuff.

The auctions are still sort of going, but wrapping up, everybody’s trying to get to Pebble, right? That is Nirvana for this entire week. So we took the time to go to Concorso Italiano touted as the largest collection of Italian cars, basically all in one spot other than Italy. True. I would like to think that Italy would win that by default.

I think there was more Fiats at this show than there is in Italy, though. I will say that more running Fiats, you mean? Yeah, [00:20:00] a hundred percent. Absolutely gorgeous cars when you come on through the gates. It’s Lamborghini all day and there’s Lamborghinis that we talk about where it’s like, oh, the Halah and the Jarama and the Spada, and you’re like, oh, they’re super cool and there’s six of them right there, and you’re like never seen so many in one spot at the same time, they had this neat stage set up.

They had a fashion show, they had announcers, and then they would take certain cars out of the field and then drive them in. I actually have a video of a Bini Strada, which is the Bini coop, which is sure V eight, powered by the way, YHA, and he’s revving and idling and sitting there, and it’s just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, the whole thing like you’d expect from a TransAm. So we’ve got that up. It was a lot of fun. I spent some time wandering around the Ferrari section and quickly realized I could buy merchandise at a Formula One race, and it would be cheaper. I didn’t bring anything home. So that said, the Fiats and the Alpha males though, I mean if they had tucked them any further back, they would’ve been at a [00:21:00] different car show like they were up over the hill, like out of the way.

Nobody wants to see X one nines. Maybe they were at a different car show. You just stumbled upon it. Now I had fun talking to those guys at a delightful conversation with a guy who did a custom delivery on his Alpha four C, looked really slick. Bunch of GTV sixes, one 60 fours, Milanos, all the old stuff. I appreciate.

I was hoping to see an Alpha sz, which is one of my favorites. It wasn’t to be, but I did talk to a lot of X one nine owners and Fiat 1 24 guys. That was really cool. I mean, Concorso was a lot of fun. You got to see the cars that we salivate over. I mean, you just drop a name. Kunta Diablo 3 28 3 48 test 2 88.

It didn’t matter. They were all at that show. So it’s really worth going to if you appreciate Italian cars. Spoiler alert, because you’re gonna talk about this later. Is this where you got to talk to the c e O of Lamborghini or was it a different event? No, I got to talk to Stefan Winkleman while I was at Pebble Beach.

[00:22:00] That’s another story for another time. Oh man. Like five minutes from now. So we went to a new event, new for this year, sponsored by Kom. It’s called the Monterey Motor Sports Festival. Shout out to David at m i e racing for bringing this to our attention. He knows some folks over there. He says, you gotta go to this show, you gotta cover it, you gotta check it out.

It’s very different than anything I’ve described so far. It’s sort of Monterey’s version of Grid Life without the drifting and the track event. It’s all the other parts of Grid Life. It’s that festival, it’s the music, it’s newer cars. It’s the things you don’t see at all the other shows, right? The tuner cars, all the J D M stuff, because you walk around, you’re like, where?

Where’s all, where’s all the newer European stuff? Or newer Japanese cars. So you don’t see a lot of that at the other shows. So it was nice. More our speed, more my style. The older guys were just like, eh, it’s okay. It’s cool, you know, blah, blah, blah. The food was hands down the best. Yeah, it’s our people food, truck food for the win.

So they got that [00:23:00] right. It was super awesome the singers they had up on stage. Brad, I think you would’ve appreciated that. They were really, really good. This one woman had a real knack for making herself sound like a Carly Simon or a Linda Ronstadt. She was very flexible, very adaptable in her singing. So that was a lot of fun.

We actually watched her for quite a while and then, you know, took turns looking at different cars and stuff. Were they like a cover band or were they like a legitimate artist? No, a cover band. I don’t remember her name. Unfortunately. She’s outta New York City. I’m sure we can look it up and see who it was.

It was a great performance and it added a good ambiance to the show. And in front of her on stage was a Maserati and then an old Packard. And oh, they had a mix of cars kind of highlighting all the different decades and she made a point to mention that between songs as they were changing some of the instruments albums.

And that’s also where I got an opportunity to see some cars from Kom that I didn’t see when I was there to include a wide body speedster V 8 9 14, which it was just off the charts [00:24:00] insane. I was like, how I known this thing was for sale. It might’ve been on it. It’s kind of cool. We have to ramp up the big two events.

The ones that everybody talks about every year are the quail and pebble. It comes down to which one do you go to? Which one do you spend the money to go to? ’cause both are very expensive. Both are very posh. If you look at the cover photo of the quail video that we just quickly put together, you kind of get an idea of what the quail is all about.

But what’s interesting is that even though it’s sponsored by Bons, and it has been for many, many years, it’s a little bit more modern than Pebble. You had brands like Singer there. You had Maserati showing off new cars. You had a new Bentley prototype. Kia was there with some of their concept cars, so it was a little bit more modern, but it was a very upscale event.

So it was really kind of cool to see that intersection between those two ideas represented at a very high profile. Concord. Before we get into Pebble, I have to know what did you wear? Did you look [00:25:00] like the help or did you look like someone who belonged there? Well, I was warned ahead of time that I needed to bring a change of clothes.

A lot of events I went to polo shirt, jeans, nicer shoes. In Pacific Grove, you could go in jeans and a t-shirt or shorts. Didn’t really matter. Did you wear the yellow? Everyone has a story. I did not, ’cause I didn’t wanna look like a flagger temple is probably where I dressed up the most. You’re talking slack, sport coat, you know, all that kind of stuff.

It is more upscale, you know, you gotta represent when you look around, everybody has those funny straw hats, which I thought about buying one. But when you look at the hat and it doesn’t have a price in the price tag, you know, you probably don’t or want or can’t afford it. So I’m just like, I’m gonna leave that alone.

There’s a lot of hype around Pebble Beach, been around for 70 some odd years now on the golf course, on the 18th fairway. It is supposed to be the epitome of luxury, high life and all this kind of stuff and some of the finest cars in the world. And one of the things I came to find out, which I thought was really interesting is they’ve incorporated [00:26:00] the concept cars and I got to see where the DeLorean reimagine was unveiled last year.

’cause they have other concept cars in that area. That’s actually before you even enter Pebble, basically what is a really large putting green right near the pro shop. Mm-hmm. I also learned that cars that enter Pebble cannot reenter Pebble for like upwards of a decade. So once it’s been accepted and shown, you won’t see that same car again at Pebble Beach.

They try to really mix it up so you don’t have the same champion every year or the same three cars competing. You’re like, eh, I’ve seen all these before. They wanna mix it up, they really wanna break up the show. It is sectioned off. So you’ve got like an entire section of pre-war cards, Packards Preservation group, Porsche group, and you can go from group to group to group and kind of focus on what you really like.

The difference between the Avant Party and Quail, even Broad arrows. Radius Pebble is where all the IT people are. It’s where all the celebrities come. It’s where all the movie stars are. It’s where all the CEOs [00:27:00] and executives, I mean, I was 10 feet from the current c e O of Ford. I talked to Stefan from Lamborghini while I was standing next to Magnus Walker, and I’ve recognized other people that have been on the show and things like that, and it’s just like, this is the who’s who of California and of the automotive world all in one spot and we’re surrounded by the most beautiful cars you’ve ever seen.

What’s funny is the Pebble actually has two books. There’s the little field guide, which is packed full of information while you’re looking at cars. And then there’s the Big Pebble program, which is like the phone book just full of stuff sponsored by Rolex. Everything you come to expect from all these brands, it is a cut above, but the question becomes if you’re going to these shows as a civilian or as a layman, you really have to build Car Week on a budget.

Pebble’s not cheap. $500 for a ticket scalpers up to 800 Quail’s not cheap either. A lot of these events add up quick, so you gotta have a big budget or decide I wanna just focus on this and then do all the surrounding shows and private parties and there’s something for everybody during Car Week. So you gotta kind of make [00:28:00] those financial decisions.

It’s not like I can do everything and be everywhere during Car Week. So Peple or Amelia Island, that was thrown around a lot too. But having talked to people that have been to Amelia, and not that there’s anything wrong with Amelia. There’s gorgeous cars there that are coming from the east. There’s not the rest of what makes up Car Week at Amelia.

You go to Amelia. For Amelia, there’s not the driving tours and there are the private parties, but there’s not 16 other car shows happening on the same day as Amelia. There’s just that one event. Now there’s been talk that you know how the Haggerty’s involved that that’s gonna grow rebranding as Radius, just like they did with the Broad Arrow event.

So really interested to see how Amelia evolves. It would be really cool if it turned into another car week, but it’s gonna take some time to get there. Are you going to tell us about your conversation with Stephan or are you gonna keep that to yourself? You know what, I’m gonna save it for a future break.

Fix episode. How about that? Yeah, and I do see here that you saw the new Kunta. I did. Tell [00:29:00] us your thoughts. Mr. Hater, I don’t hate it as much anymore. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Imagine that. Mm-hmm. It does look better in person than in pictures. It’s not that it’s horrible in picture, it’s just you’re kind of like, is that right?

Does that look right when you see it coming? It’s sort of like the e B one 10 Bugatti, which doesn’t photograph well either, but you see it in person, you’re like, that’s the Batmobile and the Kunta in that white. It’s huge. It’s wide, it’s low. Sort of like the old Kunta where it’s just so over the top. You can’t stop looking at it.

And every angle you look at it, it’s one of those cars, you see something else, and that’s what you don’t see in the photographs. ’cause the photographs are almost too polished. They’re almost too rendered. But to see it in person, I mean, I just stood there and I’m just like, I don’t know what to say. I like it.

I still think Magnus ISS version of it is better, but you know, hey, to each own. All right. One of the other things that really stood out at Pebble, we’re talking about car spotting, was [00:30:00] the McLaren display right along the coastline. Awesome. And I stopped dead in my tracks. And just had a moment amongst all the noise.

I had a moment of silence for Senna’s F one car took all sorts of pictures of it. And you know what’s funny is a guy walks up and, you know, I’m just kind of standing there, not like I’m meditating or you know, kneeling down or anything, but he’s like, whose car is this? Like I recognize it and I’m like, bro, seriously.

And he was an older guy and he’s an admitted Formula One fan. I said to him, it’s Senna’s car. He’s like, well, how do you know? And I said, it’s written right on the hoop dude, but it’s number 12. It’s his car. It’s pretty legendary Formula One car here. We had a good laugh and then we were chatting, so we continued to walk along and then next to that was one of Donahue’s McLaren’s, one of Bruce McLaren’s McLaren’s.

Then you had Mika Hawkin’s, McLaren, then you had James Hunt scaffolding multiple wings and all this crazy stuff. So that to me, as a racer and a motor sports enthusiast, that was awesome. That was my favorite part of Pebble and I didn’t know it was gonna be there. So that just [00:31:00] immediate surprise. As I came around the corner and their Senna’s car and all the rest of ’em, I was just like, that sold it for me.

That was amazing. And you didn’t get arrested for trying to climb in. I’m proud of you. You know, my media pass gets me to certain places too. You know, you cross over those chains a little bit. Yeah, all in all Car week was amazing. It is completely a blur. We’re talking 18 hour days, just nonstop. Go here, go there.

Driving around. I think we clocked 2000 miles of driving or something insane. It’s a lot of work. Maybe not physically demanding, but it’s just mentally stressful. You’re looking at the events, not through the eyes of a participant either. You’re looking at it through the eyes of the press. What looks good, camera angles is the lighting right?

You know, there’s a lot of decision. How are we gonna use this? Make sure you grab that car because that could be a winner. So you gotta photograph everything. It’s kind of nuts at the end of the day. But I don’t wanna say it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it was definitely something. I’m glad I’m now able to check off my bucket list and I did it in a big, big way.

Well with that, it’s time we move on to Volkswagen, Audi [00:32:00] and Porsche News. What is this thing? What is this? Oh yeah. I don’t know what this is, but apparently it’s Audi honoring 150 years since manufacturing began in Necar. It’s called the N S U Prince four, and it’s unrecognizable as an Audi N SS U. For those that don’t know, the wider history of the auto union was one of the four circles in the rings of Audi.

Right? So N S U was absorbed into the auto union and the N S U prints was one of these little like Nash Metropolitan thinks that they made back in the day. N SS U is also where the Winkle, the rotary was born, so side by side with the original one. This looks so much better. Yeah, it’s a re-imagination of the original N S U prints.

I really like it. It kinda reminds me of what Alpine is doing with the new R five. I don’t necessarily feel good about the back of it. I don’t understand, like it’s got a very long trunk lid and a very long [00:33:00] rear spoiler wing thing. Double spoiler action going on. It’s the fender flares that do it for me.

I like the fender flare, so I like the look from the front. It’s very low, it’s very squat. It’s boxy, but with round headlights. Although they’re oval, but with two round headlights inside the oval. Oh, okay. So aren’t those the Rivian lights just turned on their side? They’re reminiscent. They could be. They probably sourced them from the same place Rivian did.

Again, this is right up there with the Reimagined, R five, the Opal Manta ev, some of the other ones that have come out. This is not going anywhere. This is just a concept, right? Yeah. Can they make it? I mean, I’d be happy with it, but see, unfortunately nobody’s gonna buy that. A rich person’s gonna buy it just to say that they have it.

There’s nothing practical about that car. It’s so small considering how it actually looks smaller than the original. And I’m gonna guess the originals not that big, right? It’s not practical enough for today’s standards. Well, let’s talk about another car that’s being reimagined. Porsche made an announcement.

[00:34:00] Their vision 3 57 Speedster celebrating seven, five years. Yes. So what is this? It’s a car. It’s like a weird 3 56. Spider button looking more modern. I like it, but I don’t, I don’t know what to think of it. Like there’s really cool aspects to it. I think the wheels are really neat. I like that grill in the back.

That reminds me of a 3 56 with those striations that they had. You know, back then, that canopy is obviously from the 3 56 speedster. There’s some elements of the five 50 spider in this car. They could have also just called it an electric boxer. Yeah, and that’s what I’m trying to figure out. So it’s obviously mid-engine, but the front clip still looks like a nine 11, like an old nine 11.

Right. But it doesn’t have headlights either. So I’m trying to figure out how that works or It does, and it’s just like they beam through perforations. I don’t know. I’d have to see it in person. It’s kind of cool. Again, it’s a concept, so they’re probably not going to build it. It’s just to, I guess, celebrate 75 years of Porsche.

75 years of the 3 56. [00:35:00] Yeah. Well, and this is just it. This is what I expected when they were making that big reveal when Lamont’s was happening on June the eighth, and then they revealed the nine x, we were guessing that it was gonna be some sort of homage to the 3 56. It didn’t happen. So here we are a month later and yes.

Okay, so there is a 3 56 sort of prototype speedster car. I don’t think it would be kind of cool to make something like this. So there is a hard top version really. That was the one they announced back in January. You can see the picture? Yes. Which also from the side profile side, it’s kind of actually pretty hideous, but it’s got weird elements of different past Porsches and that’s probably the whole point.

But I will also say, I think it’s funny that maybe they’ll go back to the 300 series numbers. ’cause I feel like Porsche has exhausted the nine hundreds at this point. I mean that’s why we have 9 9, 1 0.1 and 9 9 1 0.2 and ’cause they’re just running out of model numbers. So maybe going back to the 300 line, which there’s only been the 3, 5, 6 and maybe a handful of others, gives them an opportunity to make some different [00:36:00] models.

But think about the marketing event that would be to have the Porsche 1000, and that’s something Don and I were joking about. You know these guys talking about their 9, 9 1, do two and 9, 9 2, whatever, and he goes, tell them you have a 9, 9, 1, do four and see what happens. Because they’ll be like, wait a minute, they didn’t make that.

When did the dot three come out? Like you get ’em all wrapped around the axle on something like that, but dot whatever. It’s almost like software. It’s like, oh, windows 10 do 1, 2, 3. I’m like, whatever. It’s a, an automotive patch. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. I like the 3 57, both the speedster and the coop.

I think they’re cool. I would take one if I fit and if they made it and if I could afford it. There are a lot of variables there that I need to meet before I can take one piece. Hmm. Well with that we need to move on to STIs. We actually have some news coming from Chrysler, Dodge Fiat, and the whole conglomerate, the new 2025 Dodge stealth Durango.

Did I read that right? W [00:37:00] what exactly? So is it a stealth or is it a Durango? It’s a stealth Durango. Oh, it’s a Durango in stealth mode that you don’t know. It’s Durango. Oh, okay. It’s just a Jeep. It’s incognito. It looks like a big Hornet. It looks better than the Hornet, like a big square hornet with 24 inch wheels or whatever those look like.

Because the Hornet in pictures, although we’ve seen it in person, I saw one on the road. It looks like the Dart was stretched upwards like a car that they turned into an SS U V. What is that weird STIs badge on the front? That’s the Dodge. That’s the two red stripes. Is that all that is? I thought it was an S.

No. Whatever it is, it looks stupid. Which is confusing because the grand sport has those two slashes on the Corvette, right? Yeah. The grand sport does on the fender on. I don’t know what it all means. All I know is that I’ve heard nothing but commercials about Dodge and the brotherhood of muscle. I feel like this is in that same realm.

It’s a muscly [00:38:00] S U V. It has those things on the top of the fenders that remind me of the Land Rover. The defender would love to see what that actually does in real life. Nothing. Yeah, I would be curious to see it in real life. It’s interesting. Yes. So Landis News Dodge is coming out with a new Durango.

They’re calling it the stealth ’cause they’re idiots and some other idiots are gonna buy it. Moving on and And the sad part is there’s only one photograph and I think it’s just a rendering. No. So there’s a second photograph. If you click in with a different logo, with a different emblem, you’re right, you’re right.

The grill is slightly different, but there’s no shots from the back. And if you do look at their rear quarter panel, it is a little disconcerting. It’s probably just a rendering. Yeah. It probably does not exist. Are there no pictures in those 13 photos? Nope. It’s all pictures of old Durangos. There’s a picture at the beginning and a picture at the end.

Clickbait. A hundred percent clickbait. Well, it’s motor trend. What do you expect? Well, you know what? Isn’t clickbait? Our domestic news brought to us by American muscle, your source for Ford, Chevy, [00:39:00] and sometimes Mopar Parts. We participated in a Zoom session over the last month with Ben Keating from Team Corvette by way of our friends at the A C O U Ss A and if you tuned into the show this month, you’ll see that we also interviewed David Lowe, the administrator for the American arm of the A C o and so we can get into more details on that.

You tune back into break Fix, but it was a really great hour long presentation by Ben. He talks about his experience winning lama. It’s like the second or third time he’s done it, obviously with different teams. We got the announcement that GM is officially sudden setting the factory team, but that doesn’t mean that’s the end of Corvette at lama.

What was really cool was listening to him talk about the driver changes, driving at night, how hard it was and the race to the end, especially when they were a couple laps down and they came from the back of the pack, you know, in G T L M to win it. It’s available, especially if you become a member of the A C O, you can check that out on their Facebook group.

The Zoom session is out there, but it’s a really great evening. Great [00:40:00] discussion with Ben Keating. I mentioned we were at Pebble Beach and I ran into the c e O of Ford. I’m just gonna read the headline. Ford tried to be Tesla and it cost the company I. Billion. Billion. And then I look down and I see a picture of Jim Farley and he’s like rubbing the hood of this F one 50 lightning, like he’s golum from Lord of the Rings.

And all I could keep thinking was my precious, my precious. But the result of all of this, if you summarize the article, is Ford cut the price of the F one 50 and its stocks took a nosedive. Which is APTT to happen when somebody does that and then investors get all scared. Scared, does it mean anything? T B D remains to be seen.

It’s all bullshit. Like I don’t understand how Tesla is so successful. Carbon credits, it works out really well for Tesla because there’s this side funneling of money into the company from Tech Bros. And people that you know refuse to let their investment die. Or Elon [00:41:00] himself just funneling his own money in there probably.

Yeah, but Ford just has normal customers so they don’t play that game. Don says it all the time. You sell more Fords than Ferraris. And so if they can make something that appeals to the masses, like the F one 50, you just gotta get the recipe right? People bought onto the Tesla bandwagon just like the iPhone and so is the Ford F one 50, the Android, I don’t wanna make that analogy, but you kind of get my point, right?

The F one 50, as we’ve said before, is the best-selling vehicle in North America. The question is, was electrifying it the right move. I’ve also heard that Ford is backing the throttle off on V six Eco Boost, one fifties and they’re moving back to V eights. So what does that mean exactly? What’s old is new again?

The coyote. Oh, funny little tidbit. Elon Musk actually commented on the price of the F one 50 Lightning saying it’s too expensive. Well, there’s the pot calling the kettle black. He was [00:42:00] complimentary saying that the Ford Lightning was a good vehicle though. Good vehicle. Yes, but somewhat expensive, especially given the high interest rates.

And so the Ford is what, like 40,000 right now? Something around that. It’s supposed to be 40,000 or start at 40, but they were selling around 50,000. The cyber truck’s gonna be, it starts around 50 and depending on you do trim motor, buy motor, single motor, quadruple motor. They don’t even have prices out yet.

When they first announced that they had prices and the trim motor was supposed to be like 75 to 80, because that’s the one that I have on hold for a hundred dollars that I’m still trying to give away people. Somebody please contact us through our channels to buy my $100 deposit on a cyber truck. I will give it away for $5.

Oh, I thought it was a bag of tacos from Taco Bell. That’s about $5. Switching to Japanese and Asian imports. More news on the Hyundai N 74 that we like so much. [00:43:00] Did you guys see this latest quote unquote production version? No, but I’m following this page. Something about it that looks different than the other.

It looks boring. Yes. It’s the missing the wing. It’s missing like the air ducks, I think on the side that the other one had, some of the ground effects are less aggressive on this. It reminds me of the Subaru SS V X. Not quite that level of weird, but yes, to your point. You know what it looks like, Tanya? It looks like a stereo on it looks like a conquest.

T S I. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. Yeah. It still has the flares, but the rest of the car is just sort of like me, which I can’t hate that comment, but they could be doing like Toyota did Toyota when they released the super, they had a bunch of what looked like fake vents and stuff like that. Right.

And it was theorized that they were put on their own purpose to sell performance parts and packages in the future. So maybe you could add the wing and some of the more radical pieces later on. Either that or some [00:44:00] aftermarkets gonna make ’em. Yeah, exactly. Maybe this is just the base model and that’s okay too.

Like maybe if there’s a base model and then there’s like the GT model, when the three 50 Z came out, there was the base three 50 Z and it went all the way up to the performance or track version that had various different options and stuff. Well, it’s almost like this is like the base. GT and But we need like the U R Q next to it.

Yeah. The sport Quattro. Exactly. I will say I hate it in this silver color. It looks like it was born in the eighties. It would look really cool. White or red. Yeah. It wouldn’t look really that great in black. ’cause I think you’d lose all of its shape in black. Although black cars are gorgeous. Yeah. The silver, it’s reminiscent of too many other cars that are coming out in silver right now.

Even that 3 57 we were just talking about is a silver and white combination. But if it was that Kunta white with the black accents, I can see that really playing it to the strength of this car. Yes, yes, yes. So we’ll see. Maybe it’s just another rendering. We don’t know what the real thing looks like, but I was a little [00:45:00] disappointed when I saw that.

I was like, it’s very watered down in comparison to the track toy that has been teased multiple times over. Speaking of track toys, you guys remember the S 2000? Yes, I do. Yes. I went for a ride in an auto cross in one once recently instructed in one. What did you think of the S 2000 Tanya? You know what, I had never been in one.

I have only been around cheater once. I was actually pleasantly surprised by its neutral handling and it’s motorcycle like engine. You know, it’s not the fastest thing, but it’s also not slow. I heard they suffer from snap over steer. They do. That is true. I was instructing someone who wasn’t pushing that aggressively, so we didn’t ever encounter anything like that.

Thankfully that’s good. And if you watch initial D, the SS 2000 is God hand. So in the passenger seat, the way this gentleman was driving, it felt very neutral. It didn’t do anything weird, which could also be that it doesn’t have enough power to break it [00:46:00] loose. But to Brad’s point, when they do snap, they go around, they come, they’re a great drift car.

I mean, everybody you know that I’ve ever talked to says they’re amazing when they’re sideways. I’ve ridden in some S 2000, I’ve driven a couple myself. They’re always kind of fun little roadster for me. The Achilles heel was the engine vtech kicks in at 7,000 R p m and you gotta ring its neck to almost 10 to get it to do anything.

Yeah, the noise is awesome, but excruciating at the same time. ’cause you’re like, I feel really bad for this engine that I have to rev it out like a motorcycle. But what have I told you? Honda was gonna come back with the S 2000 as an ev. I don’t even care about any of that. I saw the picture of this thing and it’s atrocious looking.

I don’t care what it runs on fairy dust or not, like this thing needs to go away. It looks like a cross between the new N S X and Adel Soul. You read my mind, Brad, ’cause I was thinking the same thing. I will say I did see a brand new N S X on the highway the other day and it was beautiful. I almost like started drooling.

It looks so good next [00:47:00] to me. And this really pretty bright blue color. This does not look like that though. This looks like the Honda Dell sole kind of took over the styling portion of it because it has that target bar thing going on with the rear glass there. From what you can see from these pictures, which there are not a ton, but yeah, the front end, it’s got that beak like the older Acura’s had and the N S X that it shares with, I think the wheels are cool.

I think the importance of the article though is to get interest. There’s Mario. The thing we should touch on is how do we feel about an S 2000 replacement or successor? As an ev. I don’t think it would look like this. I think this is just somebody’s stupid rendering. Then Tanya just made the point that she doesn’t even care about all that.

You know, ev not ev, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Right? I think if it was like a mini version of the N SS X and had the hybrid technology, like a smaller version of the N S X’s power plant, I think it would be pretty cool. So then why not just build an N S X convertible at that point? Because the N SS X is 200 plus something thousand dollars, and the S 2000 should be around 50 something.

And how much do you think this is gonna be? It should be around [00:48:00] 40 or 50. Hmm. We’ll ask Elon and see how much it should be. He’s just gonna shoot it into space. That’s an episode for another day too. I actually met the guy that designed the Roadster, so that was kind of fun. Oh, you mean, uh, Colin Chapman?

Uh, yeah. Well, you know, Tonya hit the nail on the head. It’s all sort of meh at the end of the day with, is it gas? Is it diesel? Is it ev, is it hybrid? Is it whatever? Toyota is, again, back in the news saying, meh. It’s EVs. They have not, and they are still not building full EVs. They’re sticking to hybrid.

They’ve invested a ton of money in hydrogen and it was really funny. I had a conversation while I was out in California with some Tesla owners and I brought up the fact that there’s a lot of companies moving to combustible hydrogen. It’s not just Toyota. We mentioned in the last episode Bosch and, and BMW’s going down this route for a while.

There’s a bunch of others that are looking to combustible hydrogen. It was really funny because the pushback I got, especially when I mentioned Bosch, which I recognize as a global [00:49:00] partner in the automotive industry, the gentleman said, I don’t know who Bosch is and hydrogen is not sustainable long term.

And I’m like, Wait, excuse me. So strip mining the Earth and Mars is, I’m super hopeful in backing Toyota’s thought that EV is a stop gap right now to this idea of combustible hydrogen. If they can solve the containment and distribution puzzle, which is going to take decades, I mean, they also have to solve the acquiring piece as well.

But the acquiring piece is also a problem with EVs. There’s only so much lithium to go around. We don’t have a great recycling program for it. And yes, We’ll talk more about infrastructure changes in the future, but we’re still not there. There was a report that came out even the other day where they’re saying that EV sales have plateaued.

All the early adopters have adopted and we’re at 7% and nobody else can afford these cars. Yep. Not at seven or 8% interest rates. Who can afford it? That, and we’re at market [00:50:00] saturation at like seven or 8% of cars are ev, but the article I was reading was saying that to get from like 8% to 12% saturation, it’s gonna take another decade to do that.

And in that decade, what other technology is gonna come out? You have to have disposable income. You are in a certain bracket financially to just go out and be like, I’m gonna dump my car that’s probably maybe paid for and has nothing wrong with it. And go spend 60 grand on an EV plus a charging system in your home, plus whatever else.

I mean, you’ve got money to play with your average person. Yeah. Who’s trying to make ends meet. They’re gonna keep running their Toyota Corolla until it chernobyls in like 50 years. They’re still driving their 1990 Camry. Yeah. EVs. EVs are still a niche affluent market. Well, you wanna talk about niche affluent markets.

How about luxury sedans that are turned into big SUVs with off-road capability? How did you enjoy your Lexus? Our press car was a 2024 yet to be released to the general masses LX [00:51:00] 600 in a seaweed green. There’s a full article that Don from Garage Style Magazine wrote about it, and we took a. A ton of pictures of it.

It was nice. There were some things that were different about it. Things that I didn’t expect, like four independent captain’s chairs in the vehicle, right? No third row seating in that thing. It had a parcel shelf behind the back row. It did cut into the trunk space a bit. I could control the front seats.

From a Captain Kirk like console in the back, which was pretty cool. I could change the aircom, the radio, like I had this whole thing, like I, I felt like I was on the enterprise. So was Don Ubering you around? There was a bunch of us, so yes, but Don was our Uber. He got to drive most of the time. It has really fast adapting air ride suspension.

Like my Jeep has air ride, but it’s the Mercedes system so it’s a little slow and it’s comfy and it’s generations old. Too true. It’s 10 years old. The Toyota reacts almost too fast in some instances. And we found that the ride initially was really, really [00:52:00] harsh and we had to soften it up. If you went over a speed bump slowly, like one with collector cars tends to do, or even with sports cars, you know, you wanna roll up to the speed bump and cross over it.

You would’ve thought a landmine was going off underneath the Lexus. But if you hit that sucker at 30 miles an hour, smooth as glass, it was really bizarre. We had to readjust the suspension, which we could do, but you could only do it when it was parked and then it’s buried in the menu system. And so that was a little clergy, but it also had things like the climate.

Concierge, which I’m still not a hundred percent sure what that button does. I mean it had heated and cooled everything from the back of your neck to the ball chiller to the massaging seat. I mean it had everything you could possibly think of. ’cause it was fully loaded. Sticker price before taxes, tags, delivery and anything else that could maybe get loaded on like optional paint colors or paint a sample or whatever you wanna do.

We were looking at above 130 grand on the website. It shows 92. This one optioned out was above 130 [00:53:00] grand. Well, yeah, optioned out. Yeah. But base is 92. Would I buy one? No, it’s a Sequoia underneath. So I don’t know. The thing is, I thought it was a V eight, but it wasn’t. It was a twin turbo six. It was a definite get up and go engine.

It made like 500 foot pounds of torque or something like that. And it was quick for as stout as that vehicle is. But the bigger problem was for all that luxury and all the gizmos and the electronic rear view mirror, like it doesn’t actually have a rear view mirror and all these sensors and all this stuff that it has, you kind of go, well that’s gonna break.

How long is that gonna last? I mean, Toyota quality, right? Sure. But eventually with use, things wear out. The biggest issue was. We’re doing a lot of highway miles. We were filling it every other day. And with California gas prices of near $6 a gallon for super, because it’s twin turbo, you have to run super in it.

That’s costly, big time money to keep that thing on the road and keep it running. If you have a hundred thousand dollars to spend on that, you have the money to spend on the fuel. Maybe [00:54:00] I don’t disagree. I will say it turned a lot of heads. A lot of people were like, we’ve never seen this. What is this? And we’re like, it’s the new Lexus LX 600.

They wanted to see inside it. That color was really unique, especially with the baseball mitt interior. It looked really good together. It was a head turner. The grill is probably, its major drawback. It looks better from the back than the front. It looks like a Range Rover from the back, the way they cut the bumpers and everything.

But they went from that Honeycombed Black Widow Grill to this just full on face mask, like it’s got braces and then some. Luckily Toyota didn’t chrome it. It’s like a satin finish, like brushed aluminum, so it doesn’t reflect everything in in anything it can. So it’s still a little ostentatious, but you can live with it.

And again, for the full review on the Lexus, you can jump back to our website or you can go over to garage style and read more about the Lexus and see more pictures and stuff. But now I’m gonna pass the baton to Tanya to talk about other random new EVs and concept cars. There’s [00:55:00] less car or concept, but a infrastructure update.

Apparently the EU is passing a law to blanket their highways. By 2025 with fast EV chargers that must be placed every 37 miles. That’s for like all the BF 500 Es and stuff. It’s a lot of chargers. But focusing on the Trans-European Transport Network, the 10 T as they call it, which is like the designated major arteries through all the different European countries.

That’s where their main focus is of putting all of these chargers. So think just, you know, major highways, it’s a step. So you’re saying every alto grill on the alto strata, the solar is gonna have a e d charger basically. And then some, I would imagine because the Alto grill are not every 37 miles, this is gonna be costly.

’cause it’s not just, oh, we’re just gonna put in a charger. You’ve gotta put in pavement, you gotta build the mini gas station, you’re probably gonna have a restroom. Someone’s gotta [00:56:00] maintain it. I don’t know. ’cause it almost seems like they’re just going to literally be like little outposts because everything has to be self-service, self-pay.

There can’t be any need for a person there. No cash. You gotta be able to do contactless payment, blah, blah, blah. So if that’s the case and they’re every 37 miles and there’s an auto grill in between, you are gonna go make a stop at the auto grill and get a sandwich and then go charge. I don’t know that you need to have all those amenities if you’re just needing to top off.

Right. Yeah. And if you’re in France, you don’t need a bathroom, from my understanding. So true. True. Back to a previous episode where the men in France just. Letter rip anywhere. I got memories to prove that in other EV news, the consumer reports has issued the 10 EVs that should last more than 300,000 miles.

How much should all the other ones last? All the other ones are Teslas, so all the other cars are junk build quality of cars is supposed to be getting better. So you’re telling me there’s only 10 cars on this planet that’ll get to 300,000 miles? No, no, no. Of the EVs [00:57:00] out there, only 10 of the EVs should last more than 300,000 miles.

I don’t know what that means. Most of the car is no different than another car. Right? Like the body, if you’re saying the body can last 300,000 miles, well, we know that that’s true of cars that are decades old, right? They’re still out there. Maybe they’re rusted, but they’re still out there, you know? And to Tanya’s point about cars going the distance, I met a gentleman while I was in Monterey, who has a 3 56 that’s about to go into the history books with almost 1 million original miles.

And so once it crosses a million, it’ll go into the Porsche Museum and what he’s doing, he’s only got about 20,000 miles left. You could actually sign up to take a drive for whatever time or length, and then your name would go in the logbook at Porsche that you added miles to this 3 56. Think about that, right?

There are cars out there that will do that. There’s been Volvos, there’s been other cars that have reached a million miles. So 300,000. Yeah. Okay, let’s prove it. [00:58:00] Let’s see it. Are you telling me the battery pack is gonna last 300,000 miles? I don’t think there’s enough data cyclic testing data out there to support that yet.

That was the other thing that bugged me about this. Based on what information, having you tested the car for 300,000 miles. Put ’em on a treadmill like it’s Ferris Bueller and just like let ’em go or something like, what is this? I don’t think they really explained other than like it should and warranties cover this entire article was bss and then they just list out the Kona and the Mini Cooper and the Bolt and the I three and the Model Ss and ID four.

And the M. Do you notice that all of these cars are in a similar price range too? Except for the model Ss. I don’t think so. I don’t think a leaf or a bolt are on the same level as a model. Ss No, the Model S is the exception here. ’cause they have to have one expensive car, but the rest of ’em are in that 30 to $40,000 range.

The Mach E is not in the 30 to 40,000. Yeah, it is. Mach E’s only like $42,000. Uh, 30 to 40,000. It’s [00:59:00] 42, so it’s not in a 30 to $40,000 range. I think you’d be hard pressed to get out of a dealership with a Ford Mach E for less than 45 for all those people interested in a Ford Mustang Mach E, they start at 42 9 9 5 starts in the select trim, the premium trim, 46 9 9 5.

The California Route 1 56 9 9 5, and if you’re gonna go all out, Why wouldn’t you? The GT trim 59 9 9 5. Eric was taking into account the government kickback. Yes, the government credit minus 7,500 baby. The tax credit. That’s what he was doing. Yeah, but who’s buying the base model? And the only reason the Tesla Model SS is on here is because there’s one person in 2017 who showed that they had one over 300,000 miles.

I don’t even know why this is a thing. Be nobody ke who like the majority of people aren’t keeping their car that long. A car gets a hundred thousand miles and they’re like, oh, this thing’s gonna die. This thing’s trash. I gotta get rid of it. A hundred thousand. It’s like, oh my God, I turned 70,000 and my car [01:00:00] needs to go.

Yeah. That’s sort of an old way of thinking because if you think about the malaise era, those cars, if they made it to a hundred thousand, that was a lot. That was incredible. It was a feat. So I think we’re sort of stuck in the idea that a hundred thousand, it’s time to go, in my opinion. I’m saying cars gotta make it to a quarter million or it’s junk at least two 50.

It could be the hour. It’s been a long day. I had to go to the M B A. I have to go back to the M B A. That should say it all. You know, it’s all fuzzy math. Just like this next article. I don’t understand what it’s saying. I don’t think they understand what they wrote. I don’t understand what I read. Most cars still cost more to charge than to fill up with gas when you take other expenses like home charging and fees into account.

Okay. I’m like, okay, sure. Maybe, I don’t know. I haven’t done the math. I. But then it goes on to say things like, EV electric truck costs you the same as a gas truck, but that costs you less than an EV [01:01:00] car. Wait what? It’s cheaper to fill your electric truck than to fill like a mid-size. EV car, and I’m like, how is that possible?

Well, electricity’s on a flat rate depending on your state, so that doesn’t make any sense. The calculation is miles per range, so miles per kilowatt, hour times your dollars per kilowatt hour. It gives you. Your dollars, how much it costs, right? They keep using a hundred miles as their benchmark. That’s a fixed number.

The charge rate’s fixed from what I understand. ’cause if you got a truck and a car at your home, I don’t think it automatically changes the price. So you got two variables fixed. The only other variable is that number on the bottom of the fraction, which is the rain. And the pickup truck has less efficient, which means it’s gonna cost you more.

How is it cheaper? Could be the hour of the day. I don’t know. I don’t see where they’re saying the pickup truck is cheaper than the cars because they said a Rivian or G M C [01:02:00] is gonna cost you about 1770 per a hundred miles. And then they said a Nissan Versa. Hyundai Elantra or Kia Forte, it cost you 9 78 was 9 78 in gas, 1255 in home charging for a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt.

So that’s $5 cheaper. Maybe I have misread the article then. So, so where the the prices do increase is if they’re doing public charging. So public charging skyrockets to $16 for the cars. It still goes up, which then makes me feel slightly better. ’cause I’m like, that makes no sense. It’s $26 for the trucks not, but wait guys, none of that makes sense.

You’re right. Yeah. I think I know what Derek’s gonna say. None of it makes any sense. And none of it matters. It doesn’t matter. Matter. The points don’t matter. Don’t matter. Matter. Exactly. But the thing is a hundred kilowatt battery is a hundred kilowatt battery. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a truck, a boat or a car, you’re still charging a hundred kilowatts.

So the thing about this article to Tonya’s point, well they’re not framing it that way, that you’re filling to the same amount. No, they’re including registration fees. The [01:03:00] cost of the vehicle up front, which I’m likem like, do you not register? You registered either way. I am confused. No, but registration fees for trucks are, are higher.

Oh, okay. The way they break it down, the overall costs are gonna be higher. That shouldn’t play into the economy of driving. Is the registration fee of an EV truck higher than, or lower than the registration of a, it is like the F one 50 lightning registration different than an F one 50. It’s about to about to be in Texas.

We’ll talk about that in a minute. I understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to say it’s okay to keep your gas car, you know, you don’t need to jump on the EV train. But the way they went about trying to do that is just stupid. Well, the real piece that they’re missing here is what we’ve said before is if you already own a car and you’ve paid for it, To turn around and sell it and buy something more expensive.

That delta, that break even, that’s a lot of gallons of fuel that you need to consume cost wise, whatever wise, before you’ve quote broken back even to havings paid an extra [01:04:00] $30,000 for a vehicle that you’re charging. That’s the piece that’s missing here. That’s more important. And what’s funny is it’s not missing because in our community of Petrolhead, it’s the same discussion.

We always have gas versus diesel and the guys like, let’s say landscapers, why did I buy the V 10 Gasser versus the diesel? There’s the diesel tax. I’m not gonna recoup it. I already own the Gasser. What you just explained is true in that use case as well. So the story hasn’t changed. We’ve just shifted it now to gas versus ev something here in the numbers doesn’t add up.

And I don’t wanna waste too many more brain cycles on this trying to figure it out. No, I’m not going to. The reality of the situation is nobody’s gonna partially charge, just like nobody puts in three gallons of gas. Or maybe they do. Depends on where you live. I’ve seen, I’ve ridden with people that, yeah, give gimme five 50, gimme five 50 on pump number one.

But you get my point. A hundred kilowatt battery is a hundred kilowatt battery is a hundred kilowatt battery. It doesn’t matter what it’s in. Right. And [01:05:00] that’s really the moral of the story. And that’s why this is some fuzzy math and maybe we’ll revisit it in the future after we’ve done some advanced calculus.

I hope not. They need to give us more information. If they’re gonna make these claims a hundred percent. I need to see the math. I need to see this Excel spreadsheets that they’ve done all this shit on. Yeah. Back during, what was it? I think it was 2009, 2010, somewhere around there. After the mortgage collapse, the government had that cash for clunkers deal where everybody had to trade in their old ies.

They’d get a couple thousand dollars per car or whatever to put down towards a brand new car. When do you think it’s gonna get to the point where the government does that? Again, you trade in your ice car for It’s not gonna happen because as you know, and you report every month, we’re gonna do this here in a minute.

The used car market is through the roof. Why would you trade a car in as a clunker to end up at concourses the lemons when you can sell that car on the used market, maybe as a result it’s a butterfly effect of the cash for clunkers. ’cause a lot of cars did get [01:06:00] destroyed, but the value of used cars is through the roof.

That would be a bad financial move. We know the government doesn’t make bad financial moves. No, never ever. The wheels on the EV go round and round round, do they or do they go differently than a gas one? When we compare them now, they spin differently. Well, it depends on how much you paid for the wheels and the registration fees and what kind of tires you’re using.

And are you using these on a private road or a public road? Was it concrete or asphalt? Depending on what county you’re driving in. Not all wheels are created equal and we’re gonna try to highlight wheels. I think we’re gonna start maybe doing a wheels Wednesday. I took so many pictures of wheels that were unique in Monterey.

We’ve partnered with a new sponsor, E S C, carbon Wheels out of Georgia. The only manufacturer of one piece. Carbon wheels, especially in the United States, and they’ve got a couple models. They’ve got a new one coming out for 2024. We’ve been working with them, you know, trying to help them out, get these wheels out there.

They actually started with the idea of putting them [01:07:00] on Teslas to decrease the rotating mass, to increase the braking efficiency. The wheels clock in even at 20 inches, and they’re like 20 by nine, 20 by 10, 20 by 11, and those sizes at less than 17 pounds. There’s race wheels that are heavier than that.

Carbon is all the rage. If you wanna learn more about the one piece made in the USA, wheels at esc, carbon checkout, www.esccarbon.com. Since we’re talking about wheels, I saw a lot of carbon wheels. There’s a manufacturer that’s been around for quite a while called Dyna Mag and they’ve partnered with Hyundai to start making two piece carbon wheels for the new endline cars that are coming out in the later part of 23 and 24.

They look cool. They’re interesting to see Hyundai going down that route. You’ve seen carbon wheels on Porsches and stuff like that in the past, and then if that was enough, Konig Z came out with a carbon wheel, which is a single lug center lock that’s capable of doing 280 miles an hour. So lots of [01:08:00] things changing in the wheel world.

If you think about carbon fiber, technically more environmentally friendly than forging wheels, mining for metal, everything that goes into creating a steel wheel, aluminum wheel, forged wheel, et cetera. How do they ride? According to the impact tests and everything else I’ve read and what I’ve been talking to the guys at E S C Carbon, they ride like any other wheel, supposedly.

The steering feels a little bit lighter. The car kind of feels more agile because again, there’s less rotating mask. If you’ve ever driven on like an end key or a vol or any of the Japanese wheels that are super light aluminum, you kind of the same sensation. But overall, it’s supposed to solicit better braking numbers, better M P G, stuff like that.

They are not cheap, that’s for sure, but they are quite stylish and no, it’s not a wrap. Well, Brad, it’s time for your favorite section. Lost and Found. What you got for us? I have news. What kind of news did, what’s his name? Sell his car. You find a Dodge Dart. That’s 1988. Cadillac Deville [01:09:00] is gone. No. Can we take credit for that?

We helped them sell that. Maybe they turned it into cash for clunkers. I don’t know. Maybe there’s an expiration date on how long you can leave something listed on cars.com. It’s gone. Yeah, it’s gone. It’s totally gone. And it’s gone. However, to replace it, a 2003 Toyota Tundra SSR five, it is being sold for the low, low price of $42,000.

What? That’s insane. Eric, the guy I bought the R 32 from, he’s got a 1982 van again for sale. Nice. $1,800. That’s a good deal. If it runs. If it runs, uh, ran when parked. Oh, okay. All right. Well, there’s some other things we need to talk about. Cars that are on their way out, right? Yes. Have been discontinued at this point.

Let’s talk about that. MotorTrend put out a list of 30 cool cars that are discontinued in the past decade because when they do this every single year, nobody reads it slow [01:10:00] news day. So they have to put together a decades long list. Of cars that we already know don’t exist anymore. Feel like we already talked about this.

We talk about every year, and they’re not that great. They say, cool cars. I’m like, Acura Z D X. Really? I would’ve bought an Acura Z D X over A B M W X six. I hate to say the Z D X out of all these is not discontinued because I. They just revealed it at Pebble. They’re bringing it back just like the Camaro was discontinued in 2002 and then brought back in 2005.

They have the Cadillac C T S V on this list, the Cadillac, C T SS V still exists. It’s the CT five V, it’s the same car, different badge, and then the Aston Martin V 12 Vantage. Yeah, some of these I’m not sad about, like the avalanche. Uh, the Viper does. Hit a soft spot though. You know the Ferrari that’s on here, you knew they were gonna build three of those.

The Ford Flex. Yes. I think that disappoints a lot of people to include Don from Garage style. He’s owned several over the years. He has one now. Why is he needed to own so many? If that good of a vehicle trading up because his new [01:11:00] models of the flex came out, you got better options. Who cares? People care about that stuff.

To Tanya’s point, people are just gonna trade in their vehicles, you know, for something else. They’re gonna spend thousands of dollars, lose thousands of dollars in depreciation or for a upgraded stereo system that they could put in themselves for a couple hundred bucks. This list is interesting. RX eights, Mazda speed three.

I’m not gonna miss the Bens R class, but even the S L S A M G that was replaced by the new GT three tt rtt. Yeah, I mean the, the list is from 2011 to 2020, so we’ve already missed these cars. I mean, come on. This is breaking news, Brad. Breaking news. Breaking news. When was this article written? Was this, this article was written two years ago.

I don’t know why it’s in here. Dude, what the hell? Kind of bullshit is this, Eric, what are you doing? That’s why it’s lost and found. You’re fired. We didn’t know this existed. This article was lost. Eric found it one day. Well, it’s that time again. Lowered expectation. [01:12:00] No, no, no. One and the same sometimes.

Yeah, that’s very true, folks. It’s time.

Well, we would be remiss. We hinted earlier about the cost of your EV being higher in Texas. Apparently under a new state law, Texas will bill electric vehicle drivers an extra $200 a year. They’re saying they’re doing this because that is the estimated lost revenue due to fewer gasoline vehicles on the road paying the taxes.

Even though I think it’s like less than half a percent of EVs in all of Texas tow the car market. But nonetheless, you now have these extra registration fees. C, C, these registration fees, they’re adding up extra $200 a year because they do registration yearly in that state. And as gasoline taxes are supposed to go to maintenance of the roads and [01:13:00] construction, I guess on the one hand I can see the argument, you suddenly have a car that’s not paying towards that.

What if we were in a world where everybody was an ev? Now what. You know what’s funny? You mentioned that and since you’re returning to the D M V, you can verify this for us. I had heard, and Brad had mentioned it earlier, about SUVs and trucks costing more registration wise than passenger vehicles. And that had to do with the gross weight of the vehicle and the amount of pressure it puts on the roads.

So it’s technically doing more damage to the asphalt. And what do EVs do? They weigh even more. Weigh significantly more. Yep. But you know what, I can’t hear all the Texans now, you know, with this law cheering it on, going, this is why we said Californians would be the ruin nation of our great republic and now we’re gonna stick it to ’em.

So you do have an influx of a lot of people coming from California into Texas, kind of changing the latitude there. You’re seeing the adoption of more EVs and you know, maybe secretly they’re sticking it to ’em. So, fun fact, because I don’t need to inquire at the the Lovely Motor [01:14:00] Vehicle Association for this answer to your point.

Yes. The registration fees are based on weight. So even passenger cars. Vehicle registrations are not consistent. They have up to weights and above weights, and the registration fee changes. So yes, three quarter ton blah, blah, blah. Trucks all have different registration fees, which are higher than regular passenger cars.

Well, Brad, you keep trying to give away that cyber truck allotment for a box of tacos. Dude, you should just buy an F one 50. I’m not buying anything. I’ve got a Toyota Tundra that is going to run for 1 million billion miles. Will it run for 300,000? It will run for 301,000. Nice. Did you see the side-by-side comparison of the Ford pickup and the cyber truck?

What is the significance of this? Sorry, I keep looking at the photo. I’m like the two 50 is a big one. It’s not the biggest one, right? Because like the three 50 or is there one above three 50? There’s a four 50, there’s like a 6 50, 5 50, there’s a seven. Okay. So the two 50 is not the smallest one, but it’s also not the biggest one.

So this [01:15:00] cyber truck is pretty much the equivalent size of an F two 50. That’s huge. Which is a super duty. But we knew the cyber truck was huge. So I guess I’m confused why this is like, but I think the cyber truck is supposed to be competing with the half ton pickup trucks and the F two 50 is a threequarter ton.

Hmm. So it’s the size of a threequarter ton truck, but it’s competition is the smaller, right? I say smaller like Rian. Yeah, dimensionally. They’re all pretty much less. It did the tug of war thing with an F one 50 back in the the bullshit days, right? Yes. Have we exited the bullshit days? But we’re in the middle of those days.

We’re still deep, deep in the trenches. So technically that wasn’t very fair if it was a Threequarter ton truck up against, I’m assuming the one 50 is not a threequarter ton, right? Nope. The one 50 is the half ton. Okay, well that wasn’t very fair. Nope. Shame on you, Elon Musk. It’s just like that kickboxing match between him and Zuck.

Did anyone see the photo that somebody did where they like, I don’t know if they wrapped their F [01:16:00] something, they put like a cyber truck wrap on it? And so if you don’t pay attention at first you’re like, oh, look, it’s a black cyber truck. And you’re like, wait a second. It’s, it’s a, it’s a Ford pick. It’s really funny actually.

Is it as good as the PLI truck? It’s professionally done compared to that. They probably cost the scene too. The wrap in the PLI truck, not the wrapped truck. In the PLA truck. Well, yeah, because the Acura that was under the PLA truck was like 50 bucks at a yard sale. Mm-hmm. So Tonya, this next one had me go, so they do exist.

They’ve existed for a while. I’ve never seen one. I’ve never seen one, but I heard the orders went through and that they were quote on the road and that they quote broke down. And what are we talking about? The semi? This was semi Tesla. Somebody else too. It wasn’t just Pepsi took an order of them. But yeah, they are allegedly out and about and we haven’t heard much about them.

I know recently there was an article about one had broken down, it was getting towed. I don’t remember what the issue with it was. [01:17:00] But I guess we’ll start seeing more than maybe, maybe I, I don’t know what I would do if I actually saw one. Is this like a cyber truck F one 50 scenario where like it’s more massive than a regular Mac.

They carry all the batteries. Sure. But yes, keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully they don’t have full self-driving capabilities and they beeline at you and take you out on the highway. This next one had me a little confused. If it’s good enough for Lego, it’s good enough for Tesla. O M G. So one of the first cyber trucks has rolled off or whatever the candidate cyber truck, meaning like this is the one we’re gonna like quality inspect or whatever.

And then there’s some sort of shared email that’s been leaked from Elon that says, due to the nature of cyber truck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb. All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy.

That means all part dimensions need to be to [01:18:00] the third decimal place in millimeters and tolerances need to be specified in single digit microns. If Lego and soda cans, which are very low cost can do this, so can we Precision predicates perfectionism. Elon, that’s a very well worded email, the very big worded email.

I would like to drop some knowledge nuggets. Okay. How thick do you think a sheet of paper is? I would say sheet of paper is maybe an eighth of a mil, so a sheet of paper, according to the Googles in microns, let’s recall what he just said. Single digits. So less than 10 microns of accuracy and precision of all these metal panels.

A sheet of paper is 102 microns thick. No fucking way. So he’s gonna have precision better than a sheet of paper on really long stretches of metal. It’s one thing for Lego to do it on an inch brick, it’s another thing to do it on a 10 foot long panel of stainless steel on the side of this thing. Lego’s also been [01:19:00] doing it for how long?

Yeah, Brad, to your point, Lego’s been doing it for like 80 years. Yeah. I guarantee you like the first 10 years of Legos were like a, just a complete cluster. A hundred percent. How much money is it gonna cost to have like the equipment to precisely have those tolerances? With the tooling, I can tell you exactly how much it’s gonna cost.

It’s gonna cost nothing because this truck is never going to be made. It’s never coming out. It’s not going to cost anybody anything. And to that point, they have not released specs or updated prices. So there’s no information on anything. Not surprised. The candidate version, I still wanna know if it has mirrors and windshield wipers and all those things.

It does based upon the photos they show. But the question becomes what’s the level of precision at SpaceX? If the cyber truck is anything like that, it will burn up on reentry. Right? On reentry, they often burn up just. I’m trying to exit. What about the panel gap? That’s the panel gap. They need to be less than 10 microns.

So that panel gap is dead accurate. And [01:20:00] how much is that gonna cost to repair when somebody inevitably gets an a fender bender? I was thinking so how much did that guy pay to have his rivian repaired after it was rear-ended? A body shop doesn’t have equipment that’s gonna measure precision less than 10 microns of panel alignment.

No. And Joe Bob down at the collision center, when he gets the Tesla parts come in, he’s gonna hit him into place with a mallet to get him to fit together to give him a little bit of credit. I understand what he’s saying because it’s true. The stainless Yes. It shows everything. It’s awful in that respect.

Yes. I don’t disagree. He’s correct in seeing what all the rest of us realize and have been seeing. Yes. But he could do something a little bit more daring. He could paint it. Oh my God, paint. Never, never. My point is he could borrow from the Italians and the British, and what I mean is Lamborghini and Lotus in the sense that he could make parts of the cyber truck clamshells where they’re all one contiguous piece and they open [01:21:00] differently to gain access to those parts.

On an ev, what are you gaining access to other than getting in and out of the thing? Not a whole heck of a lot. Didn’t the man who’s already done this before say that it was really difficult to get entire sheets of stainless? Yes. And form them, Mr. DeLorean. Correct. And we had Tony Ooga on the show who actually formed those stainless pieces and talked about the presses and the process of doing that, just making those gold wing doors was extremely difficult.

And so the cyber truck stainless works for a sink, said that before because you could press it out and there it is. And all it needs to be is a sink that takes your dirty water out to the sewer system. I’m wondering how bad is the alignment, ’cause you got to be up close and personal with the DeLorean.

Are there huge noticeably offensive gaps and distortions of panels and lining up of things? I’ll answer it this way. No, because it’s built like a real car. Mm-hmm. Meaning it [01:22:00] has a quarter inch between the door and let’s say the fender or the rear quarter, you know, whatever it is or, or there’s that gap around the lift back.

There’s seals there in place that are supposed to keep the water from coming in like any other car has those gaps between the hood and the fender. The DeLorean is no different. It also has simpler geometry. It has less sharp angles or simpler angles. Correct. Or simple angles. But it does show everything.

And part of the awesomeness of the stainless, just like having a stainless countertop or having a stainless stove or whatever, is those swirls and those striations. And I wanted to ask a refrigerator or like a dishwasher stainless, like appliances in your kitchen and they get like a water spot on ’em.

Yep. Or after a while. And they look like hot ass. Does the DeLorean look like that or did they coat it in something better than like your refrigerator? It is better, but it’s not clear coated. It’s still metal. And so if you talk to Don, he actually wrote an article about doing car [01:23:00] care on the stainless.

It’s a lot more complicated a process, but it comes out, you can use stainless polishes, all that kinda stuff just like you would do in your kitchen on your stove or your refrigerator. Those striations, those marks, those imperfections in the stainless actually give the stainless character because if it was completely smooth, it would end up looking like chrome and it would look terrible.

The way it changes the light when you look at it, and even sometimes one panel looks slightly discolored compared to the other, which is also the effect of anybody that has like a mystique paint job or like my B M W, where depending on the light, one panel looked purple and the other one looked blue and you were like not sure if the car was repainted.

The stainless is sort of the same way. What it doesn’t do is it doesn’t blind you the way they have that stainless buffed on the DeLorean where it does have that kind of swirl in it and whatnot or the, or the lines in it. It doesn’t have a ton of glare, so you can look at it in broad daylight or at night and it still just looks the way it does, which is hilarious.

’cause if you look at the photo in the article, there’s [01:24:00] glare coming off the side of this thing. It’d be awful. Like, I need my sunglasses just to look at this photo. Well, we have to wrap out our Tesla gate. We would be remiss section with even. More Tesla gate because it continues. Tesla is now faced with a lawsuit for over-exaggerating the driving range of their vehicles.

That is fascinating. Kind of like Dieselgate, this really is a Tesla gate type of situation. The way that Tesla is, calculate their range using very simple math and not actually taking into account load and all this other stuff and driving conditions and it’s sort of like you drove two miles, you used this amount of electricity, so it’s always consistent.

It’s a theoretical calculation. It has no basis in actual. Exactly. Now the question I have is theoretical calculation or otherwise. Who got paid off at the E P A? Because they post these numbers, an E p, A certified X amount of kilowatt, hours per mile, blah, blah, blah, just like they do with a gas card. Who signed off on this?

Or [01:25:00] maybe just like Dieselgate, it went out there and nobody knew until somebody sat down and figured it out and understood the math that’s being calculated. I don’t know. I guess we’ll learn more as I think this is, you know, fresh and still developing. If Tesla gets away with this, was Volkswagen falsely sort of persecuted because of Dieselgate?

If Tesla doesn’t take on the same sort of, let’s say, punishment or have to pay back the same kind of reparations, what have we just done? What have we created here? We favor one versus the other because it was diesel versus EV or whatever. To me, these are very similar situations where they falsified that information, but it, it’s different because Dieselgate was more of like an environmental concern of releasing the higher than approved of gases.

I’m glad you brought that up because here’s the problem with this math. The way I look at it, you’re falsifying the way you consume electricity, which means you’re pulling more, which means you’re putting more load on the grid, which means that the power [01:26:00] stations are running more. So you’re actually not as efficient as you said you were, which is now a detriment to the environment in a similar, but not exactly the same way as diesel was to the environment.

So if you kind of stretch this out and think about it from a lawyer’s perspective, there’s a lot of other moving parts that could be brought into this conversation about how they’re cheating and gaming the system. And there’s an environmental impact because these Teslas are not as efficient as they say they are.

Maybe I’m wrong. Hit us up in the comments if you have a different opinion or different math. But you know, the more I think about this, it’s not too different. I don’t know what to say. ’cause this is, it’ll be interesting what comes out of an investigative work, right? Because this are consumers I think, that have brought this up and are complaining that they’ve seen less mileage.

Well, are you, how are you Dr. Like how do you validate that? ’cause if you’re driving like a ass hat or something and you’re constantly in ludicrous, yeah, I didn’t get my range while you had your foot to the floor constantly doing burnouts everywhere. Of course you didn’t achieve your range. Like it’s gonna be interesting to see how they revalidate this.

Now that [01:27:00] our expectations have been thoroughly lowered, Brad can sing for us. Lowered expectations.

This next one is complete Buffoonery. Was this Andrew Bank? I mean, come on. We’ve all tried it at least once. Or know somebody that has, I’m gonna paint my break calipers, ’cause I want them to look like the Brembo Big Red. So you get out the spray paint and you go to town, and if you got a couple extra bucks, maybe you take your calipers off, you have somebody powder coat them, and then they’re permanently red.

But this. Fellow car enthusiasts decided, you know what? Let’s just spray paint the whole damn thing. Rotors and all. But if you look at it, he like sprayed it through the wheel. He didn’t even take the wheel off. If you spin the wheel and spray, it’s, you get it in there, man. Get that pinwheel effect. It also blows the spray can fumes back into your face so you can get high on them while you’re painting your brake rotors.

Maybe that’s why this happened. You know, they take it into the shop and they’re like, it won’t stop. I wonder why. [01:28:00] Unbelievable. So, public service announcement, don’t spray your brakes. Anything but break clean when you’re servicing them. How about that? Quick update for you guys. Last time we talked about Tex-Mex Motors and Downey’s Dream cars.

I actually finished both of them. I had some extra time to do so. Oh wow. Yeah. Tex-Mex motors really interesting. I am looking forward to season two. They’re hinting at a potential Ferrari build, upgrade and trade six figure car at the end of the whole show actually turned out to be a nine 11 that they converted from basically a club race car back into a streetcar.

They ended up selling it for upwards of $160,000. So they met their goal after doing all the upgrades and trades and selling and buying, and in season two they hinted at going after a Ferrari Daytona that they have to go deeper into Mexico to go get, and then they’re gonna try to restore that. So really curious to see where the show goes from there.

By the end, I was invested, I was engaged. I thought it was a lot of fun. I like the fact that they weren’t just doing [01:29:00] hot rods. Just like when they started with that Opal GT ending with the nine 11. There were some really interesting rides in between, so they kept it fresh, they kept it interesting. Lots of builds that you don’t expect to see on other shows.

I feel like this is a change of opinion. I feel like the initial opinion from the first episode was much more negative than this. It was, and that’s why I wanted to come back to it and say, look, I went all the way through. I gave it a chance, and I’ve come around on it. Now, does it have the same charisma that let’s say the guys from Gotham Garage have on Rust to Riches?

No. A same show, but different show. But by the end of the eight or 10 episodes that Tex-Mex Motors was, I was on board. They do good work. Interesting stuff, interesting paint jobs. Nothing over the top, no spiderwebs and Halloween stuff or anything like that. Just nice clean builds, somewhat decent prices.

If you look at how they sold the cars, Meanwhile, I flipped over to Downey’s Dream Cars on H B O ’cause it was recommended. So I finished watching that. That’s like six episodes, if I remember correctly. [01:30:00] I was into it until the Corvette, and I say that because I think a little bit of all of us as classic car enthusiasts and Petrolhead and Motorsports enthusiasts all sort of died that day because he took a pristine numbers matching C two Corvette convertible and just stripped it down and turned it into an ev.

It was like, you know, you could have picked up any other C two Corvette for let’s say, less money. I get that this one was in your collection, but I would’ve sold that Corvette to somebody that wanted a numbers matching original car and turned it into an EV ’cause I mean, they stripped it all the way down.

They took the interior out of it and replaced it with a mushroom leather based interior that’s like artificially grown, which was an interesting concept. I was fascinated by the way they did the build, but just that episode sat sideways with me because I would’ve picked something else. I will say I wasn’t a big fan of the paint schemes that Robert chose for a lot of the cars, but at the very end it did turn around.

They did [01:31:00] a really nice samba build with a T two bus. And they turned it into an ev. Now, they didn’t use Rich Benoit and his team from Electrified Garage. They did the Bolton kit from EV West because it was easier. They didn’t have to fabricate, just drop it in. Those have been done a million times. They turned it into this surfing design Family Hauler type of very retro California Beach Boys type of look.

I very much enjoyed the way they rehabbed that Type two bus, so at least we left on a high note, I don’t see the show continuing for a second season. It’s already transferred from one service to another because it was originally on Discovery Plus and then moved to H B O Max, or I guess Max now it’s called again.

I went through it. It was worth watching. There was some interesting discussion in there, but that Corvette episode just sort of killed me a little bit and I’m sure it did for other people. If you watched it or are going to watch it. Now this next one, Brad, this is your favorite car, is it? Now? Isn’t that the car you just lust after?

Yes. Large chested women and all [01:32:00] this car is a large chested woman. I don’t understand this. And for the listeners out there, this is a Fiero. That has been swapped to have the motor in the front and in doing so, they had to lose power steering apparently. Yep. I can tell by the guy playing with the steering wheel, he’s got the underhand.

Oh my God. I actually, I’ve seen this guy before. He was at the gas station in his early two thousands. Dodge Ram blasting Marilyn Manson when I was there the other day. Sing guy looks just like him. I wanna know how he sees. I know he can’t turn fast ’cause no power steering. But how do you see not just past the A pillar?

Three quarters of the engine, the motor pillar, the M pillar. That’s why you have a passenger, a copilot to tell you what’s going on on the right side of the car. So riddle me this Batman, the transmission tunnel is where? Exactly. It’s probably front wheel drive. Yeah. Right. No, not with those rear wheels. No.

It’s definitely not front wheel drive. Oh my goodness. That has to be the most uncomfortable car on the planet to [01:33:00] drive. It’s not even worthy of our uncool wall because it’s just so out there and then you sit back and say, hold my beer. I got an idea. Let’s spend some money and time building a front mounted fi.

I don’t get it. So in our final lowered expectation, this goes back over to California where you were, were recently, but I don’t think you had any opportunity to see any of these vehicles ’cause they’re limited to the San Francisco area belief, which is not where you were. However, the fleet of robo taxis that they’ve got going around in not necessarily test mode, they’re actually actively being used as robo taxis.

But it’s definitely a significant rollout of the technology. The cruise owned by Google or something as who owns, who actually owns it as the parent company, but the cruise fleet of self-driving robo taxis has hit a bit of a hiccup. They’ve been asked pending investigations from the Department of Motor Vehicles over there to reduce their fleet by about 50% because of [01:34:00] some recent incidents which.

It’s like, all right, it’s the programming of the technology’s fault, not necessarily the robo taxi’s fault, because the first situation is the roboto taxi’s fault for sure, because a human driver, I’m actually not a hundred percent sure that they would’ve been paying attention either. It proceeded through its intersection on a green light.

However, it did not audibly sense the firetruck sirens until the firetruck was close enough that it filtered the other noises out and it didn’t see it. It perceived it as a threat when it was too late and did try to do evasive maneuvering, but it was too late at that point. And the firetruck T-boned the robo taxii, which did have a passenger in the vehicle, and they got a little bit hurt.

But there was also a similar incident where again, it was proceeding through its green light intersection and somebody else was running a red light, and again, it got T-boned by somebody else. Well, it’s a good thing. Emergency services were already on scene. Well, there’s a couple things that I like about this.

First of all, this [01:35:00] Chevy Cruze, Google Cruze, whatever, has evasive maneuvers. Well, I use those words. I like the star ship defiant or something, right? I’m like, that’s cool. Activate shields. Activate shields. It needs that apparently. ’cause it’s getting hunted down at intersections. Well, I mean, if you look at all the gear on the roof, it looks like it’s got a deflector disc and photon torpedoes and everything else attached to this thing.

But I wanna talk to somebody that’s gone for a ride in one of these Johnny cabs, because I think it will be not a discussion about cars, but about psychology. And my number one question is, why did you think this was a good idea to get in a car with nobody driving it? That’s a level of risk. I guess somebody’s gotta do it.

But again, here we are. Two people are in these accidents. And now, now what? The second one was actually empty. Poor little thing. It’s even better. Again, clobbered by somebody. This time it was somebody running a red light. It happens, right? [01:36:00] But it didn’t have time to properly react, which is also what happens with human drivers behind the wheel.

Sometimes you’re effed, depending on like, I don’t know, the road structure building could have been blocking. There could have been something else in the way the camera couldn’t see. Sometimes the human eye doesn’t see either. Not trying to completely defend, but that’s unfortunate. It could be a step back.

Hopefully they can take the learnings and improve the programming and the auditory sensors and the cameras and all that. This technology, in my opinion, would need to trickle down to people like Tesla that are claiming their vehicles can just self-drive themselves too. So what happens in the same instance, if this was a Tesla crossing that intersection and a firetruck was coming, we already know when it sees the emergency lights, it just drives into the object.

So if I did like turn and head on onto a firetruck, I don’t know. Hmm. Well, time will tell if the Johnny Cab will become a real thing or not. But you know what else time has passed by for a section of the drive through that we haven’t talked about in a while. It’s one of Tanya’s favorites. What is that?

Rich people? [01:37:00] Thanks. Oh, we got some rich people. Thanks. So get this, I’m gonna summarize this for you. Aston Martin Valkyrie owners. At their scheduled and appointed 10,000 mile service are faced with a hefty bill. Would you guys like to guess how much it costs for the first service on your Ask Martin Dockery?

It’s over the course of the first 10,000 miles, not the very first service. So it’s all the services over the first 10,000 miles. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Either way, there’s a massive amount of money on the line here within the first 10,000 miles of owning this car, how much does this car cost?

Millions. 3 million millions. $3 million? Yep. Yes. So the service cost at the 10,000 mile mark is a low, low bargain price of $464,000. And how many miles do you pay? This car? This car is gonna quickly cost you more than what you paid for it. You won’t have to put any miles on this thing. Keep in mind, I think it’s only, I don’t know if it’s street [01:38:00] legal, it’s the original Valkyrie that came out was not street legal.

I guess this is different, but I’m gonna use their words from the article because it’s something that you touched on earlier. Tanya quote, customers of such cars are familiar with such expensive maintenance. Anyway. Valkyrie owners are also likely Bugatti Sheron and Konig Zg owners. So they’re used to the frequent high dollar maintenance and likely won’t bat an eye at this service schedule.

If you can afford $3 million for some hypercar, that’s completely for a toy, not practical, right? It’s not your daily driver or anything, then you probably can afford almost half a million dollars of maintenance. Well, that’s why it’s rich people fangs, isn’t it? Speaking of other rich people. Thanks. You remember that weird looking Cadillac that we talked about like almost a year ago?

The Celestine? Yes. We kind of made fun of its design because we weren’t sure if it was coming or going, if it was a 9 28 or if it was a wagon or if it was a sedan. It’s definitely an ev. Never seen one on the street. Never will either. I [01:39:00] don’t think we ever will. Yeah. They’ve released what it’s gonna cost.

Geez, Louise, right? It’s gonna cost, well, it doesn’t quite cost the maintenance of the other one for the low, low bargain rich people paying price of $340,000. You can have a Cadillac istic that’s Handbuilt in Michigan with a plaque on the doors stating such by a guy named Steve who has a DeWalt tool belt and a hammer in it.

I’m telling you, he built it with Ryobi tools. I didn’t even necessarily have to read past even the subtitle, which was, it’s official Cadillac is taking on Rolls Royce and Bentley, and I was like, ha, ha ha. Keep passing on the great Poupon, because you know what? That’s been since day one of Cadillac folks.

Cadillac was designed to compete with roles, Bentley and Packard. This is not new. The question about Cadillac has been, why are they in the performance segment? Cadillac racing, the sort of sports saloons, because they have been, for as long as Cadillac’s been around, we talked to the [01:40:00] Cadillac Club. Dude, why is Bentley in the racing?

It’s the same thing. It’s a double-edged sword, but it’s not. New at any stretch. And I actually kind of feel like Cadillac has been lacking a super luxury vehicle. Is $340,000 too much maybe. But is it something that Cadillac needs to break away from the muscle car sedans they’ve been building for the last 10 or 15 years?

Yeah, because they really don’t have anything outside of the Escalade that is that limousine black car type of vehicle. And I think the Celeste maybe checks that box if it ever comes to be. Okay, so you’ve got $400,000 to spend on a car. I’m buying this. You can buy a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, or a Esti or a, or Celeste iq, whatever it’s called.

Which one do you buy? I’m gonna buy a Porsche Tecan and have money left over. No, you’re not. You’ve got three choices you can buy a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, or a Celeste or a small company. I’m uh Okay. Small company for sure. But [01:41:00] the reality is if I have to pick from the cars, I’m gonna buy a Bentley because it’s a Volkswagen.

What about you, Tanya? Do I have to choose one? You have to choose one. You can choose A B M W Rolls Royce, the Volkswagen Bentley, or the Chevrolet Cadillac, or you can buy a Sweet Frog franchise. Which one are you spending $400,000 on? I was gonna say that, or a small Eastern block country. I’ll do the Bentley also.

You know I’m right there with you. As much as I love the Phantom, I would do it Bentley, because it’s part of the VA family. But you know what none of us said. None of us said Cadillac. The people that are currently buying Rolls Royce and Medleys, they’ll never say Cadillac either. Well, you know what? They might be buying or their children.

Oh, tell me. There’s a baby three. We talked before about the Bugatti Baby Twos. There was the Chiron, there was a mini Oh yes, the Bugatti. Chiron, yes. It also had the speed key, I think. Yes. There is a company called Group Harrington that apparently makes a [01:42:00] whole bunch of these cars. Yes. There’s the GB spirit.

There’s the, you have to pick one. Which one? Spider. The Ferris Bueller Ferrari. Eric pick the Ferrari. What would you pick? You gotta go with the Cobra 2 89 Cobra. I’m doing the 300. You’re gonna go with the 300. I figured you would’ve went with the F one race car. Nah. I’m gonna go with the Merck. She’s a Ben’s girl and I probably would’ve, should’ve went with the Jeep.

Let’s see how much, let’s see How much is, they’re so expensive. They don’t list the price. You might as well buy the real thing at that point. Yeah, you can design your car. Look at this shit. It’s funny you guys bring this up. I saw some of these at some of the auctions. In car week. They’re really, really cool.

These are the nicest go-karts you have ever seen. I believe it. If only we could afford them, we could each get one and then go. We talked about this before the go-karts need to look like the race cars, and then you can do a proper petite lama or petite lama classic. It’ll be amazing. A petite, petite lama, petit petite.

You should be able to get the pricing. It says to email for a quote because at the top of the page it’s got great British pounds [01:43:00] or the the Euro or US dollar and you can add things to your shopping cart. I don’t know because when I went into the 300, it says, request for quotation. Leave your details on request quotation for the car and options you have selected above.

Yeah, I see that here. When they say that you can’t afford it more than you can afford, pal. I can go buy a real one of these baby too for probably less than this mini one costs. I do like the little Ferrari, California though. That’s pretty sweet. Good old rich people thing. I’m gonna get one for Henry.

It’s time we go down south to Florida for alligators beer. You know what?

I don’t have any Florida men. What? What? I don’t got no Florida men. I got other men, but no Florida men. By the way, did you guys see that picture that I sent you? Yeah, that was good. He pulled up next to me in the turn [01:44:00] lane and he was like, okay, I get in front. I didn’t realize this lane didn’t go straight.

And I was like, yes, whatever. And he pulled up into the middle of the intersection and I looked at his license plate. He said, Florida man. Like of Jesus Christ. Of course you are. Well, we had some California mans during Car Week, as you would expect. Car week’s a little bit more upscale than just cars and coffee, although there are some cars and coffee.

I went to one sponsored by the Ferrari Club. It was fantastic. Included wine and hors d’oeuvres and all sorts of other fun stuff. Not like any cars and coffee that we have here on the East coast running up and down Highway 1 0 1 between the different areas of Monterey, the California Highway Patrol or the chips got tipped off.

Uh, I don’t know what the tip off was. It was car week. We all knew that they pulled over 154 speeders during the crow of car week only. How many of them were in an Lexus LX 600. Ah, not gonna say we didn’t open the taps on the Lexus a couple times it will. Speed. Allegedly, allegedly. [01:45:00] Allegedly. That’s a lot of people though.

It is. But to Tanya’s point, it also seems awful low considering the thousands of people that are participating in Car Week. This actually brings up a good question. 154 people at Monterey Car Week. This is over the course of the entire event, I’m guessing, or they don’t really, they’re willing to give that detail.

Do they catch more people here or more people at H two O. Ooh. Because H two O isn’t just speeding though. Yeah. So are more people ticketed at Monterey or H two O? I’m gonna guess H two O. Alright. This one doesn’t have a link. It was something I heard on the radio yesterday morning, which was very bizarre story.

The radio host was talking about his encounter in an Uber recently. A Tesla Uber. So it was model three, and he got to just chatting with the driver, like, oh, electric car, how do you like it? Like, I was thinking about getting an ev blah, blah. Dude’s like, you wanna drive my car? And the guy’s like, [01:46:00] uh, no man, I’m good.

And the dude was like, no, you, you have to drive this car. Like if you’re interested, you need to jets out. Makes him get in the driver’s seat. So now he’s driving his own Uber and then proceeds to be like, okay, they’re driving around, he’s heading home. And then he’s like, oh, but you really gotta open it up.

Get on to J F X. So if you’re from Baltimore local, you’ll understand what that means. He’s like, you know, get on it. And he’s like, no man, I’m good. No, no, you really gotta like, open it up and, and, and experience it. So like he said, he accelerated a little bit and the guy was like, no, get on it. Dude was sitting there telling him to like just, you know, go balls on his like Tesla to this perfect stranger that like got in his backseat that he doesn’t even know.

Dude said he was just like freaking out and just finally like pulled up to his like home and was like, all right, thanks man. Unreal. He was like, I was so scared. He’s like, what’s the liability of something that happened [01:47:00] and I was driving the Uber?

Oh my God. That’s ridiculous. So watch out. If you’re in Baltimore getting an Uber, you might have to drive your own Uber. You might have to pay and drive your own Uber. For some reason, I, I thought you were gonna say that the car was stolen. When I think about this entire story, is it really an Uber or is that a rental car?

It’s a Toro. What star review do you give? Do you like rate yourself? My Uber driver was really good. It was me. I got here real quick. I tell you, if that guy gave me the opportunity to drive his car at five star rating and like 50% tip, I would’ve been like, bro, you’re awesome. This is cool. He might’ve been giving you a one star.

You though I didn’t know my Tesla could do that. Look at that drift. Speaking of what a Tesla can or cannot do, going to California. Again, it’s a California theme, mono city, wherever that is, I don’t know. [01:48:00] I think recently there’s been some storms, this, that and the other. Good for them, they need water. And shout out to all our friends in southern California that experienced that flash flood last week and a 5.0 earthquake, like within 24 hours, like unbelievable crazy weather in the LA area especially.

And this dude was driving down some road and the full self-driving mode. There was a sign flooded area up ahead. Oh, it’s probably not real. There’s always a flooded sign out there. Okay. There was some water in the road. The full self-driving doesn’t know how to interpret that. So he kept driving. There’s a video of this.

It’s pretty funny. Seemingly drives through the initial puddle, which wasn’t too deep. Honestly. As soon as it hits traction again though, the thing goes like crazy and just like jerks to the left, swerves off the road, dude ends up basically water up to the door almost to the windows, like in a ditch off the side of the road.

I can’t imagine what that [01:49:00] bill’s gonna be. ’cause like the bumper was like hanging off and everything’s wet now. So what’s funny about the picture? That’s the cover photo of the video. Yes. When I first looked at it, I couldn’t tell if that was dirt. Or alligators. Right. Doesn’t it look like it was taken in Florida?

Like those look like gators? Yes, it does. And the guy’s like blurry getting outta the passenger seat somehow. He goes through a flash flood and then ends up in a pond. I mean, what are the chances, first of all, what was he doing? Because the full self-driving failed. But you could have tried to take control of the car at that point.

Probably couldn’t ’cause it was forced, the steering wheel or whatever. But like you could have also anticipated like using your brain like oh there’s actually standing water up. ’cause you could clearly see it in the dash cams of the Tesla, that a rational person would’ve maybe hit the brakes and taken it out of full self-drive and you know, cautiously driven through there.

I wonder how much water it took on because of the precise micron of the panel [01:50:00] gaps of the doors. And we know how good the seals are on the Tesla three. A lot of water. ’cause these still are made with Home Depot parts. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a kitty pool inside, maybe it knew it was going to combust so it drove into the water to keep.

Yeah. Funny is that sounds to say, it actually makes my brain kind of spin into a more serious direction to say, what if there was leakage in the battery area and suddenly now he’s got water in there and the containment part, right? This could have turned out really, really poorly for this guy. To Tanya’s point, look ahead, think ahead.

Don’t let the car drive for you because with these EVs, all it takes is one little leak. And the next thing you know, you’re in the middle of a a serious hazmat and electrical issue. What the hell is full self-driving mode? That is autonomous level 27. Remember, that means that you can recline your seat, go to sleep.

Oh, just kidding. That means that you have to have your hands on the steering wheel, but the car will drive itself better than a [01:51:00] human being. So how is this different than autopilot? It’s what they call their autopilot. Oh, I thought they called it autopilot. Autopilot. They keep changing the name, so we think it’s something different.

That’s all. Yeah, because they keep getting in lawsuits. But the name of the product, the last but not least, we’re gonna jump to the other coast, to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania coast. Does Pennsylvania have a coast? I mean Jersey, Pennsylvania’s coast is Jersey. I meant we’re moving from the western side of the US to the East coast, of which Pennsylvania is not directly on it, but we’re moving to the eastern side of the United States.

I apologize. Oh my God, what the hell is this exactly? Pennsylvania man allegedly crashed his Toyota Corolla into a house intentionally, and he wound up wedged into the second floor of this house. The picture alone, I’m like, there must have been like a ramp. Right? And I think there was some sort of berm.

Embankment [01:52:00] and he like turned and he shot Duke’s a hazard and then ended up in the second floor of this house. Ow. How fast was he going? I don’t know. Why did he do it on purpose? That’s another question that is not unexplained real. You imagine being in your bedroom on the second floor and a car comes crashing through the side of the house.

No, I mean unbelievable. But you know, testament to those Pennsylvania houses, right? It didn’t collapse right into the first floor. It’s just hanging there like a lawn dart. It just like busted a hole in the side of it. And otherwise it’s fine. Like the gutter’s a little bent on the front porch roof. That was like that.

Oh it was. Apparently there are houses that are built, hurricane proof and storm proof and whatever proof Pennsylvania houses are. Toyota proof. So there you go. Well, with that, it’s time that we go quickly behind the pit wall and talk about motor sports news and [01:53:00] nascar. Tanya, you’re on a roll. Yeah, apparently that dude who won his first NASCAR race, the Chicago Street race, Shane Van Bergen, he’s going to do another NASCAR race.

Nice. Good job. Van Bergen. We need more European sounding names in nascar. I think it’s like Talladega Knights. Formula one. Come on. What’s been happening? Anything good? We’ve been on summer break. The last race before summer break was spa and I fell asleep. Oh, was that good? Huh? We staff won. Oh, shocker.

Didn’t again? How? How many seconds did he win by 50? I don’t know, because I fell asleep and it was like, yep, he won. Okay, but he didn’t win his next race. Yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that. He was involved in a sim racing incident that happened a while ago already, though. That was already a couple real F one races ago, and that was a pretty funny video to watch footage of that he got punted or something and then he just in a full Forza V R L League rage mode, just.

[01:54:00] Torpedoed the dude off the track, which was very unsportsmanlike and he should have more control, and then got disqualified for that. You know how we talked about how expensive it is to go to Las Vegas for the Formula One Grand Prix? I’ve seen pictures from folks on social media, folks that we’re friends with that have taken pictures that have been in Vegas saying construction is happening.

It looks like they’re putting the race together again. Like we talked about how expensive it might be to go to this race, you know, million dollar packages at the win and the Venetian and all these places to watch the race from. But our friend Elizabeth Blackstock over Jalopnik says, you can pick up your F one tickets at Costco.

I mean, does that make ’em less expensive? I don’t believe it’s for the Vegas race. You can buy your Austin tickets. Yes, because with Miami and Vegas, who wants to go to Austin? True. It’s 106 this week in Austin. Insane. But you know how American is it? I’m gonna buy my F one tickets while I buy six pounds of country crack.

It would be more American if they were [01:55:00] NASCAR tickets. Yeah, right. But they give those away with a Costco pizza. Moving on very quickly to W R C News, which nobody cares about. I just wanna highlight, there was a little bit of drama. A little bit of drama. Former star of W R C, Terry Neville running for Hyundai was disqualified from the Kenya rally because he was doing some illegal wrecky as they call it, or reconnaissance trying to get inside information before his sighting passes and things like that.

And anything else he could gather about the Kenya rally. So he was disqualified from Kenya, wah wah. And I still have some rallies to catch up on like Portugal and others, so I might or might not cover that at a later date. All depends on if our fans care or if Brad cares. Nope. Yeah, figured I’ll keep it to myself then.

My guilty pleasure is rally, so it’s all I tried. That being said, did you know that Dirt fish, the Rally school in the United States has changed their website and they have taken over where Autosport has left off of [01:56:00] their coverage of all things rally. So Brad, you were asking about where you can see it other than Red Bull tv.

You can now check out coverage of W R C on Dirt Fish. So you can go to dirt fish.com and see different types of coverage of the rallies there. Hmm, I’ll give that a try. There you go. On a sad note, autocross, one of our favorite disciplines of racing that a lot of us started out in, unfortunately, took two drivers in Washington state.

It was an SS c C a event, pro solo event. And as I read it, basically the guy was on course and came in on his lap and just never stopped. According to a comment on that news article from somebody, it says, according to the conversation on G R M, which included the brother of the driver in the incident, the driver suffered a sudden heart attack and lost consciousness.

The car did eventually stop when it hit a building again, sad day. ’cause it took the lives of two Ss, C C A members. And this is not a normal occurrence for [01:57:00] autocross. It’s generally very safe because the speeds are much lower. Things have been known to happen, mistakes have been made at Autocrosses in the past.

But yeah, this is just sad and tragic and hopefully won’t besmirch the great reputation that Autocross has or key people from going to them in the future. Hmm. I wanna remind people that our Motorsports News has been brought to us in partnership by the International Motor Racing Research Center out of Watkins Glen.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s been a couple of podcast episodes this month. One of them, the History of Corvette celebrating its 70th birthday with Kip Cider, as well as an Road to Success episode with Mark Steigerwald, the current director of the I M R R C as well, where he talks about the 25th anniversary of the center, talks about the Glenn’s birthday, we talk about lamont’s.

A lot of other really interesting stuff on that episode. So as a reminder, they are still running their sweepstakes for a 2024 Corvette e ray. You can use the promo code E ray launch to get bonus tickets and either win [01:58:00] the Corvette or take the cash option all the proceeds from the sweepstakes benefit.

The continued progress of the center. It helps them fund what they’re doing because they are a nonprofit. They do have some events coming up here in September. In the later fall, on September the 16th, they’re doing a center conversation called Brumos, an American Racing Icon with Sean Cridland at 1:00 PM on September 30th.

They’re doing their 25th anniversary party on November the second, the day before and leading up to the Arts Zinger Symposium on motor racing history. They’re doing an international real wheel film festival celebrating the historical racing documentaries on November the second at 5:00 PM at the downtown Watkins Glen movie theater.

And then on November the third and fourth, We have the Michael r Argen Singer Symposium on International Motor Racing History, which we will be in attendance for. So looking forward to seeing anybody and everybody if you come out to the event. It’s a great event and we’ll also be live [01:59:00] streaming it on Gran Touring Motor Sports on Twitch.

Coming up in September, we have a few local news and events brought to us by collector car guide.net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. The car enthusiast, I guess, schedule is winding down as we head into the fall and winter months here on the East Coast. So it’s not a big long list, but there are some events that I’d like to highlight from the producers of Motorama races and shows.

Comes America’s Truck Fest. That’s September 2nd and third at the Lebanon Valley Expo Center in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Fuel Fest, September 9th at N J M P. The Smoky Mountain Driving Tours is hosting a three day driving event at Tail of the Dragon in Tennessee and North Carolina from September 15th to the 17th.

Sponsored by E S E Carbon Wheels. Moto America’s Superbikes and King of Baggers will be at N J M P, September 22nd through the 24th, and cruise and bruise at the Rockville Moose in Rockville, Maryland on September 27th. These events and tons more just like it, [02:00:00] all the details are available over at a collector car guide.net.

That’s right. And now it’s time for the H B D Junkie Trackside report. And much like the car show scene, the track scene is also winding down. We’re heading into the fall. The racing schedule here starts to dry up in late October, early November if you’re running v i r and some of the Carolinas and things like that.

But there are plenty of events all across the country that you can look up in H HPD junkie dot com’s database. But for us, there’s been some cancellations, especially over at H O D. They had to cancel some of their October events and their last event will be at N J M P Lightning on September the 23rd and 24th, so that’s about a month away.

That’s the last event on their schedule. They’ve had to cut their schedule short. New Jersey one day on a Thursday is in October, so I’m not sure why the September one’s the last event. I think it might be advanced only. No coaches or something like that. There is an event on the schedule for bikers. Brad mentioned the Moto America Super Bike and King of Baggers event at N J N P, but there’s also the [02:01:00] Barber Vintage Festival at Barber Motorsports Park on October the sixth through the eighth.

We have a link to that so you can check it out. We’ve personally been to the Barber Motorcycle Museum. It is awesome. It is a site to be hold. It is the largest motorcycle museum in the country, and Barber Motorsports Park is a great backdrop for some racing, whether it’s cars or our two-wheeled friends on their motorcycle.

So I highly recommend running down to Birmingham, Alabama to check out the Barber Vintage Festival if you have time. And for those of you that do wanna go to the remaining H O D events on the schedule, remember that our code Break Fix 23 that you can use during the checkout process is still valid on your registration in case you missed out.

Check out the other podcast episodes that air during the summer break more than just a paddock party grid. Life has turned into a phenomenon with one of the fastest growing racing and drift programs on the market. We chat with founder Adam Gibe about how it all got started and why you should be involved.

Our panel of Petrolheads extraordinaire combined their brain powers to tackle the question, what should [02:02:00] I buy from the muscle and malaise era? We celebrate with Mark Steigerwald and Kip Zider from the International Motor Racing Research Center, as they celebrate 75 years of Watkins Glen, the 70th birthday of the Corvette.

In the 25th anniversary of the I M R R C A M F Board member and Pro Rider Clive Savacool talks to us about the world of professional motorcycle racing, motorcycle track days, and setting a record at Pike’s Peak on A B M W motorcycle. Want to be part of the oldest motor sports club in the world? Then consider joining the A C o.

Don’t take our word for it. Tune in and listen to David Lowe, president of the A C O U S A, explain the benefits of being a member of the A C O in the us. Thanks again to everyone that has come on the show over this summer. Well, we don’t have any new Patreons for August and that might be because there was a little bit of a mess up.

Check your credit card statements. They made some changes with their payment process and they moved from California to somewhere else and then they corrected it and this and that. So some people’s cards were getting [02:03:00] declined. Check it out in case you dropped off. To get our behind the scenes access, early access bloopers, tons of extra stuff like pit stop episodes are available on our Patreon.

We are actually using Patreon now to pre-release episodes ’cause some things have changed with our podcast server, so we’ll be throwing ’em over there for free. We also have free trials that you can do things like that. But if you were an existing subscriber and suddenly you dropped off, make sure that it didn’t get declined because of a change in the payment processing system.

Over at Patriarch Anniversaries for the month of August, we have Rob Lores, who is featured in Our Man Myth and Little Blue Miata episode, celebrating nine years with G T M. Eric, you were gonna say nine years. It’s a long time. I was. That is a huge achievement. I mean, Rob has been with us since the very beginning and so it’s awesome to have loyal members like that in the group.

And if you’re interested in knowing what’s going on with Rob, he no longer has the little blue Miata it lives on with another club member, but he’s got a G T I that he’s been tooling around with lately. That’s [02:04:00] right. And if you’d like to become a member of G T M, be sure to check out the new clubhouse website@club.gt motorsports.org.

To learn more, take us home, Brad. Special thanks to our guest host No one ’cause we didn’t have any special guests on this episode, but this is my last drive through for a while. ’cause I will be on paternity leave as my wife gives birth to our second son. Just so you all know. In September we have a surprise guest host lined up.

But if you are interested in getting on the October episode and a couple of the episodes in the future, please do not hesitate to reach out. And remember folks for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check the follow on articles and the show notes available@gtmotorsports.org.

You can always get ahold of us on social media. We are everywhere in anywhere. Just like you can stream us on your favorite music service or podcast app. We are now available on Threads, the new social media platform replacing Twitter x. I don’t know what it’s called anymore. And also a shout out to [02:05:00] all our news subscribers on our second YouTube channel.

We tripled the number of subscribers on our long format at Gran Touring Motorsports Media channel on YouTube, mostly in part because of Car Week. But it’s awesome to see the people commenting, watching the videos, all that kind of stuff. We did separate our long format content from our short club content, so it made it easier to find stuff and and index the videos, et cetera.

So really do appreciate the uptick in the subscribers and keep ’em coming. And of course, thank you to our executive producer and co-hosts, Tanya, and all the members who support G T M. Without you, none of this would be possible. I guess we gotta say. Bye, Brad. Bye, Brad. Bye Brad. Bye Tanya. We’re gonna miss you, buddy.

You’re gonna be off the air. I’ll be back. I be hostile. Love you. Stop baby. How’s everybody feeling tonight? How are we doing? Well, I just went on a 10 minute rant about the Motor Vehicle Association, so [02:06:00] I think we should have recorded it. I think we missed an opportunity there to get Tanya on her soapbox, which doesn’t happen very often.

Usually it’s Eric. She does it when it’s Teslas, but we’ll get to that later. So it’s all Tesla.

Well 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 some idiot in a Volvo with as bright sun behind me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, watch ya trying to do.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us [02:07:00] at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

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

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.[02:08:00]