B/F: The Drive Thru #60

• MotoGP just got a whole lot more interesting...
• MotoAmerica Season Finale Coming to NJMP

• Chevrolet Recalling C8 Corvette Z06 and ZR1 Over Fuel-Spillage Fire Risk

• US Government Denies EV Carpool Program Extension
• The 308 MPH Yangwang U9 Xtreme Is The New Fastest Car In The World
• Take a look at the JAG! Supercat!
• Electric cars: EU needs 8 times more charging points per year by 2030 to meet CO2 targets

• Daniel Ricciardo confirms retirement from motor racing
• Horner to exit Red Bull with immediate effect with Mekies taking over as CEO

• Nissan Will Finally Give the NISMO-Spec Z a Manual Transmission
• Honda Will Soon Sell You Brand-New Parts for Your Old NSX
• Designer and ‘Father’ of the Mazda Miata, Tom Matano, Dies at 76
• Toyota Plans to Make New Engine Parts for Your Old AE86 Corolla
• This Very Purple Nissan Z Heritage Edition Is Inspired by a 300ZX

• Hertz Now Sells Used Cars On Amazon Autos

• Mercedes-Benz Denies Reports That It Will Use BMW Engines

• Lamborghini becomes first major manufacturer to quit Hypercar

Forza Motorsports is No More?

• 2027 Ferrari 849 Testarossa Supercar Is a V-8 Plug-In Hybrid with 1036 Horsepower

• Elon Musk on Tesla’s new ‘affordable’ electric car: it’s the Model Y
• Tesla Wants Out of the Car Business
• Hacker Showed Tesla Lied, Court Awards a Quarter Billion to Victims

• Even Volkswagen Is Doing Horsepower Subscriptions Now

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] Welcome to Break Fixes, Drive-Through News, your monthly recap for everything fast, fascinating, and usually four wheeled. We’re serving up a fresh batch of automotive headlines, motorsports madness, and car adjacent curiosities, all with zero wait time and maximum flavor from Formula One, drama to Concept car debuts with Garage built legends.

To the Quirkiest stories rolling out of the state of Florida. We’ve got your fix. So grab your coffee, buckle up, and let’s cruise through the latest in the world of wheels with a side of entertainment and just a dash of tire smoke.

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to the Drive through episode number 60.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve been missing you, Brad.

We’re back. Number 60. Number 60. Better late than never. Number 60. See. Who loves you baby.

Crew Chief Brad: What is that from?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s from Kojack.

Crew Chief Brad: Kojack. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I, with the, with the Lollipop. He’s like, who loves you baby? Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: You talk about all these shows from like, your childhood.

Crew Chief Eric: My C child, they were in re they were old when I was young.

Kojack was like 19 Sesame sixties. [00:01:00] Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: but you’re an old soul. I mean, I, I never watched MacGyver. I never watched Magnum Pi never watched Nightrider. I never watched Fall Guy. What? Blast Femur. I bet you watched Mash too. Didn’t you watch MASH A little bit? I watched TI bet I knew. I knew I didn’t like

Crew Chief Eric: Mash.

I thought it was kind of boring. But you know what’s funny, Pluto tv, they have a channel dedicated to all these shows. You can just watch ’em.

Crew Chief Brad: Fantastic. I’ve got a lot more free time now, so I should go ahead and put that on. Uh, I digress. What do we got today, Eric?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I’m gonna start off with an apology to our listeners for

Executive Producer Tania: your voice.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, thanks. Great. Normally when we do like a big thing, like you go to Lama or classic or whatever, we take that month off. But instead we did a recap with William and we took the next month off, but we had a very, very good excuse.

Crew Chief Brad: Are you sorry for taking the time off or are you sorry for coming back?

Crew Chief Eric: That depends on the audience. Arbitron is gonna send us new numbers and metrics. It’s all gonna [00:02:00] work out.

Crew Chief Brad: Scantron,

Crew Chief Eric: we had a good excuse. We went to a pro race together for the first time in many years. We went back to our old stomping grounds. We went to an IMSA race at VIR and it got in the way of recording episode 60 at its normal time.

So. We’re back, which is awesome. And not only are we back, we’re back with Brad in the passenger seat, no guest co-host. This month we got the full Brad, full stories, full fun, full comedy, whatever you want to call it. So we’re gonna go on a little digital road trip with you because this month’s showcase was actually your idea.

So you asked me what was in store this month. You tell the audience what’s in store, what are we gonna be talking about?

Crew Chief Brad: The title here says, where did all the good cars go? I don’t know if these were necessarily good cars. They were cars that I was interested in or, I mean, I’m sure lots of people were interested in ’cause they, they were the cool cars, the hit cars to have back in the day.

Good cars. I think that’s [00:03:00] debatable. But where did all the good cars go?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s define a good car. Using the lens of our childhood. So what would you have put in that category? Give an example of what you’re thinking of.

Crew Chief Brad: When I was a teenager in high school, lusting after vehicles up through my twenties or whatever it was, the heyday of the nineties cars.

So the, the Japanese halo cars, obviously you, your RX sevens, your 3000 gts, your 300 ZXs, the Supra, of course

Crew Chief Eric: the Honda Dell Soul.

Crew Chief Brad: The Honda Dell Soul. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Stop. Stop. Did you just say that

Crew Chief Brad: the Honda Del Soul? Mm-hmm. The Honda Quaalude

Crew Chief Eric: had to add in those nineties cars, the mid-engine look with all the front wheel drive trash.

That’s what Del Soul translates to in English.

Crew Chief Brad: That made no sense. Why was that car front wheel drive with mid engine

Crew Chief Eric: unbelievable. And then it had that roll down glass. That partition. Oh, the car was bizarre. Just buy a regular civic. Save yourself the [00:04:00] indecency. Just buy a Miata. Yeah. Oh, there’s no point.

Buy a

Crew Chief Brad: Miata. And then the, the Subaru Impreza 2.5 Rs before the WRX came. Yeah, the Acura Integra. You know the Civic sis like all that stuff. You gotta get it right, man. Integra an integral part of my automotive child rearing.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you notice though, Tanya, in that list, like 99% of those are all Gs. They’re all jets.

Why? But the problem with the German cars at that time is they were relics from the seventies that were made into poster cars that we all salivate over. You think about the Kunta basically developed in the seventies. If you look at the nine thirties started in the seventies, right.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, you, you make a good point, but I think you’re missing my point.

My point is the cars that weren’t necessarily unobtainium, right. A Kunta was unobtainium any Porsche, you know, it, it is just like something I wouldn’t be able to have.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s the problem. They were too expensive German cars. We actually, fun had this conversation with mom the other day. We were talking [00:05:00] about the Audi, the red one.

That car new in 1990 was like 35,000. She said, not that they got it new ’cause they got it pre-owned or whatever. Well, we went to Connecticut and bought it from those people. $35,000 today. That was an $86,000 car. Mm-hmm. God damn.

FLORIDA MAN!: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Now granted that car was beyond its time for 1990 with all the features

Crew Chief Eric: it had.

So let me put that in perspective for you. That’s the second generation Quatro Coop. The Ur Quatro in 1981 also retailed for $35,000. Would you like to know what? In 20, $25 even more? 125 grand. That’s base model nine 11 today. How much was Adele Soul in 1997?

Crew Chief Brad: What

Crew Chief Eric: it’s worth today?

Crew Chief Brad: Probably $5 in a bucket of chicken.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, there you go. Right, because what did you have in the nineties? You had the Audi Quatros, some Z car BMWs. The Mercedes was the 500 back then. The one 90 E was like the one 90 thing. Yeah. Yeah. You had e thirties as [00:06:00] BMWs.

Crew Chief Brad: The Germans were all still kind of niche products. Yeah. Like BMW had the three series, the five series, the seven series.

As far as like cars that I saw on the road, I mean they, they obviously had the eight series and the six series, you know, back in the eighties or whatever. Never saw ’em.

Executive Producer Tania: We haven’t mentioned Volkswagen yet. What did they have in the nineties? They had the carrado.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Which I knew nothing about,

Executive Producer Tania: that nobody wanted, for God knows what reason.

Crew Chief Brad: I knew absolutely nothing about Volkswagen until it was time for me to start buying a car back in 2001. And my friend just randomly said, oh, you should go check out Volkswagen. And the first Volkswagen I ever drove was a turbo beetle.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, really?

Crew Chief Brad: It was before the turbos came out. I drove one, I was so ready to buy it.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. It

Crew Chief Brad: was like called like vortex blue. It was almost like a purplish blue kind of. I was so ready to buy it. And then my buddy was like, man, you’re gonna look like a, you know,

FLORIDA MAN!: if

Crew Chief Brad: you drive that car, you can’t get that. But he, he was like, [00:07:00] yeah, you, you won’t like that car. You should look at the GTI. It’s the same car. And then I went and test drove with GTI and was like, oh, it’s the same car. So I, I bought the gti I, but before then, I didn’t know anything about Volkswagen at all.

E even like hanging out with you in high school and stuff, like, I had no clue. Yeah. I knew nothing about cars,

Crew Chief Eric: but I think going back to your original question, where have all those cars gone? Simple math says that most of them have rotted into the ground at this point because you had some shoddy build quality.

All the German cars weren’t yet galvanized and you know, they just rotted as you looked at ’em kind of thing. I mean, if you’ve ever looked at a late mark two golf that doesn’t have a, you know, a hole the size of my head somewhere in it that it needs to be patched up. Obviously that car’s got a hundred grand of restoration work in it, you know, that kind of thing.

But my point is. I think a lot of our generation, we kept our first cars. I, I didn’t, you and I have been through so many cars over the years between the two of us. We’ve passed many people’s lifetimes at this point. But like Tanya still has her first car and then has continued to amass cars since then.

And so I would’ve liked to have done the same thing if [00:08:00] I had the space, but I don’t, I need a warehouse at this point for that. So I think there’s people holding onto the cars. I think there’s others that saw untimely demise where maybe they got wrecked or destroyed, or a lot of them got turned into track cars.

’cause you do see a lot of those nineties cars at SCCA and they’re just getting the snot beat out of ’em and stuff like that. So that leaves a really small margin of cars that are left. If you’re looking at it from a collector’s perspective, now that you have a little bit more liquidity, maybe you know your peak earning potential and you’re like, we all fall victim to this as car enthusiasts.

I wanna buy the car I had in high school, or I wanna buy the car I lusted after in high school. And that presents a challenge, and I’m gonna bring a real world situation to the table. One of the cars on your list was the Integra. Integra, especially the type R. Like the mid nineties to late nineties type R’S.

97, 98, I think they

Crew Chief Brad: were in their

Crew Chief Eric: $30,000 price range. MSRP was 12,000 bucks. I looked it up for Integra type R base Integra 12 grand. Right. So type R. Yeah. You’re gonna tack on top of that. Right? [00:09:00] Because I

Crew Chief Brad: remember going to the dealership before I got the GTI and I was test driving ’em and I I test drove like a GR RS or, or like a, yeah, whatever the,

Crew Chief Eric: there was a bunch of different models, GST and blah blah blah.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. The Integra GR dash s or whatever it was. I couldn’t afford the the type R.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s take a base Integra like the plain J and drive it to work. Let’s say it’s 12 grand in today’s dollars. That’s only 24,000 bucks, right? ’cause you’re basically doubling over what it costs 30 years ago.

FLORIDA MAN!: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: However, blew my mind when I saw this article come across from the drive A type R recently sold on bring a trailer for $204,000.

Even adjusted for inflation. That’s not even close to what that thing should be worth in mint condition.

Crew Chief Brad: I, I’m gonna theorize here, that’s somebody that lusted after that car all through their childhood or their parents had one or something. It is their dream car. They have fu money and I’m just gonna do it.

I’m just [00:10:00] gonna buy the car. I’ve always wanted.

Crew Chief Eric: I agree with you. And I could see that scenario if you came and told me it’s sold for 50, 65 at most. And I go, yeah, you bought your passion. Maybe it’s got no miles. It’s got like 5,000 miles on it. You bought a brand new. 1997 Ty R today, and you just went for it and you spent 50 grand, but 200 grand.

That’s more than just you money, dude, that’s a gambling problem.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s

Crew Chief Eric: more

Crew Chief Brad: than some people’s houses in the middle of America.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. But you can buy so much more car. Oh yeah. And

Crew Chief Brad: so, so that’s also part of the problem, like with looking back at these cars. Mm-hmm. The ones that may still be left and it’s like, I’ve got 40 grand and I want to buy a car and I’m reliving my childhood, you know, my youth and nostalgia and yada yada yada.

And I want to go buy an RX seven or a 3000 GT or something. They’re hard to find or whatever. Mm-hmm. Let’s be more realistic. I wanna buy a manual V six [00:11:00] Maxima. Oh. Because those cars used to be the shit back in the nineties too. That’s true.

Crew Chief Eric: I give you that. They were quick

Crew Chief Brad: and I feel like that’s more realistic than say like a type R or like a a mark four super or whatever.

You go do that, you spend 40 grand on that, and then you’re left with a 30-year-old car.

FLORIDA MAN!: Mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Brad: Whereas someone that we know just went and bought a car that would totally outperform that car. Mm-hmm. Every single way for cheaper. A hundred percent. Or for example, you could go to the dealership right now and pick up a Camry that would outperform, my God, that car that you wasted after in the nineties.

Yeah. In every single way

Executive Producer Tania: Camry today would demolish an EG rock.

Crew Chief Brad: I know. I know. It’s ridiculous. Like 300 horsepower out of the box

Crew Chief Eric: would be embarrassing. I’m glad you went to the Maxima because that brings up another conversation that blossomed on discord over the last month, which is. Another brand that was hot when we were teenagers, which we don’t talk about too much today, which is Infiniti, which is a derivative of Nissan, right?

During that whole period, [00:12:00] Acura was the luxury version of Honda. Lexus, the luxury version of Toyota Infiniti’s, the luxury version of Nissan, right? It’s a bunch of badge engineering and we lusted over those cars ’cause they were different and they were unique and they were cool. And you know, it wasn’t a Honda and it wasn’t a Toyota.

So Nissan, like we’ve said before, always pushing the boundaries in the JDM space. And I hate to say, with things changing as much as they are at Nissan, some of that might go away in the near future, but that’s all to speculation. But when was the last time you saw an infinity? Because I read an article which spawned this whole conversation about how Nissan is going to come out with a new infinity that will revitalize the real wheel drive sports saloon market.

Like they’re gonna take on BMW and the M three and the M four and the M five with this new Infinity. And I’m like,

Crew Chief Brad: they’re already kind of doing that though because the Infinity Q sixties have the same motor as the 400 horsepower Z.

Executive Producer Tania: We need to reverse for a second before we go down this

Crew Chief Brad: road.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, do we?

Yes. Because what? 1990s [00:13:00] Infinity was cool.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s

Executive Producer Tania: where I was. ’cause the G 37 came out in the two thousands, 2013

Crew Chief Brad: there was the I 30. There was the Q like 80 or whatever

Executive Producer Tania: they were. All those weird little cel

Crew Chief Eric: looking infinities. Didn’t they have the M 45? That big boat? That thing was gangster.

Crew Chief Brad: That was like early two thousands.

That car was awesome. I loved that car.

Crew Chief Eric: The G 20 at the end tail end of the nineties. The G 30 came out the same time as the three 50 Z did. Well, hold on. Lemme, I’m gonna look this up. See, we don’t know Jack about infinity, that’s the problem.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s because nobody gives a crap. They did a terrible job of marketing those

Crew Chief Eric: two.

Executive Producer Tania: So there was

Crew Chief Eric: the

Executive Producer Tania: 2008, the Infinity G 35. Again, we still haven’t hit anything. So the two quote, coolest infinities, still have yet to have been born.

Crew Chief Eric: The two thousands is still in our window of opportunity.

Executive Producer Tania: 2008. You’re an adult. You sure about that? Full adult at a real [00:14:00] job.

Crew Chief Brad: There was the Q 45, which is like the big, like ls, yeah.

Luxury sedan kind of thing. There’s the M 30,

Executive Producer Tania: still not in the nineties. Yeah, the

Crew Chief Brad: Q 45. Yeah, it was, it was 2006 Infinity, Q

Crew Chief Eric: 45, 19 90, 19 96.

Executive Producer Tania: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: I remember the I 20 was basically a Sentra that was hopped up the G 20. I thought there was an I 20 as well. G 20

Executive Producer Tania: basically looks like a G 37.

Crew Chief Brad: The G 20 was the entry level luxury sedan.

The J 30 was the one that kind of ripped off Jaguar’s look.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that was that really amorphous one. That was like a marshmallow on wheels. I remember that one. Yeah. And

Crew Chief Brad: then the, the QX four was the Pathfinder.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right. So anyway, they had some stuff out there.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. All right.

Crew Chief Eric: But the point is when you go down the road. When was the last time you saw an infinity?

Executive Producer Tania: Every morning When I see that blue G 37. That’s the only one I see.

Crew Chief Brad: Ran when parked. What infinity, are you talking like an infinity from the nineties and early two thousands? Or [00:15:00] like any infinity because I, I see infinities all the time.

Executive Producer Tania: I couldn’t tell you when. I’ve seen a nineties one.

Crew Chief Brad: I saw a QX four at the shop when I was getting my vehicle inspection.

Executive Producer Tania: You mostly see the SUVs now?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: because they have the same motor as the Nissan Z. They’ve got the VQ or whatever. Yes, the newer ones.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. The SUVs on the road. That’s fine. All the dealerships that I knew of in the area have dried up.

I don’t know where there’s an Infinity dealership anymore, so I’m not even gonna worry about that.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s one down the road.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God, you guys are the worst. I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t even know. I couldn’t have told you where an Infinity dealer was 20 years ago, let alone today.

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s one of those things that when you’re thinking about ’em, then you see them everywhere, but because you don’t think about them, you don’t see them.

Crew Chief Eric: Selective vision. No. My point is. No one is thinking about Infiniti. Nobody’s considering it as a brand. And if you told me, Hey, I’m gonna go spend 60, $70,000 on a competitive product between an Infiniti and A BMW, when you roll up, I don’t know, wherever you work, the office or the golf course, or wherever [00:16:00] you’re taking your car, what’s gonna carry the status if I can, dollar for dollar.

I’m gonna buy the BMW, I’m not gonna buy an Infinity. Like it’s a weird space to be in and it’s a weird space for Nissan to target to try to build back their brand. It’s like sell a cool Nissan Saloon. Not an Infinity. A brand that people don’t recognize.

Executive Producer Tania: Gotta sell a cooler Ultima baby. You gotta those Altimas,

Crew Chief Brad: to your point, the problems with the Infinity, it’s trying to compete, but it doesn’t compete on any level.

Correct. It can’t compete with BMW. ’cause like you’re saying, it doesn’t have the panache, it doesn’t have the performance, it doesn’t have the wow factor.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep.

Crew Chief Brad: Certainly doesn’t compete with Lexus because it doesn’t have the reliability,

Crew Chief Eric: so it’s sort of a dud. Yeah. Good for them. Nissan is coming out, hopefully cross the fingers.

More cars with manual transmissions. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. If they’re gonna add another one to the fleet, I would love to see this as some of the four door Nissans that are sold in Japan. Just go with the Nissan brand, a [00:17:00] brand that people recognize. We’ll leave that where it is. Do we remember

Crew Chief Brad: the time

Executive Producer Tania: the Infinity commercials?

The guy with the Apple,

Crew Chief Brad: they have commercials. Ah, with the Apple.

Executive Producer Tania: Wouldn’t that an Infinity commercial? That like British actor

Crew Chief Eric: Dude,

Crew Chief Brad: British.

Crew Chief Eric: He, he was the guy who was in Pirates of the Caribbean as the governor or whatever. I think it was that dude. No, it wasn’t him. No, it

Executive Producer Tania: wasn’t that dude.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I’m confusing him with someone else then.

Because he did car commercials. The guy from Pirates of the Caribbean did car commercials. Hold on. Lemme see if I can find it. You’re gonna make me look it up. Oh my God,

Crew Chief Brad: I see him.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s in a tuxedo though. He’s not eating an apple. What is his name? It’s, isn’t it Jonathan Price?

Executive Producer Tania: That is the guy from Pirates of the Caribbean.

But that’s not the guy I am thinking of. That’s not the guy I’m thinking of. I

Crew Chief Eric: said,

Executive Producer Tania: so maybe I’m thinking of a different commercial of the same time. This isn’t the guy. Yes, Jonathan Price did

Crew Chief Eric: car commercials for infinity. Boom.

Executive Producer Tania: Then I’m thinking of something else. Then

Crew Chief Eric: see my memory is still good. All right, so talking about cars from our youths, one of the cars that went up on [00:18:00] the wall as an affordable supercar was the NSX by today’s standards.

You look at an original NSX 19 90 91, you’re like, man, it looks like it should transform into an autobot. Just be fighting the decepticon or something like it is a little stodgy. Obviously they refined it as they went on. I was never a fan of the one with those frog eyed headlights.

Crew Chief Brad: The little bubbles.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t

Crew Chief Eric: light didn’t like those at all. But Tanya found this interesting article about how Honda has decided that they’re going to start making parts for the NSXs, and I was like, there’s a market for that. Really.

Crew Chief Brad: Well see. This isn’t a new concept though. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: no, not at all.

Crew Chief Brad: On a previous. Drive through.

Mercedes was doing the same thing for some of their old pieces of junk.

Crew Chief Eric: Three years to design a knob. That’s for like a cigarette lighter, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Knobs

Crew Chief Eric: designed by knobs, but that’s not the only manufacturer turning up the way back machine. Is it Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: No. ’cause Toyota is doing the same thing for the AE 86.

Apparently you can get new heads and new motors. Nice. [00:19:00] You’re

Crew Chief Eric: telling me you can buy a brand new 2026, we’ll call it four a GE Twin cam initial D goes to 11,000 RPM kind of thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently slightly upgraded. So like they have made them better so they’re not pulled out of the 1980s vault or anything like that, but they bolt in.

Crew Chief Eric: The cool part about these motors, I have come to understand that the original four a GE was basically a duplicate of a cos word like race motor. That’s why they were so durable and so strong and made so much power and they could rev to like literally 11,000 RPM. So with all that engineering in it, that’s like one of the most sought after normally aspirated motors, like of all time.

So that’s really cool to see this come back. Now the question is, how much is it gonna cost to buy a motor from Toyota?

Crew Chief Brad: Probably cheaper than a coyote.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably cheaper than that. Integra R, there you go. Would you rather spend $200,000 on a Integra R or probably $50,000 on this motor? The

Crew Chief Eric: question becomes how much does the 80 86.

[00:20:00] Cost without a motor in it, because getting those cars was already difficult 20 years ago when they were half as old as they are now. You’re importing them from Japan.

Crew Chief Brad: You buy the motor and then you put it in a new GR 86.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, here you go. So on bat. You can get 1986 Toyota Corolla. GTS Liftback five speed.

So that’s not the full out ano one I guess. I don’t know which one that would be, but $19,000,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s not horrendous.

Executive Producer Tania: And a two JZ, GTE powered 86 SR five Sport Liftback, five speed track car ano basically sold recently for 22 or 21.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a good deal. That’s a good deal. Two Jay-Z in that. That’s a rocket ship.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a race car. It’s gutted, caged, everything. I would run

Crew Chief Eric: that. That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: Spoken by someone who has two gutted cage race cars in his driveway right now.

Crew Chief Eric: Hopefully three at some point in my life, but we’ll get there. Switching gears from that. Somebody had a note here that said, [00:21:00] in reference to the whole Infinity thing, Jaguar was another brand we hadn’t seen in a while.

And obviously there’s been some change of ownership and all sorts of stuff going on over Jaguar now. It’s funny, Jaguar came up in a conversation recently with Tanya as we were doing some car exploration, and there’s some really good deals out there on Jags, depending on what you’re looking for. Forgot about this.

Did you guys see this most recent one that they literally unveiled at Monterey Car Week this year,

Executive Producer Tania: and this is why nobody thinks of Jaguar.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks

Crew Chief Eric: like a crown.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks fake. Yes, it looks like something out of Batman. The Animated series, cartoon Show. Again from the nineties.

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna say Dick Tracy, but it’s too modern to be like a dick Tracy.

But it’s that cartoonish level of design.

Crew Chief Eric: Nothing about this says Jaguar to me.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I don’t. This doesn’t say anything. It’s like a child did this.

Crew Chief Brad: Actually, I don’t. I, I am. The more I’m looking at it, I kind of like it. Don’t say that kinda like it. I don’t like that. It’s gonna be $130,000.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s cheap [00:22:00] compared to a nine 11.

You gotta compare it to nine 11 now it’s cheap. It’s

Crew Chief Brad: cheap. Compared to an Integra,

Crew Chief Eric: a hundred percent. People already don’t like the Jaguar Land Rover rebrand thing that’s been going on, and the logo people are like, just put it back the way it was. Why did we get rid of the leaping Jaguar? You know? And all the stuff that goes with and the legacy that goes with it.

They kind of checked it all at the door. The car is just awful. I’m like, I’m sorry. I think there’s some other brands that have lost their way, but these guys don’t even know where to start. Just go back into your catalog of cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Would you prefer an auto manufacturer to think out of the box and take a swing?

Granted it’s a swing and a miss, or would you prefer an auto manufacturer to keep going back to the same Dried up? Well, of badge engineering and bringing back the Camaro, bringing back the Dart, bringing back the Challenger, the charger, the Hornet, all these old names. Slapping them on pieces of shit.

Crew Chief Eric: I see where you’re going with that.

Crew Chief Brad: Bangled era. BMWs, ugh, they swung, [00:23:00] they missed kind of That’s another car. You don’t see them anywhere? No, no. Never see ’em. I never see, they don’t even make

Crew Chief Eric: good track cars. People don’t want ’em for that either. You know? I

Crew Chief Brad: see more E 30 nines. Yeah, and more E 30 sixes and like that era than I do. Bangal era.

Crew Chief Eric: Jag has this. Opportunity to go back into a very rich catalog of retro redesigns if they want to. ’cause they’ve never really done it right? ’cause if you think about it, there’s been companies like we saw what was the Eagle that redid the E type JAG 20 years ago on top gear and stuff like that. And then you had Jags that run all the guys that were trying to make their X jss reliable.

And then there’s some other really nice jags that came out during, you know, the not so great periods of Jaguar, you know, the tail end before Ford bought em and all that kinda stuff. That’s what they’re trying to do with this. They’re creating that long bonnet thing, but it looks nothing like an XJS. Just bring back that design.

Modernize it, add the safety and put a reliable engine in it. That’s all people really want.

Crew Chief Brad: Those are things that make it [00:24:00] not a jag.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So instead we come up with this cartoon monstrosity. To me, I, I would prefer that companies did do a halo car every now and again and do an homage to their past so that people can identify through the generations, like, eh, man, I know what it means to be a Jag owner.

Like, I really like that XJS, or, I really like that E type, or I really want that MK one 20. You know, that they remade for a couple years or whatever it is. And I think they could go back and re stylize some of those old cars because some of those were as aerodynamic back then as they are today.

Executive Producer Tania: The link I just sent you, this is what you want.

Oh Lord have

Crew Chief Brad: mercy. Yeah. And then, and what happened is people would go into the dealership just to look at and be near those cars. And they would walk out with something else that they could afford.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you see this jacket that she sent? Brad? This, I would drive this posting this in the show notes.

Crew Chief Brad: I, I saw it.

This is

Crew Chief Eric: hot.

Crew Chief Brad: Didn’t Jeremy Clarkson drive something like

Crew Chief Eric: that? Jeremy’s had his butt in so many [00:25:00] cars. Who knows? This is hot. Like you wanna be a Batman villain? This is the car right here. This is awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: Painted it purple. That’s what the Joker ride.

Crew Chief Eric: And to me the last great Jaguar was the XJ two 20. Going back to our childhood.

Crew Chief Brad: No, no, no, no. I think the F type

Crew Chief Eric: is a great Jag. It’s not a real Jag though. That’s one of these later Jags.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay, then like the XJR, the supercharged Ford V eight. Ah.

Crew Chief Eric: But see, Ford had its hands in that, was it a great car?

Crew Chief Brad: No, it was trash.

Crew Chief Eric: The XJ two 20 was the last great Jag. Like everything about that was Jag.

Crew Chief Brad: But the whole controversy around that car is, it was a complete disappointment. Like they could never prove that it would go two 20. First of all, have you ever seen anybody do a test of that car where they actually hit two 20 and that was the whole point. I dunno, how

Crew Chief Eric: fast did that transit van go on top gear that they put the body.

Crew Chief Brad: Weren’t they racing a diesel jag?

Crew Chief Eric: They did do that too. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, Jaguar’s, another one of those brands like Infiniti, where it’s like if, if they’re not doing their marketing right, [00:26:00] they’re not gonna get anybody’s attention. And when you’re looking dollar for dollar to Tanya’s point $130,000, there’s a lot of car you can buy for 130 grand.

It’s not gonna be that cartoon thing we saw at Car Week

Crew Chief Brad: just off the cuff thinking of a brand that nobody that we haven’t seen in a really long time, whatever happened to day, woo.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my god.

Crew Chief Brad: What was that sound done?

Dew. Suzuki. Isuzu.

Crew Chief Eric: You know the thing that killed me about Dew is that their emblem was the seashell thing, and I always thought about the three seashells

Crew Chief Eric: demolition. Man.

Crew Chief Eric: He doesn’t know how to

Crew Chief Eric: use the seashells.

Crew Chief Eric: The date was a piece of shit too. Anyway, but Tanya, you might have something for Brad to bring him back to our high school days.

Another car that can make a comeback.

Executive Producer Tania: Lord have mercy apparently. Electric Dodge Neon.

I will say I like

Crew Chief Eric: those wheels. You [00:27:00] know, chat. GPT is amazing. It literally says that somebody designed this with

Crew Chief Eric: chat, GPT. There is something timeless about the original neon. It is one of those shapes that, okay, you could claim that it’s dated, especially from the backside. But if, to your point, Brad, if you go back to the well and you clean up some of those designs, you could reintroduce ’em today.

You need to shut up.

Crew Chief Brad: You just sit. The Dodge Neon is a timeless design. We’re not talking about a work of art here. It’s a goddamn, it’s an acno Dodge from the nineties. Timeless. It’s timeless ’cause it’s a four-door sedan and that’s it. There’s nothing special about that car.

Crew Chief Eric: Hi Neon. It is

Crew Chief Brad: a Dacia Sandero.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. There’s another brand. No neons then

Crew Chief Brad: The timeless Neon. But to, to the point of the article, an electric neon makes sense. I mean, neon in the name, I mean it, it just makes sense. Sure. Well,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s like the Beatle coming back as electric, which [00:28:00] hopefully that happens, but it probably never will because Volkswagen can’t see past it in their own schnitzel.

Executive Producer Tania: Speaking of nineties cars and classic timeless designs and car manufacturers, we don’t see anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: The Saturn. Oh no, that’s like cursing in church. So Saturn, if you look it up, it’s like how do we take a vox hall and a opal bastardize them and then say, you know what? We can make it worse. We’ll call it Saturn.

That’s what those cards are. And then

Executive Producer Tania: there’s that guy down the roads, got like nine of ’em so bad.

Crew Chief Brad: They had those body panels that you could like kick and throw things at and Oh, that’s right. That was part of their team. Right? They the cyber trucks before the cyber trucks were cyber trucks.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they were made of Tupperwares.

It’s like ridiculous.

Crew Chief Brad: The body cladding, they go.

Crew Chief Eric: When you open the door.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh man. So,

Crew Chief Brad: oh good. That that bring, that brings up a really good point. ’cause doesn’t the Tesla fart when you open the,

Executive Producer Tania: when you ask it to open its butt hole. Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty.

Crew Chief Brad: Baby Elon is like a closet. Saturn fan [00:29:00]

Crew Chief Eric: wouldn’t surprise me.

He’s a closet something. We won’t go there. As we wrap up this showcase we’ve been talking about where did the cars from our childhood go, you know, when we started driving the cars that we lusted after the things that we wanted. And you know, I mentioned Monterey Car Week because that also transpired during our month off.

So there’s been a lot of coverage and a lot of things. And so I got a newsletter from the Porsche Club and as I scrolled through it, I had to reread it like 10 times because I’m like, you guys actually posted what I’m about to read to you in public to tens of thousands of people. And I’m like, this is the problem.

Partially with what you’re talking about, Brad, what you’re describing, and I’m just gonna read this to you ’cause I, I just don’t know how to react to it and I want your guys’ feedback. So here goes quote. Monterey Car Week continues to evolve. The one thing that Car Week 2025 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt is that millennials and Gen Zers love cars.

And while big money might be heavily concentrated in the hands of [00:30:00] relatively few of them, those that have it are willing to spend it on more than just avocado toast. End quote. That was in their newsletter. And I said, okay, boomer. So we’re already being snubbed by the collector market because it’s all the older guys, our parents’ generation and our grandparents if they’re still with us.

And I’m like, you put that in your newsletter. You didn’t think I was gonna read that? You don’t think I’m in that demographic? What, what? Seriously? I I I’m gonna get off my soapbox. Go ahead.

Crew Chief Brad: You do get down on some avocado toast though. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean

Crew Chief Brad: it’s good for you. Good avocado toast, man. With a fried egg on.

It got good protein and stuff. A little bit of oil and salt and pepper.

Crew Chief Eric: This is unreal.

Crew Chief Brad: I think boomer’s gonna boomer

Crew Chief Eric: that. Make it right. Yeah. Mean I know it doesn’t

Crew Chief Brad: make it right, but it, there’s nothing we can do about it. We just gotta wait for ’em all to die.

Crew Chief Eric: Then we can inherit all the cool cars we don’t want.

Crew Chief Brad: We just need to out weight them. Then we’ll start our own boomer like car collection. Before we get off this topic, I was gonna bring up a question or pose a question to the panel. Hmm. [00:31:00] Thinking about what we just talked about, you know, looking 30 years into the future from now, so 2055, what cars on the road today do you see surviving 25 years and what cars are you expecting not to see?

And we have the same conversation about them 25 in 30 years.

Crew Chief Eric: First on the list, like cockroaches that will survive nuclear winter. The Altima? Yeah, well the Altima 2025 Altima still going strong followed by any Na Miata. Those will still be running around 50 years from now. And then I think outside of that cars that you know, my kids might be lusting after, is gonna be Mazda threes Hyundai Veloster.

Jeep Wranglers, like all the same stuff. We lusted after hot hatches, SUVs and CUVs. ’cause there’s a ton of those on the road.

Crew Chief Brad: And because they were affordable.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. There you go. They weren’t seen as unobtainium. But before we completely close out this showcase, Brad, we gotta do a little dashboard confessional, because you [00:32:00] did just recently acquire one of your high school sweethearts, didn’t you?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This would be my, let’s see, one.

Crew Chief Eric: Gotta keep your pants on if you gotta count that high.

Crew Chief Brad: This will be my fifth VW GTI. Yeah. One of ’em wasn’t a GTI, but yeah. No,

Crew Chief Eric: my sixth, my my fifth mark. Four. Can you tell the audience a little bit about the new acquisition?

Crew Chief Brad: Right now it is dead on the mountain.

It’s covered in dirt and moss and mold and crap. But pop the hood.

Crew Chief Eric: Hood

Crew Chief Brad: we will overnight parts from Japan. It’s a 2000 GTI 180.

Crew Chief Eric: What color is it?

Crew Chief Brad: It is dirt orange? No, it’s, it’s called Tropic orange, I think,

Crew Chief Eric: but we’re more affectionately calling it

Crew Chief Brad: pumpkin spiced latte.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re PSL

Crew Chief Brad: because it was purchased in the fall and, and it’s only around for a limited time.

Crew Chief Eric: I like, that’s really good. But you know, this is gonna be a first. We’ve done tons of Mark IVs over the years and we have a lot of experience with those [00:33:00] cars, but they

Crew Chief Brad: started out running,

Crew Chief Eric: this one ran parts, but we have never, ever resurrected a car from the mountain. I don’t know if we know what we’re getting ourselves into.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, who wants to resurrect a Taurus or a Mercury Sable?

Crew Chief Eric: I

Executive Producer Tania: nowhere. There’s a neon too,

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya, to your point, I actually was looking at that car. Every time I go up to the mountain I’m like, you know, I could do this. I could do this car. But then I remember it’s a neon.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a neon with a Mitsubishi 16 valve, though.

It’s the good neon.

Crew Chief Brad: But I could drive that timeless design

Crew Chief Eric: in that timeless brown color. Brown. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Another timeless design that’s better than a neon is Mark four Volkswagen.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, that’s the last golf. That still looks like a golf

Crew Chief Brad: to me. They, they look like little bulldogs.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they do. They do look, especially when you fix ’em up.

They’re pretty aggressive. So I’m looking forward to turning wrenches with you and working on this project. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. But I also feel like Gene Wilder and Young Frankenstein and we’re, when we do get it running

SOUND CLIP!: [00:34:00] alive, it’s a lie. It’s a alive,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s gonna be a process.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: for sure.

Crew Chief Brad: At least it’s not going to the track.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you never know. We gotta shake it down. Right?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not going to be built like a track car. Yes. I’ll put it it that way. It’s, that’s, I, I took Eddie too far. Pumpkin spice is gonna be something nice.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s gonna be a good blend.

Crew Chief Brad: Just a kid. That’ll be a nice little spicy blend.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it come with that cardboard sleeve just so you don’t burn yourself? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: it should. It

Crew Chief Eric: should. Alright. Well we’re gonna move on to our regularly scheduled ranting and raving. Continuing with Volkswagen and Audi News. All right. I feel like this next article from Haggerty Signals the swan song for the golf R.

Okay. When they do something like this, Volkswagen is notorious for doing weird stuff like putting, oh, I don’t know, the RS three five cylinder turbo in the next golf R before they discontinue it all together. That’s the dot, dot dot. That’s [00:35:00] missing from this article, and that’s where I’m reading between the lines, because if you build a golf R with that motor making 450 horsepower like the TTRS did, and all the other cars that came with that power plant and all wheel drive and the flappy paddles and all the wonderful things that accompanied that engine and drive, train configuration.

How do you top that? You can’t, again, to me signals, that’s the end of the golf R.

Crew Chief Brad: All I am thinking about right now is in a couple years, my boys will be out of daycare. I’ll no longer be paying for daycare and I will be picking up eight Rs, three powered golf R, or I’ll just pick up an RS three ’cause the motor’s already in it and they’ll be cheaper.

I just

Crew Chief Eric: want the motor. I don’t care about the rest of it. You know? Let me put that in something else and let’s go from there.

Crew Chief Brad: Put that in a neon. The timeless design. Shut up

Crew Chief Eric: that five cylinder sound though. That’s what sells it, right? It’s, I mean, ’cause you can [00:36:00] make 400 horsepower out of something else. You can make 400 horsepower to one eight Turbo. I know for a fact, but it doesn’t sound the same. Right. It’s gonna sound more like a rally card. The five cylinders just got, oh, it’s got that snarl to it.

You know what I mean? Yep.

Speaking of five cylinder sounds. Remember a couple drive-throughs back. Audi had made an announcement that they were changing their design language for the next generation Audis, starting with whatever chassis number they’re on now. And so the Audi Club of America put out the pictures of what the concept car looks like for this new design language.

But what I thought was hilarious was, and quote comes with virtual gearbox and synthetic five cylinder sounds.

Executive Producer Tania: This was designed by the same person that designed the Jaguar.

Crew Chief Brad: I was just about to say, they partnered, they must have partnered together.

Crew Chief Eric: I love how they call [00:37:00] this the vision for the future. You know, a new era of clarity was Ronnie Millsap behind this ’cause that guy can’t see, you know what I’m saying?

Crew Chief Brad: Penn and Farina was busy, so they got SpongeBob.

Crew Chief Eric: No, Penn and Farina ISS not busy. ’cause Ferrari put them on the curb. Why don’t they go pick up those guys? No. What they did is they got rid of Juro and now we’ve got this. What is this? What is this? Is this the Rose Meyer from the early two thousands? Like what is this?

It went from

Crew Chief Brad: Jaro to Dijo.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s good. That’s really good.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, if that wasn’t enough, this next one is what signals my final nail in the Volkswagen coffin. Like I’ve been exiting this stage for a while and it’s been a very, very tough journey because we have had Volkswagens in the family nonstop since the 1950s and it’s very hard to like break the brand loyalty.

Right? But I’ll just read this to you, even [00:38:00] Volkswagen. Is doing horsepower subscriptions. Now for an extra $22 a month, you can get 27 more horsepower

Executive Producer Tania: in an electric

Crew Chief Eric: car.

Crew Chief Brad: This just makes people never want to buy an electric car.

Crew Chief Eric: This makes people never want to buy Volkswagens. Why would you do stupid stuff like that?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, BMW did this before, not with a horsepower. And doesn’t Tesla do this with their horsepower too? At some point? It’s an electric car thing. I think

Crew Chief Eric: it is not a good thing though.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, no, it’s not a good thing. Just

Crew Chief Eric: like everybody that’s canceling their Disney and Hulu subscriptions right now, what happens when the AI chatbot that you cancel your horsepower subscription to goes, thank you.

Your membership has been canceled. Now your car doesn’t start. I’m sorry, I’m done. There is no infinite wisdom here. There’s no foresight and there’s also rumors. You hear all sorts of stuff about Porsches walking back, the electric cayenne or whatever it’s called, and they’re gonna go back to gas and all this and you know, it’s all this hokey pokey stuff.

And then we’re getting the five cylinder turbo in the golf RO. Okay, whatever Volkswagen, they’ve just lost their way. I’m [00:39:00] sorry, I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. So Brad. In the showcase, we talked about reaching back into the coffers and kind of pulling out old designs and bringing them back to life with a little bit of STIs persuasion here.

Ferrari reveals the first new tester since the 1990s.

Executive Producer Tania: Badge engineering just like everybody else.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: This thing’s ugly.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t see it. There are certain Ferraris that are just timeless. Is that the word?

Crew Chief Brad: This episode is timeless.

Executive Producer Tania: This episode

Crew Chief Brad: is, this episode is powered by or sponsored by Timex.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re iconic.

There you go.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s, yes. Iconic.

Executive Producer Tania: Like the tester. There’s nothing else that looks like. It’s like an F 40. There’s nothing else that looks like it.

Crew Chief Brad: It was the same with the original Kosh and then they redesigned that. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: there’s nothing else that looked like those. And it’s like this doesn’t even, I don’t know.

This doesn’t even whisper tester.

Crew Chief Brad: No. It whispers more SF 90.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, because it’s gonna replace the SF 90. Where

Crew Chief Brad: are

Crew Chief Eric: [00:40:00] the

Crew Chief Brad: gills on the side?

Crew Chief Eric: The strikes as they like to call ’em? Yeah, whatever they were

Crew Chief Brad: called. Yeah. It looks more like what was the predecessor to the F 40?

Crew Chief Eric: No, I think it looks like the 365 Daytona in the front.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like the picture of the red front Honda could have made this and called it another NSX.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true too. From the back, it looks like every other new Ferrari, the SP two and all those prototype E LA Ferrari things, the front because of that black stripe and those little orange things that come down.

That reminds me of the Daytona. But it doesn’t scream Testa at all.

Crew Chief Brad: No. So the real question is, which they don’t show us a picture of the motor. Does it have red heads? ’cause if it doesn’t have red heads then it’s stupid, but it’s got blue seats. Well, it’s got red head covers,

Crew Chief Eric: uh, whatever.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s got red heads.

I found some other pictures

Crew Chief Eric: when I saw the first pictures of this. ’cause obviously I talked to William from the Ferrari marketplace all the time and he’s in the know on this kind of stuff. I immediately asked him when I saw the pictures, like, would Don Johnson drive this? And he’s like, hell no.[00:41:00]

So to me that’s sort of the litmus test. Like if Don Johnson, Miami Vice, they had a tester, if he wouldn’t drive this, it’ll sell. But it’s gonna sell to a totally different demographic of people that know what it means.

Crew Chief Brad: But regardless, I, I think it’s stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. This might also be the same reaction that people that were alive to see, the 1957 original tester, Rosas, you know, with the pontoon fenders and all that, when the one in the eighties came out, they go, this looks nothing like the tester DA, because it was a complete step away.

Right? The design language was all wedge and then the classic straights that we know and all that kind. So we’re seeing that again, and maybe, and this is what I’m saying, just a word of caution. We have to be a little bit more open-minded about the design, but as a purist, it doesn’t do anything for me.

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s old man yells at cloud.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, to your

Crew Chief Brad: point, we had the same argument when the Kunta came out, the new Kosh, [00:42:00] the general consensus was, at least in my view, I thought it was a great looking car. I, I loved it, but it shouldn’t be called Kunta.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. But at least when you looked at it, you could see Kunta, DNA. In it, even though you knew it was a Mercy Lago or whatever it was underneath a Ventor or whatever, underneath whatever, right?

Yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah. But this, yeah. You don’t see nineties Testa Rosa at all?

Crew Chief Eric: No. And you don’t see fifties? No. No, definitely not.

Crew Chief Brad: Other than the actual heads being red, you don’t see anything.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, if you put a McLaren badge on it, I wouldn’t know the difference,

Crew Chief Brad: maybe.

Crew Chief Eric: But any rate, Brad, guess what? We thought we could get away with it.

We got some Mercedes news thanks to Tanya.

Crew Chief Brad: Why are we wasting our time with this Once a year. We do this once a year,

Crew Chief Eric: so, okay, so here’s the punchline. Is a Benz still a Benz? If it’s powered by A BMW?

Crew Chief Brad: The zebra is powered by A BMW. One of the greatest cars ever made in the history of cars. The McLaren F1 is powered by A BMW.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I get that. Mm-hmm. Those are [00:43:00] also bespoke supercar or whatever. Well, the

Crew Chief Brad: Zora’s, not

Crew Chief Eric: Toyota claims, BMW provides them with the blocks and then they do all this other stuff to make it a Toyota engine. And it’s not a BMW motor. I mean, I got into argument with people about that. You, you

Crew Chief Brad: mean they take out all the cheap German stuff, accounting, engineering, crap, and put in like actual good stuff.

So it lasts longer.

Crew Chief Eric: But this is Mercedes powered by BMW Turbocharge, two liter, four cylinder.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, with the globalization of everything in the global economy and every, everybody’s sharing parts. This is something that it’s just gonna be happening in our lives and they’re all gonna share. ’cause it’s, it’s more cost effective.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but here’s the thing though, if Mercedes. The people that invented the car, again, you want to tell me like we argue about Formula One, that they don’t know how to build a car. They don’t know how to build a four cylinder of their own that they can make reliable. So here’s the deal. You put a BMW power plant in your Mercedes, and that’s the Achilles heel of those Mercedes.

And everybody, the public goes ah, [00:44:00] and they get out their pitchforks and their torches and the cars are unreliable. Let’s just say it could happen. Weirder things have happened. And now the reputation of Mercedes is besmirched by the fact that they sublet out the motors for these cars rather than building it themselves.

To me it’s a stupid strategy. It doesn’t make sense

Crew Chief Brad: to me. It’s a cost saving strategy.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. ’cause they’re putting all their eggs in the EV basket, so they don’t wanna put r and D into ice and so it’s cheaper for them to just go partner and buy a motor.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And it’s going in their cheaper cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Not saying it’s right, but

Crew Chief Brad: it’s going in the cars that

Executive Producer Tania: the A class,

Crew Chief Brad: the Mercedes purists aren’t gonna buy anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: Why not just buy A BMW powered by A BMW four cylinder then?

Executive Producer Tania: No, because what? BM BMW has a four cylinder So you mean go buy a mini? No, the little three series, 3, 4, 3 series comes

Crew Chief Brad: with, you can get with a four cylinder turbo, you can get with the same motor.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. So

Crew Chief Brad: to Eric’s point, yeah. Why not just go to buy the BM bmw?

Just buy

Crew Chief Eric: BMW. To me that’s silly.

Crew Chief Brad: So Eric. We, this panel are car enthusiasts. [00:45:00] Yes. We eat sleep and breathe car knowledge and stuff. We are a very, very, very, very, very small minority percentage of people that buy cars. When was the last time you bought a new car? The

Executive Producer Tania: people that would, the people that would go to the Mercedes dealer.

Crew Chief Brad: They don’t care.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, they wouldn’t know BMW motors in it.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s gonna have a Mercedes badge on it. It’s gonna have Mercedes plastic on top. It’s not gonna say BMW anywhere unless you start taking parts off of it. Nobody’s gonna care. 90% of the people. Aren’t gonna care.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s like the Porsche. People with their V eights that don’t know that they’re Audi V eights or the V sixes, were Volkswagen engines here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I get it. Right? So it’s the same thing, but that’s at least within the family. So it makes sense that Audi will build the V eights for Porsche and Porsche’s designing something else for somebody else, and they just swap it around. But BMW and Mercedes are competitors. That’s sort of what I was getting at.

Executive Producer Tania: This at least makes more sense than BMW giving motors to Toyota. Yeah. That, that, you know,

Crew Chief Brad: how about Toyota in, in Subaru selling basically the [00:46:00] exact same car makes and competing with each other. Makes sense. Makes no sense. Sense. Or how about even better? GM competing with gm with the Pontiac Firebird and the Chevy Camaro, or the GMC Sierra and the Chevy Silverado.

They’re the exact same vehicles. They are competing with each other. It is the stupidest thing in the world,

Executive Producer Tania: but people don’t even realize it. My GM C’s better than your Chevy.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. It’s got the same motor in the same chassis and his exact same truck with a different badge on the front, but mine’s better.

Crew Chief Eric: Mm-hmm. And on Tuesday, Jim Bob put the bow tie on the front, and on Thursday he put on GMC on the same assembly line. Right.

Crew Chief Brad: But to the main point, normal car buyers, especially in this market, they’re not gonna care. They don’t care.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what they are gonna care about? Safety recalls.

FLORIDA MAN!: Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: and Brad, this is one of your favorites because we haven’t had one of these in a while.

Would you like to inform our audience, our listeners,

Crew Chief Brad: do people get locked in the trunk again?

Crew Chief Eric: No. The brakes, I think they fixed those

Crew Chief Brad: too. With the

Executive Producer Tania: hood [00:47:00] coming off,

Crew Chief Brad: is it made with Home Depot? Wasn’t that an early recall? I think the cars would like brick themselves or something. At some point.

Executive Producer Tania: They had a problem.

The hood wouldn’t latch. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They they did have the, yeah. Fuel spillage, fire risk. Awesome. That is awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: It sounds like the drain, like the overfill. If you accidentally overfilled and then the little cup area uhhuh of the gas cap, well,

Crew Chief Brad: their cup overfloweth.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it overfloweth and drain it onto exhausted Very hot earth.

Yeah. Yeah. So

Crew Chief Eric: what we’re on about is yet another, I mean, this is for a very small portion of the driver enthusiast community as well. For all you see eight Corvette owners, there is yet another recall on the list for you. So there you

Executive Producer Tania: go. I’m sorry. It leaks onto the radiator, not the exhaust.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that’s, that’s just air to, or that’s, that’s just a water to water inter cooler.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s hot though. It’ll ignite the fumes. Boom. Done. Literally like [00:48:00] Zoolander. Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s like they saw Tesla with all the, like the car fires and stuff like Hold, hold my beer.

Executive Producer Tania: This is a rare occurrence in malfunctioning filling station pumps appear to be a contributing factor. What is malfunctioning on the fuel pump?

Crew Chief Brad: The automatic shutoff.

Executive Producer Tania: I said Zoolander is not

Crew Chief Brad: automatically shutting off, even though every fuel pump I’ve ever been to has a warning sign that says, do not leave the pump unattended. I bet you these idiots are going to Wawa and they’re running inside to get their burritos

Crew Chief Eric: while I’m waiting for them to get back in their car so I could fill up.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: But I feel like I’ve had pumps. You put the lock in and then it goes punk and then it releases. I feel like I’ve had pumps where that hasn’t released and yet the fuel has still stopped flowing.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve also had pumps that did not stop flowing.

Executive Producer Tania: Uhhuh. That’s the malfunctioning

Crew Chief Eric: one I guess.

Yeah. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: they’ve happened to me like twice.

Crew Chief Eric: That one speedway in the middle of Illinois

Crew Chief Brad: in, uh, 26, 27 years of driving. That’s happened like twice. [00:49:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we talked about infinity earlier, so we’re gonna switch again and talk about JDM and Asian car news a little bit more Nissan here. I alluded to earlier, more manual transmission Nissans.

That’s right folks. The nimo edition of the 400 Z is gonna be a manual. Ooh. So

Crew Chief Brad: this scares me.

Crew Chief Eric: Why?

Crew Chief Brad: Because of the conversation we had earlier about Nissan and their troubles and infinity and who buys ’em anymore and everything. The one Nissan that I would want to own

FLORIDA MAN!: mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Brad: Scared to buy it because is Nissan even gonna be around Who’s gonna service it when they collapse?

Crew Chief Eric: You know, that’s a very, very valid point. And that’s what has kept me from going out and getting one as well, because I really do like these. I mean, I really truly do like these, I’ve said it before, they check a ton of boxes. They’re very well appointed. They’re very well priced. Yes. It’s not as fast as a Supra, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But the point is, for every day this is fantastic and it [00:50:00] looks fantastic and it goes like stink. Your point, what happens in two years if Nissan’s not here?

Crew Chief Brad: What happened to all those people with their pontiacs? I guess they can go to gm, like all the Pontiac G eights and the GTOs and all that stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they can go to Advanced Auto, so you know,

Crew Chief Brad: all good.

Well, true.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s not the only Nissan, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Tanya? No, because they’re also bringing the 300 ZX inspired heritage edition in midnight purple, which I guess was a color that GTR came in. The new Nissan Z, you can get it in this fancy purple color.

Crew Chief Eric: One of my favorite three 50 Z colors as well. They had like an ultraviolet like this too, and it’s gorgeous.

Really, really awesome color.

Crew Chief Brad: Hmm. Very tough. It almost looks like the mystic chrome. Does it have like a hint of green?

Crew Chief Eric: It does in this photograph, although that could be, could just be lighting. That could be AI generated.

Crew Chief Brad: Everything’s AI generated these days. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s hard to tell the, the one on the three 50 Z was just purple.

Like those just came in that ultraviolet, like the E 36 BMWs did. Yeah, but I like this because I’ve always thought that [00:51:00] was a really, really good color for these cars. They wore it really well, and I like the gold wheels too.

Crew Chief Brad: It’ll be really hard to choose between this and a RS three powered golf R.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it wouldn’t.

I’d buy this all day long for the money. The golf’s gonna be more expensive than the Z.

Crew Chief Brad: True. The golf’s gonna be like $75,000.

Crew Chief Eric: We researched this recently. The regular front wheel drive, GTI, with the auto bond package is almost $42,000. MSRP. So what’s the new golf R? With the RS three motor gonna cost 75 80,000 because that’s what the RSS three and the TTRS cost.

So they’re not gonna give it away for free. If that’s true. Who is gonna buy a $70,000 Volkswagen? The same people that bought Phons, which was nobody

Crew Chief Brad: at, at that point I would just go and get an RS three for cheaper ’cause it’s been out longer.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, so moving on with JDM News. Tanya, you got some hot to report here?

What’s this thing called? The yin yang?

Crew Chief Brad: I can’t even say the name.

Crew Chief Eric: The Wang [00:52:00] Chung. What is this?

Executive Producer Tania: Hey, now.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s my Yang Wang.

Executive Producer Tania: So yes, I would think that’s roughly the correct pronunciation. So the BDS Yang Wang U nine Extreme and it’s an electric car, is now the fastest car in the world. Recorded at 308 miles per hour.

Crew Chief Eric: I read the, uh, comments on this and people were just blowing it up. ’cause they’re like, well, and then they were like, well, there’s land speed cars from the 1920s that are faster than this. And it’s like, okay, apples and chainsaws, folks. Like this is stupid. It did. The speed that it did, it was recorded. It was, it was made official.

Leave it where it is. Okay, great. So we have an electric card that ran its battery down and reached 308 miles an hour. I mean, okay, how many times can you do that in a row? At least with the Veron, you could refill it and do it again moments later. It’s an interesting looking McLaren. It does look a lot like a McLaren.

So here’s the thing I remember about when [00:53:00] the Veron set the production car record. The big thing wasn’t necessarily the power. The, the power plant in the Veron was massive. A thousand horsepower quad turbos W 16 and all this crazy stuff that they came up with. And it was a slippery car, so it cheated the wind and, and everything that had going for it.

But the tire manufacturer was the big deciding factor as to whether or not it could reach that speed. What didn’t impress me was that they made an electric car with enough juice and enough motors and enough potency to get to 300 miles an hour is who made those low profile tires. They could do 300 miles an hour because that’s more interesting than the car.

Crew Chief Brad: Does it say who did? Who made ’em?

Crew Chief Eric: No, that’s, I haven’t been able to find that. Hold on. Hold on. One person speculated that it. Oh, it was probably Michelin. Okay, great. That’s not fact. GD tires. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: God damn tires.

Executive Producer Tania: GITI. I got my gds and my Yang

Crew Chief Brad: [00:54:00] yang. My yang Wangs got some goddamn tires.

Executive Producer Tania: BYD was able to set new EV land speed record equipped with the GD Sport.

E GTR two pro tires Uhhuh, a tire pattern that was especially designed and developed in collaboration with a Yang Wang team.

Crew Chief Brad: My Yang Wang’s got a team.

Executive Producer Tania: Can you imagine? Roll it up with a T-shirt

Crew Chief Eric: that says Team Yang Wang.

The jokes write themselves. I mean, there’s nothing you could do.

Crew Chief Brad: Yang Wang.

Executive Producer Tania: Hold on. Who makes GD tires? So it’s a street legal, semi slick designed for electric supercars. There you go.

Crew Chief Brad: And it only comes on one the yang wing collusion.

Crew Chief Eric: As we wrap up our Asian car news, we actually have some sad news this month, right Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: I saw this

Executive Producer Tania: Su Matano, the father of the Miata passed away. It’s 76 years old a couple days ago. So he not only is [00:55:00] responsible for the Miata, he’s also responsible for the FD Rx seven.

Crew Chief Eric: I actually interviewed a couple of years ago Professor Norman Garrett, who was Mr. M’s right hand man. In designing the Miata, he developed parts of the suspension and all the things that we love about the Miata and, and I urge people, if you’ve never dove into the creation story of the Miata, to go back into our catalog and listen to that episode.

It was a couple of years ago, but he also talks about working on the third gen RX seven with Mr. M as well. So it’s pretty cool. But you know, sad to see a legend in the design world, unfortunately taken from us. I dunno, the Miata lives on. I’m curious to see what comes next for Mazda in that department.

They’re doing good things elsewhere. Nowadays I’m seeing, I’m seeing them all over the road. It’s crazy.

Executive Producer Tania: What Mazda Miatas? No. Miata? No, I’m talking Mazdas in general. Mazdas in general, but I haven’t seen any of the new Miatas on the road like hardly.

Crew Chief Eric: Do they still make the ND Miata? I

Executive Producer Tania: think so.

Crew Chief Eric: Well this, because they’re all Miata Cup cars and until, you know what I mean?

They gotta make their way through the [00:56:00] system.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe the Mid Atlantic’s not a great.

Crew Chief Eric: Weather place for them? No, no. I think you see probably more in the southwest than California and places Florida, places like that. You definitely see ’em at the track. That’s for sure. I mean, Brad, when we were at VIR, there’s a whole cup series of end Miatas.

I mean they, there was what, probably 35 of them out there running the track. It was nuts. It’s like, it sounded like a swarm of hornets. It was bonkers. Shout out to Sally Mott. Unfortunately, she had a bad run.

Crew Chief Brad: Mazda’s always made really interesting looking sharp cars to me. Something about them, for whatever reason, they’re just, I, I used to love the 6 2 6.

If we go back to our original topic, like you never see six two sixes anymore. The Mazda speed six.

Crew Chief Eric: The

Crew Chief Brad: Mazda millennia.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my God. Oh wow. What? That’s like

Crew Chief Eric: Windows me edition. Come on. Remember the Mazda Millennia?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Those were nice cars too.

Crew Chief Eric: Forgot about that.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re styling. It’s just like if I was in the market for an SUV right now, I would totally go look at the CX 90.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, those are really nice. And with that turbo inline six. [00:57:00]

Crew Chief Brad: They’re really, really slick looking.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s a BMW takeout right there. ’cause you can get it for a lot less than an X five. And it’s as nice inside and out as the BMWs are, or at least the BMWs used to be. Right. ’cause the Germans are starting to make stuff a little cheaper.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. The thing about the Germans making stuff cheaper is they’re using cheaper parts. Mazda’s been making things cheaper just because they like making things cheaper.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s true. Well, we don’t often have motorcycle news, but we do have motorcycle news and I think this one would shock you guys.

We’re probably not sad to see him leave Formula One, but all I’m gonna say is that it’s gonna make Moto GP super interesting. Now, the Gunther Steiner is a team principle. Is he of what? Yes. And he owns a Moto GP team now or whatever.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s gonna make Ride to Survive season one. Really interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: I didn’t know Gene Haas bought a motorcycle team. God fucking gene ass. Can you

Crew Chief Eric: imagine? [00:58:00] I mean, maybe it’s the right place for Gunther. I don’t know. Good luck to him. Going into next year, he is gonna be at the head of Tech three Racing Moto GP team, full ownership.

Crew Chief Brad: It’ll be back marker team. So in order for him to get the job as team principal, he had to buy the team.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, if you aint first, your last. Right. Also in Motorcycle news, I thought it was cool to see the other series. You know, there’s Moto GP and then there’s Moto America and Moto America season finale is gonna be in our backyard and we’ll be over by the time you listen to this episode. But here at the tail end of September, Moto America will be finishing out its season at New Jersey Motorsport Park.

How cool is that? So I wanna keep that on our radar for next year because it has been on my bucket list to go to one of these like high end motorcycle races like Mo GP or MO America, and check it out. ’cause I, on TV it’s like, eh, like car racing on tv. I can do motorcycles for whatever reason I can’t. But I’d really like to go see one in person.

So Brad, that’s gonna be one of our [00:59:00] adventures for next year. And if Motor America is coming to NJ and P. Well, why the hell not? Right?

Crew Chief Brad: Do they go to VIR? If they go to VIR? I am so there.

Crew Chief Eric: I may be like, we gotta figure it out.

Crew Chief Brad: I and I, I, I would love to watch the race with the baggers.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Here. It’s really entertaining.

Those bikes

Crew Chief Brad: look really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Switching gears to EVs and concept cars,

Crew Chief Brad: what do you got for us, Eric?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, I wanna go back and unfortunately Brad, I don’t know if you listened to the episode where William covered for you, and we talked about our adventures in Europe. One of the things that came up was William and I were talking about the rules and stuff in the EU were more electric cars.

More electric cars, more electric cars. I wanted to circle back, I wanted to ask Tanya as much as they pushed for electric cars. I didn’t see any charging stations anywhere, so I kept wondering like, where are people charging their EVs in Europe?

Executive Producer Tania: And I stopped at a couple auto grills, and I can’t say maybe there were a couple end spots.

I don’t know. I don’t remember.

Crew Chief Eric: And if they are, they’re very well hidden, or maybe they’re in people’s [01:00:00] personal garages or you know, they’re charging at home or something like that. Because over there they already do two 20. So you could do a level two charger like right off the bat. But it was something that William and I had talked about after the episode and he goes, yeah man, I remember we were talking about it and.

There were no chargers, even in France where we were, you didn’t really see them. And I was like, it’s really bizarre because there’s such a big push for EVs in the eu. So if somebody’s got more information on that, I would love to know like how they’re doing their charging on, on such an old infrastructure.

I mean, we talk about our infrastructure problems as well, which leads into something I found interesting that one of our members posted about how the US government is taking away the ability for EVs to run in the carpool lanes in California.

Executive Producer Tania: Really kinda weird and especially weird for a state like.

California Right. To be denying this one point that the author makes but really fails to elaborate on appropriately, I think, is that, well, to be [01:01:00] fair, the Carpool lane is intended mostly for carpooling and Yes, by name, that’s true. But the reason carpool lanes even originated was back in the seventies ’cause of the oil crisis where they wanted you to carpool in order to reduce congestion and emissions and conserve fuel by having less cars on the road.

Right? And so if it is about emissions and things like that. Well then an an ev no matter the number of people in it fits that criteria.

Crew Chief Eric: Ooh. I know what they’ll do in California. They’ll create like their version of a bike lien for EVs. It’s the EV lien. Ooh.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s the

Crew Chief Eric: charger in it. So they charge

Executive Producer Tania: themselves as they go.

Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And then they bill you for it on a subscription. That’s how it’s gonna work in California. That’s what’s coming next. That’s what my spidey sense is telling me. I don’t know how I feel about this. It’s, it’s kind of weird. It is kind of weird because even the HOV lanes, you know, the carpool lanes that we have here on the East coast, I think people abuse them.

Executive Producer Tania: Which on the one hand then like, fine put more EVs in there. ’cause then [01:02:00] that’s less people in the main lanes clogging it up. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, now we get to move on to Brad’s favorite part of the drive-through Lost and found. Tanya, I found something for you and I’m wondering if it was a missed opportunity.

Executive Producer Tania: I remember this one now.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, remember this one? This is that sleeper beetle with the twin turbo VR six under the hood, making like a gajillion horsepower. And at the time we were watching the auction on bring a trailer and it was like, I dunno, like 20 grand. And I was like, yeah, that’s not bad. This car’s got a lot of mods in it.

There’s a lot of work done to this car. So were we right not to pull the trigger or did it sell for too much? What did it go for?

Executive Producer Tania: 56,000, almost 57. But it’s a new beetle or sorry. Yeah, it’s a new beetle version. But I mean, I meant it’s a turbo s that they converted to this twin VR six. And so my hangup even at $20,000 is I know what it means to work on a four [01:03:00] cylinder new beetle.

That it barely fits. How did they fit? Like you ever have to do maintenance on this thing. It would be an absolute tragedy from the photo. I think you have to disconnect half this intake just to get the battery out now,

Crew Chief Eric: and

Executive Producer Tania: it’s

Crew Chief Eric: all-wheel drive. It’s basically an RSI with twin turbos,

Executive Producer Tania: which I hope they would’ve imported one then because if they converted a front wheel drive to drive, my God, that’s a

Crew Chief Eric: tube frame rear end.

I mean, you just have to look at it at the pictures of it up on the lift.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. Yeah. That’s sick though, dude. I mean that, Ugh.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean for the amount of work they did on it. 20,000 would’ve been an absolute steal. Yeah. For the labor and the time that went into it. One could argue maybe even at 50,000, that was still a good deal.

All wheel drive conversion, vr, sixes, blah, blah blah. Everything else that’s got going on with it,

Crew Chief Eric: one of one beetle. But this was done professionally. This was an HPA beat a lot of Canada. This was back in the heyday when they were competing against EIP tuning, which became [01:04:00] IAG. The big Subaru guys, they built their monster, R 32, which HPA had one.

But then they built this, and it’s like, the nice part is it was professionally built. It wasn’t done in somebody’s basement, out of parts overnight from Japan. You’ve got that going for it. But when you dig into a car like this that’s so specialized, you begin to wonder, well, where did they source that part?

Can I get that part? Was it something that they machined or did they fabricate it? So there’s a lot of question marks. So I think it would’ve been really cool to your point, if it had sold for 25, I would’ve felt really bad. This is a 400 horsepower all wheel drive beetle. This would’ve been really cool to kick around in.

I’d have been scared to drive it. ’cause God forbid

Executive Producer Tania: something breaks.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but it would’ve been super

Executive Producer Tania: cool though. It’d have to be just like you drive around occasionally,

Crew Chief Eric: the occasional time you drive around, it’d be awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: It would be

Crew Chief Eric: no doubt. I think the irony though here is that this is where great minds think alike, or it’s.

These are the only seats that fit that car. They have the exact same seats in this car that you have in yours. I

Executive Producer Tania: know. I noticed [01:05:00] exactly

Crew Chief Eric: the

Crew Chief Eric: same

Crew Chief Eric: seat. I was like, wow, look at that.

Crew Chief Brad: Somebody back in the day, and I thought it might have been HPA, but I can’t remember who it was, made a mid engine S four powered Mark 4G TI.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, you’re right. That did exist. And then the factory did that crazy mark five W 12 thing that, yeah, proof of concept. I’m trying to remember who did that. Mid-engine golf. Was it Dahlback? Oh, it’s the Dahlback car. Yeah, they did. They did that. They also did the inline five cylinder turbo golf. That was like ridiculous.

They would shoot flames out the back and stuff. They had all sorts of crazy cars. I think they were in like Sweden or Germany or somewhere. I think

Executive Producer Tania: I had that doll back. Golf as my screensaver for a while back in the day.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. They called it the RSI or RST or something like that. It’s been a while since I looked at those.

But any rate, our friends, gray Chevrolet and Chuck LeDuc, you know they sell cars all the time, but did you know that Amazon sells cars now? I

Crew Chief Brad: know Amazon sells [01:06:00] houses.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. ’cause don’t, don’t they have that pickup truck? Bezos’s pickup truck. This is Hertz is selling their fleet through Amazon. Oh, so you can, oh, you can one click buy now.

That’s what I’m saying. Your car shows up next day. Prime delivery on a Carvana tow truck. I’ve said it before. No one aspires to own a rental car. Let’s just nip this in the bud. Would you buy an ex rental car from Hertz through Amazon? How desperate do you have to be?

Crew Chief Brad: There are a lot of channels there.

You gotta go through

Crew Chief Eric: everything from A to Z. Alright, fine. I’m gonna do a Brad version of this question. All right. Here we go. Hertz through Amazon or used Nissan Ultima. Which do you buy?

Executive Producer Tania: Used Hertz Nissan Ultima through Amazon.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s

Executive Producer Tania: like the worst of the worst. Oh, and, and to quote the article to make you feel safe about buying these hertz cars.

The vast majority of people renting something like [01:07:00] a Nissan Altima, ah, my God, aren’t launching it off a ramp or doing burnouts in a parking lot. I beg to challenge that statement. Yeah, right. Because Nissan Altimas, they live a rough life. They’ve seen some things,

Crew Chief Brad: rental cars in general, live a rough life and have seen some things.

The last time I had, I had a rental. When I totaled my Camaro, I had a trailblazer and I blew out the power steering doing donuts in the snow, and I just drove it back and said, Hey, the power steering stopped working, and they gave me a new one.

Executive Producer Tania: Don’t know what happened. Also, the tires are bald.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what happened.

It just stopped working on me. I, I just, I’m gonna go buy a car now, so leave me alone.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy. We’ve only done this a couple times this year. And we only have a couple more full drive-throughs left. Are we actually gonna talk about Tesla? I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: I thought we took the year off.

Crew Chief Eric: We said we weren’t. Well, why do we do this instead of talking about them?

We’ll just post the articles and not bother. They’re there for you to look at if you really wanna know. But I do wanna touch [01:08:00] on this one because it’s not really Tesla specifically, but about Tesla. My wife found this and sent it over and it’s from the Atlantic, not a source that we normally pull articles from.

And it was just a one shot saying Tesla wants out of the car business. I’m wondering how true that is because the Atlantic’s not your typical clickbait. We’re gonna do this to get people’s attention. You know, they’re usually pretty serious news, and I’m just like,

Executive Producer Tania: huh. This is something, I feel like you said from the beginning that they’re not a car manufacturer, they’re a software company.

Crew Chief Brad: Thank you. This article has absolutely zero credibility to me.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. I also didn’t read it, so I don’t know what it says. The,

Crew Chief Brad: the first sentence, Elon Musk still makes some of America’s best electric cars. Bullshit. And then, and then here we go. Because cyber truck, further on in that first paragraph, when the Model Y became the world’s bestselling car,

Crew Chief Eric: it did for like a hot second.

So that’s not. A lie necessarily. We’ll call it an [01:09:00] equivocation, which is lying with the truth, but it’s not necessarily a lie.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s bullshit. Okay. I don’t give a fuck what the numbers say. Flag on the

Crew Chief Eric: play.

Crew Chief Brad: The F-150 is the world’s is No, the, the Toyota Camry or the Toyota Corolla or whatever is the world’s best selling car.

Crew Chief Eric: Not in America. F-150 is the best one 50 in

Crew Chief Brad: America. Yeah, sure. True. But just like America’s best electric cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Switching gears. To what has changed names more times on this show than I can think, which is now called seriously what could go wrong?

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered Expectation,

Crew Chief Eric: formerly Lowered Expectations.

Crew Chief Brad: How many times do we change the name to these

Crew Chief Eric: segments? It’s whatever you come up with, Brad. Whatever suits your fancy that month. I wanna go back yet again to the French episode that we did that William was here. If you remember Tanya, we were talking about leaving manual transmission cars, not in gear when they’re parked, just pull on the hand brake.

And we couldn’t figure out why. We’ve always, you know, I just put it in first gear, why [01:10:00] bother with the hand brake? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What kind of stresses is it putting on the transmission? And I saw a video from Europe. I finally figured out why they don’t put the cars in gear. And unfortunately I don’t have the link for it anymore.

’cause I lost it. It was one of those Instagram reels or whatever. And I’ll just explain it to you. The mystery is solved. Now, if you’ve ever watched anybody parallel park in Paris or Budapest or Rome, or pick a city in Europe and there’s no space, if the car’s not in gear, you can push it. Make space for you to fit because you can override the handbrake and then when you stop pushing the other car, it’ll just sit there.

’cause the handbrake will hold it. So that’s why you don’t put your car in gear, because if you have left your car in gear and somebody pushed you out of the way to make space because you parked like a butthead, they ruin your transmission. So it’s courtesy amongst the citizens that you leave your car.

In neutral

Crew Chief Brad: or just don’t park like a butthead.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, yeah, but still I solved the mystery. That’s the reason.

Crew Chief Brad: Are these people all driving PEOs?

Crew Chief Eric: Of course they are. I mean, [01:11:00] come on.

Crew Chief Brad: And do they all have those stupid little rubber mats on their bumpers? Like the people up in New York that leave them on the road when they’re going down the Jersey turnpike?

Oh my

Crew Chief Eric: God. Every time I see somebody with that, I’m like, where the hell do you live? The one that comes outta the trunk? Yes. It’s like flaps outta the trunk.

Crew Chief Brad: But they just, they’re, they’re lazy, so they don’t bother putting it up when they’re like driving somewhere. They just leave it down. So there’s this two inch thick rubber mat hanging out the back of their trunk.

Crew Chief Eric: I kid you not, I literally watch the video of somebody like with a fiat move, two other cars so they could fit. And it wasn’t like they were bashing them like you, I’m gonna crash into it and move it. No, they just gently nudged it and then they nudged the other one and then they made space and then they parked and they got outta the car and they walked away.

It wasn’t like, oh, stage it for the gram. It was like closed circuit tv, just watching the street. And I’m like, this is for real people. Wow. And at that moment, that’s when I was like, boom. Light bulb went off. I got, I understand now.

Crew Chief Brad: So it’s proper etiquette to do that on the streets of Europe. But if I do it on an airplane, no, that’s sexual harassment.[01:12:00]

Crew Chief Eric: What? That’s okay. ’cause Southwest has a sign seating now, so it’s all good. It’ll fix all the problems. Yeah. Oh my God.

Executive Producer Tania: Never sit

Crew Chief Brad: in the middle.

Executive Producer Tania: I took a left turn,

Crew Chief Eric: dude, I make sure I fly in a different row than you when we get on a plane. I can’t even make it through security with you. Remember? That’s a whole nother story.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah. ’cause I’m, I’m Mr. America.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right. So during our little adventure to VIR, one of the evenings, we got an opportunity to watch. The Formula One movie.

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t know that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s why we kept it, and we also kept it in lowered expectations. Brad, what’s your 32nd synopsis of the Formula One movie?

Crew Chief Brad: I thought it was like any race, car, movie or whatever that’s come out in the last few years. It was just okay. It was entertaining. It’s not factual regarding like stuff that the car nerds would pick up on. Yeah, I mean, obviously there’s things that are wrong and then dramatizations and stuff like that. I thought it was entertaining.

I thought it was good. Uh, it was no [01:13:00] different than the Grando movie.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the cameos in the movie, like, you know, Alonzo popping up and then the beginning Patrick Long’s there when they’re at Daytona and stuff like that. And

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, it’s, it’s just a newer version of Driven

Crew Chief Eric: in some ways. Yeah. I think you could have replaced Brad Pitt with just about anybody.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, who it should have been. It should have been Dempsey.

Crew Chief Eric: That would’ve been a lot cooler actually,

Crew Chief Brad: either Dempsey or Fastbender. ’cause they actually have legitimate like chops and they’re both great actors. I mean, they’re, I don’t think Brad Pitt’s a better actor than anyone. What happened is Brad Pitt paid for the movie.

I

Crew Chief Eric: think there was a weird undertone. Brad Pitt’s teammate was sort of this poster, Lewis Hamilton trying to make a statement. Hamilton was also one of the producers or something like that. Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: He was heavily involved in it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And I feel like he wrote some of his own personality and maybe some of his own soapbox into that character.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. I didn’t know how to come away from it, but it was like, it was really obvious. Right. Maybe not to other people.

Crew Chief Brad: He came across as like a [01:14:00] pre Madonna kind of. Yeah. Like I’m, I’m the best, you know, kind of thing. And then like they also tried to spin it like he did stupid things like Yeah.

To make people feel that way. But they also tried to spin it like he was kind of misunderstood. His upbringing and like the relationship with his mom and stuff like that. I don’t think his dad was in the picture in the film. Right. I can’t remember if his dad was there or not, but they were trying to give a little bit of backstory, I guess, into his personality and how he might have been that way.

But I feel like it was kind of shallow.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought that Pavier Barham did a good job. I actually really liked him. I love

Crew Chief Brad: him as a, he’s, he’s a great actor.

Crew Chief Eric: He did a good job. I think he played the part of, I’m trying to remember the Italian guy’s name that was always sort of behind the scenes, even in the old days with like Lancia and stuff like that.

And his name escapes me at the moment. But I think he portrayed that type of behind the scenes, pulling the strings, playing the F1 politics and all that kind of stuff. He had some good one-liners.

Crew Chief Brad: He was Lawrence Stroll.

Crew Chief Eric: No, he was not Lawrence Stroll. No, not at all. I thought he did a really good job in [01:15:00] that.

I, although I think it was funny to see like Christian Horner in the, the background kind of dates the movie a little bit based on recent events, but uh, you know, I. I know you’re heartbroken over that, Brad. I mean, Christian Horner’s gone from Red Bull.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I, I don’t care.

Executive Producer Tania: Christian Horn Dog. What?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’ll come back to Formula One in a minute.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, well, Tanya, have you watched the F1 movie yet?

Crew Chief Eric: No, have not. No spoilers, no. Now that’s why we don’t wanna tell you anything more, but when you do, you let us know. We’ll do this again, then we will, we’ll do it again. Yeah. It’s sort of like the Sena thing that took six months for you to watch.

You know what I’m saying? Well, where can I watch it? You can watch it through Prime. You don’t have to have Apple,

Crew Chief Brad: but you have to rent it.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s how we watched it,

Crew Chief Brad: which means you have to pay for it for 12. Nine nine

Executive Producer Tania: can watch it now for 49 cents on YouTube. Apparently

Crew Chief Brad: for five hours. There’s the advertise, there’s the

Crew Chief Eric: some guy with a handy cam in the, in the theater,

Crew Chief Eric: back to the old bootleg days.

Maybe they go to that movie theater that William [01:16:00] goes to where it’s like seven bucks and you gotta shuck your own popcorn. You know that kind of thing.

Executive Producer Tania: 20 bucks to rent it. Yeah. How much is it that just go buy

Crew Chief Eric: 22? You can’t, ’cause it’s an Apple thing, you can’t buy it. You can, you can buy

Crew Chief Brad: it. That’s what, um, Tom,

Crew Chief Eric: I thought he rented it throughout.

No,

Crew Chief Brad: he bought it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, whatever. It’s still 20 bucks or 20. But

Crew Chief Brad: he did get it through Prime.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, bullshit. You can buy it on Blu-ray. Target 33 49.

Crew Chief Brad: Who’s got a Blu-ray player

Executive Producer Tania: that’s even more

Crew Chief Brad: expensive.

Executive Producer Tania: No, wait a second. F1, the movie Blu-Ray plus digital copy. 24.95 at Walmart

Crew Chief Eric: plus digital copy, so you get it on Fandango.

So just go Fandango

Executive Producer Tania: and get it. Then

Crew Chief Eric: the

Crew Chief Brad: digital copy is standard definition. Well, it’s

Crew Chief Eric: $20 on Fandango too, but at least you get it and you’re done. Right. Boom,

Executive Producer Tania: whatever. I can get it for $24 at Walmart too.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s like when you buy TurboTax at Best Buy and they send you the product code, you’re gonna get the product code.

Crew Chief Eric: So terrible. So in lieu of rich people. Thanks. I just want to switch it up and go GTM Book Club and recommend two books that I [01:17:00] read during this time off that we had skipping a month of the drive through. So I went back and I read a book called Faster by Neil Bascom. It’s the story of Lucy O’Reilly Shell and Renee Drefus and the dhe.

That’s the car manufactured dhe, and it talks about challenging the silver arrows of Mercedes and Auto Union right up to the brink of World War ii. It’s also the story that Lauren Goodman, who comes on the show to do our Women of the Autos Sphere series. She did a presentation on that as part of her work at Revs for the Ainger Symposium a couple years back.

So I was able to kind of jump back into that story and learn a lot more about it. I’ll say the book is very detailed if you’re not. A historical fiction type. Maybe it’s not your thing. If you like World War II and you wanna get a different outlook on, you know, the buildup to World War ii, it’s a good book from that perspective.

There is a lot of car technical jargon in it and you’re, you’re trying to kind of keep up with everything that’s going on. But it’s available on Amazon at Barnes and Noble, and it’s also available as an audio book [01:18:00] on Spotify. In addition to that, I didn’t get the print version. I kind of cheated and did the audio book.

I listened to the Man in the White Suit as an audio book available through Spotify. For those that don’t know, that’s the story of Ben Collins, the Stig from Top Gear. He was the second Stig from 2003 to 2011. It’s actually read by Ben Collins and it gives some really interesting behind the scenes views in, not only into his racing career, his personal life, things like, I didn’t know he was in the Army Reserves, you know, stuff like that.

But it also talks about the golden era of top gear. And I thought it was really cool to hear his perspective on, you know, James May and working with Hammonds and what Jeremy Clarkson was like, you know, when the cameras are turned off and things like that. So that was a really good, listen, I don’t wanna call it a read, you know, again, it’s available as an audiobook free if you have Spotify premium.

So check out the man in the white suit, and I’m still hoping to have Ben on an episode of Evening with a Legend, ’cause one of the [01:19:00] chapters in the book is devoted to his three attempts at the 24 hours of Lama. So yeah, there’s hope. Cross our fingers on that one. All right, Tanya’s favorite section of the drive through, formerly known as Florida Man.

Are you faster than an interceptor?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, and this first one definitely is a, are you faster than interceptor in your gravelly zero turn lawnmower going down the, oh no Florida highway. Are you faster than an interceptor? And the answer to that is no.

Crew Chief Eric: I think the answer always no. This is a nice zero turn.

They can do 25, 30 mile an hour. Right? I mean, that’s pretty decent.

Crew Chief Brad: I used to go to the drag strip up there in Frederick all the time and they had the [01:20:00] snowmobiles and the, the lawnmowers, the tractors right, going down the drag. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I never saw a zero turn do it though.

What was he drinking? That’s my question.

Crew Chief Eric: So this next one I had subtitled, it’s time to

Executive Producer Tania: make the donuts. So I’m impressed with this. ’cause it’s not every day, it’s a woman. It’s. Doing donuts in a Mustang Fresno, California. This 21-year-old, she’s doing donuts, then she’s trying to hit the officers on the motorcycle.

She gets pit maneuvered. Then she gets tasered and then she gets arrested, and this didn’t happen at 2:00 AM this happened in broad daylight, 9:00 AM

Crew Chief Brad: after the school drop off, she was like, I’m gonna do some donuts. Phenomenal.

Executive Producer Tania: Holy

Crew Chief Eric: crap.

Executive Producer Tania: She was probably.

Crew Chief Eric: On something. At least she had the decency not to do it at a cars and

Executive Producer Tania: coffee.

No, she just did it in a neighborhood. It looks like

Crew Chief Eric: there weren’t any pedestrians

Executive Producer Tania: around that know at the moment. It looked like there was a sidewalk, you know, whatever. This could have been little kids. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: [01:21:00] boy.

Executive Producer Tania: What’s next? Oh yes. So also, are you faster than interceptor? We go to Indiana, we haven’t been to Indiana.

I don’t know. We need to

Crew Chief Eric: create that heat map of all the places we’ve had. Florida man stories. I’m telling you

Executive Producer Tania: in another edition of Are You Faster Than Interceptor? Are you Faster than a Battery Powered Power Wheels Jeep?

Crew Chief Brad: What?

Executive Producer Tania: You’re kidding me. So he was drunk, and so I guess he figured I won’t get in my real car.

I’ll get in a Power Wheels Jeep and that won’t count. Come on. But he got a DUI in a Power Wheels Jeep.

Crew Chief Brad: This reminds me of that girl. She was in college and she lost her license for driving under the influence. So she drove around town in like a pink Barbie Jeep or something, going to the grocery store and all that shit.

Crew Chief Eric: At least he didn’t try to evade the cops, although it would’ve been really funny to see him bang a hard right and just go off into the grass and see if they would chase him. But I, I do appreciate the fact that he pulled over onto that shoulder [01:22:00] apron, driveway, whatever it is, and he just immediately put his hands up.

I know I’ve done wrong. Is this really a crime? It’s a crime shame because you know how these Florida man stories usually end up, you get out, you get naked and you run into a swamp. So none of those things

Crew Chief Eric: happen. So it’s a completely,

Executive Producer Tania: he would’ve already started that. He was naked. This

Crew Chief Eric: is

Executive Producer Tania: awesome. So this was a weird one.

Apparently some sort of scam in Cleveland, and I’m not sure I fully understood it the first time, nor fully understand it this time. Some lady was driving down the road and then she heard what, apparently it sounded like a rock hitting the windshield. Mm-hmm. Kept on going. Hours later when she’s home, these people roll up to her house.

Demanding that she has her cell phone, she ignored them and all this stuff. And she goes to go look at her car and there was a cell phone attached to it, like magnetic.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh. So they tracked her.

Executive Producer Tania: But what I’m confused about is were they trying to do a home invasion? ’cause then why leave the cell phone on the car?

I don’t know. [01:23:00] That’s, they don’t say where she found it. So maybe she looked really hard and, and kind of found it in a hidden place and they were gonna keep tracking her or something. I’m guessing it must have been some sort of home invasion or attempt to do a carjacking that’s kind of scar. Clever.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Or maybe once they realized the car was at a residence, maybe they were trying to steal the car, so then they figured we’re not gonna steal it outta somebody’s driveway. But if it was at the target parking lot, they would try to get it, you know, or something like that. That’s a little James Bondi throwing your entire phone.

That’s a bit much too. I mean, you’re with a magnet.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I don’t, I guess, I guess that’s the noise she heard was they like launch the phone and it actually stuck

Crew Chief Eric: a higher probability of getting hit by lightning, I think.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. Bizarre. But it’s a, I guess helpful PSA reminder to people to, you know, always be careful when there’s something suspicious.

Like when you go out to your car late at night and there’s, you don’t realize, oh, there’s this piece of paper on the rear glass, I gotta get back outta the car to get it out. Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Just

Crew Chief Brad: drive off. Just drive away.

Executive Producer Tania: Especially women. [01:24:00] Just keep going. Let the piece of paper be stuck under your windshield wiper.

Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a setup right there.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since this is Cleveland, I’m gonna follow up with William and ask him if he knows about this scam.

Executive Producer Tania: Now we’re gonna go to Pennsylvania,

Crew Chief Eric: Penn Tuckie.

Executive Producer Tania: So how would you feel like, so talking about buying those Hertz used rental cars on Amazon that have been seen some things.

How would you like to get a dealership offer a thousand dollars off plus $1,250 in rebate for some Kias that fell into a sinkhole in the dealership’s parking lot,

Crew Chief Brad: the groundbreaking deal,

Crew Chief Eric: 2250 off of a car that was in a hole. Are you serious?

Executive Producer Tania: It didn’t fall below the earth, but the earth broke underneath them and they’re like in the air.

Cattywampus

Crew Chief Eric: fees and destination charges apply. No, I I would hard pass. These are gonna end up at auction. Why wouldn’t you buy one? What does the Carfax say on this? Oh, car fell in hole Repaired by dealership. Really? I don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know. Well, it says four [01:25:00] vehicles into a chasm with minimal damage and no injuries.

Minimal damage. Two of them don’t have rear bumpers.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, ’cause they came off into the sinkhole. Alright, I’m gonna close out this Florida man by looking back, reaching into the past, reaching four years ago of drive-throughs.

Remember when we reported on a guy in the Czech Republic who would go out in his Formula two and go bomb the highways and he’s modified this car. It now looks like a Marlboro Ferrari from like the 1990s. It’s amazing. After four years, the mystery F1 driver has been called on the internet, has finally been caught.

Took him four years to catch this guy. So begging the question, are you faster than an interceptor?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes,

Crew Chief Eric: until now.

Crew Chief Brad: Damn. How did they catch him?

Executive Producer Tania: They found him at home and they arrested him there. Oh, [01:26:00] that’s lame. You gotta catch him on the highway though. They think they saw him at a petrol station and then they got ’em at home.

There was your mistake. Don’t fill up at the petrol station. Have those gas cans at home. Yeah, that was just stupid.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, you never do a fuel stop in a formula car,

Crew Chief Eric: but he got away with it for four years. That’s pretty damn good.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Good for you. I mean, now he’s gonna spend 10 years in jail, so whatever.

It’s all good. Worth it for the gram.

Crew Chief Brad: Any, yeah. Anybody on Instagram? Who’s seen that? That all blacked out? Corvette? Well, I think the license plate said will run.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. Kind of like Mbit or

Crew Chief Brad: something like that. I just, yeah, it’s all for the Gram.

Crew Chief Eric: Sort of like cart Vader. Remember him back in the days he’d go down in his shifter cart through Paris and all that stuff on the highways and whatnot.

He got caught too eventually.

Executive Producer Tania: Some of these comments are funny though, in Italy. I bet he would’ve been rewarded.

Crew Chief Eric: I saw a video of that recently where a guy in a Ferrari got pulled over and the cop came up and shook his hand and [01:27:00] said. This is one of the most beautiful Ferraris ever as the best engine ever, man.

And the kind of es just there. Like he just keeps shaking his hand and keeps talking to him. And he’s like, are you gonna give me a ticket? He’s like, he’s starting to getting tired of all the uh, the compliments, right? And then finally he just lets him go. And I’m like, alright,

Executive Producer Tania: I like this one too. God forbid a man have hobbies.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, on that note, it’s time we go behind the pit wall and quickly talk about news. This is just gonna lead us into other things, Brad, but I just wanted to start with this ’cause I know this is big news for you. I wanted the biggest things for you on your comeback for drive through number 60. And I thought this is just so important that I didn’t even wanna wait to the Formula one segment.

Here it is. Get ready. Get your Kleenex out. Daniel Ricardo confirms retirement for motor racing. This is why I put this first and foremost, retirement for motor racing, period. Full stop. There are no disciplines. Just no more. Are you sad? Be heartbroken. [01:28:00]

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t care what

Crew Chief Eric: you’ve always cared about,

Crew Chief Brad: Ricardo. I mean, it’s not like he died or anything.

He’s just not gonna be racing anymore. He’s still got his brand on Chante.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s that translate to? I’ll pass.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I signed up for the newsletter and I kept getting like product information and stuff and it’s all not my style.

Crew Chief Eric: What do you think that says about him? What do you think it says about Alonzo?

It should be making the same statement,

Crew Chief Brad: and according to you, Hamilton too,

Crew Chief Eric: there’s truth in that statement as well.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, Daniel’s getting up there in age.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think age has anything to do with it though. I think he just lost his passion for it.

Executive Producer Tania: So he lost his passion for all racing then? Yeah. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: I can relate.

I feel like I’ve kinda lost my passion for track driving. The last couple times I went and did it. I didn’t really have any fun. I broke the car, you know, I didn’t really get to go out on track much. I mean, when I say that the pumpkin spice latte is probably not gonna see the track, it’s probably a fair statement.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s gonna see it when you pull up and you park.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s gonna see it when [01:29:00] I go to an IMSA race or professional race or something, but it probably won’t touch a track. Maybe parade.

Crew Chief Eric: Talking about IMSA and sports car and endurance racing, we did go to VIR. It was interesting because as we know, VIR is one of the circuits, though it’s big, and though it has all the safety and runoff and everything like that, the big cars, the LMPs and the LM DHS and the gtps do not run at VIR.

So you had all the support classes. What a handful of LMP twos at best. But everything else was GT production based. So it was a good weekend. I mean, it’s always good to be around the racetrack, right? It’s always good to bump into people and conversations and, and everything like that. But as an aside, while all that was happening, there was news that Lamborghini is pulling out.

They’re the first to quit this new generation of hypercar, the gtps that are out there now. So I’m just sort of sad to see that. So I’m wondering if that’s also Volkswagen moving some money around, because we are officially going to Formula One next year with Audi Formula One’s not cheap. And if something’s gotta get cut, well we’ll [01:30:00] cut this new program with Lamborghini.

They haven’t proved anything. They’re not gotten anywhere yet. You know, because when you introduce a new sports car, it takes four or five years. To get to a point where it’s viable. So that’s what I think is the reason behind Lamborghini pulling out more than anything else. But it’s a shame because it’s been exciting to see all these other cars come to the surface in the upper echelon of sports car racing.

Crew Chief Brad: I agree. It’s been exciting to see all these other cars in hypercar. I had no idea Lamborghini had one.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. It came out like in 24.

Crew Chief Brad: But to my point, like I’m not shocked that they’re pulling out because I’m probably not the only one who just didn’t realize that they even had one in there. It’s not like all the fanfare and pomp and circumstance that came with Ferrari coming back and like the PEOs are cool ’cause they’re like different looking and, and everything.

It’s just Lamborghini was just kind, they just kinda got lost on the sauce.

Crew Chief Eric: On top of that, we were finally able to check something off our bucket list. After many, many years of trying on this show, you can go back and check this out via Patreon. We finally got a chance to sit down and talk with Bobby [01:31:00] Rahal.

We specifically talked about his early days and his row to Lamas. That was a lot of fun. That was a great interview, and Bobby has promised to come back and talk to us about indie car racing, so that’s gonna be really, really cool. And if you’re a fan of Evening with a Legend where we recount the stories and the legends of lamont and stuff like that, we’ve got a couple really cool episodes coming up.

We’ve got a special one on Veteran’s Day, so pay attention to that very unique episode that’s coming out. And then we’ve got David Hobbs coming in October, followed by Bob Varsha in November, and then I can’t say who’s coming after that. Those are the publicly announced ones that we got. You can still sign up for those.

Just go to Motor inc podcast.net and go to Evening with the legend and you can sign up and be part of the live audience and get your questions answered on air or whatever it is when we have the legends. There to talk about lama. So that’s really cool. And speaking of lama, I’m going to petite in a couple of weeks, gonna be at Road Atlanta for the IMSA season finale.

I’ll also be working the a CO booth. There’s gonna be a autograph session with some [01:32:00] legends that have been on the show and some that are coming later. And so I’ll be part of that and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. So if you’re at Road Atlanta, stop by and see us at the A CO booth. That’s gonna be up in the fan zone.

So looking forward to the season closer.

Executive Producer Tania: Before we move on, we need to discuss endurance racing a little bit more. Oh, okay. Because Franz Herman, AKA Max Tappin, he participated recently in a Berg Ring four hour endurance race in order to qualify for his GT three. License so that he can this weekend participate in a norlife endurance race.

And let’s just talk about how he did in that permit race. He was in a Cayman seven 18 GT four car is what he drove. However, they de-tuned him because of his quote, rookie standing. They de-tuned him 130 horsepower, holy cow. And added weight. He finished in his class seventh, he finished overall of I think 114 cars.

[01:33:00] 27th. Wow. That’s seemingly impressive.

Crew Chief Eric: So if they, they hadn’t basically neutered the car, he would’ve came in first and probably higher up

Executive Producer Tania: the gym. I’m wondering. So it’ll be very interesting to see how he does this weekend. In a non detuned car, which he’ll be driving a Ferrari this weekend. All the cars that are available in I I racing, I get it.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s a, that’s a premonition.

Executive Producer Tania: Which funnily enough, his co-driver is someone who’s coming up through sim racing. He’s got like a his own league academy thing that he is doing. So his co-driver is gonna be some sim racer dude. So that’ll be interesting to see how that goes. We’ll put a pin

Crew Chief Eric: in that for a minute ’cause we’re gonna come back and talk about Max.

We don’t talk about virtual stuff that often, but I had to bring this up because Brad, if we go back far enough into our Utes, you know the old fours of leagues we used to run as part of GTM and stuff, it was pretty sad when I read and I confirmed through IGN that according to former turn, 10 [01:34:00] employees, fours a motorsport has been canceled.

That’s it. The last one we got is the last one we’re gonna get still. It is, I

Crew Chief Brad: mean, I’m not surprised if you played the last one,

Crew Chief Eric: fours a eight or whatever they call it. Fours a motor sport. The

Crew Chief Brad: best one was seven, I thought six or no, six. Six was the best one.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: fours a seven was good because just it, it added VIR fours A seven added VIR, right.

Or was it six? There was a four pack, six added with the package. Yeah. And then it was,

Crew Chief Eric: it was default and seven. Yeah, six was the best one. Six and seven weren’t too different. It was like six service pack two. You know the typical Microsoft one? Yeah. Six. 6.1. I mean, that’s a shame. They diverted a lot of their attention to the Forza Horizon series, which is, you know, if you like that, that’s, it’s good.

Which the new rumor for horizon six is that it’ll be take place in Japan. Ooh. That will be cool. I would look for, but then that. Is gonna compete against games like Solar Crown and it’s gonna go up against JDM Drift Master and all that kind of stuff, which I have copies of all that. I will say unfortunately, JDM Drift Master I’ve been disappointed with because [01:35:00] much like the new Aceto Evo, it’s not fully baked.

You know, you rush to get it and you get it at a discount, which is great ’cause you pre-order it. But then they’re like, so we have this year long release schedule and we’re still developing the game and we’re gonna give it to you in like little bunches every month. And I’m like, Ugh, I don’t have time for this.

Unfortunately. As a result of that, I know a set of Evo is suffering quite a bit. Every time they update Evo, I go back in and I’m like, they fix one thing and they break 12 others. It’s sometimes it’s absolutely unplayable and I’m like guys. Why didn’t you just do what everybody else wanted you to do?

Start with a set of Corsa or a CC and just mod it. There’s been so many mods over the years. Just build it that way and then, you know, continue to, but they’re trying to do a ground up. Recreate the world, I guess with it. So my recommendation is if you’re looking for a racing game, maybe a little bit open world, a little bit of mixture, a little bit of everything, checks all the boxes.

You can hark back to the days of Project Gotham Racing by picking up a copy of Car X Street. I have been enjoying that thoroughly.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that on Xbox?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Cross Compat with [01:36:00] PC Mac to include, you can cross play with PlayStation and Xbox.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, it does have a, it does have a PlayStation version.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So now everybody can play together, which is pretty cool.

Originally it wasn’t built that way. It’s been a lot of fun to play. The physics is good. There’s a lot of really cool cars to pick from. And the

Crew Chief Brad: graphics are good. Is it, is it a track driving or, I mean, it’s got street in the name, so I’m assuming like midnight club

Crew Chief Eric: kind of thing? Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Like Project Gotham was too.

Right. So it, it’s got a blend of a bunch of different things and there’s different versions. There’s like CarX Drift and whatever else they have that they offer. And behind the scenes Microsoft is actually involved in that process. And that’s why I keep saying if you want that project Gotham like experience, this is sort of the reimagined version of that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I, I loved Project Gotham. That was one of my favorite racing games ever.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe pick up a copy of CarX Street.

Crew Chief Brad: I think I will.

Crew Chief Eric: So as we round out. To the regular racing news. I want a quick shout out from one of our listeners that sent us a, a note that they wanted us to read on air. And so Ash writes, she [01:37:00] said that Alex Taylor, a Booneville Arkansas girl, recently broke a speed record hitting 235 miles an hour.

Alex’s already synonymous with speed and a passion in the drag racing world, and she has etched her name in the record books At the prestigious Bonneville Speed Week, the Arkansas Native shattered the existing C slash CCB GALT record, clocking in at an astounding average speed of 2 35 0.638 miles an hour, officially entering the coveted.

200 mile an hour club. So very cool. Congrats. Ash is also from Arkansas, so she wanted to share that bit of news that was in the LOPA paper with us to read on air. So I thought that was really, really neat.

Crew Chief Brad: Congratulations to her. But she would’ve went faster if she was driving a yang wing.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you know, just wait till GD makes some salt flat tires.

Crew Chief Brad: Those G GDI tires.

Crew Chief Eric: GITI gt. I

Crew Chief Brad: know GTI

Crew Chief Eric: like, it’s like Zt, but gt no G lee. They’re all made by g lee. It’s all G.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe the, maybe it actually is Zdi.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, [01:38:00] formula one.

We reserve the right to talk about formula One last, I don’t wanna talk about every race that’s happened over the last two months ’cause it’s just too much. I don’t even remember. Right. So I just wanna say Belgium was a nightmare. The race was delayed for over an hour. It was just WW. The whole thing was WW and that was just an annoying race to sit through.

Budapest, what an amazing race between two people. The McLaren’s watching their team strategy is mind-boggling. I don’t understand what’s going on over there. Can we just let Oscar score points so that Max doesn’t, what is this BS between Lando and Oscar? Like it just needs to stop. They’re already gonna win the manufacturer’s championship for crying out loud, like Red Bull doesn’t stand a chance there.

At least bunch of other blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Races in between. So let’s fast forward to Azure Bajan Max Power, [01:39:00] right? We are going full bore, and I’m reading stuff about how people are saying that Max is now stacking the end part of the season to try to win the remaining races and take the championship away from the McLaren drivers.

Full stop. It’s been done before, and apparently if he wins every race from here on. The math works out. Do we think it’s gonna happen? What’s the over under on this?

Executive Producer Tania: They’ve sorted that car out, then yes, it’s probably possible.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t have any love for any of the F1 teams really. Go Cadillac.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re gonna get to that go Audi.

We’ll get to that too. You know, I’m not a ti fso. My heart breaks for Ferrari and kind of secretly I want McLaren to win, but then I don’t want McLaren to win ’cause I don’t like the BS that they do amongst their own team. I’m kind of like rooting for Mercedes to kind of like come through as the underdog and just take all of it home.

But that’s not gonna happen either. So I can’t put. My focus on any one team. [01:40:00] ’cause they

Crew Chief Eric: kind of all suck.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what I

Crew Chief Eric: mean? Stake.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, stake. Yeah. Yeah. Holgenburg is gonna take it all home. Uh, any rate Max for stopping Champion this year? Do you think it’s gonna happen?

Executive Producer Tania: He won every single race but won last year.

He had a 14 second lead, I think 14, 15 seconds He ended at Azure Bajan. Yeah. And he started slowing down because that gap was bigger and I think he just wasn’t pushing anymore. ’cause there’s no reason George Russell wasn’t catching up

Crew Chief Eric: the pit stop. Let’s be real.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, let’s be real for a second. And he just, they told him, you know what, save the motor, save the car.

Cruise the last couple laps.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, you could tell from the videos when they showed you, he is like short shifting and just cruising around and you’re like, wow. And you still can’t catch him.

Executive Producer Tania: So if they’ve sorted out that car and it’s back to levels that it was at last year,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s over for McLarney. It’s over.

Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: it’s over.

Crew Chief Eric: So this is what’s gonna make the rest of this formula one season exciting because so far it’s been a bit of a dud, but now it’s getting interesting to see how this is gonna [01:41:00] play out. And maybe it, it just comes down. I will argue there’s what seven races left. I think we said Tanya, it’s, it’s too many 24 races in the year.

It’s insane. It’s like every two weeks basically, right? I mean it’s just, it’s bonkers, but we’ll see. I think it’s gonna, it’s gonna be interesting. But on a side note, speaking of listeners checking in with us, I got a call from Alabama, Jeff, one of our listeners, and he says to me, he goes, obviously you guys know more about this stuff than I do in his southern draw.

He goes, I just got into F1 recently like everyone else. But he goes, wouldn’t you say stopping is just one of the best drivers, hands down? And so I wanted to open that up to go back to what we were talking about with endurance, with this whole math game, him coming out and potentially winning the championship if everything goes in his favor, do we think for is in a class?

Like a Schumacher or a Sena or somebody like that. Is he that level of driver?

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s hard to answer that question. Is he a great driver? Is he an amazing driver? [01:42:00] Yes. The reality is, I think some of it’s the car,

Crew Chief Eric: but you gotta be able to pilot that car and it,

Crew Chief Brad: you gotta be able to pilot the car. Yes.

But because they’re not all driving, it’s hard to make these comparisons ’cause they’re not all driving the exact same car.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, in Red Bull’s case, the rumor on the street is Eno’s car is basically specked identical to ver stop’s car as almost like a backup to Ver stop’s car. And it’s reportedly undrivable.

People used to say the same thing about Sena, where Senna’s car was like, I don’t know how the hell he drives this thing. You know what I mean? Is he at that level or is it just he’s got a particular driving style? What is it? I mean, it could

Crew Chief Brad: be,

Executive Producer Tania: I am changing my opinion of him and I think it’ll be very telling what he does in GT three.

Because if he’s dominating there, then he is definitely

Crew Chief Eric: one of the best

Executive Producer Tania: probably. I think he’s matured a lot from the arrogant asshole he was when he first started out in Formula One.

Crew Chief Brad: And he’s a father now, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Technically now he’s a father, yes. But he started maturing even before then. But maybe that’s ’cause he kind of [01:43:00] had a step kid in Kelly’s first daughter, Kelly pk.

So maybe he was already changing there. He’s very consistent. He’s a very consistent driver hitting the mark. Laugh after lap, after lap, after lap. So

Crew Chief Eric: that I racing

Executive Producer Tania: and maybe it is, I mean, someone else who tends to be that consistent also is Ptri. So I’d really like to see him if it comes down between him and Norris, I’d like to see him win the World Championship for sure.

’cause I think he is probably the stronger driver. But I mean, Sapin, he’s definitely something so. It’ll be interesting to see

Crew Chief Eric: if he wins this year. And to your point, if he does something in sports, car and endurance racing, you know, let’s say he gets a couple other championships of different disciplines under his belt.

I think when we jump forward 10 years and look back, we’re gonna go over stop. And he might not have eight world titles in Formula One like Lewis was trying to get to, or like Schumacher had seven and you know, all that. But I think we’re gonna regard him at a similar level as like a Jimmy Clark or a Sena or some [01:44:00] of those, some of the greats where we didn’t recognize it at the time, but now when we look back, we’re gonna be like, holy heck,

Executive Producer Tania: his contract I think goes till 2028.

So if he wins this and he wins the next. Three seasons, he would have eight world championships.

Crew Chief Eric: He would, but he also, to me, he needs to win Lama because a lot of those old time Formula One champions, not Sena, but a lot of, you know, the Andrettis, the whatevers, they went off and did other big races.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s gonna go do other things he wants to do.

He’s all this GT three stuff he’s doing is ’cause he wants to do the 24 hours of the nerve burger ring.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Once you do that, I’m sure Lamont’s probably isn’t that far behind. Why wouldn’t he?

Crew Chief Eric: 24 hours of Lamont carries more weight, you know, on your resume than 24 hours of the ring does. No offense to the ring.

’cause it’s an awesome thing. Mm. But in the stratosphere, it’s like the Indie 500 Monaco and Lama or the big three. Right. They’re the triple crown.

Executive Producer Tania: Which is funny because Lamont gets all the attention, but the Nors life is. 10,000 times more difficult. It is, and it’s also 10,000 more times

Crew Chief Eric: difficult to [01:45:00] televise.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, and that’s why it doesn’t get the hype it gets, but it’s more impressive. Like if he won first time going to the basically nerve berg ring Yeah. Kind of deal. And then he like, were to win the 24 hours. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Eric: He wants to go there because the ring is available in iRacing and Lama is not. So that’s, that’s why, that’s what it’s all about.

Executive Producer Tania: The other thing about him that I’m liking more is kind of like paying a little bit more attention and learning more about him. Like he really does seem to enjoy all the racing in all the different kinds. Like I watched that one video where he made the negative comment about front wheel drive cars, but like he was going out test driving the Mustang or all this stuff and he, he got on track in his Mustang for like the first time and, and it starts like raining and I mean he is got complete control of this.

Monster, whatever, r blah, blah, blah. Huge beast Mustang thing that he was driving and it’s like, he seems like he can maybe get into any car and learn it quickly.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Like Sena would do. Yeah. The same kind of thing. I don’t know. I’m, I’m hopeful. I, I [01:46:00] too am changing my opinion, although secretly like you, I’m sort of rooting for Oscar and then sadly I’m crying into my Cheerios because of Ferrari.

I mean, what a pathetic.

Executive Producer Tania: Ours are terrible.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re so bad. Everybody else is doing two 15 with the DRS Open and Ferrari’s like 2 0 4. 2 0 4 maybe. Eh. And then it’s like the DRS opens and then they go backwards, 180 balls an hour and it’s, it’s like, it’s awful. What a mess. God. Ferrari, I think they can know how to build a formula car.

So as we wrap up Formula One, it will be mentioned. Audi, we still don’t know. Well, we do know, but I’m like, I’m really disappointed with the driver choices. Like with Audi, that’s gonna be a wash next year.

Executive Producer Tania: Did they say who? I don’t remember. Who’s the second driver?

Crew Chief Eric: Holgenburg and I don’t know. Weren’t they gonna bring back Schumacher?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think they announced the second driver yet. All we know is it’s Hulk converter. I

Crew Chief Eric: thought they did and it was some other German or something like that, or whatever. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My point is we’re gonna go full mullet with Cadillac. [01:47:00] We’re bringing back BOTAs. That’s gonna be awesome.

BOTAs with the bow tie. Come on. And then Perez, we’re gonna bring back Perez to run with ca. What do we think about this team up?

Executive Producer Tania: Some people would say like, oh, they should be putting the rookies in, you know, blah, blah, blah. But like, honestly, you have a brand new team. The quickest way to get up to speed is two veteran drivers.

And who, other than, I guess Alonzo didn’t wanna move, so

Crew Chief Eric: Strolls paying him too much.

Executive Producer Tania: So he’s, he’s holding on for that newie, he’s waiting Uhhuh for that car from Newie. Yeah. So he is sticking there. People poo poo him BOTAs. But like he did well in Mercedes and maybe you could argue maybe it was the car.

I don’t know. He has a decent record and I mean Perez was fine when he was in the Red Bull for the most part. So there are two veteran seasoned drivers that know what’s going on and they can help bring the Cadillac team who are all gonna be rookies. They can help build that team out and then eventually they’ll get [01:48:00] replaced.

But we’ll see how it goes.

Crew Chief Brad: To Tanya’s point, like both of those drivers, even though they didn’t win the championships, they came from championship winning teams. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, right. BOTAs was no slouch when he was at Alpha Romeo either. I mean, salur, whatever was right. So just to make sure I got my facts straight, Cadillac powered by Ferrari.

Executive Producer Tania: I think so. At least until they switch motors right Beginning.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Man. How weird is that gonna be?

Crew Chief Brad: They might wanna rethink that.

Crew Chief Eric: Can they bolt a carburetor on it so

Crew Chief Brad: it’s it’s gonna be a tester.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, so here’s the thing. A lot of the problems with the Ferrari, I don’t know if they’re the motor, because a lot of things that you can read, they blame.

Maybe this sounds silly. Also, it’s not because if they really have a bunch of problems with the braking system, if you’re wasting time, early braking and not going in with good entry and then exit speed, you’re never gonna hit the same top. You just neutered yourself every time you come out of a corner.

And then if you’re fighting the car, which allegedly is [01:49:00] happening with Hamilton, because these, I don’t know, his style of braking is not compatible with whatever the hell is going on with the Ferrari. If this is all true. Okay. Allegedly then he’s wasting so much time. He’s constantly trying to counters steer the car because it’s twitchy af through every corner.

And it’s like, well how can you be competitive then? You’re inherently always slow. So maybe Cadillac stands a chance if Cadillac’s doing Arrow Cadillac’s doing suspension, brake, all this stuff, and then they just have the power plant. Maybe the power plant’s decent and the rest of the car is trash.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel as though Cadillac stands the same chance in its first year that host does.

Executive Producer Tania: If they’re on the podium, go. Yeah, right. Okay. That’s gonna be impressive. Then it’s really gonna be like Ferrari, what the, are you people doing? Right. ’cause clearly the motor’s fine.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. But I’m excited for the rest of the season. I’m also excited for it to be over.[01:50:00]

Our Motorsport News is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center. So I will say I did recently attend the Argo Singer Awards Dinner honoring Brian Redmond. That was pretty cool. There’s a lot of articles and photographs that you can check out on the I-M-R-R-C website about that event.

It was wonderful to be able to participate in that. I got to meet Brian Redmond. I got to meet David Hobbs in person, Bob Varsa, a bunch of other celebrities and folks that I had interviewed on the show before that I had only met virtually. So it was a great networking opportunity and actually I’m kinda looking forward to going next year.

So don’t know who’s gonna be getting that lifetime Achievement award next year, but I’m definitely putting it on my calendar for next time. I also wanna mention, as we’ve mentioned in the past, there is a sweepstakes that is continuing on. Until tonight. So if you’re listening to this episode on the day that it airs September 30th, this is your last chance to win that beautiful 2026.

It’s the 2026 model because it was delivered [01:51:00] Porsche nine 11 T with a manual transmission, or take a $75,000 cash option details. If you want to enter at the last minute, do that bit of eBay sniping there racing archives.org. Click on sweepstakes. Remember, hurry before time runs out. The sweepstakes closes tonight at midnight, September the 30th.

And before we wrap this episode up, let’s do a quick GTM Trackside report sponsored by the northeast region of the Audi Club of America.

Executive Producer Tania: Are you ready to discover the exhilarating world of track driving? The season is starting to wind down on the east coast, but there’s still time to step into your driver’s seat and experience the thrill of pushing your car to its limits in a safe, controlled environment.

Rounding out the roster this year is an HPTE Solo Day at Limerock Park on Friday, October 10th, along with FCP Euro’s, October Fest event, also at Limerock on Sunday, October 26th.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Tanya. And even though the Audi Club track season is coming to a close, there’s still plenty of laps out there for you and joy.

We just recently [01:52:00] added some brand new fall events to our racing calendar@club.gt motorsports.org. Organizations like SCDA and Chin Track Days are running at tracks like Limerock Watkins, Glen Sebring, Daytona Coda, VIR, and many, many others throughout the fall and winter.

Executive Producer Tania: These events offer a fantastic opportunity to refine your techniques and challenge your precision as a driver.

Connect with a vibrant community of fellow drivers and instructors who share your passion and enjoy the friendly and supportive atmosphere that HPDE provides. Push your limits, improve your handling skills, and take the opportunity to make every second on the track count. And for more

Crew Chief Eric: Audi Club events outside of just track time, be sure to visit nq club.org and to discover more events like this on our Motorsports calendar, remember, jump over to club.gt motorsports.org and then click on events.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you’re not quite ready to hit the track. Don’t forget that you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the ultimate reference for car [01:53:00] enthusiasts, collector car guide.net.

Executive Producer Tania: Be sure to jump back into our podcast catalog and check out other programs we offer, like Screen to Speed, the Ferrari Marketplace, the Motoring historian evening with the legend, the log book, break Fix, and of course, the drive-through and continue to tune in this fall as we introduce new shows like Wheels of Time, and The Racers Roundtable on the MPN.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you enjoy our various podcasts, there’s a great way for you to support our creators on the MPN. There’s tons of extras and bonuses to explore on the updated Patreon page. Learn more about our bonus and behind the scenes content. Get early access to upcoming episodes and consider becoming a break fix VIP when you visit patreon.com/gt motorsports.

And as always, we’d like to thank our co-host and executive producer Tanya. And to all the fans, friends and family who support Grand touring motor sports, as well as the Motoring podcast network. Without you, none of this would be possible. [01:54:00] First of all, before I start, how do I sound? You sound like always sound like a face for radio.

Crew Chief Eric: Your old car had a theme song. It was all that heavy metal stuff. Mm-hmm. What’s, what’s pumpkin spices theme song?

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, it’s gotta be Taylor Swift.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that the one about the unicorns or whatever? Am I

Crew Chief Brad: Starbucks lovers? I, I, I, I mean, pumpkin spice is a basic thing. So like Taylor Swift is pretty basic, so you can cut that out.

Eric,

Crew Chief Eric: you can put a beep. Yeah. It’s gonna be a quack. Quack. It’s what is gonna be

Crew Chief Brad: exactly. Quack. Quack. No put put like a put like a Volkswagen horn Sound

Executive Producer Tania: uhhuh. Yeah. Just kidding. Chris, her song’s not called that, but that’s what it sounds like when she’s singing it. Yeah. That’s the cassette. We’re gonna jam in the headset.

On

Crew Chief Eric: repeat,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s F by magic. Nothing to be sorry for

Crew Chief Eric: Leslie.

Crew Chief Brad: Who cares? I didn’t prepare. So

Crew Chief Eric: different than any of the 59 previous drive-throughs in any way, shape, or form.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, now that’s not true. ’cause there were sometimes I actually took [01:55:00] notes. I went through each link, wrote down notes, and I had talking points and it didn’t make a fucking difference.

So I said, screw. Yeah, those are

Crew Chief Eric: the worst ones we ever did. Those are the terrible episodes because they,

Crew Chief Brad: they come across as scripted,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Executive Producer Tania: The drive-through is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like Collector Car guide.net Project, motoring Garage Style Magazine, the Exotic Car Marketplace, and many others. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive-Through, look no further than www.motoringpodcast.net, click about, and then advertising.

Thank you again to everyone that supports the Motoring Podcast Network, grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix, and all the other services we [01:56:00] provide.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 02:42 Where Did All the Good Cars Go?
• 03:10 The Rise and Fall of 90s Japanese Cars
• 04:24 The German Car Dilemma; The Volkswagen Journey
• 11:50 To Infiniti and Beyond
• 20:57 Jaguar’s Identity Crisis
• 31:53 Resurrecting Old Cars: Brad’s New Whip! #PSL
• 34:35 Volkswagen and Audi News
• 39:03 Ferrari’s New Testarossa
• 42:36 Mercedes Powered by BMW?
• 49:00 Nissan’s Manual Transmission Comeback
• 52:10 BYD’s Record-Breaking Electric Car
• 54:49 Remembering the Father of the Miata
• 01:05:49 Amazon Sells Hertz Cars
• 01:12:23 Formula One Movie Review
• 01:16:54 GTM Book Club: Racing Literature Recommendations
• 01:19:07 Florida Man Stories!
• 01:27:45 Daniel Ricciardo’s Retirement Announcement
• 01:29:41 Lamborghini’s Exit from Hypercar Racing
• 01:32:17 Max Verstappen’s Endurance Racing Journey
• 01:33:41 Forza Motorsport Cancellation and Racing Games
• 01:36:58 Alex Taylor’s Speed Record
• 01:38:11 Formula One Season Highlights and Predictions
• 01:51:18 GTM Trackside Report and Upcoming Events; Closing Remarks and Sponsorship Acknowledgements

Are you ready to discover the exhilarating world of track driving? This season step into your driver’s seat and experience the thrill of pushing your car to its limits in a safe, controlled environment. Perfect for those who have always dreamt of getting on track … here are some upcoming ACNA events you might want to check out:

• And just added to the roster is an HPDE Solo Day, at Lime Rock Park on Friday October 10th, along with FCP Euro’s Autoberfest event (also at LimeRock) on Sunday October 26th. 

MORE DETAILS ON OUR MOTORSPORT CALENDAR

For experienced track enthusiasts, these events offer a fantastic opportunity to refine your techniques and challenge your precision on the track. Reconnect with the vibrant community of drivers and instructors who share your passion, and enjoy the friendly and supportive atmosphere. Push your limits, improve your handling skills, and take the opportunity to make every second on the track count. For more Audi Club events outside of just track time, please visit https://www.neqclub.org