B/F: The Drive Thru #64

• EU Officially Kills 2023 Combustion Engine Ban?
• Future Electric Vehicles: The EVs You'll Soon Be Able to Buy

Changes came to Jaguar this winter...

• New Honda Fit Race Car Looks Like a Pint-Sized Competitor
• Toyota Exec Officially Confirms New Mid-Engine Sports Car Coming, But It Might Take 5 Years
• Trump: Japan's 'Cute' Kei Cars Are Coming to America
• New Hot Wheels Kit Lets You Build a Mini Version of a '90s Honda Civic

New Genesis G90 Magma Wingback is the Hotness!

• Following Super Trofeo w/ Liepert Motorsports
• Toyota Reveals their 2026 Le Mans entry (TR010 HYBRID)
• It’s Official: NHRA Great John Force Retires from Driving
• The Motoring Historian - EP52: The Greatness of Michael Schumacher

Changes coming to Le Mans' famous "Dunlop" Bridge & Curve

• Jeep Is Selling a V8 Wrangler for $70,000 but You Have To Be a Veteran or Active Military To Buy It

The Pacific-at is done!

• The Tesla Cybertruck Had the Biggest Sales Crash of Any EV in 2025

• TDI Hybrid: Audi Launches Next-Gen V6 Diesel for Q5 and A6 Series
• Audi is Brining Back the A4. Here's is what We Know
• Volkswagen is Lining Up a Wave of New Models for 2026
• Audi’s 2026 Formula 1 Vision: Patience, Progress, No Instant Results
• Audi Revolut F1 Team Brings 2026 Challenger to Life With First Fire-Up
• Formula 1 Engine Wars Heat Up: Audi Calls for Clarity on 2026 Power Unit Rules
• Lego City Adds F1 Display Truck with Audi F1 Race Car to Collection

Karmann Hairdresser: The One off Corrado Convertible

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: Hi guys.

Crew Chief Eric: Hi, Brad. What’s up?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. When was the last time we did one of these? Feels like it’s been a while.

Crew Chief Eric: October. What

Crew Chief Brad: we didn’t, when did we? We, I thought we did one in November.

Crew Chief Eric: No, because November is always the holiday special. Last year we did the game show and all that stuff, and then we do the holiday gift exchange and all that.

And then December was the Formula One retrospective.

Crew Chief Brad: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: So this is the winter recap. We get [00:01:00] to talk about everything that happened since October, basically when we went into hibernation.

Crew Chief Brad: So you mean it’s gonna be a really short episode?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think anything really happened

Crew Chief Eric: with the absence of Formula One in the episode.

Yeah, everybody gets back half an hour of their day.

Crew Chief Brad: Lucky them. Welcome to drive through episode number 64,

Crew Chief Eric: our 64th drive through episode. Can you believe it?

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Crew Chief Eric: we’ve only skipped two in the entirety of break fix. We’ve only skipped two drive-through episodes. Can you believe that?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, no.

Crew Chief Eric: You don’t listen anyway.

So the difference is

Crew Chief Brad: so, so, so you have only skipped two. I’ve skipped a couple because I popped out babies and all that good

Crew Chief Eric: stuff. Oh, that’s true. Yeah, that’s true. So

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve skipped a lot more than two.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s very true. We did have some fill-ins there over time. So mad shout out to our guest hosts that have come on in the past to fill in your size.

13 loafers.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, my loafers.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you get anything good for Christmas?

Crew Chief Brad: I didn’t get anything for Christmas.

Crew Chief Eric: What

Crew Chief Brad: you can imagine. Why.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, well, yeah, I, I [00:02:00] can’t, I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: so yeah, I, yeah, literally I got nothing.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I got car parts delivered to the house for Christmas, but they’re yours, so Does that really count?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I bought myself stuff for Christmas. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’ll get into that Winter recap. Traditionally, we look back over the months that we haven’t been recording the drive through and kind of see what’s been going on in the automotive industry. ’cause it’s a slow time of year. Even though, as I constantly remind you, the beginning of the sales cycle is September.

So if we are now almost like halfway through the sales year at this point, nothing’s really going on. But there have been some significant changes and maybe some backpedaling, we’ll call it that in the automotive industry during the winter months, Instagram posts from the car News network, sort of by way of BMW, the EU officially kills the 2035 combustion engine ban.

Clickbait or is there some truth to this?

Executive Producer Tania: [00:03:00] That’s not exactly what they’re doing. They’re relaxing the requirement that by 2035 propulsion system is a hundred percent clean and they’re relaxing at 90%. So you have a 10% window there to pollute. So you still have to have a really efficient ice engine, or it’s a hybrid.

Basically, and you’re using very little fuel, so it’s not clear cut that, oh, EVs are out and we’re just going right back to gas guzzling four cylinders in Europe. Right? Right. So I think it’s more nuanced than that.

Crew Chief Eric: I think there’s an ounce of credibility to at least this sentiment that governments around the world are rolling back.

The hard and fast mandates that we were gonna go all electric by, you know, 2027 by 2029, and the dial kept moving towards 11. Right? So 20, 35. And now we’re walking back from that. And one of the things that I think resonates with what I saw from Cars News Network is Jim Farley, the CEO of [00:04:00] Ford, put out a statement and inside of there, there was a paragraph that I pulled out and I’ll, I’ll read it for you.

It says, Ford CEO, Jim Farley was inspired to lead an overhaul of the automaker’s electric vehicle strategy after examining rival EVs. And on a recent podcast, Jim Farley said he came down to the shocking. Quote unquote realization that Ford needed a major company reset after tearing down Tesla and the Chinese EVs, and noticing how much less electrical wiring they required, yada, yada, yada.

And despite a recent EV slowdown in the us, Farley believes EV innovation remains vital globally. However, in that same breath, yeah, yeah. EVs are great and wonderful. It continues on. The one line that you pull out of that is Ford is considering scrapping its electric F-150 pickup, which means the lightning is gone.

Mach E sales are down. I mean, obviously there’s all the controversy over Mustang Mach e, Mach E, what is it really called? Who cares what it’s called? Right.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know if that’s really controversy. That’s just us going back and forth, like [00:05:00] boomers about badge engineering.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, enthusiasts aren’t happy about it, but, but the real thing is the sales numbers of Mach E, they were okay.

They weren’t great, but the F-150 lightning, as we know, that kept getting its truck bed handed to it in every competition it was put in. Sometimes it would pull ahead of like a cyber truck or whatever, you know, one of the other electric EVs that’s out there, but it’s not what people want. Right? And the whole farce of it can charge itself.

You remember that whole thing and you’re like, it doesn’t surprise me in a world of a hundred thousand dollars pickup trucks that the F-150 lightning is not something that people want.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought we’d been talking about manufacturers backtracking on the. Full ev thing for like the last year though.

That’s not something that’s new. Yeah, it’s

Executive Producer Tania: not new. And a lot of it has to do with the tax credit, incentives, whatever, for purchasing ’em being erased.

Crew Chief Brad: Right.

Executive Producer Tania: Suddenly people don’t wanna buy ’em anymore, which I’m like, how much was this incentive? Really? It’s not like they were free. They were still really expensive.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Overly expensive. Well, [00:06:00]

Crew Chief Eric: relief might be in sight, and I feel like I’m being partially vindicated here in some ways. I’ve been arguing for six years now that we needed to borrow 40-year-old trained technology and come up with a better hybrid system than the hybrid that we’re using. And we saw inklings of this in the past.

If you guys remember, Audi had built that two liter turbo generator system on one other Decar prototype things, and it ran it like 9 billion RPM to make electricity to power the electrical system. One of their e-tron prototypes or whatever. Well, that. Is sort of the way people are starting to lean in the market now you’re seeing more reports of we should use gas and diesel as a generator to create electricity and we can double and triple the range of these electric vehicles with like a one cylinder gas power generator.

I mean, they’re gonna be bigger than that, right? They’re gonna be four cylinders, more than likely, stuff like that. But I found it funny. There was an article from the Audi Club and I just started singing Diesel’s back, back [00:07:00] again. Diesel’s back because TDI hybrid Audi launching the next generation V six diesel for its Q five and its a six series.

So Dieselgate on the end of the world, diesels are back, baby.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, not here though.

Crew Chief Eric: Not yet. It’s only a matter of time.

Crew Chief Brad: Mm.

Executive Producer Tania: All they have to do is make them actually cleaner without cheating.

Crew Chief Eric: And as a generator, they can do that because it’s basically idling and they can come up with all sorts of exhaust, gas recirculation, catalytic, combustion incineration process to make it super clean and emit, you know, wafts of rat breath out the back or something.

I don’t know. But the point is, in my mind, diesel electric hybrid, as I’ve been saying, makes way more sense. And I know big oil doesn’t wanna hear that because they wanna sell more gasoline. Right?

Executive Producer Tania: Big oil sells diesel too,

Crew Chief Brad: at like $700 a gallon too.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s just it. So is this gonna affect the price of diesel long term that, you know, we can get into all that [00:08:00] whole economic debate.

But the thing is, it makes more sense to have like a high torque, low rev diesel little generator than a gas motor that’s gotta run at, you know, 9,000 RPM to generate the same kilowatt hours that’s necessary to charge the system. So I’m really excited about this. I feel like it’s 10 years too late. Like we should have started at this point, not done the fully electric unicorn farts and you know, lithium powered everything.

Excited to see where this goes. Longer term.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: $150,000. Audi TDI.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you expect anything less? Meanwhile over at Jaguar, we talked about this car before. Remember the one that they officially showed at Pebble Beach this year, which had only been in like concept drawings and designs, and you’re like, man, did AI generate this car?

It looked like something out of Batman in the animated series. Super cartoony Jaguar. And then, you know, they went through the whole backlash with changing the logo and you know, Jaguar lost its weight and all this kind of thing. Well, as a [00:09:00] result of all the negative publicity from the Type zero zero concept, that cartoon Jaguar, I was just referencing, they fired Jerry McGovern after 20 years at Jaguar

Executive Producer Tania: who.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly

Crew Chief Eric: if you’re in that circle, the circle of Land Rover, Jaguar, Tata, and all that kind of stuff. Apparently he’s designed some iconic models like the defender and and stuff like that, which are kind of cool, like if you like that sort of thing. They’re kind of cool, but that Jaguar type, double zero, whatever was just a step away from what anybody actually wanted.

The reason I bring up this Jaguar, and you guys are like, well, who cares? We know that thing’s ugly.

Crew Chief Brad: Mm-hmm. Not surprised he’s fired.

Crew Chief Eric: Have you seen the new A four sedan?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, so Audi hired him.

Crew Chief Eric: Right.

Crew Chief Brad: The front end is very nineties alpha to me. The way the headlights go and the the square should be the, not a square, but

Executive Producer Tania: that’s trash.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:10:00] It looks like a Lego car.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like the back end of a wide body IMSA car from the eighties. The Nissan Skyline silhouette with the box flares. Yeah, it looks like the back of that is on the front. I also immediately thought Chrysler 300.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh yeah, I get that.

Executive Producer Tania: This is a garbage scowl,

Crew Chief Eric: but this is the new design language.

All the Audis are gonna look like this now.

Executive Producer Tania: Then they’re all gonna look like trash.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And they’re not going to sell and they’re gonna change it again to something worse. To

Executive Producer Tania: something worse. I mean, what is this like Bugatti front end? I mean that’s what it reminds me of.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t even think the grills were this square in the eighties.

Executive Producer Tania: No, because they were rectangles. Never was there a square grill

Crew Chief Eric: maybe in the auto union days of like 1932 or whatever.

Executive Producer Tania: Not even those. Those were like more oval.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s ugly.

Crew Chief Brad: The square grill’s from like a Mack truck.

Crew Chief Eric: You know Volkswagen owns man trucks, so maybe they’re just borrowing from their design department.

It kind of does look like a semi,

Crew Chief Brad: maybe somebody missed a meeting and they got Joe Blow from the blue collar division to come in and it was like, yeah, just throw a [00:11:00] square on the front there.

Crew Chief Eric: How is that aerodynamic?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean this straight up looks like you photoshopped and just said, let me cut a rectangle out of the front of like a regular A four and then let me just like copy and paste this image and just like put it on.

That’s what this rendering looks like.

Crew Chief Brad: To that point, do we know that this is actually what the car’s gonna look like?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, this is a still a concept, right? Yeah. So like all concepts, it could look nothing like this.

Crew Chief Brad: No. But like everything I see here says new A four rendering by motor one. Like this isn’t the concept car actually built by out?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, well then this is exactly what I said is some dude in Photoshop just copying and pasting chunks of something else onto

Crew Chief Brad: a

Executive Producer Tania: regular A four.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, exactly. This is non-New. This is clickbait.

Crew Chief Eric: No, but if you go back to the pictures of the concept C, which they linked to, it’s the same design language, Tanya’s point, they probably grafted the front end of that, onto the current a four body, you know, and kind of fix it up a little bit.

But the new car has this look to it with the square [00:12:00] grill and everything else. Mm-hmm. It just, it’s pretty terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: So Audi’s concept is in there. It’s the concept C.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: So motor one took, like I said, a screenshot of this. Change the color in Photoshop and put this on a regular A four and said, Ooh, we should make an A four.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, let’s write an article about this.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like trash though.

Crew Chief Brad: Let’s make this shit up and write article.

Executive Producer Tania: See, concept C doesn’t look good either.

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Executive Producer Tania: it actually looks better as this concept C.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, because

Executive Producer Tania: it’s proportions, but it’s still garbage.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it looks better as a coop for one thing. And like to Tanya’s point, like the proportions and everything look better.

Audi in the concept C did a better job than Jake the intern at MO on when he did the Photoshop.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, moving right along, we have to introduce a whole bunch of new cars if we’re gonna pay for the Audi F1 program. So Volkswagen is lining up a new wave of models for 2026.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like your logic is flawed.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh oh.

Crew Chief Brad: You don’t need to make new cars. You need to sell more cars. [00:13:00] I think that’s where they’re messing up.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, is that what it is?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. They can make all the cars they want. If they’re not selling ’em, they’re not making any money. Just make more cars that people want to actually buy. Top tip.

Crew Chief Eric: So to your point, scroll through this list of new Volkswagens.

There’s not a ton of them here. Are any of these appealing to you?

Executive Producer Tania: None of these are being sold in this country.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, but they’ll eventually make their way here, won’t they?

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Crew Chief Brad: 25 years.

Executive Producer Tania: No, nothing. This small is gonna come over here.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but what about the ID era and the ID cross, which looked like the ID four and whatever the bigger one is than that.

Crew Chief Brad: Id declare none of these are coming here.

Executive Producer Tania: That was good.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna just say it. These have a very like BYD sort of look to them. Is that where we’re leaning now in terms of like, we need to copy them because they’re leading the market.

Crew Chief Brad: They have A what? A what? Look to ’em.

Crew Chief Eric: B-Y-D-B-Y.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know what that means.

The

Executive Producer Tania: Chinese EV maker.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I thought you were saying like, bring your own design team. [00:14:00]

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what it stands for. I’m sure.

Executive Producer Tania: No, that was the motor one article.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring your own intern.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I will say we’re never gonna get whatever this. Polo thing is that’s at the top. I don’t even know what this thing’s called.

Maybe it’s the ID three or maybe it’s the smaller one. It doesn’t really matter. I do like this nineties. What was her name? Lisa Frank. Remember those folders? We had the Trapper Keepers and we had the Lisa Frank stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: This is the Hot Pink. Enough to be Lisa Frank. Sorry.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s like a Harley Quinn thing though.

Did you notice the colors? It goes back to the mark three Harlequin. I think this is a cool livery.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: We may have to put an earmark on this and look at it more closely and study it for an upcoming project, which we’re gonna talk about later in the episode. But I, I really like this livery. It’s, it’s very chaotic.

It’s unfocused.

Crew Chief Brad: We are not gonna put this on pumpkin spice.

Crew Chief Eric: Definitely not.

Crew Chief Brad: All. What’s next?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we have a little bit of Stellan news. All right. I’m just gonna read the title here and get your guys’ opinion. This comes [00:15:00] from the drive. It says, Jeep is selling a V eight Wrangler for $70,000, but you have to be a veteran or active military to be able to buy it.

Executive Producer Tania: Stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: I, I don’t get this.

Crew Chief Brad: I just don’t understand why

Executive Producer Tania: you’d probably sell more if you didn’t have to be active military or a veteran.

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna say, maybe this is a way just to show a little appreciation for the active military

Executive Producer Tania: at $70,000.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, there’s a, so one thing, it’s $70,000

Crew Chief Eric: starting

Crew Chief Brad: very, very expensive.

Like, so an infantry man’s not gonna be able to afford that shit. And then two, what this really is, is a publicity stunt.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re gonna sell more of the other Jeeps because people are gonna come in, oh, you guys are doing something great for the military. You know what I’m gonna, I’m gonna spend my money with you.

Crew Chief Eric: The Jeep Stir Commando.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that’s a name for you. This jeepsters going commando.

Crew Chief Eric: It is. Have you seen these doors?

Crew Chief Brad: I, I have seen these doors.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. They might as well not even exist. Mm. That’s a lot of tubing. It’s not roll cagey enough.

Crew Chief Brad: This commando’s [00:16:00] got a lot of tubing. Well.

Executive Producer Tania: I also like how there’s seemingly the attachment for the spare tire on the trunk door.

Yet the tire’s in the trunk,

Crew Chief Eric: buddy. Hey, it’s got a Hemi. It’s got a Hemi. And did you realize that it has a Hemi?

Executive Producer Tania: And what are you doing with this wildly unstable, horribly handling vehicle with V eight in it,

Crew Chief Brad: you’re spending an additional $11,500 and adding a Whipple supercharger to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Now you have a Hellcat.

I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: come on now. Yes. Now you’ve got a Hellcat

Crew Chief Eric: boosted to 705 horsepower. Just two horsepower, shy of a Hellcat. Look at that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Executive Producer Tania: How many people are gonna take this off road? Gun it and crash it because,

Crew Chief Eric: well, they kind of have to because there’s no malls anymore. So there’s nowhere to drive your Jeep.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re gonna make 250 of ’em. And to Tanya’s point, I think they’re going to wreck 250 of ’em.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of No for [00:17:00] me here, dog,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s no for me. I don’t like the white wheels. Other than that, I think it’s cool. The thing is a marketing stunt, a publicity stunt, it’s not doing anything for anybody.

Crew Chief Eric: See, and this is where you and I differ.

I actually like the wheels. I don’t know why, but that’s like the most appealing part of this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: So I wonder if they’re gonna do like Tesla did and put a clause in the purchase agreement that you can’t turn around and flip it.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah, that’s probably true. Alright, the next one. I have been following this build for years and I am so excited that it’s finally done.

And when I saw this video, I had to share it with you guys. The Pacific Cat is done, the hell cat powered Pacifica is on the road and it is freaking awesome. This thing is amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: So that’s a minivan I would buy.

Crew Chief Eric: I sent this to my wife and I was like, so what do you think? And she’s like,

Crew Chief Brad: you’re insane.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, she just sighed. And then she’s like, no. And I’m like, damn. I will say [00:18:00] this, if I could put those wheels at that stance on my wife’s Pacifica, just that and the flares. Oh, it look amazing. Like, I like the body lines of the Pacifica. And that’s weird to say, ’cause it’s a van.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s just a big wagon.

Crew Chief Eric: It is, but it’s kind of sporty, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: But it needs to be more sporty. And this is like extreme sports. This is X Games, 700 plus horsepower. Extreme, right? It’s like Harold and Kumar going through the seven 11 or the Circle K or whatever it was. Ah, this thing is aw, smoky burnouts in a minivan. I mean, does it get any better than that? Mm.

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Crew Chief Eric: that sound of that supercharger. Mm. That’s just delicious.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since we’re speaking of Stellantis, I got an opportunity to rent yet another Stellantis product. So I gotta give you a little renter review here.

Crew Chief Brad: Why?

Crew Chief Eric: Guess what? I got to drive when I was down in Florida.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, oh, oh. Um, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Brand new

Crew Chief Brad: God start,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s like [00:19:00] 2016 brand new Grand Wagoner L. The only thing as big as that is the expedition. Max monstrosity.

Crew Chief Brad: Mm.

Crew Chief Eric: Third row with a trunk. Big enough for coffins. I mean, this thing is a yacht. It’s probably the biggest thing I’ve driven since the old Autocrossers Inc. Autocross van, if you remember that.

You know, 17 passenger church van.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Back in the day. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either because it’s too big. It was too big in general parking, it was a nuisance. It didn’t fit in most parking spots. It was too long. Too wide, whatever. Driving it wasn’t really that different than my Jeep.

Mm-hmm. A lot of the creature comforts in my Jeep are there, but they’re now very much more digital. Everything is like super high gloss and behind the touchscreen. I mean, I have a touchscreen in my Jeep, 11 years old, but it’s much simpler. It’s more intuitive. The icons are bigger, they’re easier to determine.

Like I knew where everything sort of [00:20:00] needed to be, but it took a minute to orient myself Again, driving, it was like any other Stellantis product. It handled like any other Stellantis product to fit and finish was what I expected. Is it worth $150,000 MSRP? No. Is it as nice as my Jeep inside 10 years ago as a summit edition?

Yes. Is it nicer than the current Jeeps? Yes, but I’m gonna go back to, is it worth $150,000?

Crew Chief Brad: No, I feel like it’s probably worth 80.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: And the regular Wagoner is probably worth 45 or 50, and the Grand Cherokee should be in the 30 range. The Cherokee should be in the 20 range, and yeah. So on and so forth, down.

That’s not how car pricing works, unfortunately. Yeah. But that’s where I think these vehicles should be.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I, I agree with you. A thousand percent. And it wasn’t just a, you know, a round kissimmee type of thing with the wagoner, you know, dealing with stop and go traffic. We drove it long distances. Uh, and I’ll talk about this a little bit [00:21:00] more as we go along.

We started our trip in Fort Myers and Fort Myers to Orlandos three hours plus.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Despite it being big and bulky and cumbersome, it was super comfy. It was a nice place to be, especially with four people and luggage and everything else. You really were not pining for space in any way. It was, again, it was super comfortable.

And then after three hours in the truck, you got out and it’s like, huh. It wasn’t, it wasn’t even hateful. The seats are super comfortable. I will say the only thing that was really obnoxious was. A feature that I don’t have in any of my cars, which is the lane guidance assistance thing. And so the Wagoner is so big, it takes a while to sort of orient where the corners of it are, where the edges of it are, and it is wider than my Jeep, even though my Jeep’s kind of a big old hippopotamus going down the road.

I found myself maybe skirting the edge of the lane a little bit where the white line was not like going off on the shoulder and it would try to correct. And what it would do is it would bump the truck over, but because it was so big, it would bump over to the other line and it would bump it [00:22:00] back. So it was playing this like ping pong back and forth in the lane and the guys are like, are you okay?

And I’m like, watch, it’s doing it itself. And I would let go and it, you would just move it back and forth a couple of inches. This is so annoying. And I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. And it was one of those features that I don’t think you could permanently disable it, or I had to dig 12 menu layers deep to figure that out.

I’m like, it’s a rental, I’m just gonna give it back after a couple days. I don’t wanna sit here and you know, that be the cause of somebody else’s problem, so I’ll just live with it. But you were always on the knife edge when you were driving it. It was pretty pronounced how it would bump the truck over.

When it thought you were going over the lane and it has these big flag mirrors too, so they’re already sticking out past the body and it doesn’t take much for those sensors to suddenly pick up the line when the mirror is sticking out 18 inches. Like most stellantis truck owners have their mirrors extended for no reason.

This is sort of the same thing from the factory and it, it just blew my mind. It was one of the most obnoxious things that I’ve ever encountered in a new car. [00:23:00]

Crew Chief Brad: You know, for that kind of money I would just save half of it and get a Yukon XL Denali.

Crew Chief Eric: Haven’t they been having engine problems with those though?

There’s recalls in those GMV eights and stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but they’ve, they’ve got it all sorted out now and basically if you’re within thresholds, they’ll just put a different viscosity oil in it or they’ll fix it and give you an extended warranty. ’cause they have all the parts and stuff now. So. Nice. What was it an issue where there was a shortage on parts and parts availability and they couldn’t get the trucks fixed and everything.

That’s all workeded itself out now.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s switch gears and talk about Asian cars.

Crew Chief Brad: What about Mercedes and BMW?

Crew Chief Eric: We did that last year. We’re done. Remember?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, we don’t ever have to do it again.

Crew Chief Eric: No, never again. Like in another five years they’ll have changed the grills again or something.

Crew Chief Brad: Praise Lord, baby Jesus.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s talk about Asian cars. I don’t know what changed in the Department of Transportation. If it’s our current administration, whatever, it doesn’t matter. But suddenly K [00:24:00] cars are coming to America.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they’re super cute.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re accessories like chihuahuas and handbags,

Crew Chief Eric: they are. I mean, you could fit these K cars in your purse,

Crew Chief Brad: but you know who buys K cars in the us?

Nerdy white guys. Tell me I’m wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: You have to be of a certain build to fit in these too. I mean, at your height, Brad, you put on a K car as a shoe,

Crew Chief Brad: so I’d buy two of them. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: pretty much. Right now, I do think this Honda, the Modelo X or whatever, is super cool. I’ve seen some videos of these in Japan.

They’re mid engine. You could put the roof in the FR and the FR is tiny, like it holds like, you know, three wrenches kind of thing. I mean the cars are super compact. Oddly enough, it’s like MR two meets S 2000. It has that kind of vibe going. I like it. I’d love to drive one just to see, and I think it wouldd be super cool if they start making left hand drive ones and bring them over to the States.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes,

Crew Chief Eric: there is a subculture in the American automotive landscape that will [00:25:00] buy this for sure. But the, the bigger question is if we’re allowing new K cars to come in, what does it mean for old K cars?

Crew Chief Brad: No, because I think it’s the st the same overarching rules still apply.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s been folks that have been importing ’em for years.

There’s actually a huge shop in like Virginia that brings in K cars that are over 25 years old. You know, the typical gray market stuff. But does this mean we can start bringing over any K cars?

Crew Chief Brad: And even here there’s an update from Department of Transportation that says manufacturers must certify that they meet US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety standards.

So if we’re going to import a K car, unless we change those standards to allow those, the k cars that they create must meet those standards. So the old ones that were created before don’t. So they have to wait. The 25 year rule is my understanding of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Tanya, would you buy a K car? No. No,

Crew Chief Brad: she bought a K car.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought you’d be like one of the first people in line for something like this. You don’t, you don’t like K cars? [00:26:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Uh,

Crew Chief Eric: you just haven’t found the right one yet.

Executive Producer Tania: I know which K car I want.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, which one is it?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s called the Fiat Panda.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, that’s fair. I’ll give you that.

Crew Chief Brad: Not the Al Alpha Romeo Wagon, whatever.

Cross

Executive Producer Tania: Cabo something. Something

Crew Chief Brad: something, something, something. Yeah. Whatever that stick with that thing was

Crew Chief Eric: the longest name ever. Yeah. Good job there, my man. Yes. In other Asian car news, this is the sickest station wagon I’ve seen in a long time. Tell me I’m wrong. The S

Crew Chief Brad: magma,

Crew Chief Eric: the Hyundai Magma series.

Look at this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: The Genesis, smegma wingback,

Crew Chief Eric: the G 90. Look at that color. Look at those wheels, look at those flares. I mean, this is Audi RS six avant territory that Genesis slash Hyundai is going in. Am I wrong?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, no, that’s what they always do.

Crew Chief Eric: That looks sick.

Crew Chief Brad: Remember the stinger?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Stinger’s basically an A seven or it looks like an A seven,

Crew Chief Eric: which should have come in a stick shift, but we’ll just leave that where it is.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I would buy one of these.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Stop me. Stop me. ’cause [00:27:00] the price is like $200,000, I’m sure. But Tanya, you have a very discerning eye when it comes to this sort of thing. What do you think of the G 90 magma? Wingback

Executive Producer Tania: got a very asked and rear end.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: The double spoiler is. Interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. All of this is good.

Executive Producer Tania: The weird shark fin thing on the roof.

Crew Chief Brad: On the edges? Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Unsettling from the side angle.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s for aerodynamics. It looks cool from the front.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, I think it’s, if they got rid of those weird twin shark fins or whatever you wanna call those ribs, the line would be much better.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s for the roof rack though.

That’s why those are there. So you, you don’t have a wagon. You don’t understand roof rails. I get it.

Executive Producer Tania: Excuse me. How many wagons have there been made that have roof rails that look better than this? We did not need to reinvent roof rails.

Crew Chief Brad: They just integrated the roof rails into the body as opposed to slapping everyone separately.

Executive Producer Tania: Basically

Crew Chief Eric: these are aerodynamic roof rails. They also provide lateral down force. Okay. It [00:28:00] was tested in a wind tunnel. Okay. In some country that you can’t pronounce. Okay. And the Formula one team that’s involved, or the LAMA team that’s involved said it was good.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. Is

Crew Chief Brad: good.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s a beautiful color.

I’ll give him that.

Crew Chief Eric: This is the hotness fire right here, despite the name. Well, Hyundai’s gotta do something to get us excited. Right. I’m really, I’m really interested to see what happens with their WEC entry in the next couple years.

Executive Producer Tania: Here’s the K car we should all have.

Crew Chief Brad: I was just about to say that. Tanya stole my thunder.

Yes. This is the K car that we all deserve

Executive Producer Tania: because Honda’s just click baiting us with this teaser. They are re-releasing or they’re releasing a new fit only for the Chinese market. So we’re not gonna see, not gonna see another Honda fit here, but they did this, I don’t know, rendering of it in in race trim.

Yes, please. Can we have another Honda Fit Race series? Seriously, that’d be super fun to see these

Crew Chief Eric: B spec cars, is it just me or does it look like a little hamster, like it’s going to [00:29:00] like nod a carrot or

Executive Producer Tania: something? It does, yes.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s got these like buck teeth.

Executive Producer Tania: It does absolutely better front end than that Audi.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, you’re very right about that. And I didn’t plan this, but I mentioned the m mr two earlier. But what is this that you brought us here?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they haven’t said what it’s going to be. And of course they show pictures of an m mr two because that’s their previous mid-engine sports car. But allegedly Toyota is confirming they will be bringing another midg engine sports car, you know, might be a few years out, but it’s coming.

And then they show a picture of the one they built out of like the Yaris or whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: Right.

Executive Producer Tania: And it’s like are we gonna get a Yaris with a Midg engine or are we gonna actually get something like a breezy with a mid engine?

Crew Chief Brad: Ooh. But

not

Executive Producer Tania: the breezy but the The GR

Crew Chief Brad: Toyota version of the Cleo Sport.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s exactly what I was thinking.

Completely useless for everyday driving. Who

Crew Chief Brad: cares? That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: I think [00:30:00] we should go back to the second generation, MR two. I mean I like the RS, the Mr. Spider. I drove those. The poor man’s lease. I mean the lease and the mr. The MRS are basically the same thing at the end of the day. Similar power plant, all that borrowed from the the sica, but the body lines of the second gen, MR two, if they were modernized and brought into today, like you, we’ve seen some of the body kits for the GR 86 that make it look like the 80 86 of the popup headlights.

I think that stuff is all ultra fantastic and those are the directions that Toyota should be going in. I think they could reintroduce the second generation MR two today. It’s the perfect size. Just do it right for 2026 and you’ve got a boxer killer on top of it all. If they want to go toe to toe with Porsche, Tanya, you always bring us the latest and greatest.

What have you got for us?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, we have the, uh, recent article from Car and Driver about future electric vehicles that you’ll soon be able to buy, but these aren’t necessarily around the corner for sale. They could be [00:31:00] concept to actually being in production and oh, lo and behold, look, there’s that concept C Audi in the picture,

Crew Chief Eric: ma Ma.

But there is that Lancia looking rivian thing again that we talked about a bunch of months ago that is still super cool looking.

Crew Chief Brad: This whole article is kind of contradictory to what we were talking about at the beginning about how manufacturers are scaling back on the whole EV thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Well scaling back.

So it means they still have to make some. Yeah. And you got in here, aside from Okay. Some of the, the usual players. You got Acura coming out with an RSX. An RSX. We’re BRA engineering, the RSX name. ’cause this thing looks like an SUV.

Crew Chief Eric: This thing looks like a Euros. It’s huge.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s terrible. Like this should be the MDX and it’s an ev, but apparently this is expected in the second half of this year.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh.

Executive Producer Tania: So who knows?

Crew Chief Eric: Awful.

Executive Producer Tania: You got Sony apparently gonna come out with that Aila.

Crew Chief Brad: What?

Executive Producer Tania: Which I first saw like several years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show. Apparently [00:32:00] that’s actually becoming real. We haven’t been following Sony and what they were doing. They’re alleging that there’s one expected late this year.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: You’ve got Alpha Romeo with a GI BI

Crew Chief Eric: am really interested in that actually. If you kept the body the way the Julia’s always looked, that’s a handsome ev. It would be the best looking ev on the road. Hands down.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike its cousin, the Stelvio God,

Executive Producer Tania: which is interesting. I thought the Stelvio was pretty much

Crew Chief Eric: dead,

Executive Producer Tania: a gunner.

So the fact that they’d wanna try and make an EV out of that seems interesting. You got Alpine entering the foray.

Crew Chief Eric: Those are hot.

Executive Producer Tania: And here look at this Audi, TTEV. So that concept C. Tt,

Crew Chief Eric: I think I threw up a little bit

Executive Producer Tania: artistic license in writing this to say this is a tt. I don’t think in any way has Audi, you know, said that they’re gonna be coming out with a tt.

But nonetheless, this is

Crew Chief Eric: the concept. Oh, well. So, so that’s funny you say that. You know how the other, the A four was photoshopped?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Look at the roof line on this one and tell me they didn’t Photoshop.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh yes.

Crew Chief Eric: This [00:33:00] front end on a T. Oh yes. That’s a tt Gen one TT roof line.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, it is.

Crew Chief Eric: As a TT owner, I can vouch for this.

Yes, that is what they did. That is terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: Whatever’s going on with that Audi, that’s ridiculous. And then of course you’ve got Bentleys and BMWs. Of course, they’re staying with their I Series. But look at that grill on that. Im three.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God. That is horrible.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. The, uh, that car looks like a mark eight or mark nine Lancer is what that is.

Bad three. Looks like it is. It’s bad. It’s terrible. Oh, it looks like that Infinity. The Infiniti I 30.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, yes, yes. From

Crew Chief Brad: the nineties. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what I will give them credit for though? If those wheels are for real? They look really, really cool. I think those are neat.

Crew Chief Brad: You are on an island, my friends.

Executive Producer Tania: Didn’t something have something like that similar or no?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know, but they look super slick. Like the way wheels are being made these days is just amazing what they think. What

Executive Producer Tania: do we think of the catter?

Crew Chief Eric: The the what?

Executive Producer Tania: Once you get past the BMWs.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s that?

Executive Producer Tania: Hater em, sorry, I think I pronounced it incorrectly.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that an [00:34:00] vora? I don’t know. That’s what it looks like. Kind of.

Crew Chief Brad: It is stunning.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a good looking car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: And here’s a surprise, the bolt’s coming back.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh. Boo God, it looks even more like a shopping cart than it did before.

Crew Chief Brad: I actually like the Bolt. I went out the other night and did an Uber and the person that picked me up had a Chevy Bolt and I was impressed with the Chevy Bolt,

Crew Chief Eric: this Ferrari ev.

Executive Producer Tania: We got Ferrari being Ferrari really, because that SUV was so successful. Now we gotta be an ev, let things lie anyway. Yeah. How about here you go, magma.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God. I instantly love it. So can we talk about the Hoffmeister kink? Do you guys know what that is? I recently learned about it. What? The Hoffmeister kink.

Uh,

Executive Producer Tania: okay. What happens if I google Hoffmeister kink? Do I hit enter right now?

Crew Chief Eric: You don’t Google that. I, I believe it takes you to the wrong kind of [00:35:00] website.

Crew Chief Brad: You never Google anything with the word kink in it?

Executive Producer Tania: No, I haven’t hit enter, so I’m, I’m,

Crew Chief Eric: but, but you can look it up. But maybe put automotive hoffmeister kink that could give you some other search results.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, no. Okay. It came up the very first. Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright. So I learned from John Summers the motoring historian.

Executive Producer Tania: Mm. Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: This goes back to 1960s Ferrari. There’s the Super Americas cars are very swoopy, you know, very beautiful lines. And then the glass has this like cut in it. It’s very sharp, it’s very angular on a car that’s very curvy, like the Super America and the Luso and all those.

This thing, the Hoffmeister kink, it’s like a signature of those Ferraris apparently that carried forward into the modern cars. It’s to break up those swoopy lines and give you something to like focus on for whatever reason. So all modern cars apparently now have this hoffmeister kink, which I don’t understand.

I’d rather see a smooth line.

Executive Producer Tania: It was developed by a German dude [00:36:00] for BMW.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there you go. It was on those Ferraris way back when. It’s like, I don’t like it, but it’s clear and present on every new design. The

Executive Producer Tania: mark one Volkswagen has a kink

Crew Chief Eric: where

Executive Producer Tania: apparently that is considered a kink

Crew Chief Eric: in the back window of the GTI.

Executive Producer Tania: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: But it works for that car.

Crew Chief Brad: Do you mean liking the mark one Volkswagen as a kink?

Crew Chief Eric: It might be these days.

Executive Producer Tania: The E 36 has a kink. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: it does.

Crew Chief Eric: Scratch that. Reverse it. Willy Wonka style.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. What made you think of this? ’cause the magma doesn’t have a kink.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s that swoopy thing in the back

Executive Producer Tania: that, no, it’s not. The kink comes down. It goes back the opposite direction.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. But there’s a lot of new cars that still

Executive Producer Tania: have, so this magma doesn’t have that.

This magma goes just to a tip to the back. It actually looked bad. It probably looked better if it was a kink, ’cause it would have curved back the other way.

Crew Chief Eric: But yeah, that’s what reminded me. ’cause it’s so pronounced. It’s like a penant. It kind of reminds me of, remember the first gen focuses had the penant window on the back.

It was like a [00:37:00] triangular window on a hatchback. It never made any sense to me design-wise. It was like, why didn’t you square it up? I guess they didn’t want to make it look like a golfer, a Reno, Cleo, or anything like that.

Executive Producer Tania: This catering has a kink that is an example of the. The glass turned back to meet the bottom.

And look how that looks. Nice. It looks nicer than if they made it a point.

Crew Chief Eric: But if you look at the Chevy Bolt, doesn’t that also have the kink?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. It’s very, very subtle

Crew Chief Eric: and it’s awful. It looks terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, this, there’s other issues.

But anyway. The one car you were calling the Lancia, apparently it’s a Honda.

Crew Chief Eric: What? I thought that was a rivian.

Executive Producer Tania: You were calling it Rivian?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: A weird wedge.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I think that one looks like a Lamborghini from the A

Executive Producer Tania: Lamborghini. Yeah. That’s a Honda. No, the fir. Yeah. That pickup truck looked like a rivian.

Crew Chief Eric: These are all getting terrible. Ooh, the Kevin is back. E like Kev.

Executive Producer Tania: Like Kev,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. Remember the commercial Kevin Bacon? Eev like Kev. He’s got his daughter in the car [00:38:00] and he’s like embarrassing her. It’s like a Super Bowl commercial.

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. This is the SOB 900 Turbo s. That’s what this is.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean the, you, you guys, it goes on and on and, and Lucid and Lotus and Lexus and Mazda, Mercedes.

We didn’t talk about them.

Crew Chief Eric: We are not allowed to talk about them. System

Executive Producer Tania: we’re not. So we’ll skip over the various Mercedes and they have a lot a Mitsubishi Lancer ev. They’re gonna desecrate the name Lancer with a bizarre looking smushed. SUV. There’s an ev and of course you have, you know, Polestar and whatever have you.

The Porsche Cayman and Cayenne EVs, rolls Royce. And then, yes, the Rivian R two, which I thought was already out, but I guess it’s coming out. Now

Crew Chief Eric: I want the R three and the R three.

Executive Producer Tania: The R three is so good. It is a fi panda. Ah. They didn’t kink it though. They didn’t kink That glass

Crew Chief Eric: doesn’t need the kink.

Look at the glass. It looks perfect. Without the kink.

Executive Producer Tania: The line of this car [00:39:00] does not need the kink.

Crew Chief Eric: Kink is in the back. Brad is just, he’s, he’s not buying it.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m still trying to understand what the kink is. I was too scared to Google it.

Crew Chief Eric: Look at the scout and it’ll

Executive Producer Tania: make sense to you. No, you can Google it.

Hoffmeister kink, the very first thing that’ll come up is the appropriate thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay, now I, now, now I got it. Okay. For some reason I was thinking the rear glass, like the back glass.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh no, no, no. The side back glass.

Crew Chief Brad: Do they actually explain why this does this?

Executive Producer Tania: I think it’s just a design.

Crew Chief Brad: A design thing,

Executive Producer Tania: because if not, it’d be awkward.

You either have to round it like they did on that R three. You’re coming to a point which is just awkward and probably very difficult to manufacture the glass.

Crew Chief Brad: Right.

Executive Producer Tania: And also probably structurally having that kink, flattening it out there probably does something to the structural rigid or integrity of the the side panel and the glass itself.

Crew Chief Brad: I can see that I totally want an R three.

Executive Producer Tania: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re awesome. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: right.

Crew Chief Brad: I could see getting one of these in a couple years once the boys are outta [00:40:00] daycare. That’s my goal.

Executive Producer Tania: That’d be fun. And if it is truly starting under 40,000,

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t believe that for a second.

Crew Chief Brad: 37 to 47,

Crew Chief Eric: I’m sorry.

Executive Producer Tania: No, but one of the more interesting things on this list in terms of seeing how this actually plays out is the slate.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: The Bezos truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God.

Executive Producer Tania: To see how this actually turns out it, I think that’ll be interesting to keep our eyes on this year and into next year. So obviously the list goes on and on and on and on, and Toyota and Volvo and et cetera. So apparently, even though everybody’s rolling back their EVs, they’re keeping some in the lineups until they aren’t.

These aren’t all confirmed, so,

Crew Chief Eric: but you know what else isn’t confirmed? Things that are lost. So let’s switch to Brad’s favorite part of the drive through. Lost and frowned. I don’t believe you scoured the internet or called Chuck La Duck or Gray Chevrolet over the winter break.

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Crew Chief Eric: but I found something for you guys.

I’d mentioned this. Probably before [00:41:00] I mentioned the other rado that was modified, that they had turned it into a station wagon. They used the Audi 90 rear lights. I dunno if you guys remember that one eventually, that sort of became the polo station wagon way back when. But have you guys heard about the like one-off Rado Cabrio Le

Crew Chief Brad: Nope.

Executive Producer Tania: Horrible name for the video.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: Who would’ve thought it would’ve worked as a Cabrio?

Crew Chief Eric: It looks really good,

Executive Producer Tania: man, seeing this car. Not as the Cabrio though. I’m like, shit,

Crew Chief Eric: every time I see a Rado I’m like, I want a carrado in my life again. And then. I think if I get a carra in my life again, I will regret every minute of it.

You know, like, ugh.

Crew Chief Brad: So I’m confused. Okay. So Volkswagen actually made this car.

Crew Chief Eric: Volkswagen commissioned a design house to create a Cabrio Le of the Carrado as a concept, and I think they built like two of them or something like that. But this guy, private guy owns one of them, and so he does this little tour, drives around and shows everybody.

It’s one of those forgotten things, sort of like the Rado station wagon that I was just [00:42:00] mentioning. Every time you see it, you’re kinda like, yeah, I like that. They should have done that. Like what were they thinking? They should have sold more rados. They should have sold them for longer. They should have evolved it yet again and continued the Rocco line because there was a period of nothing between the Rado and the next generation Mark, six based Rocco.

There was not a whole lot going on there, so I think they could have stretched out that lineage a little bit. Now granted, there’s some fallbacks there because the longer you keep the rado going, while at that point the Mark fours would’ve been out, let’s just say the Rado was using a Mark two chassis, so we’re talking eighties technology with a nineties body, and now you’re building it into the two thousands.

That would’ve been pretty crazy. I can understand why they had to kill it off. It just doesn’t make sense to continue to keep the tool and die around for a platform that doesn’t exist anymore. But I think they could have evolved a rado and kept it going. But stuff like this, I mean, just imagine instead of that weird.

Mark three and a half Cabrio le that we got, that’s like a mark three in the back and [00:43:00] a mark four in the front, and you know, nothing’s cross compatible between the generations. That’s what we ended up with instead of this, which would’ve been super cool. Again, if they had made one, I would’ve really considered collecting one.

You know, have a Coupa and a convertible. I think that’d be super cool. Tanya, any car commercials you’d like us to review for Lost and Found this month?

Executive Producer Tania: Do not have one this time.

Crew Chief Eric: Next time.

Crew Chief Brad: By the next time we’ll actually have Super Bowl commercials to review.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll have a whole slew of car commercial

Executive Producer Tania: and they’ll probably be wildly disappointing.

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya’s holding out for the good stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly,

Crew Chief Eric: so it’s a new year. Do we have a new New Year’s resolution or are we gonna stick with last year? Are we allowed to talk about Tesla in 2026?

Crew Chief Brad: That was our resolution

Executive Producer Tania: last year.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I think we’ll make some exceptions.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Only when it’s comical and it paints Tesla in a bad light.

Executive Producer Tania: Only when it’s talking about the cyber truck and how the sales have plummeted [00:44:00] like a rock off Mount Everest.

Crew Chief Eric: Nobody wants these.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s my fault. Had I bought mine, they would’ve been negative 14,999 instead of 15,000.

Executive Producer Tania: And here’s the the hilarious thing. Cyber Truck was America’s bestselling electric pickup in 2024.

Wasn’t it like the only

Crew Chief Brad: I, it it was between that and the F1 Lightning. I don’t think there were any other pickups.

Executive Producer Tania: No. But the F1 lightning barely didn’t even, I, I don’t even remember when it came out. Yeah, maybe they came out pretty close, I guess. Nonetheless, they sold 39,000 cyber trucks during the first full year.

On the market in 2024.

Crew Chief Brad: Mm-hmm.

Executive Producer Tania: And then the sales got cut in half. They estimate that only 20,200 were sold in 2025.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: Even though Muskie would have said they were gonna sell, like, I don’t know, over a hundred thousand or 200,000 or some BS that he had floated at one point of all, all they were gonna [00:45:00] sell.

And now apparently, I think they’re saying they’re just like sitting in lots right now.

Crew Chief Eric: I just realized that the entire design of the cyber truck is a hofmeister kink.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a kink. There’s a kink.

Executive Producer Tania: No, there’s is no kink. No, this is great.

Crew Chief Brad: The back bumper is a kink.

Executive Producer Tania: If you look at the side view of it when you scroll down.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, the one that’s covered in vomit.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, where you see all the dirty hand smudges all down the side of it. Yeah. Yes. The, the perfect profile of the side.

This is what happens when you don’t do a kink. They didn’t do a kink on that back glass. It’s straight down. And then they didn’t kink anything on that front glass. It comes to a point, look how dumb that looks.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. There’s nothing kinky about the cyber truck.

It is Kless.

Crew Chief Eric: I see more of these on the road, and the wraps are crazy and they look terrible in every color. Whether it’s red, orange, yellow, blue, black.

Executive Producer Tania: You have to wrap ’em [00:46:00] because they look like vomit. If not,

Crew Chief Brad: okay, so if you go further down, there is a graph showing the pickup trucks that were sold in 2024 and 2025, the electric pickup trucks,

Crew Chief Eric: Uhhuh,

Crew Chief Brad: the cyber truck, the lightning, the Rivian R one, they’re considering the Hummer, a pickup truck.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t really think it is. The Silverado ev, which I’ve seen a few of those around here. I actually kinda like ’em. And then the Sierra Ev, which is just the same thing as the Silverado ev.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, you reminded me of something Brad, and maybe we’ll have to have him on the show to talk about life with Hummer Ev.

If you remember Big Drew who has been off-roading Jeeps and he had his G wagon and all that. He got rid of all that stuff. He now has a Hummer Ev. And he said when we had talked to him last time about off-roading for him that would be like the pinnacle offroad vehicle. Like that’s the one he want. He finally got one.

And I’m wondering, A, if he took it off-road and B, what it’s like to be an owner of a Hummer ev. So maybe we’ll have him back to talk about [00:47:00] that.

Crew Chief Brad: I can’t imagine. It’s very good off-road being 200,000 pounds.

Executive Producer Tania: So the question I would have sometimes being discerning of graphs and data. The cyber truck came out in 2023 uhhuh, so yes, it technically had a full 2024 sales year.

The F-150 didn’t come out till April. The Silverado didn’t come out till like June. Or mid-year sometime the cyber truck had a headstart on these guys and it barely eked out. Actually, the F-150, I had never seen this data before. I’d never paid attention to how many F1 fifties were sold. Who cares? So I wonder if the F-150 had come out.

Earlier in 2023 alongside the cyber truck. This might be a different graph because in 2025 it outpaced the cyber truck.

Crew Chief Brad: And to that point, like its drop off might’ve been proportional though, because all the early adopters were going, all the people that were going to buy them would buy them first, and then the casual customers would kind of stroll in and you know, pick one up.

All the [00:48:00] diehards would’ve bought them at first, so the sales would’ve come down because it’s the early adopters and everybody that are buying ’em and not the people that necessarily are just looking for a vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: But then there’s also the, all the problems with it.

Crew Chief Brad: Well,

Executive Producer Tania: bricking, you can’t get it wet. It rusts because

Crew Chief Brad: yes, I have a vehicle that I cannot get wet.

Executive Producer Tania: The panels blow off and fall off and the accelerator pedal breaks underneath you and the, and the console disintegrates

Crew Chief Eric: quality.

Executive Producer Tania: I wonder how much of that also contributed to a downward decline in sales.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Nah.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. How much of whistling diesel contributed to the decline in sales?

Crew Chief Eric: Nah. Moving on to the segment.

That has changed more times than Brad has changed his socks over the years we’re at. Seriously, what could go wrong formerly? Lowered expectations.

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered expectations.

Crew Chief Eric: This one takes the cake. Tanya, you spent a week with [00:49:00] a rental Ultima. I’m just gonna throw it out there.

Crew Chief Brad: You did what? Now

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna say it again. She spent a week with an Altima.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, actually I was gonna bring this up. I had the rare opportunity to actually sample some of JD M’s. Finest over a short period of time for a variety of reasons.

So not only did I have a rental Ultima, but I also had a rental Elantra. And I had a rental Kia.

Crew Chief Brad: A rental Kia what?

Executive Producer Tania: Kia? Soul.

Crew Chief Brad: Kia Soul. Okay. No

Crew Chief Eric: Kia Rio from like 1995.

Crew Chief Brad: Did the buy one get one free?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: So Hyundai, Kia, and Nissan, for all intents and purposes,

Crew Chief Eric: who came out on top?

Executive Producer Tania: Who came out on bottom?

The Kia

Crew Chief Eric: Really

Crew Chief Brad: not surprised. The, the Kia Souls in a condo car. The Elantra and Ultima are mid-size family sedans.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. And the Kia. Felt its economy. Yeah. Literally in its fuel [00:50:00] economy as well as its quality of interior and, and the feel and the sad motor that it tried its best.

Crew Chief Eric: How were those cardboard seats?

Executive Producer Tania: The surprise in this? Actually was the Elantra. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: really?

Executive Producer Tania: The Elantra would give you in the forties, miles per gallon all day long. I was shocked. And it’s got a nice little gauge and it’s telling you as modern cars do, like where you’re falling in the band and all that stuff. And it was like, I drove around and around and some cruising, like long distance on the highway.

I thought for the longest time after driving like two hours and stuff, that the gas needle was broken and the gas gauge didn’t work because it did not move.

Crew Chief Brad: Mm.

Executive Producer Tania: And and I’m watching the thing and it’s going, you’re doing 45 miles at a gallon. I’m like, bullshit. I am. This is a big ass car. I went around and around in a two hour drive and a two hour drive back and then here and there in city and highway [00:51:00] practically returned to full.

It was ridiculous. I mean, great. I’ll also say the interior wasn’t terrible. It was fine. It wasn’t the most luxurious. Having also recently been in some other Japanese cars, there are more luxurious interiors in that same kind of range of car that you could get in a similar price range. Probably Also, see, the other thing about the Kia, which might have swayed me, not really, there was a smoker in that car and that car fucking wreaked.

Wreaked. And I should have returned it immediately on the spot, but I did not. Eventually I got used to the smell, which was pretty bad. But anyway, the Altima, so get to the Altima.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy.

Executive Producer Tania: So I, I had Elantra. Kia and then the Altima.

Crew Chief Eric: Save the best for last. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. Save the best for last baby. When I was still in the rental car garage, I snapped a photo and sent it to you.

And what was wrong with that Altima? The front bumper was hanging off slightly

Crew Chief Eric: [00:52:00] from the, they come that way from the factory. It’s like Fiats in the seventies with the rust. Altimas do not come fully put together. It’s like some assembly required,

Executive Producer Tania: but here is my legitimate, okay, I got in the Altima, get out of the airport, all that stuff.

Get on the highway, whatever, wherever I’m going.

Crew Chief Eric: Before you get, did you do any antics in the Altima? Did you go full Altima driver?

Executive Producer Tania: Of course

Crew Chief Eric: not. You jumped some curbs. Did you reenact Bullet. Did you bounce off of some telephone poles?

Crew Chief Brad: Did you pay for the insurance?

Executive Producer Tania: No. But kid you not. I literally had the thought while I’m driving this car.

This car gives no fucks.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a on badger.

Executive Producer Tania: This car is here for it. All the Elantra and the Kia, they were sitting there driving you back into the lane constantly. Boop, boop, boop. This boop, boop, boop, that the Altima you wanna drive in the middle of the road on the yellow line. I’ll downshift for you. Let’s go.

Those are the Tima vibes. Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: The Ulta [00:53:00] is the Ultima’s a Ride or Die?

Executive Producer Tania: The Tima

Crew Chief Eric: literally

Executive Producer Tania: is there for you.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s why it’s the number one selling vehicle at Nissan, despite the fact that it’s the only vehicle that Nissan sells.

Crew Chief Brad: I, I wanna buy an Ultima now.

Executive Producer Tania: I will say the, the, the Elantra though, like interior and everything was still slightly superior.

I had a little bit nicer finish and polish to it. The Ultima felt a little, little plasticy inside.

Crew Chief Brad: Rough around the edges.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. It was, it was rough on the edges. It didn’t give a shit. Yeah. It’s just getting you where you need to go.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Need dragging pedestrians behind you?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s dragging its bumper, it’s flapping in the wind.

All right, so I’m gonna ask this every month until you answer. Nope. Yes. That question is, did you watch the F1 movie?

Executive Producer Tania: Not yet.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not free yet, but it’s Do you pay for Apple? Not, not yet. If you pay for Apple tv, you’re waiting for the F1 season. I get

Crew Chief Eric: it. So the last minute, you wanna get the maximum out of that Apple [00:54:00] subscription you possibly.

Exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: The Olympics are happening first. Okay. Yes. Then Formula One.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re in the middle of winter, really cold, and we’ve got some huge storms coming here. Destined for some inclement weather. Probably as you’re listening to this, we’re on the other end of some inclement weather that hit us pretty hard.

This is borderline Florida. Man. I don’t know if you guys saw this Instagram reel that was going around and it’s not artificial intelligence, you know, generating a video to be funny or any, you know, somebody being a parody. I literally watched a video and I must have watched it 10 times ’cause I didn’t believe what I was seeing.

A woman was using one of those small, like little portable snowblowers and I’m not talking like the Ryobi one, I’m talking like the neck size up. Okay. So I’m not sure if it was gas powered or what to clear off their car from the hood. Up through the windshield with the snowblower back and forth and back and forth, and every time they went back and forth, I just cringed and said, I wonder [00:55:00] how their windshield got busted.

Can you believe the stuff that people do? Like how hard is it to clear your windshield

Crew Chief Brad: considering there are so many people out there that just don’t fucking do it after a snowstorm and they just drive? It’s probably pretty hard. Apparently.

Crew Chief Eric: I wouldn’t think it was that easy to get the snowblower up on the car.

Executive Producer Tania: I would think it would be harder to go through the effort of this, whatever the snowblower thing was than to just even use your arm if you don’t have an ice scraper or something.

Crew Chief Brad: Right. She did it for the grim,

Executive Producer Tania: basically.

Crew Chief Eric: She looked like an older lady, so I don’t know that she was TikTok in the old folks home kind of thing.

Right.

Crew Chief Brad: Wait, wait, wait, wait. But but before we go any further, I think there is a question that needs to be asked.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Was it an Altima?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes,

Crew Chief Eric: because it’s here for it all. As Tanya says, it’s here for all of it. Okay. Yes. So that’s what got me. ’cause I was like, there’s no way the windshield’s cracked because ultimas will survive nuclear holocaust and there’s no way that the paint is [00:56:00] chipped because you could go through Armageddon with an Ultima and it will last.

And I kept thinking the snowblower has augers. It should have torn up the hood. Nah. Ultimas are bulletproof. It’s all good. So if you own an Ultima and you have a small snowblower, apparently you can clear off your car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, what could go wrong

Crew Chief Brad: And then they drive 150 miles an hour down the road on the wrong side of the road

Crew Chief Eric: because there’s no lane assist.

So what’s stopping you from Alright, so book club. I am on a mission to get through some automotive books. I’ve got a backlog of them. So, you know, I just wanna throw a plug out here. Finally finished the revised edition of Brock Yates’s tome, the love letter to Enzo Ferrari. It’s the history of Enzo Ferrari from the very beginning up until his death in 1988, and this version was updated by his daughter because of the Ferrari movie that had come out a couple of years ago.

I will say, if you’re a Ferrari fan, read it. Get the audiobook on Spotify or Audible or wherever, check it out. It’s [00:57:00] immensely detailed. You can tell that it is a little biased. Brock Gates seem to be a big fan of Ferrari, although he kind of poo-poos on the Europeans. You know, very pro-American stuff like that.

It, it is what it is. It was written quite a long time ago, but it is one of the definitive Ferrari books, especially when it comes to Ferrari history. So I enjoyed it. It’s quite long. Book itself is hundreds and hundreds of pages, and the revised edition adds another couple of chapters because it goes up through Schumacher and current days and the return of Mon de Zilo and all this kind of stuff.

So it’s updated for the current times up until the movie a couple of years ago. So Enzo by Brock Yates is on my recommended read list. If you are a automotive historian or a automotive enthusiast, nerd. That’s that. But speaking of Ferrari, we need to switch to rich people. Thanks. So I mentioned I had rental wagon here and went on a little trip to Florida.

This is a multi-layered story here, but I will say this. Shout out to our friends at the Revs [00:58:00] Institute, Naples, Florida. I’d never been before. So before going to the 2026 Mecu auction, I took a little detour to go visit Lauren Goodman and Arthur down at Revs and hang out there and see the museum and all that kinda stuff.

Never been before, always heard good things from people that had been, didn’t know what to expect. When I went there, I kept my expectations low thinking, ah, car museum. How good could it be? The minute you walk into Revs, you suddenly realize you’re on a whole nother level. The place is immaculate. It’s well curated, it’s fascinating.

The cars are interesting, the people are interesting. It runs like a well-oiled machine. I mean, we got the full tour, even the restoration shop, all of it. We got to see the new archives that they built in Fort Myers and got access to a whole bunch of like photographs and talked to a bunch of people. It was absolutely amazing.

Cannot recommend revs enough. I wrote a short article about it with some pictures that will include in the show notes. So if you’re headed to Florida and you can make the Detour to Southwestern Florida, go to Naples. Go check it out. Go check out the cars, ask for [00:59:00] Lauren. She’ll take you around or hook you up with someone there that can take you on a really nicely well guided tour.

It’s very much worth the stop over from Revs. We went to Mecu in Kissimmee, not too far from Disney World, NEP Cot and all that fun stuff right there in the heart of Orlando. It’s a circus, like that’s all I could say. Mecu Kissimmee, one of the biggest auctions in the country, absolute nonstop for two weeks.

We were there at the tail end, specifically for the Bachman collection and the Bianco Spile, which we covered earlier in December. So you can go back to that multi-part mini series that we did Leading up to that, we got there trying to get a lay of the land pictures of all the cars, you know, what we wanted to see, get the programs and figure out the run order for the auctions and all this kind of stuff.

And so what we did is we set up shop right there amongst all the craziness that was happening. And we did play by play commentary of the Bachman collection and the Bianco special. So there’s an episode that dropped on January the 17th. You can go back into our catalog and check it out. [01:00:00] And I was there with William from the Ferrari marketplace, John Summers the motoring historian, and we had David Ions fly in from Ontario, Canada, who’s from Motor Copia, and we had all been part of that miniseries in December, but we all got together live and did commentary right there from the auction.

It was pretty cool. So lots of really neat stuff across the blocks. 17 record setting Ferraris, I mean, we’re talking Enzos that sold for double what they should normally sell for F forties. That broke the record. 2 88 GTOs, 360 challenge s, just all sorts of stuff that was off the charts expensive. There was even a Ferrari 400 I that was like in disrepair and motors, half apart body panels are missing.

And we were like, Hey Willie, you like those cars? You should bid on that, blah. It came out the gate and suddenly it’s like a hundred thousand dollars for a car that needs to be put back together that isn’t even running. And it was like just absolute off the chain. Rich people things. And so you’re probably wondering as you’re nodding your head, brag on, yeah.

Ferrari. Was there more ketchup than there was mustard? No. The [01:01:00] Bachmans were huge fans of yellow Ferrari. Most of their collection was yellow. So if you wanna see Ferrari you’ve never seen in that fly yellow or some of the more modern yellow colors, definitely check out the pictures we have from the Bachman collection.

Just one of a kind. A lot of them were last of the line cars, like the last one off the production line. European delivery, crazy color combinations that were specifically ordered for them, like completely bespoke and all that.

Crew Chief Brad: And how many Altimas went across the block and what did they sell for?

Crew Chief Eric: Zero.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s the thing that boggles me about auctions, right? It’s crazy. Now Mecu is a little bit. Less what John Summers likes to call past the butter auctions. Those are the, you know, the Sotheby’s, you know, the Goodings and all those, like what you would expect if you ever watched the movie, the Red Violin.

That’s what those auctions are like. You know, they’re quiet, but you got these auctioneers telling a story and trying to get people excited and there’s someone in the background sipping tea and holding a little paddle, you know, or gently rubbing their ear or something, you know, whatever the signal is that they wanna make a bid.[01:02:00]

Kom is more like, it’s like the farm show auction, and they got the guy,

and it is just this pattern that’s constantly going on nonstop, and they take turns. They just have auctioneers that just rotate through and they take a break and it’s just, it’s bonkers. And so there’s a lot of energy in the room, but it’s no ultimas. No, but Corvettes for $800,000. You’re like, where is the money coming from?

I mean, Yanko, Camaros for millions of dollars. You’re like. Who’s buying these cars? The amount of money that was crossing the block was absolutely insane. And I did a rough calculation. The Bachman collection alone, hammer values before fees. ’cause you always have to tack on like another 10% to everything that sells.

It was like $55 million just for those 40 cars in the Bachman collection. You’re like, they had four to 5,000 cars go through Mecu in two weeks. And I mean, you’re talking again, Corvettes for [01:03:00] $800,000 a pop. You do the math, it’s billions and billions of dollars running through and it’s like, where is it coming from?

Where’s it going? Some of these cars, I feel like they rotate from one auction to the next. Right. People are buying them and flipping ’em. They probably didn’t even take ’em off the car carrier that, you know, they probably showed up to collect them on. So there’s a game there too. I mean, you get some inside baseball and how some of that stuff works, but I’m just like, that’s too rich for my blood man.

It’s straight up rich people things.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So then the crescendo, you know, we were building up to the Bianca Spec. That’s the 19 61, 2 50 GTO Ferrari. The only one made in white, one of eight right hand drives driven by Graham Hill. You know, Roy Salvador, all this stuff. You, you can go back and listen to the whole story.

All the provenance that that car has. You gotta remember two 50 GTOs don’t sell on an auction block. Normally they are traded like Picassos and Rembrandt and Renoirs. They’re like art pieces. People don’t really drive two 50 GTOs unless you’re uh,

Crew Chief Brad: crazy.

Crew Chief Eric: No, the guy from Pink Floyd, what’s his name? Nick.

Crew Chief Brad: Nick Mason.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Nick Mason. There you go. [01:04:00] So, at any rate. This two 50 GTO up for auction. It’s the first one up for auction in like over 10 years or something like that. So anyway, there’s a, there’s sort of a range. When you sell privately, they don’t declare like how much things go for. And so there’s sort of a range between let’s say like, I think 35 and 75, right?

The guy from WeatherTech bought his for right around 75. And then there was one that, you know, somebody bought way back when and wrecked and they died in it, but they never raced it and it had to be rebuilt and that one was considered a bad one and it sold for like 35. There was all these projections that either the Bianca was gonna do better than McNeil’s silver one, or it was gonna sit somewhere in the middle, right?

Maybe, let’s say 50 million, right? We’re not talking thousands, we’re talking millions of dollars. So we get there. You could tell that there was somebody on the phone, there was somebody in the room. There were only a couple people that were in that space, right? Because they came out opening bid 50 million, and then they had to drop it.

They dropped it all the way down to 25 [01:05:00] to try to get some bidding going, and it just crept up and crept up and crept up, and the whole thing was sort of over and done with in about 20 to 25 minutes. Unlike the other cars where they kind of speed ’em through, they’re trying to ramp it up. They wanna get it back to that 50 million, which is where we thought the reserve was probably sitting there.

So they took the reserve off at 35, trying to push it to 36, you know, and that number, and it just sort of sat there and sat there and sat there. And then they finally settled on 35, which came out to 38 and changed with fees, but still $35 million for a Ferrari. Good god. That’s rich people things.

Crew Chief Brad: It is pretty though.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s even prettier in person. I mean, it’s a good, it’s one of the best looking Ferrari’s hands down. I mean, it’s like that moment they just got it right, you know? They got it right on all levels. It was winning and racing. It was winning in design. It was just a winning car. Not to say that they couldn’t repeat it later.

But it was just one of those things, you know, but you had to be there, but you can sort of relive it by re-listening to that episode. So, [01:06:00] and in the end, would I go to another auction as a commentator? Absolutely. Could I bid on anything? No. Like, it hurts me, like, just to see those numbers. Like maybe I could go to the, the co-part auction when they’re getting rid of, you know, like an insurance car or an old police car or something.

But that caliber of auction is just, you have to be committed to what you’re buying at that point.

Executive Producer Tania: Mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks here that we got some extra notes in the, uh, in our rich people. What is this value meal? What’s going on here?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a different segment.

Crew Chief Eric: What is the drive-through,

Executive Producer Tania: blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s not rich people things.

It’s it’s value meal. It’s things the everyday person can afford. Yeah. That are fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s rich people things And Goodwill. Dollar menu. Maybe it should be Dollar menu.

Crew Chief Eric: Dollar menu.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought of dollar menu at first and then I thought maybe that’s ripping somebody off. Do, do, do, do, do.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the extra value menu.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Family Dollar.

Crew Chief Eric: This ain’t Burger King. You can’t have it your way.

Executive Producer Tania: No. But as [01:07:00] you know, more and more of us are becoming Lego or brick enthusiasts. The Brick shop by Mattel has unveiled their latest build, which is a nineties Honda Civic.

Crew Chief Brad: Gee, I wonder who’s had one of those before.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know Brad, who had one of those.

Me. I mean, if this was red, it would look exactly like yours.

Crew Chief Brad: It would, it would.

Crew Chief Eric: Why did they pick this color though?

Executive Producer Tania: Because they already have the Hot Wheels in that color.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, the Hot Wheels was already in that color. They already had the paint.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, and it’s funny because these are becoming more popular.

Mattel is trying to break into that speed champion’s Lego market there the other day. Well, when I was in Florida, I actually went through a Walmart. I had to go pick something up and I walked just for giggles. You walk through the toy aisle,

Crew Chief Brad: always

Crew Chief Eric: the Hot Wheels section. I’ve never been more repulsed in my life.

It looked like a bomb went off. I was like, I’m not even gonna bother. Like, I won’t bother with the bins that you see, you know, like the, the, the 50 gallon drums. Like, I’m like, ah, it’s a [01:08:00] disaster. I’m not dealing with that. Usually Walmart Target, like they put ’em up on the pegboard and you kind of glance underneath and you could see everything.

This looked like an explosion. So I was like, all right, nevermind. But what caught my eye, it looked over because the Hot Wheels. These Mattel brick shop, not to call them Legos ’cause they’re their own thing. It’s like mega blocks, right? Or whatever they used to be called are right next to the Hot Wheels.

And I saw the Audi RS two version that they have available. And for a minute I was like, I’m gonna buy that. I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna get it, it’s gonna be mine, I’m gonna bring it home. And then I went, I don’t have that much space in my luggage so I’m not gonna do it. And I’ll see if I can find one local.

I had, it was right there, it was like in, it was just within reach and I didn’t do it, but I did buy the Audi 90 GTO car a couple years ago when that came out. So I have that. So I was like, ah, so maybe I made a mistake and I’m never gonna find one. You should

Crew Chief Brad: have bought it and went straight to the UPS store.

Crew Chief Eric: And just ship it to yourself. It’s so stupid. So stupid. Oh, well. But glad to see that Mattel is doing something like this. I think it’s pretty [01:09:00] cool. There’s some new stuff coming out from Lego too, which looks super interesting. So this whole, you know, one 18 scale brick based modeling is pretty neat. I think this is cool stuff.

All right,

Crew Chief Brad: segment two F colon r ru. Faster than an interceptor. Tanya in parentheses Florida. Man.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy. Ron Burgundy’s back.

So I have a Florida man story because I was in Florida.

Crew Chief Brad: There was this Ja off driving a Grand Wagoner owl.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, ping ponging down the road. No, no, no. So get this. So we’re on our way from Revs to Mecu early in the morning. We got up, hit the road figure, we’ll knock it out, we gotta pick up William. ’cause he had gone down early, all this kind of stuff.

So it’s like, all right, cool. We get most of the way there and I’m like, anybody else gotta pee? And they’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a Circle K. So I just, [01:10:00] you know, bail pulled in a circle K figure. It’s a good time to get a cup of coffee and relieve oneself and, and whatever. Yeah. I wander around the circle KA little bit and it’s like, ah, before I buy anything, you know, go pee.

Well, you know, normally I, I don’t wanna say you go as a group ’cause you don’t, you try not to, you know, the whole, you know, there’s that unspoken rule of space at the urinal and all that kind of thing. You know, we all, we all know how it goes, right. Instead, we all go in together. John Summers to my right, I’m in the middle.

David Nyan, our friendly Canadian walks into the stall that the door is open to and all you hear is, whoa. I’m sorry. And there’s an older guy in there doing his business, wiping himself, and he looks at David and apparently David is completely embarrassed and I heard it through the stall wall. He’s just like he.

He like, gotcha sucker. And then next I hear John Summers go, I suddenly have stage fright and I’m like, oh my God. This is the most awkward bathroom situation I could have ever [01:11:00] anticipated in my life. So can you imagine walking into a bathroom stall and facing a Florida man? And he’s happy by the fact that he snared you in his web.

As he’s sitting there in the Circle K bathroom.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow.

Crew Chief Eric: Your guys’ faces say it all.

Crew Chief Brad: Was it a Circle K or a Circle J?

Crew Chief Eric: Something was amiss. Something was afoot. The Circle K.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Something’s amiss.

Crew Chief Eric: And I had to keep him laughing. Right? Because I find all of this extremely amusing. David is so polite. He closes the stall door and it’s just like, oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s very Canadian of you, David.

Crew Chief Eric: I know, right? I’m just like, oh, wow. But can you imagine? Can you imagine Florida man?

Crew Chief Brad: I’m surprised he didn’t spread his legs and say, you can go in between.

Crew Chief Eric: No. Ah.

Crew Chief Brad: How good of a shot are you?

Crew Chief Eric: Here hold this.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. [01:12:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Taken so many different ways.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you need some help there, bud?

Crew Chief Eric: God, it’s so good.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a memory there. That’s unforgettable. I mean, it’s different for me. David must be still having nightmares about that. I mean, can you imagine?

Crew Chief Brad: It really puts the name of the next segment into perspective behind the pit wall.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. Well, let’s go behind the pit wall for some of motor sports news, not formula Rolex.

That’s it. Is. The beginning of the year, Rolex is here. I cannot tell you the results because we recorded this just before Rolex, and it’s gonna come out just after Rolex, so we’ll have to talk about that next time. But in WEC imsa, SRO News, something interesting that happened during the winter months came across my desk.

Changes are coming to Lama this year, and a news article that was sort of buried on Lamont’s website. There’s a rendering of the changes that are being made to the infamous Dunlap Bridge and Dunlap Curve. They’re no longer gonna be called either. They’re going to be sponsored [01:13:00] by Goodyear and branded by Goodyear.

Thus connecting the Goodyear Tribune, which is where the Club de Piot is with La Chappelle. Over the Goodyear Bridge, through the Goodyear Curves. Goodyear, Goodyear, Goodyear. It’s all gonna be Goodyear. I don’t know how I feel about it. I care, but I don’t care. But I care because it’s always been Dunlop Bridge and it’s always been Dunlop Curve forever.

Why the sudden change?

Crew Chief Brad: If you want to know how I feel about it, I didn’t even know it was Dunlop Bridge before ’cause I paid zero attention to that. So I, it’s a, it, I’m indifferent.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah, that’s no fun.

Crew Chief Brad: I recuse myself, I

Executive Producer Tania: mean. Why

Crew Chief Eric: there is no explanation for that other than money talks.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, iconic at this point,

Crew Chief Eric: it’d be like painting the Eiffel Tower Blue and slapping the Goodyear logo on it.

Right. It’s doesn’t making any sense to me.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, Michelin wouldn’t let that happen.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, it’s kind of funny because correct me if I’m wrong, and Dunlap’s British, right?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s currently owned by Sumi. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: so it’s Japanese then. All right. Then

Executive Producer Tania: was founded by John Boyd Dunlap in Belfast, [01:14:00] Ireland.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go.

See my memory’s still. Okay, well, speaking of Lamont 2026, my. Favorite race of the year, though I’m not a, again, I have committed to Formula One, and we’ll talk about that on another episode.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, we have to,

Crew Chief Eric: this year we have to. Yes. I have to commit to Formula One for one more year.

Executive Producer Tania: Everything’s changing and there’s new cars and everything, so new drivers, new teams.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of new cars, but not new teams, you posted a link to the Twitter feed for the new Toyota Hypercar. This looks really cool. Sort of a step away from what they’ve done before. Lots more airflow in this design. I like the front end. I like the sharpness. It’s got that GR 86 super kind of look to it.

But what do we think about, are we hopeful for Toyota and Laman this year? They’ve three years in a row. It’s been Ferrari’s game. It’s their year to lose.

Executive Producer Tania: Of course, we have to cheer for Ferrari and then I silently cheer for Poeo to do well.

Crew Chief Eric: I know, I know, right? Well, Porsche’s out. We know that. Porsche’s out.

Lamborghini’s out a hypercar. [01:15:00] So there’s two teams out. ’cause again, gotta pay for Formula One somehow. So Toyota’s still in the game. Hyundai’s coming. Ford is coming, probably not this year, but next year. I still think it would be smart if Ferrari got out, go out on a high.

Executive Producer Tania: Cadillac’s. Still there, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Cadillac’s still there. BMWI think is iffy, but I, if I recall, they’re committed for another year. And then I gotta look at who else is on the roster. But L and P one, P one GTP, whatever you wanna call it, is filling up, it’s getting bulky up there. So there’s a lot of people in contention, but Toyota coming with a new car, it’s still Ferrari’s race to lose if they commit this year.

So we’ll see. Time will tell. They have not announced the roster of cars that are going to be at this year’s running of Lamas. So we’ll see. The other thing I wanted to mention with respect to endurance racing, for anybody that’s been following our digital magazine for a while, you probably caught on last year, we are carrying Lepert Motor Sports Super T News and they do endurance races of all lengths [01:16:00] around the world, especially Asia and Europe and so on.

So there’s like six hours of Dubai, did you know those? A 24 hours Yas Marina, places like that. It’s super cool. So we get all of their press information and then, you know, we run it as part of the magazine. So if you’re interested in more forms of endurance racing than maybe you weren’t familiar with, check out.

Articles that we’re putting out following Leaper Motorsport. There’s other teams that you can follow in that series, but I think it’s really cool to check out, you know, the super TRO racing and whatnot. It’s actually pretty good racing. I mean, the, when they’re together as a spec series, the cars are very, very competitive and it’s a lot of fun to see a bunch of R eights going, oh, did I say that out loud?

Uh, a bunch of Lamborghinis running together on track now, you know, we talked about Christmas presents. What we didn’t get, I actually got a couple things during the winter break. I got project motor racing and I got a Seto rally, so I wanted to follow up on that. And I also wanted to follow up on the update to a Seto Evo.

Project motor racing is project cars two, race skin the way it should have been, instead of the [01:17:00] pitiful disgraceful disappointment. That was Project Cars three, which was two cartoony and two Forza, you know, and all the things that people hated about Project Cars three. So Project Motor Racing takes us back to Project Cars two and does everything right that it’s supposed to do.

It has its own issues. It’s being updated. It gets better with every patch. You know, they’re, they are taking the advice of the fans and making changes, and they’re doing them in pretty rapid order, which is pretty cool. A Seto rally came outta the gate swinging, looks amazing. Didn’t come with a ton of tracks, stages, or cars.

They released their winter pack during these winter months. It added snow. And it added a test track in Italy, but it’s just a test track. It’s not a winter stage in Sweden or Monte Carlo or anywhere else where they run rally stages in the wintertime and they added a, a couple new cars. But it’s sort of like you’re waiting for that.

Okay, gimme the rest of it. Moment. Is it good? Yes. Is it amazing? Absolutely. Is it visually stunning? Check, check, check, check. All the things [01:18:00] that a Seto Evo was not Aceto. Evo always looked good, but the physics was wha and the tracks were, eh, and the cars were, you just couldn’t get over the fact that it was like pre alpha code that they were giving us in a Seto.

Evo now Evo and rally under the same design house of simulators, but developed by two entirely different units inside of that same house. So rally by one team. Evo by another. What’s interesting is Evo jumped massively when they released version 0.4. So their fourth release of a set of Evo, that’s when they introduced the Ferrari F 40 lm, bunch of other cars, new tracks and stuff.

And I tell you what, man, I have been driving the heck out of it now. The physics has improved. Handling’s improved. Some of the cars are very fragile. Like I love driving the F 40. It puts a smile on my face. The gearbox is absolute garbage, but you get it something like an NSX or a nine 11 Turbo, and they’re a lot of fun to drive.

You don’t really have to [01:19:00] worry about them. They’re a lot stronger. They’re like indestructible in comparison to the F 40, but the F 40, they, the sound alone just puts a smile on my face and running it at tracks like Mila and Monza and you know, all the famous Italian tracks. It’s just, oh, it’s so good. I am very hopeful now for a set of evos.

So I’m hoping that, you know, version five and six and seven that they put out, ’cause they’re on this supposedly monthly, but it’s more like when they feel like it release schedule that it’s only gonna continue to progress and it’s going to get where they promised us it would be. So those are my top three titles right now.

Granted the fact that Lamont’s Ultimate JDM, drift Masters, solar Crowns, they’re all, they were all updated during the winter months. It just takes me a whole bunch of time to go back and kind of mess with them and play with them and, and get a feel. So it’s hard to jump between games ’cause then you, you gotta get used to the physics all over again ’cause they’re all very different.

But really happy with what’s coming out of Project Motor Racing and the Aceto Rally and Seto Evo stuff. So, good stuff there. Brad, I mean, you were a drag racer in your younger years. I’m not [01:20:00] as directly connected to this last bit of Motorsport news here. John Force officially announced his retirement.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s about time,

Crew Chief Eric: 16 time NHRA champion. I. You almost don’t have enough digits to put rings on at that point. You know what I mean?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s ally putting him on his to

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Right. A fill in both feet. Yeah. Go for the full 20. So yeah, John Forcet retires. That doesn’t mean his kids aren’t still drag racing.

The forced daughters and, and all them. So there’s a lot still going on in the John Forcet dynasty.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And I, I think he’s still affiliated with the team. He’s just not driving

Crew Chief Eric: anymore. Yeah. So it’s not the last we’ve seen of John. It’s just he’s not gonna be driving anymore. And you know, at his age.

That’s probably smart. Probably smart.

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Executive Producer Tania: Or it’s the traumatic brain injury he suffered in 2024 from a crash.

Crew Chief Brad: That too.

Crew Chief Eric: Why do you have to rain on my parade

this year? Our Motorsports News is brought to you in part by Enduros, powered by Hyper [01:21:00] Dev America’s premier endurance racing community. So check it out online and become a member@www.endur.com.

This year’s GTM Trackside report is gonna take a slightly different turn for 2026. Instead of talking about, you know, who, what, when and where of HPE track days and all that kind of thing. We’re gonna use this spot to talk about our latest adventure in racing. And what is that exactly? Well, we bought a car because we’re gonna go 24 hours of lemons.

Endurance racing. Woo. We did not use Brad’s pumpkin spice. Although that was a $500 special, we found another 500 car, two $500 cars in one Y. That’s like, we might as well play the lottery or at least get SHA GPT to play the lottery for us. Right. You heard about that, right? We got a Ford [01:22:00] Focus. For 500 bucks and we’re gonna go racing and it’s gonna be awesome and we’re gonna talk about the progress we’re making, things like that.

So the first step, you know, acquire the car for the right amount of money, you know, playing to the lemons rules. Go check out 24 hour hours of lemons.com so you can kind of get up to speed of what we’re talking about. If you don’t know next stages, we’re taking it off to the cage builder to get all the safety stuff put in fire suppression seats.

You know, all that kind of thing. So that’s the next phase of the project and we’re gonna go on from there. We are gonna have an opportunity for people to get involved with the team. So look for an announcement about that very soon. Look to our show notes for how you can be part of the team and put air quotes around that, how you can help us reach our goal.

We’re actually doing this not only just for the fun of racing, but for a good cause as well. So if you’re looking to donate or be involved, or be there, live with us as a VIP, there’ll be a bunch of opportunities to do that. So we will, uh, we’ll send that link along in the show notes so you can check it out.

And I will say, you know, we’re going into this. We already got a rival. We got a rival in this field. Can you believe it? It’s [01:23:00] another podcasting team. So Bill and Vicki from Garage Hero in training. If you are listening to this, which I know Bill listens to this show, we’re gonna see you on track. We’re gonna be there.

Look out for us. GTM Garage Hero in training. Oh. 24 hours, 11 all year.

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 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 the Ferrari marketplace, the motoring historian evening with a legend, the Racers round table break fix.

And of course, the drive-through season six isn’t quite over yet. So stay tuned through February for some awesome episodes.

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 our updated Patreon page. You can learn more about our bonus and behind the scenes content, get early access to upcoming episodes, and consider becoming a break fix [01:24:00] VIP when you visit patreon.com/gt motorsports.

As always, thank you to our co-host and executive producer Tanya.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, we gotta change your title, we gotta change your title. This year she’s gonna be team principal.

Crew Chief Brad: Team Principal Tanya Bono.

Executive Producer Tania: Pando.

Crew Chief Eric: Are you gonna wear your hair? Like straight up like Beekman?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my god.

Crew Chief Eric: Team principal Tanya. That’s that’s what we’re gonna call her.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Yes. Uh, and always thank you to our co-host and executive producer and team principal Tanya, and to all the fans, friends and family who support Grant touring motor sports, as well as the Motoring Podcast network. Without you. None of this would be possible. And tro and first of all, can I just say that all of my segments here, all of my statements here start with and all four of them

Executive Producer Tania: and,

Crew Chief Brad: and, and, and I mean, a [01:25:00] wouldn’t a quick Google search answer that question for us?

I have no idea. ’cause I’m just now opening the show notes. Because you’re never more prepared than when you’re unprepared.

Crew Chief Eric: Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Who wrote this shit?

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 [01:26:00] provide.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00:00 Hosts Reconnect and Reflect on Past Episodes
• 00:00:57 Winter Recap: Automotive Industry Updates
• 00:02:38 EU’s 2035 Combustion Engine Ban Relaxation?
• 00:03:52 Ford’s EV Strategy Overhaul
• 00:06:04 Diesel’s Comeback and Hybrid Innovations at VAG
• 00:08:35 Jaguar’s Design Controversy and Audi’s New Look
• 00:12:41 Volkswagen’s New Models and Market Strategy
• 00:14:50 Jeep’s Military-Exclusive Wrangler and Other Stellantis News
• 00:17:27 Hellcat-Powered Pacifica and Grand Wagoneer Review
• 00:23:30 Asian Cars: Kei Cars and Hyundai’s G90 Magma Wagon
• 00:30:47 Future Electric Vehicles: Concepts and Controversies
• 00:39:22 Design Quirks: The Hoffmeister Kink!
• 00:40:11 The Bezos Truck and EV Lineup Speculations
• 00:40:45 Lost and Found: Rare Car Discoveries
• 00:43:40 Tesla’s Cybertruck Sales in decline!
• 00:48:58 Rental Car Reviews: Elantra, Soul, and Altima
• 01:09:32 Florida Man at the Circle K
• 01:12:19 Motorsports News and Updates
• 01:21:34 24 Hours of Lemons Racing Adventure
• 01:23:15 Outro!