B/F: The Drive Thru #66

• Hero Mustang GTD Owner Has His Car Delivered To A Porsche Dealer -- Ford lets you take delivery of your new GTD anywhere—and they mean anywhere.

• Formula 1 Experts Are Bullish on Audi’s Inaugural Season
• Honda Blames Newey
• How bas has Aston's 2026 season been so far? -- Just ask Alonso.
• Aston Martin braces for Australian GP pain amid Honda F1 crisis -- Honda’s power unit has proven inadequate, and Aston Martin is attempting to help the Japanese manufacturer solve its battery issues
• Is Stroll a dope ... or just pleading the 5th?
• Adrian Newey Stepping Down as Aston F1 Team Boss After Just 4 Months: Report -- The famed F1 designer will reportedly focus solely on technical aspects of the car, while an incoming (surprise) team principal will run the team.
• Audi F1 Boss Jonathan Wheatley Rumored to Replace Adrian Newey at Aston -- The unconfirmed report claims that after just two races as Audi F1 team principal, Wheatley will jump ship to Aston so Newey can focus on technical matters.
• Wheatley leaves Bennotto in charge?
• Then (2025) vs Now (2026) -- Number of overtakes in a race dramatically increases!
• Piastri Crashes on out lap at Australian GP
• FIA is investigating MERCEDES
• Oliver Bearman addresses his chances of leaving Haas for Ferrari at the end of the 2026 season -- Oliver Bearman discusses his ‘strong connection’ with Ferrari amid rumours about his F1 future.

Ferrari "new spoiler"

• Toyota Won’t Deny Mid-Engine Celica After Secret WRC Prototype Surfaces -- The Gazoo Racing division fuels rumors with a mid-engined GR Yaris prototype in Japan and a mysterious WRC coupe spotted in Portugal
• Driven: 2026 Trailseeker Is Subaru's Most On-Brand EV -- A wagon-like profile, adventure-ready details, and a no-nonsense demeanor show Subaru is clued in to what its EV customers really want.

90's Toyota Celica Commercial w/ Eddie Murphy

• 74% Of Americans Say New Cars Are Unaffordable
• Barn Find full of SAAB 900s! -- “SAAB 900” is the most underrated “Iconic” car of the 80s/90s?

• Court Blocks Attempt to Force BMW and Mercedes to Stop Selling Gas Cars -- An environmental group sought in court to halt BMW and Mercedes’ sales of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2030, but to no avail.
• AC Schnitzer is closing after 39 years in business

BMW reveals the new 3-series

• 62-Car 2026 Le Mans Entry List Published
• Bob Tullius: 1930-2026
• One Risk That F1 Champ Max Verstappen Is Not Willing to Take: Rally Racing -- Max Verstappen has won four F1 championships, but still thinks rallying is too dangerous.
• Verstappen wins at Nurburgring -- ... until they DQ'd him for using too many tires.

• Debut of the BUGATTI "Factor One"

• Follow up: What’s the deal with the EV Boxster/Caymans
• Porsche Boxster EV Might Not Be Dead After All -- Porsche Cars Australia CEO says he’s driven the Boxster EV.
• Former Lamborghini CTO Rouven Mohr Named as New Audi CTO
• VW and Audi’s 2.0L Turbo Engine Hit With U.S. Lawsuit Over Oil Consumption -- The four-cylinder EA888 engine in certain VW and Audi models is blamed for high oil consumption and defective piston rings.

Our 24 Hours of Lemons build is officially back in our hands, which means it’s time for the next chapter in the saga of Unfocused Performance. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned so far, it’s this: building a race car is easy… until you try doing it with a Ford. The biggest challenge hasn’t been the cost of safety gear (which is already absurd), but simply finding parts. After years of being spoiled by ECS Tuning, FCP Euro, and the endless aftermarket support behind German cars, diving into the Ford ecosystem has been a rude awakening. Unless you’re ordering from Advance Auto, RockAuto, Jegs, or Speedway Motors, you’re basically out of luck. For a car as common as the Focus, the lack of performance‑grade parts is baffling. Thankfully, one of our teammates unearthed FSWerks, which feels like the closest thing to a Euro‑style tuning shop for Ford owners. We’re still hunting for more sources, so if you know where the good Focus parts are hiding, send us a message or drop into the Discord.

CHECK OUT THE BUILD UPDATE ON THE GTM CLUBHOUSE SITE.

Because of delays in fabrication and the ongoing parts chase, we’re officially missing our first planned event at Mid‑Ohio. The car simply isn’t ready — there’s still a clutch to install and a long list of reliability items to knock out before we trust this thing to survive more than 20 minutes on track. For everyone asking how they can help, the answer is simple: come hang out, turn a wrench, or toss a few bucks toward fuel, tires, or whatever breaks next. Our Specials Tier on Patreon is the easiest way to support the team and help get this car across its first checkered flag. With Mid‑Ohio off the table, our new debut will be NJMP Thunderbolt in June, followed by Summit Point, and — if the budget gods smile upon us — a December run at Road Atlanta. Maybe even Nelson Ledges if the stars align. One way or another, Unfocused Performance will hit the grid this season, and we’ll bring you every chaotic update along the way.

There's more to this story!

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

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 Eric: Well, hello.

Crew Chief Brad: Hello.

Crew Chief Eric: Spring is here.

Crew Chief Brad: Spring has sprung.

Crew Chief Eric: We have a new season Has Riz.

Crew Chief Brad: I wonder where all the cars is. Is

Crew Chief Eric: that’s terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like that’s a greeting card. We need g team greeting cards now.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah, we would be terrible at Hallmark. Like you get fired like the first day.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I mean, we’re terrible at everything else.

Why not just keep it going?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. [00:01:00] So he, so Brad, how are, how are things going for you now in the new season

Crew Chief Brad: since the jet started? Great. Things are amazing. I’m well prepared. I’m just, I’m ready to go. I actually watched some races. I’m eager to, to get started.

Crew Chief Eric: I detect a hint of sarcasm there though.

No.

Crew Chief Brad: What are you talking about? Not at all. No. I am terrible at sarcasm.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s hear from Kathleen Turner,

Crew Chief Brad: Katie Curry. Wow,

Executive Producer Tania: thank you. I know I’m several octaves lower than normal. I got that sultry sound.

Crew Chief Brad: Sultry

Executive Producer Tania: coming at you.

Crew Chief Brad: When is the 900 number come out?

Executive Producer Tania: This is like Delilah in the evenings. Delilah,

Crew Chief Eric: oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: I think Tanya needs to just do the rest of the drive through, just like that.

Crew Chief Eric: But you seem like you’re a little down in the dumps. What’s going on?

Crew Chief Brad: You know, this is the dilemma of the car person. You know, you’ve got these really cool cars that you like [00:02:00] to put money into and fix up. You know, you buy all these mods and stuff. But then your uncool car, your daily driver, it gets sad that it’s not getting any attention.

So it manufactures a reason for you to spend money on it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, do tell.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s nothing crazy. I just need to do brakes and brakes and brakes, and brakes along the tundra. So new pads and rotors are en route

Crew Chief Eric: to get something special. Cross drilled, ventilated. Slotted, anti glaze, super blacks,

Crew Chief Brad: because it’s Toyota Tundra, I obviously went with Ferrari, carbon ceramic.

The entire brakes cost more than I paid for the truck, like five times over. No, I, last time I did this, which granted it was about 60,000 miles ago. 50,000 miles ago, so they, they’ve lasted really, really long. Tire rack had a hawk, you know the LTS or whatever the, the, the truck kit is with

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Cross drilled [00:03:00] rotors and everything.

So I just did the same kit again.

Crew Chief Eric: Are you seeing the after effects of tariffs and other bureaucratic nonsense?

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t remember how much it cost last time, so maybe I just know how much it cost me now. And my wallet is almost $800 lighter. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: oh

Crew Chief Brad: oh. But that’s pads and rotors. All four corners.

Crew Chief Eric: And you’ll be able to do the work yourself.

So you’re gonna save some money. Theres

Crew Chief Brad: yeah. Yeah. In my apartment parking lot. That’s gonna be great. Or I’ll save it ’cause I’ll, the parts will be here. I’ll do it that weekend that come up and it’ll just be one of the things we do. And yet pumpkin spice gets pushed to the back yet again.

Crew Chief Eric: You know,

Crew Chief Brad: I gotta be able to stop though.

It’s kind of important.

Crew Chief Eric: All it does is slow you down. I mean, it seems like a waste of time.

Crew Chief Brad: All breaks. All they do is slow you down. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the olem right there. Remember?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: What good or breaks, all they do is slow you down.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what’s not slowing down the news? The automotive industry, the auto [00:04:00] sphere, it just keeps turning and churning and burning.

We don’t really have a formal showcase for our season kickoff, so why don’t we dive right into your favorite segment, not Lost and found, Porsche News.

Crew Chief Brad: Porsche News. Great.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re a PAR man at heart. You love those Porsches?

Crew Chief Brad: I, I do, I do. I do.

Crew Chief Eric: The hokey pokey with the boxer and the Cayman continue. So this social media post Porsche is secretly meeting to decide if the boxer and the Cayman EVs live or die.

Ah, hype, click bait. Ah, flashy light, AI generated pictures, the whole nine yards.

Crew Chief Brad: So this says the drive can exclusively report a meeting is currently underway. So which meeting is more important? The Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting about rate cuts or this meeting about the Porsche Boxter Cayman.

Crew Chief Eric: This is more interesting than the treasury meeting by a mile.

Crew Chief Brad: I could see that. [00:05:00] Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: I think this is all bs. There’s an article that I found in doing some research ’cause I wanted to follow up on the social media post that had come out a bit ago. ’cause this isn’t new news that Porsche’s been meeting about the fate of the boxer and the Cayman. Truth be told, the take can is being scrapped.

They’re kind of backpedaling on a lot of their EVs. The new Macon that was supposed to be ev, they said, Nope, we’re gonna put a six cylinder back in it. We’re just gonna sell it the way people want it. By the way, the new Macon, I thought looked like the ID four. It’s pretty ugly.

Crew Chief Brad: That is a novel concept, selling vehicles the way people actually want to buy them.

I wish more car manufacturers would do that.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, there’s so many other options with your Porsche. Do you want it purple with yellow stitching or with white stitching? All this customization stuff, right? Maybe you could make it optional to say, I want the electric power plant, or I want the fossil fuel power plant.

And that’s something you choose. And the car’s basically the same because at the end, does it really, does it really have to look different? It should perform the same. It [00:06:00] should handle the same. They need to figure out a way to put the electrics in the place of where the gas motor is. Now granted, that’s not always the easiest thing to do because of packaging, ’cause of batteries, ’cause of this.

’cause of that. I just go back to the original Tesla Roadster where they figured it out without modifying that El lease too much. But you know, we’ll leave that where it is.

FLORIDA MAN: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: But I did find an article to sort of follow this up. I was like, what did Porsche decide about the fate of the Cayman and the boxer?

And the only thing I came up with was an article from MotorTrend where a gentleman from Porsche of Australia said he drove. The electric boxer and that the electric boxer was not dead yet. So I’m sort of like, well, uh, okay, but there’s no other indication. And even the MotorTrend articles like, well, if once we learn more, we will post more about this particular topic.

But there’s really no news. But it has been confirmed that the other Porsche models, because of their poor sales in China, VW suffering, Porsche’s having money [00:07:00] problems. So they’re backpedaling on a lot of these EVs because they’re trying to make take hands as an example that nobody wants to buy.

Crew Chief Brad: It seems like people don’t even go to Porsche dealerships to buy Porsches anymore.

FLORIDA MAN: Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: if you look at the article that I just put in the chat, I don’t know if this is rich people things or it’s P car adjacent, but somebody just bought a brand new Mustang GTD, which is a $300,000 car, which makes it qualify for rich people things. Why don’t you just take a guess at where they had it delivered?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, because we’re talking about Porsche’s. Did he have it delivered to a Volkswagen dealership?

Crew Chief Brad: He had it delivered to a Porsche dealership so he could take delivery of his $300,000 Porsche Killer Mustang, right in front of Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: Why?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, because nobody wants to buy a Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s just to show off.

Hey, check out my

Crew Chief Brad: Mustang. Yeah, it’s just to show. Just because he could.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s weird. That’s very weird. Well, so, so speaking of weird, [00:08:00] Lamborghini is putting out yet another car without an R eight as a sibling to it. So Lambos continuing to do what Lambo does, but in the same breath, the CTO from Lambo is going to Audi.

How does this work? Does this mean we’re gonna get an R eight? Because if this guy’s been behind Lambo, just pumping out more cars every couple of years, does that mean Audi? He’s gonna have a supercar again,

Crew Chief Brad: but he’s just the CTO. He’s not the COO or the chief engineer or anything like that. I don’t know where I was going with that, but I, I feel like it, it’s like the c No, it is like the CFO going somewhere, you know, the, the head bean counter.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, aren’t the bean counters the ones in charge of all the designs now anyway,

Crew Chief Brad: for places like Chevy and you can clearly tell

Crew Chief Eric: to me it’s all that C level juju that, that voodoo, that I don’t understand, like what those guys do other than get really big bonuses at the end of the year.

Crew Chief Brad: They make a [00:09:00] ton of money for themselves and their shareholders.

That’s what, that’s what they do.

Crew Chief Eric: If that’s the case with the CTO coming over from Lambo, shouldn’t he use a little leverage and say, Hey guys, work for us at Lambo. Maybe you should build a supercar again

Crew Chief Brad: maybe. But did you also hear, and it’s not in the notes here, but the Audi is discontinuing the A eight.

Crew Chief Eric: That doesn’t surprise me. It hasn’t sold well in years.

Crew Chief Brad: It hasn’t looked good in years.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it looks terrible. Oh yeah. It’s like an old Mercedes almost. It’s super blocky and just, ugh.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Super terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, if there’s no R eight sibling and then they’re getting rid of the A eight, what are, well, you know, they have to fund, as we’ve talked about multiple times, they have to fund that F1 team

Crew Chief Eric: somehow,

Crew Chief Brad: you know, that they’re doing so well with, they’re actually not doing too bad, but yeah, they have to fund that program.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s a little wrinkle in that plan because first we had Dieselgate. Now we have Turbo Gate.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, turbo Gate.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh [00:10:00] man. Have you read about this?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, no.

Crew Chief Eric: So there were problems with the two liter turbos already a while ago. Chain guide issues and other stuff that they had. I mean, this goes back to like the Mark five GTIs, like that far back where there were always sort of issues with the two liter turbo and you know, and much like the 180 T, they sort of figured them out over time.

Recalls do this, do that. Well, unfortunately, with the newer motors, the EA 8, 8 8, I gotta say that right, they are being hit with a class action lawsuit over oil consumption because the motors are basically blowing up and they have defective piston rings and high oil consumption and they use this motor in everything

Crew Chief Brad: in a point of clarification.

Even though the motor did come in cars all the way back to 2008, the lawsuit specifies 2018 and newer,

Crew Chief Eric: correct? Correct. There’s a statute of

Crew Chief Brad: limitation, so that gives them a little bit of relief.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. But then you [00:11:00] gotta go back and look at the production numbers of vehicles that use that motor. From 2018 forward, that’s still an absolute ton of cars.

So anything with a four cylinder from VAG has the same power plant in it, and this is their new diesel gate. This is gonna cost them billions with a B.

Crew Chief Brad: Are they gonna buy back all these cars? Are people gonna do, is it gonna be like Dieselgate all over again where people like removed doors and windshields and basically, as long as the vehicle could still drive into the lot, they were able to trade it back in.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know that it’s gonna get to that point, but what it does bring up is an interesting dilemma that they have on their hands. Do you go the Toyota route like they did with their twin turbo sixes and all that stuff where it’s like, well, you’re gonna have to wait in line to get your new motor and then we’ll swap out the motor for the defective one.

That kind of thing. But if they have to do that for all of these cars, going back to a certain point, they’re not gonna be able to produce enough motors for one and for two it’s gonna cost them a mint.

Crew Chief Brad: Are you kidding? Of course, they’re gonna be able to, to [00:12:00] produce no motors. They didn’t sell that many of this shit.

Crew Chief Eric: But there’s four cylinders in everything, right? It’s in the VWs.

Crew Chief Brad: There are, there are,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, it’s in all of ’em. The thing is, if you were to do a fix, it requires an engine rebuild. So now you gotta tear the whole thing down. So where is the point of no return? Where Audi and Volkswagen, and even if they used the four cylinders and the Porsches, which at one point I, they were rumored that they were gonna try to use the same two liter turbo for some project over there too.

But let’s just say the VAG family as a whole globally, don’t forget, right? Because they’re selling these motors in Brazil. They’re selling ’em in Australia, they’re selling ’em in Germany. They’re sell ’em everywhere. Now granted, the class action lawsuit is in America, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be like Dieselgate, where it’s more widespread.

Again, where is the point of no return? Where do you cut your losses and say, yeah, we’ll just buy back the car, or we’ll give you a trade in value that’s decent towards a new one, or you just don’t, and people run ’em till they explode and they’re worth nothing. So I wish them luck, [00:13:00] but I think that’s gonna cut into their financial plans for Formula One.

That’s all I’m gonna say.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that’s okay. They won’t be missed. No, that’s Cadillac. Sorry.

Crew Chief Eric: Well we’ll get, we’ll get to that. A recent social media post that I threw up on Discord from the Automatic, pretty much sums up everything I have to say about VW these days. And I thought it was spot on. The caption says VW claims drivers wanted, but stop making drivers cars.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s pretty disappointing. I think they have a lot of problems drivers wanted. They really do want drivers, but they’re not making anything drivers want. That’s the problem. I don’t know what to say. I mean they’re really expensive. And to option out A GTI at 50 or $60,000 to have it eat oil off the lot at zero miles is insanity.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s ridiculous.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know who’s in charge charge.

Crew Chief Eric: And that was one thing you [00:14:00] could count on in the old days, was that German build quality and that has just plummeted. It’s just not there anymore. Yeah. And breaking news

mentioned before about the new Macan, the new ID four will be rebadged as the Tiguan. Oh, I’m sorry Brad, did I put you to sleep?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, not you, Volkswagen did.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. So boring.

Crew Chief Brad: You know I am a huge Volkswagen fan as you know. I love Volkswagen cars. I recommend anything. Mark four and older and my friend just ball one and she, not a Volkswagen, she was looking for a new car.

She needed to replace her, like 13-year-old Jeep. And I was like, oh, why not a Volkswagen? She said, Nope, nope, not gonna happen. She went to the dealership and what did she end up with? A Mazda CX 50. The new Volkswagen, the new driver’s cars.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Brad: Yep. But [00:15:00] I think that’s an issue across all the German cars, Mercedes and BMW, you know, the, the brands we love to talk about.

And Audi even too, like all their quality has been going down for years.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I’m glad you opened the door to talk about BMW and Mercedes. ’cause I know we try to avoid it. We sometimes we just can’t, Brad that we have news coming from Lower Saxony this month. I know we talked about this design and we were like, oh man, rendering, this is some AI nonsense.

Well, guess what? It ain’t AI rendering anymore. The new three series has been revealed.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it’s a Geely. Brad is speechless.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know what that is.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, that’s the new BMWI three.

Crew Chief Eric: That is the three series. That’s what they’re gonna look like.

Crew Chief Brad: But it So it’s the three, it’s the I three though.

So does this replace the regular three series? I guess It does say, yeah. Uh, it says right there, right in front of me reading, [00:16:00] you know, comprehension, everybody reviews all new three series. Yeah. So yeah. What, what it looks like a Corolla.

Crew Chief Eric: It also kind of looks like a five series. It looks really big.

Crew Chief Brad: Which the five series are super ugly too.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. To their credit, they got rid of the big carp grills.

Crew Chief Brad: They were growing on me. I actually really like those on the M three. I saw an M three today on my way home, and I saw, I, I actually kinda like that.

Executive Producer Tania: You think you couldn’t make it uglier? And then they managed to figure out how,

Crew Chief Eric: see this is the Subaru thing.

I keep talking about it. Every time the new Subaru comes out, you’re like, man, is it ugly? Ah, until the next one comes out. And then you look at the old one, you go, you know, it’s not that bad. And you can do that with every Subaru, especially the Impreza that’s come out since the 2.5 Rs body style, like the Colin McRay one from the nineties, which was actually a halfway decent looking little shit box.

But after that, they just got with a bla eye and the Hawkeye and the this eye and the da, and then they just got uglier and uglier ugly, [00:17:00] and BM BMW’s doing the same thing. Same thing.

Crew Chief Brad: And I read an article about this car and they, they were talking about how it’s supposed to be like a really, it’s really fast and it’s gonna have a lot of power and everything.

But it got me thinking, and I don’t know if we’ll answer this question now, but like what was the best decade for actual driver’s cars?

Crew Chief Eric: So this is something that John Summers and his co-host Mark Gammy debate quite a lot on the motoring historian these days. I was talking to John even this week and he was saying how he sort of settled in to how the cars from the eighties and nineties are probably what he calls peak car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, totally.

Crew Chief Eric: Because you had the beginnings of a BS, but you didn’t have all the nannies. And in some cases some cars were better off having a BS than without. But then they were still very analog. Suspensions were very simple. Designs were things that people liked and you could get in, flog the crap out of the [00:18:00] cars and enjoy the experience of driving.

But after a certain point, and I think that’s the mid two thousands, like 2005, six timeframe, they all, because those cars are sort of left over from the nineties, they were developed in the nineties and carried in. You know, we’ve had these discussions on the, what should I buy episodes. But after the mid two thousands, it all just starts to fall apart.

It aligns exactly with the Bengal period at BMW. As soon as Chris Bengal stepped in as a designer, just to kind of highlight them at, because we’re talking about them, that’s when it all began to fall apart

Crew Chief Brad: to stick with bmw. I mean, people would argue that like the E 46 series of the BMWs and even the E 39 were like the best.

Most well-balanced fun cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Their slogan back then used to be the ultimate driving machine, and then it got me wondering like, what was the, I think also around that time there was a, that’s when the, the really big horsepower wars started.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: And I think that [00:19:00] ruined cars now. It’s it. Yeah. I, you can have a car with 7, 800, 900 horsepower or whatever off a deal or lot.

Fantastic. That’s amazing. What’s it like to drive? What is it like to drive a Hellcat? Probably Bing sucks.

FLORIDA MAN: Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s probably a terrible car to drive. So like what were, what was the best generation or the best decade or time period for an actual driver’s car? I, I, I’d like to hear actually if she’s up for it, what Tanya thinks the best generation or time period of driver’s cars.

’cause she’s got something. Very, very modern. And something in that time period we were just talking and then something in the eighties, she’s kind of got

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. A,

Crew Chief Brad: a plethora.

Executive Producer Tania: When the question was first asked, what I thought of in my head as the answer was eighties and nineties.

Crew Chief Brad: Mm-hmm.

Executive Producer Tania: Which then you went on to say that John Summers said the same thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I mean, if you’re discounting all the muscle cars and the [00:20:00] malaise and all that stuff, you know, the people like,

Crew Chief Brad: they were all terrible to drive.

Crew Chief Eric: They were, they were not great.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I, I think you’re right. Like the, the, the, the nineties and early two thousands was the best combination of safe, fun to drive, had enough power that you could, you know, get into a little bit of trouble, but not too much trouble.

Crew Chief Eric: And they were still stylish.

Crew Chief Brad: I think that’s, that’s the period. And they, they, and they looked good. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Now I will say to your point about the horsepower wars, I think that started with the C five Z oh six. When they came to the table and said 400, 400, everybody stood back and said, whoa, we’re going 400 horsepower now.

Because if you look at the cars, up until that point, 247 horsepower was, you know, the by turbo S four and the M three and even the Nissan GTR, they were all like sub 300 horsepower because of insurance.

Crew Chief Brad: And, and in Japan they were all 2 76.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. And then Porsche was like, oh three 30 in the nine 11 turbo and it was like right around 300 horsepower.

And, you know, [00:21:00] everybody was creeping around that number and 300 was like, whoa, that’s a lot. And then Corvette said. Y’all 400. And then from there it was like to the stratosphere. Now we have 1100 horsepower gas motors and we got 1900 horsepower equivalent EVs. But the driving capability of people does not match the ability of the vehicles either.

Right,

Crew Chief Brad: right. And And that’s the thing like the, you mentioned the Corvette, I mean, yeah, 400. They were so proud of the 400. They even stamped it right on the zero six badge Z six. Yeah. They did 400 horsepower. But the flip side of that, with that particular car is not only did they advertise 400, 400, they also advertised one G.

One G because it could pull a G and turn. Yes. A lot of the, most of the other cars that were started with the horsepower war and definitely the cars. Now they can’t do that.

Crew Chief Eric: No. And this generation of pony wars. That’s gone on is just absolutely insane. The stuff that they’re producing, and again, I’m not knocking people’s ability to drive, but you know, the standard driving test that you get [00:22:00] does not necessarily say, oh yeah, you’re ready to go drive an 1100 horsepower demon tomorrow.

That’s just, no, that’s a whole different caliber of driving.

Crew Chief Brad: Even though you can roll up to your driver’s test in one.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a thousand percent. I’m sure it’s been done, but you know, hey, whatever.

Executive Producer Tania: While you all were talking, was perusing a list of, ah, just outta curiosity. Coolest and probably best nineties cars ever.

It’s a very long list, and you read down the list and it’s like. The Acura legend, all of the different Audis. The coop, the 100, the 200 wagon, the Z 3M coop, BMW was in that timeframe. You had the Rado, you had whatever other golfs, you had the Miata coming out. Obviously there was Borsch

Crew Chief Eric: Viper. You had the Viper.

Executive Producer Tania: You had the Viper, you had the Eagle Talon people. The Eagle Talon was there. You had, if you were into Vans, man, the Aerostar wagons, vans, the minivans. You with

Crew Chief Brad: all wheel drive and Emanuel. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: the F 40, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:23:00] Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: the NSXs. Even Mercedes with the C-L-K-G-T-R was that time. Yeah. The The eight 50 BMW, the 300 ZX Twin Turbo.

If you’re into American, you had the Firebird TransAm, you know the RX seven? The Celica, yeah, the Skylines.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. It goes on and on.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it goes on and on the launches. If you’re in Europe, the Delta was that time period. My God. Yes. I mean, so many things out of this list, the SL Mercedes, the little two door, there was a ton of good stuff back then

Crew Chief Brad: and they were all unique and different looking and they, they all had their own personalities.

Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: exactly. You could tell them apart, that’s a Toyota, that’s an Audi, that’s an Acura. It wasn’t like, I’m sorry, is that a BM BMW three series or is that a Toyota crawler,

Crew Chief Eric: right.

FLORIDA MAN: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Or is that the new Civic

Crew Chief Eric: And, and I think that’s why John calls it peak car, because we’ve crested the peak. We are on the [00:24:00] other side of that slope, and it’s not getting any better anytime soon.

Executive Producer Tania: You’re, you’re probably right. Start teetering off. After the mid two thousands because in the early two thousands you still had like the A four was really nice. You had the TT that was coming out right there at the cusp of the end of the nineties into the TUR two thousands. You had the resurgence of the Beatle take that for what you will, depending on your fandom.

The peak of golf.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Was the mid, the early to mid two thousands, the Mark IVs and even the Jettas. Right. And then slowly, I think after that time period, you couldn’t play that game anymore when you were a kid at night looking down the street or riding in the car and going like, oh, those headlights, that’s a whatever.

That’s a whatever. Now it’s like, I don’t know. Is that a cop behind me? Is that a Kia? Is that Hyundai? Is that an Altima coming to take me out? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a pickup truck.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a cyber truck. Yeah. And we’ll get to another iconic [00:25:00] car. I don’t wanna take the cat out of the bag for lost and found just yet, but there’s another one on this list that everybody forgets and it might be the, the most iconic of iconic cars, but we’ll, we’ll get there.

So let’s put a pin in that and get back on track and talk about BMW and Mercedes. ’cause I found this next thing really, really amusing. I’m gonna just read the headline. Court blocks attempt to force BMW and Mercedes to stop selling gas cars.

Executive Producer Tania: They block an attempt, so someone’s trying to stop them from making gasoline cars, but the courts said no.

No,

Crew Chief Eric: yes.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: An environmental group sought in court to halt BMW and Mercedes sales of new combustion engine vehicles by 2030, but to no avail. That’s the subtitle there.

Crew Chief Brad: You know who heads up the group?

Crew Chief Eric: Who’s that?

Crew Chief Brad: Christian Horner

Crew Chief Eric: protesting the wrong thing. That man is Unhirable. [00:26:00] No one will give him a job.

Oh Lord. Yeah. So there’s that going on for BMW and Mercedes. And Oh, by the way, Tanya, you talked about I, we got together at the end of the season. We’re talking about things that were closing and things that were dying. We missed one. After 39 years in business, AC Schnitzer, the BMW tuner has closed its doors.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, okay.

Crew Chief Eric: But the reason they’re closing, I thought was really interesting. Unlike everybody else, whatever excuses they use for going out of business, AC Schnier came to the table and they legitimately said it was German bureaucracy that forced them to close. Because they’re a tuner. Every change they make to A BMW has to go through like regulatory compliance and all this kind of stuff with their version of the DOT.

And they said it was taking upwards of nine months to get changes approved for highway use on the BMWs that they [00:27:00] were tuning and that they were modifying that left buyers wanting to go spend their money elsewhere. To which I thought probably Porsche.

Crew Chief Brad: So who’s going to support? Any warranty claims for ac schnitt or parts and products?

Crew Chief Eric: I think that’s a five minute, five mile warranty from the word go. I think as soon as you sign that pad and tandem your credit card, it’s, it, it’s over

Crew Chief Brad: because they, they, they all have stamped on ’em. Race use only not to be used on public rec.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Not approved by German DOT.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Some those cars will find their way out to bring a trailer just like everything else. Alright, so let’s get, let’s get out of this BMW Mercedes. Thank

Crew Chief Brad: god

Crew Chief Eric: funk and let’s talk about Japanese stuff in Asian domestic news. This is exciting stuff here After 20 years.

Toyota has unveiled the new Celica and you know where they did it on the world rally championship stage?

FLORIDA MAN: Yeah. [00:28:00]

Crew Chief Eric: The celicas coming back. So that means if Gazoo has their way, we’re gonna see we proper Celica. Supra. Not that BMW thing they gave us.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh. Nobody’s gonna have their way. They put the bean counter in charge.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, why you got a rain on my parade?

Executive Producer Tania: Reality because we really think the MR two that they said is gonna come, is gonna come out.

Crew Chief Eric: I remain hopeful and steadfast the Gazoo will continue to produce cool stuff. Notice I didn’t say Toyota Gazoo will continue to produce.

Executive Producer Tania: So this like, is this gonna be like Scion?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yes, exactly. It’ll be like Scion. It looks cool though. It’s big for a two-door coupe, let’s call it that. It’s big now, granted, it has the big rally flares, just like the Yaris and all the other rally Toyotas have, and it’s all jacked up. So it’s hard to tell what it would look like as a streetcar, but this is exciting.

The Celica could be coming back,

Executive Producer Tania: mine’s gonna drive it.[00:29:00]

Crew Chief Eric: And it also sort of boggled my mind that it’s been 20 years since Celica went out of production. That’s a long time. The last sica was sort of crap, wasn’t it? I mean, no offense Ron Sheri if you’re listening, but it was sort of crap.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s funny that you think you would be listening.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you for your continued Patreon support.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. I think that’s exciting. Selica. It’s coming back. Alright, so you remember before we were talking about BMW and how there’s the Subaru effect, I like to call it. This next one is case in point of what I’m talking about. Please take a look at the 2026 Subaru Trail Seeker

Executive Producer Tania: Subaru can.

FLORIDA MAN: The what?

Crew Chief Eric: The trail seeker.

Crew Chief Brad: What the, [00:30:00]

Executive Producer Tania: it seeks trails. I don’t understand what this, is this like a wagon?

Crew Chief Eric: Is it a van?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s owners are blonde.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it’s like a really smooshed van. It has like lines of a van.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like a 94

Executive Producer Tania: A two. What?

Crew Chief Eric: They all have that same rear light. Now, did you notice that with the long light bar, just like the Porsches and the Audis have, why is that a design thing now?

Executive Producer Tania: Because they all copied.

Crew Chief Brad: Why is the fog light integrated into the plastic co cladded fenders?

Crew Chief Eric: That reminds me of the, what was that Jeep that had the three headlights?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, that was the Cherokee

Crew Chief Eric: like 10, 15 years ago, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Got it. How much plastic did they put on this?

Executive Producer Tania: This is terrible.

Crew Chief Eric: And the windows are tiny and the doors are huge.

It’s all wrong. Was this designed by chat, GPT?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it has the lines of a minivan, but it’s too short. So then it’s like, well wagon, but then it’s not,

Crew Chief Eric: I bet if you saw this in person, it’s [00:31:00] massive.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably

Crew Chief Eric: this is the trickery of these things. They never put an object next to the car. So you can gauge how big it is, right?

Because if you put a six foot male next to this, you kind of go, oh shit, it’s as tall as he is, it’s six feet. That’s huge. So you got a perspective. It’s like stand, you know, person standing next to a redwood tree. But this, this thing is, I don’t know, this is what people want.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I think might be the size of a Tahoe.

It’s noise.

Crew Chief Eric: In

Executive Producer Tania: real life,

Crew Chief Eric: I could care less about the cubic foot of storage that it has. It has towing capacity. Apparently it’ll do zero to 60 in 4.3 seconds because it’s electric. I’m like, it’s still ugly. It

FLORIDA MAN: is.

Crew Chief Eric: Cloth is the new thing, right? There’s no more leather or vinyl in cars. It’s all this cloth, like it looks like a dentist’s office.

Executive Producer Tania: No, that’s a very Subaru thing and I don’t know why.

Crew Chief Eric: Looks terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s part of that rugged appeal. [00:32:00] Apparently leather’s not rugged, but cloth is

Crew Chief Eric: until,

Executive Producer Tania: because that way when you’re dirty from your hiking adventures and you get in, then you can get the seat dirty and then not be able to clean it. And it just adds to the ambiance of outdoor trail seeking.

Crew Chief Eric: What is that television? In the middle of the dashboard. It’s that 17 inches. It’s huge. God. Nothing about that says awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: And you know what? The driver’s era of cars didn’t have computer screens in them.

Crew Chief Eric: They barely had cassette decks.

Executive Producer Tania: They barely had CD players. They had cassette decks

Crew Chief Eric: continuing with Asian domestic news.

Guess what, Tanya? The rumor mill is humming. Hyundai is expected to make 21 examples of the vision N 74 concept at the low, low price of $350,000 a piece. You gonna get one?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. I haven’t seen that confirmed anywhere, but

Crew Chief Eric: except social media, that’s the only place. It’s where the best [00:33:00] news comes from.

I think it’s BS because I don’t, I don’t think they’re gonna make it. It’s hydrogen powered for one. Then what are people gonna do with it? Use it as a model car. I mean, unless they’re making it back to the future reboot movie. That would make sense.

Executive Producer Tania: You’re selling it for three 50,000. You’re only selling it to rich people who aren’t gonna drive it.

Crew Chief Eric: So it doesn’t matter if they can get hydrogen or not. So it’ll have like 12 original miles. But on the same token, not necessarily Asian news, but the French connection.

Alpine, yes. Alpine. The same. Alpine is in Formula One is reportedly going through US. Crash certification for the one 10.

Executive Producer Tania: That is true.

Crew Chief Eric: That is exciting. The Cayman killer could be coming to the us.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, Porsche is the Cayman killer. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: oh, REM shot. [00:34:00] Now granted it’s gonna cost a quadrillion dollars. I mean, I’ve seen these in person, especially I’ve seen the A one 10 R old team.

They call it, which is like the GT three version or whatever fan freaking tastic. I would love to have one of these. They are amazing. Oh, and, and I never would I have ever thought that Alpine would be like, oh yeah, we’re gonna bring cars to the United States. There’s still a possibility that they’re not going to, but the fact that they’re going to crash testing means they might be making a push.

Because unlike Audi, who’s in denial, Alpine needs to sell cars to fund their Formula One program. They’re probably a good idea to expand their market a little bit, don’t you think? I dunno. I’m excited. I think those cars are awesome. The downside, much like the alpha male four C because of its mono co and all that other stuff that they did will never come with a manual transmission.

But with a car like that, do you really want it? Do you really care? Left foot break in and some paddle [00:35:00] shifters. Let’s go. Let’s go. This is a weapon. This is a proper sports car. Let’s go. Tanya, as we close out this segment, this thing says commercial.

Executive Producer Tania: Since last time we were doing Super Bowl commercials,

Crew Chief Eric: Uhhuh.

Executive Producer Tania: So I’ve dug back into the historical archives.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy.

Executive Producer Tania: Find some old car commercials. And this one featuring celebrity Eddie Murphy.

Crew Chief Eric: And look at that. The Toyota Celica. How on point.

Executive Producer Tania: Bringing it full circle.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you look at this Sica commercial with Eddie Murphy?

Crew Chief Brad: I have not. Let’s see.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright. How bad is this one?

It’s only 30 seconds. How good could it be?

Executive Producer Tania: There’s like a series of them, but yes,

FLORIDA MAN: Sean, talking of town in New York, it’s almost popular as I am. I look at the

Crew Chief Eric: glamorous

FLORIDA MAN: style,

Crew Chief Brad: glamorous styling.

Crew Chief Eric: Take out the dual MO four wheel steering.

Crew Chief Brad: Giving it a little rub down.

Crew Chief Eric: What is he doing to the car?

Executive Producer Tania: So weird.

Crew Chief Eric: Was he like fondling it?

What was [00:36:00] that?

Crew Chief Brad: Watch it.

Crew Chief Eric: That was almost Burgess Meredith level. Weird. Ah, so weird. Tanya, where do you find this stuff

Executive Producer Tania: from? The depths of YouTube.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a place I don’t like to go very often. Switching gears to lost and found your favorite section of the drive through and keeping with what we were just talking about or what Tanya was just talking about before headline reads, 70% of Americans say new cars are unaffordable.

This is Jalopnik reporting top shelf news here,

Crew Chief Brad: as is everything.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, everything’s gone up in price. But you know what’s really interesting about this? Because they say that, and Tanya, you and I know because we’ve been doing some of our own independent research on new cars as of late, there is suddenly a glu.

Cars starting at $25,000. That very quickly ramp up into the $40,000 sweet spot, which we talked about. Remember we did that whole episode on the, what [00:37:00] can you buy for less than 50 grand in millennial gray? But there is a glut of cars in that space between 25 and 40,000. And they’re not all terrible.

They’re not all great, but they’re not all terrible either. I find this an interesting juxtaposition between what they’re saying. 74% of Americans say new cars aren’t affordable. Is that because we’re all bougie and we don’t wanna drive the cars that exist in the 25 to $40,000 range now because they’re considered too cheap and we all have to have some nice status symbol.

Tesla set the bar. We all need to be driving whatever it is, 60,000 is the new 30,000. Because if that’s the case, maybe we need to kind of look at things in a different lens, in a different light, because I think we’re overlooking some really good cars that are actually quite affordable.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, if you read further down into the article, they actually solved the problem for us.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, did they?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So they say that the real problem is that companies just don’t pay their employees enough. It’s okay [00:38:00] that the car prices are so high, it’s just people just need to make more money.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s that got to do with the price of T and

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, it is just a way to make a political statement.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, well that’s wah w

Executive Producer Tania: If a majority of Americans only make, let’s make up numbers, $70,000 a year and they have to go buy a car that costs $50,000.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: How do they afford it?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but the new Sentra is like less than $30,000. So why wouldn’t you go buy that

Executive Producer Tania: to that point? You can still get something that’s $20,000 or around, there is just going to be a toaster.

Crew Chief Brad: You also don’t have to buy a new,

Crew Chief Eric: and that’s just it. I mean, there are cars sitting on CarMax lots.

That are reasonably price as well. And their stuff is generally pretty good quality because they’re very selective on what they sell and what they get rid of and all that kind of stuff. Why not buy a car that’s a couple years old that’s already been broken in, that might have been [00:39:00] already through all the warranty stuff and all the recalls and all the nonsense.

Find yourself a car with 10,000 miles on it or less, call it a day.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, because people can’t do anything anymore. Like, I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: because you think you’re gonna do more with a brand new car.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I mean, like if you go back in time, cars were simpler.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: But people still didn’t, like you could buy a used car and if you could probably do your, you know, some of your own maintenance.

But nowadays people don’t have an interest.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and they’ve made the cars impossible to work on without,

Executive Producer Tania: even if you had an interest, you’d need a PhD to, uh, unlock the brake caliber.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. There’s that. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: And stuff like that. I mean, I don’t know because. Yes, there’s inflation. The price of everything is high.

Salaries haven’t necessarily kept up. One could argue, but you could make that argument probably 20 years ago too.

Crew Chief Eric: That is very true. That is very true. I mean, if you compare a car with fuel injection to something with the carburetor that was [00:40:00] space, age technology, fuel injection. Why? Why I can’t put a screwdriver in there and change my settings and make it run rich or make it run lean, like, no, you couldn’t do that.

It was computer controlled. Right? That was the future. It’s been an evolution for sure, but I think at the end of the day, if you’re shopping for a car right now, I wouldn’t discount a car Max or a used car that was from a reputable source, because if you think about it, despite the fact you’re gonna get a three year, 36,000 mile warranty, that seems to be the going rate for any new car these days, which is not a lot because the way people are driving still, you’re gonna blow through 36,000 miles in no time.

Let’s be fair. If you had a reputable shop to work on your car, their hourly rate is still lower than that of the dealership. Once you’re out of warranty, taking your car to the dealer is insane. You go to the Honda dealer, it’s $150 an hour, at least you know your local mechanic. Okay. Maybe it’s a hundred.

So you’re saving even there if you’ve gotta, you know, do any maintenance on the car and you [00:41:00] can’t do it yourself. So there’s something to be said about still buying a used car, but I, I don’t think you buy the one with 285,000 miles, you buy the one with 28,000 miles.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, this goes into something we’ve talked about numerous times on the drive-thru.

Don’t buy a car if you don’t have to.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there’s that as well.

Crew Chief Brad: And I had many friends that did it, and I tried to keep up with the Joneses too. It’s, you get into this cycle of like trading up your car every two years or whatever, every three years. It’s almost like a lease mentality when you don’t have a lease.

You’re just creating problems for yourself. If you don’t need to get rid of the car, then don’t get rid of the car. Just because you want, if you just want a new car to get a new car, that’s not a reason to get a new car.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s fair. And you know, you’re touching on something that John Summers also talks about on some of the other episodes he does by himself, where he goes to these seminars out in California where he sits in and he listens to these lectures on these companies that are building autonomous vehicles and all these new EVs [00:42:00] and all this kinda stuff.

And the paradigm shift that’s occurring in that space. Because if Johnny Cab is the future, none of us will own cars. We’ll be calling up our little Johnny cab and it’ll come and get us and or we’ll lease the car so it sits in our driveway and then it takes us where we wanna go. But when the car needs to be repaired or replaced.

That’s on Waymo or Google or whoever owns the car at that time, you know, manufactures the car at that time to do the service and the repairs and all that. But what’s interesting about that, and I think the big block that everybody’s forgetting is when you shift to that new way of doing business, insurance companies are out of business.

Executive Producer Tania: Mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. Geico and Allstate and Jake from State Farm aren’t gonna let that happen because they wanna make their money too. Then who are they insuring? I’m not driving. I, I’m just a passenger, so that’s great. I got a ton of money in my pocket at that point.

Crew Chief Brad: But then you need passenger insurance.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. That’s what it’ll become. It’ll become like whoever it is, [00:43:00] Waymo or whatever, they’ll become the insurer. It’s like when you go to work, your employer provides you subsidized health insurance, but you pay a part into that. So now I don’t own the car, but I’m taking part in this business. Yeah.

Therefore, now I have to pay into the insurance of them. Right. And then they’ll probably charge high premiums to Waymo or whoever, and then that just gets passed on to you. So you’ll be paying for insurance on something you don’t own because you are a passenger in there.

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s like renter’s insurance basically.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, you need to pay for passenger’s protection

Executive Producer Tania: because after all you got in that Waymo. And if you hadn’t chosen to get in that Waymo then it wouldn’t have been on the road at the time of an incident.

Crew Chief Eric: Now I will say, Brad, to your point, if you’ve ever ridden in a cab in DC or New York, you almost wanna have passenger insurance.

’cause that is legit scary.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, you’re taking your life into your own hands.

Crew Chief Eric: You really are. Like you need to up your life insurance every time you get in a cab in Manhattan. But yeah, so there, there’s [00:44:00] definitely a paradigm shift there as well. But the problem is if we ever get to that dystopia that they’re creating, there’s gonna be a weird period where all of this overlaps and it’s gonna be the most chaotic nonsense that we’ve ever experienced.

And I hope it all happens like after we’re gone, because I really don’t wanna have to suffer through it. It’s bad enough as it is. Anyway, new car prices, ugh. Lost found is all about digging up stuff that we haven’t seen before or, you know, we’ve forgotten about. I keep saying this, how many more barns are there full of cars in this world?

I feel like, you know, the fours of Horizon games where you drive around, you know, looking for the barn. Another, it’s got another classic car. Like here we go again, another barn full of cars. Well, this time it’s a barn full of sobs and I’m looking at your face.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t even know that I’m that interested in the sobs.

I’m actually more interested in this barn. [00:45:00] Like how did they get the cars up there? Where is this barn Like, tell me more about this bar.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, they show you in, in the video, they have a forklift, so that’s how they got ’em up there.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s pretty cool,

Crew Chief Eric: right? I mean, they’re up in the air. If you drove by this barn you were sniffing around, you wouldn’t even know these sobs were here.

This is a big barn. How many cars are in there? Like 20 plus easily, right?

FLORIDA MAN: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So I teased this up earlier. We’re talking about you, you brought up peak cars. You know, we’re talking about the eighties and the nineties in another post that, because you know, you go down a rabbit hole sometimes when you find this stuff.

Another post SOB 900 is the most underrated iconic car of the eighties and nineties.

Executive Producer Tania: Is that right?

Crew Chief Eric: Is that a missed opportunity?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know enough about them to comment.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve driven one in my life. It was an ugly green color and it was as quirky on the inside as is on the outside. It was very strange to drive

Crew Chief Brad: very quirky vehicles.

I,

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I [00:46:00] thought French cars were weird and then I drove a sob, right? It was just like, why is the key on the floor? Like, what are we, that’s where you put it. Like it makes, no, there’s some weird stuff that just makes no sense.

Crew Chief Brad: I think their whole thing is ’cause they were designed by like aerospace engineers.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Born from jets.

Crew Chief Brad: So they tried to take cues from like aviation and stuff like that.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s not practical.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh. That’s why 99% of all the other car manufacturers didn’t do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Bizarre. Although, you know, I will say with wiser eyes, looking at the SOB 900, I like its shape. It’s grown on me quite a bit.

There is one I see in in the city every now and again and I’m like, it’s in Black 900 Turbo. And I’m just like, that’s a cool car. It really is kind of cool. Then you remember how quirky it is and you’re like, yeah, it’s, it’s like not cool anymore.

Crew Chief Brad: I always thought the SOB 900 was a very weird looking nine 11.

Tell me I’m wrong. [00:47:00]

Crew Chief Eric: No you’re not. You’re not wrong at all.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It just looks like a very odd looking nine 11 because I used to, there was a guy in my. In my neighborhood in elementary school that it would park, it was parked on the street all the time. And I would look at it and I was like, what the f is that?

The nine 11 looks really funny.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. All right. We don’t have any uncool wall, no Tesla gate for our season kickoff. Brad, I’ll give you three guesses what Tanya’s gonna say for the next question.

Crew Chief Brad: Um, the answer is yes.

Crew Chief Eric: She did not watch the F1 movie. Come on. Are you serious?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s, sorry, that’s just wishful thinking.

Executive Producer Tania: Nope. But I will have watched it by the next episode.

Crew Chief Eric: We got close the other day. I was like, Hey, you wanna watch it? And she was like, uh, how long is the movie? And then I brought it up and then just literally like, walked out of my house. Like did, it was like, duh.

Crew Chief Brad: So if she has not watched it by the weekend, I come up there, we’re gonna watch it.

I’m gonna, we’re [00:48:00] gonna tie her into a chair and make her sit there and watch it. Clockwork Orange style. Yes. So Tanya be, if you’re around that weekend, you better be prepared.

Crew Chief Eric: It is two and a half hours of your life. You’ll never get back.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. But like 20 minutes of it is credits.

Crew Chief Eric: Or Brad Pitt on a motorcycle, one or

the

Crew Chief Brad: other, or Brad Pitt on a motorcycle doing his weird talk

Crew Chief Eric: days of thunder too.

That’s what it is. Yeah. Days thunder too. You mentioned some rich people. Thanks. Earlier we talked about the N 74. We talked about those other cars. But Brad, you dug this for Tanya and I couldn’t help but start laughing at this.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh yeah. Bugatti debuted a zero horsepower Bugatti factor one. Can you guess what it is?

Crew Chief Eric: No. What is that? Is it a, it’s not like another baby two or one of those go-kart things. Is it

Crew Chief Brad: It is a set of roller blades. No, it’s a, it’s a road bike. It’s a bicycle. Hence the, uh, the zero horsepower

Crew Chief Eric: for [00:49:00] the low, low price of,

Crew Chief Brad: for the low, low price of 24. Thousand dollars.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, brutal.

Crew Chief Brad: So how much are you paying per horsepower?

Crew Chief Eric: Can people actually make equivalent horsepower? Has that ever been measured? How much horsepower does a Olympic cyclist make? Is that a thing?

Crew Chief Brad: So according to ai, an Olympic cyclist typically generates between 0.4 and and three horsepower.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, what did you say their answer was?

Crew Chief Eric: 0.4 to three horsepower.

Executive Producer Tania: 0.4 to three three would be a lot.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s for like the elite of the elite.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. That’s a lot. ’cause you used to have to convert watts to horsepower. Yeah. Somewhere in 0.1 to a, a very normal person is [00:50:00] probably not even 0.3.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I wonder if I could generate more horsepower for a very much shorter amount of time.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you got bigger pistons.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I got bigger pistons. I’ve got I I more displacement.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re like a V eight. She’s like a turbo four. I mean

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: You got all them torque. SI,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, I I can probably generate a lot of torque.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s true. Unless you’re really stroking.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, are you having a stroke?

Crew Chief Brad: Someone check my air Fuel?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. You, your, your, your air fuel mixture would be, you’d be running lean, you’d be out of breath.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God. Oh, man.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re gonna have to go for an inspection. Your methane levels are off.

Crew Chief Brad: You need a new catalytic converter.

Executive Producer Tania: I’d be cur, I’d be curious. Now, I’d have to look.[00:51:00]

I could probably hit 0.3 horsepower, but not very long Horsepower.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like this is, this is a challenge. We gotta, we gotta find a way to get this done.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. I wonder if you could do that on a bike trainer and figure it out.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. ’cause I can, I can see, I can do a power run and see my wattage and just convert it to horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. You do that and you let us know next time. I’ll put a note for the next drive. How much horsepower does Tanya make?

Crew Chief Brad: And for how long?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Oh, ooh, ooh. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: So if you want to decrease the ratio of dollars per horsepower, you just gotta be a better athlete.

Crew Chief Eric: So that means this is false advertising because you can make up the three horsepower if you provide it yourself.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. This is B-B-Y-O-H-P.

Crew Chief Eric: So it is a non-zero number is what we’re saying. This can actually produce a non-zero number because I love the sub quote here. [00:52:00] The Bugatti factor one isn’t powered by horsepower at all, but by pure human effort, making it one of the most unexpected Bugatti vehicles ever created.

Who comes up with this marketing nonsense?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, and don’t forget, if you’re looking for that extra special automobile to complete your garage office den or man cave, be sure to check out garage style magazine.com for a list of upcoming auctions and events, along with a curated list of items going up for sale all over the country, because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, well, let’s switch gears and go to, are you faster than an Interceptor?

I found this article to be a bit of a boomerang because we’re coming back to a story we [00:53:00] reported on a couple years ago on the drive through, and it’s about how the Austrians were switching over to EVs as their police cars. Well, Austria has decided that they are going to pull the plug on EV police cars.

Executive Producer Tania: I would just like to say that I appreciate. The author of this article who succinctly summarized in three bullet points at the top of the article.

Crew Chief Eric: Mm-hmm.

Executive Producer Tania: In the first bullet point, Austrian police found EVs unsuitable for general patrols due to range in charging issues. That saved me from reading and reading and reading and reading and reading.

So thank you for that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it does go on for a long time.

Crew Chief Brad: I bet AI did that.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe

Crew Chief Brad: that’s how I’m gonna do

Executive Producer Tania: the drive through.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna take each article, run it through AI and say, gimme the bullet points.

Crew Chief Eric: You still won’t be any more prepared than you are now.

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. ’cause I’m gonna forget I said this and then we’re gonna come back to next, next month.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad, since we’re kicking things off, let’s actually kick off [00:54:00] Tanya’s Florida demand section here. With a proper Florida man story, not totally related to cars, but you sent us this one and I could not help but want to reshare it. Why don’t you read us what this one’s about?

Crew Chief Brad: So you gotta take this with a grain of salt.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I don’t.

Crew Chief Brad: As I was saying to Tanya earlier, I get a lot of posts and news and stories and stuff on social media and I have no idea without fact checking if any of this stuff is real or AI generated or whatever. I’m gonna read the caption though. A Florida man was arrested for attempting to baptize an alligator in a waffle house using a picture of iced tea

FLORIDA MAN: on here every time.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Miami-Dade County, Florida. So down in, down in southern Florida. What witnesses are calling the most Waffle House moment in history? Florida man was arrested after allegedly attending to baptize a live alligator inside a wall house using a picture ice team.

Crew Chief Eric: I heard a story which was [00:55:00] allegedly true from someone I met from Florida that said they had seen somebody throw an alligator, like I guess a baby alligator out.

They had it in their car, threw a Wendy’s drive through window. So I mean, anything is possible. Anything is possible in Florida.

Crew Chief Brad: So I don’t believe this is real. ’cause the hashtags are funny. Comedy F book lifestyle satire for entertainment only. So I think this is like a, this is like the onion.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I think the Snopes fact check that as being not true.

I think it was staged.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I want it to be true though. Really

Executive Producer Tania: do, it could be true. That’s the reality.

Crew Chief Eric: I think still the killer is the old man with the leaf blower trying to blow himself down the road on the, in the wheelchair, like. That for me is one of the best Florida man memories.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. The guy that lit his Malibu on fire with candles is pretty good too.

Crew Chief Eric: That was like the first drive through episode.

Crew Chief Brad: I love that Florida is so bonkers that we can’t actually [00:56:00] definitively say if some of these stories are real or not.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. All right. Well Tanya, what do you have here on the list?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the first one, I don’t know why that link doesn’t work anymore, but apparently this person was a transporter and he was transporting some guys.

Porsche and his two scooters, and then decided that he needed to go to the DMV to renew his license and his car wouldn’t do. So he took the Porsche that wasn’t his. And the owner I think had some sort of tracking on it and could realize that it wasn’t on the trailer, but it was like driving around somewhere.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no.

Executive Producer Tania: Needless to say he was arrested.

Crew Chief Eric: LoJack to the rescue.

Executive Producer Tania: Note to self, you’re transporting your car. Put some ear tags or something in it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, no kidding.

Executive Producer Tania: This next one though is even better. So the title is. Florida man doing 101 in a 55 trying to quote, avoid an animal. The [00:57:00] dude got pulled over and told deputy he was speeding to avoid an animal in the roadway.

Under what circumstances? Does that make sense? Were you being chased by a cheetah?

Crew Chief Eric: By an ostrich? They could do 45 miles an hour.

Executive Producer Tania: A cheetah can do a hundred, right?

Crew Chief Eric: 80 or something like that At full tilt. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: So a cheetah can do about 55, I think.

Executive Producer Tania: 70. They can do 70. Sorry.

Crew Chief Eric: Does he say what he was avoiding?

Was it a squirrel like or is an alligator?

Executive Producer Tania: It was himself. Now the real question,

Crew Chief Eric: what was he driving?

Executive Producer Tania: I know, and it doesn’t say, all it says is dark four-door sedan. What do we think it is?

Crew Chief Eric: Ultima? It had to have been, had to have been Ultima.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: it doesn’t look like a a, it looks like an infinity interior.

Executive Producer Tania: They don’t show it.

Crew Chief Eric: You found a picture?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh no, sorry, I’m looking at the, the, I’m getting tripped up by the,

Executive Producer Tania: the body cam. Yeah, yeah. No, that’s, that’s a Olympian. Shakar. Richardson’s getting pulled over,

Crew Chief Brad: huh? Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Can we actually use this excuse, excuse me, [00:58:00] officer, but I was evading an animal.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m sorry, officer.

There was a squirrel.

Crew Chief Eric: I was being chased by a hippopotamus. Don’t they do like 25 mile an hour?

Executive Producer Tania: Was it like Jurassic Park? It was a T-Rex. Those seem pretty fast.

Crew Chief Eric: Little alarm.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m sorry, officer. I was speeding. To avoid the police.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know that, that carries a lot of weight. I,

Crew Chief Brad: I, I was running from a pig.

Crew Chief Eric: Jesus Christ. Before we wrap out this Florida man segment, just a little sneak peek. Into season seven of Break Fix. We have an author coming on the show here in the next couple of months. His name is Jesse Fresco. I met him at Awesome Con down in DC where I happened to bump into Max Kaiserman from losing Replicas who was down there.

We can talk about that another time. But he has this new little novella series, calls it the Autumn Frost Story series, and the very first one takes place in the DMV and it’s called Drive Like Hell. And then there’s gonna be a whole series of these novellas. And so I just wanna read you a little bit of what it says [00:59:00] here.

It says, autumn Frost never wanted much out of life. A nice home in Annapolis, A decent job to live comfortably, someone to love to wake up to every morning. But life had other plans while out on her rounds is a two in from driver, that means Uber or Lyft. She picks up a hysterical young girl who’s being chased by her boyfriend with a gun as they speed off.

The girl admits that in her backpack is two pounds of fentanyl. From that point on, the girl’s boyfriend is after them. A drug ring is after them. A sociopath hit man and the cops, all of it is up to Autumn Frost to drive like hell. I’m excited for this and this actually leads into some other books that Jesse has written, so really excited to have like proper Florida man author coming on the show.

So look forward to that as the season progresses. But you can pick up a copy of Jesse Fresco’s books today if you’re interested. Well on that, it’s time we go behind the pit wall and quickly talk about commercial news. The 2026 LAMA [01:00:00] entry list has been posted really early compared to previous years.

Have you guys looked at this yet?

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Crew Chief Eric: 62 cars Uhhuh across three classes. Okay. 18 cars in hypercar. 19 in LMP two. The rest of them in LM GT three.

Executive Producer Tania: What is this race again? June.

Crew Chief Eric: June is Father’s Day. It’s always Father’s Day.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think it’s actually Father’s Day weekend this year,

Crew Chief Eric: is it not? It’s always like the longest day of summer,

Executive Producer Tania: June 13th.

Crew Chief Eric: So here we go, hypercar, which is the only class anybody cares about. Aston Martin with the Valkyrie Toyota with the new TRO one Oh that we talked about. Cadillac, BMW, Genesis Magma,

Crew Chief Brad: S Magma.

Crew Chief Eric: Alpine Ferrari eo. That’s a hell of a lineup.

Executive Producer Tania: So Porsche is out.

Crew Chief Eric: Porsche is out officially of Lama. We skip over LMP two because they’re all orcas with Gibson engine.

So whatever. And then we get to LMGT three [01:01:00] and we’re looking at Corvette, McLaren, Ferrari, Aston, BMW, Mercedes Ford, Lexus, and two private tier nine elevens. So Porsche is out out of LAMA for 2026. Other than the two private tier cars, can you believe it? When was the last time Porsche didn’t run in Lama?

Executive Producer Tania: Well,

Crew Chief Brad: they stopped for a couple years when Toyota kept winning.

Executive Producer Tania: Why are the Iron Dames programs scaled back?

Crew Chief Eric: That, I don’t know. I had heard rumors, something there was changing as well. They were getting a different card, different series or something like that. Maybe I, and I don’t wanna say getting out altogether, but there was definitely some changes afoot, but I never dug into it more.

The Iron links, the men’s version of the Iron Dames, they’re still in it.

Executive Producer Tania: Why is there a men’s version? The rest of it’s men’s version,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s how they split it up. The dynamic makes no sense to me either.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t see Jackie Chan racing either.

Crew Chief Eric: No. Jackie Chan’s been out for quite a while. My, and it’s funny you bring that up.

I got [01:02:00] to interview

Crew Chief Brad: Jackie Chan.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I got to interview Ricky Taylor and he talks about racing for Jackie Chan. I don’t know if you remember or not. He was one of the drivers for Jackie Chan racing in LMP two.

Crew Chief Brad: You interviewed Ricky or Jordan?

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve interviewed both of them, but when I interviewed Ricky, Ricky was talking about how he raced for Jackie Chan now.

He never got to meet him, but he got to be part of the program and all that kind of stuff. So that was pretty cool.

Crew Chief Brad: Interesting. That’s cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So yeah, they announced the full roster of cars that are gonna be running at LAMA this year. I’m still excited even if Porsche’s not there. I’m really curious to see what Hyundai does with the Genesis magma and how Aston does and all that.

But it’s, I’m worried for Ferrari. Uh, again, I’ve said they need to leave on a high. Ford is not here. I would hate to see Ferrari lose to Ford, so maybe they’ll get out before the getting out is is not good, you know, but Ford is supposed to come by next year, right is, is what they said by 2027. So we’ll see this list change again, but I think this might [01:03:00] be the first time we’ve ever seen a Korean brand at the 24 hour lama, so that’s pretty historic in and of itself, so pretty cool stuff.

Oh, by the way, last time we talked about the FIA WEC tv, since we’re talking about watching the 24 hours of LAMA, and we didn’t know what it was going to cost. They did finally announce their pricing. It’s 49 euros. You gotta do the conversion there. 49 euros a year. So I thought that was not terrible. So you get the entire WEC series and the 24 hours lama through the FIA WEC TV plus subscription.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s cheaper than what the F1 used to be.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, that’s true. Now we pay the Apple tax instead. And in some sad news, motor sports legend Bobul passed away on March the 16th. Now some of you might be asking who? Bob Bobul. Who’s that? I, I, I might have heard that name before. Well, you probably had, because TIUs famous for creating group 44 racing back in the [01:04:00] 1960s and campaigning cars like the infamous group, 44 Jags at the 24 hours of Lama and the Audi Quatros that ran in the United States in both TransAm and ISA in the late eighties and early nineties.

So. An icon in the Motorsport world passed away just a couple weeks ago, so sad to see it.

Executive Producer Tania: He lived a long life. Nine five.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. He’s up there with Robert Deval now they’re having some ice cream.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s ice cream with Newman.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. Our Motorsport News is brought to you in part by Enduro verse, powered by Hyper dev, America’s premier endurance racing community.

Check it out online and become a member@www.endurreverse.com.

Alright, well switching gears to the GTM track side report. As you guys know, we’re doing a lemons build for the 24 hours of Lemon series this season, and we wanted to give you an update on our unfocused performance project. The car’s [01:05:00] back, so what’s next? One of the toughest things so far outside of the ridiculous cost for safety equipment has actually been trying to find parts for the Ford, and especially something that’s the equivalent of ECS tuning or FCP Euro.

We’ve talked about it behind the scenes and I don’t think we ever realize how good we have it with the German stuff until you go look for parts to work on something else. Like how easy we have it that you can go to an ECS tuning and get everything for anything going back, put in your part numbers order from the Black forest.

You need this specialty that they keep making new parts for old cars. The Ford, it’s just, it’s, the struggle is real. Like if you’re not getting it in advance, you’re not getting it anywhere kind of thing, you know? And, and thank goodness for places like Speedway Motors and Rock Auto and Jags and stuff like that where you can get stuff.

You’d think with something like a Ford focus, it’d be a lot easier to get parts for

Executive Producer Tania: it’s un unexciting. No wonder you all don’t make cars anymore and just trucks [01:06:00]

Crew Chief Eric: because there’s no aftermarket for it, right? But with as many of those cars as they sold and the popularity of hot hatches and stuff like that, you would think there would be more places.

Now we’re very fortunate. One of the guys on the team brought us a website, FS Works, and that is a sort of like a Euro tuning ECS kind of thing. And we’ve been able to find some parts on there that look like, hey, we can actually use that. It might be track worthy and it’s not just some, you know, street racer parts or whatever, looking to find more of that kind of stuff.

So if any of our listeners out there know of places to get high performance forward parts, especially for a focus, let us know, send us a note, hit us up on Discord, whatever, because again, we’re having those challenges, sourcing the stuff we need that is track worthy to make sure that the car is reliable going throughout the season.

Unfortunately because we had some setbacks timing wise, getting all the fabrication work done and all that kind of thing, we are going to be missing our first event. We were supposed to be going to mid Ohio. We were not able to register in time ’cause the car is not ready. There’s [01:07:00] still a ton of stuff to do.

We gotta put a clutch in it just to make sure that it is again, turnkey, reliable. ’cause the last thing you wanna do is go to this race and the thing dies on you 20 minutes later. So stuff like that’s gotta get done. People are still asking, you know, how can we help? Well, a couple different ways you can help.

You can come and hang out, you can turn wrenches if you want, stuff like that. But the one thing that goes the longest is if you’ve got a couple extra bucks to spare, even if it buys us gas or we put it towards tires or whatever, we do have a specials tier on Patreon. You can go to patreon.com/gt motorsports and sign up to contribute and help sponsor our lemons team so we can get to our first event safely, reliably, and be able to report back on what the experience is like.

So our first event shifted from Mid-Ohio. Two New Jersey. We’re gonna be running Thunderbolt in June. One of my favorite tracks. It’s an awesome lap. So looking forward to having the car ready to go by mid-June for the NJMP event. So we’ll see you there. And then the plan from that point forward [01:08:00] will be Summit Point and I am hoping to go to Road Atlanta in December.

’cause that sounds like a lot of fun. We’ve been there before. We know what that’s like. I think that’s worth the tow to go down there and do that. And then maybe if there’s enough money, it’d be cool to do Nelson Ledges or one of the other tracks in the middle of the summer, but we just gotta have to see how things play out.

But New Jersey for sure, and June, and then Summit Point as well. So looking forward to it.

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: March kicked off season seven on the MPN with our International Women’s Month celebrations, and we’ve got more awesome stories to come through the rest of this season.

But if you’re hearing us for the first time, 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, formula, fanatics, [01:09:00] break fix, and of course the drive-through.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you enjoy our various podcasts, there’s a great way for you to support our creators on MPN.

There’s tons of extras and bonuses to explore on our updated Patreon page. Learn more about our bonus and behind the scenes content. Get early access to upcoming episodes and consider becoming a break fix VIP when you visit patreon.com/gt motorsports. As always, thank you to our co-host and executive producer, Kathleen Turner.

Executive Producer Tania: And if you are tuning in for the first time, my voice isn’t usually this low.

Crew Chief Brad: She’s just being honest folks.

Crew Chief Eric: She’s auditioning for the reboot of Vi Wwki.

Crew Chief Brad: As you can tell, Tanya has taken up smoking cigarettes

Executive Producer Tania: in already

Crew Chief Brad: and to all the fans, friends and family who support [01:10:00] grand touring motor sports, as well as the Motoring Podcast network. Without you, none of this would be possible. Actually, I think Kathleen Turner should say TRO this time.

Executive Producer Tania: Tro.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God. It’s deeper than mine.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what she said.

Crew Chief Brad: Sultry.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine, Tanya?

On a bicycle, on a dyno? Let, let’s go. Let’s see how much worse power you make.

Crew Chief Brad: All I know is I don’t wanna be around when they do the air fuel.

FLORIDA MAN: Freaking tail pipe dust. You fail missions.

Oh my God,

Crew Chief Brad: it is outro, outro, outro. Air, fuel,

FLORIDA MAN: nail

Crew Chief Eric: pipe test

Crew Chief Brad: remain. Remember, failing to prepare is just preparing to fail.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go,

Crew Chief Brad: deep. [01:11:00]

FLORIDA MAN: Sorry, I gotta compose myself. Woo.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my.

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-thru, 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 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 Drive Thru Springtime Banter
• 00:01:52 Daily Driver Dilemma
• 00:04:03 Porsche EV Rumors
• 00:07:58 Lambo CTO To Audi?
• 00:09:47 VW’s “Turbo Gate” Lawsuit
• 00:15:11 New BMW 3-Series Shock
• 00:17:13 What was the “Peak Car” Era?
• 00:25:10 Bimmer & Benz – Gas Car Ban Blocked!
• 00:26:08 AC Schnitzer Shuts Down
• 00:27:42 The Celica Returns!
• 00:29:39 Subaru Trailseeker Roast & Hyundai N74 Rumors
• 00:33:20 Alpine Coming To US?
• 00:36:15 Are New Cars Too Expensive?
• 00:41:44 Autonomous Future and Insurance
• 00:44:25 Barn Find Saab Stash
• 00:47:19 F1 Movie and the Bugatti Bike
• 00:52:34 Florida Man Headlines
• 00:59:51 Le Mans 2026 Grid Talk
• 01:04:45 24 Hours of Lemons Focus Build Update!
• 01:08:37 Signoff