B/F: The Drive Thru #70

• View Exterior Photos of the 2027 Lotus Emira 420 Sport -- See the exterior of the 2027 Lotus Emira 420 Sport from every angle.

• Mercedes won't contest Kimi Antonelli's British GP track limits penalty -- Mercedes has ruled out taking any steps against Kimi Antonelli's British Grand Prix track limits penalty
• Formula 1 Pool Floaty Available at Costco!
• Old Spice Deodorant for Men F1 Collection Scent of Deep Waters & Downforce Aluminum Free -- Great F1 Stocking Stuffer - While Supplies Last!
• More Old Spice F1

Aston Martin in talks with Christian Horner (again!)

• The Nissan Altima Isn't Dead Yet (Update) -- Nissan is reshuffling its lineup in the United States, and some cars could be on the chopping block.
• Honda and Nissan Near Partnership Despite Failed Merger: TDS -- Nissan got cold feet when it realized Honda essentially wanted to acquire it years back. Still, the two companies got past that and are close to a tech alliance.
• Gotcha: Toyota's New Mid-Engine Sports Car Possibly Caught Testing On Video -- Is this the long-awaited return of the Celica in action? We’ll have to wait and see.
• Toyota MR2 Development Car Spied Testing at Fuji Speedway -- A new video shows what appears to be a Toyota MR2 test mule wearing motley bodywork and turning laps at Fuji Speedway.

• Would you buy this Gen-1 Nissan Altima? -- 1995 Nissan Altima XE - Brad says YES!

• BMW Recalls 29,000 Hybrid Sedans, Warns Owners To Park Outside -- An engine starter that could overheat and lead to a fire has affected a trio of BMW luxury sedans.

• What is the fascination with this TDI and stacks?

• Goodwood Road Racing Club, hits California?

Days of Thunder SEQUEL Confirmed!

• Something else we'll never get in the US -- Meet the Alfa Romeo Brutale

• Elon Musk hints at Tesla (TSLA)-SpaceX merger on earnings call

For Sale: 1998 CyberTruck 😉

• Here's all the models VW is allegedly killing off...
• Last episode we said “it would be like a 4-door beetle” well China said, hold my Tsingtao!
• The HSR Manufaktur 859 Brings the Audi Sport Quattro Back to Life
• Find of the Day: 31-Mile Audi RS6 Avant GT Seeks a Real Enthusiast Owner -- Talk about Rich People Thangs!

After months of chasing gremlins, the Break/Fix Lemons team finally coaxed their Ford Focus back to life — sort of. A new wiring harness and ECU brought the car from “found on road dead” to “idles beautifully,” but acceleration remains a cruel joke. Limp‑mode launches and emissions‑sensor mysteries have turned every test drive into a slow‑motion thriller. Still, the crew’s persistence paid off: the Focus now starts, runs, and occasionally revs like it remembers its glory days.

CHECK OUT THE BUILD UPDATE ON THE GTM CLUBHOUSE SITE.

With Summit Point looming in October, the team’s mantra is “two steps forward, four steps back.” Between battery swaps, sensor hunts, and Mountain Man Dan’s cameo repair, the Focus saga has become a masterclass in Lemons‑grade resilience. If the next fix sticks, this blue‑oval underdog might just make it to the grid — duct tape, optimism, and all.

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 Brake Fix’s Drive Thru 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 1 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: What’s up, Bradley?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you know, just dealing with pink eye, having my kids having pink eye.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, your eye is pink?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. One of them.

Crew Chief Eric: I can’t tell. It must be the quality of our cameras. They’re just not that good.

Crew Chief Brad: Hm.

Crew Chief Eric: Just don’t look too deeply.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m a good, I’m a good, like, foot and a half, two feet from my camera, so it works out that way.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go. What, uh,

Crew Chief Brad: what, what do [00:01:00] they say about a ba- uh, like some paint jobs are like a five-foot paint job?

Crew Chief Eric: The paint job on my station wagon is like a 25-yard paint job at this point.

Crew Chief Brad: Hm.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s okay.

Crew Chief Brad: The paint job on the Beetle is a doggy style paint job. It only looks good from behind.

Crew Chief Eric: Have you seen those products on Instagram where you can pour some Mervin’s magical mystery oil on there, and suddenly all your clear coat problems will go away?

Executive Producer Tania: The one where you’re just wiping something on it, and suddenly all the scratches are gone?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah. There’s that one. You know, that’s sort of like the … What was that stuff in the ’80s, New Finish? Remember the guy would go to the junkyard and he would just start buffing a car? I’m like, “Come on, man.” Like, really?

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think I’ve seen that.

Executive Producer Tania: They still sell that, I thought.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw one today where a guy was like, I don’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t really sanding the car, but he had that same clear coat peel that you had. It was on a Mercedes, one of those, like, cinnamon colored Mercedes. He does all this rubbed up scrub thing, and then he pours on two bottles of, [00:02:00] I don’t know what it was.

It was magic in a, in a vial, one on one side, one on the other. Maybe it was some J-B Weld or UV sealant or something. Anyway, next thing you know, they must have driven in another car, ’cause you’re like, “Wow, that is not the same paint that I saw five minutes ago as we accelerated that five-month process that it took you to get that car repainted.”

Crew Chief Brad: It sounds to me like that spray that they used to sell late at night for bald men. And you basically just painted your bald spot whatever your hair color was, and poof, it’s gone. No more bald spot.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the same thing that, um, Trade and Paints guy, John Travolta got hair out of a can, remember?

Crew Chief Brad: It was literally just spray paint.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we should probably get serious and start talking about drive-through news kind of stuff. You know, we talked about it the last bunch of episodes that we were gonna go to the Midwest. We were gonna be in South Bend, Indiana for Automotive History Live. Well, we went a little bit further than that. We went to the great state of Wisconsin.

We put over [00:03:00] 2,000 miles on my wife’s space shuttle.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s why it’s throwing an engine code.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yeah, right? It did not like that at all.

Crew Chief Brad: You surpassed its, uh, useful life.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s a Chrysler product, so what can you say? Yeah. I’d never been to Wisconsin. It was one of the few states I have not visited in the United States.

And I have to say I was left going, “Huh, looks exactly like everything I’ve ever seen on TV or on the postcards.” It’s like, here’s a farm, barn and a silo. Here’s a whole bunch of green for a bunch of miles, and here’s another barn and a silo and a bunch of green, and a barn and a silo and a bunch of green.

It’s very flat. It’s very much dairy land. I mean, obviously until you get up to, like, the northwest corner- You get closer to Minnesota or whatever, and you start to get into the Canadian shelf and all that kind of stuff. It’s really flat. It’s very green. It put into perspective what Road America must be like.

I haven’t been yet. It’s on my bucket list.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s, that’s what I was gonna ask, like, did you get a chance to [00:04:00] stop by Road America? I wanted to. And then the last turn and then the, the straight, the start and finish-

Crew Chief Eric: It’s uphill …

Crew Chief Brad: that giant hill.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. I was like, “There is some elevation in Wisconsin.”

Crew Chief Brad: It’s all at Road America.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. We made it all the way to Madison, so the capital of Wisconsin, so that was cool. Their capitol building is beautiful. It’s sort of like a miniature version of the Capitol Building in DC, but you can go inside. You can go all the way up in the cupola and all this kind of thing. It’s very, very cool.

Neat little city. I mean, most of the city is the University of Wisconsin, so, you know, neither here nor there. We didn’t get to Milwaukee. We didn’t get to Green Bay, you know, some of the other bigger cities. We had a bigger loop that we were doing Chicago and… Have you been to Wisconsin, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: No. We’ve not

Crew Chief Eric: had any interest in going to Wisconsin.

Executive Producer Tania: Sure, why not? We’ll get some cheese.

Crew Chief Eric: We went to the place that apparently is rated the original best place to get Wisconsin cheese curds. They live up to the hype. It is the cheesiest. And then I sort of got burnt out on cheese curds, ’cause everybody has them. I’m

Executive Producer Tania: sure they [00:05:00] do.

Crew Chief Eric: So then you’re sort of like, do you compare them? Like, do you keep eating cheese curds until you’re saturated and you can’t… I don’t wanna see another cheese curd. ‘

Executive Producer Tania: Til your intestines clog.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve really only had cheese curds at Buffalo Wild Wings. Are they really that much better in Wisconsin?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they are, they are the cheesiest, just like the commercials say.

They

Crew Chief Brad: are the cheesiest.

Crew Chief Eric: So continuing on our way back, we closed the loop on an episode that we had recorded four years ago, season two of BreakFix. We hooked up with Jim Woidilla from Volo, and he gave us a virtual tour of the museum because it was during COVID and they were under construction and a bunch of other stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Next time I’m out that way I’ll do it. How far is it from Chicago? 45

Crew Chief Eric: minutes to an hour, depending on how you drive. It’s not really out of the way. For us it was just a slight detour, ’cause it’s the way we were, we were headed anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, it’s north of Chicago.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like northwest.

Okay, northwest.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Because it wasn’t that big of a detour [00:06:00] as we were, you know, on our way through Chicago both ways, we were like, “Let’s stop off at Volo and go check it out.” And the weather wasn’t too great. It was kinda rainy anyway, so we’re like, “What’s a day at a car museum, right?” My kids are dragging their heels.

They’re like, “Ugh, ugh.” Of course. “We’re bored.” Ugh. Yeah. Whatever. I wrote an article about it. It’s on the club website. But I wanted to share some pictures with you guys if you hadn’t had a chance to see it yet. This is why I say all of a sudden we walk in the door and their attitudes changed completely.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow.

Crew Chief Eric: Huge Batman diorama as soon as you come in. ’89 Keaton Batmobile and the Batcycle and the sidecar, and you keep going around and there’s more stuff, and the life-size Joker, and the Joker mo- it, like, is absolutely bonkers awesome. This place is unlike any other museum I have ever been to. So check this out.

This is as soon as you come in you see Batman. So you can see down here you’ve got the Transformers Camaro in the [00:07:00] back. That’s Eleanor. Here’s the Falcon XB GT from Mad Max with a wax recreation of Mel Gibson. It doesn’t really look like Mel Gibson.

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s too tall. Isn’t he, like, four feet tall?

Crew Chief Eric: But the Falcon is so, that is a mean looking car.

I love that thing. I fell in love with that as a kid. I think it’s absolutely amazing. So check this out. So we got the Interceptor from Mad Max. You can also see the Michael Andretti Indy car over there, which my daughter sat in. You can actually, the kids can climb inside that and take pictures and stuff like that.

Crew Chief Brad: Whoa.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s one of the Ferraris from Ford versus Ferrari with the sister car to Max Kaiserman’s GT40 that was at Simeone back for the Le Mans event. So they, it has its own room. It’s all Ford versus Ferrari stuff. I thought this was super cool, although the cutouts are a little weird. Check this out.

’66 Lincoln Futura Batmobile signed by George Barris. This is a legit Batmobile, and it is a, it’s monstrously [00:08:00] big. It is absolutely huge, but it’s also awesome. And the bat computer in the background, that William Shakespeare head thing that they would pop open to go into the bat cave, that’s legitimate.

That’s from the show. There’s like all these props and stuff like all over the place with all these dioramas. Look at this. Look at this. Hot Pursuit Jump Mode Kit. Knight Industries 2000 from Knight Rider. Wow. Yeah, th- I mean, this stuff, this stuff is awesome, right? One of the coolest things, we’re at Volo, and they don’t do this all the time.

I don’t know if you guys heard about this. They have the world’s fastest outhouse. You seen the videos of this thing? It’s posted in the article about the Volo Museum trip. My wife took a video of it. I’m not gonna play it here. I’m just gonna show you picture of this rocket powered toilet. Look at this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like I’ve seen something like that on the mountain.

Executive Producer Tania: Too many ques- too many questions here.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but it’s a square body on fire at the mountain. You know what I’m saying?

Executive Producer Tania: And that’s a square body practically on fire, too.

Crew Chief Eric: You like that?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. [00:09:00] In s- instead of emptying the tank when it’s full, they just burn it.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s an incinerator toilet. That’s what this

Crew Chief Brad: is. Yep, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Hilarious part is Jess took the video in like three pieces, and the third part, unfortunately, I, I couldn’t stitch it back in. It wasn’t that great, ’cause she kind of almost dropped her camera as she was doing it. She was trying to get closer, ’cause there was a guy at the fence.

I don’t know where he got it or where he was hiding it. He literally busted out this telescoping forked marshmallow thing, and he’s, he was holding marshmallows out trying to roast them in, as the flame was going. But I mean, this thing shot flames well beyond the edge of the picture. It was bonkers.

Absolutely nuts. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Brad: It seems unnecessary.

Crew Chief Eric: But awesome at the same time. Like, come on.

Crew Chief Brad: Is it, though?

Crew Chief Eric: I think it is. I think it is. I thought overall the experience was pretty cool. Now, they have buildings full of cars, like muscle cars and classic cars that are for sale. They’ve got three different antique malls.

They’ve got a [00:10:00] dinosaur park. They’ve got a Titanic exhibit full of cars from like 1912 that were on the ship or cousins of the ones that were on the ship, you know, the same era, same model, all that kind of thing. They’ve got the train from Inception. They’ve got the train from Wild Wild West with Will Smith and Kevin Kline.

They’ve got an RV museum in there going back to like 1920s, like campers. They’ve got a tractor museum. They’ve got a Coney Island- carousel inside of a building and it still works, with, like, all the penny arcades and all that ki- it’s super cool. So it’s very eclectic, it’s very different, it’s very interactive, like, and it’s very family-friendly.

So highly recommend if you happen to be in that neck of the woods or if you’re listening to this and you’re in the Chicago area and you’ve never been to Volo, I mean, it’s, like, 45 minutes outside of downtown Chicago. It’s like why not go, check it out, see some of the superstars from TV and movies and all that kind of thing.

I think it’s super cool. It’s, uh, well worth the trip.

Crew Chief Brad: Good to know.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, very much so. All right. Let’s [00:11:00] talk about South Bend, Indiana, another place I’ve never been. It’s a cute little town, also a college town. Notre Dame is right there. There’s a lot of history, especially in the automotive industry. It’s like a mini Detroit, right?

You had Studebaker there and you had other companies, that some of them still survive to this day, that augment and supplement Detroit’s automotive industry. And it’s not that far from Michigan, to be honest with you. It’s in that upper, upper, upper part of Indiana. So cute little town, very welcoming.

Everybody’s super nice. The weather was good. The concours was beautiful. You know, they did the Concours of Lemons and they also did the big fancy concours as well. But I wanted to point out, Concours of Lemons, you know, we have a lemons car. We’re gonna talk about that as we go along. Yeah, we

Crew Chief Brad: do.

Crew Chief Eric: This must be a lemons thing with Ford Focuses.

Check this out. Does this look familiar to anybody?

Executive Producer Tania: They didn’t put a bandaid on there

Crew Chief Eric: They didn’t put a bandaid on it. We put a bandaid on ours. It’s much cuter. But so holding the car together, we have the same thing on our Focus that we had to do to hold the rear bumper onto the fender. Well, I was like, man, if this car [00:12:00] was at Concours d’Lemons, we could have certainly taken ours there.

I mean, it doesn’t run anyway, so might as well, you could just park it there. It’d be great. Perfect. So anyway, Automotive History Live, how can I sum it up? I think I’ll just sum it up by saying this, my favorite picture. Tanya, you watched some of it. What did you think?

Executive Producer Tania: I watched some of it. I watched, watched it on mute.

Ah, geez. Unfortunately, I had a busy day at work, but I was working from home, so in between meetings I tried to catch a couple minutes here and there, but it seemed like it was a nice event, a little differently organized.

Crew Chief Eric: Was this you? Was this you?

Executive Producer Tania: That was, uh, indicative of maybe how it really was.

Crew Chief Eric: Still my favorite.

Shout out to Bob Casey. It wasn’t boring at all. It was actually a lot of fun. I think the keynote speaker, if you haven’t heard of him before, we had Tom Cotter. He presented twice. He presented both days. Now got absorbed by Hagerty. He’s the Barne fine guy. He goes all over the country [00:13:00] looking for cars. He drove across the United States with Coleman, who lives outside of Summit Point.

Well, he, remember that Model T that would run around Summit Point, the yellow one? And you’re just like, “Oh, it’s all chitty chitty bang bang,” and whatever, and you c- you show up in the paddock one day, an older guy. They took that car cross country following the Lincoln Highway, and it took ’em like, I don’t know, 17 or 20 days or something like that, and he wrote a book about it.

So that was super cool, and he’s done some other cross-country trips and all this kind of stuff. So Tom Cotter was a super interesting guy. And then, you know, all the other speakers that were there talking about stuff. But then, as promised, we delivered. We were on stage, the whole Bianco Speciale thing. I think it went over really well.

Our slide deck was very visually appealing, we were told. Very picture heavy. The car’s gorgeous, too. But one of the other things William surprised us with when we were there, and now I am the proud owner of one of these, I, too, can say I own a Bianco Speciale because did you know Hot Wheels put them out in their vintage [00:14:00] racing series?

Look at that. Right. So I haven’t been able to find these anywhere. They were teased that they were gonna be made, and these are very specific to the car that we were talking about. What does William do? He buys up as many of these as he can. I think he found like 35 or 37 of them, and then gave ’em all away.

It was like the coolest thing. So people are like, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah, you’re not gonna see these anywhere bec- I don’t know how he got ahold of ’em. I don’t know who he called or what deal he made, but it was super cool. So I’m, I’m really excited to have one of these. So Brad, if you spot one, you better nab one of these.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, good, good, good luck, I guess.

Crew Chief Eric: And I will say, I posted a link in the show notes to all of the presentations, so if you didn’t get a chance to listen to it the first time around, or if you’re like Tanya and the signal dropped midway through some of the presentations, don’t know why, uh, you can watch the fully recorded versions up on our YouTube channel.

You can actually access it from our YouTube, the Society of Automotive Historians YouTube, or Studebaker National Museum. It’s been simulcast across all of them, so you can get access [00:15:00] to those files. All right. Let’s talk about the Focus a little bit, shall we? ‘Cause I … You know, we don’t ha- we don’t wanna wait till the end of the episode.

Everybody’s been waiting to, you know, what’s been going on with the car? Obviously, we know the car is dead. So before we went on our Midwest tour, the wiring harness that took weeks and weeks and weeks to find for the Focus actually showed up, like, right before we left. So a lot of people were bugging me, “Hey, did you get it done?

Did you get it done?” And I’m like, “No, because I haven’t been home, so I will work on it as soon as I get back.” That’s exactly what we did, right, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And how was the experience? Did it live up to the YouTube video that you found?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, it did. It was as simple.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s amazing the amount of thought they put into making that part of it really, really easy.

Everything lays on top of the engine.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I mean, unlike other manufacturers, where it would’ve been a spaghetti western mess or tied together and running behind really difficult places and you gotta disassemble half the front of the motor to fish it out, there really [00:16:00] was nothing other than taking the air box out, which is, like, two bolts.

Nothing in the way. It was very simple.

Crew Chief Eric: And the result was?

Executive Producer Tania: Car’s still not running, but-

Now, the result was that wiring harness coupled with our new ECU- ‘

Crew Chief Eric: Cause the old one doesn’t work …

Executive Producer Tania: because the old one definitely is dead and does not function. So we, we slowly started ticking off one issue at a time. So now we have an electrically functioning car.

Crew Chief Eric: It starts up, it idles. Although it idled

Executive Producer Tania: poorly at first.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: And then we had some weird battery gremlins that were making it flash and do weird things, but we fixed that.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh. ‘

Executive Producer Tania: Cause you re-grounded it, but then then we were still having battery issues, and then we think we realized the battery actually had a internal issue, ’cause we put a different battery in.

It was basically brand [00:17:00] new, and everything was gold. Thank you,

Crew Chief Eric: Brad. Thank you, Brad. Pumpkin spice, the donor vibes.

Executive Producer Tania: But I took it for, quote, “the test drive” up and down the street, and you might have out-accelerated it on a bicycle. I mean, it goes, but it goes slowly.

Crew Chief Eric: And it doesn’t go past 5,000

Executive Producer Tania: RPM. At best. At best.

Because from your house to two houses down, completely floored, it took, like-

Crew Chief Eric: Forever …

Executive Producer Tania: those two, three houses to get to 4,000 RPM. Oh. In first gear.

Crew Chief Eric: Terrible. Terrible. Terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: Needless to say, hmm, I think there’s still a problem here. Y-

Crew Chief Eric: you think?

Executive Producer Tania: Let’s read some codes.

Crew Chief Eric: So we discovered it’s, what’s holding it back at the moment from learning the throttle

Crew Chief Brad: Is that it’s a Ford.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s that. Found on Road Dead, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, we are [00:18:00] fixing and repairing it daily right now.

Crew Chief Eric: We, we are. It’s, yes, we 100% are. It’s all emissions stuff that’s getting in our way. If we could get rid of the emissions stuff, ’cause the car’s not road legal anymore anyway, it would run fine. But we can’t, because it’s completely integrated into the system.

And what Ford has done, unlike the German stuff that we’re accustomed to, if anything in that chain fails, it has no redundancy where it’ll continue to run. The car literally turns into a brick. I’m surprised we don’t drive down the road and just see shoals of Ford Focuses lining the shoulders and the medians.

No.

Executive Producer Tania: No. When was the last time you saw a Ford Focus on the road? ‘

Crew Chief Eric: Cause they’re all dead.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s unreal. These gen threes have… Like, and then every time we turn around, “Well, this is a known fail part on these models. Oh, this is a known fail part on… Oh, and this one had a recall.” Like, oh great, wonderful.

Like, everything’s wrong with [00:19:00] these gen threes. Needless to say, as we were going through the wiring, things got better, and we’re like, “Oh.” So suddenly the error became very much more clear what it was. It’s emissions-related. We thought it was this emissions purge solenoid thing at the engine, and we looked at it.

It had the original date of July of 2015 when the car was built, so we’re like, “Oh man, that’s got 237,000 miles on it and it’s just giving up the ghost.” So we order a new one on Amazon, because that’s where you order car parts these days, ’cause you can’t find them anywhere else. Put the part on. It was like a five-minute fix, and the car idles, like, beautifully.

All the problems it had with idle and stuff, gone, right Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: For how

Executive Producer Tania: long? Still not accelerating. It throw an engine code.

Crew Chief Eric: Goes into limp mode.

Executive Producer Tania: And if you try too hard, then the pedal just dies.

Crew Chief Eric: So here we are. We’re literally rewinding the clock to Memorial Day. We’re like, “Oh, shit, we’re back in the same boat we were in, like, two months ago, [00:20:00] and what do we do now?”

We’ve replaced the pedal cluster, the throttle body, the engine loom, this EVAP thing.

Executive Producer Tania: ECU. The ECU’s new. Like,

Crew Chief Eric: what is there left to change? Turns out, what, what is there left to change that we haven’t changed yet, Tanya, other than the mass airflow?

Crew Chief Brad: The car.

Executive Producer Tania: Two other emission sensors.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh. And where’s the other one located that’s connected to the ECU?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they both are, according to that-

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh …

Executive Producer Tania: that wiring diagram. Uh-huh, uh-huh. The one, I have no idea where it is, because I’ve yet to find out where this charcoal canister is.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh.

Executive Producer Tania: The other one is on the fuel tank.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, oh, yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: But there is, unlike German cars, or at least Volkswagens, or at least Volkswagens of certain eras, there’s no access panel from inside the car to the fuel tank, so we have to drop the fuel tank- Yep

to be able to find the sensor. But- According to a 54-second YouTube video, it’s three bolts and that’s it. Three screws.

Crew Chief Eric: This is the scary part about [00:21:00] this car. When you realize how it’s assembled, you’re like, “Wow, that’s super easy.” And then you take a breath, and you go, “Wow, it’s a piece of crap.” Like, it’s held together by nothing, like Scotch tape, and, like, push pins is what holds this car together.

Talk about penny-pinching auto manufacturers.

Executive Producer Tania: Hey, but it’s actually easy to work on.

Crew Chief Eric: It is. But the stuff that’s breaking shouldn’t break. I got 25-year-old emission stuff on VWs that still works, but you can also delete it after a certain point, so it’s like, who cares? The next step, to Tanya’s point, we have to drop the fuel tank.

Executive Producer Tania: It would be nice to read a part number off of it so we know what we’re ordering.

Crew Chief Eric: And why is that? Why is that exactly? Because no two Focuses are…

Executive Producer Tania: The same, apparently. I have no idea. ‘Cause some things say they have this charcoal canister, and other things say they don’t have the charcoal canister. I have yet to see it.

Maybe it’s hidden somewhere we haven’t seen. I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Even that solenoid in the front, [00:22:00] Brad, I kid you not, there was, like, 12 different part numbers for it, and it was, like, different variations. S-

Crew Chief Brad: so we, thinking about the fuel tank stuff or whatever, and the, the, you need the part and everything, we ran into that with Pumpkin Spice, where it was like, does it have the plastic O-ring or does it have the metal- Yeah

O-ring? Like, which one do you get? You gotta take it apart to know. But at least you could get to it from inside the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. And Volkswagen’s notorious for a midyear split. Like, we’re all- Yeah … sort of used to that. We’re like, “Well, were you built in the early part of 2001 or the late part of 2001? ‘Cause, you know, they decided to change this, that, and the other.”

This is just like, well, if it was built in Canada, they put it together this way, and if it was built in Mexico, it was built upside down and sideways, and half the stuff’s in the front and the other stuff’s in the back. And those Gen 3s, there’s, like, three different front ends. The motor can be oriented differently in the sense that the intake can be on the back and not on the front.

And the ones they built in the UK are completely different, even though it’s the same car. You’re like, “Oh, this is unreal.” So there’s [00:23:00] too many variations. And then you got the, the nuances between the automatic, and the manual, and the sedan, and the hatchback, and the turbo, and the non-tur- It’s like, oh, God, forget it, right?

And it’s like, ugh. So anyway, a little bit at a time. Two steps forward, four steps backwards, but, you know, it is what it is. We’ve got time. Summit Point is in October, you know? So.

Crew Chief Brad: And I, you all are aware, obviously, but I will not be driving for Lemons, unfortunately. Not with my arm being in a sling.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s not gonna be good.

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll have your suit and Simpson on backup just in case they have a, they have a conniption about anything, right?

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, I’ll bring it with me, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Just in case somebody’s like, “Ah, I, I, uh, my suit’s out of spec.” Or Dan just comes in Dickies. You know, that’s, ’cause that’s what he’s gonna… Tractor Supply.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, because my suit will definitely fit Dan.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, baggy is as baggy does.

Crew Chief Brad: S- I mean, y- yeah. It, it is, the, he’ll have a lot of extra material in the leg [00:24:00] department.

Crew Chief Eric: So by the way, we did have a groundbreaking moment. I was messing around with the car, and I did something that probably wasn’t supposed to do, but I’ve done it on VWs, so I figured why not do it on the Ford and see what happens.

We know that these emission systems, a lot of them, they do continuity checks when, like, the car first fires up and whatever, and so if it finds a fault, then you’re hosed. So what I did was I did an in-flight check engine code clear. Like, I went into modules and I started, like, just wiping stuff out while the car was running, and at that point it hadn’t recycled through checking, like, continuity of, like, sensors and stuff yet.

Dude, it suddenly woke up and ran like a scalded cat. And Tanya’s like, “What happened? Huh? Was that red line?” I’m like, “Yes, multiple times.” Zero to red line it was there, and then suddenly it caught up with itself, and it was like, “Ugh, I don’t like you.” It was over. It was done. Ugh.

Crew Chief Brad: I love how your voice, your voice is like the, the AI from Resident Evil.[00:25:00]

“You’re all going to die down here.” No,

Crew Chief Eric: no. It’s, remember Droopy Dog? “I don’t like you.”

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn’t, I di- “Come on, Gripple.” I, I didn’t, I didn’t get that.

Crew Chief Eric: So that ruled out the pedal, the ECU, the throttle body, the master, because suddenly everything worked the way it was supposed to. So if we can solve this sensor problem, I think we’re gonna be golden, and then we can button up, like, three remaining things we need to do, like put the wiring back in for the radio and stuff like that, the radio headset for the paddock and stuff like that, for the helmets and whatnot.

But yeah, that’s all that’s left, so crossing our fingers we’ll have this thing figured out here shortly.

Crew Chief Brad: Just for my own education-

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh …

Crew Chief Brad: a standalone ECU would eliminate all of this bullshit, right?

Crew Chief Eric: It would.

Crew Chief Brad: I understand that it, it costs a lot of money and everything like that, but, but just, just if we had a standalone ECU, it would eliminate all of these issues.

Crew Chief Eric: It would, but it would also require us to stand in front of Walmart like the Salvation Army people and just, like, start ringing bells. Pocket [00:26:00] change, because it is a five-figure investment to put a standalone ECU on this motor, so.

Crew Chief Brad: Got it. Okay. Yeah, well, that’s stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. We’re trying everything we can.

Plus, if we can pinpoint, hey, this is a known fail part, we can have extra known fail parts on the truck and then know the procedure of switching it out. But cross our fingers. Maybe these sensors haven’t been changed in 10 years, 237,000 miles. I have to keep reminding folks of that. Maybe it won’t happen again.

So be it. So we’ll figure it out. But luckily none of the stuff is super expensive, other than the fiasco we went through with the computer. But in the end, we needed a new computer, because something’s wrong with the old one. So to that end, we had a surprise visit. Mountain Man Dan showed up.

Crew Chief Brad: Ooh.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So we gave the old engine loom to Mountain Man Dan with the computer and said, “Here, take it to your Amish magicians in Pennsylvania and see if they can figure out what’s wrong with it.”

So maybe we’ll have a spare engine loom just in case something goes wrong there. But he [00:27:00] did work on the car, Tanya. What is it that he did? So you could say he worked on it.

Executive Producer Tania: It was part of the, I think it was the cable, the pull cable for the hood latch. He put it back in the-

Crew Chief Eric: In the slot. And he says, “See, now I worked on it.”

And I was like, “Oh my God.” But Brad, you’ll be impressed. He showed up in a vehicle, not blue like yours, but blue, metallic blue. I’ve never seen Dan drive a car like this.

Executive Producer Tania: What do you think it was?

Crew Chief Eric: And he makes fun of me, ’cause I was a custodian, I was a caretaker for a Pontiac Aztek, as we know. See, I never took ownership of said Pontiac Aztek.

Would you venture a guess as to what Dan showed up at my house with? It

Executive Producer Tania: was not a truck.

Crew Chief Eric: It, it’s a truckette, you could argue.

Crew Chief Brad: He did not show up in an El Camino.

Crew Chief Eric: No. No, no, no, no. Cruck? No, he wouldn’t do a cruck.

Crew Chief Brad: Then what would be a

Crew Chief Eric: truckette? Like a bread van.

Crew Chief Brad: An HHR?

Crew Chief Eric: Worse. Worse than an HHR.

Executive Producer Tania: No, an HHR would be so good.

They’re so fast.

Crew Chief Brad: BT Cruiser.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. He showed up in an electric blue BT Cruiser. Ah! [00:28:00] I threw up a little in my throat.

Crew Chief Brad: Was it the turbo one at least?

Crew Chief Eric: No. It’s the slug one

Executive Producer Tania: At first I didn’t, I was like, “Who’s in the…” I hadn’t seen your text message, but you were like, “Oh, come here. Move the tires.” And I was like, “Okay.”

But I hadn’t seen your message yet, and so I was looking out, I was like, “Who’s over there?”

Crew Chief Eric: Thought it was the Amazon guy. I mean, who drives a PT Cruiser anymore?

Crew Chief Brad: I can’t remember the last time I’ve actually seen one on the road.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you could look at Dan’s, ’cause it does drive. Apparently it has some issues.

Crew Chief Brad: No surprise there.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? Again, I haven’t seen a PT Cruiser in the wild in forever, but to have one in my driveway is like-

Crew Chief Brad: Why did he get a PT Cruiser?

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently it’s his daughter’s, which I don’t believe it.

Crew Chief Brad: First of all, why doesn’t he just fix that Neon that’s up there and drive that if he needs all these cars?

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, there’s a whole story there about how he money shifted the diesel, and it’s now it’s making noises that it’s not supposed to, and this and that and the other thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, man. Well, he talked to me [00:29:00] about the diesel a while ago, and I told him to park it. He didn’t say it was… I didn’t understand that it was a money shift.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I heard he over-revved it is what he did. ‘

Executive Producer Tania: Cause I was like, “If you’re going down the road I’m going and your cam’s going bad, you need to park it. It’s a ticking time bomb.”

Crew Chief Eric: 100%, yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: But if you did something else…

Crew Chief Brad: It sounds self-inflicted.

Crew Chief Eric: And then his trucks are down, and then this one’s rotted and that one’s falling apart, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

So he’s driving a PT Cruiser. Boom. Mountain Man Dan and the PT Cruiser.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve never seen someone have so many vehicles and so few of them work. I think if you take all 30 of his vehicles, you may be able to put together three-

Crew Chief Eric: That actually

Crew Chief Brad: run … good vehicles. Yes, three actually running, driving vehicles.

Crew Chief Eric: I have to add to this, because you know Dan’s modus operandi is always spend as little as possible, try to get stuff for free, or get it negotiated down to where it’s, like, next to nothing.

So he’s got, like, 900 square bodies that he all paid $4 [00:30:00] for. He just picked up another square body, and he spent a substantial amount of money on it. It’s an, an amount of money that he said he would never spend on a vehicle like that. It’s actually really nice. I saw pictures of it. No offense, Dan, I don’t like the color.

I don’t like orange. It’s orange and black, and it has a 500 cubic inch built motor in it. So it’s five figures. But does it… It, it runs? When parked. Okay. So I’m coming off the five figure price tag now. No,

Executive Producer Tania: no, no.

Crew Chief Eric: Y-

no, no, you were right. You were right, 100%. Okay. 100%.

Crew Chief Brad: So what’d he pay, 15 for it?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, in that neighborhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s nice. It looks very nice. I just, I- he said he’s gonna put it in his garage. You all have been there, so.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I guess if he empties his garage. But

Crew Chief Eric: where is that stuff gonna go?

‘Cause the garage is full.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m really, I really hate to say it’s gonna end up like that white truck that he had. Oh. That white truck was so nice. I mean, I’m not a square body fan, but that white square [00:31:00] body dually-

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah …

Crew Chief Brad: that he destroyed because it just sat and just collected moss and funk and mold and- It’s

Crew Chief Eric: green now, and it wasn’t repainted.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re not hating on Dan. We all love Dan. He’s a great guy. He’ll give you the shirt off his back, literally, whether it has holes in it or not. But the whole thing, it’s… I was baffled. I was like, he’s driving a PT Cruiser and he bought a new square body. I mean, holy smokes. Wow. All right.

Good for you, man.

Crew Chief Brad: So basically what you’re saying is it’s just more of the same.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel like it’s Dan’s midlife crisis. It’s really the PT Cruiser that I’m taking issue with. The square body, it’s like it’s another square body is square body is a square body, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, boy. Let’s get onto the meat and potatoes of this episode and talk about other people that have lost their mind. Let’s switch gears and talk about Volkswagen, shall we? First up on [00:32:00] the list, all the cars that Volkswagen is getting rid of. Some of these are European, like the Skoda Fabia, the Cupra, the Q6 e-tron Sportback.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve never even seen a Q6.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? The Q5 Sportback. Oh, that must be a European one. They don’t sell that in America.

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Internal combustion engine Porsche Boxster?

Crew Chief Brad: They’ve been going back and forth with that.

Executive Producer Tania: So they’re getting rid of it before it even comes?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. How about the Cayenne Coupe? Didn’t we just talk about this?

And this is from a reputable source. This is from Motor1, so I trust that what they’re posting is probably real. But we just talked about these Cayenne Coupes, like, either the last episode or the one before, how we thought they were funky looking and who would pay $200,000 for a low-roof Cayenne? The Taycan, well, we already knew the Taycan was going away.

The Taos? Really?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s shocking.

Crew Chief Brad: But this also says these are the cars that Volkswagen may kill. So this is, this is all [00:33:00] theorizing. ‘Cause they, they didn’t get any confirmation or denial from Volkswagen about this. We’ve just heard that Volkswagen wants to kill 50% of their lineup by 2030. Mm-hmm. But there’s nothing that actually says that these are the cars that they’re going to kill.

Crew Chief Eric: These might be the only cars in the lineup. Can you mention any other ones? I wanna focus on this Jetta here more in a minute, but the Jetta’s on the list according to Motor1.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, if that’s true, if they got rid of the Jetta and they got rid of the Taos, what’s left? The Golf?

Crew Chief Eric: My point.

Executive Producer Tania: What else is there?

Crew Chief Eric: ‘Cause the ID. Buzz is gone. The Passat’s been gone.

Executive Producer Tania: ID. Buzz allegedly coming back, but the Beetle’s gone. The Passat’s gone. The Taos is now the Tiguan Touareg, so there’s nothing else if they get rid of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and the Touareg might come back as an EV, but it might not, because then you have the Atlas. And then the e-Golf isn’t due back for a bunch of years.

So there’s the GTI and allegedly that five-cylinder Golf R, which we’ll probably never see. So they’ve got two cars?

Executive Producer Tania: Are they just gonna leave the US [00:34:00] market? Nobody’s gonna… I mean, you have the group of people that will buy, quote, “the hot hatch,” but I’m sure the majority of their sales are the bigger cars, right?

Like, families aren’t gonna all crawl into hatchbacks. A

Crew Chief Eric: Golf. Yeah, exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re still selling the Atlas, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, yeah, the Atlas.

Crew Chief Brad: And did the Taos replace the- The

Crew Chief Eric: Tiguan. The Tiguan took over the Touareg in terms of size.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay, so they have the Atlas and the Tiguan. So they’re going the way of Mitsubishi.

They’re just gonna sell-

Crew Chief Eric: Three cars at the end …

Crew Chief Brad: crossovers.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. That is still that nobody’s gonna wanna buy.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And then they’ll have cut some of the Porsches, except for the 911 and the Panamera, and then you’ll be left with the Audis, the A4, the Allroad. And they were talking about getting rid of the A8 already, so that’s gone, so the big luxo boat’s out of the picture.

So you’ll have the A6- And then that’s kind of it. ‘Cause if they don’t bring any of their wagons over, then there’s gonna be a lot of cars. There’s maybe gonna be, like, 10 across the brands?

Crew Chief Brad: Why bother keeping the [00:35:00] A6?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: The A6 is like the Buick LeSabre of Audis. Tell me I’m wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: No, and I haven’t seen-

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a new A6 and was like, “Man, that’s a nice car.”

No, it’s-

Crew Chief Eric: You know which A6 was cool? You remember the RS6 with the V8 back in the early 2000s? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: they haven’t made that in… They haven’t made that in, yeah, like 2002 or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, 20 years. It’s

Crew Chief Brad: ridiculous.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. That was a nice car. You know what else is not a nice car? I mean, I… It could be a nice car.

Tanya, you just rented a Jetta, and that’s why, uh, you know, we got it up here on the screen. Tell us about your recent rental experience with a Jetta.

Executive Producer Tania: It left me- Disappointed. I mean, the car itself was fine, like in terms of, I mean, it went down the road. I felt like sitting in that, that a 20-year-old plus Volkswagen had nicer interior

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve been saying this

Executive Producer Tania: They went backwards and they made it chintzy, and coming off all of the [00:36:00] recent Japanese cars that I also got to test drive, let’s say already almost a year ago now.

But nonetheless, I went through the Altima and, and the, uh, Hyundai and the Elantra, the Kia, and all that, and it’s like, wow. I mean, there’s always been a notion in the past that like the Japanese cars were a little bit inferior in that department, and I’m like, “Well, now I- you guys have switched roles,” and- Yeah

like for the price… And I haven’t sat in a Golf, and this was a Sport, which I didn’t even realize till I saw the little word on the pillar on the outside of the door. That’s all

Crew Chief Eric: it was

Executive Producer Tania: That it was like, it was the Sport jet. I was like, “Oh, I had no idea.” So I’m like, “If this is also what a Golf is like, and you’re gonna charge somebody 50 plus thousand dollars by the time you’ve optioned it out, close to 60 if you got like the Autobahn Golf version, like this is what you’re giving me?”

That’s really disappointing in my opinion. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll even take that icky, 20-year-old Plasti Dip [00:37:00] crap soft touch stuff. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: I know how to fix that now, so yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, over the new stuff? Ugh.

Executive Producer Tania: Give me the soft touch back, I’ll deal with it in 20 years.

Crew Chief Brad: I still need to deal with it in my car.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’ll move on from that because Tanya, you said something last month.

We were talking about Volkswagen’s demise at this point, and you said something to the effect of like, “Well, it would be like a four-door Beetle.”

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t even remember saying that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. It stuck in my head for some reason. I was like, “Four-door Beetle.” And then we sort of laughed about it and I said, “Oh, you know, call that the Panamera,” right?

‘Cause you smash the Bug and four door, and all that kind of thing. Uh, maybe it’s because Big Brother is always listening. China said, “Hold my Xingtao”

Executive Producer Tania: Xingtao …

Crew Chief Eric: because

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. That’s… What was that thing called? It was called the, uh-

Crew Chief Eric: The Punk Cat is the two-door one …

Executive Producer Tania: Punk Cat. And there was like the Doja something, something else.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. And this is, this is the Ora Ballet Cat.

Executive Producer Tania: Ora. Oh my God, it’s ugly. And they made it a four door. Ugh.

Crew Chief Eric: Look at this [00:38:00] thing. It even has a little tail

Executive Producer Tania: on it. Look. It’s heinous. It’s like pieces of different cars just put together. Screams Doshavo to me.

Crew Chief Eric: A little bit, yes.

Crew Chief Brad: The first thing I thought was Doshavo.

I have to say, this is gonna be a very unpopular opinion.

Executive Producer Tania: You like it?

Crew Chief Brad: If it was a different color, if it was all one color with tinted windows, slammed.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God

Crew Chief Brad: I could see it being something somebody would want to buy.

Crew Chief Eric: You have

Crew Chief Brad: lost your mind. Actually, if it was all black, it would be like one of those British cabs.

Crew Chief Eric: The interior’s really nice, though. I’ll give it that.

Crew Chief Brad: I, yeah, I think the interior’s terrible.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the retro-y-ness of it. It’s very Fiat. But here’s the thing. How do we know, because Volkswagen does have factories in China, and they sell the Quantum from the ’80s. They still make it today over in China. How do we know that ORA isn’t like a Cupra or a Skoda, and VW is actually building these Beetles in China, and they’re not [00:39:00] just knockoffs like everybody says they are?

You don’t think Volkswagen would’ve gone after them by now?

Crew Chief Brad: No, Volkswagen does not own ORA. ORA is a dedicated electric vehicle brand owned by Great Wall Motor, a major Chinese automotive manufacturer.

Executive Producer Tania: They probably are going after them, we just don’t know it.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, if they were, outside of losing money in Formula 1, this must be the other way they’re losing it, too.

But you would think that the Beetle’s one of those things, like a Mini Cooper or any of those iconic cars from that time period, like, you wouldn’t be able to make a clone of them. They’re so iconic. It’s like, why would you go there? Why would you try to copy it? And this doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it looks like a Beetle.

Either way, I think VW is missing out, and if they aren’t going after this, they should, and they should just say, “We’ll make it better,” and then start selling it, because a- as we’ve argued… And actually, speaking of argued about this, I saw an Instagram post, and I didn’t have time to go pull it up, but Richard Rawlins, the guy from Gas Monkey Garage, he did a post about [00:40:00] VW.

Normally, I kind of skip over that stuff, ’cause it’s always classic cars and muscle cars, and yeah, yeah, yeah, beat your chest, and motorcycles, and all that kind of thing. But it was specifically about VW, and they got his opinion on it. It was sort of like hot take. He’s on his soapbox, and he lays it out.

And he’s like, “You should’ve kept building the Beetle. If you didn’t build anything else, keep building the Beetle. You could’ve built the Beetle for 1,000 years, and people would’ve continued to buy it, but you took away the one car that everybody wanted.” And the point of his rant at the end was, “VW, you’re a bunch of dummies.

Start building cars that people want.” How long have we been saying that, right? So to hear it from a celebrity, he’s not wrong. But then, to follow that, I actually met MotoMan from MotoMan TV when I was at Revs back in January, and I got to talk to him, and this and that. So you know, I follow him on Instagram, and he posted something.

And again, people are talking about VW. It’s in the news because it’s too big to fail, as we’ve already mentioned. And he’s like, “VW’s solution to their financial [00:41:00] woes is the Tiguan R-Line.” What? “GTI power in an SUV at $45,000.” And I’m like, “What? Who, who’s gonna buy that?”

Executive Producer Tania: That’s so stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: In today’s market, your mom’s minivan makes the same power as a GTI.

Everything makes 300 horsepower these days. For the GTI to still make less than 300 horsepower, it’s actually kind of pathetic. For as heavy as it is, and the amount of power it makes, with an unreliable two liter engine, as we already know, who’s gonna step up and say, “Yeah, I want an even heavier vehicle with the same power as a GTI”?

Crew Chief Brad: Okay, I’m gonna throw, I’m gonna throw a scenario at you.

Crew Chief Eric: Please.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, one, one of the, the classic Brad’s would you rather this or X?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Crew Chief Brad: So would you rather a brand new VW Tiguan R-Line-

Crew Chief Eric: No …

Crew Chief Brad: for 45 grand, knowing what you know about VW electronics and all the- Uh-huh … recalls and stuff that they’ve had on these cars and everything, or take that same 45 [00:42:00] grand-

Crew Chief Eric: And burn it

Crew Chief Brad: and buy a used BMW X3M-

Crew Chief Eric: Oof …

Crew Chief Brad: with the three liter twin turbo. Oof. They’re getting monster power out of them. You can have them for the 40, 45, 50K range.

Crew Chief Eric: Is walking an option?

Crew Chief Brad: That could be walking money. Your 50K walking money. No,

Crew Chief Eric: what I mean is I’m gonna be walking in either case because they’re both gonna be broken down.

Crew Chief Brad: So I’ve, I’ve heard that BMW’s reliability is better now than it was, than it has been in recent history or whatever. So that is the would you rather.

Crew Chief Eric: I wouldn’t touch a BMW with a 10-foot pole

Crew Chief Brad: No?

Crew Chief Eric: Mm-mm.

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya, would you get a Tiguan R or would you do a BMW X3 M?

Crew Chief Eric: I’d ride the bus.

Crew Chief Brad: For the same money.

Crew Chief Eric: I could get a lot of Ubers for $45,000.

Crew Chief Brad: You, you could get at least 10.

Executive Producer Tania: I can still probably afford to repair the Volkswagen.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, because anything with an M badge [00:43:00] is, like, bad news.

Crew Chief Brad: True that, true that, true that.

Crew Chief Eric: God, I cringe. All those X5 M owners. Like, I have a friend that has an X5 M with that inverted V8. Ugh, God, so … No, thank you.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but the X3 M is just the standard three liter twin turbo that’s in all the other cars.

It’s just got more power and-

Crew Chief Eric: BMW should have never done turbos. That was not their thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Well-

Crew Chief Eric: So BMW plus turbo is bad.

Crew Chief Brad: What about the 2002 turbo?

Crew Chief Eric: That was not good either.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: The, all that to say Volkswagen’s earnings have dropped massively. There was a recent reporting down to 8.9. That is more than 50% decrease.

You’re the money guy, Brad. Is that the sign of a healthy company, they’ve lost over 50% of their earnings?

Executive Producer Tania: Wow. You know, I had not seen that number actually.

Crew Chief Brad: When you see it written out like that, it is actually very sad. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, they’re in trouble. And $8.9 billion isn’t anything to [00:44:00] sneeze at. You’re like, “Oh, woe is them.”

It’s just shy of 10 billion. But we- if you think about all the operating costs and operating expenses that they have globally, to then suddenly lose half of your profitability-

Crew Chief Brad: Over what length of time? Like, is this a year over year comparison?

Crew Chief Eric: This is a year over year. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, this, this just happened?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Wow. This was just reported. I saw this, like, last week.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: Are we sure this is true? Volkswagen reported a Q2 2026 operating profit of 3.47 billion euros, down 9.5% year on year, leading the company to slash its full s- year sales revenue outlook by lowering expectations up to a 3% decline. So something’s not adding up.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s still a lot. How much of that is Formula 1? That’s what I wanna know.

Executive Producer Tania: Their net profit plunged 32.9% to 1.54 billion euros, impacted by a 500 million euro charge related to ending ID.4 production in Tennessee and negative mix effects. I mean, they’re on the decline. It’s not good, but I don’t know [00:45:00] that they just lost 50%.

Crew Chief Brad: According to Gemini, Volkswagen Group’s net income for fiscal year 2025 was 6.9 billion euros, approximately 7.55 billion US. This represented a 44% decline compared to their 2024 net profit of 12.4 billion. Sales revenue was 321.9 billion, remaining flat compared to 324.7 billion in 2024. Operating result, 8.9 billion, down 53% from the previous year.

Yep. There

Executive Producer Tania: it is. If you’re on their website, volkswagengroup.com, and you can read their s- profit numbers.

Crew Chief Eric: Everything is fine. It’s glorious.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re down 8.4% in sales. Their sales revenue is 158 billion euros in the first half so far, 2026. But the first half 2025 comparison, they were at the same number, actually.

So they were also at 158. They are down slightly, ’cause it was .4 versus .1.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but how much of that is also jockeying around the [00:46:00] fact that they just sold Bugatti, they got rid of their controlling interest in Rimac. Obviously they’re hemorrhaging money in Formula 1. They’ve gotten rid of other things.

They’ve gotten rid of plants. They’ve shut things down. So-

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, they are down …

Crew Chief Eric: Brad, you work these profit and loss statements. They can maneuver this so it looks like everything’s fine even though it isn’t, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah. I mean, you can… Accounting is an art I mean, you can make things look good by, like you’re saying, selling assets and things like that.

Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: but they have to report their earnings to their stakeholders and yada, yada, yada. They can’t just bullshit numbers.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, of course.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but if you sell Bugatti for $5 billion, isn’t that an earning?

Crew Chief Brad: It is.

Crew Chief Eric: So you can make up the difference of your sales. De-

Crew Chief Brad: depending on how the sale is structured, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Right, yeah. Exa- that’s so my point, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but that’s not a decline then, so their operating profit should be higher, ’cause they have, you took out, if you took out the failing-

Crew Chief Brad: That would not be considered part of operating profit.

Executive Producer Tania: No, it wouldn’t.

Crew Chief Brad: That would be, like, not a retirement, but a, like a d- a sale of an [00:47:00] asset.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct.

Crew Chief Brad: Right. A sale of fixed asset or whatever. They, ’cause operating is strictly, operating should strictly be, like, sales and stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: This is all just rich people things, ’cause it’s well above our pay grade how this is working in a massive conglomerate at Volkswagen. But we can tell, even as innocent bystanders, that things are not good and things are unhealthy.

Sales are down. They’re getting rid of factories. They’re getting rid of brands.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re getting rid of people.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, uh, 100,000 people being laid off? Like, holy smokes.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe now wasn’t the right time to get into F1.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve been saying that. Hmm. Hmm. But they’re committed at least for the rest of the year. But let’s talk about happier things.

Let’s talk about, let’s talk about dreams. In a world where Volkswagen is king, we can build stuff like this. ‘Cause this is straight fantasy, folks. I know Tanya sent this to me. These are the recreation HSR Manufacture 851 Audi Sport Quattros, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, allegedly, they’re gonna sell [00:48:00] 84 of them for a mere $570,000.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, they haven’t built a single one of these. These are all renderings.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, when you go to the bottom and they’ve got the orange, purple, green, and red one together, man, that purple is nice.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s exactly… I was just thinking that. Ooh, that purple.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s all renderings.

Crew Chief Brad: Do I wanna buy a house or do I wanna buy one of these?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean-

Crew Chief Eric: It makes for a great screensaver. Like, I wanna put this as my desktop wallpaper, for sure.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, if they actually make these, I mean, I wish I was a milli- multi-million billionaire. I’d have one.

Crew Chief Eric: So first of all, there’s not that many UR Quattros in existence to begin with. So unless we’re doing the roof thing, we’re making chassis from scratch, this means that they’re doing the singer thing, and they’re gonna be buying up chassis at a loss because they’ll be in any old condition.

They’ll-

Executive Producer Tania: That’s why it costs $570,000.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, they’re all 40-plus years old at this point, but here’s the deal. Everybody thinks this is new and revolutionary. Dialynx, a company in the [00:49:00] UK, was doing this in the ’90s where they were taking UR Quattros, at that point which were only 10 years old, and they were shortening them, and they were re-raking the windshield by cutting Audi 4000s and putting…

You know, all the stuff they had to do to build replica Sport Quattros. That whole company died off by the 2000s, right? Because obviously it wasn’t profitable. It took too long. It was super expensive and, you know, it, it was 30 years ago at this point. But here we are trying to reboot that whole idea of the Dialynx Sport Quattros.

I don’t ever see a single one of these ever coming to fruition. I’m sorry. It’s wishful thinking. They’re beautiful. I too, like you, Tanya, have hope. But even if they do make ’em, who’s gonna buy a $500,000 Audi that still handles like a 911 going backwards?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. But I, I digress. You just, just … Thinking about AI renderings kinda got me thinking about that.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, I’m glad you brought that up because I found one too, and people are trying to pass this off as legitimate. And I knew this was bullshit from the [00:50:00] word go because it said Passat.

Executive Producer Tania: Never seen it.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s not real. It’s completely rendered. And there’s other pictures, like from the back and all. And people are like, “Nice Audi.

Better looking A5 than the A5. Oh, that’s really a BMW,” blah, blah, blah. Like, the comments were hilarious, but most people were like, “Guys, you know the Passat isn’t being made anymore, right? Like, you know this is fake, right?” And like, oh my God. Oh, yeah, 900,000 likes though, so, you know, good for you. What about this?

This… See, Brad, you said, “Where would I spend my money? What would I buy?” Obviously it’s not $45,000, but how about this? Yes. Find of the day, 31 miles, Audi RS6 Avant GT seeks a real enthusiast owner. Okay, great. Scrolling down, all these wonderful pictures. It’s basically brand new. This is the problem.

Executive Producer Tania: $200,000?

Crew Chief Eric: $202,000 was the original sticker price on this. So what’s it gonna sell for?

Crew Chief Brad: 250,000.

Crew Chief Eric: And then you’re still left with an Audi that has potential [00:51:00] V8 issues, ’cause I’ve heard these cars have had problems with the motors, even the models below these.

Crew Chief Brad: What Audi hasn’t had problems with the motors?

Crew Chief Eric: It is a Volkswagen.

Crew Chief Brad: What modern Audi hasn’t had problems with the motors?

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s, it’s pure awesomeness though. I do not like this interior though. It looks very, very cobbled together, right? Am I wrong? It’s clunky.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s blah. It’s not elegant. For the price that that costs, for $200,000, I wanna feel like I just walked into luxury.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t want it to be a Bentley, but I agree with you. I think it needs to be better than this. I know what this feels like too, this hexagonal center cushion. This is not nice. This is like a step above those beads you put in a taxi cab, you know what I’m talking about? You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Let’s switch gears and talk about a car that we’re never gonna get, but this is way nicer than that RS6- Yeah, we’re good … and probably costs a lot less. This is the Alfa Romeo Brutale. That means brutal.

Crew Chief Brad: And it’s not real. [00:52:00]

Executive Producer Tania: I’m like, that’s AI, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Bullshit, that’s AI. This is at Goodwood. Look at this.

Crew Chief Brad: The Alfa Romeo Brutale is a striking retro modern concept car designed by digital creator Simolue.

Crew Chief Eric: No. No.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks fake. All of that looks fake. It looks like a video game.

Crew Chief Brad: You can tell, like, when he- that turn right there. Like, he’s taking the turn, he’s heading straight off into the wall, and all of a sudden he’s, he’s making the turn It is not an official production model. The viral digital design imagines a two plus two shooting brake coupe featuring the iconic 2.9 liter twin-turbo V6 Quadrifoglio engine, aggressive aerodynamics, and the classic Biscione Alfa grill.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, AI’s gotten really good, but this is really good-looking. I mean, if they made something like this, would you not salivate over it? I mean, this is hot. This is hot.

Crew Chief Brad: The reason I went to look and see if this car was real is because it looks too good to be true.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: It, it is. It’s too hot. But the, the, the weird thing, the front end with those [00:53:00] two, like, like circular headlights, it’s str- it’s very, like, E30 to me.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s sexy. It’s amazing. Why can’t we make more cars that look good like this? What is wrong with people? They all gotta look like Subaru Foresters now. Bleh. Bleh. We talked about BMW earlier, Brad, and you’re ta- you asked me if I should buy an X3M or that, whatever it was, the Tiguan, or whatever it was. We don’t talk about BMW recalls very often.

We know BMWs have problems, but we don’t hear about recalls, but BMW recalls 29,000 hybrid sedans. First of all, I didn’t know they had a hybrid sedan. Like all other hybrid vehicles, they warn you to park outside because it might melt your house to the ground.

Crew Chief Brad: Awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: Good stuff. ICE cars had, like, I don’t know, 99 problems.

None of them were this. Do you ever have your starter melt your car and then light your house on fire?

Crew Chief Brad: Not on its own.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Just checking.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve seen car fires of ICE engines, but usually not [00:54:00] when parked. Like, not when not running. I did see a square body try to burn down the forest once.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. That is very true.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s go across the ocean the other way this time. Let’s talk about Asian domestic cars, you know, Japanese, Koreans, and so on. This article from Motor1 actually got updated ’cause when I originally put it in our show notes, it was talking about Nissan killing off the Altima, and I said, “Man, this is clickbait.”

I said, “First you’re telling me the Jetta’s going away, now the Altima’s going away?” And then it says, “Wait, wait, the Altima is not dead yet.” Nissan is reshuffling their lineup. I was like, “How can you kill the cockroach of cars? Why would Nissan stop producing their best-selling vehicle?”

Executive Producer Tania: Did we decide it’s clickbait, or is this real?

Crew Chief Eric: I decided that it’s clickbait because you know what? Nissan would be stupid because, again, why would you kill off your best-selling car?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, the Nissan Altima is officially scheduled to be discontinued after the 2026 model year, ending a 34-year run for the popular midsize sedan.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:55:00] 34? Hasn’t been around that long, has it?

Executive Producer Tania: The Nissan Altima’s been, like, forever. Since 1992.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a long run. Why would you kill off this car?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, you don’t remember the early Nissan Altimas? They looked like the… You never could tell an Altima from a Maxima, but they were like the little round Sentra-looking ones.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, yeah, this one. Like, that, the old Altima.

I know what you’re talking about. Yeah. You never see those on the road anymore, the really bulbous-looking ones.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, they finally all died.

Crew Chief Eric: Why am I looking for Altima pictures? Just go to Wikipedia.

Executive Producer Tania: Go to Wikipedia. I could.

Crew Chief Eric: I could, yes.

Crew Chief Brad: We’ve reached a new low on this show.

Executive Producer Tania: Searching for

Crew Chief Eric: Altimas. We’re, we’re researching Nissan Altimas?

Executive Producer Tania: Here we go. Here we go.

Crew Chief Eric: That takes me back. I forgot about these.

Executive Producer Tania: Why the 2026 model is your last chance to own this midsize icon. If you’ve heard the Nissan Altima is being discontinued, you’re not imagining things, but the story is more complicated than a simple yes or no. The key fact is this: the Altima is officially continuing into the 2026 model year, even after [00:56:00] earlier reports suggested it would end after 2025.

What’s confirmed? The Altima continues for 2026. Car and Driver reports, blah, blah, blah, “The ’26 Altima is reduced to the SV or, and SR trims with S and SL removed,” blah, blah, blah. Why the, quote, “Altima is ending” rumor started. The rumor had real fuel behind it. Major outlets reported that Nissan had indicated 2025 would be the Altima’s final year, then later coverage described Nissan reversing and bringing it back for ’26.

On top of that, Nissan has been actively trimming its sedan lineup in recent years, which makes the discontinuation narrative feel believable to shoppers. So is 2026 truly your, quote, “last chance”? Here’s the honest answer. Nissan has confirmed the Altima for 2026, but there’s no definitive official statement in the sources above that 2026 is the final model year.

What we can say confidently is that the Altima’s long-term future has been uncertain enough that reputable publications have covered potential end-of-line plans and reversals.

Crew Chief Eric: You said a lot of words and said nothing at the same time. I just wanna point that out.

Executive Producer Tania: I [00:57:00] am so frustrated as I was reading that, to be like, “Why are you contradicting?

Why is this even a headline, then?” Mm. Why would you say it’s your last chance, then you go on to say that Nissan has not officially said anything?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: And then you have Edmunds going, “No, the Nissan Altima isn’t dead for 2027.”

Crew Chief Brad: Did you see the link I just sent, I just put in the chat? Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I did.

Crew Chief Brad: That is the, I, the oldest Nissan Altima you can find online right now. That’s sort of- Is a- Let me see … well, this is the next one, a ’95 Nissan Altima.

Executive Producer Tania: Hey.

Crew Chief Eric: $29.99, look at that.

Executive Producer Tania: See, the problem is when you see these, it’s so confusing to know if you’re seeing a Sentra.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. ‘

Executive Producer Tania: Cause the Sentra looked just like that back then.

Crew Chief Eric: Fine quality machine right there.

Executive Producer Tania: $3,000. Wait, hold on, it says low mileage. Let’s investigate this. Holy crap, y’all. Y’all, this is a deal. This is a car that’s gonna live, outlive you. It only has 78,000 [00:58:00] miles on it.

Crew Chief Eric: God.

Executive Producer Tania: This is barely broken in for an Altima. This has so much life left in it. It has so much to give you.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve got another would you rather.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, boy, here we go.

Crew Chief Brad: A ’95 Nissan Altima or a ’95 Toyota Corolla. If they were the same price, which one do you think’s gonna last longer? I

Executive Producer Tania: gotta refresh myself what the ’95 Corolla looked like. Oh.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, man, it’s this one. Oh.

Executive Producer Tania: The Altima’s got 50 horsepower on it. I think that Corolla will outlive the Altima.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think so. These were junk, and they looked terrible. They were cheap.

Executive Producer Tania: I swear to God I just passed one on the road the other day.

Crew Chief Eric: How many other Corollas was it made from to keep it going?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. The air condition didn’t work ’cause his windows were down, so that’s for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s terrible. So anyway, speaking of the kids and speaking of Japanese cars, my littlest one literally just yesterday, walking through a Walmart parking lot, she takes my hand.

She’s like, “Dad, [00:59:00] we need to go look at this other car over here.” And I’m like, it’s very rare that my littlest one wants to go see a car in person, right? So I walk up. It is a second gen metallic green Hyundai Veloster. And not just whatever Veloster, it’s the one with the three doors. I had forgotten that those second gens, they’re like a AMC Pacer.

It’s got a long driver door, and then it’s got like a short passenger door, and then a rear door. So it has three doors, not counting the hatchback. She walked around it. She was looking at it. She’s like, “Dad, I really like this.” I’m like, “I guess there’s a car for everybody out there.” I was like, “All right.”

Crew Chief Brad: She is the one that didn’t want you to unload the Aztec after all.

Crew Chief Eric: Mm. That is very true. She was upset by that. She thought that thing was really neat Oh There’s something to that

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like the perfect car for her is gonna be that new Honda Element

Crew Chief Eric: That might be true, or an old Honda Element for that

Crew Chief Brad: matter Or an old Honda Element, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: She might like that. Not to get too far away from Nissan, [01:00:00] this partnership thing, uh, they’re still talking about it. I don’t know why.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re dead.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t even know why The Drive is talking about this. And the way this is written, you know, Nissan got cold feet. I thought Honda did their due diligence, and they’re like, “Man, we’re not touching that.”

I thought the deal was, like, until Nissan could show that it was moving in the direction of profitability, that they weren’t gonna invest any money in it. And if you read this, it’s all like, “Ugh, Nissan is the one that backed out.” And I’m like, “I don’t think so,” ’cause they’re in trouble. Any rate, what else we got here?

Oh, I heard this. I was not listening to NPR, Brad, but I heard this on the radio. Japanese neuroscientists have said that manual transmissions are good for your brain.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean-

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, duh …

Crew Chief Eric: let’s let that sink in for a minute.

Executive Producer Tania: Anything where you’re stimulating your mind is good for your brain. The act of having a manual requires you to be able to do more than one thing at once.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like being a drummer, yeah. I, I’m all for it.

Executive Producer Tania: Heard that handwriting stimulates your brain. It’s supposed to help its [01:01:00] development.

Crew Chief Eric: Even at our ripe, old age?

Executive Producer Tania: They say as you get older, playing mind games and sudoku and crossword puzzles and all that is all healthy things for your brain to keep it active.

Basically keeping it moving as opposed to just vegetating and doom scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, and whatever the heck.

Crew Chief Eric: It would make everybody safer, too.

Executive Producer Tania: It would help, because you definitely can’t be as distracted, though there are mofos who would still not pay attention, so it doesn’t really matter.

A mofo is gonna do what a mofo is gonna do.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s an official statement. I love it. And I know that this would normally be classified as Florida Man or Are You Faster Than An Interceptor? But since we’re talking about manual transmissions and we’re talking about Japanese cars, did you guys see this thing on Instagram?

I, I didn’t understand what was happening here. I kinda felt like this was that Jackie Chan movie that we reviewed with Steve and Izzy. The cop is literally gonna impound the car and he’s gonna drive it away, and this is in New York City. So I don’t know [01:02:00] if there was some street racing going on. But he’s, like, confused.

He doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know how to drive it. And then and then he finally kinda gets it going at one point, and then he just, if you listen to it with the audio, he makes it, like, 10 feet and then stalls out and then it just, like, blah, and that’s, like, the end of it, and it dies. It’s, then he’s done.

Executive Producer Tania: I would’ve been so pissed ’cause I’d been like, “Don’t grind my gears and burn my clutch.”

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that was one of the comments. He was like, “Car got impounded. Needs new clutch.” I was like, “Oh, Jesus.” I was like, “That’s terrible.”

Crew Chief Brad: Does it say why it was being impounded in the first place?

Executive Producer Tania: I think it was, it was illegal street racing, I think- Yeah

or something. The very beginning of the, the video you see, like, tons of cars out, so I think, I’m assuming it had something to do with that. Some Fast and

Crew Chief Eric: the Furious stuff going on. But it’s nice to see a, a wide-body first gen RX-7. That’s what I was excited about. But it wasn’t the illegal street racing. He was parked because that’s what a lot of those peop- they’re just all parked.

He didn’t have a hood on that car. That’s the problem. In New York, that’s probably illegal. It’s unsafe to drive around without a hood on.[01:03:00]

All right, let’s talk about Toyota. I’m really confused. Tanya, it was really funny. I posted something and then you posted something, like, right behind me. Is it the Celica or is it this Yaris MR2 thing? What are they doing? Are- do we have two mid-engine cars coming?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, technically, but then there’s a whole other rendering that looks like something else completely.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, the black one that was at Fuji, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Mm-hmm. So I don’t understand which one’s which because the one where they’re like, “MR2 development car spot,” I’m like, “I’m sorry, that’s a Corolla.”

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a Yaris right here, whatever this is.

Executive Producer Tania: Why we’re calling that, I have no idea. I’ve seen several different things.

But yes, to that end, they are supposed to be bringing back the Celica, which was something that was mentioned several drive-throughs ago, and then they’re also allegedly trying to bring back this MR2.

Crew Chief Eric: And they debuted something Celica-like during one of the WRC trial stages, too, that Toyota was messing around with this larger car and they were like, [01:04:00] “Oh, it, it might be the Celica, it might not.”

I’m really confused.

Executive Producer Tania: I have no idea.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know what Toyota’s doing. But why are they doing this? Because I thought all their enthusiast people at the head of the company had sort of checked out and left because they put the bean count. Why would they be doing this? Like, who is their target market? It seems foolish- No idea

unless they’re just trying to keep people’s attention. I

Crew Chief Brad: mean, I hope they make ’em.

Crew Chief Eric: I, I…

Crew Chief Brad: Like, ’cause Volkswagen’s not making cars anybody wants to buy anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: And the Boxster’s going away, so there’s another mid-engine runabout. You gotta shore that up. But then there was talk about that article from PCA where Porsche might get in bed with Toyota to make this mid-engine.

I’m like, what? Whatever. I, I’m sort of over it. But I do wanna talk about other mid-engine cars for a second. The new Lotus Emira 420 Sport was, I guess, leaked or released. I don’t know if these are real or renders. I don’t understand these scoops in the hood. I think they’re terrible looking.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s too McLaren and Ferrari.

Like, the-

Crew Chief Eric: Yes …

Crew Chief Brad: why do all the cars need to look all the same?

Crew Chief Eric: As Matt used to [01:05:00] say, there’s only one design that cheats the wind. I like a lot of Lotuses, and I don’t like this one. Like, I find myself just l- staring at the background in this picture and trying to ignore the car. Awful. I don’t know why this came to mind.

We’re talking about British cars, but really I wanna talk about Swedish cars. Last month we made a comment about Polestar going away because the Chinese ownership. Mercedes is still on the table. We’re not sure what’s going on there. Maybe they’re gonna exit stage right with Volkswagen and all that kind of stuff.

But we were kind of speculating as to why Volvo and not Polestar. It sort of didn’t add up, and it didn’t make sense, and it dawned on me after the episode why Volvo, why they would keep Volvo around. You know what it has to do with? It has nothing to do with the cars. It has 100% to do with the trucking industry.

I had this light bulb moment. Volvo semi trucks, that’s what it is. Because the trucking industry relies on Volvo, and Volvo heavy equipment, you know, big stuff like JCB-sized stuff or earth [01:06:00] movers and stuff like that. Polestar isn’t in that market. It’s easy to get rid of the cars and an EV that isn’t, uh, is underperforming and underselling.

Who cares? But it’s harder to get rid of Volvo because of where they’ve implanted themselves in our infrastructure. Getting rid of Volvo would have a huge impact. And I’m not saying that Freightliner or International or Mack couldn’t step up to the plate, but there’s a lot of Volvo semis. When you start paying attention, there’s a ton of them on the road.

Crew Chief Brad: Are you saying they’re too big to deport?

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Instead of too big to fail?

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll forgive some Chinese ownership to keep Volvo semi trucks on the road. And by the way, they’re extremely popular in the racing paddock. If you were to walk up and down an IMSA paddock, a lot of those race cars are towed by Volvo trucks.

It, it, it affects us deeply on the motorsport side of the house. All right. So Brad, I know your favorite section of the Drive Thru is always lost and found, and you found that Ultima for us. I mean, what a great deal that was. I found something for you this month.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my [01:07:00] God.

Crew Chief Eric: How about a 1998 Cybertruck? And you might say to yourself, “1998?

Wait, wait, but, but Tesla wasn’t even around in 1998.” This is the Plybertruck- What? … and then some. Look at… This is- Oh, my God … like a Ford van at one point. What? Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Did Daniel build this?

Crew Chief Eric: This thing is awesome. What are you talking about? Look at that craftsmanship. I bet those windshield wipers even work. It looks like it might not leak.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, my God. What is this built on?

Crew Chief Eric: I think it’s a Ford Econoline.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know. The front end is screaming Dodge Dakota to me, or Mazda B2000 or 200- whatever the truck was.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s gotta be beefier than that because these are six-bolt wheels, so those little trucks weren’t six-bolt.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s true.

Crew Chief Eric: This looks like a Ford ’cause it’s got a short nose, so it’s gotta be a van that they cut, and they took the roof of the van and slammed it down.

Crew Chief Brad: Where’s the- where’s the original post?

Crew Chief Eric: It was on Facebook. 1998 Cybertruck, McDonough, Georgia, [01:08:00] $5,800.

Crew Chief Brad: I have more, more details.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, do you?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Again, thanks to Gemini. I’m, I’m just plugging Gemini here and there.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh.

Crew Chief Brad: It is a 1998 Mitsubishi L200.

Crew Chief Eric: I didn’t even know that was a thing.

Crew Chief Brad: And it has 225,000 miles.

Crew Chief Eric: I love it.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one of these in the States.

Crew Chief Eric: Every time I try to click on one of these, it tells me it’s, like, a bad site. You know, “You’re gonna get a virus by clicking on this picture,” kind of thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Very ugly truck, but it is a truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there you have it. It’s a funky, funky little truck.

Yeah, okay. It’s like these hard body Mitsubishis from back in the day.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one of these.

Crew Chief Eric: All right.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, there you go. The more you know.

Crew Chief Eric: Do-do-do-do. So would you buy this or a Nissan Altima? See, I think I’d take that $45,000 you, you lent me earlier to buy a Tiguan or a BMW. I’d buy this.

Tanya’s dying.

Executive Producer Tania: No, sorry. I’m watching something and I’m, I’m [01:09:00] trying to decide if, if I’m gonna share this later.

Crew Chief Eric: Please do.

Executive Producer Tania: This is NSFW.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, boy. It’s gonna be a good one. Well, speaking of NSFW, how about this? I love this picture. I kept this only because of the picture. Look at this, Tanya.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, God.

Crew Chief Eric: This is my favorite thing of AI. This is like the Spider-Man meme where they’re all pointing at each other. It’s just Elons hugging each other and handshaking. This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. This is so great. But in all seriousness, Elon hints at Tesla, SpaceX merger. Is that even really a merger?

I mean, to the point of the picture, when it’s all the same owner?

Crew Chief Brad: I know. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, this is the sort of buffoonery when you have that kind of money that you can do. You know what I mean?

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Well, my expectations are thoroughly lowered, but I also think at the same time I found the cause of global warming.

Just take a look at this [01:10:00] video. What is the fascination, what is the point of running your exhaust through your hood and then blowing smoke-

Executive Producer Tania: So that the rest of us can’t have nice things …

Crew Chief Eric: Is that what it is?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Just wait, look at th- look at this. Look.

Executive Producer Tania: So the rest of us can’t have nice things.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like a factory in Gary, Indiana.

Look at this.

Executive Producer Tania: So stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: And when you drive down the road with your exhaust in front of your windshield-

Executive Producer Tania: What the hell do you see? You’re smoke screening yourself …

Crew Chief Eric: and if you happen to open your sunroof or your passenger window, exhaust is meant to exhaust behind the driver, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, into somebody else’s mouth, not your own.

Crew Chief Eric: It would be funny, though, if it had one of those little flappers like a tractor, you know? I’m talking with the boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. That’s ridiculous. And that stack is, like, six inches easily. I don’t get it. Well, with that said, I guess it’s time for Florida Man.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, no.

Are we there already?

Crew Chief Eric: We are there already.[01:11:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Here we go

Crew Chief Eric: Tanya, before you take us on a trip around the United States and maybe around the world Big is on the journey … around the world, I brought you one. Found this very interesting.

Executive Producer Tania: Where in the world is Florida man?

Crew Chief Eric: Montana is where we’re going. Ooh. To the most pulled over man in the United States.

He drives a giant banana.

Executive Producer Tania: Ooh.

Crew Chief Brad: Good Lord.

Crew Chief Eric: A 23-foot long banana with the license plate split. Oh. Come on. That’s dad jokes and then some. Look at this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: But why does he keep getting pulled over?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, wouldn’t you wanna pull over a 23-foot long banana?

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Why not?

Crew Chief Brad: The last time he was pulled over was for an issue with his license plate.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s a [01:12:00] quote from the police officer. “We’ve stopped speeders, distracted drivers, and even a few unusual vehicles, but this one definitely stands out. The big banana car was stopped cruising near Billings, Montana today. While it may be appealing,” “traffic laws still apply to fruit. Safe travels, Montana.”

Used to be a Ford F-150. That’s, that’s legit

Executive Producer Tania: But look at the joy that it brings.

Crew Chief Eric: The big banana.

Executive Producer Tania: B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God. All right, what do you got for us?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, there’s been some weather down in, uh, in Texas.

Crew Chief Eric: This looks like your old neighborhood.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, every neighborhood looks like… No, it does not. But a Houston area driver gets creative to avoid the floodwaters.

Just wait for it.

I mean, ha. I don’t see a problem.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, Mercedes can’t get wet. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, good for him.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. Wow, look [01:13:00] at that.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, eventually he has to get down in it, but you know.

Crew Chief Eric: He avoided a good portion of it.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s enough news that tells you to turn around, don’t drown. But, you know?

Crew Chief Eric: Look at that Altima coming through, or was that a Passat?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s a Volkswagen.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, it’s a Jetta. Can’t tell the difference, they’re all the same.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, these people should not be driving through that, but hey.

Crew Chief Eric: Where’s the Tesla dead in the middle of this water? That’s what I wanna see.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, God.

Crew Chief Eric: And she’s just standing there like it’s nothing happening.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, it’s another Tuesday in a storm.

Crew Chief Eric: Texas, where are we going next?

Executive Producer Tania: Now we’re going to Missouri.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, boy.

Executive Producer Tania: And this one, this is, like you gotta get to the video. Boy. You gotta get to the video. Car’s rolling, he’s getting pulled over. He jumps out, the car’s still rolling. Whoop, yes. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, man. That guy gets a 10. That’s like an Olympic dive. Holy crap.

Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: And his name is Gavin Thor Lundgren.

Crew Chief Eric: And look at [01:14:00] this. Boom. Whoop. He doesn’t even know if there’s water down there. He just- Would you jump off a bridge? Obviously this guy does.

Crew Chief Brad: If everybody else is doing it.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m sure he was on something.

Crew Chief Eric: Boom.

Executive Producer Tania: Bloop, bloop, bloop, like I’m pretending I’m a dolphin. Bloop.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: But they did find him.

Crew Chief Eric: So obviously he survived, ’cause they caught him, right?

Executive Producer Tania: They did catch him. Of course. They did apprehend him. Because they

Crew Chief Brad: always do.

Crew Chief Eric: The French judge only gave him seven points. I gave him an 11 to make up the difference. That was a great dive. That was amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: So this next one is also in, all the rest of these are in Florida.

Quite frankly, it’s been a busy month. So this was 4th of July, and this MFer was going down 95. Yes. And watch, look. Watch. Do woop, woop, boop.

Crew Chief Eric: Looks like a video game.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s not funny Boom. It’s not funny, actually Wow. Can you imagine if you got hit by a firework? Talk [01:15:00] about vehicles catching on fire.

Crew Chief Eric: What is he towing behind him? Is that, like, hay?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t fucking know.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that a boat? It’s a boat.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it’s Florida. Of course it’s a boat.

Crew Chief Brad: Could’ve been a lawnmower.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: And they were in the helicopter following him for 10 miles. He got arrested and charged, so the passenger in the vehicle was arrested and charged with shooting a deadly missile from a moving v- vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: A deadly missile

Executive Producer Tania: So when you shoot a firework out of your car, it is now a deadly missile.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a bit extreme. I mean, it’s not a Tomahawk or a Scud or something like … I mean, come on, deadly missile.

Executive Producer Tania: Hey, people get seriously injured every 4th of July setting off firework.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: They lose body parts. They get third degree burns.

Crew Chief Eric: Do they lose brain cells too?

Crew Chief Brad: They didn’t have many to begin with.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, this is actually a serious thing. I mean, if that hits somebody’s car, can you imagine? You just set something [01:16:00] that’s fire into, like, if it hit somebody’s car, you could, you could explode it.

Crew Chief Eric: Imagine if it hit an EV. Again, a Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s what I’m saying. Like, bad things could have happened. Okay. Yeah, so this one’s great too. So Florida Man, they pull him over ’cause he’s crashed into the side of a building. Of course, he’s not wearing a shirt because why would you be wearing a shirt?

Crew Chief Eric: Hold, hold on, hold on a sec. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait.

Brad, you gotta be th- why do these two look like they’re posing for a dating app? Like, what is happening in this picture?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s the, it’s the SNL skit, the ambiguously gay duo.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, keep going. ”

Executive Producer Tania: Nah, I, I wasn’t driving. Not my car.”

Crew Chief Brad: That’s, “The, the drugs aren’t mine, officer.” “I’m

Crew Chief Eric: not with them, Superman.”

Executive Producer Tania: And then it’s, “It was the car’s alignment’s fault.”

Crew Chief Eric: What? ”

Executive Producer Tania: The alignment was off, and-” Oh, okay … “and I hit the building.”

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Executive Producer Tania: And then it was, “Well, I had two shots that night.” And then, “Well, see, I’m not great at math, so counting drinks isn’t [01:17:00] really my strong suit.”

So it was the car’s alignment and his poor math skills.

Crew Chief Eric: This reminds me of the lady, did you see that article of the lady in New Mexico that drove into the side of a building because it was the mural of, like, a tunnel? Like, kind of like Looney Tunes. So she turned and drove into the building and just, like, crashed into it.

It was pretty hilarious, actually. Maybe her alignment was off too, or maybe her math skills weren’t that great. Good God. This last one. What do we got? Another Fl- man, you’re racking up Florida Man this month.

Executive Producer Tania: This last one, however, I recommend not to sh- please watch it first by yourself. It, there is explicit shit in it.

You kinda gotta watch it the whole way through. It’s gonna, like, catch you off guard the first thing, but if you watch the whole thing through and then he circles back to it at the end, then you’re like, “Oh, my God.”

Crew Chief Eric: So he’s in the cop car.

Executive Producer Tania: You have to be listening to the cop.

Crew Chief Eric: What is he doing? Did he just…

What was that?[01:18:00]

What?

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently, this guy was apprehended for driving on a suspended license, and he was on his way to his court-ordered drug class- Oh, no … um, because of that. Apparently he had something called a Whizzinator.

Which is a fake bladder-

Crew Chief Eric: Oh

Executive Producer Tania: my goodness … with I don’t know what liquid in it, and then it’s wired to a heating pad with a faux pizzle connected to it-

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. Okay … to

Executive Producer Tania: make it convincing.

Crew Chief Eric: Did Snoop Dogg come up with this? The, the, the Wizzle, the Whizzinator and the Wizzle? The

Crew Chief Brad: Wizzle.

Executive Producer Tania: This is this news recording’s polite way of-

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh,

Executive Producer Tania: uh-huh

of saying it.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Executive Producer Tania: I saw another one where they were more blunt. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So needless to say, the guy’s in the back of the cop car. He pulls something out of his pants discreetly, he’s being videoed by the onboard footage the whole time. [01:19:00] Chucks it across the seat, it falls in between the door and, like, the seat.

The cop comes around, opens the door. He’s like, “What the hell is this?” “I don’t know.” “What do you mean? What’s what?” “I don’t know what that is. I don’t know where it came from.” He’s like, “Bull-fucking-shit.”

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the Whizzinator.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s like, “Bullshit, I clean this car every day. I know what’s in this car. You just threw a pee bag.”

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. Ah. Wow. Florida. Florida. God.

Executive Producer Tania: I hope that person gets the help they need.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, ugh. Well, with that, it’s time we go behind the pit wall to check out your sports

Executive Producer Tania: news. Ooh. I didn’t post about this, but you found it yourself.

Crew Chief Eric: I did. Tom Cruise officially says Days of Thunder sequel moving forward.

Executive Producer Tania: Paramount has- Well- … apparently green-lit it.

Crew Chief Eric: Tom Cruise will reprise the role of Cole Trickle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you know, all this kind of stuff. Jerry Bruckheimer’s coming back. I mean, they’re gonna try to bring back, I guess, as much of the original cast as [01:20:00] possible.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, okay, hold on. We’re gonna bring back as much of the original cast as possible.

May he rest in peace-

Crew Chief Eric: Yes …

Executive Producer Tania: will not be there. Do we really think Nicole Kidman’s coming back?

Crew Chief Eric: They said as much as possible, you see.

Executive Producer Tania: Because then I wanna be like, “Who’s left of the cast?”

Crew Chief Eric: John C. Reilly, he’ll come back.

Executive Producer Tania: He will, but he wasn’t really huge, so other than if they don’t get Mike Rooker back.

Crew Chief Eric: But wasn’t John C.

Reilly Duval’s son or something like that? So he would take- No … over for the fact that Du- or he was, he was Duval’s, like, second in command, so he would take over for Duval since Duval’s gone.

Executive Producer Tania: I guess he could. They could bring back Carl You- Use, I guess.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: yeah. I don’t know. We’ll see. Anyway, continue.

Crew Chief Eric: Basically, the long and the short is the sequel is in development, reported to include research on the modern NASCAR world, bringing it into t- you know, 2026 and beyond. And Jeff Gordon has expressed interest in being part of the movie, so there you go. Boom. Good.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ll [01:21:00] watch it.

Crew Chief Eric: Moving on from NASCAR- Our, I just wanna point out, we had our first Voices of Endurance episode.

We called it Saving Sebring. It was with Charles Mendez and Dave Cowart, and if you haven’t watched it, check it out. It’s available on Patreon right now. The remastered version will not be out for a while, but it’s super cool. Charles came on and did his Le Mans story when we were still running Evening with a Legend, and Dave Cowart is the guy who won the GTO Championship in the famous red lobster BMW M1 back in the s- late ’70s, early ’80s.

So really cool to hear their take, their part in keeping Sebring alive during one of its darkest times, basically setting it onto the path that it is on today, which is very, very cool. So interesting story there. I do wanna talk about virtual stuff for just a moment, because I bellyached for a long time.

It was Assetto Corsa’s fault. It was Assetto Corsa’s fault. Transmission in the F40 is fragile and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, remember? I’ve been bellyaching about it for a while, right? Well, it turns out this hunk of junk is the [01:22:00] real problem with my setup My Moza HGP shifter finally gave up the goat.

Once it started to rear its ugly head with the same issues in other software where it had never had the problem before, I decided to put it to the side. I gave David Middleton a call at MIE Racing and said, “What do I do next?” And he said, “You go get yourself a Simagic.” And I was like, “Ooh,” and I did exactly that, which I can buy off the shelf at Micro Center, and Micro Center price-matched with the manufacturer, so shout-out to them.

I saved a bunch of money because the manufacturer was running a promotion. They matched the price. You still had to pay tax, but I didn’t have to worry about the shipping, ’cause the new shifter’s super heavy. But it’s very, very nice. Adjustable feedback as well, and it can be an H pattern or a sequential, so very, very happy with it.

D- different build, because the old one was basically little micro switches, so every time the shifter would hit a micro switch, it would tell it what to do. The new one uses a Hall sensor, so it’s all magnetic, and it’s very, very precise. It’s really, really nice. I’m very [01:23:00] happy with doing that. I should’ve probably switched to it a long time ago.

But I will say, been using the sim more to practice and, you know, sit down for a couple hours at a time, just racing Road Atlanta or Mid-Ohio, whatever it is, kind of getting ready. I mean, it’s not the same as endurance racing, but you gotta get yourself in the mindset of staying focused for a couple hours at a time when you’re behind the wheel.

So I’ve had zero issues, been able to run the sim for hours on end, and it’s been absolutely fantastic, so can’t say enough good things about the Simagic there.

Crew Chief Brad: Your initial complaint was about the programming for the actual F40 race car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Do you still have the same problems?

Crew Chief Eric: The F40 is still a little fragile, but can make it to the end of a race without it blowing up.

I haven’t tried to drive the F40 for an hour. I’ve actually been driving the Hyundai i30, which is… it’s not necessarily a Veloster. It’s, like, the one that they didn’t sell here, because I wanted something that was a hot hatch, similar power to a Focus, kind of, you know, to just be more realistic, even though a Focus isn’t [01:24:00] available.

So I haven’t gone back. I’ve done some sprints with the F40, and it’s been fine. You can still hear it every now and again, where it’s like, and you’re like, “Oh, come on,” you know? So there’s a little bit of calibration there that you can still do and can tweak all that stuff, but six of one. So here’s something I found interesting.

The Goodwood Road Racing Club of America. Just feels like an oxymoron saying it. Say it again. The Goodwood Road Racing Club of America. You can become a member starting in January, and it’s based out of California. It’s all about road racing in the style of Goodwood. I get it, but I don’t get it. Pose a que- become a member of the Goodwood Road Racing Club or become a member of Enduroverse?

What do you think?

Crew Chief Brad: I guess it would come down to cost for me, cost and benefits.

Crew Chief Eric: Enduroverse is one of our sponsors, so it’d be, uh, ideal.

Crew Chief Brad: I choose Enduroverse. I

Crew Chief Eric: think that would be a great option. You know, vintage racing isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I will say this is NSFW, sort of like Tanya’s thing.

I [01:25:00] don’t know if you guys watch this, but check this out. There are some vintage cars I just will not find myself ever in.

Executive Producer Tania: Ooh, did he die?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know how he survived.

Executive Producer Tania: I guess he did survive.

Crew Chief Eric: This isn’t a video game. This is Goodwood. This

Crew Chief Brad: is not

Crew Chief Eric: AI. So white helmet, l- it’s this car right here, whatever this Alfa Romeo is or Formula Junior or something like that.

So here he is, white helmet guy. Goes off backwards, hits the wall, and gets flung out of the car like a rag doll. Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: man. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Brutal.

Crew Chief Brad: And sent back almost completely across the track.

Crew Chief Eric: There he is, white helmet, walking around.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s, he’s concussed. He’s dazed. He doesn’t know anything. He’s running off pure adrenaline right there.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m amazed he didn’t snap his neck. Absolutely unreal. But I don’t know about you guys, there are no cars that scare me, but these cars scare me. I don’t think I could run and operate these kinds of cars at speed. I’m sorry. Like, there’s risk and then there’s that. Those are just foolish.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I, I’m good.

Crew Chief Eric: Oof.

No, thank you. [01:26:00] That being said, our motorsports news is brought to you in part by Enduroverse, powered by Hyperdev, America’s premier endurance racing community. So check it out online and become a member at Enduroverse.com.

Crew Chief Brad: So 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 ultimate reference for car enthusiasts, collectorcarguide.net.

Executive Producer Tania: 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, Voices of Endurance, Automotive History Live, The Racers Roundtable, Formula Fanatics, BreakFix, and of course, The Drive Thru.

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. Learn more about our bonus and behind-the-scenes content, get early access to upcoming episodes, or support our 24 Hours of Lemons team when you consider becoming a BreakFix VIP [01:27:00] by visiting patreon.com/gtmotorsports.

As always, we would like to thank our co-host and executive producer, Tanya, and all the fans, friends, and family who support Grand Touring Motorsports, as well as the Motoring Podcast Network. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: No outro?

Crew Chief Brad: Outro.

Crew Chief Eric: There it is. Brad, w- you missed an opportunity last month because you no longer announce the episode numbers.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t? You,

Crew Chief Eric: no, you, you don’t, you haven’t done that since, for a while.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you even know what episode this one is?

Crew Chief Brad: I thought, I thought I did last month, though. But

Crew Chief Eric: you didn’t.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought I said, “Welcome to Drive Thru Number 69.”

Crew Chief Eric: No, you missed every opportunity to take a crack.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m pretty sure I actually said that.

Nah, nah, nah, nah. I’m pretty sure you cut it out. You, you, you cut it out.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow, we went Dave Coulier on this, wow.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, we did. Cut it [01:28:00] out. Everywhere you go.

Crew Chief Eric: Number 70. Can you believe we have 70 news episodes? It would actually be 72 if we hadn’t missed two months out of the last six years, but that’s more than some podcasts have by themselves.

We have 70 news

Crew Chief Brad: episodes. This is certainly longer than I thought we would be going.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey. Hey, now. Hey, now. Hey. It’s only up from here, my man. It’s only up from here. If

Executive Producer Tania: only we had 70 listeners.

Crew Chief Eric: We have, we, we actually have a lot more than 70 Arbitron-rated listeners. We’re doing better than- It

Crew Chief Brad: does not count if you listen to it 70 times during editing.

Crew Chief Eric: I gotta do something when I’m on my walks.

Executive Producer Tania: The Drive Thru is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like [01:29:00] collectorcarguide.net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, The Exotic Car Marketplace, and many others. If you are 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 Brake 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 News Intro Banter
• 00:02:45 Midwest Road Trip and Wisconsin Cheese Curds
• 00:05:20 Volo Museum Movie Cars and Rocket Outhouse Madness
• 00:10:59 Automotive History Live!
• 00:15:02 24 Hours of Lemons Focus Revival Attempt
• 00:26:39 Mountain Man Dan has a PT Cruiser?
• 00:31:56 VW Lineup” What’s on the Chopping Block
• 00:37:10 China Beetle Clone Debate
• 00:43:30 VW Profits Drop Explained
• 00:47:41 Audi Sport Quattro Restomods
• 00:50:26 RS6 Avant GT Price Shock
• 00:51:47 The Alfa Brutale Viral Concept
• 00:53:18 BMW Hybrid Fire Recall
• 00:54:07 Altima Discontinued? Clickbait!
• 00:59:56 More Nissan/Honda Partnership Rumors?
• 01:00:28 Manual Transmissions are good for your Brain
• 01:01:33 Cop who can’t Drive Stick Impounds an RX-7
• 01:03:04 New Toyota Celica and MR2 Confusion
• 01:04:38 Lotus Emira Design Rant
• 01:05:12 Why Volvo Stays Not Polestar
• 01:06:49 Lost and Found
• 01:09:09 Elon Merger Talk and Exhaust Stacks
• 01:10:50 Florida Man Stories!
• 01:19:31 Days of Thunder Sequel Confirmed
• 01:21:41 Sim Racing Shifter Upgrade
• 01:24:15 Goodwood Club and Vintage Crash
• 01:25:59 Sponsors and Episode Wrap