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Preserving the Pulse of Motorsports: IMRRC at 25 Years

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August 15, 2023

Preserving the Pulse of Motorsports: IMRRC at 25 Years

For a quarter century, the International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC) has stood as a beacon for motorsports history, nestled in the heart of Watkins Glen, New York. From dusty archives to digital databases, the Center has evolved into a global hub for researchers, fans, and storytellers alike. In a recent episode of the Break/Fix podcast, host Crew Chief Eric sat down with IMRRC Director Mark Steigerwald to reflect on the Center’s journey, its impact, and what lies ahead.

Mark’s story with the IMRRC began serendipitously in the late 1990s while he was pursuing a master’s in library and information science at Syracuse University. A motorsports enthusiast at heart, he heard about a new library opening in Watkins Glen and knocked on the door. What he found was a pile of boxes, an Allard J2, and the spark of something extraordinary.

That three-month internship turned into an eight-year tenure, during which Mark helped transform the Center from a fledgling archive into a professional research institution. “Motorsport as a legitimate field of scholarship made sense to me,” he shared. “And fortunately, it wasn’t a hard sell.”

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

After his initial tenure, Mark left to work in fundraising at Cornell University and later at the California Automobile Museum. But the IMRRC called him back, and he returned as director with fresh ideas and renewed passion. “The mission stayed intact, but the level of professionalism had certainly gone up,” he noted.

Spotlight

Synopsis

The Break/Fix podcast episode showcases the 25th anniversary of the International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC) at Watkins Glen, capturing its rich history and contributions to motorsport culture. The center’s director, Mark Steigerwald, shares his journey from intern to director, emphasizing the IMRRC’s role in preserving racing history through extensive archives and research facilities. The episode also explores the center’s collaborations, fundraising efforts, and future plans for expansion. Special features of the IMRRC, including the annual raffle, center conversations, and international symposium, are highlighted. The 25th anniversary celebration aligns with the 75th anniversary of Watkins Glen’s first Grand Prix and incorporates reflections on notable racing events and figures. The discussion underscores the center’s importance for racing enthusiasts, historians, and the motorsport community at large.

Let’s introduce the listeners out there to Mark, the petrol-head. Tell us about your automotive and motorsports enthusiast past. How did you get involved in all this?
The effect of COVID on the center – let’s remind people of what was, and what’s coming back: Center Conversations? Relationship with the SAH? The “new and improved” symposium
This is a big year for motorsports too, 100th Anniversary of LeMans – thoughts?
What does the next 25 years look like for the center? Future plans, anything you can share? Teasers for Symposium ‘23?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder, how did they get that job? Or become that person.

The road to success is paved by all of us, because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: The International Motor Racing Research Center, or IMRRC for short, collects, shares, and preserves the history of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series. The Watkins Glen based IMRRC’s collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie of amateur as well as professional motor racing throughout the world.

For 25 years, the Center has welcomed serious researchers and the casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers, race series, and race [00:01:00] cars captured on their shelves and walls. We were very fortunate to speak with the IMRRC during our first season of Break Fix, where Kip and Rick shared all sorts of stories about the Glenn, and we’ve been working with them closely over the last three years.

But this time, we want to welcome IMRRC Director Mark Steigerwald to celebrate the Center’s 25th Anniversary with us. So welcome to the show, Mark. Thanks, Eric.

Mark Steigerwald: Glad to be here.

Crew Chief Eric: So before we dive into the center on a whole new level in the last 25 years, retrospective and what’s coming, let’s introduce our listeners to you, Mark, the petrol head.

Tell us about your automotive and motorsports enthusiast past. How did you get involved in all this?

Mark Steigerwald: Well, I guess it depends on how far I want to go back. When I was in graduate school at Syracuse University, I was pursuing a master’s in library and information science. And it was sort of an interesting period.

It was the late 90s. Technology was really booming. All of my colleagues, my professors, encouraged me to get into some sort of Areas such as, uh, over corporate libraries or other [00:02:00] information science areas. And I needed an internship and I was at the track, like any true motorsport enthusiast that was within driving distance of Watkins Lennon International.

And I heard over the PA system that a library was opening in Watkins Lennon. I thought, well, how fortuitous I have to investigate that. So I knocked on the door of the public library. The IMRRC is essentially a wing to the public library in Watkins Glen. And I inquired about an internship, talked to the director at the time.

And she said, well, certainly, however, we’re just getting set up. She took me next door and there was a pile of cardboard boxes and what became the director’s office and an Allard J2 on the floor and not much else. Gradually over time, I met the incoming director of the research center. He agreed to take me under his wing.

We formed an internship program for me. Fortunately, I never left. I plan on staying for a three month internship and I stayed for eight years. During that period, we had a lot of challenges, but we had a lot of growth and we had a lot of support from a very interested community. [00:03:00] Many of them race fans, but there were also academics that elevated motorsport history in a way that I always hoped from the beginning.

Motorsport as a legitimate study for scholarship really made sense to me. And fortunately, it wasn’t really a hard selling point. 25 years later, we’re still helping authors with books. We’re helping the curious of all age groups and just a casual browser, as well as. Before I mentioned author, even a few filmmakers out there too.

So it was great to find work for that initial eight years

Crew Chief Eric: during that eight year period, you actually evolved from intern to director at some point. So take us on that journey. How did that happen?

Mark Steigerwald: Our core collection was our library. So library migrated in a smaller form from the public library and it grew by leaps and bounds.

So we accepted donations of. Motorsport and general automotive books, and we quickly filled our shelves. So my degree was sort of a natural fit there. Meanwhile, we were starting to acquire manuscript materials, personal papers, diaries, [00:04:00] photo collections, film collections, all sorts of materials that document.

Motorsport that you would expect. I think what we didn’t expect was a sheer volume of material that came as well as the quality too. So all this material had to be cataloged, had to be organized. We had a very small staff, a couple of volunteers and myself, as well as the director at the time. Our services grew as did our complexity and our professionalism.

As I mentioned, always a challenge, but always enjoyable. And we had great community support, both local support, as well as motorsport community in general. We have built in events around the motorsport calendar for walking with an international. So we would get a great influx of people walking through the doors on race weekends.

They always wanted to see what car we had on display or to make a donation or just to catch up. We’ve always had that support since pretty much since day one.

Crew Chief Eric: So when did the archival part come into play? How did the partnership with SCCA form?

Mark Steigerwald: Well, that was after I had initially left. That was a great partnership and a great shot in the arm for the IMRRC [00:05:00] from the standpoint of an endorsement from a sanctioning body.

We are the caretaker of the SCCA archives. Most organizations, even some corporate entities, they don’t necessarily have the resources to manage their own archive. It takes someone special to have an eye and an understanding of how important an archive is to any organization. And the SCCA Foundation had that connection in mind with us.

It was sort of a natural progression. We have a display case in the center that recognizes SCCA accomplishments. That was perhaps the genesis of that idea, but we’ve always had close relationships with the SCCA project. Now that I essentially adopted a year or so ago, managed by our head archivist, Jenny Ambrose.

It is really a fairly large undertaking. We’re certainly up to the challenge. It’s a lot of material. I believe, according to our research assistants, we are up to the letter C in the alphabet going through driver’s files. And that’s, I believe, 40 record boxes just from A to C so far. Massive amount of material in a collection that’s actually getting used quite regularly.

[00:06:00] I believe about 50 percent of our research inquiries are centered around that material currently, so it’s gratifying all the way around. And the Foundation is, as I said, a great partner in this and a supporter of the program.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. And we’ve leveraged the center as well ourselves for researching guests on our show, especially for things like the golden era of sports car racing, where I’ve called up and said, Hey, do you have a profile on so and so?

And it’s not necessarily all SCCA material. This was Camel GT M sub depending on what you’re looking for. To your point, if you’re writing a book or putting a movie together in our case, putting together podcast episodes, interviewing these drivers, it’s a wealth of information. And it came super fast too.

I was surprised by the turnaround time. So I can’t say enough good things about. Quality of the material we’re getting back and just the ability to be able to access it. I don’t think you can get it pretty much anywhere else.

Mark Steigerwald: I’m glad to hear that. We hope to leverage this success with other sanctioning bodies in the future.

So yeah, a great success story for us.

Crew Chief Eric: Continuing with your journey, you hinted a little bit that you haven’t always been at the center. So [00:07:00] you left. And then came back. So what did you do and what brought you back?

Mark Steigerwald: Well, I did make a career change. I was married at the time and I went to work for Cornell university.

What is referred to as a frontline fundraiser, raising money, working with alumni, really gratifying work, very interesting. And I think even from the beginning, the wheels were turning in my head. That some of the concepts I was learning and appreciating the fundraising front could work for some sort of endeavor, such as the IMRRC.

I did spend a couple of years briefly at the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento. And that was sort of the litmus test for this. As everyone says, then COVID hit. So sort of sidelined some plans there. During that period, I did find out about the IMRRC’s seeking a director. Once again, I applied.

Gratefully, I was chosen for the position. A lot had changed in over the years. The mission had stayed intact, but the level of professionalism had certainly gone up. And I was pleased and proud and glad to be back. Initial eight years I was there at the center was a formative period for our [00:08:00] collections.

A lot of relationships were really established back during that time, but are still in place currently. Meanwhile, collections have grown, awareness has grown among the Motorsport community. So we hope to just continue that upward trend. So

Crew Chief Eric: you talked about building relationships. There’s a special one within the halls of the IMRRC.

I know you’re very close with the Artsinger family. So do you want to talk about your relationship with Michael and Duke and the rest?

Mark Steigerwald: Yes. So back when I had begun, I was fortunate to meet Gene Argesinger, who was one of the key players in the formation of the IMRRC. Gene was a proponent of the public library and the collection as well as racing by virtue of her relationship with her husband, Cameron, the founder of post World War II road racing in America.

But libraries were Gene’s thing. And Gene, in addition to John Saunders, had this idea to acknowledge racing’s history, uh, this is back in 1998 anniversary, in an innovative way, not merely just a museum, but an archive in the library that focused on motorsport. It was through [00:09:00] many conversations I had with Jean at the time.

She really encouraged me to sort of run wild, in a sense, with the concept of the IMRRC, apply professionalism, apply whatever cutting edge, state of the art procedures were going on in library science at the time, such as digitization, scanning of photos, and cataloging our books. Certainly glad to do the work and work with Jean and then I gradually met most of the Argettsinger family and Cameron also served as our chairman at the time for a short time too towards the end of my initial eight years.

Without the Argettsinger family, I think that was a sort of a bonding force for me to stay as long as I did. Michael specifically was essentially our chief marketing officer, great supporter of the center. He also had his day job, but then as he became an author, he was always fortunate to work on his book projects with him, working on images, occasionally editing.

It was always enjoyable working with him as well.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s really special about the Argettsinger family, and you kind of hinted to it, was talking about the 50th [00:10:00] anniversary of Watkins Glen in 1998. They’re one of the founding families of sports car racing in the United States because it’s centered Grounded and born there in Watkins Glen.

We talked about that on the original episode with Kip and Rick. Watkins Glen is a special place and the IMRC is just a part of that whole story. So it’s pretty incredible.

Mark Steigerwald: Oh, no, exactly. A famous family and deceit within Watkins Glen, post war road racing on the streets, on public roads. An interim circuit, and then the current circuit location.

And then the series, we had NASCAR early on 65. And then again, obviously in 88 and then current times and form the one for a spell. Pretty much it’s a who’s who of racing for several decades. And that legacy continues.

Crew Chief Eric: A lot of things changed during COVID. And you mentioned that things changed. Let’s remind people of what was and what’s coming back and how COVID changed the way the center is doing business today and what’s transpired over the last three years since that all took off.

Mark Steigerwald: [00:11:00] Attending a lot more Zoom meetings, certainly even at the board level, so that’s not going away anytime soon. Our board is scattered around the country anyway. The work. Sort of continues. I mean, if you think about research services, we’ve always provided research services essentially worldwide by virtual of our service model.

That’s remote. You know, we, we did have to shutter some of our programming. Our center conversations will come back stronger and 23 for certain certainly on the fundraising side. The model changed somewhat. The various government programs, the PPP program that was in place certainly helped us out as well, too.

And then going forward, I think people are so anxious to do things in person. And then, you know, we’ve gradually, our numbers have gone up since COVID as we’ve opened our doors and we’ve seen an influx of people traveling and seeking the center as a destination.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned the center conversations, a lot of people that are familiar with the center know exactly what that is, but for those that don’t, what are those about and what do they look like in 23?

Mark Steigerwald: The center conversations were born out of a desire to [00:12:00] showcase some of the figures in motorsport that have been influential over the years, they’ve been local and they’ve been. National or international. And we’ve been fortunate to have some great speakers. We had off the top of my head, I can remember Dr.

Fred Simeone, for example, I can remember Lynn St. James, so many others. And then our, our local drivers, for example, and we focused on several different aspects of racing history. So from the business side, from the driver standpoint, from the crew chief standpoint, these are all archived at the center currently, these are always free of charge.

Occasionally we had freshmen’s for example, and our crowds would vary in size. You were up and close. And personal with a motorsport personality and intimate way that it’s rarely encountered, you know, now it’s podcast, but you know, this series continues. We’re launching a schedule and I believe we’ve got four speakers set up for 2023 hour, but we’ll probably backfill with additional speakers as well.

Crew Chief Eric: And then there is the symposium, the big one. It’s sort of like put all the conversations together in one [00:13:00] three day event. Let’s talk about. The symposium new and improved starting in 22 going forward. What’s the symposium all about? Why should people come out and check it out and how is it going to grow next year and beyond?

Mark Steigerwald: This was my first go around last November. And as you know, you played an integral part in our success and our growth. last November. So the symposium is an international gathering of speakers and participants as well, too. Again, free and open to the public on a number of motorsport topics. So this elevates the center conversations to the true scholarly level.

We had some great subject matter last year, wonderful topics, a range that would appeal to any motorsport enthusiast and an opportunity for Q and A from an audience. And this year, even live streaming, we hope to continue that again this year, I’m sure we’ll have another great slate of speakers as well as growing our audience.

We have a partner in all of this, and that’s the Society of Audubon Historians. Without them, we could not do what we do. The SAH has a… [00:14:00] Long and storied history of pulling together similar types of symposia across the country. So we have a great partner in the SAH and now the GTM we’re doing great as well too.

So again, we’ve elevated our Senate conversations to a scholarly level. And Motorsport deserves no end of topics from 30s era racing, any sort of pre war topic that you can think of all the way up through current e racing.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And I’m glad you brought up the SAH. I’m a member of the Society of Automotive Historians myself.

I’ve been working with them, you know, since the symposium, we got some ideas brewing and things like that. And obviously we have our co branded Co sponsored content by both the IMRC and the SAH that we’re replaying through break fix throughout the year. So if you weren’t at the symposium, you didn’t see the YouTube or the Twitch live stream, you can actually catch these as episodes throughout the year, continuing into next year.

So thank you. Fantastic stuff. And I look forward to, you know, continuing to work with you guys on this because it’s not only the living history, but it’s also the past. There’s a lot of things in subjects and topics that people [00:15:00] are interested in that there’s this wealth of knowledge out there and it’s getting it in front of people that’s really, really important.

I’m glad you are able to facilitate this through the symposium and the center conversations.

Mark Steigerwald: Oh, exactly. And we’re able to capitalize on current topics too. I mean, women in motor sports has been fairly common topic in some sense over the past few years, but I think we’ve just scratched the surface of some of the pioneers, especially pre war more and more of these stories and these, these women are coming to the forefront.

In terms of their exploits. So it’s really gratifying to see this level of scholarship applied to that subject specifically,

Crew Chief Eric: since you brought a lot of fundraising techniques back to the IMRC during your hiatus, let’s talk about the annual raffle. How does that work? Why is it important? How do you guys select the car that you’re raffling off?

Maybe what’s the next pick? If you can reveal that little spoiler.

Mark Steigerwald: As a 501 C 3, we essentially raise all of our own operational funding. The core of that is a, an annual membership campaign. We’re very fortunate this year. We will have Brian Redmond as our sponsorship chair. We always choose a [00:16:00] sponsorship chair that helps to sort of spread the message to a group indicating how important it is for our work to continue and how it can.

continues with the support of fans like them. We have a great campaign at the beginning of the year that helps to launch a theme for us throughout the year. This year, it’s our anniversary. So, you know, we’re fortunate to have that sort of hook and complimenting our membership is our sweepstakes. That’s something that began as, as a raffle car, straight up raffle, a sweepstakes model is slightly different, wherein there’s really no limit.

Um, so called ticket sales, uh, we’ve had a C8 Corvette for the past two years, quite successful this year, quite certain of what we’ll have in a launch shortly. Again, uh, an important component for our fundraising. And again, C8 Corvettes have been very popular for us and we’ve had other cars in the past.

We’ve had vintage Porsches and Ferraris. So, uh, always something interesting that gets our audience’s attention.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about the 25th anniversary celebration. What have you got in mind? Is it going to be a big party? You got something [00:17:00] locked down?

Mark Steigerwald: Well, officially we will have a party that we’re still playing the elements together for September 28th.

We’re choosing that date because it’s a Saturday. It’ll be the spiritual anniversary for the very first Grand Prix in 1948. For Watkins Glen that also dovetails with the 75th anniversary of racing into Watkins Glen. That’s our somewhat arbitrary date to celebrate, but throughout the year, we will pick other opportunities to promote our own history.

We’ve had several of our fans and supporters come forward congratulating us on 25 years already, so we’re grateful for that and some are being extra generous with their annual membership. So we, we certainly appreciate that.

Crew Chief Eric: If you’re interested in going to the 25th anniversary celebration of the IMRRC, look no further than racingarchives.

org. All the details should be up on the website shortly. But this is also a big year for motorsports too. I don’t want to eclipse your celebration or the 75th of the Glen, but it is the 100th anniversary of the first running of Le Mans. So any [00:18:00] thoughts on that, Mark, as a sports car fan?

Mark Steigerwald: From a personal standpoint, Lama is an incredibly important event and certainly from the manufacturer standpoint, but it’s world renowned.

It’s the race that everyone thinks about. It was immortalized in a movie starring Steve McQueen. It’s featured in Michael Kaiser’s movie Speed Merchants. I’m dating myself somewhat, but then, um, as Lama has evolved, It still has never lost any of its luster. I mean, there was during the fifties, there was a tragedy.

Unfortunately, that could have really stymied the motor sport development, but it did not. Lamar is the great international road race for certain. So certainly we will have exhibits and displays at the center celebrating Lamar’s history.

Crew Chief Eric: Any allegiances, any loyalties that you’d like to share? Do you have a brand that you’re rooting for?

Mark Steigerwald: I shouldn’t show bias, but I’ve always been a Porsche fan for various reasons. It’s easy to say that, but it depends on where your history comes from. For me personally, it was an experience with a 356 Porsche. My father wasn’t really that mechanically inclined. He worked on his own [00:19:00] cars, but the one car he thought he would want to turn a wrench on if he could, would have been a 356.

So that sort of stuck with me. And then, um, I’ve never owned a Porsche. Driven several 911s and a 928. So the mystique has always been there and it continues to this day, for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: So thoughts on the 963, the new LMDH prototype?

Mark Steigerwald: Gorgeous car, technologically advanced, of course. I certainly would wish Porsche luck.

You know, competition is stiff these days too, and technology evolves ever quicker. So what a gorgeous machine, no doubt about it.

Crew Chief Eric: So since we’re talking about Porsche and you’re a racing fan, what do you think about them potentially, allegedly making a jump into Formula One?

Mark Steigerwald: I’m glad you asked. I personally would like to see it.

Formula One is really enjoying a crest of popularity right now. I, for one, don’t want to see it dissipate in any way. And I think Porsche can really mix up the field. I think it would be terrific.

Crew Chief Eric: 25 years. In the bag, what does the next 25 years look like for the center? Do you have any future plans, [00:20:00] anything you can share, some teasers maybe?

Mark Steigerwald: The center has certainly been growing by leaps and bounds. Probably not unknown that we’ve always been a little pressed for space. We always have a significant racing car on display, and the library is sort of gradually grown. Anybody who sort of stops in semi annually over the past Few years of seeing that about the collections themselves, film and photo, as well as a periodical collection, which is, I believe over 10, 000 volumes at this point continues to grow.

So we are in need of additional space. So we’re looking at options, but we have purchased property on Franklin street, the main street in black and spline at the North end. It gives us a pretty good footprint. And we are currently working with an architectural firm around expansion plans. So there’s an awful lot of work that needs to be done beforehand, the overall building design, the functions that it will contain, a lot of work that needs to be done, but we have an opportunity to expand in our anniversary year.

Motorsport deserves it. So we want to take [00:21:00] that. Leadership role on like we’ve done with the SCCA and push forward. We used to say when we first started 25 years ago or so for the first few years, so many of our donations were about people cleaning up closets and basements and attics that still goes on.

But as we’ve expanded and as we’ve honed in on. Primary resource materials, a lot of that material is out there now, and it’s still somewhat within a, say, a musty corporate archive. It’s not being utilized. We offer that management option of professionally archiving and making resource material available for researchers could be as simple as a copy of the photo.

But it could be more in depth since I’ve been back over the past year. I’ve touched base with a couple of authors, but I recall helping 15, 20 years ago that are still at it, writing authoritative books on motorsport. We’re still helping them with their research. So very gratifying work. It continues. I can’t personally see and tend to the need for this.

So we do need to expand and [00:22:00] we’re, we’re addressing that now.

Crew Chief Eric: Congratulations. I mean, well deserved and I’m looking forward to the move in date, you know, to come check it out, come on tour. So what’s going to happen to the old IMRRC? Is it going to just be reabsorbed back into the library or will it have a function still?

We’ll

Mark Steigerwald: continue operations there. Certainly for the foreseeable future, we might repurpose that space. In some way, it certainly serves us well for office space. We might have quieter space for researchers to work. It’s sort of an evolving project for us, depending on how we’ll continue to utilize that space and what the new space will look like.

Crew Chief Eric: So Mark, with that, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far?

Mark Steigerwald: Well, I would just encourage everyone to visit, certainly visit us on the website, but visit us in person as well, too, on race weekends. We will expand our hours to being open on Saturdays and race weekends.

In the past, certain race weekends, we might be open the entire weekend, but always call ahead if you’re making plans, but Saturdays on race weekends are given in 2023. I’ll certainly thank everyone who supported us over the years. There are names too numerous to [00:23:00] mention. Uh, I should remind everyone we have a really dedicated governing council made up of leaders in motorsports as well as a local contingent too.

Everyone’s invested in the Watkins Glen area. That goes without saying because we’re expanding in Watkins Glen. Our operation is staying, uh, rooted right

in upstate New York. Our reach has always been international. It continues on that trajectory. Thank everyone who’s, uh, you know, who’s made us the success that we We are these days. We just continue moving forward. Special thanks to Wackenstone International. Michael Printup and his crew have always been supportive of us and we’re grateful for his time and our exposure at the track too.

I mean, uh, today’s racing will be tomorrow’s history. We’re working hard to preserve all of that history, even the most recent racing.

Crew Chief Eric: To learn more about the International Motor Racing Research Center, check out their website, www. racingarchives. org, or follow them on social media at IMRRC. And if you happen to be in town, post race or beforehand, stop by the center and meet up with folks like Mark [00:24:00] and Kip while you’re there.

And if you’d like to get in contact with Mark and be part of the next 25 years of the center’s growth, reach out to him via email at mark at racingarchives. org. Mark, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and you know, I appreciate the partnership that we’ve grown over the last couple of years and I look forward to continuing working with the IMRC and being part of the next 25 years and celebrating with you guys this year.

So it’s fantastic. I mean, you guys are second to none. There’s really nothing else out there like this, especially for automotive historians like myself and others that are looking for answers and looking for our haven, our place to go. So thank you. Thank you for everything you guys do.

Mark Steigerwald: Oh, thanks, Eric. We really appreciate the opportunity and, uh, yep, come in and see us when you can.

Crew Chief Eric: The following episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Artsinger family.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to [00:25:00] learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster. Consider signing [00:26:00] up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com. dot Patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. And remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

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

00:00 Introduction to BreakFix Podcast
00:27 History and Mission of IMRRC
01:13 Interview with Mark Steigerwald
01:25 Mark’s Journey into Motorsports
02:53 Growth and Challenges at IMRRC
04:47 Partnerships and Archival Work
07:03 Mark’s Career Change and Return
10:44 IMRRC’s Future Plans and Expansion
15:27 Fundraising and Annual Raffle
16:53 25th Anniversary Celebration
17:59 Le Mans and Porsche Discussion
19:52 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Bonus Content

Learn More

To learn more about the IMRRC check out their website www.racingarchives.org or follow them on social @imrrc – and if you happen to be in town, stop by the center and meet up with folks like Mark and Kip while you’re there. If you’d like to get in contact with Mark and be part of the next 25 years of the center reach out to him via email mark@racingarchives.org

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The IMRRC’s collection grew rapidly, encompassing books, manuscripts, photos, films, and personal papers. With limited staff and boundless enthusiasm, Mark and his team cataloged and curated materials that now serve authors, filmmakers, and fans worldwide. The Center’s partnership with the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) marked a major milestone, making IMRRC the official caretaker of the SCCA archives – a treasure trove of motorsports history.

“We’re only up to the letter C in the driver files,” Mark laughed, referencing the 40 record boxes already processed. “But it’s gratifying work. About half of our research inquiries are tied to that collection.”

Mark’s bond with the Argetsinger family – founders of post-WWII road racing in America and key figures in the IMRRC’s creation – runs deep. Jean Argetsinger, in particular, encouraged Mark to apply cutting-edge library science to motorsports archiving. “Without the Argetsinger family, I might not have stayed as long as I did,” he said.

Programming, Symposiums, and the Power of Conversation

The Center’s programming includes “Center Conversations,” intimate talks with motorsport personalities, and the annual Symposium, a three-day scholarly event co-hosted with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH). These events elevate motorsports discourse and bring together enthusiasts, academics, and industry leaders.

“We’ve had speakers like Dr. Fred Simeone and Lynn St. James,” Mark recalled. “And we’re just scratching the surface on topics like women in motorsports.”

Fundraising with Horsepower

As a nonprofit, the IMRRC relies on memberships and its annual sweepstakes to fund operations. Recent raffles have featured C8 Corvettes, and the Center is gearing up for another exciting launch. “We’ve had vintage Porsches and Ferraris too,” Mark said. “Always something to catch the eye of our audience.”

With over 10,000 periodicals and growing collections, the IMRRC is planning a major expansion. The Center recently acquired property on Franklin Street and is working with architects to design a new facility. “Motorsport deserves it,” Mark emphasized. “We want to take a leadership role in preserving racing history.”

Celebrating 25 Years—and Beyond

The Center’s 25th anniversary celebration is slated for September 28, 2025, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of racing in Watkins Glen. It’s a moment to honor the past and look toward the future.

“We used to get donations from people cleaning out closets,” Mark said. “Now we’re helping authors we met 20 years ago write new books. The need for this work hasn’t diminished—it’s grown.”

Mark’s passion for motorsports and archival excellence shines through every corner of the IMRRC. Whether you’re a casual fan or a dedicated historian, the Center offers a place to explore, discover, and connect with the stories that shaped racing. As Mark put it, “Today’s racing is tomorrow’s history. We’re working hard to preserve all of it – even the most recent laps.”

To learn more, visit racingarchives.org or follow @IMRRC on social media. And if you’re in town for a race weekend, stop by the Center—you might just find your own story waiting on the shelves.

Helping the Center

Want to see your name on Watkins Glen’s version of the “walk of fame?” – You can purchase various size bricks and stones throughout the downtown area with your custom commemoration through the IMRRC.

The IMRRC operates largely on donations through physical items, cash contributions and it’s annual sweepstakes. Many of us with large collections, especially consisting of motorsports memorabilia are unsure what to do with those items when we’re moved on from them. The IMRRC is prepared to review them and see if they can be added to the library, or added to their storage. More importantly, the IMRRC raffles off some pretty cool cars each year (or you can take home a $50k payout instead).

This year you have the chance to win a 2024 C8 Corvette E-RAY Launch Edition in silver with blue stripping and matching interior. This car is an absolute stunner! Click here for details on how you can help the center or enter the sweepstakes.

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Talbott’s Moto Museum

Eric M

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August 13, 2023

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Carmel Valley, is home to the Moto Talbott Motorcycle Museum and is well-known by motorcycle aficionados and admirers of mechanical artistry.

This remarkable museum is a tribute to the lifelong passion of founder Robb Talbott, whose fervor for collecting and riding rare and historic motorcycles has culminated into an extraordinary assemblage. – READ MORE.

Jameson Classic Motorcycle Museum

Eric M

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August 13, 2023

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The Jameson Classic Motorcycle Museum is tucked away a couple blocks off the main street in Pacific Grove and is the private motorcycle collection of the recently departed (2022) motorcycle enthusiast, Neil Jameson.

It stands as a testament to the timeless allure of motorcycling. This museum houses a remarkable collection of vintage motorcycles and special exhibits, meticulously curated to showcase the evolution of two-wheeled engineering.

From Vespas and scooters, to Pikes Peak racing bikes and everything in between, visitors are transported through the annals of motorcycle history, tracing the lineage of iconic brands and groundbreaking designs that have shaped the landscape of riding.

Private Garage Tour: Frank’s Place

Eric M

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August 12, 2023

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Frank is a longtime subscriber and supporter of Garage Style Magazine, and the former head of the Carmel Mission Classic.

While visiting with Frank, he takes us on a tour of his fabulous collection and shares some absolutely unbelievable stories about his time in Hollywood and being a member of the LAPD.

Unfortunately, due to a variety of circumstances, the Carmel Mission Classic is no longer able to continue. It had a fantastic seven year run and Frank continues to thank all his friends, sponsors, and participants for the success they have enjoyed.

RM/Sothebys The Lost & Found Collection

Event Recap

Eric M

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August 12, 2023

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RM Sotheby’s unveiled a once-in-a-generation collection of “barn find” Ferraris, aptly named The Lost & Found Collection. Nestled in downtown Speedway, Indiana, across the street from the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway, lay a treasure trove of dormant stallions that have remained untouched for decades, hidden away from Ferrari collectors, restorers, and the public at large, left to gather dust.

At first glance, an unsuspecting observer would never fathom that some of these lost Ferraris have graced the world’s most famous races, such as LeMans, the Targa Florio, and the Mille Miglia. Nor would they suspect that a Ferrari once owned by royalty rests silently in the heart of Indiana. One might naturally wonder how a collection of such magnitude could be consigned to the mercy of time in an Indiana warehouse—that answer lies in Hurricane Charley. – LEARN MORE.

WeatherTech Race Car Show on Alvarado

Event Recap

Eric M

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August 11, 2023

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WeatherTech kicked off Car Week with a classic car show in downtown Monterey. We saw 30 classic race cars lining the 300 block of Alvarado Street (by the intersection of Monterey Conference Center and Portola Hotel and Spa). We also met the drivers of these beautiful examples of racing history while enjoying great music and giveaways.

After the race cars rolled out we headed to dinner at the famed motorsports-inspired Turn-12 Restaurant in downtown Monterey, which is an obvious nod to WeatherTech Laguna Seca Raceway. We enjoyed a great meal surrounded by pieces of motorsports memorabilia.

What Should I Buy? Muscle and Malaise Edition (1964–1982)

Don W

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August 8, 2023

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What Should I Buy? Muscle and Malaise Edition (1964–1982)

Welcome back to another raucous round of What Should I Buy? – the collector car debate where our panel of break-fix petrol heads dig deep into the archives of automotive history to find the perfect ride for a first-time collector. This time, we’re diving into the underappreciated gems of the muscle and malaise era, spanning 1964 to 1982.

Forget the Camaros, Cudas, and Mustangs. We’re Camaro’d out. It’s time to rediscover the unsung heroes – the square-bodied, round-headlight oddballs that make people say, “Where’d you get that?” or “What the hell is wrong with you?” at the next Cars and Coffee.

To kick things off, our panelists: Mark Shank, Don Weberg, Rob Parr, Mountain Man Dan, and Andrew Mason – unpack the meaning of “muscle” and “malaise” in automotive terms.

The muscle era: Big horsepower, bold styling, and raw performance.
The malaise era: Emissions controls, safety regulations, and a shift toward luxury and flash over speed. Think pinstripes, pop-up collars, and Argyle sweaters.

Don reminds us that by the mid-70s, horsepower ratings dropped dramatically, and manufacturers compensated with flashy trim and marketing. The Trans Am of Smokey and the Bandit fame? All show, not much go.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

This episode’s challenge: Find a car that’s not the usual auction block darling. No Camaros, Mustangs, Chevelles, or Challengers. We’re looking for diamonds in the rough – affordable, fun, and different.

Should we go beyond 1982? Should we look internationally? The panel agrees: yes, if the car has American muscle DNA. That opens the door to Jensen Interceptors, ESOs, and other coach-built oddities with big-block hearts.

Shopping Criteria

Our panel of automotive enthusiasts dives into a What Should I Buy? debate, aiming to help a first-time car collector find a unique, attention-grabbing vehicle from the Muscle and Malaise era (1964-1982). With a focus on avoiding typical choices like Camaros, Mustangs, and Challengers, the discussion covers a variety of lesser-known or underappreciated vehicles. They explore options ranging from the AMC Javelin, Ford Fairmont, Chevy Nova, Lincoln Mark IV, to European models like the Porsche 928 and Jaguar XJS. The panel also touches on the potential of these vehicles for modifications, performance upgrades, and overall collectability.

First, I think we have to define “What is a Muscle Car?” and how is a Malaise era car different? What does Malaise even mean? (Don!)
Do we have any exceptions that we can take off the table along with the Camaro, Cuda, Mustangs… ie: Chevelle, GNX, WS6, Viper, etc.
Resto-mods, Swapped Cars, and EV swaps?
Underappreciated or Hopeful classics > Prospecting
Classics for under $50k – Affordable Classics
Classics between $50-100k – Investments

Highlights

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

00:00 Introduction to the Panel and the Challenge
01:58 Defining Muscle and Malaise
03:39 Exploring the Malaise Era
05:00 Shopping Criteria and Budget Considerations
05:56 International Muscle Cars
08:26 Restomods and Custom Builds
18:44 AMC and Other Underrated Classics
20:35 Land Yachts and Luxo Barges
28:24 Ford’s Forgotten Muscle Cars
33:12 The Appeal of Muscle Cars Today
34:47 Young Enthusiasts and Classic Lincolns
35:25 The 79 Caprice Classic and Car Shows
35:54 Pontiac Fiero and Replica Cars
37:23 The Coyote X and Kit Cars
38:58 AMC Rebel and Buick Wildcat
46:18 The Malaise Era and K Cars
48:08 Dodge Daytona IROC RT and Front-Wheel Drive
53:27 Station Wagons and Muscle Cars
57:00 Foreign Cars in the Malaise Era
01:02:37 Porsche 928 and 924
01:04:22 The Quirky Interiors of the Porsche 928
01:05:11 Comparing the 928 to Other Cars of the Era
01:08:26 European and Japanese Malaise Cars
01:08:35 The Jaguar XJS: A European Equivalent
01:11:14 The Mercedes 450 SLC: A Statement of Wealth
01:12:41 The Lotus Esprit and Other European Sports Cars
01:16:52 The Transition to Sportier Cars in the 1980s
01:26:42 The Ford Fairmont: A Sleeper Hit
01:29:35 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix petrolheads are back for another rousing what should I buy debate. Using unique shopping criteria, they are challenged to find our first time collector the best vehicle that will make their friends go, where’d you get that, or what the hell is wrong with you, at the next Cars and Coffee.

Crew Chief Eric: Like most enthusiasts in the collector hobby, we are Camaro’d. Cuda’d and Mustang’d out. It’s time for something new. Time to rediscover the unsung heroes from a period when square bodies and round headlights were all the rage.

Crew Chief Brad: You asked and we answered. From our latest fan poll, there was an overwhelming consensus that our listeners wanted us to come back for yet another What Should I Buy?

This time, hyper focusing on the cars from 1964 to 1982.

Crew Chief Eric: And like all What Should I Buy episodes, we have some shopping criteria. This time, anything goes, as long as it’s not the same old muscle and malaise we’re used to [00:01:00] seeing at our local car shows. Our panel of extraordinary petrolhead panelists It’s our challenge to find our first time collector, something that will make their friends go, Hey, where’d you get that?

At the next cars and coffee

Crew Chief Brad: joining us tonight, our veteran, what should I buy? Panelists, Mark Shank, our nineties expert Don Weyberg from garage style magazine and Rob par from collector car guide, along with special guests, mountain man, Dan and Andrew Mason from the big man in a little car episode. So welcome to the show.

Gentlemen.

Rob Parr: Welcome.

Crew Chief Brad: Good to be here. Now, before we get started, I just want to say that I’ve got a new drinking game. It’s kind of a two part drinking game. Every time Daniel mentions a square body, that’s the first one, and then the second one is every time Eric mentions something Mopar.

Crew Chief Eric: Ooh, interesting.

Crew Chief Brad: So is your goal, Brad, to put people in the hospital tonight?

Crew Chief Eric: We’re all going to be laid out

Crew Chief Brad: as Don mentioned. It’s a pretty big bottle and it’s brand new. So I’ve got a long way to go.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, gentlemen, just like our intro [00:02:00] States, it’s time to talk about mustard and mayonnaise, I mean, muscle and malaise. So what exactly do I mean by muscle and malaise? Well, I don’t know.

You tell me let’s define and turn to our resident experts, Don, Rob, and mountain man, Dan, to tell us exactly what. Those two terms mean in the automotive community,

Don Weberg: you say the word Malaysian think, Oh, Don,

Crew Chief Eric: so Don, we’ve talked about this on a previous episode, but to refresh our audience, what is the Malaysian era really all about?

Don Weberg: Let’s talk about them later. I think that was an era when power was at a minimum because you had what you had a lot of emission control. You had a lot of heavy cars from the safety standpoint. It was a point where, you know, all of a sudden the Dodge charger went from being the Dodge charger to being. A Cordova, you had to make amends with that because you couldn’t market a Cordova that did zero to 60 in 12 or 13 seconds.

That just wouldn’t work. So you had to do what? You had to gussy it up with Argyle sweaters and pop up collars. You had to give it [00:03:00] pinstripes. You had to give it custom trim. You had to give it all kinds of flash to make it look like you were really cool. Take for example, the Trans Am of Smokey and the Bandits.

That was an epic, cool car. But it was not capable of anything that they did in those movies. Nothing that car could basically get out of its own way. It still held his head above water compared to so many other performance cars of the era. But compared to say a 70 Trans Am or a 71 455 super duty, uh, it didn’t hold a candle, but what did it have flash pizzazz.

It was the bright, shiny object that everybody had to have. And the movie helped it do all of that. So that helped us get through there. Somebody here has a drinking game going on. And if there was ever an era for drinking, it was the malaise era.

Rob Parr: Yeah. The weight came on the cars and the luxury was definitely a transition as the years went on from.

Muscle to luxury every year after 72 and actually even 71, they started changing the horsepower ratings to net horsepower from [00:04:00] gross.

Mountain Man Dan: But a big thing during that timeframe up into like the early eighties, a lot of the manufacturers were purposely low balling their numbers. They were putting out an ads to where there were cases where they were taking them from the dealership to a dyno and it was pushing.

10, 15% more power than what they were advertising the vehicles to have.

Rob Parr: And then as time went on, you had a g r, you had other emissions controls, and eventually in 1975, we got the beloved catalytic converter. Of course, everybody cursed like crazy when it came out at 75, 76 were the lowest power cars.

There’s definitely sub 200 horsepower. I don’t think anything, at least on the American side was anything over 200 horsepower.

Mark Shank: There were a few, but you’re right, it was just around there. Right. L82 Corvette was like 220 by the end of the

Rob Parr: 70s. Actually back in the late 70s, it started coming back up again, but it tipped around 75 to 77.

I think the 77, the Z28 came back and of course you had your Trans Am. Like Don said, they got flashier and prettier. And unless you tuned them a little bit, they really didn’t do a whole lot. [00:05:00] So before we

Crew Chief Eric: go too far down memory lane, let’s throw out any exceptions to our general rules. As you guys know, and as our fans know, we try to do this for the first time collector.

So normally we come at this with a Budget in mind, we go zero to 50 grand, 50 grand to a hundred, a hundred to infinity, you know, things like that. But I don’t know that it necessarily applies here because we’re looking for diamonds in the rough. And we already said in the intro that we’re going to avoid the Camaros, the Kudas, the Challengers, the Mustangs.

I would say probably the Chevelles, a lot of their super popular cars that you see crossing every auction block. You see it at every weekend car show. So we’re really looking for something different, something affordable, something fun. Do we need to extend beyond the 1982 limit? Did anybody come up with that as an exception to this?

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve got a question. Do we want to extend beyond our borders too?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: They didn’t screw it up so bad.

Mark Shank: Then you’re talking about Porsche 930s and Skyline GTRs.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, [00:06:00] I mean, I don’t know if… They embody like the muscle car spirit. I don’t know if we want to go down and try and define what a muscle car is.

Every time we do Mark and I end up getting into an argument about something stupid. But

Don Weberg: now at dinner tonight, my wife and I were just kind of doing a little prelim research on muscle car and where the term came from, et cetera. She found something interesting. The first article so far that anybody has found the earliest article that mentions muscle car.

Actually belonged to Jeep and they called it a muscle car in this one article. So now, of course, me being me, I’m on this kick, I got to go find this article, but supposedly it was back in the sixties because it had a big motor. It was actually considered a muscle car. It wasn’t the Chrysler 300. It wasn’t the Oldsmobile.

It wasn’t the Hudson, but yeah, it struck us both. It’s really funny that it was an off road vehicle that first had the term muscle car attached to it.

Crew Chief Eric: So does that predate the GTO? So is there earlier than 64?

Don Weberg: Now, actually, I believe it was 64. Now that you say that, it seems like she said in [00:07:00] her reading, it sounds, I think it was 1964 for that jeep.

So it would be fun to kind of track that down and see, you know, who wrote that, why they write it, et cetera.

Crew Chief Brad: If we extended the borders, I mean, then you can put the Jensen interceptor in there and things of that ilk. They’re not American muscle cars, but they have American muscle car DNA.

Crew Chief Eric: I think that’s okay because they have either small block or big block Chevys or Fords powering them.

So I’m okay with that as a muscle car suggestion. We talked about on the Italian episode, the ESOs. It’s the same thing. There’s a bunch of these Italian coach builders that did American engines. The Pantera is not a muscle car. It’s a sports car. So that’s off the table, right? That doesn’t qualify, but you’re right.

There are some European and even Japanese cars that I think fit into the Malaysia and we’ll probably talk about those as we go along, but I want to make sure there aren’t any other exceptions. There’s a few. I think we can. Immediately take off the table. If we go outside of 1982, that’s the GNX Grand National, the WS6, the Viper, pretty much any [00:08:00] Corvette.

Mountain Man Dan: Quick correction on that. Cause the WS6 actually existed back in the seventies era of the Pontiacs as well. The WS6 was a trim option that had existed since the second gen of, I don’t think they’ve made any first gen, but I know from the second gen on they did.

Don Weberg: And remember to a WS6 really all it was was a handling package to give you.

What they wanted to call the, the Gana experience, right? That was the whole point of the WS six. There was no power increase at all. It was just all chassis. So I don’t know if you wanna go there,

Crew Chief Brad: if we’re gonna nix the G N X, are we gonna nix the TransAm G T A, the turbo V six with the, I guess the, the same motor and the GN X and all that?

Don Weberg: If we’re gonna nix the Grand National, do we also have to throw out Monte Carlo SSS and the Grand Prix? Okay. I knew you would know if anybody has one. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: why.

Don Weberg: Yes. Let me just push that a little further. If we’re going to kill grand national, kill Monte Carlo, kill grand prix, old mobile Cutlass.

Mountain Man Dan: So that’s basically killing the whole G body platform,

Don Weberg: but look what it brings.

And this is up to y’all because we’re pushing kind of far now, because I’m going to bring up a car [00:09:00] that is one of my personal favorite, you guys will laugh. I know Lumina Z 34 and it’s little brother, the Cavalier Z 34, Z 24. But in the nineties, those were considered. The muscle cars, that was it. Unless you wanted to talk about your old guards, Camaro, Mustang, Firebird, et cetera.

Crew Chief Brad: I think we need to pull Don’s card now. I think, I think he has disqualified himself from the discussion.

Mark Shank: We’re like a bunch of medieval scholars arguing about when the dark ages end. I mean, some of these cars, like they’re just too good. Like the eighties made some good cars. Like, I think this is about the audio industry was kind of on its knees.

They’re in a big transition. What are some of those diamonds in the rough? What are some of those things that may be with a little modern technology and assuming you don’t live in California, you can turn into something that’s really cool and fun.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what we sort of have to figure out. And we keep dancing around these cars that are still sort of popular, right?

So if you look at the third gen Camaro, like the Iraq, the [00:10:00] firebirds not too far off. We need to find something a little bit different. I just wanted to know where we taper things off and where the blend line is. And I think we’re still safe, even if we go up to about 85. If we go outside of our stated boundary,

Crew Chief Brad: I think we’re getting too much in the weeds.

I think we nixed the Camaro, the Mustang, the Corvette, and maybe the charger and just everything else is a free for all. If you choose the Chevelle or whatever. Okay. That’s cool. But I think we leave them in. Why not?

Mark Shank: You won’t find any affordable examples, but I take events to the Chevelle comment, but. The Chevelle Laguna, good NASCAR pedigree.

Don Weberg: I mean, look at the Laguna S3. That was a hell of a car. It really was the styling. It had muscle for the day. Come on. It’s a flashy time. You know, I think the Laguna is a great one, but you’re right. Where do we draw that line?

Rob Parr: I think if you go with the lesser versions of the car, the performance vehicles, like going with the Cutlass instead of necessarily going with the 442, going with the Buick Regal versus the GNX, the lower models, because that’s going to fit the budget anyway.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. If we’re going to [00:11:00] take some of the bigger names that you were mentioning, take one that’s a less known car. And GTO as an example, if you get into like the earlier ones before the judge and everything, the mid sixties, and a lot of the guys would find a Tempest or LeMans and make a GTO clone out of them.

And that’s a great way for guys that don’t have the money to go find a numbers, matching GTO. You go find the same, Platform basically, and build the car you want

Andrew Mason: green all wholeheartedly with Dan’s sentiment there that especially when you buy one of those less than, you know, not the GTO, but it is the Lomanzo to Tempest.

There’s no guilt. You’re not going to feel bad if you cut it up to make something fit. I see muscle cars, like kind of two factions. There’s guys who restore and go for period correct. And that’s what they like. And then there’s people who look at it as this is something to be made better and faster. So from the better and faster camp, there’s no penalty to taking something pedestrian and moving it.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think that goes both ways. And that’s a really great point, Andrew, in that you can make a malaise car into a muscle car. And you can probably take a muscle car and make it a malaise car, [00:12:00] adding luxury, adding other creature comforts, adding other things to it that maybe they were devoid of when they were built because they were more sporty.

Right. So I think this conversation. Absent flows in both directions, depending on where you want to take it

Mountain Man Dan: that already exists in a sense for the fact that a lot of those muscle cars become without AC. So there’s companies for the past 20 years that have been making aftermarket AC to put in there. So you can take that muscle car and go for a trip during the summer and not sweat your brains out.

Crew Chief Eric: That power steering, power brakes, all sorts of other stuff. They came out of luxury cars that didn’t exist on the muscle cars. I think it goes both ways.

Rob Parr: Kind of getting into the 80s stuff. We transitioned from carburetors to fuel injection. The cutoff might be just carburetor car. If you want to have a cutoff point, again, it all is going to be based on budgets.

Eric suggested we, I don’t know what our limits are budget wise for an entry level car. That’s another thing we need to determine.

Mark Shank: If it’s expensive, it’s not malaise.

If you have to ask,

Rob Parr: you’d be surprised. I just saw an [00:13:00] auction Fox body Cobra going for 70 grand. I mean, that’s no power. You could get a Corvette for 40 grand. That blows it away. And it makes no sense. So it depends on what the people want. Some of these people are so fixated on the Iraqs and the certain vehicles.

They want to pay more money for them.

Don Weberg: There’s another vehicle that just kind of popped in my head while you were talking about that Fox body Cobra, the 93 Cobra Impala pop back as a, as a full blown hyped out Caprice 260 horsepower for its day. It was really, really amazing. In fact, I remember car and driver motor trend.

One of the two, they compared the S 500 Mercedes. Against the Impala SS 1995, it was an amazing comparison because here you had the highbrow Mercedes with all the luxury and all that crap, but it’s still a fast car. And then you have the Impala, which very fast car with kind of luxurious if you want to call it that.

I hate to say it. The Impala mopped the floor with that Mercedes. That was one of those things they almost didn’t want to publish it because they didn’t want to upset [00:14:00] Mercedes.

Mountain Man Dan: And that particular Impala was only made 94 to 96 and the SS Callaway version of it actually came with a six speed manual, which I’ve always wanted to acquire one of those myself.

Mark Shank: I know Mercedes S500s and Impalas get cross shopped a lot, so I’m sure it was really concerning for Mercedes.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I want to do is pull this back a little bit because Rob touched on something really important. And actually, so did mark, which is 2 sides of the last part of our shopping criteria. 1 is looking at those lesser models or the cousin of, or as Don likes to put it in other terms.

Episodes, the sister to certain vehicles, maybe under a different name with different sheet metal. You could get a variant of the GTO as an example, the old rally 350, which is basically a GTO judge that nobody pays attention to. So those are considerations we need to make. But on the other side, mark hit on.

LS swap the world. And I know this speaks to Andrew, who’s been pretty quiet this whole time, kind [00:15:00] of waiting patiently is resto mods, swap cars, EV swaps. I think all of this stuff counts when we’re talking about the muscle and malaise collector. What do they want to do with these cars? Especially if you’re buying a malaise car for like five grand, it’s going to need some love.

What do you want to do with it? So Andrew, let’s get your thoughts on that.

Andrew Mason: I was going to say built not bar, right? I mean, if you’re on a budget and you want something cool. Who cares what it’s called? Who cares what model or trim it is and what rich guys will pay for it by the cleanest example of something that you can find that has all the trim there that you’re not going to have to spend a lot of money piecing back together.

But if it’s an a body, it’s a G body. It’s a, whatever you’re going to find parts for it. I was going to say 1983, first year of the Fox body. All those parts go back on it. You have a blank canvas is the way I look at these cars. They aren’t terribly exciting as they came for all the reasons that were mentioned, but they’re all just as capable of being modded out and built.

To Eric’s point about not having something like at every car show, I spent a couple of years dreaming of LS swapping a Volvo [00:16:00] 240. Which is just a shoe box on wheels. But if it’s done clean and you get the right wheels, the right suspension, I mean, it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Who cares what it does performance wise.

It’ll be too fast for anybody saying, you know, so that’s my take buy them and build them.

Don Weberg: The nice thing is you’ll be safe in that car. Right. And I’ll send you an Argyle sweater. There you go. Go undercover.

Mark Shank: What about the Mustang too? You can’t argue that that was like a turd. Well, yeah, it was a turd. But if you’re going to be interesting, right, they had the Cobra version.

Like it could be fun. I mean, obviously you’d have to fix it, modify it.

Crew Chief Eric: And so Mark, I will see your Mustang too. Looking for alternatives now. I will pit it against the AMC Concorde.

Mark Shank: I mean, it depends on what direction you want to go. Right. So if we’re going in where Andrew was talking about where, you know, you’re going to build out a muscle car, you’re just looking for a platform or a canvas.

If you’re looking to show up. at Cars and Coffee was just something that people just haven’t seen [00:17:00] before and that you kind of restore and build out mechanically just to make it honestly, I would say more safe. There’s a bunch of different things to work with there, especially from AMC. And so part of that is if you’re going down the Cars and Coffee route, then you’re also looking at volume and how many were made.

So if you look at like a King Cobra or something, they only ever made 4, And because it was so hated. There’s probably, I don’t know, 27 on the road today, you know? So, so there is that angle to play and on the AMC side, they also did a bunch of interesting stuff. Somebody brought it up earlier. I think it was Don, right?

The automotive manufacturers decided this wasn’t a grassroots car culture thing. They just decided because we can’t make cars fast anymore. We’re going to try and make them cool. By pairing them with luxury brands, and so you have like the Pierre Cardin AMC Javelin, you have a Gucci edition Cadillac Seville, an Oleg Kasani AMC Matador.

Crew Chief Eric: There is [00:18:00] never anything cool about the Matador, okay? That’s true.

Mark Shank: I have to admit that’s true, but you have the Levi’s Denim Gremlin. I mean, that was on my list. Like, when was the last time you saw a Levi’s Denim Gremlin? Like, that’s just kind of cool.

Don Weberg: Going to Gremlin, you had a Gremlin with a 304 V8 from the factory. If that wasn’t good enough, there was a dealership in Arizona.

I think it was Randall AMC. They would shoehorn in the Matador 401.

Wow.

Don Weberg: And you talk about a little dynamo of a car. Sounds like death on wheels. That was it. But now you’re talking kind of a Yanko edition for AMC because it was a dealer specialty. It’s like the Celine of AMC. So I don’t know if that would even qualify for this.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it would, but there’s also an AMX edition if we’re going to go down the gremlin road, right? Yes,

Don Weberg: the AMX that was, uh, the Corvettes competitor because it was the only two seat sports car in America and it was half the price.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m not talking about the Javelin. They had AMX edition other AMC [00:19:00] vehicles.

Rob Parr: Yeah, later on in the 70s, they, they brought the AMX name back.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So it was like a trim package then. Yeah. That goes exactly back to what Mark was saying. The Javelin is definitely on my list. I love the way it looks. It’s got these kind of funky haunches, almost like wide body flares. It’s a, you’re not sure if it’s got like a 71 Mach one or what it is when it’s coming at you.

Especially in the AMX guys with the spoiler and the rally wheels and all that kind of stuff. I think those cars are pretty cool. And Brad, so does this count towards the drinking game AMC? Is that like Mopar adjacent or do they stand alone? Uh, I think they sent along. All right, good. I’m going to drink for it.

Anyway,

Don Weberg: Chrysler bought AMC in 87. And here we are talking AMC, which of course own Jeep. That’s the only reason Chrysler bought it was for the Jeep brand.

Rob Parr: AMC actually does fit the budget we’re talking about too. You can get a lot of.

Don Weberg: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: people don’t usually look for those 100 percent and there’s quite a few of these.

So let’s stay on the AMC path for just a moment [00:20:00] before we deviate. So we talked about the Javelin. We talked about the Gremlin. I mentioned the Concorde, which looks a lot like the Mustang two. And if you dress it up a little bit, it’s a great alternative to Rob’s point. Not very well known. Another one that came up on my list as a potential muscle car conversion is the AMC Ambassador 990.

Bigger car. Lines up with one of my other suggestions, but if you kind of take a look at it, you could do something with it. I think it’s kind of neat. If you’re looking for a bit of a land cruiser that you could shove a big motor under the hood.

Mark Shank: I think that’s an interesting category for the group to get into.

Cause then you start looking at some of the Cadillac Eldorados, that whole kind of category of just land yacht, like just embrace the rolling couch. And if you want to drive a couch, then. You have some really interesting options that come out of this era,

Crew Chief Eric: but that’s the other side of the Malays air.

They’re not all sports cars. Let’s say they’re Luxo boats.

Don Weberg: Me being the [00:21:00] Lincoln guy here, the Mark 3, the Mark 4, the Mark 5, all of those were equipped with 4 60s. The Mark 5 had it for 1 year as an option against the 400, which was a pig, but it was a great cruiser. I’ll tell you, you get on any of those cars, they were They really, really can cook because of that big block tons and tons of torque.

Look at those old mobiles and those Buicks with a four 55, you think grandpa going to church in the old mobile 98 with a four 55, that man could get there in five seconds flat because that thing was just, uh, oh. A rocket, but that’s why it was sheer torque. And the funny thing is when you talk about 1978, the quickest, fastest American production car, Dan, you’ll appreciate this.

It was the Dodge Lil Red Express. Oh, you beat me to it. Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to the manufacturer, at least Chrysler figured out, Hey guys, did you know that the truck doesn’t have to meet the emissions requirements, the safety requirements, et cetera, that a car does. They’re very lightweight. If we throw our [00:22:00] 360 in there with a few little tune ups, holy cow, we’ll have a tire smoker for days.

That was their little trick. And of course, here you are with this little farm implement and you’re burning Corvettes transams all day long with a pickup. It was hugely embarrassing. The trick was. You had to be a good driver because all that power to a rear end with no weight on it, that thing just wanted to burn rubber for days.

Dan, am I wrong? You’re the pickup guy here. I mean, come on.

Mountain Man Dan: That was definitely on my list of vehicles to mention. And with any truck, because there’s no weight on the rear of them. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you see all the videos of the Mustangs, you know, going through the medians and hitting people on the sidewalks.

It would have been way worse if cars and coffee existed back in the seventies when the little red express was there.

Don Weberg: Yes. And going back to the pickup conversation of, Hey guys, guess what? If we build a pickup with a really big motor, we don’t have to meet emission standards. We don’t have to meet safety standards.

We can have a really fast truck that we can decorate out and make look really, really cool. It was the same thing with those Luxo barges. Look, we’re catering to the guys who can afford a [00:23:00] 15, 000 coupe. To, you know, tool around in and look important. They can be Frank Cannon for a day. They can afford that 460.

They can afford the 455. They can afford the 472s. They can afford the 500s. They can afford all those big luxury liner engines. You know, what’s more fun than finding a lightweight Matador or whatever and pulling out a big 440, 460, 500 and throwing it in there.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to revisit AMC here in a little bit, but I do want to go back to something that.

Mark mentioned earlier and he, he hit something that I had on my list when we mentioned Chevelle, he brought up the Laguna version of the Chevelle again, talking about these lesser known models, lesser known trim packages. I agree with you, Mark. That was on my list as well.

Mark Shank: That particular model actually came on my radar a few years ago when Chevy, they did a Laguna at SEMA.

And they were doing it as an advertisement for their crate engine business and they had, I think it was a 74 Chevelle Laguna restomodded and built out. And that thing just looked so cool [00:24:00] and like nothing that you see, which, you know, made me kind of look into it a little more. I just thought it was super cool.

And there, I mean, there are some, if you’re looking at kind of. Racing pedigree, you know, the, this was still the before times and NASCAR. And, you know, there’s a little more correlation between these models and what was raced then, you know, in the later years when they totally switched everything around.

Crew Chief Eric: But since you brought up General Motors, I wanted to go back to another John DeLorean special, not the GTO. I want to talk about the Vega.

Mountain Man Dan: Here’s the thing about the Vega. I love the Vegas. They are hardest can be defined anymore because all the quarter mile guys realize, Hey, the V8s on them, they’re lightweight.

You can get down the quarter mile real quick with them, unfortunately, because back when they were built, a lot of people didn’t like them. They were kind of thrown to the side and many of them wound up in scrap yards and stuff. So I would say, even though they’re a less known muscle car, they’re 1 of the harder to find ones right now for like the GMs.

Crew Chief Eric: But I found a solution to that problem [00:25:00] because in watching shows like Rust Valley Restorers and learning about the Canadian versions of GM cars that can be imported into this country very easily because the statute of limitations on, you know, different models doesn’t really exist at this point. You could actually get a Pontiac Astra.

Not the Astra as in like the Vauxhall Astra, it’s A S T R E. It’s the same car, different badges in the same way that did the Bonneville as the Parisian. And they had all these other names, kind of more European sounding names for all these GM products. Once you crossed our border to the north of us. So I looked at that and went, okay, cool.

But also in the shadows is the Monza, right? You could go in that direction as well.

Don Weberg: I thought the Astra was an American car. I thought that was also available here in the USA.

Crew Chief Eric: It was sold here too, but I looked it up and a lot of the sales numbers were higher in Canada, just like the Parisian and a bunch of others.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Canadians are big Pontiac people.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they are.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I think the Vega could be a good one when DeLorean was faced. [00:26:00] With Vega, he wanted to make it a sort of American BMW. General Motors just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. They just wanted to put out a quick, dirty, efficient little car.

The main problem with those cars, if I remember correctly, was their engines would literally have trouble with the aluminum. They would self-destruct, just the mythology would give out on those cars. Another problem that they had was huge problem with suspensions. Literally wheels were falling off the car.

I mean, this is not good stuff by design. I think they were fabulous. And when you brought out the Cosworth, that was another John DeLorean special. He was the one who actually went over there and spoke to those people to build the heads and engineer a hot rod Vega. Now you’re talking about a serious collector car.

I mean, these cars, they were limited production. They were reasonably quick for what they were. Somebody brought up the Mustang two earlier today or early on this conversation. And, you know, if you want a competitor for Mustang to Cobra, I think the Vega Cosworth absolutely outshines the Mustang and I’m [00:27:00] a Ford guy, but that Cosworth Vega was something else.

It was a fantastic little car. And again, on the collective market, just because they’re rare. Just because there’s not many of them and because they have that performance pedigree with, you know, European influence, that is a fantastic car and they’re not overly expensive, even in mint condition. They’re really, really not.

Crew Chief Eric: So since you went there and you’re talking about European influences, do you consider the Capri? Not the Fox body Capri, the German Ford Capri, a muscle car or a sports car.

Don Weberg: No, I would consider it a sporty car. Absolutely. I love the Capri. The original Capri is 69. I think with the first one that they built turned into a hatchback somewhere in the mid seventies.

And then at some point it got turned into a Mustang for Mercury. Which, you know, that’s a whole different conversation, but the original European version of it, I don’t think they’re muscle cars, but I think they’re sporty cars. And they were designed by one of the original Mustang designers, Europe wanted a Mustang, and that was going to be Capri.

It didn’t do anywhere near as well as the American [00:28:00] Mustang did. But it did very well in, in giving Americans an idea of, Hey, wait a minute. We could have a sporty little compact, fun little car, but no, I don’t think it’d be fair to compare that as a muscle car, not at all

Rob Parr: for products. Again, Mercury Cougar and Ford Thunderbird.

Okay. And maybe like even. Toward the Buick Riviera, we’re always transitioning a little bit bigger car, but still lots of performance. And I think that probably would fit into our category, too.

Don Weberg: If we’re going to throw Ford under the bus there to talk about them, I’m surprised nobody’s brought up Gran Torino just yet.

And I’m surprised nobody’s brought up Fairlane kind of goes back to the 60s with the 390s and the 427s in terms of off the radar. Both of those cars are fantastic first time cars because they are kind of off the radar. And let’s face it, when it comes to those muscle cars, when it comes to those performance car, for some reason, Chevy always outshines Ford.

And that pushes their values up a little bit. Usually not always, but usually, and when you talk about grand Torino, or you talk about fair lane, you can [00:29:00] get a really nice bargain muscle car. That again, when you pull up to a cars and coffee, once you get over the starts again, Hutch jokes, you know, they’re a damn nice car.

Mountain Man Dan: So I was going to add on to the European influence, it’s still, it’s Blackhawk, you know, unfortunately, I don’t support that, but I got to throw it out.

Don Weberg: The Elvis car. Now you’re talking my language.

What have you done? What have you done? I knew I liked

Don Weberg: you, Dan.

I knew I liked

Don Weberg: you. He

opened Pandora’s

Crew Chief Eric: box.

Don Weberg: It’s party time, boys. And Eric, we can bring the Canadians in because most of those cars were built on a Pontiac chassis. Just saying. They

Crew Chief Eric: were so, 1st of all, I’m going to ignore the studs comment, because that’s just going to get us into trouble. But there are some undervalued underappreciated Fords. And 1 of them that came to mind in doing some additional research on.

This was the Maverick not to be confused with the new pickup truck. But again, going back to this javelin Vega. Yeah, kind of style of card [00:30:00] that you shoehorn a 3 0 2 in that and give it a little bit more oomph and suddenly you’ve got this muscular vehicle.

Don Weberg: Yeah, and if you wanted to go a little classier, you could always go with the comet, which was Mercury’s sister product to the Ford Maverick.

I don’t know that they didn’t, but I don’t know that they ever had something like the Grabber, but it was the same basic formula, a little 302. You could even get a four speed with those cars.

Crew Chief Eric: So was that the same marketing that they used for the Bobcat? Oh, it’s the Pinto’s more upscale version.

Don Weberg: I got all sweaters, baby.

Brad, take a drink just from your big bottle so we cheer up a little bit over here, will you? There we go. That’s what I’m talking about. You know, I’m not a Maverick fan.

Mark Shank: I struggle. I really do. I prefer the clippers myself. I don’t see the lines on the outside. The interior is bad even for its time. That’s saying something.

Crew Chief Eric: It is. And again, the Javelin is a sexier car if we’re going to go really going to go there. Yes. But the [00:31:00] Maverick. It has potential because you’re right. And what I see in it is sort of like they liked what they were doing with the Capri and then they found a way to make it worse. ’cause it has that sort of Capri look to it.

Especially when you’re looking at the side glass. ’cause it has mm-hmm. the way it kicks back. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just, it’s sort of there. And those, the round headlights, capris ugly sister. To use Adonism, yes. But you know, if you look at her with the right light on the prairie, We drink enough. When it’s last call,

Crew Chief Brad: you’re at the bar.

You need to take over. Just keep

Don Weberg: drinking. It gets easier. You’ll love Maverick after a few of those big bottles like Brad has. You’ll love it.

Crew Chief Eric: That goes just with the whole period though. They’re all sort of slightly terrible. Right. But you got to look at it for the potential. I see this as like we were talking about you shoehorn, uh, Coyote in this.

And suddenly this is an exciting car. Well, then remember too,

Don Weberg: not that I don’t love the Coyote. Believe me, I do. I think that’s a fantastic engine. But in this day and [00:32:00] age, you don’t need that much motor. You really don’t. There are so many great four cylinder turbos. So many great V6 is out there right now that are spinning 400

Mountain Man Dan: horsepower.

When I was stationed out in New Mexico, one of the guys that worked with had a sixties Mercury Cougar. They want to put in a three or two out of a Fox body into it. And then to give it a little bit extra pep, he found one of the Paxman right on to where it didn’t even show from above the hood. It was a nice peppy older car.

You know, he was running skinny 14 inch tires, so it burned the tires off of it every day, but it was fun to take out and ride around it.

Mark Shank: If you’re looking at that kind of Andrew’s canvas perspective, you know, I mean, the Panther chassis launched at the end of the Malays era.

Crew Chief Eric: Did it really? Well, was that the LTD at that point or was that a different chassis?

Don Weberg: That was the LTD.

Mark Shank: LTD, Mercury Marquis in 79 through those years. And you get some two doors. If I had more space. Not to go backwards, but I like the idea of a two door land yacht. It’s [00:33:00] just so obscene. It’s just ridiculous that I need a 24 foot long car with two doors. It’s kind of amazing. It’s like everything that was right about America.

And just

Andrew Mason: on four wheels, what that reminded me of was just why are muscle cars cool? It’s because they don’t look like anything that you can buy today. So if you have something like you said, 22 feet long with seven foot long doors, you can’t buy that anymore. And so you have a completely different car experience by whether it’s fast or not.

If it runs, it’s just automatically something that again, you could drive home and not see anything like it all day long. So. I’d ask why is the first time buyer interested in a muscle car, whether it’s malaise or classic, maybe everyone falls in love with the classic things. I’m sitting with a replica of a Shelby Cobra in my garage.

So like I know about going after the poster child or whatever, 72 Eldorado I saw on the road today. I couldn’t help but stare because. Those lines, those fins, the taillights are all in your face that doesn’t happen anymore. Everything today is built for fuel [00:34:00] economy and, and building 50, 000 of them. If it tickles your fancy, that’s, I think what’s more important than is it a special edition?

Again, I would go for something that’s as complete and mechanically sound as possible for the first time collector and then enjoy it.

Mountain Man Dan: For any of those big land yacht, two door cars, any first time buyers. One of the things I’m going to recommend is check the door hinge bushings because those doors weighing a million pounds.

Would wear out those bushings and it’s just one of those things that’s inevitable to happen. And if you’re parking downhill, hold the handle when you open it, because if not, it’s going to go and it’s going to rock the whole car to the side. Sound advice.

Mark Shank: Do they weigh a million pounds? There was no side impact crash testing.

But

Crew Chief Eric: you didn’t need it because they were all made out of lead. And real steel. It’s like hitting the Brinks truck. I mean, come on.

Don Weberg: I’m going to go out on a limb here a little bit. I don’t know about you guys, but For some reason, thanks to Facebook and thanks to the magazine, a lot of my friends these days are in their twenties and early thirties, and I got to tell you, it’s absolutely amazing talking to some of these guys [00:35:00] because I’m a member of four or five Lincoln mark forums.

Uh, and it’s amazing how many of those guys are in their twenties and then their thirties and they are digging these Lincoln mark. Three, four, five, the six is kind of a lost child, but it has its own cult following. And then there’s a seven, which forget about it. The seven was probably the best car that Ford ever built here nor there.

What amazes me and, you know, in my driveway. You know, Andrew, you brought up your Cobra. I’m going to see your Cobra, and I’m going to match it with a 79 Caprice Classic. Two tone brown with a velour interior and plush carpeting. I seriously have it. It’s sitting in my driveway. It’s my godfather’s car. I bought it brand new.

I inherited it. I’ve loved it ever since I was a little kid. It’s slower than anything. It is literally, I I’ve got a Fiat that I think could probably outrun it any day of the week.

Andrew Mason: Again, it’s, it’s a factory five, but I’ve taken this road and started to a few car shows. I’ll park and leave it. And people look at it and everything like that.

And they ask questions or whatever, but I geek out over like. Uh, mint condition Pontiac Fiero, the [00:36:00] GT. And I’m like, cause again, where do you see it? I know my replica is number 7, 000 something. So there’s 15, 000 of them out there now, but how many legitimate period correct, good condition Fieros are there can’t be that many.

Crew Chief Brad: They didn’t come in good condition from the factory. So I think the answer to that is zero.

Don Weberg: Yeah. And see Brad had a Mark eight. Brad is turning me on right there. That’s right. That

Andrew Mason: was a hell of a car in its day. Incredible car. MN 12 platform was my first car. I had an 89 Thunderbird sc.

Don Weberg: Nice.

Andrew Mason: Do you have five speed or the automatic?

Five speed. Nice. Very, very cool.

Crew Chief Brad: You used to autocross it too. You used to auto. I did.

Don Weberg: That’s how, that’s how I met Eric. I learned to drive in my dad’s market eight . Isn’t that kind of a big car to be out crossing though? The Thunderbird? Yeah. Very. Okay. All right.

Crew Chief Brad: Guys, Don, that’s right. That’s true. Big guys drive big cars.

Don Weberg: I can fit with you, but maybe this is off track. You’ve got a Cobra replica. I’ve always wanted a three 56 speeds to replica, but growing up replicas were kind of shunned. You didn’t have those unless you were a cheap, poor [00:37:00] bastard who couldn’t afford anything and we’re going to make fun of you because we can.

So I always kind of avoided it, but I’ve noticed in recent years, and maybe the. Quality too has gone up so well that that’s what’s forgiven them having a Cobra replica, having a Porsche replica, having even just a kit car that, you know, out of some guy’s head that he designed over a something chassis.

That’s suddenly now very cool. That’s actually okay. Remember the TV show, hard castle and McCormick, the coyote X yeah. Which was, if I’m not mistaken, I was designed to look like a McLaren race car. I remember watching that show. I love that show. I was young, but I remember my dad. And I remember all of his friends, Oh, it’s just a VW.

It’s just a blah, blah, blah. It’s just a, but I kept thinking, I don’t care about how slow or how fast it is. It

Andrew Mason: looks

Don Weberg: so cool.

Andrew Mason: There’s something to say, like if you want to take a fiberglass body and put it on a Fiero or a VW bug, like you said, that’s not all that special. I mean, but a modern kit car is a scratch built tube chassis with.

Fox body or SM 95 suspension,

Don Weberg: serious [00:38:00] cars.

Andrew Mason: And that’s why I said my outlook on this topic would be basically like anything’s a kit car. If you look at it, right, that might be a really good piece of advice,

Don Weberg: you know? Cause the one nice thing about those kit cars too, even the coyote is cheesy as it may have been back in the eighties.

Okay. So it was built on a 69 VW beetle. Guess what guys, you don’t have to smog it because it’s on a 69 VW beetle. So if you can figure out how to engineer a little more horsepower to that, Oh, do I hear echo tech? Do I hear EcoBoost? Do I hear those four cylinder turbos that are being made today? Oh my god, what that little Coyote could do today.

And you don’t have to smog it. You don’t have to do anything with it because it was built in 69 or whenever the Beatles platform was built.

Crew Chief Eric: What was that other kit car that was really popular in the late 70s, early 80s that sort of looked like a Duesenberg? I used to call it as a kid like the Cruella de Villemobile.

Don Weberg: They had the Clemé and they had the Excalibur.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s it. The Excalibur.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Yeah. Matt Houston drove one. Remember? Sorry. I had to bring him up again.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we brought up Luxo boats, we talked about kid cars. I want to go back to Mark [00:39:00] again, because I think he’s right. We could probably wax poetic about the Cadillac Broem and how it could tow 11, 000 pounds and all this awesome stuff and the land out top that comes with it.

But there’s a compromise car. And I said, we were going to revisit AMC again. So I want to throw out for your consideration, the AMC. Rebel.

Don Weberg: Oh,

Rob Parr: yeah. Yeah.

Don Weberg: Oh, totally. Absolutely.

Rob Parr: That was a car that was really under the radar back then. I mean, it was competing against the Chargers and G body GM cars. That was definitely a performer.

Crew Chief Eric: And it fits Mark’s recipe. It’s a big car, two doors, big motor. Are you sure it’s a yacht or are you sure it’s a muscle car? Is it malaise? I think it checks all three boxes. This thing is enormous.

Don Weberg: Eric, there are classifications. There’s Yacht, there’s Super Yacht, and there’s Mega Yacht. So I think the Rebel is definitely a Yacht, okay?

Your Mark 5s, your Mark 4s, that’s a Super Yacht. The Mega Yacht, of course, is the Stuts, which you’re not allowing us [00:40:00] to talk about.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no. Again, in the AMC, there’s so many things. There’s a lot of bad, but there’s a lot of good. And I think that’s the brand that has just kind of been forgotten because they’ve got absorbed into Chrysler years later that people don’t think about it as being a front running American brand.

There’s a couple other cars I want to mention in that camp kind of as we go along, but I want to stay on this train of thought because Rob brought up a car, the Buick Riviera. The Boattail. I love the Boattail Riviera. That being said, so does everybody else, but there’s another vehicle much like the Rebel, especially in its aesthetic, which is the underappreciated and often forgotten Buick Wildcat.

Don Weberg: Yes,

Crew Chief Eric: that was a land yacht.

Don Weberg: It was

Crew Chief Eric: that a mega yacht Don.

Don Weberg: Yeah, I think that’s a mega yacht. Yeah, I think that’s a mega yacht

Crew Chief Eric: and my cousin’s dad had 1 and I tell you what, it was a 2 car garage, you know, nose to tail 2 car. It took up every inch of that 2 car garage, but yeah. Hard top sort of a [00:41:00] fastback had that Riviera look to it.

His was red with a black interior, really cool car. Every time we go over there, you’d be like, ah, one of these days I’m going to fix this thing. If I recall that at a big block in it too. So there’s a lot of power buried in some of these cars too. Like your point, you just look at it and you go, yeah, look at that.

Brick on wheels, you know, what am I supposed to do with this yacht? But I think you can do a lot with it. And it circles back to the point earlier, Dan was saying, you know, the horsepower numbers are 18 percent or 10 percent lower than what they actually are in the dyno. But 10 percent of 180. Let’s do the math.

We’re still under 200 horsepower, but you’re still looking at 6. 6 liters of Detroit iron in a Trans Am as an example. So how much power is actually buried in that motor? A thousand horsepower without turbos, without anything with the proper build.

Don Weberg: And let’s remember Eric horsepower is how hard you hit the wall.

Torque is how far you push the wall. And that’s really what it’s all about. And when you bring in the 6. 6 back into it, the 6. 6 only had, if I remember correctly, it [00:42:00] was either 190 or 200 horsepower. It was very anemic for those late seventies, but for those late seventies, that was damn good power. But it was in the torque that was where that 400 had a lot of gumption.

So off the line, it could really go, but you’re right. The 400 had more potential than almost any other engine in the day.

Rob Parr: The thing about the 400 engine was you could take parts from prior year cars, the heads. You could change all these things around other things that you could put together to build that engine.

Even though it was a late seventies model, you can make it like an early super duty motor. If you had the right part.

Don Weberg: When GTO first was introduced to the media, it didn’t do well, you know, road and tracker motor trend. One of the two did test with it and the performance was not that great. It was kind of poo pooed in the report, Jim Wangers, the marketing guy, as well as John DeLorean.

And there was one other guy involved in this little trickery that they did, but they grabbed the red car. It was a red GTO. They pulled the 389 out and they just put in a 421 because the [00:43:00] 421 visually look exactly the same. And that goes to what you’re saying about the heads and all the interchangeability of those cars.

It was really pretty fascinating what they could do with those

Mountain Man Dan: cars. You didn’t mention the 455 that also came out of them in the late seventies. Which was their big block, which was some point, some leader engine. We don’t

Crew Chief Eric: mention those Dan, because they make us cry because they still only make 200 horsepower with more displacement.

The torque. It’s got tractor torque.

Don Weberg: Yeah. That’s a cam shafts, cam swap away. The last 455 though, for Trans Am at least was 76. That was the last time that they did Trans Am. In fact, I might even be wrong about that. It might’ve been 75, but I think it was 76 that they had that.

Rob Parr: You’re right. It was

Don Weberg: 76. And that for 76, come on, you’re still putting out a four 55.

Who else was doing that? Nobody.

Rob Parr: You look at the four 55 and those will be able to through 75 as well. They use that bigger engine because they had to make up for the lack of power in the smaller motors. That was the key thing about the malaise period. Then

Mark Shank: wasn’t it the Trans [00:44:00] Am four 55. I mean, it was making good power up through 74.

It was like the last one. Like the 74 455 made almost 300 horse.

Rob Parr: If you have the same model, that’s true. But the, the lesser ones didn’t have as much power.

Don Weberg: You still had a four 55. I mean, my God, it’s incredible to me to think in those mid seventies and a trans am they’re putting out the four 55s that, that to me, you know, Ford had the four 60 Chrysler had the four 40, you know, Brad, you’ve got a picture of a Cordova up there and I’m really glad because I don’t want to go there now, unless you guys want to.

I

Crew Chief Brad: want to say that my grandmother had. Like Cordova, and she used to race people from traffic light to traffic light all the time. Pretty slow race.

Don Weberg: I’ll tell you, you know, if you knew how to use them, they weren’t all that bad. I had an aunt who had a Cordova, and she also had a Magnum, and she was a drag racer.

And I’ll tell you, that girl could really lay it down with those two beasts. But you had to know how to use them. And let’s face it, you probably couldn’t do what you were doing much with straight from the factory. You had to do a [00:45:00] few tricks to it, but they could move, but somebody brought up these limited editions.

What about the Dodge Magnum XC and what would GT? And it was 1978 and 1979. And that was all they built. And the whole reason for it was aerodynamics for NASCAR, because that Cordova. And the Dodge Charger, which was based on the Cordova, look at that nose. There’s nothing aerodynamic about that nose. So when you put it on a NASCAR circuit, it’s fighting wind the whole time it’s out there.

The Magnum had a little bit more of that laid back look on that front end to try to help the air go over it. It also had a higher rear end to help downforce and the Magnum was hugely underrated. But the biggest engine was a 400. And that was only in 1978, 1979, the biggest was a 360 and it was a 360 police interceptor, which was respectable where they found the 360 interceptor with a better performing magnum was a 360 weighed less than the [00:46:00] 400 and yet it produced.

Almost as much power is the 400. So there was kind of a nice trade off, but you didn’t have that bragging rights. If I’ve got a 400 6. 6 liter, no, now you’re down to what is a three 60? I don’t know if it’d be 5. 9 liter. Tremendous card.

Crew Chief Eric: I think you guys are right. I feel like the malaise era is riddled with experimentation.

We’re trying new safety things. We’re trying new admissions things, you know, are we doing mechanical? Are we doing throttle body? Are we staying with carburetors? Are we doing luxury? We’re not, it’s all this hokey pokey and it lasted for like forever. And then what people forget is during the malaise era, the K cars were also born because we started to shift into the compact market at the same time, because.

The United States is the only one still building these big cars. Whereas the Europeans had shifted to the compacts and subcompacts. I do want to talk about the K cars a little bit, only because you brought them up, Don, at the beginning. And you’re right. Oh, blame

me. Thanks [00:47:00] always.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned the 2. 2 liter turbo charger, which shared the name and that’s about it with the original charger, but it was the Daytona, the charger, the laser, they had 16 names for this thing, but you also had Shelby getting his hands in this, just like he did with the Omni creating GLHS versions of those cars.

So sort of muscly, but sports cars, I’m not sure what to classify them as. But interesting, just the same. And I know it’s now the drinking game if I mention a Dodge product. So here we go. I like the Daytona IROK RT. They came later, the much wider car where they finally sort of got it right before they said, okay, we’re done completely.

That’s another car. Despite it being front wheel drive would have loved to have that been rear wheel drive would have been a great candidate in today’s world of hack and slash type of car. Maybe tub the rear out, make it rear wheel drive. Put something in there. Now you got this cool looking body with a really, really neat underpinnings.

Mountain Man Dan: [00:48:00] Downfall to that is during that transition, they were starting to make a lot of the car’s unit bodies and a lot of the unit body stuff won’t hold up to the power.

Don Weberg: Remember too, when the IROC came out for Chrysler, not Chevy, when the Daytona IROC came out, the first ones still had the flippy headlights.

The second generations had these oval open headlights. Those are the super, super rare ones, and nobody knows what they are outside of the Chrysler world, but those things were absolute demons. And to your point about front wheel drive, the original. Idea of the IROC RT was all wheel drive that last Daytona, they considered very hard, make it an all wheel drive car.

So you have the 2. 2 liter, the turbo, the intercooler. It was a 222 horsepower beast. It would spank Mustangs. It would scare the hell out of Corvettes all day long. The only Achilles heel was where the piston goes up and meets kind of the top of the head. You need to install an O ring up there because you’re blowing head [00:49:00] gaskets all day long on that car.

And I don’t know what that was, but I just remember everybody I’ve ever known with the IROC RT had to do an O ring at the top of the cylinder to alleviate pressure. Once you did that, you had a bulletproof performing car, but again, front wheel drive. But their goal initially was let’s do an all wheel drive.

Let’s do a swan song. What killed it was it’s going to be too expensive to do it. And. Why do that when we have the stealth?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, we know how that turned out, so.

Mark Shank: I don’t know. I’m a fan of the Dodge Stealth. Like, I mean, come on. It’s cool. It’s a cool car.

Don Weberg: A very cool car.

Mark Shank: For a Mitsubishi. Back in the day, I did like the 3000 GT.

I’ll take anything into the 90s. Just give me half a chance.

Crew Chief Eric: The K cars are what they are. The Aries is never going to be a muscle car. It doesn’t matter what you do to it. Now, if you show up to a Cars and Coffee with a fully restored Aries K car, I mean, I’m going to pat you on the back and say, good for you.

Because I don’t know the last time I saw one of those.

Don Weberg: You know, guys, it worked for Ed [00:50:00] Rooney. I think it should work for us.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like that Seinfeld

episode, John Voigt’s LeBaron.

Don Weberg: John Voigt’s LeBaron. That’s right. John Voigt had one. Ed Rooney had one. These are the ultimate. People that we want to hitch our stars to, you know, we want to hitch to them.

And now, you know, you’re right though, when you come with the Omni, the GLHS, even just the GLH, that was a hell of a performer. That early charger, you’re getting into precursors. You’re getting into experimentation. You’re getting into what can we do with four cylinders? You know, in that same era, remember Ford had the 2.

3 liter with the turbo going in the Thunderbird, going in the Cougar, going in the Mustang. I don’t know what GM had going on.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s another Dodge that we’ve forgotten about, so I gotta walk this back a little bit. So if we rewind the clock and go, there’s the dart. Always kind of forget about the Dart and not the 2016 Dart that Brad loves so much.

I’m talking about the sixties and seventies Dodge Dart, and there were a lot of cool packages for that. There were some RT packages. There was the Stinger package. I often say the swinger package. You never know. [00:51:00] There was a lot of other things that the dark came available with, and it also came with different motors.

You know, you see them every once in a while, but they’re not as prevalent as some of the other cars that are out there.

Don Weberg: True. And they did. And you’re right. They’re understated. They’re underscored. They came with some great motors. I mean, they, they could be everything. A Charger or a Cuda could be no problem.

But if you really want to get weird, I’ll get weird with you.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay.

Don Weberg: Oh, yeah. Here we go. You ready? Oh, shit. You ready? The Dodge Aspen Roadrunner Package. Oh! 1973, 1974, baby. Yeah, bring it. Bring it. Stripes galore bucket seats with some sort of wacky thing and the upholstery going on a console shift and this thing couldn’t get out of its own way.

It made Mustang twos look fantastic. It also had

Crew Chief Eric: that goofy oblong steering wheel, like reminiscent of something French was completely terrible interior as well. Oh

Don Weberg: yeah, they were horrible cars, but Dart has more. Panache, yeah. More respect than the vale Aspen. Oh God. [00:52:00] And certainly that roadrunner. And you know, again, in that same era, and I know we’re not supposed to go there, but Pontiac Ventura brought out the G T O package for 1974.

Love it or hated. I mean, there they were. It was the seventies, man. They were, they were trying to relive the old days, the golden days. And the only way they could do it was with a bunch of stickers. You talk about rare. And again, going back to what I was saying about all those friends of mine on Facebook are in their twenties and thirties, they dig this stuff because they’re not out there.

You pull into a cars and coffee with one of those. Velari Roadrunners or Aspen Roadrunner. Believe me, you’re going to get laughed at, but you’re also going to get a lot of respect because that car, when I went to the last time he saw one, they couldn’t have built too many of those cars.

Crew Chief Eric: So another one that they didn’t build too many of that speaks to me from a racer perspective.

Hope my racer aficionados here will appreciate this going again in this weird Mopar camp, if we consider AAMC in that same village. What about the spirit? And I bring up the spirit [00:53:00] because Lynn St. James raced one and you can shove a V8 in that thing.

Don Weberg: That weird looking thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a hatchback

Crew Chief Eric: sort of Chirac looking thing.

Yeah.

Don Weberg: I was waiting for a convention Eagle. Yeah. They had the four wheel drive at one point. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that was the Eagle, the off road.

Don Weberg: I know, but same body. Wasn’t

Crew Chief Eric: it? They’re very similar. They’re very similar. Yes.

Mountain Man Dan: The Eagle came in a wagon. I had an uncle that had

Crew Chief Eric: one when I is a great segue because this is the high point in wagons.

Mountain Man Dan: I will agree.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? Any of these cars that we have talked about thus far is available in an estate or wagon version. So if you’re a wagon, long roof society nerd, like I am, this is where you go. I mean, outside of the brown Volvo 240, this is it, man. This is Nirvana when it comes to To station where

Mark Shank: it certainly was when they sold the most wagons because they had not yet invented the minivan.

That’s right. But I mean, the CTSV was peak wagon.

Crew Chief Eric: It was peak wagon only because you got to look at the rest of the wagons. I mean, if you’re putting it against the Subaru Outback, I mean, [00:54:00] yeah. Okay. You know, I’ll take

Mark Shank: your eagle sport wagon against the CTSV

Mountain Man Dan: wagon. I will agree for modern wagons, the CTS V wagon is hands down great.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a muscle car. I mean, let’s be real, right?

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. 6.

Don Weberg: 2 liters of pure

Andrew Mason: pain. The HSV Commodore has something to say to that CTS V. I’m just going to put that out there.

Crew Chief Eric: 100 percent.

Andrew Mason: My daily is a Chevy SS, so I’ve been fascinated by the Holden. Put the LS in any form factor you can name. Two door, four door, wagon, you, if you want it and you want it supercharged, they make it.

They had the right idea, too bad we couldn’t get more of them.

Don Weberg: You know, if we can go back in time a little bit, not to take away from your Holden SS or your AMC, whatever the hell it is you’re talking about over there, Eric, Brad has an interesting car behind him there. That is a, uh, believe a 68 Ford Country Squire LTD wagon, full size with the wood, and a lot of people didn’t know this.

You could get those with the 428 and even the 429. If you wanted one. Now, this was a funky [00:55:00] little area. You guys brought up station wagons. Chevrolet also had the Brookwood, which was also available with something big. I don’t want to say 427, but it may have been a 427. Chrysler, of course, had their 440s in the Dodges and the Plymouth.

But here are these wagons in a straight line. God help anything trying to race one of these things. Because again, Cure tour all day long. Yeah. They weighed a bit, but they actually didn’t weigh all that much. So yeah. Isn’t it interesting when you go station wagon hunting, you can really get some pretty cool muscle cars out of a station wagon just by the engine.

And okay. AMC, Eric, I don’t know much about that little wagon behind Mark, but could you get the three Oh four. Or the 401, or any of those muscular AMC engines in that they did have an inline six

Mark Shank: that has its own kind of pedigree to it all by itself, right?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the same inline six that was used in the Jeeps and all that stuff.

So that’s a bulletproof [00:56:00] engine. So let’s not knock that straight six because it is what it is.

Don Weberg: Let’s talk about Oldsmobile 303 V8. That car dominated NASCAR for a long time until Hudson came out with an inline six that had 10 more horsepower. Did you just say Hudson?

Mark Shank: I did. What generation are we in again?

You got to roll in the district cruiser.

Rob Parr: Oh God.

Don Weberg: Windows everywhere.

Rob Parr: You have to remember the translucent roofs on the VM wagons from the late sixties and early seventies. They had their little Alexa and roof panels and they weren’t real glass. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Don Weberg: Okay, I always thought they were glass.

Crew Chief Eric: You take a Caprice, also known as the Malibu station wagon.

You can make a little hot rod out of that too, if you want. So there’s some options there in the Malaise period.

Don Weberg: You can get a lot of car in a wagon. You buy a nice long roof, you’ve got something that shows up at Cars and Coffee with some respect. I don’t know about the AMCs, Eric, you might? Good luck. Uh, but, you know,

Crew Chief Eric: let’s go across the pond because [00:57:00] Brad mentioned it.

There are some foreign cars in the Malaise area that really do kind of capture the essence of the Malaise era. And they’re not just the, you know, the muscle derivatives like the ESO and the Jensen and some of the cars that we talked about. There’s 2 that come to mind. I’m wondering if you guys can guess what they are.

Don Weberg: What?

Crew Chief Eric: Right in

Crew Chief Brad: the stepping.

Don Weberg: Oh my God. Seriously? Gordon Keeble. It’s English. It had a 327 under the hood, 4 speed. It was from a Corvette. It was incredible. And then of course you had the Iso Revolta, which was a sexy little car, looked like a little Maserati.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought you were talking about some one term British parliamentarian or something, like you know, obscure facts.

It looks like a Peugeot.

Mark Shank: It’s not Malaysian, 64 to 67.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s not even muscle car, right? It’s sort of like just whatever one of the other ones that I’m going to throw out for you guys to chomp on if we’re talking foreign cars, and I think it captures the essence of malaise from the Island of Japan, the Nissan 280 [00:58:00] ZX.

Mark Shank: That’s a little bit of a hot take. I like that. I like where you’re going,

Crew Chief Eric: right? You want something different? You want something foreign? I hate to say it’s in this awkward phase of the Z, but it exemplifies malaise as far as I’m concerned. It’s overly luxurious. The performance isn’t that great, but you could turn it in to its muscly predecessors by beefing it up, dropping some of the weight.

It is a two plus two. That’s part of its disadvantage when they came out with the 280 ZX. I

Don Weberg: am a great defender of the two 80 zx. I really am big shock, right guys? Yeah. Uhhuh, . Big shock. Yeah. Okay. But I, I’ll just say this one thing in Defend to the two 80 zx, it’s ugly.

Mark Shank: I mean, look, my dad had a two 40, I owned a three 50 z I love Z cars.

That’s an ugly car.

Crew Chief Eric: It screams malaise, though. Look at it.

Mark Shank: You’re right. You’re right. 100%. But it doesn’t have the redeeming qualities of some of these cars where you’re like, I like the lines. I like the stance. [00:59:00] It’s got good bones. Just rip out the emissions equipment and pull its head out of its own ass.

Don Weberg: You can’t fix that. No, you can’t fix what it looks like. You’re right. It doesn’t excite you when you look at it. It doesn’t say, wow. But on a performance level, I’ll tell you something. That car was only beat by one other in zero to 60 quarter mile. And that was the Ferrari 308, the Porsche and it were neck and neck.

It was an incredible performer. I was shocked. And when you consider the price, it was the cheapest of that entire. Flock, it was only 17, 000 in 1981 for the turbo great performer really, really is. And I think largely what you’re saying, because it is kind of ho hum because it is kind of mass produced because, and I hate to say it, but it does still have that Japanese sort of stigma attached to it.

You can still get one for a veritable bargain. So for our listener who might be thinking about, I want a first time performance classic, maybe not a muscle car. I don’t think it’s fair to call it a muscle car. I think that’s a serious [01:00:00] contender for the era.

Mark Shank: I give it credit from the perspective of I put myself in the position of somebody in 1981 looking at this car and like as a car person, I can point out some of the proportions and some of the things that I don’t like, but damn.

Does this thing look like the future in a lot of ways? And you’re like, okay, I have a hard argument to make that it’s cheaper than like the car that came out in 84, the 300 ZX, which is just a much more sorted car. I think both of these things are fully depreciated. They’re just worth the value of the metal and the fact that it’s a running automobile and however well the person has maintained it to that point.

I realized that I wouldn’t call the 300 car. By any means, but it’s kind of the point, you know, it’s like, if you’re going to get a Z, you’re dealing with thrust and all kinds of other stuff with that generation of cars. And it’s like, if you’re going to deal with that kind of pain, just get a two 40 or just get a 300.

I don’t know. You [01:01:00] struck a chord with me because I do love Z cars. So I get a little

Mountain Man Dan: opinionated. Two forties were horrible with just falling apart with rust. And I didn’t know if they’d fixing that with a two eighties. So that would be an issue. We’re trying to find one is if they were as bad as the two forties with rust issues.

Don Weberg: And again, if you do find one, it brings up that cool conversation point at cars and coffee of, wow, I haven’t seen one of these in a long time. How’d you find it? Where’d you find it? How do you like it? You know, and, and at this point too, you know, they say time heals all wounds. Okay. Mark, you can’t get away from, I’m not going to say it’s ugly.

I disagree with that, but it isn’t an exciting looking car. It’s not something that really, wow. I got to have one of those, you know, for some reason, the Japanese cars, I still don’t think they’ve quite figured out how to make a. Oh, look at that. You know, you’ve got lexus out there with these freaked out front ends and these weird little haunches And and I think really they’re just like how weird can we go here guys?

But yeah mark, you’re right the 300 there’s e31 that first edition. That was a much better car [01:02:00] Then the 280, which was still trying to be a 240, but it wasn’t, it was trying to be a luxurious car. It really did work for 1981. It was a great car.

Crew Chief Eric: So I struggled in my research to find foreign vehicles that really fit the definition of either a muscle car or a malaise car.

And so obviously the 280ZX fits the category of malaise. It was built in the right time. It has that luxury over performance thing, despite its aesthetics and all that. There are two other cars. That I found, but not much else. And please, if you have some suggestions for European or Japanese by all means, but I’m going to throw these out there for you, the big baddie.

The muscle and malaise car of the era, whether you look at it from under the hood, from the outside, from its interior is going to be the granddaddy of them all the nine 28 followed by its littlest sister. The 924, both of these cars scream middle seventies. They exemplify the malaise. They’re probably the only true malaise cars from the [01:03:00] German manufacturers or the European manufacturers as a whole.

So I’m just throwing those out there. It’s

Mark Shank: fighting, fighting words. Bring it, bring it. Everybody loves the hate on the 924. That’s an easy one. I mean, if you look at the history of the 924. Porsche didn’t intend to make that car for themselves, right? It was a consulting gig that VW walked away from. And so they said, screw it.

Fine. We’ll make it. And the 928. Yeah, I have to take issue with that. So we’ve talked about in other episodes that like the greatest nineties car is a Dodge Viper from the two thousands. Like some things cross their decade. And I would say the 928 is an eighties car and they. Launched in the seventies and they made it to the mid nineties, but it is a quintessential eighties car, like when you look at it and like, yeah, okay.

I mean, in 85 with the 32 valve, it kind of a lot better in the late seventies. They had challenges, I guess, homologating it, you know, getting it through into the United States, you know, which they didn’t really fix until 85. But [01:04:00] fair for people to disagree with me. I don’t think of the nine 28 as a malaise car.

Crew Chief Eric: See, I beg to differ four and a half liters that made no power, even though it was better power than everybody else. I mean, from a German perspective, it was an underperforming engine. It’s so get the gray market, like import one, like bring it in through the Harbor, the best night. Early 928 is an LS swap 928.

I’m just going to say it. But if you’ve ever sat in an early 928.

Mark Shank: No, I can’t say I’ve sat in a seventies 928.

Crew Chief Eric: They reek of the Malaysia era. Not in the way the Americans did it, where it was like, we’re going to put gold leaf and it’s all sorts of trim everywhere.

Don Weberg: That’s.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it was like big, you know, just knobbly, nasty, just big buttons, like something out of like a play school, you know, cozy coop kind of thing like a big, a big gig.

Exactly. And then they have like, he’s just God awful interiors and some people love him. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a big fan of like the Pasha. Sort of houndstooth, sort [01:05:00] of checkerboard interior, or the blue jean, or some of these weird tartans that they were trying to come out with.

Mark Shank: That’s just cool though.

Come on. You can just get leather. Don’t be poor. Get leather. I think it’s hilarious that you’re saying the original 928 interior was bad. Have you looked at the interior pictures of every other car we’ve talked about tonight? Oh, they’re horrendous. By comparison, the

928’s amazing.

Mark Shank: Of

course it

Crew Chief Eric: is.

Because it’s a fortune.

Crew Chief Eric: But no, in all seriousness, I also bring up the 928 because if you listen to the interviews with the early designers of the 928, they said they took their inspiration from all things the AMC Pacer, right? So you’re sort of like, ah, so here we are. That’s

Mark Shank: it. My background is a 1978 928 interior. Is it perfect?

No. Is it 10 times better, like add a zero better to every other American car from 1978? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew Mason: Are those AC vents on the door?

Yes.

Andrew Mason: They

Mark Shank: did that for a while. [01:06:00]

That’s luxury, baby.

Mark Shank: That’s amazing. It’s personalization. That gives you that cockpit. You were a

fighter pilot,

Mark Shank: and that’s your personal, you know, air device.

I wouldn’t fit in that, but it looks great,

Mountain Man Dan: Mark. I think you picked one of the better looking pictures because I’d pulled that up and was looking at, and there’s a bunch of them on here to the just, maybe it’s just the color schemes that just, I don’t know. They just don’t do it for me. Oh yeah.

Mark Shank: I mean, they do some crazy stuff though.

The whole black and white like Salvador Dali interior, which that’s just my name for it. That’s insane.

Mountain Man Dan: Am I correct? I’m looking at that, that the handbrake is actually next to the door.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. It’s that way in the 944 as well.

Mountain Man Dan: Interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: And even the C4

Mountain Man Dan: does that.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. And my jeep, the handbrake is a pedal on that side too.

It’s like, not uncommon.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, I’m used to handbrakes being in the center. That’s, that’s what

Crew Chief Eric: threw me off. Yeah. It’s, it’s different. It’s weird. It gets in the way of moving the seat too. It’s super annoying. Yes, exactly. Dart’s got

Mark Shank: it. I’m ready for

Don Weberg: my malaise.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh,

Don Weberg: yes, I [01:07:00] own one of the gentlemen

Crew Chief Eric: that was made out of an old nine 28.

That’s what he’s not telling you.

Don Weberg: And it tastes awful. I’ll tell you. Tastes awful

Crew Chief Eric: balls. Yeah. So yes, to Dan’s point, you pick the nicest representation of a nine 28. Go find like the Daytona interior or go find the Pasha interior. Go find like the pumpkin interior. Like dude, they’re ridiculous. Like psychedelic.

Nonsense.

Don Weberg: I love the posh interior. I do. There, there, there, there. Mark has it right there.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like a, like I’m in a psychology exam. It’s

Mark Shank: trippy. It’s trippy. There’s no accounting for taste. Like some people, they did enough drugs that they thought that was cool. It was the seventies. There was disco.

Mountain Man Dan: You’re still picking one that looks decent. Go with the tan interior with the black and white checker center. And it’s just. It just doesn’t go together.

Rob Parr: I was going to say, we’re in the Twilight Zone with that interior. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: terrible. It’s terrible. And again, it’s these big, just chunky, funky, everything is just for German standards.

It’s just, yeah.

Don Weberg: And if I’m not [01:08:00] mistaken, correct me if I’m wrong, but the Pasha 928, wasn’t that only available one year?

Crew Chief Eric: It was like a special edition.

Don Weberg: And again, it kind of goes right back to what I was saying originally, which is flash and panache.

Yeah.

Don Weberg: Where’s the glitter? You know, we’re not going to go real fast.

We know that, but we don’t want you to think about that. We want you to think you’re in a really cool car. You know, I’m a 928 guy. I’ve always loved 928. I got nothing against 924. I think they’re fine cars. Weird, but they do their job. If I can shift gears here a little bit on you, Eric. You wanted to go across the pond and talk about some, uh, European and Japanese malaise crap.

I’d like to bring up the X J S

Crew Chief Eric: that is a good point

Don Weberg: to me is the European equivalent of a Cordova it’s got its fine Corinthian will tonight, leather, whatever would everywhere. It has flying buttresses out the rear end. It doesn’t run worth crap. A lot of people argue with me about that. I love that. But that.

It’s like me saying Fiat’s are reliable.

Crew Chief Eric: They run really well. [01:09:00] If you go to Jags that run. com because they’re all Chevy swap. They’re amazing. 50s. Yeah.

Andrew Mason: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s where we bring Andrew in on there. I’m just looking at the XJS now and I’m looking at it and seeing all this like kind of rear weighted swept B pillar back to the tail lights.

I’m like, I’m seeing Chevelle. I’m seeing classic what I consider to be muscle car lines. There’s nothing wrong with that. You may have to put. Everything underneath it may have to get replaced, but again, I’ll say it one more time, you buy a classic car because it looks like a classic car. You’re not buying it because it’s more luxurious.

It’s got better features. Nothing’s going to work the way a modern card is, but it’s going to be different. And there’s a great example of if you’re willing to put the work into it, that’s pretty damn cool.

Don Weberg: It goes back to when you roll into a carton coffee and you’ve got an XJS, especially an early one, holy cow, you’ve got gold.

You really do, because nobody sees these cars anymore. And remember, kind of like the 928, this car stretched from…

Andrew Mason: Forever. 75 to 96. The

Don Weberg: [01:10:00] 96, yeah.

Andrew Mason: 21 years.

Don Weberg: Yeah, this car had longevity, just like the 928. And this is the other one I was going to throw out there. Now this one almost anti Malaise, it really is.

But I was going to throw in there with the Jag, the six series BMW. But you look at the eight series BMW, those things are going psychotic on the used market right now for a really prime example, and yet built right alongside of them, there was the XJS. They were right there and they do not command the same amount of money.

Going back to those friends of mine who have them, have had them, once you sort them out and if you drive them, that’s their biggest enemy is people don’t drive them. If you drive them and if you sort them out, they’re actually really, really good cars. But everyone says the same thing. Avoid the 12, go for the six.

It’s just a much better car all the way around. It was more modern. So you’re losing that seventies news that we’re all talking about that we all love, but if you want something you can drive every day and not worry about too much, the six cylinder is your best friend. If you’re just looking for that malaise.

[01:11:00] I am in your face 100%. Go with the 12, but you got to be able to afford it.

Crew Chief Eric: And the best recommendation I’ve ever been given about buying a Jag is make sure it has a lot of miles because then you know it actually ran. Yes.

Don Weberg: Yes. I’ve heard the same thing. The 450 SLC, it was the most expensive car Mercedes built.

In the mid seventies, it was the father of the 3 the 5 60 sec, but it looked like a 450 SL that had been stretched, but it was their ultimate car. It was their most expensive coupe. It is a coupe. It has a long hood. It’s a 4. 5 liter V eight. It has some muscle to it, but not enough to really do anything. It was hugely expensive in its day.

I think they were 29, 000. If I remember correctly, that car screams F you money in the seventies. It screams. I have no taste whatsoever. They’re totally insulting. And on today’s market, they’re just starting to see a little uptick in their value [01:12:00] that for one of these listeners of ours with their thought of, I want to buy a first time car, I really think your XJS and your SLCs.

Those are really kind of the ultimate statement of I’ve made it in the seventies and boy, do the cars suck and they’re still cheap. You can get them in the, they are the SLCs, even in mint condition. They’re not all that much money. And you know, it’s a Mercedes. You can get parts for it anywhere. Pretty much anybody knows how to work on them.

They don’t break easy. They go pretty well. And like Eric was saying about Jaguar. You know, if you buy them with high miles, you know, that it’s earned it’s salt. It’s gone that far.

Crew Chief Eric: Never buy a low mileage Jag.

Don Weberg: How do we feel about Esprit? Esprit was born smack in the middle of the beginning of it. And that is a car that’s very similar to some, just like the Jaguar, just like your Pasha interior.

It’s a love it, hate it car. 007 made it the new Ashton Martin. I

Crew Chief Eric: think we have to take the wedge cars out. The 928 fits both [01:13:00] categories, muscle and malaise, because it was a German muscle car. The Esprit is still a sports car. It’s mid engine. It’s a wedge car, but you hit on something important. You mentioned Ashton Martin, and if you go back to.

Like the Persuaders with Roger Moore driving that V8 Vantage Aston Martin. It’s similar to the XJS that you’re referring to. I actually like the look of that car. It has that kind of Mustang ish feel to it. Now, granted that’s going to take our collector into that stratosphere because that’s going to be a six figure car.

They are super cool.

Don Weberg: And I think that’s where the Jag is really a strong contender. Even the 928, you know, even those cars are starting to get a little bit. Pricey for what they are, they’re joining the eight series BMW, but the Jag is still flatline. And if you, okay, forgive me, cause this is getting nineties this year, but if you really want a better car all the way around the XK eight and the subsequent XK was a fantastic car.

Now, a lot of people will throw at me. Oh, it’s a Ford. Yeah. That’s great. [01:14:00] Throw me an XJS, throw me an XK, tell me which one is the better car. It’s the Ford. Okay, so get over it. Get out there and enjoy your four dwar.

Is that like a boudoir? What is that?

Don Weberg: Boudoir.

Yeah. Come ride in my

Don Weberg: four dwar. Four dwar. And don’t bring the Grey Foupon, bring mustard.

Your blue label with just mustard on it. Better yet, bring little packets of mayonnaise from Jack in the Box or something. Seriously though, I think for Malays, I think if you want the ultimate European Malays, I really wonder if that XJS is not the beast.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m starting to come around on that. I think the 920 is in the muscle car category for sure.

It’s a close second to this though, but this I think probably takes the cake.

Don Weberg: It’s so, I don’t want to say gaudy. Personally, I always thought it was a beautiful car. I really did.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the version that Mark has up with the covered headlights. I always thought that was the best of all of them. Yeah.

Don Weberg: Yeah.

The European that’s the first gen those wheels, et cetera. Yeah. They were magnificent

Mark Shank: cars. I think the British tend to get the look right the first [01:15:00] time. And then they just screw it up from there.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Their evolution is wrong. F type. Like it just looks

Mark Shank: worse. The time goes on to get

Rob Parr: a

Don Weberg: convertible version.

Also.

Mark Shank: That’s true.

Don Weberg: Yes.

Mark Shank: Yeah. They were beautiful without their top. Are

Crew Chief Eric: we still talking about cars?

Mark Shank: No comment. I mean, if we’re going, if you’re going European, the Ford Granada, Gia, good car just died. Moving on. Moving on. No,

Crew Chief Eric: I want a car that’s named after a weapon of somewhat destruction. The

Don Weberg: Granada is a perfect one.

Gran Torino, Cordoba, all these posh names. You know, it’s like those cheesy, I don’t know how well you guys know LA. I’m sorry. I’m from LA. So there’s a place we have called the Valley, the San Fernando Valley. And for the most part, it’s a pit. But you can get anything in the world you want in this pit.

Every sense of humanity is in the pit. In fact, there’s a great saying about Van Nuys or the Valley, which is [01:16:00] Valley money makes Beverly Hills living possible because it’s literally right over the hill. Most of the people in Beverly Hills won’t tell you this. But they all own land over in the valley, because that’s where the businesses that’s where money is made.

Now, that being said, most of the apartments in the valley are known as San Remo, or they’re known as Granada, or they’re known as something else. It’s supposed to psychologically take away how crappy that apartment really is. And give it a posh name and make you think, Oh, no, no, no, no. I live on Lido Isle.

No, you don’t. You live on Colfax. And

Mark Shank: I think this gets muddled when we go into Europe.

Crew Chief Eric: It really

Mark Shank: does. To be totally honest.

Crew Chief Eric: And by the way, I’m a fan of the Cortina 2 because it was featured in shows like Life on Mars and you got to see a lot of those European malaise cars. In that show, but they don’t hold a candle to the kind of, as Don put it, crap that we were producing over here.

Don Weberg: One thing I noticed in just kind of scratching down some chicken notes here for this episode. When I hit 1982, a little epiphany hit me. [01:17:00] One of my favorite Trans Ams, you guys will laugh me out of here, but I am the Malaise guy. So forgive me. The 82 Trans Am, the first year of the third gen with the little flip up.

Headlights, the bowling ball, hubcaps, et cetera. Knight Rider was an 82 Tram Zam. But then I got to thinking, you know, Charger came back in 1983 or 1982. It was a front wheel drive Mitsubishi, basically with a 2. 2 liter Chrysler. If you had the turbo, you only had the 5 speed manual. Then you had the Mustang, which.

Finally brought on that kind of muscular Fox body. It shed the Mustang too, and came out with the more squared off, et cetera. But the one thing you’ve got to say about all of these cars, they kind of shed from muscle to sport. They still have that muscular flair that, you know, American chest pounding flair to the look, but they didn’t have it under the hood.

But what did they have? They had handling. That third gen Trans Am handled like it was nobody’s business. That Mustang handled fantastically. That Charger with the front [01:18:00] wheel drive and the turbo, holy cow, if you could keep the turbo lag to a minimum. And what did that father? The Daytona and the Laser.

And of course, surrounding that, Eric, to your point, you want to talk about the oddballs. Just sticking with the Mopar family, Chrysler LeBaron GTC. Is it a personal coupe convertible or can it be considered kind of a muscle car? I don’t know how gray you want to go with this, but I just noticed in my, in my little chicken scratch, things started getting sportier.

In the eighties, less muscular, more sporty case in point Mustang SVO. I know it’s a Mustang and we’re not supposed to say that word, but the SVO 2. 3 liter turbo total European styling built right alongside the GT and yet it was more expensive. Than the gt and people couldn’t figure out why am I spending more money on this?

Ah, it was a handling car that went just as quick just as fast as a gt

Mountain Man Dan: I was gonna say to add to what you were saying don in regards of they were going to a more sportier there in that Transition through the 80s. They were also switching to a lot of lighter [01:19:00] weight materials on the vehicles You could all the plastic in the interiors and things like that which helped where those low horsepower producing engines after all the uh Fuel crisis stuff of the late 70s.

They were trying to find ways to get that power to weight better. So they started using lighter weight stuff. And unfortunately, some of it was crappy electronics in the 80s, but that’s what it was to have at that time.

Crew Chief Eric: And to Don’s point, he hit the nail in the head. There is a transition there where you started in the late 80s.

You heard about the last of the muscle cars, the GNX itself, the grand national is that crescendo. To the end of the real muscle car era, because it was built as a muscle car, not as a sports car, even though we joke that it’s a sports coupe and things like that. But in reality, Don’s right. They did move more towards sportier cars.

And we started to see that more in the nineties. I’ve got one final car, which I think is the pinnacle here, but Andrew, Mark, Rob, even Dan, do you have anything else on your list? I want to go kind of around the loop again and see if there’s any other cars that we [01:20:00] missed, Andrew, something you’re thinking about.

Andrew Mason: Yeah, I got the Monte Carlo in my background because from the big guy episode, embrace the bigger car, embrace the oversize gotten a little bit pudgy muscle cars that are still a bodies that led into G bodies that again, have all the potential in the world. They don’t look as good as all the classics, but that’s, what’s been put in front of you.

So take a look at the cars that again. With a refresh, with a little bit of love, a little bit of your own personal style put on it is I think a perfect example of a Malaysian era muscle car that can be something to be proud of.

Mountain Man Dan: That late seventies Monte Carlo, they even had a fastback version of it that had like huge sweeping glass.

That was in my opinion, a very interesting look. I won’t say it’s good or bad, but it was interesting. Look for that. Body line,

Andrew Mason: shaved the trim, put a decent wheel and tire package on it. You got something that looks pretty tough.

Rob Parr: I think Dan was referring to the aero look. Cause then that’s what we call it back then.

Yeah.

Don Weberg: Yep. There was Chevy and Pontiac that had that, right? Yes. Bring up a Monte Carlo and let’s talk about a car that transcends because the car started out as [01:21:00] what a personal luxury coupe. Remember it was supposed to be sort of an answer to the Buick Riviera, the Oldsmobile Tornado, whatever. It was a personal luxury coupe that was somewhat affordable.

Ah, but you could also get a 454 if you wanted it and spice it up and make it a real straight going performance machine. It really was basically a fancy Chevelle for all intents and purposes. But here’s a car that transcended from. The muscle car era of Chevelle is dominant, Kuda is dominant, et cetera, to, wow, we can’t do this anymore, guys.

So what are we going to be? We’re going to become a real live, personally luxury coupe, but you could still get a 454 and you could still have a lot of torque and you could still have bucket seats. And you could still, you know, if you just kept your mouth shut, the insurance company, the EPA, they really didn’t know.

Looking at that car right there, it looks like something your third grade teacher would drive. And that was kind of the beauty of it. It was sort of that luxo sleeper thing. I always thought the Monte Carlo was a great car. Then there was that moment of the late, late 70s, early, early 80s, when it was just kind [01:22:00] of a weird, little, funky thing.

Then came… In my opinion, the nicer when I want to say 1984, yeah, the G body, yeah. Sort of matched the, uh, the Regal and that Grand Prix we’re talking about. I thought they got back that muscular look, but they still retained that librarian ish, you know, you could be the librarian or you could be, you know, the Sunday racer.

If you wanted to, I always thought they were tremendous, tremendous car along with the Regal and you know, whatever was in the family,

Crew Chief Eric: I think you just described the Monte Carlo as Linda Carter. Don, I’m just kind of throwing that out there.

Don Weberg: That’s you, man. That’s, you know.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, I’m not playing the game correctly.

I’m thinking the Chevy 454 SS pickup truck.

Crew Chief Eric: But that was in the 90s though.

Crew Chief Brad: 88, 98. You can’t get more malaise than that though. It’s a 454. For producing like 210 horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s muscle car. It’s not a luxury, right? Malaise really defines luxury on top of this non performance it’s in replacement of.

So that truck, I mean, I’ve driven one of those. They’re pretty [01:23:00] slick. I mean, they’re not super fast by any stretch of the means, but they’re, they’re kind of bad ass.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re a little bit menacing. It’s a Andrew’s point. They’re a cam and a 250 nitrous shot away. From running tens in the quarter mile.

Don Weberg: That’s right.

They were one of those buildable cars. Yeah. It’s a,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s a four 54. I mean, huge iron lock, you know, motor that’ll take a two 50 shot. No problem. All day long

Andrew Mason: swap fixes everything

Crew Chief Brad: and exhaust jam swap. All the things

Rob Parr: before you LS swap, swap. Okay, we go all the way up to 1987 with the uh, El Camino. So we had the El Caminos that started out with performance from the old Chevelles and went through into the 70s with the different model changes.

And then into the 80s, I think they finally had 350s at the end, but the pricing of those is very affordable for the later one.

Mark Shank: You’re a genius. How the hell did we skip El Camino?

Rob Parr: I have no idea.

Mark Shank: El Camino. And they made it for so damn long. It’s the perfect Malaysia. You could get like a 1990 or something.

And it’s basically the 1975.

Rob Parr: And you know what the [01:24:00] crazy thing they’re going to be coming out with a new El Camino, according to Shelly, they’ve been talking about are threatening to come out with a Chevelle that’s 150, 000, 150, 000.

Don Weberg: If I may counter that, Ford is also talking about bringing back. The Gran Torino

Mark Shank: Rancher.

What about the Ranchero? Oh, the wrong car wagons. Things now crux called crux.

Don Weberg: If we’re going to go car truck, we need to bring Andrew in on this because down under they had a ute and that was a spectacular vehicle. It really was.

Andrew Mason: They have a whole subculture. They have the Ford version. They have the Holden version.

It’s just the V8 in the front and work in the back or however you want to. Put that together. But yeah, amazing. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: mullet, not

Andrew Mason: inverse. It’s an inverse mullet. It’s an inverse mullet business in the front party in the back.

Mountain Man Dan: Oh my goodness. Other than the, uh, El Camino, I was going to throw out the Chevy love.

Oh yeah. They’re phenomenal. They were like one of the original mini pickups. Oh, that’s like

Crew Chief Eric: the Zuzu pop or whatever they called it.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, but [01:25:00] the Chevy love it was cool. And I think they actually, for a short period of time, you could get it with a small block V8 in them from the factory.

Don Weberg: And don’t forget the Ford Courier.

Mountain Man Dan: We missed something huge guys.

Don Weberg: Oh, that’s why I’m saying, you know, Brad with his 454 over there, you might have a whole different episode bringing up pickups.

Crew Chief Eric: We missed something tremendously huge. We’re talking about malaise. We’re talking about muscle. We’re talking land yacht. We’re talking performance. I got it all.

It goes above the El Camino, the Ranchero, all of them. It is the GMC Ventura Van 18 edition. Vans!

Don Weberg: Muscle Van.

Muscle

Crew Chief Eric: Van.

Don Weberg: I’m all for it. Remember in the 70s. The van was the king, the custom van with the custom paint, the custom interior, waterbeds, bars. I mean, they

Crew Chief Eric: that’s malaise. That’s malaise. Corvette summer van.

That’s a member. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Rob Parr: Don’t forget the mirrors on the ceiling.

Don Weberg: You got to have those

Crew Chief Eric: said us. [01:26:00] So I’ve got 1 for you guys as we kind of close out. These many suggestions we’ve thrown on the table for our collectors to consider if they’re looking down the muscle and malaise era, trying to find something different, trying to find something new, something that not everybody else has, or would consider.

Now, hear me out. We talked about no Mustangs, no cameras, no kudos, no challengers, no chargers, no Chevelles, no, this, no, that the other thing. But what if I could present you a vehicle based on 1 of those with infinite. Amounts of customizability, infinite amounts of performance, even potentially track worthy, but really emphasizes and quantifies in 1 vehicle muscle and delays.

Bear with me now, as I present you the Ford. Fairmont based on the Fox body. 1883. Yeah. That board

Don Weberg: had a nine inch rear end.

Crew Chief Eric: That car is the car that does it all. If you think about the styling, it’s malaise through and through [01:27:00] the interior is as well, but underneath there’s a sleeping dragon waiting to be tuned and set up and be used in any capacity.

You like

Don Weberg: Eric, if I can burst just a little bit here, I want to take it just a little further. here. I want to bring in, it’s called the Lincoln Versailles. It’s one of those cars with the funky names that promises you exotic locations and fine foods when really it’s just a Granada in a tuxedo. But it’s still the five liter.

It’s still the C4. It’s still the nine inch rear end with four wheel disc brakes. And when you get inside that car, you’re surrounded with beautiful luxury. Do you know what I’m saying? You’ve got some leather upholstery. You’ve got some fake wood. You’ve got silver gauges and baby, uh, you’re driving a Lincoln.

You know what I’m saying?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, when you look at the Lincoln Versailles, I mean, I definitely see it. It is next level malaise, but it’s going to be a hard toss between that Fairmont and the Lincoln. And I think I’m going to lean towards the Fairmont [01:28:00] only because of the fact that I’ve personally seen somebody set one of these up for track use.

And it is a performer. It’s shockingly quick.

Don Weberg: Yeah. And that’s what I was going to say is where the Fairmont has this serious advantage of the weight, the Lincoln is going to have a thousand pounds over the Fairmont.

Rob Parr: And that car was also available as a wagon on top of it all.

Oh

Rob Parr: my God. No,

that does it.

That settles it. If you can get it as a wagon, it’s a Fox body station, right? Done. Done. Fox buddy wagon. My old girlfriend back in the eighties had one of those cars. Rob, you have won the day with that suggestion.

Mark Shank: You win the internet with Fox buddy wagon.

Crew Chief Eric: You put a coyote in that thing, man, you’ve got a screamer.

Mark Shank: Oh

Don Weberg: yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Even a 302 out of like a Mustang GT in that would be amazing.

Don Weberg: Well, remember the car that replaced the Fairmont with the LTD two basically was a stop gap. It was built after the Fairmont, but before the Taurus, and it was subsequent with the Taurus for a little while. And Bob Bondurant had them as training vehicles and they were dogs.

They [01:29:00] couldn’t get out of their own way. So they swapped it out with a Mustang five leader and turned it into a real beast. They took some Ford executives out and Ford executives were confused, wondering, where’d you get this car? Where did, well, we built it. They liked it so much. They started building their own for 1984 and 85.

They didn’t build too many, maybe 3000 of them, but they were equipped with a Mustang five leader and automatic transmission. And essentially it’s what you’re talking about, Eric, it’s just already. Ready to go from the factory with a five liter, but it’s a little guy. It’s the same size as that Fairmont there, but that might be something to think of too, but it might also be too far in the eighties.

I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, either way, I think we’ve given everybody a lot of food for thought. So let’s do a quick lightning round. Everybody pick one car out of the ones we suggest, or maybe one that we haven’t mentioned yet that our first time buyers should buy.

Mountain Man Dan: Pass. I’m gonna throw one out that wasn’t mentioned.

I’m gonna go to the Chevy 2 Nova since that’s the muscle car side and I really miss the one that I had when I was younger.

Rob Parr: I’m thinking about a Regal Turbo 1979.

Mark Shank: 1976 [01:30:00] Cadillac Eldorado convertible. All right, first generation

Andrew Mason: Dodge Dart, four doors.

Don Weberg: Yeah, I think I’m gonna stick with my home base. I’m gonna go with a Lincoln Mark IV.

Crew Chief Eric: I really do think it’s a hard toss for me between three cars. It’s the 928, the AMC Javelin, or the Ford Fairmont that we mentioned there at the tail end. I think those are three big contenders.

Don Weberg: Well, if we can pick three, I’m going with the Lincoln, I’m going with the XJS, and I’m going with the SLC. XJS was my second.

You gotta think, there are three Luxo barges from each country. It’s kind of fun.

Crew Chief Brad: The Caprice wagon behind me. I mean, it doesn’t fit, but I’m… Hard host. I make up the rules. I don’t care.

Crew Chief Eric: It suddenly became whose line is it anyway? The points

Crew Chief Brad: don’t

Crew Chief Eric: matter. All jokes aside, I think there’s so many options, especially when, as we’ve been alluding to, you start thinking outside the box.

The

Crew Chief Eric: boxy vehicles themselves, between the vans, the utes, the crux, the wagon, these supposed muscle cars. There’s just so many different ways [01:31:00] to take this. So it’s an underappreciated and overlooked period in automotive history, but it’s a great time to go back and revisit it and bring new eyes to it and say, where can we take these cars?

How can we make them cool again?

Crew Chief Brad: Bring your garage. the next level with Don over at GarageStyleMagazine. com. Get all the latest information on events, clubs, forums, and recommended vendors over with Rob at CollectorCarGuide. net. You’re guaranteed to catch Mark and Mountain Man Dan on another episode of BreakFix in the near future, so stay tuned for that.

And if you haven’t listened to the season one classic big man and a little car, it’s a great episode featuring Andrew. Thanks again to our panel for another great, what should I buy debate? That’s

Crew Chief Eric: right. We never come to a conclusion, but we always have fun getting there.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on [01:32:00] www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com. dot Patreon. com forward [01:33:00] slash GT Motorsports. And remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Bonus Content

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Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

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.

Blast from the past – Muscle & Malaise show, 2002

Learn More

Rob wins the day, with a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing!

Ford Fairmont, Station Wagon, manual transmission with 5.0L (302) V8. The ultimate convergence of Muscle & Malaise. Photo courtesy of SCCA.

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.

Andrew makes a compelling case for buying clean, lesser-known platforms and building them out. Whether it’s a Fox-body Mustang, a Volvo 240 with an LS swap, or a Levi’s Denim Gremlin, the goal is to stand out and have fun.

AMC AMX
Lotus Europa
Chryslers!
Ford Mustang II
Aston Martin V8 Vantage
Don W's personal 1979 Chevy Caprice Classic
Corvette C3
Starsky & Hutch's Ford Torino
The Nissan Z, Muscle or Malaise? or Both?
The late-model GTO Judge
Corvette C3
Stutz Blackhawk

Mark and Rob echo the sentiment: resto-mods, EV swaps, and creative builds are fair game. The key is finding a blank canvas with potential.

AMC: The Underdog Brand

AMC gets a lot of love in this episode. From the Javelin and AMX to the Concord and Ambassador, AMC offered quirky styling and big-block options at budget-friendly prices. Don highlights the Gremlin 304 V8 and the Randall AMC 401-swapped versions as sleeper hits. Even the Matador gets a mention—though not without some well-earned ridicule.

Don and Dan steer the conversation toward land yachts and muscle trucks:

Lincoln Mark III–V with 460s
Oldsmobile 98s with 455s
Buick Electras and Cadillac Eldorados
Dodge Lil’ Red Express—the fastest American production vehicle in 1978

These cars weren’t just big—they were torquey, comfortable, and surprisingly quick.

Mark brings up the Chevelle Laguna S3, a NASCAR-pedigreed oddball that Chevy revived at SEMA to showcase crate engines. Eric adds the Vega and its Canadian cousin, the Pontiac Astre, plus the Monza and Cosworth Vega—John DeLorean’s attempt at an American BMW.

Whether you’re chasing obscure trim packages, international oddities with American engines, or planning a wild swap project, the muscle and malaise era offers a treasure trove of possibilities. The key is to look beyond the obvious, embrace the weird, and build something that makes people stop and stare.

So what should you buy? Something that makes you smile, turns heads, and maybe even starts a few arguments at Cars and Coffee.

Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

To learn more about each of our guests, you can revisit their episodes on Break/Fix, or continue the conversation over on our Discord.

Guest Co-Host: Don Weberg

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Rob Parr

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Daniel Stauffer

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Guest Co-Host: Mark Shank

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.

Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Discord!

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

Gridlife: From Parking Lot Meets to National Motorsports Festivals

Gran T

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August 1, 2023

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Gridlife: From Parking Lot Meets to National Motorsports Festivals

What started as a humble Honda meet in a Michigan parking lot has evolved into one of the most dynamic, multi-discipline motorsports festivals in the country. In this episode of the Break/Fix podcast, we sat down with Adam Jabaay – co-founder and motorsports director of Gridlife – to unpack the journey from grassroots gatherings to a full-blown touring series that blends racing, music, and community.

Gridlife’s DNA traces back to the early 2000s, when Adam and co-founder Chris Stewart were organizing West Michigan Honda Meets. These were informal get-togethers of Honda enthusiasts – sometimes held at parks, sometimes at zoos. But in 2004, everything changed: they discovered they could rent a racetrack.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Gingerman Raceway became their proving ground, and what started as a ragtag track day slowly grew into a multi-day event with camping, concerts, and competition.

By 2014, Gridlife was born as a standalone event, combining HPDE (High Performance Driver Education), drifting, time attack, and a music festival. It was a bold experiment – and it worked.

Spotlight

Synopsis

This episode of the Break/Fix dives deep into the origins and growth of GridLife, a multi-discipline automotive festival and lifestyle event. The podcast explores how GridLife started in 2014 from humble beginnings and evolved into a nationwide series featuring racing, car shows, drifting, music, and more. Co-founder and motorsports director Adam Jabaay recounts the history, challenges, and unique culture of GridLife, highlighting key events at various tracks across the United States. The discussion also touches on the structure of the GridLife Touring Cup (GLTC), the role of amateur and professional drivers, and how the series has become a unifying platform for diverse automotive enthusiasts. Additionally, the episode outlines the volunteer opportunities, HPDE (High-Performance Driver Education) programs, and the integration of virtual racing through GridLife iRacers. The ultimate message conveys that GridLife transcends the stereotype of being just a festival, portraying it as a comprehensive motorsport movement aimed at inclusivity and community building.

Origin Story: the who/what/where/when of GRIDlife – how did it all get started?
What’s the difference between GRIDlife and GRIDlife Festival
Let’s talk about the different programs and motorsports available through GRIDlife Motorsports: Track Days, Time Attack, Touring Cup (GLTC), Drifting
Let’s talk more about GLTC
How did drifting become part of GRIDlife?
Where can people sign up for GL events? What does it generally cost? Is it per motorsport discipline or one cost for the entire weekend
Gridlife in the Virtual World? (iRacing)
Ways of getting involved with gridlife (outside of being a participant)
Gridlife is also associated with a podcast that many might already be familiar with called “Slip Angle” – with over 460 episodes ; what is the show about?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us, because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: When you think about automotive festivals, your imagination probably wanders to visions of flat brimmed, hat wearing, electronic music pumping social media junkies who spend as much time, effort, and money modifying their vape rigs as they do their lowered, extremely cambered suspensions.

Crew Chief Brad: Whoa, whoa, way to stereotype, Eric, but here’s where you’re wrong. Gridlife has many moving parts. There’s a car show, nonstop on track activities, a rotating mix of drifting, high performance driving events or education, sessions for drivers with various skill [00:01:00] levels and compete against the clock time attack races, plus two evenings worth of music and some great food trucks.

And joining us tonight is Adam Jebe, co founder plus motorsports director for Gridlife, to explain how this petrol filled multidiscipline weekend, festival, and lifestyle works and where you fit in. So welcome

Crew Chief Eric: to Break Fix, Adam.

Adam Jabaay: Yeah, welcome. We’re fresh off of our ninth year of festival. It was real busy and kind of tired.

Crew Chief Eric: Ninth one at this point. So why don’t we wind the clock back up a little bit and talk about the origin story of grid life. The who, the what, the where, and the when. How did it all get started?

Adam Jabaay: Yeah. So this would have been our eighth Midwest festival. If you start, I don’t know, or the ninth year, I don’t know how you actually want to count it, but we evolved into a, like a full touring series slash sanctioned body over the past eight seasons, but in 2001, some buddies of mine at their house had what they called West Michigan Honda meet up in grand Rapids, Michigan, and we were into Honda’s [00:02:00] I’m Chris and myself are still into Honda’s Chris, the other founder for a couple of years, we did like Random parking lot meets.

And then every year we’d have a West Michigan Honda meet, and it would basically be three different Honda scenes of people in Michigan. We were at a zoo one year. We were at a park next to a river the next year. And then how to meet four in 2004, we figured out you can rent a racetrack if you hand them money.

And so we rented Gingerman Raceway for the first time in oh four. Which feels like about a million years ago. It was like three lifetimes worth of evolution ago. It was pretty ragtag first event. We’d really didn’t know what we were doing. And then we kept doing that event every year. It evolved into a two day and then it was a weekend and then it’s a three day.

And it became a really, really fun group of people to hang out with at a racetrack. Chris said in 2013, Hey, do you want to do more events? And we just kind of did this one event a year. And I was instructing all over the country at road courses and we’d go to different tracks all over, you know, with our other friends, but we [00:03:00] only did our one event and Chris had gotten into the concert world in Chicago.

He had some friends that were in like the EDM scene. He and I both had friends in like the drift and autocross worlds. We were both pretty much like track rat kids. So we hosted this other event called grid life for the first time in 2014. It was kind of like a car show, a little bit of drift stuff. We kind of had like a ton of HPD at the time of kind of a rag tag time attack because timing and scoring stuff like wasn’t working well that year.

And camping and like a concert on, I think it was on Saturday night. It was just a two day event. Camping and concert was kind of like the thing that glued it all together. It seemed like the biggest event we had ever been to at the time. Like we saw some pictures of it recently and it was. Pretty tiny.

And, uh, I mean, it was like a big track day, you know, with maybe a thousand or 2000 spectators. And over a few years, that event really blew up at Gingerman raceway, which is sort of like our home track. It’s obviously the first track that we rented. We branched off in 2015, I think we rent or maybe 2016, 2015.

I think we [00:04:00] rented Audubon country club for the first time, which is sort of local to us. We were based out of Chicago. We’re actually going there next weekend for our track battle, Chicago round. And. And then I think in 2016 was the first year we went to Mid Ohio and to Road Atlanta. We held a festival at Road Atlanta as well for four years.

And those were real big events down at Road Atlanta. It wasn’t the best weekend. It was kind of the back to school college weekend. It was always a million degrees. Just sort of kept evolving. The time attack series has become one of the biggest in the country. The rule set, which is one of my primary jobs is obviously operating the racetrack and making the rules and everything.

The rule set has evolved a little bit, got a few more classes. Uh, we’re real proud of how time attack is going. We’ve got amazing parody at the front of all the fields, pretty much every weekend. Most of the weekends it’s. Everybody’s in the same second in like the top five. It’s got great competition. Uh, we’re real happy with a lot of pieces of that, but it was a good eight or nine year struggle to kind of get to where we are in a lot of aspects.

Our bigger events have Drift [00:05:00] also. Colorado is the festival that we’ve been doing for three years now, going into our fourth year there at Pikes Peak International Raceway, which is sort of An ex IndyCar NASCAR oval, and it’s got an infield road course. It’s kind of like a two thirds scaled Daytona or half scale.

Daytona got a kind of a fun road course infield. You use about three turns of the, uh, the big oval and you dropped on the infield. We set up a big concert stage right next to the racetrack. At night, it’s a wild drift party. We have lasers and lights. It’s a really cool spectator event because you can kind of walk around the entire infield the whole time.

That event is one of our most drift focused events. It’s really, it’s a touring show of, of all different kinds of automotive enthusiasm. Got our new wheel to wheel series, which is entering its fourth year in its fourth year now grid life touring cup. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of moving pieces, a lot of different style events.

And we’ve really kind of been all over the country the past couple of years.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, we’re going to expand upon all those different things as we continue the conversation. And I have to say, you know, humble beginnings, they sound a lot more exciting [00:06:00] than, you know, the Volkswagen guys that, you know, go behind the Dairy Queen and just talk about their cars.

You know, we hung

Adam Jabaay: out with those guys too. We were those guys.

Yeah. If you gave somebody 3, 500 bucks, you could do that at a racetrack, endanger your vehicles and your lives. Potentially,

Crew Chief Eric: by the way, big shout out to Gingerman Raceway who was on the show during our second season. So we got together with them for their 25th anniversary and they actually mentioned you guys and how you’re, they’re the home of grid light and things like that.

So

Crew Chief Brad: you might want to re say that. Remember the guy corrected us, Gingerman Raceway,

Adam Jabaay: Gingerman. Zach is an interesting dude. He’s particular about things, but we call it Gingerman. So that’s fine.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So to clarify, sure. There are differences. What is the difference between grid life and the grid life festival

Adam Jabaay: at pretty much all of our events?

We do a lot of the same things. It’s sort of like a club race weekend. Typically we get some spectators and we, uh, we might have, uh, like an evening barbecue party kind of thing, but the [00:07:00] festivals are typically a day longer. A lot of our events are live streamed. We’ve been really building out a really robust live stream.

So they all might look the same on the live stream, but the festivals typically have a much bigger camping component. The big festivals in the non COVID years, they have big music production. We’ve had all different kinds of artists play, you know, everybody from, uh, Waka Flocka to Ludacris to Andrew WK to, we just had Cascade, uh, last weekend up in Michigan, big EDM act for like the past 20 years.

And then, you know, trap and house and actual physical rock where they play guitars. That have play, uh, off of a computer, anything and everything has played over the past eight years. Those typically have a much bigger spectator camping component because there’s more of a festival atmosphere, you know, food trucks, all the stuff you kind of talked about at the beginning.

And Gingerman’s a great place for it because between turn two and turn, basically turn five, we fill that with spectators and they set up shop for the weekend, they have a big old party out there. We kind of run [00:08:00] out of room as far as driver paddock area. So it’s kind of the most. tight, packed, crazy, full driver paddock that I’ve really ever been to might be one of the tightest in the country.

It’s almost annoying how tight we have to fit everybody in there, but we use all the space and hopefully it doesn’t rain the week before so the trucks don’t get stuck and uh, we threw a big party. So the festivals are really more like They’re across between a club race weekend and like a music festival, a big car festival, that kind of thing.

So kind of a mishmash of a lot of different things and it uses that festival component as the glue. You bring all these people with the same disease and a different symptom together.

Crew Chief Eric: We had the guys from Hyperfest on. Not too long ago. And I’m wondering how does grid life compare for those that are familiar with Hyperfest here on the East coast and who did it first and who did it best?

Adam Jabaay: I think in a lot of the aspects of the spectator, they’re probably pretty similar, you know, you seeing a bunch of different automotive stuff on a racetrack. I believe they started probably [00:09:00] six or so years ahead of us. They were doing, I think at summit point earlier, and they moved to VIR a few years ago.

We’ve talked with Chris Cabetto a few times. I think we’re very different. Chris and I have never, uh, my Chris, Chris Stewart, we’ve never been to a Hyperfest. I only know a few people that have, I think they serve quite a bit of a different audience. Yeah, I wasn’t sure if you guys were

Crew Chief Eric: inspired by Hyperfest or not, you know?

Adam Jabaay: No, it was two events in before we actually like knew what Hyperfest was. It was sort of a scene unto itself. It seems like, and they’ve definitely exploded that event as far as the drift component, especially, you know, bringing in a lot of big personalities and stuff like that, they’re different, but they’re definitely similar in a lot of different ways,

Crew Chief Eric: same, same, but different.

Adam Jabaay: Yeah, probably we keep saying we’re going to go and see what hyperfest is, but it’s always within about a week or two of one of our events. And we also like have small children and want to stay married. So we’ve never been, I don’t know

Crew Chief Eric: grid life also seems to be a bit of a traveling circus, right? Where you’ve got different regions across the country that are handling grid life events, like festivals, et [00:10:00] cetera.

Adam Jabaay: We’re doing all of the events. It’s all in house. It’s all one team.

Crew Chief Eric: So that being said, do you offer the same schedule kind of events, things like that at those different locations? So let’s. Okay, so you would have track days, time attack, touring cup, drifting, et cetera, at any one of the Gridlife locations?

Adam Jabaay: For the most part, the only one this year that didn’t have actual Gridlife touring cup, we did a weekend out at Willow Springs, and that was much more time trial and HPD focused. Did not have touring cup out there. We’re also a support series with the touring cup at Circuit of the Americas the past three years for the Super Lap battle.

Time attack event hosted by the global time attack guys who are kind of like allies and friends of ours. Touring cup has become this other thing in a few spots that is like a support series that might be sort of the evolution of that series too, in some aspects, but it’s a really fun to watch wheel to wheel event because everybody’s racing each other.

It’s a single class of wheel to wheel. Versus a lot of sprint races, they are multi class racing. So you [00:11:00] really don’t know who’s winning and we’ve condensed down the timeframe and we just do it more times per weekend. So we run four to five individual sprint races. They’re about 15 minutes flag to flag.

So it’s a really condensed, a YouTube friendly. Fun to watch. You don’t have to commit 45 minutes of your day to watching the race. Uh, it’s a quick hit, really fun to watch the field. Doesn’t spread out that much in a short period of time. So kind of an interesting, different way to do club racing sprint racing.

So real proud of how easy it is to digest, you know, the person up front is beating the people behind them.

Crew Chief Brad: And so you’ve touched on a couple of the tracks. You’ve said ginger man, road Atlanta circuit of the Americas. Mid Ohio. What is GridLife’s footprint? Is it nationwide? Like, what are some of the non listed tracks that you guys run at?

Talk about the different regions of GridLife, if there are any.

Adam Jabaay: We’ve done three years out in California. We’ve been building the customer and friend base out there. This year was an explosive event. It was huge. We were real, real Pleased with the feedback we got too, [00:12:00] because it seems like California has segmented itself off into like, you know, I run with speed ventures or I always run with NASA or I always run with this.

And we brought like everybody together in one place, it seemed because we’re kind of the outside coming in. We broke up some clicks, which seemed to be a really cool vibe. It was fun. So California is kind of out on its own because it’s so far away. Three years at PPR, which is kind of in the middle of the country.

Between there and Chicago, we’re going into our second year at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas, which is an amazing track. Actually, if anybody hasn’t been there, it’s like this amazing facility everybody forgot or never heard of. It’s like a road America or better level facility. It’s really beautiful place.

We’re actually hosting our championship there. This year, because Road America, which has held our championship for the past couple of years, is getting repaved on our historic date that we’ve had, which kind of stinks. But, and yeah, the Midwest has kind of always been our home. We’ve always done one to two track battle rounds, which is our name for our club race style weekend.

We’ve done one to two of those. At Gingerbread Raceway per year. And one of those is obviously the [00:13:00] festival. We’ve done one at Autobahn for the past five, six years. Mid Ohio for the past four or five years. The furthest we’ve been on the East Coast so far has been Summit Point, West Virginia. But this year we’re doing a sort of an automotive festival at Lime Rock.

We’ve got a sound restriction free weekend at Lime Rock. We’re calling it Circuit Legends and we’re going to try to make it. More of a historic motor sports style festival for our generation, for like the eighties, nineties, two thousands kids that love speed world challenge. The pro and semi pro series of that era.

We’re going to hopefully bring a bunch of those for display and for like a leaderboard style time attack. And it will also be a stop for our track battle series. And we’re going to do one at NJMP also, that’ll be just prior to the Lime Rock event. Kind of drifting all around. We were at AMP earlier this year in March, AMP Atlanta motor sports park, which is a

Beautiful little facility. If anybody hasn’t been there, uh, and then NCM a few weeks later. So yeah, March and April, we’re real busy. We were CODA, NCM and AMP and then Willow Springs. And it got a little busy there for [00:14:00] a while. It feels like it hasn’t slowed down. And next we’re going into Chicago next weekend.

Like I said, a smattering all over the country, basically.

Crew Chief Brad: Not hearing Watkins Glenn in

Adam Jabaay: there anywhere. It is really hard to get into Watkins Glenn. They actually, when we said, uh, uh, via email, we have somebody that knows Somebody there that like is a higher up and they put in a good word for us. And the guy was like, well, probably be about 10 years before it can get you a weekend.

That place is definitely in demand. And everybody says you got to go Watkins Glen, but it’s in demand for a reason.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, changing gears a little bit, since Gridlife does do HPDE events. Can you talk a little bit about your HPDE program, uh, just the process for being a student and advancing through the different classes?

How does one become a coach and instruct for gridlife? You know, things like that. Absolutely.

Adam Jabaay: We actually do a bunch of HPD only events. Also, we’ve obviously had our West Michigan Honda meet event, which we’ve done for. This is our 21st or this is our 18th year at a racetrack and 21st, 22nd year doing [00:15:00] it.

That’s only HPD, no competition. We did a few years of VTEC club time attack, but they wanted to keep VTEC club on the West coast primarily, but it went pretty well and that was our first foray into time attack really ever. HPDE with us, it’s sort of, we’ve evolved into more of a competition series, and so it has evolved along with us.

It used to be the biggest part of what we did, HPDE was. We obviously have kind of something for every driver level. We’ve got beginner, intermediate, and advanced, and we’ve also got this other group that we sometimes call novice, depending on the event. Sometimes we only have room in the schedule for two run groups of HPDE.

So novice is sort of part beginner, part intermediate, and a lot more coaching and classroom sessions. Advanced HPDE, we usually have one to two classroom sessions. We’ve got a couple of really, really good coaches and a lot of pro drivers that kind of frequent our paddocks. Usually a pretty in depth coaching availability.

Got a few pro level coaches that drive with us and sort of have a clientele list that They coach [00:16:00] individually, one on one kind of stuff. And ever since 2017, we have been like a pro style coaching model versus a right seat instructor model, because we did have an instructor go into the wall and break his collarbone down at Road Atlantis.

That was right when SCCA, who we were pretty good friends with, Started their track night in America model. It’s more of a sideline coaching and classroom based HPE. And we developed along with the SCCA Ohio Valley region, figured out how we wanted to do it. And a bunch of our instructors actually typically do SCCA Ohio Valley region.

They do their PDXs also, but we developed this model. It’s, it’s pretty. Meeting intents in the morning for beginners or novices go through all the basic steps, all the things from placement in the car to like take the napkins out of the visor. So they don’t fly all over the apex, you know, all the little things about, uh, you’d seen a regular meeting.

And then we place instructors all around the track, obviously within sight lines of all the corners up in corner worker stations or [00:17:00] next to the track, you know, obviously in a safe zone, but get them all on radio. They’re all taking notes and talking to each other. about how beginners are doing. They usually have a couple of beginners a piece.

Usually the first session is some lead follow, and then they break out and go run around on their own work up to pace on their own, at their own pace, at their own skill level, comfort level. After every session, they get a nice little debrief, usually video work or data work, and then get coached by their coaches, their coaches are a lot of people that have, they run with us.

We have. We’ve got a pretty robust instructor group now. I think we’ve got about 70 people that regularly instruct with us. The model has worked incredibly well. It often keeps drivers retained in the beginner program because they don’t feel the pressure of somebody they don’t know telling them what to do.

They’re able to work at their own pace. They usually pick something to work on every session. It really sets the core principles versus the drivers run seat of the pants and basically just get told what to do. They’re working up through all the little pieces and [00:18:00] it’s pretty similar to how a lot of pro schools used to do it and still do it because a lot of those schools are single seater cars, you know, little, little old formula cars, et cetera.

And, uh, we’re real happy with. How it’s been going and it’s, we’ve beginner sells out and intermediate does fine and advanced does fine. And it’s, it’s, it seems like it’s working. There’s really no great metric to tell how it’s working. Other than we’re out of driver spots. Most of the time, I think it’s okay.

Usually pretty good feedback. I think back to my first HPDE and I had an instructor with me riding right seat who actually just saw on an airplane last year, which is strange. I hadn’t talked to him in like two or three years. And then I randomly saw him on an airplane, which was kind of cool. But the instructor was basically, he was yelling at me the whole time.

So I wasn’t focusing. I was just doing what he said. I didn’t know why I was breaking at this point and why I was throttling out at this point and why I had to turn in here and hit that cone. Area with a concrete patch on the left. I was just doing what he said. And it took me a couple of years of like back [00:19:00] engineering, the things that he said in my brain to like, figure out why this was like early internet days for me too.

So there wasn’t nearly as much of a track day presence. It wasn’t like a HPDs weren’t nearly as much of a thing in the early two thousands, but you couldn’t get all the, you know, the Ross Bentley speed secrets. You couldn’t get a lot of those things. You had to actually go to go to Barnes and Noble and buy the.

book and I was too broke to buy the book and I didn’t know the book existed. It has brought a lot of our beginners into a comfort zone because they’re not paired up with somebody and they’re able to kind of do their own thing, work at their own pace. We mainly judge it based on safety and offs per session, et cetera.

And we have had significantly less offs in the past four years since we’ve been doing it. Then we did in the four years prior. So we’ve had basically no hard impacts into any walls. I mean, somebody booped the wall in the rain one time at mid Ohio, which is slicker than snot in the rain, but we’re real happy with the beginner safety record and hopefully it keeps going.

That’s kind of how we do HPD. And we also do, like I said, a bunch of. HPD only events. We do one on Cinco de Mayo at [00:20:00] Gingerman called taco track day for the past few years. It’s just a simple, basic HPD. I love simple HPDs, especially after a bunch of years of hosting really, really tight schedule race events.

HPDs are just kind of a joy. Just get back to your roots a little bit, you know.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I definitely need to figure out how to get out there for taco track day for the name alone. I just want the t shirt and swag that you guys there are some

Adam Jabaay: really good tacos too. I mean, last year I tried one that had a thing on it called Diablo sauce, which I had never heard of.

It was very spicy and it made me seek out Diablo sauce. So you find new things at the racetrack and it might not just be apexes.

Crew Chief Brad: And it sounded like your first instructor is very similar to an instructor that I know of. That loves to drive from the right seat. I’m not going to name names or

anything,

Crew Chief Brad: but he has a pension for getting lap times down with a novice students just by driving and yelling at them from the right seat.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a hundred [00:21:00] percent money back guarantee. And I’ve never issued a refund. All right. That’s all I’m going to say.

Adam Jabaay: It can totally be effective for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: He exaggerates right? Seriously. But getting back to the points at hand, I want to ask this question is gridlife associated with global time attack by chance?

Adam Jabaay: So we’ve been friends with Jason and, uh, and the team over there for a bunch of years. Ever since we started, Chris and JD knew each other a little bit. And Jason, who’s sort of their lead over there at GTA. He encouraged us to kind of have a similar rule set as a base series, because obviously we both wanted to build the sport and the series of Time Attack.

So we sort of started with their rule set with a few mods. So we’re not really affiliated, but we started at their encouragement from a similar place. And we do share a lot of drivers, a lot of the higher level drivers, they drive all the way out to California to compete, or a bunch of their drivers drive out to us to compete.

And I really think it’s pretty cool that at first the driver Pools were a little bit adversarial. It was kind of an us versus them. And now it’s definitely not [00:22:00] that, especially since we’ve been kind of co hosting the circuit of the Americas event for the past three years. It’s really kind of unified those two driver pools, which has been great.

We’re loosely affiliated more of friends with them. We started a thing a few years ago called the North American time attack council. N A T A dot. Org I think is the website and with them and with the SCCA who had just gotten into a national level time trials push and SCCA is actually the sanctioning body for them for GTA and for super lap battle.

So yeah, NATA, we bought that website a bunch of years ago, kind of as a us versus them, like let’s be national instead of global, like, and then we kind of decided that it would be. In the words of Hayward Wagner from SCCA, it would probably be better for us to build more ovens instead of slice this pie thinner.

We need to make more pies. And so we’ve been kind of trying to build the, the sport and hobby of time trials and time attack all together, thought leadership and date sharing and stuff like that. That’s definitely been a, that’s been a solid partnership and, and friendship with those two orgs.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s lots of different disciplines being represented at [00:23:00] Gridlife.

Like we said, track days, time attack, the touring cup, drifting, etc. So when’s Gridlife going to add autocross to the mix?

Adam Jabaay: Somebody just asked me about that on Sunday, actually. It’s never been a thing that we’ve thought about doing because other people do it very, very well. And man, it’s hard to secure a place to do an autocross.

Crew Chief Eric: What about the concept of track cross?

Adam Jabaay: That’s an interesting concept to me. I would love to do one. I’ve never actually done one. I keep meaning to run an SCCA TT event and I want to go to the TT Nats quite badly with my own car because, and they do track cross, you know, they do a bunch of different disciplines inside of that weekend or any of those TT Nats style weekends.

We’re sort of out of track time at most events. We do have something new coming up pretty soon. It’s unannounced. Right now we’re poking into the world of running for more than 20 minutes at a time, but not running seven hours at a time. We’re going to dip our toes into the longer races world. And that’s a rule set that’s not quite published yet, but it’s just about done.

You know, we just secured a weekend out in [00:24:00] Pittsburgh at pit race. That’s sort of something that’s upcoming with Gridlife. So I’m not going to give any spoilers. But there might be slightly longer races, not seven hour enduros, but maybe some longer ones coming. But autocross is a thing that I started out doing a bunch of years ago.

When we got busy hosting events, I stopped doing it. Schedules are hard to do and raising a family and working two jobs and stuff is tough. It was always fun except for when I got lost in the cones because I like did it wrong. Windy City Miata Club had some really intricate tight courses and there was one where I DNF’d.

I literally did the course wrong six times in a row before I figured out what I was doing wrong because my worker position like allowed me to see that I was going to the left instead of the right of that one cone, you know. Autocross is very cool. It’s just something that we’ve never done though.

Crew Chief Eric: Your mention of the slightly longer races, we’re going to call them that right.

The SLR slightly longer races.

Adam Jabaay: SLR. That’s actually not a bad little, I might maybe use that and say that I, uh, but I didn’t steal it from you. [00:25:00]

Crew Chief Brad: You might have to give money to Mercedes for that. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. We accept donations in the form of crypto and Patreon. So it’s all good. I don’t know

Crew Chief Brad: if we want crypto right now.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s true.

Adam Jabaay: If you get it right now, maybe it’ll be worth something in the future. You never know. There

Crew Chief Eric: you go.

Adam Jabaay: The pit race event, there will be some HPD and then probably a three class rule set of not regular, you know, turn the flag on at eight and shut it off and go check our flag at five kind of Enduro, but more of a different style of experience where there’s.

A shorter sprint race and like a three hour enduro and that sort of thing. More of like a team driving experience where it’s not quite, you know, burn the car to the ground and rebuild it after, you know, the entire weekend of driving, something that we’re going to try out, we’re kind of excited about the rule set.

It should be kind of a cool way to show a bunch of HPD drivers, a couple of different aspects. Of wheel to wheel as well. There’ll be some sprint elements and qualifying elements, some pit stop stuff. It should be a fun weekend to kind of relax at the track in October when supposedly it’s pretty beautiful down there.

So we’re [00:26:00] excited to announce that pretty soon.

Crew Chief Eric: So actually that’s a great segue to expand upon the GLTC, the grid life touring cup for the people that are hearing about this for the first time. Is it club racing? And if

Adam Jabaay: so,

Crew Chief Eric: so how is it broken down classing wise? Because if you’re familiar with SCCA and NASA classing rules, they can get very complicated.

It can be races of, you know, three cars or 30 cars, or maybe 50 cars. If it’s spec Miata, how do you guys break down your touring cup?

Adam Jabaay: So Turing Cup is one class. In about 2015, I started working on rules because I was running a Honda challenge with NASA and SCCA STL, a super Turing light. And I also raced improved Turing A for a while on an old CRX that I had.

And Chris and I, and some other buddies had done 24 hour lemons. Some champ car events. So we’d kind of competed in a bunch of different things. The things that I didn’t like about sprint racing with SCCA and NASA, it wasn’t an easy thing to put my finger on. So I thought about [00:27:00] it for a long time. And the biggest things I didn’t like was that as a spectator, my wife or my friends that were with me at the track, never knew who was winning.

There was too many cars out there and there was six classes, three classes, five classes. Mixed class racing. It obviously is something that you have to do in like a regional club race environment, and I thought. I don’t want to do that. So we kind of rolled the dice and built one class. And the sweet spot that we picked was a rough 12 and a half to one power to weight ratio.

Basically you take your horsepower and you divide by 0. 08, your wheel horsepower on a dyno jet. That is your rough weight with driver that you need to be at the end of the race. And for the first few years, we allowed a mixed bag of tires. You could run Hoosiers and but they had to be Hoosiers similar, you know, they have, but they had to be narrower and you had to run heavier than if you ran 200 treadwear and you can run a wider 200 treadwear versus a narrower Hoosier, etc.

And the balance was pretty good. But this year we actually jumped to 200 tread wear only, and not all the 200 tread wears, just an allowed block of 200 tread wears that we knew would [00:28:00] race pretty similarly. And we’ve really seen the fields stay nice and close. And obviously tire budgets are down a little bit for people.

The crazy people still want to run two different sets a weekend or three different sets a weekend, but… You can’t control racers from spending money. It’s hard to do, but, but yeah, it’s a single class of wheel to wheel. Everybody out there is, is racing each other. So there’s a practice, a qual cars with arrow.

They have to be a little bit heavier. A splitter is 3%, a wing is 3 percent heavier. There’s no underbody flat stuff. You can really be creative with engine swaps. The rules were built around like the rule set that we really wanted to have. If we were building a car for it, I actually was building a car for it.

At the time it’s based around kind of the tuner mindset of like a tinkerer, build your best mousetrap kind of mindset. So we see a huge variety of cars. Race one is obviously the results of qualifying. So fastest in qual starts up front. Uh, and works their way back, slowest in qual starts at the back. And then race two is based on the fastest lap time of each driver of race one.

Race three is based [00:29:00] on the finishing order of race two. And then race four is based on the order of race three with a random invert. of the basically the top 12 lines and there’s a random number generator at the start of race 3 that’s it and then it tells us what number the invert is so p8 and forward is the invert or p7 forward is the invert because we don’t want the drivers to know what the invert is because we don’t want people racing for p8 we want them all racing as hard as they can There’s rewards weight inside the weekend.

Uh, there’s a maximum of 6 percent rewards weight. And so if you win a couple of races, you run in 6 percent heavier than you were at qualifying. And recently we have acquired a two wheel drive chassis dyno. And so there is a dyno for impound. There’s obviously scales for impound and scrutineering as far as.

Build and vent choice and all that kind of stuff. You got to make sure your car is built to the rules. It’s became a very high level of sprint club racing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. It’s really good that you guys are dyno testing after a session and my intercooler is completely saturated. So I’ll be down on power anyway.

That’s good. [00:30:00] Good plan. We’ve

Adam Jabaay: thought about that. We’ve got some really good fans. We know how this works.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh huh. So that being said, the point system must be absolutely insane because the Corvettes with 900 horsepower are always going to beat the Miatas with 90 horsepower. So how do you do a balance of power here?

Or do you implement a PAC system like SCCA tends to use?

Adam Jabaay: No, we do have a bunch of Corvettes that run with us. Last year, the very last race of the season determined the season champion. And it was between a four cylinder Civic. And I think he’s got a six liter Corvette, but it’s a power to weight class.

You don’t want to have a 900 horsepower Corvette because I think it would have to weigh 12, 000 pounds in GLTC. Um, so these, these Corvettes. Often they’re doing a dry sump and it’s a built motor, but they’re running a drive by wire throttle body. And so that thing makes 225 right? And it also makes 225 horsepower at 7, 000 rpms.

So they’re running about as flat of a power band as you can [00:31:00] get. The power band rules are, it’s a judged power band rule this year. It used to be three to 6 percent adder for power band, depending on how flat it was on any detuned engine, we review dino sheets and we issue a percentage modifiers. Say you had 4, 000 RPMs of flat power on your Corvette.

You’re going to run about five to 6 percent heavier than like a K series swapped S 2000 or a stock motor S 2000 or a BP engine Miata, or. Whatever that is a full effort tune. If you’re both making 225 horsepower, the super flat power band is going to run 5 percent heavier. And we’ve seen a really, really solid parody.

We measure parody and we have a half a dozen aim solos that we put in different cars throughout the session. We also claim data from anybody with an aim data system. And we have literally our buddy, Scott Malloy, his job is pull data, compare data. We want to see who’s cheating on data. And we also want to measure parity for future rules creation.

And the parity that we’re looking for is straight line acceleration. [00:32:00] On like an AIM system, you can overlay those acceleration curves, the ramp angle on acceleration. And it doesn’t even matter if somebody got a bad exit out of a corner, you can judge the angle of acceleration and you can see what cars are too good.

We’ve seen unbelievable parody the last couple of years, and it’s only getting better. The main goal of the rules creation is to let anything race anything. If it’s inside of our box and we’ve seen just about anything. I mean, we’ve seen all wheel drive Audis, naturally aspirated Subarus, swapped VWs, tons of swapped Miatas.

Stock motor Miatas, D series, B series, K series, H series, F series, Hondas, anything and everything. V8 Camaros, V8 Corvettes. We’ve even had a V8 Miata. So there’s a lot of different cars out there in GLTC. A

Crew Chief Eric: couple of years ago, SCCA adopted the idea of bracket racing, a concept that’s known more to the drag racing community than to sprint racers and time attack people and so on.

But it was very well received because it eliminated a lot of the confusion and a lot [00:33:00] of the complexity. On their previous classing systems. And even this classing system, as much as you simplified it, there’s a lot of underlying complexity here that you have to understand to know where you’re going to end up, or if the mods that you’re making are going to either help you or hinder you, you know, how many bags of cement am I putting in the trunk of my car to make a weight?

Basically, why not adopt bracket racing instead of the system you have today?

Adam Jabaay: Because I wanted it to be a raw, I’m racing that person. I wanted everybody on the spectator side to know that the person in P1 is racing for P1. I wanted short sprint racing and we’ve really found what we wanted out of it. It is some of the most exciting club racing, amateur racing I’ve ever seen.

To me, it’s more exciting to watch a recap of a GLTC race on YouTube than it is to watch pretty much any pro racing series, unless you get one of those. Crazy freak IMSA or SRO races that it’s just super close and they’ve fallen a great battle. We’ve got great battles throughout the entire field. And we wanted to have that raw [00:34:00] intensity of the first lap and the last lap of a sprint race.

And we wanted them to only be about six laps apart. And we wanted everybody out there to be in that same battle with bracket stuff. It just doesn’t work quite as well for sprint racing that we’ve seen. It’s really up to how sandbagging were you in qualifying, et cetera. We wanted it to be a full comparable parody across the entire field.

Last weekend at Gingerbread Raceway, we had 57 cars racing everything from a BMW to an S10 pickup to a Honda Odyssey minivan racing touring cup, and they’re all running about the same acceleration curves, really fun to watch. It’s really intense to compete in. It’s really the best racing I’ve ever competed in.

It’s some of the most fun racing I’ve ever watched. We’re pretty proud of the formula and we, we tried to take a different approach to it as far as the formula of classing, how you get a car to make the same speed, but also like the interesting layout of the weekend itself. It makes for really good parody in the top 10, top 15.

They’re all usually within like the same [00:35:00] third of a second. I think at mid Ohio last year, the top 12 were all within like. Same two tenths of a second, the parody is definitely there. It’s just a matter of what mousetrap do you want to build to win? So it’s, it’s a fun builders class and it’s really, it’s a pretty intense class to compete into.

Crew Chief Eric: So what about the guy that is used to running NASA and SCCA and has his spec Miata, and he comes to a GLTC event, he can only do so much for the car, he physically can’t change it outside the parameters of his spec class, because that invalidates his other series that he’s a part of. How does he, or she rank?

When they come to a GLTC event, when they can’t mod the vehicle, are they always going to be in P57 because they’re literally the slowest car out there? So are they competitive?

Adam Jabaay: A spec Miata that’s to the letter of spec Miata rules is probably going to either have to pull a bunch of weight out. And they’re going to have to put some 200 tread wear tires on, or they’re going to run.

Yeah, we, they’re going to run a little bit towards the back. We have seen a, basically a stock motor BP and the Miata run on the top 10. It [00:36:00] was very, very light. It was a lot lighter than the spec Miata would be. Most of the cars don’t have a built motor or anything in GLTC. Definitely became a class of its own.

So there’s a lot of people building to the class. Cars that could catch easily from other sanctioning bodies would be most anything in the super touring light or super touring under category in SCCA. We’ve had some E production cars run really well with minor changes or no changes. Got a couple of F production cars run really well.

And Tegra, Kevin Ruck, who’s a multi time runoff champion has ran. in gltc and he was in the top 10 right out of the box. He was just using it for testing weekend and ran really well. There’s a lot of parity in those classes in SCCA. We have had some GTL cars run from SCCA because there is an allowance for tube frame cars.

It’s a 4 percent modifier for tube frame cars and that’s brought out a couple of GTL cars. Which are like the mini tiny NASCARs, you know, usually based on a CRX or a Sentra. Cool builds. And then in NASA world, GTS three, GTS [00:37:00] two cars, maybe with some power taken out. We’ve got about a half a dozen spec E46 guys that run with us frequently.

We’ve had a few Honda challenge two and Honda challenge one cars run. The biggest thing that we really made a push for, this is years ago. And we started at 29. Team or 18 was our first year. I can’t remember. And the biggest thing we wanted to do was show sprint racing to the next generation of racers that weren’t really enamored with the current offerings that weren’t drawn to something, but we’re in our paddock, like they were already there.

They’re already spectating. They’re already driving time attack with us. They were already running HPD with us. We’ve really built most of these drivers from within and from. Spectators watching this have jumped into HPD and they ran time attack a year later or two years later, and they just built their first GLTC car this year.

It’s a, that’s a story we’ve heard half a dozen times, even this year, inside of every weekend, we wanted to make the driver licensing. very accessible versus sometimes to get a license and other sanctioning bodies, you got to show up first thing in March with a [00:38:00] car and you run this really intense program for a day or two, or you can only do it this weekend.

You can only do it that weekend. We built an, an in weekend, no cost, no loss of track time driver licensing program. And my buddy Scott Giles is sort of in charge of that. We call it comp evaluation and it’s a bunch of classroom. It’s coaching throughout the weekend. You obviously have to be a vetted driver.

We’re not going to teach anybody how to drive on a racetrack. It’s not a start from zero comp school. You really need to be an advanced or instructor level HPD driver, or somebody has driven time trials or time attack with us, or been vetted by one of our sister organizations, or somebody that has raced with other groups or hasn’t raced in 10 years.

But did it a bunch of years ago, the kids went to college time to race again. Those are all stories that we’ve heard. We strive for like a no contact, no crash race series. So we really try to put everybody through a classroom portion and it’s pretty intense laying out expectations, laying out what we want to see out of the racing.

So we do kind of an in weekend comp school every weekend. We’ve seen good success with that. It’s approachable. The biggest thing that I’m proud of [00:39:00] in GLTC is we’ve put a hundred and I think 110 people through that comp school. So those are racers that hadn’t raced anywhere else, might not have raced anywhere else, and now they are wheel to wheel racers, like, like I said earlier, we’re not trying to rob pieces of the pie from NASA or SCCA.

We are trying to make more pies. I think sprint racing, club racing is. The coolest thing. It’s also one of the most strenuous things that I’ve ever had to be on the officiating side of, but it’s an amazing thing to watch and it’s an amazing thing to experience. It’s one of those things that you will remember until you’re not here anymore.

You’ll tell stories to your grandkids when you’re not doing it. And, uh, I wanted to show that to a bunch of people that really didn’t know it was approachable because we have this social media presence and this portal to a young generation of car enthusiasts that they’re following us because of festivals or car shows or whatever.

And I wanted them to know that they could do this. They have figured it out. They’ve seen it. We have people competing that. Would have never competed with somebody else. Obviously we’ve got some friends that race elsewhere. Also. I don’t think [00:40:00] we’ve really robbed anybody, stolen them full time to run grid life, GLTC versus somebody else.

That’s not the goal to me. That is the short sighted goal. It’s a bad way to build a series. We’ve really wanted to build drivers from drivers that wouldn’t have gotten there. And I think largely that’s been what we’ve gotten. We might’ve robbed our time trial and time attack audience a little bit, but we’ve had nothing but sold out time attack events.

So I’m not too stressed.

Crew Chief Eric: So that being said, does the time attack series borrow the same classing from the GLTC series? Or is it different?

Adam Jabaay: It’s quite a bit different. There’s the traditional street, street mod, track mod, and unlimited. And those are kind of a graduated level of modifications. Those were our base for classes street is like bolt ons and.

Smaller 200 treadwear tires street mod is you can do some engine swaps. You can add a turbo to your S2000, but you’re still on 285 or less. All wheel drives 255 or less tires. Currently track mod is like unlimited on 60 treadwear or higher and not as much aero, but you can do a lot of aero. It’s [00:41:00] sort of the tweener class.

That’s the one that’s getting rethunk next year. And unlimited is basically, was your car sold at a dealership? At one point you did all kinds of things that doesn’t fit anywhere else. And you’ve got a wing the size of your trailer, like the big, wild, crazy cars. We’ve got a couple other classes that are kind of in the middle of those though, club TR, which stands for track rat.

It’s sort of like GLTC level modifications. Like you can do a lot of different things, but you have to kind of fit inside this other box. Not exactly, but a lot of GLTC cars could run in club TR it’s a two 55 or less Falcon tire. And you can do engine swaps, four cylinders. There’s a few six and five cylinders that are allowed.

But they have to be unopened internally. It’s got the same arrow rules as GLTC. It’s really more for like kind of the cars that didn’t fit anywhere in our time trials and time attack classing. Our most popular class is called Sunday cup. I don’t know if you ever played grand Turismo back in the day with the slow cars that were Honda fits and stuff like that.

The B spec

Crew Chief Eric: cars. Yeah, it’s.

Adam Jabaay: Basically B spect on 200 [00:42:00] tread wear falcons can run in Sunday cup under current B spect classing rules, but Sunday Cup is largely Honda fits Mazda twos. We’ve got Kia Rios and all they can do is a 2 0 5 Falcon. They can do a single dampening adjustable coil over, they can do intake exhaust and they have to fit in a 25 and a half to one power to weight ratio.

I think it’s 25 and a half to one. I write all these rules and I forget what they are, but it’s roughly, you know, an average American driver. In a Honda Fit or in a Mini or in a Kia Rio or something like that is roughly 25 to 1. So that’s really one of our most popular classes. It’s super fun to watch because they’re all so slow in a straight line.

These drivers are animals in the back section of the racetrack, and they’re usually doing it nose to tail, about four cars in a row bumping each other down the back straight. And that’s a really, really fun class to be in because it’s attainable. It’s approachable. You have to spend all your money doing it.

You can drive the car to the racetrack. A Honda fit can swallow like eight tires and a Jack tent and everything. It’s a [00:43:00] attainable, approachable and sustainable class. It’s really fun to watch. It’s fun to compete in my daily driver car is a Honda fit. That is a little bit Sunday cupped out. I got P4 at road America last year, not bragging.

It’s just a fun little class to watch fun class to drive in that class is now a part of the one lap of America. We’ve convinced Brock Yates jr. To. Let that be one of the classes sponsored one lap of America Sunday cup had four cars running around and they had the best time this year in May. It’s a, it’s a cool class.

That’s one of my favorite classes to watch. We’ve also got some unsubscribed classes that are out there, but haven’t, we haven’t seen many yet. Like track battle EV is for like the build it yourself. EVs that kind of go up Pike’s peak. Sometimes in the hill climb, we’ve had a few of them and super unlimited is for basically tube frame NASCARs, which When we go to Wisconsin to Road America, there’s always half a dozen ARCA cars and, uh, ASA cars that run with us.

Yeah. Those are our core classes in Time Attack. We usually have about an 80 to 120 car field. So usually everybody’s competing with 10 to 15 cars in class. Generally [00:44:00] a really fun. Place to try to beat your best lap. So you’re, you’re running up against a bunch of buddies trying to fix each other’s blown up stuff.

All my good vibes in the paddock, especially when people are yanking the heads of a Honda K series motors and changing the transmissions, which tends to be a theme, a lot of K series transmission.

Crew Chief Brad: All right. Well, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about something that’s really interesting to me.

Drifting. I’m fascinated by drifting. I know it’s a, I’d say relatively new in the U S but gaining popularity in the U S. So how did it become a part of grid life? I think

Adam Jabaay: it was in 2011, Chris was directing a music video. He was an art director for a big advertising agency. And he was also friends with. A bunch of people in the Chicago music scene.

One of them was the group Flostradamus back in the day, and he was directing their video for, I forget the name of the song, but there’s a bunch of drift cars in the video, and so he found a bunch of friends in the drift world. And we obviously knew what drift was, but we had never done anything with it.

And he made a bunch of friends in that world [00:45:00] directing this music video, which was pretty cool. I think it was the first or second gridlife. I can’t remember the first one we had drift at. It might’ve been gridlife two in 2015 when he was like, well, we’re going to bring drift cars there also. I was like, Oh, come on.

Cause I was this uppity track rat kid that didn’t know anything about drift cars and didn’t know that it was. Maybe the coolest thing that I had never seen yet, my jaw dropped. The first time I saw Ryan Turk, who’s a pro drifter, one of the most famous drifters on the planet. He came to our Midwest festival, I think in 2015, and he entered turn one at like a hundred miles an hour sideways, and he pulled it off in his old street car, which is like a two Jay Z crazy 900 horsepower Toyota 86 or whatever.

You know, BRZ, the drift scene at grid life at festivals. And we also do a smaller version of open track drift at Audubon country club. We’re the only ones that have ever drifted Audubon. We’re actually going to have a pro demo at Lime Rock. So we’ll be the first people to ever have a drift car at Lime Rock.

Which is going to be wild. We also do a bunch of drift out of horse thief mile out of Willow Springs the last few [00:46:00] years, which is kind of their dedicated drift and motorcycle track up on the mountain. But the drift scene in grid life is different at every event at the festivals, especially it’s became a pretty cool place for everybody from an amateur who’s pretty good to like the top level pros in the U S and they kind of all mixed together and it’s just party drifting.

There’s no competition. It’s no egos. They’re just trying to put on a good show for the spectators and have fun with their buddies. It’s different than a lot of the competition groups. There’s a bunch of different groups around the country that have feeder series for the formula drift, or, you know, their, their, their own pro series, you know, clutch kickers down in Florida, et cetera.

It’s really became like a nice melting pot for the drift community. A lot of these drivers, the younger drivers that, you know, they grew up. The last 10 years watching Formula Drift. And now they get to literally drive on Gingerman or PPR or road Atlanta with the people that they watched last weekend run at English town.

It’s a cool place for drift. I think a lot of the pros use it as part of what they pitched to their sponsors. It’s like a part of their [00:47:00] season. They they’re. Gonna do the grid life festivals and they’re also gonna do FD or clutch kickers or whatever. But we have drifters that drive there. They drive from Detroit all the way to to Gingerman and they ship a bunch of tires in and they thrash on their two 40 throughout the weekend.

Definitely not a place to learn to drift. It’s kind of a cool mix of drivers and talents and personalities and. You know, the goal we’re trying to pull off is like thing that we create is like vibes and smiles. So we’re trying to make good vibes in the campground area because the people that are camped along the racetrack, they throw the best parties and they want to watch drift and they want to watch GLTC and we want to put on a good show for them.

And we also want to really. Put on a good vibe in the paddock. We want everybody to get to know your new best friend. And you find your new best friend often at the racetrack because you accidentally parked next to them. Some of the best friends that I have, I met in parking lot and I met in racetrack and some of the most interesting people too.

So like we’re trying to put on best weekend ever. If we can put on the best weekend ever for a small percentage of the people that come to every grid life, I think. We’re nailing it. It’s just another [00:48:00] piece of what we do. And it’s a cool show for spectators too. If you’ve never seen pro level drifting, it’s absolutely insanity.

It’s just insanity. Especially with some of the demo cars, like Chris Forsberg and his Ultimaniac four seat tube frame Ultima, with like 2000 motor. It’s just nuts. It doesn’t even look like it’s trying hard and it’s putting off more smoke than you can see through. It’s insanity. But it’s also, if they do it right, The racetrack is still pretty clear and we can run some HPD sessions right behind them.

Just another piece of what we do. Like I said earlier, it’s the same disease, but it’s just kind of a different symptom in the automotive enthusiasm realm, you know,

Crew Chief Eric: I’m revved up for the next grid life. And for those of you that are listening and hearing about this for the first time, I don’t know what rock you’ve been under, but you’re probably wondering where can I sign up for the next grid life event?

And that’s the big question. So are we able to register for grid life events on something like MSR? Which we’re used to for other track day events, time attacks, and so on. Or do you register through the grid life website? And the bigger question, the ultimate question, how [00:49:00] much does it generally cost? Is it by motorsport discipline or is there one cost for the entire weekend?

Is there some sort of all you can eat different spectator fees? How does all this break down for somebody looking to come to the next grid life event?

Adam Jabaay: So cost wise, we try to stay in line with. other similar organizations for a three day and four day, depending on what class you’re running in at gingerbread raceway, it was under 500 drifters.

They don’t run as much seat times. I think they were in the 2 range and spectators. It totally varies whether you want to buy VIP or you just want to show up for Saturday afternoon, you know, anything from like 60 bucks up to that’s with. Two nights of headlining music and up to, you can spend a couple hundred dollars getting the track side camping and lighting and all that kind of stuff.

Several of our events are usually on sale on MSR. Also grid dot life is the main website. There’s links to all the events there. We often sell through both. pieces. MSR is one place we sell and we also use our own ticketing service. It’s pretty easy to buy a ticket, should [00:50:00] be multiple places you can find it.

Don’t buy a scalped one, that’s been becoming a problem for festivals, but the biggest problem that we actually have right now is drivers buy the driver tickets really fast and the driver tickets are typically sold out pretty quickly. We’ve got this traveling circus of about 75 percent of the same people and there are people that are I can never get Tickets for grid life, which is a terrible problem to have.

I totally hate that problem. I don’t know how to do it better other than to keep doing more events. It’s really hard to do more events. We’re a small teams, their spectator tickets, car show tickets, a lot of places to buy should be pretty easy to find if you look on our website, grid. life and a lot of people put a.

com after that, but don’t do that. It’s just. Grid. life.

Crew Chief Eric: So if you can’t get space at the next grid life event, you can always try in the virtual world. As many of us migrated there during COVID to iRacing, Assetto Corsa, Forza, whatever was available that we could get together with our buddies and compete against one another.

So I see that grid life has done the same thing. Is that continuing on as part of the [00:51:00] circus as well?

Adam Jabaay: Yeah, we’ve done several years of sim racing. And I think actually during early pandemic, there was complete inability to buy sim gear at one point. There’s so many new sim racers because of that, which is wild to think about.

But we have a gridlife iRacers, which is a pretty popular iRacing series actually. And they’ve got their own discord and all that stuff. Gridlife iRacers, Facebook is probably the best way to get involved with that. Or email kyle at grid dot life. He’s more in charge of all the sim world. He also runs a company called sim TV.

Kyle works with us full time and he runs sim TV also, which is sort of a sim hosting. He does live streams for a bunch of different people on iRacing, which is very cool. Does a great job announcing as well. He’s our, he’s our lead presenter and we’ve done stuff on a set of Corsa. We’ve done stuff on Forza.

I’ve done stuff on iRacing. We also, for the last several years, have hosted a SEMA party. Gridlife SEMA party, but it’s spent at the, what’s that one? The one that’s the, the pyramid. Which one is that? The Luxor. Luxor, yeah. They’ve got this video [00:52:00] game nightclub, an amphitheater basically built for gaming at the esports arena.

We’ve hosted several SEMA parties there. Really cool places to get to know people in the industry. And that is sort of where we really launched in 2018. We launched some of our iRacing stuff. I’m a bit more of a caveman. I deal with carpentry and real race cars, but Kyle at grid. life can answer any questions in that world.

He is the dude that knows all about the sim world. I’ll be good. Life iRace is really fun to watch, especially in the winter time. They’ve got a several different series throughout the winter, quote unquote off season, which never seems to actually be off. It’s fun to watch. Kyle does a great job with the streams.

A rotating cast of broadcasting talent goes through their great streams to watch too.

Crew Chief Eric: Are there any other ways that someone can get involved with gridlife outside of being a participant or being in the virtual world? Are there opportunities to come volunteer or help even maybe flag something like that?

Adam Jabaay: Absolutely. Grid. life slash volunteers got a volunteer application on there. We’ve got a super cool culture of volunteers that really help us run the [00:53:00] events. It’s actually more fun for many of them to volunteer. And then they drive a couple of sessions than it is to like buy a ticket and just. Focus on their car.

You know, you get to talk to all the drivers, you’re working tech, you’re working merch at the festivals. You might even get to work the bar and hang out at backstage in the concert. You never know. We need people everywhere because these events are so expensive to run and they require so many people to run them safely.

We’ll take any help we can get. We’ll train you up. We’ve got volunteers that have volunteered with us for six years straight. And traveled the country following us around flagging. Typically we buy flagger help from the racetracks typically, or flaggers by Phoenicia, which is a traveling flagger group that does everything from IndyCar to our ragtag group of unshaven misfits.

That’s typically through the racetrack. Most tracks, they’re always looking for flaggers too. It’s also a great way to experience the weekends. You can get the best view in the house. You’re standing inside of all the turns protected by a barrier. Watching every single car and you get to play with cool Motorola radios, too.

Yeah, we, we would love anybody and everybody [00:54:00] who’s interested in like experiencing motor sports. It’s a great way to really get into it as well. Like if you don’t know if this is what you want to do, but you’ve been watching these Instagram videos or the YouTube videos or the Twitch videos, we would love to show you behind the curtain, show you the backside of grid life, all the dirty work, the people that help and help these crazy weekends actually become a reality.

So we would love if somebody wants to volunteer for sure.

Crew Chief Brad: And Gridlife is also associated with a podcast that many might already be familiar with called Slip Angle with over 460 episodes. So for those of us that aren’t in the know, what is the show about?

Adam Jabaay: The second Gridlife ever, 2015. Matt Farrah, he’s a YouTuber.

He’s got the Smoking Tire podcast. He came out, he and I were announcing time attack or something, I forget. Along with my buddy Austin, Matt was like, you too should just do a podcast. You guys got got like a great on air vibe and that was the first time that somebody had told us. But he and I actually had both been talking about doing it.

We started doing shows once [00:55:00] a week in 2015 and often twice a week. And we sort of never quit. Austin kind of got out of cars, got burned out. He worked in the, uh, the track event world full time for quite a while. And he pops in every few months. He’ll be on the show still, but my time attack and competition director, Abe Schmucker is now kind of the co host and producer.

And we just have a pretty good time chatting. It’s often an interview. It’s often us talking about our broken RVs that we had to drive to the racetrack or street cars, kind of BSing anything and everything. It’s kind of a loose affiliation, obviously with grid life. But I’m obviously affiliated with both.

So it’s become sort of the unofficial podcast of gridlife. We never really wanted to have an official podcast in case we said something stupid on air. I didn’t want it to affect the other company, but it’s got a great listener base and most of the paddocks seems to listen to it. Which is sort of the reason that we keep doing it.

We get to talk to our friends and it keeps the good life community together. And it’s really definitely helped us branch out around the country as well. When we were out in California in March, all I [00:56:00] seemed to do was talk to people about the podcast and they were stoked that we brought an event out there, which is great.

I love that. The podcast was started as if we recorded like a hangout session, when the track went cold, we would always talk about anything and everything. We were literally fixing somebody’s truck, or we were like fixing somebody’s race car or talking about how much fun the day was, you know, BS ing about RVs or actually building a race car in the tower and recording it.

It was anything and everything. And then you also get to talk to some interesting people. We’ve had a ton of pro racers on, crew chiefs. We’ve had officials from IMSA, SRO. We’ve had Well, people all from all over all walks of life and anybody in the sport we’ve had on it’s ever evolving and you never know what we’re going to talk about.

Probably going to talk about RVs at some point though, because lately that’s been a theme. So I traveled the country in a 1991 diesel pusher motorhome. So there’s always something to fix.

Crew Chief Eric: So with that, Adam, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t talk about thus far in the episode?

Adam Jabaay: We have a great [00:57:00] designer on staff, the founder of gridlife, my partner in business world life. Chris Stewart is one of the best designers. He makes amazing. shirts. He makes amazing apparel. We’ve got some amazing people helping him. Check out our store on grid. life. We’ve got some awesome apparel on there.

The line for apparel at festivals is typically hours long. People love it. They love the apparel. Check that stuff out. In Chicago, we’re actually starting another company called Car Club. It’s going to be Car storage and kind of a hangout space on the north side, the near north side, right off of I 94. So if you are in Chicago, you’re looking to maybe store something somewhere, shoot me an email, adamantgrid.

life. I can connect you with the right people. That should be open probably in October. Early storage might be available pretty soon. Actually grid. life is the main website grid life official, uh, Instagram. We have a ton of different Facebook pages for events selves or our track battle or good life touring cup series.

Anything under grid life itself. You’ll know if it’s fake, we do get cloned pages all the time and [00:58:00] they usually disappear after a few hours. And then, yeah, the dumb little podcast, a slip angle podcast, all one word. You can pretty much get it anywhere that podcasts are given away for free. And we do have a Patrion for slip angle.

I don’t even know how to get there. I think it just. Look up Slip Angle on Patreon. We don’t push Patreon very hard, but we do really appreciate our patrons. We try to throw t shirts at them randomly. Some of the shows we put up there, there’s a reason they get hidden on Patreon. So some of the debauchery gets hidden there.

There are some good shows, but there’s definitely some debauchery. You hear weird stories, especially from people that live in Iowa.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, guys. So I think you’ve convinced me it’s more than just flat brim hats and vapes. It’s more than just a festival. Gridlife is a motorsports movement. I’m not sure about you, Brad, but I think we need to become part of the hashtag grid lifestyle and pick our favorite event and go

Crew Chief Brad: full send.

I agree. And to learn more about GridLife and how you can participate, log on [00:59:00] to www. grid. life. You can email Adam at adam at grid. life or follow them on social at gridlifefest on Twitter and at gridlifeofficial on Instagram and Facebook.

Crew Chief Eric: That said, Adam, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

I can’t thank you enough for coming on and telling the origin story of GridLife properly for the 10, 000th time, but to a new audience of folks that may or may not be familiar with GridLife and who are hopefully looking forward to participating and joining one of your upcoming events here in the near future.

So again, thanks for coming on BreakFix.

Adam Jabaay: You guys have been a good time to talk to. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a follow on pit stop, mini sowed. So check that out on www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports and get access to all sorts of [01:00:00] behind the scenes content from this episode and more.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a [01:01:00] month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com. dot Patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. And remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

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 What is Gridlife?
01:27 Origins of Gridlife
02:46 Evolution and Expansion
05:52 Festival Atmosphere
14:32 HPDE Program Insights
26:01 Gridlife Touring Cup (GLTC)
31:43 Data Analysis and Parity in Racing
32:25 Diverse Car Builds in GLTC
32:46 Adopting Bracket Racing
33:24 Excitement of Sprint Racing
35:16 Challenges for Spec Miata in GLTC
36:07 Building a Competitive GLTC Car
37:46 Driver Licensing and Accessibility
40:25 Time Attack Classing Explained
41:48 The Popularity of Sunday Cup
44:16 Drifting at Gridlife
48:47 Registering for Gridlife Events
50:46 Gridlife in the Virtual World
52:46 Volunteering at Gridlife
54:23 Slip Angle Podcast
56:52 Final Thoughts and Promotions

Bonus Content

Some stories are just too good for the main episode… Check out this Behind the Scenes Pit Stop Minisode! Available exclusively on our Patreon.

Learn More

To learn more about GRIDlife and how you can participate, logon to www.grid.life ; email Adam at adam@grid.life or follow them on social @gridlifefest on twitter, @gridlifeofficial on instagram and facebook.

Gridlife is now a traveling circus of motorsports and music, with events held across the country. From Road Atlanta to Pikes Peak International Raceway, the series includes:

Time Attack competitions with razor-close lap times
Gridlife Touring Cup (GLTC), a single-class wheel-to-wheel sprint race format
Drifting exhibitions and parties under the lights
HPDE sessions for drivers of all skill levels
Live music from artists like Ludacris, Waka Flocka, Andrew WK, and Cascade
Camping, food trucks, and a festival atmosphere

The flagship Midwest Festival at Gingerman Raceway remains the heart of the operation, packing the paddock with racers and the infield with spectators who party all weekend long.

GLTC is Gridlife’s answer to traditional club racing. Instead of long multi-class races, GLTC features four to five 15-minute sprints per weekend. It’s fast, digestible, and perfect for livestreams and YouTube. With tight fields and minimal spread, the racing is intense and easy to follow – whoever’s in front is winning.

Coast to Coast: Gridlife’s Expanding Footprint

Gridlife has grown far beyond the Midwest. Recent events have taken place at:

Willow Springs (CA)
Circuit of the Americas (TX)
Heartland Motorsports Park (KS)
Summit Point (WV)
Lime Rock Park (CT) – with a new “Circuit Legends” event celebrating 80s–2000s motorsports
NJMP (NJ)
AMP and NCM (KY)

While Watkins Glen remains elusive (10-year waitlist, anyone?), Gridlife continues to explore new venues and formats – including a soon-to-be-announced endurance-style race weekend at Pittsburgh International Race Complex.

HPDE: Coaching Over Commanding

Gridlife’s HPDE program has evolved into a pro-style coaching model. Instead of right-seat instructors barking orders, students receive sideline coaching, classroom sessions, and video/data debriefs. The result? Fewer off-track incidents and a more comfortable learning environment for beginners.

Instructors are placed around the track with radios and notes, offering feedback and guidance tailored to each driver’s pace and goals. It’s a system that prioritizes safety, education, and long-term growth.

Though Gridlife and Global Time Attack (GTA) started separately, they’ve become allies in growing the sport. Sharing rule sets, drivers, and even co-hosting events like Super Lap Battle at COTA, the two organizations now collaborate through the North American Time Attack Council (NATA) alongside SCCA.

The goal? Build more pies, not slice the existing one thinner.

What’s Next?

Adam teased a new format of “slightly longer races” (SLRs, anyone?) – not full-blown enduros, but multi-hour team events with pit stops and strategy. It’s part of Gridlife’s ongoing mission to innovate and offer fresh experiences for drivers and fans alike.

Gridlife isn’t just a motorsports series – it’s a lifestyle, a community, and a celebration of automotive enthusiasm in all its forms. Whether you’re a track rat, a drifter, a time attacker, or just someone who loves a good taco at the racetrack, Gridlife has a place for you. Stay tuned for more updates, and maybe we’ll see you at Taco Track Day next Cinco de Mayo.

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

The Australian Add On

Behind the Garage Door

Don W

-

July 27, 2023

0

Images by Iain Curry

Occasionally, car guys get lucky. Such is the case with Iain, whose wife was okay with the idea of converting a room in the house into a parking space, or an attached garage that is set to redefine the idea of what an attached garage is. Now the car sits in a truly proper room, and the entire scene becomes part of the home.

“It’s pretty fun, opening the door and there’s a car just beyond the living room,” said Iain.

To make it work, the concrete floor was prepared and painted with industrial-strength grey paint, the walls were treated to a stark white, crown moldings add a touch of homey elegance to the space, recessed can lights illuminate the room sharply, and vivid blue was used on the big sliding door that separates the main house from the parking room. The blue is a great idea, it’s subtly bold and draws the eye, lending a visual anchor to the space. Iain has hung two of his racing bicycles on the wall, a number of hats, some pictures, and license plates from around the world. In all, it’s a wonderfully clean environment, not overpowering or understated, but perfectly balanced, even centered in a way, thanks again to the blue door.

“I was surprised that she was interested in the idea, to be honest,” he laughed. “But it gave me a great opportunity to bring the car into the house, something I’ve long wanted to do, incorporate the home and garage into one. It’s a humble little garage, but I think that makes it even more interesting, it’s as if the room were truly set up solely for the purpose of parking a car, which is a fantastic conversation piece.”

If nothing else, Iain and his wife have demonstrated well how a single-car garage can actually be quite stylish and accommodating.

“Single car garages can be a challenge because they are so small,” said Iain. “It’s not like you have an infinite amount of space to work with, so you have to be careful in choosing the colors, and how you fill it. So many people try to put too much in too small of a space, and it ends up looking cluttered.”

Thanks for stopping by!

Don Weberg - Editor-Publisher-Founder, Garage Style Magazine

B/F: The Drive Thru #35

Drive Thru News

Tania M

-

July 25, 2023

0

This episode of ‘The Drive Thru,’ sponsored by various automotive-related organizations, marks a return to the studio for GTM. The hosts discuss their recent travels, notably Eric’s trip to France, including an adventurous and challenging driving experience in Paris with a Fiat 500 E hybrid. They recount their time at the 100th anniversary of Le Mans, sharing observations about the race, the city, and local culture, including the challenges of French cuisine and public urination issues. Their travels also took them to Denmark and Quebec, Canada, experiencing local car culture and automotive events. The episode also delves into various car-related discussions such as professional racing (including Formula One, WRC, and NASCAR), automotive shows, the rise of social media platform

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Showcase: Around the World!

Celebrating 100 years of Le Mans!

We go on-site for the 100th Anniversary of the Great Race - Photos in our Vault! ... [READ MORE]

Virtual Le Mans

GTM and MIE racing team up to check out all the digital offerings at the 100th Le Mans! ... [READ MORE]

The ACO / Le Mans Museum

100 years of winning or significant cars. Check our our photo vault! ... [READ MORE]

RM/Sotheby's Le Mans Motorsports Auction

There's a first time for everything... including going to an auction. ... [READ MORE]

Le Mans 2023 Bosch + Ligier H2e Hydrogen Race car Reveal

Watch the debut of the Ligier/Bosch H2E race car at the 100th Le Mans ... [READ MORE]

LEGOland - Not just for kids anymore!

Check out all the neat motorsports and automotive inspired things you can enjoy at LEGOland Billund, Denmark ... [READ MORE]

LEGOland Traffic School

LEGOland's long running attaction "Traffic School" is the cutest and most hilarious thing you've ever seen - check out the video! ... [READ MORE]

Tourist laps of Circuit Gilles Villenueve (Canadian GP)

We did tourist laps of the Formula 1 GP of Canada Circuit Gilles Villenueve, check out the video! ... [READ MORE]

British Ferrari fan does his best SNL Celebrity Jeopardy impression

... [READ MORE]

Double check your list before leaving for Le Mans

... [READ MORE]

**All photos and articles are dynamically aggregated from the source; click on the image or link to be taken to the original article. GTM makes no claims to this material and is not responsible for any claims made by the original authors, publishers or their sponsoring organizations. All rights to original content remain with authors/publishers.

Automotive, EV & Car-Adjacent News

For a list of all the articles and events referenced on this episode check out the show notes below.

Domestics

Garage 56

On-board footage of the Garage 56 Camaro

EVs & Concepts

All-Electric Project V Is Caterham's First New Car Ever: 268 HP, 2623 Pounds

Japanese & JDM

Tesla

Tesla NACS Charger: All the Upcoming Compatible EVs and Charging Networks

VAG & Porsche

Raging Bull: Lamborghini Unveils GTP That Begins Racing in 2024

Porsche at Le Mans - narrated by Patrick Dempsey

TRANSCRIPT

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is GTM’s monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, Hooked on Driving, AmericanMuscle. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive Thru, look no further than www.

gtmotorsports. org. Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: Recording in progress.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, we’re back in the studio. Can you believe it? It feels like it’s been forever.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like I never left the studio.

Crew Chief Eric: It was a good vacation. I think our fans are happy to see us back.

Crew Chief Brad: For our fans that have been living under a rock and may not know, did you know that Eric went to France?

Crew Chief Eric: Benvenue, right? Is that what they say in French? Benvenue.

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to drive thru episode number 35. This is our monthly recap where we’ve put [00:01:00] together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news.

Now, let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news. Cause back the streets, back, alright! Well,

Crew Chief Eric: we are going to talk about a little bit of world travel. Not only did I go to France, I went to a couple other places as well. And Tanya joined me on part of this epic adventure. I

Executive Producer Tania: think you joined me on the epic adventure.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. But we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about The Great Race, the 100th anniversary of…

Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were going to say the great race, the Canadian, you know, F1 race.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re going to get to that in a little bit. So did you guys watch Le Mans?

Crew Chief Brad: What’s what’s that? I watched Le Mans. A

Executive Producer Tania: significant portion of it.

I did not stay up all night.

Crew Chief Brad: I watched about two or three hours. Of the 24 hour race, but I have a toddler and I was very busy going to swim lessons and being a good father. He’s not old enough to understand the races yet. So [00:02:00] I had to do other things.

Crew Chief Eric: Lamar is my annual father’s day gift from my family. I asked for two things.

Be able to watch the race and to be able to watch the race in peace.

Crew Chief Brad: My father’s day gift was to go to Baltimore for a concert. So I chose music over cars, which music is my number one cars are my number two. So

Crew Chief Eric: you did some traveling, like you went to Baltimore. That’s like a foreign country from where you live now.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s going to a third world country, not France. It’s like going to Somalia.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Driven in Paris. That’s all I got to say. Holy smokes.

Crew Chief Brad: Can’t be as bad as driving through Baltimore.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s worse. Actually picture it. Paris 2023. I’m doing my best to still get here. It is like Dante’s Inferno. Paris itself is like nine inception rings of hell.

And it’s like one beltway after the other, I guess their districts or rings or whatever they call them. And I’d heard rumor about what it was like to drive in France. And you guys have heard me DMV before, but nothing. Is like driving in [00:03:00] Paris. Nothing is like driving in Paris in a Fiat that you weren’t supposed to have in the first place.

So it all sort of goes wrong from the very beginning when I showed up at the enterprise counter and they said, well, sir, your car is not here.

Crew Chief Brad: What was your original car? Was it a Chevy Impala?

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. I was supposed to get a Twingo and I was super excited about that.

Crew Chief Brad: Even smaller. Wait, that’s the electric car, isn’t it?

Crew Chief Eric: No, the Twingo is like this classic Renault that kind of replaced the R4 and some of the other people movers that have been around forever. It’s sort of like the new beetle, right? The

Crew Chief Brad: size of your shoe, Brad. Yeah. I thought I’ve sold them on Top Gear a lot.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re small. They’re like a PF 500 size.

Crew Chief Brad: You say Twingo, all I think is Oingo Boingo.

Crew Chief Eric: My car wasn’t there when I was waiting to pick it up. So I had to wait like 45 minutes and then it finally showed up. I don’t know where they drudged this car up, but it was a Fiat 500 E hybrid, not electric. So it was a E H

Crew Chief Brad: it was a

Crew Chief Eric: 500. Yeah. And that’s sort of [00:04:00] how it drove too. It was a manual, but it was a three cylinder non turbo hybrid.

I will say that 70 mile an hour happens. Eventually. And when you add two other full size adults in said vehicle plus luggage, yeah, it got a little suspect.

Crew Chief Brad: So was it any different driving a manual hybrid versus a manual dice car?

Crew Chief Eric: It was exactly the same. Basically what it did was it had RPMs.

It still had like the engine shutoff capabilities and all this kind of stuff, and so it was really designed for short stop and go, especially in the French traffic where it took us over an hour and a half just to get outta Paris onto the main highway to go to Lama. So at that point it was consuming electricity instead of gas, stuff like that.

What I learned though was with the manual transmission ev, unlike the [00:05:00] Honda CRZ hybrid and some, and this new super that we talked about last time, we got together, the fiat. If you didn’t disengage the auto shutoff, the car would like freak out and stall, especially if you tried to do like a rolling second gear takeoff.

So I’ve actually figured out how to disable the system partially. And so then it was a lot more drivable because otherwise it would sort of like Buck, it was really annoying. And I kept telling David from MIE racing, who was my travel companion over this trip. I was like, it’s not me. And he goes, no, I can tell it’s a car.

It’s doing something weird. And, you know, it’s like, I drive a manual every day. It’s it’s a Fiat. It’s easy. Once we got out of Paris, then it’s just country roads. It’s like any other highway, that sort of thing. And Lamar is in the middle of nowhere, but I will say this to sort of wrap up the thought about Paris and your comment about Baltimore, at least in Baltimore, when it rains.

The water doesn’t create a waterfall from 1 overpass to the other overpass and the 3rd overpass underneath it and then slam on the roof of your car [00:06:00] where it’s nearly impossible to see. And then when you get out from underneath the waterfall, your windshield is covered in cigarette butts and trash.

Because Paris is filthy.

Crew Chief Brad: So you’re saying you’ve never been under, in the tunnel, you know, going into or out of Baltimore?

Crew Chief Eric: The tunnel doesn’t leak, at least as far as I know.

Crew Chief Brad: No, no, but I’ve been in situations where just that, you know, happens. There was some sort of clog in the drainage system and you basically drove through a shower to get into the tunnel and out.

Crew Chief Eric: I am not one for driving in the city anymore anyway, although I don’t mind the European driving etiquette. They still have one, at least, you know, passing is very easy. Everybody’s moving at very good speeds. They’re situationally aware. You’re not looking over seeing somebody eating a bag of Doritos on their cell phone and not paying attention to driving.

Hardly any Teslas I saw when I was there, you know, the typical BMWs, Renaults, Volkswagens, all that kind of stuff you come to expect. The aggressiveness in Paris is unparalleled. They change lanes, whether you’re there [00:07:00] or not, they push against you. I mean, you could reach out and basically smack somebody in the face.

That’s how close they are. They will just cut in wherever they feel like it, whether you’re going fast or going slow, turn signals, might as well not even have them. Absolutely insane in the city when you get back out on the highway, not a big deal. It is what it is. It’s just typical European driving at that point.

But in Paris proper, it’s nuts.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It sounds like driving in New York, basically a hundred percent. If they’re an inch ahead of you, they have right away. A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. A hundred percent. It’s not

Crew Chief Brad: how many Peugeots were driving.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, there were a lot. I got to tell you, I got to spot the new 208.

Like all over the place, the new 208 GTI specifically is a really good looking car. Like if I lived over there, I’d be considering buying one of those right now. It is really nice, very well equipped, very well appointed. I got to see one up close in the interior and stuff. I also got to see some Sciroccos, including a Scirocco R.

So that is still at the top of my [00:08:00] list of things to buy while I was playing car spotting over there. But there’s a lot of neat stuff. You get super jealous really quick driving around over there. Because you realize there’s so many cars that we’re just never going to get.

Crew Chief Brad: Speaking of the Scirocco, not to go off on a tangent.

When did that first come out? The newest model, the one you Mark

Crew Chief Eric: five timeframe.

Crew Chief Brad: So 2008, 2000s.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So 25 year rule sometime in the 2030s, you can, that’s right. You should be able to import one. I just got to wait a little bit longer.

Crew Chief Eric: Just

Crew Chief Brad: a little bit.

Crew Chief Eric: That 208 is pretty hot though. That is, that is a hot car.

You get to Lamont, Le Mans, and the way we came in, because we came in from Paris, we’re going east to west and we drop in right behind Tetrerue. It’s like the famous restaurant that’s right there at turn, I guess it’s like turn five. You don’t know, really know what to expect because you’re skirting the outside of the track and the track is comprised mainly of country roads.

And so it’s chaos. There’s no [00:09:00] organization. The other thing I learned about France is they pretty much expect you to be an adult, and they’ll give you pointers to a certain point. And then after that, they’re like, well, you’re on your own. We got tired. We’re not putting up any more signs. And we must have run out of money because there aren’t any more signs to put up.

Anyway, you get lost really quickly because the level of caring kind of seems to stop. And Le Mans is huge. I never understood how grandiose it was. Until I got there, like we look at tracks like V. I. R. and the Glen and Laguna Seca and the ones in Texas and even some of the biggest NASCAR tracks at Talladega or even Indianapolis, you’re like, these are coliseums of greatness and you get to Le Mans, you’re like, these are turns three and four and five and that’s basically it.

I mean, it’s just, it’s so big, just massive. And I was tracking all of our walking that we were doing. And regrettably my decision not to get a scooter or whatever, some other alternate form of transportation, because moving around by car was near impossible, [00:10:00] we ended up clocking. Could you not almost. 80, that’s eight zero miles of walking in five days.

I mean, my calves look like your calves now, Brad. That’s what I’m saying.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, they’d probably come down now.

Crew Chief Eric: The track is just massive, right? Eight and a half miles and change Bugatti. The inner circuit, the one we play on forces sometimes is actually a lot smaller. And we walked most of that too. And you’re like, Oh, this is really cool.

Motorcycle track, HPD track, go karting. You can do a lot of stuff with it, but it seems bigger. Until you see it in context of everything else at Lamar, it’s just, it’s huge. The other thing you don’t realize is the amount of elevation change there is at Lamar, like in all the video games, just like any other video game or simulator.

It seems really flat and it’s not, not at all. Pretty interesting. You know, it’s in the rolling countryside and all that kind of stuff. Before I went, you know, we talked about different vantage points around the track. Where would you guys think would be probably the best place to watch?

Executive Producer Tania: On your TV in the tent.[00:11:00]

Crew Chief Brad: I like the way Tanya thinks.

Executive Producer Tania: Because then you get to see everything.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll put it this way. I had high hopes. Tetra Rouge was a disappointment. It’s really tight back there. There’s not a lot of room for people to stand. But what you do get. Especially at night is this overwhelming sense of how fast those cars are because they’re coming down the hill already at full tilt and getting on the Mulsanne, prepare for launch speed at 200 miles an hour kind of deal.

And it’s just absolutely bonkers. And some people come through there flat out. Some will set up the brakes just to nose the car in a little bit. And away they go, like, just absolute warp drive. That was kind of cool, but to stand there all day with no grandstands, shoulder to shoulder with other people that don’t know the boundaries of personal space.

Yeah, I was like, we need to move on from that. Another one that was super disappointing was actually the Porsche curves. And you see it on TV and it looks super cool with the Porsche thing written out and all this [00:12:00] kind of stuff. You’re sitting on a hill and you can only sit on the inside of the turn.

And you got to hike through two campgrounds to get there. It’s not close, you know, like anything is around there, but the vantage point kind of sucked and the cars are just buzzing by and it’s sort of the same effect you get at road Atlanta and turn six and seven, where they just sort of come into the corner out of nowhere.

And then they disappear because they’re off at a million miles an hour. Although I will say it was one of the. Best places to hear the cars other than the front straight. If you really wanted to be up close to them. And we’ll talk more about the garage 56 car as we go along, but I mean, talk about a car beyond the level of any Corvette of the past, that the sound just ripples right through you as it’s going through Porsche curves, we went down to Ford chicane, which is where the Ferris wheel is and at three o’clock in the morning, when you’re extremely tired after many days, it is.

Absolutely gorgeous up there. I highly recommend it. You do have to pay to go on the Ferris wheel. It’s a whole separate thing. It’s not too expensive. Some of the [00:13:00] video and the pictures we took were just absolutely unbelievable. And you can see really far out, especially onto the backside of the track, coming from the direction of like Arnage when you’re up in the Ferris wheel.

So that was totally worth it. The front straight is pretty awesome during non race time, because otherwise you can’t get there. It is so jam packed with people and security guards and like all this stuff. It’s really not a fun place to be. But what I learned through the process is. Lemans is a week long thing.

It’s a week of sleepless nights. There’s a lot of stuff going on and being at the front straight, especially during night practice, which I don’t think many of us knew was a thing because they don’t televise it. So ACO 18, the Porsche boxes. That was a great place to watch off the main street, your high upgrade pictures, all this kind of stuff.

We went there at night during one of the practice sessions because it was open. It’s called a tribune, is what they call their grandstands. And you have to have special passes to get up there and you have to be part of the Porsche box and all this kind of stuff. But [00:14:00] because it wasn’t race day yet, we could get up there.

So we went up there like late at nights, David and I were chatting, we’re taking pictures down into Glickenhaus and Toyota, and we’re kind of, you know, using the binoculars and seeing what they’re doing. And by the way, we found out there’s a curfew in the pit boxes. They’re only allowed to work to a certain point.

They got to shut it down. So we’re just sitting there chatting, you know, taking it in, talking about the experience at that point. And there were security guards like looming up there. Right. We had asked him, is it okay if we come up here? Yeah, yeah, sure. We’re going to take some pictures. We’re going to hang out.

Yeah, yeah, no problem. We’re we’re open all night. Okay, cool. It got really quiet. It’s like two in the morning, I guess, at this point. And David’s like, man, I gotta pee. And so he disappears and he comes like right back. And I’m like, what happened? He goes, they’re locking us in. What? He goes, they’re leaving.

They weren’t going to say a damn thing. I pack up all, you know, my stuff, my camera, whatever. And we run out and they’re like, Oh yes, we were, we were going. And I’m like, we were still out there. It’s okay. Not our problem. Like, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Crew Chief Brad: How would you have gotten out? Like, is there a way to have gotten out?

I

Crew Chief Eric: think we would have [00:15:00] set off a bunch of alarms and stuff. They were locking us in. And I’m like, well, we’re going to go over the front of the balcony and like, rappel down? Like, spelunking? That’s the other thing. The track is live all week. For almost all day, every day, there’s only a few hours where it gets quiet and it gets disturbing because you’re like, there’s all that ambient white noise of the cars, constantly something going on.

And so that’s a little strange Dunlop’s pretty awesome. Not going to deny it. It’s probably 1 of the most fun places to watch. There are grandstands there, but it gets packed very, very quickly. It’s hard to get in and out. The bridge is really narrow. There is an advantage. If you’re an ACO member, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, where you can be on the backside of Dunlop, where I took a lot of pictures from, and so did some of our other guys, and that’s a great place to be the downhill S’s are also awesome, hard to get to.

You have to climb these really tall banks to get up there, to be able to see, and it’s jam packed. And people are getting these spots during the race on [00:16:00] average, three to five hours before the race even started. So if you didn’t pick where you wanted to be. It was already packed, so absolutely insane. The only part of the track where we didn’t get to go was Arnage and Indie, which are the two slowest corners.

You know, after you come off the Mulsanne, it’s the hard left and then the hard right, and then they make their way back. The French guys from Bosch that we were hanging out with Thibaut and that whole team, Max and all those guys, Hey, if you’re listening. They made the trek to Arnaz and Indy, and would you guys like to guess how long it took to walk there?

Crew Chief Brad: A year.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, this is like our what should I buy guess.

Crew Chief Brad: Like two hours.

Crew Chief Eric: Three and a half hours one way. Because it is the furthest point away from everything, and you have to walk through, like, the town of Arnaz to get there. It’s super far, and… I regret not going, but I’ll do that next time because that takes a lot of planning and I would love to have a scooter or something to be able to do that.

Cause it’s just too much

Executive Producer Tania: for you to be scootering or yes, [00:17:00] or something else.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Bikes and scooters were all over the place. And every time I saw one buzz by me, I’m like, I’m super jealous right now. I’m a feet hurt and yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were going to buy a scooter and do the whole I

Crew Chief Eric: was! And so you know what I Buy a boat ship there and My inner cheapness as a racer came out, and you know what I did?

I ended up buying a really nice pair Did you

Crew Chief Brad: get Heelys? You got a pair of Heelys. No, I

Crew Chief Eric: got Hokas. These European, like, three sizes too big for your feet running shoes. And I will say that saved me because of all this walking I did. But yeah, it would have been nice to be mobile and be able to get around a lot faster.

You

Executive Producer Tania: should

Crew Chief Brad: have just taken rollerblades.

Executive Producer Tania: They sell Hokas here.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, I

Crew Chief Brad: bought them here.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: You know what I like to talk about. I know. Everywhere I go. We hungry. We hungry. We always hungry. I wasn’t

Executive Producer Tania: gonna bring up food. I wasn’t gonna bring up baguettes.

Crew Chief Brad: So let’s talk about the food situation. Brad’s a

Crew Chief Eric: foodie.

Crew Chief Brad: As in I like food. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: about it. Hanging out with a gentleman named Ty White. Hey, Ty, if you’re listening, by the way, fun [00:18:00] fact, he is the White House. You see in every video game at the Nürburgring, that’s where he lives. He lives at the track there. So that’s actually super cool. So he’s been to Le Mans many, many times, and he was very much our yogi on this trip because he’s like, go here, go here, do these things, whatever.

And he told me years ago in the not too recent past. Lamont was like a food desert. There was nothing you had to fend for yourself. Can you imagine being there camping

Crew Chief Brad: for a week?

Crew Chief Eric: Right. And you didn’t plan ahead. Well, you starved. So now they have these, especially for the hundredth, they built a lot more facilities.

There’s a lot more like food trucks. There’s this really cool brasserie that we ate at twice because it was actually a really good deal. And there weren’t a lot of lines. Cause people were like, I don’t want to sit down dinner. I just want a hot dog or, you know, whatever they could find. But since we were, as the French guys liked to make fun of us repeatedly, we were glamping.

Food was provided in the morning, at least breakfast, and they had a lounge and stuff like that near where our campsite was. Which by the way, if you’re gonna do Lama, [00:19:00] do the glamping, it is totally worth it. Considering how close we were to the track and all that kind of stuff, you get to breakfast, especially the first day and I’m starving.

I don’t even know what time zone I’m in. I’m like, I just want to eat something. And I’m thinking crepes and I’m thinking fresh fruit and brie and all this stuff is running through my head. And I walk in and You left

Crew Chief Brad: all that stuff in Paris.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently. Cause when I walked in, I looked at the table. I looked at Ty.

I’ll look back at the table and he said, Oh, I guess there’s bread for breakfast. There was literally piles of baguettes, couple croissants, more piles of baguettes. And I kid you not a three gallon bucket of Nutella, which I was like, I’m not really sure what to do with all this.

Executive Producer Tania: You put the Nutella on the bread.

It puts the Nutella on the bread,

Crew Chief Eric: but

Crew Chief Brad: you don’t double

Crew Chief Eric: dip. You don’t double dip. You don’t double dip your chip. This would have been easy to accomplish had the baguette not been a weapon of mass destruction.

Executive Producer Tania: It was a guillotine.

Crew Chief Eric: It was made out of concrete. I could have beat it on the table and it still wouldn’t [00:20:00] have broke.

It was so hard. You know, afterwards I was like, Oh, maybe the, you know, that’s the stale baguettes. You can make a cafe au lait or something like that. But no, if you ordered coffee, what did you get? A little teeny. You know, with your three fingers out, not even your pinky espresso. And I’m like, give me a freaking cup of coffee.

Executive Producer Tania: You American.

Crew Chief Eric: I know.

Crew Chief Brad: America, you glamper,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, such a, such a, just a, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: So what’s better that food or the lunch at Watkins Glen for a hook on driving event, man, you know, don’t

Crew Chief Eric: make me make that decision.

Crew Chief Brad: Cause

Crew Chief Eric: it’s

Crew Chief Brad: a tough one. Shout out to HOD.

Crew Chief Eric: And then the second day I watched the guy. Make eggs for people that were there waiting, hungry, again, staring at bread in a walk and burn them because there’s nothing like waking up in the morning to the smell of burnt eggs.

Crew Chief Brad: Burnt eggs, stale baguette, and Nutella.

Crew Chief Eric: In a country where they invented the crepe and the omelets and all this stuff, you’d think they would know how to do this. [00:21:00] You know, somebody told me afterwards, it’s because they don’t know how to cook en masse like we do here in America, like for armies and stuff.

You know, they cook in small quantities. I’m like, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Because they use our army.

Executive Producer Tania: Even here, they cook a crepe one crepe at a time.

Crew Chief Brad: Could you imagine cooking crepes for a crowd of people at a race? It would take longer than the race to cook the crepes.

Crew Chief Eric: And there were crepe places, and you could get crepes, and they looked super good.

But I was like, you know what? I’m lip lumping. I would like my breakfast, right? Now, I will say, The ice cream was super good as it always is in Europe because it’s gelato based and, you know, all that kind of thing. They had fast food pasta, which was actually really good and I saw how they made it and that was pretty cool.

But what got me is one of the evenings, and I don’t remember which one it was because it all blurs together, we were joking about how Mexican food would be this atrocity. You’ll like never find it in France. It’s like complete sacrilege and whatever. And we’re walking down by the go kart track to head towards where David’s camp was, which by the way, was a [00:22:00] 45 minute walk from my campsite.

Okay. So we’re walking down there. And we see these two young guys sitting on a scaffolding and they got these burritos in their hand. And we literally stopped dead and turn first words were German at a David’s mouth. Wondering if they spoke German, don’t ask me why he did that quite a bit. And they’re like, no, no, no.

And we’re like English. Like, yes. Where did you get the burrito? They’re like, not burrito. And by the time the word kebab got out of his mouth, David was in a full sprint. Like I was like, I’m looking around going, what the hell just happened? And there’s this food truck and it’s a kebab truck. And then I meet up with him and he’s like, dude, you don’t understand.

European kebabs. This is like legit that I’m buying like six of them or whatever. I’m like, uh, okay. They were unbelievably good. It was probably the best meal I had at the track. I mean, I can still taste them in my mouth right now. I thought of you, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: So better than New York street meat.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, it was so good.

So good.

Crew Chief Brad: But thinking about the food [00:23:00] situation, Le Mans, it’s a, it’s a small French town. Do they have markets and grocery stores and stuff where you can leave where they’re running the race to, can you, as a camper or a glamper, can you take a cooler, fill it with some ice or something and get your own provisions and do it yourself?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes and no. So we met these very nice Canadians that were team Corvette all the way. I’m sorry for team Corvette. And we’ll talk about that more in a minute. They were going into like Arnage or going into Le Mans and then there’s these tiny little grocery stores. You have to imagine though that these grocery stores are selling out quickly.

They’re only really designed to sustain the people that live there during the off season, during the non race season because Le Mans is built around the French countryside. There’s not a lot out there. There’s a lot of farms. There are like two little markets, you know, none of the, the little farmettes or the farmer’s markets are open.

There’s like a couple of restaurants. The Tetra Rouge was closed as far as we could tell. That’s

Executive Producer Tania: poor planning of all those businesses.

Crew Chief Eric: They [00:24:00] can’t support it. Right. And so that’s why Le Mans proper had to do something on campus. Cause otherwise, how do you feed all these people?

Crew Chief Brad: How long did it take you to get from Paris to Le Mans?

Crew Chief Eric: Three hours.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So you could technically get your provisions. In a surrounding city,

Executive Producer Tania: there was a grocery store between Paris and Lamont. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. You can get your provisions.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of nothing between Paris and Lamont when you get on that highway. And I don’t remember the highway number right now.

It looks like those wonderful Fellini films where it’s just someone on a train looking at farmland and there’s one little house. It’s like Chateau Picard and then you pass Chateau Picard and then there’s nothing for another. 30 minutes. And then there’s another vineyard, right? It’s like zero. And when we came back from Lamont, we went off the highway.

We took these back roads zipping through. And the Fiat was great, right? Narrow little farm roads. And you’re just blasting through there. And I’m watching Mark, like grabbing the door handle. And [00:25:00] David’s in the back, laughing. The wheat was as tall as the Fiat was. There was nothing. You’re just like, okay.

And typical of European highways too, if you miss your exit, you’re going to go another 20 minutes before you can turn around. So it’s one of those situations too. Things are really spread apart. There’s not that like road Atlanta where you’re like, well, we’re going to drive to, you know, Buford or whatever and come back.

And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Crew Chief Brad: So basically what you’re saying is. The reason the French people are so thin is because all they do is drink wine and smoke cigarettes and eat stale baguettes. Yes. When I go on a diet, I’m going to go to France. French diet. Yeah. French diet.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, on the other side of the race, you know, things you don’t get to see on TV.

Checkpoints everywhere. It was the 100th of Le Mans. They were on full alert, constantly scanning your badge and your wristbands. And you had to have different color things, you know, depending on what you had access to and all this kind of stuff, because apparently the eco friendly protesters wanted to stop the race.

And they [00:26:00] had attempted to actually during Practice before we even got there. So they were all on high alert and all this kind of stuff. And apparently they’ve done this at other races too, because they’re protesting motorsport and all this kind of thing, luckily, none of that happened. As you guys know, the race went off without a hitch, no, no issues, no protesters or anything like that, but they were definitely concerned.

Something was going to happen. Didn’t really affect us considering we’re like, well, if we go to this quarter of the track, we’re, you know, three hours from. Whatever’s happening at the start, finish line. So it doesn’t really matter. The big debate was who was going to win. I asked you guys before you saw the race, you know how it ended.

Who did you think was going to win?

Crew Chief Brad: The number 56 car, the Toyota garage, 56,

Crew Chief Eric: 56.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. It could have been anyone. I went in with low expectations.

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered expectations. The Ferrari looked like it was going to be the fastest. Although I always root for Jackie Chan, but I don’t think the Jackie Chan cars were in there.

No

Crew Chief Eric: Jackie Chan. No Jackie

Crew Chief Brad: Chan.

Executive Producer Tania: I was hoping that Peugeot would win.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, secretly, they were my dark [00:27:00] horse. They were my underdog because the car is Legit hot. It is a sexy car. It has no arrow like the rest of them. It’s designed specifically for that track.

Executive Producer Tania: Like I wanted Ferrari to win, but I also wasn’t going to be upset if Peugeot won.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s a lot of politics. People want to see Toyota dethrone, Porsche’s back, Ferrari hadn’t won in 50 years. What looks better on the cover of the magazine, right? And in some respects, we all know the last few years with Toyota, it’s been a joke. They’ll sacrifice a lamb from LMP2, like Rebellion or somebody else, even the Glickenhaus cars, you know, whatever.

And they’ll put them up against Toyota and they don’t stand a chance. This year, Toyota had. Real competition. I mean, I literally had this debate for an entire week with people about who was going to win, listening to them. And I, and my final word was always basically the same. I think it’s going to be Ferrari and you guys can’t count out Cadillac.

And they’re like, Oh, what does Cadillac know? And I’m like, Cadillac’s been to Le Mans before, but the car they’re running has been proven. [00:28:00] Time and time again at Rolex and other races, it’s an older car, but it doesn’t matter. It can do it. And in the same way, they were laughing at the garage, 56 Camaro, like, Oh, it’s never going to make it.

It’s going to run out of tires, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we got really close to that reality. It was really close there for a moment. It was Ferrari first Cadillac second. Toyota and the squirrel and all that’s whatever, you know, but I think at the end, the bigger disappointment was. Porsche. There were a lot of Porsche people there.

I’m a Porsche fan myself. But I was also playing devil’s advocate during this whole debate to say, well, it’s not really a Porsche. And that would get under people’s skin. Sorry, Ty. I’m still telling you it’s not a Porsche. Why? It’s a Dallara chassis. It’s an Audi engine. It’s all this other stuff. It’s sort of like the Formula One car.

They’re going to slap their badge on it and we’ll call it a Porsche. I was telling people, I think the 963 is short lived, especially with that debut of the 9X that came out during Le Mans, which looks a lot like the Lambo, looks a lot [00:29:00] like the Bugatti that has been previewed. They’re moving in that direction of car.

This 963 isn’t going to make it to the next Le Mans. They’re going to have something else. The only reason it would be on the roster next year is if the new car isn’t ready. Which is a pure Porsche.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe this was just to get their foot in the door. I

Crew Chief Eric: think so. I just

Crew Chief Brad: to get that because they had to be at the hundredth.

Yep. They did not want to miss the party. So they brought whatever they could slap together, knowing they’re still working on something better.

Crew Chief Eric: My sentiments. Exactly. So again, I am proud for Ferrari. That 499 is an amazing car. It sounds good. It looks good. It’s hella fast. It’s qualifying times for the hyper pole.

We’re just. Unbelievably good. And, you know, people, you should have heard that. Oh, it’s going to burn up like the formula one car. And they’re going to, and then at the end, all the memes suddenly changed. What’s too bad. The formula one cars can’t be like the four nine nine. Why can’t the formula one get their shit together?

I’m like, come on guys [00:30:00] talking out of both sides of your mouth. But that’s, that’s racing, right? I mean, we get it. We have our loyalties. We have our fans. I was really happy to see Ferrari win. And Toyota finally get beaten by a legitimate manufacturer. But I do have some rich people thing. If you are a true hardcore Ferrari fan, you could still get VIP access to the Ferrari boxes.

I mean, Porsche was like giving them away after two hours. They’re like, y’all can just come on in here. Have a good time. It’s all good. Would you like to guess? How much? Too

Executive Producer Tania: much.

Crew Chief Brad: More than 50. More than you can

Crew Chief Eric: afford, pal. 8,

Crew Chief Brad: 000. What do I get for my 8, 000 stale baguettes? I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: know. A baguette?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I stopped when they said 8, 000.

I was like, nope, don’t need to know anything more.

Crew Chief Brad: Too rich for my blood.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Brad: Do I get a baby Bugatti? Yeah. Baby Enzo. Yeah, do I get a baby Enzo?

Crew Chief Eric: For a whopping 50 euros, you could have become a member of the Automobile Club of the West. [00:31:00] The ACO has started their own U. S. region. Pretty awesome.

They have lounges all over the track, especially behind Dunlop. There’s one at ACO 18, which are the Porsche grandstands are and a couple other places in the track. You get a 40 percent discount on swag and other things. And food was discounted. If you’re an ACO member spent 50 euros, 60 bucks or whatever came out to us.

Actually worked to our advantage. Now I will say the schwag at LeMans was kind of want, want, I was getting all the emails from the ACO before the race. And a lot of the stuff I wanted either wasn’t available, it was cheaper originally online, or. What I wanted didn’t look the same when I saw it in person.

So what I ended up doing was ordering the stuff either while I was there where I really wanted, or I ordered it when I got back and they’re still actually running clearance sales on selected sizes and stuff that’s left over from Lamont. You can actually save a boatload, especially if you’re an ACO member on any of the schwag.

So that being said, I got an opportunity to spoiler alert, [00:32:00] meet with the new president ambassador of the ACO USA, David Lowe. And he’s coming on the show in a little while to talk about the new club, why you should become a member, what the benefits are going to be to the American audience, things like that, including access to the race commercial free.

For those of us here in the U S instead of having to wonder how the heck we can watch it. I did have breakfast with one of the Lamont’s legends, Margie Smith Haas. She was the first American woman to run at Lamont’s about four years prior to Lynn St. James. And she did that in a Porsche on 935. So we hope to have her on the show as well.

I got some lowered expectations as well. So I posted two memes on social media. You can find it at Grand Tournament of Sports on Instagram and everywhere else that we have social media. And people were saying, well, where’d you get that picture of the guy in the hat? And I’m like, I took that picture. I have the original.

I zoomed in on him. He didn’t see me taking his picture, but I could not. Pass up the opportunity to have a Burt [00:33:00] Reynolds SNL Jeopardy moment.

Executive Producer Tania: But it looks like, what’s his name from Top Gear?

Crew Chief Brad: James May.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: It does look like James May. But that hat was Burt Reynolds big hat. Like, it was so funny. And he had an all red Ferrari suit.

He’s a British guy. We actually talked to him. Very nice. But I could not pass up the opportunity. to post that meme. And the second one came by way of Mark Schenck, who caught this guy while he was taking photographs. Apparently on your checklist of things for Lamont, you need to remember your hat, your radio headset, and your radar gun.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s got like a hundred tattoos and they’re all Lamont. They’re all

Crew Chief Brad: Christopher Walken.

Executive Producer Tania: No, he’s got like the Dunlop tire arch across his back.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like Jackie Ickx and Tom Christensen on there. He’s got a

Executive Producer Tania: Porsche and the Porsche symbol. He’s got so many men’s heads.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought it was Christopher Walken, the one on the right shoulder.

It looks like Christopher Walken.

Crew Chief Eric: So when Mark showed me this picture, we had this whole [00:34:00] discussion about, apparently he was down by pit out and he’s radar gunning the cars on pit exit. And we’re like, Is he going to radio the officials? Is he like the clandestine undercover pit marshal? Like, what’s the point of bringing a radar gun to Lamont?

And how did he get it through security? I mean, there’s so many questions. This is like a French Florida man.

Executive Producer Tania: He hit it in his butt crack. Was there actually security? Were they checking stuff? Yes. They were looking through your bags. Maybe he’s an authorized radar gun.

Crew Chief Brad: He definitely didn’t hide it in his wife, Peter.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, it’s tie dye though, okay? That makes it classy.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that tie dye, or he’s just, he had a Bic that blew up? Or he

Crew Chief Eric: murdered a Smurf, I’m not sure. Now,

Executive Producer Tania: I, I’d say this guy was from America, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s the case.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I think he’s German.

Executive Producer Tania: I was going to say the same thing.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s definitely German.

He spreckens the Deutsch. He spreckens the radar gun.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re going to do [00:35:00] a little lit hug here, because one of my biggest pet peeves about being at Le Mans.

Crew Chief Brad: Tell us

Crew Chief Eric: what really grinds your gears. Oh boy, oh boy. Oh, you mean the baguettes? No, it’s just never going to let me live that down. The baguettes were terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: What really hardens your baguette?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. Well, you know, it’s a, it’s a cultural thing, right? So it was like, I don’t know, a red nose on a clown. You could tell the Kiwis, the Canadians, the Aussies, the Americans, Germans from everybody else. Because you know why? We know how to queue up in the line when we want to wait for something. I mean, we might not be the most pleasant people.

We might not be the most patient people, but we know how to get in the line to wait for something. The French and some of the others. I mean, no offense. We love them all. There are brothers in arms, especially in motorsport, but this first come first serve, I’m at a bar trying to get the bartenders [00:36:00] attention while I’m smoking a cigarette three inches from your ear and shouting in French.

As obnoxiously as you possibly can just got on my nerves, like you wouldn’t believe. And I couldn’t believe that smoking was still as openly public and rampant as it was over there. It’s just, we’re so used to now, you know, people change the vaping, which is, you know, neither. You haven’t been to

Executive Producer Tania: Europe in a while.

Jesus Christ. I

Crew Chief Eric: guess I don’t know, but it was evident from the cigarette butts and everything everywhere. But it was just like, I never realized maybe even it’s a post COVID thing where it’s like. I need my elbows worth of space. Please back off. Get in a line. I was here before you. It was super irritating and it’s cultural.

Right. And you’re like, Oh, okay. Uh, all right. The other thing I learned, thanks, David, was you don’t tip in France. And if you do, it’s like super low. It’s like a dollar or two, because apparently everybody over there is salary and tipping is very taboo and all this kind of thing. And tipping is like an American

Executive Producer Tania: don’t really tip in Europe in general.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it was, it was weird. [00:37:00] I don’t know. It was a culture shock that I was pleasant to learn and I will remember that, but the whole, the way you fight to the front to get the attention of somebody. And it’s just like, Oh, whatever. And don’t lie to me. Y’all know how to speak English.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like I would have gotten into a lot of fights.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I needed a body guard. That’s for sure. Freedom fries. That’s all I’m going to say. So after I left France, I went to Denmark and I joined my family because we decided we were going to take the kids to of all places. The home of Lego, which is Denmark. I won’t go into all the details of Denmark, but I will say this.

It’s sort of like Hawaii. It’s a chain of islands. You know, they get bigger, all this kind of thing. Copenhagen, the capital is on the smallest and it’s within an hour of Oslo, Norway. end of Stockholm, Sweden. It’s beautiful. It’s super clean. It’s very modern. I kept joking that that’s where all the German hippies were exiled to, you know, stuff like that.

It’s amazing. It was very different. It was a stark contrast to being in France and really enjoyed it. Had a great time. [00:38:00] And one of the things I learned while I was over there is by 2025. Mass transit vehicles, especially taxis and buses and things like that, will be all EVs in Denmark. It’s the law. We didn’t rent a car while we were there, so no more Fiat 500 stories.

But we did take the trains, which were amazing. And then we took some cabs, which in our case were mostly Mercedes. And so I got to ride in some of these new Mercedes EVs that we talk about on the show. Fit and finish. Was nothing less than exquisite, even though we’ve always joked that Mercedes are just European taxi cabs.

They are, in fact. But the interior was plush. It was luxurious. It was German. It was what you expected from a Mercedes. But if you had blindfolded me and threw me in the trunk, other than having no noise, would I have known that it wasn’t an ICE powered car? Probably not. It was very nice. It was just interesting to even talk to the cabbies.

Everybody in Denmark is very friendly. It’s known as one of the happiest places in the world to live and work and things like that. And so [00:39:00] people are very friendly and they all do speak English in Denmark. Admittedly, they do. It was great. It was good to learn from all those folks. We actually went and visited some car dealerships while we were there.

And we got a guided tour of the new ID7 and the ID3 at Citi Volkswagen in Copenhagen, which is just outside of Tivoli. And I know Tanya got to see these cars while she was at the CES show. We reported about that on an earlier drive thru. But I actually spotted XPeng dealership across the street from the Volkswagen dealership.

So I thought that was interesting because we joked about like, Who’s this? But where are these guys? These Chinese EV manufacturers? Where’d they come from? They got a dealership. In Copenhagen.

Executive Producer Tania: Of all places.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? Now, I do want to quickly talk about the Legoland experience, and I don’t want to talk about amusement parks and things like that, but I want to mention that Legos are not just for kids.

All right? Our generation is in charge at Lego. There is a lot of car stuff going on, as evidenced by the Speed Champions, the Technic stuff, all things you can buy on the shelf here in the U. S. There’s some [00:40:00] really cool stuff overseas that we won’t get, but I will say the Ferrari Experience Center at Legoland.

All petrol heads were all just, just doing the church nod right now. It was like a holy church of Ferrari. You just walked in there. It was amazing. Bunch of stuff on display. All these activities. My girls were into it. We did it for a while. Took some pictures by a life size 599 that they built completely out of Legos.

Other than the wheels. Absolutely gorgeous. You know, stuff like that. But I will say there’s a video you guys got to check out. If you haven’t seen it, we captured the infamous. Legendary long running Lego land traffic school. And it is the cutest and most hilarious thing you have ever seen. So cannot recommend that enough.

I got deeper into the world of Lego upon returning home and I learned some new things, some new techniques while I was there. Lots of really interesting stuff while we were in Denmark and I learned about a website. Maybe in more detail than I knew before. And that’s rebrickable. com. And that allows you to take some Lego sets and turn them into some other really cool things without having to buy new parts.

And I mentioned [00:41:00] before that, you know, under some rich people things, there was some kits that you could get from like the block zone to build, you know, different kinds of automotive models that are out. I found the best of the best. At least in my opinion, you take Dom Toretto’s charger from fast and furious.

And did you know, you can turn it into the 1989 Batmobile, the Michael Keaton Batmobile. It is the hotness. And so I went ahead and did it. I have some pictures on doing the conversion. Just a lot of fun. And so that kind of reignited some stuff for me, where it’s just like a good way to spend time with the kids.

They’re interested in, you know, building their little towns, but also in the engineering side with the cars and stuff. So that’s been a lot of fun. So if you’re out there looking for maybe a different hobby, something new, don’t discount Lego. That’s for sure. And then to round out our showcase here of world travel, Tanya and I, I guess she was right, I went with her to the great French colony of Quebec in Canada, to the city of Montreal.

So I couldn’t get away from the French this summer [00:42:00] if I tried.

Executive Producer Tania: But we had a better baguette. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: we did. And we had poutine, and we had some brisket, and we had all sorts of fun food, Brad. The food in Quebec. It’s better than the food in France.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it’s better than the food in Le Mans.

Crew Chief Eric: My dinner in Paris wasn’t that great either.

But I did sit down for a moment with Jensen Button and Jordan Taylor. It was a great conversation, especially after them completing the race with the Garage 56 car. So that was pretty cool. Wait,

Executive Producer Tania: how did, wait, how did you end up

Crew Chief Eric: having dinner with

Executive Producer Tania: them?

Crew Chief Eric: We were at the hotel and I’m sitting there chatting with David from MIE Racing and I wasn’t even paying attention.

And then he kind of looks over his shoulder and he goes, you know who those two are, right? And I said, yeah. He goes, let’s go over and talk to him. Okay. That’s literally how it went down.

Executive Producer Tania: But then you had a whole meal with them or? No,

Crew Chief Eric: we, we chatted with them for like five or seven minutes. They were just kind of hanging out.

They were done eating. They were just kind of sitting and drinking. And then we went back to our table. So we sort of abandoned our meal, went and talked to them before they disappeared. So yeah, it was great. I mean, got to meet him. We didn’t do the whole, can [00:43:00] I take a selfie with you? Can I that type of guy.

Neither is David. It was really great to have that memory to be able to talk to them.

Crew Chief Brad: So you didn’t invite them on the show? Cause I’ve been trying to get Jordan Taylor on the show.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I think Jensen button would be pretty cool too. So anyway, I, we, we’ve gone off the rails somehow. Did you know I went to France?

Oh, wait, Canada. We’re talking about Canada. That’s right. You went

Crew Chief Brad: to France and then little France, little France, exactly. Quebec.

Crew Chief Eric: Petit la

Crew Chief Brad: France. Petit la France.

Crew Chief Eric: In preparation for this trip, I decided, you know what, I should probably do a service on my Jeep. And I looked at my records and I realized I hadn’t changed oil in a year, but I also hadn’t done 10, 000 miles yet.

I was very close though. So I was like, Oh crud. So I went through, did all the service. And at this point I decided, you know what, now is the time we’re going to go on in this long journey to Montreal from the DC area and back. I’m going to put it evolve in the diesel and see how it does. Does it match the hype?

Does it match everything we talked about on the episode? Granted, I had already put it in the Pacifica [00:44:00] and we already noticed the change. It runs cooler, you know, this kind of stuff. But the hybrid’s different because the engine doesn’t run all the time, right? It wants to be an EV more than it wants to be ice powered.

So the one thing I noticed right away, and I think Tanya probably noticed it too, the engine is noticeably quieter. Immediately, like as soon as I put the oil in and fired it up, it was definitely quieter. I was like, huh. I mean, and diesels are loud, right? So you’re just like, oh, okay. The telltale sign here is, and this is where the numbers are sort of interesting, right?

They talk about MPGs being higher. They talk about horsepower being greater, all this kind of stuff. And it has to do with the composition of the oil and all these things you can learn about on the Evolve Lubricants episode. What I boiled it down to is. The oil itself runs significantly cooler than what I had in it before.

And on average, it was six to 12 degrees cooler, depending on load, than the oil I was running previously. So if your engine is running cooler, it’s going to be more efficient. You’re going to waste less fuel, you know, all these kinds of things, blah, blah, blah. So it all sort of adds up in that way. What I didn’t [00:45:00] see Was the four to five more miles per gallon or anything like that, but dot dot dot what I got out of this was overall higher cumulative average.

So with mixed city driving my maximum of 33 miles per gallon, which we already proved at the Green Grand Prix using my near year old oil. I was getting 32 point whatever miles to the gallon during that event. And so I didn’t get better than 33, but I was able to hold it there longer. I was able to keep my average higher.

So maybe my MPG is higher, but I don’t see a huge spike. When I do the math at the end of the day, right? It’s like, okay, well, I’m getting 32, but I’m getting 32. Much longer than I was getting it before. What I guess what I’m trying to say is the numbers sort of add up. Now the bigger question comes in return on investment.

Is it worth the cost? Because it is significantly more expensive. I’ve sent my oil off to Blackstone to have it tested. I’m going to go maybe a service interval and a half. [00:46:00] So I’m going to try to put 15, 000 miles on the oil. That’ll take me like two years, obviously. Test it again and see where we’re at.

Did the turbo torch it? Did it break down? How did it hold up? If it comes out as clean as it went in. To use that phrasing, then it’s probably worth it. If you can go to X, the oil change with these higher results, the engines running cooler, you’re seeing a higher cumulative average, all that kind of stuff.

So for me going to Montreal was this really awesome experiment, real life testing with this new technology, this new oil by evolve. So I think I’m satisfied so far and we’ll check back in. as we go along. So other cool things we saw in Montreal, right, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my gosh. We saw a VinFast dealer in the mall.

Crew Chief Eric: Another oddball, what, Vietnamese EV company or something like that?

Executive Producer Tania: We also saw they were building a VinFast dealer and service, well, I guess maybe more service center, uh, somewhere out kind of in the middle of nowhere off the [00:47:00] highway.

Crew Chief Eric: So it looks like VinFast is making a move to be in Montreal of all places.

So that was kind of cool. Like, again, we read about these and sometimes maybe we chuckle like, or who is this brand, but Xpeng, VinFast and others showing up in some of these other countries, if, and when they’ll ever come to the U S we don’t know. Right.

Executive Producer Tania: They were at CES. They had a huge display there. So

Crew Chief Eric: there were some annoying things about being in Montreal, like the traffic laws.

Executive Producer Tania: Admittedly, some of their traffic signals made no sense, like the stoplights didn’t make sense. As weird as that is to say, there would be like double colors sometimes. Which you could interpret to be like no turn on red kind of thing, but then there’d be like double green. I think at one point, like, what does that mean?

And then there was a delay, like, part one of the greens would come, but then the other wouldn’t.

Crew Chief Eric: It was a green arrow pointing forward. Yeah. I’ve never seen that before.

Executive Producer Tania: And then so people wouldn’t [00:48:00] move, and you’re like, the light’s green, and then the other light would turn green, and then they would go.

It’s like, I don’t understand. I’ve never seen we only have three choices

Crew Chief Eric: and you couldn’t tell when you were in the city limits or out of the city limits because apparently there’s no right turn on red anywhere in the city limits of Montreal but then one of the times we went out we thought we were still and then I’m sitting at the light Trying to be nice.

I even changed my speedometer over to kilometers, you know, stuff like that. I’m trying to follow their rules. And this lady’s behind me, hawking at me. And I’m like, I didn’t think I was supposed to turn, but it was one of those stupid lights where it had a straight arrow and a right arrow. And I’m like, I don’t know what to do anymore.

Diagonal

Executive Producer Tania: arrow and a back arrow. And it was like 18. Symbols

Crew Chief Eric: so confusing. It was

Executive Producer Tania: weird.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike Canada, Denmark, the traffic lights, they did something really, really interesting. When it’s about to switch from green to red, they flash the yellow in both directions, so you know that it’s about to change, and so you get [00:49:00] this anticipation like, oh, the light’s gonna change.

That’s pretty cool. I found that to be like delightfully refreshing. It’s like, oh look, the light’s gonna change. Pay attention. Sucker .

Executive Producer Tania: Oh look, the light’s gonna change. Floor it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. What’s your reaction time? Do you go on the yellow? They do drive slower in Canada, although they are situationally aware, like they are in Europe, like passing is easy.

People stay in the right lane, zipper merging, all the things you expect when you’re over there. It’s just some of the stuff is just, I don’t know. It’s just a little bizarre. And you’re like, okay, zero parking in the city too. That was finding a, you know, a white fly, but in France. All the cars are obviously small.

Every once in a while, there’s like an X5 or a Cayenne or something like that. We saw one guy with a pickup truck, American, like Dodge Ram. You’re like, Oh, he’s got to be military. Cause there’s no other reason for that to be here. But when I went to Canada, I was like the Jeep in Montreal. I was like the biggest thing on the road.

It was really weird because I am the largest thing here and parking. It [00:50:00] was fun. This is interesting. But I also found that a lot of their cars were older up there too. Not a ton of new stuff, new, new stuff. Like in the last couple of years on the roads, maybe that has to do with the fact that the Canadian dollar is like in a weaker than ours, it’s like a 25 percent discount

Crew Chief Brad: hashtag chips,

Crew Chief Eric: but we did get to do something really cool.

Tanya’s suggestion. What was that?

Executive Producer Tania: We went to the circuit. The F1 track in Montreal. Because apparently the entire island is basically a public park and the track is just open all the time to anyone. They put cones down, they split the track lane. The right side gets to be public traffic that can just at a slow speed and they got lots of stop signs up so you really can’t do anything crazy.

Do as many laps as you want I guess. I don’t think they’ll ever kick you out. You could go all day. The place is open like literally from sun up to sundown. And then on the left hand side, bicyclists. Joggers, walkers, bladers, anything you can do outside of your vehicle, you get the lane next to it.

Crew Chief Eric: And we measured, it’s about two and a [00:51:00] half miles.

Executive Producer Tania: Just under something like that, which… I will

Crew Chief Eric: say the speed limit was suggested at some points. We were going a little quicker than the speed limit. We did take video of it, it’s available on our club YouTube channel. I’ve always joked that they’re driving around a potato because, you know, it’s on an island.

I can understand why it’s so difficult to get. on and off of that track as a spectator. There’s very little grandstands because there’s just not a lot of… What’s the word, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Talking about space, the track itself, like, I don’t know, I didn’t appreciate it when you watch the races, but that sucker is narrow AF.

There is no space.

Crew Chief Eric: And no runoff.

Executive Producer Tania: You have no room for error.

Crew Chief Eric: If it’s three abreast at its widest, it’s wide. That’s it. But it is super narrow. The turns are really tight. It feels like when you drive it, you’re just doing like what we would call an autocross to one cone turnarounds. It’s like a really narrow oval track.

Almost. It’s just, I [00:52:00] would love to drive a Miata there at full bore or something small, you know, like a little cars, I think would be a lot of fun there. Something high horsepower, like Corvette or 911 and you screw up. It’s going to be a bad day for you. But we did it. We can say where we do like four laps, something like that.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: We just, we’re like, oh, let’s just keep going. Just keep going. Just keep going.

Executive Producer Tania: If I lived there, I would be biking that all the time.

Crew Chief Eric: The problem is it takes forever to get there.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. And I don’t know where you’d park.

Crew Chief Brad: How do you get to it? Like, is there a ferry? Is there a bridge?

Executive Producer Tania: No, there’s a bridge.

Crew Chief Eric: Two bridges. There’s like one on one end corner of the island and one that comes in the middle of the potato. Because

Executive Producer Tania: at the top of the island is Six Flags Montreal.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Oh god, that’s a terrible design. You have to get to the island to go to Six Flags. Can you bike or walk across the bridge? Like, is it safe for that?

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t pay attention when we were driving across it.

Crew Chief Eric: There were people walking. There’s a sidewalk. I mean, Montreal as a city is generally pretty walkable. The problem is the [00:53:00] area right before you get to the track is like being at the wharf in Baltimore where all the sea containers are and stuff or like Long Beach, you know, where all the boats come in.

So it’s sort of the same thing. And you’re like, I don’t know that I want to be hanging out down there as a pedestrian. I didn’t see too many hotels. There is a casino on the island, which is in sort of the middle of the track. It looks like a giant aviary. So there’s a lot of stuff packed into a small space when you get there.

And again, this is why they have to shuttle you in and out of that place, if you go to spectate. Now that I’ve been there, my want to go to the Canadian Grand Prix in person. I’m sort of like Tanya. I’m like, I’ll watch this from the comfort of my couch.

Executive Producer Tania: It would be hectic to go like that would be.

Frustrating, I think.

Crew Chief Brad: You would probably have to park on the other side.

Executive Producer Tania: Beware, because there’s no parking, like, anywhere.

Crew Chief Brad: Next to the shipping containers.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re a mile away or more at that point, for

Crew Chief Brad: sure. Somehow they figured it out. They don’t want to go out there.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s also why there’s a limited number of…

Seats and tickets and everything to get [00:54:00] that sells out so fast, because again, you don’t realize how small it is until you see it in person. So it was a neat experience. Summer’s not over yet. And we do have some other travel in store and we’ll talk about that as we go along here, but that sort of wraps up our showcase.

Brad, what did you learn? Do you think you want to go on a European vacation?

Crew Chief Brad: Actually, I’m going to turn your question to me into another question for you.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy. It’s inception time.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ve been to several different professional races now. One, would you do it again? And two, is this now your favorite experience in a professional race?

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve heard that the Nürburgring 24 is also a spectacle and it’s pretty awesome to go to, so I got to reserve judgment, but I think this race and the Nürburgring 24 are sort of in a category unto themselves. It’s hard to compare the experience. That you would get it petite or at Salins or any of the other races, even the Indy 500 for that matter.

And those are great races. Don’t get me [00:55:00] wrong. Le Mans is just so over the top. It’s so different. 330, 000 people spread across, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s that many people, but it’s packed. It’s the history, all the extra things that were going on, even when they pulled all the cars out of the museum, ran them on track, all the stuff that just.

It was unbelievable. Part of it was because it was the 100th. And I don’t know that every Le Mans is like that. It’s all that, you know, pomp and circumstance that was going on for this one. I think the 101st is going to be a big deal because of all the cars that didn’t come for this one are going to be there next year.

So I think next year is going to be really exciting. Would I go back? Yes. I’ve already planned to in nine years. For the second hundredth, which is the hundredth running of Lamont’s not the hundredth anniversary of Lamont. So I’m really curious to see how obviously things evolve over the next decade. I’m going to be a fan for life for sure.

It was an unforgettable experience. It was completely surreal. It’s still even thinking about it, looking back, it’s like, wow, we did all these things. And there’s so many things I even forgot because you’re [00:56:00] operating on very little sleep and only baguettes. I needed. Denmark just to decompress from Lamar and then come home from that.

It was just a whirlwind kind of thing. So in answer to your question, yes. I mean, I have always loved Lamar and I think I will continue to do so until the day they don’t race there anymore. Well, we do have some light fare for our drive through fans out there. So we are going to talk about. Porsche Audi and Volkswagen news really quick.

There’s a video link we want to share with you guys narrated by Patrick McDreamy Dempsey himself about Porsche at Le Mans. It probably ends with him crying. We all know how this story ended. Okay guys, right Ty? We know, we know how it ended. One of the things that happened during Le Mans, people ask me, were there support races?

Was there this? Was there that? And there are some support races. There’s a Ferrari challenge race, which, you know, I took videos of. They wrecked in the first corner, which is fantastic, on the first lap, you know, because cold tires. And there’s a Porsche challenge race, and that’s super cool and all that kind of [00:57:00] stuff.

The things you would expect that you’ve seen at an IMSA race before. As I mentioned, they pulled all the cars out of the museum, driven by a lot of the legends of Le Mans, and that was like 20 30 minutes of just pure awesomeness to see cars from the early 1920s all the way through up to the cars of last year out on track at full song, 917s, Audis, Peugeots, BMWs, Bugattis, Bentleys, you name it, right?

Amazing. But Bugatti, that was the name that was missing from the roster this year. I mean, it’s the great race. It’s the hundredth. Where’s the pinnacle of French automotive engineering? Where’s Bugatti? Peugeot was there. That’s Stellantis. Let’s be serious now. They brought out the new Bolide during one of the lunch breaks, and they had it out on track for like 20 minutes doing hot laps.

And I tell you what, You’re looking at the lineup for 2024 with the new Lambo and the Porsche 9X and everything else. The Bolide is like the Batmobile. Absolutely amazing. Ballistically [00:58:00] quick. And it was quiet too. So you weren’t sure what was going on. You thought the track was cold. And then there’s just this blue and black blur that just, Whoa, rockets by.

Right. And you’re like, Whoa, I can’t wait to see a Bugatti. Back on track, especially at Lamont. So I am super hopeful for this. And I’m hoping that that test session was really to get everybody revved up and tease us for the 2024 entry. As I stated before, Lambo has unveiled their GTP prototype for next year.

And it also looks fantastic. If that car’s coming out, I’m telling you, there’s going to be a Porsche that’s very similar to it. I

Crew Chief Brad: still think the Ferrari looks better.

Crew Chief Eric: 499 is gorgeous. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s awesome. The Lambo

Crew Chief Brad: looks like what you would think a Lambo would look like. The angles and all that stuff.

Yeah, I’m still the Ferrari guy.

Crew Chief Eric: The 499, that paint livery. Throws back all the way to the three 30 P four from the late sixties, which was basically the last time they won at Lamar, especially overall, I got to see that car in the museum is out on track, all that [00:59:00] stuff. I mean, just absolutely amazing. And those old Ferraris are just.

Absolutely fantastic. Since we mentioned the Peugeot and just a little bit of student news, not only did push out, come out with their new car, which we’ve been talking about for basically a year now, the nine X eight, like I said before, it is fire aesthetically. It is a beautiful car at the Peugeot booth.

Which we were at several times for multiple reasons, they had this big Lego box sitting next to one of the cars. And I’m like, what is this all about? David jokingly said, ah, they’re probably going to bring out like a life size one or something like that at some point. Cause there’s like this countdown timer.

And I said, what are they going to build it here while we’re waiting? Like all the parts can’t be in that box. So at one point they shut the whole thing down, you know, put up the curtains, whatever. And then they unveiled a full size replica Lego Technic version of the 9×8, which is an upscale version of the Lego Technic that you can buy today in the Lego store.

And it is absolutely awesome. The stuff that the guys at Lego can do is just brilliant. I got all sorts of pictures of the car from different [01:00:00] angles and stuff like that, but there was something else that came up. So we’re in the booth and we’re actually talking to the founder, CEO of Playseat, like having a good time.

We’re trying out their simulator, all this kind of thing. I see all these people working the booth, got their Peugeot swag on. And on the back, they have this Lego Technic Peugeot t shirt thing. I’m like, I want one of those. So I go into the store and I’m looking at some stuff. I was like, Oh yeah, they got this really nice looking hoodie.

I love me some black hoodies. And they got this lime green and silver accents. I want to get one. I want to get this Lego shirt, right? Cause I think it’s really cool. It’s a good way to kind of bridge the two worlds. So I go up to the counter sort of in French. Do you speak English? And like, yeah, yeah. Okay.

English. I told the guy, I said, I would like this hoodie in American XL. And he never been so off put in my life. He goes, yes, you are XL. And I’m like, Oh, Oh, Oh, okay. All right. Bye. So he comes back, goes, we don’t have it in that color. We only have it in gray. Well, I’m like, I don’t wear gray. So that’s fine.

So I said, what about this Lego technique t shirt that your guys are wearing over on the floor? He goes, we do not sell this year. You must go to [01:01:00] Lego. And there’s a Lego store at Lamont. So I was like, okay, cool. I tell David, after we wrap up, we go over there, the Lego store. And I said, I took a picture of it just because I thought it was cool anyway.

And I show the lady and she goes, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to go to push it out and get it from them. I’m like, all right, I’ve had enough. We’ve been through this already. It’s not happening. So I gave up. I’m still looking for that t shirt. So if anybody sees it, I want it.

Crew Chief Brad: You didn’t take your XL ass back over to Peugeot and say, where’s my fricking t shirt?

Yeah, right. You are XS. Oh, okay. I wonder what he would have said to me.

Crew Chief Eric: Now it’s time for a little bit of domestic news brought AmericanMuscle. com, your source for OEM and performance parts for your Chevy, Ford, or Mopar vehicle. We heard the bad news, right? Brad, I mean, you’ve had a big crying in your Wheaties this whole time.

It’s sad, but I,

Crew Chief Brad: I haven’t been excited about team Corvette since the C7R. So it’s been what, two or three years now that I’ve just been kind of mad on them. It’s sad, but Ford did the same thing with the Ford GT not too long ago. What was that two years ago, they dropped it and opted for [01:02:00] privateers instead.

So

Crew Chief Eric: for those of you trying to figure out what Brad’s talking about, GM’s Team Corvette Racing is no longer a thing. They have announced Corvette’s retirement this year. They announced it at Le Mans and they are moving to a privateer model, which is what Ferrari and Porsche have done for many years now.

So this is not uncommon. So they’re going to supply the teams. With the cars and the parts and everything else, but it’s up to the teams to figure out what they’re going to do with those cars and how they’re going to campaign them, who’s going to drive them and all that kind of stuff. So

Crew Chief Brad: after what didn’t it start with Dale Earnhardt with the C five with the C five.

Yeah. So that was early two thousands late nineties.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So let’s say almost 25 years for sure. It’s sad to see team Corvette go. Yes. We mentioned it before. Garage 56. People were laughing. They were laughing hard. They were making fun of the NASCAR special. Oh, this and that. That car’s never going to make it, as I mentioned.

But against all odds, they kicked ass. Blue passes

Crew Chief Brad: for prototype cars.

Crew Chief Eric: I tell you what, seeing it in person, their [01:03:00] closing speeds and their ability to walk away from other cars was unbelievable. It didn’t click until we were on the Ferris wheel and we could see in the distance as they would get on the straightaways and you would just watch the garage 56 car, not walk, but run away from an LMP two car unbelievably fast.

It’s trap speeds were ridiculous too. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. I got to hand it to the team though. I mean, you look at it and you go, how much of this is really NASCAR? How much of it is modified? It’s really a Camaro GT three, you know, stuff like that, blah, blah, blah. All the elements are there. We don’t really see NASCARs go for that length of time.

Yeah. They do 500 laps at Daytona or Talladega or whatever. And that’s what four hours with 24 hours. Plus imagine. They only ran one car and they had to do all the practice sessions, all the qualifying sessions. They did more than 24 hours. Those cars, that’s the other thing people don’t realize. They don’t run for just 24 hours.

They run for like [01:04:00] nearly two weeks by the time they’re done because of all the different things that they’re doing with them. Unbelievable accomplishment by that team and by the car itself. So I’m excited to see where that goes. If they do anything with it next time,

Crew Chief Brad: I’d love to see it back next year.

Crew Chief Eric: Every time it went by though, I was like, that’s. Dollar bills and eagles and freedom coming out that exhaust pipe. I mean, it was just unreal. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: the sound of America.

Crew Chief Eric: America, right? I mean, it was just like, you wanted to wave a flag every time it went by. It was unreal. It was just like, wow. And I will say this, the crowds at Lamar were different than they are like in an American race.

You go to the Indy 500 people doing the wave and you think you’re in a baseball game and it’s like a whole thing over there. It was like being at a golf match and there was like light clapping and then you would hear people get excited. Like if a car, like let’s say it’s spun and went into the gravel trap or you get this big, like just like a golfing match.

Ooh, like if somebody went off track, it was really bizarre. But I tell you what, when. [01:05:00] The garage 56 car finished the race and cross the checker people exploded. It was just like, ah, you know, it was, that was cool to see the appreciation for that car when it finished. So

Crew Chief Brad: can you explain the garage 56? Isn’t that like a Le Mans thing?

It is.

Crew Chief Eric: It is specific to Le Mans. It is a one car class. It is designed for experimental, like, super prototype cars. It’s garage number 56, because there’s 55 other garages. Some of the other garage 56 cars you might remember, let’s say the front wheel drive Nissan. Jerd. That is the worst Le Mans car ever.

It’ll go down in the history as such. The DeltaWing car, do you remember that one?

Crew Chief Brad: Turd.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So they’ve been all weird stuff like that. And so the garage 56 car, that’s where they stuck it. Right. It’s an unlimited class. I can do whatever they want. As long as they didn’t break, they were going to win their class because they’re the only car in it.

Crew Chief Brad: Is there always a garage 56 car?

Crew Chief Eric: No, it is hit or miss. So this is the [01:06:00] first garage 56 car, I think, since that Nissan, probably

Crew Chief Brad: since the front wheel drive. And then has a garage 56 car ever won outright? No. No. No. No. Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Not in my recollection because they’ve always broken.

Crew Chief Brad: So is this the first one in a long time to actually finish the race?

Because I don’t think the Nissan finished.

Crew Chief Eric: No, the Nissan didn’t make it, but like, I don’t know, the first three hours or something like that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Fun wheel drive. Not very fun that day. They

Crew Chief Eric: have that car on display at the museum. It’s outside in a glass box next to the EB110 Bugatti for some weird reason.

But yeah, they don’t even want it in the museum. It’s like, I think so terrible. We’ll put it out there and they don’t

Crew Chief Brad: drive it around anymore. Cause it’s got broken axles.

Crew Chief Eric: What a bad design. That was,

Crew Chief Brad: I would say out of everything that you’ve experienced and explained about going to Lamar, the garage 56 car is what I have FOMO about like missing that.

Crew Chief Eric: We got to see it up close in person, all that stuff, really kind of take a look at it and everything. I mean, sort of once in a lifetime, I mean, unless they go back, but I don’t see that happening again. Although I would like to see it [01:07:00] spawn a Camaro GT three. To go against Ford, because that’s the other big reveal at Le Mans was Ford unveiled the GT three Mustang while we were there.

And the only thing I heard from people was it’s huge. The S six 50 is big. It’s bigger than the S five 50 Mustang. But I mean, it just looked aggressive. It looked

Crew Chief Brad: mean wide body to fit the bigger tires and everything. You

Crew Chief Eric: know, it’s going to sound amazing. It’s going to be fast because the Mustang up until this point, the GT four Mustangs, as we learned following around world challenge, they’re pretty limited.

They were pretty neutered compared to a lot of the other cars in GT four. So I think moving up to GT three allows them to really stretch out that Shelby motor and everything else and go for gold there. Again, the hundred and first Lamont’s next year’s Lamont’s is going to be awesome too. We’ll see how it plays out.

A lot of representation from America. America. Yeah. As I mentioned before, Toyota’s [01:08:00] number two car was taken out by a squirrel. It was funny and sad at the same time. And it was really stressful there for a while because there was a big battle back and forth between Ferrari and Toyota. It all came down to pitch strategy.

You know, who is using less. Fuel and all this kind of stuff, tire management, all these kinds of things. I know that Ferrari was like doubling down on their tires to try to stretch out and all this kind of thing. If you looked at race speeds versus qualifying speeds, they were way down. Lap times were significantly down.

You could tell the strategy was totally different during the race, but when that squirrel took out the Toyota, Oh my God. And then that Cadillac. On like the first lap coming into the Molson chicane. Oh, what a disaster. I mean, how do you cause a wreck like 90 seconds into the race? You know, they still had two other cars.

The odds were in their favor. They had one more car than everybody else. You don’t count the Joda 963 for Porsche. And those last couple hours there for Toyota. [01:09:00] Once they had that big screw up where he missed the braking zone. That was it. It was Ferrari’s race to lose. And you could tell they were backing way off.

To conserve the car, Toyota almost a lap behind at that point. There’s no way they were going to make that up in an hour, not without potentially breaking the car. I feel bad for them, but I don’t at the same time. Well, let’s move on to random new EVs and concept cars. A name I never thought I would

Crew Chief Brad: hear associated with an EV.

Crew Chief Eric: Right?

Executive Producer Tania: Caterham.

Crew Chief Eric: Famous for taking over production of the Lotus Super 7 in 1962.

Executive Producer Tania: If someone just showed you a picture of this, you would never associate it with a Caterham. It looks similar to the Alpine.

Crew Chief Eric: Which I’m glad you brought that car up. The A110, those things are all over the place in France. That’s another car I would buy, no questions asked.

And they have that new electric R5 looking thing that Tanya has talked about before, talking about EVs and concepts. That’s going to be the hotness. Two cars we’re never going to get. Womp womp. That is womp

Executive Producer Tania: womp. Enjoy the [01:10:00] single seater backseat with the split headrest that’s built into the back wall of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Continuing from the last drive through, we mentioned how Toyota leadership has said that they are not interested in building pure EVs, they are sticking to the hybrid model. And you know what? I got confirmation of that while I was at the race. Combustible hydrogen is the new tech of choice. While we were at Ligier Unveiled their new, one of the first combustible hydrogen powered race cars that they developed in house sort of looks like a Ferrari 550 Maranello or 575 LM.

If you look at it in pictures, we recorded the whole session, really interesting information from their vice president about it. That is the way of the future. We’ve been hearing that from some other people and Toyota is. Also moving in that direction, moving away from their fuel cell technology to combustible hydrogen.

And the advantage to combustible hydrogen is, and this is information I understand [01:11:00] from some folks at Bosch that I talked to, is they need to figure out how to store the hydrogen in the vehicle safely. The rest of the motor stays the same. The injection system basically stays the same, except for the nozzles.

The fuel injectors that they’re using and ECU, all that stuff gets reflashed. And they’re basically keeping the ice cars, the way they were always built, making a few modifications and solving the hydrogen delivery problem. And now we can breathe a whole new life. Into our ice power cars and funny that we’re talking about that this week as we’re recording Goodwood is going on and Rowan Atkinson, famous Mr.

Bean, who also happens to be a petrol head was interviewed at Goodwood because he was showcasing the new combustible hydrogen H2 Toyota GR Yaris at the hill climb. And he gives a really long talk about it and the technology and what it’s like to drive and all this kind of thing. And he says right then and there.

It’s direct injection, you know, dah, dah, dah, all this stuff that [01:12:00] even Bosch and Ligier were talking about. So that now is making me excited for the future. That’s going to breathe new life into old cars if we can figure out how to retrofit that stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Sounds no different than people retrofitting their diesels to run off biofuel.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Very similar thought.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a similar concept, and it’s, it actually, it’s a kind of a genius idea to not scrap.

Executive Producer Tania: In concept.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, well, yes, of course.

Executive Producer Tania: Again, the same thing they haven’t solved yet is how you onboard it, and how do you have a hydrogen fuel station.

Crew Chief Eric: With these prototypes, they’re handling that in house.

They’re able to construct their hydrogen containment unit, all that. But the proof of concept. is now been basically satisfied to say it can be done.

Executive Producer Tania: Can you imagine all I see is the early scene in Zoolander where everyone’s flinging the gasoline on each other to whams wake me up before you go go and then somebody goes to light their cigarette and the whole place [01:13:00] blows up.

They need to solve that problem because you can’t have somebody willy nilly hydrogen into the air while they’re fucking smoking their cigarette. At the fuel station.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re talking about breathing life into new cars, Brad, it’s time for Lost and Found. What have you got for us?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the usual. Nobody wants this turd of a Cadillac DeVille at Gray Chevrolet.

Is

Executive Producer Tania: it still for sale?

Crew Chief Brad: It is still for sale. I’m starting to think there’s no actual car. They just want you to call and then come in. And then there’s a couple of Volkswagens. There’s the 2000 Volkswagen Jetta, 2000 Volkswagen Jetta, GLS VR six. Ice not listed. And then that four GT is still out there. 2008 Jetta, blah, blah, blah.

2012 Fiat 500.

Crew Chief Eric: You sure your browser isn’t cached from two months ago? I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. I literally just. Did a search.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re saying people are holding onto their cars longer. Maybe that’s why there’s nothing good for sale, right?

Crew Chief Brad: The whole point of this segment right here is to find the [01:14:00] turds. There are plenty of turds out there, but the turds are all the same.

no, no new turds. . Although you, you can get a 2016 Dodge Viper ACR for $800,000. Hey, that’s a bargain. Let’s get two. Andrew Bank. This is calling your name.

Crew Chief Eric: He needs a second one though. You know how it works.

Crew Chief Brad: He needs to rob a bank is what he needs to do to do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of old cars and things for sale and whatnot.

I went to my first auction. I have interviewed plenty of auctioneers and auction companies on this show. If you haven’t caught those episodes, just go back into our 200 million episodes that we have online. But I’d never attended one before.

Crew Chief Brad: I was going to say, were you on sale? Was this someone was bidding for your, like for a date with Eric or what

Crew Chief Eric: was this?

This was a motorsports legends auction at Le Mans.

Crew Chief Brad: My original question stands.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Actually, if you weren’t paying attention, you would have missed the Sotheby’s building altogether because they had not a ton of signage and they kept. They close most of the time because obviously you don’t want to get [01:15:00] any of these cars dirty, but in the lineup, you had things like Ferrari, Daytona, GTB fours, you had things like XG two twenties, you had a rolling chassis of a Porsche nine one nine.

You had the silk cut, jag, Lancia, LC two, like all sorts of stuff from back in the day that were for sale. We’re not talking 50, 000 car. We’re not talking 500, 000 car. We’re talking 5 million. 50 million dollar car, you know, kind of situation. And so as I’ve referred to it before, it was like quiet chaos. And it was everything you expected it to be like you’ve seen in like the movie, the red violin, you know, the guys with their paddles and the guys on the phone and the brokers and the internet, and it’s getting out of control.

And You know, we stayed for the Ferrari bid because that was the car we wanted to see. And when we unfortunately had to go away because we had somewhere else, we had to be, and we left and it was at 4. 2 million euros, which is substantially more than that car is generally worth. But because [01:16:00] that was a legitimate Le Mans race car and like all this kind of stuff, it ended up closing at 5.

2 million euro. Unbelievable. It was an experience. Like nothing else, because again, I’ve never been to an auction before. So I’m hoping it doesn’t sour me to some of the other events that I might be going to in the near future. If you’ve never been to a car auction, and I’m not talking about like going to Mannheim auction in Pennsylvania, like going to a Mecham or a Sotheby’s or a broad arrow, or, you know, the events that happen at like pebble and things like that, do it, just go in, pay the a hundred bucks or whatever, and just sit and soak it all in.

It is unbelievably stressful. But you also feel like you’re sitting in the dentist’s office. It’s bizarre. And I write about it in an article that’s linked in the show notes, if you can get more of my take on all of that. Other things historical, as I mentioned before, the Lemans Museum is right there on campus.

It’s at the main gate of the track. If you get the opportunity to go and a few people that I had spoken to before going [01:17:00] recommended that I check it out if I had missed it, that would have been my phone though, Brad, because as you probably saw from the pictures, which we have links to the whole vault of pictures, unbelievable vehicles.

In the museum, cars that you’ve only heard about rumored about that are legend are in this museum. Not all of them are there. Some of the Le Mans winners are at Simeone as an example, like the 57G, the 917 hippie car, you know, things like that. So not all of them there. So there were as many as they could muster up for the hundredth and other cars of significance.

From the a hundred years of Lamont’s so super cool. And then, like I said, they pulled them all out of the museum and took them out on track for some parade laps and whatnot, but just absolutely incredible to see those cars in person cars that, you know, I had only seen on television or, you know, dreamed about drooled over, so just absolutely awesome, totally worth it.

And during race weekend entrance to the museum is free. So why not go? And a little bit of vintage motor sports, the [01:18:00] VRG or vintage racers group is pushing really hard on social media to attract Miata drivers to their series. For those that don’t remember the Miata celebrates its 33rd birthday this year and qualifies for the famed vintage racing series.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess they’re getting tired of seeing 16 year olds drive and stanced out NA Miata’s all over the place.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s. Because there’s probably not enough MG or triumph guys anymore. You know what I mean? So they got to open it up because that’s part of their social media thing is they class the Miata’s to be able to run with some of those older British roadsters and stuff.

So I actually think that’d be some exciting racing to see that. So maybe we’ll find ourselves at a VRG event later this year. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Anybody that’s seen a spec Miata race would know that that’d be pretty exciting. Although I don’t know if I want, if I was a, an MG. Driver. I don’t know that I’d want a bunch of wreck pinata cars out there with me on track at the same time.

Crew Chief Eric: If you want to learn more about what you should be doing with your retired spec Miata, and if maybe you want [01:19:00] to do something different than run SCCA with it, check out the vintage racers group at www. vrgonline. org. It’s that time again.

Executive Producer Tania: What time is that?

Crew Chief Eric: We would be remiss.

Executive Producer Tania: Wouldn’t we?

Crew Chief Eric: Because it’s time to talk about Teslagate.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t follow this kind of stuff. I don’t even know. I had to look up what Threads was.

Crew Chief Eric: The war with Elon continues. It’s Zuck versus Musk in Twitter versus Threads. Did they ever fight yet?

Executive Producer Tania: Not yet. Dude, I

Crew Chief Eric: want to see it. It’s on pay per view, I heard. Yeah, I’m not paying for that trash.

Executive Producer Tania: Elon’s mom said no.

So

Crew Chief Eric: Elon’s mom said, no,

Executive Producer Tania: that’s true. It’s true. I’m not making that up.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like it would be less celebrity death match and more pillow fight.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s like when we would make the paper footballs in school. That’s like,

Crew Chief Brad: no, I feel like it would be slap boxing. It would be.

Executive Producer Tania: But Zuckerberg is actually technically legitimate,

Crew Chief Brad: says people.

He’s paid to say that.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, wait a minute. Are you trying to say [01:20:00] that Elon is illegitimate? Like he’s Jon Snow or something? No, she, she,

Crew Chief Brad: she’s saying that Zuckerberg actually trains in like jujitsu and mixed martial art and stuff like that, which I’ve seen pictures and stuff, I’m, I’m joking. I’m sure he’s, he’s good at it.

Executive Producer Tania: He actually competes, I believe. So like, he’s not like Elon. It’s that picture of him on the yacht in flabby, pale, never seen the light of day skin, where he’s just like that blob standing there on the yacht. Have you

Crew Chief Eric: seen that meme where they redid his body as the Cybertruck?

Crew Chief Brad: Is that what I’m getting for my a hundred bucks?

Executive Producer Tania: Isn’t there a meme where he’s like Crank?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s another good one. Oh, there’s so many good ones, but in all seriousness. Talking to so many people, if Twitter isn’t dead yet and just gets absorbed into the Tesla operating system, I would be surprised. Threads is here. If you haven’t converted over, it’s as easy as opening Instagram and clicking a button and it says import your profile and then you’re on Threads.[01:21:00]

Threads looks like Twitter, sort of acts like Twitter. I think it’s everything people wanted Instagram to continue to be, but it’s not anymore because Instagram is sort of turning into TikTok. All this to say, guess what? We’re on threads to at grand Torrey motorsports, follow us. Let’s get more followers on threads than we have on Instagram.

Let’s make that our goal for the remainder of 2023. Shall we

Crew Chief Brad: use?

Crew Chief Eric: And our loyal listeners can help us get there.

Crew Chief Brad: Mark Hewitt. Join us on threads and Patreon.

Crew Chief Eric: I can’t remember his Facebook password.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a nifty little forgot password button.

Crew Chief Eric: Goes to an email that he doesn’t have access to either.

Crew Chief Brad: Stop using AOL.

He’s got a, a hotmail account.

Executive Producer Tania: Hey, those still work.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I know my dad has one. My dad, Mark, my dad has one. He’s almost 70.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: What are we [01:22:00] talking about now? Tesla charger? Everyone is adopting a Tesla charger?

Executive Producer Tania: Basically, that’s, that’s all the news. Is

Crew Chief Brad: this like adopt a highway where you just, you tell them I want to adopt a Tesla charger.

Crew Chief Eric: So wait a minute. I thought there was like the J 1792 protocol that everybody was using except for Tesla because Tesla is the equivalent of Apple, the lightning charger and all that.

stuff. Now all of a sudden, we’re going to go all Tesla chargers?

Executive Producer Tania: So whatever their charging standard connector is, everyone’s jumping on board to basically be able to connect to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay. So you’re going to be able to buy something to plug into Tesla’s charging station.

Crew Chief Brad: Because they have the network now, the charging network.

So how are we going to pay for that?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they say they’re expected to adopt the Tesla plug. So I don’t know if it’s more. The plug will be the same or if it’s an adapter.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what about all the other EVs? It’s got like two different gas pumps. I guess it’s diesel and gasoline, right? Here we go again.

Crew Chief Brad: I would think they would probably start retrofitting or start [01:23:00] using the plug now, but for the older EVs, probably create an adapter that allows you to use both.

I mean, because

Executive Producer Tania: also like ChargePoint is going to now have this Tesla NAX plug, but they say they also have the other types of chargers. So to that end, it’s like having… The two different style pumps.

Crew Chief Eric: I just realized what this is. You guys watch black mirror? No,

Crew Chief Brad: I haven’t seen past the first like four or five episodes.

Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: In the first four or five episodes of season one, do you remember the episode with the meow meow beans? That’s a reference to community by the way, where they’re like rating other people and it’s like five stars. You got to keep your five star rating. It’s all like social media and all this stuff.

There’s a

Crew Chief Eric: scene in there and she drives up and because her rating is so low, she ends up with the piece of crap Evie that there’s only one charger on like This random lot that she can only go there with that car to like, and get another one or whatever it is, that’s, what’s going to happen there. It’s going to be like that episode of black mirror.

Crew Chief Brad: This sounds like the guy in Canada who bought the slow charging or whatever it was. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: [01:24:00] My expectations are once again, lowered.

Lowered expectations. There’s all sorts of new car related shows on television. We’ve listed

Executive Producer Tania: a number under lowered expectations and no one’s watched any of them, so we don’t know that they’re bad.

Crew Chief Eric: I actually spent the time and I watched today the first episode of Tex Mex. And the first episode of Downey’s Dream Machines.

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t have that kind of time in my day.

Crew Chief Brad: Ditto, ditto. We, we don’t have to go into an office.

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Eric: did. You can put it up in the background. What’s up?

Crew Chief Brad: I get my office life. I live vicariously through Tanya and everything she posts in our private water coolers chat. Because she posts some wild shit in there.

I will tell you. Shut

up my shirt. I got some mustard on my shirt and I’ve changed it. In the middle of the room, but there’s a conference

Crew Chief Eric: going on. Doesn’t matter.

Crew Chief Brad: See the hotdog and got busted. Shirt? You can’t see me because I can’t see you. My back is to you, . [01:25:00] I just got pulled on my new Izod. Oh. So, anyway, Netflix, Tex Mex Motors, this show is exactly the same as all the other shows.

It is 100

Crew Chief Eric: percent a rip

Crew Chief Brad: off

Crew Chief Eric: of Car Masters.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is 100 percent a rip off of Fast and Loud, and…

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s to the point where the cast is almost the same. They almost look the same. They rearranged them a little bit.

Executive Producer Tania: I only saw the trailer for it and I had kind of watched it in the episodes, but I was getting strong car master vibe.

Crew Chief Eric: They even use the same animations. Like when they’re building the car, you know how they do those sketches and the parts like fly in and it’s all goofy, cartoony, the same, like the music’s the same, they have guys named Scooter and Rabbit. Like it’s like, whatever. And it’s a 250, 000 payday, right? It’s the same basic principle.

And I’m wondering if it’s because Car Masters got canned. Did it? I haven’t seen it come back. It’s been like a year.

Crew Chief Brad: Car Masters is the [01:26:00] one where they were bartering. Upgrade and trade. Yeah, the upgrade and trade.

Executive Producer Tania: Rust to riches.

Crew Chief Brad: You see they’re all the same. Gotham

Executive Producer Tania: Garage. The Gotham Garage. Correct. Car Masters.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re all the, yeah. Tex Mex Motors, their differentiator. Is that they are trying to exclusively go into Mexico and buy cars for dirt cheap, because apparently the people in Mexico don’t know anything about cars. So they go down there, buy them for dirt cheap, and then bring them to the U. S. to try and flip them for big money.

Surprise, surprise, in the first episode, they have a run in with the Mexican Federales because of the non numbers matching car that was numbers matching after all. That

Crew Chief Eric: seems a little staged, too.

Crew Chief Brad: A little. Just a little. And then the shady transporter who was gonna pick up the Mustang for free. Uh huh. And then stole the parts.

And dropped off the car on blocks. I mean, Jesus Christ. If that stuff was not staged, how [01:27:00] fucking dumb are you at Tex Mex Motors? Yeah. For all that shit like that to happen.

Crew Chief Eric: And the lady that they tried to sell that Opel GT.

Crew Chief Brad: Which, by the way, that was a cool car. I liked what they did with it, though. I like the paint job.

I like the seats.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what I said when they put up the paint job? I was like, I did it first because my GTI has the same paint scheme.

Crew Chief Brad: It does. It does. You don’t have the honeycomb, though.

Crew Chief Eric: Looked awful, actually. They should have left that off the car.

Crew Chief Brad: I liked it. I liked it. Anyway, and then the Baja bug that they turned into, surprise, surprise.

A Baja bug.

Crew Chief Eric: Whatever. The best part of that was when they wrecked that Polaris.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that was fun. That was good.

Crew Chief Eric: Overall, I would probably watch the whole thing just to see how it all turns out, but it feels a little bit more contrived than Car Masters. And Tanya, this is where it really crosses the line.

They have another female engine builder. However, comma, asterisk, parentheses. Her backstory seems a lot more legit than Constance’s. She grew up, they show pictures of her [01:28:00] working with her dad in the shop and whatever, and she seemed to know legitimately what she was doing and doing that Mazda swap on the Opel.

You know, that was no small feat that Ecotech and the Beetle, that was pretty complicated. So I’m like. Okay. I mean, not this, my fingernails look like I’m in a Revlon commercial, but I work on motors, you know, kind of thing that’s going on with the other show. So it’s like, whatever. I mean, again, I’m not trying to discount anybody’s experience, but it’s the exact same formula.

Yeah. It is this carbon copy. Exactly. Now, did you watch Downey’s Dream Machines?

Crew Chief Brad: I did not. I was too enamored by the stupidity of Tex Mex motors. I’ll

Crew Chief Eric: give you Downey’s Dream Machines really quick. Basically, Robert Downey Jr. has more money now than he knows what to do with. He’s paring down part of his collection and he’s taken on…

A conscience, I guess, because of the whole footprint coalition thing that he started about, you know, climate change and all this stuff, making greener world. And what he wants to do is basically turn part of his collection of muscle cars and exotics and whatever he has, and he wants to turn them [01:29:00] into EVs.

And you’re like, okay, cool. The whole thing is sort of shot like kiss, kiss, bang, bang in those scenes where they’re behind the camera and, you know, talking through the fourth wall. And Robert Downey is very. Non scripted and non sequitur throughout the whole thing and he’s a little crazy, but that’s what makes it entertaining.

And it makes him charming as a person to where you’re kind of like, well, what the hell is he going to say next? I mean, it starts out literally with him in a Blackhawk helicopter. Like, where the hell is it? Where’s this going? And he literally turns to the camera and he’s like, This is a show about cars, I assure you.

We’re gonna get there. And then it does like this, and we go backwards and like how we got to that point. You know, whatever. It has its cinematics with it, but the very first episode he takes a k10 pickup truck square body that was Beautiful. He called it the Thanos thumper. It’s dark purple and all those kinds of supercharged LS making ungodly horsepower, all this noise and whatever.

He’s like, I want to turn it into an EV. So he partners with electric garage up in New Hampshire. They [01:30:00] retrofit a Tesla into it. They maintain the all wheel drive, all this kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there’s sort of a. gimmicky challenge at the end where they have to tow something with it, and they want to, you know, see how it all turns out.

Is it going to blow up? Is it going to work? Etc. I’ll leave it up to your guys imagination to check it out. I’m actually really curious to see where the rest of it goes. I’ve had a couple other people tell me that they’ve watched the whole thing. It’s only about eight episodes, and they said it’s fantastic, and…

They’re sort of like, yeah, that’d be really cool to retro and EV. And I know we’ve talked about this and some of the cars on his list, he’s got like a C2 Stingray Corvette. He’s got some other stuff on there where you’re like, would I really swap that car? It’s worth a mint as it is, you know, that kind of thing with what we talked about earlier with the H2E platforms coming out, you know, that combustible hydrogen, I wonder if.

Robert Downey gets to the end of this journey of converting his collection to EVs. And he goes, well, how hard would it have been to convert them to hydrogen? Right. And leave them alone. I’m wondering if people are going to have that regret as the manufacturers may be moving in that [01:31:00] direction here in the near future.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that’s not going to make him millions of dollars with a TV show. No. Changing some, uh, injectors in a fuel tank? Not

Crew Chief Eric: at all.

Crew Chief Brad: How environmentally friendly is it flying around on a black hawk?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I know, but his truck is saving the world. One ev at a time.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m not gonna get on that

Crew Chief Eric: soapbox. On the complete other side of that.

Rutledge Wood is back. Famous for being on Top Gear USA and doing One Lap of America in a modified Toyota Sienna. He’s got a new reality show, which a couple of our members have watched. That’s the Hot Wheels Build the Dream or whatever the heck it’s called. It’s a reality show, restomod, building life size Hot Wheel cars.

Oddly enough, the show debuted before I went to Le Mans. And a couple of these cars were at Le Mans. I don’t know if they were the ones from the TV show, but they had a booth and they had three or four cars out front and they are life size Hot Wheels. And I got to say, they’re pretty cool. So that gave me at least a little bit of, I should probably watch this show.

And then a couple of people have confirmed that it’s everything you don’t expect it to be, [01:32:00] but it’s a lot of fun because it’s a creator show. It’s reality television, but it’s for car people. So. Unlike British Bake Off or the repair shop or what’s that one with Amy Poehler that she’s got, you know, making it.

This is for us.

Crew Chief Brad: This is for car people. So there you go, Hot Wheels. What’s funny about Hot Wheels, he’s building the Hot Wheels that I never want to buy. I want to buy the Hot Wheels that are like production cars. I don’t buy the ones that look like fucking clown shoes and shit that don’t actually exist.

Crew Chief Eric: They already sell those, Brad. Those are called production cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. You know what? I can’t afford production cars. I can afford 1. 18 Hot Wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: They’ve gotten expensive.

Crew Chief Brad: I will buy all the 1. 18 Porsche 911s I can find. There you go. Well, Tanya’s got one that we should watch.

Executive Producer Tania: I already came out last year, but I’m just reminding you of it.

If you’re now on a kick to watch all the reality car programs that are out there, you have to go back and watch on Netflix, Drive Hard the Maloof Way. I

Crew Chief Eric: think I tried to watch this. I didn’t get past the first episode, much like I didn’t [01:33:00] get past the first episode of FUBAR. And I still need to watch the Schwarzenegger documentary because it’s all shmay.

Executive Producer Tania: The Schwarzenegger documentary is good. If you’re a fan of Schwarzenegger, you should watch his documentary because you get to see so much about his Mr. Universe days, all his training and all that, and all that happened, and how he actually came over here to this country, blah, blah, blah. So it’s very interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: He is one of my most favorite comedians. Ever.

Executive Producer Tania: Did I

Crew Chief Brad: try and watch Drive Hard the Maloof way? I don’t…

Executive Producer Tania: The one about the dude and then his daughters, and his daughters are stunt drivers.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn’t get past the first episode.

Executive Producer Tania: It was hard, a little bit, but…

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll stick to watching reruns of Deep Space Nine.

Quark’s Bar is where I belong.

Crew Chief Brad: I started rewatching Seinfeld from the very beginning.

Crew Chief Eric: Just wait till you get to the Parking Lot episode.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, yeah, I know that one.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, I was watching that on whichever one it was on, and it was like in the middle of the pandemic, and I was like, I’ve never watched Seinfeld.

Like, I’d seen an episode here or two [01:34:00] back in the day, but like, I’m never a fan of it, right? So I was like, I’m gonna sit and I’m gonna watch Seinfeld, because what else is there to do when you can’t do anything?

Crew Chief Brad: How many episodes did you get through?

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, so like, I was powering through, forcing myself through these things, because I am clearly not a Seinfeld…

Crew Chief Eric: No, she’s a Frasier fan.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, Frasier me all day long, but like, Seinfeld, like, this is so effing dry. Like, I don’t, I don’t know. Like, and the characters are all obnoxious. Most of them, I don’t know. Anyway, so I’m like powering through this thing. And then suddenly it’s like, this show is exiting in two days.

I’m like, shit. And I’m like calculating. I’m like, I don’t have enough time to like finish. So I don’t know. I didn’t watch. I fast forwarded basically to the final episode. And then I was like, what the F just happened?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the Good Samaritan episode. Yeah. The final episode, what happened is exactly what happened throughout the entire show.

Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing happened. They are right back where they started. Pretty much. By the way, it’s on Netflix right now. Yes, it [01:35:00] is back on

Executive Producer Tania: Netflix. I was like, oh, I could go catch up the season or whatever I miss. I’m like, no, I’m good.

Crew Chief Brad: Do you watch Seinfeld for the jokes? But the jokes that other people know like the inside jokes not for the because it’s really funny or anything.

Yeah, sure

Crew Chief Eric: Normally at this part of the episode we would be going down south to talk about alligators

But I think we need to talk about stale baguettes and brie

Executive Producer Tania: well I put this one in just for you,

Crew Chief Eric: oh Did you

Executive Producer Tania: so this guy did started this already like several years ago. He’s a carpenter. He’s a cabinet maker.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: and he built a two CV out of wood.

Crew Chief Eric: No, is this like that other guy that and it runs Ferraris.

It runs because

Executive Producer Tania: he [01:36:00] put the motor from another to CV in it. And he sold it for 224, 000. How slow is it? It’s gotta way more than the real thing. It gets up to 50 miles an hour. Isn’t that what the real one

Crew Chief Eric: does? Off a cliff like those cars in Alaska that they’ve been throwing off the side of the mountain every year.

No way it gets to 50.

Executive Producer Tania: Allegedly.

Crew Chief Brad: Honestly, this is how the original 2CV should have been built. It should have been wood.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it would have been biodegradable that way. The termites would have gotten to it. It would have been amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. It alleges capable of hitting 50. Now you can read into capable.

Lies.

Crew Chief Eric: Lies.

Executive Producer Tania: But he’s a very young looking 74 year old. I will give him that.

Crew Chief Brad: Listen to this. He looks like Charles Manson. What are you talking about? He whittled it from one piece of wood. Yeah, he was in jail. You know, he whittled it out of.

Executive Producer Tania: The main body is made from apple and pear fruit trees. The front and back are walnut.

The [01:37:00] base for the doors and trunk are cherry wood.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. That is an expensive vehicle. Does it run on moths?

Executive Producer Tania: It took him 5, 000 hours and over five years to build.

Crew Chief Brad: Who’s going to do the math? 5, 000 hours divided by 250, 000? 224, 000.

Executive Producer Tania: 224.

Crew Chief Brad: What does that come out to?

Executive Producer Tania: 44 an hour. 44 an hour.

Crew Chief Brad: Well,

Executive Producer Tania: 224, 000 divided by 5, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That does not seem hardly worth it.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like that’s not very profitable for the amount of time he put into it.

Crew Chief Eric: He would have spent less time just restoring a 2CV.

Executive Producer Tania: It was a labor of love, I guess, of passion. He was putting his carpentry skills to use.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m not going to begin to try and understand.

So the

Crew Chief Eric: bigger question is, how many times did he piss in the corner of his garage?

Executive Producer Tania: Probably many, cause…

Crew Chief Brad: He used it to soften the wood.

It’s seasoned. Why does my car smell like piss? [01:38:00] Because it’s French.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently, this is a thing in France. And I was warned about this, that guys will just randomly pee while they’re on the street. I didn’t believe it until I saw it myself. And then you sort of like started to ignore it. You became desensitized to it.

Except for this personal French man story that I have to share with you guys. I’m walking down the road with Ty. We’re coming back. from David’s campsite. So imagine we have a 45 minute walk ahead of us. We’re going down, minding our own business, dimly lit sidewalks and whatever. And these two fine French gentlemen decide that they’re going to hide themselves by standing next to the only light pole on the street, facing away from each other because they didn’t want to see each other peeing, but facing the people that were walking on the sidewalk as they urinated in public.

And it’s like, Are you serious? I mean, I understand that there aren’t very many port a johnies and stuff. They were lacking in a lot of things. Trash cans and other things around there, but I’m [01:39:00] just like… This is unreal. And the worst part is there’s the streetlight right there. They’re obviously inebriated, but there was a fence, like, I don’t know, 12 feet to the side of where they were standing.

They could have gone to the fence, but nope, we’re going to hide ourselves because nobody can see us if we stand. By the label.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. And then in the article here, or in the little snippet, it says public urination is a problem in most big cities. That’s why I will never live in a big city.

Executive Producer Tania: So I didn’t actually post that as a Florida man type subject.

It’s actually like an investigative news reporting on why this is so prevalent in France.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s for real.

Executive Producer Tania: So is she telling you and they show you everywhere where there’s just urine running down a sidewalk and they’re interviewing people. They’re like so disgusting and they’re talking about how they’ve been trying to like fix this situation that’s been going on since like 18 something.

I don’t think it’s gonna change. [01:40:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Nope. We do have a Florida man story though, don’t we?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, this is just a kind of a cute one. This Polk County man called Sheriff’s office to report a crime because he goes out to his black Jeep Cherokee that’s covered in all this white paint. Side of the door is covered in all this white paint.

So Sheriff comes out to investigate. And it was bird poop.

But I will say from the photo that the bird must have like downward dogged at the side of the car because the spray is quite extensive. Was it a pterodactyl? I don’t know, in Florida, maybe it was like some sort of heron. I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Albatross. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, that is a lot of bird poop. Oh, there’s a swarm of them and they all, maybe it was like a goose or a swan.

No,

Crew Chief Eric: goose, they had that little green poop.

Executive Producer Tania: This one had diarrhea.

Crew Chief Brad: It was an emu. [01:41:00]

Crew Chief Eric: And bird poop is terrible for your paint. Can you imagine? Then you have this big stain on the side of your car that won’t come out. Uh, I’m gonna wash my car next time it rains.

Executive Producer Tania: Obviously, wasn’t there one minute, and then it was there the next for him to call the police, right,

Crew Chief Brad: so.

Jellicoe says, the culprit was Avion.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve been vandalized! By an eagle!

Crew Chief Brad: She enticed me.

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, the substance was what birds tend to do. Or

Crew Chief Eric: do. Ah!

Executive Producer Tania: Ah! Ah! Get it? That’s

Crew Chief Eric: a bad dad joke. But you know what? We’ve had Canadians in our Florida Man stories before. We don’t have any this time, and that’s fine. I looked.

Executive Producer Tania: I tried.

I couldn’t find. I tried to find better content, but actually, it was very disturbing, the content that was coming up. There was a lot of road rage going on and other very negative things, so there wasn’t anything good, unfortunately.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what we’ve never seen in a Florida Man segment? We never see Danish man.

Executive Producer Tania: It doesn’t happen.

Crew Chief Eric: Denmark.

Executive Producer Tania: Because I [01:42:00] think the search would have to be Danish man bicycling or something.

Crew Chief Eric: So many bicycles. So many bicycles. Unbelievable amount. More than Holland, I think. Whoo! Well, with that, it’s time we go behind the good wall and since we talked a lot about Le Mans, what about the Canadian Grand Prix, which finished right before we went to Montreal?

What’s happening in Formula One land?

Crew Chief Brad: Max Verstappen is winning.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, it’s getting so old. Like, now he’s started this thing, like, I feel like after every race, when they post interview him, Cool Tard down there interviewing him. And it’s like, this was a really tough race, it was like the last race that they just did.

Crew Chief Brad: Where you won by like, how many seconds?

Executive Producer Tania: Silverstone, and it was just like, this was a really tough one for us, you know, it was really hard, we’re gonna have to go back and, and understand what happened. I’m like, you jackass, you didn’t lead for five laps, wow, that was really tough.

Crew Chief Brad: What happened is you Fucked up the start.

That’s what [01:43:00] exactly

Executive Producer Tania: you slipped on the start and he got ahead of you. And then it took you five laps until DRS opened or whatever. And then you got around him and then you weren’t 45 seconds ahead of everybody. Whoa, is you get out of here?

Crew Chief Brad: I think the big news. And Formula One right now is Honey Badger’s back!

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no! Honey Badger’s

Crew Chief Brad: back! The smile, the smilest man on the grid is back in a Formula One car. You’re heartthrob,

Crew Chief Eric: Danny Rick.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, my man crush, Danny Rick. It’s hard to decide between Danny Rick and Toto Wolf. That’s a hard decision to make. It’s a stale baguette decision, but yes, Danny Rick is back in AlphaTauri cause they got rid of Nick DeVries, DeVry, DeSmallFry, DeNotDrivingF1 again.

Denied, Nick, Nick Denied is what it is. Nick Denied. [01:44:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Which is like, I don’t know, I guess, sure. But at the same time, it’s like been like two races, but okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Can I just say that I was seriously thinking it was going to be. Sergio and not Nick DeVry. I thought Danny was going to take Sergio’s seat. Especially the way he’s been performing the last couple weeks, or the last couple races.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s still time, right? Because isn’t his contract up for renewal still? Like, he’s not locked in for future years, I don’t think. I know. Or did they finally do that?

Crew Chief Brad: Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a way to try and kind of snap Sergio out of his funk, too. You know, sitting there with a former race winning driver waiting to take your seat has got to put a lot of pressure on you.

Like, now that Dan Enrich has a seat, I would think it would free up Sergio to kind of, to take some pressure off of him. I mean, he’s still got to go out there and perform. But it’s like having, you know, a starting quarterback or a starting pitcher or something, and you’ve got an all star starting pitcher sitting on [01:45:00] the bench behind you.

It puts a lot of undue pressure on you. I think Sergio comes out and starts driving better for his sake, I hope, but I’m happy to see Danny Rick back. I’m happy for you.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike Formula One, there’s a bunch of WRC news that we’re not going to cover this month. I’m going to talk about it next time. And there’s some drama with Terry Neuville, so I’m gonna leave you in suspense.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think anybody cares.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, but Tanya has some NASCAR news.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I didn’t watch it, but the street race in Chicago did happen.

Crew Chief Eric: NASCARs do street races now? Yes. Is it like RC cars that just put a body on top of the Indy car and we’re gonna make pretend it’s a NASCAR?

Crew Chief Brad: No, it’s like the garage 56 car.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, then maybe it’s possible. I, I, you know, we got to stop poking fun. These NASCARs have come a long way since the days of the Conestoga wagon suspension that they were based on.

Executive Producer Tania: It was over the 4th of July weekends. Nobody watched it. Was. Did not happen. So, but however it did happen and I don’t know any of the people in nascar.

So the person who won means nothing to me. But I [01:46:00] believe it was like, this guy’s a New Zealander who won Shane Van Bergen.

Crew Chief Brad: That does not sound like a NASCAR name. Wow. He was brought in just for the street race. I was gonna

Crew Chief Eric: say . Anybody who, a non-American sounding name for the street race. Right? Yeah. We’ll get some guys from touring car.

Come over here. We’re going to try to keep it light, but I want to remind people that our Motorsports News is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen. They are running their promotion and their sweepstakes to win a 2024 Corvette E Ray through April of 2024.

You can enter now by going to their website racingarchives. org, click on Corvette sweepstakes, and enter the code E RAYLAUNCH for some bonus tickets there and entries when you sign up to try to win that Corvette. You can also take a cash… option if you don’t want a new car and the IMRRC also has some upcoming events on August 18th.

They are doing the Cameron R. Arkett Singer Award for Outstanding Contributions to Motorsports Dinner. On September the [01:47:00] 16th, they’re doing a center conversation titled Brumos, an American racing icon with author Sean Cridland at 1 p. m. On September 30th, they’re holding the 25th anniversary party for the IMRRC.

More details on that are still to come. November the 2nd. International Real Wheel Film Festival celebrating historical racing documentaries at 5 p. m. which is on the eve of the Argett Singer Symposium on International Motor Racing History on November the 3rd and the 4th. And we will be there. For those November events at the Glen.

So we hope to see you there. If you’re interested in checking out the symposium this year, and we want to thank our friends at the IMRRC for supporting us and working with us on various projects here at GTM and brake fix throughout the year,

Crew Chief Brad: upcoming local news and events brought to us by collector car guide.

net. The ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. Coming up for the end of July and August, July 26th to the 29th. We’ve got the Mecum auctions in Harrisburg. It’s at the Pennsylvania farm show [01:48:00] complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, August 5th, we’ve got the 17th annual Pleasant Valley car and truck show and put on by the Roarsville volunteer fire department in Roarsville, Maryland.

On August 5th and 6th, the SCCA WDCR Western Maryland Chapter is hosting the Polish Mountain Hill Climb in Flintstone, Maryland. On August 17th through August 19th, the MECA Monterey Auction, which I believe Eric is going to be out in Monterey, California for Car Week out there. This is held at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey Hotel and Spa.

Crew Chief Eric: I am confirmed to be at this event. So I will see people there if they’re there for car week.

Crew Chief Brad: There you go. Two events that I want to highlight just because I like these types of cars. Both of them are August 19th. The first one is the Rev Up for Rotary event at Adventure Park in Monrovia, Maryland. And then the VW Meet at Mason Dixon Dragway in Boonesboro, Maryland.

August 24th, the Audi Club North America Northeast [01:49:00] region is hosting a summer concert social event at the Train Concert at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. And August 26th, the Maryland Auto Detailing Car, Truck, Jeep, and Motorcycle Show, that looks like it’s an all inclusive show, at the Mount Pleasant Ruritan Club to support St.

Jude’s Children’s Hospital. And August 28th through August 30th, Ferrari Club of America is having their annual meet in Bend, Oregon. And tons more events like these and all their details are available over at collectorcarguide. net.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Brad. And now it’s time for the HPDE Junkie. com Trackside Report.

So what’s coming up for the rest of the summer? By the time this aired, we did a little bit more travel as we headed to VIR for our annual summer bash track weekend with our friends from Hooked on Driving. If you’re listening to this on the car ride home where you missed it, check out the rest of hooked on driving schedule this summer, and don’t forget as a thank you to all of our loyal supporters, you can sign up for your next hooked on driving event, [01:50:00] using the code break fix 23 and receive a discount on your registration at checkout.

So thank you again, and tune in for more promotions like this throughout the year. I mentioned the VRG, the Vintage Racers group earlier, and if you’re interested in checking out some of their events, here’s what’s left on the late summer fall schedule. September 1st through the 4th, they’re at Lime Rock for the Historic Festival.

September 22nd through the 24th, they’re at Watkins Glen. And November 17th through the 19th, they’re at the infamous Turkey Bowl at Summit Point, our home track in West Virginia. Be sure to check out some of those VRG events if you’re interested in running your Specmia somewhere else. July the 31st through August the 1st, Audi Club, Northeast Region, has their HPDE at Watkins Glen International.

So, if you’re looking to turn some laps at the Glen, you’re still in time to register for that event. And as Brad mentioned, stay tuned next month on our YouTube and Twitch feeds for coverage from Car Week in Monterey, California. We’re going to be at places like The Quail, Pebble Beach, the Garage [01:51:00] Style Magazine, Garage Tours, Mecham’s Auction in Monterey, and two days at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca.

Just to name a few of the events we’re going to be at. So be sure to keep up with us on social, on our websites and live streaming throughout Car Week in August.

Executive Producer Tania: In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired during the summer break. We kicked off the summer with Rob Morgan from MPG and learned all about the GT Celebration Racing Series.

We travel back to the golden age of sports car racing with co host Mike Carr when we interviewed Bob Gerritsen and learned about his friendship with Bobby Rayhall and Brian Redman, along with how the infamous Apple 935 came to be. Tony Vallelunga taught us what it’s like to take stainless steel and turn it into a vehicle, and how he’s using everything he’s learned to help build the new gull wing doored DeLorean next generation supercar.

Author Jeff Willis stopped by to tell us about his new book, Human in the Machine, while John Summers talked about the influence of social media on racing. Kevin McDonald from [01:52:00] Positive Talk Radio in Seattle interviewed our very own Crew Chief Eric about some of the lesser told parts of the GTM and BrakeFix origin story.

We revisited with Bob Gillespie and learned more about the Green Grand Prix, while newsman Larry Jorgensen told us about his new book, Shipwrecked and Rescued. We went around the world with Elspeth Beard on her epic adventure as the first British woman to circle the world on a motorcycle. And finally, Danny Pilling from the Danny P on Cars podcast crossed over with Brake Fix to talk about car culture from all parts of the globe.

Thanks again to everyone that came on the show over the summer, and we’ll see you in August.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Tanya. New Patreons for the month of July? We don’t have any. If you’re interested in supporting us, keeping up all the things we do around here, helping us keep the lights on, be sure to check us out.

Patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. You can sign up for as little as 2. 50 a month, every penny counts, keeping things running smoothly around here.

Crew Chief Brad: We have a couple anniversary [01:53:00] shout outs, Kerwin Webb and Mike Bowser are celebrating seven years with GTM and coming in a close second this month is one of the Latin lads, Steve Wade.

He’s celebrating six years with us. And if you want to know more about the Latin lads, there were an episode with them and what it was our first season, we had them on great story about their cursed mini and just their fantastic lives. So go check it out. And if you’d like to become a member of GTN, be sure to check out the new clubhouse website at club.

gtmotorsports. org to learn more.

Crew Chief Eric: And remember for everything that we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available at gtmotorsports. org. You can also join us on discord. By clicking the link on our website. And don’t forget new ways to get ahold of us.

You can follow us on threads, the new social media platform from Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. So let’s make it a goal to get more followers on threads than we have on Instagram, and we can do that with your help.

Crew Chief Brad: Also, quick shout out to our co host and [01:54:00] executive producer, Tanya, and coming up in October through probably January, I will be going out on paternity leave because we’ll be having our second child.

We’ll have an opening for guest hosts that want to come on the show. If anybody’s interested, please do not hesitate to reach out and we can find something for you to talk about

Crew Chief Eric: or we’ll conscript you one way or the other.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. One way or the other you will comply.

Crew Chief Eric: Resistance is futile.

Crew Chief Brad: This is yes.

You will be indoctrinated like the Reapers did to Shepard and Mass Effect and all the members who support GTM without you, none of this would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve had all day thinking about this episode. Like it’s got to be like the Backstreet Boys. Be like, break, fix this back. All right. Nah, nah, nah, nah.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly how that goes.

Crew Chief Brad: That was studio quality right there.

Crew Chief Eric: This is why I could never be on America’s Got Talent. I have to go overseas to really show off my talent.

Crew Chief Brad: You have to have talent to be on America’s Got Talent. [01:55:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Never gonna happen.

Crew Chief Brad: Your talent is the gift of Gab. We’re gonna do this.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I want it that way.

Crew Chief Eric: Tell me why

Crew Chief Brad: you are my father. My one desire. Tell me why. Tanya’s dying. That

Executive Producer Tania: was very nice

Crew Chief Brad: and oh.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out [01:56:00] on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770. Or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at [01:57:00] www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you.

None of this would be possible.

Highlights

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

00:00 Introduction and Sponsors
00:34 Back in the Studio
01:10 Eric’s Epic Adventure in France
02:28 Driving in Paris: A Nightmare
08:32 Le Mans: The Ultimate Racing Experience
17:43 Food Adventures at Le Mans
25:41 Race Day Highlights and Observations
37:20 Exploring Denmark: From Legoland to EV Taxis
39:38 Legoland Adventures: More Than Just for Kids
41:45 Montreal: A Taste of France in Canada
43:26 Jeep Service and Road Trip to Montreal
50:19 Driving on the F1 Track in Montreal
54:13 Le Mans Highlights: Garage 56 and More
56:24 Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen News
01:01:30 American Muscle: Corvette Racing’s End
01:09:20 New EVs and Concept Cars
01:10:07 Combustible Hydrogen: The Future of Racing?
01:13:10 Lost and Found: Car Deals and Auctions
01:14:41 Motorsports Legends Auction at Le Mans
01:15:28 Experiencing a High-End Car Auction
01:16:47 Le Mans Museum and Historical Cars
01:17:56 Vintage Motor Sports and Miata Racing
01:19:13 Tesla vs. Threads: The Social Media War
01:24:06 New Car Shows and Reviews
01:42:09 Formula One and NASCAR Updates
01:46:17 Upcoming Motorsports Events and Announcements
01:52:37 Patreon Shoutouts and Closing Remarks

Would you like fries with that?

French man ... classic Citroen 2CV car made of wood fetches record price at auction, and it even runs
French men ... peeing in the streets since late 1800s, Paris wants to change this tradition
Florida Man ... mistakes bird poop on car for white paint, calls deputies to report ‘crime’

There's more to this story!

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

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.

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<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

<img class="tdb-logo-img" src="https://www.gtmotorsports.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/CROPPED-1.png" alt="Logo" title="" width="2597" height="573" data-eio="l" />GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

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TRANSCRIPT

Highlights

Would you like fries with that?

There's more to this story!

Other episodes that aired this month…

This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014

GTMSpreading Motorsports Enthusiasm - since 2014