[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The drive-through is GTMs monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like h hpde junkie.com, garage riot, american muscle.com, hooked on driving and many others.
If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive-Through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org under about and then advertising and sponsorship. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grantor Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. All right, if you guys are ready.
Here we go. Welcome to Drive-through episode number 23. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive motorsport and random car adjacent news. Now let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news, except we’re not talking automotive news. We’re [00:01:00] starting with Motorsports News, right, Eric?
That’s right, because June is like the holy Grail of Motorsports month. To quote the announcers from Lamonts about two laps in after the yellows dropped. It is time for maximum Es, and that’s what we’re gonna be talking about this month, because Lamonts happened in June along with a lot of other racing, unlike last month where people thought summer was already over.
We’re in the middle of some of the longest racing days of the year where we have the most daylight. So this is absolutely fantastic. So we are gonna kick off this month by talking about Lamonts, the 90th running of Lamonts, and the 99th anniversary of the first running of Lamonts. Next year’s a little bit more special, but I just wanna put those facts out there for people.
Just the facts, just the facts.
But some interesting things about this year’s Lamont, it wasn’t the most exciting race in the world, [00:02:00] but there were a couple things that were different for the last few years that I have gotten very little sleep over two days. There was no rain. It’s been a first in years that it hasn’t rained even overnight, so it was a completely dry race this year.
It felt like there was a lot less yellows or quote unquote snow zones. In this year, compared to last, last year’s race, every five minutes there was some sort of slowdown, sector crash, some sort of disaster going on. This year was pretty clean. I feel like there’s a correlation between the lack of rain and the lack of slow zones.
Yeah. You think maybe, maybe, ah, to talk a little bit more about metrics, the fastest lap time of the race went to the second place. Toyota number seven at three minutes and 27 seconds. Let’s put that in perspective. They’re going eight and a quarter, eight and a third miles in three minutes. That’s hella fast.
I don’t care who you are, these guys are booking [00:03:00] Wasn’t the lab times the last time it was run a little bit quicker. It seems like lab times are down across the board in a mini series. That’s true. I’ve heard different speculation as to why changes in aerodynamics, parts of the track rep, pave changes, tire compounds, stuff like that.
You know, we don’t use the same tires every year after year. So yes, you’re right. They did post, all the qualifying times were down. They were slower by several seconds compared to years prior. But even the race pace times were down across the board faster than everybody else. Toyota at the front of the pack.
Not as fast as last year. However, this is an exit year for lamont’s. Next year, everything changes. It is the beginning of a whole new chapter for W E C, the introduction of L M D H, which is the replacement for LMP one and for those that have no idea what I’m talking about with regards to alphabet soup, it is the Pinnacle classes in endurance racing.
We’re talking about the professional prototype classes this year. We move away from P one or LMP [00:04:00] one into next year where we go to the full on hybrid class and we’re gonna talk about all the cars and manufacturers that are returning to Lamont’s next year because of the change. This is very similar to what happened with f1.
We went from the old cars last year with still with the 15 inch wheels to now what? What are they running? 20 inch chariot wheels or something on, on radials. They’re running eighteens and it’s causing a lot of porpoising. We’ll talk about that in a little bit too. They completed 380 laps, not a record.
The record’s like 424 in 24 hours leading up to lamonts. There is a lot of, you know, bluff and bluster as always, and a lot of hype, and I got myself psyched up. But there was a video going around by Mr. Lamar himself, Mr. Tom Christensen, on how you too can put down the perfect lap at Lamont’s. What would your lab time be at Lamar?
In a rented Volkswagen Polo, I’m thinking 12 to 27 minutes. Somewhere in that range to go [00:05:00] eight miles. It is the French countryside after all. That’s very true. But what’s the governor set to on this rental polo that we’re talking about? Exactly. This is the last hoorah for LMP one and 23 and 24 usher in the L M D H, also known as the GT P era.
They’re using some of the old monikers from nearly 30 years ago by changing the class names. A lot of us had already gotten used to LM d h, but they’re already calling it GT P. I hate to say it was Toyota’s race to lose. As always, for the last several years, everybody says, oh my God, you know this and that.
They were always in the shadow of so many second places and now they’re winning. There’s nobody left to compete against, and this year was no different than last year where they sacrificed a couple rebellion cars, moved them out of P two into LMP one, and I feel the same was true of the Glic cars.
They’re basically LMP two cars and there was also an alpine elf. Which a hundred percent looks like an LMP two car, and they kind of moved them in to say, okay, well we have five [00:06:00] cars in P one Toyota. But you could tell right from the start, they just laid waste to everybody and took off like they weren’t even there talking about the click in house cars.
I have to say, from an aesthetics perspective, it is a beautiful car. It’s definitely the most striking of the LMP cars that I’ve seen in recent years. It really reminds me of the old sixties McLaren P four s and some of the Ferraris and stuff, the way it looks. I love that throwback nose that it has and kind of almost the long tail, like a nine 17 or an old Ferrari.
To your point, it stands out and it is a good looking car. But what I thought was really impressive is it’s the first American design car to make the podium since Ford in 1969. Pretty cool. The number two Glick Andhas car seemed to struggle behind a lot of the LMP two cars for a long portion of the race until they kind of finally cleaned up in the last hour like they always do.
Basically six overall for most of the race was the number 7 0 8 [00:07:00] car. The race ended. With almost no drama. It was just kinda like, okay, Toyota, the Gja and the Alpine, and then there’s the rest of everybody else. They lost to Japan and they beat the French. I mean, isn’t that America’s Way America? We move on to LMP two, where for the first time ever I was.
Kind of glad that they didn’t spend a lot of camera time on P one because like I said, there’s not a whole heck of a lot going on. They did devote a lot of time to P two because for the longest time there were a bunch of P two cars mixed in at the front and there was an opportunity for one of the Joda team P two cars to actually podium thought it was gonna go that way, especially the Alpine was so far behind the GHA 7 0 8 was having issues, stuff like that.
I was like, oh man, a P two taking third place overall. That’s incredible. Then you know, the Glick class car finally found some speed there at the end in the last four hours or so, but the Joda team did end up first in class, so they still won their race overall, which was exciting. And I’ve never been that excited about a [00:08:00] P two class ever.
I usually ignore it and hope that they show something else. I will say the new classing system that they kept talking about, we’re used to pro and am and pro am and those mix, now they’re talking gold, silver, bronze. I know it’s been around for a while. They made it more apparent when they were talking about the different drivers.
Oh, this is a bronze driver and this is a blah, blah, blah driver and the number of stints, and it got really confusing cuz I think either the announcers were confused about how long each driver was supposed to be in the car. You know, was it six hours, was it four hours? Was it this, was it that, and in that mix you heard some names thrown out there.
Right. They were focusing a lot on Patrick Dempsey and those guys, and we’ll talk about that in a minute too. But I heard one and I was like, wait a minute. Did did I hear that right? Sebastian Oje was running in P2 this year, so for those of you that don’t know and why I’m so excited about it. Former world rally champion Sebastian Oje running for the Richard Miller team along with Lilo wou I will say it was exciting to watch, but their pit strategy was the [00:09:00] wonkiest thing on the planet.
With four minutes left in Lilo’s stint, her average lap was 3 35. She pits for fuel, goes back out with this craziness of I gotta pit in again and waste another minute and a half and all this back and forth. I think they lost a lot of ground to their competitors because they messed up their whole pit strategy, especially during driver changes and the minimum amount of time to be on track and they were trying to time their pit out time so it would expire correctly.
It, it was just a mess and I felt really bad for them. I did discover that there was a subclass LMP two ProAm, which is really, really confusing because most of us associate LMP two with gentleman drivers. Hey, whatever. I’m sorry I fell asleep during that entire monologue right there. Cause as soon as you mentioned rally, I just, my, I hate this snooze button.
Well, that l LMP too, right? It’s like whatever. This is the Jackie Chan cars. I mean, where were they this year? But there were some drivers ejected from [00:10:00] even starting the race for just being absolutely terrible. And we’ll talk about another one as we kind of progress through the classes here in the, in the play by play on Lamont’s.
So where was the action this year? The action was in both GT Pro and GT Amateur. Normally, I ignore the gentleman drivers as well, but you got the Patrick Dempsey Fastbender thing going on. But in GT Pro it was Corvette’s race to lose. They lost it.
If you replay that, start the Corvettes out the gate were just blazing fast. The Porsche and Ferrari didn’t even have a chance. The number two Corvette falls out because of transmission issues and, and rear end problems and things like that. The first place, Corvette, okay, cool. The race was taken away from them.
By some punk ass amateur LMP two driver, probably a a, uh, a copper licensed driver shouldn’t even have been out on track Bastard. I know. So that crushed Corvette’s dreams for [00:11:00] this year of Lamont’s. Even with all the balance of power changes, I heard that there’s some grandfathering in where they’re not totally b o p, there’s some confusion there as well.
But what ended up happening was it became a two horse race between Porsche and Ferrari. And it was exciting. Lots of back and forth, lots of really intricate and strategic pit stops. It was very much like watching an old Formula One race. It’s like, oh, they pick, we’re gonna put two, we gotta stay as close to them as possibly can, and they’d run up on each other.
The announcers kept talking about the power difference between the nine elevens and the four 80 eights. Four 80 eights are actually quicker out of the pocket than the nine 11 is. But the nine elevens slipperier down the straightaway, so it’s got a little bit more top speed, just a little bit more overall.
And so it was a great back and forth to see the Ferraris and Porsches battling, but more action was going on in GT Amateur. The overall win went to one of two Aston Martins that were running in the race, which I was surprised to even see them there. Talk about Aston, but didn’t Aston also win? The GT [00:12:00] Pro, they ousted Corvette in the GT Pro class a couple years ago too.
A couple years ago. Gtlm. Yeah, cor. Yeah, exactly. But they’ve been on again, off again. And the Astons are, I don’t wanna say they’re old tech, but it’s not a new car by any stretch of the imagination. The other Aston kind of surprised me. There was a familiar name, and this goes all the way back to season one of our show where we did an episode called The Gentleman Driver.
And they kept talking about Paul Dalana, the Canadian from the Northwest, a M r, um, asset, Martin Racing Team Northwest and Insurance Company. He’s obviously behind that. And he ran six hours. Their team did really, really well. I was really surprised to still see him out there running. So that was a bit of a flash from the past.
Speaking of flashes from the past, Ella, from Formula One was running in a Ferrari. I thought that was pretty cool. Bronze level driver, right? That they classified him as I, I don’t get that, but I think we need to focus a little bit more [00:13:00] on the whole Dempsey Fastbender thing that we have completely manufactured ourselves.
There’s probably no drama whatsoever, but as we do our best drive to survive Netflix drone inducing series here, Fastbender was in a, Iraq is a qualifying debut. Yeah. And it took him three years to get there. Right. There’s a whole documentary on Netflix about this. And he wrecks in the brak zone of one of the chicanes down the mulane straight.
Basically he lost it in the straight and went straight to the wall. It almost seems like the back end of the car locked up just got away from HIMSS happened. Yeah, he’s okay. He’s okay. His rivalry with McDreamy, Patrick Dempsey will have to live to fight another day. I, I don’t think there’s any drama between them and he crashed in qualifying, but he raced during the race.
Dempsey, I can imagine, was not happy with their finish. And Gtam Field was really big if you looked at all the cars that were entered in there, tons of Ferrari’s, tons of Porsches, obviously the two Astons, but it was a really [00:14:00] big field of amateur and gentlemen drivers in this year’s lamont’s. I was like, they couldn’t get enough of anybody else to, you know, sign up for the race.
I, I don’t know. But out of that came some really cool things, like the number 85 Pink Ferrari of the Iron Dames team. If you’re not familiar or not following their story, they’re an all female team. They qualified sixth in class. They ended up dropping to 23rd because of an issue with the car, and then throughout the course of the weekend, fought their way back up to sixth place and finished in sixth.
Overall in gtm, I mean, I gotta give ’em a round of applause. They fought hard. They drove well. The car definitely stood out. My daughters were watching the race with me and they were. Ecstatic about every time the camera went back to the pink Ferrari. And I know it’s a little cliche, but it’s a color that’s not often used and it was easy to find them on track.
And they did really, really well. The Hard point Porsche team and one of its drivers had three hours of 23 minutes [00:15:00] remaining on their stint, right? Their obligated amount of time that they have to drive during the race. And that got announced with two and a half hours left on the clock. And I was like super confused and immediately said, oh, there is a disqualification B N F, you know, waiting to happen.
I don’t know how they’re gonna work this out. So they put this gentleman harto in the car for his stint. He goes out, he makes one lap and he loops it and turn one buries the car in the gravel trap when they panned to the garage. I couldn’t help. I busted out laughing cuz it looks on people’s faces. Were like, no wonder, I guess they were keeping him out of the car.
But you live and learn, you pay to drive, you’re out there to have fun. But I really felt bad for the hard point Porsche team. They were destined for failure. Unfortunately, it is what it is. Better luck to them next year. So there’s some exciting things we gotta talk about for next year, because next year our goal is to be at Lamont’s.
I’m going, I’m hell or high water, whether I’m standing there by [00:16:00] myself or with, you know, all my closest friends. The reason next year is so important is what we started off with next year is the hundredth anniversary of the first running of Lamont’s. 10 years from now, we get to do the hundredth anniversary of the running of Lamonts, which is different.
So we’ll get to do another hundredth, you know, indie went through the same thing, but there’s all sorts of new brands coming out of other series that are gonna be appearing at next year’s Lamonts. You’re gonna see the introduction of GT four cars that are coming out of groups like S Rro, where they hold the GT four series.
Right now globally, you’re gonna see brands like Mercedes, McLaren, Audi, bmw, and Ford hitting the big stage with their GT four cars next year. Next year also brings about the GT three class where there’s new entries coming in there as well. And like we talked about L M D H, there’s been some reveals finally, not just speculation of who’s coming in the P one classes.
And we’ll kind of talk about that as we go along. There’s some really exciting stuff going, but since I’m gonna be there, There was actually somebody who [00:17:00] tweeted about some of the best vantage points when you’re at Lamont’s in person where you should be standing to watch the race. And so the announcers kind of were going back and forth about it and talking about some of the changes they’ve made at the track for spectators and this and that.
And so here’s what I pulled from it. There’s three big spots that you wanna watch the race from. If you’re interested in watching the race and not just being near the pit boxes or start, finish or whatever have you. Obviously you gotta make your way there at the end of the race. I don’t think I wanna start at start, finish.
I want to be somewhere else. Where do I want to be? I want to be at Tetra Rouge, which is basically turn eight, where they’re starting to go down the Mulan. You can see up the hill to the Dunlop Arch, you know, things like that. The other two turns that the guys recommended are Mulan Corner, cuz you get them coming in at 200 and ungodly billion miles an hour coming into that breaking zone and then taking off.
And they said they actually added a viewing area at Indianapolis Corner, which makes that an exciting corner to watch the race at. So those are like top tips right [00:18:00] now that I picked up watching this year’s race. So I’m gonna include a track map for anybody that doesn’t know what the heck I’m talking about with all my notes.
You’ll find me in one of those three locations throughout the 24 next year. So let me know if you’re gonna be there. Let’s, let’s get together. So are we gonna talk about Lamborghini? Yes. We’re gonna talk about Lamborghini, a future entrant or a coming entrant into the new l and d H class that Eric was talking about earlier is Lamborghini, and they have chosen H chassis supplier.
Wait, wait. They’re not building their own, you know, I was just about to say, I’m surprised they’re not building their own, but I guess they don’t want a tractor chassis out there on track while everybody else is going in these custom high tech. But yeah, they chosen luge to build the chassis for their cars, so that’s kind of cool.
And they’re gonna enter them into the m a series in 2024, and it looks like the G G T P Gran Touring prototype class in 2023. I think you’re gonna see a lot of manufacturers scrambling to partner with existing [00:19:00] chassis builders because Lamborghini doesn’t have a prototype program, and Audi’s been out for so long, they don’t have a chassis.
Porsche’s reinventing theirs. But even Porsche has said that they’re partnering with Multimatic to build their LM d h project. So they’re not even really building their own chassis either. It’s like everybody needs to be at 23. So it’s not just Toyota by itself, you know, nobody knows what Toyota’s doing.
I heard rumor, they’re confirmed to be there next year, whether it’s with the same car or with a new one. Again, there’s gonna be this trend of people partnering with known chassis manufacturers, be it de Lara, be it Lola, be it Legger, you know, et cetera. Since we’re talking about Volkswagens and Audis, I found out something really, really interesting this month and it goes back to something we talked about last month.
Remember how we talked about the Nissan Z was closely related to the legendary skyline, R 32 through its steering wheel, you know, the three spokes steering wheel of of legend. I found out something really [00:20:00] interesting that I think will delight Tanya. So, so the legendary Audi R eight or the the Audi R eight, it’s not legendary draws one particular thing.
You know it’s lineage from the legendary mark for beetle of 1998. I’m guessing it’s a cigarette lighter. Does the R eight have a three spoke steering wheel very well? May, oh, but this is better than the steering wheel. Would you like to take another guess as to what part ties these two incredible vehicles together through 30 years of history?
The key fob, the headlight switch. Nope. It is the coolant expansion tank known as the Death Star. I was almost gonna fricking say that, and I have pictures to prove it. The R eight uses the same death star that they’ve been using for like 30 years. So there you have folks, the Japanese have their three spoke steering wheels, and we have the Death star.
That’s our common thread. And And how do you fix [00:21:00] a E 36 BMW M three with a Volkswagen Volkswagen death star? Exactly. Speaking of BMWs, they have also revealed finally, their L M D H prototype. They’ve revealed the name and the design, and they’re working with De Lara to build the chassis. And so is Cadillac, by the way.
And I gotta say, I don’t like too many BMWs. I can count ’em on the fingers of one hand, but this thing’s pretty cool. It’s pretty good looking. The kidney grills are massive. They look like a whale shark swallowing up its food in the middle of the ocean. But yeah, it looks really cool. The name is not nearly as impressive as the hype made it out to be.
The name is just like all of their naming conventions. It’s like a 500 different words to, to describe one vehicle, B M W M, hybrid v8, like and so on down the line as you add more alphabet soup to that. Good on B M W. I’m glad they’re coming back. I love the livery on this thing. Very reminiscent of, you know, all [00:22:00] BM W Motorsport cars.
I wanna see them kick some butt. I, I want somebody to dero in Toyota and I want it to be a good fight while it happens. You know what I mean? Since we’re talking about races in France, let’s talk about French cars. Poeo debuted their nine x eight at Manza. They also declared the drivers that are gonna be behind the wheel of the Poeo throughout their testing this year in preparation for next year’s LeMans.
The coolest part and most significant part about the nine x eight that I didn’t realize and I learned this month, is that it will be the first L M D H car with no wings. Why is that important? They have been approved to go back to using ground effects, which have been banned since the eighties. So we’re talking like thes, C nine type cars, all those ground effects cars, you know, Lotus and whatnot from way back when were reintroducing that and they’re gonna be wingless on the eos.
And how do the other manufacturers feel about this? I mean, it’s legal. We’ll see who else goes in that step. You saw the b w, it’s got wings, [00:23:00] like a formula car everywhere. I mean it’s legal. Or does that mean the other manufacturers are allowed to go back and change their designs if they want to after they’ve dumped years and thousands of man hours into developing it to meet a certain criteria?
Well, I mean, if they’re using the Chevy principle of, let’s see what everybody else does first. Too late for them, right? If they’ve already submitted this is the car. But if P Joe’s breaking the mold and it’s allowed to go forward, I suspect that in 24 we’re gonna see a lot more airless cars. Especially if they’re very successful.
Exactly. That’s gonna be such a slippery car. But also the ground effects is gonna make it stick like it’s on rails in the corners. It’s gonna be really neat to see how it does against all these air foiled cars. And where is W E C? Where’s their headquarters? Uh, isn’t it in France and this is the French manufacturer.
Collusion. Yeah. Forever unclean. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of. Clean with respect to clean designs. We talked a while back [00:24:00] about the possible introduction of the Alpha Rome male version of the Fiat 1 24 Spider originally referred to as the Duetto. Most of us know it as just the alpha spider. It was produced for an extremely long time, longer than most people realize.
It has like a 30 year run on it that they made the alpha convertible. As Tanya had mentioned, the director over at Selan has said, we’re very excited about this, you know, in a very Italian, non-descript, non-committal way of saying that they’re gonna see if they can do it and if it’s worth it, they’ll continue.
And Italian Car Magazine released some pictures of the Duetto concept car. And I gotta say, I think it’s pretty neat. I don’t fit, so I don’t sit. It’s got no roof. How do you not fit? You see me getting in there? No, I don’t. Yeah, there. Yeah, I could probably put both legs in and stand in each seat. I’m not really a fan.
I don’t like the front. Is it because it doesn’t really the, yeah. Is it because it really doesn’t have headlights? Probably the back almost has no taillights either. Although the back kind of [00:25:00] reminds me of the solstice, the opal, the vox hole, you know, all those that came out at the same time, like the vxr and stuff with the double hump and really angular rear end.
It’s just a concept. You know, the concepts never come to fruition. I’ve never seen one go to production the way it was presented, but I like the fact that this is out there because it means they’re thinking about it. Right? I mean, it looks nothing like the original, honestly, other than the fact that it has two doors and it’s convertible.
Like I don’t, it needs, I don’t look at it and go, oh yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to be. Regardless of what the original looked like. I, I don’t know. But is it the standalone vehicle? It needs popup headlights. Yeah, throwback, right? I mean, why can’t we have popup headlights anymore? Because they’re not slippery.
I mean, does it really matter? I mean, everybody’s driving an S U V. How slippery are they? I don’t know. You drive a hippopotamus. It’s true. I do. I mean, my mirrors are bigger than most people’s pop-up headlights. We should probably switch gears and talk about the domestic entries into motorsport, especially for next year.
[00:26:00] And so our domestic news is brought to you in part by American muscle.com, your source for OEM replacement and performance parts for your Ford, Chevy, or Mopar vehicle. So I mentioned earlier about B M W that has partnered with De Lara and so has Cadillac, and they have confirmed that they’re gonna have a V8 in the Cadillac along with the hybrid system.
More than likely is gonna be the Corvette’s flat plane crank v8. They’re gonna share that motor. I’m excited to see a LS powered something up in P one next year or gtp, so I, I can’t wait to see the Cadillac out there fighting along with everybody else. They actually do state that it is a 5.5 liter dual overhead cam V8 engine linked to a spec hybrid system.
It is confirmed. Nice. And the car itself is what the X L R should have been. Yes, I agree. Could you imagine if the, if they brought the X L R out now with the mid-engine core bed out and everything, and it looked like this, they would have people lined [00:27:00] around the corner to buy one. What if they brought back the C seven and re sheet metaled it and reintroduced it as the xlr then that’s the same thing they did before.
They took you just a, like a quick, just not ugly. Just not ugly. The XLR looked like the Batmobile from Batman in the animated series, by the way, to, to, to go on a little bit of a rant. When I was coming home from v i r I slept at the gas station and there was a guy in an X L R. He revved me, he hit me with the revs.
He bounced off the rev limiter at me. I barely heard him cuz it was stock exhaust or whatever, but, and it was 4,500 rpm cuz it revs like a tractor. Yeah, that, that, that North star motor. Ooh. Big and scary. Yeah. I’m really shaking in my boots here buddy. That’s what made me think of it. But yeah, this car, really good looking.
Good job. Cadillac, did you throw the revs back at him? No, because I’m a mature adult. Liar sometimes liar. I I was moving and it’s harder to do in an automatic. Well his is an automatic too. So what do you do? Drop it in neutral. He was parked. Oh, okay. Well that’ll do even better. He was sitting in a parking spot facing the other direction and rev [00:28:00] me.
Good job guy. Well, speaking of mature things, who decided it was a good idea to see if a Ford F-150 Lightning, the new one, the EV could charge itself. That just makes good sense. He says you can charge other EVs. Why not try and charge itself perpetual power? I mean, it said it worked. It said you could keep it up for 150 hours.
Yeah, it took the power out of the battery and put it into the, the battery report because that generator system on there is not gas powered. Right. For all the tools and all that wonderful stuff they market as it’s in a loop circular reference, it’s idiotic. You think they would’ve a fail safe for that?
Right? I’m wondering how much power does it take to charge another vehicle? Like just regardless of the, the actual power that’s being transferred from the battery. It’s gotta use a little bit of power to move that fuel, that electricity to the other vehicle. So eventually it would, I would think it would wind down.
It would, it would power itself and it would use power to power itself and eventually just run [00:29:00] out. It’s like laps at nascar. Just round and round and round and round. Well then this fits. Is it on the left side? I can only charge on the left side. So have you guys seen this latest commercial. From Chevy surrounding the bolt, E U V, probably not.
It has this new thing called Super Cruise. I think it’s more marketing Bs I I found it upsetting. Yes, I got really, really angry. More people are gonna be on the road not touching their steering wheels. I guess the driver attention system, or whatever the heck they called it, is supposed to be monitoring you to make sure you’re watching in the same sentence.
Basically the driver attention system. Make sure that you’re paying attention and watching the road, but also this is the most relaxed you can get and blah, blah, blah, blah. So it’s supposed to be like paying attention that you are paying attention so that you could assume control. So what happens if like a lot of people that doze off, they can sleep anywhere.
I [00:30:00] think it should send electric voltage through your seat. When it sees your eyes closed, you like the rumble strips on the side of the highway. When you drift, you hit them and they’re cause of vibration and noise wake you up. But instead, you don’t have to drift in your lane. Your car just sees that you’re falling asleep and then shocks you.
So that reminds me of that movie, like back in the day with John Goodman about the movie theater where these used to zap people during the horror films from the bottom of the seat. You guys remember that? It’s the same thing. Let me break some people’s brains on this one. So it’s supposed to be looking at your eyes, you know, like you said, you fall asleep.
Well, what if when I close my eyelids. I use makeup to draw eyeballs on my eyelids. So it looks like, what if you’re wearing sunglasses? What if, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard because Well, but if you have to wear glasses, what if you’re a driver and you’re legally obligated to wear glasses? I mean, if you have Drew Carey glasses, [00:31:00] it might not be able to see your eyes so it doesn’t think you’re awake.
Right? I mean, it sounds like it’s using a retinal scanner. So when you use a retinal scanner to get into like a secure place or whatever, do you have to take your glasses off to do it? Yes. So yeah, it’s like a, but it doesn’t matter cuz you’re not driving anyway, so who cares? Like, yep, I’m good. I’m just, I’m gonna take my hand.
Jesus, take the wheel. Super cruise, take the wheel. I’m gonna take my glasses off, put ’em on my head, get out my crossword puzzle and I am good to go. So if we’re not gonna draw eyeballs on the back of our eyelids, what if we do the clockwork orange thing, you know? And just keep our eyes open, but we’re actually asleep.
But you know what really irritated me about this video was the whole pushing of driving hands free. People are gonna immediately associate hands-free driving with hands-free phone. In this day and age, I still don’t understand people that have the phone up to their chin or their ear in a car that was built after 2008.
So I don’t understand how this is [00:32:00] gonna work either, but it’s just how is this different than autopilot? It’s hands free driving. I don’t understand market. It’s a marketing bullshit. Isn’t that autopilot? We would be screaming about Tesla right now, and they’re autonomous driving level 157,000. But when Chevy says Hands free driving, we just kind of move on with life.
I mean, this is as much garbage as the Tesla thing. Yes. Period. A thousand percent. I mean, cool. Unless they crack the code and can actually do it without these things like careening into a police car that’s parked on the side of the road. I mean, I don’t know. Yeah, I I think it’s also teaching just bad habits too, because like one of the videos, there’s several of them, you know, they got the kid in the back.
They’re watching everything you do, right? Your kids are watching how you drive. They pick up your behaviors, they emulate what you’re doing. And if you’re like, Hey, hands free driving, whatever. Yeah, well, guess what? And when you’re sitting there texting on your phone and snapping pictures and selfies while you’re driving, they’re picking up on that too.
And lots of people do that. My [00:33:00] point, and I was just like, I don’t know. I think this is, this is worse. Well, and here’s the problem. This is the future. So what bad habits one could argue are they picking up? Because in 10, 15 years when these little kids are getting their driver’s license, if the technology has improved by then, that will be their car.
Their car won’t be a, oh, don’t have power steering. Oh, kind of No abs, none of this stuff. No, you have all these nannies. It’s one giant freaking moving Xbox. What’s to stop a kid, a teenager, even an eight year old, they got their eyes open getting in the car. They got, they stole mom and dad’s keys and saying, take me to the ice cream store.
And the car just drives them there. Nothing. Unless they, well, they’ll have to put in some sort of pin number or the retinal scan, right? Well, for, for this car, they use lidar. They’ve only programmed into the lidar, certain highways that this can be used on. And then uses the lidar in conjunction with the driver attention system.
I wanna know if it could be voice activated. So I could say, car turn left. Car turn right. [00:34:00] And then my G P S is talking to it, turn left here, and then turns into a lake, and then you kill everybody. Just like the office. Just like the office. I think the most entertaining part of the video was when the hands-free system recognized that you weren’t paying attention.
It lit up like a play school toy. I was like, what is going on here? There are lights and colors everywhere, so I mean, it’s definitely gonna get your attention, but I was just like, wow. All right, well, and see. And here, like, I don’t get it. So if you have to pay attention and you have to have eyes up and you have to be looking at whatever you’re doing, then why don’t you freaking drive your car?
Because I am really tired. What are you doing? Because if you can’t be sitting there watching Netflix on your phone, because you’re gonna get electric shock through your chair because you can’t see your eyeballs, why can’t you hold on? Like, really Tanya? What you don’t understand is this, it’s too much work.
It’s, it’s just too much. Okay cars today, eight hours can be freaking [00:35:00] driven with your thumb and your index finger on the steering wheel. It’s that easy. People you don’t need, especially with Jeff Grip holding on, and I gotta have arm strength to navigate the turn cause I don’t have power any like, get outta here, you losers.
I mean with electric power steering, they’re all feather light now compared to, yeah, even the hydraulics were light compared to manual steering car. But I mean, it’s so easy to drive a car now. It’s ridiculous. It’s, it feels so numb. Like you’re in a bumper car in an amusement park, you’re like, is this thing even connected anymore?
It’s like, it’s craziness. Look, and you know what, people, I work eight hours a day from home. It’s a lot of work. And when I want to get food, I don’t want my door dasher hurting himself trying to come to my house. I want him to be able to use Super Cruise to bring me my food. Okay. Is that too much to ask?
Well, let me blow, let me, let me, let me rock your world here cuz you were talking about watching TV while you’re driving. I too. Coming back from d i r this month, the same, you know, [00:36:00] route that Brad took and by mistake, my phone decided to kick over and play my TV app. And so I found a new cool thing to do in the car, which is listen to old sitcoms through Bluetooth where you don’t have to see it.
And I gotta admit this, because of whatever was next in the hopper, it started playing the Golden Girls. And I tell you what, those sassy old bras are really good over Bluetooth. It’s amazing stuff right there. I cannot recommend it enough. Made the trip just fly by. It was great. Eric, you know why that was next up in the queue?
Because Friday night, two 40 year old men were sitting around on a couch that we don’t know who had sat on it before us watching Golden Girls Eating spaghetti. We were deep in conversation. It was just background noise. Yeah, that’s what it was. I highly recommended. What, what episode did we watch? I, I highly recommend playing old sitcoms over your Bluetooth when [00:37:00] you can’t see them.
They are just amazing in the car. Absolutely not. Not old sitcoms playing Golden Girls and maybe Seinfeld, some Frazier would work. Well, whatever you wanna listen to you, if you’re from the Threes company generation, listen to that. If you’re Frazier Li I Seinfeld, do it. I’m telling you, it will change the way you listen to radio.
You can just even imagine the scenes. Well it’s, it’s like back in decades ago when they just had, you know, there wasn’t tv and you, your programming was the radio. And they had the radio shows. Which is funny because Frazier actually has an episode where they’re doing a radio show. That one’s a good one.
Just imagine that in your car. Be you Play that episode. Exactly. Play that episode in your car. It’s inception, you’re like six layers deep at that point. And so speaking of inception, this next one has me confused for many reasons. Tanya, do you care to enlighten us? [00:38:00] Mach replaces the Tesla Model three as consumer reports electric vehicle top pick, bumping the model three from the annual top picks list.
This was back in February when they were being made and not being recalled. I feel like we should be playing Alanis more sets. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? Number one, number one choice on a car that’s being recalled across the board and currently not available due to chip shortages and battery problems and whatever else.
You know what? You know what happened? It, it’s the Madden curse. Whenever you know a football player has an excellent year, they end up on the cover of Madden. The next year they break their Achilles or something like that. This, that’s what happened. The Machi, cuz I refused to call it a Mustang. The Machi has broken.
Its Achilles this year. So wait for that season. That’s a de champion curse. So we call that around here, right? There you go. But you know, I saw one on the road on this, you know, road trip that we took to v i r and I gotta say, every time I see the machi, I like it more and more and more. It’s a good looking [00:39:00] car.
I’m saw one in a parking lot today. What’d you think? I get confused on the road sometimes where I think there’s one and then it’s like a RAV4 or something. I don’t know. It’s, it’s a Kia. There’s a Kia with the same taillights. It’s something, or it’s the Ford, the new Ford Escape or something like that.
And I’m like, oh wait, nevermind. It’s not, I mean, and when you realize you’re actually looking at one, I mean, it’s not. Horrendous. I guess that is a glowing compliment from Tanya. It’s, it’s not horrendous. If you can get one and it’s been fixed post recall, I think it’s the best bang for the buck. If you look at styling space, the dealer network, and even the price plus the range, I think it’s a good value for money.
It’s still steep at, you know, 45 grand or whatever it is that we talked about on the previous episode. But I think it would be my number one choice, and I have recommended it to other people. I talked to Andrew Bank recently who was on the show, on the Viper episode a while back, and he said he wrote in one with like four [00:40:00] other people and he goes, it’s super comfortable.
And he’s like, it hauls butt. You put it in unbridled mode, which is Ford’s version of Ludicrous mode. You know, they got all these horse references in the car that you can set it to, but he goes, it, it, it boogies Yeah. With five people in the car and it already weighs, you know, 4,000 pounds if not more. I mean, shoot, what, what more could you ask for if Andrew can’t be comfortable in a car?
This is not a car period, because he’s only like five five. So he’s always comfortable in a car. I want to know if you can replace the Mustang on the grill. The grill. That’s not a grill with a, not a Mustang because it’s, it’s not a Mustang. That’s So can you put a pin? It’s a Pinto. Yeah. Can you put a, a Ford Escape logo or just, just put a blue oval on the front?
Who cares? Yeah. Right. Make it an option. You can switch it out. So going back to some exciting Motorsport news. You know, who else just announced that they’re gonna introduce a car? We haven’t even thought about them up until this point. We’ve mentioned PEO and B M W and Cadillac, and Ferrari and Porsche and Toyota, and all these other names for months [00:41:00] now.
But you know who else is coming to the party? Someone else who’s already at the party. Aura. That’s right. Honda is coming to Lamonts in 23 with their G T P car, and they have aligned themselves with the French chassis manufacturer orca. Again, all these big brands are reaching to the chassis builders to say, give me a prototype I can build on top of with my power plant.
Assuming from what I understand, they’re gonna be pulling technology out of the NSX and bringing it into their GDP card, and obviously putting it on steroids. Same thing Cadillac’s doing by taking the Corvette and boosting it up with the hybrid system and all that. I just have one question. Will this share a three spoke steering wheel with the legendary Integra?
Speaking of which, we got to see the new Civic SI touring car while we were at V I R in partnership with S R O, and we interviewed James Nazarian, who’s the head of products there for the touring car series at Honda Performance Development. He gave us a tour of the car and all that we actually already posted [00:42:00] on the server, so if you wanna catch up with that and understand more about the new Civic and how you can get into it.
We bugged him about whether or not there was gonna be an Integra version of the Honda Touring car. Maybe in the next couple of years. He was unwilling to commit an answer one way or the other, but we’re gonna stay on top of that. I will say seeing the new Civic in person. I was a little confused. I actually admittedly asked him at first, is this the Accord?
And he looked at me sideways and I’m like, it’s really big, you know? Cause I’m used to even the previous 10th generation Civic was large, but mostly hatchbacks, right? So I’m used to that cutoff rear end. I’m not used to seeing this big sedan that’s the size of a Passat. So in other news, Honda, and this is a concept I think that we’ve talked about.
Like, duh, why aren’t people doing this? It’s, or it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. Well, remember Sony unveiled at CES the last two years or so, I think now they had their own car, their own [00:43:00] concept, electric vehicle, the vision, yada, yada, yada. Well, guess what folks? Honda and Sony are teaming up joint partnership to create an electric brand vehicle.
You called it. You called it. And we’ll give you props for that. You said it was gonna happen. I mean, it’s inevitable. So basically Honda is going to build the cars and Sony is gonna put all the tech in the cars. Woo. Who didn’t it? It? It’s like when you’re riding the metro in DC and you see all these Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman signs and everything as a general consumer, those aren’t for us.
Sony was advertising this, not to us, but to the other man. To the manufacturers. Yeah. Saying, Hey, buy our tech. Yeah, exactly. They built that car as a demonstration of all the things they can do and, and the tech that they can bring and how the stepped up to the plate. I don’t know how many other people tried to partner with them or not, but they’re in under negotiations right now.
So good for them. It’d be interesting to see. Yeah, Honda’s a good car manufacturer and Sony is an [00:44:00] excellent electronics manufacturer, so I’m excited to see what they come up with together. I think it’ll be a good partnership because I hate to say some of the Hondas are pretty germane. They’re very much like an appliance.
They’re kind of boring inside. And no offense to Honda owners, just some of the ones I’ve had as rental cars, I get in them and they do a good job for what they are, but it’s not mind blowing, like you stepped into the cockpit of an R eight and you’re just like blown away. You know what I mean? I get it.
It’s apples and chainsaws, but with Sony coming to the table, as long as it doesn’t look like a PS five inside, it’s gonna be pretty cool. I mean, that’s what they’re good at. And it would be neat to see an interior designed by Sony. I’m, I’m really curious to see what that ends up looking like. Maybe it’ll end up like the preludes where it’s got the dash that goes all the way from one eight pillar to the other, and all sorts of lights, like night rider or something.
Who knows? But still, I’m curious to see how it turns out. Shout out to Brian Sha and the Prelude lovers. You’re right, the one and only Prelude member. Toyota has announced [00:45:00] that they are debuting the GR cup with the S R O racing series in 2023, so that’s very exciting. And they will be using G Rav six s.
It’s gonna be a single make, uh, series. Yeah, we’re gonna have more details on that in coming months as we talk to more folks at S R O, especially around the debut of the 86. So look forward to that in coming weeks. But there’s also something special for Tanya. Yes, it’s the ultra limited edition Toyota GR Corolla mariso edition that’s coming out.
Which if you’re unaware, Mr. Mariso is the pseudonym for Toyota’s president Akio Toyota. That’s his like racing pseudonym name. So anyway, so it’s a homage to him and it’s gonna be some sort of special edition with more torque from 2 73 to 2 95. Got a close ratio, manual transmission, shorter differential gears, blah [00:46:00] blah, blah.
They shed some pounds by taking out the backseat, forged wheels, this, that and the other. So what you’re telling me is this is Toyota’s GT 3 9 11. They’re like, here, here’s a track ready car. We took the backseat out. So Tanya has a car that she can now take to the track and then Home Depot to load up on mulch before she goes home.
A hundred percent. I, I’m really waiting to see one of these in your driveway. And it’s going to be somewhere north of 45,000, 45 grand for a Corolla. Wow. For a three cylinder, making 300 foot pounds of torque. I mean, this is what the focus Rs should have been. Mm-hmm. Speaking of. Things that should have been other things.
We need to go back to our countdown. How many days are left, Brad? Negative 25, I think. Something like that. For the DeLorean. That’s right. The alpha five. Wait, wait, hold. Hold on. Hold on. Alpha five. What the hell is that? Don’t you mean the DeLorean? D M C? No, no, it’s called [00:47:00] the alpha five. It’s the fifth concept.
Of the new DeLorean. Wow, that’s dumb. So the one we talked about where we were saying, Hey, it’s really different. The previous version of this version, there was another one that was the alpha four and there was an alpha three and blah, blah blah. So it’s gone through five revisions. The one that was revealed just after the last drive through episode is called the alpha five.
I got early access to the pictures and I posted ’em right alongside of the last drive-through. So if you haven’t seen them, they’re out there. I’ll probably post some more. I had a want. What moment? What do you mean? I, I like it, but I don’t, but I do. You actually saw, I’m not on its own by itself. I’m like, okay, but then a DeLorean.
I’m like, no, no. I don’t know. It should be the Alpha too, as in the second generation of the Lucid Air. Yeah, it, it does have a lot of styling cues in that direction, that’s for sure. I, I think what gave me the www moment, it’s the Gull Wing doors. I know [00:48:00] it’s a signature part of the DeLorean, but they’re the size of a freight liner.
It’s a four door gull wing with only two doors because it must be like electrically assisted because they’re like 900 pounds a piece. They’re huge. They’re like three quarters of the length of the car. They sourced them from the Tesla. God, do you know how many problems those things have? Terrible. What we have to reconcile ourselves to is DeLorean.
Is dead. The DeLorean, we knew there was only one, it was the DeLorean, but that’s like saying the Audi as if there was only ever like one Audi, right? But like DeLorean is technically the name of the car company. We just have to wrap ourselves or around the concept here that it’s a DeLorean, but it’s not the DeLorean.
Finally, they’ve made a second car in their lineup. Can we petition DeLorean to create an alpha two and a half where we shorten it and it only has two seats? Cuz then I [00:49:00] would buy one. I think that’s my biggest issue with this. It is actually really a pretty car from the front angle, the rear angle. The interior looks really cool.
It’s when we went to a four seater, they took that design and they just literally stretched it out. It just looks wrong. That’s what’s killing me about it. It’s like when West Coast Customs took a charger and turned it into a two-door. It’s a two-door F four seater. It’s the size of a sedan that only has two doors, but it’s not a Mercedes coupe where they do that, right?
Where they take a four-door and they cut the roof and put two doors on and all that. These doors go from one fender arch to the other. They’re just, they’re enormous. Do you think this is like 52 inches tall or whatever? Height? Eight, whatever it was. 43 inches? No, 43. It’s probably 52 inches tall. I mean, that front end.
I love the threequarter view of the car from the front. It’s just [00:50:00] shrink it. Just shrink it down. Gimme a two seater sports car. And then I’ll be happy. Right. Well, maybe they’ll do that. Maybe they’ll introduce the, the mini version of the alpha five or something. But I, I think someone is doing that. They are giving you the, the mini version with the two doors, right, Brad?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He is, he is. It’s not, it’s someone, Ty DeLorean, who’s that? The long lost son allegedly. Lies of John DeLorean is building. What I can only say are Reliant Robbins with D M C grills put on the front. Tell me I’m wrong. You’re a hundred percent right. Exactly what It’s he, so he’s basically taken old Reliant Robbins that are still floating around Europe, I’m sure.
And grafting, uh, D M C looks, well, it looks like a Monte Carlo front end with a D M C badge. A And who’s he selling these to? Not me. He’s selling them to the Taliban.
Oh, what a mess. [00:51:00] Hey, you gotta butter your bread any way you can. So what’s worse? This or that new lata that’s being introduced with like no air conditioning and no door handles and no radio. And I think someone made a good point. Did the original Lata come with those features? I don’t think so. I mean, Russia’s doing Russia.
What? You know they got, they got supply chain issues. What you gonna do? They, they got San sanctioning issues. What a mess. So are there any other EVs that we should talk about now that the DeLorean has a little bit disappointed us? No. No. Everything. They’re all dead to us now. They all, they’re, they all suck.
So there’s an update on Mercedes Q XX that we covered a while ago. They claimed something, you know, astronomical in their mileage and that they had hit over 600 miles on a single charge. It’s that real sleek looking Mercedes. All the arrow. Yeah. It looks like an L [00:52:00] L P car, right? Yeah, looks like a fricking race car.
Looks awesome. They traveled 750 miles on one charge. All I have to say is big whoop. Jeremy Clarkson did this in a diesel jag. Tell me I’m wrong. My question is, of those 750 miles, how many of them were downhill and was the car in neutral off? So they drove from Germany to UK, I believe, and they allegedly were not hyper mileing it by driving, I think at excessively low speeds.
However, their average speed was around 52 miles an hour, which is, I would say probably maybe on the low side for some of the highways. But it depends what roads they were taking. I would find it hard pressed that they. Didn’t encounter a hill anywhere, but I think that speaks to whatever technology they’re using plus their covis vision of drag being so low.
You know, this is a concept car, it’s not [00:53:00] a production car. Agreed, but let’s redo this test at normal speeds. Let’s do it at 70 miles an hour like everybody else has. Well you gotta figure, you probably are gonna do better than the cars that are out today then, because you’ve doubled what everyone else is doing.
Basically. Hundred. But nobody wants to go 52 miles an hour. Yes, but, but the point is you’ve doubled it on the same size battery as other people are using. You’ve doubled it. So if you drive faster, you’re gonna go less miles, but there’s no way you’re gonna suddenly do 250 miles out of a charge. I mean, unless you’re doing a buck 50.
I was gonna only on a racetrack again. So if they can really do seven 50 on kind of normal city driving, if you’re cruising a bit higher, they should be able to like all day long, be hitting four or 500 miles of range. I guess the bigger problem I have with this car is it’s not an experiment in reality because of its overall dimensions and its shape.
It’s not a car like we talked about. It’s not a car that people would actually buy. It’s impractical. So yes, they [00:54:00] are proving a point. But do it with a Mercedes eq, S U V monstrosity. Well, unclear what they’ve done, but if they’ve come up with something in the battery technology or the delivery system, then their next step should be exactly that.
Now that I’ve refined it in this beautiful concept, let me put it in something else and see what I get. Because this is impractical. This is basically a two seater, the way the rear slopes down, you’re not fitting anybody in the back seat, which is fine to have a two seater, but at the price point, this is probably gonna be, no one’s gonna afford it.
So, If you mastered something with your battery technology, slap this in a an S class or C class or whatever, and let’s see what it does. Speaking of the JAG that you mentioned, JAG, how do you feel about another resurrection of older vehicles electrifying them, giving them new life. Somebody is doing this with E types.
I have [00:55:00] one thing to say about this, and I’m sick and tired of companies like Singer and E C D and whoever the companies are doing it with Land Rovers and stuff. I’m tired of you people taking these old, beautiful cars and bastardizing them. If you’re gonna do it, do it like Factory Five and Super Performance, where you get a patent for the design.
Change it slightly like they did with the Shelby Cobras. Make your own fricking bodies and chassis and everything. Don’t destroy the these iconic vehicles. Don’t gut them. Don’t gut them. Don’t destroy them. Just leave them as is. Maybe they’re finding barn fines that are already rusted out, clap traps and refurbing them.
But to your point, refurb them back to their petrol. Restore them. Yeah. I mean I would imagine that they could probably take some of these vehicles and if they restored ’em back to actually factory and take ’em to auction and make more money than what they’re selling them for. But maybe they thought about doing that and the market’s not there anymore.
I don’t [00:56:00] really know, but I don’t like seeing it. So what if the tactic was different instead of using Tesla power plants and all that kind of stuff and electrifying them completely, what if the option was to hybridize the old cars, maybe eliminate the manual transmissions and put in a hybrid package, modernize the interiors?
You know, a singer makes some beautiful interiors. You can’t deny that you take an old E type jag that you’re restoring and put that level of detail into it. Modern electronics, you know, get rid of all that Lucas Prince of Darkness stuff. But you have a hybrid hybrid, so you still have that Jaguar 12 cylinder or eight cylinder sound, but now I’ve got like modern, more fuel efficient way of using that older car.
Would that be more acceptable? Maybe Singer was a bad example. My main gripe with it is that they’re ruining the market for these cars because they’re buying them all up and doing these things to them and there’s nothing left for the average Joe to buy unless we wanna buy one of their overpriced vehicles, leave something left for us.
If I want to go out and buy an E type Jag, I don’t want to have to go to [00:57:00] E C D and buy it with a Tesla motor. For $250,000 or whatever they’re gonna sell it for. I wanna be able to, to do a barn fine and restore it myself. I mean, we’ve talked about before, singers buying up all the air cooled nine 11 s and the market is absolutely destroyed, not just because of them, but just the whole nine 11 market period is just crazy town and it has been for a little while and they’re not helping it on a smaller scale, in a different market.
We’re running into that with the R 30 twos and the the Volkswagen, the Mark fours because we know of a couple people that are buying them up and destroying them, stripping them for parts, and you’re taking inventory out of the market, which is driving up the prices of the cars that are in the market.
And it’s just making it harder and harder for actual enthusiasts that just want to get a car and drive to do that. Some of those specialty models are hard to replicate cuz they were specialty models, they were unlimited numbers and things like that. I mean, to the point of singer, I mean, they put out a quality product.
The cars are gorgeous. I mean, if you can’t deny that, it follows a tradition in a way, kind [00:58:00] of like Alala and Roof and some of the other companies that were always taking nine elevens and modifying them. But I’m starting to hear through the community, there’s a resurgence of people saying, all right guys, you know, we didn’t care about the 76 9 elevens and stuff.
They were garbage. Everybody hated those. You either had a classic short nose car or you wanted that turbo look, late eighties sc, you know, or whatever it was. And then the nine 60 fours came out and all that and they’re like, They’re going and saying, no, we need to take all those race cars that, you know, we bought those set late seventies, nine elevens, gutted them and stripped them and widened them.
And people are saying, we need to convert those back to stock. So there’s this whole thing going on now there too, where older Porsche race cars are getting converted back to street cars. And I’m like, talk about an undertaking, which makes me think to the point of this, JAG, what happens when the shoe falls and we have a bunch of these electric Astons and Jags and Alpha Rome males and all these things that we’ve been talking about, these classically bodied cars and somebody goes, I wanna put a petrol power plant [00:59:00] back in it.
Good luck. You’re gonna pay for this car 10 times by the time it’s said and done with. Now that brings up my next idea that just popped into my head as we’re talking about this. I want to take a Tesla model S and put a Chevy LS swap or LS swap, all the things. You know what? Yeah. I guarantee the VR Society guys.
On Instagram, we’ll find a way to put a VR six into Tesla. Cause they’ll put a VR six in anything. So I challenge them. If any of you guys are listening, do it. There’s no drive shaft. Didn’t somebody already do this? I mean, you got the guy with the Pacifica putting a Hellcat engine in it. You know that’s, that’s happen.
So there, so theres YouTube video of Vibrant Performance, whoever this is or whatever. Anyway, we brought a Tesla toma, it’s S swapped. Amazing. This was like a year ago. They took the body off and put it on a C7 Corvette and went, Ooh, it’s S swapped basically. Basically, no, the C7 Corvette is Tesla swapped.
So I guess [01:00:00] it’s time we move on to Brad’s favorite section. Lost and found, where we find out if Brad can find a brand new 2016 Dodge Dart for us to buy this month. Did you call the local dealership yet? No, I was busy. Chuck is waiting for your call. Chuck LeDuc. I’m going to give you a call. Operators are standing by.
I haven’t gotten an email from you in a long time, so I hope you’re still there. You were a good salesman. If you’ll recap from last month, that 2005 four GT base is still out there. Oh, right alongside that. Viper, I’m assuming Viper’s gone. The Viper is gone, but this can’t be real. A 1988 Cadillac Deville.
Listed as new is only 166 miles away from me. For how much? 17,000. What, what For a Cadillac from the eighties. There’s not even a picture of it. It’s a, a picture of someone doing a thumbs up saying, yes, you can Fishing attack. [01:01:00] Yeah, it’s gotta be fishing. You can get a 2009 Audi A four that’s listed as brand new or a 2011 Chevrolet Traverse.
I’ll pass. Thank you. A 2012 Fiat 500 new old stock on that one. I found it. You can get a brand new 2013 Dodge Dart Limited GT and Knox Ford four 70 miles away. Oh, how much? How much? 10,750. That’s not terrible. What color is it? It is rental car. White. That explains a lot. Mm-hmm. So we found another Dodge Dart.
Look at that. We had one month where we didn’t have one. Another one has surfaced. So how many more Dodge Darts are out there next to that? There’s also a 2015 Chrysler 200 s. Oh. Which would you choose? That’s a tough call. I would choose the dark, the bus Amtrak. I, I’ve driven both. I I actually thought the 200 wasn’t bad.
You’re in the front seat. I’ve heard [01:02:00] in the back seat. It’s terrible. Oh yeah. The roof might as well be in the door. It’s so low back there. Here’s something that Tanya needs to get her checkbook out for. You know, screw the Toyota GR Corolla. You need a 2015 Mercedes-Benz S sls. A M G GT Final Edition. Oh, that is pure sex right there.
It really is. It’s pretty slick looking. And it’s only $549,989. Oh my God, that you know, it’s probably cheaper to buy a GT three Mercedes to go run an SRO than to buy that street car. Except you can’t drive a GT three Mercedes on the street. That is a beautiful car. But I could trailer it to the track and run the hell out of it.
Yes, but then you need a truck and a trailer and you’re Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, these are, these are trivial things. There is money left over. I’m telling you. No there isn’t. Not when you spend 50 grand on a pickup truck and then 15 grand on a enclosed trailer, cuz you don’t want it to get rock chip and stuff on the street.
And then you pay your [01:03:00] $400,000 for your race car. You’re spending the same amount of money and you can’t drive it on the street. Alright, let’s be real, but it’s ok. It’s okay because you also has race car. No, because see, your trailer now is also your mobile home. And so you don’t have a house or rental payments because you can’t afford to live anywhere else.
But inside your trailer, you also don’t have a significant other, you don’t have money for track fees or race fees. I mean, you can’t buy safety equipment. You can’t buy fuel. Especially not now, you bathe every few months at the track. Every few months. That’s about right. I think I could do it down to clown on this one.
I’m gonna call Jess and find out what she thinks. So since we’re talking about historical things, when I’m not listening to the Goldman girls over my Bluetooth, I did discover another show that was absolutely riveting. It is a six or seven part mini series that’s available on Motor Trend called Seduced by [01:04:00] Speed.
And I have to say, that’s not what hooked me, cuz I was like, I I, I gloss over stuff like that that, you know, I was like, oh, overly dramatic. This was because the cover art was Liz Carmichael and the Famous car, the Dale and I’ve been dying to get behind, you know that whole documentary and all that kind of stuff.
And I saw it pop up and I was like, oh, lemme check this out. Seduced by Speed reviews the stories behind auto manufacturers like Liz Carmichael and the Dale John DeLorean and the DMC 12, not to be confused with the Alpha five Jerry Weigert and the Vector W eight Zli versus Leno, and the story behind the Zeta Moroder V 16, which was actually quite fascinating and many others.
But I think the best part, and Tanya would enjoy this, it’s narrated by Lake Bell. I know that name Lake Bell. I don’t recognize that name. You would know her voice if you heard it. Oh yeah. Oh, I know who, yeah. Okay. I recognize her, but why would I know what show she was on? She was one of the lawyers on Boston Legal.
Oh.[01:05:00]
Debbie Crane that said it’s done in an office like interview style with photos and archive footage, bunch of stuff mixed in. I thought it was really well done. Every episode average is about 42 to 45 minutes. If you want to binge watch about four hours, five hours of TV and learn something about some really obscure car manufacturers and their backstories, their origin stories and geek out on that, I totally recommend checking out seduced by speed on MotorTrend.
I love how we had no idea who she was or what she was in, and it’s clearly printed in black and white in the show notes. I mean, that’s on y’all. We have to switch gears and give you guys some sad news. We found out through our network of friends out there in the, in the automotive world that Dr. Cone of the Cone Museum and Foundation in Philadelphia passed away in the middle of the night during Lamonts.
So we were sad to hear that. That was on June the 11th and uh, we were actually planning to make a trip back out there to see the collection changes all the time and, and for those of you that [01:06:00] know, they pulled the cars out and they actually exercised them once a month. So it’s always really cool to get out there, especially when you can go, you know, when some of the Lamont’s cars are coming out or some of the other vintage sports cars and whatever.
So we have really enjoyed the time when we were up there. We got to spend time with Dr. Simion and take some pictures with him and whatnot, but it was sad to hear his passing rest in peace. Absolutely. We’ve got one more thing to talk about when it comes to lost and Found. For anybody looking for a new daily driver, road and track came out with a list 20 sports cars that make excellent daily drivers lies.
You saw the list, thought it was terrible. None of none of those cars make sense? A 2022 McLaren gt, right? Excellent Daily driver. Excellent daily driver, or the BMW Z four. Okay, the Z four fine. The Toyota Supra fine. Which is a Z four. An Aston Martin super leg. Legit. No, I mean we, we know how nice it is to drive an Aston Martin.
I mean, just look at what happened with James May when they did those [01:07:00] cars to, to go down the Stelvia pass was the Stelvia Pass. I mean, Ferrari, anything is not a good daily driver. The Camaro, the four gts, did this replace the super speed or whatever it was other than the Supra and the Z four? None of those make any sense as everyday sports cards.
I mean, there’s stuff on there like the R eight if you wanna look like a total badass. Yeah, get an R eight. You look like Batman. Is it practical? No, the R eight looks like Ironman Get it right, which is Marvel’s Batman. So yeah. What? What, yeah. What is this Marvel you speak of? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
It’s marvelous. The Ford Mustang actually should be on the list. I agree. So that’s a good one. The Z should be on the list for the Z was there’s a, there’s the, on the S 2000, an impractical car, get an accurate nsx, but everything else on this list is like 2022. 2021. Now suddenly there’s the 2000 to 2009 s 2000.
I have a love hate relationship with S two thousands and mostly because of coaching. Further [01:08:00] down, there’s another section is the best Classic cars for daily driving. Oh, enlighten me. Here we go. Let’s look at this. Ah, the Volkswagen Beetle. Yeah. See that’s the only option I would, I could rock that. The The fox body.
The fox body Mustang Hells yeah, the Chevy and oh my God. Burn this list. Burn this list. Nope, nope. Burn this list Tanya. Burn this list. Tanya. This is the legit Impala, not the sixties Impala, but the nine early nineties God LT one powered Impala sports car. Not a sports car. This is a classic car. Yes. Okay.
The Nissan president, an xj, an xj wrangle, or Cherokee. Ooh. Ooh. AE 86, because those are easy to come by now. Yeah, a hundred percent drift king, the MR two super impractical as well. 2000. It’s a great daily driver. 2002. I hate those cars. Where do you put the groceries? In? In? In our first gen MR two. [01:09:00] Where do you put the mulch?
Here’s probably the most realistic one. Finally. The E 30 series? Yeah. Is that a classic? Now that makes me feel old. Eric, you were going to be so happy. There are three cars right here that I’m going to tell you that are just going to tickle your heartstrings. Oh Lord. The Volkswagen Golf, g t I. Yeah, classic.
The mark one, the, uh, Volkswagen, Colorado. Oh yeah. And here’s another one of your favorites. The Datson Z. Yes. Excellent. Although I approve this message. You skipped, you skipped the SOB 900. Well, cause I was only talking about cars that Eric might actually like. You know, the 900 is started to grow on me cuz I’m starting to see some tastefully redone and restored nine hundreds.
I was always weirded out about those cars. I got to drive a 900 turbo many, many years ago. It was as awkward as you think it is. It’s a sob. It’s got weird stuff. It’s kind of like the Ciro and BX and some other cars and I’m like, they’re so weird that you kind of wanna love him. The SOB 900 evolved from fighter [01:10:00] jets.
Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, you know I, when I was in elementary school, one of the neighbors up the street had a SOB 900 and I saw it every day when I was walking home from school. And the only thing I thought was that is the weirdest looking Porsche nine 11 I’ve ever seen. That’s the nine 11 I drew as a kid.
Because I couldn’t draw nine 11. That’s the nine. That’s the nine 11. You still draw. Well, I guess we would be remiss, uh, you know, honestly a little short on the Tesla news. Um, how is that even possible? There’s so much drama, you know, it’s just, we’re shorting Tesla news. You gotta be Dogecoin. I need some more.
Well, there is the whole like Tesla, Elon Musk and SpaceX being sued or something. Can we throw Solar City in there too? Might as well just round out the herd, the sort of pyramid scheme involving Dogecoin. I don’t, I don’t know the details, but, you know, two 58 billion is the claim. So that’s, is that all, is that [01:11:00] all?
No, that’s all. That’s all, that’s all bankrupt him or has he still got money left on the table for that Mercedes? Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why he is been kind of speaking these bankrupt words lately. Is that why he, he’s pivoting to Twitter. So who’s gonna buy Tesla? I keep saying it. Somebody’s gonna gobble ’em up.
Volkswagen, that would be an interesting fight. Chevy cuz they got nothing. Nicola didn’t work out. I mean they just keep spending that cash. Just keep printing it. Right. Chevy will do it, but they’ll come up with the idea 10 years too late and then they’ll have to buy Tesla from Lake Volkswagen or Ford.
STIs will just absorb like the Borg. So someone posted some article about data likely shows Teslas on autopilot crash more than rivals. The data definitely shows they crash more into stationary objects on the side of the road with flashing lights. Um, however, this is not very exciting because it’s clear the Chevy cold is way more exciting.
That’s why. Well, it’s unclear whether [01:12:00] all the other manufacturers have reported at the same frequency or the same claim. So if this is an apples to apples, it’s not really meaningful. So it’s kinda like me. Moving on. So Tanya, we need to go back and revisit when you spoke about the hot lap at v I R against the tecan a couple months ago.
Mm-hmm. Yes. What, well, you know, that came back to haunt us this month. Uh oh. Oh yeah. This was the Tecan versus the Tesla that was like modified with stock. We’re gonna put it in air quotes. Yes. Quote stock. But, but then had like a list of modifications. That’s, that’s right. So Brad and I were approached at v i r by two gentlemen and they said, we really wanna talk to you.
We wanna sit down and have a conversation. We’re like, oh boy. Wow. Fingers pointing in your face and everything. Oh, yeah, man. And it was, it was intense. In a slightly Danish accent. And I was like, man, who is this guy? You know what? They wanted to talk to us because we were interviewing drivers to get their stories and we were actually sent down by the press officer, [01:13:00] like, these guys wanna talk to you.
You need to go buy their trailer. Like they are anxious to talk to you. And I’m like, oh man, what the heck are these? The people in the Tesla? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We got to sit down with Johann Schwartz, the driver of that Tesla plaid, and he set the record straight. He actually wanted to talk about another record that he holds, which you’ll hear about in the episode.
So he is the record holder at V I r, in that Tesla for the hot Lap, v i r Grand course. Just in doing our, our due diligence and our research before we taped came up and was, oh my god, is this, this the driver that we talked about last month? And the other record that he holds is in the Guinness World Record book.
It’s actually really, really cool and it is motorsports related. So spoiler alert, we got Johann Schwartz and Todd Brown from Rooster Hall Racing, and that episode will be airing here probably in a couple weeks or so on Break Fixx. So look forward, it’s gonna be a very entertaining episode. Again, he sets the record straight on the hot lap at V I r and some of the other stuff that [01:14:00] both of them are involved with.
So it was pretty cool to have that come back at us while we were at the ir. What’s more interesting is Brad might be able to use his a hundred dollars deposit on his cyber truck. The cyber truck design is finally locked and there’s an updated timeline. 2030? No, just kidding. Oh
damn, Brad. Alright. Is at least like a bond, are you getting like interest on this? A hundred dollars you put down? No, I’m not. It actually went to Elon Musk buying Dogecoin. Nice. Are you gonna get some Dogecoin for it? So in indirectly I, yeah, Dogecoin, which is worth, it’s probably nothing right now cuz all of crypto is in the toilet.
Apparently the updated timeline is mid 23 now T B D. But yes, allegedly the design is locked and this like satellite image. I’m just kidding. It’s not that bad. But this drone footage here? Yes. Side mirrors and [01:15:00] one nine foot windshield wiper. The windshield wiper is so long it can’t go down all the way or it’ll be like that guy hauling wood on the last month’s episode.
I have a solution to the problem and I witnessed it. On the way home from v i r. Let me enlighten you guys. No, no. Cuz I know Brad. We had to make a special trip to get windshield washer fluid. He was complaining that he couldn’t clean his windshield. I kept thinking about it. I was like, ah, it’s summertime.
Just pour a bottle of water in there. Whatever. Those words came back to haunt me. Later, as I was stopped at a light, the people behind me open their sunroof, reached out, poured a bottle of water across the windshield, and then squeegee it from inside the, no, no. I thought you were just gonna say they poured it and then use the wipers.
I’m like, okay. Well, what happens? You run outta, you run outta liquid team effort. One person with the No, the other person with the squeegee from inside the [01:16:00] car reaching out of the sunroof. You know what? If you’re gonna be a passenger, it’s gas grass ass or squeegee? No, no. I was busting up laughing cuz it was unbelievable and I’m like, I’m gonna miss the light.
Cause I’m laughing at these guys. They’re squeegeeing and pouring water and I’m like, wow. What was the car Virginia was, was some non nondescript Ford that I don’t even remember. I was like, it could have been a focus. It could have been. I mean, you were so distracted by it. I was laughing so hard. I was like, this is unreal.
It’s one of those moments where you’re always gonna be too late to bust out your phone and record it and then people are gonna be like honking at you, whatever. But they’re right behind me and I was just laughing my ass off. I was like, I couldn’t believe I said Brad. There you go. You didn’t need to go to advanced Auto and buy windshield washer fluid.
Just pour your long gorilla arms and just, you know, wipe your hand. You don’t need do too squeegee. Just rub it with your hands. I [01:17:00] need a ride or die with me to do that. Okay. Wait, wait a second. So this implies not only does the motor for the reservoir not work or the lines or something, the windshield wiper the motors or something about them also does not function.
So, What if it had been raining? Would passenger have been like, like constantly like squeeing out the sunroof, the whole like trip? These are questions that remain with unanswered. I’m telling you. Would he put, would they put like an an umbrella out? Yes. To keep the water? Yes. There you go. So he would’ve the sunroof while they squeeing.
Yeah. He would’ve went up with an umbrella and then he would’ve que there need a third person to hold the umbrella while the second one is squeezing while the first one is driving and trying not to crash while he’s laughing his ass off at his stupid ass friends. Unbelievable. And I’m just like, I saw the squeegee come out the sunroof and that was just like, that was it.
No, no, no. So this means that it [01:18:00] wasn’t the first time that they’ve done this, they came prepared with their bottles of water and they’re squeegee. Alright, think about this for a minute. We’re riding in Andrew’s car. Better get the squeegee in the water. But you know what, this is not the only weird thing I saw on this trip.
Trundling down the highway doing my thing and I look in the rear view mirror and I see of all things. Mercury Sable. Oh wow. And I’m like, you don’t see one of those every day Mercury sable. I know Dan’s got like six or 10 of ’em up at the mountain that are all turning into dirt. But this one was especially odd and it caught my attention.
It wasn’t the platinum beige classic color. The mercury Sables come in. No, no. It was moving at a high rate of speed. It just looked really, really odd to me. And I’m like, of course it did. There was a mercury stable. No. Well, no, not, not just that. It was like, something’s wrong with this car. I need to throw the meatball flag here to use a motorsports term.
There is a problem with this vehicle because it was crab walking down the [01:19:00] highway and the driver was struggling to keep it in the lane. So I slowed up. I got passed and they were, must’ve been doing 85. I mean they were booking. That sounds like a very safe speed to be doing when you’re having a mechanical issue on your car.
A thousand percent. So this car blows by me basically going down the road sideways, right. Crap walking down the lane. And as it went by, suddenly all of the little warning emojis in my brain went off and I backed way off because what I realized was, The reason your spare tire says, do not exceed 55 miles an hour.
My God is not because the tire cannot go 85. It’s because your car crab walks one mounted to the vehicle. So basically they’re three wheeling going down the road. This donut is dragging the car sideways. They’re fighting the car the whole way. And I’m like, what are you [01:20:00] doing? Do you think the tire was inflated?
No, it was a spare. It was a no, but it could be an uninflated spare. I, I don’t know. But it was bad. I mean, it was, it was hunched down and it was crab walking the whole way, and I was just like, my God. And then it dawned on me, this is why I tell people all the time, I know it’s a pain in the butt, especially with those scissor jacks and everything else.
Never put the donut on the front. Mm-hmm. M can you imagine? It’s like having skinnies at the drag strip. You first corner you take, and you’re exceeding the limit of that wheel and of that tire. Dude, you’re going off in the woods, it’s gonna under steer like a cow. It’s terrible. The crab walking bad enough, but put the donut on the back, try to maintain that safety speed because it was just ridiculous.
And the way they were sawing at the wheel, why to keep it going down the road was bonkers. Why is that person so dumb? Slow down. Why are you doing 85? It just blew my mind. Between that and the windshield wiper squeegee, I mean, [01:21:00] it was a red letter day. So where do you put the spare tire when you’re using Super Cruise?
If you’re not steering, who cares? Let the car fight it. I can see the steering wheel in front of me doing this. Trying to Super Cruise explodes at that point. It cannot compute. Cannot compute. All your bassar belonged to us. Well move over Florida, man. We got Virginia people. I, I hope I have lowered your guys’ expectations.
What expectation? Wow. I’m just blown. So something really, really sad that we all knew was coming subprime lending in the car market and borrowers. Surprise, surprise with escalating prices and escalating credit. Balloon payments. Yeah, like that. And they’re not paying their debts down. They’re not paying off their credit cards.
They’re stopping payments on their personal loans and car loans. They’re included in that. Yes, we’re in inflation and most credit cards are adjustable rate, and with the fed [01:22:00] raising rates every quarter basically. All those minimum payments are gonna start going up and people are gonna, they’re gonna pay for their house and their food before they can pay for anything else.
Yes. They’ve been talking about this for years. We knew it was going to happen. It’s finally starting to happen. So here’s what I want to know. Do we get a Christian bail movie version of this kind of like the big short, or is that just still called Drive to Survive? I don’t get the joke. I, I, I, Tanya, I think you and I have to shut Eric down now.
If he hasn’t watched Drive To Survive. He cannot make drive to survive Jokes. He tried, he tried really hard this month to get me to watch it. He’s like, we’re gonna do it. I’m putting it on the tv. I’m like, no, I can’t. I can’t. Did you put it on? No, because apparently Golden Girls got put on, but not drive to survive.
You know, I clicked on Drive to Survive Season one and Golden Girls showed up. I don’t know what happened. Those saucy old ladies are amazing. That was the, that was the original drive to survive. [01:23:00] Yes, St. Oof additions. They were surviving. All right. Not much drive there though. Well, they had a drive to survive.
Not that they had to, not that they had to drive to survive, but they had the drive to survive. The drive to survive. And Blanche was a slut. Rose said, so we know this, it’s Rose said, so I, yes. Well, since there in Florida, it’s probably time that we move on to some Florida man stories. We actually have a couple Florida stories.
One of these is a very interesting, I mean they’re have some sort of truck meet thing. It already happened and they’re poppo gonna crack down on illegal activities involving truck people doing truck things at a truck event. In Daytona, America. I mean, pew, pew, pew, I don’t know, like cool pew, pew. I think this, I think this has already passed, but maybe you were at this truck event and saw some stuff.
There’s probably alligators involved. God knows. I don’t even know where the hell we are. Well, look at what the fuck are we talking about? Because I, I’m waiting for this, this other [01:24:00] story I’m saving the best for last. Come on. You can’t lead with that and then go to fricking truck month, like special event.
Well, we know, we know how you feel about trucks in general. So, you know, when I, when I, so for the truck story, when I see, oh, these trucks may get towed or, or going to be towed, I just see in my mind the video, we’ve all seen it of the guy with the F three 50 doley and the, the repo man comes and try and takes it and he literally gets in his truck, slams it in four wheel drive and drives off the tow truck and then takes off.
That’s what I’m envisioning. Uh, these people with these bro dozers, they don’t care. They’re not gonna get caught. They’re gonna end up in the Everglades somewhere. I mean, this sounds like some sort of Ocean City water fest, truck edition, H2O and subprime loans. Right? So let’s just mix that in there too.
Yeah, they, they’ve got their 10 year, 15% interest, F three 50 dual aid diesel rolling coal down in Daytona Beach. They’re not gonna get caught by no pop pop moral of the story. Go to like a sanctioned event [01:25:00] that’s controlled where you can do things safely and don’t be a butthole when you leave on the road where there’s other innocent people.
Tanya, you’re really asking too much. Pick one of those things. Okay. Just pick one. You get one, you get one thing. Oh God, I wanna see the bro dozer crab walk with his spare tire on. That’s all I’m saying. Wasn’t there a problem with, which trucks was it that had that problem where suddenly, and I witnessed this, it was terrifying to behold where they have some sort of differential problem where the whole truck would like violently start shaking.
Do you know what I’m talking about? No. That Dan knows what I’m talking about. Cause we had this conversation once. I know my Jeep had the death wobble. If the front suspension was loose. I think that’s what it’s called. Something like that. The front end would start doing this. My old wrangler used to do it all the time until I actually went in and tightened up every single bolt under the front suspension.
I actually was near somebody. 70 plus miles an [01:26:00] hour on the highway and it looked like an earthquake was happening just under them. Never seen anything like that. Like I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen, but I got out of their way cause I was like, I do not wanna be collateral damage in like this thing blowing up because it was, I guarantee you so, so violent and then all of a sudden it stopped.
Yeah. For me the only way it would stop is if I slowed down to like 30 miles an hour. They definitely didn’t slow down that much, but I don’t know what they did to get it back under control. But it was just like one minute it was fine. The next minute it was like fricking earthquake and they’re lane just under them and then it was like, okay, again, it was so bizarre truck stuff.
And I bet they weren’t driving to the repair shop either. Oh hell no. But anyway, speaking of nothing related to anything I just said, but next story. Speaking of crazy stuff and crazy people, what is it with these crazy lawsuits? Last month we talked about the person suing the [01:27:00] car owner who dropped their car off for an oil change.
Yes. Where the tech killed a fellow mechanic heard because he couldn’t drive manual and somehow it’s the owner’s fault who wasn’t even there. Anyway, so this, this is another one on par with that out of Missouri. So God. There are all kinds in the world. The headline says it all, Geico, and we all know who Geico is.
Car insurance provider. Geico is ordered to pay Missouri Woman 5.2 million. So you’re thinking, oh, what happened? Like, what was this accident right after she contracted s t D in a car? Wait, what? That. S t d? Yes. So she does the deed with somebody in their car, then allegedly afterwards, guess the little disease, whichever one it was.
And then because it happened in his car and the car insurance provides for injuries and losses, she’s [01:28:00] turning around trying to get money from his car insurance. What? Not just turning around trying to get money. She got the money. Who got the money? Who got fired from Geico over This is what I’d like to know.
Right. Somebody didn’t take this seriously and our blew up, our rates better not go up because of this. And oh, actually my rates have gone up, but usually that’s statewide. So we’re not in Missouri. But nonetheless, 5.2 million probably is gonna be, uh, impacted countrywide for Geico. Um, so maybe that is why my rates went up.
Hmm. Eric, what insurance company do you use? None yet because you, you gave me something this weekend and I need to report it. Oh, alright. Alright. I need to, I need to file a claim cuz daddy needs a G T R. Man. I just don’t e I can’t even, I don’t How does this stuff, how does it not get laughed out of court?
Like, how does the judges just not throw this out or, I mean, even Geico, like, what the hell? You know, what’s the [01:29:00] craziness? The main problem with this is it sets a precedent now. Thank you. There’s a precedent where someone can say, I got a sexually transmitted disease having sex in a car. You owe me the money now.
But now what’s the can of worms of like, I come to your house and I don’t know my homeowner’s insurance should pay for it. Yeah. Like you give me food poisoning or you know, you’re at whoever’s house and they give you the disease. Now what jokes on you? Homeowner’s? Insurance doesn’t pay for anything.
Rack. I don’t. Insurance is a racket. This is terrible. Nevermind. Okay. I can’t, and, and the audacity of somebody I would never even consider, like who, who is the person that thought to go sue Geico over this? That’s why you’re not a millionaire, Tanya. Clearly, clearly I’m doing it wrong in life. You’re doing I too have, just wait, just wait for the reality show that comes next and it’ll be fine, you know?
But seriously, Eric, you got Geico. I, [01:30:00] I need to do what your, your policy number. I need to do life better so that I could have that 500,000 Mercedes. You know what the problem, the problem is you’re a good person. That is my problem. Yeah. Gosh. Well, if we haven’t talked enough about motorsports, it’s time to go behind the pit wall.
Talk about motor sports news. So we’re gonna switch gears and talk about indie and Formula one. Again, June is the month for all the best racing, right? So the Indy 500 also happened and the purse soared to an astronomical new height, I guess. Basically broken some records that race winner first place, Marcus Erickson took home 3.1 million out of a total purse weighing in at, I believe it’s 16 million.
This distributed across all the driver’s contingency and otherwise, that’s a lot of dogecoin for the Indy 500. So we’ve talked a lot in the past about Michael Andretti’s ambitions to go to Formula One. A lot of people may or may not [01:31:00] know that there’s an Andretti Autosport team still running an indie car, and there’s been some shuffling of the deck over there.
Again, with drivers and whatnot, people not, you know, putting their best lap times down, not living their best racing life. I’m not a big Indy car fan. We need Sam on here to do his, his Indy car report. Yeah, his Indy car report. Alexander Rossi. Not to be confused with Valentino Rossi. Alexander Rossi is being replaced next year by Kirkwood.
Good for the Indy 500. I unfortunately didn’t watch it, just like drive to survive. Not watching that either. So you guys watched the Formula One race, so what is going on? What is this porpoising thing? Did they suddenly turn into sea mammals? What the hell is going on the cars? They is a bouncy as they go down as the track.
They bouncy. Bouncy. What do you mean they’re bouncy? They have like more down force than if another car was sitting on top of them. Yeah. No, no, no. Bouncy. Bouncy. Are we talking [01:32:00] kangaroos? Like what are we talking about here? Basically we’re talking like basically like a porus. So it’s jumping, they’re jumping out of the water.
No, they’re vibrating. They’re bouncing down the streets. Okay. There’s nothing more exciting than watching a driver’s head. They’re oscillating vertically. You know, the vertical oscillation, we all experience it. So it’s, it’s like the stance bros. When they hit a bridge joist and they, they bounce for like five minutes until the car settles down.
That’s exactly what it is. So I think my opinion on what’s going on is all the cars were redesigned for this year and they’re finding that now the tracks all need to be rep paved. Well, yeah. I mean, it’s something to do with the under underside. They haven’t got it quite right, but apparently, like Red Bull has so far because they’re not suffering and they haven’t suffered.
As bad as everybody else, but their design is slightly different. They’ve got, I don’t wanna say bent the design rules, but maybe there’s like some caveat loophole that they’ve, they’ve got like these wings at the front underneath that are I think [01:33:00] redistributing the air probably in a better way. And I don’t think anyone else is running quite that same design.
So I don’t know what channeling is happening underneath. And basically they’re just sitting there and they’re doing this bouncing and they’re compressing everyone’s spines in the seat and their heads are like floppy ragdolls in the cars at 200 miles an hour bouncing off the halo. It can’t be pleasant.
The last race or whatever. No, it was Azerbaijan when Hamilton got out and he was like basically holding his back, which everyone likes to complain that he’s just a crybaby loser, but I can only imagine that is not pleasant for your back. So I’m sure he was in legitimate pain and there were other think drivers complaining about it too.
So can I ask a stupid question? No. What if we put the 15 inch wheels back on and the tires absorb some of the, yes, we talked about this a little bit, but in thinking about it, maybe it’s not a tire issue. Well, the tires are part of the suspension on Formula cars. Right? That side, sidewall deflection makes a huge difference.
But they all have the same tires. Right? So [01:34:00] why is Red Bull not having the issue, or other teams aren’t complaining as badly, but it could also be the air going over the tires. It could be a lot of things. Cause granted, maybe the overall diameter is the same, but it’s not deflecting the air the same way.
The sidewalls are stiffer. There’s a lot in that tire technology, and it’s a little bit, I hate to say unproven, going from a 15 inch wheel to an 18, cut the sidewall in half. There’s a lot of stuff going on there that I would love to see them just throw a set of fifteens on and see if it makes a difference.
Like, let’s start with the simple things first, right? Because all those designs they come up with, with the funky air and all the, the tunneling stuff that they do, they’re pretty, I hate to say, pitch Perfect. At the end of the day, what’s the biggest change to the car is these ridiculous wheels that they put on to make ’em look like, you know, matchbox cars.
Yeah. And the FIA has said, you know, I mean, they’ve issued a press release saying that they’re going to step in and look at everything and come up with a solution. Oh, they are. They’re just gonna wave a magic wand and not worry about the engineers. They’re just gonna tell ’em what to do. [01:35:00] Yeah. Oh, okay.
Cool. Good job guys. You’ll learn about it in drive to survive. No, I won’t. So Tanya mentioned Azure. Baja. I heard a little rumor that Ferrari had four DNFs in that race. Yep. What the heck happened? Signs was a gearbox issue. I think his motor was still running. Failure signs. Okay. Hi. Cleric. Blew the motor cuz all of a sudden it started smoking.
Mm-hmm. I think one of the other, one of the Haas also had a similar fate. It wasn’t smoking as badly or it was the alpha one or the other. I don’t remember which was the issues. But basically, yeah, four, the power plants. Poo-pooed. And to make matters worse, Schumacher is still having issues. Was that the race he crashed in?
I mean, which one hasn’t he crashed in? That’s what I’m saying. Schumacher is the new Mazin. Well, I wouldn’t say he is as bad as that guy, but he was doing really well in Canada except. The car died. Well, have you seen the Canadian track? I mean I’d love to be there, but it’s like driving around a potato.[01:36:00]
It’s not like as complicated maybe as some of the other tracks. No, but he qualified, he and Magnuson qualified like five and six. I mean they were at the top of the field. I don’t They were the only team with two drivers in the top six. Yeah, so I mean they were in a good position and then unfortunately Magnuson suffered a front wing damage that meatball him and then he lost his shit ton of time in the pits and could never recover.
And then Schumacher’s car, he pulled it off the track basically cuz it died. So that was it for Team Haas. And I was very worried during that race because Alonzo started on the front line, which apparently was the first time in forever. And he was, so, he started number two. And I was just thinking it’s the Alonzo train for 70 laps now, which is annoying as hell and amazing to watch all at the same time.
No, it’s not. It’s so frustrating to watch. It’s, it’s frustrating to be behind him, but, oh my, he gets his elbows out so [01:37:00] far for, he reaches from wall to wall. You cannot get around him even in the grass. He’s just, That guy knows how to defend. I was very grateful when he had the pit and let everybody go by.
That race was a good race. That was a good race. That was a very exciting race. It’s unfortunate. McClair ended up starting all the way in the back, fighting his way through d r s trains to get finally, when did he come in? Fifth? Mm-hmm. Climbed his way back up from basically dead last to fifth probably if he wasn’t stuck in d r s, trains could have done so much better.
He did some awesome non D r s passes, which you often don’t see non d r s passes anymore. So it was pretty cool. And then the battle between science and Verta and at the very end was like someone needed to make a mistake. I mean, science was breathing down his neck and he was making mistakes unfortunately and just couldn’t get around them And unfortunately the Ferraris don’t have the straight line speed, so there was no way he was gonna make the pass, but he was glued to him basically for the last couple [01:38:00] laps trying to get back into first place.
So there was also a video going around, and I’m sure you saw it, Brad, with they were basically critiquing Danny Rick and talking about how his driving style is part of the reason why he’s not competitive because he’s too old school now. I mean, yeah, I can see that being a problem. He’s your heart heartthrob.
I mean, aren’t you a little disappointed by that? Of course, Danny, Rick, your boy, he’s always been in like the middle of the pack. He’s like this guy that, I feel like everyone had all these high expectations and then. He had one or two podiums and blah, blah, blah. And then, but for the most part, the majority is middle pack.
And then it’s just gotten worse. Like he was jumping ship, like he didn’t stay long enough with anybody. He had a lot of promise at Red Bull. But Max first Sapen had more promise. And I mean, I think you and I theorized this or you theorized it, that he was kind of maybe a little scared of having to compete with Sapin and he didn’t wanna be the number two driver on his own team.
Yeah, there’s ego there, right? So he, he made the jump. The jump to Rene was just [01:39:00] not good because the car just wasn’t really competitive with McLaren. It’s just a completely different car and he just, he can’t seem to get it together. Well and the McLaren’s themselves aren’t competitive cuz everyone, you know, not this year, no.
They weren make Lando seem like, you know, Lando was supposed to be the next first step in himself and he can’t do anything out there either. So Yeah, this year McLaren, they kind of like the way Mercedes, they just, they can’t get it together. But last year the McLaren’s were pretty competitive. I, Danny won a, a race, you know, last year.
A race. Adam, how many races? Like 30 because everyone else dnf. No, I’m just kidding. Oh, well he, he has actually won some races and he is podium a few times, so he’s doing better than a lot of the drivers in the field right now. A lot of the drivers in the field right now have not as much experience as in That’s true.
They don’t have as many raises under their belt. I mean, he’s like 27 and they’re 19. I mean, I get it. He’s got some gears on him, right. I think he’s in his thirties. Wow. He’s He’s a geezer. He’s a bronze. Yeah, right. He’s bronze class. Yeah, he’s 32. I [01:40:00] mean, for F1 standards, No, he’s ancient, but Schumacher was still out there running till he was like almost 40.
Right. Or something like that. I mean, a lot of those shooter was also wearing the fastest cars. True. But I mean, back in the day, the F1 drivers were a lot older than they are now. Now they’re like, you can drive a cart at like five years old and then by eight you’re in a formula car. You’re like, good to go.
You know, it’s, it’s nuts. We gotta switch over to sports cars and talk a little bit about s A and S R O, you know, kind of goes hand in hand. So I’ll start with a little bit of SSA news. Talked early on about the next year’s lamont’s and all that kind of stuff, and the changes in GT four and whatnot. And I, I happen to mention that SRO owns GT four and they pretty much do, they own that class of racing globally.
And I s A partners with them on that. Right. They kind of license it. We have this conversation with some other folks in the same respect, like T C R, the touring class now belongs to I S A and they license that out to other folks to be able to run in that series. S A and S R O have renewed their long-term partnership for the GT four Home [01:41:00] allegation.
And like I said, that’s gonna bring to bear. All sorts of manufacturers that we haven’t seen for a long time in sports car like McLaren, like Audi coming back, you know, things like that. More BMWs, more Mercedes and and whatnot in those classes. Hopefully room for Nissan with Z, you know, things of that nature.
So I’m really excited for GT four because it opens the doors for other cars to be on the big stage, you know, later down the road, whether it be at Petite Lamont’s or at Lamont’s itself and, and Rolex and some of those other races. So I’m, I’m really looking forward to that. Brad, you and I gotta talk a little bit about our, our experience at v I r with sro.
So I’ll kick it off to you and say, what did you think? I thought it was great. I thought the racing was really, really good to see. It was very competitive and I like their, their setup. It felt like an SSA race from a spectator standpoint, but more down to business. They didn’t have a lot of fanfare and a lot of the fluff that you get in an SSA race that brings in a lot of casual fans.
But I thought the racing was great. Earlier you mentioned running [01:42:00] elbows out being super defensive. I think we saw some of that at this weekend at V I R. Right. Our good friend of the show, Andy Pilgrim, ran in the GT class. He held third place for till the final lap in an eight year old Ferrari 4 5 8, which is, yeah.
Yeah. Last of the production, GT three cars of that era. I mean, holy smokes. The Huracan that should have, I don’t know why he started so late in the pack. I think he was supposed to start second or third or whatever, but he spent the entire race clawing back through both classes. Cause it was a two class race and every time he got up to Andy, he seemed to kind of lose it for some reason.
I think he was intimidated. I think he was scared. I, I know Andy and I’m intimidated by him as well. He’s the nicest guy in the world. Unless you’re on a racetrack dude, he made that Ferrari super wide, that’s for sure he did. But I feel gutted that he came in forth cuz he really deserved that podium. He did.
And you know what, it was a good race. It was an exciting race. But that Huracan, I mean [01:43:00] that Lamborghini was hauling ass. There’s no other way to put it. He was rocketing through the cars and I mean his closing rate, his speed, that thing was unbelievably good. He went off what, two or three times during the race even and still ended up third overall.
One of those is cuz Andy scared him, I think. Yeah, I think more than once was, cause Andy scared him. Who, who else was there that, that we saw? Well, there was your favorite Sally McNulty running in the Honda Civic. You keep saying that, but I mean, yeah, she’s cool or whatever. She had a rash of bad luck, didn’t she?
She did have a bit of bad luck. What she, she had a wreck, which I think she, she broadsided a mini in the race on Sunday. I’m not sure what happened on uh, on Saturday, but well on Saturday somebody clipped her and pulled the rear bumper so she was dragging it around like a parachute. Was terrible. True, true.
And qualifying and practice rough weekend. But hopefully she can turn things around at Watkins Gwen and hopefully we get to talk to her at Watkins Gwen as well. Absolutely. And you know, [01:44:00] we weren’t joking when we posted on Instagram. We’ve got, you know, commitments from Sally McNulty and Samantha Tan to come on the show, so some spoiler alerts there.
So look forward to more personalities from SRO coming on the show here in the future for such an event that it was kind of low key as, and compared to like the big circuses that we’re used to, there were a ton of fans. You looked and the parking lots were full, the paddock was full. The the track was humming spectators everywhere.
And to your point, it’s not the same kind of multi-class racing, it’s sprint racing, so hour long races and each of the, the run groups, right, whether it’s tc, whether it’s GT America, GT three, GT four, they run their, their allotted time schedules and you’ve got fans in every group, you know, people that span the entire, the entire series and the entire weekend.
I thought it was a great experience. Obviously we got a lot of access over the weekend or over the course of practice and the race itself. And we’re gonna follow up with a lot of folks and you’re gonna hear those episodes in subsequent weeks. But I thought it was absolutely [01:45:00] fantastic. Agreed. I would encourage folks that if you don’t know what s Rro is, go back and listen to our subseries of episodes sponsored by SRO to learn what the series is about and come check out some of the races they are traveling the country.
There’s uh, races out on the West coast down in Florida. We’re going to Watkins Glen next month with sro. You know, they’re gonna be at Indie, they’re gonna be at Nashville, they’re gonna be all over the country. And it’s just a fantastic series. Lots of great people and lots of great action out there. I hear there’s some other news buzzing around the virtual world.
Are we talking about possibly fours? A motorsport finally being announced? Yeah. Well, does it have a release date? It’s been like 10 years now. I believe the release date is spring next year. Spring of 2023. Unless there’s, hold my breath. Further delays are there Chip shortages writing the code, the words in the Microsoft.
I do remember seeing something that said it was going to also be compatible with Xbox One, not just the new series X, but I don’t know if that is actually gonna be true or [01:46:00] not. So what’s the over under on it being four to seven with new cars and a facelift? With the amount of time they’re spending on it.
It should, should definitely be more than that. I mean, it’s been, how many years since 4 0 7 came out? It’s been a long time. It would be a generational leap in immersion. It’s been five years, so it’ll have been six by the time it comes out. Good lord. That’s like Sony with Grant Smo, right? It takes like 10 years for the newest one to come out and then nobody cares.
The latest trailer finally giving a date for when the game will be done. They didn’t talk a lot overall on the game. They just focused in on the dynamic weather that they’re working on, and they alluded to how the dynamic weather is gonna impact the physics and tire. So as the day changes through the game, the sun changes, the shadows on a track change.
The track cools or heats differently and it actually impacts the tire temperatures and it impacts your grip and all that stuff as you’re racing. And that. Changes dynamically as you are [01:47:00] playing lap after lap or whatever. I mean, that’s a pretty big change physics wise versus what the static were. The puddles always in the same place.
Brad, correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t they have this in Project Gotham for. Well what I was gonna say, not related to Project Gotham Fours, but they came out with the same claims when they were teasing Forza Motorsport seven. I mean, not with the changing puddles and stuff like that, but with the changing temperatures and the, the day turning to night or getting darker.
I mean, because anybody that’s driven fours of Motorsport seven knows when you drive at v i r going into turn one, you can see absolutely nothing. It’s pitch black, but then coming around to turn 10, it’s like sunny and bright and everything. Now it doesn’t shift as you’re going through the race around the track, but this is all stuff that they talked about was the big improvements for fours and Motorsport seven.
So I’m curious to see if it actually gets into fours motor sport. Yeah, and I feel like they’re taking a playbook out of Codemaster’s physics engine because the ego engine already has all this [01:48:00] technology, right, that they use in dirt and they use in grid and they use in Formula One and all the other games outside of Project Cars three, which as the madness engine in it, I feel like they’re playing catch up a little bit.
But on the same token, when we’re doing virtual racing, we always avoid the rain races cause they’re terrible. Right. No, I love them. The rain races are the best. Rain races at Silverstone and v I R are amazing. Maybe for you. I hate them but I love them. We normally, the vote goes dry races and let’s go.
Right. But of course, Although Daytona is always at night, it’s true, it’s better at night. All I will say is that as long as I can play it on controller, I’ll be happy if they make it so that you need a wheel, uh, to really enjoy it. There are already sim games out there designed for that. Just make it so I can be competitive with the controller still.
Yeah. I made that leap over this past winter and I tried iRacing and I, and people are trying to convince me of how great iRacing is. I don’t get it. I don’t have the patience to tune for 10 hours. It was bad enough. Tuning and Forza where you’re sitting there, you know. Fiddling around with that puny physics engine to try to [01:49:00] get the cars to do anything, especially on a controller.
I moved into a set of corone, and I tell you what, it’s the best arrive and drive sim that’s out there. You don’t need to do a bunch of tuning. The biggest thing I had to do was tweak the overall steering range on every car. Once I found the cheat sheet on the internet that somebody had developed, I jump in, load my set, and I go and I purposely run and I put it in my live stream, no sets.
All I do is change my overall steering radius and I go on and I, you know, I’m placing plenty of races out there and some of the other guys from GTM are running with me as well, and we’ve had a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to people. The part that it lacks it is GT three and GT four racing, which is always seems to be the most fun anyway, and there is some touring car in there and whatnot because it is modeled after SRO and things like that.
What it lacks are the American tracks, right? It’s highly focused on the European ones. I don’t have a problem running races at SPA and at Silverstone and whatever, but it would be nice to run at the Glen or at V I R or some of the other tracks [01:50:00] that GT America goes to. Yes, Laguna Seka is in there.
There’s like a handful of them, but it’s not the full list of tracks. The other thing that annoys me about iRacing, for anybody that’s familiar, I know all the diehards are gonna tell me. Yeah, you know what you’re talking about as best sliced bread. I don’t like the whole way it’s monetized, right? Every time you turn around it’s another 15 bucks.
It’s another this, it’s another that Gotta buy this track, gotta buy this version of the track cuz that’s the one that the series is using. Oh, you gotta buy this card and everything’s like 15 bucks, 20 bucks. Even when you got the Dogecoin from your buddy to buy it, it’s expensive. It gets you expensive, really fast.
A c c on the other hand, it’s like, okay you’re all in for a hundred bucks and the expansion pack comes out sorta of like it does on Xbox and it’s 10 bucks and you’re like, oh, I got three new tracks and 10 cars and let’s go because they’re updating it to keep up with the series in Europe and all that kind of stuff.
So from a cost perspective, total cost of ownership. And I don’t have to have the latest $5,000 ate set up to make it work. And then I know fan of tech sponsors them. [01:51:00] I think it’s good and I, I highly recommend people try it out. It’s a lot of fun. Sounds like iRacing is just nickel and dimming you. Where does all that money go?
Cause it doesn’t go into the graphics. Oh hell no. Still playing Grand Two graphics. Hell, oh, it’s like 360 graphics. They’re terrible. There’s no high definition about that thing. It looks like it was designed for Windows 95, like you’re playing Sim City 2000 or something. It’s ridiculous. But the physics, the physics, oh, get outta here.
I mean, a CCC has all the same stuff. And you know what? I’ve got it all set up with buttons and this and that, and I, my pit stops. I got that strategy down. I’m, that’s sitting here trying to like, do mental gymnastics on how that’s supposed to work. It’s very straightforward. It, it’s just like being in an SRO race.
It’s down to business. Get it done and go. And if anybody wants to learn more about a asset, of course, so just watch Eric’s Twitch stream. I haven’t run in a while. I’ve been pretty busy. We got a lot of projects going on over here, but when I do get some more free time, I will be back to streaming my ACC races on Twitch.
So that’s twitch.tv/grand tour and Motorsport. So just in case you haven’t [01:52:00] got enough motorsports in this episode and you are suffering from some post bans, blues motorsport, that TV is where all the action is. They have a bunch of really cool documentaries and mini sos and things for you to catch up on, like Mazda wins for Japan.
The story of the 7 87 B. Mr. Lamar, Tom Christensen makes it six for Audi, Graham Hill, the triple crown, Jackie, the tortoise ix, his refusal to do the Lamont. Start back in the the seventies. Ford upsetting Ferrari, not Ford versus Ferrari. Alonzo starts the dominance for Toyota and tons of other stuff.
Motorsport TV has probably the largest catalog of different disciplines of racing from motorcycles through trucks and everything in between. So it’s a really cool platform to check out. Their subscription is right along with everybody else’s, but it’s a great way to tap into racing around the world, things that you’ve probably never seen before or forgotten or didn’t know how you could catch up on it.
Check it out if you get a [01:53:00] chance. And Eric, talking about Jackie Icks real quick. We also wrote an article that’s on our website and we’ll go ahead and append that to the, the show notes for this episode that you can go ahead and check that out when we wrote about the Lamont start. Yeah, that’s right.
That’s right. And it, it was a critical turning point in endurance racing when he refused to do that. And, and the best part is he did it and he started behind everybody dead last and still ended up winning Lamont’s at the end of it. So it’s a pretty cool story and it changed the whole dynamic of safety for endurance racing.
So that’s why we no longer run to the cars and jump in and do all that craziness. We’ve got some upcoming local news and events, uh, brought to us by collector car guide.net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. So let’s see what’s coming up for July. We’ve got. PCA Potomac has begun its series of weakened brunches.
The hundred first Barbara Fishy Classic Motorcycle Race is coming up on July 4th. Audi Club, Potomac Chesapeake hosting their summer shakes and breaks crews. The Audi Club is also kicking off their summer Audis and ice cream at [01:54:00] Brewster’s ice cream locations in both in Virginia and Maryland, and with roughly 650 cars coming on offer.
July 21st of the 23rd. GAA Auctions will have a little something for everyone. Check out all the cars for sale in Greensboro, North Carolina, gaa, and tons more events like this. All of their details are available over@collectorcarguide.net. Now it’s time for our hpde junkie.com Trackside report. So what’s coming up in July.
Emera, the Eastern Motor Racing Association is hosting their mid-summer blast at New Jersey Motorsports Park, lightning and Thunderbolt on July nine and 10 weekend. Along with that, the RX seven Club known as Rotary Spirit is celebrating their sevens day at New Jersey Motorsports Park alongside of emra and a lot of GTMs will be at this event as well.
Hooked on driving, as we announced before, has added a V I R full course weekend to July. So you gotta check out hooked on driving.com for those details. Right now we’re at the height [01:55:00] of H P D events for the year. If you can’t find an event to go to right now, I, I don’t know what you’re doing, but head on over to h hpd junkie.com and find yourself a track event for this coming weekend.
In case you missed out. Check out the other podcast episodes that aired This month we chat with Maureen McFail about her work at Mo Racing and her goals for getting more women drivers and female racers into motorsports and how you can become a part of that effort. As a follow on to the MO racing episode, we rereleased our Patreon Pit Stop Minio with Mary Haggy from Moon Mark, who is friends with Maureen for some unfiltered paddock talk.
Dean Case from s r o Motorsports GT America talks to us about his past as an engineer working on the original Mazda Miata, as well as his efforts to launch Nismo in the US and Mazda Motorsports brothers, Nat and Chris Bongiovanni joined us for a Father’s Day special where they recounted some valuable lessons learned from under the hood of a yellow 1970 3:00 AM C Gremlin, how that shaped their professional careers, [01:56:00] along with a dose of fatherly advice for all of us Petrolheads.
For every four outta five Petrolhead surveyed, when asked, what car should I buy, the answer is always Miata. Our panel of guests, Dave Peters from hpde junkie.com. Jim Tano from No Money Motorsports blog and Bill Snow from late to Grid podcast. Join us to help answer is Miata always the answer. Thank you to all the guests that came on the show this month.
We have some really exciting episodes lined up for July and August, so be sure to tune in. Don’t forget that our Patreon contains exclusive behind the scenes extras and pit stop minisodes. We’ve also recently updated our Patreon site to make it easier to find all this extra content. So if you haven’t checked it out, hop over to www.patreon.com/gt motorsports today.
So we do have new Patreons for June. Big shout outs to our newest Patreon supporters, Janet and Brian Wartell of Marietta, Ohio. Thank you both for supporting the show. For other shout outs, we have [01:57:00] some anniversaries. Andrew Mason is celebrating eight years. Eugene Kay, seven years. Steve Furman, four years, Jordan Furman.
Three years Neil and Dale Bechamp and Hunter Wilson, one year with gtm. 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@gtmotorsports.org. We didn’t have any special guests hosts on the show this month, but we look forward to more guest host in later episodes.
And if you would like to be a part of the conversation, hit us up. And of course, our co-host and executive producer Tanya and all the members who support G T M. Without you, none of this would be possible. Can we put our eight logos on Tanya’s beetle now? Yes. Yes, but only on the Death Star. Yes. Alright, I’ll put the Audi emblem on the back.
Eric, I don’t know if you, well you went 95 but you didn’t see it. So on the way home along 29, I saw a G I [01:58:00] mark five Herby. No. Yes, no A GTI. Mark five Herby. What’s the opposite of maximum? Cause That’s it. Brown Schwartz, it’s
here. We are in the drive through line. Me and her cars in front of us, cars in back of us all. Just waiting to order. There’s some idiot in a Volvo with this bright sun behind me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, watch your trying to do Blind Me. The wife says Maybe we should park.
If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) [01:59:00] 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.
We’d love to hear from you. Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M 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 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.[02:00:00]
