Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is GTM’s monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, Hooked on Driving, AmericanMuscle. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive Thru, look no further than www.
gtmotorsports. org. Click about and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.
Welcome to Drive Thru episode number 14. 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.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Tanya. And this month, Brad’s not with us. He’s out on paternity leave, but we have a special guest host.
It’s Mark Schenck, petrolhead extraordinaire, who some of you might [00:01:00] recognize from our 90s What Should I Buy? episode. So welcome to the drive thru, Mark, and thanks for coming on.
Mark Shank: Awesome. It’s great to be back. I’m looking forward to it. Haven’t gone through the notes. This should be a lot of fun.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’re going to kick off this month.
Like we do every month with a showcase brand and we’re doubling down with respect to the episode you did, where we talked about Mercedes and BMW. So we’re going to hit up both right away.
Executive Producer Tania: Mercedes has revealed their. G Wagon electric concept, which apparently is not really a concept, but a near production version.
Crew Chief Eric: G Wagon. I am geeked about this.
Executive Producer Tania: This is with their whole EQ platform. They got the EQS that’s coming out. That’s the sedan and the EQG here now. And unlike the other EQ Versions that stray a little bit from what we normally see from Mercedes. The G wagon is looking [00:02:00] like classic G wagon. It’s boxy. It’s got some round headlights.
So it already sold me square body round by I’m good with it. I like it. It looks good. This is what we talk about. Hummer did it
Crew Chief Eric: first. This is what we
Executive Producer Tania: talk about. Mercedes is doing it better.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s that. But this is what we talk about every month. We talk about the fact that if you do retro right, you can take a lot of these cars and make them super cool EVs without reinventing the wheel.
Not everything has look like a spaceship. And one of our members in our group, one of the veteran off roaders, he actually off roads a G Wagon. It’s a 2000s era. They all look the same from like, you know, World War II up until today. And even this thing, there’s not much difference, but you know, probably independent suspension all the way around and all those electric goodies and things like that, that Drew was actually talking about on his episode.
I think this is cool. This is the right Move.
Mark Shank: They don’t get a choice, right? Right. Move wrong. Move. It’s a move they got to make. Cause it’s like Pepsi not doing diet. It’s gotta happen. I think the LEDs, like all over [00:03:00] might be a little much. I mean, they’ve just gone all the way in on that grill, which is hysterical.
I mean, it started with the S class coupe and it was kind of like, Oh, it’s like the starlight grill and now they’re just like, nah, screw it. Well, we’re just going to put an LED in each component.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s really a third headlight. Is LEDs the replacement for Chrome? Is that like the new thing? Yeah.
Mark Shank: It’s like LEDs.
Are they going to be like the fins from the fifties? Uh, you know,
Executive Producer Tania: I could be okay with that. Cause you could turn the LEDs off, but you can’t turn Chrome off.
Crew Chief Eric: You can spray paint it though.
Mark Shank: So I haven’t read about this. Have they announced anything particularly spectacular about it? I mean, I see 577 horsepower, like at least with a Hummer, when they came out, it was like, they had just like crazy hyperbolic type numbers all around the Hummer and this is, The European Hummer, right?
This is their military vehicle made civilian. Although this is a lie. Now, the current version is not a military vehicle, but so is the Hummer. So
Executive Producer Tania: I don’t, I don’t think the five 77 [00:04:00] is this vehicle. That’s the current. Top rated G class, gas power, because really all they’re talking about here in car and driver is that it’s got four motors on each wheel and it’s all wheel drive.
Mark Shank: If it’s got four electric motors, it’s probably doing pretty well. That
Crew Chief Eric: thing’s going to rip. Plus that will be electronically controlled all wheel drive where you can send a hundred percent of the power. To 25 percent of the vehicle. That’s pretty slick. I’m curious to see how that would work in an off road condition.
And I know a lot of people that buy G wagons are going to and from their private schools and whatnot, or the soccer field, but there are folks out there like drew that do run them off road. So I’d be curious to see how this holds up against one of the legacy G wagons.
Mark Shank: It has a well earned reputation for an authentic off road capability.
And they were trying to preserve that with the Hummer launch. So hopefully when we get more details, they go in a similar direction.
Crew Chief Eric: So what else is in the news from Mercedes there, Tanya?
Executive Producer Tania: Well, we started out strong with a lot of excitement there around the [00:05:00] G wagon. And then. You hear Mercedes Maybach. Oh, okay.
All right. And then you look at it and then I’m done. Like, I don’t even care to read the rest of the article. This thing is fugly.
Mark Shank: They’re all fun. What’s a Maybach that’s not
Executive Producer Tania: fugly. Touche. Like why? Like you have this gorgeous G wagon and then you have this sad, weird looking, like when Buick was making ugly things.
You
Crew Chief Eric: hit the nail on the head. This reminds me of a early 2000s Buick. It screams Park Avenue, Buick Regal, like with a massive grill that just, I don’t know how to explain this thing, but even if you took. The old my book, which was basically, you know, the E-Class, like on steroids and just blown up. This doesn’t even come close.
It doesn’t look like anything. It just looks like a deformed M class, like an ML three 50 or something like that. It
Mark Shank: looks, it looks like a [00:06:00] suppository on spinners. .
Crew Chief Eric: I don’t get it. And you, you know what I, you know what I think throws me off the most, more than even the LEDs. It’s the two-tone paint reminiscent of like a 63 beetle.
Where they did the same thing and kind of painted the belt line down burgundy. And the top was black and, and the fenders are black. I just, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t like
Mark Shank: it. You can, you can tell from the pictures, the grill is fake. Well, that I was going to say, there’s no depth on the grill.
Executive Producer Tania: Throwing me too, is how it’s just like a painted grill.
Mark Shank: It’s like, I get it. You don’t want to mess up the aerodynamics, hence the giant ugly wheels. I mean, how much do those wheels weigh? 800 pounds each. I mean out of magnesium?
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there you go, right? Exactly. They’re off of a tractor. Moving on from this, I found something else that just blew me away. And this is a little bit of a teaser for our lost and found section.
It’s going to be coming up here in a little bit. I found a 2011 Mercedes AMG that was a hell of a deal. It’s listed as a [00:07:00] C8 and in quotations, the might. M I G H T. The ad was subsequently pulled down very recently, but I managed to scour the internet and find the pictures.
Executive Producer Tania: It might be hot trash.
Mark Shank: I mean, this is so bad.
I feel like it’s rolled over like an integer. That’s just gone over the top. I mean, you got to respect whoever was committed enough to do that. They’re batshit crazy. I don’t want to hang out with them, but I have a degree of respect for them somewhere deep down.
Executive Producer Tania: There is something weird like that going on.
Like I want to hate this with a passion that burns with the fire of 10, 000 suns. And then there’s just like a sliver of, but wow, somebody did this.
Mark Shank: I’m confused by the intakes. Is it a mid engine conversion?
Crew Chief Eric: That’s where I was going. How many motors does this thing have? Right? Cause it’s got snorkels in the front.
Facing the wrong direction, by the way. And then it’s got a big ass Mercedes grill on the front, [00:08:00] which looks like they glued it to the coyote from hard castle and McCormick, like I did not understand this car.
Mark Shank: That’s a double tape, double sided tape. That’s what’s on there.
Crew Chief Eric: I think the only thing I could appreciate are the wheels, but then you realize it’s got this like almost boat a seer thing in the center of it.
I don’t get it. The way,
Mark Shank: the way they built it. Butchered the A pillar, it thinks it’s like a golf cart. They tried to make look like a Corvette . Like it might not even actually be a Corvette .
Crew Chief Eric: It might not even be a, it might not even be a Mercedes. I mean, it might be
Mark Shank: one of those Gators. They just welded all this fiberglass onto the front and
Crew Chief Eric: back of it.
I mean, it looks uncomfortable, is all get out. I mean, if you look at this dashboard, I mean, all of it is just. Absolutely. But, but with
Mark Shank: the, with the AMG emblems, I mean, this, this guy knows what he’s whoever did this has to be a guy.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what I really appreciate though. And this is a shout out to our member, Andrew bank, the exhaust tips on this Mercedes are as twisted and messed up as his were on his Mercedes.
So I guess [00:09:00] they got something in common, except we wish this one was in a flood. So moving on to BMW.
Executive Producer Tania: BMW not only making their, you know, i series electric cars, etc, etc. They also are unveiling an electric bicycle.
Crew Chief Eric: Excuse me, what?
Executive Producer Tania: It also gets the i designation. Apparently it’s called the i series. I vision amby, A M B Y.
I do not know what that acronym stands for. However, it’s an electric bicycle that can go 186 miles, has a speed of 28 miles an hour.
Crew Chief Eric: Is that a bike or a motorcycle at that point?
Executive Producer Tania: They’re considering it a bicycle.
Crew Chief Eric: Does it have pedals?
Executive Producer Tania: Yes.
Mark Shank: I’ve looked at these in Maryland and other, like, cause I wanted to get something similarly like this, not for any valid reason, just because it was crazy and a bad idea.
I thought it would be great to do. The laws vary state by state. They’re hard to get registered. Some people [00:10:00] say it’s a moped and it got mo has moped rules. Some people say it’s not, it’s got pedals. It’s bicycle. It’s so hard. I mean, I give him credit. At least he’s got discs in the front and the back and it’s got suspension and
Crew Chief Eric: doesn’t get an M version.
In the future,
Mark Shank: M sport, M sport,
Crew Chief Eric: M sport, M B, whatever the heck it’s called. This goes back to what I’ve said many times before in the BMW world, there is an ass for every seat. And now there’s a bicycle seat for that ass.
Executive Producer Tania: So there is a high speed pedelec. They call it mode. It goes to 37 miles an hour.
That’s fast on a bicycle.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, you’re hauling butt. That’s motorcycle territory.
Mark Shank: It has a version without pedals, it looks like, and more of like a cafe racer style seat than a bicycle seat. Do you actually
Crew Chief Eric: change gears or is it a double clutch?
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, EK on
Crew Chief Eric: your bicycle.
Executive Producer Tania: This is borderline bicycle and very slow.
Slim line moped.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s [00:11:00] not unattractive. Like they’ve done a good job in terms of the look and everything. I think it’s, it’s cool. I’m a little suspect of that rear swing arm. It has no rear fork. I thought that was kind of odd. That’s a little bit more like dirt bike style, but I’m also looking at the first image going, I just don’t understand if that’s a rendering or if that’s defying physics.
Executive Producer Tania: They have pictures of somebody on it.
Mark Shank: But I think the pictures are all in the pedal version. Not that little race one.
Crew Chief Eric: I think I would try it though. In all honesty, I would give this thing a go. Being a bicycle fan, I’d give it a turn.
Executive Producer Tania: The unfortunate part is probably cost like, you know. 25 grand.
Mark Shank: Oh, yeah.
I’m shocked. It gets that many miles on those huge tires. I mean, the rolling resistance on tires, even on the street one, as opposed to the knobby one, those are pretty, look at some of those mountain bikes tires,
Crew Chief Eric: a lot of road noise, big tires. Speaking of a lot of road noise. The Rolls Royce Hybrid Dump Truck?
Uh, first of all, [00:12:00] that is a BMW product, but what? But it’s hybrid, so it shouldn’t be making noise, right? If Rolls Royce makes dump trucks, let’s just start with that.
Mark Shank: Is this THE Rolls Royce, or is it Because they split the company, like, a while ago, right? Like, how does that work?
Crew Chief Eric: It’s all BMW at the end of the day, isn’t it?
It looks a lot like Well, no, because
Mark Shank: remember when BMW bought Rolls Royce, they screwed up and didn’t buy the ability to use the Rolls Royce logo because they split Rolls Royce Commercial from Rolls Royce Automobile.
Executive Producer Tania: So it sounds like the Rolls Royce is providing the engine, but the dumpers themselves are by a different manufacturer.
Crew Chief Eric: So they’re just putting a motor in it. So my other question is, are they authorized to pass under bridges on interstates in Georgia?
Executive Producer Tania: Depends on their height and whether or not Georgia needs the bridge moved.
Mark Shank: That doesn’t even look like a dump truck. That looks like one of those mining operation type.
Based on the height of those safety rails on the side. I mean, that thing is. It’s two stories, I think. 10 foot tire. It’s probably one of the Rolls Royce turbines. I wouldn’t be surprised if it [00:13:00] was.
Crew Chief Eric: Turbine hybrid. That’s actually kind of a cool combination. I’d like to see how that works and how that operates.
I’m sorry. I should read the article. I will say styling wise, the Rolls Royce Cullinan and this dump truck, really not too different.
Executive Producer Tania: In defense of the comment, this was unveiled at a mining convention, so
Mark Shank: Like right before the show, I was just scouring. The M3 wagon looks like it’s coming this generation.
Really? Probably not to the U. S. It just popped up some, uh, photos of the camouflage, you know, they put that crazy black and white. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Camouflage. The
Crew Chief Eric: spy paint. The question is, have they run it around the Nuremberg ring yet? Because then you know it’s legit. When they do that, the car’s coming out.
Mark Shank: I mean, they’re just photos of it on the streets in Germany, not around Nuremberg. But it looks pretty cool.
Crew Chief Eric: I’ll have to keep tabs on that. Then
Mark Shank: see if we can beg to get her over here.
Crew Chief Eric: We talked about wagons a while back. It’s, it’s one of those things where it’s diminishing returns. The numbers of wagons every year are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and being replaced by CUVs [00:14:00] and SUVs and gigantic hatchbacks, what’s called what they really are.
Right. Unfortunately, that’s all the news we could come up with for Mercedes and BMW this month. So we know they get it. They got to do something a little bit more exciting. They got to get out there, but these are, these are pretty interesting, but I think we need to move on to Volkswagen Audi group.
Executive Producer Tania: Do we, should we?
I’m very annoyed. Sadly, the beetle, they put it to rest. It’s a very unfortunate, and I hope with the resurgence of, you know, retro and electric cars and retro electric. That the Beetle, I will say it again, is the perfect candidate for an electric car. Stick those batteries back in the back where the original air cooled engine was.
Get that frunk. Volkswagen, you need to do this. And you need to do it. Soon. The frickin Aura Ballet Cat comes out. Wait,
what?
If we remember that hideous punk cat, this Chinese knockoff [00:15:00] of the Beatle that we talked about several months ago, apparently now there’s the EV version that they’re calling the Aura Ballet Cat.
And it’s also ugly. And the problem is apparently there might not be patents on the beetle design and if there aren’t freaking people in Wolfsburg need to get on this. Either need to dig up something to block the use of this design or I don’t know what quickly throw some battery packs in the back of a new beetle or an old beetle or an original whatever.
Get it done.
Mark Shank: We shouldn’t be surprised the uh People’s wagon is popular in the people’s Republic, but I mean, somehow they managed to make it uglier, which is hard to do and they did it though. So maybe commendable, but still.
Crew Chief Eric: And that’s a huge debate too. I mean, we talked to somebody recently that was like, Hey, tell us, you know, what you think is an ugly car.
And they’re like the beetle. And I’m like, really? I’ve never heard anybody say that before. And they’re like, yeah, but it’s ugly, but it’s ugly. It’s cool. I guess you could say the same thing about the Fiat 500 [00:16:00] or the Mini or anything of that era. They were all designed similarly, but I’m with, I’m with you, Tanya, this copycat, let’s call it what it is.
It needs to stop. It needs to go away. I mean, it looks
Mark Shank: like a bloated crossover interpretation of a beetle. I mean, the beetle has proportions and it has some things going for it certainly, but this is bad.
Executive Producer Tania: It’s like we’re trying to modernize it and make the lines more modern, but it’s like they did that already with the new beetle.
Mark Shank: Yes.
Executive Producer Tania: Twice. But this is just. Elongating it, making it more sedan ish almost. I don’t know, more like a wagon. It’s just not right. It’s like, we’re taking the front end of an original beetle, but then trying to still modernize the side view and the rear, so we’re taking a new beetle and an original beetle and morphing them together, and we just need to stop.
And we just need to take the new beetle ish design and put an electric motor. With a VW badge on it.
Crew Chief Eric: End of story. Boltwagon for the win. Done. Done. All right. So let’s talk about VW’s ID series, which are gaining [00:17:00] popularity here in the States as well as overseas.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes, apparently the ID3 Hatch, which is, you know, the more golf sized version, which we’re not getting it here yet, if at all, who knows?
But in Germany, the Lower Saxony Police Department has already ordered 215 ID. 3 electric hatchbacks. to use as police cars.
Mark Shank: The Lower Saxony Police Department knows who pays the taxes that fund them, so they got to keep the jobs program that is Volkswagen going.
Executive Producer Tania: Nonetheless, it’s pretty cool.
Crew Chief Eric: We already talked about A remote island in Greece that was using ID fours as police cars.
I just find it funny that they’re using the bigger version on a smaller locale. And then they got these little, you know, tiny little micro cars that they’re, they’re running around in this police cars. I
Mark Shank: hope this is parking enforcement or something like, [00:18:00] come on guys.
Crew Chief Eric: You’re
Mark Shank: in the land of the Autobot.
Like, what are you going to do? They’re going to run out of juice. That’s what they’re going to do.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes. And we’re going to bring this back up a little bit later.
Crew Chief Eric: Excellent. But there’s a lot of buzz right now around the ID buzz.
Executive Producer Tania: There was a sighting of a, of an ID buzz. So that’s the van, the new kind of mannequin for those that don’t recall what the ID buzz is.
In a robo taxi guys, as they called in the article, essentially, I think they’re testing self driving capability. So it’s a self driving test vehicle. Has
Mark Shank: a very similar kit load out to the Waymo cars, full LIDAR spectrum up front and on top. Pretty cool though.
Crew Chief Eric: So what got me about this, when I saw this come across my desk from garage riot, I noticed something.
All the previous renderings of the ID buzz, it seemed a lot smaller. This thing literally looks like a previous generation Euro van that’s been updated. Now I’m [00:19:00] confused. How big is the ID buzz going to be?
Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. I don’t think we know being still a concept. They obviously have reign to, to make changes, especially if there’s issues with Safety compliance and whatnot that they have to increase the size.
Or maybe some market studies said that people were unhappy. If it was too small, I don’t know. We
Mark Shank: need a banana for scale.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, that’s a good point too, is it’s tricky in the photo. Sometimes when you don’t have something next to it to reference, sometimes these things look bigger or smaller than they actually are,
Crew Chief Eric: but you know, what’s smaller than we think it is this new VW called the ID.
Executive Producer Tania: Oh, yes. This is their little mini like a hatchback, like a rabbit bigger. So trying to be like this little mini SUV, but it’s way, I mean, it’s hard to tell in this picture because they say it’s a mini SUV and I look at this and I’m like, this is very small SUV is a stretch. Compact crossover, since that’s the new flavor of the day, maybe a [00:20:00] normal size golf.
Mark Shank: I mean, if you look at, look at where the rear door handle is, it’s over the center point of the wheel, which means your ass is sitting on the rear axle. You can get away with that packaging and electric car for sure. But no, one’s been that aggressive, right? I mean, the volt is pretty small. The
Crew Chief Eric: minis are that small where you’re basically sitting over the rear wheels.
That thing has no trunk, which is
Executive Producer Tania: akin to a mini,
Crew Chief Eric: but it also kind of reminds me of that Honda concept
Executive Producer Tania: behind
Crew Chief Eric: the
Executive Producer Tania: E
Crew Chief Eric: exactly. So it reminds me of that kind of reminds me of that Fiat one 26 concept, that rendering we talked about a couple of months back. I mean, I like the fact that it’s cute and small.
It’d be fun in one of those ancient cities in Italy where you can barely get a Fiat 500 through these alleyways. So I understand why. This thing exists. I just don’t see it really working for let’s say our shores as an example.
Mark Shank: Yeah. And they went with the yoke for the steering wheel.
Crew Chief Eric: Uh, that’s a hard
Mark Shank: pass.
Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I don’t understand why cars are [00:21:00] doing that. I want to feel
Mark Shank: like I’m driving a 737 very sportily.
Executive Producer Tania: Except okay. You know? Yeah. I mean, this isn’t a formula car your hands. Yes. When you’re racing, Oh, don’t move your hands. Let’s not get into that can of worms, but In the streets, you often are making a turn that’s more than 45 degrees.
Yeah.
Mark Shank: Unless, yeah, unless the steering ratio is insane, in which case it would be very twitchy.
Crew Chief Eric: There’s another new Audi prototype that’s coming to the table. The
Executive Producer Tania: Audi Grand Sphere is what they’re calling it. It’s a concept right now and it’s what they’re using to launch their vision of a self driving luxury car.
So who knows if this will actually come to any sort of fruition? I mean, when you look inside of it, it has nothing. I mean, it’s full self driving. There’s no dashboard, but where the dashboard would be, it can project a screen there. There’s no steering wheel. I mean, it’s like you’re in the fanciest first class.
Qatar Airways [00:22:00] plane, your own private pod there.
Crew Chief Eric: So the question is, this does not grow or shrink like the Audi we talked about last month?
Executive Producer Tania: No, I believe not. This one they’re saying is essentially as long as an A8L.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s huge.
Executive Producer Tania: Because they have no, you know, if it’s electric and all that, they’re actually probably getting even more cabin space because they don’t need, you know, the room for the big honking V8 or whatever that’s in that car.
Crew Chief Eric: So it’s a giant limousine
Mark Shank: with four seats. So
Crew Chief Eric: they all, they all turn around in different directions, right? They’re like swivel chairs or whatever. So
Mark Shank: I mean, the pictures look like the, that would be hard to do
just based
Executive Producer Tania: off the backseat. Definitely cannot. It’s one giant bench.
Mark Shank: I realized people would worry about motion sickness, but.
You might as well take the crash advantages of facing backwards. It’s so much safer.
Crew Chief Eric: Let me ask you this about Audi’s current line of concepts, right? And I feel like we’re in this era of concept cars. And I wrote an article about this, I think a year or two ago. It’s like good ideas and bad execution and the evolution of some of these concepts that [00:23:00] never come to fruition.
And then people forget about them and then eventually they find their way. I mean, you can go back. As an example to the Audi Avis in the early nineties that found its way into the Nardo and eventually into the Bugattis and the R8 and all this kind of stuff. And they’re part of that family tree. But what I’m starting to notice with the Audis, and I feel like they’ve been doing this for a while, they restyle all their cars.
So they look the same and you can’t tell the A5 from the A4 from the seven from the eight, except for the number of doors and the length of the wheelbase. But every new Audi I’ve seen so far, I’m like, wow, that’s cool. And then I go. Are these going to all be on the new Batman movie? All feel like Bruce Wayne should be driving them.
I just, I don’t get it.
Executive Producer Tania: You know what this front end of the grand sphere reminds me of? And I know it doesn’t look similar, but it’s just like, you kind of look at it at first glance and you see it. The Audi Avis.
Mark Shank: I mean, I think we’re definitely in an era where 50 years from now, they’ll be making jokes about the prototype cars.
Like we did about prototypes from the fifties that were like, Oh, we’re going to fly [00:24:00] everywhere and we’re gonna do all kinds of crazy stuff. I do think it’s a reflection of how scared, not just the automakers are the entire supply chain. I mean, I’ve seen crazy stuff coming out from tire manufacturers, like.
Everybody’s so afraid of being disrupted and existential kind of changes to the business model that they’re getting really ambitious with where this might go, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is sometimes come across as a little ridiculous.
Executive Producer Tania: The concepts these days are just getting more attention, right?
Concept cars have always been. Ridiculous looking, especially the ones that actually never go anywhere. I mean, if you go looking through concept cars, they all are ludicrous. You go back and look at, you know, 50 years ago, the concept car, we’re laughing at them. Like, Oh my God. And someone thought this was a good idea.
I don’t know what to say in that regard. If this comes to fruition and would it actually look like this? Or not hard to say,
Crew Chief Eric: keep it going there, Bruce Wayne. But speaking of other futuristic blade runner, [00:25:00] 2049 looking cars. Last month, we talked about Audi’s proposed entry for the Dakar rally. The car fighter that they built is pretty wicked looking.
I mean, it definitely is like the 13th Cylon. I mean, it’s all sorts of angles and LEDs and whatnot. We got a hold of this teaser video and we’re like, this is really cool. This is really epic. It also. conjured up a lot of questions about how are they going to run a car in the desert on just electric where are they going to stop and quote unquote fuel up and things like that but there’s an interesting bit of news that also popped up surrounding this and named synonymous in the world rally world in the gymkhana world in the world of ford is ken block And now Ken Block has signed with Audi to help develop this Dakar fighter.
And I think that’s super exciting. And I don’t want to spend too much time talking about this. Spoiler alert. We actually have a guest and an episode coming up later this fall where we talk to a very close friend of Ken Block’s [00:26:00] and get some inside scoop on what’s going on into Ken’s past and projects they’ve worked on together and where he’s going with Audi.
So stay tuned for that. But I also want to talk about another VW motor sports development. Cause you don’t normally hear about VW in motor sports, like you do Porsche or you do Audi. Volkswagen’s always just kind of the parent company, you know, setting up the funding lines for these racing series, you know, the last VW only racing series, I think I watched was Hans Stuck during the beetle cup racing in the UK about 20 years ago.
Right. Now there’s talks that in 25 and 26. VWs setting up to partner with Red Bull to make a play in Formula One to provide the hybrid systems for the Red Bull Formula One cars. I think this is awesome.
Mark Shank: More people participating, more manufacturers participating is always. Always awesome. That’s the constant struggle in F1.
Nothing but good news as far as I’m concerned.
Crew Chief Eric: So part of the article that we posted, it’ll be part of the [00:27:00] show notes. They talk about this thing called the MGU H the motor generator unit heat. It’s a really fancy. Hybrid electric internal combustion engine and just think of it as a giant electric turbocharger I’m going to, I’m going to summarize that I’m gonna give you the bluff on the rest of that article but Volkswagen is in development to provide that type of technology for Red Bull in the 2025.
26 seasons are really looking forward to seeing Volkswagen plastered on the side of a formula car for the first time ever.
Mark Shank: So you could see that being very portable to Lamborghini and therefore the Audi R8 platform. I mean, if you look at the Countach, the, everybody jokes about its little 33 horsepower electric motor, which is worthy of joking about.
It’s capacitor based and not lithium, you know, so that, I mean, that, that’s kind of the whole point of, I mean, you’d have to think in racing, that kind of situation. It’s not going to be a battery based. Type system, because that’s going to be too much weight for something like F1. So I think that could be very portable for both Lamborghini and [00:28:00] Audi from that perspective, which is, you know, which is very cool and possibly even Porsche not to lead into the next topic, but we’re
Crew Chief Eric: absolutely going to.
And as our Porsche aficionado on this particular episode, let’s jump into it. Let’s talk about the 718 and the mission R as they’re calling it.
Mark Shank: It’s super cool. I mean, you want a thousand horsepower Cayman. Like who doesn’t want a thousand horsepower came
Crew Chief Eric: everybody with a nine 11 doesn’t want a thousand horsepower came in
Mark Shank: any self respecting person with an 11, once a thousand horsepower came in, I think, you know, they’d be disappointed, be embarrassed by one.
They’d want to buy one. I think it’s obviously race only they’re setting up what, like this single make race series. It’s totally bad ass. I mean, I’m a little biased. I obviously am a big Porsche fan, but I mean, the car looks badass. The wheels are unfortunate, but Hey, aerodynamics, you know, the car is totally bad ass.
You can see the tech coming out of that translating into the all electric 718 that they announced. So, I mean, these two things are very complimentary. They’re making a one [00:29:00] make 718 race series. They’re making an all electric 718. And so you can see the technology being extremely portable. The gauntlet is going to kind of be laid down for any.
718 turbo S what GT2 versions that they come out with for this electric version. Everyone’s going to know what the R can do. Cause the R came out first. So you have this crazy benchmark to go up against, which is insane. Couple of the data points that I thought were interesting to talk about that all electric 718 was their weight target, quote unquote, only 3, 650 pounds.
It’s portly for a Cayman that’s for sure. But as far as, uh, all electric cars go.
Executive Producer Tania: It’s lightweight.
Mark Shank: It’s very light. Yeah. I mean, short of like, you know, that little Volkswagen, we were just looking at some kind of postage stamp of a car. I thought it was interesting. You know, they were very transparent. The most important 718 buyer is a 31 year old man in China.
I’m like, that’s pretty good age to be buying your first [00:30:00] brand new Porsche. They’re more worried about price, weight and performance than they are range. And so they have a relatively modest range target of 250 miles.
Crew Chief Eric: For a race car. That’s pretty good. The other thing I’ll say about this, I I’m in total agreement about these wheels.
They are just atrocious, but the styling of this, especially in the race trim, big wings and all that kind of stuff and splitters and canards and whatnot, I really like this. I don’t look at this and go, that’s a Cayman. I look at this and go, that’s something special. It’s something different. It doesn’t look like any other Porsche.
It’s not an evolution of something else. I mean, I guess it retains the windshield and maybe the A pillar and some of the silhouette of a, of a Cayman, but I just don’t see it. It’s a badass. It’s, you know, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of, of Caymans. It’s totally buff in its prime. It’s like, this is, This is cool.
I’m really shocked though, politically that Porsche would allow something like this to even be built. And I kind of understand why it’s being targeted to [00:31:00] a specific cup series where they’re running against each other. Because like you alluded to at the beginning, you don’t want to embarrass the 911. The 911 is the flagship.
Just like when the 914s came out, 944 turbos and other cars where they were like, Oh, they’re just good enough to be better. Then they find a way to neuter them, put a dorky motor in them so they can barely perform or something like that, because they never want to show up the flagship car. And I feel like this is in that same weird area where it’s like, yeah, it’s going to be awesome.
We’re going to hamper it. And then when finally a privateer gets their hands on it and, you know, finds a way to fit it into a class, whether it be an IMSA or WEC or something like that. Then I really want to know how this car stacks up against the venerable 911.
Mark Shank: It is interesting. Porsche has had these moments in their history and everybody loves to tell the story about the nine 28.
And there was like, Oh, you know, this is when the nine 11 is going to end and the nine 28 is going to take over and blah, blah, blah. I think someone at Porsche said, you know, nine 11 is for [00:32:00] boomers. So we’re not going to go hybrid. You know, it’s not going to get an electric version, which is a very bold statement to make.
In this period of time, of course, the buyers of the nine 11 aren’t clamoring for an electric version, but you have to think about the future of the brand and in the buyers that are going to be there down the road. So this may be the passing of the torch, right? Or they’re sitting there and they’re saying like, look, we can let them compete.
I don’t think. An all electric 718 that’s faster than a GT3 or turbo S or whatever. I don’t think the one person who buys the one is cross shopping the other. Like if you want a stupid fast electric sports car, you can buy a platter, you can get a tie can or whatever. I think it’s really interesting from where they’re going with the brand.
Are they saying the 9 11 20 years from now is going to really struggle as those buyers start to age out? They never went electric. They never catered. And the 17 takes over. I mean, and if you look at
Crew Chief Eric: it from a motorsport [00:33:00] perspective, you know, we joke all the time that the 9 11 has been consistent, especially in the last.
Let’s say 10 years, because just like the 911 GT one from the early 2000s, the motor suddenly magically found its way towards the middle of the car. And then they said, okay, well, we’re going to put it back in the back again. It’s going to hang out over top of the rear wheels. And then every year, every season, it finds a way to just migrate forward towards the driver somehow.
So I’ve always been, I have a kind of joke that. It’s a logical conclusion that they’ve been evolving a bad idea for like 60 years, and they need to move away from this pendulum, this hammer that’s going down the road with all that weight over the rear end. And it needs to be more of a mid engine sports car.
So you’re right. Maybe it is the passing of the torch. And I’m going to continue to say that I’m very happy that the 914 finally gets its day in the sun. Let’s call it what it is.
Mark Shank: Let’s call it what it is. It is a nine 14. Fair enough. I totally agree. I mean, it’s really frustrating when Porsche makes a product for a [00:34:00] slot in the lineup and not for what the platform is capable of.
We might be able to have her cake and eat it too. I don’t think this means that there isn’t some RSR version of. The nine 11 in the future in that engine gets moved forward. Like it has been in motorsport, can stay naturally aspirated or turbo or whatever, at least an IC component to me would be the best of both worlds.
They, they actually, you know, advance that forward a little bit, go follow motorsport, do what they did there and do electric and 70. Or
Crew Chief Eric: take a page out of what is it? The 918’s playbook, you know, with the LaFerrari style or the NSX, where the 911 still has a petrol engine in the rear, like you’re saying, but maybe is four wheel drive no longer turbocharged going back natural aspirated, but has that electric motor up front to help propel it and get it there.
So maybe a cross between it. Yeah. This 718 and the 918 supercar. So, yeah, I mean, it’s not
Mark Shank: like the 918 is depreciating, you know, there’s still not a Carrera
Crew Chief Eric: GT, you know,
Mark Shank: we could, we could, we could kill this whole show on this
Crew Chief Eric: topic. [00:35:00] Absolutely. So it’s probably good that we move on to something lighter hearted, but also.
Keeping with the theme of staying with tradition and following through and we mentioned Audi earlier and obviously Volkswagen Audi and Porsche have been together since the very earliest days. And for those of you that don’t realize that the auto union started at the turn. of the century. That’s the 1900s, not the 2000s.
You know, there’s a long pedigree there. There’s a long involvement with these three families together. And it’s actually two large families, the Porsche family and the Piek family, but we won’t get into that whole history. If you want to learn more about that, listen to the little Anton episode that we did during this month.
But what I’m getting at here is Audi did this heritage video. And it’s really cool. We’re going to include it in the show notes. And if you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. It’s a little bit long, but also check out the bloopers at the end, because it really, really makes the film. Tanya, I know you watched it.
What did you think?
Executive Producer Tania: I was admittedly [00:36:00] confused in the beginning.
Crew Chief Eric: Agreed. I
Executive Producer Tania: really wasn’t sure what was happening. I was totally into it once they went vintage with all the older cars, especially the IMSA and the Raleigh Quattros and all that. And then seeing Stuck and whatnot in this short film. I think the one thing that was missing or the one person that was missing was Michelle Mouton.
Crew Chief Eric: I absolutely agree with that.
Executive Producer Tania: Because with all the legends they were showing between cars and person, she needed to be there. A hundred percent. So I think that’s unfortunate that who knows what reason why she wasn’t, but I would have liked to have seen that representation. It
Mark Shank: sucks that Doug DeMuro makes the cut and she doesn’t.
Crew Chief Eric: I agree with you on that as well.
Mark Shank: Freaking joke.
Crew Chief Eric: We need to read you on that one. Definitely have to have Michelle in there. And I will say, I agree with you. When the vintage car showed up, That’s what did it for me. And a couple of things were really important. I really, really enjoyed the scene between Walter Rural, Han Stuck and Hurley Haywood.
And when Hurley stands up and [00:37:00] he’s like, you guys have been holding me up for 30 years. You know, and he’s like chucking water balloons at them. So I busted out laughing because it’s so true. And a lot of people forget that Hurley started with the Audi’s not just with Brumos Porsche, right? He ran the Audi’s in Trans Am, but the thing that really got me, that Really pulled at the heartstrings because it’s going to be one of those moments where you read about all these celebrities now that have passed because of COVID and all this kind of thing.
It’s that moment where you realize Hans Stuck Jr is driving his father’s auto union, you know, 16 cylinder developed by Ferdinand Porsche senior. They pulled that car out of mothballs and used it in the film. I mean that alone, just that scene of him driving down that wooded road, kind of leading that parade.
I was like, I just stopped. It was just, it was absolutely incredible. And it just, it just pulls at the heartstrings because you realize that’s, that’s a whole legacy. That’s two generations in that same family of epic race car drivers and epic cars and things like [00:38:00] that. So I guess what I’m getting at here is if you don’t know the Audi history, dig into it a little bit more.
It’s absolutely fascinating and it’s got many tributaries and rivulets that you can go down when it comes to the Volkswagen story and the Porsche story and how they’re all intertwined.
Mark Shank: At the end of the day, what it really says is that they do have real enthusiasts, real fans that work there and that, that have that kind of passion.
And that’s how every now and again, they actually come out with a really amazing product.
Crew Chief Eric: Like the e tron GT. They just need to lower the price tag on that thing. A hundred percent. It wouldn’t be a drive through episode if we didn’t talk about the fourth largest auto manufacturer in the world, Stellantis.
And I got a call. There’s always a lot of drama, especially with, you know, Fiat and Ferrari and all these things. And you hear about it in Formula One and you hear about it in racing. They always like, well, if they’re not winning, let’s change the rules. It’s a very, you know, FIA sort of thing to do. But this latest one, uh, It’s just mind bogglingly kind of idiotic.
I was reading this article and it’s in the [00:39:00] show notes and it says, and I’ll paraphrase it for you guys. The Italian government is in talks with the European union to exempt supercar manufacturers from a gas engine phase out. on their way to electrification. So what does that mean? They want to get out of jail free card so they can continue to build Lamborghinis and Ferraris and all these other super cars that we love and we enjoy and sound amazing without having to worry about turning them into EVs, which is kind of funny considering All these concept EV supercars that they’re still kind of proposing, but I just had to laugh and I flag on the play yellow car, get these guys off the field.
Mark Shank: I couldn’t disagree more. I think it’s exactly what they should do. We’ve got to be realistic about if we’re going to claim the environment, then we have to be realistic about what’s driving greenhouse emissions. And it’s the quantity of meat that people eat. It’s completely unregulated engines. They use in the naval shipping.
It’s not your V12. Ferrari that gets driven 1500 miles a year that still manages to be emissions [00:40:00] compliant. Hell, we let the Elise come into the country without a passenger side airbag. God help us. You know, we did, we can, we can pass on regulations when it makes sense.
Crew Chief Eric: I agree. I agree. I just think it’s funny.
Mark Shank: I think it’s awesome. I hope they get away with it. If
Crew Chief Eric: they can fight it and win, more power to them. I’m not saying, I’m just, like I said, I just had to call shenanigans on that. I was like, I don’t know
Mark Shank: what to say. I mean, yeah, no, it’s, it’s newsworthy for sure. I just hope they win is all.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, if anyone can do it, it would have to be these hyper cars that, you know, a hundred are sold or something, right?
Because, They aren’t being driven. So on the one hand, it is kind of like, what’s the big deal. The reality is, is yes, everybody’s moving to full electric, but will we really, time will tell.
Crew Chief Eric: Diesel’s making a comeback. That’s all I’m
Mark Shank: saying. Yeah. I mean, all those regulations that came up in California, which California has done the math.
On what electric, what the electric car switch will do to their grid. They’re creating regulations around the power [00:41:00] efficiency of your personal computers. They’re getting hard on the electrical grid because they know that as the electric creation of cars come, they do not have the capacity or anywhere near it today, and it will cost billions and billions to build, and we have no great way of really building it because we won’t go nuclear, which is, you know, I don’t want to open that can of worms.
In Europe, there are a lot more nuclear power plants than there are in the U S.
Crew Chief Eric: I just know, Mark, that if you and I were being taxed on the number of computers that we have in our house, it would be a very large bill.
Mark Shank: If you look at my network and all the devices connected.
Crew Chief Eric: I am surrounded by screens like the Batcave.
It’s insane. But there’s some other good news over in the Stellantis world.
Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. So the Chrysler brand has named their new CEO. So it is a female Christine fuel coming from a Honeywell being their chief commercial officer. And apparently she also had a stint in global marketing with Ford a decade or so ago.
So [00:42:00] she’s got some interesting background and hopefully she’ll. Bring good things to the Chrysler brand.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out what Chrysler actually slaps their badge on other than the Pacifica right now. So, you know, Hey, mini vans. That’s cool. I also, when I first saw this come across my desk, I immediately thought Lea Iacocca, right?
Similar background came from Ford, went to Chrysler twice, you know, save the day. Not that Chrysler’s in bad shape right now because it’s part of slant is,
Mark Shank: I think she has the remit over Dodge too, right?
Crew Chief Eric: What’s Dodge making again?
Mark Shank: Many Hemi’s. That are very future proof.
Executive Producer Tania: I think the bigger thing is if they’re naming CEO to the brand, then they have some sort of short term strategy to say that we’re going to try and revitalize this brand or try to have something other than the Pacifica or maybe the Chrysler 300 under the moniker.
Right. So who knows, maybe. Unfortunately, it, it tanks probably not necessarily through any fault of her own, or maybe she’s able to use her past marketing and [00:43:00] strategic roles in various companies to help create something new that we haven’t seen yet from Chrysler or bring back something from the past.
Crew Chief Eric: But let’s not bring back the K cars and EV. Okay. We do not need Aries EVs. I’m just going to lay it out there. It’s not a good idea. They were a good idea. Top
Executive Producer Tania: of my head. I really can’t think of what Chrysler should come back, like which Chrysler model should make a
retro reappearance.
Mark Shank: It’s interesting.
Like what’s at the top of her list, right? Because if she’s the CEO of the business unit of Chrysler, then her bigger problem is Dodge than the actual fact that Chrysler. Is a joke. I mean, Dodge is where they have all the volume that’s also having where the most aged platform is reading the article. I mean, it looks like she, she has the unit, which is really cool.
I mean, it was called Fiat Chrysler, Fiat Chrysler and Dodge. I’ve been in their headquarters and done some projects for them in my professional life, similar to the comment about what brought up the Audi video. Tons of enthusiasts work there. I mean, like everywhere I [00:44:00] went from vice president, executive of whatever, down to people, you know, managing relationships with the dealerships, very passionate about their product, loved their Hemis, loved what they were doing.
But I mean, man, all that stuff is so old. I would classify it like a turnaround strategy. Like you’ve really got to turn this thing around. If you’re going to keep the brand. Going forward,
Crew Chief Eric: the Mopar stuff hasn’t been bad. I mean, I think Fiat did a better job with Chrysler than Mercedes did. Now, granted to your point, they’re all running around on a hundred year old, you know, C and E class chassis and all this kind of thing.
We joked about that before, especially with the challenger and the charger, but from the aesthetics perspective, you could really tell when the Italians took over and they facelifted the Jeeps and they facelifted the charger, which wasn’t anything to write home about for quite a long time. And so they’ve done a good job.
The Pacific is not bad looking either. I mean, and I’m a little biased cause we have one, but whatever, but it’s just, but it’s just, you know, they do need to do something with, [00:45:00] they do need to do something with the brand that’s for sure. And just, I’m just not sure what that is yet, but I’m, I’m very curious and I’m cautiously optimistic about where they’re going to go.
Executive Producer Tania: Okay. It’s not to bring back the PT cruiser in any shape or form.
Crew Chief Eric: Get out.
Executive Producer Tania: So it’s not to do that. What it could be is to bring back the Chrysler 300 sedan as a luxury Mercedes Cadillac fighter with the right styling and enhancements. Could that be a competitor in that?
Crew Chief Eric: I agree with you there, and I’ll say this, despite the early gangster style of the 300, you know, when it was revitalized in the two thousands, every one of those I’ve had is a rental car from the, the very first reintroduced to the current ones.
I enjoy them. They’re very plush, they’re nice places to live. They don’t have the best motor to write home about. It’s the same Penn star that you get in the the Dodge Caravan or whatever, unless you get the Hemi version, the art. The [00:46:00] RT or the SRT eight or something like that, they do need to take it a step up to Mark’s point.
It’s classy, but it’s classy for Mercedes in like 2010, you know what I mean? At its best. And so they really do need to do something different to step it up.
Executive Producer Tania: Apparently though, there is a 2022 300 coming. So that is still in their lineup.
Crew Chief Eric: What I am thinking though, is Chrysler. If the trajectory is to kind of turn it and revitalize it, not that it’s doing poorly, but.
Pacifica has an advantage over the other minivans in that it’s the only hybrid minivan that’s out there right now. So if they take that momentum and it has been selling well and they propagate that into other Chrysler models, maybe Chrysler becomes the EV arm of the future. Dodge, Stellantis, they can use that as a jumping off point because right now they don’t have anything that’s really easy.
And they’ve talked about, you know, there’s sun setting the Charger and the Challenger. We talked about that on the last episode and the plans for the future of those two cars are completely unwritten that, you know, they said it’s the last [00:47:00] hoorah for the Hemi. We don’t want to see the muscle cars go away.
We want to keep them around, but what are they going to do in the EV space? And I think GM’s. Now leapfrogged Chrysler because we were joking for a long time. What’s, you know, what’s Chevy going to do? Ford’s way ahead of them, you know, and I guess that leads us into our domestic conversation a little bit as we kind of transition into Ford and Chevy a little bit more.
One of the things I discovered is we used to have the horsepower wars. Now we have the kilowatt wars for a long time. Resto mod in restoration type shops have been taking like Tesla packages and putting them in retro cars and doing all these kinds of things. There’s a rumor of like an E Copo from GM that’s coming out, but Ford has put out and has teased, you know, And EV crate engine, there’s not a ton of details on this.
There’s a lot of schematics, a lot of really interesting stuff. The one thing that I thought was really cool is it only measures about 22 and a half inches at its longest dimension. So that’s really, really compact, which means [00:48:00] you could put it in a lot of things, be it a front wheel drive and old type two bus, you know, whatever you want to jam this EV into the problem is they’re not telling you what the power output is.
And the comparison they made in the article was, well, the Tesla makes The equivalent of 577 horsepower in this new magical number. So I’m really curious to see where that goes. The one thing the article alluded to was that we’ll know more at SEMA this fall when SEMA finally happens again, you know, here post COVID.
So really curious to see where that goes.
Mark Shank: I think the whole concept of getting into the parts business around this is great. Obviously, the battery becomes a more important component than the engine, and I don’t know enough to know why the, the mileage per kilowatt hour is so different between like Tesla’s and every other Evie.
It is a significant enough gap that I think. It’s worth mentioning, they have a huge efficiency gap there. Would you have to think in the, in this kind of custom space would be a real advantage if they could figure that out?
Crew Chief Eric: Now, unfortunately, all [00:49:00] of these plans are now beholden to shortages, changes in production, obviously COVID chip shortage, all of that we hope every day that this stops and every month goes by and it actually seems to get worse.
What I’ve heard is now because of that, Ford was going to introduce A new pickup called the Maverick, which I think was a little confusing because there was a Ford Maverick way back when, which is actually a bit of a two door coupe, kind of a variation of the seventies Mustang, but they decided they’re going to scrap that because it was going to be built in India.
And that’s a 2 billion hit to Ford because they’re shutting down that production. And then, you know, some of that is to do to chip shortages due to personnel and labor laws and all that. And it’s just. Sad to see, I actually really like the spy photos of this Maverick truck. I think it’s pretty cool. It’s more attractive than the current Ranger.
I think it’s a better size. I mean, the F one 50 has gotten huge and the Rangers kind of the size of the old F one 50. And I, I, I hate to say it comes with some weird engine packages. Like who wants a pickup truck with a 2. 3 liter turbo four cylinder. I’m [00:50:00] like, I just don’t get it. Please convince me that I’m wrong.
I heard that the, you can get the V six now, but whatever, but yeah, so this Maverick’s kind of cool. Maybe it’ll get built. Maybe it won’t, but it ain’t going to get built in India.
Executive Producer Tania: I admittedly don’t understand the, uh, I guess the link between the two because apparently Ford’s been in India with two plants since 1995.
And it’s essentially operated at a loss this entire time, which is equated to about 2 billion as they haven’t been able to pick up any market share there. So
Crew Chief Eric: that’s what it is.
Mark Shank: They’re just cutting their losses. It’s the best excuse in the world. You guys said it on the show last month that the chip shortage Is the best excuse in the world to optimize your business.
Hey, sorry, got to lay you off. Uh, you know, chips. Hey, sorry, got to exit your country. You know, chips. Hey, sorry, got to drop this product line. Chips. I mean, you know, the gloves come off. They’re like, Hey man, I got the best excuse in the world. No chips.
Crew Chief Eric: Barbecue, sour cream and onion, or what are we talking about?
Salt
Mark Shank: and vinegar every time.
Crew Chief Eric: [00:51:00] So GM is also shutting down plants due to chips. So that’s all we really need to say. I think, I
Executive Producer Tania: don’t think it’s permanent shutdown. I think it’s, again, they’re having to temporarily close down factories because. Tips
Crew Chief Eric: because chips,
Executive Producer Tania: can we start that?
Crew Chief Eric: Hashtag chips
Mark Shank: because chips, Chrysler got a new CEO because chips, chips,
Crew Chief Eric: but there is a positive coming out of this and actually goes back to something you mentioned earlier, Tanya about police cars and EVs and in the UK, they’re going to use the car.
We will not refer to as the Mustang, the Mach E as police vehicles. And I believe they’re replacing the aging. Opel Astra diesels. Police officers over there are famous for running around in. I’m really curious to see how that turns out in the UK as well. I kind of feel that compared to Germany, the Mach E larger car, considering the British roads and all that, there’s a lot more towns that are closer together and not massive amounts of highway.
Obviously there’s the A1 and things like [00:52:00] that.
Mark Shank: There’s such different environments, right? You compare German and British culture, like Germany, they deal with the legacy of the Stasi. And so they’re, you know, they’re not as big into cameras everywhere, looking at everything all the time. They have more of a kind of personal freedom bent, you know, hence the Autobahn.
And so, I mean, in the UK, like what the hell do you need a Maki? It checks all the right boxes. I guess for them, it’s a big car for us. We think of it as like, you know, not a large car, medium sized, but for them, it’s a big paddy wagon type thing where you could build a police barrier in it and throw people in the back.
But soccer
Crew Chief Eric: hooligans in there. Yeah,
Mark Shank: exactly. Pick up your hooligans and toss them in the back. It’s probably more of that perspective in regards to like a SUV ish. Electric car. What are your other options besides a Mach E?
Crew Chief Eric: Well, as Tanya’s alluded to, there’s a lot of options in Europe from Renault, from Nissan, a multitude of manufacturers, Citroen, Peugeot, et cetera.
Now they’re under the [00:53:00] Stellantis banner. So there’s a lot of, Choices over there that we don’t get us even on the Volkswagen side of the house. So I think it’s interesting that the Mach E is going to go over there. I just wonder like, you know, we hear all the time again, because chips, how are they producing all of these?
Or is it because they stopped producing something else that now they can suddenly start building Mach Es for the UK police department?
Mark Shank: It’s even more interesting because these kinds of fleet sales never have good margins. Price is always a big part of the negotiation on the fleet sale. The British do love Ford.
They’ve got their Ford Rally Cosworth heritage. So that might’ve been part of it. Like if you’re a cop, do you want to be driving around in some French electric turd, or would you at least have something that has a prancing pony on the front of it? I don’t know. We won’t ever
Crew Chief Eric: call a Mustang on this show.
Mark Shank: Still has the pony on the front. Least worst choice.
Crew Chief Eric: And you know, what’s funny, something we don’t talk about on this show very often I think it’s because there’s not a ton of excitement coming out of the [00:54:00] Far East. And that’s JDM vehicles. And we’ve actually found a collection this month of vehicles that we can talk about.
We do need to revisit one from last month. So what if I said, Integra, the spy photos, the renderings are out. What do we think? Oh,
Executive Producer Tania: I’m sorry. You didn’t say Honda Accord.
Crew Chief Eric: I thought it was a really cool looking two door Civic.
Executive Producer Tania: This alleged 2023 Acura Integra. Let’s ignore the name for right now and look at the photo.
This is a very handsome two door Acura. Very handsome.
Crew Chief Eric: Yes.
Executive Producer Tania: That’s it. Have anything to do with an Integra zero,
Mark Shank: I guess maybe I’m a little lost. I had an Integra as a kid. I love Integras. I ask a question. Why this, why does this have nothing to do with an Integra? Like, I mean, Integra is just a little, a little accurate.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, other than it being two doors, I’m very sensitive to, if you’re going to reuse the name, then I want it to be more reminiscent of the car namesake and I don’t see if you had just shown this to me, I would’ve been like, [00:55:00] Oh, look, the new TSX. It’s a two door and it’s quite handsome and I like it very much and look forward to seeing it on the road.
But I never would have said, Oh, it’s an Acura Integra or an RSX was supposed to be the next Integra.
Mark Shank: I mean, the front headlights are a little rectangular, like the Integra up until I don’t remember the designations, unfortunately, cause it’s not German. It’s the one I drove. It was like a 94 was before they went to the round headlights and after it was the kind of early mid nineties Integra.
I could see the front end a little bit there. Obviously not the aggressive air scoops and everything underneath. Maybe I’m stretching, but I feel like that headlight line a little bit.
Crew Chief Eric: But the other rendering, the black one from the artist, not from Honda, that one looks more like The Integra you’re talking about.
If you kind of scroll down through that article, and if you’re listening to this, you know, check it out in the show notes, that one is more reminiscent of an Integra to me than the orange, the copper car that they’re showing.
Executive Producer Tania: [00:56:00] Exactly. So at the bottom, there’s recommended stories in the middle one. There is.
You know, someone’s rendering that one, that one screams to me, Integra RSX. And that is a car that needs to be built a thousand percent. Yes,
Mark Shank: absolutely. Going back to the copper Integra. Cause it’s the one that we’ll probably build. Am I crazy or like, look at the stance and the setup, kind of the geometry of the back of that car.
It doesn’t have. That weird civic Humpty Dumpty thing going on. Yeah. Like it actually looks like it might have some suspension in the back that could move.
Crew Chief Eric: That would be nice. I mean, the new civic type R turbo, whatever the heck it is making umpteen trillion horsepower. Now that’s got IRS. I mean, the Hondas have had IRS for a while.
I mean, I’ve written in one. They’re fantastic. They’re a little big compared to what I grew up with and what you grew up with as civics and integrals, which were small, compact GTI size cars. Now. They’re kind of huge. And we’ve joked before you look at this and you’re like, man, that’s a really cool two door Accord.
But now the Accord is massive. It’s like, you know, the size of an Avalon is [00:57:00] like a Buick. It’s just, just huge. So, I mean, I guess it’s, it’s a coming of age thing. The cars get bigger, we get older, you know, whatever. But I guess I’m with Tanya. I want to see it in person. Cause again, like we said earlier, sometimes.
And renderings to, to mark’s point, you got to get a banana for scale. So you don’t really know like where things are at and what it’s going to measure out as. Now, if this is a re skinned type R Civic, I’m very interested because it is a performer. And I tell you what those cars out of the box turnkey on track on street tires are phenomenally good with a slightly better physique.
I’m very, very interested in checking it out. Hopefully the price point won’t be something astronomical, but Get ready folks. Get ready. A new skyline is coming. It’s going to have four doors. And it might be an SUV.
Mark Shank: Can I, can I throw up on air
Crew Chief Eric: a little bit in the back of your throat? Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, you can surely make the noise.
We’ll understand
Crew Chief Eric: again, going back to names. [00:58:00] If it isn’t well for a GTR, don’t put a skyline badge on it.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I’m very annoyed by the Mustang Mach E. Let’s not call that thing a Mustang. All right. Can we not? So, I mean, this is the same thing. Like a skyline is not an SUV. So let’s just. Stop
Mark Shank: to go backwards a little bit.
You wait till the Chrysler 300 is an SUV. The next one that comes out,
Crew Chief Eric: That’s like the Ford Taurus, the Ford
Executive Producer Tania: Taurus SUV, the Ford Taurus SUV.
Mark Shank: Isn’t there
Executive Producer Tania: also like the Mitsubishi Lancer SUV? Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Now there’s an Eclipse, Eclipse, Eclipse SUV. It’s like, no,
Crew Chief Eric: it’s so wrong. So wrong. What gets me about this car is I look at it and I just see a QX50 and I’m like, come on guys, you could do better than this.
Just slap some badges on an existing infinity and pass it off as something else. I’m sorry. This doesn’t cut the mustard. And you wonder why we don’t talk about Japanese cars.
Mark Shank: I mean, so, so to be fair, this. Skyline wasn’t the GTR, although a lot of people think the GTR is a
Crew Chief Eric: trim package. [00:59:00] Was
Mark Shank: kind of a luxury version.
I mean, Nissan’s version of it. They never brought it over here, but so it’s like, okay, you know, uh, I never understood that market segment, but that’s where that market segment is. But if you try to make that a GTR and bring it over here, I’m not going to buy it. I’m going to make fun of anybody who does.
So there pretty
Crew Chief Eric: much, but let’s switch gears a little bit. So a little bit of tease to the motorsports world, 2022, the GR, the gazoo racing version of the 86, the new one that’s out is going to be the official pace car for NASA. That’s not the rockets and satellites. That’s the national auto sport association championships.
In September of 22. So I’m looking forward to that. I like the kind of paint rendering scheme they’re going to do on the car. We talked about the new GR 86 a couple of months ago versus the new BRZ. They’ve done a facelift on them. I’m not convinced that they’re not the same car still. I still think they need a turbo.
I still think a lot of things need to happen with that platform because it is the Japanese 944, as I’ve said, many, many [01:00:00] times. They are phenomenal cars on track. They are a lot of fun. I wouldn’t throw one away if you gave one to me, you know, I’d run the hell out of it, but it’s kind of cool to see that NASA has chosen the 86 as their, uh, as their pace car.
Since we’re talking about Subaru, let’s just go straight for the throat on this one. What do we think about the new WRX?
Mark Shank: All right. We’re going to skip the whole pace car conversation. We’ll go straight.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, what is there to say, right? We got to get to this WRX.
Mark Shank: I mean, I was surprised it could go fast enough to do the job.
Fair enough. No, I mean the WRX at first, especially in thumbnail, I thought it was a civic,
Crew Chief Eric: right? I think the entire interwebs thought it was the new civic and we were all being punked by asking Kutcher. I just, I don’t get it. Is it the legacy? Is it the Impreza? What is this thing?
Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, but the internet is very upset by those plastic cladding around the fenders.
Crew Chief Eric: Because it takes a round fender and makes it angular like a Lamborghini. Like what is that? Well, there’s no
Executive Producer Tania: reason to have plastic [01:01:00] cladding on the fenders of a WRX.
Crew Chief Eric: But Rally bro. But rally chip, I know this isn’t Rocks, chips. This isn’t
Executive Producer Tania: an STI chip. This is just a W Rx regular.
Crew Chief Eric: Is that still? Because chips, I mean ’cause chips just, just
Mark Shank: rock chips.
Crew Chief Eric: By the way, is copper the new color for Japan? You know, this is like Volvo from 1999 and the C 70. No, no. Like, what is this?
Executive Producer Tania: The Acura was a nice marigold. This is . This is like a, a, a tangerine.
Crew Chief Eric: Is that the official color of Honda Marigold? The only thing I like about this are the rear taillights. I actually kind of like that, but to your point, it looked like they’re off of
Mark Shank: a, Especially the taillights are the most civic looking.
I
Crew Chief Eric: like
Mark Shank: those. I’m okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s, that’s a fair reason to like it.
Executive Producer Tania: The article title said it all right. Cosplaying a civic.
Crew Chief Eric: Here’s the thing, right? I’m from the VW world. I’m a dubber through and through. Call me a boomer. I don’t care. I [01:02:00] grew up in a different era. Mark two GTI is freaking awesome, right?
And when you see one, you go, that’s cool. Those cars were just, they were bad ass. They were hella dope. The Subaru’s had their time too, where in the early days of like Colin McRae rally and things like that, those early Imprezas, the 22B, you know, those kinds of cars. They’re amazing and they have a cult following, but just like the Volkswagens, they’ve strayed away from the originalness, the uniqueness, and that grassroots enthusiasm and the people that are behind it.
And so yes, your point, this is a big old bloaty sedan and it’s kind of man. The, the specs suck. It’s three extra horsepower for the previous one. Kudos. It’s got a six feet manual. God bless Subaru for keeping the manual around. I gotta give ’em props for that. Go back to your roots. Give us another 22 B.
Give us something that we, that we want, that we’d be interested in. I mean, granted, I, I don’t want a flat four, but that’s discussion for another day. I just think this is the wrong direction.
Mark Shank: I mean, I do appreciate how the Japanese auto [01:03:00] manufacturers have just like noted out of the horsepower wars. So we’re just like, no, it’s, it’s good.
It has, it’s like Rolls Royce power is sufficient. I don’t know. I mean, I guess because Lexus gave everything a really big grill, they need a hood scoop to look aggressive. I don’t, I don’t know.
Executive Producer Tania: They need to put the hood scoop in because then you wouldn’t discern this from the legacy.
Mark Shank: If you’re, if you’re a, if you’re a soccer dad.
In the Northeast and you make whatever 70, 80 grand a year, you’re going to buy an
Crew Chief Eric: outback. You’re not going to buy this thing.
Mark Shank: I know a lot of guys that have bought these things. They’ve been horrible for a long time, right? I mean, that wasn’t one or two generations ago. These platforms have been bloated and in tough for a little while now.
Yeah. They’ll get a non STI WRX.
Why?
Mark Shank: Cause it’s. Better than the Outback legacy? I don’t know. I mean, I’m struggling here rather have I just, I rather call or a
Crew Chief Eric: Malibu,
Mark Shank: I think
Crew Chief Eric: at this point, no, .
Mark Shank: I work, I work, I work with these guys and they’re, they’re all in Rochester, New York. They all drive Subarus, you know, in case [01:04:00] they’re listening to this.
I love you all. I don’t know why you make their car choices that you do, but they will probably buy this.
Crew Chief Eric: What Mark’s saying is you live in a place that snows by an Audi, get on with it. Speaking of, you know, Asian cars and the Asian market and whatnot, another brand that we just don’t talk about because they haven’t produced anything that really gets us excited in a long time is Hyundai and Kia, right?
They’re both the same company for the folks that don’t know. It’s the same company, different badges. I happened to see a brand new Tucson on the road the other day. I know this is not the kind of car we generally talk about on the show, but like conversation street on the grand tour, we want to talk about like the Dacia of the U.
S. So we have the Hyundai Tucson. First, I thought it was a Mach E and I got super excited and then I realized actually the back is even more aggressive than the Mach E and I like it. I like those lights. I like those, you know, carved in three LEDs on each side. I thought it was really cool and I’m in traffic with it.
I was in a different lane, so I pulled ahead. I got to see the front of it. I hadn’t [01:05:00] seen the side yet. So I saw the front of it and it has these really interesting LED pyramid lights. I’ll be it’s super expensive because it feels like it’s like a 50 pieces of Lego that you got to put together. If you break one of them, the whole thing has to come apart, but it looked really cool.
It was like, this is kind of futuristic, really kind of angular and whatnot. And then I saw the silhouette. And oh my God, who the hell designed this? Were they from the original Star Fox team from like the SNES days? Cause it is all polygons and like weird angles. Like it looks like it’s already been in a digital accident on Forza.
Like, I don’t understand the design of this car. Like it makes. Was transposed
Mark Shank: into two dimensions and then brought back into the real world. Oh,
Crew Chief Eric: somebody did like a pinch on their phone. Like when they were designing this, it makes no sense at all when you see it in profile, but from the front and from the back, you’re like, that’s pretty cool.
But what really took it home for me, please somebody explain it to me. What’s [01:06:00] up with the new Kia logo. I’ve not seen it’s this wacko kind of K and it looks like a backwards N and I thought it was like something from like Mass Effect where it’s like N seven or you know, like, like that whole thing, like the Normandy, but instead they’ve redesigned their logo too, to go with this whole angular thing they have going on with the Tucson.
And now I’ve seen it on the latest like version of the Telluride other models that they have. And I’m like.
Mark Shank: I just pulled up the pictures of the Nutella ride. Holy shit. That’s polarizing. Um, I mean, you know, you got to give them credit since when did automakers get so edgy? It’s like they’re in a competition with each other.
Crew Chief Eric: I’m going
Mark Shank: to make a grill bigger than you. I’m going to make a logo that looks like a throwing star weapon. Those Kia and Hyundai, like that Telluride, those Tucson’s like, if you’ve got a three, four year old kid, you’re picking up from your little preschool, man, you see a ton of those. And I’ve talked to some people, like they were selling [01:07:00] those at MSRP a year or two ago before COVID before the chip shortage, where it was like.
No, I’m saying before because chips, they were selling those cars at MSRP without discount. People were buying them like, like they were so popular in that parent crowd. People, they were all
Crew Chief Eric: powered by 1. 6 liter turbos copying after mini Cooper, which I didn’t understand. We actually went and test drove one when we were shopping around.
We were, when we got the Pacifica instead and. I was surprised how peppy it was for as big as the cars are, but I’m still like, I don’t know, longevity of a high, strong four cylinder turbo in a vehicle that big, just, ah, no, thank you. I’ll take my Torkums.
Mark Shank: Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: So I would clarify an earlier statement. You made it at the very beginning that there’s nothing exciting coming out of Hyundai slash Kia, whatever.
I don’t think that’s true. Besides the
Mark Shank: Stinger, of course,
Executive Producer Tania: fine. But Hyundai, we talked about already a while ago, their electric vehicle. Brand ionique. They actually have some pretty cool cars in that lineup that are [01:08:00] coming out.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, when, when the press releases come out, we’re going to talk about them because we want to address and talk more about JDMs and the Asian market as well.
And the cars that they’re developing. It’s just, they got, they got to get your attention, right? Well, I mean,
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, we have the Ioniq 5. We had a member have a sighting of one that was in camouflage, and we’re pretty sure that’s right. It was the Ioniq
Crew Chief Eric: 5. So, and it’s on our Instagram, so you can go back and check it out.
Executive Producer Tania: So that car is supposed to be coming into production here, here soon.
Crew Chief Eric: We’ll follow up on that. And obviously they did the Only EV, which we thought was really cool, that retro, uh, restomod that they, they put together. So we’ll see what happens. And you’re right. The stinger is pretty cool. I wish that car had a manual.
I’d love to see a new Genesis come out like something different. That three eight Genesis, the last one they had, though, it was a bit bloaty. They were a lot of fun on track. I got to ride in one and I thought that was fantastic. And I mentioned on a previous episode, I got to coach in a Veloster N, which was one of the cars on my list.
[01:09:00] Oddly enough that I wanted to ride in and I wanted to coach in and I’ve said it before. It’s the best GTI that was ever built in Korea. It’s a fantastic car overall. So hats off to Hyundai. I just feel like they’re the dark horse right now. A little bit understated. You know, we need something flashy. I just think it would be cool.
Hyundai supercar, right? Or Hyundai super EV or something like that. Really kind of bust the news out and be at the front page and not just. I think we got to move on a little bit to Brad’s favorite section, Lost and Found, which also encompasses all of our historical stuff. And I have to start this month off with just something that boggles my mind.
And I’ve said this a million times, the people on Bring a Trailer, God bless all of you, you have lost your minds. And the proof I have,
Mark Shank: you’re part of the problem
Crew Chief Eric: to back that statement up is a mystic magenta metallic geo Metro convertible with 43, 000 miles selling for 4, 300. I wouldn’t give you 43 bucks for that [01:10:00] car.
My budget is 50 for a geometric convertible. We still want one. So this I tell you is living proof. trailer is insane.
Mark Shank: And you know that somebody will end up bringing that to like trump car lemons or something
Crew Chief Eric: being like, no, no, it was cheap. I swear. I swear.
Mark Shank: Well, horrible.
Crew Chief Eric: We are still trying to find one in that color.
For a really good price as a gift for one of our members who is dying to get one. But when I saw that come up, I was like, ah, I’ve got a bid on it. No, no, no. I’m not going into this insanity.
Mark Shank: You went all the way up to 44, but then, then you got 52
Crew Chief Eric: was as far as I was going on the reserve. That was it. In addition to that, a car that we have to add to our ugly cars list.
This one I didn’t know about came across my desk from I believe garage ride or drive tribe or one of those this month, America took a stab at the multiple. That’s a Fiat, by the way, one of the ugliest Fiat’s ever built one of the ugliest [01:11:00] cars of all time, like top five ugly cars with the Saturn CV one.
Now I’m sure you guys looked at this article. And there’s something I really want to hone in on, but I want to get your gut reactions on this first.
Mark Shank: Uh, it looks like something that they would have put in a future movie in the 90s. Like what was the one where Sylvester Stallone, they brought him back to fight Wesley Snipes.
Crew Chief Eric: Demolition Man.
Mark Shank: Yes, this is what they would drive in Demolition Man. Right here. This is, this is it. Everybody was driving around in one of them.
Crew Chief Eric: No airbags, all foam. Exactly.
Executive Producer Tania: Uh, is vomiting still on the table?
Mark Shank: Looks like somebody already vomited on it. The
Crew Chief Eric: color is atrocious. I mean, that’s the one thing about cars.
Colors make a big difference, especially if you’re trying to introduce something radically different. I mean, stick with a Navy blue or black or gray, you know, something a little dude or go, go straight, go red. Right. Go copper, obviously, but not puke or clean corn. [01:12:00] Marigold.
Executive Producer Tania: This is Saturn through and through.
Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t it, though?
Executive Producer Tania: I’m liking the under hood, though.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s what got me.
Executive Producer Tania: What are all these knobs? Is this like the Fisher Price Playmobil? Like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And it’s going to do, like, lights and sounds?
Crew Chief Eric: It’s the cozy coop. Your three year old can work on this thing. It is absolutely nutty.
Like I’ve never seen an engine compartment so clean. Even show cars aren’t as clean as this. But yes, with all these colors and knobs, I was like, how do you work on this? And how long does it take to get to the actual motor?
Executive Producer Tania: Are these like fluids? Like, is that what needs to be like six? Knobs are on the side, like I get the one on the other.
On the left is a battery negative and positive sign, but what
Mark Shank: the hell? I have no idea.
Crew Chief Eric: The hell is the rest of this . You know what? We’re gonna leave that. It
Mark Shank: looks like, it looks like the Fisher Price car.
Crew Chief Eric: We definitely have to leave this up to the audience’s imagination and their comments. So let us know what you think about the CV one and where it ranks on our [01:13:00] ugly car list.
A couple other pieces of historical news. This is what’s mind blowing about this particular barn. Find it’s 175 cars. And it was found in London. Now, Mark, you’ve been to London many times. What about
Mark Shank: this doesn’t compute?
Crew Chief Eric: I
Mark Shank: never saw a barn. I can’t recall a barn. You know, I could think maybe if it was like an abandoned disused church, like a lot of time, the, you know, church infrastructure falls into disuse.
You could park 175 cars and more of those. No, no barns, no barns that I can recall.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And my second question was, where are you going to hide? 75 cars in London, that’s not in a parking garage
Mark Shank: or one of the old warehouses. I mean, there’s so much, just like every city, so much gentrification as they turn the old warehouse districts into the coolest place to live or eat or whatever.
As soon as they get the asbestos out of there, I would imagine it was probably some warehouse.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, if you look at the video, there’s some really cool cars in there. It’s a mixture of, you know, classic British stuff, MGs, minis, Fiat’s there’s beetles in their [01:14:00] type two buses. There’s some actual like W one 23 Mercedes station wagons, stuff like that.
I mean, it’s an interesting assortment. I wouldn’t say they’re really classics or anything of super high value, unless, you know, maybe there’s a Cooper works, maybe in there with low mileage or, you know, a really early beetle or something like that, I just was kind of perplexed when I heard 175 cars basically hidden in London, I was like, how the hell do you do that?
Not so hidden. And a large collection of vehicles as our friends up British Columbia, up on the transatlantic highway, the boys from rust valley restorers. I don’t know what’s going on because as we pushed on our Instagram a while back, season three was supposed to hit. And every time I look on Amazon, and I look on Netflix, and I look in other places, we can’t get it.
History Channel’s not covering it. I know it was produced by History Channel in Canada. We seem to always get the previous seasons a little bit late, and I was okay with that. I’ve been following the show for a while, and I really do enjoy it. There’s this article that came across my desk [01:15:00] that they’re going to be auctioning off.
All the cars on the property and they actually tried to sell all the cars and the property in one go. And I’m like, well, that’s really interesting. And it says deeper in the article that this auction is going to happen during season four of the show. So I’m like, wait, what? Excuse me. So I’m a little confused on how this is working.
I want to see what happened in season three. At this point, it was supposed to be picked up by Amazon, uh, transferring over from Netflix, all that kind of stuff. So I’m a little disappointed again, one of my top five restoration shows. I feel really bad if this is a result of like COVID or something like that, where maybe they’ve, they’ve really had to thin the herd, you know, things like that.
I really thought the premise of this show was raw and it was very genuine. I mean, a little bit produced, but I liked it. It was different than everything else. It was different than counting cars and all these other things on TV
Mark Shank: because chips
Crew Chief Eric: on all these cars from the sixties.
Mark Shank: I haven’t [01:16:00] checked out the show, but your impassioned pitch for the show tells me that I have a couple of seasons to check out. It sounds pretty cool. I mean, is it worth going up there to try and participate in the auction?
Crew Chief Eric: Actually done online. And then they are talking about international bidders.
There’s no reserve on any of the cars and its highest bidder takes whatever vehicle they’re bidding on. And I’m like, That’s pretty cool. Now, granted of those cars, it’s going to be all the one and what they call the field of dreams. So these are all project cars and they go up and down the project field all the time.
There’s some really cool stuff out there. They did an episode where they restored an Alpine sunbeam and they did a Ford Capri V six swap on it. Stuff like that. There’s some really neat vehicles out there that could turn into something else that’s really cool. If you’re into restoration and Resto mods.
A lot of muscle cars, a lot of Canadian versions of popular American muscle cars, and I highlight some of those in the articles when I reviewed the previous seasons. So if you haven’t checked out Rust Valley Restorers, I highly recommend it. I recommend it to you, Mark, as well, if you’ve got some extra cycles to [01:17:00] burn.
And I know Tanya’s watched the show as well.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes, I very much enjoyed it. And in an effort to help them as a plug, you can visit their website at rust bros, rustos. com. And you can actually see a lot of the cars that they have for sale. Currently right now, they’ve got photographs of a bunch of them, but not photographs of all of them because they have a lot of cars
Crew Chief Eric: there.
You have it switching to other historical stuff, something I thought was kind of fun, five obsolete features. In vehicles and the last cars to have them. So I’m going to run through these real quick, just for our listeners. And if you’re watching the behind the scenes video of the episode, you get to see Tanya and Mark’s reaction to this.
Did you know, do you know what the last car was to have a cassette player?
Executive Producer Tania: My car?
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, it would have to be a car after 2005.
Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Because your car is a 2005 and it has a cassette player. All right. I’m not going to make you guys guess. 2010 Lexus SC430 [01:18:00] still came with the cassette player. It’s the last car to have one.
That’s pretty bold. I would not
Executive Producer Tania: have said
Crew Chief Eric: Lexus.
Mark Shank: Except as an SC430, maybe the ugliest car ever made.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s on our list. That’s for sure. You know, we need to put that list on our website. Like the people could just go to, and we need to change it. Like the leaderboard.
Mark Shank: Do your own version of a cool wall.
You
Crew Chief Eric: know, yeah, we’re, I think we’re going to do that. We can make that happen. All right. Last car to have pop up headlights. It’s actually a tie.
Executive Producer Tania: Pop up headlights.
Crew Chief Eric: Cause you know, pop up headlights are legit. Cool. Right. Remember when they were,
Executive Producer Tania: I can’t think of anything right now. My head is just like Miata, Miata, Miata.
Mark Shank: So what was that for the C5 that still had pop up headlines?
Crew Chief Eric: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It is the C5 Corvette. That is the last car to have pop up headlights outside of the Lotus Esprit.
Mark Shank: I feel like it was too obvious.
Crew Chief Eric: 2000, 2004 was the last one. All right. The last vehicle to have a carburetor,
Mark Shank: car,
Crew Chief Eric: truck, help me out.
Doesn’t matter all the above. This one’s a tough one. Cause you’re really reaching [01:19:00] back. Carburetors are pretty paleozoic at this point. I mean, the late 1970s,
Mark Shank: the five liter Mustang had a carburetor until like 86 or 85 where they finally went into fuel injection. So you’re looking, what would have had a carburetor after that?
Crew Chief Eric: All right. You ready?
Mark Shank: Yeah,
Crew Chief Eric: Chevy square body. Well, those still got, those still got carburetors. Everybody converts them back to carburetors actually from the factory with a carburetor, the 1994 is Zuzu pickup.
Mark Shank: Ah, I knew it was going to be something like that.
Crew Chief Eric: Damn it. All right. Tanya is going to love this next one.
The last car to have a front bench seat. This is one of her favorite cars.
Mark Shank: It’s going to be a Buick.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to be a Buick.
Executive Producer Tania: No, no, the real question, I’ve never said, I’ve never said that about a Buick. No, the real question is, if by favorite cars, he means cars that I hate. Yes, a hundred percent. Because if it’s cars that I hate, then it’s [01:20:00] got to be either an Impala.
Or or a
Malibu,
Crew Chief Eric: but you’re basically the
Executive Producer Tania: same car. So I’m at a loss right now.
Crew Chief Eric: And get this. This is pretty recent. It is. In
Executive Producer Tania: fact,
Crew Chief Eric: the 2013 Chevrolet Impala was the last vehicle to have a front bench seat. Rental turds of rental turds. I’ve
Executive Producer Tania: driven that
Crew Chief Eric: turd, I think. All right. Now for the bonus, the bonus.
This is a tough one. The bonus. The last car to be produced. I can’t even get this out. The last car to be produced with a hand crank start. We know the Landy had one. That’s true. That was in the seventies though. And Matt reminds us constantly of the ultimate party trick is hand starting his Land Rover.
Mark Shank: This is a tough one. I can’t, I can’t think of anything after the 70s that would have, I mean, it’s probably, it’s probably some, for a practical reason, some kind of work vehicle where they maybe they wanted to have. You know,
Crew Chief Eric: I, I would consider [01:21:00] this a work vehicle. It’s very utilitarian. I would almost say it’s an SUV.
I’ll give Mark a hint because I’ve
Executive Producer Tania: looked ahead because I had no idea.
Mark Shank: I was good. I didn’t, I didn’t.
Executive Producer Tania: Think outside the country,
Mark Shank: outside the country,
Executive Producer Tania: outside our country.
Mark Shank: That’s why this was the bonus question. You’re going to give me a global challenge. Oh, it’s hard. Like a Toyota Helix or something,
Crew Chief Eric: you know, that’s the right kind of body style, but I won’t, I won’t torture you anymore because even our, even our listeners are probably going, Oh my God, get it over with already from the Russian block, the 1998.
Lada Niva still had a crank start. Can you believe that?
Mark Shank: Of course a Lada. Of course a Lada had a crank
Crew Chief Eric: start. Because Lada. That’s cheating. You can’t say
Mark Shank: communist cars.
Crew Chief Eric: Because chips. That car does not need chips. It just has a crank start. Yeah, there’s
Mark Shank: no There’s no chips.
Crew Chief Eric: Oddly enough. It runs
Mark Shank: on chips.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s got a crank start but has fuel injection. So like wrap your head around that one for a second. [01:22:00] In other historical news, I just gotta read this. We don’t even need to dive into it. Apparently, We have finally stopped using leaded fuel. Yes. Let me repeat that. We have finally stopped using leaded fuel.
Algeria has used up their last bit of stockpile in 2021. I posted this and talked about it with some of our petrol heads here at GTM and they were laughing saying that according to some SCCA racers, Summit Point has about 5, 000 gallons of leaded 110 octane underground. That’s still available for you.
So maybe we’re not quite done with leaded fuel yet, but I just wanted to throw that out there.
Mark Shank: That’s just, what were they putting it in? Like,
Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know what runs on leaded fuel anymore. I mean, who shows up to the track with like a Hudson Hornet? You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t get it at any rate.
So switching gears, we don’t talk about Swedish cars very often.
Executive Producer Tania: No, we do not. However, who knew, although now is not the right time to be going there, [01:23:00] but maybe in like 10 years, if you find yourself in Sturgis, South Dakota, among having bike rallies and whatnot, there is apparently a Saab heritage car museum that has an extensive collection of immaculately kept classic Saabs.
And one Fiat. And apparently one Fiat.
Crew Chief Eric: So I looked through these pictures. This is really cool. I also feel like the pictures did the museum a disservice because now I don’t need to go there because I’ve kind of seen everything. But I also have a bigger question that needs to be answered. If this is a Saab museum, which I’m totally okay with, I mean, everybody’s got their thing.
Where are the jets?
Mark Shank: Well, they were born from jets.
Crew Chief Eric: What does that mean, exactly? It’s a sub car museum. Oh, okay, okay. Now we’re gonna qualify it. Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I’m just, like, South Dakota of all places, but hey.
Crew Chief Eric: Swedish migrants, I guess, [01:24:00] in that area? I don’t know.
Executive Producer Tania: An enthusiast. There was an enthusiast and he collected all these cars.
Apparently they all run.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s a very large assortment. I’m sure the two stroke ones are very difficult to get started up there when it’s cold. I looked at all the pictures and some of them definitely rank on my ugly car list for sure. Or, or the uncool wall, let’s call it that. I’m proud of people that do stuff like this.
I mean, go for it. I mean, do your passion and if you can get them for pennies on the dollar, so be it. And I’m, I’m happy that they all run and I’m, hopefully they’re being driven. The Fiat still confuses me, although I still think that’s the prettiest car in that whole museum.
Mark Shank: I’m the same way. I feel like particularly in this time of change with electric.
And I feel like when we were younger, you know, growing up in the nineties or whatever, it was more like a music culture. Like if you liked this car, then you didn’t like that car. I feel like a more broadly inclusive automotive enthusiast culture is kind of what we need if we want this hobby to survive, so yeah, man, you do.
You very proud of that guy. [01:25:00]
Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of incredible feats and being proud of something, what about a world record holding Volvo? And what do I mean by that? Gentleman by the name of Gordon, who has long passed away, his Volvo continues to live on. I think we talked about this car on a previous episode. The odometer has now turned over 3 million.
Miles. It is a P 1800 as seen in the original saint. Uh, for those of you that are old enough to remember that show, not the movie with Val Kilmer. I think this is epic. This is really cool to see a piece of European engineering still on the road, you know, 65 years later, let’s call it. And with that many miles on the clock, still being enjoyed, still being driven, being maintained.
And I think what it is above all, outside of being record breaking, whatnot is a testament to Maintenance. If you do your regular maintenance intervals, you keep track of things and you don’t let cars sit, then they will literally run forever.
Executive Producer Tania: It says that it has the original engine intact at 3 million [01:26:00] miles.
Caveat, it did have two engine rebuilds across 3 million miles and two paint jobs. Otherwise, the car is original. Can you imagine? You know, there’s that
Mark Shank: Greek, I don’t know what you want to call it, legend story, the ship of Theseus. Yes, Volvo is definitely the ship is definitely the ship of these years.
There ever was one. Everything has been replaced by maybe not everything. The enemy in that situation has to be rust,
Crew Chief Eric: right?
Mark Shank: Like you can fix things that break. Fine, but like preventing the car from completely falling apart, that has to take a lot of consistent diligence in regards to how the car is maintained.
Crew Chief Eric: It reminds me of cars that I’ve seen get sold by people or be abandoned by people where it’s like, I didn’t want to put the money in it to keep it going. And it was something dumb, like, Oh, I needed to change the lock cylinder. I need to change the spark plugs. And I just decided I’m going to go buy a new car.
And I feel for those cars. Maybe I’m, I’m in passion for these. inanimate objects, right? I, I, I [01:27:00] personify them in some way. It’s just like, if you do that little bit of maintenance, you put up that little bit of money up front, how many more miles could you have gone? How, how much longer could you have stretched your dollar?
This Volvo owes Gordon, even though he’s passed away, it owes him nothing at this point. I mean, can you imagine buying this car new in the 1960s and it’s still on the road today? Day
Executive Producer Tania: for $4,150 was the sticker price.
Crew Chief Eric: Convert that to today’s dollars.
Mark Shank: That was a 1966 doesn’t, that was a fair chunk of change.
Executive Producer Tania: It doesn’t matter. It went over 3 million miles. I don’t care if it was a 20 grand car. I mean that like holy moly.
Crew Chief Eric: And it’s probably worth more than what’s been sunk into it now, because it’s still a running driving P1800, which they didn’t make a ton of those cars. Anyway, that was the sporty two door Volvo sports coupe, beautiful car.
I really liked those. I I’d love to drive one. If somebody’s got that one out there, I’d love to get the behind the wheel of yet [01:28:00] another one of my heroes and be completely disappointed. But that’s not the point. It’s just, it’s a testament to doing the maintenance, putting in just a little bit of effort and taking care of cars.
And not abusing them. They’re not appliances. They’ll they’ll last you forever.
Mark Shank: Yeah. That’s 40, 000 in current value. I just jumped on the, uh, CPI inflation calculator. That’s not bad. 3 million miles for 40 grand in 1966,
Crew Chief Eric: Mark, we got to wrap up this because chips
Mark Shank: because chips, sure. Let’s EVs. So I don’t know, maybe not.
I guess technically it happened at the end of August, but when I was kind of going through the. The topic list, I thought it was worth mentioning TSMC, which is the world’s probably largest Silicon foundry. They announced a price increase of 20 percent and it just goes to show kind of the longevity of this challenge, your more profitable devices, the more profitable uses of that Silicon are going to absorb that 20%.[01:29:00]
And keep on chugging, right? Your iPhones, your consumer graphics cards, you know, you’re like, whatever, those kinds of things that have, you know, your higher retail margins, where in the automobile world, where they’re trying to buy in bulk, they’re trying to buy a discount, they’re trying, you know, they operate a much lower margins.
It just puts them at the back of the line. They don’t have the space. To so easily absorb that kind of price increase. And, and it does cause some broader concerns around the transitory nature of the inflation that we’ve been going through for the last several months. But just thought it was worth noting.
It’s certainly newsworthy. It’s out there. I mean, there’s lots of other kind of, if you want to look at the topic a little more broadly, there is certainly look at government investment in regards to opening some of these foundries in the United States. It’s billions and billions of investment. There’s certainly been a push in the COVID area to get our supply chain a little more consolidated and to move some of these foundries back into the United States, now that they’re all mostly automated anyway, the labor costs and things that originally moved them over there [01:30:00] aren’t as big of a deal.
It’s certainly is going to impact the auto industry.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And you bring up a really good point. And it’s also why we heard during this month that the iPhone 13 is finally debuting and yet there’s oceans of F 150s and Silverados that are sitting unfinished because they can’t get chips. So you’re right.
They’re going to prioritize the profit margins before they prioritize, you know, sometimes the need.
Mark Shank: That’s a little different. Like Apple was really smart in consolidating their supply chain. Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs. He’s not a product guy, but he is a supply chain guy. And so, you know, they did the acquisitions they needed to do.
And as they moved into ARM, they make all their own chips. They’re not licensing anything from Qualcomm or whatever, like everybody else. And they’re even getting into, you know, their own radios and stuff now. So their consolidated supply chain has really insulated them from that more broadly and the high margins of their devices, obviously.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s actually a great segue into our EV section, where Tanya is going to run us through some new concepts and some upcoming news on all the [01:31:00] EVs that are coming out here in the next couple of years.
Executive Producer Tania: So I think we’ve talked on and off about Rivian, if everyone recalls, uh, that EV automaker deposit on
Mark Shank: one of those years ago, did you,
Executive Producer Tania: well, you’re in luck because they finally rolled off their first production vehicle, first customer sale.
And that puts them at the first electric pickup truck, um, it’s unclear, you know, how many sales orders they actually have fulfilled and how many more they’re going to make because chips, but nonetheless, they can claim that they are the first ones to roll. An electric pickup truck off the line, and I’ve always liked the look of the Rivian.
I’m not a pickup truck person. Most people know that. Does not fit my hashtag, the lifestyle because it maintains a pickup truck look, and it’s a little bit futuristic, but not overly. I don’t mind it. It’s got that EV vibe. Unlike [01:32:00] the goldeneye and 64 cyber truck polygon polygon.
Mark Shank: When did you get the Goldeneye?
That’s amazing. Star Fox.
Executive Producer Tania: Oh, you, you haven’t seen that meme or that clip where someone actually created one inside of a Goldeneye, uh, or whatever.
Mark Shank: That’s awesome.
Executive Producer Tania: And it fits in perfectly as if it was designed to be there. Design
Mark Shank: this car. You have 12 triangles. Go, it’s like, it’s like an interview question that then somebody was like, that’s genius.
Let’s let’s actually build it. And you’re like, no, no, this is just one of those brain teasers. We use it in interviews. No, no, no. We’re doing it
Executive Producer Tania: like animals, like make a lion out of three pieces of triangle and two squares kind of thing. And you’re exactly right. That’s how they designed the cyber truck.
So anyway, I mean, that’s the news with Rivian. So it’ll be interesting to see kind of where their sales go and. And how the company bottom line gets affected by this in other news, speaking of Ruby and which I just came across this evening. So [01:33:00] their plant is in normal Illinois where this rolled out, but I guess they also have some offices because I think their headquarters are actually in California, but there was somebody company employee test driving one in camo gear and whatnot.
The incident is being reported as driver error. Oh man. And honestly, hopefully, because that’s a bad look for them, as they just roll off their first production vehicles to have one be in an accident if there was any sort of, you know, self anything going on. But nonetheless, from the pictures and whatnot.
The person was driving, maybe you would have needed to negotiate kind of a right hander, 90 degree ish turn, miss the turn and kind of kept going straight up the curb, up the grassy hill, through bushes into a parking lot.
Crew Chief Eric: I call that understeer normally.
Mark Shank: At least it’s got some torque, you know,
Executive Producer Tania: all
Mark Shank: the obstacles.
Executive Producer Tania: And then slammed into a parked [01:34:00] Ford Explorer.
Crew Chief Eric: At least the Ford could stop it. Which
Executive Producer Tania: then the Ford Explorer hit a parked Mercedes that was next to it.
Crew Chief Eric: Did the battery
Mark Shank: then burst into flame?
Executive Producer Tania: There was no injuries, there was no flames. Actually, there was very little damage to the Rivian. There was significant, seemingly, damage to the Port Explorer.
So I’m not sure, in terms of safety, what that’s saying, good or bad, about the Rivian. Maybe it weighs
Crew Chief Eric: 9, 000 pounds, like some of those other trucks we talked about.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s likely because a lot of EVs are just ridiculous in weight, but nonetheless, it’s very unfortunate to hear that they’ve had their first accident.
That
Mark Shank: sucks. Sorry guys. It’s like the
Crew Chief Eric: guys that bought the Hellcats and they wrecked them 10 feet from the dealership. I mean, this is like right on par. I
Executive Producer Tania: mean, it really sounds like it. And if it was driver error, I could totally see, you know, this thing is capable of, you know, [01:35:00] zero to 60 in less than whatever seconds that Someone just got buck wild behind the wheel and essentially lost control, which also isn’t a good look for the consumer that that’s a problem with all the EVs too much power.
We saw that report in Europe where that Tikon or something, where he launched it up the driveway. Like that was pretty bad.
Crew Chief Eric: His own house with this car is
Executive Producer Tania: brilliant. Something like that.
Mark Shank: You don’t have the same sensation of speed. It’s a legit problem. They’re super powerful and you don’t have the same sensation of speed.
I think the
Crew Chief Eric: problem is, is because the torque is instantaneous rather than in a petrol engine where you build up and you can feel it, you know, where the torque curve is coming on, you know, at what RPM it’s going to unload and all that with it, with the EV, it’s like, it’s, it’s a light switch. It’s all or nothing moving on to Tesla’s number one rival.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes. The Tesla fighter, if we will. So lucid air, apparently there’s some articles that are saying that it is [01:36:00] basically phenomenal to drive. I don’t know, but the more impressive piece that has more recently come out is that the EPA has given the lucid air dream a 520 mile range at over a hundred miles over the model S whatever their best.
Tesla version is so holy moly. That’s pretty impressive. And this thing weighs like just over 5, 000 pounds. Again, not a light vehicle by any stretch of the imagination. Do you
Crew Chief Eric: think we’d get more mileage if they made these things a little bit later?
Executive Producer Tania: I
Crew Chief Eric: mean, that’s a rhetorical question, right?
Executive Producer Tania: This thing has apparently 1100.
Some odd horsepower. So, I mean, how heavy are the batteries required to make a thousand horsepower at 520 mile range or whatever, right. Or, you know, maybe, uh, at that horsepower, I think the range actually falls to like four 70 something, but nonetheless, [01:37:00] that still would be the highest range EV period. And, and that’s quite impressive.
I mean, and who isn’t going to be like, Oh, you want me to sacrifice 50 miles for a thousand horsepower. Okay.
Mark Shank: And it still has 966 horsepower. If you want the full five 20, that’s pretty decent. Last I checked nine 66. I mean,
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, that’s ridiculous. I mean, that’s who needs that. I mean, I
Crew Chief Eric: do need, what is this need?
Hey, what do you speak up? It’s the want. The want is strong for the thousand horsepower.
Executive Producer Tania: So, I mean, that’s pretty cool. I believe it’s the 2022, so it should be Coming out soon. Coming around the corner pretty soon. So it’ll be, it’ll be interesting to see. I thought if I recalled the history here One of the main guys at Lucid was a former Tesla person, I believe.
Yeah, I believe
Crew Chief Eric: that’s right. Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: I guess that’s unfortunate that they lost him. Cause he must be doing something right.
Crew Chief Eric: I am still not sold on the look of the Lucid [01:38:00] area. You know, whatever. We’ll see it in person.
Mark Shank: It’s unattractive. And the interior is. Not that cool either. I mean, those are personal, those are personal preferences.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s still better looking than that Maybach thing.
Mark Shank: No, that that’s, that’s called the suppository on spinners. And
Crew Chief Eric: is that like the ballet cat or whatever that thing was? But anyway, so I feel like this era of car manufacturing has actually brought us back a hundred years. And hear me out on this one.
If you look back over like the 1920s and 1930s, there were a lot of very boutique manufacturers. You have all these crazy names like, Oh, you have Oakland. And obviously you have names like Packard and things like that, but it felt like everybody in their brother, literally in some cases, like the Bentley brothers were developing their own brand of car.
And so there’s all these little boutique manufacturers and now they’ve, you know, been absorbed by the big names and whatnot. But. We’re starting to see in the EV revolution, more [01:39:00] boutique manufacturers coming online. And one of them came across our desk, Alpha Motors. And I’m like, who the hell is Alpha Motors?
I guess Beta Motors is next followed by Charlie Motors. I don’t know, but they put out something that really got my attention. They call it the wolf. And it’s an electric pickup truck. And why do we love it? Because it looks like the Toyota from back to the future.
Executive Producer Tania: 100%. I would buy this pickup truck.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have said it.
It
Mark Shank: has a range of five miles. I mean, that has got to be the least aerodynamic thing ever made,
Crew Chief Eric: but it’s hella cool. It doesn’t matter.
Mark Shank: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It looks totally badass. I want one. I take that over a Rivian.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes, I would. I would. I would take that over a Rivian.
Crew Chief Eric: That thing is sick. And if you don’t know what we’re talking about, check out the show notes.
All the information is there. The pictures are, there’s pictures from every angle and it looks good from every angle. It is that classic Toyota four runner style. Like you’re used [01:40:00] to on back to the future.
Mark Shank: It’s a three box with big flared fenders and big knobby tires. It looks bad ass.
Crew Chief Eric: What else? What we don’t need bill is our next car.
Executive Producer Tania: Oh my. And our next car is unclear what its name is, but apparently it’s made by Opel. And it’s name is Rox E.
Crew Chief Eric: Like a boulder? Like a rock
Executive Producer Tania: rock? Like Rox as in the things you step on. Dash E. Is this the Rox E or the Amy E V?
Crew Chief Eric: Maybe it’s both. Like they had a baby or something. Because this thing is weird looking.
Mark Shank: It has a whopping 5. 5 kilowatt hour battery. That’s like a laptop.
Executive Producer Tania: Right? It’s Opal’s, ah, okay, here we go. So Citroen has what is called the A. M. I. A. M. I. The A. M. I. Sorry. The friend. Mon ami. It’s
the A.
M. I. The A. M. I. E. V. So Opal’s version is the ROX E. [01:41:00] And it’s about the size of a Power Wheels. Yeah, this is a
Mark Shank: Power Wheels with a roll cage.
The
Crew Chief Eric: This is a joke, like it’s a smart car. And then I don’t know what happened to that smart car. It wasn’t an accident or something. I mean, the seating position alone, the dashboard, just the interior cockpit would turn me away from the car outside of its overall aesthetics. Just being ultra French. But it’s just like, I would be uncomfortable in this thing from the word go.
Mark Shank: On the cobbled streets of Europe in some medieval city, I’m sure it’s totally fine. In America, you will die. A hundred percent. Don’t do it.
Crew Chief Eric: Don’t
Mark Shank: do
Crew Chief Eric: it.
Executive Producer Tania: Book service announcement.
Crew Chief Eric: Spare yourself. This one is because chips. It’s not coming to America.
Executive Producer Tania: We won’t see this one in America. But um, there’s another boutique manufacturer.
They’re known as Cupra and they have what they’re calling the urban rebel. And so they developed a concept, which is essentially an electric hot [01:42:00] hatch. And I can’t honestly say that I hate it because it is definitely the epitome of hot hatch, like fast and the furious hot hat. I’ve
Mark Shank: got one of these in grand theft auto.
Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. Like it’s something from like need for speed underground, where you go into the garage and you put all your ground effects, lights on it, You know, all that stuff. It’s like
Mark Shank: wheels.
Executive Producer Tania: It’s the scene from cars where
Mark Shank: every possible accessory
Crew Chief Eric: does look like the wheels from that seven 18. Actually the nose does too.
Here’s my take on this. First of all, you had me at CUPRA because I immediately started thinking about the Seats, which for folks that don’t know what Seat is, it’s the Spanish arm of Volkswagen. They’ve had the CUPRA, which is the layoff is a lay on. Which is basically a GTI. The CUPRA Rs are fantastic cars.
They’re, they’re a lot of fun. They’re, they’re actually in some respects, more powerful than the GTIs that we get here in the States, but they’ll never bring them, but that’s okay. What killed me on this article? It’s Jalopnik, right? So it’s the typical kind of clickbait and they [01:43:00] go, and I’m going to read this verbatim.
The CUPRA urban rebel concept is the electric hot hatch the world needs right now. In my best William Shatner impression. And I said, hell no. What the world needs right now is the GR Yaris. I’m standing up for Tanya on this one. Scrap this turd, bring over something that already exists that we already want.
I don’t need a boutique car. We need the GR Yaris. I we’ve said this a thousand times. This is not what the world needs.
Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but this is apples and oranges. The GR Yaris is a petrol car. Electric GR
Crew Chief Eric: Yaris. We still need. The GRRs.
Executive Producer Tania: We do still need the GRRs, but it’s on a totally different level. I think if any other manufacturer that we recognize badge this, we’d be having a different conversation.
Yes.
Crew Chief Eric: Because we don’t know who these folks are. They could be a skunk works for Say, for all we know, maybe they aren’t. It’s at least it’s not a lot of like we mentioned earlier. Who knows? [01:44:00] We’ll keep an eye on it. Maybe it’ll come to nothing. Maybe it’s just a rendering. I
Executive Producer Tania: mean, it’s a concept car. So only time will tell.
Speaking
Crew Chief Eric: of concepts that aren’t concepts that are actually rest of mods. We bring them up every month because there’s been some really cool ones. We talked about the Yeah. E Legend, which was an homage to the original Audi Quattro. We talked about Morgans being redone as EVs, Alfa Romeo’s, Opel Mantas, all sorts of really cool stuff.
There’s now a company that’s doing a short wheelbase Ferrari 250 remake. And it is. Absolutely gorgeous company by the name of RML, not a ton of details. You can check out the pictures and salivate over them via our show notes, but really cool. I like that more of this is happening. I am a huge proponent for this style of EV and this style of just car design in general, bring back classic designs that people will buy.
Hand over fist
Mark Shank: good Lord. That hits you right [01:45:00] in the fields, man. That is gorgeous.
Crew Chief Eric: Even in the white, which the Ferraris never came in. It’s just, it is just beautiful, beautiful car. How they’re able to do that without Ferrari breathing down their neck is beyond me, but
Mark Shank: wow. That was gorgeous. Geez. I’m just, I’m like, I’m in awe.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, I guess it’s time to transition and we’d be remiss if it wasn’t a drive through episode where we didn’t talk about. Tesla. That was your best Siri voice yet.
Mark Shank: Yeah, that was pretty good.
Executive Producer Tania: Thank you. I tried Tesla. So, uh, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a quiet month for Tesla in a way. I mean, the cyber truck still delayed.
They’re not doing this. They’re not doing that little roadster. Who knows? It’s still floating in space,
Crew Chief Eric: however.
Executive Producer Tania: They’re still dealing with a little teeny problem with their autopilot and the autopilot hitting parked emergency vehicles, [01:46:00] particularly police cars. And yet again, another Tesla. That is not fully self autonomous, even though they think it is.
Sideswipe the police car, nearly hit the police officer who I think at the time happened to be getting out of the car. So thankfully he wasn’t killed or severely injured, but it’s just adding to the list for the NHTSA to investigate what the heck is going on where the cars are seemingly getting very confused with the combination of it’s always happening in like low light settings.
So this was like early morning, so it was still dark outside and it’s seemingly like darkness plus the flashing of the emergency vehicle light is just, it’s like a, a fly to the electric bug zapper.
And they’re just, they’re just going, they’re just going. And, you know, again, the morons. Offense or no offense. I don’t care because you’re not paying attention. What are you doing that you’re letting your car [01:47:00] sideswipe a parked vehicle? You must
Mark Shank: want to
Executive Producer Tania: leave it there.
Mark Shank: I can’t believe I’m falling in the role of Tesla apologist.
I’m definitely not one, but it doesn’t make national news when anybody else sideswipes a cop that’s pulled over on the side of the road. And usually they don’t pull over very far. Sometimes they do that defensively to try and protect the car in front of them. They Hang their ass out over the line or whatever to
Executive Producer Tania: right.
And in a lot of States, it’s illegal for you to stay in the lane adjacent to the pulled over emergency vehicle. And if you cannot exit that lane, you have to reduce your speed by like 50 percent or something. They do definitely need to program something into their autonomy that would move the car in the opposite direction.
Not towards the way it would
Crew Chief Eric: just sideswipe the car in the lane next to him. So what’s fair
Mark Shank: enough, but it doesn’t make national news when a Ford escape doesn’t, right?
Executive Producer Tania: I think the problem is it’s not, it’s not so much Tesla. It’s so much that it’s always the car is in self driving mode. That’s always the common
Crew Chief Eric: denominator.
Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: Because [01:48:00] if it was just like, Oh, dumb ass, Tesla driver was driving and texting and they sideswiped a car. Yes. That’s no different than Ford Explorer driver. Dumb ass was texting lights, white car car. You know, when you’re somebody like Tesla, that’s claiming how awesome their self driving capabilities are and they’re fully autonomous, you’re putting a target on your back.
And you’re making it such that you’re going to be the attention of every little thing that happens because you’re claiming you’re something that you really aren’t.
Crew Chief Eric: See Mark, this is the lesson we all learn about the drive through. Remember I mentioned in our, in our pre session, we just don’t go there with the Tesla.
You let Tanya do her thing. You let her rant, let her get it out of her system.
Mark Shank: It’s like, I haven’t heard the actual empirical argument. Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Insurance companies ensure all these different cars. How many payouts do they make relative to mile driven on these cars? Autonomous driving, no autonomous driving.
Is it doing better or worse [01:49:00] than other expensive sedan? I haven’t seen anybody release that data set. I don’t know that. I mean, obviously they have the data. They absolutely have the data. You know, I haven’t seen any, any news around that. I mean, certainly what do they call it? Autonomous level three or whatever.
It’s, it’s a very dangerous point where it’s, it’s hard for humans. It’s hard to have the discipline to pay attention. It really is. So you either turn it off. So you have to pay attention all the time. Or you try to have the discipline to pay attention the entire time while you’re also kind of screwing around, because what else are you going to do?
Crew Chief Eric: I was going to say it’s called driving, but I mean, I’m not going to open that. Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I don’t disagree with you that we don’t have the numbers and there’s a lot of unsubstantiated claims that just say that there’s far less accidents with, you know, the self driving the set and the other, and all these nannies and aides that lane assist and all that stuff.
And, and, and that might be very true because I do think there is a subset of the population that is incapable of. Clearly keeping their focus on a single task at hand, which would be driving. And some of these aides are [01:50:00] beneficial to the people around them to keep them safe, but I just get very annoyed by,
Mark Shank: I love the way you worded that,
Crew Chief Eric: right?
That was awesome.
Mark Shank: Are you a lawyer? I have no idea what you want in real life. That was very. That was very specific wording.
Executive Producer Tania: I just get irritated by the ignorance or arrogance of people, the self driving, like stop calling it fully autonomous. It’s not, we’re not there yet. It does not exist as full autonomous.
It’s called a monorail. It’s something like a roller coaster where the thing is tied to a track that is full autonomous, but we’re not yet at a point where we can just. Take a nap in the driver’s seat, roll the seat back, put on Netflix and chill, and not kill somebody going down the road at two o’clock in the morning and you’re on a country road and you wanna go risk your life and drive off a cliff or into a tree.
By all means, live your best life for as long as you can. , I don’t know, don’t put other people’s lives unnecessarily in danger and, and maybe one day we’ll get there, but we’re not [01:51:00] in. Yeah. You know, rah, it’s only like 11 accidents on the grand scheme shore. But it’s a black eye in the whole autonomous vehicle thing.
And
Mark Shank: I hate the way that they face the market with it, where it’s like, if they were just going to the market where they’re like, yeah, accidents are happening and they do happen, they will happen and pay attention, assholes, uh, use the future responsibly, but instead they react so defensively and so aggressively against whoever bought it.
That, you know, whoever raises concerns like, Hey, there appears to be a pattern to these accidents, if they were more just transparent about the challenges with the current software, I think they would get a lot further.
Crew Chief Eric: I want to say this and I don’t want to belabor the point, but the one thing that I take from all this is I approach it the opposite way.
You know, I was jokingly saying, hang up and drive. You talked about, you know, being respectful of the future and the technology and stuff like that. When I look at driving, I think about the era in which we came up as drivers. Again, petrol heads of a certain age, we were the last of the analog [01:52:00] generation.
So we didn’t have a lot of tech, but we were early adopters of technology, but I see driving still as a freedom, as a privilege, things like that. And I don’t want to get into that debate, but what I also see it as is that moment, those 20 minutes, those 40 minutes, whatever it might be, where I get to disconnect from the grid.
I don’t have to think about work. I don’t want to answer emails. I don’t want to see your text message. I just want to turn on the radio, you know, my mixtape cruising in my five. Oh, with my carburetor and my hand crank and get where I’m going and just have a moment of decompression. And driving gives you that opportunity.
So think about it that way disconnect for just a moment, even if it’s to go to the local target or drop your kid off at school, put the phone down and just focus on driving and actually driving becomes very much second nature and you do relax. It’s not a high stress thing as long as you’re situationally aware.
We talk about that a lot. In racing, keeping your eyes up and just being aware of what’s going on. But [01:53:00] you do kind of let the rest of the world fade to gray. And it’s a moment of clarity that I don’t think we can get or harvest in a lot of other ways these days.
Executive Producer Tania: Unfortunately, we could tangent on that train of thought for a long time.
Cause I flat out, there’s people that have said they just hate to drive. So, but for a person that just. Does not want to drive or be positive with it, then get an Uber, right? You’re not, you’re not gonna, you’re not going to sell them on it’s their moment to disconnect because they don’t want to disconnect.
They don’t even want to be behind the wheel. Like if they could have somebody else driving them, they would. Right. So that’s for those people. Yeah. Self driving when it actually happens will be wonderful.
Crew Chief Eric: So let’s, uh, let’s switch gears.
Executive Producer Tania: We’ve hit on this already a couple times, electric cars and police cars, and apparently West Virginia.
The city of nitro, West Virginia, I didn’t know such a city existed. What a fancy name, which is near Charleston for those who are geographically not challenged for West Virginia has bought a Tesla model three. To be used as a police cruiser.
Crew Chief Eric: I got [01:54:00] questions
Executive Producer Tania: and they spent an additional 10, 000 on top of the 40, 000 to buy it, to outfit it with the light sirens and additional police equipment.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, not
Mark Shank: the sport model. Then
Crew Chief Eric: none of that is important based on the previous topic. We were just talking about, we have a Tesla. That’s a police car with lights and sirens. And we’re going to use it on patrol day, night, weather, withstanding, does it just like implode?
Mark Shank: The second autopilot’s engaged, it actually collapses in on itself in like a black hole and it just, it disappears.
Crew Chief Eric: And the police officer becomes like Quantum Leap. It’s all downhill from there.
Mark Shank: He now goes backwards in time to right histories and wrongs.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, my goodness. I think that’s all we need to say about that. I just, let’s follow this and see where it goes and how long this car actually lasts.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, my biggest question with all these [01:55:00] electric police cars and I believe we’re going to hit on.
On this topic, actually later, what do you do in a high speed chase? Like if you’re out running the cop, I mean, you probably could get away with it now because you only got to outlast the battery charge.
Crew Chief Eric: And I tell you what, a Tesla full tilt. I’ve done this on track and I wrote an article about it. It doesn’t last a half an hour at wide open.
We’ll call it wide open throttle.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, then you got to consider the battery was probably not fully charged to begin with.
Crew Chief Eric: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I mean, you can’t outrun Motorola. I’m not condoning any of this, but
Executive Producer Tania: you can outrun those batteries. I’m not saying you should outrun the cost, but we know it happens.
It’ll be a Florida man story coming up. I mean, it’s fine. It’ll be West Virginia, man. The last bit of Tesla news is interesting. And not necessarily indicative of anything. Electric. co, they issued an article that says Tesla obtains patent on its wild idea to use lasers as windshield wipers. [01:56:00] And there’s just so much here.
One could unpack.
Mark Shank: This is definitely Austin Powers, like sharks with fricking lasers on their head.
Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. And you need to put
Mark Shank: one of those sharks, like, uh, like it’s a windshield wiper.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes. It’s all very confusing and the take that it could just be that they came up with this idea and they’re patenting it because that’s what you do.
If you think you have an idea, put a patent on it so nobody else can take it. And you might not yet know what you’re actually going to use it for, but they framed it in this manner that really makes no sense. Talk about it specifically for debris on your windshield. So think dead bug, mud, bird doo doo, if you will.
I see it all falling apart very quickly.
Mark Shank: So my windshield wipers are misaligned. So my car blinded me, then my windshield melted from the heat.
Executive Producer Tania: And then the car got confused by the laser beam lights that were flashing at night during the rain. And then you crashed.
Crew Chief Eric: Yes, [01:57:00] it’s obvious and very apparent that the patent and trade office is full of bad ideas.
And this is just yet another one on that list.
Mark Shank: I would have thought they’d use it for heat and like some kind of anti fog.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s to give you like LASIK and cataracts. We’re
Mark Shank: going to burn dirt off of your windshield. That just can’t be efficient. That can’t be energy efficient.
Executive Producer Tania: And it sounds like they would not have a traditional windshield wiper blade going across the windshield.
It almost reads that way, but that would be impossible because what do you do during a torrential downpour? There’s no amount of lasers that are going to clear the water. And to do it, the laser would be so powerful that yes, it would burn your retina. Like it looks like a freaking
Crew Chief Eric: like Calvin Harris midnight rave.
It’s like Lights everywhere, laser beams, and shit. You might as well get out the glow sticks at that point. I
Executive Producer Tania: mean, it’s
Crew Chief Eric: gonna,
Executive Producer Tania: it’s gonna be
Crew Chief Eric: a
Executive Producer Tania: [01:58:00] travesty. Though it does beg the memory, the Cybertruck does not have windshield wipers, I believe. No, it has that, it
Crew Chief Eric: has
Executive Producer Tania: that
Crew Chief Eric: Etch a Sketch thing, where it moves, does some crazy thing on the, on the windshield.
Absolutely mental. And the Cybertruck
Executive Producer Tania: was delayed. Maybe it was delayed for laser beams. Chips. Because laser beams. The
Mark Shank: Model X was the Falcon doors, and the Cybertruck will be the Stupid windshield.
Crew Chief Eric: As you guys remember from last month, we decided to split up. We would be remiss and introduce something we like to call
Executive Producer Tania: lowered expectations.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And I got to ask a question. I mean, we’ve, we brought up Magnus Walker before he put out on his Instagram feed and they kind of, one of them went viral. The other one sort of fell to the darkness. It was the Lambo van. It was a rendering that he put together of. Basically taking an eighties Lamborghini Countach and morphing it onto a VW van again, as you can see the core vehicle through this.[01:59:00]
And he also did one of an F40 and people went nuts. Like, Oh my God, this is the most awesome thing in the world. Actually, I think got more press in a way than the release of the new Lamborghini Countach that we talked about last month. But I wanted to get your guys opinions. What do you think about this?
Mark Shank: Well, we won the Countach definitely looks better than the F40.
Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Like,
Mark Shank: like definitely. It’s funny that the F40 got a lot more attention. I guess I have to be inclusive along my comments earlier that we need a broader accepting car culture. I would certainly take pictures of this if I found it out in the wild.
That’s for damn sure.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s the coolest Vanagon I’ve ever seen. I
Executive Producer Tania: mean, if you told me that these were gen one transformers, totally be all over these. I would have both of them on my shelves and like expect them to transform into, you know, some robotic dude.
Mark Shank: Hang on. If it’s this or a Pacifica, I’m definitely taking the Coontosh version of the Mannequin.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow.
Executive Producer Tania: Shots fired.
Crew Chief Eric: I’ll tell you what, Pacifica is legit. [02:00:00]
Executive Producer Tania: Take the Coontosh in hand and one of those crate Ford electric motors.
Crew Chief Eric: Hey, now we’re talking. Now these would be really cool as ring buses. Like a Pantera. Can you make, well, that too, right? Can you imagine, but take these on the Nürburgring, like they have the ring taxis, these would be pretty slick to go around it.
I mean, I would pay to go around in a Lambo van on the Nürburgring. So that’d be pretty slick. I
Mark Shank: feel like if I made it all the way out there, I’d have better uses of my time.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s very true. That’s, I can’t argue with that. If you have
Mark Shank: infinite days of the track, if I’m going to live the Nürburgring, sure.
Crew Chief Eric: On the other side of lowered expectations, this one came from a friend of mine. She sent it to me and it was a TikTok link. And. A gentleman converted a vehicle into a life sized little red wagon, also known to many of us as the Astro Flyer. It’s cool. Oh,
Executive Producer Tania: I thought it at first was, I saw the handle and at first I was thinking back to that dude.
That made the
Crew Chief Eric: yeah, yeah, the [02:01:00] trolley
Executive Producer Tania: hand pump trolley train car thing. At first I was like, holy crap, is that this again? And then I thought it was a pedal cab kind of thing. But then I also thought it was one of those duck tour boats, right?
Crew Chief Eric: Nope. It’s a life size little red wagon.
Executive Producer Tania: Okay, different strokes for different folks.
Crew Chief Eric: I guess so. I mean, check it out for yourselves in the show notes, leave some comments, we’re really interested to see what you think about this thing. I think it’s kind of cool, but also just begs the question, why?
Mark Shank: Parade float.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, now we got to move on to Rich people thing. This one pulls at my send it button pretty hard.
And the title got me right away. And then I dug into it. Ever wonder if you could outrun a police pursuit?
Executive Producer Tania: You won’t have to wonder for very long if that police is a Tesla.
Crew Chief Eric: Or an ID3 or whatever. Yeah, or any electric vehicle. But now your wish [02:02:00] can come true because in the United Kingdom you can pay to try.
So wait
Executive Producer Tania: a second. And the very next subtitle to this article is It’s you and a Porsche Boxster or Mazda Miata versus a law enforcement Dodge Charger, GTFO. Right? That’s what I
said.
A Miata versus a Dodge Charger.
Mark Shank: On a racetrack. On a highway. Different problem.
Crew Chief Eric: On a racetrack. First off ramp and then Miata would be gone.
But here’s the deal. Let’s give you the bluff, right? The bottom line up front. An hour and a half, Includes the introductions to the basics, right? So they’re assuming people don’t have track time, whatever. So they go over safety, racing lines, throttle and braking, you know, typical HBDE and HBDC type of stuff, testing on the track, getting familiar.
And then you get to choose between the Boxster or the Miata. I would personally choose the Boxster knowing what Miata’s are like. No offense to miata lovers, just saying. I’m [02:03:00] in a police pursuit. I think I want the Porsche.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s a 15 minute police pursuit. So think about it as a shortened track session and you’re being chased by a Dodge Charger and your attempt is to escape.
Where you’re escaping to, I don’t know, because you’re lapping the track. I feel like I do this on any given weekend at the track anyway. And it probably costs a lot less, but I like the idea of the cherries and berries chasing me around, but not in the Miata. That’s for sure. That is for sure. Now, if you had told me, come to the track with your own car and outrun the cops, hell yeah, let’s do this.
I’m in it to win it.
Mark Shank: Yeah, I mean, it seems it seems a little gimmicky. I was the headline was So cool. I was like, Oh, this is gonna be awesome. I think it was one of the old top gear episodes. Maybe it was top gear us, or they had like a military base where they’d abandoned the housing section. And so they ended up doing some little contests where they’re running from Stig or Stig’s chasing them around the housing section.
And so you had this kind of residential [02:04:00] setup, but of course there’s nobody there. So if you jump a curb or run into a house or something, it’s not a big deal. I was hoping it might be something like that. It seems like just a way to play flashlight tag. Yeah,
Crew Chief Eric: exactly. And in a Miata, you’re not going to get very far in 15 minutes.
I hate to break it to you folks, especially with a Hemi charger behind you. It’s not going to work. It’s not going to take him very long to catch you. You better have like a three minute headstart or something.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, if you’re in the market for a luxurious motor home and you happen to have a cool 2. 4 million burning a hole in your pocket, You could check out a German brand called Volkner mobile that makes a very luxurious motor home for which you could also slide your Bugatti or other high performance luxury car underneath in its own private garage.
Mark Shank: I love that the second picture is an I 8 that’s a bit of a change.
Crew Chief Eric: I
Mark Shank: mean, picture number one, [02:05:00] Bugatti Chiron, picture number two, an I 8. We picked up for five bucks.
Crew Chief Eric: We’ve seen these before on the old top gear, where they showed this being done with a Morgan arrow eight, if I remember correctly, and they had an older Volkner on there.
So I’m glad to see that they’re still around. Didn’t realize there was a huge market for these things. Redefines the toter home and the toy hauler and whatnot. But, uh, yeah, if you got 2. 4 million bucks to burn, what, what the hell not send it,
Mark Shank: it looks super nice inside. I don’t know if it looks 2. 4 million nights though.
Executive Producer Tania: And maybe if 2. 4 is. Too steep. Maybe the stereo system is an option because I would save you 355,
Crew Chief Eric: 000. Whoa. Brings it down to a cool 1. 9 million. All right. More taxes, tags, and insurance. But it wouldn’t be a drive through if we didn’t finally reach our most anticipated part of the show, our Florida Man Stories.
Executive Producer Tania: So the first one is very interesting and unexplained. [02:06:00] Uh, uh, uh, no pun intended. Or was it a UFO sighted on the Florida turnpike and apparently it’s legit was not photoshopped, but there’s no explanation as to why it is gigantic metal circular thing was driving down the turnpike.
Mark Shank: I mean, it’s, it’s right in the name.
U F O. There’s no F here. It was driving.
Executive Producer Tania: It was a U D O. Unidentified driving object was seen on the floor of Turnpike.
Crew Chief Eric: I just want to know which VW Beetle this was built on top of. Thing is tragic. And I love the fact what makes it even better is the cover photo, which is in our show notes, looks like every other alien Bigfoot sighting photo where every freaking person now has like triple and quadruple high definition [02:07:00] cameras on their cell phone.
And this thing is grainy as shit. Like it was taken on an Olympus. From like 1982, like I do not
Executive Producer Tania: understand. Yeah. These people are taking 25 megapixel photos on their, whatever phone this thing looks like it was a Polaroid from the favorite Instagram comment was. New Tesla.
It’s the Model U. It’s the Model U, baby. I bet
Mark Shank: it’s the CyberDisk. Oh
Crew Chief Eric: man, but you know what? I bet this has Home Depot parts. This
Executive Producer Tania: is guaranteed to be made in someone’s basement with Home Depot parts. Dude, that
Crew Chief Eric: cockpit alone just is comically cartoonish. Like,
can you imagine driving this freaking thing down the highway?
It’s just brutal. It’s brutal.
Mark Shank: I mean, the aerodynamics, like, at what speed do you start generating [02:08:00] lift? I mean, look at the shape. Like, you’re gonna, that thing is, it’s, it’s, It’s genuinely dangerous.
Executive Producer Tania: It looks so unstable.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, guaranteed. It’s like some 72 year old man driving to the flea market. Like, you know, pick up cucumbers or something.
It’s just, oh, it’s tragic.
Mark Shank: It’s like, like that Mercedes from 2000 or whatever that just flipped up in the air. It’s like, as soon as that guy hits 55, he’s taken off.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, the CLK GTR. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, from uh, Lamonts. Alright, what’s next? You’re killing me.
Executive Producer Tania: So we’re gonna take a detour real quick. Out of Florida, we’re gonna go north to Vermont.
Whoa.
Crew Chief Eric: We haven’t been to Vermont yet.
Executive Producer Tania: We’ve never been to Vermont before and honestly this seems very uncharacteristic of, of a Vermont Ian. But hey, there’s all types everywhere. So apparently there was a man in Vermont charged with stealing five Teslas. Oh, but also lighting it on fire on Lake Champlain.
So he bought them with [02:09:00] initial small payments and then started doing a whole multiple bank accounts and all different places trying to bullshit his way out of pain for them. And then the fifth one. Apparently, because I guess he couldn’t get the right paperwork to turn around and sell these cars right away after he bought them for nothing and didn’t finish the payments, he drove it out onto the lake when it was iced over.
And then it allegedly just caught on fire spontaneously,
Mark Shank: was there like an ambulance or something nearby? There might
Executive Producer Tania: have been like an emergency vehicle out on the lake that it slammed into and then combusted, but he tried to file an insurance claim. Of
Crew Chief Eric: course he did,
Executive Producer Tania: which was rejected. So kudos to that insurance adjuster, uh, or insurance agent, the vehicles apparently totaled 607, 000.
Good God. So these were high end Tesla’s, I guess.
Mark Shank: This is where the, uh, direct to consumer market is good because normally a dealer would have to eat that [02:10:00] a relatively small business would be stuck with that payment to the bank, but nope, that comes right out of Elon’s pocket. So
Executive Producer Tania: how do you feel about this guy?
When he puts your name, you’re allegedly friends with this dude and he puts your name on these purchases.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, that’s like your buddy signing you up for porn magazines too, right? And it’s the same thing.
Executive Producer Tania: Who knew these people were in Vermont, but they’re there too, ladies and gentlemen. So,
Crew Chief Eric: you know, it could have been worse.
He could have done like that Porsche guy we talked about last year, who printed his own checks on the printer at home and then went bottom with that. So, you know, Hey, there’s all different ways that approach this.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, let’s go back down to Florida real quick. So there is a link out there of a Facebook video of a fabulous bystander who stopped, observed this and recorded it.
So thank you to those people.
Crew Chief Eric: Was it grainy or was it actually like visible?
Executive Producer Tania: No, it’s pretty good. I mean, he, I wish he was a little bit closer so I could [02:11:00] see better, but it’s enough. So Florida man was pulled over in the middle, you know, whatever the highway there was road, minor highway, not major. And, uh, he got out and then instead of just Staying in the car or just standing outside the car.
You should never get outside the car unless the police directed you to. He starts twerking in the middle of the road and it’s raining outside. So there’s a Florida man twerking in the middle of the frickin road. And then the police tase him to subdue him.
Mark Shank: I, I can’t. I cannot unsee this. And I want, and I want to.
Executive Producer Tania: You don’t want to unsee it. It’s fantastic. This is just, oh, it’s epic.
Mark Shank: I mean, the restraint from the officer is pretty good, like, he could have tased that guy a couple minutes earlier.
Yes, he could have.
But he let it go, you know, thinking maybe he’d twerk himself out and get a little tired, I guess, and get compliant.
Like,
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’d rather see this [02:12:00] guy twerking in the middle of the traffic than those assholes we talked about that are doing donuts in the middle of the beltway, you know, God, I stopped, I stopped for the twerking. I mean, you know, it’s entertainment. So what the hell is going on?
Executive Producer Tania: And
the next one. Must’ve been the Vermont guy’s cousin or something, but you know, these are more like dumbest criminal files.
So Florida guy, he, uh, steals a car from a Chrysler Dodge Jeep dealership. Then he turns around and tries to trade it back into the same dealership.
Crew Chief Eric: Because we’re never going to check the bin,
Executive Producer Tania: which they did do and realize that the car that went missing on their lot just a few days earlier was a Was, in fact, this same car now trying to be traded in.
Oh my
God.
So good job on you. I do love the comments. So you always got to read the comments. Did he have the dealer tag still on it?
Mark Shank: That was your first clue. Hey, Bob, you know, the dealer tag that went [02:13:00] missing just came in for traded.
Executive Producer Tania: But if that wasn’t bad enough. Oh, please, please tell me there’s more. I mean, you can just read the title and it just explains the whole article, right? So, Florida man arrested for indecent exposure after driving naked through seven toll booths.
Mark Shank: Well, I mean, was it summertime? Cause I mean, it’s hot in
Executive Producer Tania: Florida. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, it was late August, early September in Florida. So yes, Was
Mark Shank: he so fat that he covered his private parts? In which case, I mean, is that really indecent exposure?
Executive Producer Tania: The toll workers could apparently see those areas.
That’s
Mark Shank: unfortunate. That’s the one time where being really overweight could be helpful.
Executive Producer Tania: He was nudist. He was a nudist. That’s his defense. It’s
Mark Shank: a religious defense. It’s part of his religion.
Executive Producer Tania: The hilarious part is, the gentleman, Phil Yaw, his last name, Phil Yaw was identified through [02:14:00] photo comparison and security footage.
I’m just gonna let Photo comparisons
of what?
Mark Shank: Brings a whole, brings a whole new definition. I’ve seen that dickhead before.
People just get the freaking easy pass. I’ve seen that asshole before. Damn it. He’s back
Executive Producer Tania: to round out the Florida man. I kept this one for last. Well, I thought this one was amusing and you know what, this person, you know, he got fed up. He got tired. You know, he’s probably tired of spending money, having to repair his car.
And he’s, he’s clearly. An environmentally conscious individual. So I give him props because he got tired of the private road that he drives on being in poor condition, riddled with potholes. So what does he do? He takes matters into his own hands and he plants a banana tree in the pothole.[02:15:00]
Crew Chief Eric: So now instead of driving over the pothole, you have to evade a banana tree.
Executive Producer Tania: Yep. Yes. So in the, and you know what he considers himself warning other motorists. That the potholes there because you’ll see the tree. You might not have seen the pothole. Oh, so there’s
Mark Shank: some definite upsides here, right? So number one, you’d have a really easy measurement for how long the potholes remain unfixed, because you can see how tall the tree is.
And if you click on the picture, it’s surprisingly tall. I’m surprised no one just ran over the damn thing. It’s like four or five feet tall, which is crazy. Um, I kind of think a downside would be the root system wouldn’t be so great for the road. is already obviously imperiled all by itself. I have to think that part is maybe not great.
Executive Producer Tania: That’s true. Long term, this tree is going to cause more damage than good.
Mark Shank: But you said it was a private road.
Executive Producer Tania: And I don’t know what that means.
Crew Chief Eric: Probably not maintained by the city or the county or the township, [02:16:00] so.
Executive Producer Tania: Right. But what is that? Is it, is it his own road then?
Mark Shank: I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s a trailer park in Florida with an HOA that is somehow shockingly behind on its dues.
Maybe because it’s a trailer park in Florida and they can’t afford to keep up the roots.
Crew Chief Eric: So we put in a banana tree. You can afford the
Mark Shank: banana tree. Obvious solution is you plant a banana tree in the potholes.
Crew Chief Eric: Because the money is in the banana stand, right?
Executive Producer Tania: I, you know.
Crew Chief Eric: There’s a little arrested development for you.
Executive Producer Tania: He’s got a business going here. So kudos to him. He’s being environmentally conscious because it does say. The idea came to his mind after having to fill holes in the street with cement multiple times. So this gentleman has been taking it upon himself to do road repair that hasn’t been working.
Mark Shank: He’s been pouring quikrete into
Crew Chief Eric: potholes.
And oddly enough, I think what saddens me the most is that regardless of whatever he’s using, quikrete, [02:17:00] concrete, dog manure, I don’t care. A banana tree is somewhat cheaper than all of those items that you’d be putting in a pothole. That just baffles my mind.
Mark Shank: I mean, how, I don’t even know how the seeds on it, where do you get the seed for banana?
Did he use like a split or did he take a cutting?
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I am not, I am the furthest thing from a botanist. So he went to the
Executive Producer Tania: local, he went to the local garden center. He picked up the pre started pre grown potted banana plant, probably. And just plop it in there with some
Mark Shank: Miracle Gro. Miracle Gro is not cheap though.
Executive Producer Tania: You know,
Crew Chief Eric: again, solid logic, environmentally friendly approach to fixing the road. Ah, Florida. You delight me every month. There’s just so much going on there, but unfortunately we have to go behind the wall very quickly for some motor sports news. And this month we concentrate mostly on open wheel racing.
And I’m just going to do a couple of quick things. First up, we talked about Michael Andretti starting his U S based formula one team last month. He has apparently signed a gross John or gross Jean, or however you want to pronounce it [02:18:00] to run on the Andretti auto sport team in 2022. So that’s solidifying some dates, solidifying a name driver.
I’m really excited to see how that goes for team Andretti and wish them the best of luck. In addition to that, there was a pretty. Epic crash that we posted the video for on our show notes that happened at spa after spa has now finally been reopened during the formula W series. It’s a pretty bad pileup there’s in multiple angles, slow motion in real time, et cetera, all I can say is there must’ve been debris on the track and somebody or a liquid that they didn’t see.
And one of the flaggers didn’t catch it. It happened basically right at Eau Rouge, pretty bad accident there. My other big thing was formula W. Question mark, but we can save that. We’ll put a pin in it and talk about it on another episode. Meanwhile, more drama in Formula One land.
Executive Producer Tania: The non drama side is that Kimi Raikkonen has finally announced his retirement, but with that brought a whole [02:19:00] shuffling of drivers as he leaves the seat at Alpha.
Much to the correct speculation of folks, Botas leaves Mercedes, fills the seat from Kimmy in Alpha, George Russell is moving to Mercedes to team with Lewis Hamilton, and they’re bringing back Alban to fill the now vacant Williams seat from George Russell.
Crew Chief Eric: And we got Grossjean going to Andretti next year, so there you go.
Executive Producer Tania: But the real drama came at the Monza race where there was another. Incident between Verstappen and Hamilton, which took them both out. I don’t know my Monza turn numbers, but as they’re coming down, you know, past start, finish pit lane out the right hander, sharp right hander into the, you know, 90 degree right, 90 degree left, that quick chicane right there.
Hamilton came out of the pits. He had established front wheels in front of Verstappen, who was already hot on track. Uh, Hamilton came in on the inside into that first [02:20:00] turn. Verstappen tried to take the outside. Of course, you immediately have to come over to the left to make the next turn. There was a pinching off that happened.
Essentially the tires of Verstappen hit, hit Hamilton’s that shot Verstappen up on top of Hamilton, where his car then ended up coming to rest. And when you watch kind of the replay, you actually see that. If the halo hadn’t been there, Lewis Hamilton would probably either be dead or very critically injured because the front or back tire of Verstappen’s car actually bounced off his head.
You know, most of that force was luckily absorbed by the halo, but there was still impact. So had that halo not been there, that would have been a catastrophic incident. Good on formula one for making these safety improvements. To help save these drivers lives at the end of the day, it was deemed that Verstappen was more at fault in this incident, being a little too aggressive, I think was the final ruling he’s, I think, receiving like a three place penalty at the start of the next race to
Crew Chief Eric: no one’s surprise, [02:21:00] right?
Mark Shank: I don’t even follow. Formula one that closely, but that accident certainly made it into my, you know, new cycle. And it’s just that kind of safety stuff. If they can make those improvements, they need to.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And a lot of us laughed about that halo and how goofy it looks and it impairs the driver’s vision and all this kind of stuff.
And I was still skeptical on whether or not it works because it’s very rare that a formula car like flips over, you have an accident like this. I mean, this is reminiscent of some like weird carting accident where one goes underneath the other one kind of deal. But I often wonder too, that they make these safety improvements.
They make some of these. Drastic changes. And then that gives the drivers a false sense of invincibility where they’re like, well, I can risk because now we have this added safety thing. And so maybe, you know, we can try a little bit harder. So I often wonder that it comes at an expense and there’s a balance there.
And so maybe if it wasn’t there, then they would know, Hey, I’m not going to take that risk. I’m going to back off. I’m going to give them the space. Like you didn’t, prost Senate days when they would battle it out and take each other out, it was never like this. Like, I feel like they’re a lot [02:22:00] more aggressive now, or maybe just for stoppings, more aggressive.
In general, you know, he is a former Carter and things like that. He’s just, maybe it never got out of his system. I’m not trying to make excuses. I just, I’m glad it’s there. Hamilton’s still around and all that, but I think
Executive Producer Tania: there’s been some other accidents though, that haven’t been necessarily contact on contact like this, where the halo has probably saved the driver’s life.
Mark Shank: That’s the whole rugby versus football, you know, analogy relative to the protective equipment and do American football players take more risks. I think there’s probably some validity is it’s not mutually exclusive. It can be both of those things.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, unfortunately we don’t have a ton of other motorsport news this month.
You know, we’ve been so busy with everything else that’s been going on, including Florida man stories, but we want to just wrap up the show here with some local news. and shout outs and whatnot and reminders of things that are coming up. So for anybody that’s listening, this is obviously airing on the 28th of September.
Our town hall is the 29th. It’s our open general assembly [02:23:00] meeting. If you want to come and meet some of the crew here at GTM, some of the region chiefs, other members, it’s a bit of a happy hour type of thing. Format. We talk about things. It’s your opportunity to voice your opinion or come check us out and see how you like it.
If you want to become part of the team and become part of our ever growing organization, details for that are on our website, gtmotorsports. org. Look under club events and the information is there readily available for you. On to our track side report sponsored by hpdjunkie. com. What’s coming up in September, October.
The two hottest things that have come across my desk right now is Hooked on Driving has added another date to their calendar, kind of last minute. They’re going to be at Palmer Motorsports Park the weekend of October 9th. It’s been a while since HOD has been to Palmer. I was at the last time that they were there and I loved it.
The fastest mountain road you’ve ever raced on. They actually blew off the top of a mountain to build this racetrack up there. So if you haven’t experienced Palmer yet, there’s this little bit of added risk and awesomeness, because it’s very different than any [02:24:00] other racetrack you’ve been to, but even if you just want to go and check it out and you live in the Northeast, head on up to Palmer and see what it’s all about and meet the friendly folks over at Hooked on Driving.
Now for us here at GTM, a lot of us are wrapping up our season. We got folks at Indianapolis right now at the SCCA runoffs. We got events. Now through basically November where we wrap up with the Audi club. But for those of us here on the show, we’re probably wrapping up our season this year at the end of October, October 22nd through 24th at Watkins Glen.
So if you’re going to be in that area and you want to kind of check it out, we’re going to go visit with our friends at Hooked on Driving up at Watkins Glen. So be sure to join us up there, October 22nd through 24th. Now, I also want to give a big shout out To our newest sponsor, American muscle. com American muscle.
com is your source for Mustang Camaro and Mopar performance parts. So be sure to check out American muscle. com for details. And we look forward to having them on our show in the future to talk about everything they offer, how they [02:25:00] came to be and how they can help you with your Ford Chevy or Mopar performance car.
So stay tuned for more on that.
Executive Producer Tania: And in case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired earlier this month. This month was filled with crossovers. We got our drink on with health and hydration consultant Ken Newbill as we discussed techniques for beating the dreaded track hangover.
Intrigue, espionage, and the occult was the theme when we spoke with author and historian John W. Warner IV about his book series, Little Anton. And be sure to check out the follow on Patreon Pit Stop episode where we go beyond Little Anton. Hashtag aliens. And in the biggest no prep drag race event of the season, we lined up original verse sequels in a movie showdown with Steve and Izzy from Everything I Learned From Movies.
And if we didn’t have enough crossovers this month, tune in for a bonus episode with Carolyn Ford and Mark Sanel of Tech Transforms Podcast, where we speak about the intersection between racing and information technology. Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and [02:26:00] please look forward to more great episodes.
This season.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And some quick shoutouts anniversaries within GTM. Sam Harrington, seven years. Brian Shad, our Northeast Region chief. Six years. Dave, she from the Southern States region six years. Bobby Paul Shock two. Jeremy Riner down in Southern states as well. Two years and new member. Ben Smith, also from the Southern States region has joined us and everything we talked about on this episode will be available on gtmotorsports.
org as part of the show notes that follow along with this episode. And, you know, if you’re looking to be a part of break fix, you have some ideas. Do not hesitate to reach out and give us a buzz, send us an email. And also remember that when you listen to these episodes, although the drive through is a little bit on the longer side, don’t forget.
To smash that like button subscribe by doing that. It really helps us move up the ranks, beat the algorithms and get more exposure for our ever growing petrol head fueled podcast [02:27:00] series. And I do want to take a moment as a special. Thank you again, to Mark Shank, our returning guests from the, what should I buy nineties episode for coming on, putting up with all the antics and all the topics that we went through, it was an absolute blast.
And thank you again for coming on the show and filling in for Brad.
Mark Shank: Thanks a lot. It was a ton of fun. Glad to do it.
Crew Chief Eric: And we would be remiss if we didn’t thank our executive producer, Tanya, for all the hard work she puts into organizing the show and keeping us on track and keeping us honest.
And on that bombshell again for All the folks, all the members, the fans, the families, the subscribers, everybody that supports grantor motorsport. Without you, none of this would be possible. Thank you all and we’ll see you next month.
Bye.
Thank you.[02:28:00]
There’s some idiot on behind me. Hi. Lean out the window and scream. Hey, watch. Trying to do blind. Me wife says maybe we should pause.
Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
org. We’d love to hear from you.
Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider [02:29:00] subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.
For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.
