B/F: The Drive Thru #9

• Everything We Know About The Corvette Stingray SUV

Mustang Mach-E 1400 “Hot Sauce”

• Mazda Enters The American EV Market With The MX-30 With Rotary Engine To Follow
• Follow-up: South Korean Battery Makers SK & LG Settle Dispute

• A Sandwich Wrapper Forced Fernando Alonso to Retire

• We Found Ford's Incredible Turbine-Powered Semi-Truck 'Big Red' That's Been Lost for Decades
• New “ugliest car” has to be added to our list: 1973 MOHS SAFARIKAR
• CARMAX UNICORN - Manual Transmission 2010 Chevrolet HHR SS – Low Miles, Reasonable Price

BIG RED “Experimental Turbine” Truck

• Forget SUVs. These auto makers think tiny electric cars are the next big thing
• Potentially Deadly “Zoom Zombies” are Roaming the Streets, a New Report Finds

• Motorsports park will not be built in Oak Ridge

• Tesla Owners, Say ‘Open Butthole’ and Get a Little Surprise

Tesla Roadster Door Handle – Reveal!

Tesla “Easter Eggs” discovered in voice command system

• 2024 VW ID. Buzz Electric Van's U.S. On-Sale Date Confirmed
• VW Beetle rebooted as Punk Cat electric car
• BUGATTI Super Bike Concept
• VOLTSwagen? Legit name change or bad April Fools joke?
• Possible SEC investigation against VW for name change prank misleading investors and causing 16% increase in share price.
• Audi debuts the A6 e-tron.

911 v M4 showdown

[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 the drive through, episode number nine, or the second episode of season two, April 2021 edition. 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.

The end is nigh. The end is nigh.

They’re coming for us!

Tanya, why do you say that?

So apparently there [00:01:00] is a article talking about the California senators that are pushing our president to finally set an end date for new gasoline car sales in the United States. What is that date? Apparently our friends on the western coast want 2035. To be that deadline.

Read my list. No new gas powered vehicles will be sold in the states. So maybe they just want that for themselves and not necessarily the entire United States.

I don’t know the way I read that article. I mean, it’s ambitious for one. It’s an aggressive schedule to make that kind of declaration, put the edict on the tree to say 2035, but I did read on to see they are saying

for the, they are asking for the whole us.

Exactly. They’re making some changes to the, the standards. They want to see 51 [00:02:00] miles to the gallon. They want it to be federalized. We all know that evs are powered, By unicorn farts. So I’m really wondering, you know, what the impact is going to be by 2035.

But that’s okay because, and you’ll hear about this later, but in 2035, you’ll still be able to buy a brand new 2016 Dodge.

We will get there. You’re right.

2035. Feels like it’s around the corner. And it sort of is.

How many movies did you watch in the 80s that said in the year 2020? That was, that was last year folks. Or the Conan

O’Brien skit. In the year 2000.

Yeah, I was gonna say not even 2020. They were all like in 2002. Begs lots of questions.

Do we even have enough? Raw materials for making batteries that could sustain a world, well, at least the United States world that is fully electric. And what [00:03:00] about the rest of the globe, Europe and Asia, they’re all pivoting, you know, to electrified cars and all of our cell phones and laptops and Xbox and playstations and TVs and everything is battery operated.

There are certain raw materials that go into these devices. Not enough.

There’s not enough lithium to go around. I mean, maybe that’s why we’re exploring on Mars. We’re going to create it or something. I don’t know, but I don’t think there’s enough lithium to go around and, and even recycling it is, is questionable.

It’s not like a traditional battery where you can use virgin lead, you can use recycled lead and still create batteries. You know, the whole process there, the chemical processes that they, that they’re eating the lead and creating electricity. Lithium is a whole nother thing. And is the recycling really there?

Well, recycling is great. However, the problem with all kinds of recycling, whether it’s your recycling that you put up the street once a week for paper and cardboard and plastics is cost prohibitive. It’s very [00:04:00] expensive to recycle and that’s what gets you is, yeah, maybe you can recycle these lithium batteries 100%, but if it costs you 25 times making a new one, that’s cost prohibitive, right?

That’s what So until you kind of get those costs down, it’s difficult to do that. And if that’s where we live right now, which is likely because. This is all new. So there aren’t just, you know, lithium or whatever recycling centers just sitting out there in in mass that can handle the volume that could be coming down the road.

So it’ll be interesting. That’s why it all just feels like the infrastructure is not there. I mean, there’s still going to be tons of gas cars because there’s the used car market, but even there, if the emission standards become stringent and they, they kind of go back to one of those policies where it’s like, you got to get rid of it because it’s not meeting, or you can only drive it X miles a year and all this stuff, or if they implement things like that.

Okay, that’s great that there’s a [00:05:00] huge used car market, but then you won’t be able to drive the cars.

So, I mean, I hate to say people are going to cringe when I say this. There’s a few people that have kind of pinned me to the wall before where I say the answer is always diesel. And I know it’s not the cleanest thing.

If we could figure out how to clean it, they’ve already proven with diesels, you can get 50, 80, a hundred plus miles to the gallon. If you could do a diesel electric hybrid of some sort, it would be the best pairing of both worlds. But I know we’re shying away from fossil fuels, but even if you look at the bigger picture of the 900 pound gorilla in the room, You still have the aging power plants in the United States that are not converted over to green power of any, of any sort of major substance to offset, you know, our coal and, and ancient, you know, aging power plants.

So I don’t know. It’s tough. I think it’s aggressive. I think it’s ambitious. I’m really curious to see where we are in 2035, if that’s the target date, but,

well, the other thing is, you know, [00:06:00] last month we talked about Porsche unveiling that they’re. You know, working on their e fuel, taking CO2 and converting it into gasoline.

You know, that solves one component of the emissions problem, the small piece. And so if that comes to fruition, that becomes something that manufacturers can do economically. Because as a follow up piece to that, if we didn’t mention it last time, more recent news is ExxonMobil is partnering with them to kind of advance that technology.

So If you get majors behind them, and they’re able to bring the cost of doing this, this isn’t new technology, this has been around for decades, but if the cost to produce comes down and it becomes affordable, well now, we are converting to natural gas, not coal, that’s cheaper, that’s better in many ways, you know, there’s still a cost, emissions cost to creating these batteries and whatnot.

If that life cycle piece is equal and you’re, you’re making gasoline, but that gasoline doesn’t have the same level of emissions. [00:07:00] How does that change in 2035? Does that make it more attractive? Is that enough to curb the climate issues? Part of the climate issues? I don’t know. It’s complicated. I still don’t think no EVs is the correct answer.

I think they do have a place. It would be nice to see them again in major cities. Taxis, buses, things that are just. out chugging and driving and taking up time and space on the road, not going anywhere. If they’re not sitting there chugging fumes out the tailpipe, that’s a great outlet for EVs. Now, the whole United States on an EV, I don’t know, and by 2035, no more new gas sales.

I mean, the price of EVs, then also the other piece of this, they need to come down because who is going to be able to afford a 60, 70, 80, 000 EV,

And then the jolt in your electric bill on, you know, having to charge them on two 20 for rapid charging and all that. I mean, I’m hearing numbers from people [00:08:00] where their electric bills jumped 200, 300 a month because they went to EVs and off of gas.

So is that about the same as what you’re spending in fuel? I don’t know. Right. And can we talk

about the electric bill for a little bit here? Because Eric, you’ve got personal experience with a plug in hybrid. So how, how has your electric bill been affected?

So for us, because it’s only a 33 or 36 kilowatt battery, we charge on a one 20.

So it takes about 12 to 13 hours. I monitor all this stuff. I have, you know, one of those, you know, sense monitors and all these kinds of things. I’m, I’m very, I kind of nerd out on all this stuff. I look at it and. It has cost us maybe an average of about 35 extra dollars a month, but that’s a small battery.

Now you take a car that’s solely EV, they can do 300 miles of range, you know, or more. That’s a lot more juice that you have to pull down every day for the course of a month. So take my 35 that it’s costing to charge the Pacifica that [00:09:00] we have, or maybe more, you know, maybe it’s like 40, let’s just say, let’s just call it that.

And multiply that out. It’s a lot of money at the end of the day. And I don’t think people realize that as they go into it, do a total cost of ownership on these vehicles, if you’re considering buying one, I mean, I don’t advocate not to, or, or to, or whatever, but it’s something to consider to your point, because now it’s added stress on the grid, on the vehicle.

On your house. In some cases, you have to upgrade your electrical system. That could be thousands of dollars, especially if you’re in an older house where your service is small, you might need a sub panel, you know, getting electricians involved. There’s a lot to this. So I’ve been looking into it myself.

I’d love to have a rapid charger for the Pacifica, but it’s cost prohibitive for me to do that. When I can just charge it every night and it’s ready by morning. So I don’t really care about the speed.

On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with setting aggressive targets. Cause. In reality, sometimes you have to just set an aggressive target and you probably know you’re not going to make it, but at least it gets people moving in that direction.

So [00:10:00] it’s going to force a lot of different industries to create various infrastructure that’s needed to get there. And it’s going to force manufacturers to bring down their costs and et cetera, et cetera. It’s a whole, it feels like a whole chain of events that need to really happen for this light switch to flip.

And suddenly the dealerships don’t have a gas or diesel. powered vehicle on their lots anymore. We’ll see what the future holds. Just wait. I’m sure the next new thing will, will happen. We don’t know, but for now, possibly the end is nigh.

And there’s a follow up to this.

Yeah. So, I mean, in terms of what we were talking about, the raw materials and whatnot, we had reported on the previous episode about the two largest electric vehicle battery manufacturers in South Korea.

SK and LG had gotten into a little kerfuffle between trade secrets and this, that, and the other. And, uh, LG accused SK of misappropriating trade secrets, blah, blah, blah. Complaints were [00:11:00] filed. Pauses were put in place. Kind of hampering production. They have come to an agreement, which is good for everyone.

And because SK had planned on building a battery plant in Georgia, which was going to make the batteries for boards and Volkswagen’s, So now that they’ve resolved their issues that can continue. So that’ll be good for both Ford and Volkswagen and for electric car buyers. So at least there are some positive news there that there won’t be a huge, long lasting months and months of schedule impact.

Good. And you know, since we’ve been talking about charging and infrastructure and batteries and this and that, let’s talk about some Stellantis news with respect to that topic.

This one’s pretty cool because we heard about. Jeep is now moving into the EV front. I mean, everybody at this point, um, and they had debuted that really cool Wrangler that we talked about, the Magneto and all this stuff, but they also apparently have a plug in hybrid [00:12:00] Wrangler that they’re launching pretty soon.

And with that, they’re partnering, I guess, with, or working with Electrify America, basically to create a charging system because the Wrangler should be trail ready, this, that, and the other, but okay. Trails. I go hiking, I’ve been to a lot of different places. They’re in remote ish places. Not, you know, downtown metropolises, tons of people, tons of stores and all that stuff.

You’re off the beaten path a lot of times.

Isn’t that the point of going on a trail is to get off the beaten path and get away from civilization?

So how is

this going to work?

Exactly. So, you know, how are you, you know, millions of miles, that’s an exaggeration from civilization, from the nearest gas station, if you will, or electric starting station, you know, your little Evie runs out of juice.

Now what? Yeah. You’re in your Wrangler stuck in the Moab and Ford comes and picks you up. Right. Cause they’ve got their onboard generator and they give you some juice

diesel generator.

Yeah. [00:13:00] So, so they’re creating a charging network. It’s going to be located kind of at trail heads of starting out as some of the more famous spots like Moab and Utah, the Rubicon trail, big bear in California.

That’s pretty cool. In my opinion. I mean, this is a hybrid Wrangler, so. Once it runs out of its EV juice, it has other power behind it. But I think this is pretty cool. I like it also from the aspect that if they can put those electric stations in, then they could also impact the forest department, if you will.

Parks and Rec guys, because, you know, all their trucks, maybe they could convert the fleet. If anybody gives them money, convert the fleet to hybrids or full electrics as you’re just kind of like going around the little, you know, trail towns and whatnot and doing the service and all the good forest keeping they do.

I mean, that would also be another positive impact because it’d also be less pollution in, in those beautiful areas. So I think it’s a positive. [00:14:00]

There might also be an environmental impact with running all those lines out to federal preserve land and all that. So I think there’s still a lot to be figured out.

There’s a lot of logistics there. Like we were talking about, there’s a lot of politics, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of red tape, but I will tell you this, there’s probably not going to be a charging station in Machu Picchu. So if I ran out of power, I know who I’d call Bruce, Bruce. If you’re out there, I need your help.

I’ve run out of electricity. And speaking of lost and found.

Yes, we’ve got a segment that we’re dubbing lost and found. It’s a long list of a long line in a mini series that started a couple episodes ago. But if you all remember, we heard that there was a Dodge Viper that, you know, it was originally discontinued in 2017.

That was sold in 2020 in addition to that Viper. Solantis has a knack for selling these undead cars. There was a Ram van that was sold and there was three G Patriots, all of which were terminated prior to [00:15:00] 2020. Well, they’re at it again. Someone went to a dealership and actually paid. Cold hard cash, or maybe even finance.

That’s probably more likely at 18%, but they got a 2016 Dutch darts. Yes, you’ve heard that correctly. I 2016 Dodge dart. The dart did not miss its target this time. And in 2021. Someone bought a brand new 2016 Dodge Dart. So if you’re out there,

Good job, Stellantis. Keep those numbers

up. Yes. Anything they can do to improve their revenue numbers is okay with me.

So I have two questions.

What

terrible color was it that forced it to be on the lot for the last five years?

You know what? I have a theory. I think it was on the lot for five years because everybody just assumed it was a used car. So I have a theory. I think it was on the lot for five years because everybody just assumed it was a used car.

You know, I bet it’s that Nike Gatorade yellow green one that was over at Len Stoller down the road that [00:16:00] nobody wanted to buy because it’s the most heinous color I’ve ever seen. That’s what I’m thinking. However, my second question is next month, are we going to hear about the remaining PT Cruiser that was sold in 2021?

Maybe, maybe. Well, they also sold two Vipers, two brand new Vipers this month in that quarter. Yeah. In the same quarter. Wow. Yeah.

Killing it

first for someone like Eric, who is a Viper aficionado and is constantly looking for one. You can still buy a brand new one.

You know, yeah. Give me an ACR. I got 50 bucks.

I’m down.

Yeah. I mean, what’s the depreciation?

What’s the depreciation on these things? That’s just it. What are they getting a screaming deal? Are they still,

so a 2016 Dodge Dart probably financed at 125 percent because they rolled in the negative equity from their other car, which was probably a 2015 Dodge Dart, and then Brad’s [00:17:00] a

Brad’s a numbers guy,

and they probably paid about 25 grand for this Dodge Dart.

And as soon as they got it off the dealer lot, it dropped to 50 bucks.

It’s worth 1, 500.

It’s it’s worth it. No, if I bet you, if you took that car from the Dodge dealer to CarMax, they would offer you 500.

So these cars sit there for as long. So that means that like enterprise and national Avis. Nobody

wanted it.

They don’t even want them. And how does the warranty work? Like it’s already five years old and it’s got no miles on it. It’s it’s out of warranty immediately. The

warranty is from the date. Most of the warranties are from the date. It’s it’s it’s um, not purchased. Or is it the date it’s purchased? I thought it was the date of manufacturing.

That’s craziness. I don’t know. God, enjoy it

by a [00:18:00] brand new five year old Dodge Dart, but they also bought one out of warranty.

Hold on a second. Click, click, click, click, click. Oh, it’s on bring a trailer now for 47, 000. So you can get it today. Low mileage Dodge

Dart. All right. 47, 000 pennies. You can pick up your Dodge Dart.

I mean, that’s a little. sitting there on a lot for that long. I mean, I hope they monthly ran it, drove it around, put a couple of miles on it.

Yeah. It’s a Dodge Dart. Why do you even bother? It’s like, who cares? So I kid you not. So talking about Dodge Dart, I recently watched an episode rerun of roadkill.

And they did a drag race between a brand new Dodge start. And one of the old ones, like from back in the sixties, they said, and I thought it was funny, it cracked me up. They were like the Dodge dart is like the slowest production. Mopar like hands down in the last 30 years, it does a quarter mile in like 19 seconds.

I mean, we know a bone [00:19:00] stock Audi coupe GT five cylinder making like 130 horsepower will do the quarter in like 30 seconds. 16 or something insane. Right? So I’m like, it is so slow. So their target time to beat, like barely doing bolt ons on a, like a 64 Dodge Dart was like incredibly high. They’re like, we can do this without even trying like beating this car.

So what they ended up doing was dropping it from a helicopter about a quarter mile up just to see if the speed was faster. It was, it was not, but, uh, it was actually very entertaining. Go look for the Dodge Dart episode of Roadkill. It’ll put you in stitches. So let’s switch to our, let’s call it our favorite brand around here.

Maybe we have a bias. I don’t know. We’re definitely Volkswagen, Audi group people, not all of us in GTM, but there’s a fair portion of us here that are. So let’s switch over to some VAG news.

So for many of you that may not know Volkswagen group or Volkswagen Audi group actually owns Bugatti a little while ago this month, a guy [00:20:00] named Patrick Piper did a rendering of a Bugatti Superbike concept.

And he calls it the Vitesse, you know, hearkens back to the, I think there was a Chiron Vitesse. Um, there was a Veyron Vitesse, you know, and so on and so forth. Wasn’t there the

Bugatti Baby 2 Vitesse? There’s the Baby

2, there’s the Baby 2 Vitesse, there’s the Baby 2. There’s the speed in French. Is that what that means?

The more you know. Uh, but anyway, this guy rendered this bike, I’d say it’s, it’s a cross between a Cafe Racer And it looks like the front end is very similar to a Chiron.

There you go.

What did he say?

Tron light cycle. It’s a Tron

light cycle, yes. It looks very similar. Just

missing the LEDs. To a

Tron light cycle.

It looks like it doesn’t have any lights at all. Did I see him there? There’s no lights. I don’t

understand how it turns.

The worst turning radius in the planet. of the Viper motorcycle that they had a couple of years ago. It turns

with the rear.

Yeah. All you gotta do is wrap the throttle. I didn’t see, [00:21:00] did he, in the rendering, did he want to do a 16 cylinder quad turbo motor?

Because that would be pretty sick. I don’t know. I think it looks really cool. Some of the, I mean, they’re all renderings because it’s all CGI because it does not exist. I don’t know. But the one in the wind tunnel looks really slick. I think

I agree. It does look pretty cool. I would like to see them build a concept and just try it.

I mean, why not? I mean, now Bugatti is not known for motorcycles, but I get it. The here’s the, here’s the Kevin Bacon connection, folks. Volkswagen owns Audi. Audi owns Ducati. Bugatti is in there, Lamborghini, all this whole mess. It’s all one big happy family. It makes sense for them to try a bike like this.

So it’s probably a, you know, or would be a Ducati at the end of the day with some sort of skin on it and Bugatti flare and all that kind of thing. So I say, send it, man. I wanna see it. Let’s, let’s try it.

I agree. And if they made it and then they tried to sell it, they could sell it under volts. Wagon, which we’re going to talk about later and it could be an electric bike.

Did we go there? Did we really [00:22:00] just go there?

Let’s talk about Volkswagen and electric vehicles. Tanya, should we start with

it? What’s it a name?

We should, we really should. Sure. Sure. So what day was it? It was March 31st. No, it

wasn’t even, it was like March 29th or March 30th.

Oh my God. Yeah. So the geniuses at Volkswagen came up with a great idea.

I’m having a putt card.

Face palm moment, folks. You can’t see it in the audio, but that is exactly what I’m doing now.

Several years ago, I think it was in the early two thousands. Dodge spun off the Ram truck division into its own brand. And more recently, you know, within the last five years, Hyundai did the same thing with Genesis.

Genesis is its own kind of brand or sub brand now Volkswagen. Made an announcement that they were going to spin off their entire electric car division and call it a Volt Wagon of America. I think it was only in the US market that they were going to do this. Correct? Is that what [00:23:00] that’s what I read?

I mean the way I read it was Volkswagen of America was going to become Bolt’s wagon.

Oh Which just confused me because I, what happens to my Volkswagen right now? I mean, if

you think about it, if they’re trying to go all EV, then eventually Volkswagen would be Volkswagen, Volkswagen, Volkswagen. I’m confused. I’m

lost. But anyway, but anyway,

they announced it or somebody announced it or leaked it or whatever.

It got a ton of backlash, very much like the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. And Volkswagen said, no, no, no, no, no, no, just kidding. We not going to do this. I

mean, at the end of the day, they came back and said that it was an early release of an April Fool’s style prank and that the name isn’t changing. On the

play flag on the play.

All right. Uh, this stinks. There’s something rotten in Norway here. All right. And it’s not Will Ferrell in that [00:24:00] Cadillac commercial that we talked about last month. This is a mess. I’m sorry. I get it, it’s like corny dad jokes, but you don’t change the name of a hundred plus year old company just like that.

Yeah, I don’t like it for that reason. Cause it’s like, you don’t, the name has been around for so long, good or bad. I mean, it’s the company’s name. I mean, it’s just cause I have personal feels about it, I guess. Owning one.

Well, what, what’s next? They’re gonna change from Porsche to, to Porsche with a ED.

Well, or Volvo

becomes vol. I, I don’t know. Well,

I think with Porsche, they’re just gonna tell us how to actually pronounce it for once. Yeah.

Really?

Is it Porsche? Is it Porsha?

A porch is something you sit on that, that I know.

Yeah. You can sit on those duck bill wings. I the, the duck bill ducktails, the whale

tails for sure.

Yeah, the

whale tails. You can have lunch on one of those.

So because of all this nonsense and shenanigans,

I mean, at any rate, there was a lot of, no, no, this is true. This is true. [00:25:00] This is true. And then all of a sudden, no, it’s not.

It was true enough to drive up the stock price though.

And exactly. And now apparently the SEC is maybe filing a little investigation because that little brouhaha drove the share prices up 16 percent or something of that nature.

So.

Didn’t Elon Musk do the same thing with Tesla? You know, cause we love the rag on Tesla. All

the time. You did the

same thing with a tweet about Tesla a couple of years ago and the SEC was up his butt too.

We’ll talk about Tesla’s

butt later.

Spoiler alert. So in, in briefer news, uh, Volkswagen, excuse me.

Now nobody knows how to say it. VW.

You can never go wrong with VW. Well, I’m changing it to Schwagen. That’s what I’m calling it from the Schwagen company. Volkswagen, Volkswagen, Schwagen.

No,

no.

There is [00:26:00] finally a date for the ID Buzz. So the electric minibus.

Is going to come to the shores over here in 2023 as a 2024 production model. Europe’s gonna get it before us, I think like 2022. But yeah, it’s coming. It is actually coming. So we will hopefully, I would love to see one trundle down the road, a little Volkswagen Mini. But if

you can’t get one, if you can’t get in as an early adopter, you can still buy a 2016 Dodge Dart.

That joke’s never going to get old.

But the last bit of, I guess, Volkswagen Audi news is, you know, the e tron is here now, right?

Is that like the Volt?

Tron.

Oh, wait, nevermind.

Eat Tron. I think

Voltron is copywritten.

Not

bad. [00:27:00]

Audi has recently debuted its New A six E-Tron concept on what’s gonna be their new EV platform.

They’re gonna have their whole, it’s gonna be called Premium Platform Electric or PPE, not to be confused with personal protective equipment , but they’re gonna have their own platform in collaboration with Porsche, and they’re gonna start hitting the road in 2022. You know the, it doesn’t look terrible, honestly.

It’s a quite elegant, sleek looking Audi. It boasts some pretty big numbers as a concept in terms of let’s just start with battery range, because that’s what everybody cares about. The claim on concept estimate numbers is 435 miles. This is on the WLTP cycle range. One of the European standards, the EPA cycle is saying more like 390 to 400 miles.

Still isn’t horrific, but the 435 would be a lot better. And [00:28:00] it’s not built yet, so who knows what the actual number is going to be. It could be worse, could be better, could be what they’re saying. At any rate, I think the equivalent horsepower is going to be something like 469. It’s alleging to do zero to 62 miles per hour in less than four seconds.

So it’s going to push you back in your seat a little bit as it doesn’t meet 435 miles of range when you’re doing that. It’s coming soon. It’s the next offering from Audi. Hopefully the price. Is going to be, I believe they were saying less than what the E-Tron currently is. It’s gonna start somewhere in the mid 50,000 range, which is still very expensive and out of a lot of people’s range, but at least it’s moving that needle in the right direction.

I’m sure eventually they’ll come out with the A four E-tron and hopefully it’ll be, you know, that’ll probably start in 40 thousands or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, if they, if they can get it to the $50,000 mark. That’s really close to the current pricing, I believe, for the A6 [00:29:00] anyway, so if they can get the electric vehicles to cost in the ballpark of what the gassers cost, then I think that’s okay, because they’re still catering to their market.

Audi’s starting to make more moves, just like all the other Majors out there. So we’ll see who’s next or what’s next,

but moving on to random new EVs and concepts, this is going to be everything that we know about the Corvette Stingray SUV. Yes, because it’s a Corvette, this has become my story.

All things Corvette belong to them.

All your

base are belong to us. And all your Corvette belong to me. And basically everything we need to know about the Corvette Stingray SUV is that Chevrolet should not make this stupid thing.

That’s what we know. That’s all

we know right now.

Chevrolet artists shouldn’t have just Taken a rendering of the Mach E and put a Corvette badge on

the hood.

You know, I was thinking that, but it looks like they took the C8 nose and put it on the front of a Yuris. [00:30:00] It’s even a Yuris color and yum yum yellow. I mean, it’s ridiculous.

I noticed that too. Yeah. It’s, it’s definitely a copycat of several cars and whether it’s fact or fiction. I don’t know how I feel about an EV carrying a Corvette moniker in the way that the Mustang does.

I can get behind the, what we talked about in an earlier episode where they don’t want to put out the Grand Sport, but they’re talking about coming out with like a C8 that’s electric. I could get behind that. Yeah, the e ray, I can get behind that, but, but a truck with a Cort patch. I, I dunno why

acres do this.

They, Ford ruined the, the Mustang name with the Mustang Mach e, like to the point where nobody even calls it the Mustang Mach e. It’s just the Mach E, which is what it should have been. Mitsubishi did this with the Eclipse moniker. They destroyed it by putting it on, I mean. The Eclipse was a piece of crap anyway, but they destroyed the name that had some heritage by putting it on [00:31:00] an SUV, a little SUV.

And now Chevrolet General Motors is doing this with the Corvette. I think is the worst idea ever. I

think this is right along the lines of the new trailblazer. Mountain Mandate. I’ll talk about all these. If you’re, you know, back in the days of the K 10s and the Jimmies and all those kinds of

trucks.

Yeah, when the blazer was the blazer right now you look at it, you’re like, that’s a Camaro on stilts, right?

So I can understand where they’re going with this idea with the Corvette. I can’t get behind it though. I will definitely get in front of it and run away as quickly as possible. But I just I don’t I don’t get it.

They’re doing what everybody else is doing. Everybody’s making these. They’re called the compact crossover SUVs.

So they’re, there’s something that’s bigger than a golf. But smaller than traditional SUV trying to be, you know, Goldilocks syndrome here, which one’s just right,

you

know, if we

learned anything from BMW, all of the GT cars that they built five years ago, if not maybe a little [00:32:00] bit longer. They were a mistake.

Don’t follow their path. It’s not worth

doing. If you search a BMW lot, you might actually be able to find a brand new one that was made in 2016.

Well, the problem, the problem with that vehicle, if I recall the one that there was like two that were ever on the road is that they’re ugly as all get out.

They, by today’s BMW standards, those things are like the Mona Lisa. They are gorgeous. What are you talking about?

Well, and that may be true, but. I mean, these, all these compact little crossover thingies, if that’s what they’re classified as, the Mach E and Volkswagen’s ID4, all that, I mean. They’re not horrific looking.

I don’t have a pro, I don’t have a problem with them making this vehicle. ’cause it’s just, it’s the way of the world. This is the, this is where everybody’s going. My problem is with them slapping the Corvette logo and name on it.

Well, I had the same problem with the Mustang Mach key. I [00:33:00] don’t think Mustang should have been, it should have been called a Mustang.

And it’s not a Mustang.

No. And it should not have a pony on the, on the hood and the grill either

that, yeah. And I agree this is not a Corvette.

They could have called it a million other things. They could have brought back the Pinto name. They could have called the Galaxy. They could have called it the Palomino.

Yes. Called, let’s call it, let’s call it a Pinto, because that would’ve sold, well, the Grand Torino, I don’t care what they call it, just don’t slap a Mustang badge on it to fluff up the numbers. That’s just stupid, but you know who’s doing it right. We hinted at this months ago that Hyundai was up to something.

There was something on their website that they were going to reveal boxy looking sort of E30 BMW ish. We couldn’t really tell what it was. They went in completely the opposite direction. They took an original Jujaro design, 1970 Hyundai Pony turned it into a modern EV car. So they did. A factory approved restomod.

And if you haven’t seen this thing yet, it is pretty wild. Now, [00:34:00] granted a lot of the Jujaro cars from that era kind of look the same. Right. The Scirocco, the pony, a lot of the launches. He, at that time, he was kind of going through a phase, you know, but it’s pretty cool to see this now what 50 year old car out there and been given new life.

As an EV and some really cool and inspired designs, especially in the interior.

I got really excited when I first saw this because when you glance like at the photo or whatever, and it, the, like the cover photo is from behind for a second there, I thought it was a Trueno. I was like, Oh my God, is this an AE86?

Well, the first reaction I had was, is this a Chivette? And then I realized it was a Pony, but yes.

And that’s like, you know, you blink sideways and looked really fast. And then I just got excited by, you know, AE86, like an original one. And then found out, no, it’s not that at all. It’s this Hyundai. I mean, I think it’s pretty cool because I [00:35:00] like the idea of actually like, this is the original car.

Whether or not this is the best looking car ever. Uh, you know, that’s. Surely in the eyes of the beholder and debatable. I mean, it’s not, I mean, it’s, it’s cute. It’s charismatic.

So I’m going to throw out a challenge for us. I think we at GTM should do this. We should get an old Mark two golf or GTI or whatever, and put an EV power plant on it and just play with it.

Modernize it with EV technology and stuff.

Why? Because much like Dodge, there’s a bunch of e golf sitting on Volkswagen dealership lots that we could just buy brand new today and save a lot of hassle.

But it’s not the perfect little boxy ones.

I know, I know of a, of a Audi coupe GT with a heck of a lot of front engine.

Hood space.

Yeah, yeah, you can put anything in the front of those. Got space for miles. Flipping the coin on retro, a name we haven’t heard in a while, and a name that’s synonymous with darkness, [00:36:00] Morris Garage, better known as MG to the world. I had no

idea it meant Morris Garage. You didn’t? No. Oh

yeah, that’s what it stands for.

I learned nothing on our British episode.

So that being said, MG has come to the table proposing an MGB, that’s B as in Bravo, inspired EV two seater roadster first glance. I looked at and said, what about this car says MGB or MGBGT. And none of it resonates with me. And the other thing I realized was it’s still an MG, which means electronics.

The whole car

is electric, so it’s a Lucas Electronics car.

It’s a nightmare. I mean, good for them. If they’re going to come back, you’re going to really have to sell me on this one. And if you don’t believe me, go listen to our British cars episode and listen to some people that own British cars. Talk about them.

Uh, it’s a love, hate relationship. So this is

an [00:37:00] MGBGTEV.

That’s a lot of letters

that will not win you any, any points in Scrabble.

I mean, it’s probably going to work since MG is owned by a Chinese company.

I mean, if it’s anything like all the other carbon copies they’re putting out now, like what was that thing called that looked like a beetle that’s not a beetle?

Oh gosh,

the tiger paw or the love cat or the

something cat

the love cat

Like the love bug, but the love cat. What was that? It was really horrific. I it’s pretty

terrible Well, i’m reading this it says it’s the cyber stir concept whatever the f that means

the punk cat The punk cat there it is punk cat.

It’s a bw beetle rebooted as Punk cat electric car from this time. It’s like

the next, the next iteration is going to be the jive turkey. Oh man, I got my punk cat part next to my jive turkey.

We just switched gears here. [00:38:00] I am all for an electric beetle, but not that thing.

Nope. No, not this.

This unfortunate, yes, it sort of resembles a very early Beatle fastback ish.

Wise has four doors.

There’s all sorts of wrong with that thing. It reminds me of a British taxi cab that’s been squished. You know, those, the famous black taxi cabs in London. Yeah, three

tone paint job is not doing anything for me either. Reverse skunk.

Switching gears. Last month we had Tom Wendy on as our guest host and he’s our resident Rotard as he calls himself.

He’s all about rotaries. He has several RX 7s, one of which we can’t find. It does exist somewhere, but you know, we talked about how Mazda was pulling out of IMSA. They need to play catch up with the whole EV market and, you know, hybrids, you know, they put a lot of time and effort into their Sky Active program, the Atkinson crank [00:39:00] engines and whatnot.

Now they’ve said they’re going to come to the table with something known as the MX30, which is going to be an SUV with a rotary longevity extender, I believe they’re calling it. And so it’s going to basically be a rotary hybrid instead of a standard gasoline, you know, regular piston engine hybrid. I am.

All sorts of confused when I see this car because a rotary is confused me to begin with, you know, triangle inside of square makes things go boom and all the math that’s involved in that and apex seals going out the exhaust valves and whatnot. On top of that, it looks like a Miata that’s been sort of stretched.

It has the same lights in the back and it’s just kind of awkward looking. But then when, as I dove into it a little bit further, the specs reminded me of a Miata as well. And Mazda is saying. That the U S model will produce 144 horsepower in 200 pound foot of torque, two different than a Miata, honestly.

And the battery is only 35 and a half [00:40:00] kilowatts. And there’s no word on what the range of the models is going to be for the U S market, things like that. Right now, they’re saying without the range extender, without the rotary hybrid, it’ll go about 124 miles on a charge. It’s really, Not that great. And there is no date as to when it’s going to become available.

The rumor has it maybe as early as this year, later this year in the fall, but we’re still not really certain. I think it’s kind of cool. Mazda is trying something different. I don’t like it when we beta test things on the public, but, uh, you know, Hey, we’ll see where it goes. Right.

There was something that you said that kind of.

Made me go, hmm. It was when you mentioned rotary and longevity extender in the same sentence.

Yeah, I know. That’s like an oxymoron.

That doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean, everybody that’s ever heard anything about a rotary knows that they’re known for their. [00:41:00] Longevity and reliability.

Yes. Yeah. So what ends up happening is it becomes an LS swapped hybrid later in its life.

Cause that’s what usually happens with most referees, right?

Why don’t they just call it the MX five? That’s what the Miata is. Why don’t they just follow Chevy’s playbook?

That’s true. Just relabel it the Miata, right? They actually don’t call the Miata the Miata anymore. I don’t know. I’m all confused there too.

Is it the MX 5? Is it the Miata? What is it? I mean, I guess we’re playing the name game this month.

Just for my own edification, what is MX 5? How’d they come up with that? If this is the MX 30, there’s got to be a reason. The number has to signify something.

I’m not sure. I don’t really know. I know like with Toyota, The MR is like short for midship runabout, which is weird, but I don’t know what the MX stands for, for Mazda.

I

always thought MR was for the, for the layout. It’s a mid engine rear wheel drive.

We would all believe that to be true, but in Toyota doctrine, it says it’s short for midship.

Well, [00:42:00] if our two listeners, you know, have access to comments, please send us an email and let us know what the MX five stands for and what’s the MX 30 stands for.

But looking at Tanya in the other screen there, it looks like she’s going to tell us.

Well, according to a very quick search, which I typed in incorrectly, but still came up, it says MX five simply stands for Mazda experimental. X in the experimental project number five.

So that’s where RX is rotary. RX is rotary experimental number seven.

That’s actually true. Then there you go.

So whatever happened to the six through 29 experiments.

Been

in the tragic, tragic endings for all of those. I don’t know. We might have

to, uh, might have to do a little more digging than 30 seconds worth, um, to verify, but

no, I think that’s all you need.

Okay. All [00:43:00] right.

Then anything else in the Evie world,

Tanya. So rounding out our Evie segment. So we’ve been talking about electric cars, electric SUVs. Electric Corvettes, but not Corvettes. What about tiny electric cars? Well, tiny. What are you talking about? An electric golf. The electric FI 500. No, we’ve talked about them.

I don’t know. Think smaller. Think like a BMW Isetta, something that fits one person, maybe two people. There are some folks out there trying to make this become a thing. Tiny electric vehicles that are three wheelers, two wheels in the front, one wheel in the back, and you literally can only fit, Up to two people, essentially, in them.

There’s, there’s three different ones in this article, um, that are, that are featured here. The first one they show, they made it more the size of a car with, you know, an extra wheel in the back. [00:44:00] It’s actually not terrible because it’s heavily inspired, I think, by, like, Alfa Romeos and whatnot, especially from the front.

This Nobz GT100. It’s from Estonia,

also known for reliability. Yes. Um,

uh, at any rate, it’s definitely stealing some, some features of some other, some other cars. And then you’ve got the micro Lino, which essentially, if you didn’t say it was a micro Lino, it looks like a BMW Isetta, you know what that looks like.

And then there’s the, uh, Electra Mechanica Solo, which is, I don’t know, an Opel from the front, maybe, but chopped in the back and only one, one wheel.

It looks like that. What was it? Helio or Elio or whatever was supposed to come out with a car in the U. S. that was very similar to the Electra Mechanica Solo.

The kicker is apparently they’re going to cost You know, potentially as much as a full size car ain’t nobody going to nobody in this [00:45:00] country is going to buy that. I mean, I get it like, okay, on the surface, you look at it, you go. This is dumb. Right?

3 wheels is the starting point of bad. Okay, this

is dumb.

A F right? Like, why 1 person 2 people? Where are you going? Electric? I mean, negative, negative, negative corner, right? But then. I could see a point to play devil’s advocate. People ride around on motorcycles. You can only have one person. Well, you can have more than one, but typically you only have one person on a motorcycle.

You ain’t carrying a lot of, you’re not going to the local grocer and getting six bags of groceries and carrying them on your motorcycle home. You’re running an errand. You’re going to work with a backpack and, and, you know, whatever, that’s it. So if you’re living that life, maybe this is better for you.

Cause at least when it’s raining, your butthole isn’t getting [00:46:00] wet.

Oh man. I think that in the first car, it’s very mousy. I think it would be a very fun Halloween car. I also think that whoever designed this. Uh, his children just watched the Incredibles for the first time in Estonia. And because it looks like Mr.

Incredible drives this car. It’s it’s wacko. Now I, I give you props. If it had four wheels, I’d be all over it. The three wheel thing really turns me off. I don’t get it, but I also think of him and I go the Ape, which we know is, you know, all over the place in Italy is a three wheeler. They’ve been around forever.

They’re tiny. I could see those going electric. That’d be super useful.

Wow.

And I’m instantly reminded of the PLP 50 from Top Gear. Remember that little car he drove in an elevator all through the BBC building? Yeah. So, not so great. Cool concept, but I can’t ever see these coming to fruition. I

really like the micro, you know.

Yeah.

This isn’t something that would take steam in [00:47:00] this country. I mean, maybe in Europe. Again, you’re up in your countryside, mountainside, and you’re just trembling up and down and you don’t want to ride on a moped, but then you don’t want a car. I can see it,

but. I need to point a few things out about the microlino.

So if anybody listened to our ugly cars episode, it’s very important. Okay. So go back and revisit that when you get a chance. This is the only thing I think that rivals the Multipla. In terms of like stupid placement of beltline, headlights, doors, it is, those, those headlights are tragic. And by the way, did you notice that’s like a 23 inch wiper blade on a 13 inch windshield?

Like how does that even work? Those headlights are integrated

with the side mirrors. Come now, they’ve

saved. This is a mess. This car is unsafe to drive in any condition, okay? I don’t get it. How do you uh, how do you adjust the headlights? The mirror has to put, this is a mess. You adjust

the [00:48:00] headlights with the mirror.

So you use the little mirror switch and the mirror goes, the headlights go the opposite. How do you get out? If you’re in a front end collision,

I want to see the front impact rating with the crash test dummies in this thing, by the way, where’s the bumper?

Get it? Because why wouldn’t you just have a smart car?

At this point. Yeah, I mean, because they’re

at least you’re only going to fit 2 people in those and they’re at least designed to be roll cages. They

have

proven

the

smart

cars are extremely safe because the way they’re built,

but they’re also not electric, but they

could be, but they could be, and they’re already rear wheel drive.

They’re actually already set up for it. A lot of smart cars, at least in Europe are. Three cylinder turbo diesels or something. I think they were here at least in Canada and North America and whatnot, but they’d be the perfect candidate. If you’re going to go that route, just electrify a smart car and call it a day.

I mean, maybe the problem is the smart cards too small because these things are, well, that Mike really knows probably smaller than a smart car. So if they fit some batteries in there, then [00:49:00] you wouldn’t, I would think it’s possible on the, um, smart car. Honestly, we haven’t paid much attention to smart cars.

So that’s something I’m going to have to look into to see what they’re doing on the EV front. They must be doing something.

Whatever Mercedes is doing

well, they’re slowly coming to the table as well. So

I’ll get a swatch watch at the same time that way for most people that don’t know, smart is a cooperative investment between swatch and Mercedes.

So that I won’t digress too far on that, but we need to move into our. New segment called.

We would be remiss. So I don’t want to cover this one, but it’s here. So we would

much like Brad doesn’t want to cover Corvettes. You get stuck with Tesla’s now that’s your thing.

And I’m fine with that. It’s just the latest gimmick that they’re doing.

You know, some people think it’s quite clever. There’s those that would say it’s [00:50:00] genius. I have a different definition for something that’s genius. Being able to say open butthole for my electric charger door to pop open to me as a fully formed adult is not genius. For a 12 year old, yes, I could see this being quite hysterical.

Thank you for bringing this to us. And you know, some people might think, Oh, this is just a joke. It came out in April, April fools. No, I fully believe this is no joke because I have ridden in a Tesla with the fart sounds turned on for the turn signals. So instead of click, click, click. So this is completely on par.

with something musk would do. So I fully believe that you can say open butthole.

Oh, but it gets better. Because if you watch the video that accompanies this [00:51:00] particular episode, a gentleman goes through and reviews this particular voice command feature. There are variants to it. If you say open butthole, it opens the charge port.

If you say close butthole, it closes the charge port. If you say open butthole, My butthole, it will open the trunk. Did you know that?

You also want to know why this isn’t genius? If we’re going to anthropomorphize a vehicle, its butthole would not be on the side of it. Where energy is going into. Thank

you.

That’s, that’s my, my, that was going to be my point. It shouldn’t be open butthole. It should be put it in your mouth.

Oh

yeah, because that

makes it better. I mean, the mouth also isn’t on the side. If you were going to like in the rear end of the car.

The mouth is where fuel and energy goes in.

I don’t know. I mean, personally, I think

this is just foreplay and dirty talk between [00:52:00] Elon and Grimes and they just kind of translate it into.

You know, Tesla production, somebody, he probably was, you know, getting down with, with grimes and, uh, he butt dialed somebody and, uh, somebody at work, you heard him say, Oh yeah, open your butthole, open your butthole. And they’re like, okay, I guess we’ll implement that into the.

Yes, Mr. Musk. Yes, Mr. Musk. Right away, Mr.

Musk. We’ll take care of that.

I mean, clearly it sells. People are into it. I don’t know. Hot take. It’s dumb.

Speaking of dumb, let’s talk about the new door handles on the Tesla.

Oh, that’s not gonna break.

Right? The video, you kind of get a sneak peek here of the new Tesla Roadster. We heard about this on the drag racing episode with Bobby Parks.

He’s really excited about this car.

Effing useless. I love that.

I love that. The Tesla roaster is a coop.

Yeah, right on. All counts. But this new [00:53:00] door handle, you know, the current Teslas, the door handle kind of pops out at you. It’s like electromechanical, and then you grab it, you know, all this kind of thing.

This new one is swipe, and the best part of it is you get the glimpse of the new quote unquote Roadster or coop rather. And you get to see this guy trying a new door handle and he must swipe it like. four or five times and it doesn’t react and I’m like, what is this? Would be the most infuriating thing on the planet for me.

If this is how I have to now open my door.

Apparently he was swiping up and you should have swiped down. I mean, I thought it was left and

right.

That’s different, but it could be like,

instead of swipe, they should call it foreplay. And he just didn’t know how to, how to get the car to do what he wanted it to do.

Oh my God.

He should have swiped, right?

Oh man. I, you know, I get, I get that that’s where technology and innovation is taking us, but it’s just like the more things get so technically complex like that. It’s like there’s simplicity in [00:54:00] simple things that will always work like a door handle. Like a button on a, on a phone or, or, or on something, not some touch tone thing, but then the screen breaks and then you can’t turn your AC on or off or something in your, your car, all these infotainment systems, you know, a dial, a button it’s mechanical.

Yeah, you can break it off if you’re an idiot, but for the most part, these things last decades.

I feel a

rant coming.

I mean, if you’ve ever used one of those Samsung TVs, and I’m sure there’s other brands that do this with the touch front where there’s no buttons, I have one of these. I’ve had the luxury of owning it for many years.

I refuse to touch it anymore because it’s infuriating to hit the volume 9, 000 times. Let me just go get the remote. So hopefully my key fob for Tesla will allow me to open the door without touching the stupid thing, because if it’s anything like the Samsung TVs, it’ll drive you nuts. That’s all I’m saying.

And how about how’s it going to handle rain when it’s pouring down rain and there’s water flowing down the side or ice it ices on a [00:55:00] winter morning and you’re you’re chiseling the ice off of it or pour pouring warm water to melt it because I can’t open my door because

you’re wearing a glove so I can’t sense that you’re opening the door

you got to get the new you got to get those new gloves with the the touch pads that you can use on your touch screens

or you just don’t buy how does

that work when it’s wet But I’ll just

leave

that

there.

Let’s just leave that. I don’t know.

I mean, I guess I, you know, maybe you, I mean, why don’t you just make an app on your phone? Click the button and it opens. Swipe your phone.

How do you get in when your phone’s dead?

You say open butthole and then a charging wire comes out and you can plug your phone in enough juice to

Open my butthole.

No, my butthole. No, no, no, no, my butthole. Can you

imagine you’re standing at the charging station?

Somebody doesn’t know what’s going on. Oh,

I’m thinking about the scenario where you go golfing with your boss [00:56:00] and then you’re going back to the cars after your, your, your round 18 and then you walk up to your car nonchalantly with your boss parked right next to and his, uh, S600 Mercedes, because that’s what he’s going to drive.

And you just walk up and say casually, Tesla, open butthole. What is your boss going to think?

He’s going to say, do you have any gray poop on? He’s

He’s going to say, uh, okay, you’re going to, this is your last day. Goodbye.

You know, chances are he’s a 12 year old boy on the inside too. So he’d probably like it.

I don’t know.

Meanwhile on planet Tesla.

In other Tesla news, very unfortunate. There was a recent accident, uh, last weekend, actually not too far from my personal stomping grounds where a Tesla crashed into some trees. That crash caused an explosion, [00:57:00] fire, et cetera, the car engulfed in flames. Varying reports saying the fire burned for four hours before it was put out versus, I don’t know, it was put out immediately and the fire department just there for four hours, quenching, re ignition of the batteries, blah, blah, blah.

Regardless of whether it was minutes or four hours, uh, That thing definitely burned long enough that there was nothing practically left. There was no interior, there was no roof, there was no hood, there were no body panels. I mean, granted, they might have ripped the doors off and everything and pushed them aside and weren’t seen in the picture, but it was charred.

The mystery of this right now, this happened in a neighborhood, this happened on a neighborhood street, leaving essentially a dead end, a cul de sac, an S shaped street, not even probably too long, as it was negotiating the first of the curve, the car lost control, ended up in this patch of trees, directly in front of [00:58:00] people’s houses.

So obviously people heard the commotion or whatnot and called the fire department and called the police. The mystery of this is There were two people, uh, involved in this. Obviously, unfortunately, they did not survive. There was a passenger in the front passenger seat, and there was a person in the back seat.

The authorities are very adamant in saying that there was nobody in the driver’s seat. So, does that mean that this Tesla was put on autopilot, somehow, I don’t know how because I don’t know enough about their autopilot system and engaging it, somehow got up to a quote, high speed, okay, and it must have been a high enough speed to careen off the road and then explode into trees, because I would hope that the neighborhood speed of 20 miles an hour, if you hit a tree, you wouldn’t burst into flames, because every fricking accident would be Chernobyl.

How did that happen? You know, the initial report, you know, the [00:59:00] authorities contacting Tesla, etc. Elon is being very, you know, he’s saying that no, the data that we pulled, that autopilot was not engaged, this, that, and the other. I mean, you know, how can that be possible if there was no body found in the driver’s seat?

You know, how did this happen? And these weren’t 20 something year old folks. These were Older gentlemen, 59, 69, you know, so, you know, if they were 20 year olds, you could, you could argue, Oh yeah, he was in the driver’s seat. He’s showing off. He jumped into the back seat. Oh, look, my car drives itself. I have a hard time believing, you know, a 59 or 69 year old’s going to pull that stunt.

I could believe that there are people. Unfortunately, silly enough to be like, Oh, look at my car. It can drive itself. I’m not going to sit in the driver’s seat. I don’t know why you’d do that, because you could still prove my car drives itself and sit in the fricking driver’s seat, like a sane, rational person in case something goes wrong.

I don’t know. Maybe there was someone in the driver’s seat. Maybe they left the driver’s seat after the accident, somehow trying to get out from [01:00:00] the back of the car for some reason. With the fire and all that, I mean, I don’t know, it’s very strange. It’ll be interesting to see when the, the official black box and all that stuff, you know, other third parties get to see the data to confirm or, or not confirm whether autopilot was on or not.

I mean, this is a very bizarre, tragic accident that didn’t need to happen.

Nobody’s going to comment on this story.

I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I, there’s not much more to say on this. I’m sure more things will develop out of it. It’s, it’s very bizarre, very unfortunate in advertising in such a way that makes it sound like it’s fully autonomous.

And it, again, people, it, there is no such thing right now as a fully autonomous. Personal vehicle out there. Okay. None of the manufacturers have them. They, they are driver assists.

And it’s not just Tesla, Cadillac and Volvo. I mean, all of these companies are using this not deceiving marketing, but [01:01:00] I think, you know what I’m trying to say?

Well,

they’re all, they all misleading

marketing.

They all claim that they have, you know, the driver assist and all that, but I really think Tesla has been the most negligent in the way that they advertise it, where they very much have always made it sound like it’s this fully autonomous thing. No, it’s not guys.

The other, the other people, and maybe it’s their learnings from Tesla, I don’t think quite go that far. They make it a little bit more clear that it’s, You know, level whatever, and it’s just driver’s aids and, and that’s what they are. You’re still supposed to be in control of the vehicle. You’re not supposed to be reclined back and sleeping.

You should still be paying attention at any rate. Please do not just blindly let your car that doesn’t know what it’s doing drive down the road because these people unfortunately, you know, lost their own lives. This was a neighborhood granted. It was, I think, pretty late at night, but what if it wasn’t?

And there were children out or, you know, a family coming home in their minivan and, you know, you crash into somebody [01:02:00] else, like, don’t do stupid stuff, people, public service announcement

that leads into my next public service announcement. This is going to be kind of a, if anybody’s seen family guy, you know, you don’t really grind my gears.

This is going to be one of those things. So I, I saw something on the news the other day. Uh, and I had to get up and get the actual article, but there’s a thing called zoom zombies that are out there roaming the roads. Uh, and apparently this is something that’s real and true. Basically the, the, the moral of the story is people are working from home more now they’re, they’re telecommuting, which means they have a lot of meetings and those meetings are all on zoom or various, you know, tele, teleconference systems, but apparently because they have to quote unquote focus harder.

When they’re on a zoom or teleconferencing call, if they’re, if they go out immediately after, they shouldn’t go out immediately after because they’re too distracted to actually drive. And then they’re causing accidents [01:03:00] and they’re going out on the road because they’re not focused enough. Yes. Eric’s case.

And Tanya’s face, this is completely absurd. So here’s my thing

flag on the play

comes up

with this crap.

I don’t know. It’s it was on NBC for the, you know, that I, that I saw it as a tri DC, they, I believe that’s where I saw it as either NBC four or Fox or something like that, but basically my thing is, okay, yes.

Distracted driving is a thing. But people just don’t know how to effing drive anyway. I think

that, I think that people who have been home for so long and maybe haven’t driven in a while.

Oh my God. It’s so absurd. The amount of lunacy I see. Yes. You can tell,

you can tell that people are kind of like out of practice because they’re not used to doing it anymore or having the situational awareness.

We talk about that a lot, you know, in racing [01:04:00] that they used to have in the past. I don’t know if they had a lot to begin with. That’s a pretty marginal.

Terrible drivers before they are complete lunatics. Now, I

thought, I thought you were going to say these zoom zombies where people doing zoom calls now in their cars while they’re going to like somewhere else.

The funny thing is I’ve seen that too, but that’s not what the story was about. It was about just having a call. Leaving the call and then getting in your car and drive. I will, I will say

this, the few times that I’ve been out like with normal traffic since COVID hit, you know, in the last year, the speeds on the roads have gone up because once traffic kind of dissipated, everybody was driving.

Like, you know, you’re doing, let’s just say you’re doing the speed limit 65, maybe 70 on your highway. You know, a lot of the highways, you know, out of the greater metropolitan area here, the speed limits are higher you’re doing 70. You’re getting past like you’re parked. I mean, there’s people doing 90, a hundred.

I’m like, where are you going? There’s nowhere to [01:05:00] go. Everything’s closed. Is it just because you need, you have cabin fever and you need to get it off of your, you know, out of your system. I just don’t get, go to the track for that. Please go to the drag strip, whatever,

even more than that. Like, I don’t think like people just can’t drive.

I think majority of the people out there. Just do not know how to drive. And it’s because of the driving requirements and these municipalities and jurisdictions and everything. They basically, if you can fog up a mirror, it’s one of our, uh, one of our members favorite sayings. If you can fog up a mirror, you can drive.

They’re handing out driver’s license, like they’re candy. When you go to the DMV, you know, I took the driver’s test, Eric. I mean, all of us that when it was a rite of passage, when we turned 16, you know, you, you go for the driver’s test. It was in a parking lot here in Maryland. You mean you didn’t know street driving or anything you basically, if you could do one, two or three things, yeah, you get a license.

That’s great. That does not mean you know how to drive.

No, no, no, it doesn’t. I mean, and I guess everybody needs to approach it differently [01:06:00] because they’re every state does it differently. There’s different driving tests. Now us America as a whole compared to European way of doing drivers test. I mean, they get drivers licenses way later.

There’s all these courses a billion hours. You know, it’s it’s. very strict and very, very difficult to get a license, or at least it used to be here. You know, the joke, you know, when we were coming up, it was like, man, you could get your license out of a Cracker Jack box. It wasn’t that hard to get. Now, you know, the trend is there’s less and less, you know, young drivers.

They they’re waiting longer to drive. They have less interest in driving. That’s like a whole nother thing, but you’re right. I think the system, the education system has kind of failed. When it comes to driving now, I’m not saying all of us need to go out and, you know, do HPD or autocross or take some of the schools.

Now, there’s some streaks classes. Exactly. Exactly. Tire rack sponsors that they’re great. I’m, I’m a certified street survival coach. It’s a great program. If you haven’t looked into it before, you know, it does count towards like advanced driving credits, you know, things like that. So it’s, you’re not necessarily going to the track, [01:07:00] but there’s a lot of things to learn there, but accident avoidance, situational awareness, car control, you know, all these different kinds of things.

So if you have the extra time and you have the ability to, you know, carve out a Saturday or Sunday to go do that, I highly recommend it.

I personally think that driving is a privilege. It’s not a right. Now that may rub people the wrong way because you need to be able to get to work and stuff like that and public transportation isn’t what it should be here.

And okay, if we’re going to make driving right, then I don’t think you should be able to monetize the driver schools. I think it should be for free. And I think it should be more robust. And I think that yes, you’re right. I think street survival should be a mandatory part of the driver education before you get your license.

I can’t agree. I can’t agree more. I mean, if anything needs an overhaul, it’s definitely the way we do driver’s education for people getting their licenses for the first time. That’s for sure. So speaking of craziness on the highway, Brad,

right [01:08:00] back in our backyard here, there was some more lunacy going on, uh, right over in college park, uh, college park area on four 95

near university of Maryland for anybody.

These very well could be Maryland students. I mean, you never know. Now they do this a lot out in California. I mean, you see it all the time, but basically they shut down the highway. To do burnouts and doughnuts and all kinds of idiocy, you know, that was reserved for cars and coffee, but I guess there wasn’t a big enough audience.

So they’re doing it on the highways now and it’s completely absurd. There’s a video of it. From what I understand, the one or two of the people have already been charged with reckless driving and various other things. The police know who you are. Moral of the story. Just don’t be an idiot. Please do stupid things.

Win super prizes.

I mean, first of all, so I hadn’t heard that it happened and then when I saw this, I went from perfectly calm to so enraged [01:09:00] because the blatant stupidity and recklessness of this is just mind boggling because not only, you know, are they stopping the beltway? To do freaking doughnuts, like a tool.

They were doing 90 miles an hour, supposedly down powder mill down route to 12. So they came down route to 12, the speed limit is not 90 miles an hour there. No, I think

I was just on two 12 and I think it’s like 40, 40. Yeah. I was going to say 40 at best

if it’s yeah. 45, definitely. Probably not, but 35, 40.

Yeah, probably depending where you are on it. So they probably, they came down off. 212 onto the beltway then. And then they, they stopped traffic to do freaking donuts. I would not only melt this idiot’s driver’s license, but I would, I would have him standing there, pressing the crusher button and crush that car.

Well, I got it.

I got so many questions. Like, how does one block the [01:10:00] beltway for one to do this without

other people with them? Well, the

thing is, so I guess you create a roadblock because we already know people are zoom zombies and they’re not going to. See you. So you’re just going to like lemmings plow into these people.

And then to do this, it’s, it’s absolutely asinine. But the other thing is, do they not realize, and I have to say this again, do they not realize there is closed circuit cameras on the beltways in the DC metropolitan area. They are always watching the cars. They know who you are. As Brad said, they will see your license.

You think you’re getting away with it? They’ve already got you on camera before it even started. You know, so if you, if you ever watch the morning news,

it’s called the traffic cameras.

The best are everywhere. The best part is these idiots posted on Instagram and their, their TikTok and their, their various socials, you know, to get recognition.

What pisses me off even more is it’s only an 1, 800 fine. Are you freaking [01:11:00] kidding me? That should be jail time. Your car should be

impounded and crushed.

Yeah. That’s, that’s bonkers. 18,

000 my

butt. That’s reckless endangerment of like the public. I mean it’s it’s insane.

Is it like, I know it’s Maryland, it’s not Virginia, but it wasn’t like Virginia speeding tickets at some time, something like ridiculous, like.

Don’t

bring out the blowtorch and like melt your license

in front of you. In Virginia, they, you go directly to jail. You do not pass go, you go to jail.

And you go

to jail for speeding. You go, if you’re 50 over or 80 miles, over 80 miles an hour, it’s an immediate go to jail.

Here’s the thing. I can’t say this enough.

I know people don’t believe me. They’re like, Oh, it’s so expensive! Blah, blah, blah! Go to the track. Okay.

How

many track days do you get for 1, 800? That’s not even my point. That’s not even my point. My point is within a weekend, I guarantee you, you will have an epiphany. You will realize you are not Schumacher and it will all get out of your system.

After going to the [01:12:00] track for so many years, I just drive differently. I don’t have the need anymore. Just get it out of your system somewhere safe in a controlled environment and go have fun. It will cost you less in the long run.

So I’ll go with yes and no on that. I’ll say yes for people that are, that tend to be the people that just speed all the time.

Like they constantly just want to be speeding and, and, and that kind of thing. Like go, go do this in a controlled environment and you’ll learn very quickly that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. and that you need to respect the speed a whole lot more and shit happens, can happen very very fast and it will happen very fast when you’re doing things inappropriately.

So the no is I think someone like this asshat, to be quite blunt, would be the person that gets his butt thrown out at the track. because they’re endangering every other person out there being that a hole that’s not listening to the instructor who thinks they know better and they’re just a freaking like suicide mission going around and then they get ejected.

That’s probably [01:13:00] this type of person.

And this goes back to my previous point with the zoom zombies. Why do these people still have licenses? I don’t know. I don’t know. Why was it not taken away is immediately canceled. Done. You’re done. You, you have no more license. You can, why do

we let,

here’s a bus pass,

people that drive drunk and you get pulled over or whatever, you know, they get to go back out and, you know, kill somebody.

I don’t know. Exactly.

That, that shouldn’t, yeah. None of that. It’s, it’s

all above our pay grades. That’s, that’s, that’s. That’s just it. Right. So, you know, let’s switch to some lighter news. How about that? So we wouldn’t even want to be

in

a

story.

Oh, I wish it was, it’s sort of like a Florida man. So it involves the Southwest of the United States though.

So keeping with our lost and found theme from earlier Ford lost a turbine powered semi truck in 1964. So more affectionately referred to as Big Red, the 600 horsepower turbine powered semi [01:14:00] debuted at the same auto show as the original Mustang in 1964 and was subsequently lost. And has been searched for for now, you know, 50, 60 years and it was found, by the way, very recently.

And the question that comes to mind is how does 1 lose what is known as a double or, you know, you’ve seen them on the road, the UPS trucks with the 2 containers behind the truck, a double coming in at a whopping 96 feet long. This is like losing an ocean liner or losing a building. Okay. It’s bright fire engine red all the way through very distinct vehicle, uh, even for a semi, because it was a car shaped kind of nose.

There was only, it said Ford turbine on the front. I mean, I don’t know how you lose basically a hundred foot long vehicle.

I mean, what must’ve happened is they put it in storage. The dude who put it in storage. Passed away, moved on with [01:15:00] life, they burnt the Rolodex and didn’t have his phone number. And nobody knew, it was only one dude, one dude in charge of Big Red.

And when that person left or, you know, whatever, nobody knew where he was.

His name was Milton and he also had a red swing line stapler. That’s, that’s all I know.

I mean, that’s the only thing that makes sense.

Oh, then he’s, he’s in the basement. My paycheck, my paycheck, my stapler. Outside of that, I discovered something new.

You know, I mentioned ugly car episode. You know, again, if you haven’t listened to that one, check it out. There’s also a B sides on Patreon full length B side episode. As a matter of fact, I have another car to add to the ugliest cars list. Something you’ve probably never heard of. It’s a 1973 Moe’s Safari car, suck that in, do a Google search or check the follow on article to this episode to get a glimpse of it yourself.

Are the body panels leather? [01:16:00]

There is so much wrong with this car. Like that’s,

that’s not metal that saw, or is that metal?

It looks like a

couch.

So first of all, it’s built on a truck chassis for one because it was designed to go into Africa for big game hunting. So problem number one right there. Number two, it does look like something out of the desert for sure.

It has that very military look to it. I think my seven year old could design something better than this.

I’m

right.

It’s definitely wrapped in like vinyl.

It’s wrapped in Naugahyde. So it’s fake leather.

There’s a lot of really cool features to this. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There are some cool features here.

There are some cool features. Okay. First of all, electromechanical convertible top. It’s kind of cool ahead of its time. 1973. It has three front seats, like a McLaren F1. Kind of awesome. It has a fold away back area for like laying down and doing the snipering [01:17:00] of the big game.

So can you, does it move, does it fold down automatically if you say open the buttholes?

No, but it has other amenities because back then it was the only thing you could talk to. In the Mo’s safari car was the AM FM CB radio. Remember Peter Klein talked about that on our music and cars episode earlier this month. So yeah, it’s got a lot of like international harvester stuff on it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

You forgot about the best part.

What’s that? The side draft exhaust?

I love the hood ornament.

Yeah, yeah, that whole grill is amazing. That hood ornament definitely looks like something out of Indiana Jones and the, uh, the Ark of the Covenant. It is definitely very militaristic and diplomatic looking. I mean, there’s, there’s so much wrong and so much right with this car at the same time.

Yeah, you gotta check it out, but I will say this. It was on bring a trailer. We posted a link to it and the bid got up to a whopping [01:18:00] 90, 000, right? So one of,

I’m looking at like a closeup of this butthole, it’s fuel port, you know, we’ve got the Naga hide here and then it’s like, Metal strapping runs down like this piece of metal strapping is riveted.

Wow. Home Depot.

I love the fact that it’s got sliding doors like a minivan.

Yeah. It’s all the things, dude. So sliding doors so you can lay down and shoot out of it. Like I said, three seats, bucket seats. By the way, they’re kind of, it has a total, so you

can, you can shoot game, you can hunt game out of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Without it leaving your seat. So

apparently three of these. Concept vehicles were built, and then the company went bankrupt, and that was pretty much the end of that.

I can’t imagine why.

Cost too much Nalgahide.

Yes. Much like Another company that only built three cars and went bankrupt doing it.

A lesser known supercar manufacturer by the name of Isdera was [01:19:00] a ex Mercedes engineer who went off into the Alps of Switzerland and decided to start his own car company. He built three cars. And one of the three, the more popular and more recognizable one is the Ator I one 12, but the Gen two car, the Imperator 1 0 8, I was recently up for auction.

Probably not too many is Dara fans out there outside of Tanya, who I know is a fan and knows the brand, but, uh. Yeah, I thought it was kind of cool to see that pop up recently. It’s just not a car you hear of, but it has been around for a very, very long time. So look at these, uh, three of three cars out there in the wild.

This car is actually really, really cool looking. I’m a big fan and I love those like three 45 rear tires or whatever. Oh, wait, I got to the interior. I take it back before you move into another story, Eric, you skipped

a story. Oh, I know I’m getting back to it to round out our ugly cars. Not [01:20:00] because the one Oh eight I is not a pretty car, right?

Let’s just. The 112 was a much better looking car, but I recently came across an advertisement, you know, soliciting me to come visit CarMax. And I don’t know how I got on this list, but it was the CarMax unicorn blog telling me that I needed to come check out this quick hit manual transmission 2010 Chevrolet HHR SS low miles, reasonably priced in white.

Is it still for sale? There might be somebody out there looking for one. I’m

still holding out for a brand new one.

I mean, this one only has 28, 000 miles. 28, 000 miles. You are correct.

How much are they asking for it?

It’s a bargain for 16, nine, nine, eight.

You can get a brand

new dot start for that and not be made fun of nearly as much

that this SS would beat it on a quarter mile

once [01:21:00] there’s so much.

There’s so much,

like the fastest lap around the Nurburgring.

This is so much wrong with the

take in

a terrible

club member. Your car is waiting for you at CarMax

with a red bow on top of it.

Big red bow.

All right. So I think it’s time now for us to switch into our final segment. We need to go behind the pit wall and talk about motorsports and GTM news.

So first up on the docket, I want to talk about stock car racing, not to be confused with NASCAR, but in Brazil. They have a stock car series. This came across my desk via motorsport. tv. And I was really, really intrigued. Definite clickbait. I was like, what is this all about? Because it says in the intro catch legendary drivers, Felipe Masa, Rubens Barrichello, Ricardo Zonta, Tony Kanan, and more as part of the bumper list of.

[01:22:00] Entries in this year’s Brazilian stock car series. I was like, all right, wait a minute. So I click into this and I’m looking at it and it actually debuts on April 24th and there’s going to be a series of these, these races starring a lot of these folks that, you know, and what it turns out to be is a bunch of Chevy Cruzes and Toyota Corollas that are apparently still being made in South America.

And it’s basically South American touring car series. It looks pretty cool. I’m definitely interested now. They got me with stock car racing. Not that I’m the biggest NASCAR fan in the world, but I still think it’s pretty cool to see some GR Corollas going up against some Chevy Cruzes and other vehicles in this series.

So you had me at GR. Right. So speaking of GRs.

Yeah. There’s, um, you know, more GR yaris fun, you know, another video out there. I guess somebody out at Hockenheim ring got a hold of a GR yaris and, uh, they were racing it on a, on a track day or whatever. They had a look like an instructor in the car and [01:23:00] they’re crazy.

I’m just gonna start off with how crazy they are over there to be doing a fricking track day and they ain’t wearing helmets or anything. I mean, I know. You know, you shouldn’t be crashing and all that. And those instances are quite low, but shit still happens. And you want to be wearing head protection, but at any rate, especially since this guy doesn’t even have the windows open.

So if your head flapped to the side, you’d crap now. No

point buys. They’re passing without point buys.

I mean, they’re used

blinkers.

Maybe they were, I don’t know. At any rate, it’s a guy in his Yaris and he gets all excited and It’s basically him behind a Supra, a new Supra, um, the whole time. He doesn’t get around him, obviously.

The Supra is still more powerful, but the Supra didn’t exactly walk away either. Now I’m not going to say that like both of these people were driving to the full potential of the respective vehicles. Cause the Supra was definitely very squirrely through a lot of corners. So that person clearly wasn’t probably driving.[01:24:00]

Full potential of that car, because I imagine it would eventually walk away. But it’s still Yaris fun. It’s always fun to see what’s going on with Yarises that we’ll never get here.

I also think it’s probably the most realistic comparison or showdown we’ve seen between the GR Yaris and the Supra compared to the things we’ve reported on in the past.

All these, we did it in the rain backwards at night on an eighth mile oval and the, the Super, you know, had three cylinders removed and all these stupid tests that they’ve done against the GRRs. These were two dudes hooning around on Hockenheim ring and whether they could drive or not. I think it really showed some of the potential of the GRRs and I’m with you.

I want to drive one of these. Chris Harris recently, you know, posted about driving one on his Instagram feed and he was all about, he’s like, this thing’s fantastic. It’s a boot. And I think this, the GRRs really is. The newest, best hot hatch that’s out there. And I hate to say, being a long time, you know, VW, GTI fan or whatever, you can keep them.[01:25:00]

You know, I want to try this new Toyota.

I will say it’s apparently faster than a Miata.

I didn’t notice that too. Cause he did pass the Miata. Like it was parked. That was really an MX 30.

Who doesn’t pass a Miata like it’s parked? It’s

true. So speaking of other showdowns, Car Magazine is at it again. 911 versus M4.

Whoa. I mean, this is a battle as old as time, right? The 911 versus the M3. The M3 is now the M4, depending on the number of doors that you select. I hate to say it’s pretty ugly. I mean, it’s, it’s up there with the HHR and some of these other cars we talked about, but I mean, do we really care anymore? I hate to say the 911, I think has transcended into the supercar world, especially with the turbo and the turbo S and all the other variants of the 911.

So yeah, the one guy that buys a base model, nine 11, maybe he can compare it to the M four, but. I think there’s other cars that [01:26:00] compared to the M4 now. I mean, I think it’s kind of lost some of its luster in a way. Maybe it’s better suited against, Oh, I don’t know the Mustang 350, you know, some of these other cars that would, it would play in that sandbox a little more than with the nine 11, which is, you know, chomping at the heels of the Ferraris and the lotuses and all the other cars that are out there, you know, what do you think, Brad?

I think you’re right. I think the nine 11 is in a completely different ballpark. I don’t think personally anybody actually buys a base nine 11. I mean, they’re, they’re always tacking on 20, 000 worth of options and extras and performance mods and stuff like that. That’s just to get wheels. Yeah. So I don’t know.

I’m tired of the. The M four I, I’ve been over the M four ever since there was an M four. Give me back an E 46 M three and I’ll be perfectly happy. And this part, yeah, when

BMWs were BMWs. Yeah. Can

I just say, it actually doesn’t look okay. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. ‘

cause it’s not true.

I don’t think it looks [01:27:00] that hideous the more I look at it, but I will say it looks.

Like it’s lifted. It looks like an SUV when I look at it from the side, I can’t get

over that new grill and I

hate what makes the grill worse is the license plate placement because they put it right in the middle of the grills. Like, what the hell is the point?

Like, you got something stuck in your teeth, you know, hold on.

Let me get, let me scrape that out

so bad. So let’s get back to some motor sports news. Brad, let’s go to your favorite discipline.

Uh, everybody rejoice because F1 is back. Everybody but Eric, I should say. Uh, if it’s not a rally, he doesn’t care. F1 is back a couple of weeks ago. Fernando Alonso made his debut or his redebut coming back to F1 after a short stint in the world endurance racing WEC.

He also had attempted some IndyCar, but he decided to come back to F1, his home. He drives for [01:28:00] Alpine and it was his first race and his first race with Alpine and it basically just like every single race he had with McLaren, uh, and it ended with a DNF because he had an issue with the car. But if you really pay attention to what happened, it wasn’t because of anything the car did or anything he did or anything like that.

It was because of a sandwich. Excuse me, what? Yes, someone’s Subway Wrapper, or Jersey Mike’s, uh, one of the mechanics I guess was eating Jersey Mike’s, no I don’t think that’s actually what happened, but apparently a sandwich wrapper got stuck in one of the brake ducts and then he had brake failure.

Failure and brake issues and stuff and couldn’t drive the car and had to retire

the car Because the plastic baggy ziploc wouldn’t have melted under the extreme heat of the anti gravity brakes

apparently subway five dollar foot long subwrappers are extremely robust And can withstand nuclear temperatures.

[01:29:00] Maybe it’s the foil paper from Hardee’s, right? Remember, it’s like foil backed paper to keep it warm.

Yes, it was a checkers burger wrapper.

That’s terrible. Is there anything else going on in Formula 1?

There’s the whole Bodas and Russell running into each other. The conspiracy theory is that they did it on purpose.

So that Lewis Hamilton would get unlapped, you know, during the red flag. I don’t know how that actually works because one, they could not have anticipated an actual red flag to, I mean, they’re all competitors. Botis hates Lewis, uh, Hamilton. So I don’t, I don’t see how that could have happened, but. You know, whatever they, they collided, you know, both of them ended their races.

I forget who won. I think Max Verstappen won the race, blah, blah, blah. Nobody cares. Let’s move on. A

hundred percent. So you remember a while back, we talked about the Mach E 1400. that?

Yes.

So Ford put out that monster [01:30:00] super drift car equivalent to 1400 horsepower. It’s a Ford performance factory only vehicle.

They’ve got some factory drivers, you know, doing all these videos and whatnot. So to give you a taste, quote unquote, of what the experience is like in the Mach E 1400, they have partnered with hot ones. To create the maki hot sauce. And so we posted the video of this as Ford factory driver and the host of hot ones, sit down together and kind of go back and forth.

It’s, it’s an interesting kind of fun little two minute video showcasing the maki and this hot sauce, which probably tastes like liquid fire, as far as I can tell. I mean, they’re near tears in the video as they’re eating these chicken wings and they keep pouring the sauce on there. And it’s, it’s pretty brutal looking.

I don’t know, get yourself some maki 1400 hot sauce. That’s all I’m going to say. Next up Forza Motorsports. We talked about that last month with Tom. We keep hinting at the fact that Forza 8 is on the horizon. No pun [01:31:00] intended, but we’ve been hearing that Forza 8, now more officially known as Forza Motorsport, just Forza Motorsport period and versus Forza Horizon, they’ve been hinting for the last two years or so that it’s supposed to be coming out.

Has

never been officially given a release date. All that has been said by Turn 10 is that they’re making one, but there’s zero release date. It’s all there’s nothing

at my point. Exactly, Tanya. And so now you can sign up to beta test. Forza eight, we’ll call it that. And there’s still no release date for as far as the article is concerned.

It came from Jalopnik. It basically says that there’s no scheduled release date, even for 2021, which means Forza eight pushes into 22. So if you’re looking for. Something new to play. I highly recommend European truck racing championship that is available for free right now on Xbox live. And by the way, you don’t need an Xbox live subscription anymore for free to play games.

So have at it, check it out. Plenty of good [01:32:00] stuff out there on the marketplace.

Paid for and sponsored by Microneski.

In some sad news, titled things that aren’t going to happen. And we really hope they were. Remember Oak Ridge, Tennessee. New track being built. It’s going to be the newest track east of the Mississippi. Yeah. All the permits fell through. Not going to happen.

Big surprise.

Yeah. Fortunately, another new track close to home.

Not going to happen. Thank you to everyone that petitioned the municipalities, you know, wrote in all that stuff. All the support from the different HPD organizations, be it, you know, chin and max speed and all the people that we talked to that were pushing to have Oak Ridge built and be the first ones there, just disappointed to hear that it’s not going to happen.

However, the face of drag racing is going to change. And I think there was some foreshadowing earlier this month when we talked to Bobby Parks. What do you think, Brad?

So apparently the EV evolution revolution. [01:33:00] whatever you call it, is making its way to drag racing. And they’re going to do a quarter mile NHRA drag strip dedicated to EV cars.

That’ll be the quietest drag strip.

Can you imagine just a bunch of whining, uh, but Bobby talked about this on the episode, The Black Nasty, where he mentioned, you know, EV was coming. He wants to get in front. You know, he said there’s a good chance that if it catches on, the NHRA would get behind it and create a class for EVs.

Now, can they compete against, you know, 9, 000 horsepower top thrill dragsters, or even the 1300, you know, horsepower, no prep class that he runs in. I will see, I want to see it happen. I’d be very curious to see what kind of times they put down, but to Tanya’s point, it’s going to be a very anticlimactic sound.

I mean, there’s all the, you know. Amateur drag racing of Tesla, ludicrous mode versus Ferraris and all that. And generally at winning. So, you know, I’m sure if someone dedicates, I [01:34:00] want to put all the power down at once, I get one pull and the juice is gone. How much could you get out of it?

That’s the question.

And I think that has yet to be figured out. So

yeah. How many, how many polls are you getting out of a ludicrous mode? Tesla?

I think the interesting part about embracing this is much like there were pioneers in drag racing back in the fifties and sixties, you know, you know, garlots, all these guys, you know, the first, you know, the Coleman brothers, the first ones to put the motor basically behind the driver.

I, that’s some, that’s something I read. You can, guys can correct me if I’m wrong on that one out there and listener land. But, you know, there’s been a lot of. Interesting advancements that have come by the way of drag racing. And I’m kind of wondering if we’re standing on this precipice now going, you know, that scrawny little kid over there that’s running that EV he’s going to be the next, you know, garlots or whoever that’s going to be in the NHRA hall of fame, you know, 30, 40, 50 years from now being the guy that pioneered the EV dragster or whatever it might be.

So it’d be really cool to see where [01:35:00] it goes. I think history in the making, right?

By the way, Elon Musk, if you listen to our podcast, which I hope you do, because we have a lot of Tesla talk on here, please send Bobby parks, the black nasty, a Tesla Roadster. So he can run it for you. A hundred percent.

It’ll be interesting with.

You know, there’s the Formula E and, you know, if the drag racing goes electric and different racing venues go electric, what will change in, because you’ve, you’ve said this before about a lot of different innovation trickles down from the developments of, you know, Formula One and other racing bodies. It trickles down into the cars we drive every day.

And, you know, as You know, this new territory of electric vehicles is coming. What advances will we hopefully get in terms of safety? Because going back to the horrible accident or incident in Texas here, the two people dying in that fire, the car crashes car, you know, sometimes those guys crash on the drag strip, they lose control, go [01:36:00] sideways to go into a barrier.

If they can’t put the fire out. For hours. How are they extricating that driver? You know, what advances can we do? Um, you know, is there ways to quick disconnect the batteries and in a way that, I don’t know, isolates the reaction? Or are there other things that can be done to make those kind of incidents safer?

Will we get that technology trickling down?

It’s gonna be like demolition man, when the impact occurs. Flame is detected. Foam is ejected. Mm-hmm. . And that’s the end of that. Right? The other thing I’m joking, but that could be not far from reality. I think the other thing we’re going to see is, you know, as Bobby said, drag racing, probably one of the safest motor sport compared to a lot of other ones, especially door to door racing, you know, things like that.

And there are, there are tragic accidents in drag racing. I think there are four. Few and far between compared to some of the other motor sports that are out there. But when they’re big, they’re big, right? And you see some crazy stuff at the drag strip. However, I think some of those things are a direct result of the fact that those vehicles are rear wheel drive, they’re high [01:37:00] horsepower, they’re two wheel drive more than anything, and they have that propensity to torque and lift a car, you know, wheelie bars, all this kind of stuff.

Lots to get super technical on it. If you are interested, listen to Bobby’s episode. He goes into detail and all that. I think with the. You’re going to see a lot more all wheel drive to get the maximum power, the maximum grip, and that’s going to change the nature of drag racing too, because you’re going to have more control over the vehicle with all wheel drive.

I think you’re going to have a less of. Of a propensity to lift the car off the ground, which creates, you know, unstableness also air catching the underneath of the car to flip it over. All those things that we see with current dragsters, you know, today. So I think it’s going to change the sport altogether because the overall engineering of the EV is completely different, you know, than what we’re used to today.

It doesn’t have the same drive train or drive train at all. For that matter, it’s, it’s just very, very different.

But to Tanya’s point, yeah, they need to redirect their [01:38:00] safety focus, you know, for some of these other more traditional incidents to new scenarios that can come up. I mean, batteries overheating and catching fire is a real thing.

It happens. It happens a lot. I mean, it happens with cell phones, it’s, it’s a new danger that they need to plan for before they can start coming up with a new class or a new series in this and the other. Actually, they should probably reach out to the regulators who host the, I mean, they should reach out to the FIA.

Regarding the formula E series and find out what they do, how they mitigate the potential risks for batteries exploding or catching fire and things like that.

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with that more. So let’s transition out to some just local news here as we kind of round out. the episode. So upcoming events for GTM.

If anybody’s interested, we’ve got some off road adventure coming up in May. A lot of [01:39:00] folks have already returned to the track. A lot of the S. C. C. A. Majors have already kicked off Mars races. You know, start this weekend, the first round of that. That’s the local club racing series here in the DMV. We also have a trip Planned for Tail The Dragon.

We’ve got some, what we call away games coming up. You know where we’re gonna be going to Nelson Ledges and Carolina Motor Sports Park and a lot of other places that we wouldn’t normally go to in a track season to try to kind of get away from the normal and do something different, especially since a lot of us have been home for a while and been yearning to get back to the track.

Our Summer Bash event we have scheduled, it’s gonna be July 30th through August 2nd at Summit Point. It’s gonna be four days over three tracks. That is our annual anniversary party for GTM. We, you know, we pick an event, we go to, we partner with somebody, we throw a big party, you know, commemorating our anniversary and it’s a lot of fun.

So we encourage you guys to come out and check it out. If you’ve never been to the track before, tons of ride alongs. Especially with, you know, a lot of the folks in our group are coaches. So they’re able to take you out and experience the track for yourself. There’s no cost to [01:40:00] come and spectate. There’s no cost to come and hang out.

So check that out July 30th through August 2nd at Summit Point Motorsports Park in West Virginia. On top of that, we are going to start our VRL. Series 15 in May, as Tom talked about on the last episode of the drive through, but we’re also adding a special, we’ll call it adjacent series, which is going to be European truck racing to follow along with the open wheel series that we’re running.

So we’re going to be running two series at the same time. They’re optional. If you’re interested in that, check it out, the information on garage riot, or check out the information on gtmotorsports. org under services, virtual racing league to get more information on that. You know, give us a shout out if you want to participate or be involved in that.

It’s going to be a lot of fun. And you know, there’s, it’s always a good time. Bragging rights, prizes, awards night, all that fun stuff at the end of the year. Meanwhile, our track schedule is still huge because it is to be still really basically the beginning of the season. There’s So I can’t sit here and prattle off all the events that are [01:41:00] happening in April and May.

All I can tell you is there’s probably 200 of them and you should really go to HPD junkie. com and check it out, filter by your geographical area or closest area track to you to see what’s going on. And I will say. Dave Peters has done an excellent job putting all the information in there. A lot of new logos popping up on HPD junkie this year, you know, max speed, just track it.

It’s been around for a while, but we’re starting to see more and more events for them. Obviously we just did an episode with auto interests. There’s a lot more logos showing up on those calendars as outside of the normal, you know, PCAs and BMW clubs and things like that. And they’re on there as well. So you have the full.

schedule of all the tracks throughout the entire year now, including Canada. So there’s a lot of stuff to go through. So if you want to go to most port, go check it out. You know, it’s, it’s going to be on HPD junkie. com.

And in case you’ve been missing out, check out the other podcast episodes that have aired this month.

You can learn more about the third largest HP provider auto interest. You can also tune into the [01:42:00] chat with Bobby Parks about no prep drag racing in the black nasty episode. Get your groove on with cruising at the speed of sound, where talk is about the intersection between cars and music with Pete Kline and Vet Motorsports and Donovan Lara and Garage Riot.

And last but not least, the Patreon special re release of the Pit Stop episode with Ryan Staub of Lockton Motorsports.

That’s right. And we do have one new Patreon for the month of April. Big shout out to John Caffeci, who has now returned home from his tour of duty in Kuwait. He’s been gone for about a year now.

He’s back home. He’s back at the track. He’s, you know, back turning wrenches once again. And he’s

back looking for an HHR SS.

Oh yeah. Better believe it at CarMax, 16, 998 on sale today. So we’re really happy to have him on board as a Patreon supporter of GTM. And, you know, we can’t do this without the love, support, and, you know, friendship and everything that goes along [01:43:00] with all the folks here at GTM.

So if you’re looking to help out, you know, maybe you can’t help out with your talents or your time. As our member Gordon always says, if I can’t be present, Send dead presidents or Benjamin Franklin’s. He wasn’t a president, but you know, you get it. So patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and you can check that out and see how you can support GTM and keep, you know, things like the drive through going.

And speaking of those that want to help out, we’d like to thank our special guest tonight. Wait a minute. We don’t have a special guest tonight. That means we’ve got a slot available for anybody that’s listening that wants to be on one of the next drive thru episodes. And also, thanks again, as always, to our co host Tanya.

No problem. She’s keeping us honest, if nothing else, right?

She’s so modest. She runs this entire show. We wouldn’t have it without her.

And thank you again to all of the members, the families, everybody, the [01:44:00] fans that support GTN, because without you, none of this would be possible. So we’ll see you again at the end of May for drive through number 10.

We love all three of you

and Elon Musk.

There’s some idiot in a Volvo with his bright son behind me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, whatcha trying to do, blind me? My wife says maybe

we should 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 [01:45:00] 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports. org. We’d love to hear from you.

Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge.

As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag. For as little as 2 and 50 cents 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 motor sports, and remember without fans, supporters, and members like you. None of this would be [01:46:00] possible.