B/F: The Drive Thru #2

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Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is GTM’s monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, Hooked on Driving, AmericanMuscle. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive Thru, look no further than www.

gtmotorsports. org. Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: What’s going on, everybody, and welcome to The Drive Thru, our monthly recap where we put together a menu of local, racing, and random car adjacent news. I’m your host, Brad. With me, as always, is Eric. Heyo! And we also have Tanya. Now let’s pull up to window number one for some industry news. I would like to talk about BMW.

Before you all change the channel, [00:01:00] BMW has announced, well their M division has announced, that they’re going to finally make A touring for those of you that don’t know touring means wagon and BMW has never made an M3 wagon. The closest they ever got was the 46 where they made a prototype and there have been all kinds of conversions where people have taken regular three series wagons and converted them with all the M, you know, parts and all that good stuff.

Well, BMW M has confirmed today that they are going to finally release one. It’s going to be built on the same chassis as the M3 Sedan and the M4 Coupe. It’s going to have the same motor, the same everything. It’s going to be basically the same car, just the long roof edition. You know, all the long roof fans in the club rejoice.

Yay! Here’s the problem though.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s several.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, the one glaring problem for us is that it is not coming to the U. S. No surprise there. What are some of the other problems, Eric? You say there’s several.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, other,

Crew Chief Brad: other than the fact that it’s A BMW.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:02:00] Well, yeah. And that’s, that’s, that’s my leading problem.

The second problem is that grill. ’cause if it looks anything like the current M three, you can keep it. Oh my God. , the spy photos that rodent track posted of the back were just a rendering and that was, you know, a wide body version of the current three series, which I’m okay with from that rear angle, but the rest of it, mm, not so much.

If from a usability standpoint, I know that’s not the point of our performance wagon, but if it’s anything like the current three series wagons, it’s. It’s pretty much useless and just buy an M3 and call it a day. You’re not really missing out on a whole lot. I will say there’s a probably an upside to it and the fact that even though we’ll never see it, it is going to be available in a manual transmission.

So plus a million points to BMW for putting a standard. Well,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s, that’s the lower model. I mean the lower model of the M3. Now if you want to get the competition model with the 30 more horsepower and the all wheel drive optional. They did away with the manual. It’s got to be automatic only. I’m suspecting [00:03:00] it’s probably got something to do with the manual probably has a hard time dealing with the torque numbers or something.

I mean, that’s the excuse that a lot of these manufacturers have started to give lately, but it’s still a disappointment and all wheel drive manual wagon with close to 500 horsepower. I mean, sign me up if that’s the case, except for signing without one from BMW. Yeah, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: And the competitors too, at the Audi and the Mercedes.

Uh, you know, the RS4, RS6s, and the Mercedes E63 wagons, we’re never going to see those either. I mean, wagons, as we covered in a later episode that our listeners will enjoy, wagons in the United States are basically dead at this point.

Crew Chief Brad: I was going to say, so if you’ve got the money for an M3 Touring in the U.

S., go out and buy yourself a Porsche Macan S.

Crew Chief Eric: I would agree with that statement and you’d probably be much happier at the end of the day.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly. Tanya, we know how you feel about the wagons. How do you feel about this story? I

Executive Producer Tania: could care less.[00:04:00]

Crew Chief Brad: she, she checked out at wagon, at bmw, at m at, at

Crew Chief Eric: automatic,

Crew Chief Brad: all of those things, at not coming to the us. She, she has not been a part of this story at all. , all

Executive Producer Tania: the boxes got checked right from the headline. ,

Crew Chief Brad: well Poo. Anyway,

Executive Producer Tania: you had me at Giant Kidney Grill and I walked

Crew Chief Brad: away. Oh my god, that grill looks like, how is that legal?

I mean, that’s why it’s not coming to the U. S. because it’s not legal. It does not have the pedestrian crash guards.

Crew Chief Eric: I just want to know who the engineer at BMW was that was at Waffle House and was staring at the cook going, you know what? That’s a good idea for what a grill should look like. It looks like a waffle maker.

That’s wide open They were clear.

Crew Chief Brad: They were clearly looking at a large mouth bass and they just said let’s put two of them together And there’s our new grill, you know, it’s not the kidney It’s the bass

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the upside to the aftermarket of the new bmws is that all the tuners are going to make the grills look like the [00:05:00] old cars So I guess there’s the plus But you know speaking of crazy town I think that is the new name for Detroit these days because there is all sorts of bonkers going on.

We got CEOs stepping down, Jim Hackett from Ford is out, we’ve got GM still suing Chrysler over like secret clandestine moles and they’re playing spy versus spy and offshore accounts. I mean, it’s like the next edition of James Bond is going on between Fiat and Chrysler and, and, and GM. And then we’ve got on the same, same token, uh, Caesar, their Remini.

Crew Chief Brad: Cesare Remiti.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. Who brought Fiat through all the tough times through the darkness. He’s like the Iacocca. Of fiat has passed away. So there’s all sorts of turmoil. There’s all sorts of upheaval. And when you read all these different articles that we’re going to put out there, you’re still wondering what happened to the merger between fiat Peugeot and all the rest of that, which [00:06:00] nobody’s talking about right now.

And then on top of it all, they’ve decided they’re going to come up with a new name for the company.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, they’re changing the company name too. Stellantis? Stellantis. Let’s go to Atlantis in a Stellantis. I mean, I mean, what are these people? What

Crew Chief Eric: are they doing over

Crew Chief Brad: there? They’re drinking

Crew Chief Eric: absinthe.

Yeah, I don’t understand.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently, the word is rooted in the

Which I don’t know if I fully agree with that, but Stella in Italian is star.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but why couldn’t we have just called it Atlantis? They could have had Aquaman as their mascot.

Crew Chief Brad: Because Atlantis is trademarked. There’s an entire resort.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s an entire city under the water. You can’t just take a whole city.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, the Alantans, or the resident people from the city of Atlantis lost under the sea. Have a copyright. I was

Crew Chief Eric: [00:07:00] just thinking about it because it would have made sense with like the Trident, the Maserati logo would have made total sense there. And then, you know, the cars are starting to look like fish nowadays anyway.

So it would have been completely thematic. We could have had these really cool like fish scale paint jobs, like the old, uh, the Ford Mystique where it would turn green and purple and change. I think there’s a whole theme that they’re missing out on here. But this Atlantis thing, do not understand what is going on over there.

I mean, they have lost their minds.

Crew Chief Brad: As long as they continue to make the Hellcat, I’m okay with whatever else they do.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and that’s part of the whole, you know, the lawsuit thing and the labor with GM and Fiat. I mean, it’s just like, what is going on? Like, why does GM even care at the end of the day what Fiat Chrysler is up to?

Like, let them just go build their muscle cars. Are you jealous because the C8 is a disappointment? Moving on. So Brad, you’ve got some other Detroit news. What have you got for us?

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, Chevy just came out with a C8 Corvette. [00:08:00] Everybody’s heard about it. It’s, you know, it made the rounds about, you know, what, three, four, five, six months ago.

That’s not what we’re talking about right now. Right now we’re going to talk about the outgoing C7 and the C7 ZR1. Because apparently at the time Chevrolet claimed that the C7 ZR1, you know, with a 6. 2 liter supercharged motor, a V8, 755 horsepower, its top speed was claimed to 212 miles an hour. That’s the official number from Chevrolet.

Crew Chief Eric: Really?

Crew Chief Brad: Yep. Well, it turns out the car can go just a little bit quicker with the optional eight speed automatic transmission fitted with the low downforce arrow setup, not the, uh, you know, giant wings and all that stuff that some of us have seen at the track. It can get to a whopping Miles per hour.

Crew Chief Eric: I gotta say that’s pretty impressive

Crew Chief Brad: that it’s knocking on the doors of your What your law ferraris and your 918s and all those?

McLaren p1s. I mean for a [00:09:00] car that costs a fraction of the cost that’s pretty damn awesome

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and whether you like the design of the C7 or not, I mean, styling is, is an acquired taste in a lot of cases. It’s a pretty slippery car compared to some of the old ones. There’s a lot of engineering in that.

I’ve had the luxury of riding in many C7s on NCM at the factory test track. Phenomenal car. Absolutely phenomenal car. But to know that the ZR1, you know, that kind of final hoorah for that car, that it can do it well over 200 miles an hour is that’s impressive. I never, I thought, figured the top speed on a, on a Corvette was probably 170, 180 at best.

But over 200

Crew Chief Brad: and on a, on a standard Corvette, you’re probably right. It’s probably around 180, 186, something like that. But yeah, the ZR1 with the giant blower on top and, you know, and the correct aerodynamic bits. Yeah. 214 miles an hour. Dang. That is commendable. I mean, I tip my hat to Chevrolet for, for creating [00:10:00] something like that.

That costs, what were they new? Like 120, 000. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s the fastest Corvette, basically.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Production

Crew Chief Eric: Corvette, because when you look at the old Lingenfelters and all those specialty Callaways and all that stuff, they would do over 200 back in the 80s. But they also had like 12 turbos and they were completely gutted and everything else.

Crew Chief Brad: And they could do it once and then, you know, never again. You have to take hours to cool down. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: You needed a parachute and six miles to slow the thing down. Cause it had, you know, 10 speed bicycle brakes

Crew Chief Brad: and you couldn’t go to the dealership, buy the car and then go have a warranty with it and run this, this run.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So that’s, that’s awesome. So, wow. Wow. Really cool. So what else about Corvettes here? You mentioned the C8.

Crew Chief Brad: Sticking with the Corvette, we’re going to go with the C8 now. And a little bit of news. The C8 has its first recall. Apparently they try to eat people. Now it’s not like, it’s not like the Mustang’s eating people at the cars and [00:11:00] coffee and stuff like that.

It’s nothing like that. The problem is with the frunk, you know, Chevy, this is their, their first official foray in a, you know, in a mid engine Corvette. So they’ve got a little bit of space up front and that’s where people can store their bag with their new balances and their gold chains and stuff. Well, there’s a recall because apparently.

When you turn the car off, the frunk release button doesn’t activate. Apparently the, the voltage to wake the car up. Is too high and the button it won’t activate so god forbid your your new balance are stuck in the frunk You got your

Crew Chief Eric: junk in the

Crew Chief Brad: frunk, yeah Junk in the front. Apparently you can’t get them out with the car turned off now Chevy is fixing this with an over the air if if if you want Uh update to your system or you can go to the dealership and have it fixed.

Basically. They’re lowering The, the voltage requirement to have the button active.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve been waiting and then I Chevy [00:12:00] recalls the C8 Corvette because people can get trapped inside the front trunk. Why are you inside the front trunk?

Crew Chief Brad: Because there’s also another problem with the frunk. They pop up at speed.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s

Crew Chief Brad: been a number of issues where the frunk, because they can’t figure out how to keep it latched, it will pop up at speed. Now, luckily at the HOD event we were all just at, there was a C8 Corvette there. I did not hear anything about him and his frunk popping up. But, you know, and he was in my run group, so I didn’t see that happen, but That

Crew Chief Eric: explains the blue painter’s tape holding the front down.

I get it now.

Crew Chief Brad: It happens.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow, so it sounds like some backwards wiring there. Won’t stay closed when it’s running and won’t open when it’s turned off. That is, wow.

Crew Chief Brad: It seems like they just need to switch those two wires and you’re good.

Crew Chief Eric: So, uh, we got another article here. I think we want to dive into, and it recently crossed our desk.

Thanks to one of our other members, the 22 best GT cars and GT [00:13:00] standing for grand touring cars that road and track put out, uh, not too late within this month of August here. So do we want to go through that? I mean, I scrolled through the carousel and there’s only about four or five cars I actually care about.

How about you guys?

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know what the criteria were for the best GT cars, like what is the price point or anything because there are some cars on this list that I would never be able to afford. I can’t even dream of how much it would cost to afford one of those cars. And then there are some that are like, Oh, there’s a Corvette on the list.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, okay, there’s a Ford Mustang and then there’s a McLaren.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: the oddest comparison was, yeah, there’s the Mustang and then right underneath it, the Ferrari 812 Superfast. Yes, those two cars are really, really good to compare.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, as you go through this, here’s where I was turned off by the article, right?

So first car on the list, Ferrari 456, right? Or 456 GT. It’s a GT car. It’s a two plus two. There’s certain [00:14:00] requirements to be a GT car, right? Extended body, two doors, et cetera. And I think the 456 is an underappreciated car. I like the look of it. However, I’m a much bigger fan of the 550 Maranello. It’s a much prettier car, you know, but it’s, it’s based on the 456 or it’s an evolution of the 456, I should say.

But when you scroll to the next one in the carousel, it’s the C8 Corvette. When did a mid engine sports car become a grand tourer? How did that classification change? It makes absolutely no sense. And then they flip back and it’s like, Oh, well, here’s the bangle version of the M6, which it is a GT car. And I don’t necessarily mind it with the right wheel package and body kit and things like that.

But as you scroll, as you guys said, you scroll through this list. And it’s like Bentley, Continental. GT convertible and I’m like, well, first of all, You know, it

Executive Producer Tania: seems like a lot of these because the car has gt in the name

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: and then and then then there’s a sedan. There’s the [00:15:00] rs7 What the hell

Crew Chief Eric: I was like what I mean, so this list was a little bit all over the map But some of the rest of these, yes, the Aston Martin Vanquish, I’m like, the

Crew Chief Brad: Rolls Royce Wraith,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, and the DBS Superleggera and like all this other stuff on the list.

And I’m like, you know, the 928 quintessential GT car, yes, checks the box. Again, these are the cars I cared about, but they’re also, you know, 30 years old, right? You start looking at the Jag and the Porsche and the Ferrari, and those were true GT Boulevard cruisers. But the 911? Like, 9 11’s never been a GT car.

Crew Chief Brad: But nowadays it is. It’s gotten bigger, it’s gotten fatter. I think people are considering the 9 11 the GT car, and the Cayman is the sports car now.

Crew Chief Eric: But I gotta tip my hat to whoever the gray haired soul at Road Track that was writing this article that put in the E Type Jag. Because out of all the cars that are there, that’s the best one.

Hands down, if I, and that’s the [00:16:00] oldest one of the bunch, uh, in this group, I mean, granted, they had the hairdressers car in there, you know, the BMW 850 and all that kind of stuff, but having the E type was the right move on that list, but the rest of these modern ones, I think they could have separated this into modern GT cars versus classic GT cars because they just don’t hold a candle to each other.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay, so real quick, then let’s just go through 1, 2, 3, what car on this list would you have?

Crew Chief Eric: I would go with the 928.

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya Mercedes sl, and I would take the lc. 500 Lexus.

Crew Chief Eric: Sounds like a plan. Hey, at least we’ve picked something off the list. So what’s next? Vehicles that are out the door for 2021. So yeah, there’s a few cars on here that I’m sure Tanya will be saddened to see go away.

One of them being a carryover from last month’s episode. The Chevrolet Impala. I know you’re saddened to see that. I mean, when you look at it, it is not a bad looking car compared to previous versions. But yes, Chevrolet GM [00:17:00] has finally decided that it is out the door. And along with it is the much loved Chevy Sonic.

You know, we’re all gonna miss that car.

Executive Producer Tania: Sadder about that.

Crew Chief Eric: Along with that, you know, a staple in many a large family’s garage or driveway is the Dodge Grand Caravan. The Caravan is out in favor of the Pacifica and the base model Voyager. The Dodge Journey, which is actually a Fiat of some sort is also out the door.

It should have been gone three years ago if you really read about it. But you know,

it’s true, but you know, they decided to keep that going for a while and that’s okay now, sports car enthusiasts will be disappointed to know that the two door Hondas are out. They are following the trend of VW and there will be no more two door Hondas. So the Civic Coupe and the Civic Si two door are gone along with anything else that’s got [00:18:00] two doors from Honda, which isn’t a whole lot of things, but your only option there is the, you know, four door Civic and the other cars.

Along with that, the Honda Fit is out. The Lexus GS, the Lincoln Continental, which I thought was actually really disappointing because if you like a large Luxo boat, the Continental was a very striking car. I was really excited to see it come back a couple of years ago that they brought back that moniker again, really impressive car, great proportions.

You know much better styling than the 300 and I’m a fan of the 300 and I just think that the Lincoln is a really good looking car.

Crew Chief Brad: I, I think they screwed up with the Continental that they didn’t give it suicide doors. I think had they given it suicide doors it would still be around.

Crew Chief Eric: Possibly

Crew Chief Brad: sold a lot more.

And

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think they marketed it very well at the end of the day. At the same time, you know, it was inevitable that the Lincoln MKZ was out the door because as we know, the Mondeo has been retired. Sorry, for those of [00:19:00] us on this side of the ocean, the Ford Fusion is gone and the Mark Z or the MKZ is built on that same platform.

And so it’s no shock that the MKZ is out the door.

Crew Chief Brad: Now, the next one is one that. Mr. Khafeesi is going to be really saddened by

Crew Chief Eric: this is true. The Mercedes SLC, SLK, the, the little kind of toad grasshopper Mercedes is gone. The, you know, the smallest convertible that I have, I can’t say I’m going to miss the styling of it.

It just, this last version is now

Crew Chief Brad: what’s interesting though, is that Mercedes is getting rid of this, but BMW just released the new Z4,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Crew Chief Brad: Which is a direct competitor,

Crew Chief Eric: right? Exactly. So maybe, maybe it’ll be back. I don’t know. Maybe they’re just better off sticking to a slightly larger convertible. I’ve always felt that the SLK was a little too tight,

Crew Chief Brad: but I agree.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s some others on the list. You know, the BMW, I ate the Alfa Romeo four C, which. You know, I’ve only seen three of those [00:20:00] and they’ve only been at track events. You don’t see them on the street. A couple of Acuras, you know, stuff like that. I think the only other one that I was kind of surprised to see go, and maybe it’s because people are moving away from the subcompact market, is the Yaris or the Yaris, depending on how you pronounce it.

I’m

Executive Producer Tania: very disappointed because this means there is definitely no way that the GR Yaris make it across the shores. Looks cool.

Crew Chief Eric: It does. And it also puts a very big question mark on next year’s WRC series, which I’m the only follower of in this club. I think

Executive Producer Tania: they are.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And so what are they going to campaign next year?

The Corolla hatchback, because it’s slightly larger, which

Crew Chief Brad: that’s probably it.

Crew Chief Eric: But it gives way for Hyundai to run something bigger. It gives way for all the other manufacturers to run slightly larger cars because they had to stay within a certain size. And the Corolla is bigger than the Yaris. [00:21:00] So it’ll be interesting to see how that changes the WRC landscape next year.

However, you’ll probably still see the GRs or the Gazoo. Zoo racing Yares run in WRC two, where you still see the polos and a lot of the skoda’s and the smaller cars or the older chassis cars are still running in that that subclass of WRC. So it’ll be, it would be really cool to see what happens next year.

Crew Chief Brad: So what are the chances that we can get a number of GTM members together? We go out, we all buy Toyota. Ours is, and we start our own little club series.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, zero. Yeah. Yeah. You

Crew Chief Brad: guys have no, no imagination

Crew Chief Eric: B spec racing for everybody.

Crew Chief Brad: I think this would be more like D or E spec racing you’re talking about.

Executive Producer Tania: If you had the GR 57

Crew Chief Brad: true, true, true. Pretty good. All the broken axles you can ask for.

Crew Chief Eric: But I’ll put it to you this way. I’m waiting for the Alpha GTA to come, right? Which we saw at Salem’s last year, which is the golf sized [00:22:00] Alfa Romeo, which is rear wheel drive with a two liter turbo. And there’s been rumors that it was coming to the U.

S. And still haven’t seen it yet, because believe me, I would line up for that car. So you can keep your Honda Fits and your Yaris’s and your Fiestas, because if that Alpha comes, that’s going to be the hot ticket. It’s going to be a GTI killer.

Crew Chief Brad: See, see what had happened was Fiat had their money in their savings account, and they got to transfer the monies over to the check ins account

Crew Chief Eric: so they can move the Alphas over here.

Yeah, but there was in the Cayman Islands, thanks to gm, so, you know, I know . But you know, it was funny that that article dropped about cars that are out for 2021 because WTOP, which is a local news station here in the, in the DMV, posted an article about a week later talking about the best cars for teens to pick up in 2020.

And so, as I was, I was scrolling through this list. Cars like the Honda Fit and the Yaris are, are on this list. And I’m like. Yeah, but they’re out the door, but it got me thinking when I was driving at [00:23:00] 16 years old, I was driving a 10 year old car and that seemed to be the thing. You bought something that was a decade old, 12 years old, maybe on the new side, eight years old, but I wasn’t running out to the dealership and buying a brand new Corolla or a Honda.

Or any of the cars that are on this list and they’re all econo boxes, you know, except for, you know, let’s say the exception of the Ford escape and the Kia Optima and some of these larger cars that are on this list. I don’t know. I mean, I think about it with respect to my eldest daughter who, you know, she’ll be 16.

In 10 years. So the cars that are coming out now would be the cars that she might be driving at 10 years old. I don’t know that I want to put her in any of these and any of the ones that are on this list, to be honest with you, because the price tag for a lot of these is, you know, best new SUV for teens at 35, 000.

Nissan Rogue. I’m like, really? I’m gonna,

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna go ahead and say it right now and people can flame me all they want. If you spend more than five grand on a car for your 16 year old kid, [00:24:00]

Crew Chief Eric: You’re doing it wrong.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re doing it wrong. No, no, no, no. You’re, you’re, you’re an effing idiot. I don’t care what you say.

You’ve lost all credibility to me.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I just can’t see. I mean, I get it because you get the door to door warranty and all that kind of stuff or bumper to bumper warranty and all that kind of stuff. But I don’t know. I wouldn’t pick any of the cars on this list for my 16 year old right now. Looking back 10 years, let’s just talk about that.

Is there a car that you guys would pick as a recommendation for a 16 year old starting out now? Kind of thinking about a car from 2010 that would be in that 000 range. Is there something that just pops out

Crew Chief Brad: volkswagen rabbit

Executive Producer Tania: or any volkswagen jetta?

Crew Chief Eric: Honda, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: there’s a lot of options there that you could save a lot of money and those cars are still kicking strong.

I mean, to your point, Brad, a mark five rabbit with a two and a half liter five cylinder. Those motors are bulletproof. They run forever.

Crew Chief Brad: And, you know, simple to work on to compare to, to the, yeah, they’re, they’re [00:25:00] German and they’ve got some, some little eccentricities to them, but they’re still pretty damn simple to work on.

The 2. 5 liters been around forever. The five cylinder, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And any of the old Hondas and even, I mean, let’s face it, you could buy your kid an HHR, it would still be probably a better investment than a brand new Nissan Rogue or a Kia Optima, you know what I mean, at the end of the day, as much as I regret saying that you heard the words come out of my mouth, but, but

Crew Chief Brad: you know what the people of today are doing, they’re going out and they’re buying their children.

Those 65, 000 Bugatti electric cars. That’s what they’re doing.

Crew Chief Eric: I forgot about that. You’re right. They’ve already, they have a ton of practice. So realistically the Kia is a down step. It’s a much cheaper vehicle than the all electric Bugatti that they’ve been driving around it.

Crew Chief Brad: All

Crew Chief Eric: right. All sarcasm aside, let’s jump into our new section.

We call. Jolt Cola[00:26:00]

Where we cover electric car news.

Executive Producer Tania: Electric car and maybe electric adjacent, depending how you look at it. So the first one up here is a follow on article to the Sony Vision S. It’s actually an original debut of this back in the beginning of the year, in January, and then there’s been more developments recently on what this is.

Prototype vehicle from, yes, Sony, as in, you know, Sony Electronics, creating an EV for the modern day. So, the Vision S According to the Car and Driver article, it’s equipped with 33 sensors. It’s got LiDAR, radar, cameras, you name it. It’s got a 360 degree immersive audio system. It’s got a panoramic screen that stretches across the entire dashboard.

There’s no mention of a PS5. It’s going to be installed in it, but, but granted the PS5 [00:27:00] isn’t out yet. So there’s still time. Right. So, I mean, really what’s the deal here. This came out as a surprise, basically unveiling at the consumer electronics show and people thought they were, I think, going to go see news about a PlayStation five and instead they unveiled this vision as vehicle.

So in terms of specs, it’s on an all wheel drive platform, which isn’t surprising because apparently there is some collaboration with. The Austrian Company, Magna Steyr, who back in the day created the four wheel drive system on the Mercedes G Class and whatnot. The car alleges a top speed of 149 miles an hour, a 0 60 in 4.

8 seconds. It weighs a honking 5, 180 pounds. I’m, I’m guessing those sensors are really heavy, along with that 360 sound system. At the end of the day, it’s really unclear. Nobody’s sure why Sony is doing this. Uh, I would suspect, personally, that it’s more [00:28:00] about the technology and what they can bring to cars versus the car itself.

They’re just, the car is the platform to display all their fancy gadgetry in it. It’s not an unattractive vehicle, but it’s very similar looking to a Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’m going to throw in my two cents here. If we have any it people listening, this is equivalent to the Sony VIO laptops of the early two thousands, right?

They brought nothing to the market other than some flash and panache and Sony specific things. But otherwise it was just a Toshiba laptop, like anything else. And I think that’s exactly the point that you’re making here. There’s these Sony electronic proprietary things that they want to bring to the show.

And it might be a rebadged car from somebody else because I don’t think Sony’s got the tooling to create a car, right? It just, that’s

Executive Producer Tania: why they were, that’s why they’ve been. It seems with some people that actually know how to build cars. Yeah for that development for the chassis work, etc So

Crew Chief Brad: i’m [00:29:00] thinking this car is not I mean, I know it was displayed At the consumer electronics show, but maybe it’s not directed at us.

Maybe it’s directed at other auto manufacturers I just changed the stereo in my truck. It’s a Panasonic. Maybe they’re trying to steal some of that business and sell to the manufacturers. Look at all these cool things that we can put into your car.

Crew Chief Eric: I just want to know if I can buy a Sony Vision S at Best Buy.

Because it’s the only place I can figure out is where I would be able to get one. How many reward zone points do I get when I buy it? You’ll be able to buy a PS five for free. You better. Yeah. You better believe it. That’s like the demon package, right? For an extra dollar, you get a PS five in the trunk.

Crew Chief Brad: It clip with project cars three.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, Tanya, what else you got on the list?

Executive Producer Tania: So the next one is maybe. Electric adjacent. I mean, not really because it’s it’s a hydrogen vehicle and hydrogen is used to power an electric motor. So it’s still. [00:30:00] Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars are still considered EVs. This article again comes from Car and Driver and it’s about the Hyperion XP 1, which is a 221 mile an hour hydrogen powered hyper car.

So just as a little background here for folks who have not heard of Hyperion, this is straight from their website. They were founded in 2011 by an expert team of PhDs. Hyperion is a technology company that consists of three divisions, Hyperion Energy, Hyperion Motors, and Hyperion Aerospace. All focused on hydrogen based power and delivery.

They’re based in Orange, California. Hyperion delivers cutting edge space technology, pioneered by NASA, to the world. From road vehicles to space travel, Hyperion seeks to completely revolutionize the transportation industry by offering convenient, high quality, low cost solutions. Hydrogen fuel across America.

And as a quote from the CEO, there are enough car companies or an energy company that’s building this car to tell a story. So again, it’s, it’s a little bit less [00:31:00] about the actual car, just super futuristic looking and, you know, hypercar looking, but it’s more about the power plant, the fuel cell technology using the hydrogen.

So what it’s all about, they’re claiming zero to 60 in 2. 2 seconds. a top speed of 221 miles an hour with a range of Just over 1, 000 miles, granted, I’m sure that’s not at 221 miles an hour, but nonetheless, it’s also a carbon titanium monocoque chassis and unlike the Vision S, the curb weight is around 2, 200 pounds.

It’s very lightweight. Further on with the spec, so it’s not out yet. So they’ve got their, their prototype here, but it’s slated to go into production in 2022. So it’s still two years out. It’s going to be very limited run, apparently only 300 cars. Um, it will be an all wheel drive setup and we’ll have a three speed transmission with ultra capacitors to buffer the [00:32:00] output of the fuel cell.

The body also includes active aero elements that double as solar panels. The double barrel exhaust stacks are functional, but all that comes out is deionized water vapor. So that is straight from the car and driver article.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it play engine sounds in the interior like the BMWs?

Executive Producer Tania: There was no mention of that.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought the Hyperion was the shuttle that they used, the big space station in Andromeda. I thought that was Yeah, I think so. That was the Hyperion.

Crew Chief Eric: But my other question is, how big is the Frunk and does it stay closed at 200 miles an hour?

Executive Producer Tania: They did not mention

it. You say hydrogen, usually people just go with Hindenburg. So now because of this disaster, everyone thinks hydrogen is going to be a gigantic death Trap, and there’s tons of conspiracy theories, I guess, around [00:33:00] questioning of what really happened. Was it sabotage? Was it Hitler ordered it to be, you know, exploded, etc, etc.

Or did just something go wrong, right? And a spark ensued and the hydrogen exploded, or, you know, caught on fire. As it will, because it’s very flammable. So, Hyperion, obviously, they have to address this, because it’s going to be a big concern to people. I’m driving around Hindenburg, right? And they said, quote, You can throw our tanks off a building or shoot them with a high powered rifle.

They won’t rupture. They’re seemingly with their PhDs and their NASA friends are spending a lot of time trying to develop the fuel tank to be safe and what it is apparently is carbon fiber construction. So I would guess that they’re probably pretty thick tanks and carbon fiber. Anything generally isn’t.

necessarily cost effective, so that’s definitely one thing they still need to tackle is how do we make, you know, that strength, but also cost effective for mass production into into vehicles. I think that they can crack that nut and get the affordability [00:34:00] down. They’ve got something interesting. So, you know, someone might say, still be stuck on.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I could see the rebuttal to that because it’s, it’s the challenger effect and I’m not talking about the dodge. I’m talking about the space shuttle where, you know, it wasn’t this that or the other. It was an O ring. It was a coupler. It was whatever. It’s something else in the system. That then causes a cascading failure, right?

And so I think hydrogen being so volatile, and it does have a stigma. Unfortunately, thanks to thanks to the Hindenburg, much like diesel has a stigma. Rotaries have a stigma. Every engine type has its own problem. And, you know, ICEs or internal combustion engines have been have outlasted the rest of them, because at the end of the day.

Even that is a controlled explosion, but it’s the safest of its alternatives, right? So I’m a little bit apprehensive of hydrogen as well. And I think maybe a lot of our listeners would probably be disappointed because, you know, if something did come out, it’s kind of like the [00:35:00] early adopters of Tesla’s are all electric vehicles.

It’s like, well, where am I going to get the fuel? You know, how does that work? What’s the distribution network?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I’ll address two things there. First, the volatile comment. is somewhat misleading because it’s volatile in so much that oxygen is present, and a f ignition source. So, again, I mean, you can have as much hydrogen sitting open here, and as long as nobody lights a match, nothing’s gonna happen.

Granted, electrostatic issues could cause It’s, you know, maybe it’s a catch on fire, that’s actually one thing that they think happened with the Hindenburg, there might have been some electrostatic stuff going on. They did, like, they did have a leak, but then electrostatic. Cause the spark and then everything caught on fire, but I mean, I think if they can get, if they can seal the hydrogen off, if the system sealed off well, I mean, there’s risk.

I think the risk can probably be mitigated. I mean, it’s no different than anything else necessarily catching on [00:36:00] fire.

Crew Chief Brad: But the thing is, this isn’t the first hydrogen vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: No,

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, Honda, Honda. I’m looking at it right now. Honda offers. Yeah, Honda has the clarity. It’s a hydrogen powered car. Chevrolet back in with the early 90s came out with a hydrogen fuel cell.

BMW

Crew Chief Eric: had a prototype. I mean, there’s been a several attempts at this before. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, the Toyota has one right now. I think part of their, I don’t think they’re displaying the range that this is displaying. So I think this is actually a huge significant improvement to the technology and they’re trying to make improvements to the safety to make people, you know, feel more secure.

Additionally, to address the other point you brought up around fueling, this company is also trying to set up a network of hydrogen fueling stations. And what they’re saying is given the range, you need far less. hydrogen fueling stations because you’re going to be go you’re going to get to go farther.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, so I got to drive to Rhode Atlanta to get to Dakota. So that’s how I’m going to get fuel, right? I mean, that doesn’t make sense. That’s not [00:37:00] a good way to do it because that’s not the paths that people travel. And now you’re forcing traffic to go a specific way because the only way you can get your fuel source from.

I can’t fill up at home. I can’t fill up outside of sheets. I, you know, that that’s kind of a weird way to do it. And I, I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t buy that. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, same things with electric cars and where you plug it in.

Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: At any rate, I think I’m interested to see where they develop the technology.

Sure. I find it interesting. It’s much more environmentally friendly in terms of emissions than your standard ice engine. There’s arguments to be had around, well, how are you making the hydrogen? It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with if they’re actually able to produce those 300 cars in two years.

Crew Chief Brad: So what’s next Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: So the next one on the list is the. Cadillac unveiling of their new electric SUV, supposed to be their flagship, I think, electric SUV model. And it is called

Crew Chief Brad: The Escalade. [00:38:00] It

Executive Producer Tania: is called the Lyric. Now there’s some debate around the pronunciation of it. Lyric. It’s spelled L Y R I Q. So, you know people are going to be confused on how to pronounce it when you try to Wikipedia it and they don’t give you any pronunciation for it.

I was further confused when I saw Cadillac was actually showing it all capital letters. Then I was wondering what it could possibly stand for. I didn’t come up with anything good. So I, I was trying harder to peruse the, the origins of this name. So I did find on GM authority website, um, they have a old blog there and they were explaining the origin.

So apparently the IQ is going to be the new suffix, basically, I think for all their electric cars. What it says is, additionally, the IQ suffix names provide a sort of. alteration of sorts for Cadillac brand cars. With Cadillac and the model [00:39:00] name both ending in an ick sound, these names roll off the tongue quite well.

I didn’t realize it was a Cadillac. It’s a Cadillac, but. So is the

Crew Chief Eric: next one going to be called the brick? B R I Q. And then there’s the stick. The trick. The flick. The lick. We

Executive Producer Tania: asked about the escal Escaladic.

Crew Chief Eric: Um, this is terrible. What are they thinking?

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently there’s a celestic. I didn’t know that. Is that made by,

Crew Chief Eric: is that made by Stellantis?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, but feel better that it’s, it’s two years out. So maybe, maybe they’ll go with the whole naming convention change.

Crew Chief Brad: They’ve got plenty of time to make it worse now.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. Either way, it’s 50 50 right now.

Crew Chief Eric: But that brings up a good point. Have you seen the back of this thing?

Executive Producer Tania: From the side, it reminded me of a smushed Range Rover.[00:40:00]

Crew Chief Eric: And from the back, it looks like a car I saw in the junkyard. Like, it was rear ended by a semi. Like, what were they thinking? The front looks like all the other Cadillacs that are out there right now. They all share the same nose. But it’s like, do the engineers run out of pencils? Like, can I buy you all, like, refillable mechanical pencils so you can finish the back of the car?

Like, what is going on these days?

Executive Producer Tania: So according to advertisers, Cadillac, it’s designed to energize your senses.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it makes me angry.

Executive Producer Tania: With the introduction of Cadillac’s new design language, the Lyric, Showcar brings the sensual and the technical together.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s the Vibric. Decisive

Executive Producer Tania: graphic elements contrast against fluid form.

The full glass two tone roof subtly slopes creating a fast profile while choreographed [00:41:00] lighting and iridescent colors engage the senses. This is effortless design with a magnetic draw.

Crew Chief Eric: I think I threw up in the back of my throat a little bit. I mean, that is the, this is like mad men level of advertising here.

Because any sensical human that looks at that design goes, that car has no space in the trunk. I, I don’t know. I’m curious to see it in person. Maybe it’s like the Mach E. and some of these other new cars where they look better in person, but the photos do not do that. Lyric, and I’m going to stick with that as the pronunciation, it doesn’t do it any justice whatsoever.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe it doesn’t need a large back side because it has a frunk.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that makes sense. All right.

Executive Producer Tania: There really wasn’t much other. It does have 19 speakers in it and active noise cancellation and 23 inch wheels. Are

Crew Chief Brad: they Sony speakers?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, but maybe.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you got rid of the 23 inch wheels, it would look like a Volvo [00:42:00] V70 or V90.

It would be a regular wagon. Come on now. It’s six inches taller because of the stupid wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s true. Ground clearance by way of diameter. All right. So what else?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, goodness. There was an article about the revolutionary Tesla windshield. That’s going to, I guess, possibly debut on the cyber truck.

So revolutionary is usually cool till it breaks in my opinion. And there’s just something about. Tried and true, simple technology that just functions when you need it. I mean, I see this and then I painfully remember these heinous telecom phones that we use in some of our conference rooms at work. And they’re modern and they’re fancy and they have a touch keypad that’s completely flat.

Ooh, they look so nice. And guess what? It’s a gigantic piece of crack that doesn’t work, alright? Like, you gotta press the button, the button in quotes, like, super hard and in the [00:43:00] exact right spot, and then it still doesn’t register that you’re pushing the button, so then you’re just pounding on the darn thing.

You know what, what hardly ever fails? A friggin raised button on the telephone. Okay, those things have lasted through the decades, okay? There’s something to be said for certain technology.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t, I don’t know that it was a technology that needed to be reinvented. It was, it’s literally like reinventing the wheel.

So I read this article too, and God bless the guy that wrote it, and he threw the whole schematic with the patent and everything in there. It was very well written and I understood and when I got to the bottom and I really stepped back and I looked at it, if anyone has ever watched the videos on YouTube about how the inside of an Etch A Sketch works, it is identical.

It uses a similar weird pulley axial system to move these blades around and the reason it makes sense on the Cybertruck is because the glass is completely flat. So you’re trying to wipe A [00:44:00] non curved surface. So it’s like trying to wipe down a blackboard, right? Or an Etch A Sketch screen. It’s the same idea.

So, again, to your point, simplicity, a regular wiper system because of the springs and everything else and the way that the wipers are now squeegees, it would work on a Cybertruck. They do not need to reinvent the wiper blades.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m concerned and I haven’t used very many single bladed vehicles before. I know they exist, but

Crew Chief Eric: Mercedes.

Executive Producer Tania: The article talked about it being a single wiper. So you have a single wiper just moving across the windscreen. If this thing isn’t moving fast enough, I mean, on a regular car, with two wipers. You’re partially blinded by water because when it’s on the down wipe, you suddenly have several seconds of rain flooding your windshield.

Now, if this arm is over doing its thing on the other side of the car and the passenger’s

Crew Chief Eric: Six feet away.

Executive Producer Tania: Like, I’m super blind. Like, a really large portion of the windshield. I mean, maybe it’s the same as regular two wiper blades? I don’t know. [00:45:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe with autopilot, you don’t need to worry about it because the GPS is going to drive you where you need to go, regardless of the weather conditions, right?

Crew Chief Brad: I have to say, I’m kind of disappointed. I was expecting more from Tesla. Have you ever seen Demolition Man?

Crew Chief Eric: Mm hmm.

Crew Chief Brad: And you’ve seen the part where that little Spray can pops up out of the dirt and sprays the the graffiti on the sign And then like another one comes up and sprays a laser and gets rid of it I think tesla needs to use that technology so it zaps the rain away with these little lasers and shit I think that’s what I would be expecting from tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: I hate to say if you leave it up to tesla I think we’ll all be wiping our butts with seashells. But you know, let’s leave that where it is Since we’re talking about demolition, man,

Crew Chief Brad: it doesn’t really matter because people are going to throw rocks at your cyber truck and all the windows are going to break because they’re not made of bulletproof glass.

Crew Chief Eric: True. And there’s a video out there I recently watched about how strong old car glass is. I saw it

Crew Chief Brad: too with Volkswagen. Yeah. And guys are

Crew Chief Eric: throwing high speed baseballs at the glass [00:46:00] repeatedly and it will not break. He essentially

Crew Chief Brad: had to take a sledgehammer. To, to hit it, and you had to hit it hard, too, because it kept bouncing off.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, and that was a car from 20 years ago.

Executive Producer Tania: To that, uh, second reason that this could possibly only ever work, because first, it needs the flat windshield, which history has told auto manufacturers that doesn’t work because insects can break the glass at high speed because it’s more fragile. So, the Cybertruck’s got the flat windscreen, allegedly, but it also has the Tesla armor glass that is indestructible.

So maybe it requires those two things to work.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that like the armor glass that I put on my cell phone that after I drop my cell phone on the ground, it still breaks anyway?

Executive Producer Tania: I, you know, it’s that same armor glass. So when he threw the ball at the cyber truck on display, the glass shattered.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve got a great idea for Tesla.

Use a normal windscreen. It works. Companies have been doing it for you forever.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the reason they’re doing this. is to reduce [00:47:00] draw that the wiper motor would pull on the batteries.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re reducing draw, they’re reducing customer draw.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that, that Cybertruck is a discussion for another day. But since we’re talking about Teslas and wiper blades, just as an aside, you know, to make matters worse, if the new Cybertruck’s Etch a Sketch wiper blades require you to use the tablet dashboard to activate them like a gentleman in Germany did in his Tesla 3, you may.

with a citation, or if you live in Germany, you could get a one month suspension after crashing your vehicle because you were tapping on your screen repeatedly as to get your wiper blades working. So yeah, again, what’s wrong with the lever on the stock on the steering column? I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: I call BS. I think that guy was playing Fruit Ninja.

And that’s why he got in trouble.

Crew Chief Eric: Anyway, so electric cars. Sometimes they get them right, [00:48:00] sometimes they don’t. But I think we got one here that actually defies expectations.

Executive Producer Tania: If only it ever were to come true, which it is not going to. So there was a grassroots. This is a Motorsport article about an electric Trabant. So for the listeners that don’t know what a Trabant is, it is a very old,

Crew Chief Eric: very square,

Executive Producer Tania: very square East German car that actually I guess was in production until 1990.

Yeah. Apparently, so from 1957 to 1990.

Crew Chief Eric: The flagship of the Soviet Union.

Executive Producer Tania: It was an amazing little vehicle. It was, you know, the simplicity vehicle. It was, it was, interestingly, I learned a fun fact, made of plastic. I did not know that. So, Duraplast, composite thermosetting plastic. Similar to Formica. Okay, it’s a kitchen counter with wheels.

Sounds cool.

Crew Chief Eric: It looked like a kitchen counter with wheels.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:49:00] Uh, I mean, yes. The body lines are very simple. I thought it was also interesting that pretty much, I guess, close to 1990, 1989, they got the rights to use a Volkswagen engine in them, so that was, I guess, sadly short lived for about a year. But anyway, somebody And this actually was already probably about 10 years ago, tried to revive the Travanc.

Some investors wanted to bring it back into modern days, so kind of a retro redo. And then

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it has that pedigree and that desire and that passion that only. A true enthusiast could enjoy and if you have

Crew Chief Brad: racing heritage

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, yeah, and if you had 50 extra rubles, you would upgrade to a Lada, you know a copy of a fiat 128 But anyway continue

Executive Producer Tania: I mean Nonetheless,[00:50:00]

so I think in 2012 the investors then tried to come up with this trabant NT version which allegedly I guess would have had a little battery inside of it to give it 100 miles of range. I’m not sure where you were going with your little Trabant, but nonetheless, they didn’t get the backing for this. So, you know, that was already a while ago.

So it was kind of reposted as a, Oh, Hey, what would you think about this in today’s burgeoning EV world? Is there a home for an electric Trabant or not?

Crew Chief Eric: So I read the article and I looked at the renderings. I like it. And to your point before you kind of, you’re on the same wave link that I’m on, which is, it looks like a sedan version of a mini, and it wasn’t a hateful looking car.

I could see the throwbacks to the reon, although, I mean, anything is better. Any design is better than the original trant. So you, your leaps and bounds ahead of that. But it wasn’t an unattractive car and I could see its relevance in the world. It’s just a matter of getting it out. Getting it out there.

[00:51:00] Right?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, the design fits in this. Cutesy Ev Futurey design that a lot of people are coming up with.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s right up there with the Gary Busey and all the ones we talked about on the last episode.

Executive Producer Tania: Right, exactly. So I mean, it could have a home next to your eBuy. A

Crew Chief Eric: hundred percent.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe you could even, like, drive it up into the back of the flatbed version of the eBus y.

Nice. So you’re Tramont with your eBus y. Perfect.

Crew Chief Eric: Not bad, though. Not bad, though. And it’d probably be cheap. Probably still made of plastic, though. But now I think it’s time to make some donuts. It’s time to go behind the pit wall and talk about some motorsport news. So in local news for the listeners out there, we have 20 events left on the CHIN schedule for 2020 and a big shout out to Mark Hicks for coming on Break Fix earlier this month.

If you haven’t listened to that episode, we get behind the scenes with Mark and talk about the origin of CHIN and everything that goes along with that so you can get more familiar and better acquainted with their program and the [00:52:00] peculiarities of what they do. Meanwhile, Hooked on Driving Northeast still has three events left on their schedule.

NJMP Lightning in September, a newly added VIR date in the middle of October, which happens to be a week before their fall finale at Watkins Glen, which is closer to the end of October. A reminder to all the folks in DMV and surrounding states, Always check the latest COVID and health updates because many states are still not able to travel to New York I know there’s rules about oh, well if you’re going to be there for a week or two or whatever But places like Watkins Glen are still turning away drivers because they are checking licenses.

And if you are from one of the states that is basically on the no fly list, you will be turned away. So don’t waste your time. Do your research ahead of time before going out to places like Watkins Glen, Lime Rock and JMP, et cetera, to make sure it’s okay for you to go there. Meanwhile, SCCA still has a couple of [00:53:00] events left basically around summit point.

Uh, at Shenandoah, as well as over at Dominion down in Fredericksburg, and the Audi club has their fall finale at VIR in November. I’m sure there’s other groups out there, you know, track days and, and Porsche club, etc. We don’t dive into everybody’s schedules, so be sure to check Motorsport Reg for all the dates and locations as those are changing as we get here closer into the fall.

And then obviously everybody, you know, stay safe, wear your mask, social distance. All that kind of stuff that is being enforced at the track. So don’t forget your mask when you’re out there, things of that nature on the brighter side, things we get to look forward to in 2021 and beyond officials are now promoting a new track and it’s actually not going to be that far away.

We’re talking about seven hours, maybe less depending on how fast you tow from the DC area. It’s going to be in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Many of you probably don’t know about Oak Ridge unless you’re familiar with Oak Ridge Labs nestled between Chattanooga and [00:54:00] Knoxville. Basically, they’re on the eastern edge of Tennessee, and the track is going to be built on a 330 acre plot housing a five mile racing circuit.

With 20 turns, I’ve looked at the maps and we’re going to post a link to it so you can check it out. The course layout looks really cool and I’m super excited that they’re going to do this. Apparently they have all the approvals. The land that it’s being built on has basically been abandoned for about 25 years.

Nobody wants to develop there. Nobody wants to do anything in that surrounding area. So they’ve gotten permission to build a racetrack and I hope we get to go there when it opens. Brad, some world news.

Crew Chief Brad: So, F1, you know, that series that we all like to either watch or sleep during, has decided that they will not be coming to the Americas, North or South America, at all during the 2020 season.

Thanks to COVID, they are not going to be traveling on this side of the pond. Instead, they’re going [00:55:00] to replace the U. S. Grand Prix, the Mexican Grand Prix, and the Brazilian Grand Prix. With three new races in Europe, they’re going to be doing the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit, which they haven’t had a race there since 2013.

They’re also going to be doing Imola and Portima. So for all those listeners that were looking forward to going to a Grand Prix this year, you better get your plane tickets to go across the ocean, because you’re not going to be able to on this side of the Atlantic. And then the next story I’m going to talk about is less about news and more just something that’s kind of interesting.

So I’m going to ask a question. What is the best color in motorsports?

Executive Producer Tania: Black.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, you would say black. Manufacturers would say bright colors that help them sell their cars, you know, liveries and things like that. Drivers would say the checkered flag, black and white. But manufacturers, they say, and team coaches and team principals, it’s the gray.

The gray color, the gray area between the rule books and cheating.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: man. So in light of [00:56:00] the, the recent events with force India, uh, and the, the, the cheating, the alleged cheating going on with their team, they’ve got all kinds of, you know, investigations going on, or we’re going to talk about a couple of.

Stories from history in the motor sports world where teens, you know, cheated, got away with it for a little bit, you know, had a lot of success until they got caught. So the first one Eric might know about.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it start with Lotus? I’m so excited.

Crew Chief Brad: No, it does not start with Lotus. It actually starts with a Toyota Celica.

Back in, back in 1995, the World Rally Championship, so I figured you might know about this one. The World Rally Championship authorities said the drivers and said that the cars had to have restrictor plates. Well, Toyota manufactured these, these little spring mechanisms that, while under load, they would push the restrictor plates open just enough to get a little additional air through.

But then, you know, [00:57:00] coming off throttle and coming back into the pits after, after the racing or whatever, the, the pressure would be taken off the springs, or they could take the pressure off the springs and the restrictor plate would go back into the legal limits. The next story is about a NASCAR and Unic.

His car is HAHAHAHAHA

Crew Chief Eric: You were what was that again? His

Crew Chief Brad: name, his name is Smokey Unic.

Crew Chief Eric: You gotta be kidding me, right? No, it’s brilliant.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not spelled like you would spell eunuch. It’s Y U N I C. But anyway, he got his cars, he got his cars from Chevrolet. He drove a Chevy Chevelle, uh, in the 67 and 68 NASCAR series.

But he did all kinds of little things to his car to make it kind of questionable, whether it was legal or not. He had the bottom undercarriage smoothed, [00:58:00] so it didn’t have all the little imperfections and everything. So it made it more slippery. He had a tube frame welded completely to the frame of the car.

So it was kind of, I guess the first, you know, uh, yeah, the first integrated version of the, the tube frame chassis. Uh, he had the chrome front bumper was deepened to act as an air dam. He had the rain gutters and the glass gutters and glass trim and everything were made to be flush with the rest of the body of the car.

So really there was nowhere for the air to go but around it. It just, it made the car super slippery and super fast. And NASCAR caught him and then he was in trouble. But I think my favorite parts about this story.

Crew Chief Eric: And not his name, Smokey Eunuch, because that is just amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: My favorite part about this story was the fuel tank.

So he got in trouble for the fuel tank. I guess he was carrying too much fuel and NASCAR took the fuel tank out of the car to inspect it further. While the fuel tank was removed from the car, he was able to start it and drive it [00:59:00] Back to his pit because apparently he used thicker than usual fuel lines.

So they held up to, they held up to two to five gallons more fuel, which allowed him to have fewer pit stops and everything. So that’s my favorite part. A quote from his autobiography. Somebody asked him, was this car a cheater, Smokey? And he said, you’re goddamn right. It was.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome. Honesty to the very end.

Crew Chief Brad: So moving on to Formula 1, which we touched on earlier. Red Bull racing flirted with the gray area and racing a little bit back in 2011 to 2014, where they had that front wing on the RB seven cars. Now, these are the cars that Sebastian Vettel drove during his four time championships with the team and the RB seven car had a flexible.

front wing. So what this means is it, you know, paddock speeds and driving around, you know, for [01:00:00] inspection and everything, the wing was in one, one position. It was, you know, a certain height above the road as was legal by, uh, the F FIA, uh, you know, regulations, but it’s speed. The wing would get closer to the ground.

Which would allow the car to, I guess, handle better, the aerodynamics were better, it would be faster, and this gave, you know, Red Bull an advantage, you know, and then eventually they got caught, uh, and then therefore they got penalized, and, and the wing was deemed to be, uh, not valid. Moving on, you know, uh, Formula One, again, uh, back in 1981, this is with the Brabham BT49C, they had hydro pneumatic suspension.

It was suspension that was half filled with air. And half filled with hydraulic fluid. So what it would do is driving around the paddock and everything. It was just normal ride height. Once the car was up to speed, the aerodynamic downforce provided by the front and rear wings would push down the body, expelling just enough of the cylinders contents to the central [01:01:00] reservoir, thereby lowering the right height, the car would remain in its lowered state until the end of the race.

And then once you were coming back into the paddock, all that, you know, the contents would. Go back to the suspension, raising the ride height again, back to the legal limit. You know, this was when, uh, when PK won the championship, he won in 1981. He was caught, they were caught halfway through the season. Uh, and then essentially they lost their advantage because other teams were like, Hey, we can do that too.

And they started, you know, playing with the rules and stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there is an upside to all that. Let’s call it alleged cheating. Is that that pushing the boundary to win to, to get that competitive advantage? Usually. Trickles down years later into production cars because that, you know, hydropneumatic suspension and all that we take advantage of that on on road cars.

Now, with even the magneto suspensions and air ride and all that kind of stuff. And so all of these guys, you know, maybe they wear the scarlet letter. But at the end of the day, they were pioneers of automotive engineering and we’ve reaped the benefits. decades [01:02:00] later of them pushing the boundary. So I mean, I don’t fault them so much.

And I’m sure whatever’s going on with force India will have a rippling effect later. And you know, the next Toyota Yaris that debuts will have some technology from maybe that Formula One car. Who knows, right? On the other side of the pond, on our side, there’s, you know, big, big race just happened. The weekend of August 23rd was the Indy 500, right?

The Indy 500 usually happens Memorial Day weekend, but thanks to COVID it was punted all the way to the end of August. And I have a feeling most of us probably forgot about it because Penske pulled the plug late July reversing their course and saying the Indy 500 is closed to fans because originally it was going to be one of the first big races to reopen with full grandstands and said they pulled that away.

In addition to that, it was the first Indy 500 without a woman driver in the field since the year 2000. So there’s been a female driver in the Indy 500 since 2000 up until this year. And you know, that goes back [01:03:00] to a previous episode we did, you know, about the gentleman driver and getting sponsorship and all that kind of thing.

We debated that and then about, you know, females and motorsport. So that’s an interesting story, uh, there too. And we posted the link for that if you want to dive into that a little bit more. But it poses a question, you know, I know granted we were busy at the track and we’re going to talk about that a little bit more here towards the end of the segment, you know, this past weekend when the Indy 500 was going on, but I didn’t even hear anybody talk about it around the paddock.

Like it just seemed off. Like, did anybody even care?

Crew Chief Brad: The only time I heard about it was from Sam when I was getting ready to leave and he asked me if I was gonna try and find it on the radio. Up to that point, I had no idea what was going on, but I’m not that big of an IndyCar fan, so I’m not surprised that I didn’t know it was going on.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s a shame though, and I hope next year’s better. And we all get back in the groove and, and, you know, we haven’t lost that enthusiasm about racing and some of the larger events, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the crazies over at MotoGP. Has it Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: No, they were still racing [01:04:00] and, uh, weekend, I guess at the Austria, uh, GP race, there was a massive crash.

Well, I guess what could have been a very massive crash. Morbidelli and Zarco collided with each other, which caused Morbidelli’s bike to keep going down the track. And the Austrian track is not well known for its safety, if you will, particularly for motorcycles. There were no barriers to prevent the motorcycle from continuing its path of travel, and continuing it did.

Straight across, you know, all the sand, trap, the grass, back out on the track, right as Vinales and Rossi were coming out of the turn and his bike, if there was a paper between his bike flying in front of Rossi, that was a lot of, a lot of space. There’s a video, um, that you can watch, they kind of cover several angles and go through it a few times.

And at first you’re like, Oh, okay, big deal. And then you kind of see the different [01:05:00] angles and you’re like, Oh my goodness. He’s so lucky. They’re both lucky that they didn’t get completely taken out, wiped out by a motorcycle that’s probably still traveling at close to 200 miles an hour, just across the ground, right?

A projectile coming at them. I mean, scary. Those guys, without a doubt, are just a different caliber of racer to do what they do that close to the ground without, you know, a metal cage around them by any means. So, you know, hats off to their bravery and they’re just. Very lucky. Glad to see that nobody was seriously injured.

Crew Chief Brad: I say it about hockey players all the time, and the same rings true for motorcyclists and MotoGP riders. They are a complete different species. They are not human. I mean, if you think about, like, all the crashes and stuff that happened at the Isle of Man, during the time trials they run there, and how many people die.

or get seriously injured year in and year out. And yet they still show up. What is it? Hundreds of riders [01:06:00] every single year to test and to tempt fate, you know, to try and set the best times. It’s just that it’s ludicrous what these guys go through. Same with hockey players and, and, you know, against other sports.

It’s just, it’s amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people say, you know, IndyCar is the best thing on TV. NASCAR is the best thing on TV. I’m a, I’m a big fan of WRC. But I mean, my dad used to be a big MotoGP Superbike fan and he graduated into that and he was like, man, none of this other racing even holds a candle to what the guys on the bikes do.

So if you’re looking for something different and something really exciting, start watching MotoGP and start watching Superbike because it is out of this world crazy and you definitely won’t be put to sleep like watching any of those F1 races. That is for sure. But speaking of formula one and kind of stepping back in time, another article that came across our desk was machine learning reveals the fastest F1 driver of the past 40 years.

And I said,

Yeah, [01:07:00] exactly. Sad trombone. I said to myself, who cares? Right? Because it’s like comparing apples and chainsaws. I mean, this was the premise of the Fongio documentary that I, that I reviewed a couple months back. If anybody searches our website and looks it up, it’s under must see documentaries. And it was the whole thing.

Oh, we’re going to talk to all these. People were going to run machine learning algorithms. And at the end of the day, Fongio is the best driver of all time, but it’s an economy of scale. So Senna was the best. Is he better than Schumacher? Yes, because Schumacher wasn’t as good when Schumacher and Senna ran together.

But is Hamilton as good as Senna or vice versa? You know, Senna was better than Emerson, Fittipaldi, you know, but it’s like, who cares at the end of the day, realistically, the only thing that matters is the number of wins you have and, you know, Schumacher still holds the title for the most championships until that gets, you know, it’s like Babe Ruth in baseball until you beat it or, or whoever.

That it doesn’t really matter.

Crew Chief Brad: And they do this, [01:08:00] like you just said, in baseball. They do this in every sport. I mean, what was it, a couple years ago? Five years ago? They did this in horse racing. Yeah. And they ran a simulation. Now, granted, the variables in F1 racing are significantly more than in horse racing.

In horse racing, essentially, you have the horses and the track. And with the exception of weather, it’s the same conditions every single time. But With you got different cars, you got different competition, uh, it’s, it’s just completely it’s, it’s an asinine comparison. They do it in basketball. Was Kobe the best ever?

Is, you know, Jordan the best ever? Or is it someone from before, you know, in baseball, like you said, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, are they the best? Or is it the Barry Bonds and them? Exactly. It’s just, it’s these comparisons. They’re really just. They’re their fan service and the fans of the whoever, you know, they’re going to debate because they have a favorite.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. But there’s 1 superstar that we cannot contest. And time is going to tell us about [01:09:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Mr Tom Cruise. So this is this is old news quite frankly, but it. It kind of, I don’t remember why it came up in the GTM conversation at some point. Something came up about Tom Cruise and I was like, yeah, Tom Cruise.

There’s a picture of him at Summit. And yes, there is. There’s a picture of him and, uh, the late great Paul Newman, um, hanging in the Shea kitchen. Shea Summit, that’s the main raceway, but, um, before his days of thunder, Tom actually tried his hand at a little bit of race car driving, and I believe Paul Newman kind of helped him a little bit.

He was driving Newman Sharp sponsored Nissan at one point, and there’s a Jalopnik article that actually goes through this, and again, it’s called Old News because it’s Was released all the way back in 2010, but, um, obviously the story isn’t going to change and I’m going to quote a lot out of it because I think it’s better told that way, you know, he had, he had his racing career and I will say there’s a couple of YouTube videos [01:10:00] of real live footage of him racing at summit point and everything.

And it’s pretty interesting to watch and listen to the very dramatic announcer announcing the race and there’s. A few clips of them kind of interviewing Tom and whatnot in the paddock in that one YouTube video clip they were talking about, I guess, in his first year, he had one, he had 16 starts, one, four races.

So, okay. He was doing something out there. And then that second year, I think is when he moved up classes and was in the Nissan 300 ZX Nissan, and you know. At one point, I guess they called in or they were interviewing this gentleman, Roger French, who at the time was a regional champion with SCCA and they were kind of asking, Hey, hey, look at this.

You look at some footage of Tom driving. What do you think? And Mr. French there says doesn’t look too good. So there’s clue number one.

Crew Chief Brad: He was eating ice cream.

Executive Producer Tania: So he [01:11:00] said, this is a quote, In the car he was very aggressive. I was trying to hold him back so he could learn in stages, but he wanted to go fast.

It’s in his nature. His attitude was go fast all the time. So he was a full send kind of guy. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: my kind of driver right there.

Executive Producer Tania: And if you watch some of the video replays, I mean, there’s a lot of him going sideways. A couple spins in there. Oh yeah, the video

Crew Chief Eric: we’re posting with this show is excellent, uh, summarization of Tom Cruise’s STCA career.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, the article, he earned the nickname C. Cruise Crash Again, so there’s something going on with this article. Overall, I described him as a nice guy and, you know, he’s really into the, into that racing life for that time he was there. So he was trying to be dedicated to the sport. sport when he was there.

He just wasn’t, you know, there to get some photos or anything. He, he wanted to talk to talk and do all that stuff. But another quote from this gentleman, he didn’t seem to put my [01:12:00] advice into practice very much, but he was a really good guy when he was in the world of racing. He was in the world of racing for his part.

He just fit right in. He was serious about racing and that’s all he wanted to talk about. You just really had the feeling that once he closed the visor, he was back to being aggressive. So at the end of the day, you see his driving style, you kind of hear someone who was trying to coach him. He was a difficult student, is what we would probably say, you know, he, he was trying to do his own thing.

These are my takeaways from, from reading and watching the videos. That confident and aggressive behavior probably overshadowed any. Possible talent he had and it just didn’t develop. And, and who’s to say like, you know, his acting career was taking off and you, you have to make choices in the path you wanna take in life.

And clearly he opted, maybe it was a better choice to go down the, uh, the movie side of things. It depends if you’re a fan or not. It’s questionable some of the movies, but I don’t know. It’s interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: Very cool. So with that, we move [01:13:00] into our next section. Would you like some fries with that? So Tanya, kick us off.

Executive Producer Tania: Back to Florida. There’s a lot of nice, fine people in Florida. We’re not trying to, you know, poke fun at Floridians. There’s crazy people in every state, in every part of the world that do some very crazy things. And, you know, this just happens again. It’s another Florida man. And, you know, he wanted a Porsche, wanted a 911 Turbo.

And, you know, perhaps he didn’t have the 140 grand for it, but. He had the 75 for a home printer. So, you know, what do you do? I mean, you just print a cashier’s check for 140, 000 and you walk into the dealer and you buy yourself a 9 11 gerbo. Makes total sense. Seems legit. And then you try to buy three Rolexes with more printed checks.

And then of course, because you bought a 75 printer, and I don’t know if you bought a 75 printer, you get caught, then you get arrested, [01:14:00] and you very likely go to jail for fraudulent activities, and Check forging and all sorts of good stuff. So needless to say, he was caught. Short lived. Hope he enjoyed the two days he had to 9 11.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, there is all sorts of wrong with this equation. From not just the printing of the check, but the people that accepted it, the dealership, and everything else. I mean, it’s just mind boggling. And again, not trying to single out Florida, because But the stuff that goes on down there, you can’t, you can’t make this up.

Executive Producer Tania: What, maybe it was a really good printer, I don’t know. I mean, usually the cashier’s checks and things like that, I mean, checks in general, I mean, have certain marks, watermark.

Crew Chief Brad: They use a special magnetic ink. There

Crew Chief Eric: you go. So again, it all comes full circle. You take apart the Etch a Sketch to use the parts to repair your Cybertruck, use the magnet, aluminum magnetic powder inside the Etch a Sketch to make your, Your check that you bought the printer from Best Buy, so you can go buy your Sony [01:15:00] Vision S.

You see it all, it’s all full circle. It’s turtles all the way down from here.

Executive Producer Tania: And then, with your Best Buy rewards points, you can turn around on the PlayStation 5, and put in your Sony Vision S.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go. We have connected all the dots now. So what else is going on in Florida? Anything?

Executive Producer Tania: So this one is quite good, and it’s worth a look at the image.

So, it’s a very short article, and our southern friends at Wink News, Southwest Florida’s leading news, Posted this article about a Florida man, seen on video, riding on the hood of a truck down a busy highway. And I would like to point out that it’s not just a truck, like, ain’t no Ford F 150 or Chevy. This is a frickin semi truck, okay?

And, according to the picture, He’s only wearing underwear.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s sunbathing. I noticed that too. I was like, [01:16:00] wow.

Executive Producer Tania: At least I hope it’s underwear and not blurred out. But at any rate, it’s hopefully grey underwear. I’m gonna read. Florida man went for a nine mile busy highway. But in a highly unusual fashion, on the hood of a tractor trailer, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that the unidentified man climbed onto the hood, Saturday, after stopping his vehicle along Florida’s Turnpike and walking out onto the highway.

The Florida Highway Patrol says, the tractor trailer driver continued on down the road as the man clung to the hood and began pounding on the windshield with his fists and his forehead. Eventually, a trooper stopped the tractor trailer and took the man into custody. He was committed for a 72 hour mental health evaluation under the state’s Baker Act.

No serious injuries were reported. Not to say, if he has a mental health issue. But that’s nothing to make fun of, and I hope he gets the help that he needs, because that’s very serious. [01:17:00] That aside, what the hell was the tractor trailer driver doing? Like, why did you keep going for nine miles?

Crew Chief Brad: That guy, that guy was standing his ground.

Maybe. He’s got that stand your ground law. I bet that’s what he was doing.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe they were reenacting the scene from Indiana Jones, where he crawls up from underneath of the Nazi, you know, military truck and then ends up on the windshield.

Executive Producer Tania: They’ll say there was some other crazy stuff that happened in Florida this past month and it involved inebriation and or in the riding was going down the highway.

So public service announcement, please do not operate any sort of motorized vehicle under the influence of drugs or alcohol, please.

Crew Chief Eric: Period. Full stop. But with that being said, I can explain our next story, which is A square body hauls 32, 000 pounds.

Crew Chief Brad: [01:18:00] What’s a

Crew Chief Eric: square body? Shimmy! Yeah! And I tell you what, I started watching this video and I got about 30 seconds in and my brain started to melt.

And then I realized, Mountain Man Dan is gonna be so proud of this. So I gotta watch this video because it involves square bodies. And I’m like, alright, I’m in it. And then I realized it’s 20 minutes long and I’m like I’m like, holy cow Where are we going? So the moral to the story is If you want to understand the phrase more money than brains,

Crew Chief Brad: you can’t have that much money.

He’s got a square body

Crew Chief Eric: All right, hold up He bought a retired fire truck, bright red, all the decals on the side, paid 15 grand for a square body, and it’s mint, lifted, I mean they showed pictures of it underneath, all the parts have been replaced. manual transmission, rebuilt [01:19:00] 350. All this stuff. I mean, this truck, this truck was ready to go, but I’m looking at this thing for, for what it is being as, as old as it is.

It’s a great truck, 15 grand, maybe a little bit much to spend on it. And then this guy, younger gentlemen, he decides. Well, we did a test on another episode where we wanted to see how much a Ford F 150 diesel or whatever it was could tow to its absolute limit. And apparently this gentleman is not a fan of the square body.

And he tells you that pretty much within the first minute of the video. And he says, I want to prove or disprove whether or not these trucks are really all that they’re cracked up to be because square body owners are religious. As we know, Mount Mandan is those trucks can do anything. They can go anywhere.

There will be one in space next to the Tesla Roadster. It’ll be flying rust, though, but you know, hey, whatever. He decides, okay, I’m gonna make sides for the bed, and I’m gonna fill it with firewood. Cool. I was like, well, to me, that does not seem like [01:20:00] 16 tons of wood. Nope. That was to level the bed with the roof, so that he could then proceed to put logs, telephone poles, and all sorts of trees on top of the truck.

And then strap it down with chains to the body and see how far he could drive. Once they realized they had forward motion, Then it was time to do all sorts of crazy things. So I’m not gonna spoiler alert, but you need to watch the video and watch it through the end because there’s even stuff in the outtakes of the video that are just mind bogglingly stupid.

But I will say it has left me with a new impression of the square body. Those trucks are Hilux. You cannot kill one as hard as these guys try. But you will lose brain cells by the end of that 20 minute period. It is absolutely bonkers. All right, and on that it’s time for some random car adjacent news. [01:21:00] So let’s order up some golden nuggets.

First up, many of you may or may not know, the DeLorean Motor Company still exists. It is based out of Texas and they are still working on developing a new version of the DeLorean and we wrote about this in a in an article earlier this year that Mountain Man Dan put together because he’s a big fan of the DeLorean but you can now own your own time machine and i’m not talking about a gullwing stainless steel car No, Texas based DMC Motors has licensed the rights to the UK based Charlie Foxtrot watches to release a line of DeLorean inspired DMC watches.

And so the website is dmc watch. com. They have seven different styles and they clock in. Haha, pun intended. Between 130 and 150 U. S. So they’re really affordable. They’re actually very stylish. All of the bezels are stainless steel, and you can [01:22:00] check them out on the website. Really cool stuff. I’m actually thinking about picking one up.

So, yes, you can now own your own DeLorean at a very affordable price, unlike the DeLoreans that are going to be coming out of Texas, which will probably have a sticker price well above 100, 000.

Crew Chief Brad: Do they come with a line of Coke?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the DeLorean S model. What else we got in there, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Somebody posted from Road and Track.

You don’t use brake clean to clean everything in your shop. Probably most people have brake clean or maybe use gum out instead. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a chemical. There’s always going to be a warning label saying there’s potential for causing cancer, and BrakeClean’s no different. I mean, honestly, you should always use BrakeClean or GumOut or any of those solvents in a well ventilated area.

I mean, I tend to use GumOut, which is basically Acetone. Yeah, aerosol nail polish remover, so. You know, I’m a little less [01:23:00] concerned about acetone, but at the end of the day, you’re under the car and you’re spraying stuff down and that vapor cloud is hanging over your head and you start choking and you start nose burning and whatnot.

I mean, it’s not good for you. It’s not healthy. So, I mean, the verdict I don’t think is a solid. You spray it on your hands and you’re going to die. You’re in a room where it’s in the air. You’re going to die. I think it all comes down to prolonged exposure and how you’re getting exposed to it. Obviously don’t inhale it.

Don’t ingest it in any other form. You know, be sensible about when you’re using chemicals.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And I don’t have the chemistry background that you do. And I don’t think of a lot of our listeners probably realize that yet about your background, that, you know, that’s the industry you’re in, you know, in the chemicals industry.

I’ve always shied away from break clean because. The way I understood it is it’s a formulation of bleach and the same chemicals they use for dry cleaning. And it’s one of those things that is extremely harmful. And to your point, gum out or equivalent [01:24:00] carbon choke cleaners, which are acetone based are not good for you either, but less harmful or carcinogenic, et cetera, compared to break clean.

So I shy away from it. But I think the article was well written and it explains why you shouldn’t and if you’re concerned, you know what you have in your cabinet and you’ve never really thought about it before, I would recommend reading the article and getting a little bit more familiar with the solvents you do use.

And I would say if you’re a DIY mechanic and you’re doing a lot of cleaning. Look into mineral spirits that do not have vapors in the same way as like an aerosol based cleaner does that, you know, with a proper wash tank and things like that. If you’re doing a lot of heavy cleaning, especially if it’s parts that are off of the car.

And, you know, obviously, if it’s something under the vehicle, you can’t dismantle it. That makes it difficult. You need a spray. But even then, you can put mineral spirits in a spray bottle, like an old Windex bottle or something like that, and have the same effect, right? It cleans, I find the mineral spirits [01:25:00] cleans up oil spills really well.

That was one of the use cases in the article, but I also looked at it, went, well, you can buy a 5 bag of kitty litter. And just let it sit there, sop it up and then sweep it away. But you know, wear a mask when you’re sweeping that too, because all that dust is not good for your lungs. So again, be safe. And in the day and now in the days of COVID where we’re all wearing masks, remember to wear a mask when you’re doing something in the garage that involves chemicals, vapors, et cetera.

Crew Chief Brad: But is brake clean still the best for cleaning your brakes and preparing your new brakes to go on the car?

Crew Chief Eric: I can do the same thing with gum out. I just prefer gum out and it evaporates quicker like I find break clean to be a little oilier in my opinion You know a little more just wetter. I don’t know.

It’s hard to explain I I just find that gum out evaporates quicker dries cleaner But gum out you have to be really really careful because it will strip paint and it will melt plastics, right? Because that’s the one of the things of acetone nail polish remover, right? So anyway, but we could we [01:26:00] could diverge on that forever anything you want to add to that tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean chlorinated things generally aren’t necessarily safe or, or, or healthy for the body. Something’s excluded like table salt, which has chlorine in it, but that’s a whole other compound that’s safe. I mean, again, it just comes down to proper handling of it, good ventilation, and you don’t want to let it sit there and be on your body or, or anything like that.

I mean, if you got it in your eye and you need to take. You know, 15 minutes of flushing your eyes with water and,

you

Executive Producer Tania: know, seek medical attention, all that stuff, wash it off. You’re part of the problem is like it can absorb into bloodstream and cause issues like that, which are health issues, which are bad.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, switching gears to a little lighter subject. A lot of us have probably already. started thinking about the holidays and thinking about Christmas shopping. And we do put together a holiday shopping list at GTM every year. We’ve been doing it kind of as a tradition now for several years. And one of the things that just came across my desk, [01:27:00] the post office has released for the first time, Hot Wheels inspired stamps.

So you can start using those on your Christmas cards as you’re getting prepared, since we’re talking about the post office a little bit.

Executive Producer Tania: You’ve also issued a. Small, little die cast, matchbox size, postal jeep that you can buy for 5. 99. And I think they have a larger semi truck option, which is about 30, and the money goes to helping USPS out.

So if you’re into, again, collecting The little Matchbox Hot Wheels type cars. You could add a USPS postal truck to your collection.

Crew Chief Eric: Very cool. So switching gears a little bit, we want to talk about a documentary that Brad actually brought to our attention not too long ago. We’re not going to go in deep like we do in a lot of other movies, but I was really surprised to review Brock, which is considered a two part mini series.

It was available on Netflix. It’s now available on Amazon prime for you to review. It’s all about [01:28:00] the famous Australian driver, Peter Perfect, also known as Peter Brock. And it starts with his early days driving Austin eight thirties. You know how he got hooked up with the Holden racing team and all that and his career and his separation from GM and in the middle 80s not to give away the whole story but Peter Perfect outside of having most wins at the Bathurst 12 hour race or the Bathurst Endurance race he’s basically the creator of HSV or Holden Special Vehicles, right?

So that was a specific branch of GM Australia that they let him spin off at the, that we know today, which now we know that Holden has been officially, you know, retired. And we heard, we learned that from Mike Crutchfield earlier this month. So really cool movie to tie back into some of the things that Mike was talking about.

Unlike a typical documentary. It was a dramatization, which was cool. So they’re real actors playing the parts. And some people you may recognize other people, you may not playing the parts of all the different people, you know, be it [01:29:00] a Peter Brock, be it his manager and some, you know, the racers that he was with, et cetera.

I found it fun, even though it was three hours long, the three hours went by really fast and it was, it was a good movie overall. But one of the cool things that they did was they actually interlaced real footage. into the movie footage with some CGI to simulate, you know, the actor being there as Peter Brock.

And that was seamless, absolutely beautiful, very well done. So that made things move along really well. And it made the storytelling, I thought, more profound because it was a dramatization and not a documentary with a narrator or anything like that. So good story, worth checking out, free on Amazon Prime, uh, if you have access to it.

in addition to that of movies when we posted links to these on the follow on article to this episode you can watch the new viral video that’s going going around about a guy who mounts a gopro inside of his wheel and drives down the road so you actually [01:30:00] get to see how a tire works from the inside i don’t know about you guys but I thought it was interesting, but also not at the same time.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it was anticlimactic. I mean, it’s a fixed camera position, so it was really hard to see all the possible deflections and whatnot. And I don’t know that, uh, it’s been a while since I watched it, but I felt like he just kind of drove slowly around the blocks a few times. And then there were potholes or, you know, small potholes on those roads, but I don’t know, it would have been cool kind of to see it go over a speed bump or really aggressively take a corner.

I think he did at one point just kind of like quickly take off and make a turn, but it would have been interesting to really see an aggressive turn to see how the tire deflects.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I think I would have liked to have seen that video redone maybe with a slightly higher profile tire because I think that was the worry is that if because it was such a low profile tire, it probably crushed the camera.

But I think on a higher profile tire on a racetrack, that would be really cool to see [01:31:00] the deflection and the side, the sidewalls moving and all that kind of stuff on a proper race course, you know what it’s like when you hit a curb at the racetrack, stuff like that. So

Executive Producer Tania: we also learn how hot. Uh,

Crew Chief Eric: that is true.

That is very true. In addition to kind of cool movies that are out there. I posted links to a guy that built a working Lego rotary motor, all these cool light effects and he hooked up the spark plugs and he walks you through the build and It really kind of put into perspective if you’re not into rotaries, like how a Winkle engine works and you know, how it’s designed to work and at high speed, you can really see it with all the articulation, like how it actually functions.

So if you’re, if you want to learn something different, I would definitely check that out. And it was really cool to see the imagination and the creativity and the time that people put into. Building that kind of stuff. And on the opposite extreme of that, there’s a gentleman in the UK who has become very famous for 3d printing, large scale Legos.[01:32:00]

And he just recently put together a double XL go kart. And it looks like a giant Lego Technic go kart and it’s powered by an electric motor and he walks you through some testing and things like that of this prototype that he built. He gets it up to 31 miles an hour in a straight line drag race. But unfortunately it corners like,

Crew Chief Brad: like a brick

Crew Chief Eric: kind of terribly.

And the reason being, and it was cool because the tires he has look like Lego tires. I mean, it’s legit, right? The problem is they were

Executive Producer Tania: plastic tires, but they were hard plastic. They were,

Crew Chief Eric: no, they were, they were rubber tires, but they look like the knobby Lego tires. Like we’re used to the everything, the steering wheel.

It was all technique. The whole rack and pinion was a giant gear. I mean, when you see the video, you’re like, wow, that’s really cool. The problem was, and I guess him not being a car guy, this is where I saw the design fall apart. Yes, it’s a go kart. Yes, it goes straight. Yes, it [01:33:00] turns. The brakes were still a little suspect.

The whole engine stuff was really cool, but he never thought to put a differential in it. So it turns. like a brick. It will not turn. And then what they did was they sped up the video to make it look like it’s turning. But in an outtake at the very end, you can hear him going. This thing will not turn. And he’s doing like one mile an hour because the rear wheels are locked and it’s just basically hopping around.

It’s pretty bad. So Apparently he’s going to try to redesign the rear end to have a differential and then they’re going to try again and put it on the legitimate go kart track and test it against real go karts to see how it holds up. So I’m actually waiting to see that video come out and that seems really cool.

But if you’re interested, this guy has got a pretty, pretty good following and we posted the video to that. Brad, you had something I think in there we consider a golden nugget.

Crew Chief Brad: So a guy up in Canada essentially spent 140, 000 1, 000 [01:34:00] rebuilding and putting his own twist on a Mark I GTI. I mean, that leaves

Crew Chief Eric: me with a very big why.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love, and I’m nostalgic and I wax poetic. Over the mark one gtis but 140 grand really

Crew Chief Brad: it was it was about 200 grand in total If you include all the tools and stuff that he had to buy And he spent about 12 000 hours of labor going through this car now. It’s really cool It’s got a high compression 16 valve engine.

Uh, he bumped it out to 2. 1 liters Completely redid the interior with period correct colors and uh in fabrics and everything. It’s got 220 horsepower all motor KW V3 coilovers. It’s got Mark 2 GTI transmission. He’s got 14 inch wheels that hide four piston brakes. It’s got carbon fiber bits, carbon fiber hood and hatch.

Um, so he, he spent some time and did [01:35:00] a really good job on it. But the real question is just why? I know because

Crew Chief Eric: all the stuff you listed sounds like a, let’s call it a 30, 000 Mark I GTI I would see at Vagfare. You know what I mean? It’s like, I don’t know. Like, where did he sink? Is he factoring in his labor?

I mean, I don’t know. I just want to know what it sells for and bring a trailer at the end of the day.

Crew Chief Brad: In the article, there is a 122 page write up. Of everything that he did. And then there’s also a documented 180 different videos kind of showcasing the how to’s and and everything he did. And a lot of that 140 grand goes into his one off research and development.

So he’s including his R and D cost. Uh, into building this car. Got it.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: He sold it. He sold it to a couple up in, uh, in, in Canada, uh, and he’s got a couple other projects that he’s looking to do.

Crew Chief Eric: I guess the bigger question is, is this in Canadian dollars or U. S. dollars?

Crew Chief Brad: The article did not say. [01:36:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Hmm.

Crew Chief Brad: But he’s got two other projects.

The first project is he, he hasn’t started him yet, but he wants to do E mini bikes. Um, so he wants to electrify some of the, uh, the seventies, like banana bikes. So you used to see running around and he also wants to build a Tesla model three for the track, probably. So we can beat that nine 11 GT three.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, Pike’s Peak, baby. Uh, last thing in this segment. So an article came across our desk, thanks to Sam. And it really explains why software developers choose what they choose. They build a simulation game, especially a racing game. I thought it was actually quite interesting. I won’t bore you guys with the details.

We will post the link to the article, but basically it comes down to processing power and concessions, right? They can only simulate so much and only give you so much realism based on, you technology that we have, processing power. And then there’s a gameplay aspect to it, right? So if you make it too difficult, nobody wants to play it, you make it too easy, then it’s just for, for kids.

It’s like Mario Kart. So [01:37:00] there’s a lot of that going back and forth and they try to make everybody happy. So I know we complain a lot about certain games. Oh, Forza doesn’t have this and Project Cars doesn’t have that. And then this one has, you know, the other thing. At the end of the day, it’s all about compromises.

So if you’re interested in getting that backstory, check out the link to that article. I found it to be interesting just to kind of nerd out on. So now we come to our final segment, the secret sauce, where we cover some quickly cover some internal GTM news. So. I’ll start out a couple shout outs for upcoming podcast episodes.

You guys will hear after this airs. We want to say thank you to Joe Obernberger, Baron Mills, and Travis Dixon from SCCA.

Crew Chief Brad: We want to say thank you to Mark Francis from OG Racing.

Crew Chief Eric: And we want to do a quick summer bash roundup. We want to shout out to Mountain Man Dan and Matt Wood, our Region Chiefs for the Mountain Region, for organizing and putting together Summer Bash 6 at Pit Race.

It’s the first time we had that not at Summit Point or in the DMV. So, event [01:38:00] went off without a hitch. We had really, really good weather. We had a really good turnout, over 20 GTN members there. Carding event was fantastic. Congratulations to Sam Harrington for winning. I’m not going to boast, but I did qualify on poll.

So John Kofici, if you hear that I went faster than Pete. So, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re officially putting that out there.

Crew Chief Brad: Pete also cheated and dabbled in that gray area with his 47 second run.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s true. That got disqualified, but But the the carding event was a huge success. We also have to a big shout out to Lauren Thompson Who’s our newest member from the mountain region who also catered our saturday night party, which is awesome So big thank you to her and also welcoming aboard andrew Mullerine who’s a longtime friend of andrew bank and we welcome him to the dmv region So that’s putting us well into the 70s in terms of our membership size, and we are looking to grow.

We do get a membership requests all the time, just for listeners who are out there, you know, we’d like [01:39:00] to meet you guys. We’d like to make sure that you’re active participants in the group and you want to be part of the bigger GTM family. We’ve set up some different ways for you to get to know part of the team, especially now during COVID and when there’s less and less events going on.

So if you’re interested in learning more about us, visit the website and don’t be bashful to apply.

Crew Chief Brad: We’d also like to give a shout out to Mateo Fontana for developing the new GTM store, which is set to release in September, and we’ll have more on that later.

Crew Chief Eric: And then some more shout outs. Big shout out to Mark Hicks from Chin Track Days for coming on the show and talking to us and giving us that whole backstory.

Crew Chief Brad: We want to shout out to Harry Brill and Rob Lorz for participating in our What Should I Buy Wagons edition.

Crew Chief Eric: To Mike Crutchfield for his two part story, uh, Storytime with Crutch and the Kiwis and Coffee episode that aired earlier this month.

Crew Chief Brad: To the Latin lads, John and Steve Wade, whose episode aired last week.

Crew Chief Eric: And our new Patreons for the month of August, Peter Bank,

Crew Chief Brad: Jason Duncan,

Crew Chief Eric: John Richter, Gordon Bell. Tom Wendy,

Crew Chief Brad: [01:40:00] Matt small.

Crew Chief Eric: And again, you know, GTM is fueled by volunteers. So please consider signing up. It really helps groups like us grow, you know, without your support, we could not do what we do. And of course, I think we have one final shout out, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess we should say thank you and shout out to Tanya.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I mean, you know, what you guys don’t realize is she does a lot of work. This drive through series that we put together is really inspired by her. And she’s done a really good job of kind of formulating these segments and collecting the data and making sure that this goes off without a hitch.

And we could not do this without her. And we’re looking forward to doing more of these episodes and hearing more about all the people from Florida that, that she’s, that she’s researching. So thanks Tanya for doing this for us. And again, and again, to all the members who support GTM. We couldn’t do this without you guys.

So thank you all for your support. And on that note, I think it’s time to end. What do you think guys?

Crew Chief Brad: I think so.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. August is in the [01:41:00] bag. Let’s see what September brings us.

Here we are in the drive thru line. Bus cars in back of us all just waiting to order. 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

Crew Chief Brad: 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 1770. Or send us an email gtmotorsports. org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read?[01:42:00]

Great, so do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going so that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www.

patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports, or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you. Can help.

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