B/F: The Drive Thru #12

• Don't park your Chevy Bolt EV inside or charge it unattended overnight, GM warns some owners

• The MINI Urbanaut Is Now a Real Concept Car
• Electrify America Hits the 600-Station Mark
• California Will Start Testing for ECU Tunes During Smog Checks Starting Next Week
• Canada to Ban New Gas-Engined Car Sales by 2035

• Nikita Mazepin Singing a Song Sung Blue About His Current Lot With Haas F1 Team
• Formula 1 reveals full-size 2022 car for first time

• Toyota to Pay $1.2B for Hiding Deadly ‘Unintended Acceleration’
• It's All Your Fault: The DOT Renders Its Verdict on Toyota's Unintended-Acceleration Scare

• The Death Of Manuals Is A Boost For Collectors
• From a ’70 Lamborghini Miura to a ’64 Shelby Cobra: The Late Neil Peart’s Car Collection Is Heading to Auction
• The Most Dramatic Barn Find Stories On Motorious
• Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle
• Richard Hammond Names His Top 5 Cars

Man spent 17 years building a Lambo in his basement

• This Surprisingly Well Made, Boxster-Based McLaren F1 Replica Even Has A Central Driving Position
• SPLASH AND DASH; FORD FRAGRANCE SHOWS PETROL FANS THEY WON’T MISS OUT WITH MUSTANG MACH-E GT

Human Powered car, Part 2: Bicycle Power!

Biggest Flops in Automotive History: Cimmaron/Citation!

Fact or Photoshop? – Ferrari Tucks under Truck to avoid police!

• Le circuit de Spa-Francorchamps rouvre ses portes
• German floods: Nürburgring becomes makeshift aid center
• M-SPORT FORD UNVEILS PUMA RALLY1 CAR – FIRST PICTURES
• Peugeot reveals first images of radical 9X8 Le Mans Hypercar

• Ferrari Buyers Can Now Buy a Matching Scale Model at Dealerships
• Porsche 917/30 Junior For Sale Is All We Ever Wanted Growing Up

• 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee: Everything We Know About the Two-Row SUV
• Dodge to unveil 'the last hurrah' for the Charger and Challenger on July 8
• The 1999 Charger R/T Concept Was The One Dodge Should've Made
• Dodge brand being considered for IMSA return based on Peugeot LMH

• Tesla plans to open its charging network to other EVs later this year

• ELegend EL1 is an electric homage to the Audi Quattro S1
• Volkswagen SP2 Revival Looks like a Modern-Day Jaguar E-Type in Indy Rendering
• VW Will Use 3D Printers to Make Metallic Car Parts
• VW Passat Dead after 2022, Receives Special Edition Sendoff

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: Welcome to the drive through episode number 12. This is Brad. That’s right. I’m back. You all had a little bit of a reprieve, but you can’t get away from me this long for this time. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news. Now, let’s pull up to the window number one.

automotive news.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad. And before we get on to our normal news banter, let’s remind everybody [00:01:00] of something really special about this particular episode. This episode marks our one year anniversary, and somehow we managed to turn 52 normal weeks into 72 episodes. So if you’ve just now tuning into the break fix podcast, you have a lot of Catching up to do, but I have

Crew Chief Brad: an answer for that though.

It’s creative editing. That’s how we did it.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. You know, there’s a lot of great content out there, back on the main server, out on Patreon, all sorts of stuff to catch up on some fantastic guests over the last year, ranging. All over the motorsport and car community. So lots of really cool things to catch up on and a big shout out and thank you right up front before we dive into the news to all of our guests, all of our supporters and all of our fans that have come on the show in the last year, you know, as we look back, there’s been some really, really neat news articles that have come out through our drive through series, and I think we’re going to revisit some of those [00:02:00] topics as we go along and first up this month, our showcase manufacturer.

Just happens to be an EV company. So this month we kick off with Rimac. We’ve talked about them several times before, and they’re infamous for being the car that Richard Hammond had wrecked in an episode of The Grand Tour while doing a hill climb. So they were kind of like on the bleeding edge of hyper and supercar EV technology.

And we talked about several times on this show where Porsche has sold out. vested interest and continue to grow its vested interest in RIMAC. And things just went to 11 because here’s what we’re hearing. RIMAC bought Bugatti. Did you guys know that Bugatti was for sale?

Crew Chief Brad: I knew the Bugatti baby too was for sale.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, so let’s do the math on this for just a second. RIMAC who had about 21 percent controlled stock by Porsche. Then buys a company that is owned by Volkswagen, in which it has 45 percent [00:03:00] controlling stock of. So in two plus two equals seven and a half accounting math, that means Porsche owns about 60 percent of Rimac now.

Yes. Right. I mean, it’s absolutely nutty. I read some articles, even for PCA and PCA being the Porsche club of America. They’re saying Porsche now owns 45 percent of Rimac, right? Because of the crazy math and everything that’s going on here. What does that mean for the company? What does that mean for Bugatti?

Oh, what does that mean for all these crazy concepts that they’re coming out with? What I gather from this is like we alluded to Volkswagen group in Porsche, we’re leveraging Rimac to develop some of the more high end EV stuff that they wanted for, let’s say like something like a nine 18 or the Lamont’s cars, the LMDH prototypes and things like that.

So I think this is a great test bed. We’ve already seen that Bugatti has been going off the deep end with some crazy new models that we can’t pronounce the names and we don’t understand what they look like. So it all kind of works together, but some of the new numbers are astonishing. Obviously, you know, [00:04:00] Tesla loves to come to the table and say, Oh, we’ve got the fastest car zero to 60.

RIMAC is currently claiming zero to 60 in 1. 85 seconds. Wrap your mind around that staggering speed. Do we really need to go this fast? I guess is the better question.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I don’t think we need to go this fast. I mean, even 2. 8 seconds, which is, I guess, the norm now for all these hypercars and supercars is just still completely just insane.

1. 8, 1. 9 or whatever. That’s, I would faint. Going that fast.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? I mean, your eyes are like pushing into the back of your head at that point. We’re well past the days, like we talked about in the Bobby Parks episode, you owe me a 10 second car. 10 second car is slow. I mean, what is a 1. 850 to 60 second car doing a quarter mile?

Are we in the fives? Absolutely bonkers. Which drove me down this path. And I stumbled upon another article that just happened to kind of leak out from the side. And it went back to a conversation that we had earlier in the year about the fastest production cars in the world. Remember we talked about the SSE [00:05:00] Tuatara and some of these other vehicles that were out there and whether they had dethroned Bugatti, you know, and we’re talking about them here again now.

And so I went through this list and Rimac shows up twice. So the concept one, as they’re calling it is at 221 miles an hour. And the concept two, which I don’t believe is out yet. 58 miles an hour, again, staggering numbers from a company that’s really not that old that we’ve only hired about in the last couple of years.

Maybe they’re that dark horse that nobody’s really paying attention to while the shiny objects is the Teslas and the Koenigseggs and all these other things. And here comes Rimac now bolted up with Porsche and the power and the might of VAG. I mean, we’re going to see some crazy stuff coming out of there and, you know, Porsche is not going to settle for anything less than perfection.

And so I’m really, really excited to see what comes of this new merger. And especially from the Bugatti line, because we have joked several times that how much [00:06:00] lemonade can you squeeze out of an aging R8 platform, you know, and call it the Chiron and the Veyron and all these different names. I will say on that list of 25 fastest cars on the planet.

A lot of them are still really old. We’re talking about salines. We’re talking about the original McLaren F1 is still on that list. I mean, there’s Jaguar XJ220 is still on that list, right? I mean, going way back into the nineties, there’s still a lot of cars that topple that 200 mile an hour number.

There’s a bunch of stuff on there that I was surprised hadn’t been completely eclipsed. But it seems to me, if you take all the cars away from that list that said claimed next to them, you know, unproven results, the Chiron Supersport. That is still king of the castle at almost 305 miles an hour. I mean, which again begs the question, do we need to go that fast?

Crew Chief Brad: So what I want to know is when is this technology going to trickle down all the way to the Veloster in in the Elantra in because as you saw on the chart, Hyundai owns 12 percent of this remit group as well.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:07:00] Exactly. How’s that going to work out? And, you know, to be honest, since we’re still kind of talking in a roundabout way of VAG news, I actually got a recent opportunity to coach in a Veloster N since you brought it up.

And I have to say that is the best GTI that was ever built in Korea. So let’s move on from that and let’s talk a little bit about our next favorite group in the automotive world, Stellantis. There has been an unveiling of a Grand Jeep yet to be named, as we referenced on a previous episode. We’re still not sure what it’s going to be called, but as speculated, it’s the Grand Wagoneer with some different badging.

It

Executive Producer Tania: doesn’t look any different than any other Jeep.

Crew Chief Brad: From the side, it looks like a Palisade. Or a Telluride to me. Sharp line down the side of it. I had

Executive Producer Tania: to sit behind a Telluride. I’ve not seen Telluride line. All I see with Telluride is that the rear end lights. The Telluride actually isn’t hateful.

Crew Chief Brad: No, they’re not bad looking.

But it’s not the [00:08:00] more rounded, muscular look of the current day. Grand Cherokee, which I actually really, I’m a huge fan of the current WK2 Cherokees. Grand SUVs the Jeep makes that we can’t call Cherokees anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: The side view definitely looks a little more square, maybe harkening back to the very square Cherokees from the 90s.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought the front was basically the Grand Wagoneer. Concept that we’ve seen revealed with a different badge on it. It has that kind of crow Magnin forehead and the lights kind of inverted and, you know, kind of curved internally. I don’t know.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe I’m not looking at the same thing. Actually,

Crew Chief Eric: there are pictures of the current Jeep in that photo reel.

That carousel. Don’t ask me why, but they are there. Maybe that’s the problem.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s definitely grand Wagoneer light.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Exactly. You can tell they’ve elongated the chassis. It’s much bigger. And why wouldn’t they share the same chassis? It doesn’t make sense not to. I mean, from a tooling perspective, change a couple of things, call Hella [00:09:00] or whoever, make some different lights, and then let’s go from there.

Crew Chief Brad: But the question is, what is the Dodge Durango going to look like now?

Crew Chief Eric: I would say, take that Jeep and slam it into a concrete wall. And that’s probably what it will look like.

Crew Chief Brad: I can see that.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s if they even bring the Durango back, right? Cause the Durango, I think is being eclipsed by the Wagoneer name, which is the debate they had a couple of years ago, which was the Durango was supposed to already be the Wagoneer and they said, no, no, no, no, no.

It’s going to be a Dodge. We’re going to keep it a Dodge. With the new changes at Stellantis and even the changes internally at FCA, before all that happened where they’re kind of thinning out the herd a little bit and, you know, changing their offerings where all the trucks are Rams and, you know, Dodges is going to be the muscle cars and all this kind of thing, I can kind of see that, you know, they don’t want to have too, too much overlap anymore.

The Wagoneer, as we already talked about in a previous episode, it’s the highest of high end, right? It’s beyond. The grand jeep to be named summit edition, right? It’s then the Wagoneer. It’s like even more to obviously [00:10:00] try to compete with what’s going on over at Cadillac and all the other high end brands that are putting Range Rover

Crew Chief Brad: and

Crew Chief Eric: it’s a three row, right?

Since when has the current grand Cherokee been a three row? If it wasn’t a Durango, right? So with, with that, I mean, it’s a lot of badge engineering. Let’s call it that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. No. I’m not in the market for it, so it’s okay.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’ll flip this around a little bit, and let’s talk about the last hoorah for the Charger and the Challenger.

Crew Chief Brad: Say what now?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, so Dodge announced back early in July that, hey guys, just want to let you know, we’re done building muscle cars, okay? And everybody went, what, what, what? And we’ve been talking about this for a year now, about how Chrysler, Could care less about all this other stuff. 700 horsepower or whatever.

800 horsepower. Sure. 900. All right. 1000. 1100. Where are we going? Right? Sky’s the limit. Now they’re saying, all right, guys, it’s been fun. It’s been real, but we’re good. They are hinting [00:11:00] without giving any details whatsoever. The press release that came out on July the 8th was nothing more than, it didn’t say anything other than, yep, there’s going to be an EV version of the Challenger and the Charger in the future.

No specs, no nothing other than that. But there was a pretty funny quote from the director and he says, everybody knows electrification is coming. We will reinvent the muscle car. As far as Dodge is concerned. Okay. Well, that’s kind of ambiguous, but here it comes. I’m extremely excited about where the future is going, but right now everybody is enjoying the bachelor party and this is the last hoorah.

And

I’m

Crew Chief Eric: like, you know, all right. All right. I’ll take it. I’ll take it. But what I’m expecting though, if you’re going to go out with a bang, you’re setting the stage like that, the Hellcat better have a 2000 horsepower option. I mean, if you’re going to do it, you got to go big or go home.

Crew Chief Brad: You got to do a demon that does a six second quarter.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s the new name going to be like the Lucifer, the Dante. I mean, they got to give it, they got to give it a whole nother thing, right. To take it to [00:12:00] 2000. What’s that morning

Crew Chief Brad: star. Yeah. What are all the names from the Lucifer TV show that we can throw in

Crew Chief Eric: here? You know what? I think our listeners should write in and put in their suggestions or post on Instagram, uh, Along with the show and say, Hey, this is my idea for the main dive should use for their 2000 horsepower challenger.

Crew Chief Brad: I just got a great show idea. First of all, I think we need to insert taps here right now. Uh, when you’re doing the editing. Also, I think we need to have a funeral for these vehicles, for these cars. We do like a podcast funeral. Everybody can call in and let us know their favorite memories of when they saw the Hellcat do.

Burnout all the way up from the lower S’s to the upper S’s at VIR and the back straight and all that good stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, Dodge, if you’re listening, 21 challenger burnout salute. I mean, again, if you’re going to party hard, do it right. You imagine what that would sound like? The 21 challengers unloading. Uh, you wouldn’t be able to breathe for like a week, but absolutely incredible.

So, you know, all this talk about the challenger and the charger [00:13:00] on their way out, we got to do a little throwback Thursday here. We got to rewind the clock And talk about the genesis of where this whole legacy started back in the year 1999. So let’s party like it’s 99 and go to Tanya.

Executive Producer Tania: Sometimes we see concept cars and it’s very disappointing when the real car is made because it strays.

very much away from what that concept looked like. The concept looked amazing. And then there’s concept cars that are hot garbage, and thankfully they’re not made. This is the hot garbage category. The original Charger RT concept, this thing is phenomenally ugly. It looks like a Dodge Stratus. mated with the current Camaro or something from the rear end.

I don’t know. Like there’s many things going on where it looks like multiple cars that have been pieced, mealed together. But my initial look from the front, I just see that horrid Dodge Stratus and I don’t care what’s under the [00:14:00] hood. thing is a piece of garbage. And thankfully when they finally made the Dodge Charger, it didn’t look like this

Crew Chief Eric: when they did release the first charger, it wasn’t anything to write home about compared to now.

Some of the newest chargers. I mean, they’re really good looking. They got some stance to them and flares and they’re aggressive. I mean, Fiat has done an excellent job redefining the charger and the challenger for that matter. But you’re right. This thing is hot trash and it goes right along with. An article we wrote about two years ago now called good ideas, bad execution, where we talk about these concept cars, but you know, sometimes they do evolve into good things.

They are the jumping off point for something else, but I don’t know what this jumped off to. But thank God they threw it in the bin and started all over again.

Crew Chief Brad: I think part of it jumped off to the Dodge Avenger. If anybody remembers that car, which was basically based off of the Sebring. I think it was like a.

A coupe Sebring, essentially it’s like they’re all the same chassis, those crappy cars.

Executive Producer Tania: The amalgamation of all of those horrible looking cars. Yes. And to clarify, it does not look like Camaro [00:15:00] from the rear end view, because I don’t know what that rear end tail light thing with the way the side was swooping.

It’s garbage.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s

Executive Producer Tania: a mess. I know Camaro is not a Dodge, but. It came in my head when I was looking at the side view of it.

Crew Chief Eric: The same time was it a year or two later, they had that crazy demon they called it, which was like a Miata killer that took some of the cues from this weird prototype. And it actually didn’t look bad.

It looked like there was also the copper head at one point, which was a Viper variant that they had come out with. I mean, it was an experimental time in 99 at Dodge. Like they just weren’t sure what was up. Right. Prince said, we got a party. Yeah. And they, they were partying. All right. So switching gears and still talking about Stellantis a little bit.

What else we got there, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Ferrari tends to be You don’t say. Rightfully so. And that’s great. But now, as if you didn’t need to be any more pretentious with your Ferrari. I have nothing against [00:16:00] Ferraris. If I had that kind of money, I’d have one as well.

Crew Chief Eric: Ferrari’s getting into the mini EV market like Bugatti?

Is that what I’m hearing?

Executive Producer Tania: No. Not talking about that, but we are talking about something mini. Going forward, when you purchase your brand new Ferrari, you can now also purchase a 1 8th or 1 12th scale model car of your Ferrari. This is a partnership between Ferrari and Amalgam Collections. They’re a company that makes model cars.

Now I had to look up a Malcolm collection. So I was like, Ooh, model car. Anyone want to wager guess as to how much a model car costs? If you want to order a 1 8th scale,

Crew Chief Eric: I already gasp at the price of the auto art 1 8th scale cars. So I’m going to imagine it’s 10 times what those costs.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna throw out 15 grand.

Executive Producer Tania: You are very close and on the ball because, just as an example, the Ferrari 250 GTO 3445 GT 1 8th scale is [00:17:00] 14, 965.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, that’s brutal. You can get a Ferrari 250 TR 118 for 793.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, that’s the cheapest one? 793?

Executive Producer Tania: And it’s not the same scale though. I’m just kind of cruising through the Ferraris right here.

Crew Chief Eric: So let me ask you this, you know, there’s this whole like seeming underground myth that Ferrari owners don’t actually own the Ferraris. They’re actually all owned by The company, and you just kind of lease them and turn them in and you work your way up the Ponzi scheme until you get the latest and greatest one.

You got to, you know, it’s like this whole thing. If you have a scale model that goes with your Ferrari, do you actually own the model or is that what you get left with after they take it away?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. But at those prices, you could buy a whole second car.

Crew Chief Eric: Buy a Honda for that price. I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: you could buy a 2016 Dodge Dart.

Executive Producer Tania: Ain’t

Crew Chief Eric: that

Crew Chief Brad: truth. Get one

Crew Chief Eric: today. Your local Chrysler dealer. Oh, well, the things people will buy, the things I definitely [00:18:00] will not just because they can. Exactly. So moving on, we, I mean, this wouldn’t be a drive thru episode if we didn’t talk about Volkswagen Audi group. I know we started with Rimac. It is technically a separate organization.

We got to focus on the parent organization, Volkswagen Audi group. And there was some news that rocked the social media world this past month. So let’s talk about that.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, are you referring to the OMA to the Audi Quattro S1 in electric?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, I very much am. And you know what’s funny? I found so many people reacting to this car that probably would have done nothing but put poo emojis and thumb down over the original one.

You know, but there’s just something about it. It is probably the closest, if it isn’t a rendering to the original cars, it really does do a great job of bringing out the essence and the period and just all the awesome things about those, you know, homologated groupie rally [00:19:00] cars. What is the big problem with this car, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: The biggest problem is it doesn’t have four rings on the front grill.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. This is a complete skunkworks project by a group called E Legend. They’re building this as a tribute car, but the factory at this point wants nothing to do with it. And so if anything, Audi, Volkswagen, if you’re listening, don’t be stupid.

There are enthusiasts that want these cars. Just freaking build it at this point. Send it.

Executive Producer Tania: Everybody else. Seems to be stepping into the time machine to pull forward retro redesigns that are electric. We’ve seen some of them. We’ve talked about some of them. I mean, you’ve got the ones that everybody knows, Fiat mini, et cetera.

But we even talked about the Alfa Romeo and Renault and all these things. Why not this? What better car in the Audi lineage to bring back as a retro and electrify.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. I don’t disagree. You know, and I can hear certain members in my ear right now, the American market doesn’t want it, you know, dah, dah, it’ll never, it [00:20:00] wouldn’t be to

Crew Chief Brad: the American market anyway, that’s a non starter.

Crew Chief Eric: Just like we’re never going to get to Scirocco. And I. I’m going to get off my soapbox right now because I just get all spun around the axle about it, but you know, Hey, whatever, but there is some cool stuff coming from Audi.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, and just like we’ll never get it. I want to do a quick follow up. We talked about the five cylinder Audi RS3 that’s going to be coming out.

And I think 2022, it will be not only the sedan, which was what’s been shown in pictures. There will be a hatchback version. Take it from me now. If you live in Europe. Oh God. Wah, wah, wah. Yep. The hatchback version will not be available in the U. S. Of course. Moving on.

Crew Chief Eric: The only hatchback version of that we’re going to get is the Q3 or the, or the Q5 with an RS package on it.

That’s what we’re going to get because apparently that’s all we can drive. Frustrating, frustrating. Can you, can you folks, can you hear my frustration? I mean, if you’re a petrol head, [00:21:00] you should be upset about this. Maybe you don’t like Audi. Maybe you don’t like Volkswagen or Porsche or any of these brands, but think about it.

There are so many cool designs out there. And we’ve said this before in the show that could be updated and made better. To work without even really ruining the design. I think we’ve said it before. Chrysler has proven that time and time again, you can make the old cars cool. Yeah. They’re going to be bigger than the originals.

They’re going to be safer. They’re going to be faster. Why

Executive Producer Tania: not? Well, what I don’t understand is this aversion. Okay. It existed, but apparently still exists for hatchbacks because guess what? All these compact crossover SUV things are nothing but. Lifted hatchbacks. So if everyone in the U S is on this compact crossover bandwagon, then I don’t get it.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t get it either, but I think it goes to Brad’s favorite phrase. I mean, if nobody’s figured this out yet, you know, hatchback and CUV are basically the same thing with suspension gap. I mean, I don’t know. You [00:22:00] know, most of

Crew Chief Brad: the CUVs that are coming out, don’t even have that much suspension gap. They’re essentially the same height.

Is your Camry that’s parked next to him. It’s ridiculous, but they can haul a shit ton of mulch,

Crew Chief Eric: but you know, what is coming out is the Chinese only market. La Mondo. Have you seen this thing?

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, unique. Yeah. So in terms of not coming to the United States, I’m okay with this one.

Crew Chief Eric: It is hideous. Like there are cars where I’m like.

It looks like a roach. You could say that about the TT. Kind of looks like a little bulldog. The Toyota Paseo to me looked like an insect from like way back in the day. This one definitely like it needs little antennae and like whiskers. I mean, it’s, it just looks like a pill bug. I don’t get it. And not in a good way.

Like what was that thing called? It was like the bug ripoff.

Oh, yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. The, the fun, the fun cat or something, whatever, stupid name it had.

Nothing. God, let’s not go there.

Crew Chief Eric: There is something cool coming and I don’t know if it’s true or not. And this is one [00:23:00] of my favorite VWs that nobody knows anything about.

The SP2. I talked about it in our previous episode. It was a Brazilian born. There were multiple variants of it. And we talked about a rendering that had come out with a full motion video to go with it. Set to music, really cool looking. It’s in one of the previous drive thru episodes, but now it sounds like and looks like from these sketches that have come out that Volkswagen of South America might actually be a car.

be putting together a prototype. And I tell you what, some people have said it looks like a Jaguar E Type from a couple years back, but I actually think it looks really cool. And it does a good job of staying with that last generation of VW SP2.

Executive Producer Tania: I seriously doubt it’ll ever come to fruition. And if it were only be available in Brazil, because it’s the only place that car basically was available.

Crew Chief Eric: My soul is crushed. You’re killing me today. Volkswagen. Or is it volt wagon? What is it again? Oh, okay. I got it. Got it. Got [00:24:00] rimac. Okay. Meanwhile, VW announced that they are going to begin 3d printing metal parts for their vehicles. And I actually thought that was kind of cool. They’re the first manufacturer that I’ve seen, at least come out into the public and state that they were doing this, how this is going to change the Part manufacturing kind of logistics change.

I don’t know because you know, as we know, not all manufacturers make all their parts in house, right? Germans are famous for using Miley and man and Vallejo and Vico. And there’s all sorts of other companies, just like we have in the U S right. AC Delco and all these other groups that will build parts and then supply them to the manufacturer.

And they get put on the assembly line. This is the true of other manufacturing industries, whether it be, you know, the computer industry and others. So I think this is actually kind of cool that. They’re bringing it, maybe some of the parts more in house and they’re going to be made out of metal and not plastic and 3d printed.

So that’s kind of cool.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re still going to fail

Crew Chief Eric: a hundred percent. I mean, we’re

Crew Chief Brad: [00:25:00] still going to need to go to the dealership and wait three years for a new part to come out or for to get a new part. Cause it’s got to be overnight from Germany,

Crew Chief Eric: only made in the dark forest, right? But

Crew Chief Brad: this brings up a good point with like the 3d printing of parts and everything like that.

If the 3d printers. They don’t take up much real estate. Theoretically, if you get to a point where the dealers could start manufacturing their own parts in house to cut down on some of that time gap.

Crew Chief Eric: Be like, Hey, yo, I need an oil filter. All right. It’ll take you three weeks to get it, but you know, Hey, whatever.

Executive Producer Tania: Crazy, you know, that they’d be able to do metal printings because earlier, just a couple of days ago, actually, apparently in Amsterdam, they built like a pedestrian bridge across a canal that’s. Stainless steel bridge that was 3d printed.

Crew Chief Eric: How big is that printer?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. And it’s very, um, artistic looking the bridge.

So it’s not a simple like flat platform and rails on the side. This thing is very like futuristic looking with curves and, uh, other, you know, features on it. [00:26:00] So apparently, you know, six robotic arms and all this stuff welded it and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, if they can build something of that scale, then small parts shouldn’t be an issue.

Obviously technology is. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: And we talked about in a previous episode where team Corvette had talked about all the different things that were 3d printed on the C8 are IMSA race car. So it’s not uncommon, but I thought it was cool to VW is pretty much at the front of this saying, Hey, we’re doing this as part of our day to day operations.

And I thought that was pretty neat. So good on them. Right. And they’re going to try to set the trend. So any other news from Volkswagen before we move on?

Executive Producer Tania: One final, which I guess could, uh, air in the funeral episode. So I think it’s been a little bit in the, in the making that Volkswagen had said that by the end of the decade, I think that the Passat was going to go the way of the Condor.

If you will, but they’ve actually accelerated that timeline. And apparently the VW Passat will [00:27:00] no longer be manufactured after

Crew Chief Eric: 2022. And the only people disappointed are the folks at the rental car lots.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, the need for the Passat, I don’t blame them. I mean, the Jetta is the size of Passat now. So why do you need two of them?

And then they brought

Crew Chief Brad: out that A or 10 or whatever. It

Executive Producer Tania: was like, It’s going to say that, you know, their sedan game hasn’t really been that strong because the Ayrton didn’t necessarily do that well. The CC didn’t really necessarily do that well either. It’s like they did well with the Jetta. Okay, well keep the Jetta then.

Apparently this is going to be a special edition version because since 2011, the Passat’s been manufactured at the Chattanooga. VW plant, so it’s going to get, you know, all sorts of cool limited edition things from the wheels to seat tags in the interior to even the, the bottoms of the cup holders are going to have like an aerial map of Chattanooga and a blueprint of the factory.

So a lot of touches on the car going to [00:28:00] Chattanooga and the, in the factory itself to kind of pay a little homage to the factory there.

Crew Chief Brad: So question, how long will it take for one of these special edition Passat’s to sell for 250, 000 on bring a trailer? Because all this extra shit that they’re putting into these things to make it special edition, you know, someone’s going to buy one and try and flip it as a collector car.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, I don’t think so. I don’t

think so.

Crew Chief Brad: Should I said racing junk instead of bridge? Not

Crew Chief Eric: even that I think is going to be on eBay if eBay still exists in 40 years. Okay,

Crew Chief Brad: let me rephrase my question. How long will it take? Before these cars are all up on Craigslist for 250.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s more like it. That is a hundred percent.

More like

Executive Producer Tania: probably right. That someone will have that idea and think it’s a good one, but the reality will be that they will just be left with having bought the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s [00:29:00] going to be like that Citroën, Dechevaux, Burton conversion we talked about last month, where it costs more for them to make the car special than it’s actually worth.

So I think that’s what Volkswagen is going through right now with Passat. It’s like, they’re in denial. We’re going to make it super awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: Because I would say it’s starting at 31 isn’t really that much more expensive or out of the price range.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, you’ll be able to go to your dealer and buy one for 26 immediately.

Because nobody’s going to be buying them

Crew Chief Eric: 100%. But in China, you can still buy the quantum based facade from 1985. So it’s all good. You know what I mean? They use them as cop cars and stuff. It’s, it’s absolutely nutty. I’m like, whatever. So maybe over there, the facade will get a 2nd life. I actually, in China, they call it the Shanghai.

That’s the model that name they call it, not to be confused with the city, but who knows, maybe it’ll get a second life over there as a limousine. Cause it’s freaking huge. But now we’re going to move on to Brad’s favorite new section here in the, what is [00:30:00] it now? I guess it’s middle of season two. We’ve introduced something called lost and found.

Crew Chief Brad: So I’m going to start lost and found with something we don’t have on our show notes, but I did a little bit of investigative work and some digging and I found you can go Right now.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God.

Crew Chief Brad: This is, this is 2021 right now. You can buy a brand new 2014 Honda Civic Hybrid.

Crew Chief Eric: No! No way!

Crew Chief Brad: With five miles on it and a CVT transmission, 1.

5 liter i4 hybrid, heated seats, keyless start, navigation system, bluetooth, alloy wheels, backup camera, brake assist, lane departure warning, stability control, and leather seats.

Crew Chief Eric: And what color is it?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s black.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s why I didn’t sell.

Crew Chief Brad: Black with black interior.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s

exactly why I didn’t sell.

Crew Chief Brad: If you’re looking for a car, it is at Colonial Honda.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s in our area, isn’t it? In

Crew Chief Brad: Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Oh, nevermind then.

Crew Chief Eric: Off Route 6.

Crew Chief Brad: Nice. Buycolonialhonda. com.

Crew Chief Eric: Is [00:31:00] that the oldest new lost and found you found? Or do we know one

Crew Chief Brad: thing I had some trouble with was looking at cars. com is people don’t know what they have much to you know what they say on Craigslist where they know what they have on cars.

com. They don’t they don’t realize that their 2008 Mercedes ml. With 170, 000 miles, it’s not actually a new car.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t lowball me, bro. I know what I got. All right.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. What they have is a piece of junk with a lot of miles on it. It’s not a new car.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent, but that’s a hell of a fine dude. Good on you.

Every month we keep coming up with new old stock.

Crew Chief Brad: Let’s

Crew Chief Eric: call it

Crew Chief Brad: that. If you’re looking for this car, all of our two listeners who might be looking to buy a vehicle. They’re Arbitron

Crew Chief Eric: rated three listeners. Okay. We have stepped up. We have

Crew Chief Brad: season two. You know, you gotta up your game. MSRP is 26,625. Whoa.

Theyre selling this car for 18,994. So that’s a smoking deal. Seven years later, . [00:32:00]

Crew Chief Eric: You sure that’s not $1,876?

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. But it, it is a $1,500 price drop recently. You know what they should probably do is salvage this car and take the microprocessors and start putting them into the newer cars that are out there that they’re having trouble finishing.

Crew Chief Eric: So since lost and found also comprises some historical stuff, what else is on the list?

Crew Chief Brad: See, Toyota’s got to pay 1. 2 billion for the unintended acceleration issue that happened 10 plus years ago caused by floor mats. They had to pay 1. 2 billion for hiding the facts of the, uh, I guess of the case.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine 10 years later, you’re still dealing with that?

Are those Priuses even still on the road anymore?

Crew Chief Brad: It wasn’t just Priuses, they were Camrys, all the Toyota models, because apparently they used terrible flimsy clips that held the floor mats in place, and then the floor mats would get lodged under the accelerator pedal. That’s why every single time I go to the dealer with my truck for service, On the list of items that they check, they check [00:33:00] the floor mat.

They check it every single time.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah, even on that Avalon TRD we talked about last month. Not to go back to Volkswagen, but I got to tip my hat for some of their marketing campaigns. We could argue our off. The rails sometimes, but then there’s a few others that are awesome. And one of them in recent times is the whole buy a manual because it’s, it’s basically a anti theft device.

We all saw that commercial. We think it’s awesome, but not that this is a blinding realization of pure truth. It just took us a good doy moment to get there, which is. Now, folks are saying manuals are going to be a boost in collector value. Really? You don’t say anybody that’s out there has got a manual because they are getting rarer and rarer.

Guess what? Unlike that facade we talked about five minutes ago, you actually have something that might be a value in the future. Too bad. Nobody’s going to know how to drive it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, right. Who, who, who wants it? Nevermind. You want

Crew Chief Eric: to GR yards with the manual? I know that.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. But I know how to drive a manual, [00:34:00] but today’s youth don’t even want to drive a car, regardless of it’s manual or automatic.

So who who’s going to want to buy these manual transmission cars? Cause they just don’t want their self driving fully autonomous. Blah, blah,

Crew Chief Brad: blah. And listen to the listener in Pennsylvania. That’s got a 1985 Chevrolet Cavalier manual. That’s not going to be a collector’s car. I don’t care if it’s got a manual transmission or not.

The same for the chickadee in, uh, in West Virginia with the 1996 Pontiac Sunfire. Manual. That’s not a collector’s car either. It’s a collector’s car but still running because those cars don’t run anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: The fallacy in all this is that suddenly these cars are going to be super desirable. To your point, the collector cars that are

manual are already collector cars to begin with.

The Ferraris, the Porsches, the Maseratis, whatever they might be. To your point, the 1995 Chrysler Maserati TC with the manual, nobody wanted that freaking thing to begin [00:35:00] with. you It’s not worth anything. So Brad, what else do we have in our historical lineup here on Lost and Found?

Crew Chief Brad: If anybody’s looking for some really cool cars that were owned by a very famous and talented drummer, Neil Peart’s car collection is up for sale.

Uh, many of you know, he was the, the drummer for Rush. He passed away, I believe it was last year. Uh, he’s got a nice collection of cars. Most of them are still over, but he’s got a really nice collection. A black Cobra in here. He’s got a, looks like a Corvette Stingray, a Muera, there’s a Jaguar E Type, there’s a DB5, Maserati Mistral Spyder.

And anyway, apparently Neil Peart liked silver vehicles. So there’s a whole bunch of cars up for auction. If you’ve got the cash and you don’t want to buy a brand new Ferrari with its little one eighth scale, Kid and go buy something that’s actually worth some money.

Crew Chief Eric: They call it more affectionately the silver surfer collection, which I think is actually really cool.

And some of the pictures from the collection, when they kind of brought them out there, wherever they took pictures, it’s like pebble [00:36:00] beach or something like that. It’s absolutely gorgeous collection. I mean, even if you’re not into those cars, you can appreciate what he picked and what he had and all that.

And hopefully they go to good homes. You know, they don’t maybe just end up in a museum somewhere. Hopefully they get driven and they’ll just be out there for people to enjoy.

Crew Chief Brad: I have to say I’m really loving the silver paint with the red interiors.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re talking about historical stuff, you know, we talked about it several times on the show.

We’re always talking about barn finds. And I came across an article from one of our many sources and it was like the most dramatic barn finds. And as I dig into this and I’m like, come on guys, I enjoy a restoration show or two. I don’t know that I need an American pickers. Type of barn find show with a bunch of people that I can’t stand finding cars that I could care less about.

You know what I mean? And I looked through some of this list and it’s like 1971 Cadillac ambulance. And I’m like, yeah, so three of those, like two months ago, I mean, [00:37:00] like big deal. You know what I mean? So some of the stuff is just like, wah, wah. And then there’s already other shows like this on motor trend, where you can watch like autobiography and really get into some of the deep nerdy historical stuff about why.

Certain barn find cars are more significant than others. Like there’s one on this list. It’s like, Oh, rare 1969 trans am found in Alaska. How many 1969 trans amps did they build? 50, 000 of them. I mean, it’s, it’s when we’re talking about cars in super low numbers, like the story that we mentioned before about the car that does this thing.

Bugatti 57 G tank. It was on the episode with Mary and Marianne from Moon Mark. We talked about that car briefly in the pit stop. That car has a tragic back history. You know, being buried underground or World War II, they almost forgot where they put it. They were, you know, they were lucky the car wasn’t destroyed.

It’s a one of one, you know, all these kinds of things. That’s a barn find. That’s craziness. You know, yes. Granted there’s some collector finds out there. Like we talked about last month [00:38:00] where, It’s a barn full of Pontiacs. And you’re like, all right, that’s cool. You know, they’re going up for auction and maybe they’ll turn into some really neat hot rods.

But I don’t know that I can do another, you know, junkyard gold and just be like, okay, great.

Crew Chief Brad: I think GTM should start a show called the farm find where you go to the mountain and you look at all the Mercury sables and the Mercury wagons and the Ford Taurus wagons. And the mark four burial ground that’s up there.

Crew Chief Eric: They call that an Easter egg hunt in West Virginia. Okay. I just want to point that out. Sorry, West Virginia listeners. I’m just saying. All right. But there is a really interesting barn find that we discovered.

Crew Chief Brad: So we’ve got a barn vine for you. It’s a Lamborghini Countach. Apparently it was found in a basement.

Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about it, Eric?

Crew Chief Eric: So apparently this guy decided that he was going to build himself a A Lambo.

Crew Chief Brad: So he built it. It’s not, he didn’t find it. He, he, he built it?

Crew Chief Eric: He built it in his basement.

Executive Producer Tania: So this [00:39:00] isn’t a barn find. It’s a build find.

Crew Chief Eric: It has been unearthed, and it took him 17 years to assemble.

You know, much like

Executive Producer Tania: Unearthed from what?

Crew Chief Eric: Underground. It was in a basement.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s literally unearthed. He

Executive Producer Tania: built it in his basement. He didn’t find it in a basement.

Crew Chief Eric: Other people found that he was taking it out of his basement.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, this thing is made of wood? Or he just built a wood, the wood, uh, carcass so that he could do fiberglass molding around it.

Crew Chief Eric: He built it himself in the basement, like that Johnny

Executive Producer Tania: Cash. Yes, okay, so it’s actually made of wood

Crew Chief Brad: and they didn’t call the police They didn’t call the insane asylum about this guy building a Lamborghini in his basement

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what the hell he was building. He could have been building furniture down there at the tiniest point was made of wood

Crew Chief Brad: Whoa Back up

Executive Producer Tania: someone commented in the comment section of this video Frequently asked questions about the video fact updates [00:40:00] Number one, is the car frame made out of wood?

The answer is no. That was the jig to form the body panels off. The frame is tubular steel, which fast forwarding, I did see that, but I was horrified at first when

I saw nothing but wood.

Crew Chief Brad: I was going to say, I didn’t realize that the original Lamborghini Countach built by Lamborghini was made of wood.

Executive Producer Tania: No, but the fact that No, go ahead.

The fun facts of this comment will solve all these issues. Please.

Crew Chief Eric: I just got to say, you got it. Okay. You got to hand it to this guy. He didn’t want to buy one. He wanted to build one. And I think we know somebody that is right along these lines. So Tanya, please educate us a little bit more.

Executive Producer Tania: And that was frequently asked question.

Number two, why waste 17 years of your life? Just get another job and buy the car. As you said, it was his passion and it was his hobby. So that’s what he was

Crew Chief Brad: cheap.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I’m not sure if this caused issues in his, [00:41:00] in his marriage, but anyway, number three, since we’re talking,

Crew Chief Brad: my guess is number three is what model.

Chevrolet small block they put in it to power it.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, that’s not asked anywhere. But number three, to address this whole basement find thing, why didn’t you build it in the garage? So you did not have to destroy your basement wall.

Crew Chief Brad: You went to hide from your wife.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently they have cold winters. And he would freeze in the garage, but the basement was warm.

I mean, the

Crew Chief Eric: logic is sound. I mean, every one of these points so far, it is sound logic.

Executive Producer Tania: This is informative for me because I did not watch the whole video. So he built a full sized car in his basement with no way to extricate it from said basement. So he demoed the side of the house. To pull it out.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s, that’s not an original idea though, because there was a top gear episode where a guy was building a car in his kitchen.

It started as just [00:42:00] putting a couple of little things together and then he wasn’t paying attention to the measurements or whatever. And then all of a sudden he had a full blown car. Yeah, but it didn’t

Crew Chief Eric: take them 17 years to do it.

Crew Chief Brad: A few years and they had to knock out a wall to get the car out.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently this poor gentleman has gotten a lot of flack about this build much to the 17 years, you know, and then why are you selling it? It was your dream. It took you 17 years. Apparently it was a rough 17 years and this car is a reminder of that. And so that’s why A big reason of why he’s getting rid of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that and the termites ate the frame and it doesn’t actually run. And it’s copper to get there. No.

Executive Producer Tania: Was it was made of, it was made of tubular steel and aluminum,

Crew Chief Eric: but, uh, I, I think that’s bs It is two by fours wrapped in aluminum foil and spray painted. Okay. . There is no way.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s possible, but number six here, and I’ve skipped number five, because it’s stupidity about how to pronounce aluminum, aluminum, number six, a comment, [00:43:00] really, not a question, 89, 000 profit.

I guess that’s what he was trying to sell the car for 89, 000 profit divided by 17 years is 5, 235 a year, not including cost of build. Complete waste of time.

Crew Chief Brad: And what about cost of divorce lawyers and all that stuff?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s total cost of ownership. We don’t do that

Crew Chief Brad: now.

Executive Producer Tania: Which this person replied, it’s not a waste of time.

Everyone has hobbies. Most people watch TV, read a book, or play a computer game to waste kill time. How much do you earn per year for doing that?

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, again, this guy, he is grounded in sound logic. It’s like arguing with mountain man, Dan, you’re not going to win. I’m just letting you know in advance.

Executive Producer Tania: This is somebody on behalf of this guy, by the

way,

Executive Producer Tania: he’s got an advocate.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, holy cow. He’s number one fan, probably more than we have, but there’s another car. That has also resurfaced. And I remember when I saw this car many years ago, and it is now available on Craigslist. What do we got? Brad

Crew Chief Brad: Volkswagen Beetle

Crew Chief Eric: in early [00:44:00] two thousands. And what’s special about this Bele, they, they made a billion beetles.

I mean, come on.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, what’s special? It’s an automatic.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh really?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s silver. It’s got a sunroof powered by a, a jet engine.

Executive Producer Tania: Excuse me, what? A General Electric Model T58 85

Crew Chief Eric: With

Executive Producer Tania: afterburner. 8F rocket, basically.

Crew Chief Eric: This thing is awesome. I remember when this thing got built and it was like all over the interwebs, you know, it was on E Bombs World and everything else back in the day.

But to see it back on Craigslist, I was like, you know what? Why the F not send it, man, get it out there. I guess he’s finally done with it. I don’t know how he drives this freaking car. It is an impressive piece of machinery. I do appreciate if you look at the detailed photographs in the Craigslist ad that he paid a whopping 5 to list this car on is the dashboard.

His instrument cluster is. Something I’d like to replicate.

Executive Producer Tania: Literally beat me to it. I was [00:45:00] waiting for a pause so that I could say the key takeaway out of all this for me is the uniqueness of the instrument cluster. He added on I’m intrigued now. I have to think about this offline. So good

Crew Chief Eric: comes out of the crazy.

Crew Chief Brad: All I know is I do not want to be behind this guy in traffic.

Executive Producer Tania: You should be beside him and hold out some really long skewers with a marshmallow on the end. I mean, he’s got like a four foot flame that comes out.

Crew Chief Eric: The sad part is it’s probably slow as dirt and loud as all get out, right? So what did he really achieve from the two point slow that he had in it to begin with?

Because he probably added 1500 pounds on top of the weight of the car to have this jet engine in there. And

Crew Chief Brad: I think it said the motor weighs the motor, the engine weighs 300 pounds.

Crew Chief Eric: That seems awful light for as big as that thing. And by the way, just to throw it out there, because there’s not the same kind of commentary on this as there was in the 17 year old Lamborghini.

Where does one pick up a G E T [00:46:00] 58 dash, all that serial number that Tanya read? Do you just buy that off like the Russian black market? Or do you go down to local Home Depot and pick that up? I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: Well, Home Depot is where Tesla gets their car parts.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, I, that’s, that’s a good question.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s move on a little bit and let’s recap something from last month.

So, you know, we’re talking about restoration shows, talking about barn finds, we’re going to talk a little bit more in a little bit here about Jeremy Clarkson, but Richard Hammond, we said, has got his own show and it’s all about restoring cars and restoring some of his cars in his collection. And, you know, he was pressed by interviewers and journalists as always, and they asked him to list his top five cars.

So I read the article, it’s pretty short, I hate to say, Richard Hammond, I’m a little bit unimpressed with your list, bro. You know, they made fun of you so much on the show about being in love with the Mustangs, and bringing over cars from America, and all this kind of stuff. [00:47:00] Three of your five were Lamborghinis.

Maybe I get it, you got a love for Lamborghini. I also recall you have a love for 911s. So where was that on the list? What was on the list though was a Bentley blower. I was like, Oh, that’s cool. It showed a picture of a motorcycle. I was like, what’s that got to do with cars? But I got to tip my hat. Top of his list is Oliver, the Opel cadet from the Africa special that they did mad prompts.

It is actually really a cool car. And I’m glad he saved that thing from the brink of extinction. A little bit want why there too is expecting more, something a little bit more diverse. Uh, kind of like we talked about Nicolas Cage’s car collection last month and some of the other car collections of famous people, even, uh, Neil pert and the silver server collection.

There’s some cool stuff in there. So I’m like Richard Hammond, come on, man. Let’s uh, let’s jazz it up a little bit.

Crew Chief Brad: And this is exactly why when you ask the question, Clarkson, Hammond, or May 99. 9 percent of the time, nobody says Hammond,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, and that’s very true. And for those of you that haven’t listened to [00:48:00] our pit stop episodes, it is a question we will throw at our guests.

We see what they say, and you’re right. It does flip flop between Clarkson and may a lot. It’s very rare that somebody will pick Richard Hammond, and maybe he’s just. Secretly boring.

I don’t want to get the secret. Oh, who knows

Executive Producer Tania: so much to the secretly boring, but that Clarkson is like one end of the pendulum of extreme.

And then may is the other end of the pendulum. And I think Hammond’s just kind of somewhere in between. And so people are gravitating towards the sarcastic, angry, extreme, or the, he’s so boring and painful. Like, you know, I, I, I can’t stop watching. It’s like a train wreck.

Crew Chief Eric: I have to say I’d have a beer with you.

Either of them are all of them. So it worked for me either way. But yeah, I’m just, you know, like a little disappointed and speaking of being disappointed. I also came across another video. I believe I saw it on [00:49:00] garage riot and it was like the biggest flops and automotive history. And I was like, getting excited because we did an ugly cars episode this past year.

And I was like, Ooh, maybe some fun. to add to our list of just heinous vehicles. And it was just another wild moment, but I will say it opened with the DeLorean. And I was like, Oh, wait, hold on. You have my attention. What’s going on here? Like we all know the tragic backstory, the mockumentaries that came out, like being John DeLorean and all that kind of fun stuff that we reviewed during COVID.

Biggest flop. I don’t know. There’s a cult following behind the DeLorean. So, okay. You got me. I’m going to watch the rest of the episode. It was about. 20 minutes or so, you know, long enough for YouTube people to just kind of move on to the next thing. It followed up with the GM EV1. I was like, okay, well, I don’t know that that was a flop so much as the way that was presented a lot of historical information there.

And then it’s like, oh yeah. And by the way, they were really lease cars and GM took them back. I was like, okay, well, that’s the real story, but I don’t know that that’s a flop so much as it was [00:50:00] like a real life beta test, you know? So I wouldn’t consider that a flop. Then there was. The Edsel, the Ford Edsel.

We make fun of that thing relentlessly. It’s hideous. It was on our ugly cars episode. It is not a great car. Convince me. Otherwise, all of our three Arbitron rated listeners that are out there, you know, convince me otherwise that the Edsel is good, but there is a car that we agreed on in the ugly car episode, especially the B sides that was on this list and I was shocked and this is what made the video worth watching for me.

Would you guys like to guess what it was?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I don’t know why I’m trying to like click through it. And there’s just so much of this dude sitting here and nothing else, but is it the Cimarron?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. And the citation, both of them together in the episode. And I was like, boom, these cars are finally getting some props.

They’re getting some showtime. I was like, all right, because otherwise nobody would give two figs. About these two cars, but we did talk about them on that episode. And I thought it was hilarious and an awesome coincidence that I came across that. So again, [00:51:00] if you haven’t watched it, it’ll be in the show notes, check it out for yourself and learn about all these terrible cars, but now it’s time to talk about random EVs and concept cars over

Executive Producer Tania: the top.

I have to start this one with rich people, doing rich people things. Oh man. What are we talking about? The Bugatti baby too, again? Is

Crew Chief Eric: there a baby three? Baby three?

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Crew Chief Brad: My baby two’s on order.

Executive Producer Tania: No, this actually is Porsche, but it’s actually not really rich people doing rich people things. Cause this is a one off build that I think is going to go up on auction.

So I guess a rich person will buy it, but it is a small size replica. Of a Porsche 917 30.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the Can Am Porsche Audi blue, yellow liveried. 917

Executive Producer Tania: correct. And essentially it’s a go kart with the 917 body on it. I like it. That sounds way better than the Bugatti baby too.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know what got me about this [00:52:00] article?

Because we just did our karting showdown last month at pit race. It made me think for a minute, like if you could put a body like How cool would it be to have a race that’s like a mini IMSA or WEC where you’re in a go kart that looks like a legendary race car? Think about how awesome that would be.

Executive Producer Tania: This sounds like the power wheels races, or it could be like, let’s all use cardboard and make some bodies for our go kart.

Crew Chief Eric: I love how she goes to cardboard. You know, that’s, that’s the tip for the guy who built the Lamborghini in his basement. You should have made the body out of cardboard.

Executive Producer Tania: Then you could have folded it up and brought it up out through the house and then unfolded it.

Crew Chief Eric: See how easy that would have been just a little bit of science, just a little bit. And that would have been more ecologically friendly because when he was done with it, he could have recycled it, but what’s he going to do with that? But nevermind, let’s, let’s move on.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, for this, I actually think [00:53:00] you’re onto something with the go kart racing of these classic liveried and classic bodied vehicles.

And I think if Dr. T and race are listening to this episode, there’s a business model in here that you should tap into. This is an untapped market.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine? It’d be bonkers. And I heard a guy talking the other day about how he was going to purchase the option package for his Tesla so that it could sound like a hemi challenger while he was going down the road.

Apparently they mount these speakers and they can like project the sound. So it sounds like something else. And I’m like, put that on the go cart. So it doesn’t sound like a weed whacker. Can you imagine being like a Ferrari 333 SP replica mini? And it sounds like you got a screaming V12, boom, mental. I would, I would love this.

I’m on board. Sign me up. Meanwhile, back in concept car land.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. So in concept cars, there’s something called the mini Urbanaut that apparently is no longer a concept car was going to be now a real car, or at least a [00:54:00] prototype is actually being built. And you’re probably going, what is this exactly? The best way to describe it is.

Think of a Volkswagen ID buzz, and then you have this car.

Crew Chief Eric: Which it looks like a hundred percent.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. It very much looks an even more futuristic looking ID buzz essentially. And especially with the color choice. that they use. It’s very modern, urban looking. It’s all about modular insides. I think it might be trying to be self driving as well.

So really the inside is, is all about kind of being a little mini living room and that you can rearrange the furniture, if you will, the passenger seating and all this, and it’s very plush and funky and cool looking.

Crew Chief Eric: What confused me about this at first, I didn’t realize this was a mini. Like mini Cooper, mini BMW, mini, right?

So this is their entry into this market. And I was like, all right. What also confused me is I thought I was watching an episode of [00:55:00] whatever that show is on like HGTV where they build a mini houses. I didn’t understand what was going on. They look like shots of like a really futuristic, like living room.

When they show it looks gargantuan inside when it’s obviously it’s not, but it’s got like a bed.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. It had like a flat sofa, essentially. That you could sleep on. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a futon.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, it doesn’t fold out, but it’s like a bench seat, but it looks like a fancy modern sofa.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s just so many weird things about it, but they’re also super engaging.

Like when you look at it, almost hyper futuristic. What really got me is the wheels and tires. How did they do that? Cause it looks like something that you’d see on like a Tonka toy or a play school thing. I just, I want to know more.

Executive Producer Tania: They almost look all one piece, which almost makes me question if it’s that, uh, who made that?

Was it Goodyear? I think it might’ve been Goodyear. They were experimenting with like the hollow rubber tires that don’t need air and they’re all like honeycombed looking and this, that, and the other. I’m almost wondering if something like that’s [00:56:00] going on here.

Crew Chief Eric: The other thing that I didn’t understand was Some of the parts that are modular and some of the parts that aren’t like, it’s a hatchback.

Let’s just go there right away. But it’s got the sliding doors, like a minivan,

Executive Producer Tania: the front windshield lifts up.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s where I was going. Like, I don’t understand that. Why would you want that? I guess if you’re camping. Then you get the cross flow. Like, is that the idea? The one thing I could see about this is, you know, you hear the rumors and they’re not really rumors like developers in California, they’re not buying houses, they’re buying RVs and they’re living out of their RVs on, you know, the streets of Palo Alto and Sunnyvale and stuff like that.

So I’m wondering like. Is this the answer? Like I’m plugging my mini Urbanaut and I can open it up and let it breathe. And I’m not in a Winnebago, you know, kind of thing, but you also have like zero privacy in this thing because of the way it’s made.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s no way you could live in this. Yes. You could nap.

You could sleep. It’s not big enough. Where are you cooking? It’s not a camper van that has a mini stove and a [00:57:00] fridge and all those things. And maybe they slide out and do a little transformers thing. And all of a sudden you got, you know, all these other accoutrements in the vehicle. This isn’t that, it’s literally kind of like an enclosed lounge.

It’s very

Crew Chief Eric: strange. As we switch gears, there is some good news in the electrified world.

Executive Producer Tania: More progress being made in terms of electrifying America. It’s literally ha ha ha. So Electrify America has hit their 600 station mark in trying to Electrify America. That’s good. You know, we need that because that’ll help people with range anxiety.

And obviously even without that, we need charging stations. If Electric vehicles are going to be more of a thing. People can’t rely on being able to just go back and forth to their home all day. So this is good news. And there’s more companies than just Electrify America that are building charging stations and whatnot.

And actually to follow up on this. I know I’m jumping ahead. I hate to be remiss, but Tesla [00:58:00] actually announced that they’re opening their charging networks or they’re going to plan to open their charging networks to other EVs.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s if you have the adapter, right? Because they have a proprietary connector or whatever.

That’s how they’re going to get you. You got to buy the adapter from Tesla to be compatible with EVs. Oh, the Apple model. A hundred percent. Exactly. That’s all. That’s all I knew it was coming.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, it honestly, it doesn’t specify, but that’s a great point. That very well could be the case. Oh, order your Tesla adapter now for the low, low price of 10 million Bitcoin.

And you too can charge on our ultra fast charging network.

Crew Chief Eric: How many carbon credits do I get if I buy the Tesla adapter? They have a glut of those now, right? Because everybody’s giving them back. We talked about it on the previous episode as well. But, you know, going back to this Electrify America thing, if somebody’s doing the rough numbers, 600 stations across 50 states, or even 48 states, we’re talking roughly a dozen.

It’s like, Ooh, ah, that’s not that many. [00:59:00] That’s not the concentration, right? There’s a lot of Electrify America stations along the East coast. We, one of our members has specifically been talking to us about their experience with their electric vehicle, going from the DC area to Florida and back and using the Electrify America grid and things like that.

So it’s been working for them. I’ve also heard recently in a conversation over a business lunch where somebody was talking about, Hey, You know, I, I got an electric car. I love it. It’s super fast. It’s awesome. But I really don’t have time to sit around and wait for it to be charged. So they still have a petrol car because it, in the joke to that was, and I just kind of nodded my head and went along with the conversation was, I don’t even want to waste the time to wait to pump the fuel if you’re that busy, I get it.

So to your point, there’s a lot of things going on with this between the range anxiety and. Between the impatience of having to wait. And, you know, I get it 80 percent charge in 30 minutes. That’s still 30 minutes versus how long does it take to pump 10 gallons of gas? Right? I mean, we’ve had these arguments before.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ll address two things. First, I want to react [01:00:00] to that comment that he’s too busy to pump gasoline into his tank. If you’re that busy in your life, you need to examine your life. If you don’t have several minutes out of your day, once a week, or even once every couple of weeks, I don’t know, you got some issues going on.

Okay. Now the article actually has a map of all their stations across the country. And honestly, they’ve done a good job. So yes, you’re right. States like North Dakota and South Dakota don’t have stations, and that probably makes sense. There is a heavy concentration going down the east coast, but if you look at their network that they show, they’ve pretty much created a network that you have major arteries that you can take cross country trips.

without a problem and you’re going on the route that you would normally take. Anyway,

Crew Chief Eric: that makes sense. You follow route 50 or 66 or some of the big ones, you know, like that as an example, those, those are classic roads. It would make sense to start with those major arteries then, you know, side roads and whatnot.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. You’re just not taking your [01:01:00] country back roads like you could. If you wanted to take a nice extended road trip or something, stay off the highways and stuff like that. That’s not something you’re going to do with your electric car. But I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: we have those problems even in certain areas of the US with gasoline to where I’ve time and time again, I’ve gotten off the highway and I’m like, cool, there’s a sheets or something.

I’m going to go get diesel and you get to the end of the ramp and it’s like 5 miles that way. And you’re like, Are you kidding me? You know what I mean? So sometimes even fuel or petrol is not convenient either. Now in big turnpikes and stuff, you get on, you get off, you keep going. I mean, in, in the DMV 95, there’s a gas station every like three feet.

So it’s not that big of a deal, but you get out there in the middle of nowhere and you’re like, Even to go into some of these tracks and you’re like, you have to actually go out of your way to find fuel. So I think it’ll work out. It’s just going to take time, you know, more than anything. And so I think some of that is also dependent upon where the electrical lines are, right?

They’re going to have to follow that. It’s like almost like following the rail lines, right? If the electricity, the pipe [01:02:00] isn’t there to tap into, they can’t put in a filling station. I get it. Makes sense. Switching to a. Interesting recall that isn’t the first. GM has basically said, if you own a Chevy Bolt, Bolt with a B, don’t park it indoors.

There is a, a recall specifically around the battery and the charging system that can basically ignite the car burnt to the ground, you know, potential house burning on that kind of stuff. We got a recall, same basic TSB from Chrysler. We have a Pacifica hybrid and they got taken care of. It was like a five minute fix.

Fix it’s something they attach to the connector on the battery so that it doesn’t basically fry the system and melt the car to the ground. So just basically a public service announcement. If you happen to be one of our three Arbitron rated listeners out there and own a Chevy bolt, take it in to your dealer and get this free recall done so that, you know, you don’t cause a, a fire.

So the recommendation from GM is park it outdoors. I don’t know how that makes it better, but it just doesn’t burn

Crew Chief Brad: your house down.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Executive Producer Tania: [01:03:00] But, but, but. What about the fact that this wasn’t breaking news on every major news outlet and thrown in your face every two seconds? I mean, if this had happened to Tesla, we would have been hearing about it for weeks and weeks.

And it would have been the hot news on every major news outlet and on TV, it would have broken in as Breaking news in the middle of, you know, Netflix and binge. I mean, what the heck, come on. Why is it always Tesla?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we already know that they burned down in parking garages, right? We’ve seen that time and time again.

So, I mean, is that really news anymore?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, you know what I’d like to address because it kills me. You want to know why everyone makes a big deal about Tesla is because when you put a bullseye on your back, that’s what’s going to happen. When you’re selling Cubix or Cognia. At the price of diamonds. Yeah, people are gonna pay attention to you.

And maybe it’s my perception, but I don’t think Chevy, Ford, any of them have ever pretended that their cars are perfect and that they don’t have recalls and they don’t have [01:04:00] issues. They don’t sit there saying that their cars are the best thing since the invention of sliced bread. So if you act like you’re the hottest thing and then you’re using Home Depot to, you know, Build your cars.

Of course, you’re going to get more attention.

Crew Chief Eric: And all old Volt so I can smell like melted crayons. We can’t figure out why, but we’ve come to accept it. It’s part of their charm, right? It’s not a defect. It’s a feature.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I know I’m probably offending people when I say that, but it’s just like, you know, I don’t know, whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a shift in the status quo, I suppose. But there’s an interesting bit of news. For our friends that like to mod their cars, right, Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: So in California, when they do their small checks, they’re going to start testing for ECU tunes. So anybody with a nice, fancy Volkswagen or Audi or whatever that likes to go and you get an ECU tune to get a little bit more power out of the car, uh, well, California is going to catch you.

Crew Chief Eric: And what are they going to do to you? Put you in car jail? I mean, what are they going to do to you?

Crew Chief Brad: Let’s see, they’re probably going to fine you, I’m sure. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, I get it. People, [01:05:00] I mean, back in our day, right, of tuning when we were young and stupid and wasted money on that kind of stuff. And then now we just build race cars and waste more money.

You know, we had two computers. You had the one that you put in the car when you took it to the dealer and the one that you put in the car when you drove it on the street. Uh, and even further back than that, you had the guys that were doing catalytic converter deletes, and then they would put one on to go to the test and then they would take it off.

You know, the rest of the time. I mean, this, this stuff’s been going on since what I feel is like the beginning of emissions testing, right? Everybody’s always looking to get around it for one reason or another, and I’m not advocating. For and I’m not condoning the behavior in any stretch of the imagination.

So the point I get California’s point, a lot of these tunes that, you know, you want to talk about diesel gate and all that kind of stuff and changing the mapping of the motor. Yes. They’re now out of the regulated approved, you know, cafe rules that they have out there and all that kind of stuff. And so these cars are polluting more, you know, you make more power, you burn more fuel.

It’s pretty simple. And that means you’re emitting more as well. I don’t fault them for cracking [01:06:00] down. No. But on the same token, you know, what’s the statute of limitations here is this apply to cars that are 20 years old, but probably not. Are they still going to emissions? You know, things like that. Is it just for the newest of new cars?

How are they going to tell when your ECU has been tuned, right? Because again, maybe they haven’t released these specifics, but the tuners aren’t dumb either, right? Well, if this is what they’re looking for and it needs to show up a certain way, I’m not playing a conspiracy theory here. People thrive on these businesses and the aftermarket is bred around making cars better and tuning them, making them more powerful and whatever have you.

So I’m really kind of curious to see how this pans out in the next decade. year. Now, this apparently went into effect on the 19th of July. If you’re within this window, starting now and the next two years out, you’re going to be going through these rolling emissions testing, right? So if we have any California listeners out there, let us know.

We’re very curious to see what happens. So give us a shout. Now joining the bandwagon, right? [01:07:00] Uh, all these green initiatives, you know, we’ve heard several times on here from the manufacturers directly of when they’ve put an edict on the tree to say, Hey, we’re done with petrol engines, right? We’ve heard numbers 20, 25, 26, 32, you know, they’re kind of all over the map in the next five to 10 years, Canada, our friends in Canada have come to the table and said the moose.

have declared no more petrol in 2035. So they’re the furthest ones out as far as I can recall from all the research that we’ve done up until this point over the last year. So Canada is saying no more petrol power in 2035. So the Moose, thank you. And we thank you too. One last piece of random EV and concept car news.

Hold on to your seats. The king of kit cars has been dethroned. Dun, dun, dun! The famous, maybe infamous, at least on our show, the Pontiac Fiero, Brad’s favorite car, [01:08:00] has recently been usurped by a gentleman who turned his Porsche Boxster into a very legitimate looking McLaren. Dun, dun, dun! Talk about kit car potential.

That being said, Fiero and the Boxster, they share nothing in common other than the fact that they’re mid engine rear wheel drive cars. But I like the fact that somebody went there and said, we can do something cool with a Boxster, especially an early Boxster. They’re getting really cheap. There’s a jillion of them out there and it kind of makes sense to start doing something like that.

It looks pretty cool. Legitimately good. A lot better than some of the other kit cars we’ve talked about in the past, like the Vader that’s built on top of the, you know, G35, G37 infinities, you know, stuff like that. And the old Fiero kits, they just weren’t proportioned right for some of these cars. But I think this Boxster one looks pretty cool.

And if it wasn’t enough, it’s an EV.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t understand the whole kid car based off Fiero or Beetle or Boxster or whatever the, I just, I think the [01:09:00] whole thing is just dumb. If you want a McLaren, like somebody said in the comments on that other thing, uh, just get a second job or 15 jobs and you go buy one.

It’s so stupid. It’s an automatic Boxster. It’s still

Crew Chief Eric: better than building it in your basement. Yeah, cardboard and wood

Crew Chief Brad: with some aluminum foil. I don’t get the whole, I want to look like somebody else. Just leave it a Boxster. It’s worth more money as a Boxster.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re probably right about that. I got to hand it to this guy.

It’s a very quality job. It’s a well done

Crew Chief Brad: car thing, but McLaren, it is not. And now it’s not even a Boxster.

Crew Chief Eric: Which sadly brings us into our favorite section. Used to be called a side of golden nuggets. It was would you like fries with that? It’s changed names several times. But now, thankfully, it’s called we would be remiss.

So Tanya, what would we be remiss about this month? If we didn’t talk about it,

Crew Chief Brad: I think we would be remiss if we [01:10:00] didn’t talk about Ford trademarking the skyline name in the United States.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a great way to kick this off. So what’s that?

Crew Chief Brad: On July 12th, Ford applied for a United States patent and trademark for the term skyline.

Now they, yeah, that is a great question, Eric. And I wish I could tell you why, but I really can’t. Who knows, but apparently the name Skyline had been used by Ford in the past in a different, it was different. It was Skyliner. It was used on the Crestline, whatever the hell that is, the Fairlane Crown Victoria, the Fairlane 500, and the Galaxy.

They all, I guess, had different models that were Skyliners. Uh, there was also a Ford Transit Skyliner in 2014, but none of them were Skyline. The only thing I can think of that was Ford Ford Skyline were back in the nineties. It was very popular for people to put GTR emblems and stuff on their F one fifties and their Mustang [01:11:00] for, for God knows whatever reason.

I don’t know. People were dumb. They put it right next to their APC exhaust and, you know, Side vents and stuff or whatever. Now, as you all know, that the Nissan Skyline is no longer called. Well, first of all, the Skyline was never sold in the U. S. as a Skyline, but it’s no longer being termed as a Skyline.

Even the U. S. model is GTR. There is still a Skyline in Japan. Uh, which is basically a US Infinity Q 50, which is Rebadged over there as the skyline, but there are no other skylines in, uh, in the us So Ford, I mean, they have a right to do this. It’s just strange. I don’t get it.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll put it this way. It is, and my Ford history isn’t nearly as strong as some of my others, like, you know, French car history and stuff like that.

But if memory serves, I think the skyliner type of thing was in reference to. Either the ability to open the roof sunroof convertible that type of thing. [01:12:00] So it was like, oh, yeah, it’s a galaxy Skyliner because it’s actually a convertible like they didn’t want to use cabriolet or like we do, you know, in some of the other cars.

So I think that’s where that is. I have mixed feelings about it because a lot of us latch on to the Skyline name, especially when we’re talking about the R32s, R33s, R34s, but they’ve always been the GTR, even from the earliest early days of that car. So, um, I think it’s neither here nor there. I’m very curious to see what they’re going to slap the skyline badge on.

I think that’s,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s the important part of this is what did, what are their plans for the future with that badge?

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Now, if it’s the rebirth of the Ford Aerostar, just stop.

Crew Chief Brad: Now I can tell you one thing that I think the skyline name could be used for is the new Ford Bronco with the hard tops, because these hard tops are pieces of crap.

And basically what you should do is just take the hard top off. And call it a Ford Bronco Skyline.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, there you go. So what’s going on with these hardtops? They’re just [01:13:00] junk or?

Crew Chief Brad: They’re just, they’re poorly made and they’re falling apart and people are not happy with them. Anybody that’s owned a Jeep, you know exactly what the Bronco people are complaining about.

You’ve just decided to deal with it because hey, Jeep life, bro. For the Ford people, this is a little rainwater on your head,

right?

Who cares about a little rain on your head? I mean, just go faster, just move on. But yeah, so the, the Ford Bronco hardtops can be skylines because the hardtops basically don’t work anyway.

So,

Crew Chief Eric: and you know, what’s funny is it seems like this month on we would be remiss. We’re not really talking about Tesla’s for the first time in a year. It’s pretty crazy. It looks like our showcase brand for this segment is actually Ford. And there’s one more thing we got to talk about, which is, you know,

right out in left field.

The Ford Mach E fragrance. Is that ode to toilet? I mean, toilet? Sorry, I just got a

Crew Chief Brad: whiff.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, hold on. So Ford Mach E fragrance. So Mach E is an electric [01:14:00] car, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Yep.

Executive Producer Tania: I know this. I’m just, you know, being, being that way with my questions. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: rhetorical. I get it. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no. And it’s good that you answered.

Who here has played with a train set? I know where she’s

Crew Chief Eric: going with this. Electric

Executive Producer Tania: train set. Who remembers that smell, that, that taste almost that gets in your mouth.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s called ozone. Oh, that smell.

Executive Producer Tania: Can’t you smell

Crew Chief Eric: that smell?

Executive Producer Tania: Right? Like even, I guess, if you went to an electric go kart track, it’d be the same thing.

So is that what this smells like?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh no, no, no. As I read the article, it says the mock O, okay, spell E A U,

Crew Chief Brad: is dis, is dis,

Crew Chief Eric: is dis, That’s the name of the fragrance.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: French. Like many French references we’ve made on this episode this time. It is designed to please the nose of any wearer. A high end fragrance that fuses smoky accords, aspects of rubber, and even an animal element to give a nod to the [01:15:00] Mustang heritage.

Executive Producer Tania: What are we talking about?

Crew Chief Brad: So it smells like a horse stall, because the Mahi is a Mustang.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s exactly what I was thinking. It smells like horse shit. And this is a pile of marketing horse shit.

Executive Producer Tania: You said stalks. I thought you were going to say horse’s ass.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Crew Chief Brad: have class.

Crew Chief Eric: Whatever. This is right up there with the whole Maki 1400, what is it?

Red chili Tabasco sauce that came out with

Executive Producer Tania: like two

Crew Chief Eric: months

Executive Producer Tania: ago. So instead of like, can’t even remember who the, the fragrance models are, you know, when they walk down and they do their little thing for like Dior or whatever, who is going to be the spokesperson, the spokes model for this? Is it going to be

Crew Chief Brad: Ken Block.

No, that would be good. Let me do it again. I’ll get it. I’m going to get it.

It’s

Crew Chief Eric: gotta be good. This has [01:16:00] got to be really good.

Is it going to be? Mr. Ed, because it is a Mustang. He’s a horse. Of course, of course, that might be a little too old for some of our listeners.

Crew Chief Eric: It might be right in their wheelhouse too. Uh, y’all get new balances for Christmas, but you know, speaking of things

that smell like a horse’s stall, the newest like craze, and I don’t understand because it is a beautiful blend of agriculture and petrol headness, is Clarkson’s Farm.

on Amazon Prime. We all love old Top Gear. I don’t know. I don’t want to say the Royal We, how we feel about the new Top Gear. There’s mixed feelings about it, but the old Top Gear was a lot of fun. We do miss Clarkson Hammond in May. There’s obviously a new episode of Grand Tour coming out where they’re, you somewhere on the planet again, you know, doing an elongated, you know, two hour episode, but Clarkson’s farm along with Richard Hammond show is like the new hot [01:17:00] thing.

And you guys talked a lot about drive to survive and all this kind of stuff. And I still haven’t given that any time, but my wife came to me and said, we got to watch Clarkson’s farm. You got to check it out.

Not

Crew Chief Eric: really. I mean, I don’t know how’s Jeremy going to be by himself. And I got to say, if you guys haven’t watched this show, you got to watch it.

Not having May and Hammond is actually okay because some of the stuff that goes down on the farm is absolutely just hysterical and it’s the normal bravado and all that stuff you come to expect. But the awesome part is, and I haven’t finished the series yet and I probably will by the time we get to the next drive through, there was a lot of back and forth about whether the show was going to be renewed and it is official folks, Clarkson’s Farm is renewed for a second season.

So if you haven’t Netflixed and binged it yet, It’s time to do so on Amazon prime. So it wouldn’t be, would you like fries for that? I mean, we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about some Florida people.

Executive Producer Tania: Florida man, Florida man. Although our first one isn’t a Florida [01:18:00] man, believe it’s a Georgia man.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s Florida man in spirit.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s it’s Florida adjacent.

I’m not sure how far south in Georgia this was. And I did hear about this on the, it was big news actually, and it caused a huge traffic jam and rightfully so, when a bridge moves six feet. And how does a bridge move six feet? A dump truck hits it. Now, wait a second, you know, they have those signs under the bridges, you know, however many 13 feet low clearance, blah, blah, blah, meant for tractor trailers or other heavy trucks of that nature that can be very tall, you know, usually those kind of warnings.

I don’t know. Maybe there was a warning here. I have a feeling there wasn’t. I have a feeling clearance shouldn’t have been an issue. So then how does a dump truck hit a bridge and move it six feet? When the dump part of the truck.

Crew Chief Brad: I believe the technical term is bucket.

Executive Producer Tania: The dumper also.

Crew Chief Brad: Or the [01:19:00] dumper.

Executive Producer Tania: As they refer to it when the dumper is raised.

So the dumper was in the dump position going down the road, and of course that slammed into the side of a bridge ’cause it’s taller than . There’s not an answer yet as to why the dumper was in the dump position. It could have been a malfunction. It could have been.

Crew Chief Brad: You gotta go, you gotta go.

Executive Producer Tania: Dude wasn’t paying attention. I’d like to also understand where the load went, if there was one. I’ve never driven a dump truck, but I feel like you’d probably know if your dumper was up.

Crew Chief Brad: Looking at the pictures, it looks like the load is still in the back of the dumper. It

Crew Chief Eric: looked like tires were in the

Crew Chief Brad: back.

He was, he was hauling his tires. There is a tire

Crew Chief Eric: shortage right now, folks. There is a tire shortage. It was

Executive Producer Tania: full of, uh, like, tractor tires.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s two things here. First of all, I thought it was awesome reading this and the, the kind of feedback from the civil engineers. [01:20:00] Like, we’ve never seen this before.

Which kind of goes back to what we were talking about 3D printing the bridges. My mind is going back to that for a moment. And like, if we can move a classic I beam bridge with the dumper, how far do we push a 3D printer bridge? But I also want to tip my hat. To the diesel engine in this dump truck for going down the highway at highway speed with the dumper up and the driver couldn’t tell the difference.

That is some serious Torquem’s right there.

Crew Chief Brad: You know how you fix this? You back the truck out, you lower the dumper, you go on the other side, you. Do it again.

Crew Chief Eric: Hold on guys. I’m gonna put, I’m gonna push the bridge back. Hold my

Crew Chief Brad: beer. Oh, I’ll get it fixed. I promise you, you won’t even know the difference.

Executive Producer Tania: I didn’t see the comments you saw or whatnot. I’m not sure so much that we’ve never seen this as an, Oh my God, the bridge moved. Versus we’ve never seen a dump truck hit a bridge like this.

We’ve seen [01:21:00] trucks in bridges,

but not like this. Oh man. You know, honestly, I

Crew Chief Brad: think I’m sure you all probably heard a couple of months, maybe a month or two ago about the, the pedestrian bridge that collapsed on 295 in DC. I think it was a similar situation. A truck hit the pedestrian bridge because trucks aren’t supposed to be on that road anyway.

So do we now

Crew Chief Eric: have like an epidemic of trucks hitting bridges? We’re collecting this data now. How many in a year are we going to have? This is nuts.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a lot of strange stuff happening on the roads now that COVID’s almost over.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re going to

Crew Chief Brad: put air quotes on that. Yeah, people are out here doing all kinds of funky stuff on the roads.

Like knocking down bridges.

Executive Producer Tania: I can believe the pedestrian bridge. They’re not quite as robust as you know, this bridge was, but, and they should be designed to a certain extent for lateral forces because high winds, things of that nature, but I don’t know that they’re designed for the full hit that this was at [01:22:00] who knows, 60, 70 miles an hour.

I don’t even know.

Crew Chief Eric: Insane. But you know, Brad, you brought up a really good point. Crazy things going on. On our roadways post COVID world. You remember, you remember last month and I know you had to recap last month, but last month we talked about a human powered car, which was

Crew Chief Brad: a South park episode,

Crew Chief Eric: but we reviewed a human powered car, which wasn’t anything too shy of a.

You know, a railroad trolley with an older gentleman kind of pumping away, building his arm muscles, you know, in a seemingly Camaro like, you know, kit on top of it. But there’s another video circulating from the guys at Garage Talk, not to be confused with Garage Riot, and it is a bicycle powered Honda.

And if you haven’t seen this video, It will have you cracking up by the end of it. I was absolutely floored. These guys basically welded these rails to a front of a Civic that doesn’t have an engine in it, but still has a manual transmission. They [01:23:00] hooked up a tandem bicycle. So imagine two dudes sitting on the hood of a car, pedaling away while a driver is inside trying to see through them, steering and Changing gears.

Hot gardening. So the antics continue to climb. I mean, they build this thing, which is hilarious to watch, and then they decide we’re going to drive it. I’m put air quotes around that through a McDonald’s drive-through, which was entertaining. You know, pull up to the window, number one and all that, just like here on the drive through.

But then they were pulled over by a police officer, , and I don’t wanna

spoil it. You guys definitely gotta check this out. It is. Absolutely ridiculous.

Crew Chief Brad: It moves faster than my 1990 Honda Civic did.

Crew Chief Eric: No doubt. No doubt. It is two human powers,

Executive Producer Tania: a real tandem bicycle, like legit on the pavement would be faster than that.

I mean, I’ll give them the ingenuity welding, you know, the support bars, all [01:24:00] this stuff, hooking it up to the transmission, actually having it work. But hot garbage. Yeah, it’s pretty bad. My favorite part of the video was. Since they welded in all those bars and whatnot, obviously to support the bicycle on the front end, dude’s got his welder hat on pulled up.

So you can see his face dude starts welding. He didn’t pull the mask down.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God.

Executive Producer Tania: At that point, I was like, I’m over this.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, looking at the, the fact that it’s a bicycle on the front of a car, do you really have to question their intelligence and the using of the welding helmet and everything? I think the fact that he had the welding helmet.

Was a huge win.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, I’m not a welder. So maybe there’s certain welding you can, you can do that. You don’t need to put the visor down on. Anyway,

Crew Chief Eric: let’s change gears to yet another Florida esque story.

Executive Producer Tania: This one was in North Carolina.

Crew Chief Brad: Coming up the, up the coast.

Executive Producer Tania: Come on. We’re traveling North here. I actually, I think we’re going to keep [01:25:00] traveling North through this segment, actually.

This one belongs. In the funeral episode as well, because this 26 year old torched his 2007 Cadillac, lit it on fire, plumes of smoke on the side of a road next to what could be like, I don’t know, an apartment or a house, basically trying to do insurance fraud and, uh, pretty sure it got caught. So good job.

Crew Chief Eric: So this was not the reenactment of waiting to exhale where the lady lit her Jeep on fire. Remember that one?

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no. Well, she lit the boyfriend’s Mercedes on fire or whatever. Oh, but yes. Oh, in, in the actual movie. But yes, the lady that lit her, whoever’s Jeep on fire. Yes, that was a good one. No, no, no.

This, he wasn’t mad at anybody. He just needed a little more do re mi and I guess just selling the car, wasn’t going to cut it. So light it on fire.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is really dumb because he did this allegedly back in October, November of last year. The [01:26:00] used car market right now is really hot.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s an awesome pun,

but you know what else? I’m sure there was a gentleman on the side of the road with a trash can full of water waiting to help him out. And to quote Mountain Man Dan, where’s my bucket?

Crew Chief Brad: I was going to say, where’s Shane with the fire extinguisher?

Crew Chief Eric: In an episode of what seems to be like Ripley’s Believe It or Not, we have a Ferrari owner that does something I’ve never seen before.

Executive Producer Tania: I think this is fake. I think this is really good video editing. 20, 30 second clip of this Ferrari. It’s, this is in the UK, so we didn’t go much further North. And you got this Ferrari here, sirens, and there’s this tractor trailer or a lorry, if you will. Going down the highway and all of a sudden the ferry pulls up next to him, slides underneath it, fast and furious style, in between the front and rear wheel tires of this lorry.

And then he pokes out the other side of it, presumably hitting the brakes, falling back while the cop car, whoo, [01:27:00] straight by him and the lorry. I think it’s BS.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m on the fence, but it’s kind of cool to look at. So we’re going to post it in the show notes and you guys judge for yourselves and let us know if you think it’s fact or Photoshop.

Crew Chief Brad: Photoshop.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad has decided. The Viking has spoken. Totally Photoshop.

Executive Producer Tania: To go back to the US. And to continue our journey north, we land back in Detroit. So another Michigan woman.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. This is how we ended the first drive thru segment on this was with the Detroit woman.

Executive Producer Tania: I give props to this woman all day, every day.

You go girl. And there’s some really well written articles on this one. Not necessarily, uh, the one that’s posted. So this woman had her Mercedes stolen. Okay. Beautiful white Mercedes. I don’t even think it mentions the exact model, but you know, whatever sedans. It’s probably like [01:28:00] a, I think a C class or something like that.

She had her Mercedes Benz stolen. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: what happened to Detroit. It happened in

Executive Producer Tania: Detroit. It’s a very sad day. Well, she loved her Mercedes very much, so she wasn’t going to let it go. So she was tracking her car. She was tracking it via social media. She was reaching out. She was trying to find,

Crew Chief Eric: find my Benz app.

Is that a thing on the Apple phones now? I guess not,

Executive Producer Tania: but you know, she was using social media. You know, have you seen this car that I thought she was getting hit? She found it a few times, called the police. By the time the police showed up, the car was gone again.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they were her Instagram followers, right?

So it was all this circular thing going on. But anyway, go ahead.

Executive Producer Tania: So eventually, again, she tracks her car down. She sees it parked in front of a barber shop in a parking lot. So she had enough at this point. She said, nope, I want my car back. So she goes inside the barbershop and she sees the guy sitting in there.

And she’s like, is that your Mercedes out there? He’s all like, no. And she flipped [01:29:00] out. She grabbed him by the hair, dragged him across the barbershop floor. Other people in the store had to like pull her off and like they did a citizen’s arrest. And so they caught the guy, but not only does she like give this guy an ass kicking.

Okay. She is next level. And how is she next level?

Crew Chief Eric: She

Executive Producer Tania: slashes the tires on her own. car.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, that’s legit.

Executive Producer Tania: Cause she was worried he was going to get away and take it again. Not today. And she slashed her own tires to ground her car.

Crew Chief Eric: Boom. That’s awesome. Actually that is kick ass.

Executive Producer Tania: Next level.

Crew Chief Eric: So you two folks can be a vigilante only in Detroit.

How did she get to the barbershop if her car was stolen? She took an Uber. I

Executive Producer Tania: [01:30:00] don’t think it ever actually explains that. But I think actually the barbershop, and I don’t know if this article describes it, but there was a much longer one that went into, it’s a much more colorful storytelling, I believe she actually has a place of business that was in that same like strip, I think near the barbershop, so she might have been at work and saw her car pull up.

Crew Chief Eric: My God. Can you imagine?

Executive Producer Tania: It was a really nice car thief, dude, because he had the car detailed. So there.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, that’s a

plus. She needs four new tires, but you know, whatever.

Oh, goody, goody.

Well, you know, we got to jump yet again to our third segment, which is, we need to go behind the pit wall and So I’m going to say this before we get into our typical segments, mountain man, Dan sent me like nine pages of stuff to cover in his typical way.

I will tell you guys, there’s a bunch of really cool information that he’s got about the X games and the Barbara Frisch classic and you know, all this kind of stuff and actually what we’re thinking is maybe doing a potential little spinoff for mountain man, Dan, something called the [01:31:00] mountain view. Where he talks about, you know, more like off roading and trucks and things like that.

So if that’s something of interest. Give us a shout. Let us know. We want to get that off the ground and be able to talk about some more of those things, but we’d have a ton of other stuff left to cover. So we’ll leave that to the side, but we will post links to some of the things that he wanted to bring to people’s attention.

So we do have to jump into open wheelway racing for a little bit. And there’s some baby crying and whining and diaper changing going on in F1 right now. In addition to all the other drama, I just don’t get it this year. Hamilton’s off the hook and then we got May Spin, depending on how you pronounce it.

We talked about him even last month. I mean, wrecking a car every time he hits the asphalt. And then he’s crying that, you know, people aren’t letting him win or whatever. I just don’t get it. I cannot. Get invested in F1 this year. It’s just like, it just turns me off.

Crew Chief Brad: I think he just needs to shut up and put up some numbers, start actually doing well, and then maybe you’ll, you’ll have [01:32:00] something there.

I grant granted. I understand you’re in the Haas, which basically the Haas team is completely punted this season. They’re just waiting for new regulations next year before they make any changes to the car. So he’s essentially driving last year’s car pro teams and other sports do this all the time. You know, they lose on purpose in order to build.

It’s a, it’s a rebuilding year. Yeah. Essentially for the Haas team. He should have known that going in because he’s Mazda spin and he’s on a team with Mick Schumacher. Both of them are complete rookies. If it wasn’t for Haas, like giving up this year, they probably wouldn’t even be an F1.

Crew Chief Eric: I agree. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Right. Use it as an opportunity to build your technique and to get better as a driver. Right. And we talk about that all the time, even in our more local motorsport, where it’s like, you know, if it’s not your day, just take a step back and just work on some other things. Perfect your craft. Yeah. If you,

Crew Chief Brad: if you want to actually get on a better team, how about you go through an entire race without spinning once?

It actually finished [01:33:00] somewhere ahead of 19 or 20 in situations like this. You got to turn around and ask yourself, are you doing all that you can with what you’ve been given or you got to ask yourself that make sure you’re doing everything you can before you start pointing to the equipment and stuff like that.

And I think personally, Haas has given him a gift. By, you know, giving him a spot on the team. Now, of course they needed his money, you know, in order to do it, but there were other billionaires out there that would have loved to drive an F1 and that they could have found they chose him. Uh, I think he needs to just shut up and drive

Crew Chief Eric: along with that.

Talking about, you know, working with what you got and all that. There’s a lot of drama this past weekend at Silverstone with respect to Hamilton. You know, he’s been the golden boy, but you know, time to talk about putting a target on your back. You win long enough. People start to get a little bit upset and we’re starting to see some drama in the Hamilton camp.

So what did you think of that race, Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: I did get to see the incident between Hamilton and Verstappen. I mean, the announcers were talking about it, how Hamilton has been in [01:34:00] similar situations with Verstappen earlier in the year, and he’s kind of yielded and just let Verstappen go for the sake of, you know, the cars and not wrecking and causing an incident or whatever.

Personally, I didn’t think Hamilton did anything wrong. He was next to Verstappen. He let out of it a little bit because he was offline and he needed to make the turn. Verstappen looked like he turned into Hamilton. Don’t roast me. This is my take. Feel free to think whatever you want to think loyal listeners.

This is how I see it. I’m obviously not part of the FIA, so I have no, you know, what I say has no bearing here. But personally, I think it was a racing incident. I think Hamilton probably shouldn’t even have gotten a penalty, period. They gave him a penalty. Okay, fair enough. He ended up winning the race.

Verstappen was put out of the race. I think that’s unfortunate for Verstappen, but shit happens.

Crew Chief Eric: More drama, right? More suspicion and conspiracy theory that something’s up with Hamilton’s car because Red Bull says that there’s data out [01:35:00] there, which they haven’t surfaced yet. That’s saying that Hamilton was carrying more speed than he should have and all this stuff.

And where did it come from? And they didn’t see that kind of data during qualifying. And it’s like, so they’re trying to say, like, I didn’t know how to interpret it exactly. Like, are they trying to say that? You know, he did cause the accident because he was carrying more speed in the corner than he should have.

And he purposely rammed into him. Or were they saying that there’s something going on on the Mercedes? Like he’s getting a boost to speed somehow. I was like, what is all this nonsense? I

Crew Chief Brad: think all that’s bullshit. I think if he was carrying more speed, he would have been ahead of her step. And before the turn, he was, you know, Side by Sideward for Stepin, almost nose for nose.

He backed out of it to make the turn, which is how he ended up on Tappin’s right rear when the incident happened. So a any of that stuff, whatever. And I think majority of that’s probably coming out of the Red Bull Camp, right? And it’s coming from Christian Horner, Christian Horner’s, A, a Weasel and a and a Cry baby.

I’m, I’m just gonna put it out there. Uh, I think I thought the same thing [01:36:00] about. No, these are people that are trying to do everything they possibly can to win. And I mean, you haven’t watched drive to survive, but I think Tanya has, you can see the politics and the politicking that goes on behind the scenes between these teams.

I mean, the last drive to survive was all about, I mean, the first episode was all about the force India. They’re not forcing racing point. That was about how their car. Was eerily similar to the Mercedes car that won the year prior, all the teams were up in arms about, you know, this and going to the race stewards and the FIA saying this isn’t fair.

These guys shouldn’t be able to do this. This car is not legal, blah, blah, blah. Who gives a fuck? Just let them race. Yeah, whatever. I think it’s all bitching and whining. Cause your team’s not winning. And as Tanya said, numerous times when you’re first, I mean, you’ve got a target on your back.

Crew Chief Eric: So was there also some commotion at the end of the race?

Cause Hamilton was showing off on his win

Crew Chief Brad: that I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything about that.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought I saw something come across my desk. There was

Crew Chief Brad: [01:37:00] probably something about his race celebration, because I think Max Verstappen got in trouble last week for a particular showboating race celebration.

Well, I, okay. So I think what I heard was a Hamilton. slowed down to an unsafe speed as he was crossing the line. Even though he was mixed in traffic with like back markers and stuff, and they were still coming at full speed. I think that’s what I heard, which yes, if that’s the case, and yeah, it’s very dangerous and you shouldn’t be doing that.

I don’t know why people slow down at the line anyway, just go through the line full speed and then slow down as you’re doing your, your cool down lap. You don’t have to do it right at the line. I think that’s stupid.

Executive Producer Tania: But that was less severe than what Verstappen did because I supposedly he said. Stopped at the line and then did a burnout off the line.

And there were people still obviously coming around to finish their race.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly. I mean, the, the, the people in the front have total disregard for anybody that’s behind them. Cause if you ain’t first, you’re last. And so they, they slowed down at the line. They stop, they cause unsafe situations. I’ve seen it happen time and time [01:38:00] again, at the end of these races, just go through the line at full speed.

Do your cool down lap, get down to about four or five tenths of your, your full speed, and then do some burnouts with whatever extra fuel you have at the end. Like the

Crew Chief Eric: NASCAR guys do, right? I mean, there’s doing donuts and all that fun stuff. Yeah, it’s all exactly. It was, since we’re still talking about F1, the FIA revealed the new 2022 design that everybody’s supposed to follow, right?

Because this is formula racing. They’re supposed to follow a basic principle and design and chassis and, and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Formula racing. Right. Oh, what do you guys think of this thing? I mean, I have

an Indy car,

right? I was thinking that myself. It kind of reminds me of a duck bill platypus.

I don’t care for the rainbow psychedelic, you know, grateful dead paint scheme that the reveal was in. I’m with you. It looked like an Indy car. Didn’t remind me of anything of a typical formula one car. I think part of it was that they’re going to a larger race. wheel size for the first time in forever.

They’re going away from fifteens and they’re going to [01:39:00] like seventeens or eighteens. It makes the car look just like you said, like an Indy car looks odd. I feel like sometimes, you know, we’ve talked about on this show before there’s only one design that can cheat the wind. And I feel like all these goofy cockpit wing designs, and I’m sure there’s people out there that will hate me for saying this.

It all feels like they’re reinventing the wheel. Like, didn’t they figure this out? Mike. I don’t know. Back in the days of Colin Chapman. I mean, it’s a beak with a wing on it. I mean, it’s an open wheel car. I mean, how much more can we do to it to make it better? I’m

Crew Chief Brad: interested in looking at the wing. I’m interested to see how the DRS system works, if they’re even continuing that in the next year.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel that’s like such a video game thing to hit a button and have like, basically an electric turbo boost. You know, let’s, let’s move on a little bit. Despite all these other things that are going on, you know, love or hate formula one, there was something I was actually excited about with respect to formula one, and it was on the heels of the Italian soccer team winning the Euro cup against Britain.

Alfa [01:40:00] Romeo was eclipsed because they announced that they are going to stay in formula one for a multi year deal. So I was super excited about that because I like seeing Alfa Romeo out there with Ferrari and other brands.

Crew Chief Brad: And I like seeing Kimi Raikkonen is going to have a job next year. A

Crew Chief Eric: hundred percent.

Kind of switching away from, but still adjacent to open wheel news. I want to talk about two really important things. We all know about climate change. We know how it’s affecting the world. You know, we talk about the EVs all the time. It’s supposed to be, you know, for the betterment and whatnot. You know, in this post COVID world, some things got left to the side, right?

People are now returning to the larger racetracks like Silverstone this past weekend was the first F1 race to have like full grandstands or whatever. You know, they’ve done limited capacity. But now they opened it back up. And if you look at some of the other tracks that are out there, they’re almost to the point of abandon.

And one specifically, I mean, one of the hallmark tracks. Spa is like in terrible disrepair. Some of that has to do [01:41:00] with massive floodings in that area of Belgium that have made the parts of the track impassable, you know, with dirt, mudslides, sand, et cetera, and then the asphalt itself. I mean, it looks like the surface of the moon.

So I don’t know that spa is going to be open this year. Even maybe next year as they try to combat the weather and get the track back up into fighting shape. Really sad to hear that. Sad to see the pictures. It’s in the show notes. Check it out for yourself. And on the other side, if you guys haven’t heard, there’s massive flooding going on in Germany right now.

And I was even listening to NPR and they were talking about how. Even as advanced as Germany is in their engineering and all the things we always talk about on this show, they’re not really prepared for catastrophic weather conditions like flooding and things like that. And so it’s kind of an afterthought for them.

And even now the Nürburgring and its facilities are actually being used. And have become a makeshift like [01:42:00] relief center. And so I really enjoyed this actually came from mountain Mandan as it came across my desk. And it’s good to see this, like we talked about with Coda during COVID that they were using the track to give back to the community and do something to help the people.

And so, you know, our thoughts and best wishes go out to the folks in Germany and obviously in Belgium too, as they recuperate from these big storms and they begin to rebuild and we got to now switch. So my favorite discipline of motorsport world rally championship. And for the no people that listen to this

Crew Chief Brad: out there still a thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, it’s still a thing. Ah, my goodness. Tanya might be excited about this. There may be a few Anglophiles out there that might be excited about this. Guess what, guys? The Fiesta is out. M Sport has said the Puma is in. And the Puma Has not been sold here basically ever. I think it’s a cool name for a Ford and the Cougar and the Mustang and those cool names.

[01:43:00] And, you know, we had the car. Yeah. The skyline, we had the car there for a while, but the Puma is kind of cool. It’s always been a sporty little kind of hatchback. They had a coop there for the nineties. There was a lift. Back, you know, things like that. So it’s been around for a while. And the Puma was actually sold here at one point as the Mercury Cougar in the late nineties, they’re kind of rebranded and rebadged.

So I, I got to take back what I said about it not coming to this country. But yes, the Fiesta is basically out. The Puma is in, it looks super cool. And I’m really excited to see what it does next year in 22 against, you know, the entries from Citroen from Hyundai and et cetera. So. Good on Ford for bringing out something different and we’ll see where it goes.

Meanwhile, in IMSA and WEC news, we talked about it last month. Everybody’s coming to the surface, right? Ferrari, Porsche, BMW. Guess what? Peugeot has announced they’re coming to 2023 with an LMDH. Prototype as well known as the [01:44:00] nine X eight, because there’s always been a battle between Porsche and Peugeot about numbering.

I don’t know why they can’t settle this for all good. Like Peugeot stop calling them 900 series cars. It’s the first of their hyper cars that they’re developing, you know, hybrid system, everything that meets the regulations, but there’s also been a rumor, thank you, Stellantis, that they may also enter.

Either another one or enter the car in the Mpsa series as a Dodge. So you’re gonna see Chrysler coming to the table with a reskinned EO nine x eight LM DH hypercar here in the near future. So I’m actually really excited about that. To see a brand like Chrysler slash Dodge come back to the table. Maybe we will see something interesting for a change, you know?

not, you know, Corvette running by themselves or, or just Toyota out there, right? 23 is going to be a great year for IMSA and prototype racing in general. So in other news, we got to wrap up just a kind of random piece of information that really leads us into [01:45:00] talking about our local GTM news. And that’s Who won VRL Series 15?

We also did open wheel racing. We were kind of back to our normal format of racing for fun. We partnered again with the folks over at GarageRite. We had a great time. It was an open wheel series followed by a sub series of European trucks. So hats off to them. To our member up in the Northeast region, Sean Roberts, for taking the win in both series, series 15 and the ETRC series 15.

1. And so congratulations to him. He almost had a, basically a clean sweep or a full house. I did happen to snag P class, P class is my house. I’m just going to say it here for all the public to hear. Bring it. We picked up a new sponsor in the VRL. We are now happy to announce that we’re all running dog shit tunes.

You know, we got to do a lot of homework before we go into our next VRL series, uh, series 16, we’re hoping kind of gambling on when the new Forza Motorsport is going to come out. We’re going to take a [01:46:00] hiatus for anybody who’s interested in joining our virtual racing league. We’re probably going to put it off until the fall, and then we’ll redesign something new.

Probably go back to our roots. As we mentioned before, some B and A spec racing where it’s a little bit more cars that are, you know, every day that we can modify and have some fun with. As we transition into our local news, you know, recapping some events just before the last episode came out, we were right on the precipice of heading Into our first double header of the year, which was Nelson ledges and pit race with our friends over at auto interest.

I got to say, if you haven’t been to Nelson ledges, all the rumors are true. It is the fastest farm you’ve ever raced on and it has been repaid. The surface is sticky. The course is a lot of fun and the legend does precede it. It does have the fastest average lap speed of any track east of the Mississippi.

Incredibly Quick lap on a two mile circuit and a lot of fun. So if you haven’t been out to Nelson ledges, highly recommend it to go check it out. Pit race is a blast. As always, we [01:47:00] actually ran into Dr. T and race Liberante at the track. They were there and they chatted with us right before we went into our carding showdown with the folks from auto interest, as well as some of the ringers from pit race.

So we went. Three on pit race versus AI versus GTM in a three way battle in this grudge match. And it was a great mix in the final standings. And oddly enough, the instructors took positions three through seven out of the 20 folks that were out there. So it’s funny to see how tight the instructors are.

And we just get frustrated at each other. Because we all drive the same lines. So, uh, we’ll see what happens next year. It was a lot of fun. We’re standing on an edge now going into our second double header. A couple of days after this episode airs, we are heading into summer bash seven. This is our biggest summer bash yet.

It is our seventh anniversary here at GTM commemorating the first year of the podcast and everything like that, that we’re doing here on this episode. But this is a big one for us. [01:48:00] We’re four days at summit point. No obligation to come to all of them, but the main event is going to be on July 31st, the Saturday and the big draw this year is, you know, we’re doing the typical party and but we’ve also partnered with the American Cancer Society to do a first ever in our region fundraising walk run event.

At a racetrack. And so summit point has been very gracious to allow us to do this. It’s super cool. We have a lot of people register a lot of fun stuff. We’re going to have vendors car show again, an after party, all sorts of kind of stuff. No obligation to donate, but if you haven’t done it yet, you know, check out our website, go under events and then charity events.

All the information is there to link you to it. Everything you need. Our schedule is up on paddock pal for the day. So you can see what we’re doing when parade labs are, if you want to get in the right or an advanced driver. You have all these opportunities is an action packed day on July 31st at Summit Point Motorsports Park.

So we’re really looking forward to that. And again, all the proceeds [01:49:00] from the fundraising event are going to the American Cancer Society on behalf of all of those that are currently battling with cancer and those that we have lost the cancer that Can no longer take a checkered flag. Great blend of the motor sports world and philanthropy right behind that.

We are headed to visit our friend Nabil and the rest of the crew at just track it at Carolina motor sports park, the weekend of August the sixth. So for some of us here at GTM, we have members that live down in that area. We got folks from garage ride coming up. We mentioned the Dave Peters from HPD junkies.

going to probably make a cameo appearance. We’ll see who else is going to be there. But for some of us, CMP is going to be new. So we’re looking forward to getting down there for the first time and checking another track off our bucket list. So if you happen to be in the area and you happen to be listening and you want to come visit with us and see us firsthand and get to know us a little better, come visit us the first weekend in August, six, seven, eight, there at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina.

I kind of listed off some events we’re going to, and we’ve been to, I always [01:50:00] got it. Thank Dave Peters over HP junkie for keeping the schedules up to date, keeping us sane, you know, allowing us to see what’s going on in the entirety of North America and getting to see, you know, what kind of track events are available, what fits in my schedule and what might fit in your schedule.

So a couple of things I want to highlight though, that came across my desk from our friends at hooked on driving Northeast. They have two events coming up in August. The 11th and 12th is an advanced and instructor day at Watkins. Glenn in combination with the BMW club. And then they also have two days on Summit Point, Maine, at the end of August.

That’s August 28, 29 weekends, uh, shortly followed after that. They’re doing two days. They call it lightning strikes twice at NJMP lightning circuit at the end of September. And me personally, I am looking forward to their season finale at Watkins Glen in the third week of October, where we’ll be there for three days.

We’ll also be doing our big end of year get together for the folks that are able to make it out. That event is always a lot of [01:51:00] fun. That’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. They’re usually third weekend of October. So if anybody’s in the Watkins Glen area or is making the trip, let us know. We’d love to get together and see you look for our logo, look for our banner and come visit us in our paddock in our garage.

And, you know, get to know us a little bit better.

Executive Producer Tania: Don’t forget to check out the other podcast episodes that aired this month. We learn how to look for more advantages in the most unlikely of places. By talking tech about motor oils with Liqui Moly. We got to the moon and back with Mary and Marianne of Moon Mark, discussing their STEM program where high schoolers will be racing on the moon.

And finally, we expand our oil discussion and crossover with Blackstone Joe from Slick Talk podcast and learn about oil analysis. Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and please look forward to more great episodes in season two.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. And like we said, at the beginning of the show.

This episode is number 72, right? In our first year, it’s huge. There’s a big backlog of episodes that you [01:52:00] probably haven’t listened to many of which maybe you skipped, right? And then there’s other bonus content available on Patreon. Again, if you’re listening to us for the first time, we appreciate you tuning in and staying in for one of the longer episodes that comes out every month.

You know, our news recap episode, this is our 12th one again, commemorating our first anniversary, but go back and check out some of those episodes that we’ve done, there’s a lot of gems and gold and just some great knowledge altogether. And if you have suggestions for future shows, let us know, send us a text at 202 630 1770, or write an email to crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’re definitely. You know, looking for additional information, content. And if you have somebody you’d like to refer to be on the show, or you want to be on the show yourself, just give us a shout. We’d love to have you on here. So Brad, any closing thoughts as we look back over the year,

Crew Chief Brad: I would like to thank all of our guests that we’ve had over the, over the last year, especially in season one, you know, the.

The Daniel and the, the Crutchfield and [01:53:00] the, the Kasi and, and all of our, I mean, those are just the club members that we’ve had on Harry and, and Rob Lores and Brett, and, you know, all those special guests that we have. But then also the non-Club member guests and, and sponsors and, and people that we’ve had on.

Uh, we appreciate all that you do out there in the motor sports community. I would like to give a special thanks to Donovan Laura for filling in for me during the BMW episode that’s coming up in the coming weeks or months, as well as the, the last month’s drive through. I appreciate you filling in. You did an excellent job.

I listened to it and There were a couple of cracks about me. Well, whatever, that’s fine. I get it. You know, whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: And Tanya, as you look back over the year, anything you want to say to our, our loyal three Arbitron rated listeners,

Executive Producer Tania: don’t be a Florida man or person in general,

Crew Chief Brad: but if you live in Florida, we love you.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. Florida is a perfectly fine state. Just kidding. Florida’s lovely. Thank you for being uniquely you. [01:54:00] Every state is diverse and brings us tons of interesting stories. So thank you for that

Crew Chief Eric: big shout out to Tanya. We couldn’t do this without her. We couldn’t do this without all the people that send us these little nuggets every month that we’re collecting and putting into this, this episode and organizing it and making it flow.

And, you know, there’s a countless hours that go into this, and it’s always a lot of fun and we enjoy it. And because we enjoy it, we hope you guys enjoy it. And it’s because you guys listen that we continue to do this. And like we’ve said many a times for many years without folks like you, none of this would be possible.

And on that note, happy first anniversary, guys.

Crew Chief Brad: Happy

anniversary.

There’s some idiot in a Volvo with his bright son behind me. I lean out the window and scream. Hey, what you’re trying [01:55:00] to do blind me? My wife says maybe we should

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

org. We’d love to hear from you.

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

For as little as 2. 50 a month, [01:56:00] you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

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

• 00:00 Introduction and Sponsors
• 00:54 One Year Anniversary Celebration
• 02:05 Rimac’s Big Moves
• 07:16 Stellantis and Jeep Updates
• 10:20 Dodge’s Last Hoorah
• 15:45 Ferrari’s Mini Models
• 18:02 Volkswagen Audi Group News
• 29:54 Lost and Found: Hidden Gems
• 37:56 Collector Finds and Junkyard Gold
• 38:34 The Lamborghini Countach Basement Build
• 43:44 Jet-Powered Volkswagen Beetle
• 46:23 Richard Hammond’s Top Five Cars
• 48:57 Biggest Flops in Automotive History
• 50:59 Random EVs and Concept Cars
• 57:14 Electrifying America and Charging Networks
• 01:02:04 Chevy Bolt Recall and Safety Concerns
• 01:04:32 California’s Crackdown on ECU Tunes
• 01:09:58 Ford’s Skyline Trademark and Bronco Issues
• 01:13:46 Ford Mach E Fragrance
• 01:15:31 Fragrance Models and Spokespersons
• 01:16:21 Clarkson’s Farm Craze
• 01:17:51 Florida Man Stories
• 01:18:12 Dump Truck Hits Bridge
• 01:22:10 Human-Powered Car Antics
• 01:27:49 Vigilante Car Owner
• 01:30:29 Mountain Man Dan’s Segment
• 01:31:23 F1 Drama and Controversies
• 01:42:25 Rally and IMSA Updates
• 01:46:15 Upcoming Events and Announcements
• 01:52:46 Closing Thoughts and Thank Yous

• Upcoming/Recap GTM Events: Summer Bash 7 (7/31-8/2), Cannonball Run to CMP (8/6-8) – Check the Club Schedule for all the details. 
  
• HPDEJunkie.com report – HookedonDriving NE: Aug 11/12 @ WGI, Aug 28/29 @ Summit Point, Lightning Strikes twice in September and 3-days at WGI in October. All the details at www.hookedondriving.com
• In case you missed out- check out the other Podcast episodes that aired earlier this month…we learn how to look for more advantages in the most unlikely of places, by talking tech about motor oils with Liqui-Moly, we got to the moon and back with Mary and Marianne of Moon Mark discussing their STEM program where high schoolers will be racing on the moon and finally we expand our oil discussion and crossover with Blackstone Joe from Slick Talk Podcast and learn about Oil Analysis — Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and please look forward to more great episodes in Season 2!