B/F: The Drive Thru #13

• Palatov Has a Radical Take On Building Sports Cars—and EV Batteries

• F1's First Miami Grand Prix Planned For May 2022
• Andretti pursuing Formula 1 team takeover

• The Acura Integra Is Back

• The Ford GT40 Is a Le Mans Legend. Now You Can Own a Soup-to-Nuts Replica for $300,000.
• A Brand New Volkswagen GTI From 2001 Is Going To Auction
• 7 oddballs keeping it weird at Monterey this year

Around the World … in a Model-T

• The Mini Strip Is a Pared-Back Mini Cooper EV by Fashion Guru Paul Smith
• BMW Issues Recall For Toyota Supra Over Braking Concerns
• BMW M4 GT3 set to race in SUPER GT next year

BRABUS! is back w/800hp GLE

• Drivable Ferrari 250 GTO Made Out Of Wood Took 70 Days To Make
• A Bentley El Camino? Someone Transformed This Flying Spur Into a Luxury Truck
• Annie Potts & Mark Hamill – “Corvette Summer” (1978)

Time to leave the Waffle House!

• Portland teenager Pierson set to become youngest ever Le Mans starter in 2022
• Cadillac confirms LMDh program for IMSA and WEC
• Valentino Rossi Will Probably Race On Four Wheels In DTM: Report

• Ozarks International Raceway aiming for 2021 launch

Lamborghini JUMPACAN!

• Now There’s a Licensed, 3/4-Size Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa for Fancy Kids
• Shopping! for super cool major-logo merch available at – https://paddockcollectionstore.com/
• The BlockZone – Coolest Custom lego Sets EVER!

• Here’s Why the Tesla Semi Will Be Delayed
• Tesla is under investigation because its cars keep hitting emergency vehicles
• Tesla Cybertruck Is Delayed, and We're Not Surprised

• Bugatti’s Final Divo Is Here, and It’s the Bluest Thing You’ll See Today
• You're Too Late, All Of The $2M Singer DLS Are Sold Out
• Audi’s new autonomous concept car is also sort of a Transformer
• How plaid became part of Volkswagen Golf GTI history

Lambo Commercial: “Close to the Road”

Audi’s Road to DAKAR!

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 13. 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. For some automotive news,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, guys, I’ve been looking over August and I thought it was going to be an absolute bust. We just had nothing but piles of recalls and halted productions and chip shortages. And I didn’t know what we were going to talk [00:01:00] about this month, but the magic of the interwebs and of the automotive world itself never ceases.

And you know what we’re going to kick off this month talking about?

Crew Chief Brad: Lamborghini.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Lambos! There’s all sorts of news aflutter this month about Lamborghini, our favorite tractor builder.

Crew Chief Brad: So what’s in store there, Brad? They’ve announced that they’re going to come up with a successor to the Aventador.

It’s going to be a V12 hybrid. Their second hybrid, not to be confused with the Ceyon FKP and the Ceyon Roadster. Is that, am I pronouncing that correctly? Ceyan. Ceyan, Ceyon, I don’t remember. Two cars that I had actually never heard of until this article. So the Aventador is a little longer than the two.

So they’re replacing it. And of course it’s going to have hybrid technology, the hybrid technology that’s in the cyan or Cion or Cion in the Cylon. Is that the XB or the

TC?

Crew Chief Brad: This is the, this is the, the lunchbox, but apparently they said that it’s not up [00:02:00] to par with the. What they see for the future of hybrid technology.

So

Crew Chief Eric: you mean what Rimac is building

Crew Chief Brad: what we talked about last month? Yeah. Whatever Audi and Porsche have, uh, concocted, have, have, have contracted for the Lamborghini to be doing. So the, the technology that’s going to be in the new car is not going to be the same technology that’s in the thes FK 47 Roadster.

Touchdown. Hike. Hike, hike.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice. Well, on the other side of that, you know, we did. Allude to in the past that Lamborghini was going to come up with a hybrid and to your point, this is the second car that they’re proposing with this hybrid technology. I’m really impressed that they’re bringing back a V12. I mean, in today’s age of let’s go in the opposite direction and go quad turbo V6, having a V12, I thought they were dead.

I thought they were gone the way of the Dodo bird, kind of interested to see where this goes and why, and if it even really comes to fruition.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, speaking of quad turbo V6, the Huracan successor. Is allegedly going to have a hybrid V6. I [00:03:00] believe that’s what I saw.

Crew Chief Eric: Interesting. And that’s not the Countach.

Crew Chief Brad: No, that’s completely separate from the Countach, which I believe is also utilizes a V12, but a small electric motor for, you know, powering the. the sun visors or the, you know, the lipstick lights or whatever you get in the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So since we brought it up, that’s the biggest buzz in Lamborghini this month by far.

Let’s talk about the new Countach, you know, the one, the only epic music video car of all time. Does the new one really stack up with. Our hero, our icon, the David Hasselhoff of automobiles.

Crew Chief Brad: I hope no copyright lawyers are listening to this right now. I personally. Love, love, love, love. I’m looking for a poster of it as we speak. Love the new Kudosh. I think it’s [00:04:00] amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: As a rebadged Aventador, you’re absolutely right. I have a few. The front is

Executive Producer Tania: on point. Yes, I agree. Better than the original. I mean, it’s okay.

I don’t like the back. The back reminds me of the Decepticons in the live action Transformers movies. Like the way their mechanical eyeballs are, it looks like a Decepticon staring at you from the back.

Crew Chief Eric: To your point, it took me a minute to figure out the rear end of that car. And actually it’s very similar to a car we’re going to talk about here in a little bit, which is the Bugatti Divo.

I take a bunch of issues with the new Countach. First of all, like we talked about in the past, there’s other manufacturers That have been very successful at taking classic designs and making them modern. Let’s just go with Chrysler as an example. I think Lamborghini could have done a real salute, a real heritage car and taken the LP 500 QV and just duplicated it.

And gone from there. Now, I get that that doesn’t fit this 25 year old Audi R8 [00:05:00] chassis that they’ve been recycling now on every Lamborghini since the Volkswagen Audi Group bought Lamborghini. And so I get it. It’s got to fit those dimensions. But when you look at the press photos of the original car, even the LP 500 next to the new one, it is ginormous.

It just needed to put a wang on the back. Wang definitely would have helped and it would need to be the wing from the, uh, the LP 500, you know, the big like airplane wing on the back, but that scoop on the side looks like a second window. And it just, it irritates me. I don’t like the fender cuts. Like we had talked about internally.

It reminds me of the Jalpa. It doesn’t really remind me of the Kuntosh, the way they cut those angular fenders. There’s definitely. Pieces and parts of other cars in the design, but at the end of the day, if you read some of the comments, even on Instagram and some of the other social media platforms, people are like, yeah, that’s a great redo of the Aventador.

Does it really speak to the Countach? And to your point, front on? Absolutely. [00:06:00] I’m just, I struggle with everything else.

Crew Chief Brad: I can see your point that it should not be called the Kosh, and if it was not called the Kunta, would your perception be any different?

Executive Producer Tania: How, I think the Isador isn’t, the Aventador more is newer.

Way Newer, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, this isn’t a, I mean, this isn’t, this would be

Crew Chief Brad: like an evolution of the Aventador.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. You could say an evolution, but it’s not a redo. I mean, it doesn’t, yeah. Yes, they all have similar wedge body shapes, but I do think it hearkens more to a Countach than the Aventador. I agree.

Crew Chief Eric: But to Brad’s point, we’ve seen it before, you know, somebody comes to the table with a new Mustang, and you go, oh, it’s an Evolution.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but wouldn’t you just say the Aventador is nothing but a Countach Evolution? Or is it

Crew Chief Eric: a

Executive Producer Tania: Diablo

Crew Chief Eric: evolution?

Crew Chief Brad: Which is a Countach evolution.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I mean, yes, they all go back to that.

I mean, for a while there, they only

Crew Chief Brad: made one car at a time. That’s very true. They made many different variations of that car, but they made one vehicle at a time.

Crew Chief Eric: Going back to your [00:07:00] point about the name, the name carries a lot of weight. So certain cars, like, let’s say the Esprit, if suddenly Lotus brought that out and you, and you’re doing this whole thing compared the old to the new, you know, is the sequel as good as the original.

Right. And that’s kind of what we’re, we’re talking about here. Performance wise, visibility wise, handling wise. It’s all the electronic goodies. The new Kuntosh is going to be a thousand times better than the old one. Hands down. We all know that for a performance perspective. I’ve heard that the old ones are terrible to drive.

You can’t see out of them. All that aside, that’s the point. They’re awesome and they’re bonkers and everything else. So maybe it’ll grow on me when I see it in person. I like that it’s white, just like some of the, you know, the older Kuntosh. I mean, they

Executive Producer Tania: already made a new Esprit in 2014. So that example is poor.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that the Evora?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. It says 2014 Lotus Esprit debut. Did that ever come to market?

Crew Chief Eric: I

Crew Chief Brad: think it was just a concept car. I think it was a concept car too.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: I think, I think that evolved [00:08:00] into the Evora.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I think so too. But I mean, there’s other names. If I said Lancia Stratos, you know, I, I don’t know.

There’s, there’s a bunch. I,

Crew Chief Brad: I agree that there are Some cars that are iconic, they’re of such a level that you’re killing yourself if you try to do a redo of them. Right. The Countach is one. The Corvettes, I mean they I don’t know. I, it’s definitely one of them, but I was thinking like a nine, five, nine, four, um, Porsche, you can never have another nine, five, nine Porsche is weird because all their names are numbers or, but you never have another F 40, the F 50 was supposed to be an evolution of that, but I don’t know.

But, but I think you understand my point. There are some names that are so iconic that we do it in the sports world all the time. You see somebody. A player that is so good. They’re in the hall of fame. Their number is retired. I feel like these names for automobiles should be retired. Exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: The perfect example of bad naming convention is the [00:09:00] Mustang Mach E.

Crew Chief Eric: What

Crew Chief Brad: about the Mitsubishi? Eclipse. SUV. SAV.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my god. Oh, please stop. But just to the point, talking about Lamborghini, say they introduce the Miura again, you’re like, uh, I mean, again, that’s another name that I think is, is hallowed and sacred in the halls of automotive history. Like you can’t have another Miura unless it really is super close to the original one.

Right. And I, I feel, Like that with the Countach. Now you could flip the coin the other way, and let’s talk about the Alfa Romeo 4C, which is supposed to be the redo of the Alfa 33 Stradale. I see the hints and the homage, but they weren’t as ballsy to say, well, we’re just going to call it the 33 Stradale.

They said, here’s the 4C, it’s a new model. It takes its influence from this vintage race car, but it’s not really the same thing. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but like I said, maybe when we see it in person, it’ll do it justice. Maybe it looks [00:10:00] different. Some cars don’t photograph the best. Although the Kuntosh photographs pretty damn well.

Crew Chief Brad: All I know is if somebody can help me find high res versions of some of these images, so I can turn them into.

Crew Chief Eric: That

Crew Chief Brad: would be no, I mean, like legit posters for my wall behind me,

Crew Chief Eric: I can find you guys some high res pictures of Fierro stuff. So we got that covered. All right,

Crew Chief Brad: what kind of contain on the, on the, on the hood.

Crew Chief Eric: So moving on a little bit coming from completely out of left field is a Lamborghini that is now being referred to as the jump a con.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s not a comic con.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, it’s not a

Crew Chief Brad: convention.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, the jump a

Crew Chief Brad: con. So

Crew Chief Eric: I was like, wait a minute. What is this all about? So I click on this and I go into it and I find out 2 kind of interesting things.

1. there was a race that I’d never heard of before. And apparently it’s been going on since 1968 in the deserts of Las Vegas. It’s known as the mint 400. the mint used to be a casino [00:11:00] hotel in Vegas. And now it doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know which hotel it’s become these many years later, but this is touted as the longest running hotel.

American off road race. I don’t know how that plays in versus Pike’s Peak, but still, you know, let’s just say let’s follow that. You know, maybe we’ll dig into that story a little bit more at a later date and then comes to the table in conjunction with the 2021 running of the mint 400 is this group called B is for build and you’ll find them online, YouTube, et cetera.

They’re known for building all sorts of extreme cars and they decided to build an off road Lamborghini Huracan. And so when you look at this thing. You start to realize there’s only a few pieces on it that are actually Lamborghini. It’s very low to the ground. You know, it’s got big wheels. It’s got, you know, all this kind of stuff.

And then, you know, it’s mostly tube frame. It still has the scissor doors, which is okay. But then you realize it’s powered by an LS. There’s not a whole heck of a lot to it. That seems to be Lamborghini. And it got me into this whole kind [00:12:00] of philosophical debate. Known as Theseus’s ship. If you replace the parts enough on the original platform, is it still really that original ship?

And so it kind of made me think, you know, was this a wrecked Lamborghini that they basically stripped down retaining those few couple of pieces still makes it a Lamborghini and maybe in its overall shape and design. You could kind of debate that for a while, but needless to say, You know what makes it

Crew Chief Brad: a Lamborghini?

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yeah, that’s probably the

Crew Chief Brad: only thing that makes wise, it

Crew Chief Eric: seems to perform they recorded that video of last year, they said t the car really off road o an hour. So this was kind video and we’ll post it i you can check it out your They’re kind of hitting the sand dunes and whatnot at a decent speed.

And they learned some lessons. They had to go back and redesign some stuff, different skid plates, more ground clearance, stuff like that. So really curious to see how it fared in the race itself, but this Lamborghini Jumper can Batman Tumbler [00:13:00] thing, it definitely got my attention for all of, you know, the four minutes that the video was,

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know.

It’s just people with way too much money and too much time on their hands. More power to them for coming up with something unique and different, but I hope they didn’t take a brand new Huracan and do this to it. I hope they started with a flood car or a salvage title or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: Because It’s a

Crew Chief Brad: waste.

Like, like the guy who

Crew Chief Eric: put the wagon wheels

Crew Chief Brad: on the Hellcat. I just don’t, I don’t understand shit like that. It’s It’s stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: That being said, maybe a little teaser for our lost and found section there, Brad. What do you think?

Crew Chief Brad: We found a warehouse find is an all bare metal body Lamborghini Moira. I don’t know how to pronounce these words.

Moira. Moira. It’s a Myra. It’s a Lamborghini Myra. The Miura. I’m not Italian. I don’t get it. The

Executive Producer Tania: Miura. Spaghetti.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a good

Executive Producer Tania: name. They should have named it, instead of the Lamborghini Countach, [00:14:00] it the Lamborghini Spaghetti. It’s such a cheesy linguine!

The Lamborghini

Crew Chief Eric: Carbonara!

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, Gemelli, uh, the Lamborghini Miura P400S.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s pretty cool. This is kind of like some of those other unfinished vehicles. You know, like we’ve talked about before, what is a barn find anymore? Now we got warehouse finds, basement finds, and kitchen finds. They’re coming out of all the woodworks now, uh, no pun intended. From last month’s episode about the lamborghini, but this one I just think is striking being a bare metal car and not being completely rusted Aluminum bodied it’s beautiful actually and it’s just kind of pure form I am hoping that maybe whoever put the car together or ordered it that way or whatever At least put a protective coating on it And I think we’ll talk about a car that’s very similar in design here in a little bit But I just think this is kind of cool And if you haven’t seen it check it out again These barn finds are popping up all over the place

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s really cool.

It reminds me of the, the [00:15:00] body is kind of like the DeLorean a little bit. It’s got that look. It’s obviously a much better, much cooler car. I would totally drive this and blind the people, you know, going down the road in the sun.

Crew Chief Eric: So as a teaser for our Motorsports section later in this episode, There’s also a bid.

It’s bid number six for the 2023 running of LeMans, and that’s by Lamborghini. The number of people lining up to run in LMDH, the replacement for LMP one. The new hybrid hypercar class is going to feature the names Porsche Ferrari. BMW, and now Lamborghini. And we also mentioned last month Peugeot slash Dodge by way of Stellantis.

So that’s pretty awesome. And 2023 is stacking up to be an incredible year for Le Mans. And we’re going to talk more about Le Mans later in the episode. To close out our section on Lamborghini, our friends at Garage Riot, we were debating the Countach there as well. You know, it’s kind of hot news this month.

And Donovan [00:16:00] happened to post a commercial. For Lamborghini, which I didn’t know, no, they did Lamborghini commercials. And I got to thank him for this. I got a great chuckle out of it. The tagline for the commercial reads close to the road. We’re going to post that in the show notes. You need to check it out for yourself.

I think it’s, it’s actually very well done. Very tongue in cheek. Good on you, Lamborghini.

Crew Chief Brad: Do we know when this. Commercial came out, I want to make some guesses on who the arm belongs to. It’s definitely a baller.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. I think it’s a V10. So it’s, it’s a V10 era Lamborghini. So it’s gotta be within the last, Oh, I don’t know, 15 years.

Right. So who do you think it is in the car?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, knowing that you said it’s V10,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s Michael Strahan. No, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: No, from the song gold digger, he’s the one that wins the super bowl and drives off in a Hyundai.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, that’s

Crew Chief Brad: right. That’s right. I’ll say Poby.

Crew Chief Eric: It might be, we don’t know. I mean, cast your votes on who the mystery arm is in this particular video.

But again, very, very clever, very cute. And I very much enjoyed it. So thanks Donovan for [00:17:00] posting that. And special congratulations to Donovan who just picked up. Lamborghini Gallardo. So it’s a bit of a change from his background in BMWs and Porsches, etc. But if you want to learn more about his recent acquisition, check it out on garage riot.

com. All the pictures are there. And with that bit of Lamborghini news, we round out our showcase this month. Since Lamborghini is You know, cousin second removed of Volkswagen Audi group. I think we should probably transition to Volkswagen Audi news like we always do. And I mentioned it a little bit ago, the Bugatti Devo, the last Bugatti Devo, a model probably you didn’t even know existed.

40 of which were built, the last one has been completed and delivered. That is the end of the production run for the Bugatti Divo. I think it’s cool, but also very Lego like, I mean, obviously you can see the inspiration in it from the Chiron and the Veyron. And even like I was talking about the rear end of the Countach and things like that.

[00:18:00] It’s sad to hear about a car on its way out. Because I think this would really been really cool to catch in the beginning, like, you know, something shocking, but there are other cool and unnamed models from Bugatti coming. We’ve seen some articles floating around, some spy pictures, et cetera. So I’m really excited to see what comes next.

What do you guys think about this Devo now that you’re probably hearing about it for the first time?

Crew Chief Brad: I had no idea it existed. Is this the successor to the Chiron?

Crew Chief Eric: It is a one off model. So no, it is not necessarily in that line. But much like the Cyan and some of those cars, it runs in that kind of vein of here, we’re going to do a small batch and then move on to something else.

So I didn’t realize Bugatti was doing 40 car runs. I mean, to tool up for new unique body work like this, granted, it’s still like a hundred year old R8 chassis underneath. It’s still neat to see that they would put something out like this. They could have just called it a Veyron. But you can still buy the Veyron the what super sport now it is, I think at the top of the top line, 300 mile an hour [00:19:00] monstrosity that they have.

All right. So switching gears a little bit and talking about sort of related Porsche news singer that makes the most beautiful retro, what I call heritage cars out in California has pre sold 75 of what they call their DLS model based on the Porsche 964. For a cool 2 million each and an awkward pregnant pause there.

As you do the math, that’s an influx of 150 million into the company. Not sure when they’re going public, but, uh, pay attention to that stock IPO for sure. And this quote from the Jalopnik article definitely summarizes how I felt about the consumption of 964s. And it reads, listen, I like an air cooled rear engine driving experience as much as the next guy, but you can’t tell me that this car drives 1, 979, 000 better than my shitty old [00:20:00] 912e.

Do you have any idea what I could do with 1. 97 million? I could build a really freaking cool 9 11 and still have about 1. 9 million dollars left over. That being said, it’s also the reason why, and we talked about this when Donovan guest starred on the show, the prices of 964s are going up. Because 964, as we know, had the shortest production run of pretty much, you Most 911s, it only lasted about four to five years, and there’s not a ton of them out there, especially coupes.

You know, there, there was a mix of variants in the 964 line convertibles. There was a speedster. There was, you know, wide bodies, the four S and things like that. So there’s all these variations. And singers just buying them up and turning them into these ducktail classics and short nose cars. And they’re beautiful.

They’re handcrafted. Absolutely amazing. They perform really, really well, but it’s driven the price of stock nine 64s through the roof. I’ve also read that once singer can’t get any more nine 64s, they’re going to move on to nine 93s. [00:21:00] done so. So that means the price of 9. 93 is also going to skyrocket, right?

They want to stay with the air cooled 9 11s, the best of the best. I’m really, really curious to see where the whole Singer line goes because people are going to board the cars that they have. To try to hold out, you know, what’s the, you’re going to come to the table with and offer you 2 million bucks for your nine 64 and then turn around and sell it for four.

I mean, good on them.

Executive Producer Tania: Good on the person who still has their nine 64 that they can sell for 2 million, nine

Crew Chief Eric: 64 turbos will be there soon enough. Don’t worry about it. I

Crew Chief Brad: still think it’s a ridiculous amount of money for a car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And you’re dealing with a car from the nineties. They overlap with the nine 93, five maximum six year run the low production numbers.

Cause that was the first year of the 3. 6, you know, stuff like that. You’re dealing with a 30 year old car. So it’s already vintage. And then you’re making it even more vintage, right? Going to the late sixties, early seventies, look of the RSS and the ducktails and stuff like that. I mean, again, The singers are gorgeous, hands down.

Maybe they’ll start doing something else. Like [00:22:00] where’s my retro 308 built on top of a Modena 360 or a Ferrari F430. Why don’t we do something different than a retro 9 11? I feel like they’re kind of played out, at least in my opinion.

Executive Producer Tania: I think we forgot to just start this one with rich people doing rich people things.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re probably right. Definitely out of my price range.

Crew Chief Brad: I think we started the entire episode with rich people doing rich people things with the V12 hybrid Lamborghini and the Countach. Definitely not

Crew Chief Eric: in the market for that. Yeah. So what else is going on in the VAG world there, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: So Audi is unveiling that I guess they’re going to join the Dakar series.

We’re going back to Rally What? We’re going back to. Rally What? Huh? Come again. YouTube video out there where they’re showcasing their brand new purpose built Design Decar Rally vehicle, and it’s an e-tron and it looks sick. It’s reminiscent of other rally cars of the Decar series. So that’s exciting to see them returning to the world of rally and hopefully they actually go back to the other rally world as well.

[00:23:00] WRC.

Crew Chief Eric: So they’re calling this the RSQ. And I thought what was really kind of cute about the video is there’s this like double asterisk that says this vehicle not based on a production car. So I was like, it’s a purpose built Dakar rally raid vehicle. Right. And so what I thought was also interesting, unlike the VW submissions of years past, which were loosely based on the Touareg or the Amarok or some of the other vehicles that they have in their lineup, especially overseas.

This is a purpose built. Desert rally car. It is super cool. The big question that came to mind, and I rewatched the video a couple of times in slow motion. And I thought I saw a shot of the crankcase and I’m thinking it’s not a full e tron, but a hybrid, but I can’t confirm that. And there’s not enough information because the.

Biggest question that came to mind. If this is a legitimate e tron, where are they recharging this thing on the Dakar?

Crew Chief Brad: Because the Dakar rally is what? 1, 000, 1, 500 miles. It’s something ridiculous. I mean, I guess they’re going to charge it with their diesel generators. [00:24:00]

Crew Chief Eric: This is some pretty long rally stage weights that you have to go through.

So you’ve got to charge that thing up. I’m curious to see where it is and what the specs are. If they are going full electric, I’m shocked. And I want to see how that pans out. I don’t want to, I don’t want to say good, bad or indifferent, but I just want to see how it all works out for them. So best of luck on that, but design wise, super cool.

Very futuristic. It reminds me of the Viet Cross. No, it does not.

Executive Producer Tania: Speaking of futuristic. So they’re at it again, Audi. So they unveiled a concept car. Car of the future, if you will. It’s very sleek looking car. Got a lot of futuristic bits on the outside and definitely on the inside. I mean, this thing looks kind of like a Batmobile or should be in a James Bond movie or some villains driving this thing around.

I mean, it looks pretty neat, but the interesting thing about it, it’s an autonomous. Concept car for the future, but it’s also a transformer. Wait, wait,

Crew Chief Eric: what, what,

Executive Producer Tania: what? Transformers. [00:25:00] There’s more than meets the eye here, but I’m done. When they say transformer, it’s not going to suddenly stand up on its hind wheels and start talking to you.

It actually can elongate the wheel base by almost 10 inches. So basically you can have a sport mode in a shorter wheel base or elongated 250 millimeters. To a more touring wheelbase, if you will. And since it’s autonomous, they’ve created it such that the steering wheel is retractable and the pedals are attractable.

So basically they’ll disappear into the dashboard and the under dash so that you have more comfort room. It’s a concept car. It’s kind of the vision of where the future could be going once true autonomous vehicles, if they ever actually come to fruition, this could be the future of what more and more vehicles.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So this car has melted my brain. I have looked at this video on repeat for way too long. And here’s my takeaway.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a lot of stuff. It’s really expensive that [00:26:00] can break.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Well, I was going to save that part, but. First thing that came to mind, Batman, the animated series. Second thing that came to mind, the defender from Viper, because it looks like a Viper from the side and profile.

Yeah, I was

Crew Chief Brad: just about to say they, they went there, they’re going all the way to the future of 1993.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like a Viper from the side. I mean like a gen one, gen two Viper. It’s scary how close it looks. Third, what does 250 millimeters, which comes out to about 10 inches. Buy me on a two seater that I can lay down and go to sleep while it’s driving me. Cause I don’t understand. It’s not like suddenly your back seats pop up out of this thing.

I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t think it’s for your comfort. I think it’s for the driving experience. So if you want people,

Crew Chief Eric: If

Executive Producer Tania: you want to pull the steering wheel back out in the pedals and go hoon around a bit, I guess, you shorten the wheelbase and then you have a more sporty feel.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a car that fits everybody. I guess if you’re seven feet tall like our big man in a little car episode, you don’t have a problem.

You just stretch the vehicle like [00:27:00] Gordon wanted to do with that Viper, right? That we had talked about. But in this case, I get it. It’s cool because there’s no drivetrain and so on these electric vehicles where they can put the power plants at the end of the car and all that kind of stuff, it makes sense that they can grow and shrink the interior, especially at the pedal box.

And the way I look at this, I just, the question that continually comes to my mind. Is why, why do I need this in my life?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it’s a concept car. So why do any manufacturer do the things they do with concept cars? They’re proving they have the technology and the capability to do something that’s crazy.

Crew Chief Brad: So in my Mark four Volkswagen GTI, when the sunroof broke and it wouldn’t retract or whatever, there was a crank and you had to manually crank it. So when you’re stuck in 10 inch mode.

Executive Producer Tania: Get outside. Outside. You need to pull, you

Crew Chief Brad: need to pull out a crank. Yes. Stick it in the side and crank it back in to the driver mode.

Cue the music. No, you,

Executive Producer Tania: the jack in the box music . No, no, no. You just

Crew Chief Eric: do like those, those cars that the [00:28:00] kids have and you, you back ’em up until it winds up, you know, and then you can like let it go. It’s the same thing, just back up the car into a wall until it crushes itself. It’s perfect.

Crew Chief Brad: Or, so I’m a baller and I’ve got my Audi, whatever this car is called.

And I’ve got my, you know, supermodel girlfriend with me or whatever, and I can’t get it to shrink back in. So I go stand at the front. I asked her to stand at the back and we just kind of smush it back together. Is that how that works?

Executive Producer Tania: She, she walks away from you. She calls Uber. She goes

Crew Chief Brad: over to the guy in the, in the Chiron.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes,

exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, first of all, to do all this mechanism, I’m sure it takes a ton of power and there’s a lot of servos. And like you said, it’s expensive to replace something breaks, but the stats on this car are not great. 310 miles of range. They’re claiming equivalent 553 foot pounds of torque, but that’s a lot of stuff going on.

Crew Chief Brad: And it’s still not more complicated or more expensive to repair than a Volkswagen Touareg or Phaeton.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, you’re probably right about that. So there, there is an advantage to these cars. So we’ll, we’ll move on because this [00:29:00] thing just, you’ll see it in the show notes. It will just, it bends spoons. That’s what it does.

That’s what it does for me. It’s like the matrix, you know, normally our next. that we talk about on every drive thru episode is our friends over at Stellantis, right? The fourth largest auto manufacturer on the planet, now home to Chrysler and Peugeot, Fiat, Ferrari, and all sorts of wonderful names that are in the Stellantis portfolio.

So normally this spot is reserved for news of 2 million horsepower Dodges, right? But sadly last month we talked about how. There was the last hurrah for the Challenger and the Charger. But since we know that most of these Chrysler products that fill this space that we love talking about are really built on as Brad would put a hundred year old Mercedes Benz chassis.

We thought it was appropriate to bring in a substitute with a name in the automotive world that we haven’t heard in a while. And that name is. Brabus. Yes, folks. Brabus is back and they won’t be outdone. They were usurped by AMG many, many years ago. You know, there were other names [00:30:00] out in the field, you know, doing really cool things as well, but Brabus was the name you went to for high horsepower Mercedes.

So they’ve come to the table with all things in 800 horsepower SUV built on top of the GLE. It’s wicked cool. It looks like any Brabus you’ve ever seen, you know, it’s sort of. outlandish, but also subdued at the same time. It’s got all these really cool styling cues internally. They’ve redone the interior, giving it massive horsepower.

You know, the typical all Brabus black, it comes in one color, as long as you want it in black type of deal. It sounds amazing. I mean, I have to hand it to the Mercedes engineers. Their V8s are some of the best. Sounding V8s on the planet next to the Corvettes C7R and some other vehicles that are out there.

There’s just nothing like a Mercedes V8. So good on Brabus for coming back. I thought it was really cute to have it parked next to a Brabus Smart 4. 2, which I didn’t even know was still a thing. thing. So when you watch the video by Shmee [00:31:00] 150, it’s kind of an interesting review of the vehicle. It is new.

The newest entry from Brabus, curious to see where that goes. And interestingly enough, the name Brabus came up on our, what should I buy 90s episode. So we were debating whether that was a good pick and a goodbye and kind of revisit that old moniker. If you’re looking to invest into a 90s car. So if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, definitely check it out.

Executive Producer Tania: Sweet. I’ll I have something.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you do?

Executive Producer Tania: So the other little bit of Stellantis news we have. So last month, we talked about the guy who was building the Lamborghini in his basement and there was some wood involved among other things, and eventually had to bust the basement wall down to get the car out.

But nonetheless, wood strikes again. And this time though, it is an entire car made out of wood.

Crew Chief Eric: No.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, so, oh, yes, it is a scaled down version of a Ferrari GTO 250. So it’s not a one to one replica, but it’s not the size of a go kart either. So [00:32:00] a gentleman in Vietnam who is a woodworker and he is very talented, he wanted to give his son a Ferrari.

So he built him one out of wood and it has a working electric drivetrain. So it is drivable completely on the road. Not that it’s probably street legal, but But it does function and does run and it’s, and he handcrafted it, carved it out of wood.

Crew Chief Eric: Some of the proportions are off.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Like the windshield is ridiculous.

I love the wooden windshield wipers. That does make me laugh. I mean, those little details, the door handle is exceptionally entertaining. Looks like something you’d see on a bathroom vanity, but I got to give you props on this. The woodworking is exquisite. The car does look really, really cool. I mean, I’m not sure what else to say.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s a woodworker. He had 70 days extra time on his hands and he built one.

Crew Chief Eric: That is something else. That’s for sure.

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Brad: feel like this could have been done with a Fiero and 200 bucks.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know if they, there’s a kid out there. I don’t know if they have the [00:33:00] Fiero out in Vietnam. Can we send them out there?

’cause we don’t want ’em.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, please. Like we do with like the campaign T-shirts and the Super Bowl loser shirts we send to third world countries. Let’s just send all the fieros. Now to those third world countries,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, and that’s probably a great segue into talking about domestic news. We separate Stellantis because they’re now this global conglomerate with all these different brands underneath.

And so the domestics are now really Ford and GM Toyota aside and all the other ones that we know are built here in the States, but big, bad American companies, Ford and GM Ford has put out a press release saying they’re going to move to build to order. And I’m like, cool, Volvo talked about doing that.

BMW has talked about doing that. Porsche does that now, quote unquote, on their website. Doesn’t MINI do that? Aren’t all MINIs built to order? Supposedly. These are supposed to be completely bespoke. Like you’re supposed to actually get what you want. And here’s where I found the lies. [00:34:00] As I’m reading the article, it just stands out to me and to quote ordering the exact vehicle color trim level accessories.

Everything you want is how Europeans have been buying their cars for ages, lies, lies, and more lies. I’ve never been able to custom order a European car the way I want it, right? I want triple black or I want purple interior. All right, it’s always. You could do it in their little configurator, especially today online.

And then at the end, it goes find closest available compromise. And it’s always black over tan or black over gray. If you want red, you can only get these wheels. It’s always some stupid catch 22 that you can’t actually get what you want because they’re not building cars to order. And by the way, I’ve tried more than once going to the dealership and saying, I’d like the wheels off of that car, you know, while I’m there already making a compromise and they won’t do that either.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:35:00] Was there comment? Cause I didn’t read this. Was there comment in America? You can buy your European cars built to order or in Europe, Europeans can buy.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I think that’s more the truth because what I read was the actual quote and they’re like, Oh, Europeans have been doing this forever. And I’m like, no, no, no, not here.

Not here. At least now. So I like the concept, right? Some people are like, well, this is dumb and blah, blah, blah. I just went down to the dealership lot and pick what I want to pick. But there are those of us in the community that would prefer to buy a bespoke. And I’m not saying it needs to be ridiculous, but at least give me the combinations that you offer.

If I want a black interior on a black car with black wheels, you know, or whatever, I should be able to get it. Not get to the end, and it just be this giant tease, and I’m left with, Nope, there’s 13 white ones and a blue one, so this is what you get. I’m like, what? What? No.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought we were kind of moving toward that new hotness of, you know, made to order and a la carte and all this stuff.

So [00:36:00] I would think people would want to be able to have more choices in their interior, hopefully with some limitations. That we can’t be getting hot pink Pepto Bismol color choices, right? Like here’s a palette, choose from it. You can want to be able

Crew Chief Eric: to choose heritage interiors. So I want the Ricardo Montblanc Corinthian leather in burgundy.

I want everything burgundy in my car.

Executive Producer Tania: As long as they can do it fast enough. I think people would be on board with being able to say like, Oh, I really want. White leather interior in my

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, like the old Volkswagen Cabrio’s had and stuff like that.

Executive Producer Tania: But I want a tan dashboard, red carpeting in a forest green exterior.

I don’t know. Somebody probably wants that combination.

Crew Chief Eric: Stop talking about the color choices that were in my UR Quattro from the factories. They had green pile carpet. I don’t understand what they were thinking. Like, what is this? Black seats and a brown dashboard.

Executive Producer Tania: What is wrong with [00:37:00] you? All those cars were kind of slightly bespoke.

They were all Not by choice though. Random combinations of interior. Took me the longest time before I realized that my black interior was actually a really dark chocolate brown.

Crew Chief Eric: So bad. But on the other hand, you know what you can order, but you get all the options and no choices is a 300, 000 Ford GT 40 replica from South Africa.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, you know what, if I’m spending 300, 000, you darn tootin better be giving me exactly what I want.

Crew Chief Eric: So under license from golf to put the golf livery on the car and superformance who has made these superformance Cobras in the past, which were Ford approved replicas of the 427 Cobra. They are now constructing exact replicas of the 1968, 1969 Le Mans winning GT forties down to every single nut and bolt.

So if you want to turn key. Late sixties race [00:38:00] car. Get yourself a super performance GT 40 for a cool 300 grand.

Crew Chief Brad: Would you buy this or a new Kutosh? But

Crew Chief Eric: the price points will probably be the same. So in all honesty, I’m going to have to lean towards the Kutosh. only because 1960s replica means 1960s handling.

It’s not an homage or anything like that. It’s a direct copy. And it even has the ability to be homologated into like vintage racing and stuff like that. That’s how accurate this copy is. And so what that means is. Is awkward. You know, geometry is going to have an ancient handling characteristics. I’ve read that the old GT forties kind of were awkward.

They were a handful to drive and it’s something that I don’t want that. I mean, if I’m going to spend 300 grand, I want it to be fast and I want it to be predictable.

Executive Producer Tania: Does it have like 18 years to shift? Uh, only in Ford

Crew Chief Eric: versus Ferrari. So

Crew Chief Brad: Ford, we talked about them last month and about how people are taking delivery of their new full size Broncos.

And they’re not happy because the [00:39:00] tops are trash. Well, Ford has come back and said that they’re going to replace each and every one of those tops. For free, under recall. I thought they were having issues with sound quality and, and fit and finish and stuff like that. That’s not the case. They’re actually having problems with, Peeling paint and discoloration and things of that nature.

Ford is going to replace each and every one of them. So if you’ve got one of these fancy new Broncos and you’ve got a hard top, take it on down to your Ford dealer and come October, they’re going to start replacing those tops. So what else

Crew Chief Eric: is going on in the world of Ford?

Crew Chief Brad: Same thing that’s going in the world of the entire automotive industry, the chip shortage.

And Ford is obviously no stranger falling victim to this, not only in their trucks. And, you know, we talked a couple of months ago or last month about the F 250 sitting on the side of the road and parked in parking lots and everything, because they don’t have all the parts to finish production and get them up to sale.

Well, the Mach E refused to call it the Mustang. The Ford Mach E is no stranger to this either. [00:40:00] It is also hit by the same issues with

Crew Chief Eric: We have a huge contradiction here, though, don’t we, Tanya? Because there was another release that just came out from Ford that says

Executive Producer Tania: Given the higher than expected volume of pre order deposits that have been put down for the Ford F 150 Lightning, the electric truck, Ford is actually changing their production plan and saying they’re going to be doubling their original production numbers to keep up with this demand.

So it will be interesting to see how they can do that with this global chip shortage. It just isn’t a car manufacturing issue, it’s anything that requires Microchip.

Crew Chief Brad: I think the difference here is the Mach E is a car that was already in production and is already being sold and is out on the road. But the F-150 Lightning is not in production yet.

Correct.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re doing kind of the Tesla thing. They took all those orders in and then for vehicles to be built in the future.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. They’re hoping that the trip shortage. Goes away and they don’t get the chips they need in time, right?

Crew Chief Brad: It’ll correct itself. And I’m sure they’ve got inside information.

They’ve been in communication with the [00:41:00] chip producers, and they know that there probably is an end in sight. They just can’t divulge that information to us.

Executive Producer Tania: Or they start doing something like Tesla or Tesla to circumvent this allegedly is. building their own chip in what capacity that exactly means that they’re not having it outsourced but lays or us like what kind of chips

Crew Chief Eric: are

Executive Producer Tania: they

Crew Chief Brad: why don’t they just put the new apple a12 chip or whatever that comes on the phone why can’t we use those

Crew Chief Eric: because they’re made all on the same same place.

That’s the bigger problem. I mean, once places like Intel and micron and whatever moved their production overseas, they’re all at the same, let’s say Foxconn factory, you know, where they’re all being produced side by side. So the global chip shortage also has to do with rare earth metals and all that kind of stuff and people being able to produce them on the line.

So The Even the new Apple chip, that’s why there isn’t a new iPhone 13 yet. They’re still stuck on whatever they have, the 12s and the 11s. You’re starting to see a lot of re pops and refurbs and things like that. What I find interesting here in this contradiction on the Maquis [00:42:00] versus the Lightning is Is the Mach E really selling that well, right?

We haven’t seen sales numbers yet. So if it’s not selling well, it makes sense to halt its production to something like the Ford F 150, which we’re going to talk about here in a minute, best selling vehicle in North America.

Crew Chief Brad: The chip shortage is a great scapegoat for low production numbers, low sale numbers.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. And we saw that with the Camaro. We saw that with other vehicles where it’s like, it doesn’t make sense to keep this going. So let’s just blame the chip shortage and we can take this thing off the line. Speculation here. I’m not saying that that’s what the case is, but Brad, you’re a numbers guy on paper, I mean, just the most sense.

Executive Producer Tania: Just a quick look, apparently, without doing too much research, it does look like maki sales are continuing to grow month on month.

Crew Chief Eric: Where, I don’t know, because I don’t see them on the road. It’s like finding hen’s teeth. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. The numbers

Executive Producer Tania: are small, I think, in terms of production quantity.

So it’s not like they’re sold 20, 000. They sold, [00:43:00] apparently, in June, I think it was like 2, 500, barely. Oh, wow.

Crew Chief Brad: This is a good little tidbit because I have actually seen a couple makis on the road. I’ve seen more unique Porsche take hands than I have makis. And that’s a car that’s what, five times the cost of a maki?

Crew Chief Eric: Probably has five times the amount of chips in it too. You know, I love those. Marketing numbers. I mean, I see it all the time, even in my line of work where it’s like a hundred percent growth year over year. Yeah, you’re right. Last year you sold one and this year you sold two. So there you go to your point, Tanya.

If we don’t know what the sales numbers are, yes, the Mach E is continuing to grow, but at what rates, right? We’re not seeing 200, 000 producers. It’s not like the Mustang when it was introduced. Let’s talk about the Mustang and the Iacocca era where it outsold anything. It’s still the fastest selling car.

Like. Ever during its first production year. So they’re not going to see that on the Mach E, but to the point of the real sales numbers, the F 150 still holds the crown right now of the best selling car in North America. That’s the U S and [00:44:00] Canada combined. And based on some numbers that we’ve recently seen, which we’ll talk about here in a minute, but go where the money is.

If you’re going, I thought we

Executive Producer Tania: talked about that last month too, as part of the Slow down on some of the production was they were diverting where the microchips were going. So they could be slowing down production because they know if they’re seeing those pre orders being so much higher than what the Mach E’s were and Ford F 150 being the all time greatest bestselling vehicle in the history of the galaxy in North America, past, present, future, then, I mean, it behooves them to make sure that they can fulfill those orders.

Absolutely. And

Crew Chief Eric: I’m sure you’ll probably see things being peeled back or slowing on other vehicles as well. I mean, granted the big two, we won’t call them the big three anymore. The big two have been peeling back. Their model proliferation for a while. Right. I mean, the fusion’s gone. A lot of the passenger vehicles, you know, even on the Chevy side of disappeared.

I had the unfortunate experience of driving a brand new [00:45:00] Malibu the other day. They should stop making that car. I’m sorry. If you own one, uh, keep the Impala.

Executive Producer Tania: No, get rid of that trash too.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, since we are talking a little bit about GM. Let’s step into that for a moment.

Executive Producer Tania: The Chevy Bolt, there’s been several recalls that have happened around the Chevy Bolt and fires.

There has been a third recall, which essentially encompasses that every single Chevy Bolt globally has been recalled.

Crew Chief Brad: All three of them.

Executive Producer Tania: I think they sold more than three, surprisingly. I have to look at the numbers they’ve sold. I think like a couple hundred thousand or something. So I don’t know that I don’t know that the highest numbers were necessarily in the U.

S. Nonetheless, this is a, I think a billion plus fix for Chevy and the fixes replacing all the batteries. car, which is you just

Crew Chief Brad: turn a bolt over and take out the two double A’s and put two more in.

Executive Producer Tania: And the problem is, you know, with these electric cars, we’re [00:46:00] blaming, Oh, it’s a piece of crap. Chevy catches fire.

Well, Problem is Chevy didn’t invent the battery. Chevy didn’t make the battery, unlike sometimes Tesla claims to make all that stuff, right? This is why people get on their case because it’s like, well, if you’re making everything, then it’s your fault, right? So LG, Ken, South Korean battery manufacturer, the ones that are supplying all the batteries for the Chevy Volts, along with a bunch of other car manufacturers batteries, apparently there’s an issue in their manufacturing and not one, but multiple of their plants.

And so there’s some sort of instability, obviously they can’t divulge exactly what their battery chemistry is, but the lithium batteries are already known to be somewhat dangerous, and you know, there’s a lot of cobalt usually that goes into the batteries, which stabilizes the reactions, however, there’s issues with, you know, how much cobalt’s available, and that the cobalt comes from the Congo region, and there’s human rights issues, etc, so a lot of folks have been trying to dial back cobalt mining and whatnot, and so if you Take the cobalt out.

You got to replace it [00:47:00] with something else. And they’re replacing it with nickel. It sounds like maybe that chemistry isn’t quite maybe as stable as it needs to be. And it’s leading to battery fires possibly. So Chevy is trying to go after LG because they’re making the batteries and the batteries are catching fire.

We’ll see what comes out of that. If they can maybe recoup. Some of their money, but that’s a big problem. If LG Chem is making all these batteries, they’re supposed to be, I believe, supplying the ID Volkswagen ID batteries for those cars. I’m sure more is going to come out of this. If there truly is some sort of manufacturing issue.

Yeah. So this becomes like

Crew Chief Eric: a Takata problem where everybody’s getting their airbags from the same place. So, yeah, I see where you’re going with this and, you know, it’s going to be tough, maybe Chevy can harvest semiconductors from all these bolts and give everybody an Impala instead. And they can go, I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a growing pain also, because.

This is new frontier, all these batteries. And, you know, I like the one statement in the article. If it was easy to make a battery, [00:48:00] everybody would be doing it.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, Duracell and Energizer have been doing it forever. Come on now.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. Well, I think it’s a lot different to power your flashlight. Versus, you know, your car to go zero to 60 and then the unnecessary 1.

2 seconds, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Or shrinking, you know, accordion in the car, right? We’re

Executive Producer Tania: asking a lot of batteries. Today, that is not historically how we use them. Right?

Crew Chief Brad: How many dura cells would it take to power a bolt?

Executive Producer Tania: I forget. I went to that museum, the Reno car museum, and they had one of the first electric cars on display.

It had to go back through my photos because I took a picture of this thing. Like, You know, looking like one of those Model T, Tin Lizzy type vehicles. And I forget, it was an electric vehicle and it had like, I forget how many, like the car batteries we put in our cars. It had like, I forget how many dozens in order to make that thing have like 20 horsepower.

I

Crew Chief Eric: think they’re [00:49:00] insane. And they weighed like 9 million pounds. I was recently talking to somebody about the history of Porsche and you look at the lawner Porsche, which is like the very first one that Ferdinand senior built. And it was an electric vehicle. This is not a new concept to have an electric car, but back then, to your point, I mean, they weighed like nine tons and they went three miles an hour and they had the equivalent, you know, horsepower.

Of two terrible, but we’ve been playing with this science experiment for a very long time. And I hate to say, and I know I’m going to get chastised for this. It’s hard to beat petrol. It is consistent. If nothing else, it has been consistent for a hundred years.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, we’ve also had that many more years to develop it and do economies of scale and make it.

Cleaner and et cetera, et cetera. So this is the problem of being in the middle of innovation.

Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: Everybody’s going to bitch and moan and point fingers. And it’s huge growing pains for research and development to still be going on. But then at the [00:50:00] same time, trying to actually put it in the hands of the consumer.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s all fun and games until somebody’s battery blows up.

Executive Producer Tania: All fun and games till your house burns down because of your car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right. Exactly. One last bit of domestic news. What do we got?

Executive Producer Tania: So there’s always the raging debates that go on. Like, is there a car that’s faster than a Tesla in a drag race? You know, blah, blah, blah.

Can anything beat it? And there’s been tons of videos, right? Ferrari is going up against Tesla’s and Veyron’s and Porsche’s and blah, blah, blah. And I haven’t fully kept track of all this, but I believe finally, finally, ladies and gentle listeners, there has been a car that has beaten a model S plaid in a rolling drag race.

Crew Chief Brad: Can, I guess. I think it was a A 2016 Dodge Dart.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s brutal. That’s Savage right there. ? No, it was a HHR Ss.

Executive Producer Tania: I was about to say Cobo SI was about to say what it also was not , [00:51:00]

Crew Chief Eric: all those things, HHR

Executive Producer Tania: or any derivative thereof.

Crew Chief Eric: No front wheel drive cars were harmed in the beating of this Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Neither. Was it a Malibu or an Impala or any other flaming turd?

No. In order to beat a model S. Plaid version. All you need is RURK! Shelby GT500 modified to 1100 horsepower. Yeah! Hell yeah!

Crew Chief Eric: Yeehaw! That is not factory, that is not legitimate, and that is not fair. I don’t care how you call this.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I mean, one could argue the Shelby GT500 is a factory car. However, yes, it did require some modifications that weren’t base model in order to achieve a quarter mile mark of 7.

91 seconds at 159. 63 miles per hour. On the first round, second round, they got to 160. 94 miles per hour at 7. 66 seconds, beating the Tesla most times. [00:52:00]

Crew Chief Brad: By a very

Executive Producer Tania: slim margin. What was

Crew Chief Eric: that 2000 horsepower Challenger we talked about last month that doesn’t exist? Didn’t we name it like the bat out of hell or something like that?

That’s a production vehicle that needs to go up against Tesla.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, why, why aren’t people racing the Dodge Demon against the Tesla? Or are they in this losing? Cause the Dodge Demon is supposed to run seven, nine,

Executive Producer Tania: hold up, hold up. I don’t know. So that’s it. This is a rolling drag race. So I don’t know what, Oh my God,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s bullshit.

So there’s a little bit of a

Executive Producer Tania: difference. Stop the line with all wheel

Crew Chief Eric: drive and everything else. Yeah, that’s junk. And that’s what I’m saying. Pump the brakes because even the demon I’ve read that to get to that seven second number, Oh, you got to do all kinds

Crew Chief Brad: of shit to it. They got to

Crew Chief Eric: strip the car down.

It’s only got like one seat in it. No carpet. It’s not really the car you buy off the factory floor to get to that number.

Crew Chief Brad: No, no, it is. They just need to do a couple of little things. You can actually buy it without the seat. You pay a [00:53:00] dollar for the additional seat and the extra wheels and all that other bullshit.

It’s a package and you’re built to order Dodge Demon.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m

Executive Producer Tania: waiting for

Crew Chief Eric: the bat out of hell.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s an advantage of electric over petrol in. I mean, you get one run, but that one runs really fast because it puts down all the power immediately.

Crew Chief Eric: You don’t have to build up to it. It’s just, it just discharged.

Here’s the amount of voltage.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s almost not even really a fair comparison to even be doing like,

Crew Chief Eric: no, it’s like, let’s take a seven 47 and drag race it against an F 18 fighter jet. I mean, come on. I mean, it’s whatever. I mean, we’re always going to do it. Hell yeah. I mean, so let’s talk about. Our newest section that isn’t really new anymore because we found it and it was lost.

It’s our historical and lost and found section.

Crew Chief Brad: Before we hop into this first article, I just want to do my little cars. com search and tell you all what I found.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man, [00:54:00] here we

Crew Chief Brad: go. You can buy a brand new with three miles on the odometer 1991 Honda. Accord ex in white with a 2. 2 liter four cylinders, 16 valves, single overhead cam.

Executive Producer Tania: How much is it going for? I missed that

Crew Chief Brad: 33, 000. It’s

Executive Producer Tania: a

Crew Chief Brad: The Sam Linder Honda in California.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re shitting me.

Crew Chief Brad: Nope.

Executive Producer Tania: Sam Linder out of his mind, Honda in California.

Crew Chief Eric: That is insane. 33 grand for a 30 year old car. But, but

Executive Producer Tania: not even a good 30 year old car. At least it was something that I wanted. Not a fricking Accord EX.

Crew Chief Brad: But it’s, it’s white.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, did they really make any other exciting color? It’s, it’s

Crew Chief Brad: not silver.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: To quote [00:55:00] Hazmat, that white makes it rare. It’s rare.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, considering there was a lot of, you’re right, there were a lot of brown, gold, champagne y ones.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m throwing up in the back of my throat just thinking about it.

Crew Chief Brad: The next car after that is a 2000 Dodge Ram 2500 with 10 miles on the odometer. It’s exterior color is metallic. That’s all it says. And it’s 55, 555.

Crew Chief Eric: I just want to point out that metallic in my mind immediately conjured up the word rust. Cause rust is metallic.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s called

Executive Producer Tania: patina.

Crew Chief Brad: My brand new patina truck.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, for 55 grand, just hold out for the F 150 lightning people.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. Nobody wants a Dodge from 2000, please. Unless it’s a Cummins. Maybe.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, no, it’s 55, 555 because Facebook Marketplace wouldn’t let them put in the correct price.

Crew Chief Eric: The real price is 1234 like all Facebook [00:56:00] Marketplace ads. Ah, terrible.

Speaking of which, the Passat is still for sale. Facebook people, somebody buy this damn thing. I need it to go away. It is lost. Somebody find it.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s going to find his way to a wrecker.

Executive Producer Tania: No, it’s a good running car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Speaking of Volkswagens, there was a brand new 2001 GTI for sale for auction. I believe it was Germany.

It was in the UK. Yeah. It’s a silver 25th anniversary edition, which they did not bring the 25th anniversary edition over to the U S came over a year later as the three, three seven, but it’s got the BBS wheels, the special interior, you know, all that good stuff sold a brand new car for 30, 000. 38,000 pounds.

38, 2 50. So translates to 52,494.

Executive Producer Tania: I remember there being the 25th anniversary, GTI in this country. ’cause it came in the three colors. It came in black. It came in [00:57:00] that bumblebee yellow and it came in that candy blue and they said it was a 25th anniversary or they just sang that and it was 3, 3 7. Ah,

Crew Chief Eric: they were sold here as the 20 ae.

The 20th. That’s right. Anniversary cards. Oh, that’s

Executive Producer Tania: right.

Crew Chief Eric: Because you have to remember the GTI came in Europe earlier than it did here. Here it came out in 1983. That’s the date we set at. So 20 years from there, 2003, 2004. You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. Right. Yeah. 52 grand for a Mark IV VW, especially a 150 horse motor.

Yeah. No, thank you. But I found something interesting this month. You know, you’ve heard of the Flying Spur, which is a Bentley. It’s a, Volkswagen product, we’ll call it what it is. It’s, it’s an A8 somewhere underneath there. A gentleman decided that having a, what is considered a rare Bentley to begin with wasn’t rare enough, he wanted to turn it into a ute that’s right, folks.

He contracted with a builder. To his specifications to develop a [00:58:00] Bentley flying spur pickup truck. And it looks like every other Mark four Volkswagen pickup truck conversion that you’d imagine.

Crew Chief Brad: Who gave Daniel access to a flying spur?

Crew Chief Eric: In all honesty, the build quality is really good. I love the teak wood finish and all that, but again, it conjures up my quintessential question of.

Why?

Crew Chief Brad: Why didn’t they just buy a Chevy SSR?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. That’s exactly what it looks like. It’s terrible. It’s absolutely terrible. Granted, Bentley doesn’t make a ute. They don’t make a pickup. They make the Bentayga, whatever that is, Toreg.

Crew Chief Brad: They should have done this to a Bentayga.

Crew Chief Eric: That would have looked also terrible.

I mean, I just don’t get this. I

Crew Chief Brad: mean,

Crew Chief Eric: this goes back to what Tanya says all the time. Rich people doing rich people things because nobody in the right

Crew Chief Brad: mind. The best

Crew Chief Eric: part of the article was this guy spent quarter million dollars in the car alone, if not more. The. Custom Coach Builder said we will not disclose how much he spent to do this conversion.

So [00:59:00] I’m assuming he probably doubled down on this vehicle. So here’s a half million dollar Bentley Ute. Have at it, folks.

Executive Producer Tania: So for a little bit of levity, there is a link that you can see a visual map representation of the best selling cars. In each country around the world, in the world, we already talked about Ford F 150 is the greatest best selling car, this side of the galaxy, inside the Milky Way, since the Milky Way came about.

Yes, in North America. So the United States, it’s the F 150, it’s the F series in Canada. Ford takes the cake in North America, more or less. And then you have like countries like Italy, where is anybody surprised that the Fiat Panta is the number one selling vehicle in the country? No, I mean, you step foot out of the airport and there’s like 50 of them in front of you.

Crew Chief Brad: I love that Kosovo was the Dacia Sandero.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, Germany is the Volkswagen Golf. I’m not really [01:00:00] too shocked by that one either, but I think there are some interesting thing ones in there. Like, actually, I didn’t know that The Irish were into the Toyota Corolla, but cool for them. Another, I think, fun fact is which is the best selling car in the most number of countries?

Crew Chief Eric: I was going to bring that up. It’s the Hilux beats everything. When you look at it, it’s in the worst places on the planet. Like Australia is the outback and Africa, South America, everywhere where the roads suck, you find the Hilux like a hundred percent it’s everywhere. And then if it isn’t a Hilux, it was like.

Toyota Land Cruiser and like other stuff, just like it. I’m like, yes. So F 150 might be King on our shores, but around the world, the high luxes, we don’t get to 16

Executive Producer Tania: countries. The Toyota Hilux is the number one vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know what, if it was available here, I’d buy one too, because I think they’re freaking awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: It is. It’s called the Toyota Tacoma.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s just cause

Executive Producer Tania: the Toyota pickup in North America.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s not as good. The Hilux is [01:01:00] better and it comes into diesel, but I did see recently. There are folks. Importing right hand drive Hilux’s from overseas. And there was one at summit point at summer bash. I thought it was super cool.

It took me completely by surprise. Cause I’m like, what is this Navy blue thing that looks sort of like an eighties forerunner. And then I hear it, it’s diesel and the guys on the wrong side of the car. And I went, Oh, that’s the car from top gear. It’s super cool. And I got to talk to him for just a minute.

And you know, they’re now coming in gray market, like a lot of other cars from overseas. And I think that’s super neat. I don’t know why Toyota just doesn’t sell the Hilux. Here in Hilux trim, the way we all have seen it on television, the way we would want to, to your point, I think another car that got my attention and it was surprising to see in places that I didn’t expect was the Renault Clio kind of popping up here and there.

And I also thought it was interesting that more SCOTAs, which are a derivative of VAG, they’re just rebadged are showing up more in Europe than the Volkswagen’s themselves. Kind of interesting.

Executive Producer Tania: Do we want to [01:02:00] address that there are six countries where the. A Dacia of some sort is the number one selling car.

Crew Chief Brad: I want to address that the Tesla, any Tesla at all, has made this list. The Model 3 in the Netherlands and Norway.

Executive Producer Tania: Norwegians are pretty electric.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but why a Tesla? Because

Executive Producer Tania: Tesla basically, who else was there?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s other electric cars out there. I also want to point out with the Dacia, did we know that there are five different Dacia models?

Stop melting my

Crew Chief Brad: brain. The Sandero and then the Sandero adjacent.

Executive Producer Tania: So there’s the Sandero, which takes

Crew Chief Brad: two

Executive Producer Tania: countries. There’s the Duster, the Logan. The docker twice. So there’s four different ones. Three more than I knew about.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s three more than there should be.

Crew Chief Brad: I love how this Saudi Arabia loves the Hyundai accent.

Crew Chief Eric: Also Kazakhstan buys Camrys. I think that’s like the funniest thing on this map, hands down. I get crazy [01:03:00] this, but anyway, I think when you guys dive into this, it’ll be in our show notes. It’s actually very interesting to see the highest selling numbers of cars around the world. It’s pretty shocking and very revealing too.

So pretty surprise,

Crew Chief Brad: surprise. The Russian leader is a lot of, I mean, how arrogant are the Russians and the Americans that their number one selling vehicle is their trash.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, they’re not allowed to import anything

Crew Chief Brad: and the

Executive Producer Tania: Italy and Germany or, and, and, uh, Spain Makes sense. Yeah. You know, and, and yeah.

So,

Crew Chief Eric: well, if it’s a Sayat in Spain, it’s just a Volkswagen. I mean, let’s be serious, right? That’s

Crew Chief Brad: Sure. So Volkswagen really is not the car of the people. Toyota is the car of the people because more people across the globe by Toyota.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of around the world. I came across a video recently, a husband and wife from the Netherlands, of all places, like we were talking about with their very electric Ford with their Teslas.

This gentleman still runs around in the 1915 model T as [01:04:00] a sort of retirement, you know, adventure with his wife. He decided to traverse the world North, South in his model T. So he started in Edom, you know, where the, cheese is from in the Netherlands, and he made their first trip all the way down to South Africa.

It was 22, 000 kilometers, and they had not a single problem with the vehicle. Their first leg took 180 days. They set off on their second leg of the trip in the United States, uh, doing the United States and Canada and basically a little bit of Latin America. 28, 000 kilometers suffered two failures. One of which was a flat tire and the other one was a malfunctioning alternator on their third leg.

They did South America, and then they were going to do their fourth leg, which was in Australia, New Zealand, and that part of the world, again, got traversing North to South, kind of keeping Theme, unfortunately, when they returned home, they were involved in a car accident in the Netherlands and the Model T was destroyed.

It was completely totaled. So there’s actually still a campaign going on. Cause this was right at the [01:05:00] front end of COVID and some other things and whatnot to try to get these folks back in the Model T and finish their world tour. You know, it’s not that easy to just go get one anymore. If you don’t already have one to buy one from somebody else.

And it’s not the same car again, going back to that, that Philosophy lesson about Theseus’s ship, you start and rebuild. Is it really the same car? And I believe they were still working to do that. There was a big push from Ford to help these people get back on the road. And as I dug into it a little bit more, because this is an older video that I had seen for the first time, you know, keeping with our lost and found idea here, I didn’t see any follow up as to whether or not they were able to complete this particular journey.

But I thought it was really, really cool. It’s about a four or five minute video. Telling their story and all that. And if you haven’t seen it before, it’s definitely worth spending the amount of time to check it out.

Crew Chief Brad: Where do you find an alternator for 1915 model?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, no, that is a question I just can’t answer, but you know what I can answer top 20 highest selling cars at auction.

So [01:06:00] another. Another article that came across my desk, it just kind of falls in line with this whole theme that we always talk about a loss of found about ridiculous auctions and whatnot. So the low end of this scale is in the 17, 80 million range. The upper end is on the 50 million range. No surprise here.

11 of 20, over 50 percent of the vehicles on this top 20 highest grossing. Auction cars of all time are Ferraris. A handful of others are also Italian, they’re Alfa Romeos. You have the rest of the lineup inside of there, outside of Italians, are mostly British. McLarens, Jaguars, Aston Martins, etc. So an interesting lineup, if you haven’t seen them, check them out.

Crew Chief Brad: With the way prices have been going, I’m surprised to not see a Porsche on this list.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yeah, the singers aren’t there yet, so it’s only a matter of time. They’re, they’re only a 2 million. You gotta, you gotta cross that 17 million ceiling. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: Wipe my ass with 2 million.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, Tonya [01:07:00] mentioned plaid earlier.

You know how we talked about with Donovan. couple episodes back about where this plaid comes from ludicrous mode and all these kinds of things. It comes from the movie space balls, right? But plaid is not an uncommon thing in the automotive world. And it actually was started at Volkswagen.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. There’s a article on the Volkswagen newsroom that came out.

goes into this in more detail, but essentially there was a female designer in Germany back in the day. Back in the 60s, she joined as a young lady. She’d formerly been a painter and chocolate tier candy box designer. So she had an artistic background, knew how to put colors together, things like that. They hired her in their fabrics and colors department in Wolfsburg.

Apologize. I’m sure that’s not the best accented pronunciation, but close enough. And yes, she is basically the founder of the plaid interior that we have come to know as standard [01:08:00] GTI today. And also as a side note, the golf ball shift knob was also her doing as well. It’s kind of a sidebar. So she had a lot of influences essentially from being in and around Great Britain because Great Britain is known for the tartan and all that, which is just, you know, the piece of cloth that’s plaid.

And so she got inspired from that. And even though I think I was talking about how she actually was very much like a black and white color palette person. Like she did enjoy like just having that contrast, but then still wanted to marry some color to break that up. And so she got inspired by the plaid that she saw in great Britain and incorporated that into the interior design of the golf and then clearly a smash hit and carried on.

To this day,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s not all. She also discovered what we now know is metallic paint on our vehicles. She discovered the iridescent pearl color. Do you apply to a car service using transparent foil? So [01:09:00] anybody with a metallic car in their driveway with the metallic flake and all that. You can say thank you to, uh, gunhill, to, to gunhill.

Crew Chief Eric: Proud Gunhill. Let’s get it right. Right. , so I’m not saying all roads lead back to Volkswagen. Interesting things are invented sometimes by accident and come from the weirdest of places. We’ve seen plaid interiors pop up in all sorts of cars, but that’s kind of really the inception mainstream that it became like this cult thing.

To have these certain patterns and there is a specific GTI red, black, gray, and white pattern that we’ve all come accustomed to, which is kind of cool. And you’re seeing that resurface even today in the most recent mark eight models of the GTI. It hasn’t gone away. They’ve tried. Variations on the theme over the years, but we’ve always gone back to that original pattern.

And it’s just, it looks really cool. And it still holds up to this day. So Brad, I found something really interesting this month. Did you know? Oh yeah. Do I know what

Executive Producer Tania: this is?

Crew Chief Eric: I think I have found the oldest new vehicle. I think I’ve [01:10:00] broken your record. In speaking with a guest that will be on a future episode of Break Fix, he informed us that he has a new, never been sold 1950s.

Porsche diesel tractor available with certificate of authenticity from the America Porsche Diesel Corporation, and it’s located in Virginia. More on that later this season, when we interview Sal Finnelli, president and owner operator of Porsche Diesel USA. It’s a very interesting episode in the fact that it is car adjacent and brings to light a side of.

You know, motorsports icon, Porsche that many people are not familiar with. So be on the lookout for that episode later this season, as we go over Porsche diesel tractors with mountain man, Dan, as my cohost on that particular episode. But I also found something else. I have to thank mountain man, Dan, for this one as well.

It is a 1978. Classic film. No

Executive Producer Tania: thanks to be given.

Crew Chief Eric: It stars [01:11:00] Annie Potts, Janine from Ghostbusters, and Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, in a movie called Corvette Summer. And although Dan wanted to do this viewing party and review of the movie, I don’t think it needs to be done. I think all you need to do is watch this four minute trailer and that’s four minutes too much.

Executive Producer Tania: Hot garbage.

Crew Chief Eric: What got me though is Where the hell did they film this? It’s a right hand drive Corvette.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. Toward the end, I was like, wait a second, pause. Why is he in the passenger seat driving? It

Crew Chief Eric: to realize it was Mark Hamill at first too. Like, antipods, right away, I got it. The plot line is implausible.

It starts off like a seventies porn. I mean, it’s terrible. Terrible.

Executive Producer Tania: So I just had to look up cause very familiar with Hamill’s career. I mean, everybody is. I mean, he, Star Wars, basically, and then a lot of voice acting.

Crew Chief Eric: The Joker.

Executive Producer Tania: And Annie, yes, Miss Potts, people know her from Ghostbusters, people should know [01:12:00] her from Designing Women, people should know her from several other shows.

When I was watching this too, I was like, how did this not derail her career? I had to look this up. This was her fourth credit in IMDb. So this is her fourth on This could have been a

Crew Chief Eric: career Ending movie for her.

Executive Producer Tania: We could have had somebody else in the Ghostbusters movie because of this hot trash.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, who else would get flack to the Sugarbaker sisters other than Annie Potts?

Come on now. I don’t know. Dr. Venkman. Dr. Venkman. You got a call. God, I love those movies.

Crew Chief Brad: That is must see TV.

Executive Producer Tania: Dumpster fire. It

Crew Chief Brad: must see it go into

Crew Chief Eric: the garbage can.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I guess, I guess Mark Hamill’s lucky that his career wasn’t sidelined. Yeah, he’s lucky

Crew Chief Brad: he didn’t, he’s lucky he got to meet Luke Skywalker again after this.

Executive Producer Tania: I would, I gotta look it up and see where did this fall in his

Crew Chief Eric: We’re gonna call up our friends at Take Two and Everything I Learned From Movies. We do need to do a group. Viewing of this like mystery science 3000 [01:13:00] style on this thing, because it is atrocious. Check out the YouTube clip where we show the teaser for this.

I mean, it is all the glitter and glam that you would expect from any 1978 movie. It is time for us to move on to random EVs and concepts and Famous name in the motor sports world. Dennis Palatov has come up with a new radical battery idea for cars. He’s famous for designing some very sleek and aerodynamic concepts and some very lightweight cars, kind of on the nose of, The ideology of Lotus, add lightness, then power, those types of things.

And now he’s saying, you know, for the EV world, same idea, highly streamlined vehicles, super light, all this kind of thing, granted, he’s designing around, you know, tube frame, two seater, almost roadster type cars. But what he’s also saying is, look, folks, you’re running around doing 40 miles a day in a car that has 400 miles of range, and then you’re doing all these, you know, recharging exercises.

He does specifically call [01:14:00] out Tesla a couple of times in the article. And he says, why not put in batteries that only provide you with what you need? This way we could distribute the load of the batteries necessary for all of these EVs. We’ve talked about multiple times, where are we going to get all the precious metals?

If they’re pulling back on cobalt, where are we going to get the cobalt necessary to build these batteries? So to his point, I get it. If you’re only driving a certain distance, smaller batteries makes more sense. However, if you want to go anywhere further than your normal commute, This doesn’t work. I’m kind of torn on what he’s proposing.

It doesn’t not make sense, but on the same token, meh, whatever. I thought at first, you know, with the clickbait headline, he was going to introduce some new revolutionary battery technology. Just wasn’t the case.

Crew Chief Brad: The similar concept to the naysayers that say you don’t need a 700 horsepower Dodge Hellcat.

You just need a car that can get you from point A to point B. Going the speed limit. My response to that is, fuck you. Yeah, I do. [01:15:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Because I can’t.

Crew Chief Brad: Because I want Merca. Merca.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the answer is, you’re absolutely right. However, I still want one.

Crew Chief Brad: What does he drive? He drives a Hilux, doesn’t he?

Crew Chief Eric: Drives a car that he designed himself.

ACS Endero, Logan, or Docker.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. How many resources did he burn up in research and development for his own car?

Crew Chief Eric: But on the brighter side of concepts, Like we talked about names are important. There’s a name that’s coming back. What if I told you Integra?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, sorry. Can you repeat the question? No, I’m just kidding.

I don’t hate the Integra that much. It was fine. Integra slash RSX, I guess. I think that’s probably exciting. It should be good news for us. Cause it’s what should be a hot hatch entry. Liftback, there’s always

Crew Chief Eric: a liftback.

Executive Producer Tania: Liftback, hot hatch, whatever. A compact car that’s not a freaking saloon. Acura, Honda, whatever.

The Civic is going away. What else do they have? [01:16:00] What was it? 91 Accord EX.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. Available today. 33 grand, same price as a Civic Type R.

Executive Producer Tania: So, I mean, this is a good thing to see a sporty little compact.

Crew Chief Brad: My guess is it’ll be an SAV, just like the Eclipse.

Executive Producer Tania: You know That would

Crew Chief Eric: be terrible. And the worst part is there’s no pictures of it.

There’s nothing other than the shot of the headlight, which it looks like an NSX headlight, to be honest with you, with an embossed Integra font there. But to your point about the Civic going away, Is it really going away or is it just switching places? Is it changing outfits, right? Is it the Civic now becoming the Integra?

Immediately when I read that I was like, what’s the over under on this just being a Type R with different badges on

Executive Producer Tania: it? What’s the over and under being the size of an Accord or, good point Brad, being a freaking compact crossover thing?

Crew Chief Brad: Could end up being a Acura version of the HR V or whatever that thing is called.

The smaller one?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s their version of the, it’s the Mustang Mach E. It’s the Integra, except it’s a fricking SUV. It’s just, it’s an Integra on stilts. [01:17:00] Yeah, it’s interesting. Look forward to seeing what comes of it. Not going to get too excited yet till they have some more photos leaked. We might as well hold our expectations low so that we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Crew Chief Eric: I agree with that statement. That’s what I’m going to go with. That’s what I’m going to lead with. And we will follow up on this car when we know more about it. Tanya, as we know, has an affinity for small hatchbacks and small vehicles in general. Here’s something new from Minnie.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a small, small world.

Yes, apparently, and I do not know, I apologize, who this famous fashion designer out of Britain is.

Crew Chief Brad: Not very famous after all.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I mean, not over here on this side of the pond, but likely over there, but fashion guru, Paul Smith has re imagined, redesigned a Mini Cooper SE to be simple and sustainable. So what does that mean exactly?

It’s environmentally friendly. It’s simplicity in its beauty, if you will.

Oh my God.

I kind of liked the, where he [01:18:00] went with it. Cause essentially he gutted this thing. It’s ready for the track.

Crew Chief Eric: 100%. I agree with that. And some of the things he did, especially those door cards and whatnot. I’m like, I’m going to copy that for my race car.

Cause I like the way that turned out. I read the troll posts at the bottom. We’ll call them reviews. We’ll call them reviews. I’ll be nice. I mean, most people are like, this is heinous. This is disgusting. Why would you ever do this? This is a publicity stunt, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, yeah, I see it.

Nobody’s ever going to buy a car. That’s basically a gutted race car.

Executive Producer Tania: No. And I don’t think this is, I’m not sure this is supposed. To be out for production. I feel like this is just kind of a one off like, Oh, I did this. Oh, we can be sustainable. We can be more green with our cars, but no, absolutely. I was trying to like read through and be like, all right.

So yeah, strip like everything out. Did you leave the sound deadening? Because no one is going to drive one of these on the road when you have none of the sound bending and the carpet, because people already don’t like sporty suspension because it’s too, yeah. So this would be [01:19:00] heinous. to drive on. Yeah, everything is like, what’s left of the door cards is made out of cork and the dashboard is like made out of cork and also partially clear.

Essentially, he stripped out anything that he deemed was not necessary. So not really adding value or function, strip that out of the car. Like, I’m not opposed to the stairwell kind of. Parking back to the day when the steering wheel was a steering wheel. And he stripped out all the buttons and all that stuff.

I’m not on board that we wrapped it in a tennis racket handle wrap. That’s a little bit,

Crew Chief Eric: we

Executive Producer Tania: could have spent a

Crew Chief Eric: little bit more money there. I think. That gets sticky. And when it gets hot too, so gross,

Executive Producer Tania: I just had to unwrap two of my tennis rackets because the wrap disintegrated, touched it and it just powder black dust everywhere.

You thought the soft

Crew Chief Eric: touch stuff in the two thousands was bad. That’s going to be nasty.

Executive Producer Tania: No. Yeah. So, I mean, it would have been better off just like whatever the base material, the steering wheel is just polish it nicely sanded and just [01:20:00] like an old wood

Crew Chief Eric: steering wheel. Exactly. Exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: Anyway. So this is this fashion designers.

Bespoke, simplistic, bare bones car. The outside is unpainted, so going back to the car earlier where it’s bare metal, I guess this is, I would hope, at least clear coated or something, but no paint on it, so you get silver, gunmetal gray.

Crew Chief Eric: You can have any color you want, as long as it’s metallic.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s ready to be painted, folks.

Inside is painted blue, though, it makes no sense. They didn’t build a car from the ground up. He took an existing car and stripped it of everything. So he obviously started with a blue car.

Crew Chief Eric: I have issues with this. Okay. First of all, every fashion designer car I’ve ever seen is always to use your quote

hot garbage,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

So I don’t care who it comes from, whatever. I mean, this guy could be Gucci or I don’t care. Right. It doesn’t matter. Ralph Lauren. Whatever. [01:21:00]

Executive Producer Tania: That’s usually the other extreme. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. Of ridiculous. Yeah. Of ridiculous. But what I’m getting at here is, first of all, it’s made of sustainable materials. The car is still out of freaking metal.

So I don’t get it. It’s not like he rebuilt the car out of recycled cardboard. Like you mentioned on last month’s episode. Second of all, the chemical process to strip that car down to bare metal wasn’t necessarily Eco friendly. Third of all, the stuff he stripped out of the car, I don’t think that was the biggest detriment to the planet, the stuff that was in there.

Because here’s the deal, all that cork for the longest time, weren’t they even talking about they had to make synthetic corks for wine bottles because it’s an endangered species of tree and you can’t do all this kind of stuff. So I’m like, I don’t really buy that. And the other thing was you take away my racer brain.

It’s the first car I looked at and said, holy crap. You just made a Tesla look high class because it is kind of janky inside. If you’re don’t appreciate it from a motorsport [01:22:00] perspective.

Executive Producer Tania: So I think the outside actually looks nice. Wheels are gross. Those

Crew Chief Eric: wheels are disgusting. I’m

Executive Producer Tania: not looking at the wheels cause you can change those easily, but whatever minor, like the trim things that you change, it doesn’t look bad.

I think exterior wise, put a different set of wheels on it and paint them thing. It looks good. The interior. No, would I want that as my car? No, but I think I would take your arguments and take come at a different perspective. I don’t think sustainably. He’s trying to make 100 percent sustainable car. I think you could take it from the perspective of that’s not attainable.

However, There are many things you could do to make a car more sustainable. It doesn’t need all these things. I think there’s a problem with how gutted the interior is because realistically, how does this pass safety? So I think that’s an issue. And I forgot what my third point was. Nonetheless, I think this is just an artistic piece.

And we just leave it at that. It’s more of a, get people thinking that there may be more simplistic things you can [01:23:00] do that are a little more sustainable, but I don’t think at the end of the day, you’re like, what’s sustainable making the whole damn thing out of wood. No, that’s not sustainable either.

Cause now we’re talking about Vietnam. Did I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, come on now.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, he did it, but now, but now the argument is, well, you’re chopping down trees, right? So I go, I go, I go back.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, well, not even that really, but I go back and forth on that because some of the things I thought were really cool again, from a racer perspective, he replaced the glass with a new kind of Lexan, right?

I forget what he called it. which I thought was really cool, super lightweight, but plastic made from petroleum glass is made from sand.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I don’t know how they made the glass, but for instance, he replaced the floor mats that he did put back in were apparently from recycled plastic. Okay. That’s a sustainable thing to do.

We’re burning through plastic. Like it’s. nobody’s business, whether it’s plastic bottles, food packaging, etc, etc. So if they’re able to take that or even tires and recycle the rubber and turn them into floor mats, I mean, that’s a positive thing. So [01:24:00] there are aspects of, Hey, we can be more sustainable and friendly in our design.

You don’t have to start from scratch every time with petroleum products to make every component in the vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: The one thing that was missing from this, as we kind of Finalize this thought stood out to me as I read the whole article, not one time did they mention how much weight he saved out of car.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I would imagine it has to

Crew Chief Eric: be a lot.

I’d be curious, but they wouldn’t say they didn’t weigh it. So it’s kind of like,

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know what the point. of it, of any of it was other than like the guy did it. I’m surprised we generated this much conversation on it, but good talk.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: Moving on. We’d be remiss if we didn’t move on. It’s time to talk about Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God, here we go.

Executive Producer Tania: So there’s three points to hit here. And I think it ties back to some things we were already talking about earlier around supply chain issues. Microchip delays, things of that nature. So the Tesla semi truck, was it just me or did that thing drop off the face of the earth? Cause that, that thing was coming.

Like I thought [01:25:00] five years ago already, it was hot and heavy and orders were made and we were going to make so many of them in crickets. Which is, let me offend some people, kind of par for the Tesla course, right? Because every time, like, we’re announcing something, it’s always like six years later that it actually comes to fruition.

Whatever. But, you know, that boy who cried wolf gets a little old after a while. So the Tesla’s truck is once again delayed and it’s very unclear as to what the delay is but it sounds like it is essentially supply chain issues and refocusing. Kind of what we were talking about earlier with the Ford is they’re refocusing their energy and The supplies that they do have, the semi and the Cybertruck as they both are delayed.

They do kind of talk a little bit about, We believe we remain on track to build our first model Y vehicles in Berlin and Austin in 2021. Well, 2021 is almost over folks. The pace of the respective production ramps will be influenced by the successful introduction of many new product and manufacturing technologies.

ongoing supply chain [01:26:00] related challenges and regional permitting. To better focus on these factories and due to the limited availability of battery cells and global supply chain challenges, we have shifted the launch of the semi truck program to 2022. We are also making progress on the industrialization of Cybertruck, which is currently planned for Austin production subsequent to Model Y.

I mean, it goes hand in hand. The Cybertruck is also delayed. The Cybertruck was supposed to come out this year. It’s supposed to be in production. That’s not happening. That one’s vague too. I would assume the whole we’re shipping the model Y is part of it. There’s also question as to, are they having problems with the design?

Or,

Crew Chief Eric: or could it be, they got to figure out how to resell those carbon credits that they sold everybody that got returned. Or B, is it because they’re under investigation for Tesla’s hitting emergency vehicles? Let’s unpack that.

Executive Producer Tania: Or, before we unpack that, C, they’re seeing how well the F 150 is already putting [01:27:00] pre sales in, and they’re like, hmm, maybe this triangle blob thing polygon from Nintendo 64 days isn’t what people want as a pickup truck.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s specifically why I put 100 deposit. Can

Crew Chief Eric: we

Executive Producer Tania: get a big doy

Crew Chief Eric: from Brad?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So, I mean, Those people are all blind. You like the look of that thing, I guess, to each their own. I mean, I’m not a pickup truck fan, but give me the F 150 all day, every day. You can haul.

I have to. If you’re

Crew Chief Eric: telling

Executive Producer Tania: me I have to have a pickup truck, I would like a traditional looking pickup truck. So give me the F 150, give me a Rivian, give me whatever, as long as it looks good. Square body Chevy,

Crew Chief Eric: Dan will get you one tomorrow.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s hot.

Executive Producer Tania: I do not want one. So they are also under investigation right now because of the number of times their Teslas have struck emergency vehicles while operating in the autonomous mode, which they’re still [01:28:00] claiming is fully autonomous.

And then also Elon Musk recently tweeted in the last day or so how their autonomous beta testing version, whatever the heck they’re on 9. 2 or something. Eh, might not be that great. He’s like, literally said something to that effect. In my opinion, it’s not so good. Oh, okay. Yes, that’s what the rest of us know.

Because A, it is not fully autonomous. There’s no such thing yet. There’s no vehicle that you can lay down in the back seat and get to where you’re going without dying. Okay. I mean, you might get there once, but I wouldn’t put my face in that more than once. But it becomes a

Crew Chief Eric: hearse at that point, you go straight to the funeral coffin,

Executive Producer Tania: converse into a casket and you’re done.

I guess it’s not like there’s been like hundreds and hundreds of these accidents, but I mean, there’s been like almost like a dozen or so over the last five years, which is more than enough. to make people go why is it always happening when there’s an emergency vehicle on the side of the road with their lights flashing, particularly in night or low light [01:29:00] conditions?

What is wrong with this technology that’s not seeing what it should be seeing, right? And I mean, I think it’s Tesla themselves need to investigate this. That’s pretty serious. Often when there’s an emergency vehicle on the side of the road, there is a human being on the side of the road outside of said emergency vehicle.

It

Crew Chief Eric: does seem to be a reoccurring theme, whether it’s police cars, ambulances, et cetera. It’s like the camera system on the Tesla target fixates on those flashing lights. It must freak out the camera in such a way that it causes The thing to become basically like a homing beacon or like a, like a targeted missile.

I mean, it’s just, it’s

Executive Producer Tania: nothing happening. It’s blinding something there. I have read he’s very adamant. Tesla’s are only going to be using the camera technology as opposed to other people’s autonomous vehicles are a combination of the camera, radar, LIDAR, all these things, or, or so my understanding is the, it’s kind of insistent that it’s going to be a hundred percent of cameras.

It’s like, okay, maybe one day, but it doesn’t seem like the camera technologies. Quite as good as the human eye that’s paying attention, plenty of people at the [01:30:00] hands of the wheel that have struck emergency vehicles also. So

Crew Chief Eric: I still think the biological alternative, you know, the organics in your head are still far superior to any camera and any computer.

And that’s part

Executive Producer Tania: of the debate too, is just a computer. they’re not sophisticated enough to have that reason component and to understand and to get the other clues that can warn you about something.

Crew Chief Eric: Not on a computer that small. I mean, yeah, sure. If you got big blue from IBM in the backseat. Yeah. Yeah. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, if you’ve got three stories of I’m sure it can be better than the human eye, but yeah, no, at any rate,

Crew Chief Eric: Brad’s a huge fan of Toyota, as we learned earlier, but we heard something interesting

Crew Chief Brad: and this is something we don’t hear very often, but BMW has recalled it’s super a model or wait, I didn’t get that right.

BMW has recalled it’s Toyota super a model for a breaking issue. Basically, it causes them to not have brake assist, which means it’s very difficult to stop the car. And once it’s in motion, [01:31:00] so if you have a BMW Supra, make sure you get down to your BMW dealer and get this BMW Supra issue taken care of.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that the Zupra? Zupra with a Z?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, your BMW Zupra.

Crew Chief Eric: So I have to say, I actually rode in one of these recently. During summer bash weekend, I got to the right I got to right seat in a new Supra. I went in with a little bit of prejudice going, uh, it’s just a Z4. It’s just a Z4. It’s not going to be that good.

I will be honest with you. It is really, really good. Surprisingly good, incredibly fast, very agile, unlike any other new car I’ve been in. Granted, there are cars that are better. I will take a 2016, 2017 ACR any day of the week. 911 GT3. The Corvette C7 I think is a better car overall, but for what it is as this cooperative effort between two brands that I never saw coming together [01:32:00] to work on something like this.

It’s really, really good. It’s the best. BMW Toyota has ever built.

Crew Chief Brad: You mean is the best Toyota BMWs ever built?

Crew Chief Eric: It depends on which side of the street you live on.

Crew Chief Brad: Now, question, did you have an issue with the wind buffeting? Because there was a huge complaint from owners with the windows down. It was almost undriveable because of the wind buffeting issue.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, to be honest, no. I didn’t notice it at all because of the track you are forced to run with the windows down. Granted, I had my helmet on, but it was not this over exaggerated blowing over a Coke bottle type of scenario as everybody described it. I actually thought much like other cars with a similar shape like a 944 or the Audi TT.

There was hardly any airflow coming into the vehicle. It was kind of hot in there. Now, granted it’s got enough horsepower. You could probably run around the track with the air condition on and not even feel it, but I never noticed any of the wind buffeting or anything like that. And the brakes seem to work just [01:33:00] fine.

All four days that this car was on track, no issues there, but. I would say the only downside to the Supra is that it doesn’t come with a manual transmission. I think that would be my only gripe, especially when you look at the new BRZ, when you look at the new Z400 coming from Nissan, they’re being offered with manuals, it’d be really cool.

If the super came in a manual, because I don’t think it would take anything away from it, right? Everybody says, Oh, but the double clutch is so much faster, blah, blah, blah. Granted, if you’re Randy Pope’s or Tom Christiansen, or one of those guys running around the Nurburgring doing a power lap for us, normal pedestrians.

On a regular track day, I still think the manual is a lot more fun and you have a lot more control. You can kind of decide when you want it to shift and all that kind of thing. Just to be an old timer, you know, call me a boomer. I think it would be really cool if the Supra came in a stick, just like all the other two door sports cars that are coming out right now.

Crew Chief Brad: And if any of our listeners have a new Supra, please let me know and reach out because I would love to see [01:34:00] if I Fit in one

Crew Chief Eric: again, if you haven’t driven one, I highly recommend it. And for the money, I’d say it’s a good compromise compared to some of the other stuff that’s out there. Now, is it going to be as good price wise as the 400 Z?

No, if the 400 Z comes in where they’re saying it’s going to come in, that’s going to be the hot ticket next year when it’s officially slated to come out. But moving on

Executive Producer Tania: rich people, doing rich people, things

Crew Chief Brad: you didn’t say that. Right. As rich people doing rich people, things.

Executive Producer Tania: New Enrich people, fangs. I mean, I think we can just read this headline and then move on.

Now there’s a license, three quarter size Ferrari, two 50 Testa Rosa for fancy kids.

Crew Chief Eric: How much does this thing sell for? That’s what we wanna know. It’s up there with the Bugatti Baby two. It’s up there with that Aston Martin James Bond thing. What are we talking about price wise? I’m just curious.

Executive Producer Tania: We are talking about for a whopping 37 miles an hour.

It is so expensive they don’t list the price in the article.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a Ferrari, of course. You only pay for the best. Well, since we’re talking about ways to blow your [01:35:00] money, two things came across my desk this month. I found some really cool logo merch, officially licensed products at paddockcollectionstore.

com. So if you’re looking for stuff from F1 teams, Brumos Porsche, IMSA related stuff, pretty much different facets of the motorsport world, check out paddockcollectionstore. com for some actually great sales, reasonably priced, officially licensed merchandise. And on top of that, I saw an ad on Instagram for something called The block zone, which is the coolest custom Lego sets I have ever seen.

So there’s a group in the UK that puts together and sells sports cars, race cars, et cetera, for you to buy, you know, they’re not Lego sets, they are the block zone sets. Although they are comprised of Legos, you can order these reasonably priced. What’s funny is if you want to search for certain brands like Porsche or Lamborghini or Ferrari, you have to use kind of [01:36:00] creative ways to look them up.

Like the old bull is what they call the Countach and the prancing horse is Ferrari. Could you learn their nomenclature? Lare pretty quickly, and there’s some very cool sets out there. I highly recommend the Porsche nine 17 kit came in right around 150 pounds or so, which you know, can be kind of expensive, but it’s a 2000 piece set and it looks really, really good.

So. Check that out. We’ll post a link for it in the show notes and maybe think about that as a Christmas gift for your petrolhead this winter and stay tuned for our holiday shopping guide later this year when we’ll talk more about that. August was also the month for Car Week. Traditionally earlier in the year, but the Monterey Historics were back!

You know, first time since COVID, they had some keeping it weird cars in the collections out there at Monterey. And one of our members, Ryan Compton has a huge assortment of pictures that he took while he was out there in person. But there were a few cars of note, one, [01:37:00] especially I targeted for Tanya. The Bugatti.

What’s it called? The Bugatti Bebe. The Bebe. Is that the baby? Zero.

Executive Producer Tania: The original. Is it the original baby? The bebe?

Crew Chief Eric: I think it is. So there’s some really interesting cars on this list of seven oddballs that were at the Monterey Historics this year. I think the one that really got my attention was the BMW, which is the only BMW I’ve seen without the signature kidney grill.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like, what’s it called? A

Crew Chief Eric: Studebaker. Japanese

Executive Producer Tania: car.

Crew Chief Eric: The Cosmo. It looks like the Cosmo. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I like the Glockenspiel. I mean, I mean the Glockler.

Crew Chief Eric: So before we wrap up our, we would be remiss with our traditional Florida Man stories. I wanted to touch on a couple of quick things that you can check out today on your local streaming services.

Most of us know that the Grand Tour released their newest episode Lockdown during the month of August. And so I got a chance to review it. I don’t know if you guys did, or if our listeners did. [01:38:00] I would be curious to see your thoughts. I walked away from it going. It was better than the last one, but it’s the same old formula.

I’m okay with that. I enjoy seeing Clarkson Hammond and May doing what they do best. I found it rather delightful. The cars that they chose and some of the way the scenes played out. But it was kind of more of the same.

Crew Chief Brad: I watched it. I was bored about halfway through because I was like, Oh, it’s another top gear episode.

I didn’t like the car choices or the premise or whatever. It just, it wasn’t for me. I guess the Buick Rivera was pretty cool. I think it was pretty slick.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel bad that he kind of chopped that thing up. I think he ruined a perfectly good car. I would have cared less if they had done that to the Lincoln or the Cadillac, although lowering the Cadillac was kind of funny.

I mean, what a turd. There’s been some other mockumentaries that have come out. There’s a new John DeLorean one that has come out. The Lady and the Dale is finally available on Hulu. You have to pay for it on, you know, Hulu’s premium service. And then, you know, we were teased with Rust Valley [01:39:00] Restorers, their latest season, but I can’t find it anywhere.

It’s supposed to be on Amazon Prime. I don’t know if that’s like Prime Canada. And eventually make it to the U S syndication there or whatever. Car masters season three released earlier this month. And I did a review on it, which is available on our website. You can read all about it. I don’t know if you guys watch that.

It really, to me feels like season two part two, because it picks up exactly where car masters season two ended, but no

Executive Producer Tania: spoilers. I’m watching it right now.

Crew Chief Eric: It is kind of off the rails. I posted on garage ride a couple of pictures from the series for folks that hadn’t seen it yet. I wanted to get their gut reaction.

The response was, is that what they’re building now? If you haven’t seen car master season three, I recommend it. You know, I sat down and watched it with my wife. She enjoys the show because she enjoys the cast of characters. She had a lot of really Insightful feedback, which I incorporated into the article, not all of it, because some of it was a little more colorful than I was willing to put in the article.

Executive Producer Tania: Would you like to know [01:40:00] my pet peeve? Sure. And I’d have to go back and look at the other two seasons, but I think there was a change and I’m terrible with their names. I don’t remember what their names are other than caveman. The female Constance, Constance. There you go. The only female that’s on the show.

And I don’t remember exactly season one, season two, but I feel like season three is different in that this chick has got freaking manicured fake nails and she’s working on a car and her hands are always constantly pristine looking. And I’m like, please step off. This is so fake, which is terrible because I actually think her credentials that they explained from like season one or whatever, she actually knows.

What the hell is she’s doing and actually knows how to work on engines and things like that. So it’s like, why do we have to freaking make her fashion model? And I guess the pretty eye candy to generate, you know, more viewership from the male audience or, you know, whatever audience she knows what she’s doing with cars, let her be herself.

Maybe she works on her cars and somehow it [01:41:00] doesn’t get greased on her hands. I need to learn her trick then. I’ve never seen

Crew Chief Eric: anybody on the show where a pair of gloves. So, you know, whatever now granted, they are dealing with a lot of new parts and new parts are not dirty either way. There’s some grease involved.

There’s some grime involved. I’ve worked in new parts and you still get, I’ve managed to get, but I

Executive Producer Tania: break a nail when I don’t even have nails. So I can’t even imagine. working on cars and things like that with fake nails on. I

Crew Chief Eric: agree. And I’ve gone back and forth on this. And Jess and I talked about as well, honestly thought in season three, despite the Lee press on nails that she’s got going on, that she actually had more credibility this season because she was given more screen time.

Yeah. She speaks educatedly when she speaks about the stuff that she’s working on when they partnered her with cave man. Yeah. And with Tony to work on the two special builds, they did the fire bike and the school bus. I was like, wow. I mean, she’s on point in the previous two seasons. I’m with you. I felt like Constance was a bunch of eye candy.

They were just there to spike the ratings to keep people interested in the [01:42:00] show their work. Stands for itself. They don’t need the eye candy. So to your point, if she’s going to get dirty, let her get dirty, let her do what she’s going to do. I go back and forth on this all the time. You know what I mean?

But I do like the cast unlike some shows like West coast custom. And even as much as I like Ross Valley restorers, I can’t. Get into a show where people are constantly at each other’s throats, it takes a lot to put up with that, but this show they seem to gel. They seem to get along, which is good because

Executive Producer Tania: it’s a very good show.

Like, don’t let that comment deter anyone from watching it. It’s very entertaining. They’re wildly talented people, all four of them and what they do.

Crew Chief Brad: I tried watching the first episode of the first season. I couldn’t get behind the whole trade up to we’re going to do this. To trade to this guy to get this car to ultimately trade up to this guy to get this car.

They lost me with the trade. It actually works.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike other shows, it keeps it so unique. Mark towel has done a really good job of not copying the counting cars [01:43:00] formula. And that was very apparent in this season specifically where Sean, the guy that does the wheel in and deal in was trying to bring in these high profile customers and these high profile builds where they’re just doing like parts hanging and stuff like that.

And I could tell his body language and his, the way he dug his heels in, he was like, I don’t want to be that show. And I kind of knew where he was going with that because if you watch counting cars, it’s the same thing over and over again. And a lot of people love to copy that formula and it’s worked.

It’s been good for Danny Coker and his team whatnot, but this show is unique in the sense that they are doing this whole bargaining and bartering and upgrading and trading and whatnot. And that’s, what keeps it interesting. Even though I sometimes take issue with the way Sean does his business deals.

Even Jess was like, gotta take a shower after this. Cause it’s kind of slimy. It just, it works like their team works. The whole premise works. And I do enjoy the show. And I’m, I’m very serious when I say that [01:44:00] I want to see it come back. And it is on my top 10. shows amongst Goblin Works, Rust Valley Restorers, these guys and others.

I do want to see them come back and I want to see them succeed. I would like to see him branch out of the Gothic Batman stuff that he’s been doing and do more like what was in season one with the Futura and even the Exner from season two, like those kinds of builds where it’s really over the top, but authentic.

resonates more with me as a viewer than some of this kind of crazy brushed aluminum, you know, gothic skeletons and spider webs. I know spider webs are his thing. He even brings it up in the show. He’s like, I take flack for it all the time. You know, Hey, let’s see what season four brings us. Right. And let’s hope that they survived.

The COVID because that’s where season three ends is right on the beginning of all the lockdowns and shutdowns. I did visit their website. They are still around. They’re selling merch. There’s pictures of some other builds on there where they’ve been using some C fives and C sixes instead of the classic C four, which I gripe about in this particular season.

So again, Let’s see what [01:45:00] happens in season four

Crew Chief Brad: in order to be a well informed podcast host, I’m going to go through and watch the show so I can have an informed opinion next time,

Crew Chief Eric: probably right. Is when I watch drive to survive. So

Crew Chief Brad: you watch drive to survive and get up to date before the next drive through and I’ll watch car masters.

I have watched

Executive Producer Tania: both. I am currently watching season three of the car masters.

Crew Chief Eric: And

Executive Producer Tania: you can

Crew Chief Eric: tell me if my review is wrong. Just leave a comment on the website.

Crew Chief Brad: What did you think of drive to survive?

Executive Producer Tania: I thought it was very good. I enjoyed it. I think it’s gotten better since the first season.

Crew Chief Brad: It has, but they added Ferrari too.

Cause Ferrari wasn’t in the first season.

Executive Producer Tania: The first season was like. I don’t even remember now, but it was very focused on only like two or three teams. And then every season it’s expanded. And the last season, actually, you got to touch on, like, everybody got the opportunity to have a voice or, you know, be covered.

So

Crew Chief Brad: yeah. And then the drama that they create for each of the episodes is actually really well put together. And some of it’s stuff that I didn’t even realize was [01:46:00] happening throughout the season.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not overly like soap opera ish or dramatic either. So it’s not like you just. feel like, Oh, this is stupid reality TV.

And what I’ve actually heard from some folks, it’s doing a positive thing for American viewers to formula one, who never were ever interested. I’ve heard people that really, they’re like, I watch formula one now. Cause I watched drive to survive. Like, this is so cool. Like I’m into formula one now. So that’s a good thing.

And we’re going to talk about, I think later in the motor sports thing, how there’s possibly. Another American team that could be coming to Formula One. Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! We’ll talk about that in a little bit. So, I mean, if the show can bring more people into this sport that is pretty big everywhere else in the world, then I think, I mean, it’s doing something what we would consider positive.

I’m just bringing more people into the

Crew Chief Eric: motorsports world. The only downside is if you get new viewers into Formula 1 and they see the same people winning all the time and [01:47:00] the same BS and the same drama and all the things we’ve talked about, I hate to say Hamilton’s got to go.

Executive Producer Tania: But that’s fine because Hamilton, the reality is.

He’s waning, how many more years is he really going to keep going? So I don’t think had drive to survive came out seven years ago and now everyone got into it and they’re like, Oh, this dude’s still winning again. It’s a different story, but

Crew Chief Eric: don’t get me wrong. I have no complaints against Lewis Hamilton.

Extremely talented driver. I just want to see him behind the wheel of something else. I don’t want to see him behind the wheel of another formula car. That would be a great wish. And we all know that’s the epic challenge. Put them behind, you know, what was the force India car or something, which is actually his old car anyway, but you know, I’d love to see him in a prototype.

Do you like what Alonzo did? Go to IndyCar, go do like Juan Pablo Montoya, go to NASCAR, get, you know, get into a prototype at Le Mans, whatever. I mean, just do something different.

Crew Chief Brad: To your point about the Force India car or the Racing Point car being Lewis Hamilton’s old car, there’s actually an entire episode in Drive to Survive about that very topic.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know that I need [01:48:00] 45 minutes of my life used up to explain that. You

Crew Chief Brad: do. You really do. It’s very interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh huh. Next week on Mujeres Engañadas. Telenovela of Telemundo. Let’s move on. How about Florida man stories?

Executive Producer Tania: So we got a couple and we’re going to kind of do maybe a reverse order this time.

I’m going to start super serious and then we’re going to end it on a high note. Oh man.

Crew Chief Brad: You mean a low note?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, a high note. The first one is, uh, is really not funny at all. It’s very quite serious. I hope the gentleman recovers, but I want to use it as a public service announcement for people who think that their neighborhood is, you know, The Indianapolis 500 straight away, because I would like to inform you that it is not, nor is anyone’s neighborhood.

So please drive accordingly. So there’s a gentleman in Detroit who apparently brought up with the county, the city, whatever, that many, many people are speeding down the neighborhood street. Please put in speed bumps, please put in speed [01:49:00] bumps. And I’m not a fan of speed bumps. Okay. By any stretch of the means, but he felt so strongly that he kept petitioning for this.

They kept rejecting him. No, who knows? I mean, like Detroit can afford to put a speed bump in, right? I’m surprised the road is so smooth that someone can be speeding down it, but that aside. So unfortunately, and this was like caught on, I guess, surveillance video, the guy that had been petitioning for so long that People were speeding down his road, was going to turn into his driveway, make a left hand turn, and people started victim blaming immediately that, oh, his turn signal wasn’t on.

Well, okay, it’s a neighborhood road. As he’s turning in, he gets t boned by a guy in a pickup truck, basically doing twice whatever the speed limit in his neighborhood. I mean, it shoots him down two houses. The guy brain damage, all this other stuff. I mean, he got T boned by a freaking pickup truck and he was driving what looks to be possibly a 1991 Accord EX.

No, no lie. Which

Crew Chief Brad: where I know where he can get a brand new one.

Executive Producer Tania: Versus like a modern day pickup truck. So, you know, He took one hell of a [01:50:00] hit at whatever the speed was to get T Bone. So this poor man is probably fighting to survive right now. So please don’t be an ass and drive respectively. There’s no need to speed through the neighborhood.

Crew Chief Eric: In a neighborhood, you should always assume that there’s pets and kids and whatnot. Well, the best

Executive Producer Tania: part is he’s turning left into his driveway. And he gets T boned the truck going to the left. Why are you even driving that way?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. That being said, the same is true of the paddock.

We sometimes forget, even at the racetrack, that paddock speed is as fast as you’d like to get run over by a car. I mean, I say that all the time during group meetings and briefings and stuff like that. So it’s something to just keep in mind. There’s no reason to be doing 60 mile an hour in a 20 mile an hour zone.

Executive Producer Tania: But moving on to more idiots. Because we’ve kind of heard these stories already. I don’t know what this new hotness is, but I’m going to let the title speak to itself and then move on. Some assholes in Camaro’s stop traffic to do burnouts on a New Jersey turnpike.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, that’s the actual title of the article.

That’s

Executive Producer Tania: the title of the article.

Crew Chief Eric: [01:51:00] Jalopnik is amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: Nailed it on the head. Jalopnik. Well done. You captured it. I. Don’t need to read the rest of the article. So also, public service announcement, don’t be these people. Completely unnecessary. Go to your local skid pad at your local racetrack and do your donuts.

For the gram! For the gram! For the moron. But For TikTok. TikTok

Crew Chief Eric: these days.

Executive Producer Tania: For TikTok. Now, to end it on a high note, have you watched the link? Of this YouTube video.

Crew Chief Eric: I have seen this.

Executive Producer Tania: Mad props to that guy. In his pull start, power wheels, whatever it was, peeling out of the local diner. He peeled out of that parking lot onto the road.

That thing is fast.

Crew Chief Eric: I think the best part of that video is the lady. And she’s like, no, he didn’t. And he’s just like, burned down, like takes off. I was like, that’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: My favorite part is the Jolly Roger flag behind them.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. It’s street legal, [01:52:00] right? Yeah, definitely Florida’s Waffle House. It’s downstate.

All right. Well, it’s time for us to go behind the wall, the pit wall and talk about motor sports news. We talked a little bit already about the F1 season, drive to survive, et cetera. And there is. a constant revolving door of schedule changes this year, just like last year for Formula One. So I’m going to kind of summarize two of them.

Miami is on the docket for May of 2022. So next year, the Formula One Grand Prix of America is in Florida. So very curious to see how that turns out. And rumors indicate that Indianapolis. May return as a replacement for the canceled Japanese Grand Prix. Now we ran six to seven American Grand Prix’s at Indianapolis, especially the one where, you know, three teams ran and there were only six cars on track because they were boycotting the tires and that whole situation.

You know, there was a lot of interesting years at Indy. I went to a bunch of them myself along with some of our other [01:53:00] members in GTM, but it’s cool to see Indy coming back on the calendar, even if it is Just as a substitute teacher. But I think there’s even bigger news that Tanya alluded to coming to Formula One in the next couple of years.

Executive Producer Tania: Michael Andretti has announced that he’s trying to throw his hat into the Formula One ring and bring a U. S. team into the mix.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad he didn’t say he was coming back to Formula One, because if anybody grew up watching Michael Andretti in Formula One, it was not so good. The Andretti name. Carries a lot of weight.

His dad, Mario, Formula One champion, right? He’s actually a triple crown winner. Le Mans, Indianapolis, and F1. It’s a long legacy there. The Andretti family, you know, kind of kicking ass and taking names. I would really like to see this happen because Andretti making a play for Formula One will be the first of its kind.

Fully American team, American cars, American owned, American drivers in Formula One, I think almost ever. So that’ll be a first. I mean, granted there’s Haas as an American owned [01:54:00] team, but employees, you know, foreign drivers. So this would be really, really cool to see this, this play out. Meanwhile, in the world of IMSA, BMW is making a play, not just in LMBH, but in GT3, the BMW M4.

is set to race in the Super GT series next year. On top of that, a Portland teen is set to become the youngest driver in Le Mans ever. He will be 15 years old when he takes the green flag. at Le Mans in 2022. Wrap your head around that. Not sure how that plays out, how that works, but cool to see a young American driver on such a big stage.

You know, the biggest stage, the Le Mans 24 hours. We now have yet another bid! Lamborghini is not alone! In making their bid this month to go to the 2023 running of LeMans, which Lamborghini running LeMans. Isn’t that really Audi? I wanted to mention that earlier, but Hey, you know, it’s their way in the door.[01:55:00]

But Cadillac has also confirmed that they are making a bid to go to LeMans too. So it’s going to be an action packed hundredth anniversary of LeMans. I can’t wait to see it in person going to be absolutely amazing. But what we need to do is take a moment and talk about. This year’s 89th running of Le Mans, the 98th anniversary of the first Le Mans here in 2021.

Brad, what’d you think? I know you watched the race. We didn’t do our viewing party this year like we always do. I stayed up as long as I could and I think I got the most sleep of any Le Mans race I’ve ever watched.

Crew Chief Brad: I actually did not watch the race. Out of the 24 hours I was able to watch maybe about a half hour.

Crew Chief Eric: What?

Crew Chief Brad: But I’ve got other pressing life Events going on right now. So I did not get to

Crew Chief Eric: tell

Crew Chief Brad: that to my eight month pregnant wife. I did see the new hyper car class. Uh, or at least I guess the early makings of [01:56:00] the new hyper car class. Oh, you mean the

Crew Chief Eric: LMP2 cars with slightly boosted motors?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I thought some of them actually looked really cool though.

Crew Chief Eric: I will say this, the Glickenhaus car, which was the big to do, the announcers in the middle of the night, and because I was up late watching it, and like I said, I did watch most of it. They mentioned that the Glickenhaus team, which is, you know, Scudiera, Glickenhaus, this whole nonsense name that they came up with.

Is supposedly the prototype for the Peugeot nine X eight that we talked about last month, kind of cool to see it. So they’re using it as a test mule, this weird hyper car class that they have, you know, it’s supposed to be a mixture of like DPI and like all the LMP and all this kind of thing. Right now, the cars that were running in there outside of the Glickenhaus car were basically boosted LMP two cars.

I was really excited for team Alpine Alpine, depending on You know, which accent you use the Matt Moots car, basically under the auspices of, Hey, it’s [01:57:00] a Renault and it’s a Renault power plant, everything on Nissan, whatever, you know, whatever effort they were calling it under, but that Alpine, it had a chance of beating Toyota,

if

Crew Chief Eric: the circumstances.

For Toyota went sideways on them, which is the same thing we say every year. If it falls apart on Toyota, they’re going to lose and an LMP two car is going to win, whatever. But that Alpine or Alpine did a really great job in terms of its qualifying lap times. It was very much on pace with the Toyota hybrid.

So I was very excited to see that. That means there is potential next year, depending on how things play out in this new LMDH class and hypercar class, what the competition is going to be like. What I haven’t heard yet though, is Toyota’s bid for 2023. So I’m wondering if they’re going to bow out gracefully, maybe next year or even unspoken this year, like maybe this was it.

And next year as Porsche and other folks are got to be testing. I mean, they’re not going to come to the big stage [01:58:00] without testing something. I’m really curious to see how 22 plays out, but as just like last year’s Le Mans kind of took me by surprise because I forgot it was in August, but also it was really unexciting and Corvette suffered a bunch of problems.

The Porsches were still privateer cars. Ferrari pretty much swept the GT class. Good for them. The same folks that are doing the AF Corsa cars are also building the Ferrari LMDH cars that are going to come out in 2023. to see more of a presence from Corsa as well. I found it oddly disconcerting that I was really excited about the LMD2 class more than anything else.

So that speaks volumes as to this race. And I’m sure there’s people that are going to be out there. Oh my God, imagine it was. It was boring. All right. I’m going to just flat out say it. It was boring. And I can’t wait for 2023 when we actually get some brands back on the table competing for a proper championship and not a bunch of let’s stick it in there so that Toyota isn’t running by themselves.

Crew Chief Brad: [01:59:00] Well, two things, one Toyota’s next entry is going to be the BMW Supra and two, the Glickenhaus is the car that I was looking at. It was like, damn, that car looks really good. It’s a really awesome looking race car.

Crew Chief Eric: It reminds me of the old days of like. Group c imsa Can-Am with like the nine 60 twos. It kind of has that look to it.

It’s like an old school prototype car, which again, I’m like, Mercedes, hello Salberg. Let’s do something here. You know, I’d also select to see Mazda come back. I mean it granted their whole sky, active diesel, whatever the heck that DPI thing was, they were running an imsa. wasn’t so great. I mean, there’s an opportunity for Acura here, Honda McLaren, whatever.

I mean, there’s a bunch of other names that could still come to the table in the next two years. So I’m really, again, excited for 2023, but 2021, a little bit of a letdown. I’m just glad that Le Mans wasn’t canceled. That’s pretty much it. I would say the grandstands weren’t full. There were definitely spectators there.

And as typical of any Lamont’s race, it [02:00:00] was more exciting at night, which forces you to stay up. The, the announcer shut up and you can actually watch the race. It’s more exciting at night than it is during the daytime

Crew Chief Brad: hours. And do we want to talk on the changes in the schedule and when the next races are?

I think the IMSA Petit Le Mans has changed and the VAR race has changed as well. I think they’re both within like a couple, like a, like a month of each other. I think one’s in October, one’s in November.

Crew Chief Eric: Because Lamont’s. Slid from typical father’s day weekend to this August date right now, which hopefully it’ll slide back to the middle of summer, the VIR race and the petite Lamont has slid way into the fall.

Again, I’m going to be watching those. I will say that the WEC schedule has been severely disrupted because of Lamont’s moving. So the final two WEC races are going to be held at Bahrain, a six and eight hour race in September and October. I think it was, I looked and for What I understand, none of those folks really like running at [02:01:00] Bahrain.

They just don’t like the track. They don’t like the layout. So to have two races less than a month apart, it’s kind of a womp womp for the WC season. If you’re into watching that particular series, which is available on like motorsport. tv and, you know, places like that, but I think we need to move on to. F.

I. M. The Motorcycle Racing Series. What do we got,

Executive Producer Tania: Tanya? Talked about him before. Likely GOAT Valentino Rossi has finally announced that he will retire from motorcycle racing at the end of this season.

Crew Chief Eric: That is a shame.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s probably inevitable. I mean, he’s getting up on years. Motorcycle racing is definitely its own beast.

You need to be a young man. I think you got to have those reaction times and whatnot. And you know, the fact that he hasn’t really been winning in the last couple of years does not detract and how skilled he is because he’s still wildly skilled, but when you’re, I forget how old he is, 40s already, like, and you’re competing against.

People aren’t even 20. It’s just not the [02:02:00] same, but I mean, kudos for him. Congratulations. He’s still a young man. There’s, you know, speculation, rumor. What’s he going to go on to next? Could we see him in DTM? I already know that he usually competes in a couple of races a year in WRC. So could he do more there?

I don’t think this is probably the last we’ll hear of him. So I’ve heard

Crew Chief Eric: he’s heading to IMSA. I’m super excited about that. So Valentino Rossi might be on the schedule for IMSA and maybe Valentino will be at the 2023 Le Mans. What’s up? So I’m really excited about that. Don’t know which team he’s signing with, but I’m going to be keeping tabs on this.

I’m sure you will too. Big name like that. Moving from motorcycles into cars, not necessarily a bad thing. Again, I mentioned this about Lewis Hamilton. Try something different. He’s And again, like you said, behind the wheel of a prototype or even a GT car, he’s still got a lot of years ahead of him because look at somebody like Yann Magnussen.

I mean, I feel like he’s the elder statesman of IMSA Le Mans right now. The guy is still [02:03:00] blindingly fast, feel bad for the wreck that he was involved in, you know, the middle of the night, which basically took him out of the running in the LMP2 cars. But you know, it is what it is. You know, we’ll look to next year and see Yang Magnuson yet again out there on the WEC stage.

So what else for Valentino? Is there a little bit more news?

Executive Producer Tania: I think we have congratulations in order because he is also going to be a father to be. So he and

his girlfriend are going to be expecting a little girl apparently. So congratulations to them.

Crew Chief Eric: So maybe another Rossi and FIM in the future. This time a female.

Think about that. That would be something very exciting. Well, that’s it for our motorsport news. Now we need to jump into our quick little recap of our local news here at GTM HQ. And I want to remind everybody and thank everybody again, that came out to our charity event at the end of July, beginning of August, uh, our summer bash seven in conjunction with auto interest summit point American cancer society, we [02:04:00] raised over 90, 000.

200. That’s 9, 200 on behalf of the American Cancer Society. That was our biggest, baddest, best fundraising event yet. Can’t thank everybody enough that showed up and participated from the people that came out and volunteered. It worked the event that were part of the car show, our members that were there for our anniversary reunion.

Fantastic event. It was a lot of fun. It was a long four days after it was said and done. And right behind that, We went to Carolina motorsports park and met our friends at just track it face to face. I will say this about Carolina motorsport park. If you haven’t driven it yet, go drive it. It is a heck of a lot of fun.

I wasn’t sure what to think of it when I was looking at, you know, track maps and videos, another one of those types of tracks that doesn’t do it justice. I unfortunately learned the track as quickly as I could in the rain, but that quickly translated to some. Awesome dry laps about midday on the first day and throughout the entire weekend.

So I can’t [02:05:00] recommend going there enough. If you haven’t tried it, if it’s on your list of tracks to get out to, and you’ve been kind of like, ah, I’m not sure if I want to make the drive, it’s definitely worth checking out and check it out with our friends at just track it. They run a fantastic event, very affordable, well run, very well organized, right on point and a big shout out and a thank you to Nabil and his team for inviting us down and letting us experience a CMP together.

Our trackside report brought to you by hpdejunkie. com. What’s coming in the next couple of months, there are still a ton of events. I mean, Hooked on Driving’s got an event this week at Summit Point, Maine. You’ve got Chin all over the place. You got PCA. I mean, there are events still booked. Day in and day out now through Audi’s event in November at VIR.

So I don’t want to list them all. I could just recommend going to HPD junkie. com and checking it out. But a couple of things that fall in line with our trackside report, join us, the GTM team for our end of year bash, what we refer to as the animal house. Yes, we’re going [02:06:00] yet again to Watkins Glen that’s October 22nd through 24th.

That’s. Three days on track with hooked on driving at the famous, maybe infamous Watkins Glen full circuit Lake Seneca in New York. So if you haven’t checked it out before, it’s breathtaking. It’s beautiful. It’s enormous. It’s fast. It’s fun. If Watkins Glen is a bucket list track. Get it done. There’s no excuses.

It’s absolutely amazing. And it will become one of your favorites by far. Talked last year about Oak Ridge and new tracks coming to the Tennessee Valley, the Smoky Mountains and things like that. Turns out that we know didn’t happen. It got shut down, but there’s a new track. Coming to Missouri. It’s called the Ozarks International Raceway and it was slated to open in 2021 to Tanya’s point about other things that are supposed to happen in 2021.

It’s already come and gone. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to pay attention to HPD junkie. com and see when Ozark gets added to the roster and who’s going there first. [02:07:00] It’s within reach, even from the DMV folks to get out there. It’s within that 12 to 14 hour window that you can try a new track and the track map, the aerial view looks pretty good.

It looks kind of exciting. I’m interested to check it out. I can only imagine that out in the mountains, it’s going to have some elevation changes. For next year, as we kind of pre plan our schedule, we’re going to be looking again to Dave and the HPD junky schedule to figure out when there’s going to be events at places like Club Motorsport.

Palmer Motorsports Park, National Corvette, Gingerman, and maybe Road America. So these are some of the things we’re talking about for next year. So if you’re a hardcore, what we call cannonballer and want to do some long distance caravanning and go experience a new track together, or go to a track you’ve been to before with a great group of people.

We’ve got you covered. Let us know, get involved in our cannonball runs. Those are the types of tracks we’re looking at. So a little sneak peek. Usually we reveal this in the fall, but those are the things we’re thinking about. Drop us a note, let us know which one you’re interested in, and we’ll try to coordinate with you to get it out there.

And [02:08:00] also remember to check out HBD junkie. com for who’s going to be there. Who’s going to be hosting events and when you can get on track sooner than later.

Executive Producer Tania: And in case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired earlier this month. We talk suspension 101 with Jake and James from PowerFlex USA.

an engineering company devoted to improving your street and track handling experience. We chatted with fellow petrol head Mark Schenck as we discussed which 90s icon he should consider in a what should I buy episode. We talked STEM and eSports with David L. Middleton of MyRacing and got a first hand account of his incredible journey of becoming an American race engineer at the Nurburgring.

And lastly, don’t miss the full length Pit Stop episode with Porsche enthusiast Mark Porto. Talking about his cars, his family’s racing history, and his father being featured in the new book, The Beltsville Shell, You Are What You Drive. 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: Unlike other months, we got some new Patreons. And so big shout outs to our Southern States member, Dave [02:09:00] Scherf. Who came and joined us at Carolina Motorsports Park earlier this month. Thank you for signing up. Thank you for supporting the club. Thank you for being a member for many, many years, you know, coming on board through our virtual racing league, stellar guy, him and his brother have been longtime members of GTN, so we can’t thank you enough for joining us.

for supporting us through Patreon and also to mountain region member, Brian, Baba young, who you might remember from the big man, little car episode, mad props to both of you guys for signing up and pledging your support to GTM and being longtime members and helping us grow. Through Patreon, Brad, any other shout outs this month?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, we have one shout out. Uh, we talked about him earlier in this episode. He was over at Monterey historics car week, uh, this, uh, past week, Ryan Compton, happy birthday for his birthday in August.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, Brad birthdays are special, but how about some anniversaries in the club? I want to give a big shout out to folks like Rob Lors, who’s been on break fix podcast several times celebrating [02:10:00] seven years with us this month here in August.

Fellow instructor, Brett Sonderby celebrating four years with GTM, Andrew Maureen, Lauren Thompson, celebrating a year. And we picked up a couple new members this month as well. So shout outs to folks like Greg Hammond, Hunter Wilson, and the Beauchamps, Dale and Neil, and so on down the line. So shout out to all of you because you know what.

As we grow and as we continue to keep members on board, have our loyal fans, our loyal listeners, et cetera, you know, as we’ve said many times, and we realize we can’t do this without you folks. We want to send you that shout out. We want to send you that. Thank you. So again, thank you for being part of the GTM community, being part of the show, just being part of everything we do and continuing to perpetuate motorsports enthusiasm.

And remember folks, everything we talked about in this episode and more is available on our website, GT motorsports. org. Every one of our podcast episodes comes with a follow on article, [02:11:00] summarizing our show notes, everything we talked about, pictures, videos, a lot of things that you can’t see when you’re just listening to us.

It helps describe and support what we’ve been talking about. So please check that out, leave your comments, leave feedback. We appreciate it. And if you have. If you have other ideas for shows, episodes, or maybe you know somebody in the motorsport or car community, give us a call, send us a text, shoot us an email, let us know.

We want to get them on here. We want to share their story. And on that note, I think we made it through yet another drive thru episode.

Crew Chief Brad: We’ve got one more. Thank you though. Oh, we do. Yeah, we have to thank our leader, Tanya.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s right. Our executive producer.

Crew Chief Brad: Without Tanya, we could not do this show period.

Executive Producer Tania: Without me, you’d still do the show.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. All good praise goes to her. All bad goes right into the circular repository. That’s all I’m going to say. [02:12:00] And on that

Executive Producer Tania: note, we’ll see you next

Crew Chief Eric: month. Bye.

There’s some idiot in a Volvo. Lights on behind me. I lean out the window and scream. Hey, whatcha trying to do

blind

Crew Chief Eric: me? Wife

says maybe we should party.

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 [02:13:00] BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT 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 Sponsorship
• 01:08 Lamborghini’s Latest Innovations
• 03:22 The New Countach: A Modern Take
• 10:27 Lamborghini’s Off-Road Adventure
• 13:34 Lamborghini’s Warehouse Find
• 15:10 Lamborghini’s Le Mans Bid
• 17:33 Bugatti Divo: End of an Era
• 19:01 Singer’s Porsche 964 DLS
• 22:31 Audi’s Dakar Rally Entry
• 24:27 Audi’s Futuristic Concept Car
• 29:50 Brabus Returns with 800 HP SUV
• 33:26 Ford’s Build-to-Order Strategy
• 44:38 The Decline of Traditional Passenger Vehicles
• 45:08 Chevy Bolt Recalls and Battery Issues
• 45:56 Electric Vehicle Battery Chemistry Challenges
• 50:10 Drag Race: Tesla vs. Shelby GT500
• 53:42 Historical and Lost Cars
• 59:07 Global Car Sales Insights
• 01:03:47 Adventures in a 1915 Model T
• 01:05:50 Top Auctioned Cars and Plaid Interiors
• 01:17:20 Sustainable Car Design by Paul Smith
• 01:24:38 Tesla’s Delayed Semi Truck and Cybertruck
• 01:26:39 Tesla’s Troubles: Carbon Credits and Investigations
• 01:27:09 Pickup Truck Preferences: F-150 vs. Cybertruck
• 01:27:45 Tesla’s Autonomous Mode Under Scrutiny
• 01:30:37 BMW Supra Recall: Brake Assist Issues
• 01:31:13 Supra’s Performance and Wind Buffeting
• 01:34:21 Rich People Toys: Mini Ferraris and More
• 01:34:57 Motorsport Merchandise and Lego Sets
• 01:36:37 Monterey Historics: Unique Cars and Highlights
• 01:37:48 TV Show Reviews: Grand Tour and Car Masters
• 01:52:09 Formula One Updates: New Races and Teams
• 01:54:05 IMSA and Le Mans: Young Drivers and New Entries
• 02:01:21 Motorcycle Racing: Valentino Rossi’s Retirement
• 02:03:38 GTM HQ Updates: Events and Announcements

• Upcoming/Recap GTM Events: Summer Bash 7 + ACS, Cannonball Run (CMP) – Check the Club Schedule for all the details. 
  
• HPDEJunkie.com report – HookedonDriving NE: Aug 28/29 @ Summit Point, Lightning Strikes twice in September and 3-days at WGI in October. New October date at Palmer MS; and new race track “Ozark International Raceway” in Missouri. All the details at www.hookedondriving.com
• New Patreons for August: Shoutouts to Dave S from the Southern States region and Brian Y “Bubba” who might remember from the “Big Man, Little Car” – made props to both these folks for pledging their support of GTM through Patreon – we salute you!
• Birthday and Anniversary shout-outs for GTM Members!
• In case you missed out- check out the other Podcast episodes that aired earlier this month… We talked Suspension 101 with Jake & James from Powerflex USA – an engineering company devoted to improving your street and track handling experience. We chatted with fellow petrol-head Mark Shank as we discussed which ‘90s icon he should consider in a What Should I Buy? Episode; we talked STEM & eSports with David L. Middleton of MIE Racing and got a first hand account of his incredible journey of becoming an American race engineer at the Nurburgring, and lastly don’t miss the full length Pit Stop episode with Porsche Enthusiast Mark Porto, talking about his cars, his families racing history and his father being featured in the new book “The Beltsville Shell: You are what you Drive.” — Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and please look forward to more great episodes in Season 2!