B/F: The Drive Thru #15

• Gordon Murray's Unborn T.50 Sports Car Set to Get Cheaper T.33 Sibling
• Piëch’s New 603 HP GT Brings Classic Sports Car Looks to the Electric Age
• A student-built solar camper van completes a 2,000 km trip across Europe
• Volvo Will Drop Leather in Favor of a New Material

• Could changes to Formula 1 attract another new car company?
• Connecting the Dots on a Possible Michael Andretti F1 Team Ownership Deal
• F1 CIRCUITS THAT WERE SCHEDULED TO HOST RACES BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED

• Yes, You Can Buy Pablo Escobar's 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 RSR IROC
• Plugged-In Aston Martin DBs: British Company Launches EV Restomods

Long Lost AMC AMX III

• 19 two-tone color M4 to be produced using BMW's new innovative overspray-free paint
• Daimler splits off

• A Porsche 917 Made Out of Butterflies
• Ford Removes Minimum Credit Score For 84-Month Loans
• The United Nude Lo-Res Is the Polygon Car You Can Own
• California Enacts Ban on Gas-Powered Lawn Mowers, Leaf Blowers

• Ricciardo to demo Earnhardt NASCAR Cup car at US GP

Fassbender’s “Road to Le Mans”

• Tesla moving headquarters to Texas from California
• Tesla tempted drivers with 'insane' mode and now is tracking them to judge safety. Experts say it's ludicrous.

1000hp McLaren vs Tesla Plaid

• Taking delivery of a new air-cooled Porsche at the Atlanta Experience Center
• Bugatti Battle: Veyron Drag Races A Chiron For Hypercar Crown
• Lamborghini's vision for an alternative-fuel future
• Rally World Champion Stig Blomqvist: “The RS e-tron GT Gives Off a quattro Feeling Through and Through“

Ken Block Audi Video #1

Ken Block Audi Video #2

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.

Donovan Lara: Welcome to the drive thru episode 15. This is our monthly recap where we’ve put together many of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news.

Now let’s pull up to the window for some automotive news.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, everybody. Donovan’s back and congratulations first up to Brad and his wife. For having their little baby boy delivered this week as we’re recording. So Donovan has graciously come to fill in for Brad while [00:01:00] he is now officially on paternity leave.

So Donovan, thanks again for coming on the drive through and let’s jump into it.

Donovan Lara: Awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: So this month we are going to kick off with something we don’t normally do. We’re talking about Japanese cars. First up, the new Civic Type R. I took a look at this. I think the camo is super interesting. That’s about the most interesting part of this car.

And it’s got a new wing. Aren’t we excited? But in reality, when I looked at this new Type R, there’s really not a whole lot of words to put around it, other than the fact that I see it as foreshadowing of the new Integra.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought the Civic was sunsetted. I thought they were done with it. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: where I was going with this.

We said that like two or three months ago that they were done with the Civic.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe that was just the two door Civic?

Donovan Lara: Because it has a different name when it gets here. Maybe it’s not going to be called the Civic anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: Because there’s this Type R, which is a sedan. And there’s also the 2022 Civic SI four door that’s coming out.

So that’s two civics. When I thought we were done with Civic,

Crew Chief Eric: I am gonna [00:02:00] fact check that, but I guarantee about three episodes ago we said the Civic was no more,

Donovan Lara: but if you’re getting 25, 30 5K over sticker on the special editions, you’re gonna keep making them, right? I

Crew Chief Eric: suppose so. But the two-Door Civic, and the Hatchback Civic.

Look like they’re no longer available. So this four door Civic, I mean, the more I look at it, especially that nose, the more I see the new Integra.

Donovan Lara: Is that the line? Is that the pitch line?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah. Integra.

Donovan Lara: I love, absolutely love the camo. I can’t stop looking at it.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s really appealing compared to the normal black and white.

Something about the red, but red also throws off your depth perception. So it’s really hard at certain angles of the pictures to really discern what it is.

Executive Producer Tania: I feel like the front end looks more like a skyline.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, interesting.

Executive Producer Tania: I could see that. I could definitely see that. R 32, whichever one it is. I don’t remember the numbers.

You know, one of of those type of skylines, like that’s what that front looks like.

Donovan Lara: There’s nothing about this that says civic to me though, and I don’t know. You know, like with all the brands, right? You see a BMW short of the new hideous [00:03:00] S, but you know, and you’re like, oh, those are all BMWs. Or you see an Audi, like those are all Audis.

Like this car to me doesn’t look like. Anything and not in a good way. Like I don’t recognize this. If you took the badge off, granted it’s camouflaged, but I wouldn’t recognize it as a Honda or I don’t know what in that bolt on wing from 20 years ago. Fast and furious is

Crew Chief Eric: why are we keeping that stuff around?

Can somebody explain it to me?

Executive Producer Tania: I feel like that’s a type R thing. The wings have gotten audacious in the last several iterations. They’ve just been ridiculous. Even

Crew Chief Eric: like that because Subaru doesn’t make stupid wings anymore because they make sedans now.

Donovan Lara: But the difference is, you know, usually they’re like molded pieces, very nice looking.

This looks like they ran out of time and they were like, just go down the auto zone and grab what you can find and bolt it onto the back of the car with the scaffolding.

Crew Chief Eric: Back in our day, it was order from the JC Whitney catalog. Now it’s just going to

Donovan Lara: say, yeah, right.

Crew Chief Eric: Just like we talked about last month with the new WRX and the WRX SDIs and all that, they were starting to look Honda esque.

Maybe Honda had to make a quick change so people [00:04:00] would stop comparing the new Impreza to the Civic.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, because if you look at the SI version that’s coming out, which is not in camo or anything, the shot from the rear end, It’s an Acura call it the next, whatever Acura, no, it doesn’t look like an Integra, but it looks like it could be any other Acura from the rear, from the front, I think it’s going to have the same front end as this type R type R is going to have the same front end as the SI, which should come out sooner.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m not seeing any spectacular numbers either. I mean, I’m guessing it’s going to be the same 300 ish horsepower turbo four cylinder that there’s been in the type R for a couple of years now. So. I mean, I’ve ridden in one of the new Civics. They’re not gentle on my eyes. I’m not a big fan of the way they look.

They’ve been kind of weird for a while now, but as a performer, keeping with front wheel drive, it is really, really good. I would say, and this is, this company means a lot coming from me. It’s better than the GTI and I have my issues with the GTI, but in reality. Both the Civic [00:05:00] and the Veloster N having been in the right seat of both of these cars as front wheel drives, evolving that technology, they’re really, really good out of the box.

Donovan Lara: Is there something extra special about the C pillar on these cars? Because I noticed they’ve disguised The little kink in the back, for some reason, does that give it more horsepower?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s where you put the stickers.

Donovan Lara: That’s the sticker reserved for, I see. That’s a big claim though. Better than the GTI, but you know, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a GTI, you know, I wonder if it’s a case where Honda is doing something special.

So they really want to wring all the performance out of it, where GTI is kind of table stakes, right? It’s there. Kind of Mustang GT and it’s just like what it is, if they would do, and I’m not aware of any special edition GTIs, maybe they would do that too. Are

Crew Chief Eric: there any? Well, the Golf R, the Golf R. So yeah, but

Donovan Lara: still kind of similar.

Like if there was like a super special limited edition GTI or Golf R or something that would be. No,

Crew Chief Eric: no, we don’t do that anymore. They used to have the Fahrenheit editions and all this kind of stuff that that’s, that’s, we don’t do that. It’s too, too risqué for the Germans now.

Executive Producer Tania: I will give them that. I’m impressed.

That [00:06:00] the SI, and I guess I would assume the type R will as well is keeping a manual transmission.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. That’s the big news about the new Integra is that it’s going to have the 6 speed manual because it’s a Civic and the Civic has a manual. So I mean, they’re not saying it, but let’s face it. They’re going to share the same chassis, the same platform.

Maybe the Acura gets lucky and it gets all wheel drive or something different, but that’s going to add. to 500 pounds if they go down that route. I mean, I’m just speculating here a little bit, but I will say just really quick before we talk a little bit more about the Integra, I relooked at the Civic Type R and immediately my mind went to mid 2000s Nissan Sentra SER.

That’s the front end.

Donovan Lara: Interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: Going back to the Integra for just a moment, This new spy photo of the rear end, I’m really disappointed compared to the copper car that we talked about a couple episodes back. It’s starting to look like a Infiniti G37 from behind. I am not a fan of that. I wasn’t a fan of it on those cars and I don’t think it’s [00:07:00] the right move for this Integra either.

Donovan Lara: That is weird. That’s exactly what I thought of too. When I saw that, has there been a full reveal of the entire car yet? I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s all these renderings from different angles. And the only one that looked like a full car was that copper one that we talked about on the last episode.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. That’s going to be interesting if it is a surprise. It’s the G 35 from 15 years ago. It’s going to be, it’s just smaller now. That’s going to be disappointing. Is it

Crew Chief Eric: though? Or is it the size of an Accord? That’s what we really want to know. Right? I mean, I’m, I’m not trying to throw stones because the jet is as big as a Passat, so whatever, right?

They’re all getting bigger. I guess there’s other news from Honda this month.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently they’re going to, I guess they’re going to follow in the steps of like BMW, how BMW has their i series for their electric platform, Honda is going to have an EV sub brand. But I don’t think it’s coming to America.

Sounds like it’ll stay in Asia.

Donovan Lara: ENE,

Executive Producer Tania: colon, n , . What does that mean? [00:08:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Did Elon and Grimes name this thing is, is that word do not just letters and symbols and stuff? Well,

Executive Producer Tania: it does sort of look like. Maybe Elon helped them design it.

Donovan Lara: So I will always call these the E colon. You know, the thing that as soon as I see the picture of these, though, it frustrates me because you know, they’re not gonna look anything like this.

And I will give Tesla credit for that, right? The Tesla truck, when you first saw that, you’re like, yeah, that’s just a concept. They’re never going to build it. They actually are. But these. They’re not going to build these, but I will say kind of something we talked about the last time I was on the podcast with you guys was, you know, we talked about EVs and where can they go?

Right? They’re only going to get so fast. You’re going to have grocery getters. They’re all going to do 3 seconds. You’re a 60s top speeds, not a factor anymore. I think styling is where it’s at. And I think they could actually get away with these kind of radical designs now, because. Drag, although still exists, doesn’t really matter anymore.

If you’re doing three seconds, zero to 60, you can still get there just as quick. So that would be pretty cool. If they did keep this really very angular styling and do something different. I think that’d be pretty in contrast to what we’re just talking [00:09:00] about with the civic, right? That looks like everything else.

Crew Chief Eric: I have a response to that with respect to these. Could we make one vehicle and now this would be the modern inspector gadget car and two by looking at the nose on the three of these, the coupe, the GT and the SUV concept, are they amphibious?

Donovan Lara: They look like Dr. Evil’s ship.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re a straight. Up rip off of Nissan’s IDX concept that they never built.

Look at the front end of an IDX. Somebody was heavily inspired, I think, by that vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: I think they were inspired by the duck boats in DC. That’s what I

Executive Producer Tania: see. But I do have an answer for E colon N.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Oh, God.

Executive Producer Tania: Not that it’s good or bad. So the E is from E colon technology, the collective brand name for Honda’s electrification technologies.

Then the N stands for new or next, representing new value creation for the next generation of mobility. So they’re trying to energize. People [00:10:00]

Donovan Lara: energize your colon and drive a

Crew Chief Eric: Honda’s up until this point that I’ve used as rental cars. I always joke that there’s a little needle that comes out of the headrest and anesthetizes you because they’re just so numb, but maybe this one gives you a colonoscopy instead.

It’s more exciting. Meanwhile, what else is going on?

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently Mitsubishi. It’s coming out or has revealed there. Thank you. That’s my takeaway. We’re not even going to get into this article. Cause my whole takeaway after reading this was they’re still selling cars in America. What? But Hey, if you’re looking for a plug in hybrid and Mitsubishi is bringing the 2023 Outlander as a

Crew Chief Eric: what dealership.

I haven’t seen a Mitsubishi dealership since the Lancers disappeared and there weren’t many dealerships then.

Donovan Lara: I’ll give you 20 bucks if you can name three Mitsubishi models other than this one right now.

Crew Chief Eric: 3000 GT.

Donovan Lara: No, I’m talking about current models.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, forget it. Nevermind.[00:11:00]

Donovan Lara: I had a 97 Eclipse GST, love that car. That was before, you know, we got the Evo’s they did like Nissan did, although Nissan recovered with the Skyline, they waited way too long to bring the Evo’s over and then they neutered the Eclipse to me, they did it to themselves. Right. And then I was talking to somebody recently that was talking about, I guess they had a deal back in the early two K’s where it was like zero down 0 percent interest for so many years.

And that really kind of screwed them financially. But yeah, looking at this, what is this thing called Outlander? Again, I think the design is wrong. Look at companies like Kia and Hyundai that, you know, were. Nothing. Right. And then they started getting some nice styling and everybody’s like, Whoa, okay. And even when they were still garbage, and I’m sure they’re a lot better now, people were like, well, okay, I buy with my eyes.

I think it’s cool. This thing, I don’t know. It looks like another two things made it in the front and there’s extra, what’s the Nissan juke. It looks like yeah, it’s bigger brother, I think so,

Crew Chief Eric: which is by the way, is a Renault Clio, but we’ll get into that at another point. You’re right though. You bring up a very valid point.

A lot of people ask me all the [00:12:00] time. Why do you guys talk about aesthetics so much? Why do you talk about the way the car looks and you’re right. People buy with their eyes. So it’s really important that when you’re shopping for a car that it’s appealing. Granted, you’re going to sit on the inside and you can’t see it while you’re driving, but everybody else has to put up

Executive Producer Tania: So this is kind of a mixed one between Toyota and Stellantis.

They’re both Announcing that they’re going to build battery factories in North America to supply American EVs and hybrids.

Crew Chief Eric: Now I’ve heard, and people could correct me if I’m wrong. A lot of the hybrid technology out there, the patents are all owned and basically controlled by Toyota. So even if Ford has a hybrid or Chrysler has theirs or whatever, it’s some derivative.

Of Toyota’s older technology. And they’re all kind of licensing it and modifying it from there. It’s almost like open source, right? Where it’s like, well, we’re done with the code and now you can take it and modify it and do whatever you want with it, you know, based where we’ve already moved on to the next generation.

That’s really interesting to see Stellantis and Toyota partnering up to build batteries. [00:13:00] Any indication of where they’re going to be doing that?

Executive Producer Tania: I believe Stellantis might be a year ahead of Toyota. In 2024, Toyota following in production in 2025, but it’s unclear where that’ll happen. I mean, we do know that believe Ford has production in Tennessee and also Kentucky.

So question would be, would it be somewhere kind of in that belt or somewhere new? I mean, we do know Tesla’s got their battery factory that they’re trying to build in Texas. But

Crew Chief Eric: that’s right, they’re on the move.

Donovan Lara: When are people going to start protesting battery plants? That seems like kind of the next move, doesn’t it?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I mean, we do all these environmental impact studies of a lot of other factories and things and carbon credits are necessary. But I mean, when you’re building batteries, you’re dealing with chemicals and precious metals and rare earth metals. And it’s got to be caustic and toxic as all get out to build batteries on a massive scale like this.

I’m still wondering where all the raw materials are. Maybe we’re harvesting it off of the moon or from Mars or, you know, whatever SpaceX is doing this week,

Executive Producer Tania: maybe more interesting is, I don’t know your comment about Toyotas and their patents [00:14:00] and all that stuff, but they’ve been very other than the Prius, which they’ve had for a long time being a hybrid.

They’ve been a little bit more reserved or closed around going full EV. I feel like they’ve had the Prius they’ve had that, but there really hasn’t been the seemingly huge push from the brand, but they have pushed hydrogens in the past and currently, and they have that Mirai. Which is their hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

Right. And that’s been around since like 2016, at least I believe. However of note more recently, he does hit a Guinness world record, the Toyota Mirai for an 845 mile journey on a single tank of hydrogen that took only five minutes to fill. The record is the journey, but. To note five minutes to fill that hydrogen tank.

And they took it down the coast of California for an 845 mile journey.

Donovan Lara: How fast is it? Did it take five days to get there? I can’t imagine hydrogen’s that fast. Two day trip. I’ve always thought that hydrogen would be kind of the ideal way to go. Right. For obvious reasons. And you wonder, [00:15:00] obviously we were doing batteries a hundred years ago, but you know, did we go to batteries now because the performance is there and it was.

Easier. It was quicker or there can’t be too much research involved in hydrogen. I mean, think about all the research we’re doing in batteries. Like why hasn’t hydrogen caught on more? It’s obviously very readily available. It’s gotta be a performance issue is the only thing I could think of. Right.

Executive Producer Tania: Part of the problem is.

getting hydrogen because you’d have to do some electrolysis processes and things like that. But I think there’s also a big stigma around the safety of hydrogen because of past Hindenburg to name one. And I don’t know if they’ve worked out. Hydrogen is highly flammable, so there is definite need for very good safety around the hydrogen fuel cell and whatnot.

You know, someone’s in an accident and you know, it’s always stupid when you see in the movies that car rear end somebody else and violently explodes into flames. Right. That’s very rarely happens, but I don’t know with hydrogen, you know, two metal objects [00:16:00] create a spark and the tank opens and now you got pure hydrogen floating out.

That is very flammable. So I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve gone back and dug through kind of where the research is on it.

Donovan Lara: You wonder too about the people, you know, just filling it up, you know, I’m sure they would figure out a way to do it. But somebody smoking a cigarette, like you see the guys at the gas station that still don’t understand.

Hey, it’s not just a liquid.

Crew Chief Eric: It turns into that scene from Zoolander, except with hydrogen, I don’t even know that we’d get that far, right? You wouldn’t get soaked in it before it combusts.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s also. Compression that has to happen, right? Cause it’s a gas that’s going to occupy a huge volume. So in order to get the amount you need as fuel, you have to compress it, right?

Uh, propane, all that stuff is in compressed cylinders. And obviously that could be expensive to manufacture as well.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a cool idea. I just, I don’t know. I I’d love to see, you know, some of maybe the hybrid technologies that they use in Europe coming to the table. I mean, they’ve done diesel propane.

They’ve done propane gas. They’ve done all these other kinds of things over there. They’ve been playing with propane. for what feels like forever. Maybe, you know, we [00:17:00] have a lot of CNG, compressed natural gas here in the States. Maybe that’s an option or an alternative to hydrogen. Granted, natural gas is not fast.

You have to partner it with something else. One of the best pairings is probably with diesel, but we know there’s a huge stigma. It’s very taboo now to talk about diesels. I have to remind people, they can be run on other types of fuel. It’s not necessarily the engine that’s in it. It’s dirty. It’s the fuel that we run through it.

That’s pretty gross. And then how we deal with it, because if you run a diesel and veggie runs a lot cleaner than it does on this low sulfur garbage that you’re buying at the pump these days,

Executive Producer Tania: be interesting to maybe research a little bit more as to why the hydrogen is not taking off into cars. Because actually there’s a lot of Metro buses, city type buses that actually run on hydrogen.

They’re actually, I think like a hydrogen electric kind of hybrid. So clearly it’s possible. And there’s vehicles out on the road today. And I think that’s a great use in public transportation. Cause gosh, those petrol buses are huge polluters [00:18:00] and smog generators. So these buses running around cities, churning constantly clean energy, I think is a great alternative for them.

So it would be interesting to understand what the difficulty is on the car scale.

Crew Chief Eric: So I wanted to dovetail real quick, Tanya, off of something you said before about Toyota quietly working in the background, you know, that’s really been their MO for what’s. Seems like a very long time. I watched some things on history channel recently on a motor trend that we’re talking about the history of Honda, Mercedes, and, you know, machines that built the world and Toyota was part of that.

And it’s always kind of been their MO to be quietly in the background and all that kind of stuff and innovating. And then suddenly shocking us with something new. And you said, you know, they don’t have a whole lot of hybrids outside of the Prius. They’ve quietly released the Lexus RX hybrid. These,

Executive Producer Tania: yeah, I was going to say you got to count on the Lexus side.

They have the. Number X series. So the UX, the NX, the RX, the CT 200

Crew Chief Eric: H, which is a Corolla or whatever. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: that they don’t no longer make it. That’s Already however many years old, [00:19:00] but the current lineup is the X series, so the UX and XRX in increasing size, and those are electric hybrids. And

Crew Chief Eric: I found out that the Pacifica is no longer the only hybrid minivan.

Toyota just released the new Sienna. As a hybrid as well. And that was pretty quiet launch as well. So it’s pretty surprised and we’ve been talking for the longest time. Why haven’t Honda and Toyota come to market with the hybrid minivan? Why is Chrysler the only one maybe it was a licensing agreement, maybe something there to give Chrysler a boost.

Who knows I’m speculating, but. The Sienna is now here as a hybrid as well. Granted, it’s not a plugin. It’s more like the Prius. The Pacifica is a, is a plugin using apparently Ford’s technology to make all that work. So very curious to see where that goes in the future and how it’s going to evolve. Now that Toyota’s pretty much put both feet in the water into that hybrid space with vehicles, pretty much in every category between the Lexus, the Prius and the minivan, but I guess we got to move on to Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche news.

So last month we [00:20:00] talked about BMW and their. Motorcycles, not to be outdone, Porsche has revealed their new air cooled model. And I thought this was absolutely hilarious. Came across my desk from PCA, the Porsche club of America, and Porsche is also developing a bicycle.

Donovan Lara: Can’t tell you how irked I was when I clicked on this article.

Clickbait, right? I mean, it is what it is. Bikes are cool. I remember, you know, kind of first getting into the automotive bikes when Lotus was doing them back in the nineties, things pretty cool. Yeah. I think it’s cool. I, the video is, is kind of cheesy and corny, but I think it’s the, you know, and, and, and people will snatch those up they’re destined for somebody’s wall to hang is, you know, wall art for sure, but it was cute.

I suppose

Crew Chief Eric: I was the same. I was like air, cold Porsche. What now? Like, this is super cool. You know, maybe some EV or something, because maybe they figured out a way to do without liquid. I don’t know. And then they reveal it and they made it look like a. car, which was cool. It was actually two bikes together.

And I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah. We’re just going back to Porsche design from like the eighties. I’m [00:21:00] like, they’ve had bikes over the years. I mean, it’s not a first for Porsche to have a pedal bike. I’ve only ever seen one in person. I’ve never ridden one, but it’s also not uncommon for bicycle manufacturers to have been tied to auto manufacturers.

Take Bianchi as an example, right? Alto Bianchi is the automotive Arm of Bianchi, the bicycle company, but it’s cool. I mean, it’s a good looking bike. I honestly, I gotta say, just like in real life, I think the Porsche bike looks better than the BMW one, but I’m not gonna spend 25 grand on a bike. If I am, it’s going to be something really awesome.

Donovan Lara: So it’s funny. I didn’t even pick up those details because I only watched enough for the video to see that it was a bike. And then I got pissed and went away, but it’s interesting. You talk about the way it was covered, you know, with the race car, they just came out with, you’re talking about it on garage ride, I can’t remember what it’s called, like the R 300 or whatever it is that’s supposed to be a Cayman or something.

So to me, it was like, Oh, well, if they came out with that car, that doesn’t look like any of their production models, maybe this really is some kind of new version of an air cooled car. And you’re right. The way they had it covered, it was [00:22:00] pointy and weird, and I wasn’t expecting the bike at all. And I was like, is this some kind of, the manufacturers do that?

No roof, no windshield kind of thing. I was like a spider. No, but it was, it was a bike. Like I said, I didn’t go far enough to see that it was 25, 000. That’s crazy. But it goes along with your 95 t shirts, I guess. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, yeah. And 7, 000 sunglasses and stuff, you know, whatever, but you know, Hey, they’re made of magnesium.

So, you know, super light because, you know, aluminum isn’t good enough, but

Donovan Lara: black forest, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Special order as a Porsche part number, just like those sausages that Volkswagen has. So speaking of other things, Volkswagen, yet another King of the Hill moment, the Veyron versus the, and I got to question this, is it the Chiron or the Chiron, but they’re pitting them against each other for the hyper car crown.

Does anybody actually care? Uh,

Executive Producer Tania: is

Crew Chief Eric: it, is that the French way? Cause the Greeks say Chiron. I was, you know, that was the most interesting part of this whole thing.

Donovan Lara: I’ve heard every version. I actually was in a Bugatti dealership in Zurich. I went there. [00:23:00] Sharon, she said it. Oh, that’s how she said it was out and she told me not to take pictures of it.

I did. Anyway, I’ll send ’em to you. But to me, this video, again, it’s almost was as frustrating as the bicycle one. It’s like, hmm, let me take a car and one that’s 10 years newer and see which one’s faster. Which one you thinks gonna be faster. Right. It’s like so dumb. But I like the headline. What does it say?

The way to embarrass the Bugatti owners to bring a, A faster Bugatti. That’s .

Crew Chief Eric: Again, I wanna remind people they are French, you know, sounds Italian. They are French. They’re the most famous French auto manufacturer, probably on the planet in terms of race cars. I mean, right there with Renault, right. But still they are part of the VAG family.

You know, they are on an aging R eight platform. We’ve already covered that, but you know, on

Donovan Lara: that note and kind of sidebar that same trip, and speaking of Bugatti, there’s a museum in France over on the eastern part of France called the Schlump Museum, and it’s the largest Bugatti museum in the world.

They have 132, I think they had a bear on there when I was there, but if you ever get the chance, uh, it’s, it’s pretty cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So Donovan, [00:24:00] I jokingly mentioned the aging RA platform. So I would be remiss to use Tanya’s phrase to not talk about Lamborghini. So what’s their vision of the future?

Donovan Lara: You know, it’s hybrid, which, okay.

They’re easing into the electric, right? We all know they’re going to go there. I mean, what did they say by 2024? They’re going to be hybrid. I guess that’s cool, right? I mean, you think F1 has been doing it. Everybody’s kind of easing into it. So I got the engine in there, but I think we’ve all known that the charm of these cars, right, is the big B12 in the back or the B10 or the sound, you know, I’m fortunate enough to have.

A guy right now and you know the sound of it alone. That’s why I want to drive that car, right? Yeah, performs great, but just that sound. So once they start to lose those kind of things. I think that’s concerning. You imagine 20 years from now, somebody going to go to the Lamborghini dealership and go, Oh, I want this car because it’s beautiful, but it sounds like the wind.

So I don’t know, you know, I really wonder, you know, what’s going to happen to the supercar, hypercar market when all this happens. I mean, the Bugattis we were just talking about, you know, when they don’t make any sound and you’ve got a 250, 000 Tesla [00:25:00] roadster that’s faster, you know, that makes no sound either.

I think those companies are gonna be in real trouble, but I did want to point out the most interesting part of that article. They say in there that. One out of every 11, 000 cars in the world is a Lamborghini. There’s no way

Crew Chief Eric: that’s BS. I flag on the play.

Donovan Lara: There’s no way Baldy, the guy, or however you want to say it, Italian says that one in 11, 000 vehicles in the world is a Lamborghini, which is tiny compared to a massive automaker.

Like Toyota, I find that hard to believe. I know they made a lot of guy or does. And they made a lot of hurricanes and now they’re making a lot of Uris or Uris or however you want to say it. But if so, I want to say Toreg. Yeah. Yeah. Slash Panamera slash the exciting part for me about this is okay. Cool.

When EVs aren’t alternative source vehicles anymore and combustion engines are Kuntosh is now or half a million dollars, you know, give or take, can you imagine what they’re going to be worth? Once you can’t buy a V12 Lamborghini anymore. So buy them up now. A

Crew Chief Eric: hundred percent. Ken Block. We talked about him last month.

He has transitioned from [00:26:00] Ford over to Audi. And it’s kind of more of the same. As he’s making his foray into the Audi world, they’ve taken him through the history of Audis in a multi part video series that I was watching. They’ve given Ken the keys in these videos to multiple, what they call, Audi. Legacy or Audi heritage tribute cars, like, you know, the DTM V8 and the Audi sport Quattros, you know, from the rally era and the IMSA ITU 90s and things like that in typical Ken Block style.

What does he do? He puts them on track and goes completely sideways. The one that hurt me the most is watching him drive Hans Stuck’s V8 DTM car, trying to drift it around this road course. And I’m just like, this car was never intended to do this. That flat plane V8 doesn’t like that. And neither does the car.

And it’s too big. And I’m like, I can’t believe Audi’s letting him do this stuff and he’s getting it done. But I’m just like, I feel for those cars. I mean, if it wasn’t a rally car, it’s not supposed to go sideways.

Donovan Lara: [00:27:00] I think it’s kind of disrespectful, honestly. I mean. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s PR hype and maybe do that to rally cars.

But like you’re saying, I think there’s certain cars that you just don’t do that to, you know, you wouldn’t take a nine 17 K and try to drift it. It’s what is, you know, it wasn’t designed that way. There should be some respect for the history of the vehicle and things, but it was pretty crazy. And I didn’t know that hidden, uh, what is it called?

The tradition center or something. That’s pretty cool. And obviously none of us can get in there. It’s super secret air quotes, but the car that I was most taken by, and I can’t remember the name of it. It’s the one that’s in the thumbnail, that white one to the right of the bug eyed one.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, at the group, a car.

Yeah. The prototype that never ran. That was pretty crazy. It

Donovan Lara: was pretty cool to see a lot of these cars. It was interesting too, when he walks in and he skips that whole first set of cars. And then just pretty much wants to focus on the Quattros and everything else was, was interesting. But yeah, I mean, definitely a PR stunt, right, for Audi and for him, but, uh, it’s pretty cool.

I’m excited to see some, something different in his videos.

Crew Chief Eric: And I know there’s going to be tons of people are all, well, whatever, just drive the car, send it, blah, blah, [00:28:00] blah. The problem is if you take like a DTM car or like the ITU car, any of those that were designed for road racing, the types of. Lateral pressure you’re putting on those suspensions.

They were not designed for that. They don’t have the steering articulation. You’re taking a 30 year old car or older out on track and then just abusing it. I mean, granted it’s Audi. They can just make more parts, but their job in life at the museum is to not go then repair Hans Stuck’s race car. That’s been in storage pristine forever.

I mean, it just, I don’t know. It hurt me to watch that and I’m like, Yeah, I get it Hoonigan and bring everybody with you from Subaru and try to convince them that Audi is awesome. But I think they need to reinvent the way they’re doing this. We can’t do more of the same hats off to Ken. Hopefully maybe something cool will come of this.

I don’t want to see history repeated. You know what I mean?

Donovan Lara: What would the Audi version be of the Ford F 100 pickup that he had?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to be the RSQ8 or whatever that thing is that they’re running around the [00:29:00] Nürburgring right now, which we’re going to talk about a little bit,

Donovan Lara: what’s an old 60s, early 70s Audi that he can put huge fenders on and

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, yeah, old Audi 100 or whatever.

They’re all sedans back then. Yeah,

Donovan Lara: cool. I think it’s going to do a lot for the brand though. I mean, I think, you know, there’s a lot of people Younger people that watch that. And I think they’re going to be Audi fans after it. So I think it was pretty good move for them. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: The only disconnect there is the price range.

Audi doesn’t make anything that young people can just go by. Right. And even the GTI is starting to escape people’s grasp. And that’s why cars like the Civic that we talked about at the top of the show, their price point is still higher than it’s ever been, but still lower than some of the German entries, the low end, you know, even the low end three series, BMWs, which used to be attainable.

Now, 50, 60, 000. I mean, young kids can’t jump into that. Like they couldn’t eat 30 and the resale value on a lot of those cars, because people are leasing them it’s high, it’s a catch 22. So, you know, Ford has done the young drivers of disservice as well. By doing away with the Fiesta and the Focus and other cars, you know, we’ve seen them all [00:30:00] disappear.

So I’m really curious, you know, maybe when my daughters start driving, the car that they’re going to drive at 16, 18 years old hasn’t been created yet. So I’m kind of curious to see where the market is and, you know, what will be a used car when they’re old enough to drive.

Donovan Lara: Granted, right? It’s a, it’s a huge PR move for Audi, but you know, was it?

Audi Germany, was it Audi US? Because obviously in Germany, Audis are more attainable because of the lower interest rate. But that’s kind of a narrow focus. So surely Audi, you know, corporate was thinking broader than that, but that’s, I mean, you make a great point that I never really thought of before with Ford, you could go buy an inexpensive Ford or an inexpensive used version.

Audi, not the case. Subaru still, but yeah, I mean, unless they’re going to try to do something else with the market. I mean, think about all the PR they got from kicking everybody’s butt for years. Maybe that’s all they’re on is just a big PR machine.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m confused and I find both videos pointless.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s better done in the URQ, an actual rally car.

However, the URQ and Audi doesn’t need Ken Block to prove that it’s a [00:31:00] rally car. Audi effing proved that already 30 years ago and they changed the game now. It’s super cool. I guess with. Ford. That’s not known for that. I mean, yeah, they had the Cosworth and things like that, but the types of cars that, you know, the Hoonigan craft Ford, isn’t known like Audi for revolutionizing rally and being a world champion, unless I’m mistaken, the heritage, the pedigree, the infamy of Audi.

I don’t know. It speaks for URQ and it’s rally livery and everyone should just shut up. And I’m not impressed because he barely could fricking drift the URQ and the IMSA car, the DTM car doesn’t want to be drifted. Correct. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: what I keep saying.

Executive Producer Tania: It was such a forced effort. It’s like, what, what is the point?

It’s not like you said, it is not designed to do that.

Donovan Lara: I had a thought. I wonder if it. here. So we were talking recently, and I think we might’ve talked about it last podcast too, but talking about BMW, we were talking about it this weekend. I was at a BMW meet there is heritage and history with BMW, right?

Just think about [00:32:00] the M three, for example, the original M three, the only reason we had one is they needed them to race, right? They were two door cars. Rah, rah, rah. So through the years, they sort of kept that heritage until the four door version came out as the current M3, which should have been M4, you know, and there’s been other missteps along the way with the way they number their cars and things, but the whole point of that conversation was, do you think that a lot of these manufacturers now gotten to the point where maybe generations have moved on and newer generations are going off the bus, but they’re not thinking the tradition of the vehicles, right?

So the marketing team for the current. M4 isn’t thinking, oh, that should be an M3 because of this. The

Crew Chief Eric: problem with that Donovan is the marketing team that’s doing this right now is our generation of petrolheads. So where did we go astray? We’re going to get lost, right?

Executive Producer Tania: I agree with everything you’ve said Donovan.

And I think that makes sense because that speaks to how Everything that was once old is new again, all these remakes and redos, even in the movie world where it’s like, okay, sure. It’s new for the new [00:33:00] generation, but you know, some of us have already seen it. If Audi or anyone else is trying to market the new generation, like you’re saying, why are you bringing back a car from 30 years ago that these people have no idea existed?

Donovan Lara: Well, that’s what I’m saying though. I think part of it is the market they’re trying to reach, but I think partially internally as the corporation, those people don’t get it to your point, Tanya, about, you know, we all remember a groupie and we know Audi’s heritage in there and they kicked ass, but let’s say the new marketing team is.

You know, millennials are wise or cues or bars or whatever they’re called. Now, all they know is there were a bunch of cool Audis and video games. Let’s go get the mothballs off and have Ken Block. Who’s a current cultural icon, drive the crap out of them. Cause those things seem cool and split them. This guy and they’re awesome.

Instead of somebody going, Whoa, to your point, Eric, that was hunched. Duke’s car, right? That car was important. It’s still important. We know that it was important. We knew it existed for what it was. Let’s not touch it. I feel like there’s a disconnect these days between whatever it is, the marketing group or whatever in the history of the [00:34:00] brand, I think a lot of that’s getting lost and I think about the book that Lutz wrote when he worked at BMW about them wanting to change the round ball and he was like, no, no, no.

That’s. The heritage of the brand. They’ve changed it now, of course, since, but you know, they wanted to change it to something completely different. It was kind of that. No, that’s what people recognize. Right. And my point in that is I think, you know, people have gotten lost in that. And I wonder if that’s out of here because you’re taking, Tony, you nailed it again, right?

You’re taking these cars that we already know we’re key, right? We don’t need to prove it anymore. They’re still in our memory and our, in our minds and trying to do something different with them just because it’s cool. There’s these old cars that I’ve seen, you know, elsewhere. So I feel like brands are losing their way.

Crew Chief Eric: But if we flip that. Coin over and look at the other side, a well done version of this heritage meets the future video was actually between Stig Blumfist, one of the original Group B drivers, maybe not as well known as Walter Rural, Michel Mouton, but he was one of the key players on the team along with Hanno Micola and a lot of other folks that ran for Audi back in the Group B days.

So they brought out Lucas Degrassi, who [00:35:00] runs the Formula E car for Audi, and they did a driver swap. They had Lucas Drive, Walter Rural. You are Quattro, not Stig’s. I looked at the tag on the side of the car, plus the numbers. And I’m a geek. So I figured all that out. And then Stig drives the new e tron GT, the quote unquote, let’s call it a two door, but not a two door all electric.

I thought that was really cool. That was the past meeting the future. And both of them gave their opinions on the car. They drove it around this European road up in the mountains or whatever. And they drove the Stig. track at speed and I thought it was fantastic. And what was great is, and I always enjoy as mild mannered as he is in soft spoken Stig, the real Stig, Stig Blumfist is still the man and he can drive and he’s so smooth.

And I want to point out one important thing, cause I studied this video, he shuffle steers and I’m just going to leave my microphone right there.

Donovan Lara: That’s interesting. It’s the, it’s the past meets the future. And it reminds me too, of the swap, not the past meets [00:36:00] the future, but you know, Hamilton and Rossi doing the swap.

That was really cool. Maybe there is something in an Audi, if you’re listening, I want some credit for this, but put Ken Block in one of the old rally cars and put him on one of the old rally stages and check his time against that, you know, do stuff like that where a lot of people didn’t watch rally back in the day.

Right. So they’re not going to know the drivers that set the time, but you know, Hey, this was the record in this car. That would be really interesting. And I think that would probably be a better use of that.

Crew Chief Eric: Happened earlier this year. So I talked about it in one of the other episodes, Yari Matilatvala drove his father’s Toyota Celica from the post groupie era.

So the early nineties, the Carlos signs car, and he drove it. He goes, I can drive this just as fast as a modern Toyota. And people are like, what do you, you don’t know what you’re talking about. But you’re a mad man. Cause he is the mad man of WRC. And he did it. I mean, he got close. His times were phenomenal.

He’s a phenomenal driver. Granted he’s now pulled out of WRC. He’s a team owner. He’s not driving anymore. So he’s basically retired to sunset your career like that and go, [00:37:00] look, I’m driving my dad’s car and it can still kick ass against a new rally car. I mean, what does that say about new rally cars? It says a lot about the old cars too.

Right. And so again, the past meets the future and stuff like that gets your attention more so than some of these other publicity stunts.

Donovan Lara: The other part is, you know, Kim Block is actually a good race car driver. Right? He’s not just a drifter guy. Right. And you see, what is it, stadium Cross, is that what it’s called?

When they’ve got the joker loop and all that stuff on there? Yeah, the rally cross. Yeah. Yeah. And he’s actually beaten some current champs and stuff. What? You know, it’d be nice to see him, and I know the donuts are what sells and things, but again, right. He’s kind of in his element there. So let him do something that’s worthy.

But

Crew Chief Eric: the hat’s off the Stig for still getting behind the wheel. I was wondering if that was his original driving suit or not. I’ll leave that where it is. All right. So let’s move on to the rest of lower Saxony. Shall we? How about some BMW and Mercedes news?

Donovan Lara: Yeah. So now BMW has this very special painting process where they can paint very fine lines and patterns and things without having to mask them.

Uh, of the [00:38:00] rest of the car that I think that’s really special, you know, the, the M four is they’re going to release, I guess they’re going to release a handful of them with stripes and, you know, special designs and liveries and things. I’m excited to see where that’s going to go. Somebody is going to get crazy with it and have, you know, we’ve got all these wrapped versions of cars.

I saw one the other day, it was the silhouette ghosts on a Lamborghini, which was really cool. It would be really interesting to see if you could go in a dealership now and say, I want. This painted on the side of my car and, you know, do paint to order that way. Just means there’s going to be some really overly priced hideous cars on the market, but I think it’s going to be a pretty cool feature.

And I’m interested to see how it’s going to translate the rest of the automotive world. If it works, you know, if it turns out to be another GM process with the, what was the white? Vehicles, you know, that five years later, the paint was falling off. That’s going to be just,

Crew Chief Eric: well, I mean, they can do a lot now considering the advances in technology with 3d printing and lasers and things like that.

So I can see these bespoke BMWs being a thing, like we mentioned on a couple other episodes. I think the fail point is always going to be, I can’t order what I want. I can’t go on the website and I [00:39:00] want it purple with green stripes and the Joker’s face on the side of it and all this kind of thing. It’s going to be, Oh, well, you want a purple one?

Well, it only comes with yellow stripes. Are you okay with that? And you’re like, man, again, and the Germans have been doing that forever. You want a black interior? Well, you can only get it with a silver car. Like, well, that stinks. I want triple black, you know, move on. Speaking of moving on,

Donovan Lara: yeah. So Mercedes or the parent company is a Daimler AG is spinning off the truck division.

I think it’s pretty interesting. I guess they feel like it’ll be more successful when it’s off on its own and focusing more on, you know, where the technology of hauling cargo is going to go. So, you know, they’re testing these long haul trucks using liquid hydrogen. As we tie that into this. Part, you know, fuel cells and everything else.

So I think it’s going to be interesting. It seems like an odd move to me though, that they’re spinning off one of their divisions, particularly one that seems to be pretty successful. So I’m not sure what that’s really about.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know, but that sounds a lot like VAG spinning off, you know, all their trucks into man and man, right?

So it kind of makes sense to divide it up. Dodge did the [00:40:00] same thing, right? Ram is all the trucks and they’re not going to cross brand them anymore. So. Curious to see how Daimler does. I mean, obviously they’re probably going to be still sold through the same dealer network and all of that service at the same locations.

I mean, all these sprinters that are running around, even the Dodges and things like that, there’s still Mercedes underneath rebadged and whatnot. So good for them. And if they’re going to experiment with all electric, they’re probably going to have it before Tesla does. And if they’re going hydrogen, I’m really curious to see how that works too.

I mean, I think hydrogen might make sense. In a semi, right? Maybe slightly more protected than a passenger vehicle. But then again, you’ve got a like kind of rolling torpedo there, you know, you get into some of these accidents with the semi truck. So, you know, again, safety is the biggest concern with hydrogen at the end of the day.

So moving on to Stellantis. Now, Stellantis, as we know, you know, we have been partying hard with Stellantis for like 18 months now. And we had that moment about two drive thru episodes ago where, you know, mom and dad were flicking the lights, you know, if anybody remembers those days of house parties, [00:41:00] flicking the lights.

It’s time to go home. Everybody. They said no more charger, no more challenger, no more Hemis. We’ll let you guys know what’s coming next. The news in Stellantis has been really, really quiet over the last couple of months. I’m not really worried, but there’s nothing new to report except for the guys over at MilTech Racing decided to put a brand new Dodge.

TRX, which is the 702 horsepower Hellcat engine, basically Ram 1500 on a lap around the Nürburgring.

Donovan Lara: Hold my beer. I think that’s really cool. I was late to really appreciate the TRX, I guess. And in fact, it was just on a Leno’s garage last week. Really cool. I had no idea that, you know, they were making something like that.

And I think it’s still zero to 60 in like three seconds or under three seconds. It’s crazy fast. Anytime you get a truck like that, you know, on a performance course or a racetrack, you know it’s gonna roll like crazy. But I bet it was a lot of fun in the streets.

Crew Chief Eric: What they did is they set up, there were two miltech cars.

One is a miltech [00:42:00] prepared Audi, like RSQ eight or something like that. Basically the big SUV, so big V eight twin turbo, eight pot brakes, like all this crazy, you know, Audi stuff that you expect. And so he is chasing this TRX, which is basically stock, stock tires, you know, for the factory. All this. They put an exhaust on it, which it sounds really good.

And then it’s got the regular old. Chrysler supply two pot break that they’ve been making for like a hundred years. And that was one of the things they were joking about. They’re like, we don’t know that this thing’s going to stop. It weighs like 9, 000 pounds. Right. Watching the video, especially from the chase Audi, when he would get on it, he was out running the Audi.

And I’m like, that’s a pickup truck people. And then you you’re seeing like, you know, little, you know, BMWs and people getting out of the way. It was just like, it’s like three tons of coming. Right. And I mean, then he’s at the point where the front brakes are smoking, going into the turns because he’s trying to stop that mass.

And it was, it was just hilarious to watch this thing. And the guy in the Audi, I mean, he was kind of like, whatever. I mean, I was kind of annoyed listening to him just the [00:43:00] way he was talking. It almost felt like he was making fun of Americans in a way. But then he was like, dude, look at the back of the truck, like leaning over.

You’re about to flip. I’m like, he’s not about to flip. Oh, the one thing I thought was interesting was it was limited to 190 kilometers. And for those of you that don’t do metric conversions in your head quickly, that’s 118 miles an hour. So it’s not as fast. Fast as a challenger or 9 11, it’s governed to 118, but it gets there quick.

That’s for sure.

Donovan Lara: How did they come up with that number to govern?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s probably the point at which things get stupid. Once you cross 120 in a, in a pickup truck, it probably gets really, really dangerous. You know,

Donovan Lara: breaking distance is half a mile at that point

Crew Chief Eric: to Tanya’s point about the earlier videos.

Does it have a point? Absolutely not. The point is why the F not. So if he’s got the truck and they’re going to let him run it, cause that was their concern, whether they’re going to let him on the road or not. The one thing I thought was shocking was how much traffic there was on the ring. I mean, they might as well have been on the beltway, like bumper to bumper [00:44:00] going through there, I mean, at a hundred miles an hour, but still I was just like, it’s craziness.

Donovan Lara: So is the next iRacing season or are virtual racing going to be?

Crew Chief Eric: I think that is a good plan. I like

Donovan Lara: that.

Crew Chief Eric: But I think it’s time that we move on to some more domestic news. And our domestic news is brought to you in part by AmericanMuscle. com, your number one resource for Chevy, Ford, and Mopar performance parts.

So check them out when you get a chance. AmericanMuscle. com. So Tanya, what’s up for Ford and Chevy?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it kind of gave it away earlier when you’re talking about Toyota and Stellantis’s plans around factories being built. So Ford also announced. Uh, earlier this month, they’re planning, I think, to spend over 11 billion to build, I think, four factories split between Tennessee and Kentucky that are dedicated to EV.

I think the Tennessee campus is going to be where the F series pickup truck and battery will be assembled. Whereas I believe in Kentucky, they’re going to actually be manufacturing lithium ion batteries, um, with their partnership. With SK [00:45:00] pretty interesting. We’re talking about they’re doing battery factories.

Tesla’s doing battery factory, Toyota, everybody’s doing battery factory. And I guess it kind of makes sense thinking about it. Cause how are they shipping these batteries from Korea? Cause that’s where SK and LG, which are the two big battery producers, how are we even moving these things around? Cause there’s a lot of restrictions around the shipment of lithium batteries.

To the point that a lot of lithium batteries can’t be shipped if they’re not in the product that they’re designed for. There’s a lot of restrictions, especially for air, because it’s considered hazardous and dangerous material. So if they’re not being able to be shipped within the product, which we know they’re not, the trucks are coming off the assembly line in the U.

S. These companies are then must be having to either pay. A lot of premium to go by land as much as they can, and then maybe by sea if the restrictions are different, or they’re having to pay maybe a premium for proper packaging somehow these batteries if they are doing air freight. So I guess it kind of makes sense when you think about it that more and [00:46:00] more factories are going to be popping up in different parts of the world to satisfy demand in those markets.

Crew Chief Eric: I just want to know when I’ll be able to buy the knockoff battery on Amazon for like a tenth of the price.

Donovan Lara: Batteries plus version.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. It’s only going to work for three charges and then it only holds 20%, but, but yeah, to your point, you’re right. I mean, and if they’re moving them by ship, like a lot of cargo, which is still tied up in ports because remnants of COVID right.

The fallout from that, I don’t know how that’s done. And then I wonder too, like, let’s say, God forbid we have another Valdez type of incident where it’s a shipping container or a ship full of lithium batteries If I remember correctly, electricity and water don’t mix, right? So that can’t be a good idea.

You know, if something were to happen tragically. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, as long as there’s no fire.

Donovan Lara: That’s the other thing. And that’s what you know, I’m not a super crunchy tree hugger guy, but I am to a degree, you know, the process, you know, all the lithium and stuff that they [00:47:00] mine and all those, and you got these batteries that, 30, 40 years later?

I mean, You know, I know they can recycle. I think it’s what, 70 percent of them or something with your process, but it’s really expensive. Will we actually do it, but really concerns me about places like Kentucky and stuff. That’s very green. And, you know, like you said, if something was to catch on fire, what was the, the Rimac and I’m not going to say it the way you’re supposed to, cause I think it’s pretentious, but the Rimac that, uh, no, no, no.

Crew Chief Eric: What is it? What is it?

Donovan Lara: It’s remosh, I guess.

Crew Chief Eric: What it is? I thought it was the RIMAC. I thought

Donovan Lara: it was RIMAC

Crew Chief Eric: too.

Donovan Lara: RIMAC cause I’m American, but you know, the, the one that what’s his face wrecked on grand tour. And they said that it burned for four days because the batteries would start to ignite and they put them out and the next one would start.

So you think about something like that, you know, in the Appalachians and, you know, something happens with all those trees around and that bourbon and all that other stuff. And something catches on fire. And That could be catastrophic potentially. You know, it’s, it’s really scary to me. I don’t know.

Executive Producer Tania: That’ll be the next California wildfire was started from Tesla that was burning [00:48:00] for six days or something. It’s not funny, but it’s funny. I’m sorry. Your favorite Evie. I mean, it’s not funny. I feel sorry for poor Californians, idiots starting these forest fires because. Of stupid reasons. I mean, it’s a legitimate concern, actually.

What if something happened, you know, like that incident in Texas, you know, allegedly we don’t know who was driving or not driving and who was in which seat of that Tesla when it slammed into a tree and burst into flames. And allegedly the fire department had some trouble putting out that fire too, that it raged for several hours or whatever.

Someone’s driving somewhere and an accident and then they set a forest fire.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s conceivable. That’s the other thing too, that I don’t think we’ve considered either. It’s the other EV, the emergency vehicles now need to be equipped with additional hazmat and electrical fire capabilities, like dealing with that.

And I think the firefighters are going to have to retool their suits, you know, for electrical discharge. Increased BTU’s from the fires because electrical fires are very different than, you know, fuel fires and things like that. So obviously [00:49:00] a lot of them are getting training on that sort of stuff. And I’ve talked to some individuals that are volunteer firefighters and what they’re going through, but now there’s an added expense to the fire departments to have to deal with that.

You know, Halon systems, like all this kind of stuff that they have to now incorporate onto the fire trucks when they get a report that there’s a Prius that’s, you know, burning on the side of the road.

Donovan Lara: Well, and now imagine half of the factory is on fire. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: exactly. What do you do? Yeah.

Donovan Lara: Just let it burn.

I think we need to send mountain man, Dan, to protest.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll pay to

Donovan Lara: fly. We’ll fly him there and just, he’s got to stand there with, how about naked with his boots on with a sign that says no EV factories and on

Crew Chief Eric: the back of a square body Chevy, like,

Executive Producer Tania: yeah, I mean, for now, if their number one method of quenching the fire is just continuous deluge, that’s one thing, hopefully we don’t.

Now create some other sort of firefighting foam specifically for EVs, which then has a chemical impact on, you know, the world, because we see that now with the current firefighting foams, that there’s groundwater [00:50:00] contamination and these PFOAs in everybody’s drinking water that are forever chemicals, essentially, they don’t break down and they just tend to build up in your body and whatnot, and then can lead to adverse health effects.

Uh, it’s like, okay. I mean, it’s great. As long as it’s water, water’s water’s life, right? Of course, where are we getting all this infinite amount of water from also, right? Always a catch 22.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to become like demolition band where you wreck and the car just turns into styrofoam and that’s the end of it.

And you crawl out of it. I’m just seal. It’ll just air seal everything. And that’s the end of it.

Donovan Lara: I’m sensing something here. I think we’re going to put together a garage riot, GTM protest, and we’ll all go to the mountain with our signs on the back in boots. I don’t even own cowboy. Will

Crew Chief Eric: you show me how to use the three seashells as well?

Speaking of weird reveals, Chevy has said enough is enough. It’s time to reveal the Z06. And guess what folks, if you’re listening to this, On the day that it airs, October the 26th, 2021. [00:51:00] Today’s the big day. The Z06 has finally been revealed. They leaked spy photos on Instagram this month, showing everybody what it was going to look like.

And I don’t know, here’s my bigger question. They can’t even fulfill the orders of the regular Z51 Corvettes, the stingrays. How are they going to fulfill the orders of the Z06s? And I thought we weren’t making Corvettes. I thought there was a stop order on those, just like there wasn’t the Camaros and everything else.

I am so confused.

Donovan Lara: That’s bizarre. I will say though, they talk about in the article, they’re not sure what the engine’s going to be. I don’t know if you guys happen to see that. Was it an Instagram feed where somebody was at a party and they cranked one up? Flat plane crank? Yeah. I mean, just. Oh, incredible.

So whoever that was, I’m sure it got fired the next day, but I mean, if that’s really what it’s going to sound like, and I’ve always preferred, I think everybody does, right? Does he have six versions of the stock versions for their looks and things? I think that’s going to be fantastic. But you know, the question I have is this one, the next, you know, version, the, the ZR [00:52:00] one, like, how are they going to get faster than what they already are?

I mean, you know, you get the hybrid, the stingray one. I mean, the stock one’s already what, three seconds, zero 60. So what is it going to be? 2. 9 and 2. 8, 2. 7. So I wonder if they’re having kind of a crisis again, similar to what we were talking about before with, okay, we came out with the news, you know, C8 and it’s super fast and everybody’s going, Oh my God, it’s super fast, but now where do we go?

We can’t go much faster than this. So

Crew Chief Eric: there’s, there’s two problems with the new Corvette outside of the million recalls that we joked about throughout this year that the C8 already has. The other problems that it has are, I still argue that the Corvette community isn’t prepared for this car, right? It’s really leaning towards a younger generation of folks.

And I’m not trying to like stereotype Corvette drivers and all jokes aside, right? New balances and gold chains and gray hair and all that. But it’s just. So different, I still argue they should have a classic front engine rear drive Corvette. The C7 was just so good. Like the C8, I haven’t gotten a [00:53:00] chance to coach one yet.

Maybe I will. I just, I’m not convinced. The other thing that doesn’t convince me is they tried really, really hard to copy the Ferrari and the, and the NSX. And I don’t like split exhaust. V8 flat plane V8 or otherwise. I don’t think they sound right. It’s because of the short headers and everything else.

It just sounds like two really angry four bangers running together. And I just, I don’t know.

Donovan Lara: I don’t think though, you know, you talk

Crew Chief Eric: about

Donovan Lara: are the credit owners ready for it? I think a lot of these, they’re going to be really expensive, right? I’m sure they’re going to be a buck and a quarter. You know, 150, I think they’re going to go right from the showroom, right?

And somebody’s garage, you know, some retired folks that keep it and take it out to their cars and coffee.

Crew Chief Eric: So what happened to the 69 grand bargain basement entry Corvette that was supposed to be so affordable for everybody. Is it because of COVID that now they’re all 150 grand? Because even the regular Corvettes right now, if you can get one are ridiculous.

Donovan Lara: They were losing 20 grand per car on the [00:54:00] original one. Something like that. So, you know, they knew they were selling them on their market. I think they realized, Oh, we can ask a lot more money for these cars. Now that we’ve got the initial PR buzz out of them and let’s do them. I see them all the time now, which is crazy.

And I don’t know how, cause you know, if you still can’t get them, there’s three in the Mazda dealer lot down the road. You know, I granted now they’ve been out for a year or something, but if they’re in that high demand, so I think they’re pretty cool. I think they still have an identity crisis front end rear end kind of thing, but, uh, I’m kind of excited to see

Crew Chief Eric: that rear end is.

Just tragic. I don’t think the Z06 is going to make it better from that spy photo though. The wing looked different. So much like that civic type bar we talked about, it’s getting another ridiculous wing upgrade on the back. So maybe that’ll help that Camaro. They grafted onto the back of it though. Just

Donovan Lara: in the perception though, did you see the picture I posted on garage ride of the guy that I was behind that said L Lambo on his tag?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I don’t know about that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I don’t know about that either. I mean, at the end of the day, what I do know, and I’m still holding out hope for is the 400Z. If they’re right about the price and the car is as [00:55:00] fast as they say it’s going to be, it looks good. It’s going to sound good. It’s going to be good.

I’m putting a lot of faith in Renault, right? The parent company of Nissan to get this right, to do the heritage thing. They’ve done a good resto on that. If the price point is anywhere between 50 and 60, I think that car is going to sell like crazy and it’s going to be that replacement for the Corvette, right?

That folks like us want, unless you buy a used C7. Switching gears back to Ford for a moment. Remember last month, I mentioned the Maverick and we talked about the factory in India that was closing and Ford was losing money and apparently the Maverick was supposed to built there. Guess what? It’s going to be built in America.

And the guys from Jalopnik have already driven one. I thought the article was rather entertaining. He does a really good job of comparing this Maverick to what it could be. So he compares it to like a Spitfire. That’s a Triumph for those that don’t know. He compares it to a previous generation F 150. He compares it to the Ford Capri.

He compares it to all sorts of other things to say where [00:56:00] it got its design inspiration. I look at it and go, this is the Ranger. The real Ranger that we were supposed to get, not this other thing with a four cylinder. That’s the size of an F one 50. I think it’s cool. And I do agree with him in his early part of the statement where he compares it to the BW combi, which is for those that don’t know the type two Vanagon as a.

truck without a cap on it. The Maverick has a very similar look to it. I think it’s kind of cool and you could do some really tasteful mods to it to give it that combi kind of feel, especially out in California with some surfboards and different kind of rims and things. If you’re looking for a pickup truck of that style, is it useful for every day?

I don’t know, but it’s still going to be relatively large. Probably Canyon, Colorado size. Like I said, the way the Ranger should have been not the size of the old F 150.

Donovan Lara: That blue didn’t help. Yeah, I don’t know, man. I mean, it’s boring to me. I, you know, I [00:57:00] think the article is kind of neat, but I think it’s a little bit of a stretch where, you know, he talks about the Capri front end piece, but he’s trying to jazzercise

Crew Chief Eric: it, right?

You’re like, ah, it’s so exciting. Yeah, I mean,

Donovan Lara: I’ll say this. I think this is all you really say. It starts at 19, nine, you know, it is your go to Hertz and rent a car. That’s what they’re going to pull around with. I mean, most of the ones in the picture here have the steel wheels on them. So the shape’s a little odd though, to me, it’s kind of like first gen Ridge line.

Yes. Yeah. I see that too. Yeah. I mean, I do like where Ford’s going with the trucks and stuff. They’re like, the Broncos are cool. Even the little one, I think it has potential, man. I think like this to me could be the next like kid tuner truck, you know, the nineties, the little C10 or whatever, everybody has C10s

Crew Chief Eric: and the Tacomas and all those, the Jimmy’s and whatnot.

Yeah.

Donovan Lara: So I think this has a place in the market for sure. I didn’t see all the engine options. What is a four cylinder? Was there a EcoBoost

Crew Chief Eric: like from the Mustang and from the Bronco and all those.

Donovan Lara: So I mean, it’s fine. I mean, this would be like your 16 year old son needs something new and reliable. We’ll go buy him one of these.[00:58:00]

Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Like everything else, Ford is changing, right? We’re starting to see, I heard somebody say the other day, they understand now my comments about why the Mach E looks just like an Escape because it’s built on it. I mean, there’s some platform sharing going on with Ford. Good for them. You know, that’s a good thing.

That’s a smart move following after the Germans, but they are innovating and there’s some really cool features on the F 150 that. We didn’t really know about another funny article from Jalopnik. It’s kind of a lesser known capability of the F 150 and they’ve been teasing this idea of self scaling trucks for a while and Ford has actually done it.

And the only way you can tell. That it’s active and working is by looking at the rear taillights. There’s a set of LEDs buried in the inner part of the rear taillight that light up like a progress bar to let you know where your toe limit and your toe capacity is. And I actually think as somebody who toes all the time, you’re telling the race car and everything.

I think that’s brilliant [00:59:00] because I don’t have a way of judging that other than with my eyes. And then my air suspension kind of takes care of the rest of it. So I’m kind of wondering, you know, when can I adapt this to something else? You know, I think this is really, really cool.

Donovan Lara: I think that when fifties are super cool, always have, I think it’s amazing.

And what I think is really cool, like with the scale and the tail lights and a lot of the things that the truck manufacturers are doing, they’re trying to outdo each other and all of the features they can come up with, right? How many ways can I. Create a foldable tailgate that has speakers in it and steps in it and everything else to me.

You know, it’s crazy to think that in a lot of ways they already are pickup trucks out there are some of the most technologically advanced vehicles on the road, which is pretty crazy. And what is it? Ford sells 2, 500 F. One fifties a day, it’s like

Crew Chief Eric: the fastest selling car in North America.

Donovan Lara: Good for them.

And, you know, I think, you know, that, that market obviously is very competitive, not as much for them because they’re crushing it, but it’s these little things that are going to keep them, you know, ahead of the pack that, you know, there’s all these neat little features that people need. You know, it’s neat, you, like you just said, you could use that in towing or you imagine [01:00:00] somebody doing something like that.

It’s not just a flashy something. It’s not LEDs under them or neons underneath. It’s something usable. So I think it’s really, really cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Now it’s time to move on to Brad’s favorite section. Lost and Found, which covers hidden secrets, historical news, and things like that. So first up, this month, a video came across my desk.

I believe it was from Garage Riot, and it is the most interesting, over dramatized, and boring video I have ever watched. It all wraps itself around a long lost, AMC, American Voter Corporation, AMX 3. For some of you, you’re all groaning, going, Oh, the gremlin, oh, the pacer, ugh. You know, yes, they’re all crap, I get it.

However, the AMX 3 is special in the fact that it is a prototype. It was built from 1969 1970. There are six different versions of it that were publicly seen and released. There were nine total. And apparently the backstory on this car and the story, this whole story could be told in like [01:01:00] three minutes, but they drag it out in this video.

But some guy is, I don’t know, on Facebook marketplace or something. And he stumbled across this dude with this giant, like Clown bow tie thing. And I don’t even know why he’s shopping for this in the background. He happens to be a car guy. And he’s like, wait, is that an AMX? And they had heard some rumors about this car being lost in Michigan, somewhere in this net.

And then they discover the car. Right. And so the car was actually built by Carmen in Germany, who’s famous for also building many other famous cars, like the Scirocco and some of the Audis and BMWs and things like that. So there. A coach builder and so they helped a MC build this mid-engine two-door sports car that very much looks like a Pantera, just smaller, right?

So a ditch Mazo Pantera. And so pretty cool car. Not a lot of history on it. Only resources out there outside of the A MC club and things like that. You go to Wikipedia and there’s a big writeup on these cars and their evolution and BMW was involved with them and, uh, in [01:02:00] Carmen and Volkswagen, et cetera.

So a lot of hands in building these prototypes. It just never really went anywhere because AMC didn’t last too much longer into the seventies before they got absorbed by Jeep and Chrysler and the Lee Iacocca era of Dodge, right? And Plymouth and all those, those companies being rebranded and reformed and amalgamated, which by the way, guys, if you didn’t know, Jeep was part of AMC a lot, which is why Chrysler bought them.

But at any rate, moving on from that, what other things? Did we find that we can buy on places like bring a trailer and cars and bids there, Donovan?

Donovan Lara: Oh, there’s a fairly low mile GTI right now. It’s an 84 with 63, 000 miles that I’ve got my, uh, papers on. Car is beautiful. It looks, you know, from the pictures, it looks almost Mint.

It has horrible, horrible. What are those Chrome side panels on the side? Mm-Hmm? . That R, was that a factory option?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t remember it being one, but it could have been. But all the ones I knew [01:03:00] were, they only came in three colors. Silver, red, and black. And then your interior choices were black, blue, jean or pumpkin?

Donovan Lara: Pumpkin. I don’t think I’ve seen the pumpkin in. So I’m, uh, let’s see. We’ve got three days left. It’s a 27 5, um, 27

Crew Chief Eric: 5 for a mark. One GTI. Are you nuts? You can buy a golf cart for that price.

Donovan Lara: I’m betting this car goes over 40, so, uh, pretty cool. But, uh, yeah, I’d like to, I’ve been looking for one for a while and I think, you know, it’s probably gotten to the point where there are more than I’m interested in, in buying particularly this one, but we’ll see, you never know.

Maybe one day I hate

Crew Chief Eric: to say if I was standing in your garage and you have the keys to the Gallardo in one hand, the keys to a GTI and the other one. Probably going to pick the GTI, just letting you know,

Donovan Lara: that’s the car enthusiast though. Right. Then, you know, that’s, that’s exactly it. But there’s also, I just saw there’s a 32 mile BMW M4 GTS on here, which is pretty interesting as well.

I don’t need another F 80. BMW, but I actually shopped those before I bought the Gallardo. That was consideration. And, uh, I’m glad I did. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: only [01:04:00] 4 million. I’ll bring a trailer, right?

Donovan Lara: They’re in the nineties usually, but this one, yeah, with 32 miles, it’s probably going to be something stupid, but yeah, it was too close to what I already have.

The other thing on here, I’ll just mention cause I saw it is there’s an old BMW bike on here. If anybody listening has one or knows of one, I want one, I don’t want it running. And if the engine doesn’t work, that’s cool. I just think they’re cool to look at. I like to park it in the man cave somewhere. But yeah, you’re

Crew Chief Eric: talking BMW motorcycle, right?

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.

Donovan Lara: Not bike. Like we were talking earlier, but yeah, pre 1960s motorcycle.

Crew Chief Eric: I also saw that Pablo Escobar’s. 911 was for sale.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. Everybody’s going through the jokes right now in their head. For sure. Right.

Crew Chief Eric: So the back history on this thing, I looked at the pictures ago. Oh, I know that car.

That’s Emo’s car. And what do I mean by Emo’s car? Emerson Fittipaldi’s car. So that was a Penske built 9 11. I rock RSR international race of champions, something we don’t do anymore. And I am missed. Deeply. I thought IROC was super cool to see all the champs from all the different disciplines going at each other [01:05:00] in different cars, every year, MO sold that car to a Porsche aficionado who ran a Rolex almost kind of thing.

And I don’t know how it ended up in Pablo Escobar’s hands. And then eventually made its way back to the States in the nineties. Apparently the car has gone through a heck of an evolution to get it back to its original state. Apparently Escobar had a wide bodied it to a nine 35 style, you know, a bunch of other stuff.

Nothing that I. Would take issue with because it’s all classic nine 11 stuff, but for the purist to say, this is Emerson Fittipaldi’s IROC car, obviously we got to bring it back to standard. The going rate on that auction at the time of reading the article was a low, low, low price of 856, 000. 1, 000. So yeah, let me, I’m going to get to, but speaking of other weird things, when I bring up the word winkle, what do you think?

Not wanker, not wanker.

Donovan Lara: Oh, okay. That’s different. I think

Executive Producer Tania: in the auto mechanic shop,

Donovan Lara: wanker working on the

Crew Chief Eric: winkle [01:06:00] or you think Mazda, right? You immediately go RX seven, right? Anything rotary power for those that don’t know, or is it broken? Not really. What is it? Frederick Winkle or whatever his name is.

Fred Winkle. He designed this engine apparently when he was 17 years old, probably playing with a spirograph, but actually it was invented in the 1920s. He patented way back when, you know, the first Winkle powered cars or rotary engine cars came from NSU and Mazda just about the same time, 1961, 1964. As I’ve always said, if the Germans, Thought it was a good idea.

They would have hung on to it. So, you know, the Wankel has forever lived on in Mazda’s portfolio into the RX cars. But did you know that there was a motorcycle powered by a Wankel?

Donovan Lara: Is that better or worse?

Crew Chief Eric: So when you watch this video, which is kind of weird because it’s got a male Siri voice. And then there’s actual footage of bikes running at like motocross events and things like that.

At first I was like, that’s just a regular old two stroke. Like, why do I, what do I [01:07:00] care? And then suddenly it does like 27, 000 RPM. And you’re like, well, that’s really, really different. So as you dig into this very long video that came to us via mountain man, Dan, part of his whole mountain view thing that he’s doing, it’s a single rotor Wankel powered dirt bike.

It’s mounted horizontally in there. It’s all this. Really interesting engineering to make it work and make it fit. So it’s not super huge and doesn’t have like 12 spark plugs hanging out from it. It’s actually quite compact and almost looks like an AC motor attached to the bike and the way it works and made by a company called Hercules, which I know Hercules from the pedal bikes from England.

So I didn’t do enough research to see if there was a connection there between the two brands. They were, it was just neat. But at the end of the day, I’m like, whatever it’s. It’s a rotary and it’s a dirt bike and I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Donovan Lara: A couple fun facts, right? He was not trained at a university.

Pretty interesting for a guy that created that. Like Dr. Porsche? Yeah, he was a big time Nazi sympathizer, participator guy, but did give us the 787B, [01:08:00] so.

Crew Chief Eric: Well,

Donovan Lara: indirectly, I suppose.

Crew Chief Eric: Indirectly, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s by, uh, by proxy. Well, that wraps up Lost and Found for this month. Well, now it’s time to move on to random new EVs and concept cars.

But we dovetail right into a Restomod and there’s another British company converting classic cars to EVs. And this time it’s Aston Martin DBs and we’re talking DBs 4s, 5s, and 6s. They’re starting with the DB6s, which not to be confused with the famous James Bond DB5, is a slightly larger version with similar lines to it.

What I got out of this, super awesome, but the price tag. Is extremely hefty because a number one, you have to buy a rare Aston Martin to begin with, and then you have to convert it. It’s going to cost you upwards of anybody want to take a guess.

Donovan Lara: Million bucks.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, sir. That’s a million dollars for an EV.

How many Teslas can I buy for that?

Donovan Lara: So, okay, I’m going to compare this to a [01:09:00] 911. How many 911s do you see these days that somebody cut and put wide fenders on and ruined a car that was once valuable? Because at the time, they thought that was the cool thing to do. And now you look at it and go, Oh my God, you destroyed that car.

That’s what I see. But

Crew Chief Eric: you have to look at it for the time period. If you’re looking at the seventies and eighties, they made a lot of 911s. There’s a lot of nine elevens. You could say the same thing. Why’d you turn that piece of historical, you know, investment into a race car. There’s a lot of nine elevens that have been thrashed and trashed, so there’s so many of them.

Unless it’s Emerson Fit, Aldi’s nine 11. Does it matter if it was cut up? It was just somebody’s base model nine 11 At the end of the day,

Donovan Lara: not, yeah, you’re right. Not at the time, but now. But you know, to me it’s like, you know, I looked at, I think we talked about this on graduate as well, you know, I’ve been looking at EV swap in the nine 11, the 73, and you know, the thing that appeals to me about that is.

You know, there’s a company that does a swap, but the thing that’s great about it is it’s a direct bolt. There’s no cutting the body. There’s no modifying the chassis that really appeals to me. Right. And the kit is [01:10:00] something like 15, 000, which is basically the cost of a rebuild of the motor itself. You got a car like mine that the motor has been sitting outside the car.

Since 1986. Maybe that’s the way to go. But what I really like about that is you can take it back out. You didn’t hurt anything. I have to assume that’s what they’ve done here, but I don’t understand the million dollar price tag. If I can convert a nine 11 for under 20, 000, what kind of batteries exactly are we using for this Aston Martin here?

That’s a million dollars.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re shaken, not stirred, right? Special ones,

Donovan Lara: or they’re doing some special body work and some reconfiguring of this car that You know, is going to take it out of collector view in the future years, if they try to cut it back or turn it back. So I don’t know, it sounds cool, but then again, you know, it gets back to lots of things we’ve talked about.

If a real car enthusiast wants that feel, wants that sound, I think you’re going the wrong way in the DV six. And again, after 2030, somebody is going to look at this when they’re all of their cars or EVs and go. Man, I wish this still had the petrol engine in it [01:11:00] because that’s different. So how much

Crew Chief Eric: does it devalue a classic, even though they’re going to turn around and sell it for a million bucks, it’s not going to be worth a million dollars, right?

Cause let’s face it, it’s no longer in American terms, a numbers matching car, not that. Older European cars had a whole numbers matching system like the Americans did, but it kind of takes away from it. But so yes, from the outside, it’s still db six or db five, but yeah, it’s not James Bond’s right now, even though Q might’ve built an Evie db five for, for Sean Connery.

Donovan Lara: Well, and it’s crazy because db sixes are half a million dollars, right? You know, you buy one and you do that to it. And then, you know, you got to swap it back, but it’s crazy.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I heard that Volvos. Making a game change.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently they’re getting on with the EV revolution as well. And I think they’ve made a commitment to go electric only by 2030.

But along with that, they’re also making a sustainability commitment. And so they’re switching some of their interior materials of construction to more sustainable textiles. So. I’m kind of surprised. [01:12:00] I didn’t realize that Volvo was still offering real leather interiors. Cause I thought pretty much most everybody had moved away from real leather to, you know, synthetic leather, which is nothing but plastic aside from your Ferraris or your Porsches or, or, you know, something very high end.

So kudos for them, but also more kudos for them, I guess, for not. Wanting to continue to slaughter cows to make car seats. I think they’ve got a whole slew of materials that they’re going to use that are more sustainable recycled pet bottles, polyethylene, not pet like an animal, but PET bottles, corks from wine industry, materials like that, that are more bio and recyclable.

They’re going to use to make interior textiles essentially. And apparently they will still offer some, I didn’t realize either. Apparently they have wool interiors, I guess. Maybe there’s some wool in, in some of their fabrics, but that’s going to

Crew Chief Eric: be itchy there.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it depends. Some, some of it can be woven quite smooth, but yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, people complain about leather being hot in the summer. What is [01:13:00] a wool

Executive Producer Tania: set of

Crew Chief Eric: seats going to be like,

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. There’s so many things shocking me in this, in this article. They’re also committing to making sure that I guess whatever sheep farms that are getting their sheared wool. It’s certified responsible wool sourcing.

Does the

Crew Chief Eric: Volvo come with like a full history, medical shots and like adoption papers too? I mean, it’s like an episode of Portlandia when you go and buy a new Volvo, right?

Donovan Lara: Here’s the problem though. What does it smell like?

Crew Chief Eric: Like sheep,

Executive Producer Tania: well, your seats might smell like maybe a fine aged wine. If it’s coming from the corks, just kidding.

Well, they’re calling

Crew Chief Eric: this new textile Nordico, if I pronounce that correctly. And you’re right. It’s made from a combination of different recycled materials. I just have a feeling that you’re going to get in the car and go cool. This feels like when they make a playground out of recycled tires. No,

Executive Producer Tania: you know, probably it’s going to feel like pleather.

Crew Chief Eric: I also think it’s a lot along the lines of that mini Cooper that we talked about where they call that the strip or that guy designed things out [01:14:00] of cork and other materials in that mini Cooper that we joked about, you know, who’s going to buy that stripped down race car. But now it sounds like Volvo might be taking a page out of that book.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, honestly, as long as the touch sensation isn’t gross,

Crew Chief Eric: weird, you know, can’t be any worse than that. Soft touch stuff from the early two thousands that every European car had,

Executive Producer Tania: which is great until, you know, 15 to 20 years later, it becomes a sticky nightmare mess that stains everything. But anyway, digress.

I mean, as long as it’s not a weird feeling, who cares? I mean, it’s done. Better that we find a use for all this plastic and waste that we’re generating, that’s, you know, more sustainable. And if they can then re recycle the materials in the future, I mean, that’s just a win for the environment. So, I mean, as long as it’s not terrible, I don’t see a problem with it.

I mean, good on them for innovating in that space.

Donovan Lara: What does it smell like?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know! Crayons! That’s what everybody says Volkswagen smell like after a while.

Donovan Lara: It’s true they do smell like old crayons. It’s [01:15:00] weird. It’s gonna have a smell, right? Every car has a smell, and like, all E36 M3s smell a certain way, all, you know, certain whatever smell the same way.

It’s gonna have a smell, especially as it starts to break down. Well, as long as it’s not

Executive Producer Tania: offensive, who cares?

Donovan Lara: I don’t know. What does partially broken down plastic smell like?

Crew Chief Eric: Not good. Well, moving on, I’m going to bring up a name that some of you may know, and others may not Gordon Murray awkwardly pause for you to guess who that is, former designer of McLaren has spun off and started to develop his own cars.

The very first one he designed, he calls it the T 50. And now he’s introducing a cheaper version, even though the T 50 isn’t available for anybody called the T 33. So I’m already kind of thinking like, what? Tesla S versus Tesla three and all this. I bring this car up. I was digging around a little bit and maybe it was the gods of the interweb, you know, targeted ads and things like that.

And things coming across my desk. I happen to be having a conversation with, and spoiler alert here, Gonzalo, the CEO of heel tread. And he [01:16:00] mentioned this as his. You know, sexiest car of all time poster on his wall. This is the car he strives to get. He wants this T 50 Gordon Murray. And so as I was digging around, I discovered all this other stuff about it.

Donovan Lara: I think it’s beautiful. The first time I saw it, I was like, wow, it looks like the modern interpretation of the F1 in that orange, that bright orange color. I think is. It’s gorgeous, the silver, a little less, but let’s be honest. It is, it is a newer version of the F1, which I think is really, really cool. And the back I think is fantastic.

It’s interesting. How much is the T33 going to be? And I don’t see an Exxon like performance wise.

Crew Chief Eric: Nope. I don’t, I don’t think there’s really anything out there. Cause there’s not a whole lot of information on the T50 either. I know that production will be limited to about a hundred units. So, you know, that when they’re building cars, boutique like that, you know, sub 1000 numbers, they’re going to go for it.

Astronomical pricing. I mean, I’m going to guess here 250k easily. It’s got to be more than that.

Donovan Lara: I’m looking at the T 50 Niki Lauda version with the four liter B12. [01:17:00] There we go. That’s going to be incredible. That’s the big, is there a fan in the back? I can’t quite figure that out.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That’s like this weird chaparral thing that they’re doing with the fan in the back.

And if you notice this, like you mentioned about the F1, because I believe Gordon Murray was involved even way back then with McLaren, it has that almost centered seating position with the offset driver’s seat and all that. So it’s almost a single seat cockpit and, you know, Lambo style doors and whatnot.

So it is an interesting design. You’re right. It’s kind of a modern version of the F1, not a fan of low offset wheels. I just. I miss the deep dish wheels of the 80s and 90s. It has some Pagani look to it too from the rear. I mean, he’s definitely borrowing some design cues. I think the headlights look like he stole them right off of a 918.

You know, it’s just, there’s only a couple of designs at the end of the day, right? I’m not saying it’s ugly, but I feel like I’ve seen some of this before.

Donovan Lara: I think that’s a good point. The more you look at it, I saw it a few weeks ago and then I saw it again earlier this week. It does start to look a little bit familiar, which is [01:18:00] concerning.

Right. You know, you see something and maybe the first time you’re like, I don’t know. And then it grows on you and you start to appreciate that. This is kind of the opposite to me. It was, it was kind of hot flash at the beginning. I wonder how sustainable that is, right. You start to like really looking at the side of you now you’re like, it’s a proportion, right.

But yeah, I love the interior, you know, obviously being kind of an independent. You know, boutique manufacturer, they can’t do all the crazy electronics. So I like all the toggle switches on the ride. Like the old style, just flip switches are really, really cool. I bet it’s amazing to drive.

Executive Producer Tania: That is not my cup of tea.

And the rear end is not particularly attractive. Kind of reminiscent of the GT40 that has that Angry Birds rear

Crew Chief Eric: end look. I give you that. I give you that. I mean, like I see, I see the Pagani in there too, you know, where that fan is. Think about those four exhaust pipes coming up the middle. It’s like the same thing, you know?

So it’s odd, but I’m curious to see what the numbers are again, nothing about whether it’s going to be a hybrid or if it’s going to be an EV or whatever. Cool to look at for the moment. You know, you need to have the Matchbox car version in my case. That’s in my collection. That’s for [01:19:00] sure. But kind of switching gears to another car that triggered an emotion for me on multiple levels, the Pieck or the however, you don’t want to pronounce it.

Some people say peach, et cetera, but Pieck as in Ferdinand Pieck, the cousin nephew, the Porsche Pieck family, there is now a Swiss manufacturer using the Pieck name to come out with a classic sports car look for the electric age. So this is not. An EV restomod. This is a ground up designed in their, you know, laboratory car.

They’re boasting 603 horsepower and it’s supposed to be a GT cruiser, right? A boulevard cruiser grand touring car. The Swiss mark Piek was founded in 2017. I think that coincides right along with when Ferdinand Piek. Passed away, but I was also kind of thinking, you know, what other Swiss brands have there been out there outside of is Dara, right?

The commendatory and all the prototypes that they built and stuff like that. You don’t see a lot of cars coming out of, out of Switzerland or the Swiss Alps because all the restrictions they have, [01:20:00] obviously it’s going to be an EV. It’s going to be. that’s important. I thought it was low weight. 39 68 is the current weight on the car, which compared to a lot of other EVs you’re hearing Teslas and some of these Audis weighing five and 6, 000 pounds with their battery packs and whatnot.

Tanya knows more about the kilowatt hours. They’re claiming a 75 kilowatt hour battery. That’s going to allow up to 310 miles of Range. So I thought that was pretty good. Zero to 60 numbers of three seconds and zero to one 20 in nine seconds. Before I give you my hot take on this car, I want to get your guys feedback on what you think it looks like.

Executive Producer Tania: The profile looks like a Ferrari that I can’t remember the numbers of.

Donovan Lara: I think the side profile nailed it. I think it’s gorgeous to me. It’s kind of Aston Martin ish, Ferrari, California ish, but better. And then in the article, as I start to go down, I start to see other angles. The front end reminds me of the TVR was the one of the late nineties T vs.

Tuscan. I think the back’s okay, but then [01:21:00] when you see the Threequarter front shot, I’m like, Nope, I’m out. It’s like a . Nope, I’m out. Love it. Vanilla Aston Martin looking kind of car, but side profile is. Beautiful light that that’s wall art, like, you know, poster, the rest, not so much.

Crew Chief Eric: So I agree with the front end, very Aston Lotus look like the old Elans with that big kind of gaping, you know, hole.

And then some angles, if you close one, I kind of was like Miata from the front as well. The back has that look like a 400 Z it’s got a similar tail to it, which I actually like that coming together of the, of the wide hips and the integrated ducktail and the lift back and all that. The side profile, I agree dead on looks really good, but you know, which car reminds me of the most and Tanya is going to go, Oh yeah, that one, the Alfa Romeo eight C

Donovan Lara: I can see that.

Window shape, maybe.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. Yeah. It has a very similar style look. Even when you look at the headlights and stuff, you’re like, really looks like the Alfa Romeo. And I’m okay with that. I think this car would look better in a different [01:22:00] color other than this tungsten that it comes in. Maybe with some accents and things.

I think it would look kind of cool in something else. I’d like to see some other pictures of it, but I would drive one. I think this is really neat.

Donovan Lara: I don’t see any interior shots. Something about the back is very familiar and I can’t quite place it. Is it another TBR? Like the Z

Crew Chief Eric: car? It looks like an old Z car.

Yeah.

Donovan Lara: You know, and you gotta give them props though. I mean that, you know, a lot of concept cars come out or, you know, these, these boutique manufacturers and they’re like, man, you can’t actually, this looks like something that People right away and sell really well. So

Crew Chief Eric: they’re saying we’re gonna have to wait until 2024 though.

So we’re a little ways off before we get to see final production, get to see the car, you know, behind, you know, with Chris Harris behind the wheel on on top gear or something like that. But I’m really curious to see what happens. I don’t know that they listed a price tag on this yet, but I can only imagine that this car is gonna cost a hundred grand, if not more.

I mean, there’s nailed it,

Donovan Lara: 99,000. Oh, no, sorry. That’s the competitor. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re going to compete against the Audi e tron GT, which we mentioned earlier with the [01:23:00] Stig. So kind of cool. Something different, you know, very definitely pretty to look at. I would also add that to my Hot Wheels collection if there was one available.

Donovan Lara: Me too.

Executive Producer Tania: So the last one, is it something that’s going to be mainstream or coming to the market or something you can purchase anytime soon, but I think it’s pretty impressive feat by these engineering students, essentially. Apologize for mispronunciation, but at the Eindhoven University of Technology, 22 students designed and built a 100 percent solar powered camper van.

It took them nine months from design to build, which is pretty impressive considering They’re students and they don’t have access, you know, necessarily to Ford manufacturing or equivalent. And they took it on a, what was I think technically supposed to be a 3000 kilometer journey from the Netherlands to Spain, but the vehicle actually only did 2000 of the kilometer.

So just over 1200 miles, I believe they, they had to tow it the first a thousand miles [01:24:00] of the journey due to some sort of drive train issue, which. Remarkably, they were able to solve and fix and reprint a part or whatever that they needed to get it, you know, up and running. So I think it’s a, it’s a good testament to these students and the capability of their solar powered car.

We can easily get into solar power. How stupid when it rains, you don’t have sun. Two, three days for this thing to, you know, fully charge you and say, who, man, that’s so stupid, blah, blah, blah. Take it for the engineering feats and the capability of these 22 individuals. I think it’s pretty impressive and good on them.

Crew Chief Eric: So I have two questions. One of them I’m going to ask for Donovan, which is what does it smell like?

Donovan Lara: That’s a new segment now.

Crew Chief Eric: What does it smell like? The sun. Yeah, burning electric and the other one is I applaud them for their ability to build this thing because it’s pretty epic with like the Westfalia roof and these wings that like come out, I guess, which are solar panels and [01:25:00] all this crazy stuff that it has.

But why is it shaped like this? Like a giant Johnny Cab slash suppository. I mean, what is going on with this thing?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, they must’ve had some sort of design reason. Maybe, you know, they’re, if they’re students, maybe they did some aerodynamic calculations that told them that that’s what they should be doing.

I don’t know. Or maybe they wanted something funky and futuristic looking.

Crew Chief Eric: How heavy are those doors? Those things are huge.

Executive Producer Tania: So they say the whole thing weighs 3, 700 pounds. No

Crew Chief Eric: way.

Executive Producer Tania: The specs listed put the weight at 1, 700 kilograms or 3, 748 pounds.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow. That, I mean, like any other RV that’s made out of tinfoil and Well, it’s fairing strips.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s supposedly an aluminum chassis with glass fiber and aluminum foam core on the aeroshell. So I’m going to

Crew Chief Eric: give them, I’m going to give them this. If their solar technology is what we’re really focused on here, which it is, it’s not the vehicle. No, if that, if that solar roof works [01:26:00] and if those, whatever those butterfly wing things are, when it’s fully extended work, you have my attention because, you know, this is something we’ve been talking about, you know, Tesla and it was a Fisker.

promise, you know, these solar roofs and they really never went anywhere. Wouldn’t it be really cool if you could charge the batteries while you’re driving around and use the battery power at night or when it rains, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like you were saying, if this works, that’s the point of this at the end of the day, not the fact that it looks like a Johnny cab.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, and I believe that there’s a time and a place for everything, so to speak, right? Diversification. of the Energy Portfolio is not a bad thing. There can be a good use for this. Maybe it’s not on the roof of your Tesla or Taycan or whatever as you’re going to the grocery store. But let’s go back to those city buses that are doing nothing but sitting around or crawling through traffic.

What if they had some sort of use? Solar panel wings that came out and they’re able to capture some of that sunlight and, you know, transfer it to battery recharge or [01:27:00] things like that. Maybe there are applications for it and we can diversify the energy portfolio that we’re not solely bound to one thing or the other,

Donovan Lara: you know, they probably would have gotten that first thousand iPhones on the trip.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to know how they got 22 people inside that Johnny cab.

Executive Producer Tania: No, so in fairness, the issue was allegedly had nothing to do with the solar panels, but was a mechanical issue again with the drive train. And there’s only room for two people. Wait, that thing’s

Crew Chief Eric: the size

Executive Producer Tania: of a

Crew Chief Eric: school bus.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it’s designed for two people.

Or two people because they have like fricking like pull out double sofa bed thing in there and all, and all this other stuff. It’s a camber man, right? It’s, it’s not designed like a big RV to bring, you know, you and your family of six and the dog. It’s maybe two, maybe three people. I don’t know. But so the real question is, which of the two of the 22 got to take it on the journey

Crew Chief Eric: con?

I know what it smells like. . It smells like Ikea. [01:28:00] It smells like Swedish meatballs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re high. Ikea has all that like super lightweight furniture that you got to assemble,

Executive Producer Tania: but this is the Netherlands, not Sweden. So it

Crew Chief Eric: doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. I mean, what do you think they put in that thing?

It’s all like three pound tables from like Ikea and stuff. So I guess we got to move on since we’re already talking, you know, we’re talking about these new EVs because we would be,

Executive Producer Tania: we would be remiss not to bring up Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh Lord.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, nothing bad this month. We already knew that Elon moved to Austin, um, personally, a year or so ago, I guess now.

Donovan Lara: And he lives in one of these solar Eindhoven things.

Executive Producer Tania: No, there’s too many round edges on, on the, uh, The glass won’t break if you

Crew Chief Eric: throw something at it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. There’s not, they didn’t put the laser beams on the windshield. So to wipe the water away. Yeah. So he personally moved to Texas to be closer to SpaceX and all this other stuff.

I’m sure he had issue, you know, other issues being angry at California. It’s been recently [01:29:00] announced that he is going to move the headquarters. Out of Palo Alto to Austin. Nice.

Donovan Lara: It was every other Californian

Executive Producer Tania: along with every other big California company. And part of it is citing the fact that California is just ridiculous in different ways in terms of just congestion and cost of living, you know, aside from the very stringent regulations.

that they have in place and whatnot. So, uh, it’ll be interesting to see how happy those California workers will be to move to Texas. They don’t plan on shutting down the facilities they have in California. If anything, they’re, you know, alleging to ramp up production in the, in the manufacturing plants there.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I am hopeful here. On this one is Tesla moves to Austin. Steve Wynn owns DeLorean, which is also in Humboldt, Texas, not too far. They get together and we get an EV DeLorean. This is what I’m waiting for people.

Donovan Lara: The way it should have always been.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred thousand percent. But in other Tesla news,

Executive Producer Tania: there’s another drag [01:30:00] race.

And it’s this 14 minute video that you got to fast forward to the nine minute mark. And then again, to like the, I don’t know which minute mark to see anything remotely interesting, but it’s between a thousand horsepower McLaren, whatever the hell it is. And a Tesla plaid S version blue, they did three runs.

They did a standstill drag race run, which the Tesla obliterated the McLaren, which off to no one’s

Crew Chief Eric: surprise. Right. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: I, and it was to no one’s surprise that was. Present for this drag racing. I mean, off the line, electrics have the advantage. We already know this. Then they did a rolling start drag due to the fact that of course, McLaren’s going to suck off a dead stop line and the Tesla still really obliterated it.

And then their third one was a rolling start. with advantage to the McLaren. So I think it started with however many feet ahead of the Tesla and the Tesla still caught up basically. And I think it was ended up being [01:31:00] like a nose to nose kind of finish. Hey, I got to add

Crew Chief Eric: to the funny part of the end of this.

Not only did the Tesla outrun the McLaren, it also apparently has better brakes.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, because the guy in the McLaren must’ve had a code Brown moment because essentially he ran out of racing. He ran out of runway or whatever they were drag racing on. He ran out of drag race. And apparently literally managed to stop the McLaren an inch from hitting like a fence or a wall or something.

The barrier at the end of the track strip, you did some late breaking.

Crew Chief Eric: I have to say, I mean, you know, we talked about Ken Block earlier. Obviously he’s sold off Hoonigan. This is another Hoonigan video. He’s kind of distanced himself from that, even though he’s. Kind of still affiliated or whatever. It’s still Hoonigan stuff.

It’s whatever you’re right. The first like seven minutes is all about like cleaning products and, Oh, isn’t my car cool and all this kind of thing. It’s it’s whatever I looked at the clickbait, you know, McLaren versus plaid, and this is the same as the Corvette one they did, which the Corvette also got [01:32:00] obliterated.

It was some like 2000 horsepower, you know, nitrous injected quad turbo Corvette or whatever. And it was like, all right, yep. The Tesla wins every time. And it went great. Hey, look yet. Another. drag race between a Tesla and something else that’s going to get crushed. But you’re right. That ending made the whole video worth it.

So I just tell you guys to skip like the first 13 minutes and just watch that last poll because it’s the best.

Donovan Lara: After I lost interest after about five seconds. Cause like you said, there’s a bajillion of these. I had an idea that’s not drag racing anymore, right? Nobody cares. I want to see a triumph TR seven and a Fiat X one nine drag race.

Yes. Old school. Think that video was long. Wait till they figure out how to keep those running long enough to get to the end of the that’s the drag race. I want to see what do they smell like, like fire and oil and

Crew Chief Eric: they’re running rich. That’s for sure. There’s other Tesla news this month, which is kind of funny, but also kind of scary.

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, you know, honestly, this is more I feel like [01:33:00] sensational click baity than anything else. The way the headline reads Tesla tempted drivers with insane mode and now is tracking them to judge safety. Experts say it’s ludicrous. Honestly, that title has nothing to do with the point that’s trying to be made here.

And so what’s happening is Tesla’s doing another beta test of their, you know, full autonomous driving bullshit that. Again, even Elon is admitting doesn’t really work yet. Okay. It’s not full self driving. They’re doing like another beta rollout and they want to do actual testing with Tesla owners, as opposed to just dummy vehicles going around.

And so he’s created this vetting process where he’s created this checklist, if you will, of grading scale for judging who will be allowed to beta. Test this new software update. So essentially he is tracking how people are driving. It’s a very stringent grading scale to the extreme of any kind of like hard breaking, you get docked [01:34:00] points.

And so you have to get like a perfect hundred hundred score or however your scale is. To be allowed to beta test the new full self driving software. And he’s doing this because he only wants safe, trustworthy people should be trying this out to be the Guinea pig, if you will. So it’s not so much that he’s trying to spy on everybody and, and, and track their every moves and control their driving habits.

Not to say that things don’t morph into other things, but it’s supposed to be this vetting process for people to pilot the new beta software. And honestly, this isn’t new. If people are going to get all in there, Oh my god, everybody’s spying on me. Meh, meh, meh. Guess what? Who was it? Progressive did this already?

Like, Five, 10 years ago where they gave you that little sensor to plug in OBD port and they were tracking how you drive and you were supposed to save on your car insurance and all this bullshit. So guess what people it’s already been out there, been there, done that. Let’s not go conspiracy theory.

Crew Chief Eric: Ancient automotive enthusiasts contend that it is Skynet at the end of the day, but Donovan, go ahead.

Donovan Lara: [01:35:00] How many ways can we rip this part of the article apart, right? It’s just. Um, first of all, experts say it’s ludicrous. That was, that’s obviously a Tesla mode, right? So either somebody scanned an article and they’re like, Oh, there’s a little good, let’s give somebody the fastest mode in the car.

And if they don’t drive it safely, then we’re going to do what?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think it even has anything to do with the mode in the car. It’s just nowhere. Have I seen where it says the beta is being tested in the cars with the ludicrous mode and whatnot. It’s just a thousand Tesla owners. are going to get to pilot the new software and he’s vetting them by tracking how they’re driving.

Crew Chief Eric: So, so two things on that. First of all, all those dudes from Hoonigan that we just talked about, they’re out. They’re off the list. Second of all, I’m wondering, can you game the system by using the current, we’re going to put air quotes around autonomous driving, you know, level, whatever. To get the perfect score.

So you’re actually using the current system to qualify yourself for the new system?

Executive Producer Tania: Probably not. Cause I assume he’s able to track that.

Donovan Lara: We definitely need Edson for these particular [01:36:00] articles, but, you know, I don’t know if you guys have ever noticed, like every Tesla article you read is Something they’re doing wrong or something that’s great.

And then you, you get in the actual cars and realize they’re doing it all right. And this article looks just like another attempt to twist it. Tonya, like you were saying around the, make it seem like, Oh, they’re at it again. They’re doing something dumb there. You know, you don’t want to buy a Tesla. I don’t understand why everybody has the hate for the Teslas, but.

I don’t know. I think Edson Paul’s, we keep calling him Edson on GarageRat, you know, show me things like his, in his model three, where, you know, there was a feature, somebody asked for, Hey, can we get these cameras now? And I’m going to butcher it for the Tesla owners out there, but there’s like the rear view.

And then there’s like the corner ones that weren’t normally on and somebody tweeted it or something. And Musk was like, Oh, that’s a great idea. Sent the software upgrade and boom. Now they’re there. He also thought

Crew Chief Eric: that open butthole was a good idea. I mean, come on now.

Open butthole. Yeah. You remember that

Crew Chief Eric: for the gas tank?

Yeah. You open the gas tank voice command. You say open butthole and then it’s open my [01:37:00] butthole, like open the trunk or something ridiculous. He thinks everything’s a good idea,

Donovan Lara: but still, you know, the fact that we’re quick to market with something, somebody made a suggestion. That’s a great idea. Let’s do it.

That to me makes Tesla the winner in the automotive market. So, but it’s also

Crew Chief Eric: kind of scary too, that your car is controlled by over the air software update. So they can render you useless. I also heard about something that came across my desk earlier about. That Tesla is also talking about the cars will put in their own orders for maintenance parts.

Can you imagine if the car ordered its own set of tires suddenly and then you got docked, you know, 1200 bucks because it’s the only tire that’s available for Tesla. No, thank you. There’s certain parts of that I want to be disconnected from.

Donovan Lara: There’s all kinds of, and you should get Paul in here and do maybe just a spin.

Specific Tesla interview, but there’s all kinds of things about eventually like he can’t buy his car. My understanding is he can only lease it because they plan to have this back as a fleet later automated. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: the Ferrari pyramid scheme.

Donovan Lara: Well, it’s a, it’s a, they can basically have them as automated Ubers down the road and they’ll be able to go, you can send it, pick up your [01:38:00] dry, clean, all kinds of crazy stuff.

So I don’t know. It’s, I think it’s pretty interesting, but I’ll take

Crew Chief Eric: that 84 GTI you were talking about. Me too. That’s all I need. Me too. We’ll split. And with a big sigh, we move on to our next segment,

Executive Producer Tania: lowered expectations.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the last time you’ve been on things have evolved.

Donovan Lara: You’ve got my attention now.

Crew Chief Eric: So, you know, I’ve gone to a few Porsche parades over the years and, you know, we’ve all done the car show and the swap meets and things like that. And there’s always, you know, there’s always that one guy kind of back in the corner. He’s selling like, you know, his hand painted art of Lido. Steve McQueen and the nine 17, or, you know, even Dr.

McDreamy and his nine 11s and all those kinds of stuff. But this latest one that I came across this article in auto week, where there’s an artist that’s using these natural mosaics to paint pictures. Of legendary race cars. And I thought this one of the nine 17 made of butterflies is actually quite beautiful.

It’s, it’s really cool looking. And it’s one of those [01:39:00] things that you can just kind of continue to stare at and kind of move your head and just see different things and you kind of zoom in and out of the perspective. And I really do appreciate stuff like this. And I know it’s, it’s kind of car adjacent and probably well out of the all posters.

com price range, you know, to get a full print of that or whatever. But I just thought it was kind of neat.

Donovan Lara: It’s cool. I feel bad for the butterflies that died. I hope you didn’t kill them to make.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And that’s why it qualified for lower expectations. Cause that’s where my brain went to. How do you stage that?

Cause it’s not painted. It’s actually made, you know, these different, uh, renderings that he does are done with, you know, natural materials and things like that. So it’s cool, but on the same token, I’m like, wow, that’s, that’s a lot of effort there.

Donovan Lara: It’s sad at the same time.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Right.

Executive Producer Tania: How many butterflies were killed in the making of this?

Donovan Lara: I was like, it’s got to be several hundred, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine these guys out there? I mean, people collect butterflies. I mean, it’s a thing, but I mean, whatever.

Donovan Lara: It’s very creative.

Crew Chief Eric: So right along with that, but on an entirely different side of things, Begging the question, what could go wrong? [01:40:00] Ford removes the credit score qualification requirement for 84 month loans.

First of all, I didn’t even know seven year loans were like a thing, but good God. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Everybody gets an F 150. It’s like an episode of Oprah and you get an F 150 and you get an F 150 and you get an F

Executive Producer Tania: 150. It’s okay. I don’t want an F 150. Thanks. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, 0 percent APR on a seven year loan on a 70, 000 truck.

I mean, it’s not going to suck me in the door, but for somebody that’s looking to buy a truck right now, if you can get one, despite the semiconductor shortage, that’s really not a bad deal. I don’t know how I feel about 84 months of interest.

Donovan Lara: It’s going to be one of those. You’re going to go down there and they’re going to go, Oh, that was this one particular stock model.

And we don’t have that one anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the Maverick. You came in for the F 150, but you’re getting the Maverick.

Donovan Lara: How long before these end up at title loan? Right? That’s crazy. Yeah, you can do, I know you can do longer finance on, you know, exotics and things. So not crazy, but 0 percent [01:41:00] APR. That’s amazing.

But you know, and the other thing that’s crazy is, you know, all of these, particularly right now are holding their value. There’s a good chance you buy that, drive it for two years and sell it back to Ford for what you have in it or more.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. And the other thing I will warn people about is when you’re sitting at the table, there’s always a lot of pressure to buy a new car, especially if you’re excited about it and the sales rep wants to get their commission and all that kind of stuff, even though they tell you they’re not paid on commission.

One of the things my wife did many years ago, and I still will never forget this. We were buying a VW. And it was one of their promotion, you know, weekends, which happened to be there at the right time. There’s always that, you know, zero down, zero APR, get the car for free, you know, you know, drive, arrive and drive, you know, the whole campaign that they had.

So we’re there and she’s sitting down and she’s kind of furiously scribbling on a piece of paper in this, in the, right in front of the financier’s desk. And she’s like, what are you doing? She’s like, we need to change the terms of this loan. And she’s like, what do you mean? She’s like your 0 percent APR loan is actually more expensive than if I take the shorter, more aggressive loan [01:42:00] with a higher yield, I will end up paying less over the period than I will with the zero.

And she was like, the lady that was there was like, that’s. The first time somebody’s actually sat down and done the math and I’m like, yeah, that’s my wife, right? So I still give her mad props for that. And I’d like to share that story as a reminder to people to just take a minute when you’re sitting there and take the pressure off and breathe and think about what you’re signing on the dotted line on.

So do the rough calculations yourself. If you do the math, see where you end up. Cause some of these things are not to your advantage over the long run.

Donovan Lara: I have many stories along there. I’ll give you two quick ones. First of all, I’ve discovered money factor in these. If you guys don’t know what that is, you need to, that’s how they calculate your finance rate and they hide that from you.

So do your research there. But one of my ex girlfriends, we went in and she was buying a car and I didn’t think about it at the time, but they said, yeah, yeah, go ahead. You know, take it. We’re going to have to have you come back in a couple of days, finish up. Paperwork. So she took it and when they came back, they had dropped her credit score and, Oh, we made this mistake and did all this.

[01:43:00] And, you know, we told him, give back the keys and she was in love with the car. I’d never seen that scam before, but you know, another, this apparently is my Paul Edson podcast night, but we’ve been, I think I’ve talked to Eric. We’ve been looking for operators. So we went to Jeep and trying to buy some Jeeps.

So Jeep currently, and they might still have it on their website, has this 275 a month deal for their hybrid 4XE, which of course doesn’t exist. I went into three different dealers, called all of the Metro ones, nobody has the stock. So we found a dealer that had two, and we had gone into a previous dealer and said, we’ll take two, but they didn’t have any.

So we went to this dealer and said, if we can do the numbers right, we’ll take both of them. At the end of the story, first of all, the first numbers they came back with on a 275, A month loan was 890 a month, right? So we looked at the paperwork, said, no, that’s quite right. Paul’s MBA, super smart guy before it was all said and done.

I kid you not. He was teaching the finance manager how to quick calculate costs and figure out factors and stuff on the online in the dealership. So I say that for two reasons. One is Paul’s super smart, but to [01:44:00] your point, the people that. That are pulling the numbers don’t always know, right? Sometimes they’re just given a calculator or a formula or whatever, or they’re, they’re trying to stick you.

So yeah, definitely do those numbers. And, uh, I’ll give props to Honda, uh, another future sponsor of your podcast. Hopefully for leases, they’re the only, as far as I know, they’re the only manufacturer that does not allow their dealers to change the money factor on a lease. So that’s how they, they, the dealers make more money.

They have to do what corporate gives them, which gets us back to this forward. Uh, 0 percent APR. How are the dealers going to make any money off of this? Right. And again, shopping recently, I went into a Nissan dealer and they had dent proofing as part of their add ons, dent proofing, right? Good luck. Yeah.

They’ve got the undercoating. All right. So I would have to believe that any kind of zero APR F 150 probably has dent proofing and muffler bearings.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it come with muffler bearings and blinker fluid?

Donovan Lara: Yep. Blink of fluid. So,

Crew Chief Eric: oh Lord, they see, this is why it’s on lowered expectations. Speaking of [01:45:00] lowered expectations, how about the United nude low res

Donovan Lara: you have me at nude,

Crew Chief Eric: another art piece, you know, I’m a big fan of Tron.

I mean, if folks know me, they know this to be true. I like all the things about that movie, both the original and the new one, you know, those super angular futuristic cars. But when I saw this, I was like, W. T F and apparently this is a real car. And the part that really got me about this, like I could have cared a less like, Oh, this is some, you know, Wraith Knight Rider BS for a movie that somebody made publicity sign.

It was made for a United nude, which apparently they make like sports apparel and all this kind of stuff, you know, you know, yoga pants and all that kind of, yeah, whatever. But their definition for this car is an abstract low resolution version. Of the Lamborghini Countach, and I’m like, what? I mean, everything is square.

Even the steering wheel is like a hexagon. I’m like, I don’t [01:46:00] understand. At least it was, it’s bogus. I mean, when they lift the lid on this thing, cause it’s like a big old, like, you know, single cockpit Lotus seven underneath or whatever. It’s ridiculous. And then I’m looking at these numbers and I start laughing and it’s like both power numbers of a five kilowatt electric motor paired with a single speed transmission.

And I’m like, this is like the Bugatti baby too. What does it do? Like 30 miles an hour. And it goes like 10 feet. It’s ridiculous. Exactly. It only

Executive Producer Tania: goes. 31 miles

Crew Chief Eric: an hour. It’s insane, right?

Donovan Lara: You can’t wear pants in it. Apparently, no, you have to

Crew Chief Eric: be united and nude, whatever that means. It has to be low res.

Everything’s blurred when you drive it. Right. But the best part is the part that gets me, it goes back to what I always say about auctions on bring a trailer and other places like that, that people have lost. They’re ever loving minds. I mean, this isn’t even like a piece of history, right? This is a publicity stunt car, 111 grand.

I’m like, really? I wouldn’t give you 111 bucks for this thing. Like it’s terrible.

Donovan Lara: What’s crazy is if you look at this, [01:47:00] the winner of the auction, it’s a United low new, no kidding.

Crew Chief Eric: But what does it

Donovan Lara: smell like? Right. I don’t want to know.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t, I don’t want to know either. As we continue to lower our expectations, Tanya mentioned California earlier, what’s going on.

Executive Producer Tania: This is, I guess, car adjacent fuel or fuel adjacent. We already know California is very strict emissions laws. They’ve got their California air resources board, AKA CARB, regulating a lot of things around passenger cars and whatnot in the state, but they are going. further and saying that starting in 2024 there will be a new law passed banning gas powered lawn equipment.

Crew Chief Eric: The world is done. It’s over.

Executive Producer Tania: Lawnmowers and leaf blowers will need to be electric because allegedly what I guess the scientists or whomever have calculated is that one hour lawnmower use is equivalent to driving 300 miles. From LA to Vegas and [01:48:00] one hour of leaf blower use is apparently equivalent to driving 1, 100 miles from LA to Denver.

What

Crew Chief Eric: economy of scale did they calculate that on? Because my lawnmower literally uses a gallon in an hour.

Executive Producer Tania: So what it also says is that they’re saying that they’re the best selling commercial lawnmower for an hour emits as much smog forming pollution as you would by driving a 2016 Toyota Camry around 300 miles.

Donovan Lara: It doesn’t really matter because everybody’s going to be in Austin by the time this, uh, well, there’s no

Crew Chief Eric: grass there anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Executive Producer Tania: So at any rate, if you’re in California, you better start stocking up on your electric leaf blowers and lawnmowers before you can’t find any.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, so with that band, that’s going to hurt.

The landscaping industry, agriculture industry, it’s going to hurt the residents. It’s going to, I mean, there’s going to be a lot of riding lawnmowers for sale, which would be awesome. We’re just going to have to go to California to get it. Whoever’s starting that, you know, cars and bids version for lawn equipment.

Let me know. I want to get in on that early.

Executive Producer Tania: [01:49:00] No, what we need is somebody who’s going to retrofit batteries onto the gas powered lawnmowers.

Donovan Lara: I think it’s just a solar powered. leaf blower. I think that there you go. Problem solved.

Executive Producer Tania: We need those guys and gals in the Netherlands to help us.

Crew Chief Eric: So terrible. But let’s live in the mood a little bit and talk about our favorite section, most anticipated section of the show, the Florida man stories.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, our first one is More of a public service announcement and kind of sad, not kind of sad, it is sad. So we’ll start off low and then end it on a high note.

Crew Chief Eric: Our expectations were already low. So

Executive Producer Tania: this is a Florida man story, unfortunately, and a man killed two people by driving a Tesla through a house.

At 116 miles an hour. And this has nothing to do with Tesla, but with the stupidity of some people, apparently this car had just been purchased several hours before the incident. It wasn’t even the owner [01:50:00] driving, but he let his friend drive. And then there were also two other passengers. In this Tesla, and they were in a 30 mile an hour zone, essentially in a neighborhood, and I guess decided 30 was too slow.

And the report says the car was doing 160 miles an hour. When he blew through a stop sign, ended up over the curb, up an embankment. So I want to say you kind of shot in the air, went through the roof, through the house, very sadly, the house owner and your dog were in the house and they were struck obviously so violently were found in the front yard of the property outside the house.

And obviously they did not. So don’t be a dumb ass. Why are you doing 116 miles an hour on McLaren? He saw a McLaren. He had to

Crew Chief Eric: take the challenge.

Donovan Lara: That sounds more like though they didn’t know how to drive the car. There are brakes, but not really, right? You decelerate by kind of letting off the pedal and things.

I mean, to be that egregiously stupid, you think it was just. Driver [01:51:00] error. Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to slow it down or something. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, it’s possible. Maybe they realized they were going a still too fast on the road speed, but nowhere near that aggressive. And then made a mistake and further thought

Crew Chief Eric: the flux capacitor was working when he hit 88 miles an hour, they would go back in time,

Executive Producer Tania: but he wishes that that was true.

But,

um,

I think he’s in jail now, rightfully so, if he was an idiot. Yeah, that is really unfortunate. So be careful here in Florida. We could digress into EVs and it’s, it’s a whole thing when they accelerate so fast. Hold on,

Crew Chief Eric: hold on, hold on. Wait a second. Wait. I just realized I had this mental picture.

First of all, how tall was the house? Because this, this Tesla went airborne. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, it’s Florida. So I imagine it’s probably one. Oh, okay. I was thinking like a two

Crew Chief Eric: story Victorian or something like chop it off.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s Tampa. So it looks like a one, like a rancher.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought it was like the car from Harry Potter, you know, or like flies around.

Executive Producer Tania: I think it [01:52:00] kind of like definitely probably came airborne and came like. Clip the roof and then like came down in the house. Probably.

Donovan Lara: That’s definitely sad. And I think, I think I need a hug now. I know. Right. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Start it. So you need a hug. Well then why don’t you head on over to Texas where a Houston woman known as pink celebrity, there’s not much text.

You just need to watch the video and it’s. NSFW, I would say. She is a very scantily clad woman riding in various positions on the exterior of, I believe it was a Charger, as the driver is doing doughnuts in some parking lot and she’s barely dressed, twerking. Hanging out the side of the car on the windshield, wherever she can hold on, just twerking it as he’s drifting.

Donovan Lara: I just want to know, is this an actual legitimate news? It’s Fox. This is an actual [01:53:00] news channel. They

Crew Chief Eric: only show the best news.

Donovan Lara: They show her twerking, right? Her ass is all out in the, in the, the tagline reads the pink celeb twerks her ass on a car. They actually put that on the broadcast. Really? You know, somebody was having way too much fun with this and they slipped that in there, probably last minute on Leo.

We’ll put that on and see, but I don’t know. It’s talent. She’s hanging on. And I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, both the driver and her, I mean, this is pretty awesome. I’m not gonna lie. This is really good.

Donovan Lara: How are you supposed to get the dollars to her though? She’s moving too fast. It’d be funny if there weren’t two guys running behind the car, throwing dollar bills at her.

Crew Chief Eric: The paint job is, leaves a little to be desired though. Like I’m not a fan of the baby blue and the pink, but you know, I mean, better than the woman in Britain that was doing the same thing and fell out onto the highway or actually kill herself. Right. I mean, so, I mean, wow. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, at least, yeah, they were confined to a parking [01:54:00] lot trying to keep it safe doing it for the gram, you know, but doing for the tick tock, I don’t know

Donovan Lara: now, now, Eric, you want to know what that car smells like

Crew Chief Eric: and sin.

So that smells like

Donovan Lara: it says she’s the CEO of the car club. All right. What? Imagine that board meeting. My goodness. What’d you all do on Friday?

Executive Producer Tania: So in other news, Fargo. So we’re going north for this one. And, uh, obviously if this is Fargo, uh, I believe in North Dakota, right? It gets cold up there. Animals like to hibernate sometimes in the, in the cold months, they like to store food because obviously when everything dies in the So one, you know, entrepreneurial.

The owner of his Chevy Avalanche, great SUV there, found, when he decided to open the hood of his Chevy Avalanche, or maybe tried to turn the car on and started hearing some weird noises or something, I don’t know, he discovered [01:55:00] 42 gallons, or 150 pounds, which is more meaningful, 150 pounds of black walnuts stuffed inside.

Everywhere in the engine bay on a Chevy. Why

Crew Chief Eric: are so weird?

Donovan Lara: I’m going to regret this. Cause I know you’re going to tagline it out somewhere else, but those are the biggest nuts I’ve ever seen. They’re huge. Those look like lemons. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So I have black Walnut trees here on my property and they’re about the size of tennis balls when they’re fully mature.

And by the way, They are hard as rocks. You could run them over with that avalanche and they will not bust open. I do not know how squirrels open those things up. They are just insane. They might as well have made us cement, but yeah, 150 pounds of black walnut. That’s a lot of wall.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, mad props to that squirrel.

He was busy,

Crew Chief Eric: but this guy never drives his car right. Or is he driving around town? accumulating nuts.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently, I guess a [01:56:00] few days had gone by. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: quick.

Executive Producer Tania: So I mean, this squirrel, I mean, shit. Apparently he started giving the walnuts away to people. How rude that that poor squirrel did all that work, all that heavy lifting to have his spoils just unceremoniously removed from, from the treasure chest of the avalanche.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, 48 hours later, it was full again. I’m sure squirrel is industrious.

Donovan Lara: I must resist. I’m trying so hard not to comment on this any further. You guys are just loving them up there.

Executive Producer Tania: All right. This next one, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: It came to us courtesy of garage ride. I’m just

Executive Producer Tania: apparently came to us courtesy of garage rides.

Kind of first laying my eyes on this one headline man arrested after shooting at car thieves on the headline of it. I’m kind of like, okay, I’m not sure. I think the funniest part ish is apparently backstory is this is Some dude in New Jersey, who’s CEO of Meat Innovations Incorporated, whatever that is.

[01:57:00] Sure. Yeah. Okay. Clearly he’s got a lot of money. Cause he’s got an exotic and luxury car collection that apparently has been, had attempted robberies on it 18 times in the last two years. And the most recent attempt, which this is a recent article, but it’s commenting on the March 25th, 2020 attempt that woke him in the middle of night, which had him running out of his mansion in the nude.

Donovan Lara: Now we know why it’s called meat innovations.

Executive Producer Tania: In the nude with his AR 15, nothing but his AR 15 strapped around him.

Crew Chief Eric: Is he, is he in the same car club as the pink celebrity?

So what gets me is about this article is like Donovan said earlier, by going to the protest and his cowboy boots and nothing else, but the sign, this guy’s already there. He’s got his AR and he’s running out after his car. He’s ready to go. [01:58:00] You

Donovan Lara: know, he’s serious too. He’s like, this guy is crazy. He’s naked.

AR 15.

Executive Producer Tania: What we really learned here is that he sleeps in the buff.

Donovan Lara: Maybe. We don’t know what he was doing. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, that’s true. You’re right. It was the middle of the night. We don’t know what he was doing. I don’t want to know what he was doing. But he got all his guns confiscated, not sure they necessarily were all

Crew Chief Eric: so

he’s

arrested for guns,

decent exposure.

And then he still got his car stolen.

Executive Producer Tania: And it was a bad day in New Jersey. Oh, man.

Donovan Lara: Well, they keep talking about these cars have been attempted. They’ve attempted to steal these cars. 25 times since 2019. Stop parking

Crew Chief Eric: them on the

Executive Producer Tania: road!

Donovan Lara: Right, or move them, or get a better security system, or, I mean There’s so

Executive Producer Tania: many things you could do here before you run in the nude with your AR 15 confronting

Crew Chief Eric: In the middle of the night too, right?

You’re like, come on! Ugh. You can’t make this stuff up.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, and then you have the guy in Missouri who [01:59:00] serves as a public service announcement for everyone. Well, not everyone, if you’re going to sell catalytic converter online, and you’re going to take photos of your catalytic converter, post them, be cognizant of what’s in the background of your photos, probably not a good idea for your bag of meth.

To be on display.

Donovan Lara: I don’t know anything about meth, but that looks like a big bag of meth. We all learned about meth from

Crew Chief Eric: Breaking Bad. Come on now, you should know, you should be an expert. I still

Donovan Lara: have yet to watch that. I need to catch up on this.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m right there. Drive. You need to watch that and I’ll watch Drive to Survive, all right?

All

Executive Producer Tania: right. So apparently it was 48 grams of meth, which probably is a lot. I don’t know. And he had a pistol that he wasn’t supposed to be having. So it was a bad day for that guy. All

Crew Chief Eric: this on Facebook Marketplace.

Executive Producer Tania: All of this caught on Facebook marketplace by someone who could, by someone who could recognize a bag of meth and report it to the police.

Donovan Lara: Good point. How come they didn’t put a stop on this is, [02:00:00] uh, not appropriate for the

Crew Chief Eric: same guys that were searching for the big clown bow tie and happened to find that AMX three that we talked about earlier. I mean, you know, Facebook Marketplace. Nevermind. I’m not going to go there.

Executive Producer Tania: We’ll go back down. The new

Crew Chief Eric: Craigslist.

Executive Producer Tania: We’ll go back down to Florida real quick. And you know, this is just Florida men doing a Florida men do. And I’m pretty sure there’s been other reports of this, but again, there’s a Florida man caught mowing and going, as they say, so he needed something from 7 Eleven down the street. And he hopped on it, riding down John Deere tractor and just pulled up to 7

Eleven.

What’s wrong

with that? Apparently the legality of riding your lawnmower on a public road. But aside from that, the neighbors just think it’s good fun.

Donovan Lara: Where he screwed up is he should have cut the grass while he drove along and then he would have gotten polluted, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Two more things to add to this.

Number one, soon this will be illegal anyway if California has their way so he’s going to get his [02:01:00] confiscated and two, at least he didn’t end up like that other guy that was driving a tractor on the road and somehow managed to flip it over. If you remember last year.

Donovan Lara: There’s the video of the guy that gets the DUI on his lawnmower.

How is that even a thing? I don’t know. You have to look. It’s on YouTube somewhere, but yeah, he is hammered and on a dirt road somewhere and they give him a DUI.

Executive Producer Tania: So speaking of tractors, we’re going to go down under for this one. Like quickly down under? So we’ve got one coming out of Australia and

Crew Chief Eric: yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: this gentleman really wanted to steal two motorbikes from a dealership and thought that a big yellow tractor, like construction tractor would be the perfect theft vehicle and getaway vehicle for this.

So he was quickly intercepted at which point dropped the bikes, but then. proceeded to bring the police on a chase, which if you think about it, he had a pretty good vehicle because he cut across [02:02:00] lawns and farms and train tracks and all this stuff before abandoning on foot. I mean, you wouldn’t have been able to do this in a car.

So maybe he didn’t have the wrong idea after all.

Donovan Lara: And to be fair, that’s a wheel loader. That’s not a truck. And I’ve actually driven one of these. They’re really cool to drive. But yeah, I’m with you. He’s got basically a lift on the front. So there is nothing getting in his way. He wants a house. He just picks it up, tears it apart.

So did they say he got caught or did he get away?

Executive Producer Tania: No, they did arrest him. 41 year old man, several offenses. Hold on

Crew Chief Eric: a second. Okay. First of all, the tractor wheel loader, skid loader, that dump truck made by Rolls Royce from last month. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to ask a very pointed question. What is the suspected top speed wheel loader?

Donovan Lara: 25. Are

Crew Chief Eric: you kidding me? Yeah, let’s be real. He’s probably doing like. Four. Okay, so the Mounties or whatever they’re called down there, they can’t catch this guy. I mean, seriously, you could [02:03:00] probably run and catch this tractor, let alone whatever it is. And they’re dirt

Donovan Lara: bikes, right? And I don’t know, it’s been a while since I’ve been on one.

Do they have keys? I mean, he busted the window. Could he not just driven the dirt bike away? That’s what he

Executive Producer Tania: wanted two of them. He couldn’t drive two of them at the time.

Donovan Lara: That’s where his plan failed.

Crew Chief Eric: We know that those motorcycle chariot races, you can run two of them at the same time. I

Executive Producer Tania: was going to say he’s not aware of the chariots.

That would have been the true getaway vehicle. Is he an expat from France?

Donovan Lara: Because he has another friend. If so, why didn’t friend help him out? Or maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he was trying to get a friend and do a good deed. And then the police screwed it up. I think that’s what it is.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, like 4 miles an hour.

Okay. I just want to reiterate the fact that this is a tractor. I mean, if you’re not well versed in driving 1 of those, there’s no way he’s going to go like that. Top speed, even if it is 25, but 25 is still slow. Even those freaking Astra diesels or whatever they use over there. [02:04:00] It’s got to be able to catch this tractor, right?

Donovan Lara: And you see, he takes that turn and picks the front wheel up off the ground. He almost rolled it over. That would have been a better hint of the story.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe that explains how the guy flipped that other tractor over from last year. Tanya. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: he was riding that thing. So

Donovan Lara: nobody’s even asking where he got the wheel loader from, so he obviously stole that.

So it was a

Crew Chief Eric: chain of events. Right? Exactly. There was

Donovan Lara: a whole lot of screwing up going

Crew Chief Eric: on. That’s

Executive Producer Tania: part of the multiple offenses he’s charged with.

Crew Chief Eric: Geez. Well, I guess it’s time for us to go behind the pit wall and talk about motorsports news. Apparently Ricardo won a bet or lost the bet, but it ends in him driving one of Dale Earnhardt’s NASCARs at the American GP.

So I don’t know if he’s being punished or being praised, but apparently he’s going to be, Campaigning one of Dale Earnhardt’s 1984 Monte Carlos at the American Grand Prix. So what’s

Donovan Lara: the American Grand Prix talking [02:05:00] about the F1 track?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Donovan Lara: He’s going to drive a NASCAR at the F1 track. Yes. Nothing about that makes sense.

Nope.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s going to do it. Like they do all those other parade laps and you’re like, yay, whatever. I was like, I was like, how did this even make news? But I was like, ah, well, okay, fine, whatever. I mean, there’s so much drama in Formula One every week, but I was like, this is NASCAR adjacent. Normally Brad like follows all that kind of stuff and reports on it.

So I didn’t spend a whole ton of time, but I was like, Oh, that’s cute. That’s fun.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think he’s actually. Competing in a race. I think he’s just doing a couple of laps in it.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe he’ll drift it. We can get Ken Block to go sideways around the Dale Earnhardt’s Monte Carlo. Last month, we talked about Volkswagen and F1 and, you know, talked about the whole, you know, hybrid system and how they’re looking to use Volkswagen technology to replace the current system that they have and all these fun, really technological things.

And you can go re review that episode and go re review that article. This new article that came out about. Two weeks later from the one we talked about last month, the only important part that came out of this [02:06:00] article that’s super important to F1 is something that I have been hoping, wishing and praying for, for many, many years, which is Audi or Porsche coming to Formula One.

And that’s the speculation right now from F1 insiders are saying if Volkswagen makes this move to provide power plants and whatnot, we may see Audi and Porsche or maybe Porsche Audi, like in the old Can Am days branded. Formula one cars, but we’re not going to see them until 2026. So I’m really excited about this.

Donovan Lara: I’ve seen different snippets of articles and things, and I can’t tell one article look like they were going to come separately as two different teams, and then I’ve heard kind of together, I think if they were different teams, that would be amazing,

Crew Chief Eric: but it would be alpha and Ferrari at that point. It’s like, what’s the difference, right?

Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Red Bull. I mean, come on, speaking of Alfa Romeo, you know, there’s There’s been a lot of connecting the dots from, I’m going to put air quotes around it again, Formula One insiders about Team Andretti, which we talked about last month. And basically it looks like Andretti [02:07:00] might be making a minority interest investment, or maybe it’s going to be a majority interest investment.

in Alfa Romeo, the former Sauber Formula One team. So maybe that’s how they’re going to fast track their way into Formula One next year. I mean, they’ve already signed up Grosjean, or Grosjean, however you pronounce it, for 2022 under Team Andretti. So I was wondering how they were going to do that. You know, get a kick of adrenaline here and get it done.

But you know, if they’re going to buy into alpha or male, maybe that’s the way to do it.

Donovan Lara: So I didn’t understand this article either, because they were talking about, they’ve been looking to get an F1 for a long time. There’s at least two teams that have changed hands in the past couple of years. Right.

What were they just not eligible? Uh, are they gonna, and then you look at Porsche, the conversation we just had Portionality, my understanding is right. There’s only so many available spots for teams in formula one. So you got two teams potentially coming in one, maybe he’s going to buy one. So what’s going to happen to you?

Are they going to expand or how that’s all going to work? I think it’s going to be really interesting to watch, especially with the new cars and everything [02:08:00] next year. I think the next couple of years are going to be exciting, especially with this year.

Crew Chief Eric: The one thing I thought though, that I’m still confused about is I thought Williams was done and then I just hear their name being thrown around again.

And Oh, Williams for next year. And I’m like, I thought they were like bankrupt or something, but they were bought by

Donovan Lara: the investment group. Yeah. Those guys. And then a racing point. So

Crew Chief Eric: for Cindy or whatever they were called before that and all that, that kind of thing, I just wish the big brands would come back.

You’d have team Lotus and all this kind of stuff. Not all these, like, you know, it companies basically plastered on the side of the cars. One other article that came across my desk. From the formula one side of the house that I thought was kind of interesting were races that were planned for the last couple of years that didn’t happen because of COVID.

Obviously, the big one everybody knows Vietnam was supposed to happen on the street circuit that they built there look kind of cool. We saw these drone footage of where the cars were going to be and how they were going to navigate the street course. But I was like, okay, whatever. But then as I was scrolling through this list, I see things like Zuhai.

That’s cool. Ontario, what port Imperial street circuit. That’s [02:09:00] pretty interesting. Cause that’s in New York. Not sure how that was going to work. A street circuit in Rome, the course looks absolutely mental. And then you had the Autopolis. So they were planning on like six new tracks up through the 2022 season that none of these are now going to happen.

I mean, I’m glad they brought back like Zandvoort and some of the other classic Formula One tracks. I’d love to see like Zolder and some other stuff returned to the schedule as well. You know, Formula One does need to mix it up a little bit. I mean, there are a lot of tracks that have just been walked away from, and it’s a shame, you know, you know, And so we’ll run their occasionally prototypes will run their other forms of racing, you know, TCR and things like that.

But, you know, it’d be nice to see the big boys, you know, bring it in. It’s kind of like, you know, when the Olympics come to a new town, it brings in tourism, brings all this other kind of stuff. And I think, you know, F1 is the messenger for that. And I think it’s a good thing for those economies. So,

Donovan Lara: so they did bring Zandvoort back, right, which was pretty cool.

Uh, it’d be cool to see them come back to South America. I just saw the other day that this is, it’s either this year or next year is the last year for [02:10:00] Sochi and they’re moving to St. Petersburg. I think a new track somewhere else in Russia,

Crew Chief Eric: but that’s a new old track is didn’t they run St. Petersburg like a million years ago?

Donovan Lara: Oh, is it? I thought it was a brand new purpose. Or maybe, or maybe

Crew Chief Eric: no, I’m thinking about the indie track in Florida, which was St. Petersburg. My apologies. Yeah, well, then you got

Donovan Lara: Miami coming next year. So yeah, I think it’s cool to see some tracks they haven’t been on in a long time. A couple of this year, they were just somewhere they hadn’t been since 2010 or something.

So I like that track though. The Rome track that looks amazing. That looks like something straight out of Forza.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And that should be in Forza. Like some of these are in project cars, which I think is pretty cool. Like I’ve driven Zuhai, some of the other ones that are on this list in that game, which is kind of neat.

I’d love to see this in Forza Motorsport 8 whenever that comes out. So who knows, right? But I guess we’ll talk about more about the VRL as we. Head deeper into the fall. Outside of that, the only other thing that came across my desk that I thought was actually interesting was coming from the IMSA side of the house or the WEC side of the house.

Michael Fastbender has a new set of videos. It’s like a, almost like a drive to survive. They’re on YouTube, he [02:11:00] calls them the Road to Lamonts and. I hate to say they’re not Drive to Survive and they’re not quite Truth in 24 either. You know, there’s no Jason Statham narrating or anything like that. If you’re into following Michael Fassbender or any of his stuff, or you want to see, get introduced to Lamont’s, watch it.

I’m not discouraging anybody from doing that. It’s just, I’m kind of like, okay, I already, I already know a lot of this stuff. So it’s not really for me, but you know, hey. Check it out. Something different. Something to kill some time in the evenings now that we’re heading into the fall and into the winter.

So switching into our final section, kind of wrapping up with some local news here. Our year is coming to a close. We have not yet set the date for awards night. And if you’re listening to this, the Watkins Glen HOD three day is already over with. So it pretty much wraps up the season for most of us as it’s getting to be colder and colder.

There’s a few events left out there, you know, thanks to HPD junkie, taking care of keeping the, all those track dates up to date all the way into the end of the calendar year, because there are events going on in the South, especially where it’s warmer and at West and [02:12:00] things like that. But for us here in the mid Atlantic and the Northeast, you know, tracks are beginning to close down.

And so you still do have the end of year events, you know, with Audi club, you know, traditionally at BIR in November, you know, things like that. So keep an eye on. the schedule helmets off the heroes with SCCA is at Shenandoah again, the beginning of November, very close to veterans day, not on veterans day, you know, look for those types of events.

And obviously there’s still going to be some autocross events as well in the DC area because they’re doing track cross hosted a lot at summit point, which is really cool to watch. And some of our members actually do that, but there’s some other big news coming this fall, right? Donovan.

Donovan Lara: Yeah, that’s right.

So garage ride is moving platform. So Eric’s been helping out a lot with that doing a lot of the work there. So we’ve been working pretty closely together, but pretty excited to announce that we’re moving sort of, we’re definitely changing platforms. Our old one’s been around for five years. It’s served us well, but we’re excited.

Some of the new features coming and some new stability in the platform. So If you haven’t already, you can visit the, uh, the new [02:13:00] platform. Uh, there’s links on the current. com site. We hope to have everything built out and switched over officially sometime in November. So look forward to seeing you online.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And there’s a new phone app coming out as well. Right. So we should be looking for some big changes.

Donovan Lara: That’s right. Yeah. Those will replace your existing apps should just be a regular update from the app stores. So, yeah. Looking forward to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Very cool. And if you have any feedback, there’s still a bit of an open beta left.

So reach out to Donovan. If you’re an existing GarageRiot member, go ahead and check out the old site for details on how to get to the new one, do a passive reset and get in on the new platform now, and, you know, start making your transition over early because we are accepting, Early access into the new platform.

Now, outside of that, what else is exciting going on Donovan? We’re going to Rhode Atlanta.

Donovan Lara: That’s right. Petite Le Mans, right?

Crew Chief Eric: And we are looking to get together with some of our friends that have been on the podcast before folks. Like David Middleton from my racing episode. That’s going to air here in November.

We’re going to see Rob Holland from Rotec racing. We’re going [02:14:00] to see Phil and Brendan from max speed track days. We’ll probably run into Mark Hicks from chin as well. Everybody’s located down in the general. Atlanta area. So it’s going to be good to get together with some of our guests. And our plan is to take photographs and maybe do some live streaming from down there between a garage riot and GTM while we’re on site at the petite Lamont’s for those two, three days that the races are going on.

So we’re looking forward to that. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Donovan Lara: Yeah, definitely. We’ll have to get you up to some of the mountain roads too, while we’re here.

Crew Chief Eric: I get to pick keys from a, from a bowl, right? Is that how it works?

Donovan Lara: Uh, it’s not that kind of party, but Hey, you never know

Crew Chief Eric: outside of that sneak peek, a little bit of a spoiler alert of some other things that are coming.

Online here in the fall, look forward to some really cool podcast episodes. Like we did last year, some lookbacks, some retrospectives, also our holiday shopping guide coming out. But also we are looking forward to going out West and reporting live from the mint 400 in December. So stay tuned for details on that and look For some upcoming [02:15:00] episodes in the following weeks on what that’s all about and why that’s super important to the motorsport landscape and to motorsports history.

So I’d also like to remind everybody, a shout out to GTM’s newest sponsor, americanmuscle. com, your source for Mustang, Camaro, and Mopar performance parts. So remember to check out americanmuscle. com for details. And we look forward to having them on our show on a future episode. So stay tuned for more on that.

And if you have any questions, reach out to us, reach out to them. They’re. Our logos are on all our websites, but remember AmericanMuscle. com for all your high performance domestic parts, accessories, and performance needs.

Executive Producer Tania: In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired earlier this month.

We went on the attack with Emrah, chatting about time trials and global time attack in a double episode. And remember, if you want early access to part two, be sure to check out our Patreon. You might still be catching up on episodes of Clarkson’s Farm, but But did you know Porsche made diesel tractors?

Neither did I until I listened to this month’s episode with Mountain Man Dan, who interviews Sal Fanelli, president of [02:16:00] Porsche Diesel USA. And finally, as we prep for fall motorsports, we revisited part two of Drew’s All the Tourcums episode called Jesus Take the Wheel, as we got his opinion on the fall season.

Future of off roading and some great Pitstop banter. Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and please look forward to more great episodes this fall.

Crew Chief Eric: So no new Patreons this month, but a big shout out to Donovan for working together with us on this project on Garage Riot 2. 0, we’re going to call it.

So thank you again for that. Some other shout outs this month to folks that are celebrating anniversaries in GTM, Doug Turner, six years. Ben Scherf, six years, Chris Waite from the DC area is celebrating his third year with the club. Mike Ruber is celebrating his first year and Nate and Emily, who we were introduced to by way of garage ride and also by the crutch fields are celebrating their first year.

And I do want to take a moment. If Nate and Emily are listening to this episode, we wish Emily a speedy recovery from her recent car accident that she was in. So we wish you the best. And we hope [02:17:00] that this podcast is helping you spend some time as you recuperate. So again, big thanks and big shout out to Donovan for coming in, filling in for Brad.

We always love having you on the show. You’ve been on a multitude of break fix episodes. You can actually find all of the episodes Donovan has been on, on the new Garage Riot platform. There’s a special page for them and future episodes that he’s going to be on will also be listed there. So if you’re a Garage Riot member.

Check them out, go back into that time capsule and see where Donovan’s participated and, you know, added massive value to all these episodes and look forward to really cool episodes coming this winter and early spring as we collaborate more on some new ideas that we have. And again, you know, I want to remind everybody that we can’t do this without you.

So we want to thank you for all your love, your support, the fans, the families, the friends, the members, everybody that makes this happen without you guys. It absolutely wouldn’t be possible.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. Thanks for having me on guys. And Brad, thank you for letting me keep your seat warm. I still haven’t gotten my check from the last one, by the way, Eric.

So if you want to send that to me, that would be awesome. But I get paid in, [02:18:00] uh, noodles and hugs and kisses too. So I don’t know where that was going. So what’s his

Crew Chief Eric: dressing room smell like?

Donovan Lara: Anyway, no, I appreciate the GTM community and especially those right now that are helping us beta test the new site.

And I look forward to meeting guys in person hopefully soon and seeing you online and spread the word.

Crew Chief Eric: Right on. Oh yeah. And Tanya, our executive producer. Thank you. As always. Thank you. All right. That’s a wrap.

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. [02:19:00] You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770. Or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of 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. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummy Bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com. patreon. com forward slash GT [02:20:00] 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 Sponsorships
• 00:33 Welcome to Episode 15
• 01:06 Japanese Car Spotlight: Civic Type R
• 07:38 Honda’s EV Sub-Brand
• 10:20 Mitsubishi’s Market Presence
• 12:14 Toyota and Stellantis Battery Factories
• 13:55 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles
• 18:12 Toyota’s Quiet Hybrid Expansion
• 19:46 Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche Updates
• 25:56 Ken Block’s Audi Adventures
• 34:37 Heritage Meets the Future: Stig Blomqvist and Lucas Di Grassi
• 36:03 Ken Block and Rally Legends: A Nostalgic Challenge
• 36:28 Jari-Matti Latvala’s Toyota Celica: A Modern-Day Rally Comparison
• 37:51 BMW’s Innovative Painting Process
• 39:20 Daimler AG’s Truck Division Spin-Off
• 41:02 Stellantis and the Dodge TRX Nürburgring Lap
• 44:34 Ford’s Massive EV Investment
• 50:51 Chevy’s Z06 Reveal and Corvette Community
• 55:26 Ford Maverick: The Real Ranger
• 01:00:10 Lost and Found: AMC AMX 3 and More
• 01:08:12 Restomods and EV Conversions: Aston Martin DBs
• 01:10:04 Aston Martin’s Million Dollar EV Conversion
• 01:11:36 Volvo’s Sustainable Interior Revolution
• 01:15:16 Gordon Murray’s T50 and T33 Supercars
• 01:19:00 The Swiss-Made Piëch GT Cruiser
• 01:23:09 Solar-Powered Camper Van by Students
• 01:28:21 Tesla’s Move to Austin and EV DeLorean Dream
• 01:29:58 Tesla’s Drag Race Dominance
• 01:32:51 Tesla’s Autonomous Driving Beta Test
• 01:39:59 Ford’s 84-Month Loan Controversy
• 01:44:59 The Bizarre United Nude Low Res Car
• 01:46:22 Auction Madness: The Ridiculous Car
• 01:47:10 California’s New Emission Laws
• 01:49:14 Florida Man Stories: Tragic and Bizarre
• 01:56:37 Naked Hero: Defending Exotic Cars
• 02:04:34 Motorsports News: F1 and NASCAR
• 02:11:28 Wrapping Up: Local News and Announcements

• Upcoming/Recap GTM Events: Road Atlanta “Petit LeMans” and Mint 400
  
• HPDEJunkie.com report – HookedOnDriving season finale at WGI October 22-24th. More events in SE and West througout the fall and winter; check out HPDEjunkie for details.
• Birthday and Anniversary shout-outs for GTM Members!: Doug Turner (6 years), Ben Scherpf (6 years), Kris Waite (3 years), Mike Ruber (1 year), Nate Burton & Emily Fox (1 year)
• In case you missed out- check out the other Podcast episodes that aired earlier this month… Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month, and please look forward to more great episodes in Season 2!
  • We went on the attack with EMRA chatting about Time Trials & Global Time Attack in a double episode. And Remember, If you want early access to part.2 be sure to check out our patreon!
  • You might still be catching up on episodes of Clarkson’s Farm, but did you know Porsche made Diesel Tractors? Neither did I until I listened to this month’s episode with Mountain Man Dan who interviews Sal Fanelli, president of Porsche-Diesel USA. 
  • And finally, as we prep for “fall motorsports” we revisited Part.2 of Drew’s “All the Torquems” episode called “Jesus Take the Wheel” as we got his opinion on the future of offroading and some great PITSTOP banter.