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B/F: The Drive Thru #22

The countdown to legendary 3 spoke steering wheels!

The Drive Thru is our monthly recap where we’ve put together a menu of automotive, motorsport and random car-adjacent news. This episode is brought to you by the letter Q, 3-spoke steering wheels and Jesus takes the wheel. Meanwhile, Spring has sprung, the grass has rizz, we wonder where all the NISSAN’s is? Tune in for Episode #22: where we showcase the Nissan Z 400 and our trip to California to see it. Below are all the articles, links and videos we talk about in this episode.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

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Showcase: Demystifying the Nissan Z 400

Crew Chief Eric's Personal Impressions of the new Nissan Z-400

Spring has sprung, the grass has rizz… I wonder where all the NISSANs is??? - More info about the NISSAN 400 Z, and my trip to California to see it!  ... [READ MORE]

What the Z shares with the legendary R32

Everyone modifies an old Nissan sports car ... except for one part. ... [READ MORE]

Old vs New - How does the Z stack up?

More first impressions on the new Z 400 seeing it side-by-side with the classic 240. ... [READ MORE]

Camissa's Sports Car Shootout: Z vs Supra vs Mustang

How fast is the new $50k Nissan Z? — New Z vs Supra vs Mustang Mach-1 — Cammisa's Drag Race Replay ... [READ MORE]

How *BIG* is the new Z?

Photographs can be deceiving - we talk more about the size/shape of the new Z. Is it a sports car, or Grand Tourer?  ... [READ MORE]

Am I a Z-man?

To buy or not to buy? THAT is the real question. Do we take the plunge or wait for something more? ... [READ MORE]

**All photos come from the original article; click on the image to be taken to the original article. GTM makes no claims to this material and is not responsible for any claims made by the original authors or their sponsoring organizations. All rights to original content remain with authors/publishers.


Automotive, EV & Car-Adjacent News

For a list of all the articles and events referenced on this episode check out the show notes below.

Domestics

EVs & Concepts

Formula One

Japanese & JDM

Lost & Found

Lowered Expectations

Motorsports

Rich People Thangs!

Stellantis

VAG & Porsche

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The drive-through is GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like h hpde junkie.com, garage riot, american muscle.com, hooked on driving and many others.

If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org under about and then advertising and sponsorship. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grantor Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. Wait, am I saying it?

Welcome to Drive-Thru, episode number 22. This is our monthly recap where we’ve put together a menu of automotive motorsport and random power adjacent news. Now let’s pull up the window, number one for some automotive news. Hey guys, you know what? We are closing out May. This is airing actually on the [00:01:00] 31st.

You know, spring is almost over as well. I heard that the other day. That summer was already over. I said, really? So it’s gonna be winter next week, weeks practically 2023. I was like, summer hasn’t even started, but it’s over. Well, I mean, if you live in the dmv, it’s winter goes into summer, like a light switch, which led me to write a little poem.

You know, I wanted to share it with you guys. Aw, yeah. So it goes like this. Real simple. Spring has sprung, the grass has rise. I wonder where all the Nissans is. Wow Snaps for that poem. That’s that DEA education right there coming through. I can, I can hear it. Don’t quit your day job. It leads us into our showcase this month.

I wanna start off by talking about the Nissan 400 Z, the proto, the just the Z, whatever you wanna call it, and my epic trip to California to see it. [00:02:00] So if you guys remember last month I reported about, you know, seemingly new information about the Z and all these kinds of fun things. Cause I’m partially obsessed by it.

And you know, I told you that local dealerships are saying August, August, August, I’m hearing now closer to October for the release. And if you guys are following anything on social media about the Z, the press cars are absolutely everywhere right now, which means they were also available to see in person.

You just kind of gotta keep track of where these press cars. I was fortunate enough to have to go out to LA for work and at which point I reconnected with one of our previous guests, Paul Willsey, who took me all over, you know, LA and, and the Canyons in Santa Monica. And we had an absolute blast. And as part of that, we got wind by way of one of our friends over at SRO Motorsports that there was an exclusive, you know, event going on at the Peterson Auto Museum, which I’ll talk about more here in a little bit.

Where the Nissan Z was gonna be shown publicly. It happened to coincide with a [00:03:00] J D M Nissan event that they were having there at the Peterson and. I have a bunch of pictures and I’m gonna, you know, have them available in the show notes as well about the Z and what it looks like and this and that. I tell you what, first impressions are everything, and you put it in order.

I don’t know what to think. He’s not going to put it in order. What? Let me put it in. You can’t get over The French dreams were crushed. Never drive your heroes or sitting in them. He didn’t have those lowered expectations. So first of all, the two that were there at the Peterson were in Canary yellow and battleship gray.

Two of what I feel are the most unattractive colors that the car could come in. A lot of the other press cars come in, Ruby red and this electric blue, and you know, all these other colors that you’ve seen throughout social media and videos and whatnot. This wasn’t the color black, so it was not murdering color.

And I was immediately turned off by that a hundred percent. The thing that stuck out to [00:04:00] me immediately that I didn’t notice until I saw the car in person was this chrome strip that goes from the A pillar down to the rear haunches, I guess maybe certain angles or colors, or it wasn’t there in the prototype or whatever.

It just sticks out to me like a sore thumb when I saw it in person. Maybe cuz it was reflecting in the California sun. I don’t know. But it just annoyed me in today’s day and age in 2022 to produce a sports card with an obscene amount of chrome on it. Just, oh God, that turns me off. Like I immediately said to myself, that needs to be wrapped or painted flat black, one or the other.

Isn’t Nissan big on doing the like midnight edition vehicles? Maybe that’s like the next version. Midnight edition, 400 z. You can get it with your midnight edition Murano. It could be. They must have something else. Toyota has the midnight editions because I thought we rented one when we were in Texas. It was the midnight edition [00:05:00] Murano, or we didn’t have, what did we have?

Was it a Murano? I can’t remember. Might have been Murano. It wasn’t a cross Cabrio. That’s what I know for Stam. Sure. I don’t think it was that. Then a midnight murdered out edition. It was all black. Yes, but it, it was terrible. And that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at here is when you see this new Z from the front outside of this chrome thing, it immediately got my attention.

It’s very angular. It is very reminiscent of the old two 40 Zs. You know, there were tons of two 40 Zs and two 80 s and two 60 s to compare it to at this event. So you’re like, oh, old versus new. I have pictures of them side by side. I like the front. Everybody makes fun of the big rectangle grill. It needs it, it’s gotta suck in a ton of air to cool that motor into turbos and everything else.

I’m totally fine with it. The profile of the car outside of the chrome, it looks really good. When you get to the back, it also looks really good, but you feel like you’ve looked at three different cars as you’ve walked around it. The back feels like you’re looking at a late nineties, [00:06:00] 300 ZX turbo. It is so big.

You think the Mercedes s Ls has got a big butt. You think the nine 11 has got a just a huge rear end and here comes the Nissan. It’s just massive. So I’m like, okay, I, I can put up with that. It was exactly what I thought it was gonna be. It is longer than, and lower than the three 70 z. There’s a lot of people saying it shares a lot of stuff with the three 70 Z fine, whatever.

But it’s not up on stilts. It’s very low, it’s very wide. It’s a big car, you know, it’s sitting on like, I don’t know, like twenties or 20 twos or something. I mean, it, it just, it almost looks like a matchbox car in some respects. So I’m there and I get introduced to like the PR people from Nissan and this and that.

And they’re talking to me and I’m talking to them, asking questions and you know, trying to get some more definitive answers about the car. And one of them turns to me and says, Hey, do you want to, do you wanna sit in it? And I’m like, well, I mean, there’s a bear shit in the woods. Of course I wanna sit in it.

So I hop [00:07:00] in the car and there’s pictures of me in the car and things like that. And the first question out of his mouth, you know, as I’m kind of looking at the interior, and I’m really not saying anything, which, by the way, the interior is very beautiful and plush. It’s a great place to be as much as you want it to be for a sports car.

Nothing too outrageous, but not as utilitarian as a Porsche. So he asked me, he’s like, so what do you think? And I turned to him and my first response was, well, there’s plenty of space in here for my helmet. And he looked at me puzzled. I said, you have to understand, I coach in a ton of different cars, and this is the first modern sports car I’ve gotten into where I don’t feel like I.

I’m gonna be cramped if I’m in a student’s car, if this was my personal vehicle, you know, you compare it to like the Supra, where the roof line cuts off really, really fast. And if you’re over, you know, five foot eight, you gotta either rotate your hips or scrunch down or this and that. It, it’s just, and the Corvette similar to where it’s, it’s a very tight cockpit.

The Z is so big, it has a lot of room. It feels more like a grand tour than a [00:08:00] sports car. So if I want to compare it to something not visually, I would compare it to like a 9 28. It’s a Japanese 9 28. That’s what it is. Am I underwhelmed? Maybe a little bit. I’m hearing really good things about the performance from the people that have gotten the opportunity to drive one.

I have still not yet gotten the opportunity, and I hopefully will soon. That might be a deciding factor. Also, the price is a big thing, right? You’re still hearing pretty low numbers, reasonable at the, you know, upper forties, low fifties, things like that. But who knows, right? With surcharges, dealer markups.

So that’s been my experience with the Z thus far. So there’s a couple other articles that came out in the meantime since I’ve been back from California, and one of them Brad shared with me, which was, what are the things that the Z shares with the legendary R 32? What is the answer to that question?

Nothing. I mean, what it’s a two-door. Is that it, like it comes in a blue color? No, it, it’s not all wheel drive, right? It, it is not some, some little thing. It doesn’t have a [00:09:00] VR six in it, right? Well, no, the, the skyline was an inline six turbo. The Nissan is a V6 twin turbo. What it shares in common, which, oh, nevermind.

It was a want, want moment is apparently the steering wheel design. But even when I looked at that, it’s like comparing a modern G T I to the original one from 83. Oh, we’ve got a three spoke steering wheel, wheel spoke steering wheel. We’ve got another three spoke steering wheel. I’m like, whatever. All right.

So. Yeah. Other than that, I don’t really think they share anything in common. I, I have my Audi has a three spoke steering wheel. You’re pretty special. I don’t know what my car has. Momo three spoke. Do I share with these two? So the other thing that, you know, since we’re talking about the Z, the other thing that’s on my list of, let’s say in the negative column against the car is Jason ESSA’s latest drag race shootout that he did on the Haggerty YouTube channel.

And it’s between the Z 400, the Supra, and the current top of the line Mustang GT [00:10:00] 500, or whatever the heck it is. Excuses aside, right? Everybody’s saying, oh, well if the, if the Z had better tires, if the Z had better tires, it would’ve done better. The end result here is it got spanked by both the Supra and the Mustang.

That’s not boating well for its performance. No, no, not at all. I mean, I don’t know if it’s fair to compare it to a Mustang, but compared it to the Supra, I feel like is a more, I dunno if it’s, if it’s a bigger grand tour then, I mean the Mustang’s pretty close to a grand tour. What’s the weight on the Z?

Uh, that I haven’t been able to confirm yet. Unfortunately, as I 3,600 pounds as I’ve read it, not all of the body panels are equally magnetic, meaning that I think they’ve taken some playbooks out of older cars where some panels are aluminum and some are steel, and not everything is actually metal to try to keep the weight down.

But 3,600 pounds at 400 horse, that’s pretty heavy. All things considered. I mean the Corvets lighter than that obviously, but it’s in a totally different category. The Mustang is about the same weight. I think the super’s a touch [00:11:00] lighter. 3,300 pounds worth of super. Yeah, that, that’s quite, that’s significant actually.

300 pound difference. So again, it’s a 9 28. That’s what I keep thinking now, and I’m like, well, does that still make it as palatable? It, it’s not gonna be a track day superstar. It’s gonna be a B road bomber. It’s gonna be a lot of fun on a mountain road or a mountain run or a cruising or something like that, you know, and maybe an everyday sports car.

But not, you know, hey, I’m gonna go set the world on fire at New Jersey Motorsports Park or some point, or v i r or something, you know, I’d rather almost have an old three 50 Z that’s modified, weighs less. It’s naturally aspirated and you can have a lot of fun with that as well. So, I don’t know. I’m really Well that’s where you’re doing, I mean, that’s a completely different discussion.

Oh, I would much rather have a car that’s modeled specifically for the track as a track car than a car fresh off the showroom floor. I mean, you can say that about anything you can, but it’s kind of what gets you up in the morning. I almost think I would have more fun with the stock three 50 Z in a way, because it’s more nimble, [00:12:00] less computers.

More of a driver’s car cuz it was built 20 years ago. I mean, that’s kind of what I’m thinking too. And then you do some mods to it. Coilovers wheels, they look good. They sound good. Well, you haven’t driven it so you can’t say you can’t peculate. Yeah, I don’t, you dunno if it’s, you don’t know if it’s more or less nimble.

I, I understand which, where you’re going with this. I mean, it’s kind of why they took the Miata back a step to be more in line with the Nas. Far as like the engineering, you know, they, they tried to go back to, they got away from the bloated Ford n c to a more NA based n d. So I understand what you’re saying.

Where it seems like the Z 400, your first impression is it’s not going to be like that. It’s gonna be kind of a bloated, but I agree with Tanya. You should really, I wouldn’t write it off just yet until you get a chance to drive it. I agree. But the other thing that’s now stuck. In my craw and I, I gotta blame Paul for this a hundred percent.

Mm-hmm. We went out in the canyons with his bone stock, 99, 2 and a half liter boxer, [00:13:00] 200 horsepower or whatever it makes, and two 10 or something like that weighs 2,700 pounds soaking wet from the factory. And it was amazing. I forgot what an original boxer was like. I drove one so long ago that it’s like you kind of put it out of your memory and I’m like, for what?

He paid for that you could have one of those with a ton of money left over, not do anything to it, and have an absolute blast. Now is it gonna turn a bunch of heads and people go, Ooh, ah, it’s the latest and greatest. That’s unfortunately the old timer in me that goes, there’s plenty of old cars still left to enjoy.

So this is what puts the Nissan back a minute. Like I got super excited about it and I’m just like, I don’t know, but. I think it still holds true everything we’ve talked about so far. It’s kind of the last of the line. It’s last of these stick shift, rear wheel drive, ice powered coops, right? These, even if it’s a grand tour, there aren’t many coops left either.

A sports coupee, let’s call it what it is, and there’s something to be said about that. So yes, [00:14:00] I’m still holding out final judgment to drive one. I mean, please, if you’re listening to this, convince me that I’m wrong, that I shouldn’t give up on the Z, but right now, The scales have definitely been tipped.

I’m, I’m not really sure where to go from there. So if we pull the Z out of your future garage, what do we put in it? Uh, you know, I know you’re gonna run out and buy a 99 boxer, or are you still on the Alpha Romeo 1 24 train? There’s a lot of cars on that list and I just don’t know yet. I don’t know. I, I mean, I’ve been salivating after the Alpha four C as well.

I think that’d be a lot of fun. It would cost less than a Nissan Z, but then you give up the manual. You do. And you’re a purist. That’s true. That is very true. I am a dinosaur, so I don’t know. There’s a lot to think about. You know, there’s a lot to think about. I think we have some upcoming, what should I buy episodes that might change our listeners’ minds as well.

So I’m gonna leave, I’m gonna put a pin in that until we revisit those later this season. Enough of that. Enough of that. We need to move on. Right? We, we can, we can talk about Nissans till we’re blue in the face. But you know, you guys are big into Formula One and I hear some exciting news [00:15:00] coming from our friends at vw, Porsche, Audi.

Yeah. Some of our favorite brands. They’ve announced that they are coming to Formula One in looks what? 2026 It looks like. Not soon enough. 2026. We gotta wait that long. I mean, is that when they’re bringing out the next generation of car that they just brought out? The new generation. Now we’re waiting for that.

It seems like a three to five year timetable in Formula One. Will they be running 20 inch wheels then? Are they waiting for Trump to become president again and, and reduce the cafe uh, requirements? Vw, the parent company of Audi and Porsche, et cetera. They’re making a push to put Porsche and Audi in Formula One, not just in engines, but actually have their colors being run on a car.

I don’t know which, I don’t think that has been said at all. It looks like Audi is, has an agreement with McLaren, I guess, for power plants. Both of these agreements are for power plants. Porsche will be powering the, the Red Bulls. I don’t even think there’s an agreement. I think there’s a. We on this side wanna do this?

Howdy [00:16:00] Porsche, and then McLaren’s like middle finger. We don’t want you. And I’m sure there’ll be negotiations, at least that was my understanding. So maybe it’s all for nothing. Maybe they’re gonna power the Andretti car. But the question is with that is are they gonna let another team in and have 22 drivers, or is Andretti gonna have to buy out somebody?

Haas? You know, I personally, I think Gene Haas is looking to get out of Formula One because it’s a loss leader for him. I mean, this year the team’s been doing a lot better. Than they have previously, but still, I think he’s been looking for an excuse to get out of Formula One for a little while. What do you do?

Driver shuffle Or you just kick Schumacher to the curb? Well, you keep Schumacher cuz you got rid of the Russians. No, you can’t because Andretti wants to have American drivers on an American team in Formula One. He can put Schumacher on the B squad and keep him as a test driver for the team and not break his contract.

Yeah. But once you get a taste of that sweet, sweet Formula one drive, you don’t want to be a test driver anymore. I mean, I’m sure there [00:17:00] might be some other team. I’m sure there’s like, you know, some other team that wants to kick somebody out out. Maybe they could swoop, swoop up or. Magnussen at this point.

I’m sure that Mercedes wants to get rid of Hamilton since he hasn’t done Jack’s shit this year. How quickly is they’re disrupt fired? I’m tired. I mean, I can say that because I already know he’s a much better driver than anybody else in the world, so I don’t, I don’t care. Yes, Louis, you’re better than me, but you’re still gonna get kicked off the team.

It’s either you or Toto. Totally ain’t going nowhere. Nah. Yeah. So Audi and Porsche want again, formula One. They just need to find a team that they can give power plans to. I think they should go ahead and extend the field. Why not? I do too. I don’t think it would hurt. It’s not like there’d be that much more traffic.

Do they? Yeah. They just gotta get around the back markers of Williams. There’s another team, right? For the taking, Williams is already under new own new, uh, ownership. Didn’t they do a documentary, like basically showcasing that they were dead? I mean, what, what’s going on? What’s going on? You know, there’s this show on [00:18:00] Netflix called Drive to Survive.

No. Where they talk about all of this stuff. It’s been on for four seasons now. No, three seasons. Four seasons. Tonya, correct me if I’m wrong, three, four seasons. Yeah. There’s a lot of information out there. Eric Uhhuh. There’s a lot of information on ancient aliens too, so I’ll just continue watching that.

You go ahead and watch WRC with your 10 foil hat and us normal humans are gonna stick with f1 if you’re okay, since you brought up wrc. You know what? Let’s talk about cool stuff that’s happening in the world of rally around the Audi e-tron. The car, shall We? Nothing is pretty sick looking. It is pretty sick.

And the journalist that the article that we’re referencing here actually got an opportunity to drive it on a test course, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Some of the questions that we had were actually answered about this vehicle, which isn’t a full ev, it’s a hybrid. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

That was our biggest question, right? Which is, how the heck are they gonna get power to charge this thing up when they’re on the dekar rally? Please tell me it’s a [00:19:00] diesel. It’s not. Oh yeah. I mean, their answer was like straight up, like, we don’t have the battery technology. You can’t do this like you won’t make it, which is fair.

So there you go. They put a two liter turbocharged force cylinder on it. So does it get to carry the badge e-tron though, right? I mean, maybe it does cuz the A three e-tron was a hybrid, but whatever. That’s all just badge engineering. The thing that I thought was amazing though is the technology, the MGU technology, which we talked about on a previous episode, and this is why it comes back to Formula One.

Volkswagen had proposed the MGU technology for f1 and now I understand what it is. In simple terms, it’s what I’ve been preaching about for years now, that we need to go the direction of diesel electric hybrids like they do in trains. The difference is the VW Audi MGU Power plant is a gasoline version of that.

It’s a two liter gas motor that runs at somewhere [00:20:00] between 40 506,000 R P M to maintain this like perfect power output to feed the electric system to then, you know, get the car going where it’s going. So I was like, ah, there we go. Okay, so I’m not crazy. This is doable. They are doing it. Diesel is taboo, so we have to do it with gas.

But the one thing I thought was comical is when the journalist was talking about just the sound that it makes, cause it’s, it’s basically running at the high end of the RRP M range for a two liter all the time. It’s just kind of obnoxious. But can I just say we’re overlooking the most important feature of this vehicle?

It’s something it shares with the greatest Nissan ever made. The R 32, it has a three spokes steering wheel

that solidifies its legend dirtiness right there. The two liter motor. It’s not powering the wheels at all. It’s literally only So it’s a generator? Correct. Okay. That, that’s, so that’s kind of cool. But it’s a high [00:21:00] strung generator. Had they used a diesel, think about the range. They could have gotten a gallon of diesel, probably would’ve.

They would’ve gone, I don’t know, 500 miles and it would’ve idled at 1200 rpm. Instead, this thing has to burn its brains out at 4,500 to 6,000 RPM to generate the power needed to run the electric system. That’s nuts. It’s so inefficient. I guarantee if this was pre 2015, pred Diesel, diesel, diesel, it would be a diesel.

A hundred percent. It would’ve been a three, three cylinder TDI in there. What kind of earplugs are the drivers wearing to my point, right? To deal with this. Holy crap. Can you imagine a high strung four banger that you can’t shift gears for like the next 10 hours? This sounds like an rx. It sounds like an RX seven.

Hey, what does that share in common with the R 32 Nissan Shoot me now. Oh wait, that’s a three-sided. Nevermind. Rotor, not a steering wheel. That’s a Dorito. So we’re gonna stick with the EVs for a moment. We’re going back to Volkswagen. They are resurrecting. [00:22:00] Yes. Thank you Tanya. They are resurrecting the scout nameplate and bringing out an EV brand scout offroad, like you’re talking international scout.

Right. I’m talking like minor league baseball scouts. That’s what I’m the Boy Scouts. What are we talking about here? The Boy Scouts? The Girl Scouts of America? Yeah. No, yeah. They’re resurrecting the international scout to be an EV off-road, I guess to compete with the new ev. Hummer will. It’s probably gonna be a lot cheaper cuz it’s gonna be smaller than that.

The Ford Bronco and the Jeep, they want to get in on that sweet suite four by four monies. Just to segue of our hot second, I was in traffic and turned my head the other day and oh, there’s a Bronco next to me. Like, oh, very nice. Very, very nice to see. Nice. And then I got behind it and I was like, uh, it was a little less nice to see from this angle.

Was it a Bronco or the Bronco Sport? Uh, I think it was the sport. My memory is already like erased it. So it’s, so it’s basically the, the Land [00:23:00] Rover freelander or whatever the hell escape, the thing was escape. It’s the four escape. It’s just so like I really like it from the side and from the front, but then like the back is just like too narrow at the top.

They wanted to do like the safari roof, like on the old discos and stuff. It’s got that kind of shape to it. Or the Volvo SUVs kind of have that scalloped rear and I get you on the sport, the Bronco itself, if you see one of those in person, they’re big. I mean it’s like a Ford Explorer big, like you won’t miss it, that’s for sure.

So back to the scout, I was wondering how did they do this And apparently they bought, when did they do this? That’s when did they buy International? They 2020. What? So it says here, international Harvester sold the proto S U V Scout from 1961 to 1980 with the truck maker going belly up in 1985. After nearly 80 years of production, BW acquired what was left of International in 2020 with its purchase of Navistar International Core.

Interesting. They bought the parent company, so [00:24:00] they, they also bought the rights to, because International makes rigs and stuff too, right? They make tractors, they make motors. I mean, so this is, this is all under that Navistar International umbrella, I’m assuming? Yeah, I think it’s cool. It just feels out of place because international is such an American brand.

Such an American thing. I think what a lot of US associate international more with Ford. Than we would with vw. It just seems weird that VW bought them and Ford didn’t, you know? Yeah. You know, this is nothing like Fiat buying your Jeep or anything like that, right? I mean, by way of Mercedes. Come on now.

Yeah. We need, we need the Germans making America’s most beloved military sport suv. Was this America’s most beloved? It was a flash in the pan. No, but the, the Jeep Willy’s was, and it’s kind of funny that Mercedes owned Jeep. I think it’s cool, but again, you have all these neat things in Europe, like the Amar Rock and all these other trucks [00:25:00] that you’ve already built.

Why do we need the international and does anybody care anymore? I mean, I guess they’re gonna try to play the nostalgia card. Yeah, that’s the real question. It’s like, I don’t know. Yikes. I mean, who’s gonna. Buy this with a VW badge on it? Well, it’s gonna have a scout badge on it. I think they’re gonna brand it as its own thing.

It’s like, it’s like Hummer. Hummer is its own ev brand now. So Scout is gonna be, no, no, the German equivalent. It’s like those bags you buy or whatever, blah, blah, by Michael Kors or DA by Versace instead of Prada. It’s Prado. What? Yeah. Yeah. It it? No, it’s, it’s S Scout. It’s scalp by Volkswagen. Magnet Box Scout by Volkswagen.

Terrible. Yes. The People’s Card. The People’s Scout. I mean, I would go test drive when I’d go look at one in person, would I bring it home? You’d have to really convince me like the stats on it would have to be stellar. It’d have to be better than the rivian, which we already know is like the king of the hill right now when it comes to these ev u v pickup, smaller size things.

So I, [00:26:00] to be fair, you’re not, uh, you’re not really a four by four person per se anyway, so I would never expect you to take home one of these, or a Bronco or a Wrangler or a Hummer or any of those. I’m always looking for something to replace my diesel guzzling, $6 a gallon Jeep Grand Cherokee right now.

Okay. Yeah. How about the cyber truck? No, that’s a hard, hard task. So yeah, but none of the things like Brad just named off would be suitable replacements for your use case though. So a thousand percent, no, of course not. But you, you know what else isn’t a suitable replacement for the use case at hand? The Nissan yet another 400.

Well that too, but anything named ID whatever at this point, because they’ve introduced yet another one called the ID five gtx. I’m really confused. Oh my God, I love this. How is it different than the ID four? Although [00:27:00] than the back and Mike is rolling his eyes and could tell us, like the back I guess is a lot more sloped.

I get you there. At first I went, Ooh, this is maybe gonna be like a carrado thing, you know? Cuz it kind of has that side profile, like maybe like a little tails gonna pop out almost, you know? Right. And then you get to the back and you’re like, wait. It looks just like the ID four. The other thing that turned me off immediately.

Okay. Immediately soapbox the ID five is the coop version of VWs. Familiar ev, but changes the standard car. And that’s the other thing I got confused by. How is this a coop of the ID four? It’s the same size or bigger, I think it said. I just want to confirm that I’m not crazy because I’ve had this discussion with Brad a million times about what’s a hatchback and what’s a liftback, and what’s a coop and what’s a not, so I went back to the dictionary again for the thousandth time, and I’m gonna read you verbatim what the definition of a coop pay [00:28:00] is, or a coop, a car with a fixed roof, two doors and a sloping rear end.

It has four doors. Got too many doors. Uh, not, I believe BMW coined the term Grand Coupe. It’s a Grand Coupe from the South on that ugly thing. Did they make like three of them? Yeah, they made a bunch. The Grand Coupe is supposed to be like the two door Benzs and the, the six series bmw, which was a big car, but it was two doors.

But they made a four door version. And then the, the Mercedes has the cls lies, lies. It’s all lies. It’s all lies. Well, to me, it looks like from the side, Volkswagen didn’t just buy international Scout, they also bought Eagle talent because that one line that goes down the side of the car and the back end with the tail, it, this is an Eagle town from the side dude.

And then it’s, it’s got this badge gtx. There ain’t nothing gt even related to the eye about this thing, man. Well, that’s what the, the, the author says, they’re like, don’t be thinking this is [00:29:00] like g t i Cause you’re gonna be disappointed. Don’t be thinking, you know what? It does happen. And we covered this a long time ago.

Oh, we did? I forget what the whole GTX thing was supposed to be. Terrible. Yeah. But it does have a three spoke steering wheel though. Oh. So it, it has lineage in common with the Nissan R 32. Perfect. That’s great. Well, it’s kind of a three spoke. It’s a split three spoke. This goes back to the definition spoke.

It’s a for spoke, but only one of the spokes is split. So it’s a 3.2, 2.5, but it shares a steering wheel with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if that wasn’t disappointing enough, there was another article that came across my desk this week, which made me feel super old. So old I, I was wondering how you were gonna react to this one.

I, I cried a little because. Guess what folks? The golf R, which started with the R 32, which is actually the successor of the Beetle R s I [00:30:00] now celebrates its 20th anniversary and I bought one of these new, I would still have that car had it not been stolen. And then I realize, shit, it’s a 20 year old car.

That’s a long time. Yeah, I got really confused at first. I was like 20th. Like what? Like the 20th anniversary came out so long. What is this? What are they talking about? Well, the sad part. And then I was like, holy crap. No, the R 32 20th anniversary, Jesus. Right, because the 20th anniversary G ti I was in 2003, which makes the GT’s 40th anniversary next year in the United States.

And I’m like, talk about feeling old, right? That’s the mental gymnastics that I did. And I’m like, oh my God, the car that epitomizes, let’s see, my personality, my soul is as old as I am. And I’m like, ah, this is terrible. That said, I hate the new one. So they had the picture there. Awesome. R 32 and the Golf Rs and I, [00:31:00] I just like to look at the R 32.

I was gonna say who wore it best? I feel disrespected. That seems no offense. Mark five R 32 in here. All right. All right. I’m gonna call you out on this. I remember while ago we used to say Car in the world. Yep. Was a mark five Volkswagen, and suddenly it.

I think the Mark five Jetta specifically, but the mark five golfs and GTIs and stuff too. They were terrible. They were ugly, ugly, ugly cars. When I, when it first came out, I thought I was looking at the new Corolla. That’s how terrible I thought it was. I thought someone took a mark four, they put like an air pipe onto it and just blew a bunch of air into it and expanded it.

I think they’re, I think they’re hideous. I will give you the taillights look like a Corolla. Yeah,

but I also said that it was mainly the Jetta, cuz it looked like a Corolla at the same time because they looked so [00:32:00] different from the front. Oh, they’re completely different. They’re completely different. Oh, oh, okay. One’s a coop. That’s why it’s a coop. A it’s a very coupe. And the other’s a liftback.

Technically it doesn’t have a sloping back. So it is a hatchback and not a coop. A coop doesn’t have a, it doesn’t have, it’s got only have two pillars. No, so it’s very simple in Volkswagen terms. The Rocco is a coop and the golf is a hatchback. End of story. But then the ID five is a coop. It is not riddle me that bad man.

It has four doors. We gotta go back to this again. Technically it’s a five door, but, you know, whatever it is. What, what does Urban Dictionary say? Let’s go to, we’re moving on. That’s what it says. It says Stop this nonsense, moral of the story. We don’t like the Mark eight. We think it’s stupid. I, I’m not a fan.

And, and you know, and it goes against everything I’ve ever said that the even number generations that got it right. Now I’ve been proven wrong. I hate it. I hate it. Maybe they’re switching to odds and the golf nine is gonna be amazing. Well, the, the golf is [00:33:00] gonna cease to exist at some point, right? I mean, yeah, let’s face it.

I mean, I’m biased, but I don’t know. I like the R 32 when they went with the big chariot wheels and then the, the air dam front bumper, the big low bumper and the front and the back and the little tail. I mean, it really cleaned the look up. Very nice. Of the mark fours, the mark the beetle was a coup. The mark fours the best looking.

It’s the best golfs in my opinion. And I hated them at first, you know? But that’s a whole nother story. We’ll get into that at a later time. Mm-hmm. So we need to switch now to our domestic news, brought to you in part by American muscle.com, your number one source for OEM and performance replacement parts for your Chevy Ford or Mopar.

You probably noticed that we skipped over STIs. But we’re not really skipping over them because we don’t have a lot to say about Ford or Chevy this month for whatever reason. So we’re gonna talk a little bit more about Dodge Chrysler and everybody under that family tree. I’ve been watching a lot of the [00:34:00] European, you know, social media feeds following some of the magazines and other car markets and things over there.

And I, I get to see things that I salivate over that I know that we’ll never get. And this has been going on for years. In the last year there’s been pitches and positions over a new C U V called the Ton, or the Tonal, if you wanna pronounce it in the English Way by Alpha Romeo. And I said, oh, that’s cute.

Alpha’s building another S U V. They already have the Stelvia, who cares? In the last month, there’s been pictures released of the Dodge Hornet. And I went, oh, that’s the Alpha Rome male I’ve been looking at for the last year, basically. That’s exactly what, it’s what I take issue with on the Hornet. Is the name.

If you know anything about classic mopars muscle cars or whatever this thing does, they’re not deserve this name. I’d rather you pick the duster, the shadow, the spirit. Any of those car names would be better than the Hornet for this C Uuv. That’s just my opinion. Why? Why can’t this just be the new journey?

That’s what I was thinking too. [00:35:00] Right. I don’t know why they chose Hornet. Maybe again, this nostalgia player. Exactly. Yep. Badge engineering. But the question is, Does it have a three spoke steering wheel? You know, I do not see any pictures of the inside, but I’m going to guess that it does have a three spoke steering wheel.

Cause all the other cars on our list that we’re talking about today have three spoke steering wheels. So they are all direct descendants of Nissan’s Greatest car ever made. The R 32 skyline, you know it isn’t, but is also under the STIs banner. Peo, we don’t talk a lot about French cars, and I personally do have an affinity for French cars.

I think they’re, they’re quirky. They’re, they can sometimes be cute. They’re a little odd. Don’t talk to me about Citroen, but, you know, I was gonna say, what, what, what do you think of the, uh, cevo, you know, the two cv? That’s not the worst. It’s the ds, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna table that for now. Yeah. The DS stands for D sucks.

Freaking cockroach on wheels. Hate that car. That said, we hinted last year, I think it was about this time on the drive through about the PEO nine X [00:36:00] eight, if you ever noticed, PEOs got this interesting battle between Porsche and them for numbering their race cars. And apparently there were lawsuits years ago about using 900 series, you know, you can’t use nine zero, can’t do this, blah, blah, blah, back and forth.

So they’re always poking a pointy stick at Porsche when they build their next race car. So the nine x eight, it’s real. It’s been revealed. There’s pictures of it. It’s freaking awesome. I cannot wait to see this car at Lamont’s. I can’t wait to see a French brand in the L M D H class fighting alongside of everybody else.

I think this is gonna be awesome. I think you’re forgetting that Nissan did it a couple years ago with the front wheel drive, whatever the heck that car was. That barely made it a few laps. Is this front wheel drive too? Uh, it is not. This is your classic prototype layout? Yes. They want this thing to actually survive more.

The first third, wait, wait, wait. Go back to what you just said. The classic prototype isn’t the whole thing about prototype is, is this one of a kind? It’s like there’s no classic formula. It’s something [00:37:00] completely new in engineering and everything. How is there a classic prototype formula? I mean, aren’t they all spec classes now?

They’re all building to a certain design regulat negotiation? Uh, I don’t think LMP one is. Well, does LMP one even exist anymore? Uh, I think so. I don’t know. The jury is still out on whether or not Dodge will be entering a clone car, running a different badge to have two cars in the field been teased a couple times.

Dart this number will be 2016. I’m really excited about that. I mean, obviously we already have entries from Cadillac, Ferrari, Porsche, now PEO officially and others. I mean, the L M D H class is stacking up for the hundredth anniversary of Lamont’s, and I, like I said, I cannot wait to be walking that paddock and seeing it in person.

It’s gonna be absolutely phenomenal. So my hat’s off to them. Speaking of anniversaries, there’s another anniversary to celebrate. Happy Birthday Toyota. Yay. Wait, what? Happy Birthday Toyota 4runner. Oh God. How old is that? Am I gonna feel like a dinosaur? It is the [00:38:00] same age as US. Years Young Edition. Oh God.

Really? 40th anniversary, special edition 2023. Toyota 4runner will be coming to a dealership near you and it’s limited to 40. 40 copies. Okay, that’s just lame. That’s Toyota for you, but it’s got some cool decals. Hey man. 17. It’s coming with. Bronze, 17 inch wheels. You know, I really feel like they missed an opportunity to use copper.

They went a little throwback though with these tri-colored pin striping, which isn’t really pinstriping. They’re really wide, but still the striping down the side. Well, the sun, the sunset striping. Yeah. Which came on their campers and stuff, right? I mean, like, I don’t know. Maybe the 4runner had it, I guess.

Yeah. You know, some of the older runners had it. So going back to my trip to the Peterson as an example, remember we talked about the Alpha Wolf? That truck that looks like the original 4runner from Back to the Future. I actually got to see it in [00:39:00] person. It is a hundred percent legit what we thought it was, and it’s freaking amazing.

The truck from back to the Future wasn’t a forerunner though. Was it Toyota? Yeah, the 4runner is the SUV V. It was like a T 100 or something like that. Or a Tacoma. It was not a 4runner. That pickup truck. No, because at that, that other company, that one company is trying to make a knock off one of it. What is it, alpha?

It was, it was a Toyota SR five. SR five is a package SR five pickup. That’s what it’s listed as the back to the features SR five pickup trick. Oh, I see the original 4runner. Ooh, that takes ugly shit. Now I do believe there was a 4runner that you, well, happy birthday Toyota Runner. You have aged gracefully.

You, you could take the back off of the 4runner. I think some of the earlier ones, kind of like you could with the old Broncos. This is knowledge. We are dropping truth bombs on you people left and right. Meanwhile, over in the Honda Camp, this month’s break. Fix guest, Annika Carter reviews the 2023 Acura Integra for a [00:40:00] girl’s guide to cars.

So I wanted to get your guys’ opinion on what you thought. Now that we’ve seen more pictures of it and looked at her article, I still stand aside my dislike of using the name Integra for this Acura TSX evolution. Don’t you mean the, the Acura Civic Hatchback. I thought it was the Honda Cross Tour v6.

Could be. It is. I thought the red interior though, really cool. The interior does look good. I will give it that. For a Honda, it is a step above what I expected, but looking at it in, in relation to other vehicles, her standing next to it, stuff like that, I was like, this thing is big. Like really big and they had the classic Integra there, like the original boxy first gen Integra, and I’m like, man, that thing is microscopic in comparison to this thing.

I don’t know. I’m with Tanya. Three spokes steering wheel. Does it? Does it? Does it? Oh my gosh. You’re right. It is going to sell millions. It is a derivative of the crx because it has a three. Spoke to [00:41:00] What does this have in common with the crx? Nothing. It weighs three times as much. You can put one in the trunk.

I will say the trunk space is reminiscent of the two thousands integra’s. The way they built a proper lift back, it looks humongous when you open that rear hatch. Actually, whatever, like those cars. Whatever the first photo of this car was when the whisper started and there was that yellow photo, and it wasn’t even like necessarily 360 views of anything, that first initial teaser photo.

There was such promise there. Such promise, and then we got the real photo of it and it was like, what hot trash garbage is this? It looks nothing like this thing you teased us, which could have been really nice. But it says Integra. Well then I want it to be different, but that’s just me. It’s dumb. So let’s move on a little bit.

We’ll switch to random EVs and concepts that we might actually be excited [00:42:00] about. So going back to my trip to California, I saw so many cars I took. Probably 1200 pictures if that was the low number on all the stuff that I took. And the Peterson was an amazing experience. I’ve never been to an auto museum that big, so pretty, just so many different things.

And then I actually got access to the vault, which I thought was more interesting than the actual show floors themselves because that’s down in the basement. That’s where they keep the cars, you know, that aren’t on the floor or being changed in and out, all this kind of thing. There’s really nice, very well educated docents downstairs that can guide you around.

They’ll talk you through, you got questions about cars. I got to see the United Nude try five mile an hour golf cart thing that we talked about that sold for like a gajillion dollars that’s down there. Magnum PIs, actual Ferrari’s down there, the Batmobile, you know, all those kind of movie cars are down the uh, I got to see from Gotham Garage.

Remember we talked about rust to riches and all that. Mark Talley’s, Mach five, Corvette, C4 based. [00:43:00] Movie cars in there and I got to see the exner that he had built. I mean, I stood six inches from it and it was just like, wow. You know, to see all these cars in person that we talk about on this show that we read about or see on TV was amazing.

I’ve never been to a museum like this before. I’ve been to other private collections, other museums, you know, usually those museums are combination of private collections, but the Peterson is like topnotch. Which by the way, if anybody’s listening to this, I have two tickets to the Peterson that I will mail you if you are interested.

Free admission that are good through the 30th of June. So email us at crew chief@gtmotorsport.org or call or Texas at (202) 630-1770 and I will send them out to you. First person to hit us up. They are yours free of charge. That said, I saw so many DeLorean when I was in California that Peterson has one of the factory gold DeLoreans.

And I got a picture of it and all that. That was [00:44:00] really cool to see in person. I took some pictures for you, Brad, because remember we’ve talked a lot about how tall is that car? How big is that car? Put it in reference to my height. It comes up to my waist at 43 inches tall. It’s been so tall. So tall. Yeah.

It needs to be lower. Six inches in stock Trim. It got me thinking though, we talked a lot about last month, you know, they teased us the corner of the back end of the new DeLorean. It also got me thinking about the cyber truck that we talked about with its misaligned body panels and its color mismatch and this and that and I, I started to think about it.

I was like maybe that color mismatches on purpose, because it was on purpose on the DeLorean, they had a hard time color matching the stainless steel to the front grill. Right. The front grills are always like a darker color, you know? Cause they’re painted versus the body color. Yeah. I suddenly realized, you know, there’s another car.

That has that same styling to it. And I wanted to go back and see if it came from the same design house as the DeLorean, you know, from Etal design from Giro. And it turns out that the [00:45:00] 1975 launch of Beta Monte Carlo, which has that same panda bear look in the front with the two-tone nose and all that was not penned by Juro.

It was penned by PanIN Farina. I started thinking, well, I wonder if Juro got his influence in the seventies when the DeLorean was being designed right, even though it came out in the eighties, if he got that from PanIN Farina. So a hundred percent speculation there, right? It’s a little trip down memory lane.

It reminded me that I needed to revisit the website cuz Tanya had said they’re going to be revealing more of the car as we get closer to Pebble Beach. Well, guess what? Pebble Beach is the week this episode releases in four days. Two hours, 51 minutes and 54 seconds. 53. 52 50. There’s a countdown on the DeLorean website.

Can we just say that? Let’s just give our impressions of the DeLorean as if we just saw it. Wow. The new DeLorean. It’s freaking amazing. I gotta say, this is the best looking car I’ve ever seen [00:46:00] next to the new Kunta for me. I know people have their own fossil tage, but whatever. This new DeLorean, oh my god.

Best looking car ever. Eric, what are your impressions of it? Have you seen the rear end? Oh, I’m an ass man. Yes, I have. I didn’t know if you were being serious or not. I was kind of being dumb, but also serious. Okay. He’s setting it up. All jokes aside, there is a new picture. It’s more than just the quarter panel that’s sitting waiting for you on delorean.com.

As you count away, the minutes left to the official reveal at Pebble Beach, and I have to say I’m a little confused. By what it’s, it says DeLorean right there. You’re in the right place. I mean, I know what it is. Here’s what I don’t get. The other picture we got gave me this almost, I don’t know, fantasy of like the Nissan 400 z, where it’s like, oh my God, it’s gonna be, and then when I got the full perspective of the back, the cockpit looks really tight.

It’s got wide hips. Mm-hmm. But it [00:47:00] also doesn’t look anything like the 2021 etal design concept that was Penn by, uh, angel Guerrera that they actually built. One of which I thought they were gonna take that modify for production use, which looks really, really cool. And I’ve posted pictures of both of these in the show notes so you guys can see it.

The 2021 one-off concept is a gorgeous car. I thought they were going with that. Those front shots you see in the teaser video, they’re doing this V thing with the goaling door. So it’s gonna have this maybe b kind of nose, like an Alfa Rome male. Nothing like the concept car they built. A year ago, so now I’m really confused.

What is this new jewelry gonna look like? And I’m not sure if I’m gonna like it. It’s a tester. That is the impression I get from it a hundred percent. I don’t know. I’m just gonna not get excited anymore. How about that? I’m just gonna leave this page up and I will revisit it on 31st, and we’re gonna talk about it next month when we get to see all the pictures from Pebble Beach.

[00:48:00] So stay tuned folks. Write in, let us know what you think. If you get to see the DeLorean before we do, because. I don’t know. May I might need to be convinced. I’m really disappointed though. Huh? You really just gotta drive it a hundred percent. The real question is, does it have a three spoke steering wheel?

That’s what I was gonna ask. I did figure out why the 2021 concept car wouldn’t work though. If you look at it closely, it wasn’t designed for goldwin doors. If that is the keystone centerpiece of the design, that prototype they did last year would’ve never worked. My guess is it was like a financial thing and they, they didn’t want to pay the money for that design.

The new one will probably be a four door coupe lifted. It’s gonna be a a a four door lifted. S U C V S U C U V. Speaking of what’s old is new again. So, Brad, we gave you an action item last month. Did you call some dealerships to see if you could buy a Dodge Dart? You know, I. I’m going to disappoint our audience here.

I did not get a chance to call any dealerships. I meant [00:49:00] to call Chuck LeDuc, but I completely forgot. So I’m gonna have to table this discussion, Chuck. Just know that I’m gonna be giving you a call sometime within the next month. I’m hoping that you can tell me that you’ve got some new Dodge Darts for me to not buy.

But I did go on cars.com and I checked to see if I could find a brand new Dodge Dart. They’re not listed what? But you. You know this was the first time in two years. No, I know. Well, cause they finally sold all out. It only took them six years. But can still buy a brand new 2016 Dodge Viper ACR R. Oh really?

How much. Only $800,000. Whoa. At Deon Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram 800,000. That’s pretty good. Good for them. Do they have a dealer rating of 4.2 on cars.com? No. Go out of out of five. It’s only 200 miles from here. So when we go to test drive the Nissan Z, why don’t we just go ahead and make a detour up to [00:50:00] DeCozen Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram.

See if we can take this bad boy out for a drive more than you can afford PAL taxes. I found something interesting. You know, somebody wasted the time to put together a listicle called the bestselling cars from the year you graduated high school. Talk about things that make you feel old and depressed.

This has gotta be the saddest automotive article I’ve ever read. Oh, snap. Really? Let’s take a trip on this road. I’m gonna take a guess, Tanya, and say that the car of your year was the Toyota Camry. No. Oh my gosh. It was this Chevy Cavalier. So it’s the best selling car by year for like 40 years or whatever.

You just, oh my God. Wait, let’s scrap that. Who cares about your high school? Can we hone in on how the Ford Tour, was it 1992? 19 93, 19 94, 19 95, 19 96. Bestselling car. Dang. Does that even [00:51:00] matter? Because starting people didn’t trust the Japanese. Starting in 1997 until now, everything listed is a Toyota Camry.

So, not true. Not true. Not true. In 2001, the Honda Accord beat it probably by like three cars. I’m sorry, I mistook it for a Toyota Camry. Cause they all look the same. How many of these are are beige? That would be Matt Yips favorite thing. Oh, these are all terrible. Every one of these makes me sad. Wow. I mean, there is not a single impressive thing on here that’s not true.

Hey, now the old mobile cut list was the best selling in 1978 and 79 and 80 and 81 odd, but they’re, and then again, in 83 with the Supreme, only because it got ousted by the Ford Escort. I mean, come on. These are all terrible. You know, here’s an honorable mention. It only shows up once on this list. What’s the only car, I think to show up once on this list?

The solarity. The celebrity. Look at [00:52:00] that. Look at that. That is the worst 1986 Chevy celebrity. That is trash. I, I’m with Tanya though. How the hell did the Taurus beat out the Accord and the Camry for like four straight years? None of this, you know, they, they, they went to the bubble Taurus and that’s where I want none of this.

Okay. I wanna know really. 1987 Ford Escort. You’re showing the GT version. Really? I don’t remember ever seeing GT Ford escorts on the road. They were always the sold seven of those. Yeah, they were always the hideous, like the 88 version. That picture would’ve been even funnier if the guy was driving from the right seat and not the left.

Cuz then it would’ve been like, oh, okay. Again, this is the worst automotive journalism ever. Thanks. Car driver. Wow. I mean, it is what it is. If those were the top selling car and the sales numbers are the sales numbers, yeah. I mean it’s, you, you, it’s not the the journalist’s fault. Although I must say 2016, I really would’ve thought it would’ve been the Dodge Start.

These are like the best [00:53:00] selling cars in middle America. I don’t understand where they got these numbers from because nevermind, nevermind. We’ve already done the world map. Remember we did that last year where it’s like best selling cars on the planet. It’s like all Toyotas, and somehow it’s like Day Cs, Senderos or whatever.

Fine, but the Ford to whatever, get outta here. Hey, Lisa wasn’t an Impala. You know, my expectations are completely lowered, so lowered expectation, we don’t have anything. What, just, just a little update though. Uh, the DeLorean will be revealed in four days, two hours, 41 minutes and 37 seconds. 36, 35, 34, 33. Do we have Tesla news?

Are we remiss? You know, I’m okay with being remiss. Might be the first time really not highlighting anything. It’s not to say that there isn’t any Tesla news. I mean, there’s Elon Musk news. Yeah, can, can we do, can we go [00:54:00] inception style and do car adjacent to Tesla adjacent news? I mean, you know, he’s under some allegations now at the moment, and apparently like suddenly we, Tesla has hired all these like magnificent lawyers.

It’s like really the same time that you are being accused of misbehavior. Okay. Whatever. Oh, I thought we were gonna talk about his purchase of Twitter. Oh, that, oh yeah, there’s that too. Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet. Which is like on hold. Did he say it was a, didn’t he say it was a flaming pile of crap?

Lots of things. He says lots of things though. I, I, I don’t know that that was on hold. Twitter put hiring freezes in and all kinds of stuff. Apparently like it, it’s on hold until they show him the bot accounts or something. I don’t know. Yeah, cuz he, I guess he was under the impression that it had more genuine accounts than it actually does.

The value is probably inflated because of the bot users. Yeah. And now there’s so much orchestration that you’re posting once and it’s going everywhere. I mean, [00:55:00] come on. Social media, whatever. Let’s talk about cars. Somebody wants to talk if, tweet me if you use Twitter. All right. Well there better sports.

14. Hook me up. I would be remiss if I didn’t, I would be remiss if I didn’t say this. Apparently they’re rolling out an update to the, I thought it is driving magnificence, uh, cause they’ve been doing that beta testing. How many spokes does that steering wheel have? God, not enough. It’s got a steering wheel.

None. Which one has a dumb yoke thing now? Or whatever? Because you don’t need a steering wheel. You don’t need a, a traditional round steering wheel. Right. Have you seen the car where the tr where the steering wheel slides across the front? I believe we talked about that. Be right hand drive or left hand drive and the, and none.

No, no. This is a new transformer thing. I saw it. And then the seats can rotate. So it can be a one seater. A two seater. Like it’s bizarre. Imagine you’re how generate more seats. Imagine you’re on a road trip and you’re like, oh man, I’m getting [00:56:00] sleepy. You know, I’m driving your passenger’s like, oh, I got this slide steering wheel over in driver’s seat.

So, so what if you’re both sleeping? You, you just throw your hands in the air and say, Jesus, take the wheel. Does it just automatically go into the heavens? You hope, you, you hope that there’s not an emergency vehicle on the side of the road for your carrine into when you, that’s the secret Tesla command now to activate Jesus.

Jesus, take the wheel. Exactly. It’s like open butt all, all over again. But speaking of Jesus taking the wheel, there is new promises that this time next year you will not need a human. The babysit pilot. Tesla. We are there folks. So we’re just gonna send full autonomous level. 9,000. Ian will be here one year.

Approximately. Approximately. Give or take two decades. Take 10. Yeah. What, what’s, what’s the standard [00:57:00] deviation of that? Are we, are we playing cornhole? I mean, what the hell is this? We’re playing butthole. Jesus, take the wheel. So, so wait, does this mean eight by three spokes wheel, so, so if we don’t need a human, does this mean I can just program my car to go to the grocery store and get my milk for me and then bring it back?

Oh snap. You know, you’re right. Cuz curbside pickup, just be like Tesla, Jesus. Take the Tesla to the curbside pickup and then bring it back. That’s right. Hey, no, that’s Johnny Giant. Just go ahead. Yeah, just go ahead and put the milk in the passenger seat. It’s fine. And no offense, offense. Jesus is driving.

No offense to Jesus. Let’s just put that out there. He’s laughing too cuz he is like his, only God knows when this is gonna happen as he knows what not. Jesus is like, I want nothing to do with that fool. I tried to tell him, but he didn’t take the sign. I showed up in his toast and he wet listening. Wow.

And on that [00:58:00] note, I gave him the three spoke steering wheel and everything. Yeah. Momo just announced we only make four spoke steering wheels. Oh Lord. Okay. So we, we, we are remiss, we have no lowered expectations. What are the rich people up to? The rich people are up to buying more Lego sets. So they bought all the collector cars they can now they’re built, they’re buying fake cars.

No, but you know, sometimes prices for Legos are a little bit pricey. So we dump this one in the rich people saying this is the, you have disposable income saying this is up there. Yeah, this is definitely up there. Not necessarily off par, probably with the Lego prices, but for a mere $399 and 99 cents, you too can own this 3,778 Lego piece set of the Ferrari Daytona SP three.

To quote Donovan for garage ride on this one, it’s about damn time. Somebody at Lego was a motor sports enthusiast. They got a lot of new sets coming out. [00:59:00] That speed category theme, if you will, they go by themes, the speed theme speed champions is what it’s called. It’s exciting to see that grow. So can you actually buy this from Lego or with like every other Ferrari, you have to sign up and get on Ferrari’s special waiting list and you have to buy it directly from Ferrari and then you don’t actually buy it, they just lend it to you when you want to play with it.

Then you gotta give it back when the new one comes out. You gotta give it back when the new one comes out to stay on the good side. It is legitimately on Lego’s website coming soon, so it’s not up for pre-order or available yet, but it is there on their website along with. The Ferrari 4 88 GTE E Number 51.

Yeah, that that one’s been out for a while. I’ve seen that one in person as well as the retired. Unfortunately, you can’t buy this one. Ferrari F 40 Now car related as well. If you are a Transformers geek, Lego is also going to be revealing on June 1st, the Optimist Prime [01:00:00] Lego sets. I am excited about that because if they make Optimist Prime, it means they have to make other characters like Megatron and Star Screen and Jazz and Wheel Jack and all those, right?

They gotta all be correlated though, unfortunately. Now, for a price comparison, the Optimist Prime, which does not bring the cab, which I’m a little bit disappointed with, oh, so for a hundred sixty nine, ninety nine and 1500, 1000 508, 1500 pieces. One 70. So, okay. That’s about the size of the Voltron that they did, right?

It stands at in truck mode. It’s five and a half inches tall, 10 and a half inches long, and four and a half inches wide. And when he’s standing, he’s 13 and a half inches tall. I think Voltron was about 18 inches tall. So, but yes, I’m very excited. I want this and then you shall have it. This is a truck. I shall have middle class people doing middle class things.

Yes. [01:01:00] Still playing with our action figures. What’s up? So we’re moving on to Florida. I think we’re moving south. I know this is sad. So this person had just purchased a 2006 Heritage Edition Ford GT for $704,000 from a Barrett Jackson auction. And this is like golf color livery and, and drove it off the golf course and crashed it.

Was quote, unfamiliar with how to drive stick shift. That’s the best part. Why do you buy a car with a manual if you don’t know how to drive a stick? Was it Jerry Stiller? Is that who it was? Is he driving through Del Boca Vista? I mean, if you look at the pictures, He looks like he’s driven through the golf course like the guy did last month while he was evading the police, burying his car in the water hazard and all that stuff.

Well, here’s the question. How unfamiliar are you with driving stick shift that you totaled this [01:02:00] $704,000 vehicle? Probably about five minutes after you bought it at 35 miles an hour. The problem is the wheels were engulfed in smoke because he dumped the clutch and that was the end of that, right? If you’ve ever watched anybody with like their first time behind the wheel of a Toyota Camry, all the herky jerky, and then finally they get frustrated and they dump it, it’s probably exactly what he did.

He looped the car off the golf course and down into the ravine, and that was the end of that. I mean, he alleges, I don’t want people to think I was racing at 90 miles an hour. I was going 35, a hundred rpm. Yes. The crash occurred as he shifted up into second gear from first, not while downshifting, as the official report had said, Guarini claims, old tires, muddy pavement, and a fresh detailing were all factors causing the 550 horsepower supercar to swing out [01:03:00] and hit a tree.

Not stupidity. At which point. It triggered multiple airbags, disabled the vehicle and caused it to slide far enough after hitting the tree that it blocked a sidewalk again. Oh my God, those people aren’t gonna be able to get around for hours. I mean, how unfortunate. I do like the comment here, forget his license.

They need to revoke his man card. Well, hold on a second. Speaking of the license, he was issued a citation for driving with a suspended license, so he shouldn’t have even been driving the car to begin with. Isn’t that driving on the sidewalk? Like that chick that drove the uh, the big wheel? You know she lost her license when she was in college cuz drunk driving.

So she was driving a big wheel down the sidewalk to get to the bars. What’s the statistics on the number of suspended licenses in Florida? I mean, he might not be in a minority. Well, allegedly it was a clerical error, he says Okay. Well, it’s gonna cost him 700 grand to fix that car. [01:04:00] Beautiful car, by the way.

But yeah, that’s unfortunate to see that happen. He’s, he’s gonna repair it then he’s gonna sell it on Craigslist. Garage kept, never wrecked. I’m bring a trailer. No, no low balls. I know what I got. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of escaping the heat, we’re gonna go straight into the heat in Texas. There is a YouTube clip of a hit and run probably when you’re thinking hit and run like, oh, you know, dude sideswipe somebody, God forbid if they hit a person literally in the hit and run.

None of these things, sort of these things. You’d think this was Florida, but it was Texas. Someone on the highway in the main roads caught video camera, I guess dash cam video of like parallel Highway Road, some exit ramps of this. I don’t even know what car it is cuz it’s too far away to see, but it looks like it’s probably like an Altima or something like that.

Ford gonna car Tesla. Was it a Ford Taurus? It was an Impala people. It was a goddamn Chevy Impala.[01:05:00]

That would be perfect. That would be perfect for this story. He just came back from Home Depot and I guess some people would say, well, hey, There’s the reason why you need a pickup truck. Cause you gotta haul some wood. And if you had a pickup truck you could have put it in the bed, not straight out the side of the car through the windows.

So it’s sticking out. He probably, even with the pickup truck, he still would’ve done it this way. He probably, are we talking perpendicular to the car? We’re talking perpendicular to your direction of the drive train of the car. Yes. So they made a T. Okay. Okay. I see the logic here. Wait, they’re eight foot two by fours and a lane I think is about eight feet.

I, I gotta double check my, oh no, these, these look like 12, 14 foot two by fours stand corrected. So this MF effort, because, sorry folks, that’s what this person is. He’s going at a clip with his 12 by fours hanging out [01:06:00] through the glass and he proceeds to miscalculate his spacing of course, and there’s like wood posts and like signs and he starts what wiping out and the car books.

And then he hits this poor S U V that’s standing in a back up lane of traffic trying to like exit. And he just like broadsides it with the 12 by four. Keeps going. As if nothing happened, just keeps driving down the road. Maybe he’s unconscious because the wood like bashed him in the head cuz it was probably like going straight through the driver’s window and not even the backseat window.

He was still steering though I wanna talk about was on autopilot. Jesus with the Tesla wheel through the Tesla. This is unofficial. I wanna talk about the guy at Home Depot that helped him load the wood through the windows of his car. Are you liable at that point if you’re Home Depot? Because I once had a Costco person tell me they wouldn’t load something cuz they couldn’t be responsible for it being loaded incorrectly.

I didn’t know [01:07:00] Costco sold mulch.

It was not mulch only the finest. The finest signature Kirkland’s mulch for me. Redwood mulch, although, you know, could you return the mulch at the end of the season if you were unhappy with it? Only if you’re a gold customer. That’s the Walmart return policy. No, but that’s Costco’s as well. He could return anything at any point in time.

That’s, that’s nor Nordstrom too half used bag of mulch. I didn’t like this. I need a refund. All right, well, don’t be that idiot. Don’t let those Home Depot people load your car or lows, you know, just who knows who it was. Next time you need to buy some Longwood, Mr. Altima, Tesla Impala driver, probably Impala driver.

Just call Uber Eats, they’ll deliver. Hell, you’re a wood chuck. Miss your dinner. [01:08:00] More fiber. I can’t use these GrubHub coupons people sent me for anything, so I might as well use them at Home Depot. I need fiber. All right, so let’s go north. We’re just gonna ping pong around the country here, local to some folks in the DMV area in Glen Benet.

If you’re in the know, you know it’s Glen Benet and not Glen Burney. We fancy, fancy, fancy in the Glen Benet. Hi. How you doing? How you doing? How you doing? How are you doing? Not so well these people, I would say, cuz if you went to the fuel station to fill up your car and unknowingly filled it with diesel fuel, I, I’d say you had a bad day in the Glen Benet.

Apparently Wwo, apparently that’s what’s happened at a shell station. Come on, shell be better. Someone, I guess probably the, the trucker that came in to fuel the, the tanks mistakenly put diesel fuel where the gasoline should be. Wmp Wamp. That’s real bad. Who’s liable [01:09:00] there? Did they give you a new motor for all the ones that just blew up?

Uh, these are great questions. Although what car was this? That the repair cost was only $800. It was a Chevy Spark. It was an Impala. Let’s be real Impala. The motors are junk. They just gave her a whole new car for $800. It says, she said a blue Chevy Spark star. No, the spark is the be the Be spec monster.

Oh yeah, monster. The Spark is our favorite new B spec car. True. True. Yeah, so be careful. I mean, there’s not much you could do cuz unless you could tell the smell was different as soon as you started pumping, like you wouldn’t know. So that’s really unfortunate. At least, maybe it was only relegated to one car.

If it was multiple cars, that would’ve been terrible. But you know, they use a shared pumping system so there’s no way that, unless it was a tiny gas station that, you know, not every pump was affected by that. I mean the cleanup costs alone were probably crazy. Oh. I mean, that is a nightmare. They probably just had to trash all of everything that was in those tanks and then have to get ’em cleaned and all that.

All. Well, they could have [01:10:00] probably pumped the fuel into the diesel tanks cause it wouldn’t have diluted it that much by volume, depending on how much was in there. If they combined it with other diesel and if they didn’t have enough room because. Let’s be real. You know, you go to the station, there’s 12 gasoline pumps and there’s one diesel pump.

Yeah. There’s a lot of truckers getting free diesel that day then or something to get it outta there. So I will say this is a good psa, something I learned, you know, from similar stories. You sniff the handle before you put it in your car. No. You know, very close. No, always you lick it. Always keep your receipt from pumping gas because if something is to happen, you need proof of purchase.

Now she said she filed a complaint with Shell Corporate. I mean, she hasn’t heard back yet. Not surprised. She continued to drive the car with a bad knocking sound. So, because it probably wasn’t pure diesel like you all were alluding to. It was probably a mixture of gasoline and diesel, but which at that point you could pump some of it out the tank, thin it out in the system, you know, all that kind of thing.

Yeah. But the damage might have [01:11:00] already been done if it was. Mis detonating, right? True. But that spark motor isn’t like, you know, a Ferrari engine where you’re worried about, yes it is high tolerances and things like that, but still whatever purebred race card that the spark is. But anyway, just keep your receipts from the gas station in case they do F up like this.

Just it gives you some sort of proof that you were there and smell the nozzle first. It’s good for you or, or taste? No, do not taste it. Do not taste it. Do not smell it either. We don’t recommend that. But speaking of, would you say sports cars, something like that? High powered machines? Mm-hmm. We’re gonna jump across.

Ponds to Europe to another butthole that decided to take their Maserati on a little joyride through Rome. Oh, that sounds like fun. Are we talking like the old Rendezvous movie where the guy at three in the clock in the morning is driving his Ferrari or Mercedes? There’s all sorts of speculation, you know, through the streets of France at high speed to meet with his lover [01:12:00] for the sunrise.

No. How beautiful would that have been? No. Instead, this was an ass hat who decided to drive his Maserati down the famous and historic Spanish steps. Oh dang. Didn’t they do that in a Bond movie? Yes, but in the Bond movie, I’m sure that was fake and didn’t cause damage. Oh, dang. To this part of history. At any rate, it’s only gonna cost 1.5 million euros or approximately 1.6 million US dollars to restore these steps.

Or actually, sorry, they, or they already, these steps already went under a restoration that costs that much. They were recently restored at the tune of 1.6 million US dollars and now this person drove down them and destroyed them. He wanted ’em to look like they did before, so he figured he’d just drive his car down there.

I mean, there’s something to say about that. I mean, and the question is, how drunk was this person? I guess he was taking a shortcut. The funny thing is like there’s surveillance camera and like dude stops like the middle of the steps. At what point did you realize this was a bad [01:13:00] idea? I guess halfway down this staircase, we’re not talking like three steps staircase, lots of stairs.

I’ve been to the Spanish steps. It is big. You could go down it in a car, you could definitely go down it in a dirt bike or a motorcycle or something. But I wouldn’t advise it just as you can. Doesn’t mean you should. You should. Yeah, you should really just go down it on foot. Florida mans brought to you by what not to do.

Now, unfortunately, it will end on a less funny note. Very disturbing note, and a very, just like, I cannot believe it’s a very sad thing that happened. A Jeep owner dropped his Jeep off at the dealership. I’m gonna get an oil change done. You know, nothing atypical here, right? Well, unfortunately, this turned into a huge tragedy when the 19 year old mechanic who was going to do the work, I guess didn’t know, again, was unfamiliar with driving a stick shift, went to move the car in the bay.

A more senior mechanic, 42 years old, was, I do not know why you would do this, but was standing in [01:14:00] front of the vehicle and I guess he lurched it forward and whatever happened, whatever those circumstances were, he struck that man and he ended up dying from that hit. That is very tragic. Unfortunate to happen.

The worst, well, not the worst part. The worst part was this man died, but the unfortunate icing on this cake, the guy that dropped off the Jeep who had nothing to do with this. Is being sued for the death of this man, and I do not understand this. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? What? Yes, yes. There is a lawyer for the victim’s family and they are suing the owner of the Jeep, not the 19 year old mechanic or the dealership.

They’re suing the unsuspecting, uninvolved patron to the dealership. Not the guy that didn’t know how to drive a stick and apparently didn’t have a driver’s license. This is insane. Fox News, whatever. You must be suing the dealership. They asked the lawyer, we can’t because of a legal standard that’s involved [01:15:00] because the accident happened at work and involved two employees.

You can’t sue the boss in that situation. What. I don’t understand why they’re suing anybody at this point, like other than the 19 year old. This doesn’t make any sense. I clearly don’t understand these laws are aware of how they’re written, but I think it’s absurd and I hope that a judge would just take this and be like, out of my courtroom, because this is ridiculous.

I mean, the closing thought on this is insane, right? Where Fox News comes back and says, so you’re suing the owner of the car who’s getting his oil change. You had nothing to do in this case. And the lawyer says, I have to do that. It’s the law. Wait a minute. So they’re gonna go to court on this, they’re gonna fight it.

Obviously this unsuspecting owners like whatever. And the attorney comes back and says, again, you know, when you hand your car over to anybody, including the valet or person at the service desk at your local dealership, you better be able to trust that person. Granted, I don’t, I don’t take my car very often to a dealership or any third party mechanic, but that never even crossed my mind that if they took my car, like it’s [01:16:00] common practice for a dealership to take your car for a test drive after they’ve done a repair, they’ll drive around the block or something.

So you’re saying they are involved in vehicular manslaughter and I get sued. And I was sitting at home, or they rob a bank and you go to jail because you’re the getaway car. I mean, it, it all turtles happen. So there’s a link to another article within this article. Oh, inception. That basically, basically it’s because there’s a statute known as owner’s liability.

That means the owner of the car is legally responsible. That’s bullshit. If the owner, if the owner gave permission to the driver to drive the car, the owner is negligent. That’s, but the owner didn’t give permission to the 19 year old. He gave it to the service manager, possibly. Then, if that’s the case, I want everybody that’s gonna be touching my car that I need to sign consent, that they’re allowed to drive it.

That doesn’t happen at the dealership. When I turn the car over, some schmuck behind a desk writes me up, copies, my VIN scans, the thing, I don’t know who’s jumping in that car. I didn’t approve for them to drive it. The law is called vicarious liability. It means the owner is [01:17:00] automatically liable for the negligence of the driver.

That’s bullshit. You know what this tells 100s? You know what this tells me? Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let anybody else drive your car. A thousand percent. Never take it to the dealership. Never, never, never, never, never, never. I don’t, I can’t say enough nevers. That’s the most absurd.

Like that law needs to be changed. I get it. You let your friend drive your car and they do some bullshit or something. Maybe that’s a different law, but like you’re taking your car to a service. You can’t do it yourself. You don’t have any other choice a lot of times, and you are on the hook. That’s not right there.

There needs to be some other clause in here that says, no, it’s the responsibility of that dealership or that mechanic company, whatever. I, I just, my boggles my pissed me off when I read this. So, so, so let’s see. What can the Jeep owner do separately from the lawsuit from the Hawkins family? The owner of the Jeep has some options too.

He can and has sued the dealership. So basically [01:18:00] they’re suing the Jeep owner and then the Jeep owner can go back and sue the dealership. So is this just a dumb Red Robin thing? Like Yeah, yeah. Sue me, but I’m gonna sue him. So, really, I’m, I’m the, the funnel for your money. Yeah. Yeah. So he’s the middle man and basically it goes on the Jeep Owner’s insurance.

They pay out as much as they’re willing to pay out, and then the dealership is responsible for the remaining, which, by the way, the lawsuit is for 15 million. The insurance company has already paid out $100,000, so the dealership with all these different lawsuits, and Peter suing Paul is on the hook for 14.9 million.

And in the meantime, this is now flagged on your insurance and no one’s ever gonna insure you again because you have a 15 million lawsuit against you. I that involves vehicular manslaughter. I mean, come on. Yeah, this is, this is just a terrible story. Basically, know the laws wherever you live and learn to change your own oil.

Yes, I’m learning to change your own oil. It’s not that expensive and it doesn’t take that much time. It’s actually cheaper [01:19:00] than taking into the dealer and everybody gets aggravated. Oh, I have to go to the dealer all day. Wait for an oil change. It would’ve taken you an hour and you could have bought all the supplies and needed at Walmart, but whatever.

Yeah. But what happens when you have to take your car into a service that’s bigger than an oil change? Well, you know, that’s fine. But this oil change is gonna cost this guy unsuspecting or otherwise a lot of money. He’s not gonna get away Scott free. He’s wasting his time. He’s having to go into courtrooms.

Yeah. Lawyer are gonna go up. It’s insane. I mean, this is gonna cost, you know, that $19 oil change or whatever that the dealer promised him is gonna cost him six figures, if not more. It’s insane. The last line in this article, when you hand your car over to anybody, including the valet or the person at the service desk at your local dealership, you better be able to trust that person.

Yeah, I’m gonna trust somebody. I don’t even know their name to drive my, oh my God. This story just gets me all kinds of irritated and upset and angry for this cheap owner. I’m sorry, dude. And on that note, well I guess it’s time [01:20:00] that we go behind the pit wall. Talk about motor sports news. Before we do just an update, the DeLorean reveal is in four days, two hours, eight minutes, and 27 seconds, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21.

And we’re gonna talk about two disciplines simultaneously. And generally these two disciplines don’t go together and that’s nascar. Formula One, they should go together. Aren’t there plenty of Formula One drivers that have made the transition to nascar? Juan Pablo Montoya comes to mind. Well, I mean, there is the guy from, um, Ricky Bobby and then, uh, Cole Trickle.

Cole Trickle, exactly. But what are we really on about kidney riken in making his return to the motor sports world? The voice man. Yes. And he’s gonna be driving what Brad? A NASCAR 90 91 Chevrolet Camaro at the Watkins Glen International Raceway up in Watkins Glen, New York. So he is gonna run on a road course in a nascar.

So that’ll be interesting. [01:21:00] Well, it’s a limited road course. It’s not the full, he’s not gonna do the tow and then all that jazz. But this seems to be a new concept that Track house racing is pushing to put more overseas drivers Formula One drivers and IndyCar drivers alike in NASCAR Cup series stock cars.

I wanna know if he’s gonna be using a three spoke steering wheel. They have that pad in the middle. You seen those? You know, that would be new for him though. Right. It’s true. Did they even have spokes on their steering wheels? They’re like rectangles with handles on them. Yeah, with about 500 buttons.

You’re right. Nobody knows what they do. Buttons and switches. I mean, good for Kimmy is NASCAR that desperate? That’s my question. His retirement, he must have got it really bored really quickly. You see it all the time. I mean, Mika Hocken went to W R C and Olivier Panis went to touring car and I mean there’s there.

I mean, they go wherever they go, right? Valentino Rossi is left motorcycle racing to go racing cars. I. He’s the s R o. [01:22:00] Okay. Yeah. So Kimmy Renan is going to be driving NASCAR on Watkins Glen. Uh, I mean I guess I would watch that NASCAR race just cuz it’s something different. When is that race? It’s in the article.

Has NASCAR season started? That’s how much I pay attention to nascar. I know the answer. Yes. I thought NASCAR started in February. Wrong answer. NASCAR season never ends then How do you know when it begins? Nascar, it’s a never ending story. Okay. NASCAR is gonna be at the Glen August the 20th. When are we at the Glen?

We are at the Glen July the 21st through the 24th. About a month early. Darn. Well since we brought up Formula One, you two are the resident experts. And I’m just gonna bring up a couple of things that I noticed this past month. And we gotta start with the Miami Grand Prix. You mean Monaco Light with the fake marina and all that other stuff going on there?

The thing about that that I thought was ironic, the Miami Grand Prix boss. He admits to being shocked by the financial [01:23:00] loss that they took on the race. And I’m like, yeah, you went out of your way to build this ridiculous track with all this fake stuff like Disney World, but you oversold the ticket sales and yet you still lost money.

I mean, a race in its first year, especially in a new place, isn’t gonna make money. It’s gonna make money in its third year because then you’re still paying down the investment. But I mean, what did he expect? You know, I gotta say the Miami Grand Prix, the spectacle, the fake marina and all that jazz, the helmets is, that’s exactly what you would expect from a South Florida rendition of the French Riviera Grand Prix, which Michael is coming up this weekend, by the way.

And I thought that the, uh, the helmets were the coolest part. You know, Lando with his basketball, Danny Rick, with his Ace Ventura thing, you know, all that stuff, you know, really lending itself to Florida and whatnot. I, I didn’t watch the race. I know you guys did. I don’t even remember it. The track was that good.

Mm-hmm. Underwhelming. [01:24:00] Cause I didn’t hear much from our members as well. I mean, normally there’s a big loo about every race. This, I think the one thing I heard was this track is trash. Lots of things that I heard were, it was basically the fire festival of the F1 season. Yeah. But at least it happened, right?

Because fire Festival has yet to go off. Oh, it’s okay. He’s outta jail. So Fyre Festival actually happened. They got a whole bunch of rich people together on an, an island in a foreign country. There was no music, but they had a festival for minute there. I thought you were gonna talk about Ibiza off the coast of Spain, but you know, Hey, whatever.

It’s, no, no, they were down to South America somewhere. Yeah. Let me just call up my buddy jaw rule and see if I can get the details. I’m trying to think. I like, I think it was a pretty boring race. Like nothing really. I say boring race and there was like five DNFs, but that’s terrible. Oh, is that, that’s, no, that’s not the race.

Where Schumacher and like VE crashed each other out. No, that was this past weekend. That was the Spanish grand. No, no Vedo and yeah, I think Vedo and Schumacher was this race. [01:25:00] Okay. And it didn’t, I’m looking at a picture right here of, uh, so Vettel took himself, well, Vettel got taken out, but Schumacher kept going.

I think probably, yeah. That’s also the race where Vettel claims that he got robbed while he was there at the Spanish camp Pri and laughingly. I heard from somebody going, did he also claim that they stole his talent at the same time? I was like, that’s a good one. That’s really good. That’s clever. So that race was a good race.

The but Miami not so much. I don’t, I can barely remember it. I do remember thinking it was boring. Everyone spread out and like that. But how is it gonna be portrayed in seasons five and six of Tribe to Survive? Because all the drama llamas are gonna be so excited to see the behind the scenes of the Miami Grand Prix.

Well, they’ll be basketball helmets and butt slaps and all that stuff. Well, it is confirmed that there is gonna be a fifth and sixth season of Drive to Survive, which I’m not gonna watch on Netflix cuz I’m not. Which will be interesting to see if, if they’ve taken any of the, uh, feedback [01:26:00] from F1 to tone down their dramatizations.

I’ll put it this way, and I don’t watch the show, but I was thinking about that because we talked about it last month or the month before. If you took the drama away from Drive to Survive, all you’d have left is a boring F1 race. So just watch the F1 race. Well, if you took the drama out of it, you’d have season one and most of season two I would say.

And then like I haven’t watched the fourth one yet. But they definitely increase it in the later seasons. So the bigger question is, with all this drama, is Ferrari cheating? What’s all this nonsense about the tires considering? Unfortunately, the car died in the Spanish gp? No, I don’t think they’re cheating.

At least they weren’t in that race. Uh, let me guess. Christian Horner started poking his nose into what Ferrari’s doing, saying the Ferrari was cheating. I guess because Mercedes and Toto Wolf are out of the way right now. I mean, although Mercedes did a lot better. In this [01:27:00] race. George Russell did get a podium.

He did. Had an unfortunate incident not happened with Hamilton. At the very beginning, I would question whether or not he would’ve been on the podium. Oh, you mean before he ran into Schumacher? No, before K Mag took him out on like Oh, oh K K A. Yes. Point five of the lap. I don’t think it was K Ag that did it though.

It was Hamilton driven into him. No, guys, none of that matters because cleric wrecked Louds. Seventies F1 car at the Monaco Grand Prix too, right? That was not his fault. Brake exploded. Yeah, upon braking, and he had no brakes. You think you would check those things before sending a vintage car out onto the track?

Well blame whoever the heck is the steward of loudest car. Apparently they don’t have enough checklists. Apparently not. There’s a still shot of it and you can see the brake pads or the road or whatever. I mean, it was just like you just saw like this explosion. You could see the parts like out of the car and it was like, and then he hits the wall.

How much is that gonna cost fix? I mean, it’s been [01:28:00] wrecked before. So, well, the last bit of Formula One news that came across our desk, the F I A clears Aston over Red Bull’s F1 similarities after an investigation. What? Aren’t these cars all the same? No. Well, I mean, Aston was in trouble last year as well for allegedly copying the Mercedes design.

Basically, they’re like the Hyundais of the F1 sport because they see what everybody else is doing that’s successful and then they copy it on their own designs. I think allegedly last year they said that Aston bought the previous year’s design for the Mercedes car, and that’s why they were doing so well.

This reminds me of Queen versus vanilla Ice. Yes. Dun dun, dun dun, dun dun. Not dun dun. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Well, I guess it’s time we wrap up with some local news. Upcoming local news and events brought to us by collector car guide.net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. First off, our [01:29:00] apologies for the incorrect location of the Porsche swap Meet.

Last month, all the info and collector car guide was correct. The PORs Swap meet is no longer held in Hershey, but in Carlisle. So look for that event to be held there next year and beyond. We still ended up in Hershey and had a great time, so I just, I just wanted to add that. Well, good for you. Did you see any three spoke steering wheels?

They didn’t belong to Nissans, though, the legendary R 32. So let’s see what’s coming up for June. We have the sixth annual Chesapeake Bay Motoring Festival on Saturday, June 4th on beautiful Kent Island, Maryland Sunday, June 5th. Marks the sixth annual Real Steel Car and Truck Show in East Berlin, Pennsylvania.

If you have time to take off from work, join the Northeast Cuatro Club as they take a three day extended cruise to Wampum, Pennsylvania home of pit race for some activities there. Monday, June 6th through Wednesday the eighth. Two big events being held at Dominion Raceway, the Souls for Souls event on June 10th and 11th, as well as the cars late model stock tour on [01:30:00] June 18th.

Gm Carlisle and the Chevelle Nationals are being held on June 24th. Corvette Club is holding its first autocross of the season at a new location, prince George’s Stadium in Bowie, Maryland on June 26th. Side note, I will not be making that one, but I will be making the one in October and I’ve got a couple other people coming with me more news on that one coming later.

And the first of many Independence Day celebrations to be held is Freedom Fest 2022 on June 26th in Frederick, Maryland. And tons more events like this and all their details are available over@collectorcarguide.net. That’s right Brad. And it’s time for the hpd junkie.com Trackside report. So what’s coming up in June?

I found some interesting news coming out of Summit Point Motorsports Park. Guess what, for the second time, in about five years now, summit Point has been sold. The announcement came earlier, what this week? Yeah. The Zader Holdings company was purchased by Parsons Group, a federal systems integrator. They announced today that they’re acquiring Zader and Summit Point, Motorsports Park, and the Summit Point [01:31:00] training facility is not part of the sale, so they’re being basically divested from that.

The current owners of ZA Tour will continue to own Summit Point, and the current staff and management people like Edwin, who we interviewed earlier this year will remain in place. Jeff Johnson, the current Zader vice president, will continue to lead the efforts and the long-term commitment to motor sports at Summit Point.

So that’s good news for us. It just means a change in branding. All that Zader stuff will come off of the signs. Who knows what they’ll be called. Next week, but Summit Point is here to stay at least for the foreseeable future. You can come and join GTMs at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, June the fifth with Emra, the Eastern Motor Racing Association, where they’ll be running the Pocono Raceway Southeast configuration with nascar.

Turn one. Some news from hooked on driving. They are happy to announce that they’ve added yet another N J M P date at Thunderbolt on June the 24th, and it will be an open track day for solo drivers. They said, come on and off as you [01:32:00] wish. It’ll be a nine to six open track day with a one hour lunch break.

They are limiting this to 50 cars, so that’s gonna mean a massive amount of open space on Thunderbolt, which is an extremely technical track. One of my favorites as a matter of fact, and they’ve also opened their novice run group for the July 7th through eighth and July 31 through August one. Events at N J P.

These were solo only before. Now they’re including a novice group and they’re opening up both of those events. So look for more details on Hooked on driving.com under the Northeast region for details on how to register for those events. In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired this month after 40 years as a leader in the car care industry.

Chuck Bennett, founder of xmal, helps us understand why. Sometimes it’s not the car you need. It’s the car that needs you. Accompanied by Patreon, Minnesota called Einstein’s Packard, where Chuck tells us more great stories about famous peoples and their beloved cars that he’s worked with. We are honored to have had [01:33:00] Barbie the welder, share her amazing life journey with us, explain her artwork and passion while discussing pieces she’s made for Harley Davidson, sema, and more the world’s foremost expert on all things.

Porsche 3 56, 5 50. Spider and actor racer James Dean. Mr. Lee Raskin gave us an in-depth history lesson surrounding the rise and tragic fall of James Dean, but how it also acted as a springboard for Porsche in the us. Up and coming driver and Instagram influencer, Annika Carter talked about what it’s like moving up through the ranks in club racing while supporting her own team, turning wrenches herself, as well as some advice for women looking to get into motorsports and becoming an automotive journalist at a girls guide to cars.

Thank you to everyone that came on the show this month. Please be sure to look forward to more exciting episodes in season three. And be sure to check out our Patreon for exclusive behind the scenes extras in Pit Stop Minisodes. I also hear a rumor that you guys will be recording live from racetracks this year.

That’s right Tanya. We’re [01:34:00] gonna be on site with SRO GT America this year a couple times. First up here in June at V I r where we’re gonna be reconnecting with previous guests of the show. Folks like Rob Holland and others folks, that’ll be on subsequent episodes later this season. So if you’re in the area, you’ve never been to a touring car or gt.

Three GT four race. Come on down to v I R that week in June. You can look at their schedule on Gtam america.us and join us there. We’ll, again, we’ll be recording live and meeting all sorts of people, and then we’ll be back at it again at Watkins Glen in July with SRO as well. And then probably later in the year.

So I’m looking forward to that. How about you, Brad? Anybody you wanna, anybody you wanna rub elbows with somebody you wanna meet? Yes, all of them. All the drivers. I wanna meet them all. I wanna meet everybody. And if you’re gonna be at some of those races, please come up, say hello, tell us how much you love the show, that one listener that we have.

Please make sure you come up and say Hi. We really appreciate meeting our listener. That’s true. And we’re gonna have some swag while they’re there. You know, you can’t meet us in person. We’re gonna do some live recording, like you [01:35:00] said. And if you’ve got a story you wanna share, pitch us an idea, let us know.

I mean, we’re all ears, right? So everyone’s got a story. And yeah, look out for the yellow card that’s gonna be floating around the paddock. All right, so no big shout outs to new Patreon supporters this month, but if you’re looking to have, oh, wall, I know, and if you’re looking to help us out and keep the lights on and keep the momentum that the show is building going, you can log onto patreon.com/gt motorsports, and even the littlest contribution helps.

You can set up your own custom amount or choose from one of the pre-prescribed tiers that’s there, and each one of those comes with different benefits, some swag, et cetera, et cetera. We really thank you in advance if you’re looking to support us, and it really does go a long way and remember that. For everything that we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out all the follow-on articles for this episode and others, and show notes are available on gt motorsports.org.

We have some other shout outs. Anniversaries, Shane Cease and Ethan Pinkard are celebrating eight years with G [01:36:00] TM and Darren Palato, who found us via hooked on driving and joined our Northeast region in May. Welcome aboard. We’d also like to thank of course Tanya, our co-host and executive producer for all the wonderful work that she does on the show and all the members who support G T M.

Without you, none of this would be possible. And last but not least, just one more countdown. Check-in for the DeLorean Big reveal on 5 31. We have four days, one hours, 45 minutes, and 23, 22, 21, 20 19. 18 seven. This episode brought to you by the letter Q three spoke steering wheels and Jesus took the wheel is for and three spoke steering wheels coming to every vehicle in the world.

Sounds like a bad porn. Now, which part of it? Jesus, take the wheel. The devil down shifts the straightaway. [01:37:00] I wanna say something, but I’m not cuz it’s inappropriate. Say whatever you want. Yeah. 16 seconds, 14 seconds, 13 seconds.

Here we are in the drive through line. Me and her cars in front of us, cars in back of us all just waiting to order. There’s some idiot in a Volvo with this bright sun behind me. I lean out the window and scream. Hey, watch your trying to do Blind me. My wife says. Maybe we should.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows. You can call or Texas US at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt [01:38:00] motorsports.org.

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

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s, gummy bears and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.[01:39:00]

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Tania M
Tania M
Our roving reporter & world traveler. Tania’s material is usually brought to us from far off places and we can’t wait to see what field trip she goes on next! #drivethrunews
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