B/F: The Drive Thru #26

• 2024 Ford Mustang Has an Attitude and a Dash Full of Modern Tech
• GM is investing half a billion to upgrade Indiana factory to support EV production

GT3 Mustang has been revealed, will be competing in IMSA and SRO next season

2023 Cadillac Escalade EXT Pickup with Supercharged V8 Turbo Blackwing Engine

• World’s largest auto parts supplier moves to support the industry’s transition to EVs
• Heart Aerospace unveils new electric aircraft; Air Canada invests and orders 30 planes
• Hertz Rental Fleet to Add 175,000 GM Electric Vehicles
• China is testing a magnet-powered floating car that goes up to 143 miles per hour—take a look

• Schumacher to cut Ferrari ties at end of 2022 F1 season
• AlphaTauri for sale; ultimate opportunity for Andretti and Herta'.
• American driver Colton Herta on verge of F1 race seat with Red Bull junior team AlphaTauri
• Herta's F1 switch off as Red Bull abandons efforts

• Toyota GR Corolla Pricing Finally Arrives
• As Hyundai/Kia Thefts Grow, 2 Victims of the TikTok Trend Show Us What Happened to Their Cars
• Stunning Hyundai N Vision 74 Is a Wild 'Rolling Lab'

The Hyundai N 74 Concept's Grandfather... meet the 1974 Pony Concept

• Bentley stolen from London discovered almost 5,000 miles away
• Sunken Arctic Expedition Ford F-150 Recovered From Ocean
• No Reserve: 1987 Chevrolet R30 Chassis-Cab Utility Truck
• 1983 Honda Civic Deluxe Wagon
• Tom Cruise’s 1984 Nissan 300ZX Race Car Is For Sale

• Group 5 Jagermeister BMW is coming up for auction at RM/Sothebys!

• Tractor beam? Toyota developing 'hitchless towing' system
• Scoop: That $30,000 Chevy Volt invoice is real!
• Cleetus McFarland is going to get somebody killed...
• EPA Hits Two More Diesel Tuners With $10 Million Fine For Defeat Devices
• 10mm Metric Essential Socket Set, 10 Pie

• Alex Palou Is Sticking with Chip Ganassi Racing After Announcing His Departure to McLaren

• Princess Diana much-loved Ford Escort for sale with Silverstone Auctions
• Some Millionaire Built a Bentley Arnage Woody Wagon and Now It’s for Sale

Did you know that you can write off your Mercedes G-wagon?

• We're preparing to unveil one of the Chrysler Brand's most luxurious and powerful special edition vehicles to date. Catch the big reveal on September 13th at 6:00 PM EDT and see how you can reserve one of your own from this extremely limited production line.

• Tesla owner says he’s locked out after battery died, replacement costs $26K

• Porsche Attracts IPO Demand at Up to $85 Billion Valuation

Have you seen the Countach redesign by Magnus Walker?

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The Drive-Throughs GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like H P D E junkie.com, hooked on driving American muscle.com, collector car guide.net, project Motoring Garage style magazine, and many others.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org. Click about and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Gran Touring Motorsports, our podcast Break Fix and all the other services we provide. Welcome to drive through episode number 26.

This is our monthly recap where we’ve put together a menu of automotive motorsport and random car adjacent news. Now let’s pull up to the window number one for some automotive news. Aw, look at you doing the intro like Brad does. Wrong, no . [00:01:00] You know, he’s off this month as he’s in the middle of moving across the river, and we look forward to having him rejoin the conversation in October, but in his place, we’re excited to have a special guest, right, Tanya?

Yay. We have Sarah Lacey back. Yay. She is the managing editor from a Girl’s Guide to Cars filling in for Brad this month. And like Tanya said, we’re welcoming her back and you all are kind of scratching your heads going, wait. Hang in folks. You’ll find out there’s more coming. That said, let’s kick off this month’s showcase a proper showcase.

Unlike last month’s double down showcase, we’re gonna do a girls guide to the automotive industry. So what have you got for us, Sarah, in exciting news this month? The Detroit Auto Show showed up in September instead of its annual slot in January. Who made that decision? . Certain people who make those kinds of decisions decided.

It’s been really interesting actually, because, you know, we’ve all been trained to gear up for all the news coming out of [00:02:00] Detroit in January, and it came out just now in September. So there’s a lot of news hot off the presses, but I also imagine that the show goers will be excited because it won’t be in, in the middle of winter that they can go.

So there’ve been some outside booths and outside events for families and for show goers. It’ll be cool to see how that plays out. My destinations in the winter vacation months are definitely Detroit. You know, where it’s like negative 12, number one. . Yeah. Top choice. So you wrote. Earlier this week on a girl’s Guide to cars.

So tell us about this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit. What do we have to look forward to? It was a big three news event. There weren’t a whole lot of other pieces of information from any European automakers or Japanese or Koreans. So it was really exciting from the standpoint that Ford and STIs and Chevrolet had some interesting pieces of news to share, and it ran the gamut.

There was some [00:03:00] interesting information about internal combustion engine futures, which I think a lot of consumers are thinking about and wondering about because electrics seem to be so front of mind for everybody right now. But there was some big news about that. In more interesting family related news, there was a giant rubber duck out on the plaza for deep fans to experience, and that might have come up on everybody’s Instagram pages and whatnot.

But really fun, and again, part of the fun outdoor atmosphere that Detroit had going this year. The ducking move. Apparently in the juke world going on right now, and not, that’s not a play on words. I’m not trying to be like, oh, you know, duck this or anything like that, but it’s not an autocorrect parody.

Yeah, no. So I was like, what is 61 foot tall inflatable rubber ducky like you’d see in your bathtub? And apparently it’s like this whole thing that got started by one Jeep owner leaving a rubber ducky on someone else’s jeep with a note that says Nice Jeep . And I guess [00:04:00] that’s a thing with Jeep owners.

Yeah. And in fact, we have a writer who just recently published a post about why Jeep owners love their Jeep. She taught about that being a very compelling, exciting facet of Jeep ownership, which I thought. Awesome. And she has had it Jeeps her whole entire life and for the first time got ducked earlier this year and she was very excited about it.

So nice. It’s a thing. I don’t think it applies to Grand Cherokee owners. I’m just gonna leave it right there. I think that’s a smart, to clarify that maybe one day you’ll find a duck. There’s a duck in your future. Oh, thanks. I saw some articles though on the North American International Auto Show. A lot of them were saying how it was a ghost town and there were maybe vendors missing, and I don’t know if that meant it was specifically like vendors were missing or attendance was low.

I don’t know about attendance. I haven’t been looking at that, but I do know that attendance from manufacturers was really low. You know, usually it’s the show of [00:05:00] the year, and I guess probably for the last seven or eight years it started to wane as manufacturers start looking to LA and to the East Coast, you know, the New York Auto Show as venues for their reveals and everything.

But it’s unfortunate, you know, there are a lot of other smaller displays and kind of up and coming aftermarket companies that then had room to kind of showcase their products and everything. So I don’t know. It’ll be interesting because of the shift in its normal schedule. Like you said, it’s in the middle of winter usually, and we all aspire to go to that event, but it’s tough.

You’re like, oh, new York’s a couple months later, it’ll be warmer. We’ll do that in March or April some, or the show comes to dc, you know, things like that. But it also is at a weird time of year because it’s back to school time in September, but it also comes on the heels of a lot of concourse. So Car week there in the middle to the tail end of August at Pebble Beach, and then there’s a bunch of other concourses right behind that.

So, , the folks from the hobby are busy showing their cars and [00:06:00] probably not at the Detroit Auto Show because it’s not traditionally been at this time of the year. Right. You gear up for the winter when there’s nothing else going on. So I could see as they readjust, and maybe this becomes more normal, that tendon would rise.

Yeah. But you kind of have to view this as the first time event. And I think it’ll be interesting too, to see news is disseminated so differently. Now then when the auto shows were born and, and it was really a necessity to kind of put out all of this information all at once so people could write about it and get all that information at the same time.

And it, it’ll be interesting to see if this going forward is how automakers choose to present newsworthy information. There will always be a place for auto shows because dealerships want people to be able to shop the cars there. But as far as press events, it’s really gonna be interesting to see how this plays.

They’ve also changed a lot too. They used to be more like the world’s Fair compared to these dealer shows that they’ve become over the years. I mean, I remember going even 20 years ago to the New York [00:07:00] Auto Show, and it was a spectacle. The types of displays they created, cars that were suspended on air, that looked like they weren’t held by anything.

All this crazy stuff. And then they become more and more mundane and just kind of regular like, oh, I can see this Baltimore as I could see it in San Antonio or in Detroit, sort of all the same. So I think to bring back the appeal, there needs to be more concept cars. There needs to be more stuff that kind of like Geneva where it kicks off that season.

Yeah. Of those auto shows and really gets us excited about what the art of the possibility could be. That’s a really good point because I think, I wanna say it was Chrysler. They had a concept car that people were talking about, and it just felt like, gosh, it was so singular, you didn’t hear about a whole lot of other concepts.

And part of me was feeling like we are in a moment where past concepts now exist. Many years ago when I would attend auto shows, it was like, the future is electric and check out these crazy electric cars. And it was like, who knows if these will be made? And now all of a sudden, here they are. And it’s a lot to present a consumer [00:08:00] with.

So I wonder if manufacturers are hoping that some of that razzle dazzle kind of comes out in the products that they’re actually offering today versus a concept. I guess in other news, unfortunately, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, I think it would be hard to miss the sad loss of a great lady, great woman in history.

Queen Elizabeth II finally passed away peacefully. Very sad news. Condolences are, are British compatriots, um, in the Commonwealth, but what’s cool about that? That people didn’t realize until maybe after she passed is that she was a heck of a car girl. She was amazing, and as a young woman, really fought against her parents to earn the right to go and join her military to learn how to work on trucks.

It was largely trucks and heavy machinery. She. Very hands on, and I think she was 18 when she joined the army. Their version of the Army, it was the auxiliary [00:09:00] territory service, I believe it’s called. In any case, she trained on not just how to change a tire, not just how to clean the windshield. She was in there.

She was taking engines apart and putting them back together. She also learned how to drive those vehicles in all kinds of terrain, and that was something that she did as a young woman, obviously. So she carried that with her throughout her life and it was really something that gave her a lot of freedom and she really embraced driving as her way of doing what she wanted in a life and in a role that she couldn’t always accomplish, that.

It was really fun to write this story and to remember that through her learning and her education, she found such independence. It’s something that we all get when we start to learn how to work on cars. It seems so simple, but it really is empowering. It really is something that makes us feel like we have some agency and control over our lives.

And [00:10:00] she drove her whole life. It was so cool. And I think you posted a video in there too, of her kind of driving different cars and it was funny to see her even, you know, in her later years she was, she’s there driving a JA and. Oh my gosh. And you can hardly even see her head over the steering wheel and the dash and it’s hysterical.

And yeah, she had a large collection of cars and had her favorites like that Jag, she drove that for ages and it was one of her favorite. One of her other favorites was a station wagon that she had outfitted with a gun rack and a little cage for the corgis and I think it was at Vox Hall. Cresta Estate is the name of the car and it looks so cool.

This cool station wagon out. See there’s some foreshadowing for the next episode here if it’s good enough for the queen to drive a station wagon. Everybody should drive a station wagon. Everyone should have one. Everyone should have one. I agree. Could not agree more. I know she was pictured a lot in her rovers and everything, and of [00:11:00] course those were some of her favorites as well, but her station wagons were the ones she drove the most.

I believe. If you can’t have a station wagon, you can always have a hot hatch. That is true, even though it’s sometimes seems like the number of hot hatches is declining, perhaps Toyota will help us and reinvigorate all of the different marks to create more hot hatches and then flood the market with more small, fast fun cars.

You’re not getting a yarus. It’s not gonna happen . It’s fine. Well, I will say though, the GR Corolla would be a fair compromise, wouldn’t it though? You know, especially if you got boiler Alert 50 grand to spend on the Mao Race Car Edition. . Well, I know that we’ve been talking about this car for quite some time and it’s your second favorite GR product next to the Yaris.

Probably third in line is the Supra after that. Annika Carter who writes for our girls guide to cars, got a chance to drive one outta track and review it. [00:12:00] So let’s get Tanya’s take on Annika’s review. Essentially, she said she wants one boom mic. Everyone should have one. pretty straightforward review. For people who don’t know her, she’s into pro racing now.

She made that transition from starting track days. You can catch her episode on a previous break fix podcast. You learn all about her story. Did start out track days, moved up into club racing, trying to go into the professional circuit. So she’s got a lot of experience. She gets to go on these new car rides and doing these car reviews.

So the slightest one was on the GR Corolla as it’s coming. Finally, right? We’re getting more and more information, I think daily and prices were finally listed. She goes into all this. She does a nice job of very clearly outlining the main points. She goes into her test drive and how she felt the car performed and all that.

And there’s essentially three trim levels. You can get your basic trim level, you can get a performance trim level, and then you can get the super trim level, which is [00:13:00] actually gonna be a super limited production. And even like in the first year, it’s gonna be a really small quantity, so you’ll be lucky to even get one.

We’ll probably. Hardly ever see these on the road, but that top tier one is literally a race carb. It’s the Toyota nine 11 GT three, right? They took the backseats out to save weight. They put a chassis bar for reinforcement and rigidity back there. The windows don’t roll down in the back. They took out speakers.

I mean, they stripped a whole bunch of stuff in there to save weight. Most of us aren’t getting that one, but you know, maybe you’d start out with the core model that’s, I think it was 36,000, almost 37,000 to start one could go. It’s a Corolla . But if you compare it to like the golf R and the W R X and some of the other cars at let’s say $35,000 for 300 horsepower and all-wheel drive according to Annika, it’s fun to drive.

It does everything it’s supposed to. Yeah. And with electronically biasing all-wheel drive system where you can actually make it more rear wheeled and front wheel, all these really intricate gizmos that you would expect from a much more expensive vehicle, that’s a lot to ask [00:14:00] for in that little package.

And even the MAO edition at 50 K, that GT three version, I mean, the joke there is. You’re getting less and paying more, but it pays off in dividends. The extra a hundred pounds that you lose, you get more boost, which you’re making more power. All this kind of stuff. If you wanna track day weapon that’ll blow the doors off of focus Rs or a golf R, I think this is your option.

I love what she said in her review about the fact that the Corolla feels like it was born and built as a track car, that it does not feel like anything that’s been modified in order to perform like it feels like from day one that this was the intent. It drives that way. It feels that way. She was so smitten with it.

I love it. Which the interesting thing about this car though, is it. Only being offered as a manual transmission. Yes, I’m fine with that. Save the manuals. That’s a very interesting business proposition. . Well, I think they’re catering to the enthusiast market. For sure. [00:15:00] For sure. Toyota’s gonna make these.

They’re gonna make them for the people that really want them. Yeah, and if you look at like the B R Z and the FRS crowd, they’re all manuals as well, right. If they’re looking to kind of fill the gap of people are like, well, I don’t really want the rear wheel drive B rz, or whatever the Corolla is. The next answer, especially if we’re not getting the yarus and the Supra, we keep going back and forth on this.

You want the manual, you get the smaller motor. If you want the horsepower, you’re stuck with the flappy paddles. I think they’re trying to appease that missing section of the enthusiast crowd and draw them away again from Subaru, from Volkswagen, and even from Hyundai, because the Veloster M is starting to be sunset as well.

So where do you take those people that went, man, I really wanted a veloster. Used car prices are too high. I can buy a new car for the same amount. What is that new car? It’s this car. You have to be an enthusiast, right? Because like this car is going to ride a little bit stiffer than a regular Corolla, right?

It’s not gonna have that kind of sofa feel to it that pedestrian [00:16:00] cars might have, right? Like as soon as you start doing performance modifications, the cars get stiffer, you start feeling the bumps in the road more, et cetera. And there’s people that don’t like that. And so if you don’t like that, you’re probably not gonna like this car.

But if you’re an enthusiast, then you like to feel more connected to the road, and you don’t mind feeling the cigarette butt when you hit it. Not saying that this car is so stiff, you’re feeling cigarette butts, but sounds like it’s gonna be just wild. The nail in the coffin here is a shootout. Like all those silly shootout videos that we see, well, that’s what we’re waiting for.

This versus civic type R versus the golf R. Yeah, and the Nissan 400 z. Cuz if it’s quicker around the track than a 400 z I’m sold. We’re getting a Corolla end of story . I mean, I don’t even care about the Civic anymore. Can you call that a hot hatch? It’s the size of like a town car and then it’s got that God awful wing on the back that looks so trashy, like I’m embarrassed.

Not in the car. I’m embarrassed for the other people in it. , we talked with James Naan from [00:17:00] Honda Performance when we were at V I R earlier this year. If you really want to go. In the new Civic, buy the race, ready Civic because it actually costs less than the streetcar. If you are thinking about buying a civic to go to the track, don’t build it yourself.

Just go buy it from H P D directly and you’re gonna have a better car. That being said, jokingly, I said to him when I walked up to the car, Hey, is this the new Accord? And he gave me this look like if looks could kill because the 11th generation civic is so big compared to its predecessors. But the same is true at Volkswagen, at Subaru, at Toyota, all the cars have gotten bigger as they’ve evolved, which is funny.

Yes and no. I feel like the Civic has bigger, even bigger than it needs to be. Like. Yes, the Gulfs have gotten bigger, but it’s like the Civic, I swear to God. Yes, it’s an accord. Stop calling it a Civic, but was in the car with someone the other day. Mark seven passed us Volkswagen and the response was, wait a second.

Oh, is that the new, I thought that was a [00:18:00] wagon. Wait, that’s a, that’s a golf like, well, not quite that big, but yeah, we’re getting there. . I mean the Jetta’s as big as a, the old Passat, that’s all I’m gonna say. Talking about big cars. A little bit more foreshadowing for the next episode. Sarah, you mentioned that the hot thing right now, especially for the ladies on a Girls guide to cars, is to talk about SUVs and trucks.

So let’s talk about the one you just most recently reviewed. Another product from Toyota. Yeah, I am a fan of the mid-size S U V, and I think I talk about this a bit in the review, but you know, you kind of have all the utility without all of the bulk. You can wind up carrying people, which is often the first thing that makes people look towards three row SUVs anyway, but don’t always wind up carrying all the cargo that you think you’re gonna carry and you kind of get a little more in the fuel efficiency department.

What I love about Highlander, Toyota in general and the Highlander, is that some people might accuse them of [00:19:00] underdoing things. They’re not gonna always have the biggest flashiest new features. They kind of take their updates slowly. They’re kind of thoughtful about what they choose to incorporate. And while it sometimes it can seem boring, it’s timeless, it’s effective, it makes it really an easy car to be in all the time because everything is very ergonomic and friendly.

All the buttons and switches are where they should be and it makes sense. Unlike a giant S U V, you can reach things like your purse if you happen to have one, you can put that on the passenger seat and still reach for it if you need to get something. So it’s a very practical car. So that’s the reason why I love those so much.

And you know, if you have two kids, And you want to carry some of their friends around from time to time. It’s really a nice size and I know that we’ve debated a little bit about, well, why don’t you just get a gosh darn minivan? Well, some people want the all-wheel drive. They [00:20:00] want some of the capability that you can get in something like the Highlander and, and in that case, the Highlander really delivers in that way.

So any consideration to doing, let’s call it a shootout between the four wheel drive, Sienna against the Highlander. You guys thought about maybe doing that? I would love that. We just haven’t had an opportunity to get a Sienna yet. Generally speaking, when we do our reviews, we don’t do shootouts, but. I wouldn’t rule that out because I also think that seldom do people go out taking their kids to school and to activities and whatever.

When there are these massive snowstorms where you have 12 inches of snow out there, that could really be problematic. That would require the clearance, the ground clearance that you would have in a crossover and U as opposed to minivan. So I’m down. I think it would be a neat comparison to rank Stack the features of the Highlander against the Sienna, like making things equal.

Right. The power plants are gonna be similar, especially if you buy V6 models. [00:21:00] All-wheel drive is an option on both. Granted, the Highlander’s not gonna have those awesome sliding doors, but there’s gonna be a lot of other creature comforts that either carry over or exist on one and not the other. And it’d be neat to, even if it was in a tabular form, see what that looks like because I don’t think people are doing those comparisons.

And it might be the difference of one or two things. And even price, is the minivan cheaper? Is it more expensive? How far is your dollar going? And what are you willing to live with and live without? As much as you try to rationalize a minivan to people, there’s just. They’re just not cool. Yeah, I get it.

your listeners will hear this on the episode that I’m on with you in as much as it makes zero sense in many cases to select an s u V over a minivan, there are always gonna be people who are not interested. And so on paper, I agree. I think it would be really fascinating because on paper they’re probably a lot closer to each other in [00:22:00] terms of how they price out, how they behave.

All of this and push came to shove if your heart wasn’t invested in it. If it was just a cerebral decision, people would pick the minivan every time. All right. You know, if it, uh, looks like. Drives like a Jeep or does that Looks like a duck then It’s a Jeep. Did you go ducking again? . So I really wanna know about the new four Xes.

These are the hybrid Jeeps. I actually ran into somebody that bought a hybrid Wrangler, and again, you reviewed one of these this month, so I wanted to get your take on that as well. We were writing about all the news that was coming out for Jeeps four by E Day. Jeep is really putting it out there that this is their four by E.

Their plug-in hybrids are some of the most popular hybrids that people can buy. And so they’re really doubling down on this. And it’s super exciting because owners of these cars are just smitten with them. They love them. They’re kind of getting the [00:23:00] best of both worlds. I don’t think that Jeep could look the other way in the face of that kind of success and that kind of popularity.

It’d be crazy for them not to create some more models. So what they wound up doing was they announced that they are going to do an all electric, their recon, which is probably the image that you’ve seen the most out there with the Jeep four by eDay News. The recon is going to be all electric. You’re gonna be able to take the doors off, you’re gonna be able to remove the roof.

So it’s gonna feel gp, it’s gonna look a little different. What Jeep is saying is that in true Jeep fashion, they’re tying it to the Rubicon Trail and they say that there will be. Charge in this vehicle that you can take it from start to finish on the Rubicon Trail. So that’s exciting. Some of our listeners might be wondering, why is it so important about this four xe?

Why is it so important that Jeep has this hybrid and all this kinda stuff? They’re a little late to the game on this, but also [00:24:00] sort of at the pointy end of the spear. Because if you think about it, plug in hybrids, all hybrids to this point have generally for packaging purposes, been designed around front wheel drive vehicles, right?

Transverse? Mm-hmm. , front wheel drive vehicles and the Jeeps, the Wranglers and the Grand Cherokees especially are all longitudinally oriented. And so from a engineering packaging perspective, the hybrid transmissions a little bit bigger. There’s more stuff. How do we move things around? Where do we put things in the place of the transfer case, you know, if we’re doing all-wheel drive, the standard transmission that’s there.

So they had to figure out how to fit all that without losing the already limited space that a Wrangler and even a Grand Cherokee have inside. So for them to be able to do this is monumental because it also goes into the playbooks of other vehicles to say, now we can do rear wheel drive hybrid. That’s what they’ve been trying to overcome for a while.

And then to do all electric, this has opened so many doors and I’m glad to see that STIs is the one that’s walking through this. Hearkening back to our [00:25:00] conversation we just had about what consumers want. There’s this hurdle that people have about electrics and how far you can go and range anxiety and all of this and, and while you know, hybrids certainly assuage a lot of that fear to really take the leap and create something and say, you can embrace your outdoor lifestyle.

You can go out in the woods somewhere and have an experience. You can go camping, you can do the things that you like to do and you can do it with an all electric vehicle. I mean, that’s the bold statement. If they can pull it off, it’s gonna be some bold technology for sure. What I think is interesting is I’ve actually seen a number of them on the road or in a parking lot more aptly put, you don’t notice them unless you’re paying attention because they just look like regular Jeeps and until you, your eye catches that blue, that’s their little electric blue color and it’s just accents here and there in the gray color that they did, which is kind of a new color.

You don’t really see the Jeeps in that color. And then you kind of look at it, go, wait, is this something [00:26:00] different or just a new color? I kind of like how they did that where it’s not like in your face like, oh, I’m so different. I’m electric. But it’s like, no, I. I’m ducking, you know? Yeah. . Hi. Just ducking around.

Ducking around. Well, and they did just announce, this was a couple days ago that there will be a Willie’s version and it’s actually gonna be the least expensive of those plug-in hybrid models. And they did say it’s gonna be the blue accents, blue toe hooks, and the Willy’s lettering in blue. But it’s going to be subtle.

I think a lot of people agree with you that you don’t need your car to look like it’s a U F O. Thank you very much. I’ll take just a regular looking car and if it happens to be electric or partially electric, then great too. Yeah, and that’s the upside to hybrids over EVs in the sense of making people transition to more carbon friendly cars.

Especially now with everybody having automatics. If all cars came as hybrids, and I’ve heard the Toyota is pushing for this to have a hybrid on every chassis that they [00:27:00] have, the drivers wouldn’t know the difference. We’re still pumping fuel. We’re going a lot longer between Phillips, but the hybrids do and its thing under the hood, and it’s just like driving every other car.

When you get into the all electrics, that’s when the anxiety rises. You know, can I really go where I need to go in an emergency situation? Is it gonna be there? Is it suddenly bricked because of a bad firmware update? None of that stuff really exists in the hybrid world. Yeah. So you’re starting to see the Japanese.

Embraces through Toyota and you’re starting to see even the Europeans sort of turn in that direction now too, saying maybe all electric isn’t the answer. I think we will be a little bit slower here because now we’ve invested so much to pivot right away. Back to where we, where we sort of started is gonna be a difficult switch.

The practical problem of all electric is that not everybody will have a home charger. Not everybody will be able to to charge their cars that way, which changes your behavior around any ev if you’re having to go and charge it. It may not take a [00:28:00] long time, but it’s still a little bit longer than a gas station.

And as of right now, those are harder to find. It’s still quite a bit of a hurdle and I think that hybrids are really a great bridge between internal combustion and all electric. You know, we can still self-inflicting idea on ourselves too with internal combustion engines. You know, like leaving for your morning commute with over 500 miles on your tank and then just noticing how the needles moving closer and closer to the east side.

But you know, duck it, it’s fine. Do we know someone like this? Does this does I don’t. I don’t know. I think, I think she made it this morning to the gas station. It was fine. She got fuel . Well, one last piece of girls’ Guide to industry, right Tanya? We have something from the motor sports world. Yeah. So it was recently announced that the FIA.

Is introducing a new role for the first time ever in their structure, they’re introducing a C e O role. And for those who don’t know what the F I A is, it’s the International Federation of Automobiles. They’re [00:29:00] the basically the overarching licensing sanctioning body of all the big motor sports events, formula One, rally, world endurance, yada yada, yada.

They do everything for those. So, okay, big deal. One c e o. Cool. Ooh, who? Big deal. A woman is stepping into that role. That’s the real big news here. Yes. So congratulations. And she’s American. Yes. Not a European or somebody else that they’re putting in there. Mm-hmm. . That’s great news. Icing on that cake. So Natalie Robin is gonna be taking that chief executive officer role.

She is not a stranger to the automotive industry. She comes from past experience with Volvo, Nissan, Daimler Chryslers should be hopefully a good fit and I hope to see her be successful and then obviously do good things with the F I A . Absolutely. That wraps up our showcase. So let’s move on to Porsche, Volkswagen and Audi News.

There’s only a couple things to talk about here. We mentioned in the past that Porsche has been teasing us all with a [00:30:00] potential American I P O. They’re already traded on European stock markets and other places around the world, but it’s taken them some time to get their act together and by way, a Volkswagen, the parent company, you know, there’s a lot of red tape that they gotta get through.

So right now, the I IPO demand has been valued at 85 billion. The article that we added to the show, States that the IPO should have been in September, and I marked that as should have been. I checked the NASDAQ for all the filings, redactions, and otherwise there is no mention of Porsche filing yet for their ipo O So you’re still in time.

Save your pennies to buy some of those early Porsche stock when it comes out. That said, I wanna ask you guys, you know, we know that the new Kuta has been pretty polarizing and the designer of the original Kuta said not no way not know how. I don’t wanna be affiliated with whatever this new thing is.

And then Magnus Walker steps into the picture and presents us with [00:31:00] just, I don’t even know how to describe it. I don’t even remember what that other one looked like other than the back was hideous and reminded me of like something out of the Transformer movies, not the cartoon, but the live action. And it was got awful, but this is quite nice.

This is what they should have done in the first place. This car is a kuta. Regardless of the fact that it’s an R eight or an inventor or whatever, underneath this plays the part. It fits the role. This is the right way to go. Lamborghini, if you’re listening, just take Magnus is design and go with it. This is quite nice.

The front end is nice. Oh yeah. It’s beautiful and it, you know, it really makes my childhood Kutas dreams reignite like, yes, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. Like I don’t mind an update. I don’t mind things being different, but this all makes sense. It feels right. It feels good. Yeah, this whole thing just screams perfection.

I’m not always a fan of the stuff that Magnus [00:32:00] puts out. He’s done some weird things like the van again, F 40 and like all this crazy stuff. Yeah. But this was a stroke of just pure magic here. Yeah. So, uh, you were just talking about Porsche before Lamborghini. So speaking of them, you know, there was a whole big hoorah thing about Porsche and F1 and Audi and F1 and, and Porsche suddenly was in talks with Red Bull.

Yeah. Took their label on the side of the car, I guess. Put your left foot in and hit your right, right foot out. You know, we’re doing the hokey pokey. Yeah, that’s where we left it. . That’s exactly where we are. The music stopped. Porsche fell out of the seat. Duck, duck goose. Didn’t work. Got the duck reference again.

Good. There it is. There’s no hope for a Porsche F1 team. Is that what you’re saying? They wanted to do, I think. 50 50 and that was 49. Too much I think for Red Bull,

whatever it was. It was like it was too much. Corner was not willing to give up that. So they kicked them to the curb essentially. So no deal. T B D, what [00:33:00] happens? Do they go after somebody else now? I don’t know. I haven’t heard, I haven’t looked. I know we’ll talk about it later, but I hear Al Alpha tars up for sale, so who knows?

Maybe those slap Porsche stickers on that card will be confused just as where we’re gonna be before Honda powered Formula One car by Porsche, whatever, . But more on that later, we wanna talk about Lower Saxony. The news for Mercedes and BMW has been really, really seldom lately it’s been, they’ve been pretty quiet, so I figured they’re probably tooling up for, you know, the hundredth different design for three people that wanna buy it.

But our friends over at Garage Style Magazine, Don Weiberg specifically sent me a note this month and he says, Hey, I got a great B M W for you to buy it. I said, oh really? And I opened it up. In my jaw, hit the floor. It is a BMW three 20 Group, five Jagermeister race car. And he had me at Jagermeister

That’s all I have to say, . But would anybody like to guess what this is going for during the RM Sotheby’s [00:34:00] auction? Do we have any numbers? 70,000 shots of Jagermeister. Ooh, $1 Bob. Yeah, $1. . What? I don’t know. What is this? Like 900,000? I don’t know, million. The price was listed as furnished upon request. So you know when it says that , you can’t afford it.

That’s rich people. Thanks. Can’t afford it. But it’s still super cool, super cool. All these jaegermeister cars have such great racing history. It’s such an iconic livery in the racing world too. I mean, they’re unmistakable and little known fact. Little bit of trivia. If you’re ever on, who Wants To Be a Millionaire?

The first Liveried Jaegermeister race car was a P nine 14. So there you go. But moving on to Lantis News, and I hope you all took your medication for this . Cause if you’ve got a case of Lantis, to your point, Sarah, from earlier about the Detroit Auto Show, there was a teaser that came out earlier cuz we have a Lantis products here.

And I got a thing in the in our newsletter and it was [00:35:00] like, we’re prepared to un unveil one of Chrysler’s most luxurious, powerful special edition of vehicles to date. Catch the big reveal, yada, yada, yada yada. Reserve one of your own for this extremely limited production. So I went and checked it out and it was the airflow, which we all already know about.

So I’m like, wa, wa, wa bud. The airflow is pretty cool. We’ve talked about it before. It’s a neat looking, I don’t know what size it is. Maybe it’s the size of a Highlander. Maybe it’s smaller, but I like the way it looks. But that’s all we have to go on. I guess with the big reveal, you go to chrysler.com, it’s there on their website now, alongside the 300, which you also mentioned in your article.

And I thought the 300 was dead. They’re talking about how the 300 is not. I’m not dead yet. No, I’m not dead yet. They’re doing a limited run of the 300 and it’s kind of giving it a proper sendoff. You know, they’re very clear that the [00:36:00] 300 as we know it is endings. It also begs the question of, okay, well will there be a future 300?

Will it be electric? What will it look like? What will it be like? But we have no other information. I enjoyed all the 300 rental cars I’ve had over the years. They’re great. Mercedes to that point. It’s a little long in the tooth. The 300 s had a 18 year run that’s really good for that car. I’m sad to see it go, but on the same token, I felt like they couldn’t take it anywhere either.

It was the same car for a very, very long time. Right? We get recalls and TSB in the mail all the time, and there’s this growing trend lately that upsets me, and I only want to talk about this because. It falls in line with something else that we’re gonna talk about later, which is all the, you know, the diesel gate stuff, everybody’s suing everybody and there’s all these scandals and don’t modify your car right to repair and it just ducks all the way down.

But we got one in the mail the other day came as a result [00:37:00] of us having that Pacifica, as our listeners have heard about before, there’s a now a class action lawsuit over a CAM position sensor, and I’m like, Send me the tsb, I’ll take it in. It’s a $25 part. Why does there have to be a class action lawsuit over something simple?

I get it. Maybe somebody blew up their motor, but really now we gotta be involved in all this and all these payouts. I mean, I feel like they’re capitalizing on the diesel gate thing, that now we can just turn around and sue the auto manufacturers for every little thing. It made me sad because getting these in the past and be like, okay, well I’ll find the time to take the car in, but do I really want to be part of this lawsuit?

Everybody’s shaking their head. I know. Like I, I can’t speak to that one in particular. You know, I know that it’s such a tricky thing, you know, manufacturers are sometimes reluctant to send out recalls for certain things. Like, you know that you can get a recall in the mail and it might be for your radio dial knob.

People are prone to ignoring them. I think [00:38:00] people are prone to putting off repair in general, and I’m curious to know about this class action lawsuit to know whether or not there was really something to it that, you know, obviously they must feel like they’ve got a a case there. Oftentimes, I think with car stuff, it’s just really on the onus of the owner to pay attention to what’s going on with your car and to read those recall notices and to act accordingly.

What I thought was really telling is, One of our neighbors actually has a regular gas Pacifica. It has the same three and a half liter pen star that the hybrid has. And he texted me and he goes, Hey, do you get this recall? Does this affect your hybrid? And at that moment I sort of realized, you know, we still have a lot of education to do with these hybrids.

We really do. . It’s true. It’s so true. . Well, as we move on, we need to retract a statement from last month. We said Siara to our friends at American Muscle, and at the last minute, they must have listened to our episode because they’re back. So we’re gonna talk about domestic news sponsored [00:39:00] by American muscle.com, your source for O E Em performance and replacement parts for your.

Ford or Mopar product. So first up, and I know how much you love these big fast trucks, Sarah, the 2023 Cadillac Escalade, E X T, supercharged, V8 Turbo Black Wing addition. If the title couldn’t get longer, we can add a couple more things to it. Don’t tempt them to make the name longer, cuz they’ll always take the bait , they’ll always take the bait.

I was so surprised to see this resurgence. I did not think this was gonna happen. And of course my brain immediately went to the Rivian and the Hummers. You know, the big electric trucks. Maybe they’re laying the foundation for that. I don’t really know where this came from, but I’m interested to see where it goes.

You know, we have a lot of interesting types of trucks happening right now. Not just the electrics, but you think of ones like the Hyundai Santa Cruz. You know, granted that’s [00:40:00] smaller. It’s a different animal than this, but people kind of have more of an appetite for something interesting and different.

Goodness knows, people like distinctive cars. So this is like a four bag mulch truck . Oh. Oh yeah, but you can move four bags of mulch with 800 horsepower very easily, really, and quickly. You wanna get that project done. You’re right. You know that’s important cuz you really needed like 16 bags, so you gotta go back and forth four times.

So you gotta do it quick. I have a friend who says if you have to go. To the home improvement store once, you’re gonna have to go four times. And it’s so true. So maybe Cadillac is like, look, we know you’re gonna have to go four times, so we’ll just make it a small bed. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw an Escalade pickup at my local Lowe’s or Home Depot.

Not every day. Never. No. But seriously, like they already had one of these, right? A while [00:41:00] back. Yes. A long time ago. Cause I like haven’t seen one of these on the road in forever. I don’t know. I’m not a fan of them. Not just cuz it’s a pickup truck, but I’m not a fan of ’em. But it’s just like weird shape.

Like do you put your groceries in that little slot and then get ’em wet? Or if it’s raining, I guess you put ’em in the backseat. around. Yeah. I can’t help you. I don’t know. I don’t know. Like my other problem with this is Cadillac in my mind. Is a certain type of vehicle. So this is the equivalent. Look, Cadillac, having a pickup truck is the equivalent, and we haven’t talked about it here, and we could, we didn’t cover it of the

The new S U V from Ferrari. Ferrari should not be making an S U v. Cadillac should not be making a pickup truck mic drop. I a hundred percent agree with you. It’s like when Lincoln did the Blackwood and some of the, it’s like, why? It just doesn’t make sense, but somebody’s gonna buy it. Trucks are popular.

We love our trucks. Yeah, maybe it’s just throw it at the wall and see if it sticks again, because [00:42:00] I do feel like car interiors are leaning more towards luxury. They’re leaning more towards posh. You know, whether or not this is your cup of tea, it might be somebody’s, and maybe they’re just looking at this to say, okay, what is the.

If the show ballers on HBO was still going to rock, the Rock would drive one of those. I mean, that’s all I’m saying for sure. ? What? What Is it not in the bed? ? ? No, you would? I don’t think you would. But what is interesting, and this goes back to the Detroit Auto show again, Sarah, let’s talk about the new seventh generation S six 50 Ford Mustang.

Yeah, it looks pretty. I did not see it in person. So all of my statements are about the photos and videos that I’ve seen. One thing I wanted to point out was that Ford really is embracing the internal combustion engine. And nothing says it [00:43:00] more than this model. It’s got a special va. Your audience probably knows a lot about that, but for a lot of people who come to a girls guide to cars, they may not know that, that that’s a special and unique engine.

So it’s really important for me to outline that. And I think the thing that’s really interesting is that there’s a lot of doubling down on special additions, on new versions of cars that we’ve seen before. And is this really the same kind of Mustang? Is it a different Mustang? What does make it different?

Two things stood out. The first one. what I thought was cool. I guess they’ve gone to a whole digital dash console display system. Mm-hmm. , like everybody’s doing that. Nah, I don’t know. Not super fan of like traditional gauges, whatever. The cool thing about this though is apparently you can like change what your display looks like.

So you can actually go like retro, late eighties, early nineties, Fox Body Mustang and have Yes, that be your [00:44:00] display gauges. Sadly, they didn’t go like super, you know, classic car, sixties, seventies era firmware update. Yeah, software update. Exactly. So maybe in the future. So I thought that was pretty neat and pretty cool.

I guess we could see that maybe with other auto manufacturers though Mustang is more iconic, so that’s probably more relevant. To go back to other dashboard displays, like I’m thinking like, would it be really cool to go back to like a 1990 Camry display in your 2024 Camrys? Probably not, but you know, there could be a couple different marks that this could work for.

But the other thing. It was a little disturbing was the mention of an electronic drift break. And what does that mean for cars and coffee ? Yeah. I think that’s gonna require a lot of mobile detailing services at the cars and coffee events. It has a new feature called Crowd Control. The button says crowd on it.

You just hit that and it clears the path for you [00:45:00] and makes sure you hit the curbs in the median at 60 miles per hour. Yeah, right. , I wanna talk to you guys too about this feature that it has and it’s a remote rev feature. Did you read about this? Oh, you’re right. I forgot about that. It’s available on the 10 speed.

Not the manual though, right? Yes, not the manual. Right. Uh, and do not like this feature. I might need a deeper understanding of when it would be applied. It’s going to be applied at 2:00 AM by some drunk idiot in the neighborhood when you’re trying to sleep, and he is just gonna sit there from inside his home.

Mustang Hold. Hold on. Well, okay. Do you remember the Fast and the Furious movie? I was. Where they pull up and they can like shoot the flames and the nitro and stuff. It’s the same thing. So I’m standing there. Yeah. Like a complete tool with my key fob and instead of doing remote start, which is what it is, it’s remote start and rev up.

Right. So it’s gonna go rah prop. But you know what somebody’s gonna do is they’re gonna reprogram it and then it’s not gonna be [00:46:00] just fired up and rev it a couple times. It’s gonna sit there and peg the rev limit and be like, ba, ba, ba. And they can do that, you know, from 50 feet away. It’s gonna be an absolute nuisance.

But it’ll be cool the first time it happens at a car’s coffee . Yeah, for sure. And I’m like, it’s like a clicky pin. It’s fun to, to click on it over and over if you’re the person doing it. And for everybody else. Totally annoying in, in my previous location, there was a guy a couple blocks away who had, I don’t even know what latest Mustang monstrosity, like it was a super nice car, but he got up in the morning, he was my alarm clock because when he turned the car on it like shook my house and he was literally like two blocks behind me.

And I found out one day like walking through the neighborhood who he was and where the car was. And it was like without fail, like at five something in the morning, he was getting in his car, going to work and then you’d hear him like come through the neighborhood. It was just, I don’t know what exhaust he had on it.

It was so loud. So I am not in favor of [00:47:00] this . Well, you know, and it’s, and it’s interesting, like the dark. Mustang reminds me of what might be an overarching theme of this episode, which is bloodlines, right? We were talking about the Queen. We’re talking about some of the Jeeps that are coming outta Willie’s that’s been around forever and ever, but yet it’s new.

I kind of go down this road of is it a Mustang? Is it not a Mustang? When does a a heritage model just become a full departure? Can we still call it a Mustang? Can we do something different? It’s yet to be determined. To me, I think being in the presence of one would definitely help me make the decision about how Mustang is this Mustang I, and there’s so many jokes we could make about the Machi, but I’m gonna leave that right where it is in terms of bloodlines.

I left it. I left it. I didn’t even bring it up. I didn’t even bring it up. . There is a bit of journalistic rubbish here that I need to just highlight and read this quote to the audience because it left me baffled because you’ve [00:48:00] mentioned bloodlines and the article says it reads The Dark Horse is an entirely new breed of Mustang one that shares no bloodlines with the historic models, while it’s based on the new seventh generation v8.

Ford Mustang gt, and now my brain is going Question mark. Question mark, question mark. The dark horse is more badass out of the box, and it’s bred for racing with numerous standard performance features and exclusive track focused options, which goes back to what Annika was talking about in terms of the hype around cars and how they’re built for the track.

And then you put ’em on the track and they’re just like, w, want want, but what isn’t? W. Is the new GT three version of the S six 50 Mustang, which is coming to both IMS A and SRO World Challenge next year. Those pictures were released before and it’s already been talked about well before the Detroit Auto Show, and that to me and to, I’m sure a lot of people, is gonna be exciting because it’s the return of [00:49:00] Ford Performance and Ford Motorsport back into world class racing.

So to see these cars on those stages means it’s only a couple more years. It’s a foregone conclusion when you’re gonna see Ford battling against Porsche. at Lamont’s. And that’s exciting. That’s cool. I wanna see that. I will see that for sure. . So our last bit of domestic news is around gm and I didn’t realize they had a slogan, quote, EVs for everyone, but apparently they’ve got some sort of campaign or plan to bring EVs to everyone.

So their latest news is a almost half a billion dollar investment in their Indiana assembly plant for specifically EV cars. So I guess they’re seeing the writing on the wall and they don’t wanna offer just the bolt and the Hummer, and they’ve got the Cadillac lyric coming too, but they’re gearing up.

We could be seeing the Blazer and the Silverado and the Equinox, and I think we’ve already heard tell of the Silverado already, but then some of these other SUVs or [00:50:00] other pickup trucks, they’re gonna get more serious. Now, remember what we talked about last month? They’re always late to the party, not like Mountain Manan.

You say it starts at seven, he shows up at nine. That’s That’s gm. It’s the GM way. . Well, and at Detroit, they reannounce the Silverado of course, but then there’s also an Equinox and a blazer that will be electric. Welcome. Welcome to the party. Yeah. Thanks for showing up, . Better late than never, right? That’s what they say.

That’s true. That’s true. You know, there’s the flip side of the coin where you wait for other people and see if they fail or not, and then you jump in . So maybe that’s their strategy. They’re just waiting for everybody. To stumble and fall and chip shortage. What we didn’t know they were doing is they’ve probably been hoarding chips this whole time.

That might be true, but you know who hasn’t been hoarding chips? Apparently Hyundai and Kia . Because apparently they haven’t been putting, IM mobilizers in their cars since like, like until very recently, [00:51:00] apparently. So if you didn’t hear this bizarre news that had come up, I don’t even weeks ago, it’s a Kia challenge on TikTok and it’s like, okay, what is this?

What are, what are people doing like putting their mouth on the tailpipe and, and huffing , you know, , you eat Tide pods while you’re driving a Kia and see if you can get to the next place and then, and, and then cook your chicken and NyQuil cuz that’s the latest TikTok challenge too. Please don’t do these things, people don’t do it.

So, okay, what is this Kia TikTok challenge? Apparently it’s go steal a Kia and record yourself doing it cuz that’s always brilliant. Poster felonies, to social media. Wait, really? Really? Mm-hmm . Apparently these Kias and even some of these Hyundai days, these like early two thousands models, I believe it is.

They didn’t have a mobilizer, so it’s like super easy to like hot wire and just like steal. Boom. Done. It’s like being in the seventies with any domestic product. Pull them wires down and the way you go. It’s insane. But it looks like we’ve stumbled backwards into our J D [00:52:00] M news section, so we need to also pull back something from last month we talked high praise about the new Hyundai N 74 vision concept.

We were literally drooling. Tanya stood up on her desk going, take my money. Just take my money. the best car that we have seen in years. What’s the truth, Tanya? We’ll probably never see the light of day . Oh wow. Wow. It is apparently based on an article the car and driver released earlier this month. It is.

Essentially they’ve, they said a, A rolling lab. So it’s literally just like a test car. It’s not even anything unique. They put this body, this beautiful body that needs to become a car on top of a Kia Stinger, . Oh my gosh. What? This is so disappointing. I know. We were so excited. I was like, where do I sign up?

Which Hyundai dealer do I need to contact to get one of these? Yeah, it’s like hydrogen powered and all this stuff. So it’s really just, [00:53:00] they made this beautiful car to just tool around and test out, I guess. You know, this new power plant and whatnot. And I, I really hope that they make this thing. I don’t care if it’s not hydrogen or if it runs on snowflakes or something like this.

Body needs to appear somewhere. And the interesting thing that came out of this, as you were reading the article, they talked about the history of like the concepts and all this stuff, and like where the name came from. Like what is N 74? Like, where did they come up with this? And apparently it’s like an homage to the 1974, the Hyundai Pony Coop.

Which then if you look at the history of that, because when we first saw this car, we were like, this is what the DeLorean. Should look like the new electric DeLorean. This is what it should be. And when you go back into the history that they said the 74 is an homage to the pony coop 74, that car was designed by Gito Giro who ended up designing the DeLorean D m c [00:54:00] 12 years after he designed the pony coop.

And when you look at the pony coop, you go, oh, I get it. Thankfully he fixed that one and made the DeLorean . Cause that was kinda weird looking. But yes, they are close cousins and you know, there’s a bunch of cars. When you look at Ju Jaros portfolio, you start to see the man gusta in there, you know, the BMW M one.

You start to see some of the other things that he’s designed and they all come together and it’s just, he has such an interesting story and there’s so many cars that he has penned that people just take for granted. They don’t realize that it’s the same guy that designed the lowly fiat panda to the VW Golf, to the DeLorean famous race cars and, and everything in between.

It’s just, it’s absolutely amazing. Again, this is just another like missing link in the whole story and it all starts to come together. So I’m with you. When I saw that, when we were doing the research as we were kind of climbing back from last month, I was like, wow, that’s really, really cool. So that’s the silver lining in that whole discussion for [00:55:00] me.

All right, so now onto some random ev. Bosch interestingly, who is like in everything in every car, right? Largest auto parts supplier. Essentially, they too are going to join the evolution and are going to transition to supporting EVs. So maybe they hope to be the number one supplier of EV electronics. So does that mean the e empg numbers that are on the sticker will not match what I get on the road and there’s gonna be an electric gate?

Is that like what, what comes next? Z . Yeah. So more to come as that story develops in the future. Now over to in car adjacent news, this next one is frightening, and I think we’ve heard things about this before about electric aircraft, but apparently we’re even closer. So close that Air Canada has actually ordered 30 electric planes.

And I’m like, I don’t [00:56:00] know how I feel about this. And they’re not like big, I think they’re, they’re those e RJ Bombardier type planes. Yeah, I mean these would probably be very like private planes, private taxi kind of things. But I don’t know how I feel about battery air powered airplane. Yeah, not so much.

I hope there’s a backup system, like some sort of small fuel tank that switches over a hybrid emergency. Yes, like a hybrid would be great. because like when the battery something fails or short circuits and the plane just falls outta the sky , I mean, it won’t fall outta the sky, but hopefully they can do a controlled landing.

But, ah, Then it got me thinking like, well, man, what if there was like a Boeing seven 40 something and we were like there, that we, it’d be impossible. You’d need a Boeing size of batteries, I think, to make it fly. But I don’t think I’d, I’d be uncomfortable. Okay. What does the inflight safety video look like on an electric airplane?

In the case of an emergency, when we lose all power, like , your oxygen mask cannot be deployed . It’s [00:57:00] not a flotation device, and it’s not a parachute either. Are they gonna give you parachutes, like is along with life vests? I mean, how is this gonna work? What happens? Like the plane crash lands, but not like in a, in a, in a bad way.

Like sometimes planes, they land the landing gear breaks or something, and they have a quote crash landing. It’s not catastrophic or anything. But like what hap like when a electric car crashes, sometimes there’s that whole issue, right? The firefighters can’t, like, God forbid you, you have a minor crash landing and a fire happens.

Do we have the fire suppression technology available and ready? , do you remember the show Lost? Oh yes. It ends like that. in Happier News, I’m proud to say I bought my first EV Lies. Wait, wait, wait. Is this the Power Wheels that you bonafide with a R? I got a super deal. You’re not gonna believe this. I bought a Lucid Air.

I got the best deal of the year. . It’s on his fall chance. Should they make a coloring book? [00:58:00] No, no, no, no. You know I found it at a local dealership. Uhhuh, Walmart, amongst a bunch of other cars. You’re right. I paid 94 cents for a brand new Lucid Air by Hot Wheels. Congratulations . Yay. It’s green and everything.

The packaging has this little battery on it and stuff. It’s very cool. Well done. Look at you . Well, our last bit of random EV news. So we reported previously about Hertz speaking of, uh, rental cars from earlier that Hertz had been going under contract to order like a hundred thousand Teslas, whatever. And not a lot.

It was random airports in California, basically seeing them. Not widespread, but apparently now, cuz Hertz wants to be like the leader, I guess, in rental. EVs is signing contract with gm. So, woo, look at you. Gm, I guess technically late cuz Tesla did it first. But nonetheless, not super late. They’re [00:59:00] getting 175,000 EVs from GM is their plan and to spread them out even more.

And they want something like, I think like a quarter of all of their rental fleet to be EVs, which is interesting. Good for them. We probably need that in this world. The other interesting thing I had thought of though was like, okay, 175,000 GMs, but you only asked for a hundred thousand Teslas. Is it because like when someone drives it, like they stole it and they wreck the Tesla, it takes like a hundred years to repair it.

like I was wondering, like wonder why there’s not more Teslas that they’re ordering if they’ve come across that as a problem or not. Or if it’s even a concern. Because I know some people that have had minor, minor incidents with art Teslas, and then they were out for like six. To get a new camera in the bumper installed because it’s Tanium and who do you take it to and whatnot.

And I was just thinking in general, it would probably be a better idea for Hertz to be going to someone like GM or Ford or whoever started making these EVs because they’ll actually have parts [01:00:00] available to replace in like dealer networks and mechanics and things like that. So I wonder if Tesla might just be like a niche little, it’s like a, what is it?

The gold executive star level when you go to the the Hertz rentals and they only got like one of the car, maybe that’ll be like what Tesla ends up being. Then I wonder about the sales of the cars after they’ve run their life through the rental. That’s a good question. Gauntlet and, and then they have to put ’em up for sale.

And maybe there’s something about the GM that would be easier to sell than the Teslas. That’s a good point as well. What happens, the batteries, the degraded and how do you turn around and sell that? I guess you replace the batteries. That’s a huge cost though. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Yes we will. About how much that might actually cost you . So it’s time we move on to Brad’s favorite section, even though he isn’t here, which is lost and found where he spends the month scouring the internet, looking for the newest old car on dealer lots. And lately it’s been all sorts of fun stuff. It was Dodge [01:01:00] Darts and wipers for a very long time.

We found something that was truly lost and then found should almost be in Florida man category. So let me summarize this for you. new cars. Especially luxury cars have what we used to call the old days LoJack G P S tracking systems. A Bentley Mosan V8 was stolen from the UK and discovered 5,000 miles.

Later in Pakistan. Not that it wasn’t obvious on the back roads of Pakistan, that a Bentley didn’t belong there, but authorities not only confirmed it by G P s tracking, but also by all the VIN numbers that are all over the place on those Bentleys, because the Germans will stamp the VIN in all sorts of places.

So cars can be recognized later in these types of incidents. So pretty interesting story, and I will say if you’re the type of person that is paranoid about your precious vehicle, turn those systems on. You’re seeing more [01:02:00] commercials these days about OnStar. That’s what it’s for. It’s for tracking those vehicles though.

G p s systems, if you have a classic card, look into putting one of these G GPS trackers in the case that somebody were to take them, the owner of the Benley is getting his car back. It’s a little dirtier and dustier than when it left the uk, but it’s really cool to see that it didn’t just disappear and somebody wrote it off and then insurance had to pay out for it.

That’s the awesomeness of modern technology. So another lost and found, one of the Ford F-150 Arctic Expedition pickup trucks that was used for a first ever crossing of the continental shelf of Canada, and then going up into the, you know, high Arctic region areas on that trip. Unfortunately, when they were done, it fell through the ice.

Luckily no one was in it, but it fell through the ice and then San, and unfortunately they had to leave it, the lost part. And then the found part. They finally, after a long time, I don’t know how many months or whatever, were able to go back and [01:03:00] actually they pulled out of the frozen water. And I guess I’ve taken it to dry out.

I, I’m not sure it’ll run again, but you know, so what you’re telling me is this is what Lawrence Fishburn has really been talking about on History Channel, not Earnest Shackleton ship. It’s pulling this F-150 out of the Arctic. Yes. , speaking of pulling things out of nowhere, mountain man, Dan sent us a lost and found this month.

And you know how he gets about his square bodies? He can always do it cheaper. He can always do it better. You’ve heard it from him time and time again. So he sent me a listing from the Holy Gospel of all things, used cars bring a trailer, and his quote was, I can get one of these all day for five grand.

Well, at the time we talked, the auction wasn’t over yet. And Dan, I hate to tell you. You were wrong. That square body commercial truck sold for almost $12,000 before fee. So the value of square bodies is going up, and this thing is not pristine. It is not a [01:04:00] show car in any respect. It looks like something you would’ve picked up from an electrician or a plumber and threw up on bring a trailer again, goes back to what I’ve said.

It is the Wild West over there on B A t. I don’t understand the pricing at all. Isn’t that like a low price on ? That’s like super low. I mean, the only thing lo lower than that was that $6,000 Geome convertible. Remember that one? Yeah. May. Maybe that needs to be a new segment. What’s the cheapest car you can buy on?

Bring a trailer. Hundred percent. This wing , but I came across another one that I have been debating, right? It checks all the boxes. It’s Early American jdm. It’s very well put together. It’s a show worthy car and it’s a station wagon. It’s a Sweeten the pot. It was put together by Top Gear, America’s Rutledge Wood.

It’s his 1983 Honda Civic deluxe wagon that was up for sale. It’s been engine swap, highly modified, lowered gold basket B B s [01:05:00] wheels. I mean, just a brilliant looking car. And for less than $20,000. It had me going, man, you might just wanna pull the trigger on this one. I mean, that’s probably not a bad price for what it is for all the work that went into it.

I mean, it’s like the singer of Hondas, if you look at this thing, not that I just recently listened to, uh, you know, an episode about your first classic car purchase, but you know, that could almost be considered up up in there, right? That is a hundred percent true. It checks all the boxes in terms of rarity, peculiarity, and you know, that cult following.

You wanna stand out at a Carson Coffee. This one definitely does it. And it has that provenance, right? Coming from a celebrity like Rutledge Wood, no, it doesn’t have the same sort of, you know, pedigree that a Bugatti owned by Ralph Floren has. It’s still cool in its own right, as Don Weiberg says, we need to embrace more of these oddities, more of these weird cars and the people that like them, and you are passionate about it and it’s making you smile just talking about it.

So I, I think it’s worth considering , [01:06:00] it’s a wagon, super clean, and then there’s like a big ass dent on the front fender Defender , that’s pat. That’s Tina . Character. Character. Well, there’s something else that’s for sale. A car that we saw running here locally when we were a kid, right. Tanya? The 1984 Nissan 300 ZX race car that Tom Cruise graced LA track of Summit Point with in his very short tenure as a race car driver.

with Paul Newman, alongside of Paul Newman. And you can find his photo in Shea Summit if you’re ever there to visit. I believe along with photos of Paul Newman. Yes. His former race car is for sale. Did he keep it this whole time or is it like pass through multiple hands? I couldn’t figure that out from the auction listing, but the car did sell.

So do you want to take a guess what the planner’s Peanut 300 ZX sold for? No idea. 15 grand. No idea. Because nobody cares. What? No. Okay, fine. [01:07:00] 65, you’re still too low. Hundred 65. What? It’s sold for almost $103,000. What? For almost 40 year old Nissan. I mean, that’s pretty good again, okay. The numbers right now on used cars are insane.

Granted, race cars have always been higher, especially if they have some sort of pedigree. It wasn’t really the most winningest car. The biggest memorable part about it is it was Tom Cruise’s car when he ran with Paul Newman. I mean, I remember seeing this car as a kid. I remember seeing even the videos way later of it running at some point.

Stuff like that. It’s pretty cool. Would I pay a hundred grand for it? I don’t know. But for the right Nissan collector, absolutely. Would it be more valuable because is Tom Cruise’s car or because it’s Paul Newman adjacent? I think it’s probably both. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Adam Carlo was involved because he’s a big collector of Newman cars.

So you know, one of those kind of deals. Interesting. So the answer to that question, it says the car you see [01:08:00] here. Is the Nissan 300 ZX that Cruz was driving in 1987. It was lost to history before being rediscovered in a junkyard and restored with the racing delivery. It carried when it was driven by the up and coming movie star.

So it’s worth its weight at that point if it’s a full resto. And then it got the log books, the VIN numbers, if it’s all like they say in the American car’s numbers matching, they paid a lot of money to get that car back to where it is. And it looks really good. It looks super clean. If that was a junkyard car, Hmm, something’s odd about this photo cuz it looks like brand new.

So, okay. It’s not like he parked it and it had all the robins racing on it and now it’s for sale. This is like probably a really nice car . It probably got sold a couple times through S E C A and then somebody ditched it going This car isn’t worth anything and moved on with life. Maybe they crashed it, who knows?

Or he crashed it, didn’t he? . We won’t get into that. We would be remiss if we got into that. We would. And you know what, again, the Tesla news is pretty, uh, short this month, but I, I did wanna highlight an article [01:09:00] that I saw that was just mind boggling, I guess, and not a good omen. Hopefully, like, I, I hope this isn’t the trend, cuz I think this will be a problem for the longevity of EV cars.

But it said that, uh, a teslar was locked out of their car after the battery died, and then the replacement cost for that battery was $26,000. That is a big pill to swallow after you’ve paid, what did they go for? 40, 50 grand and you have to pay almost half the cost of that card to replace the battery because it died prematurely or whatever.

Or I don’t even know. I think this was one of those like 10 year old Teslas. So yeah, I would want my battery to go more than 10 years because internal combustion engines go longer than 10 years only unless you freaking blow ’em up. Right. Doing something stupid. Right. But if you’re driving normally every day, usually something catastrophically doesn’t happen and it then cost you isn’t necessarily gonna cost 26,000 to replace either

So I did [01:10:00] a little sleuthing on this story just because I’m curious A, because I don’t know how much it costs to replace the batteries and the EVs. So first thing is that it was Canadian dollars, which. Good catch doesn’t feel a whole lot better cuz it’s still around 19 to 20,000 American dollars depending on the day.

It sounds like the actual battery that died was the 12 volt battery, um, that this guy didn’t know about. Perhaps if I’m putting the pieces together right. It was the 12 volt battery that died in conjunction perhaps with the lithium ion battery pack, but the 12 volt battery died and that’s why he couldn’t unlock the doors because that battery power.

That makes sense. Like the screen and all of this. Yeah. So granite, it sounds like he was a very frustrated Tesla owner and had probably dealt with a lot of issues before now and this was the proverbial straw. That being said, it sounds like the person who purchased the car was able [01:11:00] to either access and replace the 12 volt battery right?

Or somehow recharge the 12 volt battery or swap it out. In any case, it was really the 12 volt battery. That might have been the problem. So did the 12 volt battery car vault. It’s a bigger battery somehow. I have no clue. I rhetorical question. That’s all I can find out. , let’s take this back to what I was talking about with Chrysler earlier.

Where’s the class action lawsuit here? A $50 part cam position sensor on a pentastar that’s been around for 20 years. It’s the same motor they’ve been making forever, but we got a class action lawsuit for that, but not for these Teslas, because this isn’t gonna be the first or the last in this particular case.

So I don’t know. Maybe that’s happening, but you don’t get the same kind of press, right? It’s. Tesla’s like this holy cow that you can’t touch and then everybody’s gonna go after Chrysler or Ford over something silly. And I’m, I just, I don’t understand. I wanna follow this story to see exactly what the situation is because yeah, it would [01:12:00] seem like it would merit that class action lawsuit if this was in fact like, oh my God, I just can’t even get into my car.

That’s a problem. That is a problem. So I’ll do a little homework and I’ll let you guys know What I find out, there was a video posted, engineering explained you follow them on like Facebook and stuff like that. And the guy was in his Tesla and he was kind of going on like a little rant about a recent service, I guess instant he was having, cuz he had ordered like the performance package tires or whatever, something or other as like extra on his, I think model S because he had wanted to go to the track.

But then some weird thing about the brakes on at Tesla, like. , you can’t order them separately. So you were supposed to have known that at the same time that you bought the tires, you needed to order the brake pads that were the track pads. And then he got this whole ring around the rosy with like the service centers.

He called like four or five times or something to get like things straightened out. He ended up not getting the pads, so he ended up not doing his track day that he wanted to do. But apparently like, it’s like this whole thing that’s like really [01:13:00] hard to order certain parts and then I’m like, are the brake pads really that specific that you can’t just throw on hawks or power stops or something on the Tesla?

Or people just being super special about it Cuz oh I want the Tesla ones cuz they say they’re the best. I don’t know. They look like Brembo Cas like everything else runs right now. So you could get ’em from Porterfield or Hawk or anybody. I, I don’t get What about, yeah, I didn’t understand. Cause then I Googled like Tesla brake pads really quick and then like the first thing that came up was like, yeah, power stop and whatever and all that typical name.

So I was like, I didn’t quite understand what the whole thing was unless you were just trying to be super particular and get the ones from Tesla. But I’m like, they didn’t make bespoke brakes on their cars. But I’m aware of, I’m not gonna throw shade at this because you know again, they’re a burgeoning car company.

They’re gonna have some growing pains, all the things that we’ve talked about before. But what I sort of take issue with is, and I’ve had the privilege of coaching in a Tesla. I wrote an article about it, all that stuff on track. I hate to say even if you do all that prep and you buy the race [01:14:00] tires, it’s not the unplugged.

Car that Randy Pops is running around in or, or the one that Johann Schwartz is driving. You know that kind of stuff. You’re not gonna have the same experience. The guys who go to the track with the Teslas are sitting around all day trying to keep that thing charged up cuz they can’t last 20 minutes at full speed in a regular H P D E run session, if you wanna put good money behind this, just rent a Miata for the day, it’s actually gonna cost you.

Than getting your Tesla prepared and all the heartache that comes with it and the track time that you’re missing. And let’s face it, track time can be expensive depending on what track you’re going to. Watkins Glen versus Rhode Atlanta versus Summit Point, they all cost a different amount. I hate for people to go and get all psyched up and then be super disappointed when they get there.

If you want the real track experience, go rent something from somebody. Or if you’re really getting into the hobby, I hate to say ice cars are still the way to go and there’s lots of really affordable ones out there that you can pick up cheap [01:15:00] on places like racing junk right now. Yeah. When we were at Road Atlanta, there was that guy with that tu and he literally do like three or four laps and then like he’d come in and then you’d come in from your session and then you’d see it there charging in the paddock.

So I’m like, okay, cool. I mean, spoiler alert, there’s an upcoming episode here in a couple of weeks with Johann Schwartz. He’s the record holder at V I R in a Tesla right now. And he talks to us about that entire experience. We actually talked about him on a previous drive through episodes setting the drift record and all this other kind of stuff, and setting the lap record at v i r.

And you know, he explains it was an all day affair to get that hot lap. And he’s like, yes, it was exciting. But he’s like, we’re driving into town to charge the car and then we have to run back and then we do three hot laps and we’ve depleted the battery cause they’re on grand course, which is even longer.

And then we gotta, it’s all this back and forth of yo-yoing. And he’s like, the experience you have in an ice car at the track, there’s still. Dollar to dollar. Apples to apples. Comparison with an ev, there’s still not an EV yet. They can [01:16:00] do what an ice car can do at a track day. Now, from a performance perspective, they’re hella fast, don’t get me wrong, but maybe drag racing.

I think that’s where I would take my Tesla. I’d have a great time. . There you go. Lots of waiting around. Now that you’ve thoroughly lowered my expectations, let’s lower ’em some more with some news from our friends at Toyota. Whoa. Whoa. Wait. You’re not gonna sing No cuz. Brad’s not here. . Oh, it’s a duet. It’s a moment of silence then moment of silence.

Lower expectation. That was my best Brad impression. . . Lowering our expectations this month is Toyota. It’s coming off the heels of the high expectations of GI Corolla. We swing the pendulum all the way over to tractor beams. What? Which honestly, in a futuristic sci-fi alternate reality universe, I love this idea because then I could tow my car to the track without having to purchase an S U V or pickup truck.

However, I [01:17:00] hate this idea because it’s never gonna work and it’s gonna be wildly unsafe. Yes. Tractor mean no physical connection between your tow vehicle and the object it is towing. How could this possibly go wrong or right? Right. like so many ways this can fail. , I have two questions. They’re safety related.

I like the idea too, the whole tractor beam thing. Yes. Because you could take a regular passenger car and Rosie the robot is actually doing all the work of towing your trailer, your camper, your car, whatever It is fine in an emergency situation and I have to do a quick evade lane, change maneuver. Does my trailer follow me or go straight into the object?

I was looking to miss. Does my trailer suddenly become a projectile and now I’m in court for the next 10 years because my tractor being failed. Is your trailer considered autonomous? Oh, whose fault is it then? . Oh, that’s a good one. I love that . [01:18:00] And do you have to have the appropriate vehicle and maintain the same range as your Rosie the robot that’s towing your trailer?

Because remember the adage is you know that you’ve bought the right tow vehicle when you’re no longer really paying attention that you’re towing something, like it’s just sort of back there and you’re used to it. So what happens when you’re driving along and suddenly you look back in the rear view mirror and your trailer’s not there anymore because the batteries died?

Furthermore because cyber stuff is getting so much more sophisticated, could we have like the equivalent of the great train robberies where the guys on the horses ran up alongside the train or whatever and took it over? Could you have someone drive up the side? Yes. And like feel your, your trailer out from under you or cause your trailer to run into you?

Right? I mean there’s all sorts of things that could go. That’s it. You have to make a panic break. They’re using the speed sensing radar or [01:19:00] whatever that adjusts automatically. So what is it gonna say? Three car lengths behind you and you slam on the brakes and then it slams into you. So if the gap is too big, as I witnessed today when there was like barely a car length of space and this dude started changing lanes in front of a tractor trailer, I literally got on the shoulder cause I was in the left lane and this guy was in front of me.

I drove onto the shoulder. We weren’t going too fast cuz there was a lot of traffic. But I maneuvered onto the shoulder in an anticipation of avoidance. Okay. But the tractor trailer was horns blazing and the guy did not complete his lane maneuver. But what happens if someone tries to lane maneuver between you and your little tractor beam

But if they complete it, say they cut off your trailer and they’re, do they take the trailer? Yes, because they’re doing the maneuver like they do in Virginia where they stay in the left lane until they off ramp. So they cut off your trailer and then your trailer starts following the other guy? No, and he wipes everybody out.

There is no good exit to [01:20:00] this scenario ever. . I like it. I like it. Again, this is probably one of those, we’re testing innovation, we’re trying cool things. It makes people talk about it, right? We’re talking about it, but is this ever really gonna happen? No. Maybe in a hundred years, I don’t know. Maybe I’m harsh.

You have shuttle craft. Yes. You know, maybe it’ll work on Mars with the moon. I don’t know. The battery that you spoke. Earlier, isn’t the only five figure battery replacement either? Did you guys hear about that $30,000 Chevy Bolt invoice that that had gone viral? No. No. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You guys gotta check this out.

Does a Chevy Bolt even cost $30,000? ? Well, th let’s start there. No. Okay. It was floating all around the internet. I mean, it, it even made it to our, in internal Slack chat within the club and things like people, have you seen this invoice? It’s from a Chevy dealership. Operation number, you know, N 0 1 11 0 battery, r and r, hybrid battery [01:21:00] replacement.

There’s a GM part number, and it says part price, $26,853 and 99 cents. And the second part. Cooling $16 and 99 cents and then it continues down battery fees and so on and so on. So in this Chevy Volt, the customer paid $29,842 to have their battery replaced. And to your point, Tanya, on this aging vault, that’s more than what it costs new.

So is it really worth it in the end? And originally people were like, this is bs. This is just a thing. Somebody doctored this up on their computer. Apparently it was verified that this invoice from a South Florida Chevy dealership was legitimate. Somebody was charged almost $30,000 to have the batteries replaced in the hole.

So I just googled that part number and then it brought me to gm parts giant.com. I don’t know the legitimacy of this cuz I don’t own a gm. Car lists this part as discontinued. Ah, hence the markup. Ah, maybe that could have [01:22:00] contributed to such a high cost. That’s. Terrifying. The first comment from the trolls was, uh, but that a V doesn’t look so affordable now.

Haha. Yeah, we get it. But it’s the cost of innovation. I mean, you look at the Chevy Volt, how long has it been out? So maybe it’s 10 years old, it’s 12 years old. A lot of people change their cars. I mean, Sarah, you guys talk about this all the time. What’s the life expectancy of a vehicle Nowadays, people are keeping them longer, but if you’re within that 10 to 15 year threshold, you’re probably looking for a new car.

Maybe this person really loves their bolt and it’s worth $30,000 for the next 15 years that they’re gonna get out of it. Hopefully the new batteries are better than they. They didn’t just put the same thing in there, but I, I think it’s the cost of doing business, right? Ah, the contributing factor was the discontinued battery high cost, and then it was coming from a third party, so it wasn’t even.

You know, directly from GM or anything, there are articles saying that they, it got fact checked and it is confirmed from the dealership service director that that was indeed the bill. [01:23:00] Holy moly. Wow. You’d hope in a case like that GM’s thing now allegedly is EVs for everyone. I would hope that they would do something about this, right?

Like, this isn’t transaction lawsuit. I mean, well, if, if, if this is happening to every volt, then hey, okay, something bigger needs to happen if that’s the case. But if this is like truly a one off kind of thing and it’s the one in however many thousands you have something go wrong, there’s always a small percentage of that manufacturing.

It’s like you’d hope EVs for everyone. Maybe they, they do a little something for this guy. Show some goodwill here, , because that, that’s steep social media campaign or something at least. Yeah. No, I do, I do wonder about that. Give him a discount on his next one. Yeah. Like was this person just really in love with their vault?

Were they looking at buying a new car right now? And that cost of whatever they wanted. So much more than whatever the price of replacing this would be. We all know [01:24:00] that new and used cars are super expensive right now, and if they really loved that car, then you know, I mean, I guess it’s on them to decide whether or not to pay that bill.

But who, I mean, also shame on the dealership because we’re very used to the German cars and the way they do their things. And when you go in and you request a part number like that, especially for something that doesn’t exist anymore, there’s usually a superseded part number and the system tells you that.

But to press forward and say, we’re gonna order you something that let’s say doesn’t even exist anymore and charge you the full value when there’s maybe a newer battery sitting to the side, that’s a fraction of the cost to me, that’s criminal. Now, I’m not saying that that happened here, but that’s sort of where my mind goes next.

And I could see it again talking about, you know, jokingly that class action lawsuit building around this to say, well, what’s this dealership doing? We’ve been hearing about price gouging, you know, all these kinds of crazy things that are going on in the automotive market right now in that last mile in those dealerships.

And this, I feel, just adds just another layer on top of that. I don’t know, it’s, it’s shameful. It really is. [01:25:00] But you mentioned social media, Sarah and I have to say, a lot of folks are probably familiar with Cletus McFarland, and this is gonna be motor sports related, but he’s gonna get somebody killed. And for those of you that don’t know who Cletus is, he’s a law school dropout.

He was an automotive YouTuber. Again, he’s rich people things, right? I, I don’t understand everybody’s making that much money on YouTube that they can do these extravagant things like buying a short track in Florida and renaming it, freedom Factory and hosting your own races there and all this kind of thing.

So let me cut to the chase. He hosted a race on Labor Day at Bristol, not at his home track of Freedom Factory a hundred laps. 30 cars, inexperienced drivers, and if you look at the screen grabs from the videos that they posted, these things are literal death traps. These are even lemons quality cages where you’re putting together with like tin cans and pvc.

You’ve seen some crazy stuff. These are cobbled together cages. I mean the window net being [01:26:00] screwed into the doorframe and into the door panel itself just did it for me. At that point, I was like, safety is no joke when it comes to motor sports, but to make fun of it in this way, to not take it seriously, be like, wow, I just screwed it to the door.

That’s not even just a slap into the face to all of us that do participate in motor sports. You are endangering yourself and 29 other people at this point and somebody needs to stop this. I mean, granted, if you’re on private property, do whatever you wanna do YOLO and all that stuff, but you’re at Bristol.

This is a major racing facility and I don’t know how they got away with doing this. It, it really just upsets me because it’s just, it’s. Beyond stupid. It’s dangerous. It’s reckless. Did anybody get hurt? Was were there any incidents? As far as we know, there is an incident that it looks akin to a demolition derby.

There was like five cars involved. Looks like one of ’em rolled over. Somebody had to crawl out of the window while the radiator of another car was spraying [01:27:00] hot cooling on them, like all sorts of stuff. So it didn’t end well. Now I get that these Crown Victorias are just tanks, but. . Is it ironic that a law school dropout doesn’t recognize the negligence here?

maybe there’s a reason he, he’s not a lawyer. That is a fair, it’s all becoming very clear now. It is a fair point. Well, you know what else is also unfair? You know, we talked about class action lawsuits and we’re talking about all sorts of things. In the last couple of drive-through episodes we mentioned that the EPA has been going after tuners, you know, names like Cobb and, and others in the industry.

You know, we have our slew of diesel gates, right? Whether it’s Volkswagen or b w or Mercedes or Jeep or whoever had a diesel over the last, you know, 10 years or so. Now the EPA is going after diesel tuners. We all know it’s not fun to choke on the rolled coal, but sometimes it’s maybe well-deserved for [01:28:00] misbehavior on the road.

It’s our only self-defense as diesel owners, sometimes blowing clouds of smoke, like you’re like a semi, it’s not great, and that’s what’s given. Diesel a bad name. You know, I go down the road with my diesel Jeep and you would never know that it’s a diesel. It doesn’t puff an ounce of smoke. Even if. Stand on it, you’d never know.

Right. It runs actually pretty clean. 10 million fines for defeat devices. I even heard a story, somebody told me the other day that the White House had some cars commissioned to have, you know, some things changed and they were fined by the E P A. So to me that said, like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing sort of thing.

It has gotten out of control and I think they’re making an example of diesels and when in reality it’s a smaller portion of the population, granted it’s the visible effect. You can see them rolling coal. It is nasty. It’s not just a visual effect. There’s a health effect. Right. That’s the whole point of trying to clean the diesels and trying to clean even gasoline engines where the same emissions aren’t [01:29:00] as visually obvious.

Right. But there’s plenty of diesels that make power that don’t blow smoke like some of these bro dozers that you see going to the mall or going to Lowe’s or wherever they’re going. Yes, I get it. It’s cool, it sounds neat, whatever. But you’re doing a lot of harm and you’re making it worse for the rest of us.

That Yes. Are diesel loyalists. Right. And diesel enthusiasts. And we would love to see this technology stick around. So my plea here is just leave it alone. Don’t ruin it for the rest of us. Exactly. Exactly. Don’t be that one kid that keeps us all inside from.

Uhhuh. We remember those days, right? Oh, there’s always that one kid. And then suddenly we all couldn’t go to recess. A hundred percent we’re all on Saturday detention together on some happier news I found as a potential stocking stuffer. As we’re getting now into the fall, start thinking ahead, right?

There’s only 90 some odd [01:30:00] days left until Christmas. Harbor Freight is now offering its version of the 10 millimeter Essential Socket Set made by Pittsburgh. It comes in at a great price of $16 and 99 cents, and has deep, short swivel wobble, and all sorts of different tens that you’re going to lose. So if you’d like, just burn the $17.

Don’t buy the sockets and move on with life . Buy two shots while you’re there. Hundred percent. So our last lowered expectation comes out of China. They are testing a magnet powered floating car that they were able to get up to 143 miles per hour. This was done over top of a conductor rail. So yes. You’re going hold a second.

Aren’t there trains that do that? The whole maglev thing? Yes. Yeah. Like maglev, essentially it’s maglev in cars. Wait, but it’s, it’s a car, not a train. So you’re just saying it’s a train [01:31:00] car and not the whole train, like I’m confused. No, it’s literally no. It is literally a car, not a train car. A car vehicle.

Four wheels, doors, windshield. Yeah, that kind of car. So how does it work with the tractor beam trailer set up from Toyota ? It’s all coming together now. I see what’s going on. I see what’s happening. I don’t doubt they can do this cuz obviously if you can do it on a fricking train, I mean you can’t be that hard on a car.

How do you practically execute this, right? Because if you have to put the rails in, you could just put a train in . Yes, yes. And move more people. Stop using logic. At any rate, Sarah, you brought up Queen Elizabeth earlier and I wanna bring up Princess Diana. All right. Do it because as we shift into rich people things, princess Diana’s much loved Ford Escort RS Turbo series one came [01:32:00] up for auction recently, and I guess everybody but me knew that Princess Diana basically drove a hot patch, a liftback.

This thing is sick. Like who knew she was a car gal? Like, this is super cool. It is. I liked it. Oh, she’s pretty. Look at that. I mean, she’s a mint condition. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. This is like the baby’s sister to the Sierra Cosworth and the escort Rs, the escort rally car that we’re used to seeing. It’s a two-door sedan, but it’s got all the same d n as the rally car did or what became the focus later.

Right. So this is like a super cool car. I don’t really know the back history on these, like how many they sold in Britain or anything like that, but I can tell you being an RS model Ford, there’s not a lot of them. Yeah. It only has apparently 22,000 miles on it. 22,961 mile. I love this picture of William in the back in the car seat.

Mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm. . Apparently she [01:33:00] also had a red escort Cabe. Oh. So apparently she’s like Ford girl, . She is a Ford girl. That’s awesome. Wow. Was a Ford girl. Very cool. Yeah. Always with us in her hearts. But do you want to venture a guess as to what her prized RS Turbo Series one sold for? Oh no. 125,000 pounds.

I know the number. Oh, all right. Audience, a earth shattering 722,500 British pounds for a car that probably costs 7,000 bucks. . Really? That’s how much. Oh, I didn’t know the number then. I’m really bad at this game. I’m care about it. We play it every month. We’re not good at it either.

Wow. But if that wasn’t enough, some millionaire bought a Bentley Arage and converted into a woody station wagon because apparently he wants to be the [01:34:00] British version of Clark Griswold. I don’t understand this girl at all. Oh, that thing is, uh, I didn’t even, I don’t wanna look at that ever again. . It’s idiots.

I mean, I like most station wagons, but this is hideous. Ugh. Not, not like a big Bentley person. Like they don’t speak to me. They don’t, their looks don’t really draw me in. I get it. If I was a rich person, I guess, and it was like my chauffeur, I’m sure it’s very luxurious, but like this does not improve the looks, that’s an impressive tongue in cheek move.

I can’t see it as anything other than that, but, . Oof. I can see buying a PT Cruiser and not this with the same faux wood paneling. I mean, that’s the only time I’ll probably ever utter those words because this is just so bad, . But if you find this car exciting, you could have it for the low, low price of $130,000.

Wow. Hot. Wait, what? Wow. No. Okay. No, you can keep that. Thank you . Yeah, [01:35:00] you it not Take my money. Have it. I’ll keep my money. Thank you very much. So the next one is Rich people, thingss. When I first saw this article, all you see is a picture of a plain Jane, silver, cayenne, eg. Tore, sorry, cayenne, eg . And you see it like straddling, it’s a mountainous terrain.

And all I could think of when I saw that, I didn’t even read the article. All I needed to see was that picture. And I’m like, that’s some rich people saying if you’re taking your Porsche Cayenne rock climbing, essentially like bouldering through. And apparently this person, this owner, took their bone stock cayenne through Moab for egg, through Moab Offroading, rock crawling.

It’s a testament to Volkswagen Engineering. That’s all I’m gonna say. And so, yeah. And so I guess the real moral of the story is the thing made it so, who knew that the Cayenne was an amazing off rotor? You know, who knew? It’s the people that wanted it to weigh [01:36:00] more than it does? Because you know what, it’s not heavy enough to be a tax writeoff.

And you’re probably saying to yourself, what in the world are you talking about? So did you know. Going back to our Cadillac Escalade, X T pickup truck, XYZ p dq, super turbocharge Blackhawk Supersonic Edition. If a vehicle weighs more than 6,000 pounds and is used 50% or more of the time for work purposes under Section 1 79, are we, hold on, are we doing like a math word problem here?

Yeah, I gotta, I gotta lay it out for you. Okay. So if you do all these things, if you check all these boxes under section 1 79 of the tax code, you can write off your Mercedes G Wagon, Cadillac Escalade, infinity QX 80, all because of this one tax loophole. I. Have no response to that. , what is business, exactly?

What is allowable under the business criteria? I mean, that is a loosely defined [01:37:00] term.

what is your business? If you spend all day recording podcasts, you could be driving around and that’s business, right? Because I don’t know. I’m just saying, I’m just saying maybe you really like this loophole and you just don’t know it yet. , figure out your podcast business. I air quotes, I use it for business.

And I mean, we’ve seen that in the past too. This is a marketing vehicle. You’re like, what does that mean? How does that even work? But apparently there is a tax write off for these types of extremely heavy vehicles. So if you’re in the market for the new 9,000 plus pound Hummer and you use it for work, you can write it off on your taxes under section 1 79.

So keep that in mind while you’re crab walking like LeBron, right, your yard. You know what? That’s a good commercial actually. I really enjoyed that commercial. So kudos to them. I don’t get it. You’ll have to explain it to me. It’s like those memes that people send me and I. Why is this funny? They’re like, ha ha, ha [01:38:00] ha.

I’m like, I don’t, I don’t get it. Like whatever. It’s like watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I don’t, I don’t understand . So anyway, speaking of things we don’t understand, did you know before we get into our fan favorite section of Florida? Man, that Blue Oyster Cult? Yes. The music super group from the seventies and eighties, they came out with the Epic Classic.

Don’t Fear The Reaper, put out a song in 2020 called Florida. Man. I did know that. I do not think I’ve listened to it though, or I can’t remember if I have. Oh, it is epic. I will have to read. Listen to it. Florida people . Oh yeah. As a Bard of Floridian News. Why don’t you sing us some tales of Floridians?

I’m just taking a moment to soe in these lyrics, you know? Should you settle down in the Sunshine State, you should know of its tangled fate. How the conquistadora came to Florida long before it had a name. Florida man. Florida man. Florida man. Florida man. I’m, [01:39:00] that’s the Refl.

Hi. On meth. There’s little best. The neighbor’s cat is on her breath. Florida man, these are great lyrics. Dad dreams, he’s got red Wings of Fire, speaking of red Wings and chickens. So there apparently have been a slew of truck spills across the greater United States, if you were not aware all in this month.

Yeah, all pretty much very late August into early this month, all the way from as far west as California to down south in Florida. We got everything from tomato sauce. Or fresh tomatoes, which is just horrific to behold as an Italian to see all those glorious tomatoes go to waste strewn across the highway.

Run over pulverized, you’re ketchup. Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, you had the Alfredo sauce carrying truck that overturned in Tennessee, to which [01:40:00] people first said how wonderful the highway smells for about the first 30 minutes, and then it smelled like garbage rotting in the hot pen. Then we even had, in, I think Georgia, we had more groceries.

Slewed across the highway, just random groceries as the public’s grocer truck equivalent. Giant Safeway, Kroger, whoever just spilled their contents. And then we get super awkward in Oklahoma. Okay, and S F W. Not safe for work. This truck was carrying some adult items. recreational use adult items, let’s just say.

And those apparently could have made the morning commute a little confusing for some people bringing their kids to school as the paraphernalia was strunger strewn across the highways. Oh my god. Mommy. What’s that? Sarah? How would you explain [01:41:00] that now? . Oh, and then. Down in Florida you had all the Pedialyte, so not, it wasn’t bad enough that we had like the baby formula shortage and all that stuff.

Now you had the Pedialyte shortage because the semi-truck in a train collided. It was carrying all the Pedialyte. Do you know how sl, how bisous that stuff is? If you hit that with your car, you might as well be on ice. Can you imagine hitting pedia light all over the road? I don’t know what is going on.

What is happening? What happens to the tractor beam trailer when it hits pedia light when it hits pedia light or Alfredo sauce? These are good questions. What if that sauce was on the maglev car? I don’t even know what would happen. Lastly, back in Georgia, cuz once in Georgia wasn’t enough. Back in Georgia, you had a truck crash that it was not only hauling.

But it was hauling chicken parts. And I just wanna know who rolled where was the truck with the barbecue grills that overturned? I’m bringing [01:42:00] the potato salad. Let’s have a tailgate right on Highway 60 ones. Can we just coordinate these catastrophes? Can we just put our heads together, put some of these trucks in the same proximity with the question is, what is going on?

Do we have Teslas that are coming at them, like missiles like we’ve seen in the past that are causing these semis to tip over? Or is this a conspiracy by the Teamsters Union to, you know, fight back the evolution? You know, you hear all these, all these things all the time, but it is pretty crazy to see.

Not one, but like seven of these incidents over the course of a month. And it’s just like, that seems like a lot. And I was wondering that myself too. I was like, do these always happen? And we just didn’t notice and suddenly we’re noticing because now normally they hit the bridges, right. And open like sardine camps.

Right. And yeah, so, you know, I think I’m gonna have to start like looking out for these now going forward. Yeah. Like is this a thing that’s happening all the time? What can we find next month? But this next one is [01:43:00] a little video, which it’s about four minutes long. It’s well worth a watch. It was posted by one of our members, and it’s a compilation of runaway vehicles from the looks of a no people were hurt even though many vehicles were harmed throughout the making of this compilation.

But some of these. Fuck, wild. Unreal. So basically there’s people that left their cars out of gear, out of park and they walk away and suddenly they just start going in reverse. And the ludicrous thing is the number of people, and I guess you know, they say if you’re following, you might as well try to fly, right?

Like your car’s rolling away. You might as well try to hold it like your Hercules are Superman and have any chance of stopping it. Like, I mean the, the smart people were the ones that just sat there looking, defeated and watched it like crash . Yeah. Yeah. The one woman that walked away as it went into the woods and it was like, yep, that’s it.

We’re good. . You know what? She was holding her child. So [01:44:00] kudos to her for not, not sacrificing her child for the thing, but they have like a little thing in the corner. These were all across the globe. A number of them in the us I mean one one year close to home with it, apparently. Don Johnson, duffle Ganger, Miami Vice Post pan.

Where is this guy? I wanna meet him. I’ve never seen anybody deliver mail in a Sears sucker suit. What is this? I don’t know. I have not seen the Miami Vice mailman, but I hope to one day cuz that’s hilarious. He’s in Baltimore. I guarantees that Baltimore’s gotta be. Oh. But at any rate worth the watch for a few chuckles.

There were a couple near misses from people, but uh, luckily I think most people were unharmed in this crazy, I have my own Florida man story. It happened right here, close to home, right near Summit Point, and it stars a G T M man, one of our members who as we were going through and cataloging an estate, found a grenade.

No. Yes, I was there for this. I was not the one that [01:45:00] discovered him. I’m gonna keep the innocent innocent, even though I, he knows who he is and he’s listening to this . We called the sheriff’s department immediately, and then you would’ve thought it was like a schwartzen anchor movie. There were cop cars coming out of everywhere and firetrucks and this and that, and everybody had to clear out and all the neighbors.

And you have to get 500 yards away. And if you’re in the house, stay in the house. Cause now it’s a bomb shelter. I mean, all this stuff, right? Wait, wait, stay in the house with the grenade? No, no. The grenade was found in boxes that we had been moving around from the basement to the garage to the other garage.

Like carelessly, like I just chucked that box over there. And there’s a, so you were fully involved in this? Oh, you were a participant. Oh, you’re a hundred percent witness to what went down . So we find this thing, actually my wife found it turns to our friend and says, what is this? And he goes, holy shit.

Grabs it runs out of the garage and chucks it under the trailer? No, he’s through it. Yeah, he threw it under the trailer and I’m [01:46:00] like, well, you probably, I guess, wouldn’t hopefully know if it was like the pin was out or however grenade works, I guess. . Meanwhile, I’m like, what did you guys find? Oh, we found a grenade.

I’m like, cool. And then I turned back to, to doing what I was doing. Like, you guys are messing with me. Like, you’re full of crap. No, for real. There’s a grenade. And he’s like, oh, I put it under the trailer. Here’s a picture that I just took of it. Like after he jumped it under the trailer, right. Sends it to his father.

His father’s like, you know, call the cops. Right? Whatever. Again, they show up all this stuff. It looks like just a, like a war scene is going on. They make us all push, back hours are wasted. They had to call in some guy. We’re like, where’s he? He’s Strausberg. Pennsylvania, like where is this guy coming from?

Like that’s hours away. Oh no, it took him forever. Some other part of Virginia, this guy gets there and all this commotion and he comes up afterwards with a shiting grin on his face and unscrews the grenade right in front of us. He goes, there’s nothing wrong with this thing. You should have seen the people’s faces just turn white.

Like we’re all about to blow up [01:47:00] as he’s opening this thing up. Right. At that point, I had already Googled. I had looked into it. I had done some research in the newspaper article that came out in the Clark County Gazette. I was really surprised where all this information came from. Cause there no reporters show up.

No, there wasn’t news trucks or anything like that. I’m like, how did they get all this information? But what they got wrong is that it was a fake grenade. No, no. . It was a real grenade. It was a training grenade that had been disassembled. It was enured. When the inspector guy came, he had already figured that out.

Part of the giveaway was that the grenade, you know, had the military stamping on it. It was legit. It wasn’t like whoever had it bought it at like ranger surplus or something like that. Like you can buy ’em for like 12 bucks. They’re like ornaments, you know, you can put on your desk. Normally they have the whole drill in the bottom to tell you that they’re empty.

This was legitimate. This was a leftover from a military veteran, but it was empty. The charges were taken out. And the reason, it’s not a fake grenade, it’s a training grenade. They’re actually designed, [01:48:00] you can change the element inside. And the way they work is you pull the pin, you throw it, and there’s some mercury concoction that goes pop and makes a bunch of smoke, and then that’s it.

If it had been a real grenade designed differently and all this kind of stuff. So all this commotion, all this back and forth, lots of really pissed off people because how many times do you get a call? We got a grenade, right? So , it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a mess, but So did they let, did they let the grenade stay?

No, no, they had to confiscate it, so, oh yeah, that was kind of a bummer. But it makes for a good story. But I think we might be giving out, you know, the fake ones for Christmas this year. Oh, ooh, ooh. All right. Don’t gimme one pass. No thank you. Just gimme a picture. That, that was fine. So our last one here, I saved this one for last because not only is it probably the best, but it’s also timely with Halloween coming up.

Oh, oh no, this [01:49:00] isn’t like the Orlando drive-through haunted house thing, is it? No. It depends what you think. But cinder fell. Out in Missouri, he decided to paddle in an 846 pound pumpkin that he had grown. He carved out this hollowed pumpkin and he paddled down the Missouri River . How epic is that? This is car adjacent people.

This is vehicle adjacent. This is boating. Okay. It’s transportation. It’s transportation. This counts. I’m gonna start a car company called Gord

So how far did he get? How did this end, what happened and why He is set to take over a 2016 Guinness World Record. Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a standing record for going down a river in a Gord. There is a record of a 25 mile trip in Grand Forks, North Dakota to Oslo, Minnesota.

So this guy, I guess, is [01:50:00] trying to beat that record. He paddled his pumpkin for 11 hours. How does this play out? You tell your buddy, the motor on the dinghies busted. Let’s just climb into the pumpkin . Let’s go fishing. We’ll take the pumpkin . How does this work? What a great bumper sticker. Gone fishing and you put a pumpkin

Oh, yes, yes. What we know what’s happening. Did he make it? Did he do it? I’m confused about the status of this endeavor. So apparently he did 38 miles down the Missouri River. and yes, he did complete it. And he’s quoted saying, I ain’t gonna do this again, , I’m done with this. So I think there’s a whole process to Guinness World Records validating something.

So I’m not sure how long that takes. So I guess we might need to, yeah, I think they have to have like a witness there or something, right? Yeah. Like I hope there did it. Yeah. Yeah, there’s gotta be whole bunch of evidence and stuff. So we’ll [01:51:00] see. We gotta check in on this in a couple months. See if he’s now Guinness World Record Holder.

All right, so I got a top tip for this guy when he does it again, so we can talk about it and soon No, no, no, no. I ain’t gonna do this again. He said , he ain’t going do it. He ain’t gonna do it. I’m done this. I’m not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. But if he was gonna do it again to keep it car adjacent, because it is a pumpkin and is such a big pumpkin, the walls of that pumpkin are pretty thick.

I think he should carve in the Honda badge and on the back he can write element in Sharpie, . And he’s good to go. . Oh my gosh. You’re welcome listeners. You’re welcome. There’s some bad dad jokes there. Well folks, it’s time that we go behind the pit wall and talk about motor sports news. So what’s going on in the open wheel Formula one community?

Tanya, I know without Brad here, this is all you. Oh man. Whole bunch of stuff like, you know, Ferrari being Ferrari, so they blew up and caught on fire. . No, but you know, looking great and [01:52:00] qualifying, getting pulled positions and then just going home on race. It’s disappointing, but it’s becoming quite comical.

The memes are getting good, so yeah, not much goodness to report on Ferrari, but a lot of just turnover and driver changes. And the most interesting thing of the last race, which is also quite comical, was album very last minute ended up out of the race with a appendicitis so he wasn’t feeling great and then ended up having to go get surgery last minute.

And it was like a whole thing. Like he, he like reacted badly coming outta the anesthesia too and like, but he’s okay. He’s o, he’s good. But they put the reserve driver in Mr. Nick DeVry, I think his name is, and like he got like a top 10. Finish his teammate. Yeah. He’s so much better than like, I don’t see Latifee having a seat because this guy just got the first points like how bad is it that you’re like 21 outta 20 drivers and points.

Cause your reserve driver came in . He had a resume, he did a job [01:53:00] interview and he passed that job interview. Like if he doesn’t get probably a seat, Having shown that based on his performance. I, I mean that’s, I don’t know who’s in charge. So is that why Herda lost his seat? Because now they gotta put this guy out there.

I don’t know the hor Well the whole Herda thing is all the drama around the, the super license and he doesn’t have enough points cuz he hasn’t done enough races and indie and this, that and the other. And you know, the whole scary thing. If they make an exception for him, then it opens the floodgates to all these other people.

But then I think I saw an article that was like, well then like Kimmy and even Verta should never have gotten their license or something. And I didn’t follow into that. So I don’t know the whole story behind it for what is right now. Her does not moving in yet cuz they’re sticking to their license rules.

But there are other movements with Ricardo getting kicked out. Yikes. And then they finally, that whole will he. He do, they don’t they with Pietri and that he was with Alpine and then he’s not, apparently he’s being signed now to [01:54:00] McLaren officially. So there’s a bunch of vehicle driver changes.

Unfortunately, Schumacher is no longer, I guess, on the Ferrari team anymore. So I guess they’re not pleased with his house performance, unfortunately. So he won’t no longer be part of the Ferrari driving team. Well, they can’t afford to replace cars after every race. Well, you know what, the last several races, he hasn’t really had any incidents.

He hasn’t put ’em in the wall or anything like that. So he is, he’s been finishing, so, you know, that’s good. He’s got big shoes to fill and that’s unfortunate carrying that last name and the heritage and thinking that he’s gonna jump into the Ferrari and suddenly he’s gonna be his dad. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but there’s only one Michael Schumacher.

Uh, it’s tough. Who knows? He needs more seat time like we all do. Right? And that’s, that’s the recipe for success is more seat time. The question is, where does he get his seat time? Does he walk away from Formula One for a while and go to m s A or go to w e c go run prototypes or, or indie [01:55:00] cars, come to the states, get some more experience.

I know that F1 is the top of the totem pole, but a lot of these guys. Have experienced from other places, and then they had ventured out afterwards. Look at Juan Papa Montoya, look at Alonzo, you know, trying to go for the Triple crown and, and all that kind of stuff. There’s other opportunities. There’s been plenty of people that left f1, take Olivier Penns, he ran for pros.

He was a basically a back marker, way back in the day. He went to touring car and he kicked butt. Like he found his discipline. Right. And maybe, uh, Schumacher needs to do the same thing. I don’t know. I was wondering, BES retired, they’re friends. Maybe he could become more of a coach or a mentor for time, world champion himself, Sebastian Bes.

So maybe there’s something he, I, I think he’s already probably to some extent been working with Schumacher, but maybe there’s something more there he could do if, if there is a path or, or anything for him to be as a sliver, as great as his father. Right. So that’s very true and I think the last bit of hokey pokey that’s been going on in the open wheel world [01:56:00] has to do with Alex plu, right?

There was a whole thing about he was leaving Indy car to go to McLaren. Same kind of thing as like Colin Hurda, and now we’re talking about he’s sticking with Chip assi after all of that stuff. So, okay, fine, whatever. It’s always like this, this time of the year, right? What does the next season look like?

You know, if it isn’t the new cars that are coming out, we all get excited about that. It’s the drama of the drivers changing teams. The bigger question is, and maybe for Sarah, is how’s it all gonna play out and drive to survive? I don’t know. I’m dying to watch this next season to see the other perspective of what I’m watching right now.

It’s crazy. I don’t know. I, when we were talking about Schumacher, I didn’t realize that he’d been let go, so I’m kind of processing that information as we speak. There’s gonna be a lot to catch up on. It’s gonna be all off track. Drama. Yeah. It’s not gonna be on track drama for this coming season. So much movement.

So much movement. All the on track drama will be making fun of Ferrari, unfortunately. , [01:57:00] right? I think so. I think so. Sorry guys. Sorry, and since we’re bringing that up and, and to talk a little bit about what we talked about on your episode, you became a Formula One fan as a result of Drive to Survive. No, you’re absolutely right and I will admit it freely all day long.

I love it. It’s been kind of a gateway for me to start watching and learning about other races too. So one of the women I work with, our associate editor, Shannon McBride, or Shannon Scott, sorry, she just got married. Shannon Scott, she’s a big indie car person. And so we published an article about watching an indie car race for your first time, and she provided her perspective along with one of our newbie writers.

And so, you know, we’re all kind of getting excited about that even though it’s the tail end of the season. But in any case, it’s like figuring out, okay, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna be maybe go see some races this coming year? Because it would be really fun to put all those pieces together in [01:58:00] person.

I’m really excited about that. I would say probably one of the best pro race weekends, if you want to get a taste of multiple disciplines at the same time was actually at the Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, where they had not only IndyCar, indie Lights, TransAm and SRO World Challenge there all in the same weekend.

So for one price of admission you got to see four different disciplines of racing, which was pretty cool. Oh, that’s really cool. I would love to do that. Okay. I’m putting that, I’m writing that down. writing that down and to do that next time, because I would love to have that comparison. Exactly. And Nashville’s an awesome city, great place to be.

Street courses are unique compared to anything else. I mean, going to Rhode Atlanta or Watkins Glen or High Plains or wherever, great. But a city course is always sort of different. They gotta make changes and how do we go around that building and they just blew that one up last year. You know, things like that.

So the city courses are a lot of fun and it was a great time being there. Live at the Music City Grand Prix, so I highly [01:59:00] recommended. There’s also other street tracks you can check out, like St. Petersburg, long Beach. There’s a few others, but those, those are the big three on most of the sports car and IndyCar calendars, you know, outside of when they add like, uh, bell Isle, like Troy and things like that.

So there’s some cool stuff out there. So if you’ve never been to a street race, definitely check it out. I’d love to. And speaking of that, there was an article that gives you no information that the Las Vegas Grand Prix is planning affordable zone of tickets. Whatever that means. Whatever that, what does that mean?

affordable for who? So if you’re interested in Formula One at Las Vegas, keep your eyes out for these affordable price seats. I wonder that myself, and I also wonder which high-rise casino is really the one to get a room at and just watch it from there with the TV on to get full coverage and then looking out over your balcony to see the race and hearing the race live.

I think that’s really the strategy. Forego buying the F1 tickets and sitting in [02:00:00] the grandstand. Get yourself a room at the Bellagio or at the Venetian. It’s the Las Vegas version of the yacht and the Monaco Harbor. Correct? Exactly. Yeah, I like that. Which you needed to reserve your ho, your hotel room then three years ago,

It’s okay. Lamont’s is way cooler. . So as we segue into sports, car racing a little bit, I wanna bring up something really important. The SRO World Challenge season is coming to a close. I will say that I wasn’t able to make it to Road America this year. We’re planning on going next year and shout out to guest and friend of the show, Andy Pilgrim, for an epic battle in GT three.

If you haven’t seen the replay race from GT America, front Road America, it was absolutely spectacular that Mercedes was all over ’em and he fought ’em to the very end. It was a very good race. I will also say there’s one more race left in the world challenge schedule, and that’s Indianapolis. That’s where they’re finishing their year, running the old F1 track.

So that’s gonna be a [02:01:00] lot of fun to see as well. But on the M side of the house, As you guys are listening to this episode, this coming weekend is the big one. It’s the end of the Emta season closing with the Petite Lamont at Road Atlanta. That’s the 12 hour Enduro at Road Atlanta, and it’s also the final bow for the Daytona prototype cars.

We’re closing the chapter on that book, and next year we move into the new rules and regulations as we get closer and closer to a combined W E C and IMSA rule book, where you’re gonna have, like we had in the A L M S days where the cars could cross over from one series to another next year. Also brings, like we talked about back in the summer on the Lamonds showcased episode of the Drive-through all the changes that are coming to Lamonds next year.

Next year is the big show. So I’m really looking forward to closing out this season. I’ve only got a couple track days myself left, but the Petite LeMans is [02:02:00] always a favorite and I was very fortunate to go last year in person. And if you have the opportunity to go to petite in person, it’s well worth going to.

All right, so local news and events brought to us by collector car guide.net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. So what is coming up for October? Well, we’ve got GTM and Garage Style Magazine, hosting a happy hour in sponsor appreciation event during the A A C A Fall Nationals East in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

We’ll be at the Tattered Flag Distillery from five to 9:00 PM on Wednesday, October 5th. Food and drinks are on us. Lots of great giveaways. Come meet people and you can RSVP for this event on our members website. Go to club.gt motorsports.org. Click uh, events or jump over to CCG for those details as well.

And meanwhile, also in October. Packed full of events. We’ve got the third annual Audra Newport Concourses and Motor Week, presented [02:03:00] by the Audra Automobile Museum, and this kicks off in Newport, Rhode Island, September 29th through October 2nd. Also, world-class Bobby Nuon Jr. Petroliana and Soda Pop advertising collection will be the centerpiece at the Morpheus auction, September 30 through October 3rd.

This is a 32 year collection that you do not want to miss. The Corvette Club of America 40th annual car show is being held at Sport Chevrolet in Silver Spring, Maryland. We actually went to one of those a couple years ago. It was number 44. I don’t remember what number there. I drove by it last year. It’s almost 50 years of this car show being at the same place.

Pretty cool. Wow. The Anma Fall Grand Tourist. That’s off from Pismo Beach in California on October the sixth. Broad Arrow Auctions presents the No Reserve Jim Taylor, passion for the drive auction in Albany, New York, October 14th and 15th. Break fix sponsors american muscle.com are [02:04:00] holding the world’s largest charity car show to raise money for.

Make-A-Wish in Monton, Pennsylvania, October 15th. And don’t forget about the Black Forest Industry’s 11th annual Octoberfest event. And there are tons more of events just like this and all their details are available over at Collector Car Guide dot. Thanks Tanya. And now it’s time for the h hpd junkie.com Trackside report.

So let’s talk about what’s coming up in October for our area. I’m actually gonna be at the NJ MP event with Audi Club Northeast Region on October the third and fourth. That is a Monday Tuesday event. But the reason it’s so awesome is that it’s two days at Thunderbolt and a lot of people really want to do two days at Thunderbolt.

It’s hard to get, happens to be on a weekday, but I’m looking forward to being there. So if you’re coming out, give me a shout look for me and my mark one out, e t t ripping up the track sounding like a rally car. That being said, there’s a lot of other groups that are winding down their seasons. In October, you’re seeing a [02:05:00] lot of fall finale events, but the folks over at Chin Track days still have 10 more events on their schedule ranging from locations like Seabring Road, Atlanta, Daytona International Speedway.

Koda, the Circuit of the Americas, Eagles Canyon, and even National Corvette Museum. So more on that@chintrackdays.com. If you wanna try out something completely different and you live out West or Points West, check out the California 300 Offroad event that’s being brought to you by the same folks that put together the Mint 400.

And if you remember, I went to the Mint 400 last year out in the deserts of Nevada and it was an absolutely amazing experience. And you can catch a previous podcast episode with Matt Martelli. That’s all about the mints and the efforts that they’re doing. The California cleanup and everything that goes along with that and details for that event are also available over on Collector car guide.net.

Like I said earlier, most importantly, this weekend, if you’re listening to this episode on the date, it airs [02:06:00] September the 28th through October. The first is IMSA Petite LeMans at Road Atlanta, 12 Hour Enduro. It’s awesome. Put it on, watch it. If it’s your first sports car race. Ever. This is multi-class racing.

At its best. You’re gonna have full-blown prototypes. The gentleman drivers, Porsches and Corvette’s and BMWs that you recognize all racing at the same time. And the beauty and the magic of sports car racing is that it’s sometimes three to five races happening at the same time. It can be a little confusing to keep track of who’s on first, but that’s part of the game and that’s why these races are a lot longer too.

So you have plenty of time to get caught up. More importantly, next year, nasa, the National Auto Sport Association, the championships will take place for the first time at Pittsburgh International Race Complex. A track that a lot of us here at G T GTM know well, and we love making the trip out too. So look for those 2023 runoffs for NASA and the club racing time trials, et cetera, to be held at [02:07:00] Pittsburgh next year.

So we’re really looking forward to that as well. And in case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired this month. September was action packed as we went back to school with Mountain Man Dan, taking on questions from an eight year old panelist in an episode called, can You Explain It to a Third Grader?

All the records were broken when Lynn St. James came on Break Fix to share her incredible journey from Club Racer to IndyCar Rookie of the Year. Catch the behind the scenes on our Patreon. There’s so many reasons for why we shouldn’t do something, but open track, track day insurance gives you the confidence to put those fears aside and get out there with your car today.

Tune in to learn more about their coverage policies for your track day vehicle. Do you mentally sabotage your own performance and want to know how to stop? Do you want to learn how to reduce your anxiety in the race, environment and life in general? Do you want to know how to control your focus more effectively in the race, car, and beyond than tune into maximum performance and mental sabotage with Dr.

Del Air? What should I [02:08:00] buy? Classic and collector cars. Learn from our panel of Petrolhead Juggernauts Mark s Shank, our nineties car expert, Chris Bright from Collector, part exchange, Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine and Rob Parr from Collector Car Guide as they work through what cars a first time collector should invest in.

Thank you to all the guests that came on the show this month. We have some really exciting episodes lined up for the fall of 2022, so be sure to tune in to more episodes of the show. Check our behind the scenes and bonus content on Patreon. And don’t forget about our new Facebook group for the show where you can chat with guests, co-hosts and get questions answered.

That’s right, and I think we forgot about an episode. There’s a special extra September episode airing after this one, two days from now, and that’s Sarah’s episode on a Girl’s Guide to cars. So do you wanna give everybody a little teaser about what we talked about, what it’s all about? Oh well, it was a really fun episode where I just kind of introduced myself and we talked a little bit about the history of a girls’ guide to cars, kind of where we’re coming [02:09:00] from and who our audience is.

But also we talked a lot about how we want to talk a little bit more about Motorsport, and so it’s been really fun to get to know the audience here so that we can, you know, learn about you, you can learn about us, and we can just have more fun together in this Motorsport environment. So some other quick shout outs to our members, Brian Shaw is celebrating.

Seven years as a GTM member and Bobby Paul Shock and Jeremy Rinker are celebrating three years with gtm. So if you’re interested in learning more about Grant Touring Motorsport’s membership and Club hop on over to club.gt motorsports.org and we would be remiss to not give a special thanks to our guest host Sarah Lacey from a Girls’ Guide to Cars for filling in for Brad this month.

And we hope to have her on another break Picks episode sometime in the future. Anytime you want, you are always welcome. And for everyone else, if you’d like to be part of the conversation, hit us up. We’re always excited to have more people on the show. So, Sarah, like we close our [02:10:00] regular episodes, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?

I just had such a great time with you guys and appreciate getting together with you and learning more about you guys and and talking about us. You can find us online at www.agirlsguidetocars.com. We’re on Instagram at a girls guide to number two cars and on Facebook as well. A girls’ guide to number two cars.

And of course we gotta thank our executive producer of the drive-through series. The person that keeps. Somewhat organized, sane, and on track. Pun intended, the illustrious Tanya, because you’re never more prepared than when you’re not prepared. That is the slogan of this show, isn’t it? ? And remember, folks, for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the following article and show notes available@gtmotorsports.org.

And as Brad likes to always say, without all the [02:11:00] members, families and friends that support gtm, without all of you, none of this would be possible. Outro, . I’m surprised that ducks didn’t come up again. I love the ducks. Oh, I bit my tongue a lot on the ducks cuz I don’t know if this is a family show. . . There are a lot of moments I thought about, uh, ducking, talking about ducking things and whatever.

Thanks guys. Oh, thank you. It was really nice. Well, and I hope I did a good job. I hope I made Brad proud. I hope I stood in. All right,

well 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 a idiot in a Volvo with us. Bright son behind me. Hi Lena. The window and scream. Hey, watch A to do blind me, my wife says maybe.[02:12:00]

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 Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt 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 G T M 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 [02:13:00] 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.