B/F: The Drive Thru #33

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Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is GTM’s monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, Hooked on Driving, AmericanMuscle. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the Drive Thru, look no further than www.

gtmotorsports. org. Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to drive through episode number three. This is our monthly recap, where we put together a main view of automotive. Motorsport and random car. I

Crew Chief Eric: see the L he showed up. This episode is probably going to be recorded on some sort of recycled digital media, right? It is Earth Day after all.

Executive Producer Tania: Earth Day is April 22nd.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s Earth [00:01:00] Day. E R F.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I mean, it’s 420, so maybe we should all have green backgrounds. Earth.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why it’s E R F earth.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s herb day. It’s oh, there we go. It’s herb day. I like it. Tanya is in a really good mood.

Crew Chief Eric: 420 at the time of this recording, this month’s drive through. For the first time in three, three episodes, we are going to focus on Earth Day, Green Initiatives, EVs and Concepts and the like.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, before we start, I want to apologize to Mark Hewitt. I don’t know for what yet, but I’m going to go ahead and apologize to him now. This is going to turn into the Jimmy Kimmel saying, we’re sorry, Matt Damon. We don’t have enough time for you today. We’ll, we’ll get you next week. I apologize, Mark Hewitt, for whatever I do this month that I shouldn’t have.

So. There you go,

Crew Chief Eric: but thanks for listening. Yeah, absolutely.

Crew Chief Brad: Thanks for listening. We appreciate your support.

Crew Chief Eric: Previous months. I kept talking about an event that was coming up at Watkins [00:02:00] Glenn called the green Grand Prix. Maybe it just flew by your desk. Maybe you stopped and listened to the pre release episode that we put out.

What exactly is the green Grand Prix? It’s been going on for 19 years now, sponsored by Toyota. It used to be in the old days, they would do a time distance rally around Lake Seneca. It was about 80 miles around the lake. It’s evolved over the years. It’s held at Watkins Glen International, and it’s basically 80 miles of the track, which comes out to roughly 26 laps of the track over about a 90 minute period.

Crew Chief Brad: And what was the point of the event?

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s a memorial event for Doris Bovee. And basically she was an environmentalist very much about, you know, the green initiative, all this kind of stuff, even going back 20 years. And so this event is in honor of her. It’s a time distance rally. It really kicked off in the early days of the Prius to help showcase the early hybrids and stuff like that.

And so they’ve continued to perpetuate the event, grow the event. It’s [00:03:00] actually become a STEM event as well. So a lot of the participants are from surrounding colleges and universities. They invited 1200 people to this event, which was pretty cool.

Crew Chief Brad: The whole point of the thing was to do the 80 laps in a certain amount of time.

And.

Crew Chief Eric: I was invited to not only participate in the event, but cover the event from different perspectives, being part of the media team that was there, we live streamed multiple portions of the day. I didn’t really know what to expect, right? I’ve done some other rallies and gym kind of like things in the past, but I’ve never done a TSD.

I was very fortunate to go into this event with my family. Quote unquote alternative fuel vehicle, which by their definition was alternative to gasoline. So diesel does qualify for that. And in full disclosure, they had to kind of like hem and haw about it and get approval. And then finally they go, okay, cool.

I’m out there in my, you know, 5, 000 pound Jeep [00:04:00] diesel and, you know, live streaming from the truck and all this kind of stuff, you know, I wasn’t expecting anything. I kind of had an idea of what it might do, but I really wasn’t expecting the day to play out the way it did. Time distance rally by yourself with no navigator is more challenging than I thought it would be, you know, kind of talking to some of the folks that won overall and kind of looking at the scores and stuff.

And I was like, well, how did you guys do it? And they’re like, Oh, well, we’re calculating as we’re going along, how quickly we should be going down the straightaway and, you know, how much speed we can scrub off and all this kind of stuff to really maintain that average lap speed around the track. And so I was sort of going at it.

Too much of face value like, all right, I’m just going to set the cruise control and we’ll do what we can do. But in reality, the more I looked at it, my lap times were consistent. I don’t know. I wasn’t really hitting the, maybe the number that I was supposed to be hitting. My lap should have been slower. I noticed that some of the folks that during the award ceremony had won.

I had passed those cars. I was like, man,

Crew Chief Brad: they’re going really slow. So [00:05:00] you had a target mile per hour that you had to be 46 miles per hour was your target.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. It’s the average lap speed. Even though I was talking to the live stream, I was sort of kind of thinking about it. They gave you a window. You weren’t supposed to go slower than 35 or faster than 55.

And so somewhere in that window. You can achieve an average lap speed of 46, which is the number they said was the target. And my aim solo was actually showing me the ranges of my upper and lower miles per hour, which was pretty cool. And I was falling in that range. Except when I did 70 to get around the Mustang.

But you know, the race is over. I can say that now.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve driven around Watkins Glen several times. You go into some of those turns a lot faster than 46 miles an hour. So why not just set the cruise at 46 miles an hour and let the vehicle just take you around the track?

Crew Chief Eric: So that was my initial goal. And I thought that was going to be the [00:06:00] plan for the Jeep.

Just lock it in at 46 and call it a day. The problem is with the cruise control, when you started to go downhill, it would put on the brakes. So rather than do that, what I would let it do is I would kill the cruise control. I would let it speed up a little bit and then I would trail break in like, especially like turn six, just.

Ease the brakes into nose it in to allow it to come through, but like turn nine, it’s a slow turn. It’s tight. I wasn’t confident with the cheap, although I did push it through there a little faster towards the end. Cause I wanted to see under acceleration with the all wheel drive, it’ll pull through. It’s not a problem.

So I was a little nervous, right? I didn’t want. To really upset the vehicle so much, yes, I could have gone faster, but I think the lap conditions when you’re racing are different because you’re planning your breaking zones. You’re not just trying to do the BMW school thing where you throw it in with no brakes.

So there’s a little level of apprehension that you have to overcome when you do that, especially in a 5, 000 pound vehicle. It’s not the same as in a GTI where you could, [00:07:00] yeah, just turn the wheel and who cares, you know?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I would have been curious how my TDI would have done because its cruise control is very tight where some cars you go down a hill and suddenly you’re like, I’m doing 10 miles an hour faster because like, it’s got such a ban before it like catches itself and comes back to set point.

I see very little movement in my cruise control, whether it’s going up a hill or down a hill, it reacts very quickly. I’d be curious to see how it would do. And apparently my car would be not eligible because I don’t have stock tires.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that should be easy to overcome. We can find a stock set of wheels and tires around.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you’re running a 225. 40, 17. That’s a stock size.

Executive Producer Tania: The stock that came on the car. Oh, he came with 15.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no, no, no. Hold on. It is a OE size for a Mark four golf period full stop because SCCA is weird like that. If you go to them and say, this is the stock available OE size.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, if that’s the rule, I interpreted the rule.

Meaning if you bought that car. [00:08:00] It came with like 185s or something.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the leeway that they give you in the SEC rule book. So that is an manufacturer size that is legal on that car.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, then I could have been there and I would have gotten first place for diesel category.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, there you go. And you just answered another one of my questions.

Who put this event on? So it was SCCA? Correct. It’s an SCCA event. Now, you said your alternative fuel vehicles, but there were 911s and Mustangs and stuff there. So really, if you just want to go and drive Watkins Glen, sign up for the event.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. But I believe if you have a non petrol car that isn’t a diesel, or so if you have a gas car, I think you’re kind of moved down the priority list.

Like they hold you. And if there’s open slots and then you can get in, they give priority to the alternative fuel vehicles first. I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: that makes sense. It is. After all a green green Grand Prix. Yeah. Yeah. I thought all the cars were supposed to be green. I guess I was wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: I was shocked too. I mean, you see an El Camino and you’re like, well, that’s about as not green as we [00:09:00] can get.

It was interesting. It was really kind of nerve wracking at some points where you’re like, Oh, you know, how much speed can I carry through this corner? This guy does. Dive bombing on top of me, stuff like that. I will say the pit stop was just, thankfully, Tanya was back in the studio and she’s texting me going, Oh, you know that you have this much time left, you have this much time.

And I’m like, cause I didn’t even pay attention to when I rolled into the pit, but it was like four minutes of absolute torture because I’m like, do I turn the vehicle off? Do I let it run? And I’m just watching my MPG calculation just fall and fall and fall. And I’m like, well, what was the point?

Crew Chief Brad: Of the pit stop,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, I don’t know if that goes back to something that is part of the original time distance rally.

It didn’t make sense to me. I’m like, why do we have to stop for four minutes? But I think it allows them to change drivers. The thing I was confused about, because there were some teams that had three drivers and four drivers, and I saw people like pitting in and then leaving. Cause [00:10:00] like the Mustang did that.

Cause there were three drivers. Is it a cumulative four minutes or is it four minutes in one shot? Again, the rules were a little unclear and I wanted to ask these questions at the driver’s meeting, but I felt like if I asked these questions, I’m going to look like that guy. I’m going to be that noob. And I didn’t want to be that guy.

You know, you got to get over that sometimes, right? I think going into next year, I’m going to have more questions that I want answered before the event.

Executive Producer Tania: I think you took a longer pit stop too. Cause After you got into the pits and you read the rules about the pits, the timing should have started apparently when you cross the line into the pit.

I didn’t start counting you until you stopped in your pit box and then the counter should have ended like as you pitted out. So you took like an extra solid extra minute or more.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I was going to say, does it count from pit in to pit out? Four minutes or is it? Four minutes at your stall.

Crew Chief Eric: As long as it’s four minutes, you can go more apparently.

But what they do is in the timing, cause they use the same transponders we use in time trials. They just [00:11:00] delete the laps before, during, and after, I think they said. So they take those away. So they don’t even count. We were able to claw back from that, which was good. Honestly, I’m still really proud of my Jeep for being almost 10 years old and getting.

As we recorded live stream 31. 9 miles to the gallon. I think that’s pretty good. What tune was it? It was the GDE tune. Okay. It was tough. It was challenging. And there’s a lot of things going on. And obviously multiple cameras in the car and talking to you guys and everything that was happening. It was interesting.

And I think with two people, maybe you could do the rough math as you’re going along. But I don’t know. It’s weird. Like a four and a half minute lap. Flew by, but also felt like an eternity. Once we got done with the TSD part of the event, we moved to the conference center where there was a talk by folks from Toyota, from BAE systems, from the TCAT service, which is like the bus service or whatever, and they were actually showcasing and they, you could go for joy rides.

On [00:12:00] these electric full size, you know, like bolt buses or whatever around the track, which a couple of people said it was kind of sketch going through like the boot with the big massive, like Greyhound, you know, it’s pretty cool. They’re silent, they’re quick, they’re super torquey. And so they had a whole discussion about that and the future of EVs, but it was all with respect to those big buses and the technology that BAE and Toyota and all them were working on.

And then the later part of the day was an autocross, which I want to dive into a little bit more. I know Tanya was watching the live stream and we were chatting back and forth through the live stream about like the times and stuff. And it was really interesting to see the hybrids versus like the gas cars that were there and stuff like that.

It’s a full day event, award ceremony dinner. It’s the part that got a little kind of confusing. There’s different classes. Like they, they subdivided the results by like generation of Prius. And insight and stuff like that. And then there was like, okay, gas cars, which confused me. Cause as I walked around the paddock, I’m like, that’s a saline Mustang.

That’s an El Camino. There’s a [00:13:00] couple of Miatas over there. I was like, what does that have to do with anything? Granted, you know, you got extra spots to fill. You’ll sell them to people. Right? Sure. Fine. And I don’t take any satisfaction in coming home with a trophy. First place, you know, I did hang it on my wall in the garage because the Jeep won something.

I’m proud of the Jeep, but yeah, it was the only diesel there. Right. I mean, so I was kind of competing against myself. You know, how did they score that? It was weird because the gas calculations were easy. You know, how many gallons of fuel did you burn over 80 miles? You know, during the time period and all this kinda stuff and they could just do a rough calculation, the EMPG for the hybrids and the EV calculations.

Like I got a little bit lost ’cause they were all cheering about like 0.2 kilowatt mile and I’m like, I don’t know what that means. Like you gotta transl it for me. ’cause the part that was crazy was when you’re hearing about these guys at the Prius and they’re like 112 miles to the gallon. And I’m like, what?

How? There’s no way you went around 80 miles. Without burning any fuel, [00:14:00] there’s almost not enough of Watkins Glenn to use regenerative braking, or maybe there is, maybe I don’t understand how the Prius makes its electricity. That part was a little sketchy. I didn’t get to really see how they scored everything, but I felt like IMSA racing, it was like, there’s 16 different classes of cars out here right now.

And we’re really not competing against each other other than the fact that we’re running the same format.

Executive Producer Tania: The Prius would have been running on the gas engine the entire time.

Crew Chief Eric: Is what I was thinking.

Executive Producer Tania: According to the interwebs, most Toyota Priuses will switch to gas when the car reaches speeds of 15 miles an hour.

And the average speed you were supposed to be somewhere.

Crew Chief Eric: 46 miles an hour is what they said. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. 46. Okay. The gas engine was on then.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent. I don’t know how they calculated this, right? And when I heard the numbers, I was like baffled. What? How? How did you do that? Because I was sort of thinking, okay, a Prius, probably in line with say a VW [00:15:00] TDI, they should be getting 45 miles to the gallon, kind of almost regardless of the conditions, right?

They’re just sort of that type of vehicle. But 112, I was just like, what? How? Were you hypermiling? And even the guy who had the 911, and I’m not trying to call them out because they sure as heck did during the award ceremony. I mean, they were giving him grief, but stock 911 4S with the all wheel drive and he’s getting 40 miles to the gallon.

I was like, what? Did he pop it in neutral and like just coast?

Executive Producer Tania: How? Again, according to the interwebs, a Prius is probably, let’s just call it somewhere around 50 miles to the gallon.

Crew Chief Eric: How do you double that? Are you turning the car off? Are you coasting? I mean, they didn’t say you couldn’t hypermile. I personally don’t have the patience for that.

I would say on a racetrack, it’s sort of nerve wracking to, you know, like, I’m just going to let it coast.

Executive Producer Tania: How are you hypermiling up 600 horsepower hill?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what I was wondering, right? With all the pre I and the insights. It’s like a suit. I mean, I had torque for days. I could just tip into the throttle and it just climbed the hill with no problem.

But you’re in a what? [00:16:00] 1. 2 liter Prius. Might as well be going backwards, trying to get up that hill.

Executive Producer Tania: Cause there’s also the hill up the S’s that you have to climb.

Crew Chief Eric: From turn two to the bus stop is a long haul. I guess you could

Executive Producer Tania: coast from the bus stop all the way to the hill. But then you’re accelerating the rest of the way all the way around basically to like pit.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Cause it’s all

Executive Producer Tania: straight. And then you could coast till you get to the S’s.

Crew Chief Brad: There was a top gear skid where Jeremy Clarkson took an E46 M3 and drove it around the top of your test track. Got better mile per gallon than a Toyota Prius

Crew Chief Eric: that he was following. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: He drove the Prius first, I guess, to get a target lap time.

And then he drove the M3 and at that same speed, the M3 was more economical. Was there any type of hooliganism or shenanigans there at this event, kind of around something like that? I mean, you say there were Mustangs there, and

Executive Producer Tania: No, because the Prius got 112 miles to the gallon.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a showcase for a Prius event I call

Crew Chief Eric: COLLUSION!

[00:17:00] Drafting’s not allowed. There’s a lot of things you’re not supposed to do. They stagger start it like a proper rally, so everybody is sent off. 10, 15 seconds apart or whatever, but you end up catching people. I mean, it just happens, right? Especially I was one of the only people as I was going through traffic that was actually driving the race line, trying to hit all the apexes to maintain as much speed as I could, stuff like that.

And I’m not trying to boast. It’s just, I was sort of like perplexed by where people were putting the car.

Executive Producer Tania: That was the problem. You drove more than you needed to.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe that’s it. I should have shortened the track up. I figured to maintain that average lap speed, I was really targeting a four minute, 25 lap.

I was looking at lap times and I was like, once I set my base lap based on what I thought was good, I could keep being in that range for 24 or four 25, four 23 and kind of float around in there. And I was like, I felt that was good. That was consistent. Because what I was hoping for was better than 32 miles to the gallon, because I know the [00:18:00] Jeep.

Can already do 32 miles to the gallon so tough. It was challenging. Right? But yes, I was looking at people’s I’m going to call them lines. And I’m like, where are you driving the other 1 that was kind of interesting. And we joked about it during the autocross and I have pictures of it up on our website.

It’s the converted all electric geo Metro, and apparently like that blew all the EVs out of the water. It got like 12. 5 kilowatt per mile or whatever the heck the conversion is, you know, a billion times better than the Chevy Bolt that ended up winning the EV class because that’s considered like a super modified.

It was in its own class, but the numbers were just like, okay, we have 0. 2. And then we had 12. 5 and to me, I’m like, that’s like,

Executive Producer Tania: I’m assuming the geometrify ways have as much as a bolt.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I was going to say the weight difference. Oh, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. But as we saw during the autocross is still understeered like crazy, which was.

Pretty bizarre considering it had no weight up [00:19:00] front.

Executive Producer Tania: It had no brakes. That’s how they saved weight. They didn’t put brakes in it.

Crew Chief Eric: They just had wood up there.

Crew Chief Brad: Did they have those little teeny skinny tires too?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they had everything and they blocked off the front to try to make it more aerodynamic. It was totally homebrew.

They blocked it off using like duct tape and cardboard and it was just like, all right, whatever. It was comical, but the car was quick.

Crew Chief Brad: My real question is where in the standings did the Eagle Eye Hammer Thrust And, uh, I think I beat

Crew Chief Eric: the Eagle Eye Hammer Thrust. So we’re all good there. Just really quick about the autocross.

The young guys that were there from the colleges are like, Oh, the Miata is going to crush everybody. You know, and I’m like, no, that formula SAE car over there is definitely going to crush everybody by like a mile. So it did, it did their little autocross course in like 20 seconds flat. It was like, all right, cool.

Let’s take the outlier out of the equation. But the top five was modified Miata with a turbo, not a Mazda speed Miata. Then it was the 911 that I talked about, a GTI Mark 7 with an APR kit on it. And then there was a couple [00:20:00] other cars that were in that area. And they were all right around 22 to 23 second times.

And what was funny is when they talked about their fastest times, I was like, that’s not what I reported on the live stream. It was a little weird when we got to the award ceremony, either way, it was interesting to see how tight the Porsche, the Miata and the GTI were, and they looked so different when they were out there on the autocross.

But what really shocked me were these supposedly stock. Chevy volts, those things were quick right there with those other cars that I mentioned, like within a second, especially that green and blue one, the Alfred state car, I don’t know who was driving it. If it was the teacher, 1 of the students, because, you know, there were so many drivers in the same car, it got a little confusing.

You’re doing like a 22 second lap and I’m like, dang, that is ballistically quick for a Chevy volt. That’s. I’m going to put air quotes around it, stock. So I was actually really impressed. I was looking at how the Volt handled. It has the typical front wheel drive lift throttle [00:21:00] oversteer because they were getting it to rotate and stuff, but it was pretty well planted.

I mean, yeah, they could get it to push, but not as much as like the Bolt, where they basically flung that car and pushed it through every turn and it was just screaming for mercy. Just like the Priuses were, it was like, man, that hurts me to watch that car because, you know, skinny five inch tires, and they’re just like rolling over on themselves, but they managed to make it work the autocross lots, a little small, if anybody’s ever been to Watkins Glen and especially to a lot of the HOD events we go to, if you’re familiar with the big garages and where we pit.

Out to go on to the hot pit, they use the little lot right there next to the garages in that area where there’s like, there’s medians and there’s a couple of trees and guys will camp out there and put their trailers and stuff. So it wasn’t super huge. I was expecting them to use the other paddock that world challenge uses because it’s much larger and like a proper autocross.

But apparently that was closed off because it was opening weekend is what it [00:22:00] is. I think overall I had fun. I think I need a redo. I need a mulligan. I want to try it again. And I think it would be cool to go back with Tanya’s TDI and see what that does, you know, next year compared to the Jeep. It was a neat experience.

I would recommend people going and checking it out. If you ever wanted to. See what your alternative fuel vehicle does in an event like this, sign up for next year’s green ground, pre keep an eye on what they’re doing again, very low key tech, wasn’t anything that you really had to be worried about. You know, you had working turn signals and headlights and stuff like that.

So it wasn’t like proper track day or an autocross where they got to check a million things. And by the way, there was no helmets, so you don’t have to worry about that, you know, windows up, the whole thing, you know, all that you want to run with the air condition. It’s not like a track day, because again, the speeds are much slower.

And I will say there was only one flagger the entire time. He was

Executive Producer Tania: going to ask, were there even anyone to see that you were drafting somebody?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know how they police that. Because again, there was only one flagger and he was a turn 10 right before [00:23:00] you put it in. And I was like, okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Your experience reminds me of when GTM got together and tried to do that electric cart Enduro and not fully understanding the rules and the strategy.

And we were pitting in and changing drivers and swapping carts and stuff where everybody else literally was driving the carts until they died. The race would stop and then they would get a new cart and then the race would resume. It was the most ass backwards thing I’d ever seen. It

Crew Chief Eric: made no sense.

Absolutely. What was a nice followup to the Green Grand Prix, especially if you want to make a weekend out of going to Watkins Glen. I mean, there’s a million things to do up there. Go to Lake Seneca, go to the local wineries and the breweries and do some antiquing and all that fun stuff. It’s a great place for a weekend getaway.

Our friends over at the International Motor Racing Research Center also held their eighth annual model car show. The next day. So I stopped by before I went home. I grabbed some breakfast at Toby’s donuts, which was fantastic. Great little diner [00:24:00] cafe there in downtown. And I went over to the IMRRC, which shares its location with the Watkins Glen public library.

A bunch of collectors came out and it wasn’t just model cars. It was Legos. It was dioramas. It was slot cars. It was all sorts of stuff. And what was cool is I got to experience another side. Of the motorsport enthusiast community. I always knew existed, but I never personally kind of crossed that threshold.

And I’m sitting there and a guy’s talking about this McLaren Lego thing. And then the other guy’s like, Oh, I got that. The model car. And they’re like comparing the models and the details. And then they’re suddenly talking about Daniela Ricardo. Like it evolved into these conversations. And I’m like, They’re car guys, just like the rest of us, but they’re probably smarter because they’re only spending, you know, 94 cents for a matchbox versus, you know, 94, 000 for, you know, a brand new car or whatever, but it was really cool to share stories and then they were like, well, what do you have in your collection?

And I’m like. One to one scale, or are we talking, you know, one 64, like those [00:25:00] kinds of things. And, and, you know, swapping stories. And I actually talked about the Falcon X BGT build that I recently did from the block zone, which we’ve talked about on our holiday episode. And the guys were really interested about that.

Somebody else was like, Oh, I got one of those right here. And he had a McLaren formula car that he bought. And we talked about the build experience and it was, it was really cool. It was different. It was very pleasant. You know, going to the center is always a lot of fun. It’s in trenched in history. Every time you turn around, there’s something else going on.

There’s new things to look at and whatnot. So it was a good time. Very much enjoyed that. So if you’re interested in next year’s green Grand Prix, check out www dot green, grumpy. com. And then look at some of the other things that might be going on Watkins Glen that weekend.

Crew Chief Brad: And don’t forget to hit up house of Hong.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, yeah. Moving on, we need to talk about some more states that are pushing back on the alleged ICE bans and phase outs.

Crew Chief Brad: Wait a minute, hold on. Did you mean states that [00:26:00] are in support of Phasing out ice, correct? No, there

Crew Chief Eric: are states that are in favor of getting rid of ice and all EV and all electric and all that, but there are actually states retaliating, pushing back and saying, no, we want to keep our petrol cars.

Two of them. You can probably guess that would be the country of Texas. Yeah. The Republic of Texas is definitely is at the top of that list followed closely by Colorado. I mean, one of the most outdoorsy States in the country

Crew Chief Brad: shout out to herb day, Colorado.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right But what I was a little kind of surprised by his New Hampshire is pushing back Saying let’s take a chill pill on these phase outs and these bands

Crew Chief Brad: Mmm, maybe they actually have Intelligent lawmakers in their state

Crew Chief Eric: their lobbyists are better than the rest

Crew Chief Brad: I would have thought Michigan would be on the list if that was the case with the heart of the automotive industry there, but I guess not

Crew Chief Eric: in light of all that there are organizations like PRI and SEMA and things like that, that are going to [00:27:00] bat as well for these types of initiatives.

They’ve been behind the right to repair act, the right to modify they’re behind keeping motor sports alive. There’s a lot of things going on. I tell a lot of my motor sports compatriots, if you’re not a member of PRI, you should be thinking about it. It’s pretty cheap. It’s like 40 bucks a year and you get access to.

All their government affairs, things that they’re working on, the legislation, a lot of insight webinars and things like that, where you can actually see what they’re up to, what they’re talking about. There’s some really interesting stuff going on with PRI and SEMA in terms of them advocating for us as enthusiasts, but also advocating for our lovers in general.

And for folks that maybe aren’t ready to transition to EV or hybrid or whatever have you. So really interesting stuff going on at performance racing. com.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ve said multiple times that the answer is not all one or all the other. It’s a nice mix of all because everybody has a different use case. So why can’t we all just be happy?

Crew Chief Eric: [00:28:00] Since we’re still talking about Earth Day and green initiatives, there’s been a lot of Hubbaloo in the last month over at the environmental protection agency.

Executive Producer Tania: They would like to close, as they say, a SUV loophole, which I didn’t appreciate that this existed and is basically the reason, I guess, why so many people were willing to purchase these monstrosities back in the day even, right?

They’re much better today. Somewhat better fuel economy, I guess, and more luxurious. They don’t flip over and all that good stuff. But apparently back then there was a loophole that was goes as far back as the seventies, because there was a lot of people, obviously there always has been that use SUVs or big trucks exclusively for.

work, whether you’re a farmer or other industries. And so there was a loophole for them not to suffer severe punishments because of fuel inefficiency, that became a loophole for personal use.

And

Executive Producer Tania: so that [00:29:00] allowed people to not be penalized, have any sort of repercussion to having some monstrosity that gets eight miles to the gallon as you’re just going to work and sitting stuck in traffic.

And then to further that apparently in 2010, there was further loophole craziness that happened that essentially said the bigger your footprint, i. e. the larger your chassis, you still get exempt from like more stringent shit. So car manufacturers, it’s in your best interest to actually make shit bigger.

Wow. Oh, man. Thank you. Thank you. And this EPA. Come now.

Crew Chief Eric: And wasn’t there something we talked about like last year? If you slapped stickers on the side of your monstrosity, like a G Wagon or something like that, you could consider it as a work vehicle and therefore it would fall into this loophole.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, yes.

So, you know, small businesses do that stuff all the time. Because the vehicle, it’s over a certain weight or something like that. They use it as a commercial vehicle and then they write it off on their taxes. And yeah, it’s good stuff. As someone who’s [00:30:00] in the market for a suburban now that my family is growing, I hope I can still buy a used one before they close this loophole.

Ford Flex with the EcoBoost. That’s all I’m saying. Uh, not big enough. Have you seen my family? I have soon to be two children that would potentially reach seven feet tall. Yeah. Right. And then the dogs. And a hundred pound Labrador. Yeah. So a Ford Flex, not gonna do it. Sorry, we’re sorry, bro.

Crew Chief Eric: Not going to do it.

Not going

Crew Chief Brad: to do it. I mean, we drive maybe 5, 000 miles a year combined. It’s not that terrible of an issue.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what is terrible is the EPA.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, I agree. The EPA is terrible. End of story. Leave it right there. What is the next article?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s another article from PRI kind of affirming what I was mentioning, that there’s a lot of Hubbaloo over at the EPA this month.

And basically, I even heard this on NPR, I heard this on other places, they are pursuing new standards before the supposed 2032 cutover, all EV, no more petrol cars, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when you [00:31:00] boil it back, 17 states that are basically latching onto the new CARB rules that are coming out, And they’re changing the numbers, the metrics that manufacturers have to achieve in terms of their emissions output.

And here’s where it gets a little tricky because people are like, Oh my God, this is the end of everything. There’s never going to be another Mustang. It’s like, all right, put your pitchforks down. Do you extinguish your torches for a second? The way this works is they have to have a 90 mile per gallon.

Chevy Bolt to basically swing the pendulum so they can have a nine mile per gallon Chevy Camaro ZL one 28, whatever the hell it is, and then everything else has to fit in between. So what it is is they’re changing the standards for the average miles per gallon, sort of like that average speed per lap that we talked about the green Grand Prix, same thing with these manufacturers, they’re changing the average miles per gallon that the entire fleet.

[00:32:00] Needs to achieve. And so that number is going up, but with the recent adoption of EVs and the new mental gymnastics and new math that you have to do there to make that convert to miles per gallon, they can still afford to have big pickup trucks and things like that in the fleet. So I’m curious to see how it all comes out in the wash at the end of the day.

What I find interesting though, is just before all this hit is when Ford is like, we’re not going to sell any more sedans. Forget the hatchbacks. The focus is dead. The Mondeo is gone. Known as the fusion here in the United States. You know, stuff like that. They just checked them all at the door. They don’t have an EV right now to really compensate for the number of F 150s.

Best selling car in North America. They have the lightning.

Crew Chief Brad: They’ve got the Mach E, and they’ve got the plug in hybrid Fusion.

Crew Chief Eric: No, the Fusion’s dead. The Fusion’s gone.

Crew Chief Brad: Don’t they have an EV escape or a plug in escape or something like that? I don’t know. I’m not a Ford fan.

Crew Chief Eric: But what I’m getting at is there’s not much [00:33:00] to compensate for the amount of But then they just go to Tesla and buy credit.

Crew Chief Brad: Possibly, right? And the cycle continues.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. So nothing’s really changing, but what is changing is the number of wagons, sports coupes, the things that some of us really do enjoy. Those numbers are getting smaller every year that goes by. I know we talked at the beginning of the year, the number of cars with manual transmission sold is up this year compared to previous.

I don’t see that lasting forever either.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the problem that none of this takes into account is what’s going on with Porsche and their development of these. Greener traditional fuels, e fuels, gasoline, diesel, whatever that aren’t going to have that’s maybe the same environment impacts as we see today.

How does that play into here? Suddenly we had magic gasoline that there’s nothing harmful coming out of the tailpipe because those molecules don’t exist. If you don’t have nitrogen and those bad things in the fuel to begin with, it can’t convert into there’s nitrogen in the air [00:34:00] and all that stuff.

Naturally. Yes, but like it’s not going to have the same impact. Right? So. If we magically had that today, what does this conversation look like?

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And you know, what’s funny is I don’t know if it was an April Fool’s thing, and we’re going to talk about crazy YouTubers as we move on here, but there was something coming back saying that Porsche’s new e fuel is illegal.

You know, they’re pushing to make it illegal. I’m like, what are we talking about now? What, why let them experiment, let them see if they can come up with an option to keep petrol engines on the road.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know what it is. But there’s definitely something fishy going on. And somebody has their hands in the government’s pocket.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, capitalism, baby.

Crew Chief Brad: Somebody has the excellent lobbyists. There’s something going on that we don’t know in the background that yes, there’s somebody’s all this crap. Somebody’s pockets getting lined. I hate when the government oversteps and starts pushing people around to push their agenda. And it’s not even their agenda.

It’s the agenda of private corporations. As Tanya alluded to capitalism. Leave me alone. Just let me do [00:35:00] what I want to do.

Crew Chief Eric: Some of this is because as a commodity in the energy sector, electricity itself in the United States was cheap, super cheap. It was super cheap. And what’s the best way to make everybody have to pay 500 a month at home for electricity?

Well, let’s introduce electric cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Not everybody can afford an electric car. Not everybody can afford the infrastructure to charge an electric car. There are So many people in this country that can’t afford to do any of that stuff. They can barely afford. I mean, we joked about her and this lot in the last drive thru, but that woman who was so proud of herself for going out and being able to buy a Ford escort for what was it?

300 a month.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: There are so many people in this country that are like that. But unfortunately, that’s the way the world works. How is this going to be possible? I don’t want to say the driving is a necessity because it’s not, but you’re basically pricing them out of the ability to get to work and have transportation.

Now, are you going to, in conjunction with this, are you going to increase [00:36:00] the. Public transportation infrastructure, if you’re going to do something to offset it to where these people that can’t afford to drive anymore have alternate means to get where they need to go, then, okay, we can talk about that.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what was really interesting about the lunch and learn at the green Grand Prix is seeing those electric buses and hearing from British aerospace and hearing from Toyota about the technologies on the big scale, because how many times have we talked about why are they penalizing the consumers and the workers when you’ve got buses?

At airports around the country and metro systems and all this stuff. And you’ve got delivery vehicles and police cars and stuff. That’s just sitting there idling all day long. What you don’t think because they’re idling, they’re not polluting.

Crew Chief Brad: So to your point there into Tanya’s point earlier that she made, we don’t have enough money to pay for lobbyists.

We’re not corporations. We can’t pay for lobbyists. So if we got everybody together, everybody puts in 5.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll start a new tier on Patreon. We’ll call it the lobbyist here. You can start

Crew Chief Brad: the lobbyist here. Everybody puts in their 5 and we will [00:37:00] lobby for the general consumer, not a corporation. We’re a nonprofit.

So we will lobby for the general consumer. To get your needs passed because apparently the politicians don’t give a shit about it.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of different, unfortunately, divisive topics here, right? It creates these arguments and whatever. I mean, I’m all in favor of all cars. I have my biases. The things I like and like I always joke, just like, you know when I find something at the grocery store that I enjoy to eat because I like it, they’re not gonna produce it anymore.

Right? So it’s sort of like manual transmissions and two door coops and things like that. It’s just the thing of the past, I’m always in the 1%, but it’s not like I’m one percenter. It’s I’m in the 1% of enthusiasts that like really weird stuff. But for the general population, I agree with you. The movement is a little premature.

We’ve talked about that before. And I look at it too. We have a hybrid. I don’t have two 20 in my garage for these level two or above chargers and getting a level two put in. I don’t [00:38:00] care how many government incentives you give me. I still have to find an electrician that is willing to take my money, do the work.

Retrofitted into the house, which is way more expensive than a lot of people realize my house is older, so I got to upgrade my service. I got to do a bunch of stuff. Sub box in the, it’s a lot of money that has to be put out to do this conversion. And so right now I’m really fortunate that my wife’s vehicle can be charged in a level one charger overnight.

But if we were to replace that, or let’s say tomorrow I ran out and bought a Mach E, I wouldn’t know what to do. And I don’t have the patience to drive down to the local library and go charge and wait there for 45 minutes. It’s inconvenient. Plug it in and spend a week charging like that one guy did.

Crew Chief Brad: You own a house.

You’ve got a single family home. Yep. What do you see a lot of driving around the cities in particular? Normal driving, you see a lot of apartments. Yeah. A lot of renters. How are they going to charge their cars? How is, you know, a single mom going to charge her [00:39:00] car to go to run her shift job? You know,

Executive Producer Tania: what about people that are on campus, right?

In school or whatever. And some campuses, you’re not allowed to have a car on campus in your X years or whatever, and not until the later years. But still, nonetheless, there are people on campus that have cars because they also have jobs they have to get to. And they’re living there. Our university is going to install chargers for these people to be able to like, go do their lives.

I mean, There’s a lot to it. I think it’s disheartening all these years that they throw out where it’s like in 10 years from today we will be Ev, I’m like y’all can’t even freaking repave the road two mile stretch But you’re gonna like redo an entire country’s electrical infrastructure grid to support this in

Crew Chief Eric: 10

Executive Producer Tania: years?

For DMV people, be on alert that the GW Parkway is commencing construction that will go on till 2025, where you will alternate between two lanes and one lane available during weekday rushes, and then only one lane available on your weekends and any other time. Enjoy this for the next two [00:40:00] years.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s okay.

Those of us in the Baltimore area are already used to 695 constantly being under construction. So it’s not a big deal for us.

Executive Producer Tania: No, but the point is, it’s like they’re repaving a two lane highway divided. I forget the total mileage. Once you come off the beltway and heading to the airport or whatnot, I mean, it’s not short, but still it’s like, that’s going to take two years.

Just to do that, but you’re gonna re infrastructure everything in like 10 and everybody’s gonna be buying EVs. That’s where the disconnect is.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. And our last article here dovetails right into the what we’ve been talking about. It’s the coverage from NPR. They have about a 15 minute podcast that they added to this.

I actually listened to this the day Everything went really sour with Elon and NPR. And we’re going to talk about that as we move along, but their reporters got on. They said, look, let’s summarize all these EPA changes for you guys. And they were basically saying the EPA wants to put millions more EVs on the road, should you buy one right now?

And actually I [00:41:00] thought it was really good of the NPR reporters to say, you know what, no, understand that this. Rule applies to new cars. They’re not going to take away your petrol car. They literally said gasoline is not going away anytime soon. And that’s great. And that was very positive. And they’re trying to basically dispel and dilute any sort of sudden panic that people are going to have.

What I want to remind people of is, yes, there are plenty of petrol cars to go around. But right now there’s a weird situation happening where it’s actually cheaper to go buy a new car than to buy a used car in a lot of cases. And so we talk about this a lot on what should I buy, you know, our sub series here on break fix.

Be careful what you’re buying. Don’t end up with a 98 escort that’s costing you 300 a month because the used car market is due for a course correction very soon because it cannot sustain the [00:42:00] prices that used cars are at right now. Not for what you’re getting.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, and every individual person has to look at their particular situation, right?

Because if you already have your car paid off, it’s in good, reliable condition, and it has many, many miles to go. It is not more cost effective for you to go out and shell out 50, for a brand new car. If you have it that it’s like buying chiclets at the grocery store, cool. Otherwise, keep driving your car.

And even if you’re doing regular maintenance, have to fix something here and there. It’s still going to be more cost effective for a long time versus just dropping and buying something new that also still has its own issues. And if it’s an EV, as was just mentioned, level two charging, all this stuff, you got to pay extra infrastructure in your own home and you have to have a place to have it and all that stuff.

There’s other considerations.

Crew Chief Eric: Not only that, there’s something that you touched on In the ladies and EVs episode of what should I buy that we did earlier in March and what was really important about that [00:43:00] is people are not thinking about the long term environmental impact of getting rid of their existing car.

What you guys touched on and what you talked about was really important because. Not only is there not a plan right now, although there are a lot of propositions to say, this is how we’re going to handle the batteries when it’s time to recycle them. Well, guess what? Everything’s new. So we haven’t crossed that bridge.

We’re not recycling anything yet. Right? Even the Tesla model S’s from 10 years ago are still on the road. So we haven’t really had to handle the hazmat until we’ve gotten into an accident situation. But here’s what happens to your used car. Let’s think about diesel gate. We talked about this years ago, even before we started to show what’s going to happen to all these cars.

Daniel buys them. Yeah. What happens to all these cars that Volkswagen bought back? And the speculation was they were getting put on container ships and sent to like Africa and Asia and all these places. And they were being resold because the demand was super high and the U S government wanted them out [00:44:00] anyway, because this Evie thing was already on the horizon and all this conspiracy theory and speculation.

But what I’m getting to and what I’m driving towards with that is your car, just because you traded it in. It doesn’t mean it’s dead. Somebody else might continue to drive that car for 10 years. They’re going to put in those couple extra bucks. Maybe it is a couple thousand dollars to get it back on the road and it’s going to continue to live.

And then once it is, let’s say dead. It continues to live more in a salvage yard, rotting in the middle of a field where it’s letting go of its fluids into the ground and you know, all this kind of stuff. And it’s just like your car isn’t really done done until even it’s gone through the crusher or it gets melted down.

They’re better at recycling them now than they used to be. It doesn’t happen the day after you trade in your car. It happens years later. Maybe a decade after you got rid of that car. So think about it for a second. I need to change a starter in the car. What’s that cost me? 200 bucks. Oh, we’re just going to trade it in.

I get a new car, [00:45:00] spend the 200 bucks and your car’s got a lot more life in it than you think.

Executive Producer Tania: Maintain your car. Maybe just. Yeah. Minimum stuff. Don’t be an asshat. You don’t have to hit every pothole you see and run over every curb that you encounter. You know, that’ll keep the longevity of your car as well.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent.

Executive Producer Tania: Change your oil.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. That is super important. If you’re worried about that too, you know, we’ve talked about it before. We had Rick Lee on the show. Look at alternative oils like evolve that are made from plants rather than petroleum. There’s a lot of alternatives out there right now.

There’s a lot of science. That’s being perfected and things like that, but it’s not as cut and dry as it used to be. So in kind of wrapping up this thought about earth day and about herb day and earth day, and all that is just take a step back and think about your car and think about what you can do, be a better steward of the environment.

But like we talked about on other episodes, there’s different ways to go about doing that. Well, it’s time that we switch to Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche news. [00:46:00]

Crew Chief Brad: I’m just going to read the headline. Audi owner finds basic HVAC function paywalled after pressing the button for it. I called it! I knew it was, I knew it was coming.

I’m going to revise that cheap bastard Audi owner finds basic HVAC function paywall. There you go. The owner jokingly tongue in cheek calls himself out for being cheap anyway. And he says, every time that he gets in his car now, it reminds him. That he’s cheap because he did not buy the Audi tri zone climate control for his Q4 e tron.

The button for it is still there in the car because gone are the days of the manufacturers putting blank buttons there. It’s cheaper just to manufacture them all the same. And if you don’t have the function, it just doesn’t work, didn’t do anything. This one does something though. It says that function has not been purchased.

Crew Chief Eric: He doesn’t have heat?

Executive Producer Tania: No, he doesn’t have a very specific way to use the HVAC

Crew Chief Eric: system. Wah, wah, alright, alright, Karen. Every car has heat.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, it’s [00:47:00] called Tri Zone Climate Control. So I’m assuming it must divert, you know, like, oh, you can control different Part like the back seat versus the front seat. You can

Crew Chief Eric: put heat on your feet and coolness on your balls.

Yeah. Come on.

Executive Producer Tania: So, I mean, totally like a luxury purchase add on, obviously it’s

Crew Chief Brad: a Q4 e tron, that’s a luxury purchase itself.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s already spending a hundred grand. These, this is some first world BS problems right here.

Executive Producer Tania: But it is scary. Nonetheless, when they start talking about all the subscription stuff, because it’s following the airline model where they’ve gone, Oh yeah, economy now we haven’t.

Basic economy. And not because you’re a basic bee, but we want to nickel and dime you even more. For everything.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s the Spirit Airlines model. Oh, it’s terrible. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: basically, but now the majors are doing it, right? So it’s like, Oh, United, you want the cheapest ticket possible? Well, you will be forced to sit next to the toilet and you’ll have to pay to bring a bag on the plane to put [00:48:00] under your seat.

Crew Chief Brad: Can I sit in the toilet?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but you can upgrade to economy plus and sit one row in front of the toilet. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: For 50 a ticket. Yeah. Right. This is why I don’t like to fly

Crew Chief Eric: again. This is why I’m all for used cars, but this new stuff scares me because again, you buy this car used in five years. Can I turn this feature on?

What’s the infrastructure supporting it is the Amazon in the cloud system. That’s running the subscription for the HVAC going to be there in five years. Like it’s insane. Like, stop, give me a button, turn it on. I’ve never been a fan of all the packages on cars. You got to have the premium package and the premium plus and the prestige and the prestige black.

And just give me all the options and let’s call it a day. The car is the car. Like. Everybody’s making it way more complicated than it needs to be. You just want the car to be too bespoke. It’s what I don’t want it to be is software where it’s like, well, you need this add on and you need this DLC. It’s like when you buy a video game.

Now you can’t get the full game. They give you [00:49:00] something half baked over the next six months. You got to pay for all these add ons and cars are not like that. When I buy a car, I want to hit the HVAC and I want it to work. And what was wrong with the dials, like we had 20 years ago, where you pointed at your head and you pointed at your feet and you’d pointed at the defroster and you just turned a freaking knob to get this done.

Crew Chief Brad: Eric, you’re a dinosaur.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m like, yeah, I’m from the Jurassic era.

Crew Chief Brad: Cars 2000s.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s an argument to be made around safety in that because All these infotainment screens where the stupid buttons don’t work and you gotta pound on them because all that crap technology is still crap, honestly. It’s more distracting to have to, oh I gotta sift through four screens I need to turn my heat on or my defrosters on versus like Dials and buttons, you can see them out of the corner of your eye, you instinctively, no muscle memory, like, you can reach for them without [00:50:00] even looking, and keep your eyes on the road as you should be doing, as opposed to completely distracting yourself with a frickin laptop in your car.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m telling you, it’s all bullshit. The government trying to make things safer and all this other bullshit, it’s all fuckin bullshit. They don’t care about us, it’s all about the money. The lobbyists for those infotainment systems, yeah. Capitalism. They don’t give a shit about us. Whoever thinks that the government cares about us.

Yes. The government cares about the dollar. It’s all about the dollar. Yeah. Sing it Tanya. Amen. Amen sister. Sing it.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the eighties all over again. Like I just see Michael Douglas. Greed is. Good as like Gordon Gekko, right? I mean, it’s like, come on.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s out of control. I will probably never buy a new vehicle ever again.

I probably have the last two. Maybe there’s another vehicle in my future down the line a long way away, but I think

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve turned all my attention now to older cars. [00:51:00] I’m in that collector mindset and I’m just like, Oh, if I get rid of this and I can buy that and blah, blah, blah. And I want this car from the 80s or from the 70s.

Crew Chief Brad: You got to stop doing what should I buys? You’re, you’re, you’re starting to, you’re being influenced.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s bad for me, man. I did. I stopped the other day. I was like, I was looking at a Ford Maverick, not the pickup truck that everybody’s thinking about. Now I’m talking about a 72 or don’t do it. Don’t

Crew Chief Brad: buy that piece of shit.

Crew Chief Eric: But since we’re talking about Ford’s, let’s switch gears. This is something that is right up your alley, Brad. So let’s talk domestic news brought to us by American muscle. Your source for OEM performance and replacement parts for your Chevy, Ford, or Mopar product. The 2026, you’re gonna have to wait a little bit.

Ford Mustang. Raptor.

Executive Producer Tania: Raptor all the things.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, Raptor all the things. Do you mean the Porsche 911 Rally? Thank you! Thank you! Because that’s exactly what I thought when I first saw it. Do you know what

Crew Chief Brad: this [00:52:00] is? The auto manufacturers see the writing on the wall, they realize that we’re going to be in a post apocalyptic world soon, and they’re giving us our Mad Max cars now, so that we can prepare For the impending doom when the world implodes.

Crew Chief Eric: Dang, that’s a good one. I’m good with that. And if the Aussies still made cars, cause we’re not sure if they make anything anymore, this would be the Ford Falcon XBGT. This is Mad Max’s car. That’s pretty cool.

Executive Producer Tania: Here’s a, what should I buy? What should I buy? Mad Max edition in the future post apocalyptic world, what car would you want to be like this?

Crew Chief Brad: The first question is what fuel source survived? My guess is diesel. Diesel will be around forever. We’re all going to be running biodiesel because we can go out and find vegetable oil.

Crew Chief Eric: They used to joke all the time, you can run a diesel on piss. Well, let’s get that done. I mean, think about

Crew Chief Brad: that recycling plan, how efficient would that be?

How also,

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, I got to stop. I got to fill the tank. [00:53:00] I mean, think about it. You get the death and the power from the same fluid. It’s all right there. Just urinate in the tank. Done.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re going to start this company and we’re going to start researching now. If there are any chemical engineers out there that want to help us with that wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Tanya, then please sign on, uh, we’ll have a job applications on our patron

Crew Chief Eric: under our lobbyist tier soon to be on Patreon.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. We’re looking for chem E interns to make this diesel. What does that smell like coming out the pipe? It’s got to be better than death now.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it depends. Did you have asparagus for lunch? Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s how you get that extra five horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that that green diesel?

Crew Chief Brad: Those cars are going to be running in the green Grand Prix next year.

Crew Chief Eric: As I was coming back from the green Grand Prix, a lot of miles on the road, back from the track to home. And I saw in traffic. Remember we talked about the last two routes for the facade. They’re not being built even here anymore in the States. They kind of phased them out last year. So a brand new facade and then next to [00:54:00] it was a literally a brand new still had sticker plates on it, Malibu.

And it got me thinking. I paused for a second because at first I didn’t recognize the Malibu. They redesigned it. The rear lights are a little angular, kind of reminiscent of the Camaro, and they added this nice little integrated kind of spoiler to the back. It’s sort of aggressive looking. The front hasn’t changed too much.

It’s sort of All the blazer and they all look the same, the equinox and all them from the front. It’s got that big, massive grill like a Lexus. And I’m looking at them from the third lane. They’re next to each other. And I’m like, what would I rather own being a diehard Volkswagen guy for so long?

Executive Producer Tania: How

Crew Chief Eric: was

Executive Producer Tania: the question?

Crew Chief Eric: Cause I was thinking about it. They’re sort of like the last of the sedans because those cars are being phased out. As we know, the Malibu is still around. You know, we don’t know what the expiration date is on that, but the Passat’s gone. A Malibu should have died in 2000. And I’ve rented a Malibu and the inside, they’re quite nice.

I mean, we make fun of the Impala for sure, but the [00:55:00] Malibu is not bad.

Executive Producer Tania: The interior cannot withstand candle fire though.

Crew Chief Eric: This we know to be true. Again, looking at them going back and forth and what it did is it brought to light. You don’t see too many full size sedans on the road anymore because again, they’re just being phased out.

And so I said to myself, you know, if I was in that market, What would I buy? I sort of fell squarely on the Malibu because in profile, it doesn’t look like a rental car like the Passat does. It’s a little more aggressive the way they restyled it. In reality, I would have neither, but I became a fan for a moment there as I was in traffic.

And so I just, I wanted to bring that up. You could go get a Toyota Crown, you know, You’re right

Executive Producer Tania: about not having full size sedans. Toyota is bringing it out. The all new 2023 Toyota Crown full size sedan,

Crew Chief Eric: which will probably be a hybrid. So that fits with this whole green theme, huh? Well, since you brought up Toyota, I mean, they’re, they are all over the map right now.

We’ve heard you say it before, Tanya, Honda and [00:56:00] Toyota seem to flip flop in terms of, you know, who’s exciting for a decade or so. And right now, Toyota is the hotness. And they have teased the fourth generation, Mr. Two.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, my attention. Right? I don’t fit, but a lot of my friends do, so I can live vicariously.

Executive Producer Tania: It doesn’t look like a car from this decade.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like it’s straight out of the late 90s, early 2000s.

Executive Producer Tania: The blue one doesn’t look like a car from this decade. The yellow one looks like a car from this decade. Not in a good way.

Crew Chief Eric: Just like the Integra, these are two different designs for the new MR2. And actually there’s a third one if you scroll down, there’s a black one.

Yes. And so

Crew Chief Eric: they’re just throwing out some ideas out there. I don’t dislike Really any of them, honestly.

Crew Chief Brad: I think the yellow one looks like an Evora that was in an accident. I

Crew Chief Eric: did kind of think that too. And the black one sort of looks like a cross between the third gen TT and the [00:57:00] Cayman.

Executive Producer Tania: No, the Lexus.

What’s that little two door convertible Lexus?

Crew Chief Eric: The

Crew Chief Brad: SC430.

Executive Producer Tania: Kind of has a profile shape.

Crew Chief Eric: And the blue one looks like a Scion. I just kind of go, is that a TC? You just kind of look at it sideways and you’re just like, okay. Again, they could produce any one of these, all three of these. I’m okay with them because I think this is exciting because when was the last time a two seat midship runabout, which is what MR2 stands for, by the way, has been produced.

Something that’s like a little 914 or, or, or like a Lotus Elise type of car. I thought that this is cool. This is exciting. And if they make a GR version of this, let’s face it, it’s going to have the three cylinder 300 horsepower turbo.

Executive Producer Tania: They said it’s going to have the three cylinder.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. So that’s awesome.

Awesome. So I sort of don’t care what it looks like. You know what I do care about? You know, since I mentioned I was in traffic. Guess what I saw? The new

Executive Producer Tania: Indegra.

Crew Chief Eric: Indegra. And it’s fugly.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s a TLX? TSX? Which one?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s [00:58:00] bigger than I thought it was going to be. I appreciate the lift back, but then it makes the profile look really strange, right around the C pillar.

Uh, and actually I ended up seeing two of them, one in navy blue and one in gray. And the color didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Cause you know how sometimes cars look better in certain colors and they do it. I was just, I was not impressed. What I did confirm is what we suspected. It’s huge. It is really, really big.

And it’s just like It

Executive Producer Tania: has nothing to do with an Integra. Quote, original Integra.

Crew Chief Eric: And the only way I recognized that it was an Integra was because of the little badge on the bumper. Otherwise, you’re like, okay, to your point, it’s like, that’s an Acura TL, TSX, or whatever. Like, all right.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, I thought I saw one at the Cars and Coffee I went to a couple weeks ago.

And whatever. It’s a car.

Crew Chief Eric: That about sums it up.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a car with a manual transmission. I can’t say that I hate it. I have to like it based on those facts, but I would not own one.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, I’d still drive one. [00:59:00] I’d still ride around in one. If somebody wanted to take me around a lap of the track, I’d love to experience it.

But yeah, I was like, not for me. Maybe that Malibu is where I’m at.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I would not own a Malibu.

Crew Chief Eric: But would you own this new Afghani supercar?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, we’ll never see it. Ooh. It’s interesting. Apparently it’s basically Toyota underneath.

Crew Chief Brad: The front end is very Maxima.

Crew Chief Eric: Also Mustang y at the same time. Stang y.

It’s very stank y.

Executive Producer Tania: EQS. But not in a good way.

Crew Chief Eric: The back looks like a McLaren.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: got a lot of different cars in it.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m not sure the front spoiler.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the cow catcher. Yeah. I’m like, is that

Executive Producer Tania: the scoop people up?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s different for sure. I mean, I mean, I don’t see Afghanistan as a burgeoning car manufacturer Mecca of any sort, but.

You know, good on them. If they’re going to try, if somebody is going to make this happen, maybe this design gets sold to somebody.

Crew Chief Brad: I just [01:00:00] figured it out. This is the will. I am car. So he couldn’t sell it here in the States. He went to Afghanistan and had it made there. That’s what this is. Tell me it’s not the will.

I am car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that makes a lot more sense now for sure. Brad, it’s time for lost and found where you scour the internet looking for the newest old car available on dealership lots. All right.

Crew Chief Brad: For this month’s old gem, the 1988 Cadillac DeVille base is still available.

Crew Chief Eric: Ray Chevrolet.

Crew Chief Brad: Yep. Ray Chevrolet, 275 miles from where I am right now.

And it will stay 275 miles away. I’m going

Crew Chief Eric: to go get it

Crew Chief Brad: for

Crew Chief Eric: you for Christmas. If

Crew Chief Brad: you want to buy me a car for Christmas.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s going to be the running joke. It was Dodge darts. That padelack is going to end up on our holiday shopping guide as a bargain because it’s been sitting for so long.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s cheaper than an EV.

Let’s see. We’ve also got the Ford GT still out there. I’m looking for things of note. [01:01:00] There’s a 2005 Buick LeSabre. Custom by custom. I mean, it’s just a plain white Buick LeSabre at Mark McLarty Toyota. It’s not quite as good as Chuck LeDuc, but Mark McLarty is pretty good to rival your Cadillac. There’s a 2006 Lincoln town car signature again, signature means.

Nothing. This one’s in my backyard. It is four miles away. It’s cheeky Ford Lincoln.

Crew Chief Eric: You should go do a retro test drive. I think that would be fun.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, I, so I need, I need to dress up like the eighties, of course. 100%.

Crew Chief Eric: Big lapels, man.

Crew Chief Brad: Big lapels. Yes, yes. And, and, uh, bell bottom pants.

Executive Producer Tania: No, not those. Those are Jenko’s, right?

Jenko, yes.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s the nineties, early 2000. Yeah. The new metal phase. Yeah. Look at Tanya. Way to go. There are a couple of 2013 Corollas out here.

Crew Chief Eric: Remember when we used to talk about should Andrew bank buy it?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. What would Andrew buy? W W a B.

Crew Chief Eric: We found a 2 million [01:02:00] McLaren flood car. Well, this was already purchased though.

Yeah. And you know what the guy said? It’s

Crew Chief Brad: freaking worthless. Is this the, is this the one that Tavares bought? I didn’t see the video.

Crew Chief Eric: Cars junk. And unlike. Andrew’s flood car Mercedes that he bought, which he alleges he made money on. The math doesn’t work for me, but

Crew Chief Brad: he uses mountain math.

Crew Chief Eric: We know how that works.

I mean, this video is an interesting insight into why sometimes as Don Weberg likes to say from garage doll magazine, the cheapest exotic ends up being the most expensive.

Crew Chief Brad: But the views for

Executive Producer Tania: the gram.

Crew Chief Eric: Meanwhile, Tanya, you came across something interesting. Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: I did. Apparently there was sort of a barn find in Holland recently.

Oh.

Executive Producer Tania: 230 classic cars discovered in warehouses, an abandoned church. Apparently there was a Dutch gentleman that was collecting cars for the last 40 years. [01:03:00] Recently, at 82 years old, his health has declined considerably. So he’s no longer been taking care of them. They’re no longer, I think, in his possession.

They were all sold off. And so they now are. Further going to go into auction, some things like Elantra B24 Spider America is in that fleet. He’s got other Ferraris and Alphas and Mercedes, Jags, Astons, yada, yada.

Crew Chief Brad: I see a FB Mazda RX 7 here. I see the XJ Jag.

Executive Producer Tania: One of the pictures you might go, wow, these are in really horrible condition.

They’re really filthy. Apparently there was a fire in one of the warehouses, but like the brigade got it out. Like immediately. So nothing was actually damaged. Apparently a lot of the cars are actually in like pristine mint condition. So it’s unfortunate that his health failed and, you know, people found out about this after the fact.

So no one really knows the backstory here. Like, why was he collecting all these cars? Like, how did he do this? Where did he find them? That’s a little bit sad to miss out on that story. But if you’re in the market for some classic cars, go figure out how to get in on this auction [01:04:00] happening May 19th in the Netherlands.

Crew Chief Eric: How is this still a thing? How many more barns full of cars are we gonna find? It’s just ridiculous. Warehouses, like, there’s cars shoved everywhere.

Crew Chief Brad: This is what happens when you trade in your old junker for an EV. You’re exactly right. You thought this thing was dead. This is where the cars go. People like Daniel buy it and shove it in a building and it sits there.

It’s there for 50 years until someone discovers it.

Executive Producer Tania: In other interesting historical facts, I guess, here’s a list of 10 sports car vehicles that share headlights or taillights from another car. Damn,

Crew Chief Eric: I thought you were going to say they had three spoke steering wheels.

Executive Producer Tania: No, we haven’t found that list yet.

Crew Chief Eric: This is a grasp.

Executive Producer Tania: So the apparently the 1991 and 2001 Lamborghini Diablo share some illumination with the Nissan 300ZX. Lister Storm and Audi 80, Lotus Esprit and Toyota Corolla 11, TVR Cerbera and Ford Fiesta Mark 3, Panos Esperante GTR1 and the [01:05:00] Mazda NX6, the MG and the Fiat Punto.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah! I like it. Wait, you weren’t excited about the Morgan Aero 8 sharing its front end with the Beetle RSI?

I thought that would be like super exciting for you.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, it’s very nice. I like the Hayane Sonata lights, though, for your taillights. Zezetta Marauder and the Alpine GTA have the same taillights. And the Invicta S1 and the B5. 5 Volkswagen Passat have the same. Tail lights. And interestingly, they’re just rotated 90 degrees on the, this

Crew Chief Brad: is not the same bite.

And I was like, Oh look, that was very creative. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: But you won’t fool us. That’s right. And the real question is how many of these vehicles share their lineage with the legendary three spoke steering wheel of the Nissan R32?

Crew Chief Brad: The answer is all the ZX, maybe the 300

Crew Chief Eric: ZX. Nope. Nope. That’s got a four spoke steering wheel.

You

Crew Chief Brad: are a loser!

Crew Chief Eric: [01:06:00] LOSER! I think it’s that time again. It’s Teslagate time. We would be remiss.

Executive Producer Tania: And speaking of steering wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy!

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently, the yoke is a bit of a joke. Ah!

Crew Chief Eric: You’re pulling my yoke.

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Eric: heard, the yoke’s on them. The steering wheel’s gonna cost ya. Ooooh!

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, their whole yoke steering wheel idea, which Sounds silly to me unless you’re in a Formula One car, but what do I know?

Apparently people also think it’s quite silly and not that effective as you’re just kind of driving to the grocery store and you can buy, sold separately, regular circular steering wheel that’s been tried and true for decades. However, if you’re looking to replace your yoke I guess they’re backordered because they’re sold out.

Crew Chief Brad: Um, how about you head on down to OG Racing and pick up yourself a nice Momo steering wheel?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s okay, because all the Model Ys where the steering wheel has come off in their driver’s hands, you can just pick those up on eBay, [01:07:00] I’m sure.

Executive Producer Tania: I wonder if you could even, like, take a Aftermarket steering wheel and put it on a Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: Not without the airbag situation,

Crew Chief Brad: right? So that’s the problem with all that. It wouldn’t, yeah, it wouldn’t pass any type of state safety. But I

Executive Producer Tania: bet it’s not even, I’m like, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some sort of like special hub that’s only for Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: Even that racing Tesla that we saw at Emra last year still had the stock steering wheel in it.

Because to your point, there’s a lot of things like, you know, you have to have your hands on the wheel for the autopilot. So I’m sure even if you don’t use that stuff, it still probably freaks the car out and the software if you don’t have the wheel. So here is

Crew Chief Brad: one instance where I wholeheartedly advocate for changing vehicles.

You’ve got a Tesla, you need a new steering wheel, just get a new fucking car. It’s appropriate in this one

Crew Chief Eric: instance. Well, you know, what is not appropriate is the use of the interior cameras.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not just the interior cameras, it’s the exterior cameras, because when it’s [01:08:00] like, oh, there’s video from within my house of myself naked looking past a window.

Uh. That’s not interior camera. Yeah. You didn’t hear about this? Apparently all the cameras on the Teslas have been recorded. It’s like how you got

Crew Chief Brad: the Amazon echo.

Executive Producer Tania: You got to put that little sticker on your webcam, on your laptop, you know? So the government,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s called electrical.

Executive Producer Tania: I have a yellow post it note with a smiley face, you know, so the government ain’t looking at you topless, sitting at your computer all day.

I don’t know. Same thing here with the Tesla’s, the cameras apparently are always on and they’re always recording. And so if you’re the dude or dudette. Back in wherever, watching the video footage, you’re getting the show, maybe.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s like that movie with Robin Williams. You remember One Hour Photo? Oh, God.

It’s like super creepy. That’s the kind of people that are into this stuff, right? I mean, I don’t know, but

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think they were trying to be creepy, but it’s hard because I think I’ve heard of reports [01:09:00] Where that camera actually caught somebody trying to burglarize a home or even burglarize a car and it actually caught that person on camera.

So it’s like, on the one hand, you make the argument of like, okay, it’s a camera catching something. On the other hand, I don’t think these people realized it was actually doing all this stuff and

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, I can see the justification there. I would be more okay with it. If you could say there’s an integration between ring and the Tesla or blink and the Tesla, where you could say when I arm my alarm system at the house, it can activate the cameras in the car and become part of my security system, which is actually kind of a cool idea.

But that doesn’t exist. What they’re doing here is technically illegal. They’re spying on people. They’re recording them for no apparent reason without their consent. Yeah, only the government can do that.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re collecting data, you know, probably for the self driving, that [01:10:00] information, because when the car is parked, that’s a really important self driving data.

Crew Chief Eric: The disclaimer is like when you call and you get the automated voice and it’s like, this call may be recorded for quality assurance. Like that’s the excuse that they’re using.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s what they need. When you get in the car, they need the little zoom thing that comes up that says recording in progress.

And you have to hit, got it or decline.

Crew Chief Brad: If you hit decline, you can’t move the car. Exactly. Here’s another instance where I say, if you’ve got a problem with your Tesla, just go ahead and sell it for doge. Yes. Sell it for dogue. I mean, they’re capturing all this footage. This is all footage that you can’t see.

So they’re capturing footage of you that you’ll never,

Crew Chief Eric: you cannot verify. Yeah, exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: So who knows what they got?

Executive Producer Tania: And that part is creepy. And then them sharing it across work email, be like, look at this dingus. Oh my God. I can see his dingus. Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: look at this girl’s tits. Oh my God. She really needs to close her windows.

Crew Chief Eric: Makes me wonder how good is the zoom on the cameras? Are they able to see other sensitive information? Can they really spy on you? Well, [01:11:00] cybersecurity soapbox. I want to hear it. No, no, we’re going to park that for another day. Let’s do it. I want to know, but here’s the other thing. So if those cars are recording.

In the privacy of your home, what are they recording in public?

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, you know what, as I changed lanes around the Tesla the other day, I was like, Hmm, so are you just recording me right now?

Crew Chief Eric: And you wonder, and then what if your car was seized because it was at the location of a crime and then the footage could be recalled from Tesla, because The kit 2000 is recording everything that it sees back at Tesla headquarters.

So what if your car is suddenly involved in like a murder investigation? You weren’t there. I mean, your alibi is that you weren’t there. They can prove that, but your car was, and now it’s going to be subpoenaed. I mean, think about that. And it is a slippery slope. But in

Crew Chief Brad: this modern day and age, if you go out in public and don’t think you’re being recorded by something at any point, you’re kind of delusional because you’re always being recorded.

But there’s

Executive Producer Tania: a. [01:12:00] Problem legally, because there’s such a thing as consent and in certain states, if you’re being recorded, you had to have given consent to that. So even if they are recording you, I don’t think in none of that could be used. It’s all garbage. I didn’t give consent for you to spy on me and record what I was saying or what I

Crew Chief Brad: can go out and commit murders again.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no, but, but the point is like, I don’t know that. It could go that far.

Crew Chief Eric: The point is, Elon is watching. That’s all we know. What he’s doing while he’s watching. I see it. Like, do you guys remember the Watchmen where Ozymandias is sitting in front of all the screens? I just had

Executive Producer Tania: that same vision of him sitting with like a hundred monitors and like just seeing.

And

Crew Chief Eric: he’s in a throne with a cape. That’s Elon. He’s got, what’s her name? And the child that’s just. Characters and not a real name. His name’s Kevin. Yeah. Right. Rufus

Executive Producer Tania: dollar sign, asterix pound sign L seven two five nine six decimal point. Start eight 32. 592. Musk,

Crew Chief Eric: but they call him Kev like Ev [01:13:00] like Evie.

Crew Chief Brad: And their car lineup is sexy.

Crew Chief Eric: Elon versus the world. Let’s go there. Now we’re cancelling NPR. Like, seriously?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like the most government sponsored news outlet that ever existed, so.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like the people that don’t listen to our Patreon outro on the show. Do you not realize NPR exists at the behest of what’s her face, who is the wife of Ronald McDonald, the hamburger happy clown?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, you know, like 3 percent of NPR’s funding does come from political backing, blah, blah, blah. Even though every year they do their NPR telethon for like a week straight to get money.

Crew Chief Eric: Super annoying too. Again, most of the money comes from the McDonald’s Joan B. Kroc. That’s her name, right? At the behest of Joan B.

Kroc. Who? She was the wife of the McDonald’s founder. You never watched that on Netflix? Oh, Kroc

Executive Producer Tania: with a K. I don’t know, I was thinking Kroc with a C. Yeah, Ray Kroc’s wife.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. The McDonald’s guy. Ronald McDonald, the [01:14:00] hamburger happy clown. Jokes aside, everybody’s always said not popular radio, whatever. I find Except during the Trump administration that their reporting has always been very neutral.

I stopped listening to NPR during that time, not because I’m a fan one way or the other. I just thought I need to just stop listening to the news period. Like it was just too much for me to handle. It is what it is. I guess Elon’s cancelling NPR and NPR’s cancelling their Twitter account.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I guess a lot of people are going to cancel their Twitter accounts since they’re now unverified.

And now we can have Chad GPT pretend that they’re like Oprah on Twitter.

Crew Chief Eric: And Twitter’s going to a pay model soon. And like, it’s like, who cares? Twitter’s dead, isn’t it? I was like, who cares?

Executive Producer Tania: Not yet, but he’s trying to grind it into the ground. I think trying to roll

Crew Chief Brad: it into the everything app that does everything,

Crew Chief Eric: but does nothing at the same time.

Executive Producer Tania: And in other Tesla news, they’ve like slashed their prices again. And I think what came out today is like their. Sales or something is down 20 percent versus

Crew Chief Eric: No,

Executive Producer Tania: last year, [01:15:00] they have never

Crew Chief Eric: been down. They have sold all the vehicles they have made. Just one of those

Crew Chief Brad: things where Elon Musk is buying all the inventory just so that he can show the numbers.

Yeah, right. Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, so

Executive Producer Tania: many games. 20 percent drop in net income. That was the thing.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re still holding on to those carbon credits that Chrysler doesn’t need anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: This is like the fifth or sixth time that they’ve, oh, here’s a couple thousand dollars less, a couple thousand dollars less on the price of the cars.

You’re only going to do that if you’re not selling. Right. Inventory.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Your demand is low.

Executive Producer Tania: Because if you’re still selling. You’re gonna keep your price high.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s basic economics, supply versus demand, right?

Executive Producer Tania: But then at the same time you hear how like, they’ve sold more than ever! It’s like, okay. I’ve sold more than ever, but I lost money.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s a good business model there. Ah, my expectations are lowered once again.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, isn’t this old? Didn’t we hear about this a long time ago? Or is this another person who put the world’s [01:16:00] largest Conestoga wagon wheels on a Tesla? The

Crew Chief Brad: one person did it on a

Executive Producer Tania: Hellcat. Oh, that’s what I

Crew Chief Brad: was confused by.

I think this is the same guy. It’s the

Crew Chief Eric: same guy, Whistling Diesel on YouTube. Not that I’m trying to give him more publicity than he already needs.

Crew Chief Brad: Let’s just not talk about this.

Crew Chief Eric: This is also the same idiot that sawed that mirror off of the Ferrari, which we were talking about on Discord. So this guy is over the top as mountain man, Dan likes to call him a, he’s a shock jock.

There ever was one. And he basically puts those stupid wagon wheels, even bigger than the ones he had on the challenger Hellcat on a Tesla and flips it upside down. And then he’s all like. Your move, Elon! Your move to do fucking what? Right? I’m like, what are you proving here? That, yeah, you can drive a car upside down?

Executive Producer Tania: And then use a giant crane to flip it over?

Crew Chief Eric: And you have to drive it in reverse to go forward. So, yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: And you could have done that with a metal And it

Crew Chief Eric: doesn’t steer worth a shit. It goes straight. You’re like, [01:17:00] what?

Executive Producer Tania: Of course it can’t steer because there’s zero turning radius. Because as soon as you turn the thing, the frickin nine foot wide wheel hits the door.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what happened with the Hellcat. It, like, destroyed the car. Oh, yeah, 100 percent it did. It was awful. I felt so bad. And that was a brand new Hellcat, too. Pissed me off. And every car he touches, he destroys. And the bigger question I have is Where is he getting them from? Thank you. Where is he getting the money to afford this stuff?

YouTube. Yeah, but the YouTube pay models If you think you’re going to become a millionaire on YouTube, got news for you. Like the payout structures are awful. You have to have like a jillion views a second, and then they pay you like 10 bucks. Really? Why do you care? Screw that guy.

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered expectation.

Well,

Crew Chief Eric: It’s that time that we go down south and talk about alligators and beer.[01:18:00]

Birdman. And alligators drinking beer. That’s right, beer drowning alligators. So last month we talked about the new Netflix series called And I vowed to you guys that I was going to watch it. And as promised, I did. I binged it. I watched every episode despite the previews that show you the raccoon Aquanet blowtorch and all the other stuff that’s going on.

It is not what you think it is.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not a Florida man putting wagon wheels on a Tesla and driving around.

Crew Chief Eric: Nope. Nope. Nope. So it is definitely a drama. It’s dark. It’s like a mobster type of thing.

Executive Producer Tania: So I think Bateman produces it. So he did Ozarks.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. And so it has that Ozarks feel to it, right? It is a little gritty at times.

The cast is interesting. Anthony La Paglia plays the father of the Florida man. Some [01:19:00] hilarity ensues. There is some stupid stuff that happens. The most entertaining Florida man esque as we like to report it on this show is with the news reporter and it’s usually in the background of the scene and she’ll be reporting upon like the stuff that we talk about, Florida man goes on golf course and crashes in the telephone pole and 20 miles an hour and blows up his car and an alligator eats him, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And it, and so that’s in the background. And then there is another sort of ancillary character in the show that pops up and it all starts with him trying to bring a gun into Florida and buy a gun and he’s a cop and like all this and he ends up like your typical Florida man that we talk about in these stories.

He’s like he’s wearing his basketball jersey and he’s got Crocs and he’s like beat up and he’s dirty. And he shows up at one point on a mini bike that he stole. That character sort of epitomizes all the things that we joke about, but it’s not the theme of the show. The show is to your point, Tanya, more like Ozarks.[01:20:00]

It’s drug running and they’re looking for gold. And there’s a mobster involved, people backstabbing each other. It’s not bad. It’s actually excellent. I highly recommend watching it. It was a great couple hours of these eight episodes. By all means, watch it. It’s actually quite good, but don’t go into the expectations of it being like we joked about a continuation of my name is Earl because it’s not,

Crew Chief Brad: it sounds like a Florida man origin story.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s sort of click baity in the sense that they called it Florida man to be sort of like tiger King, where you want to jump in there and I’m like, I got to watch Florida, man. They could have called it something else. Like, I don’t want to say it’s like Magnum PI. It’s more like in that genre of. He was a cop and like all this stuff happens to him and it’s like a series of unfortunate events and they’re not that funny.

You know, there are things that happen to him and he’s, you know, he’s trying to work back from that, you know, a rose by any other name is still the same, but

Executive Producer Tania: yeah, the

Crew Chief Eric: Florida man thing gets you, but I recommend G you [01:21:00] guys got to watch it.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s on my list. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Got to finish up.

Love is blind.

Crew Chief Eric: Love Island. Is that what you said? You’re watching? No.

Executive Producer Tania: You know what? I thought it was going to be light on Florida man. And at the 11th hour, I was like, let me look again. And

Crew Chief Brad: you just Google search for Florida man and see what comes up.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, that’s what I always do. I didn’t know it was a secret.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I kid you not. I had a meeting at work. Somehow this came up and people didn’t know if you just put Florida man or Florida man stories into Google. What it gives you back three people in the meeting didn’t know. And they did it. And their faces like, Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: you just do Florida man, click news. So it filters down and you just got headline after headline after.

Oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: They were beside themselves. And then the one guy just busted out laughing. I think he got like to the bottom of it and he saw something that got his attention and he’s like. Oh my God, I didn’t know this was a thing. And I’m like, what kind of rock have you been living [01:22:00] under?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, you can do it with it.

You can do any state, Maryland man, Texas man, Michigan man, Michigan woman, California woman, you know, do whatever you want and just filter all the news headlines. The

Crew Chief Brad: Florida man is always the most entertaining.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a special breed. It really is.

Executive Producer Tania: And we’ll see that here. I, they got some nuggets. I wasn’t expecting them.

But before we go to Florida, we’re going to go up into the great Northwest.

Crew Chief Brad: I haven’t read any of these. I’m going in blind.

Executive Producer Tania: For an Oregon man. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: in celebration of Herb Day, we’re going to Oregon. Oregon. Oregano.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, speaking of things that are green, this dude decided to Wipe out all his family’s bank account, 200, 000, drive down the highway, and literally make it rain 100.

Hundo’s out the window! It was Hyundai?

Crew Chief Brad: It was a Chevy Malibu.

Executive Producer Tania: Ah, B. Chaos kind of ensued because when people realized there were hundos flying around, everybody was pulling over and like collecting all the money. What possesses [01:23:00]

Crew Chief Eric: a person to do that?

Executive Producer Tania: He wanted to share his money generously with others.

Except you just ripped off your There must be more to that story. Nonetheless, if you were in Oregon that day on highway Something or other, you might have had a little early present there.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll call that a tax return.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: this is like when the beer truck turns over. Yes, exactly. scrambling to get cases of beer.

When it’s

Crew Chief Eric: Bud Light, nobody wants it. That’s the problem. They’re like, I don’t even want to clean this up.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a lot of people out there with no taste.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s half the calories in the same taste, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is, like I said, no taste.

Executive Producer Tania: So now we’ll go to Florida.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ve

Executive Producer Tania: got to love it when it starts with only in Florida, man spotted riding jet ski motorcycle in Cape Corral.

Go ahead and click that link and check the picture out. He is literally on a jet ski converted to a motorcycle. Why, [01:24:00] why is this a problem? Well, apparently the police would offer that it probably is illegal. Not having a license plate, not having headlights, not having a rear view mirror or turn signals.

Crew Chief Brad: So, so jet skis have headlights. You can have a headlight.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, we don’t know if this one has a headlight.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s probably as safe as if it was a regular motorcycle. It’s amphibious. He did the Top Gear challenge and made an amphibious vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: He built this himself. I gave him props.

Crew Chief Brad: And him and his, his purple backpack.

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Eric: can imagine how this chase scene should have played out.

Crew Chief Brad: All he had to do was find a boat ramp.

Crew Chief Eric: He’d be gone. Well, not even that. Wrap the throttle, bang a hard right and go off into the swamp. Yes. This guy’s got it figured out. This is the ultimate escape vehicle for Florida. Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: You know what? He could be onto something.

He truly needs to make them amphibious [01:25:00] and he could be onto something. He could have a business.

Crew Chief Eric: I love the detail that was put into this. Do you see the exhaust tip, how it comes out the back of like that fairing back there? It’s just, he spent a lot of time making this work. This is amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s that Florida man ingenuity.

Crew Chief Eric: I love the backpack and the matching hat. He’s going off to school riding his jet ski. I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: he had a jet ski and he had a motorcycle and he had one too many joints. Let’s put them together.

Executive Producer Tania: No, he was talking to some friends and God knows what they said. And he goes, hold my beer. And then this came out.

Oh

Crew Chief Brad: my God. So he had a jet ski that he needed to transport. But he only had a motorcycle. So he said, all right, well, if I got to move my jet ski and I got a motorcycle, I’m going to move them both at the same time. Hold my beer. I’m a bear.

Executive Producer Tania: But speaking of Florida man, ingenuity,

Crew Chief Brad: take a look

Executive Producer Tania: at this next one.

And let me know, would you buy? This Ford Crown Victoria convertible. What the [01:26:00] hell? Now, I look at this, and the second picture, he’s got a smirk, shit eating grin, I love it. He’s like, I know what I got.

Crew Chief Brad: No lowballs, I know what I got.

Executive Producer Tania: Why is the air filter routed with like a 5 inch PVC pipe up from the front of the hood?

Up to the dashboard!

Crew Chief Eric: This vehicle, too, can go in water, so therefore, if you look at it, he made it look like a boat. It has a boat windshield, and that’s a snorkel so that when he goes in the water, he doesn’t suck water into the motor.

Executive Producer Tania: Goddamn, you’re right.

Crew Chief Brad: My favorite part is the temp tag. He just registered this vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: Better than the shit eating grin. Better than, obviously. All lack of safety on this. Cause if you look at the seatbelt mounts, it’s covered with foam, right? I don’t even know how that’s bolted. I would

Crew Chief Brad: argue that the jet ski motorcycle is safer than this.

Crew Chief Eric: All of this is absolutely amazing because it is almost ready for a lemons race.

And at first I [01:27:00] thought, maybe, maybe just, maybe this is a lemons car.

Executive Producer Tania: You’re right, actually. So it is part of the Gambler 500, Florida, which is like an off road rally, blah, blah, blah, two, three, four day challenge. And basically, yes, it’s like off roading lemons.

Crew Chief Eric: But, did you scroll down to the picture where he has his shit eating grin on his face?

Did you look at the logo? Heh heh heh heh heh. That

Crew Chief Brad: palm

Crew Chief Eric: tree’s got boobs! That or truck nuts. I haven’t figured out which yet.

Crew Chief Brad: And I love the fact that it’s pissing rain on him.

Crew Chief Eric: Everything about this is

Executive Producer Tania: awesome. Okay. Our last Florida man, and there’s a water theme here.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m going to die. Like my stomach hurts. Like this is going to, it can’t get any worse.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, it gets better.

Executive Producer Tania: 23 year old man in his Nissan [01:28:00] Sentra, crossed the center line, collided with a semi truck, so it had an accident.

First thought, you have an accident. Get naked, get naked and run into the swamp because I’m gonna be less noticeable naked going through a swamp.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna be less noticeable as gator food.

Crew Chief Eric: While he was looking for the jet ski motorcycle so he can get away.

Crew Chief Brad: I think that’s like step one in the Florida Man handbook.

Step one, no matter what you did. Step one, get naked. You gotta reduce the drag and save some weight so you can run faster. Simplify and add lightness. Simplify and add nudity. Lord of Man motto. Harlan Chapman had it right. This guy

Executive Producer Tania: is brave.

Crew Chief Brad: Brave? Brave

Executive Producer Tania: is the word you

Crew Chief Brad: use? Yes! Yes! I don’t know that I would use that particular adjective to describe this guy.

Executive Producer Tania: The other ones were taken, but Brave, I say, because he got [01:29:00] naked and jumped into a swamp at 8. 30 PM! Ooh! You can’t see what shit’s out there? What swamp thing’s there to eat you? Ooh, that’s He got He got in so deep, apparently he was happy when the cops found him, cause he wanted to get the F out of there, but I don’t even think scary swampland

Crew Chief Eric: is it in the water?

Is it something about when the water evaporates and goes into the air that people just go crazy in Florida?

Crew Chief Brad: You know, they say it’s because of the water that New York bagels are so good. So I could see something that Florida causing all these people figuring it out.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s from all the drug running in the eighties.

There’s so much cocaine in the water. It’s just everywhere. It’s like that cocaine bear thing. You see, Oh

Crew Chief Brad: my God. They should just rename Florida. Okay. It was cougar town. Now, now cocaine town.

Crew Chief Eric: So now it’s time to go behind the pit wall [01:30:00] and talk about next week’s news. Brad and Tanya are resident Formula One experts.

What has been going on?

Crew Chief Brad: There was a race. It ended poorly. You’re welcome. Mic

Crew Chief Eric: drop.

Executive Producer Tania: Depends on your perspective, but that was a cluster.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God, the end of that.

Executive Producer Tania: So many wrecks.

Crew Chief Brad: Apparently they let a bunch of club racers out in an F1 track. Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: It was Romper Room. Who even won that one?

Crew Chief Brad: Verstappen.

Executive Producer Tania: Verstappen, Hamilton, Alonso.

Crew Chief Brad: And then Alonso, he lost five spots and had to give it to Russell. He was given a five second penalty, took him off the podium and put Russell on the podium. And then about an hour later, that penalty was reversed. And then they put Alonzo back on the podium, then Russell off the podium.

Executive Producer Tania: Was that that race or the race before?

Crew Chief Brad: That was Australia.

Executive Producer Tania: Russell crashed. He was crashed out, or his car broke. He was DNF’d in Australia.

Crew Chief Brad: Was he?

Executive Producer Tania: I think that was the race before, because Alonzo also came in third in Saudi. I think that was the one that had the, uh, podium.

Crew Chief Brad: I retract my statement. Because Russell came in

Executive Producer Tania: fourth there, [01:31:00] but he DNF’d in Australia, because like

Crew Chief Brad: Sorry Mark Hewitt, I retract my statement.

Executive Producer Tania: Eight cars DNF’d and like six of those eight was because they crashed

Crew Chief Brad: into each other. Driving in Florida.

Executive Producer Tania: It was bad. It was romper room. But we’ve been on spring break for the last couple weeks. So there has been no races since April 2nd. And the next upcoming race is the 30th in Azerbaijan.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, I’m really glad that they get a break.

You know, they worked so hard. They really deserve a spring break and a summer break. I’m so happy for them to get quick respite from all the hard work that they put in.

Crew Chief Eric: They are athletes. Let’s get, I know,

Crew Chief Brad: I know. I’m, I’m, I say that in jest, but whatever. So

Crew Chief Eric: there’s some interesting changes happening now that formula W.

has been on pause. Formula One, the FIA made an announcement that there’s a new Formula Academy for women drivers coming on.

Executive Producer Tania: They’ve got five teams already lined up in there. I think the inaugural season opener race is coming up [01:32:00] in Austria on 28th, 29th. So it’s right ahead of the Azerbaijan men’s Formula One race on April 30th.

And this program is actually being managed. The director of this is Susie Wolf. And if Wolf sounds familiar, it should, because that is Toto Wolf’s wife, the principal for Mercedes.

Crew Chief Eric: The most overpaid person in Formula One right now.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, he’s not having a good year, but we’ll see if they can turn it around.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s still getting paid. Good year or bad year. He’s still making that doge coin.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, you know.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve been talking a lot this season about WRC and at the time of this recording here on IRF day, we are just ahead of the Croatia rally, but that also comes at the heels of some very sad news and a statement from Hyundai Motorsports on April the 13th, 2023 Hyundai Motorsport is deeply saddened to confirm that WRC driver, Craig Breen, lost his life during an accident during [01:33:00] pre event testing for the Croatia rally.

Co driver James Fulton was unharmed in the incident that occurred just after midday local time on the 13th and Hyundai Motorsports sends its sincerest condolences to Craig’s family, friends, and his many fans. Hyundai Motorsports We’ll make no further comments at this time as WRC fans, you know, we’ve been talking about Craig and his progress and some awesome results he’s had at the last three rounds of the 2023 season of WRC.

And he was one of our hopefuls. He was definitely not an underdog, a contender to take the crown this year. And I think we’re all shocked and saddened by the sudden news and sudden passing of Craig Breen.

Crew Chief Brad: And I think I saw something where Toyota was only going to or something like that. To kind of limit the amount of points that they could take away from the race and some sort of show of solidarity.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Missing man type of thing. Yeah. Because Hyundai is down a driver. Now they’ve just got Terry Neuville. They haven’t said who’s going to fill his spot. It is a little quick [01:34:00] to just jump into that, you know, maybe one of the backup drivers. Well, again, we won’t have results from Croatia or any additional news until next month’s drive through.

So we’ll be paying attention to that to see what the changes are for Hyundai. But again, all of us deeply saddened by the passing of Craig Breen. Motorsports. History being kept alive by our friends at the international motor racing research center. And we’re happy to have them here as a sponsor of our motor sports news.

So again, it’s brought to you in partnership with them. Check out what they’re doing over at racing archives. org. If you’re interested in helping preserve racing history, the IMRRC has opened officially their sweepstakes for this year. You could be a winner and come home with a 2024 Corvette. Ray in a Hyper Silver with blue Pinstriping package.

There’s a promo code so you can actually buy more tickets for less money. The code is Ray Launch. The [01:35:00] details are in our show notes, they’re on our website. You can go to racing archives.org. Click on sweepstakes for the 2024 Corvette Ray three LZ convertible, and that will be running through April, 2024.

Also, if you haven’t, or you’re just now tuning into Brake Fix for the first time, season four is going to be showcasing a mini series in partnership with the IMRRC and the Society of Automotive Historians, where we’re going to be bringing to light a lot of really cool topics about racing history. So tune in each month for new episodes brought to you by the IMRRC and the SAH.

Crew Chief Brad: Upcoming local news and events brought to us by CollectorCarGuide. net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. Coming up in May, we’ve got the Project EG Mountain Takeover, May 4th through May 7th. That will be held across four states, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The description shows closed [01:36:00] off mountain roads, closed off tunnel, drag strip.

Airport runs police escort need. I say more. That sounds like a pretty awesome event to me.

Crew Chief Eric: Where are the police escorting you to

Crew Chief Brad: probably across state lines. Get out of my state. Also, the golden gears, 50th anniversary car and truck show is May 6th and Frederick, Maryland, Dana me comes 36 original spring classic may 12th through the 20th and Indianapolis state fairgrounds.

Yeah. Music Mimosa’s Mother’s Day Weekend, May 13th and 14th at Volo Museum. Drive Toward a Cure, the Alisal Ranch Getaway, May 15th through 17th at Alisal Ranch in California. The description is Drive Toward a Cure is constantly imagining and investigating new programs to directly benefit Parkinson’s disease patients and research programs.

Something old, something new, something to look forward to. The IMRRC Corvette Festival will occur May 20th and 21st at Kloot Park in [01:37:00] Watkins Glen, New York, and the Great Pocono Raceway Airshow, May 27th through 28th at, you guessed it, Pocono Raceway. And tons more events like this and all their details are available over at collectorcardguide.

net.

Crew Chief Eric: Now it’s time for our HPDJunkie. com Trackside Report. What’s going on here in early spring in our area? Speedo de Mayo event with HOD Southeast is on Friday, May the 5th. It’s a one day event at Florida International Rally and Motorsports Park, also known as The Firm.

Crew Chief Brad: Like the movie?

Crew Chief Eric: John Grisham will be there.

For 189. So there’s some updates here for HOD Northeast that came across our desk. There’s a couple of new events that they’ve added to the schedule on June the 3rd, they’re going to be at Pocono and they’re hosting a one day event on the 21 turn mega course 3. 51 mile mega course at Pocono it’s where they use.

Every bit of the track, except for NASCAR turn three. So that’s all the infields and two thirds of the NASCAR oval. We’ve done that [01:38:00] configuration several times before. If you’ve never done it before, it is the biggest, baddest configuration at Pocono and it is definitely worth trying out. And usually at the end of that day, they will open up the circuit and allow you to run the tricky triangle.

So if you want to get your NASCAR fantasy on, that’s a good time to do it. There’s also an unmuffled day at Lime Rock. It’s two half day open track sessions at Lime Rock on Friday, June the 9th from 1 p. m. to 5 p. m. And on Saturday, June the 10th from 9 a. m. to 1 p. m. But again, the best of all for these two half day events is that there are no sound restrictions.

So you don’t have to worry about getting thrown out of Lime Rock because your Miatas. With its stock exhaust is too loud. At the same time, HOD has partnered with track masters to offer discounted rates for all HOD novice and intermediate level drivers for three, two day events at Watkins Glen in 2023.

So you’ll see familiar faces to help ensure you have a great Monday, Tuesday at these track events and make sure to [01:39:00] wave to Kenny Ivner as he points you by in his Miata. More details on that. If you check out hooked on driving, you can also. Register on Motorsports Reg, take advantage of this current offering and opportunity of events at Pocono, Lime Rock, and at Watkins Glen.

And you can save 50 on any Trackmasters two day HBD event as well. Again, we want to remind you as a thank you for everyone being loyal supporters of GTM and fans of break fix. Mike and Mona from hooked on driving are offering a discount all season on their HPD events. You can use code break fix 23 to receive a discount on your event registration at checkout.

So thank you all again for being supporters of our efforts and tune in throughout the year for more promotions.

Crew Chief Brad: So does that discount only apply to HOD Northeast and does not apply to HOD Southeast with a. Steve.

Crew Chief Eric: So I have heard from Steve Furman that the code does work or is supposed to work on Southeast events.

That was sort of the original plan. I haven’t had anybody [01:40:00] test it to confirm. I know that people have used our code for the Northeast events, so it does work. But if it doesn’t work for some reason, please reach out to us and let us know. All right. Some news from SCCA. There’s a lot of people that are sort of upset about this.

There’s some changes coming to our favorite registration platform, motorsportsreg. com. Payment policies have been changed and they’ve announced that they’re introducing an added fee to processing of every event entry through their system. So this applies to not only SCCA, but other. Events that use MSR like track days, like NASA, whoever, it’s not that anybody’s leaving the platform, but they just want to make you aware that there’s now an experiential fee that will be added to people’s registration.

And it’s a whopping 2. So there’s some people that are very upset about that. Bake it into the cost, whatever you want to do. Honestly, I think Ticketmaster charges a lot more for their convenience fees and experiential fees. So two bucks [01:41:00] isn’t so bad at the end of the day, but yeah, just be aware that they are changing this policy and it will show up and you’re like, Hey, where’d this extra two bucks come from?

What does it go for? But MSR has stated specifically a 2 fee is applied once and only once to all registrations with an entry fee fee registrations, such as those for volunteers, workers, instructors, crew, et cetera, are not charged and nor will volunteer registration be charged. Registrations paid entirely by credits on file are not charged the fee.

So the booking fee. Can be refunded if the registration is refunded in full, the long and short of that disclaimer is that this only really applies to people that are paying full boat for an event on MSR. So those of us that are instructors, et cetera, this is pretty much moot. So, but we just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Crew Chief Brad: Why did they feel the need to point out it’s paid once and only once in what instance would it not be paid once? I don’t understand. And that’s

Crew Chief Eric: misleading too. It’s not like a one time [01:42:00] membership fee.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that’s what it sounds like. They make it sound like we’re going to charge you one time a 2 fee. No, it’s once per registration.

Exactly. Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: So again, thank you for clarifying that Brad, because you’re not getting an MSR membership of any sort. It’s just a 2 fee every time you sign up for an event. Capitalism.

Executive Producer Tania: In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired this month. We rounded out International Women’s Month with an extra episode where we chatted with a third generation SCCA club racer, Taylor Hyatt, and her plans to get more ladies on track.

Kat DeLorean returned to BreakFix to introduce us to Rimac Bugatti designer Angel Guerra from Seville, Spain, who is determined to bring the steel bodied, gull winged door DMC 12 squarely into the 21st century with a next generation concept. We welcome back Steve from Everything I Learn From Movies to help us review Lamborghini, the man behind the legend.

The last of the cheap Porsches, the 924S and 944 might not have the panache of the 911, but that’s okay. Kevin [01:43:00] Duffy from 924S944. com joins us to discuss why you should consider buying one as your next collector vehicle. We wanted to let you know we did some spring cleaning on our YouTube channels. Yes, we have channels now.

You can find all your favorite brake fix and long format content on our new at Grand Touring Motorsports Media channel. So please hop over there and resubscribe to get all the latest updates and notifications. All of our clubhouse material will remain on our existing at Grand Touring Motorsports.

Sorry about the inconvenience, but it’s a new season with all sorts of great changes coming your way.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And speaking of great changes and people supporting us and giving a helping hand, a shout out to our new Patreon supporter. Mark Shank, our resident nineties expert stepped up to the plate and is helping us out again.

Every dollar counts, every dollar helps keep the show going, keep the lights on, help us pay for all the really cool technology and all the changes that we’re making to make things better, easier, more efficient, and [01:44:00] more entertaining for all of our listeners out there. So if you haven’t signed up for Patreon, check it out, patreon.

com forward slash GT motor sports.

Crew Chief Brad: We’ve got a few anniversaries to shout out here. We’ve got Amr and Christine Abduwalab are celebrating six years with GTM. Todd Lilly, our most recent GTM or award winner is celebrating two years with the club and Graham Clemson and his low cost super seven are also celebrating two years with us.

If you’d like to become a member of GTM, be sure to check out the new clubhouse website at club. gtmotorsports. org to learn more. And special thanks to

Crew Chief Eric: L. He, he,

Crew Chief Brad: does

Crew Chief Eric: that make us LGT? Does that work?

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya wants to know why we’re saying things in these weird voices. And it stems from our discord. If you’d like to be a part of the conversation, join us on discord.

Us for keeping the show going because we don’t have any guests,

Crew Chief Eric: but we need one for next month.

Crew Chief Brad: We need a guest for [01:45:00] next month. So Mark Hewitt, get off the cans and join us on an episode. Why don’t you

Crew Chief Eric: see, this is why he apologized at the beginning of the episode.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, because I’m going to call you out throughout the episode.

Now

Crew Chief Eric: the whole season.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Every episode I’m on, I’d like to apologize to Mark Hewitt. I’d like to apologize, Mark Hewitt. And of course our co host and executive producer, Tanya. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And remember for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on articles and show notes available at www.

gt as in grand touring motor sports with an S dot O R G

Crew Chief Brad: all the members who support. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Executive Producer Tania: Are you okay?

Crew Chief Eric: Are you okay? Are you okay? Annie, are you okay?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, that

Crew Chief Eric: is amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: Can I say something? Can you all both look at this picture of this guy? Smirking and tell me that’s not John Gavese.[01:46:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Project motoring sponsored this vehicle.

Crew Chief Brad: He supplied all the safety equipment. Oh, you’re gonna have to cut this shit out. Oh, I’m leaving

Crew Chief Eric: it in, just for you.

Oh, that’s so good. And we’re out.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. [01:47:00] org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows. You can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

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

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