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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 motor sports, our podcast, break, fix, and all the other services we provide

Crew Chief Brad: weird, weird music, whatever Eric has. Welcome to the drive through episode number 36. This is our monthly recap, where we put together a menu of automotive motorsport car, adjacent news and wherever Eric has been this last month. So let’s pull up to the window. Number one. For some automotive news. Eric, where were you this month?

Crew Chief Eric: Our week drained me. What day is it, by the [00:01:00] way? Like, I am in a time warp. Let’s do the time

Crew Chief Brad: warp again.

Executive Producer Tania: Too early. Although Halloween is out already.

Crew Chief Brad: Can you believe

Crew Chief Eric: that?

Crew Chief Brad: Halloween was out after Easter.

Crew Chief Eric: Summer isn’t even over yet, and people are already stocking the shelves for Halloween. Soon, Christmas decorations will be out Valentine’s Day.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s if they ever take them down.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the secret, just have a Christmas section.

Crew Chief Brad: You never have to take it down, just leave it up. You could take away 10% Of the women’s clothing section and still have plenty of room for a Christmas section. I think Kim

Crew Chief Eric: Kardashian has something to say about that.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what? It is 24 7 Christmas at Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan. So if you’re on your way to the middle of nowhere, stop by.

Crew Chief Brad: So there you go. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re not here to talk Christmas. That’s for later in the year.

Executive Producer Tania: But wait, speaking of the Kardashians, how is California?

Crew Chief Eric: I might’ve bumped into them.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, you couldn’t

Crew Chief Brad: miss them. [00:02:00]

Crew Chief Eric: You know, last time we got together, I recapped my epic journey to the European union. This time I went to the completely opposite side of the country. Thanks to Don at garage style magazine. And we did 10 days. of the Monterey Peninsula for Car Week.

Crew Chief Brad: Last time I checked, a week is only seven days.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I wrote an article about that too. That’s

Executive Producer Tania: them California weeks.

Crew Chief Brad: Because you get stoned the first three.

Crew Chief Eric: California’s famous Car Week is becoming really two weeks. Soon it’s going to be Car Month. It’s absolutely… Insane. And I will say I’ve had people invite me out time and time again to go and I’m like, man, I don’t know if I can put aside 10 days.

I don’t know if I can put aside a week. I don’t know if I can go, you know, works in the way, you know, real stuff. But this time I couldn’t pass off the opportunity, especially to go with a press team, with photographers, with everybody that was there contributing. It was an awesome experience and once in a lifetime to do it that way, to really do it up.

I’ll just summarize it for you 10 days, 37 events, over 5, [00:03:00] 000 photographs, unbelievable people, places, and cars. We’re going to do some show and tell this time. So if you’re watching this on Patreon, you actually get to see what I’m showing off here because every event I went to. I got something and I kid you not.

I paid an extra hundred bucks to send my luggage home because in a mid sized suitcase, I was at 60 pounds.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s my normal packing. Just your shoes, right? Just my shoes, my socks, my underwear.

Crew Chief Eric: So the Monterey area is cut up into these little towns and it starts with like Seaside and you work your way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and then there’s Carmel Valley Then there’s the city of Carmel then there’s Pacific Grove and all these other places that are connected even Salinas where Laguna Seca is It’s all right there and in this Conglomeration of different towns.

At first I was kind of getting spun around. I’m like, where are we? Where are we going? It was a lot of driving and we were actually staying in of all places. Garlic town, USA, which is Gilroy, California, because we couldn’t get a place in downtown Monterey. We were commuting in about [00:04:00] 40 minutes or so with our Lexus LX 600 press vehicle, which I’ll talk about here in a little bit.

But I wanted to highlight some of the events we went to. And the first little town that’s quite charming is Pacific Grove. It’s full of like different things to do. There’s a motorcycle museum there. There’s some great places to eat. It seems to be a repeat offender when it comes to car shows. There’s the little car show.

There’s a couple others. And then there’s the classic motorsports car show. They’re the authors of not only classic motorsports magazine, but one we’re all too familiar with, which is grassroots motorsports magazine. Why I mentioned that. It’s debated whether or not the beginning of car week is actually a week from pebble, or if it’s longer is that the quote unquote kickoff event for many, many years was the classic motorsports concourse in Pacific Grove.

Now we back that up almost a week prior. Car Week really kicks off with the Pasadera concourses, which we had Rick Barnett on the show last year to talk about, and I bumped into him several times while I was there in Monterey. What I liked about [00:05:00] Classic Motorsports, it was one of those anything goes kind of shows.

All sorts of stuff showed up. You’re talking… 911s to Camaro swapped MGs to alpha Montreal’s to Jaguar XJR homologated race cars. It was actually a really great show. I really enjoyed it. Mad props to the classic motor sports guys and free magazine. So I’m going to flip through it. I’m going to take a look at this thing.

Lots of really cool stuff in here. Also in Pacific Grove, I mentioned the little car show. That was a lot of fun. We returned for that. It’s historically been. Cars with 1, 601 cc’s or less. So we’re talking 1. 5 liters, 1. 6 liters rounded up this year. They opened it up to 1. 8 liters. So 1, 801 cc’s, which kind of opened up the field a little bit, allowed some Miatas in and Nissan Pulsars, like all sorts of crazy stuff in the eighties because as engines got bigger, so did the little car show need to grow.

So that was a lot of fun. Saw a lot of micro cars, Japanese imports, you know, stuff like that. So I thought that was pretty cool.

Crew Chief Brad: How many Mark 4 1. 8 T’s did you [00:06:00] see, or does the power adder take it over?

Crew Chief Eric: It doesn’t cause they’re just classified by displacement and technically we’re 1787, but I saw absolutely zero Mark 4s.

Crew Chief Brad: Cause they were all at Radwood.

Crew Chief Eric: No, but you know who did represent us from the dubber side was a G60 Parato that was in excellent shape. So one of the other events that I think I have to say when I look back was maybe one of my favorites and that’s Radius. By Broad Arrow. And so Broad Arrow got bought by Hagerty.

So it’s part of that whole, you know, they bought motor sports reg, they bought Radwood, they’re putting all this stuff together. So they’ve relabeled the Broad Arrow auction to Radius. And they’re going to be doing this at Amelia as well in a couple other places. And what I liked was it was set at the Monterey jet center, which is the airport there in Monterey.

And they made it look and feel like a late fifties, early sixties, Hollywood movie set. It just had this. appeal to it. It had this feel of luxury. It also doubled for the location for the motor Lux, which was [00:07:00] later in the evening, which is more of like a black tie type of gala event. But the caliber of cars they had, I thought was pretty awesome ranging from, you know, the big doozies and the Packards and stuff like that, all the way to crazy concept cars like Weigert’s vector or an Isdera 108, which I’m wearing the t shirt and a little show and tell here as well.

And really everything in between the big three cars up on stage, Ferrari F50, Ferrari 288 GTO, and a Dyson Porsche. Those were like the headlining cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you just say F 50? I did say five, zero five, zero. Okay. The most undesirable of the F cars is what you’re trying to say was a highlights of the events.

Crew Chief Eric: I know you love that car.

Crew Chief Brad: I do.

Crew Chief Eric: It was the only one at 50, apparently up for auction and all of car week where there was half a dozen at forties for sale.

Crew Chief Brad: People don’t get rid of them. They keep them.

Crew Chief Eric: They didn’t make that many to begin with either. Right. Whatever. It was cool seeing one again in person. I mean, I haven’t seen one in years and they are pretty rare.

[00:08:00] So I’ve got all sorts of pictures of that. It’s actually that headline photo of the radius article that we wrote. And that’s part of what made this week stressful too. We were averaging four to five events. day over 10 days, and then we were writing every night, processing pictures. So we tried to highlight events that were really unique and really different.

Radius was one of them. It just had this champagne and roses type of feel to it that other events didn’t have, but all the events are different and that’s. Part of the awesomeness of Car Week. I did pick up a copy of Hagerty’s Driver’s Club magazine, which I’ve been wanting to get from anybody that had Hagerty shirts, but I figured, Hey, it’s available for free.

So I’m going to check it out. And this particular issue covers Porsche’s 75th birthday. So I’m looking forward to flipping through that and reading the articles. As many of our listeners probably know, we had John Kramer on from Mecham. We did a special pre release through Patreon, a couple other things.

If you wanted to go behind the scenes of the auction, get some pro tips from John, we got his road to success story. But what we ended up doing was when we [00:09:00] went to Mecham to see their Monterey, what they call the daytime auction, we actually ran into John again. He said, Hey, let me take you behind the scenes of the auction and show you how it runs.

Unbelievably busy, super chaotic. And we have all that footage. It’s up on our YouTube. It was really nice of him to do that. We got access to all sorts of stuff that you don’t normally see. Met a bunch of people like in the production studio, other commentators, you know, just watch the auction unfold live.

And it is more of that traditional, you know, standard American auction where you got the guy up there, but I mean, it’s just this constant. Never ending cycle of cars coming in and off the block. And if a car spends more than two minutes on the block, it’s too much. And so it’s this just parade and this commotion, and it’s very different.

It’s very lively. It’s energetic. And when you go out on the field, then you can see the cars that are still up for sale. The ones that have sold what they’ve sold for it’s very interactive. So that was a lot of fun. And again, really appreciate John taking us on that tour [00:10:00] and showing us how the auction runs and how it operates behind the scenes.

Crew Chief Brad: I did actually watch some of the Mecham auctions because they had coverage on Motor Trend app. So I was able to catch some of that. And you’re right. Like, I didn’t see any car go across the block and spend more than like a minute and a half, two minutes. They were boom, boom, boom. Get off the block. Even if they weren’t sold, you know, they put the little graphic up.

The bid goes on. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I, I like watching those auctions. I like watching them with older people like my father in law and my dad. Because they love to reminisce about the vehicles and then complain about how much they sell for.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I’m glad you brought up the bid goes on. John took us over there in the behind the scenes.

That’s actually a separate section of the auction where you can continue to bid on the cars once they’re off the block and actually negotiate a price rather than the whole, you know, 50, 51, 52, you know, all that kind of stuff. You can settle down and say, okay, I’m offering this. Are you willing to take it?

Negotiate with the owners if they’re there, stuff like that. So it’s really interesting how they run that. But to your point, Brad, a minute and a half, two minutes, every car on the block, they got [00:11:00] 600 cars to go through in like three days. So they got to keep that thing moving. Well, I got to give a shout out to Steve Cuttrell at Veloce media.

We ran into him so many times, whether it was at his place, at the premier of the new beer rally time at Concorso Italiano, which I’ll talk about here in a minute. To some private parties that were at his place. I felt like we were bumping into Steve every two minutes and especially thankful that he opened up his place for us to take a photo shoot for our Lexus press car came out really cool.

He’s got this awesome octopus mural in the background. There’s actually a jellyfish one buried in the back behind where the kitchen is and stuff like that. There, you’re going to see those photos in a garage style article coming out where we feature. Veloce media and they’re building. It’s really cool because it’s unassuming from the street.

You drive by it, not even paying attention to it. And inside it’s a wooden roof and all this glass and that mural. And it was the really great backdrop to take photos of the Lexus and they came out really, really awesome. So I got to give a nod to Steve at Veloce, but also because this happens almost all the [00:12:00] time.

You’re like so tired, you’re done with the day, done all these events. And then the phone rings. And Don’s like, Hey, we just got invited to two private parties or three private parties. Which one do you want to go to? And you’re like, none. You know, I just want, I want to go home and process pictures, but we would do that in the evenings go where people invited us.

And so we ended up back at Steve’s one evening for the Vance party. And so a Vance is a. Lifestyle brand and magazine. Every issue is about 140 pages, beautiful photographs, really, really nice stuff in this magazine. The one I have here is the Monterey edition. So I got to actually meet Avance. I got to meet those guys.

And while we were there chatting and looking at Ferrari two fifties and wide body nine 11s and all this kind of stuff that was in the showroom in walks. Matt Farah from the Smoking Tire and Jason Kamisa from Haggerty. We stood there for a while and I kept thinking, Brad wants me to talk to these guys.

Like, I gotta talk to these guys. And I’m there with Mike Piptone from ESE Carbon, who we’ll talk about here in a minute as well. And he’s like, let’s go [00:13:00] talk to Jason. Let’s do it. So we’re standing there like two fools. And Matt Farah and Jason are having this conversation. I snapped a photo. I don’t know what they were talking about, but the expressions on their face was really, really funny.

But Brad, that’s as close as I got because we unfortunately got pulled to another party. I know that Mike went and talked to Jason. So if you guys are listening, love to have you on the show, would love to get your road to success stories on break fix. So look forward to an email that’s going to go to spam in the near future.

I had to go to my more familiar stomping grounds. The racetrack the Monterey Historics at WeatherTech Laguna Seca Raceway. They sort of run autonomous from concurrently with Car Week, but traditionally there was a race around Pebble Beach back in the 50s as a Grand Prix and then eventually moved to Laguna Seca in 1957.

It was always the lead up to the Pebble Beach Concourse. The idea was you go race your car. And then you go show your car. Now, what they do is what they call the tour de elegance, which [00:14:00] we have a video of that as well. It kind of simulates the old days racing around Monterey on 17 mile drive and around pebble beach and things like that.

And then they end back at the Concord and get the car stage. Meanwhile, the historics are going on at Laguna Seca 300 cars. There were 13 classes of cars running every day, either between practice qualifying, and then there was race one and race two. So I went on race day, hyper focused on group four.

Which was 1981 to 91 Trans Am, IMSA, GTO, all the big body cars, V8 stuff. Was hoping there was going to be a five cylinder fire breathing dragon of an Audi there, but it was still fun. Corvettes, and there was a Newman Nissan in the mix, so that was good. And then group six was vintage Formula One cars, which was just…

Earshatteringly awesome. And then group 13, which was my absolute favorite. We had to stick around to the end of the day to watch them. You had Pat Long in his Celeste green, Bianchi blue, whatever you want to call it. Porsche 962 [00:15:00] amongst other 962s, Audi R8, you had Jaguars, you had Buicks, you had Spice Budweiser cars, all sorts of stuff.

Basically Le Mans prototypes, GTP cars celebrating, you know, the hundredth Le Mans that was. Spectacular to watch, especially big turbo cars running around Laguna Seca. Absolutely amazing. And Laguna is one of those awesome tracks where you can see from everywhere, but it requires a little bit of hiking to get to different vantage points, but absolutely amazing to be there on race day.

Crew Chief Brad: You were there for motorcycles too, weren’t you?

Crew Chief Eric: There were bikes there, but I didn’t see them. Were they

Crew Chief Brad: running in the same day? Just different group.

Crew Chief Eric: We got there a little later in the morning cause we had to cover. Portia works first, which I’m going to mention now. And then we ended up at Laguna lunchtime on, because we had looked at the schedule going, these are the three groups that we really want to see.

So I missed the bikes and all that kind of stuff. But as you wandered the paddock, there was a little bit of everything.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ve got a note here for Corvette 70th. Do you want to touch on that? Or

Crew Chief Eric: that’s a really great reminder. You know, [00:16:00] we’ve mentioned many times. We have a special episode that we did with the IMRRC about the 70th birthday of Corvette.

It coincides with Porsche’s 75th. They’re always trying to one up each other. So I kind of split hairs on thoughts. I was having a lot to track. I did a coverage of the Monterey Historics, but I also did an article called Porsche versus Corvette. Trying to decide whether or not one or the other is the every man’s sports car.

And you’ll have to read it to find the conclusion.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that the sequel to Ford versus Ferrari?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I think so. It’s Porsche versus Corvette. But what was nice is they had a really cool display of Corvettes. I’d never seen in person. Some of the prototypes, the Aerovette was there. They had Ben Keating’s Corvette that I saw live at Le Mans, the winning Corvette.

So that was fun to walk through that outdoor museum that they set up and photograph that I have pictures of. Of all sorts of the different Corvettes that were there and they were making a big to do celebrating Corvette. And like I mentioned before, Porsche works, which is the PCA sponsored event. They were celebrating Porsche in style.

Some of the craziest cars you’ve ever seen. Some of the [00:17:00] craziest colors you’ve ever seen. I ran into the. Current executive director and former executive directors. That’s Vu and Manny from PCA. And we had a chat. So they’ve agreed to come on the show in the future and do a crossover with us, but it was good to reconnect with them.

They’re in the same region that we’re in here on the East coast. They actually did a segment on the crazy colors of Porsches at Porsche Works. So there’s a video there on PCA. org to check out. So that was a lot of fun reconnecting with those guys. And Porsche Works was a great show to attend. It was free to anybody that wanted to go and check it out.

Crew Chief Brad: To answer your question online on Instagram. Graham, the answer is always green. Always. So it’s always green versus

Crew Chief Eric: lime.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah, it’s always lime. Lemon just doesn’t look right on it unless it’s a yellow bird.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s funny. You bring up lemons. Cause I did go to the concourse. The lemons, please touch on.

It’s exactly what you expect. It’s the hoopties. It’s the rust buckets. It’s the undesirables. It’s the ugly cars. Like we talked about on our, what should I buy [00:18:00] ugly cars episode? It’s everything you can think of. And then some other stuff you didn’t even know existed.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like you missed an opportunity to win something with your former Aztec.

Crew Chief Eric: Wasn’t mine. Didn’t own it. Well, there was an Aztec there along with a silhouette, the dust buster of minivans and other stuff like that.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the silhouette. That’s the one that basically looks like Illumina.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. The guy actually had a dust buster on the windshield. It was hilarious. I was like, this is awesome.

So the thing about concourse, the lemons is. Thank God it’s free because you get exactly what you pay for. I did a video of it. It’s on our YouTube. It’s compressed. I literally it’s concours de lemons in 60 seconds because that’s really all you need to understand what happened there. So a lot of fun. It is a bit of a circus to prizes and giveaways.

And the announcers are making fun of each other, making fun of the cars. And there’s a guy on top of his vehicle riding a bucking Bronco. I mean, it’s the weirdest stuff you’ve ever [00:19:00] seen is at the show. So why not just enjoy it, right? It’s part of car week. It’s part of car culture. And that’s what car week’s about is the celebration of car culture.

So then we step into the more serious side of car week. As we get closer to bevel, once you get to the Wednesday, Thursday, that’s when everybody starts to arrive in town. The celebrities start to show up. Things are getting more serious. Cars are getting ready for the tour de Elegance, like all this kind of stuff.

The auctions are. Still sort of going, but wrapping up. Everybody’s trying to get to pebble, right? That is Nirvana for this entire week. So we took the time to go to concorso italiano touted as the largest collection of Italian cars, basically all in one spot

Crew Chief Brad: other than Italy.

Crew Chief Eric: True.

Crew Chief Brad: I would like to think that Italy would win that by default.

Crew Chief Eric: I think there was more Fiat’s at this show than there is in Italy, though. I will say that.

Crew Chief Brad: More running Fiat. You mean?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. A hundred percent. Absolutely gorgeous cars. When you come on through the gates, it’s Lamborghini all day. And there’s Lamborghinis that we [00:20:00] talk about where it’s like, Oh, the Halpa and the Jarama and the Espada and you’re like, Oh, they’re super cool.

And there’s six of them right there. And you’re like, never seen so many in one spot at the same time. They had this neat stage set up. They had a fashion show. They had announcers and then they would take certain cars out of the field and then drive them in. I actually have a video of a Bizzarini Strada, which is the Bizzarini Coupe, which is Chevy V8 powered by the way.

Yeehaw. And he’s revving and idling and sitting there and it’s just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, the whole thing like you’d expect from a Trans Am. So we’ve got that up. It was a lot of fun. I spent some time wandering around the Ferrari section and quickly realized I could buy merchandise at a Formula One race and it would be cheaper.

I didn’t bring anything home. That said, the Fiat’s and the Alfa Romeo’s though, I mean, if they had tucked them any further back, they would have been at a different car show. Like they were up over the hill, out of the way. Nobody wants to see X one nines.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe they were in a different car show. You just [00:21:00] stumbled upon it.

Crew Chief Eric: I had fun talking to those guys at a delightful conversation with a guy who did a custom livery on his alpha four C looked really slick, but your GTV sixes one 64s Milano’s all the old stuff. I appreciate. I was hoping to see an alpha S Z, which is one of my favorites. It wasn’t to be, but I did talk to a lot of X one nine owners and Fiat one 24 guys.

That was really cool. I mean, Concorso was a lot of fun. You got to see the cars that we salivate over and you just drop a name. Countach, Diablo, 328, 348, Testarossa, 288. It didn’t matter. They were all at that show. So it’s really worth going to, if you appreciate Italian cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Spoiler alert, cause you’re going to talk about this later.

Is this. Where you got to talk to the CEO of Lamborghini or was it a different event?

Crew Chief Eric: No, I got to talk to Stefan Winkleman while I was at Pebble beach. That’s another story for another time,

Crew Chief Brad: like five minutes from now.

Crew Chief Eric: So we went to a new event new for this year, [00:22:00] sponsored by NECOM is called the Monterey motor sports festival.

Shout out to David at MIE racing for bringing this to our attention. He knows some folks over there. He says, you got to go to the show. You got to cover it. You got to check it out. It’s very different than anything I’ve described so far. It’s sort of Monterey’s version of grid life without the drifting and the track event.

It’s all the other parts of grid life. It’s that festival. It’s the music, it’s newer cars. It’s the things you don’t see at all the other shows, right? The tuner cars, all the JDM stuff, because you walk around, you’re like. Where’s all, where’s all the newer European stuff or newer Japanese cars. So you don’t see a lot of that at the other shows.

So it was nice, more bar speed, more my style. The older guys were just like, yeah, it’s okay. It’s cool. You know, blah, blah, blah. The food was hands down the best.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah, it’s our people.

Crew Chief Eric: Food truck food for the win. So they got that right. It was super awesome. The singers they had up on stage, Brad, I think you would have appreciated that they were really, really good.

This one woman. Had a real [00:23:00] knack for making herself sound like a Carly Simon or a Linda Ronstadt. She was very flexible, very adaptable in her singing. So that was a lot of fun. We actually watched her for quite a while and then, you know, took turns looking at different cars and stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Were they like a cover band or were they like a legitimate artist?

Crew Chief Eric: No cover band. I don’t remember her name, unfortunately. She’s out of New York city. I’m sure we can look it up and see who it was. It was a great performance and it added a good ambience to the show. And in front of her on stage was a Maserati and then an old Packard. And oh, they had a mix of cars kind of highlighting all the different decades.

And she made a point to mention that between songs as they were changing some of the instruments out. And that’s also where I got an opportunity to see some cars from Mecham that I didn’t see when I was there to include a wide body Speedster V8 914. Which was just off the charts insane. I was like, how did I know this thing was for sale?

I might’ve bid on it. It’s kind of cool. We have to ramp up the big two events. The ones that everybody talks about [00:24:00] every year are the quail and pebble. And it comes down to which one do you go to? Which one do you spend the money to go to? Because both are very expensive. Both are very posh. If you look at the cover photo of the quail video that we just.

Quickly put together, you kind of get an idea of what the quail is all about, but what’s interesting is that even though it’s sponsored by bottoms and it has been for many, many years, it’s a little bit more modern than pebble. You had brands like singer there, you had Maserati showing off new cars. You had a new Bentley prototype Kia was there with some of their concept cars.

So it was a little bit more. Modern, but it was a very upscale event. So it’s really kind of cool to see that intersection between those two ideas represented at a very high profile concord

Crew Chief Brad: before we get into pebble. I have to know what did you wear? Did you look like the help or did you look like someone who belonged there?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I was warned ahead of time that I needed to bring a change of clothes. A lot of events I went to polo [00:25:00] shirt, jeans. Nicer shoes in Pacific Grove. You could go in jeans and a t shirt or shorts. Didn’t really matter.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you wear the yellow? Everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: I did not because I didn’t want to look like a flagger.

Apple is probably where I dressed up the most. You’re talking slack sport coat, you know, all that kind of stuff. It is more upscale. You know, you got to represent when you look around, everybody has those. Funny straw hats, which I thought about buying one, but when you look at the hat and it doesn’t have a price in the price tag, you know, you probably don’t or want or can’t afford it.

So I’m just like, I’m going to leave that alone. There’s a lot of hype around pebble beach been around for 70 some odd years now on the golf course on the 18th fairway. It is supposed to be the epitome of luxury high life and all this kind of stuff. And some of the finest cars in the world. And one of the things I came to find out which I thought was really interesting is they’ve incorporated the concept cars and I got to see where the DeLorean reimagined was unveiled last year because they have other concept cars in that area that’s actually before [00:26:00] you even enter pebble basically was a really large putting green right near the pro shop.

I also learned that cars that enter Pebble and not reenter Pebble for like upwards of a decade. So once it’s been accepted and shown, you won’t see that same car again at Pebble beach. They try to really mix it up. So you don’t have the same champion every year or the same three cars competing. You’re like, I’ve seen all these before.

They want to mix it up. They really want to break up the show. It is sectioned off. So you’ve got like an entire section of pre war cars, Packards, preservation group, Porsche group, and you can go from group to group to group and kind of focus on what you really like. The difference between the Avants party and Quail, even Broad Arrows Radius.

Pebble is where all the it people are. It’s where all the celebrities come. It’s where all the movie stars are. It’s where all the CEOs and executives. I mean, I was 10 feet from the current CEO of Ford. I talked to Stefan from Lamborghini while I was standing next to Magnus [00:27:00] Walker. And I’ve recognized other people that have been on the show and things like that.

And it’s just like, this is the who’s who of California and of the automotive world all in one spot. And we’re surrounded by the most beautiful cars you’ve ever seen. What’s funny is the pebble actually has two books. There’s the little field guide, which is packed full of information while you’re looking at cars.

And then there’s the big pebble program, which is like the phone book, just full of stuff sponsored by Rolex, everything you come to expect from all these brands. It is a cut above, but the question becomes. If you’re going to these shows as a civilian or as a layman, you really have to build Car Week on a budget.

Pebble’s not cheap. 500 for a ticket. Scalper’s up to 800. Quail’s not cheap either. A lot of these events add up quick. So you got to have a big budget or decide, I want to just focus on this and then do all the surrounding shows and private parties. And there’s something for everybody during Car Week. So you got to kind of make those financial decisions.

It’s not like I can do everything and be everywhere during Car Week.

Crew Chief Brad: So pebble or Amelia Island

Crew Chief Eric: that was thrown around a lot too, [00:28:00] but having talked to people that have been to Amelia and not that there’s anything wrong with Amelia, there’s gorgeous cars there. They’re coming from the East. There’s not the rest of what makes up car week at Amelia.

You go to Amelia for Amelia. There’s not the driving tours and there are the private parties, but there’s not 16 other car shows happening on the same day as Amelia. There’s just. That one event. Now there’s been talk that, you know, how the Haggerty’s involved, that that’s going to grow rebranding as radius, just like they did with the broad arrow event.

So really interested to see how Emilia evolves. It would be really cool if it turned into another car week, but it’s going to take some time to get there.

Crew Chief Brad: Are you going to tell us about your conversation with Stefan or are you going to keep that to yourself?

Crew Chief Eric: You know what? I’m going to save it for a future break fix episode.

How about that?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And I do see here that you saw the new Kuntosh. I. Did tell us your thoughts, Mr. Hater. I don’t hate it as much anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: Imagine that [00:29:00] it does look better in person than in pictures. It’s not that it’s horrible in picture. It’s just, you’re kind of like, is that right? Does that look right?

When you see it coming, EB one 10 Bugatti, which doesn’t photograph well either, but you see it in person, you’re like, that’s the Batmobile. And the Countach in that white, it’s huge. It’s wide. It’s low, sort of like the old Countach, where it’s just so over the top, you can’t stop looking at it. And every angle you look at it, it’s one of those cars, you see something else.

And that’s what you don’t see in the photographs. Cause the photographs are almost too polished. They’re almost too rendered, but to see it in person, I mean, I just stood there. And I’m just like, I don’t know what to say. I like it. I still think Magnus’s version of it is better, but you know, Hey, to each his own.

All right. One of the other things that really stood out at pebble, we’re talking about car spotting was the McLaren display right along the coastline. Awesome. And I stopped dead in my tracks. And just had a moment amongst all the noise. I had a moment [00:30:00] of silence for Senna’s F1 car, took all sorts of pictures of it.

And, you know, it was funny as a guy walks up and, you know, I’m just kind of standing there, not like I’m meditating or, you know, kneeling down or anything, but he’s like, whose car is this? Like I recognize it. And I’m like, bro, seriously. And he was an older guy and he’s an admitted Formula One fan. I said to him, it’s Senna’s car.

He’s like, well, how do you know? And I was like, it’s written right on the hoop, dude. But it’s number 12. It’s his car. It’s pretty legendary Formula One car here. We had a good laugh and then we were chatting. So we continued to walk along. And then next to that was one of Donahue’s McLarens. One of Bruce McLaren’s McLaren’s.

Then you had Mika Hawkin’s, McLaren, then you had James Hunt scaffolding multiple wings and all this crazy stuff. So that to me, as a racer and a motor sports enthusiast, that was awesome. That was my favorite part of Pebble and I didn’t know it was gonna be there. So that just immediate surprise. As I came around the corner and their Senna’s car and all the rest of ’em, I was just like, that sold it for me.

That was amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: And you didn’t get [00:31:00] arrested for trying to climb in. I’m proud of you.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, my media pass gets me to certain places too. You know, cross over those chains a little bit. All in all, Car Week was amazing. It is completely a blur. We’re talking 18 hour days, just nonstop. Go here, go there driving around.

I think we clocked 2000 miles of driving or something insane. It’s a lot of work, maybe not physically demanding, but it’s just mentally stressful. You’re looking at the events, not through the eyes of a participant either. You’re looking at it through the eyes of the press. What looks good? Camera angles is the lighting, right?

And there’s a lot of decisions. How are we going to use this? Make sure you grab that car because that could be a winner. So you got to photograph everything. It’s kind of nuts at the end of the day, but I don’t want to say it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it was definitely something I’m glad I’m now able to check off my bucket list.

And I did it in a big, big way. Well with that, it’s time we move on to Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche news. What is this thing?

Executive Producer Tania: What is this? Oh yeah! I don’t know what this is, but apparently it’s Audi honoring [00:32:00] 150 years since manufacturing began in Neckarsalem. It’s called the NSU Prins 4. And it’s unrecognizable as an Audi?

Crew Chief Eric: NSU, for those that don’t know the wider history of the auto union, was one of the four circles in the rings of Audi, right? So NSU was absorbed into the auto union and the NSU Prince was one of these little like Nash metropolitan things that they made back in the day. NSU is also where the Wankel, the rotary was born.

Executive Producer Tania: So side by side with the original one, this looks so much better.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. It’s a re imagination of the original NSU prints. I’ve really liked it. It kind of reminds me of what Alpine is doing with the new R5.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t necessarily feel good about the back of it. I don’t understand, like it’s got a very long trunk lid and a very long rear spoiler wing thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Double spoiler

Executive Producer Tania: action going on.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s the fender flares that do it for me.

Executive Producer Tania: I like the fender flares. So I like the look from the [00:33:00] front. It’s very low. It’s very squat. It’s boxy, but with round headlights, although they’re oval, but with two round headlights inside the oval.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So aren’t those the Rivian lights just turned on their side?

Executive Producer Tania: They’re reminiscent.

Crew Chief Brad: They could be, they probably sourced them from the same place Rivian did.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, this is right up there with the re imagined R5, the Opal Manta EV. Some of the other ones that have come out,

Executive Producer Tania: this is not going anywhere. This is just a concept, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Can they make it? I mean, I’d be happy with it.

Executive Producer Tania: I see. Unfortunately, nobody’s going to buy that a rich person is going to buy it just to say that they have it. There’s nothing practical about that car. It’s so small considering how it actually looks smaller than the original. I’m going to guess the original is not that big,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not practical enough for today’s standards.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s talk about another car that’s being reimagined. Porsche made an announcement.

Executive Producer Tania: Their Vision 357 Speedster, celebrating 75 years.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. So what is this? It’s a car.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like a [00:34:00] weird 356.

But

Crew Chief Eric: I like it, but I don’t, I don’t know what to think of it. Like there’s really cool aspects to it. I think the wheels are really neat. I like that grill in the back that reminds me of a three 56 with those striations that they had, you know, back then that canopy is obviously from the three 56 speedster.

There’s some elements of the five 50 spider in this car.

Executive Producer Tania: They could have also just called it an electric boxster.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out. So it’s obviously mid engine, but the front clip still looks like a nine 11. Like an old 911, but it doesn’t have headlights either. So I’m trying to figure out how that works

Executive Producer Tania: or it does.

And it’s just like, they beam through perforations.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. I’d have to see it in person. It’s kind of cool.

Executive Producer Tania: Again, it’s a concept, so they’re probably not going to build it.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s just to, I guess, celebrate 75 years of Porsche.

Executive Producer Tania: 75 years of the 356.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and this is just it. This is what I expected when they were making that big reveal when Le Mans was happening on June the 8th.

And then [00:35:00] they revealed the 9X. We were guessing that it was going to be some sort of homage to the 356. It didn’t happen. So here we are a month later and yes, okay, so there is a 356 sort of prototype speedster car. I don’t think it would be kind of cool to make something like this.

Executive Producer Tania: There is a hardtop version.

Really?

Crew Chief Brad: That was the one they announced back in January. You

Executive Producer Tania: can see the picture. Yes. Which also from the side profile side, it’s kind of actually pretty hideous, but it’s got weird elements of different past Porsches.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s probably the whole point. But I will also say, I think it’s funny that maybe they’ll go back to the 300 series numbers.

Cause I feel like Porsche has exhausted the nine hundreds at this point. I mean, that’s why we have nine, nine, one dot one and nine, nine, one dot two. And because they’re just running out of model numbers. So maybe going back to the three, five, six, and maybe a handful of others gives them an opportunity to make some different models,

Crew Chief Brad: but think about the marketing event that would be to have the Porsche 1000.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s something Don and I were joking [00:36:00] about, you know, these guys talking about their nine, nine, one dot two and nine, nine, two dot whatever. When he goes. Tell them you have a 9, 9 1 0.4 and see what happens. Because they’ll be like, wait a minute. They didn’t make that. What, when did the dot three come out?

Like you get ’em all wrapped around the axle on something like that, but dot whatever. It’s almost like software. It’s like, oh, windows 10, do one, do two, three. I’m like,

Crew Chief Brad: whatever. It’s a, an automotive patch, . We’ll talk about that in a little bit. I like the 3 57, both the speedster and the coop. I think they’re cool.

I would take one if I fit and if they made it and if I could afford it. There are a lot of variables there that I need to meet before I can take one

Crew Chief Eric: piece. Hmm. Well, with that, we need to move on to STIs. We actually have some news coming from Chrysler, Dodge Fiat and the whole conglomerate, the new 2025 Dodge stealth Durango.

Did I

Executive Producer Tania: read that right?

Crew Chief Eric: What?

Crew Chief Brad: What

Executive Producer Tania: exactly?

Crew Chief Eric: So is it a Stealth or is it a Durango?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a Stealth Durango. Oh.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a Durango in [00:37:00] Stealth mode that you don’t know it’s a Durango. Oh. Okay. It’s just a Jeep. It’s incognito.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like a big Hornet.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks better than the Hornet.

Executive Producer Tania: Like a big square. Hornet.

Crew Chief Brad: With 24 inch wheels, or whatever

Crew Chief Eric: those look like.

Because the hornet in pictures, although we’ve seen it in person I saw one on the road. It looks like the dart was stretched upwards, like a car that they turned into an SUV.

Crew Chief Brad: What is that weird Stellantis badge on the front? That’s the Dodge.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s the two red stripes.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that all that is? I thought it was an S.

No. Whatever it is, it looks stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: Which is confusing because the Grand Sport has those two slashes on the Corvette, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, the Grand Sport does on the Fender, eh?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know what it all means. All I know is that I’ve heard nothing but commercials about Dodge and the Brotherhood of Muscle. I feel like this is…

In that same realm, it’s a muscly SUV has those things on the top of the fenders that remind me of the Land Rover. The defender would love to see what that actually does in real [00:38:00] life.

Crew Chief Brad: Nothing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I would be curious to see it in real life. It’s interesting.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. So still at this news, Dodge is coming out with a new Durango.

They’re calling it the stealth because they’re idiots and some other idiots are going to buy it moving on.

Crew Chief Eric: And the sad part is there’s only one photograph and

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s just

Crew Chief Eric: a rendering.

Crew Chief Brad: No, so there’s a second photograph if you click in with a different logo, with a different emblem.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re right.

You’re right. The grill is slightly different, but there’s no shots from the back. And if you do look at their rear quarter panel, it is a little disconcerting. It’s probably just a rendering. It probably does not exist.

Executive Producer Tania: Are there no pictures in those 13 photos?

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. It’s all pictures of old Durangos.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a

Crew Chief Brad: picture at the beginning and a picture at the end.

Executive Producer Tania: 100

Crew Chief Eric: percent clickbait. Well, it’s Motor Trend, what do you expect? Well, you know what isn’t clickbait? Our domestic news brought to us by American Muscle, your source for Ford, Chevy, and sometimes Mopar parts. We participated in a zoom session over the last month with Ben Keating from team [00:39:00] Corvette by way of our friends at the ACO USA.

And if you tuned into the show this month, you’ll see that we also interviewed David Lowe, the administrator for the American arm of the ACO. And so we can get into more details on that. You tune back into break fix, but it was a really great. Hour long presentation by Ben. He talks about his experience winning Le Mans.

It’s like the second or third time he’s done it, obviously with different teams. We got the announcement that GM is officially sunsetting the factory team, but that doesn’t mean that’s the end of Corvette at Le Mans. What was really cool was listening to him talk about the driver changes, driving at night, how hard it was, and the race to the end, especially when they were a couple laps down and they came from the back of the pack, you know, in GTLM to win it.

It’s available, especially if you become a member of the ACO, you can check it out on their Facebook group, the zoom session is out there, but it’s a really great evening, great discussion with Ben Keating. I mentioned we were at pebble beach and I ran into the CEO of Ford. I’m just going to read the headline [00:40:00] Ford tried to be Tesla and it cost the company.

Billions and then I look down and I see a picture of Jim Farley and he’s like rubbing the hood of this F 150 lightning like he’s Gollum from Lord of the Rings. And all I could keep thinking was my precious, my precious, but the result of all of this, if you summarize the article is Ford cut the price.

Of the F 150 and its stocks took a nosedive.

Executive Producer Tania: Which is apt to happen when somebody does that and then investors get all scared. I’m scared. Does it mean anything? TBD remains to be seen.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s all bullshit. Like, I don’t understand how Tesla is so successful. Carbon credits. Works out really well for Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Because there’s this side funneling of money into the company.

Crew Chief Brad: From tech bros and people that, you know, refuse to let their investment die.

Executive Producer Tania: Or Elon himself, just funneling his own money in there, probably.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. But Ford just has normal customers, so they don’t play that game.

Crew Chief Eric: Don says [00:41:00] it all the time. You sell more Fords than Ferraris.

And so if they can make something that appeals to the masses, like the F 150, just got to get the recipe, right? People bought on to the Tesla bandwagon, just like the iPhone. And so is the Ford F 150 the Android? I don’t want to make that analogy, but you kind of get my point, right? The F 150, as we’ve said before, is the best selling vehicle in North America.

The question is, was electrifying it the right move? I’ve also heard that Ford is backing the throttle off on V6 EcoBoost 150s and they’re moving back to V8s. So what does that mean exactly?

Crew Chief Brad: What’s old is new again. The coyote. Oh! Funny little tidbit, Elon Musk actually commented on the price of the F 150 Lightning saying it’s too expensive.

Oh, there’s the popcorn, the kettle black. He

Executive Producer Tania: was complimentary saying that the Ford Lightning was a good vehicle, though.

Crew Chief Brad: Good vehicle, yes, but somewhat expensive, especially given the high interest rates.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:42:00] And so the Ford is what, like 40, 000 right now? Something around that?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s supposed to be 40, 000 or started 40, but they were selling around 50, 000.

Executive Producer Tania: The Cybertruck’s going

Crew Chief Brad: to be, it starts around 50 and depending on what you do, tri motor, bi motor, single motor, quadruple motor, they

Executive Producer Tania: don’t even have prices out yet

Crew Chief Brad: when they first announced that they had prices and the tri motor was supposed to be like 75 to 80 because that’s the one that I have on hold for a hundred dollars.

That I’m still trying to give away people. Somebody, please contact us through our channels to buy my 100 deposit on a cyber truck. I will give it away for 5. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: I thought it was a bag of tacos from Taco Bell.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s about 5.

Crew Chief Eric: Switching to. Japanese and Asian imports. More news on the Hyundai N74 that we like so much.

Did you guys see this latest, quote unquote, production version? No, but I’m following this page.

Executive Producer Tania: Something about it that looks [00:43:00] different than the other.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks boring.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, it’s the missing the wing. It’s missing like the air ducts, I think, on the side that the other one had. Some of the ground effects are less aggressive on this.

Crew Chief Brad: It reminds me of the Subaru SVX.

Crew Chief Eric: Not quite that level of weird, but yes, to your point. You know what it looks like, Tanya? It looks like a Stereon. It looks like a Conquest TSI. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. It still has the flares, but the rest of the car is just sort of like, meh.

Executive Producer Tania: Which I can’t hate that comment, but.

Crew Chief Brad: They could be doing like Toyota did. Toyota, when they released the Supra, they had a bunch of what looked like fake vents and stuff like that. Right. And it was theorized. That they were put on there on purpose to sell performance parts and packages in the future. So maybe you can add the wing and some of the more radical pieces later on.

Crew Chief Eric: Either that or some aftermarket’s going to make them. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: exactly. Maybe this is just the base model.

Executive Producer Tania: And that’s okay too. Like maybe if there’s a base model and then there’s like the GT model. [00:44:00]

Crew Chief Brad: When the 350z came out, there was the base 350z and it went all the way up to the performance or track version that had various different.

Options and stuff. Well, it’s almost like this is like

Executive Producer Tania: the base coupe GT and but we need like the URQ next to it.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, the sport quattro. Exactly. I will say I hate it in this silver color. It looks like it was born in the 80s. It would look really cool white. Or red.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it wouldn’t look really that great in black because I think you lose all of its shape in black.

Black cars are gorgeous. Yeah. The silver it’s reminiscent of too many other cars that are coming out in silver right now. Even that three 57 we were just talking about as a silver and white combination. But if it was that Kuntosh white with the black accents, I can see that really playing it to the strength of this car.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So we’ll see, maybe it’s just another rendering. We don’t know what the real thing looks like, but I was a little disappointed when I saw that. I was like, it’s very watered down in comparison to the track toy that has been teased multiple times over. Speaking of [00:45:00] track toys, you guys remember the S2000?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, I do. I went for a ride in an autocross in one once.

Executive Producer Tania: I recently instructed in one.

Crew Chief Eric: What did you think of the S2000, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: You know what? I had never been in one. I have only been around cheater ones. I was actually pleasantly surprised by its neutral handling.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s motorcycle like engine.

Executive Producer Tania: You know, it’s not the fastest thing, but it’s also not slow.

Crew Chief Brad: I heard they suffer from snap oversteer. They do, that is true.

Executive Producer Tania: I was instructing someone who wasn’t pushing that aggressively, so we didn’t ever encounter anything like that. Thankfully,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s good. And if you watch Initial D, the S2000 is God hand.

Executive Producer Tania: So in the passenger seat, the way this gentleman was driving, it felt very neutral.

It didn’t do anything weird,

Crew Chief Eric: which could also be that it doesn’t have enough power to break it loose. But to Brad’s point, when they do snap, they go around, they come. They’re a great drift car. I mean, everybody that I’ve ever talked to says they’re amazing when they’re [00:46:00] sideways. I’ve ridden in some S2000s.

I’ve driven a couple of myself. They’re always kind of a fun little roadster. For me, the Achilles heel was the engine VTEC kicks in at 7, 000 RPM. And you got to wring its neck to almost 10 to get it to do anything. Yeah. The noise is awesome, but excruciating at the same time. Cause you’re like, I feel really bad for this engine that I have to rev it out like a motorcycle.

But what have I told you? Honda was gonna come back with the S 2000 as an

Executive Producer Tania: ev. I don’t even care about any of that. I saw the picture of this thing and it’s atrocious looking. I don’t care what it runs on fairy dust or not, like this thing needs to go away.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like a cross between the new N S X and Adel soul.

Crew Chief Eric: You read my mind, Brad. ’cause I was thinking the same thing.

Crew Chief Brad: I will say I did see a brand new N Ss X. On the highway the other day, and it was beautiful. I almost started drooling. It looks so good next to me. And there’s really pretty bright blue color. This does not look like that though. This looks like the Honda Del Sol kind of took over the styling portion of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Cause it has that [00:47:00] Targa bar thing going on with the rear glass there for what you can see from these pictures, which there are not a ton, but yeah, the front end, it’s got that beak, like the older Acura’s had and the NSX that it shares with, I think the wheels are cool.

Crew Chief Brad: I think the importance of the article, though, is to get interest or the thing we should touch on is how do we feel about an S2000 replacement or successor as an EV?

I don’t think it would look like this. I think this is just somebody’s stupid rendering. And Tanya just made the point that she doesn’t even care about all that. You know, Evie, not Evie, whatever. It doesn’t matter. I think if it was like a mini version of the NSX and had to hybrid technology, like a smaller version of the NSX is power plant, I think it would be pretty cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So then why not just build an NSX convertible at that point?

Crew Chief Brad: Because the NSX is 200 plus. Something thousand dollars and the S 2000 should be around 50 something.

Crew Chief Eric: And how much do you think this is going to be?

Crew Chief Brad: It should be around 40 or

Crew Chief Eric: 50. We’ll ask Elon and see how much it should be.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s just going to shoot it into space.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s an episode for another [00:48:00] day too. I actually met the guy that designed the roadster. So that was kind of fun.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you mean, uh, Colin Chapman? Yeah. Well,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, Tanya hit the nail on the head. It’s all sort of meh at the end of the day with, is it gas? Is it diesel? Is it EV? Is it hybrid? Is it whatever Toyota is again, back in the news saying meh to EVs.

They have not, and they are still not building full EVs. They’re sticking to hybrid. They’ve invested a ton of money in hydrogen. And it was really funny. I had a conversation while I was out in California with some Tesla owners, and I brought up the fact that there’s a lot of companies moving to combustible hydrogen.

It’s not just Toyota. We mentioned in the last episode, Bosch and Ligier and BMWs going down this route for a while. There’s a bunch of others that are looking to combustible hydrogen. It was really funny because the pushback I got. Especially when I mentioned Bosch, which I recognize as a global partner in the automotive industry, gentlemen said, I don’t know who Bosch is.

And hydrogen is not sustainable long term. And I’m [00:49:00] like, wait, excuse me. So strip mining, the earth and Mars. I’m super hopeful and backing Toyota’s thought that EV is a stopgap right now to this idea of combustible hydrogen, if they can solve the containment and distribution puzzle, which is going to take decades.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, they also have to solve the acquiring piece as well,

Crew Chief Eric: but the acquiring piece is also a problem with EVs. There’s only so much lithium to go around. We don’t have a great recycling program for it. And yes, We’ll talk more about infrastructure changes in the future, but we’re still not there. There was a report that came out even the other day where they’re saying that EV sales have plateaued.

All the early adopters have adopted and we’re at 7%.

Executive Producer Tania: And nobody else can afford these cars. Yep.

Crew Chief Brad: Not at seven or 8 percent interest rates.

Executive Producer Tania: Who can afford it?

Crew Chief Eric: That and we’re at market saturation at like seven or 8 percent of cars or EV. But the article I was reading was saying that to get from like 8 percent to 12 percent [00:50:00] saturation, it’s going to take another decade to do that.

And in that decade, what other technology is going to come out?

Executive Producer Tania: You have to have disposable income. You’re in a certain bracket financially to just go out and be like, I’m going to dump my car. That’s. Probably maybe paid for and has nothing wrong with it. And go spend 60 plus a charging system in your home, plus whatever else, I mean, you’ve got money to play with your average person.

Who’s trying to make ends meet. They’re going to keep running their Toyota Corolla until it Chernobyl’s in like 50 years. They’re still driving their 1990 Camry.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. EVs, EVs are still a niche affluent market.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you want to talk about niche affluent markets. How about. Luxury sedans that are turned into big SUVs with off road capability.

Executive Producer Tania: How did you enjoy your Lexus?

Crew Chief Eric: Our press car was a 2024 yet to be released to the general masses. LX 600 in a seaweed green. There’s a full article that Don from Garage Style Magazine wrote about it. And we took a. It was nice. [00:51:00] There were some things that were different about it, things that I didn’t expect, like four independent captain’s chairs in the vehicle, right?

No third row seating in that thing. It had a parcel shelf behind the back row. It did cut into the trunk space a bit. I could control the front seats. from a Captain Kirk like console in the back, which was pretty cool. I could change the air con, the radio, like I had this whole thing. Like I felt like I was on the Enterprise.

Executive Producer Tania: So was Don Ubering you around?

Crew Chief Eric: There was a bunch of us. So yes, but Don was our Uber. He got to drive most of the time. It has. Really fast adapting air ride suspension. Like my Jeep has air ride, but it’s the Mercedes system. So it’s a little slow and it’s comfy and

Crew Chief Brad: generations old too.

Crew Chief Eric: True. It’s 10 years old.

The Toyota reacts almost too fast in some instances. And we found that the ride initially was really, really harsh and we had to soften it up. If you went over a speed bump slowly. Like one with collector cars tends to do, or even with sports cars, you know, you want to roll [00:52:00] up to the speed bump and cross over it.

You would have thought a landmine was going off underneath the Lexus, but if you hit that sucker at 30 miles an hour, smooth as glass, it was really bizarre. We had to readjust the suspension, which we could do, but you can only do it when it was parked. And then it’s buried in the menu system. And so that was a little kludgy, but it also had things like the climate.

Concierge, which I’m still not 100 percent sure what that button does. I mean, it had heated and cooled everything from the back of your neck to the ball chiller to the massaging seat. I mean, it had everything you could possibly think of because it was fully loaded. Sticker price before taxes, tags, delivery, and anything else that could maybe get loaded on like optional paint colors or paint to sample or whatever you want to do.

We were looking at above 130, 000.

Crew Chief Brad: On the website it shows 92, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: This one optioned out was above

Crew Chief Brad: 130.

Crew Chief Eric: Well,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, optioned out. Yeah. But base is 92.

Crew Chief Eric: Would I buy one?

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s a Sequoia underneath. So I don’t know. The thing [00:53:00] is I thought it was a V8, but it wasn’t, it was a twin turbo six. It was a definite get up and go engine.

It would make like 500 foot pounds of torque or something like that. And it was quick for as stout as that vehicle is. But the bigger problem was for all that luxury and all the gizmos and. The electronic rearview mirror, like it doesn’t actually have a rearview mirror and all these sensors and all this stuff that it has, you kind of go, well, that’s going to break.

How long is that going to last? I mean, Toyota quality, right? Sure. But eventually with use things wear out. The biggest issue was we’re doing a lot of highway miles. We were filling it every other day. And with California gas prices of near. 6 a gallon for super because it’s twin turbo. You have to run super in it.

That’s costly. Big time money to keep that thing on the road and keep it running.

Executive Producer Tania: If you have a hundred thousand dollars to spend on that, you have the money to spend on the fuel.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe I don’t disagree. I will say it turned a lot of heads. A lot of people were like, we’ve never seen this. What is this? And we’re like.

It’s the new Lexus LX 600. They [00:54:00] wanted to see inside it. That color was really unique, especially with the baseball knit interior. It looked really good together. It was a head turner. The grill is probably its major drawback. It looks better from the back than the front. It looks like a Range Rover from the back, the way they cut the bumpers and everything.

But they went from that honeycombed Black Widow grill to this just full on face mask. Like, it’s got braces and then some. Luckily, Toyota didn’t chrome it. It’s like a satin finish, but like brushed aluminum. So it doesn’t reflect everything and anything it can. So. It’s still a little ostentatious, but you can live with it.

And again, for the full review on the Lexus, you can jump back to our website, or you can go over to Garage Style and read more about the Lexus and see more pictures and stuff. But now I’m going to pass the baton to Tanya to talk about other random new EVs and concept cars.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s less car or concept, but a infrastructure update.

Apparently the EU is passing a law to blanket their highways. [00:55:00] By 2025 with fast EV chargers that must be placed every 37 miles.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s for like all the Fiat 500Es and stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a lot of chargers, but focusing on the Trans European Transport Network, the TEN T as they call it, which is like the Designated major arteries through all the different European countries.

That’s where their main focus is of putting all of these chargers. So think just, you know, major highways.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a step.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re saying every Alto grill on the Alto strata, the solar is going to have an EV charger, basically.

Executive Producer Tania: And then some, I would imagine, cause the Alto grills are not every 37 miles.

Crew Chief Brad: This is going to be costly because it’s not just, Oh, we’re just going to put in a charger.

You’ve got to put in pavement. And you got to. Builds the mini gas station. You’re probably going to have a restroom. Someone’s got to maintain it.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. Cause it almost seems like they’re just going to literally be like little outposts because everything has to be self service, self pay. There can’t be [00:56:00] any need for a person there.

No cash. You got to be able to do contactless payment, blah, blah, blah. So if that’s the case and they’re every 37 miles and there’s an auto grill in between, you’re going to go make a stop at the auto grill and get a sandwich

Crew Chief Brad: and then go charge.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know that you need to have all those amenities if you’re just needing to top off.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: And if you’re in France, you don’t need a bathroom. From my understanding. So.

Crew Chief Brad: True. True. Back to a previous episode where the men in France just let her rip anywhere. I got memories to prove that.

Executive Producer Tania: In other EV news, the Consumer Reports has issued the 10 EVs that should last more than 300, 000 miles.

Crew Chief Eric: How much should all the other ones last?

Crew Chief Brad: All the other ones are Teslas.

Crew Chief Eric: So all the other cars are junk? Build quality of cars is supposed to be getting better. So you’re telling me there’s only 10 cars on this planet that’ll get to 300, 000 miles? No,

Executive Producer Tania: no, no. Of the EVs out there, only EVs should last more than 300, 000 miles.

I don’t know what that means. Most of the car is no [00:57:00] different. Then another car, right? Like the body, if you’re saying the body can last here in a thousand miles, well, we know that that’s true of cars that are decades old, right? They’re still out there. Maybe they’re rusted, but they’re still out there.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, and to Tanya’s point about cars going the distance, I met a gentleman while I was in Monterey who has a three 56.

That’s about to go into the history books with almost 1 million. Original miles. And so once it crosses a million, it’ll go into the Porsche museum. And what he’s doing, he’s only got about 20, 000 miles left. You could actually sign up to take a drive for whatever time or length. And then your name would go in the log book at Porsche that you added miles to this three 56.

Think about that, right? There are cars out there that will do that. There’s been Volvos. There’s been other cars that have reached a million miles. So 300, 000. Yeah, okay. Let’s prove it. Let’s see it. Are

Executive Producer Tania: you telling me the battery pack is gonna last 300, 000 miles? I don’t think there’s enough data, cyclic testing data, out there to [00:58:00] support that yet.

Crew Chief Eric: That was the other thing that bugged me about this, based on what information. Haven’t you tested the car for 300, 000 miles? Put them on a treadmill like it’s Ferris Bueller and just, like, let them go or something? Like, what is this?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think they really explained. Other than, like, it should and warranties cover.

Crew Chief Brad: This entire article is BS. And then they just

Executive Producer Tania: list out the Kona, and the Mini Cooper, and the Bolt, and the i3, and the Model S, and the ID. 4, and the Mach E.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you notice that all of these cars are in a similar price range too? Are they? I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t think so. I don’t think a Leaf or a Bolt are on the same level as a Model S.

Crew Chief Eric: No, the Model S is the exception here because they have to have one expensive car, but the rest of them are in that 30, 000 to 40, 000 range. The Mach E is not in the 30,

Crew Chief Brad: 000 to 40, 000 range. Yeah, it is.

Crew Chief Eric: The Mach E is only like 42, 000.

Executive Producer Tania: 30 to 40, 000. It’s 42, so it’s not in a 30 to 40, 000 range.

Crew Chief Brad: I think you’d be hard pressed to get out of a dealership with a Ford Mach E for less than 45.

Executive Producer Tania: For all those [00:59:00] people interested in a Ford Mustang Mach E, they start at 42, 995. Start. In the Select trim, the Premium trim 46, 995, the California Route 1 56, 995, and if you’re gonna go all out. And why wouldn’t you, the GT trim 59, nine, nine, five,

Crew Chief Brad: Eric was taking into account the government kickback

Crew Chief Eric: credit minus 7, 500 baby,

Crew Chief Brad: the tax credit.

That’s what he was doing. Yeah. But who’s buying the base model. And the only reason the Tesla model S is on here is because there’s one person in 2017 who showed that they had one over 300, 000 miles. I don’t even know why this is a thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Nobody, who, like, the majority of people aren’t keeping their car that long.

Crew Chief Brad: A car gets 100, 000 miles, and they’re like, Oh, this thing’s gonna die, this thing’s trash, I gotta get rid of it.

Executive Producer Tania: 100, 000? It’s like, Oh my god, I turned 70, 000, my car needs to go.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s sort of an old way of thinking, because if you think about the Malays era, those cars, if they made it to 100, 000, that was a lot.

That was [01:00:00] incredible, it was a feat. So I think we’re sort of stuck in the idea that 100, 000 is time to go. In my opinion, I’m saying, Cars got to make it to a quarter million or it’s junk at least 250.

Executive Producer Tania: It could be the hour. It’s been a long day. I had to go to the NBA. I have to go back to the NBA. That should say it all.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, it’s all fuzzy math, just like this next article.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t understand what it’s saying.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think they understand what they wrote.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t understand what I read. Most cars still cost more to charge than to fill up with gas when you take other expenses like home charging and fees into account.

Okay. I’m like, okay, sure. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t done the math. But then it goes on to say things like EV electric truck costs you the same as a gas truck, but that costs you less. Than an EV car.

Wait, what?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s cheaper to fill your electric truck than to fill like a mid-size EV car. And I’m like, how is [01:01:00] that possible?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, electricity’s on a flat rate depending on your state, so that doesn’t make any sense.

Executive Producer Tania: The calculation is miles per range, so miles per kilowatt, hour times your dollars per kilowatt hour, it gives you your dollars. How much it costs, right? They keep using 100 miles as their benchmark. That’s a fixed number.

The charge rate’s fixed, from what I understand, because if you got a truck and a car at your home, I don’t think it automatically changes the price. So you got two variables fixed. The only other variable is that number on the bottom of the fraction, which is the range. And the pickup truck is less efficient, which means it’s going to cost you more.

How is it cheaper? Could be the hour of the day. I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t see where they’re saying the pickup truck is cheaper than the cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Because they said a Rivian or GMC is going to cost you about 1, 770 per 100 miles. And then they said…

Crew Chief Brad: A Nissan Versa, Hyundai Elantra, or Kia Forte will cost you [01:02:00] 978 in gas.

12. 55 in home charging for a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. So that’s 5 cheaper.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe I have misread the article then.

Crew Chief Brad: So to where the prices do increase is if they’re doing public charging. So public charging skyrockets to 16 for the cars. But it still goes up,

Executive Producer Tania: which then makes me feel slightly better.

Cause I’m like, that makes no sense.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s 26 for the trucks. Not,

Crew Chief Eric: but wait guys, none of that. You’re right. It,

Crew Chief Brad: it, yeah, I think I know what Eric’s going to say. None of it makes any sense and none of it matters. It doesn’t matter. The points don’t matter.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. But. The thing is a hundred kilowatt battery is a hundred kilowatt battery.

It doesn’t matter if it’s in a truck, a boat, or a car, you’re still charging a hundred kilowatts. So the thing about this article to Tanya’s point,

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they’re not framing it that way that you’re filling to the same amount.

Crew Chief Brad: No, they’re including registration fees, the cost of the vehicle, which I’m like, do you not

Executive Producer Tania: register?

You registered either way. I’m confused.

Crew Chief Brad: No, but registration fees for trucks are higher. [01:03:00]

Executive Producer Tania: The way they

Crew Chief Brad: break it down, the overall costs are going to be higher.

Crew Chief Eric: That shouldn’t play into the economy of driving.

Executive Producer Tania: Is the registration fee of an EV truck higher than or lower than the registration of a, is like the F 150 Lightning registration different than an F 150?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s about to be in

Executive Producer Tania: Texas.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Crew Chief Brad: I understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to say it’s okay to keep your gas car. You know, you don’t need to jump on the EV train, but the way they went about trying to do that is just stupid.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the real piece that they’re missing here is what we’ve said before is if you already own a car and you’ve paid for it.

To turn around and sell it and buy something more expensive, that delta, that break even, that’s a lot of gallons of fuel that you need to consume cost wise, whatever wise, before you’ve, quote, broken back even for having paid an extra 30, 000 for a vehicle that you’re charging. That’s the piece that’s missing here that’s more important.

Crew Chief Eric: And what’s funny is it’s not missing because in our community of [01:04:00] petrolheads, it’s the same discussion we always have, gas versus diesel. And the guys, like, let’s say, landscapers. Why did I buy the V10 gasser versus the diesel? There’s the diesel tax. I’m not going to recoup it. I already own the gasser.

What you just explained is true in that use case as well. So the story hasn’t changed. We’ve just shifted it now to gas versus EV. Something here in the numbers doesn’t add up. And I don’t wanna waste too many more brain cycles on this trying to figure it out. No,

I’m not gonna,

Crew Chief Eric: the reality of the situation is nobody’s gonna partially charge, just like nobody puts in three gallons of gas.

Or maybe they do.

Crew Chief Brad: Depends on where you live. I’ve seen, I’ve ridden with people that, yeah, give gimme five 50, gimme five 50 on pump number one,

Crew Chief Eric: but you get my point. 100 kilowatt batteries, 100 kilowatt batteries, 100 kilowatt battery. It doesn’t matter what it’s in. Right. And that’s really the moral of the story.

And that’s why this is some fuzzy math. And maybe we’ll revisit it in the future. After we’ve done some advanced calculus, [01:05:00]

Crew Chief Brad: they need to give us more information. If they’re going to make these claims a hundred percent, I need to see the math. I need to see this Excel spreadsheets that they’ve done all this shit on.

Back during what we do, I think it was 2009, 2010, somewhere around there, after the mortgage collapse, the government had that cash for clunkers deal where everybody had to trade in their old cookies. They’d get a couple thousand dollars per car or whatever to put down towards a brand new car. When do you think it’s going to get to the point where the government does that?

Again, you trade in your ice car for

Crew Chief Eric: it’s not going to happen because as you know, and you report every month, we’re going to do this here in a minute. The used car market is through the roof. Why would you trade a car in as a clunker to end up at concourse the lemons when you can sell that car on the used market?

Maybe as a result, it’s a butterfly effect of the cash for clunkers because a lot of cars did get destroyed, but the value of used cars is through the roof. That would be a bad financial move.

Crew Chief Brad: We know the government doesn’t make bad financial moves.

Crew Chief Eric: No, never, ever. The [01:06:00] wheels on the EV go round and round, round.

Executive Producer Tania: Do they? Or do they go differently than a gas one?

Crew Chief Eric: When we compare them now, they spin differently.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it depends on how much you paid for the wheels and the registration fees and what kind of tires you’re using. And are you using these on a private road or a public road?

Executive Producer Tania: Was it concrete or asphalt?

Crew Chief Brad: Depending on what county you’re driving in. Not all wheels are created equal.

Crew Chief Eric: And we’re going to try to highlight wheels. I think we’re going to start maybe doing a wheels Wednesday. I took so many pictures of. Wheels that were unique and Monterey we’ve partnered with a new sponsor, ESE carbon wheels out of Georgia, the only manufacturer of one piece carbon wheels, especially in the United States.

And they’ve got a couple of models. They’ve got a new one coming out for 2024. We’ve been working with them, you know, trying to help them out and get these wheels out there. They actually started with the idea of putting them on Tesla’s to decrease the rotating mass. To increase the braking efficiency, the wheels clock in even at [01:07:00] 20 inches.

And they’re like 20 by nine, 20 by 10, 20 by 11, and those sizes at less than 17 pounds. There’s a race wheels that are heavier than that. Carbon is all the rage. If you want to learn more about the one piece made the USA wheels at ESC carbon, check out www. esccarbon. com. And since we’re talking about wheels, I saw a lot of carbon wheels.

There’s a manufacturer that has been around for quite a while called Dynamag. And they’ve partnered with Hyundai to start making two piece carbon wheels for the new N line cars that are coming out in the later part of 23 and 24. They look cool. They’re interesting to see Hyundai going down that route.

You’ve seen carbon wheels on Porsches and stuff like that in the past. And then if that wasn’t enough. Koenigsegg came out with a carbon wheel, which is a single lug center lock that’s capable of doing 280 miles an hour. So lots of things changing in the wheel world. If you think about carbon fiber, technically more environmentally friendly than forging wheels, mining for metal, [01:08:00] everything that goes into creating a steel wheel, aluminum wheel, forged wheel, et cetera.

Executive Producer Tania: How do they ride?

Crew Chief Eric: According to the impact tests and everything else I’ve read and what I’ve been talking to the guys at ESC carbon, they ride like any other wheel. Supposedly the steering feels a little bit lighter. The car kind of feels more agile because again, there’s less rotating mass. If you’ve ever driven on like an N key or a Volk or any of the Japanese wheels that are super light aluminum, you kind of the same sensation, but overall it’s supposed to solicit better braking numbers, better MPG, stuff like that.

They are not cheap, that’s for sure, but they are quite stylish and no, it’s not a wrap. Well, Brad, it’s time for your favorite section, Lost and Found. What you got for us?

Crew Chief Brad: I have news. What kind of news?

Executive Producer Tania: What’s his name? Sell his car?

Crew Chief Brad: You find a Dodge Dart? That’s 1988. Cadillac DeVille is gone.

Crew Chief Eric: No, can we take credit for that?

We helped them sell that.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe they turned it into cash for clunkers. I don’t know. Maybe [01:09:00] there’s an expiration date on how long you can leave something listed on cars. com.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s

Crew Chief Brad: gone. However, to replace it, a 2003 Toyota Tundra SR5, it is being sold for the low, low price of 42, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: What?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s insane. Eric, the guy I bought the R32 from, he’s got a 1982 Vanagon for sale. 1, 800.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a good deal. If it runs. If it runs.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, ran one part.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay. All right. Well, there’s some other things we need to talk about cars that are on their way out, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes

Crew Chief Eric: have been discontinued at this point.

Let’s talk about that

Crew Chief Brad: motor trend put out a list of 30 cool cars that are Discontinued in the past decade because when they do this every single year, nobody reads it slow news day So they have to put together a decades long list Of cars that we already know don’t exist anymore. I

Executive Producer Tania: feel

Crew Chief Eric: like we already talked

Crew Chief Brad: about this.

[01:10:00] We talk about it every year.

Crew Chief Eric: And they’re not that great. They say cool cars. I’m like Acura ZDX?

Crew Chief Brad: Really? I would have bought an Acura ZDX over a BMW X6.

Crew Chief Eric: I hate to say the ZDX out of all these is not discontinued because… They just revealed it at Pebble. They’re bringing it back.

Crew Chief Brad: Just like the Camaro was discontinued in 2002 and then brought back in 2005.

Crew Chief Eric: They have the Cadillac CTS V on this list. The Cadillac CTS V still exists. It’s the CT5 V. It’s the same car, different badge.

Crew Chief Brad: And then the Aston Martin V12 Vantage.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Some of these, I’m not sad about like the Avalanche, uh, the Viper does hit a soft spot though. You know, the Ferrari that’s on here. You knew they were going to build three of those.

The Ford flex. Yes. I think that disappoints a lot of people to include Don from garage style. He’s owned several over the years. He has one now.

Crew Chief Brad: Why is he needed to own so many of executive a vehicle

Crew Chief Eric: trading up because there’s new models of the flex came out. You got better options. Who cares? People care about that stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: To Tanya’s point, people are just going to trade in their vehicles, you know, for [01:11:00] something else, they’re going to spend thousands of dollars, lose thousands of dollars in depreciation or for a upgraded stereo system. That they could put in themselves for a couple hundred bucks.

Crew Chief Eric: This list is interesting.

RX 8s, Mazdaspeed 3, I’m not going to miss the Benz R Class, but even the SLS AMG that was replaced by the new GT3 and GTR. Yeah. I

Crew Chief Brad: mean, the, the list is from 2011 to 2020, so we’ve already missed these cars. I mean, come on.

Crew Chief Eric: This is breaking news, Brad. Breaking news.

Crew Chief Brad: Breaking news. When was this article written?

Was this, this article was written

Executive Producer Tania: years ago. I don’t know why it’s in here.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, what the hell kind of bullshit is this? Eric, what are you doing? That’s why it’s lost and found. You’re fired. We didn’t know this existed. This article was lost and Eric found it one day. Well, it’s that time again. Lowered expectations.

No, no,

Crew Chief Eric: no.

Executive Producer Tania: One in the same sometimes.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s very true. Folks, it’s Tez Lucky time. [01:12:00] Dun, dun,

Executive Producer Tania: dun. Dun, dun.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we would be remiss.

Executive Producer Tania: We hinted earlier about the cost of your EV being higher in Texas. Apparently under a new state law, Texas will bill electric vehicle drivers an extra 200 a year. They’re saying they’re doing this because that is the estimated lost revenue due to fewer gasoline vehicles on the road paying the taxes.

Even though I think it’s like less than half a percent of EVs in all of Texas, total car market, but nonetheless, you now have these extra registration fees. See, see, these registration fees, they’re adding up extra 200 a year because they do registration yearly in that state. And as gasoline taxes are supposed to go to maintenance of the roads and construction, I guess on the one hand I can see the argument.

You suddenly have a car that’s not paying towards that? What if we were in a world where everybody was [01:13:00] an EV? Now what?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, it’s funny you mentioned that. And since you’re returning to the DMV, you can verify this for us. I had heard, and Brad had mentioned it earlier about SUVs and trucks costing more registration wise than passenger vehicles.

And that had to do with the gross weight of the vehicle and the amount of pressure it puts on the roads. So it’s technically doing more damage to the asphalt.

Crew Chief Brad: And what do EVs do? They weigh even more, significantly more.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what? I can’t hear all the Texans now, you know, with this law cheering it on, go on.

This is why we said Californians would be the ruination of our great republic. And now we’re going to stick it to them. So you do have an influx of a lot of people coming from California into Texas, kind of changing the latitude there. You’re seeing the adoption of more EVs and you know, maybe secretly they’re sticking it to them.

Executive Producer Tania: So fun fact, because I don’t need to inquire at the, the lovely motor vehicle association for this answer to your point. Yes, the registration fees are based on weight. So even passenger cars. Vehicle [01:14:00] registrations are not consistent. They have up to weights and above weights and the registration fee changes.

So yes, three quarter ton, blah, blah, blah. Trucks all have different registration fees, which are higher than regular passenger cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Brad, you keep trying to give away that Cybertruck allotment for a box of tacos, dude, you should just buy an F 150.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m not buying anything. I’ve got a Toyota Tundra that is going to run for 1 million billion miles.

Will it run for

Crew Chief Eric: 300,

Crew Chief Brad: 000? It will run for 301. 1000.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice. Did you see the side by side comparison of the Ford pickup and the cyber truck?

Executive Producer Tania: What is the significance of this? Sorry, I keep looking at the photo. I’m like the two 50 is a big one. It’s not the biggest one, right? ’cause like the three 50, or is there one above three 50?

There’s

Crew Chief Brad: a four 50, there’s like a 6 50, 5 50. There’s a, so

Executive Producer Tania: the two 50 is not the smallest one, but it’s also not the biggest one. So this. Cybertruck is pretty much the equivalent size of an F 250.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s huge. Which is a Super Duty.

Executive Producer Tania: But we knew the Cybertruck was huge, so I guess I’m [01:15:00] confused why this is like…

Crew Chief Brad: I think the Cybertruck is supposed to be competing with the half ton pickup trucks, and the F 250 is a three quarter ton. So it’s the size of a three quarter ton truck. But it’s competition is the smaller, right? I see like a ribbing dimensionally. They’re all, it

Executive Producer Tania: did the tug of war thing with an F one 50 back in the bullshit days.

Right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Have we

Crew Chief Eric: exited the bullshit days? No, we’re in the middle of those days. We’re still deep, deep in the trenches.

Executive Producer Tania: So technically that wasn’t very fair if it was a three quarter ton truck up against, I’m assuming the 150 is not a three quarter ton, right? The

Crew Chief Brad: 150 is a half ton.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. That wasn’t very fair.

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. Shame on you, Elon Musk. It’s just like that

Crew Chief Eric: kickboxing match between him and Zuck.

Executive Producer Tania: Did anyone see the photo that somebody did where they like, I don’t know if they wrapped their F something. They put like a Cybertruck wrap on it. And so if you don’t pay attention at first you’re like, oh look, it’s a black [01:16:00] cyber truck.

And you’re like, wait a second. It’s, it’s, it’s a Ford pick. It’s really funny actually.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it as good as the PLI truck?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s professionally done compared to the house. . .

Crew Chief Brad: They probably cost the scene too. The wrap in the PLI truck. Not the TR wrapped truck. In the truck.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, yeah, because the Acura that was under the PLA truck was like 50 bucks at a yard sale.

Mm-hmm. . So Tanya, this next one had me go, so they do exist.

Executive Producer Tania: It existed for a while. I’ve never seen one. I’ve never seen one, but I heard the orders went through and that they were quote on the road and that they quote broke down.

Crew Chief Eric: And what are we talking about?

Executive Producer Tania: The semi Tesla, somebody else too. It wasn’t just Pepsi took an order of them, but yeah, they are allegedly out and about and we haven’t heard much about them.

I know recently there was an article about one had broken down and was getting towed. I don’t remember what the issue with it was. But I guess we’ll start seeing more of them maybe?

I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t know what I would do if I actually saw one. Is this like a Cybertruck F 150 [01:17:00] scenario where like it’s more massive than a regular Mac?

Crew Chief Eric: They carry all the batteries, sure.

Executive Producer Tania: But yes, keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully they don’t have full self driving capabilities and they beeline at you and take you out on the highway.

Crew Chief Eric: This next one had me a little confused. If it’s good enough for Lego, it’s good enough for Tesla?

Executive Producer Tania: O M G. So, one of the first Cybertrucks has rolled off or whatever.

The candidate Cybertruck, meaning like, this is the one we’re going to like quality inspect or whatever. And then there’s some sort of shared email that’s been leaked from Elon. It says, due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, Any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.

All parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy. That means all part dimensions need to be to the third decimal place in millimeters and tolerances need to be specified in single digit microns. If Lego and soda cans which are very [01:18:00] low cost, can do this, so can we.

Precision predicates perfectionism. Elon. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: a very well worded email. It’s a very big worded email.

Executive Producer Tania: I would like to drop some knowledge nuggets, okay? How thick do you think a sheet of paper is?

Crew Chief Eric: I would say a sheet of paper is maybe an eighth of a mil.

Executive Producer Tania: So a sheet of paper, according to the Googles, in microns.

Let’s recall what he just said, single digits. So less than 10 microns. accuracy and precision of all these metal panels. A sheet of paper is 102 microns thick. So he’s going to have precision better than a sheet of paper on really long stretches of metal. It’s one thing for Lego to do it on an inch brick.

It’s another thing to do it on a 10 foot long panel of stainless steel on the side of this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Lego’s also been doing it for how long? Yeah, Brad, to your point,

Crew Chief Eric: Lego’s been doing it for like

Crew Chief Brad: 80 years. Yeah, I guarantee you like the first 10 years of Legos were like a just a [01:19:00] complete cluster.

Crew Chief Eric: 100 percent.

Executive Producer Tania: How much money is it going to cost to have like The equipment to precisely have those tolerances with the tooling.

Crew Chief Brad: I can tell you exactly how much it’s going to cost. It’s going to cost nothing because this truck is never going to be made. It’s never coming out. It’s not going to cost anybody anything.

Executive Producer Tania: And to that point, they have not released specs or updated prices. So there’s no information on anything.

Crew Chief Brad: Not surprised.

Crew Chief Eric: The candidate version, I still want to know if it has mirrors and windshield wipers and all those things.

Executive Producer Tania: It does based on the photos they show.

Crew Chief Eric: But the question becomes. What’s the level of precision at SpaceX?

If the Cybertruck is anything like that, it will burn up on re entry, right?

Executive Producer Tania: On re entry, they often burn up just trying to exit.

Crew Chief Brad: What about the panel gap?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s the panel gap. They need to be less than 10 microns. So that panel gap is dead

Crew Chief Eric: accurate. And how much is that going to cost to repair when somebody inevitably gets an offender bender?

Crew Chief Brad: I was thinking, so how much did that guy pay? To have his [01:20:00] Rivian repaired after it was rear ended.

Executive Producer Tania: A body shop doesn’t have equipment that’s gonna measure precision less than 10 microns of panel alignment.

Crew Chief Brad: No, and Joe Bob down at the collision center, when he gets the Tesla parts come in, he’s gonna hit them into place with a mallet to get them to fit together.

Crew Chief Eric: To give him a little bit of credit, I understand what he’s saying because it’s true. The stainless.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: It shows everything. It’s awful in that respect. Yes, I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: disagree. He’s correct in seeing what all the rest of us realize. And have

Crew Chief Eric: been seeing, yes. But he could do something a little bit more daring.

Crew Chief Brad: He could paint it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my god, paint? Never, never. My point is, he could borrow from the Italians and the British. And what I mean is, Lamborghini and Lotus. in the sense that he could make parts of the Cybertruck clamshells where they’re all one contiguous piece and they open differently to gain access to those parts.

On an EV, what are you gaining access to other than getting in and out of the thing? Not a whole heck of a lot.

Executive Producer Tania: [01:21:00] Didn’t the man who’s already done this before say that it’s really difficult to get entire sheets of stainless? Yes. Form them. Mr. DeLorean.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. And we had Tony Vallelunga on the show who actually formed those stainless pieces and talked about the presses and the process of doing that.

Just making those goldwing doors was extremely difficult. And so the Cybertruck stainless works for a sink. I’ve said that before because you can press it out and there it is. And all it needs to be is a sink that takes your dirty water out to the sewer system.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m wondering how bad is the alignment?

You got to be up close and personal with the DeLorean. Are there huge, noticeably offensive gaps and distortions of panels and lining up of things?

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll answer it this way. No, because it’s built like a real car. Meaning it has a quarter inch between the door and let’s say the fender or the rear quarter, you know, whatever it is, or there’s that gap around the [01:22:00] lift.

back. There’s seals there in place that are supposed to keep the water from coming in. Like any other car has those gaps between the hood and the fender. The DeLorean is no different.

Executive Producer Tania: It also has simpler geometry. It has less sharp angles or simpler angles. Correct. Simple angles.

Crew Chief Eric: But it does show everything.

And part of the awesomeness of the stainless, just like having a stainless countertop or having a stainless stove or whatever, is those swirls and those striations. And I wanted to

Executive Producer Tania: ask a refrigerator or like a dishwasher stainless, like appliances in your kitchen and they get like a water spot on ’em.

Yep. Or after a while. And they look like hot ass. Does the DeLorean look like that? Or did they coat it in something better than like your refrigerator?

Crew Chief Eric: It is better, but it’s not clear coated. It’s still metal. And so if you talk to Don, he actually wrote an article about doing car care on the stainless.

It’s a lot more complicated a process, but it comes out. You can use stainless polishes, all that kind of stuff. Just like you would do in your kitchen, on your stove or [01:23:00] your refrigerator. Those striations, those marks, those imperfections in the stainless actually give the stainless character, because if it was completely smooth.

It would end up looking like chrome and it would look terrible the way it changes the light when you look at it. And even sometimes one panel looks slightly discolored compared to the other, which is also the effect of anybody that has like a mystique paint job or like my BMW, where depending on the light, one panel of purple and the other one looked blue and you were like, not sure if the car was repainted, the stainless is sort of the same way.

What it doesn’t do is it doesn’t blind you the way they have that stainless DeLorean, where it does have that kind of swirl in it and whatnot, or the or the lines in it, it doesn’t have a ton of glare. So you can look at it in broad daylight or at night, and it still just looks the way it does,

Executive Producer Tania: which is hilarious.

Because if you look at the photo in the article, there’s glare coming off the side of This thing, like I need my sunglasses just to look at this photo.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we have to wrap out our Tesla [01:24:00] gate. We would be remiss section with even more Tesla gate because it continues. Tesla is now faced with a lawsuit for over exaggerating the driving range of their vehicles.

Executive Producer Tania: That is fascinating.

Crew Chief Eric: Kind of like diesel gate. This really is a Tesla gate type of situation. The way that Tesla’s calculate their range using very simple math and not actually taking into account load and all this other stuff and driving conditions. And it’s sort of like you drove two miles, you use this amount of electricity.

So it’s always consistent. It’s a

Executive Producer Tania: theoretical calculation that has no basis in actual.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Now the question I have is theoretical calculation or otherwise, who got paid off at the EPA? Because they post these numbers and EPA certified X amount of kilowatt hours per mile, blah, blah, blah, just like they do with a gas car.

Who signed off on this? Or maybe, just like Dieselgate, it went out there and nobody knew until somebody sat down and figured it out and understood the math that’s being calculated.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. I [01:25:00] guess we’ll learn more as I think this is, you know, fresh and still developing.

Crew Chief Eric: If Tesla gets away with this, Was Volkswagen falsely sort of persecuted because of Dieselgate.

If Tesla doesn’t take on the same sort of, let’s say, punishment or have to pay back the same kind of reparations, what have we just done? What have we created here? We favor one versus the other because it was diesel versus EV or whatever. To me, these are very similar situations where they falsified that information,

Crew Chief Brad: but it, it’s different because Dieselgate was more of like an environmental concern of releasing.

Higher than approved of gases,

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad you brought that up because here’s the problem with this math. The way I look at it, you’re falsifying the way you consume electricity, which means you’re pulling more, which means you’re putting more load on the grid, which means that the power stations are running more.

So you’re actually not as efficient as you said you were. Which is now a detriment to the environment in a similar, but not exactly the same [01:26:00] way as diesel was to the environment. So if you kind of stretch this out and think about it from a lawyer’s perspective, there’s a lot of other moving parts that could be brought into this conversation about how they’re cheating and gaming the system.

And there’s an environmental impact. Because these Teslas are not as efficient as they say they are. Maybe I’m wrong. Hit us up in the comments. If you have a different opinion or different math, but you know, the more I think about this, it’s not too different.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know what to say. Cause this is, it’ll be interesting what comes out of the investigative work, right?

Because this are consumers, I think that have brought this up and are complaining that they’ve seen less mileage. Well, are you, how are you like, how do you validate that? Cause if you’re driving like a. Asshat or something. And you’re constantly, I didn’t get my range while you had your foot to the floor, constantly doing burnouts everywhere.

Of course you didn’t achieve your range. Like it’s going to be interesting to see how they revalidate this.

Crew Chief Eric: Now that our expectations have been thoroughly lowered, Brad can sing for us.

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered expectations.[01:27:00]

Crew Chief Eric: This next one is complete buffoonery. Was this

Crew Chief Brad: Andrew Bank?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, come on, we’ve all tried it at least once or know somebody that has. I’m going to paint my brake calipers because I want them to look like the Brembo big red. So you get out the spray paint and you go to town and if you got a couple extra bucks, maybe you take your calipers off.

You have somebody powder coat them and then they’re permanently red. But this. Fellow car enthusiasts decided, you know what? Let’s just spray paint the whole damn thing. Rotors and all!

Executive Producer Tania: But if you look at it, he, like, sprayed it through the wheel. He didn’t even take the wheel off.

Crew Chief Eric: If you spin the wheel and spray, it’s, you get it in there, man.

Get that pinwheel effect. It also blows the spray can fumes back into your face so you can get high on them while you’re painting your brake rotors.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe that’s why this happened.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, they take it into the shop and they’re like, It won’t stop. I wonder why. Unbelievable. So public service announcement.

Don’t spray your brakes with anything, but break clean when you’re servicing [01:28:00] them. How about that quick update for you guys? Last time we talked about Tex Mex motors and Downey’s dream cars. I actually finished both of them. I had some extra time to do so. Yeah. Tex Mex motors. Really interesting. I am looking forward to season two.

They’re hinting at. Potential Ferrari build upgrade and trade six figure car at the end of the whole show actually turned out to be a nine 11 that they converted from basically a club race car back into a street car. They ended up selling it for upwards of 160, 000. So they met their goal after doing all the upgrades and trades and selling and buying.

And in season two, they hinted at going after a Ferrari Daytona that they have to go deeper into Mexico to go get, and then they’re going to try to restore that. So really curious to see where the show goes from there. By the end, I was invested. I was engaged. I thought it was a lot of fun. I liked the fact that they weren’t just doing hot rods.

Just like when they started with that Opal GT, ending with the 911. There were some really interesting rides in between. So they kept it fresh. They [01:29:00] kept it interesting. Lots of builds that you don’t expect to see on other shows. I

Executive Producer Tania: feel like this is a change of opinion. I feel like the initial opinion from the first episode was much more negative than this.

Crew Chief Eric: It was, and that’s why I wanted to come back to it and say, look, I went all the way through, I gave it a chance, and I’ve come around on it. Now, does it have the same charisma that Let’s say the guys from Gotham garage have on rust to riches. No, a same show, but different show. But by the end of the eight or 10 episodes that Texan X motors was, I was on board.

They do good work, interesting stuff, interesting paint jobs, nothing over the top, no spider webs and Halloween stuff or anything like that, just nice, clean builds, somewhat decent prices. If you look at how they sold the cars. Meanwhile, I flipped over to Downey’s Dream Cars on HBO because it was recommended, so I finished watching that.

That’s like six episodes, if I remember correctly. I was into it until the Corvette, and I say that because I think a little bit of all of us as classic car enthusiasts [01:30:00] and petrolheads and motorsports enthusiasts all sort of died that day because he took a pristine, numbers matching, C2 Corvette convertible and just stripped it down and turned it into an EV.

It was like, you know, you could have picked up any other C2 Corvette for let’s say less money. I get that this one was in your collection, but I would have sold that Corvette to somebody that wanted a numbers matching original car and turned it into an EV. Cause I mean, they stripped it all the way down.

They took the interior out of it and replaced it with a mushroom. Leather based interior that it’s like artificially grown, which was an interesting concept. I was fascinated by the way they did the build, but just that episode sat sideways with me because I would have picked something else. I will say I wasn’t a big fan of the paint schemes that Robert chose for a lot of the cars.

But at the very end, it did turn around. They did a really nice Samba build with a T2 bus. And they turned it into an EV. Now, they didn’t use Rich Benoit and his [01:31:00] team from Electrified Garage. They did the bolt in kit from EV West because it was easier. They didn’t have to fabricate, just drop it in. Those have been done a million times.

They turned it into this surfing design, family hauler type of very retro California beach boys type of look. I very much enjoyed the way they rehabbed. That type two bus. So at least we left on a high note, I don’t see the show continuing for a second season. It’s already transferred from one service to another because it was originally on discovery plus, and then moved to HBO max or I guess max.

Now it’s called again. I went through it. It was worth watching. There was some interesting discussion in there, but that Corvette episode just sort of killed me a little bit. And I’m sure it did for other people. If you watched it or are going to watch it. Now this next one, Brad, this is your favorite car.

Is it now? Isn’t that the car you just lust after?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Large chested women and all.

Crew Chief Brad: This car is a large chested woman.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t understand this. And for the listeners out there, this is a Fiero. That has been [01:32:00] swapped to have the motor in the front.

Executive Producer Tania: And in doing so, they had to lose power steering, apparently.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep,

Crew Chief Brad: I can tell by the guy playing with the steering wheel. He’s got the underhand. Oh my god, I actually, I’ve seen this guy before. He was at the gas station in his early 2000s Dodge Ram, blasting Marilyn Manson when I was there the other day. Same guy, looks just like him.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to know how he sees. I know he can’t turn fast because no power steering, But how do you see, not just past the A pillar, But three quarters of the engine,

Crew Chief Brad: the motor

Executive Producer Tania: pillar,

Crew Chief Brad: the end pillar.

That’s why you have a passenger, a co pilot to tell you what’s going on, on the right side of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So riddle me this Batman, the transmission tunnel is where exactly?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s probably

Crew Chief Eric: front wheel drive. Yeah, right.

Crew Chief Brad: No, not with those rear wheels. No, it’s definitely not front wheel drive.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my goodness. That has to be the most uncomfortable car on the planet to drive.

It’s not even worthy of our uncool wall because it’s just so out there. And then you sit back and say. Hold my beer. I got an idea. [01:33:00] Let’s spend some money and time building a front mounted Fiero. I don’t get it.

Executive Producer Tania: So in our final lowered expectation, this goes back over to California where you were recently, but I don’t think you had any opportunity to see any of these vehicles because they’re limited to the San Francisco area, I believe, which is not where you were.

However, the fleet of Robo taxis that they’ve got going around in not necessarily test mode. They’re actually actively being used as robo taxis, but it’s definitely a significant rollout of the technology. The cruise owned by Google or something as who owns actually owns it as the parent company, but the cruise fleet of self driving robo taxis.

Has hit a bit of a hiccup. They’ve been asked pending investigations from the Department of Motor Vehicles over there to reduce their fleet by about 50 percent because of some recent incidents, which it’s like, all right, it’s the programming of the technology’s fault. Not necessarily the [01:34:00] robo taxi’s fault, because the first situation is the robo taxi’s fault, for sure, because a human driver.

I’m actually not 100 percent sure that they would have been paying attention either. It proceeded through its intersection on a green light. However, it did not audibly sense the firetruck sirens until the firetruck was close enough that it filtered the other noises out, and it didn’t see it. It perceived it as a threat when it was too late and did try to do evasive maneuvering, but it was too late at that point and the firetruck t boned the robo taxi, which did have a passenger in the vehicle and they got a little bit hurt.

But there was also a similar incident where again it was proceeding through its green light intersection and somebody else was running red light. And again, it got T boned by somebody else.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it’s a good thing emergency services were already on scene. Well, there’s a

Crew Chief Eric: couple of things that I like about this.

First of all, this Chevy cruise, Google cruise, whatever has evasive maneuvers.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I’ve used those words

Crew Chief Eric: like the starship [01:35:00] defiant or something, right? I’m like, that’s cool. Activate shields, activate shields.

Executive Producer Tania: It needs that apparently. Cause it’s getting hunted down at intersections. Well, I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, if you look at all the gear on the roof, it looks like it’s got a deflector disc and photon torpedoes and everything else attached to this thing.

But I want to talk to somebody that’s gone for a ride in one of these Johnny cabs, because I think it will be not a discussion about cars. But about psychology and my number one question is, why did you think this was a good idea to get in a car with nobody driving it? That’s a level of risk. I guess somebody’s got to do it.

But again, here we are. Two people are in these accidents. And now, now what?

Executive Producer Tania: The second one was actually a day poor little thing. And even better. Again, clobbered by somebody. This time it was somebody running a red light. It happens, right? But it didn’t have time to properly react, which is also what happens with human drivers behind the wheel.

Sometimes you’re effed. Depending on, like, I don’t [01:36:00] know, the road structure building could have been blocking, there could have been something else in the way, the camera couldn’t see, sometimes the human eye doesn’t see either. Not trying to completely defend, but that’s unfortunate. It could be a step back.

Hopefully they can. Can take the learnings and improve the programming and the auditory sensors and the cameras and all that this technology, in my opinion, we need to trickle down to people like Tesla that are claiming their vehicles can just self drive themselves too. So what happens in the same instance, if this was a Tesla crossing that intersection and a fire truck was coming, we already know when it sees the emergency lights, it just drives into the object.

So if I didn’t like turn and headed on onto a fire truck, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, time will tell if the Johnny Cab will become a real thing or not. But you know what else? Time has passed by for a section of the drive thru that we haven’t talked about in a while. It’s one of Tanya’s favorites. What is that?

Executive Producer Tania: Rich people thangs.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, we got some rich people thangs. So get this. I’m going to summarize this for you. Aston Martin Valkyrie owners. at their [01:37:00] scheduled and appointed 10, 000 mile service are faced with a hefty bill. Would you guys like to guess how much it costs for the first service on your Aston Martin Dockery?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s over the course of the first 10, 000 miles, not the very first service. So it’s all the services over the first 10, 000 miles.

Crew Chief Eric: Potato, potato, tomato, tomato, either way, there’s a massive amount of money on the line here within the first 10, 000 miles of owning this car.

Executive Producer Tania: How much does this car cost?

Crew Chief Eric: Million. Three million. Millions.

Executive Producer Tania: $3 million.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. Yes. So the service cost at the 10,000 mile mark is a low, low bargain price of $464,000.

Executive Producer Tania: And how many miles do you pay? This car, this car is gonna quickly cost you more than which paid for it. And you won’t have to put any miles on this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Keep in mind, I think it’s only, I don’t know if it’s street legal.

The original Valkyrie that came out was not street legal. I guess this is different, but.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m going to use their words from the article, because it’s something that you touched [01:38:00] on earlier, Tanya. Customers of such cars are familiar with such expensive maintenance. Anyway, Valkyrie owners are also likely Bugatti Chiron and Koenigsegg owners.

So they’re used to the frequent high dollar maintenance and likely won’t bat an eye at the service schedule.

Executive Producer Tania: You can afford 3 million for some hyper car. That’s completely practical, right? It’s not your daily driver or anything. Then you probably can afford almost half a million dollars of maintenance.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that’s why it’s rich people fangs. Speaking of other rich people, thanks. You remember that weird looking Cadillac that we talked about like almost a year ago? The Celestique. We kind of made fun of its design because we weren’t sure if it was coming or going, if it was a 928 or if it was a wagon or if it was a sedan.

It’s definitely an EV. I’ve never seen one on the street. You never will either. I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: think we ever will.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they’ve released what it’s gonna cost.

Executive Producer Tania: Jesus, Louise.

Crew Chief Eric: Right?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it doesn’t quite cost the maintenance of the other one.

Crew Chief Eric: [01:39:00] For the low, low bargain rich people thang price of 340, 000, you can have a Cadillac Celestique.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s hand built in Michigan with a plaque on the door stating such.

Crew Chief Eric: By a guy named Steve who has a DeWalt tool belt and a hammer in it. I’m telling you. He built it with Ryobi tools. I didn’t even necessarily have to read past. Even the subtitle, which was, it’s official, Cadillac is taking on Rolls Royce and Bentley.

And I was like, ha ha ha ha ha, keep passing on the great Poupon, because you know what? That’s been since day one of Cadillac, folks. Cadillac was designed to compete with Rolls Royce, Bentley, and Packard. This is not new. The question about Cadillac has been, why are they in the performance? Segment Cadillac racing, the sort of sports saloons

Executive Producer Tania: because they have been for as long as Cadillac has been around.

We talked to the Cadillac club, dude.

Crew Chief Brad: Why is Bentley in the racing? It’s the same thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a double edged sword, but it’s not new at any stretch. And I [01:40:00] actually kind of feel like Cadillac has been lacking a super 340, 000. Too much maybe, but is it something that Cadillac needs to break away from the muscle car sedans they’ve been building for the last 10 or 15 years?

Yeah, because they really don’t have anything outside of the Escalade that is that limousine black car type of vehicle. And I think the Celestique maybe checks that box if it ever comes to be.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So you’ve got 400, 000 to spend on a car. I’m buying this. You can buy a Rolls Royce, a Bentley. Or a Celeste or a Celeste iq, whatever it’s called.

Which one do you buy?

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna buy a Porsche Tecan and have money left over.

Crew Chief Brad: No, you’re not. You’ve got three choices. You can buy a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, or a Celeste or a small company. I’m

Crew Chief Eric: okay. Small company for sure, but the reality is, if I have to pick from the cars, I’m gonna buy a Bentley because it’s a Volkswagen.

What about you, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: I have to choose one.

Crew Chief Brad: You have to choose one. [01:41:00] You can choose a BMW Rolls Royce, the Volkswagen Bentley, or the Chevrolet Cadillac, or you can buy a sweet frog franchise. Which one are you spending 400, 000 on?

Crew Chief Eric: I was going to say that or a small Eastern block country.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ll do the Bentley also.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, I’m right there with you. As much as I love the Phantom, I would do a Bentley because it’s part of the Vag family. But you know what? None of us said. None of us said Cadillac. The people that are currently buying Rolls Royce and Bentleys, they’ll never say Cadillac either.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what

Crew Chief Brad: they might be buying?

Executive Producer Tania: For their children.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, tell me there’s a Baby 3. We talked before about the Bugatti Baby 2s.

Executive Producer Tania: There was the Chiron. There was a Mini. Oh yes,

Crew Chief Brad: the Bugatti Chiron, yes. It

Executive Producer Tania: also had the Speed Key, I think.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. There is a company… Called group Harrington that apparently makes a whole bunch of these cars. There’s the GB spirit.

There’s a spider, the Ferris Bueller, Ferrari,

Executive Producer Tania: Eric, pick the fry. What [01:42:00] would you pick?

Crew Chief Brad: You got to go with the Cobra 289 Cobra.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m doing the 300.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re going to go with the 300. I. Figured you would’ve went with the F 1 race car.

Executive Producer Tania: Nah, I’m gonna go with the Merc.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s a Benz girl.

Crew Chief Brad: And I probably would’ve, should’ve went with the Jeep.

Let’s see how much, let’s see how much is…

Executive Producer Tania: They’re so expensive, they don’t list the price.

Crew Chief Eric: You might as well buy the real thing at that point. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: You can design your car. Look at this shit.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s funny, you guys bring this up. I saw some of these. At some of the auctions in car week, they’re really, really cool.

These are the nicest go karts you have ever seen.

Executive Producer Tania: I believe it. If only we could afford them, we could each get one and then go.

Crew Chief Eric: We talked about this before the go karts need to look like the race cars, and then you can do a proper Petit Le Mans or Petit Le Mans classic. There’ll be amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: A Petit Petit Le

Crew Chief Brad: Mans.

You should be able to get the pricing.

Executive Producer Tania: It says to email for a quote,

Crew Chief Brad: because at the top of the page, it’s got great British pounds, the. The euro or U. S. dollar, and you can add things to your shopping cart.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know because when I went into the 300, it says request for [01:43:00] quotation. Leave your details and request quotation for the car and options you have selected above.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I see that you can’t afford

Executive Producer Tania: it.

Crew Chief Brad: More than you can afford, pal.

Executive Producer Tania: I can go buy a real one of these.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe two.

Executive Producer Tania: For probably less than this mini one costs.

Crew Chief Brad: I do like the little Ferrari California though. That’s pretty sweet. Get all rich people

Crew Chief Eric: things.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna get one for Henry.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s time we go down South to Florida for alligators and bears.

You know what?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t have any Florida men. What? I don’t got no Florida men. I got other men, but no Florida men.

Crew Chief Brad: By the way, did you guys see that picture that I sent you? Yeah, that was good. He pulled up next to me in the turn lane and he was like, Oh, can I get in front of you? I didn’t realize this lane didn’t go straight.

And it was like, yes, whatever. And he pulled up into the middle of the intersection and I looked at his license plate. He said, [01:44:00] Florida, man, like Jesus Christ. Of course you are.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we had some California man during car week, as you would expect car weeks, a little bit more upscale than just cars and coffee.

Although there are some cars and coffee, I went to one sponsored by the Ferrari club. It was fantastic, included wine and hors d’oeuvres and all sorts of other fun stuff. Not like any cars and coffee that we have here on the East coast running up and down highway 101 between the different areas of Monterey, the California highway patrol or the chips.

Got tipped off. Uh, I don’t know what the tip off was. It was car week. We all knew that they pulled over 154 speeders during the course of car week.

Crew Chief Brad: Only how many of them were in an Alexis LX 600.

Crew Chief Eric: Not going to say we didn’t open the taps on the Lexus a couple of times. It will allegedly, allegedly. That’s a lot of people, though it is, but to Tanya’s point, it also seems awful low considering the [01:45:00] thousands of people that are participating in car week.

Crew Chief Brad: This actually brings up a good question. 154 people at Monterey car week. This is over the course of the entire event. I’m guessing they don’t really, they really give that detail. Do they catch more people here? Or more people at H2O. Ooh. Because H2O isn’t just speeding though.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: So are more people ticketed at Monterey or H2O?

I’m going to guess H2O.

Executive Producer Tania: All right. This one doesn’t have a link. It was something I heard on the radio yesterday morning, which was a very bizarre story. The radio host was Talking about his encounter in an Uber recently, a Tesla Uber, so it was a Model 3, and he got to just chatting with the driver like, oh, electric car, how do you like it?

Like, I was thinking about getting an EV, blah, blah. Dude’s like, you want to drive my car? And the guy’s like, Uh, no, man, I’m good. Dude was like, no, you have to drive this car. Like, if you’re interested, you need to. Jets out. Makes him get in the [01:46:00] driver’s seat. So now he’s driving his own Uber. And then proceeds to be like, okay, they’re driving around.

He’s heading home. And then he’s like, Oh, but you really got to open it up. Get on the JFX. So if you’re from Baltimore local, you’ll understand what that means. He’s like, you know, get on it. And he’s like, no, man, I’m good. No, no, you really got to like, open it up and experience it. So you’re like, he said he accelerated a little bit.

And the guy was like, no, get on it. Dude was sitting there telling him to like, just, you know, go balls on his like Tesla to this perfect stranger that like got in his backseat that he doesn’t even know. Dude said he was just, like, freaking out and just finally, like, pulled up to his, like, home and was like, Alright, thanks, man.

Crew Chief Eric: Un real.

Executive Producer Tania: He was like, I was so scared. He’s like, what’s the liability if something had happened and I was driving the Hooper?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God, that’s ridiculous.

Executive Producer Tania: So watch out if you’re in Baltimore [01:47:00] getting an Uber. You might

Crew Chief Brad: have to drive your own Uber. You

Executive Producer Tania: might have to pay and drive your own Uber.

Crew Chief Brad: For some reason, I thought you were going to say that the car was stolen.

Crew Chief Eric: When I think about this entire story, Is it really an Uber or is that a rental car?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a Toro.

Executive Producer Tania: What star review do you give? Do you like rate yourself? My Uber driver was really good. It was me.

Crew Chief Brad: I got here real quick.

Crew Chief Eric: I tell you, if that guy gave me the opportunity to drive his car, five star rating and like 50 percent tip.

I would have been like, bro, you’re awesome. This is cool.

Executive Producer Tania: He might’ve been giving you a one star review though. I didn’t know my Tesla could do that. Look

Crew Chief Eric: at that drift.

Executive Producer Tania: But speaking of what a Tesla can or cannot do going to California again, it’s a California theme, Mono city, wherever that is. I don’t know.

I think recently there’s been some storms. This, that, and the other good for them. They need water

Crew Chief Eric: and shout out to all our friends in Southern California that [01:48:00] experienced that flash flood last week and a 5. 0 earthquake, like within 24 hours, like unbelievable, crazy weather in the LA area, especially,

Executive Producer Tania: and this dude was driving down some road and the.

Full self driving mode. There was a sign flooded area up ahead. Oh, it’s probably not real. There’s always a flooded sign out there. Okay. There was some water in the road. The full self driving doesn’t know how to interpret that. So he kept driving. There’s a video of this. It’s pretty funny. Seemingly drives through the initial puddle, which wasn’t too deep, honestly.

As soon as it hits traction again, though, the thing goes, like, crazy and just, like, jerks to the left, swerves off the road. Dude ends up, basically, water up to the door, almost to the windows,

like,

Executive Producer Tania: in a ditch off the side of the road. I can’t imagine what that bill’s gonna be, because, like, the bumper was, like, hanging off and everything’s wet now.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s funny about the picture, that’s the cover photo of the [01:49:00] video, when I first looked at it, I couldn’t tell if that was dirt or alligators, right? Doesn’t it look like it was taken like gators.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, it does. And the guy’s like blurry and getting out of the passenger seat.

Crew Chief Eric: He goes through a flash flood and then ends up in a pond.

I mean, what are the chances?

Executive Producer Tania: First of all, What was he doing? Because the full self driving failed, but you could have tried to take control of the car at that point, probably couldn’t because it was forced the steering wheel or whatever. But like, you could have also anticipated like using your brain, like, Oh, there’s actually standing water up.

Cause you could clearly see it in the dash cams of the Tesla that a rational person would have maybe hit the brakes and taken it out of full self drive and, you know, cautiously driven through there.

Crew Chief Eric: I wonder how much water it Took on because of the precise micron of the panel gaps of the doors. And we know how good the seals are on the Tesla three.

Executive Producer Tania: A lot of water. Cause these still remain with home Depot parts.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. So it was a [01:50:00] kiddie pool inside.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe it knew it was going to combust. So it drove into the water. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Funny as that sounds to say, it actually makes my brain kind of spin into a more serious direction to say, what if there was leakage in the battery area and suddenly now he’s got water in there in the containment part, right?

This could have turned out really, really poorly for this guy. To Tanya’s point, look ahead, think ahead, don’t let the car drive for you, because with these EVs, all it takes is one little leak, and the next thing you know, you’re in the middle of a serious hazmat and electrical issue. What the hell is full self driving mode?

That is autonomous level 27, remember?

Executive Producer Tania: That means that you can recline your seat.

Crew Chief Eric: Go to sleep.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, just kidding. That means that you have to have your hands on the steering wheel, but the car will drive itself better than a human being.

Crew Chief Brad: So how is this different than autopilot?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s what they call their autopilot.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, I thought they called autopilot autopilot.

Crew Chief Eric: They keep changing the name. So [01:51:00] we think it’s something different. That’s all.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Because they keep getting in lawsuits for the name of the product.

Executive Producer Tania: The last but not least, we’re going to jump to the other coast to Pennsylvania.

Crew Chief Brad: Pennsylvania coast.

Executive Producer Tania: Does Pennsylvania have a coast?

I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: Jersey, Pennsylvania’s coast is Jersey.

Executive Producer Tania: I meant we’re moving from the western side of the U. S. to the east coast, of which Pennsylvania is not directly on it, but we’re moving to the eastern side of the United States. I apologize. Oh my god. What the hell is this? Exactly. Pennsylvania man allegedly crashed his Toyota Corolla into a house intentionally, and he wound up Wedged into the second floor of this house, the picture alone.

I’m like, there must’ve been like a ramp and I think there was some sort of berm embankment and he like turned and he shot Dukes of Hazzard and then ended up in the second floor of this house. [01:52:00]

Crew Chief Eric: How fast was he going?

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Eric: don’t

Executive Producer Tania: know. Why

Crew Chief Brad: did he do it on purpose?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s another question that is not explained.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine being in your bedroom on the second floor? And a car comes crashing through the side of the house.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: unbelievable, but you know, testament to those Pennsylvania houses didn’t collapse right into the first floor. It’s just hanging there like a lawn dart.

Executive Producer Tania: It just like busted a hole in the side of it.

And otherwise it’s. I like the gutters a little bit on the front porch roof. It was like

Crew Chief Eric: that. Apparently there are houses that are built hurricane proof and storm proof and whatever proof Pennsylvania houses are Toyota proof. So there you go. Well, with that, it’s time that we go quickly behind the pit wall and talk about motor sports.

And last car, Tanya, you’re on a roll.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, apparently that dude who won his first NASCAR race, the Chicago Street Race, [01:53:00] Shane Van Gisbergen, he’s gonna do another NASCAR race.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice. Good job, Van Gisbergen. We need more European sounding names in NASCAR, I think. It’s like Talladega Knights. Formula One, come on, what’s been happening?

Anything good?

Executive Producer Tania: You’ve been on summer break, the last race before summer break was Spa, and I fell asleep.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, is that good, huh? First half won. Oh, shocker. How many seconds did he win by? 50?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, because I fell asleep, and it was like, yep, he won, okay.

Crew Chief Eric: But he didn’t win his next race.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, that’s right.

I forgot about that. He was involved in a sim racing incident. That happened a while ago already though. That was already a couple of real F1 races ago. And that was a pretty funny video to watch. Footage of that. He got hunted or something. And then he just in a full Forza VRL league rage mode, just.

Torpedoed the dude off the track, which was very unsportsmanlike, and he should have more control and then got disqualified for that.

Crew Chief Eric: [01:54:00] You know how we talked about how expensive it is to go to Las Vegas for the Formula One Grand Prix. I’ve seen pictures from folks on social media, folks that we’re friends with that have taken pictures that have been in Vegas saying construction is happening, looks like they’re putting the race together.

Again, like we talked about how expensive it might be to go to this race, you know, million dollar packages at the wind and the Venetian and all these places to watch the race from. But our friend, Elizabeth Blackstock over Jalopnik says you can pick up your F1 tickets at Costco.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, does that make them less expensive?

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t believe it’s for the Vegas race.

Crew Chief Eric: You can buy your

Crew Chief Brad: Austin tickets. Yes. Because with Miami and Vegas, who wants to go to Austin? True. It’s 106 this week in Austin.

Crew Chief Eric: Insane. But you know, how American is it? I’m going to buy my F1 tickets while I buy six pounds of country crack.

Crew Chief Brad: It would be more American if they were NASCAR tickets, but they give those away with a Costco pizza.

Crew Chief Eric: Moving on very quickly to WRC news, which nobody cares about. [01:55:00] I just want to highlight there was a little bit of drama. A little bit of drama, former star of WRC Terre Nouvelle running for Hyundai was disqualified from the Kenya rally because he was doing some illegal recce, as they call it, or reconnaissance, trying to get inside information before his sighting passes and things like that and anything else he could gather about the Kenya rally.

So he was disqualified from Kenya. And I still have some rallies to catch up on like Portugal and others. So I might, or might not cover that at a later date. All depends on if our fans care or if Brad cares. Nope. Yeah. I figured I’ll keep it to myself then. My guilty pleasures rally. So that’s all I tried.

That being said, did you know that dirt fish. The rally school in the United States has changed their website and they have taken over where auto sport has left off of their coverage of all things rally. So Brad, you were asking about where you can see it other than red bull TV. You can now check out coverage of WRC [01:56:00] on dirt fish.

So you can go to dot com and see different types of coverage of the rallies there. I’ll give that a try. There you go. And on a sad note, autocross, one of our favorite disciplines of racing that a lot of us started out in, unfortunately took two drivers in Washington state. It was an SCCA event, pro solo event, and as I read it, basically the guy was on course and came in on his lap and just never stopped.

Executive Producer Tania: According to A comment on that news article from somebody, it says, according to the conversation on GRM, which included the brother of the driver in the incident, the driver suffered a sudden heart attack and lost consciousness.

Crew Chief Eric: The car did eventually stop when it hit a building again, sad day because it took the lives of 2 members and this is not a normal occurrence for autocross.

It’s. Generally very safe because the speeds are much lower. Things have been known to happen. Mistakes have been made at autocrosses in the past, but yeah, this [01:57:00] is just sad and tragic and hopefully won’t besmirch the great reputation that autocross has or keep people from going to them in the future, I want to remind people that our motorsports news has been brought to us in partnership by the international motor racing research center out of Watkins Glen, as I mentioned earlier, there’s been a couple of.

Podcast episodes this month, one of them, the history of Corvette celebrating its 70th birthday with Kip Sider, as well as an road to success episode with Mark Steigerwald, the current director of the IMRRC as well, where he talks about the 25th anniversary of the center, talks about the Glenn’s birthday, we talk about Le Mans, a lot of other really interesting stuff on that episode.

So as a reminder, they are still running their sweepstakes for a 2024 Corvette. Ray, you can use the promo code Ray launch to get bonus tickets and either win the Corvette or take the cash option. All the proceeds from the sweepstakes benefit the continued progress of the center. It helps them [01:58:00] fund what they’re doing because they are a nonprofit.

They do have some events coming up. Here in September and the later fall on September the 16th, they’re doing a center conversation called Brumos and American racing icon with Sean Cridland at 1 PM on September 30th, they’re doing their 25th anniversary party on November. The second, the day before and leading up to the arts and girls symposium on motor racing history, they’re doing an international real wheel.

Film festival celebrating the historical racing documentaries on November the 2nd at 5 PM at the downtown Watkins Glen movie theater. And then on November the 3rd and 4th, we have the Michael R Argen singer symposium on international motor racing history, which we will be in attendance for. So looking forward to seeing anybody and everybody, if you come out to the event, it’s a great event.

And we will also be live streaming it on grand touring motor sports on Twitch.

Crew Chief Brad: Coming up in September, we have a few local news and events brought to us by collector car guide [01:59:00] dot net. The ultimate reference for car enthusiasts, the car enthusiast, I guess, schedule is winding down as we head into the fall and winter months here on the east coast.

So it’s not a big long list, but there are some events that I’d like to highlight from the producers of motorama races and shows comes America’s truck best. That’s September 2nd and 3rd at the Lebanon Valley Expo Center in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Fuel Fest, September 9th at NJMP. The Smoky Mountain Driving Tours is hosting a three day driving event at Tale of the Dragon in Tennessee and North Carolina from September 15th to the 17th sponsored by ESE carbon wheels.

Moto America, Superbikes, and King of Baggers will be at NJMP September 22nd through the 24th and Cruise and Brews at the Rockville Moose in Rockville, Maryland on September 27th. These events and tons more just like it. All the details are available over at a collector car guide. net.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. And now it’s time for the HBD Junkie trackside report.

And much like the car show [02:00:00] scene, the track scene is also winding down. We’re heading into the fall. The racing schedule here starts to dry up in late October, early November. If you’re running VIR and some of the Carolinas and things like that, but there are plenty of events all across the country that you can look up in HBDJunkie.

com’s database. But for us, there’s been some cancellations, especially over at HOD. They had to cancel some of their October events. And their last event will be at NJMP Lightning on September the 23rd and 24th. So that’s about a month away. That’s the last event on their schedule. They’ve had to cut their schedule short.

Executive Producer Tania: New Jersey one day on a Thursday is in October. So I’m not sure why the September one is the last event.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it might be advanced only no coaches or something like that. There is an event on the schedule for bikers. Brad mentioned the Moto America Super Bike and King of Baggers event at N J N P, but there’s also the Barber Vintage Festival at Barber Motorsports Park on October the sixth through the eighth.

We have a link to that so you can check it out. We’ve personally been to the [02:01:00] Barber Motorcycle Museum. It is awesome. It is a site to be hold. It is the largest motorcycle museum in the country, and Barbara Motorsports Park is a great backdrop for some. Racing, whether it’s cars or our two wheeled friends on their motorcycles.

So I highly recommend running down to Birmingham, Alabama to check out the Barbara vintage festival, if you have time. And for those of you that do want to go to the remaining HOD events on the schedule, remember that our code break fix 23, that you can use during the checkout process is still valid on your registration

Executive Producer Tania: in case you missed out.

Check out the other podcast episodes that air during the summer break. More than just a paddock party, Gridlife has turned into a phenomenon with one of the fastest growing racing and drift programs on the market. We chat with founder Adam Joubet about how it all got started and why you should be involved.

Our panel of petrolheads extraordinaire combine their brain powers to tackle the question what should I buy from the muscle and malaise era. We celebrate with Mark Steigerwald and Kip Zeider from the International Motor Racing Research Center as they celebrate [02:02:00] 75 years of Watkins Glen, the 70th birthday of the Corvette, and the 25th anniversary of the IMRRC.

AMF board member and pro rider Clive Savakul talks to us about the world of professional motorcycle racing, motorcycle track days, and setting a record at Pike’s Peak on a BMW motorcycle. Want to be part of the oldest motorsports club in the world? Then consider joining the ACO. Don’t take our word for it.

Tune in and listen to David Lowe, president of the ACO USA, explain the benefits of being a member of the ACO in the U. S. Thanks again to everyone that has come on the show over this summer.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we don’t have any new Patreons for August, and that might be because… There was a little bit of a mess up.

Check your credit card statements. They made some changes with their payment process and they moved from California to somewhere else and then they corrected it and this and that. So some people’s cards were getting declined. Check it out in case you dropped off to get our behind the scenes, access, early access bloopers, tons of extra stuff like [02:03:00] Pitstop episodes are available on our Patreon.

We are actually using Patreon now to pre release episodes cause some things have changed with our podcast server. So we’ll be throwing them over there. For free. We also have free trials that you can do things like that. But if you were an existing subscriber and suddenly you dropped off, make sure that it didn’t get declined because of a change in the payment processing system over at Patriot.

Crew Chief Brad: Anniversaries for the month of August. We have Rob Lorz, who was featured in our man myth and little blue Miata episode celebrating nine years with GTM. Eric, you were going to say nine years. It’s a long time.

Crew Chief Eric: I was, that is a huge achievement. I mean, Rob has been with us since the very beginning. And so it’s awesome to have loyal members like that in the group.

Crew Chief Brad: And if you’re interested in knowing what’s going on with Rob, he no longer has the little blue Miata. It lives on with another club member, but he’s got a GTI that he’s been towing around with lately.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right.

Crew Chief Brad: And 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.

Crew Chief Eric: Take us home, Brad. [02:04:00]

Crew Chief Brad: Special thanks to our guest host, no one because we didn’t have any special guests on this episode, but this is my last drive through for a while because I will be on paternity leave as my wife gives birth to our second son. Just so you all know, in September we have a surprise guest host lined up, but if you are interested in getting on the October episode and a couple of the episodes in the future, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Crew Chief Eric: And remember folks, for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check the follow on articles and the show notes available at gtmotorsports. org. You can always get ahold of us on social media. We are everywhere and anywhere, just like you can stream us on your favorite music service or podcast app.

We are now available on threads, the new social media platform, replacing Twitter X. I don’t know what it’s called anymore and also a shout out to all our new subscribers on our second YouTube channel. We tripled the number of subscribers on our long [02:05:00] format at Grand Touring Motorsports Media channel on YouTube, mostly in part because of Car Week, but it’s awesome to see the people commenting, watching the videos, all that kind of stuff.

We did separate our long format content from our short club content. So it made it easier to find stuff and index the videos, et cetera. So really do appreciate the uptick in the subscribers and keep them coming.

Crew Chief Brad: And of course, thank you to our executive producer and co host Tanya and all the members who support GTM without you, none of this.

Would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: I guess we gotta say bye Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: Bye Brad.

Crew Chief Eric: Bye Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: Bye Tanya.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re gonna miss you, buddy. You’re gonna be off the air.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ll be back. I’ll be back. Hasta

Crew Chief Eric: la vista, baby. How’s everybody feeling tonight? How are we doing?

Executive Producer Tania: I just went on a 10 minute rant about the motor vehicle association. So I think

Crew Chief Brad: we should have recorded it.

I think we missed an opportunity there to get Tanya on her soap box, which doesn’t happen very often. Usually it’s Eric. [02:06:00] She

Crew Chief Eric: does it when it’s Tesla’s, but we’ll get to that later. So Tesla

There’s some idiot in a Volvo. Lights on behind me. I lean out the window and scream. Hey, whatcha trying to do, blind me? My wife says maybe we should…

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

org. We’d love to hear from you. [02:07:00]

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

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you.

None of this would be [02:08:00] possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.