B/F: The Drive Thru #37

• The 2024 Lucid Air Sapphire is quicker than a Bugatti Chiron
• Great Wall Motor Company's Ora Funky Cat Is True to Its Name
• EVs Are Only Environmentally Friendly If You Drive A Lot: Report

• Max Verstappen is being investigated by the French police after a video emerged online showing the F1 champion over-speeding in his $3 million Aston Martin hypercar
• Lewis Hamilton gets new Mercedes deal, extends F1 career to 2025
• Daniel Ricciardo Is Out Of Formula 1 Again, This Time With A Broken Wrist

• Acura finally joins the EV ethos, unveils ZDX with competitive range, hands-free driving
• Acura Integra Type S ECU Jailbreak Reveals More Aggressive Tune Than Civic Type R
• The Toyota Century SUV Is a Budget Rolls-Royce Cullinan With Sliding Rear Doors
• 2024 Genesis GV60 Adds More Range Thanks to Smaller Wheels

• These Are The Most Overpriced New Cars Based On MSRP
• These are the fastest-selling new cars of 2023
• For Sale: A 1985 Paris-Dakar Rally Veteran Opel Manta GT/E
• Stolen Valor: 10 Times Automakers Spun a Glorious Past Into a Mediocre Present
• Land Speed Streamliner w/Trailer

How about a V12 XJS going around Bathurst!

• The 2024 Mercedes-AMG GT Grows Up—And Adds Seats
• Want to See the Next BMW 3-Series? Vision Neue Klasse EV Is Its First Draft

BMW is giving up on heated seat subscriptions

• These Are The Most Screwed Cars At Burning Man
• AWD swap kit for Hondas?
• It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy
• ‘Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed By Mozilla — Including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota — Flunks Privacy Test

• Jake Gagne Wraps Up Superbike Championship Number Three With Two Wins On Sunday at Pitt Race
• FORZA MOTORSPORT INITIAL TRACK LIST

• LG now sells this bizarre TV in a suitcase, and I must have it
• Hey, Rich Guy: Buy a $4.3M Bugatti Bolide and Take the Body Off

• Motorsports Are Essential To Business, Say Maserati Executives
• Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale Is a Limited-Run Piece of Rolling Sculpture

• Tesla shares close down 5% after price cuts, Model 3 refresh
• Tesla Model 3 Highland officially unveiled with new design and unexpected features
• Tesla Model Y Owner Finds Scary Cracks in Gigacast Front End
• Tesla is under federal investigation over company resources being used to build Elon Musk a house
• Cybertruck looks rough just being transported. It has duct tape over the panel gaps.
• Watch A Tesla Cybertruck's Wheel Cover Whiff Off And Go Airborne On The Highway

• The 800-HP RUF CTR3 Evo Is RUF's Most Powerful Car Yet
• Volkswagen T7 California Concept Debuts: Two Sliding Doors, Hybrid Powertrain
• VW Ditching Manual Transmission in GTI
• Volkswagen’s Rabbit returning as a sporty, nimble electric car in the US?
• VW Passat goes wagon-only, upscale and away from USA

The Tuthill 911-K

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

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

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to the drive through episode.

Danny Pilling: 37. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news. Now let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news. Brad, do you need a throat lozenge?

Crew Chief Eric: You sound a little off this month. What’s going on? How about now, y’all? [00:01:00] Listeners, Brad is out on paternity leave, and guest hosting for the drive thru this month is none other than Danny P from Danny P on Cars.

So we welcome you to the drive thru. Thank you for filling in. You have some big shoes to fill. Size 14, to be exact.

Danny Pilling: You know what they say about big shoes? Small hands? Big socks.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since you hail from the UK, as we discovered on your episode of Brake Fix, and we wanted to pay tribute to all things British for the first time ever, let’s talk about British cars in this month’s showcase.

It’s hot off the presses. A name we haven’t talked about in a long time, Lotus, is in the news. They just did a stellar reveal of a new vehicle that I’m having a hard time to pronounce. How do I say this? EMEA? EMEA? Like Europe, the Middle East, and Asia? What are we talking about here? In typical Lotus tradition, all cars start with the letter E, but it does have an official type designator, Lotus type 130, and it was revealed on September the 7th.[00:02:00]

They keep talking about it’s going to be a hyper GT rival to the Porsche Taycan and the Tesla Model S. Lotus had already hinted that they were going into the EV space, but is this what we all imagined it was going to be?

Danny Pilling: Is that corner of our world sacred?

Crew Chief Eric: Is Colin rolling over in his grave seeing this?

Danny Pilling: First it was the SUV and now the Grand Tourer. What’s next?

Executive Producer Tania: But I’m confused. It says this is going to be off the SUV’s platform.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s a sedan?

Executive Producer Tania: How big is this SUV?

Crew Chief Eric: This is the first Lotus sedan since the Omega Carlton that they built in the early 90s, if you remember that, which was sort of a box haul on steroids.

I’m not sure what to think about this. As a Lotus fan myself, being a amateur Lotus historian, is there really a place for it? Does it really belong here? Or is it because Lotus can’t continue with the current Elise Exige model that they’ve been following for the last 20 years? Looks like trash. How do you really feel?

I mean, the few renderings that are out here, the spy car that you see running around the [00:03:00] Nürburgring as they did some hot laps, only has two headlights versus some of the other photographs.

Executive Producer Tania: So somebody took the spy photo with the camouflage and actually rendered it in like a paint job and it looks like a Urus from the front.

Danny Pilling: If this car exists, but it means that they’ll continue to make ICE engine manual cars, would you feel more comfortable?

Crew Chief Eric: No, because it’s still not a proper Lotus. There was no lightness added to this in typical Lotus fashion. This looks like it’s going to be heavy and it’s going to be big and goes against everything that Lotus stands for.

And it needs to be a sports car. It needs to be a sports coupe. The Avisia that came out before this. I wasn’t convinced and I don’t think they sold that many of them. And then before that you had the Evora and I was like, that’s kind of cool. We’re getting back into the Esprit size of car. You got that V6 back there, all the things that the Elise and the Exige were missing, so I was excited for them to continue that and say, well, maybe they’re going to build a competitor to the C8 Corvette, something a little along those lines, but then to come to the [00:04:00] table and say, well, we’re going to build a model three with a Lotus badge on it, I don’t know.

In another report, Lotus has said that they are off to a stellar and successful year in 2023. That’s a great report now that we’re three quarters of the way through it. So great. You’ve got a company that is selling somewhere in the neighborhood of 1, 500 to 2, 000 cars a year. Is this new car that we’re talking about the EMEA?

Are they hoping 2, 500 cars a year? 5, 000 cars a year? Like how many more sales are they going to make? Or is this going to be something detrimental to their stellar year that they’ve had here in 2020? They want

Executive Producer Tania: to do 150, 000 cars.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think Lotus has ever produced that many cars.

Danny Pilling: It would be interesting to see the numbers of cars sold versus cars delivered.

Because I’ve got a friend of mine who’s got an Edition 1 of the new 2 door, and it’s been delayed for another six months. I don’t think it says in the details how many of these have actually been delivered, but I can’t imagine it’s the same number.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad that Lotus has not been [00:05:00] swept up in some sort of collapse, where they’re still trying to be out there, they’re still trying to be relevant, they’re still trying to build cars.

The question becomes… What does the future hold for this particular brand? And I hold them in high regard, especially with consideration to all the other British cars. Not saying that any of the other ones like Aston and Jaguar are bad, but Lotus has always been focused on motorsport and being a motorsport fan.

You’re like, you want to see Lotus succeed. You want to see them come up with something that’s going to shake the tree. And make Porsche scared or Corvette scared. But what did Lotus come up with now? What harebrained idea have they put into motion? They’re notorious for pushing the envelope on engineering.

The question is this new Ford or some of these other cars, are they really pushing the envelope or is it just more of the same?

Danny Pilling: Yeah. So in a recent article, it’s been announced that Land Rover will be bringing a baby defender into their range and all electric. The first thing that I struggle with a little bit is where in that range does it fit?

You have the [00:06:00] big defender, you have the Vela, you have the three lander. There are about five or six different models of Land Rover. So where does this fit? Like, will they drop one or two?

Crew Chief Eric: So is this to be like the Bronco and then the Bronco Sport? Is that what they’re trying to play off of? The success that Ford has put forth with two different vehicles, which happened to be, let’s say, an F 150 in a Ford Escape at the end of the day, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently it’s a tad smaller than an X3 BMW.

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s sort of like the old Disco?

Danny Pilling: Even smaller. It’s like a Q3 from Audi.

Crew Chief Eric: Wasn’t the LR3 Discovery kind of like the smallest one of the bunch? Are they going back to that?

Danny Pilling: Well, you’ve also got the Evoque, haven’t you?

Crew Chief Eric: They still make the Beckham car?

Danny Pilling: Is that what it’s known as over here?

Crew Chief Eric: They say she had a hand in designing it.

Danny Pilling: Was it the right or the left? Maybe it was the convertible. Remember they did a convertible Evoque. They sold those for real? But yeah, I’m struggling to see where it, if it’s smaller than an X3, that sounds like an evoke to me, because they’ve announced that everything’s going to be electric, haven’t they?

By a certain time [00:07:00] period.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. You hear different numbers, 2025 through 2032. There seems to be this span of when everybody should be fully electric, but then you begin to wonder when alternative fuels come into play, synthetic fuels, things like that, is there going to be a reversal on some of these mandates?

There have been companies pushing hard to meet at least the first wave in 2025. So I don’t know if Land Rover is sitting somewhere in the middle there. Curious to see what happens. I mean, the 2024 models are beginning to roll out this month. That’s why September is pretty crucial as we’re talking about all these new cars that are coming online.

Danny Pilling: Well, this will be a 2027 model, this baby Defender.

Crew Chief Eric: Back to your point, will there be a place for it? Will there be a need for it three to four years from now? Is somebody going to want. That let’s say mid sized CUV Land Rover four years from now. I

Danny Pilling: think for me that a Defender brand is better than an Evoque brand.

So maybe they drop the Evoque. You get this all electric Bronco competitor that’s maybe slightly smaller, so maybe the two door Bronco.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what they really need Dan is a ute.

Danny Pilling: [00:08:00] Utes come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, right? This next one blew me away. In the UK, we have this term called chav.

It’s a derogatory term, but it’s basically similar to in Australia. They have this term, which is a bogan. And these are folks that are prime for a pickup type vehicle. Maybe they’re going to use their ill gotten gains from secondhand dodgy things, but they have these pickups. But someone in the UK has built a Bentley Continental pickup.

And this article just blew me away because it’s not just a cut, shut and leave it as it is. They’ve decked it out with teak. So it’s a Bentley Continental in pickup form, so two doors, so almost like your El Camino, but imagine you’re El Camino for high society.

Executive Producer Tania: How do those two things go together? El Camino and high

Danny Pilling: society?

This is the alternative, right? Would it be the red necklace won the lottery or what?

Crew Chief Eric: How long is the hair on the back of a well heeled British man who buys this Bentley pickup truck? Call it [00:09:00] mullet edition. Is mullet the same term used in the UK? Or there’s some other word. Isn’t this at the front party at the back?

This is akin to those Smith conversions that they do on like the Beatles and the Jettas to make them into pickup trucks. Like it has the same sort of look to it from the B pillar. Like I don’t understand this one iota of.

Danny Pilling: 150,

Crew Chief Eric: 000 will get you one. Why? What else would I buy for 150, 000?

Executive Producer Tania: It must have cost a lot more to build this thing than that.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, Danny, let me ask you this. Is there a shortage of pickup trucks in the UK? Is that why they had to do this?

Danny Pilling: I don’t think so. Because, like, there’s the Ranger Raptor you can get in the UK. Ooh. It’s obviously slightly smaller. The moral is, a fool and his money is easily parted. All right. Well, there is

Crew Chief Eric: something that you guys do enjoy over there, which is going on camping holidays.

If this Bentley Continental isn’t your thing, what about a Ford Transit that’s been done up by one of the legendary names in camper vans, Westfalia?

Executive Producer Tania: I’d buy that. Well, I’d ride in [00:10:00] it.

Crew Chief Eric: This thing is awesome. We’ve talked about other Ford Transit vans that have been highly modified, especially for track use and running at the Nurburgring, but just putting the word Westfalia.

After anything suddenly elevates it to where I think that Bentley wanted to go. But this is cool.

Danny Pilling: And you could have two of those for one Bentley. 83,

Crew Chief Eric: 000 U. S. That’s actually not that bad. And they’re calling it the nugget, which we haven’t seen Westfalia in the United States for a long time. Obviously, that went kind of the way of the dodo bird when Volkswagen.

Stopped partnering with them on the type three buses and things like that. But there is a rumor that they are going to return to the U S and potentially with these four transits, it might not be a UK only thing as this hype beast article surmises. So there’s some additional evidence that says they might be returning to the U S.

So I’m really excited about that. And 83 K for a converted camper van, as we will learn on a future episode with a premier camper van builder out of Colorado, this is [00:11:00] actually a really good deal.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, they can’t do that for that price.

Danny Pilling: There’s rumors that VW are going to bring a camper version of the ID buzz.

So would you rather have a VW camper van?

Crew Chief Eric: Is it a Westie or is it Volkswagen’s creation?

Danny Pilling: Yeah. Do you think the brand holds that much kudos?

Crew Chief Eric: I do, because if you tried to convert your own T2 or T3 camper van or get somebody else to do it, there were other companies or even the companies that would take the Euro vans like Riata and make them into RVs and things like that.

The Westies still hold their value. You go to find one now, especially a manual transmission Wasserboxer with a synchro and a Westie package. I mean that it’s like a white fly. Okay. And you know where that white fly is good luck. But if they were to bring something like that in the ID buzz package as a Westie, something special.

Yeah. And if it was competitive price wise to this, it’d probably be worth every penny of 83 grand.

Danny Pilling: There seems to be a lot of these concepts, but no one’s actually bringing the things to market yet. And that’s the frustrating thing.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:12:00] And unfortunately, places like the UK get this stuff first or we don’t get it at all.

That’s the other fallout, right? There’s other vehicles that we’ve fantasized over for years. That it’s just like, seriously, I will give you a deposit right now, if I can get one of these, maybe we’re not deserving enough. Well, you know what else is back, speaking of off roaders, speaking of camping, utes and things like that?

Do you guys remember when MINI made the Countryman, which was also rebadged as the BMW X1 for a while?

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe. I drove one the other day.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s been off the market for a while, and now the Countryman is back with the equivalent of 300 horsepower, which it needs desperately, in the form of an EV. And Tanya, having driven a Countryman S all four many times, what do you think about this new iteration, the third generation of the Mini Countryman?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like anything else. I mean, why not at this point?

Crew Chief Eric: What do you think of that front grill? I like the look of the original, the Gen 1 Countryman with it’s kind of like, it looked like a little dog, you know, a little puppy and you wanted to [00:13:00] pet it. This is really square. Compared to what a mini should look like.

Executive Producer Tania: I think the headlights are throwing it off because the headlights aren’t trapezoidal originally.

Crew Chief Eric: That interior is wild though. They retained the center screen. It’s all digital. No more of that BMW head unit.

Executive Producer Tania: Makes sense given how they’re outfitted. With that gigantic speedometer off to the center, and then you have the little bitty thing over the steering wheel.

They might as well, because it keeps the form factor there.

Crew Chief Eric: But one thing that gets on my nerves, and it’s not even the headlights, it’s whatever’s going on right around the C pillar.

Executive Producer Tania: A door handle? I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: No, because there’s a normal door handle on the door.

Executive Producer Tania: A window handle? I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Bizarre.

Danny Pilling: That is strange.

What purpose could that have?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t understand it because it almost looks like an afterthought. Maybe it’s some sort of accessory piece, but then it also makes it look very Lego by adding just that funky component that matches the roof. Would look like a door handle that cuts into the glass. I’m already not a big fan of [00:14:00] the way SUVs and CUVs have cut pennant glass between the C and D pillars that swings upward and goes against the belt line and the body line of the vehicles themselves.

I just don’t get it, but this is.

Executive Producer Tania: They actually accentuate it in the gray and red version. The roof is red, the mirrors are red, and that piece is red.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we can move a little bit more back into the high life and get out our tea set yet again. And Jaguar is in the news, coming to the table with their next EV.

Dan, you’re secretly a Jag man, aren’t you?

Danny Pilling: Well, I do like a good Jaguar. I’m not sure what this Jaguar is. Maybe it’s a slightly different car. But they’re really going for it, aren’t they? They’ve got Bentley and others in their sights, and they’re going to develop this XJ successor. From a design perspective, it looks sleek, it looks great, but British cars and electrics?

Who knows? Lucas, Prince of Darkness! It’s not the number one thing we’re famous for, is it?

Crew Chief Eric: Which is troubling, for [00:15:00] sure, but I have to agree with you. If this is a reimagination of the classic XJS… That was around since the 70s through the 80s into the 90s and then they redesigned it later. I like it. I see where they’re going.

It has some design language of JAGs that have come before it, not just the XJS. Obviously it’s missing the flying buttresses that the XJS has that it’s known for, right? Those B pillars that they used. What I’m sort of tired of and even looking at this picture is you can tell this is Either CGI AI generated or rendered.

I want to see the model. I want to see the concept car built in steel over a wood buck, even if it doesn’t have an engine or whatever, they would lay out these cars at places like Geneva and Frankfurt. So you could really see it. You can tell this is not a photograph by a professional photographer. It looks like it was generated by chat GPT or one of its.

Derivatives. So I’m glad they’re able to crank out these ideas and [00:16:00] get them to the masses quickly so they can get a reaction through social media and through Reddit and through other places like that. But it’s just, I want to see them take the time to build it because it makes it more real. It makes it a possibility that it’s something we could see on a dealership floor in years to come.

Danny Pilling: And this car is going to launch in 2025. So we’re not far away with this one.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s also a wagon version, according to the renderings that are in this article, which gets me even more excited. I won’t be sold here. Exactly. It’s lines are completely off of the other vehicle. So maybe this is two separate models.

It does hint at. A Jag trio coming out, meaning three cars, although they’re only showing two renderings in this particular article. So I’m really interested to see what that third car might be. Maybe it’s another SUV, something to replace the E pace or the F pace, build them a little bit bigger than they have been, because they are all in the smaller side, I believe sharing a similar platform to the evoke and some of the Land Rovers back before they split them all up.

Danny Pilling: What do you guys think about the fact that Jaguar is no longer called [00:17:00] Jaguar and they’ve dropped the name Jaguar and it’s now. JLR, I didn’t know that it’s happened quite recently. I listened to the collecting cars podcast So this is chris harris and friends and they are up in uproar about this

Crew Chief Eric: Jlr standing for jaguar land rover,

Danny Pilling: but the brand will be jlr moving forward not jaguar

Crew Chief Eric: No, that’s dumb.

Danny Pilling: So one of the spokespeople from jaguar have said that the brand doesn’t carry any recognition anymore. Isn’t that like career suicide?

Crew Chief Eric: That is a shame, and we’ll probably still pronounce it wrong, because if you look at it, it’s Jailor. That’s that new brand, Jailor. I would rather see Jaguar and Rover, to be honest, like drop the land or the range, and just consolidate it down to Jaguar and Rover, and go from there.

Yeah, Jover, Jover. The thing is, even the leaping Jaguar logo itself is an icon. It’s, you don’t even have to know, you just see it. You’re like, I know what that is right off the bat. Now, Rover, Land Rover, Range Rover, a little different, you know, the [00:18:00] little oval or the Rover Burgundy diamond that they have Jag is Jag.

It will always be Jag. And even when you look at this car. Put another badge on you go. It looks like a jag. It’s sort of silly. I don’t know that I’m up in arms in the same way that Chris Harrison friends are, but I don’t like the idea of them rebranding.

Danny Pilling: I think I’m right in saying the third most successful brand at Lamont.

Crew Chief Eric: I believe that is correct. Yeah.

Danny Pilling: And they’re going to do away with the brand.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a sad, sad day. It really is

Danny Pilling: different times.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what else? is sort of sad, but not at the same time. There’s another brand we sometimes forget about because we pay more attention to them when a new movie comes out and someone like Daniel Craig is driving around in the latest version that will then salivate over for the next couple of years because only a select few can actually attain these cars.

And that’s the new Aston Martin DB series of vehicles. And they just announced. The new DB12. And my gut reaction was before looking at the specs of the vehicle, I was like, didn’t Clarkson say that Aston was done with 12 cylinders? [00:19:00] Not thinking about the version number. I was just thinking 12 denotes a V12, a twin turbocharged four liter V8 borrowed from something else.

And the car is really big, or am I looking at this wrong?

Executive Producer Tania: Looks long.

Danny Pilling: It was interesting. I’ve seen a couple of the videos. What Aston Martin did is they flew out a number of influencers and journalists to Monaco. Put them up in a great hotel, gave them the experience of driving this new car. And all the reviews have been great.

Now, I don’t think it’s anything to do with the fact they were in Monaco being wined and dined, but the reviews are that everything that DB11 was lacking in, the DB12 now makes up for. So it’s a better handling car. They’ve completely changed the interior and made it non Mercedes like. And everyone is raving about this car.

It almost feels like Aston Martin are kind of cresting to a high right now.

Crew Chief Eric: But the problem is the design cues, especially the front end remind me of the Ferrari 599 or like a Fioriano or one of those, and because they stretch the wheelbase and then to your point, Mercedes now being the [00:20:00] parent company of Aston Martin, which a lot of people might not know, just like we were talking about JLR and that whole merger.

It still SLS GTS. When you look at it at the right angle, you’re like, it still looks like a Benz in a different dress. You know what I’m saying?

Executive Producer Tania: Speaking of looking like other cars, if you go to the comment section, one person would say it looks like a Hyundai.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, those headlights look like a BRZ, like they stole them right off the shelf.

Executive Producer Tania: And somebody else would say it looks already five years old.

Danny Pilling: I feel offended on behalf of Aston Martin right now. I think it is a stunningly beautiful car, and it’s matched not only by the outside, but look at that interior as well.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re saying it’s a stunningly beautiful car as compared to what’s available today or compared to previous DBs like a DB9 or a DB9R or any of those which were Gorgeous cars.

Danny Pilling: I think the really early Aston’s, I would agree with you, but a DB nine and this, they’re both beautiful cars.

Crew Chief Eric: He’d be seven as well. It’s such a good looking car.

Danny Pilling: Apart from all the Ford [00:21:00] switch gear.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah.

Danny Pilling: You have Mondeo, uh, windows window button.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s something to be said about all these Mondeo parts that get used in a lot of cars.

I think those are the only reliable components sometimes.

Danny Pilling: Quite probably, quite probably. If you look at that interior, I think you’ve got to commend Aston Martin for doing something different. It’s a combination of buttons and screen, which is kind of what a lot of people want these days. As I said, I might be in the minority, but I think it’s a sexy, sexy car.

Crew Chief Eric: There aren’t many ugly Aston’s. This is not one of them. Is it as pretty as some of its predecessors? We could argue about that, but no, it is not an ugly car by any stretch of the imagination. Now, if I’m going to spend the money and I have to choose between the new Mercedes. SLS gt3 gts gtr replacement that’s coming out this year, which we’ll talk about here in a little bit.

It’s a hard choice I think i’m going to lean towards the bens just because I love that new grill I love how aggressive it looks even the previous model of the gts and gtr. They’re just [00:22:00] Earthshakers, like every AMG that’s come out. And I don’t know that the DB12 does it for me in that same way.

Danny Pilling: I think the trick with all the recent Aston Martins is you don’t buy one new.

You wait two or three years and you pick up what is potentially a bargain compared to what it was new.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, speaking of bargains, is there ever an end to barn finds? How many barns are there in England? Then you’ve got these warehouses in Japan full of cars that are forgotten and that, but then even last year, we found a building full of vehicles in the UK.

Why, where, when, how has this lost the time? And what exactly is this? Is this an X19? We’ve got a lot of farms in the UK.

Executive Producer Tania: Where was this found? In an abandoned mansion.

Crew Chief Eric: It looks like it’s an AC. It looks like it. This is one I’ve never heard of before. The AC 3000ME, which is apparently a late seventies concept car from the same manufacturer that brought us the legendary AC Cobra, along with a lot of other vehicles.

Danny Pilling: It looks like a triumph to

Crew Chief Eric: me. It has some TR7 lines to it as

Danny Pilling: well.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s powered by a [00:23:00] three liter Ford Essex V6. That’s not earth shattering by today’s standards, but for 19. 73 when this was shown off for the first time at the London Motor Show. That’s a big power plant for a small car. Do they turn

Executive Producer Tania: it on?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a video of it, which you can watch in the article itself, but it looks like they’re just uncovering it.

Executive Producer Tania: I can’t imagine it would run. It’s got to be dead, the battery and no fuel in it, or… gross fuel.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean if it ever ran to begin with, right? I mean it’s a 35 minute video of them going through the mansion, where they found the car, uncovering the car, going in it, looking at it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, you can just fast forward to the 30 minute mark, that’s where they find the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Pretty much. Otherwise it looks like something out of the Blair Witch Project.

Danny Pilling: It does look like a kit car.

Crew Chief Eric: Never ending supply of barn find cars, that’s for sure.

Bradford? Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. What was that? Where’s Bradford Novak? Bradford?

Marc Huete: Who’s this? Who’s calling? Who’s yelling? This is Mark Hewitt and I [00:24:00] was promised an apology. I’ve been waiting here since 3pm.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh. Oh, Brad, you’re in trouble.

Marc Huete: You’re in so much trouble, dude. Where is he?

Crew Chief Eric: He is on paternity leave, Mark.

Obviously, you guys cannot occupy the same space, time, relativity, any of this cosmic balance. You can’t be in the same place at the same time. So here you are.

Marc Huete: Well, guess what, Brad? I’m the car chief now. I’m gonna steal your script and I’m gonna do the lost and found historical, of which there are notes that I don’t have to know anything about.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you’re a s Step above Brad, aren’t you? Well, Mark, now that you’re here to fill in Brad’s size 14 slippers, what is in Lost and Found this month?

Marc Huete: Well, we’re going to start with the fastest selling cars of 2023. These models still move fast. Is not my pun.

Crew Chief Eric: I was wondering, they’re the fastest selling cars, meaning zero to 60 times.

So what is on this list of fastest selling cars?

Marc Huete: Well, there’s some classics. You got Toyota Corolla. That’s a winner. Toyota Sienna. BMW [00:25:00] X1. I assume that followed like a W9, right?

Crew Chief Eric: That is the Mini Cooper Countryman equivalent.

Marc Huete: There’s a Subaru. Kia. Forte. Fort? There’s no accent. Is it Forte?

It’s Forte, yes.

Marc Huete: Forte, great. Okay. A Lexus. And there’s some numbers. GMC, I think GMC only makes the big trucks, right? They don’t make like a wee GMC. There’s not like a GMC nugget.

Crew Chief Eric: No, not anymore.

Marc Huete: Cool. Toyota Highlander. And it’s Grande, a Land Rover, Range Rover. It does a lot of roving. Really, if you have roving needs, that’s what you get.

That’s why it’s 10 days on the market that people need to rove. And then the big winner, 9. 2 days on the market. So this is hot takes. Is your Toyota grand Highlander hybrid, which is basically two cars. You buy the one car, but you get two engines out of it. So that’s a deal.

Crew Chief Eric: That sounds like you ordered a drink at Starbucks.

I’d like a sugar free Venti vanilla Frappuccino.

Marc Huete: Yep. Yep. I’m going to turn the page on the script here. These are the most overpriced new [00:26:00] cars based on MSRP. I’m just going to go to my favorite one here. Trucks. Trucks are overpriced.

Crew Chief Eric: You don’t say Mark.

Marc Huete: I do say I can go into the details. I was trying to find if there’s 1 that matches the last of it that it’s overpriced until selling.

No, it’s not that exciting. But trucks is the number 1 here and there’s like, different kinds of trucks inside. Wrangler, Jeep Wrangler, that’s a kind of truck, really. Bronco, that’s a truck. And then there’s some other cars. Hardy Davidson, that’s a motorcycle.

Mm hmm.

Marc Huete: I don’t know why that’s on the list, but that is also overpriced.

Mazzarotti, I think that kind of goes without saying. I don’t know about Mazzarotti. That’s like, reasonable. Yeah, there’s a lot of cars that are way too expensive, y’all.

Executive Producer Tania: I think my favorite on this list is the Honda Civic, aka the Accord.

Crew Chief Eric: Also known as… The Integra. I don’t understand why the Civic would be on this list, maybe because of the vertical that it sits in?

Danny Pilling: The Type R Civic is currently fetching at least 15 to 20 grand over list.

Executive Producer Tania: I like how they’re considered a small entry [00:27:00] level car, like the Civic is no longer a small entry level car.

Crew Chief Eric: Not at all.

Executive Producer Tania: And I think that’s what’s driving, it’s still considered a small entry level. How much is it this door? 28, 000 Canadian apparently.

That’s like, really expensive. What about for a full size sedan? Is that expensive?

Crew Chief Eric: I want to know then what the price of a new Jetta is. What fell off of this list? And how far off the margin did you have to be? Let’s say the Jetta clocks in just under the price of the Honda, so it didn’t make the list, even though they’re both considered small economy sedans.

And the Jetta’s huge now. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, I guess if you take the, uh, conversion rate, depending on when this was written, that Civic is actually only 20 grand here in the U. S. So that’s not terrible then.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s 28, 000 in Canada.

Executive Producer Tania: Poor Canadians.

Crew Chief Eric: Meanwhile, for sale on this list, Danny P, you’ve got something to share.

Danny Pilling: One that caught my eye, the price of rally cars seems to be going up a lot. So these classic cars that raced in the 80s, 90s. But what I found was in 1985, [00:28:00] Paris Dakar Rally Opel Manta. And this car auctioned for 33, 000 euros. But talk about trying to get into a rally car at a respectable price versus your Integrales or your Peugeot 205.

It’s got everything you need. It’s got the right spotlight, what we would call a cow catcher on the front, which is a big metal guard. But this thing was used in the Paris Dakar Rally, obviously an intense rally. Across the deserts of Africa.

Crew Chief Eric: And you know, what’s funny about Opal, they didn’t sell a ton of them in the United States over the years.

And there was all this talk about them coming back and if it’s going to be an EV and then they got absorbed into the whole GM Vauxhall situation and all that. Opals have always been really cool and they’ve been really good and they’ve been different sort of German, but not, but yes, and Walter World drove Opal Mantas.

In group A and B rally. So why not? These cars are cool. I’ve talked about it before in this show, my grandparents owned an Opel Manta. And one of its key features was always, they came with a flat black hood. That’s how they sold in the United [00:29:00] States, regardless of the color you bought it in. But I think these cars are neat.

I think they’re underappreciated and they’re probably a good bargain. Even if you don’t buy a full on rally car, like this one, looking for an Opel Manta or looking for an Opel Kadett, like a GTE and some of the other ones that are like the hot. Older Opals from the seventies and eighties. I think they’re a neat car to go after, especially from a, what should I buy type of perspective.

So this is actually a really great find, Danny, and I’m glad you brought it up.

Danny Pilling: Very different. There’s a commercial in the article as well. And it shows an individual called Jimmy McCray is wearing Rothman’s livery. He’s stood next to a Opal Manta, but the big thing obviously is Jimmy was a great rally driver in his own right, but also the father of Colin McCray.

Executive Producer Tania: I like that advertisement because it says. By choice, he drives an Opel Manta. They’re so backwards, but

Danny Pilling: it’s nice. First place, first choice.

Crew Chief Eric: And the one they’re showing in that ad is actually a later generation Opel Manta too, which looked much more like the Chevy [00:30:00] Cavalier Z24 that we had here in the United States.

The earlier Opel Mantas, like the rally car that’s for sale, I think are the more desirable ones. This is okay. Neat in its own right, but it’s sort of like the third gen Ford Capri. It was cool until you came out with that one. And I think this is still true. The Manta at this point, looking at this 1981, 82 ad.

Mark, what else is in lost and found? Looks like there might be some other things here.

Marc Huete: I have an article about catchwords and automotive marketing because it used to be good and now they’re bad. That’s what it says. Yes. So for Senator Henny’s. Which we hate, or we like. Do we like them?

Crew Chief Eric: What they were trying to do is capitalize on, is it got a Hemi?

Which is traditionally reserved for the big Dodge V8s. Four cylinder Hemi is sort of like, eh, not so much.

Marc Huete: Yeah, we hate those guys. Ford Mustang Cobra, it’s really cute actually.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s another one that got overused in a lot of cars, especially the Mustang two, when [00:31:00] they came out with the Mustang two Cobra and then the King Cobra.

And we’re like, all right, guys, that’s a Pinto. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s still a Mustang two, which is unfortunately one of the least desirable generations of the Mustang. But now. Thanks to people getting more interested in the Malays period. Those cars are actually a good bargain. People are looking into them.

I’ve seen some really interesting wide body kits, re imaginations of the Mustang too, maybe they’ll live up to that Cobra badge eventually.

Danny Pilling: I was watching a video today of the new Mustang. And the reason I bring it up is the new Mustang has a lot of screens. instead of buttons etc. But it has this funky option where you can press a button and select the screen to look like a Mustang Cobra.

So the dials are from the iconic Mustang Cobra. So talk about Ford actually bringing some innovation and fun to their cars. You can be driving the latest Mustang. But it could look and feel like the Cobra.

Marc Huete: The Ozdakota Little Red Express, and is also super cute.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t see this [00:32:00] one as a misnomer so much as the Little Red Express was a special build that Dodge had put together.

I think for those of us in the collector car space, We’d love to have an original, untarnished Little Red Express. That was supposed to be the fastest truck on the market at the time. I mean, obviously that was superseded by things like the Cyclone and the Typhoon and whatnot, but the Little Red Express is what started it all off.

So I don’t see this as a mediocre attempt in the present. I think this is something that is highly collectible in today’s market.

Marc Huete: Pontiac Grand Prix Richard Petty Edition. Richard Petty, is he a singer? Where’s your driver?

Tom Petty.

Marc Huete: Tom Petty’s a singer, right?

No, not the same

Crew Chief Eric: Petty. This is STP number 43, Richard Petty.

NASCAR legend. Still with us, as a matter of fact. But yeah, a lot of these Pontiacs, during the late 80s, early 90s, A lot of badge engineering, a lot of really kind of questionable marketing. So I’ll give them this one. Do they only turn left? They turn both ways, but [00:33:00] they turned left really, really well.

Marc Huete: Let’s see the Dodge Charger Daytona.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially the 06 to 09, those first gen re imagined retro chargers. They are not as cool as the current Charger, especially when you leave the yellow stickers on from the post inspection stuff at the dealership like everybody does. These new Chargers, built on a Paleozoic era Mercedes chassis that was shared with the Chrysler 300, they were still trying to find their way.

They were trying to figure things out. The Daytona badging that they put on it was just… Stickers and a spoiler, which I like that spoiler. I have reasons to like that spoiler, but I’ll save that for another episode.

Marc Huete: We got the old mobile four, four, two, the 91 looks cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, no, no, no. Four, four, two stood for four on the floor, four barrel.

Two exhausts of which the 90 to 91 Oldsmobile had none of those things. It was front wheel drive, single exhaust. It was an [00:34:00] automatic. Oh, no. So

Marc Huete: the Dodge Ram Daytona, which I can get that one because Daytona is a racetrack and you don’t Race and Dodge Ram,

Crew Chief Eric: right? But it’s the same as the Charger Daytona because of the original Charger Daytona.

It has that big wing in the back and they made it look like those road runners and the whatnot. So I get it again. This is just a styling package and it’s a static thing. I can’t fault. Dodge for this because they also built the Viper truck. It had the same livery as the Viper GTS coupe at that time. It was a Dodge thing.

We all appreciated it. I don’t see it as bad as some of these other ones.

Marc Huete: Pontiac, Le Mans. I’ve heard you say that one because you were there recently.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. This is just terrible. It’s a Vauxhall Astra with a Pontiac badge on it. I’m almost throwing up in my mouth right now. It has nothing to do with its predecessor.

Marc Huete: Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS.

Crew Chief Eric: This is in line with some of Tanya’s favorite cars, like the Impala. And these are terrible. We all laugh at these every [00:35:00] time you see one still running around. Great for the people that bought them. They will become a collector’s item in the sense that they were low volume, not desirable now, but maybe in the future, there’ll be these malaise nineties, two thousands cars.

So something to keep an eye on for the future. But for me, I’ll pass.

Danny Pilling: That’s not a truck. Is it

Crew Chief Eric: the

Marc Huete: Monte Carlo SS?

Danny Pilling: Yeah, it’s not like the guy from Bentley’s had that before he had the Bentley. No. No, it’s just a really big boot.

Crew Chief Eric: And I see what you’re saying about that. It sort of looks like it could be a ute.

Almost like the Holden Monaro ute that they had, which is the GTO where they cut the back off of it. Same kind of body styling, I can see that there. This might have been better as an El Camino, actually.

Danny Pilling: Here we go. Around El Camino. Ha ha

Crew Chief Eric: ha. Meanwhile.

Danny Pilling: Yeah, I was thinking, I saw this on Bring a Trailer. If you’re feeling really brave, you can go to Bonneville and try and break land speed records.

And this is the perfect car to do that. Called the Land Speed Streamer. Comes with its own trailer. It’s basically a [00:36:00] nose, followed by a little cockpit. And a big engine. The current bid on this car, 85, 000.

Marc Huete: That’s about what it costs to fill the tank.

Danny Pilling: I think if you’re buying this, you’re compensating for something else.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re right. It’s in the right shape. It would be unreal to drive something like this.

Executive Producer Tania: Where are you driving this? Who is buying this? No one’s buying this to drive. They’re buying it. Because they’re rich and they’re going to put it like in their garage.

Crew Chief Eric: They bought one of these on Car Masters in season four, and they turned it into some hokey Jetsons mobile.

You remember that?

Executive Producer Tania: This thing is 157, 000 feet long. Where are you turning this thing?

Crew Chief Eric: You’re taking it to Bonneville and you’re doing 300 miles an hour.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: It has 178 pictures in the Bring a Trailer gallery. How can you take so many pictures of something that looks like a pencil?

Executive Producer Tania: Because it’s 175, 000 feet long.

So you got to take a picture every like four feet. And get like a section and then you got to do the other side. Okay. I showed that there’s no dents in it.

It

Danny Pilling: comes with a parachute.

Crew Chief Eric: You can buy those on JEGS and Summit Racing, 50 bucks. Mark, I know [00:37:00] you didn’t diligently scour cars. com and other resources to find remaining HHRs.

Dodge Darts or 1980s Cadillac Broughams that are still for sale at Gray Chevrolet. But I do appreciate you stopping by and filling in for Brad and giving us some insight into Lost and Found.

Marc Huete: Well, Brad, consider yourself on notice. I hope your baby turned out okay.

Executive Producer Tania: We take a break here as Eric dies.

Please mind the

Crew Chief Eric: gap between the train and the platform. And on that bomb Phil.

We turn to Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche news, where the name Roof has resurfaced yet again.

Danny Pilling: Who doesn’t love a roof? Eric, presumably you must have seen them at Car Week.

Crew Chief Eric: I would have liked to have seen more. There weren’t as many as I thought. I was expecting to see maybe a [00:38:00] CTR2, a BTR, a Yellowbird, something.

No, there weren’t as many as I would have imagined. There were a bunch of 911s with roof wheels on them or some other components, but not fully blown roof cars.

Danny Pilling: So at the jet center at Monterrey on Wednesday night of car week, they launched a new car. So this is the Carrera Turbo. Roof 3 Evo and it’s their most powerful car to date.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it a 911 or is it a Boxster or a Cayman?

Danny Pilling: The nearest hereditary line you could draw would be a 911. Are you sure? Yep. The engine’s not facing the wrong way. True. Now the interior is Cayman. The front of it is 997 GT3 RS.

Crew Chief Eric: That I can see. And the rear fenders look like the Carrera GT, which is deceiving.

And then when you get to the back, it looks like a Noble. Since, you know, our theme this month is British cars, tell me that isn’t the back of an M12.

Danny Pilling: Are you saying that they’ve stolen their headlights from Ford as well then?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s probably some Mondeo parts in this. [00:39:00] There we go. That rear clamshell does not look German at all.

It does look more British. It reminds me of the Noble quite a bit, especially that spoiler they put on it. The canards, the diffuser, all of it looks out of place because of the sharp cut of the glass. The profile still sort of looks like a Cayman to me. And that’s why I’m like, is this really a 911? Now I know roof is now in the business of making their own chassis.

They’re not harvesting cars and doing things like they used to, you know, 20, 30 years ago. And like some other re imaginations of Porsches are happening right now. So this is interesting. I’d love to know what this does around the ring.

Danny Pilling: For sure, they’ve gone with a, an automatic gearbox on this car. And reef is pretty famous for having manuals, isn’t it?

And most of the cars they do, I guess with 800 horsepower,

Crew Chief Eric: you need to control it somehow. The other question is, is it really as cool as some of its predecessors? Something like the yellow bird or the original BTR or any of those cars? Is this as cool as. Some of the earlier roofs

Danny Pilling: is anything as cool as a yellow bird.

The answer is no [00:40:00] 29 yellow birds They just came out of nowhere, didn’t they and they were doing that merburg ring lap Like no one really knew about them back in the day They’re pushing the envelope with trying different things and it’s not the roof that I would want but have it in black And you can pretend to be batman.

I think it’s cool

Crew Chief Eric: So going back to something we talked about earlier with the ford nugget By Westphalia and you mentioned that Volkswagen is going to be coming to the table with their own version of the camper. So here we are, we have the T7 California concept based loosely on the ID Buzz. There is talk of a larger minivan coming that’s going to be bigger than the ID Buzz on a slightly different platform or whatever have you.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean if I had infinite money I’d have one.

Crew Chief Eric: But would you have it with that power plant? This looks heavy. 1. 4 liter single electric motor generating combined 215 horsepower. This thing’s got away 5, 000 pounds. What they’ve done is created a type two bus that can’t get out of its own way. Like they were when they were [00:41:00] air cooled.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. It’s homage.

Crew Chief Eric: You got to relive that.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Danny Pilling: Thought about the nostalgia. I think there is a Tom Wookie Ford video from Top Gear on the VW camper concept, so it might be worth having a look at that at some point.

Crew Chief Eric: This thing needs 300 horsepower, if not more. I mean, my wife’s minivan makes over 300 horsepower and has a hybrid, you know, to boot, so it’ll scoot along.

Granted, it’s aluminum space frame, all this other stuff. They try to keep it just under 5, 000 pounds. I don’t see it. I like a leisurely journey. I’m not really sure about this. Now, I do like the look of it. It looks really nice. I love the two tone, the pop up camper top, all that kind of stuff. And I’m not a fan of light colored interiors.

And I hate to say that on a proper camping trip or a proper camping holiday, that’s gonna get dirty really, really fast. But it looks awesome in pictures.

Danny Pilling: This or the Nugget?

Crew Chief Eric: I’d go with the Ford. It’s a Westie! I’m gonna have to go with the Ford! Well folks, the end is N I called it. I set it. I knew it [00:42:00] once they got rid of the two doors on the golf and they eliminated the TT and they sunset the beetle.

It was only a matter of time before Volkswagen took all the fun away and now the G T I is going to not come with a manual transmission. Can you believe it? An iconic hot hatchback that has had its. Dick shift since day one, they’re doing away with

Danny Pilling: it. It’s a sad time, isn’t it? Boo hiss, boo hiss. But

Crew Chief Eric: wait, if that wasn’t enough, it ushers in the return of the rabbit.

Not that we need it to be called a rabbit, but it’s going to be a sporty little electric car. that we already had called the GTI and they had the e golf and that didn’t sell well and here we are.

Executive Producer Tania: So it’s an ID

Danny Pilling: 3,

Executive Producer Tania: 2, 1, I don’t know, but with a little bunny on the back.

Danny Pilling: Yes. It goes to the bunny.

Executive Producer Tania: Do we need this in our lives?

I think they need an electric beetle next before anything else.

Crew Chief Eric: That would be cool. I saw the ID 3 in person at The Volkswagen dealership in Tivoli in [00:43:00] Denmark. Yes. It’s the size of a golf, like any Mark seven or Mark eight that’s out there, but the proportions aren’t right. The way the hood slopes, it has that grill less look to it, which we liked on the Passat’s in the nineties.

We liked on the beetle because it just worked with the car. I just can’t get over some of the styling cues on the ID three. And if this is what’s going to be sold here as the rabbit, yeah, I guess. Because it still maintains that shape of a hot hatch. This is a punch in the eye to the GTI lineage.

Danny Pilling: It’s an appliance, not a car.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, the end is nigh. I knew it, I said it. Two doors go, the manual’s next, and here comes an EV Golf, and that’s it. Who

Danny Pilling: is gonna save us? You know who’s gonna save us? Maybe a rally company. What do you think?

Crew Chief Eric: Nah. The Passat’s gonna save us!

Danny Pilling: No?

Crew Chief Eric: Never mind.

Danny Pilling: Gone, isn’t it? It

Crew Chief Eric: is gone for the United States. But here’s the news on the Passat.

It’s only going to be sold as a wagon in the next couple of years in Europe. And I’m really disappointed about this. Why can’t we have more wagons in our lives? It’s not terrible [00:44:00] looking. I’m not in love with this new Volkswagen front end yet. It hasn’t really grown on me. But the idea of a Passat. Hybrid or Passat EV full station wagon with all the bells and whistles that you expect from Volkswagen.

I’m on board, but give me some options, maybe an R line package, some nicer wheels. According to this article, it’s going to have a couple different engine packages. It’s going to have four motion, all these other kinds of things. So okay, cool. Why can’t we have this? What’s so wrong with the station wagon?

Executive Producer Tania: Because when you get hit by a Tahoe, it won’t stand up as well. So now I need a Tahoe so that when I hit a Tahoe or a Tahoe hits me in my Tahoe, it’ll be the equivalent of any two cars of the same size hitting each other. So we haven’t solved anything.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah, I understand. Well, I guess a Tahoe is just a big station wagon, isn’t it?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I have all that extra ground clearance that I wouldn’t get in a station wagon. Because it’s so low. It’s too sporty. It rides too hard.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve ridden in some hard riding trucks, [00:45:00] too. But there’s another vehicle we need to discuss. And since you mentioned it earlier, Danny P, your friends Chris Harris over in the UK just reviewed the Tuthill.

911k. I want to get your thoughts on this car.

Danny Pilling: How cool is this car? Richard Tuthill is a big rally guy. I don’t know if everyone knows that. He does a lot of fettling with different Porsches, but he’s decided to basically do his own and he let Chris Harris behind the wheel. So this is the Tuthill Porsche 911k and it is a lightweight Porsche.

With an engine that revs like a motorbike engine, you know, 11, 000 RPM out of a 911, which are normally famous for, you know, revving high. We talk about all these declines in these cars that we love and everything else. There’s someone keeping it real, and they’re keeping it real in the UK.

Crew Chief Eric: What I think is interesting about this car is All carbon fiber body and they go through it is this panel?

Is this panel? Is this? Yes, yes, yes. Even the Fuchs replicas are carbon fiber and [00:46:00] I’m just blown away by the amount of carbon that they put on this car to save the weight. To your point, the engine is interesting. It’s a 3. 1 liter cranking out somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 foot pounds of torque.

The horsepower numbers are a little variable there. So it’s power to weight ratio. Isn’t bad. It’s not as good as maybe some of the other air cooled builds that are out there. Especially you start throwing turbochargers on things, all of that goes out the window. The question though, with the way the engine is built being a twin cam, really a four can air cooled engine.

That’s something that Porsche played with on the nine 59s. They had a hard time keeping it cool, having core meltdowns and things like that. 959s aren’t driven that much, so not a lot of people have maybe encountered those problems, but 959s do have issues. So I’m really curious from an engineering perspective how Tuthill got past that when Porsche couldn’t figure it out.

Maybe it’s because there’s 30, 40 years of evolution and it’s a complete redesign somehow, but to put an engine like this together with those specs, [00:47:00] that configuration, and maintain air cooling only. Is a feat of magic, if nothing else, I will say the rest of the car, it’s a long bonnet 911, but its interior doesn’t match anything that’s coming out of singer vehicle design in terms of that bespoke, the quality, but that would add weight, wouldn’t it?

Danny Pilling: It is something for him to just. Rag around a track. I don’t know if the phrase rag translates, but to basically take it by the scruff of the neck and rinse it, as we would say. The interior, he probably doesn’t care about the interior. It’s all about lightweight, high revs, and having as much fun as you can on the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So would you rather have a Tuthill 911, or an Exige, or an Evora, or something like that, which is already stripped down?

Danny Pilling: Yeah, I think the Tuthill 911, just because of the weight dynamics, We know what these classic Porsches drive like, don’t we?

Crew Chief Eric: I think my boat still goes to the Lourdes, though.

Danny Pilling: Yeah?

Crew Chief Eric: I would prefer mid engine, honestly.

Danny Pilling: But it’s interesting, I mean, that car obviously is priceless, because it’s not a car he’s putting into [00:48:00] production.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, he’s gonna build 30 samples of it, from what I understand.

Danny Pilling: That may have come after the video, then, I didn’t see that. Did he put a price on them

Crew Chief Eric: that I don’t know, but even the car that they were testing, it was stamped one of 30

Danny Pilling: because Evo magazine have just reviewed the pro drive 22 B.

So this is an all new half a million dollar Subaru. And that thing looks immense. Well, it’s interesting. It’s only got one flappy paddle. So you shift up and you shift down using one paddle instead of traditionally you would use two. And this thing is a rally car for the road and it looks immense.

Crew Chief Eric: The problem that Tuthill will be faced with in terms of pricing is whether or not you have to supply the early 70s chassis that this is built on and then they go ahead and do all the restomodding and all that.

Or if they’re going to acquire, well, basically harvest 30 versions of a 911 T S whatever it is, they’re all the same, basically the end of the day, the problem is those cars are expensive to get into. So does it become like some of the other [00:49:00] manufacturers we’ve seen where yes, bring your Mustang, we’ll build you a monstrosity.

Are they going to have to go that model? Are they going to have to do more like singer where they’re buying cars? And then obviously the uplift to make profit on them is going to be huge. These Easily could be quarter million dollar cars, which then goes back to my argument for a quarter million bucks.

What else can you buy that might have a similar performance factor? It might be maybe a little bit easier to drive. From my perspective, Chris Harris looked stressed out driving that car. It did not look like an, it was an enjoyable drive until he put it on the track. But then when he was on the track, he spent more time really hooning around in it because it wanted to break loose then to really put it through its paces and say, I’m going to do a hot lap, a time trial lap here at the ring or wherever it is, I think that takes a lot more concentration, a lot more determination with a car like that, then jumping into something mid engine or a little bit more modern.

Danny Pilling: It did look like he was having to learn that car a lot. For that sort of money, what else can you buy? Well, Alphaholics, they do a modern [00:50:00] interpretation, don’t they?

Crew Chief Eric: They do, and they’re gorgeous, and I would love to have one of those. Well, there’s another brand that Tanya would love to have sitting in her driveway, and it’s very rare that we get to talk about our friends from Lower Saxony.

So what’s on the radar this month?

Executive Producer Tania: The new 2024 AMG GT, which is sadly getting bigger

Crew Chief Eric: and softer.

Executive Producer Tania: It also still looks well proportioned, I guess. Same, same, but different at the same time. The nose isn’t as long as the previous ones. They’ve made this one a 2 plus 2, meaning there’s a backseat for your guests.

I’m like, really? So it’s 9 11 back seats. So it’s for people without the ability to have a leg.

Danny Pilling: It’s a car for contortionists.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. Or like a small child for two years of their life or something. It’s confusing to me. Why bother? They’ve been two seaters, keep them two seaters. If you want a four door, go get C class or E class or whatever class.

Danny Pilling: Trying to compete directly with Porsche, aren’t they?

Crew Chief Eric: This is where we’re going back to the DB12 [00:51:00] again. If you start really looking at some of the angles on this new AMG GT, you start to see the DB12 and vice versa. Especially some of these three quarter angle shots of the front headlights and the grille.

It’s missing that cutaway behind. The front wheels, but you can see the same lines where it’s sharing maybe the platform with the Aston Martin and vice versa. Now, granted the rear end retains that classic SLS GT look that I have always joked was borrowed from the nine 28. It has that sort of design to it where the Aston Martin steps away, has a little bit of more of that Jaguar duck tail, like the DB nine, the DB seven had.

There’s a lot of similarities between these two cars. It goes back to what we talked about in the beginning. I would rather have this than the Aston.

Danny Pilling: The 911 in the rear quarter of this car.

Crew Chief Eric: Because of the flares. Yeah, absolutely. But it’s so much better looking than the 911. Those are fighting words. I know it.

I know it, but here’s the thing that AMG V8 sounds like nothing else. [00:52:00] I think the only sound that comes close to it was the C7, especially the C7R Corvette. Those were. Unbelievably good. They have that nice deep base to them, just like the AMGs do, but there’s something about a Mercedes V8 that just hits you right in the middle of your chest.

It sounds like nothing else and fun to drive too. I’ve driven some of the older, like CLK Blacks and things like that, and they’re just an absolute riot. So I can only imagine that these are better by a long shot. BMW, as we know, jumped into the fray with electronic vehicles and hybrids back with the i series.

We can all call back to the i3 and the i8, which was like a new Batmobile. But now they’re talking about a new 3 series. EV.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, this is a concept so far because when you see it, you don’t think 3 series, you think 2002.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Danny Pilling: would agree.

Executive Producer Tania: Which for a 2002 EV, I mean, it’s kind of cool.

Danny Pilling: Did they fire their head of design and bring someone new in?

Because this looks good.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not just one kidney grill though, there’s two. [00:53:00]

Crew Chief Eric: The back looks like an Alpha 164.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Straight out of the 90s. And it has a lot of Alfa Romeo look to it, which I’m okay with. And the big grills aside, then I know it’s a concept thing and they want to show it off and the natural light and all this kind of thing.

The greenhouse effect that this car will have when you drive around with an all glass roof has to be absolutely killer. On a hot day in the middle of Texas or California?

Executive Producer Tania: Nah, it’ll probably have some quirky technology where the sunroof glass, you can hit a button and it goes. And it goes dark like the new airplane.

Marc Huete: Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: well, they’re not new anymore But how the airplane windows you hit the button instead of pulling the shade down and it just like goes dark Maybe they’ll put that feature in it’ll be subscription so you can pay extra for it

Crew Chief Eric: The only other problem I have with it is the interior looks like something you would pick up at a garage sale That was left over from the mid 70s That particular gold, and that particular weave, and the purple [00:54:00] accents, and the white.

This is some art deco. I don’t understand this interior. It’s not German, and it’s not BMW. It doesn’t scream 3 series to me by any stretch of the imagination.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably handle the interior with the correct color choice. What bothers me immensely is that, like, crooked HUD display thing. Bizarre trapezoid, and it looked like it was, like, an S.

Rhombus, it was like angled.

Crew Chief Eric: Well not only that, it’s the two spoke rectangular steering wheel that looks like it’s out of a 70s Citroen. Leave that stuff to the French, BMW, okay? Next they’ll do the one handled steering wheel, you remember those? This is not a yoke, to be honest. That comes off in your hands.

A lot of these concepts never come to fruition, or the production version never looks anything like the concept car. And that’s why they’re concept cars, right? They’re design studies.

Danny Pilling: BMW get a lot of heat because of their design at the minute. So I wonder if this is a response to some of that heat that they’ve received.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, they’ve been too busy getting heat on something else, right, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, those heated [00:55:00] seat subscriptions apparently aren’t panning out.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, nobody’s signing up to get paid to play for their winter package.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, talking about bonehead moves.

Crew Chief Eric: We called it though. Nobody’s going to pay for these nickel and dime features.

This is not an iPhone and you’re in the Apple arcade and you need to buy the next weapon, you know, so you can level up your RPG character. It doesn’t work for cars. If they want to simplify the manufacturing process. Put the feature in there, put a dead switch in or whatever. I love it.

Executive Producer Tania: We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer.

What do you mean extra service? Almost every car comes standard with heated seats these days. Boneheads.

Danny Pilling: In the luxury category, it’s expected, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Luxury category. My nearly 25 year old Volkswagen has heated seats. Luxury category, my rear end. Come now.

Danny Pilling: Literally your rear end on a warm heated seat, right?

Executive Producer Tania: I can go warm my rear end. And you didn’t have to pay a

Crew Chief Eric: subscription. Yeah, for free. Exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: Quote free. I paid for it. [00:56:00] Which is why people are upset with this because they feel like they’re being charged again. Because obviously they’ve already paid BMW price for the car. And then they have to pay extra for something that has probably been standard on a BMW for who knows how long.

BMW

Crew Chief Eric: making all the right moves. Speaking of making the right moves, we need to talk about Stellantis.

Danny Pilling: Those folks at Maserati?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they say that motorsports are essential to business.

Danny Pilling: Where were they in the 50s and 60s?

Crew Chief Eric: Maserati’s always had some sort of race car here, there, and everywhere, and that’s fine.

They do the hokey pokey, like, we’re in this year, we’re out this year, here comes the MC12, we’ll run at Le Mans, then we won’t, all this back and forth and whatnot. This latest car? I really like it. I’m excited. If this is going to end up in what used to be GTLM, I’m all for it. They are labeling it with the 24 hinting that they may take this car to Lamar.

What’s nice is this doesn’t exactly look like a Ferrari 296. That’s got different [00:57:00] body panels on it. Granted, it probably is, but it does reach back to Maserati’s past. It kind of reminds me of what the Maserati B Turbo, as they like to call it, or Bi Turbo, would look like in today’s day and age. I think this car is hot, I think it’s necessary, and I want to see it at Le Mans next year.

It looks sick.

Danny Pilling: It’s interesting that all these manufacturers seem to be getting on this bandwagon, don’t they? Because Ford at Car Week, the branding was slightly different for me. Why call a car a GTD and not make it a diesel?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the GT3. We all saw it at Le Mans. It’s the street version of it, but you could still call it the GT3 because that’s what Porsche does.

There’s the GT3 RSR race car and the GT3 for the street. Big deal.

Danny Pilling: It’s definitely a theme. These car companies are doubling down on motorsport in order to keep their brands alive.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s also true of Alfa Romeo. They’ve decided to. Tease and alpha 33 stradale as a limited run. I don’t know what to think of this because the alpha 4c was [00:58:00] supposed to be the new reimagination of the 33 stradale.

And here now they’re saying, well, well, let’s, let’s forget about the 4c. Here’s another car for you to look at, which. Sort of looks like the 8C sometimes, does kind of remind me of the original 33.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, this probably looks more like one than the 4C did.

Crew Chief Eric: And the gullwing doors that are scissored, sort of?

It’s very strange.

Danny Pilling: I love the interior on this car. Talk about minimalist. Talk about Italian flair. It’s just so sexy,

Crew Chief Eric: but there are still pieces of it, especially in profile. When you look at that one shot that it looks like the four C’s still, do you guys see that? Or is it just me? I

Danny Pilling: can see it a little bit.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re only making 33 of them. I mean, how much more limited production can you

Crew Chief Eric: get? Red, some

Danny Pilling: red, 2 million car.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it going to be a million bucks?

Danny Pilling: Who? Million dollars,

Crew Chief Eric: 2 million. Wow. I will look forward to seeing one of these in a future car week or in somebody’s private collection or at the Peterson or something like

Executive Producer Tania: where [00:59:00] the grocery store down at the Piggly Wiggly.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m sure the Sultan of somewhere will buy three or four of these. That’ll chew up a bunch of them. This is super cool. Alpha needs to do more stuff like this. Like we’ve said before, they’re the BMW of the Italian car market. They need more. 40 cars. They need more things in the motor sport realm, especially with their exit from formula one coming soon.

They need to keep that momentum going to keep people interested in the brand other than just, you know, the formula one cars, but as we continue down our domestic news Brought to us by AmericanMuscle. com, your source for Ford, Chevy, and Mopar performance OEM and replacement parts. We have an entry here about Corvettes from Dan.

Would you like to tell us about it?

Danny Pilling: My friends at the Peterson have just opened a new exhibit. So this is the Peterson Automotive Museum in LA, and they tend to rotate their exhibits really regularly, which is a really good thing because it means that if you go within a sort of. A month or two months, you’ll actually see something a bit different.

And this is a new exhibit focused on Chevys and specifically [01:00:00] Corvettes and racing Corvettes. It’s called Corvettes in competition. And it basically documents some of the most famous winning Corvettes of time. It looks fantastic. They borrowed cars from notable people like the Rebs Institute. So it’s a, an exciting exhibit.

I can’t wait to get down there. I’ll be down there in a few weeks time.

Crew Chief Eric: And this is in concert with Corvette’s 70th birthday. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of these different celebrations going on. And some of those cars were at the Monterey Historics this year as part of Car Week as well. Moving on, some JDM and Asian car news.

Danny Pilling: They’ve finally done it. They finally decided to go down the EV route. I think this has been teased for a couple of years. I can remember seeing concepts that Pebble and, uh, the quail for the last few years, but they’ve actually unveiled the, I guess you guys would call it the Z D X or the Z, the Z D X coming to a car charger near you.

But they’ve unveiled it and it, it looks pretty funky actually. So you mean the Honda Pilot? There we go. The Honda Pilot with the suit on.

Crew Chief Eric: put on a boat eye. The ZDX, if everybody recalls, that was [01:01:00] Acura’s version of the Honda Crosstour way back when. It became a full estate after that, before they sunsetted it, which was basically a TSX station wagon or a TL station wagon, something like that, if I remember correctly.

So the ZDX is back as an SUV, looks like a full size from the pictures, estimated to deliver a 500 horsepower equivalency. That’s going to be a quick truck. That’s for sure. And that’s in the dual motor configuration, by the way. So interesting to see Honda step out and do more things with EV than just the basic Econoboxes that they’ve been putting together thus far.

But there’s also some shaking up going on in the world of Integra.

Danny Pilling: So just when you think that these cars are quick enough, someone has actually revealed that you can jailbreak a Integra type Ss and make it much quicker than both the type F Ss as well as the Honda type R. There’s a whole page on the drive around how you can now tune these cars with software versus physical part, and they’ve managed to jailbreak it.[01:02:00]

Crew Chief Eric: So one over the air update will take care of that to re-encrypt the E C U so that they can’t, or how’s it gonna work?

Danny Pilling: There’s always people out there that are willing to try and test, isn’t there? So it’s a game of catch up and then catch up again.

Crew Chief Eric: And what’s interesting about this is unlike Hondas of previous generations, this is using a Bosch electronic fuel injection system.

So it’s using Bosch ECUs. And I’m wondering this new revelation that people have come to is really no different than what the Volkswagen community has known forever. Is that the ECUs are open and they can be reflash and you can manipulate the system. Granted, you void your warranty almost immediately, but unlike the Chrysler Bosch ECUs, which are full disc encrypted, and you can’t make modifications to them, this is not uncommon for Bosch ECUs to get flashed, where you can buy a tune for five or 700 bucks from a known tuner, at least in the Volkswagen world, from somebody like a p r, and suddenly get a hundred more horsepower without changing any other parts.

I [01:03:00] guess I’m glad that Honda’s catching up.

Danny Pilling: The other thing for me with this one is actually people see this as a car worthy to try and jailbreak. That’s true. Think about some of the Acuras of recent time, let’s exclude some of the quick ones, but they’ve always been less of a interesting car when it comes to things like modifying, et cetera.

So, uh, yeah, I think it’s interesting that people are actually going to spend the time to try and hack it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know what? They’re not going to spend the time hacking because they’re going to spend their time enjoying. That’s the Toyota Century SUV. That is rumored to becoming stateside in the next couple of years.

So for those that aren’t familiar, what is this Toyota century? The century division of Toyota is the highest of the high. These are the cars that they built for ambassadors, presidents, mobsters, whoever needs these luxury limousines armored or otherwise. They have a program in which they have apprentices working at century for decades before they can take over and do certain jobs, hand stitching the leather.

I mean, these cars are of the highest. quality. They’ve been [01:04:00] building SUVs and now those are going to be coming to the States to compete with cars like the Rolls Royce Cullinan, the Bentley Bentayga, and some of the other high line British SUVs that are available today.

Danny Pilling: Will badge snobbery kick into play?

Are you going to want a Toyota badge versus a Rolls Royce badge, for example?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the hard sell. That goes back to the dilemma with the Volkswagen Phaeton. The Phaeton was an amazing car from an engineering perspective, but who wants to show up to the golf course in a Volkswagen, you’d rather have the A8 L that shared a similar platform because it carries that prestige.

And then from there you went to the Panamera, which is again, an A8 L underneath. So to your point, will it be sold here like Genesis? Right. Or just be labeled as century kind of pulling the thread away from Toyota. A little people go, Oh, I have to own a century. I’ve never heard of century, but there could also be that stigma of I’ve never heard of century, even though they’d been around for forever and a day as part of Toyota.

I don’t, that’s a [01:05:00] tough call to make Dan in terms of what people will buy. The other thing that might throw them off. Is a four door SUV where the two rear doors slide like a minivan.

Danny Pilling: It looks like reading this article, they’re going to do a GR version.

Crew Chief Eric: Anything with the GR badge is good in my book. Okay.

It’s

Danny Pilling: cool, right? So they could send it to the

Crew Chief Eric: Paris Dakar.

Danny Pilling: Now

Crew Chief Eric: you have my attention.

Danny Pilling: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: In some respects, this shares. Some of the things that I became accustomed to with our Lexus LX 600 press vehicle that we had at car week, like the full size rear seats that reclined and were heated, and you had the Captain Kirk console in the center and all those kinds of things I talked about in the last drive through.

So that Highline Lexus is going to be competing with the Century. So the Century better have some really interesting features that people go, well, why would I not buy a Lexus? And I think that goes back to what you were saying as well. So, it’s time to talk about random new EVs and concepts.

Danny Pilling: Well, I was going to start with the Lucid Air Sapphire, which is quicker than a Bugatti Chiron.

Lucid are obviously trying to make a name for themselves. [01:06:00] They’ve done Goodwood with the Stig last year, and they’ve now developed this Sapphire. Its claim to fame is quicker than a Chiron.

Crew Chief Eric: Why is that important?

Danny Pilling: It’s a good question. It’s not important to me, but maybe it’s the people that buy these cars.

Crew Chief Eric: There lies the dilemma. We’re going to build these EVs that are like missiles, but wasn’t the intent of EVs to save the planet, reduce greenhouse gases, do all this kind of stuff? And they’re supposed to be economical cars. Why are we building them so fast? And by going so fast, don’t we deplete the energy that they’re supposed to use more quickly and therefore have to recharge more often.

And then it’s like turtles all the way down.

Danny Pilling: I think for me, Lucid is trying to find his place in the market. It’s got some good bragging rights around its distance. But how does it differentiate itself? And I think it’s speed is the one that they’re going for. But I agree with you. It’s not why we buy these electric cars.

Executive Producer Tania: I think he’s right. What makes it any different than a Chevy Bolt?

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe it could be that you could get a nice looking car that doesn’t cost a million dollars. I don’t care

Executive Producer Tania: about

Crew Chief Eric: [01:07:00] that. Look at the cars on the road. Why can’t we make a good looking EV? Why does a cheaply priced. Car have to look like something out of the Jetsons.

Why can’t Chevy make the Bolt more attractive? It’s got a lot of good features to it. It’s got a good price point. Apparently it’s built quality is okay. Except for the ones that they mandated stay outside that you never plug in because they might melt your house down. Because

Executive Producer Tania: they’re so small because they’re however they’re built and da da da da is why they can be affordably priced and not 70, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: But why do they have to be ugly?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know who they hired.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think the speed is that important in an EV. And if you’ve ever ridden in even a Tesla in ludicrous mode, it’s sort of like a roller coaster. You’re like, ah, and then you just, it sort of just drops off and you’re just like, okay, that was fun for three seconds.

And you move on with life and everyday person doesn’t need to go zero to 60 in 1. 9 seconds. And even then it’s. You know, touch these buttons, do this thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Sure they do. With their inability to gauge speed, they can rear end you all that much [01:08:00] faster.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what the nannies are for. It’s supposed to stop you from doing it.

Okay.

Danny Pilling: It also goes to your point from earlier. This car is a quarter of a million dollars. What else can you be buying for a quarter of a million dollars? It’s

Crew Chief Eric: the magic number. Everything’s 250 grand these days because your entry level vehicle now is 50, 000, right? Speaking of EV’s expensive cars. What about the new reek nivera destroying the lap record at the Berg ring

Executive Producer Tania: that they did like several months ago?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, but it’s in the news again.

Executive Producer Tania: They are the

Crew Chief Eric: kings of the ring buying whatever. Again, this goes back to, do we need them to be this fast? It’s already a $2 million supercar. Is it the fastest supercar? No. Bugatti still holds that crown. Now there’s speculation about whatever that other car was called, the Chimera or…

Executive Producer Tania: Or Tuatara

Crew Chief Eric: thing. Yeah, yeah, the Tuatara. Yeah, that’s right. One off thing that they couldn’t prove what speed it was actually going. Okay, great. You destroyed the lap record at the ring until somebody else comes along. Are those things that important [01:09:00] anymore? No. Danny Shikin has said nope. Where did all the fun go?

It went away when the manual transmissions went away, that’s when it happened. Tanya, here’s one that I know you’re so excited about. A

Executive Producer Tania: few years ago now, I guess, the Great Wall Motor Company in China had revealed their pump cat blatant ripoff of the Volkswagen Beetle. And since then they’ve gone on to have the ballet cat and now they’re introducing the funky cat.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, come on,

Executive Producer Tania: which is a blatant ripoff Of a nissan leaf from the back from the front. It looks like a bizarre 356 It

Danny Pilling: looks like a subaru 360 for way back when that’s what I was thinking. It also looks like a cross eyed cat

Executive Producer Tania: That’ll be the next one cross eyed cat. Everything’s cat.

Danny Pilling: Yeah Isn’t the cat lucky in China,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

With the arm.

Danny Pilling: Yeah. When you, there we go. You get a coin when you open the door or something.

Crew Chief Eric: As goofy as this thing is from the outside, it’s pretty well appointed on the inside. [01:10:00] It’s sort of like a Dodge Hornet or the Alfa Romeo Tonale when you look at it, the way it’s got that nice, almost tufted microfiber door cards and the seats.

It has a little bit of Fiat look to it. Super simple and clean. The outside withstanding, it wouldn’t be a bad place to live if I wanted an econobox.

Executive Producer Tania: This thing costs 37, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, nevermind. I’ll buy a Honda Civic from Canada and save money.

Executive Producer Tania: Nonetheless. Wow. Granted, apparently Nissan Leafs are terribly less expensive.

They’re a little bit more than that.

Crew Chief Eric: Do they even sell those anymore? Does Nissan sell cars?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay. So this next one was really interesting. Every once in a while, Jalopnik just lobs one out of the park. And this article for me was that one. Unlike last month, where we talked about crazy math and how they calculate EMPG versus MPG and how, you know, a pickup truck is as economical.

As Tesla and all this stuff that we were debating back and forth, this article talks about how [01:11:00] EVs are used really to the point that they’re only environmentally friendly if you drive them a lot. And I thought that was kind of an interesting discussion around EVs versus ICE cars.

Executive Producer Tania: If the assumption is it gets trashed at low miles, because Even if someone changes their car at 50, 000 miles, let’s say, as many are apt to do in the U.

S. because, my car is too old, I need a new one. That car isn’t going to a crusher, that car is going to a used car lot, it’s going to somebody else who presumably will drive it for another 50, 000 miles. And they talked about that magic window threshold was like 20 something to 68, 000 miles. that the car needs to run on.

Well, okay, in its lifetime it will hit those miles, so therefore what’s the argument that it is more friendly than a gas car?

Crew Chief Eric: Something that can be said about cars that sit for long periods of time, if you’re doing a lot of city driving, which is the intention of EVs, you’re doing a lot of short trips, low mileage, and so it might take a long time to rack up [01:12:00] 30, 000 miles.

Of only city driving, because people still have a lot of range anxiety. There’s the daring few and the pioneers out there that will go coast to coast in an EV or up and down the East coast from Maine to Florida and things like that. That’s not everybody. Not everybody’s racking up a hundred thousand miles on their EV.

And I think that’s the point that we’re trying to drive home is. As these cars are getting older quickly, you’re really not racking up the miles as if it was a single used single car in the family that was gas powered. People are like, well, we’ll drive from here to Kansas. No problem. The cars are sitting a lot longer than they were previously.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know that we know that again. No one’s ever writing these articles and actually explaining because all they just say is, well, the batteries, it’s the making of the car. That is the problem. Not the car. Once it’s built and it’s running. Once the car is built and it’s running, it is more environmentally friendly.

than anything else. There’s no tailpipe emissions while it’s running. But what all these articles always fail to address is, well, what did it take comparatively to get [01:13:00] to the point that the car is running? More articles talk about, well, your electricity costs and that and that, but then what is the true cost of electricity in terms of the environmental impact because you have a power plant running, da da da da da, all that stuff.

Versus I’m drilling into the ground, and I’m shipping oil halfway around the world, and then I’m processing. Those are the details that still aren’t comparatively discussed ever. It’s all anecdotal. This is bad. This is good. I’m like, I don’t know what actually is bad or good. I can say that if I don’t have something coming out of my tailpipe, that is better for the air that I breathe.

Is that better overall for the planet? If I chugged out 900 times the pollution to get that car? Versus ice. Well, that’s horse of a different color, right?

Crew Chief Eric: And in the United States, it’s a tough discussion to have because then you start getting into the more political side of things. Are we offsetting the carbon emissions from the city centers to the power plants?

Because again, these EVs are not run on unicorn farts, the electricity has to come from somewhere, [01:14:00] and we do not produce clean electricity at the source in the United States. So that’s a bigger problem. Places where they leverage nuclear and other options that are cleaner, there are arguments about safety there as well.

Displacement of the carbon footprint doesn’t absolve us of our sins. I agree with you, but I thought this article anecdotal or otherwise was interesting from a food for thought perspective. It was refreshing for somebody to come at this discussion from a different angle and say, well, you have you thought about this?

Maybe your Evie shouldn’t be sitting around so much,

Executive Producer Tania: but their argument is it all goes back to building it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s already built and I own it, that it’s sitting there. is probably still better than a gasoline car because when I fire it up to drive it three miles down the road gasoline car hasn’t come up to temperature isn’t it in its worst state of efficiency

Crew Chief Eric: that’s due to the catalytic converters and how they work unfortunately

Executive Producer Tania: okay well are we solving that problem no so that’s a fact that exists with ice vehicles So if that is a less [01:15:00] efficient and more polluting environment, then it can’t be better to go three miles down the road in an ice versus an electric that’s not polluting.

Again, it’s differentiation between the whole life cycle versus this one minute of comparison of when the two are running.

Crew Chief Eric: Agreed. And I think it goes back to what we’ve been saying many times over that hybrid is the answer because for that short little trip where you could run on the battery and the electric and the ice motor isn’t running.

And you take that little trip, but once you’ve exceeded that 30, 40 mile range and the car is warm and all that other stuff, you can switch over to gas and drive from here to Kansas without a problem. Either end of the pendulum isn’t a hundred percent, right? That middle ground is hybrid, which we’ve talked about before.

Toyota is sticking to that. They’re saying that’s the way to go. Again, interesting discussion. It’s seems to be constantly changing. It’s a bit of shifting sands, but there’s another development that came out of some other research, and this came from car driver, and this is part of our reinvent the wheel section sponsored by ESC carbon wheels.

Hyundai came to the [01:16:00] table and said they were able to add more range to their vehicles by reducing the size of the wheels. Now think about that for a minute. Wheels have been getting bigger and bigger and bigger for years. The new Ioniq 5 is on like 21 inch wheels. I mean, they look ginormous. They’re borrowed off of the big Genesis, like G80 sedan or whatever.

It’s the same style and everything. And they decided, you know, let’s put a 19 inch wheel on, which is still large. By a lot of standards and they gained 16 miles of range. I mean, don’t we

Executive Producer Tania: know this already? Haven’t we known this information for decades? It’s why econoboxes come with skinny ass tires and they’re 15s, not 22, 10 inch wide wheels and tires that are more rolling resistance.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. There’s a lot of things that go into the simple design of those wheels, the rotating mass, the weight, the width. All those kinds of things. I just think it’s funny that they just put pen to paper and said, look, guys, we can pick up more range, more distance. It’s [01:17:00] more efficient if we just put smaller wheels.

And then I started to wonder, 19s again are still pretty big. What if they went down to 17s back to something that used to be huge?

Executive Producer Tania: My spinners wouldn’t look as good at 17. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s very true. Yeah, can’t have that. But let’s just say they went down from 21 to 19. They lost two inches. They went from 19 to 17.

Maybe they doubled over again, 32 miles of extra range by going to a 17 inch wheel. Think about it. That’s incredible.

Executive Producer Tania: I wouldn’t have anything much bigger than a 17 and 18 at the most on the street. Anyway, you’re going to bend those things every two minutes in the way these trash roads are.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Low profile tires are just, it’s a risk every time you go out for sure.

Executive Producer Tania: You’re not going to put balloon tires on no 19 inch, it’s going to look stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: Teslagate.

Yay, Tesla! Let’s

Executive Producer Tania: probably go take a break

Danny Pilling: for 10 minutes.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s good. Go get some water. Get refreshed.

Danny Pilling: Let me know when you’re done. Ha

Crew Chief Eric: ha [01:18:00] ha! Where do we start? She pulled out a little stepladder so she could get on her soapbox.

Executive Producer Tania: Hey, whatever. I’m gonna keep it light and keep it airy. They write their own material.

But in news, if you’re interested… We’ve been waiting to pull the plug and get yourself an EV. The Tesla Model 3 Refresh is here. Unveiled, new design, unexpected features. Like who needs turn signal levers?

Danny Pilling: BMW owners.

Executive Producer Tania: Instead, you can push little buttons on your steering wheel to activate your turn signals. Not only that, there’s some other cool features like putting the car in park, reverse, or other various unnamed driver controls that you’ll use the touchscreen for. Because the more you’re not looking in front of you and reaching for crap in menus, it’s much better than a traditional lever.

that you instinctively know how to grab and can just flick with a finger. Much better to blindly be reaching. Oh wait, but you [01:19:00] would only do that because it’s an autopilot. But wait, it’s an autopilot so you don’t need these buttons or levers anyway. So we’re just the ones that are wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: And then they said they were introducing their version of a bliss system, which is the blind spot indication.

I was like, wait, it didn’t have that? That’s been standard on cars for like 10 years. You’re just getting this now?

Executive Producer Tania: It has to have it.

Crew Chief Eric: I read that they were adding it.

Executive Producer Tania: How special. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: how they get to raise the price on the Model 3 again, because they added that stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Actually, at least in China, the new Model 3 is going to cost you 12 percent more.

Crew Chief Eric: You get heated seats for that? It’s a subscription. So is that before or after they lowered the price 5 percent and the stocks tanked?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, that’s all interlaced. They lowered their prices, their stocks went down, and bailed the Model 3. Who knows, who cares, right? That was already a couple weeks ago. I think now their stocks have like soared on the expectation of, I forget what, it’s always on the expectation of

Crew Chief Eric: The Cybertruck.

Executive Producer Tania: Mana falling from the sky, I don’t know. But speaking of things falling, the Model Y, there’s only I think one reporting of this so [01:20:00] far. So one reporting does not make An issue. However, this person reported that they were going through their frunk for some reason, so they were taking stuff out, and then saw cracks in the aluminum of the front end of the Model Y, and it’s all, I guess, cast one piece.

So that was very disturbing to them that they would see these fissures on their front end and were obviously subsequently worried about the structural integrity of their car to which I believe Tesla was like, nah, it’s fine. Or whatever repair shop they took it to. Didn’t seem very stressed about it.

Cause these things are probably normal for cracks and the metallurgy of your vehicle. Nonetheless, this does not make a crisis. However, it was reported by one owner.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m going to side with Tesla. For the first time ever on this show and say, you know what? It’s probably okay. Because how many Mark four Volkswagen plastic fiberglass K members have broken over the years, just looking at [01:21:00] them, the whole front end of that car is plastic.

That holds up the lights and the grill and all that stuff. So that’s not a surprise to me that somebody is driving around with a crack cross member. What surprised me is that it’s made out of cast aluminum. That sounds like a bad idea.

Executive Producer Tania: What I didn’t understand was this just a K member across the front or is the whole front end one piece?

Crew Chief Eric: That was unclear as well. And I went to Home Depot to see if I could find a replacement. And it was not available. I was in the plumbing section though.

Danny Pilling: Gorilla glue, don’t you?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, yeah, JB Weld, take care of all of it, no problem. Yeah. Little epoxy. We talked about mansions earlier, didn’t we?

Executive Producer Tania: We did, and now Tesla’s under federal investigation.

Crew Chief Eric: Again.

Executive Producer Tania: For allegedly using company resources to build Elon Musk a house, which… That all part didn’t bother me. What bothered me was an article from a while ago where I thought he went on a soapbox of his own saying how he doesn’t need to live in a mansion and he lives in like a one bedroom shack trailer [01:22:00] because that’s all he needs in life.

So what is he doing building a mansion? I mean maybe for his like 18 kids that he’s racking up. with multiple people, but

Crew Chief Eric: wasn’t he on that mission to build like the Tesla house, which was some sort of derivative of a trailer and you know, everything has a 30, 000 price tag, like all Tesla start out as, but we talked about that like a bunch of drive throughs ago.

And it’s a picture of Elon with his hard hat on. And where is this mansion being built?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. Probably in Texas. Cause that’s where he moved

Danny Pilling: on the moon

Crew Chief Eric: on

Danny Pilling: Mars. That’s why it’s costing so much. And why there’s such an investigation because he’s having it built on Mars.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, if that’s the case, then I totally condone this.

Please use more funds.

Crew Chief Eric: Weren’t they moving away from Texas again? They’re doing across the country stuff? No,

Executive Producer Tania: because the Gigafactory that they built is in Austin, Texas, so that stays, but they did, I think, reopen the Palo Alto office. And then wanted some of the engineers to go back there after he forcibly made the engineers move because of the whole work remote thing.

Danny Pilling: And then he gets in trouble for putting a big Tesla [01:23:00] sign on the roof of the house

Executive Producer Tania: that he’s building?

Danny Pilling: Well, that’s what he did with Twitter and the X, right? So I’m guessing it’s going to follow suit.

Crew Chief Eric: It’ll say Musk. Help us get off Twitter. Follow us on threads. Once we’ve doubled our numbers, then I will gladly delete our Twitter account because I’m so done with all that.

Executive Producer Tania: Ooh, the Cybertruck is coming. It’s coming for real this time, right? Okay, whatever. However, I guess there was somebody on Reddit posted a picture. A couple that were on a trailer going somewhere. Who knows? Whatever. There was duct tape on the front. I don’t even know how to call the panels on this trapezoid.

It’s like the end of the fender where it would meet the bumper, except it’s like a jagged piece, because everything’s made with like blocks. So there’s duct tape across that seam, where there would normally be a panel gap. There’s duct tape. Who knows why? There’s no explanation.

Danny Pilling: The only time that would be acceptable for me is if that was the racing version of the Tesla Cybertruck.

Can

Crew Chief Eric: I give you, it’s some gaffer’s tape there to like seal up all the cracks? Yeah, that makes sense.

Executive Producer Tania: The rear shop, there’s no duct tape, but they were still compelled to show it. [01:24:00] You remember, I think I made a comment a while back, because this thing is fucking stainless steel, whatever the hell, aluminum stainless steel bullshit, and I said, your stainless steel appliances, you ever touched your fridge a couple times or your dishwasher and it looks like ass because your fingerprints are all over it?

Do you see the back of this thing? This thing looks like ass. Like. Is that what every panel is gonna look like? This thing looks so smudged and dirty and gross. It looks nasty. You can be freaking polishing this thing constantly.

Danny Pilling: Maybe that’s part of the master plan and maybe Elon’s bought a car detailing service.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s to fully realize that adage, that cliche when people say they’re polishing a turd.

Executive Producer Tania: If I wanted my car to look like it had throw up all over it, oh my gosh, I can’t wait. Can’t wait.

Crew Chief Eric: The whole thing is ugly. I mean, there’s all these articles even that Tesla engineers are designing another truck because they hate the Cybertruck, they think it’s awful.[01:25:00]

It’s not the design that they wanted.

Executive Producer Tania: It is awful. It looks like ass.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s stupid and it’s big. It’s useless. I don’t get it.

Executive Producer Tania: People only like this thing because it’s Tesla and it’s different. Like, you have no sense of style? I’m sorry. An eight year old would probably design something better with crayon.

Crew Chief Eric: No, you could design a Cybertruck using original Legos.

Only the blocks and slopes from like the 60s and make a better looking truck than this thing. I’m telling you. Ugh. At any rate, there has been some rollover testing done with the new Cybertruck as well. Personally have to say I was pretty impressed with how it held up in a rollover test. It’s trapezoidal shape does okay, I suppose.

Executive Producer Tania: They said the interior was completely still intact, which I guess I could see it. I mean, sure.

Crew Chief Eric: How were the panel gaps though?

Executive Producer Tania: Effed. Foobarred, I think.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of things foobarred, this wheel cover flying off in traffic?

Executive Producer Tania: Just like the windshield wiper. They must have thought they had a new [01:26:00] revolutionary way to attach a hubcap, and clearly it hasn’t panned out because it shot off on the highway.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what’s hilarious about this is if you look at the shape of the hubcap for the Cybertruck, It’s a ninja star. So when that thing hits you like a skillsaw blade, you’re going to have it coming out of the front of your car. It’s going to cut your radiator. Like you are so done. Or if that thing goes through the windshield, it’s going to be like mortal combat.

Executive Producer Tania: You know what you say? Mortal combat. There’s probably a mode in the cyber truck. That’s like free new gym and it shoots the hubcap off into traffic. Open butthole.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh Lord. Well. Now that my expectations are fully lowered, I don’t think Danny’s going to sing for us like Brad does, so we’ll just kind of, we’ll go with it.

You want to least follow us?

Executive Producer Tania: My voice is a little lower right now, I think, but I don’t think I could actually get through it, so I’m not going to try.

Crew Chief Eric: You know who else wasn’t able to get through it and they didn’t even try? All the people that were stuck at Burning Man.

Executive Producer Tania: I believe who made it [01:27:00] out, I want to say Danica Patrick made it out, using those NASCAR skills, baby.

Does she have dirt track background?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, I believe so.

Executive Producer Tania: There you go. She knew how to do it. She got out of there.

Crew Chief Eric: There were some of the funniest stuff that got stuck. Trying to get out of the mudslide, and even the best all wheel drive pickup truck number one selling Ford Toughen America. Up to their doors and mud, not going anywhere.

Subarus, you name it, it comes down to something simple. If you don’t have the right tires, doesn’t matter the conditions. You’re not going anywhere. You can have quattro, you can have asymmetrical all wheel drive. You can have. F 150, the Jeep, it doesn’t matter. If you got the wrong tires, you’re not going anywhere.

And most passenger vehicles are not designed for catastrophic earth events like this. It is what it is. I think it’s hilarious when you look through and see all the crazy cars that got stuck and how they got stuck trying to leave Burning Man. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, all you would have to do is probably walk 10 feet, have your feet suctioned into the [01:28:00] ground and realize this was a horrible idea.

And not bothered to get in your car.

Crew Chief Eric: The best one is when you go through the slideshow of this and you see the Jeep Wrangler and how bad they got that thing stuck. It’s pretty awesome. Oh boy. You know, earlier we talked about Honda and jailbreaking the Integra and getting more power out of it and things like that.

This next one really has me scratching my head. An all wheel drive conversion kit for cars like the Civic and other Hondas that you enjoy that are front wheel drive. I look at this. It scares me and I don’t understand how it works.

Executive Producer Tania: Why don’t you just buy an all wheel drive car then?

Crew Chief Eric: Because how many all wheel drive Hondas exist other than the CRV and the HRV?

Executive Producer Tania: Buy a different car.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently all this stuff bolts up to the existing rear suspension that’s in the place of a lot of the front wheel drive Hondas. I don’t know that Honda intended this in the first place. Granted, if you’ve ever looked at the rear diff on a CR V or an HR V, they’re not that big. So [01:29:00] maybe this is doable.

Generally, when something like this happens, like let’s say you take an Audi, right? The floor pans and all that kind of stuff are kind of predisposed, especially in the older days, front wheel drive, all wheel drive versions. They kind of had the swap. Although you’re to your point. Just buy the quattro and be done with it.

Why go through the hassle of converting the car? But the thing that kind of came to mind for 5, 000 bucks.

Executive Producer Tania: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This kit costs five. You can’t even buy a good suspension for 5, 000, but you can buy this kit for under five grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. And then add weight to your car to make it slower than it was as a front wheel drive and handle worse.

Executive Producer Tania: So either this is some cheap ass shit that doesn’t work, or we are severely being overcharged on other components of a vehicle that are standard.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, if it was 1930, it would only cost 85. No. And here are the cars that these bolt up to, again, for five grand. You know, when you’re all in. 92 to 95 Honda Civic, 94 to 01 Integra, 96 to 2000 Civic, and 88 to [01:30:00] 91 CR X.

I didn’t know there was a huge demand for converting those cars to all wheel drive. They are fantastic front wheel drive handlers. They’re like little go karts. Why would you want to do this?

Executive Producer Tania: Because you don’t actually know how to set up your CRX because you don’t know anything about them. And so you think this is going to help you

Crew Chief Eric: for the massive amount of torque.

That those four cylinders put out that you really need the extra grip to put it to the ground.

Danny Pilling: Let’s do a Safari Civic.

Crew Chief Eric: See, now that, I can get behind that. That makes sense. I mean, it’s been done with 911s and Golfs and other stuff. So yeah, yeah. Off road Civic. That makes sense. I understand it now. It’s the opposite of low riding.

It’s, it’s lifting.

Danny Pilling: Next big trend. You watch this space.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah, alright guys. Quick lightning round question. Super Mario Brothers, Fast 10, or Gran Turismo? It’s Friday night movie night. Which one do you choose?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I haven’t seen the Gran Turismo one. Well, I haven’t seen Fast 10 either. So I’d probably have to choose one of those just for the fact that I haven’t seen them.

Crew Chief Eric: So which one do you think you would get the most enjoyment out of having seen the [01:31:00] trailers for all of them?

Executive Producer Tania: Probably Super Mario Brothers.

Crew Chief Eric: Danny P, it’s movie night. Which one are you picking?

Danny Pilling: I think it’s got to be Fast 10 just to see how the family have evolved. Indescribably.

Crew Chief Eric: Nobody pick Gran Turismo. I don’t think I would pick it either.

I’ve heard mixed reviews about that movie. Honestly, I will end up watching it, but I am going in with low expectations.

Executive Producer Tania: If it shows up free somewhere, I will watch it

Crew Chief Eric: full stop. Taking a little bit more serious note, but also in the vein of lowered expectations, and we’re going to do a follow up to these particular articles as we do a crossover with Carolyn Ford and Tracy Bannon from TechTransforms in October, I want to talk for just a moment about privacy issues in these new vehicles, and I want to remind folks.

Look at the EULA. That’s the end user license agreement before you buy your next new car because there are reports saying that companies are able to collect all sorts of data, not just facial recognition data from the internal [01:32:00] cameras, things like health status, immigration status, sexual activity, all sorts of crazy stuff coming from the car.

And you’re like, wait, what? We’ve got a couple of these articles in the show notes that you can check out. The reports came from. Some of the more interesting places, not normally where I get news about cars, but we do expand upon these thoughts in an upcoming crossover episode. Really scary stuff out there in some of these new cars.

Danny Pilling: There are some cars on this list that you’re guaranteed not have any sexual activity if you own. So that Dacia, for example,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s a criminal record car.

Danny Pilling: It’s definitely a criminal record car in the opposite of whatever a magnet for the opposite sex is.

Crew Chief Eric: And on that last month, we reintroduced rich people.

We have a couple of this month, too. This is exciting. As we get closer to the holidays, we will probably see more and more rich people things popping up. Dan, what’s going to be on your holiday shopping list here very soon?

Danny Pilling: But you know what? When I go camping, I want to get away from [01:33:00] everything. You know, I want to enjoy the wild outside.

But LG have made it much more easy for me to catch up with the latest Netflix show. They’ve developed a suitcase, which is a 27 inch screen TV that supports AirPlay, supports screen monitoring. So just when you thought you’ve escaped it all, LG are there to make sure that you stay connected to the real world.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s the low, low bargain Best Buy price of this? Particular suitcase television

Danny Pilling: to you, sir. Just shy of a thousand dollars,

Executive Producer Tania: you know, that’s not unreasonable. That’s expensive for 27 inch.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. But how many 27 inches can you tuck away in a Pelican case and carry with you to your next campsite?

Executive Producer Tania: I like the concept of being able to.

Transport the TV, but I wouldn’t be bringing it on my wilderness excursion. I also don’t know where I would need to transport it to in general.

Danny Pilling: It goes landscape and portrait, so I don’t know why you would want, maybe Instagram. I want to watch Instagram at scale. If it doubled

Crew Chief Eric: as a computer monitor, then I could see it [01:34:00] being advantageous for like motorsports events.

Maybe at an autocross, a great way to like tuck it away, have it stored in a trailer.

Executive Producer Tania: Tailgating. Tailgating. Yes. Would be useful. Tailgating, you’re in the parking lot of the game and you’re watching pre game coverage in the parking lot.

Crew Chief Eric: How many of these new big SUVs have TVs in them that you could just jack your Roku into and do the same thing though?

They should do a Westphalia edition. Yes! Oh, then it’s okay. Does that justify that? 100 percent it’s done. If it comes in the Westphalia, I’m all for it. It’s all good.

Executive Producer Tania: That wouldn’t be a bad idea because if you’re taking your Westphalia on a road trip and in some nights you’re not really where you need to be, you would have some form of entertainment.

Crew Chief Eric: You know who’s not going to be able to use this folding suitcase LG television? The gentleman that purchased a Bugatti Bolide and stripped it down to its carbon fiber monocoque and turned it into an ExoCar. What I appreciate about this. Is being able to run the car like this But what I [01:35:00] don’t appreciate about this is there’s only a handful of bully days out there Why just buy an exocet buy an aerial atom like I don’t understand

Danny Pilling: He could have saved a lot of money and bought that land speed streamliner from bring a trailer.

It

Crew Chief Eric: has the same front end

Danny Pilling: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: it does look like something out of star wars though. It is wild without the body work on it I got a chance to see the Bolide at Le Mans when they were running test laps with it. I’m super excited to see if they actually campaign it next year or the year after, you know, alongside of the Lamborghini and some of the other cars that are coming to the races.

What compels people to do stuff like this? You spend four and a half million bucks and then you strip your car down?

Danny Pilling: Maybe he wasn’t allowed Hot Wheels as a kid.

Crew Chief Eric: But it also made me wonder how hard it is to do this conversion. Maybe it isn’t.

Executive Producer Tania: So this thing is stripped down blah blah blah exoskeleton. It weighs 2,

Crew Chief Eric: 700

Executive Producer Tania: pounds.

A full bodied Bullyday weighs 3, 200 pounds. 500 pounds. All of that stripping and you only save 500 pounds

Crew Chief Eric: and you know what else you lost in the process [01:36:00] not only did you lose 500 pounds aerodynamics Yeah, all of that is gone ground effects. It handles like ass

Danny Pilling: He should have bought a lucid sapphire.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the ticket right there. There we go. That is terrible It’s time to go down south and talk about alligators That’s right,

Danny Pilling: what have you brought us this time. People don’t do things by halves in L. A., do they? So this thief, he stole a car from one of the posh areas of L. A., but it wasn’t any car. He stole a Rolls Royce Phantom and took the finest L. A. PD, and I’m assuming maybe some chips, on a high speed chase through L. A. So he’s rolling in his, uh, Phantom, giving the police a run for his money.

This was on the Rob Report.

Executive Producer Tania: How fast do these go? They’re like the length of a school bus. They can’t handle that

Danny Pilling: He probably couldn’t hear [01:37:00] the police.

Executive Producer Tania: He had that 27 inch suitcase TV going.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, his chauffeur was actually stealing the car. He rode in the back, but he got away with it. That’s the best part.

How did he lose the cops? How did he get away with stealing the car? That’s insane.

Executive Producer Tania: They didn’t catch him.

According to this. They did not.

Executive Producer Tania: The savvy thief took advantage of the buffer they were given as the chase progressed deeper into downtown. Damn traffic. They eventually pulled into a parking garage near the L.

A. Grand Hotel, and with the vehicle no longer visible, the police were forced to stand down while a department helicopter hovering above tried to figure out what was going on. When they finally returned to the structure, the vehicle was discovered, but the driver was nowhere to be seen. Classic TV shit right there.

Danny Pilling: Just like a scene from

Crew Chief Eric: Gran Turismo. It’s like something off the blacklist. Meanwhile, in other parts of sunny America,

Executive Producer Tania: In our great state of Nebraska, which we don’t hear very often about, the picture is worth a thousand words. All you gotta do is just look at the picture, and you’re good. Because a dude chopped the roof, [01:38:00] opened up the passenger side cockpit area, and put his nine million pound steer In the passenger seat, proceeded to transport it down the road.

Danny Pilling: This is like a Top Gear special, isn’t it?

Executive Producer Tania: This thing is like a what? Well, like a Lumina? What is this thing?

Danny Pilling: It’s a Ford of some sort.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a Crown Victoria.

Danny Pilling: But the last plate says boy and dog. These are clearly not a boy and a dog.

Executive Producer Tania: No, he’s got like the matching horns. On the front, too, like Yosemite Sam.

This is unreal! But I wanna know what modifications are made to the suspension on that side of the car because that thing is dead flat! It is not sagging! That bull must weigh more than the car, probably!

Danny Pilling: The, uh, Richard Petty edition.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, it is. You should have painted it blue. Damn, missed opportunity.

Crew Chief Eric: I love the brush guard to the right of the bowl.

It looks like something off of a barn or a stable or something. This is nuts.

Danny Pilling: I thought that was a ladder, so you could get on top of the bowl and ride. [01:39:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe that’s comforting to the bull having that.

If it was Florida, the vehicle would have been stopped and they

Crew Chief Eric: would have fled on the bull into the swamp, never to be found again.

Much like the Rolls Royce that disappeared in L. A. The cops would have been just befuddled. But I love the title of this. Moving violation. I mean, if there was ever a pun to be had.

Executive Producer Tania: The best part is I took the article from clickorlando. com, baby. Florida’s reporting on it. Florida’s reporting about Nebraska.

Crew Chief Eric: Go and look at those guys.

They’re legit.

Danny Pilling: Hey Nebraska, hold up here.

What does that smell like? That’s what I The bull. It’s

Executive Producer Tania: open air. It’s got that farm fresh smell, you know?

Maybe it

Danny Pilling: was powered on methane. It’s an alternative fuel vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: Suction to the back of the

Crew Chief Eric: bull. Open butthole, bull! They just opened HOV lanes in Nebraska.

This poor farmer was by himself. He needed a plus one. This was his answer. I figured it out.

Danny Pilling: [01:40:00] It’s not an HOV lane. It’s a hoove lane. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Executive Producer Tania: Well, this next one, we’re going to Indiana. And this is a public service announcement about the dangers of drug. Okay? Which from the guy’s photo, it’s obvious he was on meth.

He was found under the influence of meth and marijuana and what this can do to you as a 51 year old man is think that you can get inside a Power Wheels jeep and then drive down the road at night. And it sounds like at first he was pulled over because the Power Wheels didn’t have lights or reflectors.

So he might have been able to get away with this shit if he had just had some basic safety features on this Power Wheels.

Got to be clearing me.

Executive Producer Tania: Public safety announcement. This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. He must not weigh a lot, which he probably doesn’t given the math. I was gonna

Crew Chief Eric: say, as an adult, have you ever tried to ride a Power Wheels?

Like, they will not move. Even the converted, like, 18 and 36 volt ones won’t move.

Executive Producer Tania: I wonder if this was a foot chase, or if they pursued [01:41:00] them in the trooper mobile, you know? Pull over!

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine the commotion this caused while some guys in a barbie pink jeep

Executive Producer Tania: rising and driving a ditch now we’re gonna go to florida oh

boy

Executive Producer Tania: because florida is not gonna be out done ever florida man hot wires excavator and then crashes it into walmart because what else would you do with it what else would you do with an excavator when you’ve stolen it and hot wired it You’d crash it on a Monday night into Walmart.

Crashed

Crew Chief Eric: it into the automotive service center, apparently he wanted to do an oil

Executive Producer Tania: change. He was conscientious the lights were out on the excavator so he was going to replace the bulbs.

Danny Pilling: And the blinker fluid.

Executive Producer Tania: This is bizarre. But last but not least, to tie us into our British theme, Florida Man was arrested after trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean to get to merry old England in a hamster wheel vessel.

So imagine the hamster wheel with, [01:42:00] like, pontoon balloons inside of it, and this little metal cage, and he was gonna get across the rough and wild Atlantic, and he was gonna make it all the way over the pond to England.

Danny Pilling: Why?

Executive Producer Tania: Unbelievable!

Crew Chief Eric: So somebody tested this. They thought this was a good idea. It probably works.

But can you imagine? Forrest Gumping the whole way across the Atlantic in a hamster wheel. like out of Wacky Races.

Executive Producer Tania: Like, this is unbelievable. I don’t know what drugs this person also was on. Have to be on some.

Crew Chief Eric: And when a balloon pops, then what happens?

Executive Producer Tania: When they all pop and you just… Sink in your steel cage

Crew Chief Eric: because there’s nothing water tight

Danny Pilling: about this.

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Danny Pilling: He’s clearly not playing with the full deck here. Right. Because he refused to step off his vessel and threaten to kill himself saying he had a bum on board.

Executive Producer Tania: He was an international waters. He did not have to step off at that point.

Crew Chief Eric: Was he cited with maritime law or it’s how does this [01:43:00] work? Is he considered a vessel?

Does he have a call sign the hamster wheel? This is the h m s dumbass.

Executive Producer Tania: Is that,

Crew Chief Eric: is

Executive Producer Tania: that what this is? Meth in action again

Danny Pilling: coming to brick trailer next week.

Executive Producer Tania: How far did he make it? He was found drifting not running miles 30 miles.

Crew Chief Eric: Jeez South of new york. So already going the wrong headed back to florida.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, this isn’t the first time he’s tried to do this No, no, they found him 70 miles somewhere georgia but in 2021 He was arrested and was rescued, tried to go from Florida to New York, and was found adrift 30 miles south of his departure point. So he didn’t make it very far from Florida.

Danny Pilling: Give him enough time and he’ll invent a submarine next.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, you think? He tried it a time before in 2014. This was the third try.

Crew Chief Eric: They say three times. Charm, right? I mean, here we are. Took him ten years to build this balloon contraption.

Executive Producer Tania: Nope, still hasn’t gotten it.

Danny Pilling: I think Darwin had a theory on him.

Crew Chief Eric: Except it didn’t [01:44:00] pan out. I guess next he’ll do like the Up movie, and he’ll just tie the balloons to his house and float over to England.

When he gets there, he’s got a place to live!

Executive Producer Tania: This is also a testament to our educational system in this country because… Clearly, no understanding of oceans, roughness, it’s whatever you want to call it, but also the temperature. Like, the Atlantic is effing cold, and you’re in this, like, exposed open air, like, how do you think, never mind, and geography, because clearly you don’t know how far away English is.

Crew Chief Eric: This is awesome. With Florida leaving us with some awesome stories this month, it’s time we go behind the pinball and talk about motorsports news. And I’ve actually been looking forward to this. Danny P coming from the Formula One world, talking with one of our resident subject matter experts. Let’s talk about F1.

What the hell’s been going on?

Executive Producer Tania: Where’s the subject matter expert?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, isn’t it you and Brad normally?

Danny Pilling: Allegedly. The last weekend I posted on Instagram and it was a picture of a flag with a marked safe from hearing the Dutch National Anthem. It was a weekend without a [01:45:00] Formula One race, which meant that we didn’t have to listen to the Dutch National Anthem again.

But that man, Max Versappen, is actually being investigated by the French police.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, what’d he do?

Danny Pilling: There were videos of him taking the latest Aston Martin 3 million car speeding. Ooh. I’m hoping that that would put points on his competition license as well as his driving license. Someone needs to slow him down.

For sure.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s already shown us even in the virtual world that he liked speeding a little too much.

Executive Producer Tania: No, he showed he’s got some rage issues in the, or self control issues in the virtual racing incident.

Crew Chief Eric: I did happen to watch the at least first half of the Zandvoort GP there in Holland. And it was exciting for a minute because of the variability of the weather.

But then I felt like the track was short. It was tight, kind of reminded me of Canada in that respect and where everybody. Pitted and exited is sort of where they finished. I kind of felt like by the time all that circus happened, the race was pretty much a done deal at that point. So I don’t know, maybe I’m [01:46:00] wrong.

It wasn’t exciting. I felt like the cars were too big for the track because it’s such an old school track designed for the pre aero days and all the little Formula One cars of days gone by. So it was hard to watch, to be honest. And the lap times were like, what, a minute 20 or something like that.

Danny Pilling: The rain definitely added a different element to it this time around, but For us in the U.

S., we get up early to watch these races if we watch them live. For me, I end up falling asleep again.

Crew Chief Eric: And Monza, how did that turn out? I heard good things about Ferrari. They were on the pole, and even Verstappen was impressed by Ferrari’s ability.

Executive Producer Tania: I think he was being polite with that comment.

Danny Pilling: Fans are supposed to give you a home advantage, but Max did what no one else has been able to do, and he won 10 in a row.

You know, I think there’s Singapore, then Japan maybe, and he can win the World Championship by Japan, which is, I think, earlier than most seasons.

Crew Chief Eric: There were some rumors floating around that he wanted Hamilton to be his teammate and join the team over Red Bull, but he’s okay with Lando too? Is that what I’m hearing?

Because Hamilton just renewed his contract for a couple more [01:47:00] years at Mercedes?

Danny Pilling: I read the same thing. It’s interesting because it sounds like the Hamilton contract had been done a few months ago. But Mercedes always keep that cards close to their chest. They hadn’t announced it. So then there were these rumors and there’s also a lot of debate going on right now and between the Hamilton camp and the Verstappen camp in terms of it’s arguments that Max hasn’t got a competitor in the same way that maybe Lewis had in his team.

So, you know, Max with Sergio that they’re saying, and I think Sergio is a great driver. So, you know, I think you call that straight away, but they’re saying that it’s been easier for Max because he’s far too superior compared to his teammate, but I don’t agree, but yeah, who knows it’s kind of getting into silly season right now.

So, yeah, we could be seeing a few drivers change seats. We saw one driver change a seat and then broke his wrist. I was gonna say,

Crew Chief Eric: Danny Rick is out! Brad goes out, Danny Rick goes out. I think there’s some collusion there, as he would say. Definitely at home crying in his Wheaties. I mean, it’s unfortunate for Danny Rick.

I saw he had surgery on his hand and on his wrist and all [01:48:00] that. Hopefully he gets back in the car. But that gave an opportunity for a rising test driver to jump in his seat and see what he could do. Another one of those situations where that was his job interview, right? And he needed to pull it off. It didn’t play out so well for him.

Unfortunately at Zandvoort is what it is, but

Danny Pilling: yeah, this is Liam Lawson, who’s the Red Bull junior driver. Being asked to do your job interview on a track where it’s raining and it’s last minute wasn’t at the start of the weekend. Was it? I think Daniel Rick had done a few different runs, so it wasn’t like he was getting into the car and he had time to go through those practice sessions and then do qualifying.

He was literally in at the deep end, if you will. I think he represented himself pretty well. Brad’s still home crying about

Crew Chief Eric: that said not much to talk about in WRC. Since Brad’s not here, we’ve been tag teaming back and forth throughout the season, you know, trying to get his opinion as a newbie to the sport, you and I, Danny are veterans to rally.

So we could. Probably have an entire episode on that by itself. So we’ll save it. We’ll [01:49:00] put a pin in it for now. The IMSA season is winding down. We’re going to be at Petit Le Mans next month. So I’m looking forward to reporting on how the IMSA season is going to close. Seeing some of the cars that we saw at Le Mans again, in person, like the Porsche 963, the Cadillacs and others, and seeing how they finish out the year and the championship.

Danny Pilling: On our British theme, I believe there is a British driver who’s going to be racing there. And Mr. Jensen button, look out for him

Crew Chief Eric: in the garage, 56 car you brought to the tables, some other racing news. Some things that we don’t normally talk about, which is

Danny Pilling: yeah. Motorbike racing, the motor America, which is the premier super bike.

Race series there are other different types of bike series as part of motor america But the man jay ganye has won his third championship He’s been unstoppable this year a bit like max verstappen But on a bike on two wheels instead of four there were glimmers of hope from bmw and also ducati But in the end, he did it again.

So three in a row, it will be interesting to see what [01:50:00] they can do to try and stop him next year, because he’s just dominating. He’s just a cut and above. He races in a team of two bikes and Cam Peterson is the South African who raced in his team with him. He had another wrist injury, lots of parallels between formula one, but he went out injured for the rest of the season, but the two riders that have been on him, Cam and also the new rider, neither of them been able to catch him.

So he’s got something more. Than the rest of the pack and his teammate. Big congratulations to Jake.

Crew Chief Eric: Are they also Red Bull bikes? Just, I wanna see if there’s a correlation there. .

Danny Pilling: They’re not. No fresh and lean. Okay, so more of those meal services than energy drink could be a correlation.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you think he’s.

Going to be the next Valentino? Do you think he’s as good as? Does he have the potential?

Danny Pilling: I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is last year he did a world superbike run. So I think he went off to Portugal, I think it was, and uh, got the chance to race in a world superbike race. And you don’t just get launched in the deep end and you’re able to perform always, right?

But he didn’t do as well as he could have done. So [01:51:00] who knows, but he’s definitely a talent. You don’t win that series without being a talent. You don’t win it. So dominatingly. Yeah. So who knows

Crew Chief Eric: switching gears to the virtual world for a moment, Microsoft and turn 10, the producers of a Forza motor sports, we’ve been waiting quite a long time for what would be considered Forza eight.

To hit the market. They did a recent reveal of some of the tracks that are going to be included in the latest version of Forza. Now they haven’t said, are these replacing all the ones we’ve come accustomed to, these are just some of the ones that they were highlighting. It’s not the full track list. We haven’t got the full car list.

And what really stuck out to me is they’ve introduced. Something spectacular for the American audience, which is a highly technical track. One of my top five favorites in the country, they’re going to add mid Ohio to the track list for Forza Motorsport 8. So I’m really looking forward to playing that in the virtual world on the Microsoft console.

So that looks like a lot of fun. Forza Motorsport 8 again. They’ve been kicking that can down a road for a [01:52:00] while in terms of when it’s going to be released. But hopefully this fall or into the holiday season, we can add it to our shopping list, maybe alongside of some new Xbox X’s to go with it. Super excited to see Forza Motorsport finally coming to the table this year.

Danny Pilling: Don’t think I’m breaking any NDAs. I was a very early beta tester of this game. When I used to work at Microsoft quite regularly, they would ask for people to test early versions of the game, give feedback on the experience, give feedback on the environment. So I did a couple of sessions, which were like an hour long.

You’re driving a track and you’re giving feedback. And it was Laguna Seca when I did it. I can’t remember which car it was in. So, uh, I don’t think my name will be in the credits, but, uh, who knows. Well,

Crew Chief Eric: we’ll be

Danny Pilling: looking for

Crew Chief Eric: it. That said, our motor sports news is brought to us in partnership with the international motor racing research center out of Watkins Glen.

As a reminder, you can enter to win a brand new 2024 Corvette E Ray through their website. Go to racingarchives. org. Click on Corvette sweepstakes, enter the promo code E Ray launch for [01:53:00] some bonus. Entries into that sweepstakes. And if you don’t want to do Corvette, you can always take home a nice 50, 000 cash option.

Keep that in mind, double down with that E Ray launch promo code. As we head into the fall, there’s only a couple more events left on the IMRRC schedule starting November 2nd kicks off their motorsports symposium. They’re going to be doing an international real wheel. Film festival celebrating historical racing documentaries at the Watkins Glen theater, starting at 5 PM on November the 2nd, which leads into two days of the Michael R.

Argettsinger symposium, where we’ll be there live streaming with the IMRRC and the society of automotive historians, where you can learn about all sorts of interesting stories throughout motorsports. And we’ll be rerunning a lot of those stories on break fix. As you come accustomed to every month, we put out stories from the IMRRC.

So look forward to that. As they close out the year. And we do want to wish them a happy 25th anniversary now that we’re officially in the month of September. So [01:54:00] congratulations to the IMRRC. Here’s to 25 more glorious years at Watkins Glen.

Executive Producer Tania: And since Brad’s not here, I’m going to cover upcoming local news and events brought to us by collectorcarguide.

net, the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. The 26th Annual Vicari Cruise and the Coast Auction in Biloxi, Mississippi is on October 4th through the 7th, and you can learn more about this event and its founder on our Vicari Auction Company episode that aired earlier this month. A show that Eric and his family have been to several times over the years is coming up.

It’s the 59th Annual Apple Harvest Festival and Car Show in Biglerville, Pennsylvania, spanning two weekends, October 7th and 8th, and October 14th and 15th. While you’re out there, stop by the EMMR for a tour if you have some extra time, or check out the episode we did with Hall of Famer Lynn Paxton. Our friends at ESE Carbon are sponsoring the Smoky Mountain Driving Tour on October 14th at the infamous Tale of the Dragon, along with the RunSport Dragon Rally for three days of spirited driving on October 27th through the 29th.

And mentioned [01:55:00] before, we’ll be at Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. On

Crew Chief Eric: October 14th. And if you’re there and you happen to want to get a hold of us, we’ll probably be hanging out at the ACO USA booth, to which we interviewed both David Lowe, the president of the ACO USA, and Ruben Sanchez, the chief marketing officer.

So if you want to stop by, meet them, meet other legends of Le Mans, we will be there with them.

Executive Producer Tania: So stay tuned to our Discord and social media for live updates from the event. And tons more events like these and all their details are available over at collectorcarguide. net.

Crew Chief Eric: Meanwhile, the HPDE Junkie Trackside Report.

What’s coming up for the tail end of the summer on the East Coast? The Audi Club is hosting a two day driving school at NJMP Thunderbolt Circuit, October the 2nd through the 3rd. And speaking of NJMP, the track itself is hosting charity laps on Thunderbolt on October the 3rd. 5th from 5 to 7 p. m.

Proceeds will benefit the Millville Army Airfield Museum. Meanwhile, EMRA, the Eastern Motor Racing Association, is [01:56:00] closing out their season at Pocono Raceway on October the 15th, while the Washington DC chapter of SCCA finishes out their time trial and HBDE season at the Jefferson Circuit on October the 14th and 15th.

SCCA Club Racing will also come to a close on the East Coast in October at NJMP on October the 20th through the 22nd.

Executive Producer Tania: In case you missed out, check out the other podcast episodes that aired during September. We kicked off the month by picking up where the What Should I Buy muscle malaise left off with our 80s retro reunion covering all the square bodies and round headlights from 1983 onwards.

We chatted with University of North Carolina student Brockton Packard about his plans for the future and how sim racing has been a gateway into several NASCAR engineering jobs. We travel from Cuba to Le Mans when co host Mike Carr rejoins us to dive into Ruben Sanchez’s road to success story. Two miles too far.

That’s the moral of the story for Larry Benedictus, as he recounts his rounded country journey on a custom built motorcycle and trailer, which will be [01:57:00] featured in his upcoming book, The Traveling Larry. We go behind the scenes and learn about the history of the Makkari Auction Company with founder and Corvette collector, Pete Makkari, and why you should check out Biloxi, Mississippi, this fall and spring.

Rounding out the month, we learn about the Grease Monks of Belmont Abbey College, located in the heart of American Racing in North Carolina, their motorsports management degree program, and why you should consider applying this fall. Thanks again to everyone that came on the show over the summer. We’ll see you in October for our spooktacular drive thru before settling in for the winter break.

Then stay tuned for our holiday shopping special and our best of episode after that.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to thank everybody for supporting us, especially our fans over on Patreon. They’ve included some really awesome new features called collections. We’ve been able to better sort the content that’s over there. For those of you that are underwear, we have over 300 different pieces of either behind the scenes, pit stop, many sodes, extra articles, bonus photos, all sorts of stuff on our Patreon that are available today.

And now we even [01:58:00] have the option that you can join for free and get access to a lot of really awesome content on our Patreon. So sign up today, patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports. And if at some point you feel like. Buying us some gummy bears, some monster or fig Newtons sign up for one of our plans at 2 and 50 cents a month.

A little bit goes a long way and helps keeping the show going. Some shout outs, Brian Sean, one of our Northeast region members of the grand touring better sports car club is celebrating eight years with us. So congratulations, Brian. And if you’d like to become a member of GTM, be sure to check out our clubhouse website at club.

gtmotorsports. org. Well, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I like to ask any shout outs, promotions, or anything else that we haven’t shared thus far. Danny P, tell us where we can find you outside of this drive thru episode.

Danny Pilling: Yeah. So I have my own podcast, Danny P on Cars, available on all good podcast services and some rubbish ones as well.

But you can check me out. I’ve finished my first [01:59:00] season. Second season is just around the corner with equally exciting guests. Including some folks that might be on this episode. If you want to check me out on Instagram, I’m on D nine N N Y P Danny P were with a nine, someone had beaten me to it. And finally, my new company on Instagram zero 77 media.

So that’s on LinkedIn and Instagram. Check it out. It’s a new company I’ve started focus on. Working with automotive customers and motorsport customers on things like marketing, uh, partnerships and also strategic planning. So that’s me. Thanks for having me.

Crew Chief Eric: Hang on a second. Looks like there’s an interruption in our satellite

Crew Chief Brad: feed.

Oh yes, Danny. Thank you so much for filling in while I’m cleaning dirty diapers and not getting any sleep for the next 18 years of my life, but more specifically the next three months.

Danny Pilling: My pleasure. And I wish you the best with the, uh, the birthing. What I understand is the check is in the post. Is that right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. The check’s in the mail. Yeah.

Danny Pilling: Excellent.

Crew Chief Brad: You can have [02:00:00] access to our Patreon unlimited access to our Patreon.

Danny Pilling: That’s very kind. Very good. But good luck with the birth and everything.

Crew Chief Brad: Thank you. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: Remember, folks, for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available at GTMotorsports. org. And there are new ways to get a hold of us. We are getting rid of our Twitter. We are now on thread, so you can look us up pretty much on every social media platform out there at Grand Touring Motorsports.

Remember, there’s no D. G R A N, Touring Motorsports, with an S at the end. And I want to thank our Special guest host, Danny P for coming on our special interruption, Mark Hewitt for coming on and of course, our executive producer, Tanya, for putting all this together every month. So thank you. And for all the members, families, friends, and fans that support Grand Touring Motorsports, remember that without you, none of this would be possible.

We’re out[02:01:00]

here we are bus

cars in Beba, all just waiting to order. There’s some idiot and a lights on behind me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, what ya trying to do blind me? My wife says, maybe we.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of brake fix podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as [02:02:00] 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gumby bears, and monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be possible.

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

• 00:00 Introduction and Sponsors
• 00:34 Welcome to the Drive Thru Episode 37
• 01:18 British Cars Showcase: Lotus and More
• 05:45 Land Rover’s New Baby Defender
• 08:21 Bentley Continental Pickup and Other Unique Builds
• 12:21 Mini Countryman EV and Jaguar’s New EV
• 18:31 Aston Martin DB12 and Other Luxury Cars
• 24:40 Lost and Found: Fastest Selling Cars of 2023
• 25:55 Overpriced New Cars and Classic Rally Cars
• 30:26 Automotive Marketing Catchwords and Barn Finds
• 37:44 Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche News
• 38:35 Analyzing the Design of the 997 GT3 RS
• 39:21 The Evolution of Roof’s Chassis
• 40:14 Volkswagen’s Camper Concepts
• 41:54 The Demise of the Manual GTI
• 43:47 The Future of the Passat
• 45:02 Chris Harris Reviews the Tuthill 911k
• 50:14 The New 2024 AMG GT
• 52:26 BMW’s EV Concept and Design
• 56:22 Maserati’s Return to Motorsports
• 01:03:25 The Toyota Century SUV
• 01:05:51 Lucid Air Sapphire: Speed vs. Sustainability
• 01:09:11 The Great Wall Motor Company’s Funky Cat
• 01:18:15 Tesla Model 3 Refresh
• 01:20:03 Tesla Model Y Structural Concerns
• 01:21:37 Elon Musk’s Mansion Controversy
• 01:23:17 Cybertruck’s Duct Tape Dilemma
• 01:26:56 Burning Man Escape Stories
• 01:28:13 Honda’s All-Wheel Drive Conversion Kit
• 01:30:40 Movie Night Debate
• 01:31:24 Privacy Issues in New Vehicles
• 01:32:41 Rich People and Their Toys
• 01:34:45 Crazy Car Stories
• 01:44:30 Motorsports News and Updates
• 01:54:05 Upcoming Events and Shoutouts