B/F: The Drive Thru #41

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

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

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I hear it, Tanya. I hear that sultry baritone. What is that sound? We haven’t heard it in a while.

Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to drive thru episode number 41! 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 [00:01:00] automotive news.

We are

Crew Chief Eric: back! We are coming out of the winter freeze. This is pretty awesome, and

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think that’s true that we’re coming out of a winter freeze when it’s like 17 degrees out the last few days.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m down here in the tropics of Richmond where it’s 37.

Executive Producer Tania: What a heat wave!

Crew Chief Brad: I know, I was out in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and I was living the life today.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that the new dad look? Is that how it works after you have the second kid? You get the flip flops and the Hawaiian shirt?

Crew Chief Brad: Don’t forget the socks, socks and sandals, socks and slides, socks and slides. Shout out to Doug Turner.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no. You got to have the toe thong with your sock.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s the Elmo slide.

That’s what, that’s what we’re doing up in this piece. The Elmo slide. All right. Let’s go. But before we dig in to the showcase, I have breaking news. I received an email from Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: They, uh, hacked your account and have all your personal info.

Crew Chief Brad: They would like you to reset your password. Yes. There was a security breach.

And then, no, I’m kidding. Your limited edition [00:02:00] foundation series. Cybertruck is ready to order. Did

Executive Producer Tania: you say limited edition?

Crew Chief Brad: Limited edition foundation series. Cybertruck is ready to order because I got in with my deposit on day one So i’m one of like the first couple hundred as an early reservation holder You have been invited to order your foundation series cybertruck with early access Two delivery.

I’m guessing that means 2027 maybe. I don’t know. It says further on that they’re delivering trucks in California and Texas and they’re delivering as early as 2024. I don’t know. Warm

Executive Producer Tania: climates.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Yeah. Well, we’ll get into that. We’ll get into that.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, I need to call Tesla and get my a hundred dollars back.

That’s what’s going to happen with that. So let’s dive into the showcase. If you haven’t been able to tell, we are talking about all things, Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. I am so glad you’re back. This is going to be a hell of a winter recap. Obviously. Congratulations are in order. You had your second son, you know, that’s an awesome big event in your life, but maybe not [00:03:00] as big as getting the opportunity

Crew Chief Brad: to

Crew Chief Eric: pick up this Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, yes, yes.

Crew Chief Eric: So to quote Steven Izzy from our Everything I Learned From Movies episodes, What have we learned over the winter about the Cybertruck now that people are taking delivery of these things?

Crew Chief Brad: We’ve learned that they’re available, but they’re not available. Tesla really doesn’t want to sell any because they’re trying to offer you money to buy another Tesla.

So you don’t sit around waiting for a cyber truck that may or may not exist. All the ones that are out there running or doing funky things like crashing and you know, weird things like that. All good things. Let’s start with this.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve got that email. Does it give you any details? Are you able to go in and maybe spec it out and figure out how much it’s going to cost?

Because I’ve heard some rumors. About what maybe the real price is for these

Crew Chief Brad: Cybertrucks. So this one’s going to be expensive. Your Cybertruck will be fully optioned and will include limited edition laser etched badging, premium accessories, charging equipment with [00:04:00] PowerShare home backup hardware, all terrain tires, full self driving capability.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, all terrain tires?

Crew Chief Brad: All terrains.

Executive Producer Tania: She got hung up

Crew Chief Eric: on all terrain

Executive Producer Tania: tires? Wait, what do we mean? The tires that can’t get up a hill in the woods? Or when there’s, like, snow?

Crew Chief Brad: V1s. I don’t know which all terrain tires they are offering, but they’re probably not Duratrax, which means they’re probably not very good.

Don’t ruin it for everybody. But here’s the part I thought Tanya would’ve honed in on. Full. Self. Driving. Capability

Crew Chief Eric: that’s what I thought too. She got hung up on these all terrain tires. I wasn’t listening

Crew Chief Brad: full self driving capability That will need to be recalled before I even take delivery. Yeah, because that’s false advertising So maybe I should take this email and just sue tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, the lawsuit’s not over yet. That’s why that’s why they can still use it I guess

Crew Chief Brad: but still no talk about what it costs though Well, I can continue to my account. I haven’t logged into this in like three years four years Maybe five when was it first announced?

Executive Producer Tania: [00:05:00] With

Crew Chief Brad: that steampunk kind of like cyberpunk

Executive Producer Tania: wasn’t it in the year before Cove in the year 2000 and the time before

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, it was like in the before times.

Yeah, it was like in the November

Executive Producer Tania: BC before Cove it Yeah

Crew Chief Brad: before Cove it. I Was working at that terrible mortgage company a while

Crew Chief Eric: ago

Crew Chief Brad: then yeah 2019.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. Wow, so it’s been Jeez, five years since you put this deposit. And the one thing that makes your particular deposit special is you actually went full in on the tri motor version of this thing.

So it is like the upper echelon of Cybertrucks if it ever comes to fruition.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s why it’s the top of the line limited edition. Some are limited

Crew Chief Eric: to

Crew Chief Brad: somebody limited to my imagination.

Crew Chief Eric: What I’ve read is. They had all these bargain basement prices. Oh, you can get a cyber truck. It’s going to be the cheapest truck in town.

Blah, blah, blah. 50, 000, 60, 000, 30, 000. You know, all these numbers that you never ensure. It’s sort of like Christmas time where they double the price and then put it on sale. 50 [00:06:00] percent off one of those kinds of deals. But I’m reading over a hundred grand for these things.

Crew Chief Brad: So the all wheel drive foundation series tri motor.

Fully loaded 99, 990 before taxes. Yeah. Well, they lost the tax credit, didn’t they? So you can’t get that. You can get the cyber beast. I can upgrade if I wanted to, to the cyber beast. For 119, 990 stop playing games. Tesla 100, 000 dropping that 10 off does not make it any better. I apparently had very lofty goals for my income.

When I put the order on this truck, I will tell you

Crew Chief Eric: what, but let’s put that in perspective though. We already know that pickup trucks are expensive to begin with, but how much truck real truck. Can you buy for a hundred grand these days?

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, you can get a fully optioned out diesel 3, 500 dually or something like that.

F two [00:07:00] 50 King ranch or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: Talk about a beast. That’s a real beast, right? Compared to this thing. And we’ll get into more of these specifics of what’s working and what’s not with the cyber truck here is we’ve learned through the winter months and doing this research.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m not even done.

So yeah, a hundred thousand or 120, 000. But then,

but wait, there’s more call Now.

Crew Chief Brad: You can add the range extender for $16,000, so it’s 116,000 or $136,000 for any of the trim motor versions. Uh, what percentage APR these days? Car loans are for excellent credits and like the five to 7 percent range, something like that.

And it only goes up from there. Still a lot. Well, you financed it for 30 years, like a mortgage.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, when you’re talking six figure cars,

Crew Chief Brad: because remember Tesla not only does their own insurance, but I think they do their own financing too. So, okay. Yeah. The interest rate would be 6. 59%. You can do up to 84 months.

With a 4, 500 down [00:08:00] payment, your monthly payment for seven years

Crew Chief Eric: on a

Crew Chief Brad: truck that probably won’t last two years is 1, 500.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they also do some other financing. Do you guys remember the Tesla Roadster and the thousand people that put money down on that thing like 10 years ago? If you do the math on that, it’s like a cool quarter million dollars they got.

Tax free.

Executive Producer Tania: What kind of scheme is it? Like, does it have a name where you get people to put deposits down and you get a million people to put a hundred dollars down and then you use that money to finance yourself and don’t give them anything?

Crew Chief Eric: I believe that’s called a sweepstakes. Isn’t that what it’s called?

So this is the Tesla Roadster sweepstake and Cybertruck semi truck. Program.

Executive Producer Tania: Great. If you order now, we’ll throw in

Crew Chief Brad: a windshield wiper blade.

Executive Producer Tania: Does it have windshield wipers?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It’s got that one. It’s got that one giant windshield wiper.

Crew Chief Eric: Large one. So we’ve confirmed that it has side mirrors. Now it doesn’t have lasers or sharks with lasers.

It kind of looks like a shark toy with lasers [00:09:00] on it in a way. We’ll talk about the aesthetics here as we go. We already know about the less than 10 microns of panel gap and all that stuff. We’ve reviewed that in the past.

Crew Chief Brad: Better than Legos. You know what I’m not seeing? I’m not seeing how to get my 100 back.

That’s what I’m not seeing. Where’s the link for that?

Crew Chief Eric: You told the Ethos, the great wide interwebs, you would give away your Cybertruck allotment for a bucket of chicken. Has anybody taken you up on this yet? I mean, come on, man.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I’ve been waiting for Mark Hewitt to give me a call, and he just has not reached out.

So I don’t know what’s going on with that.

Crew Chief Eric: Because he’s trying to figure out how to buy Dogecoin, because even that doesn’t exist anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: Is your donation to the Tesla Corporation, is that tax deductible on your yearly taxes? It’s

Crew Chief Brad: supposed to be fully refundable. Yeah, yeah. I, I filed it. I got the tax write off for that back in 2019.

This says all prices are shown without incentives or estimated seven year gas savings of 8, 400.

Executive Producer Tania: Wait, you’re only going to save for seven years? And then the gas [00:10:00] car,

Crew Chief Brad: because it says a cyber truck is 900 estimated electricity per year versus a gasoline cars, 2, 100 estimated gas costs at 13, 000 miles, three 30 a gallon.

Okay. Okay. Let’s stop. Hold

Crew Chief Eric: on. Yeah. All that’s great. That’s well and good, but imagine this you fit in a GR Corolla, right? I do not have any answer for that.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re going to compare it against an F 150 triple duty quad cab. Fine, fine,

Crew Chief Eric: shenanigans. Okay. But what I’m saying is for the rest of us, normal humans, especially those of us that are automotive enthusiasts, listening to this, the GR series cars are hot.

Whether you’re into the 86 or the super or the Corolla or the Yaris or any of those, let’s just say Toyota’s the place to go. If you want a hot hatch or a sports car right now from the. Not American market. So let’s just say you pick up a Corolla for 40, 000. Cybertruck’s 100, 000. You can’t tow anything with either of them.

You can actually probably [00:11:00] get more in the back of that Corolla hatchback than the Cybertruck. How much are you actually spending on gas after seven years on a GR Corolla? Even if you bought that. What is it? The meat Sano edition or whatever that thing is that they have the special one, add another 10 grand to it.

You’re still going to come out on top with a gas car. It’s sort of like when we would debate diesel versus gas and people were like, I’m not buying a diesel truck because there’s a 20, 000 tax on it. And I’m never going to recoup the amount of diesel. Cause diesel’s more expensive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this kind of stuff.

I’m wondering if this debate about some of these EVs, especially really expensive ones like this, is it really worth? Buying the EV when you can buy, let’s say a couple year old off lease Mercedes Benz, that’s depreciated, have a really nice car money left over. How much gas are you going to buy in that seven year period?

Let’s say if you own a Mercedes,

Crew Chief Brad: I do have a correction to make though. Breaking news. My foundation series is not the tri motor cyber beast. Oh, it’s [00:12:00] just the dual motor. So the dual motor is a hundred thousand dollars. When the dual motor was supposed to be 80, 000 when they first announced it.

Crew Chief Eric: Do we have a countdown timer for this?

Like we did

Crew Chief Brad: with

Crew Chief Eric: the DeLorean. Do you remember that? That

Crew Chief Brad: we need the same thing for you. Oh, the stopwatch was stopped back in 2019 because I’m not actually ever going to pick up one of these fucking things. No, because

Crew Chief Eric: you want a bucket of chicken for

Crew Chief Brad: this. Yes. I want a bucket of chicken. I will even take a bucket 2019.

You know what? No, I want. When it was first announced, one of the day one Popeye’s had that chicken sandwich that was sold out and people were like stabbing each other for him. I want one of those, give me one of those Popeye’s chicken sandwiches and you can have my a hundred dollars.

Crew Chief Eric: So you’re saying that’s worth more than your cyber truck a lot, man.

I, I,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, yes, yes, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Even if you did get your cyber truck, I’m going to convince you to buy this thing by the time it’s over. Right. This is like our little, what should I buy here? You’re not going to convince my

Crew Chief Brad: wallet

Crew Chief Eric: to buy it. You only get one car to buy. It’s a cyber truck,

Executive Producer Tania: but you only get one car to buy.

And it’s the cyber truck. I [00:13:00] guess I’m riding my bicycle

Crew Chief Eric: cyber bike. Think of the mulch you can haul or you can’t haul. Apparently we’ll talk about that too. If you did take delivery of this thing, let’s say you set up all the financing and you’re making your payments and all this kind of stuff, and you could, I got my cyber truck and you decide in three months, you want to get rid of it.

There was a bunch of, again, shenanigans are the words I’m going to use here about whether or not you could actually unload the car, trade it in, get rid of it, sell it. Were you going to get sued? Aren’t you going to get sued? I still don’t know the answer to this.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know either. I would assume you would get sued, but it depends.

I think if you try to flip it for more than you paid, like if I took it to CarMax and said, Hey, will you take this? First of all, they won’t take it. But second of all, If CarMax was to take it, I certainly wouldn’t get market value. I’d get below market value for it. So I don’t think Tesla would have a problem with that.

I think they’re trying to stop the people that are taking their day one investment and flipping it to somebody else for 150, 200, 000, which [00:14:00] is what I was hoping to do until I couldn’t even get it about to get a chicken for it.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned before that they’re offering people a thousand bucks to change their reservations over.

Is that in the system? Can you do that now? Can you convert that to a. Isla model three reservation instead?

Crew Chief Brad: Not anymore. I could only have done that by end of year last year.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s really timely too, because they just announced that they’re going to be restyling the model three. So if you missed that window and said, you know what the heck with the cyber truck, I want to get that new model three that’s coming out.

Now you’re sort of stuck. But with again, what you got, uh, okay. So that’s out the window. That’s no fun. You can’t sell it. You can’t get a thousand bucks for it. You can’t get the economic rebate from the government for it.

Crew Chief Brad: The price went up because of inflation from the day they announced it. Exactly.

Exactly. What are you going to do? What are you to do?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you’re going to buy a bucket of chicken because you’re hungry, but nobody’s going to give it to you for that Cybertruck allotment. We’ve established that.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m going to get my a hundred dollars back and then I’m going to buy a hundred dollars worth of chicken.

And I’m going to share it with my closest friends.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think this [00:15:00] next article sort of hits this idea right on the head, which is the Cybertruck is just another bloated EV that misses the point of being green transportation. And this is written by like an IT blog or whatever. And so they’re comparing the Cybertruck to the F 150 and the Rivian R1T and all this kind of stuff.

I have this like, dodoy moment when I look at this because it is not functional. And this does give us an opportunity to talk about the aesthetics of the truck. I haven’t seen one in person yet. You know, there’s rumors people have seen them and that they’re out there and this and that. And you see the videos like on YouTube and stuff.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know who to believe when people say, Oh, it’s so amazing. It looks so good. What do you consider ugly? Right? I guess I need to phrase it that way because I don’t see the beauty. I can understand someone in the art community trying to explain to me why you bism and all the Picasso and the melting clocks and all this stuff is beautiful.

Okay, great. But I don’t see the beauty in this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: I think [00:16:00] beautiful is. The wrong word. There’s nothing beautiful about it. There are very few cars these days that are beautiful.

Crew Chief Eric: But why would you buy this thing? Is it just ironic? Is it like those memes that I don’t understand?

Crew Chief Brad: Because in that very peak, it looks like it’s got a lot of headroom for the driver.

That’s all I care about.

Crew Chief Eric: Have you seen anybody? sit in it?

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like a Supra. You’re on the slope side of the roof. So there is no headroom. Oh, well, that’s dumb. It’s so weird. I don’t even know how you see out of these. I don’t get it.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s so when you flip it over, you can spin it around when you flip it on the trail.

So

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, it’s just another bloated truck.

Crew Chief Brad: Bloated EV. Not good as a truck. There you go. It’s not good as an EV. What is it good as?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I don’t know because let’s talk about that all wheel drive system and those fabulous all terrain tires that Tanya got so excited about. Have you seen these videos of the few Cybertrucks that are out in the snow?

None of them. I haven’t

Crew Chief Brad: seen the ones in the snow, but I saw the one that wrecked. That was a while

Crew Chief Eric: ago, but these ones in the snow, I mean, you can see See the all wheel drive trying to do something. [00:17:00] There’s definitely some latency from front to back because obviously the systems aren’t connected. It’s not like quattro or like a Jeep or something like that.

There’s no mechanical all wheel drive here. It’s all digital, right? These all terrain tires must be slicks because they don’t work. And then the hilarious video was over on jalopnik and the cyber truck gets pulled out by like a regular F three 50. Looked like he was just off the showroom. Like nothing special.

It’s not like he had a lift kit, you know, 93 inch tires with big foot knobs on her. Hold the Cybertruck out. And the Cybertruck’s not light by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s something to be said too. You have a heavy vehicle in the snow. It should kind of like, let’s say, push itself down into the ground.

If you have decent tires, you should be able to get around, but it can’t get out of its own way.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like snow and ice is stuck in the grooves of the tires. So basically you’ve created a slick. I’m assuming it doesn’t have a low range transfer case.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, why would it? It’s all digital, right? There’s no real all wheel drive system in there.

I know, I know.

Crew Chief Brad: I bet an Audi could get out of that hole.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, that second video where he’s kind of going up the driveway and you [00:18:00] see him just like the back ends like fishtailing and stuff and it’s just trying to crab walk its way up. To your point, I think a Audi could do that. My Jeep could definitely do that.

There’s a lot of other four wheel drive vehicles that could do it. So you’re paying all this extra money for dual motor, tri motor, whatever for what? To have a bunch of extra stuff in the rain? This thing could be front wheel drive and I guess it’d be like the new Aztec, I guess.

Crew Chief Brad: To be fair, a lot of vehicles would get stuck like that, though.

It depends on how you’re driving it. It depends on if you’ve got a low range. I think your Jeep’s got a 4 low that you can put it in, which is, it’s different gearing and changes the power delivery, which is necessary in snow and stuff like that. You know what? This reminds me of on Top Gear, they used to make fun of the BMW X5s.

Yeah. Because the all wheel drive system in those was not very good. If they had appropriate tires or maybe they should put chains on their tires.

Crew Chief Eric: Kind of defeats the purpose though.

Crew Chief Brad: My truck would probably look like that. with an empty bed with no weight over the rear. I guess the battery’s in the rear though.

I’m not impressed though.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t think a lot of people are, and you know what else really isn’t impressive. We’ve talked about it [00:19:00] many times before, which are these stupid drag races, Tesla versus the world. And this latest one is just, I don’t even know what to say. It’s just a spectacle. I also heard that it was a complete farce and it’s.

Mostly produced and or staged. So it’s a Cybertruck that’s trailering a 911. Drag racing a 911. And what am I supposed to take away from this?

Executive Producer Tania: Who won?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, who do you think won?

Executive Producer Tania: And they were doing a what, quarter mile?

Crew Chief Eric: Quarter mile drag race.

Executive Producer Tania: I would assume an electric vehicle can get up to the quarter mile faster.

Crew Chief Eric: But again, what is the point? Who cares?

Executive Producer Tania: It wasn’t even a tea can?

Crew Chief Eric: No! It was a regular gas 9

Crew Chief Brad: 11. Both are base level 9 11 Carreras. So, no additional power or anything like that. It’s just a base 9 11. Which is still no slouch. It’s 350, 400 horsepower in the base level 9 11, so. Tesla and Porsche go back and forth all the time with who’s better.

I don’t know why.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but you don’t see a 911 towing a Model 3 or a take hand towing a Model 3. It doesn’t make any sense.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:20:00] Cayenne.

Crew Chief Brad: So that’s what they should have done. That’s what Porsche needs to come back with. With a Cayenne Turbo towing a Model 3.

Crew Chief Eric: And blowing this thing out of the water. Publicity stunt for the sake of publicity stunts.

To me, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just another stupid Tesla drag race. As far as I’m concerned. Yep. If you didn’t think things could get any stupider.

Executive Producer Tania: No, wait, you have to go back to Brad’s Foundation Edition. You haven’t talked about the range it’s going to get.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, oh?

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a gentleman out there in the world who also, I guess, put a day one reservation in and has his Foundation Edition Cybertruck, decided to take it on a 27 hour, 1, 340 mile road trip from Austin, Texas to California.

And he had to stop 12 times to recharge it.

Crew Chief Brad: At 30 minutes of charge, that’s wow, an additional, I’m assuming

Executive Producer Tania: you took a longer than 27 hours then.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, that’s like 111 miles per chart. Like what?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that’s not good. That is [00:21:00] terrible. So here it says 318 mile range estimated or 340 mile range with the all season tires, which are available to purchase.

So those trucks that you saw may not even have the all terrain, they may just have all seasons. Oh man. Which are not good anyway.

Executive Producer Tania: And also apparently the truck doesn’t fit well to the charger, and so it basically maxes out the cable length. The Tesla chargers barely reach. charge port. So you have that to contend with.

Also, you better back it up real close.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s like the people that pull into the gas station on the wrong side of the pump, and then they’re dragging it around the side of their car, trying to pump it because they don’t feel like moving their car. Been there, done that. And then the towing capacity, I thought it was supposed to be over 20, 000 pounds towing.

It’s only 11. My current truck gets 9, 900. Then there’s plenty of other pickups. They can do 000 pounds. Yeah. How about anything diesel can do easily? 15, 20.

Crew Chief Eric: So Brad, do you remember when we gave you the option, you know, when you’re still trying to sell, well, Oh [00:22:00] wait, you are still trying to sell your cyber truck allotment when we talked about the Plyber truck.

Do you remember that one? On Craigslist?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, the one that was built on an MDX.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quality, right? It was, yeah, quality. It was IKEA quality. Dude, those panel gaps were really, really nice, okay? You remember, we’ve talked before, there’s been other people that have made cars out of wood, right?

That guy that, you know, restored his Dogebo out of wood, and there’s a guy that made a Ferrari out of wood, and But there’s this dude in Vietnam that seems to just have a real knack for building replicas of vehicles. And he’s at it again, and he built a wooden Cybertruck. I don’t know what it’s based on, but he said he was going to send it to Elon because, quote, I am aware that Tesla has faced its share of challenges in bringing the Cybertruck to fruition.

However, I maintain unwavering faith in your vision and Capabilities of Tesla. I hope to have the honor of gifting this wooden cyber truck [00:23:00] to you and Tesla to wish you and Tesla continued success and to maintain your position in the international arena. This guy’s super nice. He spent 15 grand on this thing.

It looks

Crew Chief Brad: better than the real thing. Oh my God. He built a wooden ATV with it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, man. That’s legit.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s tube frame. This thing’s awesome. I would pay 15 grand for this as a side by side. That’s the real Plymouth shark right there.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s the deal. Elon actually responded to this guy. He has these eloquent emails that he sent out that have been leaked to the public and things like he’s, you know, he’s I’ve got a great way of presenting this

Crew Chief Brad: as a way with words.

I will say that’s

Crew Chief Eric: absolutely marketing genius. So what did he say in response to this gentleman?

Executive Producer Tania: Sure. Much appreciated.

Crew Chief Eric: I was surprised you didn’t go here, Tanya, but we’re going to go here now because his reaction was so benign. Sure. Much appreciated because what he should have really said is what he said on Twitter.

Go F yourself.

Executive Producer Tania: What was that in response to? So I don’t even remember because it could have applied to so many things. It

Crew Chief Eric: was stupid and it went viral. I forget [00:24:00] what it was and he responded to some It was some interview or something and he told the guy to go F himself. And I’m just like, ugh. But it was on Twitter, which is a platform that everybody’s been Bailing ship like rats off the Titanic.

I don’t really care, but I thought it was hilarious. Go Elon!

Crew Chief Brad: Woo!

Executive Producer Tania: Who cares?

Crew Chief Brad: He was responding to advertisers boycotting X.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s a good way to get your advertisers back. Ha ha

Crew Chief Brad: ha. X gonna give it to you. That’s the marketing campaign right there. X gonna give it to you.

Executive Producer Tania: X marks the

Crew Chief Eric: spot. A man with so many things to say.

And that’s it. I mean, this guy went out of his way to build this beautiful Plymouth truck. All jokes aside, it is really nice.

Crew Chief Brad: What he should do is share with Elon Musk, his manufacturing process. ’cause a hundred days, I feel like that’s gonna beat cyber truck manufacturing and delivery. Yeah. Right times.

It looks really good too. I I would totally buy it. It looks kind of small though, but it, it looks good. I like it. I think it’s the scale.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it’s that it’s not stainless steel. That it looks smaller than it really is. And because it’s not stainless steel, you know what else it has [00:25:00] going for it. No smudge marks and you can clean it with pledge.

It’s a modern

Crew Chief Brad: day

Crew Chief Eric: Morgan.

Crew Chief Brad: Lemony fresh. Yes, lemony fresh.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Brad, you know, when you do take delivery of your Cybertruck, you’re going to have to celebrate. Celebrate my ass.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m going to celebrate with a divorce if I

Crew Chief Eric: take delivery of this truck. You’re going to celebrate something one way or the other.

So let’s just say you need to celebrate with a case. Of cyber beer. Oh my

Crew Chief Brad: God. The angles on that bottle, ,

Crew Chief Eric: right? According to this, it says, Tesla super fans are complaining about the $150 cyber beer, calling it hot garbage and posting pictures of rusty bottle caps. It does look like complete swill.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like someone pissed on a bottle.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s say you’re partying a little too hard in your garage by yourself.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, then your Cybertruck can drive you home.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, yeah, that’s true. If you’re self driving, according to, yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Until it runs into a wall or a firetruck.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you know if you spill your beer on your Cybertruck, you [00:26:00] can now get renewed?

Cyber shield cleaned it up with. Wow. I mean, I would have just gone with Windex.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh no, stainless steel, barkeeper’s friend.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, barkeeper’s friend.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what you should use on that thing. But no, special cyber shield. But the big question is, and this next article had me laughing, and I thought of Tanya when I read it.

Does the cyber shield, which is a cleaning and protective layer, blah, blah, blah, all these wonderful paint protection products and chemicals we have these days, you know, graphene and carbon ceramic and all this stuff. But the question is, does it actually protect against bird shit? Because reports are coming in that bird droppings can actually ruin the stainless steel finish of the Cybertruck.

So Brad, you had to worry in the past about birds sitting on a tree ranch and pooping on your golf. Now it could burn a hole in the stainless steel of your Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: How did DeLorean get away with it? None of them ran. They were all parked in garages, I guess.

Crew Chief Eric: See, you answered your own question. Exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, then you just take it to the factory and have them replace the body [00:27:00] panel that got damaged for thousands of dollars.

Executive Producer Tania: So what happens in the winter? Cause obviously there’s bird droppings are maybe acidic or whatnot. And you know, over time could corrode or oxidize. the stainless steel because it’s not impermeable to things, but like salt is not that good on stainless steel.

Crew Chief Eric: You get that nice crust on the salt on the stainless steel.

Executive Producer Tania: And sometimes in poor quality stainless steel, and you’ll see it in like cookware, when you throw salt in the water to boil the water for pasta and things like that, you can actually get pitting that happens on the bottom of the pan when you put the salt in at the end.

Improper time and things like that. So in the wintertime when they’ve put the brine and all that stuff down on the roads and you’re driving around and you can’t wash The car right away because it’s 17 degrees outside

Crew Chief Eric: You’re gonna go out and it’s gonna be like fred flintstone And you’re gonna be able to see through the doors and the fenders.

I mean

Executive Producer Tania: I said it before People you have stainless steel appliances in your home the fridge the stove the dishwasher You get a drop of water on it two minutes [00:28:00] later. The thing looks like you vomited all over it And you’re sitting there buffing it every two minutes so that it’s shiny and nice looking.

Crew Chief Eric: But you have carbon ceramic graphene shield spray on car detailers to take care of all that.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, and then when the rock chip hits it and breaks that coating and then the surface is exposed, it can start looking like when your wheels pit after a while. Cancer that happens. Exactly. Coatings.

Crew Chief Eric: To think that bird droppings could ruin the finish isn’t unfathomable.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s not unheard of because droppings if you leave it on a regular painted car will eat through the clear coat after a while and can cause damage.

Crew Chief Eric: Well not only that, in talking to DeLorean owners and listening to how they do car care and stuff, there is a certain way to clean the stainless and to your point barkeepers friend and some other these household cleaners is the way to go but you also have to remember that you need to grain the stainless steel

Executive Producer Tania: no kidding done in a certain direction on regular paint now umbrella pad you see what [00:29:00] happens if you use like even a soft thing sometimes on cookware.

God forbid, like, you’re rubbing it with something that has some sort of grit that you don’t realize, you’re gonna have massive swirl marks. It’s gonna

Crew Chief Eric: look

Executive Producer Tania: terrible. Maybe all our concerns are completely unfounded and unwarranted, and we just don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re just not happy. We’re grumpy curmudgeons screaming at the clouds.

Everybody’s going, you don’t understand! Well, the Cybertruck is so awesome, it’s just as funny as these memes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I think to that point, this is going to be a golden age for our show, because we can rag on the Cybertruck with all the new articles about how terrible it is for years to

Crew Chief Eric: come. In perpetuity.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t even want to give them air time.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we’re going to do it for the rest of this episode. So guess what? The Onion. Cracked me up. So I’m reading about bird shit on the Cybertruck and next across my desk, I get this from The Onion, which I know is a farce, but it cracked me up about pressure washing the Cybertruck.

And they basically CGI’d or AI rendered the [00:30:00] Cybertruck just getting obliterated by a power washer. And I just thought it was funny. You think about it. I’ve seen people wash their trucks. With a power washer, why wouldn’t you power wash a stainless steel truck?

Crew Chief Brad: Because the people that power wash their regular trucks aren’t buying Cybertrucks.

The people that are buying Cybertrucks, they’re going to take them to their power wash down the street. They’re not going to wash it in their driveway.

Crew Chief Eric: So I heard a good one. I was out in California. Over the winter talking to somebody and, you know, you see a lot of the Wemos, which are these driverless taxi cabs and stuff, which I thought were interesting.

Somebody actually said they took a ride in one, which is a weird lottery system to get involved with those things anyway. And I was like, wow, you’re pretty daring. Like, I don’t know that I would do that. And then they actually kind of changed the conversation into, well, you know, my Tesla and the self driving.

And I was like, oh, okay. And I just sort of played stupid and let them talk. And I said, Oh, you know, those systems have a long way to go. And I don’t know that I would trust my Tesla to drive me around. Like the Wemo does, you know, you see all those cameras. And then they said to me, it’s okay. Because you know, Tesla is switching from radar sonar, you [00:31:00] know, the system they have, and I’m thinking to myself, okay, well, it’s LIDAR just keep talking.

Right. So I’m thinking to myself, and the gentleman says they’re going to be switching to neural. Net technology. At which point I’m biting my cheek on the inside because I’m trying not to show my hand. And I’m thinking to myself, all right, there are commander data, you and your positronic brain in the test.

I’m like, get the hell out of here. You know what? Stay tuned folks. Laser beams mounted on sharks, neural net. Commander data technology up next for Tesla. So, and my Tesla roadster too.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a lot of articles on it. I mean, I’ve been talking about it for a while.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Brad, you’re out of luck, man. You’re trying to sell this cyber truck here in the United States for a bucket of chicken.

And I was thinking, you know what? Maybe if Americans won’t buy your allotment, you could sell it to somebody overseas. Maybe somebody in Asia wants it. Maybe somebody in Europe wants it. Maybe, maybe. There’s a whole list of reasons why the Cybertruck won’t be going to Europe. Let’s face it. Tanya’s mentioned it before.

The [00:32:00] overall size of the vehicle. Shipping it from California to Europe. There’s a lot of obstacles in that.

Crew Chief Brad: But if we get lucky, it could get lost at sea on a shipping container ship. We would lose hundreds of them.

Crew Chief Eric: That only happens to Porsches and Lamborghinis. There’s all these obstacles getting it through the European version of like the DOT and getting it approved and, you know, safety testing and all that kind of stuff is a lot more strict than it is over here.

Granted, they don’t have to worry about the emission side because it’s an EV, but do they have the charging network to support it? You know, all those kinds of things. Do

Crew Chief Brad: we have the charging network to support? Well,

Crew Chief Eric: I wasn’t going to get into that. Also, there’s an issue with the gross vehicle weight being between 8 and 9, 000 pounds.

So four and four and a half tons. That’s also a problem with Europe. It’s just too big. It’s just too heavy.

Crew Chief Brad: The issue that the Cybertruck is just gross, regardless of gross vehicle weight. It’s just gross.

Crew Chief Eric: And that sort of leads into our final article about the Cybertruck. Elon

Crew Chief Brad: Musk, and I quote, we dug our own grave [00:33:00] with the Cybertruck.

Executive Producer Tania: I guess it was shortly after he announced, Oh, it’s coming in November. And then, Oh, we dug our own grave on this. Basically like, yeah, this is a bad idea, but we’re doing it anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: What kind of business sense is that though? And I mean, we’re past the point of no return, right? I guess there’s enough people that want this that they’re going to build it.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s still a year and a half from being cash positive. He said scaling the production is still a problem. So to your point, Brad, if you’d actually click yes to that order, it’ll be a couple of years till you see it. Probably.

Crew Chief Eric: If you place that order, how much of a deposit do you have to put down?

Crew Chief Brad: When I did the estimator, it was 4, 500.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you start paying on it right away? You haven’t taken delivery of your Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re not going to finalize the loan until there’s a VIN number.

Crew Chief Eric: Are you sure? Because they can generate a soft VIN number and reserve it for you and say, this is going to be your chassis number.

Crew Chief Brad: But a bank is not going to fund that loan until there’s an actual vehicle.

That they could repossess when you don’t pay.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re using logic, my friend. You’re going to go through the Tesla financing [00:34:00] corporation.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. And they can repossess unicorns and glitter.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. It’s like software. I’m going to generate you a license key, but your trial hasn’t started yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you mean how they generate stock value? They’ll just generate it out of thin air.

Crew Chief Eric: So they’re going to allot you your VIN. You’re going to start paying on a truck that you’re not going to receive for two years. I

Crew Chief Brad: think this is a good deal. That means I’m two years into my seven year loan. And all of a sudden, when I get the truck, it’s a five year loan.

And don’t forget, it’s an armed loan,

Crew Chief Eric: so it’s adjustable rate.

Crew Chief Brad: So wait a minute, when I buy it at the 100, 000 or whatever, does that mean, I haven’t technically driven it off the lot, but when I actually take possession, does it mean it’s worth 30, 000? Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: because you have two years of depreciation. But not two years of wear and tear.

I would tell you this, if you were in a different state of life, I’d say send it. Let’s make this happen. You gotta get this Cybertruck. It’s just gotta happen, right? Just go for it. We got a little homework to do here. I don’t think I’ve convinced you properly to buy this truck. I don’t think I could convince [00:35:00] anybody to buy this truck.

Honestly.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think Elon Musk can convince anybody to buy this truck. What are you talking about? I don’t see why they have volume in production issues when there aren’t going to need to make that many because not that many people are going to take delivery. Demand is artificially

Crew Chief Eric: high. Just like generating those VIN numbers.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, everybody put in 100 on a whim. Cause like, Oh, it’s a fucking hundred dollars. Who cares if the truck ends up, you know, shit in the bed or they never make it or whatever. I lost a hundred dollars. Who cares?

Crew Chief Eric: Is that how you’ve rationalized it for yourself? Have you just said I’ve wasted a hundred dollars on a lot of other things?

And let it go. Or do you think you can get your money back? Do you think you can unload

Crew Chief Brad: this Cybertruck allotment? Getting the money back versus unloading the Cybertruck allotment are two different things, because when I first signed up for it, it was a refundable deposit. So I should be able to technically call up Tesla and say, Hey, you know what?

Nevermind. Can I have my a hundred dollars please?

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. You said call up Tesla. You could talk to a human.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I’m going to call him up on the [00:36:00] cyber webs. I’m going to use my neural net right to Elon. And he’s going to cut me a check for a hundred dollars minus a hundred dollars processing fee.

So he’s going to mail me a check for like 15 cents.

Crew Chief Eric: If nothing else. They should be paying you interest on the a hundred dollars. It should be like a bond. I

Crew Chief Brad: was going to say it should be like, yeah, a hundred dollars plus 5 percent interest over five years. So I’ll take that.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. You loaned the Tesla foundation a hundred bucks.

It was a charitable donation. You want your money back?

Crew Chief Brad: I aided in their stock valuation and their inflated cash position and stock valuation. Oh, it was great. Freaking mess there too. And he took that money and bought X. I don’t mean, I don’t mean ecstasy, although he probably bought that too.

Crew Chief Eric: X insert variable here, right?

Yeah. Well, let’s put a pin in this Tesla talk. Let’s

Crew Chief Brad: put a bird shit in this Cybertruck talk.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. We’ll put a pin in this. We’ll come back to Tesla a little bit later in the show, but we need to switch over and talk about Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche news. And I’ve got one piece of hot hatch [00:37:00] information for you, and I’ve said it before, the end of Volkswagen’s.

Rain in the hot hatch world was upon us. The end is nigh. We saw it when they said we’re doing away with the two door. We’re doing away with the turbo four cylinders because we’re going EV, blah, blah, blah. Now they finally said no more manual transmissions. That’s it, folks.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s over. Is it just in the U. S.

or is it globally?

Crew Chief Eric: Worldwide. They have switched permanently to the DSG. 2024 will be the last year that the Golf R, which over there they have the GTI 380, that will be sold with the stick shift. So this is it. This is the end. This is the end of the hot hatch era for Volkswagen as far as I’m concerned. So, as I said earlier, Brad, if you fits, you sits.

If you want a hot hatch right now in the United States. HGR Corolla is where it’s at because nobody else makes anything. The Veloster’s gone. Honda hasn’t made a hot hatch since I think [00:38:00] you’re civic in the nineties, but you know, Volkswagen is the last one out door. So we’re left with Toyota. Toyota is making some really, really cool stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Toyota always doubles down when other people are going left. They always kind of double down. Stay right. They come out ahead. Yes. Always. Did you say the Veloster N is also losing the manual?

Crew Chief Eric: The Veloster N, they stopped production. All together.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, it’s losing the manual, losing the car. What’s going to happen in rally?

There are already paddle shifters. Mainly kidding, but I was like, what type of cars are they going to use? But I guess they use the Ford Puma and the other cars

Crew Chief Eric: overseas. Hyundai has the I 20. A slightly bigger version of, like, say, the Veloster. If the Veloster was the Yaris, the i20 is more like the Corolla, although they’re very similar.

They share, like, a lot of DNA. That’s what they’re using now. I could have that backwards, though. It could be smaller. It could be more like the Polo. You know, I don’t pay that close of attention to the Hyundais that are outside of the United States. States, so it is what it is.

Crew Chief Brad: So the next step for Volkswagen is to just get rid of the Tiguan and the GTI becomes the Tiguan.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, [00:39:00] the old Tiguan, you mean, because the new Tiguan is actually the old Touareg became the Atlas, whatever, right? It’s all turtles, or maybe it’s just turds all the way down. And it wasn’t

Crew Chief Brad: earlier this year or last year, they stopped offering the 3. 2 liter as well. Wasn’t everything going to

Crew Chief Eric: the VR six.

Died, yeah, a year or two ago, and that was a 3. 6 liter.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that’s what I meant, the BR.

Crew Chief Eric: And so that was another death knell. They’re getting out of the gasoline business. They’ve been saying for a while that they want to go all EV. And then as we reported last year, they, they fired the guy that came up with the retro designs, like the ID buzz and all that.

And if you’ve noticed, they’ve gotten really quiet about that too. And it’s just like, what the hell is going on? And some of the other things I’ve seen with respect to even stuff that’s going on in Audi and Porsche, I’m like, Volkswagen has just lost their way. Yes, they are still in the top five largest manufacturers in the planet, but that’s also by volume.

They’re a conglomerate. They own so many other brands that they can lose their ass on VW while they’re making 97 percent of all 911s or [00:40:00] GT3 RSs. Now or whatever this lunacy going on at Volkswagen and it’s just like, okay guys, and unfortunately hot hatches are still really, really popular overseas. The French are still building them.

The Japanese are still building them. They’re just not bringing them here. I don’t understand. And maybe I never will. Although I own an SUV myself. It is a glorified hatchback at the end of the day and it has its reasons and its purposes and I love my Jeep But I love a hot hatch a proper hot hatch that you could just go thrash on a mountain road or take to the track Put a couple bags of mulch in the back or whatever.

There are a lot of fun. It’s what makes driving fun

Crew Chief Brad: I saw something on Instagram the other day. It was one of those throwback posts on somebody’s account And it was one of the old Mark 5 GTI commercials, the unpimped Z auto. Oh yeah. With this, this really funky focus. And then they pushed the button and we unpimped Z auto and it’s a Mark 5 GTI.

I feel like Mark 5 and a little bit into Mark 6, that’s the generation when Volkswagen. [00:41:00] Completely lost their way. And now they’re basically just GM. They’ve got no direction. They’re just releasing junk that nobody really wants. They lost their funkiness, their identity. I think, as you said, their uniqueness, their creativity, it’s sad.

Crew Chief Eric: And unfortunately to fill that void, we’re not getting the other European cars. I was hoping we were going to see that with Stellantis when they bought up the PSC, Peugeot and Citroen, right? Altogether. And I was hoping we’d see more of those cars. There was talk about Peugeot coming back to the United.

How cool would it be to have 208 now and the 308 and some of those that they have? I mean, those cars are super cool and a lot of fun. And then bringing over, maybe that gives an opportunity for Renault to expand Nissan, which is in desperate need of a shot in the arm in terms of marketing. But ushering in Alpine, that A110, I would buy one tomorrow if they would sell that car here.

Of course, we never get the good stuff, God forbid.

Crew Chief Brad: You should just go out and get an RS6.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a hard toss up, we’ve had that debate before. Alfa Romeo, RS6. I’ve [00:42:00] had Audis before, I think I need something different. But, that does open up a conversation. Talking about cars that are going away. The manual transmission’s going away, the Veloster’s gone, the GTI’s basically dead in my book.

We need to talk about Stellantis.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, we’re skipping over Mercedes Benz and BMW. Two car companies that I didn’t know still existed. News alert. They don’t have any news moving on.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of drum beating right now over at Chrysler and Dodge about the new 2025 Charger EV. There’s a bunch of spy photos.

Nothing. Different than you’ve seen before from the renderings and the car they had at CES and all that kind of stuff. So I don’t really want to dive into that because there’s nothing really new to report. But what’s interesting at this time of the year, and especially next month, when we talk about cars that are going away this year, you know, new cars for 2024.

And we’ll touch on some of that as we go along here. One of the ones that they’ve already signed the death certificate on over at Stellantis is the Jeep Renegade. Because apparently, nobody’s buying those cars.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, if I was in the market, if I was a [00:43:00] different person, I would actually be interested. I really like the Renegade.

To me, it reminds me, I know it’s not the same and Tanya will poop on me, but it reminds me of like the U. S. version of like a Fiat Panda. It’s a small, all wheel drive, manual transmission, just kind of runabout.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s based on the 500X. So it’s a Fiat underneath, and, you know, it had its own quirks and, and whatever, but yeah, to your point, I agree.

It was the American version of the Panda. The European Panda, you know, has its own thing, and, and there is a new version of that coming out, as we’ve learned over the last couple of months, but, Tanya, I mean, if you were in the market for a new car, would you consider the Renegade?

Executive Producer Tania: I rented one several years back in Hawaii, and it was quite nice for those purposes.

Given the landscape of other vehicles. I mean, I would go test drive one. I don’t know if I could actually buy one.

Crew Chief Eric: Because there’s a GR Corolla that she wants instead. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, I would also test drive one of those.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m surprised you haven’t bought one already.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t need one.

Crew Chief Brad: Yet. We’re going to put [00:44:00] yet on that.

If you can’t get that brake light working, you might need one.

Executive Producer Tania: My brake light works wonderfully now. Thank you very much. And it wasn’t the brake light that always worked, but my rear tail light is fantastic.

Crew Chief Eric: Because her mechanic is fantastic. Well, you know, what else is a little bit of sad panda? Would you guys care to guess how many cars Fiat sold last year?

None.

Crew Chief Brad: Worldwide or just in the U. S.? Just in the U. S. Let’s see. There are what? 350 million Americans.

Executive Producer Tania: I hardly see any 500s anywhere anymore. Honestly, I

Crew Chief Brad: can’t remember the last time I saw a Fiat. You see

Executive Producer Tania: one or two alphas. If that, I haven’t seen one in a while.

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, I would say 30. You’re way under there, Bob. A hundred

Executive Producer Tania: thousand.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re way over. Whoa. A hundred thousand.

Executive Producer Tania: Fifteen thousand.

Crew Chief Brad: No. I don’t even think they brought a hundred thousand to the U. S.

Crew Chief Eric: They sold 605 cars last year. For the entire brand.

Executive Producer Tania: Just Fiat. Yes. Not Alfa is another thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Countrywide. 605 fiat. Can you believe that? Now I know our local fiat Alfa [00:45:00] Romeo dealer here does not exist anymore.

It got absorbed back into the Chrysler building that was already there and they use it as storage. There’s not a single Alfa or Fiat on the lot. I think the next closest one is still like in Tyson’s corner, like just off the beltway.

Executive Producer Tania: Goes along with the death of hot hatches. There’s why there’s a death of hot hatches.

Nobody wants something small like a Fiat 500. How many Honda Fits do you see around? Did they stop making the Honda Fit already? Yeah, they

Crew Chief Eric: did. A couple years

Executive Producer Tania: ago? Nobody wants a car that small.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, they bring over stuff like the Hornet, which is really the Alpha Tonale. It’s the same size as the Jeep Cherokee.

Not the Grand Cherokee, the small Cherokee, which they’re also talking about getting rid of. Okay, Fiat, you control everything. You pretty much own every company that’s over there. You’ve got that big Maserati. SUV that nobody buys, why not Reba that as something and bring it out as a Hil luxe, uh, for a male that’s bigger than the Stelvio and even the Stelvio, it’s a [00:46:00] gi on stilts, but it is cool it, and if you’ve seen them fixed up with big wheels and that you buy the Q4 version, they’re pretty awesome.

Where do you go see one? Where do you go buy one? I feel that Fiat suffers in the same way Nissan does. They don’t know how to market themselves and they can’t blame. Well, Oh, back in the sixties, when we brought the chink with Chanto to America, it was a turd and everybody hated it. And all the came from the factory with rusted panels, Fiat one 31s and spiders and all one 24s and all that kind of stuff.

Guys, it’s a quality product. The Fiat 500 won best car of the year in Europe, like over and over and over again for like years running, but you have other stuff, you have other cars. Try to bring something over here. And I feel like it was all half hearted, but if they are slowly starting to peel back the offerings.

What is the big parent Stellantis going to do longer term? What’s their goal? Because Chrysler doesn’t have anything but the van. Dodge has no cars right now because the Charger’s dead and the [00:47:00] Challenger’s dead and the new Charger is like two years away. So they’re selling Jeeps, but even there, they’re cutting the Jeep line down to the Grand Cherokee and the Wagoneer.

So what I’m wondering is, are we seeing the death of Stellantis in the U S?

Crew Chief Brad: I think Stellantis is priming themselves to be bought by somebody else.

Crew Chief Eric: Toyota’s not going to touch them. General Motors doesn’t want them. Ford doesn’t want them. Volkswagen’s not going to buy them.

Crew Chief Brad: GM is all about buying shitty companies.

GM will do it. GM will buy them. I love this stat. 605 cars sold in the US. And an entire year out of 357 dealers. That’s less than two cars per dealer. How did those dealers even stay open? I don’t know, but it’s terribly sad. I will say for Christmas, Henry got a box of Hot Wheels cars. And in it, one of his favorite cars is a little Fiat 500 that he calls a beetle.

Because he also got an old like seventies beetle in that box as well. That’s awesome. So he’s got his beetle and then he’s got his, his fetal.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, we [00:48:00] don’t have a ton to talk about in terms of the rest of our domestic news sponsored by American muscle. com. You’re a source for OEM and performance parts for your Ford Chevy or Mopar product.

What I came up with over the winter, you know, things. Again, are very quiet. There’s an Italian company that’s a modding C8 Corvettes. And I wanted to see what you guys thought.

Executive Producer Tania: Modding them to do what?

Crew Chief Eric: This new car is called the S1 Coupe by a company called Aries out of Modena. And they’re rebodying the C8 Corvette.

We’ve argued before that the C8 Corvette sort of looks like an NSX and a kind of rip off of a Ferrari and this and that. So there’s a history in Italy of doing this. There’s tons of Carazzorias. Out there that have rebodied cars, whether it’s, you know, Zagato or Pininfarina or Scaglietti or Bertone or whatever, Aries are coming to the table and they said, we’re going to put pen to paper and we’re going to come up with a new body for the Corvette C8.

I look at it, it’s got gold wings and reminds me of a McLaren.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:49:00] It’s an Italian McLaren. The Gordon Murray, right? Same kind of thing. And I’m just like. I mean, it

Executive Producer Tania: doesn’t look bad as far as hyper looking cars go or something, but if someone just showed the picture to you, I would have no idea it had anything to do with Corvette.

I

Crew Chief Eric: think that’s the point. You get the power plant and the drivetrain and all the awesome stuff of the Corvette, but you know, they sort of redid everything to include the interior, which this is a lot nicer and it looks to be a lot roomier and more comfortable than the C8 Corvette comes from the factory.

If, Brad, you’ve sat in a C8, you know what it looks like with that. Funky dashboard with the buttons that go up the side towards the passenger seat and all that crazy stuff. It’s kind of cramped. This looks like you could actually enjoy this car on a long drive. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy a C8 Corvette on a long drive.

I

Crew Chief Brad: can’t enjoy a C8 Corvette on a long drive.

Crew Chief Eric: This looks way more comfortable. So I got to give him props in terms of their interior design. To your point, Tanya, it is hard to discern, especially from the back. To me, the back screams McLaren or Bugatti a little bit. I kind of like it. But then there’s [00:50:00] certain things I don’t like.

It’s got these snouts over the rear trunk. I don’t know if that’s where the exhaust comes out. I don’t understand what those holes are. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: those are the exhaust. Those don’t belong there.

Crew Chief Eric: It kind of reminds me of a

Crew Chief Brad: boat. It looks like they took the back of a McLaren P1. Because I think the P1 has the same kind of thing.

I will say, in looking at this article, some of the pictures of some of their other projects, I am all about that Aries, Bentley, and all seeing coupe. Because it reminds me of the old Bentley’s Bricklins or whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: The one I gotta give my hat off to as you go down and look at this is the Aries Panther.

Crew Chief Brad: That looks pretty sick.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s an homage to the Pantera. And I was like, build that car. Whatever that is, I’m here for it all day long. That’s based on the Huracan. Dude, that is way nicer than the Huracan. That is cool. Why can’t Volkswagen build stuff like that?

Crew Chief Brad: Because they’re too busy taking manual transmission out of cars that people want to drive.

Crew Chief Eric: I would put my money down on that Panther. That’s really, really cool. I would too. We have a little bit of Asian domestic news. I’ve been [00:51:00] following this build for a while. It’s on Instagram. It’s all over the place. It’s a K24 Honda swapped Ferrari 308. Have you guys seen this car? Nope. Oh, dude, it’s sick.

Gorgeous car. It’s a 308. So I don’t feel bad. You know, people, oh my god, it’s sacrilege. Oh, Ferrari, blah. 308’s the most mass produced Ferrari on the planet. It’s like a Porsche 944. You’re like, whatever, okay? It’s indicative of the times, right, of the late 70s, early 80s. It was also the car that kept Ferrari out of bankruptcy, much like the 944 did for Porsche.

Unfortunately, all the work and effort and all the years I followed these guys building this K24 Honda swap Ferrari, yep, boop, is dead. They blew it up at a grid life global time attack event or whatever. And that’s the end of that. But it went out in a heroic ball of white smoke.

Executive Producer Tania: Did it oil start? Cause all the comments are saying that you can’t do that without a proper.

So

Crew Chief Brad: it will live on for another generation because they are going to do a less swap now, which again has oil cooling issues. So they need to make sure that it gets plenty of oil, but [00:52:00] why didn’t they do that? To begin with, they should do what we see at water fest all the time. They should do a VR swap.

Crew Chief Eric: Those make a gajillion horsepower and they’re pretty damn reliable. I can understand why they went with the Honda power plant drive train and all that, because a lot of people don’t know that the 308 is actually transverse. And it’s a V8 transverse, right? So think giant Fiat X1 9 at the end of the day.

So a Ferrari V8, it’s not small. It is in there sideways. So I’m kind of thinking like Fiero now in my head. If an LS fits, like you say, Brad, if I fits, I sits. I would have started with that. Yes, the Honda K motor, blah, blah, blah. But every K swap I’ve ever seen, whether it was Miatas or other stuff, and even this, they sort of all end in somebody crying in a bowl of Wheaties.

If you’re going to build, especially a drift car, go V8 or go home. Unless it’s a straight six from Nissan back in the day, but you’re going to pay a mint for that. So now I’m going to start looking at 308 costs. You don’t, they’ve gone up a lot since I’m sure they

Crew Chief Brad: have. I’m sure they have. I’ll stick to the nine 44s,

Crew Chief Eric: nine 24s.

You mean [00:53:00] other

Crew Chief Brad: random new. News.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. Random new EVs and concept cars. So what’s hot for 2024? You know, we’re going to talk about this more in February as more of these reports come out from all over the industry. But there’s about 10, 12 cars here on this list that people are jonesed about right out of the gate.

We’re looking at the Heidi buzz. Which, again, I haven’t heard a whole lot about whether or not and how you can buy it if it’s really coming. I mean, yes, I saw one in person at Car Week and it is super cool. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I like a lot of the features and stuff that’s going into it.

I’m excited that it might be coming out. The question is When? How? Where? Can I order one? I need more details. I need more firm numbers and more information. We got the new Land Cruiser. Brad, you’re a Toyota guy. What do you think?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s smaller than the one it’s replacing. I don’t know. I’m not a fan. It looks like a cross between the FJ Cruiser and the 4Runner.

I don’t like it. I’ll stick with my Tundra and our Sienna.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, the rest of the list is [00:54:00] Kind of unexciting or cars that we already know about, right? The Volvo XC 30, the New Forester hybrid that we talked about last year. You’ve got the GR cars and all that, but there’s one in particular here that goes back to one of Tonya’s favorite actors.

He drove one of these cars back in the day. Tell us about one of Patrick Stewart’s favorite cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably what the Integra should have been instead of, of the new TSX, the Honda Prelude, which isn’t. official. It’s kind of like a teaser. There’s no firm plan that that’s actually going to get built, but the render is a two door.

Not that I would call it a hot hatch, but it is a two door panda.

Crew Chief Eric: This thing is fire. The old Preludes, I’ve driven Brian’s Gen 2. They’re fun cars. They had their own, that was the H block motor, like all this kind of stuff, you know, they didn’t share any parts with a lot of other cars with the prelude was just kind of its own thing.

As you’ve told me, Patrick Stewart, you know, captain Picard owned a prelude way back when this new one, you’re a hundred [00:55:00] percent, right? This should be. The Integra. This is super cool, and I hope Honda builds it.

Crew Chief Brad: It should be the Integra, and it should compete with the, uh, GR86.

Crew Chief Eric: What would really be the icing on the cake is if Honda would put the Civic Type R motor in this, and for once in a very long time, ditch the front wheel drive.

Build this as a rear wheel drive, use the S2000 drivetrain or some variant thereof. Give us a proper sports coupe, and this thing will be killer. I can see this thing selling and flying off the shelves. You’re going to have these Hondas running neck and neck with the Supras and the GR 86s and all those things.

But the design from these angles, I really like it. I want to see more pictures of it, but I think this is super cool that Honda is going this way. And they need something because as Tanya said before, they’ve been kind of boring up until now.

Crew Chief Brad: Like Volkswagen or GM. Does anybody want to buy any cars from any of these brands?

GM has the Corvette. They killed the Camaro. Volkswagen has the GTI, [00:56:00] which they’re killing

Crew Chief Eric: slowly. They’re bleeding that thing to death, but it’s sort of like, I hate to say like cars and vacuum cleaners sometimes are very similar. Like you’re looking at some of these brands, you’re going black and Decker shark, whatever Bissell.

And then you got like these other, that’s a Dyson. Look at that. Right. It’s so futuristic and so different. We joke that cars aren’t appliances, but. I feel like they’re boiling them down to the point where you could just change the label on them. You still know the quality difference, but every once in a while, it’s like, do you buy the Roomba or do you buy the Ecovac

Crew Chief Brad: Electrolux Electrolux?

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. It’s like buying a Packard. Talked earlier about the Cybertruck. Here’s the list of the EVs that are eligible for instant tax rebates. As of the 1st of January,

Executive Producer Tania: it’s basically every Chevy model. Ford, Lightning, and the Tesla’s.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go. And it used to be, you’d get the 7, 500 tax credit. I’m sure they’ve changed that number by now.

If the vehicle was built in the United States. So then it was okay. That limited the field [00:57:00] to let’s say the plants that exist in like Tennessee and the Carolinas and Kentucky and all that. That’s how like Toyota and BMW and Volkswagen were getting away with, Oh, well you can still get the tax credit versus like, Oh, you buy a Chrysler.

It’s built in Detroit. Blah, blah, blah, blah. What they did is they changed the law so that it’s now EVs with battery materials manufactured in China are not eligible for the tax credit. So we’ve taken that first window and now we’ve made it even narrower. And to your point, Tanya, it’s the GM stuff, a couple of Fords.

And the Tesla’s. And so the list is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. But the price of the EVs hasn’t come down, although they have fluctuated. A lot of the incentive to get people to buy them is now going away, or they’re making it more difficult to buy these EVs by not giving you that government rebate.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is funny because considering how the government was trying to push everybody to buy EVs. Just a short time ago.

Crew Chief Eric: I still feel that it’s going to come full circle at some point.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re all going to be driving diesels. [00:58:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Nah, hybrid isn’t as bad. Diesel’s dead, unfortunately, except in the big, bigger trucks.

Crew Chief Brad: And again, Toyota has doubled down and created more hybrids.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. You know, I hate to say it because I’m a ride or die. VAG fan, and it’s losing its appeal. I’m disillusioned with them at this point. There’s nothing that they sell that I’m really that interested in. But when I look at Toyota, to your point, they’re the trendsetter.

Now it used to be Volkswagen. It used to be a lot of other companies that were bucking the mold and saying, ah, we’re going to rewrite the history books. This is how it’s done. Now it’s Toyota. And to your point, if you want the answers of what the future is, look to Toyota for those answers. If Toyota is not going full EV, they have like one car that’s full EV, and they’re going to make like.

Three of them to your point, they were doubling down on hybrid. Hybrid is going to be the answer. All this other stuff is like a proof of concept. So buy your Rivians and buy your Teslas, do whatever you want to do. Live your best life. That’s fine. Eventually, just like in the 1920s, we had all these boutique manufacturers out there, but where are they [00:59:00] today?

Where can you go buy a Studebaker or an Oldsmobile or a Packard, all these names, they’re on the winds of history anymore. And I think you’re going to see that with Rivian and Tesla, Lucid, and a lot of these other brands, as they get absorbed for their intellectual property and their patents by the bigger brands.

And eventually a new big three will emerge that is concentrated in a alternative fuel space. Brad, you’re a hundred percent right. Look to Toyota for those answers. today.

Crew Chief Brad: We just talk about a car company that I am sad to not see anymore. Who’s that? That’s Mitsubishi. They still make HVAC and ductless air conditioning systems.

They make the all wheel drive SUV, AUV, SAV, Eclipse. Is that their only car? I think. When did they disappear? I can’t remember the last time I actually saw one Mitsubishi.

Crew Chief Eric: I rented a Mitsubishi in Texas, like, two years ago. Why? It was the only thing available when I went to go kick something up off the lot.

It was a Lancer Cross something or other, [01:00:00] some goofy thing with a CVT, and it literally made 140 horsepower normally. like, you know, like a small tank. It was pathetic and it was horrible. And I was like, this Mitsubishi is why you have died in the United States. You cannot put stuff like this out. Now I get, Oh, we’re not going to, you know, put a motor in it.

That’s like the Lancer evolution. But at this point, everybody’s got freaking turbochargers on everything. You can’t put out a 4, 000 pound CUV with a normally aspirated one, six, that makes less than 200 horsepower. That’s insane.

Crew Chief Brad: No, not in this country. Maybe the. put around like the little cities in Europe or something, but not here where you got to drive cross country or something.

Crew Chief Eric: I was so tempted to go to the local Walgreens and get shoe polish, which I think you can still buy these days. And right on the back, the struggle is real because anytime you merged, you were better off getting out behind it and pushing it. I mean, it was just pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. And the build quality was just junk.

I actually sat down and [01:01:00] started writing an article about it. I just got frustrated doing that. And I was like, nobody’s going to care. It’s Mitsubishi. Where’s the last dealership in America? Like, it’s like the last blockbuster. There’s going to be one in like Nome, Alaska, where you can still buy a Mitsubishi and that’ll be it.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ll be able to buy Fiats and Mitsubishis next to each other.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like junks are us. Guys, I want to remind you our sponsor, ESC carbon has put a significant price drop on their carbon wheels. You can now get the E2 for the low price of 1, 100 a wheel instead of the MSRP of 1, 724. So you’re looking at made in the USA, all one piece carbon fiber wheels for a plethora of different cars, Audis, Volkswagens, Hondas, Subarus.

And so on down the line, there’s a fitment guide on the website, esecarbon. com. They are on sale, 1, 100 each, lots of really awesome stuff going on there. A new wheel is coming out and some other programs that they have going on with some major distributors for the foreign car market. So check out esecarbon.

com for the latest [01:02:00] on their wheels and new stuff that’s coming. Well, it’s time we talk about your favorite section, Brad. It’s time for a little bit of Lost and Found.

Crew Chief Brad: Lost and Found. Scour of the internet to tell you all what is available. Oh boy, what have we got? It’s been a minute. I will say that 1988 Cadillac DeVille is gone!

It’s gone! No longer on the list. Somebody either bought it or turned it into cash for clunkers. Something happened, but it is no longer available.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m still waiting for our sponsor check from gray Chevrolet. That’s all I’m saying. We help sell. I know, I

Crew Chief Brad: know, I know. You know, we give them a spot every month and we still have received nothing, the oldest vehicle you can buy on cars.

com. Brand new. Again, this is because people don’t know how to use the internet, but the brand new car is a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta GLS TDI. Oh, and then you get a 2001 Pathfinder that Ford GT is still out there, 2008 Shelby GT 500. You know

Crew Chief Eric: what we haven’t heard of in a while?

Crew Chief Brad: HHRs,

Crew Chief Eric: Dodge

Crew Chief Brad: Darts, and Vipers.

Crew Chief Eric: That hasn’t [01:03:00] shown up on the list in a while.

Crew Chief Brad: 2014 Dodge SRT Viper GTS in lime green for the cool price of 249, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I’m glad you brought that up because you know what I found that’s going to start replacing Vipers as leftovers on the lot. That’s going to be at your local Honda dealership when you go out.

To put your deposit on your prelude. So what’s taking the place of the Viper now? The NSX. The NSX went out of production a couple of years ago, right? How many did they sell last year?

Crew Chief Brad: They

Crew Chief Eric: sold five,

Crew Chief Brad: but I’m not surprised. It’s a low production supercar. How many Vipers did they sell in a given year? What?

12, 13, something like that. It’s the nature of the beast. They’re priced accordingly. They don’t need to sell very many of them. They’re super fucking expensive to begin with 350, 000. Not surprised that they only sold. Five.

Crew Chief Eric: You mentioned brands that you don’t hear about anymore. This one is right up your alley.

Pontiac. Yeah. What about Pontiac?

Crew Chief Brad: Apparently you can buy a nice Pontiac vibe. [01:04:00] 25. No. 25, 000 the SEMA car looks like it’s lower to some suspension, just a mini sub box in the back. Okay. What is so special about this car?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s orange. That’s what’s special about it.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s not a manual. I think there was a certain percentage of these that were manual.

And what people forget about the vibe is it’s the Toyota matrix. It’s the same car rebadged. It was a deal that Toyota had going on with GM.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know if people forget that they choose not to remember. Oh yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s how it works. Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Choose not to remember that.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s clean. The only problem is it’s an auto tragic.

To your point, I don’t know that I’d spend 25 bucks on this, but okay, sure. When was the last time you saw a Pontiac vibe?

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a

Crew Chief Eric: reason for that.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s a reason like Mark 4, Mark 5 Volkswagens are still running around, but Pontiac vibes are not. Not so much. I didn’t like its vibes.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of cars that are still running around, couldn’t believe this when I read it.

Honda will lease you a 10 year old car because the new ones are too expensive. What?

Crew Chief Brad: [01:05:00] So 10 year old cars are not available for leasing, but five year old cars, CPO, are available for leasing.

Crew Chief Eric: It says here, while Honda TrueUse launched in 2022, it does include pre owned vehicles up to 10 years old. They are not available for leasing.

Crew Chief Brad: Reading, comprehension.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s written terribly.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay, so you can lease a 5 or 10 year old Honda Accord. Why?

Crew Chief Eric: So here’s what I’m thinking to myself. If the new cars are so expensive, why don’t we just lower the price? Am I totally, like, off my rocker here? Am I speaking alien language? Hello. And they have this funky like warranty policy where it’s like, where they’re finding these low mileage Hondas.

I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: They’ve gotta be CPO cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. CP program and 86,000 miles of non powertrain coverage, or 84 months and a hundred thousand miles per powertrain. And I’m like, what? No, just lower the freaking price of the new one because what kind of price tag are you putting on this? Accurate TSX or whatever it is you’re trying to sell me.

Let’s say that’s 30, [01:06:00] 000 if you multiply out the lease, you know, and all the, all the stuff that goes along with that. Why can’t I buy a new Accord for 30 grand? Why does a new Accord have to be 50, 000? It doesn’t make any sense.

Crew Chief Brad: So I will say I did go to a Toyota dealership once many years ago, back in, it was the mid 2000s, early to mid 2000s.

The reason I went to the dealership is because they had a used Toyota Supra on the lot, like a 96, 97 Supra. They wanted to lease a used Toyota Supra because they were trying to sell it for 45, 000 or 50, 000 or whatever, because it was in the height of the whole fast and furious craze. And they were trying to lease me this car.

And he said, Oh yeah, you can’t buy it. We can lease it to you. No, thank you. I don’t think so. I’m not going to lease any car, let alone a tuner car, but still leasing a used car. I agree with your point. Why not just make the cars cheaper? I guess they’re doing this because of the crazy auto market. The crazy auto loan rates right now.

People are priced out of vehicles that they normally would have been able to buy.

Crew Chief Eric: You remember when we had a take it to the bank moment? It’s that [01:07:00] would Andrew buy this car? This next one is a hundred percent a take it to the bank moment. Dude, I totally would have bought this car. Oh, come on. Why not?

Headline reads, Someone willingly paid 16, 000 for a Maserati Ghibli on Cars and Bids. What’s wrong with the Ghibli? For 16, 000? What is wrong with the Ghibli? That’s what I’m asking, what’s wrong with the Ghibli? It needs 66, 000 worth of maintenance. That’s what it needs.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh yeah, I see. 400 oil changes, 1, 200 brake jobs.

But if you can do this stuff yourself You’re gonna order parts for your Ghibli

Crew Chief Eric: on Rock Auto? Did you see those door panels? This car looks like it was in a flood. And Andrew bought a flood Mercedes. And it wasn’t Piece of junk. He lost money on that car. What is wrong with these door cards? It says here 3, 500 to repair the door cards at an upholstery shop because you’re paying the Maserati tax on everything you touch on this car.

Crew Chief Brad: What you do is you go to the junkyard, you find a Dodge Charger. Which is the same car, and then you take the door cards out of the Dodge Charger and put them in [01:08:00] your Ghibli.

Crew Chief Eric: And I would buy a Chrysler 300 and be done with this because they’re all aliezoic era Mercedes at the end of the day. I don’t know.

This is junk, man. I wouldn’t go near this with somebody else’s 16, 000. I’m sorry, Andrew would buy this car though. So let’s call him up, see if he’ll go get this thing and we can all go hoon around in a Maserati.

Crew Chief Brad: He already bought a car. Got that Viper. It’s just as bad. No, he’s, he’s got the, the Lexus. He got a Lexus?

Was it the RC Coupe?

Crew Chief Eric: Was it in a fire, a flood? Did it have locusts? What other of the seven plagues did it suffer?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it’s got Andrew ownership, the eighth plague.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. So he’s going to take it to the track and something’s going to break on it.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And then he’s going to flip it for more money than he bought because he’s got the touch.

Brilliant.

Crew Chief Eric: Unfortunately, now it’s time that we return to our conversation about Tesla because we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Elon.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh yes. That’s exactly who I want to talk about. Who cares about this guy and who cares about his boring company? How boring. Like this is still a thing you and your freaking like we’re going to tunnel under [01:09:00] everything and then we’re going to have.

Tesla robo taxis in Vegas. And, oh yeah, it’s like two blocks and it’s people driving the Teslas in the tunnels.

Crew Chief Eric: Autonomous self driving level zero. That’s when you dropped the car.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. Why don’t you just leave the keys in it? Let me drive through the tunnel.

Crew Chief Brad: I like how people say this was a good idea.

Executive Producer Tania: They

Crew Chief Brad: wanted it to work. They should have made the tunnel so you could drive completely like in a loop. So you just drive up on the wall and go around the loop. Like a loop, a loop. That’s what he’s calling the

Crew Chief Eric: Hyperloop. It’s like a rollercoaster. I get it. The Tesla Hyperloop. It’s a ride at Six Flags. It all makes sense now.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t even think the Teslas are fast enough to overcome. The forces needed to make it through the loop to loop

Crew Chief Brad: the cyber truck can do it. , I don’t know, zero to 40 miles an hour. They got it. It’s just a shame they weigh 20,000 pounds.

Crew Chief Eric: The thing about the boring company, that’s hilarious and I can’t believe to Tonya’s point that this made news again seven years.[01:10:00]

We’ve been kicking this coffee can down the road. And how far have they made it, Tanya? A total of what?

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently 2. 4 miles. I mean, that’s money well spent. It didn’t take seven years to build a 2. 4 miles. So how much is being spent to go nowhere? I mean, I guess you need to spend it.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think the subtitle sort of sums up a lot of these projects, right?

They’re pet projects for a multi billionaire who’s just like, I got an idea. Let me fart out, you know, a hundred million dollars and you can go do this thing for me. It says the boring company is years behind schedule and employees. say it’s because musk had a good idea but failed to execute

Executive Producer Tania: well it also talks about that like there’s huge turnover because all the engineers just leave because the engineers are grounded in reality and he’s not it sounds like and so if you’re telling somebody this doesn’t work for xyz or you know you need to do this abc blah blah blah and it costs this much he’s like no after a while you’re gonna be like deuces i have better things to go do

Crew Chief Eric: isn’t that the origin story of [01:11:00] lucid

Executive Producer Tania: But we haven’t heard of the boring company equivalent boring 2.

0 or not boring company. That’s actually doing something. Oh, wait, it’s every other person’s already built a tunnel and a subway underground.

Crew Chief Eric: Everybody keeps asking me about BYD. What about their presence in America? Is that going to happen? You know, I haven’t seen too much on that lately. They are a force to be reckoned with.

They have more global EV share than Tesla does right now, so keep an eye on them.

Executive Producer Tania: BYD in America I think is a whole other political issue that remains to be seen. In terms of the rest of the world, obviously they got more latitude.

Crew Chief Eric: But I think one of the telltale signs is this next one.

Executive Producer Tania: All these rental car companies that started taking huge orders for EVs, specifically Teslas, because they were going to turn over their fleets of gas and diesel vehicles to electric.

Sixt, S I X T, which is a very large rental company in Europe, a German company. [01:12:00] They, like Hertz here in America, had taken huge orders for Teslas, and now are selling them all off. Because apparently the repair costs are way too much to be sustainable. And not that they’re abandoning their quest to have 90 percent of their rental fleet BEVs, they’re just abandoning Tesla for, to your point, BYD, the Chinese automaker, who’s apparently not only more affordable just to buy the car, but also their repair costs are much more affordable.

Crew Chief Brad: Because they look like normal cars. They’re probably mass produced like normal cars. Good for Sixt.

Executive Producer Tania: And Hertz is also selling off. The Tesla fleet that they had purchased, presumably for similar reasons.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess all those Tom Brady advertisements didn’t work for him.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. Let’s go. I want to interview the guy that thought that was a good idea.

I want to pick that person’s brain and be like. Here you are a year later, two years later, have a long spin. Cause we’re still in this sort of like [01:13:00] COVID time warp.

Executive Producer Tania: You thought this was a good idea? Go big or go home. Sometimes you gotta swing for the fences to make a home run. Takes money to make money.

You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. So he was shooting from three courts away.

Crew Chief Brad: Was the 7, 500 tax credit only for individuals or were companies? Like Hertz who were buying these cars eligible for that on a per car basis as well.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t remember. I thought that was for personal cars.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m wondering if they, as well as Sixt out there in Germany, I wonder if these people were expecting Some sort of government funding or kickback or something, and it either never came or the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze or something like that. My cynical mind is trying to figure out if there were some underlying reasons as to why they were buying these cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we have to dig into that a little bit further,

Crew Chief Brad: but I do have a question for Tanya, Chevy Impala or Tesla model three is a [01:14:00] rental car.

Oh man. That’s hard. I might just not go on the trip. Uber, Uber.

Executive Producer Tania: Uber is the answer.

Crew Chief Brad: What if your Uber is driving a Tesla?

Executive Producer Tania: You know, Hey, I have been in a Model S Uber before.

Crew Chief Brad: More than likely your Uber is driving a Nissan Maxima or they’re driving an Ultima. Yeah. Well, going back to our

Crew Chief Eric: showcase, Brad Tesla, Cybertruck, or sweet frog franchise.

Crew Chief Brad: It depends on where you put the sweet frog, because they, they do not succeed in all places. Just like the Tesla

Crew Chief Eric: does not succeed in the North.

Talking about not succeeding. This next one had me rubbing my temples.

Executive Producer Tania: This one’s a little bit of clickbait 1. 2 million mile Tesla with 13 motor replacements and three battery pack replacements. And it’s like, this was one of the early initial model S’s that were built. That apparently were also known to have somewhat defective, let’s say, parts.

And if you dig into it, most of the [01:15:00] stuff was fixed under warranty. And like the final battery that got put in or the last battery that got replaced went like 900, 000 miles if eventually they got it right through the years. Then it’s like, is this really that big of a deal? I don’t know, like, what’s really the truth and where the parts are breaking?

Like, this guy is an outlier. I don’t think there’s enough Teslas on the road with people driving 100, 000 miles to understand, are these rear motors breaking still this consistently, or in this low mileage? I’m kind of like, meh about this. One of your first cars that was a piece of garbage anyway, had garbage parts in it, and then somewhere along the line, you put less garbage parts in, and it works better.

Like, okay, yes, growing pains.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t see too

Crew Chief Brad: many Model S’s on the road anymore, do you guys? Every once in a while. I see more Lucid Airs than I do Model S’s now.

Executive Producer Tania: You know what? Honestly, they all frickin look the same a lot, but I can’t tell what the hell it is, and I don’t even look at it, so I’m not sure.

I think every once in a while, yes.

Crew Chief Eric: I think the Model Y is the best selling Tesla right now or something like that. And I do see a ton of [01:16:00] those kind of everywhere I go. But even the Model 3s is probably the next most popular. But Model Ss, when I read this article, I was like, Do they even make that car anymore?

Because it has been about like 10 years since it came out. And I’m just like, I haven’t seen one in a long time.

Crew Chief Brad: I still do. Part I have not seen is the Model X. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Model X. Did they stop production of that finally?

Executive Producer Tania: They didn’t, those are really kind of hard to tell between the Model Y and the X though, when you see them on the road, like if you’re not really paying attention, like if you’re just like glancing and seeing stuff, they all look so similar.

Crew Chief Eric: Like we said earlier, the new Model 3 is coming with a facelift. It’s a little more angular. Is it?

Executive Producer Tania: I’m like, I fricking looked at it. I’m like, I don’t pay enough attention to any of these cars to tell the difference. I’m like, does it look different? It still has that. Smashed Botox front face. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: a little less platypus than the original one.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: Before we move on, I will say about this article, this 1. 2 [01:17:00] million mile Tesla, Toyota called, they said, been there, done that with general maintenance.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And Volvo said the same

Crew Chief Brad: thing too. It’s like, come on,

Crew Chief Eric: man.

Crew Chief Brad: Take your 13 motors and your three batteries. You could have bought this car probably 10 times over.

Executive Producer Tania: What I was disappointed in. Well, and I guess if it was under warranty, then it. Didn’t necessarily cost that guy much, but I’m like, how much did this Tesla cost you right over the last 10 years or whatever, 14 motors later,

Crew Chief Eric: if you didn’t have warranty or some sort of extended warranty plan, but even how much did they pay out to have this done?

How much downtime did this guy incur? So let’s say this is his only vehicle. It’s not like a hop, skip and a jump to change these parts. So what was he driving while his Tesla was out of service?

Crew Chief Brad: Probably driving his Volkswagen Polo.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, this next one is just another didoey

Executive Producer Tania: whistleblower says autopilot is not safe enough to be used on public roads. It’s like, okay, I don’t need to read the rest of this. I don’t care.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re just trying to get you [01:18:00] spun up. That’s all it is. We’re trying to get a rise out of you, Tanya. Get on your soapbox.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m getting desensitized.

Crew Chief Brad: We need something else.

Executive Producer Tania: How do we get

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya excited?

Crew Chief Eric: You know, this next one would have me excited. We talked about the cyber truck and how the stainless steel bird poop and hair and maintenance of all that stuff and barkeeper’s friend and all that Tesla is making this move now.

And I think it’s a cost saving maneuver because painting a car is actually very expensive. People are just paint the car and, you know, clear coat it. So paint shops can cost multiples of millions of dollars to do that. And now they’re talking about wrapping their car. I mean, from the factory, so you can pick a rap, you know, whatever style you want, all this kind of thing.

And reports are coming in that the rap quality might be as bad as the paint.

Executive Producer Tania: This costs 8, 000 and that’s cheaper than a paint job because if you went to somebody third party and had it painted, I’d think you could paint your car for that under that.

Crew Chief Eric: But that’s what the team of folks and you got to count the labor hours and the [01:19:00] prep time.

So

Executive Producer Tania: on your fricking assembly line, it should be more cost effective.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s cheaper to wrap because the one robot can do the whole car in one shot. They prime it, wrap it, it’s out. If you have to do multi stage painting and then the time it takes to cure the paint, clear the paint, buff the paint, finish the paint.

Executive Producer Tania: Man, nowadays they turn around a paint job in like a.

Crew Chief Brad: And they’re terrible. If only there was a car manufacturing process that really zeroed in and just had this process down of making cars mass produced and painting them and getting them through assembly and to the market really quickly. Has anybody been able to do that yet?

Not in a hundred years, my friend.

Executive Producer Tania: Here you go. And this article even says you could go to a local body shop who could wrap a compact crossover car for size comparison for 3, 500. So what are they charging you for eight grand? That seems really expensive for what you’re getting.

Crew Chief Eric: Cyber wrapped.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m sorry.

Like I’m pretty sure the assembly line paint job [01:20:00] would be cheaper.

Crew Chief Eric: But think about it. You can get your cyber truck wrapped. In a stainless steel wrap, then you don’t get the fingerprints on it, but it still looks the same.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. And then apparently people are complaining that there’s bubbles and like missing pieces to the wrap.

So the robots need to be Lego robots that can go to 0. 0000001 micron tolerance when they layer the wrap on your car.

Crew Chief Eric: But think about it this way. If you wrap the cyber truck, it solves the panel gap problem because you wrap right up for the gaps. And now they’re sealed! And it looks like one smooth panel.

He has solved the problem! And then when you open the door,

Executive Producer Tania: the whole wrap rips apart.

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like the wraps are ripping apart anyway.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, yeah. No, no, no. It’s a distressed look.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, it’s distressed. It’s patina.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s all the rage now. It’s antiquing. I’m going to

Crew Chief Brad: save my 8, 000. I’m going to go to Mako and I’m going to get the 350 on sale holiday [01:21:00] paint job.

What a mess. I’m not

Executive Producer Tania: suggesting you go that cheap on your paint job, but there’s something in between 350, 000 and 8, 000.

Crew Chief Brad: What are we up to next? Yeah. Tesla raps about his paint jobs.

Executive Producer Tania: He started his own price war with himself and he can’t win it.

Crew Chief Eric: This is the freaking hokey pokey that Tesla’s been doing.

You know, again, let’s raise the price 200 percent and then we’ll give you 50 percent off. It’s like all this back and forth. I still don’t know how much a Tesla three actually costs. Going back to our point about the Cybertruck, is it 50 grand? Is it price adjusted for inflation? Because it’s been 10 years since they talked about it.

And you know that when Brad bought his Cybertruck allotment, what is the price of these cars? And so. And to your point, Brad, even about the stock valuation, how can any of the, the investors keep track of this stuff too? If one minute we’re selling a car for 35 grand and then we’re selling it for 65 grand and then tomorrow it’s 12, it’s all over the map.

They need to get this figured out.

Crew Chief Brad: So they lowered the price to hit vehicle [01:22:00] deliveries. But then they met expectations on the revenue side, but they also still didn’t make deliveries.

Crew Chief Eric: What the fuck are they doing? This screams of Ponzi scheme. This is like a Bernie Madoff special here. All right. That’s how

Crew Chief Brad: I feel about all those tech companies out there in Silicon Valley.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s all inflated bullshit. And I’ve said it before. Tesla is a software company, not a car company. They operate like a software company and it’s a mess. For sure. But now they’re going to get into the food business. Next thing you know, there’ll be the Tesla show on the food network. Have you heard of this drive through restaurant thing that you don’t drive through?

Executive Producer Tania: First I said, how stupid? And then I said, well, while you’re sitting there for 45 minutes, charging your Tesla or however long it takes,

Crew Chief Brad: I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, yeah, you go get a bite to eat. And then there’s like a movie theater too, or something. So there you go. Make it an event. It’s a whole experience just to recharge your car.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re taking all these old ideas and repurposing them as brand new innovations.

Crew Chief Eric: You hit the nail on the head. It is like a Howard [01:23:00] Johnson’s the same idea was a place to go to stop. And I’m like, Oh my God. But I’m wondering if we’re talking about the build quality, what’s the food quality? Could it be like, it’s not the Alto grill in Italy, right?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s crusty. He’s crusty. My question is, if you don’t have a Tesla, can you still eat there?

Executive Producer Tania: Will there

Crew Chief Brad: be parking in a gas pump for my tundra?

Crew Chief Eric: If it’s anything like what we heard about here in the last couple of weeks, about those. Tesla’s getting frozen at the charging stations and all that kind of stuff.

There’s going to be gridlock. What are they going to do? Build a Bucky’s where there’s like 200 spots so that everybody can charge. There’s going to be a line around the block. They’re proposing this one in Hollywood. Are you kidding me with all the Tesla’s that there are in Los Angeles? It’s going to be successful, but it’s also going to be super inefficient.

It’s sort of like when you go to a theme park and there’s only one rollercoaster train running when there should be four.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re probably going to sell like all organic, [01:24:00] vegan, animal free foods for the fruit food people in Hollywood.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re going to sell electrons. See, there’ll be this like asterix in it.

It’s fine print. It’s really not. It’s food for humans. It’s food for your Tesla. I would love to have a scoop of ice cream right now, but instead I think we’re going to get the inside scoop on the Tesla Semi.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh wait, there’s more Tesla news.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently it’s a hot mess.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re kidding me, right?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I’ve never, I haven’t seen one on the road.

at all. I mean, not that I guess I would expect to, because I’d imagine so few.

Crew Chief Eric: Didn’t Pepsi buy them or something like that?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, PepsiCo, I think, was one of the first. Is it PepsiCo, Frito Lay? Are they the same or are they different?

Crew Chief Brad: I think they’re the same.

Executive Producer Tania: Both of them, I think, took early orders and apparently some PepsiCo employee that must have been driving one has described it as a disaster.

That does 400 miles at best with around the clock servicing by Tesla engineers.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: That sounds like a cost effective approach.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to save the world, remember? The Tesla Semi is going to revolutionize the trucking industry.

Executive Producer Tania: In their [01:25:00] defense. You gotta start somewhere.

Crew Chief Eric: Somebody’s gotta break the mold.

Yes, I agree with that. But my bigger question is, how many of the trucks Did Pepsi return?

I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: So they’re back to gas guzzling diesels. I know we had Carrie Weisher on the show a while back and she’s from the trucking industry. And she’s sort of alluded to some changes that are happening amongst the big companies, you know, like Freightliner and Mac and all those, again, this is where I make the argument to be able to move the weight that we move in America, because we don’t use trains in the same way we did, let’s say a hundred years ago, you know, to move stuff around the country.

Although we still use trains. I don’t know why trucks didn’t adopt diesel electric hybrids. 50 years ago, the technology was already there and we’ve said many times before we’re doing all this carbon offset stuff that we’re doing the middle class average person with their Honda Civic and whatever is paying the price for these semi trucks and school buses and Metro buses that are belching black smoke out every time they go down the road.

And it’s sort of like. Why [01:26:00] can’t we speed up the process of getting new hybrid technology, not EVs, into these trucks?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my gosh. Tesla isn’t using special grade truck parts for the Tesla Semi, i. e. weight and energy grade, heavy duty parts. Tesla is using car parts on the Semi, which is why it breaks down so often.

Crew Chief Brad: That can’t be true. Tesla’s using Home Depot parts.

Executive Producer Tania: You’re right.

Crew Chief Brad: This is the thing that really gets me. PepsiCo did a 500 mile trip with the Tesla Semi from California to Phoenix, but it was just for PR. The batteries completely burned out, which is why on these PR trips, they bring three Tesla Semis, with two of them being towed by diesel Semi trucks, and then they swap them out when the battery dies.

Oh my god. It’s like the Formula E, where the pit stop is they swap out the car, Pepsi’s swapping out the trucks. That’s really good for their logistics.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe that’s the plan. You just have a bunch of the cabs, like, at [01:27:00] certain checkpoints along the highway, and then you pull up to one, you drop the load, the other freshly non burned up battery cab pulls it in.

Grabs the load and then keeps going until the next one.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like a relay race.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Pass the baton. Then they’re using pouch battery cells made in Nevada, which get damaged in heavy rains.

Executive Producer Tania: Here is the best. None of the Tesla semi drivers care about the fact that the semi can accelerate to 60 miles an hour in 20 seconds.

God damn. Yeah, because I want my like 20 ton of cumming thing to accelerate. in 20 seconds at 60 miles an hour and how quickly is it stopping? People commenting on the Tesla Isemi said it might help in passing other trucks, but PepsiCo’s employees said nobody cared. Tesla uses the tri motor system from the Model S X Flad on one axle of the Semi, which seems both dangerous and needless.

Given the lack of concern among semi users for a quick acceleration.

Crew Chief Brad: Wow. What’s funny is when the Tesla was first introduced in [01:28:00] 2017, they touted zero to 60 in five seconds, first 20 seconds for a diesel semi. So now the actual drivers are saying it’s going zero to 60 in 20 seconds.

Executive Producer Tania: I wonder if that’s empty or loaded.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s towing on

Crew Chief Eric: 9 11.

Executive Producer Tania: That right there, you built a semi truck capable of a zero to 60 in 20 seconds. Why? You’re not grounded in reality. It does not need to go zero to 60 in 20 seconds.

Crew Chief Brad: No, it needs to be safe and it needs to be able to walk and it needs to be durable. Their use case,

Executive Producer Tania: exactly. It’s like, I need to go distance.

I need longevity. I also need safety. I need to hopefully be able to stop when you have a huge payload of tens of thousands of pounds. Whatever.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s also a bunch of talk right now too about these new sodium batteries. There’s some stuff coming from Panasonic. There’s some alternatives to this. Some people are saying that we don’t need the sodium batteries, we don’t need these other techno.

There’s a lot of shaking of the tree right now, and even though Tesla’s been at the front [01:29:00] of this battery technology for a while, and I still think the the long term game. The long con here has been to sell everybody their battery technology in the same way that Toyota has licensed their hybrid technology to most of the automotive industry at this point.

But I don’t see it coming if we’re revolutionizing the battery technology. Still, I don’t think lithium ion is the answer. We’ve talked about that before, and this just proves the point and the bigger the object gets, whether it’s the cyber truck. Or the semi, we’re not getting the range out of them that we’re looking for.

And this isn’t a range anxiety thing. This isn’t an infrastructure thing. Like we were arguing about, you know, three years ago, this is the efficacy of these vehicles at a point of stupidity, where it’s just like, stick with what you’ve got.

Executive Producer Tania: And this is why you haven’t seen one yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they haven’t made it yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, now that you all have. Thoroughly lowered my expectations. Lowered expectations. Talk about something a little more fun. What did you guys, did you guys get anything good for Christmas?

Crew Chief Brad: I [01:30:00] got a leaf blower. A gasoline leaf blower. I

Executive Producer Tania: got a Mercedes Lego set. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, in our holiday shopping guide, we talked a lot about some really cool gifts that you could get.

I mean, we talked about the crazy stuff, model cars and Legos and watches and clothing and shoes and books and you name it, right? Well, there was a list that came out that was sort of the antithesis of our holiday shopping guide. The worst gifts you could have received this Christmas. Did you guys take a look at this list?

Some of these are. Pretty funny.

Crew Chief Brad: Dodge Charger

Executive Producer Tania: Shelby. Yeah, because I want a Chevy belt buckle. You know what? Those giant carbos are really expensive. Hundreds of dollars. That ain’t no joke if you actually got somebody one of those. There was an event one time and we had cars on site and they were Promotional lottery, you know, whatever cars people were gonna put in sweepstakes or whatever to get them.

Crew Chief Eric: They were making a donation that they would not get refunded. Yeah, I got you.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, but like the dealers they brought the bows to put on the [01:31:00] car and they were like do not mess these bows up Like it was like a whole thing. They’re like hundreds of dollars just for the one bow. They ain’t cheap

Crew Chief Brad: I love the useless multi function system.

I actually got my dad one for his truck a couple years ago The wrong polish knob.

Crew Chief Eric: I like this one, right? Because did you read the sub caption for this? And it says, a Mugen 5 speed shift knob. My car has a 6 speed and is German. And I was

Crew Chief Brad: like, that’s awesome. I love the ram. T shirt that was clearly bought at Walmart

Crew Chief Eric: and the dream cars calendar, like who gives people paper calendars anymore?

You know, I get my free one from SCCA every year. Don’t buy me a calendar, but I think my favorite is that last one where it’s GM parking only. And it’s a picture of a Mustang. Obviously they couldn’t tell the difference between the Mustang and the Camaro. And we’ve talked about that before.

Executive Producer Tania: I think that’s a gag gift.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of [01:32:00] gags. Tonya, you brought this next one to my attention.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh yeah. Did you watch the clip? You were silent on it. I’m like, wow, I stuck this out into the world and like nobody commented on it. I was like, let me crawl back under my hole here.

Crew Chief Eric: I saved it specifically. For this moment. I don’t know how we missed

Executive Producer Tania: this,

Crew Chief Eric: but we need to review this movie with Steve and Izzy,

Executive Producer Tania: right?

Crew Chief Eric: The movie we’re talking about is senior moment, starring William Shatner.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s epic. He’s like a retired test pilot or something. And he’s senior now and whatever. And like, he’s out in his like three 56 or something in California. And like he rolls up next to somebody in a stoplight and is all like let’s do this and like he’s like drag racing And I think he’s like 360s and across a parking lot or something I don’t know basically gets his like license revoked and then it’s this whole thing of him like trying to get his I think driver’s license back and then like meet some woman who I think is into cars too or something.

And he [01:33:00] ends up like on a racetrack with her. It’s like this whole thing. I’m like, what is going on?

Crew Chief Eric: This is awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: How did we miss this in the middle of COVID? It was 2021.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: Must’ve been a straight to TV streaming movie. There was nothing in the hallmark

Crew Chief Eric: channel, but we are definitely going to revisit this movie.

We’re going to pick this apart. We’re going to get together with Stephen Izzy. And I think this is going to be epic. Thank you, Tanya. We have found the next movie to review. Not

Executive Producer Tania: only William Shatner, but Jean Smart is like the woman in the movie and Jean Smart is hilarious. If anybody like follows her, I mean, she’s been around forever in everything.

Really good actress. Hilarious. There’s some spots for Christopher Wooley too.

Crew Chief Eric: Now this is going to be awesome. We’re going to have a lot of fun with this one. So folks, spoiler alert, in the future, there will be a review of Senior Moment on Break Fix. So we’re looking forward to doing that with Steve and Izzy.

So thank you, Tanya, for that. But since we’re talking about TV and movie right now, one of the announcements that came out here over the winter, and I don’t know if. Anybody’s actually surprised or if anybody [01:34:00] actually cares anymore, but top gear has been suspended indefinitely.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought that already happened like three years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no. Officially off the air. Wah, wah, wah. Until it comes back.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, I never knew when it was on or how to watch it after, for whatever reason, when I stopped with cable and I didn’t get BBC America anymore. I had no idea how to get it. So I just stopped watching it.

Crew Chief Eric: And Netflix lost its relationship with the BBC and then sort of got it back.

You know, COVID messed all that stuff up and then Britbox picked it up and then certain other places you can get BBC America through like Philo and things like that, but I lost interest once Clarkson Hammond and May were gone. And then the grand tour was such a disappointment that you’re just like, man, I don’t care anymore.

You know, there’s still even some grand tour specials that I haven’t watched. And I remind myself periodically, I’m like, Oh, I should watch something. And I’m like, Oh, I should watch the Scandi flick. Nah, I’ll just watch reruns of Star Trek instead because it’s like, I just don’t care anymore. You know, there’s so much other interesting stuff out there to talk about, whether it’s Tex Mex [01:35:00] Motors or the new season of Car Masters, which you can go back into our older episodes this month, William Ross and I sat down and reviewed season five of Car Masters.

Cause there’s some controversy there in the Ferrari world. And you know, there’s a lot of other stuff that’s gotten my attention. And so going back to watch. The same old shtick is whatever. And sadly, Top Gear America was not good. Top Gear Australia was short lived. I really enjoyed that. And then the new, they kept changing the team, except for, you know, Joey from Friends, you know, on Top Gear.

And it’s just like, whatever, who cares anymore?

Crew Chief Brad: I thought Matt LeBlanc was actually pretty good.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why they kept him around. Everybody else, it was like a revolving door until, you know, they got Chris Harris and all those guys. And even Chris Harris has got his own thing going on. But if you’re a fan of his podcast.

Even that doesn’t have any sort of cadence anymore. It’s like, oh, well, three months have gone by and he puts out another episode. And you’re like, all right, whatever. And I get that he’s busy doing his thing, but I think we’ve all sort of moved on. And the new generation of petrolheads [01:36:00] aren’t consuming this sort of media on TV anymore.

They’re consuming it on YouTube. So between Hoovy’s Garage and Whistle and Diesel and all those guys, I mean, there’s a million different channels you could be watching on YouTube and getting car reviews. And getting access to stuff and people hooning around and playing the fool. And speaking of hooning around, we also saw in the last couple of months, the dissolution of Hoonigan.

All the OG guys from Hoonigan are gone. Like just the last one, I think it was last week said he’s out, he’s done. And so you’re seeing a turnover right now in the market, in this automobile entertainment sector, whatever you want to call it. So we’re going to keep doing our thing like we always have, but I’m curious to see what.

Props out here in the next couple of years, if anything at all,

Crew Chief Brad: our four listeners are happy that we’re going to continue on

Crew Chief Eric: arbitrage rated for listeners. All right. So be real lowered expectations, right? The whole thing is sort of like, wow, that caught me by surprise. Didn’t know that was a thing, whatever.

And you know, we. Made [01:37:00] fun of this movie for such a long time. Oh, this is a joke, whatever. I had the opportunity to watch the Gran Turismo movie because I was delayed on a flight and I was like, well, I got a couple hours to kill. It’s free on the airline. I might as well watch it. I went into it with low expectations as the point of this segment.

And I came away. And I know you guys saw it as well. And I want to get your hot takes.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought it was good. I thought it was entertaining. I saw it in IMAX. It’s just something to do on a Wednesday night or something. I thought it was good. One thing I did note the Instagram personality, Amelia, I can’t remember her last name, but she was one of the drivers in the, in the movie.

So congratulations to her for getting a, uh, an acting gig like that. Good job. I thought it was interesting. I don’t think it had anything to do with how that whole situation really went down, but it was entertaining, which I think is the whole point of a movie to begin with. It’s supposed to be entertaining and I was entertained.

So the thumbs up.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And I think it gave us a glimpse into the NISMO program at the [01:38:00] time. It gave us a glimpse into the GT Academy and loosely based on true events. Now, Jan, the main character was actually in the movie and did his own stunt driving, which was cool, you know, on that part. Somebody else pointed out to me, you know, when he went through the GT Academy, the GTR was not available.

He was in 350Zs.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think that the GTR wasn’t available, but he didn’t use it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, nobody wants to watch a movie with, you know, 20 year old Nissan 350Zs in it, although it would have been kind of cool. Yeah, I

Executive Producer Tania: would have. I would have too. I would have preferred that. It would have been more exciting.

Crew Chief Brad: They should have used black Honda Civics with underglow.

Executive Producer Tania: They weren’t actually trying to make a documentary, so there you have it, because they should have actually used what he drove because those cars are still available. It can be found.

Crew Chief Eric: And I did have somebody ask me recently. I think Tanya, you’re with me when, when it happened, they were like, so did they really win Lamont?

The amateur class? Yeah, but not Lamont. So I was like, I’m not going to sit here and explain how sports car endurance racing works. So I just kind of nodded my head and smiled like an idiot. And I’m like, yeah, yeah,

yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: sure did. And unfortunately that’s the takeaway from the movie. It’s [01:39:00] going to give people this certain impression because once you put up that thing that says based on true events, how do you know what’s fact and what’s fiction?

Tanya, we talked about this. His coach, the chief engineer guy, that guy did not exist. Obviously he had a whole team of people he was working with, but that one character, they needed him to move the story forward. I’m assuming Orlando Bloom’s character sort of existed. That character existed. The things I took away from it, and I think you guys probably did too, is the driving sequences, the wide line and the late apex and all this stuff.

And I was like, what in. Physics. Are you talking about sometimes I take the line and it’s faster than the preferred line around the racetrack. And I’m like, offline passing is one thing, but all this nonsense, I’m like, dude, you’re losing speed. Yeah. The further you get away from the apex, the longer you’re making the track.

Like, what are you talking about? You’re not going to carry more speed on the exit. Just centrifugal force. It’s not going to work period. At that moment, I had to stop myself because I was getting agitated and I’m like, nope, stop, it’s a movie. Stop thinking about it. [01:40:00] Just go with it. What kind of killed me though, was every race ended the same way.

Executive Producer Tania: Two centimeters.

Crew Chief Eric: Ugh.

Executive Producer Tania: Difference, nose to nose.

Crew Chief Eric: Like an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard where the car is midair and they just, See y’all next week! And you’re like, come on, man. Everything’s a photo finish in this movie and it’s just super annoying. Drama. Oh yeah, okay, whatever. But, did you guys do some car spotting?

Because there was something super cool that I appreciate the movie for. What did Jans It’s dad drive. I know. I know. I was there. His dad drove a BR6 Corrado. How awesome is that? Yeah. Yeah. That car came on the screen. I was like, boom. I’m here for this. Now the stupid driving sequence, you know, trying to evade the cops and all that stuff.

I was like, okay. We owned a Corrado. I’ve driven Corrados. I drove my dad’s Corrado. I learned how to drive on a Corrado. It doesn’t do that, but okay. Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe in the right hands it does.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And the right hands of my controller on need for speed underground. It sure does, but not in real life. [01:41:00]

Executive Producer Tania: It must not have had glazed rotors.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh man. Oh God. Oh yeah. I wrecked cause I had glazed rotors. No, you did it. Yes, he did. Oh god.

Executive Producer Tania: Because Gran Turismo on PlayStation 2 simulated glazed rotors a lot or whatever. Yeah, it was so dumb. So

Crew Chief Brad: dumb.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s so realistic. It’s so realistic. I just wrote a whole article about simulation racing and the realism and how games have changed all this kind of stuff.

So I’m not going to go on my soapbox about that. I just encourage people to go to our website. It’s like GTMotorsports. org and read about it. It’s been an interesting adventure going into that, but Tanya and I recently sat down and watch Road to Glory, which is the group B story as told by Lancia. That too, we were doing fact checking while we’re watching the movie.

It’s like, did that really happen to Walter Rural? Like, and then, you know, Michelle Mutant drives me nuts. Some of the acting was just whatever, but the movie itself was actually quite good. And I’m going to watch it again. I want my kids to watch. It didn’t get good scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Tanya and I talked [01:42:00] about that and it’s like, who’s the person doing the judging of this?

Are these automotive enthusiasts? Are these rally fans? Or is it just a bunch of people going, Ah, this movie sucked. I didn’t like it. I thought it was dumb. Growing up in the groupie era, watching these races and whatnot. I thought it was a good way to dramatize and sort of water down the struggle between Lancia and Audi.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, they interweaved some real footage in there in a nice way, which was nice to see. Overall, the movie was entertaining, I would say questionable in terms of what was truly factual versus dramatization. And I think even the closing credits where it said, you know, based on true events, there was some other turn of phrase that was used that made it sound like it was more inspired by than based on loosely interpreted or something.

There was

Crew Chief Eric: definitely a disclaimer there, and it was an homage to the era, but it wasn’t in the same way as when we reviewed the Lamborghini movie where you’re like, This is fake. Don’t take this [01:43:00] as any sort of fact.

Executive Producer Tania: I’d be curious to, like, find some information around, because Walter Rorel was a huge focal point in the movie.

And honestly, I guess I don’t really know much about him. But the way he was depicted, I was a little surprised by, I guess I just had an assumption of his personal true character. And it was a bit of an antithesis to that. So I’d be interested to see, did they actually have his buy in and support of the way he was represented.

Crew Chief Eric: And a lot of us, especially in the Audi community, regard Walter Wuerl like he’s a god up on Mount Olympus. You know, he’s a hero amongst men. The way they painted him, you’re like, man, he’s a jerk. But I’ve read some articles, like in the Quattro Quarterly and stuff like that, where they’ve done these winter driving events with Walter, and I’ve seen some interviews with him and Hans Stuck.

He seems like a nice guy. I don’t know, maybe that’s because of age. Maybe back then when he was younger, he was like, I’m the hot shoe. Everybody wants me to drive on their team. And so he could play these games. Like they sort of portrayed him doing where it’s like, I’m going to drive the races I want to drive and to hell with the [01:44:00] rest of your season kind of thing.

And it really put. Launch on a bad spot again, if you’re a race fan and you want to learn a little bit about rally and you want to get a taste for group B without watching mockumentaries and stuff like the killer B years and some of these other films that are out there. This was a good telling from an angle that hasn’t been told before.

Normally you get the Audi side of things and the Ford RS 200 and you don’t really hear about launcher too much. So it was nice. to have a different perspective on the whole era. Now, I will say, I haven’t gotten the opportunity to watch the Ferrari movie yet. I’ve been told, go in with an open mind, again, be entertained.

So, we’ve got a bunch of these movies right now where it’s sort of like, take them on face value, be entertained. Again, I miss the chance to see Ferrari in theaters. I am going to watch it and hopefully we can get together and talk about it, maybe review that with Steven Izzy as well, because, you know, there is that Hollywood aspect.

Of the new Ferrari movie as well. But I’ve heard good things about it, so I’m excited to see that. So hopefully by next time, you know, we’ll be able to talk about it a little bit more. But before we [01:45:00] close out, lowered expectations, Brad, we have a nominee for the uncool wall.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, . This is like the eagle eye hammer thrust right here.

This is like the Jeep Patriot. It looks like the old Cherokee. I don’t know what that is. The Liberty or the Patriot. Compass. That’s the other one I was thinking.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s read the name of this thing, shall we? It says here, the extremely rare and bizarre Italian coach built Hummer, H one T-Rex.

Executive Producer Tania: It has nothing to do with a Hummer has.

Has that person ever seen a Hummer? It’s

Crew Chief Eric: obviously a Jeep. This thing is

Crew Chief Brad: horrendous for every Aries coach builder to build something that people might actually want. There’s this. Will. I am coach builder. That is absolutely

Crew Chief Eric: absurd. I don’t get it. And that’s just it. And so what I love about this is when I saw this, I laughed out loud.

And then I said, man, Oh man, we finally got the La Forza [01:46:00] for the new era. Cause if you remember that SUV handcrafted Italian made from like. A lot of parts out of Russia or whatever, like this is the same thing, you know, move it forward about 10, 20 years. It’s abysmal. I mean, there’s no other way to put this absolutely horrendous.

It just proves that there’s an ass for every seat because somebody bought this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: So what’s better, this or the multi blood?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’d buy this before I. Took over your Cybertruck allotment.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that a circle sunroof?

Crew Chief Eric: You don’t have to unpack it really. It just gets worse. The more you look at it. We do have rich people thangs.

Executive Producer Tania: Picture that I found Michael Jordan, allegedly a picture of him unveiling at some point, his car collection at the time of this picture, the second most expensive in the world. I don’t know if that’s true anymore. Probably not. But what was interesting was immediately. Where my eyes went by like the front row of red Ferraris with the rally cars on the left [01:47:00] side.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: You get the three random rally cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, not just random. Some of the most iconic ones in history.

Crew Chief Brad: Random as some of these are not like the others.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Okay. But let’s look at what they are for what they are. The Audi S1 Evo 2 Pikes Peak car. The Delta S4. And at 037, I’m like, holy crap. Those are three of the most iconic rally cars of all time.

And if you look closely, you can’t identify all the cars in this mix. I mean, you can point out the Countach and the 550 convertible in the back and the 599. There’s a Miura, there’s a R390 Nissan GT1 street version. He’s got two EB110s. There’s some cool stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s got two 550 convertibles. And then I think the other.

Newer Ferrari, there’s like a convertible 599 or

Crew Chief Eric: FXX or, yeah, Fiorano or one of those. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s Fiorano.

Crew Chief Brad: And then the orange cars looks like an XJ220 with a wing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That’s what I was thinking too. So that’s an [01:48:00] XJ220LM if it has that on it. Each of the Ferrari halo cars, the 288 GTO, the F40 and the F50.

If

Executive Producer Tania: this is true, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a hell of a collection. Whoever it belongs to,

Executive Producer Tania: or maybe it’s all Photoshop.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s his Forza Garage, Project Cars here or whatever. That’s what my Forza Garage looks like. 100 percent it does.

Executive Producer Tania: My Forza Garage would have a Fiat Panda in it.

Crew Chief Eric: And an Eagle Talon. I can only imagine that Michael Jordan has some cool cars.

That’s all I’m going to say about this. So whether this is real or fiction, I’m good with it one way or the other. Well, now it’s time we go down south. Talk about alligators and meat.

Florida man.

Executive Producer Tania: Except I don’t think we ever do and this is what happens when somebody else does Florida man. Cause I don’t know what this one [01:49:00] has to do with anything other than being part of stupid criminal files, but if you’re going to rob a Walmart, don’t do it when 75 police officers are there for a shop with a cop day.

Just saying. Don’t rob Walmart in general, but if you’re going to, cause you’re stupid, don’t do it when the PO is there.

Crew Chief Brad: It says 727. I read that 72, 000. I was like, who would be thinking of 72, 000 worth of shit at Walmart? It’s one of everything in the store.

Executive Producer Tania: So don’t do that. I’m not sure where the car relation is.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s holiday Florida, man. You see, that’s the

Crew Chief Brad: importance

Crew Chief Eric: of it.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe there were Hot Wheels in the 727 worth of shit. Guarantee you there were. Probably some

Executive Producer Tania: Power Wheels.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that’s how they were moving the merchandise.

Executive Producer Tania: That would have been a good story. Woman driving power wheels with seven hundred, uh, with six hundred and fifty.

You gotta count the power wheels in there. Yeah. [01:50:00] Anyway. Moving on. This next one’s much better. I didn’t know the Danes were so foolish.

Crew Chief Eric: You know why this is important? We literally talked about this a couple drive thrus back where we said we’ve never had Danish people in the Florida Man segment and the universe.

Provided the donor provides.

Executive Producer Tania: Ah, this intrepid soul thought that they were going to keep their EV battery. It’s not disclosed which EV this is.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s just assume it’s a Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Their electric vehicle, they wanted to keep the battery warm during the below freezing overnight temperatures. What do you think they did?

Have a garage? Have a heated garage? Maybe they exist, I don’t know, like, blanket? Like, the diesel engines you can get? The warming blankets? I think it’s probably a bad idea on the battery in general, and that you can’t get that, but this guy thought putting a toaster on the highest setting possible under the car, presumably touching the [01:51:00] battery.

It was a good idea. The whole damn thing burnt to the ground.

Crew Chief Brad: It worked.

Executive Producer Tania: The battery was warm.

Crew Chief Brad: The battery was warm. The

Executive Producer Tania: battery was warm.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s all you can ask for.

Crew Chief Eric: It was warm for quite a while too.

Crew Chief Brad: I applaud his ingenuity.

Crew Chief Eric: I love the subheading here. Danish police say they strongly discourage this practice.

To me that implies that it’s happened more than once. There’s a run on people heating their EVs with toasters?

Crew Chief Brad: Or space heaters or something? Space heaters, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So this begs the question, my diesel has a plug with an engine warmer that I can plug in in the winter. You’ve

Crew Chief Brad: got an engine block heater.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, so.

The electric car is already plugged in. Why aren’t the manufacturers creating a system that pulls the electricity from the wall and keeps the batteries at a temperature that is comfortable for them in these sub below temperatures? Well, I don’t get it here. What possesses people?

Crew Chief Brad: It would use too much battery power to keep the battery warm,

Crew Chief Eric: but it’s plugged in

Executive Producer Tania: or you live [01:52:00] somewhere where it’s like sub Arctic temperatures.

Don’t have an EV because they’re not going to be great. I mean, bless you for thinking of the environment in terms of emissions from your tailpipe. But

Crew Chief Eric: how many pollutants does a melting EV put into the atmosphere? That’s what I want

Executive Producer Tania: to know. They probably can never recoup that. All the toxins that got released in the burning of that vehicle.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a government grant. I would be okay with subsidizing. Let’s do a study on when a Tesla burns to the ground, how many hydrocarbons does that put into the atmosphere?

Executive Producer Tania: But EVs burn to the ground far less often than ICE vehicles.

Crew Chief Eric: Tell me they burn cleaner. That’s all I want to know.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that’s the clean

Crew Chief Eric: incineration of your vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: All right, this next one had a video with it, but the video doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s really hard to understand what’s actually happening. Somebody driving a dump truck abandoned it on the highway. And then almost got plowed into by a cement truck.

Crew Chief Eric: But also, did you notice in the [01:53:00] photograph, they put a spotlight on the guy.

What’s in the left lane that he almost got hit by as well?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, that’s who recorded the video. A Tesla dash cam caught it.

Crew Chief Eric: See, it’s Tesla’s everywhere.

Executive Producer Tania: Without seeing the video, it’s hard to say what actually we’re supposed to get out of this. Because one photo, the dump truck was literally just. Stopped in a lane of traffic and it’s a foggy situation.

I don’t necessarily blame him for wanting to get out of the car. Are you safe? Stop dead in a lane of moving traffic.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re safer in the car than out.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know if you are or not.

Crew Chief Eric: I call this the Tony Stewart rule. We learned this at the track all the time. Never get out of the vehicle unless it’s on fire, and if it is, go somewhere safe.

Again, what possesses people to do shit like this?

Crew Chief Brad: I still feel like it’s safer to be in a vehicle on the highway than to be out of the vehicle on the highway.

Executive Producer Tania: Suspended on a bridge like that? You’re stuck. But if you were somewhere where you could go over the Jersey wall behind a guardrail and be far away from your vehicle, I’d say it’s safer to get the hell out than have some [01:54:00] asshole who’s texting rear end you because that happens all the time.

In

Crew Chief Brad: that instance. Yes, I would say so. But this guy clearly didn’t have any situational awareness to see. I mean, yes, he’s on a bridge. Where the fuck is he going to go?

Executive Producer Tania: Some people in the comments who saw the video were like, the cement truck was headed straight for him. If you saw cement truck heading straight for you, what would you do?

Stand there? I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, no, I wouldn’t be out of the car, period.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll say this in closing. We’ll never know except for the few photographs that are lingering around, because not only was the video taken down, to Tanya’s point, if you read closely the warning from YouTube, it’s not just like, Oh, the user, the author creator of this video has remove this or whatever.

It literally says the video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with the video has been terminated.

I don’t know what that means.

Crew Chief Eric: Something really egregious happened here. Like I don’t really know. So I don’t think it was a publicity stunt or anything, but it is a public service announcement in the sense that to Tanya’s point, if you’re on a bridge, you’re sort of stuck.

But I tend to agree that if you can get your vehicle. Off the [01:55:00] road as it’s becoming incapacitated and you can get away from your car with your cell phone, you’re probably better off over the wall in the woods as far away from it because that chance that the truck driver or that another Tesla or whatever it is, isn’t paying attention and hits you could be pretty high these days.

So when you do exit, don’t do like this guy, don’t exit into traffic, crawl across your interior, you know, exit out the passenger side, especially if you’re in the right shoulder, you know, stuff like that. Use common sense at the end of the day. And finally, this last one, who needs the Tesla semi?

Executive Producer Tania: You must’ve been planning this because you hook up your, what is this?

A model model?

Crew Chief Eric: Why

Executive Producer Tania: you’re able to hitch it randomly to the

Crew Chief Eric: 53 foot trailer.

Executive Producer Tania: Like what

Crew Chief Eric: was this? Daniel, is

Executive Producer Tania: that possible that your hitch just can connect? You must’ve purposely planned this and like had time to make sure you had the correct hitch to mate with this. trailer

Crew Chief Brad: he got the right attachments and jerry rigged something onto the trail was that in the

Executive Producer Tania: foundation edition

Crew Chief Brad: maybe [01:56:00] this is in the tri mode or cyber beast edition

Crew Chief Eric: did you see the tiktok video though like this was done on purpose i’m guessing that the trailer yeah it’s empty it

Executive Producer Tania: was 100 percent done on purpose

Crew Chief Eric: there he is doing like Three miles an hour towing this thing and then he turns across traffic, but it did it.

He’s pulling it. And that’s the thing about towing, right? I mean, we joke all the time about the Europeans and they’ll tow a vacation camper van behind them with a Seat Ibiza or whatever the 1600, you know, four cylinder. But the thing is, once you overcome the inertia and you start rolling a lot of the big trucks, it’s sort of a waste in the sense.

And I understand the science that he’s proving here that you don’t need an F. 475 triple diesel, you know, smokestacks and all this stuff. Did the batteries burn up? Right. You put a lot of stress on that Model Y at the end of the day. And that’s where the big trucks have the advantage. They can pull a lot of weight with ease.

But once you’re rolling at 50 miles an hour. The most important thing at that point is how big are your brakes? How quickly can you [01:57:00] stop that weight? But once you’ve overcome the inertia, eh, it’s all about the same, right? I’ll give credit where credit is due. As stupid as this is, the Tesla Y did it, but I don’t know if he was carrying pillows in the back.

The weight of an unladen trailer is heavy.

Executive Producer Tania: It did it, but we don’t know that that Tesla’s gonna go another 100 miles down the road before.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s under warranty, 13 motors later, it’ll be fine. We already know this.

Executive Producer Tania: If you go back to the PepsiCo Tesla semi truck that it couldn’t do 400 miles, it burned itself up.

It probably had an empty payload and it burned the batteries up in the motor or whatever for going 400 miles. It’s allegedly designed to be a tractor trailer. And this thing pulled a trailer. I don’t know. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: you said it before the Tesla semi is built with car parts. What you saw here is this is the Tesla semi.

You just put the bigger body on top of the model Y and you have the semi

Crew Chief Brad: weight reduction. This is Tesla semi 2. 0.

Crew Chief Eric: This is the Tesla semi superleggera. [01:58:00]

Executive Producer Tania: You get the plaid edition, then you get the speed key,

Crew Chief Eric: triple motors, the whole nine yards.

Executive Producer Tania: Could the model Y do zero to 16, 20 seconds?

Crew Chief Eric: With the trailer.

Yeah. A hundred percent. That rounds out our Florida man for the winter, Tanya. I’m looking forward to, as we come out of the winter freeze, what will blossom in the great state. State of Florida for us, you know, great stories that we get to tell throughout the year. So looking forward to it. And for those of you that are missing out on a great Florida man stories, go back to last month.

We did our best of Florida man stories from the year, incorporating some new stuff in there too, that you haven’t had heard before. So it was a lot of fun. So hopefully if you didn’t catch it, go back and listen to it. And if you did, we hope we put a smile on your face, more to come from Florida man throughout the year.

But now it’s time to go behind the pit wall, talk about sports news. Of which we have none on this list because it’s the middle of winter and the seasons really haven’t kicked off. There’s no formula one right now. You know, everything’s really still in its gestation period. The only event that I can think of that’s [01:59:00] of importance or significance right now is kicking off the sports car and endurance series.

At the end of January at the Rolex 24 hours. So I’m really looking forward to watching Rolex from the comfort of my couch this year. As we talked about last year, it’s a great way to kick off the year. And I am also looking forward to my membership to the ACO, getting access to the WEC races leading up to Le Mans.

And then, you know, I’m thinking. Maybe we’ll go back to Rhode Atlanta for petite again this year. That was a lot of fun last year. It was great getting together with friends down there, making new friends while I was down there. Really looking forward to the sports car and endurance scheduled this year.

And as a bonus, some of our new co hosts on break fix that’ll be coming on throughout the year that you’ll get to hear their voices. A couple of us are actually rally fans. So we’re going to be doing some like quarterly rally recaps instead of doing it inside of the drive thru episode. So you can totally fast forward and skip over those episodes if you’re not interested.

But if you want to learn more about WRC, we’re going to be doing some specials [02:00:00] throughout the year. So I’m really looking forward to doing some coverage with some other fans of rally this year. You guys have any events that you’re looking forward to? Any news, any rumblings in formula one?

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, all the new livery press events are being set up and McLaren just dropped a bomb on everybody and release.

There’s just

Crew Chief Eric: randomly that looks like last year’s and the year before.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. All the cars always look like the year before. The only one that’ll be different this year, I guess, is Alfa Romeo is no longer Alfa Romeo. They’re steak. Yeah. That’s a cool name.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a gap year, right? Until Audi comes on next.

Year

Crew Chief Brad: possibly. Is Audi still coming? I don’t know. Is

Crew Chief Eric: Andretti buying Haas? I mean, there’s all that drama too, right?

Crew Chief Brad: No. , I mean, yeah, not true bombshell. I guess in F1 right now is that Gunther Steiner is no longer the principal for Haas

Executive Producer Tania: who gives a crap good. Like why did Gene keep him as long as he did?

Crew Chief Brad: Because of the ratings are drive

Crew Chief Eric: to survive.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, he was a personality. Force or a farce. I don’t know. One of the two. I like [02:01:00] them. I like them.

Crew Chief Eric: Next month, we are dedicating February to NASCAR. We have a full lineup of NASCAR episodes. So if you’re at home watching the Daytona 500 in February, catch up on some of our history of motorsport series, where we’re going to be reviewing the beginnings of NASCAR and some of its changes all the way up through NASCAR in space.

So look forward to some really cool episodes. In February surrounding NASCAR. And with that, our motorsports news is brought to us in partnership with the international motor racing research center in Watkins Glen. They haven’t posted their schedule of events yet, but I can tell you that the eighth annual Argenzinger symposium is going to be in the November timeframe.

Again, it’s always in the fall, just about the same time every year. So you can pretty much put that on your calendar right now, or at least to save the date for that. They’re still trying to figure out the rest of their schedule for 2025. for, but I do want to remind everybody that the current Corvette e ray sweepstakes for the [02:02:00] IMRRC is ongoing through April of 2024.

So if you want to be eligible to win that e ray 3LZ convertible package, you can go to racingarchives. org and click on the Corvette sweepstakes and enter to win today. There’s a bunch of different promo codes for that, where you can, you know, double down on tickets. If you want to get more information on that.

Call the research center, ask for Kip, and he can give you all the information you need on how to get involved in the sweepstakes for the Corvette. So we’re looking forward to seeing that car in person and congratulating whoever wins it here in the April timeframe. So you’re still in time to jump in and get yourself a Corvette.

Well, guys, it’s that time that we do our shout outs, promotions, and anything else we haven’t covered thus far.

Crew Chief Brad: As a reminder, you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the Ultimate Reference for Car Enthusiasts on collectorcarguide. net.

Crew Chief Eric: And the track season is not yet underway, so we don’t have any special bulletins as part of our hbdejunkie.

com trackside [02:03:00] report, but Dave Peters is in the process of adding all sorts of events to his database.

Executive Producer Tania: Not kicking off, maybe not up here. Kick off for NASA, MSR Houston is like a week or two away.

Crew Chief Eric: Chin has already got like eight events for the next eight weeks. So yeah, no, there are track events going on, but we’re looking down the barrel of some snowstorms right now.

So there’s nothing happening in our area for sure. And we are also carrying a new motorsports calendar on gt motorsports. org. So you can check out some of the other events, whether it’s road rallies, club racing, rally cross, autocross, all those kinds of things from around the country on our events database.

Executive Producer Tania: We just crested 260 episodes of break fix while you’ve been listening to this episode, but more importantly, we’ve expanded our catalog as part of our new motoring podcast network, where you can enjoy programs like the Ferrari marketplace, the motoring historian, the history of motorsports series. Break, fix, and others.

Just search for break slash [02:04:00] fix or grand touring everywhere you download stream or listen and be sure to check out www. motoringpodcast. net for reviews of the show’s new episodes, bios of our on air personalities, and descriptions of the services we offer.

Crew Chief Eric: We don’t have any special announcements for For our winter recap.

But when we do, you’ll find them here as part of our wrap up.

Crew Chief Brad: If you’d like to become a break, fix VIP, jump over to www. patreon. com slash GT motor sports, and learn about our different tiers. Join our discord or become a member of the GTM clubhouse by signing up at club. gtmotorsports. org. Drop us a line on social media or visit our Facebook group and leave us a comment.

Tell us what you like and send us ideas for future shows.

Executive Producer Tania: And remember 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.

Crew Chief Brad: And I want to give a special shout out to all the guest hosts that dropped in and filled in for me during my leave.

Danny Pilling from Danny P on cars podcast, Don [02:05:00] Weber from garage style magazine, and of course, William big money Ross from the exotic car marketplace. And a thank you to our co host and executive producer, Tanya and all the fans, friends, and family who support GTM. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: You are back. My friend, you are back and thanks for being back that big. Thank you to you. And we’re happy to have you back on the air. So looking forward to more episodes with rad on break, fix,

Executive Producer Tania: break, fix on the outro

Crew Chief Brad: on the,

Executive Producer Tania: on the. .

Crew Chief Brad: I was gonna say, welcome to Break Fix. This is our parenting podcast where we talk about how our kids break things and we have to fix them

Crew Chief Eric: and change diapers.

I do like that though. And change

Crew Chief Brad: diapers.

Crew Chief Eric: MPN, the tro ,

Crew Chief Brad: cinco, there’s[02:06:00]

behind

Executive Producer Tania: me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, what you trying to do

blind

Executive Producer Tania: me?

My wife says Maybe we should.

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 GrandTouringMotorsports. 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 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 [02:07:00] 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 Sponsorships
• 00:46 Welcome to Episode 41
• 01:44 Breaking News: Tesla Cybertruck
• 02:44 Cybertruck Features and Pricing
• 07:06 Cybertruck Performance and Issues
• 18:59 Tesla’s Marketing and Publicity Stunts
• 20:24 Cybertruck’s Practicality and Real-World Use
• 36:49 Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche News
• 40:10 The Decline of Hot Hatches
• 40:53 Volkswagen’s Identity Crisis
• 41:12 European Cars We Wish We Had
• 42:09 The Future of Stellantis
• 44:14 The Death of Fiat in the US
• 48:13 The Rise of Car Modding
• 53:05 The Future of EVs and Hybrids
• 59:28 The Struggles of Mitsubishi
• 01:08:41 The Tesla Dilemma
• 01:21:42 Tesla’s Pricing Chaos
• 01:22:24 Tesla’s New Ventures: Food and Entertainment
• 01:24:17 Tesla Semi: A Hot Mess
• 01:29:57 Holiday Gifts and Worst Presents
• 01:32:16 Movie Reviews: Senior Moment and Gran Turismo
• 01:33:57 Top Gear and Automotive Entertainment
• 01:48:33 Florida Man Stories
• 01:58:43 Motorsports News and Events
• 02:02:37 Shoutouts and Promotions