B/F: The Drive Thru #44

• Newey to leave Red Bull over Horner allegations
• Did anyone hear about the debut of "F1 Arcade" in Boston?

• Best Car Wash Prank?
• The Highway Hoopties - Why is it always an Altima?

• Moonshine cave found underneath North Wilkesboro Speedway grandstands, track officials say

Literally drove the wheels off it...

Indy Cars get a new Aeroscreen

• ESE Carbon Reveals "The E3"

Model Car Collectors Rejoice! - Mattel makes VR6 Corrado casting.

• What's the Real Difference: 550 Maranello v 575?

• No One Wants To Pay $200,000 For A Tesla Cybertruck Anymore
• This Is Why Tesla’s Stainless Steel Cybertrucks May Be Rusting
• The CyberTruck Recall - Insider Reveals Issues
• Tesla puts ‘$25,000 electric car’ codenamed NV9 on back burner despite what Elon Musk said
• Tesla laying off more than 10% of staff globally as sales fall

CyberTruck Pedal Recall Fixed!

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: Well, I guess that just about wraps up April and I have to give a big shout out to you, Tanya, for helping us get through this April episode here.

And as Brad likes to say, unfortunately, he couldn’t be with us here tonight.

Crew Chief Brad: That was set up pretty well. That was, that was set up pretty well. But

Crew Chief Eric: I thought we were going to get a good April fool’s on you, my man.

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I guess we should probably kick this thing off. Shouldn’t we?

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe I got to get to it.

Pop the

Crew Chief Eric: clutch.

Crew Chief Brad: Let’s do [00:01:00] it. Welcome to drive through episode number 44. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car. Jason news. Now. Let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, in the spirit of April fools, we seem to do this every year, kind of flip flopping between herb day, earth day, April fools for April.

It’s such a slow news month. And I got to bring something up that you brought up before Brad, that you don’t like to hear. It’s the mid year already for 2024 vehicles. And I think that’s why the news is so slow because we should be talking about those 20, 25 models that are right around the corner.

Crew Chief Brad: I can’t say that I’m excited about any new cars, really.

Crew Chief Eric: I found a good one for you. And in the spirit of, of upcoming father’s day of April fools, I found the perfect. Dad joke for you. You know how many, many times on this show you will kick off and go, you know what really grinds my [00:02:00] gears?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. The old family guy bit. Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. You know what really grinds my gears?

Crew Chief Brad: Uh, what’s that? Clutch

Crew Chief Eric: failure. Yeah, I’d

Crew Chief Brad: have to say that is probably the number one cause of grinding gears.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought that was good. I read that. I laughed out loud. I was like, that is the perfect petrol head dad joke. If I’ve ever heard one, that’s, that’s fantastic. Yes. It is unfortunately a slow news month.

We aren’t kidding about that, but we do have some things to cover here. Wanted to kick off just a little bit of Earth Day stuff, talking about the 20th anniversary of the green Grand Prix. If you missed it, I’m sorry you missed it. We live streamed it again this year on our Twitch channel, and we were posting about it on our new Instagram.

So if you’re not following us at Motoring Podcast Network. Please do so that’s where we’re posting all the updates about the shows, about the drive thrus, about everything we’re doing, especially with our partners and other folks that are participating in the motor and podcast network. So 20 years, the green ground pre I got [00:03:00] to ride a shotgun with one of the folks from Toyota corporate in a brand new 2024 Prius prime.

I learned a ton about it. There’s a nearly. Hour and 45 minute video of us going back and forth, talking about the Prius, talking about Toyota, the history of Toyota motorsport, as we’re driving around the track, so you get a perspective of Watkins Glen while we’re driving this Prius and, you know, debating back and forth and stuff.

So shout out to Jeremy from Toyota. Fantastic time. Excellent driver has done the green Grand Prix a ton of times. The autocross was a little lackluster this year. We have recap footage of that as well out on our YouTube channel. The weather wasn’t great. And I’m thinking maybe that’s what kind of put a damper, ha ha pun intended on the event.

It did start to clear up throughout the weekend, but I will say some of my favorite cars, as you saw, we posted some pictures on our social media on at grand touring motor sports, Instagram channel, the veggie powered rabbit diesel pickup truck was definitely a favorite [00:04:00] for me. And then the Autocross killing Geo Metro, AKA Suzuki Swift was back and all EV built by one of the universities.

Fantastic car. Good to see that back out there again.

Crew Chief Brad: And I’m assuming they explain how the ruling works or the scoring and everything. So what is it? It’s the greatest distance in the amount of time you have to run it or something?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a trophy bearing event because it’s a SCCA sanctioned Road rally.

So you actually score SCCA points, you get a trophy. It’s a legitimate, it’s not just some gimmicky thing that they’re putting on. It’s very professionally done. I mean, obviously after 20 years, they’ve got their act together. This year they did try some different timing software, which is pretty cool. And the most important thing, you know, obviously the autocross is scored like a traditional SCCA autocross and all that kind of stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Oh my God. The Sienna at the autocross. That’d be fun.

Crew Chief Eric: They, uh, and they do break it down into classes, which is cool. So the Sienna Pride be in its own class as a van, just like my Jeep was in a diesel only class, you know, that kind of thing. So it’s not closed [00:05:00] to just EVs or hybrids. It’s alternative to gasoline.

So there’s a whole bunch of options there. There’s homegrown, there’s SAE cars, all sorts of stuff at the Green Grand Prix. So at the end, what you hang your hat on, what you can boast about is those MPG numbers. And I’m surprised you guys didn’t ask me, how did the Prius do?

Crew Chief Brad: Is the Prius Prime a plug in hybrid?

Crew Chief Eric: It is. What I’ve learned is all the prime models are plugins.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. So that, that’s what makes it prime.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. We managed to squeeze out by playing with the hybrid system because what’s cool about the prime is you can actually force it into gas only mode or full EV mode or hybrid mode.

Crew Chief Brad: You can hypermile it.

Crew Chief Eric: You can, you can. So we were able to stretch the 40 miles of all electric that it can do.

Crew Chief Brad: 49.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Throughout the 80 miles. Of the green ground pre and we clocked in 99. 9 miles per gallon. It was insane. So we barely used a gallon of fuel during that entire, like two hours that we were on track. [00:06:00]

Crew Chief Brad: Something tells me that the E46 M3 that Clarkson ran against the Prius on the top of your track would not be able to see those same numbers.

Crew Chief Eric: No,

Crew Chief Brad: not even close.

Crew Chief Eric: The Green Grand Prix is a lot of fun, hoping to see it grow maybe in its 21st year. Here’s some rumors about things that are changing. So really looking forward to that coming up next year at Watkins Glen. So if you can make the trek, check it out. But if you want to see what it’s been like over the last couple of years, check our YouTube channel for all the different live streams.

I guess they wouldn’t be live streams anymore. They would be Just videos, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Streaming. Yeah. Streams. I guess you’re

Crew Chief Eric: streaming it. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Before you move on for those of us, wink, wink, nudge, nudge me who are interested in possibly running with my, now that I’m a hybrid owner, Toyota Sienna, maybe next year or in years to come, where can we go to get more information?

Crew Chief Eric: www. greengrandprix. com. That’ll have all the rules, regulations, details, costs. It’s not a very expensive [00:07:00] event, but yeah, everything you need to know is on greengrandprix. com. Well, other big news for the show, we advertise this. On the motoring podcast network, Instagram, and a bunch of other places. As you know, we have a partnership that’s been building with the ACO for the American arm of the automobile club of the West, the sanctioning body of 24 hours in Lemans.

So I took over as the MC for evening with a legend. And I was looking back over the calendar, you know, kind of reminding people, Hey, you know, check out these episodes and things that we’ve done in the past. And almost to the day, the serendipity of this, right. And I hate that word almost to the day. I got to sit down and do round two with Mario Andretti.

What an unbelievable, just legendary driver. Hell of a guy for almost 85 years old. He is in top physical shape. He’s all there. Amazing storyteller. We specifically talked about his not one, not two, but nine attempts. Winning Lamar over [00:08:00] basically a four decade period. And so lots of really interesting stories.

I mean, there’s one point when you listen to the interview, we’re just cracking up because he’s talking about breaking zones at night. And he tells a story about this church and he kept using it as a reference point. At one point he goes, I just kept thinking that I hope the church doesn’t move. What? So it was a lot of fun.

It was good to get back together with Mario again. And we’re going to re release the episode here in the next coming week. So stay tuned to break fix podcast, where you’ll see the evening with a legend series coming out. We’re actually kicking it off with a reprise of Ben Keating’s episode from late last year.

So that’s going to come out and then we’re going to go to leapfrog. Some of the episodes. So we’re going to be bringing that onto the motoring podcast network, obviously sponsored by the ACO. So really looking forward to that. I also did Rick noobs a couple of months ago in February. That’ll be coming out here in the summer.

And then we’ve got some other guests lined up, so I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you’re not an ACO USA member, check it out. You can get access to the [00:09:00] private Facebook, get access to some of these legend. We actually recorded the Mario episode. In front of a live audience and people are sending me questions and managing the chat.

And so it was a really, really good time as super geeked to see him. And again, you know, just focusing on those Lamont stories. I mean, so much good and so much bad and so many learning experiences for him. I just was like absorbing as much as I could from the storytelling. So absolutely fantastic. And it is available right now on our Patreon for our VIPs.

So you can get it uncut raw, exactly the way it was recorded today. Patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports.

Crew Chief Brad: Sweet. So what do you have planned for Mario next year?

Crew Chief Eric: I know, right? We got to do an anniversary special with Mario and Dreddy. I think that’s going to be awesome. Well, that’s the end of our showcase.

Crew Chief Brad: Shortest episode ever.

Crew Chief Eric: So why don’t we move on to automotive news?

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like we should just start making shit up.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, that’s what some other shows do, but we’re going to stick to the facts.

Crew Chief Brad: Volkswagen [00:10:00] announced this month. The new W24 VR motor going into the GTI.

Crew Chief Eric: So what you’re saying is it’s Volkswagen with a T, right?

Remember that?

Crew Chief Brad: No, it’s, it’s Volkswagen.

Crew Chief Eric: Volkswagen, ah.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re from Minnesota. Volkswagen from Minnesota.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll power it with eggs. That’s our new alternative fuel. We’ll call it the Yolkswagen.

Crew Chief Brad: No, they should power it with potatoes. What would that be? The Spudwagen? Yes, the Spudnikwagen.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Well, we got no Volkswagen news, no Audi news, no Porsche news.

We got nothing from Mercedes because I don’t know what they’re doing over there, building the EQS. But we have some news sort of by way of BMW. Do you guys remember the color changing car that they were kind of throwing out there, but it wasn’t really color changing. It was monochromatic, like a Kindle body, and you could do all this kind of stuff.

And then they talked about patterns and, you know, making the car chameleon to the background, all that. You remember, we talked about this a couple of times.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but I thought it was [00:11:00] actually towards the end there. The latest variation was actually color changing.

Crew Chief Eric: It was official in April. I don’t know if it’s April fools, but the headline reads.

BMW unveils the world’s first fully color changing car. What could go wrong?

Crew Chief Brad: Cool idea. I guess.

Crew Chief Eric: Breaker, breaker. I’m in pursuit of a blue, I mean, green, uh, uh, yellow BMW.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess the question is how long does it take? Yeah. First of all, do you have to swipe your credit card to download the subscription so that you can change the color?

And do you have to buy new colors through microtransactions? Do they use the BMW slash EA subscription model? Yes. All of them.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. I think the idea is cool. I mean, you’re going to see some crazy stuff. To quote Tanya from the last time we talked about this, I believe she said some asshats going to run around with dick butts all over their car.

Crew Chief Brad: Shout out to Sam Harrington.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. I don’t know what the limit is on the capability or the [00:12:00] technology. It was just sort of a headline in a picture of a not so attractive BMW in a not really Harlequin, it was a very price is right looking seventies layout.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like you didn’t need to say not so attractive BMW.

I feel like you say that anyway, when you just say a BMW, you

Crew Chief Eric: know, the grills are small on this particular one.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s the news right there. BMW grills have gotten smaller, small grill, small grill.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the idea of a Harlequin. I want to change it up. I want my car black today, tomorrow, Navy blue. I want to do something crazy.

Cause I’m going to a car show. I think that’s cool. But having owned a BMW in the past, and you’ve heard me say this before, overcomplicated and not made of the best materials. So sort of wondering how long before this breaks, it’s going to be expensive to replace.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Is it Sherwin Williams paint or is it bare?

It’s Kindle. It’s Kindle paint. Yeah. Is it, do you flip a switch? I bet in order for it to work, the car probably has to be in park or it has to be [00:13:00] in some special mode. Yeah. You can’t do it while driving down the road.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it looks like I stand corrected. Our resident Mercedes aficionado has found an article for us.

What is this all about?

Executive Producer Tania: This is the most interesting thing happening right now. I mean, it’s pretty sad. What is this fossil that you have

Crew Chief Eric: presented us with? What are you talking about? The G Wagon. It’s like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. They’ve been making this thing for a hundred years. How is this news?

Crew Chief Brad: And now they’re making an electric one.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, yes, it’s not even about the G Wagon. Per se, but yes, they’re making an electric one, but what they’re doing is alphabet soup badge engineering, again, dropping the whole EQ, EQE, EQ, whatever nomenclature, and they’re going back to the more traditional letter and numbers,

Crew Chief Brad: God,

Executive Producer Tania: even though the numbers when it’s EV really don’t mean anything anymore, but

Crew Chief Brad: the points don’t matter 100

Executive Producer Tania: percent don’t matter

Crew Chief Brad: the EQG what get out of here.[00:14:00]

How do you pronounce that? Equi Equigee. E Egegee. I got, I got a Egegee. A 2005 Egegee. So it

Executive Producer Tania: won’t be the EQG anymore. It’ll just be the G580.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s just the guh. The guh. It’s the guh.

Executive Producer Tania: But who knows what the 580 actually has anything to do with.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad, I get your point. It’s sort of like the Volkswagen. How do you actually pronounce Touareg?

Is it twarg? It’s Torg from Borg. Yeah, right. I never really Glommed onto the whole EQ idea, the EQE and the EQS. And I mean, I looked at them and I went, that’s an A class, that’s an ML, that’s a G wagon. Why reinvent the wheel? You know, I guess we went through the same thing with Audi, although it’s been 30 years where they dropped the Audi 80 and the 90 and they became the A4 and the A5 and all this kind of thing.

And they leaned into that, but Mercedes had already established their nomenclature. And when they went to this EQ idea, it just didn’t make sense. Now, as far as this. Fossil is concerned. It should be in a museum at this point. This is unbelievable that it must be super popular. They can continue to sell the [00:15:00] G wagon with basically almost no revisions.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I mean, news about the G wagon, you know, a little side tangent, two players that were just drafted in the WNBA on the same day, both bought G wagons for themselves. So they are popular with the affluent people.

Crew Chief Eric: Bought or given? Uh,

Crew Chief Brad: the article I read said bought, but you know,

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. I don’t think Lewis Hamilton has bought any of his Mercedes.

That’s all I’m saying.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: of course not.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I mean, they’re drafted by the WNBA. I don’t think they’re getting much from Mercedes.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m just saying Mercedes sponsors, some of the stadiums and sports events too. I mean, I see it out there every now and again. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: true. That’s true. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got some sort of sponsorship anyway, to tie into the G wagon.

You know, they are still popular. We’ve got a club member or a friend of the show who has one as well. Although he kind of beats the crap out of his cause he actually off roads it. They still float around

Crew Chief Eric: and I want to hate on it, but I actually, I liked the G wagon. I think it’s cool, but it is a fossil fossil.

They still [00:16:00] make, I know, I know,

Crew Chief Brad: but you know what? You’re a fossil. So of course it makes sense that you would like it. Everything you own is fossilized. Here’s the thing. Even the Jeep is, isn’t that old, but it uses like old, old, old fossil fuel. That’s true.

Executive Producer Tania: Let’s be real to Brad’s point. This is. A vehicle for the affluent.

The 2024 G Class, the AMG G63.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re going to do a pricing guess.

Executive Producer Tania: Is 183, 000. What?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of other cars you can buy for 200 grand.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a class of people that are supporting the purchase of these vehicles.

Crew Chief Eric: Having ridden in a G Wagon, they’re not that nice. Compared to the other Mercedes, like an S Class.

They are

Crew Chief Brad: military vehicles. Why the fuck would it be nice? People are delusional. The people that buy this, yeah, I’m going to stereotype here. The rich, white, blonde ladies that get this to [00:17:00] drive around to the shops on Rodeo Drive, they think they’re getting some luxury vehicle. It’s the same middle class version that buys the Jeep Wrangler, four door or the Bronco.

They think they’re getting something super special. No, it’s a turd.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, you got it all wrong. It’s sort of like when all the BMW drivers started buying Audis. All the G Wagon soccer moms now drive Land Rover or Range Rovers or whatever they are. Evoque. Partially designed by Beckham. No, I think

Crew Chief Brad: they’re driving Cayennes.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s that too. Anyway. If you’re not driving a Puro Sangue, I don’t know what you’re doing, right? That’s the new hotness right now. Come on.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since we’re in mainland Europe and I just brought up Ferrari, we need to talk about Stellantis, don’t

Crew Chief Brad: we? Yes. Let me get to

Crew Chief Eric: my caviar. Count Stellantis.

It’s like the count on Sesame Street. Like that’s how serious I could take it. All right. Get this. Italy says. It’s illegal to [00:18:00] sell the Alfa Romeo Milano outside of Italy.

Crew Chief Brad: Build. What? Not sell, build.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, they have a law that prohibits this.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, explain it to me.

Executive Producer Tania: Not the Milano specifically. But there is some sort of law, apparently, that an Alfa Romeo cannot be built outside of Italy, cannot entirely be built outside of Italy.

So there’s a little loop there, and it depends how they designate, at what point do the components come together. Make it the car because they can probably do some assembly

Crew Chief Brad: you see you build a rolling chassis

Executive Producer Tania: Right some part of it bring it back in and finish it

Crew Chief Brad: But when you give it the alpha heart, you got to give it the alpha heart in Italy the alpha soul Yes, the heart in the soul.

Crew Chief Eric: I imagine walking in to Alfa Romeo behind the receptionist. Is this wall? Explaining the gestation period of an Alfa Romeo, but when is it

Executive Producer Tania: Alfa and Alfa? What?

Crew Chief Brad: When is [00:19:00] it life?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, wait. So I am misinformed here. So it actually is the fact of the name of the car. So a car called Milano can’t be produced outside of Italy because it’s Italian sounding and it would be false advertising essentially.

Crew Chief Brad: If I, can I just say this sounds like the most Italian law I’ve ever heard. This is Italy, this whole article and just the whole situation is 1000 percent Italy.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s so stupid. It’s real, right? And that’s the convoluted nature. And this is what drives me nuts. Every time I go over there, people are like, I don’t understand, you know, your heritage, blah, blah, blah.

And I’m like, ah, it’s stuff like this that drives me nuts. Like who thought this was a good idea and who wasted the time to make it a law? I mean, I can understand if it’s part of like the ethos of Alfa Romeo to be like, we’ll call it something different. Sort of like the whole Alfa [00:20:00] Romeo Tonale is sold here in the United States as the Dodge Hornet, which it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because that drives me nuts because it has nothing to do with the Hornet, blah, blah, blah.

We won’t, I won’t get on my soap box and rant about that. But the point is it’s that kind of Idiocracy that exists.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it really would be the first Alfa Romeo not built entirely in Italy, though. I wonder if that’s part of their issue, too. How does the Giulia not sound Italian?

Crew Chief Eric: Because we misspell it here.

We spell it with a J, so it’s all good, right?

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. I mean, I guess Milano, the city.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they sold the Alfa Romeo Milano here in the 90s when Alfa was trying to Do its thing again and failed miserably. So it’s not like the one 64 was also known as the Milano. So it’s like, whoop dee doo. So maybe it’s that it’s tying back to a failed launch of a car.

They don’t want to do that again. Who knows, you know, they’re superstitious. They’re silly, you know, whatever adjective you want to use, whatever. But speaking of [00:21:00] Italian cars, you may or may not be in the investment portfolio to buy one of these vehicles. But William Ross. from the Ferrari marketplace who has become part of the motoring podcast network shares his views most recently on the subtle differences between the 550 Maranello and the Ferrari 575.

And it is a deep dive. It is encyclopedic. William is a wealth of information. I found it fascinating and I actually learned a lot. Now, if I go to a car show or if I go to car week and I see one of these, I might more readily be able to tell the difference between the two at first glance. And he points out some things even cosmetically that I thought were really interesting and things to look for.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s one of my favorite Ferraris ever. Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: well, I know. And that’s why I bring it up. Such

Crew Chief Brad: a beautiful car.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that got me talking about the styling, because the 575 and 550 aren’t that different. It came down to like little things, like, like you mentioned before, like the little turn indicators.

But also like the fog [00:22:00] lights, just these little changes that they made. And that’s what made the difference. Now, obviously the five 75, the big giveaway was the color matched headlights to the body that immediately is not a five 50. So I’m like, Oh, okay. That’s cool. So there’s these things to like look out for, but I’m with you as a front engine V12 rear drive Ferrari.

One of the best looking cars still to this day. I don’t, I don’t think the five nine nine and some of the later ones are as good looking as when the five 50 hit the shelves. Yes. But what really blew my mind and I didn’t know was that the five fifties were all manual, right? I was expecting certain percentages would be flappy paddle and all this kind of thing.

And so he dives into all these details and then talks about buying them as an investment, all those kinds of things. So if you’re interested in those cars, Check out the episode. It’s the most recent Ferrari marketplace. It’s on our platform while moving right along, we don’t have any other domestic news.

And that wasn’t really domestic news either. Cause we talked about Italian cars owned by a [00:23:00] conglomerate that owns American cars. So we’re going to move right across the globe into Japanese and Asian domestic vehicles. And this next one has to be an April fool’s prank because otherwise it is headed directly.

Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 to the uncool wall. Thoughts on the cabriolet version of the Integra. Um.

Executive Producer Tania: This person’s probable rendering doesn’t even look that bad, honestly. This was put out on April 1st. It has to be an April Fool’s thing. There’s different posts here and there. There’s nothing definitive from Acura saying it’s true.

There’s also nothing saying it’s not true. There’s no like, oh, it’s just an April Fool’s thing.

Crew Chief Brad: This is the modern day. Chrysler Sebring.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. I see it now. You’re right. Oh my God. That is just, but I’m still not sold on the Integra. You’re not saying you’re right. It’s

Crew Chief Brad: Integra.

Crew Chief Eric: It that’s [00:24:00] Integra. It’s so large.

And so I’m like, uh, it’s an accord because the Integra and the civic and even the civics gotten bigger and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the other day, and I think Tonya and I were together when we saw this brand new Acura. TLX.

Executive Producer Tania: Was it TLX or TSX?

Crew Chief Eric: Whatever it was. It’s got hips like a Audi RSS four or RSS six.

Avan. It was low. It was wide. I don’t care how long it was. Big wheels, you know, tinted windows. I was like, that is hotness right there. I was like, and I. I see that a lot about Hondas, especially the more modern ones. I’m like, ah, they’re okay. Couldn’t stop looking at, especially those hips that they put on that car, those flares.

And I’m like, it’s all factory. And I’m like, damn, that’s a good looking car. So I would give that a second thought. If I was thinking about a sports sedan right now,

Executive Producer Tania: I guess it is a TLX. I don’t think they make the TSX anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I think they discontinued that, that whole, and then wasn’t there an ILX for a while, which was.

Yeah. The [00:25:00] precursor to the trash. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Frickin trash. It was based on the civic.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, skipping right along to new EVs and concepts. I want to call back our discussion about Fisker from last month. Remember how they were having issues and the ocean is having problems and all these recalls and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Crew Chief Brad: Fisker always has issues. That’s just like their natural state.

Crew Chief Eric: And the three people that bought them,

Crew Chief Brad: I feel so bad,

Crew Chief Eric: right? And again, I don’t know, is this Jalopnik having some fun with us or what? But you’re hearing about, you know, three new cars. And then there’s an article on the other side saying Fisker is running out of options as all stock trading halts.

And I’m like, wait, what the

Executive Producer Tania: hell is going on? Apparently they’re going to be possibly claiming bankruptcy soon. So,

Crew Chief Eric: and that’s just it. And that’s where it was like. Wait, they’re going to come out with three new cars. They can’t get the ocean right. And the company’s basically falling apart. A lot of misinformation.

So I have a hard time believing anything that comes out in April. Maybe that’s why it’s such a slow news month because some of it’s just so unbelievable right now.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, according to Business Insider, there’s four [00:26:00] automakers in talks to buy them out.

Crew Chief Eric: Really? Who’s on the docket? General Motors is always on the docket.

Executive Producer Tania: Does not indicate.

Crew Chief Eric: They’ll buy any losing company. Was that Nikola? Remember that one? Yeah. Oops. Whoopsie. Well, I wanted to take a moment to talk about wheels and our friends over at ESC Carbon have recently released pictures of the fully formed E3. We’ve been waiting a while to see, so they’re able to put that into production.

When you look at it, it’s a multi spoke wheel, kind of reminiscent of a early 2000s, uh, wheel. BBS type style, like an RKRX, that kind of thing. And that’s a cool wheel for an all one piece carbon fiber wheel. But it got me thinking about wheels on cars these days. You know, we had this whole fad for a while where as we know, Tesla puts the covers on some actually decent looking wheels and there’s a lot of, I’m going to call them air quotes, interesting wheels out there, wheel designs out there right now.

I kind of wanted to look at this from the other perspective and ask your guys opinion. Who do you think has the ugliest wheels on their car right now? Which

Executive Producer Tania: automaker?

Crew Chief Eric: [00:27:00] Yeah, which automaker? All of them. Brad, have you seen some ugly wheels? Man, they just keep nailing it. Thousand percent

Crew Chief Brad: ugly wheels. I don’t know about now, but if we go back in the day, I have to say Those stupid double three spoke came on the SN 95 Mustangs.

Oh yeah. You could always tell it was a V six Mustang because it had those stupid wheels on them. Anything three spoke is just complete track.

Crew Chief Eric: Except for the

Crew Chief Brad: steering wheel, except for the steering wheels, the drive from the legendary R 32 Nissan. Well, I was

Crew Chief Eric: also going to say, I have a sweet spot for the three spoke.

Not three bolt, like the smart car, the three spoke wheel from the original Viper. I thought those wheels look cool, but they’re very nineties, right? They’re very in period appropriate and they look good on that.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re very ugly.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re blasphemy.

Crew Chief Brad: No, they’re three spoke. Any wheels that are wrapped in tires [00:28:00] are ugly.

I stand by this statement. You know, it really grinds my gears. Three spoke wheels blind my ears.

Crew Chief Eric: Um, maybe I’m pointing out the obvious here. I think the winner right now, take a look at the cars on the road. The new cars on the road. I mean, the EVs are trying some really weird stuff, whatever, but ugliest wheels on the road right now.

I’m going to give the award to Kia. They’re all heinous. I actually like some of them.

Crew Chief Brad: Some of the wheels that come on the Telluride, I’ve seen some pretty wicked stuff and the wheels that come on the Hyundai Genesis, I know it’s not Kia, but some of the wheels that come on the Genesis models are pretty wicked looking to

Crew Chief Eric: one or two, but I think in general, the regular line of wheels that they’re putting on like the EV six and you know, whatever that sob thing is that’s running around, they’re just all kind of funky and what everybody’s doing right now is these sort of GTI style.

Lag in the wind, hyperaluminum with a black inset. Like they’re just [00:29:00] funky looking. They don’t look good when they’re spinning. They don’t good look when they’re still, they’re always a kind of dirty. And I’m just like, Oh, these wheels are gross.

Crew Chief Brad: I get it. They almost look like steel wheels that they painted to make look like they’ve got spokes.

Exactly. They do this for aerodynamics.

Crew Chief Eric: For a million reasons. Yeah. I think we need to pay closer attention and maybe start thinking about. Ugly wheel ranking system like who’s second place who’s got the second ugliest wheels out there And there’s some humdingers in the old days to use an old timey term.

Oh my

Crew Chief Brad: god the wheels on the aztec Oh god, complete trash. They had branches like little sprouting branches off the spokes Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: they were awful the ronald teddy bear. I know there’s people that love those. There’s some those

Crew Chief Brad: are awesome Those are fantastic.

Crew Chief Eric: The daisy that they had on the beetle.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the daisy was pretty.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s some winners. There’s some winners out there for sure. The

Crew Chief Brad: teddy bear was awesome

Crew Chief Eric: though. Stop it. That was making a comeback too. Well, Brad, it’s time we move on to lost and found [00:30:00] your favorite section where you scour the internet looking for the newest old piece of junk on dealership lots.

Crew Chief Brad: If I had to guess the Ford GT, I guarantee the Ford GT still out there.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t give us any of these, more of these Jetta’s and stuff, man. You got to give us cool cars.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s what I was going to say. Those are the cars that are going to still be out there. No max price, unless Daniel bought them. I don’t know what he’s got up at the mountain. Yep. Those two Jetta’s. One diesel, one VR6 are still for sale at Alexandria Volkswagen.

Nope. No, thank you. Yeah, the rest of this is trash.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I love this next one, Brad, because you know how we talked about Dodge Darts for so long. We’ve talked about Vipers that are still for sale. You can pick up an NSX or two every now and again. But this next one, just read the headline.

Crew Chief Brad: What? How is that possible?

Sold negative What the fuck? How do you sell a neg So they bought one back. So I’m guessing it was a lemon. I haven’t read it yet. Well, let’s bring our listeners up to speed. Negative one. Chrysler 200 [00:31:00] last month. Stellantis sold negative one. Chrysler 200s. So they sold two and bought back three. How did they do

Crew Chief Eric: this?

This is brilliant.

Crew Chief Brad: That is the burning question. How does an automaker sell a negative car?

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe this is like that Karen moment where it’s like they bought it. They drove it about 10 feet. They said, I need to speak

Crew Chief Brad: to the manager. They sold a negative car. How does it want to make yourself less than zero cars?

Maybe it’s just clickbait. Well, it’s the Autopian. So of course it is. Yeah, it’s bullshit.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I think this is my April fool’s thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Get this trash out of here. Clickbait go away. The story is stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we do have a legitimate uncool wall nominee. I present for your consideration the 2003 Kia Sedona GT Cabriolet.

Crew Chief Brad: This was ahead of its time.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a three row.

Crew Chief Brad: If this came out when the Nissan Murano cross cabriolet [00:32:00] came out, they would have sold Tens of them,

Crew Chief Eric: tens of

Crew Chief Brad: them, tens of them, they would have sold more than negative one. I can say that. Oh, I love the suicide doors on this too,

Executive Producer Tania: right? So somebody did this in their backyard. How unsafe is this vehicle?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s some structural integrity lost in this vehicle. Is this an e

Crew Chief Brad: prepared car? Is that what this is? Now you got to cut the windshield off a lemon’s car. It’s got to be, it’s got to be,

Crew Chief Eric: but you know, I really, really liked the fact that we went retro with this and put a hood ornament on the key. Poke them horns.

Oh man, this is terrible. Terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: I love how they mounted the hood ornament.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re turbo clamps.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they got it from Advance Auto. I bet they hit the steer and killed it. And they’re like, well, what are we going to do with his horns? Let’s

Crew Chief Eric: mount it on the car. It’s a Kia and the wheels are ugly. Am I wrong?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I didn’t even notice the [00:33:00] wheels. I have to go back to that. They’re so

Crew Chief Eric: ugly. You don’t pay attention to them.

Crew Chief Brad: I couldn’t get past the convertible.

Crew Chief Eric: What do you think, Tanya? Would you drive this stellar piece of automotive design?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I’d drive it right off the side of a cliff and jump out of it in a second.

Crew Chief Brad: I love that they put. Music to this, R. Kelly’s bump and grind.

Executive Producer Tania: That makes it better.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I wouldn’t get in this death trap.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, would you get in this or our next vehicle? Because of its recent recalls, because we would be remiss

if we didn’t talk about.

Before we jump into Tesla, have you noticed after 44 drive thrus that we have begun to really split hairs on Tesla? Tesla has become its own segment on the show. I remember when it was just, we would be remiss. And then it became Teslagate, and then it became stupid shit that Elon does, and now the Cybertruck has its own segment by itself, [00:34:00] because it is a spectacle.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, there’s some other non Cybertruck stuff in here.

Crew Chief Eric: Lies.

Executive Producer Tania: But the Cybertruck is obviously the new, quote, hotness, so it’s top of mind. Finally, after 16, 000 years, it’s in production. 16 minutes after being in production.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s already recalled.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God, this is so fucking stupid.

Executive Producer Tania: And you know, it’s like a silly recall.

I mean, it’s a serious thing, but it’s also silly at the same time. When we’ve gone through this, we’ve seen this before. It’s the reason why. All cars now have the little clips on the floor mats. It’s because unfortunately Toyota had to learn this painful lesson of what can happen in the footwell if something lodges and gets the accelerator pedal stuck.

The car keeps accelerating.

Crew Chief Eric: But Tesla marches to the beat of their own drum. Just want to point out the Germans had carpet [00:35:00] clips in the nineties. It’s not new.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. But it wasn’t until there was a problem. Yeah, but their carpet, their carpet

Crew Chief Brad: clips cost 15, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s the little nubs underneath the carpet that have been, you know, solidly holding carpet in place for ages.

They’re bolted

Crew Chief Brad: in from underneath the car. And then the only way to get them out is engine out.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Crew Chief Brad: Service position for your format is engine out.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, in a beetle, yes. Everything is engine out

Crew Chief Brad: in a

Crew Chief Eric: beetle. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: the sad thing is you’d think that the little things like this. And this isn’t a format issue yet.

Crew Chief Brad: If this is worse, this is much worse. No, this is an accelerator pedal falling off. It’s not the whole pedal though. Just the cover,

Executive Producer Tania: just the slide on cover. And apparently it’s a glue issue, but the glue, the temperature, I think something, I don’t even remember.

Crew Chief Brad: Elmer’s that’s what’s wrong.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: They left home Depot.

Cause shit was too expensive. They went to Target [00:36:00] and bought Elmer’s from the school supply section, and then they’re using that on this pedal.

Executive Producer Tania: It was back to school sales at the beginning of the year. It was discount, no tax on the glue.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they bought out the entire, like, Southwest region.

Crew Chief Eric: It literally says on the bottle, Elmer’s Blue All.

It’s pretty straightforward. It glues all right. Barely

Executive Producer Tania: not your, whatever this accelerator pedal is even made of. I don’t even know. Probably plastic, maybe a little bit of stainless steel left over pieces that they reformed.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s no wood in there.

Executive Producer Tania: No wood in this one. I know I read somewhere that they were attributing it to in the production line, something with the temperature, the adhesive wasn’t right.

And then,

Crew Chief Eric: so it

Executive Producer Tania: didn’t set or something. So basically when you’re mashing down the accelerator pedal, you end up sliding the cover off and then it jams into what would be,

Crew Chief Eric: hold on a second. What kind of troglodyte. It’s [00:37:00] pressing the accelerator pedal like Donkey Kong.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, hey, hey, some of us have big feet and we can’t control it.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no. Okay, because to the point of the Toyota incident, I am using the inappropriate rubber floor mats in one of my vehicles. Meaning that they don’t clip in to the clips, and I am constantly actually pulling the floor mat back sometimes while I’m driving just by virtue of my feet being there. I’m not even doing anything, but by virtue of my feet being on top of it, there’s enough.

I’m not pressing down on it, but it does slide forward constantly. So I could see. that a loose little bullshit cover on the pedal, especially it’s the type of pedal that’s on the floor, then you kind of have that weird motion of you making your foot go up anyway. So I think it would be easy to have that cover come off and then it jams into what would be the transmission tunnel if it had one, right?

So that center console piece like jams in there and it keeps [00:38:00] Accelerator depressed and somebody apparently had it happen to them and they hit a pole. I thought

Crew Chief Eric: they called that ludicrous mode.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know if the cyber truck has ludicrous mode, but that was ludicrous to have happened.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I love the fix.

Can we get to the fix?

Executive Producer Tania: The fix. Is on par with everything, right? I mean, I personally would love to spend 100, 000 on a car to have the glue not set correctly and then have the fix be a fricking rivet.

Crew Chief Eric: I would like to point out, I did research just like the Model Y. You can go to your local Home Depot, aisle 13, bay 26 and buy a packet of rivets for like a couple

Executive Producer Tania: dollars.

Home Depot! Does a rivet work? Sure. Is it aesthetically pleasing anymore? I mean, not to say that it was to begin with without the rivet. The rivet could be an improvement. I don’t know. Or

Crew Chief Eric: for the course with the Cybertruck, but you know.

Executive Producer Tania: You just spent a hundred thousand dollars on a car and that’s how they’re gonna fix it?

They’re just gonna be like, oh yeah. [00:39:00]

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, not to open this can of worms again, but this is what I keep saying. Everybody oohs and ahs over these vehicles. And the. Build quality is variable from car to car, and it is not on par with the hundred year old manufacturers. Pick one. Chevy, Ford, Fiat, Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche.

It doesn’t matter. You can’t

Executive Producer Tania: get these wet. Let’s talk about build

Crew Chief Eric: quality. Jesus.

Executive Producer Tania: So they keep focusing on car washes or washing your car. But I’m like, so what happens when it rains and the car gets wet? It’s shorting out the electronics temporarily. And you gotta like wait hours for it to reboot.

Crew Chief Eric: Doesn’t rain that often in California where they build the Cybertruck?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no, they built it in Austin, didn’t they?

Crew Chief Eric: Again, does it rain in Austin?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, it rains in Texas.

Crew Chief Eric: Lies, lies, fake news.

Executive Producer Tania: In the hill country, actually, where it’s quite green, they do get some water. Lies! And when the hurricanes come through, they get the remnants of the rain from those. At any rate, I couldn’t [00:40:00] find it.

I thought I saw something going into the whole car wash thing. Where it’s like, don’t take it to the car wash. And make sure you take it to the car wash that it has to be some sort of like, no drive mode or something. And it basically like, shuts down. It like, locks the charge port. It disengages. It disengages.

The wipers apparently like what is what and then it like locks the doors and all this stuff and then there’s like a role mode. So it’s distant. I don’t know. Anyway, but the article was a guy I think who washed out the bed and then he ended up like bricking the truck for a while and turned back on. And I thought I saw something going into that.

Where they showed, I guess water was going under the bed somehow and then getting like stuck in like frame rails or something like that. And then I guess whatever, wiring maybe? I don’t know, don’t quote me. I saw it briefly and I didn’t, I closed it and I don’t remember how to find the article again. But I’m just like, that’s wild!

To your point, it’s like, There’s so many other cars on the road that can get wet. [00:41:00] It’s not a problem. Like, I think we’ve figured out how to send a car through a car wash and not have it be catastrophic. What again? You spent a hundred thousand dollars on a car that you can’t get wet. You can’t drive after men like, Oh, is it a Gremlin?

Crew Chief Brad: You don’t, you don’t. Get it wet after midnight and

Crew Chief Eric: not the AMC. Yeah. The eighties movie, the gremlin. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: Two is taking their cyber truck to the car wash though, because do you just wash stainless steel? I thought you just kind of wipe it down with a diaper or something.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no. So if you go on Tesla’s website, there’s a whole like.

Page scrolling of how to clean the exterior of the thing. And it’s like, don’t use this. Don’t use that. Don’t do it in the sunlight. Don’t do it after you’ve eaten. Wait 30 minutes.

Crew Chief Brad: You can only do it on the day of the full moon. [00:42:00] In Feb tober. Yeah. Like

Executive Producer Tania: what? There’s like wild notes in here too. And this is. From the Tesla website. Okay. This is legit stuff. Don’t use alcohol on the headlights. I’m like, why? What are the headlights made out of? Alcohol evaporate.

Crew Chief Eric: Because your beer will rust the stainless steel.

Executive Producer Tania: Ah, okay. Wrong alcohol. There was also a thing in here that was like, Oh, if I could find it again, it was like, yeah, yeah, here it is. Do not aim water hoses. Okay, so like if you’re washing your car and you have the garden hose, right? It’s like, don’t aim the water hose directly at the windows.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, aren’t these those indestructible bulletproof

Executive Producer Tania: things?

Windows? I can’t aim a garden hose at? Like what? Now I don’t think it’s the glass itself because then it’s The door or the hood seals.

Crew Chief Eric: I think they leak.

Executive Producer Tania: So don’t get it wet, basically.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a higher probability of Apex seals in an RX 7 sealing better than those window seals in the Cybertruck.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently. And then it killed me at one of the things, like, the [00:43:00] recommended way to, like, to clean the stainless steel. Again, this is from Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: Unreal.

Executive Producer Tania: I know you’ve written some articles about how to clean your car, and we’ve had the wax people on. I feel like even if you’re not the most into detailing, you know this.

And given it’s stainless steel. It said that you use a circular motion. And I’m like, have you ever cleaned a stainless steel pot? If you have anything abrasive, a circular motion. Oh my God. I mean, even on a painted car, you don’t really want to use a circular motion in case there’s something gritty there because you will leave swirl marks.

You always go. Quote unquote with the grain, so it’s less noticeable. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, since we’re talking about cleaning, I included an additional article here. It goes back to the, you know, why the trucks are rusting because it’s from February and it’s [00:44:00] not about that. I included it because I wanted you guys to see these pictures.

I don’t know if somebody urinated on this vehicle, vomited on this vehicle or what. But this is why they look terrible. Like, all the pictures in this article from Wired, oh my god, this thing looks so bad. Awful. Oh yeah, no, no, no. Absolutely awful.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like your appliance is in your like, this was the first thing I said.

Do you not know when you have water splashing, like, the front of the dishwasher or your stove? Because it happens, people. You go reach for the towel that’s either hanging on your dishwasher or, you know, bar or on the stove. Oven door bar. Water hits the surface and it looks like garbage after two seconds.

Crew Chief Eric: I will say this. Now, this is an argument for something that I just recently tested. So if you go back into the April catalog, you’ll see that Don from Garage Style and I did an episode with Dan Williams from Owner’s Pride and their Eco Wash. Is designed for low water conditions and [00:45:00] all this kind of stuff.

And I was like, you know, I’m going to try it until I understand it and get a bottle and read it and kind of mess with it. I’m not going to really understand how it works. I tell you what, I think that soap is perfect for the Cybertruck. And here’s why. I did it on two different vehicles and I was absolutely astounded by the results.

Literally a capful, and I’m talking about like a Pepsi bottle capful that you would get on like, you know, out of the 7 Eleven case, full of this soap to three gallons of water. Rinse the car if you want, don’t, it doesn’t matter how it comes out the same. I washed our van and I washed the Jeep. using the eco wash with only three gallons of water.

I didn’t rinse the car before, did the whole thing, used up all three gallons of water that I had, didn’t rinse it afterward. It looked as clean as if I had done it the traditional way or went to the car wash. Unbelievably good. One of those things that until I tried it, I wasn’t convinced, but in the case of the Cybertruck, I could see something like eco wash.

being perfect for it.

Executive Producer Tania: There is a section on waterless [00:46:00] wash. You got a hand wash using a non ionic pH neutral waterless wash with a high quality microfiber towel.

Crew Chief Brad: It sounds like that waterless shampoo.

Crew Chief Eric: And I was thinking the same thing again, three gallons of water to a cap full of soap. I did both cars, three gallons a piece.

But I was thinking about it. If you’re in a situation in California where water conservation is important, you know, they have drought conditions. Don’t water your lawn. Don’t use a car wash. The eco wash is perfect. But then obviously taking it to the next logical conclusion, if you really can’t get the cyber truck wet, sort of like washing a cat, I suppose this is perfect.

This is something I would recommend in all seriousness to cyber truck owners to use. I recommend getting rid of the truck.

Executive Producer Tania: Or you could just. Spot clean using a glass cleaner and microfiber cloth. Spray the glass cleaner and wipe in a

Crew Chief Eric: zigzag motion. Oh my god.

Executive Producer Tania: So

Crew Chief Eric: many rules with this truck. It’s wild.

Executive Producer Tania: And basically this and the other rules are [00:47:00] immediately clean the surface.

So bird poop’s on it. Pull over. Get your glass cleaner and zigzag it off. Don’t want to create scratches because it’s going to scratch. Now there is a solution to this problem.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t buy a cycle. It’s called paint.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s called the 5, 000 clear coat.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my god.

Executive Producer Tania: Why? It’s not standard.

Crew Chief Brad: You can’t rattle can it?

Executive Producer Tania: You could, why not? You could paint it. Although it might short out. I don’t know what happens with the paint.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I would say paint over the glass too, just seal everything in and call it a day. Prevent any future leaks.

Crew Chief Brad: I think the best solution is to trade your Cybertruck in for a Rivian. A Fisker.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know.

But in other non Cybertruck related news, do you remember when they talked about how we’re going to make the people’s car? Let me guess. The Tesla 2. The Model 2 at 25, 000 for everyone. Electric Chargers for all.

Crew Chief Eric: Lies.

Executive Producer Tania: In fact, it is lies. Because now they’re basically [00:48:00] apparently abandoning it or quote putting it on the back burner.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s code for we’re not doing it anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: In order to focus on their robo taxis using the same platform.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, yeah, whatever, sure. Meanwhile, the price of all the rest of the Teslas went up again, and next month they’ll put them on sale and then they’ll jack them back up again and all that hokey pokey.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they are going through something at the moment because they just laid off 10 percent of their global staff.

That hurts.

Executive Producer Tania: The worst is, and there’s quite a lot of, I think it’s like 14, 000 people.

Wow.

Executive Producer Tania: Lot of people. And because it’s Elon and he’s, I’m sorry, total ass hat. I wouldn’t want to be under him.

Some people found out that they had been laid off when they arrived at work, and their badge didn’t work.

Crew Chief Eric: Wow, that is a bold move, Cotton.

Executive Producer Tania: And got escorted away. That’s how you let you’re an asshole. But we already knew this when COVID [00:49:00] happened and the whole you can work from home and then you can’t and then the ultimatums that these people that move they had to move back and all this crap that he did and then they handled it like a total jerk, you know, in the communications with the people.

I’m like, okay, I’m not surprised by this, but what a D move. Can you imagine? Suddenly it’s like what? There’s a layoff? And it’s me? What? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I could see, yeah, I could see you coming up to the door with your co worker, talking. It was like, man, did you hear about those layoffs? Man, I’m so glad that I still have my job.

Hey, that’s weird. My badge doesn’t work. Hey, try yours. Does your badge work? Oh, yours works. Oh, just let, let me in. Oh, they won’t let the, why, why can’t I get

Executive Producer Tania: no tailgating?

Crew Chief Eric: Tesla’s like the weirdest reality television show I’ve ever seen. It just every day, something

Executive Producer Tania: it’s weird. It’s all two sided too. It’s like, Oh, record sales. We’re selling so many. We’ve built so many. And then you lay off all your people and then you’re lowering prices and your stock. It’s going down, but that’s [00:50:00] because you’re doing so well.

I, I don’t understand. It’s not usually in good times of economic prosperity that people go, you know what? Let’s just cut 10 percent of the workforce for funsies. Although who knows, maybe that is what happens.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s probably sitting around in a bar with his executive buddies. Just like, you know, it’d be really good.

You know how we could like really help the bottom line. You know, they say that like HR and salary and stuff is your worst expense. Let’s just cut half or 10 percent of the workforce. Oh, yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. The end.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I feel bad for those people. Of course. Hopefully, they’re able to move on to something bigger and better.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you have, once again, successfully lowered my expectations. Lowered expectations. Oh my

Executive Producer Tania: god. I’m watching this video, and it’s pretty good. Couldn’t do this with a Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Eric: Nope, you sure couldn’t. And since we’re talking about washing cars, I thought this was appropriate. This is a great April Fool’s prank.

She’s getting pissed. So we have a link in the show notes to this. It’s [00:51:00] a video of these guys. Basically just messing with this lady who’s washing her Range Rover at a self car wash place and they keep throwing milk on the car and she thinks some birds shitting all over it. I mean, is it milk? It’s milk.

Yeah, it is a riot busted out laughing watching this thing. And normally I don’t go for this kind of stuff. I was like, Oh, this is lame, whatever. But I actually thought this was super funny.

Executive Producer Tania: I get it now why they have to. Because my cars are old, I don’t have all this fancy technology. I didn’t think about it on the Cybertruck.

Why they have to disengage the wiper blades, because it probably, because just like her Range Rover here, she keeps setting the windshield wipers off. It’s got the auto sensing windshield wipers. The Cybertruck could probably blow the whole thing up.

Crew Chief Eric: I was wondering what would happen if you poured milk on a Cybertruck.

Would it just melt?

Executive Producer Tania: You’d have to wipe it real quick to not mess up the stainless steel.

Crew Chief Eric: How gross would that look? It would look like vomit. Well, switching gears, I got to ask you guys one more time.

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Did y’all watch the Ferrari [00:52:00] movie?

Executive Producer Tania: Not yet.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a Ferrari movie? Oh, man. All right. So here’s the plan.

You guys aren’t going to watch it. You’re not going to take it seriously. I’m

Executive Producer Tania: going to watch it.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re not going to answer my question. Who is this movie about? I’m going to take it to higher authorities. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to call up John Somers, the motoring historian, maybe my friend, William Ross, and see if we can review this movie.

How about that?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, I didn’t know you wanted to review it in the middle of this segment.

Crew Chief Eric: I wanted your opinion. That’s good enough.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. Well then we have homework for the next month.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of Ferraris. This could have gone anywhere. This could have been in Stellantis News. This could be Florida Man. But I think it finds its home here in Lowered Expectations.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, this is a brickin tragedy.

Crew Chief Brad: Right? This is a crime. This is a capital crime.

Executive Producer Tania: The guy should be thrown in jail.

Crew Chief Eric: Headline reads, not that a headline has never started this way before, dealership employee.

Executive Producer Tania: 24 year old. Dealer employee,

Crew Chief Eric: I repeat. Dealership employee reportedly wrecks a Ferrari F 40 in a tunnel.

Who [00:53:00] in their right mind gives the keys to a $3 million low production Ferrari. To a 24 year old.

Crew Chief Brad: Lawrence Stroll.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I don’t care that the driving laws in Europe are stricter and more this and more that than they are here in the United States. Nobody in their right mind is going to give a 20 year old, unless they’re a YouTuber, that can afford the car, the keys to an F 150.

40! I mean, come on!

Executive Producer Tania: Imagine a dude’s like, Hell yeah, I’m gonna let it rip! I’m gonna hear it through the tunnel!

Crew Chief Eric: Meanwhile, it stepped out on him, didn’t know what the hell to do with 500 horsepower in a car that weighs nothing, and put it in the wall. Sounded hella good! For the gram. Yeah. This is criminal because this car is trashed.

Executive Producer Tania: They say they’re going to repair it.

Crew Chief Eric: At whose expense? The deal is sure.

Executive Producer Tania: They must have a massive insurance policy on it.

Crew Chief Eric: He had to have spun. Look at how it bent the door. Remember this is a carbon Kevlar tub. The whole car is like specialty, you know, whatever the rear wheel is [00:54:00] cocked in like reverse stance, bro.

He must’ve been going quick. And he spun and hit

Crew Chief Brad: hard. This car is no longer three million dollars. No, this car is 30 bucks. So what the dealership is going to have to pay a lot more than just fixing the car, they’re going to have to make this guy whole.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to cost them the value of the car to rebuild this.

And I love the comments. V8 Ferrari in the tunnel. Who could resist? I’m like, okay, man, let’s be a little bit more mature

Crew Chief Brad: about this for a second. Wait a minute. You’re looking at the comments and expecting maturity. Your first mistake.

Crew Chief Eric: I know I couldn’t help but scroll down. It’s that morbid curiosity. You know, it’s like, what are the trolls saying?

Executive Producer Tania: Here’s another question. So this car was going to go for sale or something, right? It’s three plus million dollars. Why are you driving it to the

Crew Chief Eric: trailer? You make a very good point, Tanya. Even in Europe, this car would have been on the back of a lorry in a closed compartment, completely cleaned, ready to go.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:55:00] Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Something’s fishy here. Maybe this was an insurance payout deal. You know,

Crew Chief Brad: like the guy who drove the Veyron into the, in the lake. Yeah. And the Everglades.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m not saying it was that, I mean, that’s all just conjecture, but to your point, yeah, if this car was being transported to auction in the States, this would have been in a closed vehicle.

Under lock and key.

Executive Producer Tania: You would never want to risk this happening or somebody else hitting you, right? Yeah. It’s wild.

Crew Chief Eric: Unless he stole it and went for a joyride.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Could be. Un reeking believable is what it is. So another one bites the dust, unfortunately.

Executive Producer Tania: We’re gonna fix it.

Crew Chief Eric: I got to bring up this next thing because it has come up on our discord is come up in conversation.

I have decided there’s a new category of car and it’s called the ultimate highway hooptie. And maybe this is a phenomena on the east coast. Let me correct me if I’m wrong. You’ve driven the beltways. You’ve been around the metropolitan areas. And my wife pointed this out to me. Are all the hoopties on the beltway, always a Nissan.

There’s actually a montage video.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:56:00] It’s amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: Oopty Nissan’s on the byways and they’re all like flapping panels and just hoods. They’re bent and crab walking. They’re garbage.

Executive Producer Tania: Every Nissan is just an Ultima. It’s like, it’s the regular, you have the regular Ultima. Tima, you’ve got the Altima, the pickup truck, you’ve got the HVAC in Altima, ,

Crew Chief Brad: you’ve got the Paul Walker Altima,

Executive Producer Tania: you’ve got the Jarret’s Altima,

Crew Chief Eric: They’re all trash. It’s sort of like the PT Cruiser spotting. And then there’s those, the other Camry corners where every Camry has a bashed in left rear bumper, you know, kind of thing. And to your point, it seems to be ultimas more than anything, maybe. ’cause that’s the only car that Nissan actually sells these days.

But they’re all trash. We spotted two on the road

Executive Producer Tania: the

Crew Chief Eric: other day.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re still out there. Look at that underlying quality. They’re still out there. Such rugged, rugged, they are [00:57:00] abused and they’re still out there. So they are rugged.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re so terrible. Rental car agencies won’t even pick them up. When was the last time you saw a Sentra at

Crew Chief Brad: like Alamo?

No,

Crew Chief Eric: no.

Crew Chief Brad: Didn’t we rent a Nissan Murano when we were in Texas?

Crew Chief Eric: But that was like a decade

Crew Chief Brad: ago. No, it wasn’t. It

Crew Chief Eric: was like

Crew Chief Brad: 2017.

Crew Chief Eric: It was 2017. Yeah. It was a long time ago. You

Crew Chief Brad: are correct,

Crew Chief Eric: sir. Not a decade yet, but getting close. I’ve decided. Ultimate Highway Hooptie spotting, we want Nissan pictures, send it to us on our Facebook group.

Not only that, I’ve also decided, argue with me, tell me I’m wrong. Nissans are the people of Walmart of the highway.

Crew Chief Brad: You know what’s funny? It used to be Kia.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they had that whole USB hacker thing, right? Steal a Kia. The Highway Hooptie used to be Kia’s. Well, I’ve got some rich people thangs to tell you.

Before we get into the actual rich people thangs news that Tanya has here for us, I found something super cool [00:58:00] and I gotta give mad props to Tanya. A little show and tell if you’re watching the video version of this. I finally added a LMP1 Mercedes C9 to my collection and it is the gorgeous. This is my now prized jewel in my collection.

Yes! Yeah, it’s my precious. I gently buff it with Zyma and stuff at night. We stopped by this in your old neck of the woods, Brad, where your dad lives. There’s like a toy exchange. They call it there in a shopping Plaza. And we popped in just to see what they have, because online they advertise like vintage toys, and I was like, Hey, let’s go see if they have any model cars and, you know, Legos or whatever else, just to see what they have in there.

So we happened to be in that area together. We stopped in and in this glass case, a bunch of just absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous one 18th scale model cars. And I got a soft spot for that size model car, you know, the nine, 10 inch cars. Behind me, you’ll see I’ve got Andy Pilgrims, PF Goodwrench, number three, Dale Earnhardt, C5 Corvette, also picked that up at the same place when I picked up the Mercedes.

In the case, he had Porsche [00:59:00] 956, you know, Rothman’s car, Steve McQueen 917, the Ferrari Daytona that actually sold at RM Sotheby’s last year at Le Mans. I saw that car in person. He had the model of that, some muscle cars. There were probably about 20 cars in the case. And if I could have taken them all home, believe me, I would have, but a little bit on the pricey side.

So I had to settle. I almost passed on the Mercedes again. I’m going to show it here because it is just so amazing. What’s so cool about this. I’ve never bought one of these racing legends models, and this is by Exato. I have some auto art. I have some other stuff. That’s really nice. This is a cut above like the materials that are used on here are almost watchmaker quality.

There’s little hinges with these tiny screws. And when you open the engine compartment, it’s got wires and hoses and fittings. Fabrics and just unbelievable amounts of detail, actual springs in the suspension. And I mean, it’s just really, really wild. I sort of guffawed at the price when he told me what he wanted for it.

And I was like, ah, you know, well, I’ve [01:00:00] spent about that for some other stuff. We negotiated because I’ve got the Corvette and I got some other things while I was there, so he came down on the price. Super happy to have this. It’s not exactly the livery I wanted because I wanted the factory, basically Silver Arrows C9, you know, with the green patch over the brake light.

This is the Yves Saint Laurent car. So it’s navy blue and white. It’s still absolutely gorgeous. It’s super heavy too. I wanted to make sure that I got a good deal. So I went online. I want to ask you guys as our resident price guessers here on The Price is Right Rich People Fangs. How much do you think that C9 is selling for?

Don’t look it up on places like eBay, et cetera. If you can get it, I’m going to preface this by saying I paid a fraction of what it’s worth right now,

Crew Chief Brad: like on eBay. So I have an idea of what I think you paid. So I got to multiply that up. Okay. What do you think I paid? I think you paid about 250. I actually paid less than that.

So then I think it’s worth. Or people are asking on eBay, probably 1500.

Crew Chief Eric: Ooh. Okay. You’re [01:01:00] double over. So on the high end, it’s half that it’s about seven 50 to 800. And on the low end, it’s about six.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So I got a really, really good deal on it. Now, granted probably worth more if it had the box, but even then, what was he going to charge me for the box?

I mean, come on, it’s a, it’s a freaking box, right? So all the cars were out of the box, but still, if I wanted to turn around and sell it, it’s actually a really good investment. You know, we did that episode a while back with Patrick strong before the holidays, talking about investing in model cars and looking at the higher brands and stuff like this.

This was a great opportunity because this came off an estate sale. So I’m sure he got it at a good rate. There’s a decent markup there that he obviously made on the car, but little did I know bringing that home. I’ve made money on the car. If I decide tomorrow, you know, I want to get rid of it. So I think that’s actually really kind of cool.

So don’t shy away from the model cars. If you’re looking for an investment, I’m not saying do that instead of buying a five 50 Maranello, if you can afford it, but think about that

Crew Chief Brad: to diversify your motor sports portfolio.

Crew Chief Eric: You got it, my man. You got it. [01:02:00] Super proud of this by super proud.

Crew Chief Brad: Do they make one?

That is the silver arrows livery that you,

Crew Chief Eric: yes, it costs about the same. So the livery doesn’t make a difference

Crew Chief Brad: because you know where I’m going. If you could find one that you actually want, you could flip that car into whatever you want.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. So just like real life, buying cars, flipping cars, blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, more rich people thangs.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, rich people thangs. So HANU, we remember them, those futuristic looking utilitarian little bands. Yeah,

yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Their CEO is also an asshat, apparently, and spent double the annual revenue on his own private jet.

Crew Chief Eric: Out of the company funds.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s how you do it.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s how you run a business.

That’s how it’s done. And they expect this company to be profitable.

Executive Producer Tania: Not at that rate.

Crew Chief Eric: How did these people not go to jail? That’s what I want to know.

Executive Producer Tania: They do. They just go to a fancy jail.

Crew Chief Eric: The ones with the tennis courts, right? [01:03:00] We’re at this high point. In what I call boutique manufacturers and we’re seeing Fisker with problems.

We have the Rivians and we have the canoes and we have all this stuff. How many of these companies are actually going to survive?

Executive Producer Tania: Not this one.

Crew Chief Eric: Not at this rate. That’s for sure. Again, I will be amazed if even Tesla. As air quotes, good as they’re doing, doesn’t get absorbed by somebody in the future. And I think that’s always been part of the plan, right?

Is to sell patented technology, license it to somebody else to use, which is the Toyota model. Right.

Executive Producer Tania: To your point of them being a software company now there’s, and we didn’t talk about it, but there’s also rumblings about them licensing their full self driving BS. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: not

Executive Producer Tania: full self driving. So they’re

Crew Chief Eric: going to sell negative one of those two, right?

Oh man. Well, I guess it’s time we go south and talk about alligators and beer.[01:04:00]

Executive Producer Tania: We’re going to go south and talk about this poor man.

Crew Chief Eric: Was he a poor mountaineer, barely keeping his family fed?

Executive Producer Tania: No, but this poor man, he had his 2023 limited edition Dodge Charger SRT What? Apparently that’s a thing. Stolen. The kicker on this was, I don’t know, apparently he bought the cars and it was an homage to his late mother and all this stuff and yada yada.

Well,

Crew Chief Eric: well, well, well, pause, pause. How is a Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye jailbreak An homage to your mother.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, but it was like

Crew Chief Eric: Was his mother a trapeze artist for Cirque du Soleil? Because that’s the only thing that makes sense here. Like what, what are we Well,

Executive Producer Tania: homage might not be the right word, but he said to quote, that the main reason I got the car, Because of her to represent her

Crew Chief Eric: again, I [01:05:00] ask.

Executive Producer Tania: So whatever that I don’t know, but somehow a limited edition purple Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat red eye jailbreak with some vinyl graphics in the paint or something.

Crew Chief Eric: What is on the side of the, is that our lady of Guadalupe?

Executive Producer Tania: I think it’s the statue of Liberty, maybe, or it could be. I’m not really sure. Or it’s somebody, something completely different.

I don’t know. Is that his

Crew Chief Eric: mother wearing a tiara?

Executive Producer Tania: Or maybe that’s a picture of his mom. Oh, I don’t know. It has a

Crew Chief Brad: mustache. It’s got a goatee. That’s a guy. I think that’s jesus.

Executive Producer Tania: It could be jesus in the thorn of roses on his head I don’t know. There’s words too. Maybe I can’t tell that’s not the point It’s entirely the point No, no, no, no wait because the point is he got this for his mother Represent his mother i’m using the word homage Apparently this man had a deep relationship with his mother so deep that he kept the cup of her ashes In the car.[01:06:00]

They were stolen with the car. But, as he said, the person might not be right, but they had a good heart. Because they came back and they put the ashes in his mailbox, kept the car, but they returned the ashes. Thankfully, the mind’s messed up.

Crew Chief Brad: He did his due diligence and he’s investigated work and he worked to preserve the evidence

Executive Producer Tania: by

Crew Chief Brad: using a shirt to close the lid of the container, holding the ashes.

Yes. Very smart. Very smart. Mr. Carter.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Colombo to have made the distinction between quote unquote, the urn. I don’t know how these ashes were kept in the vehicle, but I’m going to assume that they weren’t kept in the ashtray. So telling the difference between the cup holder, again, I say cup holder.

They were in a

Crew Chief Brad: Carl’s jr. Cup.

Crew Chief Eric: My point. How do you know that it wasn’t just cigarettes? So what I’m saying is. Collusion to use Brad’s [01:07:00] term.

This is an inside job Nobody would know unless it was one of his friends relatives or otherwise. I think this was an inside job

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know it only happens in Florida See

Crew Chief Eric: that’s why the point of this is about the graphics on the side of the car and the homage to his mother and not About the ashes.

That’s what I’m saying This is ridiculous. I don’t know. I’m convinced. That’s like Jesus in the toast. That’s what it’s right there.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. I can’t tell. It’s hard to see the angle. The picture’s not good. That’s a really dark purple with the black graphic. It’s hard to see. Nice car.

Crew Chief Eric: Jesus in the toast.

Executive Producer Tania: All right. Now we can go up north middle ish of the country to the delightful Yellowstone National Park.

Crew Chief Eric: Yogi Bear lives there.

Executive Producer Tania: Where some sort of Karen created

Karen of Yellowstone, I [01:08:00] apologize to all the good Karens out there getting a bad rap. Apparently this woman exited her vehicle and it was an SUV, so it fits the Karen stereotype.

Crew Chief Brad: Was it a Rage? Was it a G Wagon?

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, it was not. I think it was a Ford.

Crew Chief Brad: Bronco.

Executive Producer Tania: Anyway, if you’ve ever been to Yellowstone, most of the areas through the national park, Yep.

One lane each way, and there’s really not a shoulder in anything, and there’s only wilderness there, right? Preserved area. Anyway, so she decided to just, you know, park it, leave it running, because that’s environmentally friendly for the National Park, and then get out to go do some National Geographic photography.

No, she’s not part of National Geographic. She was going to go take a picture of a little bear, because not only, A, what you don’t do is leave your car running in the middle of the road. You also B, don’t try to approach a bear cub because C, mama’s probably around the corner and you don’t want to F with her.

Crew Chief Eric: This is you again using the Vulcan logic. I’m going to start calling you Tuvok in a minute. Bears are [01:09:00] cuddly. They’re warm. They’re fuzzy. They’re friendly.

Crew Chief Brad: They have giant teeth and claws. They’re hungry. We’ve heard other

Executive Producer Tania: stories out of Yellowstone.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re right. We’ve heard about Winnie the Pooh and we’ve heard about the Bernstein bears, all of them.

Executive Producer Tania: Like I’ve been there. I’ve gone through Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, all that stuff. And like the wildlife is real. The bison, they are literally there on the side of the road and you might actually have to stop for them because they’re in the middle of frickin road. But you don’t want to stop for them, you really want to keep going.

That’s all real, and the people that get out of their car to approach them, the stories of them getting gored, or like, catapulted through the air, also real. Public service announcement! Do not approach the wildlife! Do not feed the wildlife! Stay in your vehicle at all times. Have you seen Jurassic Park?

Don’t get out of the Jeep.

Crew Chief Brad: Please win that Darwin award. Thin the herd, come on. Survival of the fittest. If these people are stupid enough to get out of their [01:10:00] car and get killed by a wild animal, then

Executive Producer Tania: Nothing happened with the animal or anything. What she did was apparently It was high season, so it caused a huge backup of people that just sat there

Crew Chief Eric: behind

Executive Producer Tania: her.

I’m surprised that somebody with the thing running didn’t just move the car out of the way and just park it down in the ditch and keep going.

Crew Chief Eric: This is like the Church of Petrelhead. Can I get a do doy? It’s like an amen. Can I get a do doy?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it’s one thing if it, like, she took the keys with her, but the thing’s running?

Like jump in, just push it off a cliff.

Crew Chief Brad: Then Karen would call the cops and accuse you of grand theft auto.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, a hundred percent. Just make sure the ashes aren’t in it.

Crew Chief Brad: I’d like to speak to the manager. What you do is you get in it. You don’t actually get fully in it. You put the emergency brake down and you put it in neutral and you let it go.

Wherever it goes, it goes. Not

Crew Chief Eric: full brick move. Ferris Bueller on the

Crew Chief Brad: accelerator. No, you can claim, Oh, she, she must’ve left it in neutral. I don’t know what happened, [01:11:00] Ossifer. Yeah, that’s true. Well, it’s

Crew Chief Eric: time we go behind the pitfall and talk about British sports news. And we have some NASCAR news this time.

You know, it’s one of these moments where truth is stranger than fiction.

Executive Producer Tania: But it’s not surprising.

Crew Chief Eric: Not at all. Headline reads, Moonshine Cave found underneath North Wilkesboro Speedway grandstands, track officials say.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, sure.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, there’s nothing more NASCAR than this story.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: 700 square foot still shine operation that was basically buried under these Submit grandstands for decades.

Executive Producer Tania: I think it’s a pretty cool find.

Crew Chief Eric: It is kind of cool. I’m sure Dale Earnhardt Jr. will do something on Lost Speedways about it soon enough. But the point is, it does hearken back to stock car racing’s original history. We had Buzz McKim give a presentation about this, about the ties back to moonshining and the origin of NASCAR.

It goes back and forth. The races on the beach at Daytona, blah, blah, [01:12:00] blah. You know, there’s some revisionist history happening here where it’s like, well, we don’t want to talk about the Shiner days and all this kind of thing. But like you guys, I think this is kind of cool to see. I wonder how many other NASCAR tracks might have hidden treasures like this.

I recently discovered a story about another track. Where it was said that at one point, I think it was Henry Ford had commissioned, you know, the celebration for like 4th of July, the race, they had stored fireworks under there. And thank God it was made out of cement because somebody threw a cigarette that was still like, sort of lit and it sell the fireworks off and like exploded underneath the cement.

I mean, this was way back in like the 1910s, 1920s kind of thing. So I mean, crazy, crazy stuff like this. To your point, not a surprise that there’s a still under there or, you know, illegal alcohol production facility, let’s call it that. I mean, cool fines, right? Lost history. Speaking of things that are lost, I don’t know about you guys.

I don’t often get the time to watch the craftsman truck series. But you had to have heard about this race at Coda [01:13:00] quote, the driver drove the wheels off of it. Mechanical failure. That is a big one. Basically the whole rear end of the truck fell off and went into the middle of the track as the car careened into the corner.

So truth sometimes is stranger than fiction. So if you watch that race and you saw it. Maybe tell us about the details. I still have to go back and watch the replay, but I found it extremely amusing. And, you know, unfortunately stuff happens, stuff breaks, but to have a whole rear differential axle, it looks like they just purposely took it off.

The truck, that’s a big failure. So somebody, yeah, someone’s getting fired. Exactly. Well, let’s switch to open wheel racing for a little bit. Would this be considered open wheel? You know, that’s a good one. That’s very true. So before we get deep into IndyCar and Formula 1, did you guys hear about the debut of the F1 Arcade in Boston?

Crew Chief Brad: No, I had not heard of that. I’ve seen stuff about it on Instagram and everything, but I never really paid much attention [01:14:00] to it.

Crew Chief Eric: So I thought it was going to be maybe an extension of F1 Boston, if you guys remember that. That’s the go kart track that became really, really famous. Back in the early 2000s in Boston, we’ve been there a bunch of times.

It’s a heck of a lot of fun. They got multiple courses. It’s really big for indoor complicated, multiple floors, all this kind of stuff. And so I was thinking, Oh, they finally expanded, you know, trying to be back in the news. Well, no downtown Boston F1 arcade. It’s a bar

Executive Producer Tania: Dave and busters.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it’s me. Yeah, exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: Formula one themed simulators.

Crew Chief Eric: So the Toto and Christians. Toto and Christians, exactly. I had some friends that are in the sim business kind of check out these videos that are out. I happened upon the one from Two Girls, One Formula outside of their kind of preliminary stuff of getting into Boston. They did an interesting tour of the facility.

So I watched that. It was a great way to digest it in quick order and get a feel for, like you said, the Dave and Busters of Formula One. So I think if I was in town, I would check it out. What about you guys?

Executive Producer Tania: I would, but it’d probably be a ridiculous amount of people. Maybe in a little while when things calm down.

Crew Chief Eric: Definitely, I would check it out the next time I’m in [01:15:00] Boston. IndyCar has been at the forefront of safety in open wheel racing. They were the first ones to kind of introduce the halo and some of the other stuff. And, you know, we could debate, uh, Formula One, the pinnacle of technology, but really IndyCar sort of adopted that in Formula One.

Came later IndyCar changed to the windscreen and halo setup, which they’ve used for the longest time. And now it looks like they’re getting a whole new windscreen setup for it looks like next season. So they’re making additional modifications to the IndyCars. And I guess that will translate through open wheel racing, probably into formula one here in the near future.

Possibly.

Crew Chief Brad: So IndyCar is not governed by the FIA, is it? No, it is not.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know that Formula One would adopt this similar.

Crew Chief Brad: Why are they making this change?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I think it has a lot to do with the episode that we did with Penske’s aerodynamicist, Lauren Sullivan. And so because of the speeds that are sustained at the Indy 500 and some of these other oval events that they do, [01:16:00] They need to find every possible way to make the car as slippery as possible, but maintain the safety.

And so the new quote unquote arrow screen is designed to improve the aerodynamics and the airflow going around the driver. So it looks a little odd. It’s kind of tankish when you look at it. I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, they added vents and they put a lid on the top basically, because the current windscreen is really like an open wheel windscreen.

So it just comes up and it’s open over your head. Looks like they put a top on it, but then obviously, so you don’t Frickin boil and suffocate. There’s two huge vents. Yeah. Push air in.

Crew Chief Brad: So basically if they put fenders over the wheels, they’ve got a prototype.

Crew Chief Eric: Gee, I’m glad you brought that up. Hmm. Funny how that works.

It’s all going to be in dirt’s cars soon enough. Well, let’s talk about formula one. What has happened here over the last month?

Executive Producer Tania: Still the Mac show won four out of the five races. Missed that one because car broke. Yes. Carlos won that one, I [01:17:00] think, instead. So good for him.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s clarify, didn’t Verstappen’s Red Bull catch on fire?

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, there was a brake issue on basically lap one. The rear brake was stuck, so it was constantly riding the brake and then obviously he was having handling issues, didn’t realize, or they didn’t communicate what it was, and he came into the pit lane and it got to the point that it literally exploded into a burst of flames because it got so hot.

And that was it catastrophic failure that put him out of the race on like lap two or three or something.

Crew Chief Eric: Awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: And otherwise I think all the other races he’s been, you know, 45 seconds ahead of the next car and like lather rinse repeat from last year. How exciting.

Crew Chief Brad: How fast was he during the sprint race?

He was like 20 seconds ahead in a, or no, like 10 or 15 seconds ahead in a. 20 minute race or something ludicrous.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I

Crew Chief Brad: mean.

Crew Chief Eric: Cheating.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s something going on. The thing I don’t understand is

Crew Chief Brad: he’s so

Crew Chief Eric: much faster than [01:18:00] even Perez. Not to spoil an upcoming episode, but we’re doing a tribute to Ayrton Senna.

And so it commemorates 30 years since his passing, tragic passing at Temporello at Ipola. And one of the comparisons that we made on that episode was Verstappen to Senna. If you look at Senna’s 1988 season, he had the perfect run. He missed all but one. And that was the event at Monza because that was sort of like giving the nod to Ferrari because Enzo had passed.

And so Ferrari wins it at Monza and the whole thing, right? Kind of thinking about it, drawing this parallel between Max And Senna, which you can make, especially if you extrapolate all the data that exists and all this kind of stuff. But the one thing that kept coming up, and I’ve said this before, and you guys told I want to put Max in the Haas and see what he does.

Executive Producer Tania: Why are you saying? I don’t disagree with you. I’ve never said the contrary. A lot of people have. I don’t think Brad has either.

Crew Chief Brad: Shout out to Sam Harrington. [01:19:00]

Crew Chief Eric: No, but a lot of people have that’s so stupid. That’s what I want to see him in another car. The same argument was made with Senna. You put the best driver in the best car.

He’s always going to win. Is it the driver? Is it the car? If you want to make the decision, put him in a lesser car and see how he does. If he kicks butt 20 seconds ahead in a Ferrari or in a Mercedes, which we know is slower or in a Haas, you know, to make the joke, okay, it’s for stopping. He’s that good.

You’ve got to take the Red Bull out of the equation.

Crew Chief Brad: But the only way to really prove that is to have everybody driving the same car. Oh, that’s called spec racing. Oh, that’s cool.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I mean, to Brad’s point, he’s miles ahead of his own teammate in supposedly the same car, which they’re not exactly the same, right?

Crew Chief Eric: So that goes back in the history books. And it’s something that we talked about even with Senna, you know, with all these different teammates outside of Prost, they would make these negotiations. Like when he was at Lotus, Now, I’m not saying Red Bull doesn’t have deep pockets because they all sort of do, but back in [01:20:00] those days he would demand my car gets the best parts.

The cars are, yes, in look and feel, they are equal, but they are not. The other car, the backup driver, the number two driver, basically got all the leftover crap and it met spec and it met qualification and whatever, but the lead car got the better parts. I’m not saying it’s exactly the same, you know, maybe the tuning is different.

I mean, so many different things in a modern formula one car, but I’m wondering a, if some of that is happening or B, like I’ve said before, maybe they’re cheating and nobody’s been able to prove it yet.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s a consistency in him, no doubt that he can consistently. Just lap after lap hit the same freaking mark exactly the same way.

When you’ve seen some of the races where he passes the other cars as if they’re parked, and I know there’s the DRS and all that stuff, but some of the gap closing is just extraordinary, and it’s like this car is in a league of its own. It’s not even

Crew Chief Eric: Again, is it the car? Is it him?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, in a straight line, it’s the [01:21:00] car, because what is his talent?

Pushing the pedal down

Crew Chief Eric: corner exit speed makes a huge difference. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: yes. Yes. In that regard. Yes. The corner exit speed, but on some of the traps was a really long straights.

Crew Chief Eric: But here’s the thing. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we look back. We might. Be talking about Verstappen as the second coming of Senna.

I want to put it under a different lens and I know I’ve been hating on Verstappen for a long time, but I’ve come into this new way of thinking. Maybe I’m not hating, maybe we are seeing something. Just like we saw it in the 80s when Senna was coming up, because if you watch some of those races, he was ballistically fast compared to everybody else.

His closing rates, his exit speeds, it was like he was driving a space shuttle and everybody else was driving Cinquecentos. Again, I’m wondering if this is sort of the second coming of Senna.

Crew Chief Brad: Did anybody make that same comparison when Lewis Hamilton was winning all his championships?

Crew Chief Eric: No, Lewis Hamilton was constantly compared to Schumacher.

He was in Schumacher’s shadow. And even though [01:22:00] Hamilton wanted to be Senna, you know, that whole attitude and this facade that he put on, that I’m not here to make friends, and he wanted to emulate Senna. Senna, he was more like Schumacher. He cold and calculated and precise and consistent. Not that passionate driving.

Not that just on the ragged edge lap after lap. Senna was that way. He drove at the ragged edge, 13 tenths, every lap, the same. Just ridiculous with complete disregard for everybody else and the thing is granted more Formula One drivers come up through karting than ever before but back then it was super rare and Senna was a karter before he was in Formula One he went Formula Two and moved up the ranks but Max also comes from a big history and practice of karting and when you watch him drive.

Executive Producer Tania: They all do though everyone. In the grid right now does.

Crew Chief Eric: Well Lance

Crew Chief Brad: Stroll comes from Mario Kart.

Crew Chief Eric: But my point is, it’s hard to take the Carter out of the boy, you know what I’m saying? And we’ve seen some of that behavior with Verstappen, so I’m just [01:23:00] telling people, for the haters out there, I think in a couple of years, we’ll be looking back going, Damn, we were here for the beginning of something amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: But in the moments where the car hasn’t been good, he hasn’t done shit. Very few races. Where, like, the car was having problems, like, he couldn’t, I don’t know if he got into a Haas, because the Haas is inferior, that he could win, and definitely not by 45 seconds or something ridiculous like that. I don’t think anybody could.

I think what will be more telling, and the jury is out on the car versus him and all that stuff, because everyone claims the car. is because Adrian Newey, he designed it. Well, guess what? He’s leaving Red Bull.

So

Executive Producer Tania: if he builds the same car somewhere else and now suddenly that gap closes, now you know it’s the car, right?

For sure.

Executive Producer Tania: Now if he has to fight somebody for that first place constantly, and there’s real racing going on, because he’s out by himself doing time trials. He’s not under pressure to make a mistake. He doesn’t have to make a mistake because he’s [01:24:00] got somebody breathing down his neck.

Crew Chief Brad: Yet he always has something to complain about.

Executive Producer Tania: Right? So that’s a whole different dynamic too. When you’re out there just doing hot laps by yourself, the dynamic’s different. So who knows? So it’ll be interesting to see. We don’t know, allegedly. So it’s kind of breaking news today. Where knew he’s going? It says he wants out and he’s gone. He’s gonna even break the contract that he has, I think, to get out.

Because I think technically his contract goes till the end of next season. But he can, I think, break it and get out so that he could be with a new team starting next season.

Crew Chief Eric: And ready.

Executive Producer Tania: Be interesting to see where Well, there was, I think, rumors a while ago about, Oh, if Hamilton moves and Adrian, like, goes with him, would he go to Ferrari?

Or did daddy wore bucks? Pony up some big cash to bring him to Aston so his son can look good. I don’t know.

Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: that’ll be interesting to see because if he clones a red bull for somebody else

Crew Chief Eric: or let’s say he doesn’t sign with a team at all that reeks of suspicion that maybe they were on the verge of getting caught for doing something, you know, Lotus esque [01:25:00] in this modern time and he doesn’t want to be associated with it.

Conspiracy

Crew Chief Brad: theories! What? That’s a very NCAA collegiate sports theory there. Just saying, it could happen. I suspect he’s trying to get out because of the whole Christian Horner drama, and there’s probably more going on there.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s supposedly the impetus for it, is the whole Horner allegations thing.

He’s like, nope, I’m done with this.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s just cross our fingers and hope he goes to Audi, and I mean Sauber, and the Germans is coming to destroy everybody, it’d be perfect.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my god, that’d be amazing. Which, speaking of Audi, apparently they’ve signed their first driver and it’s not Harlow Sines. Uh

oh.

Executive Producer Tania: Even though there’s rumors about that, that they’re courting him and this, that, and the other, but they have Nico Hülkenberg.

What?

Executive Producer Tania: Like, okay, he’s sitting there backmarking in Haas right now. Like, cool. Really? You could’ve brought Vettel back out of retirement, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: Probably would’ve been better.

They still might.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a rumor about that too.

Crew Chief Brad: They could get bonus out of retirement.

Executive Producer Tania: Out of his green state car. What [01:26:00]

Crew Chief Eric: is there anybody else on the list with a German last name? Let’s start there.

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, there are no other German drivers on the grid right now.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why they chose Hulkenberg. It’s very simple.

The way Volkswagen works. They’re gonna start there. Just gonna leave it alone. But couldn’t they still get in Mick Schumacher?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s not possible. He’s not doing anything right now.

Executive Producer Tania: Could. I don’t know who any of the reserve drivers are. If there’s any German ones there might be. But the next F1 news is Miami.

Welcome to Miami. Thousand dollars for three days. Get your uh, wallets open. I’d rather not. So May 5th I believe is that race. Another spectacle.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, if that’s all we got, we will tune in next month for more Formula One recap. But for now, our motorsports news is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center Watkins Glen.

So I just want to let you guys know the raffle closed and we do have a winner of the 2024 e ray that they were raffling off. Apparently it is going to a man in Florida, so we may see this car show up in the news soon [01:27:00] enough. The rumor on the street is they’ve already selected the next raffle car. So spoiler alert, it’s going to be another Corvette.

This time it will be a Z06. So I don’t have all the details on that yet, but look for an upcoming announcement on the next raffle car for the 2024 2025 season. And by the way, if you do buy a raffle ticket, And you win, you do have the option to take home the car or a cash prize option instead. But please note that every ticket you buy goes to continue the work being done at the IMRRC, which is a non profit organization celebrating its 25th year of existence this year.

So through your help, it keeps the lights on, keeps things going, keeps research going. And it’s for a really great cause because they are at the epicenter of a lot of things in the motorsports communities really appreciate the work that they’re doing and your help by participating in these sweepstakes and other things very much goes a long way.

So that being said, teasers for upcoming events at the IMRC on May 11th, there is going to be a center [01:28:00] conversation called. Oswego Supers, a legacy of speed at the Steel Palace, which includes the Purdy Deuce, one of the legendary super modifies that’s run at Oswego, and it’s currently on display at the center.

If you look at our Instagram, if you look at theirs, all the social media stuff, we have some special articles about the Purdy Deuce. We recently sat down with Camden Proud, the PR director from Oswego, to talk about the history. Kip Zyder came on and did a short, what we call TLDR, too long, didn’t read about the importance of the Purdy Deuce, lots of stuff around that.

They’re going to be recording the session and we’ll be able to bring that to you later in the season. And then again, on June 22nd, there’s another center conversation. This one, even more important, it’s called the greatest Corvette story ever told. It’s about the Camarotti Corvette, which has multiple wins under its belt to include.

Really, really awesome car. It’s the tail end of the C1 Corvettes. So first generation Corvettes, again, they’re looking to record that. We’ll get that out and remastered later in the year. And then on September the 12th, there will be the Cameron R Argett Singer [01:29:00] award for outstanding contributions to motorsport.

I am privy to who is getting awarded this year. It can’t say yet. The official press release will be coming out any day now. So stay tuned to that. And I think a lot of people will be shocked. And tickets are on sale for the Argettsinger award dinner right now. You can get those from the IMRRC website by clicking on store and then going to awards dinner.

And then don’t forget November 1st through the 2nd, mark your calendar. The 8th annual Michael R. Argettsinger symposium on motorsports history is going to be held at Watkins Glen international. And we will again, be carrying it on the motoring podcast network and live streaming it for you on our Twitch.

So stay tuned for that. And we are re releasing remastered. Presentations from throughout last year’s symposia out on break fix and out on the motoring podcast network throughout the year. So stay tuned for some really interesting and educational episodes throughout the rest of the season. Well, guys, we’ve hit the wrap up, so it’s time to bring it home.

Crew Chief Brad: As a reminder, you can find tons of upcoming local shows [01:30:00] and events at the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts. So

Crew Chief Eric: I want to remind you if you’re still planning your track season, look no further than hbdejunkie. com for an update list of events from all across North America on their website. You can filter by location and find the perfect HPD event for you.

And be sure to keep an eye on our motorsports calendar on gtmotorsports. org forward slash events to learn about other special events like autocrosses, rallycross, go karting events, and other various disciplines of motorsport that you shouldn’t miss.

Executive Producer Tania: We just crested 335 episodes of Brake 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, Brake Fix, and others. Search for Break Slash Fix or Grand No D Touring everywhere you download, stream, or listen, and be sure to check out www.

[01:31:00] motoringpodcast. net for reviews of the shows, new episodes, bios of our on air personalities, and descriptions of the services we offer.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you know you can sign up for our Patreon for free? Lots of great extras and bonuses, even on the free tier. But 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, dislike. 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, as always, a special thank you to our executive producer and co host, Tanya, and to all the fans, friends, and family who support GTM. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Otro.

[01:32:00] Otro.

Crew Chief Brad: And we’re out.

Here we are in the eyes in front of us, cars in back of us, all just waiting to order. There’s some idiot in a Volvo, with his bright son behind me. I lean out the window and scream, hey, whatcha trying to do, blind me? My wife says maybe we

Crew Chief Eric: should We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.

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