B/F: The Drive Thru #47

• The Chevy Volt Was So Ahead Of Its Time Automakers Are Just Now Catching Up

• You Can Still Get a CD Player in the 2024 Subaru WRX

Is Toyota bringing back the Celica?

Did you know that the new Maxda CX-90 has an inline-6?

• A Cybertruck polished to a mirror-like sheen is now for sale for $150,000

• Lotus Immediately Crashes Its 2,000-HP Evija X Prototype At Goodwood Festival Of Speed
• GMC Made a Motorhome That Pumped Sewage Through Its Exhaust on Purpose
• What compels someone to put an aircraft engine in a Beetle?
• The Best "Pre-Race Prayer" Ever!

• 2025 Bentley Continental GT Speed launches 771-hp PHEV powertrain

• Vigilante 4x4 endows 1988 Grand Wagoneer with 807-hp Hellcat Engine

• Tesla launches new Cybertruck tailgate shield and jumpseats
• Tesla’s Market Domination Is Waning
• Tesla Autopilot Mistakes Train Tracks For Road, Driver Doesn’t Immediately Notice
• Tesla Cybertruck Unexpectedly Accelerates Into Home With Rear Wheels Locked
• Tesla Electric Steering - Input Delay?
• Someone Sent a Strong Message to Elon Musk on Dozens of Cybertrucks Awaiting Delivery

• Andreas Mindt's plan to fix Volkswagen's ID crisis
• VW Takes Away Execs’ Porsche Company Cars To Cut Costs
• Volkswagen’s EV troubles deepen with possible Audi plant closure
• VW Tells 271,000 Atlas Owners Not To Use The Passenger Seat

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The Drive Thru is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like HPTEjunkie. com, CollectorCarGuide. net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine, The Exotic Car Marketplace, and many others. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of The Drive Thru, look no further than www.

motoringpodcast. net. Click about, and then advertising. Thank you again to everyone that supports the Motoring Podcast Network, Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast, Brake Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I’ve got to turn off this stupid. Yes. I acknowledge that I’m being recorded. That is the whole point.

Zoom. All right. We ready? Yup. Dun, dun, dun. Welcome to drive through episode number 47. Wow. 47 of these things. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random. Car adjacent news. Let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news. Yeah, I was looking at the notes.

I actually [00:01:00] like what we’re doing here with the car stuff. But what can you do with 50, 000? That’s

Crew Chief Eric: right. Well, we’re coming off a shlew of what should I buy? So I figured you know what? I know how much you guys love it when I start doing math. We remember how that drive thru went down, but I

was

Crew Chief Eric: like, I’ve been called out more than once about this mythical 50, 000.

So I was like, you know what? How about I do a little bit of homework?

Crew Chief Brad: 50, 000 does not go as far as it used to. No, it does not. It does

Crew Chief Eric: not.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, before we jump into our showcase, our what can you buy showcases? For the month, we got a little bit of cyber truck update for you, Brad. I know you are really, really regretting not buying this truck.

Crew Chief Brad: This is something you can not buy for our mythical dollar amount that we’re going to talk about later, but what’s going on with the cyber truck that I don’t have?

Crew Chief Eric: Tanya, do you want to go there? I don’t even know what the problem is. What do you mean you don’t know what the problem is? There’s always a problem with the Cybertruck.

Well,

Executive Producer Tania: there’s so many. Which one are we talking

Crew Chief Eric: about?

Crew Chief Brad: Right now, we’re talking about the windshield wipers detaching from the truck [00:02:00] because even they think the truck is so ugly, they don’t want to be associated with it.

Crew Chief Eric: 11, 000 Cybertrucks have been recalled due to trim and wiper

Crew Chief Brad: issues. How does that work?

They’ve only sold like 5, 000 of them.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no, The trim, that’s old news. Like those pieces were coming off the back end already for a while.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, now they’re acknowledging the fact that there’s a problem with the Cybertruck that needs to be addressed.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So, so they’re doing a formal recall. Right. Okay.

I got it. Right.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, we’ve talked about this before. How do they fix things? Which aisle in Home Depot are they going to get the fix for this particular recall? And I was thinking, Do they glue the wiper back on? Do they rivet it on? It’s not, that’s not

Executive Producer Tania: the issue. The trim piece is what’s falling off.

So they most certainly will glue the trim piece back on or rivet it like they did the pedal piece.

Crew Chief Brad: No, no. They’re going to use Ni Tis. Oh. They’re going to Ni Ti it to the wiper and it’s not coming off after that.

Crew Chief Eric: Realistically, that thing is 67 feet long. Can you imagine walking [00:03:00] into Vance Auto or AutoZone and like, I need a wiper blade for a Cybertruck.

Where do they keep? This six foot long Bosch edge wiper blade.

Executive Producer Tania: They don’t, you probably have to special order it. And then it takes like six months or something, but the problem with the windshield wiper is not the wiper itself is the motor where the motor controller may just stop functioning due to electrical overstress to the gate driver component.

So the wiper blade is so big and the motor is too small. That’s what I just heard.

Crew Chief Brad: You would have to imagine that an electric. Car company would be able to figure out how to get enough juice to power a 6, 000 foot windshield wiper. Nah,

Crew Chief Eric: nah,

Crew Chief Brad: we’re still working on that. But yet the truck has enough power to pull a 9 11 and race against the 9 11 while pulling a 9 11, but it can’t move its wiper arm.

Executive Producer Tania: We were going to put laser beams

Crew Chief Brad: as

Executive Producer Tania: wipers instead, and yet we can’t manage a technology that’s been around for how many [00:04:00] decades?

Crew Chief Brad: A hundred

Crew Chief Eric: years. Like

Crew Chief Brad: literally, I bet they had the technology for the laser beams, but the NHTSA was probably like, nah, dog. That’s not for me, dog. Not, nah, nah, nah, nah.

Crew Chief Eric: LASIK sales were going to be infringed upon.

That’s perfect.

Crew Chief Brad: You buy a

Crew Chief Eric: cyber truck and you can give yourself LASIK. That’s awesome. But you know, as I dug into this article from Electric Which is a bit of a tech website, but they bring up EVs quite a bit, sort of baffled by the picture that they had. And as I looked into it a little bit more, apparently the picture that they used in the article has nothing to do with the wiper blade, which is what was puzzling to me.

It has everything to do with a Russian cyber truck smuggling ring.

Executive Producer Tania: Is that the two trucks in front of a tractor trailer?

Crew Chief Eric: Right. And I’m like, wait, what? So I want to know where that story is, or is it some sort of weird, like SEO to get Google to find their site? Because they’re putting the appropriate words together in the picture data or whatever.

So I was like, this is really weird. So I couldn’t find [00:05:00] any evidence of this particular thing as I was digging into that, but I was like, oh, okay, well, whatever, but that’s okay because. There’s another thing with the Cybertruck that was brought up on, of all places, Reddit.

Crew Chief Brad: You read it here, folks.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right.

So we’re talking a majority of the systems on the Cybertruck are electric. Well, the steering is two and apparently it has input delay and somebody took a video of just how slow it is to react to a driver’s input. The caption reads, Imagine dying in a car accident because of input delay.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know.

It’s imperceptible from this video. And they’re not moving, which there’s a difference.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, anybody who’s driven a car without power steering knows that. It’s much easier to turn the wheel when the vehicle is moving than when the vehicle is stationary. Granted, this shouldn’t be happening, but I’ve never tested this with any other drive by wire car.

I would like to think that it doesn’t happen.

Executive Producer Tania: Who’s turning the steering wheel like that?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s

Executive Producer Tania: an invasive maneuver. Invasive [00:06:00] maneuver. Not the way he’s doing it. You’re going to roll

Crew Chief Eric: that. Exactly. And that’s what I was thinking too. I was like, if you’re turning that hard at speed, you are basically going to instigate a rollover situation.

You shouldn’t be turning that much that quickly.

Crew Chief Brad: Still, I mean, to their point, it’s obviously exaggerated. Maybe there is something to the input delay.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. You know, that’s a Tesla problem or a technology problem. Doesn’t Lexus have one of the cars that has the drive by wire as well? I can’t remember now.

There was something about theirs too. I think it was still better than this, but maybe not even perfect either.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t that how they do the self parking system as well, where everything is controlled by the computer and it’s turning the wheels and all that, so it has to be like drive by wire in that way?

Crew Chief Brad: There are a lot of cars out there that are drive by wire. I believe my R32 is drive by wire.

Crew Chief Eric: Only on the throttle. Nothing else.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, yeah, that’s true. We are talking about the steering here. That’s right. Okay. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Now what’s scary is [00:07:00] the cars that are brake by wire, where there’s no relation between the pedal and what’s happening at the calipers, that To me is

Crew Chief Brad: scary.

That’s why you need that brain input that Elon Musk is trying to sell that way. You can just, all you gotta do is think about breaking and it’s going to happen. Oh, okay. No need for a foot.

Crew Chief Eric: That explains why the wiper blade stuff is buried in the menu system. You’re just supposed to be like Spock and mind meld with the cyber truck.

And then the wiper starts working.

Executive Producer Tania: My thoughts to your thoughts.

Crew Chief Brad: I take it that’s a Star Trek reference. Yeah. What gave it away?

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve never driven a car with this feature to it, but what would be more concerning is the numbness. Does it have force feedback?

Crew Chief Brad: Is that a Thrustmaster? Did they put the wrong Thrustmaster in there?

No!

Executive Producer Tania: See, think about it. How numb that steering wheel must be. If it’s not connected to anything.

Crew Chief Brad: They gotta upgrade to that Fanatec.

Executive Producer Tania: Where’s your sensation? [00:08:00] Legitimately, where’s the force feedback?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh

Crew Chief Brad: my god. Well, don’t they have the ball tickler?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s the sensation. My Mark VI Volkswagen had electric assist, but it was still obviously all mechanical.

So that, you really couldn’t tell the difference. So much versus like a hydraulic assisted car from the old days, but yeah, a totally drive by wire system like this. I’ve only driven a couple model threes and I just thought they felt numb in general, but then again, I’m looking at it with a different lens than your standard daily driver commuter person.

So I would want it to react a little differently. I’ve been in a Tesla on track. What I walked away from was that they feel heavy because they are heavy. You know, that’s a whole nother discussion. All this drive by wire, fly by wire stuff. You know, what’s wrong with a cable? What’s wrong with a brake pedal that pushes liquid?

I don’t know. All this extra complication for things that are just going to break.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Bye bye.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Right. So we’ll put a pin in that for now, because there’s always more Tesla and cyber truck shenanigans happening. [00:09:00] So let’s get into our showcase here. So we mentioned at the beginning, we’re coming off of some, what should I buy?

So it’s been in my head for a while that I’ve been roasted a couple of times. I keep saying that every new car is 50, 000 and you guys keep telling me, no, no, no, that’s not true. You can buy something that you would like for less than 50 grand and I’m like, okay, so you know what? I put pen to paper and I started doing research and clicking around and.

Doing the build my own kind of stuff, but it also dawned on me. I can’t just go try and buy what I want or what I would choose as my next daily driver, because I was spending a lot of time behind the windshield since the last drive through, I started looking at the cars that are on the road. You know, I’m reading badges, trying to look at packages that people bought because I want to see what’s kind of the general populace.

And I can assume that they’re SUVs. Nobody’s buying cars anymore. Not really. And vans, I mean, whatever that’s, you know, that’s a whole different ball game of rarity. So what I did is I kind of pared down my shopping criteria and I said, midsize SUVs, which. Are larger than the [00:10:00] 10 years ago. So I also had to kind of open my aperture there a little bit as well.

So I said, not a C. U. V. and it’s got to be a base model with all wheel drive and hybrid if it’s available. And the only other thing that I know that I would want that my wife would run that most people buy is like the weather package, right? We want the monster mats and we want the cargo liner. Whether we’re millennials or Xenials or Gen Xers or whatever the hell generation we’re considered now, I have no clue.

I went with millennial gray. And there’s a good reason for picking that too. So I’m going to go through all this.

Executive Producer Tania: Who are we buying for Eric or somebody else?

Crew Chief Eric: When I looked at this and I did the research, I’m like, what would somebody in the middle of Ohio buy? So I said, all right, let me go down to my local virtual car dealership.

And the first one on the list was Honda.

Executive Producer Tania: Sorry, I heard Honda and my eyes glazed over. Um, so.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently your ears did too.

Executive Producer Tania: Paying 50, 000 for a Honda seems outrageous.

Crew Chief Eric: Midsize SUV. What did I choose? CR V Sport Hybrid. [00:11:00] MSRP 34, 350. Options that I needed to add to meet my shopping criteria, all wheel drive. And did you know that gray paint out of all the cars that we’re going to talk about, including this Honda, you pay extra to get gray, whether it’s gray or silver or pewter or some sort of combination, right?

And then you add the all season protection package. Everybody’s got a kind of different name for it. Brand new CRV sport hybrid 38048 before taxes, tags, and all the other fun stuff. And I said, okay, that’s cool. All right. My next part of this adventure was as I got like to the third or fourth car, I’m like, but wait a minute, because everybody keeps telling me because chips and there’s no cars and that, so I said, search inventory for any matches.

To what I wanted to buy.

Crew Chief Brad: But a lot of dealers don’t stock base models. Right. They’ll have one or two to get you to come in the door, but then they upsell you to all this other stuff as well. Here’s the inventory that we actually have for only 100 more a month on your [00:12:00] monthly payment.

Crew Chief Eric: And again, I’m not asking for a whole lot.

Crew Chief Brad: The base

Crew Chief Eric: package with all wheel drive in gray with an all season package, which is again, just mats and a cargo liner nationwide inventory of that CRB. Six cars, six. So that meant if I were to roll down to the local Honda dealership, they wouldn’t have what I wanted, especially not at 38, 000, I could get stuck with something else and you know, the people are doing that, but they’re just like, man, I don’t have time to wait.

I’m just going to buy what’s here. I don’t really care. I just need a car, you know, whatever it is. Maybe you could pay the base price of 34, 000. Or you could end up paying way more than 38, 000 by the time it’s all said and done.

Crew Chief Brad: Sometimes I want a base model because we had the discussion last time. If you want to soup it up or, you know, put modifications and stuff on it, you don’t need to buy what the dealer is trying to sell or what the manufacturer put together.

Cause you’re just going to mess with it anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: Not to be outdone, I’m going to look at slightly larger cars in the Honda fleet. So I looked at the pilot. Starts at [00:13:00] 30, nine, nine. And then we’ve talked about the new prologue and here we are getting that much closer to that mythical 50, 000. The prologue starts at 47, four.

So what can you buy for 50 grand from Honda? Any of those three cars that I mentioned, but taxes, tags, fees, and any other options are going to inch you closer to 000 number.

Executive Producer Tania: Am I trying to buy at 50, 000 or. under 50, 000. No, you

Crew Chief Eric: guys told me that there are tons of other cars out there for less than 50, 000.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m on the build list. And if you’re just darting MSRPs, the HR V is 25, 000, the 000, the CR V hybrid is 35, 000, the Pilot’s 40, 000, the Passport is 42, 000, the Prologue SUV is 47, 000, the Civic sedan is 24, 000, the Accord, which is 25, 000, Looks the same as a civic sedan is 28 .

Crew Chief Eric: Nobody buys those. They’re cars.

Nobody buys cars. That’s the whole point. They buy SUVs.

Executive Producer Tania: Every single thing on Honda’s [00:14:00] page. They have 26 cars available. All under 50 grand

Crew Chief Brad: starts under. But to Eric’s point, once you add options, ’cause he had specific option criteria. It took the price up. His next point was search available dealer inventory.

They only had six nationwide of his particular criteria. Next up, you’d have to get into a different vehicle. I mean, yeah, you went and looked at base models. So when you put it in those terms, yes, manufacturers technically are offering these cars, but I see where you’re going where people aren’t actually buying.

Cars that are in that price range. So I, I understand what you’re doing now.

Crew Chief Eric: I want it to be fair because I’ve been accused too. And I know that I’ll do this because it’s a lot harder to add all the whiz bang, cool, fun stuff later. So I’m always like, man, buy the biggest, baddest one there is, because you won’t regret not having it later when you have all the options.

But I wanted to be real because people don’t shop like that. And I’ve been told that’s not how people shop. So I said, fine, I’ll go to the other side of the [00:15:00] pendulum swing. And I’ll start with a base model in all the categories of what I considered domestic cars. People probably scratching their heads going Honda.

Well, a lot of those Hondas are built here in the United States. Toyota, the same thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Eric, let’s do an experiment. Can we find out what is the number one best selling vehicle in the country right

Executive Producer Tania: now?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s the Ford F-150. We already know that.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought it wasn’t. I thought they got beat out

Crew Chief Brad: Well. Okay.

Okay. Well that’s, that’s a good place to start. Ford F-150. Surprise surprise. Once you get past the F-150 and the Silverado, the third on the list is the RAV4. Yeah, you were spot on looking at the RAV4. And then after that, the RAV4 comes the ram and then the crv. So that’s what people are buying. And then we can go in and price a Ford F-150 and that’ll tell us if that’s the number one selling car.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think you could buy one for under 50 grand. Can you?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, there you go. Then to Eric’s point, people are not paying less than 50, 000 for a car. Because if you look at the statistics of what the number one selling vehicle in the country is right now, and if it’s not less than 50, 000,

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, no, I just assumed started [00:16:00] already at 50.

They actually don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know. F one 50 started in the thirties. And then usually trucks have really big rebates. I know whenever I was looking, you could get at least eight to 10, 000 in rebates. At any given moment when purchasing a truck, a simplified version of this is what are the top five number one best selling cars in the country right now?

Crew Chief Eric: So I was trying to discount the outliers because there are plenty of Corollas and other stuff on the road. And there are plenty of F one fifties, a majority of trucks, Silverados or Dodge Rams or whatever. Because there’s a high concentration of that, but let’s just say you’re an average, normal person.

What are they buying today? They’re buying a CRV. No, they’re buying a CRV. They’re buying a RAV4. They’re buying an Equinox. They’re buying a Ford Edge. So I started looking at those and what do they have in common? Midsize SUV with all wheel drive, because everybody’s got this fantasy that we have to have all wheel drive now too.

So nobody buys the front wheel drive base models. And what the dealerships have done. Is [00:17:00] they’ve gotten smart and all wheel drive is an add on. But if you look for a base, base, base, vanilla front wheel drive SUV, there’s like zero, right? There were barely any base all wheel drives out there when I was looking.

Executive Producer Tania: Buy a RAV4 all wheel drive for under 30 base.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s buying those. They’re buying hybrids. So you have to add the hybrid. 32, 000 is the

Crew Chief Brad: starting price. So the hybrid was one of Eric’s criteria. Yes, it has to be

Crew Chief Eric: hybrid

Crew Chief Brad: now. You have to fit into his sandbox.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. What’s the point of that?

Crew Chief Brad: The point is

Executive Producer Tania: Keep the car you have because it’s not worth going to buy a new one unless it died.

Crew Chief Brad: There you go. You hit the nail on the head. Exactly. So that’s always the answer to the argument. It’s always cheaper to keep her.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, there are a good percentage of CRVs and RAV4s and Ford Edges and things like that on the road. But when you start really looking at Maybe what people are driving in certain geographical areas.

Let’s say in the DMV versus the middle of Arkansas, it’s going to be different. You know what I mean? Because the cost of living is different and there’s a certain like level [00:18:00] of status when we go down the beltway here, all we see is Audi’s and BMW’s and Cayenne’s and the major part of the cars on the road.

In a high populous area, especially in a much more affluent area are going to be more expensive. So when I go down the road, I feel like a cheap bastard because I’m in an old car at the time it was expensive, but compared to what people are rolling around. And now I’m driving a base model when I had the top of the line model 10 years ago.

And it’s just like, what they’re paying is mind boggling. That’s the whole thing. And so when I went and looked at this cross section. It’s the usual suspects, the CRV, the RAV4, the Edge, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But as I dug a little bit deeper and I started looking at like, I couldn’t even find anything to buy.

Chrysler’s got one vehicle. The other Pacifica Dodge like has nothing at the moment. And then Jeep just 86, a bunch of their stuff. So you’re left with the Jeep Cherokee, which is the only thing I could make as a comparison. And even there, you’re coming in at 50. 40, 000 [00:19:00] optioned out the way I did it. All wheel drive, gray paint, all season, weather package, all that kind of stuff.

But there were none available. You couldn’t get a base model Cherokee. Everything was a Trailhawk, which then jumps the price up. So then what’s the price of a Grand Cherokee? And they tout on their website, 36, 500. But. If I add the hybrid and all this other stuff, I was suddenly at 61, 000 and jeeps sell like crazy.

We know that I didn’t even want to look at the price of Wranglers because we talked about this before they’ve gone through the roof. So then I said, all right, I’m going to go back to my old stomping grounds as much as it pains me to do this because I saw the commercial, like literally the day I was doing the research, the summer of savings, but they spelled it S A V W I N G.

I was like, this is such a terrible commercial. So I was like, all right, you got my attention because I’m doing the homework anyway. I wasn’t even going to look. There’s nothing. So to meet my criteria, all you can buy is an ID4 standard. That’s the base. It starts at 40, 000. And as soon as I started selecting anything, it didn’t matter what [00:20:00] it was.

You’re just like, okay, ID4 standard. I don’t understand what was going on with the configurator. 41, 000. Like it was like a 2, 000 jump immediately. And I don’t even know what the hell was going on. The other thing is the ID four is rear wheel drive. And I’m like, what? There’s no all season package. I could get it in gray.

And then if you wanted the all wheel drive, you had to opt for the ID four Pro, which then moved me basically right to $50,000. I’m like $50,000 for a vw. That’s not gonna happen. I drew a line at $35,000 for a Volkswagen 50,000. I’m not giving them 50 grand. But then if you look at the used car market, it’s still just as crazy.

So what do you buy for under 50 grand? You buy these midsize SUVs, if you can find them with very, very minimal creature comfort add on things that you might want, because some of the packages that come with these vehicles are super cool, but you’re jumping five grand every time you want to add something, you know, you want this stereo package or you want this thing or this other it’s, it’s nuts.

It’s shenanigans. [00:21:00] It’s collusion. 100%. So what did I learn? I learned that some configurators are better than others. They’re also very different and some are extremely awful. I had some problems with a bunch of, um, compatibility with browsers and stuff like that. I also realized that the whole Burger King, you can have it your way thing.

That ain’t happening either. You know, there’s been talk from Volvo and Ford about how you can order it all a cart. Yeah. I didn’t see any of that. I went to those websites just for giggles.

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. But you can still walk into a dealership and place an order for a car to get exactly what you want within the manufacturer’s.

Parameters if you want to wait six months, sure. I’ve done it before. That is one way people can actually get what they want if you’re willing to wait for it. That’s the

Crew Chief Eric: whole thing. Like nowadays we don’t even like the buying process. We don’t even want to talk about the car Vanna’s and all that kind of stuff to make buying easier.

So the dealer process is a little like, we all just like, can I just order it and have it show up via Amazon? And they dropped my car off. The builders are kind of stupid. [00:22:00] Because when it comes to that inventory search, you’re literally just better off going down to your local Ford dealer and seeing what they have on the lot and then just be happy with what they have.

And the other thing is if you do the nationwide search for cars, which is really interesting. If you went down to your local dealership and they didn’t have what you wanted in the old days, you could do what they call the DX, which was a dealer exchange. They would take something off their lot and they would swap with another dealer.

That way, they weren’t out the car and they’re making the sale. And there’s all this backdoor stuff going on. There are now so many hefty destination fees to do something like that, that they’re trying to persuade you never to do a DX again, forcing you into that position of just be happy with what we have on the lot, the buying process.

I don’t want to have to go through it again. If I don’t have to, I think that’s where I was at the bottom line. I guess at the end of the day, when you look at this list of data, which we’ll have in the show notes, Are any of these cars something that if you needed a new car today, do that summer savings close out of the 24 models because the new ones are right around the corner.

September is the 2025 year for [00:23:00] cars. Would you buy anything off this list?

Executive Producer Tania: No,

Crew Chief Brad: first of all, I think all of that’s bullshit. I think you buy a car when you need a car and that’s just when you buy a car, you don’t, Oh my God, they’re having a sale. I have to go buy the car. Now, if you don’t need a car, don’t go buy a car.

Executive Producer Tania: I just priced a GR Corolla circuit edition. Done. I don’t want to use a little trash on your list.

Crew Chief Eric: I got a deal for you, though. You know what the biggest bargain I found was? You know what you should buy, Tanya? You can get a brand new 2024 Chevrolet Malibu 26995. Optioned out.

Executive Producer Tania: 26995. Yeah, okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Going back to all the times that we bring this up when we talk about it, yes, you can buy a car for less than 50, 000, but is that the car you want to drive?

Is that the car you want to be stuck with for the next 10 years?

Executive Producer Tania: A GR Corolla Circuit Edition?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but you’re spending 50, 000 for that.

Executive Producer Tania: If you’re telling me I have to spend 50, 000 on something, I’d rather have that than a RAV4. I

Crew Chief Eric: [00:24:00] don’t know, Brad, C63 AMG Mercedes used? You’d probably get that for less than 30,

Executive Producer Tania: 000.

I thought we were buying new from the dealer.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s options on the table. That’s all I’m saying.

Crew Chief Brad: But yeah, so, so we stopped talking about the normal car buyer and we started talking about the enthusiasts, which takes us into a whole different realm. One point I was trying to stretch my budget to get a black series because you could get one for around 60.

The first gen, the CLK black series, they were hovering around 60 grand. I don’t know what they are

Executive Producer Tania: now. Probably higher.

Crew Chief Brad: I was like, you know, I could make that work.

Executive Producer Tania: I still wouldn’t be able to buy a 50, 000 Toyota, I don’t think.

Crew Chief Eric: Just think about that. We talked about this before, the price of the Volkswagens, where the GTI is going to be with the Mark VIII and a half.

So if the GR Corolla is there, the Golf R is going to be 50, 000. For sure, because they got to compete. 320 horsepower

Crew Chief Brad: competition? Well, I don’t think we’ve actually figured out which of these cars are we going to buy.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, so now we’re forced to choose off this list.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, if you had to pick something off this list, what would it be?

Executive Producer Tania: Honda CR [00:25:00] V, RAV4, Ford Edge, Chevy Trailblazer, Jeep Cherokee. VW ID4. No, I don’t want any of these. God, I have to choose.

Crew Chief Brad: I would do the ID4 rear wheel drive, and I would slap on some extra Ryobi batteries to get a little more juice out of it. I’d pick the

Crew Chief Eric: Jeep all day long. I like the Stellantis products these days.

I think I would go with that. I know what I’m getting into. I know what the all wheel drive’s like. There’s certain things about the Jeep that have just become sort of second nature now, so I think that’s where I would spend my money.

Executive Producer Tania: Can I get the Trailhawk?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, those are available.

Executive Producer Tania: I’d probably get that.

Crew Chief Eric: She says with complete disdain, she’s like

Crew Chief Brad: a total reluctance. I have to, I guess I’ll buy a Jeep as of July, 2024, the average transaction price for a new car in the U S is 47, 000 January, 2023. The average new car transaction price was 49, 004 68. So it has come down a little bit. Yeah, you did all that research when we just needed two [00:26:00] quick Google searches.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I can’t win for trying, that’s for sure, right? Well, that said, I did a lot of homework. I was very proud of myself. It wasn’t nearly as boring as my gas guzzling NPG calculations the last time I started doing homework between drive thru episodes. Let’s move on to our regularly scheduled ranting and raving.

So this brings us into Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi news. And last month, like I mentioned before, we spoke about the Mark 8. 5 GTI. The rumor on the street is the GLI is coming back and it will be coming with a manual. We got to put might. And air quotes might

Crew Chief Brad: come with a manual. You mean like the book that tells you how to do everything in the car, right?

That type of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s, that’s the manual I was thinking of too. Yeah. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Do they even come with those anymore? Is it like a QR code that you could go online for?

Crew Chief Eric: QR code in the glove box. Which is super convenient when you’re stuck on the side of the road and your cell phone’s dead and you’re like, how do I change the tire?

Crew Chief Brad: My wife’s car, which is a 2022 still [00:27:00] has the book. I think that’s for that very reason that Eric just pointed out is why. Manufacturers still put the book. Now you may have to pay extra for it. I don’t know if it comes with the vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: Don’t give him any ideas.

Crew Chief Eric: I read this as the next Passat is coming with a manual transmission because the Jetta’s huge.

Yeah. But again, who’s buying Jettas? I don’t really see them too much on the road except for the old ones. Like there’s so many Mark V Jettas on the road. It’s nuts.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t see a lot of Volkswagen period. I don’t see any Volkswagen.

Crew Chief Eric: Since diesel gate, they’ve all disappeared.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I don’t see anything older than mark

Crew Chief Eric: seven down here.

VW is in crisis though. You heard about this?

Executive Producer Tania: 3.

Crew Chief Eric: 8 percent drop in sales in China. Spells bad times for Volkswagen.

Executive Producer Tania: Does it?

Crew Chief Brad: I guess.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know what their sales volume is in that region.

Crew Chief Brad: It was 3. 8 percent higher last time. Whatever

Executive Producer Tania: it was, it was 3. 8 percent higher.

Crew Chief Eric: We remember when we talked about how they let the guy that designed the ID buzz and all the fun stuff, they kind of kicked them to the curb and we were like, [00:28:00] what in the heck is going on over there?

Well. Volkswagen in response to the drop in sales and this and that because remember VW is outside of the GTI, you know, they’re pushing hard this all EV stuff. So now they hired Andreas Mintz to come in and fix their crisis and they call it the ID crisis. And I was kind of digging into that going like, is this an identity crisis or does it have to do with all these?

I D dot whatever’s that they build in Europe that we never get, right? Because we only get the ID four and over there they have like the ID two and the ID three and the ID for GT and like all this other stuff that we’ve mentioned in previous episodes, you know, fun cars that we’ll never get. When I read about he’s the hero, he’s going to revolutionize and the designs and this and that, I’m like, none of it matters to me because none of the cars he’s working on are going to come here.

Crew Chief Brad: VW is like the new General Motors.

Crew Chief Eric: They are so lost.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s sad.

Crew Chief Eric: Because their financials are so bad and everybody is woe is me over at Volkswagen and [00:29:00] multi gajillion dollar company that it is. VW is taking away executives company Porsches to cut. Does anybody feel bad? So they don’t get to drive around in Panamera.

So they’re going to give them a eight. Which are basically the same car, right? I mean, come on. I don’t understand stuff like this. I mean, granted, we have stuff like this in the States, too, where it’s like, Oh, you know, my 350 billion bonus this year, doo doo doo, they’re gonna cut it down to 250 million. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.

Executive Producer Tania: You can buy your own car. Go cry me a river. The hell out.

Crew Chief Brad: If a car manufacturer is giving somebody a company car, they should have to drive the shit they’re trying to make everybody else buy.

Thank

Crew Chief Brad: you. A Toyota exec should be driving RAV4. Volkswagen exec should be driving a tour egg or, or whatever Tiguan Teon or a ta, whatever a.

But I’ll take a company car.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and I don’t know how much this is drama llamas and hype and this and that, but then there’s another article and this might be the most serious part. [00:30:00] Volkswagen is looking to close its first plant ever in Europe. Shutting it down. It’s one of the Audi assembly plants in Brussels.

And I’m like, huh. So to me, that speaks volumes. It feels like that’s the Holy grail, right? You’re like, you’re not going to mess with the EU. You’ll shut down factories in the United States, move them to Mexico, or you’ll build them in Brazil and all the, you know, the tactics that they’ve taken over the years, but here they’re saying we’re going to shut down a factory in the EU.

So what does that mean?

Crew Chief Brad: This says that they’re closing their first EV factory. So this means that there may be a pivot. Pivot! We’re pivoting! Pivot! From EVs back to gas. Yeah, it’s something we’ve been preaching for the last, how many episodes?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but all the manufacturers have already come out and said that, but now they’re reversing course.

Crew Chief Brad: So, so this just comes on the heels of, yeah, okay, we’re starting to change and the EV factory wasn’t such a great idea in the first place. So now we’re going to, what they should do is just turn it into something [00:31:00] else, but maybe they don’t have the money to do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but you know what? They do have the money for it.

They’re going to invest another 5 billion with a B into Rivian here. We are crying a river about, you know, taking away a company exec car, shutting down factories, but now you’re investing more money into an EV. Build the Rivian in that Audi plant. I don’t, yeah, I don’t know. Like what is going on?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense.

These articles are speculative and they don’t actually know what’s going on. They haven’t probably had a conversation with any of the executives at Volkswagen. So they’re just throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing what sticks and there could be other factors going on here as to why they’re doing these things that we’ll never know.

So I say, We need more context

Crew Chief Eric: for sure and we make fun all the time of the Cybertruck having all these recalls and you know, there’s teething problems with every new car, but maybe part of the cost problem that they’re faced with is recalls in the [00:32:00] Volkswagen family. One of those things that people don’t realize is, Hey, I took my car in for the recall and I didn’t have to pay anything to get it done.

Well, there’s a cost associated with that. All the technicians that have to do the work and the parts they have to replace and the stuff they have to redesign. You know, if they did find a flaw, there’s a whole supply chain that goes along with that. But this next one could be a significant punch in the gut from a financial perspective when you have to recall 271, 000 atlases because there’s a problem with the airbag system in the passenger seat.

Executive Producer Tania: That isn’t cheap.

Crew Chief Brad: What it’s saying is that it will not inflate.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, at least it’s not a problem with the airbag itself. It’s a problem with sensors. So that might be an easier fix, not to say that that is no cost, but be a lot less costly than having to replace the actual airbags because those aren’t inexpensive.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, some happy news, something you can’t buy for less than 50, 000. The new street legal. Porsche 935. So a British firm has found a [00:33:00] way to make this basically track only hypercar past the UK, and you can now drive 935 on the street. I think it’s cool, but I don’t know that I would want to commute in that.

Sign me up.

Executive Producer Tania: Really effective at the grocery store.

Crew Chief Brad: But you look hella cool going to the grocery store. How much mulch can you fit on the wing? Zero.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, if you’re super rich, I guess that’s cool.

Crew Chief Eric: No, you just kind of look douchey. Speaking of, let’s talk about our friends in Lower Saxony. So the 8th series, which I thought was already dead, apparently is dying a slow death by a thousand owners or something.

BMW is reportedly bringing back the 6th series.

Executive Producer Tania: They’ve gone in the right direction with the grills.

Crew Chief Eric: And nothing else. If you look at the blue one that’s further down in the article, that looks like it might actually be a real car, not a rendering, although these days it’s really hard to tell the deep fakes from the real thing.

I kind of like it. I think this might be the best looking 6 series yet. It does [00:34:00] retain some of the design language from the bangle period, six series where, you know, it had that kind of bucktooth beaver front end, and it had that trunk that looks like they bolted her on as an afterthought. So it still retains some of those lines, but in a more mature, almost like.

Two door five series sort of way in the same way they did the M four and the M threes. I feel like this new six series is like the two door five series.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a Mercedes with a BMW grill and badge on it.

Crew Chief Eric: Why’d

Crew Chief Brad: you have to call me out?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s what it looks like, especially in profile.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s not a six series.

Executive Producer Tania: No,

Crew Chief Brad: the badge on the back right there says 850. I said the same

Crew Chief Eric: thing. If you go through the pictures, it’s a six 50.

Executive Producer Tania: I zoom in full size on the six. Yeah, it’s

Crew Chief Brad: a six 50.

Executive Producer Tania: That’d be the smallest eight series ever.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. Carry on. I’m sorry. I was just so confused.

Crew Chief Eric: No, but what they do hint at in these pictures, and there’s like 200 of them at one point.

They flash an M badge. Now, I don’t know if that’s an M [00:35:00] 650 I or if it’s an M six, you know, how these days, if you want a proper M it has to have competition next to it. I think I would be excited to see what BMW does with this. If. They go in the direction of an M six, but as you get further along in the pictures, there’s also a four door version.

There’s been a four door six series though. I thought the six series was always a two door. I mean, it was a two door back in the old days, like in the seventies and stuff. Although that was the whole point.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. They’ve had four or six series since.

Crew Chief Brad: It was like the 6 Series Grand Sport or whatever, it was kind of along the same lines of the Mercedes CLS or SL, whatever that four door coupe thing that they were trying to sell.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, I, I ignore those cars, so that’s fine. In profile, the four door, Looks like every other Maserati four door and or Jag. So I’m not really impressed with it. I think it looks much better as a two door.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: But here’s one you can’t ignore. I want this headline to sink in for a moment. I want to get your guys reaction to this.

[00:36:00] McLaren could lean on BMW. To enter the SUV segment. Say what now?

Executive Producer Tania: Why not? Ferrari has one. Lamborghini has one. Porsche has one. Bentley, do they have one?

Crew Chief Eric: The Bentyaga.

Executive Producer Tania: There you go. So why not?

Crew Chief Eric: Is nothing sacred anymore?

Executive Producer Tania: Ferrari has an SUV. I think we’ve passed the point of sacred.

Crew Chief Eric: Where’s the Lotus SUV? Yeah, there is a Lotus SUV, but McLaren doesn’t need an SUV.

Come on.

Executive Producer Tania: Neither does Lamborghini or Ferrari. Or arguably Porsche,

Crew Chief Eric: but it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, because what do people buy? They buy SUVs. They don’t buy cars. They buy SUVs. And this is definitely not going to be 50, 000 bucks. Would you like to guess what the price tag of this alleged McLaren SUV is going to be though?

Executive Producer Tania: Six figures,

Crew Chief Eric: 150, 000. So, you know, our mythical 50, 000 budget number at a zero, 10 times the size,

Executive Producer Tania: half a million dollars

Crew Chief Eric: for a McLaren SUV. It better be the Lando Norris edition or [00:37:00] something. I mean, for that kind of money,

Crew Chief Brad: it looks like they’re trying to do a low volume, special edition kind of thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Rich

Executive Producer Tania: people things edition.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to have zero resale value in the future. Can you imagine going to like pebble beach or going to like a broad arrow auction or any of these where it’s like, and rolling across the lot

now is a 2025 McLaren SUV. Let’s start the bidding at a cool 750, 000.

Executive Producer Tania: No, that’s not going to happen. How many SLS AMGs can I buy for 500?

Crew Chief Eric: Three or four. A lot. You can buy some busted ones to harvest for parts too.

Executive Producer Tania: Cause that’s what I’m buying instead.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll switch gears here and talk a little bit about domestic cars. And like always, we’ll start with Stilantis. So this isn’t really a Stellantis thing so much as it is an awesome thing. There’s a company out there, Vigilante 4x4s, that are throwing 800 horsepower Elcat [00:38:00] engines into old school Grand Wagoneers.

And I’m here for all of it. It is awesome

Crew Chief Brad: until you see the price.

Crew Chief Eric: And how much is that? Pray tell.

Crew Chief Brad: Almost as expensive as the McLaren SUV. If they put a McLaren badge on this, it would be right. Here’s my problem with the world today. Where are people getting all this money to buy? 400, 000 40 year old SUVs.

Crew Chief Eric: And we talk about how the economy is weak and inflation and this and that, and the cost of everything’s going up 385, 000 for a 1988 Grand Wagoneer. With a Hellcat engine swapped into it. I mean, granted, it’s turnkey, it’s ready to go. You didn’t have to do any of the work.

Executive Producer Tania: Rich people, celebrities are buying it and driving it once and then parking it somewhere where they don’t remember, but their secretary knows.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a tax write off. 385, 000, that’s somebody’s home, depending on where you live, but that’s somebody’s home. But can you drive your home at 807 horsepower? Dodge would like [00:39:00] you to believe that you could tow your house with 807 horsepower, I’m just saying. You can sleep in your Jeep, but

Executive Producer Tania: you can’t drive your house.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s the

Executive Producer Tania: thing. It’s,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s still a 40 year old truck. And it’s awesome. I mean, I love these things. I think they’re super cool. I thought about getting one of these, unfortunately, breaking bad. Made the price of these things jump significantly because that’s what Walter White’s wife drove was a Wagoneer and everybody went, Ooh, the Wagoneer.

Cause they kind of forgotten about it. Right. And you couldn’t touch one for like less than 40 grand and they were ratted out. And I’m like, come on. Is 385, 000 justifiable? No. Is it still a 40, 000 truck? Without the Hellcat engine?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. When you look at it, it’s the Singer philosophy. They went through every inch of this vehicle and redid it.

So I understand the painstaking work that went into building this truck. What I don’t understand is who’s going to Pay 385, 000. Robert Downey jr. Is [00:40:00] going to pay 385, 000. Yeah. And then he’s going to put a fucking electric motor in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all

Crew Chief Eric: saw that show too. Right. God.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, tell me a little bit about the engineering.

Architectural, structural, robustness of the 1988 Jeep to handle 807 horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s stronger than the Durango that that motor came from. So that thing’s built like a brick shithouse.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s body on frame. They redid all of the suspension. They, it looks like they redid the frame.

Executive Producer Tania: So they’ve bolstered the Jeep.

Crew Chief Brad: And that’s why I was saying they were doing like the Singer model, where they went through a Wagoneer and redid every single inch of this vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is like brand new and they’re using top of the line parts. It’s, it’s Fox shocks and stuff. I can understand how it costs so much, you know, given the labor.

And to me, this thing’s kind of a work of art. It’s beautiful. I don’t understand how people would Pay that for that, just like I don’t understand how people would pay 500, 000 to a million dollars for a [00:41:00] singer. I understand the vehicle itself. I think it’s beautiful. It’s a work of art and everything, but I just don’t understand where all this money is coming from.

I guess only only fans and YouTube and Instagram is that where all it’s all coming from.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s people that are in a realm so far above us. I don’t know, Michael Jordan goes and buys one of these or something and that’s like 20.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but there’s a lot of new money right now too. There’s a lot of people like either they’re in debt way into the stratosphere or there’s just this glut of money out there that we don’t have access to.

From

Executive Producer Tania: who?

Crew Chief Eric: Everybody in the planet that keeps clicking on YouTube videos.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, so how about your working class person? They’re not buying this. They’re not affording this. Even one of these YouTube influencers is somebody not in our realm either. I don’t even understand how any of that works, but You’re

Crew Chief Eric: right.

That’s why you’re working a desk job and not out there influencing on YouTube.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. I’m the idiot. Clearly.

Crew Chief Eric: I [00:42:00] think all that stuff’s gonna come full circle eventually, too. That said, since we were talking about what you can buy for 50, 000 or less that’s new and exciting, and as I poked Brad about before, the 25s are right around the corner.

How about the new Ford Capri?

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like a Polestar from the back. Yeah, it does. Either a Polestar or even a Urus, a little bit.

Crew Chief Eric: Expected to have a 400 mile range. It is an EV. It is an SUV. And I take issue with the name from the word go because the Capri again, is sort of sacred ground. If anybody remembers the old Capris from back in the day, and obviously that Capri swan song was shared with the Fox body Mustang in the early eighties and things like that.

But the Capri was like the British Ford Mustang. Our dad owned a Capri. They were super cool. I know a bunch of people that had Capris. Every time I see one, I think they’re awesome. You put a Capri and an old Escort together. I mean, they’re just delicious little cars, right? You’re like, Oh, that’s awesome.

That’s what I want. The new Capri, much like the Hornet and some of the [00:43:00] other sort of retro named cars has nothing to do with its predecessor. So I’m just going to ignore the name for now.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no, no, no. We can’t ignore the name yet. What? Why not? Because. They’re saying Capri stands for Cool Athletic Past Meets Future.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, that’s not even the right acronym. That’s not how you spell Capri.

Executive Producer Tania: I know, I’m confused. C dot A dot P dot R dot I equals Cool Athletic Past. I got that far. And then, Meets Future Rebellious to its core and boasts intelligent technology. Boom. R. I.

Crew Chief Eric: That was developed by one of these YouTubers.

Executive Producer Tania: That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they spelled crappy wrong. Crappy. That’s good. I like that. Can you imagine walking into the dealership? Yes, I’d like to order the new Ford Cool Athletic Pass Meets Future Occult Classic Rebellious to its core and boasts intelligent technology, please. Base model? Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: In [00:44:00] ceramic mandarin pearl.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, can I get millennial greige?

Millennial greige. To stick with the Mustang theme, this should have just been called the Mustang II Mach E.

Crew Chief Eric: I could see that as well if we’re gonna go down that path. You know what does sort of make it wah wah though, is Ford has partnered with Volkswagen to build this. Do you guys realize this is an ID.

4 with a Ford badge on it?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s an ID. 4 a Polestar from the back.

Crew Chief Brad: Is that the new EV mullet? ID4 Pulsar in the back. It’s a Pulsar

Executive Producer Tania: in the back half and a VW from the front half. This thing is suffering from its cool athletic past meets future rebellious to its core boasting an intelligent technology cult classic identity crisis.

Crew Chief Brad: Identity crisis. There you go.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what that is in German? I believe the word is Farfignügen. I honestly don’t think we’re going to get these in the States. Could be wrong. We didn’t think we were going to get the Hornet either because that’s the Alfa Romeo Tonale, but that ended up showing up on our shores, so maybe we’ll get the new Capri.

But I think [00:45:00] it suddenly jumps into that bucket of cars that we were talking about earlier. It’s not going to be nearly as expensive as the Mach E, which is slowly creeped up in terms of price every year that’s gone by. But we’ll see, I mean, it’s really interesting also for them to be touting yet another all electric car when we’re seeing the market soften on electric cars, we hit that like, you know, seven or 8 percent saturation it’s plateaued.

People are going back to gas. Manufacturers are going back to gas. People are still not convinced, you know, hybrid is the future. As we’ve been saying since like day one because of infrastructure and a million other things. So curious to see where this goes when the EcoBoost version of the Capri comes out, you have my attention.

Last month we spoke about the Maverick, and how they’re growing that offering, and I made a joke about the Ranger, which I guess the gods of the internet were listening on my phone or otherwise, but it popped up in my feed. Did you know that there’s a Super Duty version of the Ranger? Nope.

Crew Chief Brad: Not yet, but they filed a trademark for it.

Crew Chief Eric: I think there’s a lot of Duty, not a lot of [00:46:00] Super in this. Yeah, okay. It’s sort of like a T Rex, right? It’s like, I’ve been scaring my wait, it has tiny little arms. It can only bite me. I think the Ranger should just go away. I don’t get it. The mistake is the four cylinder EcoBoost. And I know it’s a nod to the old Rangers being four cylinders, blah, blah, blah.

But the cool Rangers were the ones where they swapped the Fox body motor into them, you know, big old 5. 0. I thought the Ranger should have been a six cylinder, even if it was normally aspirated, like the old six cylinder Mustang engine would have been better for it, because it’s just such a big truck. In comparison to what it used to be, you know what I mean?

I’m like, whatever. We haven’t talked about Ford at Pikes Peak in a while, not since that super fast, 2000 horsepower transit van.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, but to be outdone with the audacious looking. Awesome. F 115 lightning super truck with quite the wang.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a wang. It’s a we gotta get right to wang.

Executive Producer Tania: Quite the everything arrow on this thing.

This thing is awesome! It is. You need to just slap Hoonigan on the [00:47:00] side.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s right there, dude. And the best part is they’ve cut so much off of it, it doesn’t even look like a truck anymore.

Executive Producer Tania: 6, 000 pounds of downforce.

Crew Chief Eric: The Viper only generates 4, 000 pounds of downforce, so that’s pretty good.

Crew Chief Brad: This is an F 150, like a NASCAR is a Camry.

Yes. That’s the only similarity is that. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: there’s no relation to the actual F 150 Lightning.

Crew Chief Brad: No, this is a tube frame. I mean, look at the back. This is not an F 150.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it doesn’t have to be an F 150. This is awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: It is awesome. Yeah. But to call it an F 150 is, it’s not enough.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to know how it did it.

Pike speak though. I didn’t find any results yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Cause I think

Executive Producer Tania: they already ran.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, they did at the end of June, but I didn’t see any results like, Oh, Ford captures the title with the F 150 lightning super truck. I didn’t hear anything.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe it crashed.

Crew Chief Eric: Super cool though. I love seeing stuff like this. I think this is awesome.

And I think Ford needs to keep it up. That wing is ridiculous though. Wang. So moving on to Japanese and Asian domestic car news, I got thrown for a loop. We all have streaming packages that we [00:48:00] paid extra for to not have commercials. We all seem to have commercials. I saw the latest one from Mazda. And did you know that the Mazda CX 90, which is the big SUV has an inline six.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you notice there were no Mazdas on your, what should I buy list?

Crew Chief Eric: I wonder why I thought that was interesting, right? Because if you think of inline sixes. If you’re an enthusiast, your brain goes, Oh, 2JZ super. Or BMW, where did Mazda get an inline six? I’m not trying to throw shade at them, but I’m really curious.

So the video I posted is not the commercial. It’s more of an in depth video about the engine and how they designed it and how they designed the car around it. Why it’s so important as a nerd, I found it super fascinating. So I’m really curious. To see what happens with this new engine that Mazda has come to the table with.

Executive Producer Tania: Except they’re also coming back to the table with another rotary.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the second mistake they’re making. [00:49:00]

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think the inline six is a mistake. I think it’s kind of cool. Mercedes came out with a new inline six not too long ago as well, I thought.

Crew Chief Eric: The first mistake is coming out with another SUV and not a new Miata.

Crew Chief Brad: Could you imagine an inline six in a Miata? Dude, that’d be sick. That would be awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: Or a turbo from the factory. We haven’t had that since the NBs, the Mazda speed Miatas. Dude, it’s time for a new Miata. Like, I hate to say, if we had an NE Miata, like the fifth generation, it needs to be bigger than the ND.

I know so many people love the ND, Great. I like the NC. It’s comfortable. The NC needed a two and a half liter, which is the common swap that everybody does from like the Fusion and all that, or a Turbo or whatever. I think we need a fifth generation Miata, not another SUV that nobody’s going to buy.

Because an SUV this big, a full size, if you’re looking at it as like a status item, I kind of feel like you’re wasting your money, right? You’re going to buy a BMW X5, or you’re going to buy a GL, or you’re going to buy something else. You’re not going to buy this. When you’re going to spend [00:50:00] 65, 000 or more on an SUV, Mazda is not the first dealership you go to.

Crew Chief Brad: This should be an inline six rotor.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, that’d be like 787B territory, right? It’d be crazy. Yeah, that would be awesome. Meanwhile, Subaru would like to welcome everyone to 1999 because you can get a CD player in your WRX.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: Why?

Executive Producer Tania: Here’s the best part. It’s 375 to 450

Crew Chief Brad: extra plus installation.

Executive Producer Tania: And the comment is, but that’s not a lot of money given that adding the CD player later could be too costly or complicated to be worth it.

Let’s take a pause here. Let’s skip like the old CD players. I can go to Best Buy. They still make them. Portable CD player for as low as 24. 99. I can get an aux cable, plug that Mitch in, stick it in the glove box, keep going. Guess what? A lot less than 3.

Crew Chief Eric: When was the last time you bought a CD?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, right.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:51:00] Tapes were great in the car because they didn’t really care about the bumps in the road. The suspensions of the old cars aren’t nearly as nice as the ones we have today. But CDs were like the worst media for cars. You hit a Marlboro cigarette butt and it was like, And then they start jumping around. All this shit would happen and you’re like, Ah, this is horrible.

It’s like trying to have a record player in your car. No. Oh my God. Could you, we’re going to vinyl.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m just envisioning someone with a cyber truck and in the passenger seat, they’ve got their record player hooked up to the stereo and he’s got the drive itself system on or whatever. And he’s over there like trying to make sure the needle doesn’t skip and scratches.

Crew Chief Eric: Cause you know, vinyl has that high fidelity. It’s got a much better sound. That digital

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve listened to a lot of vinyl and a lot of digital, and I can’t fucking tell the difference. All I hear is the crackling and the popping and the snap crackle pop,

Crew Chief Eric: which is what we spent an eternity trying to get rid of.

[00:52:00] And now we’re going back to this, turning the page a little bit. Toyota, as we mentioned, might be getting rid of the Supra. But they’ve teased the return of the Celica. Celica. The Brits like to call it the Celica. That’s what Jeremy Clarkson used to always say. So the Celica might be coming back.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t hate that in concept.

Right? It’s admittedly Maybe it’s growing on me.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s more Supra than the current Supra.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s the problem. It’s not Celica enough.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s got to be front wheel drive with an anemic four cylinder that looks like a Roach.

Executive Producer Tania: They had all wheel drive Celicas, so we could be all wheel drive.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s acceptable. The last Celica was like the Toyota Paseo, and they stretched it out, and they called it a Celica.

The

Executive Producer Tania: front, it’s not right. It’s not right. I like

Crew Chief Eric: it. The front looks like the Lexus race cars. That’s what that looks like to me. It’s too sharp. I like it though. It’s very Transformers. I like it a lot. If that had a super badge and you told me that was the next Gen sra, I’m all about it. ’cause I’m like, at least it [00:53:00] doesn’t look like a BMW.

Executive Producer Tania: The last sica there was like the mousy one. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: The stretch EO

Executive Producer Tania: sure was. I don’t know remember what a EO looks like. I mean, I, I see where the design line or there, especially with the headlights. ’cause that last Sica had the headlights that kind of triangled up. So it’s sharing that the gor is obviously completely wrong.

Very Lexus. But the Celica that I want it to look like is the older one with the round lights,

Crew Chief Brad: the four track,

Executive Producer Tania: which came as all wheel drive, because that was like the rally version.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re talking about with the pop up headlights.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s that one too. I wouldn’t mind it looking more like that, but like the mid nineties Celica.

Crew Chief Brad: You could get the four wheel drive version of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Now it would also be cool with this design. If this never went anywhere, if we take that Toyota badge off and we put a Nissan badge on it, Tell me it doesn’t look like the Z.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, like you melded a 370 and a GTR together.

Crew Chief Eric: I really like this rendering or otherwise.

I think this is really, really cool.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, that’s my problem with it. It’s like I’m [00:54:00] having a crisis with the name with the car because the car is not even like horrible looking. It’s like growing on me, but it’s like, does not compute. It’s not a Celica. It looks like something else, but it’s not.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s move on to random EVs and new concept cars.

And we’re not going to talk about anything new. And we’re not going to talk on anything conceptual. What are we going to talk about here? Chevy Volts. People are saying they’re coming back around on the Chevy Volt. They’re saying it was ahead of its time.

Crew Chief Brad: Was it now? Well, because plug in hybrid is the way to go.

And

Crew Chief Eric: now automakers are just catching up to where the Volt was. I heard the same story about the Aztec too.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, because even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Crew Chief Eric: Woo! We’ll move on. So Brad, it’s time for your favorite section, Lost and Found, where we’re not going to look for anything on dealer lots. We’re going to talk about really interesting stuff you can buy for any sorts amounts of money.

So how about this? We talk about [00:55:00] how bad the stainless steel is on the Cybertruck, how you gotta keep it clean, you gotta watch out for bird poop and all sorts of things. What about a Cybertruck that’s been polished to within an inch of its life? Pretty cool. Whoever did this, mirror like finish.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s almost camouflage when you look at it.

It’s a very wraith, stealth, Knight Rider. Is it worth 150, 000? Is

Executive Producer Tania: it worth an extra 50, 000?

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: How dirty does that

Crew Chief Brad: get? I don’t even know what to say. But that is how people are dealing with these Cybertrucks. Hate them. Raps.

Crew Chief Eric: I have seen some black ones, because I guess they’re wrapped or whatever, and they do look like the Wraith at that point.

They’re pretty creepy going down the road.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think the Cybertruck looks good in any color. We can paint it blue, I mean, we can paint it yellow, orange, you know, these M& M colors that exist on, let’s say, the Mopars and the Fords and stuff. There’s no way. The body shape, it just doesn’t work. It is cool, it’s different.

I mean, it is hyper polished, it looks like a mirror. I don’t know that I would want that either. Nope. [00:56:00] Texas size, hard pass. That actually segues us right into Teslagate, so we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh boy, woe is them. Their sales are down. It’s a

Crew Chief Eric: significant number! I was listening to not popular radio, I mean NPR. And their finance reporting was saying 45 percent decrease in fictitious sales last quarter. So this is the second quarter in a row where Tesla is just sort of on the decline.

Crew Chief Brad: That means it’s probably a 75 percent decrease in actual math.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think their percent of sales fell 45 percent because they still are considered the largest share of EVs, their percentage of sales did decrease, but then arguably like everyone’s has, right?

Crew Chief Brad: This says their market share.

Executive Producer Tania: If they’re diluted, then that would only mean that that’s because there’s more people bringing EVs in, right?

So [00:57:00] it’s like their numbers are the same, but their overall percentage goes down because there’s people in the market, right? So, I mean. Are they having a problem? It’s called competition.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it is. And it’s BYD. It’s the Chinese coming in and building a better product for less. Well, better. Well, you know, I’m trying to be nice.

The bar’s not high. They did have some quotes from our favorite friend, Elon. And you know, some of the things he was saying, he’s still promising the self driving taxi and the cheaper model two or whatever they’re calling it. Calling the, you know, the cheaper model three or whatever it is that they’re going to put out.

And it’s all stuff that we’ve heard before. So at this point, I’m like, it’s the boy who cried wolf. How many more times are you going to say that this is coming or that’s coming? I was waiting for him to say, and when the Tesla roadster come, you know, like, come on. I don’t believe it as far as I can throw it at this point.

The Cybertruck has to be eating into them big time.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s the best selling electric pickup truck in the U. S.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s

Executive Producer Tania: what

Crew Chief Eric: I heard too. Is

Executive Producer Tania: that some

Crew Chief Eric: sort of new math?

Executive Producer Tania: Considering how many electric pickup trucks [00:58:00] there are to choose from, there’s like three. And what does that mean? They produce them? That’s selling!

Everybody put a deposit down. Does that mean they sell? We’re sold. I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: It should not. It’s the estimated sales numbers.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, maybe it is estimated sales number. I don’t know because they also mentioned delivery number and we’re well, what does that mean? Is it actual deliveries to person or to the Tesla parking lot where they’re all parks?

We’ve seen those pictures too.

Crew Chief Eric: So Lotus does something like that where it’s like orders. Received and then deliveries accomplished. And so it’s when the consumer actually receives their vehicle, that’s the delivery.

Executive Producer Tania: We don’t know what their definition is.

Crew Chief Eric: No, because as we alluded to, when Brad’s been shopping for his cyber truck, they could generate a VIN, like they generate a software key.

So the thing’s not even built yet.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: But what I do know is you can get DLC for your Cybertruck now.

Executive Producer Tania: Downloadable content?

Crew Chief Eric: What I mean by that is now we have add ons like the [00:59:00] 300 tailgate cover and the jump seats and other things like that to accessorize.

Executive Producer Tania: Do we really think the tailgate’s strong enough for somebody to sit on?

Crew Chief Eric: No.

Executive Producer Tania: When the trim pieces Are flying off.

Crew Chief Eric: No. And what’s wrong with just sitting on your tailgate? Why does it need seats and a cover?

Executive Producer Tania: I could see how bougie it would be to have like a seat when you’re sitting there and kind of like recline, which you could also just go by like a beach chair. That’s the super low, just sit on your tailgate.

But there are other, I remember it’s Ford or Chevy or GM or who it is. There is someone whose tailgates Are going to have like butt shape.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s not new. That’s not new. The Aztec had those. And I knew you

Executive Producer Tania: were going to bring the

Crew Chief Brad: Aztec

Executive Producer Tania: tech. Well, they’re bringing it back on some of the new models. Now

it was also ahead of its time.

Like the Chevy Volt.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s great to be ahead of your time, but always behind yesterday’s technology. Tomorrow.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s GM’s motto![01:00:00]

Oh my god. Welcome back to 8 Track.

Executive Producer Tania: The CD player is coming back in the car because that’s really good.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what’s ironically cool? Tesla Autopilot. Yeah! Did you see this latest one?

Executive Producer Tania: I did. I thought they

Crew Chief Eric: weren’t supposed to call

Crew Chief Brad: it that.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought we covered this as a Florida person last time.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that a Model Y?

It looks like a Model Y. They

Executive Producer Tania: all look the same from a distance, but yes.

Crew Chief Eric: The headline reads Tesla autopilot mistakes train tracks for road and then the driver didn’t immediately notice.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, here’s the thing. What kind of a hole are you? And maybe it’s the angle of the picture and there was actually a road that crossed the train tracks, but I’m thinking not.

Actually, because there’s a sign that would indicate that there’s no road going there. There’s a T intersection. You let the car leave asphalt, onto gravel, down a ditch, up the ditch, onto the railroad tracks, turn and line yourself up with the tracks, and then go like, [01:01:00] however many feet down the road. At what point Did you think something’s not right here?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s when the melatonin gummies wore off and they came out of their deep sleep. Don’t you mean the weed gummies?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I also question who took this photo?

Crew Chief Eric: So that makes me wonder if it was staged.

Executive Producer Tania: You can’t trust anything anymore. Today. I’m also like, is this real? Or did some asshole be like, hold my beer, I’m gonna drive down the tracks on my Tesla.

Crew Chief Brad: No, the photo was posted by the police department. So they probably took it for evidence.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s where the Tesla died. It was like a crime scene photo. That’s what that is. Cause the suspension fell apart from riding down the railroad tracks.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, well, I mean, honestly,

Crew Chief Brad: was it trying to use the third rail to charge?

Crew Chief Eric: This little like R2D2 arm comes out and it’s just trying to charge off the third rail. It mistook it for its mother. Are you my mother?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh gosh.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So next up in Tesla buffoonery, we have problems with [01:02:00] unintended acceleration.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh God. Tesla Cybertruck. The accelerator may or may not disengage when the brake is depressed.

What does the brake have to do with it? If I let my foot off the accelerator pedal, shouldn’t it disengage?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s all digital. The ones and zeros are still flowing.

Executive Producer Tania: But I don’t rely on my brake pedal. To disengage my accelerator pedal.

Crew Chief Eric: You do when it’s a Thrustmaster pedal box that you’re working with.

Executive Producer Tania: Like, I feel like they’re blaming the brake pedal, but there’s more here.

Like, the problem isn’t the brake pedal.

Crew Chief Eric: I blame the meat behind the steering wheel. On the same token, this is basic stuff, right?

Executive Producer Tania: If it’s an electronic software problem, it doesn’t matter the meat behind the wheel, because it’s not your fault. If you input and there’s no output

Crew Chief Eric: Again, this is why our insurance rates are going through the roof too.

Executive Producer Tania: Which is probably why, though, cars at some point, and I don’t know if it’s standard on all of them, but like in the Volkswagens of a [01:03:00] certain era, you stop being able to accelerate and essentially left foot brake for more than approximately literally three seconds because then it cuts the acceleration off.

which was probably a safety reason, I would assume, so that some a hole didn’t just keep pushing the accelerator down while they’re trying to stop and then keep going forward. So the fact that this doesn’t have a feature like that or that feature also broke because it’s all electronically controlled.

Because if the gas pedal did fail to disengage electronically, then there should have been another code written that said brake pedal engaged, no matter what’s happening, cut off.

Crew Chief Brad: I guess it’s using the accelerator for the all wheel drive system, kind of as their I guess they’re limited slip and traction control and stuff.

Cause a Tesla representative said, we have reviewed logs and due to the terrain,

Crew Chief Eric: the terrain, he said a freaking parking lot, the driveway he’d slammed into his house.

Crew Chief Brad: It may have been a gravel drive in which he needed to activate you [01:04:00] seeing

Crew Chief Eric: a different article than I am? I can literally see painted lines on asphalt.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re reviewing why the back tire is locked.

Crew Chief Brad: The accelerator may or may not disengage traction control.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I’m assuming he’s in it. It looks like he’s like in his driveway. I don’t know. Maybe this is like later he brought the car home. After he like hit a pole somewhere.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I’m, I’m further down.

There’s another X post on Elon Musk’s other business venture.

Executive Producer Tania: In surveillance footage, the impractical pickup darted up a hill into a neighbor’s house with the rear wheels completely locked up. The owner stated that the throttle and steering were unresponsive as he held the brake pedal to the floor.

Crew Chief Brad: You can see the video of the truck going up the hill. He

Executive Producer Tania: put down. 50 foot long skin marks.

Crew Chief Eric: Guys try to build 900 horsepower motors to do burnouts that long. Just saying all you need is a cyber truck. Now,

Crew Chief Brad: all you need to do is lock your rear wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: Remember when you guys made fun of me? And I said it was [01:05:00] rushed to production and you’re

Executive Producer Tania: ha ha ha ha No, we didn’t.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think we ever did that.

I don’t think

Executive Producer Tania: we ever said that.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Executive Producer Tania: yeah, you did. No,

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think so. This thing was rushed to production. I’m just saying.

Crew Chief Brad: But I think we used to say if this thing ever makes it to production, it’s too soon.

Crew Chief Eric: Just saying. There’s so many problems with this thing. Ugh.

Crew Chief Brad: When are they going to blame the tires or the input delay on the steering?

The

Crew Chief Eric: more we talk about the Cybertruck and Tesla and everything else, we’re giving them free publicity as you like to mention. Has Elon gonna respond to this next one?

Executive Producer Tania: Probably like a petulant child. Oh, the vandalism on the cyber trucks. I recall this now. Yes, they wrote duck, but with an f Elon

Crew Chief Brad: on the hood of multiple ones.

Executive Producer Tania: Wonder how that above outta stainless

Crew Chief Brad: Tesla fans are saying they should sell the trucks as is is a limited edition.

Executive Producer Tania: You know what? I could see him being like, I’ll sign it

Crew Chief Eric: How many of them did they do this to? It’s a lot of them, isn’t it? It

Crew Chief Brad: says dozens.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, inside of this article, they’re talking about how they [01:06:00] want to produce 2, 500 Cybertrucks a week.

Executive Producer Tania: Who’s buying these? Here’s where I ask the question. Who’s buying these? Who has the money?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know. He wants to put 150, 000 of them on the road by next year.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s 10, 000 YouTubers a month. They’re gonna go buy it. No, I don’t think so because these people don’t drive, these YouTuber influencers.

Crew Chief Eric: If you think about it, I think the recalls are always interesting because it gives you more real life numbers as to cars that are out there. So for instance, we talked about the Atlas, 271, 000 cars that they have to fix.

In the beginning, we mentioned the wiper recall for the Cybertruck. So realistically, 11, 000 trucks need to be fixed. So let’s just say, This thing’s been out since when, Brad? The beginning of the year?

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re seven, eight months in now, and they’ve only really sold 10, 000 vehicles, or there’s 10, 000 vehicles on the road.

That’s not great. I don’t know how they’re going to get to 150, 000 units by January. They’re going to be sitting around on lots, knocking birds out of the sky because of the [01:07:00] reflection. And a loss for words.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Normally at this point, I would say my expectations are thoroughly lowered, but I’ve been starting to think about it.

Maybe we should rename it to, well, That’s unfortunate. Right, Tanya? Apparently Goodwood was not so good for this Lotus. Did you see the video?

Crew Chief Brad: I’m watching it right now on loop and I think we all know who we think is driving this car.

Crew Chief Eric: And who’s that?

Crew Chief Brad: We can’t say it on the air because I don’t want to upset anybody. 2,

Crew Chief Eric: 000 horsepower Lotus Evija didn’t even make it. Four car lengths at best. And binned it. They did real bad, but it did a smoky burnout. I mean, it was an epic burnout, but here we go again. And they claim that it’s this electric stuff, blah, blah, blah.

It broke loose. One wheel gets away from the other one and then you can’t control it. And it’s just a nightmare. And what’s wrong with a proper transmission.

Crew Chief Brad: Why is it not all wheel [01:08:00] drive?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, when you’re making 2, 000 horsepower to put it through the rear wheels, that seems kind of nuts to me.

Crew Chief Brad: They should call Koenigsegg and ask him how they make their cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right? I’m sure Christian would be happy to share the secret.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, for billions of dollars.

Crew Chief Eric: We don’t tell

Crew Chief Brad: poop jokes too often on this. I think we told one earlier about the Ford Ranger Super Duty.

Executive Producer Tania: And the crappy.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the new Ford crappy EV.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. Yeah. You got me there. I guess this is the hat trick then, because did you know the GM basically created a mobile incinerator?

Executive Producer Tania: No, I never knew that.

Crew Chief Brad: I went somewhere dark and twisted with this.

Crew Chief Eric: This is like the RV that was in the movie Stripes. I mean, these GM motorhomes were around forever. They’re kind of cool. Six wheel, the whole nine yards. But if you look into this groundbreaking technology that they created, basically every time you took a number two, it went out the tailpipe through this complicated system where you use the heat from the catalytic converters to basically incinerate your [01:09:00] excrement.

While you were going down the highway. Definitely not the, uh, French fry smell that you get from the biofuel.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m

Crew Chief Eric: intrigued. It gives a new meaning to biodiesel.

Executive Producer Tania: A whole new type of smoke screening. It might even be better.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you imagine though? You’re like a mile behind this guy. You’re going up a mountain road and you turn to your kids. You’re like, Did you fart? What is that smell? There’s farms? And you’re looking around and there’s no farms. I mean, you know, the typical road tripping story. Nope. Some guy in his GM RV going uphill, burning his poop.

Executive Producer Tania: So if you like floored it, I guess it would incinerate it faster. So you want to drive real slow then, I guess. You want to cool the exhaust. No,

Crew Chief Eric: no, no, no. Because this thing is so big and heavy, once it exceeds 30 miles an hour, the exhaust temperatures are already above 900 degrees.

So

Crew Chief Eric: they were like, we’ll just put the poop down the chute, burn it.

Done! So you don’t even have to be going that fast. So it’s 70 mile an [01:10:00] hour.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like this is genius, right? Because what are you people with your diesel trucks doing now? You’re buying deer piss to put into yours to do the exact same thing. Are you not more

Crew Chief Eric: or

Crew Chief Brad: less? Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s what

Crew Chief Brad: death is. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: urea.

Crew Chief Brad: Why not just bring back the system and you could use your own.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it goes with the other part of the story. The GM is ahead of its time and everybody else is just trying to catch up. I like the name for this thing, though. The thermosan as in thermal sanitary, right? Thermosan waste reduction system.

There’s brochures, there’s pamphlets, there’s diagrams. Can you imagine having to service this thing?

Crew Chief Brad: I love this part is a screen prevented solid waste from entering and clogging the system, which would have been hellacious to fix. Amusingly, Thetford, I guess the guy from the, uh, the, from the company, right?

Call the exit an ejection orifice.

That’s

Crew Chief Eric: awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: Ejection

Crew Chief Eric: orifice. Speaking of ejection orifices, this next one, it [01:11:00] just begs the question, what compels. Someone to do something like this and it also goes back to our theme of where do people get the money to do this

Executive Producer Tania: I want to know more about the counterweight on this

Crew Chief Eric: I want to know how he didn’t kill himself standing next to that fan.

This is insane. He bolts a radial Aircraft engine to the back of a 70s beetle. This is nuts And it sounds terrible. And then what you take this to cars and coffee, how do you not get pulled over immediately? I just, I don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know what to say.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know.

Crew Chief Eric: You make one false move coming around the back end of that car.

You are dead. That thing is in sane. And I bet it drives like complete garbage, too. To your point, the counterweighting, I mean, just, ugh, awful.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s got a Hellcat motor in the front driving the front wheels.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh! So that’s how they balance it. Well, speaking of what compels people, we have an uncool wall nominee.

Have you guys seen this thing? This was actually a real picture taken by my wife on a [01:12:00] recent college tour.

Crew Chief Brad: Please tell me your wife took this picture in Portland. It looks like a very Portland thing.

Crew Chief Eric: No, she was in, uh, Philly. It was in Philly and she posted it in our discord and goes, what is this? And I actually didn’t have an answer.

We had to do some research on this one and it’s the Myers Motors NMG.

Crew Chief Brad: Didn’t Jeremy Clarkson drive something like this to the offices at Top Gear?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that was a peel P 50, which it sort of looks like, but it’s much, much bigger because look at it in reference to the scooter that’s next to it. And I love the fact that they just happened to be together because now you have an idea of how goofy it is, but also.

I think I would rather have that Yamaha scooter that’s next to it than drive that thing. This thing is awful. So all I can say is go to our website, gtmotorsports. org, click on break, fix, and then go to uncool wall. And you can vote on this and like 65 other cars that have been nominated either through, what should I buy?

Or the drive through or our staff picks. There’s no shortage of just [01:13:00] really freaky cars out there. And this is. Definitely one of them. But in the meantime, gotta switch gears and talk about rich people thangs. Sponsored in part by Garage Style Magazine, because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage?

How about the new Bentley? And it’s not the Bent Yaga Daba Daba Doo, this is the new Bentley Continental GT Speed 771 horsepower. Pretty nice A8, wouldn’t you say? I want it. That is a good looking car.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Yes. I love all the Bentleys, like the Bentley race cars and stuff. I’ve liked the Bentley GT Continental since it came out.

It’s just a good looking car with massive power, a massive motor.

Crew Chief Eric: I actually got the opportunity to drive the W12 twin turbo version of this that came out, you know, whatever it was like 10 years ago. First, I was like, whatever, you know, it’s a two door a big deal. It’s all Volkswagen stuff, because, you know, Volkswagen owns Bentley, right?

But it had all these really interesting luxury things like there’s this little [01:14:00] arm that brings the seatbelt to you. So you don’t have to Turn and reach back forward and possibly like tweak your shoulder while, you know, you’ve been putting your seatbelt on and the seat adjusts and it like massages you and in a corner, it’ll push up against you to make sure that you’re not leaning out.

You know, all of this stuff, it’s like, God, all this crazy stuff. And I’m like, no wonder it weighs 9, 000 pounds, but the minute you wrapped on the throttle, holy hell, it was like a tornado. It just unleashes. All this power and that motor that W12 twin turbo, I don’t think was nearly as powerful as this is.

I think it was like 650 horsepower. And now they’re talking closer to 800. So I can only imagine with all wheel drive and that kind of power, what kind of gut punch it would be to just open the taps on this thing. But at the same time, I think this looks better than the older Bentley, which wasn’t bad looking.

You know, sometimes the newer cars are like, eh, I’m not really convinced. It’s a little uglier or whatever. This is actually really, really cool. It definitely has. Some very Germanic styling cues to it, but on the same [01:15:00] token, I think this is really slick.

Executive Producer Tania: I was about to say I don’t hate it, and then I saw the back of it.

Crew Chief Eric: E tron GT

Crew Chief Brad: or this? This.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I would get the E tron.

Crew Chief Brad: Now I’m looking at used Bentley Continental GTs.

Executive Producer Tania: How much is this Bentley? Cause I think I can get two e trons. I’d get day and night versions.

Crew Chief Eric: Cheaper than the McLaren SUV, but more expensive than that Grand Wagoneer. I’ll put it that way.

Executive Producer Tania: Then I could

Crew Chief Eric: buy three e trons maybe.

Who can afford these things? Rich people can afford these things. Well, you know what? We’re going to go down south and we’re not going to talk about rich people. We’re going to talk about alligators and beer.

Executive Producer Tania: All right. So this one, okay. Boat launch fail of the year. Now you see the [01:16:00] beginning photos here. You need to scroll down to where you see the first beer and bananas Instagram video, and you need to watch the Instagram video. However, I’m giving you a disclaimer. This will be painful for you guys to watch.

Crew Chief Brad: I can see the first photos and I can already, I understand why.

Executive Producer Tania: So they’re attempting to pull the boat. Out of the water on the trailer.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, is that a human tow hitch? Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Keep watching.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wait. There’s four parts. There’s four

Executive Producer Tania: parts. You want to watch part one? Whoa. Oh my God. No,

Crew Chief Brad: no.

Then where’s the next one? Where’s the part two. Here we go.

Executive Producer Tania: So part one, for those who aren’t enjoying. The video, imagine the man holding onto the back of a tailgate of a pickup truck, horizontal, with his waist inside the boat, and as the pickup truck’s pulling the boat out of the water on the trailer, he’s acting like the winch, [01:17:00] essentially.

He’s gonna pull the boat along with

his feet,

Executive Producer Tania: essentially, because he starts getting dragged out of the boat, of course, because he’s not able to hold on to a boat

Crew Chief Brad: because physics,

Executive Producer Tania: they almost get out of the water, but he completely out of the boat and then slams down crotch into to the tow hitch of the pickup truck.

Very painful. So that was part one of the video. Part two of the video is now they got up out of the water onto the ground before the boat fell off the trailer. Then it slipped off the trailer because it was never locked in place. So now they’ve got a boat on dry land and they’re all standing around going, what do we do?

What they end up doing is just pushing it, scraping it across the ground back into the water, and they get it back into the water. Part three I didn’t watch because everything said that it was really boring and not really worth watching. So I didn’t watch it. But I do recommend watching the conclusion of this.

Part four is the glorious finale of getting the boat out of the water, [01:18:00] and this guy is just peak Florida man.

Crew Chief Brad: Why are they unhooking it?

They got the boat pulled up, why unhook it? I’m going the wrong way. I’m turning the wrong way. And now he’s dancing, headbanging. He’s so happy.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, and he almost knocks himself out on the back end of that truck because he’s like headbanging it.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s the guy that slammed his nuts at the beginning.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, he is.

Yeah, yeah. He’s

Executive Producer Tania: recovered from that very quickly.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve made this joke before that there’s something in the water, whether it’s the alligator piss or whatever. As again, I was listening to NPR. They were talking about a report. About how down towards like Brazil, there are sharks that are basically on cocaine.

So it’s like cocaine bear as they were explaining this and what was boggling people’s minds is what is the concentration level of cocaine in the water that basically the sharks aren’t metabolizing it and the water isn’t diluting it enough. Cause again, this is [01:19:00] in the ocean. That’s a lot of water. So if you can’t dilute the cocaine, How much is in the water?

So now I’m thinking about the jet stream and the currents and my head’s going. And this is why Florida is the way it is the way the waters move. There’s gotta be something in the water.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not the cocaine in the water. It’s the cocaine in themselves. Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: oh, oh, oh. I was expecting something more exciting in the last.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I mean, it ends just right. With like, this guy is on something, clearly, from part one, there’s something’s not,

Crew Chief Eric: not

Executive Producer Tania: normal.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of not

Executive Producer Tania: normal,

Crew Chief Eric: you know, we like to make fun of Ultimas more often than not as well. Did you hear about the Ultima man that broke into a dealership?

Executive Producer Tania: This is wild because he didn’t, but also I could see his point that his car was stolen.

Crew Chief Eric: Guy goes to the gas station. He’s got his ultimate at the pump. I guess he goes inside like people do, which super irritates me. Move your [01:20:00] car, park it, free up a pump, especially if you’re at the diesel pump drives me nuts. So I guess he doesn’t leave it in gear or whatever. It’s an automatic. So whatever he must have had it in neutral.

The car just starts rolling away and they’ve got it on the security cameras. It rolls away. It goes across the street. And then crashes into a dealership, destroys the front of the dealership, went this way and the other. So the guy reports his car stolen, and then the next morning, the guy at the dealership is reporting that somebody crashed into the building, and, you know, vandalized the property, and it was all just the car by itself.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s an argument to be had here.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, that the Ultima was too nice, and it needed to be beat up. So it just sacrificed itself. It just said, my driver’s too good to me. I’m going to go find a building to slam into. And that’s what it did.

Executive Producer Tania: No, but the distance this car went, can you imagine you go inside the gas station?

I don’t know, you go to the bathroom, you can’t see your car anymore. And you come back out, it’s nighttime. So the car was off, the headlights are off, this thing crossed four lanes, plus a [01:21:00] median,

Crew Chief Eric: a divided highway,

Executive Producer Tania: then through a parking lot. Smashes into a building. So you come out of the gas station.

You’re like I left my car here. It’s not here You’re looking around. It’s not here. You’re not thinking let me look way across the street over there

Crew Chief Eric: like a quarter mile or more Yeah, that

Executive Producer Tania: closed parking lot and see if my car is over there. You’re like panic getting on the phone going holy shit my car was just stolen

Crew Chief Eric: this ultima is actually herbie okay it just drove itself it just put itself on the wall it’s more like christine

Executive Producer Tania: curious now like how the insurance handles something like this because he was negligent One could argue.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: So he should be at fault.

Crew Chief Eric: It all starts with him leaving his Ultima unattended at the gas pump.

Executive Producer Tania: Let’s talk about something else here. How impressive is that Ultima?

Crew Chief Eric: It tracks straight.

Executive Producer Tania: And over a median and was able to keep going. It was hard to tell. It didn’t seem like the downhill was that downhill, but it must have been quite the descent for it to [01:22:00] have picked up enough speed to hop over the curb, not beach itself on the median then.

But then come back down and then keep going into the dealership.

Crew Chief Brad: Ultimas are strong vehicles. They have to be. It’s, it’s like my toddler. I tried to go feed my toddler dinner and it runs away. I mean, he was trying to give his Ultima some fuel and it was like, nah, dog. I’m out of here. Leave me alone. I’m good.

I had a, I had a snack earlier. I’m okay. I’m

Crew Chief Eric: good. Just when you guys thought it couldn’t get any worse. Have you heard, and I’m not talking about the Olympics, because that’s going on right now. Have you heard? Oh, I’ve heard of it. About the Florida Man games. I’m watching the trailer now. Dude, they got events like dumpster diving for catalytic converters while wearing inflatable alligators and being chased by the cops.

Does it get any better than that? Evading

Executive Producer Tania: arrest,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah. Obstacle course. It doesn’t get any more Florida than this.

Crew Chief Eric: That is epic. That needs to be on a streaming service. This is the new MXC. This is hilarious. Florida man games.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re looking for vendors and sponsors.

Crew Chief Eric: We should do [01:23:00] this. Sponsorify the drive thru.

Done March 1st. Next year. Here we go. March 1st. We gotta go, dude. Come on. Come on. That’s www.thefloridamangames.com. We gotta go. That’s

Executive Producer Tania: early. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean obviously it’s in Florida. In

Executive Producer Tania: Florida. Where is that?

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, listeners, sign up for our Patreon, send us. To the Florida man games. We got to go. We got a North

Executive Producer Tania: of Daytona beach.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s

Crew Chief Brad: like at

Crew Chief Eric: the height

Crew Chief Brad: of

Crew Chief Eric: Florida.

Crew Chief Brad: All right, Eric, if we’re going to go, you and I got to start growing our mullets now, because there’s a mullet. Contest. Have you seen my hair

Crew Chief Eric: lately, dude? I’m getting there. I’m getting there. Judges shorten the sides. I’m at Corvette level. I’m not at Fiero level yet.

I’m not quite there yet.

Executive Producer Tania: Wow. Tickets are 35 general admission up to 420 for that RV Country Trailer Park Pass.

Crew Chief Eric: Go on VIP then. Come on.

Executive Producer Tania: We need a Patreon sign up. Includes VIP parking area, unlimited ride. There’s rides? Unlimited ride passes.

Crew Chief Eric: You missed the fine print. It’s unlimited rides in the backseat of a police cruiser [01:24:00] to the jail.

Unlimited rides.

Executive Producer Tania: Climb a controlled indoor VIP area, three free drinks, free catered lunch, VIP bathrooms, and reserve bleacher seating during the Florida man game.

Crew Chief Eric: This is awesome. We got to do this. Sign up, Patreon, send us to the Florida man games. We’re going to do this. Weaponized

Executive Producer Tania: pool, noodle, mud duel. Oh my God, dude.

All of it is amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s time to go behind the pit wall and talk a little bit about motor sports news, not falling. Too far from this whole Florida man game story, you know, it’s not uncommon to have an opening prayer at a race, but this one takes the cake. And I got to get a shout out to my wife for finding this golden nugget.

Have you guys seen this opening prayer at this NASCAR race? Thank you for the Fords

Executive Producer Tania: and Toyotas.

Crew Chief Eric: This was a Talladega Knights moment. I mean, this is just crazy. Is this the one where the guy talks about his

Crew Chief Brad: wife?

Executive Producer Tania: Smokin hot white Lisa! [01:25:00] Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Boogity, boogity, boogity! Boogity, boogity, boogity!

Somebody was watching

Crew Chief Eric: Cars 2.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: I love the guy in the background too, he’s like,

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a guy on a John Deere, dressed up like Randy Savage. Yes! Drinking a beer.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my gosh!

It’s funny because it’s real, not because we’re making fun of it, because it’s real and it happened. God bless. That was awesome. I

Executive Producer Tania: haven’t heard that one yet. In the name of Jesus, we pray.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh man, can you imagine? Someone did Jesse’s. Prayer from the fast and the furious in the comments, dear heavenly spirit. Thank you for providing us with direct port nitrous injection for core intercoolers and ball bearing turbos and a titanium valve springs. Thank you. Shall

Crew Chief Eric: we address the elephant in the room?

Formula one. What’s

Crew Chief Brad: formula one?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I don’t even want to talk [01:26:00] about all the BS with Verstappen and, you know, blah, blah, blah, whiny baby cry stuff. I want to talk about this Brad Pitt movie. This is some smoking hot garbage.

Executive Producer Tania: I feel like the plot line is going to be smoking hot garbage because there’s yet to be evidence that there is one.

Which, in fairness, is like the first trailer, so they only have so much, I guess, they can show. But for someone who is not a fan, not a follower, it’s going to be visually very exciting for them.

Crew Chief Eric: If you like CGI, yes. Well, that’s all anything is these days.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I think it’s all real footage. I don’t know if there’s accidents and things like that, but the CGI comes in where they’ve taken real footage and changed the liveries and changed the colors so that it matches what the movie’s trying to do, because there are legitimate scenes that are real F1 clips of other drivers.

But then they just photo edited afterwards, video edited, and made it look like it was Brad’s pit car going up Eau Rouge when it was really [01:27:00] pure gasoline.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m still gonna watch it, just like every other car movie that comes out.

Executive Producer Tania: The trailer that’s out now, I don’t think there’s been a second one yet, but whichever version it was, it’s just like, it opened with Brad Pitt saying some garbage, and I just wanted to vomit when he first started speaking.

I don’t know, it was just a reaction. It just sounded so dumb. what he was saying was McLaren, Audi, or not Audi, McLaren, Mercedes. I got Audi on my brain because that’s another hot topic. They’ve all got the speed, but we need to tack in the corners. And it’s like, what are you fucking talking about? Because then like his engineer is like, you want me to build a unsafe car?

Like what? And then the premise seems to be Basically backmarker with no funding suddenly rises to become F1 world champion. It’s like that’s not how it works.

No,

Executive Producer Tania: no, there’s no Cinderella story here that whoever no name scrounged up a few dollars to get into a race car in Formula One and suddenly is.

beating [01:28:00] Red Bull. No, not reality.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you also happen to catch in the background of the trailer, I thought I saw Gunther Steiner.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, he does make a cameo in there.

Crew Chief Eric: Just tells you, sponsored by Haas. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: and that’s what I’m confused too, like, what is this storyline? Because it showed at the time, I guess they were at Silverstone, maybe?

I don’t remember. It was one of the recent races and Brad and whoever else has been going to all the events and they’re quietly in the background recording to give it that authentic feel so a lot of times when some of the other people are doing their press interview stuff Brad’s over behind them sort of in a corner and he’s got fake press stuff going on there too and so in the very beginning when they all line up for the anthems and all that stuff pre race There’s a scene where they had Brad and the other driver, whatever the actor’s name is, they were standing alongside, and then Verstappen was there, and like Perez, and like everybody else.

And so you see all of them, and I’m like, Are you competing against the real Formula One drivers then? Like, why are you showing them? Or is it just like, no one’s gonna know who these guys are, so [01:29:00] it’s no big deal? Because then the plot is even worse. Yeah. If Podunkville people come up from nowhere in F1 and, again, are going to try to beat the leading constructors, it’s like, you don’t have a leg to stand on, because if not, Haas would be winning.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s going to be terrible, but again, I’m going to watch it, so.

Executive Producer Tania: So I don’t know, I mean, I’m being very negative about it prematurely. Who knows, maybe it’ll be quite good, but somehow these things don’t often end up that way.

Have you seen Driven?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, Driven just becomes absurd where it was. Ridiculous driving around whatever the city street over manhole covers or whatever the thing was.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we know that doesn’t work because of Las Vegas.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. So that was fake. I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll all watch it.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll have to do it with. Steve and Izzy will tear that movie apart. It’ll be fantastic. I look forward to that actually. Yep. What else is going on Formula 1? There’s all this talk of Audi and skeletons coming out of the closets and God knows what else.

We’re stabbing it as a curfew now. Well, it’s because he’s 11. So I mean, come on, right?

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like the old Snickers commercials [01:30:00] where you had like The celebrity who was like really cranky doing bad stuff. And then like someone hands him a Snickers bar and then suddenly he becomes like this different celebrity and super nice.

And it’s like, you really get angry when you’re hungry or whatever the slogan was. So I guess he gets really angry when he’s sleepy. I don’t know because the thing is, people are trying to say it’s because he was up at 3 a. m. doing sim racing when he should have been resting and sleeping. So his aggressive behavior is the result of.

You know, his lack of sleep. I’m like, no, his aggressive behavior has always been there. And the only reason we haven’t seen his aggressive behavior for two years, because he was in a car that was leagues above everybody else’s, and he was always out at front doing hot laps by himself. So he had no pressure at any time, no reason to be aggressive.

He was just out there bored. And now we’re seeing him actually have to race wheel to wheel with other people. And guess what? His aggressive nature’s coming back out. Because racing incident this, that, or any other, sure, fine, let’s call it that, and not give Hamilton a penalty. But it’s like, you dive bombed [01:31:00] him, and it didn’t work.

And then you want to say it’s his fault.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve said it before, you can take the boy out of the go kart, but you can’t take the kart racer out of the boy.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean it would have been an amazing move had he been able to stick it but this time it didn’t work and he locked up and he’s lucky he’s so lucky he didn’t crash himself out freaking incredibly lucky how you go up in the air slam back down shoot off the track And you’re able to like slow down enough not to slam into the barrier, turn right next to it, and then get back on track and basically lose a position.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, well, we’ve seen the exact opposite of that because Okan does stuff like that and just destroys everybody. Remember Monaco?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, this could have very well been the same thing where he just missiled into the side of Hamilton and took him out. And it’s like, for what? Because if you’re so much better and so much faster, you could have waited till the next turn then.

Could have waited till the next Lap, even, because you still had several laps ahead of you. Anyway, so I don’t know why anybody’s surprised, because I thought we all saw this behavior when he was not in Red Bull, or in the Junior Red Bull, where he was super [01:32:00] aggressive, and yada yada yada, so I don’t know that we can blame lack of sleep in sim racing, as opposed to his true driving character because we even saw it in his sim racing where he literally got pissed off enough and he went and punted somebody off.

Yep that did happen yeah yeah yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: So how is this any different?

It’s really not. Other

Executive Producer Tania: than the fact that this is real world and you could hurt somebody. It’s a lot more exciting now thankfully that some of the other constructors are now finally bringing forward a car that can compete and we’re seeing other people winning sometimes not even on the podium anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: Ever since Adrian Newey left, I wonder why? I do not know. I’m just saying all signs point to Adrian Newey. I always thought they were cheating, but you know, I’m just going to leave that where it is.

Crew Chief Brad: And that’s probably why Adrian Newey left. The writing was on the wall.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. They were that close to being exposed because of Christian horny and all that stuff.

And then they were going to blow the lid on everything and they were going to figure out that they were cheating. Like I’ve been saying, and that’s that, but you know, Hey, Oh, I’m okay being wrong about that [01:33:00] too. But the proof is suddenly coincidentally in the pudding. So we’ll see. So Audi.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m confused by this one.

They named their team principal and it’s former Ferrari team principal.

Crew Chief Brad: Egon Spangler.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. But

Crew Chief Brad: Benotti or Benuti, whatever his name is.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Butoni, whatever. I can’t remember.

Executive Producer Tania: Minotto.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. That really Italian name. That guy. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: He looks like Egon Spangler. I mean, let’s get real. Yes. Yeah. Harold Ramis.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know how to feel.

My initial reaction was disappointment because I’m like, great. It goes out.

Crew Chief Brad: They should have got Steiner. No,

Executive Producer Tania: it’s

Crew Chief Brad: worse. At least it would have been entertaining.

Executive Producer Tania: No,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s such a small community. That’s just it. I mean, who are you going to name as a print? I brought that

Executive Producer Tania: French guy back.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh,

Executive Producer Tania: no, the guy that was Renault.

Beryl, that was his name.

Crew Chief Brad: Here’s a novel concept, why not hire somebody else? Like Andretti! You know, you know. How about somebody from Formula 2, Formula 3, [01:34:00] some of the others. Be better than Steiner. Steiner’s fucking entertaining.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s all he is though.

Crew Chief Brad: So that’s all I want, I don’t care. They’re not gonna win.

Crew Chief Eric: I have high hopes for Audi, but With everything we talked about earlier, how is Volkswagen going to afford a Formula One team? You know? I don’t know. Because it ain’t cheap to run a Formula One team, and it’s not Porsche that’s doing it, it’s Audi that’s doing it.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know where the buckets of money come from.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why it’s hard to believe what’s fact and what’s fiction. Maybe Audi has an OnlyFans page. Is that what it is? Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: That explains

click here to see the Q7 unwrapped,

Crew Chief Brad: but mom and dad Volkswagen don’t know about it.

Porsche

Crew Chief Eric: sliding into their DMS for slides in the DM.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, that’s horrible. Well, I am delinquent on my rally recap. I kind of fizzled out [01:35:00] around Portugal, but then again, during the summer months, there’s only really basically one a month. So it’s pretty easy to get caught up. So I apologize. Not that you guys care.

And in the world of WEC and IMSA and World Challenge and all that fun stuff, you know, we’re still riding the high for it. from Lamar. So it’s like a lot of the races are a lot shorter, like, you know, mid Oh, and all those, and not all the big cars go to those events, Rolex and Sebring and leading up to Lamar, it’s a big deal.

And then now it kind of gets slow until we start doing some of the bigger races in the fall. And then they obviously petite’s in October and things like that. That’s not to say that there aren’t other things going on in the ACO. I am going to be at evening with a legend live in San Diego for blown away to on August the 24th.

So if you’re out on the West coast, listening to this and you want to be part of it, you still have an opportunity to join us on the SS Minnow. I mean, uh, the America’s cup sailing yacht for a three hour tour, leaving from the San Diego yacht club. And it’s a plated dinner with a chance to sit down and talk with the.

[01:36:00] Former legends of Lamont’s. I can’t say who’s going to be there, but the list of folks, the list of pro drivers is pretty exciting. So looking forward to seeing anybody out there, come up and say hi, and look forward to more evening with a legend episodes throughout the season. We’re on break here in July, but next month, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

We’re going to be talking Corvette. We’re going to be talking Corvette quite a bit. So we’re fortunate to have Andy Pilgrim coming back to talk about his days back with the C5Rs and C6s and his time even behind the wheel of a 911 And then we’ve got some other fun stuff planned. So no more spoilers other than that.

And Andy’s been on the show before, so if you haven’t caught his whole backstory, go back into our catalog and check that out. But always promises to be a good time when Andy Pilgrim comes to talk to us. Our motorsports news is brought to us in partnership with the international motor racing research center, September 12th.

We have the Cameron R Argettsinger award for outstanding contributions to motor sports, which is directly related to formula one this year. This year’s honoree is Zach Brown. Yes, that’s Zach Brown, [01:37:00] CEO of McLaren formula one. You still have the opportunity to buy tickets to attend that event. So jump over to racing archives.

org and then click on store to purchase your ticket for a seat at the table. And then don’t forget, mark your calendars, November 1st through the 2nd, we have the 8th annual Michael R. Argettsinger Symposium on Motorsports History that’ll be held at Watkins Glen. And we will be there with other folks from the Motoring Podcast Network, live streaming the event and intending the two and a half day symposium.

It actually starts on Halloween with the Real Wheel Film Festival. More details on all of that over at racingarchives. org. So I guess we got to wrap it up and take it home.

Crew Chief Brad: As a reminder, you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the Ultimate Reference for Car Enthusiasts, CollectorCarGuy.

net

Crew Chief Eric: HBDJunkie. com is your place to plan your track season. We’re at the middle of the summer now. Look no further than HBDJunkie. com for an update list of events from this point forward all the way to the end of the year, because there are [01:38:00] places in the United States and in Canada that run track events year round, like our friends at Just Track It and Chin Track Days and Hooked on Driving and so on.

So be sure to check out their website for an up to date HPD calendar. But if you’re a little bit more adventurous and you want to know more about other motor sports that are going on around the country, check out the new motorsports calendar on club that gt motorsports. org under events. And you can learn about other special events and happenings in various.

Different disciplines of motorsport that you shouldn’t miss.

Executive Producer Tania: We just crested 366 episodes of break fix while you’ve been listening to this episode, but more importantly, we’ve expanded our catalog as part of our new motoring podcast network where you can enjoy programs like. The Ferrari Marketplace, The Motoring Historian, Evening with a Legend, The History of Motorsports Series, Brake Fix, and others.

Search for Brake Slash Fix or Gran, No D, Touring everywhere you download, stream, or listen. And be sure to check out www. motoringpodcast. net for reviews of [01:39:00] the shows, new episodes, bios of our on air personalities, and descriptions of the services we offer.

Crew Chief Eric: And we got a couple of special announcements.

Normally the July episode is our happy anniversary special where we review, you know, things we’ve done in the past and what we’re going to work on next. You know, obviously we took a little bit of a different turn this month, but let me hit you with some quick facts and figures. Did you know that we’ve been around for 10 years?

Can you also believe it’s been seven years for our digital magazine? And four years for break fix. Wow. Do you believe that? That’s a hell of an accomplishment. Wouldn’t you say? So happy anniversary to us. We’re kicking butt and taking names. And by the way, we reorganized gtmotorsports. org in light of our recent anniversary.

And now you can actually sort the content on the site by Magazine issues. So to add to those stats, 10 years, seven years of the magazine, four years for break fix. We have published 29 issues of our digital magazine. So you can actually go back and look through the index, check out all the new cover art, see all the cool [01:40:00] episodes of break fix that fall in line with that.

If you want even more content, hop on over to club. gtmotorsports. org for the old blog style stuff, more regional things we got going on from our club members and some of our just inner feelings and thoughts that we’d like to share. Right, Brad? That said, I also want to give a quick shout out to friends of the show and former guests, Danny Pilling from Danny P.

On Cars and Ryan Barkey. From the steering committee podcast, they are now part of a new combined show called the road show podcast, which just launched this week. So check it out everywhere. You listen to podcasts.

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 and send us ideas for future shows.

Executive Producer Tania: And remember for [01:41:00] 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 Eric: Issue number 29.

Crew Chief Brad: And a huge thank you to our co host and executive producer Tanya, and to all the fans, friends, and family who support GTM and the Motoring Podcast Network.

Without you, none of this would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: Begin year five. Google, what’s wrong with Google? Reconnecting. Okay, here we go. I think it’s finally coming back. Oh my god. All right, we’re all back now?

Executive Producer Tania: Building one right now, but I’m on DSL, so

Crew Chief Brad: Why are you on DSL?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s what it feels like.

Crew Chief Brad: Where are you? Are you piggybacking off of Eric’s?

You have a mesh network across the street?

Crew Chief Eric: Tanya still looks puzzled. She stopped listening. Or she’s just frozen because of her DSL.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, I’m not saying anything though. I’m so bad. I don’t know why my internet’s so sluggish.

Crew Chief Eric: I had to reset my router today and that seemed to solve all the problems. Stupid CrowdStrike.

Executive Producer Tania: I think it’s [01:42:00] lagging.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, okay. Well, you’re not moving either, so. I

Executive Producer Tania: think my audio is coming in like 15.

Crew Chief Eric: I think we actually lost on, you know,

Crew Chief Brad: did you change your wifi password? Is that what happened?

Crew Chief Eric: I’m going to kick her out. That’ll force her to reconnect. There

Crew Chief Brad: you go. Password is now get your own wifi.

Tanya. She, she, she’s, she’s out in the

Crew Chief Eric: yard, like splicing wires,

Crew Chief Brad: even better. She had to put her phone back on the hook. So this AOL would connect

Crew Chief Eric: back in the old days. You

Crew Chief Brad: had to find her CD player, her disc drive, so she could put the AOL disc in so it would connect.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, she’s got a tape deck in her car.

She loves that stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I know. But she doesn’t have an 8 track. Or would it be easier to have her just walk across the street?

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, no.

Crew Chief Brad: No, she won’t do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, I’m gonna stop and I’ll send a thing and we’ll rejoin, alright?[01:43:00]

I lean out the window and scream, Hey, whatcha tryin to do, blind me? My wife says, baby, we should

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

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, [01:44:00] you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies.

As well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gumby bears, and monster. So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be possible.

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

• 00:00 Introduction and Sponsorships
• 00:40 Kicking Off Episode 47
• 01:30 Cybertruck Woes
• 09:01 The $50,000 Car Challenge
• 26:21 Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi News
• 35:59 McLaren’s SUV Ambitions
• 36:13 Debating the McLaren SUV
• 37:41 Vigilante 4x4s and the Grand Wagoneer
• 41:59 Ford’s New Offerings and the Capri Controversy
• 47:52 Mazda’s Inline Six and the SUV Debate
• 56:02 Tesla Troubles and Cybertruck Criticisms
• 01:07:13 Lotus Evija’s Goodwood Mishap
• 01:09:07 Biodiesel and Poop Burning RVs
• 01:10:56 Radial Aircraft Engine on a Beetle
• 01:11:51 Uncool Wall Nominee: Myers Motors NMG
• 01:13:12 Bentley Continental GT Speed
• 01:22:34 Florida Man Games
• 01:24:25 Motorsports News and Events
• 01:37:36 Podcast Announcements and Wrap-Up