B/F: The Drive Thru #49

• Tesla’s Superchargers open up to GM EVs today—adapters needed

• Renault has unveiled its latest electric restomod, a reinterpretation of the iconic Renault 17 fastback coupe from the 1970s
• Volvo ditches electric car plans
• Lotus Eletre Priced At A Shocking $229,900 Due To New Chinese EV Tariffs

• Exclusive: Former Haas sponsor trying to seize cars as team sure of finding solution
• Haas F1 Update: Action Taken As Team Responds To Uralkali Legal Dispute

• Toyota Supra Gains a V-8 Engine and Will Go Racing in Australia
• Remember when: Nissan Altima V8 Supercar (for Australia)

• A Dealer Is Holding This 633-Mile E39 BMW M5 Hostage for $280K

• BMW has hired Polestar’s old design boss. Is it done with being polarising?

• Tesla Cybertruck Hits Fire Hydrant, Catches On Fire
• What happened? This crash closed Interstate 64 in Henrico County for hours

• FBI agents carry out operation at RLL headquarters
• United States Esports Federation Global Esports Games 2024 Qualifiers

• Rising star: we go for a ride in Polestar's new electric boat

• The Newest Lamborghini Is, Surprisingly, a Limited-Edition Baby Stroller

Shaq has recieved the worlds first Carbon Fiber CyberTruck!

• Stellantis Blames Bad Marketing for Maserati's Poor Sales

• Tesla deletes its blog post stating all cars have self-driving hardware
• You Can Just Peel Open A Cybertruck Like An Orange

• Enter the dragon: Under pressure from Chinese EV makers Volkswagen may close plants in Germany for the first time in history
• Volkswagen weighs another plant closure, this time in China as domestic EVs take control

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: Uh, yes, I am as ready as I always am. Wait, how’s my hair? But anyway, okay, welcome to drive through episode number 49, our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news.

Now let’s pull up to window number one. For some automotive news. Did you notice that Tanya

Crew Chief Eric: already has her popcorn? She is ready for tonight.

Crew Chief Brad: Is this the Florida Man episode?

Crew Chief Eric: No, this is better. Tonight, we are [00:01:00] bonded in the love of storytelling. Because tonight, tonight, tonight. Whoa,

Crew Chief Brad: that old Genesis song was the Genesis or Phil Collins.

I can’t remember.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there really a difference?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the same lead singer. It’s not that different. It’s like,

Crew Chief Brad: is there a difference between Bon Jovi and John Bon Jovi? No, not really. It’s the same shit. Yeah. No, I’ve got a bone to pick with this intro though, because we only pull up to window number one, but I guess it’s kind of like when you go through a drive through nowadays, they’ve got two windows, you really just go to the first one or the second one and that’s it, it’s just one window.

Window number one. Here we go. What are we doing today?

Crew Chief Eric: Only a few times in the 49 drive throughs that we’ve had over the last few seasons have we really taken a step into the personal. Again, sharing the love of storytelling. And this month it was almost, and I hate this word, serendipitous that certain articles lended themselves to events that had been going on in my life.

It’s going to be a little bit of a personal showcase this time. We’re going to talk about Buford [00:02:00] T. Justice, Roscoe Picotrain, and maybe Judge Dredd in there. You know, I am the law.

Crew Chief Brad: Judge Jerry Executioner.

Crew Chief Eric: But I got to back up a little bit because I got to set the stage for our listeners. Now, some of our listeners, May know just before back to school.

So somewhere in between the last drive through in this one, my wife broke her ankle pretty bad in three places, surgery. We’re talking deck screws and metal plates and weeks and weeks and weeks of recovery and stuff like that.

Crew Chief Brad: And how did she do it again? She was wrestling a bear, right? She was hiking and got literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Crew Chief Eric: That being said. I am on the road more now every day of every week than I have been in probably years. And you guys already know how I feel about being in traffic. It’s a Herculean effort. I’m doing a lot of stuff, running around, all these kinds of things. In the early part of this, I’m trying to get some stuff just done around the house.

And I was like, you know what? I’m going to run to Home Depot because I’ve been [00:03:00] driving the minivan for so long. I was like, you know what? My station wagon has been sitting. I’m going to take it into town just to drive it, to get it out of its parking spot. And hopefully the tires aren’t square. So I head off into town.

It’s not like super early in the morning, like contractor early, you know, got to be at Home Depot to pick up my Tesla replacement parts at six in the morning type of deal.

Executive Producer Tania: It was after 8am.

Crew Chief Eric: I go there. I get what I need. I’m coming back and there’s a major intersection traffic light. There’s a wawa there and it’s three lanes that can turn left and one that can turn right.

So it’s actually a really, really wide intersection and I’m the first car in the middle lane and there’s a bunch of cars behind me. Beautiful day, absolutely gorgeous weather, had the windows down. I didn’t even have the radio on. I was just enjoying that Saturday morning. In my old car, right, the light turns green and I just proceed to take off like normal.

I’m not doing anything stupid. I’ve lived in this town for what feels like forever now. And I had noticed in the two weeks prior that the town [00:04:00] was just crawling with cops, you know, in their normal hiding places. And then they’re in the bushes and then they’re in camouflage and all this kind of thing.

And I’m like, you know what? I’m not here to burn the carbon out of the intake. I just, you know, Want to drive the car, drive a manual transmission car and just enjoy this beautiful Saturday morning. So I’m coming home from the home depot, a little short shift for a second gear. I’m going below the speed limit and through traffic.

I see behind me, this gray Ford Explorer come. Flying up on just like what the hell so my eyes got a little big and I’m like, okay and All the lights go off. I’m like, what did I do? Am I going too slow? Did something fall off you can imagine what happened next license and registration? I’ve been through this not my first rodeo I’m, like, excuse me officer.

Is there a problem? Is there something I can help you with? He didn’t already like that. You know, they start their speech. Please understand that you’re under recording and blah, blah, blah. Everything you say and do and blah, blah, blah. Like, okay, great. Yeah, I get it. Your camera’s like in my nostril at this point.

And he proceeds [00:05:00] to tell me that my car was Unnecessarily loud and frightening. Which car was this? This is the Wookiee wagon. My VR6 station wagon. I had to bite my tongue. So I responded and I said, Really? Do you happen to have a decibel meter on your truck? Can you tell me how loud it is? And he looked at me like I was a Cerberus from hell with three heads.

I didn’t know if he didn’t know what I was talking about, but I was flat out like, how can you tell me if my car is too loud? Meanwhile, my blood is like starting to boil. Cause I’m like, this is stupid. What did you pull me over for? Cause I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t doing anything dumb. I was in the right lane.

No, I didn’t do a burnout at the traffic light. I’m minding my own business coming home from Home Depot. Like, what do you want from me?

Crew Chief Brad: We joke about this all the time because you’re a very well bearded man. But how much of this do you think could be profiling because you don’t look like the normal demographic in that area?

That’s what I said. I thought about that. I remember when we were coming home from Texas from CODA and you got stopped, you know, the random check. [00:06:00] Checkpoint, I’ve got a photo evidence to prove it. They frisked you and went all up and down your crotch. Meanwhile, you could have been

Crew Chief Eric: carrying anything and everything.

And you walked through like it was

Crew Chief Brad: nothing. I look like, you know, the good old boy.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, it was beginning of September when this happened to you. And September is a particular month in this country. Now, not saying anything.

Crew Chief Eric: You look at the old profile pictures and the headshots, My hair is much shorter.

I’ve let my hair grow out. Your beard has grown out a lot. But I have a lot of white in my beard too. So when he came around the corner, I think he was like, Oh, this is older guy. And this little hot rod is scared. And but yes, I did think about that. Being of olive skin. It’s like, you know, how much of that does play in, you know, he was blonde haired and blue eyed.

I don’t know what to say about that. Again, I don’t think about things that way. People are people and people do people things and that’s that. Move on with life. That’s not how the world works. I know, I know, I live in a bubble.

Executive Producer Tania: I wonder if he’s gonna pull over Santa Claus.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh [00:07:00] yeah, Tanya brought that up.

She’s like, there’s another guy with a VR6 GTI running around and it makes noise too. Apparently he looks like Santa Claus.

He looks straight up like Santa Claus. Is Santa Claus driving a Mark 4 VR6?

Crew Chief Brad: Delivering audible treats to all the little boys and

Crew Chief Eric: girls. Okay, first of all, can you argue as a VR6 owner that the VR6 sounds bad?

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, it sounds fucking amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you. It’s one of the best sounding engines of all time.

Crew Chief Brad: Other than V8s, and then a select few like straight sixes and stuff like that, the VR6 is one of the best sounding motors ever produced.

Crew Chief Eric: But even at full song, the VR6 is quieter than the Nissan VQ, because those, those, those Three fifties are allowed the infinities and all those, the GTRs and a straight six BMW is really shrill.

Like if you want to talk about a startling engine, the VR six is not it. It sounds like a freaking Wookiee, but anyway, I digress.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know why he was expecting to get any money out of you. You were driving a 22 year old Volkswagen. It’s blood out of a turn up. [00:08:00] Thank

Crew Chief Eric: you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, what I think he wanted was to get me for something, because I got a loud car, and I got a lowered car, and it’s a station wagon.

It’s not like I’m running around in a Camaro with a roots blower on it, right? It’s just a freaking 20 year old Volkswagen, who cares? So then he proceeds to tell me, well, you know, you have a taillight out.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the old taillight trick, right? Did he smash it with a nightstick before he came

Crew Chief Eric: up? Man, if he had done that, that would have hurt.

Cause I got European taillights, but Tanya had actually told me and I forgot like a week or two prior. She’s like, you’re right rear taillights out. Yeah, I got to change that. But in the midst of everything that’s been happening at home, I totally forgot about it. Okay. I need a brake light. Thank you, officer.

I didn’t know. You know, I never get to see the back of my car. So I’m trying to be nice because he’s already pissed me off with this exhaust thing. Right? So license registration goes back to the car. He’s back there for a while. I’m like, ah, God damn it. What kind of ticket is he gonna hit me with? Again, I didn’t do anything and he didn’t say I was speeding because I wasn’t.

I was actually under the speed limit. Like I said, I knew they had been [00:09:00] crawling and they were all kind of in the area.

Crew Chief Brad: He didn’t have a gun on you anyway. There’s no way he

Crew Chief Eric: He comes back and he’s like, I have two pieces of paper for you. I’m like, oh, geez, Louise, what the hell is this? He’s like, well, the first one’s a repair order for your taillight.

You need to take it somewhere and have it fixed. I’m like, I can fucking fix it at home. And I sort of said that, but not in that way. I said, okay, I’m going to go home. It’s going to take me five minutes. We really have to go through this process. He’s like, yep. I was like, okay, that’s how he’s going to get under my skin.

because he can’t give me a speeding ticket because again, I wasn’t speeding. Then he gives me another warning on top of that. And this is what really just irked me and pissed me off. He starts off by saying, you know, I, I know Volkswagen because you know, this and that, and it shouldn’t be unnecessarily loud like this and blah, blah, blah.

And he goes, you know, your muffler cut off. And I’m like, no, no, no, no. So you can look under my car. I have a catalytic converter. a resonator and a full exhaust. I, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. And he’s like, well, I’m not looking, I’m not looking under your car. I’m like, I’m telling you, it’s all there.

Well, that’s not the exhaust that this [00:10:00] car came with. And I said, okay, well the original one rotted off the car and this is what I put on to replace it. And what’s funny is I went back afterwards because I kind of started doubting myself. I bought my exhaust from Tectonics. It’s DOT approved as a replacement exhaust.

So in my head, I’m like, again, running these scenarios and I said to him, where am I supposed to get a replacement exhaust for an almost 22 year old Volkswagen? And he’s like, well, that’s not my problem. Okay, well now you’re just an asshole, right? And I’m like, fine, I’ll just live with that. And mind you, when I was pulled over, I let it sit in idle and it just sits there and it’s not like it lopes like a V8.

It’s pretty subdued at idle. Like you got to kind of go, Oh, is it running?

Crew Chief Brad: You mean you can have a conversation with a police officer at idle?

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent. But what really got under my skin, you know, after he’s like, you know, have a nice day. And I was like, you know, thanks again for letting me know about the brake light.

So I sit there and I read this warning and I’m going to read it to you exactly the way it’s written. Motor vehicle not equipped with exhaust muffler system. Unlawful use of muffler cutoff.

Crew Chief Brad: Which he [00:11:00] didn’t check to see if that’s even accurate. You told him to look under the car, he refused to.

Crew Chief Eric: And if this was a TRO, or repair order, first of all I’d get a lawyer involved, because there’s a bunch of things on there.

On this particular warning that are incorrect that first would get this thrown out. But second of all, the first mechanic that puts the car in the air goes, what the hell are you talking about? There’s a cat, there’s a resonator, and there’s a muffler with a tip. There’s no cutoff. There’s no bypass. This is a DOT approved replacement exhaust for my car.

It’s what I could afford to buy. And it’s what I put on there. It’s not my problem if it’s louder and you can’t tell me what the definition of loud is.

Crew Chief Brad: How about the fact that it passes emissions every two years,

Crew Chief Eric: every year. And that’s the other thing I thought was. grace. I got together wit called one of our club me cop and I told him the sto man, that guy was fishing know, he was a young cop, academy, you know, all th and he goes, you’re lucky with the repair order for the fact that he’s got yo these things, he’s like, [00:12:00] hold up and it’d be a nuis For everybody, because I’d fight this, this is ridiculous, and I’m not running straight pipes, I’m not running a side pipe with no mufflers or anything ridiculous.

Crew Chief Brad: His badge number and name is on the paper?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, it’s all here.

Crew Chief Brad: I would call, and I would talk to his superior, and I would file a complaint for harassment.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m not that type of person, but it pisses me off, but the story continues.

Executive Producer Tania: Me and my

Crew Chief Eric: big dooly went, ah! Yeah, and the Mustang guy coming from the cars and coffee went by at 70 mile an hour with his open pipe, so that wasn’t a problem.

I’m in the little German car. Fur and car don’t belong around here. You know, I’m, I’m like one of two in the area.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I have the other one.

Crew Chief Eric: So I go over to the inspection place, which was interesting to even find a place that would do a safety equipment repair order. Right. So that was the whole thing. So I get over there and it was recommended by one of our sponsors, you know, Hey, this is where we take our cars.

Don’t bother with the local Firestone or with the whatever, this and that. So I go over there early on a Monday morning and I walk in the door and this lady looks at me and I [00:13:00] look at her and she’s like, what do you want? And it’s that voice, like the caseworker in Beetlejuice. She’s been smoking a pack a day for the last 30 years.

What’s your problem? Why are you here? We just get to chit chatting a little bit and I said, look, I got this repair order. That’s for the taillight. I hate to bother you guys with this, but it’s a bother to me as well. And she’s like, yeah, these cops, you know, blah, blah, blah. They’ve been on the war path the last two weeks.

You know, they’ve been putting up blockades throughout the county, pulling people over, looking at their license plates and registrations and this and that. And I was like, wow, I didn’t know that, but I knew something was up. We get to talking a little bit more. And I said, You know, it could have been worse.

And she goes, well, what do you mean? And I said, you know, he gave me a warning for my exhaust. She goes, I didn’t even hear you come in. What kind of car do you have? I’m like, okay. And she goes, you’re telling me he was scared? He was scared of your car? I need to see this thing. And I’m like, okay. So we walk outside.

She immediately starts laughing. And she’s not laughing because she is laughing at my car.

Crew Chief Brad: Laughing at the situation.

Crew Chief Eric: Because now she recognizes the situation, right? [00:14:00] She’s like, you gotta be kidding me. So she looks at my car and she’s like, you know, this is really nice. You should take it to shows and like blah, blah, blah.

And I said, you know, it’s just my Sunday grocery getter. Like literally, I just like driving it around town and on the B roads and, you know, minding my own business. Another guy from the shop shows up and, you know, we chit chat and talking about the car and this and that and got the hood open. And she’s looking at all the things I’ve done to it.

You know, she’s a car gal. And she starts telling me about. I can’t believe you’d get pulled over in this and blah, blah. It’s the way she worded it. She was going off about her Mustang that she built. She’s apparently got a Camaro as well. Some pro street car. She’s like, God forbid they find me. My car’s a bright red and super loud.

And she’s like, I’m going to jail. Right? So we’re just BS in a little bit. And then she’s like, all right, I need to hear how scary your car is. I fired up. She’s got this big grin on her face. Was that it? Blip the throttle to like 2, 500 and then she goes, Yeah, that sounds good! I’m like, oh my god. Real [00:15:00] country girl, right?

And I mean, I was eating it up. And she’s like, I’ll be happy to sign your paper. Get on out of here and have yourself a blessed day. You have made my day. And she just started laughing. She’s like, this is unreal, right? Needless to say, we got all that taken care of. But I was just like, come on, man. Seriously?

And I’ve only had this happen to me one other time. And this was in my old drape five Audi coupe. And I had a full exhaust on that too, but it would reverberate off the buildings in like downtown Baltimore. And I went to go pick up my wife and I got pulled over like within a block. Cause they were like,

why are you street racing?

Crew Chief Eric: And it was another one of these, I was like. Dude, I’m like a block from power plant live. Like, where am I going to go? The streets are as wide as a Fiat 500. Like, are you kidding me? That time they tried to get me on a front license plate for that car, but I literally had the plate on the passenger floor with a broken bracket.

I’m like, it broke off the car earlier today. Like I need to order the part. So they sort of like, let me go, but it was all like, you know, lights and sirens [00:16:00] and we’re good. You know, I’m like, come on, man, I’m not trying to be a public nuisance here. I’m really not. I’m too old for this stuff. But Tanya, you know, as we were talking about this and discussing this and kind of peeling it apart, you discovered something new and it’s in the news now about some changes that are happening in our fair state with respect to the sound of cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, I’m in trouble because the MoCo is trying to get bill passed that they’re going to put noise cameras up. throughout good old MoCo, Maryland. Can you believe that? Basically a speed camera, but sound. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: With a decibel meter

Executive Producer Tania: on

Crew Chief Eric: it.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re going to catch you at the speed of sound.

Executive Producer Tania: Take your phone.

Your

Crew Chief Eric: decibels are too high. So what’s going to happen is we’re all going to rev and then drop it in neutral when we all know where the sound cameras are. And we’re going to coast by and then we’re going to downshift and floor it.

Crew Chief Brad: All your experience at Lime Rock has paid off.

Crew Chief Eric: That is so true because people actually do that where the sound meters are.

And I’ve heard they do that at Summit Point and some other places as well. So, I mean, as racers, we kind of know those games or get the [00:17:00] dryer vent, more Home Depot parts and turn it away so that the sound is, you know, pushing the other with a Doppler effect.

Executive Producer Tania: I literally did this in town coming back yesterday through the car in neutral.

Cause I was like, Passing a cop with his window open and I like threw the car in neutral and like ghosted by him. Because of all of this, your experience hearing the Montgomery County thing, like all flashed in my head and I was like, crap, not that I was doing anything because I could have just gone by at the speed I was going.

It was, it wouldn’t have been anything, but I was like, I’m not taking a chance.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Not right

Crew Chief Brad: now. Maryland is just a great place to live. It’s going the way of California.

Crew Chief Eric: I go back to that article from May where we talked about, you know, how loud exhausts are attractive to people with criminal minds and psychopaths and this and that, but it really got in my head.

I haven’t driven the car since, and I shouldn’t feel guilty to drive my own car. I have regular plates on it. I have a legal DOT approved exhaust.

Executive Producer Tania: Make a copy of your paperwork and put it in the car.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what I do keep in the car now is a spare taillight bulb.

Executive Producer Tania: I was gonna [00:18:00] say, the other lesson learned here is have a spare taillight bulb in your car.

Crew Chief Brad: You also might want to get a decibel meter.

Executive Producer Tania: I do actually want to get one, which you actually can download. There’s some apps you can just download on your phone. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I would, I would do that. And

Executive Producer Tania: I’m curious.

Crew Chief Brad: I would almost look up the ones that the cops Allegedly use I don’t I would have the same model.

I just have it sit in the car. Well look officer This says it was at 95. What’s the legal limit 102?

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, you’d be in violation at 95 guarantee

Crew Chief Eric: Is it posted anywhere? I mean i’m guaranteeing every state is different But what scares me is normally stuff like this comes from california first and it’s weird that it’s happening here on the east coast

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, no, it’s not.

It’s montgomery county. This is normal

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what i’m saying is if other states buy into this Now suddenly it’s like Switzerland where the cars have to be whisper quiet.

Executive Producer Tania: So there’s been a noise camera in Laurel for, I don’t know, decades now.

Crew Chief Eric: And how many times have you blown by it at wide open throttle?

Executive Producer Tania: Never, because I know it’s there, but there’s also speed cameras on that same road. But it’s on a road that’s Directly with like apartments on either [00:19:00] side. I understand in that area there was probably some dipshit that kept doing burnouts, waking everybody up at all hours of the night and they did that.

So if they want to put noise cameras in a very tight residential area, I don’t like it but I’d understand it. If it’s on like an open road that you’re not bothering anybody, that’s BS.

Crew Chief Brad: Instead of catching the criminals, they just punish everybody else.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, that’s the problem.

Crew Chief Eric: And there it is. And that’s something I noticed being in traffic.

And it’s something that I thought is super illegal. And maybe I’m wrong, but please correct me. I’m seeing a lot more tinted windshields.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m not talking just like, oh, we put like a foot and a half of black. across the top. I’ve seen two tone where it’s super dark limo tint on the first half and then it’s dark on the bottom.

And then I’ve seen like all black where you can’t see the driver and it’s super obvious. If I can’t see you, not that I really want to see you in your car, but if I can’t see you, your glass is tinted. Some of them are reflective on top of [00:20:00] that, like polarizing, which is really distracting in your rear view mirror.

And I’m like, that’s illegal everywhere in the United It’s like, how are those folks not getting pulled over? But you’re worried about me in my Volkswagen, which at cruise altitude doing 50 miles an hour, the car gets really quiet.

Crew Chief Brad: So I’m going to say low hanging fruit. You are the lower chance of causing a headache in that guy’s day.

The person with willing to do the tenant windows is probably. Doing some other nefarious things and you’re just JoBlo citizen just trying to putt around. I think you’re, you were low hanging fruit.

Crew Chief Eric: Why waste the time to pull me over? Especially if I wasn’t speeding. Come on. Like what’s the point? He saw

Executive Producer Tania: that brake light after you

Crew Chief Eric: pulled over.

That’s true too. Well,

Crew Chief Brad: if you were in

Crew Chief Eric: a

Crew Chief Brad: light though, he may have

Crew Chief Eric: saw it at the light. So that’s the thing about that traffic light. I couldn’t see him because I’m always kind of Scanning and looking around, make sure, you know, some dump truck isn’t coming without breaks. But he was so far back in the line that I didn’t see him.

Crew Chief Brad: He was grasping at straws the whole time.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. And he [00:21:00] heard me because I was the first in line of the three cars as we’re turning and I stuck out like a sore thumb. ’cause it’s like, oh, look at that car. That goodness. But he probably thought I was gonna do a smoky burnout and run down at a hundred miles an hour.

But you know, what else is funny is not even a half mile down from that intersection is the police barracks. I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to go blow and buy there at a hundred miles an hour. Like that’s literally the dumbest thing you could do. I would have gone straight

Crew Chief Brad: there. I’d have pulled right in there with my little notice and said, I want to file a complaint against officer Buford here.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and that’s what our friend said. The former cop, he’s like, go change your bulb and drive right over to the barracks right now and get them to sign the paperwork. And I was like, you know what? I’m not going to tempt fate. that this guy is gonna be there. I just don’t want to do it.

Executive Producer Tania: What would

Crew Chief Brad: he have gotten you on?

Executive Producer Tania: He can get you on a lot on that car, technically. Lowered suspension, blah, blah,

Crew Chief Eric: blah.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, all these stupid marijuana laws that I don’t have to deal with. That’s right. Yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. Just wait. It’ll come to you too. On rural Virginia. But let’s [00:22:00] face it. It could be worse. Have you heard about all the tunes and the tuners and all the shops?

That are closing.

Executive Producer Tania: Cobb just got charged that they owe like 2.9 million, almost 3 million or something like that.

Crew Chief Eric: 3 million for selling. Basically what the EPA is qualifying as emissions defeat devices.

Are they wrong?

Crew Chief Eric: No. No. The way tunes are designed today, I would say there’s more of that going on because like Brad’s car and my car, or even your car, Tanya, you get a chip.

It’s not really designed to change emissions. It’s designed to remap, let’s say the VE table, the volumetric efficiency table or the timing table or whatever it is. Give you a little bit more fuel, a little bit more rev or whatever it is, but they weren’t going in there and systematically turning off functions of the engine to bypass, let’s say particulate filters or exhaust gas recirculation or things like that.

So I understand where does this end? I’m sure there’s a cutoff where they’ll retroactively say, okay, well if you got a tune on a 20 year old car, we don’t care. This is clinching down on [00:23:00] the aftermarket. If you pass emissions with a tune today on a modern car, let’s say it’s a Subaru or a Volkswagen or a Mazda or whatever.

If you pass, does it matter? Like how are the drivers and the owners going to suffer from what Cobb is going through? Like what’s the butterfly effect of this?

Crew Chief Brad: I’m just dumbfounded. I don’t even know what to say about this.

Crew Chief Eric: If that wasn’t bad enough and you were talking about, you know, we’re all here in the DMV together suffering equally in some ways.

There are worse states. No doubt. Ours don’t even make the list of the worst states to be a car owner in.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I know number one is California.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, 100 percent.

Crew Chief Brad: My guess is Colorado is another.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, it sucks to be in Washington D. C. owning a car.

Crew Chief Eric: D. C. didn’t make the list either. We won’t do the whole Letterman thing.

Check this out. Here’s the surprise ones to me. New Mexico and Arkansas. Alaska, that’s sort of obvious. Brad, you’re 100 percent right. Colorado’s on that list. Oregon’s on that list too. California’s on that list. You’ve got Georgia, Nevada, and tied for [00:24:00] third, Florida. I

Executive Producer Tania: disagree.

Crew Chief Brad: Florida is surprising to me.

But the things that they include like fuel costs and car insurance, I was thinking, you know, pivoting from our last discussion, I was thinking it’d be more on like the, like the EPA and the restrictions.

Executive Producer Tania: This isn’t just registration fees,

Crew Chief Eric: right? This is the most expensive states in the country to own a car today.

Okay.

Executive Producer Tania: Cause I was going to call BS because Texas should not like Maryland can’t not be on this list of Texas is there. I know how much registration was, but. Per year in Texas and Maryland has now exceeded that.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I’m glad you brought that up because I had to renew the registration on the Jeep. I got to tell you, it is,

Executive Producer Tania: it was probably 70%.

Crew Chief Eric: It is a 58 percent increase over two years ago. 5, 000 pound vehicles in this state, 187 for two years. And a lot of people are going, Oh, compared to my state, that’s cheap. California, man, like thousand dollars. I’ve heard stories and stuff. And there’s other places that are super cheap where it’s like Ohio.

And it’s like 40 bucks to register your car kind of deal. [00:25:00] But when you go from 187, which was already a price increase from when it was one foot. 49 and before that it was like 127 and whatever, it’s jumped through COVID and now 323 for two years. It was really hilarious as I got the letter in the mail from the DMV, I walk in and I’m talking to my wife and I said, this is the most expensive sticker I’ve ever put on anything in my life.

Cause that’s all you get.

Executive Producer Tania: No, you get

Crew Chief Eric: a little three by three part. That piece of paper is worth it.

Crew Chief Brad: You get a sticker that says, Oh, you’ll get pulled over for something else.

Crew Chief Eric: And I sort of wondered to myself like why all this stuff isn’t digital, why it even matters. There should be almost a barcode on your tag that they could just scan and look up and see if your registration is up to date.

You know,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s almost like they can pull your plates. It’s almost like they can just read your tag and look up information about you in the DMV system. No. They can’t do that now?

Crew Chief Eric: This is Star Trek, dude. technology you’re talking about. Oh my god, beam me up Scotty.

Executive Producer Tania: Although I do kind of like [00:26:00] being a look at people and being like, look at this hasn’t renewed his tags in like five years.

Crew Chief Eric: But again, that guy’s not getting pulled over. No getting pulled over for having a one out of your two license plate lights burned out. because they were 20 years old. That happened to me another time too. Luckily, I didn’t get a repair order for that one, but I was like, again, thank you for telling me.

Okay. Is it really that important? No. Okay.

Executive Producer Tania: Meanwhile, what about that guy who just drove by? His muffler’s dragging on the ground. Hold on. Hold on.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. I heard a Mustang. Are there sirens? Oh, come on. What about every Altima on the road? Please. That’s unfair. You’re targeting. Not to get political,

Crew Chief Brad: but how many of these states are liberal

Crew Chief Eric: run states?

Our fair state is questionable every other day of the week. So I don’t know. But this continues. Okay. This continues. So we got

Crew Chief Brad: more.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you’re, you’re kidding. Oh, wait, there’s more. I love this. So I told you it’s personal. This whole showcases the stories of what’s happened over the last month.

Executive Producer Tania: Look at this guy.

He doesn’t drive anywhere. And then like he’s driving somewhere for like, Two weeks and look at all these stories.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, what’s next? [00:27:00] So I’m back in the minivan driving the kids to the city, all this kind of stuff for school. And I decided I’m going to work remote. I’m going to be closer to school because if something happens when the kids get sick, I don’t want to have to drive all the way and get stuck in traffic and all this kind of thing.

So I’m going to do my homework. And I did way too much like I do when I buy anything. I’m going to buy myself. an electric scooter to get around town. It’s going to be super cool. So let me tell you, it’s really difficult to find adult rated EV scooters that A, are the right weight requirement, balance of power, range, and then speed.

So those are sort of like the four categories, right? You have to look at, and it started reminding me of like, if I was purchasing an electric vehicle, I got to look at weight. I got to look at speed. I got to look at range, anxiety is a thing on the scooter as well. Let me tell you. I ended up buying a Varla Wasp, which comes in as the lightest adult scooter.

It doesn’t have the highest top speed, but it has decent range, but lightest at 32 [00:28:00] pounds. The ones that like really haul ass, like a Lime or a Spin or some of the other ones you see in the city, those things can weigh upwards of 50, 60, 80, 100 pounds, because the faster you go, the more battery you need.

And if you’re running dual motor, which mine is not, mine’s a single 350 watt motor, it can save all that weight. But the problem is it’s not very fast. So again, I’m in the city. It’s pretty hilly. And what I noticed right away was I either have to do the old school, like you’re on a skateboard and put out one leg and give it some help going up the hills, or I have to walk it.

It just doesn’t have the torque to carry me in my backpack up a hill. So that gave me pause. After like the first day of riding and I said, you know, yeah, there’s some bike lanes here. They’re really out in traffic and the people here are a little bit crazy. And I just don’t feel comfortable. And the bike path doesn’t go all the way to where I’m going.

I have to get up on the sidewalk. I have to get out of the way, like all these kinds of things. I figured I’ll try to ride the sidewalk when I can. And if I see people, especially people with dogs, [00:29:00] I dismount, I get off. I put the scooter on the grass and I just walk along the sidewalk, like I’m walking and I just push it.

And I’m trying to be very respectful of all the pedestrians. That said, I was coming back one afternoon, I’m like by myself, and I’m just cruising down on the sidewalk, and this young girl passed me on one of the big scooters, I mean, she just blew by me, like I wasn’t moving, and then when I say, this thing is slow, it’s about as fast as a car.

As a runner, it does like eight or nine miles an hour. If I’m going downhill pushed by a Metro bus, it could probably hit its top speed of 15 or whatever it’s supposed to do, but it doesn’t do that on the regular does like eight or nine mile an hour, which is faster than walking, but it’s whatever, what I realized was when I tried to use the bike lane.

I was too slow and the bicyclists were pissed and I was just in their way and it was just, this is ridiculous. Again, I’m coming home one afternoon, I’m by myself and then I see this little old lady and she’s got her cane 50 feet from her. I dismount and I just start walking and I have the scooter in the grass and she gets in the middle of the sidewalk and she gets as big as she can and she starts [00:30:00] shaking her finger at me.

And she starts yelling at me and she was like let me tell you I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of these scooters and da da da and the bicyclists and the bicyclists should be all be put in jail and blah blah blah and I was like yes ma’am yes ma’am I’m so sorry yes ma’am. I would have exploded her ass.

Oh she went off and she went off and so I said I understand but I dismounted from the sidewalk and now I am walking and you are blocking me you’re on my side. Side of the sidewalk. She said, there is no side to the sidewalk. This is my sidewalk and I’m gonna walk here. And I’m like, well damn. Okay. You own the town.

Apparently she must have been the mayor or something. Right? At 97 years old, that would’ve infuriated me more. I don’t need to get into a fight with anybody, just like, I don’t want to get into an argument with the cop. It’s a Danny Glover moment. You’re like, I’m too old for this. And as soon as I part ways with you, I’m never going to see you again and I don’t care.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s why I told her to go F herself and kept going because I’ve never seen her again.

Crew Chief Eric: Then it became like this political rant and I’m [00:31:00] like, ma’am, I have to go. I could care less. You

Executive Producer Tania: stayed way longer than I ever would have.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t even know if I would have said anything to her. I would have just kept going.

I would have ignored her. She’d have been nothing to me. I

Crew Chief Eric: guess. I just don’t need anybody reporting me or, oh, there’s a guy running around and, you know, he looks like.

Crew Chief Brad: Newsflash, they’re gonna report you anyway, you don’t look

Crew Chief Eric: like them. It’s true. You know, Tanya brought up a good point. She was like, it’s not always legal everywhere to ride the scooter on the sidewalk.

And I noticed on the bigger ones, the rental ones, it literally says on the base plate where you stand, it says, do not ride on the sidewalk. And I’m like, I get it because those things haul ass. They do like 30 miles an hour, right? And you know who

Crew Chief Brad: rides them on the sidewalk? Everybody that rents one

Crew Chief Eric: safer.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: It is. And the old lady did say, she’s going, I understand that you don’t want to get hit by a car. And I’m like, okay, let’s just stop there for a moment. And that is true. I am fearful to use the bike lane, even if it’s available, because again, it is too slow. And I don’t want to cause a bicyclist to have an issue [00:32:00] because they are going faster than me because they’re capable of going faster than me.

But I’ve noticed though everybody with a dog that takes the time to say good morning or hello or whatever has been like oh thank you so much for not scaring my dog because you see the dogs get all antsy they don’t even like the cars in the city let alone the scooters everybody else I’ll just ride along and they’re like good morning hello and it’s like you know this happy middle America type of neighborhood it’s super weird like I’m living in this bubble that I just don’t understand and it’s like I don’t know I just can’t put up with the whole being yelled at by everybody I guess the bigger point is it’s like some people respect the bicyclists and the scooters.

I will say that I have seen some crazy stuff from the bike messengers because they do still exist in the city with their fixed gear bikes and they just blow through intersections and they could care less. And I’m like, wow, that’s brave. That’s the word I’m going to use for it. But I’m like, uh, okay. What really gave me pause about all this, and I’m still riding the scooter, I don’t really care, and I ride on the sidewalk, and I tell you what, there’s this one kid every day, dude, he [00:33:00] meanders down the sidewalk, and I literally have to yell to him, Eyes up!

Eyes up! He’s just gonna run into me, not because I’m trying to run into him, because he’s not looking, he’s playing Pokemon Go or something. But I fear for him. I fear for myself, maybe some of the other people, because there’s an article that came out recently from the NHTSA addressing the bigness of the vehicles, especially trucks and SUV, and they’re trying to, I guess, trim the fat.

But I really want to know what the definition of a quote unquote excessively SUV is. Where do we draw the line on that?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it’s the same definition as excessively loud,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Executive Producer Tania: In Brad’s perspective, he doesn’t think any of them are excessively tall. From my perspective, when the headlight is at the height of my head, I’m sorry, that is excessively tall.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah. If you’re standing outside the vehicle, the headlights or the, or the bumper is at your head, that’s too tall. Yes. I agree.

Executive Producer Tania: You’re not a Mack truck.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re not off roading in the bush.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: You don’t need a eight inch lift. With 42 inch [00:34:00] tires on your F three 50, it’s unnecessary.

Crew Chief Eric: I love those trucks though.

And then they have a 12 inch drop on their trailer hitch because they’re too tall to actually tow anything. So they can tow their mulch trail.

Executive Producer Tania: No, cause the guy’s five foot nothing and he can’t get in.

Crew Chief Eric: Or he can’t get it up either. Going back to what we were talking about with the cop. I’ve never seen one of these bro dozers pulled over before.

I had one behind me even today. F 150 that’s been lifted, what looks like a foot, and the tires are sticking out eight inches on either side.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is also illegal in Maryland.

Crew Chief Eric: The windshield is pitch black, and then he’s blowing diesel smoke, rolling coal out stacks, and yet I got pulled over, right? And I’m not trying to play the victim here, but I’m like, really?

That’s okay? That’s cool? And he’s loud because those diesels aren’t working.

Crew Chief Brad: How many shotguns did you see in his gun rack?

Crew Chief Eric: What’s funny about all this is I never really took it seriously until I became like more of a hardcore let’s say pedestrian everyday in the city and really like being involved in traffic.

When you’re in a car you’re sort of [00:35:00] protected you don’t think about yeah there’s a brodozer but when you’re on a scooter doing like Eight and one goes by you and kind of like nearly knocks you over. You’re just like, you have a pucker moment on both sides of your body. That is pretty incredible. But what I also noticed that I never considered is how scary EVs can be.

So it goes back to what we were talking about before the cars need to make a little bit of noise. Because you could have a Prius or a Tesla just creep up on you. I had an electric BMW following me up a hill on a side street that was like only a car wide. I didn’t know he was back there until I heard like the crack of the tire roll over like a twig.

And I was like, Oh my God, there’s something behind me. And he had been there a while. And then as soon as I realized that he was there, I got out of the way and then he just floored it and took off just like a bat out of hell. He didn’t honk the horn or anything like that, which probably would have startled me.

Right? Because again, I didn’t hear him.

Crew Chief Brad: What you were describing though, it reminds me of that scene in the office where Andy and Dwight are dueling in the parking lot and Andy [00:36:00] creeps up on him in the Prius, like. Five miles an hour. So you can’t hear them. Exactly. I think you need to get yourself one of those high visibility jackets, like the construction workers wear.

I got a bright red

Crew Chief Eric: backpack, man.

Crew Chief Brad: You

Crew Chief Eric: can see it.

Crew Chief Brad: Those yum, yum, yellow vests and wear that as you’re going down the road.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll wear the GTM media polos from the track days. That

Crew Chief Brad: is perfect.

Crew Chief Eric: But there was another article, and this is again, where I think big brother is listening. And it’s a bit of a de doy moment here, as Brad likes to say, but quicker EVs might lead to more accidents.

Oh, you don’t say.

Crew Chief Eric: But there’s one more part, Brad, and I don’t know if you put it out there in the world, gave me the karma, but I’m gonna get one of those signs like they used to have in the factories.

Executive Producer Tania: Do I still use those?

Crew Chief Eric: That says, X number of days since incident, because guess what? The Pacifica’s back in the shop.

Oh

Crew Chief Brad: my god, what happened?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s been 200 days since Since it’s been in the shop, so that’s seven months for those of you counting at home. I was driving it into the city like I do every morning and I didn’t warn the girls, but the [00:37:00] dashboard lit up like Times Square, all sorts of lights. Then a big red wrench with a lightning bolt in the middle.

And it says service hybrid system now. And I’m like, Ooh, something’s about to go seriously wrong. I got them dropped off and then basically took a minute to get my thoughts together. Talk to my wife, like, Oh my God, we’re going to about to be down a car.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s true. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: She cannot drive for several more weeks and I drove it immediately to the dealership and I made it their problem again.

And this comes on the heels of us literally talking about. The Pacifica and talking about the letter that we got from Stellantis saying how they just put an unlimited warranty on the hybrid system. So we’re taking advantage of that. My

Executive Producer Tania: question is, did you guys just get a lemon? Lemon law or is every single one of these?

The dealership garage lot is just full because everyone’s is doing this.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know and I’ve asked the dealer and every time I say the word lemon [00:38:00] law, they look at me again like a Cerberus from hell. I’m like, look, I’m not trying to be any sort of way. I just want you to tell me without having to go dig through the Oracle of Google to figure out what the law is or get a lawyer involved.

But yeah, it’s been in the shop so many times over the last couple of years. And it’s had three going on four transmission replacements, which by the way, the hybrid is in the transmission and it’s a big to do, and it’s usually there for three weeks plus, and they got to get a transmission from Detroit.

What I’m hearing as of today is it may not be a transmission problem. It’s part of the EV coolant system, which we’ve had a problem with before. It’s not the first time with that either where sensors go bad, or there was a leak on the pump, which is inside the transmission. It’s a whole thing, right? But even the lady at the dealership was like, seriously, this is unbelievable.

Like she’s looking at our records and she doesn’t even know what to say. And I’m like, thank you very much. What are we supposed to do? My wife and I had a heart to heart about this. And like, we’ve talked about our [00:39:00] previous drive thrus before. What do we do if the Pacifica finally goes belly up? Like if it goes really pear shaped.

Fix it, again, trade it in at the next local Toyota dealer, and call it a day. Cuz I’m done. Unless we’re gonna buy another Jeep. Because to me, buying a Jeep is like buying an Audi or a Benz. They’re more of a higher end car now than they used to be. There’s a lot more in them. There’s a lot more quality.

It’s the flagship of Stellantis, at least in the United States. You look at the rest of the Chrysler fleet, it’s not worth it. And if you look at the rest of the vans, cause my wife wants another van, if we were to replace it, what do you buy? We’ve talked about the Kias, the Honda and not buying a 62, 000 Volkswagen ID buzz.

Like I’m not buying another Volkswagen. You know what I mean? It’s a mess. Well, I

got another minivan.

Crew Chief Brad: The sliding doors. She’s hooked on the sliding doors now. I bet. The sliding doors are pretty nice. Yeah. And the cargo space and the, yeah, I get it. Question. About the Pacifica. All these issues that you’ve

Crew Chief Eric: had.

I love it. It’s the best car we’ve ever owned, except for all this.

Crew Chief Brad: We [00:40:00] exclude the time it bricked itself just sitting in your garage, but all the other times, what is the ratio you driving versus Jess driving?

Crew Chief Eric: This is the first time it’s happened to me. Okay,

Crew Chief Brad: that debunks my theory because we have a theory like that about another GTM member that is really hard on vehicles and they’ve had transmission issues and stuff with all their vehicles, too.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you brought that up because I was on pace to try to beat Jess’s record and that’s what was super impressive about the Pacific. I was like, man, this thing is torquey and blah, blah, blah. And you know, the way the hybrid works and it’s all electric before it’s gas and how far I could go. There were some days I could get to school and have like 30 percent left.

So I’m coming back part of the way on electric, which was awesome. I was averaging everything I was doing. I hadn’t put gas in it in three weeks and I was getting 48. 2 miles to the gallon, cumulative average city highway, freaking unbelievable. That’s better than diesel. Most of the time,

Crew Chief Brad: didn’t there used to be a saying back in the day that [00:41:00] Cars run best right before they’re going to die thousand percent.

So there was a foreshadowing there. You put it in the world. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: what you did.

Crew Chief Brad: I didn’t Chrysler did.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Chrysler put some other stuff in the world. Did you read this thing by the CEO?

Crew Chief Brad: No. What did this fool do?

Crew Chief Eric: He says that the auto industry is in survival mode. That’s a gross generalization.

Stellantis might be in survival mode because what are you selling in the United States? States. You got rid of everything. There’s no challenger. There’s no charger. There’s the Pacifica, the Jeeps, and that’s it. What else do you sell? What else do you have? Cause there’s no more alphas. There’s no more Fiat’s other than the ones that are left over for the next three years.

And they’ve sold all the Dodge darts that were remaining from 2016. So what? They got nothing and they brought over the Hornet, which was a joke. Like, I don’t even think they sell that anymore. They actually downsized part of the Jeep fleet. There’s talk of getting rid of the manual transmission in the Gladiator, which I didn’t even know was an option.

What are you guys doing? And that’s where I’ve lost faith in the brand. I joke [00:42:00] that Volkswagen has lost their way, but Chrysler has been lost in the desert for 40 years now. Like when are they going to come home? The one thing I did take away from this article, which I thought was hilarious, is some creative rebranding and marketing.

I’m always game for stuff like that. I think it’s pretty cool. So according to the CEO of Stellantis, we now have electric motors and thermal motors, not internal combustion, thermal. Motors, which someone pointed out to me that steam engines are also thermal engines. So maybe they’re going back to that. Is that a Tesla?

Oh, we’ll get to that later.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean, I can kind of see what he’s saying from like the auto industry is being squeezed from both sides from a regulatory standpoint of being forced and strongly suggested to start making vehicles. That do a certain 1 thing or another, and they’re trying to balance meeting those regulations with also providing a product that customers want, which they haven’t been able to do because the customers and the government don’t really [00:43:00] agree.

And then they’re stuck in the middle. So I can kind of understand what he means. And maybe this is, it’s less like, this isn’t right now, but it’s like a preemptive. We’re heading this way really soon kind of thing.

Crew Chief Eric: They come to the table with something like the airflow. Remember that? It was supposed to be sort of like the Cherokee, but had the Chrysler badge.

It was really cool and sleek looking. Develop that body shape, which was interesting, and everybody went, Oh, that’s pretty cool. But give me an engine package option. Nobody’s doing that where it’s like, I can buy a golf with an electric motor, or I can buy a golf with a two liter turbo gas, and I can still have a golf.

If that’s what I want, or in this case for Stellantis, the airflow, if I want to buy that, Just give me an engine package to choose from. They keep developing these crazy cars for no reason that, to your point Brad, nobody wants. Stop making them weird looking, stop making them unusable, stop making them not functional.

And the reason people keep gravitating towards, let’s say SUVs, is because they are Functional and [00:44:00] useful and still very drivable, but you get into some of these other cars and you’re like visibility is garbage You can’t even get a suitcase in them. You can’t fit four people in them Like why are you building this trash and then the cars that we want you stop building?

Well, it’s like just put the freaking ev As an option and the cars that we do want and then they speak out of the other sides of their mouths And there’s another article still antis Blames bad marketing for poor Maserati sales. I’m like, guys, wake up.

Crew Chief Brad: How about his poor products?

Crew Chief Eric: If Maseratis were cool, which is a stretch they haven’t been for a long time, more people would buy them.

But when you think about what they cost, you’re going to buy a Ferrari if you can afford it, or you’re going to buy something else. So it’s like we said, if they restructured and maybe did the highline SUVs. As a Maserati, like, they built that one for a while there, but instead it’s like, no, we have to have the Stelvio.

We have to have the Maserati version. We have to have the Fiat version. It’s like this proliferation of internal competition. And then suddenly they go, we can’t sell anything. So we’re [00:45:00] just going to stop making them. I

Executive Producer Tania: like how it’s more people would buy Maseratis. That group of people buying Maseratis is so small, right?

You make it sound like more people would buy Hondas. First of all, who cares? Why are they even mentioning Maserati? That’s such a niche market and they should go investigate why the uber rich are putting their money somewhere else. Who cares?

Crew Chief Brad: Because Maserati doesn’t satisfy the uber rich. Maserati is the Buick or Oldsmobile of Italy.

Crew Chief Eric: But tries to be a Ferrari. Well,

Crew Chief Brad: Oldsmobile, Buick tries to be a Cadillac, but it’s not.

Crew Chief Eric: I’d rather have the lowest low end Ferrari, which right now is the 296. Then any high end Maserati, sorry. Like if I’m going to spend that kind of money, the Ferrari is a status symbol, not the Maserati.

Crew Chief Brad: There was another automaker that went through something similar, making all these duplicate vehicles, and then basically not selling anything because where they were competing with themselves.

Who was that?

Crew Chief Eric: What was that Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: That was General Motors. Oh, Oh, you’re right. Wait, wait, or was it Ford? Oh. [00:46:00] Or, or, or maybe it was Chrysler. I think all the American brands did that stupid stuff. And look how it worked out for them. They all needed to be bailed out. I feel like Chrysler’s

Crew Chief Eric: Stallones Stellantis It’s like history is doomed to repeat itself.

They’ve been with this struggle ever since Iacocca got there in the 80s, where it’s like, we got to take the government bailout. We got to do this. We’re always on the verge of bankruptcy. We got cool ideas, but we can’t execute them. So we develop, instead of something awesome, the Ares K Car. You’re like, come on.

Like, I get it. But you know, the Ares didn’t save Chrysler. The caravan did. Because it was something people wanted. It was fun. functional, it was useful, and they lasted for freaking ever. I still see some of those old bread boxes still running around, which is mind blowing, those Iacocca era Chryslers. But it’s just like, have you not learned anything yet?

Anything. And because I dropped the Pacific off at the dealership, would you like to know what was sitting in the parking lot to be purchased? Ram Rebels Cherokees. That’s it. That’s all there was. That’s not a lot of choice. And [00:47:00] if you want to buy a pickup truck, we know the best selling pickup truck in America is a FiberTruck Ford F 150, so why are you bothering?

Crew Chief Brad: You also need 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 thousand dollars to buy one too.

Crew Chief Eric: That sort of wraps up

Crew Chief Brad: my showcase.

Crew Chief Eric: And the show is over.

Crew Chief Brad: I do want to say you’ve got to ditch your scooter and just get a really good set of Heelys. And you’ll be golden.

Crew Chief Eric: If you’d see the roads and the sidewalks in the city, I’ve gotten good at jumping the scooter, but I don’t think I could do Heelys.

Dude,

Crew Chief Brad: there’s a guy on Instagram that he wears Heelys and he does like Heelys parkour. It’s pretty sweet.

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, there’s so many rooted sidewalks. Ugh, it’s awful. Yeah, yeah. And these, again, things I don’t consider. When I’m just walking or people cut your bushes back and there’s not even room for a person to walk.

Like, why are you sticking out three feet into the sidewalk?

Crew Chief Brad: Where’s the HOA in this instance?

Crew Chief Eric: No, seriously. And these are things I’m like vehemently against usually. But in this case, I’m like, you know what? I understand why these rules are this way.

Executive Producer Tania: Ah, yeah. See, and then you understand how these bills get passed for noise.

[00:48:00] Cameras because when it’s in your backyard, it’s a problem when it’s in the guy’s backyard 10 miles away It’s not a problem

Crew Chief Eric: Like that guy with the go kart track in his backyard as we wrap up here in honor of all these shenanigans We did a special mini sewed a while back. It was actually drive thru number 19 I had to go look it up to figure it out.

So it’s been a minute. 30 drive throughs ago. There’s an extra episode that was a complete rant about the shenanigans that happen in city traffic. And I tell you what, I went back and we listened to it. Nothing has changed. Zero. So we’re going to re release that alongside of this episode. So you can hear me go off about people using their cell phones as sun visors and other fun things.

Crew Chief Brad: I think we need to change it Pitstop to a PSA and we need to remarket it. You know, we got to change our poor marketing and we remarket it to this is a public service announcement. It’s an outreach program really is we’re trying to help you all help me help you.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, on that, let’s get back to our regularly scheduled ranting and raving.

[00:49:00] Stellantis has told us that the automotive industry is in survival mode. And that might be true at Volkswagen because reports are saying the crisis continues. Since the last time we talked about this, they might be forced to close factories in Germany. And wait, this just in, factories in China too.

Executive Producer Tania: What’s the name of the Chinese EV company?

Crew Chief Eric: BYD.

Executive Producer Tania: Who’s going to compete against them? Because it’s the EV factories that they’re shutting down. Because they can’t compete against Chinese EV.

Crew Chief Eric: Because nobody wants them. Volkswagen bet the farm on EVs.

Executive Producer Tania: No, it’s not that nobody wants an EV. Nobody wants a Volkswagen’s EV when they can have the Chinese BYD for 75 percent less.

Crew Chief Brad: For

Crew Chief Eric: 25

Executive Producer Tania: yen.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and that’s just it. We talked about the ID buzz at 62, 000. How many Honda odysseys? Basically two of them. Can you buy for the price of that ID Buzz?

I would just like to say that you cannot buy two Honda Odysseys for the price of one ID Buzz. The Honda Odyssey 2025 version starts at 41920 MSRP.

Crew Chief Eric: How much are they at [00:50:00] CarMax? I bet I can buy two at CarMax.

Okay,

Executive Producer Tania: used. Then we gotta wait to see how much a used ID Buzz is.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, if you’re buying used, then you can get six Honda Odysseys.

Crew Chief Eric: Used, they’re gonna cost 62, 000 because nobody’s buying them.

Executive Producer Tania: I probably can get six 2005 Honda Odysseys. That’s

Crew Chief Brad: what I mean.

How low can you go? How used do you want? You can buy 25 Mazda Miatas.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m gonna get a Dodge Caravan from the early 90s.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s insane. Nobody wants that stuff. You want to tell me it’s because it’s an EV? They’re pushing the ceiling of what the market can bear. And for once, the market is not willing to bear the cost of these cars.

And they’re either not being made, they’re not being sold, or they’re sitting on lots. And I say, hell yeah. Vote with your wallet in this case. Don’t buy these cars. They’re ridiculous. And not because they’re not good. Because the prices need to come down. You guys get my point’s?

Executive Producer Tania: That guy’s name at the dealer?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. You’re talking about Chuck led duck? Yeah. . Chuck LED duck. Yeah. I [00:51:00] still get emails from him. Oh shoot. There’s an article here about BMW.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently maybe we’re in for some new BM BMW stylings as they’re seem to be replacing their chief people in charge.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Define styling. Changing the grills back to what they were before is not changing the styling.

Executive Producer Tania: It would be a step in the right direction.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t disagree with that.

Executive Producer Tania: For anyone who liked the Z4, apparently they’re bringing that guy back. I do

Crew Chief Eric: like the Z4. It’s one of the few BMWs I do like.

Executive Producer Tania: Well then maybe there will be a style change that you like, because the guy that designed that one is coming back apparently.

Crew Chief Eric: Will they all be as ugly as the Z4?

Executive Producer Tania: Well now you just spoke out of both sides of your mouth.

Crew Chief Eric: No! I said I liked it. It’s sort of like that scrappy junkyard pound puppy and you’re like, he’s so ugly. He’s cute. Okay. That’s the Z4. You’re like, it’s so ugly. It’s kind of

Executive Producer Tania: nice. I like it. Time will tell what changes we might see exterior, et cetera, on future BMWs.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll believe it when I see it. I just like his name. Who he don’t. He develops the [00:52:00] donks

Crew Chief Brad: over at BMW. Donks like a truck. Chuck, Chuck. Double dubs, baby. For the record, the more and more I see the BMW M models with that giant front grill.

Don’t tell me.

Crew Chief Brad: The more I like it. The more

Crew Chief Eric: you like it?

Crew Chief Brad: The more I like it.

Crew Chief Eric: Have you seen them at night when they light up? They’re atrocious.

Crew Chief Brad: I cannot say I’ve seen it at night. You need to get out more. Come at me, bro. Where am I gonna go? I go to daycare. Daycare is during the day.

Crew Chief Eric: My wife’s doctor has an M2 competition, black on triple black with the seats, with the BMW motorsport stitched leather.

And

Crew Chief Brad: it probably says M like 50, 000 places

Crew Chief Eric: when it’s an M2 competition. I mean, this thing is legit awesome. And I don’t say that about a lot of BMWs, but I was like, dude, that’s a really, really nice car. That is pretty cool. So good on him. But again, there’s very few and far between BMWs I can say that about.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, it

also has a normal size

Executive Producer Tania: grill.

Crew Chief Eric: The

Crew Chief Brad: M2 has a normal size grill.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s

Executive Producer Tania: why it looks

Crew Chief Eric: good.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s why even if all they did is go back to normal size

Crew Chief Eric: grills, it would be a step in the right direction. More of that marketing nonsense. [00:53:00] It’s like thermal motors. Buzzwords. Synergy. We have synergy. Well, moving into domestic news, General Motors at the cutting edge of 10 years ago,

Crew Chief Brad: the cutting edge of failure.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. Is it 10 years ago? Because Tesla only very recently started opening up its charger network to non Tesla manufacturers, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I feel like they are first to market on this. Well, Ford’s already doing it. They got access to the network. But what I don’t understand is when you pull up with your Hummer EV and charge of the Tesla network, how does that work?

Do you get a Tesla subscription? Like, I understand the Electrify America thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I think you pay at the quote unquote pump.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve seen that with other systems, which is super awesome at places like Ikea, where they have that you can park right up front. And it is relatively inexpensive, but it is a 225 uplift to get this adapter so you can use the Tesla chargers.

Yeah, and Ford gave away their adapter for free.

Executive Producer Tania: Beginning, I think they’re gonna start charging.

Crew Chief Eric: Why can’t we just develop [00:54:00] better charging stations and put Elon out of business?

Crew Chief Brad: Why can’t we just develop better technology for everybody to use for free? Why do you have to curse in church all the time?

Executive Producer Tania: Uh, You want to give a mass group of people something for free for the general benefit of society.

What country are you in?

Crew Chief Eric: That was the premise of the movie The Saint. Remember that free energy? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: cold fusion. Yeah. He drove a

Crew Chief Eric: Volvo. I just want to point that

Crew Chief Brad: out. He did. He did. I don’t have a problem with it costing 225 when they’re selling it to people that bought a 130, 000 Hummer.

Crew Chief Eric: I have a problem with it costing 225 because Ford’s giving it away for free.

Executive Producer Tania: Ford gave it away. Ford is

Crew Chief Brad: a better company.

Executive Producer Tania: But apparently they’re not free anymore. Because GM started to charge for them. It’s all tit for tat. Well, no, cause if GM just started this Ford said that after June 30 of this year, it would be 230. So look, GM just beat them by 5.

Crew Chief Brad: 230. I’m selling mine [00:55:00] for 229, Bob, 229.

Executive Producer Tania: You can take that extra 5, go to Subway. And get an 8 footlong and you’re still out of

Crew Chief Brad: pocket, but you can’t charge outside the subway. That’s like the people that get a coupon and they’re like, look, I’m saving money. No, you spent 500. Yeah, but I would have spent seven 50. I saved 250. No, you didn’t.

Crew Chief Eric: You

Crew Chief Brad: spent 500.

Oh, look at your bank

Crew Chief Eric: account. You know, the marketing term for that is. Spaving. Spending and saving. Spaving. All right, let’s switch gears and talk about Japanese and Asian domestic news. Do we actually have news? We do! It has nothing to do with America, which makes it completely awesome, and it really has nothing to do with the car that’s going to exist, either, because we’ve talked before about how the Supra is going away, and we’re all very saddened by this weird four cylinder one that nobody’s going to be brokenhearted about.

The Australians, never to be outdone, say Here, hold my fosters. That’s Australian for beer. [00:56:00] They’re doing V8 supercars, Supras.

Crew Chief Brad: So first of all, I think this article is clickbait because I saw Toyota Supra gains a V8 engine. And I’m like, we’ll go racing in Australia. Oh, only the supercar championship cars will have the V8.

They’re not going to sell any on the street. Like there’s not going to be any for consumption.

Crew Chief Eric: And what gets me about this is Supra or Lexus, R C L C, whatever the heck they are, F Sport.

Crew Chief Brad: Those Lexus LC coupes are awesome. Right? They sound amazing.

Crew Chief Eric: Why not just use the ones that are an IMSA that are like 100 years old?

Isn’t that like the same thing?

Crew Chief Brad: Super’s lighter. Sort of. Smaller is lighter. Maybe there’s an issue where they can’t use the car that’s already

Crew Chief Eric: in production. What it means, and it’s probably already been done. LS swap all the Supras now because you know a V8 fits up there.

Crew Chief Brad: They’ve been putting V8s in Furs and Burrs.

There’s a guy running around on Instagram with a Ferrari V8 in his Furs.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it doesn’t fit right though. But this isn’t the first time they did this down in [00:57:00] Australia. Do you remember the V8 Ultima?

No.

Crew Chief Eric: And I wondered what do we call this one? You know, we have the Taltima all that. You guys got any creative names?

Because I came up with one. This is the Baltima. Got balls tima. Baltima. That’s awesome. But that’s old news. We got to move on to some new news. Random EVs and concept cars. My wife, who has ample free time now because she can’t really go anywhere, do anything. So she’s been trolling and doom scrolling on Instagram and sent me this one knowing that I love some French cars.

Have you guys seen this Renault rendering of the, call it Resto Mod, R17 EV? Very neat. I love this.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s very Mad Max to me.

Executive Producer Tania: Not a fan of this brown color, but you know, that could be changed. I

Crew Chief Brad: love the color.

Crew Chief Eric: Brown is back. Did you look at the original one to compare it to what they did? I think they did a really good job of pulling the design language of a 1970s Ford.

French coupe into the modern era. I think it looks really, really cool. [00:58:00] It’ll never get made. Of course not. Because anything awesome never gets made or it’ll get made and we’ll never see it.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, we’ll never see it for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: Throw a Nissan badge on it and call it something else. Meanwhile, we talk about the auto industry being in survival mode.

There are some people that are taking themselves off of Survivor Island.

Executive Producer Tania: This is just another manufacturer that’s. Joining the bandwagon of not going full electric anymore. So Volvo is saying that they’re going to ditch their previous plans to sell only electric cars by 2030. Because again, we’re seeing this decrease in demand for electric battery powered vehicles.

Crew Chief Eric: We pulled the rubber band as far as it can go. It’s just coming right back to where it was.

Executive Producer Tania: People got real optimistic. They said, you know what, let’s do it. Let’s run with it. And then it was like, let’s see how this goes. It’s not going how they forecasted, so they’re popping the brakes, so to speak.

Crew Chief Eric: So do you think they feel silly divesting Polestar?

Executive Producer Tania: Do they feel silly not being 100 [00:59:00] percent Swedish?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s that too. Could that be part of the problem as well? Because of the huge tariffs that have been imposed upon the Chinese imports to basically keep them out of the United States. Probably not helping. That’s what’s happening to Lotus right now.

The cost of their new EV, the Elettra, has jumped to 230, 000. Because it’s another Chinese owned legacy manufacturer. Not going to help. What are we afraid of? I guess that’s my bigger question. What

do you mean?

Crew Chief Eric: Why can’t we allow BYD to build the cars here? Everything else we outsourced to China. That’s for a different podcast.

Oh, okay. All right.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s a totally different discussion. That’s a battle that the lobbyists are fighting.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll leave that where it sits. I mean, if you can tell me the difference between a Tesla three and a BYD,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s the same difference between a Sorni and a magnet box.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s Sorni.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m not sure if there’s a Home Depot in China or not.

Crew Chief Eric: And speaking of Polestar being divested, this one made me think two if by land and one if by sea. [01:00:00] Because Polestar is gonna make electric boats! Because we know how well water and electricity go together. Why is this boat flying? It’s a hydrofoil.

Executive Producer Tania: They do go together because when the batteries go off in a chain reaction to burn, you need an ocean of water to put them out, so it’s perfect.

Crew Chief Eric: Sink it. Done. I don’t know that this is the first electric boat or thing of this type. I remember meeting the gentleman from Von Mercier and they were developing an EV hovercraft, and that was a couple of years ago now. I’ve heard of EV airplanes. Again, this was the next logical conclusion, I suppose. I just didn’t think Polestar was going to be the one to do it, but hey, send it.

Speaking of going for it, Brad, we need to turn to lost and found. I found something for you. I know it’s one of your favorite BMWs, speaking of BMW earlier, this is the chassis hand built by God himself, the E39 M5. Yep. But is that 280, [01:01:00] 000 worth of yep?

Crew Chief Brad: Nope. Because the chassis hand built by God has a very, very close cousin in the Chevrolet formerly Holden SS sedan, which, when it first came out, Drew very similar comparisons to the E39 M5 during road tests and everything like that.

So do I pay 280, 000 for this car or do I pay 40 or 50 for that car? I’m going to pay 40 or 50 for that car.

Crew Chief Eric: And that LS sounds better than this BMW V8. And

Crew Chief Brad: it’ll cost you a lot less to run over time.

Crew Chief Eric: But this one has 633 miles and it’s in Dakar yellow. Can you get your SS in that? I can puke this color all over my SS if I want to.

You know, there’s Fans of this color. There’s people that love this. I’m not a big fan of yellow cars. I mean, it’s just not my thing. And I know here comes a joke about the Aztec, but let’s let sleeping dogs lie. You said it to me. I love these M fives though. They are fantastic. I [01:02:00] actually thought about buying one of these, not a V8, a.

Three and a half liter six to run at the track instead of an E36 M3 and I regret not doing that.

Crew Chief Brad: I almost bought a 540i with the smaller V8. I had check in hand at CarMax ready to buy it and somebody in my journey from home to CarMax put it on dealer transfer and

Crew Chief Eric: I didn’t

Crew Chief Brad: get it. They refused to sell it to me.

And I was very distraught. I probably would still have that car. So I love the car. I don’t love it. 280, 000 worth though.

Crew Chief Eric: Every time I look at these, it’s a beautiful blend of E36 styling and E46 styling. It like sits in between and it has these cues and these certain features. They just still look good today.

It’s one of the few, let’s say 20 plus year old BMWs Still looks really, really awesome. So God bless whoever buys this, but yeah, there’s a lot of cars you can buy for 280 grand. Well, Tanya,

Executive Producer Tania: we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about the [01:03:00] great Tesla.

We finally have, yes. Possibly. Vindication! Are you happy now? I busted out in a small laugh towards the end of this article. So there’s an article about how Tesla has now deleted its blog postings, any mention of postings where it said that their cars have self driving hardware. How curious. The better part is, that made me laugh, is they touted this whole time that they have fully autonomous, full self driving, duh, duh, blah, blah, except they have yet to prove that it’s capable.

Nobody has been able to prove that it’s capable without some sort of adult supervision. This is awesome. Tesla is now calling the system FSD, which is the full self driving. FSD, FSD, FSD.

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t that just called driving? I mean, this is like thermal motors. I mean, here we go [01:04:00] again.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like contradiction.

Full self driving. Supervised. So it’s not full self driving. But it’s

Crew Chief Eric: not supervised full self driving because if you change the subject predicate noun agreement, then it actually changes the connotation of what they’re saying.

Executive Producer Tania: I wonder what the legal implication of this order of the words is.

Crew Chief Eric: What about full supervised self driving or full self supervised driving?

Bullshit

Crew Chief Brad: driving. This just goes along with the people can identify as whatever they want. I can identify as a chair. Eric can identify as a car with working taillights. Tesla’s cars can identify as full self driving. That is the world in which we live. There doesn’t have to be any truth behind any of it.

Wow. When you say it, I identify as a czar of a remote country that I just don’t get to visit.

Executive Producer Tania: King of India, over there.

Crew Chief Brad: What

Executive Producer Tania: would your

Crew Chief Brad: country be called? Portlandian. I

Crew Chief Eric: think Fred Armisen might have something to say about that.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes,

Crew Chief Eric: yes.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, he’s [01:05:00] my vice czar.

Executive Producer Tania: Nice shot. So there’s still more Tesla. This one’s even better.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s more Tesla news.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s unreal. It’s about the Cybertruck. Oh, something we haven’t talked about much this year at all. Because the Cybertruck is without fault. Oh, it is infallible. Like anything Elon touches is A turd. Meets the expectations. is totally in line with the promises.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll say again, a turd.

Executive Producer Tania: Works to the utmost degree, like a freaking Swiss timepiece. That’s how well these things work. So recall the windows, right? Back however many years ago it was now.

Crew Chief Eric: The baseball.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, they’re, you know, armor plate glass that can withstain bullets, blah, blah, blah. I’ll show you by lobbing this baseball at it with my untrained, unprofessional slow ball.

shatter. Oh, it was a fluke. It was this and the other, you know, this is still the prototype, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then why [01:06:00] now that we’re in production with 3, 000 of these or whatever the production rate is, 11, 000 were recalled. That’s right, we did say it was 11, 000, so good job, they’re all in the parking lot somewhere.

This is probably going to be another recall, maybe, I don’t know. At any rate, some poor individual who spent 100, 000 on this car, left it parked wherever. And the impenetrable, unsinkable cyber truck, heard that one before. It’s like the Titanic. With its shatterproof glass. The thief rolled up to it, tried back the window a little bit.

Crew Chief Brad: Because it’s frameless, I want to point it out. So this would happen with any car with a frameless.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, so we won’t fault the frameless part. I’m not faulting the frameless part.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a lack of notification.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I don’t even fault that because honestly, if you jimmy a little bit, I don’t think anyone’s cars are that sensitive that.

They’re going to sound the alarm yet,

Crew Chief Brad: but the shattered window,

Executive Producer Tania: did this window shatter because the window peeled back like an onion layer. And so [01:07:00] people are up in arms about how to your point, there was no alarm notification. I wasn’t told my car was being robbed. The alarm didn’t go off. What alarms going off this thing like rolled up like a paper towel.

It didn’t even know the window was open. Where’s the sensor airflow. Suddenly the air current changed into the vehicle, but it was the door wasn’t open. That’s. The sensor. I don’t know. Is it worth saying that the thief was in a Nissan Ultima?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, no.

Crew Chief Eric: Are you serious?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. But the picture of this peeled down window is just wild.

Wild. You wouldn’t be able to do that on any other.

Crew Chief Eric: No. And I think it has to do with the fact that it’s safety glass. So it has that coating on it. So it’s not supposed to shatter and all that. But in thinking about previous Teslas that I’ve been in, remember, I told you guys that story about when I was in Tampa.

And how that Tesla Model Y tried to choke me because the door seal ended up falling on my head as I was getting out and all this kind of thing. If the seals are that bad on a Cybertruck, and with all those [01:08:00] angles, you don’t need a pry bar. You probably could put your fingers in there and pull the window back.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably would’ve did.

Crew Chief Eric: Which is a lot harder to do on other cars, even on a frameless door car, which we’ve owned some over the years. It’s pretty tight in there and usually the window goes up into a cavity. Yes. Where it seals. inside of that door seal, even though it doesn’t have a frame. To say that the build quality is maybe not quite where it should be, and all those weird angles might add an extra layer of, I don’t know, weakness, or entry point, or attack vector, we’ll call it that.

You know, I don’t know! But I guess this guy proved the hypothesis.

Crew Chief Brad: Tesla’s recall fix is going to be going down to the local home depot and getting some rebar to build a frame for your frameless door. Just caulk it shut. Just get a couple of tubes of caulk. Your answer usually, I would just get some caulk.

I was going to say caulk, but I decided to go with the rebar. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I’d like to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a vehicle that I can peel the glass back on. What the fuck?

Crew Chief Eric: [01:09:00] Ah, you know, now that my expectations are thoroughly lowered, we need to Things that are unfortunately unfortunate.

Executive Producer Tania: Look at that.

The first unfortunate thing. Right back with the Cybertruck.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like this is like serendipitous though.

Crew Chief Eric: No, this is the definition of irony.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: The headline alone explains it. Okay, Yahoo News reports. Tesla Cybertruck hits fire hydrant, catches on fire.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, they were already there with the water. So their fire

Crew Chief Eric: hydrant was on the scene.

The fire hydrant

Crew Chief Brad: was on the

Crew Chief Eric: scene. Apparently he caused the fire, but also could not put out the fire. Do you know how much water a fire hydrant puts out? But that is needed to put out the fire. Oh, still not enough. The picture of this thing alone just cracks me up.

Executive Producer Tania: How do you hit a fire hydrant? They’re not in the middle of the road.

Supervised full self driving. It was F U S D.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, unsupervised.

Crew Chief Brad: No, so this Cybertruck identified as a fire hose. [01:10:00]

Crew Chief Eric: God. There were reports this month of other EVs burning to the ground and the fires are just unbelievably tragic.

Executive Producer Tania: Everyone wants to say, Gasoline, ice, thermal motors catch on fire more than Thermal means fire.

When was the last time, though, sir, that an ice engine that hit a fire hydrant caught on fire?

Crew Chief Eric: I believe the chances of that are one in a trillion.

Executive Producer Tania: Unlike the Fast and the Furious movies,

Crew Chief Eric: generally.

Executive Producer Tania: When internal combustion engine operated vehicles strike something, they don’t normally go up in a blaze of glory.

Crew Chief Eric: Would have been amazing if that Cybertruck’s dashboard lit up and it said danger to manifold.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I get, yes, maybe ice do catch on fire more regularly, but it seems like the difficulty and the severity of some of these electric [01:11:00] vehicle fires, imagine you’re in some big collision and then you’re out of it.

You can’t even get out of your car or you can’t get out of your car until somebody comes rescues you and then the damn thing ignites. Would it

Crew Chief Eric: be fair to say that maybe Knowing what we know, having the safety gear that we have available to us, that we should wear our Nomex suits. Every time we take a ride in a Tesla,

Crew Chief Brad: I was just about to say that.

Yep, exactly. So you can go down the Tesla cyber truck rabbit hole with this one article. I don’t know if you looked in the middle of the page, but it says man almost loses a finger to a cyber truck.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, the window tried to like,

Crew Chief Brad: no, this was the door because of where the door buttons are. So his finger got caught between the rear door and the front door.

He almost lost the finger. And then the next one out of that is. Out of control Cybertruck crashes into a house? I think that’s the one we talked about.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a while ago, yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: I just, I love it.

Crew Chief Eric: I saw one on the highway today, and I’ve never seen one in traffic. And the beltway, six lanes on each side type of deal.

It is massive. Looks like there’s [01:12:00] lumbering. And I couldn’t figure out where the brake lights were. You know how we discovered that the headlights are in that gap? Between the front fascia and the bumper, I think the brake lights are in the same place on the back. But every time we would stop and go in traffic, I didn’t see that back bar light up.

I think that back bar across the lift gate only comes on at night. Unless he wasn’t using the brakes.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe. Regenerative braking that you don’t have to break in those cars. But

Crew Chief Eric: you still have to hit the

Crew Chief Brad: brake

Crew Chief Eric: pedal because we’re coming to a full stop.

Crew Chief Brad: Not if it’s full self driving, it’s fully aware.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: Identifies as a brake light.

Crew Chief Eric: Or the brake lights just don’t work. I mean, amongst a million other things that don’t work on those. They could have shortened for all we know. Had brand new temp tags on it.

Crew Chief Brad: I will say, I see cyber trucks all the time. I see at least one a day. They’re creepy though. When they come up on

Crew Chief Eric: you, you’re suddenly like, whoa, what is that?

Crew Chief Brad: I hate the fact that they’re so popular. I don’t know why, I just, they rub me the wrong way. Really upset me

Crew Chief Eric: because you didn’t get one and you are owed a T-shirt. That’s why

Crew Chief Brad: I didn’t want one. Yeah, I ordered a cyber truck and all I got was this stupid T-shirt. [01:13:00] Parentheses. Thank God .

Crew Chief Eric: Thank Elon. Get

Crew Chief Brad: it right.

Thank you El Well, Elon is God. There you go.

Crew Chief Eric: Soon to be he’s gonna be the first trillionaire. Did you hear that? It’s insane.

Crew Chief Brad: Don’t even get me started on how stupid people make money. . He’s not stupid. He’s very smart, but he’s also. Stupid.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s also a horrible human being.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, horrible human beings make a lot of money.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, this next one almost made Florida man, but this is really unfortunate. This

Crew Chief Brad: is right down the road!

Executive Producer Tania: The rich man’s side! I don’t understand what happened. I don’t understand how this is physically possible.

Crew Chief Eric: Where’s

Executive Producer Tania: the rest of the truck? Kept going. What? So the cab separated, but I don’t understand the highway sign was that low?

The only

Crew Chief Eric: way I can explain this is that it went off and then rode the pole.

Executive Producer Tania: No, so it says that the semi When it’s raised bed. So he was driving like a dump lift.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a big dump lift. That’s the full length of a tractor trailer. I didn’t think those things tilted.

Executive Producer Tania: Because it says the semi was headed [01:14:00] west when it’s raised bed slammed into the overhead sign near mile marker 200 as it approached the 64 295 split.

The cab continued on and then stopped, obviously, because it separated from the bed of the tractor trailer.

Crew Chief Eric: He was adding rocks to the trailer. Chips to the highway

Executive Producer Tania: troopers do not know why the bed was raised or how long was up before the crash. Oh, okay. That’s my missing piece of information possible.

Crew Chief Eric: This happened in Georgia a couple years ago and we reported on it where a dump truck hit a bridge, remember? And he didn’t realize that the dump was up or something like that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but that’s a dump truck. This is a dump truck.

Crew Chief Eric: This is like a

Executive Producer Tania: dump tractor trailer. Apparently that bed could be lifted.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, it lifted.

Executive Producer Tania: Can you imagine being on the highway behind that is straight up. Out of. But

Crew Chief Eric: nobody tried to flag this guy down or tell him, Hey, up, up, up. Maybe he’s thinking do the horn and he’s just blowing the horn at him. Right?

Crew Chief Brad: No, you’re in Virginia. You just get the hell out of the way. They’re all amped out in the left lane.

Crew Chief Eric: Nothing.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. You just, just let it happen. This trailer identified as a street sign, [01:15:00] apparently, but as Tanya

Crew Chief Eric: likes to say,

Crew Chief Brad: that’s unfortunate.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, guys. So following up from last month, gave you guys a homework assignment. Did anybody watch one for the road? Final chapter in the Top Gear Grand Tour Clarkson Hammond and Mays saga.

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. What?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, of course.

Crew Chief Eric: And what do we think?

Crew Chief Brad: It was just like all the rest. I feel it was more for them than for the fans.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Crew Chief Brad: would agree with that. They didn’t do anything new or earth shattering. It was just kind of like a greatest hits of their jokes and I don’t know it was definitely for them.

Executive Producer Tania: I wasn’t sure like the beginning of it okay they got their three cars they’re going on this road trip and I was like nothing was really happening so to speak like it was pretty mundane yeah the Capri kept breaking down every 20 minutes.

But it’s kind of like par for the course. And then they, they did the antics, I guess I’ll call it. And it’s like, let’s drive down the railway. And I’m like, okay. I mean, that’s been done before they even said they’d done it before. So I don’t know if that felt forced, contrived. Yeah. Forced. That was nor here nor there.

Could they have just skipped that and [01:16:00] driven the rest of the way? I don’t know. I mean, I will say I was just a little bit heartbroken that he destroyed the railroad. That Lancia. When that bumper ripped off, I was just like.

Crew Chief Eric: I loved all the mods on the Lancia when he goes, and it’s got the 308 taillights and it’s got the Delta HF grille in the headlight.

He

Executive Producer Tania: said it cost him 80, 000 pounds. I’m like, can you drive slower over the potholes? For

Crew Chief Eric: Pete’s sake, like, anyway, there was a couple of good potshots in there too. Like when Hammond was working on the Capri and they talked about some of his crashes and they kind of really get him on the Rimac that he destroyed, you know, that kind of thing.

I thought that was funny. It was interesting to see James may actually get a little bit emotional towards the end. Cause he’s, he’s like the ice man. Like he’s always like, Oh, he’s always kind of like the curmudgeon. You know what I mean? Like, Oh, okay. I’m here. I’m doing this. I

Crew Chief Brad: thought for sure Tanya would be heartbroken or like angry that they destroyed a Volkswagen Beetle.

[01:17:00] Oh, and I gotta say up until the very last second where the beetle disintegrated, I thought it held up pretty well given what was going on and just the tumbling down. I was like, wow, if Tanya’s ever in an accident on track, I think she’s going to be okay. And then tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble.

Hey, the cockpit’s fine. It’s fine. Until it wasn’t,

Crew Chief Eric: did you see when the motor and transmission ejected itself? Like it went into orbit.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but who cares? I was only looking at the cockpit to make sure the driver would have been okay. And it was fine until like the last two seconds. And then all of a sudden it collapsed on itself.

Executive Producer Tania: That was unnecessary. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: 100 percent

Crew Chief Eric: it was.

Crew Chief Brad: It should have been a caravan.

Executive Producer Tania: Really unnecessary. That car would have been the better car to have driven across those roads than the ones they chose. But at any rate, I get it. It was actually

Crew Chief Brad: a pristine beetle too. It was in really good condition.

Executive Producer Tania: I was like eating something and I literally just mid bite just stopped mouth agape and I didn’t move [01:18:00] the whole, I was just like.

Crew Chief Eric: And you knew what was coming too. You’re like, come on. Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: They built it up so much. Oh my God. I’ve gotten myself into a predicament. Oh, I

Executive Producer Tania: know. And it was just like, ah,

Crew Chief Brad: we spent five minutes building it up.

Executive Producer Tania: Really? Oh yeah. That was distasteful.

Crew Chief Eric: I think it would have been better had he done it. Ferris Bueller style where the brick is on the pedal and then he’s just kicking the shit out of it until it just goes off the cliff, but it should have been going backwards, you know what I mean?

Kind of thing. Like it would have been. Perfect.

Crew Chief Brad: I like the idea that they used a dog though. It was almost like an homage to top gear dog.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it was. I got top gear dog, man. That’s been a minute too. And I thought the other part that was kind of cool, whether it was produced or not, was when they came across the original cars, except for Oliver, which we know is back in the UK that were on that original special.

So his launch of beta coop and the Mercedes, I thought that was really cool. I think that was the moment when James sort of realized like. Oh, [01:19:00] crap. This is the end.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I don’t think the boys knew, but I think the producers knew. Like, they probably found those cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I thought that was really, really well done.

Crew Chief Brad: I will say, I definitely thought they were going to drive through the minefield.

Crew Chief Eric: But they’ve done that before too, right? With all the military exercise stuff they’ve done. Yeah, but it

Crew Chief Brad: wasn’t quite a minefield. The fact that that truck went through, I thought that was awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that was pretty cool. I felt like it came full circle and it did literally and figuratively because it spoiler alert, it ends where it started.

I had to wrap my head around it because I’ve been following top gear since let’s say top gear version one, when it was more like motor week Clarkson was on there, but he was reviewing like the Renault R 17, the original one and telling you about how crappy the tires were and what the handling was like, just like you would expect from, let’s say motor week.

And then when Top Gear 2. 0 came out, suddenly had Clarkson Hammond in May and the airport and stuff like that, they had their adventures, but I didn’t realize that the specials, and what they meant by specials was these [01:20:00] independent, long format, two hour deals that they would put together, started 17 years ago and started there in Botswana and the whole thing, and that’s why I say it came full circle, because I kept thinking there were other specials where they would talk for maybe five minutes, But it fit inside of the 44 minute episode that they had put together with a break in a little conversation street or whatever it is.

Yeah. But the

Crew Chief Brad: reason they fit and it’s cause they were edited down. If you were able to get when they were on Netflix or whatever, or if you had access to BBC, if you were able to get the unedited versions, they were our, our plus episodes, even the standard top gear episodes were over an hour.

Crew Chief Eric: Cause I felt like the Africa special was already well into them doing so.

specials. There were other things that they had done already on Top Gear that sort of led up to that moment. So I felt like, man, they’ve been doing this for a lot longer than 17 years. But 17 years is nothing to sneeze at. Jeremy Clarkson has been in the business well over 30 years, and Clarkson, Hammond, and May well over 20 years together.

So I agree with you that it was for [01:21:00] them, but I think as fans, If they had just left it where they left it, let’s say with the previous special.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, it wasn’t good enough. We needed some closure. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly.

Executive Producer Tania: It was a nice ending to something and like other stuff that just kind of like ends with and you’re like looking around going, okay,

Crew Chief Eric: that was

Executive Producer Tania: it.

Crew Chief Eric: Little kind of side notes from this when that triumph stag showed up I actually knew about that car and I had just paused it. I said, oh my god, you won’t believe what a piece of crap Those motors, you know, and then they would take the rover sd1 engine and put it in there And then they led into that this like I paused as soon as the car showed up because she’s like what is this?

And we were talking about it Yeah We were kind of arguing a little bit about whether it was barney purple or not because to me it was a little bit too Magenta and then they they lay into it and She’s like, how do you know all this stuff? And I’m just like, I know things I shouldn’t, I guess, you know what I mean?

But that Rover SD1, the backup car, I love those things. I think they’re super cool. They sort of gave inspiration to what we got in the States, which [01:22:00] was that Sterling. If you remember that European Accord, it kind of had a similar look to it. It lasted for like a hot minute in the late 80s, early 90s.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought it was funny because they roasted him a little bit from the beginning.

Oh my God. This engine’s a turd. They all overheat. You never find a stag with this motor because they’ve all been replaced with the V8 and da da da da da. And that car never had a problem the whole time through the heat and all that. I’m like, well, that car doesn’t overheat through that trip. It ain’t never overheat.

Yeah, right.

Crew Chief Brad: I wouldn’t be surprised if secretly he did replace the motor and it had a different motor in it. I was disappointed in the fact they took the doors off of that car, considering how good a condition it was in.

Crew Chief Eric: I guarantee they put them back on afterward. It was cardboard garbage at the end though.

But you know what’s funny is, I read some Somewhere that the searches on Google of triumph stag were up 6, 000 percent as a result of that episode,

Crew Chief Brad: Lord, it’s going to be the fast and furious effect. [01:23:00] Like the prices of supers went up. The prices of those cars are going to go up now.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And then people are going to realize how crappy they are.

And it doesn’t really matter. I’d rather have that Rover SD one, honestly, the gold car. I love the beta Monte Carlos. They’re so awesome. And then the scorpion on top is even better. Right? So there was another article. that Hammond talked about after they shot and did production of the episode that apparently it’s sort of like not the end.

It’s the end of the three of them together, right? Clarkson is doing his thing, Clarkson Farm and all that stuff, which is fantastic if you’ve never watched it. It’s actually a lot of fun. But apparently him and May are going to do something of an adventure together. And then apparently Hammond and his brother are going to go off and redo some of the previous adventures that they had in the past, but with a little less.

of a whole production team there to help them, like, fix the stuff. Like, they’re actually gonna do some of these adventures. So I thought that was pretty cool, and he was talking about that after it was all over. So it’s sort of not the end, and all three of them are used to being on camera. I mean, [01:24:00] James May’s still doing the R Man in Japan, and R Man here, and all that kind of stuff.

So I don’t see a finality to this, unless They’re physically not capable of doing something. They’re just not going to be doing it together.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not the end of their careers. It’s just the end of their, them to get, it’s the end of an era,

Crew Chief Eric: not

Crew Chief Brad: their careers.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t think it’s the end of their friendship.

Although I really love the whole thing where may is like

Crew Chief Brad: deleting their numbers. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: it was so good. But even that ending I appreciated and Jess really liked it when Jeremy’s talking and then suddenly he just. Pulls the mic and then that was it and it went quiet

Yeah

Crew Chief Eric: But I also thought with all those quotes that they used and not all of them were from that episode Some of them were pulled from other things.

I felt it appropriate and it was a missed opportunity for jeremy’s classic ending And on that bombshell, it’s time to end. Boom! Mic drop. Done.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I just felt like I needed that. That was me. Hopefully I’m not alone in that feeling. I do think the disconnected mic thing was cool, but it [01:25:00] is what it is.

Because of this, my kids have started to get into Top Gear and they want to see more of the old special. So, I might actually spend some time, like, revisiting. Not all of them are appropriate. Some of their antics, to use Tanya’s word, are not always appropriate. Kosher, but you know, there’s some good ones in there.

I mean, Bolivia, the North Pole, especially. I mean, there’s some really, really awesome ones in the mix.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I think the Bolivia one’s my favorite.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. That one’s definitely top three. And obviously the original Africa one for that matter is fantastic. So they did watch Scandi Flick recently though. And that accident, everybody reacts the same way.

It’s not great. Not ideal. We have some rich people things.

Crew Chief Brad: Yay!

Crew Chief Eric: Sponsored by Garage Style Magazine, because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage? Shaq said he needed another car, and what did he buy? Cybertruck. See Brad? He’s another happy Cybertruck owner.

Crew Chief Brad: This is what irritated me.

Executive Producer Tania: However, it’s I guess a one of a kind, because it is a carbon fiber Cybertruck.

So, Mr. O’Neil [01:26:00] is actually a little bit intelligent, because he went, uh, I don’t want this stainless steel trash.

Crew Chief Eric: I will pay quadruple for carbon fiber. That’s a lot of carbon. I don’t want to

Executive Producer Tania: be out here

Crew Chief Eric: buffing

Executive Producer Tania: this thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It still weighs 8, 000 pounds instead of 9, 000 pounds though. They should have made the cyber truck out of carbon fiber.

That would have been more cyber. That would have been more futuristic to have a street car that wasn’t a hyper car made out of carbon fiber. They could have made it out of Kevlar. So the whole thing was not bulletproof. Carbon Kevlar is not new. They did that in the eighties on like, Audis and Ferraris and stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Stainless steel ain’t new either. So he wasn’t going for that.

Crew Chief Eric: No, we’d straight back to the eighties on that too. It’s still ugly, but I like the red light in the front though.

Crew Chief Brad: I think it looks cool. It’s murdered out. It’s like the rate. I’ve seen a cyber truck like this, like blacked out in my area.

Crew Chief Eric: Here, the guy wrapped it.

It’s still ugly, but it looks better than the stainless.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s better than it was, but it’s still polishing a turd.

Crew Chief Eric: Did you notice that Shaq’s windshield is also tinted?

Crew Chief Brad: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: Illegal. Issue that man a citation. He ain’t driving that

Executive Producer Tania: thing. Isn’t it really [01:27:00] small inside? How the hell is he fitting?

Crew Chief Brad: That’s what I was wondering.

Like, they’re not very big inside, but it’s got enough headroom for the driver.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe it’s custom on the inside. Since it’s only like seven foot something. There’s

Crew Chief Eric: no backseat. He just sits in the back. So it did bring up a question in my mind. You remember how Shaq was doing that Shaq’s garage cartoon, sort of like the Cars movie.

So is there going to be a Cybertruck in it now? Is that show even still on? Did it even make it to market? I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: We got to look that up. We got to find out.

Executive Producer Tania: That came up during the beginning of COVID, I think.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, look at this. We have more rich people times.

Executive Producer Tania: Make sure you put down this winter. If you’re one to ask Santa for presents, maybe you want to ask for this if you’re expecting a little bundle of joy in the future.

How would you like a Lamborghini? for your baby.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. Are we talking like Bugatti Baby 2? Because that’s been done before.

Executive Producer Tania: No, we’re talking about a limited edition baby stroller.

Crew Chief Eric: No!

Yes. A

Executive Producer Tania: Lamborghini baby stroller could be yours.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it named after a bull like all the [01:28:00] other Lamborghinis are?

Executive Producer Tania: There’s only going to be 500 made. The price isn’t revealed yet on it. But the basis of this stroller costs 1, 000. So expect it to cost more than 1, 000. Is that all?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s actually not terribly outlandish for a baby stroller.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you know how loud Lamborghinis are? This would frighten the child. It would go down there.

Rawr, You know, you know that V10 sound that they make?

Crew Chief Brad: That trooper that pulled you over would give this person a ticket? 100%.

Crew Chief Eric: I do like the orange stitching though, that is super nice.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna do that to my baby stroller that I probably won’t be using once Adam starts walking. Boom, done.

Executive Producer Tania: Bring out some Lambo stickers, put them on.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. So much cheaper. Feel like I have a Lamborghini.

Well, we’ve reached that part of the episode where it’s time to go down south and talk about alligators and beer.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh man, we’re in a flirta man.[01:29:00]

Our first Florida man, how unfortunate for the owners. Right. But this thief decided to steal a tractor trailer full of Porsche’s race car. Yes! Worth about 1. 5 million dollars. And he got away with it apparently. This is

Crew Chief Brad: very gone in 60 seconds.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s a Florida man motorsports enthusiast. He knew what he was doing.

What he was going to do with them after he stole them is beyond me. Because race cars are pretty obvious. Chop them up. Parts. There’s so little things on a race car that you could use back on a street car. It’s not worth it. Bold move, Cotton.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe you just thought they were regular Porsches, and then like, once you’ve stolen it, and then you’re like, crap, now what?

Shit.

Crew Chief Eric: But that plays into the fact that you see one 911, you’ve seen them all. They all kind of do look the same.

Executive Producer Tania: Unit for a penny, unit for a pound, is that the same?

Crew Chief Eric: Pass the point and overturn. All right, Florida, what else you got?

Executive Producer Tania: [01:30:00] There’s another Florida man. This one is interesting. I mean, what would you do if you came outside to your Corvette?

There was a person inside of it. You didn’t know that person.

Crew Chief Brad: I’d hit the panic button and call 9 1 1 and then I’d get the biggest tool or axe or something I could find in my garage and I would stand there and wait with the gentleman until the police showed up.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, that’s basically what this person did aside from the menacing weapon, but I don’t know how the guy got in the Corvette, but apparently he couldn’t get it.

Out of the Corvette because he got locked inside and couldn’t figure out how to open the door. But apparently maybe you can’t open the door of these Corvettes without the key present?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s electric.

Executive Producer Tania: The new ones? Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: The C7 is the same thing. I’ve seen it in the C8. It has this little kind of triangular button that you hit on the handle.

But it’s electric and it doesn’t work if you’re not near the cars. But how he got in to your point, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Crew Chief Brad: Does it have frameless window?

Crew Chief Eric: They do, but you know, it didn’t peel back like it did on the cyber truck.

Crew Chief Brad: And it didn’t alert the owner either.

Executive Producer Tania: So [01:31:00] however he got in, that’s a Houdini right there.

Cause a car alarm should have been going off. I need to look

Crew Chief Eric: up

Executive Producer Tania: the definition

Crew Chief Eric: of this word.

Executive Producer Tania: I

Crew Chief Brad: love how he is quote unquote, a suspect. He’s not a suspect, he’s a criminal.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? It says he was charged with burglary of an unoccupied conveyance, according to local media. And I’m like, wait a minute.

Executive Producer Tania: Something that conveys.

So a vehicle would convey a person.

Crew Chief Eric: It has two definitions. The non lawyer definition is the action or process of transporting someone or something from one place to another. Full stop. The legal definition of conveyance is the legal process of transferring property from one owner to another, neither of which apply here.

Executive Producer Tania: Sometimes authors try to use big words.

Crew Chief Eric: Why use a 50 word when you can use two 1 words? I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, it’s Florida. Maybe they use the word conveyance

Crew Chief Eric: instead of vehicle. This does not convey properly to me. Alright, what else?

Executive Producer Tania: This one is a little different, less on the funny side or whatever. And we go up north to [01:32:00] Michigan for this, and this is Michigan Police.

So apparently there was somebody in a, I don’t know, older end of middle aged, was having a medical emergency. Which people didn’t realize at the time, but they were in a medical emergency while they were driving whatever GMC Sierra truck they were in. And they were weaving on the road and like hitting the curb and kind of going up and coming down.

Crew Chief Eric: I believe the Dodgeball movie referred to it as duck, dive, dit, duh.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, all those things. Because he was no longer in control of his faculties and what was going on. So these two officers in Ford Explorer or whatever got alerted or however and came onto the scene. From the video, it didn’t look like the guy was going very fast.

I think he was in a coasting mode, basically, because I don’t think he was feet on the pedals or anything like that, so. I would have thought you would have pulled in front of the guy, let the bumpers hit, slow him down, safely. So no, instead, they decide to go fast and furious, with the cop pulling up next to the truck, the driver has no control of, get as close as he can while the [01:33:00] other officer climbs out of the window, into the car.

The other vehicle while they’re still moving and you see in the video when she gets in she just hits the ignition button and like shuts the vehicle off. So I’m like you weren’t going very fast then.

Crew Chief Brad: He was going five miles an hour.

Executive Producer Tania: If you were able to do that, if you were only going five miles an hour, why would you risk Yourself by crawling through one window to the other

Crew Chief Brad: because falling in between 2 vehicles and getting run over at 5 miles an hour is the same as falling in between 2 vehicles and getting run over at 50 miles.

You’re still getting run over.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s going to not be pleasant. And oh, my God, such praise for the, you know, whatever thinking and

Crew Chief Eric: heroics.

Executive Producer Tania: Only because this worked out, because if she’d fallen in between the cars, or suddenly, like, he regained something and turned the steering wheel, and suddenly the gap between the cars opened, or the gap’s opening, she’s hanging through, and the other guy’s like, Oh no, I need to get closer, and then, like, what, smashes her in between the cars?

Like, this could have ended wrong in so many ways. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: for sure.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like, was it worth it?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, [01:34:00] they’re on TV. We’re talking about it. That’s true. We are doing all of those things.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m trying to talk about it as a public service announcement of stupidity.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s not like it was a semi. It was a Silverado.

All of this could have been avoided. Good for them. I mean, I guess it comes full circle and we can say there’s happy stories too.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, it is a happy story. They were able to stop the car. Nobody else got hurt. They were able to get the guy medical attention for whatever was his ailment. So it is a happy story.

I

Crew Chief Eric: guarantee you they issued him a citation afterwards.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no, I don’t think he’d get a citation. You wouldn’t get a citation. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: reckless driving.

Executive Producer Tania: If you had a stroke, whose fault is that? That doesn’t matter. I am the law.

Crew Chief Brad: You live in America. It’s somebody’s fault.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. And that driver, even if he stroked out, I guarantee you they gave him a citation.

Crew Chief Brad: He may not get any criminal penalties, but he’ll definitely get civil. He’s driving on the curb. How many signs did he hit? Damages, property, all that stuff.

Executive Producer Tania: Is that why they didn’t want to do the stop and front technique?

Crew Chief Brad: [01:35:00] Because of insurance? Yeah, yeah, there’s that too. My guess. It was just a snap decision and they didn’t think about it at the

Executive Producer Tania: time.

Probably at this snap decision at this 5 mile an hour. You could have stopped. Okay, there you go. If it was okay, we’re going to go with it was 5 miles an hour because we talked about speeds of scooters and walking and running earlier. Yes, 5 miles an hour. You could have stopped your cruiser, got out, and jogged up to the dude and opened

Crew Chief Eric: the door.

Let’s just say in the 90s this would have been a lot easier because it would have got carjacked at that speed.

Crew Chief Brad: I swear I thought I saw where it said five miles

Crew Chief Eric: an hour. Oh man, never ceases. All right, well folks, it’s time we go behind the hit wall and talk about motorsports news. Formula One’s back. So much drama in the latest.

And the greatest, Adrian Newey, I hear rumors he’s going to Aston Martin. Not a rumor.

Executive Producer Tania: They paid him Fort Knox

Crew Chief Eric: money. It begged the question. [01:36:00] We’re going to see

Executive Producer Tania: three

Crew Chief Eric: time world champion Fernando Alonso. Thank you very much. Oldest Formula One driver to win a championship, right, at this point. Does he stand a chance or are they going to give him the pink slip?

Executive Producer Tania: His contracts are renewed, not that they can’t still get him out. I don’t remember for how many years his contracts are renewed, but I would say at least through 2025 he’s there. He’s there. if they’re able to make car changes for next season and if those car changes are miraculously at the level of what red bull used to be it’s conceivable that fernando could be a third time world champion i suppose however the real question would be are there team orders that make lance stroll

Crew Chief Brad: one time

Executive Producer Tania: world

Crew Chief Eric: champion daddy pays daddy gets what he wants

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but you still have to have some talent.

Who?

Crew Chief Eric: Are you kidding me? This goes back to Formula One, even to the 70s. The best cars and the best money, and it didn’t really matter the driver. If they wanted you to win, they would make it happen.

Executive Producer Tania: Let’s say they equal the previous Red Bulls. [01:37:00] Verstappen and Perez were always 1 2, 1 2, 1 2, 1 2, 1 2. It’s conceivable that they could be 1 2 also, and then at that point,

Crew Chief Eric: uh oh.

And Alonso’s paid to play blocker for Lance. He’s the best. That’s a retirement gig,

Executive Producer Tania: which would just be bad. I don’t know. That’d be the most pathetic world champion win ever because it’s like, he didn’t deserve it.

Crew Chief Eric: Take it back to 1979, Jody Schecter and Gilles Villeneuve. Villeneuve was under team orders from Ferrari to basically play blocker.

He was faster than Schecter, but they wanted Schecter to have the championship. And so they forced him to take a backseat for years. That sucks. And that’s why I hate the team orders thing. I get it in the days of like, preserve the car and this and that, but I mean, again, there was cases with Barrichello and Schumacher.

It was the same thing where Barrichello could have run the race, but he had to get out of the way to let Schumacher through, right? That’s the part of Formula One I don’t like. And that’s where, Brad, you’ve said it before, it’s not a driver’s championship, it’s a manufacturer’s championship.

Executive Producer Tania: And currently, I believe, McLaren is now winning that.[01:38:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Good on Zach Brown, who, by the way, was recently honored at the IMRRC Artsinger Award for Motorsports Achievement this past month. There’s a full article on that on the IMRRC’s website with pictures and all that kind of stuff. He celebrated that with Bobby Rahal, who was the MC of the event and a lot of other really cool people, and fortunately was supposed to be there.

But due to life circumstances, To get to go, but you know, there’s always next year. There’s always another honoree good for McLaren. They’re having their moment in the sun. So, and that bright orange is very, very reflective on the downslide of that. Brad, are you, are you getting a little blue? Are you, your heartthrob might be on the chopping block again?

Crew Chief Brad: Not surprised. He hasn’t been the same since he left Red Bull.

Executive Producer Tania: You’ve made bad decisions and this is where he is and he’s done.

Crew Chief Brad: He left McLaren and now they’re front runners.

Crew Chief Eric: So is that the pattern? Every time Daniela Ricardo leaves a team, then they get better. Is that what we’re seeing?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but it didn’t happen to Renault slash Alpine.

Crew Chief Eric: So is he going to be signs his teammate over Haas or wherever the hell he ended up? Oh, he’s [01:39:00] going away. There’s too many junior guys.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s going to be racing with Brendan Hartley out in WEC.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, and that might be a step in the right direction. Or

Crew Chief Brad: no, maybe he’ll just race in an Australian supercar.

He’ll drive the new Toyota. Oh, the

Crew Chief Eric: super. Yeah, that’d be really good for him. I mean, again, there have been other guys that have left formula one and have had amazing careers and other disciplines of racing, and that’s where I’ve made the argument before, what would Verstappen be like, or what would Hamilton be like if they left their ivory towers of formula one and tried to go race somewhere else?

And we saw what happened with Kimi and all those. They just. They suck. Meanwhile, speaking of Haas, there’s some drama.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I don’t even know because that’s old drama because they’ve already raced several races post this declaration of after the Italian GP. So it’s like, I don’t know what got seized because the cars are still on the track.

Crew Chief Brad: Gene, Gene Haas called him and said the checks in the mail.

Executive Producer Tania: Didn’t he really?

Crew Chief Brad: He literally like in an interview said, he said the checks in the mail, like the funds were sent. Get off my back. Leave my cars alone. Nice. [01:40:00] He probably sent it via MoneyGram.

Crew Chief Eric: Might as well use the sponsorship, get that discount.

This is all a result of HeMightSpin or Mazispin’s dad, right? This is all the Eurocoli and all their investment.

Executive Producer Tania: Paying for everything.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: Title sponsors, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then with the invasion of Ukraine, Russia got kicked out

of everything. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: And so did they. And so they wanted their money back for all the endorsement and sponsorship and everything they paid into the cars.

It was like 12 million or something that Jean wouldn’t need to pay. But he didn’t.

Crew Chief Eric: Was it the full original amount or is it like the prorated what was left on the contract amount?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Cause I think it would be unfair to be like, you know, the Karen scenario where you’re at the restaurant and you’ve eaten seven eighths of the meal and then you complained that it wasn’t any good and you found a hair in it.

Executive Producer Tania: Since Maz’s spin crashed several of the cars, I believe. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Like I’m not paying you back. So other drama going on, Tanya, you brought this up on our discord. [01:41:00] Sounds like the FIA is having a little moment of silence. censorship,

Executive Producer Tania: which is dumb because so there’s two layers to it. So there is rules within the FIA rulebook, blah, blah, blah, around language.

It’s particularly in regards to when they’re doing the press stuff and they’re actually in front of a whole audience. People should be watching their language. I don’t disagree with that. Like, It’s unprofessional. You don’t need dropping f bombs when somebody’s asking you how your race went.

Crew Chief Eric: If you’re getting a nut punch from one of the other drivers, you might curse a little bit.

Okay,

Executive Producer Tania: that’s extenuating circumstances, but what actually has just literally happened yesterday is Verstappen actually, I think, has gotten penalized, reprimanded at the very least, but I think some sort of penalization because he cursed on a live Singapore Press conference because the next race is in Singapore.

First of all, I wouldn’t do anything remotely bad in the country of Singapore. I don’t know if he’s getting fined or something for it. And it’s like, dude, why? Why do you need to do that? Right? And that is clearly in your rule book. No excuse, right? Like go cry yourself a river if you’re going to complain about it now.

[01:42:00] But what they’re trying to sounds like almost extend is the driver in the car when their adrenaline is to the max and their life is on the line and they’re going 11 tens. If they drop an F bomb, it’s like, you shouldn’t be dropping F bombs. Get the hell out of here!

Crew Chief Eric: On a closed radio system.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, no.

Because the problem is, with all like, F1 TV and all this stuff, you can go into individual people’s feeds and actually be hearing the radio. And a lot of times they broadcast what some of the commentary on the radios is. So, one, don’t broadcast it. Two, stop making it, you know, Publicly available, which is basically what all the drivers are coming and saying is like, don’t let people listen to us then.

This is crap. How can we control what we’re saying in the heat of a moment thing?

Crew Chief Eric: Every time they get hit by Ocon, I would be cursing every expletive that existed.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, if my teammate took me out for no reason on like lap two, I’d be like, what was this atmat for doing?

Crew Chief Eric: Or a total Elon move. Go

Executive Producer Tania: F yourself.

Yes. Is it unsportsmanlike? Blah, blah, [01:43:00] blah. Like, if someone is doing it in a way that’s super malicious or very directed and pointed at someone, fine. There is some level of reprimanding that needs to take place. But if you’re on your team rating and you’re like, Fuck! Sorry, guys. Like, messed that up. Like Who cares?

Move on with life. Don’t broadcast it then if we’re worried that somebody’s sensitive and hearing it. I think that’s silly. Hopefully it doesn’t get put into effect. That’s just crap.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s also just the sport itself. It has the luxury of having the access to that. You don’t have that with like football.

Football or baseball or any of those kinds of things. It’s part of the realism of racing. Like you said, these guys are under stress. They’re under a lot of load and shit happens. Let’s just call a spade a spade.

Executive Producer Tania: And that was multiple drivers comments too. It’s like, we’re broadcasted. That’s why you hear it.

They’re like, mic up anyone on the soccer pitch or in a basketball game. I guarantee

Crew Chief Eric: you they’re cursing at each other.

Executive Producer Tania: You just can’t hear it.

Crew Chief Brad: And to that point, they actually do Mike some [01:44:00] individual players. And some of those other sports, they just don’t broadcast. They edit and filter out what the general public hears.

But there are instances like Tanya just mentioned, where they actually do mic some of the players at these events.

Executive Producer Tania: They could do the same thing here too, because if F1 TV feed or whatever, they could put a delay on it and then they could filter out the curse word.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, exactly. What’s a, what’s a two or three second delay going to do?

You for each team. You got somebody sitting there to edit it.

Crew Chief Eric: It used to be seven seconds. That gave them enough time to filter that kind of stuff out. And now with the AI technology and everything else we have,

Crew Chief Brad: it should be an automatic bleep. Just bleep it. You don’t even have to filter it out. Just bleep it.

Crew Chief Eric: Bleep. Done. Well, you know what? Can’t be bleeped out. And I couldn’t believe this corporate espionage underfoot in the world of IndyCar.

Executive Producer Tania: Wow. What year are we in?

Crew Chief Eric: I know, right? This is some cloak and dagger. Spy versus spy stuff the way the story reads and I love the headline It sounds like super bad fbi agents [01:45:00] carry out operation at ray hall headquarters You’re like, what is this about?

Like, what did they do? Who died? Okay, whatever apparently they hired somebody from andretti global came over to ray hall’s team and I don’t know if this person took intellectual property from Andretti and then here’s my USB stick, plug it into the computer. Or if it’s like tried to do a brain dump of everything he knew and giving them an advantage.

You sign non competes. You’re supposed to be good about that stuff and NDAs and all those kinds of things. But I don’t know. I’m curious to see how this plays out, but there’s really not any more information than exactly what’s in this article from racer. com. It’s just like. The FBI went in and took all their computers and I guess they’ll never get ’em back.

Who knows? The shadow knows.

Crew Chief Brad: I also wanted to just say, I learned something today. Now I knew that you could watch WEC races on HBO Max or just, it’s just Max now, which came in handy today because [01:46:00] Adam was home sick, so I needed to. Watch him needed something to do. So I put on something palatable that a less than one year old would be able to watch what I did not know that I’m pleasantly surprised by is you can also get the full MotoGP schedule as well.

So I was sitting there watching Mark Marquez’s return to glory, catching some of that old stuff. It was quite nice. So if anybody’s a motorcycle fan and has been looking to try and watch the MotoGP races, you can catch them on the max app. They’re also on TNT sports. Which are sometimes broadcast on true TV.

And then all the WEC races are out there. They were at CODA, I think September

Crew Chief Eric: 1st,

Crew Chief Brad: which was fun to watch. I learned something new today.

Crew Chief Eric: And don’t forget the IMSA season is wrapping up here in the early part of October. Oh

Crew Chief Brad: yeah. They’re going to Petit Le Mans. Are you going?

Crew Chief Eric: I want to go so bad. But I can’t

Crew Chief Brad: because of your third child,

Crew Chief Eric: we’ll just say I’m grounded for a little while.

But yes, if all had gone to plan, I [01:47:00] was going to meet up with some friends. There’s an ACO event going on down there. A bunch of other stuff that weekend would love to be a Petit Lamar. I absolutely adore road Atlanta. I think that’s a. Fantastic event, but you know, sometimes it’s not in the cards. There’s always next year, which I am still hopeful to do a Lamont’s classic.

So looking forward to that, but we’ll see. We’ll see if I can swing France again, that would be absolutely amazing. But there’s other cool stuff. Goodwood, a million other things I’d love to do.

Crew Chief Brad: Goodwood is on my bucket list. Goodwood and the revival.

Crew Chief Eric: I want to do the Isle of Man. I’m not a big bike guy when it comes to following motorcycle, like motor GP and all that stuff.

Like my dad was, but I’m like, Isle of Man, be pretty cool.

Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: well, that wraps up our motor sports news. Oh wait, no, it doesn’t. We’ve got one more piece here and that’s from the virtual world. So if you guys go back into this month’s catalog, you’ll see that we did an episode with Steffi Dow from Innit Esports.

She’s a world champion motocross rider. She’s got a sim for STEM program and something else called screen to speed. And they have a lot of these tournaments going on [01:48:00] throughout the season and they have one coming up right now. They were looking for people to qualify, to represent the United States.

eSports games. We posted about this on our discord and a couple other places where you can get access to up to date information from GTM and NPN headquarters. But what’s really cool is you can continue to follow the action of the global eSports games. You can join their discord. You can follow them on Twitch and the real life finale.

Is either going to be in South America or in Abu Dhabi, look for that in December, but you can learn more about what’s going on in the global esports games at initesports. gg. Go from there, there’ll be a link to the global esports games qualifier and the link and information is also in our show notes.

So good luck to everybody from Init Esports is going to be competing on this global stage in the virtual racing world. As a reminder, our Motorsports News is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center. A couple quick teasers for the [01:49:00] remainder of the season. As I mentioned before, there’s a write up, there’s video, and other coverage of the Argottsinger Awards Night honoring Zach Brown, the CEO of McLaren, at RacingArchives.

org. We also posted a And some of it on our clubhouse website, club. gtmotorsports. org. And there’s other racing outlets that you probably subscribe to that are covering the same press releases from the event. So check that out. I will say that racingarchives. org is the only place to get access to the YouTube video compilation that was made for the events of that’s there.

And don’t forget at the tail end of October, starting on the 31st Halloween. The Real Wheel Film Festival kicks off the 8th Annual Michael R. Argettsinger Symposium on Motorsports History. If you can’t come to the Glen for any of that, we will be live streaming it on our Twitch, twitch. tv forward slash GrandTouringMotorsports.

So be sure to follow us for more details on that. And if you can’t even catch the live stream, all that stuff will be available after the fact, [01:50:00] chopped up and turned into podcast episodes and things like that throughout the rest of the season. And you might recall that the IMRRC loves to do a Corvette sweepstakes every year.

This year is no exception and the Corvette sweepstakes is back. It is running through spring of next year. You can enter now for your chance to win a 2024 Corvette Z06 with the Z07 package. Details on racingarchives. org. And don’t forget that if you don’t want the Corvette, that’s perfectly fine. There’s always a cash option and all the proceeds go to benefit the continued operation of the center, which is a 501c3 not for profit organization.

And with that, Brad. Take us home.

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

Crew Chief Eric: You know, Brad, that reminds me, we have a special announcement. I want to give a quick shout out to the Unbound Wheels of Hope Car Show.

They would like to welcome anyone to the Landmark [01:51:00] Church 12th. This event is not only to showcase incredible cars, but also a way to contribute to a worthy cause. They are encouraging enthusiasts to sign up their vehicles and contribute to the show and help make a memorable experience. You can learn more by registering at unboundwheelsofhope.

com. And if you have any questions or are interested in sponsorship opportunities, feel free to contact them directly at info at unboundwheelsofhope. com and you’ll find the event listing at gtmotorsports. org. Are you still looking to fill your calendar with some track days? How about some hpdjunkie. com trackside information?

This month we actually put out a three part time trials and HPDE classroom session that was taken from our time with our friends at EMRA. It’s all about learning how to get on track, what you need to know. Our website follow along article includes the slides, videos, and we presented it as a single extended podcast episode everywhere [01:52:00] you download podcasts, including this episode you’re listening to right now.

If you’re looking for the article, it is an issue 29 of our magazine. So next month kicks off issue 31 because we had our special car week one in there, which was issue 30. So look to that for all those details. Again, you can check out all the local motorsports events on the East Coast, or at least in the DMV area, ranging from autocross track days, karting, et cetera, on club.

gtmotorsports. org. And we also promote national events as part of the magazine and the calendar there. That’s on gtmotorsports. org. And if you’re looking to advertise events like the ones we’re talking about here or like the Unbound Wheels of Hope, drop us a line, send us an email, get it read on air, get it added to our database, and then we actually can distribute that out to other folks as well.

So again, if you’re looking for somewhere to explore the limits of your car in a safe and controlled manner, look no further than HPDEJunkie. com for an up to date list of high performance driver’s education events from all across North America. You can filter by location and find the [01:53:00] perfect HPD event for you.

Crew Chief Brad: We also want to remind people, if you’re looking for that extra special something to make your garage, office, den, or man cave just a little bit extra, be sure to check out GarageStyleMagazine. com for a list of upcoming auctions and events, along with a curated list of items going up for sale all over the country, so that you can make your space unique or round out a collection.

Because after all, What doesn’t belong in your garage?

Executive Producer Tania: We just crested 387 episodes of Brake Fix while you’ve been listening to this episode. We’ve expanded our catalog as part of the Motoring Podcast Network, where you can enjoy programs like What Should I Buy?, The Ferrari Marketplace, The Motoring Historian, Evening with a Legend, The History of Motorsports, brake fix, and of course, the drive through.

If you’re not listening to this via your favorite podcast app, 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 more [01:54:00] details on all these programs and the services we provide.

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 BrakeFix VIP, jump over to www. patreon. com slash gtmotorsports 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 episodes.

Crew Chief Eric: And Brad, you know what else you’ll start getting for free? We’re trying something new because no one has time for 10, 000 more emails a week. So we’re going to be putting our newsletter on Patreon. There’s no sense in putting it on our website, which is already an online magazine.

But if you need that quick hit of GTM goodness, we’d Check out our Patreon for those updates. Click the join for free blue button in the middle of the page. When you visit patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports, it’s really just that simple.

Executive Producer Tania: And remember for everything [01:55:00] we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available at gtmotorsports.

org.

Crew Chief Brad: And a thank you to our co host and executive producer, Tanya, and 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: The next one, big 5 0!

Executive Producer Tania: Not that 5 0, we already did 5 0.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, and on that bombshell Book him, Dan o! Oh, look at this thing.

Does it actually work? No, we cannot hear you at all. Did you turn it off and turn it back on again? It plugged in.

Crew Chief Brad: Is it working now? Yeah, it’s working. You were recording, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I never hit stop.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. I didn’t I didn’t see the, uh, I don’t see the red dot.

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s up in the top corner.

Crew Chief Brad: Okay. Ever since I got this thing, it’s just not been a pleasant experience.

And so I don’t know. But everybody

Crew Chief Eric: says how good the yetis are. They’re supposed to be made when they’re

Crew Chief Brad: working. They’re great. Whoever I bought it from, you know, I guess Amazon seller [01:56:00] 23876524 just you. Didn’t sell me all the, the whole thing packaged properly, I guess. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, you could get another cable.

I mean, especially USB C or whatever. It’s supposed to be. So

Crew Chief Brad: micro USB is hard to find these days. Everything’s USB C. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Anchor makes those things like they’re going. So I need, I need

Crew Chief Brad: to buy some. So, yeah. But how do I sound? You sound good. You sound not scratchy

Crew Chief Eric: like before.

Crew Chief Brad: Not scratchy. Okay. Good, good, good, good.

What about volume wise?

Crew Chief Eric: No,

Crew Chief Brad: you’re good.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re

Crew Chief Brad: good. Perfect. Let’s see. Show notes,

Crew Chief Eric: by the way, watch out with your illegal mufflers.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Be careful. My car’s still on Jackson. So I can’t get a ticket.

Crew Chief Eric: I love it. Well, that’s that. That’s a wrap, right?

Yep.[01:57:00]

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

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

So consider signing up for Patreon [01:58:00] 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
• 00:37 Monthly Recap and Automotive News
• 01:35 Personal Stories and Traffic Encounters
• 26:59 Scooter Adventures and City Life
• 40:36 Electric Car Adventures
• 41:07 Chrysler’s Struggles and Industry Insights
• 42:14 Stellantis and Market Challenges
• 43:48 SUVs and Market Preferences
• 45:01 Maserati’s Market Position
• 45:54 American Automakers’ History
• 46:09 Chrysler’s Persistent Issues
• 46:48 Limited Vehicle Choices
• 48:06 Ranting About City Traffic
• 48:58 Volkswagen’s EV Struggles
• 51:01 BMW’s Design Changes
• 53:03 GM and Tesla Charging Networks
• 55:31 Japanese and Asian Car News
• 58:25 Volvo’s EV Strategy Shift
• 01:00:00 Polestar’s Electric Boats
• 01:00:48 BMW E39 M5 and Alternatives
• 01:02:56 Tesla’s Self-Driving Controversy
• 01:05:07 Cybertruck’s Issues
• 01:13:20 Unfortunate Truck Accident
• 01:15:03 Top Gear Grand Tour Finale
• 01:17:20 Unexpected Car Ejection
• 01:17:26 Cockpit Safety Concerns
• 01:17:49 The Pristine Beetle Incident
• 01:18:04 Building Up the Drama
• 01:18:21 Ferris Bueller Style Ending
• 01:18:34 Top Gear Dog Homage
• 01:18:39 Original Cars Reunion
• 01:19:09 Driving Through the Minefield
• 01:19:23 Top Gear’s Full Circle
• 01:19:49 Top Gear Specials History
• 01:21:18 Triumph Stag Discussion
• 01:21:56 Rover SD1 and Sterling
• 01:23:16 Future Adventures of Clarkson, Hammond, and May
• 01:25:47 Shaq’s Carbon Fiber Cybertruck
• 01:27:48 Lamborghini Baby Stroller
• 01:29:11 Florida Man Steals Porsche Race Cars
• 01:30:06 Corvette Intruder
• 01:31:58 Michigan Police Rescue
• 01:35:46 Formula One Drama
• 01:44:41 IndyCar Espionage
• 01:45:49 MotoGP and WEC on Max
• 01:46:42 IMSA Season Wrap-Up
• 01:47:38 Motorsports News Conclusion
• 01:50:41 GTM Announcements and Events
• 01:53:25 Podcast and Patreon Information