B/F: The Drive Thru #50

• First new CNC Motorsport Sierra RS500 delivered

Understanding Porsche's New Six Stroke Engine Patent

• Max Verstappen Might Cut His F1 Career Short Because The FIA Won't Let Him Cuss

Toyota FINALLY RETURN to F1

• This Simple New Assisted Driving Feature Could End Left-Lane Hogging

These Hyundai Sante Fe wheels are absolutely inspired

• The STEER Act is here. Here's what it means for Maryland, Virginia drivers
• Fisker HQ left abandoned

• Lia Block's Subaru Rally Debut Ends Early After Getting Wedged Between Two Trees
• Project Motoring - Garage Sale

INDYCAR unveils track layout for 2026 Arlington, Texas street course race

• Keanu Reeves spins out at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in pro auto racing debut
• Limited-Edition prints – signed by Fangio
• Hot Wheels track with Ferrari’s by Slot Mods Raceways

Painting Coconuts - Movie!

Behind the Scenes Facility Tour - Slot Mods Raceways

• Stellantis is searching for a successor to current CEO Carlos Tavares

• Police department unveils first Tesla Cybertruck cruiser in US
• Apparently Geico car insurance in no longer insuring Cybertrucks because this type of vehicle doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines
• Geico insists it ‘has coverage’ for the Cybertruck after owners complain of dropped policies
• Tesla’s Elon Musk unveils the Cybercab robotaxi — and also the Robovan
• Tesla and Elon Musk sued over use of AI image at Cybercab event

WhistlinDiesel Cybertruck Durability Test #1

James May finally drives the Tesla Cybertruck

• Renault 17 revival off the cards as brand moves away from retro
• New Peugeot 208 Racing is perfect throwback
• Alpine A390 Beta previews electric crossover available in 2025

Anyone watched “Emily in Paris?” Debi Mazar scene with new Renault R5 EV

• Sim Racing Giant Fanatec Was in Shambles. Here’s How Corsair Plans to Fix It

Trying Out Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown

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 Eric: It’s time to begin, you weird Halloween music.

Executive Producer Tania: This is Halloween. This is Halloween.

Crew Chief Brad: Halloween. Halloween. This is Halloween. What’s this? What’s

Executive Producer Tania: this?

Crew Chief Brad: There’s white stuff in the air. What’s this? Kidnapping Sandy Claus. Put him in a bag. Laughing everywhere.

Welcome to drive thru episode number 50. [00:01:00] This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news. Pull up to window number one for some automotive news. Hello?

Executive Producer Tania: Can you hear us?

Crew Chief Brad: I can hear you. I can’t see you. I’m assuming you guys are holding off until the big costume reveal.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we thought we would do the whole episode in darkness, right? And then we could sing,

Crew Chief Brad: Hello darkness, my old friend.

Crew Chief Eric: But I don’t think our fans would enjoy the dark screen.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know. I’ve got a face for dark screens.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, let’s

Crew Chief Brad: see it. This is awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, my man!

Crew Chief Brad: NEEE! By the way, I don’t know where you got narwhal.

Isn’t

Crew Chief Eric: it a narwhal? It’s like a unicorn. I don’t know what that is. No, it’s

Crew Chief Brad: just a unicorn. It’s just a unicorn.

Crew Chief Eric: For some reason, I had it in my head that you were a narwhal.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe you wished I was a narwhal.

Crew Chief Eric: Woah, look at Tanya! You ready for this? This is gonna be like[00:02:00]

Eric, you’re just you. It’s like burning my I have to wear the sunglasses because I can’t stand to look at this shirt. It’s so freaking bright.

Crew Chief Brad: I wear my sunglasses at night so I can, so I can

Executive Producer Tania: watch you weave and breathe your storylines.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my god,

Executive Producer Tania: ew.

Crew Chief Brad: I thought it was keep track of visions in my head.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, that’s like

Crew Chief Brad: another

Executive Producer Tania: verse.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: This is the musical episode. You are Eric circuit 2022.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m bringing back the days of SRO, man. I am a yellow flag.

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya is a snowboarder who’s trapped in Bloodborne. And I have a horn.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re a narwhal. Meanwhile, back at the ranch. Last time we talked [00:03:00] about the 5. 0, but this is the big 5. 0 for us! 50!

50 drive thru episodes. You know there are podcasts out there that don’t have 50 episodes? And we have 50 of just the drive thru. That is astounding. It’s inception. What layer are we on? Because we are a podcast inside of the podcast? Inside of the podcast, inside of the network. Goodnight.

Crew Chief Brad: What’s more impressive that we have 50 episodes of just the drive-through, or that our listenership has not changed.

Crew Chief Eric: It hasn’t gone down. It’s gone up. So that’s a good thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Adding one or two kids to the mix doesn’t count for going up. They keep listening to that d

Crew Chief Eric: and d episode of rpe. You know, I don’t know what to say. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of on repeat, we have done some Halloween episodes in the past, trying to be all spooky and drive through haunted houses in Florida and stuff like that.

You know, we gave it some thought and said, why don’t we talk about topics that I don’t know if it’s because of chat GPT or because of our computers or big brothers always listening, but topics and [00:04:00] stories that have come back to haunt us in the month of October, right off the top from last month, we were literally talking about Chrysler.

Where they were in the world no sooner did the episode publish and they’re already saying off with his head So the CEO his contract is up Carlos. He’s got open to work on his LinkedIn right now You know, it’s all good. I get it. But who wants this job? Who wants to be at the head of Stellantis right now?

Not that guy. As I dug into this a little bit more, yeah, he’s 66, he can make all the excuses about, I’m leaving for family reasons and this and that and the other.

Executive Producer Tania: Just go do something with your life.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right. I noticed there’s been a little bit of restructuring at Stellantis over the last couple of years.

So if you kind of go back to when all this got started, and we did an episode Way back in the drive through, we talked about the Stellantis family tree and who is connected to who and second cousins and all this kind of stuff going on. And now they got this new [00:05:00] seal slide that they have on their website and I actually dug into this, make sure it wasn’t somebody just, you know, rendering it themselves.

And so they’ve actually kind of minimize the brands inside of Stellantis. What I discovered was. Ferrari was spun off. It’s now its own company. It’s got a Dutch backing and it’s kind of back in the hands of the Ferrari family and stuff like that. So they got out from underneath the talons of Fiat. So I thought that was pretty cool.

And that kind of explains why things have changed so much at Ferrari, even recently with the introduction of the F80 and some of the other cars that William’s been talking about on his show. But I had to laugh when I saw the Lancia logo. Yeah. Okay. What cars are they making? Forget that noise. But also surprising was seeing the Vauxhall logo under Stellantis.

And I’m like, when did that happen? That

Crew Chief Brad: was a GM thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. It was like GM of UK. It’s always been Vauxhall. And I’m like, wait, what? I find that kind of interesting because through Vauxhall, you’ve also got. That weird relationship with Holden. [00:06:00] So I’m wondering like, what other interesting muscle cars might Dodge end up with in the future as things progress.

And then finally, I also read an article talking about how they might, and I’m going to put big air quotes around might, Sell off Maserati, which is something we’ve been angling at for a while now. It’s like, well, what’s the point who buys Maserati’s if they sell off Maserati, who would they sell it to Ferrari got sold to a Dutch holding company.

Does Maserati go to the Chinese like a Lotus or something like that? It bothered me a bit. But interesting to see the logos that are on this slide.

Crew Chief Brad: Opal was surprising to me too, because they had ties to GM as well.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve also heard some rumors about, is the Chrysler brand still going to be around? And so some of this stuff happens quietly in the background, like Ford and GM pulling out of Australia was a big deal and everybody made us think about it, but Opal gets sold and.

It’s sort of like if a tree falls in a forest

Executive Producer Tania: in this country,

Crew Chief Eric: who here’s that tree? No one. Yeah. Nobody cares. [00:07:00] Exactly. Coming back to haunt me. Do you guys want to hear the latest in the Pacifica saga?

Crew Chief Brad: I was wondering if we were going to get back to like things that have come back to haunt us, like personally.

Cause I was expecting to hear about the 924, uh, and then the R32, you know, and things like that.

Crew Chief Eric: As we were having the last drive through, it was talking about how the Pacifica went in for service. We were unsure if it was going to be the fourth transmission, you know, all this kind of thing. And by the grace of whatever omnipotent being you believe in, it wasn’t a transmission for a change.

It was related to the hybrid. And it was like the heating system that keeps the batteries at whatever optimal temperature. Now I will say, we had a moment the other day, I turned the car on, it hadn’t been plugged in, the battery was depleted, and it threw up the big red wrench again, and it said, service charging system.

I’m like, did somebody try to charge the van when we weren’t looking? Like I’m not even parked in a place where there’s electric chargers around. It hasn’t been charged since last night. I did the it [00:08:00] crap thing. I turned it off and I turned it back on again. All the errors went away and I kept driving and no issues there, but so far, so good, all of it was covered under warranty yet again, I can’t throw too much hate at Stellantis product, ask for max care.

Crew Chief Brad: So you’ve had the van for how long?

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve had it since 2019.

Crew Chief Brad: And how much of that time has it spent in the shop?

Crew Chief Eric: If I tally it all up, I’d say six months out of five years. It’s been in the shop

Crew Chief Brad: six months,

Crew Chief Eric: more or less.

Crew Chief Brad: So it doesn’t sound like it was six months out of five years. That’s a month every year.

That’s a lot of time for your vehicle to be down. I’ve had my truck for seven years. It’s been down one day.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, but you drive. A Toyota Tundra that has been made the same way forever. She’s driving a space shuttle.

Crew Chief Brad: I understand. We’ve had our van for one year. It’s been in the shop zero days.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Toyota reliability.

There’s something to be said about it. But what I’m really interested in with the Pacifica is [00:09:00] I was thinking about it the other day when I was driving it. We are finally over 100, 000 miles. I feel like it’s a TMU car. And for those that don’t know the acronym TMU is true mileage unknown because when you’re in electric mode, it is clocking miles.

But those are body miles. So I don’t know how many miles the engine has on it. You know, when you sell a car, it’s like, well, how many miles on it? You assume the engine and the body match. So if it has 100, 000 miles, everything has 100, 000 miles. But realistically, the way this thing operates, the motor doesn’t run for a large portion of the time.

And so I was like, how many miles does the van actually have? So I’m thinking it might have 60% Of the miles. And that might be too much. I don’t think it’s 50 50, but I think it might be 60%. So let’s just say the van only has 60, 000 miles on the motor,

Crew Chief Brad: which would make that stat of six months in the shop.

Even worse.

Crew Chief Eric: I was waiting for you to go there.

Crew Chief Brad: Just saying. Speaking of Chrysler. Oh boy. Remember

Crew Chief Eric: they sold negative one vehicles last year.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but then they sold another [00:10:00] dot start. First of all, why does a dealer have a brand new dot start sitting on their lot in the year of our Lord 2024?

Crew Chief Eric: See, this is why lost and found existed.

Just when you thought they were all gone. You found another one, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: It was hand delivered to me.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s been sitting on the lot for eight years. Who wants an eight year old brand new car that isn’t a collector car?

Crew Chief Brad: I want to know what kind of loan the person got on this because they probably didn’t walk in and pay cash.

What do you think their payment is on this car? Is it like the Ford Escort? Is it like a 600 payment on a 30 year old Ford Escort?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, as much as we joke about this, and we’ve talked about this before, it brings up a really interesting conversation about if a car sits on a dealership lot for, let’s say, a year or two years, and in the case of Dodge Vipers and NSXs for like an eternity, how much does it depreciate just sitting there?

Because the dealership can’t ask Sticker For a 2016 Dodge Dart, which was, let’s say it was 25, 000 to just pick a round number. That was 25, 000 in [00:11:00] 2016. So with inflation, what is that now? Is that a 32, 000 car? It’s not worth 32, 000.

Crew Chief Brad: But at some point they hit a floor. I mean, my guess is they probably sold this car for 15.

For 15, 000. That’s my guess. Brand new eight year old car, but still zero, like very low miles. I’m sure, I’m sure nobody was test driving this thing.

Crew Chief Eric: So then that begs the question, if they were using it to, let’s say they got to run it eventually or take the battery out. I don’t know, but you can’t just let it sit there for eight years and rot in the parking lot.

Is it sold as used at that point? Because it’s got some, let’s say demo miles on it.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not used, but it’s probably sold as a demo. If it was never titled to anybody else, it wouldn’t be.

Crew Chief Eric: And what kind of warranty do you get on a brand new eight year old car? Like how does that? Well, you just told

Crew Chief Brad: everybody on any Solantis product, you get the max care warranty.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true.

Crew Chief Brad: They probably got the max care warranty thrown in. Would you want

Crew Chief Eric: a brand new Dodge Dart today?

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve never wanted a Dodge Dart brand new or otherwise. They’re not that bad. I mean, they’re better than the

Crew Chief Eric: Chrysler 200s. Neon [00:12:00] derivatives in some respects. The 200 and the, uh, Dodge Dart work. Alfa Romeo, I forget what chassis they were built on, but I rode in a couple.

They weren’t that bad. They weren’t that good either. But anyway, talking about topics that have come back to haunt us, remember we were chatting a while ago about California and how they want to always keep up with the Joneses. Well, they wanted to keep up with European regulations to limit speed.

They’ve actually passed their first bill in what I would assume is a series of bills yet to come. And I thought this ironic because the headline reads, how California plans to stop you from speeding 10 miles over the speed limit. Isn’t one mile over the limit speeding like by the law? Why do we have this like, well, 55, but it’s okay to do 65, obviously, they’re going to use GPS and electronics and all this stuff to limit you based on whatever the speed limit is just like your garment.

It beeps at you like we’ve talked about. Right? But now it’s law that it’s going to come into effect at [00:13:00] 2030 that vehicles are going to start having this type of nanny. Built into their electronic systems to limit you from speeding.

Executive Producer Tania: And it’s not limiting you. All it is is flashing a warning on your dashboard telling you you’ve exceeded 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, which would have to mean that your dashboard is connected to GPS to know what the speed limit on a road is.

Crew Chief Brad: GPS and a front facing camera is what this says here. But you know what’s funny? My very first 2001 Volkswagen, you could set a speed limit warning for other drivers and when anybody went over that speed limit, it would flash the dash doesn’t match the speed limit, but whenever the car went over a certain number, it would let the driver know.

Hey, don’t do this. So this is not new technology.

Executive Producer Tania: You can also turn it off, I think.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, obviously you can turn it off, but it’s

Crew Chief Eric: really a law to institute a nanny that the manufacturers must comply with, but the rest of us can just ignore it and go about

Executive Producer Tania: it. Well, the real question is. What does this lead to?

It’s almost like a gateway law. It’s like, you [00:14:00] crack the door open on this, and now, what does it become later? Because this isn’t, who cares? It’s like lane assist, where the car, like, shakes because it sensed you hit the paint line. It’s like, okay, whatever, I can turn that off, keep going, drive on the line all I want.

Crew Chief Brad: The first sign is it notifies you. The next sign or the next step in this evolution of notifies your insurance company. It notifies law enforcement Notifies the manufacturers to void your warranty and this that and the other and then all of a sudden nobody’s driving

Crew Chief Eric: That’s the escalation. That’s scary.

You guys took it to that extreme and I see it the other way where Okay, this system is in the car. It’s tested. It’s vetted It’s somewhat accurate and it adjusts with the road that you’re on and this and that. I’ve made the comment before, we go back to like episode 42, I think it was, is that we’re talking about the levitating eggs.

Enjoy going at the speed limit because legally all these self driving vehicles are going to have to go at the posted speed limit because then it doesn’t make sense. [00:15:00] Auto driving Tesla run at 10 mile an hour over the speed limit, they’re speeding regardless. What I think is going to happen is, to your point Tanya, if this is a gateway, Once it’s tied into the MFI system and the MFI talks to the EFI.

Why inform the insurance company? Why notify the police? That’s all extra work and it’s gonna take too long to even enforce it because they gotta dispatch and this and that and

Executive Producer Tania: no, they don’t have to dispatch it. Mail you a ticket, .

Crew Chief Eric: That’s just it. But what’s to stop them from just. Slowing the car down, especially now that we have electric brakes.

We have electric this and electric

Executive Producer Tania: different than adaptive cruise control

Crew Chief Brad: But you’re insinuating that they actually care about safety when really I don’t think they care about safety. They care about revenue

Yeah, they

Crew Chief Brad: care about the speeding ticket revenue insurance company care about their revenue because they have bottom lines They gotta adhere to they’ve got a board of directors that they’ve got to line their pockets with which is why our insurance costs are So high I don’t think they care about safety.

I think they care about money and this is a money generator.

Crew Chief Eric: So the insurance company thing is always interesting because it can be [00:16:00] very divisive when you talk about insurance companies, you know, they’re when you need it canceled after you need it, you know, all those kinds of things. I often wonder it’s in the insurance company’s best interest for you not to get into an accident, not to speed, not to do not to this.

If you think about it. Because basically they’re sitting on their dirty criminal butts, collecting money, playing in the stock market or whatever they do with it, right? It’s the reality of the situation. It behooves them to make sure that you follow the laws and you never get into an accident, the cars drive themselves.

But when you get to that point, who’s liable, right? Well, we talked about that before with self driving cars. Are you really driving? If the car is self driving, it’s implied in that statement that you are not driving. The car is driving itself. So what the hell is the point of insurance? Why am I paying for it?

So it’s an interesting game. The further we look down this tunnel, when we start talking about insurance,

Crew Chief Brad: you know, this reminds me of one of the top gear specials where Jeremy Clarkson was driving the R35 GTR in Japan. And I don’t know if this was real or [00:17:00] not. But again, it’s. television entertainment, but he was saying that he could not go over a certain speed GPS, you know, electronically controlled until he got to the racetrack.

And then the GPS knew when the car was on the racetrack and it released that limiter.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Crew Chief Brad: don’t know if any of that was true, but I mean, it was part of the skit.

Crew Chief Eric: And see, that’s where my head was going. I was thinking exactly. That’s what’s going to happen on the roads where tried this trick in the seventies and eighties.

We’ll only make the gauge go to 85. So the car isn’t faster than the 85, you know, that kind of thing. But yes, with GPS, with electronics, with the MFIs, talking to the efis, what’s to stop them from just limiting the car to 55 miles an hour or whatever the speed limit is?

Executive Producer Tania: Then why are we even bothering building B eights and V sixes and all this crap?

Why don’t we just make lighter weight, lower horsepower, more fuel efficient cars, then that only go to the speed limit? ’cause I don’t need a car that can go do 120. There’s no speed limit. That’s 120

Crew Chief Eric: except for that like one highway in Montana, right where there is no speed limit. I totally agree with your point.

The horsepower [00:18:00] wars are still out there too. You know, you’ve got the new ZO six Corvette is a thousand horsepower to do what in America, it doesn’t make sense. Now, places in Europe where they’ve even started to kind of climb back. I heard about the Autobahn like, Oh, we might be putting speed limits on the Autobahn because things are out of control.

They started doing that in Italy on the Alto Strada and other places where it’s like, you know, it’s not unlimited anymore. I guess unless you’re in the middle of the United Arab Emirates or something where they got those, you know, massive highways that you could just go ballistically fast. What’s the point?

Go to the racetrack. Like Brad’s saying.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s money. It’s an ego thing. I’m going to pound my chest. I’ve got a Camaro this faster than your Mustang kind of thing. Even though the speed limits on the roads that we drive on are exactly the same and we can’t go over them. My car still makes more.

Crew Chief Eric: As the 57, 000 other ones that were made on the same assembly line that year.

Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: It doesn’t matter. My car is my car. My car is special. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me it’s not about ego and it’s not about money.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t disagree. Everything comes down to the money. Well, this next one is right [00:19:00] up Tanya’s alley. We’re still talking about nannies here. Cutting edge technology coming from Nissan.

I love this. Nissan’s latest driving assist feature encourages drivers to quit holding up the left lane.

Executive Producer Tania: I like it. Get the hell out. Move. Over!

Crew Chief Eric: On the East Coast, the slow lane is the left lane. I mean, I pass so many people in the right lane, it’s not even funny. Just kind of trundling along. I just, again, I’ve witnessed so many things, like we talked about last episode.

Driving in and out of the city for the last couple of months. There’s only so much space in the right lane.

Executive Producer Tania: So what does this do? Is this another like, Learning! Learning! You dumbass slowpoke! Get out of the left lane! Like, is that all it does?

Crew Chief Brad: So, what I’m reading here is, if the car in front of you is moving too slow, it’ll suggest that you overtake them, and then you move over, and then the car will retake control from you, because they’re pro pilot, whatever, but if you’re in that lane for too long and don’t move [00:20:00] back over, It will suggest, Hey, maybe you should move back over to the other lane.

So it’ll suggest one move and then it’ll suggest another.

Executive Producer Tania: This is so dumb. And what about that a hole that merges on and shoots four lanes across and then parks in the left lane? Is it still going to give a warning?

Crew Chief Brad: What about the driver of a certain demographic that likes to make right turns from the left lane?

In the middle of the highway, you get to their exit. Just like the speed

Crew Chief Eric: limiter that California imposed, this can be turned off or ignored.

Executive Producer Tania: Of course it can.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s the point? Just say they have it.

Executive Producer Tania: If it helps move someone out of the left lane, then I guess it’s good. It’s useless, but I don’t know. Maybe it could change behavior.

Crew Chief Brad: So I don’t usually read the comments, but this first comment here is pretty good.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re amazing.

Crew Chief Brad: Hoping ProPilot 2. 2 will have a mechanical robot arm that pops out of the headrest and smacks the driver on the side of the head after ignoring the suggestions.

Or the next one, maybe an electric cattle [00:21:00] prod in the base of the seat.

Crew Chief Brad: No, it’s going to be like that scene from Ghostbusters where every time he gets the card wrong, it zaps him. Oh, man. Nissan for the comic release.

Executive Producer Tania: I thought this was going to be an article about an indicator warning you that your bumper is falling off because every Nissan seems to not have appropriate bumper mounting.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like Tesla needs one of those and we’ll probably talk about that later, right, Eric? Yes, we will.

Crew Chief Eric: All jokes aside, this is what Nissan is devoting its attention to? They are so screwed.

Executive Producer Tania: Why? What do they need to devote their attention to? They make one car with different names. They’ve got it down lock.

They’re good. So they have time to devote to stuff like this.

Crew Chief Brad: If only that were true, maybe they wouldn’t be in such trouble. Financially, if they just went through and did a rebranding and [00:22:00] everything was Ultima based, but instead they’ve got these other vehicles and their profits are down 70 percent year over year.

Crew Chief Eric: Has anybody yet seen a 400 Z on the road? I’ve yet to see one. I’m just saying

Crew Chief Brad: no. But I see a lot of frontiers these days. Uh, I mean, I’m sorry, Altima Sports

Crew Chief Eric: Altima Sports Altima, sports Ultima Sport Track. Yeah. There is a frightening number of Altimas on the road and old Centras,

Crew Chief Brad: but none of ’em are new.

Nobody’s buying

Crew Chief Eric: new Ultima’s

Crew Chief Brad: they’re only

Crew Chief Eric: buying used Ultima’s. Well, I did see a new one on the road the other day and I thought it was a Maxima and then it passed us and it said Ultima Platinum or something. I was like, wow, that is big. It’s gotten huge. They could have just changed the badge on the back of the Maxima too.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, but they don’t make the Maxima anymore.

Crew Chief Brad: The

Crew Chief Eric: Maxima.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, new Nissan Maxima 2025 reveal. So it’s all crap. I thought they discontinued it.

Crew Chief Brad: Somebody go to Nissan’s website and figure it out.

Executive Producer Tania: Car and Driver 2026 Nissan Maxima. [00:23:00] What we know so far. We’re not even 2025.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve reported on this. We went the hokey pokey on this.

It is, it isn’t, it isn’t. And then there was a report that they got rid of the Maxima. Whatever, who cares. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: apparently they’re already talking about 2026. So things that come back to haunt us. The Maxima. The zombie.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, it is. It is. I’m B.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s the zombie Ultima.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, since we’re naming Ultimas, I got a new one for you guys.

All of us saw this because we were all driving in together into the city. Traffic was stopped on the other side because we were going so slow and I couldn’t help but not look. I said, I’ll be damned. If that isn’t an Ultima being drenched by firefighters, because it was a blades on the other side of the highway.

Or thing. Immediately I turned to Jess and I said, so what do you call that one?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a blastema.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s better than what we came up with. Fire Baltimore.

Crew Chief Brad: Ball, ball to our ball. It’s just a Baltimore, Baltimore in Baltimore.

Crew Chief Eric: Couldn’t believe it. I was like, had to be an Ultima. [00:24:00] Of course, it’s an Ultima because what else is there on the road?

They

Executive Producer Tania: only make the Ultima. Everything else is a figment of your imagination. The holographic projection off an Ultima. It’s only one car. That’s why they can focus on whatever the hell that profiler thing was. I already forgot because it was that cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Complete trash. All right. Well, speaking of other enforcement and you know, last time we talked about our run ins with the law, I am the law.

Well, guess what? We had talked a bunch of drive throughs ago about how people were speeding in the District of Columbia and the district has no way. Of enforcing the speeding tickets, the red light cameras, parking tickets, whatever, because all of these folks are out of state because the DC is DC. But most of the people that are infringing upon the laws are from Maryland and Virginia and other places.

But that’s

Executive Producer Tania: such bull, I’m sorry, you get a ticket in another state, you get the ticket and you have [00:25:00] to pay it. So why is DC special?

Crew Chief Eric: No representation. That’s why it’s special.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay, because it’s crap. You get a ticket in another state, you’re paying that fine.

Crew Chief Brad: So that brings up an interesting point because obviously the DMV, Maryland, D.

C., Virginia, they’re all very close to each other and, you know, there’s a lot of interstate travel between the three. If I was a Maryland resident and I racked up a bunch of speeding tickets in Virginia, Would those show up in the Maryland DMV system?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there’s reciprocity.

Crew Chief Brad: So that’s the problem. DC doesn’t have an agreement with Maryland or Virginia to have reciprocity for that to happen for whatever reason,

Crew Chief Eric: because they’re not a state.

And so there’s no interstate relationship there. Think about that.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re not a state, but they still have a government. They have a mayor. They operate more like a city, I guess. Let’s not get into a discussion about DC mayors because

Executive Producer Tania: these things are surmountable. Oh, I know. I know.

Crew Chief Brad: If they’re high enough on your to do list, they are.

Crew Chief Eric: If they can make easy pass work from Maine to Florida. I mean, come on, they can make [00:26:00] this work too.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Let me put it in perspective. This is how bad It is in D. C. There was basically a group that got together and added up all of the outstanding tickets that were owed to the D. C. Public Works from all of the out of state tickets that were issued.

This number is staggering, folks. Eight hundred and eighty nine million dollars of unpaid tickets in the year 2022 alone,

Executive Producer Tania: almost a

Crew Chief Eric: billion,

Crew Chief Brad: 1 billion. You said a group got together and counted these. I’m picturing a group of like high school kids with little yellow slips, sitting at a table, counting them like they’re counting ballots.

Yep. Here’s one, here’s one, here’s one up. This one was paid up. Here’s one. Here’s one. I hope they had some sort of

Executive Producer Tania: scanning device that was just reading the numbers. And it

Crew Chief Eric: was all Excel spreadsheets. But the point is that it’s. Staggering amount of money, but then it ties back into this california thing We were just talking about because they [00:27:00] call it the steer act strengthening traffic enforcement education and responsibility Amendment act of 2024.

It’s very long So the steer act

Executive Producer Tania: the clever name

Crew Chief Eric: the punch line to all this is is This is kind of at the far end of this. So anyone convicted of criminal and reckless aggravated driving, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, an intelligent speed assistance system will be installed in their vehicles by the DMV, which will automatically limit their speed, that they can be traveled on the roads according to the steer act, yada, yada, yada.

Again, to your point, Tanya, this California thing coming from Europe originally, Is it gateway to stuff like this happening?

Executive Producer Tania: So I don’t mind in the sense of our laws are pathetic sometimes. That someone who drives under the influence of whatever it is, can just go back out and get in their car. So if you wanted to institute some sort of restrictive device, well, first of all, they shouldn’t be allowed to drive, but that’s not how it works, apparently.

I’d be for that kind of thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Weren’t they blowing [00:28:00] into those kazoos on their dashboard?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, there used to be those kind of interlocks where you’d like, you have to do your own breathalyzer.

Crew Chief Brad: You can’t drive unless you blow the appropriate level. For this, you need to be convicted of criminal reckless and aggravated reckless driving.

I don’t think this is going to work because I don’t think the people that are actually doing the reckless and aggravated reckless driving are going to be convicted for various reasons I care not to share on this podcast. But I feel like could be seen as targeting and police abuse of power and yada, yada, yada.

But anyway, I don’t think this is going to be effective.

Crew Chief Eric: No, of course not. So that number of 889 million is going to continue to climb because people are going to wipe their butts with these tickets.

Executive Producer Tania: This goes back to We have all these asshats running around with the historic tags on their daily driver.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t even get me started with that.

Executive Producer Tania: Which I was observing yesterday, within about 30 [00:29:00] seconds, two cars had expired registration because One was august of 24 and the other one was like september 24 But apparently I guess maybe that’s the new thing is let me just not pay my registration Which is supposed to contact your insurance.

We’re supposed to cancel you.

Crew Chief Eric: They don’t contact your insurance if you don’t have it

Executive Producer Tania: Look at brad’s face If you get a ticket and then you don’t pay it Yeah, we don’t have time to send the lien collector against you or whatever, right? Like the tax collector to come knock on your door and collect your thing But it could tie into your insurance or even your registration and then when you go to renew What although maybe not registration renewal because people don’t do that and maybe not even insurance renewal because people probably don’t renew that either Just keep driving on expired bullshit, but it’s like you could tie it into those systems.

It’s like oh When I go to renew, guess what? My unpaid tickets are showing up. You can’t renew your stuff or your license or whatever else until all this stuff gets paid. Like, there has to be a mechanism for it. That is [00:30:00] possible in the year 2024 with artificial intelligence and computing power and all the crap that we have.

There’s no excuse for a billion dollars in unpaid tickets. I don’t understand how that gets unpaid. It’s crap. It’s all crap. No wonder people are like, look it, I’m going to do 100 through DC because I have no penalty, no consequence. Yeah, of course. It’s just bad behavior. Duh.

Crew Chief Eric: So the moral to the story is where’s the best place to do 120 miles an hour with that V8 Camaro you were talking about?

Apparently through DC.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I hope you’ve got spare wheels lying around because as soon as you hit one of those potholes, you’re replacing it. And

Executive Producer Tania: see, this billion dollars of revenue, which is where it should go, Into the transportation budget for repaving and structural improvements to the road.

Crew Chief Brad: You know what I think?

I think the lobbyist for the intelligent speed assistance system has gotten the ear of somebody high up in DC and they’re like, we’ve got a great idea. It’s going to solve all your speeding ticket problems. We’ll run the system and [00:31:00] we’ll install them and you can pay us a fee to do it. But yeah, we’ll get your speeding tickets paid for you.

10 cents on the dollar.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s just like the conversation my wife and I have been having the last couple weeks as we watch the guy who does the rounds in the morning changing the car batteries in the speed cameras. So you’re like, how good are these batteries? How long do they last? Jokes about those things not actually working.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re not always on, because if you have radar, they go off. There used to be one. Occasionally it went off. Mostly it didn’t go off. And then they actually removed it. So I don’t know what that was all about.

Crew Chief Eric: Because it didn’t work because the batteries were dead. Well, Brad, we’re talking about billions.

And you were talking about roads in DC and how you would need a new set of wheels. Well, I got a call back. Hoonigan, you guys probably read in the news, they are in chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is restructuring, reorganization, trying to consolidate their debt. They have a projected total of 1. 8 billion dollars in debt, of which they declared [00:32:00] 1.

2 is resolvable, so there’s still like 600 million on the table. That they’re dealing with and I had to scratch my head is pretty long video. The guy that breaks it down does a pretty good job. He actually goes through as much legal paperwork as he can find stuff like that. But what I didn’t know and now begin to appreciate is the hoonigan that Ken Block started and built is not the hoonigan of today.

Although the branding is the same. It’s a umbrella for a larger company called Wheel Pros, which is backed by Clearlake Capital and this and that. So for those of you that those names don’t mean anything to you, the following names might mean something to you. Rotiform, American Racing, Fuel, TSW, Borbay, a bunch of other wheel companies.

I think there’s like 30 of them that are part of this conglomerate. And one more that hits close to home for you, Brad. They own Smittybilt. So the debt that Hoonigan has because wheel pros took on the name and then restructured everything, they have almost 2 billion in debt [00:33:00] that they’re trying to figure out how to resolve.

And more than likely. There’s going to be a thousand or more people that are basically going to be unemployed here pretty soon. So it was kind of funny when we were reading and talking about those articles about that exodus from Hoonigan within the year of Ken’s death, where people were just, we’re leaving Hoonigan, we’re done, you know, blah, blah, blah.

What we didn’t realize was all this other turmoil under the brand name that’s been going on, I guess, for quite a bit now. Obviously inside of this consolidated debt, it’s not just wheel related stuff. It’s also the factories that they bought the properties and the back taxes and the property taxes. And this is the problem with mergers and acquisitions.

You take on that company, you take on all their baggage, you take on all their debt. And now their debt is your debt. Sort of like getting married, I guess. But in that respect, I almost want to divorce the Hoonigan name from the Wheel Pros thing to not tarnish the cool memories of Gymkhana and all that other stuff that we associate with Hoonigan, [00:34:00] and this is really a Wheel Pros problem at the end of the day.

So speaking of wheels, And calling back the triple article that had come out a bunch of months ago about Ricaro and BBS in bankruptcy. Well, Fanatec was also on the brink and they got a parachute from Corsair. Another IT company. They’ve been buying up all sorts of manufacturers. You know, they make memory, they make chips, they make this, they make that.

So they bought Fanatec, they’ve rescued Fanatec and you know, they’re going to bring Fanatec back from shambles. I had a conversation with some guys in industry and I said, so what do you think about this? What do you think about Fanatec being bought by Corsair is not like a bad brand name. I think the consensus right now, at least from what I can tell, and I don’t necessarily disagree, is that the reason they were sort of falling apart is the quality had gotten worse.

If you had any exposure to the newer Fanatec stuff, It wasn’t as nice as it used to be. It wasn’t as robust as it used to be because it got super popular. They had to cut corners. They had to make things [00:35:00] cheaper, typical business stuff. So Corsair sweeps in at this point in their manufacturing lifecycle.

And so does Fanatec stay where it is, or does it slide back and become like a Logitech Thrustmaster where it’s like, it’s okay, it’s not that great. In the sim world, there’s still a ton of manufacturers out there. You start talking about Moza, you start talking about Simicube, you start talking about Asetek, and a bunch of them are still a little bit DIY in terms of fit and finish.

So I’m really curious to see what happens. The ink is still pretty wet on this new deal here, but good to see that Fanatec didn’t just get flushed down the tubes.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I hope they go back to just making quality wheels in a limited quantity rather than trying to serve the masses and make a wheel for everybody.

I mean, that’s my big gripe with, you know, not related, but with BMW, they used to make decent products. Same with Mercedes. And then all of a sudden they started dumbing everything down to try and get a larger footprint and ended up just watering down the entire brand. So just stick to what you’re good [00:36:00] at.

Make good shit. People will pay for it. Grow that way. Don’t grow too fast, too quickly by cutting corners.

Crew Chief Eric: When I redid my rig, I invested in Moza and a lot of people were like, I don’t know, you know, this and that. And Moza now, even guys like Jimmy Broadbent are using Moza. There’s a lot of people that have Moza.

In their sims and what’s funny about it is when people actually mess with it and stop throwing shade because you know there were fan of tech fanboys or whatever they go this reminds me of the old fan of tech stuff you know rumors what they are that stuff was reverse engineered or whatever have you it is really nice quality it’s it feels like stuff that comes out of a car you know this and that and what i thought was interesting is at the same time i’m reading this article about you know fanatics back in business they got all this money from corsair to bail them out you Moses sign in a deal with Lamborghini, talk about an upward swing to your point, Brad, what happens now you start hitching your horse to these bigger wagons.

And it’s like, does it stay the same? Can they maintain the [00:37:00] quality? Or are we going to see, you know, future Moser products going down? So the auto sphere itself, it’s business, right? These games are played over and over and over again. So be curious to see what happens in the next couple of years. But Sim is not dead by any stretch of the imagination.

Not nearly the same fever. Or fire that there was during COVID where like, you couldn’t keep the stuff in stock. That’s the danger in why Fanatec ended up where it was too. The market got saturated and you’re like, well, your gear’s pretty good. It seems to last because you know, they built something tough.

You’re only going to replace it if it breaks. I wish some of the cars were like that though, but Hey, all right. Let’s switch to formula one. Let’s talk about shenanigans. What is this nonsense Verstappen is cutting his career short because of the whole cursing censorship thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, clickbait. He made comments of like, Oh, I don’t need to be here for this stuff, blah, blah, blah, but whatever.

Anybody really believes he’s just going to walk away? No.

Crew Chief Brad: So there has been speculation that he may be out in a year [00:38:00] or two anyway, just to go do something different, you know, with all the regulation changes in the sport over the next couple of years.

Executive Producer Tania: Didn’t he also say that there was, like, nothing else is worth it after F1?

Wasn’t he the one who said that? Where it’s like a

Crew Chief Eric: lesser form of

Executive Producer Tania: racing or something, and like, be beneath him to do anything other than F1?

Crew Chief Brad: Possibly.

Executive Producer Tania: But I mean, if he wants to stop, that’s it. Breaking news, breaking news!

Crew Chief Eric: Ricardo just signed with another team!

Executive Producer Tania: No he didn’t.

Crew Chief Eric: Psyche. FBull is out. You know, maybe Verstappen can join Ricciardo wherever he ends up next.

Executive Producer Tania: Doubtful. I don’t think he’s going anywhere. If anything, he sets himself up. If Red Bull’s going down the toilet, he’s got an excuse. Oh, I was leaving anyway. I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: Said it before. I’d like to see Verstappen. I’d like to see Hamilton. I’d like to see some of the other guys. Do an Alonzo, and go to Indy, or go to Lamar, or go [00:39:00] to some of these other disciplines of racing. I don’t think they’re beneath them. I just think that the boys club of Formula One is what it is, and they don’t have the same pull if they go somewhere else.

They might actually have to drive. It’s Adrian Newey’s fault. That’s all we know.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is probably where all the speculation of him retiring early is actually coming from.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: The fact that he’s not winning anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s a whole bunch of drama around that too with him going to Aston or whatever.

I want to see how that plays out, but that really doesn’t really matter until next year. But there’s a couple other things that matter next year. We know Audi’s coming, right? They’re taking over Sauber, Stake, Alfa Romeo, whatever the hell that team is, I don’t know. The rumor, not so rumor, is that Toyota is coming back?

Well, they’re partnering with Haas. You don’t think this is the perfect exit strategy for Gene Haas? To get out of this bleeding pig.

Executive Producer Tania: If that’s true, then what’s his deal? Cause he could have handed it over to Andretti. So what’s the drama there? The American team to quote another American team, right?

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe his ego wouldn’t let him.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, [00:40:00] did anybody watch the Gunther Steiner expose where he says that him and Jean never got along to begin with and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this BS.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t doubt it. If you ever watched, which you haven’t, Netflix’s Drive to Survive.

Crew Chief Eric: Never gonna happen.

Executive Producer Tania: Every time there was a problem in Haas, which was like,

Crew Chief Eric: Every race.

Executive Producer Tania: He was on the phone getting like, scolded by Gene. So I don’t think the relationship was very good when every time Gene’s sitting there watching the race and another of his cars has crashed millions of dollars later. Steiner’s the one that’s gotta sit there and take that phone call. I’m pretty sure that relationship wasn’t a good one.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t believe everything you watch on YouTube, even if it’s from the person that was there. If you look back, this is not the first time Toyota has Entered into Formula One. This was back in the early 2000s, back in the days when the U. S. Grand Prix was at Indianapolis. You had drivers like Alan McNish, Ralf Schumacher, all stars, right?

I mean, sarcasm [00:41:00] aside, Alan McNish went on to do great things for Audi at Le Mans, things like that. If you look at What Toyota did in the past, and I’m not saying they haven’t advanced in 20 years, we know Toyotas can be reliable and they can be strong and they can be fast, especially in WEC and stuff like that.

But if you chalk it up to what they did over those five years or so that they were in Formula 1, they didn’t amount to anything. It was a complete failure, which I’m actually kind of surprised Toyota is coming back after such a disgrace to use the phrase losing face. In front of the world on the formula one stage, but I’m happy to see them come back.

But on the same token, I keep saying Haas, what could go wrong? Do they really want that on their scorecard?

Executive Producer Tania: So interestingly, it says that the new agreement doesn’t include Toyota returning as an engine supplier. So there’ll be branded Toyota Gazoo racing will appear on the cars. They’re going to provide.

Design, technical, and manufacturing services, [00:42:00] while Haas will provide technical expertise. What? I’m not sure. Money.

Crew Chief Eric: That means money.

Executive Producer Tania: Basically, it’s a Toyota with Haas written on it. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Unlike a Honda with a Porsche crest on it. We’ll leave that where it is. So yes, Toyota’s coming back to Formula One.

They’re basically buying Haas is what’s going to be the result of this. And I see it as a tit for tat. Audi’s coming up. Toyota says we’re coming back too. It’s going to be an interesting 2025 Formula One season. Oh, very weird. I just don’t know who’s going to drive for Toyota. Verstappen. Tim

Yellow,

Crew Chief Eric: Ricardo.

Justin,

Executive Producer Tania: he’s back.

Crew Chief Brad: Ricardo and Mazepin.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my

Executive Producer Tania: God. Don’t they already have the drivers?

Crew Chief Brad: I’m sure they do. I don’t know. I haven’t been keeping up with it.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. I think one of the new young kids, at least, I think is going to be a driver for Haas. And I’m not sure who the second driver is.

Crew Chief Eric: So memorable.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, you know what it is?

I think I saw this the other day. I think Ocon is going

Crew Chief Eric: to Oh, come on. That’s a recipe for [00:43:00] disaster.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, he got kicked out of, uh, Alpine.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: So I think it’s Ocon and it’s the new British kid, Beerman. Ali, they’ll be the Haas drivers because, not Magnusson. ’cause I think he’s out, basically lost his seat.

Holberg. Holgenburg. Thank you. He’s going to Audi

Crew Chief Eric: because we must have a German team with German drivers is good.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think they’ve named the second Audi driver yet. And I think there’s been some rumors like

Crew Chief Eric: Schumacher,

Executive Producer Tania: his name has sort of surfaced again. But whether that actually comes to fruition or not, I don’t know.

I mean, there’s a couple drivers that don’t have seats, so to speak. Like, I don’t know that Botas or Joe Guanyu have anywhere to go now that Sauber’s dissolved. Does that mean they go to Audi?

Crew Chief Eric: Probably not.

Executive Producer Tania: But there’s also a number of other young drivers I guess they could pick up.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, speaking of probably not, We gotta switch gears and talk about a subject within the drive [00:44:00] thru that just continues to haunt us.

Once you think you have it under control, it’s like a bad rash, and it comes back, and it scratches, and it itches, and it smells weird, and it’s pussy, and it’s gross. It’s

Executive Producer Tania: overly dramatic. Is it really coming back to haunt you when it’s par for the course that anytime Tesla says, Something’s going to happen.

It doesn’t according to their timeline. Like, I mean, it’s not haunting at this point. It would be haunting if it actually delivered something they said, according to a schedule.

Crew Chief Eric: So what are they delayed this time? Is it the semi truck? Because we know it’s not the cyber truck that was rushed to production as we’ve already

Crew Chief Brad: touched after major delays.

It was rushed to production.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t even know what’s been happening with the Tesla semi truck, actually.

Crew Chief Brad: It doesn’t matter,

Executive Producer Tania: but no, it’s the, the roadster.

The biggest Ponzi scheme

Crew Chief Eric: in the Tesla Donation Foundation ever.

Executive Producer Tania: They need to generate those pre orders so that they can fix the Cybertruck. They gotta get the pre orders in for the Roadster and they can keep [00:45:00] dragging that out for like 10 years.

Crew Chief Eric: The only thing I can say about the Roadster is I like the way it looks. And I noticed that too on the road the other day with the Teslas. Minus the Cybertruck. The Teslas look better when they’re self driving away from you, than they do coming head on. Like from the front, they’re all like duck billed platypuses.

But the back of the Teslas are not bad looking at all. Like it’s got a nice derriere. Minus the Cybertruck.

Executive Producer Tania: Got a nice butthole.

Crew Chief Eric: Such childish nonsense. Open butthole. Yeah, I mean they look good from behind. I just wish they would fix the front. Now I have seen a couple of the remodeled Model 3s on the road.

But I’m not convinced. It’s way too angular, and then they left the back the way it was. When I saw it for the first time in person, there was a guy sitting at a traffic light, so I was walking, so I was able to really kind of like, absorb the look. At first glance, I was like, is that the new Prius? Because the Prius has that kind of angular with the drawn out lights.

And then I went, oh no, that’s [00:46:00] the new Model 3. And so, I don’t know, they’re doing something funny with the design there. It’s better, but worse, but better. I don’t know how to describe it. But the Roadster’s cool. I gotta bring this up. And I said we were gonna do this. It was gonna happen. We needed to stay tuned.

We’re talking rocket launchers. We’re talking ridiculousness. We’re talking explosions. Fall guy level stupidity. Remember when I brought up our favorite internet idiot, Whistlin Diesel, and how he was gonna battle test a Cybertruck? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah, yeah. Did you guys watch the video?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s out! I did.

Crew Chief Brad: I watched that video and the follow up update about the trailer hitch.

Well,

Crew Chief Eric: I didn’t watch that one, so you’ll have to tell me about it. But let’s talk about the big It’s a long video. It’s like a half hour.

Executive Producer Tania: I never watched anything from that guy other than maybe like five seconds. Is he the one that did like wagon wheels on a Charger or something? Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s also the one that took a hacksaw to a Ferrari.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh yeah. So I’ve seen like 20 seconds. [00:47:00] So I watched the whole thing though. It was very enlightening. And that’s his shtick, right? Some of the tests were just ludicrous, meaningless. I’m like, okay, so you backed a vehicle off of a flatbed truck without lowering the flatbed. One of those vehicles has a completely flat underpan that’s reinforced because of the batteries it’s protecting.

The other vehicle has an exposed drivetrain that you dropped the weight of itself on and then ripped itself off the back of a metal plate and then were like shocked that the central drive axle, uh, broke.

Crew Chief Eric: But okay, but let’s take that the other direction and say the cyber truck split in half and then caught on fire and you could look at the F 150 and go, well, the draft shaft was the only thing I was

Executive Producer Tania: impressed that there wasn’t that we know of.

Structural damage to the batteries good on them that they made [00:48:00] a really, really thick skid plate under there, protect them.

Crew Chief Brad: They make aftermarket skid plates that would fix that issue for people that all the roads and stuff for, call it 1, 500

Executive Producer Tania: protect the drive shaft,

Crew Chief Brad: protect the entire drive train, oil pan engine, everything you can front to back skid plates, the diff.

I mean, You can reinforce that stuff to where it would pass that stupid test if you had to.

Executive Producer Tania: So the ludicrous part is, who’s driving the vehicles in this manner? Like, it’s an unrealistic test that really proves nothing kind of thing. Like, that doesn’t tell me that the Cybertruck is more superior than an F 150.

It’s a dumb test. It does point out like, okay, good. I feel good about the skid plate on that Tesla.

Crew Chief Eric: They abused the hell out of both of these trucks. Let’s just talk about some of the other tests. I thought were kind of interesting. I cringed with the frunk thing. I can’t believe he stuck his hand in there.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God. I wanted to see the Ford version of that test. He didn’t show it because the Ford most certainly would have cut off his fingers [00:49:00] because it’s mechanical. It’s not, there’s a manual. There’s no electronic control. The hood is just the hood. You slam the thing

Crew Chief Eric: is modern cars have been designed so that even if you were to close the door, like on a kid’s hand, the way it goes in and closes, there’s that cavity.

And the hoods are the same way. Yeah. An old like Pontiac Bonneville from the seventies would cut your fingers off. Right. But new cars are actually kind of design where. It’ll stop, but the Tesla, that frunk just kept closing because it’s electronic. And it was like, and you could see him. I don’t know how he didn’t bust his hand because that looked way painful.

It was bleeding. Yeah, it was awful. I was like, I would have done that with something else.

Executive Producer Tania: I would have done that with like a carrot

Crew Chief Brad: assistant. His assistant. Yeah, exactly. A lot of the video was very jackass to me. Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve never seen jackass, but yes. I know enough of it, but yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, nobody was stapling themselves to other selves and things like that, but.

Executive Producer Tania: So the [00:50:00] aha moments that lead to the end conclusion. I thought so when they did

Crew Chief Eric: the slamming of the doors.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. So they were We give credit where credit’s due we want to start there. So a the skid plate underneath is pretty strong. So his apocalyptic proclamations Apparently seemed to be accurate because they ignited c4 on the body panels And like, they’ve only dented.

Okay. The stainless steel is pretty strong.

Crew Chief Brad: To that point, Ford made the change a few years ago to aluminum body panels, but GM and Dodge, Poyota, and like other big truck, they still use steel body panels. So I think had it been another manufacturer, it may have been a different result. Ford is the one that went to aluminum.

Executive Producer Tania: It would be interesting to see. What that same test would be on, not that Ford truck.

Crew Chief Brad: Right.

Executive Producer Tania: What was the other one? The beating [00:51:00] of the car on the glass?

Crew Chief Brad: When they brought out all the other YouTube jabronis, I thought that was stupid.

Executive Producer Tania: So even though he said, I do all the exact same tests on both the cars, they didn’t do that one on the Ford truck.

They didn’t do the same beating.

Crew Chief Brad: They couldn’t because the windows were already destroyed.

Executive Producer Tania: Whatever, they could have gotten another door and done it. We’ve seen other videos where, oh, you threw, like, a brick at a glass of, like, a Volkswagen, and it didn’t break, and they threw the brick at a glass of, like, a Cybertruck or something, and it did break.

So, like, what’s the story here? Illusion. So those were, like, the good things of it, I guess. Like, wow, impressed. Now the horrific things, which was insane, was, like, The second thing they did, I don’t even remember what it was, but they drove it off the side of the hill and then it got implanted in the mud. He used a ford to tow it out.

Tow it out? Or no, he got stuck, they pulled him out, and then he went and repeated the same thing and ended up implanting the ford or something. Oh, no, no, no. That’s not when he did it. It was when he was doing that pothole test and they had those [00:52:00] big like six foot diameter.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they drove over the cylinders.

Executive Producer Tania: And they drove the Ford up, beached itself basically like it hit in between the wheels and then didn’t have traction to go. So they backed the Tesla up to pull it down like off the ramp off these things. And in doing so, they ripped the frame, like, you even can call it a frame, but it just ripped the rear end, and he was beside himself, and rightfully so, because it was like, how can you tow with this thing?

It was held together like caca underneath. There was no reinforcement. It was like, it all goes downhill from there on build quality.

Yeah, and he said himself, he’s like, it’s rated for 10, 000 pounds. He’s like, this is just normal truck stuff. Truck pulling another truck that got stuck like you’re off roading.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know how it passed any of these towing tests if it couldn’t even pull a truck off a ramp or whatever.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s an aluminum frame and it probably cracked during one of the other tests. And then that test just,

Executive Producer Tania: that’s maybe fair,

Crew Chief Brad: but still that’s what the [00:53:00] second video was about because he received a lot of hate mail from Tesla fan people cultists about, Oh, the Ford’s frame would crack in half.

It would break in half and the truck would destroy itself. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So they did a repeated, like they had an excavator. Lift the rear end of the Ford truck up and they dropped it on concrete bricks, like 50 times. It did eventually bend the frame. They just dropped some real heavy concrete on top of it to straighten the frame back out.

It never broke though. It just bent the frame and you could still drive the truck away. But again, this is another issue between steel, which now in this particular test, the Ford has the steel and the Tesla has the aluminum.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, here’s where I’d call bullcrap on these people. They got up in arms about it.

He did the exact same stunts with both of them and the Ford was able to tow the Tesla. When it got stuck. So they both came off the back of that flat bed without pulling the ramp down. They both shot off the side of a thing. They, they both did the [00:54:00] same thing and the board could still tow. It didn’t rip its rear end out.

Crew Chief Brad: Exactly. And that’s what the second video kind of was about. This is a very important lesson. Both trucks use a mixture of both types of materials in different ways. And I feel like the Ford. Used the appropriate materials in the appropriate places, right? Much rather have a hole in my tailgate than my 10, 000 pound load going down the road next to me because the hitch came.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it wouldn’t be going down the road next to you because the battery charging system was a complete farce as we saw. Also,

Crew Chief Brad: how much time did he spend at the charger? Oh

Crew Chief Eric: my goodness. And then how many times did it brick itself that he had issues and he’s on the phone with Tesla support?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I’m sure a lot of that was due to whatever sensors and whatnot going absolutely bonkers by the abuse that it was taking.

It had no idea. I probably thought it was like upside down and you know, God knows where. So the other highlights just go back to the build quality. We’ve already heard about

Crew Chief Brad: the [00:55:00] tonneau cover. Oh my gosh.

Executive Producer Tania: The duct tape.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God. Yeah. The washers, the duct tape.

Executive Producer Tania: The fact that he could just pull trim pieces off because they were like hot glued on basically.

Yeah. It was just glue holding all these trim pieces on. It was so hilarious when he’s rips like the fender off. He’s like, let me see if I can rip the fender of this Ford off. Oh, wait, I can’t. It’s one piece.

Crew Chief Brad: And then when he slammed the doors. And the interior came off. That was wild. The interior panels came apart.

Crew Chief Eric: That was wild. That is not a test I would do to any car.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s also like, really aggressive because nobody’s gonna slam their door that hard.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know, I’ve been pretty mad. I’ve broken many a window regulator in a Mark IV Volkswagen from my anger.

Crew Chief Eric: So at the end of the day, again, we’re talking about the hate, there’s a second video now, all this kind of stuff.

So we fast forward to the end. We talked about at the beginning with this driveshaft and the, you know, the Ford fails right away, but the fix was what? [00:56:00] 700 bucks or something with labor?

Executive Producer Tania: 900.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. To change the driveshaft. But at the end of all that abuse, a Ford drove away and the Cybertruck was brought in on a trailer, bricked.

And I’d love to see what happened behind closed doors when they brought that Cybertruck into the Tesla facility because

Crew Chief Brad: At some point they did talk about The current repair bill for the cyber truck. And I think it was like 15, 000 or something like that. That seems low.

Executive Producer Tania: No way. But

Crew Chief Brad: if they also weren’t done with it yet.

Executive Producer Tania: Although glue doesn’t cost that much, maybe duct tape and glue. You get a lot of duct tape.

Crew Chief Eric: I just want to bring up one more thing. Gas pedal test. There was no rivets that was going to fix that problem.

Executive Producer Tania: That was also ludicrous and wildly aggressive.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s what they mean, ludicrous mode.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s like

Crew Chief Eric: meaningless test.

It’s not a meaningless test though because the Ford could take the abuse. That’s what the point is.

Executive Producer Tania: But you don’t need, it doesn’t need to take [00:57:00] that abuse. On the one hand, it’s not that Ford did anything special because pedal technology is how old?

Crew Chief Eric: When your pedal assembly is made by Logitech,

Crew Chief Brad: and that’s part of the criticism and the problem with Tesla to begin with, is they’re trying to reinvent the wheel when if it ain’t broke. You don’t need to fix it just for the sake of fixing it. Things have been a certain way for a certain, for a really long time because they just, it just works.

Well, they’ve

Crew Chief Eric: been proven to work in that way. And that’s why I say Tesla is a software company, not a car company, even though they’re making cars. I get that. You don’t have to explain it to me. But the point is that thinking that reinventing of a new way of doing something is very critical. Software minded.

Instead of hitting ctrl p to print you hit ctrl lock screen upside down triangle and then bounce on your nose three times and then it prints. Well what was wrong with ctrl p?

Executive Producer Tania: The pedal design in the ford is very robust. I would be [00:58:00] curious if you did that same test in something say a mini. It has the pedal mounted to the floor.

Would it hold up or would it do the same thing that Tesla did? I guarantee

Crew Chief Brad: it’ll hold up.

Executive Producer Tania: Probably, because it wouldn’t be made out of cheap plastic.

Crew Chief Brad: Your mom has a Mini. You should go test this theory. Yeah, let’s go break mom’s uh, Mini. Make your own YouTube video and go test this.

Executive Producer Tania: Sam’s got a Mini.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, go down the road to Sam’s house.

Crew Chief Eric: Instead of watching the second Cybertruck Whistle and Diesel video, what I watched instead was Tanya’s recommendation of Top Gear’s James May reviewing and driving the Cybertruck for the first time.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, do you mean his, uh, what was it, whiskey? Or what was he selling? James Gin. Yeah, James Gin. His gin commercial?

Crew Chief Eric: Self promotion, yeah. He had nothing but positive things. To say about the Cybertruck and this and that it was very top gear esque.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I was surprised how like positive it was.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Well, he’s a bit of a, a techie kind of person. Well, he

Crew Chief Eric: also owns a Tesla now. So for him, so

Crew Chief Brad: he’s, it was a bit biased.

Crew Chief Eric: It [00:59:00] was, but it wasn’t biased when he started talking about the panel gaps and the panel alignment.

And the finish, it was just like, wow, the straight edge thing, right Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, the ruler measuring.

Crew Chief Brad: But then he tried to say that they did that on purpose because of the glare and the angles and all that stuff. So he tried to play it off as that it was done on purpose.

Crew Chief Eric: No, and then the hilarious part when he put the bottle on it the one time and then he put it on the same spot and then it would move and then it was like, what a joke, what a mess.

I didn’t give too much credit to that. No, because he didn’t stress test it in any way. You know, that was a press car. He’s driving around. He’s just giving his opinion. Rah, rah, rah, Tesla. Okay, fine. Sure. So it was, it was interesting to see like the other end of the pendulum swing. I didn’t expect James to be so kind because he can be very direct.

I would have expected a lot more if it was Jeremy Clarkson, he probably would have ripped it to shreds, not literally like whistling diesel did. But, you know, he would have had not so kind things to say about it. Then again, that’s why he stopped doing the Grand Tour, right? He’s not interested [01:00:00] in electrofecals.

He doesn’t want to talk about them. They’re blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The excuses that he gave for leaving. That’s that. I just thought it was good to go back because we said we were going to watch it. I wanted to get your guys opinion. This is the first time I’ve sat through a Whistle and Diesel video in its entirety.

And I was hooked because I think what he did, it was truth. So we’re still talking about Tesla.

Executive Producer Tania: Which would be haunting, I guess. You had one of these pull up behind you with the red and blue flashing,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Executive Producer Tania: We’re in California again. So there’s police department there that unveiled a cyber truck cruiser.

I don’t think they’re actually going to use it. It’s more, I think maybe just promotional type police vehicle, not one that’s actually going to be used to actually go out and fight crime. So to speak

like the Wraith.

Executive Producer Tania: Nonetheless, California’s taxpayer dollars went to getting this Cybertruck at their local precinct.

Crew Chief Eric: Outfitted as a police interceptor. It’s only being used for community outreach. Yeah, because they’re afraid if they got to do a pit maneuver in this thing, it’s [01:01:00] going to fall apart and crumple like a soda can.

Executive Producer Tania: Right? The risk to the officer would be quite high if they were involved in a high speed chase that ended in a crash.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ve all seen those Florida Man videos and chases. I don’t think you could do that with a Cybertruck. You could do it with an Ultima. Yeah, damn right.

Executive Producer Tania: As we saw in the Whistling Diesel video, it’ll get itself in like, planted in mud. Just don’t go off road with it. What was the other thing he had to like, activate his subscription for the four wheel differential?

Crew Chief Brad: For the Diff Lock, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah, that was insane. It’s insane. Ugh.

Crew Chief Brad: At least you know when you’re being shot at, after a drug bust goes bad, you’re going to be protected.

Executive Producer Tania: That is true. That is true. They could use it as a riot vehicle is what we learned. So.

Crew Chief Brad: A riot with some very poor attempts to destroy it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well that rounds out probably our episode. Longest showcase, but I don’t think we’re done with haunting topics as we [01:02:00] go along here But we are gonna switch to our regularly scheduled ranting and raving and bring you some new stuff. Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen Redefining literally reinventing the engine.

I rank this six stroke right up there with the Wankel also known as the rotary All the RX 7 people know what I’m talking about. I watched this video. It was In lightning and all I came away from it after half an hour was intake compression combustion compression combustion exhaust That’s how it works.

So it’s got this weirdly spirograph system where it does a double compression combustion stroke, supposedly, you know, the benefits of a two stroke with the benefits of a four stroke, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the punchline is why is Porsche reinventing the wheel? Or the engine in this case, when Europe is pushing to have all EVs by like 2035 or whatever it is.

So I think they’re betting the farm on this new engine, has some really interesting techniques in it that would take advantage of the new [01:03:00] synthetic fuels that they’re creating. But. If you are not into math and science, I don’t recommend watching this video, but I found it fascinating because I’m a nerd.

So that’s that.

Crew Chief Brad: Why is he spending five minutes telling us how to say the word?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. I was so turned off by that. I was like, who cares? But I do like how he ended it. He goes this way. I put to bed all of your comments about how I pronounce it and we can move on with life, but that was pretty good. All right.

So Asian domestic news, Honda is putting out their GR 86 competitor, also known as Quaalude. I mean the prelude,

Crew Chief Brad: but isn’t it going to be electric?

Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t it going to be front wheel drive?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s hybrid front wheel drive. Isn’t it going to be the size of an accord? Basically it’s going to be the replacement for the two door Accord they used to make.

That’s what it looks like to me.

Crew Chief Eric: I think you hit the nail right on the head. It’s just an Integra

Executive Producer Tania: with the Honda badge instead. Blasphemer!

Crew Chief Brad: But it’s two door.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s a two door Integra. Integra.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s ugly.

Crew Chief Brad: Which they [01:04:00] used to make. That weird grill. What is that? That’s like the Prius thing.

Executive Producer Tania: No, when you said it’s a CR Z.

That’s the front end of a CR Z. That little weird nub nose.

Crew Chief Brad: No, but then it’s got like a dual lip. It’s got fish lips

Crew Chief Eric: like the new Ferraris, right? They have that kind of thing going on there. That’s what they’re doing. But it looks

Crew Chief Brad: good on a

Crew Chief Eric: Ferrari. It doesn’t look good on this. This is ugly.

Oh, it doesn’t.

Crew Chief Eric: Whatever. I mean, Honda fans are going to go nuts. The Prelude is coming back. I mean, Brian Schott will buy one right away, right? But I don’t get it. If we do see one going down the road, we’re going to be like, Oh, that’s nice. You’re not going to know what it was. No, you’re not. And then the thing is you’re never going to see one because who’s buying two door sports coupes anymore.

Nobody. So, I don’t understand why Honda’s even bothering with this. If you really want it to be something awesome, it shouldn’t be an EV. It should have a manual. It should have the same power plant as the Honda Type R Civic. It should just be that with two doors. It should be a two door Civic, but instead it’s whatever this thing is.

Moving on. Toyota. We haven’t talked enough about Toyota, right Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: Nope. So they have revealed that [01:05:00] they will be joining TC America Series.

Crew Chief Eric: SRO baby!

Executive Producer Tania: With their 2025 GR Corolla.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re gonna kick butt with this thing. It’s gonna be awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: Should be interesting.

Crew Chief Eric: This car is the hotness. I kind of wonder what the balance of performance is gonna be like for this.

As we know, Brad, BOP is all over SRO. This is gonna be competing with the HPD civics. This is gonna be competing with the Hyundais, the smaller BMWs, all that kind of stuff in GT America series, the GR three cylinder turbo 300 horsepower. I think they’re gonna have to detune that ’cause a lot of those cars are running under 300 horsepower in that class.

Crew Chief Brad: Or they would add weight.

Crew Chief Eric: They’d add weight. Yeah, exactly. It’s exciting for next year to see the hatchbacks out there kicking butt in touring car. So they haven’t

Executive Producer Tania: said what the horsepower will be on the 2025s. They haven’t unveiled that yet. The only thing they’ve said is they’ll make 290 foot pounds of torque.

Crew Chief Eric: Out of a three cylinder. Damn. I’d take one of these left over after a couple years of being beat on the racetrack. I’m good with it. And they’re only 150, [01:06:00] 000 when they’re used.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, and they haven’t announced the pricing of it either. So we’ll see what the production version comes out to be. We know what the Maritzo version or whatever is like 50 grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Race cars open your wallet. I mean, there is just That’s

Executive Producer Tania: not even this level because this is already, you know, a step above that.

Crew Chief Eric: No, what you do is you find a sponsor. Well, this is not street legal. So 100 percent right. Still kind of in the camp of Asian domestic news. Remember when we used to do that wheel segment for a while there, you know, it kind of popped its head up the other day because I was again in the city walking around, I get to see a bunch of different cars that you just wouldn’t normally see from the headquarters office, right?

I had made a statement on a previous drive thru that all Hyundais and Kias, they have the ugliest wheels on the road, like full stop, right? They’re just heinous looking. But I stumbled across. What I didn’t realize was basically the end of the line of the previous generation Hyundai Santa Fe. And so it’s a Hyundai Santa Fe Sport.

I [01:07:00] looked at these wheels and I said, man, these are absolutely inspired. These are GTI quality wheels. I think they’d look really good on something else because that’s a, you know, a CUV, SUV or whatever have you. But then I realized because that was the end of the Santa Fe line, I had to kind of take back my statement and say, Okay.

They do have a good looking wheel, they don’t have the ugliest wheels, but now they have one of the ugliest SUVs on the road because the new Santa Fe is heinous. Have you guys seen this thing? I think they have like a basketball personality doing like this commercial like, uh, he’s got his brown Hyundai Santa Fe running around.

It’s very square, very digital looking, like very 80s. But the wheels are nice.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. The new Santa Fe reminds me a lot of the old Azuzu Axiom.

Crew Chief Eric: Ooh.

Crew Chief Brad: If you remember what those look

Crew Chief Eric: like. I do. Those were not nice either.

Crew Chief Brad: No, it’s they look identical. You would see that meme of Jenna Fisher from the office sitting in the boardroom saying it’s the same vehicle.

It’s the same picture.

Crew Chief Eric: It did [01:08:00] send me down a little bit of a weird rabbit hole, kind of looking at Hyundais and trying to understand what car this was and the wheel package and all this kind of thing. Although I saw the badging on the back of the car, it didn’t really dawn on me until I was yet again inside the configurator.

As you guys remember, that was a fun experiment too. The Santa Fe had a 1. 6 turbo for a while, then it had a two liter turbo. Now it’s got a two and a half liter turbo and that exists on the new ugly one as well. I was like, wow, when did Hyundai step up their four cylinder? And when is that motor going to get dropped into more stuff?

It’s making 277 pound feet of torquems. And I know it didn’t make our 50, 000 millennial grade challenge, but it doesn’t come with all wheel drive standard. It only comes with fun wheel drive for all those 311 torquems. So that’s not fun. If you do add all wheel drive to a Santa Fe. Going back to that list, it comes in around 40k.

So it’s another contender on our list of under 50k. What would you buy with almost 300 [01:09:00] horsepower? I was like, that’s not bad. So good job Hyundai for stepping up your four cylinder game. Now put that in a Veloster. Now for some random new EVs and concepts.

Executive Producer Tania: So in the spirit of Halloween, apparently Rivian’s feeling a little bit fun and they have a software update that you can do for all the consoles inside that give you an option for three different themes.

One being Kit’s theme from Knight Rider.

So cool.

Executive Producer Tania: Another being the Back to the Future DeLorean interior theme.

Still

Crew Chief Eric: cool.

Executive Producer Tania: And the third is the most Halloween y one, I guess. It’s this kind of bizarre, spooky ish color haze thing that it does. And then this silhouette of like a Yeti going across your screens or whatever.

That one was okay. But the Back to the Future one with the time all in the center console, like when you set the date and all that, like it was really cool. And even like, you know, the old school Knight Rider, very Audi digital dash. Yeah, it

Crew Chief Eric: was. Oh my [01:10:00] god. It was bringing memories back. I love it though. I think this is cool.

This is the kind of stuff if you’re going to have screens in the car, give me these kinds of options and then put Mr. Feeney’s voice in there.

Executive Producer Tania: Right?

Crew Chief Eric: Hello, Michael. That’s pretty cool. Not that garbage we got from Volkswagen where it’s like, make your 2024 GTI feel like a 1963 beetle. Like why? I don’t care.

That’s lame. This is cool. This is what our generation wants. Now I would like the L cars Version dashboard from Star Trek. That’d be cool with the sounds too. When you hit the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, switch it to Cardassian. Really cool. Deep space nine action there.

Crew Chief Brad: I like Rivians.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: they’re pretty

Crew Chief Brad: neat.

I see a lot of them down here.

Executive Producer Tania: You see a lot of them. If you see Amazon delivery trucks.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, speaking of seeing things, anybody been watching Emily in Paris? I know it’s a stretch,

Crew Chief Brad: not the latest season.

Executive Producer Tania: I haven’t seen the latest season yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Well, I took a screenshot for you guys and then we’ll have it up on our website.

I’m not giving any spoilers away. It’s just sort of like a thing that they [01:11:00] did on one of the episodes. There’s this photo shoot. Everything Mazar, Who some of you might remember from Entourage. She was also Medusa in Chaos, if you watched that, and a bunch of other stuff. So she has a very 1930s look to her, right?

Especially when she puts her hair up and they dress her up and all those kinds of things. So they did this very cool Inception commercial inside of the show. And because it’s Paris, it was Renault, and it was shot in black and white. You know, you always see those, like, Dior commercials are like this, where they’re in black and white, and then something suddenly pops in color, and there you go.

So she comes out and there’s all this paparazzi and da, da, da, da, boom. The only shot of color is a bright yellow, like my shirt, brand new Renault R5 EV, I stopped, soaked it all in. I took a screenshot of it. As you guys can see, this is not just fire. This is hot fire. This thing is so cool. Please Renault, make this car.

Executive Producer Tania: Make this car and only sell [01:12:00] it in your country. Stop, why

Crew Chief Eric: did, why did you have to do that to me?

Crew Chief Brad: That way Eric can buy one in 25 years.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s the reality that we live in.

Crew Chief Eric: I urge you guys, if you watch Emily in Paris and you get to that episode, it’s towards the end of the season. Again, I don’t want to give any spoilers away.

Just rewind it, watch it again. I did that several times. It’s really cool. This thing is really, really neat. And she gets in it and she drives away. So you get to see it from all the different angles and I mean, obviously it’s whisper quiet, but still just this modern retro R5 with big wide haunches and everything.

It just looks really, really epic. Talking about more retro designs from Renault, last month we talked about their idea of calling back the R17. Which, there’s a couple Datsuns that look like that, and the Saab, Saab Sonnet, and a bunch of other cars that have a similar shape to the R17. Well, as much as there was a big hub a loo about it on the internet, Renault officially came out with a statement saying, for those who remember the [01:13:00] R17, we’ve given you everything that you love, and for those who could care less, it’s just a nice car.

And what they mean by that statement, all kind of wrapped up in that sentiment, is that they’re not going to make the R17. Again, the big question is, if that’s your attitude with your retro cars, are you going to make the R5?

Executive Producer Tania: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, probably not.

Executive Producer Tania: Even says that they’re going to move away from retro designs.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s killing me. And by the way, the Alpine version of that R5 is freaking awesome too. And there’s a couple of new Alpines coming out the three 90. Now we talked about the two 80 before that. And obviously the a one 10 GTs and awesome cars, stuff like that. There’s a lot of motion and commotion going on at Renault.

And the funny part is Renault parent company of Nissan. One of these things is not like the other. So Brad, lost and found. We got something on the pile here. This car speaks to me. What do we got?

Crew Chief Brad: First CNC Motorsport Sierra RS500 was delivered. Just look

Crew Chief Eric: at that. That is 80s at its finest right there. So imagine, you know, there’s been a bunch of these, what do you want to [01:14:00] call them?

Tribute cars or halo cars, whatever it is, you know, like the whole singer effect. Take an old car, do everything you could possibly ever imagine you could do with it, with modern technology. We’ve seen this with Porsches. We’ve seen this with launches. We’ve seen this with other brands. And now there’s a company CNC Motorsport getting into the Sierra RS500S Cosworth.

And this thing’s awesome. Right down to the gold basket weave BBS wheels. I mean, what is there not to like?

Crew Chief Brad: I love the fact that it’s got 575 horsepower from a two liter.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Yes. Excellent. I didn’t see a price, but I can only guess that it’s six figures.

Crew Chief Brad: I found a price.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh

Crew Chief Brad: oh. Prices for these cars start at 185 British pounds.

Ah!

Crew Chief Eric: I knew it. It was a hundred thousand plus dollars. Yikes. Tanya, would you buy one of these? Would you drive one of these? I mean, would I buy one? You don’t buy anything. So what would you drive one?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I would buy something [01:15:00] else over this, but I would drive one if I had the opportunity. So cool. I’m not like in love with the aesthetics of it.

Crew Chief Eric: Seeing that article kind of drove me down a rabbit hole on YouTube. And I was watching a bunch of videos about Delta integrales and I was doing some research for a rally project anyway, then group a and all that stuff. And so many different versions of the Delta HF Chris Harris bought an eight valve and Ben Collins bought a 16 valve turbo, and then he bought a Evo one and all this kind of thing.

And then you learning the differences between all the variants of the HF and stuff like that. I’m like, I would love to import one of those. If we didn’t talk about them enough, we would be remiss. Are we going

Executive Producer Tania: back to Thesla?

Crew Chief Eric: We got one more article.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my gosh.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s a bit the hokey pokey.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t even care or know what’s real.

I don’t have a Cybertruck. I’m not trying to insure it with Geico. I’m never gonna have a Cybertruck. I’m never gonna try [01:16:00] to insure it with Geico. So I honestly don’t care if Geico wants to insure them or not.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s the problem we’ve been seeing a lot lately. And it’s not just this article. It’s other ones where let’s say Jalopnik says one thing and then motor one says the exact opposite.

It’s like on the same day and you’re like, wait, what? And in this case, how much do you trust things you read on Reddit? That article starts Geico drops coverage for the cyber trucks. And then on the other side, the verge is saying, well, maybe not. Geico is not going to drop your cyber truck. We’re going to continue to cover it.

I guess buyer beware, do your homework first, figure out how much it’s going to cost to insure one of these things. And if they’re going to cover it, I think there’s still a lot of changes yet to come in the insurance world when it comes to EVs, because I think there was a lot of unexpected consequences with these cars, how long it takes to fix them, how expensive they are to fix them.

Crew Chief Brad: This isn’t new. A few years ago, didn’t Tesla come up with their own insurance Policy for their cars because other insurance companies [01:17:00] were having a hard time pricing insurance policies for other Tesla models. So this isn’t something that’s new Geico is probably just the first to outright deny coverage, then just go to Tesla.

I mean, if Tesla has an insurance company, that’s going to insure it, then just do everything in the Tesla ecosystem. You buy the Tesla vehicle, you get the Tesla loan with the Tesla interest rate. You do the Tesla insurance. That’s it. And you do the Tesla electricity. That’s the Apple model. It’s a software company model.

And it keeps

Crew Chief Eric: the money flowing internal to Tesla. Oh, shocking. How that works.

Crew Chief Brad: This reminds me of the old coal towns where they paid you in chips. And then you use those chips at the coal company owned store and you lived in coal company owned housing.

Crew Chief Eric: Robber barons. It’s not what they were called. So anything else on the.

Tesla docket there, Tonya?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, for those who’ve been tracking, and they’re super interested, they recently unveiled, earlier this month, [01:18:00] the RoboTaxi and RoboVan. Autonomous.

Crew Chief Eric: Johnny Cab.

Executive Producer Tania: Speaking of which, they unveiled that, and now are being sued by The Blade Runner movie.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh. Brilliant. Did he call it Johnny Cab on stage?

Is that why?

Executive Producer Tania: No, the production company is suing them, alleging that they created a lot of the stills and photos, basically generative AI taken from Blade Runner, essentially. So if you think it looks like something from Blade Runner, I think that’s pretty intentional.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that’s unfortunate. Did you guys see this about how Fisker abandoned their headquarters and left it in complete disarray, allegedly with hazardous waste and clay models and a bunch of other stuff just laying strewn about?

Executive Producer Tania: Is that like when people get evicted out of their house and they’re like, fuck you, I’m gonna take a sledgehammer to all my walls and I’m gonna shit in the middle of the [01:19:00] floor. Bye!

Crew Chief Brad: Was all this stuff put on the front lawn?

Crew Chief Eric: I just want to know where all these Fisker Ocean people are going to get their EVs taken care of.

They’re going to take them to the scrapyard. It’s a shame. I mean, we’ve seen it before with Fisker where it’s like, well, this and that and the other thing, and are they going to make it in the solar roof? And didn’t they collapse once and then came back and all this kind of thing? They’ve had a bit of a storied past, but it’s like, Even when they came out with the Ocean, which is not a bad looking vehicle, it’s just like, you kind of look at it and go, they’re not going to be here in five years.

There’s just no way, they just don’t have the infrastructure. I was sort of hoping that they would have gotten swallowed up by somebody else.

Executive Producer Tania: They still have a website.

Crew Chief Eric: What does that cost in them? 20 bucks? You

Executive Producer Tania: can save up to 24, 000 on a My 2023 Fisker Ocean. Go get your ocean right now. It’s a 24, 000 discount.

Crew Chief Eric: All sales final. Well, a little bit of racing. We know where to [01:20:00] put this, right? Is this lowered expectations? Possibly. We all know rich people gonna do what rich people do. And Keanu, he knows Kung Fu, but did you know he knew how to drive?

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like this is not news race car. Drivers spin out in the middle of a race all the time.

He didn’t cause a collision. He didn’t crash. He just spun out and reentered the race surface and finished the race. I don’t understand why this is. He’s also 60 years old. The guy, a fucking break.

Crew Chief Eric: But he’s not the first Hollywood star to turn towards racing. Now we’ve got Frankie Munez making his official announcement that he’s a NASCAR.

Now we have these Hollywood stars that I guess they’re bored. They’ve done everything that they can do with the umpteen trillion dollars that they’ve made. And they’re going to go racing. I mean, not uncommon. You’ve got the Paul Newman’s of the world and the Steve McQueen’s.

Crew Chief Brad: The Tom Cruise’s. McDreamy.

Crew Chief Eric: A bunch of people that were from Hollywood have gone racing in the past.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, Frankie Munez isn’t. [01:21:00] necessarily a good example because he’s been racing for like 20 years actually and he’s only like 38 so he’s got into the racing scene pretty young he’s just he’s finally I guess going pro officially

Crew Chief Eric: now yeah

Executive Producer Tania: He’s been involved in motorsports for a long time, but I guess finally he’s officially there.

Keanu, I don’t know, isn’t he known for doing like motorcycle stuff? Correct.

Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s not a stretch I guess to get into a car. Good for him. Maybe he is bored. I think it’s more news just because it’s Keanu.

Crew Chief Brad: It says professional auto racing debut. What makes this a professional? Auto racing debut.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s an SRO.

He’s in the Toyota GR cup.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. If I had enough money, I could go do SRO too. Would that make me a professional race car driver? No.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s a bronze level driver like anybody else, right? Especially because of his age and his experience. I feel

Crew Chief Brad: like this is just, it’s not news. It’s clickbait. It’s kind of not worth beating.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, he’s done a couple races since this too. So, I mean, obviously he’s following the SRO schedule. [01:22:00] So good for him. He knows Kung Fu and now he knows how to race. So good job, Keanu.

Crew Chief Brad: Tom Cruise was the last samurai. Right.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re talking about rich people things, sponsored by Garage Style Magazine, because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage?

How about some limited edition prints that are now up for grabs? Signed by the man himself, Juan Fangio.

Executive Producer Tania: How many? Thousands of dollars of these costs.

Crew Chief Eric: So what it says here, they’re in the hands of the guy that did these original prints and got them signed or whatever. I don’t know how many he has. And this is over on Exotic Car Marketplace.

Executive Producer Tania: It was valued $500 10 years ago. So, and not $500 today.

Crew Chief Eric: So now they’re two grand, three grand each. Okay, let’s say it’s a thousand. That’s still Fangio. Put his Sharpie. On it. That’s history right there. So to get a signed print, now granted it’s going to cost you 500 to ship it from Australia. 500 bucks for a piece of artwork signed by Fangio?

That’s not bad. Add that to your Christmas list. If you’re interested in getting one of these, the contact information to [01:23:00] reach Kevin Waite in Australia is at Exotic Car Marketplace. Just search for limited edition prints signed by Fangio. So other rich people thangs, and this is a spoiler alert for an upcoming episode.

We sat down with David Beattie from Slot Mods Raceways, and he talks about his whole story about building custom slot car tracks and all the other things that he is into over at Slot Mods. And he’s working with William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace to auction off a Hot Wheels track. You can get in on that for the low, low price of 25.

1, 000. It’s actually kind of cool. There’s all sorts of pictures of it on the exotic car marketplace website You can check out and I know that William and David are working on a project for next year and there will be a track being built to be auctioned off for Charity and you’ll be able to read more about that and more of its details on exotic car marketplace as well But if you haven’t seen the work that slot mods has done some of these tracks that they’ve built for Audi that they’ve built for private collections for Zach Brown Brown of McLaren, you know, all these [01:24:00] kinds of things that Dave goes into on the episode is pretty cool.

I highly recommend people check out the video painting coconuts on YouTube. And you’ll see David about 10 years ago or so that video actually won a Clio award and it’s produced by Audi. And it has to do with the Quattro experience, and he built this really cool track for the debut of, at the time, the new A7.

So if you haven’t seen that, check out Painting Coconuts on YouTube, and then you get more of an idea of what Slot Mods is all about, the quality of their work. And, on top of that, William just did a behind the scenes. Facility tour of slot mods. And you get to see Dave and he shows you the tracks that he’s building and all this stuff that they’re working on.

There’s some really, really cool stuff there. And so for me, reignited a passion about slot car racing. So if you’re looking to have something commissioned to fill up a big empty space in your house and you’re into racing slot mods is definitely something you should check out. Speaking of big money, Zuckerberg and his Porsche.

Executive Producer Tania: I take exception to this being called a minivan.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s more like a limousine. I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t [01:25:00] know what makes this a minivan other than it’s long because I don’t think it shares the correct architectural qualities of a minivan. Like a minivan doesn’t have a sloping rear pillar. They’re flat.

Crew Chief Eric: Right.

Executive Producer Tania: They’re straight up and down.

I mean to say in the back, they don’t slope down like this. Like you just stretched an SUV.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It’s a shooting brake with sliding doors. Sliding doors equal

Executive Producer Tania: minivan.

Crew Chief Brad: Basically that’s what they’re saying.

Executive Producer Tania: So a Yukon XL that has four rows.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: And if I put sliding doors on it. I could call that a minivan and not rolling house.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, sliding doors equal minivan.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s it. So I could put sliding doors on a Volkswagen Beetle and it would be a minivan.

Crew Chief Eric: But you would have to extend said beetle to accommodate sliding doors because your sliding doors cannot be your feet. front doors. They are rear sliding doors in the place of standard opening rear doors.

Executive Producer Tania: So I can take a mini Cooper.

Crew Chief Eric: How are we even arguing [01:26:00] this?

Executive Producer Tania: Because I think this is the dumbest thing.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad, is that a van?

Executive Producer Tania: No,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s

Executive Producer Tania: a abomination.

Crew Chief Eric: Is a

Crew Chief Brad: Camaro a hatchback?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s a liftback. That’s a whole nother. Yeah. Okay. I get your point. Yes. Who

Crew Chief Brad: gives a shit?

Executive Producer Tania: But hey, she was happy. So I guess that’s all that counts.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently it fits a seven foot statue. That he commissioned in the likeness of his wife.

Executive Producer Tania: Is that why he needed to transport that statue home? So he had to build a longer. No, no, I

Crew Chief Brad: don’t think that’s it. I think those are two independent stories.

Crew Chief Eric: For his army of zucks.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, zuck army.

Crew Chief Eric: Rich people things, baby.

Good for him. Well, it’s time we go down south. About alligators and beer.

Executive Producer Tania: Couldn’t really find any stories, but there is apparently a new [01:27:00] HBO show out. It premiered just a couple days ago, October 18th. It’s called, It’s Florida, Comet Man. Oh, God. And so, it’s different than like the Netflix. Florida man,

Crew Chief Eric: which I enjoyed.

Executive Producer Tania: So I think it’s less episodic. It’s apparently it’s going to have like a slew of cameos of different well known people now.

And it’s apparently it’s part documentary, part dramedy, part whatever. So I don’t know what this is exactly. I haven’t checked it out yet, but apparently there’s episodes available on HBO.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. It’s time to watch. It’s Florida, man.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s Florida, man.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s time we go quickly behind the pit wall. So we’ve talked all about Formula One earlier, but there is a little bit of shakeup in the IndyCar world.

I hear there’s a new racetrack coming. IndyCars are not going to Koda, but they might be going to Arlington, Texas’s street course. Sure. [01:28:00] So if you guys watched the video that we’ve attached in the show notes, basically what I tell from this very poorly Xbox 360 graphic video that they did is that You’re driving around the Dallas Cowboys stadium and at the end it says coming March 2026.

Sure. Yeah, so we’re still like two years away, year and a half away from whatever this racetrack is. It looks like every other street course, kind of tight and Long straightaways and slow down. So the crowd can see the cars and then speed away and slow down and see the cars. Does Indy do a lot of street courses?

They do more than anybody. I think

Crew Chief Brad: really,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, there’s still all the Memphis and St. Petersburg and Detroit and all that stuff. They’re all street courses.

Crew Chief Brad: AMSA does all of those as well.

Crew Chief Eric: Similar ones. Yeah. But I, I don’t know why anybody would want to do city courses anymore. I mean, it makes life miserable for everybody.

It’s hard to get any good seating because there’s so many crash barriers and gates and you know, all that kind of stuff. It’s just, I don’t know. When we went to Memphis a couple of years ago, I was like, that’s cool. You [01:29:00] couldn’t get to all sections of the track because of the way the roads were blocked off.

And unless you lived in one of the buildings, which you were either trapped in. Or you had the best vantage point of the race. It was kind of weird. So for me, city courses, I’m like, yeah, that’s cool. That’s fun. I’ll watch it on TV. You know, I promised you guys I wouldn’t talk about rally because we got a whole rally special coming spoiler.

And we mentioned Hoonigan earlier, Leah blocks. WRC Subaru debut. Not so good.

Executive Producer Tania: No, I think her day ended when she ended up sideways wedged in between two trees. Oopsies.

Crew Chief Brad: She was just trying to get on the Zach Galifianakis show.

Crew Chief Eric: She’s trying. Poor thing. I mean. I mean, it’s Rally. Shit happens, right? A hundred percent.

I mean, it’s just it. It’s not if, it’s when stuff happens in Rally. Rally is so unpredictable. It’s so risky and dangerous, but to be at the front, you gotta be fast and you gotta be able to push. But yeah, I saw that picture and I was like, Damn girl, like, that sucks. You know, hopefully she dusts herself off and gets back on the horse and keeps at it.

Interesting though, with all the hub [01:30:00] a loop, this is why I bring it up, with Audi, she’s driving a Subaru, she’s not driving an Audi. I don’t get it, I don’t understand, right? That whole thing was really strange, you know, we speculated, talking about ghosts of the past coming back to haunt us, you know, was that a, gotta fulfill the contract, you know, all those legendary Michel Mouton and Lea Block and this and that, Here we go.

She’s driving a Subaru and it’s like, I don’t understand, but maybe it’s not our place to, Oh, and I mentioned virtual stuff earlier, Jimmy Broadbent did a two and a half hour review of test drive silver crown, which I don’t recommend watching the TLDR the too long. Didn’t read is I might still buy it.

Anyways, our motor sports news is brought to us in partnership with the international motor racing research center. The only events left on the schedule for the center are the eighth annual Michael R. Argettsinger Symposium on November the 1st and 2nd at Watkins Glen. Tanya and I will be there. We will be live streaming the event for anybody that wants to really geek out on motor sports history.

Lots of really cool stuff. You can check out the schedule [01:31:00] right now by going to racingarchives. org, click on news and events, Argettsinger Symposium, and you’ll see all the presenters. You’re going to see the project that I helped work on with Professor Summers, the motoring historian. That’s going to be featured in one of the days and then keynote speaker this year, Lynn St.

James come back. So we’re delighted to have her coming on and be able to live stream her keynote. If you want to tune in, you can’t come to the Glenn twitch. tv for slash Crane Touring Motorsports. Follow us now that way you’ll get an alert when we go live and you can just tune in and watch the whole program for two days plus.

And by the way, just so you know, Corvette sweepstakes are back. They are running through next year. You can enter now to win a chance to come home with a 2024 Corvette Z06 with the Z07 package. Details are on racingarchives. org. Click on sweepstakes in the top right corner. If you don’t want the Corvette, that’s fine.

There’s always a cash option, but remember that all the proceeds from the sweepstakes go to benefit the continued operation of the center, which is a 501c3 not for profit organization.

Crew Chief Brad: And as a reminder, you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the Ultimate Reference for [01:32:00] Car Enthusiasts, collectorcarguide.

net.

Executive Producer Tania: We all have the power to spark change, and this October, you can too, by simply getting that old or unwanted vehicle off your hands. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Buffalo, New York, is participating in Cartober, a special event during the month of October to turn your old or unused car, truck, motorcycle, or boat into proceeds that go directly to helping neighbors in need in our community.

The best part? There’s no cost to you. Cars will pick up your vehicle for free and provide you with the paperwork for a tax deduction. You can learn more at svdpwny. org.

Crew Chief Eric: Remember, you can check out all the local happenings, motorsports events ranging from autocross, track days, karting, etc. at club.

gtmotorsports. org forward slash events. We also promote national events on gtmotorsports. org’s calendar as part of our magazine, and we are open to advertising and promoting your events too. So feel free to reach out to us if you got something that you need to get out there and get it featured in our magazine and get it featured on our [01:33:00] website.

And just because it’s the end of October doesn’t mean that the racing season is over. If you want to get out there and turn some GPS unlimited no speed restriction laps out on track with your favorite vehicle in a safe and controlled manner, look no further than HPDJunkie. 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 perfect HBD event for you at hbdjunkie. com. Do

Crew Chief Brad: you love garage sales? Do you need to stock up on equipment for next season? Project Motoring has some clearance items like undergarments and 2024 production belts good for five years and you can check it out at projectmotoring.

com forward slash collections forward slash garage hyphen sale. 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 [01:34:00] 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 400 episodes of BreakFix while you’ve been listening to this episode.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s pause right there for a second. Fo hundred. Fo hundo. Four large. Can you believe that? Pat yourselves on the back. 400 episodes of BreakFix. That’s pretty damn awesome. Good job. Meanwhile, we’ve expanded our catalog as part of

Executive Producer Tania: 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 Thru. And 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 details on all these programs and the services we provide.

Crew Chief Brad: Did you know you can sign up for our Patreon for [01:35:00] free? Lots of great extras and bonuses, even on the free tier. But if you’d like to become a break, fix VIP, jump over to patrion. com slash GT motor sports and learn about our different tiers.

Check out our newsletter, 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. Click the join for free blue button in the middle of the page when you visit patreon.

com slash GT Motorsports. It’s just that simple.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad. And you know, we’re consolidating a lot more things onto our Patreons and we have a goal to exceed triple digits on our Patreon. So if you haven’t gone over there, go over to patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. Click on that blue button.

Just like Brad said, help us get our numbers over a hundred. That way it keeps us motivated to continue to consolidate, do these things, and not fill your inbox with a bunch of newsletters you don’t want to read. You can get those notifications through [01:36:00] Patreon. You can check out special things, extra things, bonus articles, all sorts of really cool stuff that we’re able to offer through that platform that Much more difficult to do in other ways

Executive Producer Tania: and remember for everything we talked about on this episode and more Be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available at gtmotorsports.

org

Crew Chief Brad: And as always we would like to thank our co hosts and executive producer tanya for putting together Yet another amazing episode and 50 of them to boot

Crew Chief Eric: You know tanya’s the only person on the network that doesn’t have her own episode She doesn’t have a road to success episode. She doesn’t have a bio.

We gotta fix this next year We got to fix this now. Yeah, let’s do it. Okay. All right. Buckle down folks. Here it comes.

Executive Producer Tania: Here we go. 30 seconds extra of this episode. We’ll wrap this up.

Crew Chief Eric: I was born, I bought a car and then it died. And

Crew Chief Brad: it’s still been in the shop less times than Eric’s minivan. So thank you, Tonya.[01:37:00]

Great job. And to all the fans, friends, and family who support GTM, including Chrysler and the motoring podcast network without you, none of this would be possible. Oh, true.

Crew Chief Eric: So who wants to reveal first? Oh no, he didn’t. Where’s your unicorn narwhal rainbow outfit.

Crew Chief Brad: I have mine here, but I haven’t put it on yet.

Cause I didn’t have time after bedtime.

Crew Chief Eric: You could just put the top part on, like, just put it over your head.

Crew Chief Brad: I could

Crew Chief Eric: wear it like a cape because nobody can see you from the chin down anyway.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I’m not wearing pants now anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you’re doing the Dan Rather thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, the burgundy.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, my costume’s not

Executive Producer Tania: that impressive, but Hold

Crew Chief Brad: on, let me put mine on.

Crew Chief Eric: Your pants or your costume? He’s going to be so hot.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, not if he does it like you said, like a cape. It’s so hot right now. I’m so Hans, it is so hot right now.

Crew Chief Brad: To your point, it is burning up in this thing. I told you. Already. I’ve had it on for 30 seconds. So hot right now.

[01:38:00] I told you you were gonna sweat in that thing, man.

I

Crew Chief Brad: need to turn, well, let me turn my air on. Wearing it this way, I can’t button it. Your pants are your costume. I told you, no pants.

Crew Chief Eric: Can you tell me

Crew Chief Brad: the

Crew Chief Eric: difference between a unicorn and a narwhal? Yeah, one’s a horse. One swims in

Crew Chief Brad: the sea and one doesn’t exist? One’s a horse. Yeah, one is of the horse variety, the other is of the whale variety.

They are both mammals, though, so you are correct in that sense. I’m a narwhal that looks an awful lot like a unicorn. Well, I’m that bombshell. Dónde están mis pantalones?

There’s a midi

Crew Chief Eric: in me, I wouldn’t scream. Hey, whatcha trying to do,

blind me? Life says maybe we should[01:39:00]

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 today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be [01:40:00] 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
• 00:32 Halloween Theme and Episode Start
• 00:55 Costume Reveal and Banter
• 03:49 Stellantis Restructuring and Industry Changes
• 07:01 Pacifica Saga and Car Reliability
• 12:11 California Speed Limit Law
• 19:00 Nissan’s New Driving Assist Feature
• 24:23 DC’s Traffic Enforcement Issues
• 31:44 Hoonigan’s Bankruptcy and Industry Impact
• 35:18 The Evolution of Sim Racing Gear
• 37:34 Formula One Drama: Verstappen and Ricciardo
• 39:31 Toyota’s Return to Formula One
• 43:51 Tesla’s Delays and Controversies
• 46:22 Whistlin Diesel’s Cybertruck Test
• 01:02:04 Porsche’s New Engine Innovation
• 01:03:28 Honda’s New Prelude: A Controversial Comeback
• 01:04:57 Toyota’s GR Corolla in TC America Series
• 01:07:17 The New Hyundai Santa Fe: A Design Disaster?
• 01:08:16 Hyundai’s Turbo Evolution
• 01:09:07 Rivian’s Halloween Software Update
• 01:10:43 Emily in Paris: Renault’s Retro Revival
• 01:13:49 CNC Motorsport’s Sierra RS500: A Tribute to the 80s
• 01:15:53 Tesla’s Insurance Dilemma
• 01:18:40 Fisker’s Abandoned Headquarters
• 01:20:11 Hollywood Stars in Racing
• 01:27:45 IndyCar’s New Street Course
• 01:30:37 Motorsports News and Events
• 01:34:06 Celebrating 400 Episodes of BreakFix