B/F: The Drive Thru #56

• Banning hybrids from 2030 would have been 'too soon', says PM
• Hyundai Gets It: Buttons Are Safer than Screens

• ‘Absolutely insane’: Disbelief as urgent toilet trip costs F1 star Carlos Sainz $36,000
• Audi Makes its Position Clear on Potential F1 V10 Engine Pivot

• Honda, Acura Accused of ‘Start-Stop Engine Failure’ Affecting up to 2.2 Million Vehicles
• Nissan Z Smokes Toyota Supra, Sells Five Times More In Q1
• A 400-HP Nissan Z Now Costs Less Than a Mazda MX-5 Miata
• Subaru's STI Plans Ditch Gas Engines Altogether
• 2026 Genesis GV60 Magma Is a Red-Hot Electric SUV Worth Waiting For

• Projekt964 sells for $130,000 to Kansas City Region member!
• How we sold Projekt964 for $130k | To Consign, or NOT to Consign

• Mercedes to launch by-wire steering and yoke wheel in 2026
• Mini Changes Course, Won't Abandon Gas Engines

• Swearing Is Back As WRC Drivers Reach Compromise With FIA
• McLaren Is Making a Grand Return to This Prestigious Race

• Auto Industry Warns Trump He’s Risking Layoffs And Bankruptcies With Tariffs

• Dodge Desperate To Sell Charger Daytona EVs, Prays Huge Discounts Will Lure Buyers

• Tesla Announces It Will Sell a Basic, Entry-Level EV That Costs Less

• Volkswagen to introduce 'import fee' on tariff-hit cars, WSJ reports
• Lamborghini boss on US trade tariffs: ‘We are working on different scenarios’

Executive Producer Tania: [00:00:00] The drive-through is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by organizations like Collector Car guide.net Project, motoring Garage Style Magazine, the Exotic Car Marketplace, and many others. If you’re 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 Motor Sports, our podcast Break Fix, and all the other services we provide.

Crew Chief Eric: Hi, oh, he’s got his deep voice on today.

Crew Chief Brad: Hello.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, Brad, kick us off and

Crew Chief Brad: welcome to Drive-through episode number 56. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive motorsport and entertaining car adjacent news. Now let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know if this is gonna be entertaining or not.

We have such a somber topic to talk about, but it is at the top of [00:01:00] everybody’s mind. Is it top of mind?

Crew Chief Brad: Somebody’s entertained by this.

Crew Chief Eric: What could it be? I don’t know anybody that isn’t affected by this,

Crew Chief Brad: so, so what Now

Crew Chief Eric: we’re gonna talk about tariffs.

Crew Chief Brad: Tariff play.

Crew Chief Eric: More specifically, the trouble with tariffs.

The trouble they’re causing us. Isn’t there a song The Trouble Gets Me Down or something? I thought it was Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

Executive Producer Tania: No, there’s that, but there’s another one.

Crew Chief Brad: The wheels on the bus go round and round, round

Crew Chief Eric: and round and round and round. I mean, if you listen to Clarkson, what is that song?

The Thrill is Gone. Right? He keeps saying he’s so done with cars and he is done with cars and he’s done with cars.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s been saying that for how many seasons now.

Crew Chief Eric: I know, but there is a resurgence coming, right? I hear the. Hammond and May are getting back together to do some stuff. Oh yeah. It already premiered.

Oh, excellent. Well, we’ll talk about that next month because this time we’re gonna talk about other buffoons and clowns.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve been directly affected by the tariffs and duties [00:02:00] basically on Canada. I bought a pair of sweatpants from a company in Canada. I didn’t realize they were in Canada, and they shipped them to me and they arrived.

But UPS would not give them to me unless I paid $70 in duty tax.

Executive Producer Tania: Holy crap.

Crew Chief Brad: So I said, you can go pound sand and you can leave and go and take them and send them back to Canada. ’cause I, I don’t fucking want ’em. I’m not paying more than I paid for the pants in duties. Uh, and then I immediately got on the chat with the company because they don’t have a, a telephone.

They said, oh no, no, no. You’re not supposed to pay those. You know, I’m glad you didn’t. You know they’re gonna send the pants back to us if you still want them. We’ll send ’em back out, whatever they receive the pants. They allegedly paid the duties. They sent them back to me. I proceed to get a bill from UPS for $70 after I received the pants and it was you mother farmers.

I got back on the horn with the company and I said, Hey, what’s going on here? [00:03:00] They said, oh, send us the bill, we’ll pay it. And then they did. They honored it. You know, they, they told me they were gonna pay it and they paid it. You

Crew Chief Eric: were the last person they honored it for though.

Crew Chief Brad: Probably. And I will not buy anything from them for the next four years because until all this crap is fixed.

Crew Chief Eric: Let me ask you, was that a direct purchase with a Canadian company or did you go through like Amazon or one of the other online?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh no, it was direct through their website.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. ’cause I was getting a little skid, you know, how I would order stuff from Amazon and don’t think about it. We don’t really know where it’s coming from.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: man. With the amount of brown boxes that show up on people’s porches, can you imagine the bills? Woo.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. You know, this came directly. I, I purchased it directly through their website. It was not Amazon or anything.

Executive Producer Tania: Everything you order on Amazon comes from China. So what are people’s bills looking

Crew Chief Eric: like with 145?

Well, I did notice some things on Amazon where it was like, I’ve ordered this before and now it’s $200. Like, what happened? How is that even possible? Right. And I, and I go, oh yeah, tariff. I thought you were gonna tell me ’cause it was coming from [00:04:00] Canada. What they were doing was shipping your sweatpants inside of a Chrysler Pacifica.

Like that was the box. And then now you were stuck having to pay for a $45,000 van.

Crew Chief Brad: No, no, no. What they did is they shipped the material. So they just shipped the yarn and a needle and thread. And I had to, I had to create my own sweatpants, but they gave me just enough material to make them to what I had ordered.

So that’s

Crew Chief Eric: unreal. So I thought we could get away from it. I thought we could avoid talking about it, but this is all the news has been since April the third is tariffs. Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. And obviously the automotive market is gonna be at the middle of that because are there any cars actually built in the United States anymore or are there parts built in the United States anymore?

Right. And so this causes a huge, huge problems for those that are not up to speed. Let’s do everything and get you up to speed. On tariffs. That’s a six letter word.

Crew Chief Brad: They must be driving Dodge Darts.

Crew Chief Eric: No, there’s plenty of old Dodge Darts left to go around ‘

Crew Chief Brad: cause they’re not up to speed. [00:05:00] Uh uh uh uh.

Crew Chief Eric: So if you missed Liberation Day, our president unveiled a sweeping 25% tariff on any car or part that isn’t made in the United States regardless of its origin.

So obviously this sense ripples through our community and many of the other communities as well. And so the first knee-jerk response to this was a bunch of letters to the government, please. Please don’t do this to us, right,

Lisa?

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t want some more. Do people actually read these letters that companies send?

I mean, it’s wonderful if you get a letter from Stellantis on Stellantis letterhead.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s something that, uh, that an intern wrote.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. With chat, GPT, another intern read it and then filed it into circular repository. I mean, come on.

Crew Chief Brad: Sounds like this is just kind of payback for the automotive bailout that happened years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: I hadn’t thought about that. But this is across the board. Remember, the tariffs are on everything, not just cars. So we’re being very hypersensitive here. But with good [00:06:00] reason.

Executive Producer Tania: And you know, they should get very exact with words because words matter. And words matter only if you read them, legally speaking words matter very strongly.

And to say anything is made in America in terms of cars is wildly inaccurate because there’s no car that’s made in America. ’cause made in would presume that a hundred percent of the item is made in that country in which that is false. Nothing is made in the USA in terms of the cars. A hundred percent.

Not even the Grand Tesla who claims that he is, that’s not even a hundred percent made in America. They are assembled in America. Right. And therefore there are parts from other countries, which means. Your car price. Even an American car is going to go up because it’s made of components that are going to be tariffed.

Crew Chief Eric: But if you proclaim eminent domain on our north and southern neighbors, then it’s America, right? Because Chryslers are being built in Canada and Fords are being built in Mexico. So it’s just an annexation of all of the continent that way. It’s made in America. You see it’s made in [00:07:00] North America.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, there you go.

There could be a legal loophole there.

Crew Chief Brad: Does it have to be made in the United States? Because even South America is an America. It’s not America, but it’s an America.

Crew Chief Eric: You gotta have the right, the proper inflection on that. America,

Crew Chief Brad: you, you gotta get the Bama in there, the America,

Crew Chief Eric: all that to say there are. Plant closures, there are layoffs. There are cars sitting at rail stations, at border crossings, at shipping depots.

Everything’s frozen. There are countless car manufacturers that have said, all right, America, let’s see how this plays out. Audi’s not bringing cars. Volkswagen stopped. Jaguar, you name it, no cars are moving. But

Executive Producer Tania: then at the same time. You hear the reports of people like sales are climbing ’cause everyone’s scrambling.

’cause they did delay the tariffs on automotive. Everyone’s like scrambling to buy a new car [00:08:00] before it costs more.

Crew Chief Brad: I feel like that’s a marketing tactic too.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly.

Crew Chief Brad: Stores closing soon. This is the last

Executive Producer Tania: one. This is the last one we have. There’s a guys about to buy it, you know he is right in the back room.

Crew Chief Eric: I just got a call 20 minutes ago. They’re on their way to see it. Right. Gimme a break.

Crew Chief Brad: We’ll never have another 2016 Dodge Dart.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s right. And that’s like the furniture store here in town that’s been closing for the last five years. It’s constantly a liquidation sale. I’m like. Just go outta business already.

Nobody wants your furniture.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s like KISS has been on their, oh my God. Farewell tour for the last 25 years. 25 years. I thought it was like 45 years at this point. Yeah, yeah. They started on their farewell tour and it’s just, it’s perpetually going.

Crew Chief Eric: And right along with this, I heard a good one the other day.

We had a meeting and one of the guys was saying that he was shopping for a new car. And I’m thinking to myself, man, this has gotta be the worst time to be buying a new car. And it’s the typical new dad, new kid, gotta buy the big vehicle. Gotta be safe. You know, the whole excuses that we make for buying like a suburban or an expedition or whatever, [00:09:00] the biggest land yacht we can find.

And I was like, okay, fine. I’m just going along with this story. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get to the point. Much like everybody’s saying right now, you won’t believe this. And he goes, I used to sell cars when I was younger, you know, he was getting, you know, into a sales position. And he goes, I know all the tricks to Tanya’s point.

You know, I got a guy outta the line and they’re coming later and blah, blah, blah, this bullshit. And he goes, what I wasn’t ready for was. What the dealer was doing to the destination fees and the markups. They were marking up cars that are sitting on the lot. Hell, hell yeah. As tariff vehicles. Hell yeah.

He told the guy straight up, this car is here. It was built a year ago. Hell yeah. How can you hit me with tariffs? It’s like, makes no sense. So the dealerships have already started this. Gaming of the system and gouging of the consumer. And I’m like, unless you need a car right now,

Crew Chief Brad: don’t buy one. I don’t believe that the dealerships are such standup guys.

I am throwing a red flag [00:10:00] on the play that I can’t, I don’t believe it

Executive Producer Tania: inconceivable.

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve never met a dealer that was not just a, a standup citizen. I bet you Chuck La Duck’s not doing that.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, really? Well, let me read you this headline for the Wall Street Journal, Volkswagen to introduce. Import fees on tariff hit cars?

Executive Producer Tania: No, actually I think they are being standup in that case. ’cause they’re literally calling out the line item. That’s the tariff portion of the cost of their car and they’re going import fee. Boom. Here’s what it is, people black and white. This is why the car costs more this line.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s not the $1,500 destination charge.

If you’re buying a car that was built in Detroit and you know you’re in Detroit, it’s, it’s not the $1,500 destination you’re

Executive Producer Tania: assembled in Detroit. Yeah, yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Imported from Detroit. Isn’t that what Chrysler was marketing, you know, years ago.

Crew Chief Eric: I really love the tagline here from Volkswagen of America. We want to be very transparent about navigating through this time of uncertainty.

We wanna be very transparent that we’re gouging you every time you buy a car. So we’re gonna add more fees on top of the [00:11:00] tariffs, on top of our already bogus fees. To Brad’s point that we put on these cars,

Executive Producer Tania: the way I interpreted the article is that the import fee is the tariff. So import fee on tariff hit cars.

’cause Volkswagen does have a plant in the United States. So they can sell you a car that was assembled in the United States that shouldn’t be subject to that tariff.

Crew Chief Eric: Which car is that? Because they stopped making the rental Passat two years ago. So what are they building here in the United States? The plant’s still open in Tennessee.

Yeah, the door’s open and closed. But what’s coming out of them?

Executive Producer Tania: I wheels couldn’t tell you ’cause I haven’t looked. I don’t know, honestly, I can’t tell you what any plant. I didn’t know that the Chrysler Pacifica wasn’t made in the United States. It was made in Canada.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I think the Silverados are made in Canada.

I don’t think the Silverados and like the Yeah, I read that too. The Sierras are made here, so I mean that’s gonna drive their prices up. And like Eric was saying, what is the, the F-150 Maiden

Crew Chief Eric: Mexico. Mexico. A lot of this Mexico stuff comes from Mexico. Mexico, yeah. Mexico in In

Crew Chief Brad: Mexico.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, if it’s Baja California, does it count?

Crew Chief Eric: That’s still [00:12:00] America

Executive Producer Tania: according to the interwebs. All knowing this, the Atlas Atlas cross sport in the ID four. Supposed to be made there, assembled there.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Sure.

Crew Chief Brad: And, and in Chattahoochee

Crew Chief Eric: Chattahoochee. So speaking of Volkswagen, we’ll continue this Winkleman. The CEO of Lamborghini is gonna solve all the problems.

He has a plan. They’re working on different scenarios. They’re gonna figure out a way to continue to cater to their best market, the United States, selling Lamborghinis, because that’s what people are doing right now. We’re on the brink of a recession, quasi depression. We’re gonna all run out, buy Lamborghinis.

That’s what’s important.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, when we all start our OnlyFans and YouTube careers, we’re gonna have, we’re gonna be flush with cash and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna buy all these, whatever the SUV is, the Uranus, the Uras, sorry, the, the Uras. ’cause that’s all those kids buy is that stupid thing.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re talking about sticker price increases of three grand to 12 grand, depending on the model. But when you’re paying a quarter million dollars for a [00:13:00] car, if you’re in that tax bracket, who cares? What do you care about? Three grand. You don’t, and since we’re still talking about Volkswagen and Porsche stuff, I was talking to Tanya earlier.

Do you know what the cost of the base model nine 11 is right now? Brad, have you ever looked this up?

Crew Chief Brad: Like 125? 130 grand, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s in

Crew Chief Eric: insane. Insane.

Crew Chief Brad: When we were growing up, like in the nineties with the 9, 9 6, it was like 65 grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And we were like, oh my God, that’s so expensive.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I used to play on their website all day long and build all these custom builds and everything.

It was like 65 70 grand for a brand new nine 11, and now it’s almost double that

Crew Chief Eric: for a base model. The turbos and the GT threes, they’re all 200 to two 50. It’s just absolutely insane. So again, if you’re in that tax bracket, you can afford those kinds of cars, the Bentleys and all that other stuff. Then with all the financing and everything in play, does it really matter Where it hurts?

Is the average consumer. Right now, as we’ve been saying, what do you buy for $50,000? You know, I [00:14:00] jumped over to Honda’s website just to see if their prices had gone up and you know, you can still buy a Civic for 24 grand. That’s the base model. And the touring is in the thirties, so it’s like, okay, nothing’s changed there yet.

I’m just looking at their website, which they don’t have to update that anytime soon. So when you go to the dealership, there might be a little sticker shock there.

Crew Chief Brad: Hyundai’s next.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. We’re solving the world’s problems here. Right? So Hyundai has said they’re not gonna raise their prices. They’re just gonna take away everything else.

If you bought a Hyundai because of its stellar maintenance package and you know, free this and free that, and all those wonderful things, they still have a really good warranty. Although I fear that that’s gonna be subject to change. The CEO Jose Munoz has said they’re taking away the free maintenance and all the other stuff that you get as a perk for owning a Hyundai or a Kia or a Genesis or any of those cars that are in that family.

So they’re not gonna raise the prices, but now your oil change is $900.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, ’cause they have to import the oil,

Crew Chief Eric: you [00:15:00] know, and that brings up a really good point. What is oil and gas gonna cost? Because that’s not made in the United States either.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s too complicated. If anybody would know, it would be Tanya.

I would love a lesson on this that someone who worked for previously, a petroleum company, big oil, she worked in big oil

Crew Chief Eric: sounds, so Texas. Big

Crew Chief Brad: Earl. She was t, she was a Texas girl.

Crew Chief Eric: Big daddy runs big oil. Big earl,

Crew Chief Brad: big Earl’s, big oil.

Crew Chief Eric: She’s like, Nope, I ain’t giving you that satisfaction.

Crew Chief Brad: She’s, I am not taking that bait.

My soapbox has been put away.

Crew Chief Eric: I gotta get to bed tonight. Alright, so. There’s still EV mandates out there, which are in the middle of all this, and where the EV batteries and all that wonderful unicorn fart power that we’re getting coming from. We’re not strip mining. Well, we are, but we’re not strip mining the United States for all the precious metals.

We’re gonna go plunder other countries for [00:16:00] that kind of stuff. In the midst of all this, remember even hybrids were supposed to be banned in like the next five years because the evil ice motors. So now they’re like, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Wait a second. Can we get away with smaller batteries and like spread the love and maybe do some hybridization of vehicles now?

So they’ve said 2035, which I think this is gonna continue to walk backwards as we’ve talked about in the past where hybrid really was the answer. And we’re gonna talk as we go along here a little bit more about manufacturers that have said, yeah, we’re just gonna go back to what we were building before.

Have a nice day guys. Let us know when you’re done playing the hokey pokey

Crew Chief Brad: and make sure you say that this is in the uk. I mean, this wasn’t I, I don’t think eliminating hybrids by whatever time period was something in the us was it?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it wasn’t until we stopped participating in whatever it was, the Paris Accord and all that other stuff.

Weren’t we subject to the same rules as everybody else?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I don’t think so.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t remember hybrids being on the chopping block.

Crew Chief Brad: Not in this country.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, diesel certainly [00:17:00] were. To add more pain and misery to the conversation. Do you know what the average car cost is right now? It has jumped dramatically, and I mean, we’ve talked about in previous episodes the under 50 K millennial gray car.

That’s not even doable right now. The average cost of a car is $48,000, starting price with 20% a PR on top of that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Would you take out an 84 month loan at 20%?

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Crew Chief Eric: no. Let’s do the rough math. $48,000 car plus, let’s use Volkswagen’s terms import fees, and then 20% a PR for seven years. How much is that?

You know, let’s say Ford Mach E gonna cost at the end of a hundred grand, right?

Crew Chief Brad: A lot of money,

Crew Chief Eric: right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. Yes. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: what I, I keep saying, if you don’t have to buy a new car right now, if you absolutely don’t have to. Don’t do

Executive Producer Tania: it. The only reason you’d have to buy a new car is your car is totaled because, just because it [00:18:00] needs some routine maintenance.

Oh, the shocks, the bang, the bank fix it. ’cause it’s going to be cheaper even if you can’t do the work yourself to pay a couple grand at the mechanic to fix it versus going out and spending $80,000 on something else. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: but you don’t even need a new car. Like

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but the used car market, it’s gonna become like the Covid.

I know what I got 75,000 for this 200,000 mile rust clunker.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s true. But it’s still, it’s still not gonna be a brand new, I mean, it’s still not a, a new car, I guess it’s who do you want to give your money to? Cecil b Beauford or, you know, uncle Sam,

Crew Chief Eric: they’re gonna get it one way or the other. That’s the problem.

It doesn’t matter which way you turn around.

Crew Chief Brad: No. You know who’s gonna get it. We’re all gonna get it as we’re bent over the, the steering wheel of our brand new car.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God. Things are out of control. On every tangent of this conversation, there is no good solution. Jalopnik wrote an [00:19:00] article that was titled What? Foreign Cars will Still Be Worth It after the Tariff Price Hikes. A lot of them. Well, that’s if you’re okay with today’s design language aesthetic, the fact that there’s no buttons in any cars anymore, all that kind of stuff.

Here’s the

Executive Producer Tania: thing. Board website, I don’t want anything on your website. The only thing that would be attractive is the Mustang.

Crew Chief Eric: So you bring up a very, very valid point because I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit,

Executive Producer Tania: and I’m sorry. Before you get to that Thought Chevy’s website, I’ll be god damned. I’m buying a Malibu.

I’m gonna buy that tariff European car.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, here we go again. Oh, those cars are terrible. So I did, I gave it a lot of thought. If I was forced to buy something and I’m not talking about for the family or whatever, if, if it was just me going to work and I have to buy a car new and I have no other option, I don’t have the money to buy used, I can finance it.

Get away with it. I actually kept landing on the Mustang. It just made sense. It was like, get it with a manual if you [00:20:00] want. Yeah, the V eight or the four cylinder, you got some options there. The warranty, the dealership network, blah, blah, blah. Technically made in us.

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve got everyone’s page open at the moment.

Chevy Garbage. The Malibu, I’m sorry. No, the Equinox, the Blazer, the Silverado. None of this Buick. No. I mean there was never anything interesting there, so no. Well,

Crew Chief Eric: Buick’s gonna be in trouble here because we export a lot of Buick to China. So how’s that gonna work?

Executive Producer Tania: They’re gonna say BYD. Bye.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s very true.

Executive Producer Tania: So it would come down to probably Cadillac getting something like a, do they even still make a Black Hawk ct? Whatever

Crew Chief Brad: they make the CT vibe. Black wing, black Wing. They are. Phenomenal cars.

Executive Producer Tania: So it would probably come down to a Cadillac or a Mustang, and then I’d probably have to choose if I was forced to buy a American car, probably end up with a Mustang.

I mean the Corvette, I don’t know. [00:21:00] I’ve never been enamored by them.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. You wouldn’t buy the new two door Dodge Charger that supposedly has been on sale and is an EV now.

Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: I forgot about Dodge. See, I forgot about Dodge. Everybody forgot about Dodge because when they closed up their doors and said, no more hemis, oh, the party’s over kids.

Time to go home. We all said, bye Dodge. Bye-bye. See ya. Nobody’s building muscle cars anymore. Who’s paying attention to Dodge? Right? What else do they have? The

Pacific Up. I think I the Mustang? Well, I’d have to test drive it. As an ev. You’d want it as an ev. Is that the only thing, the only way to make, that’s the only option

Executive Producer Tania: you have?

Oh, well then, no, then I’m getting a Mustang. I mean, the only other thing would be a Jeep Renegade. Maybe just ’cause I like it. ’cause it’s like a, the panda, if they still make that. They stopped selling it, right? Yep. So there you go. So that’s out. So I’m back to a Mustang.

Crew Chief Eric: I do have an option for you though.

This is right on the heels of an upcoming, what should I buy? Episode that we did. Did you know [00:22:00] that classic cars are exempt from the import tariff?

Executive Producer Tania: Wait a second. It’s a whole new way.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. There’s a catch though, which we addressed in our, what should I buy Episode And that is. It must be 25 years old, so you have to be happy.

That’s fine. Importing an old car,

Executive Producer Tania: I’m okay with that.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m okay with that too.

Crew Chief Brad: Which is going to drive up the gray market car prices

Executive Producer Tania: because a 25-year-old car is a

Crew Chief Eric: 2000 car. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You got it. And that’s what we talked about on the, what should I buy episode, when you jump back into it is what can you buy from like 98, 99, 2000 in that range?

What would you import? Now we went a little crazy because you know Ah, we’ll get a TVR. We’ll get this, we’ll get that

Crew Chief Brad: Ford Mano.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, Ford mano. But there’s actually some solid choices in there, and this actually stems from a previous drive through episode that we did where James Humphrey. From speed or whatever it’s called now was talking about those 25-year-old cars.

So it’s still an option. And they are only subject to a 2.5% duty like they’ve always been. [00:23:00] So it’s actually a pretty good deal. You could import just about anything.

Executive Producer Tania: Well,

Crew Chief Eric: they’re exempt for now. I mean, how do you tax something from the eighties though? Like you wanna bring in an old Toyota Truo or something like you gonna tax it 25%.

Why? They can do whatever they want. It’s a known entity. It’s like buying rust.

Crew Chief Brad: Doesn’t matter.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t matter.

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya’s. Right. If they want to tax the air that we breathe, they will do it.

Crew Chief Eric: They’ll figure out a way.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Maryland taxes, your rainwater.

Crew Chief Eric: They used to,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: they did away with that. Thank goodness. But that being said, there’s lots and lots of options in that year 2000 that we can start to look at and investigate if you’re really desperate for a car, or at least you wanna continue collecting cars, right?

If that’s still your hobby and your thing.

Crew Chief Brad: But, but the, the car. Is not subject to the tariffs, but the replacement parts that you need to import when you

mm-hmm. When you

Crew Chief Brad: buy the car, you’re not gonna be able to put an AC Delco starter from Advanced Auto [00:24:00] on your newly imported Toyota. I sure will.

Crew Chief Eric: You know why?

’cause I’m a LS swap it with an American made V eight mo.

Crew Chief Brad: Now you’re speaking my language.

Crew Chief Eric: Now all the parts come from Advanced Auto. Yes. Love it. So that I guess sort of wraps up our tariff discussion. Tariffs are terrible. I hope they go away quickly. I think there’s been some backpedaling as of late the last couple weeks.

So this is a constant state of flux. I can only hope that this goes back to normal, not just for the automotive industry, but for everybody in general because. It’s gonna get nuts for computers and electronics and appliances and shoes. Clothing sweatpants. Well sweatpants. Yeah, absolutely. I can’t believe they charge you 70 bucks.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I was dumbfounded. I told the UPS guy, just get off my property.

Crew Chief Eric: Get off my lawn. Switching gears. As we wrap out our showcase on tariffs here, we returned to Lower Saxony. I know we said we weren’t gonna do this because we pretty much covered everything that there was to cover in boring [00:25:00] Mercedes and BMW News, but I found something that I just couldn’t pass up.

Headline reads, Mercedes to launch by wire. I’m gonna say that again. Buy wire steering and yoke wheel for 2026. Why are we doing yoke wheels again? ’cause a, a Yoel thought it was a good idea on another vehicle

Crew Chief Brad: because people want to feel like they’re a pilot. Well, and and when they introduce the self-driving, you’re not even gonna be touching it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

It’s less material. It’s smaller. It’s less to make and they can charge more for it.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. And it looks so futuristic.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it looks like hot garbage.

Crew Chief Eric: That looks uncomfortable. It looks. Dumb. How do you rest your wrist on it and like gangster road. Oh, they’ll find a way. They’ll find a way.

Crew Chief Brad: You just grab the turn signal stock.

Crew Chief Eric: It doesn’t have them.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, this is a Mercedes. It does. The BMWs don’t.

Crew Chief Eric: No, that’s the shifter up there.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s the shifter. I don’t think so. Yeah, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. Zoom in. It has numbers on it. It says D one something. [00:26:00]

Crew Chief Brad: It is not D one.

Crew Chief Eric: Ugh. This is terrible. I hope that new cars will not pick up this trend. Much like I’m very tired of the slab sided, no flares.

Everything looks like it was cut with, you know, a joint compound putty knife. I’m so done with all this stuff. Can we just have cars that are normal again?

Crew Chief Brad: No.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of not normal. Let’s talk about domestics. Have you seen the concept of the C nine Corvette?

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, no. No. I have not seen the concept. What do we think?

I need some context. Who is the source? The

Crew Chief Eric: source is car

Crew Chief Brad: scoops. No, no, no. Well, where did, where does their source?

Crew Chief Eric: This is a concept. What am I supposed to, so imagine this. Picture it 2020 something, the year 2057 uhhuh. Right, right, right. This is the replacement for the current C eight. This is the next generation Corvette.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t really like the current generation that much. I’ve gotten used to seeing them. They don’t feel as Corvette [00:27:00] as other Corvettes do. This is even less Corvette. This reminds me of the peo uh, the Axia, the l and p car or

Crew Chief Eric: whatever. It’s Oh, yeah, yeah. Who would drive this every day? Who is this designed for?

It looks like a fighter jet, which is in some respects Cool. I mean, if it was all

Executive Producer Tania: black, I guess it could

Crew Chief Eric: be a

Executive Producer Tania: Batmobile.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So it it, it reminds me of the Aston Martin Valery.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A

Crew Chief Brad: little bit. Which is practically an LMP two car

Crew Chief Eric: Goldings is a bad idea.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Well, I don’t, I don’t know. I uh, obviously this is not what it’s gonna look like, but I can guarantee some of the styling cues from this are gonna be used in

Crew Chief Eric: the next one.

That’s usually what they do. They’ll do something crazy like this and then they come up with the next design as a result of it. Maybe some foreshadowing of what the C nine could look like, but okay, let’s say they went full court press and this is what they built. Then this now takes you into that stratosphere of like Lamborghini and Bugatti, where Corvette is [00:28:00] no longer for the everyday sports car enthusiast.

This is now a hyper car. In that new class that’s supposed to be coming to endurance racing, right? Is that what they’re building this for? Again, to your point, Brad, what’s the source? What’s the audience? What’s the point? I don’t get it and I don’t know that I dislike it.

Executive Producer Tania: This is not a car you’re gonna drive to work and then stop at the grocery store in,

Crew Chief Eric: and you do that with

Executive Producer Tania: a

Crew Chief Eric: C

Executive Producer Tania: eight.

Well, the guy today was, I guess

Crew Chief Brad: we should ask someone that we know that owned a C eight in Mr. Bank.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh yeah. Yeah. But

Crew Chief Brad: he takes his viper to the grocery store. So

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, the reality is this will never be made. Whatever the next Corvette is, won’t look like this.

Crew Chief Eric: The one thing I gotta hand this design is at least it doesn’t look like a Camaro was involved in a rear end collision.

At least they figured out how to make the back end of it look halfway decent. These seats don’t look comfortable. None of it looks comfortable.

Crew Chief Brad: None of it is that steering, whatever it is,

Crew Chief Eric: yolk. It’s a yolk. Don’t call it a steering wheel. It’s a yolk. It is circularish [00:29:00] if you curve a rectangle. Sure. Yes.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s basically what it is. It’s a curved rectangle

Crew Chief Eric: switch to Asian domestic news. Honda’s got a recall out and the headline reads, Honda in Acura are accused of start, stop engine failures affecting up to 2.2 million vehicles.

Executive Producer Tania: And

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, this ends in a class action lawsuit. That’s the and

Executive Producer Tania: and,

Crew Chief Eric: but basically it sounds like Honda’s going through motors, like people go through chewing gum, which is sad because Honda’s always known for its.

Quote unquote reliability and you know, engines that run forever and never need their oil changed and never need any maintenance and all that kind of stuff. But this is not good. I’ve always said that start, stop technology as much as people claim that it saves. This is, again, the argument of it was a cool experiment.

Just put a hybrid in it and call it a day instead of all this start, stop nonsense that isn’t really doing any good for anybody.

Crew Chief Brad: Has Honda thought about just replacing the starter motor

Crew Chief Eric: with what?

Crew Chief Brad: With a new starter motor? Is that why it’s, I mean, and start stop technology? I would think that [00:30:00] that’s probably getting overworked and it’s probably prematurely failing.

Yeah, so that’s probably what these cars need is just a new starter.

Crew Chief Eric: Something like a Tilton racing quality, high output starter instead of, you know, whatever they’ve been using on the Civic since 1976. I don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know.

Crew Chief Eric: Changing gears and talking about one of the marketing geniuses of the Asian domestic world.

Didn’t we talk about this already? We talked about it on Discord. Oh, is that why? ’cause I’m like, I remember having this conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And that conversation revolves around the Nissan Z selling five times more than the Toyota Supra in the first quarter of 2025.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s also newer.

Crew Chief Eric: The SRAs on its way out.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: The Zs have been sitting on lots. Not moving. It’s sort of stupid. Toyota’s ramping down production of the Supra. So like, what is this comparison?

Executive Producer Tania: They still have a model year for this year, so

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, but production is ramping down, you know what I mean? I

Executive Producer Tania: don’t think it’s ever been a high

Crew Chief Eric: volume car.

Anyway, they also changed the front end of the Z. Did you notice [00:31:00] now it has two grills in the front instead of the one big blocky one that nobody liked?

Crew Chief Brad: I did not.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t even remember what it looked like.

Crew Chief Eric: It had this big square single grill. It was like open mouth fish. Like a carp? Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: a magic hop, cob

cob.

Crew Chief Eric: Pretty much. So now they did this split grill in the front. I think it looks better. Not a hundred percent. I’m not sold on it yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, I see. Now what it, what it used to look like. Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. If you look at the next picture,

Crew Chief Brad: yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Then you see exactly what it looked like. So part of this could also be, because as I said before, first of all, the Nissan was a good deal when they introduced it and people just didn’t buy them.

And then they started fire sailing them, and they said that the current bonuses and incentives on the Z make it as cheap as a Miata. So if you had to choose between a Miata and a Z, what are you gonna buy? I don’t even know how much Miata

costs too much. I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: buying the Z.

Yeah, buying the one with more power.

To put in perspective, the price is 44,000. Well, hold on. They’re [00:32:00] saying 44,000 is less than the price of a Miata.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s before the incentives. That’s the starting price is 44 grand. So if you knock off. And you’re down to 40, which there’s as much as a $4,000 rebate on the Z. That’s what they’re saying that the Miata costs.

We can verify that. Let’s fact check that quick. I

Executive Producer Tania: am fact checking it. And the MX 5 20 25 MX five starts at 29,530.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you get wheels? Do you get a motor? Do you get anything? Does it have electronics? You get

Crew Chief Brad: a yolk

Executive Producer Tania: as shown whatever one they’ve got. Pictured here is 33.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, I don’t trust articles that come from the drive.

We’ve pointed this out before.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: I

Executive Producer Tania: thought

Crew Chief Eric: you were gonna say, I don’t trust, like I’m on Mazda’s website, so I think I can trust it. Sometimes the sources of stuff that we get, I’m like, what?

Oh,

Crew Chief Eric: I was gonna try and build

Executive Producer Tania: one and it gave

Crew Chief Eric: me an, oh, here we go. It says here, according to their facts. They’re true facts that they have here.

The Mazda Miata MX five grand Touring with an automatic is 36,935, and the gap widens when you pick the special edition Miata, which is [00:33:00] 37. And then the RF Club, which is that fixed roof thing that they have, brings it up to 42. So with incentives, this is where they’re playing the game with incentives than the Z is cheaper than the top model.

Miata not the base model yet, so you can never compare.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, the base, it’s cheaper than. A version of the Miata.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s cheaper than the track prepped ready Miata. Do you know what? They’re both cheaper than than the nine 11 GT three Rs Whoopy. Do. Like, who cares? The the bigger point is that the Z has been a good deal since day one.

If you want a grand tour with 400 horsepower that isn’t a V eight and is something different that you can take to your local cars and coffee, ’cause you’re not gonna see another one, the Z is a goodbye. And if you can afford going to the track anymore, which those prices have gotten, maybe there’s tariffs on track days.

Now. I, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Brad: The asphalt is imported.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, is that what it is? Yeah. There we go. So if you can afford to do that as well, you’ve got this sort of every person, every event type of [00:34:00] car. And to me that’s the second car in the lineup. After the Mustang,

Executive Producer Tania: you have to buy American, so it’s not in your lineup,

Crew Chief Eric: but the Z is the next one in line.

If we remove the shroud of everything else we talked about, it would be a hard toss up between the Mustang and the Z at the end of the day.

Crew Chief Brad: As someone who is without a fun car for a little while. I can look here and let’s see. The Z, they sold 20. Okay, so when did it come out? I’m trying to think of how many are gonna be available in the used car market in about four or five years.

Came met a couple of years ago. There’ll probably be a decent amount of them.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, the ones they’re selling now are like Dodge Darts. They’re gonna keep selling the 2020s through 2030 because they haven’t. Fantastic. I’ll be

Crew Chief Brad: able to get a brand new one. There

Crew Chief Eric: you go. It’ll be 170,000

Crew Chief Brad: for 25% auto loan for 15 years.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t forget, there’ll be a tariffs on that.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s true. I’ll, I’ll take it on

Crew Chief Eric: 15 year mortgage. Well, we’ve talked about this before, Tanya. This is a de doe moment for you. Right.

Executive Producer Tania: God. Thank God manufacturers specifically. Hyundai is gonna go [00:35:00] back to buttons in the car versus touchscreen. ’cause it’s safer.

No shit.

Crew Chief Brad: But the buttons aren’t gonna be free. You’re gonna have to pay for them.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but it’s gonna be a lot cheaper than that. Imported computer board, electronic screen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah chips.

Crew Chief Eric: I just wanna know who thought it was a good idea to put all that crap in the cars.

Executive Producer Tania: Somebody who is trying to capitalize on the world we live in, that everything is, is freaking computers.

Crew Chief Eric: Can we start our own campaign? Can we do make cars great again? Can we

Executive Producer Tania: do that? Can we start that

Crew Chief Eric: Macca?

Executive Producer Tania: No, it’s Mick. There’s not enough vowels in there.

Crew Chief Brad: Maybe we, we, we just add a vowel, make all cars again. Well, there’s no d so me.

Crew Chief Eric: If you take a D out of dodge, you get Doge, right? You don’t want to get dodged in this situation. No. You never

Crew Chief Brad: take the D outta dodge. You leave the D [00:36:00] in.

Crew Chief Eric: My point is, I’m not saying, let’s go back to Fins and Friends of the 1950s. Now there’s a shirt, right? Those cars are wonderful. There’s a ton of nostalgia around the cars of the fifties and sixties, and they’re terrible to drive,

Executive Producer Tania: but there’s beauty and simplicity and, and a freaking knob.

Works and a button works unless you’re a total ass hat and you break the thing off the buttons and the buttons and the knobs and my 40-year-old car still work 40 years later. You know what doesn’t work? The touchscreen in that Cadillac,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s the reason we got rid of our Cadillac.

Crew Chief Brad: Mercedes will spend how much time developing?

It was two years or redeveloping a knob

Crew Chief Eric: for your 1980s sl. See, but that’s quality engineering. Now, that button went from being $3 to $300. Thanks to everything that’s happening right now. We’re gonna have to pull back some of those stories. Be like, uh, correction. We need to redact our statement about how cheap this was.

Executive Producer Tania: Ep be, be, be, be, be. It’s okay though. Here’s the thing people [00:37:00] gotta think about. With the buttons and the knobs and everybody having 3D printers. You could break it. You could just 3D print yourself another one. That’s

Crew Chief Eric: what I kept thinking. But the price of the 3D printing filament’s gonna go up too, right?

If you don’t already have one. So it’s a lose lose loser situation. Well, since we opened the door to talk about Hyundai again, Tanya, you brought us one in EVs and concepts. What is this? Apparently,

Executive Producer Tania: Genesis Oh, is unveiling their 2026 GV 60 magma. Come on. You gotta give it that magma.

Crew Chief Brad: It reminds me of S Magma.

Crew Chief Eric: Next up from Hyundai, the Merkin.

Oh my God.

Crew Chief Brad: The Hyundai fpa.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, as we compose [00:38:00] ourselves, get used to the magma name because apparently it’s the Mark’s new performance sub-brand Magma

Crew Chief Brad: EV 60 s Magma.

S

Crew Chief Eric: Magma. Here we go again.

Did it on purpose. They had to have done it on purpose.

Crew Chief Brad: They’re trolling us. They are trolling us.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. Genesis Kia Hyundai, same company. Let’s just get that out on the table for people that don’t know. So the magma. Is the end line. This is the Veloster.

Executive Producer Tania: And see, they call it an SUV, but I’m like, it’s, it’s the red hot electric SUV.

This thing looks like a velociter. A velociter. Isn’t that, wait, veloc. Isn’t that what that thing’s called? What is it? Veloc? There’s

Crew Chief Brad: no, I, oh,

Executive Producer Tania: is it?

There you go. Veloster. Is it? Yes. The Velociraptor like, yes, the ve.

Crew Chief Brad: The Velociter s Magma.[00:39:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Velociter would’ve been a better name. Veloster, all that bluster.

And anyway, it looks like a veloster.

Crew Chief Brad: They should rename it. The Vesuvius.

Ooh, the magma comes from the

Crew Chief Eric: Vesuvius Vesuvius’s. Terrible. So if it’s quote unquote an SUV as the article alleges, then it’s the Ioni five.

Executive Producer Tania: It looks like an updated veloster.

It

Crew Chief Eric: really does. It’s the back door and the flare fender in the back that really screams Veloster to me, which is okay. ’cause I was sad to see the Veloster go. The last generation was really, really good and I was like scratching my head why they would pull themselves out of that market considering GTI and Civic and all those cars still exist.

Executive Producer Tania: But you are correct in that it actually shares the platform of the Iion EQ five N.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it have the stereo that makes the car sounds when they drive around?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know, but apparently this thing’s gonna have 600 horsepower or more.

Crew Chief Brad: 641 [00:40:00] what?

Executive Producer Tania: Depending on the motor configuration you have and apparently the magma brand, you’re also gonna be seeing Genesis magma racing in Weck and imsa, and they’re gonna try to get into Labon in Daytona.

Crew Chief Eric: Not with this. That’s No, they’re gonna have, that’s literally gonna be an SUV on track.

Executive Producer Tania: No, of course not. No, no, no. They’re gonna create their own hypercar. I think.

Crew Chief Eric: I like it from the back. I like it a lot. It’s very corrado from the rear with that little wang that it has there. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it either,

Executive Producer Tania: honestly.

Like the front could massage a little bit, they could tweak it, improve that. I don’t know that I’m a fan of those double headlights

Crew Chief Eric: and I don’t normally go for orange, but I kind of like this. Yeah. Okay. All jokes aside in the name

Executive Producer Tania: Jokes aside, it’s gonna be 75,000 before tariff. Nevermind.

I’m out Dugger.

Executive Producer Tania: So boom. A cool a hundred grand right off the bat

Crew Chief Eric: for a hundred grand. They better bring me that N 74 vision thing. Yeah, well that’s

Crew Chief Brad: gonna be 200 something.

Crew Chief Eric: Forget that noise. And it’s a hydrogen bomb [00:41:00] on wheels too, so, alright. I didn’t bring this up during Lower Saxony because I know Brad starts to get the Ajita if we talk too much about BMW now, but Mini is one of the brands.

That says we’re changing course. We are not gonna abandon gas engines. Internal combustion is quote, still very much a thing.

Crew Chief Brad: Shocker degree.

Crew Chief Eric: Where’s like the captain obvious sticker for this?

Crew Chief Brad: That don’t have to be the thumbnail.

Crew Chief Eric: What I wanted to comment on is the mini is no longer the mini anymore. The mini became the maxi a while ago.

This thing is big and this thing is ugly. Especially that green one is starting to look like a Subaru Outback. Like, what is that awful?

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, the lines on the green one, that’s the Aman, so that’s different. That is larger than the white one. I think the white one is more normally sized because it’s supposed to just be like a mini Cooper.

So it’s not a countryman. It’s not the Paceman, it’s not so whatever. The other one they have is [00:42:00] normal size relative to the

Crew Chief Eric: current mini, which is twice the size. Well, yes.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, when you speak mini now you can’t be like, oh, it’s red, the one from 40 years ago. Of course it’s bigger. It’s like the new GTI.

It’s 9,000 times the size of the original one. And

Crew Chief Eric: God, I saw one the other day. I was with my wife, we’re driving down the road VW badge on the back. She asked me, what car is that? Like? You couldn’t really discern it from everything else on the road, the

Executive Producer Tania: earlier point. Everything’s just this blob shape now, and everybody copied each other on headlights and taillights, so it’s like you can’t play that game anymore.

And I feel like you could play when we were kids where it’s like at nighttime and you see headlights coming. It’s like, Ooh, name that car. And you could actually tell the car from the headlights. Now it’s like, is that an Audi? Oh shit, look, that was a Corolla. My bad.

Crew Chief Eric: See, that was an important skill to have when you wanted to know if the five oh was rolling up on you, or if it was a Mustang because they had similar front end headlights in the Crown Vix and stuff.

Now I have no idea. No clue. Roof racks. It’s all about roof racks now. Alright, meanwhile, so mini [00:43:00] sin. Ice is okay, we’re gonna stick with ice. But on the other hand, Subaru, in a stroke of absolute genius Subaru’s, STI plans are to ditch gas altogether and the next STI Subarus will be electric.

Crew Chief Brad: How are they gonna blow head gaskets then?

Crew Chief Eric: Well, how are they gonna make that noise?

Hey, I’m okay with this actually,

Executive Producer Tania: so I don’t have to hear that noise.

Crew Chief Eric: What I took away from this is. The following, the old school, the OG doubles all defected after the Mark IVs basically, and left Volkswagen and went to Subaru because Subaru was exciting. It was the next tinkerers cars was sort of, you know, the bargain basement enthusiast vehicle like the GTIs used to be.

And they, you know, all wheel drive and Rally and Colin McRay and add all the excitement in there. Right. But they’ve become old and bloated like everybody else. And so they are following exactly in Volkswagen’s footsteps, just like we talked about with the golf. What does Volkswagen have that gets anybody excited anymore?

I [00:44:00] can’t tell a Jetta GLI apart from enter your favorite Japanese domestic American car in that versus the GTI and Subaru’s going the same way. The cars over the last couple of years have just gotten more and more, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, they’re family cars now for the aging, you know, dad Bo and you buy your next Subaru, right?

As you’ve matured out of the fanboy racer, just like we did with our Volkswagen,

Executive Producer Tania: right, Brad?

Crew Chief Eric: Mm-hmm.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, they only offer two cars and none of ’em are WRX or STI. It’s just. Impreza or Legacy,

Crew Chief Eric: gross and grosser.

Executive Producer Tania: They already said they got rid of the wx, I thought, right? Yeah. So you can’t even get that. So now you just have base sport and RS trim, whatever that is.

So it’s like, what is exciting about these?

Crew Chief Eric: Nothing.

Executive Producer Tania: The Impreza is still the more hatchback looking one, and then the legacy is the sedan.

Crew Chief Eric: You really do have every dealership website of, we have an uncool wall nominee. It’s been a while. We got a new one. What is this trash? Is this a new forester? No. Is this a new Outback?[00:45:00]

Yes. What

Executive Producer Tania: a turd.

Crew Chief Eric: This is the ugliest car on the market right now.

Executive Producer Tania: What are these two piece plastic fender things? Lego

Crew Chief Eric: cars have more shape than this does. Is this an ev? Is this gasoline? It’s a truck is what it is. Look how big it is.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s gotta be an ev. There’s no radiator grill or anything. There’s like little teeny holes in the front.

This has to be an ev.

Crew Chief Eric: This is the family youngster. That’s what this is. This is terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: This is the family ter.

Crew Chief Eric: This is what Subaru is building now. Available Turbocharged

Executive Producer Tania: Subaru Boxer engine. The six cylinder or the four doesn’t say get vehicle updates. Oh, I gotta sign up

Crew Chief Eric: to hear about it. Do it because it’s not out yet.

This thing looks like it weighs 6,500 pounds,

Executive Producer Tania: 8.7 inches of ground clearance. Ugh. And available turbocharged in their registered trademarked Subaru boxer engine. Yeah. Okay. Wherever you’re going, the 2026 Outback is ready when you are. Yeah. Okay. This has not been paid for [00:46:00] in part by Subaru.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Okay.

Either way, fans of the show now have the opportunity to vote on the family Youngster, AKA, the 2026 Subaru Outback, along with 60 other cars on our uncool wall. So jump over to gt motorsports.org, click on podcast, and then uncool Wall. And you can vote on a ton of different cars that we have talked about over the years on this show and on other segments on the Motor and Podcast Network.

Well, since you have dealership websites open, it’s time to talk about Brad’s favorite segment of the Drive Through Lost and Found, where we scoured the internet for the most ridiculous cars that we can buy. Had you been keeping track of Project 9 64 from PCA? Nope.

No.

Crew Chief Eric: So this has been going on for quite a while, that they did this restoration on this Carrera for 9 64.

They sold it on Bring a Trailer. I’m sure you guys have already figured out how much it costs, so we won’t play the guessing game, but our audience doesn’t know. They sold it for a cool $133,000.

Executive Producer Tania: Was that a better deal than just buying [00:47:00] 120 something thousand dollars? Brand new nine 11

Crew Chief Eric: if you’re a purist.

Like I am. Yes, I want an air. Cool. 3.6 liter 9 64 could care less about the all wheel drive. That syncro system was junk in those cars back then. That being said, if you’re a technophile and you want the latest and greatest nine 11, that will run circles around this 9 64, then yeah, you’re saving money by spending 127 grand on a base model nine 11 because it’s, oh, I don’t know, 30 years newer, 30.

They put out that little teaser, like, Ooh, wow. They sold it on bringer trailer for 130 grand. Okay, cool. And then they followed it up with an article about how they sold it. So I was like, well, that’s interesting too. So a little just kind of deeper dive into the world of consigning cars and bring a trailer and what that was all about.

Glad to see that project. 9 64 went onto a new home. It is a beautiful car. I tend to like the nine 60 fours in other colors, but there’s nothing wrong with a guards red nine 11 at the end of the day.

Crew Chief Brad: I like the guards red nine 11, but I don’t like the 9 64 [00:48:00] in guards red.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. There’s something about its shape that it does not lend itself well to red.

Crew Chief Brad: No, it does not look good. It looks good in green. I’ve seen some green ones. It

Crew Chief Eric: looks good in yellow. Like the turbos, it looks good in silver, white. Mm-hmm. Just anything but red. It, it’s just red. Never floated Well in those cars.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t like these hrre with this color either. I don’t like the combination,

Crew Chief Eric: just something about it.

Crew Chief Brad: But I’m not dropping 130 grand on it, so it doesn’t really matter what I think.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. Tanya, are we gonna do it? Are we gonna break our New Year’s resolution? I think we’ve, we’ve done it once before already.

Executive Producer Tania: We don’t have to.

Crew Chief Eric: We don’t have to. Okay.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s lies anyway. That’s not gonna happen. So, oh,

Crew Chief Eric: oh, oh, oh.

Are you ta are you referring to Tesla?

Executive Producer Tania: If past performance is indicative of future performance, then it ain’t happening, so we’re

Crew Chief Eric: fine. Oh, there’s no news just to fill in the curious audience. What are we talking about?

Executive Producer Tania: So they allege that.

Crew Chief Eric: I like how you have to start with that disclaimer. Alleged you

Executive Producer Tania: have to.[00:49:00]

They allege that their basic entry level, lower cost model is going to be available in June of this year based off of, I think the model Y. The real question is how much more basic can you get? Like what’s below Home Depot?

Crew Chief Brad: Ingers.

Executive Producer Tania: Ollie’s good and cheap, and that’s all you have it. That’s it. It’s not happening.

June’s gonna be here tomorrow. This isn’t gonna be there. Just like, you know, everything else. I

Crew Chief Eric: wanna know, have they stated how much? Actually,

Executive Producer Tania: they’ve always said it was supposed to be 30.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Okay.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, so I think they’re still trying to say it’s gonna be 30 or less and they’re gonna do that. We need to be built on existing assembly lines.

Yeah, of course

Crew Chief Brad: it’s still, it still says 30,

Executive Producer Tania: but you’re gonna still base it off something you already have. So how much more cheaply are you going to make it? You’re not gonna put seats in it. Like are those optional?

Crew Chief Eric: Why don’t they just say that they’re facelift the model Y and then be done with it. Now I will say.

Credit where credit is due. The cyber truck front end [00:50:00] actually works for this.

Executive Producer Tania: The only thing cyber truck is the thin lights that they have going across. That’s what I’m

Crew Chief Eric: saying.

Executive Producer Tania: It sort

Crew Chief Eric: of

Executive Producer Tania: works for this, you know, from the picture. It doesn’t look like has a windwood wiper. It

Crew Chief Eric: doesn’t. That’s why this is not happening.

That’s why this is fake. This is a rendering. It’s never gonna happen. This was dreamt up by stable diffusion or something.

Executive Producer Tania: This is just typical. Bullshit publicity they gotta do to generate the media buzz and try to get their trajectory back up. And then there’s probably, if you go on their website, which I’m not gonna do, probably if you go there, you probably put your a hundred dollars deposit down.

That way they can start collecting a bunch of money to go pay for something else and then delay this, you know, six months and another six months and another six months. Well enough of that nonsense. Speaking of nonsense,

Crew Chief Eric: we need to switch to lowered expectations.

Crew Chief Brad: Lowered expectations.

Crew Chief Eric: Antonia, we have just recently celebrated all the high Holy Holidays of the spring and it is time for our final installment of the Passion of [00:51:00] the Senna. Did you listen to our review?

Executive Producer Tania: That’s funny. May he rest in peace. Yes, I listened to the podcast

Crew Chief Eric: was good. So were William, John and I. Wrong.

Executive Producer Tania: It was interesting in that John hadn’t watched it, so he was digesting from your and William’s perspectives, watching through your words essentially.

I was with it the whole way till a certain point. I know which point it is too. And then I was like, flip the table, I’m done. Turn it off. I’m not listening anymore. Spoiler alert, if you haven’t listened to the podcast, go ahead and fast forward a minute. The point that turned me off when we were discussing, obviously, his death, and that there was a hypothesis, oh, my conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theory, that it could have been intentional, that it could have been suicide.

Crew Chief Eric: You don’t know.

Executive Producer Tania: I was like, no, you gotta be kidding me. [00:52:00]

Crew Chief Brad: That’s a bold take.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean that’s, that’s one theory. That’s one theory

Crew Chief Eric: because I wanted to see how John was gonna react. He did

Executive Producer Tania: not appreciate that theory either.

Crew Chief Eric: Ah. I mean, otherwise we’re all doing the same thing. Ah,

Executive Producer Tania: no, I think there was general consensus. I mean, you got the real sense of it from the movie and of course his family was involved in the production and and all that. So obviously it was gonna slant and tilt a certain way, and I think everyone agreed that that was the tone of the TV series.

If you’re at all interested in Formula One, if you’re all interested in. Ton and that whole history, it’s a must see. Just like,

yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: watching the original Netflix docu movie that came out called Sena, which has more clips of him and the real footage and all that in the interviews and stuff like that.

That’s definitely a must see as well. At the end of the day, recommend it. It’s obviously a ization. Some things that don’t make sense or at least [00:53:00] seem odd with what the history would’ve said as people lived through it, some of the relationships he had with some of the other key folks in the rivalries.

Which I think we touched on last time,

Crew Chief Eric: like Darth Prost.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. It was very interesting how they were suddenly BF. That seemed completely not what the situation was, but I guess, who are

Crew Chief Eric: we

Executive Producer Tania: to

Crew Chief Eric: know? Well, we did have fun reviewing it. If you haven’t listened to the podcast episode that goes along with the review of Sena Conspiracy theories aside, I think we did a good job of buttoning that whole thing up so you don’t have to watch it.

TLDR it. Listen to the podcast episode. It’s in our catalog from last May. Now it’s almost a year ago. We celebrated the 30th anniversary of Senna’s Death at Timor. Now we gotta switch gears and pick up, are you faster than an interceptor? And Brad Japan heard you and they said, hold my Sapporo, North Carolina.

We’re gonna see your Mustang and raise you. Acura NSX. Ooh. This is their police interceptor.

I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: it looks like the [00:54:00] Fujiyama Fujiwara.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Tofu shop delivery 80, 86. But still, Italy’s got Lamborghinis. I thought they stopped making the NSX.

Crew Chief Brad: They’ve all become police cars now.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. The ones that they didn’t sell are all cop cars now.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Retail’s for 25 million yen, which is $175,000 a us.

Mm.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t wanna be chased by one, but I would love to stage like a top gear cop car challenge with this and the Mustang and some of the other cars. I think that’d be a lot of fun. Do some cherries and berries for charity racing. That’d be good.

Well, since we are talking about Florida man. Mm-hmm.

Florida man.

Executive Producer Tania: Mm-hmm. I was trying to understand this one, but apparently it’s all the rage. No, this was in Texas because I recognized the beige Lexus driver going full road rage on cyber truck. Sounded like he was just [00:55:00] annoyed that the fact that there was cyber truck in his line of vision and then the guy went so far as possibly brandishing a firearm while they look like they’re on the 45 highway.

I don’t know where in Texas they are, but they’re on a highway.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, that doesn’t matter. The cyber truck is bulletproof.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true.

Executive Producer Tania: Maybe that’s what he wanted to test out. He’s like, look at you. I wanna see if you are riot proof.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that a gun or a taser?

Executive Producer Tania: What is that? Well, and that’s what they say.

They’re like, we’re not sure if it’s a taser. We’re not sure if it’s a gun in its holster, but I’m like, that’s a really square holster. But I don’t know

Crew Chief Eric: really big

Executive Producer Tania: thought. At first I was like holding this wallet.

Crew Chief Eric: Unreal. There is a video,

Executive Producer Tania: there’s a theme here in the Florida, man. I’ll let you know. This is starting a theme of unhinged people.

We’ll get to

Crew Chief Eric: more

Executive Producer Tania: of

Crew Chief Eric: them. Yeah. First of all, I thought the cyber truck was supposed to be really fast. He can’t outrun the five liter in that Lexus. I’ve been in one of those Lexus. They’re quick, but he should be able to just. Put on all his tri motors and unicorn farts and outrun ’em. Oh, what?

Crew Chief Brad: He looks like.

He’s just not trying. And it looks like the guy’s holding a box now. It looks like a taser. [00:56:00] It’s not a gun. Geez. He

Crew Chief Eric: almost wrecks himself.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, he almost killed himself. If he didn’t have traction control, he’d have been in the Jersey wall.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it really his fault that this guy bought a cyber truck? Like, I don’t fault people.

If that’s how you wanna waste your money, like go for it. I don’t say that about other Teslas. I get it. You know, it’s the car you chose, but the cyber truck, you know, that’s a conscious decision you have to make. But I will say this, a friend of mine, I was chatting with him about this ’cause I know his wife owns a Tesla and he said that they bought a sticker to put on the car that says, I bought this before Elon went crazy.

Oh, there’s, I’ve seen lots of things talking about that. Yeah, I’ve

Crew Chief Brad: seen those before. People changing

Crew Chief Eric: the badges on the car, because to your point, Tanya, all the cars look sort of the same. So from the back, if you put an Audi badge on a Tesla, it kinda looks like an A four, A five, maybe you’ll get left alone.

I guess what we don’t know

Executive Producer Tania: is if something precipitated that guy’s anger. If it was, it might have been. Something. Yeah. How unhinged are you to really get that? Just ’cause you see one and then, and I do believe there are unhinged people like that, but we don’t know that something else didn’t happen two miles down the road.

Not that this was the [00:57:00] appropriate reaction regardless.

Crew Chief Eric: No, but it also proves the point that the Teslas plural are always recording because that was picked up on what the fender cam or the mirror cam off of the cyber truck. I guess, again, I don’t want to go into the process of how they extracted the video, but the fact of the matter is those cars are always recording

Executive Producer Tania: and they only extracted the part you wanted to see because you don’t know if two miles before the camera would’ve seen something not favorable for the Tesla, but Yeah, exactly.

People be cray.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s gonna be a new campaign out. That’s a Tesla Lives matter. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: geez. Oh my God. Well, speaking of a world full of cameras, did you know that there are now highway patrols? That are using AI cameras in an attempt to catch distracted drivers. So

Executive Producer Tania: how do they know you’re distracted?

Crew Chief Eric: I had to venture into the city yet again, and I’m not gonna get on my soapbox and rant about it.

It’s pretty obvious when somebody is talking into their phone. Well, that in a car with Bluetooth and it’s.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I, I guess I’m wondering that what is the sensitivity level

Crew Chief Eric: from this picture? It’s pretty obvious. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: [00:58:00] that’s like really blatant. Yeah, but I’m wondering, so I guess they’re just randomly taking photos all the time and then they have, it’s like the capture thing and they’ve got the AI that’s sitting there looking for the bicycle in eight of the picture frames.

Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And by the way, at the same time that they took a snapshot of you driving down the road, they’ve also taken a snapshot of your license plate. Oh, of course. And put two and two together and they’re gonna send you not just a $70 thing from UPS in the mail to pay for it. They’re gonna send you a fine, they’re gonna send you a citation.

That’s what this is all boiling down to. Well,

Executive Producer Tania: hold on. ’cause this is where it gets interesting. So if this is the picture that they shot, now obviously they probably blurred this guy’s face or lady’s face. I can’t tell for their privacy here. Speed cameras function in that they sent you a ticket, but there’s no repercussion to the points on your license because they can’t actually know who was behind the wheel.

Right. If they’ve now coupled the technology to take a picture, you’re face in there. It’s pretty solid evidence of who was driving the [00:59:00] car.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re done.

Executive Producer Tania: So is are you now not only gonna have the ticket, but also, Hey, guess what? That’s two points off your license. ’cause I can clearly see that it’s you.

Whoop

Crew Chief Eric: whoop, you’re done. This is the police state. Skynet big brother is watching 1984 world that we will be living in. Oh my

Executive Producer Tania: God. We’re gonna have people riding around in like Friday. Masks screen, hundred percent masks. They’ll be like, I don’t want my face captured on your AI photo.

Crew Chief Eric: Just like they put the smoke plastic covers over their license plate to try to avoid the toys.

The cameras, exactly. There’s gonna be a

Executive Producer Tania: bunch of plastic Richard Nixon heads driving around.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna get the one from Money Heist. I’m gonna do the Dali Masks. It’ll be perfect.

Executive Producer Tania: Some guy Fox Maxes.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent. This next one. This is right up your alley, isn’t it, Tanya?

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, if you’re, if you’re so stupid to do a crime and post it on social media, like I don’t feel sorry for you.

That’s the modern age Darwinism happening right there. Like my God, man, charged after bragging in a selfie. Selfie of tire theft.

Crew Chief Eric: We all [01:00:00] know that social media is a pit and we’re never sure if anybody’s actually watching, but how brazen do you have to be to be like, yo, look at me, dude. And all the tires and wheels that I stole from the dealership, 22-year-old Connecticut man said on Instagram,

Executive Producer Tania: brazen.

How stupid are you mentally challenged, no offense like. Are you just

Crew Chief Eric: incapable of of reasoning? What makes me sad is he got more likes on those posts than we will ever get cumulatively on all of our social media posts. And that’s the real pit of despair. That is social media. That’s the pit of despair, that’s humanity.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So remember to like subscribe to at Motoring Podcast Network on social media. Thank you.

Executive Producer Tania: All right. I couldn’t decide how to round it out, but I think I’m gonna save, not gonna put Florida man as the last one, but this is, there’s a video here as well. And for whatever reason about halfway through just repeats, it shows the same thing.

It’s not a whole thing to watch, but this Florida man casually offers a [01:01:00] vodka spritzer to the police officer during a police chase. This Floridian was just driving in circles around some. Parking lot. And then the cops showed up and they tried to pull him over on foot or whatever. And as he is driving by him, he’s holding the vodka spritzer out the window and basically it’s like, you guys want one or something.

Nonetheless, he then speeds away, tries to evade the cops. They do some spike strips. What does this need for speed to the spike strips? Deploy the

helicopter.

Crew Chief Brad: But you said he was in a parking lot,

so he left the parking lot.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, go, go.

Yeah. I was like, hang on.

Crew Chief Eric: They deployed spike strips in the parking lot.

Executive Producer Tania: No, no, no, no, no, no.

He was in the parking. He left the parking lot. I think they went like a couple miles down the road. Not only did. The spike strip. Then you see like later when they finally have him stopped, I think another SUV rammed into him. So these Canadian pacificas put good tires on there.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re Korean from the factory, by the way.

I know that, but So

Executive Producer Tania: you should watch the video. They got him. They said, get outta the car, put your [01:02:00] hands up, get down on the ground, or whatever. He doesn’t comply

Crew Chief Eric: because he was

Executive Producer Tania: offering them a

Crew Chief Eric: white claw,

Executive Producer Tania: so they had to respond. Oh boy. Dude goes down like a feld tree. Did they tase him?

Crew Chief Brad: He’s barefoot too.

It’s funny.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s becomes outta that van barefoot if they tase his ass and he just lump. And then when they finally like cut the video back to when they woken him up, he goes, you guys had fun though, right?

How many vodka

Crew Chief Eric: spritzers did he have? And his head looks like he hit more than just a pavement.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I think he’s got face tattoos and stuff too.

Crew Chief Eric: He’s all bloodied up

and everything.

Crew Chief Brad: I swear this is,

it’s like a jackass video. He also wasn’t a head on collision. So

Crew Chief Brad: if Daniel was a Florida man, this

my cousin, and it would be a square body.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh my god.

Crew Chief Brad: A square body might have survived and it would be a bottle of jack, not a spritzer.

Executive Producer Tania: All right, so this last one is so far I. Taking the [01:03:00] top prize of insanity, and this is the theme of people that are just nuts, like the Lexus guy. So you really gotta like, watch the, this woman.

So apparently the, the driver of this Nissan like honked at her because she cut out in front of her and the Nissan lady had to slam on her brakes not to hit her. So she honked the horn. This woman gets out of her car, gets on the hood of this woman’s car, starts yelling, she’s gonna kill her. Rips the windshield wipers off, starts beating on the glass.

I was filled with my own rage watching this. ’cause I was like, if I was in that car and this woman was on my car beating it, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

Crew Chief Brad: I would, I would’ve hit the gas and I would put it in reverse. I would hit reverse and knocked

Crew Chief Eric: her ass off the car. Person in the car isn’t even reacting.

Are we sure this wasn’t like a stunt?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, they arrested that lady. No. So they interviewed the woman in the car. I don’t know. To her credit, she remained perfectly calm and let that woman rage out. I guess she, I don’t know if she called 9 1 1 or other people apparently stopped, took the keys outta the other [01:04:00] woman’s car while she was busy banging on this woman.

Some dude like went and took the keys outta her car and then she stopped, tried to get in her car, couldn’t start it. And then she started like going at the dude who took her keys. She also seemed like she might have been strung out on something. So I’m wondering if she had an overreaction to this situation.

How many people

Crew Chief Eric: were filming this? Because there’s like four

Executive Producer Tania: camera angles goes back to our social media humanity crisis. Instead of helping, instead of like four people going and grabbing this woman, which actually they probably shouldn’t because then they end up getting sued. ’cause that’s the humanity we also live in.

Yeah. They just sit there and film instead.

Crew Chief Eric: That is amazing stuff. Springtime is the best time for the crazies to come out. They’re outta hibernation now. They’re getting those D vitamins from the sun and all that. They’re just like, they are ready to rock and roll. Woo Damn Florida. Except this was in Brad’s backyard.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I just, I just realized that this is in Virginia. This is on the way to VIR.

Crew Chief Eric: Well folks, we’ve reached that point of the episode. The most important part. [01:05:00] So this really should be a showcase. We’re gonna go behind the pit wall, talk about motor sports news, and before we talk about. The really, really important stuff.

I wanna highlight a couple of things for you guys. WRC, I know I said I wasn’t gonna talk about WRC and I’m not wasting my time on WRC. This was this season. You guys have convinced me to devote my life to Formula One. Oh my God, for the year 2025. Violin. Oh, it’s a big violin. We’re gonna get to it here in a second.

WRC, I gotta hand it to ’em. They’re gonna be the first one in the FIA to bring back swearing. So watch out Formula One. Watch out Max. For staffing. You can curse all you want because Rally is leading the charge. Yeah, I don’t think so. Just wait. Just wait.

Executive Producer Tania: They people own WRC.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s all the FIA. All right. All right.

Meanwhile, in WEC, IMSA and SRO News, we talked earlier about Hyundai coming to LAMA and going into endurance racing. Well, they’re not the only ones that [01:06:00] have announced that they’re going in back into the greatest race in the world. Ford had announced Aston Martin is made a comeback. You saw them racing their new car at Sebring earlier.

This. Season, but also McLaren is throwing their name and they haven’t run a car since the McLaren F1 back in the nineties. So they’re coming back to WEC in 2027. So if everybody sticks around, let’s just say Cadillac and EO and Porsche and Ferrari, everybody’s there in two years, it is going to be one of the most spectacular LAMA we’ve ever seen because that front end GTP class is going to be jam packed.

They’re not even gonna let LMP two cars run. That’s how many manufacturers there’s gonna be and it’s gonna be freaking awesome. It’s gonna be like the old days when you just saw prototype after prototype after prototype. And I am super stoked to see more and more brands pony and up to run at lama. So speaking of lama, I just wanna drop this in there as well.

The A-C-O-U-S-A who we proudly partner with as part of our evening with the Legend series is sponsoring not [01:07:00] one LAMA viewing party this year, but. Two ding,

ding, ding.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s two. One will be held at the A RCF. That’s the Automobile Racing Club of Florida at Sebring International Raceway. And that’ll be start to dark at Sebring.

And the second one, some of us from the Motoring Podcast Network will be attending and helping to be part of Simione Foundation Museums. 24 hour viewing and camp out as they like to call it event at their museum in Philadelphia. So there’s a full schedule of not only events that are happening at the Sione Museum, but also the round the clock demos that they’ll be running of famous cars like the Paisley nine 17 Ferraris, Aston Martin, DBR one Jaguars, and things like that, that they’ll be running all throughout the day and the night there in the parking lot of the museum.

So if you wanna come and meet Legends of Lama, if you wanna meet some of the folks from the NPN, we will be at the Ion Foundation over LAMA weekend and you can buy tickets for as cheap as [01:08:00] $24 because of the 24 hours of Lama, I’ve delayed enough. I’ve procrastinated. We have to talk about formula. Uh.

Again, I’ve devoted 2025 to watching every race to the Formula one. See you guys. I didn’t know you called me out. You said, what do I know? I’m not a fan. I don’t watch blah, blah, blah, yada yada. Hamilton’s gonna be the best. You’re gonna see Ferrari, blah, blah,

blah. The Mercedes is inferior. I don’t think we went that far.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think we’ve just said we couldn’t count him out yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. We said he’s not gonna be a back marker. Like Eric said he was going to be.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, really? Oh really? And I told you, and I’ll put money on this, that by the third race I. He would cement exactly how he was gonna do for the rest of the season.

And we’re at what race? Five now? Yes. We’ve had

Executive Producer Tania: five races I would [01:09:00] say. I don’t know yet. He, he’s not gonna win a championship this year, that’s for sure. Not gonna win one next year either. He’s so far been in the top 10 for the five races. Ninth is in the top 10. Yeah, you’re right. No, he’s currently sixth in points.

He’s not ninth. His best finish was fifth. Technically his best finish was first in the sprint race.

Crew Chief Eric: It doesn’t count.

Executive Producer Tania: But nonetheless, ball rain in the middle of that race. Both he and Le Claire, there was like a light switch moment where they were like flying around the track. I don’t know what turbo mushroom they got when they went into pit, when they came back out.

I mean there was like night and day and they were like flying around the track. They were gaining time and then it’s like, I think they went back for like another pit stop and suddenly like the mushroom wore off or something. So that was disappointing.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like, remember Mario Kart 64 where you got the gold mushroom?

And you kept hitting the button as fast as you could. Yes. Because you wanted to go, you know, the super boost and then when it ran out you were like, oh no, that was the middle of

Executive Producer Tania: that race. It was like, holy shit. Like the Ferrari suddenly like work software upgrade. Yeah. [01:10:00]

Crew Chief Brad: They didn’t pay their subscription fees.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, it was what it was. They only did a temporary subscription. It was. First 30 minutes free,

Crew Chief Brad: wasn’t it? That there wasn’t there a yellow and they had put mediums on and everybody else put sauce or something like that. Their pit strategy is garbage.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. It was something with the tires, like they were doing really well on the tires they had and then they switched off of them and then suddenly it was like garbage.

And it was like, why did you switch to these? ’cause you already knew from another team that these were garbage and yet you chose them. Winning strategy. Great job. Well, Ferrari’s gonna Ferrari. Yeah. And they do. It’s so dumb. Unfortunately, if you’d watch the last like three, four seasons, they literally make the most bonehead.

Decisions, whether it’s timing of pitting their people, the order of pitting them, team orders in general, the value of their pit stops, the value of their tire choices. They usually make the most astine choices, and then they suffer and they lose position. So yes, Ferrari’s gonna, Ferrari has become a thing because of the way they’ve managed themselves over the last several seasons.

Crew Chief Eric: As a Tizi, [01:11:00] I’m gonna die of a very old age, like I’m gonna live to be 200 waiting for Ferrari to win a championship again. Like this is unreal. The Keystone cop garbage that I’ve been watching, like this is why I stopped watching Formula One. And every race is painful because it’s like, what are you clowns doing?

And then last year, if you go back even to the Formula One special and all that kind of stuff I talked about, you wanna tell me that Mercedes can’t build a car? You guys are, oh, what’s inferior? And Adrian Newey. Over a Red Bull. It was. It was Period. And it’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit. No. Adrian Newey goes to Aston Martin and nothing changes.

He’s

Executive Producer Tania: not doing anything yet, that’s why. Well, yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: because apparently they’re making cars with scribes and ads and stuff from the Egyptian period.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know what the deal is with this magician, Adrian Newey. Okay. That apparently anytime he’s been on the team that they’ve won the Constructors for like the last 30 years or something like that.

I don’t have any idea. I really couldn’t give a shit. But if you watch the other races, the straight line speed and the out of cornering speed of the Red [01:12:00] Bull was incomparable with anybody else.

Crew Chief Eric: They were cheating.

Executive Producer Tania: It passed the Mercedes and shit like it was parked in the paddock.

Crew Chief Eric: But the Mercedes this year,

Executive Producer Tania: because they do upgrades every year at the end of the season, the car is different and they change something.

Does

Crew Chief Eric: Ferrari do downgrades every year? Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes they do. Downgrades? Yes, a hundred percent. Just like Mercedes did a big downgrade last year ’cause their car was garbage compared to the year before.

Crew Chief Eric: Apparently they can’t get their electronics right as we saw with Russell. Which race was it? Bahrain?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t remember.

But yeah, his timing system basically shut the whole everything down on the track

Crew Chief Eric: and he still survived without it. It was amazing. Well, he

Executive Producer Tania: barely made it because on like the last lap, it was like his whole car. Remember I joked, it was like, I was like, dude is like gonna have total electrical failure and he is gonna not make it to the end of the race.

It was like the last lap. He’s like, uh, guys, uh, my steering wheel’s not working anymore. Like something wasn’t working and it was like the car was shutting down.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think he had any more lap in it.

Crew Chief Eric: Outside of all that. I mean, [01:13:00] Mercedes is doing great. Red Bull’s doing Red Bull, Ferraris, whatever.

China was, meh. Suzuka was a complete snooze fest. So boring for such a legacy track with so much character and so much history. And you watch the old races of, you know, Sena at Suzuka, the track hasn’t changed other than the repaid. The

Executive Producer Tania: cars have changed. The cars are twice as long as Senna’s days. Yeah, I mean it’s an exaggeration, but they’re so much bigger.

The rules are different. The parody is different. So

Crew Chief Eric: boring.

Executive Producer Tania: Basically watching it to finally one day be there to see something happen. Because honestly, after the first couple opening laps where you’re checking to see if they don’t wreck and turn one or wreck anywhere in the first lap, it basically becomes

Crew Chief Eric: an HPD where

Executive Producer Tania: they’re

Crew Chief Eric: just going around awful.

And then Bahrain was the most exciting race so far. Hands down. That was really good. And then Saudi is like a go-kart track. There is no space. There’s zero space for error, as we saw with Sonota in the second turn of the first lap. What the heck are you [01:14:00] guys doing? And then. You know, max cutting off, turn two because there was no room and that whole debate and debacle.

But that track was boring. Like once they set their pace, it wasn’t any better than Monaco where there’s, there’s no room to pass because the cars are too big. So the whole excitement of Formula One in the old days was then cutting it up and dicing it up. And why can’t we go back to the smaller wheel based card?

’cause then they’d be slower and then they can’t be slower. Do they really have to do 200 miles an hour? I mean, that’s what the endurance cars do, right? Or more than 200 to do like two 30, but they’ve got the space to do it.

Executive Producer Tania: I think they should go back to manual gear boxes also to make it more interesting.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: The whole tire thing is dumb and the pit stop strategies are weird and well,

Executive Producer Tania: and there’s no more refueling. So you took that variable out of it. Like you didn’t have the guy running outta fuel in the last lap, you know, had the minimum fuel load. So it was lightweight and going faster and miscalculated.

Crew Chief Eric: I noticed this year they got rid of the whole energy thing where they have the virtual refueling that’s gone. Right. I haven’t seen that again. They

Executive Producer Tania: don’t

Crew Chief Eric: really highlight it too much.

Crew Chief Brad: That was an F1. That was in M ssa. [01:15:00] That was uh Lama.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, maybe you’re right. There is a thing where they gotta do something but they don’t usually publicize.

Well anyway,

Crew Chief Eric: Hamilton is not doing so great.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s not impressing. There’s lots of excuses, if you will. That’s the right word for it. I know if you wanna say excuses, but explanations that he gives. I like the latest one he was talking about was how different the brakes on the Ferrari are from what he is used to.

And he said, we made a point of saying that he is never engine braked. Like ever. And that’s something that you do in the Ferraris. And so he is not used to it. Which if that’s true, I mean, you could lose a lot of time if your break points aren’t correct.

Crew Chief Eric: But if they’re using engine braking, then that means they can go deeper into the corners and use the engine to help slow the car down.

It’s not like the braking zones became longer as a result of it. ’cause Le Claire isn’t complaining about those problems. Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: But Le Claire’s been driving the car for like five seasons or something, so he’s gotten used to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Million time world champion. Louis Hamilton doesn’t know how to drive a Formula one car.

Is that what you’re telling me?

Executive Producer Tania: I’ve never driven a Formula One car. I don’t know how easy it is to go from one to the [01:16:00] other.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like spec me. They’re all the same, right? I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: come on. I mean, in theory the, it’s all the same, but how do you eek out your 12 tenths. Yeah, you eek

Crew Chief Eric: it out when you’re 18 years old and not 40 or 65 like Alonzo.

Executive Producer Tania: And that might be true, although Alonzo had like, I forget how many, like a hundred points last season. Like he actually podiums once, no, in the first like 10 races. I think he was on the podium every time. And then the car like totally would became like an ass. I don’t know what they did.

Crew Chief Eric: They upgraded it.

Executive Producer Tania: They downgraded it.

Crew Chief Brad: Eric, you’re just an ageist.

Executive Producer Tania: No,

Crew Chief Eric: I, okay. Look at the rest of the field. The median age of the drivers. I mean, come on. They’re all in their early twenties.

Executive Producer Tania: It’s funny how he like rooting against, ’cause in fact, like I’d love to see somebody who’s 40 years old go out and kick the ass of all the 18-year-old new rookie drivers.

Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: I, I think he’s just being contrarian because people like Lewis probably like, oh fuck, Lewis Hamilton,

Executive Producer Tania: he never liked Lewis. So that’s part of it too.

Crew Chief Eric: This is just like when Lada spent one too many seasons behind the [01:17:00] wheel and he should have retired earlier than he did.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, that’s probably true, but they’ve all done it.

Schumacher. Should have stopped

Crew Chief Eric: those two seasons with Mercedes were crap. He should have never done that. Like a hundred percent. I don’t disagree with that. And he was in his forties as well. And no, I’m not saying that, you know, somebody in their forties or 65 like Alonzo couldn’t win a race or win a championship.

But the point is. He’s not showing any enthusiasm, like even the background shots of Hamilton, like he’s disconnected. They keep saying he doesn’t get along with his race engineer. There’s all these excuses, blah, blah, blah. Then why did you leave Mercedes? Because obviously the Mercedes suddenly got better overnight or did it get better because you weren’t there sucking in the driver’s seat?

So which is it? I am throwing shade, but I’m not trying to be any sort of way to be like, look, if you can’t do it, then hang it up. There’s a lot of young drivers in F two that wanna move up and other people that want an opportunity, and both him and Alonzo are sucking up a seat as the second chair collecting a paycheck.

Go do something else. Go race at Lamont. Go do [01:18:00] touring car. I don’t care what you do. But in Formula One, I think he’s done. I don’t think even if Hamilton runs another couple of years. And say he goes to 43 or 44 like Alonzo is, that’s his real age folks. That’s another four years. I don’t think he’s got a championship in the next four years.

I just don’t see it. I don’t see it with Ferrari. So who does he go to? Is he gonna go Red Bull? Is he gonna pull a Sena and go to like he did with going to Williams in his last year? And then Well that, we know how that ended. But the point is. All that shuffling around. I think the younger guys, they just have the advantage and I’ve been impressed ’cause we make fun.

Haas with Toyota has been doing really great this season and Williams has been shockingly good. Bottom of the barrel teams, unfortunately Salberg just there.

Executive Producer Tania: Williams was middle pack last year also. So where they are right now is really no different than they’re not suddenly a magic that they’ve never been before.

Alban was doing pretty decently last year and then they’ve got the benefit of Carlos in the other car, which he [01:19:00] was a higher. Position person when he was in Ferrari. So there’s obviously a difference between two cars ’cause he’s not in the top five at any point.

Crew Chief Eric: Again, they’re putting the cars together with chisels and spoons or something.

I don’t know. But they’re

Executive Producer Tania: all the same. It’s, it’s mi aup. Right? I that’s what I’m saying. He should be able to take poll and be first again.

Crew Chief Eric: Aston Martin should have come out the gate with Adrian Newey on the payroll and won the championship. Fernando Alonzo Champion 2025.

Executive Producer Tania: He’s not, and you even read the article that said that Newey has gone in there and said you all are sitting here with the most antiquated bullshit.

Yes. 20-year-old stuff. What is he gonna work with? It’s gonna take him, God knows how many races and months before he gets things, probably how he wants it.

Crew Chief Brad: And then he is gonna go somewhere else. Pretty

Executive Producer Tania: much. Yeah. Not as long as Daddy stroll’s. Pain.

Crew Chief Brad: Daddy wore once a dollar.

Crew Chief Eric: The Sonota Liam Lawson thing

is

Crew Chief Eric: hilarious.

It’s not

Executive Producer Tania: surprising at all to anyone who’s, who knows how the Red Bull people operate. This was a zero shock and should have been seen coming

Crew Chief Eric: a mile away. It’s amazing how they could just switch, [01:20:00] but then. It’s not amazing because it’s all the same team. They have four cars. One’s a junior team and one’s a senior team, and they can move drivers around all day long.

It’s not like they fired him.

Executive Producer Tania: They would’ve fired his ass anyway. ’cause they did that with the junior team last year. They got rid of a driver completely.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: If they didn’t like suno enough to move him up, they probably would’ve gotten somebody from anywhere else and brought him in. They don’t give a shit.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you think he’s gonna make it to the end of the year?

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know. Because if they’re gonna, I don’t know. When he didn’t crash out, he was okay. He was better than Liam at least. So they probably gonna give him a little bit more of a chance. But if he starts wrecking every race or finishing in the bottom, I don’t know if there’s like a driver swap limit in a season,

Crew Chief Eric: they’ll bring BOTAs in.

That’s what they’ll do. Oh no. It is a Mercedes as a backup driver. Nevermind.

Crew Chief Brad: They’ll bring back Checko

Crew Chief Eric: a check. Checko or Daniel Ricardo. They’re like, yeah, we’ll settle for Ricardo. It’s fine. We’ll just bring him back. It’ll be okay. It’s gotta be better than this. So there’s other controversy going on, allegedly, supposedly, maybe.

This is again, hokey pokey, and [01:21:00] I read this on the Audi Club news that V tens could be returning, but Audi’s not happy about that because that goes against their whole EV thing. So they’re taking a stand and they might pull out, but they might stay in. But I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m excited. V tens returning to Formula One.

Hallelujah. That’s awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: The latest says they’re not gonna do the V tens, but.

Crew Chief Eric: Who knows again, the hokey pokey. But in some Formula one Florida man, you mentioned Carlos, you had me cracking up about this the other day. Phyllis in

Executive Producer Tania: feel bad for the guy ’cause he got a 10,000 euro fine that he had to pay for being five seconds late to the Japanese anthem as it was playing at the very beginning of the festivities.

So with tariffs, that’s like $50,000

Crew Chief Brad: if you do the math. I mean, he’s set to make $10 million this year.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, it’s nothing.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s the, yeah, it’s the equip. It’s 10 basis points. It’s it’s point. It’s not that he can’t afford it, it’s nothing. Yeah, it’s the point. It’s

Executive Producer Tania: like really? It’s like I was late ’cause I was having a bathroom emergency.

Crew Chief Brad: He’s making a big stink about it.

Executive Producer Tania: He literally [01:22:00] flushed money down the toilet.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: And they have very strict protocols and rules in F1 about being where you need to be and all that stuff. And he actually received a 50% penalty ’cause they took pity on him. And the reason he was late was because he literally had to go to the bathroom.

Number two. He even has a medical doctor saying that he was having stomach issues and that like legitimately, yeah. Like he had to go to the bathroom and they, they were like, no, we’re still gonna give you a 10,000 Euro penalty. So basically stand there and crap, your pants is the better answer than being a human and having like a gastro issue.

He should get

Crew Chief Eric: sponsored by Pepto. That’s what he should do.

All right. Our Motor Sports News is brought to us in partnership with the International Motor Racing Research Center, and [01:23:00] they closed out their Corvette sweepstakes, but that’s okay. There’s another one coming in right behind it. You get your chance to enter to win a 2025 Porsche nine 11 T. That’s valued at $137,000.

If you haven’t been to Porsche’s website lately, and that’s a manual transmission car, or you can take a $75,000 cash option. So if you think about that, you know for 20 bucks, couple of entries or double down and add one of their promo codes for like 20% more tickets, you could have $137,000 nine 11 sitting in your driveway.

Details available@racingarchives.org and then click on sweepstakes in the upper right corner. Brad, take us home.

Crew Chief Brad: As a reminder, you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the ultimate reference for car enthusiast, collector car guy.net.

Crew Chief Eric: And now for the G TM Trackside report. Couple of quick pieces of news.

NJMP now has a try before you buy Members Club option, and we got a listing not only of those events but their new bike track days. Courtesy of NJ MP’s [01:24:00] partnership with revzilla, they’ll be bringing 12 motorcycle track days to NJMP in 2025 and carrying those over into 2026. So check out our calendar and theirs for those details.

And speaking of NJMP, if you are an HPDE instructor, NJMP is leading the charge with stricter rules. They’ve had all sorts of paddock enforcement with the state police and all these things that they gotta do, and we’re used to at NJMP. Now you have to be, and I’ll repeat, you have to be MSF. That’s Motorsport Safety Foundation level two certified to instruct on any of the courses at the NJMP campus.

We learned about this through an email sent to us by hooked on Driving, and they are having an upcoming MSF Level two class scheduled for May the second at Pocono Raceways North Circuit, followed by an event on the May 3rd weekend. So that’ll be on the mega circuit. There’s other opportunities to get your MSF level two training, so this is a great way to renew or get up.

Graded to level two. [01:25:00] Also, please note that organizers and sanctioning bodies can check your MSF level two rating very quickly ’cause it’s verifiable online via Motorsport Reg, it is unclear to us at this time though, that other tracks are gonna be enforcing this sort of mandatory certification. So just keep that in mind.

But there are tracks that do follow the precedent that NJMP sets out, so you know they may require that proper training and those credentials in the future.

Crew Chief Brad: Don’t forget, if you’re looking for that extra special automobilia to complete your garage office dinner, man cave, be sure to check out garage style magazine.com for a list of upcoming auctions and events along with a curated list of items going up for sale all over the country.

After all, what doesn’t belong in your garage,

Executive Producer Tania: be sure to jump back into our podcast catalog and check out other programs we offer, like screen to speed, the Ferrari marketplace, the motoring historian evening with a legend, the logbook break fix, and of course the drive-through.

Crew Chief Brad: And we’ve also got lots of great extras and [01:26:00] bonuses to explore on our expanded Patreon page.

So if you’d like to learn more about our bonus and behind the scenes content and get early access to upcoming episodes, consider becoming a Break Fix VIP by clicking the blue join for free button in the middle of the page when you visit patreon.com/gt motorsports.

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@gtmotorsports.org.

Crew Chief Brad: And before I do the closing comment here, I just wanna say happy belated birthday to both Eric and Tanya.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you.

Crew Chief Brad: They both turned 400 years old, as you can tell by, you know, Eric’s homogenous. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. You can’t sing the whole thing.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll get sued. You know that’s the joke on Teen Titans Go.

They have a whole episode about the Happy Birthday song and how you can’t sing it.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Little old lady will come after you and like sue you for copyright infringement.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, I’m glad I didn’t finish it. Just sing it in Spanish. It’s perfect. Ah,[01:27:00]

fel

and a thank you to our co-host and executive producer Tanya and all the fans, friends and family who support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast network. Without you, none of this would be possible.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, at least we finished this episode. We did. I dunno if we did it in a record time. ’cause we started so late.

Speaking of Mario, you’d be like, here we go.

Crew Chief Brad: Here we go.

Crew Chief Eric: Here we go. It’s

Crew Chief Brad: on

Crew Chief Eric: me.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t see this still recording thing. Did you turn it off already? No, it’s recording. Oh, there it is. Nevermind. Okay.

Well here we are in the drive through line. Me and her cars in front of us, cars in back of us all just waiting to order. There’s some idiot in a Volvo with as bright on behind me. I lean out the window and scream, Hey, what you trying to do blind me? My wife says, maybe we.[01:28:00]

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour 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 Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@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 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional pit Stop, mini sos and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and Monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of [01:29:00] this would be possible.

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

• 00:00:00 Kickoff and Episode Overview
• 00:00:56 Tariffs and Their Impact
• 00:01:56 Personal Tariff Stories
• 00:04:33 Automotive Market Reactions
• 00:21:59 Classic Cars and Tariffs
• 00:24:54 Mercedes’ New Innovations
• 00:29:07 Honda’s Start-Stop Issues
• 00:30:26 Nissan Z vs. Toyota Supra
• 00:37:15 Hyundai’s New Performance Brand
• 00:41:02 Mini’s Commitment to Gas Engines
• 00:43:02 Subaru’s Electric Future
• 00:44:48 The Uncool Wall Nominee: 2026 Subaru Outback
• 00:46:26 Lost and Found: Project 964: A Porsche Restoration
• 00:48:36 Tesla’s New Model: Skepticism and Speculation
• 00:54:30 Florida Man and Cybertruck Road Rage
• 00:57:32 AI Cameras and Distracted Driving
• 01:05:01 Motorsports News and Events
• 01:08:05 Formula One: Controversies and Predictions
• 01:24:11 HPDE Instructor Certification
• 01:25:42 Closing Remarks and Announcements

• NJMP now has a “try before you buy” Members Club option – and we just got a listing of BIKE track days, courtesy of NJMP’s partnership with Revzilla. They’ll be bringing 12 motorcycle track days to NJMP in 2025 and 2026!  
• Speaking of NJMP, they’re leading the charge with stricter rules, this time enforcement of instructors needing to be MSF Level-2 certified to instruct on any of the courses at NJMP. Your MSF-L2 rating is quickly verifiable online via Motorsport Reg.  It’s unclear, but we have a feeling that other tracks *might* follow suit in the future and will require proper training and credentials.
• ACO USA is sponsoring not one but TWO viewing parties over Le Mans weekend. The First one will be hosted in conjunction with the ARCF at Sebring International raceway, and that’s a Start-to-Dark event like last years viewing party at M1 concourse. 
• The 2nd ACO USA viewing party is held in conjunction with our friends at the Simeone Foundation Museum in Philadelphia; and that’s a full 24 hour event, with round the clock demo’s of Le Mans vehicles and more. 

MORE DETAILS ON OUR MOTORSPORT CALENDAR