Best of the Bay – Showdown Part Deux!

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

Part-4

• 00:43 Review of the Fiat 500e
• 04:08 Technology Glitches and Driving Experience
• 07:05 Dodge Durango Hellcat Review
• 16:44 Acura ZDX and Final Thoughts

FINALE

• 00:33 Best of the Bay Road Test Series Overview
• 01:43 Toyota Camry XSE Review
• 04:22 Range Rover Review
• 08:14 Lucid Review
• 16:49 Conclusion and Sponsor Message

[00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Good day, good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers, the motoring historian, part four. Of the best of the bay driving days that I did so a review of the Fiat 500e the electric one the Dodge Durango Hellcat the one with the 707 horsepower Hellcat motor as you might expect from the name and the [00:01:00] Acura ZDX which that company was kind of forgettable but yeah without further ado So it’s applicable that I’ve just taken a swig of my espresso because the next thing I drove was the Fiat 500e.

This is easily the smallest and, uh, you know, least impressive of, uh, of the stuff that we drove in terms of like, you know, look at my swinging kind of thing. But. A perfectly adequate product. Plasticky on the inside, but I mean, who cares, right? This is an economy car. I actually like the simplicity of the design.

As I say, I struggled to, as I was saying in another part of the presentation here, I struggled to find out how to make it go. You know, I was in, I found the start button, then I was like, how do I put it into gear? And they’ve moved the buttons onto the center console, like where normally the heater controls or the radio would be back in a car in the, from the 20th century.

But you know, obviously once somebody, it’s like cut and paste, once they’ve showed you how to do it, once you know how to drag and drop a paragraph around in Word, you’re like, Oh, [00:02:00] you know, my life has changed forever. It’s that feeling, you know, once you know how to do it, it’s easy, right? And it becomes hard to believe that you were ever numpty enough not to know how to pop it in gear.

First thing I wrote down about it was that it has a very aggressive regenerative breaking and you can modulate that. But it’s clear that there’s less thought gone into the design of how the one pedal driving experience is far less than, you know, Hyundai spent on the Ioniq or Lucid did, and really the comparison between the Fiat 500 and the Lucid, it shows just in the, you know, with practice, you can drive the Fiat smoothly, but it does Take a little bit of practice and it’s a little bit herky jerky more as Citroen used to be than you’re the way my mum used to be trying to drive a car with a clutch.

Forgive me, mum, but very jumpy in that white Fiesta that we had. So 500 was a facelift, right? So it’s got like strakes across the lights and [00:03:00] things on the face of it. You might look at it and be like, is that even a new model? The answer is yes, it is. The more you look, more you’ll see how is the new model stylish?

Actually, when you look closely stylish evolution of the, of the design, it’s got a big ev wine, like a real, like, hi, I’m electric. You know, like that milk flow sound. For those of us who grew up in suburban England in the late 20th century, the wine of the milk flow is, is there, I’m not a fan. I mean, I never was gonna be a fan of this kind of car and I don’t like as, as I’ve.

I think I’ve said elsewhere in the presentation, I don’t like the fact that Fiat 500s always have this sit up and beg position. Did I like it? No. Was it a good car? Yes. Is it the right solution for many people? Yes. Although I just wonder, you know, would you buy it new and eat the depreciation? You know, I’d probably try and find some.

Secondhand EV where some other tree hugging schmuck had eaten the depreciation pill [00:04:00] earlier. I wrote here, tire roar noticeable. It’s fine around town. Screen and air conditioning are easy to use. Oh, there’s an amusing thing that happened. A couple of times, a couple of the cars, the technology sort of tripped up.

So the Honda, it like wanted to break cause it saw the car in front breaking. So it was like, ah, emergency, like car in front, it’s stopping. Like, ah, you got a break. And I’m like, dude, I’m like 50 feet away from the car in front. Like cool your boots. And it settled down once the car had like turned off, but I’d never had that before where the car had been like, Oh, we’re going to crash.

Like, cause like the gauge flashed red. I don’t know what kind of car has 500 horsepower and isn’t, and is like a old mother hen like that. It’s really bizarre. Sorry, Acura. Jake, the, the rep from Acura, really nice guy, but the product is, it’s not that the product is off the pace. Because it isn’t, right?

Because that, on the [00:05:00] prologue, that low wide stance, really cool. But there was, I don’t know, I mean, the car had only done 100 miles. The Acura ZDX that did this like flash for me. So I don’t know, you know, maybe those kind of warning systems were still tuning themselves in. But that was the most serious incident where, You know, where the technology got in my way and was like, you know, when, and you’re like, dude, just settle the fuck down and act like you were a 1980 CRX, the Fiat 500.

It’s one was the AI. They’re like the voice listening their voice. Sensing thing must have been working because at one point I was talking to myself. I don’t know what I said, but I said something out loud and the car was like, what was that? Can I help you? Pardon? And all this kind of cars trying to start a damn conversation with me.

And all I’d done was like mutter about somebody moving into my lane. It was like I’d done like a fucking L or something [00:06:00] like that. I just had one of those in the car was like, what? Like, can I help you? Sir, you know, would you like a paper hat with that? And I’m just like, out of my face, dumb technology. Oh, I also triggered the emergency break.

That’s the other thing. It was for a second triggered the emergency breaking on the fear. The Acura that I just talked about, that was a, that was a separate incident. Now, I think of it, those were the three things. So I guess whilst I like the fear, that technology feels like it’s not quite tuned in properly yet, even for the kind of people who like it.

And I obviously. Hate that kind of technology. I quite like this little Fiat, despite it, even despite it asking me, you know, over waiting on me and, uh, the emergency braking going off. Cause it said I was too close to the traffic in front. It’s like, who’s driving me or you car, but I’m driving.[00:07:00]

So from the sublime to the ridiculous, cause it went from the Fiat 500.

To the Dodge Durango Hellcat. I think it was some silver bullet last call. Get a gas guzzling V8 while you can kind of special edition. Silver matte black hood really looked good. This is a three row SUV with a 707 horsepower supercharged V8. Nice bull’s blood leather. Interior in it that actually was kind of nicer than the rest of the interior.

There was that sort of a mismatch and I sat in it and I’d driven it before I looked at the price. [00:08:00] And were it the same price as the Genesis and the Lexus, you might allow your heart and that epic engine to win you over. But, hand on heart, even died in the war confirmed gearhead like me, were it my money, for the same money, I’d take the Genesis GV Coupe over the Hellcat Durango.

That’s if they were the same money, but the GVs, they were 70 to 80ish. This Hellcat. It was 115. 113. One was 115, one was 113. It was the range and the Durango were the two most expensive. I’m here to tell you, the Durango felt overpriced. It felt like a, you taking the piss because this is not in the same, the bill quality was not even like close to the Lexus.

And the Lexus is like 30 grand less. Like you [00:09:00] literally, you could have had the Lexus and the Lan Elantra n. Instead of the Hellcat, but that’s missing the point. Isn’t it? The last best of the bay. I wasn’t able to make it because I wasn’t able to go for the whole time, but their best car was, you know, the best debate they picked was a stick shift Acura.

And, you know, Michael did joke at one point. What were you going to do if the Hellcat one kind of thing? And You know, I’m a sufficient Luddite that I steeled myself to make a good judgment and not allow myself to be blinded by that epic engine because I knew the engine was going to be impressive. And it was right.

It is an awesome thing. You know, one of the awards that we had to give was the best piece of technology. And honestly, without a trace of facetiousness, the best piece of technology we experienced there wasn’t the Lucids. Regen breaking, which I’ll talk more about later on, but that really is, that’s an awesome feat [00:10:00] of engineering.

I mean, that is an awesome feat of engineering, but it is not in the same league as 707 Horsepower of supercharged V8 let loose on the highway, that is just a thing unto itself. So you’re never allowed to forget about the engine in sport mode. It’s incredibly loud in normal mode. It’s bloody loud. You know, you don’t ever forget these cars about the engine.

It’s like a Porsche 911 or a Suzuki tach is right in the middle and the speedo and all the other stuff is just off to the side. It’s got all these track modes and launch modes. I didn’t play around with with any of that stuff. I just got out on the highway and pressed the loud pedal. You know, for a while I looked at those Ram SRT10 pickup trucks.

That is a Ram pickup truck with a Dodge Viper [00:11:00] 8 litre normally aspirated V10 in it. In concept, it’s pretty cool. They don’t, they can’t tow that much, but you can tow a car in them. The gas mileage is bad, but what would you expect? They’re expensive to maintain, but you know, what would you expect kind of thing?

But really what put me off is that for a truck you want torque, and this is a race motor that makes all its power high up. So really, you know, people burnouts and then sell them. A lot of them have very, uh, have a very high number of, of owners. So as I sort of. Passed out that I didn’t really want this SRT 10 truck.

One of the things that always stuck in my mind about them was that that motor in the Viper makes it like a 200 mile an hour car, 190, 200 mile an hour car. The truck can do 140. Arrow limited, and I would never have thought that, you know, I’d have thought 500 horsepower was 500 horsepower. If, if an E type with 270 horsepower can [00:12:00] knock on the door of 150 miles an hour, if my a MG Mercedes de restricted when new, you know, a 2000 and, you know, W2 10 E 55, supposedly called to Wikipedia de restricted, can do 175 miles an hour, 350 horseback Ferrari, Daytona.

350 horsepower AMG Benz. This is mid 170s, isn’t it? So it seems to me, I thought, you know, 500 horsepower would inevitably mean that you were looking at more than that. But the error effect is significant in the case of those rams. The same is the case with with this Durango, and I was surprised by how error limited it was.

It was pretty stable high speed. It certainly was fun. Um, it certainly is. more fun. There is a difference in the organic power delivery of a gasoline or [00:13:00] diesel powered vehicle versus the electric whoosh of Of an ev right there, there is a difference. So it’s not about the amount of horsepower, it’s the way that the power is, is delivered.

And that contrast was actually most noticeable between the Ionic five N and the Elantra N. It’s the, just the way the power comes in. And the Elantra just left me feeling like an old pair of slippers, whereas the Ionic five left me feeling like was I, I feel like halfway between a PlayStation and real life.

The Durango is definitely on the real life section. It’s an absolute beast. I wonder if the price is even relevant because this is a future classic. Like, you can’t get that V8 anymore after this year. You can’t get it in a sedan or coupe wrapper even now. You know, it’s, it’s over. And yes, this new inline six that they do, they’re going to turbo charge for more power soon enough.

[00:14:00] But this, this Hellcat is the last of the American V8s. And if you look at that. In that context, it’s not the last is the Ford Mustang will be, but if you look at it in, in that context, it seems a bit silly to wrap it in a three row SUV body, to be honest. Like, I feel like, you know, if you want a Hellcat buy a 50 grand Challenger and a 50 grand Hemi Durango.

You know, when, and yeah, to say I was underwhelmed is completely the wrong thing. I wasn’t underwhelmed. Like I loved it. Like I, I drove further than I drove. Any of the other cars drove beyond the end of the designated test route. And I still didn’t want to turn around. And I drove up a little lane and the surface was rough and it was twisty.

And I, you know, I wanted to fling it down there and see how it rode the bumps. See if I could try and make a case for a 700 horsepower, three row SUV. And I got out and, you know, walk around it and took [00:15:00] pictures and, and was, was smitten with it. But not only was it not the best, it just wasn’t the most charismatic, just complete package.

It was, uh, rather like. Reminded me a lot of that SRT 10 RAM that the engine was epic and the idea of pickup truck was epic. But you know, you don’t want mustard on ice cream and, and that was how I felt. You know, the mustard belongs on the roast beef and the chocolate sauce on the ice cream. And you know, that engine in the GV80.

Oh, now I see why people love Hellcat Chargers. Why the Chargers was so popular, even alongside the Challengers. So I wrote down that it had a Harmon card stereo, which you’d expect for the price point, wouldn’t you? The lovely smell, our canara steering wheel, so it felt sporty. It had a fan seat, so like you could have the, like, the cool air blowing up your ass crack, and the, our canara steering wheel being heated and [00:16:00] that was, was pretty cool.

I wrote noisy and guttural, even in normal mode, let alone sport. The modes were really easy to use. And it was easy to sort of bespoke up the suspension and you could do that on the fly, you know, so that felt really usable. There is a noticeable supercharger whine and it is a million times cooler than that irritating EV whine.

Like here comes the milk float that a lot of them, that a couple of the cars had. Yeah, I just wrote the motor is always there.

So the Acura ZDX. So this is maybe more familiar to a lot of you as the Honda Prologue. I know somebody in the school pickup line is one of these Honda Prologues and, and where a lot of SUVs are going down the [00:17:00] sort of narrow, tall, kind of design, you know, more like Rivian, uh, more like the Land Rover Discovery and the Lexus is an example of that.

The Prologue’s of that in that it’s wider and lower, so it actually appears more like a sort of square or wider station wagon, traditional American station wagon or a state car, than it does seem like, uh, an SUV. I didn’t poke around in the trunk properly. I’d got back ended on the, the times and it was the last car of, of the day.

And I’ve got to say, I was feeling tired. So did I give it a fair crack of the whip? I certainly tried. As I mentioned earlier, it, it got upset with me because it said I was following another car too closely and, and tried to do the, uh, the emergency, uh, braking on me. At 544 horsepower, apparently, so, you know, the thing had plenty of, uh, of, of giddy up.

It didn’t feel that fast. I didn’t toggle with the modes very much. And [00:18:00] sadly, at the end of the day, it didn’t make that much of an impression. I did go back to look at it again afterwards, but I actually was distracted by the Lexus, and I went back and looked at the Lexus. I set out from, you know, at the end of the day, when I was looking at stuff right at the end, about before I did my voting, I set out to look at it again to try and form more of an opinion about it and, uh, ended up sitting in the Lexus again and thinking, Oh, that’s really nice quality.

So, you know, maybe within this, right, there’s a metaphor for the challenge that Acura have at the moment, which is that was this a bad product? Absolutely not. But was it in any way memorable in comparison to the other things that I experienced? No, no, it really wasn’t. You know, is it better objectively than the Hellcat?

Of course. Slight. By a country mile, but what the Hellcat had, and in fact, what the Genesis has in spades, the sort of design swagger, just the [00:19:00] coolness, just, uh, I’m paying 700 pounds, 700 a month for the next five years, but it’s cars. Bloody cool. I’m not sure if you’d feel like that about the ZDX. You know, I can’t remember what the interior looked like.

As I said, I was tired. Right. A lot of this, this might be more about me than about the car. And certainly I did lean on it before I’m driving wise. And you know, it just as all EVs tend to do, it just like did it all. It didn’t like fall apart at really high speeds. It just like did it all. I should say as well, the Fiat.

Enough speed for any normal bear, normal time. You know, I explored, uh, I explored that much. So for the Acura, I wrote the toggling for mode’s not perfect. Awesome ride, great ride, and it feels planted on the road. So sorry, Acura, that I haven’t given you as fair a crack there. I should have really driven that car again afterwards, so sorry about that.[00:20:00]

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[00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing, technology sales rep, that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Good day, good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers, the motoring historian, and this is part five of my Best of the Bay road test series. This is the shortest episode, but this has the two cars that I thought were all together the best, and the best of really a pretty good bunch. So, I felt all round the best was the Camry, which I talk about first, and that was just because of the amount of performance it had next to the amount of money it cost.

[00:01:00] Money no object, the Lucid was the best. I liked the Genesis G80 better, but the Lucid was the best car. But I guess the, the other car in this group is the Rangey, the full Fat Range Rover and kind of what an awesome piece of kit that was. If the Lucid is next generation, the Range Rover was the very best of what we have been doing up to now, or you know, or at least the leather.

Alright, so then there was an overnight and then the following morning there were the last three cars. First, the 2025 Toyota Camry, XSE. So could anything be more boring? The first thing I wrote was Camry gonna Camry, and that was after I’d sat in traffic in it, because the traffic was clearer and I’d done the [00:02:00] forest route up the hill, winding around a little bit.

It was nice. It was premium. It felt, if you just shut your eyes, you’d have thought it was a Lexus. And that is, has been the way Camrys have been for, for as long as I can remember, they’ve always felt a little bit better than they should have done. out on the fast sweepers. Was it as good as the Elantra N?

No. Was it nearly as good? Oh yeah. Was it a lot better than you ever would have expected a Camry to be at speeds far, far higher than you would ever have expected it to be able to cope with? Yes. It was really a Good car to drive and completely inoffensive. You know, all of the modes were easy to use. It was modern, but it wasn’t too much.

It was techie, but it’s just all of the things that Camry does so well. This just did all of those things so well. And then when you look at the price and it’s 37 grand, you’re like bloody hell. This is without question, the [00:03:00] best. Combination of value here. When you actually step out of the car and look at it and think, if it was my money, would I want to write the check?

You know, the car looks good. It has a visual, it makes a visual statement. I like this sort of waterfall grill, holy waterfall grill that the thing has. I mean, it’s, I still struggle with that much visual aggression against the like front wheel drive four cylinder car. But, you know, if you look at it for what it is, if you compare it with, with Accord, you know, it competes head on and in a convincing way.

And, and yeah, normally I’d be all about the Accord, but having driven this Camry, I would urge anybody who’s in that market to look closely at what they have on offer. I mean the guy’s doing like awesome gas mileage like it was in the 40s when I toggled for it’s a hybrid so it’s quiet ish around town but there’s no range anxiety fear it’s just most of the people most of the time this was just [00:04:00] the regular boy’s choice and and If you really are looking for car buying advice and you just want something practical and you’re only shopping from this, you know, of the stuff we drove, this was the best car.

It filled the definition of car best for most people, most of the time. So then from the really, I mean, I’m not sure from the sublime then, because that is a sublime piece of design. We went to the, I’m not sure if you’d describe it as ridiculous, but I mean, the Range Rover, I opened the door and smelled the leather and my word.

You just sign on the dotted line if you’re in the dealership. Just the way the leather looks, the way the leather smells. Between the moment you open the door and there’s the smell, and then you park your arse on the seat and you feel what the leather feels like. My word, we British can do interiors very, very well.

I know the reliability on Land Rovers and Range Rovers is, is dodgy, but when you’re spending six figures brand new, you know, you hope not to worry about those kinds of things to your humour. Um, that’s the way I’d feel about it. If you’re the [00:05:00] first, you know, reliability, something for the second customer to, for the second owner to worry about.

No sport mode, just a comfort mode, half a dozen different off road modes, snow, wading, all of this kind of stuff. Obviously I didn’t try any of that. I just. Like the fact that it had a distinctive feel to the screen and that kind of interaction, like distinctive Range Rover y kind of feel, but easy to use, you know, easy to use, easy to understand, big buttons, big touchscreen buttons, you know, you weren’t like diving into irritating menus, it was.

I played with the infotainment unprovoked of the traffic light, and then instead of being like, that was irritating and not playing with it again, which is what happened with most of the cars, I played with it again afterwards and, and, you know, saw if I could lower the suspension anymore or any of that kind of thing, but this is not the Range Rover’s party piece, right?

The Range Rover’s party piece is when you just get up in the saddle and stab the throttle, you feel like you’re, uh, [00:06:00] member of the aristocracy. I mean, you just do, you like float along the highway. You know, was it that fast? No. Was it adequately fast? Yes. To all intents and purposes, it’ll get down the road plenty fast enough for most people and it’ll change direction fine.

But most importantly, it’ll ride so well. And the thing that I wrote and, and that really is, is the takeaway is that. Without question, this was the most civilized car that we tested. It just felt so well thought out and luxurious. With the Durango, you were trying to justify spending all the money. With this, the difference between.

The leather used in the Range Rover and the leather used in the Genesis, that alone justified the 30 or 40 grand price differential. Yes, you could have had a Camry in between that, but you didn’t want a Camry in between because you wanted Range Rover leather, Range Rover design, the Range Rover aesthetic.

You know, it’s [00:07:00] not my thing. I couldn’t do a Range Rover and a bloody Corgi, right? I’ve already got the Corgi. That’s ridiculous enough. I can’t do a Range Rover as well. But this one, it set me thinking a little bit. I mean, that YouTuber I follow, Chop’s Garage, he has a Range Rover. And as I look at his, covered in mud, parked up outside his, uh, his dealership, I’m like, you know, There is something cool about an old Rangey, so I don’t know, maybe, uh, let me do my old Jaguars first and then I might get around to my old Rangeys.

Yeah, for the Rangey I wrote, the leather double exclamation mark, smell, touch. Then I wrote, no sport, comfort only on road mode. Then I wrote civilized. I think I just said all those things, so you can probably trim those out, but maybe if you weren’t listening, you know.[00:08:00]

And this leads us on to the last and, and objectively speaking, the best car that we drove. So it’s double the price of the Camry, which is why it’s hard to recommend it. But. You know, in terms of, was it the best piece of technology? Yes, it was. And that’s the Lucid. So it was what? Probably two years ago now that I drove that 1100 horsepower air edition one.

It’s the first of these pods. They told me to slow down on highway one. They said, did I want it in sport mode? I said, all right then. So they put it in sport mode and then on the piece of road where it opened out where I’ve done obscene speeds on sports bikes, I just did obscene speeds in the Lucid and it was just a point and squirt, right?

It was not, uh, you know, and you just squirt and when they expected me to lift off, I carried on squirting and it squirted all the way up to a bonkers speed, frankly, to the extent that even I was a bit scared and then they asked me to slow down. So that’s what happened on the last one. We were kind of running out of road as well.

I was, I was worried, [00:09:00] actually, I was a little worried that that might have, have affected whether or not they would let me drive this new one. Anyway, right, Lucid, as we know, are in a bit of trouble financially. Apparently, I spoke to the rep. Because of this whole, like, funded by the Saudi government thing, they’re not going anywhere.

This car that they brought was about half the price of the one that I’d driven. Visually, it looked pretty similar. The rep described it as decontented. It didn’t have a moonroof. It had 430 So you’re driving it thinking, is this too decontented because prior to driving that 1100 horsepower one, they had one in a mall somewhere in Silicon Valley and, uh, I was at a loose end with my father in law was in town.

It was me, my father in law and my son, when my son was, you know, younger and I’d signed up to get mailings from Lucid and they were like, do you want to come to our showroom in, you know. Festival mall or whatever it was called. It’s some cheesy [00:10:00] mall in San Jose. I hate the place. But anyway, we went there.

The guy was really keen to do his spiel before we got in the car. And afterwards I realized why. Because, uh, the materials, they looked great from 10 feet away. But when you went close and touched them, my god, the quality was terrible. Well, when I said that to the people who, when they introduced the Dream Edition that was the 1100 horsepower one, they were shocked by that because they really wanted the car to have this Awesome California luxury kind of feel and that 1100 horsepower one really did.

So then I was like, Oh, wow, these guys are lucid. They’re really good at baiting and switching, you know, impressing us with an 1100 horsepower moon roof, you know, feels like restoration hardware, luxury furniture store inside, right? They’re great at doing that and then, you know, now in order to get from 200 grand to 80 grand, you know, not only if they shed horsepower, right, what’s it going to feel like inside?

Is it going to have cheapened out too much? That was my fear. [00:11:00] And the answer is absolutely not. You know, had it been my 70 or 80 grand, I’d have bought the G80, but I like steak and potatoes. Most people, most of the time, it is Mercedes S class quality, right? The smoothness. Every element of the way the vehicle’s designed is thought about well, so I drove, I drove out and leaned on it a bit.

So when I drove back, I very much had a feeling that, you know, I’d done this test driving, I leaned out of the high window in terms of my driving license for the last Two days, and I didn’t want to lean out any further, so I just put the cruise on and sat, and I found I had my wheel, my hand, on the flat bit of the steering wheel at the bottom, and my thought was, wow, this flat bit is a really good piece of design, and that’s just.

Uh, a little vignette that shows you the way that the Lucid is, uh, is, is designed. Their shift mechanism is a little bit like [00:12:00] Mercedes have been. So it’s like a, a little toggle lever, toggle switch. And you just like, you push the button and then knock it up or knock it down to make it go into gear. No moonroof.

And obviously, you know, quite hard plastics on the inside. You could see it was, you know, a 318, not a 325 kind of feeling if we’re going to use E30 BMW kind of comparisons, but you know, it did not feel, it still felt really, all the things that were cool about the 1100 horsepower one that I drove, they were still cool about this one.

And you know, would I have wanted a moonroof? Yeah. You know, you can order the base one and have the moon roof. And similarly, this mega technology with the motors. Yeah. I wanted to talk about the regen braking. So around town, it’s quite aggressive regen braking, but if you’re like really leaning on it and doing high speed, if you come out of the gas, that regen braking is nowhere near so aggressive.

It’s there, but it’s nowhere near so aggressive. It just acts like [00:13:00] engine braking. Like, if you came out of the gas in, like, if you were hard in the gas in top gear in a big German sedan, if you came out of the gas, imagine the kind of engine braking that you would get. Controlled deceleration. That’s how this, this Lucid is.

So it means that the car doesn’t need to be pointing straight for you to be able to use that deceleration and use it in a controlled way. The Fiat, you’d be worried you were going to spin off into the scenery if the car was in any way not pointing straight and you were. going to trigger the regen braking at north of 60 miles an hour.

Three modes, smooth, swift and sprint. It seemed to be about how the power was delivered. I actually liked smooth best. Sprint seemed just to be about, you know, putting a crick in your neck. The interior, whilst it was nice and whilst it was similar to, you know, the previous one, price is similar to the G80 sedan.

So with the cars I drove, that was the obvious comparison point. [00:14:00] In comparison to that, the G80 just bloody destroys it because the quality of materials is just so much nicer. And even if you do prefer, you know. Roughly recycled plastic over leather. I just feel like the way that it was put together, the Genesis was just a nicer place to be.

But, you know, I, I dunno, like I’m an old dude, you know, I’m sitting recording this in my man cave library garage space. And, you know, I’m sitting on a leather Chesterfield to do it. So, you know, I like. the leather and the wood and cars as they have been. So if I’m thinking about what’s best here, you know, even maybe on the interior, I could see some people who like a clean California, modern look and feel, that person is going to choose not the Genesis.

They’re going to. Choose the lucid. Yeah. So this is what I put it that the lucid it makes the G80 and the Range Rover. It makes them feel very old. It makes them feel a [00:15:00] previous generation technology. So on those last days, I did the same route each day and I drove and turned around in the same. lay by.

And now I stepped out to take pictures. I might even include some of the pictures in, in the thing of that first of the Rangy and then of the, uh, of the Lucid. And when I was photographing the Rangy, I noticed at the side of the lay by, there was a guy who was obviously traveling and camping in his Prius.

So he’s got like a Prius with a tent off the side of it. He’s got a couple of big German shepherds and they were like lying around the place. And I noticed that because they’d noticed me because, you know, I’d like turned around and approached in it at the car, the car. So, uh, as I’m photographing the Lucid, the dude yells out, I’ve just got to say something that thing is sick and we talked a bit more about the car and he was like, you know, I’m sorry, I interrupted you and all of that.

And I was like, no, dude, I’m so glad you did because. This is a good way to end this review, right? The, of all the cars I drove, the only one that [00:16:00] provoked comment from a passerby was that one, because that’s how futuristic this quote, decontented, close quotes, lucid is. So I wonder, maybe this decontent, this, this did not, you know, I don’t need.

In my Caesar salad, I don’t need the chicken. I don’t need the cheese. I still enjoy Caesar salad without those things. And, and maybe that’s what we’re talking about with this, uh, Lucid. I don’t know what the edition was because that’s how they, they name it. But yeah, if you’re in the market and you’ve got the money to spend, um, that definitely is of the stuff that we drove the most tom tomorrow.

Kind of vehicle. It was, uh, truly next generational. I wrote that and, you know, I’ll stand by it. Truly a next generational vehicle. Well, thanks for listening.[00:17:00]

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