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Crew Chief Brad: 2025 is our year.
Crew Chief Eric: 100%. Let’s send it.
Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to Drive Thru episode number 53. This is our monthly recap where we put together a menu of automotive, motorsport, and random car adjacent news that’s meant to be slightly entertaining.
Now let’s pull up to window number one for some automotive news.
Crew Chief Eric: We’re back! We gotta find a song for this. We already did the, the Mac. Can’t do Welcome Back, Cotter. So what’s another comeback song, Brad?
Crew Chief Brad: Isn’t there like Back in a New York Minute or something like that? That’s an
Crew Chief Eric: [00:01:00] oldie though. There was another one.
Backstreet’s Back Again. We can’t do that.
Crew Chief Brad: No, ACDC Back in Black.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah.
Crew Chief Brad: Is that PC enough? I don’t know.
Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know.
Crew Chief Brad: Tell me why we don’t get any cool cars. Tell me why. We’re back.
Crew Chief Eric: Episode 53. A
Crew Chief Brad: little older, a little wiser, a little better looking.
Crew Chief Eric: Are you sure about that?
Crew Chief Brad: We’ve got faces for radio. I mean, come on now.
Crew Chief Eric: where we get deep into the bowels of our winter recap because we have been on winter break for the last couple of months our last official drive thru episode was october then we did the holiday then we did the best of and did you get everything on your christmas list you’ve been turned to wrenches on your car is your car happy
Crew Chief Brad: i got some tools on the christmas list i didn’t get anything for the kitchen this year they gave me that stuff for father’s day and but i did get A new set of gear wrench sockets and some new ratchets, the 120 tooth ratchets.
They’re pretty sweet. Three quarter inch, [00:02:00] half inch and three eighth inch. Or the little guy.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, I hear congratulations are in order. Your car is off jack stands.
Crew Chief Brad: Ah, so pump the brakes there. Pun intended. It is off jack stands, but the brake pedal goes to the floor and then it builds up pressure. Before it would just go to the floor and it would continuously go to the floor.
Then, and obviously because I changed the brake lines at the caliper, I needed to add fluid. So I put fluid in and now I pump the brakes. It goes to the floor once and then it comes back. So I need to put it back on jack stands, get the wheels off of it. And I just need to do a whole system flush and make sure there’s no leaks.
So that’s my next step.
Crew Chief Eric: You got all the breathers and PCVs and all that intake stuff done too, right? So the car’s running again.
Crew Chief Brad: Oh, the car’s running really well now. Yeah, it runs great. PCVs back in the intake manifold, the intake gasket, the intake manifold, new gasket, new valve cover, gasket, uh, new plugs, new coils, all back together now.
And all the suspension stuff, it’s still just needs a brake flush and.
Crew Chief Eric: Starting to sound like a Bubba Gump commercial there. Fried [00:03:00] shrimp, boiled shrimp.
Crew Chief Brad: Control arms, upper control arms, lower control arms, rear control arms, front control arms.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, the reason I bring it up is non car enthusiasts would be like, Brad, bro, that decrepit old car into trash.
You need to buy. Something new,
Crew Chief Brad: if I could afford to, I would, but this old piece of shit isn’t worth anything to anybody else. But me and the words of, you know, anybody that’s been married for a really long time, it’s cheaper to keep her.
Crew Chief Eric: That leads us right into our showcase. And that’s why I brought it up because a lot of us at GTM headquarters have older cars that we cherish and we adore.
And we continue to turn wrenches on and you look at the stickers on these new cars and you’re like, I don’t get it. As we’ve talked about many times over the newest car we have is a 2019 six years ago. Now that was expensive looking at the prices today. It’s like everything’s doubled. And I know you love this.
When I bring it up that [00:04:00] the 2025 car buying season started in August of 2024, we are halfway into the 2025 sales season and things are not looking good at all. There’s a lot of the sky is falling. The end is nigh. It’s the end of the world. There’s going to be a car market collapse. The industry is imploding.
Crew Chief Brad: I used to be on that train the first year they started talking about it, but now we’re in like year five or six of them talking about the car bubble bursting. I haven’t seen it yet. I will say I work in finance. I work for a financial institution. I do see Delinquency and collection numbers and charge off numbers and stuff like that.
It’s actually a big part of my job and our auto loans, delinquencies have gone up slightly, but nothing like what has been predicted. I will say the repo men that we have that we contract with are Very, very busy [00:05:00] and the lead times on picking up these vehicles has gone from like within 30 days to like within 90 to 120 days.
They are very busy collecting these vehicles, but maybe it’s just because we didn’t do any type of predatory lending. We’re not in that trouble.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, there’s a whole lot of that going on because these cars have gotten to the point where you’re making mortgage payments on them. They’re so expensive. The video that we have in our showcase that kind of set the whole tone for this, this month done by a YouTuber.
And he’s apparently done shorter versions of this same thing throughout the year. And I feel like this was a compilation video cause it was very stitched together and he was kind of repetitive, but very thorough, very informative, and very interesting. He went to actual dealerships and he started walking up and down the lots and looking at the markups, looking at the prices, how many trucks and cars were still left on the lot.
I felt like he was doing an audition for CBS Evening News because he’s got this very Tom Brokaw way of speaking and it was very clean and, and everything. And so it got me thinking because there’s [00:06:00] other articles that have been floating around during the winter break about the market and these companies that are merging and CEOs that are just stepping out unannounced and whatnot.
So. I want to take a deeper dive and see if the sky is really falling on this. So I recommend everybody watch this first video by untamed motors. So again, he’s got a whole series of these.
Crew Chief Brad: You know, I saw another video. Actually, it was quite popular on Instagram. Somebody at a car dealership was going around.
I think he was a salesperson at the dealership and asking the other salespeople. What they were paying on their cars and keep in mind they work at the dealership. They probably get pretty decent pricing and maybe even pretty decent financial terms.
Crew Chief Eric: 96 month loans.
Crew Chief Brad: Every single person’s loan payment was four digits.
Crew Chief Eric: Good. Can you imagine?
Crew Chief Brad: No, like you were saying, that’s, uh, some people’s rent and that’s some people’s, you know, mortgage payments. But 000 for a cell phone. I’m not totally [00:07:00] surprised, but still, it’s just ridiculous how many people pay with these cards,
Crew Chief Eric: right? And not to get into a political debate or a discussion about, you know, world economics and inflation and all this, all the bills are going up and actually untamed talks about that.
He’s like, insurance is going up and electricity is going up and this is going up and that’s why everything’s getting more expensive. And obviously the paychecks are all staying the same. The markups, which we’ve talked about Bullshit that they add to the price of the car. And you look at an F one 50 best selling vehicle in the world, as we’ve reported before, when he goes up and down the line at the dealership, I don’t know the difference of the trim packages.
I’m just not that into it, nor do I really care, but the point is. Entry level F 150. I’m sure you can get the two seat, no cab, long bed, basic work truck for 35, 000. And that’s the argument people are going to make, but that’s not what people are buying. People are buying these as family haulers. And then there are the folks that just use them for work.
And when you [00:08:00] look at the price spectrum, they’re anywhere from 50 to over 100, 000 for an F 150. Let’s not even talk about the Rams and the Chevys and the Dodges and all the other trucks that are out there. And it’s like, these vehicles are designed for all of us, you know, not like a special class, like you’re buying a Ferrari or a Porsche, you have a certain demographic.
That’s going to buy that. That’s going to be interested in, have the liquidity to be able to do that. Or maybe it’s aspirational. Let’s just leave that where it is, but a truck’s a truck. You’re going to use it for work and haul stuff, maybe on the farm or just because you want to go to the mall and that’s fine, but they’ve priced everybody out of the market because even somebody with a lot of money is going to go 100, 000 for an F one 50,
Crew Chief Brad: but see, you’re missing the point.
Crew Chief Eric: Am I?
Crew Chief Brad: Or at least part of the point. So these trucks, they’re big, they weigh a certain amount of weight, you know, with government tax write offs and you, the way you depreciate them, a vehicle that meets in a certain criteria, you can take the full write off of its depreciated value in one hit, [00:09:00] which lowers your taxable income, which then ends up putting more money in your pocket.
So they buy it, has the company bankroll it and cashflow it. Then they depreciate it, which reduces their taxable income, and then it reduces what they owe the IRS at the end of the year.
Crew Chief Eric: It must be nice. I guess everybody and their brother in the United States has an LLC now, so they can do this kind of thing, right?
Like, I don’t get it.
Crew Chief Brad: I think that’s what a lot of these people are doing. These tradesmen, people that buy trucks every year, every two years, you know, replacing their F 150 that’s only got like 50, 000 miles on it. Granted 50, 000 miles in two years is a lot of miles, but you know, they’re replacing it with something brand new because they’re taking the tax right off each year.
Crew Chief Eric: What the government is doing, and I have bear witness to this myself in the greater DMV area, right? The DC metro area. You notice that they’ve changed the way they’re issuing the registration and the license plates now. And so they’ve readjusted what you pay for your tags based on the weight of the vehicle, which is a very European.
Way of doing things. So [00:10:00] they do that in England and other places, the bigger the vehicle is, the heavier it is, we’re going to impose this like road tax it now it’s become a luxury that you drive a 9, 000 pound Hummer or cyber truck or whatever it is.
Crew Chief Brad: That just makes total sense. And if you think about it, I don’t know if you remember back in the day, I don’t know if it’s still a thing or not, but.
Back when in the early 2000s and before there used to be a luxury tax on vehicles that were purchased over, I think it was like 35, 000 or something. Yep. There was an additional on top of the sales tack and additional luxury tax. They can’t have that now because that’s the normal price of a vehicle now.
Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: Unfortunately, you know, to register your minivan. In the greater DC area, get ready to fork over 600 bucks when it used to be 150. It’s absolutely insane what they’re doing. And so every time we turn around, it’s getting worse. Insurance is going up. Cost of cars are going up. And then the funny part about what Antin was talking about, he goes, the used market was crazy [00:11:00] during COVID.
We know that, but actually that has sort of right sized itself, and he was talking about, here’s a XYZ Expedition with the Black Knight Mohawk package that it comes with, and like, all these bells and whistles, and he’s like, I bought the exact same truck used, two years old. And it’s like a third the price, the sticker price on the dealer lot.
He’s like, just buy one used. I would do that too, especially something low mileage or whatever, but it’s insane. The people that are taking out these six, seven, eight plus year loans on 100, 000 truck. And the stupid thing is only worth a third.
Crew Chief Brad: They’re only thinking about the cash flow. Can I afford the monthly payment?
Crew Chief Eric: It’s absolutely insane. Some of these other ones on here, and we’re gonna go through some of the major manufacturers that are sort of in this mess and have gotten themselves into a pickle. One of them being Ford. And the headline reads, Ford EVs struggle to continue in this rapidly deteriorating market conditions.
Oh, again, the sky is falling. Let’s be real. [00:12:00] Who wants an F 150 Lightning? It costs more than a F 150 V8. And are you really going to save money on the electricity long term? I get it. We’re saving the world and all this kind of stuff. But we’ve seen the tests. They can only tow so far. They can only go so far.
Yeah, you can recharge your house on them or whatever, but Is it worth it?
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. If I wanted to pick up truck that was like a car simply just because I like the pickup truck design and I wanted to pick up truck, okay, yeah, I’d consider one over, you know, some of the other electrics out there, it’s got space, it’s got cargo capacity, whatever, but to use it like a truck for truck things, no.
Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Well, and to your point, if you want a truck bodied. Vehicle to have that truck feel because that’s what you like to drive. What’s wrong with a Maverick? And then maybe let’s make it a hybrid because it already comes with that anemic four cylinder anyway. Well, the Maverick size wise isn’t big enough.
Flag on the play because the Maverick is the size of an old F 150 from a couple generations back, which [00:13:00] we all know back then, economy of scale. It was huge, but now it’s tiny. It’s like a S10 in comparison to the stuff that they’re producing, that they’re all the size of freaking barges.
Crew Chief Brad: As someone who is a, you know, and I quote, as someone has told me many times, I’m a very large human being.
I appreciate the extra space in some of these vehicles. And my reality is I don’t fit in a Maverick. I don’t fit in the older F 150s. I don’t fit in those vehicles. Bigger vehicles accommodate me better. So that’s what I’m going to look at, except for a GTI. I will drive a Volkswagen hatchback because they accommodate me too.
Crew Chief Eric: You got that bubble car. So it’s all good. But Ford, they got the F one 50. Okay, great. But then they’ve decided to do the Capri and then these other ones, which are rebadged Volkswagen’s. Why are you taking this gamble? On somebody else’s product, which isn’t really selling that great in their own portfolio.[00:14:00]
And you want to take that on and try to sell and compete against that. To me, it doesn’t make sense
Crew Chief Brad: to me. They’re cheating and it’s not working out for them. If you want to build a good electric vehicle, do it from scratch, engineer it, build it yourself. Come up with something innovative. EVs are supposed to be the next level technology.
You know, the future, make it look like that, make it dramatic, make it something that people are going to want to buy, not just a rebadge. Like you’re saying a Volkswagen, the Capri looks like a Polestar. Looks like a this looks like a that. I mean, none of these vehicles are particularly eye catching or good looking.
They’re overly priced. They’re trying to cheat. And then they’re suffering because people realize, oh, well, this is just the same shit just with a different front emblem.
Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad you brought that up cars that look like other cars that look like other cars. That brings us to Chrysler. Who announced that they’re halting production of the airflow.
You remember the airflow? We talked about that, you know, midsize SUV thing. We’re like, Ooh, something new from Chrysler, other than just a bread box on wheels, AKA minivan. [00:15:00] And they’ve decided now we’re not going to do that anymore.
Crew Chief Brad: Oh yeah. It looks like a lifted Chrysler 200. With a shooting break back end,
Crew Chief Eric: it looks way better than the
Crew Chief Brad: 200.
It’s not bad looking.
Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s not at all. I was really interested in this when they first announced it. It has very Germanic styling to it. I mean, like you said, like a pole star or an ID for the Capri, they all kind of look the same, but I’m like, here’s another one down the drain. That could be a result of the fact that there’s still no CEO.
It’s the way it is.
Crew Chief Brad: No, I don’t know.
Crew Chief Eric: So one other thing to add to the Stellantis. Mess is a DeDoy moment to quote you. Brad Jeep has come back and said that maybe they overshot with their pricing on the Wagoneer. Maybe nobody wants to spend 150, 000 on a three row Jeep.
Crew Chief Brad: I was looking at this actually, not this article, whatever I don’t read.
So, but I was looking into the Wagoneers because I see a lot of them in my neighborhood and I’m like, they can’t be all these people paying six figures [00:16:00] for a Jeep Wagoneer. Right. What I found, and someone can correct me if I’m wrong, the regular Wagoneer is in the 60s. So, similar price to a Suburban, Tahoe, Sequoia, vehicles of that ilk.
The Grand Wagoneer is where you get into the Range Rover pricing and stuff like that, which I have not. seen a lot of grand Wagoneers. So I actually do feel the standard Wagoneer pricing is actually pretty decent given what the competition is. The grand Wagoneer, I think is probably shooting for the stars and not really landing on the moon.
That one I could, I could see it should be cheaper, but the regular Wagoneer, I think is fine. If we’re talking about EVs real quick, one that I have seen a lot of. That I’m very impressed with in person, and I really, really like it. And if I was in the market for an EV, I would totally consider getting one.
Is the Cadillac, uh, what’s it called? The, the derelict,
Crew Chief Eric: the
Crew Chief Brad: lyric. I’ve seen several of them in person and I [00:17:00] think they are awesome looking. I love the weird quirky Citroen styling that they do have like a very classic French styling. And I just think they’re really awesome looking cars
Crew Chief Eric: for the EV market. Different. That’s for sure. I mean, not everything has to look like it came out of the Jetsons, you know, all the stuff that Toyota is producing, where you’re just like, you just make it look normal and then put it in electric power plant in it.
I don’t know why nobody’s caught on to that. But speaking of Toyota, a company that we’ve talked about multiple times that doesn’t have, but whatever that BR4X RAV4 electric thing that they came out with, just to say they have an electric, an all electric, they bet the farm on hybrids. New CARB rules have gone into effect where by 2026, so we’re talking next year, well, actually this summer, if we go by sales, right?
So by August, September of this year, when they’re producing 2026 models that have to comply with the new CARB 2 rules, California and the [00:18:00] 12 or 13 other states out of our great 50 states here in America that abide by the CARB rules are saying, Not practically zero emissions or, you know, all the PZEV and PHEV and all those acronyms are out there.
They’re talking ZEV, Zero Emissions Vehicles, earlier than expected. And Toyota’s like, dude, what? This is impossible. There’s no way.
Crew Chief Brad: As a Toyota person, when I’ve got two Toyotas in my fleet, I love my Tundra. It’s been flawless for the last seven years, uh, and I’m expecting the van to be very similar.
Anybody that’s got a new Tundra or a new Tacoma will tell you Toyota is looking at a bunch of recalls and issues with major components like the Tundra’s twin turbo motor is blowing up and grenading themselves, the Tacoma’s transmissions are grenading themselves, Toyota uh, Can’t really afford to invest in the EV market right now because they’ve got to fix all the issues that they have with these trucks.
Crew Chief Eric: [00:19:00] No, they got to pay for kazoo racing to go to Formula One.
Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah, let’s, let’s talk about that for a minute.
Crew Chief Eric: How much is that going to cost? Come on.
Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know. I guess they’re hoping that, you know, if they get the constructors championships or points from that. More people are going to
Crew Chief Eric: buy Tundras.
Come on. I mean and even the price of tundras has gone up a lot like they’re 60 70 plus thousand dollars when they were the more reasonable by but you had to convince somebody not to buy a ford or chevy it’s like dude look at the toyota like seriously look at a toyota and now. They’re just as expensive
Crew Chief Brad: as someone who actually went through that exact scenario.
When I was looking for a truck, I was looking at the Ford, the Chevy and the Toyota, the Fords and the Chevys consistently priced in the fifties. And then even with the 10, 000 of the dealerships were throwing back at people and rebates and stuff just for fun. It seemed like you go in, you never pay sticker because he comes back with a 10, 000 rebate.
I still [00:20:00] got the Toyota for mid thirties. And it does everything that I needed to do. It did everything the Ford and the Chevy did. And I’ve had it for seven years with zero problems.
Crew Chief Eric: We’ve been talking about pickup trucks a bit because they are some of the best selling vehicles in the U S and we’ve mentioned Ford.
We’ve mentioned Chevy. We mentioned Dodge Rams or just Ram now, and then the Toyota Tundra. But we forgot one, right? Another manufacturer of full size pickup trucks, Nissan.
Crew Chief Brad: We didn’t forget Nissan. Nissan forgot themselves. I
Crew Chief Eric: think Nissan forgot everything. What is going on over there? For those of you listening at home, if you haven’t heard this yet, I don’t know where you’ve been, especially if you’re a car enthusiast parent company.
Renault also involved in this debacle is looking to divest Nissan and sell it to Toyota. Again, kazoo racing, the Tundra recalls, and now they’re going to buy Nissan. What are they doing?
Crew Chief Brad: It sounds like they’ve gone full Volkswagen.
Crew Chief Eric: Dude, this is unreal. Nissan. What are they losing? [00:21:00] 70 percent year over year.
They’ve slashed production. They laid off 9, 000 employees. I don’t know. That doesn’t seem like a big number to me for an auto manufacturer. I don’t know why. And then we can talk about infinity. I mean, people still buy those like really inside of this mess. Is the fact that Renault has controlling stock in Nissan.
They bought them back 20 plus years ago when the 350z came out. Right. So it’s, we’re going that far back in time. And so Renault has been involved and then Nissan had acquired Mitsubishi. And we all know how well Mitsubishi has done in the last. Ever so the DSM days are long gone.
Crew Chief Brad: Oh my God. And talking about Mitsubishi, they haven’t made a cool car since the Evo.
When did that stop production? Like 2012, 2015, 15 years
Crew Chief Eric: ago. Well, they make that Lancer across whatever the hell that thing CV is. It’s awful.
Crew Chief Brad: I reiterate, they, they haven’t made any cool cars in a really long time. But
Crew Chief Eric: that being said. Nissan’s like this money pit and we talked about it before how exciting it was when the 400, which again, the Z, a lot of people just [00:22:00] call it the Z, but let’s call it the 400.
The
Crew Chief Brad: Zaltima.
Crew Chief Eric: So the Z was coming out and it’s like bargain basement price and still nobody bought them. And we spotted one over the holidays. My wife was like, what is that? I said, that’s the Z, that’s the car I kept talking about. That’s the car I am still interested in purchasing, but I don’t think you can get one if you tried.
And at this point, Nissan’s probably fire sailing those cars. If they do have any of them,
Crew Chief Brad: are they fire sailing them? Or can you not find them? If you’re interested in buying a 400 Z, then I think you should. I think we need a segment where Eric talks about how he’s going to try and buy a 400 Z. And then we want to hear the answers of buying the Z.
Crew Chief Eric: That was like all of 2023. What are you talking about? We already covered all that.
Crew Chief Brad: No, but that was before it came out. Then you saw it in person and you’re like, meh. That front end,
Crew Chief Eric: it’s we, yeah, whatever, we’ll get into that. Maybe I am speaking out of both sides a little bit, but my point is this. They struck gold with the fact it’s a twin turbo, six cylinder, proper grand tour, because I can’t call it a sports car because we saw the test and how it all panned [00:23:00] out against the Zupra and everything else.
It’s a nice car and for 50 grand, compared to a lot of other things you can buy for 50 grand, if you’re an enthusiast, it’s like, don’t walk, run to the Nissan dealership. And buy one. But here’s the deal. They’re losing money hand over fist. As Tanya has always said, they just make one car. It’s the Ultima.
They stretch it and they crunch it and they elongate it and all those kinds of things. Toyota’s like, yeah, bro, we’re gonna bring you on board. But there’s a couple stipulations. And this is where I started laughing because I’m digging into these articles. And Toyota’s like, All right, Nissan, we’ll bring you in to the family if you can make yourself profitable by 2026.
How? They haven’t been freaking profitable forever.
Crew Chief Brad: What they need to do is change the name from Nissan to Ultima Motor Company.
Crew Chief Eric: Go back to Datsun.
Crew Chief Brad: And just, yeah, everything, everything’s an Ultima. And then, yeah, they just rebrand every car to Ultima. The Ultima Sport, the Ultima Touring, the Ultima Econ.
Crew Chief Eric: And we know some people that had.
Titans, the big [00:24:00] Nissan full size pickup that competes with everything else. And it just, it couldn’t compete with everything else. And they had transmission issues and like you’re talking about with Toyota.
Crew Chief Brad: I’m going to call BS, but I’m going to reserve the right to keep my opinions to myself about that particular issue.
But that particular truck at this time,
Crew Chief Eric: I have a feeling I know where you’re going with that.
Crew Chief Brad: There’s a lot of lead.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. What did Jeremy Clarkson say about fuel economy? It’s all about how you use the right pedal.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: Same kind of thing. The sky continues to fall. Prices are out of control. We’ve got cars still sitting on dealership lots because chips or whatever,
Crew Chief Brad: you know, cars are sitting on dealer lots because they’re too fricking expensive.
Crew Chief Eric: Nissan’s in dire straits. Toyota, they got their own issues and doing Formula One and everything else. And then Volkswagen. Oh boy. Volkswagen, our favorite, our absolute favorite. And the CEO from the U. S. decided during winter break, he just quit. We’re done. And I was reading into it and it wasn’t like [00:25:00] when they got rid of the guy that designed the ID Buzz.
They’re just like, yeah, we’re done with you. Nope. They’re just like, this guy just left. That’s it. On his own recognizance, he just quit. So then they took the guy who was the head of HR for Volkswagen of America, put him in charge until like December. And now the new head of VW USA is the former CEO of Porsche North America.
And he was in that role in 2020. So the beginning of COVID, and then he left and went to Rivian and then he left Rivian in 2023. So now the guy that was in charge of Porsche North America is in charge of Volkswagen North America. I don’t think it’s going to make a damn bit of difference because of the ID buzz is still 63, 000.
Can you imagine a Volkswagen minivan? 63.
Crew Chief Brad: I mean, it’s on par with other electrics out there, isn’t it? Isn’t the pricing on par with what electric cars are costing?
Crew Chief Eric: That thing should be 40 grand and a hybrid, but I’ll leave that part where it is.
Crew Chief Brad: I agree. I agree. So right
Crew Chief Eric: now, if the [00:26:00] van Is 63 grand, that is the most expensive Volkswagen in the fleet?
Crew Chief Brad: I guess it is, I guess it would be.
Crew Chief Eric: So the ID Buzz is Volkswagen’s flagship. That’s what they’re hanging their hat on right now, is that two tone breadbox.
Crew Chief Brad: Something tells me the VW bus in the 60s was not the flagship of VW.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, you don’t say? Where’s the Beetle again?
Crew Chief Brad: It’s still being produced in Mexico.
Crew Chief Eric: So the Passat’s gone, they don’t make a wagon anymore of any kind.
I don’t even count the Alltrack, I think those are all left over anyway. So then, Golf is sorta still around, the Golf R, we went into that whole debate last year. So if the Golf R is not the flagship, the hot hatch, the van is, so we’ve talked about how the Golf was gonna be over 40, 000 and you guys were like, nah, there’s no way, there’s no way.
And the Brits had already reported that the prices of the Golfs were going up. When you look at the lineup, it’s not very deep. If Porsche guy, coming from the 9 11 mentality, goes, golf [00:27:00] should be flagship, how much is the golf gonna cost? Or are they gonna have to bring the price of the van down?
Crew Chief Brad: Well, I don’t necessarily think flagship means the most expensive vehicle in the fleet.
Crew Chief Eric: VAG world, though. Look at the Phaeton. Look at the A8. I don’t know if that
Crew Chief Brad: necessarily is the definition of what a flagship vehicle should be, though.
Crew Chief Eric: What else would it be?
Crew Chief Brad: The most iconic, most recognizable vehicle. The vehicle that everybody, like, you look at and you know, oh my god, okay, that’s a Volkswagen.
Crew Chief Eric: Okay, we’ll apply that philosophy to VAG. With the example of Porsche. So if the most iconic car, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in the lineup, nine 11, nine 11 is the most expensive one they have hands down.
Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah, that’s one use case.
Crew Chief Eric: So the GTI is the nine 11 of VW. So 80, 000 for the Golf R.
Crew Chief Brad: And what doesn’t mean that it has to cost 80, 000.
It just means that that’s the. car that they’re hanging their hats on
Executive Producer Tania: according to the interwebs, a flagship vehicle doesn’t [00:28:00] have anything to a cost, but it is the vehicle in the lineup that embodies the best that the automated car stands for.
Crew Chief Brad: Thank you, Tanya. I think that’s exactly what I was trying to say, even though I wasn’t as eloquent as Tanya was.
Executive Producer Tania: They’re usually high performance models, which can translate the cost.
Crew Chief Brad: Of course, you’re paying for the technology and the engineering.
Executive Producer Tania: The design is. Striking, usually, or expressive, usually have better technology in them. And then in terms of volume, it’s a higher volume line.
Crew Chief Eric: So by that definition, then the ID buzz is the flagship of Volkswagen right now.
It’s got better technology. It should be higher volume than the golf R if that’s the 9 11 of Volkswagen. That is a finite niche market of people that buy that compared to the people that should be buying the vans.
Executive Producer Tania: Sorry. It’s size, not volume. So I guess the physical size, it’s the largest car in the automaker’s lineup,
Crew Chief Eric: then it’s ID buzz done.
Executive Producer Tania: But it’s usually the car that represents the best of an automaker’s
Crew Chief Eric: capabilities, which I’ve seen the interior [00:29:00] and the ID buzz, and I’ve heard other people say it. It’s not that nice.
Crew Chief Brad: Well, then I would say the golf, the golf bar is the flagship of the Volkswagen fleet.
Crew Chief Eric: We’ll put a pin in this for now.
Mark my words, the Golf is going to get more expensive.
Crew Chief Brad: It’ll get more expensive, but I don’t think it’ll be 80, 000 to beat the ID Buzz. Unless they come out with a GT3 RS equivalent.
Crew Chief Eric: They have it in Europe. It’s the GTI Club Sport.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but that’s a race car. That’s basically, it’s specifically for racing.
Executive Producer Tania: Can you say Volkswagen has a flagship? It used to be the Passat.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And I think that’s another point. Like not every auto manufacturer has a flagship.
Executive Producer Tania: Flagship would be like an a eight L rolls up
Crew Chief Brad: or an S class,
Executive Producer Tania: but I don’t think it was Passat either. Maybe it was the fate. It was the
Crew Chief Brad: Faden when they had it.
And then the, the twa, the twa wag, the
Crew Chief Eric: twarg,
Crew Chief Brad: the twa wag,
Crew Chief Eric: stupid name. Well, anyway, ID Buzz, 63, 000, my mind is still melting over the price every time I see it. I think
Executive Producer Tania: you have to have two flagships if you’re [00:30:00] talking electric vehicles, because an ID Buzz is so radically different than a Golf, you could almost have two flagships.
Crew Chief Brad: According to Eric, Volkswagen’s flagship EV then is the Ford Capri because it’s the same car.
Crew Chief Eric: What a mess.
Crew Chief Brad: Welcome to the global economy.
Crew Chief Eric: Since we’re still speaking of Volkswagen,
Crew Chief Brad: do we have to,
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, they need to get their heads out of their butts.
Crew Chief Brad: Talk about the entire automotive industry needs to get their heads out of their butts.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, did you hear about the data leak for VW? This one’s pretty bad.
Crew Chief Brad: I know all about VW leaking.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, yeah. Tell us more about that. Headline reads massive Volkswagen data leak exposed 800, 000 EV owners. Movements from homes to brothels and everything in between. Big Brother is watching. I
Crew Chief Brad: feel like that title is clickbait.
Crew Chief Eric: Isn’t it though? But if you read on, it says sensitive information about Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, and Skoda EVs was left exposed and unprotected in a misconfigured cloud storage system for months. [00:31:00] Why are they tracking the cars? This is the kind of stuff that’s going to kill the automotive industry.
Crew Chief Brad: So Volkswagen is not the only company that’s doing this.
If you remember what Lizzie was saying, I don’t know if she said it on air, but when we were talking to her about the Lexus Nexus network and how all cars, I did some research and yes, my Toyota, all Toyotas from like a certain year on send driver data and vehicle data back to Toyota. As well. Now what they’re doing with that data, I’m not sure, but it does say like movements, speed, breaking, you know, all kinds of information.
Volkswagen is not the only car manufacturer that’s doing this. I think it’s an industry wide issue, a privacy issue, that nobody seems to be talking about.
Crew Chief Eric: So what’s the endgame here? Is it all to invalidate your warranty? Because what else would they want to collect your driving behavior data for?
Crew Chief Brad: That’s why insurance costs are going up.
Insurance companies are looking and said, Brad, it looks like you went 90 miles an hour [00:32:00] on Sunday, January 22nd or whatever. Because of that, we’re raising your insurance rates to XYZ dollars a month or something like that. I feel like that data is being sold to somebody. That’s why the trickle down effect, all this just going up.
Executive Producer Tania: There you go. It’s being sold to something because data is king right now, but doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being sold. Although it probably is also going to insurance companies. And there’s a social engineering aspect around all this too, because imagine someone’s tracking you go from your home and you go to Starbucks and then you go to McDonald’s drive thru and then you go to the whatever grocery store.
Oh no, then you stopped here and oh, you stopped there. There’s a whole slew of things this data could be used for and people that could be buying it. So even outside of the insurance company thing, it’s like the marketing loys when you’re scrolling through Facebook or something like that. And you’re going to start doing targeted campaigns and suddenly your little infotainment screen in your car or something is going to start suggesting like, Oh, Starbucks has a sale on caramel macchiatos.
[00:33:00] Pumpkin spice latte seasons here. You know?
Crew Chief Brad: Waze already does that. It’s been doing that for years where you’re driving and because it knows where you are, obviously it’s a navigation app. If you’re driving by a Dunkin Donuts, sure enough pops up in your Waze app. Dunkin Donuts is right here. They’ve got a sale going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it’s like, no, just tell me where the cops are. And then it’s just like anybody who’s seen, well, I can’t remember if it was iRobot or Minority Report, Black Mirror, that too, but there was a specific movie. I can’t remember if it was when Tom Cruise was walking into the police station or something, but you walk past the stores and everything and the screens pop up and it say, Hey, you know, this is on sale.
You, we know you bought this last month. You, you want this, you know, it goes into exactly what Tanya is saying. There’s too much information on everybody out there and it’s being used nefariously.
Crew Chief Eric: It is. And I don’t even want to get into a discussion about cybersecurity because that’s my day gig and nevermind.
I will just say, stop using Chrome. That’s all I’m going to say. Really? [00:34:00] Yes. I’ll just leave it at that.
Crew Chief Brad: Anybody who knows me or follows me on the social media or whatever. There’s a reason I don’t post anything about my kids at all. I think there’s maybe one or two pictures of my kids anywhere on Facebook, maybe
Crew Chief Eric: the metaverse
Crew Chief Brad: and it’s of the back of their heads.
That’s it. You will never see my until they’re old enough to make that decision for themselves. They will never be on social
Crew Chief Eric: media. So on this whole bent of the end is nigh, the sky is falling. It’s all coming to a collapse, not to be outdone. We would be remiss if we didn’t include Tesla in this mess. For those of you that took a winter break like we did and you’re tuning in right now, we did do our best of this year and it was time to do Tesla again because we always do Formula One and then we do Florida Man and all that fun stuff.
So we did the Cybertruck thing and that was, I think that was a great episode. But you know what? The news of the Cybertruck just never seems to stop. Ever. And I don’t want to continue
Executive Producer Tania: on that treadmill. I want to like stop talking about Tesla going forward.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s our New [00:35:00] Year’s resolution. We’re never going to talk about Tesla ever again.
Executive Producer Tania: I don’t want to give the air
Crew Chief Eric: time anymore. I thought this next one was pretty damn hilarious. Tesla is buffing foundation series badges off of Cybertrucks to sell them as regular trucks. Ha ha ha ha
Crew Chief Brad: ha ha ha ha. Come on. So what does that tell us? It tells us that the foundation series truck is literally just a badge.
Well, duh. You paid for early adopter badge engineering.
Crew Chief Eric: Yep, a vinyl that they put on there that says foundation. That’s terrible. And at the same time, Tanya, you were telling me about this diverting people and personnel and resources and things to other parts of the Tesla line.
Executive Producer Tania: Cybertruck sales are down.
They can’t sell them. The markups that people were buying them and trying to sell them for over a hundred thousand dollars, that’s all falling flat on people’s Faces
Crew Chief Brad: glad I didn’t buy one of those stupid things,
Executive Producer Tania: right? And [00:36:00] then the sales are down and so they’re going okay Well, people are still interested in the Model Y so we’ll make more Model Y’s now I do see a lot more
Crew Chief Eric: Model Y’s on the road than anything else.
I’ve gotten used to the way they look to
Crew Chief Brad: So I had a very similar thought and I was even talking to my wife about it and I was like, you know If the Model Y was made by anybody else, I would actually consider picking one up.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, I mean, it looks like Volkswagen’s Capri or an Airflow. So they’re all the same.
It looks,
Crew Chief Brad: looks like, yeah, a Ford Chevrolet Volkswagen.
Crew Chief Eric: So at the end of the day, here we are, all these manufacturers are having issues. A lot of manufacturers have bet the farm on EV. EV sales are down. Tesla is just one example of that, but you’re seeing it across the board. We said it once, we said it a hundred times.
They needed to go hybrid. They needed to follow Toyota’s lead, but Toyota was left backed into a corner by itself. And again, now it’s suffering because of these carb rules and everything else. Hybrid was the answer. And I think it always has been, despite lack of [00:37:00] manual transmissions and all those other things that as enthusiasts that we’d love, which they found ways around that.
Now too, with hybrids, which I think is actually really, really cool.
Crew Chief Brad: Are you talking about the scout
Crew Chief Eric: at that? Car’s never coming. Don’t even get me started on that thing.
Crew Chief Brad: They’re taking reservations. I almost put one in. I almost, here we
Crew Chief Eric: go again. Oh my God. Did you not learn the first time? The point is we’re halfway through the sales year and it looks like a downward slope all the way through the summer because the cars are committed for this year and we got these new car rules like we mentioned that are going to force the manufacturers to change yet again and I think we’re going to see more cars disappearing.
Not because people are buying them up, but because those models cannot support whatever this next generation is. So I think there’s going to be sort of a bloodletting across the industry. And that’s really the collapse.
Crew Chief Brad: That’s such a good word, bloodletting. I thought that was such a great word to use to describe what’s going on.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s not necessarily that these companies are going to fall apart. There’s always still [00:38:00] mergers and acquisitions happening because there’s a. Graphic that I’m including with the show notes, the shows sort of the larger family hierarchy of companies, and there’s really only maybe 20 car companies total, then people be like, well, what about this?
What about that? But they’re all part of the same conglomerate. So you have to look at the heads of those families. And so there aren’t that many car companies anymore. There is a collapse coming, but it’s not the way it’s being portrayed from a financial perspective. It’s a change in the way they’re going to be building these cars the next 10, 15 years, which I’m still concerned for our kids.
What the hell are they going to be driving five, eight years from now? It’s just, I don’t know.
Crew Chief Brad: My kids are going to drive something that we’re going to talk about later, rather than put 50, 60, 000 into a new car. Let’s import a car from 25 years ago.
Crew Chief Eric: Ooh, that’s. Yeah, I like that idea. Let’s come back to that.
Let’s close out this showcase. It is not the end of the world, despite all the YouTube videos and everything that’s out there. My [00:39:00] only piece of advice is if you have something that you like and you have it now. Keep it. Because it’s cheaper to keep her. Just like you were saying earlier, right?
Crew Chief Brad: I feel like that’s going to be the tagline for this episode.
Cheaper to keep her.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s the episode title right there.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, that and cheaper to keep her and bloodletting.
Crew Chief Eric: Mercury in retrograde. So let’s get back to our regularly scheduled ranting and raving. We got to go back to Volkswagen for a minute because I want to play the sad trombone. I want to play taps here because 34 years of old.
Awesomeness have come to a conclusion. The final VR six was assembled and rolled off out of the factory.
Crew Chief Brad: Was it an ID buzz?
Crew Chief Eric: No, it was in an Atlas. I’m very sad about this because the VR six.
Crew Chief Brad: Okay.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, Volkswagen fan boy propeller head mirror. It is one of the coolest engines. Ever engineered. Go [00:40:00] research it.
We wrote an article about this a couple years ago about the VR and the W and it is an engineering masterpiece to put a six cylinder in the space of a four and make the kind of power that they were making and continue to expand the displacement without losing any geometry in any space to the point where 3.
6 liters In something that’s the size of a four banger making 300 plus horsepower naturally aspirated with a sound that is unlike anything else. It’s a sad day for enthusiasts that the BR 6 is gone. But the upside of that is there’s plenty of spares out there because they made millions. Of VR6s over the last 34 years.
So if you’re looking to swap it into something, it’s like a 2JZ. It’s like an LS. It’s like top five motors that you would do a swap with. So the VR6 is just absolutely incredible. But again, sad day. I’d love to see it come back, like the Beetle.
Crew Chief Brad: I don’t want to see it come back. What?! Not because I don’t love it, but because I have one, and [00:41:00] I want it to remain special.
So I want it to not come back and just stay in what we already have.
Crew Chief Eric: I have two myself, and I want another one, but we’ll get into that at another point too, you know?
Crew Chief Brad: I mean, I would have no problem driving an Atlas. That would be a pretty cool daily driver.
Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of other things ending in Volkswagen, and I thought we reported about this back during COVID, there was an article from the Audi Club.
About the TT was finally ending its run as well after 25 years of production. And I’m like, the TT has been dead for a while. Production numbers were terrible. They sold like 300 of them last year.
Crew Chief Brad: How many years in the future do you think it’s going to take for them to sell the very last Audi TT? Five years from now, it’s 2030.
We’re going to do a second Audi sold one, 2025 TT. In 2030,
Crew Chief Eric: that could very well be the case as a TT owner, I am sad to see this TT out of production. Now I wasn’t always a fan of every version of it. [00:42:00] Some of the more blocky styles that came later, it’s like take it or leave it when they came out with the RS with the five cylinder turbo, absolutely incredible car in there.
That’s Audi’s GT three right there.
Crew Chief Brad: Would you say it’s a flagship?
Crew Chief Eric: No, no, not an Audi’s portfolio, but the Carmen Ghia, I mean, the TT, it’s sad to see it go, but just like the Beetle, I’m amazed that it’s stuck around this long because two doors are going the way of the dodo bird. And again, their sales numbers were too low to keep it going.
And not only that for the money, cause TT’s. When the RS came out, the gen two, those were already 70, 000 with all the fees and everything else for 70, 000, you’re going to go buy something else, something with even better performance, you know, the 400 horse that it was allegedly making, you can get 400 horse out of a Mustang for half the amount of money.
It wasn’t a contender. It was a boutique car in a way it was stylish. It was a statement. Like you want it to look cool and show up and go, I got something different. You show up in a TT. Okay, it’s not a 911. It’s not this. It’s not [00:43:00] that. It’s not a tearjerker like the VR 6 going away.
Crew Chief Brad: I will say my neighbor, someone who recently moved into the neighborhood within the last year, all of a sudden I was driving by this house and I looked over and there’s a white TTRS sitting in the driveway.
They’ve got a three car garage. I was curious as to why the TTRS got the driveway. And it’s because they’ve got a GT3 RS in the garage parked next to their Cayenne, but I haven’t seen the TT RS in a couple months. And I recently I saw the guy driving around in one of the new Continentals. So I’m wondering if he got rid of the RS for that.
Crew Chief Eric: The small car too. It’s not for everybody.
Crew Chief Brad: No, no, it’s not.
Crew Chief Eric: You know, they’re really pretty cramped.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, we need to go back to the drive through notes. And look up the last time we actually had Mercedes Benz or BMW news, because this section of the drive thru notes has been TBD for as long as I can remember.
We talked about that stupid BMW car, the changes color. The paint shifting, [00:44:00] whatever. And then that car that was like came out, it was like an avatar and it was talking to people or whatever. But that was like a year ago. I can’t remember since then any Mercedes or BMW news that we found noteworthy. Is there anything?
Crew Chief Eric: No, there’s nothing exciting to talk about. They don’t make anything that really gets anybody’s attention.
Crew Chief Brad: Well, that, that I don’t, I don’t believe that’s true. I follow this account on Instagram. It’s good. The guy’s basically a general manager of a Mercedes dealer. And they’re constantly talking about G wagons that they can’t.
I can’t keep in stock and they make cool cars, AMG GTs, anything, AMG, you know, the G 63 AMG BMWs has got the M cars. We never as enthusiasts, for whatever reason, we just never find any of their news noteworthy enough to put into the show. And I was just curious as to why
Crew Chief Eric: the only thing I came across over the winter break that was noteworthy for BMW was some guy is now 3d printing replacement front ends.
For the big grill cars. And I was like, Oh, that’s pretty cool. But that’s it. That’s all there [00:45:00] is to talk about.
Crew Chief Brad: Well, I wanted to throw that out there. I find it kind of interesting if any of our listeners, any of our two listeners want to go back and look and tell us what the last episode was, if we actually talked about new Mercedes and BMW news, I would be very curious to hear about that.
I
Crew Chief Eric: read something else. that said that BMW is going to get rid of the competition thing and they’re going to go back to their original badging so that an M is an M and not an M240 and to get a real M you had to get the M competition so oh my god we’re reverse badge engineering now
Crew Chief Brad: I love that probably because all the people that wouldn’t want an actual M car.
They’re so mad that this Joe blows, uh, Sally homemakers driving around in a two 40. I am X, Y, Z telling people that she’s got an M car. And she’s like, no, that’s not an M car. That’s just a two series.
Crew Chief Eric: We all had leftovers during Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner. You know, you probably made ham sandwiches for two weeks, but you know who else is going to have leftovers.
It’s always going to be Dodge.
We’re
Crew Chief Eric: going to find a brand new Dodge Dart in [00:46:00] 2030 along with that TT. But I couldn’t believe this article from Jalopnik. I can’t believe most articles from Jalopnik.
Crew Chief Brad: These numbers are astonishing. It’s, it’s crazy.
Crew Chief Eric: So enlighten us, Brad.
Crew Chief Brad: The article reads, Stellantis sold over 78, 000 cars.
Their production ended before 2024.
Crew Chief Eric: Zombie cars.
Crew Chief Brad: Dead cars. Not to be confused with like the zombie race teams, you know, zombie cars and NASCAR or whatever. This is completely different. But yeah, the cars production ended before 2024. And yet they still sold these cars in 24 and it’s 43 percent of their sales.
Ridiculous. Our old Dodge darts. Look, Oh my God. Yes. This is amazing. One Dodge Dart was sold. We reported on that Dodge Dart. Two Dodge caravans and then 5, 295 Chrysler 300s. I don’t know who the hell bought those cars. They sold a bunch of chargers. No one Viper. And then they’re throwing the Jeeps in here.
What is the Ram ProMaster City? Is that that van?
Crew Chief Eric: Yes. The Ram Van. That little like [00:47:00] Mercedes Sprinter thing. Ram Van. If
Crew Chief Brad: somebody has a Ram Van and they don’t have the license plate Ram Van, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Crew Chief Eric: Ram a lam a ding dong. Dodge again will continue to sell dead zombie cars for the next 100 years.
So I’m not really worried about that. But I just think it’s hilarious. And it goes back to what we were talking about in the showcase with all those. Cars still sitting on dealership lots. I bet you can pick up a brand new 2023 something that hasn’t sold yet because it’s been sitting there forever, but that’s okay.
Crew Chief Brad: I feel like they should go back and alter the financials for these years. For 2023, they sold 5, 295 more cars. They should retroactively go back and fix the financials. Look, our sales are great. Now our business cycle is five years still wouldn’t help Nissan. So
Crew Chief Eric: it doesn’t
Crew Chief Brad: matter. I got a Nissan. Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: So Chevy’s in the news continuing on with domestics.
They’re recalling the Equinox. Because it’s too quiet. Isn’t that what we [00:48:00] all have been pining for? Isn’t that what we all wanted? Were these super quiet approved by the Swiss government Hoover Matic whisper EVs, like now we’re recalling them because they’re too quiet. Did it say in what direction it’s too quiet?
Crew Chief Brad: It says a specific alert sound for the driver is too quiet and the drivers aren’t able to hear it. You know what really grinds me? This really pisses me off. Okay. The sound for the pedestrian alert is too quiet. You know what other thing alert, you know what else alerts you to pedestrians? Your fucking eyes or the pedestrian screaming.
Executive Producer Tania: This is an alert for the driver to know that there’s a pedestrian, not for the pedestrian to know that they’re being stalked from behind, like a mountain line in the woods.
Crew Chief Brad: I don’t know. I just read the beginning of it.
Crew Chief Eric: I think it’s both because I read that the vehicle was too quiet. So it’s like the silent killer.
Crew Chief Brad: Okay. Yeah. So there’s the pedestrians can’t hear him. You know, I don’t care. Pedestrians. Here’s [00:49:00] a public service announcement for you. Stop walking in the road. Take some personal accountability. If you see a car coming, don’t step out into the road. I. Went to South American country, seeing how drivers treat pedestrians in another country is wild compared to what goes on here in the U S I mean, here we cater to the pedestrians so much stop signs everywhere, crosswalks everywhere.
When I went to Bolivia after that, you’re lucky if you don’t get hit, you’re standing on the sidewalk, the way those people drive. So take some personal accountability, have some situational awareness. Look around, head on a swivel and don’t get hit by a fricking car.
Crew Chief Eric: Why must you continue to curse in church?
Why ? We are just gonna go down a rabbit hole with this, so let’s go down a different one. Let’s keep going. Let’s
Crew Chief Brad: keep, let’s just, let’s peel back this onion. Let’s see where it leads. Is this could be good radio.
Crew Chief Eric: We have some two wheeled news.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes. So in the motorcycle world, the groundbreaking trailblazing.
First [00:50:00] female road motorcycle racer, motocross racer, and a bunch of other accolades. Recently inducted into Hall of Fame, Mary McGee passed away at the age of 87. It’s a sad day.
Crew Chief Eric: I want a VR6 as my tombstone, I’m just saying.
Crew Chief Brad: You don’t pay attention when you’re walking down the road, it might be your tombstone.
Might be right on top of you.
Executive Producer Tania: What is a VR six tombstone? Is that like six tombstones?
Crew Chief Eric: Narrow angle tombstones. And when you look at it from the front, it looks like a tombstone, but when you look at it from the side, it’s six little tombstones.
Oh, that’s terrible.
Crew Chief Brad: I need somebody with a 3d printer to mock this up and create a VR six inspired. Tombstone,
Crew Chief Eric: it will be brilliant telling him speaking of brilliant. Let’s talk about EVs and concepts. This breaks my heart because this is never coming. We’ve talked about variations of this car before, and Renault is busy dealing with the debacle that is Nissan, as we’ve already [00:51:00] mentioned.
And here they are talking about. The Renault five turbo three E 500 horsepower rear wheel drive hot hatch homage. Bless. I want one of these,
Executive Producer Tania: but they said they are putting it into production, so they’ll make it, but they’re never going to sell it in the U S.
Crew Chief Brad: 25 years from now, they will. They’ll
Executive Producer Tania: never make
Crew Chief Eric: this is just like the R.
18 and all those other cool cars that they’ve been like teasing us with. They’re not going to make this. They’re not
Crew Chief Brad: just start saving up your money now. And in 25 years, you’ll be able to buy and import it.
Crew Chief Eric: This is so cool. Renault, you hurt me so much. So did you guys see on discord? I posted that thing about the Twingo with the semi automatic transmission.
Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were going to go somewhere else with the semi automatic. No, I did not see.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s the wildest thing. This reminded me of it because, you know, French cars are quirky and this, that, and I have an affinity for French cars. That’s why this pains me so much, but the Twingo, I’ve never really paid that much attention to.
I always thought they were super cute. They’re [00:52:00] very iconic, you know, with the happy little eyes, like it was a Dodge neon or whatever. And the fake me out little turbo induction grill on the hood that doesn’t do anything. But apparently neither does the manual transmission because it only has two pedals.
And it changes gears by basically granny shifting it for you. Almost like an SMG where it’s changing gears and whatever. It’s absolutely wild. It’s over on our Discord and I’ll post it in the show notes. How did we not know about this? This car is like 20 plus years old and it’s just bizarre that somebody would create and take the time to build a semi automatic like this versus something with like, let’s say paddles or whatever have you.
So anyway, Brad, you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. Talking about waiting for cars to get older and importing those cars and you were talking about how your kids are going to drive something older. I’ve been thinking about that myself. One of our favorite internet influencers, I’m going to be nice about this, straightening up my tie as I say it.
Crew Chief Brad: It was a real challenge listening to him talk in the video. [00:53:00] I swear he’s on something. It was really hard.
Crew Chief Eric: It was bad because I’m so used to James Humphrey just screaming the entire time. Right? Up to speed! Alright! Alright! Alright! That’s everything you need to know! I think you need to know! About the VR6.
Uuugh! Like all his videos are the same! And they drive me nuts! Every once in a while there’s a gem in the mix. But apparently, he’s not a donut anymore, he’s over at Speedco or whatever it is. And he’s also lost a ton of weight, apparently he had a heart attack. Like there’s a whole bunch of turning points in his life, I guess, that’s gotten to him is sitting in what looks like a Barco lounger in his garage, lean back.
Eating the microphone, doing sweaty balls. It was so awkward to watch him because I was waiting for him to start screaming like he always does. I agree with some of the stuff that’s on here. Tell us about this list, Brad.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So basically the United States has a 25 year rule for vehicles that were not sold in the United States.
After they’ve been in production for 25 years, or their production date was [00:54:00] 25 years ago, you can import them without any sort of special testing or requirements or anything like that. They’re basically allowed to import in the United States. 2025 means that cars manufactured in the year 2000 and earlier are now eligible to be imported into the U.
S.
Crew Chief Eric: The year 2000.
Crew Chief Brad: I’ve been trying to do that. Yeah, I love Conan O’Brien. Okay. Yeah for some of us There’s a lot of really really cool stuff that has now become available for import and the video basically just highlights What he feels, you know are worth thinking about importing,
Crew Chief Eric: but he is comparing them to the skyline r34 That’s sort of like the pinnacle and then there’s all these other cars That you could consider instead, and he makes a valid point because the R34, if you’ve got 250, 000 to spend on it, there’s a lot of cars plural that you can buy for that kind of money in the same age range.
So he lists the top 15 or 16 cars in that [00:55:00] same demographic. So I, like you, I honed in on some really, really cool stuff, which actually I hadn’t thought about as a gray market import. I’ll start off by saying Renault Sport Clio V6. That’s a de doy.
Crew Chief Brad: Anybody that’s ever played Forza knows all about this car and how amazing it is.
And that’s right at the top of my list. But I’m going to kind of do a round robin and just pick three cars, maybe not even on this list, but just three cars from the year 2000 that you would import. So pick a car year 2000. You’re 2000 and go. Did they make a Fiat Panda in 2000? Of
Executive Producer Tania: course they did. Of course they did.
Are you sure?
Crew Chief Brad: I think Tanya needs to import a Fiat Panda.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, why would I import a 2000 Fiat Panda? I can import any of them.
Crew Chief Brad: That’s true. Get the OG for cheaper. All right. So who wants to go first?
Crew Chief Eric: I want to stick to the list. Cause I, I really honed in on these. Cars. Cause then I have to really rack my brain about non U S [00:56:00] availability cars from the year 2000.
And that’s how even wider catalog. And there’s some stuff in there. People are gonna be like, what
Crew Chief Brad: I feel like we need a, what should I buy episode just for this particular topic?
Crew Chief Eric: What should I buy? Gray market is definitely coming.
Crew Chief Brad: Not red light district. Great market. Yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: So let’s just stick to this list right off the bat.
I mean, I think we all agree on the Clio Sport. We’ll just say, okay, that’s a given. But if I gotta pick three more off of this list Then you gotta pick two more. Well, we all agreed on the Clio Sport. Then that’s
Executive Producer Tania: everybody’s one.
Crew Chief Eric: No, no, that’s your Hall Pass. We are all getting a Clio Sport and then three other cars.
So what are the other three?
Crew Chief Brad: I agree with these terms.
Crew Chief Eric: Okay. All right. Working backwards, I really like the Vauxhall VX220. I think that’s cool because that’s a really cheap Elise and that’s a good deal. That’s good value for money. I would also go with the VR6 VW Caravelle, which is the successor to the Eurovan with a stick shift because I like vans and I like VR6s and boom, done.
And then a three way tie for me between the gen one Audi S6. Three, which is a [00:57:00] mark 4G TI with Quattro, the OTT Cupra, which is a Mark four golf with Quattro and the Luo GTI, which is basically a mark one GTI. Awesome sauce. So I have to pick from those three. I would probably buy the OTT because it’s so different, but I know what I’m getting myself into with that car Sayat, the Caravel and the Voxel.
VX two 20. Go. I don’t want any of these. What? The last
Executive Producer Tania: femur. You don’t want a Lupo GTI? I’m getting these for free or am I paying for them? Oh,
Crew Chief Brad: you’re getting them for free. This is, this is no, because
Executive Producer Tania: no, in seriousness, why would I get a Lupo when I can get a regular golf?
Crew Chief Brad: I’m with Tanya on that. I don’t really understand the appeal of the Lupo.
Executive Producer Tania: Why wouldn’t I go get a nice Mark I then? Because Mark Is are turds
Crew Chief Eric: unless they’ve been taken care of. Because that Lupo is not a turd? You can’t buy right now a Mark I GTI. But these are
Executive Producer Tania: free!
Crew Chief Eric: For 15 grand.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, what can I import for free from Europe that [00:58:00] falls in the 25 years?
Crew Chief Brad: You can import a Mark I GTI if you can find one.
If you can find one.
Executive Producer Tania: We don’t know that we can find any of these in good condition.
Crew Chief Brad: That’s true. That is a whole other aspect of this that we’re not talking about.
Executive Producer Tania: We’re in fantasy
Crew Chief Eric: land now.
Executive Producer Tania: So we’re in fantasy land. So in seriousness, could go get a Mint Mark I out of Europe. And I would rather have that, I think, than the Lupo.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. I think the Lupo is a poor choice. You chose poorly as the, as the crusader said in the last crusade.
Crew Chief Eric: Chose the Cooper. I didn’t pick the Lupo.
Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you did choose the Cooper. That’s true.
Crew Chief Eric: But the reason I would pick the Lupo is modern suspension, modern electronics. It’s the same size as a mark one. And guess what?
It makes double the freaking horsepower because when you drive a mark one GTI, you realize it makes 65 it’s fun, but it’s not fun. And I’m exaggerating. It makes like 85 horsepower, 90 or something like that. It’s in that loophole makes a hundred. Okay. 123, but still it’s more
Executive Producer Tania: modern, but anyway, leave it
Crew Chief Eric: where
Executive Producer Tania: it is.
Probably weighs more. I don’t know. I’ve [00:59:00] driven a Seat before. I don’t know that I was overly impressed by it. Fine. We’re all getting a Clio, so that’s fine. I think I’ll be different. And I’ll get this noble things. Oh,
Crew Chief Brad: that’s a good choice.
Executive Producer Tania: That sounded fun. Twin turbo V six or something like that. Ford motor ish.
So the transmission brakes, whatever. I think, I
Crew Chief Brad: think, uh, Richard Hammond drove one in one of the challenges.
Executive Producer Tania: He drove it or he wrecked it.
Crew Chief Brad: He drove it and it broke a couple of times. So they, they gave him a second one.
Executive Producer Tania: I don’t Opals out and then Sylvia is out. If it was a regular Sylvia, cause that thing’s hideous as a convertible.
I want to try to be different because I would naturally in a split second looking at this list. It would be the S3, the Clio and honestly probably the Lupo even though I just went through that big whole thing.
Crew Chief Brad: Stand your ground Tanya, stand your ground.
Executive Producer Tania: But watch out RS4. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t drive wagons.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Too practical, too practical,
Crew Chief Eric: right? Yeah. You could put extra [01:00:00] bags of mulch in a wagon. We wouldn’t want that. You only need a finite amount of mulch. Exactly. All right, Brad. Well, you’re going to buy every Toyota on this thing, right?
Crew Chief Brad: Uh, no. Oh, okay. Parked next to my Renault Clio sport. I’m going to have.
I’m going to have the RS4 Avant.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s a good choice. Solid.
Crew Chief Brad: I’m going to have the TVR Tuscan Speed 6.
Crew Chief Eric: I had a feeling. I’ve
Crew Chief Brad: loved those cars ever since Gran Turismo. Seeing one in the movie Swordfish. They’re so interesting looking. And just, the fact that they’re so Insane, you know, the engineering and how they’re put together.
And they’re just stupid cars and I’m all for stupid cars. And then I got to go with the Holden Maloo.
Crew Chief Eric: You got to get your redneck on. That’s a crook.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And then, and then Tanya and I can have a competition about who could haul more mulch.
Crew Chief Eric: You can definitely haul it. Oh,
Crew Chief Brad: yeah. Oh, yeah.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. The Maloo is a good choice.
I’m glad he went to Australia too, because [01:01:00] there is some cool stuff in that direction as well.
Crew Chief Brad: Back in 2000, 2001, 2002, when all like I was a bank teller, so all I did was like look at cars online. I was on the Holden website. All the time trying to figure out how the hell do I get this car into the U. S.
Turns out I just had to wait 25 years, but that would definitely be on my list.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, you know, you mentioned Gran Turismo and we’re talking stuff from 20 years ago. How about this 80 year old grandma who bought her RX 7 25 years ago because she watched Initial D.
Crew Chief Brad: So 55.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.
Crew Chief Brad: You know, more power to her. I mean.
That’s awesome.
Crew Chief Eric: Apparently she’s done with it and she donated the car now.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. She gave up her license. I guess she’s 80 years old. She’s
Crew Chief Eric: 80 years old, so she doesn’t need to drive it anymore. But can you imagine? I mean, that’s pretty cool. I want her to be my grandma.
Crew Chief Brad: Good for her. My grandmother gave up her Honda Civic, which was not much to write home about.
This is definitely a much cooler car. This is awesome.
Crew Chief Eric: This is a nice FD. This is really, really nice.
Crew Chief Brad: I actually feel really bad that she had to give up her license. This is [01:02:00] foreshadowing. It’s going to happen to all of us at some point.
Crew Chief Eric: Thousand percent.
Crew Chief Brad: We’re going to have to hand over the keys to our prize, whatever it is we’re driving at the time, and it’s going to be a really, really sad day.
Crew Chief Eric: The next grandma we found, it’s not a sad day for her yet. Do you see this? She won a burnout contest with her 57 big block Cadillac. This thing was making the rounds on social media. It was hilarious. Can you imagine your grandma rolls up to the car show and then just starts doing wild burnouts in her Cadillac?
Crew Chief Brad: True story. My grandmother used to street race, not really street race, but whenever somebody pulled up next to her at a light, when she was in her Chrysler Cordova with that big old V8, I mean, the car weighed more than my house does, but the big old V8 and everything. And she would rev it up and leave from the light peeling tires and stuff.
She got thumbs up all the time from people and she would do that. So grandmas get crazy out there. I love it. I think we need a new segment. We need to drop Florida man, and we need to [01:03:00] pick up crazy grandmas. 2025 new year, new us.
Crew Chief Eric: All right. So we’re in the middle of lost and found, and, you know, we like to find little nuggets of things that we didn’t know before, because part of lost and found is really about the history of motorsport and the automotive world.
And during the break, if you go back to our catalog, the Senna Netflix series came out. We did a crossover with William Ross from the Ferrari marketplace podcast and professor John Summers from the motor news story. And we got together and we reviewed the Senna film. Because of that, people were trying to jump on the bandwagon, you know, putting out articles and all this kind of stuff.
You know, we did our part to supply the social media gods and the Googles with something else different to read. But, you know, it was our take on the movie. I got a thing in the Porsche Club newsletter that said, Did you know that Senna raced a Porsche? And I was like, What? These are like lesser known tales of Ayrton Senna, I guess, because I’ve never heard this before, ever.
You know, you always think Honda, McLaren, Senna, those three [01:04:00] words, that’s it. But apparently, he raced a 956.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, there was an interesting backstory to that, like The reason why he didn’t continue doing it. I don’t remember what it was now because I read the article so long ago. It
Crew Chief Eric: was like Jost Racing, who is still around today, running at Le Mans, Rolex and all those kinds of things.
He paid Senna to drive the 956 at the Nürburgring. It’s like, OK, great. And then, you know, I asked Professor Summers Senna is really his thing. And so his only comment was it would be interesting to compare his times with Derek Bell’s and Stefan Beloff’s. Since they were the Rothmans works drivers and just see how he did.
But from the very little write up that was here from PCA, it seemed like Senna was king of Formula One, but he wasn’t crushing it in GTP.
Executive Producer Tania: They said he finished seventh and that he crushed his teammates times considering this is His first time he gets into a car and he beats the people that drive it on a regular basis.
Yeah,
Executive Producer Tania: that is saying something and then practice he was [01:05:00] seventh and then qualified seventh and then the car broke down in the race. So who knows what he actually would have accomplished.
Crew Chief Eric: I’ve always argued that more of the Formula One drivers should do other disciplines of racing and so I mean, you see that where Senna did the celebrity race with the DTM cars and so the Mercedes and stuff.
I mean, that’s cool. So basically
Executive Producer Tania: he didn’t continue because his aspirations were Formula One.
Crew Chief Eric: Right. Exactly. Yeah. He didn’t want to cross discipline. Oh, well, that was fun. What’s next?
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So what did you think? First of all, what was that guy? Nick? Nick Smith. Yeah. I’m so glad they got rid of him. I don’t think his vision and what they were trying to do with finding these high end people that like spiderwebs.
Apparently I didn’t think it was going to work out. So I’m glad they kind of went back to their roots a little bit and kind of dropped that whole arc. Cause I thought that was really dumb. All we heard about was them complaining. I’m a creative and I want someone to give me millions of [01:06:00] dollars to build a car, but I want to be able to do it the way I want to do it.
And I want them to be hands off. Who’s going to do that? Who in their right mind is going to do that? Nobody. Nobody. But I’m glad they went back in time and started doing things the way they used to. I actually thought a couple of the cars that they did were pretty cool. I’m not usually a fan of the Fords, but the casino car with all the little touches, the casino car was really, really cool.
I love the little thing between Mark and Tony where they’ve got this like steel, like this polished steering wheel and Mark’s like, you’re gonna have to put a cover on that. It’s a convertible. Your hands are gonna be burning if you try to drive this thing. Yeah. The casino car was pretty much awesome.
The kid coming in trying to get his McLaren worked on and daddy’s like, daddy Warbucks came in. He was like, not going to happen. They’re going to make a wide body McLaren. It would have been dumb. It would have looked stupid. I’m glad daddy Warbucks said no. The DeLorean, I kind of liked it. Cause I liked the idea of modifying a DeLorean.
I [01:07:00] didn’t like the execution. I thought they didn’t really do much to it. Granted the owner probably was like, you cannot destroy this car. So I can understand they probably had limitations, but the things that they did do, I thought were dumb. I’m not even going to give the hot air balloon any airtime. You know,
Crew Chief Eric: I thought
Crew Chief Brad: the demolition derby car was stupid.
I liked the idea of the Hummer. Although I would have liked to have seen them forgo the whole eco diesel thing or biodiesel. I mean, go with like a full electric. I feel like an electric Hummer would have been a bigger statement, but maybe they had budget restraints
and
Crew Chief Brad: they couldn’t really do that. I thought that would have been a really cool idea versus the biodiesel.
Uh, I do love the fact that it almost caught fire. That was pretty cool.
Crew Chief Eric: The
Crew Chief Brad: Ferrari at the end. The 308
Crew Chief Eric: William and I did a whole episode on that.
Crew Chief Brad: I don’t like their touches.
Crew Chief Eric: I still want to get Tony cave man, Constance. Any of them can come on the show. I don’t care who it is. Even Mark, we’re good with all of you.
[01:08:00] Come on. We want to interview you.
Crew Chief Brad: Have you reached out to him? I’d love to talk to Tony. I think Tony is awesome.
Crew Chief Eric: I’ve reached out to Tony actually, but I got no response. Yeah.
Crew Chief Brad: Tony’s pretty awesome. I mean, I like them all, but I feel like Tony would, he’d be the most interesting and knowledgeable. I actually really liked the 308.
There were things about it that I didn’t like, but for the most part, I actually really liked that car. Well,
Crew Chief Eric: the one thing that William picked up on, which I thought I was just being overly Critical? Sensitive, was that the vinyl was crooked. In some of the head on shots, you could tell that the striping wasn’t straight.
And so he pointed it out and I was like, Okay, so it’s not just me. I thought I was being just ridiculously hypersensitive. And then I was like, Okay, you notice it, that means other people notice it too. So that stuff like that just bugged me. To no
Crew Chief Brad: end, I think you and I have had discussions about that in their past seasons where like their attention to detail it’s lacking.
I don’t think they’ve put out very good products overall would make sense. Why the high end car market doesn’t want to deal with them because. It seems like a lot of the [01:09:00] stuff they put out is junk. I’m sorry.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s hot wheels.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And hot wheels aren’t made to be real cars. I did really enjoy that car that they made for the museum.
That read the
Crew Chief Eric: Exner and then the Futura was fantastic. That thing was gorgeous, but that’s all season one. Season two stuff where they were really taking their time.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. And then they kind of lost their way and did some weird stuff. That car that they quote unquote design themselves of where I thought that was an abomination to the automotive industry for the most part, I liked most of what they did this season.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, good. And I’m looking forward to the next season. I will continue watching it and I will continue reviewing it because it is entertaining. And unfortunately, my new favorite Rustoration show, Tex Mex Motors, because Rabbit died unexpectedly, they had to change the whole format of the show. It’s like a whole thing and they didn’t go after the Ferrari and half of the people aren’t there anymore.
And I got through maybe the first episode. I was like, Nope, not watching this anymore. I’m done.
Crew Chief Brad: Did you ever watch fast and loud?
Crew Chief Eric: No, but everybody tells me I should.
Crew Chief Brad: It was [01:10:00] good and fun, but I mean, it follows the same formula. Oh no, we need to get a car done in two weeks and we got to redo the entire thing and fab the whole car, whatever.
It’s the same formula over and over again, but they did do a salvage Ferrari F40 and they brought it back to life and had it recertified by Ferrari to get a clean title for it. So you might want to go back and watch that. And the guy that was the fabricator on that show, Aaron, he was really, really good fabricator.
If you’re looking for something else, go back and watch fast and loud to watch what they did with the F40. It actually looks straight up Batmobile.
Crew Chief Eric: Nice. Well, just when you thought we couldn’t talk about them enough.
Crew Chief Brad: GM. No, we’re obviously talking about Mercedes and BMW.
Crew Chief Eric: So is Tesla a better company than GM?
Is that how it goes?
Executive Producer Tania: We would be remiss if we didn’t circle back and talk about he who shall not be named.
Crew Chief Eric: Voldemort.
Executive Producer Tania: They kind of look alike.
Crew Chief Eric: His new day. He’s the doge now. See Brad doge coin.
Crew Chief Brad: He’s the head doge. Who let the [01:11:00] doge out?
Crew Chief Eric: All right. So what’s going on in the world of the doge?
Executive Producer Tania: Some unexciting stuff, like recalls for TPMS sensors. Who gives a shit? And it’s not even the sensor itself, it’s actually the warning light in the dash.
The mill is non persistent, and that’s what the recall is for. So like, it’ll flash on, and then you like, you turn the car off, and turn the car back on, and then magically your air pressures back, which is a problem because most there’s going to be people are going to be like, Oh, it fixed itself. And then keep going on a flat tire.
Anyway, it’s an over the air software update, bubbing fixed. And next,
Crew Chief Brad: it should be really easy for Tesla to do this update because none of these cars have been sold. So they just go around where the lot is and just do the update. If it’s over the air, it’s even easier.
Crew Chief Eric: And this next one has to do with his new best friend, right?
Cause he’s the doge. So now that inauguration day is over. The new administration reportedly wants to end NHTSA requirement for car crashes involving automated systems that have to self report. This is crap. That’s your new [01:12:00] soapbox, Tanya.
Executive Producer Tania: I already calmed myself down because I already went
and got angry. Like, this is crap. Just. Really? Really? Like, what’s the justification that something that’s autonomous suddenly doesn’t need any crash test safeties test or has to pass them? Like, where is the logic link here? There is none. The car still needs to be safe, whether it’s driving itself or a person’s driving it.
Autonomy has nothing to do with the safety of the vehicle. The implication is, yeah. Autonomous vehicle is inherently safer because it’s not going to make mistakes, but I think by virtue of how many get confused by flashing lights and drive into parked vehicles. We know this isn’t the case. And the other problem that this tangents me on and gets me even angrier is the freaking cyber truck that apparently eluded all crash test safety standards of any kind in its design because there was the other article that came out With the convoy of Tesla [01:13:00] Cybertrucks that were going wherever the hell they were going, 75 miles an hour down the road, one of them hits a deer.
And it was unclear whether the control was of the driver or if it was in FSD, who gives a shit. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of hit deer I see on the road for the roads I travel. I have never seen a deer that’s sliced in half. After being hit by a car, but that’s what happens when a cybertruck at 75 miles an hour hits a deer in the road.
It slices it in half because, oh, I wonder why. Could it have anything to do with the polygon sharp edges of this vehicle? And then you go, there was no test because if you would have hit a crash test on me, I’m sure it would have told you this is bad. So what happens when you hit a pedestrian? God forbid if you hit a pedestrian at 75 miles an hour, I don’t care what you’re in there.
Most likely dead, but even at a lower speed, yes, people can die getting hit by regular rounded car, even at lower speed, but most people aren’t getting decapitated or body split in half [01:14:00] when they’re hit. You’re definitely not surviving that.
Crew Chief Eric: Wasn’t that the whole point of the cab forward design and you had to have the headlights at a certain point so that if you did hit a pedestrian, they would roll over the car.
Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, that’s why they all look so swoopy and bubbly and all this shit is like most of the design now is driven a lot because of pedestrian safety and exactly that. So it’s like you hit them and they’ll scoop up over you or whatever. And you don’t just knock them out on the knees. They’ll scoop up over you in the car behind you.
I think
Crew Chief Brad: we put the responsibility back on the pedestrian and if you don’t want to die, don’t get hit.
Crew Chief Eric: There’s that too. But to me, getting hit by a cyber truck is equivalent to getting hit by a bullet train. You’re not bouncing off of it. It’s going to completely eviscerate you. Like that’s the end of the story.
Crew Chief Brad: Should we put cow catchers on the front of cyber trucks? Oh my
Crew Chief Eric: God. Can you imagine? The whole front end would break.
Crew Chief Brad: Speaking of whole. [01:15:00] Oh boy,
Crew Chief Eric: Brad, you brought us a good one. Our favorite internet idiot whistling diesel back again with another cyber truck durability test. Oh, did
Crew Chief Brad: you all watch it? I
Crew Chief Eric: did.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes, I was hard to watch. So that video tone and everything was more what I was expecting. Never watched him all the way through and that first one was actually like
Crew Chief Brad: fairly informative. Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: He was like sober. Maybe I don’t know.
Crew Chief Brad: He wasn’t hopped up on those caffeine. Whatever’s that he’s pushing.
Crew Chief Eric: God damn.
He was hopped up on those. LFGO. Those it’s like basically like chewing tobacco, but it’s full of caffeine or some shit.
Executive Producer Tania: Chewing caffeine, I guess. I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t tobacco.
Crew Chief Brad: LFGO stands for let’s fucking go.
Executive Producer Tania: It looked like a skull pouch that you stuck in your lip. You know, spitting. Oh my God, that must taste nasty.
Crew Chief Eric: Ah, it’s awful.
Executive Producer Tania: It started off good. I was like, oh, this is going to be interesting. We’re doing the tug of war. It’s bullshit, but still we’re doing it. And then after that, [01:16:00] it’s like went off the rails.
Crew Chief Eric: It was hilarious. I was laughing the whole time. I said, this is so good. I felt bad for their building because they kept just destroying the building.
Executive Producer Tania: That was kind of funny when he’s like, oh, the car will just come to me. That was my
Crew Chief Eric: favorite part. He’s standing there like, calling the Batmobile and it drives in by itself through the building. Not through the opening.
Crew Chief Brad: Through the building.
Crew Chief Eric: Holy shit. Like, wow.
Crew Chief Brad: That was awesome. That was hilarious.
Crew Chief Eric: The stuff that they put those trucks through yet again, and he was like, look, we’re doing this because, you know, real truck people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They broke the driveshaft in the Ford again.
Crew Chief Brad: Again.
Crew Chief Eric: Obviously that’s the weak link on the F 150, but what was interesting about that is this time they broke the driveshaft. And they just sent it. They kept going. So it was running off the front two wheels. They must have locked the diff and then just said to hell with it and go.
Crew Chief Brad: I’ve witnessed somebody do that out on [01:17:00] the trails. Actually, a former guest, Bobby Parks. We were out off roading on the trails and his Cherokee, he broke the rear axles and he used. Basically front wheel drive mode, the four wheel drive to claw his way out. So I’ve seen that done before. It works. I don’t think the cyber truck can do that.
Front
Crew Chief Eric: wheel drive mode on a cyber truck. Don’t work too good. That was pathetic. And then you heard this big old bang. He destroyed the axle or whatever. And I was like, Oh my God, what a mess.
Crew Chief Brad: When did they rip off the back
Crew Chief Eric: tailgate came off or whatever that truck was just. Destroyed by the time it was done.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Something else structurally. I was
Executive Producer Tania: surprised when they started the video, this is part two. So it was the same truck from the first video. Yes. They dropped off at the Tesla thing. And then the bill was only like 15, 000. I’m like BS.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. But then he spent another 20 on top of that.
Executive Producer Tania: But also it wasn’t completely fixed, even for 15 grand.
Like it was just patched.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. He dropped it off and said, make it run again, but they didn’t fix anything else. They just made it. So it ran [01:18:00] again without any lays
Crew Chief Eric: and they put a windshield in it and that was it.
Crew Chief Brad: But he did, the windows were still broken and still had holes in it.
Crew Chief Eric: But at the end of the day, the Ford.
Soldiers on in comparison to the Cybertruck because he destroyed the Cybertruck yet again I will say that other thing where he was doing the doughnuts and then the rear suspension broke and he’s going down and the wheels like
What a piece of junk god bless you if you have one enjoy it doesn’t sound like they’re gonna be making them too much longer But he really put it through its paces. And I guess the only thing I thought was interesting, he didn’t get his diff lockers because that was a software thing that he had to pay extra for, but he got that Baja mode
Crew Chief Brad: and I thought
Crew Chief Eric: that was really cool where it basically just let the thing run full tilt.
Without any nannies. And then he was more capable at that point than the F 150 was in some respects, but it was basically falling apart around him. Anyway, it was good fun. I [01:19:00] enjoyed it. I laughed.
Crew Chief Brad: Before we get off the cyber truck, there was another video I saw not on YouTube. It was on Instagram. It was a cyber truck and a Hummer H2.
They’re at a hill climb competition and the cyber truck tries to go up the hill climb, makes it about two thirds of the way, maybe three quarters of the way fails has to back down, you know, just can’t do it. The Hummer pulls up, turns around and backs. All the way up the hill to the very top, right in front of the cyber truck.
And then just drives right back down. This isn’t an H one. It’s a regular H two with the six leader. Basically it’s just loaded Chevy Tahoe. I just annihilated the cyber truck in this competition. And I thought that was hilarious.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that was a good one. I saw that on social media. I was like, damn, look at that old Hummer doing it.
Thing, you know?
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. Really something could be said about
Crew Chief Eric: mechanical All-wheel drive.
Crew Chief Brad: Yep. Solid axles.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s unfortunate,
Crew Chief Brad: lower, expect
Crew Chief Eric: [01:20:00] worse than destroying a cyber truck. ’cause I don’t think we really feel bad about that because we don’t like ’em to begin with. And I thought it was hilarious earlier when I was prepping for this. My daughter walks in and she goes that. Why is that on your screen? And I said, what are you talking about?
She goes, that is the ugliest car I’ve ever seen. And so I started laughing. Oh boy. Kids already have an opinion. They don’t care about cars, but they know the cyber truck is ugly. I’m not feeding this to them. This is out of the mouths of babes. All right. But what is unfortunate? We’ve had not one, but two F40s succumb to carnage over the winter break.
One of the coolest hypercars ever.
Executive Producer Tania: Don’t let interns drive the car.
Crew Chief Eric: Who’s making these decisions? Who says I don’t know. Let Johnny on the spot take out a five million dollar F40, Lando Norris’s Ferrari F40, and drive it from here to there on a rainy day. Who thought that was a good idea?
Executive Producer Tania: The one that was like the highest mileage F40 in existence.
Who was driving that? What the circumstance was? I have no idea.
Crew Chief Brad: A [01:21:00] service technician was behind the wheel.
Crew Chief Eric: There you go. Highest mileage F40 in existence means it has like 10, 000 miles on it.
Crew Chief Brad: Apparently it had 44, 000
Crew Chief Eric: miles. That’s still nothing. I mean, come on.
Executive Producer Tania: Yeah, but the thing is freaking. Totaled. I mean, he took a pull down.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that was bad. And if you watch the video, and we posted a link to it in the show notes, where it’s from the dash cam of the car that’s following him, the road is wet, and then suddenly he just decides to punch it. They’re doing like 30 miles an hour, so he’s like in first or second gear, and the car just gets away from him.
That’s all she wrote, folks, and you’re done. It’s incredible the flip that happened, though. Well, the car doesn’t weigh anything. I
Executive Producer Tania: mean, someone could turn it into a meme where like, there’s a cat. standing next to the side of the road and the cat just did that, the thing. And then suddenly it was almost like the Mercedes that would catch air and flip over.
It was almost like that happened.
Crew Chief Eric: It was wild to watch the wreck.
Executive Producer Tania: Cause when you see it sideways on the side of the road, I was thinking, Oh, there must’ve been like a ditch and it went down and it like flipped it sideways into the pole and then like all this catapulting it did and it’s [01:22:00] like, no, it’s flat from the pavement to the grass other than whatever bump to go on the dirt grass.
Crew Chief Brad: Well, it doesn’t look like there’s a curb, so it probably slid into the curb and popped up over like that.
Executive Producer Tania: It knocked the telephone pole down. I don’t know, the picture where it’s on its side with no body panels on it anymore, it doesn’t look like there’s any curb.
Crew Chief Brad: When I’m looking at the undercarriage right here, there’s a curb right there, it looks to be a couple inches tall.
Executive Producer Tania: There is a curb there, he’s right. Oh, this angle of the photo looks different. So then that’s what did it. It popped the
Crew Chief Eric: car up.
Executive Producer Tania: It shot up the curve and flipped it up.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s fixable. I mean, look at that. The chassis, it’s all still there. That’ll buff. But Lando’s on the other hand, that wreck was like, sort of similar.
Very similar. Similar, but he had a little bit more room before he hit. So he came around and it basically clipped the rear quarter panel. So that they’re going to fix. I mean, granted that whole car is carbon Kevlar. So it’s not like, Oh, we’re just going to run out and get an F 40 clamshell and put it on there.
There weren’t that many of those cars to begin with like 1500 of them or something. I mean, William will correct me. [01:23:00] He knows the exact numbers, but it’s not a lot. 1300 that. So the point is. Lando’s will get fixed, but again, why is the intern from the service shop driving Lando Norris F40? That, to me, doesn’t make sense.
Executive Producer Tania: Nobody knows who was driving Lando Norris F40 other than it wasn’t Lando. Maybe it was a friend or something. Which, guess they’re not friends anymore. It
Crew Chief Brad: was George Russell.
Crew Chief Eric: You know, all of this culminates into Rich People Things, because you have friends with F40s and they let you drive them, and blah, blah, blah, and you’re getting your F40 serviced, and you’re gonna get your F40 fixed, because that’s what you do when you’re rich.
So, Rich People Things, sponsored by GarageStyle Magazine, because, after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage? I found that now that Hamilton is over at Ferrari and we’ll talk about that more, especially the photos that came out, him looking like Shumi and stuff, that he gave some really profound investment advice over the winter break.
He says, Hypercars are boring. You should buy a classic car.
Crew Chief Brad: And
Crew Chief Eric: art. Yeah. [01:24:00] Okay. Thanks, rich guy. I mean What do you say to that? The ocean has water in it and it’s wet. Moisture is the essence of water.
Executive Producer Tania: I mean, cool, right? His version of it. So we all can buy a classic car, right? Dan’s got a mountain of them.
Crew Chief Brad: Now, now hold on, right? There’s a difference between a classic car and whatever’s going on at the mountain. There’s a. Big difference. Do you call the cars at a junkyard classics?
Executive Producer Tania: Well, it depends on the level of classic because of a certain age
Crew Chief Brad: cars of a certain age,
Executive Producer Tania: you can start calling it a classic and even normal people.
Can buy a classic car. You could have a sixties Mustang. That would be considered a classic. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Crew Chief Brad: A sixties Mustang. Yes. Ford Taurus. Nobody wants
Crew Chief Eric: two mercury sables.
Crew Chief Brad: Tanya, your point is like what [01:25:00] happens on classic rock radio where Nirvana is classic rock now. So everybody listens to classic rock.
Executive Producer Tania: Hamilton’s comment is like, okay, cool. You’re going to go buy a classic car. You’re not going to go buy a 20 grand 1960s. Mustang or a Camaro or something from that age, you’re going to go buy some classic car that’s going to cost 750, 000 or 2 million. Some Mercedes, one of a kind, gold wing, SL, blah, blah, blah.
Crew Chief Brad: Don’t buy a LaFerrari, buy a 250 GTO.
Executive Producer Tania: Yeah. He’s talking about shit that nobody can afford. So cool for you. Yeah, everybody should buy a classic car, but. That everybody that can buy a classic car is going to be buying not those things.
Crew Chief Brad: Buy a classic car, not a shit box.
Crew Chief Eric: Sound buying advice from Lewis Hamilton
Executive Producer Tania: and art who can afford art.
Really? I’m sure I can go buy the knockoff reprint. Yes.
Crew Chief Eric: Hold on. All posters. com. Yeah.
Crew Chief Brad: Everybody go to display and get your art there. [01:26:00]
Crew Chief Eric: Oh boy. That’s definitely not a, what should I buy episode in the making?
Crew Chief Brad: Rich people.
Crew Chief Eric: What should I buy? What art goes with my car? People would probably listen to that more than some of the other what should I buys.
We’ve done like 25 what should I buys and that’s the one people will probably listen to is, What Van Gogh or Renoir goes with my Bugatti? Like, ugh, stop.
Executive Producer Tania: See? And the Picasso. We’d go with the Cybertruck.
Crew Chief Brad: I feel like you are grossly overestimating the buying capacity of our listeners.
Crew Chief Eric: All three Arbitron rated listeners.
We have,
Crew Chief Brad: I don’t think Mark Hewitt is out there buying a Veyron or Chiron or whatever, and then he’s going to steal and buy the Mona Lisa.
Crew Chief Eric: All right. Lord, a man.
Executive Producer Tania: None. I scoured the country. I scoured the world, actually. And could not find anything. They’re in
Crew Chief Brad: hibernation for the [01:27:00] winter.
Crew Chief Eric: I mean, the new administration’s only like three days old.
Crew Chief Brad: They were all at the inauguration.
Crew Chief Eric: I thought
Executive Producer Tania: I found one down under. Oh! Down under, man.
Crew Chief Brad: Down under, man.
Executive Producer Tania: Was something like Australian man getting a ticket or a fine, arrested, whatever, for cooking a steak in his car while driving.
And I was like, oh damn, here we go. Open it up. It was all fake.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, written
Executive Producer Tania: by
Crew Chief Eric: chat. GPT.
Executive Producer Tania: He wasn’t. No, I mean, the article was real, but like he actually wasn’t doing that. It was like a fake picture and he never was actually driving, but apparently the fine is quite high if you are cooking and driving in Australia.
Crew Chief Eric: Wow.
Executive Producer Tania: So the fact that it was like explicitly said, here’s the fine and even jail time of like three years or something, if you’re cooking and driving. Must mean it’s happened before
Crew Chief Brad: and it’s happened enough that they need a law. So I feel like that leads us into maybe a new segment instead of Florida, man.
It’s stupid laws.
Crew Chief Eric: There’s one in the DMV. They can find you for cursing in your car.
Executive Producer Tania: I don’t know how [01:28:00] anybody knows, unless it’s like you roll the window down and you’re like out the window at somebody and they record you
Crew Chief Eric: Jersey. That’s like. The way they greet each other. What
Executive Producer Tania: are you talking about? I don’t know.
But if like I’m sitting in my car and I see a dumbass doing something dumbass, I’m like fucking dumbass. Like who’s going to say anything?
Crew Chief Brad: You’re going to get arrested for that now, Tanya. Be careful. You know why? Because the cars are listening to you. I
Executive Producer Tania: was about to say in the new cars. With all that crap in it,
Crew Chief Brad: it’s being transmitted to your insurance company.
And then your rates are going to go up. You’ve got a potty mouth.
Executive Producer Tania: See what’s going to happen is they’re going to go, Oh, in the drive between the Starbucks and the McDonald’s, they cursed
Crew Chief Brad: as they got to work after they left McDonald’s, they calmed down. So they were just hangry.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God. Well, we opened the door, talked about Lando a little bit.
We talked about Lewis Hamilton a little bit, and I already mentioned, you’ve seen him now in the Ferrari driving suit pre practice and all that kind of stuff. I still think it’s weird to see him at [01:29:00] Ferrari. People are, you know, already creating memes about him. They’re at Ferrari headquarters and the big black double trench coat and all that stuff looking very much like Schumacher did the same thing, you know, 25 years ago.
Okay. Sure. I think it’s awesome. Hamilton’s at Ferrari. Let’s talk motorsports news. Let’s go.
Crew Chief Brad: He’s going to suck. They’ve been actually fairly competitive the last two seasons. I’ve, they’ve had a good car team orders and like some. Poor mistakes made by the drivers. I actually feel like this is good. And I think he’s going to be better than people are giving him credit for.
Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think so. I think he’s done.
I think he’s too old. And if he was still good, he’d be good. And he’s not good.
Executive Producer Tania: No, there’s no way. Like the Mercedes, it got better. They improved it. Definitely in the last season, the season before even the two seasons before the car was crap, like it was visible. There’s no amount of [01:30:00] anything he could do when you saw the straight lines, speed, and the.
Disparate difference in that speed, there’s no way he or Russell could have competed in that version of the car in those seasons. The car was crap. It was so freaking slow. Absolute garbage. Verstappen could have been in it and he wouldn’t have won.
Crew Chief Eric: That’s because I think they were cheating. If you compare him to the rest of the cars, he wasn’t doing that great.
They’re either the car
Executive Producer Tania: was not good against it was better than like Haas and like Williams and those cars But it wasn’t better than Ferrari even in those seasons They struggled to even be like the top ten the car was so bad and then in the last season at least they were getting Podiums,
Crew Chief Eric: how does Mercedes struggle to build a car like that to me doesn’t make sense
Crew Chief Brad: They were struggling to build a competitive race car.
Crew Chief Eric: I think that’s BS. I’m calling flag on the play. You can’t tell me the Mercedes that has a racing pedigree that’s longer than anybody there can’t build a car.
Executive Producer Tania: Well, they didn’t because they went through that whole porpoising thing where the car was completely unstable and jumping around. So they did something.
[01:31:00] But that was happening to everybody though,
Crew Chief Eric: wasn’t it?
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but Mercedes took the longest to figure it out. And they, they had it more drastic. You know what? I feel like the catalyst was for Mercedes and it’s probably doesn’t make any sense or whatever, but Nikki Lauda went when Lauda passed, he was doing a lot for them still up until then
Executive Producer Tania: he was team consultant,
Crew Chief Brad: they lost his expertise and years of experience and knowledge, and I feel like it seems to have had an effect.
On them.
Crew Chief Eric: Maybe he was the Mercedes whisperer. , yeah. But he was the Ferrari whisperer before that. Basic suspension. Yeah, sure. That’s all the same. But I think the technology far surpassed LA’s expertise because he raced in the seventies and the eighties we’re 40 years in the future, the cars aren’t even close to being the same.
Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: But he was an engineer. He didn’t walk away from Formula One. He stayed in it that whole time. And as an engineer, he probably learned
Crew Chief Brad: exactly. Just because he wasn’t racing doesn’t mean he wasn’t driving the cars.
Crew Chief Eric: He’s not Adrian
Crew Chief Brad: Newey. He was doing better than Adrian Newey was when he was alive. The team [01:32:00] was winning.
Crew Chief Eric: The point is not one person designs the car and you can’t tell me that Mercedes doesn’t have talented people that could design a car that could be competitive as competitive as everybody else.
Crew Chief Brad: Apparently not, not as talented as Red Bull and Ferrari and McLaren. It
Executive Producer Tania: was wildly uncompetitive against many other manufacturers for at least two years.
So I know you want to say Red Bull was cheating. If you take Red Bull out of the picture, their performance with everybody else was hot garbage. So was everybody else cheating as well? And it was just Mercedes.
Crew Chief Brad: They were only faster than the back markers.
Executive Producer Tania: Basically, that’s all that car could do. It’s a mid pack
Crew Chief Eric: team.
I get it. Point being though, I don’t think you’re going to see a whole hell of a lot out of Lewis at Ferrari. That’s my prediction is going to be more of the same.
Crew Chief Brad: I think he’s going to be better than you’re predicting. And that’s my prediction.
Crew Chief Eric: Okay.
Executive Producer Tania: I look forward to seeing it. Well, this is funny. Eric’s very strong about his opinion and he hasn’t watched a formula one race in like 20 years, but he’s very confident and strong about all of it.
Crew Chief Eric: I secretly keep up with [01:33:00] it. I don’t have to watch the races to get the race results and read and understand.
Crew Chief Brad: That’s how I feel about Rally .
Crew Chief Eric: Stop it. Stop it.
Crew Chief Brad: Okay. This is us making our picks like for the NFC championship game coming up, you know? Exactly. Versus the Eagles. Who’s gonna win the, the F1 championship this year?
Crew Chief Eric: It’s not gonna be Ferrari.
Crew Chief Brad: Who, who’s it gonna be? Who’s gonna win the driver’s championship and who’s gonna win the constructors? They do not have to be the same.
Crew Chief Eric: It’s gonna be Affan again. As long as he’s still driving and whatever other, blah, blah, blah. Because everybody’s cash. That’s not who won the
Executive Producer Tania: Constructors championship this year?
Crew Chief Eric: See? Yeah. So McLaren won the Constructors championship. I know that. The whole Zach Brown thing. It’s like, okay, so it’s McLaren’s year. Let’s see what happens. But I don’t think Ferrari’s gonna do it. Ferrari doesn’t feel like it’s been competitive for a while.
Executive Producer Tania: Ferrari was very competitive last season. They were a lot more competitive than they have been in the last X number of years.
Crew Chief Brad: I feel like Ferrari made an upgrade in driver.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes.
Crew Chief Brad: So, as long as their car is still as competitive as it was in [01:34:00] prior years, and if they made an upgrade in driver, then that should tell you that they should perform better, at least as good as they did in prior years or better.
Executive Producer Tania: I think it’ll be interesting to see.
I think you could tell with the Mercedes being. So uncompetitive Hamilton didn’t give a shit and why should he what he’s gonna bust his ass out there to come in 10th Okay, he came in 10th, but it’s like how much more is he gonna bust his ass? He was never gonna come in first So you’re driving your passion gets killed a little bit when you’re like I gotta drive this frickin turd and there’s nothing I can do And it’s like I know I’m a better driver than these people But like I haven’t I can’t compete like you put me in a Pinto and I’m racing against GT40s?
Crew Chief Eric: He wants to be Senna. That was his role model. That’s the Senna and the Tolman story, where the Tolman was, they were like Haas back then. He ended up almost winning that Monte Carlo race, even though they cheated and took it away from him. But there’s all these regulations and shit that was used against him.
But I don’t know if it’s apples to apples. But the thing is, if you have the determination as a driver, you’re [01:35:00] going to try regardless and not just be like, complacent and take a paycheck. And that’s the thing is, if Hamilton has been resting on his laurels, For the last couple of years, it means he’s lost his edge, which means he’s not going to be fast.
Executive Producer Tania: Here’s the question that I have. Maybe it won’t matter, but Mr. Verstappen, will he lose his edge now that he’s going to be a father?
Crew Chief Eric: I am surprised he didn’t quit at the end of this season and just be like, I’m done. That’s it for that’s all I need.
Executive Producer Tania: He has a contract. He’s not allowed out to like 2028. I mean, I’m sure he can buy himself out, but technically he’s got a contract till then.
Crew Chief Eric: Or until he underperforms enough that they really need to get rid of course. They’ll
Executive Producer Tania: kick him out, but are they going to do that?
Crew Chief Eric: If he causes enough nuisance, I’m sure he will. You know what I mean?
Crew Chief Brad: He’s just got a curse on air a couple of times. Let’s move on to another former Mercedes driver. That I think is doing great things.
Botas is my spirit animal. He is my new favorite driver in F1. He is just, he’s awesome. I love Botas.
Crew Chief Eric: Thought it was hilarious. Cause [01:36:00] Tanya goes, that man needs to get a haircut. And I said, I’m glad you mentioned that because there’s an
Crew Chief Brad: Instagram video.
Executive Producer Tania: He needs to shave that mustache off. It’s so nasty.
Crew Chief Brad: That’s the point.
Executive Producer Tania: I know it is. Have you seen the whole thing now?
Crew Chief Eric: The gimmick with his stunt double who looks nothing like him?
Executive Producer Tania: I just saw a thing of him doing. I think I actually coincidentally also in Australia because he’s very big into stunts. Cycling as well. Um, and he, and he competes in a lot of different races
Crew Chief Brad: and nude swimming in creeks.
Executive Producer Tania: And he was doing no, it was a nude bike. It was quote nude. Like he was just in his underwear and he was like, everybody was just like in their underwear, basically doing this bike ride. I was like, Oh my God. Also one that sucks. Cause the underwear don’t think was padded. So that’s rough bike ride. Have fun with that.
Crew Chief Brad: Some guys like that.
Executive Producer Tania: Yes. He was sporting his mustache and living his best life naked on his bike.
Crew Chief Brad: Bicycle. Bicycle. Bicycle. And I think his
Executive Producer Tania: stunt double, her stunt [01:37:00] dude must’ve been with him because there was another guy like next to him on a bicycle that looked a lot like him. Yes,
Crew Chief Eric: that’s the guy. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Crew Chief Brad: Aw, but this is a good follow on social media. He’s good stuff. He
Crew Chief Eric: is entertaining, that’s for sure. See, I keep up with Formula. I want to keep up with the right stuff and the
Crew Chief Brad: stuff that matters. Bodice’s haircut. That’s this is the podcast that we should be having. This is Bodice’s fashion and haircut.
There you go.
Crew Chief Eric: Hey, there are podcasts out there that built themselves around that whole principle of not throwing it. I
Crew Chief Brad: know they’ve been former guests and
Crew Chief Eric: they are no longer producing shows. So that’s that.
Crew Chief Brad: Oh, they’re not.
Crew Chief Eric: No, they are off the air. Did you miss them? They retired at the end of the season.
They’re done.
Crew Chief Brad: So sad.
Crew Chief Eric: So Botas Perez is out. He doesn’t have a seat. Nope. Okay, he’s out. Bye. Going into this season Verstappen’s teammate is going to be Lawson? Yep. How’s that going to work?
Executive Producer Tania: If the guy holds his ego in check, should work out fine. He’s got to be a team player. By team player, [01:38:00] Max Verstappen is number one.
Yeah.
Executive Producer Tania: And you do everything to protect him and he’ll always be in front of you. So it’s
Crew Chief Eric: Shumi and Barrichello all over again. I get it. We got Lawson moved to Red Bull. We got Carlos Saenz went to Haas. Yes. No. Williams. He went to Williams. Okay. And then Hamilton went to Ferrari and Leclerc is still at Ferrari.
Yes. Are any new drivers coming in for this season?
Executive Producer Tania: Yes. A
couple.
Executive Producer Tania: There’s a lot of youngins
Crew Chief Eric: with no experience. Are they driving for Audi, Gazoo, or Andretti at any point? In 2025,
Executive Producer Tania: even though it’s Audi, it’s still Sauber for 2025. They’ll officially be Audi in 2026. And so Audi has brought on Nico Hulkenberg.
They moved him from Haas and he’s going to be the Audi driver in 2026, but he’s already going to sit in the Sauber next year. And then they brought in a Brazilian driver, Gabriel Bortoletto, who’s the other number two chair.
Crew Chief Eric: So speaking of Audi, what is this that they were looking to sell out their investment and get out of Formula One before they even got started?
Is that true? Is that crap.
Executive Producer Tania: I think [01:39:00] it’s crap because if you go on Audi’s website, they have a whole page dedicated to Formula One talking about their entrance in 2026 and that they also, I think they got some
Crew Chief Eric: Qatar investment money as well. And there is still rumor on the street and I brought it up because I wish them the best that Andretti and GM are coming to Formula One at some point.
Executive Producer Tania: So, Cadillac’s coming to Formula One. Which is General
Crew Chief Eric: Motors.
Executive Producer Tania: Right. That was, I think, Greenlit. If it isn’t, it’s about to be. It might not be completely complete. It seems like it’s actually going to happen versus the Andretti one, which is just, it makes no sense. That doesn’t mean
Crew Chief Eric: that Andretti can’t come along with General Motors.
I mean, pretty much. And then at some point General Motors says Have you met Michael? And then passes the baton and then Andretti’s in Formula One. I mean, what is this backdoor nonsense that we’re doing? I don’t know.
Executive Producer Tania: Because there’s also been talks about like, Oh, maybe Perez will come back and could race for like Cadillac, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, we’ll see. What year is that going to happen? I think they’re trying to do it for [01:40:00] 2026. Okay. Yeah. Because that’s when the rule, there’s a rule change that’s happening in 2026. So that’s why then, take an engine for something. So that’s when Audi can officially come in.
Crew Chief Brad: Apparently Andretti is scaling back his role in the team and in the organization, which I guess that is.
Making F1 more accepting of having all this happen. So
Crew Chief Eric: you drop back and you punt and then burst down.
Crew Chief Brad: It also says that Cadillac’s motors aren’t going to be ready until 2028. So it’s going to be a GM branded car with a different engine supplier. How funny would be, it was a Ford.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, or it’s a Honda with a GM badge, which was the Porsche thing, right?
Where it was going to be a Honda engine with a Porsche badge. It’s like, whatever. When do they reveal the new cars that look just like the cars from the year before? That’s in, I think February. Yeah.
Crew Chief Brad: It starts like into January. There’s a whole schedule out there of the team reveals and stuff.
Crew Chief Eric: Are we still doing Visa cash apps?
State Chipotle [01:41:00] MoneyGram. Like, is that all like a thing or have all the teams changed again?
Crew Chief Brad: Wasn’t that Audi now?
Crew Chief Eric: They’re KickSauber
Executive Producer Tania: or whatever.
Crew Chief Brad: MoneyGram was Haas.
Executive Producer Tania: Visa, CashApp, blah, blah, blah is now RacingBulls. Toro Rosso. But RacingBulls. AlphaTari. It was AlphaTari. Then it was. Something, I don’t know, it was Alpha Tauri Toro Rosso, Visa Cash App, something, something, and now it’s Racing Bulls.
Crew Chief Brad: Why do they need to keep changing the name?
Executive Producer Tania: All right,
Crew Chief Eric: all that aside, is Okan back or not? He’s us. Terrible. All right, that’s all I needed to know. I’m rooting for Okan. Okan’s going to take it this year. He’s going to take all of them. Okan? Yeah, right. That’s my prediction.
Crew Chief Brad: He’s going to take them all out.
Yeah, exactly.
Executive Producer Tania: Take out his partner.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s switch gears here in motor sports news. We could talk about formula one all night. I’m not going to talk about WRC, but I am. So here’s the deal. 2025 schedule has been released. [01:42:00] WRC kicks off the end of January with rally Monte Carlo. That’s just a traditional event. They’ve been doing it forever, but here’s the cool part.
Rally has a tendency to switch it up. On us kind of unannounced, which is kind of cool. So this year we have three new rallies on the docket, the Canary islands, which are in Spain. And those look really awesome. You have rally Paraguay and then rally Saudi Arabia. So that’s replacing things like rally Mexico and some of the others.
So they, they mix it up every couple of years. So the new official 2025 schedule is out. They’re running in 14 locations this year over the course of, you know, January to December. And so I’m excited to see the new cars rallies, always a blast. And that’s all I’ll talk about it for the next 12 months.
Crew Chief Brad: And the Canary islands aren’t actually in.
Spain. They’re off the coast of Africa.
Crew Chief Eric: Considered Spanish.
Crew Chief Brad: They’re Spanish. It’s a
Crew Chief Eric: Spanish territory.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, they’re off the coast of Africa. Yeah, they’re off the coast of Morocco. I’ve been there.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, there you go. Boom.
Crew Chief Brad: Did you know I’ve been to Germany?
Crew Chief Eric: What is it that place for the Olympics that was France?
But it was [01:43:00] like halfway around the world. It’s the same. Yeah.
Crew Chief Brad: It’s a French territory. Yeah. It’s still France.
Executive Producer Tania: Oh, French Polynesia was, that’s where they had to do the surfing there. Cause there’s no surfing in the Mediterranean. As far as they’re
Crew Chief Eric: concerned, it’s France. So Canary islands, that’s Spain. It’s Spanish.
Speaking of rally, Tanya, you’ve been keeping up with the R4 division of Dakar.
Executive Producer Tania: Very lightly since there was in the Dakar classics rally. There were four vintage quattros that were entered in and they actually all four finished. The top finisher was 31st. The other three cars I think were like in the 50s and then I think one of them was like the 60s range.
I think the last stage before the final stage they were higher up as high as 28. It was a couple more places, but the other cars were actually up in the 30s as well. So something must have happened. I guess in the last stage, or I guess when they average everything out across all the stages, that’s where they, they shook out.
So they had a couple of bad stages in there, but that’s still pretty good. Glad to see that all four of them survived the whole thing.
Crew Chief Eric: What I really want to know is what’s the [01:44:00] next newest Audi that beat them? Because that’s the car that they enter next year.
Executive Producer Tania: Oh yeah. I don’t think there were any other ones in this one.
Like, they were
Crew Chief Eric: it. Well, by the time you listen to this, Rolex will be over. I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl of Racing. Meanwhile, in the virtual world, new title is coming out that you should put on your Steam wishlist. Check out JDM Drift Masters. I’ve been reading about this. I’ve been looking at the videos.
I saw some stuff on social media. I’ve never been into a drift, I’ll call it game, sim, whatever, before. I think this actually looks really cool. I’m really interested in it. It’s another one of these sort of open world, like test drive, solar crown, like a set of courses that Evo is turning into. It’s like, Hey, go drive, have fun, build cars, you know, need for speed, underground type of mentality.
And so I’m looking into that. I did purchase. And I played it a little bit. I think the weirdest part about that Simcade is that you drive on the same side of the road that you would drive in Hong [01:45:00] Kong, which is opposite of everywhere else in the world, except for a couple other countries. So that’s a little bit you have to get used to.
And then I did also pick up the early access to Assetto Corsa Evo, which it’s coming along. It’s still full of bugs. They’ve got a really aggressive release schedule to get it out there right now. There is no ability to drive this. Alleged, you know, 1300 square miles or whatever the heck it is in the Nürburgring and all the stuff.
It’s like, here’s a handful of tracks and here’s a couple of cars and get used to the physics engine, which really isn’t too different than ACC at the end of the day. I also got to try AC Evo when I was at PRI and I got to try different sim rigs. They had a whole Sim area at PRI and David Middleton from MIE Racing and I even got to test on Dallara’s bespoke one off sim that they built, which was super cool.
And then we got invited to actually take a look at the car that it was modeled on. I actually got to sit in that Roadster, which is pretty slick. So lots of really neat stuff coming in the sim side of racing. And then if you haven’t been paying [01:46:00] attention during the winter break, we actually adopted another show on the NPN.
So you can listen to screen to. by Inet Esports, and you can hear from sim racers who are also racers in real life, and they go back and forth and talk about their different experiences and the race they’ve been in, the sim racing that they’re doing. And we just had some of the ladies from Inet Esports run at Daytona as well.
So there’s an episode that precedes this one where you can listen to their experiences. A lot of really cool stuff coming in the SIM world and happening in the SIM world. So it’s something you should be paying attention to because there’s a lot of up and coming drivers that are coming through those types of programs and finding themselves F1 Academy and places like that.
So lots of really, really good stuff there. So I’ve mentioned before our motorsports news brought to us in partnership by the international motor racing research center. I just want to note that this year they’re making some changes at the center. They’re going to start doing some virtual center conversations.
Similar style to our evening with a legend that we do with the ACO [01:47:00] pay attention to their newsletter. Get on their newsletter. If you’re not on it, their Facebook group, things like that, then you can see what the guests are going to be. We’re doing a pilot in conjunction with them in March with different panels of women coming from different disciplines of motor sport, and it’s not the same old.
Oh, you know, we’re going to do roundy round or we’re going to do this. It’s like, we’re going to get ladies from Trans Am. We’re going to get ladies from drag racing and some other disciplines that we don’t always shine a light on. Like we do open wheel racing or sports car and endurance. It’s really shaping up to be a lot of fun.
And I got to tip my hat to our friends at WMNA for helping us out to put all that stuff together. So some really exciting content for season six of break fix. And for the NPN, as we move into the spring. And when racing goes back full swing. So pay attention to those virtual center conversations in 2025.
And I also wanted to just remind folks, the center raises its money as a 501 C three, not for profit through sweepstakes and fundraising and things like that. Their current sweepstakes for that [01:48:00] ZO six C eight has been shortened. So if you were looking to get in on that, you’re trying to wait till the last minute, do that hair trigger eBay, buy it at the last second type of deal and hope you win.
They’ve moved up the sweepstakes ending to February the 16th. So that’ll happen somewhere in between this drive through and the next one. So you’re not going to hear about this again in the next episode. So if you want to get in there and try to win that Corvette or take the cash option, jump over to racing archives.
org and then click on sweepstakes in the top, right corner.
Well, Brad, that about wraps it up. Let’s take her home.
Crew Chief Brad: As a reminder, you can find tons of upcoming local shows and events at the Ultimate Reference for Car Enthusiasts. CollectorCarGuide. net
Crew Chief Eric: This is our last HPD Junkie Trackside Report. I don’t know if you heard, we wrote an article about it. HPDJunkie.
com is closed. Dave Peters has retired from racing and he has closed up shop. He’s selling his Miata. He’s getting [01:49:00] out of the game. And so our source for all things track related, you know, to make it easy to find stuff is no longer available. So what we’re doing is to the best of our ability. Over on the GTM clubhouse website, we’re trying to absorb at least track data and event scheduling information for stuff up and down the east coast where we tend to frequent.
And we’re going to put that on our calendar with all the details. Now, unfortunately, none of us have the bandwidth to do what Dave was doing, but if you have events. That you know of that you want to get on our calendar. We’ll gladly put them out there and help you promote it. And, you know, we’re going to focus in on the groups that, you know, we’re associated with, you know, HOD, SCCA, CHIN, PCA, and so on down the line.
We’ve already got 70 events listed on our motorsports calendar. For HPD on this side of the country. So look to club. gt motorsports. org and then click on events to look more into that. We’ll do the best we can. All I can say for advice is you can go to motorsport reg, but you’re going to be [01:50:00] limited to the groups that participate in motorsport reg, and that’s not going to be the chins and the hooked on drivings because they have their own systems.
So your best bet these days is to go to the calendar. Of your local racetrack or the racetracks are interested in visiting. You know, maybe you want to make a trip to VIR or road Atlanta, go to their calendar and see who’s running during the year or during the month. Now I will say tracks tend to be a little bit slow to come up to speed on who’s going to be there.
But. They are contractually obligated to put that information out once they’ve confirmed the bookings with those organizations. Right now we’re in a state of transition, a little bit of state of limbo. So it’s unfortunate, but if you’re an HPD junkie, we adapt and overcome.
Crew Chief Brad: I will also say. For any of these clubs, if you know of a club or an organization that you have run with in the past or want to run with, most of them have mailing lists, you can get on their mailing list and they’ll send things out.
I still get things for Chen all the time and HOD Audi club, North [01:51:00] America. So get on the mailing list of the organizations that, you know, run where you like to run and they’ll update you with when, when they have track confirmations as well. And don’t forget, if you’re looking for that extra special something to make your garage, office, den, or man cave just a little bit extra, be sure to check out GarageStyleMagazine.
com for a list of upcoming auctions and events, along with a curated list of items going up for sale all over the country. Because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage?
Crew Chief Eric: And I have to add to that, Brad, just a quick note. We were saddened to hear that John Kramer, former guest on our show BreakFix, and the voice of Mecham Auctions, passed away during the Kissimmee Mecham event here in January.
So if you want to hear his life story, how he got to become the voice of Mecham and tune in to his encyclopedic knowledge of classic cars and all that, and go behind the scenes with John, we seem to have a treasure trove for people to, you know, celebrate his life and learn all that kind of stuff. Our episode originally aired [01:52:00] on November the 8th of 2023, but it is actually a three parter with multiple behind the scenes.
So you can actually see John, see the videos he took us on tour at Monterey, all sorts of stuff. And then obviously there’s the final edited version that you can listen to over and over and over again on your favorite podcast app. So if you jump back into break fix podcast, November the 8th of 2023, you can hear John’s life story in his own words.
Also be sure to check out our digital magazine. We reran the article from November in issue 32. So if you’d like to leave a comment. A little bit of a time capsule or memory of John. There’s been plenty of people that have been writing in the comments section of the article. So feel free to do that as well.
Just hop over to gtmotorsports. org and then click on the cover of the current magazine.
Executive Producer Tania: We just crested 470 episodes on the motoring podcast network. While you’ve been listening to this episode, we’ve expanded our catalog to include programs like screen to speed, the Ferrari marketplace, the motoring historian evening with a legend, the log book break fix.
And of course the drive through. [01:53:00] If you’re not listening to this via your favorite podcast app, search for Break Slash Fix everywhere you download, stream, or listen. And be sure to check out www. motoringpodcast. net for more details on all our shows, as well as the services we can provide.
Crew Chief Brad: We hope you enjoy our updated Patreon, which now includes our newsletter in the rear view.
We’d like to give a big shout out to all the folks that joined our free tier during the break. And if you’re wondering where our Facebook group went, Well, that’s over on Patreon now too. Lots of great extras and bonuses to explore. So if you’d like to learn more about our different tiers, join our Discord, or become a GTM Clubhouse member, become a Brakefix VIP by clicking the blue JOIN FREE button in the middle of the page when you visit patreon.
com slash gtmotorsports.
Executive Producer Tania: And remember for everything we talked about on this episode and more, be sure to check out the follow on article and show notes available at gtmotorsports. org.
Crew Chief Brad: And a thank you to our co host and executive producer, Tanya, who even though had technical issues tonight, she [01:54:00] still powered through and made for a great show.
So thank you, Tanya, for all your support and all the fans, friends, and family who support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network without you, none of this. Will it be possible?
Crew Chief Eric: That is the cover photo right there. Look at that.
Crew Chief Brad: Don’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that. We’ve done
Crew Chief Eric: that to you before though.
Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, but uh, she seems to be having a bit of a rough night anyway. I wouldn’t do that to her.
Crew Chief Eric: She’s on her laptop and that sometimes has issues too. I wonder if it blue screened on her.
Executive Producer Tania: That’s what happens when your laptop just randomly shuts down and you’re not even touching it.
Crew Chief Eric: I have a nice screenshot of you.
You’re like.
Executive Producer Tania: Is this thing, is this thing on? Because I don’t think I ever I can hear you. You sound about
Crew Chief Eric: the same as before.
Executive Producer Tania: I was on mute apparently. I was saying we would be remiss. Why did she go silent?
Crew Chief Brad: I, I don’t know. What happened? She censored herself.
Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, she censored herself. Oh, I accidentally hit the power button apparently.
So what you’re saying is that 20 minutes at the beginning where she didn’t talk, it was because her microphone wasn’t working?
Crew Chief Brad: I’m saying it made the show better. [01:55:00]
Wow.
Crew Chief Brad: I’m kidding. I kid, I kid, I kid, I kid, I kid, I kid, I kid, I
kid. I kid, I kid.
Crew Chief Eric: You guys ever watch that game show? On Hulu, it’s called The Floor with Rob Lowe.
Crew Chief Brad: No.
Crew Chief Eric: The floor is lava? No, no, no, no, no. It’s this game show where basically two people come up to the stage and they show them pictures in a category and they have to very quickly say what it is, right? It’s like Pictionary, right? And so there’s these moments though that apparently when they’re standing there, if the screen is not lit, it’s not your turn.
But there’s folks where the screen is lit and they just. Stare at it and I watch you guys. And sometimes I’m like, guys, there’s a picture on the screen and nobody’s talking.
Crew Chief Brad: Now, you know what it’s like when I talk to my therapist, that’s the show, everybody. We’ll see you all later. We will talk to you all next month.[01:56:00]
Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought to you by grand Tory motor sports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and [01:57:00] other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gumby Bears, and Monster.
So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports. And remember, without you, None of this would be possible.
If you enjoyed this History of Motorsports Series episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. That would help us beat the algorithms and help spread the enthusiasm to others. Subscribe to Break/Fix using your favorite Podcast App:
The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), partnering with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), presents the annual Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History. The Symposium established itself as a unique and respected scholarly forum and has gained a growing audience of students and enthusiasts. It provides an opportunity for scholars, researchers and writers to present their work related to the history of automotive competition and the cultural impact of motor racing. Papers are presented by faculty members, graduate students and independent researchers.The history of international automotive competition falls within several realms, all of which are welcomed as topics for presentations, including, but not limited to: sports history, cultural studies, public history, political history, the history of technology, sports geography and gender studies, as well as archival studies.
The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:
