transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Guten Tag.

Speaker 2:
[00:01] Guten Tag. Wie geht's dir?

Speaker 1:
[00:03] You know, pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[00:06] Gut. Heute sind wir, we don't do this in German. Today we are here with The Carmudgeon Show. Trying to get a German to say The Carmudgeon Show would be very fun. Car-mud-gion.

Speaker 1:
[00:21] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[00:22] Car-mud-gion. Getting Germans to say a lot of things is very funny. This is how I do my German accent all the time. I sit in the back and I think, how would a German say this word? And then I laugh and laugh and laugh. Anyway, this is The Carmudgeon Show, which is driven by Hagerty. That is a Derek Tam-Scott. I am a Jason Cammisa. That behind me is a 1996 Volkswagen Cabrio with a VR6 swap. Effectively a Volkswagen Mk3 GTI VR6 with the roof chopped off.

Speaker 1:
[00:54] A convertible they never made.

Speaker 2:
[00:56] A hot hatch that is no longer hatchy. I un-hot hatched my hot hatch. I un-pimped my ride. Oh, those commercials are so good.

Speaker 1:
[01:06] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[01:06] It's definitely sucking.

Speaker 1:
[01:09] Yeah. What's it just do?

Speaker 2:
[01:12] I give you an F. Oh my God. If you guys don't know those Volkswagen commercials from Mark V. Mark V era, they were amazing. Today we're going to talk about two, we have two topics that sort of almost bleed into each other. Not really have nothing to do with each other, but we have.

Speaker 1:
[01:25] You made a convertible that never existed.

Speaker 2:
[01:28] Right, out of something that would be appreciated because of its roof, and therefore ability to mount a hatchback to it. We're going to talk about the emissions controls that are on all of your cars. I think 1996 and later has a system called OBD2. We'll talk a little bit about the background of that, what it exists, why it exists and why it's a fucking nightmare. I shouldn't use that term. Features and miserable, yeah, features and benefits. And then we'll talk about Derek's favorite topic.

Speaker 1:
[01:57] Porsche.

Speaker 2:
[01:58] Squished Beatles.

Speaker 1:
[02:00] Specifically, the forthcoming convertible GT3. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[02:04] Derek has very, very strong opinions on that. He's very upset.

Speaker 1:
[02:09] The world is upset, but I'm going to clap.

Speaker 2:
[02:12] Oh, Derek is giving, would you please give the 911 GT3 SE a round of applause? Can it just be a round if it's one? Is that a square of applause or a rhombus of applause?

Speaker 1:
[02:25] I think it's a singular aplodim.

Speaker 2:
[02:28] Aplodim.

Speaker 1:
[02:29] A singular of applause is.

Speaker 2:
[02:32] We'll be right back after this jingle. Would you like to explain to our friends at home what monitors are and why they're stupid?

Speaker 1:
[02:42] The first time I learned about this, I was buying a used 1996 Porsche, and I brought a check and it was at a dealer, and they were like, you can't take it away because we can't get it to smog because the monitors aren't set. And I was like, why don't earth or monitors? And I was 19. And anyway, they were like, yeah, you got to like drive the car a bunch for the monitors set. And I was like, that smells mysterious. Anyway, that is a, basically there are all these, in OBD2 cars, the car was a 96, which is the first year of OBD2, before that was OBD1. And then, in those cases, smog used to be conducted by just smelling what was coming out of the exhaust pipe, basically.

Speaker 2:
[03:24] Yeah, you lock the car in the garage, let it run for half an hour, and see if you come out standing up.

Speaker 1:
[03:29] And then you don't need a swab check anymore.

Speaker 2:
[03:31] Somebody else does.

Speaker 1:
[03:33] Your heirs. Your heirs.

Speaker 2:
[03:35] OBD meaning onboard diagnostics.

Speaker 1:
[03:36] Correct.

Speaker 2:
[03:37] So there was a federal mandate for car companies to include an onboard diagnostic system to monitor the emissions systems on your car.

Speaker 1:
[03:47] And this has gotten progressively more complex, but when OBD2 came out, they had a standardized diagnostic port that anyone with the little diagnostic tool, it was used in every car. And it has like a standardized set of monitors for various aspects like EVAP, or fuel. Don't say that word. Sorry, is that a trigger for you?

Speaker 2:
[04:11] I have an OBD2 PTSD abbreviation trigger.

Speaker 1:
[04:15] Yeah, so yeah, EVAP is the one that is often problematic. There's, I don't know, it depends on the car, but there's at least half a dozen, maybe two dozen, yeah, probably half a dozen to a dozen of these different functions that are checked by the computer. And when the battery is disconnected, the car loses all memories of whether those systems are functioning, and you have to drive the car some quantity of miles, and not just in a certain quantity, but a certain type of sort of use for all of the monitors, for it to be able to do all the checks that it needs to do to make sure that those systems are functioning. And depending on the car, you have to do what's called a drive cycle, which is a, I don't know, it's 45 minutes probably to do a standard drive cycle depending on the car, and it'll be very specific where it'll be like, start the car from stone cold where the coolant temperature must be below 40 degrees Celsius, and then idle it for 30 seconds.

Speaker 2:
[05:16] And within four degrees or five degrees of ambient air temperature.

Speaker 1:
[05:20] And the fuel level must be between one quarter and three quarters in the tank, and then idle it for 30 seconds, and then drive using no more than 25 percent throttle to accelerate to a speed of 26 miles an hour. Maintain that for four minutes, then accelerate through every stoplight imaginable. Yes, exactly. And then accelerate with no more than 25 percent throttle to 90 kilometers per hour, and maintain that speed for, you know, anyway, it's this like absurd thing, and you have to do it all sequentially and in order. And, you know, if you fuck up, then you have to wait for it to cool off.

Speaker 2:
[05:55] Start again.

Speaker 1:
[05:55] And start again. And so you could put 1,000 miles. We have literally put 1,000 miles on cars trying to get the monitors to set for...

Speaker 2:
[06:03] I'm at 850.

Speaker 1:
[06:04] Well, it's different when it's like a mechanic doing it to your car, and it's like a Ferrari 360 with 9,000 miles, and you put 1,000 miles on it trying to get the monitors to set so you can smog it. Right.

Speaker 2:
[06:14] So here's the, let me back up a little bit, the reason that there are monitors. So your car is constantly monitoring its emissions effectively, looking at the mixture that's coming out of the exhaust with an oxygen sensor. It's looking for the presence of oxygen, which is, which correlates with the, with unburned fuel.

Speaker 1:
[06:33] How busted the fuel is that you put in.

Speaker 2:
[06:36] So it's constantly monitoring everything. However, it needs to know that it has enough use cases and enough trials to make sure that it's able to properly monitor stuff. So the readiness monitors, as they're called, are software that runs on top of the regular engine computer to make sure that the engine computer has all of the tools at its disposal. It needs to make sure it's not emitting. One of them, EVAP, is an evaporative emissions test. Now, on this car, for example, this is my monitor. My, I have, this engine has eight monitors. This is 1998, Jetta GLX VR6 was the donor car for this fucking nightmare of a project. And when I bought the Jetta, I made sure that it had no codes in the system, no pending codes, and all of the monitors were set. That was the same with the 96 Cabrio. So I knew everything in both cars was functioning properly.

Speaker 1:
[07:27] You should have just left the battery connected when you swapped it.

Speaker 2:
[07:31] You're a shithead. And so one of the monitors is EVAP, and what it's looking for is making sure that there's no evaporative emissions that are making it from the fuel, so unburned fuel that's leaking out of the fuel system into the environment. That's raw hydrocarbons, right? It's terrible for the environment. So what it does-

Speaker 1:
[07:50] This is the same reason why on California fuel pumps, there is this-

Speaker 2:
[07:54] Bellows.

Speaker 1:
[07:55] Thank you. That was not the word I was going to use. The word I was going to use was much more crass.

Speaker 2:
[07:58] What was it? Foreskin?

Speaker 1:
[08:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:00] You're kidding.

Speaker 1:
[08:01] Yeah. Do you not call it that?

Speaker 2:
[08:02] How did I guess that? We've spent too many episodes.

Speaker 1:
[08:04] Everyone- No? No.

Speaker 2:
[08:06] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[08:06] Anyway, in California, they have this thing, which is designed to prevent fuel evaporation-

Speaker 2:
[08:11] While you're filling your tank.

Speaker 1:
[08:12] While you're fueling the tank, which, you know, you go to other places and it doesn't have that thing. They're just like, it.

Speaker 2:
[08:17] So it's actively, in exactly the same measure as the fuel is coming out, the volume of fuel is coming out of the fuel dispenser, it is sucking in. So as you're replacing air volume in the tank, the fuel is then sucking that air and then capturing it and recycling it. So in every OBD-II car, as you're driving along at inter... I'll call them random intervals, at different times, your car will have a pump, it's either a vacuum or a positive pressure, this is a positive pressure pump, that will pressurize the entire fuel system. And I'm not talking about the fuel itself, but the air that's in the tank, to one PSI or thereabouts on this car. It pressurizes to that point, and then monitors that pressure, for a certain period of time, to make sure it doesn't drop. If that pressure starts to fall off, then it knows it has a leak.

Speaker 1:
[09:04] And then it throws a code.

Speaker 2:
[09:05] Exactly, but it can't do that, under different circumstances, like for example, when you're using the fuel. So it has to do it on overrun, meaning when you're decelerating. And so what this thing will do, the drive cycle for this to set the EVAP monitor, is you have to start it from cold. There's no more than a 12 degree difference, temperature difference between the coolant and the ambient temperature. Let it idle for two minutes, two to three minutes, and that's so the secondary air pump will run and complete its cycles. And then you drive it until the coolant reaches 80 degrees Celsius. And at that point, you drive four to five miles at 45 to 55 miles an hour, and then seven miles or seven minutes, whatever it is, at 60 to 65 miles an hour. You can't go over this amount. Exactly as you said, it's idiotic. And then the favorite part is, cruising at 60, between 60 and 65 miles an hour, so 100 kilometers an hour effectively, in fifth gear, you let off the gas pedal on level ground, and you don't touch a thing until you get down to 18 miles an hour, which in this car is idle. That takes a long distance. And you tell me where you can find all of these places where you can safely and legally go 65 miles an hour, let off and coast for a fucking mile. Well, you're slowing down to 21 miles an hour, and now there's trucks whizzing past you. So the trick is get up at four o'clock in the morning and go for this one stretch of road around here that all of my mechanic friends use. I've asked them about it, and I've done this 200,000 fucking times. After 400 and something miles of driving this engine swap with no codes, no pending codes, no check engine light, no nothing, it set a pending code for a small intermittent evaporative system leak. So I smoke checked the car, meaning that I put one PSI of pressure on the entire intake system and everything else.

Speaker 1:
[10:55] Yeah, so the way that you would do this is, I don't know what entry point you use, but that you have a smoke machine that generates smoke and you have an air source of compressed air and you attach this thing like it's probably a little cap with like a little rubber gasket or something to somewhere in the fuel system. I don't know how you do it in this car, in my car I would usually use the intake track.

Speaker 2:
[11:16] Well, you can't really use the intake track because you're looking at the fuel system, not the intake system.

Speaker 1:
[11:21] Oh, I'm looking for vacuum leaks.

Speaker 2:
[11:22] So that's when you're-

Speaker 1:
[11:23] When I'm looking for vacuum leaks, that's what I would do.

Speaker 2:
[11:25] So on this, there are two purge valves on this system, which is similar to most. One of them will take that pressure that's in the evaporative system that it builds up and purge it into the intake to burn it off. So that connects that fuel system directly to the intake. And then there's another one that sends that pressure outside to the environment. And it's got a little vent tube to do that. So you have to make sure one of those is pressurized, which is the one, is energized, which is the purge valve that goes to the outside, because that's normally open, and you put 12 volts on it to close it. So the first thing I do is I pull off, there's a Schrader valve on this, like a little tire valve basically, where you can pressurize. I don't have that fitting. So I pull off a vacuum hose, and shove the little smoke machine in there, let it pressurize for, I let it go for 45 minutes this last time, just to watch for any smoke anywhere, with the external purge valve closed. So pressure built up. So after a couple of minutes, I go over to the gas tank all the way at the back of the car, and you open the gas cap, and smoke comes out. So I know it had built pressure. And I sat and watched it, and after four or five minutes, I could see this tiniest little wisp of smoke coming from a connector. And this was the VR6 uses a different style connector up front on a flexible line to the plastic key point, hard line that goes to the back of the fuel tank. And so the trick there is just use a hose clamp, tighten it, but because it's plastic, you can't take the shit out of it, or you're going to crack it. And then I'm really in trouble.

Speaker 1:
[12:59] Because that's like part of the car.

Speaker 2:
[13:00] Yes. I mean, then you're running a new line all the way through the floor pan and everything else. So I did it gently, because I didn't want it to crack. And there was a little tiny wisp of, continual wisp of smoke through there. And I thought, ha ha, I found the EVAP leak. Cranked it down just enough to stop it. And then another couple of degrees, and sat and watched it for 45 minutes. Nothing came out of it. Occasionally, and I mean like every three or four minutes, I would see a quarter inch long of smoke come out of the pump itself that makes this. And I thought, who the fuck, this is not measurable. This is such a tiny leak. But 45 minutes I watched the whole thing, and so now I am positive there is no leak. I tested both purge valves. You take 12 volts off of the external purge, and it all comes out the bottom of the car. You take 12 volts and you put it to the intake purge, and it pressurizes the intake with all this stuff. It's been another 400 miles. It won't set the fucking EVAP monitor. Now, in California...

Speaker 1:
[14:03] But has it thrown a pending code?

Speaker 2:
[14:04] No. California, you're allowed to pass smog with your EVAP. California has realized that EVAP monitors are such a pain in the ass, and so often so difficult to set, that you can now pass a smog test without. And this car passed a smog test.

Speaker 1:
[14:19] If the car is a 98 or earlier, right? Or is it 2001 or earlier?

Speaker 2:
[14:22] 2001 and earlier. Because they know, there are times... So, I can... Another example is I have a friend with an E46 M3, and she put 8,000 miles on her car, and the day she set the EVAP monitor, they smogged it, and then she wrecked it. This is the idiocy. So, I wrote to the California Bureau of Automotive Repair, the referee that I'm dealing with, to try to certify this. And I said, I've now done more miles on this car, trying to set the monitor, and then I will drive it every year. So, now we are creating more pollution in the effort to rule out pollution, which I know isn't happening in the first place. A, because you already shoved the thing up its tailpipe and measured what's coming out, and fucking the car is clean. And B, I put it on a smoke machine. Would you please just smoke test the fucking EVAP system and leave me alone? No response. I mean, I didn't say it like that, but I was like, anything you can do to offer any assistance would be greatly appreciated. My goal here is to limit emissions and putting another thousand miles on the car. Anyway, so now I'm going through anything else. What else could be possibly pissing this fucking computer off?

Speaker 1:
[15:34] You need more drive cycles.

Speaker 2:
[15:36] Right, so I've been daily driving this car, which I don't want to do, but doing it, it's fine. Everything is happy, but I put the factory air box on the car.

Speaker 1:
[15:43] But do you do the drive cycle every time you drive it?

Speaker 2:
[15:45] I do it a lot. I've done the drive cycle probably seven, eight times since the last reset.

Speaker 1:
[15:50] It's miserable. Can you do this on a rolling dyno?

Speaker 2:
[15:53] No, yes.

Speaker 1:
[15:55] Hypothetically?

Speaker 2:
[15:56] Hypothetically, you could.

Speaker 1:
[15:57] I would be very interested to do that. I think that would improve the experience of drive cycle.

Speaker 2:
[16:02] Volkswagen actually allows you to force the monitors to be set. There's a product called a Vagcom. It was a company by Ross Tech, and they wrote some software that lets you directly tell the computer what to do. And you can tell it to perform the test. Mine just won't set. But it's not throwing after all these miles, it's still not throwing, and I see an error. It's just saying, I can't rule out that there is an error. But I'm driving this car, and driving this car, and driving this car, and the folly here is that the computer can't tell me why it won't set the monitor. Isn't saying, hey, I'm not ready to set the monitor yet because I am seeing an intermittent leak. Or hey, I'm not even trying to set the monitor because. And so there's another friend of mine called, I called another friend asking for EVAP monitor help. And he said, well, how old's your cat? I said, I don't have a cat anymore. I died a couple of years ago. No, the cat will be a converter. And I said, I need more coffee.

Speaker 1:
[16:58] Sorry for your loss.

Speaker 2:
[16:59] Thank you, it was many years ago. The Toyotas will come in, Priuses specifically, he said, will come in with an EVAP monitor not set.

Speaker 1:
[17:08] Don't they all have new cats because they've all been stolen and replaced?

Speaker 2:
[17:11] Apparently not. They last between 130 and 150,000 miles in our conditions, he said. And when the cat is aging to the point where it's no longer functioning properly, the computer doesn't throw a code, doesn't throw, and there is a catalytic converter aging code that they should throw, doesn't do that, just stops trying to set the EVAP monitor. EVAP has nothing to do with the catalytic converter for the record, nothing. One is an evaporative emissions, the other one is a combusted emissions thing. It just stops. So he said now every time they get 150,000 mile Prius in with an EVAP monitor not set and they can't smog it, they just throw a new catalytic converter at it, run it through its cycle and it sets the monitor. So my question is what fuckery does this thing find? Is it saying I don't like being in a Cabrio? I liked it better in a Jetta, therefore I don't want to set the monitors? Does it not like, is there some other system?

Speaker 1:
[18:08] Does it not like being garaged?

Speaker 2:
[18:10] Do you not like being pampered, you stupid fuck? Like this is maddening. And so in the middle of this whole thing, I thought, you know what, let me just throw the stock air box back in the car because I finally was able to get it to fit in the engine compartment. I had a cone filter. So I do that and the secondary air system, and all the secondary air does is pump extra air through the engine to help the catalytic converter when it's all cold. Secondary air pulls.

Speaker 1:
[18:33] So that it runs lean?

Speaker 2:
[18:34] So that it run, well, it's extra air to combust uncombusted fuel in the exhaust. So, which it dumps down. So it runs rich. It runs rich to heat up the car.

Speaker 1:
[18:44] But then it gives you the air. So it's going back towards stoichiometric. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[18:48] So it gives it the air that it needs to combust the extra fuel during warm up to light off the cat. Don't sue me if I got that wrong. The secondary air on this car breezed through the air box. And so I hooked up the secondary air, which is through this tube and the whole thing. If the pump runs, it sets its monitor for secondary air. It's very happy about that. But I noticed that when I put the factory air box in and the factory paper air filter, that my fuel trims went off the chart. And fuel trim is basically your engine computer saying, I see this much air going in, and I applied the appropriate amount of fuel, but it was either not enough or too much. And so I trim the fuel.

Speaker 1:
[19:33] Do you think your paper filter is too restrictive?

Speaker 2:
[19:35] I don't know. It went positive, which meant it was adding fuel, which meant it was sucking in extra air from somewhere. And I thought, okay, when I put the air box in, I introduced a vacuum leak post-Maff, post the mass airflow sensor.

Speaker 1:
[19:54] Is that possible? Were you playing in that area?

Speaker 2:
[19:56] Yeah, I just had to take the mass airflow sensor off. So I took the mass airflow sensor. I went and pressure tested it with the smoke tester. No leaks anywhere. Very happy about that. Put it all back together with the stock air box. Again, I cleared the adaptations and it came right back. 25% fuel trim, which is huge. 25%.

Speaker 1:
[20:16] So 2D cycle is a hundred. If it were fully out of whack, it would go up to 100.

Speaker 2:
[20:20] I don't think it goes any more than 30. I think every car probably has this limitation. All I know is at 25, guess what that thing sets? A fucking check engine light. So I put the factory airbox back in, I'm sorry, the aftermarket cone filter back in, cleaned the MAF, did everything I could, put it back in, fuel trims back down to 6%. Everyone's happy. In the meantime, though, when I pulled the factory airbox out, I have that secondary air tube that was sitting next to it. And I sort of secured it. I didn't remove it this time. I secured it next to the engine. And it came loose and got ground up in the technical term, goddamn motherfucking radiator fan, and made a hole in it.

Speaker 1:
[21:04] So now you have an air leak.

Speaker 2:
[21:05] And set a code for, set a tempera, pending code for secondary air. And I can't find this little 90 degree elbow anywhere in the world. I can't find any of this. It doesn't exist. So if anyone has a 12 valve VR6, preferably a 98 or 99, because they kept changing the EVAP system, that has this little tube, would you please, I will pay you a handsome sum of money for it. But now I have a pending code, and I don't know how long it will take to get rid of that. So my choice is to reset it and then start over again with this EVAP monitor setting, to which I say, just let me register the car.

Speaker 1:
[21:39] Can you JB weld that? Plastic weld.

Speaker 2:
[21:42] I thought about plastic, like plastic welding it and whatever, but if the referee, see the whole point of how I did this fucking car was I wanted it to be done properly. I wanted the hope to go up.

Speaker 1:
[21:55] Have you considered moving?

Speaker 2:
[21:56] I may have to. I may have to sell the car, right? The joke is I only have a year and a bit. Now that I've started this process, before I have to get this car past a smog, which not just a regular smog, through the referee for the engine swap process, which I can't do until all monitors are set, even though California would pass this car without an EVAP monitor set, and a pending code is not a real code. So I'm stuck in this Neverland where I can't get the car through the test.

Speaker 1:
[22:23] I believe right now the comment section is going wild about common-fornia or whatever it is that people say about California being miserable.

Speaker 2:
[22:32] They are not wrong.

Speaker 1:
[22:35] Yeah, about that. What I will also say is that I have had the pleasure, I have a client in Oregon and I registered, I handled the DMV registration for his car in Oregon and the experience there was so much more glorious than here. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is.

Speaker 2:
[22:49] Is it enough to make up for the fact that everyone in Oregon is a super driving pacifist asshole who drives at two miles an hour under the speed limit? That is a complete and total joke.

Speaker 1:
[22:58] If you live away from the developed areas, I think you don't have to deal with those people so much. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[23:05] You're not supposed to take that comment seriously. Oh.

Speaker 1:
[23:10] That was me being a robot.

Speaker 2:
[23:11] That was me being purposefully inflammatory for the second time.

Speaker 1:
[23:15] But in addition to the they're not being sales tax in Oregon, there is also a collector plate that exempts you from emissions testing for anything 25 years and older. Which is the right thing to do. If it's not 25 years and older, if there is a club that certifies that it's a significant car, then you can get that plate on the car even if it's not 25.

Speaker 2:
[23:38] I'm the club of people who think Toyota Prius is a special car.

Speaker 1:
[23:42] Effectively, so yeah, much better system there.

Speaker 2:
[23:46] This is why the Leno's Law thing is back on the books again. Everyone is trying to get California to just back off. Where cars, look, this is my newest car. It's my only OBD2 car. It's a 1996. It is 30 years old. This is never, okay, it is not that special of a car. We understand this is a Volkswagen Cabrio. It's not going to be driven regularly. It's not going to emit a portion as much as a fucking Prius that's daily driven. I'll probably drive this car a thousand miles a year once I got the monitors to set. So it's one of those things that's just incredibly frustrating about living in any place that has any sort of emissions controls. And it's not because of the emissions controls. It's because the manufacturers did a shitty job complying with the government mandated OBD-II standard, where you're shooting in the dark.

Speaker 1:
[24:34] Right, and the other thing that happens is that these standards were written for the tens of millions of motorists in California and the enthusiast community represents a relatively small portion. And if they say we're going to design a regulation that is intended to get as much smog solved as quickly as possible, then they're going to do it in a sort of heavy handed way that applies to 97% of the people who aren't motoring for enthusiasm. And they haven't introduced like a sort of sidebar the way that Oregon does where they're like, well, if you have this type of license plate and you certify that the car is going to be used primarily for...

Speaker 2:
[25:07] Other states have...

Speaker 1:
[25:08] We have HV plates, but they don't come with any emissions. That's historical vehicle.

Speaker 2:
[25:11] Yeah. They don't. Well, kind of. There is a law in the books that says if California car is registered with a historical vehicle plate and is 35 model years old or older, it is actually exempt from tailpipe emissions inspection. And you can go to a ref, meaning a referee, have it done. I don't know anyone who's been brave enough to bring your car to a ref.

Speaker 1:
[25:34] Because then they're going to look at everything else on the car.

Speaker 2:
[25:37] That's your thought, right? Apparently, they're only allowed to look at the gas cap and make sure, visibly make sure there's a catalytic converter present or something like that. But that's it. I don't trust them. No one trusts the ref. Like they're the fucking antichrist to car people. So, but yeah, there should be mileage exempts. If you've gone 3000 miles a year or less, just fucking leave me alone.

Speaker 1:
[25:57] I might even allow a GPS tracker. Would you allow a GPS tracker in your car if it prevented you from having issues?

Speaker 2:
[26:05] The question is on an OBD-0 car, meaning a car before OBD-2, how do you do that?

Speaker 1:
[26:11] Yeah, it would be literally a GPS tracker.

Speaker 2:
[26:14] Well, yeah, but then the battery could die. Oopsie. And then I do 12. I mean, there's always ways to cheat. I don't like that. I drove my dad's car once and his insurance doubled because I did a burnout and well, I launched it aggressively from onto, emerged onto the freeway and it made a little noise. And then I kind of slid around an on-ramp and I got a couple of stability control interventions and it made a little noise. And he called me screaming not long after. And he's like, I tried for so long to get my insurance down and blah, blah, blah, blah. He's on some idiotic insurance thing. So he promised that I would never drive the car again, which fine.

Speaker 1:
[26:50] What is it?

Speaker 2:
[26:50] Mercedes GLA 250 front wheel drive. Trust me, I'm not upset about that. And yeah, I would consider, well, I would certainly report annual mileage, right? If that.

Speaker 1:
[27:04] Yeah, but that's like so.

Speaker 2:
[27:07] I'm not going to listen. I have a spreadsheet with every tank of gas I've ever put in any one of my cars. I am all about information gathering. I'm not going to cheat.

Speaker 1:
[27:15] But there's going to be people who will.

Speaker 2:
[27:16] But there's always going to be people who cheat. So this car was supposed to make its rally debut a couple of weeks ago. But it popped that check into the light.

Speaker 1:
[27:27] Yeah, it showed up at the beginning. It was gone by lunch on the first day.

Speaker 2:
[27:31] Yeah, in fact, I dropped it off, had lunch and picked up Beatrice, the E30, which had been sitting basically unused. I think I've driven it maybe 200 miles since October of last year. Starts right up, did 450 miles of perfectly conscientious, all law-abiding motoring. And other than the speedometer dropping to zero, occasionally for no reason, odometer kept turning. I would have immediately stopped because I can't handle the odometer not turning. I need to know what my fuel mileage is, problem free. So yeah, that thing, but the worst part of that is that car, so the morning of, or the morning, the night before, the day before, I woke up in a panic and I'm like, how are you going to set the monitors? How are you going to set the monitors? How are you going to set the monitors? I'm like, you stupid fuck, you want to set the monitors, take that thing on a 450 mile back road and it'll get overrun, it'll be exposed to all sorts of horrible things. Maybe it'll set the monitors. So I brought it into the alignment shop. I'm like, please. And they said, okay, they aligned it. Everything's great. I get to the start of the rally. Fuel trim was at 20, between 18 and 22%. I was a little nervous about that. We do one mountain drive. Car was shockingly good. Like I was genuinely surprised at how competent it was. The brakes started to become fragrant, but these have the driver edition big brakes on it. Like it's, the car was fucking great. Get to the bottom of the thing, we all get out, we're talking, everybody's happy. I go to get back into the car. I'm like, where's the clutch? Clutch pedal's on the floor. The brand new master, clutch slave, which has never felt right and never stopped leaking, just let go. And so I had to drive that 34 miles back to my fucking warehouse through mountain windy roads and traffic and in town with no clutch. So.

Speaker 1:
[29:28] There was clutch. The problem was there was no, no, no clutch.

Speaker 2:
[29:31] No clutch, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:31] Yes. You had clutch only.

Speaker 2:
[29:33] I had clutch only. I hate doing that.

Speaker 1:
[29:35] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:36] I mean, it's a pain in the ass and it was all fine until everything was totally fine. I can shift no clutch and I just made sure I never stopped and you sort of, you know, slow down, put your flashers on and sorry, I'm having a mechanical to the people behind me and you wait until that light turns green and you fucking floor it and get through that light as fast as you can and I just mostly stayed in second, third and fourth. Then I get to like a block or two blocks before my warehouse where I'm going to ditch that and get Beatrice and I'm coming up on a green light and there's a woman in a fucking Subaru. You know I was going to say it. And I'm gaining on her quickly because I'm coming. I want to make sure I'm making, we're making a right at this light. She fucking slams on the brakes in the middle of the intersection and starts looking around like, oh, I think I have to go left. I don't know. She comes to a screeching halt and I had to ABS to stop like full, but almost hit her. Oh my God. So I'm on the horn and too late. Now I'm stopped, I'm stalled and it's up a significant hill, seven, eight percent grade. So come to a stop and she starts to go stops again. And the guy behind me almost hits me and he's honking. I'm honking and I'm like, oh my God, I hate you. And she takes off. And now I realize I'm in second and I'm stuck in second because there's so much weight on the car, pulling it down the hill that the gear is locked. And I'm like, okay, the only way I'm going to get out of this is to hit the key, let the starter move the car a little bit, let go and immediately at the same time, knock it out of gear when there's no load on it, come to a stop, put it in first and have the starter start me up the hill. So I grab the key with my left hand and my right hand's on the starter and I go to get out of gear, let go. And the guy I hear behind me and he goes nuts. Like I think he thinks I'm like trying to fuck with him. Now I'm the asshole who's stopped in a green light. So he's screaming, he's honking, he's doing everything. I have my flashers on, I'm like go around, but he's so close to me that he can't. And obviously he can't figure out how to put his car in reverse. So I just hit the key. This poor thing, this poor starter up the hill. At like one third walking speed. And I'm like, I don't care. Self-immolate. Light yourself on fire. I have really good insurance. I'm so sorry, Hagerty. Just fucking blow up. I don't care. I hate you. I want you to sit in the garage and think about what you've done. You've embarrassed me amongst your friends and my peers. And by the time I get to the top of the hill and crest it down, started up, drove it right into the garage, put it on the lift, gave it the finger, took Beatrice and left.

Speaker 1:
[32:12] And got a sandwich.

Speaker 2:
[32:13] And got a sandwich and then caught up with you guys right after lunch.

Speaker 1:
[32:17] Yeah, great success or similar.

Speaker 2:
[32:19] And now I have to replace fucking secondary air pipe just so I can drive in another 4.2 billion miles to set a fucking monitor to know that I don't have an evaporative emissions leak that I already know I don't have. So rant is done. I will put this tube back on the ground and grab our Carmudgeon logo while you tell us what you did in the rally.

Speaker 1:
[32:44] I got a flat tire. I didn't get a flat tire, I got a nail.

Speaker 2:
[32:48] You know, I posted that to the video that, yeah, he got it. You got a screw. You got screwed. It was a drywall screw. And I posted a video of me. I was extracting the screw and thought it would be funny to take a video of me saying, listen, you asshole at you. And then screwing the tire back in and pretending that I was giving you a flat. It was funny. For me anyway.

Speaker 1:
[33:08] We did a roadside repair on that. We, one of us always has the kit. I actually bought one myself because I figured I should have my own. But we patched it on the side of the road. Actually, we patched it in the driveway before leaving. What else happened? Nothing else. Noteworthy. Everything went smoothly.

Speaker 2:
[33:26] You know, the only thing that didn't go smoothly is this was a holiday weekend.

Speaker 1:
[33:30] Oh, yes. We forgot that it was Easter. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[33:34] I don't know what happens on religious holidays, but Christians get very upset or something.

Speaker 1:
[33:39] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[33:39] That's not true. But everyone was very mad at us. Like we got screamed at constantly for doing 47 in a 55. Like we were just constantly being yelled at by people who were very angry that we were on the roads. And like in a bunch of sports.

Speaker 1:
[33:56] The volume of people out was also, I think, problematic. There were a lot of people using the holiday weekend. So anyway, we tried to go far enough away from civilization for it to not be an issue. And the farther we went, it was definitely.

Speaker 2:
[34:09] The less we got screamed at.

Speaker 1:
[34:10] Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[34:11] But as per usual, taking amazing cars on amazing, well, taking cars on amazing roads on a holiday weekend is a bad idea. And I wanted to do it in a convertible because I thought that would slow me down and it would just make me enjoy the scenery more and the smells and that didn't work. But we came back to the world erupting over a convertible.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] Oh, yes. I had heard about this. I, one of my clients is very prolific with Porsche, Porsche buying, Porsche, Porsche buying. And he told me it was happening and I was like, what? Really?

Speaker 2:
[34:53] Okay. So we're talking, of course, about the newly launched 911 GT3 S slash C.

Speaker 1:
[35:01] Yes. For something Cabriolet.

Speaker 2:
[35:05] Oh, well, I just thought it was an ad here. I don't know what. So here's the full transparency. A week from now ish, I will be driving that car, I think. I'm going to, I'm going down to Porsche. I'm going down to LA to spend a couple of days with Porsche. And I think they're letting me drive it, SC. I don't know. Either way. But it brings up a really good point. Because people are having a kind of visceral negative reaction to this car on social media. Is that your experience also?

Speaker 1:
[35:30] Yeah, I think people are objecting to it on the basis that it is conceptually unpure. Yeah. So Ferrari has done this already.

Speaker 2:
[35:44] With a Gt3?

Speaker 1:
[35:46] No, with their equivalent cars. Nobody really seemed to give a shit when the roof was removed from Ferrari's hot rods, which is, let's see, what was the first one? Was probably the Aperta. The, the, the, no. Well, 599, I guess. Yeah, because the GTO engine in an open car, they made 80 of those. It's kind of a sidebar car. I guess it's a little more rationalizable because that's not really like a race car formula. When you go to the mid engine cars, I think it distresses people more. And so when the 458 Speciale Aperta was probably the origin of this, because there was no 430, oh no, sorry, 430 16M.

Speaker 2:
[36:23] 16M.

Speaker 1:
[36:24] Yes. In 2009. Yes. So Ferrari has been at this for, for.

Speaker 2:
[36:29] I drove that, I was on the launch of that car.

Speaker 1:
[36:30] Yeah. So what is that's coming up on 20 years ago. Yeah, I guess it didn't, maybe the mentality was different then, or nobody seemed to give a shit at the time. I thought it was a little bit like, weird.

Speaker 2:
[36:43] I didn't give a shit.

Speaker 1:
[36:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[36:45] I didn't give a shit, and here's why. The, let's be honest, the initial definition of a sports car was a roadster, was a two door open car. The problem I feel with the GT3, so no one has a problem with a convertible 911, they've been around for a long time. I mean, we could all talk about. We could talk about the people who tend to buy Turbo S Cabriolets and.

Speaker 1:
[37:11] I think Cabriolets generally.

Speaker 2:
[37:13] Fair point, and maybe we should, but I think the dissonance here is that GT3 as a badge tends to, GT is Porsche's motorsport division, right? And so the idea of a GT3, i.e. track car or motorsport car being a convertible is a problem. It's not that the 911 is a convertible. I think if they had called it 911sc cab and just had it been a 911sc, I don't think there would be this much uproar. But Porsche has trained us that GT3 was track focused, and that's why it was originally only available with a PDK when they had to reduce it down to one transmission, because the PDK was faster on a lap time. And then they've been able to do things like 911r and 911sc, which are... And ST I'm sorry, ST I said SC 911r and 911st, which are GT3s without the focus on the track, where they were able to just tweak the dial a little bit in the direction of experience rather than lap time. And so SC...

Speaker 1:
[38:16] There's also, I mean, context is certainly relevant. And I think, you know, the context for 911 cabriolets have always been, let's start with what it means if you drive a 911 cabriolet.

Speaker 2:
[38:27] Watch out, I've owned one.

Speaker 1:
[38:30] Poser?

Speaker 2:
[38:31] No.

Speaker 1:
[38:34] Geriatric?

Speaker 2:
[38:35] No, I was 31.

Speaker 1:
[38:37] No, no, no. I'm saying, what does it say if you buy one of those cars? Yeah. It is the, and this is borne out by values also, right? Like for example, if you take a Carrera 3.2, a Cabriolet version of the car is worth approximately, slightly more than half of what the equivalent car as a coupe is for a regular 911. And so when these cars get bought by collectors and enthusiasts now, it's always the coupe version that's sought after. This is a, I think, distinctly Porsche characteristic, and it's actually distinctly 911 characteristic, because if you go to 356 land, the 356 Cabriolet is worth more than the 356 coupe.

Speaker 2:
[39:16] So that relationship... What about a SL, a Gullwing, Roadster versus like a 300 SL, Roadster versus a 300 SL?

Speaker 1:
[39:21] Roadster is worth less than a Gullwing.

Speaker 2:
[39:24] But none, we're not talking half, right?

Speaker 1:
[39:27] No, it's probably, it's more than 25% value difference.

Speaker 2:
[39:32] Right, but you do lose the Gullwing doors, which is kind of...

Speaker 1:
[39:34] Correct, which is the car's calling card, and it also is a motorsport car. It started as a racing car, and so you're just becoming less and less close to the race car thing. But Porsche Land is specific because I think when you get a 911 Cabriolet, then there's no, there's never been an offering that was a truly sporting offering that was a Cabriolet. And part of this was the fact that the Cabriolet 911 came out 20 years after the 911 first came out. The car went as it's, and it was still using the original body shell. The car wasn't conceived as a convertible. And so there was compromise built into the an open top 911 because they had to do a bunch of sort of after the fact engineering to make the car, it's not very structurally rigid.

Speaker 2:
[40:17] Even if it's built in, 997 Cab when it debuted, I remember the, I think it was 997. What was the crazy Targa one? That was 991. No, the return of the Targa was 997. Return of the Targa. So in terms of structure-

Speaker 1:
[40:32] You're talking about the Bar Targa or are you talking about the bubble top?

Speaker 2:
[40:36] The Bar Targa for 997.

Speaker 1:
[40:37] Okay, that was 991, yes.

Speaker 2:
[40:39] One was 997, one was a 991. Either way, historically Porsche's have, 911s have lost half of their structural rigidity. A quarter for the Targas, half for the convertibles. And that's the compromise built in. And that's even when the car is designed as a convertible to become a convertible from the onset. You still lose a lot of structure and gain weight.

Speaker 1:
[40:59] So for this reason, driving enthusiasts have always chosen 911s with fixed roofs. And that is sort of, and the other thing also is that the GT3 line goes back, if you trace it far enough back, goes to the RS days, to the Carrera RS, which came out in 1973. So there is a 50 plus year precedent about this car, which has basically been in production in every generation of 911. No, there was no, yeah, the impact bumper car, you could get an RS equivalent. It wasn't badge as an RS, but it effectively was the three liter Carrera and the MFI 2.7 Carrera. So every generation of 911 has basically been available in a sort of hot rod RS version, which became the GT3.

Speaker 2:
[41:47] 991 had the Speedster, which had a GT3 engine in it.

Speaker 1:
[41:52] Yes, and that was the first time, and that was an interesting experiment in the way to sort of correctly approach this or a way to sort of sneak this product in the back door without upsetting anybody, which was that the Speedster was its own thing that had existed since 1954, and historically had always used the standard engines. And so that existed for the 356 Speedster, the first G-Body 911, the 964, there was no 993, the 997 Speedster. All of these cars were standard 911 convertibles, basically paired down, or 356 convertible in the case of that car, paired down and stripped down to be closer to this historical definition of sports car, which you mentioned earlier, which is that it's a roadster, effectively. And, you know, the Cabriolet had wind up windows, it had a fully insulated top that was watertight, it had a taller windscreen, it was a sort of all-purpose car, I think more like a Mercedes SL that you could use on a daily basis and put the roof down when you wanted to, but you could drive it year round if you wanted to. And the Speedster wasn't. And so when the Speedster appears for the 991 generation and they put the GT3 engine in it, they're like, look, it's a different car, it's an extension of an existing model line, we just made it spicier than it's ever been before, and everyone was okay with that. So I guess my question is, the Speedster was limited, the 1,948 units of the 991 Speedster, 356 units of the 997 Speedster, 400 something of the 964 and 2,000 something of the G body, and I don't know how many 356 Speedsters they made, but it was more than any of those. And so those are all limited production cars that are very valuable because of that. And my question, I guess, is the GT3, is there going to be a 992, GT3 and a Speedster, or is this a replacement for the Speedster? Are they going to make a low volume open 992 GT3 or then call it the Speedster? Limited production, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[43:59] I think this is probably limited production. I think this is it. I would have to guess from an, look, Porsche is not a great position finances wise, right?

Speaker 1:
[44:08] We know this. Yes, they're unelectrifying, which is proving to be extremely expensive.

Speaker 2:
[44:11] Right, and so if I had to guess, Porsche is not willing to spend the money to re-certify a re-bodied car like a Speedster would be. It would have to be re-roll over crash tested and probably have a subject to all kinds of repetitive engineering expenses. Whereas if you just take this existing engine and just throw it into the cabriolet, you'd probably save money. I'll be seeing Andy Poeninger this weekend, this next week and I'll ask him, but that would be my best guess is probably just a less expensive product and why not?

Speaker 1:
[44:41] Sure. I mean, so this car is, yeah, so I think much remains to be seen whether there is also a Speedster or whether this is conceptually the replacement for the Speedster, in which case you would say it's not that far of a conceptual leap from the Speedster. And, but the fact that it has a GT3 nameplate on it, I think is the thing that's upsetting everybody because it is counter to 53 years of sort of convention established by the 73 Career RS about what that car, which became the GT3 when the 996 came out, but it's basically the same car conceptually that's been in production for such a long time. And none of them have ever been available in any body style except for the coupe. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[45:26] Yeah, I think putting a GT3 badge on it was probably, I don't want to call it a mistake. Look, at the end of the day-

Speaker 1:
[45:32] It's created controversy for them that they probably weren't seeking. Right.

Speaker 2:
[45:36] Yeah, fair point. I mean, maybe it's also helping sell the car because if it doesn't say GT3 on it, maybe people wouldn't realize that it- Maybe number one, they wouldn't realize that it's GT3 powertrain and number two, maybe they would think of the 911 Sc, which was an entire generation of not particularly spicy 911s.

Speaker 1:
[45:55] It was a standard base car.

Speaker 2:
[45:56] A standard base car called the Sc in the US. Only in the US, right?

Speaker 1:
[45:59] No, it was called Sc everywhere.

Speaker 2:
[46:00] Sc worldwide for that same motor. Look, at the end of the day, I'm tired of the whole 911 story, right? It's just, it's been played out for one reason. It's, they're ubiquitous, they're everywhere. They're getting dramatically more expensive. On the other hand, we had this debate last night. We were filming and Rob, our editor, was sort of, we were all talking about like how he wouldn't spend $600,000 on an ST no matter what, right? Even if he had a lot of money. And I say, yeah, me too, hold on, that's not the case. Because it is still the best experience you can have in a sports car short of a Gordon Murray T33, which I have not experienced, but I suspect will be a better experience at many, many, many multiples of that price. But at whatever those cars transact for, three, four, five, six, $800,000, I just don't think you can get a better new car, sports car experience. So as much as I'm sick of talking about 911s and sick of hearing about them and sick of people talking about their PTS fucking vent leather covered straps.

Speaker 1:
[47:01] And that's the actual issue is that, in my opinion, everybody who is buying those cars for any reason other than the driving experience is doing it for the wrong reason. And that's, you know, it's, I don't know, it is the reality of the fact that these cars have become victims of their own success, that everyone who knows what they're talking about says they're so good, and so people who can't appreciate directly how good of an experience it is, because they don't have enough behind-the-wheel time in driving near the limit and driving lots of cars, can't perceive that, you know, what's special about it, but they know that a bunch of people who know what they're talking about say that they're... Well, they can probably perceive, I mean, at the end of the day, not in the sort of technical color way that, like, the brilliance, like, where you just perceive the, like, you want to kiss the engineers who designed the car afterwards because the thing is so brilliant. And not, I think, most people who own those cars, especially those who don't drive them on track, don't have the just raw number of hours driving cars quickly or near the limit to appreciate just how far above and beyond.

Speaker 2:
[48:10] Right, because I think it's a car that speaks for itself. A 9,000 RPM flat-six with that kind of exhaust note is just a special experience by virtue of that. Plus, anyone who's driven any manual transmission car or multiple, you drive four or five different manual transmission cars and you can start to see the real difference between them. It's a brilliant manual. And so it becomes very obvious very quickly why this car is special. Even if they'll never get to the handling limits and never slide it around, they're not gonna Chris Harris it around the track to use a verb. I find it so interesting that there's so much pushback on, in my little bubble, and that could be just my little social media bubble, but everything I've seen about SC so far has been making fun of it.

Speaker 1:
[48:50] That it's blasphemy or heresy.

Speaker 2:
[48:53] And I'm not going to watch, I know Henry Catchpole reviewed the car on Hagerty Channel, and I won't watch the episode. I'm not gonna watch anyone's coverage of this car or read anyone's coverage of the car until I go experience it for myself. So I purposefully have the blinders on, but I'm not immune to the sort of memes that are coming up. I'm like, all right, that's a little bit unfair.

Speaker 1:
[49:11] I mean, yeah, especially because when you compare this to the way that Ferrari does things, I mean, if you look at Ferraris historically, anytime they made an open version of a production car, and this goes back to the 50s, certainly, the open version is worth often multiples of what the closed version is. Think Daytona Spyder. Daytona Spyder is a, I don't know, these cars are all depreciating, so I don't know what they're worth this week. $3 million versus $750 for a coupe, $330 GTS versus GTC is like $600,000 for a closed car, and $1.5 million or $2 million for an open car. There's just a huge value difference for closed versus open Ferraris.

Speaker 2:
[49:55] But are those all grand touring cars effectively, rather than track-focused sports cars?

Speaker 1:
[50:00] They are, and so that, and then I was going to transition into the discussion of the Scuderia, because that was the first car that was sort of really sporting intent that they made as an open car. And nobody got their panties in a bunch when that happened. And now it's happened enough times that people are kind of just okay with it. And it's now expected that there is going to be a 458 Speciale Aperta, and there is going to be a Pista Aperta, and there is a LaFerrari Aperta. And it's just part of the landscape, because historically the halo cars were always available exclusively closed form until the LaFerrari came out. And they made an Aperta version and printed money with it. And, you know, it's maybe just... I guess there's always a continuous dull roar of people complaining about how Ferrari is fleecing its customers. And so it's maybe perhaps out of reach for enough people also that it's not that material. But they are certainly taking a page from the Ferrari playbook in doing this. And perhaps because they have the visibility and there's more Porsche people out there, because as you say, it's ubiquitous choice and everybody buys one. But there's just more sort of like chatter about it that is offending people in a way that didn't happen as much when Ferrari did. I guess Ferrari started doing it long enough ago. If you are going to use the Scuderia as the origin of this, that it was a different world back then in terms of less media consumption and chatter.

Speaker 2:
[51:22] I think let's be realistic about who is buying GT3s and what they're doing with it. I really don't think that many people are taking their cars to the track. And so I don't have a problem with that.

Speaker 1:
[51:31] Not because of the volume that they're selling them in now. And that's historically what those cars were for, and that's why they made those products.

Speaker 2:
[51:38] But unfortunately for regular 911s, they have sort of gone down a route of... I hate to shit on them, but they've become sort of old man cars in a lot of ways. They always were, but even more so, right? Incredibly capable, but have been removing the experience. Certainly once they went turbocharged, you lost something. You gained a lot of speed, but lost sound at the same time. And that equation sort of leads you to Buick Town. And the GT division products, especially the naturally aspirated ones, have just ascended to become what crazy inner sanctum car nerd enthusiasts think of when they're thinking of it, when you're fantasizing about a 911. I have no interest in a Carrera, for example, but I have lots of interest in a GT3 and a huge amount of interest in an ST, because they're the driver's cars of it. I don't think I would track one. I don't think I need to track anything with center lock wheels or carbon ceramic brakes. It's just why would I do that when a brake job would cost more than a speccy 30 or a spec me on or a speccy 46 or any of these other disposable sort of race cars that are actually kind of more challenging to drive. And so when I bought my 996 cab, it was, I wanted a sports car finally in my garage of like E30s and E39s and Chiracos and all the same shit I have today. I wanted a sports car, but I also wanted a track car and I wanted a convertible. And those things are mutually exclusive until I realized I can get a 996, put a hardtop on it and track the shit out of it. And then throw the hardtop in my friend's pickup truck and then he could drive it home from the track towing his other car. And I had the top down in my 911.

Speaker 1:
[53:24] Yeah, and that's probably part of the motivating factor for this disgruntlement is the fact that historically convertible versions of cars have been disfavored for track events.

Speaker 2:
[53:39] Or not permitted at all.

Speaker 1:
[53:40] Or not permitted at all unless you have a hardtop, which is the whole Miata work around. And I suppose that with these Ferraris, if anyone was tracking them, they sort of have roll hoops and such that maybe they are permitted if you put the roof up.

Speaker 2:
[53:53] Pass the broomstick test, right?

Speaker 1:
[53:54] So, I don't know. I mean, I don't think you would necessarily do that with a 430, but you could certainly do it with the hardtop convertible cars, which came after the 458 and the Pista. So, that also, I think, erodes some credibility for an open topped car that is conceptually or in people's mind a track car.

Speaker 2:
[54:12] If you can't take it to the track, how could it be a track car? Although, NDs don't pass the broomstick test. There are a lot of Miata's that you can't take on a racetrack.

Speaker 1:
[54:22] You have to do the RIF or put the hard top on it.

Speaker 2:
[54:25] Which is adding weight, thus antithetical to a track car. There's no winning this. I think that's the key point. That's why I have my convertible as a four seat front wheel drive shitty Volkswagen.

Speaker 1:
[54:38] It passes the broomstick test.

Speaker 2:
[54:39] But it doesn't pass the fucking smog test. No, but I would never, could you imagine? I mean-

Speaker 1:
[54:46] Yes, I could imagine you doing it.

Speaker 2:
[54:48] Totally would. But not for a whole track day. Safety first, right?

Speaker 1:
[54:52] You would do it for-

Speaker 2:
[54:53] I would do it for amusement. It would be horrible and I know it. But the whole convertible issue is a tough one because convertibles really do change the driving experience. For the better for me, for the worse for you, you don't particularly care for them, right?

Speaker 1:
[55:09] Yes, that's true.

Speaker 2:
[55:10] I love to- this stupid car, for example, sounds kind of nice. Most of the time, put the top down and it's transcendent experience. It's just unbelievable. Same with my 16-valve Cabriolet, which actually sounds in some ways better than this and is quicker than this. But you put the top down in a car and they just change fundamentally, and you're at one with the environment. And I know that sounds fucking ridiculous, but I did just drive a Z1 with the doors down and the roof down.

Speaker 1:
[55:40] I guess if I want that experience, I ride a motorcycle.

Speaker 2:
[55:43] Yeah, maybe that's why you hate convertibles, because you know you can do better than that.

Speaker 1:
[55:47] It's like an awkward, uncomfortable space between a motorcycle and a car, and it's like, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[55:53] Well, you know that right before I got my 996, I bought, I got a motorcycle license, and my plan was to buy a motorcycle.

Speaker 1:
[55:59] Really? No. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2:
[56:00] I went and got my motorcycle license. So a little bit of backstory. My dad, when he was 24, was in a major motorcycle crash, got cut off by a car in Brooklyn, and sort of went up on the sidewalk, over the curb in the sidewalk, and hit the window, the plate class window of a car dealership, and hit the car inside. So flew through that plate class window, hit the car, flew off the bike, flew through the other, because it was on a corner, the other window, and landed effectively dead on the sidewalk, and was bleeding out. And of course, it was Brooklyn, Bay Ridge. So everyone thought it was a mob hit. And so no one would help him. And he was affected. He had bled out, and his pulse stopped. When my uncle, my mom's uncle saw him, and was like, huh? And called 911, and they gave him transfusions, whatever. He's cut up, he's got scars everywhere. And he really almost, really almost didn't make it. And this was many years before I was born. And then, when I was 10 or so, my dad got back into motorcycles, BMW and a Triumph, and he would go out riding on the weekends. And my mother always said to him, how could you do this? Like, you know what almost happened to you. And he was like, I was young and stupid, and I was driving too fast and whatever, blah, blah, blah. Well, he was in Manhattan, and a car was coming towards him, made a left, and he hit them in the door, and wound up in the ICU for a month. I mean, it was another pretty bad situation. And she had two 15-year-old kids at home at the time, and she hated him for it. She was so mad at him that he took his bike into the city. And so she has that, she carries around that trauma with her, and she saw my motorcycle license on, my wallet was just sitting on the dining room table, and she walked over and she just looked at it, and my mom was not one for subtlety. She's, you know, you know my mom. And she just looked at me and her eyes welled up with tears, and she blinked and walked away. And I just had never seen her like cry like that. And I thought, huh, I should really think about this. And so I changed my plan and bought a convertible 911 and said, because it was the next best thing. And it did the track day, and the track day duty, because I was tracking a VR6 four-door golf Mk3 that I built and I was killing the poor thing, plus it was front wheel drive. And so I came to the conclusion that I should have a convertible because it's the next best thing. Oh, but if I put a hard top on it, then it's safe-ish on a track day. And so maybe that's why you... I think that's a perfect explanation on why you don't prefer convertibles. But...

Speaker 1:
[58:32] Yeah, I mean, there's only costs and the benefits are not benefits that I enjoy.

Speaker 2:
[58:37] Because you get on a motorcycle instead.

Speaker 1:
[58:39] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[58:39] Interesting. I have no fundamental issue with a convertible Gt3. I just don't want it to be called a GT3.

Speaker 1:
[58:46] Yeah, I would rather it not be called a GT3. Like, the Speedster thing didn't rankle me because basically it took a thing that existed and improved it by adding the powertrain of a GT3. So that was fine. So I'd be curious, you know, maybe this was a misstep from packaging and like the product itself is perfectly fine. I imagine the product itself is going to be great in the same way that the Speedster was.

Speaker 2:
[59:08] I'm going into this with the expectation. It's not a foregone conclusion, but the expectation this... If I do drive it, because I'm not entirely sure if I'm driving the thing. The expectation this will be a convertible version of the ST, which is my favorite 911 probably ever.

Speaker 1:
[59:24] Yeah, and you as a convertible enthusiast, that can only...

Speaker 2:
[59:26] How could it get worse?

Speaker 1:
[59:27] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[59:28] Right? I mean, I'm not... I haven't tracked an ST, they wouldn't let us on the launch and the launch was on back roads and the car was unbelievable. The GT3 is there for that. So you take an ST on a back road and enjoy it. And, you know, shorter gears and manual transmission, they got rid of the rear axle steering for ST So chop the roof off of it, make a car where you get to hear that 9,000 RPM motor from the outside too. Pfft, time me up, time me up. But it's just, we live in a world where I think no one can win. I mean, everyone's just shitting on everything, especially if it's expensive.

Speaker 1:
[59:59] Yeah, and the way that they sort of named and packaged it maybe could have been more clever, but they also, like you said, want to capitalize on. I mean, the GT3 nameplate has become legendary and has so much clout. And as Porsche is struggling financially and seeking to probably recover from that and go move to higher margin products, and I'm sure that people will pay more for it. And if they're hoping to take a page from the Ferrari playbook, that'll be justified in the secondary market. So as they try to return to more profitability, that's consistent with what they were used to instead of, I think they're now at a 20% of what they were even a couple of years ago in terms of profits. So they're really trying to recover. And this is a way to take existing ingredients, recombine them, charge more for it.

Speaker 2:
[60:45] And give people a good time. It's the whole point of a sports car, regardless of whether it's a roof or not.

Speaker 1:
[60:51] We will look forward to consuming your impressions once you are impressed by it.

Speaker 2:
[60:55] I can't wait. I know I can't afford it. So as per usual, I will leave a Porsche event going, I hate this car fundamentally because it's a fucking goddamn squished Beetle and I'll drive it and say, a sports car experience you can buy under insert X amount of number of millions of dollars and it's perfectly executed and does exactly what it should and I can't afford it and damn it, and I'll come home and try to set the monitors on my stupid fucking Volkswagen.

Speaker 1:
[61:22] You could add that sentence to the end of any previous sentence and it will always be true.

Speaker 2:
[61:26] That I'll come home and drive my stupid Volkswagens?

Speaker 1:
[61:28] And try to set the monitors at this point.

Speaker 2:
[61:33] Well, I will say thank you all for joining us on this episode of The Carmudgeon Show where we monitor Porsche 911s.

Speaker 1:
[61:42] Now with more Carmudgeonation.