transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] What up, everyone? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you, as always, by Off The Record. We love them over here. And as I drive around the country, I know that Off The Record is always looking out for me. If the V1 doesn't get them, if the Waze doesn't get them, Off The Record's gonna get them. Off The Record sets you up with qualified attorneys in every state in America to fight moving violations on your behalf. Don't let it ruin your day. Don't let it ruin your vacation. And certainly don't plead guilty. Get Off The Record. Go to offtherecord.com/tst to get 10% off all legal services through Off The Record. Again, that's offtherecord.com/tst to get 10% off all legal services through Off The Record. All right, folks, on this episode of the podcast, Zack gets his competition racing license at Skip Barber Sonoma. I drive 1600 miles in the new Dodge Charger six pack and give my review. I found some exotic car bargains from my birth year and a Waymo was driving like a dick for an unexpected reason. It's the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go. Guys, the Smoking Tire is giving away a 992.1 Turbo S in partnership with Dream Giveaways. We're giving away a $275,000 car with some slick choice mods. The proceeds benefit charity and you don't have to buy any merch. It's a straightforward entry process. So hit the link in the show notes and get entered to win today. What the fuck is up?

Speaker 2:
[01:47] It's your favorite date, Matt Farah.

Speaker 1:
[01:49] Happy motherfucking 420.

Speaker 2:
[01:52] It's the anniversary of your two favorite things.

Speaker 1:
[01:54] It's my anniversary of my... Yeah, celebrates two favorite things, my wife and the chronic. And to celebrate, I have taken some advantage of both today. Don't you worry. Don't worry. Unlike most other podcasts, I did smoke some weed before this one to celebrate 420. It's real.

Speaker 2:
[02:18] Yeah, it's important.

Speaker 1:
[02:19] It's a real change in behavior.

Speaker 2:
[02:21] Yes. It's nice of you to do that for the people. You know what I did?

Speaker 1:
[02:25] What I actually just did, for real, if I'm being very honest, was go to the locker, realize that actually I was out of weed here at the office. And I scraped the grinder. Scraped it, not resin. No, not resin. What am I, in college? No, no. But, you know, the grinder makes a healthy amount of Keef. And so, guitar pick to the Keef, and it's all right.

Speaker 2:
[02:54] Stronger than weed, right?

Speaker 1:
[02:55] Oh, it's delightful. Keef was, I mean, when I learned you could just buy Keef, and I don't even know if you can anymore, but you could.

Speaker 2:
[03:02] That was, I remember, that's when we were living together. You were just buying bags.

Speaker 1:
[03:05] Keef, the, because the combination to, man, the year, the year was 2004. The place was Smokey Joe's Bar at the University of Pennsylvania. Still there, shout out to him. Band used to play there. This is the last time I remember being able to smoke cigarettes in bars, like while I smoked, like not in Vegas or anything. You know what I mean? Like local, and I had that jar of Keef. When you would pack your stokes, it would leave that gap, right? And so that you would have that scoop at the end. So you would just gently do a nice little scoop, and then you would fucking tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap it down, a nice little scoop, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And then when you just go to light your cigarette in the bar, you would have that first banger, and then it was, oh, what's that smell? I've just got a cigarette.

Speaker 2:
[04:01] Yeah, everyone's like, who's smoking weed? And you're like, no, it's not him.

Speaker 1:
[04:04] Not him.

Speaker 2:
[04:04] He's just got a cigarette.

Speaker 1:
[04:05] Just that very happy looking man with a cigarette.

Speaker 2:
[04:09] Matt's not as angry right now as he was before.

Speaker 1:
[04:11] Talk about the fucking glory days.

Speaker 2:
[04:14] They got a website.

Speaker 1:
[04:15] And then you were already smoking a cigarette. Then you already were, you were still at the bar, and you were already, I mean, god damn it. Oh, great.

Speaker 2:
[04:24] I've never ever enjoyed anything as much as you enjoyed smoking cigarettes, I think.

Speaker 1:
[04:29] Nobody liked cigarettes more than me. So they're so bad for you, but socially did so much for me.

Speaker 2:
[04:37] But you and other people who smoked a long time, they talk about it like, it's this oasis that they used to live in before, you know, the communist rules showed up or something. It's just like, in the morning, before you even have water, it's the best. You're like, right, it's because you're craving this addiction. You're like, yes, and now I don't feel terrible because I've had this thing.

Speaker 1:
[04:59] Last night, we were at Mousseau & Frank's. Shout out to TST listener Brian, who works at Mousseau & Frank's, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood, old school steakhouse, fucking great.

Speaker 2:
[05:10] It's good.

Speaker 1:
[05:11] And Brian gets us the best table. He's a car guy. We've seen him in cars and coffee. And for years, he's been like, come to Mousseau & Frank's. And I was like, well, whatever. But then I finally was like, hey, man, I'm going to come. He sets us up in the table that Al Pacino and Brad Pitt are sitting at in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's apparently a very requested table. It's pretty cool. We had a fucking fabulous meal. But this group of like six super drunk guys was next to us. They're like our age, but they are wasted and they're fucking loud. And Brian's taking care of them. So he's like, here's some, you know, what do you call it? Some amuse-bouche. Give me a second. These dudes are wasted. Let me get their food out. And he goes, they start bringing out like three trays of food. All five of these guys get up to have a stoke outside. And Brian just looks at me, he's got like all this change. He looks over and he's like, huh. I was like, and we started talking about how great that mid-meal grit was.

Speaker 2:
[06:12] Didn't that reduce the flavor of all the food you're eating?

Speaker 1:
[06:16] It didn't matter. You don't know what you're missing. Like, I know what you mean, yes, smoking does reduce the flavor, but it's not like yesterday I wasn't smoking. Yeah, you know, it's a slow change over one way or the other.

Speaker 2:
[06:31] It's an immediate change, like, if you take a bite of steak and then go smoke a cigarette and come back, the taste isn't...

Speaker 1:
[06:36] Yeah, there's no short-term effect. Especially if you've been fucking pounding, you know, Italian red wine.

Speaker 2:
[06:42] Right, they know everything tastes delicious. Sure, you just put more salt on it.

Speaker 1:
[06:46] So that was our anniversary celebration, and Brian was all fucking... Zuckerman and Johnny have both been in this week also. I guess it's a popular spot to go this week. But we should go again, because it was superb. so old school.

Speaker 2:
[07:01] I ate there with Lynn Woodward, Aaron Robinson, and Dale Aaron from Subaru.

Speaker 1:
[07:05] Our oldest young friends. Our friends that are roughly our age, but are like out of the 30s.

Speaker 2:
[07:11] And Lynn drove her old Porsche, and Aaron drove like an old Buick that opened when Musso opened.

Speaker 1:
[07:18] Yeah, we say this with the greatest love. Yeah, they're our friends from like another time.

Speaker 2:
[07:24] For sure.

Speaker 1:
[07:25] Yeah. Anyway, hi. Happy 420 and all that. A lot of a lot has gone on since we last talked. We got ahead because we were traveling. We did we did the gig at the Heritage Invitational. I hope the people at home enjoyed that show. We certainly enjoyed doing it. That's a really fun event. We got to drive the Legends cars on the track. We saw a bunch of a bunch of very, very, very famous and legendary racing drivers duke it out in similar cars. We saw and then we saw like in the in the Pro-Am where they had a bunch of these pro drivers. I mean, NASCAR legends. They had Bill Elliott and Mark Martin. Jeff Gordon. Jeff Gordon. There was Tommy Kendall.

Speaker 2:
[08:09] Kurt Busch.

Speaker 1:
[08:11] Was Sterling Marlin there too? Kurt Busch, maybe Sterling Marlin. But like, fucking guys that were like legends. And they put them all in these Mustangs. And then a bunch of wealthy amateur drivers got to donate money to the charity and buy seats to compete. And it was like a team sport. Pretty fun. My highlight of it was when like the 19-year-old utility track kid who worked there, JC.

Speaker 2:
[08:40] So I drove his legends car. Yeah, he's the track utilities manager. He's third place and he's really fast. He was, we were watching, it was like, in the semifinals, I think he had the second fastest time. And then maybe Jeff or Kurt found like a second and a half.

Speaker 1:
[08:56] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:56] And suddenly jumped way ahead.

Speaker 1:
[08:58] I think it was Kurt because Jeff was in the lead and JC was right behind him.

Speaker 2:
[09:02] But JC is this guy who just started driving a few years ago and is one of the fastest people in legends, one of the fastest people of this track. And I was like, oh, is he an instructor here? And Graham goes, no, he's like the facilities. So he just does sim stuff and drives when he can. And he's really good.

Speaker 1:
[09:19] And he's on the podium with like NASCAR legends, which was like an unbelievable thing to see.

Speaker 2:
[09:25] Yeah, really cool.

Speaker 1:
[09:26] I was into that. And it was a very fun event. Oh yeah, the Vintage Tide car too. We saw some of the Radwood portion. Art and fucking Warren and the boys did a great job with this Radwood. This was a really good one.

Speaker 2:
[09:42] It was a really like nice diverse mix, not too big, spread out around the track. So you kind of walked a couple corners.

Speaker 1:
[09:50] But also a great spread of 80s and 90s NASCARs and race cars, which were really, really fun. So that was a good time. And then Zack went to get his competition license. I did. How'd that go?

Speaker 2:
[10:03] And I got it.

Speaker 1:
[10:04] You passed?

Speaker 2:
[10:04] I passed. I passed the test.

Speaker 1:
[10:06] It is pass, fail, open book.

Speaker 2:
[10:08] It kind of is, yeah. Yeah, I think it's like, what did JF say? Because JF did it too. He's like, don't crash and don't go four off and be a problem and they'll probably give you the license.

Speaker 1:
[10:22] That's just like the actual race, by the way.

Speaker 2:
[10:24] That's the same rules, right?

Speaker 1:
[10:26] It's like the sanctioning body gives no if you're fast or slow. They care if you're crashing into shit.

Speaker 2:
[10:32] I had one off, but I was just practicing playing with deeper braking zones and it was an area that was coned, not dirt. And I went, all right, if I overshoot this, I have runway. And I overshot it by like eight feet. And they flagged me anyway, because that's just protocol. And they were like, hey, what happened there? And I went, here's what happened, here's why, blah, blah, blah. And they went, OK, this wasn't an accident that you don't understand.

Speaker 1:
[10:57] Yeah, you found the safest place on the track to push this one thing and you saw what happens, right?

Speaker 2:
[11:04] Second safest. Yeah, they were like, we like to do this in corner seven. And I was in 11.

Speaker 1:
[11:08] Oh, yeah, but it was short 11.

Speaker 2:
[11:10] They coned 11 off.

Speaker 1:
[11:11] Yeah, if you run short 11, you've got, unless you're blowing that in 100 miles an hour, if you blow that by a few feet, that's a...

Speaker 2:
[11:17] So much room. Yeah, so much room.

Speaker 1:
[11:19] With an exit, with a return route.

Speaker 2:
[11:21] Well, a guy in my class did have an oopsie on that corner on day one and whacked a wall.

Speaker 1:
[11:27] Get out of here.

Speaker 2:
[11:27] Like, he got on the gas too early coming out of it and 11's bumpy. Like, you just... This class is... So this was the advanced two-day Skip Barber class. I had signed up for it months ago and then it just so happens that this also counts for the SECAs like full competition license if you get passed through in the advanced class. So they send a certification to SECA and SECA says, oh, okay, here is your license. Spring Mountain also counts if you do the two-day advanced class.

Speaker 1:
[11:58] Which you've already done?

Speaker 2:
[11:59] I did that a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1:
[12:00] So they could have just sent in the thing and you would have had the license already?

Speaker 2:
[12:03] They probably could have done that, yeah. But Spring Mountain took that off of their website for some reason, like it used to be in their marketing. And so you have to find it in SECA's web page, which I did after I did this class.

Speaker 1:
[12:15] Well, I mean, more training is always good.

Speaker 2:
[12:17] Totally, and I was already signed up for it before even, I was happy to have the training.

Speaker 1:
[12:23] This is at Sonoma, we were talking about corner numbers and I don't think we said Sonoma Raceway.

Speaker 2:
[12:27] You're right, I didn't set it up at all. I did the Skip Barber 2-day class. I was driving 2013 Mustangs at Sonoma. Weather was perfect. The cars are pretty simple. They've got stop tech brakes, half cage harnesses. That's it, I mean, some of them have been swapped to the Tremec six-speed, I think a few are still five speeds, but mine was a six, not that we needed it. And it's pretty much it. It's a real simple formula, and square stance, I think.

Speaker 1:
[12:58] And you said it's a 13, so it's a Coyote motor car at least, right? It's not a four-valve car.

Speaker 2:
[13:02] No, it was a four-six, sorry. It's a four-six, so it's an early one.

Speaker 1:
[13:04] That's like a 10.

Speaker 2:
[13:05] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:05] Or, no, oh wait, let me see. Oh, that car is like older than that. That car is like a nine, yeah, 809 maybe.

Speaker 2:
[13:12] Yeah, it was definitely the four-six mod motor. Yeah. Which, reliable, cheap.

Speaker 1:
[13:18] I mean, for a school car, who gives a shit?

Speaker 2:
[13:20] I think that's the plan.

Speaker 1:
[13:22] As long as they're reliable, that's really fine.

Speaker 2:
[13:25] Mine had 90,000 miles on it or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[13:29] Skippy is as Skippy does.

Speaker 2:
[13:31] They're making it work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That company went bankrupt a little bit and now they're back. Some of the other people in the class said that their cars were being weird, and I don't know if that's the way they were driving them or if the cars were being weird. I think there's a bit of both. So I think one person was upshifting super early and they're like, the car bogs, and you're like, sure.

Speaker 1:
[13:52] Yeah, when you shift to three.

Speaker 2:
[13:54] But one guy who was very capable, he was reporting some transmission oddities.

Speaker 1:
[13:59] Well, if it's that five-speed.

Speaker 2:
[14:01] Yeah, I don't know which one. Mine knows the trimix, so it felt great.

Speaker 1:
[14:04] Sure. Yeah, it was quite fine.

Speaker 2:
[14:05] Funny enough, this car felt so much like the Ranchero. I race in lemons. I swear to God.

Speaker 1:
[14:11] That is a compliment to a certain car and an insult to the other one.

Speaker 2:
[14:15] Correct. Correct. It's a compliment to Tim and Gluckner and the guys that built that car. And I went, oh, all right, I know how this feels. Just be delicate everywhere.

Speaker 1:
[14:23] That rules. Okay, so what, for someone who might want to go get their license and they go, well, I could go to Skippy at Sonoma or I could go to Spring Mountain and drive Corvettes. How do you compare those two experiences? Folks, taking a quick break for Mac Tools. You know Mac Tools. You've seen the Mac Tools truck at shops before. But have you ever thought of being the one who actually owns that route, selling those tools to those shops for anyone already into cars, working on them, being in and around shops, or at least spending your weekends wrenching on something? This is perfect because Mac Tools franchisees run their own mobile tool business selling directly to shops and technicians. It's a relationship business. It's repeat customers that you service every week. But you're not left to figure it out on your own. They've got an extensive training program and support to build this the right way. As a small business owner myself, multiple small business owners myself, I really think this is a good idea because I had to figure out a lot of expensive and difficult lessons to start my business. But if you've got a partner that's been around for a long time and they've got training, they've got resources, they've got support, they can integrate you into their ecosystem and set you up with stable income for a very, very long time, that is incredibly beneficial if you're trying to be your own small business owner and you're not ready to learn some of those lessons in what we call the trial by inferno, like I did. Mac has been doing this for over a century. There's a reason it still works. If you've ever thought about doing your own thing in the automotive world, it is worth checking out. Go to mactools.org/tire to learn more and see if there's an open route near you. That's mactools.org/tire to learn more. We also got support today from Factor. And for me, eating healthy isn't a willpower problem. It's a setup problem, right? Until I found Factor, because here's what happens to me. My setup is a mess. I do not put time to eat in my calendar. I got four jobs, I got a lot to do. I'm running all over the place. I don't put that hour or whatever to deal with lunch in that schedule. But with Factor, I can hit the nutrition goals. I can eat on time. I can eat correctly without the planning. The grocery store runs the cooking, because the Factor food, it's already in the fridge, right? Factor's got meals built around goals, right? That could be weight loss, it could be over on nutrition, it could be protein, it could be GLP-1 support. For strength and recovery, they've got the Muscle Pro collection. And every meal is crafted with those functional ingredients, like lean proteins and colorful veggies, whole foods, healthy fats. Factor, in fact, bans 175 ingredients. There's no artificial colors or sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup, all that stuff. Everything's fresh, it's not frozen. And they have over 100 rotating weekly meals. So, basically, when I'm running around all morning, I don't get to noon or 1 when I'm starving, and then I try to figure out what to eat. I make an unhealthy decision because it's whatever's quickest, and that's how you just, that's how your diet completely falls apart. But with Factor, the food's here. It's in the fridge, it's ready to go, two minutes in the microwave, no mess, no prep, all good. Factor shops, preps, cooks and delivers right to your door, so I have more time for work and everything else that I love. So head over to factormeals.com/tire50off and use code TIRE50OFF to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details. One more time, factormeals.com/tire50off. That's five zero. Tire five zero off and use code TIRE50OFF to get 50% off and free daily greens per box. And now back to the show. I know what I would do, but you go on.

Speaker 2:
[18:53] I will say I paid retail for both, so no one owns my words. I would go to Spring Mountain if you can make the flight and the travel, because the new Corvettes have the data logging system built into it, and what we would do between sessions at Spring Mountain helped me a lot more than what we did between sessions at Skippy. So between sessions at Spring Mountain, they would pull up your video with all your break trace, your GPS trace. They would show your route and show where I was breaking too late, too much. I was getting on the gas too early. Here's where you need to wait more.

Speaker 1:
[19:32] And this is with the stock Corvette PDR thing.

Speaker 2:
[19:36] Exactly. So it's that with a Cosworth software.

Speaker 1:
[19:38] Yeah, it's Cosworth Toolbox.

Speaker 2:
[19:40] It's Cosworth Toolbox. And they'd have like two or three instructors in our classroom attending to a person at a time, and they're like, see here, this is wrong, right there, that's good. And then you're able to look at it on video and go, okay. And then you go back out and remember, here's the spot I was doing X wrong.

Speaker 1:
[19:57] Yeah. And in between each session, you only want to make one or two changes. You don't need to overwhelm yourself and go, here's where I'm fucking up every corner.

Speaker 2:
[20:06] Right.

Speaker 1:
[20:06] You go, this session, I'm going to find a half a second in these two corners. Then once I get that and make that automatic, next session, I'm going to find two tenths in these two corners.

Speaker 2:
[20:18] 100%.

Speaker 1:
[20:19] And now you don't overwhelm your brain.

Speaker 2:
[20:21] Yeah, because I think when I first went to Spring Mountain School, the first day, I was like, oh, we're taking all these brakes. And now I realize that the brakes we take, Skippy or Spring Mountain or anywhere, are really important because one, you can analyze what you're doing. Two, you need to rest your brain and kind of calm yourself down a bit and process. And like, it's amazing how much, I don't know, thinking you do, I mean, racing cars or driving cars or doing school stuff. Like you are, you're analyzing your performance, then you're performing, then you're analyzing your performance, then you're performing. And you're doing it, you know, all in one day. So I just found the tools they had available that are native to the C8 really helpful. But also the specificity of the instruction that was given at Spring Mountain was like, here's where you're braking wrong, here's how you're accelerating wrong. Like, and at Skippy, I think they're doing it maybe a little bit to be safe. They don't, like they never use the word speed. They never say you're carrying good speed there. They say energy. I think that, and they wouldn't give people braking markers, cause it's like, they wouldn't say, hey, you should break at the three and a half. Cause I think their concern is, if I don't know how to break as well as you, or I don't get as far in the pedal, then that marker means very different things. Which does make sense. And there were very different skill levels in my class. But I came away, I learned a lot that I had to self-coach myself through. And they do say like self-coaching is a big thing of driving, which I agree with. I just wish there had been more notes given in these breaks. Because for me, the only note they'd say is try more energy into seven. And it was like, what about corners one through six, and then eight, nine through eleven?

Speaker 1:
[22:01] Having the data is just so important. Like when we go to Road America, by far the most important thing we're going to do is on the Friday, which is qualifying day, Tato will go qualify the car. Because obviously he fucking will. And then we'll have his data. And then we will go practice the car. And we'll go do a session, you know, ten laps, fifteen laps, whatever. Practice in the race car. And then at home, at dinner that night, it's, here's your line, here's Tato's line. He does this much more brake pressure, he does this much less, blah, blah, blah. And then, you can, you know, throughout the race, try to go, well, what are the three things that I can do based on what he's doing? You know, that can make me where he is. If he can make the car do it, I probably could. I found it's not entirely true, but I can at least, you know, there's certain big ones like he, he after after comparing my data to his in the next race, my very best lap only got a tiny little bit faster, but all the rest of my laps got closer to my best lap. Like, I was much, much, yeah. Like, my best lap was like a 235.5, and my worst lap was like a 238, instead of like a 242, you know?

Speaker 2:
[23:35] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[23:36] So, I think like either my slop got less, you know, like, and also I set up passes, you know, and got stuck in traffic less.

Speaker 2:
[23:49] That's something I get stuck in traffic a lot, in lemons, and I mean, sometimes you're just stuck, but like, planning those moves three corners out, so that you don't get stuck on the third corner, you just go by is something that I just have to learn.

Speaker 1:
[24:02] In this series, it will be more than that, more corners than that. I had, there were passes, and maybe if you're fucking Tommy or Tato, you don't have to do this, but if you're me, there were certain cars where we were, the cars themselves were basically the same speed, and so I could not beat them down straightaways and whatever, but I could see where I would watch them, and I'd go, all right, I know I can go through that corner fucking faster than them, so I'd set it up, and I would chill, and I'd go, you know, but then I'd wait for the next time around sometimes, and then three corners ahead from there, I'd go, all right, and it usually would work, but it would take a while to get by.

Speaker 2:
[24:43] And they did cover some race crafts in the class, they covered a lot of stuff, I don't want to harp on them entirely, but the one other fast guy in the class was an old man wearing cowboy boots, whose name started with a C. And when I did the Spring Mountain School, there was an old man wearing cowboy boots, whose name also started with a C, who was fast as fuck. Different names, but my lesson to people is, if you're in a racing class, and there's an old guy wearing cowboy boots, just be very careful, because I was getting point-bys and stuff, and then I'm going up turn three at Sonoma, and I look at my rear view, and someone is up my ass. And this is day two, that hadn't happened yet, and I went, my ego, I go, some instructor put on a regular helmet, and he's fucking with us. This is open passing time, that's what's happening. And so I give him a point-by, and we pull in, and it's this guy, Charles, and he gets out, and he's like, his hands are shaking, he's like, ooh, that was something. I go, well, you were flying, dude. And he always seems scared when he got out of the car. But to your point, the next time we went out, I watched how he went through one through five because he was quicker than me. And that's when I learned, oh, I don't have to brake going into turn two, I can just downshift.

Speaker 1:
[25:58] Oh, yeah, because with the hill?

Speaker 2:
[26:00] With the elevation, I was doing like a light tap, but I just went, well, if I'm going to catch Charles, I'm just going to go for it. And it worked. And then I was catching him on the back half.

Speaker 1:
[26:08] Yeah, there is not much braking in to turn two. If you've got a light-ish car with good tires, like when I drove the Bentley GT, I had to like a little bit, but in some other cars, yeah, not so much.

Speaker 2:
[26:23] I mean, I will say-

Speaker 1:
[26:23] That whole complex turns one through six at Sonoma are fucking rippers. I just love driving that first half of that track.

Speaker 2:
[26:32] And I think that is the big kudos to Skip Barber, at least for the advanced thing, maybe the three-day fundamental is really good. But the course comes to you, and you can drive tracks you've dreamt about. They do Laguna Seca and Lime Rock and Coda. So if you don't want to fly to Vegas, you don't have to. But also, you can go drive a track you've dreamt about for a long time. I mean, I had so much fun. And these cars, my car was really balanced. It was a good teacher. You just lift a little bit, you feel the back get light, you add the gas a little bit, it settles back. I mean, it was really talkative in that way.

Speaker 1:
[27:10] Mustangs make good track cars. You don't have to do much. It's a basic suspension and brake package, and then the right size wheels and tires, and that's it. These cars don't have anything else besides that.

Speaker 2:
[27:23] Yeah, it's great. Had a blast. No steering feel, but we're used to driving BMWs. And also, when you're in a racing seat and everything else is so locked down, you get enough information that, like, I knew when I was understeering very easily. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:38] And you've driven enough cars, you know, you don't need super, super steering feel to get through that kind of stuff. It's like, you might not choose to, like, buy this car, but, like, you could certainly drive it. You know, fine. That's great. Glad you had fun. Got a license. And now, I mean, yeah, now we get to go fucking race.

Speaker 2:
[27:56] I know.

Speaker 1:
[27:56] Now you get to go race a car with Tommy Kendall, like, in a few days.

Speaker 2:
[28:00] So crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[28:01] Wild, right?

Speaker 2:
[28:02] Yeah. And he's still extremely fast, as we saw.

Speaker 1:
[28:05] Yeah. Well, I mean, look, to have the unnaturally fast child, you know, and then also to have a dude who's a legend and who's seen everything and go, oh, this is like, you know, what happened at this and this and can, like, see and just knows, like, everything about pit stop strategy and how to, like, mentally fuck with other teams and, like, all kinds of shit.

Speaker 2:
[28:31] The creativity of youth and the boldness, of course, because he does not fear death and the wisdom.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] Yeah. So while you were doing that, I went on the Road & Track Desert 600. Folks, one more break because support is coming in from BlueChew, you know what it is. The future of erectile function is here. Not dysfunction, Klapman, function. High function and it's my anniversary today on 4.20. So BlueChew Gold, it is changing the way millions of men are having sex in 2026. The new arousal boosting formula combines passion and performance into one tablet that dissolves under your tongue for super fast onset. Crazy. No more waiting for them pills to kick in. No more moments ruined by performance anxiety. Just the results you want when you want them. Most ED meds focus on blood flow alone, but BlueChew Gold goes further by combining two ingredients for blood flow with two for mental arousal and connection. So you're not just physically ready, you're actually in the mood. This type of innovation is why BlueChew Gold is the number one brand in erectile dysfunction. The process is super simple. It's all online. Get started today at bluechew.com and go for the gold. I mean, dude, you can, it's not about need, I think, anymore, right? That's why they're saying function. Because it's like, it used to be like, oh, you have a problem and this can fix it. Now it's like, you don't have a problem, but you can be Superman. I think that's where it's at. And I like that thought process. It's a reframe, folks. And boy, do we have a special deal for you right now. Get two months of BlueChew Gold. You get the third for free with Promo Code Tire. That's promo code tire at bluechew.com. For more details and important safety information, we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast. Again, Code Tire, get a third month free when you get two months of that BlueChew Gold, baby. Guys, taking a break from the action because support is coming in fast. Like Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, who's now got a podcast. You're always asking me what I'm listening to when not recording this show. And right now, it's this, the new season of Drive with Jim Farley. In it, the Ford CEO talks to some of his favorite people about what they're driving and what drives them to succeed. Like Formula One driver, Daniel Ricciardo. Listen, there's a well-worn trope about racing drivers not being interesting to listen to. But if there is one that is interesting to listen to, it is Daniel Ricciardo. I think this guy's takes on stuff and life are great. And look, Jim is a racing driver also. I personally raced against him like two months ago. And for me, a CEO that drives race cars on the weekends is about the pinnacle of CEO-dom when it comes to car companies. So the two of them together obviously have a lot of things to discuss on Drive with Jim Farley, which you can get on your podcast app. Very easy to find, Drive with Jim Farley. Check it out across... You can play that if you want to see all the cars. There's that reel I put. Those are all the cars on the event. You can just mute and play it. So I was driving the new Dodge Charger, six pack, scat pack, coupe. And I actually was pretty excited to drive that car. I requested it and I actually had to do kind of a lot of work to get it. It was substantially more work than getting most normal press cars. I am not sure why. But I actually think it looks cool. I think it's a cool looking car. It's sort of how I wished the original Charger sedan, because they make this as a two and a four door now. I always thought the Challenger sort of looked like the old Challenger, just bigger. But the Charger didn't look like anything from back then. This looks like a modernized version of the 68 to 70 Charger. Basically, right? Is that the right years?

Speaker 2:
[33:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[33:01] 68 to 70?

Speaker 2:
[33:01] 66 to 69, basically.

Speaker 1:
[33:04] Like, yeah, the one you're thinking of. The good one, right. Now, and I was like, oh, this is, it's going to be, we're doing the Desert 600. I have a big, a long highway transit to Vegas. We got a lot of big open sweepers across the desert, not a lot of hairpins, some long highway transits, some high speed, you know, two lanes. And then I got a big transit home from Scottsdale. It's like 1600 miles. I was like, this, this is a big American GT coupe. I drove it in the Corvette already, right? I did the e-ray and my like pecs and arms were like sore from keeping the car straight. You remember? So I was like, give me some relaxed shit. It's got the twin turbo six. I thought that would be an interesting thing to experience. Can you tell by how I'm setting it up that I didn't like it very much?

Speaker 2:
[33:57] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[33:58] Okay. For the record, I do think it looks great. And it is really the only two door coupe that you can actually fit four people and four sets of like luggage in. Like four people and four weekend bags. No problem. Four people and four sets of golf clubs. No problem. Like that's pretty unique in the space right now. You know, there really isn't like an S class coupe anymore. You know, and any two door car that has back seats, those back seats are pretty small. Like, what's the next biggest, right? Bentley GT at whatever X the price. BMW 8 Series, like, kind of not really.

Speaker 2:
[34:46] I mean, the M2 is a 2 plus 2, but has not much headroom, I remember.

Speaker 1:
[34:50] Yeah, Mustang's not really BRZ.

Speaker 2:
[34:53] Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1:
[34:55] So not a lot of big coupes out there. And so I have no issue with Dodge going for the big coupe thing. And like, to their credit, like, I can almost sit behind myself comfortably.

Speaker 2:
[35:04] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[35:05] I could sit behind you comfortably in the back of that car. And also, pull up the rear view. I should have air dropped you this picture of the open trunk because it doesn't look like it, but it's a hatchback. The whole rear window opens.

Speaker 2:
[35:19] Oh, wow, that's hidden really well.

Speaker 1:
[35:21] Oh, yeah. Should I? Oh, I see the hinge. Let me air drop you. It's worth it for me to air drop you the picture of the open hatchback here, just so we have it. So, I mean, it's actually like as a practical long-range car, not bad, okay? And over that entire drive, I average like 19 miles per gallon, which for a 4800-pound car, 4800.

Speaker 2:
[35:54] Damn.

Speaker 1:
[35:55] Not an EV.

Speaker 2:
[35:55] Not a hybrid, not yet.

Speaker 1:
[35:57] Gas-powered, front engine, it is all-wheel drive.

Speaker 2:
[36:01] It's all-wheel drive.

Speaker 1:
[36:01] It's all-wheel drive. But that's what we're talking about here. But the hatchback is dope, actually. I'm fully about this.

Speaker 2:
[36:10] And I thought, so I thought in the other picture that this top roof thing was a hinge for people listening. It looked like there was a big pivot point, and it's not. So they actually, they hide the seam. It's like hidden on the glass. That's really clever.

Speaker 1:
[36:23] Yeah. So that I found to be a nice bit of practicality about this car. It also has comfortable seats in general. It is a comfortable place to spend time in any seat. Heated and cooled seats with a nicely adjustable lumbar, maybe not as substantial as Porsche, but like an extendable thigh bolster. Like, not bad. Not bad. Body does not hurt. The engine. I thought it sounded worse than an M3 competition until the very last fuel stop on the way home when an M3 competition pulled up next to me at the gas station. And we talked about the cars. I was like, oh, this has the three, blah, blah, blah. And I started it for that person. And he went, oh, okay. And I turned it off. I go, start that. They are actually very similar sounding. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[37:24] The whole time, it has dual exhausts.

Speaker 1:
[37:27] Now, I have a theory, actually, because I think this car doesn't sound good. Doesn't sound good on the inside. It doesn't sound good on the outside. Hearing the M3 next to me, I was like, oh, shit. I thought this was worse than the M3, but then the M3 pulled up, and that's actually pretty bad too. But I was trying to think of all the really good sounding inlines. I was like, why? This is an inline 6. It sounded like a fucking drone-y VQ. It droned. And I was like, what is wrong? Why does this drone? And to their credit, it makes good power, it makes good torque, and if you keep it up high in the revs, and I mean above four, it sounds okay.

Speaker 2:
[38:06] Okay, but on the highway...

Speaker 1:
[38:07] Drone.

Speaker 2:
[38:08] Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[38:10] And a ton of drone at really low speeds. Like, dude, you should have... The Supras, the JZs, and BMWs, for the most part, right? They all have a single exhaust.

Speaker 2:
[38:54] Yeah, true.

Speaker 1:
[38:55] The ones that don't sound so great. Now, I don't know, does a new M3 have a one into two? Or is a new M3 a dual exhaust? I suspect...

Speaker 2:
[39:06] Oh, like, you think the headers are two sets of three, or is it one set of six?

Speaker 1:
[39:09] That's what I don't know. If it's, but like, those... And maybe someone who's smarter than me can actually tell me why the older engines sound good and the new ones don't. Maybe it's the displacement of them, maybe it's the firing order, maybe it's the configuration of the turbos. I don't know, but like, this engine doesn't sound great. And neither does the new M3. I'm not saying it's worse, but it doesn't sound great in fucking drones, which for a twin-turbo inline-six, to me, is not really acceptable. The gearbox is also, it's just a boring, like, it's not, so, okay, despite the fact that this makes 550 horsepower, despite the fact that it looks pretty nice, I just, despite the fact that it is a, it seems like it was screwed together well and has some good things going for it, it's just not any fun. Like, that's ultimately the problem. Like, it's not, it accelerates briskly, but not mind-blowing. It handles appropriately, but not impressive. And it looks nice, but you see, look how high, the fender gap is really big, right?

Speaker 2:
[40:27] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[40:28] But, so you'd see that and you would go, well, it probably has a very squishy ride, right, like a highway, like a highway touring car. It rides like it's on cut springs. So the problem here is, it's a very heavy car, 4,800 pounds. It does not have adaptive shocks.

Speaker 2:
[40:45] So it's probably over damped.

Speaker 1:
[40:46] So it's over sprung and over damped to compensate, and it just, it's got stiff springs. And then they've tried to find a balance between ride and handling.

Speaker 2:
[40:59] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:00] But without an adaptive shock, when your car's that heavy, you're going to end up in no man's land, and it doesn't ride that well, and it doesn't handle that well either.

Speaker 2:
[41:08] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:08] So like, a car like this needs an advanced suspension to handle and ride appropriately. It's just too heavy for like a basic ass set of shocks.

Speaker 2:
[41:19] I wonder what it is, but like the Lucids, famously don't have adaptive suspension, and so impressive.

Speaker 1:
[41:26] They don't have like a powertrain. You can have like crazy long control arms.

Speaker 2:
[41:30] Yeah. I think, well, that's the answer. It speaks to the suspension geometry itself, and then maybe where the weight is sprung in that car, your phone's ringing.

Speaker 1:
[41:38] Oh, we don't need to, sorry. That was, it was only here to air drop, and we're not being, you know, but...

Speaker 2:
[41:43] So the BMW engine, because it's twin turbo, does have two exhaust manifolds. It looks like there's two sets of three that each one goes to a turbo that makes sense. And then it's, you know, the pipes run parallel for a while, and then they cross over at a point, and then separate again in the muffler. So it could be a bunch of things influencing why this sounds like the way it does.

Speaker 1:
[42:03] It could, but I, you know, us enthusiasts, we hear on the marketing, oh, in line six, it's going to sound good. And then it doesn't. So that was very disappointing. And ultimately, it just didn't, it didn't feel like a serious performance car, which was unfortunate. You know, I know, they told me specifically, I'm not allowed to put it on track. It only comes with all season tires. So like, they're trying to convince me and everyone else that this is not a serious performance car. Okay. You know, okay.

Speaker 2:
[42:39] Well, is this replacing like the Charger 392? Is that what it's supposed to replace? Or is it just like the regular RT? Because it may not be aimed at being a serious performance car. I mean, it's like, now, but the problem there is that if it's not a serious performance car, then it seems like it should be aimed directly at good GT car. But then the ride is not enough, even though reviews would say the ride, you know, gets soft in the corners. Sure. But if it's not comfortable riding around town or riding on the highway, then you kind of have a no man's land.

Speaker 1:
[43:11] It's all right on the highway. It's terrible around Los Angeles. It's really brutal. I'm like, you know, so funny. I booked it hoping to discover that this is the budget Bentley GT, you know. And I gave it back yesterday. And I got the new Genesis GV60, which is the small electric crossover. It's about the same price as this. This is the budget Bentley GT. But the interior, the ride, the acceleration, the cross-stitching, and the materials, the sculpture of the seat in this car, that's the fucking budget Bentley GT, much more so than this is. That's like, that's actually like, you know, if you put someone who didn't know better and close their eyes and put them and had them like touch shit, they might actually get confused, you know. Anyway, but I do have to say, what else did I write on my notes? Okay, but there are, there's some else. So the bad things, the ride doesn't sound great. CarPlay was glitchy. Did I send you a little bit of the video of the flashing? I'm going to put it on my Instagram review, but it, CarPlay was glitchy a little bit. And, but like some, some good things. One thing I do really like was the dashboard is much lower than the outgoing car. The outgoing car, you sat behind a very tall dashboard.

Speaker 2:
[44:38] Tall engine.

Speaker 1:
[44:39] Like shorter people will love this. It has much better like sight lines and a much lower dash that opens up the greenhouse quite a bit.

Speaker 2:
[44:49] Nice.

Speaker 1:
[44:50] And the wind doesn't buff it when you go on the highway and with the windows down. So it's a cool cruiser. I actually think this thing had adaptive shocks, better sort of wheel and tire fitment. And the rear windows went down to make a pillarless coupe. That would be extremely sick.

Speaker 2:
[45:08] That would be cool. They probably wouldn't pass like the past side impact standards.

Speaker 1:
[45:12] Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 2:
[45:13] But you know, it's cool.

Speaker 1:
[45:16] It has it had a great curb people appeal. People asked me about it. The valets at the hotels, almost all of whom recognized me. I'm huge with valets. Like you and I are celebrities major to valets. It's just that industry that we target directly.

Speaker 2:
[45:33] Yeah, that is the gateway job into car enthusiasm and car journalism.

Speaker 1:
[45:38] They loved it. And I was like, do you like the sound? And they're like, yeah. So they didn't mind the farty exhaust. We know they're putting a VA to this. It's going to be fucking hell-catted like next year, if then.

Speaker 2:
[45:53] That will probably get adaptive shocks.

Speaker 1:
[45:55] I hope so. And look at it. Doesn't it look like it needs a fucking V8? I mean, it just, the idea that this has this sort of like BMW M3 light powertrain in it, it's just like a total mismatch of character. And I know they were like in a tough spot and this was going to be a fully V and then they backtracked and it does sort of feel like a no man's landy kind of product. So like, I sympathize, I really do. But I thought it would be a better GT if it wasn't going to be a serious, right, you know, but it was a little no man's landy. But this event we did is one of my favorite ones I've ever done. Just the balance of the driving in the hotels. You see the tent? I put the picture. We stayed at this place called Under Canvas Zion in Zion National Park, or right next to Zion National Park. There it is. And it was like a glamping type of deal. The tents were dope, and there's like a pot belly stove in there, and you got to make the fire and keep that bitch going. But it had a nice bathroom.

Speaker 2:
[47:00] That's awesome.

Speaker 1:
[47:00] Had a hot water shower. It was awesome. Ripped. Great hot water. And I had the fire going all night. Fucking just ripping Jays under the stars. And dude, this place is like outside of town. And so you've never seen stars outside of Zion.

Speaker 2:
[47:18] Yeah. The southwestern side of it, where you come in from, where we came in with the Porsche.

Speaker 1:
[47:23] It's before you go get into town. It's south of town. It's not the one you see from the road. There's you can see a glamping place on that road. You have to drive, turn left up there and then go like six miles up the hill. Yeah, there's nothing up there. It was the best. I would 100% go back and stay. I don't know if I would do more than like two or three nights there, but I would absolutely do two or three nights there. That was a good time.

Speaker 2:
[47:49] That's like a restful two days, get away from everything.

Speaker 1:
[47:52] Well, there's hiking. I mean, there's trails you can get to from here, but also you can go hike in the park and then just come back. They've got a restaurant there. There's probably like 60 of these tents. They had one that had a window over the bed, so you could look at stars. Yeah, I don't know what they cost as part of the thing, but it was cool. Las Vegas Motor Speedway, great event. We did the Lake Mead Valley of Fire Drive, and the drive from Zion to Sedona, the route that we did was fucking sick. It was so nice, and some of the best drives we did. So we still got a few spots left in the Pacific Northwest one. It's filling up, though. I'm stoked about it. We had sort of a slow start. I don't know if people were not necessarily ready to pull the trigger, but we had two people who came on this event sign up for the Pacific Northwest one while they were there.

Speaker 2:
[48:53] Because they had so much fun.

Speaker 1:
[48:56] And you see that picture of the challenger next to the 355? That's his dude, Abhi, who rolls solo. He brought a Ferrari 355 on this event, fucking ripped it on the track, fully smoked the brakes, and drove it solo for the entire rally.

Speaker 2:
[49:15] Bravery.

Speaker 1:
[49:15] No mechanicals. It was a boss move. There were quite a few TST fans on it. Shout out to Lance. Shout out to Matthew. Shout out to Alan. Shout out to Abhi, all TST fans who came on the event.

Speaker 2:
[49:30] How many people in the event total?

Speaker 1:
[49:31] 25 cars. This dude, Lance, went for it. Taycan Turbo GT. Shout out to him. That's right. It was a bad idea. It was a bad idea. Second EV to ever come on one of these, the first one was the Smokies, and it was a Lucid Air GT, long range. That gentleman who was very kind, he kind of hung back and drove slow, and in the Smokies, the average speeds are much lower. The roads are whiny and technical, but in the desert, it's like 90 miles an hour, these wide open roads. The average speeds are much higher. So this dude was ripping through his battery. This guy has a heavy foot. This is a heavy foot.

Speaker 2:
[50:16] Was he charging until breakfast ended, and then he hops in the car?

Speaker 1:
[50:19] His charge plan, he had a plan. He told us what we were doing. We sent him the route ahead of time. He was like, OK, cool. I got it, no problem. He had to make extra stops every day. He was going through batteries so much faster.

Speaker 2:
[50:32] So when he calculated it, he was like, oh, the max distance I can go is this. But yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:37] He was going through the battery.

Speaker 2:
[50:40] Look at the size difference of the 355 in the Charger. I know.

Speaker 1:
[50:44] It is a...

Speaker 2:
[50:44] Charger towers over it.

Speaker 1:
[50:46] In fairness, the Charger does at least hold a lot more stuff. If you put that 355 next to a GT3 RS, it is much huger and holds exactly the same amount of stuff.

Speaker 2:
[50:59] Great point.

Speaker 1:
[51:00] You go, oh, I see what the problem is here. But yeah. There was a really good spread of cars on this one too. So if you want to come drive with me in June... Oh, dude, and we talked about... I am not going to say what they are yet, because they are certainly not ready. But we talked about the four events for next year. Some bangers. Some bangers on the schedule.

Speaker 2:
[51:19] The next one is a stopover at Dirt Fish, which is one of the funnest places on earth.

Speaker 1:
[51:24] The Pacific Northwest one has two track days. Well, one track day at PIR in your own car, Portland International Raceway, which is a great little track. Not little. A great road course. And then a day at Dirt Fish in their Subarus, ripping on the dirt ski, which is going to be just the best. Before we get to a few questions, I want to say something really funny that happened yesterday. You know, Waymo's can go on the highway now. And so we're going, I forget where I was going, but I'm on the highway last night. Oh, we were going hiking in Malibu, so I'm on the 405 going north, and there's a Waymo. And I go, okay, Waymo on the highway, and it's in the left lane. I go, the Waymo's in the left lane. And I go, it's the Waymo left lane hogging? And it was going like 66 in the left lane. I was like, oh, no. I was like, we're going to have a big problem if Waymo's are going on the highway and left lane hogging. Like, this is fucked up.

Speaker 2:
[52:18] Yeah, I can't pull them over.

Speaker 1:
[52:19] Yeah, this is crazy. I was like, this is so bad. And I go to pass the fucking Waymo on the right. This is being driven by a human.

Speaker 2:
[52:31] Oh, God. What an amazing highlight of the problem. Incredible. So Waymo, if you're listening to this show, tell your engineers to not do that.

Speaker 1:
[52:43] So listen to this. Here's something else I figured out. I had dinner with Alex Roy. And so we talked about a great many interesting things. As any dinner with Alex Roy is going to be very interesting. But the difference between Waymo and Tesla's self-driving, and when I say self-driving, I don't necessarily mean Tesla FSD supervised. I mean their cyber cab. The difference between their algorithms, Tesla's optimizes for time, Waymo's optimizes for safety.

Speaker 2:
[53:15] Oh boy.

Speaker 1:
[53:16] And so that's why a Waymo will take longer to get places than Tesla FSD supervised, or a, because it will take the safest route.

Speaker 2:
[53:27] Well.

Speaker 1:
[53:29] Because they have their own insurance, their self-insured. Yeah, what could go wrong? So this is according to Alex, but Alex is, I think, can be a trusted expert in this field. And he's not anti-Tesla. He did the fucking Tesla across the country thing.

Speaker 2:
[53:42] Yeah, like months ago.

Speaker 1:
[53:43] Yeah, he thinks Elon Musk is a shitbag, but he gives Tesla a lot more credit for things than I personally.

Speaker 2:
[53:48] Does he know why someone sent me a picture of the RoboTaxi recently? But like, it's an old story. Why do they do two-door car? Did they take an average survey of like, hey, average cab hire is one to two people you don't need? Okay, I figured.

Speaker 1:
[54:04] I think that's silly when you could, if you don't need a driver, have a vehicle like that little van thing that's driving around here now that could hold more people even if it doesn't need to. But you know, okay, whatever. That's what, yeah, I think that's silly, but it's one of the less fucked up decisions, I guess, that Elon Musk has made recently.

Speaker 2:
[54:29] Well, for sure, I think it's one that got a lot of attention because everyone's like, oh, two door cab, and you're like, that is the low hanging fruit that we need to analyze. Sure. But it's a question that I guess could be answered quickly.

Speaker 1:
[54:40] It's like the yoke. You know, it implies things, you know. It implies that there won't ever need to be a driver because you're sitting where that driver could go.

Speaker 2:
[54:52] Well, I was more thinking like it's just, why not make a car that has four seats so that people can share a cab and go out together as a group, but if 93% of cab hires are from one or two people, they go, why would we spend extra money to make extra space that won't be used?

Speaker 1:
[55:08] I think a very high percentage of cabs are one or two people.

Speaker 2:
[55:10] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:11] Yeah. But, yeah. Oh, so we were talking about that, but he thinks, I told him about, you know how the Waymo's take the long way from my house, like if they need to go east, they leave west and then go back east. And I told him about that. He said, there are almost certainly a substantially higher number of accidents at the other intersection than at the one that it uses to leave your house.

Speaker 2:
[55:39] Oh, cool.

Speaker 1:
[55:39] So it will take ways, it'll take routes that sometimes seem odd, but that, for one reason or another, are substantially safer.

Speaker 2:
[55:48] So it has, maybe it has the accident data from different areas and it goes, oh, it's a dangerous intersection. We'll avoid it.

Speaker 1:
[55:55] Smart. Yeah, interesting, right?

Speaker 2:
[55:56] Yeah, cool.

Speaker 1:
[55:57] Yeah. So, I mean, if somebody that is an equal level of expert to Alex Roy would like to fact check that claim, like I'm open to hearing other information, but I just thought that was very interesting.

Speaker 2:
[56:08] Nick Shirley will be on the case.

Speaker 1:
[56:10] Yeah. That's pretty much all I got. That's all I got.

Speaker 2:
[56:15] That's what my week was. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[56:17] We both had busy weeks.

Speaker 2:
[56:19] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[56:19] Busy weeks driving cars.

Speaker 2:
[56:22] Which we will have this week as well. And every week forever. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[56:26] We got a Durango Hellcat, which will be kind of fun to take to Road America. I hope they let us take it on the track. There's a bit of a... People have sent me a thing that Road America doesn't necessarily allow SUVs on track. But when an organization rents out the entire facility for a weekend, the rules may be different. So we'll see when we get there. I hope we get to have a go.

Speaker 2:
[56:51] I'm just glad gas is slightly cheaper in Michigan or Wisconsin, where we're going. Because Hellcat Durango...

Speaker 1:
[56:58] A lot of these folks who do our Road & Track events, they come from all over. They come from all over. And so a lot of them are East Coast, some are Midwest, whatever. And so we were at somewhere in Utah, and gas was $4.59. And one gentleman was like, Holy shit, $4.59. What are we in California? I'm like, fucking Habibi, I'm looking at $6.99 over here.

Speaker 2:
[57:23] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[57:23] That $4.59, that was like two years ago.

Speaker 2:
[57:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[57:30] They freaked out about it. That's years ago.

Speaker 2:
[57:33] Yeah, $4.50 is close to the national average. That's not bad.

Speaker 1:
[57:36] Right next to us, diesel behind us here is $7.25.

Speaker 2:
[57:39] Diesel's crazy. I mean, diesel's been nuts since, basically since Dieselgate. Before that, diesel was cheaper than gasoline.

Speaker 1:
[57:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[57:44] And then the market, the demand for it dried up and now it's more expensive.

Speaker 1:
[57:50] Oh, wait. So before we go to some questions, we have, Vinnie did bring me the Road & Track from December 81, my birthday, my birth. And so I did want to show a couple of highlights. We've got the 911 all-wheel drive convertible on the cover. This was a prototype that I've actually seen in person. They built, it was an early version of basically the all-wheel drive system that they used in the 964 or the 959, actually. And then in the sort of later children, they never built it. This was a convertible SC and it's in Porsche's collection. And you can see it sometimes, it rotates through the museum. So, that's pretty cool. But...

Speaker 2:
[58:39] It feels like the Saab 911. It's like all-wheel drive for the winter, but soft top.

Speaker 1:
[58:44] So, I love this. This is fabulous. This is a review of the Deloria, cutting through the hype to discover an exciting GT car. And the photographs are actually, are particularly artistic and striking from this 1981 thing. And I went back to look, who shot it? Jeffrey Zwart.

Speaker 2:
[59:08] No way.

Speaker 1:
[59:10] This is a Jeff Zwart joint, dude.

Speaker 2:
[59:12] Wow, no wonder the pictures were so, like a lot of people listening are like black and white photos of a Delorean interior.

Speaker 1:
[59:18] Their color.

Speaker 2:
[59:19] Hold on to the next one.

Speaker 1:
[59:19] Yeah, these are, there's some very like dramatic looking.

Speaker 2:
[59:23] Yeah, the inserts are dramatic black and white.

Speaker 1:
[59:25] Isn't that funny?

Speaker 2:
[59:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[59:27] I gotta save this for Jeff, but he photographed this for the year I was born, which is hilarious. And so, that's wild. Yeah. So then, let's go to the classifieds. That's of course the bit that's interesting. And see the deals that people could have gotten had they bought a car 44 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[59:51] So had your parents bought a car instead of raising a child.

Speaker 1:
[59:54] Right. So just real quick. What is a dollar in December of 1981 with inflation worth today? What would a dollar be today from 44 years of inflation? Just so we have...

Speaker 2:
[60:11] One dollar then is $3.63 today.

Speaker 1:
[60:14] Okay. So three and a half. We'll call it three and a half. Three and a half X. So in December of 81, in the back of Road & Track magazine, you could have bought a Ford GT40 Roadster chassis number 108, original condition, complete documentation, tested in October 1965, Sports Car Graphic magazine, $150,000.

Speaker 2:
[60:43] Okay. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[60:44] So not nothing, but that's 450 in today's money, right? Or let's call it 525 in today's money. That car is probably worth $10 million.

Speaker 2:
[60:53] That's a good, that's true.

Speaker 1:
[60:54] That would have been a good buy. That would have been a buy and hold, right? How about Ferrari 275 GTB 4 cam, serial number 93, restored to museum quality, this one's right here in Encino, California, $55,000.

Speaker 2:
[61:11] Yeah, I was gonna say that's gonna be less than the GT40.

Speaker 1:
[61:13] So yeah, so that's like, let's call that, you know, 3 and a fourth. $200,000, $210,000, something like that.

Speaker 2:
[61:20] $192,000.

Speaker 1:
[61:21] $192,000. In today's money, cars worth $3 million bucks. It would have been a fucking buy. That would have been a, by the way, you know who was buying cars at these prices? Ralph Lauren. Oh, back then. Ralph Lauren, in the late 70s and into the 80s, was buying shit just like this for money just like this. But he would buy the one that won Le Mans.

Speaker 2:
[61:42] Because he was into it.

Speaker 1:
[61:43] Instead of 55 grand, he'd pay 155 grand. And it would be...

Speaker 2:
[61:47] Pull him and Bruce Meyer. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[61:49] How about a Ferrari Dino, 246 GTS Spyder?

Speaker 2:
[61:53] Oh, this would be $8.

Speaker 1:
[61:55] California car, original mint condition, 30,000 bucks.

Speaker 2:
[62:00] So 100 grand.

Speaker 1:
[62:01] 100 grand, but today that car is, you know, three, 400 grand.

Speaker 2:
[62:05] Yeah, wow, and those went through a dip then. That might have been, there might have been a dip coming after that because those things were pretty cheap for a while. Like early 2000s, the Dinos were pretty inexpensive.

Speaker 1:
[62:15] All right, here's a super banger. 1966 Lamborghini 400 GT. Very, very rare. New two-tone silver paint, black leather seats, fresh service, new tires, $18,500. So, you know, 50 grand, 55 grand, something like that. Yeah, three and a half.

Speaker 2:
[62:38] Three and a half.

Speaker 1:
[62:38] For 55, 60 grand. That car, half a million, 600, 700, thousand, something like that, if it's a nice one. And finally, 1955 Porsche Speedster. New paint, new interior top, mechanically superb California car, since new. 19,500 bucks. So again, there's your 60,000 dollars in inflation, gets you about three to 500,000 in value.

Speaker 2:
[63:08] Are there any old 911s in there for like two grand?

Speaker 1:
[63:11] Well, no, not really because interestingly, you know, like a 79 Porsche Turbo was like only, it was only two years old. So that was 52,000 bucks. You know, those kind of things were actually like pretty expensive. The funny ones are like stuff that is exactly the same dollar amount now.

Speaker 2:
[63:33] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[63:33] Like this, how about like 1979 Trans Am, you know, custom built motor, blah, blah, blah, immaculate condition, 22,000 bucks.

Speaker 2:
[63:49] I mean, that's probably what that caused now.

Speaker 1:
[63:51] That's what that cost you today, you know? Like, how about a 1979 Lotus Esprit S2, like 6,000 miles, 23,500 bucks. I mean, that might be 40 now, but it won't be hundreds.

Speaker 2:
[64:06] So those should be cheaper than with inflation.

Speaker 1:
[64:09] Right. Like, oh dude, 1979 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. So this is like, these are 6 grand. These, you buy, you find one of these, this is the cheapest. These things are sub 10 Gs. So this one, 9,000 miles, 72,000, because it was only two years old.

Speaker 2:
[64:27] My grandfather had one of those bits because he owned a scrap yard, and someone literally like dropped it off just to donate or exchange it for money for the metal.

Speaker 1:
[64:34] Oh dude, I didn't even see this. I missed this whole thing. Hang on, give me one real quick because this is a fun one. Ed Waterman's Thoroughbred Motor Cars in Washington, DC. They have some inventory. I'm not going to do the translation of all these, but I think everyone understands the scale of prices, right? So like, 63, 289 Cobra, very early, 19,000 miles, 35,000 bucks. Right?

Speaker 2:
[65:01] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[65:02] How about 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300 Galway?

Speaker 2:
[65:11] Oh, boy.

Speaker 1:
[65:11] 21,000. Right? Lamborghini 400 GT, as is bargain. This must be a shitter. 10,900. 1971 Miura SV, red-black. That's 5 million today. So 55 times 3.5, that's 275 inflation. So this car outperforms that by probably 20x. Inflation, not the market. You know, the market is a different thing. I'm just talking about inflation. This dude is sitting on...

Speaker 2:
[65:49] Wait.

Speaker 1:
[65:51] One, two, three. Three 275s. A 330 GTC, GTS. Okay, wait, what's the dopest shit he's got here? All right. So this is really funny. We've got a 54 250 Europa, a 55 375 America, a 56 Tour de France, and one, two, three, four, five 275 GTBs, a 330 GTC, a 365 GTC 4, a 246 Dino. Okay. The most expensive car he's got, and I mean the very most expensive, more than the Miura, more than anything, is the 250 Ferrari TDF, 65,000. I understand that. The second most expensive is the Miura SV. The third most expensive is a one year old Ferrari 308 with 3,900 miles on it.

Speaker 2:
[66:48] Yeah. I mean, so the car is 3,000. It's when they're 30 years old, no one cares about them. That was like, cause it's 81. So the Cobra was 63. So that was 18 years old. The Gullwing was a little older.

Speaker 1:
[66:59] 28, 18. Oh, so that was 18. I'm sorry. Excuse me. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:03] So you need to wait for the depreciation to hit, then they go back up.

Speaker 1:
[67:08] Wild, right? So that's fun. That guy was sitting on some stuff.

Speaker 2:
[67:12] Yeah, and if he'd helped, that guy could have just held it for 30 years.

Speaker 1:
[67:16] Ed, just keep it all, you idiot. Don't sell anything.

Speaker 2:
[67:21] But, you know, he had to buy those cars. He's sitting on them. He's just trying to make a couple grand on each trade or on each sale.

Speaker 1:
[67:29] That's day trading. What he's doing is day trading compared to, you know, just sitting on it, right?

Speaker 2:
[67:34] Well, that's what every business is really doing, right? I mean, if you trade products, you're like, I buy these cups and now I sell these cups in my store.

Speaker 1:
[67:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:41] Should have held.

Speaker 1:
[67:42] Held for 30 years. But how do I pay my rent? Can you make that bigger? Let's go to the people over at patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast. We love you folks over there. Really fucking killing it for us, taking care of us. We're trying to take care of you by letting you guys ask questions for the show. Watch the live stream. Get the show before anybody else. Get extra show. Get the show without ads and more. We've got the Patreon exclusive, Notice Canyon, Brozen Fairy Metallic pink like dial. I have been getting calls from a lot of personal friends who want to make sure that there's one for them. But the patrons get first crack at all that shit and so I will have the link for you very, very soon. They will sell out probably in a day. So mark your calendar for when I send the link. You feel me? And let's go to the people. Just Jay says, Your thoughts on the other day on the speed map. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted a Tag Heuer Monaco caliber 11 like Steve McQueen's from the movie Le Mans. For my 50th birthday, my wife bought it for me. It's my baby, and I'll likely have it forever. As such, I don't care what anyone else thinks about it, but I'm curious what the word on the street is. I know many smart and successful people that like the Tag Heuer Monaco. Alex Roy, as a matter of fact, wears a Tag Heuer Monaco. It is the kind of watch that, like, I think educated people wear. It's a very unique piece. It's the square case. You know, it's nothing else looks like it. You know, and either you kind of love how it looks or you don't really care for how it looks. If you ask me, I personally don't really care for how it looks. I don't have a desire to own one myself, but and if I wanted a square watch, I would get a Cartier Santos. But for people who like them, more power to them, it's certainly a respectable timepiece. Steve McQueen's a real shit bag, though, you know?

Speaker 2:
[69:54] Yes, correct. But the watch is the watch. That makes sense. Alex has it. It looks French to me, even though it's not, but he's a Citroen man. Like, he likes things that are a little different.

Speaker 1:
[70:05] Ball caddy. Growing up, I loved cars, but I was told to make cars my hobby, not my livelihood by a family friend who worked for Ford. Would you agree?

Speaker 2:
[70:16] You know, I feel like I went through a period where I got over cars for a bit during, and it was really when I was working for Tangent and TST. It was just, like, too much, so I just... But I think we're very fortunate that we get to, you know, go for drives in the canyons and track stuff, and, like, that's work. We get paid for that based on the things we make. So there are definitely worse things to do, but you will get a little jaded. Like, that will happen, but...

Speaker 1:
[70:43] When you make cars your livelihood, it does ruin cars the hobby a little bit, because when other people might want to go do car shit in their free time, you're like, I don't want to do that. Like, I felt really bad. There was a guy on this event. It was a very sweet guy. And if you're out there listening, I'm not going to use your name. You know who you are. That was like trying to recommend places that he knew that had good roads. And you know, he was first trying to suggest why that we should have an event there, as many people do. And we usually respond with like, here's the things we need to make an event. And it's like we need good hotels, we need a racetrack. Because there's a lot of places that have one or two of the things we need but not three. And so we're not trying to be shitty. We're happy to hear suggestions. But we usually respond with like, do you know any good hotels in that area? Do you know of, not to be like, downers about it, but to like, help. Like, you know, if you know, like, tell us. So anyway, the person was like, this place, they were talking about the Black Hills, where Sturgis is. And I was like, I don't know if they have racetracks up there. I don't know about the hotels. These bikers like love it. But like, I don't really know. And he was like, suggesting I should like go up there as a vacation. And I kind of responded like, I'm at work right now, like this thing. And I had to drive this thing twice to do this work. Like, my vacations are not road trips. And I might have been, the way I said it, I might have been a little dismissive. And I think people who come on our experiences can't fathom that somebody might, because they're paying a lot of money and coming from all over to go on road trips, because it is their hobby. It's their escape from whatever the fuck their office job is. But it does ruin your hobby. Like, if I had an office job, I might want to go to the Black Hills for a road trip. But now I'm like, if there's a gig, you know, and I felt like kind of a dick.

Speaker 2:
[72:50] Well, we do mini road trips, like driving to the canyons once a week is like a four to five hour thing we do. It's an hour there each way. It's not really a road trip. For most people, five hours is a lot of driving. And for us, it's like, that's kind of how we're going to the office.

Speaker 1:
[73:02] For us, that's Tuesday.

Speaker 2:
[73:03] Yeah, so I get it.

Speaker 1:
[73:05] Yeah, but certainly if you see too far behind the curtain, if you work at Ford, you might go, this industry is full of dickbags.

Speaker 2:
[73:12] Also, you got to ask this relative, right, family friend, you know, they might have liked cars and now they're just building them and they hate cars because they hate their job, because they're an assembly line person. I don't know what it is. They might just be so disgruntled in what they see as a car and what they're really unhappy about something else. So there's a lot to unpack there.

Speaker 1:
[73:30] Yeah, like if you do the thing within the term cars that you enjoy, you probably won't feel that way, but you may not want to also do it as a hobby. Fartmeister says, with the shift from haptic and screen controls back towards physical buttons and knobs, will physical gauge clusters also make a comeback? No.

Speaker 2:
[73:54] No.

Speaker 1:
[73:54] No. They're just too expensive.

Speaker 2:
[73:56] There's too expensive, and I think there's too much information now. They want to or need to show on the screen, and a screen is the most effective way to do that by a huge margin.

Speaker 1:
[74:06] At the high end, you may see screens implemented in a creative way, like what Zenvo does or what Ferrari maybe is going to end up doing with this Johnny Ive car. So hopefully, we can see innovative uses of OLEDs and stuff like that.

Speaker 2:
[74:25] I still like what Porsche is doing, where there's a few gate, like the tack is real. It's not. It was. And then screens around it. But Ferrari went to digital tack a long time ago, and they're probably not coming back from it.

Speaker 1:
[74:38] Yeah. Front-wheel drive NSX, my wedding was Saturday. Congratulations. And now I'm looking for a car-themed honeymoon activity in Northern California. I've done track days in Thunderhill and Sonoma, looking for something new. I mean, wine country road trip. I don't know if you're drinkers, but wine country road trip is always a beautiful thing to be doing. I mean...

Speaker 2:
[75:05] I don't know, they're taking two different cars, like his and hers Accords, if that's real.

Speaker 1:
[75:09] A car-themed honeymoon activity? I mean...

Speaker 2:
[75:12] Drive Highway 1 from SF to, like, Oregon.

Speaker 1:
[75:16] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[75:17] Because the landscape changes, it's gorgeous. I would do that. I could stay at some glamping places or camping or whatever, but that's a pretty good thing to do.

Speaker 1:
[75:26] I don't know, to me, like, car-themed is like a couple, like, road trip or track day.

Speaker 2:
[75:34] Kind of, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:34] That, like, I don't... I'm not really sure.

Speaker 2:
[75:38] I mean, if you can afford the time, you could drive all the way from NorCal to Washington and end at Dirt Fish and then, like, do a two-day rally school as, like, the payoff, but...

Speaker 1:
[75:51] I mean, I could... You could rent an SUV and do part of the backcountry discovery route.

Speaker 2:
[75:56] Yeah. Or just take one of their Honda Accords and do that. You could probably make it.

Speaker 1:
[76:00] Yeah. But, like, I mean, road trip, you could do the Russian River Valley loop down... and then down PCH back down to Marin County. I mean, that's beautiful, but, like, not sure... I'm not sure that... I mean...

Speaker 2:
[76:17] I think what we're saying is that the options for a car-themed event are, you can meet in a parking lot, you could build something, you could road trip something, or you could race something, right? It's kind of it. Or you could adventure. You can do overland adventure. So those are your categories of car-themed thing.

Speaker 1:
[76:35] You could buy seats and arrive and drive race car.

Speaker 2:
[76:37] Yeah. You could do that.

Speaker 1:
[76:39] You could do a Lemons or a Champ race together. They don't often require any wheel-to-wheel experience.

Speaker 2:
[76:44] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[76:49] I don't know where like Sierra cars or cross-carts are based, but if you can go rip those.

Speaker 2:
[76:53] It also depends on what these people's skills and sensibilities are, so.

Speaker 1:
[76:57] Yeah. ZR1X, go and give it to you. That's pretty funny. Thoughts on the GT3SC Cabriolet? I wish it was a Speedster. I don't. I'm sure that someone said somewhere, said I want a GT3 with back seats and a soft top, and then we could sell it for a shitload of money. And I'm sure it drives lovely. You know, it's got the ST side doors on it, so it looks pretty cool.

Speaker 2:
[77:34] It does.

Speaker 1:
[77:35] I'm sure it's nice. I think it will not be worth the amount of money that people have to pay to get them, unless they're one of the allocated.

Speaker 2:
[77:44] Right.

Speaker 1:
[77:44] You know? But I'm sure the 911 Cabrio in general is a very rigid Cabrio. Like, as far as soft top cars go, like, that's a pretty tight, tight package.

Speaker 2:
[77:55] I mean, I watched Harris' video on it, and according to AP, like, they didn't have to add a bunch of structure to it compared to the normal cab, because the normal cab is very stiff already.

Speaker 1:
[78:04] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[78:04] So, that tracks. Now, if they had made a Speedster, would they have to make a new body for that, or would they just kind of stick on, you know, the whole backseat filler thing that, like?

Speaker 1:
[78:15] Pull up the 991 Speedster. I think they have to make a whole new back. I don't think it's a separate... Just pull up images. I think it's a whole... Yeah, it's a different thing. Yeah, that whole top, that whole rear bit is different. Cause the way it meets with those fenders is different, you know? That's all different.

Speaker 2:
[78:42] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[78:42] So this is a much cheaper...

Speaker 2:
[78:45] What they've done is much cheaper.

Speaker 1:
[78:46] Yeah, like it's cheaper to, you know, rather than having to redesign a whole rear clip, they have the convertible, they have the lower bumper already, they already have the ST doors, they already have the ST fenders, so they could mix and match existing shit.

Speaker 2:
[79:03] Yeah, exactly. That's why. And we know where Porsche is at financially, so that's what they're gonna do. They probably started planning this a little while ago, but I'm sure that the cost savings was a benefit.

Speaker 1:
[79:13] This is an extremely high margin parts bin car. I mean, which is like, I'm sure, I'm not saying it's not developed, but I'm sure Andy and his team have made it a thing that can proudly wear the badge. But nevertheless, everything that's in it, from what I've seen, at least the boilerplate items, I love to drive it, I love to talk to Andy, I'd love to go on the launch if that's a thing. But the boilerplate items, it seems like, is pretty mix and match from stuff they've already got.

Speaker 2:
[79:41] Yeah, and I guess, if it's something, I don't know if they do research with customers and say, is this something you'd like, or if Porsche, they make it and they know that the customers will buy it. It's nice that the soft top is more usable than the speedster solutions, you don't have to get out and set up your tent. Right. I'm sure they'll sell all of them.

Speaker 1:
[80:03] Of course they will. It's not a product that necessarily interests me as a consumer, but it interests me very much as someone who gets to taste. I look forward to having a go, for sure. Okay. Matt Brook says, I'm looking to consolidate from four cars down to three by selling my daily driver Taurus SHO and one of my fun cars. Two of those cars are a 944 Turbo and a VW Vanagon Camper. Do I replace the 944 Turbo and the SHO? With a base 718, Cayman or Boxster? Or do I replace the SHO and the Vanagon with a power boost F150 with a pop-up bed camper?

Speaker 2:
[80:58] I mean, these are really different, Matt. Plus, you follow up saying like you camp a lot, but you're outside Atlanta, and this would be like a fun thing to drive around. So, if you get the 718, it will be fun to drive in the, you know, backroads of Georgia. And you could bring a little camping gear. But obviously, the F-150 is going to be, I mean, I think it's a more comfortable daily. It's just easier in so many ways. You can carry more stuff. And then if you're going camping, and if your camping involves way more gear like the trip we did, you know, PowerBoost, I thought was great. It was cool for off-roading, plugged in a blender. You know, you could put a rooftop tent on it or a bed tent. Like, you have so many options with it, but it's not going to be fun to drive in the backroads. So, like, is your definition of a weekend fun? Is it driving quickly and, you know, packing light, or are you bringing mountain bikes and a gun and, you know, bringing a deer home and, I don't know. Like, these are really different vehicles.

Speaker 1:
[81:51] Yeah, you know, work from home and have no commute. That's great. That means you don't need a normal car as much, right? Three weird cars equals one normal car if you work from home.

Speaker 2:
[82:04] I guess, oh, is this question...

Speaker 1:
[82:06] What we don't know is the extra car. We don't know. We don't know the extra car is.

Speaker 2:
[82:12] I think what the crux of this is, Matt, would you rather have a newer 718 and a Vanagon for camping or an F-150 PowerBoost and your fun car is a 944 Turbo?

Speaker 1:
[82:25] The thing is, a 718 is an excellent option if you want something in that category. The PowerBoost F-150 with a camper is an excellent option for something in that category. So, the question is, do you want to have an old, weird car as a weekend car and a normal car as a daily or as an everyday car or the other way around?

Speaker 2:
[82:50] Right.

Speaker 1:
[82:50] So, that's tough. I don't know. I'd probably rather have the F-150 and the 944, probably. But, right, because I'm not that into actually camping in a 35-year-old Vanagon. I'm not into vintage camping compared to new camping, whereas I am into vintage sports cars.

Speaker 2:
[83:13] Yeah, I think I would be more willing to do adventures in an F-150 than the Vanagon. I know that they can be amazing cars, like, slow, climbing hills, all that stuff. So, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[83:24] Wheat City Night Court, is it okay to wear a gold-colored watch that isn't actually made of gold? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Many fine watches are colored gold that are not actually gold. It is totally okay to do it either ironically or seriously. The awesome gold turtle that I gave Foley from RU Garbage that he's wearing all the time now, which is awesome. Yeah, PVD gold. It's great. AYG, by the way, we're going to see them. It's like May 7th in LA. I've got tickets and if you're in LA on May 7th, come see AYG live with us. It's really fun. Username reimagined by Singer. Are we going to have any comics from the Netflix or the Jokefest set up for podcasts if they have time? I'm trying to get Tom in. He's going to be around and I will try to get the AYG guys if I can. Okay, cool. That's not a question. But Tim A, shout out to your new scooter. Moonshiner28 is considering getting my USCG license. Is that Coast Guard license? What kind of license do I have? I have the ASA bare boat charter certification that's up to like 80 feet, 88 feet or something like that. I got it like when I was 17. I got it a really long time ago. So yeah, I don't think you need anything more than that. Usually if you're talking about chartering boats, you want to get bare boat charter and maybe you want to take the catamaran course if you've never sailed on a catamaran before. But I don't know the names of those courses, sorry. Quadrifoli O-Face, what is the best M2 generation and gearbox?

Speaker 2:
[85:23] First gen manual, I think.

Speaker 1:
[85:24] First gen manual? I would say the last gen CS manual.

Speaker 2:
[85:28] Oh, you like the facelifted one a little bit?

Speaker 1:
[85:31] Yeah. Queer Shift and Gears, they're always out there, they're so shifty. I'm doing, I think this is, I'm pretty sure it's them, I'm doing their podcast.

Speaker 2:
[85:46] Oh, cool.

Speaker 1:
[85:47] Which has a very funny name, a funnier name than this. Vaughn talked about the RTR Ecoboost Mustang and it got me thinking about entry level sports cars. Curious about your take on the GT86 compared to the Ecoboost Mustang as fun, sporty drift cars. Without driving JR's car, I can't say because the last one I drove, Cobb Tuning did a full package on an Ecoboost Mustang that I just hated. This was like 2016 or something, though. The first year of that car. It's been some time and I have driven no Ecoboost Mustang since then. I really want to do JR's car, but like a Mustang is so big compared to an 86.

Speaker 2:
[86:38] This person also replied to themselves that the Mustang only comes as paddle shift automatic. You cannot get it as a manual. Obviously, GT86 you can get as a manual and I think it's a pretty good one, especially for the money. And it's a smaller car.

Speaker 1:
[86:52] I'd get the 86 dollar for dollar unless I didn't fit in it or it didn't hold the amount of stuff and people that I needed it to hold. Outside of that, there's a tough argument for a four-cylinder Mustang. With respect to JR and whatever it is that he builds, Mustang Geek, thoughts on the tit-for-tat Nurburgring battle between Ford and Porsche?

Speaker 2:
[87:19] It's really Ford and Chevy right now, isn't it? I mean, the whole ZR1X versus GTD thing going on.

Speaker 1:
[87:24] There's Mantai's in there as well. Mantai's getting it done as well. Yeah, and then they wonder if the GTD competition has a Whipple Blower instead of the Eaton. I mean, it's probably like a thousand horsepower instead of the 838.

Speaker 2:
[87:39] Yeah, because they just shaved seven seconds off their time or something, and now Ford, the GTD is faster than the ZR1X, but people are like, is this a cheater car?

Speaker 1:
[87:48] Yeah, I mean, it might not be street legal. Whatever this power unit is may or may not be able to pass smog or anything like that. So it remains, if I had put money on a GTD that was just delivered, I would be extremely pissed that they now have this faster one. I would be super pissed that six months later, here is a faster one. So I would expect a...

Speaker 2:
[88:12] Hopefully it's not street legal. Yeah. Because otherwise, yeah, it diminishes the value of the current one. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[88:17] So we would see. Tapp and Zee's nuts. That bridge is always going to be the Tapp and Zee bridge for me. I'm not fucking calling that shit the Mario Cuomo bridge. Fuck you. I'm not a Cuomo fan. When WCCS is selling a car on behalf of an owner, how do you decide between listing it in bat versus cars and bids? First way is if the owner personally has a preference. We work for the owner of the car and if they are knowledgeable and have a preference, then we will do what makes them happy. Then our head of concierge Dave will run comps on both sites and see if these type of cars perform notably better on one site versus another site. Then also, some cars are too old for cars and bits. So some cars, it's like you only have bad as your only real option. Duffel Shuffle Retirement Club says, I saw that you liked the Mustangs provided by Skip Barber, although this was probably written before the show started. I found it surprising since Ron and Vin had nothing good to say about them on Scotto's show. Anyhow, in theme with the date, what's the most inconvenient or embarrassing time y'all have been interrupted while high or drunk?

Speaker 2:
[89:40] Interrupted. So you've imbibed or ingested and then something interrupts you.

Speaker 1:
[89:48] There was a time of, yeah, I had to run Le Mans and then they told me I couldn't drive and so I went to the bar and got shit-faced and they were like, Matt, you're back in. I did once.

Speaker 2:
[90:07] Oh, I was interrupted by the police showing up to our house when we had brownies and someone in our house had a panic attack and decided to call 911 on 420 and older police are like, yep, we get a lot of these calls this day. That was bad.

Speaker 1:
[90:22] The the first 10 times in my life that I smoked weed, and I'm talking like when I was like 13, 14, I was caught all 10. Like not like not like joint in hand, but I was caught like either either while smoking or just being high and smelling like because I was 13. And I was very young. And so my parents were like thought that if they caught me 10 times, I must have done it, been doing it a thousand times all day every day. And they wouldn't absolutely not believe like, no, no, I'm just very bad at hiding because I'm 13 and we don't have cars and can't go anywhere. You've caught me every time, or someone has caught me every time. And they just didn't, so they sent me to rehab, where on the very first day, the guy called my parents and was like, he does not need rehab. He's just bad at doing this. He's caught me. You've caught him every time. I don't know what this Rye Pontiac Rye's questions is. What is this?

Speaker 2:
[91:28] Well, before last week, before Vaughn came on the show, when Car and Driver tested the RTR and their instrument testing was not very flattering, he, I guess, had said, what did AI write this review? And I think he has since retracted that. And I also, I learned after the show, I should have looked up before, but that article was written by Alana Scherr. So, like, Alana knows how to drag race. She knows how to run cars. She's also a huge fan of muscle cars and old cars. So some of the criticism toward that was, like, maybe the person who wrote this is not a car person. That is obviously not true with her. It was just like the numbers are the numbers in that particular test.

Speaker 1:
[92:05] And it just didn't accelerate quickly?

Speaker 2:
[92:07] It was slower to 60 and a quarter mile, I believe, than a regular Mustang GT. Not good if the car has 200 or 300 more horsepower.

Speaker 1:
[92:17] But if it did not have appropriate tires for that type of test, or got worse traction, I mean, you know.

Speaker 2:
[92:26] I don't know if a car driver has tested a Mustang on that same road, like different tires. I didn't read it, see that in there. But I would just say that the person who wrote it is a trustworthy source. So, they should just do... I don't think it would be good content if they do drag race, like take them both to a strip, and see what happens if you can get the RTR to hook up.

Speaker 1:
[92:45] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[92:46] I don't know. Or highway racing.

Speaker 1:
[92:47] Oh yeah, okay. So, that's the first time seeing of that. Okay. Mr. Nailhead, I wanted Elantra N to be my next car to replace my 2011 Mazda 2. If I'm buying used, is there any real difference between a 2022 and a 2026 Elantra N to warrant spending more on a pretty tight budget? I don't think there is enough that if money is tight, you should spend it on that.

Speaker 2:
[93:20] I feel like it was mostly, I'm sure there were some small hardware changes, but I think the big story was the facelift. The new one looks way better, but the old one was fast, handled well, seats were good, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:
[93:33] I drove the post-facelift and pre-facelift one, and when I drove the post-facelift one, there wasn't anything about it from the driver's seat that was different enough that if you didn't have the old one immediately next to it to try it back to back, you could tell the difference. There just wasn't. It really looks. So save your money, get the older one. The only difference is if, I don't know what's, I know Hyundai has a great warranty, so like maybe there's some math to be done on, well, it's $1,500 more or $2,000, but I get an extra three or four years of factory warranty, like that might be it. Outside of that, driving, nah, same. Okay, wait. Beeping aid asshole. Bang for the buck, what items provide the most value in terms of quality and tactile feel certain cars or watches, et cetera? There are a lot. I mean, most, well, most value is a hard one because when you talk about quality and tactile feel, these are usually, that's usually not where you find value. You know, like, that's usually the first thing that gets cut out in search of value, right? I mean, so like, and then there's also like, how long that, like, for instance, a brand new Genesis G90 or whatever, and a brand new Bentley GT have actually some pretty similar, like, the way the quilting and the touch and blah, blah, blah and all that stuff, but like five years down the road, if you look at a five or ten year old or 50,000 mile Genesis G90 and a 50,000 mile Bentley GT, which will have worn in better and held up better. So I mean, I don't know, I've said a whole bunch of times that the best, the most satisfying shit I've ever bought is steel Rolex watches, the Vespa, my Vespa, Porsche's, just, you know, my brand, a brand new Porsche, my, you know, my Spider, a MacBook Pro. I mean, honestly, you know, in your hands.

Speaker 2:
[95:53] Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1:
[95:54] I'm a tight, the titanium fucking MacBook Pro. That shit is sick. A great, a great pen. The tactile turn pens are really nice.

Speaker 2:
[96:04] I mean, I think, I think Mazda, the Miata at the cheaper end is the best example of like, has great tactile feel because it's focused on that. But once you start, once you go up market a little bit, the focus becomes more broad, like we M2 or other cars, Mustangs and stuff. And then when you get to the top, the focus can narrow again because they go, here's, here's a car that's just about, you know, feeling nice when you shift or here's a car that's just about having gauges. Yeah. So, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[96:31] But there's, there's a lot of stuff that, that factor, you know, high-end cameras, Leathergood, Leica cameras and some, I mean, some gun manufacturers.

Speaker 2:
[96:42] And even then, like, just spending a few hundred dollars more to go from like a polymer gun to an all steel gun, I think it feels like it's worth a lot more money, even though it's not.

Speaker 1:
[96:51] And yeah, I mean, there's stuff that you can do to make shit feel way more, way more expensive than it is. I mean, for instance, like, they make a mod that if you wanted to take your G-Shock watch for like a hundred and fifty dollars, you can make that fully metal. Well, like, just, they take it and put it in a metal, it's a metal aftermarket case. And so, like, you know, you can mod a watch to make it feel more upscale and luxurious.

Speaker 2:
[97:20] Or like Fad's Shifter and his E36.

Speaker 1:
[97:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[97:23] That's tactile as fuck. I mean, it's a giant motorsport shifter, but it's an upgrade you can make.

Speaker 1:
[97:27] Yeah. But, I mean, one of the things, for instance, that we did with this, just as an example of how much I give a shit about the Notis Canyon, this is the prototype, right, that I've been wearing for like a month. You know, they wear it. And I said, and I compared it to my other ones, because this is a new bracelet, this new class. And I said that the edges of this bracelet are not smooth enough. Like, the corners are like a little rough. And they're not, it's not, if I hold it up next to my Rolex bracelets, it doesn't quite feel right. And it's not that they don't have the right materials or right everything. I just want those corners to be slightly, slightly softer, to give it a little bit of a more luxurious feel. Really perfectly rounded off and smoothed edges give a luxurious feel. So that's like kind of a thing that we're working on. Just now, and they've got it. They have the new bracelet. And then the other thing is this bit, the bottom bit that sits on your, the part of the clasp that sits on your wrist now is longer and smoother. And that way, when it sits on your wrist, you don't have to have this as tight, but it's just the fact that it's a little longer keeps it from moving without having to be as tight. So that's a nice thing that we're really focusing on. And that's when a watch, particularly, a lot of people buy off what they see on the internet. They see a picture that's taken at the right. And of course, it's a lot of ways you don't have a choice, the store's not near you, whatever. But then they put it on and they go, ugh, that's not right. So if you can try before you buy, that's great. But if not, know that at least your boy is over here fucking thinking about this kind of shit when you buy my watch. Mustang Geek says, Do manufacturers discreetly include automotive journalists in focus groups on the front end of product development? Not necessarily journalists, but like influencers, yes. So, you know, full disclosure, my wife Hannah does research and she works for a company semi full-time, but also does freelance on the side. And Hannah was asked to put together a group of intellectual influencers, not just like stupid influencers, to consult on a new product for an OEM. I couldn't, I don't do that, but I arranged for a whole bunch of people that are in the scene but don't call themselves journalists, such as Scotto, such as Larry Chen, such as people who really know cars but aren't like journalists. And wouldn't be ethically compromised by working for an OEM directly for one reason or another. And Hanna ran a focus group with those people that the results of which were delivered to an OEM and helped, in my opinion, greatly improve what ultimately became the GR Corolla. And again, what is going to become the GR GT or whatever this new high-performance GR sports coup is. So Hanna did help run a focus group of influential people that I was not personally involved with, although I handed over a Rolodex of people. So yeah, I mean, they kind of do.

Speaker 2:
[100:54] I think the question would be like, how early in the process do they involve people? Because the OEMs, do they go, hey, we've got these hard points, this platform, here's what we're doing. Or do they approach them with blank canvas? And say, what do you want to see?

Speaker 1:
[101:08] Yeah, I'm not sure either. I mean, obviously, Harris was just driving a GT3 convertible mule in that video. So, and we know that he has a relationship with Andy and is probably does some driving of these products. I don't think that makes him unobjective or whatever, but like, I don't personally do. Darien Lux narrowed down your top, my top three seven-figure cars into the three favorites for the Singer DLS, McLaren F1, and Carrera GT. Can you think of one six-figure car or less that you would rather have than any of those cars? No.

Speaker 2:
[101:48] That's why those cars cost so much money.

Speaker 1:
[101:49] That's why those cars were at the top of the list. I mean, that's why there's, yeah, I don't want those cars because they're expensive.

Speaker 2:
[101:54] No. The only downside about those is that they're expensive. Not only in the sense that you can't acquire one, but that if you're hesitant to drive it hard because of the cost. We see so many owners that just bubble them because they get afraid of getting hit or getting rock chips. And so then it's actually a merit to it.

Speaker 1:
[102:12] The flexing nib, have you guys ever been gate-kept? And how did you deal with it? Like I'm not, I don't think so. Like, like blacklisted or what is what is how do you, how do you interpret the use of that term?

Speaker 2:
[102:30] Well, it can just be like, I mean, I looked it up because it's such a broad term, like controlling the access to resources, information, community belonging. I mean, I don't know, there's stuff like there are car clubs that require membership to attend. So like, technically, that's a gatekeeping thing. Can you afford the membership or not? I mean, there's private private country clubs and racetracks and stuff that have it. It seems like almost anything that's gate kept, there is a free or cheaper option. Like, there's expensive golf course country clubs. There's also public golf courses. Like, there's private racetracks, public racetracks. Then there's autocross, like the even cheaper version. So I think the way to approach it is, what are you trying to get from that place that is gate kept? And can you find 80% of that experience cheaper? And the answer is probably yes. Now, if it's information, I mean, now with the Internet, I think that tore down a lot of the gates that a lot of institutions and universities had.

Speaker 1:
[103:27] Well, yeah, I mean, in the beginning, we really thought that YouTube would be this rolling audition for television. And we did get to the edge of television and to do a little television, but it never became the thing. And I don't want to call that gatekeeping, or we just didn't get it done good enough when we were there, or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[103:44] Actually, I think that's a perfect example, because the formula for a long time was move to Hollywood, get an agent, audition for shit, pitch shows to very specific people. The way to get in those meetings was oftentimes you had to have a relationship with someone that could vouch for you so that the person who is important knows they're not wasting their time with you. And we circumvented it by the Internet being invented, YouTube, and we go, oh, well, what if we just make the thing and then hope eventually someone sees it, which is what happened.

Speaker 1:
[104:13] Pretty much last one. And then I'm going to save the rest for the next show. Twin Cam Home Haze says we're actually going to one of my favorite restaurants tonight in LA called Two Home Haze for our dinner. Cannot recommend it highly enough. It's on all the lists now. It's the fucking pets. Looking for a sports car this winter to replace my NB Miata. I drove the Gts 4.0 and loved it. Gt350 and loved it. Emira liked it. Manual 2024 Supra hated it. And a manual 2024 M2 enjoyed it. Anything else I should drive before I buy a Gts or a Gt4? I would say if you can find a great Camaro ZL1, I might consider that.

Speaker 2:
[105:04] Or SS1LE also.

Speaker 1:
[105:06] I mean, if you've got money for this other shit, you can buy a ZL1. They're not that expensive. They're not that expensive. ZL1s are fucking fast. They got MagRide. They're good at a lot. So if you like the Gt350, I think you'd probably like a ZL1. The M2 you liked. Supra you hated. Okay, so don't bother with the Z4. You know, Gts are a gold standard for kind of a reason. You know, the Emira is the obvious option, you know, and that's the best choice if nothing is... If you don't like Porsches, I mean, you could get something old. You could get something older. I mean, everything you're talking about here is, you know, the Gt350 is really the oldest car.

Speaker 2:
[105:56] It's true.

Speaker 1:
[105:57] You could go older and your money... You could go with something like... You could try a Viper. You might like a Viper. You might like a Corvette.

Speaker 2:
[106:05] Yeah, Grand Sport might be a good thing to try.

Speaker 1:
[106:08] You might like either a front-engine Corvette that's higher equipment or a C8, you know, Z51. You may like that. You know, if you've got $75,000, $80,000 to spend, you're deep into low-mile C8 territory.

Speaker 2:
[106:24] I feel like if you merge the Gt350 and the Emira, you get C8 Corvette Z51.

Speaker 1:
[106:29] Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 2:
[106:29] You know, it's a comfy ride like the Emira mid-engine, of course. But sound and power like Gt350. And the engine is also less problematic, probably, than the 350. Sure. Oh, Mustang Mach 1, as an honorable mention. Great ride, simpler engine, plenty powerful. And also, a guy in my school, he runs it as a track car frequently, and he's like, no problems. So, that's a pretty great car.

Speaker 1:
[106:56] There's some good options, yeah. I mean, and I really, the Gts is the gold standard, but I think your head's in the right place. You got good choices.

Speaker 2:
[107:05] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[107:06] Thanks, everybody. We'll save the rest of those questions for another day. I'm trying to get, before we go racing, I'm trying to get Chant, who's building my Benzito, to come in here and give us the nuts and bolts of the project, because I post content about this thing. People clearly want to know about it, but there's a lot of debate, which is fine, but particularly around which engine we're using, why we're using the E55 and not the M119 from the 500E. There's a very good reason. Mainly, you have to modify the unibody to do the 119. But I want Chant to take us through the whole process of it, as well as his crazy story and all that wild shit he's building. Hopefully before we race, but if not, certainly afterwards. Thank you to our patrons for support over at patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast. Get in that game today. And last but certainly not least, don't forget, we are giving away a 911 Turbo S brand new, tuned by us. You can go to the link in the video or podcast description to get over there. You can buy tickets and get entered to win. The game ends on August, I believe, 20th of this year. And yeah, you're going home with the 911 Turbo S and 75K to pay the federal taxes to offset that. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time. Bye.