A Wheel Problem; Zack's Religious (Car) Experience; Taycan GTS

Summary

The Smoking Tire Podcast — Episode: "A Wheel Problem; Zack's Religious (Car) Experience; Taycan GTS"
Date: December 23, 2025
Hosts: Matt Farah & Zack Klapman

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

In this episode, Matt and Zack deliver a fully-packed conversation about Matt’s Porsche Taycan GTS review and how it compares to his older Taycan 4 Cross Turismo, Zach’s transformative first real drive of a hot-rodded air-cooled 911 (which he describes as a religious car experience), updates on Matt’s NSX auction, and a crowd-sourced science experiment about Porsche’s spinning wheel crest. The show is peppered with automotive insights, price talk, and the usual banter—plus, audience interaction via Patreon.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

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1. Matt’s NSX Auction and Vespa Upgrade Plans

[05:04 - 07:11]

• Matt’s pristine Acura NSX is up for auction on Cars & Bids with an extended 11-day auction window to avoid ending on Christmas.
• The car’s immaculate condition is highlighted, with special emphasis on its nearly untouched undercarriage ("Your control arms are like as clean as silverware." — Zach, [05:55]).
• Matt is planning to use sale proceeds to consider new toys like a Vespa 310, noting the gap in quality and performance versus his older 300.
• Discussion of luxury/collector Vespas—some costing over $100,000.

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2. Porsche Taycan GTS vs. Taycan 4 Cross Turismo

Review & Comparison Segment: [08:28 - 29:30]

• Exterior Updates:
  The Taycan GTS facelift features minor visual tweaks, such as new headlights and a more aerodynamic nose, but is mostly similar to Matt’s 2022 Cross Turismo.

  • “If you open the door and sit in it…the answer is zero [difference].” — Matt, [09:12]

• Driving & Value:
  Used Taycans provide significant value compared to the $196,000 GTS tester, with 80-90% of the experience retained in older models.

  • “That’s a crazy thing…that I can get 80%, 90% of this current one for my car, at least when it’s used…” — Matt, [09:35]

• Active Ride Suspension:
  The showstopper is the Active Ride system—“the real game changer”—which provides exceptional body control and comfort, muting even unpredictable road imperfections.

  • “Active ride can do both at the same time. Which is…game over for a daily driver type of car...” — Matt, [13:34]
  • “It feels like an advancement similar to what Mag Ride felt like…just go, wow.” — Zack, [12:14]

• Brakes & Charging:
  The GTS brakes, especially with performance battery plus, stand out in pedal feel and stopping power, though Matt notes he doesn’t need ceramics for most driving.

  • “My brakes kind of suck.” — Matt, [14:47]

• Infotainment & Interior Differences:
  Improvements include 100% reliable proximity sensors and a ‘hard’ CarPlay button, but climate touchscreen control still irks Matt.

  • “The new one 100% of the time [unlocks with the key]…The screens infotainment a little bit faster…” — Matt, [23:53]
  • “The touchscreen climate control vents I still fucking hate.” — Matt, [25:13]

• Charging & Range:
  Performance battery plus offers much higher capacity—up to 105kWh—meaning real world range of 280-300 miles, a considerable improvement.

  • “My car if you’re chilling is like 220. That’s a big difference.” — Matt, [27:08]

• Commuter Utopia:
  The ultimate daily driver for handling city streets, adverse pavement, and long commutes.

  • “There is no better commuter…” — Matt, [25:57] (re: a Greenwich-to-Manhattan drive)

• Verdict:
  “If I was gonna get another Taycan after this one…Active Ride and Performance Battery Plus.” — Matt, [21:34]

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3. Zach’s Religious (Car) Experience: Air-cooled 911 Hot Rod

[30:10 - 48:44]

• Background:
  Zach, long inexperienced in air-cooled Porsches, is encouraged by Marco at TLG to sample a standout example: a '72 911T with RSR-style flares and a 3.8-liter 993 RS engine (making 305 whp).

• Driving Impressions:

  • Astoundingly connected steering, ultra-precise shifter (with a Wevo shifter mod), and manual brakes—all sharpened to a degree he’d never experienced before.
  • “I totally understand why people spend all the money on this…everything’s so precise, the car talks to you really well.” — Zack, [35:11]
  • “The steering…it was how good the brakes were, the shifting, all the things you talked to were so good.” — Zack, [37:58]

• Technical Details:

  • Shortened lower gears for lively accelaration, highway fifth for cruising, tractive adaptive shocks without sway bars.
  • “It’s weird, but I could not tell. This car didn’t have sway bars.” — Zach, [34:00]

• Cost Breakdown:

  • On-air phone call with Marco: A build to this spec today would cost $250,000-300,000 ($60k of that for the engine).
  • “What you had was the greatest $150,000 driving experience possible…but it actually cost 300.” — Matt, [41:07]

• Reflections:

  • Discussed opportunity cost, the pros and cons of building from scratch vs. buying done, and why these cars—despite the price—make sense for the experience junkie (if you can afford the “buy in”).
  • “It didn’t cost you 200 grand, it actually cost you 12. But you had to park 200 grand.” — Matt, [46:12]

• Verdict:

  • Zach calls it “a great education,” and urges anyone bored with new cars to pursue making an old car feel this alive and connected.

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4. Science Experiment: Does the Spinning Porsche Crest Resemble a Swastika?

[51:05 - 55:00, 93:03 - end]

• A fan performed a drill-based experiment to see if the black-and-white Porsche center cap creates a swastika illusion when spinning.
• Results: With the monochrome cap, it appears so (but not with the gold or colored versions).
• Discussion veers into animation techniques (zoetrope vs. rotoscope), color contrast, and both hosts’ skepticism about the factory’s intentions.
• Later in the episode, more historical detail: Porsche’s “Classic Hubcap” is available in monochrome, originally for models from 1965-73.
  • “For real. The monochrome one looks like a swastika when it’s spinning.” — Matt, [101:20]

MEMORABLE MOMENT

“There's no way you don't know what your logo looks like.” — Matt Farah imitating bong podcast reaction, [96:11]

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5. Car Market Talk & Audience Q&A Highlights

[Various, starting c.54:58 and especially after 56:12]

• Dumbest Performance Models:
  Matt roasts "street trucks" and “badge-only” AMGs, while Zack jokes about "Nismo Ariya" and performance-badged crossovers.

• Cars They’d Daily If Reliability Was Guaranteed:

  • Zack: Alfa Romeo Quadrifoglio
  • Matt: “The answer is Ferrari 355 and will probably always be Ferrari 355.” — [59:47]

• Manuals for Under $30k:
  Extensive rundown includes S2000, Mustang GT, Boss 302, M2, 370Z, 230i, and more.

• Porsche’s Expensive Air-cooled Builds:
  Cost explosions; why buying a sorted car can make more sense; relative value proposition vs. “cheap thrills.”

  • “Highly stressed, small displacement NA engine power is expensive. It’s just…this is why Ls’s are great.” — Zack, [43:55]

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6. Bonus: Random Fun Bits

• Discussion of entry-level luxury workhorses (ES350, Genesis).
• General car-buying math: “dollars-per-mile” wisdom and depreciation.
• Safari vehicles and the new INEOS Grenadier, complete with quail rig geekery.
• Grumbling about early '90s airbag steering wheels and a PSA about Gen 1 airbags being more dangerous than helpful.
  • “You probably should deactivate your Gen1 airbags if you have a car that has them. And maybe even change the steering wheel.” — Matt, [50:18]
• Matt (colorblind) on logo contrast: “Nice, subtle swastika. No, like, I’m just saying, like, maybe…it’s way, way more subtle. The fact that like black and white, nice, subtle swastika.” [100:06]

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NOTABLE QUOTES & MEMORABLE EXCHANGES

• On Porsche Active Ride:

  • “Active ride can do both at the same time. Which is…game over for a daily driver type of car…” — Matt Farah, [13:34]

• On the Air-cooled 911 Experience:

  • “I totally understand why people spend all the money on this…when it’s done well and the car is kind of restored.” — Zach, [35:11]

• On Cost of Building Air-cooled 911 Hot Rods:

  • “What you had was the greatest $150,000 driving experience possible…but it actually cost 300." — Matt Farah, [41:07]

• On the Spinning Porsche Crest:

  • “For real. The monochrome one looks like a swastika when it’s spinning.” — Matt Farah, [101:20]

• On Opportunity Cost:

  • “It didn’t cost you 200 grand, it actually cost you 12. But you had to park 200 grand.” — Matt Farah, [46:12]

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TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• NSX Auction / Vespa Chat.....................................[05:04-07:11]
• Taycan GTS Review (Active Ride, Value)...........[08:28-29:30]
• Hot-rodded Air-cooled 911 Experience.................[30:10-48:44]
• Cost of Porsche Hot Rod Builds..............................[38:41-41:07]
• Porsche Crest Swastika Experiment....................[51:05-55:00, 93:03-101:20]
• Q&A (Performance Cars, Daily Driver Dreams).......[57:05, 58:45, 85:46-87:27]
• Random Car Nerd Debates / Market Talk...............[71:26, 84:43, 86:22]

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CONCLUSION

This episode is classic "Smoking Tire": sharp and irreverent, yet deeply nerdy about driving, ownership math, and the joy of old and new cars. Whether you want insight into the latest Taycan GTS, need to hear the religious experience of a sorted air-cooled 911, or just enjoy mythology-busting (and meme-worthy) Porsche logo science, this show is for you.

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Patreon shoutouts, sponsor reads, and some extensive listener Q&A omitted for focus on main content.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

We open with this really. It's really a hook, isn't it? I mean, should have put this at the end. You should have, yeah. And in conclusion, we still can. Is it hard? Can I talk about the Taycan GTS on this show? Now? That's how we're gonna do that. What up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you as always by off the Record. We love off the Record here at the Smoking Tire Podcast because they are looking out for you 24 7, 365. If you get a ticket, any moving violation, big or small, what do you do? You get off the record, you don't plead guilty. You go to offtherecord.com TST input some basic information about what happened, where and why. They will fight that ticket for you all the way up and get those points off of your record. And if they don't, you don't pay again. Offtherecord.com TST don't let friends plead guilty. Make sure you and them get off the record. And if you. Man, every month, every month, every week, somebody hits me up and says off the record. Saved my backside. They've saved my backside a whole bunch. They're going to keep you out there on the road. Offtherecord.com TST. Let's get it going. On this episode of the podcast, my Acura NSX goes up for auction on cars and bids. Zach has his first real deep air cooled experience. And I compare the new Taycan GTS Sport Turismo to my 3 year old Taycan 4 Cross Turismo. Some things is a real different, other things is a real the same. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. What's up everybody? Welcome to the smoking tire podcast. 8:15am on a Friday. We were going to have Gordon Murray in today, but he's unfortunately not feeling well. And so instead I'm going to give you my review of the Taycan gts, which is totally the same thing. Stick around to the end of the show for a surprise.

[Zach]

Got a good surprise. One of our Patreon members is going to help with this test, by the way.

[Matt Farah]

What do you mean with this test?

[Zach]

Well, listeners have to wait to the end to know what we're talking about. Oh, I'll tell you.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. What does that mean?

[Zach]

They have a drill and they have the thing we're going to talk about at the end of the show and they can spin the thing on their drill to look at it.

[Matt Farah]

Science. Oh, they're gonna do science like now, like before the end of the show. Can we get it? If you're on the fucking livestream, they are. Listen, this is being recorded. Put it down and go put some AirPods in. Get that drill.

[Zach]

Yeah, I said do it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's good. Send a clip to Zachmokingtire.com or post it in the Patreon post in the chat. Yeah, we'll talk about Tycon gts. Zach had a fucking go in Marco' Cool new air cooled 911 which is like a 1970 something with like a 993 motor in it.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Which is a nasty little thing. I got into the ice race with the Manx. So there's a. We're going. We're going to the ice race. Got it. Now it means I have to sell a car to buy tires. You know, I gotta make or get spike tires. Shout out to Vredestein. Also they dropped off the new Vespa 310 in my driveway. I have it for like a month.

[Zach]

This is the one with the engine's like 5cc's bigger than yours.

[Matt Farah]

It's more than that. It turns out that my 300 is really a 278. And this 310 is actually a 310. So it's actually like 30ccs bigger, which is 10%. Makes like 5 more horsepower. I rode it once already. This is going to be an expensive press loan. Cause I'm gonna sell this car. I'm gonna be flush with cash. And after riding this for a month. I rode this one once and I go, I don't know if I wanna go back to the 300.

[Zach]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

This one after one ride. The throttle response is incredible. And the fucking shocks they've put on this. This thing has like. Is like mine feels like a rental car or a scooter. And this feels like a motorcycle. Wow. Yeah. This has really good suspension on it.

[Zach]

All right, so you're getting a new Vespa.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, maybe. I'm going to put an offer in on a used demo. When they want to sell the press ones. That's the move. So buy an ex press bike if you can.

[Zach]

Nice. Are you going to sell your old Vespa to your current trainer the way you did with the last one?

[Matt Farah]

He.

[Zach]

His last scooter.

[Matt Farah]

The cycle of scooters.

[Zach]

No, you did with the both of them. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I sold my last two scooters to trainers. Yeah. I don't think my trainer wants this one. Different trainer.

[Zach]

Got it.

[Matt Farah]

But I can't imagine Sean riding.

[Zach]

It's also a different scooter dude.

[Matt Farah]

Sean riding a Vespa would be hilarious. Ladies would love him.

[Zach]

That's true.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. But yeah, the NSX is up. It's on cars and bids now. We did an 11 day auction so that it wouldn't end on like Christmas.

[Zach]

Now is that longer or shorter than most?

[Matt Farah]

Longer.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Longer than normal normally there's seven days. So I think it ends on the 29th. It does ends on the 29th. So photos by Tatius and yeah, I'm stoked. It's ready to see a new home.

[Zach]

Cool.

[Matt Farah]

There's so many photos. Please. The underside photos you have never seen. I mean this is, talk about. This is like this car like presents as new. Basically. There's like one little nick on the leather on the passenger side and like. But the underside of this car, geez. It's no evidence the car has ever seen rain.

[Zach]

Your control arms are like as clean as silverware.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it has certainly. It's not seen rain since 2017 at least. It hasn't seen rain in at least eight years.

[Zach]

This is crazy.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So if you want to know what it's like to have a brand new car, this is what that's like.

[Zach]

Like look how shiny everything is.

[Matt Farah]

Stock suspension, components from 25 years. This car's never been dry. Ice blasted. If it had, there would absolutely a document of it in this crazy fucking binder I have. That was obsessive by the fuck.

[Zach]

So this is what cars look like when they're clean and new. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

This is a 20 year old car with 20,000 miles on it.

[Zach]

That's bananas.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Wow. So good car. Brand new tires, fly in, drive it home. Doesn't need nothing. Everything works. Turn key.

[Zach]

Longer the drive, the better. That thing is such a highway car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I drove it to Vegas, I drove it to Palm Springs, I drove it to Santa Barbara, San Diego. It's a lovely touring car. Yeah. Buy it.

[Zach]

Good luck.

[Matt Farah]

Buy it at auction on cars and bids. Take it home.

[Zach]

So are you gonna roll all the money from this into the Vespa?

[Matt Farah]

Yes, I'm gonna buy. I'm gonna put diamonds, there's that. There was a crazy designer Vespa that is like $100,000 plus and it is very silly. I forget what designer it was, but I'm sure you have. It looks like it looks a little different than a regular Vespa, but not a hundred thousand dollars different.

[Zach]

Christian Dior did a collab in 2021 and oh, that's Canadian money. Those are 36,000.

[Matt Farah]

Is it like. Does it look weird, or does it look like just different color schemes?

[Zach]

The GTS Super 300 was sold for 76,000 bucks. I can't find a weird one yet.

[Matt Farah]

There was one that was literally, like, at the Pagani showroom in LA when I went to go do the Utopia review, and it was like. It was like a coach built kind of Vespa, but it was, like, over $100,000. It was crazy.

[Zach]

Wow. There's a vintage one for 200 grand. It's like the original Vespa.

[Matt Farah]

Sure. Yeah. Wow. Seinfeld's got a few of those. He really likes old scooters. Should we talk about Taycan gts?

[Zach]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. There is. Yeah. If you scroll down, there's a couple. They're not great. It's right there. I'm sorry to say that's. But you know what a Taycan GTS looks like, and I chose poorly right there because it does have a new front fascia, and I don't know if the. Yeah, you can see it there. So it has a different headlight shape. The headlights are more. It's got, like, a clear cover that's shaped more into the front of the nose.

[Zach]

Oh, okay.

[Matt Farah]

Like, so, you know, my 2022 there has the sort of scalloped, recessed. Yeah, the recessed bit. So I think the new front end is more aerodynamic, and that's across the whole range there. That's really the only way to identify the new one from the outside. When this thing first rolled up, I was like, all right. Right away. How much different is it from mine? If you open the door and sit in it and get in it, the answer is zero. When sitting, the seats, the steering wheel, the buttons, the software's updated, but everything else is the same. If you don't have the new one parked next to the old one, it's mostly the same from a styling standpoint. I mean, it's clearly still a tayc. It's a facelift. I happen to like how the new one looks, but it's not a radical change. And generally, the experience of being in it, using it, and whatever is the same. And so that's not a bad thing because Taycans are great, but I bought mine used for $64,500 plus tax, and the new one as tested was $196,000. Okay. So, like, that's a crazy thing to think about in terms of value, that I can get 80%, 90% of this current one for my car, at least when it's used just as a sort of daily driver type of car. Right. Running errands, commuting, highway driving, city driving, stuff like that. Dynamically, that's where all the other money goes. Okay. Because the GTS has active ride. It has performance battery, plus it has rear steer, which mine doesn't have. It has power steering, plus it has sport chrono. Did I say ceramic brakes already? It has ceramic brakes, so all the stuff that makes it drive is much, much better. And having lived with an active ride taycan for a week, mine getting back to it feels kind of shitty. Like there it's like, it's air suspension. So it's like floaty and whatever. And if I get another taycan, it is absolutely having active ride. Like it's just. It matches that platform and the vibe of like gliding like so well.

[Zach]

It also just mutes so many of the weird roads around here. Especially like just around this office. There's a lot of like heaves and the land keeps settling because of Howard Hughes or whatever. So there's a lot of weird ups and downs and whoops and cracks and it really muted that stuff.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. There's a lot of the reason that people who live in cities buy SUVs and justified our crumbling infrastructure. It feels like off roading, it might as well be an appropriate vehicle for it. And active ride is a great justification for not needing an suv. This is a fucking sports car that rides like that. Sorry, go on.

[Zach]

It feels like an advancement similar to what Mag ride felt like. Remember Mag ride when that came out was this holy crap, have your cake and eat it too thing. And you just go, wow, it can get so soft and smart. And as they updated, all got smoother because the reaction time of the sensors and the motors and everything got so good. This is a big step forward.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Active ride is not substantially better than air suspension when it comes to like hard edged potholes. It is better. But that where it's really in like unexpected whoops, like an unexpected whoop in a road or like a speed bump that's still kind of smooth, that shit disappears. That's not there at all. Like if you hit a hard edge, you know, you still feel that especially cause this thing has, you know, 21s on it. If you paired active ride with a little more sidewall, that would be better. So my car on air suspension, this car on active ride hit hard edges similarly. But the whoops, the active ride is unreal. I mean it's a complete game changer. And the body control because air Suspension has cushy ride or decent body control, but you have to choose one or the other. Active ride can do both at the same time.

[Zach]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Which is. That's like, that's game over for a daily driver type of car that also needs to be sporty. Like, that's just fucking next level.

[Zach]

It's like the McLaren magic. Just do everything in every condition. It's incredible.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It wasn't so much that the GTS had ceramic brakes. That makes a difference because I never. I drove it up the mountain a little bit, but I didn't really do anything super, super dynamic with it that would justify a ceramic brake. But the performance battery plus has a much more aggressive, not aggressive, but a much more powerful AC charging system, which is what charges off the regen too. So it can do more regen when you hit the brakes, the brakes feel much better and more powerful even before you get to the caliper. And I really like that. And also my car has the base brakes. I don't need the ceramic brakes, but if I get another one, I'd probably spend for those white brakes. The surface coated brakes. They're a little bigger, they're a little more powerful. You get them with the S. Like, my brakes kind of suck.

[Zach]

Well, like around town, do they suck in terms of the rate at which they slow you down? Like on the highway?

[Matt Farah]

The pedal is soft. The pedal's soft, and I really like the pedal on the gts and in a panic stop situation, they're fine. But I'd like better guys taking a break from the show for Delete Me. Deleteme makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. Data brokers are out there. And what is a data broker? A data broker is someone who, where you sign up for a website, you put your email address, your home address, your phone number, et cetera, et cetera. That that company then sends you the knife insert for your drawer in your kitchen that you ordered. And then they sell your data to a data broker who sells it to whoever else. That again, could be your name and contact info. It could be your Social Security number, could be your home address, could be info about your family members. It all gets sold online. And then everybody gets spam calls and texts, phishing scams. Even worse. It could all be a mess. And so what do you do? You sign up for Deleteme. Okay, you go to deleteme.com tire code tire, and then once you're there, you give Deleteme the information that you no longer want to see on the Internet, meaning your name or names, your addresses, your phone numbers, contact info for your spouse, your family members, et cetera. Delete me goes to work. You don't hear from them for a few days and then they come back and go, look at all this stuff I found. And it'll be like a thousand things. And most of them you can delete automatically. Some you have to do a little extra work, a couple clicks here and there, a couple signatures here and there. And then the next month they send you another one and it's got less. And the next month they send you another one, it's got less. And then you just sort of stay at less, right? You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete me at a special discount for our listeners. For real, you sign up and then spam calls and texts and stuff, just get a lot less. It's just nice. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Tire and use promo code Tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is, is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com tire and enter code Tire at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Tire CodeTire and also brought to you today by Aura Frames. Loving the Aura Frames. They're all over. It's the perfect gift. Are you still hunting? It's like after Christmas. It's just before Christmas or just after Christmas, depending on when you hear this show. And if you are still hunting, get on the Aura Frames train. They make it look like you planned that gift all along. If there's generations in your family, whether it's young people that want to see pictures of old people or old people that want to see pictures of young people, G rated, morally healthy pictures of young people. You want Aura Frames, right? You basically preload some pictures of either the olds or the youngs into the frame and send them to the appropriate opposite group. Then you create a folder on the website with the Aura Frames app and you just continue uploading pictures that then go straight to the Aura frame that is proudly displayed in the other person's living room, right? And it's just an endless photo album. You can personalize it, you can share effortlessly, and every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. You can't wrap togetherness, but you can frame it. So for a limited time, save on that perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best sell selling Carver Mat frames named number one by wirecutter. Use promo code tire at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code tire or A frames.com code tire. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast. So order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Now let's get back to it. Some guy like me is never going to say, I don't want better breaks. Do I want to? I don't want to spend $10,000 for ceramic brakes. That's when you're not even using the caliper 85% of the time. Like that's stupid, but you know, if you need it.

[Zach]

Yeah. A lot of the sports cars we drive, and we drive a lot of sports cars, they've either whether it's through components or through just the way they've adjusted like braking fuel over the years. Like I feel like everything is grabbing earlier and earlier in pedal travel. So then when I get in a car like the car we'll talk about in a little bit, the air cooled one, stuff where the clamping force is deeper in the pedal. Even if it's really good, even if it's like a 10 piston, whatever, your brain, my brain still is like, ooh, this feels like it's not hooking up the way it should. Just because everything now engages earlier.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean I do like a higher bite, but I don't need a crazy rotor caliper in a car like this when I have such a powerful regen system. I mean, I forget in the zinger. I mean, sure, to run a fucking 22 Laguna like you want incredible brakes, but to drive the canyon in that car, you're barely squeezing the caliper because that car has a fucking hugely powerful regen system and you don't even really need the calipers at all to fly up a canyon road in one of those cars. But you know, it's a little unfair to go well my used 30,000 or 26,000 mile car when I bought it versus this brand new, much more expensive version of it. I mean, the truth is like if you want a daily, you shouldn't get a really fast ev. That's kind of a waste. The overall experience of driving around LA in my car and driving around in this car are 10% different, 15% different. Yeah, the ride is a little better. Okay. You know what I mean? It goes a Little faster. Okay. Brakes, stop. Okay. But like, they're the same car still.

[Zach]

I mean, that tends to be true for plenty of ice cars, performance cars. The changes are usually small. And unless you drive one that's, you know, back to back, five years apart, unless there's been a massive change, like, oh, this car had coils and now this one has mag ride. Yeah, they didn't offer it in 22, now it's in 25. But unless there's something like that, it's always like, oh, there's a little more power. Oh, they took this thing from the upper tier and they brought it down to the meat, the middle tier, shit like that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, I'll say it again. The active ride is the real game changer. And if I was gonna get another Taycan after this one, like, I have no regrets about this car. This car, this white car is awesome. I mean, for the amount of money I paid for this thing, it's fucking on point. I'm all about it. Fully in. But if I was gonna get another one in two years, active ride and performance battery plus. I would. Not even because of the range, but because of the performance of the battery.

[Zach]

The charging speed.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, you know, the charging speed, the regen performance and yeah, like, a little more range would be fine. If I could do San Diego and back at the speed I want to go, as opposed to doing it at 74, that would be great.

[Zach]

You want to go at the speed of traffic, essentially.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. If you try and do San Diego and back at 74 miles an hour, you're in the right lane with the trucks being passed by everybody. Which is silly. Yeah, can be done, but it's silly I'm gonna do. At least. The plan right now is to do the root scout for this Arizona desert event in a Lucid Gravity GT which has very long indicated range, like over 400 miles. So I'm kind of hoping. Which, by the way, I gotta check. Hang on. I have to double check the route that we're on for this Pacific Northwest thing with these floods, I think.

[Zach]

I don't know if.

[Matt Farah]

I don't know, but like a lot of roads have gotten fucked up.

[Zach]

Yeah. If you don't know, there's been some really serious flooding in Washington. And also there's two of them. Montana. Yeah, Montana. A bridge fell down.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

The kind of upper northwestern United States has gotten hammered by rain. And I mean, there's some towns like barns are floating away.

[Matt Farah]

Just last things I will say about the new Taycan. The certain things are really improved from my car. The proximity sensors with the key. My car. 50 50. If you walk up with the key, half the time it unlocks. Half the time you have to hit unlock.

[Zach]

Yeah, we were down at Hre the other day. Oh, no, that was a different car. When was yours? Oh, it was the other car.

[Matt Farah]

It was the other car.

[Zach]

The other car also had the same problem.

[Matt Farah]

Anyway, so my car, it's like. Half the time it'll do it. Half the time it won't. Not a deal breaker, but fine. The new one 100% of the time. The screens infotainment a little bit faster in the the addition of. I'm going to air quotes hard button because it is on the touchscreen but it's docked on the touchscreen. Hard button for CarPlay. That's a nice thing. And honestly, the hard button for CarPlay eliminates the need for CarPlay Ultra entirely. Because all I want if the native system. I get that CarPlay is better than most native systems for playing multimedia and engaging with your phone. But sometimes native systems are pretty good for doing car functions and Porsche's is one of those. The menus are not typically very confusing. The touchscreen climate control vents I still fucking hate. But outside of that, I don't know how CarPlay Ultra would fix that. I don't think they could. But as long as you can go switch very easily between your CarPlay, which is probably using your GPS function, and. And the native system, which you can with this one hard button on the dock. It replaces the button for phone because of course it does. I really wish I could get an update on my car that would get that. That changes the game. My car doesn't have it.

[Zach]

That seems like that could be possible.

[Matt Farah]

It totally does. I'm sure there's a good reason it doesn't, but it totally does.

[Zach]

Floating taskbar.

[Matt Farah]

In other words, they have not improved the backup camera. It's the same. But yeah, I mean the car is evolving and is getting better and it's fucking crazy expensive to get one of these things new. But they're dope.

[Zach]

I mean, it's the front of technology for them. Right? Like, it's always going to be expensive.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I think this is the ultimate daily driver car. There's nothing better that you could spend your morning and afternoon. Especially like, man, if I lived where I grew up, if I lived in Greenwich and I commuted into Manhattan, fuck me. There is no better commuter. You start with some windy Greenwich back roads, you hit the Merritt Parkway, fucking little bumpy, but nice undulating now you get down to Manhattan, you get over the bridge onto the fdr and the tarmac is just shit. And it's just right over. I mean, nothing better.

[Zach]

This ride's like, I think the way people would imagine a Rolls Royce rides. It's like, it's that good. But then you hit the buttons. And if you commuted from the valley, you know, if you go over Topanga, a lot of people hear that, you know, people use back roads to get places because there's too much traffic on the main road. And this is the great solution for that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's, it's really, really good. And, and it has more, you know, more range. This is a, this is like a legitimate. The GTS is like a legitimate 280 to 300 mile car if you're, if you're chilling, which my car isn't. My car if you're chilling is like 220.

[Zach]

That's a big difference.

[Matt Farah]

The performance battery is a big difference. It's physically a bigger battery. It's also a better battery.

[Zach]

How many more kilowatt hours is it loaded?

[Matt Farah]

It's a question I should know and I don't know offhand, but I bet the oligarch's thirsty machine will tell us. It is. It's a, it's double digit kilowatts though.

[Zach]

It's 105.

[Matt Farah]

It's 105. I think mine's 83. So it's like, it's significantly bigger. 105 seems like a lot.

[Zach]

I think it's 105 because in 2022, performance battery plus was 93 kilowatt hours.

[Matt Farah]

So mine. And mine is non. So it's 80. Mine was 83.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

And it would have been 93 and 20 and now it's 105. Wow. Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

According to dumping current, right?

[Zach]

Top Gear. Yeah, that's.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. All right. That's a big ass battery. Big difference. Wow. A lot of juice.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean shit's come a long way. These are so sick though. I would love to get one. Love to get one. Maybe one day and then let's go. Let's. Minus the clock. 50 years you drove in 1970. Guys, one more break today because support is coming in from true work. Zach and I were up on the mountain today and Zach was where wearing his true work coat. I noticed it. But we had four different weathers today. We had cold and windy and then we had just regular cold and then we had like hot and then we had a cooling off and then it was Hot again. And Zach was ready for all of it because he was wearing true work. I was not ready for it because I was just wearing a regular sweatshirt. I was unprepared and he was prepared. And you could be prepared like Zach was on the mountain today by rocking your own true work. They set out to make workwear that keeps pros comfortable, capable and ready for whatever the day throws at them. Like four different weathers designed with advanced performance fabrics for lasting comfort, all day mobility and year round job site protection. Every piece is tested on job sites with the trade pros so when conditions change, you're still ready. Now, if you happen to find yourself on a mountain, I do recommend a truewerk coat. If you find yourself, let's say, crawling all over a construction site, I recommend their pants. If you are doing some actual morning workout in a cold, damp, dank environment, I have their hoodie that is incredibly awesome. And you can upgrade your day with workwear built like it matters. Get 15% off your first order at truework.com codetire that's T R U E W E-R-K.com T Code Tire. And now back to the program.

[Zach]

Yeah, speaking of.

[Matt Farah]

And you're like, you're like not so experienced with air cooled cars. Oh, sorry.

[Zach]

The battery I think is 97 kilowatt hours.

[Matt Farah]

I wonder if 105 is the new Cayenne EV. Maybe.

[Zach]

I don't know. I found different 4s things.

[Matt Farah]

Thanks. AI giving us great answers.

[Zach]

This is just regular Google. Just regular old Google.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

Okay. Yeah. So I've had like very little experience with old air cooled cars. I drove a McKello's RSR replica thing like seven years ago, I think, or maybe 10 years ago. And then I drove their turbocharged, like their 930 Turbo car. But the RSR one was so long ago. Like I just didn't have a lot of experience driving Porsches at the time, even new ones. And then the turbo thing, they just feel like there's tons of lag. There's power in the straight line. It was on modern tires, but I think it was just not. It just wasn't representative of like why everyone's shopping for these. Air cooled, naturally aspirated, what it was. Singer, hot rod, whatever you want to call it, I don't really care. But since, since I drove those cars, the market has exploded. The popularity is way up. And Marco at tlg, who is obviously my, you know, old Porsche Sherpa, was like, drive this thing. And he literally said like, you don't you don't have a lot of experience driving these cool things that are made fast. And like all shop owners, he's like, and I want you to drive a good one. Which is mine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Or his customers. So this and I've got the spec sheet which is very long. I will not read the whole sheet. If you want that, you can go to my Instagram. It is a 72 911T but it has the big fender flares of an RSR. They're steel. And then the big story is the engine is a 3.8 liter 993 RS engine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

That makes 305 wheel horsepower.

[Matt Farah]

That's a ton.

[Zach]

It is a ton. And a car this light, I mean I think for most cars, 400 crank is pretty great. You know, you don't really need more than that. And if the car weighs under 3,500 pounds, like you're gonna have a really good time.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Unless you're roll racing in Tesla.

[Matt Farah]

400 horsepower and £3,000 is the answer. That's the right answer.

[Zach]

Yeah. Yeah, that's the good number.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That's a Cayman GT4 is what that is.

[Zach]

Basically it feels balanced. You can't really overdrive it. Now this car did have really good, had really good brakes, their manual brakes. But where are they out of. I forget the brakes.

[Matt Farah]

I mean they're probably just like 993 brakes or something.

[Zach]

930 calipers, rotors. It's got a diff. So the interesting thing about this mix.

[Matt Farah]

And matched Porsche factory parts.

[Zach]

It's a hot rodded thing. Transmission's a five speed, but the first four gears have been shortened, which is rad. Yeah, that's the move that is after driving this. And like I was talking about this, you know, spiders with the shorter shark works gears or whoever. Like that is such the answer if you can't just shorten the final drive.

[Matt Farah]

Shortening the final drive is not always the answer because you end up with a car that could be great in the canyon. But suck on the highway.

[Zach]

Right. That's the comprom. If you can customize your gears. Oh my God. Do that. So the first four in this are short thing revs to 8500rpm anyway. And then the fifth one is like total highway cruiser gear. It's rad. That was an interesting thing. And then the other one is that it has no sway bars. It has these tractive adaptive shocks in it.

[Matt Farah]

Oh yeah.

[Zach]

Have you used those before?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I use them. I've never I don't think I've ever used them without sway bars, but I use your. They've had them. I've tried them in like vipers and Corvettes and stuff. Stuff.

[Zach]

So the guy, the guy that used to run, I think Flying Lizard Racing recommends these tractive suspension. And so that's why Marco put them on this car and he runs them without sway bars because they're, they're so adaptive. Like they do the job of the sway bar.

[Matt Farah]

Wow.

[Zach]

It's weird, but I could not tell. This car didn't have sway bars. Like it leaned in the corner, but not a ton. And then you have. It had a little screen underneath the dash where you could, could choose five different modes. Now when I drove it, all the modes felt exactly the same. And I told Marco this when I brought the car back and he texted me like two hours later and he goes, oh, yeah. The parameters were fakacta. Like I changed them and now it rides much better because around town this thing was stiff. Like it felt. I texted him after the first drive and I said, does this have solid bushings? Because when you go over the, the rumble strips between lanes near South Bay, it was like. And he goes, no, no, no. It's just that the suspension's stiff, it has like, I don't know, polydurometer or whatever. But steering is amazing. There's zero slop, like manual steering, but you move that wheel 1 millimeter, the car moves a little bit. It was very, very exciting. And I came out of this drive, I drove it to good vibes and back. And I totally understand why people spend all the money on this show because when it's done well and the car is kind of restored, I mean, it has this primer and brown paint job.

[Matt Farah]

But are you showing these photos? You should show different photos because it's pretty.

[Zach]

It's a rowdy looking car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

But, you know, the engine's got low miles on it. The transmission I think had 500 miles on it. So it was a very like fresh build. And it's just so exciting. Everything's so precise. The car talks to you really well. Shifting is fantastic in terms of the feel of it. Like the action of the shifter is excellent. It's like a little heavier than like an S2000 or NSX, but not as heavy and chunky as Corvette. It's somewhere in the middle.

[Matt Farah]

So it's gotta have some shifter in it.

[Zach]

I guess I must.

[Matt Farah]

It's gotta have like a Vivo shifter or something in it because 915 gearboxes.

[Zach]

Excellent call Wevo shifter. Yeah, yeah. Internal gate shifter.

[Matt Farah]

I know my shifters.

[Zach]

You know your Porsche?

[Matt Farah]

Well, my safari had the Vivo shifter, okay. But I had a G50 gearbox, a 915 gearbox, and people are not going to like this without a Vivo shifter is unusably bad. That is a shit pile of a gearbox. It's junk. But with the Vivo shifter, especially if you've rebuilt it and made sure it's good, then it's good, then it's fine. Fine. It's not a G50. There's a reason G50 cars are fucking expensive. Because they actually have good shifters.

[Zach]

How much is a Vivo shifter to put on a 915?

[Matt Farah]

I mean, hundreds of dollars. It's a short throw shifter. Like it's not.

[Zach]

It's worth it.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Zach]

It's not like thousands of dollars.

[Matt Farah]

No, no, you have to do it. Yeah, you have to do it.

[Zach]

This thing felt awesome.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, you have to do it. 915 gearboxes. Third gear is like in fucking Kansas somewhere, you know. Third gear is like fucking getting onto the green in two in a par five. Like you gotta. You have to be good to find third gear in one of these cars. Cars.

[Zach]

This, I mean, this took a little getting used to, like the narrower, narrower gates. But once I had it down, then it was just the Revo makes it.

[Matt Farah]

Much, much, much better.

[Zach]

The Wevo makes this felt better than any stock fresh BMW shifter I've driven. Like, that's from his perspective. Well, they keep trying, but, you know, on the way up there it was cold and this car basically has slicks on it. And I was like a little tentative and being careful and then that coming down, I just figured it out, found the rhythm, just drove it harder. And man, like, it made me. I understand why people spend the money, but I also think this should be the goal of. If you're bored with new cars, try to make any old car feel like this. Like, just focus on those inputs and get as close as you can. And like, this is the.

[Matt Farah]

Well, even if you, you don't have to make it this crazy. Like you could put a stock993 engine in this, you know, and you could, you could make it a little more civil than this and it would still be just as fun. It just wouldn't be quite so fast.

[Zach]

Yeah, but the straight line speed is part of the equation, but it's not 50% of the equation. I think it was the steering. It was how good the brakes were, the shifting, all the things you talked to were so good.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, they're nice. And when you make them really light, if you drive like a real 73Rs or like anything, those are fucking light. Like the Tudhill. Dude. That is crazy. Yeah. When you just like, when I just like move it around in here, like, you can't believe how little effort it takes to get it to like, move or to like to steer to anything. It's like nothing takes any effort at all. It's wild. Wow.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's really cool.

[Zach]

This is cool.

[Matt Farah]

So how much would it cost to replicate this car?

[Zach]

I have no idea.

[Matt Farah]

I bet you this car is $300,000. Why do that? And this engines got to be 60,000 bucks.

[Zach]

I believe you. There's 60,000 bucks. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Call. Fuck. Where's your call, Marco right now? Ask him.

[Zach]

Might be listening live.

[Matt Farah]

Call him right now and ask him what it caught, what it would cost you to have this exact car from. From nothing. I have no car and I want this car.

[Zach]

That's a good question.

[Matt Farah]

I bet you that's a $300,000.

[Zach]

Because if people are listening, if you looked at this car, you would go, oh, someone has a project in their backyard.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it looks like Rat Roddy.

[Zach]

Hey, we' show right now. We're discussing the 72 911T.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

How much would it cost for someone to get this car made? Like, I show up to your shop, I have no car, and I say, please make me a copy of brown and gray primered. Fast machine.

[Matt Farah]

Well, I'm not very good at this pricing situation, Marco. I guess three hunch. Yeah. Between 250 and 300. Yeah.

[Zach]

Jesus Christ.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, this ain't cheap, bro. Marco. Let me guess. This engine's about 60 GS more because it has, you know, real 993Rs intake manifold. Right, right, right. And all that stuff. And like, the heads are, you know, they're billet heads from Billet Extreme. And, you know, it's got a special crank in it and rods and all this other.

[Zach]

So.

[Matt Farah]

So if you. If I wanted a car that was 80% of this, could I get it for 150? You could get it for 18180 to 200. All right. Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah, it really depends on how good the car is that you start with. Because this car didn't need a lot of like, restoration. It was very rust free. I mean, the car looks like a roach, but that's because it was laying. But the structure, the bones are really good. And it didn't need like crash repair and rust repair and all that it needed fenders and then the mechanicals. You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. Well.

[Zach]

Okay. All right. All right.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you very much.

[Zach]

All right. Thanks, buddy.

[Matt Farah]

All right. Good luck, boys. So, yeah, I mean, like I said, this is not a cheap fucking hobby.

[Zach]

Well, that's. Yeah. I mean, as I was coming down the hill and I was imagining a cost of 150 and I was like, I, you know, I'm not going to spend. That's the problem.

[Matt Farah]

That's the problem with this. What you had was the greatest $150,000 driving experience possible, but it actually cost 300.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

That's the Porsche conundrum.

[Zach]

That's the Porsche problem.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah. Because I came down going, I know this will be more expensive than I'm willing to pay for this, but if I can get, you know, do the fastback Mustang thing with Sarah, my objective is to have steering as close to that and shifting. Steering that's good. Shifting, that's good. Brakes that are good. And then old car sounds, you know, that's, that's just what we want.

[Matt Farah]

The hardest thing about doing that with a Mustang is going to be to have really good steering.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it's doable, but it's hard.

[Zach]

It will be hard.

[Matt Farah]

It's much easier to do with Porsche.

[Zach]

Is Porsche's old steering in this rack and pinion to begin with.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And there's no fucking weight up there. So you can have a manual steering rack. That feels good. That's not possible. I drove that Parnelli Jones Trans Am. Car had manual steering.

[Zach]

It was garbage, especially at low speed.

[Matt Farah]

I'm sure it was awful.

[Zach]

It was awful.

[Matt Farah]

I was exhausted in 10 minutes.

[Zach]

Yeah, that's very, very true. And this had big, huge front. I mean, this has huge tires, front and rear, but with no weight up.

[Matt Farah]

There, it makes no difference.

[Zach]

It really wasn't bad to move around and park. Well, that's a problem. That's annoying. Yeah, that's unfortunate.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Porsches are so expensive.

[Zach]

That's crazy. Now, with this car, I should have asked him, but 15 years ago, would this car have cost that much to build because the engine was cheaper.

[Matt Farah]

Correct. The car itself would have been much cheaper. And so you could have done it from there. And I mean, there's probably like, there's ways to approximate this kind of stuff. Like you can do. You know, you could buy a car that's already got a hot rodded engine and tweak it. Like, I mean, it would have to be a decent car. You could get a 911 SC for 50,000 bucks. And maybe someone has done a 3.4 crank or a 3.8 swap. And the purists don't want. But you get lucky and you get it for 75,000 bucks. And Marco can put fucking 15 and 20 or unfucking. And now you've got a hot car for. We're still talking about 90,000 fucking dollars. This is just. It's a really expensive hobby. And when you start building air cooled engines. Oh my God. Oh my God. I mean, my safari car, you know, Marco rebuilt it and we did some stuff and it needed the maintenance part of it that it needed was like $17,000. And then for while you're in there, I could get another 25 horsepower out of the engine. And that's four grand. You're like, what?

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Wow. Yeah, it's insane.

[Zach]

Highly stressed, small displacement. Na engine power is expensive. It's just. This is why lss are great. Because it's almost like for every dollar you spend, you get, I don't know, a tenth in horsepower or 50 cents in horsepower. It's crazy.

[Matt Farah]

And sometimes, I mean, a lot of times it makes more sense to just swap in different engines. So if you were to find a 72, just find an engine from an 89 that someone took out and put that in. And it's not a racing engine, but it'll be 70 more horsepower than whatever it was making. Yeah.

[Zach]

Geez. And then there's other narrow body if you want, but that will change how the hand.

[Matt Farah]

But also, sometimes people like the smaller displacement, the 2.7s, the 2.9s, because they like rev up real fast and then revved.

[Zach]

I mean, this is a racing engine. It revs so fast.

[Matt Farah]

But the bigger displacement, you know, like Carrera engines like the 3.2, they have heavy flywheels, so you could put a light flywheel on it like my car, my safari car had. But then it has that cold start thing, right? So you have to like feather the throttle. Cause the flywheel keeps it when it's ice cold, idling smoothly.

[Zach]

I mean, whatever.

[Matt Farah]

So it's all a trade off.

[Zach]

Whatever he did with this engine, this thing started immediately. It was easier to start than that slant nose I drove started immediately. It made way more torque below 4,000 than I expected. I did not downshift nearly. Like if people watch the video on my Instagram, I was running it from like four grand to six because I just didn't need to run it to nine. Even though you can. It was really remarkable. And the light flywheel, like I had to get used to how quick it revs to kind of catch it on downshifts. But it didn't really have any of those user issues that your car had.

[Matt Farah]

You do a lot more with a light flywheel. Air cooled car, you do a lot more like feathering the throttle in between gears sometimes to keep the revs where they need to be.

[Zach]

Man, that's so much money.

[Matt Farah]

I know, it sucks, but the thing about that is it's not an investment. You're not gonna make a profit. But if you have the capital to get it in money, you pay Marco to do work, you're not going to get back. But if you could buy someone else's car, you buy a done one, you buy a stock one. Because stock air cooled cars are fun too. They don't need to be race cars. But you buy one of those and if you can afford to get in, then when you get out, there's only going to be an incremental difference. It didn't cost you 200 grand, it actually cost you 12. But you had to park 200 grand. And yes, you could have made investment income off it or blah blah, blah, blah, blah. But the opportunity cost is paid for by the enjoyment of the car. And your actual net out of pocket cost is not the actual purchase price of the car. So you need to have enough capital to get in the game. But once you have that capital in your car game, you can then just circulate it and do this. And there's your car account. You just roll that capital into the next car or whatever. And it's not, not, you know, you're not minus 250. At the end of the day somewhere you might even be up, but probably you're minus a little bit.

[Zach]

Yeah, you know, yeah, you can have, you can have. This experience will essentially cost you 12 grand if you bought it for 200 and sold for 188, which I realize is a crazy number for most people, but we're just speaking.

[Matt Farah]

Well, that math works at scale, right? If you buy a car for 8,000 and you sell it in two years for six, you didn't spend eight, you spent two. Two. You had to park eight to lose. You know what I mean? To spend two. The math isn't terrible on that kind of stuff actually. That's why I like dollars per mile. Dollars per mile. Is that math applied to how much you actually drove the car?

[Zach]

Yeah, totally. This makes me understand like why type Rs, you know, older type Rs or S 2000, stuff like that deliver similar things. Great shifting engines rev. Those engines work really well and the steering's pretty damn good in a lot of those cars.

[Matt Farah]

And the other thing with these Porsches is once you get them built, whatever sorted. Very few people actually do enough miles to justify a top end Rebuild. Is the 100,000 mile service for an air cooled engine. Once that's done, it's 100,000 more miles. This car will probably never do that many miles again. So once that shit's done, you have a car that just needs oil changes for 20 years.

[Zach]

Well, the guy that owns this car should drive the hell out of it. I know he has a bunch of cars and I don't think he's listening but he should drive this car because it's fucking awesome.

[Matt Farah]

Well stuff like this where the odometer. Who even gives a shit what the odometer is? There's nothing. It's a, it's a body. And then everything else is new, so who cares.

[Zach]

Yeah, the whole interior is new. Even though it looks very like vintage and of period interior photo in here.

[Matt Farah]

I didn't really see one. I forget what the inside. I wanted to drive this car too but it showed up right at the beginning of that eight day rainstorm and then I had to travel. I forget where I was going, but I was not in Los Angeles. Yeah, simple, vintage, you know, not fancy.

[Zach]

But no, it's like just. I don't know, whatever kind of style of carpet and very simple stuff.

[Matt Farah]

I'm going to say this out loud. I hate that four spoke steering wheel.

[Zach]

Oh yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I hate it in all Porsches.

[Zach]

No, it looks so dumb.

[Matt Farah]

I don't like it. I like a three spoke steering wheel very much.

[Zach]

Totally agree.

[Matt Farah]

I do not like a 4. I don't even like it in the Tudhill KS when that, when that thing is made of carbon.

[Zach]

No. And then later when they got airbags with the VHS tape.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that's the wheel. 964 wheel. Yeah. No, no. Gen 1 airbag wheel. PSA by the way at this point like normally I'm a keep your. You know, don't fuck with airbags. Right. Gen 1 airbags are more dangerous than they are worth at this point. If you have a car it's cause they're old. Yeah, they're old and they're fucking. They're dangerous, they hurt people. If you have an impact that's high enough speed to deploy the airbag but not enough high up speed where the crash itself would really hurt you. Like an otherwise very safe car like a 91 Lexus LS400. You could get much more injured by the airbag than by the crash.

[Zach]

Oh. Cause the airbag design hasn't evolved. Of course, that was the beginning. So I wonder if it just inflates and doesn't deflate when you hit it with your face.

[Matt Farah]

You probably should deactivate your Gen1 airbags if you have a car that has them. And maybe even change the steering wheel. Just saying.

[Zach]

The last thing I would say about this is as cool as the titanium exhaust looks with the giant cans. It is loud. I was on the highway with AirPods with noise cancellation, and I didn't have a little tinnitus. A little tinnitus. That's tough.

[Matt Farah]

No sound deadening in the car.

[Zach]

Yeah. I would go with something quieter than that for sure.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So. But it was sick. It was really fun. Great. A great education. Very happy to have that class.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Air cooled cars are fun as they're. They're. They're a really good time. You know what? Well, I mean, we've. I've hit all the. All the points. All six things I wanted to. I wanted to talk about.

[Zach]

Someone sent me the video, if you want to get.

[Matt Farah]

Of spinning.

[Zach]

Of spinning Real.

[Matt Farah]

Really? Gold Crest spinning, man. God, I love our fans. Thank you to our patrons who are doing science for us in time for the program.

[Zach]

Here, I'll let you watch it.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

I haven't watched these yet.

[Matt Farah]

Do I need to hit a bong first? Sorry.

[Zach]

You should hold up. You need a therapy bong.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, wow. Okay. Shout out to this guy. Okay, here we go. This is what's gonna happen when you spin the gold crest. Hmm. I'm gonna go ahead. Well, that's not perfectly even. It's not. Hang on. He sent two videos. Let's see the second video. Is the second video the same as the first? So I'm gonna go with no. I'm. I'm gonna say that in this experiment, I'm not gonna call the myth busted, but I'm gonna say. And you can watch this video as well. And thank you very much to our patrons, Jake Shores. Shout out.

[Zach]

Jake Shores, longtime subscriber.

[Matt Farah]

In this video, it does not demonstrate that the original gold crest with the black and red stripes looks like a swastika when spinning. Now, I don't know if it's perfectly centered on the drill either. That's why I think. I think we might need to do further science.

[Zach]

We do.

[Matt Farah]

We actually have to mount a camera On a window wheel and do it.

[Zach]

It's very close, Jake. But I think it is. It's not totally centered. It's probably just mounted on. I don't know, wherever you could.

[Matt Farah]

But I really do think that there is. And someone's probably just so mad because they really know the answer to this right now because they studied filmmaking or whatever. In the monochrome, it's just black and white. Here it's black and red. But then the gold is a third color.

[Zach]

True.

[Matt Farah]

So you don't. It just won't produce the same effect when spinning. And I keep using the word rotoscope. Is it more like spirograph? Spirograph is where it draws using spirals.

[Zach]

I remember. I remember the toy when I was a kid.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. But I don't think it's an animation technique where you trace over live action footage frame by frame to create realistic fluid moments.

[Zach]

Oh, that's just like.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, not road. What's the Spirograph? No, no. What is it called? You know what I'm talking about, where you spin something.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's the horse and it's the horse thing.

[Zach]

I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

Fuck. I don't have the words. No one in the chat. Is anyone. Is anyone. All capsing this into the chats right now.

[Zach]

Carousel.

[Matt Farah]

Carousel. Spinning carousel. I guess carousel. Is it carousel animation? That. I guess that's more what it is, right? Because it looks like a carousel from the side. Yes, that is something like a carousel animation. But this is some guy doing it.

[Zach]

With, like, doing it like. Yeah, on AI.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, like old school, from the 1800s. Shit.

[Zach]

I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

But I'm sorry, people, I don't have the word, but I hope you know what the fuck I'm talking.

[Zach]

Yeah, someone will put it in the comments.

[Matt Farah]

So I don't know. In that one, I'm gonna say potentially busted when it comes to the original logo.

[Zach]

Well, I wonder, did they add the red and gold later? And they went, oopsie daisy, like, here's how we fix this.

[Matt Farah]

Stephen Miller's too young to have worked there. I know that for sure.

[Zach]

We know which center caps he has.

[Matt Farah]

Which option box he chose.

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah, that conflicted, man.

[Matt Farah]

We'll go to the people. That's a good time. Of course. Patreon.com the Smokingtirepodcast Our patrons are the best. They're fucking doing science for us in the program. And wait, is this where we put the original bit of science?

[Zach]

Zoetrope. Someone says zoetrope.

[Matt Farah]

That's right. Thank you. Again, shout out to him. Zoetrope is correct. Yeah, I knew it was in there somewhere. Check out the livestream. Talk to us during the livestream. Ask questions for the livestream. Get the show early. Get extra show. We just recorded the pro show where we revealed something very special about next year that only the pro drivers know about about. Recorded that podcast in the car the other day. And anyway, all the things are. What happens [e-mail] the Smoketirepodcast is this. No, we're not at the last episodes of the year yet. I just want to. We appreciate all of you for taking good care of us this year. In the year of J Town 2025, without the Patreon keeping the ship going, man. Man, it would have been an extreme struggle this year.

[Zach]

Yeah, it would have been true.

[Matt Farah]

Fortunately there's, you know, you're probably hearing them, skipping them. There's ads on this show which is good. You want your favorite podcast to have ads on them.

[Zach]

Trust me, otherwise the podcast won't happen.

[Matt Farah]

The podcast disappears.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Come onlyfans top supporter.

[Zach]

So good.

[Matt Farah]

In the spirit of the recent news of Nissan releasing a bunch of Nismo models, including versions of the Ariya and Rogue, what is the dumbest performance version of a car that actually made it into production? Oof. The dumbest performance version of cars that make it into production. Oh, I mean I think like the like street trucks of the 2000s that were like lower Tacoma but like didn't really have anything extra. Like yeah, the Toyota one there was like the S10 extreme, like those like mid size lowered street trucks that were just trucks that had body kits and shit. Those were no good. I didn't like those at all. Do you have a performance version of a car? That's very stupid.

[Zach]

I think I just got, I got bothered when Mercedes and Audi just started adding like AMG to things. Oh yeah, just the. You get the badge, you get some wheels. Maybe like they changed the suspension but the engine didn't change.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, cashing in on the.

[Zach]

That bothered me to no end. So that's what I would say. That's.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, the Nismo Ariya. I would probably skip that.

[Zach]

I mean that's pretty bad.

[Matt Farah]

They're doing a manual Nismo Z though.

[Zach]

Yeah, I'm good.

[Matt Farah]

I'm extremely.

[Zach]

That's what the name is for.

[Matt Farah]

Extremely excited for it. The automatic Nismo Z was awesome. Except for, I mean and the gearbox wasn't even that bad. It just wasn't a manual. That car will be a delight. It might be expensive but it'll be a delight. Excited for that. And also top, top fucking username. I'm only fans.

[Zach]

So. Good.

[Matt Farah]

Superb. Zach's clapped out Jetta. Zach don't have no Jetta.

[Zach]

I did.

[Matt Farah]

When did you have a Jetta?

[Zach]

College. I had a 97 GLX.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you did?

[Zach]

I had a black, black Jetta.

[Matt Farah]

GLX.

[Zach]

GLX.

[Matt Farah]

Shit. Not a trap. Trek didn't come with a bike.

[Zach]

No trek, just regular glx sunroof that broke the car amazingly lasted what, 3 years. Drove it across from Colorado.

[Matt Farah]

GLX is the high performance one. Right.

[Zach]

It was the nice one. So it had like the electric seats and the sunroof. Leather seats in Colorado. Terrible Choice.

[Matt Farah]

There's a VR6.

[Zach]

Yeah. Which I put an intake on so it sounded awesome. Exactly. And I think I went like 130 in it once which took a while to get to. Yeah, it's fun.

[Matt Farah]

If the car would never break down and only needed regular services, what car would you love to daily or have as a weekend fun car?

[Zach]

Well, on a Alpha Alpha quad I would do that if I knew that nothing was ever going to go wrong with it. Sure. I would rock that around for like a daily or. Because I think it's just stunning looking and it's basically an M3 but doesn't look like garbage. Average or Ferrari. Like I don't know. Pick a Ferrari that I never have to worry about.

[Matt Farah]

550. 550 Ferrari.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean and honestly like that's not. That's not even like would never break down like a Ferrari 550 is. They call them. Donnie used to call them the Ferrari Camaro because they. Not to insult them just because they fucking work. They're lovely cars. It's not even that. It's just like do I. I want to. I've never not bought a car because of its reputation for unreliability. That's never kept me. That's never been like, oh, I would buy that but the service is too much.

[Zach]

What about that's not true.

[Matt Farah]

It's 355. Ferrari 355.

[Zach]

That's the answer.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah. If you never had to worry about that, that's what you get. That's.

[Matt Farah]

That's true. That's the answer.

[Zach]

You buy it tomorrow.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Thank you for leading me to that answer I hadn't thought about. But the answer is Ferrari 355 and will probably always be Ferrari 355 Cadillac Cialistique. That's good. Thoughts on the Ineos Grenadier game viewer. You see this thing?

[Zach]

I did not.

[Matt Farah]

It's a grenadier for safari lodges. So now that the old Defender is out of production, they're hoping that safari safari lodges will buy these grenadiers which have a stadium seating in the back. Now, I have to say, despite their best efforts, When I went on Safari in 2017 with Hannah, we had a Defender based safari vehicle and it was fucking nicer than this. The back part where people sat the customer, customers was much nicer and more comfy and luxurious because it expanded outward beyond the boundaries of the car.

[Zach]

Yeah. Here they're still. They're keeping all the seats kind of within the width of the standard vehicle.

[Matt Farah]

The body is basically the lower half of the body is just the grenadier pickup truck body. The same one we drove. They've just like ripped out the inside and put stadium seating.

[Zach]

Yeah, it's got three rows.

[Matt Farah]

Three rows plus the drive.

[Zach]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It also doesn't have the bow rider chair.

[Zach]

Doesn't have the bow rider chair. So that basically the chairs remain narrow. It's like two seats across with a small. You know, there's a lot of bars on it. I also, I wonder, you know, Land Cruiser or whatever is based on Land Rover, would you say?

[Matt Farah]

I'm sorry, the one you were on was a Defender. It was a 2015. It was a final year of the old Defender.

[Zach]

All right. I was going to say if it was the old one. Simpler to fix. This is obviously BMW power plant, but with the 2015 Defender.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, no, that was a modern vehicle as well. Land Cruiser does these as well. I saw a couple other. The lodge that we were at had defenders, but we saw when we were out there, like some Land Cruiser based ones from other lodges. I mean, not terrible. Not terrible. And I do love me a safari vehicle, but maybe it's intentional. Maybe the lodge people were like, you know, we don't want them to go wide anymore.

[Zach]

It's a narrow body.

[Matt Farah]

It's a narrow body. Maybe this is for fewer people and whatever. But the ones that we had had a bench seat that had like. It had armrests in it. But it was one big bench with these nice kind of comfy armrests. It was pretty luxurious.

[Zach]

I mean, these seats look very nice. They do look really big buckets.

[Matt Farah]

But it's just two across. You could do four across in ours.

[Zach]

So this one seats six pieces, people total.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's a short wheelbase.

[Zach]

There you go. That's a better shot.

[Matt Farah]

And then the long wheelbase Seats eight people total. Yeah, I do like the Bimini roof.

[Zach]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

I don't know. That makes sense.

[Matt Farah]

That's okay. It does. That is a logical extension. And I bet they will sell those. I wonder if someone has turned one. Can you see Just Google if someone has turned a grenadier into a quail rig? Because I am sexually aroused by quail rigs. Honestly. Quail rig. Is there a granadote? You're not good at typing under pressure.

[Zach]

I'm not. Especially on a screen that has lag.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that Look. The second picture has the bowrider chair on it. Bowrider chair is fire.

[Zach]

This is a safari rig story.

[Matt Farah]

Also, it's the same truck, but we didn't see the bow rider chair.

[Zach]

But I think the quail rig. The bow riders were like. They looked larger. More like you could like sit and shoot. This is great.

[Matt Farah]

You don't shoot off the rig. That's like a big. No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rig is from getting from one field to the other and for holding the dogs and holding your guns and holding your fucking liquor and whatever. But the sickest bow rider that I was on had like cigarette boat chairs on the front with a cooler and like it was crazy.

[Zach]

That's funny.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. No, if you shoot off the rig, you're a dick bag. That's like a big. It's like a. No, no. Is to shoot off the rig.

[Zach]

Well. Cause when you get to a spot, you have to like let the dogs out and flush all the things. Yeah. And what would you be shooting at off the rig?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You're just not supposed to.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, you could like. You shouldn't even really be holding your gun while you're on the rig. The guns go in the gun compartment and you're just like.

[Zach]

Yeah, makes sense.

[Matt Farah]

Chilling.

[Zach]

Because if you drop it, drive over it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Zach]

Fancy. Drive by.

[Matt Farah]

I'm going shooting in January. I'm very excited. Some birds. Okay. USDM says. Did my first lemons race at Road Atlanta last weekend. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner. I agree. Wants to take the next step to advance my driving skills. Would you suggest a racing school or one on one coach? Well, I mean, you will not learn more at a driving school than you would with one on one coaching for the same amount of hours invested.

[Zach]

True.

[Matt Farah]

Right. Like even the best driving school isn't one to one. Having said that, if you don't have your own car and access to a racetrack, you know, those may be other problems. You know, the convenience of a racing school just having everything there. The only other reason I would say potentially is if you really do want to keep racing, not just improving your skills, I would consider attending a competition licensing school.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

So like coaching is great but a coach can't issue you a license, only a school can.

[Zach]

Like there's the Skip Barber, Mustang School, Spring Mountain does it. Of course a bunch of schools do it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

A bunch of schools, two, three day program.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And you come out of it with a competition license. So that way if you want to go race a champ, race at a race at the other series, you just give them your license and you're just in and they don't have to be like well what races have you done? So it's not all one or all the other. And I have a couple of coaches that I've used shout out to Kevin Madsen, who's awesome, saw him in Texas last weekend or two weeks ago. And other folks are very talented coaches.

[Zach]

But like I think if you can afford it, one on one is always better. And if you can find someone that has a car, I'm sure there are coaches out there that have cars, they just charge you more for that. But otherwise like you said, you have to bring your own car. If you don't have one, you know, doing, doing a school like I don't know, Spring Mountain school was great and that they didn't gave me no discount on my rate. Like I paid MSRP for that thing. But I had a ton of seat time. I couldn't have really wanted more seat time. The data overlay stuff was really helpful. They, I jumped into level two school so they weren't saying like here's where your, here's what apexes are, here's how trail breaking works. They just assumed, you know, those things. So if you jumped into a level one school it might be a little bit different. But just finding one that has like good reviews and lots of drive time, I think you'll get a lot out of it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Rage against the Mach E. Could Porsche ever build a modern special edition air cooled 911 and would it be a hit or a miss? Well first off, if they could it would be a hit for sure. Very, very difficult to build an air cooled 911 that will make the kind of power people want and also meet global emissions regulations. Supposedly this air cooled roof will meet California emissions. Having said that roof themselves and people who have driven it said it's not like quite ready for prime time. Still needs a little more development. Not a point against. Just like, you know, they're trying something very hard. Isn't the Singer Turbo engine homologated for.

[Zach]

Emissions as well, 50 state legal?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I think it is. I'm pretty sure the Singer turbo engine is fit. I think it is.

[Zach]

Is.

[Matt Farah]

Having said that. Is it? Yeah, it is. But because a Singer Turbo is still a Porsche 964, it's not the same kind of rules as if they were building a brand new car from scratch today and they were a manufacturer like that. So like that's probably one of the things that drives Porsche insane is that companies like Singer and like Roof Roof can make a car with an air cooled engine and sell it and they themselves cannot. That probably drives them nuts. It'd be much harder for Porsche themselves to do this than for Singer or ruf. And it's already very hard for Singer.

[Zach]

And Roof and plus I'd be, I mean, I guess they can make the price what they want because you have to now you have to redevelop or bring back to life an engine that's designed to not be water cooled. Because they've been doing that for 25 years.

[Matt Farah]

Right?

[Zach]

So now they go, okay, and they know how to do it, but they don't have to make those blocks from whoever and then make like the cooling channels and all these other things and then I don't know. Would it work with the current body style? Like, I don't know. And if it's air cooled in NA versus Turbo now they're going to try to make air cooled horsepower that's strong enough to propel a new modern 992.2 unibody. Which is heavier than the old ones.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Would it be, you know, good? I think that's the advantage that people like Singer or Tuttle or them have is they go, what size car do I want? And they pick one from the lineup and they go, what kind of engine do I want? And they pick one over here and they just get to Lego the thing together and make it the best they can. Whereas an oem, if they had to adhere to current constraints of safety, emissions, etcetera, they are stuck in a box.

[Matt Farah]

Totally, totally.

[Zach]

What is next up, Sorry.

[Matt Farah]

Duffel Shuffle Retirement club. What mods are left for Zach's M3?

[Zach]

I got a shifter kit to go in and some sort of brake upgrade, but not really like mods I don't really need to modify. Like, it's like Porsche horsepower is too expensive in these cars. So I'm not gonna try to get more power out of. Has all the suspension in the world. I don't need to do that. Like, I'm gonna put some all seasons on it soon and drive it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's great. Cool. Horad Sibel. I need a new, comfortable, dedicated work car in the Phoenix area to drive between restaurants. I averaged 30,000 miles a year for this task. I was looking at a new ES350 Ultra Luxury. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I mean, that's a great choice.

[Zach]

That's a great choice. That is a great choice for Phoenix. The roads are smooth. Get a car. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Genesis G9. Genesis G90 is a pretty rad cruiser.

[Zach]

Keep your warranty.

[Matt Farah]

Huh?

[Zach]

Keep your warranty.

[Matt Farah]

They have like. Doesn't Genesis have a 10 year warranty? They do.

[Zach]

Just make sure it's. Yeah, you want it.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, 30,000 miles a year. You want to be real comfy. Acuras, great seats.

[Zach]

Amazing seats.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

I think the Genesis has the nicest looking interior of those three. The Lexus is just the most robust. You get like an ES high hybrid.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Because you're covering a lot of miles. Get something that gets really good miles or mileage. That would be awesome.

[Matt Farah]

That's so much driving in one car. Yeah.

[Zach]

Almost three times national average.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That's a lot.

[Zach]

Damn.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I know how it is, though. If you've got restaurants, you got to go to all of them. Like every day. You're just lapping.

[Zach]

Or depending on how nice these restaurants are, you go Taycan GTS with the super suspension.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Is one of the restaurants near a character Charger. Yeah. H town till it drowned. Oh, fuck Mary killed the cars I've owned. I got to do people fuck Mary. Kill people's personal garages.

[Zach]

That's okay.

[Matt Farah]

That's all right. 1993 FDRX7 2003 Mercedes SL500 200699716 speaker speed with a 4 liter.

[Zach]

Yeah, marry that one.

[Matt Farah]

Marry that one. Plug the RX7 and kill the SL. That was pretty easy. Okay, listen. And sometimes watch. My garage has a short, steep ramp. Four feet long and one foot tall. That's pretty extreme. 25% great. Wow. What sports cars have the best and worst clearance? For context, my 1 inch lowered ND Miata doesn't scrape.

[Zach]

Well, that has a short wheelbase, so that really helps you out. And maybe the short overhang.

[Matt Farah]

Like 80s and 911s and 90s 911s are great at this task because the.

[Zach]

Breakover is also important to think about. Right.

[Matt Farah]

Length of wheelbase yeah, 90s Ferraris are horrible at this. They have huge front overhangs. Testarossas, horrible front overhangs. My countach, surprisingly good clearance tall.

[Zach]

Front tall over hang with the engine being way up there.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, but. But like good.

[Zach]

Oh, like r. What, like RS4 or something.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah, yeah. C7 corvettes. Horrible.

[Zach]

No go.

[Matt Farah]

Horrible. No go. They scrape on everything.

[Zach]

Mustangs are no go. Like the GTD or the dark horse we had with the splitter. I could barely get out of my driveway. My driveway.

[Matt Farah]

But a regular GT is fine.

[Zach]

That might be okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Interesting car.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, hang on. Rage against the Mach E with robo taxis and self driving tech advancing despite EV sales trends and carmaker retrenchment from EVs, will autonomous vehicles hit the mainstream before full electrification does? Yes, because they're not linked. I mean, you could have an autonomous car that is not electric. You absolutely do not need electrification for autonomy. You would need to have. I mean, all of those systems that are running need power. So you probably would need a hybrid. But like you don't need. There's absolutely a world that we'll probably be living in where you can buy a Level 3 or Level 4 autonomous vehicle, but you are not forced to buy an electric vehicle.

[Zach]

Probably. I guess maybe the question is, would like a 48 volt system, does that put out enough power for the computing needed for like, you know, I think the Waymo system probably needs way more power than Tesla's shit.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach]

I just used shit just for brevity, not because it's actually shit, although it might be because that's just like cameras, it's just less computing power. That will be. The question is, how much data load does each system require?

[Matt Farah]

What's so crazy is I saw a story this morning about Tesla has enabled this mad Max mode on fsd which makes it break laws, basically. It'll do California rolls, It'll do like 85 miles an hour. FSD.

[Zach]

Why don't you just call it like the Elon Doge mode?

[Matt Farah]

I mean literally. And so this article, people like Ed Niedermeyer, Phil Koopman and all these people that we know are quoted, and essentially what some people are saying is that this is hilarious, is that people don't like. Like a Waymo representative said that people don't like how caution, how cautious Waymos are. So they've made them be a little more aggressive and more assertive. And it turns out that people, even though this whole shit was about safety, safety, safety, safety, safety, it turns out that when People are in waymos. It's not about safety anymore. They want them to drive like an aggressive human driver that won't crash well.

[Zach]

Because people want to optimize their time. So I think people interpret cautious driving as weak, slow. And they're going, I could have done this faster. A lift could get me there quickly. Why are you wasting my time? Let's go. Even though it takes like a minute extra.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, their actual sense of math is terrible. And the predictive math is good. Meaning it says, I'll get you there in 32 minutes. And that's how long it takes. But like, it becomes about like a human is imperfect, you know, and we will accept, accept that a human will go five miles an hour above or a human will cross a crosswalk before the light turns when there's no one there. Because a human could reasonably interpret this in a way that you shouldn't be programming systems to act like that. That's not great. And that people want these computers to drive more like them is very funny because it's against. To me, in my interpretation, the whole thing about this is for safety. This is for safety. This is for safety. Which does mean being more cautious and driving like, you know.

[Zach]

Yeah. But I think if I'm sitting in a Waymo and you know, the parking lot thing we've discussed. Right, right. They don't really go around other cars. Sure.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So me as a human, because of my driving experience, social norms, the automotive body language, we all know you go, this car's taking too long. I can tell the people are still loading their shit in the trunk or they're not gonna be out. Like I can cautiously go around this car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And it's. I still feel that it's safe now, but that's my definition of safe.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Zach]

Would that be yours or your Grandma's or a 16 year old who just got their license, Their definition of safe. So that's where it's interesting. It's like we as a society are nudging Waymo in a direction where we go, well, we still want it to be safe. And if it crashed, oh my God, the lawsuits and the uproar would be huge. But we don't want it to be docile and we don't want it to drive, drive in a way that is slower than I would drive. So people are kind of asking for.

[Matt Farah]

This, but like, everyone thinks they're an above average driver also.

[Zach]

Very true. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Very, very true. I've been in a bunch of these things and I've been in a bunch of Ubers and a bunch of fucking, quote, yellow cabs. In the last year, I would rather be in the back of a Waymo most of the time. That is driving conservatively. I was in a yellow cab coming back from Austin where the driver had no sense of what moderate. Moderate throttle control is. It was. No, it was this.

[Zach]

That's terrible.

[Matt Farah]

While just cruising up fucking Sepulveda. Like, they couldn't just go and just maintain 40 to do 40.

[Zach]

I'll bet you $100 that that person thinks that by doing that when they're off throttle, they're saving gas.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

I'll bet you a milk like all the money I have. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And like, you know, a Waymo may not go one mile an hour over the speed limit, but, like, it's smooth.

[Zach]

Cab rides are oftentimes an adventure. You're like, wow, look at this person going for it. Yeah. And sometimes you trust them and sometimes you. You don't.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And like, I totally get the jobs thing and I'm pro jobs and I don't want people to lose jobs. Like, or not to lose jobs. I don't want people to lose their ability to keep a roof over their head and fucking feed their family if that's universal basic income instead of a job. Like, okay, but it's not like, that's not happening. Did you see fucking asshole said in a corner quote that people won't need. People shouldn't save money because the great abundance is going to take care of everything. AI is gonna solve poverty and it's gonna solve everything. And so you don't need to save for retirement.

[Zach]

I mean, look, he's lied to us before, but why would he do it now?

[Matt Farah]

The guy with $600 billion says you don't need to save for retirement.

[Zach]

Yeah. So please spend it to Jesus.

[Matt Farah]

The guy who can literally solve poverty himself himself today says that you don't need to worry about it because we'll solve pop when I become a trillionaire.

[Zach]

We'll solve problems.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Then he'll do the nice things not. But he hasn't done it yet because he's not rich enough to go back really quick. I think what we like about the Waymos is it they all have a driving standard. And when you're in a cab or in a lift or whatever, there's no. You get a driver's license, but you don't go to chauffeur school and learn how to drive in a way that has moderate throttle. And all the other. That person passed their license Test somehow, whatever. They hit the bare minimum. So I think that's what it is. It's like we're all trying to agree on what the chauffeur standard should be for Waymos, and we just wish Lyft and other people drove more like that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, Waymos do drive very conservatively and their limitations are very interesting. They can't communicate with a person outside of the car. They can't communicate with other cars. If they get confused. There's no way to tell one, go over there. There's no way to do that from inside the car either. They could drop you off and stop. And there's a huge fucking puddle right there. And you can't go, can you pull up two feet? So I'm not in the puddle. Those are pretty limiting. But how they actually navigate the world between. Right across the street from our studio is the fucking hub. Every morning, like 400 Waymos pull out of there and drive up and they. Right in this corridor between my house and your house and here.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, these things drive so predictably. They drive so nicely and predict when they're actually just driving. It's so nice and predictable. I don't want these things to start getting all aggressive.

[Zach]

I don't, I, I think they'll move it up, you know, 4%. But yeah, they're gonna be very, very cautious as they have been. The company has been very cautious this whole development. Yeah. Versus Tesla. So I don't think we have to worry too much.

[Matt Farah]

Mad Max Mode. Fuck it out of here, dude. Let's see Keel in tow. Any chance we'll have a go in the SCG004? Eventually. The first customer car is, I mean, they've been in development for many, many years now. Wow. I thought the first customer car was that gold car.

[Zach]

Me too.

[Matt Farah]

With the cheetah shit in it from. How many years ago was that? Wow.

[Zach]

I really thought these had been sold a long time ago.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

I don't really, really know. Adil says Mercedes EQS models have depreciated into the 30k range at that price point. Do some of the flaws start to become easier to live with? I mean.

[Zach]

If you jump out of your Ioniq 5 into an EQS. I wouldn't do that. I would keep the Onyx 5. I know your lease is running out, but, like, I, I, I hated the giant, giant, giant screen. I hated the brake pedal the most. The brake pedal. The way it was crazy away from your foot when you didn't know it was going to do that when it was like adjusting its speed and stuff?

[Matt Farah]

No, it was when it was using Regen.

[Zach]

Regen. Terrible. Terrible.

[Matt Farah]

It's not good.

[Zach]

No.

[Matt Farah]

The EQE was better than the eqs by like a pretty decent margin. But it still wasn't great. 30k is cheap. I'd probably pass.

[Zach]

I would pass.

[Matt Farah]

I'd probably pass. Yeah. It's not the EV experience I want.

[Zach]

Right. I really didn't, I didn't like either. And when I, when I see them around, I don't think they're good looking cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So they don't look like a Mercedes to me at all. Take that badge off and then think about what you're blob. So it's not a driving experience or an ownership experience I'm interested in.

[Matt Farah]

I, I agree. Yeah. Is that all?

[Zach]

No.

[Matt Farah]

Oh no. Wow. Okay. Let's see. Chappie says I keep looking at F pace and Velar V8s a few years old, but if I get one under 50,000 miles, am I committing financial suicide? I don't think Thad likes his Velar very much. I thought the Velar V8 was pretty cool actually.

[Zach]

It's a good looking car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. F paces. Here's what I'd worry about. My mom's Jaguar of that same era. The interior has gotten very sticky. That rubberized coating they put on everything got crazy sticky. The Ferrari problem and she's looking at a few thousand dollars to fix it. You have to take the whole interior apart. Yeah. So like that's. I would worry about that with F paces because they use the same exact material materials.

[Zach]

His, the Valar. His Velar hasn't been too bad. I think they've, they've done basic maintenance and yeah, they had to do some breaks at some point like and they got, you know, just get the rotors off. The Internet or whatever hasn't been that bad. And they've owned it for three years I think. So I don't think that's suicide.

[Matt Farah]

But yeah, I mean, extended warranty though. If you can get extended warranty, I would really be. That's where I, I'd be with that for sure. You know, that's tough. Oh my God. So many words. Okay.

[Zach]

Here.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Lotus Griopa. Great. Is that Gropa? Oh, Europa Griopa. Okay. Recommendations for good manual transmission cars on under 30k. I don't value wild speed, but I love a good engine. Between previous gen M2s, 86s, A530i Sport with a manual. No. Anything else that would Be good to consider to really learn to drive manual.

[Zach]

Live in Texas.

[Matt Farah]

Live in Texas. Coming from west North Carolina mountains s2000s great.

[Zach]

Sure. Under 30k you get a lot of Mustang GT. You might be able to get Laguna Seca edition boss 302.

[Matt Farah]

I mean you can get Corvettes. You can get corvettes that have LS3s in them for that kind of money. I mean a news new. The 86 is okay, but not a great engine. It's an average engine. Not a great Texas car. It's just too noisy on the highway.

[Zach]

Yeah, exactly. You do long, you do long miles there. At least that's what I, I've done.

[Matt Farah]

I'd rather have a A2 a previous gen M2 for sure.

[Zach]

That's a great choice.

[Matt Farah]

And that is a fast car. Yeah, I mean, I mean if you don't want fast, you could find. Did they make it? 228 and 230s were never manual.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

They were all audios. I think they're all autos. No, the 230i manual. Yeah, 230i manual might be nice for Texas actually. That could be fun.

[Zach]

That was the light one we drove in.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It was a manual.

[Zach]

Yeah, the white one.

[Matt Farah]

Manual.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

All right.

[Zach]

That's a very nice car.

[Matt Farah]

That's a cool car.

[Zach]

They're not sought after. So if you use one you can get it for like very low money.

[Matt Farah]

GTI with a tune that's. Oh well, I don't know if it's under 30, but first gen RS. First gen Audi TT RS you could get as a manual with the five cylinder.

[Zach]

That's a good cruiser.

[Matt Farah]

2013. 13 to 15 or something like that. To 13.

[Zach]

I mean look, I, I are Supras under 30 now? Probably not.

[Matt Farah]

Supras.

[Zach]

Yeah. Super manual.

[Matt Farah]

Probably not. Probably not. No Z4s. Z4s are all right. You know, as are like as our, you know, turbocharged. You know, your 335 eyes.

[Zach]

And you can definitely get a 370Z for that money.

[Matt Farah]

Three 370Z. Yeah. Probably the nicest one in the world.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Yeah, maybe you could, I mean you might be able to get a new gen one for that. I mean maybe ll Cartier of the SoCal Car podcast guys who drives most recklessly on the street and who's the most grandmotherly?

[Zach]

Most recklessly.

[Matt Farah]

Spike doesn't drive fast.

[Zach]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

I mean I don't hang out with anybody that drives recklessly. Yeah.

[Zach]

And I also don't, I mean there's probably other car podcasts out there I don't listen to, and maybe someone there sends it, but I don't know. All of our friends are relatively responsible, I think.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I don't. Zuckerman, when I went for a ride with him in a car, he beat the shit out of this car from Ice Cold in a way I would not have personally done, but, like, all right, your car.

[Zach]

Like, I mean, Zach Mertens, he doesn't have a podcast. He's on podcasts. But, you know, most of his videos are like, here's how my Tahoe does business. Burnouts on the. In the industrial district near my shop. Is that reckless versus driving the canyons? I don't know, but it's. It's noisier and smokier.

[Matt Farah]

Most of our friends are, like, in their 40s now. Like, we. Even if we were dick bags when we were younger, most of our friends are not driving like that on the street today.

[Zach]

It's true.

[Matt Farah]

I'm. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I wish I could.

[Zach]

There's probably a show out there called, like, the 11 tenth or something.

[Matt Farah]

There's, like, automotive journalists, like, on press launches that I absolutely won't get into cars with, but I'm not gonna, like, just shit on them on the show. That's not cool. Better forgotten suv, Jag F Pace SVR or Maserati Levante Trofeo svr. The SVR is a very good vehicle that was sold at a very good price. It was, like, cheaper than the X3M and had this amazing engine sound. It rode better. It was heavier than the X3M. I remember that. Yeah, but that's. That. That's a fucking. That's a nice car. Good seats. That's cool.

[Zach]

I'd rather have that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah. All right, last one.

[Zach]

Unless it sucks.

[Matt Farah]

Matt's video taught us stick, and now my son and I daily manuals. There we go. Any downsides to powder coating wheels? My car came black with black wheels, and I want to powder coat them to bronze. It seems more cost effective than getting new wheels. It might make resale harder. Well, first thought, the word seems seems a lot more cost effective than. Make sure your math is right on that. Last time I tried to get wheels changed colors, especially if they're already painted, it was like a few hundred dollars a wheel. It wasn't nothing. So it depends on what getting new wheels means. You don't say what the car is.

[Zach]

It's true. You should do the math, because if you can't get the stock wheels in bronze from factory, which I'm betting you can't. So if you're thinking about you'd sell these stock wheels, and then you have to. The math is buying an aftermarket set and selling the stock wheels and maybe getting some money back or powder coating the stock wheels and having those all done. So that might be like 1200 bucks. Yeah. To paint the whole thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Now, there isn't a downside to the wheel. If you have the wheel, the paint stripped and have them powder coated, like, the wheel's fine. And about resale, if the job is done professionally and it's not like an ugly color. Like, if you're talking about an enthusiast car that's black with bronze wheels, like, that's tasteful. And if there's. I don't think. I don't think it would make resale harder. I really, really don't. And I don't love black black. For me, I'd rather buy a car that was black bronze than black black. I don't like black black at all anymore. So there isn't a downside. Just check your math.

[Zach]

I'm doing so real quick on Apex's website, if you had. If you had a 20, 22 M2, getting bronze wheels in 18s from them is 1600 bucks.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

And that's. That's total. So that's for four wheels.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

So that might be. That might to your Matt, like, that might be cheaper or really close to the same price as getting, you know, new coating on. And also, when I. When I bought wheels from them, they didn't have the wheel I wanted in the color I wanted. And I said, oh, okay. Like, I just quickly threw it out. I could just get them painted gold later. And they're like, ooh. Who don't add a coating to a coating because, like, it might not stick that well. So if you get your stock wheels painted again, if the coating isn't great or it comes off in a few years, that will hurt your resale value and it'll look like shit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The cost to have it done properly, it's not like, oh, I just do it like, whatever. But, yeah, we open with this really. It's really a hook, isn't it? I mean, should have put this at the end. Should have, yeah. And in conclusion, we still can. Right before we started doing the show. First off, Gordon Murray was supposed to be with us today and unfortunately had to cancel last minute. Said he wasn't well. So hopefully he gets better soon. And we get to talk to him soon. So we're just doing radio. Anyway, then right before we started, someone sent us this video of a Porsche 996, which wheel with a black and white Porsche crest in the center cap, spinning and at a certain speed when it spins, which looks like normal road speed to me. The crest, when spun, really does resemble a swastika.

[Zach]

Really does.

[Matt Farah]

Like a rotoscope. Like if you looked at a swastika in a rotoscope. You know those things that. The spinny, old Nickelodeon type machines where a thing that spins and it looks like a horse is galloping or it's like light on, light off light. You know what I mean? It's like somewhere between flipbook and film.

[Zach]

A shape of whatever turns into another shape because it's spinning a certain revolution, right?

[Matt Farah]

Well, as it turns out, the Porsche logo. And we have a YouTube short from the best possible source, which is apparently a podcast called Dope As Usual, where these guys just fucking hit bongs straight up, which is my kind of podcast.

[Zach]

Because this was not the video we saw this morning. We saw a different one, but then.

[Matt Farah]

This is a better version of what we saw.

[Zach]

Porsche logo, swastika, spinning. And the top result, we just click on it and it is the funniest thing in the world.

[Matt Farah]

And it's fucking these guys with like pretty incredible quality tubes in their hands. I mean, it looks like. Looks like extremely high quality glass.

[Zach]

What I thought was funny is that all of them have a tube. It wasn't like they're sharing personal bongs. Each one has.

[Matt Farah]

Well, like, I haven't really. I haven't really been in a session like that. You know, post Covid where a student.

[Zach]

Is that a jam session? Everyone's got their own instrument.

[Matt Farah]

It was never a byob. You know, bring your own bong. Was. Was what we did back in the day. But like, post Covid, I imagine we're not sharing glass as much as we were. So anyway, these guys. Guys have power tubes and are just reacting to stuff. And this dude's reaction to. Can you just play this? This guy's incredibly fucking high reaction to seeing this while holding a bong in one hand and a lighter in the other. The accent on the word fuck. It's not shut the fuck up, it's shut the fuck up.

[Zach]

You draw the F out. Shut the.

[Matt Farah]

And. And it's.

[Zach]

So this is the best.

[Matt Farah]

There's no way you don't know what your logo looks like.

[Zach]

And then you got the one contrarian. I don't think they know that and then I love the clapback over 90 years. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Can the audience hear what we're hearing on that? Is that, does that audio have to go into our microphones? Well, the audio. So. So basically what we're saying is when the logo, I haven't seen it in gold yet. In your standard gold. But in both the example that our friend sent us and this example, it seems to be like a black and white version of the crest that really makes a swastika when spinning and Wow. I don't know if they were doing black and white versions of the crest back in then they might have just been all like the gold crest.

[Zach]

Well, I think what makes it is like the bars, you know, the black bars and the gold crest which I'm looking at. It's black and red. I mean we gotta do a mountain shot.

[Matt Farah]

I think we just have to do a mounted shot on my car. Oh no, I have HRE caps. We have to. The Taycan also has HRE set caps. It's okay. We'll find a 911 somewhere in this place. Building full of 9 11s. We'll find one somewhere to get a mounted shot of. But we will have to test it with a gold. See, I think at least for me, colorblind matte. Because red and black go back to the other one where it's like black and white. When it's black and white, that's a very stark contrast and that's going to produce a much different result than black and red which, which like maybe if you see color normally it will produce a real evil looking black and red swastika. But I don't think I'd be able to see it. But when it's black and white, you're making a rotoscope. Like that's what black and white does.

[Zach]

Well, so for people, like if you're listening when it's spinning, the white shape is like I guess the swastika and the black is the negative space.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Zach]

And the black and the red crest. It's a pretty dark Red is a dark shot. It's a pretty dark red blurred together more and it's less distinctive.

[Matt Farah]

I don't know. This is a really rare. I don't know what it's like to see color normally.

[Zach]

So when you look at this.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, no, it's black and red. Okay, but, but I can see black and red. But to me, when you put sort of certain colors near each other and they're not distinctly different or contrasty, it could get a little murky. You know, like in small, particularly in very small scale like this, like on watches and within logos of stuff. And a lot of times that's why. Excuse me. I've had this lingering cough since like Texas.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And I've taken Mucinex twice a day, every day. I'm almost through the whole pack actually, actually. And this morning is the first time I forgot to take it. And I'm really noticing the difference. I was like finishing this pack and being like, I don't know if this Mucinex is working because I don't really fully feel better.

[Zach]

But is Mucinex in. Is it congested?

[Matt Farah]

Expectorant and decongestant and it's what my pharmacist told me to take. But having not taken it this morning, there is a huge difference. Actually. I have to take some at lunch, but point being, without the big contract contrast, I don't think you get the same effect. Or I mean, you will, but it's way, way more subtle. The fact that like black and white, nice, subtle swastika. No, like, I'm just saying, like, maybe it could be possible that you don't get the same effect because to get a rotoscope like effect, you really need that contrast of black and white.

[Zach]

I'm looking, looking up. I don't know if I'll be able to find it quickly. But when the Crest. I don't know if. Did they change it from black and white to black and red or.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think so.

[Zach]

Is it always in black and red? And it's just like a cost thing. Sometimes you get black and white, you know, center caps and sometimes you get the other one.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think those are factory center caps. I think that's a. I think that might be. Yeah. Or maybe you can order it. I'm not sure. But I don't see a lot of brand new cars with, with those with black and white center caps like that. I mean, you can get. I could probably get those on fucking Amazon for $25 or something.

[Zach]

No, no, for sure. I was gonna see if like that.

[Matt Farah]

Looks like that wheel looks like that Carrera S wheel. Like a 991.2 Carrera S wheel that would have the machined front, the machined face and then the black.

[Zach]

So this website, this is shop.porsche.com. okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So you can get it from Porsche, right? Yeah.

[Zach]

All right. Because I, I also agree with you. I wanted to make sure this isn't just like an aftermarket thing. So.

[Matt Farah]

Monochrome Porsche Crest.

[Zach]

Gotcha.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, look.

[Zach]

Do they know for real?

[Matt Farah]

For real. The monochrome one looks like a swastika when it's spinning.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Something tells me the gold was one won't Porsche. Or at least not as much.

[Zach]

Is this. Oh, Porsche.com, porsche. So this is Porsche.com and they call these. A new website for those listening. Porsche.com calls these the Porsche Classic Hubcaps.

[Matt Farah]

That's not helping the case.

[Zach]

These are on a set of fuchs. This is definitely an older car.

[Matt Farah]

It looks like a. Yeah, like a late 60s, early 70s, early 70s.

[Zach]

Black and white center cap with a white surround.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I might be wrong here. Waco. What is the description there available in the form the new edition of Hubcaps for the 65 to 73. Well, it's not going back to the 40s, that's for sure.

[Zach]

Never forget they say wow.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Okay. Yep.

[Zach]

Well, really, should we email the Porsche reps?

[Matt Farah]

Should we get a quote from somebody about that? Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. See, that's certainly a thing. That's our show, guys. I'm sorry Gordon Murray's not here with us. I hope he's all right and we'll recover quickly and we'll talk to him soon. Thank you for joining us today. Appreciate you for all of 2025, really. And if you want a great NSX, it's on cars and Bids right now. See you guys later. Bye.