Bentley Auction; SL63 AMG Review; Q&A!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Smoking Tire – Episode: Bentley Auction; SL63 AMG Review; Q&A!

Release Date: March 13, 2025
Hosts: Matt Farah and Zack Klapman
Podcast: The Smoking Tire
Episode Focus: Bentley Turbo R Auction, Mercedes SL63 Hybrid Review, Classic 911s by Singer, Listener Q&A

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1. Bentley Turbo R Auction

Auction Overview and Strategy

The episode kicks off with Matt Farah discussing the strategic decision to auction his Bentley Turbo R on Cars and Bids with no reserve. The primary objective was to determine if selling the Bentley through this platform would result in a profit or loss. Matt set a personal challenge, termed a "game," aiming to drive the Bentley as a daily driver for a year while keeping expenses below what he spent on leasing a midsize electric vehicle (EV).

Generating Buzz and Auction Dynamics

Matt and Zack delve into the marketing efforts behind the auction, highlighting the significant attention it garnered. Matt mentions, “We pulled out all the stops to get as many eyeballs as possible on the Bentley auction” (03:24). This aggressive promotion resulted in an impressive 47,000 views on the auction page, underscoring the extensive reach and interest the Bentley Turbo R attracted.

Auction Outcome and Reflections

As the auction progresses, excitement builds with bids reaching $37,000. Matt reflects on past experiences, saying, “The game was, we're playing with house money. And so what can I do? Can I do this?” (19:25). Eventually, the Bentley sells to a bidder named "Awful Mechanic" for $38,250. While Matt acknowledges that the final bid didn't surpass his initial hopes, he remains satisfied with the outcome relative to his game’s parameters. “If we get something with a four, yeah, I'm super stoked,” Matt comments (34:14), emphasizing his contentment with meeting his financial goal.

Audience Interaction and Market Insights

Throughout the auction discussion, Matt and Zack address listener comments and market comparisons. They explore whether the Bentley's final price reflects a premium due to Matt's reputation or if it aligns with the broader Bentley market. Matt muses, “What I'd like it to be worth is just the general knowledge across all of these platforms, that buying a car from me is a safe bet” (46:22), suggesting that his established trust may have influenced the auction's success.

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2. Mercedes SL63 Hybrid Review

Performance and Features

Transitioning to the Mercedes SL63 Hybrid, Matt and Zack provide an in-depth review of its features and performance. Matt describes the car as “insanely fast” with “800 horsepower and 1024 pound-feet of torque” (52:14). The hybrid setup offers a 10-mile EV-only range, integrating modern technologies like Bosch traction control and motorsport-grade ABS.

Driving Experience and Critiques

While praising the car’s speed and comfort, Matt raises several criticisms. He points out the limited practicality due to the small trunk and the inconvenience of the electric top mechanism. “The tablet... pops up the video screen... [is] very distracting” (58:22), Matt expresses frustration with the augmented reality dashboard, which he finds unnecessary and disruptive during driving.

Comparative Analysis

Comparing the SL63 Hybrid to other models, Matt observes, “If you were going to rent or, sorry, at least a new EV, so hopefully we wouldn't have problems” (28:08). He contrasts the Mercedes with the Porsche 911 GTS, favoring the latter for its balance of performance and practicality. “This thing's 4,800 pounds. That's a lot of tire and brake” (66:38) Matt critiques the SL63’s weight and brake system, suggesting that it doesn’t match the agility and ease of handling found in modern sports cars.

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3. Driving Classic 911s Reimagined by Singer

Experience with Singer’s Restomod

Matt shares his exhilarating experience driving two classic Porsche 911s reimagined by Singer. The Singer-modified cars impress with their seamless integration of modern technology and classic design. Matt notes, “The engine was incredibly smooth” (15:05), praising the meticulous craftsmanship that preserves the essence of the original 911 while enhancing performance and reliability.

Comparisons and Craftsmanship

The hosts discuss the comparison between Singer’s work and other customizers like Gunther, highlighting the superior quality of Singer’s restorations. “This is a 300 mile car. So I was not fucking around in this thing” (16:00) Matt emphasizes the reliability and daily drivability of Singer’s 911s, contrasting them with more extreme modifications that may compromise functionality for performance.

Aesthetic and Functional Excellence

Matt lauds the attention to detail in the Singer modifications, stating, “There's no bus left. It so well captured the essence of what you loved about the original thing without like going overboard” (15:56). The reimagined 911s stand out both visually and mechanically, offering an optimal blend of vintage charm and contemporary engineering.

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4. Listener Q&A

Diverse Automotive Inquiries

In the Q&A segment, Matt and Zack address a variety of listener questions spanning topics such as car ownership costs, modifications, and personal automotive preferences.

• Unlimited Funds Car Choice:
  Listener Sandy Lane asks about selecting a car from a country they've never purchased from before.
  Matt contemplates, “A Persang Bugatti Type 35, which is made in Argentina” (70:32), illustrating a unique choice that combines heritage and rarity.

• Handling Leaky Cars at WCCS:
  Listener Finn inquires about managing leaking vehicles at Westside Car Storage.
  Matt explains, “If a car is leaking so much that it's really problematic, we basically force the owner to get it fixed” (87:32), highlighting their proactive approach to maintenance issues.

• Best V8 or V10 Experience Under 100k:
  Listener Alex Palazzo seeks recommendations for V8 or V10 experiences within a $100,000 budget.
  Matt and Zack suggest options like the Dodge Viper and Audi R8, discussing the balance between performance and practicality.

• Ownership of High-Maintenance Cars:
  Listener Enrico Palazzo asks about turning down high-value cars due to maintenance costs.
  Matt advises, “Any car that is not... that's such a pain in the ass that you're now afraid to drive” (85:55), emphasizing the importance of affordability and reliability in car ownership.

• Automotive Wisdom and Career Reflections:
  Listener Christian Larson queries about automotive wisdom and career regrets.
  Matt reflects, “I would have asked more questions before going to college” (87:16), sharing personal insights on pursuing a career in automotive design.

Practical Advice and Personal Anecdotes

Throughout the Q&A, Matt and Zack offer practical advice, drawing from their extensive experience in the automotive industry. They discuss the costs and benefits of car modifications, the importance of reliability, and the emotional aspects of car ownership.

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5. Conclusion

Final Thoughts and Upcoming Milestones

As the episode concludes, Matt and Zack reflect on the success of the Bentley auction and the insights gained from their experiences with the Mercedes SL63 Hybrid and Singer-modified 911s. Matt announces his upcoming trip to Montana, aiming to enjoy some skiing, and teases discussions for future episodes, including the milestone TST1000 on March 30th.

Appreciation for Listeners and Patrons

The hosts extend gratitude to their listeners and patrons, encouraging new audience members to join their Patreon for exclusive content, early access to shows, and additional perks. Matt emphasizes the community aspect of their podcast, fostering a space for automotive enthusiasts to engage and share their passion.

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Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [03:24]: “We pulled out all the stops to get as many eyeballs as possible on the Bentley auction.”
• Matt Farah [19:25]: “The game was, we're playing with house money. And so what can I do? Can I do this?”
• Matt Farah [34:14]: “If we get something with a four, yeah, I'm super stoked.”
• Matt Farah [52:14]: “It’s insanely fast. 800 horsepower and 1024 pound feet of torque.”
• Matt Farah [15:05]: “The engine was incredibly smooth.”
• Matt Farah [87:16]: “I would have asked more questions before going to college.”
• Matt Farah [85:55]: “Any car that is not... that's such a pain in the ass that you're now afraid to drive.”

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This episode of The Smoking Tire offers a comprehensive look into high-end car auctions, luxury hybrid vehicle reviews, and customized classic cars, all while engaging with listeners through thoughtful Q&A sessions. Matt and Zack's candid discussions provide valuable insights for automotive enthusiasts navigating the complexities of car ownership, modifications, and market dynamics.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

Today's episode is brought to you by off the Record. And big news. So many of you emailed me about this last week so you'll know, but we have a new code for off the record, new for 2025. All these codes get passed around all over the Internet and then before you know it, everybody's got them. And people with that og good stuff have to find a new code that not everybody has. So the new code for off the record is TST 25. You can go to off the on the web browser or if you're using the off the record app, it's code TST25. TST25. And of course, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, off the Record is the very best. They are a service that connects you with a qualified attorney in the jurisdiction where you have just received a moving violation of some kind. They then fight that ticket on your behalf, get the points off your record, and you are good to go. So many of you use them. I use them. So many of you love them. I love them. And now we have a new code so they know that you came from us. And so you get the right 10% discount with your services. So code TST25 on the app or offtherecord.comTST. all right, folks, the time is now. This is going up live as we are selling my Bentley Turbo R at no reserve on cars and bids. Will I get hosed or will I miss bank? We're going to find out today. Plus, Zach and I review the Mercedes SL63 Hybrid. And I went out to Willow Springs to see what the hell the new owners are really doing out there. Plus, take a quick spin in two classic 911s reimagined by Singer, their classic air cooled 4 liter, and their new turbo study project. And I tell you all about them today on this here episode of the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go. Hello and welcome. It's that day. It's the day we find out if I lose money or make money, right? It's the Smoking Tire podcast. It's Bentley selling day. No reserve, cars and bids, front page. This was a good one. We did it. We pulled out all the stops to get as many eyeballs as possible on the Bentley auction. And there was a little bit of criticism. And this isn't gonna be like an attack the haters thing, but there was some criticism that the amount of eyeballs that I could get on this car is not representative of what a regular person can do, to which I Say the game wasn't, can a regular person do this? The game was, we're playing with house money. And so what can I do? Can I do this? Sorry, that's true. Not every, you know what I mean? I can't, like, I can't undo the meanness of me. Like, we could be consumer Reports and like anonymously buy cars and test them if that was the gig. But like, that's not the gig. And like, who wouldn't take advantage of getting eyeballs onto a cool thing that they're selling?

[Zach Klapman]

This is our version of the swag bag you get at the Oscars if you get invited, you get an eyeball, iPad or whatever. You know, you get all, you have free things. So.

[Matt Farah]

Well, like, and we're not trying to, like, I'm not trying to like move the market, but like, I think this is a good example of like, I mean, I guess you could call it a best case scenario, right? A car that's like, not a barn find, but like one owner and like on its way to being a barn find and, and rescued just in time before it really started to go to shit and then just gone through with reckless abandon. Because with a Turbo R, you have two kinds of cars. You have low mile cars that look great and need 40 grand in work, and you have high mile cars that look okay but probably run awesome. I saw Donnie the other day, his Turbo R on the day I saw him hit 100,000 miles.

[Zach Klapman]

Whoa.

[Matt Farah]

And it looks, dude, it looks really good. Like it's a really nice, clean, good car. I mean, he'd probably get, I don't know, 25 to 30 for it, right? But with this, it's like we bought the right car. We did all the things we then did, like the super duper duper detail twice. Well, once when we bought it a year ago and then once. And then we redid the interior detail because I wasn't happy with it. And then we had Jonathan Harper shoot the photos, which is great. Get a great photographer, you know, and then, you know, I don't think, I think, I don't think Doug would have also made a video of just any car. I mean, if I said, hey, Doug, I'm gonna go, I wanna sell the nsx, for instance. Like, he probably wouldn't have made a video of it, but this one was interesting to him. So. Okay.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, the concept is interesting. I mean, I think the math versus a leased car is very interesting, for sure.

[Matt Farah]

And he didn't make a video because it was me. Yes, I had a Fast track. But like, he makes videos of lots of cars that don't belong to me and he doesn't make videos of lots of cars that I own. But the numbers on the auction were wild. I mean, just scroll down. We don't have to necessarily. Just the eyeballs. If you scroll down on the auction page with 32 minutes left to go, and this is no reserve. So it's selling. Keep going. It's going to show like metrics. Keep going. It's right above the comments thing. One more, one more. There. 47,000 eyeballs on an auction page is pretty stout. Wow. For a car that is, you know.

[Zach Klapman]

For an old Bentley that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I'd like to see some comps to other listings, but that's why four videos about this thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. For what was essentially my wife's daily driver for. For a year. You know, it's not like it's, you know, a Miura or something.

[Zach Klapman]

No, but this, it's a good. This actually might get more attention than Miura. Like if you guys owned a mirror. I think the audience in general is more interested in can I ball on a budget than can I daily a 2 million dollar mirror.

[Matt Farah]

I agree. And this car, I just think is captivating because it is the kind of car that I think, like, it's like itching to move into ironic cool. Like, people want it. You want it to be the kind of car that like Gen Z hipsters are driving in. You know what I mean?

[Zach Klapman]

Like when Volvo box.

[Matt Farah]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

But this, I think this is genuinely cool.

[Matt Farah]

It's also genuinely cool.

[Zach Klapman]

It'll take a while to get to ironic cool.

[Matt Farah]

It's genuinely cool for a certain type of buyer. It's ironically cool for another younger type of buyer. If you're under 35, you're buying this, like, kind of as a bit. Right.

[Zach Klapman]

Because you weren't alive when rappers were driving these. You're like, I heard people used to like these things.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so. So when. When grand, you know, old rich grandparents and rappers and criminals were driving, these things go down. The Internet's gonna. What if the Internet ends before this auction ends? Like, fuck, we'll never know. It'll be the last episode of the Sopranos where it just goes black. The timer gets down to 10 seconds and then all of the Internet turns off and you'll never know and my car will just be that thing that is talked about for millennia. That was the thing that no one found out the answer to. The day the Internet turned off. I Think Tony Soprano died, by the way, and so does David Chase.

[Zach Klapman]

What?

[Matt Farah]

Sidebar. Just discussing the ending of the Sopranos, which I'm sure you're like well versed in.

[Zach Klapman]

I've watched the season once, so I don't remember at all.

[Matt Farah]

The ending was very controversial because it was a massive dramatic buildup.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Set to Don't Stop Believin'and then it just kind of. And then it goes to black. Like not even like at a on beat. Like it goes to black. Like off beat.

[Zach Klapman]

Left it very open ended.

[Matt Farah]

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I. But the implication is that Tony and possibly his entire family are murdered.

[Zach Klapman]

Now, do you think that's a fun trick that authors, screenwriters and stuff do where they go, ooh, it's up to you or is it lazy?

[Matt Farah]

I think if you watch the documentary on David Chase, who's the creator of the Sopranos, it's pretty interesting and good. And he implies that it's not that much up to you that he sets the stage for Tony being murdered in the film.

[Zach Klapman]

He thinks he left a lot of breadcrumbs for.

[Matt Farah]

He pretty much kind of implies that. Okay, yeah. He never outright says it, but it's not as it's. It's designed to point you at him being murdered without having to show it versus the gore of a whole family being assassinated in the last episode of a show. So anyway, things are moving along and we've got 28 minutes to go so we can talk about other things. In the meantime, I went out to Willow Springs yesterday, guys. Support for the smoking tire comes from the podcast Drive with Jim Farley. You know Jim Farley, he's the CEO of Ford. Not only that, this guy has a GT40 and a Cobra and all kinds of amazing vintage American metal that he races wheel to wheel at places like Goodwood. He's a boss. And you gotta check out this show. It's where Jim talks to some of his favorite people about what they drive and what drives them to succeed. They just started season three with some sick new guests, including Vicki Butler Henderson, the British racing driver and fifth gear personality Randy Nonenberg from Bring a Trailer and T Pain, the musician turned drifter. Guy's got skills, actually. I listened to it the other day. It is great. Jim is a great interviewer. He's insightful and it's interesting hearing these folks open up to him. I really am about it. I support Jim's venture here to listen to Drive with Jim Farley. Just search Drive with Jim Farley in any podcast app. That's Drive with Jim Farley and thank you for supporting this episode. Oh yeah, it was raining all day.

[Zach Klapman]

I know.

[Matt Farah]

And so jealous.

[Zach Klapman]

You drove two singers.

[Matt Farah]

I did, I did. I drove the classic one and they were quick goes. I did basically three. I don't even want to call them really like laps at speed because they were borrowed singers on a wet track, you know, with no. Like it was basically I was there for a photo shoot and all these cars were there and someone said, you know, would you like to have a go in between takes? And so I was not about to say no to driving the new. The Turbo Study, which is the new car from Singer. But I first got to have a go in that orange classic which was like their sort of press car and like long term development car and you know, the classic. What was really nice about that is it's. There's a. There it is. There's a photo of it up there. It's the orange one. You've probably seen it. It's the most, probably the most photographed Singer coupe that there is. It was so. It was very, very lovely to drive. It had some small ass seats in it that I didn't fit in so good. But it felt like just a really nicely made hot rod old 911, which I think is a great thing. The engine was incredibly smooth. You know, it's a 4 liter motor and it had great power and it was really nice and you pretty much could drive it every day. It had a really good ride. It was clearly set to like soft and because it was wet, I mean, and it was not. I was not pushing it. I was probably going. I mean like if. If it was 60%, it was a lot because the other car, the Oslo blue turbo study had 310 miles on it. Belongs to a friend of mine, customer car. Very nice of him to say that I could have a go and. This thing is wild. By far the most interesting thing about this car is how much it doesn't feel like you started with another car at all. Like, you know, like almost every. I mean every. Pretty much like Gunther, the Italian stuff, the Lancia based stuff. Like you can always tell that they started with a car and they took it apart and they rebuilt it like way better. But there's always just some like little hints that they had started with a car and took it apart. You know what I mean? There's always something left. I've never seen any quote resto modded car at any price point of any type where there was so much nothing Left. But it so well captured the essence of what you loved about the original thing without like going overboard. Like you know how it's like, yeah, that's well put. You know like a technician knows how to do something and an artist knows when to stop. It's like that, you know, it's like they knew the exact right place to stop everything. And so like. Is it faster than the Gunther Turbo? No, I don't think so. I think, I mean in terms of like granted wet and I was driving it with all the systems like still on. It has like modern like co engineered like Bosch traction control and motorsport grade ABS and all kinds of stuff that has multiple settings allowing you to dial it back to zero. Again. We're talking about, look at the still. That plastic on the seat has never come off that seat. This is a 300 mile car. So I was not fucking around in this thing. It was literally just have a quick go just to get a feel for what it's about. When you got in it, you. I mean Zach's been there and I don't know how many people out there have been there. Some of you have the smell of a brand new Porsche or any brand new. Could be a brand new Aston Martin, could be a brand new, you know, whatever. Like super high end six figure car. Brand new. You first the smell when you get in it. It's an unmistakable new car smell. Resto mods don't typically have the smell.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, true.

[Matt Farah]

This does. And I got fucking, I got in the car, I was like. And I'm looking around and I'm like sniffing and like touching stuff and I'm like everything is new. Like, like they make everything like factory level. Like that door card could have come from Porsche. Like this. Must I know why this shit like this drives Porsche nuts. Porsche would fucking love to be able to build this car. Preuninger if one day, if he woke up tomorrow and he could build this car, he'd fucking wake up with a boner the size of this fucking camera stand right here. Right?

[Zach Klapman]

He had blank check open team restrictions.

[Matt Farah]

No restrictions. I mean none of that. This is that. This is if like literally today's Porsche was allowed to build yesterday's car. That's what it feels like. And I'm like, oh, I wonder if.

[Zach Klapman]

They buy the Porsche glue like out the back door. That's how they get the smell right?

[Matt Farah]

Or something so crazy no one else is getting anywhere close to this. And the Gunther is a different thing. The Gunther is like such a lunacy hot rod. This is a daily. This is a daily driver car for somebody. Like the ride, the clutch like.

[Zach Klapman]

Well it was like the roof you drove. Nothing similar execution but what was so noticeable about the roof for me was you could drive it every day. It felt comfortable, it felt soft enough, it felt easy enough but also was exciting and you know, stunning.

[Matt Farah]

It was like the roof in some ways where you go this looks old but the engine feels so modern, you know. And the Gunther engine is insane. Like insane insane. But doesn't feel modern. It feels like an insane old school engine, you know like when you start it like it sounds like old air cooled stuff. This engine when you start it it sounds like a current like Carrera gts. Like it's air cooled but it doesn't sound like a traditional air cooled engine. It sounds much more like a modern which is like a totally different thing. And it's like its power band is like the 3 liter Carrera based engine power band. Like there's more and it's light but just, just quite a treat. A fucking really, really nice thing. I kind of like they're so expensive. I just like this is, this is way out of fucking my league. But it. But I Maz 2 years ago was like I can get you one. The deposit is this much. And I, I was like I don't know, it seems like. And now I drove it, I was like oh God damn it. That's fucking. I there's. It still would have been like selling basically everything else but like.

[Zach Klapman]

And a few years ago I mean they were under a million dollars. Right. And. And like that's not affordable to most people including myself.

[Matt Farah]

But it's not affordable. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

They've like doubled at least.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And you understand why like you literally is not type possible to buy that type of experience from any current mass production car.

[Zach Klapman]

Just not. That's a good way to put it because I am this week I'm driving this crazy 1970 Cheville from Ironworks. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Downstairs. I didn't go downstairs and it's.

[Zach Klapman]

I. It's very nice. I didn't drive in the rain yet but it's perfect time. It's three days of rain with like a big blower and stuff. The timing is bad you know but they execute things to a high level. But my comparison is going to be singer and when you get in the Chevelle you a lot of it is hand milled made but there are things you go that's left over.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. There's always something and I'll. I'm going to Call it out in the gunther. It's the 993 air vents and also the H Vac behind it. Because when I could, there was an audible whirring from the system, like there was something in there. Like they hadn't been fully. Fully restored and redone. Like, there's always something, even when the car's like, a million dollars. So, like, I was. I mean, and I'm sure if you. An expert, could probably point out one or two things that are left, but, like, I looked over this thing for quite a long time, and I couldn't find anything.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, look, their motto is, go.

[Matt Farah]

Back to the auction. We're distracted, but let's just make sure. Still holding 19 minutes remaining. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Now, do you want to do the math on this now, or do you want to wait till the end? End?

[Matt Farah]

I can say what the math is.

[Zach Klapman]

The good news is in a good spot.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The last time we did this, which was when I sold my DeLorean. Right. It was real close. The thing got. They had convinced me to settle pretty low reserve. It got to the reserve, and then it stayed there for, like, six days.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And then. And the reserve was like, 40 grand or something. And I was into the car for maybe 48. And, you know, at the last second, the bidding went crazy. It ended at, like, 57 and change. And it was a huge, very exciting moment, but it was very stressful. The game that we made up for the Bentley was can we drive the Bentley? All total expenses in. Now, I didn't include the costs associated with the sale. Right. Like the detailing and the photography and things like that. Those were not taken into account.

[Zach Klapman]

I was gonna ask. Now, do you include the first detail when you did paint correction and stuff?

[Matt Farah]

Not. No, because people who worked for me at the shop did it. I mean, in any car I owned. Didn't matter. What if it was the Mach E? The Mach E got corrected by Derek twice. A car that's corrected by Derek twice is unusual for most people, but not for me. Typically, if we have someone drop out of an appointment at the last minute, Derek's too expensive to cancel on. And so I usually just have him do one of my cars. I'm not gonna miss out on it. So that is not unique to this car. It's unique to me. But, like, okay, so anyway, it costs about $10,000 all in to lease a midsize EV for a year, or at least it did a couple years ago when I did it. It's a little cheaper now. Okay, but when I did it. That's how much it costs. So obviously that's how much I was comfortable spending on a daily driver car for a year, which is shared between my wife and I. We don't have our own daily drivers. So I thought when we found this Bentley, because it lived right up the road from me, we walked by and we thought about, do we want this? And everyone said, if you want to buy this car, you better drive it every day. And we thought of a game. Can we drive this car every day for less than I spent on a Mach E? So I put car cost $20,000. I then put $23,000 into it over the course of the year. And then insurance, which now I would have had to get insurance for both cars. But this car, because it's classic insurance, was actually cheaper. The Mach E was more to insure than this. The Taycan is way more. The Taycan is almost triple to insure for a year what the Bentley was. So all in. If I sell the car.

[Zach Klapman]

If you spend less than 10.

[Matt Farah]

Correct. The game wins. Okay, so car plus servicing got me to 43. So when we crossed 33, that meant we were within the 10. So we had officially won the game. That I completely made up and means almost nothing. If we got to 35, then we can also count the insurance and the fuel. Okay, so I can. All right, great. If it gets to 45, which it may do, I will not only have made a full on all in net profit on the car, which for a turbo R is insanity, but I will have also set a record for turbo Rs. Now it's a record on the bounce. Folks gotta take a quick break from the show because support is coming in hot from Deleteme. Deleteme makes it quick and easy and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. It is so easy you have to invest just a little bit of time with Deleteme. But what you do is you make an account and then it asks you to tell them everything you want deleted. It's pretty much like your current and previous addresses, your current and previous employees, employers, your family members, your phone numbers, their phone numbers, anything you wouldn't want malicious and or very annoying people to have. You then tell them and Delete me goes to work in the background. You don't hear from them for a while, a couple days, and then they send you this monster report of everything they've taken down, everything they're still attempting to get taken down and then some stuff that like you have to approve them doing the next step to getting it taken down. And then deleteme keeps going. You go through that and then they send you regular personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it and what got removed. It's not just a one time service. It's always ongoing working for you. Constantly monitoring and removing the personal information that you don't want out there on the Internet. Privacy is important to me. They got, I mean, the first email I got was like, we found 1100, you know, instances of this stuff. And so each report does get a little smaller, which is nice. But take control of your data. I took control of mine. Keep your private life private by signing up for delete me now at a special discount for TST listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan. When you go to joindeleteme.com Tire T I R E and then use promo code tire at checkout. That is 20% off when you go to joindeleteme.com tire and then use promo code tire at check checkout. One more time, join delete me.com tire enter code tire at checkout. Now back to the show because I assume that as these cars were depreciating, one sold at auction for 160 grand, right. When it was 240 new. Right. So we're talking about on the bounce they went, they hit the bottom and now maybe back up.

[Zach Klapman]

Have you seen any comps to your car condition and such?

[Matt Farah]

Not exactly. There are no comps on the market for it right now. But if you go into the comments of this auction, which we don't need to do, but people at home can do, there are a lot of people who claim to be owners and experts who have essentially co signed onto this one as either saying things like, this is the one to buy, buy with bid with confidence, you know, things like that. Okay. And so it would be crazy if I could, if we could because. And also like, if we decided to keep it another year, the math would be amazing.

[Zach Klapman]

Unless it cost another 20. If it's 20 per year, that would be wild. Which I don't, I don't address things like hardware breaks once usually.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And then some of this shit's good for like 30,000 more.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, so much of this stuff was like what you might call once in a lifetime.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, like the window regulars, they hadn't broken.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And then they broke once.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, all of them broke once. 30 years after the car was new and that was 2,500 bucks for all those. I had to replace the air conditioning compressor. Like that's 1,800 bucks. Like the next person ain't doing that. That's a 30 year part. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff. The insanely expensive, not the seat motors, the seat brains, the ecus for the seats. Those are like two grand a pop. And I had to buy both of them. Those are not going back.

[Zach Klapman]

So someone just asked a very good question. Shout out, Tyler. Which is, is it worth owning an aging car that was constantly in the shop as a daily versus the new ev? So do we factor in the emotional or mental load?

[Matt Farah]

The Ford had to go to the dealer a bunch too. I think if I did, if I did number of days in first year, if I did number of days down in year of ownership, I think the Ford might have been down more than the Bentley.

[Zach Klapman]

Now that, yes, fair. Also to be fair, that was like first year Mach E. Probably a little more reliable now.

[Matt Farah]

They're better now. But in my experience, if you want to talk about my experience, the number of days, I call it a wash. And that's a favor to the Ford.

[Zach Klapman]

That's true. I think we're talking about if you were going to rent or, sorry, at least a new ev, so hopefully we wouldn't have problems. But I guess we don't know. You don't know, dude.

[Matt Farah]

You don't know. I mean, new car, New cars break all the time. I mean, you, what you get. What you get is the knowledge of. I'm not gonna have to pay to fix that. You know, the car may be down, but at least, at least I can, you know, not, not have to lay out an unknown amount of money for whatever the fuck, you know.

[Zach Klapman]

That's true.

[Matt Farah]

So it's, it's. And also like with, you know, with a turbo R or any old specialty car, you have to either be pretty handy or have a pretty good relationship with someone who really does know what they're doing. Because there's not the people who know what they're doing on old Bentleys and Rolls, like there's like five of them. They really know what they're doing. And there's 100 other people that are going to make shit worse.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, I mean, it's a niche market anyway. And then finding good help within any car market is tough. How many Bentley repair shops or sorry, BMW repair shops are there in SoCal? Hundreds probably, because there's a lot of those cars here. But finding good ones is the subset. So of Bentley, you Know, the selection's even smaller.

[Matt Farah]

Leave this page up because we're getting to the end. But just to finish off on the thing, you know, the Singer vehicle design stuff, everyone knows it's amazing. But this turbo study car, we're out of restomod now. It's a different.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, it's a new. It's a body in white situation.

[Matt Farah]

It's a new car, basically. Yeah. I mean, it's on the. It's on the level, I think in a lot of ways of what Roof is doing. Not necessarily with the carbon tub, but if roof gets a VIN number, like, we're sort of in that same realm over here.

[Zach Klapman]

I would agree with that. Five years ago, when Singer came out and I saw what they were doing and how much attention was literally paid to every single thing you can see and things you can't, I went, that's a different leak.

[Matt Farah]

But driving them back to back, you'll go, oh, yeah, this is the fucking. What's up. But you know, also the reason I was at Willow Springs was for a photo shoot. But I met with the people who bought the track, who I do know. I knew them before and I know them now. And they showed me. I can't say what they showed me, but they showed me renderings. They're not, you know, city approved plans yet. They're just. They're the renderings.

[Zach Klapman]

The dream.

[Matt Farah]

They're the dream, but in my opinion, extremely grounded in reality.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, yeah, they're not gonna render these things. No.

[Matt Farah]

Extremely grounded in reality, but like, dude, wow. It's going to be extremely sick.

[Zach Klapman]

Nice. Cool.

[Matt Farah]

It's what they showed me from, logistically, aesthetically, from a use of space. I was extremely impressed. And it's not just going, you know, going to be a thing. That's just. That's. That's, you know, walled off for billionaires. That's not the idea. The idea is that it's representative of the larger Southern California car community. And so there's like, there's going to be something for pretty much everybody. It's really, really, really cool. I'm very, very excited. I also got to lap the Hudson Hornet. What is this? It's my friend, the guy. My friend who owns the Turbo, among other things, has this Hudson Hornet NASCAR.

[Zach Klapman]

Which is, you know, is this like a 52?

[Matt Farah]

I don't even. Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed. I don't know anything about it. And it lives here, it lives downstairs, but it sounds great. It's got four on the floor and it's clearly a nascar. The gearbox is heinous. You cannot find gears for anything. But it looks so cool. And if they can sort out the shifter linkage a little better, it's exactly the kind of car I'd like to roll around fucking car week in. You know, like for a car of its age, it's like reasonably quick interior is just gorgeous.

[Zach Klapman]

There was a pair of hornets that won the 1951 Daytona 500. Yeah, like as a team, I don't.

[Matt Farah]

I don't know. I don't really know the history of this particular one. Just that it was a NASCAR and.

[Zach Klapman]

It'S rad, but it probably. Would it make like, I don't know, 220 horsepower maybe.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

What engine's in it?

[Matt Farah]

Do you know? I don't know. I don't know anything.

[Zach Klapman]

Was it loud or quiet?

[Matt Farah]

Not that loud.

[Zach Klapman]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Not that loud. Yeah, no, it sounded healthy, but not loud. No, I couldn't. I could tell you very little about this car, dude. I don't know. But someone, someone was just like, hey man, you want to take a lap in the Hudson? I looked at. I was like, uh huh. Yep. Absolutely.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, it's a 1952. I'm proud of myself for guessing that engine. Wow. No information on the engine, but that car is on this Wikipedia page.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, really?

[Zach Klapman]

It's got a little bit of clout because it used to be. It's somewhere nice. It used to be at the Ypsilanti Automotive Museum.

[Matt Farah]

Cool. That's good times. But. And on the way home, we've hit 30,000 miles on the Taycan, so bought it at 26. 4.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, cool.

[Matt Farah]

Now we've at 30.

[Zach Klapman]

Wow. Yeah. Getting her done country, basically.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah. It's a good thing the wheels are coming along because I'm actually going to need new tires soon.

[Zach Klapman]

Speaking of impressive mileage total tangent. But Vin Tra hit 12,000 miles on his Ferrari 360 in a year.

[Matt Farah]

He personally did 12,000 miles in a year. Good for him.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Seven minutes left in the auction and we're installed at 30,200. I mean, dude, there's a bunch of people watching this one. They've got to be. It's got to be people going to dive in.

[Zach Klapman]

37. 37. Do I hear 37?

[Matt Farah]

I'm not mad. Look, I would, I'd happily sell it at that. And if you asked me what I thought it would get when we started this process, I said I'd be happy at 35. And I said I'd. And I said I would not be mad. About numbers. A number with a three. So if we get something with a four. Yeah, I'm super stoked.

[Zach Klapman]

But you're already in the black, which is great.

[Matt Farah]

Well, no, no, I'm not in the black. I just won my own game. Right.

[Zach Klapman]

Compared to the.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Thing.

[Matt Farah]

I've lost an amount of money that I'm comfortable with.

[Zach Klapman]

You've lost less money than you would have.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

At least a car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, totally, totally.

[Zach Klapman]

At least if you'd leased a Maki based on.

[Matt Farah]

There are a bunch of new comments. It was 107aminute ago. Scroll down. Let's see if any of these are anything needs to be answered. Okay. What do I think it'll be worth in 20 years? I think if it's kept in this condition while other cars disintegrate around it, you know, if you did 2,000 miles a year for 20 years, you know, this would then have 64,000 miles on it, which is not a ton for one of these cars. And if you kept it up, I think it would still. I think it would still be very valuable. Yeah, for sure. Cars. I like this one, Steve Struss. It'll be worth even more after it's presented at pebble beach in the cars of YouTubers class of 2065. That is funny and awesome. I would really like that.

[Zach Klapman]

They should have that class. Or at least Radwood of that class.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are people saying that I should be more in the comments and less on the podcast?

[Zach Klapman]

No, no, no, no. Someone just added people should ask their questions on cars and bids. If it's about the auction, not in the podcast chat, which I reinforced and posted.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but this thing's also been up for a week. If you've had serious questions about this car, you should have asked them before five minutes later. I understand how people are. People are watching cars. You know, they go out to carsandbids.com and they see a car that's ending soon and they see maybe it's at a price that they want to go in on. And all of a sudden they're playing a little catch up.

[Zach Klapman]

The MSRP was nearly twice what the Countach's was.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it was more. No, my Countach MSRP was 107 in 1987 and this was 241 in 1991.

[Zach Klapman]

Is there a Bentley you can buy today new that costs more than the Revuelto? I don't think there is unless you go super custom Mulliner stuff.

[Matt Farah]

I guess the Brooklyn's line is dead. That was the Highest end line, Right. I think. Well, the flying spur speed hybrid is like 400. You can get up to like maybe 450, which is about what this car is, adjusted for inflation and you get an awful lot more.

[Zach Klapman]

But the revolt was 700, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yes. Oh, compared to Lambos.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm sorry, comparing to flagship Lambo. If you compare to Huracan. But at the time the Countach was the flagship Lambo.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. And actually it's kind of funny in hindsight. It seems underpriced actually. The Countach, like in what universe is this Bentley twice the car at Countach, like that's crazy. It's made better.

[Zach Klapman]

Twice the seats, twice the doors, twice the ashtrays. Twice the ashtrays.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, no. It has five times the number of.

[Zach Klapman]

Ashtrays because it has six.

[Matt Farah]

The Countach has one, the Bentley has five. Yeah. None of which have ever been used. Do you know how much fucking restraint I had for a year to not fucking rip a Cuban in that car and use the ashtray?

[Zach Klapman]

Why didn't you do it?

[Matt Farah]

I don't know.

[Zach Klapman]

That smell would go away in like a day.

[Matt Farah]

I know. I just, I never got all the. None of the ashtrays had ever been used. And I was like, it's only mint. Or the cigarette lighters, I was like, they're only brand new.

[Zach Klapman]

I wouldn't use a cigarette lighter. Cause stuff could stick to that. But the ashtray, can you take it out and wash it?

[Matt Farah]

I mean, probably. I probably could have. It was a missed opportunity. One of the happiest car people I've ever seen in my life is a character I saw around Malibu on Sundays driving his Alpha gtv. It was like an older dude with like kind of that sort of Al Pacino. Not like slicked, but like, you know, sort of a two third, a three quarter length. Do brush back. Yeah, brush back. Roll around in this GTV with a fucking 18 inch stogie and would just do the whole canyons at half paste. A lot of tobacco. When he would park at the top of the snake, his whole interior was like an ashtray. Dude. It was so. But he was the happiest person I ever saw. Yeah, it seemed like he bought that car to be an ashtray, which I support.

[Zach Klapman]

18 inches of cigar over and over again.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but like, but like, you know, and I don't give a fuck. Gtv, that's just your ashtray that runs great. I mean, talk about a tool for happiness.

[Zach Klapman]

That's someone who's just like, this is a car I Use it as a car.

[Matt Farah]

We're getting down to two minutes and there's no bids. Dude, either. We were all very optimistic about what this car is actually worth. And I got hyped up about it going over 40 or it's about to get hot, hot, hot. What do you think?

[Zach Klapman]

I think you'll get a tiny nudge, but I would be shocked if it goes over 38.5. Okay, that's what I think.

[Matt Farah]

The employee gambling at Westside Collector Car Storage.

[Zach Klapman]

They have an over under happening.

[Matt Farah]

It's Price is Right rules. But the bets are, like, real optimistic. They're all like, 50, 60. I don't think they watch the market very well.

[Zach Klapman]

They probably don't and they want to get you excited.

[Matt Farah]

But scroll back up. Is someone gonna get in the game or what?

[Zach Klapman]

So 36, 5. 36, 5.

[Matt Farah]

That's so weird. 7. Oh. So it's increments of 250. There we go. Someone's in. So there is. There is somebody. There is somebody watching.

[Zach Klapman]

Number of bids. 26.Number of bids total.

[Matt Farah]

If we set the record. You know, this is company money. So you're. You are part of the company. You're invested in this. This money goes back into the company.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, but we've talked about this. It goes to you because this is your project, right?

[Matt Farah]

Because your percentage of the profits were already paid out last year. But nevertheless, the money goes back into the company.

[Zach Klapman]

Look, I want it to do as well.

[Matt Farah]

And if we do have a. If we have a record. Yeah, if we have a real.

[Zach Klapman]

If this goes really well, 37,000, which.

[Matt Farah]

It might, then we're gonna have a real nice steak dinner. Steak 48 with a fucking.

[Zach Klapman]

But how will we get there?

[Matt Farah]

Do you know what the size of a wine bottle is bigger than a Magnum?

[Zach Klapman]

I don't know it offhand, but I know there are many gradients.

[Matt Farah]

A Nebuchadnezzar.

[Zach Klapman]

Is that what it is?

[Matt Farah]

A three liter?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. And you get bigger from that.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, come on. Someone get in the game. Not that I'm not happy with 37k, but I thought this was going to be an exciting bit of bit of radio. Okay, 37.

[Zach Klapman]

5.

[Matt Farah]

37 5.

[Zach Klapman]

Someone jumped it up.

[Matt Farah]

I don't. I swear. I'd rather have 30 minutes of. Great. This is, like, kind of fucked up. I know the value of money, okay? And I want as much money as we can get, but I'd rather have 20 minutes of great radio right now than just have this die at a number I'm happy with after one bit.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, well, you now if it had been at 20 and then it got to 37, right now you'd be ecstatic.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. But if it, if it started at 35 this morning and if it gets to 45, I'm gonna be ecstatic.

[Zach Klapman]

But like you need an increase during the show. That's what it really is, right?

[Matt Farah]

This is why television is scripted.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, yeah. Cuz you never know. 37, 37, 750.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, any comments need responding to?

[Zach Klapman]

We got two people going back and forth now.

[Matt Farah]

Keep going, keep going. Issue.

[Zach Klapman]

Here we go.

[Matt Farah]

Servicing car. If you don't live. Oh, we got four people in the game. Go down. How the Connor. The Connors milfy. How many times is an old timer giving you a thumbs up or a smile at a traffic light or gas station? That's what's really funny. It's young people that do that. Old people don't really notice the car so much. Young people are shockingly responsive to it and are like, you know, what's up? Which I really like. Runo Nagamara. I'm sorry. PDR paintless dent removal for the minor dings in the hood and trunk lid. Feasible. Yes, absolutely. They're very small. It's like they're like from acorns, like dropping on the car. Like really small. Like someone as fastidious as me and insane as me about the car, if they were not something that I could walk by every day and ignore, which is very hard for me, then I would have done them on day one.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, true.

[Matt Farah]

I think, honestly, a couple hundred bucks, the PDR and you're good to go. They're on perfectly flat surfaces. Your PDR guy would fucking have the laziest day ever. He could be half asleep doing it.

[Zach Klapman]

38.

[Matt Farah]

Come on. 10 seconds. Somebody get in the game. Oh, is it dying at 38? Well, no. Is that it? 38? No. Man, I thought this was gonna be like, oh, hey, still alive. How about. How about cars and bids for getting the fucking drama going? This is so funny. Do you have Doug's phone number? Can we get him on the phone or should I get my phone and get. And get Doug on the phone?

[Zach Klapman]

That's a good question. I just love that you're like, I don't know if we're talking. I don't have it. Talking fans into it by just like them wanting to help you out for 250 and get you excited or if this bidding war was always going to happen because these four people really want.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, a bunch of people have really been interested in the car. I mean, keep go down, don't. I don't want to see the top. I want to see where the comments come in so we can answer them as, what's going on? Someone says, zach, I bought the E46 M3 you reviewed on Cars and Bits.

[Zach Klapman]

The black one. That was a pretty nice car.

[Matt Farah]

The daily vroom is about this with the auction YouTube commentary. And I fucking agree. There should be YouTube commentary for all auctions. And I've pitched this to every feasible auction site we have. Is it done? Oh, it's over. Awful mechanic. 38,250. I mean, look, I'm happy with the number, but actually, I think given what people were saying about this car, I think it went cheap. I think they built me up a little bit to make me think there's.

[Zach Klapman]

Also some economic pressure happening.

[Matt Farah]

There are. It's not a great time to sell. Tax time is around the corner. Looming fascism, possibly the cratering of the entire US Economy.

[Zach Klapman]

A friend of ours that runs a repair shop was like, the bays are pretty empty right now.

[Matt Farah]

I went, ooh, oh, people are not servicing their cars.

[Zach Klapman]

People are not doing maybe voluntary work as much.

[Matt Farah]

Really?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Well, was it Awful Mechanic is the username, I believe. Awful Mechanic.

[Zach Klapman]

Where does it tell us?

[Matt Farah]

Right? Go down, down, down, down, down. Keep going, keep going there. Sold to the Gray Bar. Go up. Go up Gray bar. Sold to awful mechanic for $38,250. And I have to say, like, I think he got a really good deal. I actually did.

[Zach Klapman]

It's an awesome car.

[Matt Farah]

It is an awesome car. If you're still in the comments, Awful Mechanic. Let me know where you live. Where is the car going to go? I'm interested to see what kind of home it will have. But, but I, I, I kind of, I kind of did think it would possibly set the record, given what Cold bear bump. I mean, maybe I, I maybe. But I think maybe it also proves that the bump is only worth so much.

[Zach Klapman]

You know, we don't know. If you were just normal person selling this car and it was as nice as it is and had all the documentation and all the other stuff, would it have sold for 32? Like, is this honest Bentley market or is this a little bit of Even with all the extra eyeballs, is there any kind of like, I wonder if there's a Matt Farah prestige tax or value that goes onto it. Is that worth two grand extra?

[Matt Farah]

I mean, what I'd like it to be worth is just the general knowledge across all of these platforms, that buying a car from me is a safe bet is a known quantity that I'm not gonna try to sneak something by you. And so whatever the sale price is, I mean, there's so many things that are outside the control of just, you know, I've kept this car nice and I think this is a very. There's a very specific type of person who wants a car like this. So if. I mean, if I was. If it was the other way around and someone else call it Freddie or what other. Chris Harris. Let's just call it Chris Harris because he's known for taking pretty good care of his cars. If he was selling it, would I want it? I mean, no, maybe not. I mean, the fact. The way that we found this car was so accidental, I would never have been like, you know what? I want a turbo R. Let me go shop for one and see what it's about. It was like. This was like four houses up and we were walking by. So, you know, you end up with a.

[Zach Klapman]

But I think there's probably some. There's an overlap where someone's interested in this kind of car, and they are probably fans or viewers of automotive media. And they go, oh, well, if I'm gonna get one, you know, if I'm gonna buy it, buy a T shirt or a collectible thing and I can get one that was owned by you or him. It's like, I bet there's a little bit to that for sure.

[Matt Farah]

Probably a little bit. But I doubt it's much considering. It's like. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it is. I guess we'll see. Oh, here. Majestic. Majestic Fook. Majestic Fook says if I did my math right, Matt's net ownership cost equates to a $400 a month payment, which is pretty good for driving around in a flagship British Luxo barge for a year. I completely agree. 38,500.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So, I mean, yeah, that actually, that math does sound right.

[Zach Klapman]

So you spent 4500? Yeah, that's fucking. That's pretty great.

[Matt Farah]

Pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's.

[Zach Klapman]

And to have what an experience that led to all the stories, all the videos. Well, questions. Because if you were just driving a, I don't know, Ionic 6 around, people would not ask as many questions.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, people. When we got the Mach E, there were the video views on the traffic on. Those were pretty good because I was the first person to. In the media to like have one for long term. And so Those ongoing videos did work, but now, three years later, four years later, EV crossovers are so common.

[Zach Klapman]

But I think my point was like five years or ten years from now when you're talking to friends, they'll be like, oh, that was cool. They might not go, oh, how is your second gen Mach E?

[Matt Farah]

No, for sure. I mean you can get a car for less than $400 a month, but you can't get a car cooler than that for less than $400 a month.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, someone said you can lease Ioniqs for two years for like ten grand now. Yeah, but it's not, it's not a Bentley has provenance and there's like presence to it and it was, you know.

[Matt Farah]

Allegedly quite a good car really. Like, you know, things that went wrong in it were things that go wrong on 30 year old cars. The parts may be a little more expensive, but it's not like, but deeply flawed automobile.

[Zach Klapman]

When you showed me your repair bills, I was upset because they weren't that far off from BMW repairs in parts.

[Matt Farah]

You know that was like when I got, when I did the engine rebuild on the nsx which is quote just a Honda. And oh by the way, Your once every 6 years engine out on an NSX is within 300 bucks of your once every 100k top end rebuild on an air cooled 911.

[Zach Klapman]

Wait, you had an engine rebuild or did you just have the full service?

[Matt Farah]

The once every six years major service on an NSX most of the time is an engine out. Here's where somebody, there's like a couple of people around the country that can specialize in NSXs and can do this service without taking the engine out supposedly.

[Zach Klapman]

But is it a rebuild or is it.

[Matt Farah]

No, no, no, not an engine rebuild.

[Zach Klapman]

You said that.

[Matt Farah]

No, I'm sorry, it's not a rebuild. It's the engine comes out and it's all the hoses and it might be they might replace the water pump or something like that. I mean it's like some accessories and hoses and wires and blah blah, blah. But the point is all in, it wasn't any cheaper than the 911 for quote, just the Honda. Wow.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, yeah. Everything fun is going to cost a.

[Matt Farah]

Bit of money, but 400 bucks a month to drive a classic Bentley for a year all in is really not good.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So. All right, well bought awful mechanic. And I'll get at you in the DMs when we're done with this particular podcast. And thank you to cars and bids and Doug for putting it front and center. The. Should we talk about the Mercedes?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, we can talk about that.

[Matt Farah]

So we've been driving the SL63 Hybrid, which is a lot of car. It's insanely fucking fast. 800 horsepower and 1024 pound feet of torque. And it's evolved. It's sort of a one and a half gen from the naturally aspirated V8 1 we drove two years ago. It has an electric motor and battery which can give you 10 miles of EV only range. And it can also do all the torque filling and stuff and also does reverse. Love the color China blue.

[Zach Klapman]

I do, too. Really good. But yesterday I saw a Subaru Crosstrek. I'm calling it Tacoma blue because it's like this flat kind of clay blue that looks really good. But I was next to a Crosstrek in traffic. I went, that's pretty close. But it's a good color. That's why it's popular.

[Matt Farah]

This car is so fucking fast. Did you take it up the mountain?

[Zach Klapman]

I didn't, but I spent three hours doing many errands in it yesterday, and it was sublime.

[Matt Farah]

It's very, very fast. And if you put it in the right mode, it's really good. And the two good modes are EV and sport. Comfort.

[Zach Klapman]

You don't like it?

[Matt Farah]

No, not at all.

[Zach Klapman]

I was just cruising around. The ride was noticeably better than the other.

[Matt Farah]

No, I'm sorry. Soft shocks. Sport mode. The shocks are in soft. It's sport plus where they get hard. So you. Or I'm sorry, I do my individual mode, which is sport powertrain and comfort shocks. But I really don't like when the engine is going on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off. Like a Prius.

[Zach Klapman]

Tell you what, if the battery's drained, it doesn't do that very much. No, I didn't. I didn't charge it at my house. So for me, it was basically gas all the time.

[Matt Farah]

Well, if you put it in sport mode, it'll charge the battery back up, like while you're driving. So, yeah, in comfort mode, it'll drain the battery and then it'll stay drained. In sport mode, the engine will be on all the time, but it will charge the battery back up anyway. To me, it's a little bit. And I wrote this on Instagram. If you want the written version of it. It's a little too much of everything, not enough. Focus on a couple of things. For instance, the fact that it has back seats means the trunk is smaller. The front seats don't go as Far back as they probably should or as low as they probably should. And the fact, particularly in this car that they're white means you don't want to load luggage back there. Of course it comes in other colors, but like they already. And is that really a thing that people needed from the sl? They've been making it for how long with no back seats? And like really the demand was that for a back seat?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. I wonder if there. Oops. I wonder if there was like an insurance benefit to that or like some more calculated thing. Like, I mean, 911 has back seats that almost nobody sits in. I'm sure someone out there is going to get mad because their kid sits back there. But for the most part, these are two seat automobiles, so I agree with you. Having a partial shelf would make it much more usable. Having a larger trunk. This trunk, it's so small, tiny with. Because you had some Lambo parts in there. And there's the charging cable. If I put my backpack in sideways, but incorrectly, the trunk would not close. It's very shallow.

[Matt Farah]

A GT car that you really can't properly GT cause it doesn't hold any luggage. It's a golf course car that you can't fit your clubs in.

[Zach Klapman]

The truck is Miata size.

[Matt Farah]

It's really small. And this is a big car. Like if my Boxster can fit two people's luggage for a week and it will fit my golf clubs in the back if I take the woods out and put them on, which. Pretty impressive. And it's a smaller footprint than this. Like, come on.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. I mean, obviously the convertible top takes up space, but I agree with you. If you get rid of the back seat, is there a way to repackage things so you can move the top mechanism forward a little bit or have more trunk space?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Plus the bat and the battery eats into it. So it's even. It's even smaller.

[Zach Klapman]

Right. Because it raises that trunk. And then the. Because the electric motor, it's like the S Class. Right. There's the transmission just on top of the diff.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

So that eats up into the space too.

[Matt Farah]

So, you know, you have this car that rides beautifully, that's insanely fast, that can generate its own electricity and use it for torque filling and use it for all kinds of stuff. Or for EV driving, if that's what you want. You can plug it in at home and run your errands on electricity. You know, the seats are comfortable also.

[Zach Klapman]

Very comfortable.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Super adaptive. Yeah. Massaging seats, things like that. But like by having like the hybrid and the back seat and the folding soft top. And like, there's just so much shit tried to cram into a small package that none of it is optimized. And that's kind of frustrating.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, it kind of becomes, you know, it's very expensive. Obviously. It's like over $200,000, $230,000. And so it's an amazing grand touring. Sorry, like, almost grand commuter.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Is that what I would call it?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it is.

[Zach Klapman]

You know, briefcase. You can put a small bag in the trunk. I mean, truly, people, like, it's very small back there, and that's kind of it. Versus if you had the equivalent 911 with a frunk. Much deeper. Yeah, much deeper.

[Matt Farah]

Cargo area I can put in the front of my Boxster, which is, give or take, the same size as the front of a 911. You can put two rolling carry ons laid on top of each other.

[Zach Klapman]

Now, this is all wheel drive, right?

[Matt Farah]

This is all wheel drive.

[Zach Klapman]

So that, I mean, that takes up space. But I think if you're looking at the competition, it just feels like there's not a lot of space to the car. So you can't go that many places with it. And it's a great. I think it's an excellent grand touring car, with the exception of. I was very comfortable. Like, it feels cramped in there because the giant tablet, I still don't like that. And one of the only really annoying things was that tablet that pops up the video screen to show you where you're driving as you're driving. And I couldn't figure out why or when it was doing it. Like, I didn't read the manual, but you're getting a. There's redundant information being presented to you. So as you're. As I was driving on the highway and in normal street traffic and stop and go, the tablet would pop up.

[Matt Farah]

This huge and show front camera, front.

[Zach Klapman]

Camera screen with arrows sometimes, sometimes without them. Sometimes it was just showing me the road. And it literally was the same thing I was looking at.

[Matt Farah]

Did you have a navigation destination set?

[Zach Klapman]

I did.

[Matt Farah]

So that's augmented reality. So augmented reality pulls up a camera feed showing you where you're going, and then overlays arrows showing you where to turn.

[Zach Klapman]

I saw that, which I don't like, and I find it very distracting from looking at where I need to go. And there's turn by turn under the normal gauge pod. But it was also activating on the highway when I wasn't exiting for 10 miles.

[Matt Farah]

That's weird. I wonder if the highway, if the GPS had one of those, like, continue straight for this. And that was triggering it to pop up. It's very stupid. It is very stupid. One of the EQs had it. And if you pull it up, you can pull it up in the cluster screen, which is way better and less stupid than pulling it up in the center screen.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, in the S class I drove, you had the augmented reality was in the heads up display.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Zach Klapman]

And that made way more sense. It was still a little odd to get used to, but once I did, it was fine. I think a simple turn arrow is totally adequate. You don't need this like growing, moving amoeba thing that's telling you to go to the right. It's like a video game.

[Matt Farah]

It's like, follow me like Donnie Darko where the big long worms come out of his stomach.

[Zach Klapman]

It's like that. It's weird. If you played Halo, it's like following the robot to the right. I just think it's a little unnecessary. But otherwise, I mean, incredibly comfortable. After three hours in the car, like, zero back pain, zero problems. Visibility is really good to be. The corners drop away. It feels like a smaller vehicle.

[Matt Farah]

You know what it does really well? The transition from the road to a steep driveway or pulling into a shopping center or something with a really bad crowned road into a steep transition driveway. It does those. It makes all of those articulations kind of go away with that active body control.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it does a good job of that. And you can extend the front spoiler or retract it if you don't want to.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, and you can raise and lower the car as well. The touchscreen to raise and lower the Top is top 5 worst UI decisions in the history of cars. And then a commenter said, no, no, what you have to do is you press the hard button and then hold it and that raises or lowers the top. And it's like if you press the hard button for the top, it's got a picture of a moving top on it. You press that, it brings up a screen that says swipe left or right to raise or lower the top.

[Zach Klapman]

There's no double tap version because I think we ran into this when we tested the yellow SL when it first came out. Yeah, it was the same controller. Also stupid. Yes, because we were sitting in the sun with the top down and we wanted to put it up and the tablet was really fucking hard.

[Matt Farah]

The tablet burns your fingers.

[Zach Klapman]

You needed to hold your finger on there. So maybe did you try and fuck around with your table?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I tried tap, I tried tap, tap, I tried hold, I tried tap, hold, nothing worked. Now a commenter said if you tap and then a second later press and hold. And my point is, why would the better of the two top options be fucking buried? A secret option, fucking animal style buried in there. And the primary, the thing that comes up on the screen is the stupid way.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, I agree.

[Matt Farah]

And it doesn't say on the screen also double tap button or something like that. Like you either have to be deliberately instructed for this or read the entire manual for something that like fucking every other convertible ever made.

[Zach Klapman]

It should be simple.

[Matt Farah]

Brain damaged 4 year old can operate the fucking top.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, they put too many, too many things. I mean this is a complaint about all Mercedes of recent years. There's too many capacitive, haptic, non buttoned controls, but one you shouldn't skip. Especially when there's still a button to release the fuel door, which I was shocked by. So if you're going to have that hide a convertible button down there, I don't care, but just make it, it a hard control.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, or just make it so like look, if the top is down you probably want it to go up by pressing the button. If the top is up, you probably want. So if there is a hard button you could just press it and have the screen say please hold button to continue.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, yeah. Why have the button that then brings up the screen menu?

[Matt Farah]

I cannot figure I if that person still has a job. I mean, Jesus, it's horrible.

[Zach Klapman]

It's also redundant right up there with.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think we need buttons for the rear windows, which is too bad, I mean that's real stupid. But the rear steer is better. Now they've gotten the programming from the AMG GT and I drove it in the rain a bunch. It was great in the rain. It is such a nice car. But for that much money, the things it can't do annoy me.

[Zach Klapman]

It has a lot of compromises for the price and for what it's intended, which is grand touring. But you can't, your tour can't be that grand because you can't really bring that much with you unless you put things in the back seats.

[Matt Farah]

And if I didn't need to have golf clubs or care about golf clubs, I'd rather have a 911 GTS. I just think it's, I think it does basically the same amount with less, you know what I mean? It basically accelerates just as quickly with half the Power, you know what I mean? And a lot less weight. This thing's 4,800 pounds. That's a lot of tire and brake. Also, by the way, did you notice in the different drive modes the wildly changing brake feel? So it's brake by wire.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, we talked about that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. When you change the pedal from comfort to sport to sport plus the brake pedal changes wildly to the point where I was driving in the canyon in sport mode. I was like, this car has ceramic brakes. How are these brakes this bad even for a heavy car? I don't understand how Mercedes would sell a car with this much power and such bad brakes. And then I flicked it into Sport plus and all of a sudden I had Formula one br. I don't understand why that is a decision that was made.

[Zach Klapman]

It's like they had, they stole the programming left from eqs, like can we do something with this or I'm going to get fired. It was really, really strange because in comfort I thought the brake tuning was fine. It was normal and good and it was. I preferred it to like. I know I mentioned a lot the MC20 and it just felt.

[Matt Farah]

The Amira brakes were.

[Zach Klapman]

The Amira brakes. That's what I was really thinking of.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, the Amira brakes are great in the mountain but. But awful traffic. Yeah. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

It was this weird touchy thing. Yeah. But I didn't mess with any other modes because it was raining. I just pulled up A picture of 2024 911C4S has a frunk that you can fit a carry on in vertically. So even with all wheel drive I just wanted to.

[Matt Farah]

You can fit one, you can fit one in mine, you can fit two horizontally.

[Zach Klapman]

Right. Because you don't have the all wheel drive system.

[Matt Farah]

Correct. But I mean it's, it's too bad because on the one hand it was so lovely and on the other hand I can't really think of a situation in which I would buy it. Compared to some alternatives, the 911 GTS comes to mind, particularly maybe the Targa which would still come in quite a bit cheaper than this. And it's not really fair because it's used for new, but you can get like a two year old Bentley GTC V8s with like seven. I looked on auto tempest like 6,000 miles in a good color, still a warranty, probably 215 grand, you know. And like now you've got a really fast car that's got a Panamera powertrain, pdk, even more prestige, a huge trunk, an even better interior. Real buttons, you know, shit like that. And it's like if I was gonna, if I was. If I could afford this, I'd rather be driving a Bentley and I could be driving a Bentley.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. But new for new. I'd rather get the Porsche version of.

[Matt Farah]

For sure.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. I mean it does a lot of things well, but.

[Matt Farah]

It does, but it's trying to do too many things well and it prevents it from doing the right things very well.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like, okay, it is what it is. But I, you know, but they've improved it from the last one. I mean, I like the. We've driven three versions of the SL. The original 63, the 43, which I did not like. Nobody wants a. And we learned. I learned this driving the Amira too. I don't think anybody wants a. A six figure luxury car that is powered by a buzzy four cylinder engine.

[Zach Klapman]

So funny you mentioned that though because driving the Amira around, I loved all the different turbo sounds it made.

[Matt Farah]

Turbo sounds, Yes.

[Zach Klapman]

A lot more theatrics than the MC20's V6 or the new GT2 one. It. It had a lot going on.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I'd still probably rather get the V6 with the supercharger.

[Matt Farah]

Wait, can we save a mirror for next show? Because I want to talk about. I have a lot of mirror stuff too, but, but sitting at a. With both the SL43 and the Amira have the same. The engine from Mercedes, the four cylinder, 385 horsepower one. Right. And in both cases, when you're revving them out, it's actually not bad. It makes pretty good power and some interesting sounds. But at a stoplight with your foot on the brake, the whole goddamn car vibrates.

[Zach Klapman]

I think the SL shook even more.

[Matt Farah]

The SL shook even more, I think than the Amira because I think it was mounted this way, not this way. And nobody wants a hundred and thirty thousand dollars grand touring car that vibrates like an Evo. Yeah, like nobody.

[Zach Klapman]

No, I mean this, this powertrain is amazing. And I'm so glad they fixed the rear steer situation because the first S class I drove was terrible.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And then the yellow one we drove, it was better, but still bad. And then they fixed it with the gt.

[Matt Farah]

Right. So, yeah, I mean it's neat. It's just. It's really like a batshit daily more than anything else. And I'm not sure who needs that, but it's definitely better than the four cylinder version. Let's go to the people in the Patreon. Our supporters are vi Fucking peas. Let's get to it. Patreon.com the Smoking Tire podcast is where you find us. You can get the show live, although today's show, as well as our 1000th episode on March 30th, only those will be available on the public channel. All the other ones, the live shows, you get them at your private channel. You can get ad free. You can get the shows early before everybody else, and you can ask us questions. So let's get to it. Sandy Lane says you have unlimited funds, but your next car must be from a country you've never bought a car from before. What country and car are you picking? I mean, I've had. I've never had a Korean car. That's the only. So what's an unlimited funds Korean car? That awesome Genesis convertible concept car thing.

[Zach Klapman]

Hyundai rally car or something like. Oh, yeah, that'd be fun.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, my list of options is too large, so obviously I'd get something Italian that starts with an M. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

There are. How many. What other. I mean, you got China, you got. I guess Brazil. Why do they manufacture cars? Well, actually. Oh, how about this? Okay. This one, this one, this one made. I would have a Purseang Bugatti Type 35, which is made in Argentina, and I've never had an Argentinian made car before, even though it's a French brand. Count. Does that count? I think so, Right?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

A Persang counts as an Argentinian car, right?

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, they are made there, right?

[Matt Farah]

They are made there. They're made there.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. Okay. All right.

[Matt Farah]

For purposes of this game, I'll talk about it.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, sure. I mean, that's a great thing to buy anyway.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Jim Fares has a Seiko Pogue, got it for 400 bucks and loves the patina on it. Oh. However, last year I got into a hot tub with it and flooded it. Do you think it's worth trying to get fixed or should I just get another one? Last year is the word that I would really be concerned with. If you brought it to a watchmaker the next day and the water that went in it is just water, then you could probably save. Would need a complete rebuild, but you could probably save it. But honestly, considering you can buy a pretty nice pogue for like 1,000 bucks, and I think it would cost you at least that much to have it.

[Zach Klapman]

Really? To restore it. Wow.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Cause you have to take it. It's not a service.

[Zach Klapman]

It's full of water.

[Matt Farah]

You have to take it apart. Apart.

[Zach Klapman]

And even if the water's evaporated, it's like, there's like chlorine rust.

[Matt Farah]

It's a mess. It's the kind of thing where if you had a vintage Rolex or a Patek or something, where you know, the net result is a watch that's worth 10, 20, $50,000 or more. Absolutely. A great poke is 1,000 bucks, maybe 1,500. So I'd probably just get another one. Maybe if you found a place that wanted to take yours as a credit for parts or something that they could do, there is some value to it, possibly as parts. Tim A says, what car would you turn around and buy right now on cars and bids for the price of the Bentley? Well, I don't know how much these cars are going to end at, but let's see what is at the top right now it looks like. So we have 38.5 to play with. Go down, go down.

[Zach Klapman]

There you go.

[Matt Farah]

There's your Corvette 2010 Grand Sport Coupe. 2Lt. 28,700 miles. That's a pretty nice car.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, it's at 31 right now. Yeah, that's a pretty good one at the perfect number.

[Matt Farah]

How about that Integra GSR, Mugen. That's all right. GT3 touring. Keep going, keep going, keep going. I don't see anything I love right now. It's 39 grand. Okay, that's pretty close. 996 cab. Yeah. Six speed. Oh, is that not a six speed? It usually would say six speed manual.

[Zach Klapman]

Six speed manual.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it does. Okay. Yeah. Okay, cool. Ooh, maybe it's an S, not an rs. Okay. I'm thinking of what we've seen go back up. I would like to have the. Yeah, probably that grand sport. Right? That'd be a good one. 28,000 mile C. 6 Grand Sport. You get rid of the seats. Those are.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, no.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it's an auto. Fuck. You suck.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, you already committed. An automatic red Corvette with a tan interior.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, boy.

[Zach Klapman]

That's when you've given up. If you buy that car, I go, what's going on, man?

[Matt Farah]

You're getting divorced. I just need a red hat and some EDC and I am good to go. Brake, Diego Brake wants a suggestion for an interesting SUV or truck that will be used primarily for towing a car on an open aluminum trailer. Ah, dude, I don't know.

[Zach Klapman]

Something with turbo diesel.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, I would say like maybe A Q, Audi Q7 or a Cayenne. Diesel is probably what I would do. Maybe one of those Touareg V10TDIs.

[Zach Klapman]

He says Hagerty will only insure V8 models. I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

No, that's for. Yeah, I would say really. They only seem to. They won't insure a diesel. I mean somebody will insure a diesel, but I don't know dude. For tow vehicles, I don't. I like to keep it simple with that kind of stuff. That is. That's a work vehicle.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm like F250 Chevy 2500, you know something Allison transmission. They shift quick. The under stressed towing capability. I would go with something like that.

[Matt Farah]

Plus I wouldn't want to bet my fucking race weekend on a 12 year old German towie.

[Zach Klapman]

Bingo. You're already doing that with the race car.

[Matt Farah]

I understand the mindset, I really do, honestly. You might be better off buying like an H1 Hummer. Seriously, like H1 Hummers are like shitty but you can't kill them. They're meant for fucking Iraq. Like it'll tow you, it'll tow your Miata. Well, you won't even notice it's towing.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, I know.

[Matt Farah]

I mean it's slow towing or not. It's towing will not affect.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, the towering is £10,000, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it could tow itself. Yeah, there's no. I mean it will not notice.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Get an enclosed hauler. Stephen Halterbeck opinion on a weekend sports car. I've owned several V8 Camaros. I want something more refined and GT. Like I got 100G. Been thinking of a PDK Boxster GTS 4.0. Any thoughts? 911 variants I should consider for this budget. I mean, dude, I love the Boxster and Cayman gts. I think for a street driven car that's about as good as it gets right there. It's a lovely car. PDK stick. No bad choices. You're up to you. PDK's fabulous. It's not a bad gearbox at all. So if you're going to go. If you want to drive an automatic sports car, Porsche's gearboxes are great. And then Stephen asks about a massive depreciation hit. I don't know what the depreciation hit is, but the 718 series has been out since 2017, so you have plenty of data there to go on. Bring a trailer cars and bids and look at the historical sale data and you could easily determine that for yourself with no special tools. So saying is it special enough to avoid depreciation is not the way to find out if it avoids depreciation. Actually looking at the data which is easily available on whether the car Depreciates or not is going to be the way to do that. Okay, this is an interesting question. Sometimes snow, sometimes gravel. Have you any anecdotes or thoughts on how you are perceived either positively or negatively in certain cars, despite them being rough? Roughly the same value. 100%. Yeah, 100%. Dude, that happens. I mean, I don't have specific anecdotes, but if you were driving places in a $100,000 King Ranch F150 versus a $100,000 Mercedes SL, that might easily be the difference between someone letting you merge or not.

[Zach Klapman]

Now, are you saying because they'll think the Mercedes driver is just a rich asshole?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. As opposed to someone going to work.

[Zach Klapman]

That's a good point.

[Matt Farah]

You know, I mean, at car meets. I don't think so. I think it's all. It's all really.

[Zach Klapman]

That just depends on who is viewing you pulling into the meet, you know? Yeah, but I mean, there are things like if you see six guys pull in in silver GT3s, people will be like, oh, those are cool. But they might not be as excited as if you pull in with something that's a little more interesting of equivalent value. You might get more of like, oh, and people will. We see how crowds walk over to a heavily modified car. Cause it looks like the person's personality comes through the car and they go, oh, what did you do over here? Why does it look like this? I think that can get a little bit more attention.

[Matt Farah]

And also the example he uses is that he's got an E30 that he calls a shitbox. And he said people treat him differently with a 986 Boxster, which is like a base early Boxster compared to the E30. The base early Boxster Boxster is at the bottom of its depreciation curve and its appreciation curve in terms of how people view them. They're not viewed as collectible, they're not viewed as interesting. They're just old Boxsters to a lot of people. They drive great. I get it. But whereas an E30 is a car that is already on its way back up to being a classic.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, do you think he gets treated better or worse with the E30?

[Matt Farah]

I think people are probably more interested in the E30 than they are in the Porsche. That is my guess.

[Zach Klapman]

I definitely got treated differently when I sold my Miata and got a Crown Vic because people thought I was a cop.

[Matt Farah]

That's a good one.

[Zach Klapman]

That was quite a change.

[Matt Farah]

That's a come up, especially when you're beating the shit out of all those people. It's really helpful when they think you're a cop. They don't narc big bad cam Faz. That probably means something that I don't want it to know about. I don't want to know what it means.

[Zach Klapman]

Or it's a guy named Fazel who has like you know, a big block Chevy.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Wants to know have we ever driven a supercharged or forced induction na Miata and what did we think? Or possibly might want to do some ITBs. Have you ever driven forced induction Miatas?

[Zach Klapman]

I think I drove a turbocharged one in like 2011 for two minutes. But all the other cool Miatas I've driven were V8 swaps. Yeah, but didn't you drive. I drove a mile Miata. Supercharged.

[Matt Farah]

I drove a. I've driven a supercharged one. At some point I drove a Mazda speed NB Miata which is factory turbocharged.

[Zach Klapman]

That's when I drove one of those.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And then I've driven V8 ones. I mean I think like the problem is the stock engine is only so eh. At a certain point it's just so much easier and better to just get a small V8 and put it in there.

[Zach Klapman]

You drove someone's supercharged Miata?

[Matt Farah]

I'm sure I did.

[Zach Klapman]

Looking at a one take. That's funny.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I'm sure I did. I drove 2,000 cars. I couldn't tell you anything about it. You gotta go watch the video. But like, I mean the cost of doing a reliable good turbo setup on a Miata is like a lot.

[Zach Klapman]

Is it?

[Matt Farah]

I feel like it is. It's probably half the cost of the car. Probably 5,6000 bucks for like a good like hks.

[Zach Klapman]

So Reddit as of a year ago says that a supercharger cost for Miata is over eight grand if you don't do it yourself.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's like, that's like the whole car, most of the car.

[Zach Klapman]

That's a lot of money for sure.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I would, I would sell the Miata and get a Corvette. I mean your life will just be so much easier. A Corvette is just a fast fucking Miata.

[Zach Klapman]

It feels exactly like a fast Miata now. Now like in terms of, I mean handling, steering, feedback, everything. It's wild how similar they feel. A supercharged Miata or turbocharged Miata has a little more zhuzh to it. Like it's special and unique and interesting and the car is tiny obviously, but that is a lot of money. I mean I like superchargers a lot. I'm a big fan, but man, eight grand putting it going into an na miata. Yeah. That doubles the cost of most NAS.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

So I don't know. ITBs might be cheaper.

[Matt Farah]

ITBs would almost definitely be cheaper. You could just do that and they wouldn't make. You wouldn't have to deal with like a whole bunch of other cooling issues.

[Zach Klapman]

If you get an old leather race helmet and put itbs in it and just tell yourself that you're in a race car from 1972. That's the game.

[Matt Farah]

It's not a lie if you believe it.

[Zach Klapman]

Exactly.

[Matt Farah]

Scroll down. I don't. The next next to it. I don't know. Okay, wait. Varthe var wants to know. Hi, Chews or mambas, bro, I can't do any of that shit that sticks in your teeth.

[Zach Klapman]

I don't know what mamba is, but I go haichu.

[Matt Farah]

It's basically the same. It's chewy sugar, chewy sticky sugar. Not that I'm not looking down on chewy sticky sugar. My road trip foods are basically nuts of varying types of mixed nuts is pretty much what I fuck with on the road. Jerky makes you fart too much. You know, I try to avoid carbs when I'm sitting all day. So it's really about these nuts. Yeah. Some good trail mix. Sometimes a little M and M in the chocolate. Little chocolate. Little chocolate in there. Maybe a little peanut butter chip.

[Zach Klapman]

I got Quest bars, but I'm sure that one day there's gonna be a class action lawsuit.

[Matt Farah]

I've stopped doing the gas station quality bars. We have good bars that are, you know, I take the time to read the labels and shit at our the gas station ones. I think they're all candy.

[Zach Klapman]

A lot of them are just true candy. Look at the sugar content.

[Matt Farah]

Trey Rutledge leased a BMW i4 and was surprised that the car suggests you set a charge limit to 80% to maximize the lifespan of the battery. Do I keep my cars charged 100% and is it really that bad? And he says I feel like I shouldn't care since it's a three year lease. But part of me still has mechanical sympathy and I'll try to take care of my cars least if it's a lease, charge to 100%. Honestly, even as someone who cares about the environment and even is someone, it's not necessarily your responsibility to take better care of that battery for the next person. And it's not going to go bad during your lease because of charging 100%. I charge the Mach E to 100% all the time. I am told that charging to 80% versus 100%, keeping it between 20 and 80 is better for the long term health of the battery. I think that matters more if you're fast charging because the thermals change so much. And if you're just level two charging at home overnight, I don't think it's really much of an issue. Having said that, my everyday, because I own it, I do have an 80% charge limit set for the Taycan. Better safe than sorry.

[Zach Klapman]

And usually when we did it with the Mach E was like, we're about to do a road trip, right? And we're driving to Arizona and we would charge to 100 to try to maximize.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, well, with the Mach E, I would charge it to 100 and drive it down to 10 and charge it to 100 and drive it down and I'd charge it once a week. It was 300 miles. We weren't going that far. And if I'm on a road trip, I'll charge to whatever. I don't. My time is more important than whatever's happening to the battery long term. But I think if you're fast charging daily, you know, if you're doing Uber or whatever, I think that's probably good advice. But if you're charging once a week at your house, I think you're probably okay. I think so. Enrico Palazzo. What quote good car would you not even accept as a gift if you had to pay to keep it in daily driver condition out of your own pocket? And why is it a Veyron?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, anything that is completely beyond your financial ability is a good thing to turn down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, that's true. High ownership costs, high maintenance costs, and relatively uninteresting to drive once you kind of, you know, there's not a whole lot different about driving a Veyron from like a Ventador or like it's paddle shifting. It's, you know, it's huge power. But I've been in Veyrons. Like, they're cool, but like, it wouldn't be worth being able to say you have a Bugatti is a lot more special than actually driving the Bugatti most of the time.

[Zach Klapman]

And if you truly can't afford to drive it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

That you're going to be stressed most of the day and then you might be able to tell one person you own a Bugatti Veyron and they'll get impressed. So for two minutes you'll feel cool.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, dude, any car that is not. You know, that's such a pain in the ass that you're now afraid to drive.

[Zach Klapman]

It just sucks, you know, when. This comes up a lot, and I've seen this here with some of your clients is people that inherit a car and they go, I don't know what to do with this. I can't afford to fix it. But I can't drive it if the car's broken. But it's sentimental. Like, that's a tough spot to be in, too.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Really? And that happens often.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Siamese sports cat enthusiast. What piece of automotive wisdom do you wish you'd listen to earlier? Huh?

[Zach Klapman]

Well, when I was getting my suspension, Steve Dinan said, don't get club sports. They're very stiff. And I said, but I'm gonna go drifting a lot, Steve. And he went, okay. I should have listened to him, because then I did not go drifting very often.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Because the car breaks.

[Matt Farah]

You drive on the street.

[Zach Klapman]

I drive on the street. Yeah. I wish I'd listened to that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I'd also say horsepower is not everything. We say this a lot. Lot, but 400 is all you need. Don't chase more than that. It's not actually that much more fun, except for those tiny moments where you blast the throttle, like going too fast anyway.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Learn to go around corners. That'll be more exciting.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The set. The. The. The third time that I put racing harnesses in my car. I should have learned the first two. You should never.

[Zach Klapman]

Where are all the cars? The Mustang probably high school.

[Matt Farah]

Mustang had a. And then Corvette had them. And then when I did the Fox body, I put them in, too.

[Zach Klapman]

Did the high school car also have normal belts?

[Matt Farah]

Yes. Okay, great. And then when I put the Corvette, in order to make the Recaro seats fit, I had to take out the regular belts.

[Zach Klapman]

I remember.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that was dumb. Oh, that was dumb. Yeah. It's not related to journalism, but that's. Yeah. Don't put fucking racing harnesses in your streetcar. Everyone will hate you, and you will hate yourself. Okay. Career. Oh, man. Christian Larson, personal question. If you were in your early 20s and in school, what would you do differently? Any mistakes you regret? So the only thing I would do differently is I would have asked more questions before going to college, because I've said it a million times. I told people I wanted to design cars, and they told me, oh, you have to be a mechanical engineer. Nobody said, you have to go to Arts center in Pasadena. And what I meant was, like, draw the cars, not engineer the engines or parts. And so seven different experts sent me to engineering school and I hated fucking every minute of it. I should have been more clear and I should have, I don't know, everyone else should have done a better job being like, wait, you don't want to design parts?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, I would add to that because I asked my career counselor the same exact question when I was like a sophomore in college and she didn't understand what industrial design was. And I remember she was like, oh, well, I guess you could package these two majors. And what I should have done is ask more people. So like, if you don't, it's kind of a slippery slope if you don't get the answer you want, ask more people. Till you do. That's what the Internet is. But just ask a number of sources that might be into the thing you're passionate about. And if you can reach out to someone who works in that field, I'm sure if an 18 year old emailed a car designer, like, they'll probably respond because they like enthusiasm, because they're actually.

[Matt Farah]

Like regular people and they're only gods to a very small group of nerds.

[Zach Klapman]

And this is true of any industry. Like you're curious about something, try to get more information about it before you either go commit to going down that path as a major or as a career or before you give up on it for some reason. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And also if you're talking about undergrad school, which I assume you are at age 20, your degree doesn't necessarily have to do hardly anything with your career.

[Zach Klapman]

Unless it's a technical degree.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it doesn't necessarily. If you have a CSI degree or you're pre med or pre law. Yeah, okay, cool. But if you just have a general BA and you didn't have a major you were passionate about and you're still trying to figure shit out, that's okay. Your life isn't problematic if you can't figure shit out. Out at 22, just fucking pick a direction and go and try it. And knowing that you could fucking.

[Zach Klapman]

You can pivot is a good thing. And you can always, particularly in your 20s also, that's something that people like. I felt this great pressure to like decide what you want to do. You have four years to decide and then from then on, that's it. But you can go back to night school, you can go to grad school. Like, you can change course well into life.

[Matt Farah]

Sure. Finn and Cricket and Nicky and Monty. Respected in the username. How do you handle leaky cars at wccs? Our trays are full floor trays. They're not like mechanics lifts. So if a car leaks, it leaks onto the tray. It doesn't leak onto the car below. And if a car is a known leaker, we then put additional drip trays underneath the cars. And if a car is leaking so much that it's really problematic, we basically force the owner to get it fixed. If a car is leaking fuel, we absolutely force the owner to get it fixed. But yeah, old cars leak oil all the time. And we considered that when building the building. Alex speaker, best raw V8 or V10 experience for under 100k. That's funny because these are very different V8s and V10s, so you want to lump them together. The closest thing that would almost be a crossover is like a Viper.

[Zach Klapman]

And that's. That might be the cheapest V10 you could get. Cheapest vans Gallardo. Oh, right, the Triton V10. Very good point. Yeah, that's true.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, for under 100k, you're really talking about R8s, Gallardos and Vipers in the V10 family, right? Yes. For under 100k.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

And 100 is getting you a fairly shitty Gallardo. And probably not a manual, which you would want. You could probably get a V10 R8 for under. It's going to have a zillion miles on it and it might have seven owners, but it's possible I would get.

[Zach Klapman]

A V8 something because there are so many tasty options for that money. I mean, you could get V8 Vantage, you could get a great Corvette. You could get Chevy ss. I mean, there's four doors, two doors, truck. Like you have so many options from big displacement, small displacement RS4. You could get twin turbocharged. You could buy Santino's C63 and you get a twin turbo four liter. Yeah, there's all kinds of shit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot more options for sure. I suppose.

[Zach Klapman]

So. A 2015 R8 V10 Spider sold for $87,000. 35,000 miles on it.

[Matt Farah]

A lot of miles. Wow.

[Zach Klapman]

A lot of miles. But 87 grand? That is possible.

[Matt Farah]

Not bad. Okay.

[Zach Klapman]

There are a lot of. Wow. Spyder sold. A 2011 Spyder sold for 56 grand.

[Matt Farah]

A V10 Spider? Yeah. Oh, shit. It's gotta have a story. That's fucking.

[Zach Klapman]

There's some modifications, so it might have a story.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's cheap, but okay, maybe R8s. R8s could be in the game. Prashan, what was your favorite feature in the Bentley? Anything about it that no Modern cars offer. I don't think there's really. There's a lot of modern cars that offer. I haven't seen real deep pile carpets like this since I haven't seen. The combination oil and fuel gauge is really funky. Let's see. I mean, nobody's really doing hydraulic suspension and brakes anymore in that way. I mean, it's the coolest thing about it is just how the amount of torque that it uses is, you know, because it revs to 4,500. It had three gears and it would do 135 miles an hour. That is a crazy ratio to think about the amount of speed generated by such a low amount of revs. It's like a fucking train. Frozen dingleberry metallic saw on my Instagram that I had a Seiko with a geometric cut crystal. It's actually my wife's watch that's called a Seiko Lordmatic. And it's from 1973 and it has a faceted crystal that's like diamond cut. It's really, really neat. Oh, wow. Deep ones. This one's real deep. Nathan Reynolds, has the passage of time ever weighed on either of you at a particular point in your life? But there's moments where I remember things from my childhood or realize how far away certain events were. And it's gotten to me on a few occasions. Have you experienced something similar? Yeah, I mean, every once in a while you think about some shit and go, oh, wow, that was 20 years ago. Or, you know, I'm, you know, I'm more than halfway to the age my grandfather was when he died or something. You know, something like that, you know. But like, what do you do?

[Zach Klapman]

Right? Yeah, you go, okay. You know, just a fact of things. I think the only time I really dwell on it is I go, ooh, I wish I had done that. Like, that's terrible.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You should enjoy your youthful body while you have it. You know what I mean? You should make dumb decisions while people expect you to make dumb decisions.

[Zach Klapman]

Very true.

[Matt Farah]

Take risks. At the time people expect you to take risks. If you act like a 20 something when you're 20 something, people will forgive a lot. But if you act like that when you're 45 and divorced, they're gonna roll their fucking eyes.

[Zach Klapman]

Are you okay? Yeah. That's true. Recapturing youth when you're older is delicate. Gotta do it just the right way.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah. I think it helps for me that, like, my 30s were better than my 20s.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And I don't know if my 40s are better than my 30s. But like, I kind of like the level of establishment that comes with my 40s. Like, people are like, oh, yeah, you're actually, you actually belong here.

[Zach Klapman]

Right? Yeah. 30s. It was like we're climbing. Climbing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would try to not let it bother you too much.

[Zach Klapman]

It just is what it is.

[Matt Farah]

Time goes on. And you know something that, like, if you're thinking about stuff from your childhood and being like, oh, wow, that was so long ago. Like, if you can, whoever else it was in that memory, call that person, text them. The older you get, the more you have to try to talk to those people.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, that's true.

[Matt Farah]

And social media, when you scroll by, oh, here's a picture of that guy with his dog. That gives you just enough connection to that person to get you out of calling.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. And it's not nearly the same. The quality of interaction is just nothing compared to actually hanging out with a person.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Plethora of pinatas. If you were to want a Mustang GT, would you get a 14 with reasonable miles and then get the Maximum motorsports kit? Or would you get a 2015 and newer for comparable money? For the advantage of the irs, question, do you live somewhere with bumpy roads or not? If you live somewhere with really good roads, the IRS's advantages will be negated by the smoothness of the tarmac. If the roads are really bumpy, then even Maximum motorsports best efforts will not be able to save the solid rear axle.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, that's true.

[Matt Farah]

But if the roads are decent, you will not complain about the rear end of your Mustang with a maximum motorsports kit.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, and it looks like they're getting a car with lower miles. The one with the solid axle is lower miles than the other one. So I also think the 2014s look a little bit better. You're getting a lot. Yeah, I would stick with the solid if you can. It's also kind of fun, just different.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, I think the 2014 with the kit will probably out handle a stock 2015 in most situations.

[Zach Klapman]

It might be a lighter car too.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but that, but irs, bumpy roads, that's where you're gonna have an advantage. So if you live on bumpy roads and you're on bumpy roads a lot. You want the irs.

[Zach Klapman]

Chevelle has irs. Looking forward to experiencing it one of these days.

[Matt Farah]

I'm downstairs and look at that. We'll save this next one for the, for the, for the next show. It's a little. It's old school. It's old School. We'll keep it for. Keep it for the next time, you know what I mean?

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, okay. That was a quick one.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you want to do it real quick?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

All right, fine. Vodge Diaper. Good. Name, Fuck, Marry, Kill Track Daily. And Crush is the car version. Allegedly. BMW 507, Jaguar C type, Toyota 2000 GT. I have never driven any of these.

[Zach Klapman]

I haven't either, but that means that I'm even on all of them. So my answer is I would marry the 507, I would fuck the Jaguar C type, and I would kill the Toyota 2.

[Matt Farah]

All right, well, the C type was actually a Le Mans race car, so I would track the C Type. I would marry the.

[Zach Klapman]

What was the third one, 507 or the 2000?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, the 2002. I'd marry the 507 and I'd kill the 2000 GT. You ever seen a 2000 GT in person?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You're not fitting in that car.

[Zach Klapman]

They're so tiny.

[Matt Farah]

They're smaller than Miatas. Yeah, yeah. Google Toyota 2000 GT images and you will see a whole bunch of photos of cars that are not photographed next to other cars because they look like they're about the size of a Corvette. Right.

[Zach Klapman]

Because the long hood.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You look at it and you think it's the size of a Corvette. It is not. It is smaller than a Miata. They're tiny. There's one next to a James Bond.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Sean Connery is a monster compared to that vehicle. Yeah. And that one's even bigger than normal because it's got no roof. Like the. When you put a roof on it, it gets really, really small. Yeah. You can only photograph them next to other 2000. Right.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm trying to find it. Next to.

[Matt Farah]

Nobody parks them next to anything else. Like, see the entirety of Google Images. There's not one next to another car.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. Wow.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, man. Well, thank you everybody for playing along with my little Bentley game. It seems that you actually can drive a 35 year old Bentley for less money than it would take you to lease a midsize crossover. Do it, kids, even at today's price. And shout out to our patrons for good questions today. I'm actually going to Montana tomorrow for the week. I haven't skied in a while and I need to get a couple of days in. But we'll be back next week and we are closing in on TST1000, which will be March 30th. So for everyone watching live on the main podcast channel, thank you for joining us. Please consider becoming a patron. And you can get the same show while we're recording it over on the private YouTube channel. And of course, we have an extra pro driver show every month for those patrons. Plus they can ask questions and they can get the show ad free, both in audio and video form. Thank you all. Love you. See you later.