Bugatti Veyron 2.0?; Racetrack for Sale; E-Ray Conclusion; Q&A

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Smoking Tire — “Bugatti Veyron 2.0?; Racetrack for Sale; E-Ray Conclusion; Q&A”

Air Date: January 27, 2026
Hosts: Matt Farah and Zack Klapman

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Episode Overview

In this rich, wide-ranging episode, Matt Farah and Zack Klapman cover everything from emerging fascism and citizen resistance in Minnesota to in-depth impressions of the Corvette E-Ray after a 1,400-mile road trip. They dig into advances and pitfalls in automotive tech, the realities of insurance telematics, the “new” Bugatti Veyron homage, and the sale of Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. The show closes with a highly engaged Q&A touching on tire choices, ideal cars for famous roads, and even watches. As always, the hosts blend humor, deep knowledge, and an unfiltered conversational tone.

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Main Topics & Key Discussion Points

1. Citizen Resistance and ICE Protests in Minneapolis (00:00–22:57)

• Matt gives a heartfelt shout-out to Minneapolis commuters and activists bravely organizing to document and resist ICE activities amid freezing temperatures.
  • Memorable quote:
    "They're helping their neighbors who don't look like them... non-violently opposing a violent invading force in their city. They're getting creative. They're incredibly organized. It's fucking cold there... These are some tough ass people." — Matt Farah (04:10)
• Discussion on decentralized, citizen-led efforts, observers documenting official abuses, and fears over government surveillance.
  • Notable quote:
    "There's a non-zero possibility that there could be a violent confrontation between federal and local law enforcement." — Matt Farah (08:21)
• Zack and Matt recommend journalism outlets for unbiased coverage (Channel 5 News, Chris Hedges), and reflect on law enforcement’s conflicting roles.
• Concerns over warrantless phone tracking and broader implications for privacy and civil liberties.
  • Quote:
    "This software which they can now use, government's now using without warrants... can just track phones, just where they're going. Oh, you're at a protest? Could track you right to your house." — Matt Farah (11:44)

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2. Quick Automotive Updates & Rants (23:09–32:07)

• Follow-up on the insurance company Lemonade, which claims lower rates for Tesla FSD users. An industry insider’s letter debunks their approach and telematics in general.

  • Insightful summary:
    "The end game for all this is that every OEM will provide connected vehicle data to a centralized data exchange that will operate exactly like a credit bureau." — Anonymous insurance insider, read by Matt (25:23)

• Tesla FSD LA–NYC “zero interventions” trip: Matt and Zack analyze the technicality of Tesla's software updates, implying metrics like fewer disconnects may not necessarily mean real progress in safety.

  • "The way I described it is essentially how it works. It just makes further attempts to solve its own problems before actually disconnecting." — Matt Farah (30:52)
  • Zack on automaker strategy:
    "They always roll things out a little early, take them out of the oven before they're really done." (31:04)

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3. Analysis: Autonomous Vehicle Tech, Trust, & Insurance (32:07–38:36)

• Debate on the limits of current autonomous systems: Matt trusts certain expert drivers with FSD, but distrusts its use by “regular” drivers or in full autonomy.

  • "I just can’t stress enough how redundancy of sensor suites is so important." — Matt Farah (33:59)

• Critique of misleading marketing, Tesla’s approach versus Waymo or Mercedes. The two discuss the gap between tech, regulation, and public trust.

• Matt recounts a telling quote on Elon Musk’s “genius” status being context-specific (38:36).

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4. Detailed Review: 2024 Corvette E-Ray (40:56–56:44)

Matt’s 1,400-mile Road Trip Impressions:

• The E-Ray is not a plug-in hybrid, and its electric front-axle drive only activates under high throttle or slip.

  • "You don't plug it in. You'd have to convince somebody that this car is actually a hybrid." — Matt Farah (41:02)

• Under normal driving, it behaves like a regular Stingray. The hybrid system doesn't add the dramatic handling benefits (like torque-vectoring) of rivals (NSX, Artura, 918, etc.).

• Steering described as “darty” and heavy, presumably due to alignment and chassis setup.

  • "My ... armpit just from holding it straight for that long. This was a two hands on the wheel drive for all this was a lot." (42:43)

• Positives: Value (fully loaded at $133k), excellent straight-line speed (0-60 in the 2s), strong engine.

• Criticism: Heavier, less fun steering than Z06, name “E-Ray” and hybrid branding poorly targeted, little practicality improvement—couldn’t fit a rollerboard in the front trunk.

• Digital rearview mirror: Big field of view, but critical lack of detail — Matt notes he "couldn't see a cop car for shit" until too late (50:35).

  • "Because your eyes are just so much better than cameras, which is why like all this camera only AV shit, drives me crazy." (52:32)

• Tires matter more than AWD for winter driving—both hosts reinforce that point, lamenting how often the public misses it.

• For most buyers, a regular Stingray is a better road tripper unless you specifically need AWD for snow.

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5. Chuckwalla Valley Raceway FOR SALE! (58:33–62:10)

• Chuckwalla Valley Raceway is on the market for $26 million.
• Matt and Zack discuss its features, location (“so far in the middle of nowhere”), quality of the facility, and why it's a beloved spot for driving and filming.
  • "It's a great place to do slides… Who designed that track did such a fantastic job." — Zack (60:27)
  • Sundown, stargazing, and “plenty of cabins”—fantasy scenarios ensue.

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6. Q&A Segment: Listener Questions (63:07–110:54)

Bugatti Veyron “Homage” / Coachbuilt One-Offs (63:07–66:55)

• Bugatti's new “solitaire program” offers ultra-wealthy customers bespoke coachbuilt cars.
• Discussion centers on the just-revealed “FKP Homage,” a one-off based on the Chiron but styled to recall the Veyron.
  • "They've built this one-off car that is a Chiron, but looks like a Veyron. So now you... have a photo of it next to an actual Veyron, and you can see the differences." (64:41)
• Both agree it’s a better retro-modern homage than Ferrari or Lamborghini’s recent attempts, if somewhat absurd in purpose.

Quick-fire Topics & Notable Excerpts:

• Geo Brand & 90s Cheap Cars: A badge-engineering venture, mostly Isuzus and Suzukis sold under Chevy’s tent; not all bad, but defined by price (68:44).
• Corvette ZR1 Improvements: More sound, new interior (not “wall of buttons”), round steering wheel to replace current square one (71:13).
• Sticky Tires vs. PS4S for Canyon Driving: Most benefits are marginal; negatives include more wear, noisier, pick up more stones. Stick with PS4S for road use (72:25).
• Ideal Cars for Tail of the Dragon (under $100k): Short gearing & light weight matter more than raw power — “re-geared Boxster GTS” (74:11).
• Mustang GT Premium vs. Base Dark Horse: For driving enjoyment (manual transmission, better seats) the Dark Horse with Recaros is the pick, but otherwise GT Premium gives more options (76:05).
• Wagons “douche-proof”? Nothing is douche-proof, it depends on the owner culture and context; wagons are often bought for attitude, not just function (77:43).
• White-faced Tool Watch for ~$10k: Explorer II, Milgauss, or Speedmaster—cases depend on wrist size, personality (93:34).

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7. Industry & Market Insights

• EV Pickup Trucks as Fleet Vehicles: Best suited for predictable municipal/fleet use; not ideal for unpredictable, long-term grid outages (105:44).
• Porsche 911 Line Future: Hosts disagree that splitting 911s into "GT" and "sport" lines is realistic; emissions and racing tech pressure dictate the current evolution (107:02).
• NA GT3’s Likely Turbocharged Future: Regulations may force the next GT3 and GT3 RS to adopt turbocharging (109:49); the current NA models may increase in value.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Organizers in Minneapolis:
  "I hope there's someone right now... listening to this podcast and honking air horns at ICE. That would make me so happy. If someone sends me a video... dinner's on me, habibi. Let's fucking go." (09:14)
• On Telemetrics and Data Tracking:
  "Every OEM will provide connected vehicle data to a centralized data exchange that will operate exactly like a credit bureau." — Anonymous Letter (25:23)
• On AI, Self-Driving & Marketing:
  "Only Elon could get away with it. No other publicly traded company could have leadership that would lie to everybody like that and still be in place." — Matt Farah (37:45)
• On Bugatti One-offs:
  "Keep the billionaires happy. That's very important. Otherwise they're going to make the rest of our lives terrible." — Matt Farah (66:09)
• On Road Trip Eats:
  "I don't like eating in cars at all... I don't want to sound holier than thou, but... the grease of touching the car in your hand, to me, eating in the car is a pretty gross thing I don't do." — Matt Farah (88:28)
• On “Race Cars for the Road” Projects:
  "It takes a mature consumer to go: actually, my inner id wants a race car for the road, but in reality... I don't want that." — Matt Farah (100:29)

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Timestamps — Key Segments

• 00:00–10:51 — Minneapolis activism & ICE protests, privacy/surveillance
• 23:09–32:07 — Insurance telematics, Tesla FSD “progress”
• 32:07–38:36 — Automated driving trust, Elon Musk critique
• 40:56–56:44 — Matt’s in-depth Corvette E-Ray review
• 58:33–62:10 — Chuckwalla Valley Raceway for sale, memories
• 63:07–66:55 — Bugatti Veyron “homage,” coachbuilt hypercars
• 67:00–94:30 — Listener Q&A (selected car advice, watch talk, industry observations)
• 105:44–110:54 — EV pickups as fleet vehicles, future 911/GT3 powertrains

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Tone & Style

True to The Smoking Tire, the episode is candid, irreverent, and deeply knowledgeable. Matt’s rants are as thoughtful as they are passionate, and Zack’s straightman queries keep the show moving and clear to both enthusiasts and casual listeners. Their interplay is laced with dry humor, strong opinions, and a consistent focus on real-world automotive experiences.

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Closing

The episode is a microcosm of the show’s strengths: unapologetically off-the-cuff, mixing in real-world advocacy, hard-earned car insights, healthy skepticism about tech and industry claims, and an engaging rapport with listeners. Whether you love cars, care about policy, or just want to hear what “the people on the ground” are really doing, this is an episode worth catching in full.

Transcript

[A]

What up, everybody? Matt Farah here with my boy Zach Clapman. Welcome to the Smoking Tire podcast. And today's episode is, as always, brought to you by off the Record. We love off the Record because they're out there on the road looking out for you every week. Not a week goes by that I don't get an email from somebody or DM on Instagram saying, man, off the Record saved my bum. I was about to use them myself on this past road trip, but I got away with one. I thought I got nailed, but actually the guy was just checking out the Corvette. But if you nailed don't plead guilty. That's for suckers. Go to offtherecord.com TST that's offtherecord.com Tst they will connect you with a qualified attorney who will fight that ticket in the jurisdiction in which you got it right. They'll send the right person to do the job in the right place. And if you use offtherecord.com TST you will get 10% off all legal services booked through off the Record. If you get a ticket big, small, or in between, don't plead guilty. Fight it with off the [e-mail] TST they've got your back. All right, on this episode of the show, one of our local racetracks. Another one of our local racetracks is for sale. I did 1,400 miles in the Corvette E. Ray Bugatti has thrown back to itself. And also, ICE can suck my ass. Hannah rented a Ford Maverick in Fort Collins for her trip.

[B]

Oh, cool.

[A]

She calls me from the rental lot and asks me what she should get. And I go, first off, no Nissans, no Mitsubishis. From there. From there, we want to go what we really want. We're looking for, like, a Hyundai or a Toyota or a Ford or maybe a Kia is kind of where we're at. And so she was like, how about a Ford Maverick? I was like, that sounds great. Get that. And then she realized that she's essentially never parked a car with, like, a bed before.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it has a backup camera, but because it's like the base model, it doesn't have, like, sensors or really anything else. And so she's like, yeah, I'm not good at parking this thing, but.

[B]

But I feel like if the camera doesn't have sensors and stuff, it doesn't matter if there's a bed or not. The camera, I feel like, has gotten rid of the whole.

[A]

I don't know what the camera looks like in a Maverick.

[B]

I Have a shitty camera.

[A]

It could be a bad camera. Like it could be on the top of the cab and not on the tailgate.

[B]

True.

[A]

I don't know where it is. I've known it.

[B]

But I think if she had a hatchback but it had a bad camera with no guidelines. You still have to go mirrors and cameras.

[A]

Yeah. And Hannah's also bad generally of she's not a bad driver, but she's bad at knowing exactly where her wheels are.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

You know what I mean? She has trouble straddling potholes that aren't like right in the middle of the lane. You know what I mean?

[B]

I can understand that.

[A]

Yeah. She'll often go fully around a pothole rather than straddle it because she doesn't think she can actually straddle it when she can.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Are we live? Do we exist?

[B]

Yeah, we do. They say the sound is good. Does she like the Maverick now or have you not. You've not heard back?

[A]

She said it's fine. She said it's fine. I don't think she'll be buying one, but she said it's fine. Hey, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the program. Was our last show me in Arizona. It was right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Sorry about the hotel ass audio of that one. I hope it was okay. But it was a show, man. A few things have happened since then and without going into great detail, I would like to give a quick shout out to the commuters in Minneapolis. If you know who you are, you know what I'm talking about. The people commuting in Minneapolis right now. They're doing the fucking work. And these are some very brave people that are commuting is what they call the people that are following ice around. Oh, and alerting legal observer legal observers. These people are doing very dangerous work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're helping their neighbors. They're helping their neighbors who don't look like them, which is very Christian of them, in case you do that sort of thing. And they're non violently opposing a violent invading force in their city. They're getting creative. They're incredibly organized. It's fucking cold there. It was like 6 degrees fucking cold there. And these are some tough ass people. So I'm not that tough. I'm a fucking pussy. If I was in this situation, what would I do? I'd feed those people. I would. I'd set up a fucking barbecue and I'd. And I'd feed those people. That's what I would do.

[B]

I mean, every movement needs a system.

[A]

That's all. It's all And I'm sure some people would appreciate that food. I wouldn't be the ones out there taunting those fucking pussies with fucking big guns and masks. I wouldn't be. But there's fucking hard ass people that are doing that work right now. And that's fucking legit as fuck.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, the protest was super. I mean, admirable and sadly necessary.

[A]

Well, there's. I mean, there's the protests and then there's like the helpers and then there's.

[B]

The observers are important because the documentation is important, because through this again, we've learned that like the official narrative will be like, da, da, da, da. And they go, here's the video showing. It's not at all like that.

[A]

Yeah, they're gonna murder you and then they're gonna call you a terrorist on television.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And even when there's like 12 angles of fucking ice shooting you in the back or in the face or the.

[B]

Video, his handgun was taken away. But the official story. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, love the two A guys. They're. Oh, boy. Are they saying he had it coming now?

[B]

No, the NRA came out and was like, this is not good.

[A]

Finally the NRA does something consistent with itself.

[B]

Well, they have pickle.

[A]

They're up against the wall. Yeah, but I mean, fuck the people. All I'm trying to say is the real fucking folks out there that are fucking freezing their balls off and chasing these bitches out of fucking town in their cars with whistles and horn horns and fucking air horns and shit.

[B]

That requires a lot of bravery.

[A]

Fucking dude. Guys walking around the streets with leaf blowers to disperse tear gas. That's so good, bro. I'm reading. I'm reading articles from journalists, you know, who have been there and have talked to these folks talking about going to a guy's house, he's got a living room full of leaf blowers. Going to the guy's house, he's got fucking 20 megaphones.

[B]

So they're gonna call him an arms dealer. Right?

[A]

Right. Yeah. And these guys are. They're fucking. There's no. It's like the Malibu Cars and coffee. There's no central organization. It's all decentralized on signal chats and shit like that. It's just people helping people. And it's fucking amazing to watch. It's like, it's terrible. Obviously I spent most of the weekend in this sort of alternating state of like, you know, dread and not fear specifically, but just this sort of like, it's gonna come for all of us sort of thing. But also like then I started reading stories about like Minnesotans who are like hardcore, like just fucking getting it done and organizing and talking to each other and feeding each other and helping each other and hiding each other.

[B]

There's a great interview on Channel 5 News. Do you watch that guy? Channel 5 News is great. This is a YouTube channel. But probably like the best unbiased journalism videos out right now. And like, I don't. You would like him a lot.

[A]

All right, I'll check it out.

[B]

I'm down. But he went. He usually lands in these places right as it's happening. And someone just talking to camera was like, you know, the political party's not coming for you. We have to do this together. And that's always true. Chris Hedges, do you know him? Yeah. Fantastic journalist. I mean he preaches this a lot. Like you have to do non violent organized stuff and it has to be the people because you know, there's no, there's not going to be an organization of like law enforcement on the side of the people or like law enforcement. I mean law enforcement is gently resisting. There was a bunch of police chiefs in New York that spoke out together publicly about ICE harassing their citizens. And they're like, what the fuck? Like, this is not how you do this. But they can't like go to the ground.

[A]

I mean there's a. There's a non zero possibility that there could be a violent confrontation between federal and local law enforcement. Yeah, I mean there's really a decent. A lot of people wrote really interesting stuff this weekend. Hamilton Nolan, Wes Seiler wrote a really decent, really, really interesting piece. I thought Garbage Day as always was fucking on it. That's a must read. And of course popular information is a must read, of course. Judd Leggum, Very important accountability newsletter.

[B]

My Tinfoil Hat thought this weekend was ICE has changed their uniforms to say police instead of ice. Because then if federal and local show up at the same place and have a discrepancy, it's harder for local police to identify who's their guys and who is ice.

[A]

That's crazy. Cause that's criminal thought. That's what people doing crimes do. Dress up like cops. That's crazy. I don't wanna spend the whole show on this. But I, you know, you gotta fuckin. I had to get the thoughts out about first. I was like, I'm gonna come and fucking say a bunch of things about how ICE are a bunch of piece of shit. Which is true. But it's more important to focus on the people that are like, doing the fucking. The good things down there. So, like, shout out to those people. And I hope there's someone right now driving around Minnesota, listening to this podcast and fucking honking air horns at ice. That would be. That would make me so happy. If someone sends me a video of a fucking car chasing ice out of town while playing this podcast, fucking dinner's on me, habibi. Let's fucking go.

[B]

I just think it's a great celebration of the fact that, you know, we the people can get things done. And it's just because this force shows up with all the gear, all the rifles, trying to intimidate and all that stuff. And it's like just the simple. And it's amazing to see people's organic organization of like, oh, we're gonna follow them document stuff. Here's how you do that. Like, it's just. It's impressive how quickly those methods have come to be in the last six months.

[A]

Well, it depends. Fascism depends on people staying home.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

It depends on a pre fear of. A fear of what's gonna happen. So you don't do the thing you were gonna do.

[B]

Well, that's why they call everyone a terrorist. Because they go. Because they're saying they're not. Yes. They're accusing the person that they shot of being a thing. What they're really doing, in my opinion, is they're informing the whole audience of the news going, this is what we're gonna call you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is how it's gonna go for you.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. And we have Palantir now to watch you. We have all the money, and we have absolutely warrantless data tracking software. Remember that software I told you about? I talked to him on the show because I met my friend who has a commercial real estate business, and he showed me his phone with this app that showed everyone who came into their stores and where they were coming from and where they were going. And it was like, not expensive to get this. And he was just like a commercial fucking real estate guy. And it didn't just show his stores. It showed all the stores. It showed every commercial business in this region he purchased. It was like 30, $40,000 for the year, which is both a lot of money and not a lot of money.

[B]

That's not a lot of money to track every single person in a neighborhood.

[A]

Yeah. And it's not a lot of money if you own 100 shopping centers, which this. This person does. And it's not a lot of money if you're the fucking government. And this software which they can now use, government's now using without warrants. They don't need warrants to use it. Can fucking just track phones just where they're going. Oh, you're at a protest, could track you right to your house. So that's why Wes Seiler's article this weekend was like, what do you do if your house isn't the safe place anymore? Folks, taking a quick break for HelloFresh. Supporting us today. I love hellofresh. You know what nobody tells you about weeknight dinner? It's the thing that never goes away. Every day around 5pm there it is again. Hellofresh doesn't make you a better cook. It just gives you your nights back. What are they talking about? It's not about being good at cooking. It's about the mental load of figuring out every single night, what are we gonna have, what are we gonna eat? No, no, no. 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I like to make new recipes and HelloFresh gives me the right ingredients to make the recipe. Easy instructions to make the recipe. There's never any waste. I have the exact amount of food so I'm not buying stuff and then it's rotting or I'm not buying expensive spices and using them once. And then I keep that recipe card so I can multiply the recipe if I want to make the same thing for a party or something later. Because it's usually really delicious. And I've had some really good meals with hellofresh. But it's not just dinner time. It's energy. You're getting the ability to sit down instead of Standing at the counter, stress eating while you cook. And when dinner tastes this good and takes so little effort, you finally get your nights back. I can totally relate. Go to hellofresh.com smokingtire10fm to get 10 free meals and a free Zwilling knife. A $145 value on your third box offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. 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By signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners, you can get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com tire and use promo code tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Tire and enter code Tire at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Tire code Tire. How do you sort of what does a prepper's mindset look like in that type of case? Because for most people home is safe. But between ice following people home using fucking shady ass tracking software sold to them by Palantir or whether they are fucking. I mean I completely lost my train of thought. I'm so fucking discombobulated by this. But like you can just be followed to your, like to your house. Like, you know, so that or I'm sorry, whether they're following you doing that or whether they're just doing fucking warrantless, warrantless raids now, which apparently is a thing. So the first amendment that's gone second amendment kind of on ice. Cuz fucking this dude Preddy, Alex Preddy, I believe legally fucking carrying and didn't pull it under major threat. Helps a woman and they fucking disarm him and shoot him in the back and say he was there to murder everybody.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Legally. I mean doing the. Literally the good guy with the gun, the fucking choir boy nurse helping a.

[B]

Woman, Veterans affairs nurse.

[A]

Yeah, There is no gooder guy with a gun who in the face of that violence doesn't pull it.

[B]

Which I think is very smart. And I think a lot of people talk about it. It's like if they instigate a violent confrontation, then do they get just then can they justify martial law? Then can they suspend elections? Well, that's what Trump wants, right?

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

So I think the restraint being sh by all the people that go to these protests and all the people that are there is really admirable. And Chris Hedges again, like amazing nonpartisan journalist does fantastic work. He put out a video that's just like non violence is the only way because the state can always exact more violence on the people than the people will ever be able to exact on the state.

[A]

Well, and how about Kristi Noem's fucking podium? Do you see Kristi Noem's podium? She fucking is up there with a podium she's speaking from and on of it written on the back of the podium it says one of us all of you. Oh, this wasn't some AI thing, this was on cnn. She gave a speech. You see it? The one of us all of you podium. I believe that's the exact wording. One of us all of you or one of us all of them either.

[B]

Way, one of ours, all of yours.

[A]

One of ours, all of yours. Excuse me if I didn't get the exact fascism words right. But think about that. Think about that. Do you know what that's the implication is? Collective punishment, right? If you injure or kill one of ours, we're gonna kill all of you. Right? That's literally a war crime. Like, she's up there giving a speech with a fucking declaration of a war crime written on the podium. Like, that's how little these people give a fuck about.

[B]

So that podium was. That was. The picture I found was from January 8th. So I don't know if she's using that podium continuous.

[A]

January 8th is not very long ago.

[B]

It's not. I thought you were saying that the podium was made during, like.

[A]

No, not made this weekend. That was not made this weekend. No, no, but still the whatever head of fucking.

[B]

You know, it's still saying that. What? It's saying it's.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's like, that's, you know, that's where we're at right now is with, like, people in charge going, we're gonna do war crimes.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And like, there is just nothing to do about it.

[B]

Fascist intimidation works.

[A]

But Minnesota has shown, I think, so far that they can't control a whole city. Actually.

[B]

No, they can't.

[A]

They think they can, but they can't. And that's. They picked the wrong fucking city. They didn't pick a fucking city full of pussies, did they? They picked a tough city to try and run amok in. It's not working so good.

[B]

You know, these observers have. They. They were doing this in LA when ICE first showed up here, and there was some great Instagram accounts that were doing the same thing. Like, yeah. Cars, whistles. They were. And there are people. They'd go to Long beach. They figured out where ice's, like, base was.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they just watch them. And then they would follow the cars when they left and follow them to the neighborhoods, help provide advice to neighbors that are getting approached and stuff like that. So it's this. These methods have just, like evolved and developed and spread really quickly. And it's fantastic to see. And I think people, if you live in Minnesota, you're tough, like, it's cold. You are a tough person. And usually very nice people.

[A]

So I like to call it some folks from Minneapolis. Let me tell you something, all of them had super ethnic fucking names. None of them were like, Minnesota white people. None of them were that. They were all fucking Hispanic or African. Ish. Names of folks who were Americans, by the way. I say they were children of immigrants who were Americans that just had very ethnic last names. And it surprised me back then. I was like, Minnesota. You guys are Minnesota. And they're like, Minnesota. They were hardcore about being from there. And when they graduated from college, none of them, everyone else, New York, Miami, Louisiana, them, right back to fucking Minnesota.

[B]

My friend Jim Claps from Minnesota, So very white name. But he was the guy that would wear shorts in the. In January in Colorado and it would be 12 degrees.

[A]

I know that guy.

[B]

And he's like, I'm not cold, just because he's used to it. And we're all, I'm bundled up.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got the tevas, the shorts and the tin.

[B]

Yeah. Literally cargo shorts and like maybe like one puffy jacket. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

They're hard as fuck up there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Shout out to Minnesota, for sure. Fucking, we fucking respect you guys. All right, cars. Should we do cars then? How about that? Where do we want to start? Should we start with the update to my Lemonade rant?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[A]

So two shows ago, we talked about this company, Lemonade, that was offering sort of discount rates for Tesla FSD users. Right. And they implied that using Tesla FSD is so much safer that we did 25 minutes on this about why it's stupid and medium level bullshit. Well, we have a letter from a list listener who preferred to not be identified by name, but has been an auto insurance industry representative for 20 years. Okay. This is from the letter. I have personally tested just under a dozen telematics platforms that insurers use, even without autonomous driving being a factor. A huge challenge with these systems is figuring out who is driving and the mechanisms that they use this to determine. The mechanisms they use to determine this are sometimes goofy. When the stuff first came out, and I'm going to paraphrase a little bit because a lot of words here. When the stuff first came out, you plugged the dongle into the OBD port to gather driving data. In these cases, it was evaluated based on the car. As time went on, the dongle went away in favor of monitoring the behavior of your phone using the accelerometer and gps, which presented new challenges. You could get dinged for speeding while being on a train, or you could be pegged as driving aggressively while you were the passenger in a car.

[B]

Amazing.

[A]

One of the many janky ways they controlled to identify for being a passenger was using your phone's accelerometer to determine if you lowered yourself down and to the right or down and to the left. Some programs have dozens of such indicators which will taken together create a directionally correct picture of what's going on, but with many obvious exceptions and errors, which editorial I suppose makes insurance telematics and AV driving a match made in heaven. The end game for all this is that every OEM will provide connected vehicle data to a centralized data exchange that will operate exactly like a credit bureau. The only reason there's any hope of this not happening in our lifetimes is that insurance regulation is convoluted and administered at the state level, which makes it very difficult to pull off on the national level. To be clear, this is not a take accepted nationwide, but one that I personally carry in many insurance boardrooms. P.S. your assertion that there is no data of FSD being safer asides from what Elon says is correct. If this data did exist, the industry would price on it. And aside from tech bro, insurance startups that don't actually have to make any money, the industry does not. So not necessarily should be taken as gospel. But that's an insider's take as to why these sort of driver tracking based insurance programs are just bad across the board and why this one that claims all this stuff with Tesla and FSD seems to be medium level bullshit. So thank you for that one. We appreciate the insight, that's fun. But speaking of which, Alex Ro did actually, along with two of his buddies whose names I forget right now, sorry, did actually go from LA to New York using FSD with allegedly zero interventions or disconnections.

[B]

That's right, they did that.

[A]

Yeah. So I was reading up on this, it was like 58 hours, which sounds fucking awful if you ask me, but I guess FSD has. And this is probably what Camisa experienced when he, he was texting about it as well. They changed something in the FSD algorithm or not Algorithm, who changed? Tesla. Okay. Changed something in the way it operates. So if it would get confused previously you'd have a disconnect, but now it has a new sort of methodology where it tries to solve its own problems a few times first before disconnecting. And one of the things that Alex said was without this update there would have been a couple of disconnections on this drive. But because they're now, I don't know if it's more computing power, I don't know if it's just a changing of parameters, but they have. And if you scroll down in this story, they have the actual. They casually call it try, try again, but There's a different wait. There's a keep going, keep going. There is an actual name for it. Keep going. Guys, one more quick break because Mud Water is coming in hot. Now, here's the thing about Mud Water. It's a coffee alternative that's made with cacao, chai, turmeric, and functional mushrooms like Lion's mane and reishi. Okay. You get this sort of warm focus boost without a wired buzz or a crash that usually tags along with coffee or other caffeinated products, right? And I've had problems with caffeine in the past. I've had literal panic attacks as a result of being overly caffeinate. When you want to get your morning together a little less chaos, less jittery energy, and more of that kind of locked in feeling that gets you going. But when I don'ti can't have that kind of caffeine in the morning. That's where the mud water comes in. Right? And if you're still craving that taste of coffee, which you're in luck, I like it. They just launched a low caffeine coffee made with organic arabica, Swiss water, decaf l theanine and the same functional mushrooms you get in the other blends. It's rich, smooth, and only 45 milligrams of caffeine. So you can get the flavor you love without the jitters, crash, or spiraling thoughts. Spiraling thoughts is usually where you would find me in the peak of being overly caffeinated, so I don't want any of them. So whether you're mixing up the original blend or easing into something gentler than your usual brew, Mud Water makes it ridiculously easy to start the day feeling good. Now you can grab it at Target and sprouts nationwide, making better mornings easier than ever. Every ingredient in Mud Water does serve serve a purpose with organic ingredients for a clean, natural boost. Mud Water's smooth, earthy flavors provide a delicious and natural source of energy. Their OG blend contains cacao and chai for a hint of caffeine and a hot chocolate like flavor, Lion's Mane for focus Cordyceps to promote natural energy and both chaga and reishi to support a healthy immune system. Ready to make the switch to cleaner energy? Head over to mudwtr.com that's m u d w t r dot com and grab your starter kit today. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal. Up to 43% off your entire order plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother. When you use Code Tire at checkout. That's right up to 43% off with code tire.com after your purchase, they'll ask how you found them. Please show your support and let them. No, it was us. M U D W T R and use code tire at checkout. And now back to the show. Oh, it doesn't have it. Okay, nevermind. The way I described it is essentially how it works. It just makes further attempts to solve its own problems before actually disconnecting. Which, I mean, on the one hand it makes you wonder why it wasn't doing that before, but on the other.

[B]

Hand, well, they always roll things out or a little early, take them out of the oven before they're really done.

[A]

I also think it wasn't. Number of disconnections or lack thereof seemed to be an indicator of the system being good or not. And so my guess is they prioritized. I'm not saying they like, like bullshitted or finagled, but they prioritized reducing the number of disconnects.

[B]

Oh, well, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I could see them doing that. I think then the question would be from people like Alex's side, you almost have to have this subjective observation of, okay, did it make more mistakes or do anything weird but remain connected? You know, to the point where he's, he goes, okay, six months ago it would have disconnected here, but right now it's staying connected and figuring it out and wandering in the lane a little bit or something. Or if he says it was actually a lot more flawless, then they've improved both sides.

[A]

Yeah, look, I don't disagree or that they have slowly improved this system. I don't think I've ever really argued that there was a slow incremental improvement of this system. I just, I still don't fucking. It's still a level two system. Like it's, you know, I would not ride in a Tesla that didn't have a very attentive human operator monitoring such a system. If I would. Any day of the fucking week, Zach. Absolutely any day of the week. Would I ride with Alex Roy in his Tesla using FSD? 100%. I trust that person to use that system response. But would I be comfortable with any fucking Uber driver just hitting it and zoning out? Nah, I don't think so. And would I be comfortable in a driverless taxi that had this system? Absolutely not. Not compared to what I've seen with Waymos.

[B]

Well, I'm sure you saw the story too. The Tesla's in Austin now. They don't have observational drivers. In the car anymore. But they have cars following the robo taxis that are observing.

[A]

Yeah. So they're like eight years behind Waymo.

[B]

They definitely are. I mean I think the article, they were attacking Tesla a bit for the creative wording, which I do understand. But also they have now let a car out into the world where no one can grab the wheel if they are, if something goes wrong with it. So it seems like a step towards letting these things just drive around like Waymo did.

[A]

Yeah, it is a step towards, but I just, I can't, I can't stress enough how redundancy of sensor suites is so important.

[B]

I agree with these type of cars, I totally agree with you.

[A]

Just, I just can't stress that shit enough.

[B]

What would be so smart if they, if they wanted to go all in on the robo taxi thing is if they could have like bolt on radar stuff like take the existing car, it's got the cameras, it's got that suite, then add on the LiDAR radar, it'll stick out just like it does on the Waymo. But it would be a safer thing to operate. But that would hurt their stock because it's not something you or I could buy at the dealership.

[A]

Right. Yeah. I mean, and still we still have the thing of, I mean Tesla can self insure their cybercaps, right. They got lots of money, they don't need insurance. They can self insure Waymo. Self insurers, they're fucking Google. They don't need regular car insurance. But like you Zach Clapman, there is no path yet for the individual to purchase really at any price a policy that will cover a car that's being driven autonomously. And we have no, no one has stepped up. And even Mercedes, if you saw pulled back on that level three car. Yeah, maybe not. No one has stepped up and said we will stand behind our technology when being used by the general public. And I don't see that happening fucking anytime soon.

[B]

Well, insurance is all about risk and they want to reduce as much. I mean they stopped covering a lot of houses in California because of fire. Yeah. Like they're not going to cover autonomous cars I think until the data is really, really clear to them.

[A]

Yeah. And that data anywhere close, right?

[B]

It's not close. And it also needs to be made, made. Well, maybe not public, but at least given to them. And they probably want, you know, millions of miles of data like Waymo has. So they have to be.

[A]

And Waymos aren't. I mean Waymos aren't, aren't perfect. But no, they're not.

[B]

I think they're the front runner right now. Yeah, they're the leader. And they're insured by Google.

[A]

They're not misleading. That's the difference to me is that waymos aren't misleading. They operate in a fucking area. You can see the map of the. That you know what they are. I mean, I can't believe I'm defending fucking Google, of all people. They're as evil as anybody else. But I think it's a more honest product.

[B]

I think they just approached it more cautiously. And whether it was because they saw Elon's method and went, ooh, okay, that hasn't gone well for him, or it's just not in the nature of Google and the people that work there, they're a different person.

[A]

Well, they certainly didn't go, buy this today and it'll work tomorrow for six fucking seven years.

[B]

I don't know. They also just. They don't grab the headlines like he does. I mean, he. For years, he was. Everyone was like, it's our Tony Stark. It's the real thing. And then he went totally crazy. And that's worn off.

[A]

There's an entire Road and Track column about why a fucking huge red flag for any news article is if in the headline it says Elon Musk says just anything that follows that. But I'm just saying, like, deeply horseshit.

[B]

Like, I've told this story before, but I read an article once where it was like, Tesla crashes into Nissan. And I was like, oh. And it was during the fervor a few years ago, when everyone was paying attention, I clicked on it, and it's a video of a Nissan crashing into a Tesla, right? The Tesla is stopped at a red light. And I went, oh, they're just using. Tesla was the headline grabber, right? So I. I don't. Maybe Waymo didn't ever have that kind of cultural cachet. So I'm wondering, did we. Because you can't buy one, were they more cautious in how they talked about or promised their future? Or did they just not get the attention and the headlines? And so I think that's what it was, right?

[A]

If you bullshit the future, your stock goes up, like, a lot. But it's also deeply irresponsible. And so only fucking Elon could get away with it. No other publicly traded company could have leadership that would lie to everybody like that and still be in place.

[B]

Well, Sam Altman's doing a pretty good job.

[A]

Well, yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. What's his name? Sam Bankman fried, I guess, who's doing real good, right? Until he wasn't. But I don't think any company in the world world could bullshit for 15 years as convincingly as Elon Musk has. And I don't know why, because a lot of the things he say to me sound catastrophically stupid.

[B]

Well, it's also. Cars are in our wheelhouse. I'm sure there's.

[A]

Well, you saw the fucking tweet, right? People called Elon Musk a genius because of his cars. And I didn't know cars, so I assumed he was a genius. And they called him a genius because of his rocky. And I don't know rockets, so I assumed he was a genius, but I know software. And then he started talking about software on Twitter and I saw the stupidest motherfucker I've ever seen talk about software. What did I learn? Don't go near his cars or rockets.

[B]

That's really funny.

[A]

One of the most concise explanations ever written.

[B]

Well, but I also think. I don't think you can. Like, I won't write off his rockets because his Twitter tech sucks and grok. And he's like a terrible person.

[A]

No, her point is that he professes genius and people label him a genius in areas he is absolutely not. A fucking genius.

[B]

And I think that is a flaw in human nature. We ask celebrities what they think about xyz, some celebrity. And celebrities. Actors. I'm just gonna say actors. And it's because we celebrate them for doing this thing. They make us feel a certain way when we watch a movie or a TV show and we say. We go, well, what do you think about this technical problem? And then they say something and we go, I can't believe that this person said that. And you're like, you shouldn't be amazed by this. They trained at acting. They're an entertainer. They might not know everything about COVID vaccine, molecular biology or whatever, or spaceships, but. So that's the thing is we just go, you're good at this. Are you good at all these other things? Because we all want a God. And that's a dumb thing to do.

[A]

It's a really dumb thing to do. Really dumb. I mean, your God. Pretty soon your God's gonna start talking about white genocide, you know, like it's fucking. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not going well over there.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Imagine being that rich and that miserable. Be crazy.

[B]

It's a common thing, apparently.

[A]

I know. I aspire. May I. May I have the wherewithal to be A Tom from MySpace, you know, should I ever get that much money, all you're gonna see from me is pretty ass landscapes. That's gonna be the end of my Instagram. Here's a landscape of somewhere.

[B]

You can't Fred Durst, man. It's just wagons, right? For a while it was just like old wagons.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Should we talk about the E Ray? I should review the E Ray.

[B]

Yeah. You have a lot of Corvette.

[A]

The Corvette Iray. There it is on the right. There is a picture of the array in that there. 1,400 miles in three and a half days. Solo in the E Ray. So I think that qualifies me for learning about it. For those who don't know, the E Ray is it's a hybrid sort of. It's kind of a hybrid. It's not a hybrid in the way that most people will think about a hybrid. And in that regard, I think it's actually a bit of a failure of GM to even call it a hybrid. Because the truth is. Or call it the E Ray. I don't think the E Ray is the kind of name that will attract who GM is probably trying to attract to buy this car. Because those people are probably like, hybrids are for queers or something like that, right? And I drove this car a lot. You don't plug it in. You'd have to convince somebody that this car is actually a hybrid. Like, there's nothing about it that acts like a hybrid car. There really isn't. There's a small battery that powers the front drive for it's a single motor for the two front wheels. So it's all wheel drive. In order to really activate the all wheel drive system, you either need to have a situation where you're beyond the limit of gravity grip in a corner and it's activated by the stability control and those kind of like yaw sensors and stuff. Or you have to be at like over 50% throttle. Okay, now remember, the E Ray's output is rear wheels, gas power, front wheels, electric power. There isn't some motor generator in the gearbox that does a torque filly thing or a sort of off the line shove, the way that Porsche systems or Lamborghini Systems or McLaren Systems do. So what I'm saying is if you drive this car around on a clear day at under 50% throttle, it's a stingray through and through Z51 stingray. You will not activate nor really do anything with the electric motor. There will be a little bit of regenerative braking when you brush the brakes. It does regen first if it has battery before going to caliper a little bit. But you don't notice it much if you get into the pedal and it does the sound and you can feel the extra thrust. Then now you know you've got. And this fucking thing goes in a straight line. This car boogies. It is a fast car. I mean 655 horsepower. It goes like a motherfucker. And if you launch it, it's in the twos. It's a very fast car. But Temerario, McLaren, Artura, Acura, NSX, Porsche 918, all these other cars, because they've got those two motors up front that can do that incredible infinite torque vectoring, brake vectoring. In this car, you don't have the magic steering that you have in those cars. And actually because it's motor into differential into, you have a heavier steering than you would have in a Stingray or in a Z06. So the weight of the steering is a lot. And most of the time the trade off in power doesn't give back. Most of the time it feels like a darty and heavy steering stingray. Which doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that it was sort of pitched as sort of the road tripper's Corvette. And actually I think if I was road tripping, I'd rather just have a regular sting Stingray. The front tires are 275s in this car. And I think it may have had a sort of journalist spec alignment on it because it was darty and 1400 miles in a darty car. My I don't know what this muscle is. It's part of either where my pec meets my armpit just from holding it straight for that long. This was a two hands on the wheel drive for all this was a lot. I would hope that know you, you can dial the alignment more relaxed a little bit. If you're really going to do these kind of miles in one of these cars. And it sounds like I'm getting down on this car, here's why you shouldn't. This one is fully loaded and it's 133,000 bucks. It's with all the carbon, it's with all the ceramic brakes, the upgraded wheels, the upgraded interior, like all that stuff. And it's a ton of car. It's super fast. Even at that price, I think I'd rather have a Z06 for the same money. That's where I would go. But I get it. And if you really did want to drive one of these through the winter. The all wheel drive would help you if you had the right tires. I drove it in the ice and on PS4S's the All Wheel drive was not substantially helpful. As helpful as a set of the proper tires would have been. Okay. Having said that, the stingray powertrain, the LT1 engine, and that gearbox is still great. I mean, the engine doesn't have the fizz of the flat plane motor, but it still sounds tough on the cold start. It revs very smooth. The power band is very even. It's an excellent engine for what it's being asked to do. The ergonomics of the car are largely very good, very comfortable. I will say that the binnacle, which is where the roof meets the windshield, is a little bit low for taller drivers. And I only noticed this after a lot of miles. Two, three, four hours, no big deal. Days I found myself doing this, which.

[B]

Is where the Viper posture.

[A]

The Viper or Huracan posture, which is where you just droop your head down a couple of inches subconsciously, you don't even notice it. So that you have a more level vision through. And my neck started to hurt. And we're talking days, not hours. Days of driving. That would be the new interior. They've gotten rid of the wall of buttons. Much better. Yeah, this actually, if you're going a long distance solo, this driver's cockpit is so well set up for you. Everything is just right at your hands. And GMs like, UI is really, really, really good. Clear. What's the TV doing? It's flickering and it's an easy car to use. Everything just sort of falls where you want it to be. The seat is pretty well adjustable. It doesn't have that thigh support thing that I like that the BMWs and the Porsches have. But it has good lumbar, it has good side bolstering. I cannot get behind the square steering wheel. It really doesn't do it for me at all. And really, over long distances, it did not make my hands feel very good. I think the fact that I had to really hold the car straight also didn't help. But I'd really like a round wheel. That mod that I saw in Texas where the guy put the Cadillac black wing wheel on one of these. Did I not show you that? I don't think I put it on Instagram, but there was a GM engineer at the race in Texas that had a prototype C8 prototype.

[B]

Oh, you told me about it. That they just had.

[A]

They had done up as like a track car and it had a round wheel on it and it was amazing. So you definitely want a round wheel. The digital rear view mirror. Click over. So on the one hand. Keep going, keep going. Look at that sunrise in the digital rearview mirror. So the digital rearview mirror on the one hand can brighten up very dark environments or kick down very bright environments. It has a much wider field of view than just looking out the back window. And you can adjust the camera angle a little bit. Bit. So that's okay. And also you don't have to use it. This can be used as a regular mirror if you flip it up.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Here'S something I noticed about the digital mirror. And it actually relates a bit to Tesla and avs and camera only systems. When you have this digital rearview mirror and then you have your real side mirrors and you can see kind of the same scene from both. When it's clear like this, the digital mirror, I could see that there's trucks behind me and cars behind me. If I look at that same from the same distance, same scene, I can see that that's a Peterbilt truck. When I see cars behind me in the digital mirror, I could see that it's a car car. But with the regular glass, I can see much more detail in the individual cars. And I can go, okay, I can go, that's a Volvo. That's a BMW 3 Series. That's a da da da da da. All the way back where they're just dots in this cops. You can't fucking see a cop car for shit. In this digital rearview mirror. All the extra lights and all the detail and stuff that you would use to pick out a Tahoe or explore as a cop car, you can't see nothing. Nothing. Side view mirror, no problem. Flip off the digital mirror and look through the dirty ass Lexan. No problem.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Because your eyes are just so much better than cameras, which is why like all this camera only AV shit, it drives me crazy. You just have to look at a fucking camera. Compared to your eye, almost any camera, especially the piece of shits they're using on Teslas and go, the amount of detail that I can see about the world is just so much more. So the digital camera bottom line is it's good for certain things, it's bad for other things. I hadn't found something that it was particularly bad at until I got fucking rolled on by a police Tahoe. And I didn't know this motherfucker was a cop until he was eight feet behind me. I didn't get pulled over. I just got like a whoop whoop and kind of a shaka like cool car. But this motherfucker snuck up on me in a way that if I had a regular mirror they never would.

[B]

Now why didn't you just run the regular mirror after that?

[A]

I did. Oh. Actually I'll tell you why. Because you see how my Valentine 1 cables wrapped around the mirror. I couldn't get the mirror to the right angle angle and also have the cable wrap around it.

[B]

That is a thing with the cables. Yeah, you should wrap it around like your rocket mount or something like that.

[A]

Yeah, no there's. Yeah. I. After that I was like this and unwound it or actually if you set.

[B]

The mirror before you wind the cable.

[A]

Like you can't shove the cable up there. It moves the mirror.

[B]

Yeah. You couldn't shove it in there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It would just be showing a little bit.

[A]

It didn't fit. Yeah. So anyway, that's.

[B]

I always, always. I mean Sarah's car is this. But other cars that I've driven one that, that have. I like, I like the improved field of view, especially on mid engine cars or you know, SUVs. Like especially a long three row SUV looking through the regular mirror past two rows of seats.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean you get this tiny little window and I. But yeah, I'll switch to like the side mirror if I need to verify something.

[A]

But it just, it may. It got me thinking about camera only AI or camera only AVs vs just like how does nobody with a fucking brain go? Camera eyes and the camera. Despite a wild field of view, the amount of detail in the image is like so much worse.

[B]

Well I think it depends on what they need to see because if the AAV or whatever just needs to see there's a car, it doesn't need to care. Is it a Nissan? Is it a BMW? Is it a police officer?

[A]

No. Where it falls apart. Nobody needs to see small things.

[B]

Is there a ball that rolled out and then they know a kid's going to follow? Or can they. They identified the difference between a child up ahead and a fire. Like a fire hydrant at 200ft. Like that's when it would definitely be important.

[A]

Yeah, but like you know anyway. Fucking. I didn't. There are instances where the digital mirror is better and the digital mirror is not new. It's been in the Corvette for five years. So it's not a new thing. But this is my probably longest experience with it. Like over days and days and days. What else about the E Ray, did I write. I would say that it's definitely not the Corvette for me. Right. I'm a Z06ZR1 guy obviously. I do sort of struggle to guess who it's for. It looks really good. The body colored stuff is really nice. It's not as practical as I'd want it to be. Like you actually I couldn't fit a rollerboard bag in it. I had to pack with duffels which is okay. But because of the front powertrain I couldn't actually get a. You know and so that's sort of a point against compared to some other all wheel drive cars. Although having a front and back trunk is definitely helpful. It's generally a very good car. It just is. It's surrounded on the lower end by a car of unbelievable value that it feels almost exactly like most of the time. And above it is a car that's super fizzy all the time and is only slightly more expensive.

[B]

And the all wheel drive system, someone asked in the patron chat like if the front motors only kick in above 50% throttle then why would it help help in like snow. But I'm sure there's a snow, there's a, there's low friction. Yes, stuff like that. But that we know that tires will help you more than almost anything. Now if you had an E Ray in snow or you know, ice or something on snow tires versus a regular Z51 Stingray on the same tires, the Era would have an advantage for sure. But I hear what you're saying like the number of people that are going to have that situation and would benefit from having all wheel drive instead of just driving a little bit more like you know, you can kind of pre plan how you drive in the snow for your traction, a little momentum here, early braking and if you do that you'd be you know, 99% as set as you would if you had an E Ray. So it's kind of a weird thing to spend the money on.

[A]

I haven't driven an E Ray in the snow but the way I was told at the launch was if you put it in snow mode it makes it more all wheel drive which makes sense, you know, but it doesn't need to be more all wheel drive the rest of the time. Like it's not like it, it's not like driving on a canyon road when you are with within the limits of grip. It doesn't need to be all wheel drive then.

[B]

No.

[A]

So it's not.

[B]

And what's funny is we and every magazine before we even Got into this job, have tried so hard to inform the American public that tires are more important than all wheel drive. And that message still doesn't land. So it's actually, it's GM going, look, we know they're not going to buy snow tires, most of them or all seasons. We have a question about this later in the chat. Someone's friend is driving their car in New England in the winter on PS2s or on Pilot Sport Cup 2s. So it's like that person doesn't even know. So that kind of person might benefit slightly from all wheel drive, even though it won't really affect their braking distance.

[A]

Sure. I think the E Ray is a good car. I wonder what kind of customers it will end up in. And I certainly appreciated that. I got to go do 1400 miles with it. I was scouting the road and track Desert 600, which is April. There's a few spots left. It's going to be unbelievable. The roads are so good. The drive from Zion to Sedona is so beautiful. The hotels are amazing. The food is really good. We've got Las Vegas Motor Speedway outfield, which is the better road course to play on. We're doing Valley of Fire, Lake Mead. It's like it's such an awesome trip. And also I think it's gonna be an awesome trip for passengers. Cause there's a lot to see. It's not just like driving through the woods. There's like big, big vistas and it's a lot of open sweepers. So the passengers aren't gonna get nauseous from tight and technical roads. So. Experiences.roadandtrack.com if you want to come drive with me in April and do this route, it's fucking sick. I will not be doing it in E Ray. I'll be doing it in something else. But thank you to GM for letting me put 1400 miles on your car. That's a cool thing. And the lucid gravity I was supposed to drive it got bumped. I don't know why they really wouldn't tell me. It didn't seem nefarious. But we'll get back to that car as soon as we can. Before we get to questions, did you see that Chuckwalla is for sale? What? Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. I have one of the other racers, tracks in Southern California, an hour east of Palm Springs in the middle of the desert is for sale. I think they want 26 million for it. Which, you know, I don't know if that's a lot or not a lot.

[B]

I have no idea.

[A]

There's a lot there. I mean, there's a beautiful racetrack. There's a big skid pad. There's a Runway. There's the cabin, a Runway cabin. There's the 40 cabins. There's a bunch of garages that have condos on them.

[B]

Wow. Solar everywhere.

[A]

It's a lot of solar. And it's really. It's really a fabulous track. It's really, really good. But it's so far in the middle of nowhere.

[B]

That's really. It's. I mean, it's a funny point against. Because, like, Willow Springs isn't close. You know, it's 86 miles.

[A]

Dude, it's so much further than that.

[B]

It's further than that, but it's also. There's a big section. Getting there is middle of nowhere. Like, Willow Springs is, you know, Palmdale, Lancaster. Like, it's populated. Populated. And then you're there. It's just far from Los Angeles. But Chuckwalla is far from Los Angeles. Then you get to, like, Indio, then you turn left and then you go out into the middle of nowhere.

[A]

I mean, it's 50 minutes east of Indio. That's fucking far.

[B]

Yeah, I'm gonna see what the miles is.

[A]

I just. I passed it the other day in the E Ray on the way home. I passed the exit for Chuckwalla and it was three hours, zero minutes to get home from there. That's.

[B]

That's. That's twice as far as Willow Springs.

[A]

It's twice as far as Willow Springs. And it's two hours to get to Button Willow from la. So it's like, it's really far. Which is too bad because I love it as a racetrack. It is such a fun place to drive a car. It's a great place to do slides.

[B]

200 miles from here.

[A]

Yeah, it's really far.

[B]

It's got such nice, like, little bits of elevation. The bolt turn is if you drive that bull turn and then you go back and you do streets of Willow Bowl. You went, oh, that's what the streets one wants to be when it grows up. Yeah, I mean, it has some speed and it looks like three lanes wide. It's just. Whoever designed that track did such a fantastic job, like with the terrain that was available or they modified it a bit.

[A]

It's also very flowy and it's easy on breaks. Yeah, there's only two big haul downs. And then you have long periods of sustained, like third gear where you're cooling the brakes. So they even on a very hot day which they get out there is. It's not too bad.

[B]

It's so great.

[A]

If I had $26 million, I'd fuck with it. Sure.

[B]

I would need more. And then I'd buy. And I just live out there for a while and get.

[A]

Well, you don't have. It's got the Runway, so you don't really have to live out there. I mean, it's 200 miles, which is like an hour in a, you know, recreational plane.

[B]

Yeah, Right. Tanner Faust should buy this place.

[A]

He fucking.

[B]

He's got a plane. He knows how to drive. Yeah. I don't know if he has $26 million. That's. Well, it's a great place. I have no idea if it's priced high or low, but it's a fantastic facility. And the people that I worked with there years ago, we used to rent it a lot for filming TV shows. The crew were the best of, like. They were so kind, Kind, welcoming, let us do what we wanted. They just kind of trusted visit us. It was so good.

[A]

Yeah, it's a great place.

[B]

Good memories there.

[A]

Yeah. Sun, the sunset there is.

[B]

Oh, yeah, it's a great.

[A]

It's a great place to shoot until sunset.

[B]

And at night, if you look south, I think Osprey take off, like the military aircraft, and they've got these green tracers on them. So you just see these green circles spinning. You go, what the. And then you realize what it is.

[A]

Then the mushies kick in and. Yeah, that's a good. That'd be a good place to do some mushrooms, actually. It would, right? The cabins out there.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, it would.

[A]

Yes. Stargazing little campfire. Go walk the track at 2 o' clock in the morning.

[B]

No, no, I'll tell you a story later.

[A]

Good time. Should we go to the people?

[B]

Not trying to get somebody fired for that story. Yeah, we can go to the people.

[A]

Let's talk to them [e-mail] the Smoking Tire Podcast. They're the best over there. Keep this ship afloat. You can ask questions for the show and then check out the live stream. You can get the show the day it's recorded, not have to wait until Tuesday, Thursday. You can get the show without ads. You can get extra show. You can get access to exclusive collabs and things like that, such as the frozen Berry Notice Canyon that's coming out. Wes from Notice sent me some color samples. He tried to ask me, like, which one I thought was the closest to the fact. And I'm like, dude, I am literally Colorblind here. You need to take charge on deciding which of these colors most accurately represents the factory paint. It's not easy to get, like, to get this color right. It's hard.

[B]

Yeah, I bet.

[A]

So let's go to those folks. Toyota I foreskin. It's pretty good. Thoughts on the quote, new Veyron. Yeah. Do you see this? Some. They're doing. They're doing. They're doing a. Let's keep the billionaires happy over there at Bugatti. You got to keep the billionaires happy, otherwise they'll destroy society.

[B]

There's the tourbillon coming, which keeps them happy. So is this to keep them happy until that's ready?

[A]

No. So one of the things that Bugatti's doing is full on coach building. They're building people one of one cars. So not this. This is not correct. They built a new car.

[B]

This is not the story.

[A]

This is not the story. They built a new car. A car. One car on the Chirons architecture. But that looks like a Veyron. Like, it took me a few looks at the photos to figure out, like, what I was looking at. Top. That's it. FKP homage. That's it. So. So look at this thing. So buga. That. So you look at that and you go, huh. Well, that looks like a Veyron. And it does look like a Veyron.

[B]

That looks like a Sharon, right?

[A]

It. It's like halfway between it look to me, it. At first, when I looked at a small photo on my phone, the back is.

[B]

The back is.

[A]

That was the first photo I saw. And I went, well, that. That kind of looks like a Veyron.

[B]

But very much so.

[A]

But then the front is like, well, those headlights are different. And then the interior, you go, well, that's a little. That's not Chiron. It's more like Veyron.

[B]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[A]

And then you keep going. So. So they've built this one off car that is a Chiron, but looks like a Veyron. So now you. They have a photo of it next to an actual Veyron, and you can see the differences.

[B]

Yeah, it's lower. It looks a little longer.

[A]

It's got the chrome strip that runs from the base of the. A pillar around the sort of big scoopy thing.

[B]

The hood's a little bit longer than the headlights, of course, but, I mean.

[A]

Roof scoops are bigger. The wheels are bigger.

[B]

If you park that next to a regular Veyron that's made in, you know, the same color, they're Going to go, oh, which one's the kit?

[A]

Yeah, they're going to think it's a fake, right?

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Interior is dope with that fabric, this diamond Y fabric. So like, I mean, so what is.

[B]

The point of this? They just. It's a go back.

[A]

Look. There's an ap. There's an ap. Open work. There's a dash clip. Look at the top, at the very top. I don't know if you can take it off and wear it, but it's there. I don't like the take it off and wear it. I like when it stays in the car, but.

[B]

Well, it always looks huge because they have to have a mechanism to hold it in the car.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Named after Ferdinand Piek.

[A]

Yeah. So the second model to come from Bugatti's new solitaire program. One off customer commissions. Built on existing engine and chassis architecture with coach built bodywork and highly customized interiors. Limited to two projects per year. So, I mean, look, dude, keep the billionaires happy. It's very important. Otherwise they're gonna make the rest of our lives terrible.

[B]

They're doing that anyway. Matt.

[A]

Shit. It's not working.

[B]

It's not working.

[A]

So. So that's. I mean, what do I think about it? It's not ugly. It's better. It's a better, better throwback than Lamborghini's Countach.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Or than anything Ferrari's doing right now.

[B]

Very true.

[A]

Or subtle. Yeah.

[B]

And they vote Bugatti's done this pretty well.

[A]

I mean, other than that EB110 thing they did that was real ugly.

[B]

You mean like the original one?

[A]

No, no, the new one. They did the Cento de chi. Whatever the fuck it is. The anniversary. It's. It looks very weird. This is. This is pretty. Pretty classy though. I'm kind of about it.

[B]

Well, I think this for us is a fantastic looking car. And so they've. They've blended two pretty subtle, very aerodynamic designs together. And they did a good job of it.

[A]

Yeah, it's cool. I'm into it.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And they're gonna make like one.

[A]

Yeah. One.

[B]

You know what they're doing? They have to offset the cost of Vergera sales. I think this is Bugatti. I know. What doesn't Bugatti own? Rimacs?

[A]

Oh, yeah, maybe.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think they're selling all of them because they're the keys to the Tourbillon. That's what you had.

[B]

You had to buy a. Yeah, that's a weird.

[A]

You have to be a Bugatti or Rimac owner to get a tourbillon.

[B]

It's so funny that even at whatever level, it's the Porsche Macan thing, it's.

[A]

The Ferrari California allocations are heroin. Okay, let's see. I don't know what that is. Front wheel drive nsx. Was the Geo brand as bad as everyone made it seem? I mean Geo were Korean cars sold in America under gm. Right. That was basically what they were doing. Some of them were not bad. I think the Geo stories storm was sort of decent. The Tracker was a sidekick or a samurai sidekick.

[B]

I mean they were very cheap cars that I think they captured the essence of what they were trying to be really well and they sold it for cheap. Like the Tracker was this tiny off roady thing that weren't that bad at it, but it was like right when SUV craze happened and they convertible version. I saw all of these cars like in droves and I think, I mean the commercials were everywhere. Super bowl, like they had money. I think they weren't great cars. But yes, in the 90s these geo was a player. I think they sold a ton of them.

[A]

Which is.

[B]

It's wild to think back on.

[A]

Yeah. But all their, I mean pretty much all their cars were like, you know, badge engineered other cars.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then cheap.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And cars that like cars that sold as Chevys in other markets that we never saw, they didn't want to like tarnish the Chevy brand so they sold them as Geos here.

[B]

I don't know what could you even compare it to today? I mean this was like a Saturn.

[A]

I mean it was like a Saturn.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Scion.

[B]

Scion or if you took an accent and like made an. If you made an accent into an off roader and then made an accent into like a convertible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean that's the kind of cost or the price they were at.

[A]

Did I say Korea? I don't know if they were Korea, but they're for foreign market GM vehicles that they didn't want to sell as Chevys in America, like a bunch were like Isuzu's.

[B]

Oh yeah, the Geostorm was made by Isuzu. They were at Isuzu's plant in Japan.

[A]

Yeah. The Tracker was obviously a Suzuki Sidekick. The Geo Prizm was sold as the Chevy Prism in other companies. The Metro also was a fucking Chevy Metro. So it might have been Europe or Asia, but it was like terrible fucking Chevys. What else we got? Hella. Oh, dude, I don't know. I don't know about this. Okay. Chris from Colorado watched the P. Cody video on YouTube. Yeah, go watch that. It was a good video. We had a lot of fun making that. And it's very well made. Aaron did a fucking awesome job in the boys with the ZR1 winning. Winning. What are three things you think Chevy could improve for the next gen ZR1? Three things that they could improve for the next gen ZR1. It could sound better. The ZR1 doesn't, you know, it doesn't sound all that amazing compared to the Z06. I'd like a little more sound. The current ZR1 had the old wall of buttons because it was a 2025, not a 2026. So the next one, they will improve the regular to the current interior instead of the wall of buttons. That's good. And they could get rid of the square steering wheel. If they did all those three things, you'd have a fucking no notes car for me. That would be. Oh, but your part two, does the 9,000 rpm redline of the GT3 feel more raw than the 10,000 red line of the Temerario? I mean, yes, because it's a stick and because it's naturally aspirated.

[B]

I also think the more cylinders they have, plus the higher revs, the pistons and things usually get really small or the stroke gets really small. It's like the sound gets smaller, tighter, closer to. You're approaching Zinger. The Zinger had this like. It was so smooth that you couldn't even hear the exhaust pulses at all. Whereas the 911, it's a pretty big engine in terms of displacement with only six cylinders. And I think it just. It does sound more raw to me. Yeah, it's angrier. Yeah.

[A]

Bull taco soup. How would you choose the appropriate tire? I have a 2021 BMW M2. I live in LA. I only use it for driving canyons. I do 2000 miles a year. Should I go with something really sticky like a Potenza RZ or a Cup 2 over the standard PS4s? I've been told that the sticky tires will pick up stones from the road and cause paint chips.

[B]

True, true.

[A]

Also will cause paint chips on whoever's car is following you. Also. Also, you will not see much of a real difference in the canyons. Frankly, your difference will be marginal. Your tires will wear faster if you get caught in the rain. You won't have a very good time.

[B]

They're louder on the road. The sidewalls on my Bridgestone race tires, the sidewalls are really hard. And we talked to Steve Dinan about this and other people too. The more aggressive the tire, the harder the sidewall. They want to take flex out of the them for the most part. So your ride around town when you hit hard edges will also be worse. I feel like this is nothing but negatives. You should keep the PS4s. They'll operate better in most of the situations you will ever be in.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, Murray Long last name. What ammo product should I use to clean and condition leather? And is it sold to wccs? I'm sorry, I can't remember the name. Larry has these whimsical ass names for his stuff. We sell the full line of Lamo. I think it's called Cream. Actually, I think it's C R E M E. Every Ammo product is sold at wccs. Both our locations and my detailing staff knows exactly what everything is and what it is for. I think it's called Cream. But whatever it is, we sell it here. Yamaha Bibi. That's funny. If you live near Tale of the Dragon and wanted a pure fun car, what would be ideal for that area? For under 100k, I would say a re geared Boxster GTS.

[B]

Re gearing is the answer for that area. It's not a high speed area.

[A]

Low speed area. Yeah, yeah. So you'd want something light, something small and something with relatively short gears. And so for me, a Boxster GTS with short gears would just be about as perfect as it gets. Or a Spider with both with short gears. Yeah, my end. My car with my engine is too much power, but my car, my chassis with my gears would be perfect.

[B]

Yeah, I think a re geared. Anything with NA2, like I was thinking re geared M2, but I just feel like the power band of that car, it's just. It's almost too much power for those roads for the most part. So I would go like a really nice E90 or Corvette's. Too much too. Yeah, grand. Like a C7 Grand Sport. But it's. That just seems like too much for those roads.

[A]

No, I wouldn't want a front engine, long nose car in that road.

[B]

I'd want.

[A]

I'd want mid engine. I'd want. I mean.

[B]

Yeah, I think Boxster came in. Evora's a good one.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, Amira, you're getting.

[B]

Mirrors are under 100 grand. They are. They're 80.

[A]

Yeah. I mean maybe an Elise or an Exige. Something small like that. Ripping Dodge darts. I'm looking to buy a new Mustang this year. I specced one out online. It came to $67,000 when a stock dark horse cost $64,000. Editorial here. I drove a dark horse two weeks ago for a story. It was $84,000.

[B]

MSRP or MSRP now, it had options. Was that base or options?

[A]

No, it had options. It had a good paint color, and it had recaro seats with the contrast leather, which is really the only options.

[B]

Yeah. Base is 63, though.

[A]

Yeah. So the question is, would you rather get a loaded up GT premium performance pack, et cetera, or a base dark horse? I want a manual transmission. So the tremec difference does come into play. I want a weekend car for North Carolina, not to track.

[B]

Oh, then I'd get the GT premium performance.

[A]

I probably would get that.

[B]

The base mustang seats suck.

[A]

You do not want a dark seat.

[B]

Yeah, because now you have a sticky car. Even on canyon corners in North Carolina, they're not comfortable. They don't support you. They're terrible.

[A]

Can you hang on? There's an in between. You can get a dark horse with Recaro seats.

[B]

Yo, sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I just don't know if they can afford that option.

[A]

Well, so the spec was 67K. The. The Recaro seats on a dark horse are like 2,500 bucks. So if you get a dark horse, you know, with Recaros, you're in the same place.

[B]

Might retain its value. I mean, well, then, yeah, I think.

[A]

I would rather have a dark horse with a tremec gearbox. The different engine, the better suspension, Everything with Recaros. Not in a good color and not.

[B]

With a tech pack. Yeah, I agree. So it depends on how much how important the electronics and color and all that stuff are to you. So it's like it's driving versus, I guess, all the options.

[A]

Okay. Andy's wood. Cody said Camisa recently said on his podcast. Camisa loves it when we talk about him on this show. By the way, it's his favorite thing. Said that wagons are douche proof.

[B]

Nothing is douche proof.

[A]

Citing that they're more rare, costs more, and are exclusively an enthusiast's purchase. Now, to me, flexing a wagon for just the sake. It's weird or rare. Is a douche move. It's comparable to counterculture hipsters with some obscure music tape that normal people just wouldn't understand. I don't think it goes that far. I don't know. Does.

[B]

I mean, I don't think anything is douche proof. I think it. Because it depends on the attitude. I mean, it's hard. Like, define douche. The attitude of the person driving it. And then, like, I think the douchebag movement is like, if something gets popular and then a lot of people who don't aren't really into the thing, grab onto it. So. But that can happen anything. So if a bunch of people decided that wagons were the new GT3Rs, you would get a bunch of people buying wagons and driving them and just because they wanted to buy the cool thing. And a lot of them could be douchebags. So it just depends on, like, the social pressure and definition of what is cool. So right now, I mean, yeah, most people don't like wagons. They still see them as, like a sort of domestic vehicle, and it's an island in enthusiast land that you can go to. But also, one person could be the only person that owns a car. And if they're an asshole in a douchebag, then it's still a douche car.

[A]

You only need if you say something is the Titanic is unsinkable. You only got to hit one iceberg to disprove that. So if you want to say something is proof, one example will disprove that, and I guarantee you you can find one.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

In my experience, most of the people that I know who buy fast wagons don't actually need the wagon. They're just. They just like how it looks. I own a sport wagon. My wife insisted on it, and she was right because actually, we throw shit in the trunk of it that we wouldn't be able to to put in a sedan. So, like, we use our wagon for wagon things.

[B]

I think the Taycan wagon also looks way better than the ring.

[A]

Yeah, it does look way better, but, yeah. Dre from Houston, what were the market positions of brands from the 80s and 90s like Mercour and Sterling, Alfa Romeo and Peugeot? Well, Alfa Romeo has been the same. It's always been Italian sports sedans. Marginally reliable.

[B]

It's a Miata that'll get you blown. That's their marketing.

[A]

People have repeatedly told Alfa Romeo that they would, in fact, be able to sell cars in America several times now. It's not been largely true.

[B]

Same crowd that says they'll buy a wagon, right?

[A]

Peugeot, same thing. In the 80s, French cars were about. They tried to make French cars happen. Renault and Peugeot both tried to make French. I think. I think PEUGEOT in the 80s probably would have been about the equivalent of Audi. Peugeot and Audi made cars that looked kind of the same. Audi had all wheel drive, but other than that, they were kind of the same genre of car. I don't think they were quite BMW or Mercedes in the 80s and 90s BMW and Mercedes were it. When it came to a high end sports set sedan that was it until you were talking about Rolls Royce. Right. You had Rolls Royce at the very top. Below them it was all about Mercedes and BMW. And then below that you had a sort of the sporty European sedans that were alternatives to those. So you had Saab, you had Peugeot, you had Alfa, but also you had Volvo. Volvo was trying to be in play in that world as well a little bit. Then you had the Japanese upstarts. Acura came in hot in the 80s and 90s.

[B]

Honda started seeing huge success in the 70s. It was like the cars are reliable and super frugal on gas. During the gas crisis, oil crisis. I think that probably took a lot of market share that Peugeot was hoping for. Yeah.

[A]

Mercour was Ford essentially doing, going how can we sell our European product in America? Which was the fact that they thought that we couldn't just sell them as Fords was so strange.

[B]

Well it's going back to Geo. It's the same thing. They're like we make these over here but we don't want to they think tarnish their brand, fit in the dealership. So you got to call it something else.

[A]

Yeah. Instead of launching the Ford C era they made all these dealerships carrying do a Mercour franchise selling Ford Sierras. It was crazy.

[B]

But it worked for Genesis. But a lot of tried and failed.

[A]

Harlequin E 63mg help choose a Valley of Fire run car for an upcoming Vegas trip. Audi RS3 or Lucid Air at a reasonable price. Well look. Or an Amira V6 at an outrageous price. Or wait until Enterprise opens. Oh, this is a rental car. Okay. Turo options.

[B]

Turo, they can get the car early, before sunrise. Enterprise, they have to wait till it opens at 8 and they miss that sunrise through Valley of Fire.

[A]

Okay. I mean I would say get an Rs3 for $125. That seems like a good one. I would not spend five times that to drive an Amir. I think that would probably work. The thing about the lucid is if they have a big battery, they go have a long range. But you're driving out to the middle of the fucking desert. If you decide to have a very heavy foot and rip through the battery much faster than you think you're going to, you may find yourself in a bit of a pickle. Just saying rental cars and EVs don't necessarily go hand in hand so. Well, because when you're on vacation. Your time is worth a, a lot of money, right? You know, like, part of me was disappointed that I couldn't do the gravity on this trip. Cause I really wanted to drive the gravity. It would have been very comfortable. I wanted to check out the different networks, the two hotels. Both hotels were like, Mr. Farah, we've saved you a charger. And I was like, that is awesome. I'm sorry, I don't need it. But at the same time, I was able to complete the transfer a half a day faster. I was able to save cumulatively an hour to an hour and a half a day by A, being able to drive faster, and B, not having to deal with the actual charging. So, yeah, I'd just fuck with the RS3 and go rip Lake Mead. Valley of Fire. Great drive. Okay, um, let's see. Quadrifolio face your takes on sleek arrow rooftop boxes. They look cool when color coded. But can you really get any use out of them except for skis? My rap guy wants me to put one on my taycan.

[B]

Do you need quadrifoglio face? Do you need a body box? Like, forget what the rap guy says. I think the aesthetics work when they're needed. Like, Jeff Swart has this car that comes here a lot. It's got a box on it because he puts in it. And aesthetically, it works with long roof cars, right? But to do it just for style, it's kind of like, I'm not trying to throw you under the bus, like, the whole Thule rack on cars when you don't put things on the roof.

[A]

I did that.

[B]

I know you did.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's what I'm saying. You do that in high school because it was like.

[A]

Because it was his fucking style.

[B]

It became a style. But, like, putting it on there because the rap guy thinks it would just look cool on your Thai kid ct, which sure it would, but do you need one? That's the only question.

[A]

It's probably gonna reduce your range by, like, 5 to 10%. First off, that's a lot. That's a lot.

[B]

That's a ton.

[A]

And that's like an arrow box. And, I mean, could you get use out of them? Like, yeah, they fit other shit besides skis. But, like, is your car full to the point where you need. It's pretty lame to drive around with anything strapped to your roof that you're.

[B]

Not immediately using or using frequently. If every weekend, I don't know, you go.

[A]

If you go mountain biking every weekend, leave the rack on your roof.

[B]

That's fine 100%.

[A]

But we have a friend. I'm not gonna blow up a spot who don't camp all that much and drives around with a fucking rooftop. I know a couple of people that do that. Holy shit.

[B]

One person does it. I once I showed him the numbers on the mpg, he took it off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But for a while he used it once a year. And I said, why is it on there all the time? Because he was complaining about the fuel, the mileage he was getting out to shoot.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And he's like, well, I just, you know, it was part of his identity. He's an outdoorsy dude.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I don't know what the box will do for you. It doesn't even do that.

[A]

There have been plenty of studies on your aerodynamic drag on the box. And one very interesting one where a guy, I think it was with a Model 3, mounted the box backwards and got better results because the boxes are pointy at the front, but actually flipping.

[B]

It around because then it made it like a long roof sort of thing. But to go back, is this gonna give this person even at the shallowest end of the pool, is it giving them any identity? You know, rooftop, tent, you go, I'm an outdoorsy person. You got your gas tanks on there you go. I'm a four wheel person. This is like I'm a carry more stuff person.

[A]

It's one of a million things that looks cool for one Instagram post and then you have to live with it forever. And it's dumb, but that's a.

[B]

The CT is a great looking car without it.

[A]

It doesn't need it.

[B]

It doesn't add it.

[A]

Admittedly, it probably would look cool with a color matched one if you were were using it.

[B]

I still don't think it was John.

[A]

Olson, you know, Got it.

[B]

You know.

[A]

But I would say skip it if you don't need it. Ha. Wait. Ha. Bbking blues oh, habibi habibk Habib King blues. Okay. Wow. Okay. There we go. Not counting big SUVs and pickup trucks. Can you recall any cars good for eating in while parked?

[B]

Dude, anything with a bench seat.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

You can put food next to you.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And it won't, you know, tip over into your cup holder.

[A]

I don't want to sound like a fucking holier than thou, but I don't like eating in cars at all.

[B]

I do when I have to. I don't care.

[A]

I try to avoid it. Even if I stop on a road trip at a in n out or something. I'll put that Tray on the roof. I'll stand because I'm in the. I'm in. I don't want to. I'm also using that as an excuse to stand up and not be in the car. That's that and like the grease of touching the car in your hand. Like to me, eating in the car is like a pretty gross thing I don't do.

[B]

I think I used to be more inclined to keep the road trip going, but now with back things like it's better to get out and move now.

[A]

It'S more important to have an excuse to not be in the car.

[B]

I think there's a lot of new cars now that are really great for eating in because the dash are so deep. So most of them have a built.

[A]

In shelf on the desk.

[B]

Really? You could.

[A]

Doesn't the Ford like shift the Ford F150 shifter like goes out of the way and then you can make the whole center console into a table.

[B]

Clever. It's like the work area.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean we've said it a bunch of times, but back in the day when we were working at Gotham dream cars, the 2013 GM single cab, 3500 dually, 2 seats, 8 cup holders. Now that's how you have a fucking big Gulp and a big old fucking large fries and yeah, let's say L.L.

[B]

Cartier LLC.

[A]

L.L. cartier. I'm a karting driver coach with a lot of international racing experience, meaning karting, but very little car experience. If I wanted to do a race in lemons or chump car, how do I find a good team and how much moolah should I expect it to be? How do I find a good team? That's a question that I don't have the answer to.

[B]

If I think if races happen near you, can you just going to one is fun real quick.

[A]

Arrive and drive Lemons racing. So this is the search term. I would start with the 24 hours of lemons may have like teams on there. Oh here, look, look. Lemon. Go back on this Facebook group. Lemon's team builder Arrive and drive matchmaker.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

So I would start with the search terms arrive and drive and then whatever series. Oh wow.

[B]

This is a very. The group is current. There's posts from a day ago.

[A]

Yeah. This is a Facebook group for people who have teams and are looking for drivers or who are drivers and looking for teams.

[B]

Fantastic.

[A]

So there we go. Okay. Stupid Lemons Team builder Arrive and drive matchmaker Facebook. I would say you should expect to spend two to five grand for a seat In a weekend. And a weekend is going to probably be two to three or two to four stints, plus a practice day if the race goes well. Well, right, you think that's about right?

[B]

I think, I think closer to two. Yeah.

[A]

For lemons it might be closer to two for a competitive car and champ, it might be closer to four or five.

[B]

Yes, correct.

[A]

You know, I think to run in WRL might be a little more running. WRL might be seven or 8,000. But if a team is well managed, you write that one check and you don't have to write any other checks.

[B]

That's it. Yeah. And I would also be selective as best you like. I would go with a team that is very experienced doing this because they've probably worked the kinks out of the car and they work well. A car that might be more reliable and is less of a science project. You know, Japanese car, great. People have been having a lot of success with E36s. Just I wouldn't jump into something where people took like a V8 from this thing and put it in that thing. And yeah, it's rad. But how much maintenance does it require, you know, because that will dictate whether you're weak and is learning to wrench and become friends with these people you were hoping to drive with or are.

[A]

You guys going to drive you also? I mean, this was a five minute googling, but I think you may be able to start on the website. Oh, look, here's a. Here's a fucking. Here's teams. If you just keep scrolling down there on this page, there's teams looking for drivers. So. Yeah. Okay, cool.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Dumpster. Yeah, look, this is three days. Days. There's plenty and plenty and plenty.

[B]

1600 for a race with Dumpster Fire Motorsports.

[A]

Yeah, there you go. It's trash can, not trash can.

[B]

Love it. That's why I love lemons so much, dude. The cleverness abounds.

[A]

Yeah, so that's a. That's a good place to start.

[B]

They're providing comms, breakfast burritos, all consumables and a test day. Yeah, a lot of seat time with four drivers. I mean, that's a lot of seat time.

[A]

Yeah. If the car works, you're getting a lot of driving.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That's rad.

[A]

That's a good time resource. Yeah. And if that doesn't work, I would go to the lemons website and the champ car web. If I ran an operation where I was selling arrive and drive seats, I'd want to be on their Website as a place to get arrive and drive seats. Okay. Sweden low favorite white faced tool watch for roughly 10 GS.

[B]

What's a tool watch?

[A]

A tool watch is a watch you wear if you're a fucking tool. No.

[B]

So if you drive a wagon.

[A]

A tool watch is a medium fancy but sturdy steel sports watch. It should have some water resistance, some shock resistance. It should be able to be worn outdoors. Knock it around. But you could probably dress it up just below the suit level. The gold standard of tool watches is a submariner, although that's moved up market since like the 80s. Now tool watches are like Tudor, IWC, Seiko, your divers, stuff like that. I would say that the notice canyon could be a tool watch. It's tough. So 10 G's white faced, speedy, used role, Rolex, Milgauss or get on the list for an Explorer II. Those are your big UN's right there for 10 G's those are the ones you want. I would say of those three, if you can only get one Explorer, two if you've got a big wrist, Milgauss if you've got a small wrist, Speedmaster, if you're a science dork. And I say that as someone who owns two of three of those watches, including the Speedmaster. I just sent my Speedmaster to the dial artist. Fucking. It's on. Maybe.

[B]

To do what?

[A]

To turn my. I told. Didn't I show you what I was doing with the dial?

[B]

Oh wait, with the white dial? Yeah. The one you just bought? Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize you were gonna.

[A]

Want to fucking up. Oh, this is gonna be great, dude. The audience don't get to see this, but I'm show it to Zach. We're gonna. Zach's gonna get. Gonna get the fucking sneaky peeky. Look how dope this is.

[B]

That's cool.

[A]

Isn't that fun?

[B]

What? Oh, I see.

[A]

You see what it is now?

[B]

Wow, that's.

[A]

Isn't that awesome?

[B]

They can paint that?

[A]

Yeah. Isn't that fun? This is a. This is a rendering. The. The. Some of the colors are different, some of the little things are different. But that's gonna be fucking sick.

[B]

I don't want to blow up what it is.

[A]

Don't blow it up. I'm gonna show it. Show when it's done. But it's fucking really cool. He sent me a render of one before that. He didn't know I bought the white one.

[B]

Those little graphics.

[A]

No, that's hand, hand painted. It's micro artistry. It's hand painted.

[B]

That's Wild.

[A]

Yeah. These are done on a computer. This is not paint.

[B]

Right. But, like, the final one will be.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's hand painted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Isn't that awesome? So excited about this. Let's see. Kurt May. How did. I like doing dinner with Racers? I like doing dinner with Racers. It was fun. It was easy. They asked me a bunch of questions that I had very easy answers.

[B]

Or.

[A]

Or doing. Talking about me is so easy on someone else's show. That's great. But I love Sean and I love Ryan and those guys.

[B]

Their show's awesome.

[A]

Those guys are great. And I think the way that they do, like, record like, 10 of them and then make it a secret is, like, kind of fun. You can. Yeah, I think it was a fun show. We drank a little bit. Go listen to my Dinner with Racers podcast. It was fun. Mark Ferra. Oh, no. Is that really true? This one from Mark Farrar.

[B]

Yeah, I got a dm. Is that true? One of the guys at Automation. Oh, well, I don't know if there's a lawsuit going forward, but they DM me and they're like, hey, check this out. And there's a screen grab of a message from that said, what? I don't have Instagram on my phone anymore.

[A]

Okay. The question is, did you see that? Mark Farr, the tired smoker, says, Jim Glickenhaus. Oh, it says nearly. I missed the word nearly. Jim Glickenhaus. Nearly decided or assumed. Maybe that means threatened to sue. Threaten to sue. Camshaft software, makers of. We know these guys. Makers of automation. This is a company that 10 years ago brought us to New Zealand because some guy built a car in the game that looked vaguely Glickenhaus esque. Did it. Did it look.

[B]

Yeah, vaguely. But, like, I feel like with those kind of. I'm speculating. I'm not a lawyer, but video games always get, like, close to a design that you kind of remember, but they change little details, and you go, that's definitely not that thing. And their rendering that they DM me, I was like, it's definitely not his scg.

[A]

Whatever.

[B]

Yeah, like, there's elements of it that. That are probably inspired by, but there's a lot of it that looks different. And I mean, I don't know.

[A]

That seems.

[B]

My snide remark was, has Jim delivered any of those cars to his customers?

[A]

That is fair. That is extremely fair. And I do not know the.

[B]

Let me see if they have.

[A]

I think the. Is the Instagram automation game or camshaft software? Yeah, automation game. Did they take down the Instagram post. It's still there.

[B]

We'll take a little peek at Sneaky peek. Is this the car?

[A]

Oh, that does look kind of like it. No, I mean, not really.

[B]

That's a different one. That's not the one they sent me. The one they sent had, like, a center. Oh, like, that's not it.

[A]

That looks like a. Somewhere between a Koenigsegg and a. Yeah, an old Koenigsegg and something else. Anyway, anyway, I didn't, I didn't know that until right now, but I hope that, that I, I.

[B]

This isn't even.

[A]

I hope he realizes how lame that is. Like, that's just a. That's just a loser move.

[B]

Yes. Like, it is.

[A]

I hate when rich people do loser moves like that. Like, why? What are you doing?

[B]

Stop it. It's just a waste of their time.

[A]

Stop it. Let's see.

[B]

Oops.

[A]

All right, now go down. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Sorry, did we talk about. I don't know. We'll do it again. Left is best. Why do you think so many grown men deep into their 40s, continue to build race cars for the road, ruin any comfort and functionality, sell them and then repeat?

[B]

We definitely. If left didn't ask this question a month ago and forget about it, which I would do, then someone else did. But that's parallel thinking, and that happens. I think it's like any vehicles are interesting because I think a lot of us build something for what we aspire to do. Do it's lifted wrangler that doesn't go off roading. Like, it can express a part of yourself or your personality. You want to be a race car driver. You like these things. People do it with any sort of mechanical hobby all the time. And I just think it's an example of that. And like so many of those mechanical hobbies, what's funny is a lot of times it makes the vehicle worse for the environment they actually drive in. And there's a. There's always a period where, like, you're excited about this and you might go do the thing and then you don't go to the track, but you, you drive the thing around and then you eventually get tired of the ride and you sell the car, and then maybe they do it again because they once again have the same dream.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, everyone has this fantasy of race car for the road, and it takes a mature consumer to go. Actually, Actually, I don't want that. Actually, my inner ID wants a race car from the road, but in reality, I don't drive like that in reality, that rides like shit in reality. I have to give up this other thing that's annoying to have that. But because cars are such an emotional purchase, it takes a lot of emotional maturity to go. Actually that seems like fun, but I.

[B]

Think that's kind of, I think I'm really. There's also like if you read an article that says that GT3Rs, the trackiest version of something really improves turn in, your brain zooms in on turn and you're like, my turn in could get better. And it will be great in these moments where and you just, you focus so much on improving that part of your car that you don't stop, zoom out and think, how often is that type of driving important or does it show up in my weekly life?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

You know, 2%. Oh, maybe I don't need to improve my turn in.

[A]

Sure. I mean it goes the same way with SUVs. How often do I need the third row? How often do I need four wheel drive? You know, how often do I need whatever. How often do I need this pickup truck bed? And it's like single digit percentages, you know, or less, you know, I mean, even anyway, can't unshitbox. This says okay, what would be my best option to do a demand 4.5 engine? Should I get a 2016 Cayman GT4? That's a 3.8. A 718 Cayman GTS that's a 4.0. Or spend 20 to 25k more for a 718 GT4? What is the best and why does the premium for the GT4 badge matter in terms of money in, money out, mostly street driving. Second fun car, some track day days. Some track days to me says the GT4 will be worth it because on the track, the wing, the front end, the wheel, the stuff that they do does come into play for sure. And in the canyons it does too. It's like in road trips where you'd rather have the gts. And if it's a Boxster, because a Boxster GTS has a power to top. And so if it's really a street car, a Boxster GTS might actually be the move because it's a super hot rod but with comfy seats and a power top, that's kind of the move. But if it's just for canyons and weekends and you're going to do a hard top, then it's going to be a GT4. So it's going to be a 16 or a 718. The differences are a 718 with a demand engine will make about 40 horsepower more than than a 981 with a demand engine. The 3.8 engine versus the 4.0 engine as starting points. The 4.0 gets you further. That's the upside. More power, more torque, 30 to 40 more horsepower and torque for a 718. And that's power you can't get from anywhere else. So you have to spend that. And because of money in money out, I think if you consider the cost of Porsche horsepower and factor in money in money out, spending 20k to get a 718 GT4 is probably worth it. *. A 981 GT4 has a single muffler. A 718 has two. They make completely different sounds. The 718 sounds like my car. Like World War II aircraft. The 981 car sounds more like a GT3. That high pitched that you get from the collected muffler. So how do you want it to sound and is it worth a little more horsepower to have this sound if you really wanted that sound? So in my opinion, because you're already going, you're going in, in for a penny, in for a pound, you're about to buy a $50,000 engine. You're probably going to get gears too. If you've got the money. Just get the. Get the best car you can which is going to be the 718 GT4, especially because you're going to the track. Be a fucking nasty motherfucker of a track car though. Two more and then we'll fucking call this a show Explorer. I hardly knew her. Did Ford make a mistake by pushing the F150 Lightning as a consumer vehicle instead of what I think it is, which is a municipality government fleet vehicle, they could act as dual purpose rolling battery backup for storage for emergency response scenarios or maintaining functionality for small corporate or government infrastructure. I don't. Okay, a couple questions here. I do think these electric pickup trucks make good fleet vehicles. And you see them in California being fleet vehicles. EA has the electric Silverados Tesla. I was just in somewhere on my road trip and I saw a Tesla supercharger and the service vehicle working on it was a fucking Chevy Silverado ev. All right, so EV work trucks do make decent work trucks if they're not towing, right. And if they're driving the same route predictably. Now rolling battery backup storage is a good use of these trucks in a camping average workday with power tools sort of situation and potentially with vehicle to grid as a backup generator for Your home, if you have the appropriate hardware. I don't know if that will work in commercial situations as well as a fucking giant Ingersoll ranch diesel generator that could just run forever because the truck can't run forever. If you're talking about emergency scenarios and stuff like that, you might get a day or two out of the truck, but, you know, you might get days, weeks out of that diesel.

[B]

Generator. And then you have to charge the truck. And if the grid is down, like they're saying, you know, governmental infrastructure, like bring in a diesel truck from wherever, fill it up, and you keep going for a long, long time.

[A]

Yeah, Honey, we need a new.

[B]

Roof. That's.

[A]

Good. Does the 911 range need to split? With the new hybrid cabriolet models being over £4,000, it seems like they need a GT line and a sport line. It seems like there's a pretty hard line between the turbo customers who want to go Fast and the GT3 customers, customers who want engagement. A split would allow them to downsize the GT3 and maybe have a larger line of NA high revving models. I disagree with this assessment of the market. I don't think splitting the 911 is. I don't think that works at all. I don't see how that. Why would you do that? There's a pretty hard line between the turbo customers who want to go fast and the GT3 customers want engagement. I also disagree with that assessment. I have three clients here at WCCS who have 991 or, excuse me, 992 Turbo S's, all of them own GT cars also. Wow. So I disagree with that assessment. I think that an individual who is looking at a Turbo S wants engagement. I think they do want engagement. And that is an engaging car. Despite its weight, it's probably the most engaging car in its class. Despite its weight. The Turbo S hybrid. I don't know if we ever said it wasn't engaging. It feels heavy, but it's still.

[B]

Fun. I mean, the steering is still reactive. The steering feel is pretty good. The suspension is pretty taut. So.

[A]

Yeah. And it'll say. And it said a split would allow them to downsize the GT3. That represents to me a misunderstanding of why the 911 is shaped like it is. Part of the reason it's shaped like it is is to move the engine further forward in the car. That's part of the reason it keeps getting bigger, which benefits.

[B]

Mostly. The GT3 benefits the racing.

[A]

Team. It benefits the racing.

[B]

Team.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So the car getting bigger, bigger and the engine moving forward in the car versus older 911s is is that comes right from.

[B]

Racing. Well, not to mention the cost of making one unibody to and both on all these different parts and sell these different models that saves them a lot of money if they downsize just versus what a mini 911 slightly smaller one that it was only the G. That would actually make the GT3 much more.

[A]

Expensive.

[B]

Yeah. Like prohibitively so. So that wouldn't be. They wouldn't do that for the business.

[A]

Case. Yeah. And the reason they don't have a larger line of NA high revving models is emissions. And there's even a story, there was a story up yesterday or the day before that they think the next GT3 and GT3Rs are going to be.

[B]

Turbo.

[A]

Wow. They might have, I mean they might have to. The engine that they're fucking with in that car is at the end of a 16 year year life.

[B]

Cycle. And I mean the, the EU regulations which we probably talk about really quick, very like lightly but that dictates a lot of the sound, gearing and power and engine displacement and configuration of the cars that come from Europe. You know. So when the, when the Porsches show up, the 911s, the GT3s and they're kind of quiet or we go this car's too quiet, it's because there's just big filter on the back the of, of the muffler or like in the exhaust system. So we wouldn't have that here because our EPA wouldn't give a shit. But the car coming from there, it has to match those or meet those.

[A]

Regulations. And Porsche is fighting the good fight, trying to keep the stick, trying to keep. But pretty soon they're going to have to choose. Well, we're going to keep this NA engine but it's going to have to be paired with a plug in hybrid. Right. Because it's going to have to be zero emissions sometime or we go turbo and we don't have hybrid. Like they're going to have to make that.

[B]

Choice. Yep. I'm sure that will bring down the values of, you know, the Nagt 3.

[A]

Cars. Yeah, I mean, you know, we hadn't talked about it before, we could talk about it a little. Now you're going to see it in the videos of our giveaway car because we're doing a giveaway of a 992.1 Turbo S. That's a brand new car but it's not a hybrid. And we first started driving it to car Create content for the giveaway right after I had driven the hybrid Turbo S. And so my takeaway from going back to the old car was really twofold. One, the hybrid 400 volt shock controllers on the new car are magic. The ride is crazy good with that new suspension, and the old car doesn't ride as well. B, the old car feels crazy light compared to the old car. You can feel it in two seconds. I'm sorry. The old car feels much lighter than the new car. And you can feel it from behind the wheel. Totally. So, long term, there will probably be more desirability for the 992.1 because of that lighter thing and because of lower potential maintenance concerns because it has less shit in it. But for now, the new one, that ride. Oh, boy. That is a fucking delight. To get one of them and they come stick stateside. Yeah, maybe I could take one of those for the fucking desert.

[B]

Event. That would be.

[A]

Perfect. Sick. Oh, I gotta see if there'll be one here by April. That would be the jam, wouldn't it? I don't know if they'll let me do that many miles, but they.

[B]

Might. They might, they might, they.

[A]

Might. That's our show. Thank you, everybody. We appreciate y', all, especially your patrons. The patrons keep the ship afloat around here. Thank you for all of your good questions today. One more shout out to the commuters in Minneapolis. Doing the fucking good work over there. We love you. Keep it up and we'll see you guys on Thursday.