Driven: Kimera 037, GRP P39; Best Dad Wagons; Project Updates

Summary

The Smoking Tire Podcast — "Driven: Kimera 037, GRP P39; Best Dad Wagons; Project Updates"

Hosts: Matt Farah, Zack Klapman
Date: May 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, Matt and Zack dive deep into ultra-rare car reviews, project car updates, the quest for the best "dad wagon," and tackle a slew of thoughtful listener questions. The main star tests are the Kimera Automobili 037 and the RML GTHP39, two dramatic takes on rally and supercar heritages. Along the way, expect characteristic hilarity, brutally honest consumer advice, and musings on everything from clutch thermodynamics to the ethics of car-themed watches.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Watch & Gift Banter (02:00 – 05:00)

• Lighthearted banter about unique gifts, the challenge of finding the right watch colorways, knee pads for car events, and anecdotes about Elton John and Eminem’s extravagant, risqué gifts.
  • Memorable quote:
    Matt (03:53): "I also blow dudes in parking lots... I really need an E Class cabrio, I’ll slug yo dick!"

2. Review: RML GTHP39 (05:02 – 20:00)

• What is the RML GTHP39?
  Based on the 992.1 Turbo S, this car is rebuilt with a full-carbon body. RML is a race car constructor with a touring car history, also behind the Saleen S7.
• Design & Performance:
  • 940 horsepower, widebody, with heavy nods to the Porsche 959 and GT1.
  • Noted for its angular, extroverted styling; carbon and orange pieces make it "look like a 911 with another car surrounding it."
    • Matt (06:48): “The fact that the inner bumper is bare carbon and the outer bumper is orange... there’s probably a color palette where maybe it does that a little less.”
  • Features: GT3RS-style mode selectors, plush custom interior, functional roof scoop (but loses rear window; camera-only).
• How does it drive?
  • “Fucking insanely fast,” smooth, balanced, not harsh; turbo noise is prominent.
  • Suspension is aftermarket but not radically altered from stock; lengthened/widened for more control.
  • Draws huge crowds—perfect for someone wanting exclusivity in a recognizable but unique shape.
• Critique:
  • Any major service requires removal of the entire rear section.
  • Loss of practicality: no frunk, camera mirror only, no rear seat space.
  • Matt (12:24): “If you want to drive a 911 Turbo S that doesn’t look like everyone else’s... you will NOT be an anonymous dentist among 15 other dentists."

3. Review: Kimera Automobili 037 (20:16 – 41:48)

• The Car:
  Re-imagining of the legendary Lancia 037 rally car, built with carbon and a highly tuned, twin-charged four-cylinder engine by Italtechnica.
  • 2,425 lbs, donor chassis from Lancia Monte Carlo.
  • RWD as tested (an AWD “038” and wild “K39” with Koenigsegg engine coming).
• Driving Experience:
  • "High strung as shit," tons of character; supercharged + turbocharged response builds through RPMs.
  • Lots of characterful mechanical, induction, and exhaust noises, but not unendurable:
    • Matt (25:20): “There’s a lot of noises, always there... but that’s what you’re paying for. The ride is good, seating is decent — but all the noises!”
  • Clutch is challenging: short, vague, not much low-end torque; easy to stall, “embarrassing for a million-dollar car.”
  • Shifter is very short-throw, precise but would be preferred with a classic gated feeling.
• Interior & Aesthetics:
  • Striking, “one of the coolest interiors in 20 years”; sits like a race car, carbon buckets, custom fit possible.
  • Theatrical, almost overdone start-up sequence (vertical key-in for powered-up car; pinch dual-button start).
  • Some generic switches lessen the high-price experience.
• Driving Dynamics:
  • Slight wandering at speed, possibly due to fresh setup (likely just in need of alignment).
  • Excellent steering, ride, and brakes; would love to try on gravel.
  • Matt (39:31): “It drives like a rally dude. My kingdom to try one of these on gravel.”
• Perspective:
  • “This car isn’t for someone new to oddball cars. It’s the edge of the universe for a specialist. But if you’re there... it’s fucking great.”
  • Demonstrates the fun of moderate weight and 500hp, rather than chasing 1000hp excess.

4. Project Car Updates (44:11 – 47:15)

• W124 Mercedes E55 clone:
  • In for repairs; cracked coolant O-ring is a common failure but cheap fix.
  • Standard E500 shocks don’t fit due to mounting differences—boutique workaround sourced.
  • Deeper engine rebuild and bespoke shock selection; not a setback for the specialist shop.
    • Matt (47:15): "If it's not something, it's something else. There's always a little adventure in the build."

5. Used EV Market & Taycan Update (51:50 – 56:00)

• Taycan is back from service; steering and control arms are fixed.
• Used Taycan Cross Turismos popping up cheaper than what Matt paid for his; recommends as a daily.
• General discussion on the rapid depreciation of EVs.
  • Matt (54:37): “I'm generally okay losing $10,000 a year on a daily. Can I beat that metric?”

6. Dad Wagons: The Best at Any Budget (72:24 – 74:46)

• Recommendations for the best “cool dad” wagons at $25k, $50k, and $75k:
  • $25K: Volvo V60 Polestar (used)—“My dad’s wagon!” Great value, fun, rare.
  • $50K: CTS-V Wagon (auto at this price); possibly E63 AMG Wagon used.
  • $75K: Taycan 4S Cross Turismo—“Probably not a GTS Sport Turismo, but Cross Turismo in a good color.”

7. Listener Q&A Highlights (63:30 – 104:10)

Special Automatics (67:52)

• Are automatics ever truly “special”? Newer DCTs (BMW, Merc) are excellent; special engines make a good auto more memorable.

Used $70K GTs: AMG GT vs. C8 Corvette (70:05)

• AMG GT looks and feels pricier and special; C8 is an amazing road tripper but styling divides. Consider used Porsche 911 or C7 Grand Sport as alternatives.

Fun $20K Commuters (74:14)

• GTI is the default (any generation); Focus ST is alternative, but might feel too similar to a Fiesta ST.

Car-Themed Watches—Yes or No? (75:32)

• Most are corny. Autodromo Group B is recommended ($600-1,000) for being subtle.
  • Matt (76:45): “You really shouldn’t buy car-themed watches. The crossover is obvious—separate hobbies, same people.”

Best Live-Axle Handling Cars (78:33)

• Ford Boss 302 Laguna Seca; a testament that with OK roads or the racetrack, live-axle can perform.

Learning Stick—Best Strategies (97:34)

• Best way: just buy a manual and daily drive it. Renting short-term works if you don’t want long-term ownership. Most won’t destroy a clutch learning–modern engineering tolerates a lot before failure.

Watch Strategy for Travel (83:06)

• Matt takes one watch for non-Car-Week trips to avoid loss/theft. Car Week is the exception.

Most Pointless Badging (84:31)

• “Four Door Sports Car,” “Handling by Lotus,” “Supercharged.” Some badging means nothing or is just funny.
  • Matt (86:02): “Handling by Lotus—what did Lotus do to this Isuzu Trooper?”

Best Anonymous “Duffle Shuffle” Car (88:07)

• The key is bland anonymity; Prius or nondescript crossovers (debaged Honda/Toyota/Nissan) recommended for blending in.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the RML’s styling:
  Zach (13:08): “When you show up, it looks like the Lamborghini version of a Porsche or something. It’s extremely extroverted… you will NOT be an anonymous dentist among 15 other dentists.”
• On the Kimera’s clutch:
  Matt (27:54): “Nobody wants to embarrass themselves fucking stalling this thing around cars and coffee. You need an easy, workable clutch that communicates. That’s my criticism.”
• On automotive depreciation math:
  Matt (54:37): “I’m OK losing $10,000 a year on a daily driver. The Bentley only cost me about $340/mo—it was awesome.”
• Car-themed watches reality check:
  Matt (76:57): “Everyone gets that cars and watches are the same shit. But people’s watches aren’t themed like their cars. It’s a separate conversation."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------------|------------| | Watch/gift banter & Elton John story | 02:00-05:00| | RML GTHP39 review intro & impressions | 05:02-20:00| | Kimera 037 deep dive & driving | 20:16-41:48| | Project Mercedes W124/E55 updates | 44:11-47:15| | Used Taycan market/EV depreciation | 51:50-56:00| | Dad wagon picks by budget | 72:24-74:46| | Fun $20K commuter (GTI, Focus, etc.) | 74:14-75:32| | Car-themed watches—problems & recommendations| 75:32-78:33| | Best live-axle handler discussion | 78:33-80:14| | Learning stick strategies | 97:34-104:10|

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Tone and Style

Consistently irreverent, self-deprecating, and approachable—Matt and Zack toggle between high-level car nerdery and everyday consumer advocacy, always with plenty of personal stories and comedic asides. The episode balances deep technical observations (engine setups, service issues) with cultural insight (what makes a car or watch “special” or “cringey”).

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Final Thoughts

This episode is essential listening for car enthusiasts curious about boutique high-end builds (Kimera, RML), practical buyer advice on everything from daily wagons to watch styles, and the realities of project car adventures in 2026. In trademark TST style, Matt and Zack deliver truth, humor, and just enough self-mockery to keep even casual listeners engaged.

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To interact, support, or participate: patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

Matt Farah here. And today's episode is brought to you, as always, by off the Record. We love off the record here at TST. They are looking out for us 24. 7, 365. If I get pulled over on one of my many adventures, I am not pleading guilty. I am getting off the Record. Don't get into arguments on the side of the road with police. That's no good. Just be quiet. Take the ticket. Call off the Record. They'll handle it. They have qualified attorneys in every state in the country, and they will fight that ticket as hard as possible to keep those points off your record. Don't risk your job, your insurance, your credit, because you've got points on your license. Get off the [e-mail] TST that's offtherecord.com TST. All right, folks, on this episode of the podcast, I review the Chimera 037 as well as the RMLG GT HP39. Plus, I have updates on my Taycan. I have updates on the project Mercedes from down in Tennessee. And we come up with a list of the ultimate dad wagons. It's the Smoking Tire. Let's go, guys. The Smoking Tire is giving away a 992.1 Turbo S in partnership with Dream Giveaways, we are giving away a $275,000 car with some slick choice mod. The proceeds benefit charity and you don't have to buy any merch. It's a straightforward entry process. So hit the link in the show notes and get entered to win today. Man, every time I put the mint on, I'm like, that is fucking correct mint.

[Zach]

I was wearing it yesterday.

[Matt Farah]

I don't know when the last time was I wore this.

[Zach]

You have many in the rotation.

[Matt Farah]

Many in the rotation. And, you know, we were selling the pink, so I was really, really leaning heavily pink as well as the stink.

[Zach]

Is that the next one you're gonna make? Is it brown? BTS Brown.

[Matt Farah]

You have to do two pink variants first and then a brown. That would be incredibly subliminal messaging. Did you do two pinks and one stink?

[Zach]

What color would the taint be?

[Matt Farah]

Right, that'll be the third one.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

The third watch will be the one you wear. You tie it off your ball bag like someone's probably already doing with the fucking AP Swatch.

[Zach]

Someone. Someone has surely done that.

[Matt Farah]

Someone's like, I'm so glad this is here. You ever hear the story has always needed a watch.

[Zach]

You ever hear the Elton John Eminem gift story?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, they Gave him, like. He gave him, like, cock rings.

[Zach]

He gave him a diamond encrusted cock ring. Eminem gave this to Elton John after they did their song together and they became friends.

[Matt Farah]

That rules.

[Zach]

And it was like Elton was defending. People were accusing Eminem of being homophobic. And Elton's like, here's how not homophob Eminem is.

[Matt Farah]

That's pretty funny. That's a good gift. It'd be nice to be able to give people.

[Zach]

You're hard to buy gifts for us now. I know.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, please add to registry right click. Am I hard to buy gifts for? That sucks. I don't like being hard to buy gifts for.

[Zach]

It's not your fault.

[Matt Farah]

You bought me some such great gifts, though.

[Zach]

Yeah, but it takes me 11 months to think of something.

[Matt Farah]

Did I tell the story on the podcast about the Leatherman? I did a couple episodes ago? Right? Yeah, I told that one. Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah. You haven't used the knee pad yet.

[Matt Farah]

I have not yet used my knee pads. Yeah, Zach, I don't know if I told that you got me knee pads, but. You did. It's because. Well, you know, I have a bunch of jobs. Like, we park cars. We do make videos. I also blow dudes in parking lots.

[Zach]

Yeah, that's why you have more cars than I do.

[Matt Farah]

And I have a knee. Guys, I really. I need an E Class cabrio. I'll slug yo dick.

[Zach]

Well, as your followers have gone up, your rate has gone up. You know, it's like an appearance fee.

[Matt Farah]

No, actually, it's because I like. You can't. There is a level at which you are too famous to help put stickers on cars in a parking lot, and I'm not there, and I'll never be there. So here we are. And I have to help put stickers on cars in the parking lot at

[Zach]

the road and track events.

[Matt Farah]

The road and track events. And I fucked my knees up in wherever we were last time. Where was I? Vegas. In Vegas at the Southwest, at that track. And my knees were fucked up for, like, two weeks, and I was complaining about it. And Zach got me some nice travel knee pads. So it's not like he said, here's a job where you don't have to put stickers on the cars, but it's a nice second place.

[Zach]

Listen, Matt, you want me to put

[Matt Farah]

the sticker on the car?

[Zach]

You do something for me? Put these on.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, so. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the program. Boy, is my notebook open to the wrong fucking page. We had, like. There's so much shit going on in the last couple weeks, in terms of, like, cars, I drove so many last episode, I forgot that I had driven the Zinger 21C high downforce. I also drove the. The. This car is. This is the. Here's the coolest car, the stupidest name of the week. This is the RML GTHP 39. This is the latest. This is an inter. This is basically what it. If you're calling a phone number in the Cayman Islands, like, that's basically here. It's like a fucking bitcoin wallet car.

[Zach]

This is the. It's 1-800-cars for kids. But if the letters were all jumbled and terrible.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, this is RML is the manufacturer. Okay. And they make this thing now. You've never heard of them. They build race cars mostly. Like touring cars in Europe mainly. But they also did the Saleen S7, which you've heard of. They built that.

[Zach]

Gorgeous.

[Matt Farah]

Cool. You know, it was branded as a saline, but they actually built it. So they. They build this. So this is a 992.1 Turbo S that they then take. It's a full carbon body. Everything. It's full carbon. It's. As you can see in the photos, it has its angles. Let's just say that it's supposed to be somewhere between like a 959 and a GT1. And, you know, there's kind of a lot going on in the back. It looks like a 911 with another car surrounding it.

[Zach]

It does look like that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And the fact that the inner bumper is bare carbon and the outer bumper is orange, I think really accentuates that. There's probably a color palette where maybe it does that a little less. I do think the best angle is like the broadside. Just the straight up broadside, I think is pretty tough.

[Zach]

Yeah. Kind of 911st inspired front fender here where it has that cut. Although it's much deep.

[Matt Farah]

It's a deep cut.

[Zach]

It's a deep cut.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

It's an obscure callback.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like Dirty Frank on a Pearl Jam album. So I think it looks a little awkward.

[Zach]

If you make the brown notice it has to be called Dirty Frank. Continue.

[Matt Farah]

I think it looks a little awkward.

[Zach]

It does.

[Matt Farah]

Having said that, it's 940 horsepower and it has a pretty cool interior. It has better versions of the seats that were in yesterday's Guntherwerks, actually better padded versions, but a really nicely re trimmed interior. It also has the knob knobs on the steering wheel like the GT3Rs that allow you to change modes and Stuff quickly, which is pretty cool. It's funky and it is just fucking insanely fast. It's like dynamically. It was really good. It was smooth. It rode beautifully. Super fast, but without really losing all the bottom end. A very balanced tune. It shifted really smooth. Really smooth. You know, you start with a turbo. S like it's yours to fuck, yours to fuck up.

[Zach]

Yeah. What did they do to the suspension?

[Matt Farah]

It didn't like. It's aftermarket stuff, but it doesn't look like full geometry changes. I think they have widened, lengthened. It's a wider body. And they do the lengthening of the control arms, which gives you a more precise control over the shocks. To be honest, I only had like 20 minutes in the car, so it wasn't like a. It was like, yeah, have a quick go in it. So it was like, here's a quick go. Here's the impressions. I didn't. I didn't look into it super deeply. It was just like, I'd like to have a quick go. It drove nice. It did drive nice. Spike, like, loved it. I took it out. Took it out with Spike. He really liked it because he wants a car he could fucking play tennis with or whatever. Right.

[Zach]

I guess this is quiet. Like, does this dry and feel. If you close your eyes, does it basically feel like a faster turbo? S? Same insulation. They haven't changed any of that. Doesn't get super harsh.

[Matt Farah]

Well, actually, the roof scoop is functional, so a couple things happen because of that. So you do get the air whooshing over the roof. You do hear more turbo noises, for sure. There's a bigger whoosh. You know, there's that. The exhaust is not. It's significantly louder than, let's say, our giveaway car with the ACRA exhaust. The exhaust is not much louder than that. But you do get a lot of turbo noise, which is fun. Who doesn't like that? But because the roof scoop, you lose the fucking rear view window. And so your only option is the camera rear view mirror, which I hate.

[Zach]

Is it a good one? I know you hate all of them, but, like, GM's is very good. And the one we had in the race car was not very good.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, no, it's not the one in the race car. No, it's of a. It's the one that you're getting when you buy an OEM car that has this. It's the same, basically the same as GMs or. What was the most recent car I had that had it where I thought I was getting rear ended and fucking scooted into the intersection. What was that?

[Zach]

Hyundai. What'd we have? What'd we have?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it was in the Genesis. It was the Genesis GV60. Yeah, that one. That one. Actually, this one is the same as that one. Because I also thought I was gonna get rear ended once or twice in this. Objects in mirror appear way fucking. Yeah. Dude, we need a T shirt. We need a T shirt for that. Objects in digital rear view mirror are not about to rear end you. Is like, there's something there. We gotta fucking workshop that. But I think it looks awkward. But it did drive beautifully. And it did draw a crowd. Like at Graham Rahal Performance, which is the Graham's dealer, where he's got this. It's like a huge fucking complex. This guy owns Indianapolis, basically. The Rahal. The shocking. The Rahal family owns Indianapolis. There's a steakhouse there. Wow. There's a coffee shop that was like packed. So this photo is in front of the dealer, but literally like 10ft behind the ass of the car in that photo is the coffee shop. And there's a couple hundred people. It was big. There's nothing to do. There's nothing to do in the suburbs of Indianapolis.

[Zach]

Sure. But still, the fact that this place, you know.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, no. It's impressive.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

He doesn't own the coffee shop. He owns the building and rents it to a coffee shop. And he's got the right coffee shop in there. Cause it was popping off and the food was pretty good.

[Zach]

Very nice. Yeah, it's called Rivet.

[Matt Farah]

That's it. Rivet is the coffee shop. Yeah. So that's right next to it. So there's a. So, you know, when they pulled the cars around for me and Spike to take them out, they pulled the fucking 037. They pulled this thing out.

[Zach]

Both of which are bright orange.

[Matt Farah]

Both of which are bright orange. People fucking lost their shit. You know, it drew a huge crowd. So, you know, you love it. Maybe you don't love it, but if you wanted. If you want to drive a 911 Turbo S. But that doesn't look like everyone else. 911 Turbo S. Because that's the problem you find with like many cars. It's just like, oh, a 911 Turbo S is definitely better than this. But the guy up the road has one or whatever. Assuming, of course, you live in that type of neighborhood.

[Zach]

But I noticed that's a great point. Because I look at this and it reminds me a lot of stuff like the roof. What is it? The.

[Matt Farah]

The CTR 3.

[Zach]

The CTR 3. That's different.

[Matt Farah]

That's a carbon tub.

[Zach]

It is, but this is like a

[Matt Farah]

Gambala kind of thing.

[Zach]

It's like that also. I was gonna say gambala. TechArt's almost more subtle than this. It's very Gambala, where it's just very showy. But if they don't mess it up, then underneath you have a car that you will like driving because it operates the way Porsche designed. But when you show up, it looks like the Lamborghini version of a Porsche or something. It's extremely extroverted. Whether or not you like the design, that's up to you, but you will not be an anonymous dentist among 15 other dentists.

[Matt Farah]

That is a perfect assessment of this car.

[Zach]

Moving on, then.

[Matt Farah]

No, you're exactly right. I mean, because it's RML and they know what a good car is. They didn't. And it's like straight up. Whether or not you like how it looks, it's screwed together really nice. I mean, it's tight. The panel gaps are really good. There's no rattles or anything. The paint is very nice. It's. That's a nice thing. The only thing is to service it. Anything beyond an oil change, you have to remove the entire rear. That straight line that comes off there that you can see, so the mouse is on it. That line. And then that whole thing comes off has to come off as one.

[Zach]

The whole lower thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And also show the front. The front of the car, the entire. So you see how there's no. There's no trunk line anymore. So there's no trunk anymore up there.

[Zach]

Right, right.

[Matt Farah]

But the entire front is a clamshell now. All one piece opens up as one big piece. Yeah. So it's like a whole thing. Yeah. That's kind of the one thing about it that's a little annoying is. Guys, support is coming in today from Vin Bidders because, let's face it, buying cars is fun, but selling cars sucks. Whether it's Facebook, Marketplace, the auction sites, forums, whatever you do, you're giving up. Combination of money, time, and privacy. Selling to a dealer is by far the easiest option. It's immediate, it's clean, it's easy, and they handle all the paperwork and logistics and you get paid. But the real challenge is finding a dealer who offers all the convenience but is also willing to pay the right price. Vin Bidders is here to help you find that dealer, the one who wants your car and is willing to pay for it. They have a curated network of high end independent and franchise dealers around the country who regularly buy enthusiast cars remotely. VIN Bidders offers stronger results than other channels, but with a fraction of the effort. Their dealer network buys everything from GT350s to Carrera GTs. Here's how they do it. All you do is submit your car in five minutes. Just the VIN miles, condition, eight recent photos and your desired reserve price. Once a listing is approved, they send a service to your home or office to photograph the car and prepare a condition report. You don't drive it anywhere. You don't have to answer any unnecessary questions. Your auction goes live for 24 hours because that's all a dealer needs to make a strong, binding offer. There's no publicly listed vin, no comments and no drama. Your info is only shared with the winning dealer. You can go from submitting your car to a confirmed sale in under one week with VIN bidders, and you only pay $149 if the car sells now. Smoking tire Fans can get $100 off the listing price with promo code tire by visiting vinbidders.com T B I N B I D-E-R-S.com Tire and thank you to Vinbidders for supporting today's show. Support is coming in today also from Mac Tools. You've seen that Mac Tools truck out at shops before, but have you ever thought about being the one who actually owns that route for someone already into cars? If you're into working on them, racing them? If you live in and around the shop or like to spend your weekends wrenching on something, Mac Tools could be the jam. Mac Tools franchise franchisees run their own mobile tool businesses, selling directly to shops and technicians. It's a relationship business and repeat customers that you serve every week. You're not left to figure it out on your own. They've got an extensive training program and support to build this route for you the right way. As a small business owner myself, I kind of had to figure it out on my own, and there's benefits and drawbacks to that. But the learning curve can be steep, expensive and intimidating. Having a system where you can go into an established methodology, an established brand, an established something that's known and still have your own business within that system is a much more streamlined way to run a small business than trying to start something and being uncertain of its validity. Mac has been doing this for over a century, so there's a reason it still works. And if you've ever thought about doing your own thing in the automotive world, it's worth checking out. Go to mactools.org tire to learn more and see if there's an open route near you. That's M A C t o o l s.org tire to learn more. The one thing about it that's a little annoying is there's the buckets and then there's a roll bar behind the buckets and then you lose the frunk also. So it's fucking super hot right now to make your 911s, like non practical, but like fucking. You gotta stop.

[Zach]

Well, you turned a turbo into a GT3RS, correct?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. And with more power. Yeah. So. So you can get the. They'll do you one with the regular seats. So I think they will do one with regular seats that are trimmed all cool. And then maybe not a cage so you can put something back.

[Zach]

I like the. I like the door cart.

[Matt Farah]

The doors are dope.

[Zach]

Yeah, that looks really nice textured. It's got like pebbles coming out of it.

[Matt Farah]

It reminds me of Aston Martin's sneakery vibe.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

When the Aston Martin sneaker comes, for

[Zach]

people listening, this is like orange, gray, black. There's a lot of sneaker happening.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's good fun. I think some of the styling is a little awkward, but it is good fun. And if somebody wanted a very extroverted car that ultimately drove like a great fast911, you could do worse.

[Zach]

Gambala is a great example of how many people do want that. Because that company's been around, I don't know, at least, what, 30 years or something like that.

[Matt Farah]

There's always been this kind of stuff. All I can say about it is, however it looks, it drives nice. It really does. It's fucking quick. It's real fast. I mean, when you have this much power, it's enough to. That are just. When you're on it, the differentials are just constantly like scrambling for power. So you gotta hang on. If you put your foot down, it's really gonna seek traction all the time.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

So I was on Indiana, fucking farm roads. We didn't have a lot of time. It was like, hey, Graham, what's like the most remote place I can get to in 25 minutes?

[Zach]

Go launch it five times, come back.

[Matt Farah]

And then I also got to drive the Chimera 037. So this is. I just put another post up before the show started. If you refresh that homepage, refresh this page, and you have more Chimera photos right there. So the Chimera 037, so they make two versions of this car now. The 037 and 038. 037 is rear wheel drive. 038 is all wheel drive. The 039 is coming out, which they just announced. Did you see this one? This one is the no donor car version. Okay.

[Zach]

I believe It's a carbon K39. Oh, whoa.

[Matt Farah]

K39? Is it K39? Yeah.

[Zach]

Pretty sure this is what you mean.

[Matt Farah]

Yes. And it's K because it has a Koenigsegg mot.

[Zach]

Oh, geez.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So that'll be a fucking good time.

[Zach]

Yeah. That's crazy.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Isn't that nuts?

[Zach]

Yeah, that's very nuts.

[Matt Farah]

So I'm just already on board with that. I don't even have to drive that yet, but. So the 037 is the first one they've done. But this was a. This one was new. There's no miles on this. There was like 40 miles in this car. So they were like, you know, have fun.

[Zach]

But, you know, it's not broken in yet. Doesn't arrive.

[Matt Farah]

Well, I'll tell you what, I drove it for three minutes and you could. I knew it wasn't broken. You could smell the exhaust, you know, like a brand new exhaust burning off. It's burning off the coatings or whatever's in there that smell like right away. Boilerplate Items. It is £2,425. There is a donor car for these. It's the Lancia Monte Carlo. They had a donor car chilling there. Wow. Yeah, The Lancia Monte Carlo is the donor car. That's how it's registered. Which is very funny. But they do use a few bits from the donor car. It's not like just the vin. They do use some of the chassis.

[Zach]

It is just. It's funny to look at the Monte Carlo.

[Matt Farah]

You can see what they kept, you

[Zach]

know, and you can see why. But it also is such a strange looking coupe.

[Matt Farah]

Clarkson took one of these on the. The last special, I think.

[Zach]

Really?

[Matt Farah]

I'm pretty sure this is what he drove on the very last top Grand Tour special.

[Zach]

I guess the last one was the Jaguar. I have to go look again.

[Matt Farah]

No, the one in Africa.

[Zach]

Oh, okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Oh, right, right, right.

[Matt Farah]

So there's a donor car. So the engine is a bespoke.

[Zach]

You know, the engine's insane.

[Matt Farah]

The engine's insane. It's Ital Technica. And Ital Technica is a company most people have never heard of. But they also make the engine for that crazy totem GT thing that I drove.

[Zach]

Beautiful engine.

[Matt Farah]

It's. It's Italian racing engines. That's what we are talking about here. So it's a four cylinder, twin charged, supercharged and turbocharged. The turbo plumbing is so pretty.

[Zach]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

It's a longitudinally mounted in the back four cylinder with a six speed transaxle and it is bananas. It's just high strung as shit. But you know, because you've got this. Anyone who's ever heard driven a twin charged engine, it's really weird. My dad's boat of all things was twin charged. Did you know that? Yeah, the turbo diesels, Volvo inline six turbo diesel.

[Zach]

Well they've been doing. That's funny, they've been doing twin charging in their pedestrian or you know, whatever cars, passenger cars for like for a while. Ten years. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So this is twin charged and fun time. So as you go through the revs, you know you hear the blower and then around 4000rpm the blower sort of tapers off and then here comes the turbo and so you have a bit of torque at the bottom end to putter around if you need and cruise without it being too peaky. But there is a big dip in the middle and then you get your turbo. But that's old school. It's fun like that. You wouldn't want to it to be any other way. There is not a whole lot of sound insulation and so you get a decent amount of vibration. But all the noises, you get the blower noise, you get the turbo noise, you get the fucking wastegate noise, you get the blow off noise, you get like the exhaust, like you get a lot. There's road noise. Like it's pretty. The ride is good. Like it's a. It's actually the seating position is decent and the ride is good. So it's actually like fairly quote comfortable. But there's a lot of noises. They're just always there. But that's kind of what you're paying for. It's not as bad as the Gunther. I'll say that. The noises are present but they do happen at a palatable volume.

[Zach]

Yeah, the Gunther was too much.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, we'll get to that later. But they found the end so yeah. Oh God, look at this engine. How cool is that looking? Wow, that's great. And actually the one in the car is even prettier because the header was gold and shit.

[Zach]

Let's go back to that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it was dope. Oh, it's right out of frame. Oh, at the bottom the way the exhaust works, it's just out of frame of that photo. Damn, it was so good.

[Zach]

The engine's Stunning. There was one at Ice Race. Kevin Marshall owns it. And the whole back clamshell he had opened up, up. And I took so many photos of that engine. It's so stunning.

[Matt Farah]

It's real crazy. So driving it is a lot. Once you're just on the road and cruising, it can be pretty relaxed. You'll settle into sixth gear. You could take one on a road trip. But the clutch throw is about three and a half inches long. And the catch point is kind of vague. And the engine is in vacuum at the very bottom of the power band. So you can't do the thing where you give it no gas and just engage the clutch from idle. It doesn't have enough torque at idle to do that. You'll stall it. But the tip in on the throttle is a little inconsistent. So I can't just repeatedly hold it at 1500rpm evenly in order to. And I'm driving barefoot. So this is the thing I could do. I drive better barefoot than with shoes. So if you go hold that, repeat it, go from 0 to 150050 times in a row. I can do it. Not in this car. So I only stalled it once. But every stop sign, every red light was a little bit of a. Is it. Is it gonna. And like maybe if I drove it like a lot, then it would be different. Like the 911st has a funky clutch, but I programmed to it very fast. It didn't bother me. It was hard for other same people say that about the Carrera gt. Doesn't bother me. This one was more like that Bora Motorworks race car. Like not at the level of the Legends car or those kind of race cars, but that sort of thing where it's that short throw kind of grabby, but without much feedback through the pedal.

[Zach]

Light flywheel as well.

[Matt Farah]

Light flywheel. And so that was, I think, the worst part of the car. Now it doesn't really come into play when you're moving. You're talking about a car that's a million bucks. A million bucks. Nobody wants to embarrass themselves fucking stalling this thing around cars and coffee. You need to have an easy, workable clutch that communicates. That's just my criticism of this car.

[Zach]

I wonder if it is a. If it's a product of the twin charged four banger. Because like, you know, the Gunther car, and I know we'll talk about a different show, but it had 1000 horsepower. The clutch was really easy. So power numbers don't always dictate, you know, clutch Selection and whatnot.

[Matt Farah]

But it's a four liter, six cylinder, right? As opposed to. This is a 2.1 liter four cylinder.

[Zach]

Exactly. So you might have less torque. I mean, this is like a rally engine from group B era. And I think I'm fine with it being a little difficult because it's like, hey, let's take this crazy, you know, power plant from 40 years ago, that was probably hard to drive back then. You want it today? All right, well, there's gonna be some considerations.

[Matt Farah]

Look, my job to criticize this fucking. To me, this car's like a 96 to me. Because I've been through normal cars and now I'm at the edges of the universe in terms of like loving weird shit. But if you're not there yet, this is too weird for you. If you've had one 9, 11, this is not your next car. You need to been through the cycle of weird shit. And this is the end point of that. You know, that's how you end up with stuff like this. And so, like, would you get used to it? Could you get used to it? Is it a deal breaker? No. But like, there's only two things dynamically I didn't absolutely love about this. Cause the brakes were great, the ride was great. There's no real corners there, so I couldn't really feel out the handling. But I took a couple 90s at speed and it stuck good. It was predictable. It wandered a bit on the road. And it only has 235 front tires on it. So I was like, huh? Why does it do that? And the guys at GRP said this thing just came in and it just came off the boat and it might need an alignment. So.

[Zach]

Okay, it's the RC problem.

[Matt Farah]

Grain of salt. Might be. Jethro didn't say that the one that he drove had that issue. So I assume maybe just that Carnage alignment. All right, fine, whatever. Not the end of the world. And then the clutch was really the only other one. The shifter throw. Guys, support is coming in today from Delete me. Have you ever thought that you should really be doing something to protect yourself from stalkers, scammers and hackers, but you're not really sure what? I have the answer. Here's what you do. Go to www.joindeleteme.com tire and enter code tire. You'll get 20% off. Delete me. DeleteMe removes the personal information that's being sold online. And so when you get delete Me, you are basically getting that information off the Internet. Right? In the age of AI, we are particularly vulnerable to scammers finding and using your personal data floating around on the Internet back against you. You ever googled yourself and found your home address, your phone number or the name of a family member? It can be very unsettling. But Deleteme can help. What you do is you make an account at Deleteme. It's very affordable, as little as over $8 a month. Joinedeleteme.com tire code tire and you make an account, you put in your information. It seems counterintuitive, but that's what you do. And then Delete me goes to work. They find everything about you on these data broker websites. Some of it they can file automatic instant takedowns. Some of it you have to click on a couple things. Some you have to enter a signature or two or fill out another form. But the next month they do it again and then again and then again. And every time they find less and less and less and less. And it's not a one time thing, it's an ongoing thing because you're still active on the Internet in this time. You're always putting it out there, so you have to keep up with it. But. But I found a reduction in spam, a reduction in weird harassing texts, those fake scammy phone calls, things like that. You can do it too. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to www.joindeleteme.com tire and use promo code tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% is to go to www.joindeleteme.com tire and enter code tire at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com tire codetire. And we are also fully supported by BlueChew. You know what I mean? Because the future of erectile function is here. It's Bluechew Gold and it's changing the way millions of men are having sex in 2026. The new new arousal boosting formula combines passion and performance into one tablet that dissolves under your tongue for super fast onset. No more waiting for a pill to kick in. No more moments ruined by performance anxiety. Just the results you want when you want them most. ED meds are only focusing on blood flow, but bluechew Gold goes further by combining two ingredients for blood flow with two for mental arousal and connection. So you're not taking just physically ready, you're actually in the mood. This type of innovation is why bluechew gold is the number one brand in erectile function. The process is simple. It's all online. Get started [e-mail] and go for gold. Listen, it's not about need. It's about want. It's about improvement. Ladies, if you're out there, I know there's at least two of you. Send your man the link. Make him a trophy husband with that bluechew gold podium position, baby. Turbocharge your love life and make it easy to get hard. Discover your [e-mail] with a special deal for our listeners right now. When you get two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for free with promo code tire. That's promo code tire. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. Thank bluechew for sponsoring Today's podcast. Again, bluechew.com code and now back to the show. The shifter throw. The shifter's dope. It's like a rally style shifter. It's a six speed, but the shift, the throw is real short. I mean, it's very. I wouldn't mind. I would prefer, let's just say I would prefer it to be less accurate, quote, but to have the gated six speed like a Ferrari, I think it would make the driving experience better even if it was less accurate. But like fine.

[Zach]

I think also sometimes if a shifter, if the throw is too short and maybe it's something you get used to if you drive or race the car a lot. But if the. If it's like a 1 inch or maybe a long shifter at 2 inch, it's so much shorter than other cars we drive that it feels like you must be in neutral. And if you can't detect those dents, it's just a little bit too. It's just too small.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Can we say though, this interior is one of the coolest, best looking interiors I have seen in, in probably the last 20 years.

[Matt Farah]

It's extremely sick.

[Zach]

It is stunning.

[Matt Farah]

And sitting in it doesn't make it less sick. Sitting in it, it's just as sick as this. I had to take my shoes off to drive the car. I can't drive this car with shoes on. But once I had my shoes off, I found it to be very comfortable. Good driving position.

[Zach]

I love the seats. Are they comfortable?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, like these, they're carbon buckets, but they do have nice padding. If I was going to buy one of these, I would have a lumbar built into it. You know, it's not a lot of lumbar in this type of seat, I hope.

[Zach]

Or I wonder if when, like they can fit you to the seat and. Cause it's all these individual ribs that go across. Like, if they could thicken your padding, they would. So it's basically perfect for your back.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, they would.

[Zach]

That'd be awesome.

[Matt Farah]

The gauges are really cool. I mean, they made it feel like a Lancia. I mean, they didn't go too far into high concept land. The only place they did that is with the startup procedure, which is a little corny. All right. I wish you could zoom well. So there's a key you can see sticking vertically in the center console. So that isn't a traditional key. That's a battery tab. A battery cutoff tab.

[Zach]

Oh, it's like a kill switch.

[Matt Farah]

Fancy battery tab. But it's the remote. It has the lock unlock in it too, which is pretty cool. So you put that in there and turn it and that powers up the car. There's a big chrome. Not chrome. Right there. The mouse is on it. That a big aluminum lever that you pull up and that's the ignition. And then that little pyramid looking thing that it's. No, no, behind the thing the ignition button is mounted on. That piece has buttons on either side of it. Like, if it's like this, you pinch it on both sides. Two buttons. And that's how you start the car.

[Zach]

If you only press one button, it doesn't start.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, correct. You gotta press both.

[Zach]

Very ableist.

[Matt Farah]

It's if you don't have two fingers.

[Zach]

It's if you don't have a thumb or the other side. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You wouldn't be able to drive this car. Just hypothetically, in case one of our listeners only.

[Zach]

I'm just being a jerk. That is a lot.

[Matt Farah]

So that's how you start it. Yeah, yeah. It's a little theatrical, but like, you know, I got the Manx plunger thing. So bring it up. No, no, I'm not throwing stones in a glass house. It's a bunch of theater. I. If we're gonna go that. If we're gonna go that route, just go ceiling. Ceiling is doper. Just trust me on this. And then you could have a couple.

[Zach]

And you have all the toggles here. So you could. Yeah, I think it's like the pinch button is an awkward movement.

[Matt Farah]

That's what I'm saying.

[Zach]

Adding different buttons to activate this machine is cool, but just make it a little bit easier.

[Matt Farah]

So that and my only other real criticism of the interior on top of that same little structure that you pinched are the three drive mode buttons. So you basically have like 350, 450, 500 horsepower is what it was told to me. Is those mean? Cool, Sounds good. But the buttons are those fucking SEMA ring light buttons.

[Zach]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know what I'm talking about.

[Zach]

Just an aluminum circle. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

They're everywhere with a colored ring light. In my opinion, when a car is that much money, you know, like knocking on a million bucks, right. You need to do better than that. Those switches are fine. When your car's three hunch, Right. When your car's a million bucks, we need to do better. Those aren't. They're generic. We can't be having generic toggles and stuff in this kind of car. But that's it outside. It wouldn't stop me from buying one Fucking if this seems like it's. If you look at this and you go, that's my bag, it's gonna be like if it looks appealing to you driving, it probably will not disappoint you. It drives like it looks nice. Which is like the best thing. That's a lazy thing to say, but it's the best thing I can say about it is like it fucking. It drives like a rally dude. My kingdom to try one of these on gravel.

[Zach]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I bet you if you had the balls to take one of these on gravel, you'd have the greatest day of your life. Because it's got the moves like a rally car.

[Zach]

It's a very short car, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

It's small thing. Yeah, dude, the overhangs are great. There's almost no overhang in the back. What a rad looking thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It's fucking so legit. I mean, I do like that this is like, even though this is very exclusive and very expensive, the fact that this is being engineered by enthusiasts that they're putting their time and efforts into making something like this is very, very cool.

[Zach]

Yeah. In a way, this is a big departure from the traditional hypercar. I think maybe we're at that point or maybe that's always existed. But it seems like for a long time people got really rich and they all chased hypercars. More hypercar companies came into being. They made more and more cars. So the whole thing was, hey, you're going to go buy this super fast mid Eng thing that looks basically similar and has a similar structure to all these other hypercars. And this is like, what if we took that kind of money but put it into something that is, you know, A bit more, you know, it's rally. It's rally inspired. It's like, hey, we're not in. We're rally people. We're not into hypercar, you know, prototype stuff. But we also have money and also,

[Matt Farah]

like, you know, the zinger with fucking 1300 horsepower. The fucking Gunther with a thou. This thing is. It's. Let's call it £2,500. And at 500 horsepower is so fast.

[Zach]

Well, the power to weight is crazy.

[Matt Farah]

And it's small, and so it feels small on the road. It drives small on the road. The power to weight is great. It's really a good lesson in. We don't actually need to go 1000 horsepower all the time. We can keep the mass tight and keep the package small, and you're gonna have a great product. Most people are not gonna feel or use the difference between 500 and 1000 horsepower, except a couple of times to scare their friends.

[Zach]

Yeah, that's true.

[Matt Farah]

You just can't do it. Where in America can you do it except a racetrack? And then if you're at a racetrack, I don't know who's buying a Gunther to use as their track toy or something like that.

[Zach]

Brave people.

[Matt Farah]

Brave people.

[Zach]

Also, this power to wa. Is not too different from a Chiron. You know, Chiron's like £4,400, thousand horsepower. And I think when you have a car with that much mass and that much technology, it doesn't get interesting. Like, the launch is interesting, but then the real speed and impressiveness to me comes above 100. Yeah, but that means you're always playing in illegal land. And this. With this power to weight, it's probably really exciting from zero all the way to 120.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, dude. Rolling into third gear, you know, at 40.

[Zach]

Right?

[Matt Farah]

You know, and then. And just riding the wave of the. Of the supercharger and is like, that is a good time.

[Zach]

40 to 80, you're having a great time. Instead of 140 to 180, I don't

[Matt Farah]

know how fast this car will go. It's fast like this car. If it doesn't fucking go 170, 180 miles an hour, minimum, I'd be surprised, but, like, you do not need to be at that speed to be enjoying it. You know, you can enjoy it at very 190. Apparently that makes sense. The reason it will do 190, it doesn't have a crazy high redline. I think the redline might be 7,500, which is fine, but just not crazy. It has a pretty Relaxed sixth gear, which actually part of what one of the drawbacks from yesterday's driving the Gunther is it does not have a relaxed sixth gear. 80 miles an hour in sixth gear in that car is like 4200 rpm. So it's a car that's only geared out to probably 170, 180 miles an hour, even at 1,000 horsepower. So I think coming from experience with my own pink car, having a relaxed sixth gear is important for these types of cars because you're gonna want to drive them on a road trip or if the track is two hours away or your vacation house or what the fuck ever a road rally, you know, if you want to do something with it, you need to be able to go on a fairly relaxed highway drive.

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Which I'll be doing in the Manx soon. Can't wait. I'm gonna. I should take a weekend road trip in the Manx. Should once I have highway, I've added. I asked Manx to give me some photos. Updates. Shout out to Graham Rahal and his team at grp Davis, Nick, those guys. Jenna, I believe, was the woman who manages Wheelhouse, their social club. Lovely people. Extremely professional operation. They got a lot of cool shit in there. They got a lot of fucking dope shit.

[Zach]

Cool.

[Matt Farah]

And really nice PPF shop as well. And it seems like they service all manner of exotic car down there as well, which is pretty cool. It seems like it was pretty much the only thing to do in Indianapolis.

[Zach]

I hate to say service exotic cars.

[Matt Farah]

No, just people were hanging out. People were hanging out there. I mean, we were. We were there a bunch and a bunch of people were hanging out. It was a cool spot. Spot update from Matt. Quick, Quick Classics. Memphis. Not Memphis. Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. Nashville, Tennessee. He found, he said, the dreaded cracked coolant O ring. So apparently there is some kind of O ring in a coolant channel and it's a fairly common failure in these E55 engines. This metal O ring cracks and coolant passes through and ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be. It's not a fatality for the engine or anything like that, but it means he had to tear further into the engine to replace this, to replace whatever the damage is from that and replace the zing. And I said, okay, well how big of a shit show is it? He said, one extra day and a $15 part. And I said, great, I'm sorry for your work. And I said, once it's fixed, is it like a Porsche im where it's fixed, and it's kind of fixed for life. This is. You replace it with a better quality one. He goes, yeah, you know, you're good for 30 years afterwards. And I said, anything else crazy in there? He said, nothing new yet, but he's rebuilding the engine. It's not just fucking yank it out and drop it into my car and cool. It runs. So that'll be. That's nice. He also said that the standard shock absorbers that they use for E500s don't actually fit my car because the pickup points are slightly different. Even though we're going to do the wide body. They don't. Yeah. Because the E500's front end, engine compartment, front of the windshield. The 400 and the 500 were a different size to accommodate the V8. So the pickup points are slightly different. So he said not to worry. There is a company that makes an equivalent shock for this specific purpose. I forget what the brand was. I had never heard of it, but he said he's just gonna get those.

[Zach]

Okay, cool.

[Matt Farah]

He said, you know, I was like, you know, fucking sorry. It's not, you know, straightforward. He's like, oh, dude, this is. This is not a big deal. He's like, if it's not something, it's something else. There's always, always a little adventure in the build.

[Zach]

Yeah. And I mean, he's probably dealt with enough of this stuff. Like, he knows where to go. It's not. Oh, man. You know, you hold it up and he. He didn't go. Oh, shit.

[Matt Farah]

No, he just.

[Zach]

New.

[Matt Farah]

It's not that. It's just that the thing.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Upon upon looking, the thing is broken as easily possible. So. Shout out to Matt. Quick at some. I was. Fuck. I was gonna go. I was like a day from buying the plane ticket to go to Nashville to see him in the car and do the podcast with him. And then that weekend for our. It's. I don't know why it's on the weekend, but that weekend I have to fly to Italy to Tenerife for Ferrari. Not oh, woe is me. It just means I can't be in Tennessee.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

But so that's cool.

[Zach]

And what if they transport you from the airport to the drive in Tenerife in Luce. I could see that happening.

[Matt Farah]

I'm gonna.

[Zach]

$10 says that that'll happen.

[Matt Farah]

Did they pick us up and use them as airport shovel? I mean, I mean, at 10 bucks, sure. But any bigger than that, I'm not sure I'd want to bet against that.

[Zach]

I Feel that's an uncontrolled launch. Meaning like, you know, launches, they'll be very curated for who they bring and what they do with it. So they probably. That would not be the smartest move strategically because you're all there to drive

[Matt Farah]

a super sports car, there to drive something else.

[Zach]

And then they're like, hey, you want to get a ride in this? So actually I retract.

[Matt Farah]

I think it could be a vibe, but. But I don't think they will just yet. I think they will. I don't know what they're going to decide will be the perfect environment for launching this vehicle, but I imagine it will be. Not while you're there to drive something else.

[Zach]

Yeah, probably not.

[Matt Farah]

So we'll see. I was thinking about this. I think we talked about it in the last show. But Mark Newson's aesthetics and talents really lend themselves well to objects that are for the masses because it's curvy, it's approachable, it's friendly. The stuff he designs doesn't scream exclusivity even when it is expensive. And I think in the context of a car, this design looks like a car for normal people. It doesn't look like a car that's a super exclusive and exotic car. But his aesthetic is really more everyman type stuff. I mean, Jony, I've too Jony, I've designs consumer products that are. They're high end but they're for everybody. Ipods and iPads and headphones and computers like regular people buy that shit. And Mark Newson, because I was looking at getting my ikopod watch service and he loves that much Marina Bay Watch company. So sending me photos of the movement out of the case and stuff is pretty cool. And I'm such a huge fan of Mark Newson, but a lot of his designs really have the appearance of being approachable, friendly goods. Even on the occasion that they are exclusive goods, you know, they're colorful and curvy and it seems even though he's done a couple yachts and stuff, I

[Zach]

was wondering if that's his boat or.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think it's his boat. I think he has done design elements for four boats before, but that was just my secondary pondering on the Luce.

[Zach]

Gotcha. Well, I think the most watched video on social media right now about it is the Angela's Death highway. It had 4.7 million views last night and it was double what Ferrari's official unveiling Instagram video had. Where. And that was the video where they had Lewis Hamilton And Charlotte Claire, like, you know, unveil it and talk about it. They're. They're grass.

[Matt Farah]

Ferrari's video, they had them do it. Oh, my God. Imagine being Lewis.

[Zach]

I mean, what Lewis said in the video, it was. He's like, well, the shifter is really cool. He's like, I like the glass shifter.

[Matt Farah]

That's the best you got? Yeah.

[Zach]

Specific.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So it's funny, I did actually watch the AI one and I did not watch Ferrari's official launch video. So, yeah, that was cool. But the Taycan is fixed back from service.

[Zach]

That is such a nice car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You drove it yesterday for filming and I drove it today. And yeah, the steering is fixed. Just. It was a little bit off with the steering and it turns out, control

[Zach]

arms the steering in. Always surprises me how heavy it is compared to every other Porsche I've driven. It's the only thing about the car, but everything about it's like, it's so comfortable and quick and quiet. That is a great used buy.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah.

[Zach]

I mean, you knew that. But like, anybody out there who's buying a used ev, just go get it.

[Matt Farah]

And they're even cheaper. Like right now, they're even cheaper. Like, I saw a Cross Turismo 4S with performance battery plus and mileage in between what mine has now and where I bought it at. I saw it sell on cars and bids or something for less than I paid for mine and it was in a better color. Wow. Yeah, so they're out there, dude. Get yourself a fucking especially. I mean, that one was the same year as mine at 23. But. But, but 23 and up is the shit.

[Zach]

But that part that.

[Matt Farah]

I'm sorry, mine at 22. I think mine's a 20. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, mine is a 22 and it's totally fine. The 23 had some updates, which made them even better. But yeah, anyway, 22 and up is the shit.

[Zach]

I think that car's price highlights what you've said though, that the EVs will continue to decline in value because this is better in every way and yet still cheaper with, you know, it has the right miles and all that stuff. But yeah, people just.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it will depreciate. But like, the interesting game for me is buy how much?

[Zach]

Right?

[Matt Farah]

I mean, because I spend very little to fill it up. I mean, very little. Especially because half the time I charge it here, which is a business expense as opposed to a personal expense. Cha Ching. And then it cost me nothing to service it.

[Zach]

I think it's will it depreciate more quickly than if you had a car payment on something newer.

[Matt Farah]

Well, yeah, my general figure for the last, I don't know, however many years, I'm generally okay spending or losing $10,000 a year on a daily driver car total. When it was a gas car or an electric car, whatever, that's just been the amount that I'm okay with taking. And my normal game is just, can I beat that metric with the Bentley, I beat it. I beat it by a lot with the Bentley. And the reason is that's what it cost me to lease the Mach E for three years. That's when I came to that realization. With the amount I'm okay with. Do you have an amount you're okay with? Although there's just.

[Zach]

Well, I was looking at the national average for car purchases. 50 grand. And if most cars, you know, colloquially. Colloquially lose, what, 20% in the first year of ownership when you buy it, like, that's 10 grand. So that's what I was curious about. Like, people might hear, oh, man, you're losing 10 GS a year. And you go, actually think about everyone who bought a new car. They've all probably lost about that much money in the first year of ownership.

[Matt Farah]

Well, it's 10 G's a year is like 700 bucks a month. That's like pretty much where you're at. And many, many people are spending that. So, like, that's the number I'm okay spending. The Bentley only cost me fucking like $340 a month. It was awesome.

[Zach]

Yeah, that's good math.

[Matt Farah]

That was great math.

[Zach]

That's very good math.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So, like, I don't know what the taycan will cost. I mean, I'm gonna fucking. I'm gonna slang it when we're done with it. I'm gonna fucking let it fly. No reserve. Let's see what happens. Like, I don't know. Yeah, I think that car will lose 10k a year.

[Zach]

Well, that's right. Cause the other thing is, will it lose 10k a year? Whereas a lot of new cars, it's 10k. And then they, you know, they kind of. They bought them earlier for a while.

[Matt Farah]

This thing will hit. It'll hit. There's a floor, right? If it runs and drives, like there's a. There is a floor. It might be less than I want it to be, but, like, you see early model S's and stuff will still sell for 15 grand, right? You know, so. So there is a floor.

[Zach]

If this car one day is $30,000.

[Matt Farah]

That would be a possibility.

[Zach]

Wild.

[Matt Farah]

I buy one, then you want to buy it. You want to buy it if it gets to 30.

[Zach]

I thought when I was driving yesterday, I was like, I should buy this when he's done with it. And I was like, I can't just like keep getting the leftovers. It just feels weird. Too much coffee trading.

[Matt Farah]

Who would you. Yeah, but who would you rather buy a car from than me?

[Zach]

Oh, nobody. Like you and Musto are the people I would buy cars from without asking any question. Yeah, absolutely.

[Matt Farah]

Well, if it turns out we need the tow vehicle and there's still like, you know, two years of warranty left on this, that's when you should buy it. Not when comes to it. And it's not when I fully exhaust the warranty and you just get to roll the dice on nothing.

[Zach]

Very true. It's really nice, man. And I saw a white Turbo passed me on the highway the other day. I actually thought it was you. Cause I had a goatee. But what tipped me off, or sorry, what also hinted that it was you is it had the paint matched skirts.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it did.

[Zach]

And I was like, but it was a Turbo S Right. Didn't that come with it?

[Matt Farah]

All Turbos came with painted wheel arches, but they were all painted black. So if this person had them painted white, they did it. They did it custom.

[Zach]

Oh, okay.

[Matt Farah]

So that's cool.

[Zach]

Yeah, it looked.

[Matt Farah]

It looked. Maybe that dude saw mine and went, oh, that's a good idea maybe. Yeah. Because you can buy the arches in primer from Porsche. So you can. You can change any wagon one into body match. You just gotta do it. Gotta order the parts, dude.

[Zach]

They're nice. It's a really.

[Matt Farah]

What a great. It's the best daily ever.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's amazing how nice those fucking things are.

[Zach]

Are.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, fucking great. Great car. Especially like, you know, after. After driving a car that just beats the absolute piss out of you all day. Getting in that to go to dinner. Clutch.

[Zach]

Yeah. I was a little bit of an old man. You're like, do you want to drive the Gunther home? I was like, no, I'll drive the Taycan. But I also appreciate the simplicity of its cruise control stock. Because the assets. And it's like, oh, no.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Even after spending six hours in it, I was kind of annoyed with the operation.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It has good radar cruise control, by the way. Quick sidebar before we get to the people. But I tried, you know. You know that fucking. I hate to even reference this guy because he's such a fucking Dick bag. But that Dave Portnoy guy from Barstool, he does his, like, pizza reviews. Look, credit where it's due. The guy's eating a lot of pizza. Game respect. Game respects game in that regard. And regardless of what I think about his views on almost anything else, so he said the best pizza in LA was this place, Apollonia's in Crenshaw. So last night I had a very stressful day after the shoot. So many things to do. I was fucking overwhelmed. And I was like, I just needed a little some comfort. Hannah's like, let's try that place. So. Oh, actually they don't do delivery. So Thaddeus was on his way back from work, so I was like, hey, we're buying you dinner. Fucking swing by, we're placing an order. Pick it up. So, dude, we got three pies for three people. Whoa. We did not finish them.

[Zach]

Yeah, of course.

[Matt Farah]

But that place was fucking fire.

[Zach]

No way.

[Matt Farah]

So fire.

[Zach]

What's it called?

[Matt Farah]

Apollonia's. I'm gonna make myself work my life worse by telling even more people about it. The fact that you have to pick it up and it's in Crenshaw is gonna stop a lot of people. People from going. But it was Derusher.

[Zach]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

And if, like, you know, we don't eat. I don't know about you, but I don't eat a lot of pizza anymore. I've pretty much cut anything south of very special pizza from my diet. This is the once a quarter. That's probably worth it.

[Zach]

Nice. Yeah, that's not close to here at all.

[Matt Farah]

It was expensive. Really expensive.

[Zach]

Wow. Like, even compared to, like a pie,

[Matt Farah]

like what you would call the only size they make. They make one size.

[Zach]

Your hands are very far apart.

[Matt Farah]

Big pie.

[Zach]

That's a huge pizza.

[Matt Farah]

It's a large pizza.

[Zach]

Yeah. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, like a New York large pizza size. That's. They're not making individual pans, although I think if you go there, you can get slices. But like a large pie, it's like $40. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Expensive.

[Zach]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

Expensive.

[Zach]

Very expensive.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but.

[Zach]

But it's high quality. Because any. Because we've gone to, like, what's the place downtown? The ones in Arizona. There's sister stores in like. That pizza is amazing. They're small, but those are 26 bucks.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So this is like. If you expand that quality outward, it'll cost $40.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. This is halfway between a New York style and a Bianco. It's Bianco toppings on a New York style executed crust.

[Zach]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

It's fire.

[Zach]

You must have so much leftover pizza. None of you eat large quantities of food.

[Matt Farah]

No, we have a full fucking pie that has. From all three pies and fat. Took home a full pie from all three pies. Between the three of us. We ate one pie from the three and we reassembled two other ones. And he took one home. We took one home for real. We didn't know how much. It only comes in one size and we wanted to try three. I'm so proud of us for eating as little of it as we did, to be honest with you. You know what I mean?

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Fucking five years ago, me, I would have crushed a pie to the face. Yeah.

[Zach]

Because it's just so good.

[Matt Farah]

It was delicious.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I stopped at three slices. Couldn't believe it. One from each pie.

[Zach]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

Who am I? Is this guy not eating?

[Zach]

You don't want to feel disgusting the next day.

[Matt Farah]

I know.

[Zach]

Or an hour after.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but it was half a bottle of wine and a. After that, I still stopped at three.

[Zach]

Oh, well, yeah, but you were never a weed Munchies. You were drunk munchies.

[Matt Farah]

Drunk munchies.

[Zach]

And you had, you know, some wine. Not all the wine.

[Matt Farah]

We. We became. We joined the Fox and Wine Club. Fox and Vineyards on Fox and Canyon Road outside of Los Olivos. It's a fabulous. So much good wine across the spectrum. So we like going there. It's like two and a half hours or so. It's a good overnight. Good. And. And we join their clubs. We got some good. Come drink some.

[Zach]

Cool.

[Matt Farah]

Let's go to the people. Patreon.com the Smoking Tire podcast is where it all goes down. I hope you guys got the BTS pod with me and Spike Ferriston that's up there right now. Little bonus show for you. And if you want to ask questions for the live show, if you want to watch the live show or listen to it, get the show the day it's recorded rather than later in the week. If you want to get extra show. If you want to get the show without ads, and if you want to get access to exclusive merch collabs and partnerships. Oh, my God. And we have the new one coming up. Me and Zach got the photos. The photos of the prototype of the next thing we're gonna have for you guys is fucking awesome. Have you said what it is yet?

[Zach]

No. We should wait, I think. No, We've hinted and we put up some photos on Instagram a little while ago. We did well in stories, so they're gone.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

If you weren't there, it's clothing, but it's not like merch. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking awesome clothing. It's something that's really cool that I'm

[Zach]

gonna wear in a sea of. Would you like to buy this car themed shirt?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

This is not that.

[Matt Farah]

It isn't that at all. Yeah, there's almost nothing car related about it, but it's fucking sweet. Except I'll tell you what will be. It'll be the perfect thing to wear whether you're going to car week or to the Woodward Dream Cruise.

[Zach]

True.

[Matt Farah]

That's your tease. Let's talk to the people. Fucking broken BMW apologist has many words. Oh, it is losing your company car and needs a new daily with a couple days a week in the office. Maybe it's a 90 minute drive from your house from Bergen County, New Jersey to southern Connecticut just past Bridgeport. Holy shit, dude. First off, I don't know if you go there much, but don't stop in Bridgeport. Secondly, done. Directly. That's a fucking horrid drive. That's a terrible drive. You're driving on some really shitty tarmac. You're driving straight, you're driving in the corridor that I spent my entire first 25 years of my life driving. That is a fucking garbage drive. Now you can make it fun. And I recommend, I mean, if you're a fu. I recommend, I really recommend going. Going north from Bergen County, New Jersey, going across the Bear Mountain Bridge as opposed to going across the Tappan Zee Bridge. Oh. Which is gone and now I think called the fucking Mario Cuomo Bridge. But don't go across that bridge. Don't go across the George Washington Bridge. Go all the way north and go across the Bear Mountain Bridge and that will be a beautiful drive. Now if you. And the reason I say that is because I know at the end you're talking about a four door sporty sediment sedan. If you take the highways, the tarmac is garbage. You want like a used Trackhawk. Seriously. Or a rally car. But it says the Aston Martin Rapide is piquing my interest. If that's the case, you best be going north on Seven Lakes Drive and taking the Bear Mountain Bridge across, because you need good roads for that. So for 50,000 bucks, four doors and automatically, what would you buy?

[Zach]

Well, are the roads garbage? Because are they cracked up or are they bad?

[Matt Farah]

Northeast tarmac, okay, there's some good. There's some beautiful driving back roads. But the commute that he's talking about, if you go short as possible Will take you from Bergen county, which is northern New Jersey, the other side of the George Washington Bridge. That's Bergen County. You're either going to go over the George Washington bridge bridge across the Cross Bronx Expressway and just 95 the whole way. That is 40 miles of hellaciously awful tarmac.

[Zach]

Okay, so you need probably smaller wheels, some sidewall and soft suspension, not sport suspension.

[Matt Farah]

Like like you want a rally car. Like literally like as close to rally car as you can get is where you want to be. So like like maybe that means like an Audi all road with like some oz rally wheels and some cool meaty tires or something. Or maybe that means like a macan actually a macan A macan on small rally wheels that would be perfect. That's where you want to live. Right here is an old Macan S6 cylinder CPO that you can put some meaty tires on that will handle those roads.

[Zach]

That's such a good car for so many things and especially this. Yeah, it's not the cool. I mean what they said you can

[Matt Farah]

make a macan cool.

[Zach]

No you can. And you need the custom wheels because they want the daycare drop off factor. Also your kids are so young that any car will probably look cool to them.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, make your Macan into a rally car. Yeah, little some cool wheels, some cool lights. Dude. Maybe wrap it in like an interesting way that your kids will think make it feel like race car. A cool rack on the roof or something like that. You know, make it like a all season sort of fun utility vehicle kind of thing.

[Zach]

Get a blue one and get like the white oz rally wheels.

[Matt Farah]

That's the right car for that type of area. You don't want a sports sedan for that type of commute. But yeah, enjoy the back roads on the weekends though. Listen. And sometimes watch says are there any automatic transmission cars that truly feel special? My first thoughts are the Mercedes from the mid 2000s and the DC.

[Zach]

Those feel special for a bad reason.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean I think there are. If you can have good control manually over your gears then an automatic is like fine. Like so BMW's DCT is like great, great. I mean really great actually. Like I like a manual because I like to do the thing. But there ain't nothing wrong with BMW's DCT. Nothing at all. It's snappy and great.

[Zach]

There's also I think the whole like does it feel special? Is it paired with an engine that you enjoy shifting or want to control and so that's a big thing like the ZF8 speed is in whatever 80,000 different cars. But when I drive like a Charger hellcat or a charger 392 with it, I'm controlling the volume of this awesome soundtrack and then I have a really good time. So that to me feels like an auto. That's special because the car is really fun.

[Matt Farah]

I mean there's, if we, if we're talking about newer cars, there's a whole bunch of automatic cars that are special like the newer cc.

[Zach]

What other choice do we. Yeah, that's a good point. Yes.

[Matt Farah]

The Valhalla is very special with an automatic.

[Zach]

I mean it's a mid 2000, so I guess that's like 2005, 5, 6, 7.

[Matt Farah]

Slush boxes make it hard. They really do make it hard for a car to feel special.

[Zach]

They do. Audi's felt special because of the plus minus little shifter thing. I think they were the only company to have that for a long, long time. So to me that felt really special. You know, they had that brushed aluminum like console and you move it over and suddenly you're an S. Oh my God. I was so excited as a V. An S, bro.

[Matt Farah]

Luke Bentley's and Rolls Royces, I mean go drive a Phantom and tell me that's not special. You know, there's a, there's plenty of cars for which not shifting gears is an asset, not a liability. BOAR score in seven years ago. Oh, bravo. I do love that. For $70,000 do I get a used Mercedes AMG GTS, a C8 Corvette or something else? I haven't thought of something that will be more of a GT car than a track weapon.

[Zach]

This is a, for me, this is a very tough comparison because I think that generation of AMG GT looks great inside and out. It's fun to drive like it sitting inside it looks like a much more expensive car. It's so cool, like jet age. Those H vac controls and everything.

[Matt Farah]

They look good parked up too.

[Zach]

They look good parked.

[Matt Farah]

So great curb appeal.

[Zach]

But the C8 as a GT car, like as a road trip car is one of the most comfortable I think, period. If you get like with mag ride and everything and the ride is great because it's mid engine, it rides so well. But I don't really want to look at it. So I would go with the GT s but it's really close.

[Matt Farah]

I mean other things you're not considering. I mean there is a $70,000 911 for you somewhere. I mean that's, you could get if you care. I mean you can get a 20. A991 Carrera cab or Carrera S cab for 70k that will be built very well and have a PDK gearbox and a good amount of power naturally. Aspirated engine will sound really nice.

[Zach]

It'll sound fine. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Sound nice. Won't be like six. Huh?

[Zach]

I just don't think they sound that interesting. But that's just me.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but I mean, it'll sound pleasant. So there's that. There's also, you know, your front engine. Corvettes 70K might get you like a fucking Z06. A C8, Z06 or something.

[Zach]

Yeah. Or C7 Grand Sport.

[Matt Farah]

The best one ever. Grand Sport. Yeah. Did I say C8Z06? I meant C7Z06. But also C7 Grand Sport is a delight. And by the way, sidebar, WCCS is about to put a blue white C7 Grand Sport on bat. Automatic. It's an automatic, which maybe you want, maybe you don't, but it is going on bat very soon and we just detailed it and looks really nice. One more thought for a GT card.

[Zach]

We talk about it a lot. Vantage S could do that. Pass and Vantage S. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Used Vantage is where it's at. They're lovely. Merkinball Run says, can the Nismo Z overcome the Ultima image? I think those are different compartments.

[Zach]

I agree.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think anybody in the real world is using the Altima stereotypes on people that are driving Nismo Zs. I don't think so. Cameron Fry's Regrettable Kick says, based on the ownership of your Taycan Best Cool dad wagons at 25k, 50k and 75k, 25k. You might be able to get a 2016 Volvo S6. A V60 Polestar.

[Zach]

That's my dad's wagon. Literally, it's my dad's wagon. That's a great wagon. They look really good.

[Matt Farah]

V60 SDR Polestar built so well. Yeah, my wife had one. I mean, it was, I think 55,000 bucks new. I think. I think we saw one at. Where was I? You were there when we filmed. Oh, no, when I filmed whatever. I was doing the Zinger at Willow. There was like a big track day on Big Willow and a guy was in the advanced group mobbing A white V60 Polestar. Whoa.

[Zach]

Oh, he probably had the polest with the Ohlins.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, the one with the Ohlins. You might be able to get that for 25 grand. Now those have. It's not like those are going to hold value forever.

[Zach]

Yeah, the big brakes, those were dope 50k CTSV wagon. Have they gone up from that?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you might probably. Yeah. One with an automatic for sure that if you get a manual you might be able to get a manual for 50. But it would be heavily used. But that's okay. There's also there's going to be an E63 wagon at that price price point, you know. 75K. Taycan 4S Cross Turismo in a great color.

[Zach]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

Maybe you're not. Probably not a GTS sport Turismo but cross Turismo in a good color. Yeah. Rolex LT Lariat. King Ranch says I had a Fiesta ST and now a Beetle one eight T. What are some good options for a fun commuter car with twisty roads the entire way way that are small handle. Well are manual and not a Fiesta as I want a little more refinement. 20k budget, not afraid of miles or working on stuff. I mean that's a GTI. You've just described the GTI.

[Zach]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

There are any number of GTIs at 20,000 bucks.

[Zach]

Choose your mark. They're all from one to seven. Basically. Maybe one to six.

[Matt Farah]

One to seven point. Is a 7.5 haptic or non haptic? When do they go haptic? Eight or 7.5.

[Zach]

I think 7.5. But I just meant for 20 grand. I don't know if you get a used one for sure. Let's see.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I would buy whatever the nicest GTI is that you can afford for that money, you know.

[Zach]

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, they're great.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean you could also maybe get a Focus st. Not maybe you can definitely get a focus st for 20 grand. I'd probably rather have the GT if

[Zach]

you already have a Fiesta. So many of the controls are going to look the same in the Focus and the Fiesta. Like you're just going to feel like you're in a bigger version of the same. Same car.

[Matt Farah]

I like her rims. I'm glad she ADAs. That's funny. Just starting to get into watches and I've said that car themed watches are often corny. I get the wheel rim patterns and carbon fiber have the subtlety of a monster energy tattoo. Yeah. Can you offer up a couple of car adjacent watches that are not a Speedmaster, Chopard, Milli Milia or tag something under 100k automatic under 100. Oh, excuse me, 1k. The obvious one is the autodromo. Autodromo Group B is like 900 bucks. That's to me the closest you can really get without being corny. Like, what I'm really trying to say with all of that is you really shouldn't buy car themed watches. Like, you just kind of shouldn't. I mean, if you really, really need. Need the crossover. Yeah. How much is. How much is that? You said I purchased it. I purchased it used. Okay. I think these are. Yeah, 600 to 1,000 bucks. So these are. These are generally accepted as being car adjacent without being car to car on the nose.

[Zach]

Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, if, outside of car, if you hadn't told me this, I saw this on somebody, I would just think. Think that they're into like art, especially with this color. It's like a baby blue with pink dials.

[Matt Farah]

They make some other ones that are more obvious racing livery colors. Hodinkee gave me one that was the Martini livery. So it was pretty obvious. But you just shouldn't because they're pretty much all corny. There's a company, all right. I think this company is called Rec R E C. And this is another company where. And I don't want to shit on them. It's not my bag. But they take pieces of a crashed car and integrate them into the watch. Now typically, do you have some. Do you have a. Yeah. So they typically. They don't make the watch really look too much like the car, but it's got little bits in it. Maybe if there's a car that is really, really, really, really, really special and you happen to love the design of the watch, I would not talk you out of buying this, but they've had a PR company approach me a couple of times about do I want to be sponsored by them or do a watch with them or something. And it's too on the nose for me. There's just so many good watches that if you like cars and you like watches, the watch doesn't need to be related to the car. Everyone gets that cars and watches are the same shit. You go to a cars and coffee, you talk about each other's watches. The people's watches aren't themed like their cars. It's a separate conversation that happens between the same type of people.

[Zach]

Yeah, there's plenty of crossover between the.

[Matt Farah]

That's just my opinion. If you want to get one of these, like, go for it. I'm not gonna come, like, make fun of you to your face. But like, in general, I'm saying you just shouldn't buy car themed watches. I blow horns. Best handling car with a solid rear axle that you've driven. Well, that Bora Motorworks Touring car thing I just drove the other day had a solid rear axle with a Watts link. That was amazing. I've driven a couple of great Mustangs that handled nicely.

[Zach]

The Boss 302. Yeah, the Boss 302 was fantastic. That car just drove great. Great steering, great everything, really.

[Matt Farah]

I'm pretty sure I've driven a couple of race cars that had solid rear axles, too, that were decent.

[Zach]

I'm sure you have. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

The Boss 302 Laguna Seca comes to mind. As for. As for production cars, those handled great.

[Zach]

I love that car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Yeah. And that's a nice size car. That's a really good, like, overall thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And you know, the difference between a live axle and a independent rear suspension only really comes into play when the road is bumpy.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

If you're on a track, it's been proven over and over that a solid axle Mustang can put down a fucking hell of a time. As long as it's not somewhere that's super, super bumpy or where the curbing really comes into play.

[Zach]

If you're using a lot of curbing, you'll notice it. I felt that at Sonoma. I was like, oh, there's the live axle. But otherwise, when you're staying on, on the actual tarmac, it's great and really talkative and easy to manage. Yeah. Love it.

[Matt Farah]

Tappan Z's nuts. I didn't. I guess someone wrote that before I even talked about the Tappan C bridge in a pre. Okay.

[Zach]

Oh, this was. Would we ever. You know, they asked this. So they asked if we'd ever go up the canyons and do a record, a podcast while watching people drive. Specifically in the sections where we've seen all the double passing. And we might do a live sports commentary. Exactly. On all the bad driving. I mean, on the one hand, if something happens, are we making content about something? Some sort of travesty? But it's a lot more effort to drive up the canyons and set everything up than it is to come and sit here in the studio. So maybe we'll do it once.

[Matt Farah]

I also. I worry it could seem like glorifying it. I worry it could like being up there. It's a fragile ecosystem. Right. It's a public resource. Public roads. Yes. People still gather a little bit at the top of the Snake on Sundays. It's open. People gather at the old place. People are around. People go to good vibes. Vibes. But like. And we film up there. But like, when it's quiet, I just. I don't. Something Irks me about doing that. It just doesn't, like feel right. It feels like it could be misconstrued as glorifying it or like profiting off of.

[Zach]

And I think this person was talking about the area where we watched the Palmdale 500. Not than the car folks going up there to kind of get away from their thing.

[Matt Farah]

They mean that.

[Zach]

They mean that.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, I'll tell you what. I'd be so much more likely to do that than I would to be up there fucking Karening on people doing double yellow passes in GT3s.

[Zach]

No, because this person we DMed later after one of the shows and it's about that area.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Zach]

What I'll say to that is that window of time is about 40 minutes and then it's dead quiet.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So you'd get at best, I don't know, five minutes of interesting driving among you.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, you'd get a couple. You'd get a couple. Morally, I feel a lot better about doing that than I do about sitting up in the social elements of being in the canyons and causing some kind of a scene just by us being there and doing it. You know what I mean? If you. If we were doing a show at the top of the thing, that would turn into a thing and it would become problematic instantly. But. Oh, okay, that's still a maybe, but I'm more likely to consider it now that I know the context. Sorry. Zing. Life away. Very good.

[Zach]

Very good.

[Matt Farah]

Also, what they play when they shoot their missiles at. Shoot divergent 3D missiles at stuff. When traveling. What is the watch strategy? Do you wear one or pack multiples almost exclusively? I pick one for the whole trip. The only exceptions are like car week. That's really the only exception because each night is going to be an opportunity to fucking do something fun. And it's the only week I care about fashion. Normally it's not worth thinking about. Pick one for the week. Other people. I know people that fucking bring like a lot of. I know people that travel like four or five watches. That's like, forget the security risk of that. That's like heavy. Like, that's a five watch thing.

[Zach]

To travel in the rolly thing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. In the big fucking roll. Like, that's heavy. Like, what are you doing? But I get it why people who wear a lot of watches want to go. But like, that's one of those things where when I'm on vacation, my time's a little too valuable to think about because I'm not worried about my watch getting jacked I'm worried about me forgetting it somewhere. I put it in the hotel safe and I forgot to check. Or it's in the fucking thing or whatever. That's way more likely than me actually getting jacked. So. Yeah, Gluteus. Nissan Maximus.

[Zach]

I like that one.

[Matt Farah]

I also like Nissan Maximus. Decimus Meridius. I saw a PZEV badge recently and it got me thinking. What's the dumbest marketing badge you've seen or heard of on a car? So many. So many, dude. Four door sports car. The Maxima one.

[Zach]

I mean the Toyota BZ4X. I had to look it up to remind myself what it was. But that badging is just.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, you. No, I don't. Is that what. No, no, the pzev. It's like additional marketing badging, not just the model name. So like what? GM used to put like, you know, tuned port injection or whatever on their car or like when they first started saying cars that had abs, there was a big ABS badge there.

[Zach]

Yeah. Advertising the features of the car effectively.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there must have been a whole bunch. My favorite is the word supercharged. Give me all of the of that. Like the fucking old Pontiacs and stuff. Just said supercharged on the door.

[Zach]

Like triport injection was a thing the Chevy's had. What was it called? It was like triple carburetors.

[Matt Farah]

How about this? Texas edition. Almost every OEM has a Texas version of their truck that they just sell in Texas.

[Zach]

And you never see the ads for it until you go there. Yeah, because why would that.

[Matt Farah]

Mm. Many of the fashion house collabs, we talk about those all the time.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

How about this? Oh, here we go. On some cars handling by Lotus, of course. That was one of the best.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Hell yeah, brother. Other times, what exactly did Lotus do to this Isuzu Trooper?

[Zach]

I would say they always improved it. I'm sure if you drove what it was before they got there. It was terrible. Terrible. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. They should have put a badge. You should have seen this shit box before, dude. Stew Dog said, did cars and bids ever follow up with me about the guy who doxxed your address when auctioning the nsx? No. No, they didn't. I don't. I'm glad that's actually, I think the first time hearing about it. I'm not sure someone did.

[Zach]

I don't know what it was.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, look, you live in the world, you know, there's people that know where I live. You know, there's people that are.

[Zach]

They know where you work.

[Matt Farah]

There's people that know where I work. There's people who know where I live. There's people that, like, I know, live in my neighborhood that are fans, you know, and there's my. I was very shocked that my address did not get posted on Reddit. When I had the Alpine in my driveway, somebody just took a photo of it and said, like, spotted this in my neighborhood. And right away, because I post my own driveway on fucking Instagram and shit, people were like, that's Matt Farah's house. And it was nice of everybody who knew to not say exactly where it was.

[Zach]

That is good.

[Matt Farah]

But there's always cars and shit in front of my. Like, you're gonna.

[Zach]

If you.

[Matt Farah]

You could probably figure it out. If you care. If you're an asshole, you might try to do something with that information. If you're a normal person, you're not going to do something with that information.

[Zach]

If you're a normal person and you want to, you know, meet Matt, you can just schedule a tour here at wccs. Do that. If you show up at the house and you're like, I figured it out. I wanted to meet you, you're instantly not a friend of the show.

[Matt Farah]

That ain't gonna work. That's not good.

[Zach]

This man's very good at shooting quail. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You make an appointment. You make an appointment at the place where I can expect you. Sure, I'll be real nice to you. Just saying. Fisker. I hardly knew her. What would be the best modern replacement for the Duffel Shuffle Mercury? The Duffel Shuffle Mercury is the Mercury Mountaineer I had in college that I used to run drugs all over the country. What made that car great was it was. It didn't look like anything on the outside. It was just a blanket black Mercury Villager. And if you're fucking under the age of 30, that's a Ford Explorer with a different grill on it, slightly nicer

[Zach]

leather, which a Ford Explorer would serve the purpose of. You want to be anonymous? I would go suburban because they look nice. A Suburban can be driven by a wealthy person or a livery. It can be a chauffeured vehicle.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna run drugs, I mean, the best advice I can give you is just to just buy the most boring, invisible, forgettable car

[Zach]

that you can find and then put TV screens in every headrest, which are visible from the back.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that was different. That was different.

[Zach]

I was just thinking the fact that a cop would be behind you to see six TVs lit up and go,

[Matt Farah]

they don't really do that anymore. No. And yeah, I mean now they have podcasts for that. You know, just buy something boring and fuel efficient and drive the goddamn speed limit. I mean, you know, that's being. Just being invisible person. So I honestly like a Prius. So, you know, or just something that is. Or actually one of those, you know. Here's one. Take the badges off and tell me the difference between like a BZ4X and a Honda HRV and you know, like those weird shaped compact crossovers. Tell me which one is which.

[Zach]

That is a good point.

[Matt Farah]

You know, one of those debadged in fucking black, you know, nonchalant.

[Zach]

I thought I saw a BZ4X yesterday and then when it passed me, it was a Subaru Solara. Right.

[Matt Farah]

Solterra.

[Zach]

Solterra.

[Matt Farah]

Well, those are platform shared. That's. They're the badgemates. Look.

[Zach]

Close enough.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. BMTrew says what cars have not been reimagined yet that you want someone to look into. I'd like to see a Restomod NSX or Hakosuka. Someone is doing nsx. They just announced it.

[Zach]

Sweet.

[Matt Farah]

Just Google Restomod nsx. There were stories about it. I don't even think it was a week ago, the nsx.

[Zach]

Oh, the Tensai thing. Right, right, right.

[Matt Farah]

What's it called?

[Zach]

Tensai Tensei. I'm probably mispronouncing that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So here is it. Here we have a. Gone back to rec. Watches.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Here we go. We've got a Honda NSX Restomod known as 10 side. Designed by Pininfarina, built by JAS Motorsport. This NSX revival features beautiful carbon fiber bodywork. I mean it does look nice. Yeah. Look at that little C8 Corvette from the side.

[Zach]

It is indeed. It's a taller greenhouse.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And yeah, definitely more C8.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Interesting though. I don't hate it. I'd like to see it. Pretty cool.

[Zach]

The lights look like NSX lights.

[Matt Farah]

You know, Evasive Motorsports built that S2000 type R. Yeah. Which I think is. I haven't got to drive it, but that's on the nose. It's got a Civic Type R engine. Engine. A slightly widened body, but in a way that really hides it actually.

[Zach]

Yeah, we were supposed to drive that like two years ago.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I don't think they could quite get it running right. And then maybe they're trying to sell a bunch of them. I don't know. Maybe there's not a business case for it, but that seemed like a really good idea. I think there's A lot of opportunity there for sure. These Honda people are crazy.

[Zach]

They are all car people are crazy.

[Matt Farah]

No, but like a Honda person, if you did that right, a Honda person would spend $200,000 on that.

[Zach]

Yeah, probably.

[Matt Farah]

If you delivered them what was effectively a brand new car, I think they would. Obviously you're not a Golf R fucking Ace. Ace. Dude, that's great. I mentioned last time going to business school versus making an allowance of $250,000 worth of mistakes. What were the most painful and or val teachable moments you've had in running your business? Oh, man, the biggest one is probably that we have lost more money with errors in accounting by a lot than we have in damaging cars.

[Zach]

Wow. Really?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I thought we would damage a lot more cars and have to fix a lot more cars. The truth is that's almost. That's barely happened. Not to say it's never happened, but it's really very rare and very minor. No one's ever driven a car into something except the one person who got fired for it, outside of that guy. No, no, no. But I know you said it and

[Zach]

I was like, I think it happened. And then you're like, it did happen once.

[Matt Farah]

It happened once and he got fired for it. But outside of that it's been very minor. But there have been been multiple over the course of the business instances of missed billing and or incorrect billing that have resulted in a lot of money. And those are. They're way harder to see. You have to pay attention. Like, normally you can tell is a car damaged or not?

[Zach]

Sure. And you guys do a really good job of taking photos of the whole car when they come in, when they go out. It's all documented. So a change in the car is a appearance.

[Matt Farah]

Interestingly, the procedures for documenting the car as it goes in and out I learned throughout the history of my life working at the rental company and all this other stuff. I had experience in that I had no experience in recurring billing transaction. You know what I'm talking? Like, I didn't go to business school. I went to fucking art school. Even though I have smart people. They're fairly analog systems. And what happens when people have many cars with us? Some people with 12 cars, the cars just show up. And maybe this car is at service when this car shows up, but then this car comes back and it doesn't seem like a new car has moved in and you know, oh my God, now three, four months go by or whatever. And this isn't fortunately recent, but you talk about big lessons. Many of Those lessons, they don't get discovered for a few months. And so you then have to embarrassingly go back to your customer and go, can you pay for it? Or the other way where you didn't return their security deposit or they moved out, they didn't tell you, and you've been billing them and you have to refund them fucking four or five grand that you didn't know you have to do. So that's a really big one. And then the other one was. To. Hmm, hmm. I'm trying to think of the other like biggest one. Because there's a lot of fucking big ones, man. So many were so big. Really study how if you're going to open a physical business business, don't just study how that town relates to the customers you want. Like our second store I put in Gardena because it's closer to the South Bay and the beach cities, which have a good amount of money and very little space. And I felt that that community was not being served by existing options. That's why it's there. But by specifically putting it in Gardena without researching, is Gardena a good place to do business? Right? I ended up in this shitty mafia fucking government that has like mired me in paperwork for years and years and years and cost me a fortune in not being able to get this next building done and all this other stuff. And if I had a choice, I would have chosen a different, literal, different fucking city. We'd go to Hawthorne, maybe Torrance, maybe anywhere. But not what I thought. So I didn't research that side of it. I was focused solely on the customers. Those two combined are fucking huge. Those are huge mistakes. Other shit has come up. That's just. There was no way you would have known that. And here it is. The only way out is through. But these are ones where I was like, okay, probably should have done that. And so never do it it again. Yeah, good question though. Last one and then we'll get out of here. She okay, good name to end note. She put her Volvo on my pole like a star. Perfect. No notes. I'm of the younger generation that did not grow up with manual transmissions. Is there anywhere in the LA area where I can learn? Would it stick if I don't have a manual to drive regularly? Or should I buy a manual beater of that note, when the youths get older and start having money to spend on the cars they wanted as kids, do you see the pendulum swinging the other way for cars being more valuable with the high manual take rate? Okay, two questions. One there's no better way to learn to drive stick than to just buy a fucking stick car.

[Zach]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

It doesn't even have to be a beater. I mean, if you want to really commit, just buy a car. That's your car. That's stick. I mean, that's the best way. If not a beater is the second best way. Third best way would be to, like, rent a car on Turo for like a month. You know, like, you could probably rent a fairly. What was that? Pick something.

[Zach]

Pick something that's bleeding.

[Matt Farah]

Live and direct. Yeah, you can probably rent something for a month. You know, maybe it'll be a thousand bucks or something. But, like, you then are not committed past that, you know, so you don't have to buy and deal with a car. You could just do that. It would probably. It's. It would be a few weeks to a few months of driving stick before it would really permanently stick to you.

[Zach]

Yeah, I think that's true. Like, Sarah, my wife, she rented a Mazda 3. This is years ago, on a trip. She rented it. It had a manual, and she did it for like two weeks. And she had driven one before, so it came back, but it took, like two days to really come back and be easy. And even then, I think it required thought. Whereas for you and I, it's like totally subconscious. So to get it to that level where it's pure muscle memory, subconscious. And then you could wait five to 10 years and hop in one again and be like, I know how this works. That's gonna take months of daily driving.

[Matt Farah]

The best option is to buy a manual beater or even a manual good car. Like, I think so many people think they're gonna do more damage to a clutch learning how to drive stick than they really are. Yeah, like stalling an engine. Engine isn't that bad for it. Riding a clutch a little bit isn't that bad for it.

[Zach]

Yeah. As long as you know that you shouldn't ride it for very long and you're working to minimize that, you'll get through that phase pretty quickly, and then it should last you a very long time. Yeah, like, my first car was a manual. The clutch lasted three years, and I drove it shittily and then. Well, and then beat the shit out of it. My current car I'm at, I've put 60,000 miles on this clutch, including what, two drift days and a couple track days, and it's fine.

[Matt Farah]

You know, you have to. Fortunately, the only thing I understood from my one semester of engineering school was the only thing that really stuck to me was thermodynamics. An engine and a car are designed like they have certain like, and a clutch have like there's a temperature where it fails. Like I don't know what the temperature of a clutch failure is. Like let's call it 2,000 degrees.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

I'm just making that up. But maybe you can look up what the temperature is, but you could get it up to, to 1,997 degrees. 150 fucking times. As long as you don't get it past that mark, it'll fail. Like same with an engine. I used to think that you'd have to when I was younger, that you didn't want to use the top half of your power band because it's not good for your engine. It's going to get hot, it's going to wear it out, it's going to all this. Well, it turns out that's not the case. The metals and all that, if they are going to fail at 750 degrees, you could get that motherfucker up to 725 all day, every day for its entire life and it will be totally fine. But if you get it to 752, it explodes. That's how those things work. And so the operating range is all the way even close to the top. So same thing as a clutch. Do you have a number for failure?

[Zach]

No. AI said 3 to 500, but I don't trust that.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, well whatever it is. So like if you ride the clutch a bunch, if the normal temperature is 200 and you elevate it to 250, whereas maybe I only elevate it to 220 with experience. Right. And you're new, you're riding it more, you're elevated to 250, but the fail point is 350, you haven't worn it at all. But if you elevate it to 351 1, you have completely ruined it in one fucking go. So like I probably haven't perfectly explained how those types of thermodynamics work, but like that's the takeaway is as long as you keep it below that maximum threshold, you're pretty flexible for a pretty long time.

[Zach]

Yeah, I did find a stat that top fuel cars, their clutches get up to 1500 degrees.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Zach]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

But like even, you know, the BMW and endurance racing, like you're full fucking throw throttle for eight hours. Car's fine. Car's totally fine.

[Zach]

Well, it goes to your point about thermal management. If you're managing the water temp and the oil temp. That will then keep the metals in

[Matt Farah]

the right operational window, even though they're spinning as fast as they will go and flowing as much fuel as you can flow. Crazy, right? So, yeah, it's not a sliding scale. It's a hard line of it has to stay below this number. And if it does, it's fine. And if it goes over that number, you pretty immediately have a problem.

[Zach]

Yeah. Or things will start to melt and break down. Where they happen in the engine drivetrain, you don't know. But that's, that's why some of those records, like the Nardo 24 hour, those high speed records, their average speed records are impressive because it's a way for them to figure out what will fail at high rates of speed. For sustained, you know, for sustained hours.

[Matt Farah]

When you're learning to drive stick, just pull. Just riding the clutch a little bit, pulling away from a light like, that's not going to fit. Here's where you. Here's where you'll smoke a of couple clutch when you're learning. If you think the right thing to do on an uphill start because you're afraid of stalling is to sit there and ride the clutch for 30 seconds. You know what I mean? At 1500 rpm with the clutch halfway in order to hold the car. That is how you will smoke the clutch.

[Zach]

Yeah. Because then you're just sitting there, rub the clutch is just rubbing against the flywheel. It's not catching. And the same thing. And you'll know. Like when you slip the clutch on a hill, the hill is always the scariest thing to do. When you're learning to drive a motor manual, the smell will tell you you've done it incorrectly because you'll ride it too long, then you'll let it out and the car will smell bad. And you want to try to not do that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. If that's the case, less revs or a shorter length of time riding the clutch should get you there on a hill. You know, a little revs, you know, a little smell. Like to get it done, you got to do what you got to do. You haven't broken the car.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But if you do that too much, you know, then you're going to have a problem. That's our. Thank you, everybody. We appreciate you all very much. We appreciate our patrons for keeping the boat floating down the ocean. Appreciate everyone else for being here as well. Can't wait to share our next collab with you. We're going to have it ready to share soon. We're going to have. We don't have tickets yet for Woodward Dream Cruise, but it's happening. I promise. And of course, the giveaway for the 911 Turbo S, we're going to have our next video up with that where Zach and I drive it to Utah to break it in for you and. And make sure you go and get your entries in for that. The game ends on August 20th, I believe. And. Yeah. See you next time. Bye.