Ioniq 6 N Review; 1000 Miles in a 918; How TST Works

Summary

The Smoking Tire Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Ioniq 6 N Review; 1000 Miles in a 918; How TST Works
Hosts: Matt Farah, Zack Klapman
Date: November 11, 2025

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Overview

In this in-depth and lively episode, Matt Farah and Zack Klapman provide a dual-feature review: Matt details his unique, immersive experience living with a Porsche 918 Spyder for a thousand-mile road trip in the Smoky Mountains, while Zack delivers his first impressions and a technical rundown on the all-new Hyundai Ioniq 6 N after attending its press launch in South Korea. The discussion expands into a candid look at the realities of automotive journalism, objectivity, and the economics and ethics of "press cars." The show wraps up with an extended Q&A session sourced from Patreon supporters, touching on car buying, ownership insights, and industry trends.

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Main Topics & Key Discussion Points

1. The Porsche 918 Spyder: Living with a Hypercar

[04:17–58:13]

• Immersive Experience:
  Matt recounts eight and a half days on the road with a pre-production Porsche 918 Spyder, treating it as a daily driver.

  • "I had never really driven a 918, so it was a very unique opportunity to not just have a go, but literally live out of it for five days, which is really crazy." (04:18, Matt Farah)

• Uniqueness of the Press Car:
  The vehicle in question was one of only four pre-production cars—never to be sold, often slated for display or destruction.

  • "It’s either priceless or worthless, which is a very funny way to think about a car." (04:26, Matt Farah)

• Driving Impressions:
  The 918’s hybrid tech, carbon chassis, surprisingly usable ergonomics, and immense ride quality set it apart, even over long distances.

  • "This car rides better all the time than my Spyder... almost as good as a 720." (31:02, Matt Farah)
  • "Ten hours, 500+ miles in a day... It’s so usable as a car. It’s such a Porsche." (31:56, Matt Farah)

• Aging and Relevance:
  Despite being over a decade old, the 918 feels remarkably modern, with only its infotainment and interface feeling dated.

  • "You could fundamentally update the center touchscreen, take off the steering wheel and put on the current GT3RS steering wheel and you could just sell this car as is right now." (29:52, Matt Farah)

• Emotional Resonance and ‘Investment-itis’:
  Matt laments the "investor" mentality keeping many hypercars undriven and idle.

  • “Capitalism will beat car enthusiasm every time… it’s too profitable to not drive it. And that’s such a fucking bummer.” (44:31, Matt Farah)
  • Dream: “Depreciate a Ferrari F40 more than anyone. F40 used as a car until it’s fundamentally worthless.” (45:24, Matt Farah)

• Notable Quote:

  "This is where this hybrid supercar technology started… you can draw a dead straight line from this car to Lamborghini's entire lineup right now. Performance hybrids could be what keeps crazy, high-revving, motorsport-grade engines alive." (48:27, Matt Farah)

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2. How Automotive Journalism Really Works

[06:10–29:03, 59:15–76:19]

• Listener Reddit Question:
  A popular Reddit thread questioned the objectivity of auto journalists, suggesting free trips and expensive press cars are "gifts" that bias reviews.

• Industry Reality Check:
  Matt and Zack clarify that press loans are not cash-value gifts, but essential tools to create content and reviews, with strict disclosure and minimal "perks."

  • "Porsche doesn't give you money, they don't give you a gas card… They give you a car. That’s what they always give you." (06:36, Matt Farah)
  • "We get paid in seat time." (09:52, Matt Farah)

• Comparison to Other Industries:
  Media junkets, press trips, and review units are common across entertainment, tech, and luxury industries—not unique to cars.

  • "This exact thing happens in almost every industry... lot of times they pay people directly." (18:35, Matt Farah)
  • "Companies have realized a review or influencer coverage is cheaper and more effective than advertising—often with fewer disclosure requirements outside the US." (19:11, Zach)

• Limits of Objectivity:
  Ultimate objectivity is elusive, especially in subjective experiences like driving; thorough, long-term professionals strive for balance and honesty, sometimes at the expense of further press trips.

  • "People bring all their baggage... what cars we were around when we were 7 years old." (27:14, Zach)
  • “I have one chance to get all this situation right. $811 revenue on a Turbo S video—believe you me, that’s a workday.” (24:37, Matt Farah)

• Preferred Format:
  Both hosts prefer having cars delivered for extended loan rather than globetrotting junkets, though logistics and costs make this rare.

  • "I would so much rather have a Turbo S delivered to my front door even for one day." (27:50, Matt Farah)

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3. Hyundai Ioniq 6 N: EV Performance with Personality

[58:13–78:01]

• First Impressions and Design:
  Zack attended the South Korean press launch, driving both the hydrogen-powered Nexo as well as the feature vehicle, Ioniq 6 N.

  • "The big story ... is Ioniq 6N. Performance EV. We drove the Ioniq 5N, which we liked... This has all of that stuff and more." (60:10, Zach)

• Specs and Chassis:
  Weighs approximately 4,800 lbs—"heavy, but reasonably athletic." Substantial chassis reinforcements, revised suspension, improved brakes and cooling, and new adaptive dampers. The N aero package even offers a Koenigsegg-style swan neck wing.

  • "I was looking at this and went, when Koenigsegg came out with this it blew my mind… now I’m looking at a Hyundai that you can get this at the dealership." (62:31, Zach)

• Driving Dynamics – Street & Track:
  Street manners are firm—a necessity for body control with this much weight. On track, it’s impressively neutral and playful, especially with the innovative shift simulation and drift optimization modes.

  • "On the street, the car is stiff... At higher speeds it does a really good job, but if you’re going over chattery stuff... you’re gonna feel that." (62:43, Zach)

• Next-Level EV Gimmicks:
  Manual ‘gearing’ is simulated, paired to improved, more natural EV sounds—including selectable “spaceship” or, less flatteringly, “circular saw.”

  • "Downshifts… the sound is timed much better… it’s really good, like they refined the sound." (64:24, Zach)
  • “There’s one that just sounds like you’re walking through a Home Depot and someone’s demonstrating something.” (65:05, Zach)

• Drift Modes – Still a Work in Progress:
  The Ioniq 6 N’s drift and “N pedal” modes allow multi-axis fun but are hampered by inconsistent steering feel and overly complex drive mode menus.

  • "If I had a big note for steering, make it consistent." (68:23, Zach)
  • “Menus are insane… and I had the car for two days and still got lost.” (70:36, Zach)

• Memorable Moment (Track Mishap):

  • "I literally say, 'the back comes around'—and as I say it, the back comes around. I am suddenly a passenger." (77:02, Zach)

• Pricing & Practicality:
  Estimated US price of ~$70,000—expensive, even compared to a Model Y Performance. Quirky but comfortable and feature-rich.

  • “The design of it is subjectively odd in my opinion… a powerhouse gaming PC – can do anything you want, but trying to figure out how is not as intuitive as it should be.” (75:46, Zach & Matt)

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4. Q&A: Patreon Lightning Round

[80:14–End]

• 911 Oversteer:
  Sudden, unpredictable oversteer in a modern Carrera suggests either a driving technique issue or mechanical fault (possibly bushings or alignment).
• Who Benefits from 2028 Election?
  Rivian, Lucid, and luxury EV makers stand to benefit from regulatory changes.
• Sporty Cars for Bad Backs:
  Porsche 911s, Mercedes E63, recent Acura/Integra, and certain GTIs/Golf Rs have excellent seats. Crossovers like Macan may suit some better.
• What’s Worth It in Supercars?
  Don’t pay a premium for ultra-low-mile cars like the 918. Buy with miles, use as intended.
• Aging Cars & Reliability:
  Japanese and especially Lexus cars age well; older German/Audi/Mini models typically do not.
• Customer Cars on Road Trips:
  A Lucid Air GT (electric) was a recent standout; vintage cars are rare due to practicality.
• Press Loan vs. Ownership Reviews:
  Owners harbor sunk cost biases; both professional reviews and owner stories can be useful if critically parsed.
• Chronograph Watches (Price Range Advice):
  Omega Speedmaster, Tudor Black Bay, Grand Seiko Tentagraph, Zenith Chronomaster Sport, various IWC. (104:15, Matt)
• ...and much more: from hot takes on car market inflation to track day prep advice, to random car trivia.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On ‘Perks’ of Automotive Journalism:
  “You have one chance to get all this situation right. $811. Like, what are we talking? Like, so how on God's green earth... am I supposed to drive this car when this is the earning potential of a piece of content?” (24:37, Matt)

• From the 918 review:
  "It’s the very definition of like driving a roller coaster that’s just on a rail. If you turn the stability control off, you can oversteer out of every corner, which I only tried once…" (38:13, Matt)

• Hyundai’s simulated EV ‘manual’:
  "There’s one that sounds like a circular saw… I don’t think anyone will enjoy because it just sounds like you’re walking through a Home Depot.” (65:07, Zach)

• Meta-moment:
  "I literally say, 'the back comes around'... and as I say it, the back comes around." (77:02, Zach)

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Key Timestamps

• [04:17] — Matt begins detailed recount of Porsche 918 experience
• [06:10–26:23] — Controversy and realities of press cars / auto journalism
• [29:35–58:13] — Deep-dive: 918 engineering, road trip, philosophical reflections, depreciation vs. joy
• [58:13] — Transition: Zack’s Korea trip & Hyundai Ioniq 6 N review
• [60:10–76:19] — Ioniq 6 N on the road and track, features, driving impressions, and quirks
• [77:02] — Track mishap: Zack unintentionally spins the Ioniq 6 N, caught on camera
• [80:14–End] — Extended Patreon Q&A

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Tone and Style

The episode maintains a trademark mix of frankness, humor, and technical depth, with both hosts unafraid to share industry realities, poke fun at themselves, and get delightfully sidetracked by nuanced car-nerd digressions. Their explanations are geared toward both enthusiasts and curious listeners, with a focus on transparency and demystifying the car industry.

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Takeaway

Whether you’re an enthusiast keen to learn what a modern hypercar is like to actually live with, or curious about the next evolution of accessible performance EVs, this episode offers uniquely candid insight, practical advice, and a behind-the-scenes look at car media’s realities. The Q&A section provides a rapid-fire, informative wrap-up, ensuring there’s something for every level of fan.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by off the Record. And, man, are they coming in handy for our people. This week alone, I got two emails from listeners that used off the Record to get points. Completely dismissed after being pulled over and issued big old tickets. You know what I'm saying? If you get a moving violation of any kind, don't plead guilty. Get. Get off the record. Go to offtherecord.com TST and off the Record will set you up with a qualified attorney in the jurisdiction where you got that ticket. You will not have to do anything else. Just send them a copy of the ticket, fill out some basic information, and they take over and do the rest. They have an amazing success rate. And you can get 10% off all legal services booked through off the Record using our code at offtherecord. All right, folks, on this episode of the podcast, I went to the Smoky Mountains and spent a week with a Porsche 918 and lived to come back and talk about it. Here. Zach went to South Korea and spent five days with the new Hyundai Ioniq 6N and is talking about it. Plus, we get into a little bit of the mechanics of automotive journalism and helping you guys understand how we make the content we make. And a lot of great questions from our patrons [e-mail] the Smokingtirepodcast. Thank you to all of them for helping us out and getting your questions in for the show. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. Let the man turn the knobs.

[Zach]

Let him cook.

[Matt Farah]

Sometimes you have to press play and then dance around like this for three hours for 400.

[Zach]

Just point and just point.

[Matt Farah]

Thousand dollars.

[Zach]

Yeah. And do the heart. You gotta do the heart. Hands. Right. And just like. I love this check.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Zach]

Don't do the.

[Matt Farah]

My heart goes out to you.

[Zach]

No, no, no, no, no. Well, I guess you can sort of. I mean, people seem fine with it, right?

[Matt Farah]

They'll give you a trillion dollars. No, they won't. I'll talk about why I don't think Elon Musk is going to get a jj.

[Zach]

Sound is very low. So. Jj, you're listening. We're on a new board, so I'm going to turn it up a little bit, but let me know when it sounds good because we've got a lot of control here.

[Matt Farah]

Now we're going to Turn it up 1, 1 notch per minute until your eardrums explode.

[Zach]

Turn it up a little bit. Now it's landing where it should on the iPad. But tell me if it sounds scratchy or strange.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. I love real time testing shit.

[Zach]

It's the only thing we can do, right?

[Matt Farah]

It's the show, then this is it, right? We're gonna fucking do the show. Bunch of things to talk about today. I just got back from eight and a half days on the road. Why I added the half, I don't really, really know that first.

[Zach]

Sometimes that extra half is important, dude.

[Matt Farah]

The first flight home from Atlanta, 6am, 6:40 out of Atlanta. I fucking landed at like 8:20am, had a whole day like Hannah. I got home and Hannah was like just waking up and I'd been up for eight hours. It was weird.

[Zach]

Whoa. So you got up at.

[Matt Farah]

I got up at the equivalent of like 1am California time. And then I got home, flew home, worked out, got lunch, and then had to go speak at the Grand Seiko annual club thing with Joe Kirk. Drank some whiskey, but not a lot of whiskey, but there was a tasting of Yamazaki. So I tried some of that. But I had to drive the Manx to Hollywood and back and then go straight to a birthday party. So I'm like, I get to this birthday party at 7pm and I'm essentially like tripping.

[Zach]

Yeah, you gave yourself international jet lag.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And I'm at this party and I'm trying to like be fun and whatever, you know, be a good husband and be a good neighbor and friend. Fortunately the party was a neighbor's was across the street from my house. But at like 8:40 I was like, I'm sorry, my brain is non existent now. And I went home and I was asleep within like six minutes. And I slept for 13 hours. Wow. Yeah.

[Zach]

Is that a record for you?

[Matt Farah]

It's up there. Yeah, it's up there. Man. I was fucking dunzo. But yeah, I was on this road and track experiences. Blue Ridge 500 in the Porsche 918 which was a very, very cool experience. And I had never really driven a 918 so it was a very unique opportunity to not just have a go, but literally live out of it for five days, which is really crazy. But also you learn so much. And this car in particular is very special because it's one of the four pre production cars. It can basically never be sold to the public. Porsche's only option is to either keep it around and use it for random appearances and stuff like that, or to crush it. So it's either priceless or worthless, which is a very funny thing. Way to think about a car, especially a Car that, you know, were it a kind of like fair market value situation, it would be a very, very expensive car. You know, these are now regularly selling with numbers that begin with a 2, and if it's a super special one, potentially even a three. So of course everyone is like, is it worth it? Is it worth it? Worth it? It's like, what? I don't even know. What does that even mean? Those are. These aren't even real numbers anymore.

[Zach]

I feel like even at any price point. You know, I just drove the RTR Mustang the last week, and I know that the question will be like, is it worth it? It's such a subjective. It's like, what is your financial situation? And. And the things keep changing so much. Like, the dollar's lost so much value in the last three years. I think it's like 40%. I think it's like we're 60 cents on the dollar. So if the Mustang was 60 grand, it's a good Mustang. It's 100. It's like, well, that's a lot for a Mustang. But. But it's like the math is insane. Yeah. And who.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, exactly. So, and, and, and I want to talk about. So. So forgetting the. The money aspect of it for a moment and the collectability. You know, I want to talk about it as a car because it's really interesting. It's really, really interesting. But first, a lot of people sent me this Reddit thread that was apparently on top of the cars subreddit all weekend, and I'm not on Reddit anymore, but it talked about us and me. And it's essentially a post about how can automotive journalists be objective when they're being given all these things of value. Flights to international destinations, luxury hotels, things like that. But it's framed in a way that it's an incorrect premise. And I just want to. Without being mad about the existence of it, because a lot of people in the comments, which I did read, some were like, hey, man, here's why this goes this way, including, I think I forget if it was Jack or Mark from Savage Geese, but one of the people from Savage Geese wrote a very lengthy explanation of effectively how you can still be mostly objective while going on a press launch. And there is a way to do it as best you can. Right? But the post, which was from a user called Cookingboy, says, I was listening to the Smoking Tire podcast recently, actually a big fan, so maybe they'll listen to this one too. Right? He mentioned that Porsche gave him a 918 spyder on loan for a 1000 mile road trip free of charge, with everything paid. Well, that's not an accurate description of how that works. I got the car as a press car from Porsche. I don't know what everything paid is meant to accuse, but Porsche doesn't give you money, they don't give you a gas card, they don't give you like they give you a car. That's what they always give you. So they didn't buy my flight like I was on a trip for Road and Track magazine, which is a magazine that borrows cars for manufacturers all the time. And you know, borrowing a car, this happens to be an expensive car, but it's no different than borrowing any other car. Same agreement, same whatever, right? And I think everybody, I thought everybody understood that. But here, this. As someone who has dabbled into supercar ownership, I can estimate the cost for a regular Joe like me to put 1,000 miles on a $2 million car. So he's putting a comparative value on me driving this car on a road trip, like a per mile value to him having a similar experience by effectively renting one, which I understand the position, but in order to write about cars, you have to drive cars. Like, I don't understand how I would do it any other way. And then it says, the next one says. And his math is that I'm getting effectively a 50 to $100,000 gift from Porsche by being able to put this. Now, I could see how somebody would see it that way. If the only way you can drive a car like this is with money, sure, I found another way to drive a car like this. But the fact is there's no way I could generate that type of value from driving this car. You know what I mean? We get paid in seat time.

[Zach]

I think what he's almost describing is like a shmee example where if you have to own the car and then it's yours and then whatever content you make is based on that, but you know you're gonna lose money on that as well.

[Matt Farah]

So next sentence. Obviously Matt isn't doing a review of a 12 years old 918. Also factually incorrect. We are about to talk about it for 20 minutes on this podcast, which absolutely is a review. I am literally writing a review of it for Road and Track. That's another thing. So I'm creating two different pieces of content for two different media outlets about this drive. So that's not a, that isn't a gift, that's a providing of a thing for me to generate content about. Now, yes, Again, it's a fucking expensive car. If you have to go out and earn the money to buy one or pay some insane amount of money to rent one, like, yeah, it is, but I don't have a way to do that. And then they go on about the 911 Turbo S launch or flown to Spain, wined and dined. How can you be objective about that? To fly to that destination that's effectively $20,000 a person. And we've talked about this a lot. Yes, objectively, you are flown somewhere pretty, put in a nice hotel and given a scenic environment in order to drive this car. But that's way cheaper for the manufacturer than sending cars all over the world. You're also interacting with the engineers who built the car. You can learn a lot more about it. And so you land, you fly in, you land. It's like 4pm, you go to dinner, you go to bed the next day, 6am, work all day until right before dinner, shower, dinner. Yes, there is wine, go to bed. 5:00am the next morning, you know, you're back on a plane to go home. And it is nice to be in a hotel that isn't crappy. It's nice to eat a meal that isn't crappy. You know, a glass of wine at the end of a nice day is an alright thing. And I mean, and in the videos at the bottom of all the YouTube videos, we say, you know, Porsche or whoever provided airfare, hotels, the racetrack, meals, etc. It's in every video, every single one. Exactly what was. I mean, it's not an itemized receipt, but the obvious items. And like, I think there's a lot of people who have been doing this a long time who go on press launches and then offer fair criticisms of the car. You and I went on the Volvo EX90 press launch and essentially tore that car to shreds. Yeah, the Turbo S launch. I said quite a few things about the car that were negative. It's crazy fucking expensive. It's not much better than the GTS for most things. You genuinely can't feel the difference. A lot of the time. It's so heavy. The convertible's over £4,000 and it's gonna be, God help you if you own one out of warranty. Like, I think those are pretty fair criticisms of a car.

[Zach]

We had the Dark Horse. I remember criticizing the steering on that a lot. And the RTR has the same problem.

[Matt Farah]

And like, so, you know, and then another misunderstanding. I understand it's part of the job, but this would never fly in any other industry. Folks, we got to take a quick break for advertisements, but this one, boy, I couldn't be happier with this one. Brooklyn Bedding is in the house. They sent us a new king size mattress to try out and they were like, look, I guarantee that your bed is not as good as our bed. We're going to send you a new bed. It's going to feel like a unbelievable high end mattress experience. And this is a totally reasonably price mattress. Mine is like the elite one. It's actually the nicest one that they make and it still doesn't cost a fortune. And their high quality materials are designed to last a lifetime. It's like my bed got a first class upgrade without the first class price. Look, I don't mess around with beds, okay? I have a bad back, I have bad knees, I need support, I'm obviously heavy and so I need a bed that won't sag after like a year. And so while I've only had the Brooklyn Bedding mattress for like a month, I am real confident that this is a well made bed. The materials feel good, the craftsmanship is tight, and no matter which side of the bed I sleep on, it feels like a really. It's firm on the bottom but soft on top. So it's soft to the touch but firm in the support. I really, really like it. It is a masterpiece. Brooklyn Bedding makes every mattress in their Arizona factory. No middlemen, no gimmicks, just top tier quality and real American craftsmanship. And they know sleep is not one size fits all. That's why they offer like 10 different mattresses for everybody. Every sleep style, even hard to find sizes. They've got a sleep quiz on their website and you can find your perfect match in under two minutes. Do you sleep hot? Well, I sleep hot. And Brooklyn Bedding uses glaciotex covers and copper flex foam to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. And Brooklyn Bedding offers a 120 night comfort trial. Love it. Or they'll help you return or swap it hassle free. Go to BrooklynBedding.com and use promo code Tire at checkout to get 30% off site wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. BrooklynBedding.com promo code Tire 30% off site wide support. Know we sent you after checkout. BrooklynBetting.com promo code Tire I'm telling you guys, I have never slept better in my own house and you can too. We are also brought to you today by Deleteme. You know, delete me. I've Been talking about them for probably a year now. I guess it's maybe almost been a year. They do the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. What is a data broker website? Pretty much anytime you sign up for something online, your data gets sold to a data broker website who then sell it to other people who can do whatever the heck they want with it. Right? And so Delete Me knows that your privacy is worth protecting. So when you sign up with Deleteme, you provide them with your personal information that you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Then a couple of days later, they're going to send you a personalized report showing all the places they found your information. Now, some of that information can get automatically deleted. Some of it requires a couple of clicks. Sometimes you have to do a digital signature or something else. Another step. But either way, it's not a one time service. Once that all happens, then like a month later they send you the next report and then the next one. And each time Delete Me finds less and less because there's less and less out there. It's never going to go to zero because we keep using the Internet. But Deleteme is always there looking out for you, removing this stuff in real time. In my case, I end up getting a lot less fake phone calls, scam text messages, things like that. My problem has always been with the phone texts, the fake texts and those have really gone down compared to my wife who does not use Deleteme, even though we both have a very similar phone plan. So take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete me now at a special discount for our listeners. 20% off your delete me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com tired and use promo code tire at checkout. That's the only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Tire and enter code Tire at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Tire code Tire. And now back to the show. I understand it's part of the job, but this would never fly in any other industry. Imagine any time a company launches a new video game, they fly journalists in. Imagine any time. Blah blah. By the way, this exact thing happens in any almost every industry.

[Zach]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

And a lot of times they pay people directly.

[Zach]

Yes, true.

[Matt Farah]

It happens a lot more egregiously. I know people who write about watches, they fly somewhere ridiculous. They put on the watch and then they just get drunk with the watch. On they don't really do. Like, I know someone who's a bourbon reviewer and they skip with the fucking pretense. It's, let's get there, let's get shitty.

[Zach]

Well, and there's like, there are people that get. There are people that get free trips and stuff for all kinds of products. Hotels, restaurants, gun youtubers get sent guns for free or get brought on trips. Like any type of product now.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

What I think a lot of companies have realized what car companies long ago realized, which is if you get like a quote review for it, it's cheaper than advertising. And now in the last 15 years with influencer culture, it's far more effective. And some people don't just get the free thing. They get paid to say the thing. And it happens in the car world and often is not disclosed, especially if they don't live in the United States and they're not legally required to. It happens in a lot of. Lot of products. Video games, computers, all kinds of stuff. People get kickbacks of all kinds. So I think that is, that exists in the world more than this person might realize, unfortunately.

[Matt Farah]

And also basically it's how can I last bid? You know, it says to credit, I'm sure people like us and Savage Geek try to be effective, but how are you objectively critical when they routinely give you experiences you'd otherwise never be able to afford? And they then say, which is why I only start asking actual owners of their cars for their experiences. Before making purchases, it is useful to speak to owners of cars about their experience. However, there is a ton of sunk cost fallacy in people who buy cars. There is people want to not seem stupid. And a lot of times they'll tell you that their car is, you know, better, is great, is great and better than it is, and it's perfect. And they're, you know, and that's not true. Conversely, a lot of times people really want to bitch about something and their car could be a complete piece of shit, and it really wasn't. And so lastly, I can only think of people with fuck you money like Chris Harris or Hoovy's Garage or Top Gear, who have been able to bluntly criticize OEMs in their cars. Chris was on the Turbo S launch, by the way, with me. Same wine and dine motherfucker.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And he went through two sets of tires that he didn't have to pay for and I didn't do it. And I'm not this absolutely not a criticism on Chris. I just like and I don't want to, I don't want to do this. I'm not just trying to like read the comments and be mad, but like, this person is a fan. They listen to the show and their misconception of how it works. So if that's a person who's a listener and it seems very well meaning but is misinformed about what's going on and like, if after this explanation, that's still not good enough for you, like, all you got is Consumer Reports, bro. They buy the cars but like, but they're not buying Turbo S's like, they're.

[Zach]

Not buying they also because I, we have a Consumer Reports login thing and I, I was looking at the other day and one of the interesting stats was on the reliability predictable predicted reliability survey, the Rivian scored last, but it was first in customer satisfaction.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Zach]

So that car is known for having problems. Yet just to your point, the owners are like, no, it's not that bad, it's cool. But all these things are going wrong with it. Yes, but it's number one. Oh, sorry. It was number one in would buy again. And so that is a great example of the, the sunk cost fallacy type of thing. So I understand this person's point. Like, and trust me, the automakers know what they're doing. They are definitely trying to give you lots of like good feelings. And here's everything's really nice and there are people out there who will say nothing but nice things in reviews over and over and over again so that they can go on every trip. Yeah, but what we do and we have to do is you have to separate yourself from the environment you're put in and you just look at the car, you drive the car and you, you, you know, review it objectively and you point out the things that are wrong and you point out the things that are good.

[Matt Farah]

And I also like, it feels like it's, it feels, it hurts a little bit because like, yeah, the hotel in Spain was nice. It wasn't the nicest place I've ever been. Yeah, the racetrack is nice. Yes, food is nice. Yes, those things are nice. And yes, there is a quantifiable value to them. Porsche has a number where we're spending whatever it is. 20k a journalist to do this, man. Like, I wrote an article, I shot the podcast with all those other guys who were there. We made a fucking super produced video out of that. I wrote a script, I had like, we put a lot into that, you know what I mean? And like I have this pulled up, I'M gonna show this to the fucking camera. This is the revenue from that. From that video. $811. So that's 30 hours of flying. Okay? And a full workday. Now, look. Yes. Is driving a 911 Turbo for work, like, fun? But, like, don't you fucking think that isn't work? When I have to make sure all the shots and all the fucking audio and all that's going, like, no help. That's fun, but it's better than a lot of people's work days. But believe you me, that's a. You have one chance to get all this situation right. $811. Like, what are we talking? Like, so how on fucking God's green earth, God I don't even believe in is. Am I supposed to drive this car? When this is the earning potential of a piece of content?

[Zach]

Right? So if you rented a new Turbo S, if that was even possible, it would probably cost more than that. Money more than that.

[Matt Farah]

So, like, there is literally, like, you have to be on the first batch of people to drive this stuff if you want any kind of traction at all, right? If the content is to have any real value, it needs to be first. And if you need to be first, the only way to do it is to get there. So you have to be invited to begin with. And look, look, yeah, being invited feels nice, but you have to be invited. You then have to have outlets for the content, you know, and then. But if you really do have to pay your own way, and there are folks who like Dan Neal because of the Wall Street Journal, Hannah Elliott because of Bloomberg, sometimes you do work for outlets that can and do afford that, but there is no fucking chance that I can get to drive this car if I have to fund it.

[Zach]

Right? And to clarify that really quick, what the Wall Street Journal would do is they would send Dan on the same trip as the journalist, but Wall Street Journal would pay for the airfare, the hotel, et cetera.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, they would basically reimburse. I don't know if they'd reimburse Portia. Whatever it was, they wouldn't take the money for the thing. And, like, that's the ideal. It really is. That is the ideal, but, like, it's just not possible. Like, there is no other option. So we do the best we can. And I didn't mean for this to be 30 minutes of content on a guy's Reddit post, but a lot of people, you know, sent it to me. It's worth not arguing with the person or with their opinions, but at Least making sure that they understand what the reality is of the situation.

[Zach]

Absolutely. Because I'm sure, you know, this is like the. For every phone call that goes to a senator's office, there's probably 50,000 angry tweets. And then for each tweet, there's a grumble at the supermarket, whatever. So, like, this probably represents the thoughts of a lot of people that wonder how the system works or discuss how the system works. And so I think it's a good thing to cover.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And when you're talking about, like, how are you objective? Like, I mean, these are humans with feelings and opinions and they're writing about how these cars make them feel. Unless you're putting every single car through. You know, like, Car and Driver does numbers tests. Like, that's about as close to objective as you get. They're consistent with their testing and they put the car on a scale and like numbers, numbers are objective. But a person telling you what a car is like to drive, that's not ever going to be totally objective. People bring all their baggage from forever.

[Zach]

Well, and to be fair, like Car and Driver does the number stuff to separate them from other magazines that are more like subjective in how a car feels. But rt. Sorry, not rt. Car and Driver also will have those lines in their articles and stuff about, like, but how did the car feel to us? What did we like about it? So again, it's subjective and depending on the size of the person, they have different opinions on the seats or what kind of like, I grew up with muscle cars. I tend to be more into them than you. And that's just because of what cars we were around when we were 7 years old. Like, so everyone's bringing all of that stuff to the table.

[Matt Farah]

I think if you really have people that are career at this point, if they've been doing it for 15, 20 years, these kind of folks, or the level of thoroughness that the Savage Geese guys go to with their testing and their nuance, or Kyle with his EV stuff. I think, man, everyone's doing the best they can. No, no one's getting super rich. We're not choosing where those destinations are. I, you and I would so much rather have a Turbo S delivered to our front door for even one day, sure. Than have to fucking fly across the world to do it. Even though the pictures look nice, you know, the headline I went to Spain to drive a Turbo S is a fucking real headline. But in terms of a business choice, dude, I'd rather have the car for a day. Covid was the fucking shit for us.

[Zach]

One thing, one good thing about COVID Yeah, Covid.

[Matt Farah]

The manufacturers had to suck it up and deliver the cars because they couldn't have the fucking events. Yeah, man, were we killing it.

[Zach]

We got like two day loans.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it's fabulous. Do what you want to do. That's preferred, actually. You know, I just got stamps in my passport for places I can barely remember.

[Zach]

Well then you also like, you can kind of live with the car for a day or two instead of sometimes these events. Your drive time might be. It could be eight hours, which is mostly road. Or it could be one. It could be one hour.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, that's the other thing.

[Zach]

And those are. I mean that and then. I hate those for so many reasons. OEMs have their reasons for doing it. Maybe some good, some bad. But you just don't get to learn enough about the car.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And that makes it really tough.

[Matt Farah]

Well, that's why having a 918 for a week puts me in incredible position.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

I learned a lot about this car, I have to say, in 2013 when it was the holy Trinity. I thought this was the least interesting of the three.

[Zach]

So did I.

[Matt Farah]

The Ferrari was the pretty one. The McLaren was the crazy one.

[Zach]

Also pretty in my opinion, but yes.

[Matt Farah]

And this one was the nerdy one. Let me just say that time has been incredibly kind to the 918. You could fundamentally update the center touchscreen garbage piece of shit. Take off the steering wheel and put on the current GT3RS steering wheel and put updated battery chemistry in the battery pack and updated E motors in the axles and you could just sell this car as is right now. Like the rest of it. Just leave it. Just sell it the same. It does not feel like a 15 year old car at all. You know, I only got to drive one for like five minutes back in the day. So I really. It's as basically, it's like I'd never driven it. Fucking Porsche with a carbon tub to work with. Fucking hell. That's. This car rides better all the time than my Spider.

[Zach]

This ride, this adaptive suspension, I forget.

[Matt Farah]

It has adaptive shocks. But it's also double wishbone and it's. And it's got in the rear is cantilevered also I believe. And the ride is so beautiful. It's almost as good as a 720. Like right up there with a 720. But driving at 1,000 miles, there is literally no comfort or ride quality downgrade from like a Boxster. Like I fit. I'm in the right driving position. My new balances fit the 2013 buckets. I'd like those to be updated to the current buckets. And I did have to use the Tempur Pedic pillow starting on day three. On day five. Bro, I drove this car for 10 hours.

[Zach]

Whoa.

[Matt Farah]

I drove over 500 miles on day five. Guys gotta take one more break from the action for Strap Habit. Dude, these straps. I love watch straps, right? I like to change up my watch all the time. I like to change the look with the season, the outfit and now with some of these quick release straps. Tool list changing. I can change a watch strap in like five minutes. The Strap Habit will Watch straps is coming in hot. They have a ton of straps, a ton of different materials, all the important sizes. Strap Habit was started in 2019 by a big time watch collector. His wife came up with the name after she noticed that he had a habit of strapping out watch straps. Right? Strap Habit understands the effort and expense that goes into finding the perfect watch. But unfortunately sometimes the included strap or bracelet is uncomfortable or doesn't reflect your style. That's like me. I've bought a bunch of watch watches that come on these like alligator straps and I dress them all down with casual straps. They focus on involvement in the watch community including collabs with many of your favorite brands and channels. Even my Notice Canyon. There's a review on the Strap Habit blog that shows all the different straps that will fit the Notice Canyon. It's up there right now. Go check it out. And they have all different places in the market where the right strap is not available. Like deployment straps at affordable prices. Different ranges of sizes including the odd 19 and 21 millimeter for stuff like Grand Seiko and modern Rolex. Unique colors you won't find anywhere else. And straps designed to accompany very large and very small wrist sizes. The Strap Habit straps feel really nice. I've got the rubber, the canvas, their deployant clasp is really really good. I would defin recommend that they've got so many 5 star reviews on their website and Google business. So get some for yourself, get some for gifts at others. @straphabit.com use code TST15 at checkout for 15% off your order. That's straphabit.com and code TST15 for 15% off. Lastly, we're brought to you today by True Work. Fall weather changes fast. We could be hot, it could be cold, it could be wet, it could be windy. I was just out there in Georgia and Tennessee last weekend and it was all of those things in one day and whatever the fall weather throws at you. TrueWerk is performance workwear that's built to stand up to it because it matters. Truewerk was founded by a trade professional who was tired of wet, heavy gear weighing him down. And TrueWerk set out to make workwear that keeps pros comfortable, capable and ready for whatever the day throws at them. Designed with advanced performance fabrics for lasting comfort, all day mobility, and year round job site protection, every piece is tested on real job sites with trade pros, so when the conditions change, you're still ready. They've got over 50,000 five star reviews from pros in every trade and every climate. My favorite is the Truewerk pants. They are super, super durable. They look light, they feel light when you wear them. When it gets hot, they're not too sweaty, but they hold up to a bunch of washes. They hold up to being kneeled in the ground. When I'm like working around cars, I'm like up and down and kneeling around. They're really comfortable. They fit my belts like perfect. I've got their cargo work pants and they are super, super useful. So upgrade your day too, with workwear built like it matters. Get 15% first [e-mail] with Code Tire. That's T R U E W E-R-K.com and Code Tire. And now back to the show. Fucking hell. Dude, this V8 naturally aspirated fucking smokestacks right behind your head. And at idle, it's just that beautiful sound of engineering where you just had that whine of cam gears and stuff, you know? And then when you start to lug it a little bit, like you're loafing along at like 2000 RPM and you just like tip into the pedal and like load it, but at low RPM you get this growl, like resting like you just woke a fucking tiger. And it's looking at you like, you have 10 seconds to get the fuck out of here before I eat you. That like, you know that like low tide, it makes that. And then it turns into swarm of bees as you bring up the revs. And then after about 5, the bees start attacking the tiger. And then after fucking seven, the bees and the tiger are having like a full on brawl with each other. It's bananas how this car sounds. And the fact that there's no turbos and the Exhaust is like 7 inches long and just goes up.

[Zach]

It's so rad.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, that sound is like, God, do you never get tired of that? That is just unbelievable. And the PDK you know, the PDK with an E motor, it's as smooth. It's the same. I mean, it's indiscernible how it shifts from a car that's now. You know what I mean? It shifts just like today's PDK with the front axle motors. It's got. So it has hydraulic steering. It has an old hydraulic steering like an old GT3RS. It's sort of a similar system to that. So the steering feels a lot heavier than today's cars. But you do get used to it. The feeling is really good. I feel like if they did the car today, they would do electric steering and it would be better. It would be a little lighter and it would be a little sharper. The ratio isn't quite as fast as I expected, but, like, still with the magic E motor shit at the front and the torque vectoring, this is like.

[Zach]

This is now. Does it have the magic steering like NSX does?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, better.

[Zach]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

It's better than nsx. Yeah, but it's like. It's the very definition of like driving a roller coaster that's just on a fucking. If you have the stability control on it is just on a rail. And if you turn the stability control off, you can oversteer out of every corner, which I only tried once. I'm just not brave enough to do it more than that. There's no. No normal situation. Do you ever need to put the shocks in sport or the traction control in anything but regular?

[Zach]

Yeah, of course. Unless you're at a track and you. And you're Harris and you want to.

[Matt Farah]

Go for it so fast. Yeah, it's so fucking fast. Like, the numbers aren't impressive. In 20, 25, it's like 887 horsepower. But, like, you know, with the E motors and like, the way that it delivers that power along with this just, you know, the engine's like, based on the Spyder rs, the Le Mans car. And it's just. It sounds like Le Mans.

[Zach]

It sounds amazing.

[Matt Farah]

It sounds crazy.

[Zach]

What's incredible is it weighs, according to Google, like 3,800 pounds. So it weighs what a new Corvette weighs. This has a hybrid system. Three electric motors.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And you can. You know, it's because of the tub. You can hear the bushings. You can hear stuff happening. So it's not like, refined like a Boxster would be. It's definitely.

[Zach]

No, it's a raw. It's a more like raw symphony happening inside. But you hear a lot of. And like the sound because I drove one years ago. For filming. And like, there's like a sound that resonates when you, you know, in the open cockpit and the V8 bounces around the carbon stuff a little bit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but you can cruise down the highway no problem. And if I actually, after a while, when I would get stuck in traffic, I would put it into electric mode. Hybrid mode sticks. The engine sounds too good to be kicking on and off all the time. So you essentially have E mode for creeping around parking lots andor sitting in traffic, or sport mode, which is engine on. And because there isn't like a nor because you're not using that hybrid mode to keep the engine on, you put it in sport mode, which also activates a sport gearbox program, which really, I shift myself in any of the twisties, but on the highway the gearbox program is really, really good. And with the torque fill and the choice of gear, I actually found myself leaving it in automatic on the highway almost the entire time. I thought it did a really good job giving me the amount of power and gear I needed for highway driving. Although on the fucking Dragon it was just, you got to go, you know, obviously manual, but. And it had. Even though it had cup twos, I drove it in the rain twice. It was fine. There was some funny quirks to it because as a prototype I had to get all these USB A cables for my phone and my phone had no idea what this car was like. The Bluetooth did work, but it kept getting error pop up messages on my phone. And then when I would turn the car off and walk away with my phone, my phone wouldn't make any sounds. My phone still thought it was connected to the car, even though the car was like long gone. So that was a little wonky. And it did have a check engine light. But I was told over and over that it doesn't mean anything. It's just a mixture of prototype and production parts. As the car's been serviced throughout its life, some of the handmade parts were replaced with production parts, but it didn't seem to affect how it drove at all. And it's due to things. It's scruffy, it's got like 13,000 miles on it. So is rock chips and shit, which is just, it's just the best. Like left it parked outside. You treat it like a car. And so that's really. It is, it's really like, it's so usable as a car. It's such a Porsche in the way that, like, it has to pass the same like shit as like a Panamera or Whatever. Like, the driving position and the ergonomics are, like, normal, not, like weird and shitty, so that I could sit in it for like almost 40 hours and not have a problem, you know what I mean? The windshield wiper and the H vac and all that stuff works perfectly. The ride is great if you're just cruising. The fuel economy isn't even all that bad. It's very refined. The nose lift works. After two days, it really just became a car, which is both good and bad.

[Zach]

But I think that's gonna happen with good McLarens. When you're on it really hard, are exciting. But now with the new ones where they move the nose lift once, everything's really easy to access and it becomes more livable, which is what everyone has asked for. But then we get there and we go, oh, it's just a car now. And you go, well, which one do you want?

[Matt Farah]

Well, it just made it because it was such a good car. It made me sad that so few get driven. Like, to do a thousand miles on it is probably the most any 918 was driven this year, you know, and, like, it's more than a lot of them will go ever.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And it just made me, like, sad that Porsche put so much energy into making this car work so well and still, like, not driving. It is such a good investment that for so many people that earn enough money to buy one of those things, capitalism will beat car enthusiasm every time it's too profitable to not drive it. And that's such a fucking bummer, because if you could get one that had miles on it, or if you could have bought one new, you could have fucking basically daily this thing for like a decade for free. And, like, that's what, like, car enthusiasm is like, really about. Like, I just feel like there's certain cars, like, if you bought a Zinger 21C, I get it. If you only want to drive that a couple of times a month, it's comfortable and everything, but, like, you know.

[Zach]

It'S a one seater, essentially. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

This you could just use as your car and you'd be the king of the universe if you did that.

[Zach]

The other thing is that these cars exist and are good because car enthusiasts exist. You know, these happen because the car enthusiasts work at Porsche. They work in the factories. They go, how do we make these things better, faster, you know, stronger, all that stuff. Like, the pun is not intended, but it's happening. Like, that is driven by the excitement and passion people have for cars. But then they get bought by people who just See it as a stock that they can invest in or a thing that they can just sit on. And it's like, this wouldn't exist if it weren't for this group of people who like to drive the thing that you now just keep in a garage. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And like, to be fair, like, I think someone who buys one and doesn't drive it can still be an enthusiast.

[Zach]

They can.

[Matt Farah]

It's just, you know, it's just sad because if you earned enough money to buy one in the first place, you could probably earn that much money again just doing what you're doing. And that car could be a thing that gives you feelings instead of a thing that is earning a profit for you. Not everything needs to earn a profit for you. Like, my dream is to depreciate a Ferrari F40 more than anybody ever has. And to do that, it means I have to make a lot of money and be comfortable putting this Ferrari F40 into my entertainment fund. Like, the money you pull out of your pocket in Vegas for one night and you go, 200 bucks is my. And if it's gone, it's gone. One day, maybe. One day. That's the dream. That's the dream board. Is like, Ferrari F40 used as a car until it's fundamentally worthless.

[Zach]

I think, you know, one of the problems, and it's a fundamental problem for our society we're very aware of, is that there are a lot of people at that income level on the top that can't see number go down because it hurts them in their soul. And I think it's probably something innate to our DNA. Like, I have this. And now it's, quote, going away. You know, the value is diminishing. It's like sand being blown away by the wind. And if they could tap into those feelings of enjoyment and just accept that, that's okay. Sometimes. We'd probably be way better off in so many arenas. Totally.

[Matt Farah]

And it's a human. It's a human.

[Zach]

It's cars to save society.

[Matt Farah]

It's a human thing. And every once in a while, I think you get a really rich person that does kind of get it and treats the car like a car, you know, but it's just so often that when you have a society that's like, so capitalist, the car is capital, and you want line to go up. You want to be a savvy investor.

[Zach]

Well, the people at the. At the. The people have enough money to buy these cars. They live that way. So of course it's going to be more prevalent.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, you don't want to think about it as I drove 20,000 miles for free, or I drove 20,000 miles and it only cost me this much to have this experience. Or, you know, I drove 20,000 miles and it was expensive, but, man, was it fun, you know?

[Zach]

You know, it's funny, I just realized because there's probably. I was just imagining, like, bet they.

[Matt Farah]

Lose a lot of money on their leased G wagons.

[Zach]

There's that. Or when they go on a ski trip. And I'm just gonna blanket statements like when rich dudes go on hunting trips that are very expensive, like, they're not getting that money back, but they're doing it for the experience. Right. So what if you drove your 918 enough miles to reduce the value by 20 grand, which is the same as you going to Africa and shooting something expensive. Totally. And those experiences you're gonna have are gonna happen every day.

[Matt Farah]

Cooking boy says it's $50,000 to go 1,000 miles.

[Zach]

Right?

[Matt Farah]

So, yeah, you know, and granted, this car, the car I drove is, like I said, it's unsellable. So the only value it can deliver anymore. It cannot deliver monetary value to anybody. It can't. It can't be stripped for parts and it can't be sold for profit. So what's left? All that's left is joy and education, you know, and it's very cool that I have developed a reputation within the people who are in charge of delegating who gets to drive this shit, of just being someone who doesn't break stuff, is being and will be honest and respectful and will give praise where due and criticism where due. And they thought that it was not cool that we had not had a chance as the smoking tire to talk about this car yet. Road and Track reviewed the fucking car. I didn't need to do it for Road and Track. Dan thought it would be. My boss thought it would be cool to do a retrospective on it. And I compared it with a brand new turbo S E hybrid Panamera that I drove just before it. We talked about on last show. And dude, you can draw. I mean, this is not. To Zach, this isn't going to be very obvious, but to anyone else, you can draw a dead straight line from this car to Lamborghini's entire lineup right now, you know, to go from this to 10 years now we've got the Temerario, which has the same technology for, you know, adjusted for inflation, that's probably 25% of the price. I think the Temerario is objectively faster than the 918, surely. Yeah, new technology. Yeah, of course. And I think, I happen to think this technology paired with weight reduction methods can really be something amazing because it allows you to use very exotic, weird, interesting engines that otherwise don't need to be as practical if they have to rev the 10 to make power. We got E motors, baby. If I want to do a fucking 2 liter, 16 cylinder that sounds like a fucking hornet's nest you just shot a flamethrower at, you know, but it makes no torque. I got fucking E motors, you know, I want to make it do a motor that runs to 12 or whatever. Like E motor. E motor. E motor. Like you can now put a weird ass, high revving, stupid, impractical engine in a car.

[Zach]

That could be a cool way to make a performance hybrid. Because around town you want torque. Yeah, you need torque. So you could have the E motor doing most of the lifting there. And as you get up in the canyons, you get up into the screaming six grand territory. Six and above.

[Matt Farah]

Well, this is the new Bugatti tourbillon, the 16 cylinder, naturally aspirated engine paired with 3E motors. Like that's what we're doing now. And so as long as those cars don't get super, super heavy, I mean, the 918 at least proves it's possible to have one that starts with three. I believe the Temerario's weight starts with a three. You may want to look, I don't know if anyone's put one on a scale yet, but maybe I forget the quoted weight, but these performance hybrids could be sort of the thing that keeps crazy naturally aspirated, super high revving, motorsport grade engines. I mean, alternatively, what everyone's using 4 liter twin turbo V8. Like, okay, that's fine, but like, give me some weird shit like this is how we're gonna do that. Think about that Lanzante. The TAG turbos.

[Zach]

Oh yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know, they're putting these old F1 engines and they're doing something to make them run.

[Zach]

But like the Mercedes one. Yeah, the AMG one, Sorry. Like that was a tiny thing that revs to the moon, but it needs electric help as well.

[Matt Farah]

Well, if you, I mean, think about the Von and Shadow hybrid drive thing paired with the Lanzante. I mean that might make it way more drivable, but you could still have this crazy engine. So I am writing about the 918 for road and track. And if there are questions in the, in the thing about it now, you know that. And to answer the worth it Thing, it's just. It's like, what percentage of your net worth is it? And like. But how about this? Is it worth it? Yes. If you buy one with some miles on it and put more. Like, do not spend up for one of these that you can't drive spend, because none of them are like shit boxes. Buy one with fucking 10,000 miles, if one exists, and a few rock chips and put a set of tires on it and go.

[Zach]

I would add that cars like this are worth it because you can use it as a car so it's not super compromised. I mean, there are compromises. Yes. But like, in the supercar realm, it's not. You know, you don't get in and you go, why is the steering wheel 4 inches to the right? Why can't I fit in this thing? Why is it uncomfortable? And it rides like garbage. You can do a lot of stuff with it, which I think makes it more worth it than some of its competition.

[Matt Farah]

My rollerboard Carl Friedrich rollaboard bag and my backpack fit in the frunk together. Which I thought, you know, I thought for sure I'm gonna have to wear a specially narrow pair of shoes. I'm gonna have to bring either a duffel bag or a smaller suitcase. I thought my backpack was gonna have to ride shotgun the whole time, you know? No, no, no, no. It was like. It was only marginally less practical than a 911.

[Zach]

Do you know, are they having any of the long. The battery issues that the P1 is having?

[Matt Farah]

Nope.

[Zach]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

They haven't. They're. They're coming out with an updated chemistry for people who want it that will supposedly give the car 30 to 40% more electric only range.

[Zach]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

And it will also output more electrons to the motors. I don't know when that's coming. I don't know how much it is. They just said it was something that they're working on for these cars. But no, for real, you could change two or three things and just make this now, and it would feel like a brand new car. And in fact, they fucking should. I mean, they really just should. They should do a successor to this. I mean, if now if they've got access to Rimatz's electric motor technology and, you know, with the stuff that they're doing now, I think they could build a fucking bad motherfucker of a car. Be a real good time.

[Zach]

Yeah, they haven't had. I mean, they haven't needed a Halo car because, like, all the GT line has just sold so well. But I mean, Porsche's overall business right now, based on that report from a week ago, like, they're having some trouble not moving normal cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, no, they are having trouble. The normal cars are really very expensive for people right now.

[Zach]

The problem is, you know, halo cars are usually in a time of plenty for a company because they can divert the resources to that. So.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, no, there's no indication that a replacement or something is. Yeah, I mean, it would be. And I just. This is where this hybrid supercar technology started. Really. And it's good to go back there because when the hype, when this car came out, you go, man, I don't know if that's gonna age well. And this car is now 12 years old. And yes, actually the only things about it that haven't aged well are the same shit from 2012, regular Porsches that haven't aged well. Phone connectivity, crappy haptic stuff. Like, everything else about this car has aged really, really well. Having to release the electronic parking brake every time. Like, you know, having to turn a key while also having that razor shifter, the shaver shifter, and like, guys, fuck it.

[Zach]

Intersections of technology.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Like, I need just give me a start button and have the fucking things. You know what I mean? Like, it was kind of funny, the mishmash of different stuff, but the way the top fits in the frunk is really innovative and cool. It was great.

[Zach]

It's a gorgeous car. I mean, the profile of it is just timeless. I think it's fantastic.

[Matt Farah]

And it was a real contrast between people who lost their mind when they saw it and people that just either didn't know or didn't notice at all. I mean, a lot of people walked right by it. Just know that a Porsche. Yeah. Okay. Just, you know, maybe because of the color, maybe. I mean, it's not. But it's not that, like, flashy, flashy. You know, there's no big. When the wing is down, when it's parked.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know.

[Zach]

Well, if you look at the front of it most. I mean, you can trick yourself into going, oh, Boxster came in. Yeah, yeah. It's different for sure, but it's not crazy.

[Matt Farah]

But if you don't know cars, it doesn't immediately stand out as that's a seven figure car.

[Zach]

Whereas the LaFerrari, I mean, one, it has a Ferrari badge, but also it looks more like a seven figure car. And the P1 as well, especially from, like the back.

[Matt Farah]

But this is. I mean, God, if anyone out there, if you're listening to this and you own one of these fucking Drive it. It's. It's such. It would be such a tragic thing to not use it as a car. It's so great as a car. And I want you to tell. You want to talk about Hyundai?

[Zach]

Let's talk about Hyundai. The embargo is off. And then we can go to the people.

[Matt Farah]

Let's go. Let's talk about regular people cars for a minute. These are not regular people cars, but I get it. It's not relatable, but I had to do it.

[Zach]

Yeah, of course. I mean, that's part of the reason we sought out this job as children was like, to drive the cool stuff. So, you know, why wouldn't you do it?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Oh, speaking of which, Roof rodeo video is up on the channel now. It's up today, so go check that out. Also not particularly relatable, but the video is fun.

[Zach]

There's some car to car we did where you were driving, and I was looking in the rearview mirror, and I was like, okay, we got the shot. We got drift. We got enough street drift. Close course, but, like, we got enough.

[Matt Farah]

The road actually was close.

[Zach]

Got enough tarmac drifting shots where I was starting to get nervous. Producer brain.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, the road actually was closed, but.

[Zach]

You did a very good job. And when I watched the footage, like, you stayed in the line, like, there was not a lot of room, but that car is not that big, incredibly, because it's based on an older car. And I was like, oh, you're right there next to yellow and right there next to guardrail.

[Matt Farah]

Right there next to guardrail.

[Zach]

I know. There was.

[Matt Farah]

I was a very close, close, close bumper tag thing. I did not tag, but I was. It was inches.

[Zach]

It was inches. It wasn't feet, because there wasn't feet. Had. Yeah, that was exciting.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, go watch that video. But Zach went to Korea.

[Zach]

I did.

[Matt Farah]

To drive Korean cars or a Korean car.

[Zach]

Yeah, I went to South Korea last week, as we talked about on the show, to drive two cars. One was the Hyundai Nexo, which you can't.

[Matt Farah]

Hydrogen car objective, though, because they flew you there.

[Zach]

I'll be objective about the Nexo. You can't refuel it anywhere outside of California, and the infrastructure here for hydrogen is terrible. And I don't recommend anyone get a hydrogen car car unless you have the most specific route in an amazing lease deal because it's too compromised in too many ways. And if you want to know everything I feel about those, go watch my Nexo review from a few years ago. So. But the. The big story, you know, the reason they think they primarily invited us. The smoking tire is Ioniq 6N.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Performance EV. We drove the Ioniq 5N, which we liked. Loved it had some amazing new technology. The shifting most notable. This has all of that stuff and more. And they have also refined how the shifting works, how the sound works, etc. So it was very impressive. Generally weighs like 4800 pounds. Yep.

[Matt Farah]

That's heavy for a 4800S.

[Zach]

I know, but it's an easy.

[Matt Farah]

Kind of the same as the 5N, right?

[Zach]

It is. It's like the same size. Just buried in my notes. It's basically the same size as the 5N. It looks smaller.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

The roof is shorter slightly, but otherwise it's basically the same size. This thing plays visual tricks on you. Some angles it looks good. I think the front end refresh on the six is good. I did not like the front end of the old one at all. The lights and everything were terrible. The back end from the rear 3/4 still looks strange to me. It looks like a Cls that got rear ended. And it's what's weird about this car. And the reason the proportions are this way is because you have a lot of headroom. Like, it's a very bubbly canopy, but the. The front and rear droop so much to make it slippery. So you've got this almost like it looks like an animated movie where the cars, for some reason always had, like a big canopy because they want the characters of the movie to be seen.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, like the Jetsons.

[Zach]

The Jetsons. But they want the front ends to be small and cute and whatever and friendly, I guess. Or, you know, like Pixar movies do that. So this reminds me of that a little bit again. 600 horsepower. It's very quick. They did a lot to this thing besides the 6N, to differentiate it. It's got reinforcements all throughout the chassis. It's got new suspension, it's got new pickup points. Bushings, I think Sachs dampers, they're adaptive, but they're retuned. The batteries have been upgraded a little bit. It's got better thermal management. And, you know, there's a lot done to this thing. Brakes, lighter wheels. You can get aero packages for it. One of the aero packages that they're working on, it has like a full swan neck wing. I mean, I was looking at it and I went. I remember when Koenigsegg came out with this and it blew my mind. And race cars had it for sure. But it was like this new tech of, oh, it's supported from the top. And now I'm looking at a Hyundai that's like, yeah, you can get that at the dealership.

[Matt Farah]

That's crazy.

[Zach]

So that was all pretty wild. So I got to drive it on the street and the track on the street. I would say the car is stiff. It is a performance car.

[Matt Farah]

The 5 is stiff too.

[Zach]

It's probably very similar to that. The damping is great. We had a lot of speed bumps in Korea, even in the middle of the farmland for some reason. But one and done, you go over the bump. It soaks it up well at higher speeds. It does a really good job of that. But if you're going over chattery stuff like we have here up in like Angeles Crest or Encinal or any of the cracked roads, like, you're gonna feel that stuff through the, you know, pretty stiff chassis.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, the 5M was like that too. There wasn't really a way around. It was so heavy that, like you have to make it stiff to turn. Like do.

[Zach]

Yeah, it's the price you pay, I guess. Yeah. Fast, obviously, 0 to 60 is like, I think 3.5 seconds. It's almost a full second quicker than the regular 6N. Top speed's like 146. I think top speed doesn't really matter, but it's just limited to whatever it's limited to. The big thing with this is the shifting technology. The way the sound is paired to the shifting and then of course, all of the different drift optimization modes. So I'll try to keep it concise and to the person who on Reddit. Some of the things I don't like about this car, despite the trip, are a bunch of the end features that they were very proud of having put in this car. So shifting, it's timed. It's timed better with what you're doing and how you're driving. And the sound is timed much better. So I think before the sound was fun, but it sounded and it was pretty accurate to like what the quote revs were showing. But it didn't have as much of like a build through the rev range in terms of the sound. Now it's really good. Like they refined the sound.

[Matt Farah]

Like a gas.

[Zach]

It sounds like a gas car and it revs like that. And it's really timed perfectly.

[Matt Farah]

Sounded like an Elantra N before. Does it still sound like an Elantra N?

[Zach]

It's a little better, but it's still very much like a two liter, beefy two. And then they have the space sounds and the one that sounds like a circular saw, which I really find grating and I don't like. But I was impressed with the upshifts. Downshift.

[Matt Farah]

That sounds like a circular saw. That's pretty.

[Zach]

Yeah, that's pretty. They have one that's called like, I don't remember the names, but one's like very future spaceship Y. And it's fun and I bet your kids will love it. And then there's one that I don't think anyone will enjoy because it just sounds like you're walking through a Home Depot and someone's demonstrating something and you're.

[Matt Farah]

Like, what circular saw?

[Zach]

Can I get a key made? And it's like in a minute, you know. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

It's called we're here to help.

[Zach]

Yeah. Oh. So one of the things with the shifting is they made the gears air quotes shorter.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

So they showed a graph foot of.

[Matt Farah]

Tight as short as.

[Zach]

It's got a close ratio gearbox now. So I think up from zero to 100, you now shift four times instead of three.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

I believe that was. Or three instead of two.

[Matt Farah]

373 at the rear instead of the 350.

[Zach]

And I gotta tell you, that's helpful because we got to do like a drift skid pad thing around a cone and then try to connect it to figure eight on a mixed wet dry surface, which was super hard in this car.

[Matt Farah]

Mixed Wet, dry figure 8.

[Zach]

Mixed wet dry figure 8 in an electric car.

[Matt Farah]

In an electric all wheel drive car. That's. That's really hard.

[Zach]

And like I'm. And I found out, I found out later, like I'm not great at EV drifting. I have almost no experience in it. Well, not since 2016. But I've done like three drift schools that had a lot of figure eight in circle. And I went, all right, like, I know how this works. And man, when you have like first I tried it with, without the gears, so it was like unlimited wheel speed. It's really challenging.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And another thing they've added so we'll talk about drift optimization is they took notes from you and like Kamisa and some other people with the 5N, even when you said full traction off full rear wheel drive, it wasn't.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

There was still stuff going on to like help you a little bit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And so when I first went out there doing the circle, it was in this like 90% rear, 10% front setting. And I did not like it because the front, I'd start the swing and it would come around and then the front would like fight me. And pull outward a little bit. And I went like, what's going on? And the drift instructor said, all right, well it's go full rear night and day. Yeah, like, yeah, that's what I want. Yeah, that's what I wanted with the drift car. However, there's a problem with that. And I didn't notice it on the skid pad, but I noticed it when I was trying to drift on the track. Is that the steering weight changes drastically when you go to full drift rear mode.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach]

It gets. They made it, they programmed it to be very light. So in normal sport mode, the steering I think is actually a little too heavy. It's trying to do that illusion of feel that like Camaro did. But when you go to drift mode, it was like super light. And the end guys said, oh, we did this to make it easier to.

[Matt Farah]

Like a rear wheel drive car. Oh, to flick it.

[Zach]

To make it easier to like flick. Which I understand. But what I didn't like is I had gotten used to this certain weight, you know, this weight of x for a 20 minute lap session. And then I switched to drift mode and I think I broke the thing. And now my brain has this predictability of how much input my hands have to give to steer the car. And that math has changed. So I didn't like that well, because.

[Matt Farah]

Like with the Mach E, remember, like we liked the rear wheel drive ones better than the front wheel drive because if there's no front motor, the steering was just better. You just like actually felt more.

[Zach]

But I think with the rally, with the rally, it was so good at. They fixed the programming in that car was excellent and the steering didn't get really wonky. So in this, if I had a big note for steering, it's just make it consistent. And I would make the sport steering lighter and I would make the drift steering the same.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Because I didn't like that at all. Drifting without gears is like, is so difficult. Once I switched to the gears mode, fine circle just all day. Like because I was able to limit my wheel speed.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So it was really helpful for that. So that was one of the things they've added something called N pedal.

[Matt Farah]

Oh.

[Zach]

Which is. It helps you like turn in a little bit. It's almost like I think they said in normal pedal mode, lifting with full regen is like 0.3 GS and now it's 0.6.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And it will also grab the inside front wheel to help guard the car turn. But when we're driving fast on the track, like I Was using the actual brake pedal so much that I didn't really notice it that much. It was only when I went out with. With jun park or. No, sorry. With the engineer who designed it, and he drove, and he's like, here's end pedal on. Here's end pedal off. Just lifting off the. Off of the gas pedal. Like, then I felt it, but during driving.

[Matt Farah]

But, like, when you were trying to drive fast, it made no difference.

[Zach]

It didn't. You know, maybe it was working in the background, but. Oh, it did.

[Matt Farah]

I thought, okay, it did. So they. The only time I ever noticed it, I did not notice it on the track. I noticed it a lot when going, like, when doing, like, a descending canyon road where there's a lot of, like, off camber, downhill stuff. Like, I mean, to be very specific, it was going down the backside of laurel's grate. Any downhill fast canyon. It really cranked up the regen, and it helped rotate the car into the corner. Having said that, I. I didn't love it. And I liked the regular, you know, max regen before I pedal. And then combined with the manual gears, I liked a lot better. Yeah, that was in the 5N.

[Zach]

And then the pedal thing, you can use it with the drift optimizer to, like, initiate. It basically just helps you tuck the nose. But I just feel like between the gears and the regular brake pedal and the brakes were pretty good, and the brake pedal feel was pretty good.

[Matt Farah]

Have they changed or simplified the menus at all?

[Zach]

No.

[Matt Farah]

And that's because the 5N is like, I get lost in that motherfucker.

[Zach]

I should say the brake pedal does. You need way more pedal travel than you should. That's another complaint, because the throttle is very reactive. The steering ratio is good. So your brain goes, all right. These two controls. I get this reaction with this much input. And with the pedal, it's like, I need 2x input. So that was just a little bit too weird. The menus are insane. And, like, you can literally get lost. I did. I had the car for two days. I got to do this drag race with jun park, head of the n division. It was like we're in a meeting Talking about how the quarter mile time will be the same Whether you're in shifting mode or not shifting mode. And I go, oh, let's prove it. Like, do a drag race. And he's like, okay, so we did that. But at the end of that drag race session, we're both gonna take the drive the racetrack back, and he starts to put his car in drift Mode, and I'm like, hell, yeah. I'm gonna go tandem drift with June park right now. And I couldn't figure out how to get the thing back in, and I had it, like, set in drift mode, but not over here. And there's just. There's too many things. And I know that if you own.

[Matt Farah]

The car, he's, like, fucking dking it, and you're like, your traction controls on. Oh, no.

[Zach]

He's swinging out right away. And then I just went, I'm just gonna chase him. And that was super fun. And then watching him initiate and, you know. And also watching him make, you know, try and loop once, and he's just laughing his head off.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, he did?

[Zach]

Yeah. He looped it once, which made me feel good, because I'll tell a story in a second. But the menus are just. It's like. I know there's people out there who want to build their own computer or tweak every little thing, and if you like that. Sure. This is the car for you.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And the car has the technology to allow us to control all these things, because it's not an ice car. But it's just so much. And I just. It needs, like, just.

[Matt Farah]

It needs shortcut buttons of these options, you know, like.

[Zach]

Yeah, and there were a lot of things like. Like, you want to turn on drift mode, but you have to go turn traction control off first in this other menu. Yeah, I get it, but. And maybe that's a legal thing.

[Matt Farah]

You also want to do that.

[Zach]

You should do that, like, in a.

[Matt Farah]

Configurator where it's like, you can't get, you know, brown seats unless you get the tan headliner. Do you want to switch to tan headliner? Y.

[Zach]

Yes. It should be exactly like that. And say, this requires this. But instead of just saying, you know, hey, you didn't go, tick this box. I go, I don't know what the box is. Yeah, yeah. You know, can you just. Can you show me where the box is?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I have a shortcut to the box.

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was so. But the weight balance is great. It's like 49, 51.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That's perfect for doing slides.

[Zach]

It's really good. It was a ton of fun on the track. It's very neutral, like, oversteer, understeer. You can manage it really well. I like the gears. I thought they were a ton of fun. It helped me for braking zones and stuff like that, because I haven't driven a fast EV on the track for a long time.

[Matt Farah]

What track Were you on?

[Zach]

Oh, yeah. We were at the old F1 circuit in south of South Korea. Really?

[Matt Farah]

Was it cool?

[Zach]

Was it a cool track we ran? Well, it was weird. We ran next to it, so they had two tracks. So we were at the F1 track.

[Matt Farah]

But not on me.

[Zach]

We were on a very good track that was like nine corners or maybe 12 corners. And near us, us at lunch one day, we hear something being tested, like. And we went, what the is that? And we never got to go over there. It was like someone testing a. Like a GP2 car.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach]

So we were on the auxiliary track. But it was. It was just a nice flowy thing that had some corners and stuff.

[Matt Farah]

At least tell me. I was at the dinner at one point.

[Zach]

They were like, do you want to go see this wall where there's some paintings of, like, Schumacher and some other guys on it? And, you know, some of the guys in the group were like, yeah. And I went, eh.

[Matt Farah]

We'Re all right.

[Zach]

The guys aren't standing there.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach]

These are like an artist rendering of them. And if it's not really good, I don't know how good it is. I haven't seen it. But then I'll be even more disappointed for this walk. So I think overall, I think it gives me Hope, like the Ioniq 5 did of, like, you can add fun to these cars. And I do credit Hyundai for doing that, I think think pretty damn well. And there are definitely some negatives to this car, which I've already spoken about. It's going to be like 70 grand, probably fuck out of here. It's going to be expensive. It's like limited run in the United States. I don't know how many there are, but I just think that, like, in the early EV days, we thought they're all going to suck and be boring. And this thing, I mean, they've been doing this N Division EV thing for only a couple years, and they've come super far. And it's a really. It's a good time. There are some negatives about it, but otherwise it's a comfortable car. The interior looks great. You got heated, cooled seats, manual seats, but like every other gizmo you could.

[Matt Farah]

Want, heated and cooled is an interesting combo.

[Zach]

The seats fit, nice, seating position's great. You know, it's impressive. I think it's a. The. The design of it is subjectively odd, in my opinion.

[Matt Farah]

You know what?

[Zach]

It is like a fucking.

[Matt Farah]

It's like a powerhouse gaming PC where. Where like, yeah, it can do anything you want, but also Trying to figure out how to make it do any of those things is not as intuitive as it should be.

[Zach]

I think it's well put. People who are like, oh, you have this computer, you know, you can overclock it with this program. I go, no, no, no, no. I just want it to work.

[Matt Farah]

No, I'm an. I have an iPhone.

[Zach]

It's like iracing. I'm more of a Forza Horizon type of person. So it's just a little bit too much customization. But the platform is fundamentally really fun.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And I think it's a good evolution. The funny story I'll tell and then we can go to questions is, so I did like three orientation laps, maybe four with this engineer. And my cameras are mounted, so we trade and he hops out and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go do my in car. So I do like, I think three laps, four laps. I'm out there for a while. They didn't tell me when to come in. I went, all right, you're gonna have to flag me. And there's a section of this track that's like a high speed right hand sweeper. Slightly downhill to a left hand sweeper. Pretty like, I don't know, 90 miles an hour or something like that.

[Matt Farah]

Like, it's Sonoma. Like the downhill S is at Sonoma kind of thing.

[Zach]

Longer than that. Okay. And only, only one right, then one left.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

And I'm turning right. And I literally say, I go, this car's really fun. It's super balanced. Little lift off the throttle, tucks the nose. Back comes around. And as I say, I swear to God, I guess I'll keep it in the video. As I say, the back comes around. The back comes around, and I am suddenly a 90 degree to direction of track passenger.

[Matt Farah]

Just.

[Zach]

And I'm just going, what? What happened? Because I didn't feel it happening. And later I thought I was talking to one of the guys in the group who's a very good driver. He's like, well, the EV is like, you heat the tires up really quick. And I hadn't driven a 48.

[Matt Farah]

How many laps do you think you did before you spot it?

[Zach]

Seven, Eight.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that's a bunch. Yeah, you get.

[Zach]

You get the tires and kind of cooking. And I probably did something a little different on this turn than I had. But the moment, the irony of saying it and proving myself true.

[Matt Farah]

That's the Instagram clip for sure.

[Zach]

It was real embarrassing. And dude, I was like, man, I felt so many things in that moment. And I went. They didn't flag me in. I do a couple more laps. I get my in car done a little slower, and then I go in and I park the car and Hyundai. Derek's probably listening right now. I'm going, what? I get out of the car, and I walk up to Gabe from Edmunds, who's a good, very good driver. Cool guy. And he looks at me and I'm like, what's going on? And I get closer, and he goes, nobody saw. And I go, what? And he goes. He's like. Like, you were through those trees. Nobody noticed. He's like, I noticed. But you did it in the perfect spot. Nice.

[Matt Farah]

That's all right.

[Zach]

You know, this is how we learn.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Did your. Did the wheels exit the tarmac?

[Zach]

No.

[Matt Farah]

All right. That's okay. If you stay on. You stay on tarmac, you're fine.

[Zach]

I mean, the back wheels are on the rumble strip, but that's tarmac.

[Matt Farah]

That's still tarmac. Yeah.

[Zach]

So.

[Matt Farah]

And if the car comes back, like, full of grass or something, you know, that. That's.

[Zach]

That's. And the reason. I felt really bad for so many reasons about myself and everything, but when I did that lap with June at the end and he looped it twice, I went, you know what? I don't feel that bad anymore.

[Matt Farah]

It's fine if you don't hit something. Yeah.

[Zach]

Just. I'm learning.

[Matt Farah]

I'm learning.

[Zach]

That's how we learned.

[Matt Farah]

I went for it.

[Zach]

But damn it, it's so funny. And I was so charged with adrenaline when it happened, I forgot that the line preceding it was the back comes around. So when I watch the footage.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that's great. That's the Instagram clip for sure. All right, cool. So six cent, man, 70 GS, though, boy. Have to try one for ourselves.

[Zach]

It's tough because it's probably gonna be more expensive than a Model Y performance.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

And I think you drove the 3 Performance. You had really good things to say about it.

[Matt Farah]

The 3 performance was good. I like the 5N better. So. Yeah, I mean, I. I don't know. I. I don't love how the 6N N looks. I think the 5N looks nice.

[Zach]

The 5N. But see, they play this trick here, too. Like, the 5N is big in person.

[Matt Farah]

It'S back a couple.

[Zach]

In this picture, it's back a few feet, which makes it look like a small hatchback, which we've said. And then when we get in it, we go, whoa. This thing is like a lowered Jeep Cherokee.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, it's yeah. Like a lowered Q5.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Okay.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yay stuff. Let's go to the Patreon. Of course, if you want to ask us questions for the show, get the live stream, get the show early, get extra show, get ad free show, get all of the things. Patreon.com the Smokingtirepodcast is where you do it. And let's go to them. Can you zoom in a little bit because my glasses is the wrong focal length. Fat Six says, I bought my dream car, a 911 Carrera. I love it, but I feel like it's trying to kill me. Me, I've had some quick sporty cars before, but I've never had a car that gets sideways so suddenly and regularly. Tires are good. Do you think I just need to get used to it or avoid lift off oversteer. I mean I don't know what year your car is but like something is wrong. A Carrera at this point should not be a car that is trying to.

[Zach]

Kill you, especially on modern tires.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean I don't know if that means she's talking about like an 85 Carrera or you know, that's a different. Those do require a little bit of different driving technique. But like sideways suddenly and regularly. That's something that sounds, that sounds like that should not be happening.

[Zach]

Yeah, that you should probably have your suspension looked at. You should look at your tires to make sure they're good. I mean suspension. I say that if a bushing's gone and suddenly the geometry of your car is changing under load, you getting tow out in the back, that's dangerous and you should fix that. But if, oh, you said your tires are good but if your suspension's fine.

[Matt Farah]

Are you driving weirdly suddenly sideways so suddenly. That's not a word that should be happening there. And even so, unless you're talking about a really old car, you gotta, you have to be over driving the shit out of one of these things. If you're talking about you get sideways suddenly.

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I would maybe consider your technique is not right.

[Zach]

If this person came out of a fast front wheel drive car and they're used to going into corners especially it's a modern car like too hot. You can lift off the throttle just full light switch and it tucks a little bit better and it the car saves you and now you've got something where the weight's different. You might have to reevaluate your method.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I'm gonna say your technique is all wrong or something on your car. Is broken Ride the Ford Lightning. What company would benefit the most if we elect a Democratic president in 2028? And which would be the biggest loser? Stellantis would be the biggest loser. They need those Hellcats back in production.

[Zach]

The Hellcat division would.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah, they need them shits back in production. What company would benefit the most? I think it would be anyone like Rivian. Rivian and lucid people selling almost exclusively luxury EVs. Yeah, and Porsche also, who's getting hammered on their luxury EVs right now. They invested a lot in EV production only to have the regulations not really go their way.

[Zach]

Actually, I think the broader point is that any company that makes cars out of the United States would benefit because the tariffs might dissolve. Because right now, Porsche is one example of a company that's getting hammered on tariffs.

[Matt Farah]

Piggly Wiggly Deluxe. Okay, I know nothing about watches. A friend of mine found a clean Seamaster aqua Terra for 1000 on Facebook marketplace. On ebay, they seem to go for five times that price. Thoughts? Fake or stolen? Those are your two options. There's no such thing as a deal that could doesn't exist. Fake or stolen? Temple of the Dodge. I thought that was Doge for a second. Temple of the Dodge. Tall guy with a bad back. What are some sporty cars with great seats? 911s. Mercedes E63.

[Zach]

Oh yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Will have great seats.

[Zach]

I think Acura seats are great.

[Matt Farah]

Well, Acura.

[Zach]

Acura seats are contoured well, but they're narrowish.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I think the Integra Type S has very good seats with lumbar support.

[Zach]

Yeah, that's key.

[Matt Farah]

What else has really good seats? What did I do driven this year?

[Zach]

What did we drive ahead? Oh, no, that was the totem.

[Matt Farah]

The Golf R, the GTI and Golf R have nice seats. Those are good. You'd like those. But with a bad back also. And every bad back is bad in a different way. You may want to consider a sporty crossover because your doctor might tell you this, that you really don't want to have your feet going out so much as down. You want like a sporty crossover, like a Macan or SQ5 or something like that. You may have a better position not just with your back, but with your lower body. Like for instance, I should really be driving more of a crossover. It's better for my back. But like, I don't want to.

[Zach]

I would add seats that have a longer thigh or an extendable thigh is really important because you can. It'll hold you in the seat better. So you don't slide down. And something that. Not adjustable lumbar is great, but if you have adjustable side bolsters, you can, like lift your torso up more so there's less pressure on the lower part of your spine. All right.

[Matt Farah]

D the Aston says what cars are great in spite of themselves. For example, 5th gen vipers are fast despite bad welds, build quality and construction. I mean, basically all Vipers. All Vipers fall under that.

[Zach]

A lot of Lotuses, you know, Lotuses, they're tinny and comfortable, but they're awesome German cars.

[Matt Farah]

My Countach, yeah. Certainly has some build quality issues from the factory.

[Zach]

C63AMG's hard to work.

[Matt Farah]

Italian from the late 70s.

[Zach]

Pretty much all the fun shit that's not from Japan.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Hoopty157. What has been the most random yet satisfying customer car to come on one of the road and track experiences with us? One person brought an Alpha gtv, an old one, which was very cool of them. Yes. This first. This most recent one, first electric car. Someone brought a lucid. Oh, yeah. And they were. They were only mildly inconvenienced.

[Zach]

Which. Which lucid did they bring?

[Matt Farah]

It was an Air gt. Air Grand Touring. Yeah.

[Zach]

I think that has a. The range is like 4, 8.

[Matt Farah]

It's a long range. Yes, it's a long range, but they were. They got a little hosed because one of our hotels that had chargers, but they were broken, which. It was the one that was in the middle of nowhere. It was Tapoko Lodge, which is on Tale of the Dragon. And they were just able to get like into somewhere that had another charger. Other than that, Like, I was impressed though. That was cool. I don't know if there's been. The cars themselves are not that weird. I mean, it's a lot of 911s and Boxsters and Corvettes and there's always a Ferrari or two. There's always a McLaren or two. There's been an M car here and there. There's been a Cadillac V car here and there. There's not a lot of, like super oddball wild card stuff. I think. I think if you're gonna do a long road trip with your partner and some luggage, there's really a handful of cars that are very good at that, you know, And I think because of the track, because there's a track day, most people are not bringing their vintage cars. Like, once in a while someone does, but the track is usually if someone's got multiple cars and they go, I got a new Carrera s or a 1983911 SC. A thousand miles in a track day. It's going to be the new car I drove.

[Zach]

We can talk about this on a later show, but I drove Marco's slant nose, like, over the weekend yellow one.

[Matt Farah]

That he bought from my old client.

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah. And cool, fun, fast. Like, we'll get into it later. But one thing I noticed that stood out, I was like, this is loud on the highway just because there's less sound deadening. And the science of nvh.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Was what it was. So a thousand miles in an old 911, like, yeah, it's a lot.

[Matt Farah]

Listen and sometimes watch. Said you've driven a bunch of safari cars. Are they more fun in urban settings compared to regular street cars? I love the idea of a supercharged lifted beater brz, but for obvious reasons, I can't test drive one. Yes. Do it off road. Sports cars are more fun in urban settings than regular sports cars. Every time. No notes.

[Zach]

And people will smile at it all the time. And, like, you're driving a clown. Not a clown car, but it's an interesting experiment that people will like.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's like a hot. Like driving a hot wheel.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Plymouth Jewish space laser. When modifying a car, adding horsepower and torque, at what level of increase can you really feel it? Seat of the pants. I'm getting a tune on my SLK55 that's supposed to be good for 30 or 40 horsepower.

[Zach]

I didn't know Marjorie Taylor Greene had an SLK55.

[Matt Farah]

You should be able to feel 30 or 40 horsepower power. You. You should.

[Zach]

I think once you're into like the 250 and up arena, percentage, like 10% increase, you notice.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

Below that, you don't, but you'll.

[Matt Farah]

It's more about percentages than it is about actual number of horsepower. If you've got a 700 horsepower car and you increase it by 40 and you've got a 100 horsepower car and you increase it by forty, you have a really big difference. So if you can increase your horsepower by 10%, I think. I think you would start to feel that. Especially, you know, the difference is a lot of times if that comes with a sound increase, if you put an exhaust on a car, it might only give you 5 horsepower, but it's loud and so you feel, you know, feels different. So. Rolex cave dweller. What cars age well with higher miles and what other cars wear quickly and age poorly with miles? Hmm.

[Zach]

Well, age aging well. Does that just mean they stay Intact and remain.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. What cars hold together.

[Zach]

So I think it's a lot of like Japanese cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

You know, you can get in a car with the Lexus is a good example. But hundreds of thousands of miles and when you go over a bump, you don't hear that many. There's not that many secondary sounds. Whereas other cars, you go over a small bump even at 80,000 miles and you feel like the doors are falling off.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. Like Fiesta sts, you know, were great when they were new, but they did not last to 100,000 miles. There's a lot of cars that really start to fall apart above 50 or 60,000 miles. Minis.

[Zach]

Yes. Because they're stiff and they're complicated. A lot of plastic.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. A lot of the Japanese stuff really holds from that period of time or early 2000s, really holds up well. But also like Ferraris, high mile Ferraris are like usually pretty good mechanically if they've been kept well and driven a lot. Like, they're really nice with high miles.

[Zach]

E 36 miles are terrible.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I wouldn't want any audi with over 50,000 miles on it ever. Carl's matzo ball soup. Mazda ball soup.

[Zach]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that's good. We need to make Carl's matzo ball soup soon. It's getting to be winter soup time. Am I still playing guitar and how do I like the PRs? Well, two separate questions. Yes, I play guitar still, but I sold the PRs back to Anthony at the Sloan School of Music, who I bought it from. I traded it for a Mike McCready special edition fender Strat that has the. It's called a relic, which is like fake aging, but it's fake aged to be exactly like Mike McCready's guitar. And it sounds like it. I like it a lot.

[Zach]

Nice.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, Eddie. All right, I will answer this. Eddie Vedder's enunciation teacher. I would do Eddie therapist. I think that would be a good twist on that. But yeah. Why has WCCS been successful but Haggerty's facility nearby didn't last? A few reasons. One, I was here first and I offered a better service and a better product at a lower price than they did. I own my buildings and this business is very much a hands on business. You need to be an owner operator. You need to have hands on the operations. You need to know your customers. And it's not a business that's going to work. If you're renting a building and you don't own it and if your corporate headquarters is in Michigan and You're operating a brick and mortar business in California. That's not how this business works. And they were trying to make it like a lounge, like a club, like a social club. And like if you don't have food and beverage, just stop your stupid fucking social club dreams. It is going to suck. I run a parking garage, not a social club. It's a fancy parking garage. It's. We'll have your car ready for you to go do something fun, bring it back dirty and you don't have to think about it again until you want to drive again. Not, I have a nice living room where you can come hang out with your friends. That's worse than the living room you probably have at home and doesn't have food and beverage.

[Zach]

You have to bring your own lunch. You know, it's like having a city park, but it's inside with cars. It's like, oh, bring a blanket in your computer and your lunch and drinks and water. Yeah, yeah, it's fun.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Cars and coffee without the fucking coffee. Sucks balls. Like you gotta have the coffee. Like that's the. You're going to fucking have breakfast with your friends. And the cars are just there at a certain point. Like that's why. So that's why the shop in Seattle and Texas and why the motoring club are successful because they're fucking restaurants that happen to have some car storage and some social element to it, but they're restaurants. So anyway, Stew Dog went to intersect Austin and met Wes from Notice there you go fucking around with some micro brand watches. Oh, Wes gave me a hint of the color for the final, by the way. Stew Dog was the one who called me out for doing the extra one and he's less annoyed by it now having talked to Wes about what the next color will be. So maybe we could. Maybe we convert a customer. Maybe if we go from annoyed to less annoyed to, oh, I'd like to have that actually. Ultima SVJ. I have a newly acquired Lexus IS500 that's sort of like an Altima SVJ and I love it. I signed up for a track day at Chuckwalla which I hope to use to explore how the car behaves with traction control off. I have moderate track experience but I'm considering canceling because the Lexus doesn't have the brakes and cooling to stand up to track work. Do I sandbag a little at the track and take the day or cancel and save my road car for a GT use? I think that your car will absolutely survive a track Day at Chuckwalla. I think the worst possible case scenario is you have to do brake pads and fluid when you're done. And maybe tires. Having said that, Chuck Wall is a great track for this car. It is so easy on brakes and tires. There are only two high speed braking zones, the front straight and the back straight. And both of them are followed by long sustained periods of third and fourth gear. Open sweeper cornering. So your brakes get hot twice but fully get to cool down before getting hot again. Again. That's like really easy on brakes. If you really care. Do pads and fluid ahead of time.

[Zach]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Cooling that engine will stand up to track work.

[Zach]

Just watch the temp gauge. You know it's got one, but it's a Lexus engine.

[Matt Farah]

A naturally aspirated V8 in a sedan with a. With a nice front end opening designed by Lexus. You're not overheating that engine on the track. Track just. I would pull up whatever gauges you need to pull up to watch your temps. And maybe you want to proactively do pads and fluid if you can. But I think you could also just show up at the track with your car and have a really nice day and you could learn what? Oh, your pads go first. Oh, your fluid goes. You can learn.

[Zach]

I think you drive like 8/10, especially if you were. I don't know, I don't know what. Your track experience is moderate, like moderately modern.

[Matt Farah]

Then you're driving eight tenths anyway.

[Zach]

Yeah. And if you want to practice a little oversteer, make sure that's okay with the track event. But there's some good places to do that out there and some bad places to do it. So be careful.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Kim Jong vroom.

[Zach]

That's great.

[Matt Farah]

That's fucking awesome. As someone who's had the opportunity to try the new Ford GT and the Ferrari Tune 296, both V6s. Which would you prefer when it comes to performance and body control? And do you think the production run Ferrari has made the Ford GT less special?

[Zach]

296 all day?

[Matt Farah]

I'd probably rather have a 296, but I'd probably rather have. If it was just about driving dynamics, I'd rather have the Artura than both. I actually think the Artura is a little nicer to drive. Well, no, I think the 296 is a little more special to drive. The Artura is nicer to use. And I don't think the current Ford gt. The newer Ford GT for me has remained all that special.

[Zach]

I agree When I see them, I still think I'm like, wow, that's one of the best looking things ever. But then you get inside and you go, oh, it's like. It's a little underwhelming inside. And then we drove it. I've only driven it briefly. It was at the track in Miami. Yeah, but.

[Matt Farah]

But you got the idea.

[Zach]

I got the idea and it didn't give me anything I don't get from a 296. And it's a lot more expensive.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. In 2017, the Ford GT was the jam. And I could get over the sound of the engine, which wasn't that great. Other cars have since done that same formula better. The cars are both faster and more exciting.

[Zach]

And 296, also a V6 Turbo sounds way better.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah. The 296 is pretty rad. I like the Artura a lot as well. I know not everybody does. Nk debating between a new Turbo S and a new GT3. With the right mods, can the Turbo s come close to the GT3's On Track Mountain road performance and feel in terms of handling. No. You cannot hide 600 extra pounds. There's just no way to do it. So don't bother. The Turbo S has unbelievable body control. I would not dare fuck with what they have done there that the body control from that shock with the 400 volt system is as good, I am convinced as it can be.

[Zach]

Right. Don't pull it out and put in some expensive coilovers. Even if they're installed by Joey Sealy.

[Matt Farah]

Don't leave it this. That's a fucking. That's a touring car that can also dance. It's heavy. It's always going to be heavy. What can you do? You could cut. If you're only driving in the summer, you could use some tires. Maybe you get some lightweight wheels, lighter wheels. The wheels that are on it are not anything special. So you get some lightweight wheels, you save some unsprung weight. That can help. You know, maybe you get an aligned for more performance driving. But like, no, you cannot hide £500 in this car anywhere.

[Zach]

And I think the weight will contribute so much. I mean, they use the word feel. So there's on road performance. You. You. In my opinion, you shouldn't be driving so fast where someone in a GT3 is leaving you. But you know by a second and you're like, I'm trying to chase them on the road. They're the same good.

[Matt Farah]

The. The rules of good judgment and morality matter more than the car either of these is way too much car for.

[Zach]

Road and they will be equal in speed if you adhere to the morality and rules of the road. Road I think feel it's the weight thing. So it's never going to break or turn quite as eagerly or as willingly as the GT3 will just because of physics.

[Matt Farah]

Having said that, I mean if you're going to go on a road trip, the turbo, if you're going to drive it in four seasons, the turbo, if you care more about acceleration, the GT3 will feel slow compared to like legitimately slow.

[Zach]

Because of torque.

[Matt Farah]

Because of torque. And then now we have fucking hybrid torque on top. I mean the GT3 is probably a second and a half slower to 60 than the Turbo. So the way the turbo comes out of corners is really impressive. And the GT3 if you're not up in the revs it ain't shit. If you're driving hairpins you might be thinking about downshifting to first. So anyway they're just different cars. And yeah, Christian says will the Aventador SVJ be a multi million dollar car in 15 plus years? Maybe. The problem is I really don't know how many of them they made and it seems like there's too many. When I go to car shows I think there are too many. Do you have an official production number svj?

[Zach]

I was looking up what they're selling for right now. So on, on bring a trailer this year we got one for 1.3, sold for 1.3, sold for one point three.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach]

Gray with numbers on it. And then earlier this year one was sold for 800. Yeah, so.

[Matt Farah]

So maybe it's miles. No miles. Maybe or maybe it's. Yeah, could be a variety of things. I mean they're all all same kind of thing. You could drive one of those for free because they were like 750 new. So multimillion. I don't know man. I don't know. That's a weird financial prediction. And it's not like you know, it's not like there's stick SVJs. Right. And the revuelto really is people might want the non hybrid might be like last before the hybrid or whatever.

[Zach]

You know total produced SVJ Lamborghini registry it says 900.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So and that might be coops.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I think there's kind of a lot of them compared to like relative for how expensive they are and how rare they seem like I think there's a disproportionate amount of them. There was a lot of profit in those for Lambo at a time when they really wanted to do a lot of profit. Profit.

[Zach]

It's interesting. They, you know, they made 918 Porsche 918s.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So about the same number as the SVJ Coupes.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

But the 19 is also so unique to the Porsche lineup. Whereas the Avenger svj, it's like the.

[Matt Farah]

Nicest one of the ones.

[Zach]

It's one of those. But then the next version of Revolto, it's got a lot of the same things but improvements.

[Matt Farah]

So it's just seven merry three. 35 I pretty good. Okay. 10 years with my company. I recently became CFO. To celebrate, I want to buy a watch. What do you recommend for a chronograph in the 8-12K price range? Okay, a few options. I recommend Omega Speedmaster, one of the higher end Speedmaster professionals. You could do either like the dark side of the moon and the ceramic or the gray side of the moon or you could do the white ceramic dial Speedmaster. Those are pretty cool. The Tudor black bay chronograph is a pretty cool watch. Grand Seiko has quite a few chronographs. Their new movement is called the tentagraph and that's a very cool thing. If you want something that's a little more what you call a lecturer's watch, you'd have to tell people why it's different. If you like the idea of the Rolex Daytona, check out the Zenith Chronomaster Sport I believe it's called. It basically looks sort of like a Rolex Daytona but is a little different and very cool looking. IWC pilot watch chronographs. There's a bunch of options there. I'm sure there's a lot I have not thinking of right now but there's like six different options for you. Last one and then we are going to wrap this show for today and pick it back up on Wednesday. Larry's Larry Casilla's whimsical analogies in an episode of Zip tie tuning. Is that a show? I don't know. A window sticker was shown for a base 1997 BMW Z3 up of $44,000 which is around 91k adjusted for inflation. Hot take. Considering performance and build quality, carves have become a bargain. This car must have been a turd even back then. According to the sources attached, 1997 car loan interest rates were as high as 9% which is higher than they've been for 20 years. Thoughts? I mean I remember when the Z3 came out out and it was launched in James Bond goldeneye. It was the Bond car and it was kind of a turd. I remember this. The 4 cylinder Z3 was really expensive for the time and it was really slow. I don't think they put a big price premium on the M when that came out because I don't think the price went up. And I figured, I think the prices leveled off a little. Like time went on and the car didn't get more expensive, I think. But yeah, I mean, cars, that car notwithstanding, in a lot of cases you do get more money, you get more value in a car than you've ever gotten before. The problem is wages have not caught up.

[Zach]

So I just looked up a dollar in 1997 is two dollars today. Yeah, so. And that's slightly different. Like that's our purchasing power.

[Matt Farah]

But wages have not kept up.

[Zach]

Oh yeah, that's right.

[Matt Farah]

For a lot of people, cars feel more expensive than they've ever been even though the actual value delivered per dollar is higher. If you can afford to pay that dollar in the first place. Yeah, you're right. And that sucks. That's our show. Thank you everybody for tuning in. We will see you next time. Zach and I are going to record one from a car. We have to go on a little drive and we're going to be in a car talking. But we'll get to the rest of these questions then. We appreciate the Patreon, of course, more than anything. They're going to keep us afloat [e-mail] thesmokingtirepodcast so please join up and get one of the extra levels of benefit it if you can and we'll see you next time. Bye.