New SIM; Kill Switch Law; Merc Project

Summary

The Smoking Tire Podcast — Episode Overview

Episode Title: New SIM; Kill Switch Law; Merc Project
Hosts: Matt Farah & Zack Klapman
Date: January 30, 2026

Brief Overview

In this episode, Matt and Zack dive into a packed show covering:

• Matt's adventures at the Barrett-Jackson auction, including everything from “garbagio” cars and blue-collar luxury to wild Americana art and the quirks of charity auctions.
• Behind-the-scenes impressions of a completely new racing simulator tech (XP1) and what it could mean for sim racing realism.
• The “Kill Switch” law working its way through Congress and its implications for drivers and car enthusiasts.
• Updates on the Mercedes E320 convertible “Merc Project” transformation into an E500-inspired cruiser.
• Listener Q&A on topics like tuner engines, risk-taking in automotive design, Porsche build quality, and more.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Barrett-Jackson Auction — A Circus of Metal and Merchandise

[02:00 – 39:03]

• Matt’s Nostalgia & Arrival: Reminiscing about years spent watching the auction on TV, Matt describes his experience walking the floor in Scottsdale, reconnecting with figures like Mike Musto and meeting rising star Soupy.
• The Barrett-Jackson ‘Experience’:
  • Diversity of Vehicles: Not just high-end exotics — everything from 7(!) new-gen Ford GTs to sub-$5000 “shitboxes” like the Aries K. For $25,000, you can score serious bargains like a 1993 Corvette ZR1 (black, <30k miles), mid-90s 2-door Tahoes, or Fox body Mustangs with crazy swaps.
    • “Barrett Jackson—$25k goes a long way. A long way.” —Matt [06:15]
  • Auction Economics: Cheapest cars sell early in the week (Monday, Tuesday), prices ramp up toward the Saturday peak. Many cars could be easily “flipped” after minor cosmetic fixes.
  • Buyer Incentives: Even basic bidder passes come with an “absurd” number of drink tickets — up to 10 a day.
    • “You can get fucking schwasted. And then you can buy...” —Matt [05:13]
  • The Sideshow: Beyond cars—Rolexes, cowboy boots, knickknacks, art, and even eVTOLs (personal air vehicles). The “sideshow tent” is a spectacle in itself.
    • “It’s like a craft fair, but for blue collar ballers.” —Matt [10:56]
  • Describing the Scene: Over-the-top conservative/“Americana” art, gold eagles, and more. Sometimes bordering on parody:
    • “This is like Americana threw up all over — you’re decorating a low-level ski lodge in 2002.” —Matt [26:06]
• Charity Auction Quirks:
  • The CHP 1199 Foundation's misspelled poster (“Foud Nation”) and its elaborate donor reward tiers, which are widely viewed as a pay-for-police-leniency system.
    • “I've never heard of anyone donating money for any other reason than what bit of shiny jewelry that says eleven ninety-nine do you get to show a cop if you get pulled over?” —Matt [20:34]
  • Wild prize: $100k gets you a “platinum level” badge, jacket, and a truly garish watch [23:16].

2. Weirdest & Funniest Finds at Barrett-Jackson

[26:00 – 39:03]

• Art, Pianos & Politics: Bizarre “Americana” sculpture and art, including AI-generated “Trump as Captain Jack Sparrow.”
  • “Even regardless of your politics, this is hilarious...” —Zack [33:27]
• Innovative Toys: Standout favorite—an artisanal coffee-table zen garden / “Etch-a-Sketch digger” with knobs, almost bought by Matt.
  • “Me and Musto sat there playing with this for 15 minutes. We really liked this.” —Matt [37:27]

3. The Wild World of Autonomous Driving: Waymo Adventures

[39:45 – 47:04]

• The First Bad Waymo Ride: After dozens of smooth Waymo (driverless) rides, Matt encounters a car making dangerous traffic decisions (trying to cross six lanes for a right turn, blocking traffic at an intersection).
  • “I had the first bad Waymo ride I’ve ever had... drove badly. Literally drove badly.” —Matt [40:04]
  • [41:22]: Describes sitting broadside in traffic, feeling exposed as a landscaping truck drives toward him.
  • Fails to move up at red lights, erratic blinker behavior—Matt documents it all, finding the app’s customer service unable to receive detailed feedback.
  • On the same day, another Waymo hit a child ("not 100% Waymo's fault"), sparking a critical discussion on the readiness and limitations of AVs.
  • “We’re all part of the beta...” —Zack [46:07]

4. All About the New SIM: XP1 — A Leap in Sim Racing Physics

[48:10 – 57:34]

• The Pitch: Developed by friends Mike Harley and Justin Bell, XP1 is a new sim racing software using an innovative force feedback and physics engine.
  • Claims to offer far greater realism than contemporary racing sims.
  • Not hardware-dependent: works with existing PC-based wheels and pedals.
    • “It’s software ... that learns based on how people are driving ... to deliver a much more car-like experience.” —Matt [49:03]
• Hands-On Impressions:
  • [51:00]: Zack praises the nuanced head-movement model, capturing physical sensations without the delay or “latency” common in VR or other systems.
    • “It communicated speed and G-load really, really well... felt really accurate... better than any other force feedback thing I’ve driven.” —Zack [51:47]
  • Matt notes unrecoverable oversteer in typical sims, while XP1 feels closer to real car dynamics.
  • Ultra-limited so far (one car, one track) since the in-house team had to build everything from scratch, including physics and vehicle models.
  • Excitement for future features, esp. drifting (often poorly replicated in sims).
    • “This is an actual game that … will definitely reward you if you’re good at driving in real life.” —Matt [55:24]

5. Willow Springs: The New Racetrack Chapter

[60:57 – 63:04]

• “Singer Club” Membership: Matt and Zack have joined as official racetrack members, opening the door for more drifting, filming, and even the potential purchase of a dedicated “dorifto” missile car.
  • “We have a racetrack membership, Zach! What are we gonna do with it?” —Matt [61:07]

6. Merc Project Update: Building the Ultimate E320 Cabrio

[63:04 – 70:21]

• Matt details plans to transform his E320 into an E500-inspired cruiser with a:
  • 1999–2002 E55 AMG engine swap (5.5L V8, 350 hp).
  • E500 suspension, SL600 brakes, OEM E500 bumpers/fenders, euro-style Recaros, custom cloth interior, HRE wheels modeled after Mercedes monoblocks.
  • Red respray, brushed aluminum interior, removal of all chrome.
    • “It’s going to be a really nice balance between, like, quick, you know... but with a five-speed auto and a convertible top.” —Matt [67:54]
  • Excited about the project’s potential as an “ultimate quick cruiser” and possible debut at Dream Cruise Detroit.

7. Kill Switch Bill: Doomsday Device or Sensible Safety?

[70:49 – 75:42]

• Legislative Hysteria: Public panic over government "kill switch" law allowing cars to be shut down. Kelly Blue Book (KBB) clarification:
  • Congress is requiring a system to passively detect intoxicated drivers and disable the vehicle—not an “external” remote shutoff.
  • Implementation details still undefined; likely to be clunky at first, especially distinguishing sleepiness or distraction from impairment.
    • “If people, especially if, if the kill switch term goes forward ... I mean, you can’t have that just happening when someone’s driving to work because their body position’s different.” —Zack [72:45]
  • Big privacy debate over future “remote” possibilities as cars connect to automaker servers.

8. Listener Q&A Highlights

[75:55 – End (~94:00)]

• Car Brand Legacy: Why only some carmakers (like Porsche with 911) preserve design DNA for generations. Factors: continual production, competitiveness, company philosophy.
  • “The 911’s engine being in the wrong place defines its shape and lineage…” —Matt [75:58]
• Favorite tuner engines:
  • 4-cylinder: High-rev Honda builds
  • 6-cylinder: Matt’s E46 M3 “demand engine”
  • 8: Dinan stroker S62s; 10: Supercharged Lambo V10
  • 12: Brabus Rocket
• Risk-Taking in New Cars: The era of wild, fun projects (Viper, SSR, Z8, Prowler) seems faded due to market demands, boomer nostalgia, profit focus on exclusive high-end projects instead of mass-market weirdness.
• Porsche Build Quality: “No change” in the last decade; 991 and 992 held as benchmarks.
• Best/Worst Press Launch Swag:
  • Worst: “A magazine about the car you’ve just driven.”
  • Best: Matt once returned an iPad, felt it was too expensive as a gift.
• Why the C7 ZR1 Appreciated but C8 Won’t: “Last-of” elements, manual transmissions, and old-school layout drove up C7 values, not present in the new mid-engine versions.
• Sim Racing Cafés: Not a direct threat to real track days—fun for social hangouts but still nowhere near the true 1:1 experience (“maybe 70% at best”).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s like a craft fair, but for blue collar ballers.” —Matt [10:56]
• “I've never heard of anyone donating money for any other reason than what bit of shiny jewelry that says eleven ninety-nine do you get to show a cop if you get pulled over?” —Matt [20:34]
• “Me and Musto sat there playing with this for 15 minutes. We really liked this.” —Matt [37:27]
• “I had the first bad Waymo ride I’ve ever had... drove badly. Literally drove badly.” —Matt [40:04]
• “It communicated speed and G-load really, really well... better than any other force feedback thing I’ve driven.” —Zack [51:47]
• “We have a racetrack membership, Zach! What are we gonna do with it?” —Matt [61:07]
• “It’s going to be a really nice balance between, like, quick... but with a five-speed auto and a convertible top.” —Matt [67:54]
• “If people, especially if, if the kill switch term goes forward ... can’t have that just happening when someone’s driving to work...” —Zack [72:45]
• “The 911’s engine being in the wrong place defines its shape and lineage…” —Matt [75:58]

---

Timestamps for Must-Listen Segments

• Barrett-Jackson Auction Stories & Sideshow: 02:00 – 39:03
• Waymo Driverless Fails & AV Society: 39:45 – 47:04
• XP1 SIM Tech Deep Dive: 48:10 – 57:34
• Mercedes E320/E500 Project Details: 63:04 – 70:21
• Kill Switch Law Explained: 70:49 – 75:42
• Q&A Lightning Round: 75:55 – End

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Tone & Vibe

The episode is true to the Smoking Tire’s signature blend of sarcasm, inside-industry knowledge, and irreverent affection for car culture. As always, Matt’s storytelling is lively, occasionally profane, and often rich with the kind of details only a true automotive lifer can provide, while Zack plays an incisive, curious (and funny) counterpoint.

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Final Thoughts

Packed with hilarious, revealing, and sometimes sobering insights on American car culture—from the circus of the Barrett-Jackson auction to the potential pitfalls of autonomous cars and new “kill switch” laws—this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the ever-weirder overlap of cars, tech, law, and lifestyle. The new sim racing tech could mark a real turning point, too. And don't miss Matt’s Mercedes project: classic car restomod dreaming, done right.

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For more, follow The Smoking Tire on social media and check out their car reviews on YouTube.

Transcript

[A]

What up, everybody? Matt farah here with my boy Zach clapman. Welcome to the smoking tire podcast. And today's episode is, as always, brought to you by off the record. We love off the record because they're out there on the road looking out for you every week. Not a week goes by that I don't get an email from somebody or DM on instagram saying, man, off the record saved my bum. I was about to use them myself on this past road trip, but I got away with one. I thought I got nailed, but actually the guy was just checking out the corvette. But if you nailed don't plead guilty. That's for suckers. Go to offtherecord.com TST that's offtherecord.com Tst. They will connect you with a qualified attorney who will fight that ticket in the jurisdiction in which you got it right. They'll send the right person to do the job in the right place. And if you use offtherecord.com TST you will get 10% off all legal services booked through off the record. If you get a ticket big, small, or in between, don't plead guilty. Fight it with off the [e-mail] TST they've got your back. All right, folks, on this episode of the program, I spent some time at the Barrett Jackson auction in scottsdale. I had a really weird waymo ride. Dropped off our new project Mercedes to get it going, and we. We tried a totally new type of racing simulator. It's the smoking tire podcast. Let's go. Should we begin in the beginning?

[B]

Yeah. Or we could go from the back to the front.

[A]

I prefer the front to back.

[B]

Huh? You wipe back to front? Back to front, Always? Sure.

[A]

Really? Sometimes front to back. Switch it up. Yeah, you should always front to back joke. Always front to back. Hi. Well, hi. Man, it's been. I thought we might not have things to talk about, but, boy, do we have things to talk about. There have been things that have happened, believe it or not. One more, much shorter shout out to Minneapolis. I got a bunch of nice emails from people that are fucking getting shit done out there. And it was nice to hear from those folks. Stay warm. Continue getting shit done. We appreciate you from fucking 1500 miles away, but in our world, some things happened. Let's see, where do I start? Okay, let's start a week ago when I went to Barrett Jackson. So, like, if you're my age or my age. Ish. Or maybe a little older, maybe a little younger. Barrett Jackson streaming on TV for A week straight was like a staple of my car youth.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I would watch it like it was like horse racing, you know what I mean? You'd watch it like it was gambling almost. What do you think that's gonna work? You know their televised auctions. Fucking. They changed the game. I mean, totally changed the game. And I hadn't been to Barrett Jackson. I'd only been once before and it was a very long time ago and I wanted to go back. I was passing through Scottsdale while it was going on. Our pal Mike Musto was there. Finally met that dude Soupy, who's awesome by the way. I expected Supy to be like an old Polish man. Not. He's not an old, he's like a young.

[B]

Yeah. You didn't know. You never seen him before or anything? No. Oh, okay.

[A]

Nope. No, no. So yeah, it did not look like I expected someone named Supy to look. Anyway, we walked around, we fucking saw all this stuff. Car wise. What we really. There's like at the high end, there was like, dude, look. There's like multiple SF in the background of this shot. Which I'll tell you why. But there's like seven new gen 4 GTs, all these SF 90s, blah, blah, blah. Right, Fine. You gotta go to the sold tent where the cars that sold on like Monday and Tuesday are sitting. Cause that's where the gold is, that's where the cheap cars are at. Right?

[B]

Because they build. It gets more expensive throughout the week, right?

[A]

More or less. I think it culminates on Saturday and then pairs off a little bit on Sunday. But it builds from Monday to Saturday in terms of expected value of cars.

[B]

Because if you can get drunk and bid on a Tuesday, you can't buy that much car.

[A]

You cannot do that much damage on a Tuesday. Right? But the cars that sell on Monday and Tuesday then go into like side tents. Now I didn't take any pictures of those. Cause I just, I don't know, we were just talking about cars. I wasn't taking pictures but like I was seeking value. And let me tell you the value that I found. First off, if you're within like driving distance of Barrett Jackson of Scottsdale, it's a fucking thing to see. It is absolutely one of the great American car spectacles that's worth seeing. Specifically the Scottsdale one. It's enormous. There's so many fucking cars. You can get so drunk. I didn't get a bitters pass, I just bought a GA ticket because I was just like, whatever. Apparently if you buy like Even the basic level of bidder's pass, it comes with a shocking number of drink tickets. It's like something like 10 drinks a day or something. Crazy number. You can get fucking schwasted. And then you can buy.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Not just cars. I'll show you in a second. Some other things you can buy there, but like just the silliest stuff imaginable. Right. And also it's like compared to like your. Your car week auctions or your Amelia island auctions or any of your other like really prestigious auctions. This is like a fucking circus this thing. I mean this does the. The cars in this are fucking all. I mean there's great, there's unbelievable and then there is straight up garbagio. I mean and it's. It's just crazy thing to see.

[B]

What was the cheapest auction result you saw?

[A]

Do you know, I saw a car that was one that went for $1,000. Wow.

[B]

Yeah, okay.

[A]

It was like an Aries K, you know, like one of like a Plymouth air Dodge Ares. Like that terrible, you know, two box sedan. Yeah.

[B]

Made out of cardboard.

[A]

Yeah, something like that. And there was a couple of sub $5,000 like shit boxes.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But like there' like Barrett Jackson 25k goes a long way. A long way. 25k gets you into a pretty fabulous non numbers matching muscle car that is a set of new wheels away from being like a totally decent car that you could like. The number of cars with like heinous 90s wheels that were otherwise fine, that were like $22,000. You just put the stock wheels back on and do a great detail and a great photo shoot. They're 35 on. Bring a trailer like a week later. There's a business in that. Cause it's just people are so lazy selling their cars there or. And. Or they think their wheel choices are good and they are not. Or they were Good on trend 35 years ago.

[B]

Well, some people still think mods add value. Those wheels cost four grand in 2002.

[A]

So there was a lot of that. So for you, I even texted you and I was like habibi, I know you love a late 60s Mustang. Like there's a bunch of like almost turnkey shit here. Like there were so many of those.

[B]

Like I should bring Sarah to this thing.

[A]

The number of like fucking, you know, you name it. Like just C3 corvettes and just you know, mid year mustangs and like some really nice stuff too. But like, you know. Okay, but the value I really saw was like 25k will get you a 1993 Corvette ZR1 black. Black with under 30,000 miles.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Which for our like the performance bargain that that is because like those things don't look like much, but they are really, really fast. Yeah, like that's like a 400 horsepower car with a 4 cam V8 and it's transaxle, it's light and they turn in like crazy. That car had the. When car and driver was doing the slalom. I think they still do the slalom test. But that thing was the record holder in the slalom test for like a couple of years. So I saw three of those three ZR1s for 25k or less. I really liked. These aren't for everybody, but I really like the mid-90s two door Tahoes.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

I think those are fucking pretty cool. Ron Baugh has the sick one and who else? Someone else. Did zach put a LT4 in one. Somebody put a LT4 in a two door Tahoe and it was pretty nuts.

[B]

I think Zach Merten was it. ZACH Merten horsepower so the ZR1 test in car and driver actually got beat by the 300 ZX Turbo by 4.8 miles per hour in 1991.

[A]

Oh, so it had it before that. It had it in 89 to 91.

[B]

Then maybe it did that.

[A]

I was just like yeah, or 90 to 91 because the Z has the.

[B]

Super steering and all that stuff.

[A]

Oh, it had four wheel steering, right? High cast. Yeah. Oh, how interesting. But anyway those things drive. They drive awesome. And they were cheap, you know, Irox Fox bodies built fox bodies went for big money. Like a turnkey kind of oem. Plus looking with like a coyote swap is like a $45,000 car.

[B]

That makes sense. With a coyote swap. That's pretty rad.

[A]

Yeah, one I saw one with a. What was it? The. With a lightning swap. A 5.4 supercharged. Yeah, like a lightning swap.

[B]

That's a GT500 before the proper.

[A]

Yeah, it was in a Fox body. It was. And that was a $50,000 car.

[B]

Were these coops or hatches?

[A]

They were hatches. I did not see a notch. Yeah, no notches. I actually. I was surprised at how few Fox bodies there were. I really only saw maybe four. Granted there could have been some in like the other. Cause there was a whole other. I would say like four hours. There's a whole other room of cars that like we're gonna sell. Like we wanted to see. Cause when it sells they put the price on the window. So we wanted to see what shit Was selling for. It was the equivalent of looking through the results tab with the sold. You know, that's what we wanted to see. So the knots, we didn't even really bother so much with the not yet sold. And there was some cool stuff. We walked briefly through it and some really wild, like, shit, so many cars. Whereas must. I was like, I saw that at sema five years ago. I saw that at sema six years ago. I remember that from sema. Like, yeah, you know, it was. But my favorite part of barrett jackson is not the cars. It's the sideshow tent. It's the, like, sort of. It's like a craft fair, but for, like, blue collar ballers. So, like, if you want a pontoon boat or a hot tub or a massage chair or like, some item of like, blue collar luxuriousness, like, this is your mall. Like, every. Like, all of the. Like, Nothing will make you feel less cool a steel rolex than seeing the jewelers in there with a case with like 500 steel Rolexes. Every single one you can imagine. Like, they've got it right there. And some dude that's like eight drinks in is like.

[B]

Yep. So that's a place to. Because if you go into a rolex store, they'll make you buy five other watches first.

[A]

Well, these are secondhand, but.

[B]

So these are secondhand, but is this the place to go to get a watch? Like, if. Unless you want to buy one online? I mean, like, are there watch auction events that are similar? I'm sure there are.

[A]

There are watch auctions, but not. Not for, like, submariners and shit. There's watch auctions for, like, important watches and vintage watches and stuff. And, like, you can get some affordable things, but, you know, you'll see stuff that, like cars, where watches are millions of dollars.

[B]

But if you just want a kermit, would you go to barrett jackson for it? Pick up a kermit.

[A]

And like, so these. These, like, jewelers that are in this thing. I've not verified these people, they're all dressed like these guys on instagram that go to, like, the wholesale and they're like, haggling, you know what I mean? They're wearing essentially a suit without a jacket or a tie. Just the suit shirt and the suit pants and shoes, Right watch on each wrist, right couple rings and, you know, very clean skin. And they're all, like, you know, thin and fucking, you know, there's a big counter. Like a big counter that's like our, you know, the size of our table. But, like, it's like that and an L. So it's imagine that. But then there's like eight people behind the counter. Oh wow.

[B]

Okay. So it's kind of aggressive.

[A]

It's like, it's like a bullpen. It's like Wall street or something over there. So like, are the watches they're selling real and genuine and I don't know, would I buy a watch from them? Spidey sense says probably not. And I'm not like, I'm not trying to single out any individual. Like I don't even remember the names of them. They're just, they could be, it could be a website. Like it's the same as like, you know, not Bob's but like any number of places on the Internet that sell second hand watches. So like I would say like if you're capable of immediately identifying whether something is genuine and you're comfortable buying like that. But like, okay, anyway, there are watches. There's also cowboy boots and fucking knives. So anyway, so that's where I ended up taking pictures of stuff because you know, very rarely does a car stop me in my tracks. So go back to the first picture. The first picture this is in. This is hilarious. Because folks, taking a quick break for Hellofresh supporting us today. I love hellofresh. You know what nobody tells you about weeknight dinner? It's the thing that never goes away. Every day around 5pm there it is again. Hellofresh doesn't make you a better cook. It just gives you your nights back. What are they talking about? It's not about being good at cooking. It's about the mental load of figuring out every single night what are we gonna have, what are we gonna eat? No, no, no, you're already exhausted. This happens with me and my. And you know when it happens for me? Not at five o', clock, but right after lunch. A lot of time we have lunch together, we'll finish lunch and then it's what do we. And then we have to talk about food again. Hellofresh has over 100 recipes every week. You pick what sounds good, not what you can figure out how to make. And it's got bigger portions now. 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I have the exact amount of food so I'm not buying stuff and then it's rotting or I'm not buying expensive spices and using them once and then I keep that recipe card so I can multiply the recipe if I want to make the same thing for a party or something later because it's usually really delicious. And I've had some really good meals with hellofresh. But it's not just dinner time. It's energy. You're getting the ability to sit down instead of standing at the counter, stress eating while you cook. And when dinner tastes this good and takes so little effort, you finally get your nights back. I can totally relate. Go to hellofresh.com smokingtire10fm to get 10 free meals and a free Zwilling knife. A $145 value on your third box offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com Smoking Tire 10 FM for 10 free meals and the free Zwilling knife on your third box. All right, support also coming in today from Delete Me. We love Deleteme. Been using Deleteme for months now and what they do, as I've said, is they make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data from the Internet at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody vulnerable. It's so easy for anybody. Bad actors, good actors, people who wanna sell you stuff to get information on people online. Your address, your phone number and your family members names all hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and make everyone more vulnerable. And listen, we're seeing this happening in real time now. You want to get your personal information off the Internet and data broker websites as best you can. DeleteMe does that. It's what they specialize in. All you do is you make an account, you fill out their search survey with all the information that you want them to search for, root out and delete. 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When you go to joindeleteme.com tire and use promo code tire at checkout, the only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Tire and enter code Tire at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Tire code Tire. One of the things they do are these charity auctions, which always raise so much money. And on the surface of it, I am not against a charity auction of any kind. It's fine. Here's a Mercedes gullwing. It was donated to a charity auction. Can you see the beneficiary of the auction there? Zach?

[B]

And the CHP 1199 Foundation.

[A]

First off, it's the CHP 1199 Foud.

[B]

Nation Misspelled foundation on their very large poster. That is about the size. I mean, as tall as the car.

[A]

It's as tall as the car. Yeah, pretty much. So that's the one thing. And the other thing is the CHP 11 9. This is like where you. Where everyone knows you donate money if you want to get out of. If you want to not get tickets.

[B]

Matt, how many tickets do you need to be getting a year where you have to donate a 300 SL to just get out of them for the next 10 years?

[A]

When we saw this, I was like, okay, so if you go to their website, if you buy, you donate 50 bucks, you get a sticker. If you donate 2,000 bucks. And I'm making up the numbers, but they're not far off. Something in the thousands. You get that license plate frame and that's what everybody wants. Everybody wants that 1199 license plate frame immediate identifier in California, if you get pulled over of I've donated money. Do you have the prices handy, Zach?

[B]

No, I was looking at the budget increases for the CHP year over year.

[A]

And then you can get A badge, if you give enough money. I mean, if you give them, like 20 grand or something, it's like you get a badge. It's crazy. And it's just. I've never heard of anyone donating money for any other reason than what bit of shiny jewelry that says $11.90 do you get to show a cop if you get pulled over? My theory is, if you buy this car, you actually get issued a California driver's license with the name Bruce Meyer on it. I think that's pretty much.

[B]

I think they give you a cop car, a uniform, they give you a gun with no firing pin. I mean, you get the whole thing.

[A]

You actually get for this car, full credentials. Oh, we have it.

[B]

Yeah. Here's the tier.

[A]

Oh, yeah, here we go. So classic level, three GS. You get a glass plaque, one license plate frame, leather wallet and brass ID card, and a plastic ID card. That's three GS. Five GS gets you a Crystal Star Award, a laptop, backpack, two license plate frames, leather registration holder, leather registration holder, leather wallet and brass ID card, and.

[B]

A plastic ID card.

[A]

Bungees you get in a jack. You get a jacket with an 11.99 logo. Toiletry bag, dop kit, mugs, coffee mugs, the logo cap, A hat. Yeah, you get fucking full on cosplay.

[B]

Well, you get. You get more and more things so that no matter what you grab in your house, you'll. You'll have something that'll say 11.99. You just get more stuff. There's more tiers.

[A]

Well, oh, my God, there's so many more. Wait, go back up. But also, like. Also you with the jacket and the hat. Well, that's because you really have more than two cars and you only get two frames. So you need to have something that identifies you at that level when you're in another car.

[B]

Now, do you think the dopp kit is so that if you hire a sex worker and they come over and it's a sting, and then as they're about to put the cuffs on you, they see that and they go, we'll let it slide. I know CHP doesn't do vice. Maybe they do. I don't know.

[A]

All right, wait, I thought that was the highest. I didn't realize that was only silver, gold. 25k. You get the jacket, you get the backpack, the duffel, two coffee tumblers, the cap, two license plate frames. I have to say, I don't think you get a whole lot more for 25k, to be honest with you. It doesn't seem like you do. At 100K, the platinum level. Get a personalized platinum award. A platinum level watch. God. I want to know what the platinum level watch is.

[B]

I'll look it up. You get invites to events where you get shoes. That's probably.

[A]

What's the big one. The platinum level jacket with the 1199 logo. That's a big one.

[B]

This is the entry level, politician level. Because you need to rub elbows with these people and get the union behind you.

[A]

At 250, the list gets shorter again. Private events with CHP top brass and 1199 CEO recognition in perpetuity at the museum, hosted travel and tour of the academy. Exclusive events. Name displayed at the headquarters in the annual report. Okay. This is about putting your name in other things that they broadcast out to other people. Diamond license plate frames, black with chrome lettering at the diamond level. Wow.

[B]

And then here's the watch.

[A]

Let's see the watch. Oh, it's a cromwell. $100,000 for this fucking thing. Oh my God. Look at that. That, dare I say, absolute piece of shit looking watch. That's fucking crazy.

[B]

All this watch. This is just. This is one step behind having a police badge. I mean, it's got.

[A]

It has.

[B]

For people listening, it has a CHP star like in the middle of the watch. So it's just so that on your left hand when the police officer walks up, they see that.

[A]

Let me just check the time. Yeah, that's crazy. So anyway, this is what you're getting by giving money to this organization, in case you're wondering. So anyway, I thought that was very funny. You think for all that money they could spell the sign right?

[B]

Foud nation. Foud nation. What if that's the.

[A]

What if the sign is right and it's a fucking fake?

[B]

That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

[A]

What if you think the sign is accurate and you're donating to a mimicking organization with a different but similar.

[B]

Imagine the balls to make a fake police organization and then try to get with that crime. They'll all be after you.

[A]

I mean, look, I had someone who worked for the police steal a digital tracking device from my car for purposes of using it for digital tracking.

[B]

What?

[A]

When I got arrested for street racing back in New York, my car was impounded. A cop stole my E. Z pass out of my car and was commuting with it. That's the level of thinking we're at here. Let's see the next photo. The next photo is what you'd call good conservative art. You Know how they always. Conservatives always talk about how like art's too woke. Like, whatever this is. This is like Americana threw up all over. This is like you're decorating a low level ski Lodge in 2002, basically is.

[B]

The Wells Fargo carriage, which is a real full size one, by the way. Is this an area sponsored by. By Wells Fargo or is this the art?

[A]

No, this is a place selling this artwork. It's big eagles, huge eagles and like literal Indian heads.

[B]

A lot of wood carvings of eagles that. I mean, some of these look six feet tall.

[A]

Yeah, huge.

[B]

Huge. On giant pedestals.

[A]

Towering huge horses and eagles and Americana. Shit.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, and you've got like the stock exchange bowl right here that you can put somewhere. You need to have such a big house to just.

[A]

Yeah, big. But imagine like how awful your house would be decorated.

[B]

This eagle statue, it's two eagles, like dancing or whatever, is literally twice the size of these grown men standing right next to me.

[A]

I think that one probably goes outside.

[B]

That is like 12ft tall.

[A]

Yeah. So keep going. We've got more. Would you like. So Zach flew in the Pivotal, Man. What do they call it? I forget what they call this thing.

[B]

I forget too.

[A]

It's like ultra.

[B]

The Helix.

[A]

Yeah, Helix. But no, it's. What style of vehicle is it? It's like a drone. You fly?

[B]

Yeah. Electric vertical takeoff landing, Evtol. Excuse me.

[A]

So you flew in that and that. And how do you feel looking at this particular Evtol, about whether or not it would be safe?

[B]

I honestly, the honest thing to say is I don't know because. Because all of like, there's the hardware side of these things and then there's the software side of these things. The only reason I trusted Pivotal is because I have friends that work at Boeing and other drone companies. And I said, have you heard of these people? And they said, yes, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten in there. And no disrespect to Pivotal, so with these guys that have built this, you just. And I've seen a lot of like clips of these different machines being sold or being like, promoted to be for sale. A lot of this personalized electric vertical takeoff stuff. And how long's the ride? It's so easy. You hop in, you just control it with a joystick. I mean, there's so much that needs to go into the training for these things.

[A]

Yeah. So anyway, they were selling these.

[B]

This is an eight. This is eight rotor. So this is a lot like. It's a big DJI thing, you know, you've got two rotors at each corner, and they probably spin, like, opposing directions. I don't know. This stuff excites me. It seems fun, but I wouldn't want to get in them for, like, another five years.

[A]

Yeah, it seems. I don't know, I don't want to pass judgment on this thing if it's been tested and whatever, but, like, it just looks shady just looking at it. It looks kind of shady. I don't know.

[B]

I don't think. I mean, the one I was in, like, looked cool because it was all carbon and you could see that. But it had to be a certain weight, right? It had to be very light. So if it fell out of the sky, if I had done something wrong, the carbon's not protecting me very much. Like, it's. The ground is coming through. So this looks more exposed, I think, which might make you feel a little bit unnerved. What I will say, this will be way easier to take off and land because it doesn't tilt up or down.

[A]

This has a traditional helicopter configuration with, like, skids and a traditional helicopter seating position.

[B]

Your visibility is much better.

[A]

So I don't know, it's just. This was being sold right next to that artwork and a bunch of Rolexes and cowboy boots, you know, trips to go on quail hunts.

[B]

There's something amazing that this was across the aisle from, like, eagle sculptures, like, 100 years, 20 years ago. Like, the eagle, you know, was the thing that flew.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And now we've got this for sale in a mall.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, keep going. So. So this is. You have the Millionaire gallery here, which guys, one more quick break because mud water is coming in hot. Now, here's the thing about mud water. It's a coffee alternative that's made with cacao chai, turmeric, and functional mushrooms like lion's mane and reishi. Okay. You get this sort of warm focus boost without a wired buzz or a crash that usually tags along with coffee or other caffeinated products. Right. And I've had problems with caffeine in the past. I've had literal panic attacks as a result of being overly caffeinated. And so when you want to get your morning together, a little less chaos, less jittery energy, and more of that kind of locked in feeling that gets you going. But when I don'ti can't have that kind of caffeine in the morning, that's where the mud water comes in. Right. And if you're still craving that taste of coffee, which you're in luck, I Like it? They just launched a low caffeine coffee made with organic arabica, Swiss water, decaf L theanine and the same functional mushrooms you get in the other blends. It's rich, smooth and only 45 milligrams of caffeine. So you can get the flavor you love without the jitters, crash, or spiraling thoughts. Spiraling thoughts is usually where you would find me in the peak of being overly caffeinated, so I don't want any of them. So whether you're mixing up the original blend or easing into something gentler than your usual brew, Mud Water makes it ridiculously easy to start the day feeling good. Now you can grab it at Target and sprouts nationwide, making better mornings easier than ever. Every ingredient in Mud Water does serve a purpose, right? With organic ingredients for a clean natural boost, Mud Water's smooth, earthy flavors provide a delicious and natural source of energy. Their OG blend contains cacao and chai for a hint of caffeine and a hot chocolate like flavor. Lion's mane for focus. Cordyceps to promote natural energy and both chaga and reishi to support a healthy immune system. Ready to make the switch to cleaner energy? Head over to mudwtr.com that's m u d w t r dot com and grab your starter key. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal. Up to 43% off your entire order plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother. When you use Code tire at checkout. That's right up to 43% off with code TIRE. U d w t r.com after your purchase, they'll ask how you found them. Please show your support and let them know it was us. M u d w t R and use Code tire at checkout. And now back to the show which has a bunch of these sort of composite things where it's photos of famous people alongside their signatures. It's like shadow boxes.

[B]

Got it. Okay.

[A]

And then there's the weird one of fucking Trump maybe getting shot at the top corner.

[B]

There's like a Marlboro F1 1 Shelby, clearly.

[A]

Yeah. So that kind of stuff like this sort of Americana, the millionaire gal, this sort of like this sort of worship of these of successful.

[B]

It's totally an altar for a person.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's like we got their signature when we cornered them outside a bathroom, but then we took pictures from the Internet and printed them and all that stuff.

[A]

Yeah. So go to the next one. Cause there was around the back was really creepy Trump fantasy art. So we Have Captain Trump Sparrow, dude.

[B]

I mean, for people listening, like, even regardless of your politics, this is hilarious. It is Trump's fox in Captain Jack Sparrow garb. Like head to toe in front of.

[A]

A Navy destroyer with like a. Like. It's not a real signature. It's like an imagery of his signature on like a name tag there. And then on top it says like a whole bunch of like, quote accomplishments of his that most of which are not actually real. Like, stopped eight wars and things like that.

[B]

No, you know what it says? It says where he was born, where he went to college.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

The other one, it says he produced the Apprentice and then he appointed three Supreme Court justices and. Yeah, that's what that says.

[A]

Okay. That one actually at least has some truth to it. There was another one I saw this one I thought was the funniest imagery. But there was one of him as like fucking Atlas picking up the world. There was one that was him as like a. Like an Aristotle, you know, and the one, the Aristotle, I think it was the Aristotle one that was like the world peace.

[B]

This is proof that it's not just AI making bad art. That just.

[A]

This was probably made by AI that was.

[B]

But like, was it a sculpture? Alice or him just holding something like.

[A]

No, it was like these. It was like a paint. It was from this particular degree.

[B]

It was definitely AI and there was.

[A]

Yeah. So then we have the Venezia Gallery here. This is like gigantic bronze sculptures, but of also mostly Americana. Like big wildlife stuff. Horses, bucking and eagles and deers and fucking lions and shit.

[B]

You have an estate and you need something on that lawn. Right. I mean, these are humongous, but also.

[A]

Like, not very like. They're the kind of things that decorate a certain mid tier level of hotel. You don't see this in like the really nicely designed homes, I guess.

[B]

I mean, I don't have that much exposure to those places. But I think. I think if you have a giant hotel that's out in the middle of like Montana and you just go, we need something.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[B]

And you just. You shove a giant horse in it or like an elk, because it's.

[A]

That's exactly what I'm saying. It's the kind of stuff you'd put in a mid tier hunting lodge.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's just how hotels work. They gotta remind you of the thing you're already doing.

[A]

Yeah, continue. Then we had all sorts of weird Trumpy iconography. This place sold pianos and yet they had a Trump Mannequin playing the most femme looking Liberace ass piano.

[B]

Well, I think you're missing the big detail with these pianos. And don't sue me. This is a joke. Is that these pianos are all probably under 18 years old. So that's why they're. That's why he's geared towards him.

[A]

That's why he's tickling them. Yeah. So there was just weird.

[B]

We're demonetized.

[A]

All kinds of weird trumpy stuff going on. Continue. And then this was actually my favorite thing. And I have two photos of it. This is the up close, but the next photo is the zoom out. This is a full size coffee table, or it could be like a kitchen island table. And it's an Etch A Sketch with. You have two knobs. And go back to the other photo. The two knobs drag around this little digger that just moves dirt. And it's just a joyous little thing. It was $2,500 and I almost bought it.

[B]

It's pretty cool. This is like artisanal. Like RC car, even.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What's the word I'm looking for? Mechanical. Yeah, it's just mechanical. It's like you move the ball and the ball pushes the little thing the.

[A]

Digger drags behind the ball.

[B]

Oh, it's attached to.

[A]

It's attached to the ball. And so when you move the ball, it sort of tows the digger like a trailer, but the digger then pushes dirt around.

[B]

Dude, that's very meditative.

[A]

It's like a Zen garden, but for like, you know. Yeah.

[B]

Buddies, you know? But if you trade cartoon.

[A]

I really. Me and Musto sat there playing with this for 15 minutes. We really liked this.

[B]

If you had known you needed a room that this needed to live in, and then you'd have bought it. Like it, I think.

[A]

Yeah. I don't. I don't have this. I don't think it would work in my house.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it. It's fun.

[B]

If you had a hunting lodge. I'm serious.

[A]

It's very, very fun, though. I do. I really liked this a lot. Yeah, we played with this for soccer. Solid. Because see the fucking laps around the rocks?

[B]

That's us. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Foot.

[A]

Yeah, that's Musto's giant foot. That's all I took pictures of. There was also this guy who made these Rube Goldberg devices, like where the ball. You know, the rad. Is it Rube Goldberg?

[B]

Rube Goldberg is like a complicated mechanical device to complete.

[A]

It's a thing where, like, the ball. A ball travels like A real crazy route, like up a thing.

[B]

I don't know if that has a specific name.

[A]

That might be a sub.

[B]

I know what you mean.

[A]

Version of a Rube Goldberg device. But there were these amazing machines where it was like a roller coaster for, you know, pinballs, essentially.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

These beautifully animated machines. They were like five to ten grand, but they fucking rocked. But I got out of there. I did not spend any money except on the tickets. So that was good. It was a wild thing to see. And from the cars to all of this crazy shit, it's a thing that if you can make it a destination in your car life, it's worth it at least once.

[B]

Yeah, I'll go. That seems fun.

[A]

And if you can afford, you know, you don't need a huge budget. But if you can go and get a bidder's pass and be prepared to, like, throw some bids in on something you might like, like, it's a pretty fun thing to do. Obviously, you have to have some money to do that.

[B]

Yeah. And, like, the knowledge of what to ask about what you're buying. Does everybody have printed detailed sheets on, like. Like. Yeah, you gotta do that homework. I'm sure you got upkeep, maintenance, all that stuff.

[A]

Yeah. So that was fun. Got the Manx over to Phillips to get studded tires put in. I saw my. We're using a BFG winter tire that comes with pilot holes.

[B]

Yeah. Or divots.

[A]

Is that what they're called? Divots?

[B]

That's what I'm calling them. I know you mean.

[A]

Yeah, but they got like 20 tires over there. This poor dude Carlos has got to put so many studs in. But get this. On the way back from dropping it off, I took a Waymo and I had the first bad Waymo ride I've ever had. Like, I've probably taken 50 to 60 Waymo rides at this point. And all the cars have driven the same as if they're the same car. This is the first one I've ever been. Been in that drove badly. Like, literally drove badly. So the first thing that happened is. And I sent you photos of me wearing my. Keep going. Me wearing my silly jacket there. So I sit in the front in a Waymo because you can just recline the seat. More leg room. So I'm exiting a small side street street heading south and trying to turn left onto Olympic Boulevard here in order to turn right onto that traffic light that's like 100 yards away. Sepulveda. So a human driver I don't think would try to do this. So what this Waymo is trying to do here is cross six lanes of traffic and then get to a turn lane to make a. I'm sorry, make a left across six lanes of traffic to then make a right 100 yards later.

[B]

I mean, I've seen people do this, but they are the worst people.

[A]

Yes. And a good driver would. And this is a grid, mind you, a good driver would have just made a right and then turned left at the next light and cut back over at some later.

[B]

Yeah, double back, cut him off at the pass.

[A]

Right. And so especially. Cause Zach, we're talking about Sepulveda and Sawtel, they run parallel. So anyway, it tries to do this and I've taken a picture because there isn't room. The light doesn't change. So now I am sitting broadside as a fucking gardening truck is driving straight at my door.

[B]

It really is like straight 90 degrees.

[A]

It's driving right at my door. And so I'm now sitting there. And fortunately this gardening truck understands that it's a driverless car. So there's no one to honk at. But I'm sitting there like, you know what? Do. Like I'm an asshole. What do I. I'm just sitting here. And that's when I first took the photo. I then sent you a video. And I'm not sure how good the video is. And I don't think you need to play it with sound.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But I think I just show what is going on. Cause now traffic is just going. And I'm just sitting here, just about to get keyed up by this fucking van that's now stuck here. Look at this. Look at the traffic. My Waymo is just.

[B]

Yeah. You've walked two lanes. Three. So a human, a human driver would pull into that left only lane.

[A]

Yeah. Like figure it out from there.

[B]

Yeah. And just get out of the way. Like there is an opening. If you made a harder left, it's like a left turn lane instead of you want to go right, but you'd be out of the way. But right now you're blocking two out of three lanes of traffic. You got a big utility van. Who's mad?

[A]

So it's doing that. So that's what happens first. Right. And after eventually blocking traffic, it does start to move. Now, now that could have been hugely problematic, obviously. So that was the first one. Then I pull up to a red light and look, it stops two and a half car lengths back from the red light for some reason. Does not move up to the front row.

[B]

That's weird.

[A]

Which is not a huge problem in and of itself. But after what it just did, I felt it necessary to take this picture because I thought that was odd and then go to the next one. So here I'm zoomed in, zoomed in, zooming in on the blinkers start to go fucking batshit.

[B]

Oops.

[A]

So I filmed this. So play this in real time and look at the pace of the blinker. Look, what's this blinker is going. See it doing like a weird. It's just doing like going haywire. Clicking in.

[B]

No, it's doing Morse code and it's trying to talk to other cars. We're all about to be in big trouble.

[A]

Trouble.

[B]

This is how it happens.

[A]

So meanwhile it did this while being like kind of bad at picking lane placements for where it wanted to be. So I was really, really. I mean, look, nothing terrible happened. I didn't like run over a child, like just fucking happened. That's not. I don't want to accuse. Run over a Waymo hit a kid yesterday.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, I did not know that.

[A]

I think it was one of those situations where it was like a kid ran out into the. And the Waymo, you know, did try to stop. It just couldn't stop quick enough. I don't think it was necessarily. I don't want to. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I don't think it was necessarily like 100% of the Waymo's fault. Like an unexpected thing happened that it just couldn't avoid, I think. But either way, on the same day that happened, this ride happened.

[B]

Well, well, Waymo says the kid ran into the street from behind a double parked SUV V. So yeah, I mean.

[A]

Can we believe them? I'm not 100% sure.

[B]

I'm reading the news on KTLA 5, so that's what they said. But we. I'm sure there'll be footage and whatever. Yeah, yeah, the kid was okay. It should be said.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Kids stood up and went to the sidewalk.

[A]

Okay, well, that's good. So anyway, on the same day that that happened, coincidentally, my. The Waymo I was in was acting weird as hell. And I had never, never been in one that drove like this. So I don't know, maybe there was a software update. Maybe this one was like bugging out for some reason. And I realized there was not a way for me to accurately describe to somebody using the Waymo app. And they're like customer service had a problem using their decision tree thing. There was not a way to accurately Describe what was happening.

[B]

There's no notes section.

[A]

Not really.

[B]

Wow. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. So anyway, that was.

[B]

That's weird.

[A]

That was the thing. But we're all part of the beta. We're getting studded ass tires. It's. Which is very exciting.

[B]

Pre drilled tires are called studdable.

[A]

That makes sense. That makes sense. That's also like. That's like me. I'm studd a bull, but I'm not there yet.

[B]

Just have potential. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[A]

I got. I had to get weighed and granted, granted, different scale. Like normally I weigh myself at Santo's scale, but I went to my physical and I was on their scale. So one could expect a small difference.

[B]

In how the dyno article.

[A]

The dyno article. Like small difference. And I weighed 2 pounds over what I weighed like a month ago. And I was like. Went into a deep depression. Number should go down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But December and Hannah was like. Hannah was like, you know that 247 is the same as 245, right?

[B]

Also water, salt.

[A]

I know.

[B]

What time of day did you get weighed at this physical?

[A]

In the morning. It was morning.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. And I fasted too. It was optimal, optimum conditions.

[B]

I mean, we talked about December. We both ate more snackies.

[A]

There were cookies in January, December. I did good over the holidays. January was where I had my. I had my holidays in January when I went to South Carolina and then I went to Miami. That was my holidays in January.

[B]

Dude. When I saw my parents, my parents always had have lots of healthy bad food around and I went, oh, a tub of biscotti. Well, I don't have these very often at home, so I'll eat three per day.

[A]

In South Carolina, it's those peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets. If I die of a heart attack, it's because somebody left a kilogram of those in my house washed up in the ocean. There'll be like. That would be the perfect crime. Like if you wanted to like assassinate me. All you have to do is leave the giant. You remember like the buckets of popcorn, that peanut butter pretzel and just send it to me for Christmas. I'll be dead by Valentine's Day.

[B]

It's like a very Kramer type of assassination. They're desiccates.

[A]

Doesn't seem there was foul play. You got an awful lot of treats this year.

[B]

I don't see.

[A]

Should we talk about the sim? Is that interesting to talk about?

[B]

I think so.

[A]

So our buddy, two friends and one of my storage clients here at wccs, which is Continuing to pay off in interesting ways. Our friend Mike Harley, who's a former car journalist, our friend Justin Bell, who's a racing commentator and a race car driver. And my friend Charlie. XP1. Not XR1, is it? XP1, it's XP1. Have come up with, not come up with. I guess there's a person who's come up with the tech but they've shown us this new simulator program, racing simulator program called XP1 that launches in like a week that uses an entirely new force feedback and physics engine compared to any other racing simulator that is on the market today or before. And the idea is to deliver a vastly more realistic driving experience compared to other racing simulators which in my opinion do not deliver realistic driving experience.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. Why?

[A]

I hate them. So it apparently works with any PC based racing simulator, right? Basically any PC based.

[B]

They work with basically any PC wheel I think is what they're saying.

[A]

Yeah, it's not a new type of drive wheel, not a new type of pedals you can use basically any pedals. It's software and it's sort of. Okay. How did he describe it? He described it as. All other racing sim software in the past uses tables to deliver driving sensations based on what they think a car would happen at this particular amount of force or load or speed or heat. Right. And this one doesn't do that. It learns based on how people are driving on it in order to deliver a much more car like experience.

[B]

I mean I'll say like the pitch was quick. We went there today and they talked fast and then we hopped in the, in the driver's seat. So like the methods behind how the game works, like I don't want to comment on too much because I don't understand enough of how existing games work. Like what I took away from it is that the driving instantly feels way more realistic because you know, their cockpit like moves while you're driving as if your head was moving. And they modeled it, they said, you know, we, they modeled it after like a 13 pound head with a helmet on. So when you hit the brakes, when you turn left, right, accelerate your field of view changes very slightly. But it is so accurate I think to how your head would move. There's no latency. Like you hit the brakes, then the plane thing moves, you turn left, then the head moves. You know that would, that would be like bad VR. This felt so natural. I thought it communicated speed and G load really, really well. And then when you couple that with the force feedback, I think think felt really accurate. I felt I could feel the back stepping out and loss of grip. I think better than any other force feedback thing I've driven. And this was without. This didn't have a four motion seat. This didn't have any of the like electronic actuator stuff that was moving that around. This was a fixed seat, fixed pedals and a wheel. But that was my takeaway.

[A]

My takeaway was that the steering feel was like way, way, way better. And if you got like oversteer in iracing or assetto, it's like unrecoverable in a lot of ways. And it was much more recoverable in this. I thought the weight transfer was a lot better and more natural feeling in this.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So the thing with this game is it's called XP1 is right now there is only one track and there is only one call.

[B]

And it should be said that's because they built the physics engine behind it themselves and then they built the car themselves also. So they didn't download a car from, I don't know, other games or other sources that supply games. They were like, let's make this thing as a proof of concept.

[A]

Yeah, well. And the limiting factor is if you're spending money and resources licensing cars, you're not spending money on, on the actual accuracy of the driver to video game engagement. And also they said they basically had to build, they had to do everything totally from scratch in order to make this system work. You couldn't import physics models from different OEMs.

[B]

Right. Michael told us if you hit curbs too hard in the car they built like it will start to bend the wheels or it will start to bend control arms and like that will come back in how the car performs. But existing models didn't have that kind of stuff. Like they have. I haven't played enough recent sims. Like I've played ones where there's damage, but it will just show like flat tire, engine damage, wing damage, so you've lost your arrow, the engine's weaker or like it pulls it one direction. So I don't know how detailed some of the other games get, but I was just really impressed with how it felt. And this is, this is like an alpha launch.

[A]

So.

[B]

So like I know you don't play video games, but nowadays like you can download a game before it's quote done and you can pay for it and it's called beta. And sometimes the game is amazing and you and it could by all means seem like it's finished game but they will keep developing it, but they can get the money earlier to fund the development. So this is like they made one track, they made one car. Their early investment seems like it's pretty small. And then, you know they're gonna launch it for free. You download it, you can play it for an hour, and then you can decide if you want to pay for it or not. And they can take that money and put it into development, licensing cars, et cetera, et cetera.

[A]

It was. I mean, I feel that if I really wanted. I mean, unfortunately they don't have like every track and they don't. Even if it was just this car with this one track, you can tell that the physics engine is much, much, much more realistic to an actual car. And like Harley said, like, you can be good at racing sims and not be good at driving cars. It does apply. If you are good at racing sims, it will help you be good at driving cars. But it's not a given. They are different things. You could be good at Guitar Hero and guitar, but being good at one will not make you good at the other. I thought I would be good at Guitar Hero because I knew how to play guitar. And I was like, oh, this is not actually playing guitar. It's like vaguely similar, but it's not. And it's like the same kind of thing. This is an actual game that, in my fucking 20 minutes, by the way, will definitely reward you if you're good at driving in real life. It's much more like driving in real life.

[B]

It really is.

[A]

Yeah. So the car they made is like a mid engine GT3 style car with a Ferrari S500 horsepower V8 and it weighs like 2700 lb and double wishbones and this and that. And very natural driving dynamics. I would say for 20 minutes, easy to get used to. And the track is nice and it's not that hard to learn. And it does have all different types of corners. So that's good. It'll be interesting to see as they add tracks and add stuff. But I just, for me it was like, oh, this is actually the kind of give and take I'm looking for. For a video game that replicates driving, it actually replicates like driving.

[B]

You were genuinely curious after driving it. Like, I've never seen you get out of a sim and go, so what do these costs? Like, where could you put this thing? Like you had a good time driving it? Because I think it, like you said, helps you represent better how you can actually drive because it actually talks to you a little bit more.

[A]

Yeah, because like my problem with racing Sim. Like, when I'm trying to use racing sims to, like, learn a track, like we talked about a couple months ago, I will have crashes that will never happen in a car. Like, why? Why would that? Like, it's because the game and the car aren't the same. Like, there's like, it took me two hours to. To get to the time I wanted in a racing sim, even a nice one, versus six laps around the actual track in an actual car. That's a pretty big discrepancy. Maybe it's just because I don't play enough racing sims, I'm not good enough at them. But if I drive this much, why should this not reflect a decent amount of skill in that? Why should I be so terrible at that? So anyway, this is much more like, if you can drive a car well, you can get in this. And you're like, why? Why am I crashing here? You're not, actually. So that's good. And they're doing a drift thing, which is gonna be really fun, because drifting in video games is not good. This could potentially be actually good drifting.

[B]

I just think with sims, you have to relearn how to interpret the visual data to tell your hands and feet what to do. So even if you start sliding in a drift car in a Seto, and it's set up, like at Corey, our friend Corey's house, if the controllers are set up well and all the parameters are set up well, the things you would do in a normal car will work in the sim and vice versa. But it's the data that you're getting to your eyes, telling you what to do, when to do it. That can be, like, clunky. And you have to learn almost how to, like, read Braille. You have to learn how to read what the screen is showing you and what that means for the car. Like, you might not think you have a lot of angle on the car, but you actually have, you know, 72 degrees already of yaw. And I don't know, this just seemed like it talked to me more like CXC's trophy truck thing, which was this giant cage mountain. Huge electronic.

[A]

They just sold one on Birdie Trail. Did it. What did it go for? I don't know.

[B]

We should find out right now.

[A]

They were building one to put on a cruise ship, and they built another one that was. That was the dopest driving simulator I've ever.

[B]

Absolutely. I mean, the thing would move up and down like, two feet back, left and right.

[A]

It was. It was rad.

[B]

This. This. The way this Your head moved in there. I thought it got you a good part of the way over. You know, it didn't give you all the movement. That was very exciting. But in terms of telling me, because the big thing with the trophy truck was knowing it's sliding, right. You're on a dirt track. You need to know that it's pitching forward when you brake and then that it's sliding. And it made it really easy to drift and catch. And I think this, it made jumping.

[A]

It pretty accurately recreated jumping too, which was pretty sweet.

[B]

If I had all the money, I'd have one of those in my house for sure.

[A]

Dude, I can't believe that thing.

[B]

It sold? No. Huh? It was bid two. I think it's a no sale. Bid 60 grand?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know how much this thing I think it was?

[A]

I think it was a million dollars. Holy depreciation. Batman make offer.

[B]

No kidding. Oh my God. Oh, wow. There's a lot of CXC sims on Bring Trail. I had no idea there are. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, cool. What do they do they sell for? Would you have sold some? Sold prices.

[B]

Yeah, I'll pull it up. These are depreciate like crazy like at my box.

[A]

Oh, wow. Okay. Sold for 24k Motion Pro 2 Sim back in June 23, 20. Okay. So they sell for 20 to 25k used.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

That one sold for 45k earlier this year.

[B]

Wow. Oh, wow.

[A]

All right. Well they, I mean you can get one. They're that they're like, you know, half to three quarter price.

[B]

Yeah, these things are rad.

[A]

But that's pretty cool.

[B]

A lot of money.

[A]

I guess it matters maybe what year.

[B]

You get, but maybe.

[A]

Oh, the cart sim is interesting. Look at that. 23k.

[B]

No suspension. Oh, it's got little.

[A]

They just have fans that just blow you in the face. Is that what that is?

[B]

Yeah. So you get used to it. Is that. I mean, I've gotten sweaty playing these things at cxc.

[A]

You just put on VR goggles and have fans just blast.

[B]

You want to get used to it. Dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. That's what this feels like.

[A]

It's kind of a good time.

[B]

You think if you're training like you know, with your dad and he throws sand in it in case someone goes off in front of you.

[A]

So you're ready to throw the tire at you?

[B]

Yeah. All right. I'm going to throw a child at you now. Just in case.

[A]

That's pretty cool.

[B]

All right, cool.

[A]

Big news. I therefore we are now members of the singer club at Willow Springs.

[B]

Let's go.

[A]

We have a racetrack membership, Zach. What are we gonna do with it?

[B]

Everything.

[A]

What aren't we going to do with it?

[B]

Yeah, we're gonna film there. We're gonna practice there. We're gonna go drifting there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It is time to drift again there.

[A]

Yes. It is time that we possibly consider a dorifto mobile. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Who do we know in Palmdale? We could just store a car.

[A]

We're about to get a trailer. We're gonna get a trailer for advertising. Be all right.

[B]

I'll buy the missile car if you buy the race. Someone said, do you see?

[A]

If I buy the truck, you buy the drift car.

[B]

Sure. We need to talk budget. We need to talk budget.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you see the race car I sent you that?

[A]

Oh, yeah. That's like a spec racer. That's like a. I'm not that interested personally in a race car. Like, I don't. I like racing. I like renting seats in race. I don't want to own a race car. But a drift car seems like. Cause with a race car, like, we're going to get press car cars. So we'll get to like go to the track in press cars. We'll get to try different stuff. Like.

[B]

Well, this was inspired by. A fan sent this, but it was inspired by. You're talking about the Sierra cars. You know, we can get something that's not street legal.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like this. But if you've come full circle to drift car, I have so many flat brim hats to share with you.

[A]

Well, because a Sierra car you could use, like on dirt, you can use it. There's a lot of different things you could do with that.

[B]

True.

[A]

Like, different tires is a different. Entirely different experience.

[B]

Sierra Carr. I wonder if you could complete the hill climb like up in the back of Willow. Like they have a trail, but if you just went fast, you probably could.

[A]

Well, they're building, you know, they're building trails. They're building like rally slash off roady trails back there.

[B]

Sierra car could be cool for that. Mm.

[A]

So any. But that's. That's fun. That'll be. That'll be superb.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I mean, that's like I literally signed the contract and shit. Like, let's fucking go.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. And speaking of let's fucking go. Wait. The other photos of the Benzito is a go. This is. I was. I just walked here. I didn't. He dropped me off. I was gonna walk. I don't even know why he said that. He was. I Was gonna walk, but it's not far. It's right around the corner. And I dropped off the E320 with Chand and we have a plan. So to convert this car to an E500. It's not really going to be a 500 exactly because we're not going to do the four cam engine. It doesn't get us anything. That's like a high revy.

[B]

It doesn't get you that much more power. Right. When I did that story for the video for cars and bids like the four cam versus a built two cam, it's really close.

[A]

So instead what you do is you get the 1999-2002 E55 engine. The 5.5 liter single cam cam, 350 horsepower, five speed automatic. So we have to buy a donor car, which he says we can do. They're around full powertrain swap. He said you leave the E320 rear end because you want the highway gears. You don't want the E55s gears. For some reason. You want the gears that are in this. We then get the E500 suspension setup, which is bilstein damper and an H and r shock. Our control arms and stuff are the same same. We do SL 600 brakes, we do the E500. Front and rear bumpers are OEM parts. We have to make E500 front and rear fenders. But shont says like absolutely no problem at all. The rocker panel, we don't use the OEM E500. We use. It's not. It's one of the. It's not schnitzer, but it's like one of the. One of the eurotuner ones has a panel for the convertible that makes it look like the sedan on the 500. Because otherwise you have to cut the sedan one and like it doesn't look right. And then we get rid of the chrome. We swap all the trim to the 500 trim. We're gonna do those recaro euro front seats. Those cool recaro ones that everybody use. Uses crazy fabric on leather. But also with the crazy fabric, we're going to delete all the wood and make it all brushed aluminum. We get air conditioning and cruise control from the E55. Full wiring harness swap. The headlights and taillights are the same. We can restore those. And the dash is actually really good. The steering wheel we're going to keep, but we're going to recover. The top actually is in great shape. We're going to service the hydraulics, but we're going to keep the top fabric.

[B]

That's fantastic.

[A]

It's not that old. It's only like five years old. The top fabric. The top glass is good. The side glass is good.

[B]

I'm just noticing the number of check engine lights you have on the dash.

[A]

There's only two. One is check engine and one is low washer fluid.

[B]

Two out of how many possibilities.

[A]

But I drove it from South Bay to him today. It's like fine. I mean, it, like it burned a little oil. Like a little oil.

[B]

Whatever.

[A]

We're taking the engine out. Who gives a shit? It made it like it was. It's. And Sean was like, this is. This is only 60,000 miles. I was like, yeah. He's like, I cannot. Like, he could not believe his luck. He looked all over it. No rust. He's like, this is the most perfect. And it's already red.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

We're gonna repaint the whole thing. Red. But it's the right red. I really need to look really hard in figuring out what our interior trim for the doors, like your car. The door cards, the seat centers. I'm gonna do the A pillar. Probably. Cause it's only the A pillar.

[B]

What are you gonna do the A pillar in?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

In a. Maybe a cool pattern.

[B]

Oh. I thought based on your smile. I thought you had a special idea.

[A]

No, no, no, no. I mean it' we gotta find a cool cloth. Hre is gonna make us the wheels that look like the monoblock wheels.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

But they're HREs. This is gonna be a cool cruiser.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is gonna be nice. There's like. It's really actually funny. Like, the things that we need to keep are, like, really good. And the things we're throwing away are old and tired. We have to do bushings. Cause all the bushings are. But like, whatever. While we're in there fucking all the do it all.

[B]

Of course you're taking the whole drivetrain out. Yeah. Do all the bushings. You're kind of so excited. It's cool. It's like what you learned from the Bentley project. Like, what's good about cruising and what do you want? And this is like tailor made.

[A]

It's going to be a really nice balance between, like, you know, quick, you know, 350 horsepower, not nothing good torque. But with a five speed auto and a convertible top and like.

[B]

And exhaust dumps electric electronically actuated.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Nice stealthy sound.

[A]

The only thing I don't like about the E500 is a single exit exhaust, which is not my favorite but, but the dual. I want a stock look.

[B]

Well, what's it. What do you have?

[A]

It's a. It's an ugly single exhaust now, but the stock E500 is the dual ovals. Yeah, but it's just a dual. It's not two, two. It's just that.

[B]

Yeah, I think they'll look good.

[A]

It looks fine.

[B]

Yeah. What do you. What would you do if you had a dream?

[A]

Do it like a duel. Like one proper duel. Yeah, but you know, whatever. Oh, we have to have headers made. Like, we have to have exhaust manifolds made.

[B]

Oh. For fitment.

[A]

To fit the V8 into their. Yeah, their ass. So I don't know, whatever. For every single thing is like, no problem.

[B]

I got a guy you could probably route a dual exhaust.

[A]

Like, I don't want it. I don't want it to look like a tuner car. I want it to look exactly like an E500 on the outside. Like, just like it should look like Mercedes built it. Like we're on the same page with that one. Other than the crazy fabric and hres not stock OEM Mercedes wheels, it's going to look exactly like an E500 that Mercedes built.

[B]

Okay, I'm looking.

[A]

I'm super stoked on this as a project project for this year. This is going to be fucking awesome to roll around.

[B]

This is an angry. It's like the Angry Minx project. Oh, here we go. Okay.

[A]

Well, it's just going to be such a cool cruiser. Kind of to have some match luggage made for it. Right? Like some fitted ass cool luggage.

[B]

I mean, maybe some like I would say because it has such a big trunk. I mean, do whatever you want. It's your money. But you could have a cool attache case that lives on the back seat.

[A]

True. That's the E500 exhaust.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's just a single. Boy. Yeah, it is what it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Nothing wrong with it.

[B]

They switched to dual in 2000. It does look better, but. Oh, well.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You know, still, it's gonna be hard as fuck though. It's gonna look so rad. I'm stoked. That's gonna be. I don't know. I wonder if he can have it done in time for Dream Cruise. If he does, maybe we take our trailer. Fucking take that shit to Dream Cruise.

[B]

Take, did you?

[A]

It only takes four days to drive to Detroit.

[B]

Four days to trailer a Mercedes to Detroit.

[A]

That what a waste of time that would be.

[B]

That's funny.

[A]

No, we would ship it to Papadino's.

[B]

They might not like it there? I don't know. I question.

[A]

I think they would. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they, they're. It's not just American cars. I mean it's a lot of American cars at Dream Cruise, but it's not just American cars. I sell some really awesome stuff rolling around. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to talk about Kill Switch before we go to the people?

[B]

We can do it because, because it's quick, like this is not a big thing.

[A]

We also don't have to do full length questions today. We can kick questions to the next one. It's okay.

[B]

So you know the big story, I guess this is actually like two days old. But the Kill Switch bill went forward through Congress and this had everybody stirred up. Still does, because everyone thinks that the government's going to be able to turn off your car at any moment. And so Kelly Blue Book did a good article kind of of calming everybody down. And the basic thing is that Congress wants car companies to use existing systems or develop a new kind of system to basically monitor drivers and determine when they are inebriated. And in that case the car needs to do something like turn off. The reason that KBB is trying to say everybody calm down is because the way the bill is written, it wants a passively detect blood alcohol level equal to and exceeding the limit. So that means passive means they can't install a breathalyzer. So Congress is saying, hey, NHTSA has.

[A]

To write the regulation coffee cup that comes up and says you seem tired, pull over.

[B]

It's that it'll be something like that. But Congress basically made the bill, you seem wasted. And then NITSA needs to write the like requirements and then hand those requirements to automakers. There's a lot of steps left. Their goal is to use existing tech in there to like monitor and determine someone's inebriated. I'm sure they can. I also bet this will be very clunky for a long time. Like if someone imagine if you're just driving and like, you know, you lean on, on your windowsill for too long and you're awake and looking. So I mean, is it going to track your body movement, your eyes both?

[A]

Yeah, well, the number of times I've had the pop up window come up that says you're tired, you look tired.

[B]

You'Ve been driving 20 minutes.

[A]

Yeah, like whatever. Like bro, fuck out of here.

[B]

So they're going to have to be, you know, super buttoned up with this kind of stuff because if people, especially if, if the kill switch term goes forward or that's what they want, where the car would turn itself off or, like, pull over to the side of the road. I mean, you can't have that just happening when someone's driving to work because their body position's different, or they're staring, you know, straight ahead for too long, but not moving their eyes because they're zoned out. I don't know. These are all the things. I mean, it's silly, but these are all the things that the car companies and NHTSA have to figure out how to account for. This goes to, like, the autonomous car thing. Can you plan for every single variable while trying to complete one objective, you know, despite all those variables?

[A]

Yeah, so.

[B]

So there's going to be a lot of time between now and when this might get rolled out, but that is what it's going to be.

[A]

Okay. So the law creates a kill switch that would let a car deactivate itself if the system determined that the driver was likely impaired. It does not create a kill switch that anyone outside the vehicle could control. Some privacy advocates worry that any shutdown technology could eventually allow remote control control as today's cars increasingly communicate with external servers as they drive. To date, those servers belong to the automakers. Yeah, I think that's going to be clunky and shitty, but I think there are probably maybe not. If you're wasted, I bet people move their eyes and. Or their heads in somewhat predictable ways.

[B]

Very possible. Yeah. You know, yeah.

[A]

Will that shit hold up in court or anything like that? Like, you know what happens, right? If you, like, will it, like, say, you know, you have 30 seconds to pull over and the vehicle is gonna shut down. Will it say that, you know, well, it couldn't be watching you long enough. If you just start it and try to drive. It couldn't be like, oh, hold on, right. So it'd have to be watching you drive and then make some determination that actually you can't be driving.

[B]

Yeah. And if you're wandering in the lane a lot, that's probably the easiest thing for it to notice. You know, if it has to keep pinging you back like bumper bowling. But then what will it do? But it's the more nuanced stuff. If people are. You know, there's so many different ways someone could drunk drive. And like, I've seen people that have driven at night in Los Angeles or in the daytime, honestly, like, where their speed and the way they're driving their car and the proximity they get to other car cars, you go, that person's either mad, 22 years old or wasted or something. And sometimes they're one of those things. But how will it be able to determine this? Person A is drunk versus person A is an idiot. Person A is late for work. All those things for sure. A lot of, I don't know, they have a lot of work to do.

[A]

Sure. All right, let's go to the people and we'll start with of course [e-mail] smokingtirepodcast but let's start off with Zach's broke ass hair transplant surgeon.

[B]

He's not broke, he's quite rich.

[A]

Why don't more manufacturers see the long term value in protecting the lineage of a car, its design DNA, its identity, the way Porsche has with the 911? Well, the 911's like engine being in the wrong place defines its shape and its lineage. Like you could argue like a lot of people. I mean Corvettes ascent effectively did that until they had to make a change going from front to mid engine.

[B]

They've probably protected it. I think they've done the best job out of any front engine car. I mean BMW maybe, but because this person's point was some companies will like bring back the Supra, kill the Supra, bring it back, it looks totally different and kill it. And whereas the 911 seems more, I think the fact that they've been building it consistently means the design, the changes are much more subtle. Whereas if you take a, I don't know, a six year break from a car and then bring it back, well, suddenly manufacturing technology has changed, design trends have changed a lot. So it seems like it makes a big leap.

[A]

What always helps though is that 911s have always been competitive. They've always been less power than the other cars they were competing against, but less weight and equally competitive, if not more competitive that whole time. Even when they were building old cars in the 80s, the C4 Corvette versus the 1985 911. The 911 is ancient, but it's still competitive. The 964 old, still competitive. I don't know if you can just do that with any other car. I would say certainly the Mustang, beginning again in 2005, the sort of modern era of Mustang where it looks like the Mustangs of the late 60s looked. They've learned, learned. They probably maybe, arguably should have been doing that the whole time. Even though I like the Fox bodies and stuff. But you kind of need your product to be good enough that it needs successive generations without breaking it up. If you break it up Then you're like, well, that car's dead. But later, I'm doing a new car. It's vaguely the same. And we already own that name. People remember it. We could get some hype out of launching this thing. You know, I wonder if there's also.

[B]

Merit that Porsche was a private company until what, a year ago? Two years ago. So maybe if they had more control over their designs. Whereas, you know, I don't know, other companies were publicly traded and they just, if something wasn't going well, they bring a new committee, new board, and they go, well, let's change the design because that's what's not working. And Porsche could go, no, like, here's how we're doing it. Just tweak it a little bit. I don't know.

[A]

This one's fun. I blow horns. Favorite tuner engine for the standard cylinder counts. So your favorite four cylinder, six cylinder, eight, 10 and 12 from tuners. Kind of interesting. So favorite four cylinder was that. That Honda engine that was built by that dude on the east side of la. I think his name was Emmanuel. That was like a Honda engine that na. That revved to like 9000 with like crazy high compression, big power engine. That was a sick Honda engine.

[B]

High revving Honda like that, that makes power is rad.

[A]

Six cylinder. Favorite six cylinder engine. I mean, my demand engine is pretty fucking spicy. I dare you to find a better six cylinder engine than that.

[B]

Yeah, I'll agree with that because yours has like big engine sound, but then it's got a more. It's different. Something really meaty. Yeah, I'd go with that.

[A]

Yeah. Favorite eight cylinder, Judd. Well, oh, Judds are usually the 10. The Judd V10 is really where it's at. Favorite V8. How about the Dinan 4.6 liter stroker S62. The E90 M3 stroker engine.

[B]

Well, you drove that in like an M1 or 1M, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. I wasn't there that day. I think I probably would choose that, though.

[A]

That was mental.

[B]

Small, high revving V8s are very good, but shout out to the Audi 4.2 with a supercharger on it. However, I'm gonna save that for the 10 because I think throwing the VF supercharger on like a Lambo V10 is rad.

[A]

That's pretty. That's where it's at for a 10.

[B]

You're gonna go Viper with twin turbo Calvo Viper.

[A]

Yeah. 2000 horsepower Calvo Viper. Yeah, that's. That's scary. We'll take that 12 cylinder tuner, 12 cylinders. Brabus rocket.

[B]

Yep. I can still see the video in my head. That was one of the questions.

[A]

Twin turbo, 12 cylinder in an E class.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I should have asked sh. If my car will fit the V12.

[B]

No, just go V8. Get the sound.

[A]

Yeah, that's true. That's a fun one.

[B]

Is the V12 far more complicated, less reliable, all those things. Yeah, right.

[A]

Keel in tow. Do you think automakers aren't taking risks with new products anymore? Fun projects like the SSR, the Prowler, the Viper, BMW Z8 and Z1 don't seem as common. Common anymore. Well.

[B]

Well, original Viper. I think there's enough original sports cars still coming out. Z8 and Z1 are. I agree. Because they're just making fewer coupes. We know that, like we've talked about the 90s. There were dozens of coupes kind of peaked like late 90s in the 2000s. Z. The Z8 was like this amazing just design exercise. Oh my God, they're stunning.

[A]

I mean BMW does still make. They make the Z4 still. I mean, I don't think there was room for BMW to make two roadsters at the same time. Doing the Z3 and the Z8 at the same time. I don't think there's room for that.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

But I mean, look, the ssr, the Prowler, this is like Bob Lutz shit. Like this is like the 90s. That's like when cars were like cartoons.

[B]

Well, and that was also looking at the market then. It was kind of, kind of boomers now. And they have money. They grew up around hot rods. How do we make hot rods new again? You make it now. Those people are kind of aging out, so they gotta make what our generation wants to make. And they're making rally cars and they're making stuff. You know, I think the GR Corolla, I mean granted it's to kind of reflect their rally program, but that's a pretty exciting thing.

[A]

I mean, some automakers are taking risks. I mean, Porsche doing the Dakar as a production car, that's a risk. Lamborghini selling the Sterra, that's a bigger risk. That's a risk. You know, I suppose an Escalade V is a silly thing that probably shouldn't have really sold well.

[B]

I think the difference with those though is they're all based on existing product. Whereas like the Prowler was crazy and weird. And I think car companies now are taking more risks with the high dollar cars because they know they can sell them as collectibles. And so there's less really wild stuff out there for, you know, people buying 40 to $60,000 cars.

[A]

That's true. They don't need to build a wild $60,000 car because they can build something, something that's $3 million and sell 50 of them. And that's how they. And then it's not a risk. Then they can show the model and the renderings to people and they'll go, yes, I'll take that. And they get them locked up and then they build them later. They know they're sold. I mean, that is a good reason that income inequality is hurting car culture, because automakers are not taking risks on massive mass market products because they can do it. Write that down. Thank you very much for that. No risk on.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

High and okay, thank you for that one. That black Scuderia says, oh, I saw some. I don't. Well, I don't want to even talk about that. I saw. Let's just go to the question. In your opinion, has the build quality of Porsche been going up or down in recent years?

[B]

I honestly don't know because I don't have much exposure to them after they are more than 2,000 miles old.

[A]

I have not seen a change in, in what I perceive as quality in Porsche in the last 10 years since like the 991, like a 991 and a 992 are built to approximately the same standard of quality, in my opinion. Literal built. How tight things fit the materials. That's the same in those cars to me.

[B]

Marco, if you're listening, text me.

[A]

David Hasselhoffmeister, Kinkshame.

[B]

That's a great answer.

[A]

Absolutely exceptional. Best and worst piece of swag you've ever gotten from a press launch. The worst piece of swag is just a magazine about the car you've just driven.

[B]

And it's really like a sales brochure.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've gotten stuff that was so expensive, I gave it back. Like I've gotten iPads. Someone gave me an iPad and I was like, that's ridiculous. Ridiculous. Absolutely not. We've gotten helmets.

[B]

Oh yeah. I got a helmet from the Hoosiers.

[A]

Helmet, jackets.

[B]

Sometimes I got offered a jacket and it wasn't, hey, wear this. It's very cold where you're going. It was like, wear this somewhere else. Yeah, it's like here as a parting gift. And I gave it back to them.

[A]

Yeah, no, I will. Sometimes I'll turn down a lot of swag. I got a nice pair of headphones.

[B]

Once.

[A]

But usually if it's like really if it's something very expensive, I will definitely not keep it. Maxima Decimus Meridius says, why do you think the new ZR1 will depreciate? Didn't the previous generation go up in value? The C7ZR1 is the last front engined Corsica Corvette, is the last manual transmission Corvette and up until the current ZR1 was the highest horsepower Corvette ever. That's why the curve of the new ZR1 will mimic the current Z06. It will not mimic the old ZR1. I called that from the fucking press launch. I said this car is terrifyingly fast. You cannot see anything out of it because the fucking hood comes up so high it wants to rip its own fucking rims out of the tires. It's scary as shit. And it fucking was the last of something. And it's the last manual Corvette. I said this is an instant buy and hold. Instant. All the signs were there from the press launch.

[B]

And I think obviously the difference Here is the ZR1's amazing right now, but right now it's the first ZR1 of the first mid engine Corvette packaging. So where will we go from here? Faster, better, et cetera, more.

[A]

They've already put out a faster one. The ZR1X is already one year later. Yeah, the ZR1 we drove for P. Cody has the old interior in it.

[B]

Wow. It has a wall still.

[A]

Yeah, it's a 25, not a 26. So like why would this current ZR1 not fucking depreciate? It has none of the elements that the C7ZR wanted. Had that specifically put it in the buy and hold category right along a Viper acr. Viper acr. Same exact thing. If you had an allocation for acr. As a matter of fact, any final year or final two year Viper, a TA or an ACR would have been a fabulous buy and hold because that was it. That C7 was fucking obvious from day one. Acura NSFX are we going to Air Water? Where's Air Water this year? I don't even know where it is. Let's see while you're looking. Can you scroll down a little bit?

[B]

Yeah. It comes back to Costa Mesa in April.

[A]

Oh yeah, I'm sure I will go. I don't have something new to put on display, but maybe the master Manx. Actually if there's a Manx display there might. Then they'll probably end up putting the Manx there. I imagine they'll want to display it.

[B]

I Guess it'll be a Porsche powered Manx, right?

[A]

I don't know. I think last year there was one, there was Philips Manx, but I think they also had a regular another Manx. Okay. Puff the Magic Drakkon. This guy owns a Draken actually looking for a sports car more daily drivable than the Draken. I drove a 2016 GT3RS and I loved it. I would have pulled the trigger but I actually like a convertible. I rode in a Spider RS and hated the sound. Boxster GTS 4.0 was fine. Should the Z06 convertible be a contender? Will I miss it not being a Porsche? Okay. Okay. Interesting. I think two things. One, you could get a 911 GTS or Turbo Cabriolet and that would be really fucking nice. Or a Targa GTS which would be really fucking nice. So Those are good. Z06 convertible is fabulous. Will you miss it not being a part of Porsche? I think it provides an excellent driving experience that doesn't need to be a Porsche in order to be an excellent driving.

[B]

Yeah. Is this the car he's driving around right now like a Draken Spider?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I think the Corvette will still feel like a huge step up in luxury quality, etc. Yeah, I think the Corvette is great fitment and whatever. So I think they're really nice cars and the driving experience is Fantastic from the Z06. They sound amazing. Yeah, they sound incredible.

[A]

And you don't actually need the confidence convertible because the coupes are also convertibles. Like don't forget that the roofs come off the fucking hardtop ones and go in the trunk. So you know, if you. I think the convertibles are cool. I like the power top in those. I like the head buttress things. Like I think it looks nice but like you can say you don't necessarily have to get the convertible.

[B]

But the answer should it be a contender? Yes, you should definitely go try one.

[A]

I think we just. Sometimes you're J.D. vance and sometimes you're the couch. Thoughts on sim racing cafes do you think the growing availability of sim racing cafes have anything to do with the increase in racetrack closures as you can get 70% of the experience for fractions of the price.

[B]

I wouldn't say 70%.

[A]

I would disagree with, with that. I. I've never been to a sim racing cafe.

[B]

My wife went to one with for a work thing. It was more like a Dave and Buster's but only with F1 Sims. I think what we're seeing is just the like video game cafe Market moving to where people are. So sim racing's popular and they go, I mean, it used to be first person shooter stuff. It's. It used to. I don't know, Dave and Buster's with all those games. So they go, okay, if people like sim racing, why not just try and make it a social thing? There was the one next to cxc. I don't know if it's still there, but it was exactly what it was. It was a bunch of. It was like 12 of their simulators. They had some bar food and drinks and stuff. And the idea was you'd go down there with your friends and hang out and you'd race each other.

[A]

Yeah, I think racing is very expensive. I think developers can make more money using land for other things than some racetracks in rural areas and secondary market. I don't think there is a substitute for the real thing, although I do think this technology that they just showed us is promising. Though it remains unclear how this technology could be applied to a more video game like sim where you are driving in traditional cars from real automakers and traditional tracks and things like that. It remains unclear how it translates, but the physics engine is there, I think, or closer. And I don't think it's 1 to 1. I don't think it's 1 to 1. I would. I'd hang out with my friends at a sim Racing cafe. But like, I'm never gonna be the one who's like, hey guys, let's like go down to the sim Racing cafe.

[B]

I think it really depends on where it's located. Like, how hard is it to get there? Because one of the benefits of sim stuff is you can do it from your house, but now, like, you gotta get in the car and drive to this thing and, you know, go see your friends when you could just hop online and talk to them. So that really depends on Geol location.

[A]

Yeah. All right, guys, we're gonna save these last questions for the next show because Zach has to go to a very important appointment in just a minute. But thank you everyone for listening. As always, we appreciate our patrons for such good questions. Get in on the [e-mail] the Smoking Tire Podcast. You can get the show early, you can get the show live, you can ask questions for the show, you can get extra show, get the show ad free, all of that good stuff. And support your favorite podcast while you're at it. We will see all of Yalls next week. Bye.