Road Rage; ZF Autos get a Clutch Pedal??; Crown Vic Race; Acadia Review

Summary

The Smoking Tire Podcast — Road Rage; ZF Autos Get a Clutch Pedal??; Crown Vic Race; Acadia Review

Date: May 14, 2026
Hosts: Matt Farah & Zack Klapman

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, Matt and Zack dive into a wide range of automotive topics with their trademark mix of humor, insight, and storytelling. Highlights include Matt’s Pacific Northwest road trip (with plenty of travel and road rage stories), prep for the upcoming Cletus Crown Vic race in Connecticut, a hands-on review of the GMC Acadia, a mind-bending discussion about hacking ZF automatic transmissions to add clutch pedals, and their always-entertaining audience Q&A on everything from underrated cars to drifting hacks, watches, and future car trends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Crown Vic Race Prep & "Oval Racing Anxiety"

Timestamps: 03:50 – 07:15

• Matt and Zack are confirmed participants in the Cletus Crown Vic “New England 900” race at Stafford Speedway on July 17th.
  • Amusement and mild panic about the driver roster (most are YouTubers and oval-racing regulars):
    “They’re probably more famous than us almost for certain.” (Matt, 05:35) “Everyone here probably has more oval racing experience than we do.” (Zack, 07:15)
• Nervous anticipation about “contact racing” versus their usual no-contact endurance events.
• Anecdote about recent NASCAR shenanigans and self-inflicted “road rage” incidents.

2. The NASCAR Truck Series & Global Racing Oddities

Timestamps: 08:34 – 14:49

• Discussion about the peculiarity and history of the NASCAR Truck Series.
• Segue into South American truck racing (Copa Truck), with Matt marveling at the design and madness:
  • “Why isn’t there a Drive to Survive about this shit?” (Matt, 14:18)
• Consideration of how wild it would be to see these events in the U.S.

3. Pacific Northwest Road Trip & GMC Acadia Review

Timestamps: 15:12 – 23:58

• Matt’s honest review of the rental GMC Acadia:
  • Spacious and comfortable but with underwhelming power delivery (“Just a lot of fucking— a lot of nothing.” —Matt, 20:30)
  • Vague, fake paddle shifters that do literally nothing (“They do absolutely nothing.” —Matt, 21:38)
  • Annoying vibration due to an out-of-balance wheel
• Glowing praise for the driving roads and landscapes of Washington and Oregon:
  • “All the roads are bangers…as close as you could probably get to New Zealand in America.” (Matt, 22:53)
• Logistics of finding open roads after winter and the unique alpine/swiss-german themed town of Leavenworth, WA.

4. Cautionary Road Rage Tale

Timestamps: 33:01 – 37:17

• Matt recounts witnessing a classic road rage chain reaction involving:
  • A “hugs not drugs” Kia driver, a botched evasive maneuver, a brutal brake check, and a hit-and-run by a Pontiac Grand Prix.
• Takeaway: Some people care so little about their cars they will “win” a road rage battle by simply leaving after being hit.
  • “This dude let this fucking lady smash into the back of him and then went, you know what, that’s cool.” (Matt, 36:35)

5. Morning Canyon Runs & Wild Commuter Driving

Timestamps: 37:17 – 39:03

• The hosts reflect on the wild “Palmdale 500,” where LA commuters in junkers drive more recklessly than any car reviewer.
  • “Do not do…double yellow passes into blind corners…We should just go up there and…count the fucking double yellow passes.” (Matt, 38:17)

6. Announcements & Live Events

Timestamps: 40:24 – 43:15

• Detroit Dream Cruise: Live Smoking Tire Podcast with Christian James Hand announced for August 13th at Garage 248.
• Special merch and possible guests teased.
• PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) through Big Sur has reopened—drive it while you can!

7. Tech Deep-Dive: Hacking ZF 8-Speed Autos with a Clutch Pedal

Timestamps: 44:02 – 53:15

• Revelation about aftermarket systems (e.g., “Turbo Lamik”) allowing a ZF 8HP automatic to be controlled with a “fake” clutch pedal:
  • Enables clutch kicks & more manual-style control—primarily of interest to drift and performance enthusiasts.
  • “It is a clutch kickable fucking eight speed automatic torque converter gearbox.” (Matt, 46:53)
• Discussion of how this tech could democratize drift car builds and represent a middle ground between autos and expensive sequential boxes.
• Cost breakdown: About $2,500 for the swap kit, plus a pedal solution.
• Zack speculates about durability under racing conditions.

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8. Audience Q&A Highlights

Practical Car Talk

• Sliding Doors on SUVs
  Why not? — Image and style are the main limiters; in Europe, sliding rear doors are more accepted (59:41).

• Best “Under $50k” Sounding Cars
  Choices: Mustang GT, GR Corolla, Civic Type R, Nissan Z.
  “You kind of have to tune it to make it sound good.” (Matt, 71:27)

• GT350 Market
  GT350 prices holding firm, seen as a “safe place to park money.”
  “...Both Rs. And one with half the miles was sold two days ago for 75 grand. Wow. So $25,000 more for half the miles.” (Zack, 73:58)

Watch & Cultural Tangents

• Most Complicated Watches
  Deep dive into Patek’s Grandmaster Chime (Jay Z sighting) and the engineering required for $3M+ watches (65:13–66:19).
• Custom Car/Watch Synergies
  Some luxury watch brands allow bespoke orders for the ultra-rich, but custom specs aren’t common at scale.

Oddball/Thoughtful Inquiries

• Restomodding Newer Cars
  “I wouldn't need to do anything newer than 20 years.” (Matt, 92:23)

• Why are ‘Terminator’ Cobras More Revered than S197 GT500s? Technical/historical reasons: first IRS, forced Ford’s hand after a horsepower lawsuit, better to drive vs. the later, heavier, under-tired GT500s. (90:00–91:50)

Fun One-liners:

• “Driving Crocs would be fucking sick. I would love to collaborate with Crocs for like a rounded heel.” (Matt, 85:24)
• “Just Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland—the time zones!” (Zack, 88:29, joking about speccing custom world time watches)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We’ve been doing no contact racing for a while. It’s about time we do some contact racing, dude.”
  — Matt Farah (07:42)
• “They don’t really give a shit… But I was so out of touch I didn’t even realize that there was like an actual NASCAR race attached to that probably the next day or something.”
  — Matt Farah (11:04)
• “All the roads are bangers… such a banger. Like, really, really, really, really, really good.”
  — Matt Farah (22:53)
• “Hugs not drugs is immediately to our right… [Pontiac Grand Prix] does a moose test maneuver. Hugs not drugs lays on the horn… Grand Prix is having fucking zero of this. Jams on the brakes… hugs not drugs… smashes into his back bumper. Grand Prix does not… just dips.”
  — Matt Farah (35:00–36:10)
• “You can now control a ZF 8-speed with a DIY clutch pedal. That is just fucking crazy.”
  — Matt Farah (44:02)

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Useful Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Crown Vic/New England 900 race chat | 03:50–07:15 | | NASCAR/Global truck racing tangents | 08:34–14:49 | | Acadia road trip and regional driving | 15:12–23:58 | | Leavenworth pseudo-Alpine town story | 30:11–31:42 | | The “hugs not drugs” road rage story | 33:01–37:17 | | Announcing Detroit Dream Cruise live show | 40:24–43:15 | | ZF 8-speed “clutch pedal” hack deep-dive | 44:02–53:15 | | Cars that sound good under $50k | 71:14–72:26 | | GT350/GT500 market chat | 72:49–74:48 | | Luxury watch engineering marvels | 65:13–66:19 |

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Conclusion

This episode of The Smoking Tire is packed with road tales, technical deep-dives, great banter, and listener interaction. Matt and Zack’s chemistry shines as they jump from offbeat motorsports to the most practical car nerdery, all while keeping it light and engaging. Whether you’re after pro driving insight, want to hear the latest racing tech hack, or just enjoy amusing on-road war stories, this is a highly entertaining and information-rich episode.

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Transcript

[A]

What's up, everybody? Matt Farah here. Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by off the Record. You love off the Record just as much as I do based on the number of emails I get from people who tell me that off the Record absolutely took care of them when they got pulled over and accused of doing something bad in their car. That's right. If you get a ticket for anything big or small, don't plead guilty. Get off the Record. They will connect you with a qualified attorney in that jurisdiction who will fight that ticket on your behalf and most of the time, get it reduced so you don't have points on your record. You don't have those problems with insurance premiums going up, problems with your employment, et cetera, et cetera. Go to offtherecord.com TST that's offtherecord.com Tst to get 10% off all legal services booked through off the Record, one more time, offtherecord.comtst.com all right, folks, on today's episode, I recount my Pacific Northwest road trip, and we spent an awful lot of time talking about road rage. Zach and I prepare for our Cletus Crown Vic race in Connecticut in July, and we learn that actually an automatic transmission can be a manual. It turns out the trans. Are. Trans. That's just fucking crazy. On the Smoking Tire podcast, they're turning the Trans. Trans. They're turning the. Get the out of here.

[B]

I'm sorry, I cannot.

[A]

I'm sorry, I. No, I cannot. No, I'm sorry, I cannot get the out of here. That would be bely.

[B]

Serge.

[A]

Serge. Serge S. What's that?

[B]

Serge S. Oh, the. The. The French guy.

[A]

B. Shit.

[B]

Not Gerardo.

[A]

Not Gerard. Jesus Christ.

[B]

Bronson.

[A]

Bronson. Bronson Pinchot. Yeah, Bronson. Bronson is a. First name is. Hell, yeah.

[B]

He was just. He was everywhere. He was like, I'm the French guy.

[A]

Yeah, He. He crushed it in the mid-1980s.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

All cameos all day.

[B]

Yeah, just.

[A]

Yeah, right. Best supporting.

[B]

He's probably a lead in something we didn't see.

[A]

Yeah. Perfect Strangers.

[B]

Oh, I didn't exactly.

[A]

It was a sitcom. Yeah.

[B]

Oh, he's balky.

[A]

But then after that, it was just play balky with different names.

[B]

Guess what his first movie ever was? Ever right out the gate? Beverly Hills Cop, Risky Business.

[A]

Oh, fuck. Right?

[B]

Huge Tom Cruise. Then Beverly Hills Cop was the third movie. Wow, that's like.

[A]

That's a career. What are his first four?

[B]

His first five movies, Risky Business, then the Pointer Sisters. Neutron Dance. That was probably video that might have. I read that part afterwards then. Beverly Hills Cop. Beverly Hills Cop. Second movie. Yeah. The Flamingo Kid. Hot Resort.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That sounds like Boobs and bikinis and a movie called Sarah Man.

[A]

So not quite Led Zeppelin levels but definitely a strong first showing.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Risky Business and second and third album took some work and then you know, got back into it in the 90s.

[A]

Shout out to Bronson Pinchot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Love you, buddy. Hi everybody. What's happening? Welcome to the program. It's. It's been. We. I have like. So I got some carryover things to talk about from last show. I have some new things I. I've learned about technology that I like, strangely enough. And dude. And we heard from Cletus business guy today.

[B]

I got the best text this morning.

[A]

Got the text. We're in the race. Zach and I are in the. What the fuck is the race called? It's a Cletus Crown Vic race, whatever it's called in Connecticut on July 17th. So you gots to be out. Anyone. Any east coast people you want to.

[B]

New England 900.

[A]

The New England nine. Is it? I hope it's not 900 laps. I will get dizzy. I don't know. What 900 watts?

[B]

Great question.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

900 laps.

[A]

Maybe it is 900 because it isn't

[B]

the track like short. Yeah, that'd be 450 miles. That'd be a long race.

[A]

I can't be right.

[B]

We gotta start working our necks out.

[A]

It's not an endurance race. It's not an endurance race. The race starts at like 7:30pm yeah.

[B]

Stafford Speedway. Stafford Speedway.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

900 cars. There has to be, I don't know, creative math.

[A]

It's just made up $900 a car. I don't know.

[B]

There's no info on how long. Doesn't matter.

[A]

I'm so it starts at 7:30pm so it can only be so long. It's not going to be a five hour race, right?

[B]

True.

[A]

It's probably like a two hour race. Or not. Maybe not even. But that's like that long of a race. Around a half mile is a lot of turning left.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For your boys here. We don't do that much turning left. Usually we turn left and then right and there's like a couple more rights or then lefts to me. Make a clockwise or counterclockwise situation. But there's typically both.

[B]

Check out this driver driver's list. Tell me if you know more than two people on it. And I say this, it informs Me that we might be a little disconnected from the driver's list. Not that these are nobodies. I think these are all probably.

[A]

They're probably more famous than us.

[B]

They probably are.

[A]

They're probably more famous than us almost for certain. Let's see.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Bolts and nuts. Burnout rivals whole deal. Wow. Is this gonna load?

[B]

Geez.

[A]

Okay, anyway. Oh, there, wait. There it was. It was there and it went away. Oh, no

[B]

good guys.

[A]

Is this. Because this is Stafford Speedway's website. Okay, There we go.

[B]

All right. Drive quickly.

[A]

LS George Cletus McFarlane. Mig Wilder. Ty. Greg Biffle. That doesn't seem right. Seems like that may be a little out of date because he's no longer with us. Clutch Pack. Zach. Cameron Johnson. Victor Alvarez. Boosted Boy Kyle. Maybe not.

[B]

That's off road recovery. That is the coolest channel. That is such a rad channel.

[A]

Jim York. Ryan Priest. Jack. Stan. Jimmy. Brad Deberti. Jimmy Oakes. Roman At. Roman Atwood. I think I know that name. I don't know why, but I think I know that name. Kevin Smith. KSR. J.H. diesel. Weston. Oh. Weston Champlin. I know. I know him. I've met that. I met that guy in Vegas.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He's. He's fucking hysterical.

[B]

I mean, anyone who that guy is.

[A]

You know who that guy is. He's the. He's the big dude who built the, like, semi truck. Like the Mad Max.

[B]

The one that drove underneath all of the things.

[A]

Drove through all that shit. Yeah, yeah, that's that guy.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

That guy's a fucking g. I can't

[B]

wait to talk to that guy. What a genius.

[A]

So. Yeah, so. So two. There's like two people. Three if you include someone who is unfortunately dead.

[B]

And everyone here probably has more oval racing experience than we do.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

This is so exciting.

[A]

Like, as they say, how hard can it be?

[B]

You just got to move them around a little bit, right? As Kurt Busch said, I am so focused on and slightly terrified.

[A]

But how many of these people have personally gotten advice from Kurt Busch about how to handle this race?

[B]

I don't know how many people know that you're allowed to push other cars around and it's totally fine.

[A]

I mean, you know, we've been doing no contact racing for a while. It's about time we do some contact racing, dude.

[B]

The NASCAR highlights from Watkins Glen. Like the trucks? No, no, the cars. The front runner race was amazing. Like, very close. But in the backfield, some guy who's very impatient, like, runs into the back of a car Coming into turn one, he's like, get out of my way. Hits that car, tries to go around him. And then his spotter's going, still on your left, still on your left. The guy, that same guy who rear ended someone, passes that car on the right, cuts across left too early, pit maneuvers himself and crashes into the tire wall.

[A]

In NASCAR top series, top or cup, whatever.

[B]

Like, very legitimate cars. But it was very funny. This guy's just real impatient. And the spotter's going, that car's still

[A]

there, just so you know.

[B]

And the guy tracks way out. Pit maneuvers himself.

[A]

Just road rage.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Fuck, yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, I love it. I love it. He road raged himself into the wall effectively.

[B]

Did you watch that? The clip I sent in the group chat. One guy went off into the grass and it was muddy and the splitter was so low it. It dug up all of the sod, made a mound, and then created a jump that the car then went off itself and ripped off the entire undertrack.

[A]

I did. I don't know if ever before has a race car built its own jump in real time. Built its own jump and then taken the jump right while building it. Like, there's gotta be a fucking Guinness record for that.

[B]

Yes. This was only done in, like, what was the show like? Go Go Gadget. Inspector Gadget. That's what this is. This is. The car drives it, puts a jump in front of its jumps, brings the jump with it. Absolutely insane.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I didn't. You know, it's so funny. I'm so out of touch. I saw on TV on the road trip I was on with Hannah, the truck series. The NASCAR truck series. It was on at a bar that Hannah and I were in on this trip. And I was like, oh, shit, they're at the Glen. I was like, look at their fucking lines. Their lines are, like, insanely wide. You know, using all the racing surface.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As long as if there's tarmac on it, fucking paint doesn't mean shit to these.

[B]

Light contact doesn't matter.

[A]

It's so funny because, like, at Cota, they really care about the track limits. Like, specifically at Coda, because all the runoffs are paved. And so, like, you have to. When it's all just paved and you could sort of theoretically just drive anywhere. Like, you have to enforce the track limits. Otherwise people are going to just drive anywhere. Like, there's no reason to not just make a straight line through the esses.

[B]

It's possible, but we talked to Jensen Button about this because he Raced there. And he said the only place they enforced it was the yeses.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The rest of it. He was like. It took him. I think he said it was like half the race just to understand that what was happening around him was allowed and, like, contact past paint, like track limits. He was like, I need this car for sure.

[A]

I mean, in fucking. When we were in wrl, they only cared about it in one place, but they did, in theory, care about it to the point where they would bring it up in all the meetings, all the drivers meetings and blah, blah. At the Glen. It's like track, grass, wall. And so, like, if there's pavement, like, you know, fuck it, like, it's not that much of an advantage. It's like in road America.

[B]

Right, Right.

[A]

Like, if the car can make it, like it's. It's grass and then wall. So, like, you might as well try.

[B]

Yeah. It's your risk, it's your reward. Totally.

[A]

They don't really give a shit. And they didn't really seem to give a shit. But I was so out of touch. I didn't even realize that there was like an actual NASCAR race, like, attached to that probably the next day or something. But I had to explain to Hannah why there is a series where they race pickup trucks that are actually nascar, which is a fun. You know, it was like one of those conversations. Like, Hannah knows. It wasn't a difficult concept to explain, but it was almost like no one had ever asked me that before. And it was almost like, you know, explain Kim Kardashian to an alien sort of thing where you have to, like, back it, you know, back it up pretty far. And I was like, all right, how far do we have to go back to explain why they're racing pickup trucks as nas? How that makes any sense at all?

[B]

I don't know how the history evolved. I just know that it's like the feeder series into Xfinity and then cup and all that stuff.

[A]

Yeah. Hannah said her company sponsored a quote racing truck in Brazil briefly. And for a minute I got extremely excited because I thought it was one of those snub nose, like, man racing semis that they race down there. And then I found out that they have a NASCAR truck like series in Brazil as well.

[B]

Oh, yeah. And it was one of those maybe Copa truck, I think is what it's called.

[A]

Maybe. Sure, that sounds right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which looks like NASCAR truck, but in Brazil.

[B]

I'm sorry, Copa truck is the one you want.

[A]

That's the one you want. The dopest shit Ever.

[B]

So is formula truck if you haven't.

[A]

Have you ever. Next time we go to CXC to like train for a race or something, after we're done fucking around with the race, have them put us in one of the semis. Because in a motion. In a motion fucking sim. Semi racing is insanity. Wow. You're bouncing like in ways because, you know, you still have the hydraulic seat. And so that's weird. It's like bouncing like crazy.

[B]

So you got. It'd be hard to feel the limits because it's all cushioned. You know, it's going through this translator.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, that'd be weird.

[A]

Yeah, it's wild.

[B]

So anyway, real quick, how cool does that look?

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Everyone imagine a cab over semi that's shorter.

[A]

AMGs.

[B]

Yeah, dude, it's got. It's got a front splitter, like, I don't know, a gtr. It's huge.

[A]

And yeah, display that in America. And don't tell. Don't tell the fucking Habibis in Beverly Hills. That's a thing that someone could possibly drive.

[B]

Really cool, dude.

[A]

Imagine like, look at the camera. Okay, imagine the lower. The lower nose of a Toyota Supra grafted onto the flat front of a European semi. That's cut. They cut the bottom half, bottom third of the cab, and then they just drop the top 2/3 lower onto it. Looks tough, dude. It looks.

[B]

So the front fenders are equal with the door handle. Like, that's how you rock the cabin.

[A]

Look at the camber on the front tires. And by the way, 4 degrees of negative camber, if not more.

[B]

And for people listening, the whole truck is gold. The whole truck is gold with side exit exhaust. This is awesome.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

That's a 2019. That's not even a 2026. We need a 2026 Cobra truck. All sponsorship money needs to be diverted to this series. Why are we even watching anything else? Why isn't there a drive to survive about this shit? Dude, these guys probably nuts. This must be one of the best spectator motorsports possible to see in person.

[B]

They're the proximity. I mean, they're so. They're side by side three wide with these huge vehicles.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, it's great.

[B]

Like, look at that. That just seems terrifying.

[A]

Three wide down the front straight.

[B]

These giant semis, I wonder how, like

[A]

15 gears, real aggressive windshield, banner game,

[B]

lot of real estate, a lot of advertising, a lot of space. You know, nascar, they charge. What is it by the square inch or something. Here they do it by the, you know, the Meter.

[A]

Okay, so I just did about 600 and something miles across around the state of Oregon, mostly Washington, but a little Oregon as well. Folks, taking a quick break today for fitbod. When you are working out, it is so easy to get into a rut and just do the same thing with your workout every day. Like before I got on my like proper fit fitness journey, I was working out. I was doing cardio like five days a week. But it wasn't until I added weight training and changing the workout each workout and changing weights, changing reps. Changing the exercises I'm doing with a trainer has helped my body get in much, much better shape, helped me avoid boredom and help shrink those plateaus on my fitness journey. And fitbot is here to help you do the same. It is an app that is like a TR trainer in your pocket. It makes working out easier because it customizes workouts based on your goals and that could be recovery, weight loss, targeting a specific muscle group, et cetera, et cetera. The app then helps you stay focused to get a better workout. It ups the intensity as you work along and it really is like having that personal trainer pushing you along the way, right? Fitbod creates a personalized workout routine based on your goals, fitness level and the available equipment. The workouts then adapt to your growth so each workout is challenging enough to push you to make progress. Fitbod then tracks your muscle recovery so you can avoid burnout and keep up that momentum. Fitbod is fine tuned by experienced, certified personal trainers to bring best practices and exercise science to you. You can level up your workouts with customized fitness plans that work for you and it's got over 1,000 demonstration videos. So level up your workout and join Fitbod to get your personalized workout plan. You can get 25% off your subscription or try the app for free for seven days at fitbod. Me tire that's F I T B o D me tire F I T B o D me tire Support is also coming in hot today from bluechew. Once you got that fit bod, then you get the bluechew. Because the future of erectile function is here, underlined, bold on the page, not dysfunction. It's not about need, my friends. It's not about you need better boners. It's about wanting awesome boners. That's what it's about. The new arousal boosting formula combines passion and performance into one tablet that dissolves under your tongue for super fast onset. No more waiting for a pill to kick in. No more moments ruined by performance anxiety. Just the results when you want when you want them. Most ED meds only focus on blood flow, but bluechew Gold goes further by combining two ingredients for blood flow with two for mental arousal and connection. So you're not just physically ready, you're actually horny. You are truly mentally horny, guys. This type of innovation is why bluechew gold is the number one brand in erectile function. The process is simple and all online. Get started [e-mail] and go for gold and ladies because mother's day was just this past weekend. If you're listening, send your man the link and make him a trophy husband with the bluechew Gold. There's like three ladies in here, so we have a potential. It's impossible. We could get 100% seat push through on this ad with women customers because there's probably four women listening to this ad. If all four of you get BlueChew that we could have 100% penetration in women, which is a very funny way I have just phrased that for an ad about sex stuff. Discover your [e-mail] special deal for our listeners right now. When you get two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for free with promo code tire. That's promo code tire. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And thank bluechew for sponsoring sponsoring the podcast promo code tire to scout the road and track northwest shift. Hannah came with me. I drove a, a GMC Acadia, which is not the worst thing you could drive, but for driving in dynamic situations, it's among the worst things you could drive. So this thing, okay, I'm gonna be nice to the GMC Acadia. If you were going to, let's just say central Florida and you wanted to rent a three row mid size suv, smaller than a Tahoe, but whole three row. This is a lovely vehicle. Spacious, the fucking tech, the carplay and shit works great. The heated seats were just about the hottest heated seats I've ever used. To the point where like someone might

[B]

actually cook a pizza.

[A]

Cook a pizza with one. And it was like, you know, space and whatever. It was fine. It was screwed together tightly like it was all right. But this engine is mad wheezy. I don't know what this thing weighs. It's got to be 5000 pounds. Big ass heavy thing this engines. A little four cylinder and just. Just nothing. Just a lot of fucking. A lot of nothing. And it required a lot of downshifting, a lot of hunting for Gears, things like that.

[B]

2.5 liter turbo, 4. Probably the same engine we had in the Blazer, probably in Montana. That was a pretty nice car. This is a good job.

[A]

This thing probably weighs 800 pounds more than that.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

You know, and so also steering wheel with paddle shifters. Right? Okay. They do nothing. They are not. They do absolutely nothing. They're full on. It's full on. It's a steering wheel from something else. And the paddle shifter does not take a fit.

[B]

It doesn't change anything.

[A]

Nothing.

[B]

Truly.

[A]

There's no drive mode in which the paddle shifters change gears up or down.

[B]

Oh, I thought you were being like, no.

[A]

No.

[B]

Embellishing like zero.

[A]

Nothing.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. Nothing. Furthermore, this particular vehicle, which was not something I could have checked when I could have foreseen when I left the rental place, had a nasty vibration beginning at about 55 miles an hour all the way up. And so, I mean, probably a wheel out of balance or something. I actually thought there might be mud into tires, Right. And there was some mud in the wheel arches. So I stopped at a self serve and really power washed the out of the wheels and suspension and everything. I could get helped it a little,

[B]

but so maybe, maybe a wheel weight fell off.

[A]

A wheel weight fell off and it got caked in mud somebody, you know.

[B]

So for like three days it was just like. Yeah, yeah, it was so Hannah, like, the trip, it didn't.

[A]

It actually wasn't like quite bad enough. And Hannah doesn't have quite enough experience with cars for her to be like, this is problematic versus, like, this is just how this car drives. And this car drives like crap. You know what I mean? Like, I could be like, this car's not supposed to be doing this. She can't really. Which it was fine. She did about half the driving washing. This is fucking a slept on part of the country. From a car enthusiasm standpoint, these roads are fucking bangers. All of them. All the roads are bangers. It's like this road trip is like as close as you could get probably to New Zealand in America. We went from lakes to beaches, to forests, to rainforest, to desert to high pine forest to literal snow, and then back down all of those back to the sea again. Like, such a banger. Like really, really, really, really, really good. One of the hotels that we're gonna be staying in the trip is like on Mount Rainier and doesn't even open until like two weeks from now. So I couldn't check it out. The road to get there was closed.

[B]

That's right. We looked at that on the map.

[A]

And I found a much. But I finally. It took me a couple of hours to figure out who it is I can call in the state of Washington to figure out, like, when these roads might open or whatever. It turns out, actually, it. The roads I need are inside the park. And I tried calling all the DOT agencies, and they just kept pinging me around like, no, this is. You're. You're in the southwest region. You need the north region. And ping. I talked to six of them. Oh. Until I got a complete circle. Eventually I was like, how about the park? And like, that was it. Actually, it was the park, so. But really, really good tarmac up there. For a place that has four seasons, like, the tarmac was exceptional. A lot of good open sweepers. But in the beginning, part of the drive, in the Oregon part of the drive or the area around Portland, leaving Portland, some very beautiful and tight technical forest driving with, like, big ferns, almost like you'd find outside of in Northern California. Kind of like that. And then, like, tons of waterfalls, tons of fucking rivers. Like, the sound of, like, water rushing is, like, everywhere. Absolutely beautiful. One of the most beautiful drives I've ever done. There are a few spots available. If you want, you can come drive with us. It's experiences.roadandtrack.com I will, of course, be there leading the drive. And I believe, barring some kind of miracle, I'll be driving an M5 Touring, which is a good car for a road trip. Admittedly holds a lot of stuff. Very comfortable. It's not like, my favorite car in the world, but the selection of press cars up there is very limited, so I'm happy with that. The other quote, there's two sporty. I cast a pretty wide net. Sporty cars are in the fleet. The only two cars that would qualify to a road and track reader as Sporty were the M5 touring and a Miata.

[B]

I knew it. I just knew it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And so I was like, dan, I got you a Miata. That's what happens. Don't ask someone to arrange the cars. They're gonna give themselves the best car.

[B]

Well, I bet there will be a road or a section where you'll want to be in the Miata. And there's a lot where you don't.

[A]

Yeah, there's a couple. And we got Portland International Raceway, which is a fun track, and we're gonna be staying at some really cool hotels. I couldn't check out the one, but I have. I check the first one. I couldn't get to Mount Rainier one and I have actually stayed for two nights at the third one and it's super, super nice. So it's gonna be a really, really fun trip. I'm, I'm extremely stoked that I get to go back and do it again. And, and Hannah and I really enjoyed the towns of Long Beach, Washington and Levitt. Leavenworth. If you go in that next photo, Leavenworth, Washington is like one of those fake Swiss villages, folks. One more quick break from the action because support is coming in from Deleteme friends. The number of people who have come up to me recently and asked me do I know of any services to help them get their information off the Internet off of data broker sites. And I have like literally three or four, including Eric, my manager here at WCCS has asked me do I know one. And boy do I. Because I know about Delete me. Because I haven't just read this ad a million times. I used delete me. In the age of AI, we are more vulnerable than ever with scammers using your personal data floating around on the Internet against you. Have you ever googled yourself and found your home address, phone number or the name of a family member? That shit be creepy. But the good news is Delete me can help because Deleteme was named the top pick for data removal services by Wirecutter. And now it's never been more affordable because our listeners can get 20% off at www.joindeleteme.com tire with code tire. Here's what you do. You sign up for Deleteme, you give them a bunch of information. I know that seems kind of counterintuitive given that you want to get your information off the Internet. But they need to know what to look for. So you tell them and then they go around and you don't hear from them for a couple days and they come back and they're like, we found your information on 10,000 websites. And then you go, oh my God. And they go, but it's only going to be like, like four clicks and a couple E signs for you to delete this stuff. So you do it, they go to work and like a month later they come back and they go, we found your data on 1,000 sites. And then you do it again and you keep it going for a couple months. Like you gotta keep it going. It's not a one time thing. Delete Me works, does all the hard work, but you gotta like let it go ongoing way and you can get an individual plan for a little over Eight bucks a month. And then you could see a reduction in phone calls, scams, spam, text messages, garbage, emails, all those annoying things. Plus genuinely much, much less likely to have your personal information used for malicious and nefarious purposes. So take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to www.joindeleteme.com tire and use promo code code tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to www.joindeLeteme.com tire and enter code tire at checkout. That's www.joindeleteme dot com tire codetire. And now back to the show. This town wanted to boost their tourism in the 60s and a guy was like, I know, Swiss Village. And so they went to Solvax, which is California's Swiss Village. And they were like, yeah, this just

[B]

this a copy of a copy Control

[A]

C, Control V or whatever the 1960s version of that was. They hired the architect, they hired the builder. We were reading about this the whole way. They hired all these people and they built themselves a. Now Solvang, California is Danish, this is Swiss German, but like, same fucking shit. It's equally. It's very much the American version of Swiss. First people that have never actually been to Switzerland or Germany. In this small photo on your phone, it looks very Alpine. It does up close, not so much

[B]

because the mountains are shorter.

[A]

The windows aren't quite right. No, not the mountains. I mean, the mountains aren't quite right either. But it's like the second story and above say Switzerland. But the ground floor of all the buildings is very much America.

[B]

I wonder if we have the regulations of ADA maybe, and also just larger doors, larger windows. That's what we do.

[A]

And it might have been converted from buildings that were already there in the 60s. Who knows? Nevertheless, the sausages were delicious. Seriously, the beer was actually proper German beer. Drinking good German beer. And we, we ate dinner at a restaurant called Carta, which is not fucking Swiss German themed. And it was unironically absolutely fucking delicious. It was a pretty good time.

[B]

Wow. Yeah, nice.

[A]

This is like. It was like two hours from Seattle. So this is like. It is literally like their Solvang for Seattle place was popping off on a Saturday.

[B]

People want to see something different. They're like, sure, this is what it looks like there. It's fine. I get it. It a little bit of whimsy.

[A]

Yeah. So we're Stopping. And this is one of our stops on the event. So it's not an overnight. It's a.

[B]

Someone in the chat asked if, you know, if you bring a partner on the trip, do they get to drive on the track also? Or is it just one person?

[A]

Yes. No.

[B]

No.

[A]

If there's two people in the group in that. With that they want to drive on track, they both get to drive. Yeah, yeah. They make accommodations for that. They would basically put, you know, there's like, the red group and the green group. That's not. They don't mean skills, anything. It's just like, you have to divide it up because there's only so many. Whatever. Right. And you would just. The car would stay and the driver would switch. Yeah. But it would. They would each get full sessions as long as the car was able to handle that. Yeah, yeah, cool. But these are. These are fucking good trips. And, like, I know the Pacific Northwest is, like, kind of far from stuff. It's hard to get to, but, like, very much, very much worth it. This was the beach, and this was called Long Beach. And this Long beach is the longest drivable beach in the country. Like, you can drive on the sand.

[B]

Oh, cool.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, you can drive on the sand. You're not allowed to do drifties.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We did not take the GMC because we had been in the car for, like, five hours, and we wanted to walk on the beach. And that was very rewarding and delightful. But people weren't. Mainly people who just wanted to drive because it's pretty deep. They wanted to just drive down to where the water was for the. I mean, not the. The depth, meaning the distance from where

[B]

you parked from parking to the water to.

[A]

Water is like a couple hundred yards. So people who wanted to go fishing would, like, drive their Forerunner down there and. And pull out the poles. But lovely place, nice people, awesome, Good food. Very much enjoyed my time up there. Cannot wait to go back. Oh, and I sort of told you about this the other day, but I saw a road rage incident play out in front of my eyes, and it was so good, because one of the people. The person that. This person. Not the person that started the road rage, but the person that started the. That sparked the road rage, had a big sticker on their back window that said hugs, not drugs, which I. I loved. In fact, at first I noticed it because I thought it said nugs, not drugs. And I was like, that's right, sir. Weed isn't drugs. But then I was like, oh, wait, no, that's just Me reading that.

[B]

Yes, that's the cursive.

[A]

So we're driving the Acadia. Hugs not drugs is immediately to our right down what you'd call a dual carriageway, two lane road. In front of us is a Fairly crappy late 1990s Pontiac Grand Prix sedan. The blobby one, the one that looked like it was just fully injection molded plastic like that one. Right. It's in front of us. All of a sudden, traffic comes abruptly to a halt in front of Pontiac Grand Prix, who clearly will not be able to brake in time and does a. What do you call it? A moose test maneuver into the other lane. Sort of. You might say it would be called cutting off Hugs not drugs if there. If it wasn't so obviously a defensive maneuver to avoid getting into a crash. Okay. Immediately hugs not drugs, lays on the horn as if he had been cut off, unprompted, lays on the horn. Grand Prix is having fucking zero of this. Jams on the brakes. One of the hardest brake checks I've ever seen that results in hugs not drugs smashing into his back bumper. And now hugs not drugs is, you know, it's a white Kia, maybe an Optima or something, Whatever, just a Kia. The front bumper is now doing that thing where only the top hinges are holding it on and it sort of

[B]

flaps like a doggy door that's being pushed open.

[A]

Yeah, you see it on drift cars once in a while. Yeah, look at push. So hugs not drugs, you know, they've been in an accident. Now he pulls over. Grand Prix does not fucking take a beat. Just dips. Yeah, just the front, the rear bumper of this car. This, this car is. This car's $2,000 on a great day. Even if it's totally straight and legit, this is a $2,000 car.

[B]

I wonder if the plastic back in the 90s also was like rubber made. Rubbermaid plastic. The fasteners were a little more expensive. They hadn't taken all the value out of them yet, so it's just more durable.

[A]

But this dude just fucking. This dude just eyes up, evaded a crash only to get honked at in a car he gives no fucks about and was absolutely having none of this person's fucking honk. And man, like, I do not endorse his behavior, but if you're gonna do it like. Like he wasn't trying to do an insurance scam, right? This dude let this fucking lady smash into to the back of him and then went, you know what, that's cool.

[B]

Fuck that. And he didn't even check the damage gone. He's like, I don't care what happened. It's about. It's about the lesson being taught here.

[A]

Slowed down just enough to get hit and was like, that's fine, and then went to work.

[B]

Do not fight that person.

[A]

Yeah, that's like these people that drive in the canyons. When we're up there doing fucking open shade. Zach and I get up there really early, both to, like, beat traffic across town and so that we can shoot the car interior's in what's called open shade. It's like, soft lights. You don't have these hard bright and shadow bits in the interior. But, like. And people will criticize us for, like, breaking speed limits, by the way. Shout out to the CHP officer fan who fucking said, what's up to me yesterday, by the way. I don't think that guy has any problem with what we're doing. But when we're up there shooting fucking open shade, we witness what we call the Palmdale 500, which is people who commute over the mountain on that road, doing the kind of speeds that we do in the worst cars imaginable with terrible tires and doing, like, crazy double yellow passes. Do not do into blind corners. Yeah, like, the shit we see up. We should just sit there. Like, one day we should go up there and, like, not film a car

[B]

and just put a GoPro head on looking up that hill.

[A]

Just sit there and just count the fucking double yellow passes. Because it's at least three or four in the half hour we're in that siding.

[B]

Yeah, all those passes are like, they're on the rain line, you know, because there's a car in the apex, so they actually go to the outside, break later, and then turn in. It is truly crazy. Box trucks, old Tacomas, you know, Camrys, whatever. Like, a lot of Econo boxes with marred paint. Just going for it, Pushing, pushing.

[A]

Like, dude, just wake up a couple minutes earlier, man. Like, whatever you're doing, like, dying for your fucking job ain't worth it, whatever you're doing, bro.

[B]

That break check story is very much like Patton Oswalt has a story where he was at a bar outside and a cowboy walked out and bumped into this very large black dude who had a cigar. And the cowboy goes, watch where you're going. And the black guy goes, I'm not going. Like, I'm staying here. You bumped into me, so you watch it. And the cowboy's wasted and tries to start a fight, and the black dude just picks him up and drops him because he's a power lifter. And then the cowboy walks away and it's like this honk was like, hey, I'm. Hey, fuck you. And the other person's like, no, I have the upper hand in so many ways.

[A]

Yes, you have fucked with the wrong person today and I am not taking it. Yeah. Falling down is not a admirable story, but it is a cathartic movie in that regard.

[B]

Oh, Michael Douglas for sure. Any movie where someone just cracks.

[A]

Yeah. So that's wild. But. So I saw that on this road trip and we're going back June. Jesus. I think it's not the 9th to the 9th or 10th to the 13th is the actual trip. Like I said, there's a couple spots left. You get to hang out at the bar with me every night and fucking. I tell you what I really think. Yeah. Tell you what I really think about stuff that's. That's what you're paying for on this trip is not the hotels and the food and the racetrack. It's so I can tell you what

[B]

I really tell them. All the secrets you left out of the video reviews and that you left out of the podcast.

[A]

100%, dude. 100%.

[B]

What do you really think about the Porsche boxer Spider?

[A]

Mm mm. Comes better in pink. The. Oh, another announcement. I'm 99% sure this is a go. 99%. There's only like, maybe like one thing that could derail it at this point. Detroit Woodward Dream Cruise Thursday live smoking tire podcast with Christian James hand at Garage 248 in Royal Oak. It's gonna be a fucking good time. The tickets will include snacks and bevs. Wink winks. That means cocaine and whiskey. Piles of cocaine.

[B]

Cocaine's a snack too.

[A]

248 garage. Did I say garage? 248. I don't know if I got it right, but 248 garage in Royal O. Been talking to them. We got it all lined up. We got things organized over there. So it's going to be Thursday night of Woodward Dream Cruise. I believe that is the 13th. August. Thursday. August 13th. Yeah. Christian Hand's going to fucking crush it.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

We have. We're going to have special Detroit themed fucking merch. Dream Cruise themed merch. We're going to have maybe some special guests come in to chat. Chat some of our Detroit heads and it's going to be a fucking good time. So I. I don't have the ticket link just yet. It's gonna be. I just found out this morning. Thank God. These have these Fucking guys have a Eventbrite account so I don't have to, I don't have to make another subscription. So we'll have tickets soon. This place, it's a. It's like a car storage and social club. I like their vibe. I talked to Douglas who, who owns the Journey for like an hour on the phone the other day. Guy gets it, I'm down, dude.

[B]

Shout out.

[A]

That's the room we're gonna use. They're gonna pull all the cars out of there. The stage will be at the back by that roll up door. And we got TVs, we got sound sick. We're gonna have. It's gonna be. It's only gonna be like, like 125, 130 capacity. So a little smaller than the, than the Texas shows.

[B]

So when the ticket link goes up, jump on it. Fucking hit myself.

[A]

Get on it. Detroit, Midwest, Midwest people come on down and we're gonna be hanging out for Dream Cruise. So that'll be going up soon. That'll be. I can't wait to do. To do live show in Detroit. It's gonna be Detroit. Like they have a fucking sense of humor in Detroit. These are awesome people there. So I'm extremely stoked about that. Also in important news, did you know that PCH is open? Big Sur. PCH through Big Sur is open. I don't know exactly the date it opened, but all of a sudden someone the other day was like, hey, did you know it was open? And I look absolutely.

[B]

Is January? I guess.

[A]

Was it January?

[B]

Yeah. Wow.

[A]

Oh, I haven't been paying attention. So I haven't gone up there. But it is open. And I guess if I didn't know, maybe other people don't know either. So now you know PCH is open. You should go drive it while you can because it's like never open for more than like a year. Very true.

[B]

Yeah. Like drive it now before the rainy season arrives. That's usually when it has a problem. You don't want to be there for that.

[A]

So.

[B]

What an amazing drive. But the road changes so much from bottom to top. Like just gets super tight, twisty. Yeah, it's cool.

[A]

It's very fun and you should drive it. But if you're. And if you're going to car week, you should go that way. But if you're, if you're not, you should come to car. You should come to Detroit to the Woodward Dream Cruise and hang out with us. And before we go to questions, because we do have a bunch. I just learned another thing I just learned that. I'm sure other people have known. Did you know that the, the 8 speed ZF gearbox, the 8 GP 70 or whatever it's called, right there is like a hack for it now that can essentially make it an on demand manual. So there's a thing that they sell. Oh, fucking. There's a name for this computer and I can't remember the name of it. You're gonna find it in two seconds. I'm sorry, I don't have the link right at hand, but it's a computer that can hack the gearbox and you can effectively put a fake clutch pedal. Now it's an automatic still. You have to press the brake pedal to put it from park into drive. And you can use paddle shifters or leave it in D and you can drive it like an automatic. Separately, the ZF gearbox has a torque converter. So still. Right, it's an automatic. But with this hack you can also like control a bunch of other shit that they don't normally let you control. Now I don't know about like the longevity of this, but this, a couple people have now done it where it's sort of built into this computer that controls the gearbox. You can put, you can then install a clutch pedal. What? Right. And you, you put a clutch pedal in.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And in one, in like one video Thad sent me, someone had put in a very professional looking clutch pedal. It looked almost oem, right. And did it in a streetcar and another video. It was like a fucking drift car. Right. And in the drift car, they actually used a gas pedal as the fake clutch pedal. Okay, you following me?

[B]

Kind of.

[A]

There's a gas pedal on the right.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then the normal brake.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then, and then about where there would be a clutch pedal, there's another gas pedal. Now that gas pedal is a fake digital clutch and it does the things that clutches can do.

[B]

So just as full disengagement, it doesn't disengage.

[A]

It engages the clutch pack inside the gearbox, disengages it so you can clutch kick, you can separate, you separate the gearbox. It opens, opens it just like a clutch, but it's not the clutch like a manual, there's a bunch of clutch packs that are for different gears within the. It opens those.

[B]

So is the, is it pretty much used for drift folks? Like, because you still have the paddles, do you still have the same electronic shifter?

[A]

Correct.

[B]

Okay, so basically you can clutch kick the car using an automatic, which opens up the market for more drift cars instead of having to get the Manual, Okay.

[A]

It is a clutch kickable fucking eight speed automatic torque converter gearbox.

[B]

It's like a discount sequential box, essentially.

[A]

Yes, it's the fucking gearbox that we race with that survives endurance racing and all that other shit. And now I don't know how long it lasts if you're doing this a lot, particularly because you're opening the clutches for purposes of clutch kicking. Right. So who knows how long it will last if you're doing this all the time. But it is apparently possible and not all that difficult for someone who knows how to install a computer and a clutch pedal to make this work. 8 HP the world is this website and in the frequently asked questions tab it offers what the 8hp swap kits are. So. And I don't know anything about the reputation of this company, it's not necessarily an endorsement, it's just that this is where in the faq, like, because Thad sent me like long videos and podcasts and all this and I was like, dude, just something quick. So the FAQs in here are like the, the, the transmission controllers are called the Turbo Lamic or the Max ecu. Turbo Lamic offers the most comprehensive features including launch mode and virtual clutch control. So that's what it's called. T U R B U O L A M I K Turbo Lamic. And so with these swap kits you can, this website is to swap the 8 hp into other cars. I think with the Turbo Lamic controller you can just hack the gearbox when it's in a car that it's come with.

[B]

Here we go. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Right. So if you've got a BMW or a Chrysler or something that's already got

[B]

the gearbox, 8hp is A. About putting that transmission in a Supra. A Mark 4 supra. NSE 300 is 300. Basically Toyota stuff. Here we go.

[A]

Yeah, but this is, this is pretty cool, huh?

[B]

That's pretty rad. I mean, yeah, if you can just go to the junkyard, get a ZF8 speed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or you buy a car that already has one.

[A]

What is the, what do they have products for? So it's just a computer. It's a wiring harness. Here's a Supra. So you could do it for a Sup. You could do it for a modern Supra. You could do with an automatic and make a clutch kickable automatic.

[B]

Yeah. So I mean the whole hardware, computer, wiring, everything is 2,500 bucks.

[A]

And then you have to figure out what your fake clutch pedal will be.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But like, kind of interesting, isn't it.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I wonder. Very curious if people know about this in the comments. Like, how does it hold up to racing? How does it hold up to drifting?

[A]

Yeah. There's the DCT clutch simulator remote.

[B]

Oh, this is. Yeah, this is one of the things.

[A]

But Porsche sort of did this with the DCT Right. In the GT cars where if you tug the paddles together you can clutch neutral, which I think would be a fun. I actually might potentially like that in a Supra or a BMW. Better than a fake pedal. I don't hate the tug. Both paddles to clutch kick.

[B]

I mean, I think it works in some situations, but there will be times like, you know, if you're drifting and you need to, you know, clutch kick mid corner and the wheel is turned and the pat. Where are the paddles right now? That could be a little more challenging

[A]

if you're doing competitive drifting. Absolutely.

[B]

Or just for fun sometimes. Depending on your power. It depends on your power level, your engine. But if I was.

[A]

If I was putting this in a streetcar, I might just use this computer to add that ability than. And rather than adding an actual pedal.

[B]

Very. Oh, right. Very. Just physical occasional burnouts and clutch drop stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Weird.

[A]

Neat.

[B]

Very neat. Like, what a cool possible solution to if people want to build a drift car. And they're like, well, the manuals always cost a premium. There's not as many of them, obviously. Like this opens up that whole market. Yeah. If they work for competitive stuff.

[A]

Kind of interesting.

[B]

I mean, this is definitely cheaper than buying a sequential box. Like what's the cheapest just, you know, sequential transmission cost?

[A]

I have no idea.

[B]

I don't know. I feel like. I feel like the good ones are in the tens.

[A]

It's gotta be. Yeah.

[B]

Versions are like six to eight.

[A]

It's gotta be ten grand. Yeah.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

That's just kind of a. Kind of a neat thing I've never heard of before. And of course Thaddeus found it because the kind of thing Thaddeus would find.

[B]

He's. Yeah, he's been very interested in the ZF8 speed swap into what he sent me. Someone put one in an E92.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And like E92, I think E92. And he's like, this is pretty cool. And you could do it in the. In the E46. They're just making it work with lots of BMWs.

[A]

Yeah. Well, remember the. They were doing it with the DCT before that. The guy at Pikes Peak has the e. Had the E30 with the BMW DCT in it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But it was a 2J. It was a 2JZ with a fucking BMW DCT in an E30.

[B]

Yeah. In a wide body.

[A]

Yeah. It was nuts.

[B]

Psychotic hill climb. E30 engineering student.

[A]

Of course that car fucking rolled. Everything about that was tens across the board. I don't care how it did in the race, that's a winner. But this is neat. I'd love to. If somebody in California has a drift car with this in it, I would really like to try it.

[B]

Definitely.

[A]

I will host you it at Willow Springs as my guest and we can come play.

[B]

Super cool, man. I love just the constant ingenuity of people. People.

[A]

So clever, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I like it a lot. And it does. I mean it makes the. It makes automatic equipped JDM cars more desirable because now you don't have to turn it into a manual. You could get it throw out whatever slush box is in there. Do you know, get one of these out of a Dodge or a Chrysler or whatever.

[B]

The transmission's in everything.

[A]

Yeah, they're all set on that other side. Like which ones to use for the swaps. No, go back to the FA. The FAQs. Where were those? Oh, the FAQ page there had there. Right now we offer the Supra one with the Dodge gearbox, the Soarer with the Dodge and. Yeah, so they're all using the Dodge gearboxes. Those are. That's got to be the strong ones, right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because they're in like the Hellcat and stuff. Whoa.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

So. Yeah.

[B]

Neat, huh? Yeah, that's really neat. That's really neat.

[A]

All right, let's go to the people. Right?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I think it's that. Is it that time? Yeah, I think it is. Certainly it's because I'm out of things on my list. We've got a few from last week, of course, if you want to ask questions for the live show and then watch them on the live show or get the show the same day it goes up. Get the show without ads. Get extra show. Which by the way, we're recording on Friday, I think so, aren't we? Pro driver show. Pro champ show is gonna be this Friday. And exclusive early access to collabs and merch projects such as the Berry Canyon that I am wearing right now. Actually, if anyone left in the Patreon, I think the remaining units, I think there's about. I wanna say like 25, I think of the hundred, I think our patrons got about 75 of them. The remaining are gonna get offered to the public. So if. If you do want One, if you were on the fence, if you were holding out for that AP Swatch collab, and then you realized that it was obviously going to be a pocket watch if Carl was here today. I don't like to speak for the dead, but Carl spoke on the record to me many, many, many times about pocket watches. And Carl would laugh at everybody buying that fucking AP Swatch pocket watch watch. That's all I'm saying. He really.

[B]

That's great. Someone had a question about it and you answered it.

[A]

He would laugh at it. And I, I think it. I think the same thing. Like, I understand what they're both doing, but I think that. I think the problem is if you. If you. If someone figures out how to put the thing in a wristwatch, it looks an awful lot like the expensive AP ceramic ones. And so people who have the really expensive AP ceramic ones might be a little.

[B]

I'm looking at it. This looks terrible.

[A]

It's not great. And what, that it's a pocket watch?

[B]

I just. Yeah, I don't think it works as a pocket watch.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I also. I think if this thing is what makes pocket watches all of a sudden trendy, then it will be like a shameless, just branding consumerism of how to get anything with an apartment brand on it for, you know, regular people money.

[B]

Yeah. Trippinon Adas asked if this was a recession indicator. I don't think I'd go. I wouldn't go that far. But I think pocket watches a lot of times look really nice because they're just so slim. Like, they're slim and it's just a simple circle and there's like, I don't know, the smooth pebble shape to them without. Without the strap, without the housing that you attach. So isolated. I think they look nice, but obviously they're very inconvenient. It's like having your phone in your pocket as your watch.

[A]

Yeah. Pocket watch. It's called your phone, actually. It's, you know, But I mean, if you.

[B]

I think if you dress the right way, they work as an accent for that, but not as a really functional watch, in my opinion.

[A]

To me, it's. The Labubu people are going to hang them on their backpacks.

[B]

Right. So it's not in your pocket. It's hanging out there. Yeah.

[A]

I guarantee you the number one place to spot these things is going to be around the handle of a Louis duffel, which, to me, the Louis duffel is a joke of a product because it's essentially made of plastic, not leather. That's just the print like my dad used to talk so much about. Like the trunks like that they brought in the Titanic and shit. Those Louis trunks, that's a different story. Them shits are made in Italy and France by but the duffels that you see everybody carrying around the airport. And them shits are made of plastic.

[B]

They're garbage because they have to be more durable for getting thrown around.

[A]

No, no. That Beckett Simon bag I have, that shit's made of leather I carry all over the world. It's money. No, Louie's trash, dude. But they're gonna see them hanging from the fucking Louis bags for sure. Let's see. Poop to sample. That's pretty funny. I haven't been able to drive a GT4 or Spider with the shorter gearing. But honestly, don't mind the. The OE gearing. I did it. I had an S2000, did a rear end final gear swap and felt like I was having to shift too much, which made the car actually slower. Is the gearing more set up for the 4.5? So no, here's the thing. You're really not. It's not that much shorter. First. It's not. The final drive ratio is different because it shortens all the gears the same amount. The gear set in the Spiders, at least there's different gear sets you can get. The one I use, it leaves first, it leaves sixth alone. So your creep and your cruise are stock. They're the same as stock. And in between, it changes the ratios individually in a way that is just more optimized. So in the canyons, yes, you're shifting a little more than you otherwise would. But the problem with the stock car is you're not shifting enough.

[B]

And you don't end up shifting like a hill climb rally car where you watch them get into six by the time they're at 90 miles per hour. It's not like that.

[A]

No, it just makes the gearing more like a normal car.

[B]

I feel like it makes the gearing what it would be if Porsche was not restricted by EU noise and MPG regulations and emissions. Because that's part of why the gearing is so damn tall and everything.

[A]

Yeah, possibly. So I don't know anyone who's done the gears and regretted it. Whereas there's definitely people that I know who have done final drive ratios and ended up with some unintended consequences.

[B]

We know two people at least who have done the gears that did not do the engine. And they love it.

[A]

They love it. If they do the gears, a light flywheel and, like, the plenum and the exhaust, like, you're 60% of the way to the engine, honestly, in terms of, like, actual enjoyment. Sound deadening my car so no one can hear me cry. Why does nobody put sliding doors on an SUV? They do in, like, Europe. Sliding doors is like 50% of what makes minivans more practical. It seems like a common sense upgrade. It ain't about practical. It's about image and perception. Sliding doors make people think minivan minivans are for losers.

[B]

Probably also more complicated to construct because now you have a sliding mechanism and a brace mechanism on the flank of the car instead of, like, hinge, you know? Yeah. Maybe hinge is a simpler thing.

[A]

I don't know if you probably sorted that by now.

[B]

It seems like more parts, but every

[A]

major company's built a sliding door on something.

[B]

I think it also makes the side of the vehicle look worse.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Having some sort of cut where the door can move depending on where it is.

[A]

But like, in Europe, they have a lot of the. A lot of cars that heat would absolutely be sold with just normal doors where the back door is a sliding door. I think that may be for easier access to a baby seat.

[B]

It's definitely easier ingress, egress, for sure.

[A]

It's easier to get things in and out of a back seat if that door is sliding out of the way than if it's just open, for sure. So it may be okay. We're not as obsessed with style, but this is a more practical thing. And maybe I don't think in Europe they have the stigma towards van, like, cars that they have here. Here. Like, I don't know what it'll take for, like, vans to be cool in America, like, ever again. Id Buzz couldn't really do it. And that's about the best we got.

[B]

Let's see, the 26 Carnival they call an MPV. Not a. Yeah, it looks kind of like an SUV, but it's got a sliding door. The Toyota century. So there's a few out there, but we don't have them.

[A]

Two in the Ruby, one in the star says, if you could have a watchmaker design and build a car, who would you choose and what would they produce? I mean, I would love to see Richard Mille build an actual sports car. I mean, their watches. Regardless of what you think about how they look, they're certainly not for everybody, and most of them are not for me. But the material science, the engineering, there's a lot. There is a lot to that.

[B]

Probably a reason they sponsor a lot of F1 drivers, you look at the car, you look at the watch, you go, yeah, that kind of makes sense.

[A]

I mean, all of their athletes and whatever influencers or whatever that they represent or they represent them. However you're supposed to say that they wear a watch to do activities where you're specifically told not to wear watches. Tennis, golf, shooting, racing, cycling. These are activities that if you go on all the forums, people literally say, don't wear an automatic watch while doing this because it'll mess up the watch. And so Richard Mille goes, oh, you think so? And they build watches that are for these activities. And so like that kind of like technological achievement. I think their cars would look weird as hell.

[B]

Who makes the crazy watches that are like $500,000? With the crazy complication movement, Jacob, it'd be interesting to see what they come up with. It might look like the Blasty Brothers car.

[A]

Well, I wrote for Road and Track this month about the Jacob and company, the new Bugatti watch, which is. We find ourselves at a hilarious crossroads because historically there have been many car themed watches and most of them are shitty. The only really good car themed watches are the tag Carrera, the Rolex Daytona, the tag Monaco or Heuer Monaco. And that's kind of it. There's not a lot of other car themed watches that like really work. Most of them are fucking Chopard Millimelia is pretty good, but many of them are corny as fuck. We now have Bugatti has released a watch themed car. They've fucking inverted that shit. So we now have the Tourbillon, a car named after a watch complication that has visible fucking watch gears doing the dials. They fucking flipped that. And so now Jacob has now come out with a Jacob Bugatti Tourbillon.

[B]

The watch version of the watch.

[A]

The watch version of the car version of the watch. We're in the fucking metaland for billionaires now. And so this thing is like a zillion complications. And you know, it looks kind of stupid, but it actually, if you think about the engineering behind it, it's really incredible. The complications of The Jacob Co. Bugatti Tourbillon. Themed after the Bugatti Tourbillon.

[B]

I wonder what this will cost.

[A]

It's like $800,000 or something. It's fucking insane. It's an unfathomable amount of money. Although hilariously, this morning I was browsing on Reddit cause I still do browse on Reddit once in a while and there was a post, there was a picture of Jay Z, who is a fucking insane watch collector, wearing the Patek Grandmaster chime, which is like a $3 million watch. There's like maybe 20 people in the planet that can build a watch like this. It has like 20 complications and is. Dude, it has 1400 parts. Okay, think about this. The Renaudus Canyon, okay. Is 41 millimeters. Okay. And it's 11 millimeters thick. Okay. The Grandmaster chime. And this has. I want to say this has like 240something parts in it. Okay. The Grandmaster chime is a millimeter, half a millimeter thinner than this and 4 millimeters smaller in diameter than this.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And it has 1400 parts in it.

[B]

How many parts do yours have again?

[A]

Two. Like 250.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Like so. So. And actually I saw this Reddit thread where the first comment was like, honestly, why would something like this be worth so much money? They don't know watches. And also they. Because it's fucking. To say someone's Watch is worth $3 million, you might as well say, you know what I mean, they came from space or something. But then, you know, and it was a bunch of snarks. And then a guy who knew a lot about watches, I assume it's a guy, wrote a very lengthy explanation and you just saw a flood of comments underneath it that were like, I never cared about watches at all, but this is fucking crazy. And now I'm like researching the engineering of like crazy watches.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And so double faced watch. Yeah, you flip it. Oh my God, it's got complications on the back. The shit spins, dude. Yeah, it's 20 complications.

[B]

It's got like eight features.

[A]

The way go to the list of complications. If you scroll down.

[B]

I'm sure I zoomed in on this.

[A]

Oh, you did. I'm sorry. There is

[B]

the.

[A]

The list of complications is so extraordinary and it's shit. You know, half of it is stuff that you never use, but it's. It also is a grand and petite sonnery. It's like a full chiming mechanism. So like when you press the button, it just chimes the timeout on, you

[B]

know, like your own personal church bell.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Where does it see so chiming? Does it have it.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

There, there go down grand complications. So it's. Oh, it doesn't even.

[B]

It's not even on the website.

[A]

Yeah, it does not even. Oh, that's it on the right. Grandmaster chime.

[B]

Oh, this is it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, man, I was looking at the wrong picture before.

[A]

Well, this one just has jewels on it.

[B]

But it's.

[A]

But. But you could get it. Get it with or without the baguettes. But I just want to see. Read the list of complications because that's important. It's got to have it. Case to the movement. Click, expand the movement. All right, here we go. The list of complications. Grand and petite sonnery. That's a chiming mechanism. Minute repeater with chime on three classic gongs. Strike work mode display. Now that's a display dial that tells you where what mode the chiming is in. Alarm with time strike alarm on off indication aperture date repeater movement and strike work power reserve indication. So it has two barrels of power. One for the movement to actually tell the time and then a separate barrel that just powers the chiming function. Strike work isolator indication. That's a function to separate the two barrels. Second time zone Day night indicator for the second time zone. Instantaneous perpetual calendar. So that does the day, the date, the month and the year until the year 2100. So it knows leap years. It knows the day of the week, everything. You never have to reset it for 100 years or for 74 years.

[B]

Good Lord.

[A]

Day date on both dials. Month and leap year by the hands. 4 digit year display. Moon phase. 24 hour minute sub dial. Crown position indicator.

[B]

No stopwatch.

[A]

Dude, click on. But that. Can I. This is powered by springs and gears.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's no. You can't punch in on that. Oh, what a shame to punch in on the movement because you can see.

[B]

Oh, there you go.

[A]

So that's one side of it and then on the other side you can see if you click on the back, those in the center. Those are the two power barrels in black. Oh no, those are the date wheels. Excuse me. The power barrels are. You see the. The big disc on the big solid disc on the bottom left at 8 o' clock and then another one. Those discs have the power in them.

[B]

Oh, that's where the springs are.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Good lord.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Incredible engineering.

[A]

Fucking crazy stuff. Yeah. So I was a million dollars.

[B]

What these folks would build a car. You know what car would they make sure that would be. It would be weird to have like nine wheels and go every direction.

[A]

Yeah. Or like MB and F is like. What if a car looked more like a hamburger, you know?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I only clutch kick on the second date. Says racer always do whatever it takes to win. Was there a race car driver that was so detrimental to their sport it would have been better if they never raced at all. I'm sure it is. But I don't know them.

[B]

Yeah, I don't. I'm not sure.

[A]

You know, we, we read about people that acted badly, but in such a charming way. They became legends. You know, we don't know anybody that acted so badly that they were a stain on the entire sport. I mean, maybe you could talk about like, like the coke running or weed running. Imsiga.

[B]

We were looking up that there was a driver who got famous. He was a good driver in nascar, but then he got famous because he died of aids. And that was very rare. And then I think he gave a lot of people aids. So that wasn't a great look for the sport. But I don't know if he was a net negative, like his presence or was he also like a legend for

[A]

good reason for that. This question I think refers to someone who behaved badly on the track, not like a guy who was like also a rapist.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, you could also look at recently was the F1 driver's name Mazepin. The guy, you know, dad was like a Russian oligarch. The sponsorship was not great. You know, it was a bad look. And during the beginning of the Ukraine war, he also was a driver. Like he hit people, he crashed a lot. And then he had a bad attitude. He blamed the car a lot of the time for mistakes that were his because his teammates were doing fine. Like the all in. I was just like, I don't think you really helped F1 in any way.

[A]

I agree. Unpimp your auto. You've mentioned some new cars that sound bad, but what new cars stand out as sounding good? Anything under 50k.

[B]

Mustang GT.

[A]

Mustang GT. Absolutely.

[B]

You know any, any Dodge Charger Challenger? Well, not anymore.

[A]

I think the, I think the GR Corolla sounds pleasant. I think the Civic. The Civic Type R absolutely sounds pleasant, as does the Integr Type S. I think they sound pleasant. They're not mind blowingly great. I mean a lot of things that make cars sound really good is that make small engines sound really good are not included with stock cars. Like ITBs and like that, you know, like you kind of have to like, like for like an affordable car. Like you kind of have to like tune it to make it sound good.

[B]

Yeah. Put an intake on it. The induction.

[A]

Yeah. But under, under. I mean the, the. All right. The, the. The Hyundai ends don't. They don't sound bad. They sound, they sound nice for what they are. They sound nice for what they are.

[B]

Subaru used to, but now they sound like everything, which is unfortunate.

[A]

Do it for me anymore yeah, yeah. I mean I gotta. I think, I think, I mean GR Corolla just barely slides under the watch.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Other Z. I think the Z sounds nice. You know the Z Sport in the 40s.

[B]

Keep it quiet, everybody. Don't make these V6s too loud.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

[B]

That's the game that.

[A]

Keep the V6. Keep that chill. Yeah, yeah. Re education through SNAP, lift off, oversteer. Very good. Is now the last chance to get a GT350 before they go absolutely bonkers.

[B]

Jason Penske, he did.

[A]

Why are they about to go absolutely bonkers? Why would that be?

[B]

Maybe are they just the last corner people? Haven't they. Maybe they haven't risen. Someone said below, further down is a question that a ZL1 sold for like 120 grand. Maybe it was a zero mile car. But like that car was $55,000. So that's doubled. I don't know.

[A]

Well, they don't make Camaros anymore. Yeah, I mean that's.

[B]

They don't make decent.

[A]

The ZL, it was probably a one out ZL1.1 lens, low miles, final year of production, something like that.

[B]

Sold to Hendricks.

[A]

And those will be valuable. And GT350R. A GT350. Not talking about maintenance, but money in, money out is a safe place to park. Money, presumably it works. You might go through tires, you might go through brakes and they might be expensive to insure. But if you're just talking about purchase price and sale price, not a bad place.

[B]

A car with 7,000 miles was sold three days ago on bat for 50 grand.

[A]

That would have been a great first ownership experience. Seven thousand miles in seven or eight years. And fucking these are both ours.

[B]

And one with half the miles was sold two days ago for 75 grand. Wow. So $25,000 more for half the miles.

[A]

That sucks. It sucks that it pays to not drive your cars. You know what I mean?

[B]

If you.

[A]

That's such a bummer. I hate that that's a thing, but it just is. But that's why. I don't know. That's why for me, cars are not really for making money. They're for enjoying the money I made somewhere else.

[B]

Well, I mean look, for 50 grand you could choose between a barely spec'd up new GT. And I know new vs used is not fair, but like if money's real, we're not doing the car review right now, but if money's real, you could get a 350R, probably drive it for free. Free for a year. It'll have CarPlay and shit and then sell it again versus the other one will lose money.

[A]

Yeah. Perindle Bindle says I'm spiraling down the bad decision train with late 2020 Germans. A 2017 Audi S8, a 2018 BMW M760 or Alpena B7 and a 2018 S63 are all about the same price right now. Now how fucked would it be? And what similar or better options am I stupidly ignoring? Bro, you're ignoring the best one. The Panamera Turbo S is the fucking used German sedan you want full fucking stop.

[B]

Does handle. It drives way better than all of those.

[A]

It does. It goes stops and turns better. It's built as good or better. It's not as like screen heavy as the BMW 2017 S8. They're gonna stop making parts for that really soon. And yeah, I would, I would be in. I'd be on team Panamera all day.

[B]

Yeah. And they got better and better looking with each generation.

[A]

Yeah. And you could, you could, you could even save if you got a GTS with the nav 8.

[B]

That sounds so good.

[A]

They sound awesome and they're still very fast. Yeah. Racing bulls on parade says. What are your thoughts on the Honda CR Z now since they've come back into view lately as a somewhat as a forgotten gem or cult classic? Is it a forgotten gem that was judged too harshly? No, not at all. I reviewed one when it was new, dull as fucking rocks and nothing has happened to make it more interesting since. So enjoy yo self.

[B]

I'd have to drive it with. Cause we drove one when they were new and I was so new to press cars. I thought it was cool and exciting, but I would have to drive it again.

[A]

You thought any press car was cool

[B]

and exciting because I was driving my shitty Miata.

[A]

Yeah. It was not. It was slow and it being a hybrid did nothing. I mean they had an opportunity which was weird.

[B]

Like that was a strange choice, use of space.

[A]

They tried to smash cut a CRX and an inside and it ended up just being an Insight.

[B]

But it looked like a crx.

[A]

It looked like a crx. Like if they had done, you know, a very lightweight, you know, a real classic Honda, I'd have been on board.

[B]

But that's a good looking car, which is a bummer.

[A]

Riders on the GEO Storm. That's very good. Oh well, we sort of just talked about that one. Literally those same fucking cars. Was that rare or did you read that?

[B]

I read it before.

[A]

That's why I mentioned the one Darian Lux. What is the future of the Camaro and what would you like to see Chevy do with it?

[B]

I want to see them make it smaller. That's what I want. They're not gonna do that. Make it smaller, keep the engine. Fine.

[A]

I got a one word for you. Berlinetta. Camaro. Berlinetta. Know what I'm talking about?

[B]

No.

[A]

The slimming of the camaro in the 1980s. Just give me, give me a Camaro Berlinetta. It was the, it was the elegant. It was the Lamborghini LP400 of elegant Camaro designs.

[B]

No, I mean IROC early, before IROC, before it got 79 to 86 it says.

[A]

But the early, the early one specifically.

[B]

And you want the T top, I assume?

[A]

Yeah, of course, of course. Do, sure. I think it's time to retro future the 1980s Camaro. Now that we have exhausted the people who really give a shit about the 1960s design, it's time we pander to us.

[B]

That's not a bad idea. But I just, I want the cars to stop getting bigger because the Camaro fantastic driver's car performance is amazing. Yeah. Handling was very good. Visibility. We all talked about they could fix that, but the car just kept getting bigger.

[A]

Right. But think if you did it like this like Berlinetta style, like you could make it almost kind of like halfway back to the C7 Corvette where it was more like a four seat Corvette, you know that, that had the 80s styling than, than like a 60s muscle car. I've spent by the way this one minute thinking about this. This is not something I've been like secretly pandering on the side. So I'm kind of running on the fly.

[B]

Love what you love.

[A]

But like I think it's time for like irocs have aged actually quite well. Like how they look, not how they were built or how they drive, but how they look.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So like I think a very, a very talented person with a vision could update the irocs Berlinetta styling in a way that was like smaller than the existing car, but like very dope.

[B]

That's true. Because also it's kind of like you want them to take what Hyundai did with that concept and do that with Camaro. And I know the 6th gen was smaller than the 5th gen, but let's just keep going, keep going.

[A]

De smoldering rim I've been seeing vinfast cars every, everywhere in Dallas. How did that make it here? But not BYD or the big Chinese brands because it's from Vietnam. Vietnam ain't China. I think if you dropped Donald Trump in one versus the other, he'd have a real hard time telling the difference where he was. But legally speaking, the way our country is set up, Vietnam and China and you can sell cars that are made in Vietnam but not cars that are made in, in China.

[B]

Yeah. I mean Jaloptics got a good article on their finances, but they're losing money on every car. But I feel like they were tariffed even before Trump came into office. The prices on the Vinfast in the beginning were like 70 grand for a car that drove from all of our colleagues drove like looked bad from a brand new company you've never heard of, like it's just too expensive. So I think maybe they let him in. They're like, yeah, sure, no one's going to buy these, but it's not. But the BYD, they're for sale for like 12 grand. Yeah, like that will eat everybody's lunch for sure.

[A]

Foshomoco. Maybe it should be FOMO Shoko.

[B]

Well it's FOMO Co show Fosho Motor company.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Fosho.

[A]

Oh, I thought it was a Taurus Sho. Fosho Moco. Oh yeah, got it.

[B]

I think it's both.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know. Just watch Johnny's review of the facelift Audi RS3. I was surprised by how much more he and Misha liked it over the pre facelift due to the tuning of the rear diff. Did you guys think it made that much of a difference? If so, would it be enough to upgrade? It's really funny. I think unless you had the two cars immediately back to back, you probably couldn't tell the difference with the diff 99% of the time.

[B]

Time.

[A]

And you only really can tell when you start to break traction on a track. I think I had a very tough time telling you that. Oh, this is better because of the new diff without, without literally having the older car right there to go. Okay, well this, this, this comes out of a corner here. Here. It's really, it can only put so much power to the back. Yes, they improve the system a lot but like it's not like real rear wheel drive so it doesn't do the thing consistently every time. Whereas like at Thunderhill Performance car of the year we had the RS3 and we had, I don't know, some other fucking rear wheel drive car. I forget what it was. I don't remember. I'm sorry. But like the rear wheel drive car, I could do the same slide more or less exactly the same six times. Maybe I wouldn't quite do it right. But the car would respond to the input the same way every. You try it five or six times in not just the RS3 but the Golf R. And it doesn't necessarily do it exactly the same every time. And it doesn't mean it can't do it or it doesn't mean it's not substantially better than an old system that doesn't have it like in the A3. But like, is last year's to this year's like that much of a difference?

[B]

There's just a lot more. There's a lot more electronics that are filtering. What physics. What? You know, you're trying to get physics to send a message to the tire. But in between that there's all this like torque shuffling front and back and then also side to side. So it's hard to get it. It's hard to tell it the same message every time. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So I would say any upside of the diff is offset by the downside of the squeal. The other car had a round wheel. This one has a squeal. And I don't really like it. So, you know, take from that what you will. How do I pronounce that?

[B]

Mateo's nuts.

[A]

Oh, Mateo's nuts.

[B]

Oh, Mateo's mate.

[A]

Ow's nuts. Got it. It's speculated that the Ferrari Ferrari Luce will mostly be sold to people wanting allocations for other Ferraris. What current Ferraris would be worth having to buy a Luce at 600k? None of them. Sorry, there's not a Ferrari on the market that's worth having to buy an extra car to get.

[B]

Yeah. Because you can just get a 296 if you want one. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think that's the best one they make. I don't. I don't want to jump up to. Yeah, SF90 or the F80 or like. Those look terrible.

[A]

We had this conversation on the last podcast. What other. Let's say you have to buy a Luce at 600k to get into a 296 special at 600k. You're now spending 1.2 million to get the car you actually want. So that brings us back to last week in Evoluto is fucking a million bucks. Once you're done, what would you rather give that money to Ferrari for exactly? With their current product lineup like nothing. Sigs inside says, what are your favorite type of shoes to wear for long full day road trips in an automatic transmission. My heels get sore in my Nike running shoes. And the Accessories of my Crocs get caught in the pedals. Don't use crocs with accessories. Get a set of car Crocs. Driving Crocs would be fucking sick. I would love to collaborate with Crocs for like a rounded heel. That's the key driving Croc. That would be so dope.

[B]

But that's the answer to this person's question is find a shoe with a rounded heel. I had some Onitsuka Tigers that had a rounded heel. They're hard to find. Makes a huge difference versus the squared one. That's like the biggest thing.

[A]

So if I'm. Truth be told, if I'm doing long full day road trips, very often I'm fucking with the radar cruise control and I might even be taking my shoes off.

[B]

Off.

[A]

Just stretching my legs straight out behind the pedals, just chilling like that. If I have radar cruise control I can count on, I could do that for hours and hours and hours. I basically drove across the country in the Taycan doing that. Having said that, I normally do just wear. Actually I'm wearing them today. I wear these. These are. I might. I'm sitting like A.C. slater in the seat so I can't show my shoes. But these are New Balance. What number are they? 9, 3 3s. And they're sort of like New Balance's version of like a skateboarding shoe, I guess. A casual sneaker with sort of a flat slash rounded heel. And they're not, they're not as wide as my other sneakers. So they're good for driving. And I like driving in those actually. Mark Ferrari, the tired smoker. Oh, wants to summarize who Alan man is we talked about in the last show. Okay. Alan man was basically the European Gene Haas Allen man racing, ran touring cars and did rally and did a fielded GT40 at Le Mans. Had drivers like Sterling Moss and Graham Hill and built cars for, oh, James Bond, Goldfinger and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Okay, there we go. Thank you for that, Johnny E.V. geuberman. Have either of you driven a Jag? XKR or xkr? Yes, I have a review of it on the fucking channel. The 175 edition. Go watch it. Good video. Very fun. Llcardier says, why is it that the luxury watch industry has not adopted the customizing options that the car industry has? It seems wild. Is it such a profit center for companies like Ferrari? Do watch companies rely strongly on impulse purchases? Has it been trialed in failed before? If you mean like specking out a watch that you sort of order Porsche Design does that you can actually order a watch to match your car. Many like Rolex has a whole quote off catalog section where if you're super rich and a fucking good, you can order things that are not available to the public. Public. Sometimes you have input in what they look like and sometimes you don't. They'll just present you with a thing and say you can order it. If you're like a super boss at Patek and you get a world timer, they could put your preferred cities in their time zone thing.

[B]

They did that for mine.

[A]

They did it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I've seen one of those custom time zones before. That's pretty crazy.

[B]

So like I did all the cities in Ohio.

[A]

Yeah, most it's just the same time zone.

[B]

Just Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland.

[A]

You spin it around. It just doesn't do anything right fake time zone. So at a very, very high level you can do some sort of customizations. Most watches are mass produced and just don't. You know, they're not even Rolex. Even most luxury brands are. The watches are made made predominantly by machines and so it's not worth the trouble for them.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Wait. Two in the ruby, one in the star. I thought it would be cool if a car's turn signals and hazards could sync to the BPM of whatever music was playing in the car. Both to make driving more fun and encourage proper signaling. Thoughts? I think we need stand. I'm sorry, you should just. Sorry.

[B]

To be a bug to signal and that wouldn't add enough fun. It would add a lot of cost to the purchase of your vehicle. Now you need a computer to control the light tempo in every.

[A]

You need to integrate. Shazam. And find your blinkers.

[B]

Yeah, that would be expensive.

[A]

No, no, no. Lemonhead says. Any thoughts as to why car guys seem to hold the Terminator code in higher regard than the S197 GT500? Oh, would you like to take this?

[B]

I know why I mean the S197 drove poorly undersized rear tires. It was just. It was a weird car.

[A]

And I think especially the early.

[B]

The early ones were under braked, under tired. Felt like more nose heavy than the old car did. I also think there's a nostalgia element. Right. Like the Terminator just happened. It landed in our brains locked in. It was the right time the Terminator landed with.

[A]

So the GT500 also had a solid axle still until 2015. Until the most recent one had a solid axle. And in the 0708 ones it was very shitty. I drove it when it was New it was super shitty. Them things are trash. In 01. Ford got sued class action. The cars weren't making the power and so they fucking. They had to fix all these cars. They had to retune them all. It was very embarrassing. They said a car is never going to make less than advertised horsepower again. Their next car had this fucking blower on it. That was the first thing. But it also had independent rear suspension. So it was the best handling Mustang of all time as well with new technology and all that kind of shit. So it was a groundbreaking car in Mustang and it also happened to drive pretty good for what it is, whereas the 500 kind of didn't.

[B]

Yeah, I mean I bet if you put equal tires on them, I bet the old car would out handle the new one just because of the live axle situation.

[A]

And the holding it higher regard is definitely among people that like drive the cars, modify the cars like things like that. If you asked a blue chip collector which they'd rather have in their collection, they'd probably tell you an early GT500. Those cars aren't driven. They sit in collections. They have no miles on them. Probably because they suck to drive. But they're actually decent investments. Shelby's undriven Shelbys, as we just mentioned, are historically very good investments.

[B]

They look cool. They made lots of power. They did not. From what I've heard from people at magazines, they couldn't get it to hit the top speed that was advertised.

[A]

Oh well, that was the 2014. The 12 to 14. Yeah. So that one they couldn't. But I'm talking about earlier than that. Yeah. Riders on the Geostorm. Oh, why?

[B]

Because these are the new questions.

[A]

So this was repeated because we didn't cover it from last week. Is that why?

[B]

No, no, we just covered the repeated the old questions and now we're in. New questions. But they're posted by the same page.

[A]

Right, but we. No, this is.

[B]

That question was copy and paste. Oh, I moved some up. That's right.

[A]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Habibi come back says, what is the newest car you'd want to to resto mod the newest car in 20 years? I. I don't. I wouldn't need to do anything newer than 20 years.

[B]

I would take an a new alpha quad and just redo the interior. I think the exterior is stunning and I think it's fast enough and all that stuff. But I think if you could make an interior that was equally beautiful and not just part shared with feet yacht, that would be pretty cool.

[A]

That's not it's not. There's no resto. That's just mod. Because it's new. There has to be a resto.

[B]

I find a clapped out one and then you resto it. Like what? You know, what are we defining? It's a made up game.

[A]

Who gives a shit? Exactly. Koji. Koji says if running a rear seat delete and half cage combo in your car, would you prefer to leave the rear interior bare metal or cover it up with some soft material like cloth like GT3 Clubsport Sports Spec. I mean look, that's. If you're doing that like that's a track car. Right. But like carpet doesn't weigh very much. Like whatever, like basic cloth. It would cost to cover up like the bare metal part of your rear seat. Dude, it's like probably the same amount of weight as like a gallon of gas.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like if you're not driving for time

[B]

and it would look so like the bare metal inside on a car that's driven on the street looks like shit. It just. It looks like an unfinished vehicle.

[A]

I've gone bare metal twice now. My Mini. I took the rear seat out and I did not do the get the nice $800 rear seat delete cover thing. And then the fox body. I took the rear seat out and did not get a professionally rear in. Both times. I absolutely regretted it. It saved me no noticeable weight at. At all. It just made the car louder in a bad way.

[B]

And especially if the car has a trunk, which your fox body did. The noise that comes through, like when I fold my seats down in my car, it's so much louder, the entire noise that comes through. So having a panel is a good idea. Yeah, I don't half cage. Like if you drive it on the street, I just think it looks so much nicer. It'll look like a higher class vehicle.

[A]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

All right, there it is.

[A]

Thanks everybody. Them's the questions. We appreciate you guys very, very much. Look out for these announcements for when we have tickets available for our Detroit show in August. Believe it's August 13th, Thursday of dream Cruise. Don't forget we're giving away a Porsche 911 Turbo. We're have a new video about that coming up very soon, but the link is in our Instagram bio. That game runs until August as well. I believe it's August 20th.992 Turbo S modded by us. It's going to be real delightful. We've driven it a bunch and it was fucking so sick. It's so fast. So you can enter to win that. And do we have anything else to offer? Zach, right now. Last chance for TST fans to get for patrons to get their hands on the Barry Notice Canyon. If you want it, watch the Evoluto video.

[B]

Also, your Nissan Nismo video is coming out next week.

[A]

The 18th Nismo Z. Please watch for that. Please watch these videos. Please. I went all the way to Northern California for one day to make it. Please. That's all, everybody. Love you. See you later.