SSC Tuatara Review; No More Regs; Merc EVs

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Smoking Tire – SSC Tuatara Review; No More Regs; Merc EVs

Episode Details:

• Title: SSC Tuatara Review; No More Regs; Merc EVs
• Release Date: August 7, 2025
• Hosts: Zack Klapman and Matt Farah
• Description: Matt Farah and Zack Klapman engage with automotive enthusiasts, industry icons, and other friends to delve into the latest automotive news, racing insights, projects, and spontaneous discussions.

---

1. Personal vs. Economic Freedom Rankings

Discussion Overview: The hosts dive into the Cato Institute’s study ranking personal and economic freedoms across U.S. states, focusing on California and Texas.

Notable Points:

• Texas Rankings:

  • Initially cited as last (50th) in personal freedom.
  • Upon clarification, Texas ranks 6th in economic freedom.

• California Rankings:

  • Misinterpreted by some as being 48th in personal freedom.
  • Actually 48th in economic freedom based on the same study.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [04:27]: "Economic freedom typically implies higher state taxes, building restrictions, and as you can see, the bottom of the list is New York, Oregon, Washington, and California."
• Zach Klapman [06:23]: "I don't know how it weights it, but as you see, like, California remains 48th."

Insights:

• The distinction between personal and economic freedoms significantly affects state rankings.
• Personal Freedom vs. Economic Freedom: Matt emphasizes valuing personal freedoms over economic ones, suggesting a preference for higher taxes and certain regulations to ensure individual liberties.

---

2. Elimination of Fuel Economy Standards

Discussion Overview: The conversation shifts to the repeal of fuel economy regulations in the U.S. and its repercussions on the automotive industry.

Notable Points:

• SEMA Reaction:

  • The aftermarket and manufacturers celebrate the removal, likening it to an "Eyes Wide Shut style orgy" due to the newfound regulatory freedom.

• Impact on Innovations:

  • Fuel economy standards previously spurred innovations like direct injection turbocharging and power enhancements in vehicles.
  • Matt argues that constraints often foster creativity, citing how regulations pushed carmakers to innovate.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [08:07]: "SEMA is having like an Eyes Wide Shut style orgy right now because... we've got no more fuel economy regulations."
• Zach Klapman [09:11]: "Fuel economy standards brought us hypercars. They brought us direct injection turbocharging. Huge power."

Insights:

• Removing fuel economy standards may lead to a stagnation in vehicle efficiency improvements.
• Historical Context: Referencing the 1970s fuel crisis, Matt warns that without regulations, the industry may regress in terms of efficiency and innovation.

---

3. Mercedes and SSC Abandon EVs in America

Discussion Overview: The hosts discuss the surprising move by Mercedes and SSC to cease selling electric vehicles (EVs) in the American market.

Notable Points:

• Mercedes:

  • Likely finding an excuse to revert to traditional combustion engines.
  • Concern that EV mandates disproportionately benefit lower-end manufacturers rather than luxury brands.

• SSC Tuatara:

  • SSC’s strategic pivot towards re-emphasizing their high-powered combustion engines post-regulation repeal.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [24:26]: "They sort of just stopped selling EVs in America and didn't really announce it, because why would they?"
• Zach Klapman [25:00]: "Mercedes is probably very excited when the EV mandate was taken away. They're like, oh, now we have an excuse."

Insights:

• EV mandates are seen as advantageous for budget manufacturers by leveling the playing field.
• Luxury brands like Mercedes may be disadvantaged by EV regulations, prompting a retreat from the EV market in certain regions.

---

4. SSC Tuatara Review

Discussion Overview: The core of the episode revolves around an in-depth review of the SSC Tuatara, a high-performance hypercar, based on the hosts' experience in Richland, Washington.

Notable Points:

• Performance:

  • Capable of reaching speeds up to 295 mph.
  • Equipped with a 5.9-liter billet engine producing up to 1,750 horsepower on E85.

• Build and Engineering:

  • Built predominantly with American-sourced components.
  • Features a carbon tub, inboard pushrod suspension, and a seven-speed sequential gearbox similar to those in the Pagani Utopia and F5.

• Handling and Dynamics:

  • Described as extremely violent in high-speed maneuvers.
  • Lacks advanced features like air brakes, resulting in significant pitch during braking.
  • Steering is criticized for being too quick and twitchy.

• Interior and Features:

  • Utilitarian and artistic but lacks the refined finish of competitors like Pagani.
  • Power hydraulic doors and touchscreen window controls noted as impractical for frequent use.

• Reliability and Practicality:

  • High build quality but concerns about features like hydraulic doors affecting long-term reliability.
  • Intended primarily for experts and professional settings, not everyday use.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [28:40]: "And it's already done 295."
• Zach Klapman [35:35]: "This is like psycho machine."
• Matt Farah [36:56]: "It's, it's really, really, really violent. I would say that, that this is an expert-only level car."

Insights:

• Performance vs. Practicality: The SSC Tuatara excels in raw speed and power but compromises on handling nuances and everyday usability.
• Competitive Landscape: While faster than many, its handling and feature set leave room for improvement compared to established hypercars.
• Future Prospects: SSC aims to refine the Tuatara's performance, potentially pushing it to exceed 300 mph with better cooling and handling systems.

---

5. Audience Questions and Discussions (Patreon Segment)

Discussion Overview: Engaging with listeners, the hosts address various audience-submitted questions, offering insights and personal opinions.

Selected Questions & Insights:

• Older Cars vs. 90s Models:

  • Q: Why do older cars from the 60s and 70s seem to age gracefully compared to 90s cars?
  • A: Matt suggests it's due to material differences, such as the prevalence of metal in older cars versus plastics in later models.

• Making Electric Vehicles (EVs) Enjoyable:

  • Q: Tips for enhancing an older BMW E39 530 for mountain roads with value in mind.
  • A: Focus on restoring stock components like bushings and suspension mounts before considering upgrades like Ohlins road and track suspension for better handling without compromising value.

• Glock Making Watches:

  • Q: Thoughts on Glock’s foray into watchmaking.
  • A: Hosts express skepticism, associating Glock watches with overly tactical aesthetics that may not appeal to broader audiences.

• Corvette ZR1 vs. Porsche GT Models at Nurburgring:

  • Q: Comparative performance of Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 against Porsche GT models.
  • A: Hosts discuss surprising lap times where less powerful Porsche models outperform higher horsepower Corvettes, attributing it to factors like handling and aerodynamics.

Notable Quotes:

• Zach Klapman [69:49]: "Older cars from the 60s and 70s are made of metal and your Mustang is made of plastic."
• Matt Farah [78:21]: "The P5S4 was super cool because you could get a manual."

Insights:

• Technical Restoration: Emphasizes the importance of restoring original components to maintain value and performance.
• Brand Collaborations: Skepticism towards non-traditional brand ventures (e.g., Glock watches) highlights the importance of brand consistency and quality.
• Performance Nuances: Greater horsepower does not automatically translate to better lap times; factors like handling, aerodynamics, and driver skill play crucial roles.

---

6. Upcoming Events and Closing Remarks

Discussion Overview: The hosts briefly touch upon future episodes and events, including plans to review the M5 C Sedan and a customized G Wagon from Russia.

Notable Points:

• Future Episodes:

  • Review of the M5 C Sedan.
  • Examination of a Russian resto-mod G Wagon.

• Personal Updates:

  • Matt shares excitement about receiving his Myers Manx, highlighting custom accessories like specialized coolers.

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Farah [99:06]: "The Manx is finished. That looks very exciting to me."
• Zach Klapman [87:49]: "If you drove a car."

Insights:

• Continued Engagement: Hosts maintain a personal connection with their audience by sharing their own automotive projects and upcoming content.
• Diverse Reviews: Future content indicates a blend of high-end reviews and unique, customized builds, catering to a broad range of automotive interests.

---

Conclusion: In this episode, Zack Klapman and Matt Farah provide a comprehensive analysis of the SSC Tuatara, discuss the broader implications of deregulating fuel economy standards, and explore the strategic retreats of luxury brands from the EV market. Engaging with their audience through Patreon, they address a variety of automotive curiosities, reinforcing their position as insightful and relatable figures in the automotive podcast landscape.

For more detailed reviews and automotive discussions, visit The Smoking Tire YouTube Channel.

Transcript

[Matt Farah]

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you, as always, by off the Record. You gotta have off the Record. It's like saying you gotta have a lawyer, but it's saying that you're gonna have a lawyer for everywhere in the country. That's what's important, right? You have the right to defend yourself if you're accused of a moving violation, a big one or a small one. And in that case, you're not gonna do as good of a job as. As a qualified attorney. But where do you get one? That's where off the Record comes in. Almost everywhere in the entire United States. If you get pulled over, you can go to offtherecord.com TST and rather than pleading guilty to that moving violation, you can send it to off the Record. They'll set you up with an attorney who will fight that ticket, get those points off your record, maybe beat the thing entirely, and that way you won't have increased insurance premiums, you won't have potentially an issue with your employment if you drive for a living, and on and on. Don't plead guilty. Get off the record. Go to offtherecord.comtst to get 10% off all legal services booked through off the Record. Right. Great. All right, guys, on this episode of the podcast, Zach and I have gone to Washington to review the SSC Tuatara. Plus, my Myers Manx is done. Merced has stopped selling EVs in California, and SEMA, the entire aftermarket, and all the manufacturers are basically jumping for joy because America has decided that we aren't going to have fuel economy standards anymore. Yay. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. I have been thinking about, like, death and loneliness, like, a little too much, really. A little too much for someone who, like, isn't likely to die and isn't particularly lonely. I've been having thoughts, and I think it's. It's, like, triggered by, like, stuff. It's triggered by seeing some fucking abandoned dog on Instagram or something. Oh, one of those.

[Zach Klapman]

Your algorithm.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, well, because if you, like, they. When they. If they, like, when you get. When you watch, like, pet videos, you get fed all the pet videos, and many of them are cute, and some of them have, like, happy endings. Like, they find a dog that's, like, about to die and save it. But still, I'm spending too much time thinking about the person that left the dog to die. You know, that kind of thing.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And it's like, that's just mixed in with my pet enthusiasm General. And it's. It's been affecting me. It has been affecting me. My strength says that's because I'm becoming more emotionally mature and I should be happy that I'm being affected. And I'm like, yeah, but, like, it sucks. Is that what that means? Oh, good. I'm emotionally maturing. I'm just. That's just makes me some sad all the time now.

[Zach Klapman]

More. Yeah. In a way. I don't know. That's funny.

[Matt Farah]

He's like, you know, you need to learn to really appreciate things like that. It's like, you know, we've been doing therapy for, like, almost like 20 years. Like, you've actually finally fed back. This is what I call a breakthrough. Something. Something that we've done is actually sunk in.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, it's. It's like the Seinfeld thing when he's like, what is this salty discharge? When he's feeling emotions. I went to a concert last week, and I, like, started to well up during it, and I was like, what is happening?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

So that was just. And it was fantastic performance.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

What is the salty discharge?

[Matt Farah]

Just good thing. Just lefty queer.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Speaking of which, this one's funny. Was this, like, I think was this before we went to Texas? He joked about this. Before we went to Texas, Zach joked about a study that was done, Cato Institute. The Cato Institute, which can be [e-mail] and Texas. And Zach had joked that that Texas was, I believe, dead last. 50 out of 50 in personal freedom. Personal freedoms.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And, you know, a couple of angry people suggested that we go check our lib selves and that California was 48th out of 50 in the same freedom study. And I was like, well, that's odd. Is that right? So we just went back and looked, and it's in. You have to. I'm not saying that we read the chart wrong or that this person read the chart wrong. And I don't remember the exact wording that you used at the time, but I'm pretty sure you did say personal freedom.

[Zach Klapman]

I think I did. And this person who commented is correct. I had highlighted personal freedom because I was looking at things like marijuana, like things that they've been banning recently in Texas. And I was like, oh, let's look at the personal freedoms. But to be fair to the commenter, when you go to the economic freedom, then California is 48th and Texas is sixth.

[Matt Farah]

But if you look at the economic freedom, if you just stay on that Basically, they were saying, but look at this other completely different chart where California is at the bottom. Like, you were looking at one chart and they were saying, well, you guys, you're selectively. Because you said Texas is last 50th, but California's 48th. But that's on a different chart.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, I mean, to be fair to them, I did not. I did not mean to imply. Like, I wasn't trying to obscure data. Like, I focused on that part of it, and that's what I looked at. So I get where they're coming from.

[Matt Farah]

Economic freedom typically implies higher state taxes, building restrictions, and as you can see, the bottom of the list is New York, Oregon, Washington and California. Like, those are places that have those things. Right. And so. Yeah, okay. But so if you look at overall, the overall freedom, which I guess chooses to weight everything in a certain way.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. I don't know how it weights it, but as you see, like, California remains 48.

[Matt Farah]

So my guess is that this study somehow weights economic freedom more harshly than personal freedom. Right.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, mathematically, it must.

[Matt Farah]

It has to.

[Zach Klapman]

If. If California goes from. What was it? Seventh. No, sorry, sixth? Eleventh.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

If it's 11:48, those were evenly weighted, then the middle would be like 27 or something like that, but it stays 48th. So economic freedom is. Is.

[Matt Farah]

This particular study clearly weights economic freedom over personal freedom. I. My values. I don't know about your values, but my values. And granted, as someone who's never really grown up with money struggles in that way, I value personal freedom over economic freedom. I'd rather pay higher taxes and I'd rather personally deal with. I don't have a problem with harsh building code to someone who builds. There's problems with the California building code process, but it's not that it's hard to build. That's not like, my problem with it. And I. I prefer personal freedoms where individuals are left alone and not fucking personal.

[Zach Klapman]

You know, they also might be waiting, though, is stuff like. Like business incentives. You know, the film industry has basically left Los Angeles.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach Klapman]

Because a lot of other states provide amazing tax breaks or kickback. Yeah, kickbacks. Like the legal kind, you know, whatever. And California doesn't.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it sucks that way.

[Zach Klapman]

Right. So there's like. There's so many industries that it's probably a lot easier to run in in other states. The tuning industry, cartooning industry. A lot of them are moving out.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, my God. I saw a story this morning. I wrote it down. One of the stories this morning is like, SEMA is having like an Eyes Wide Shut style orgy right now because. Fucking. Because the fuel economy regulations have been killed. Like, we, We. Well, yeah, we have no more. We don't have laws anymore. Like, crimes are like legal now.

[Zach Klapman]

Some of them.

[Matt Farah]

Have you seen the. You watch. You watch Coffeezilla?

[Zach Klapman]

Occasionally.

[Matt Farah]

I like coffee zilla. Have you seen his merch? I ordered a T shirt. His merch is his T shirts just say crime is legal.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Which is not an endorsement, by the way. That's just like, this is a guy who does deep dives on crypto scams and rug pulls and influencer scams and like, just. Just people who take advantage of other people using the digital economy. That's this guy's entire shtick. And his merch, his conclusion is that crime is legal. That's how little these people get in trouble for doing this kind of shit.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And now fuel economy standards don't exist anymore. Like, that's so crazy. Fuel economy standards brought us hypercars.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, they brought us direct injection turbocharging. Huge power. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like all like, dude, when they. When they said you have to do make all these car turbocharged, they all gained 250 horsepower like one model year later.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, sometimes constraints nurture innovation. You know, if something is totally unrestrained, people can be less creative. They just think whatever I'm doing works fine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And so it does that. And I understand there's people on the other side who think that some of the requirements were getting too strict. I mean, some of the deadlines set for car companies may have actually been impossible, but I think getting rid of them, the pendulum hath swung too far.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, even you. And I said the all ev mandate was never gonna happen. They were gonna get a headline while they could and they were gonna backpedal when they realized it was totally untenable. And that's like a realistic thing to say. Even if you think fuel economy standards are probably a good thing to have and even if, like, I mean, dude, come on. Like, don't you like to fucking breathe? Like, don't. Like, even if you think. Even if you're the kind of person who's going to modify your car in a way that won't pass emissions, even if you are that kind of person. I'm not saying you're a horrible person. I'm just saying, like, even if you're willing to break the rule, do you really want that rule to not exist? Like you. You know what I Mean, I, I think for the automakers, you don't. You want the automakers to be able to sell the dirty to like everybody, right?

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, look at, look at Volkswagen.

[Matt Farah]

They will do whatever the fuck they can get away with, right? And if you tell them they can get away with anything, that's that.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, that's what you just like.

[Matt Farah]

Dude, you even if you like tuning your fucking car, if you're someone who sells tunes, okay, fine, you don't want rules. But if you're just a person and you've got a modified car, you can't possibly think that what you're doing should be legal across the board.

[Zach Klapman]

I think of that a lot when I see people that run a catless exhaust and we beat this horse to death. I'll be quick, like Steve Dynan explain. The horsepower you lose by just running a high flow. Cat versus catless is negligible. Literally negligible. But I think this myth has perpetuated for a long time that people need this open pipe thing. And if you're behind them, it smells like you just know that everything is just going up into the atmosphere. And the pictures from the seventies in many cities and like have shown like, it's smoggy at this buildup. And I understand that large industries are contributing a lot more mathematically to all of the greenhouse gas, if you believe in that stuff. If you don't, then you could probably skip this part. But like the city of Los Angeles was choked with shit. A lot of that because of cars, because that was the local source of these emissions.

[Matt Farah]

The whole argument against car, like, the whole argument people use is like, if they want to run any car with like dirty emissions. Look, and I'm not a fucking saint in this regard. I'm not saying I am, but all of our arguments are always like, it's just me. It's not everybody. What if it was everybody?

[Zach Klapman]

That's very funny.

[Matt Farah]

What if it was?

[Zach Klapman]

It could now be everybody.

[Matt Farah]

Now we're in 1972. Like, you know, like that's what we don't want that. Nobody wants that. Even the fuck. This is like adding lanes. It's like to highway. No. You know, even if you want to drive, like, having effective public transport will clear the highways of the people who don't want to drive, but have no other choice, leaving the people who do want to drive. Like, traffic will be better for you if you give a whole bunch of those people another option that works. That isn't a car. You don't need to force people out of their.

[Zach Klapman]

Wait, sorry, how does that relate to the emissions thing?

[Matt Farah]

Because like, all right, wait, where I have to back it up. It's just like the understanding of, of, of a, of an issue. Like, like it's, if it's just. Wait. I related two things in terms of like the way that groups think about stuff, but now I'm struggling to, to go back and connect them. Maybe I shouldn't bother. Maybe I should just move on. I think the point was made.

[Zach Klapman]

Okay, that's fine.

[Matt Farah]

It doesn't happen often, but I did lose myself first.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, look, I, my wife's flight was delayed six hours. I went to bed at 2:30, so my brain is not running. But I think it's gonna be interesting to see what the car companies do. And like, you know, they've put a lot of money into this tech and also something we've talked about a lot is, you know, the administrations, if they change every four years, if you've, if you've done a bunch of R and D and you've done a bunch of tooling and stuff, you're going to reverse course totally and then it changes again.

[Matt Farah]

Maybe stations move faster than the development of a single vehicle.

[Zach Klapman]

Well put. So, you know, now this means the catalytic converter manufacturer business goes to zero for three years or six. If they just extend the terms like El Salvador, then that might be one thing. But I don't know if they'll start pulling like turbos and direct injection out of engines because all of the factories are designed to make engines like that right now.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, look, I don't think that overnight it's going to be, you know, we're not selling cats anymore. That's not what it's going to be. But, but what you may find is in a fairly short development cycle, the emissions of vehicles become less of a priority. And an independent study may find that while, you know, tailpipe emissions have been dropping starting in mid-2025, they stop dropping. Like that's what you're going to see. It's not, it's not going to be like the whole, it's not going to turn in 19 to buy Christmas, you know, but like, bro, fucking, they're going to bring back the Hellcat in like five fucking minutes.

[Zach Klapman]

I was going to say the TRX is back. I think they're going to use what they have in the pantry. So if they have the tooling and they can spin it back up or just, you know, open some boxes again, they totally will.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And if they have moved on like we Talked to at 9 11st launch, when I asked like how come it's limited to this stuff, they were like, well some of the things we make for this, like the tooling breaks down and yeah, at a certain point you cannot make more things.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

So if it's in that situation, I don't know if they'll make a new, you know, reorder a machine to then make this thing that used to burn a fuck ton of gas. But, but they got TRX engines laying around, they're like open that door for sure.

[Matt Farah]

I just, I don't, I can't see how even as a car enthusiast, you know, stopping the progression of efficiency in cars is a good thing.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. One of our commenters made a good point that unless fuel prices go down significantly, most consumers are not going to be drawn towards inefficient cars because everything's more expensive. And inefficient cars tend to be expensive because they have a lot of horsepower and they sell them for more money. So people aren't going to go, oh I'm going to stretch to buy this thing that burns way more gas than my current car.

[Matt Farah]

I mean I would hope so. But you know, people in America buy the biggest fucking fastest thing they can afford a lot of the time. But I don't know, I will say maybe the consumer, maybe the free market will sort this out and consumer preference will, will be for smaller, more, more efficient cars. But when has that? The only, the last time that happened was when America was left totally flat footed by the fuel crisis in the 70s. And people, their small economy cars were total shit boxes and people were like, maybe I'll try a Honda, maybe I'll try a Toyota. And that bitch ran for 400,000 miles with just tires and oil and they were like oh shit. And like never went back and called American cars shit boxes for the rest of their lives.

[Zach Klapman]

And a lot of American cars were shitty back then because they real lazy. They were so lazy and that like the competition nurtured innovation from the US manufacturer side.

[Matt Farah]

But you know, who's, who's going to do it? Who's, who's going to be the company that comes in and, and all of a sudden sells this car that people want. The lightweight, fuel efficient car that people theoretically want.

[Zach Klapman]

Toyota.

[Matt Farah]

Toyota probably I think them still them not somebody new.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, yeah, I don't think Chevy's gonna do it or something because if they're going to, they would I think to make, to sell the lightweight car from a company that doesn't do that. You need a step change in material use or in the features that are included in cars. Everyone who buys things wants too many things in there. The car has to weigh X with some exceptions. And just real quick, the national price of gas right now the average is $3.50 and 15 cents as of today.

[Matt Farah]

Is there, what's the line look like? Is there, do you have a line like a graph? Oh, I don't, I don't watch the national price because I'm not typically buying gas all over. But. Okay, wait, hang on. What does that say? Current average, yesterday average, week ago, month ago, year. Okay, so it is, it's down by 30 cents from a year ago. But it's been inching its way down from 3,178 to 3,151 from a month ago. So drop down and dropping diesel seems like it's up.

[Zach Klapman]

Actually there's a graph.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, so yeah. Where is, where did that graph, the one year graph. One year is back there. Oh. So there was a really big drop.

[Zach Klapman]

In August 5th of 24 and it basically 45 degree angle down.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. To between August and the end of the year. It really, it really took a steep drop and then it's been actually climbing a bit since then.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay.

[Zach Klapman]

Slower with some peaks and stuff.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So it's, it's pretty far down from its peaks. Peaks. But what was the highest there? May of 22. It got up to five bucks for the, for the national. Wow, that's pretty high.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Speaking of burning a lot of gas, we can talk about either either the SSC or Mercedes has abandoned selling EVs in America. They quietly stopped selling electric cars in America.

[Zach Klapman]

Sorry, who abandoned Mercedes?

[Matt Farah]

Guys, we got to take a quick break for today's sponsor, Rula. Listen, Rula, this one's about therapy, right? Therapy, mental health therapy. Talk therapy is been part of my entire adult life. I've been seeing a therapist since I was in college. I've actually seen three different therapists over that 25 year period. And here's what's really interesting for me about therapy. It's really helped out. It's really helped as my emotional intelligence. I feel it's helped me deal with my wife, deal with my parents, deal with stress, deal with everything else that's going on. But as I've had different careers and different employers, whether my health insurance covers mental health care has been totally back and forth, which is crazy. It covers my physical health. Why wouldn't it cover My mental health. And maybe you've found the same thing. Maybe your you've not been seeing a mental health professional because of insurance. Well, Rula is here and make sure that your mental health is covered by insurances. Right? Right. So how do you find one? So all you have to do right is rule as partner. With over 100 insurance plans making the average copay just 15 bucks a session. We're talking about real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. And you think about it, your insurance benefits should cover this right already. Rule is not just affordable, the experience is tailored around you. Other online therapy platforms might match you with the first available provider. Whether or not they're the right fit. Rula considers your goals, preferences and background to provide you a curated list of licensed in network therapists who are actually aligned with what you need. Because they know that finding the right therapist can make all the difference. There's no wait lists, no frustrating back and forth. Rula makes it easy to find a mental health provider who is accepting new patients. Appointments are available. And then Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is helping you move forward. And then, then there's that insurance thing in network covered care that's super important. You pay as little as 15 bucks a person. Go to rula.com tire to get started today. That's R U L A.com tire for quality therapy that's covered by insurance. And we are also brought to you today by Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make make everyone vulnerable. Data brokers are out there making a profit off of your data. It's a commodity anyone on the web can buy your private details, your address, your phone number, your employment records, things like that, which can lead to phishing Attempts, harassment, scams, etc. But now you can protect your privacy with DeleteMe. Data brokers are companies that literally buy your data from companies that collect your data. And who collects your data? Everybody. Social networks, Google, your shopping history, Amazon, etc. Etc. They collect your data, they sell it to data brokers for money. And Delete Me comes in and scans all these data brokerage websites, finds the things that you want deleted, gets them deleted. And it's not just a one time thing, it's an ongoing service. Every month I get an email from Delete Me saying here's what we found, here's what we erased, here's what you need to be involved in because occasionally you have to hit some approvals yourself when it finds stuff. But it's ongoing. It's not just one and done. I love Delete Me. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Tire and use promo code Tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe deleteme.com Tire and enter code Tire at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Tire code Tire. And now back to the show. In fairness, people didn't really like the EVs.

[Zach Klapman]

People abandoned them, too.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that's pretty much the whole story. They sort of just stopped selling EVs in America and didn't. Didn't really announce it, because why would they? And that's really the entire story. And based on what we just talked about, my guess is the supercharged 5 and a half liter engine from the 2004 E55 is about to make a comeback. The EQ55 is coming in hot.

[Zach Klapman]

I feel like Mercedes is probably very excited when the EV mandate mandate was taken away. They're like, oh, now we have an excuse.

[Matt Farah]

Well, look, I mean, we've. As we said a million times, EV mandates benefit car companies at the bottom end far more than they benefit ones at the top end. Because if everything's an ev, like, what is the difference between a Mercedes and a BMW anymore? I mean, that's. If your company's history is on precision crafting engines, boy, were you fucking hosed. And yes, I understand that being EVs would make economy cars more expensive as well, but I'm talking about purely in terms of refinement and perception and things like an electric Kia and an electric Mercedes. If you close your eye, you know, you close your eyes and ears and someone drives you down the road. Like, not a whole lot of difference.

[Zach Klapman]

Very true. Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So how about the complete opposite of that? Zach and I went to Washington. Not Seattle, Washington. The eastern Washington. Not east, middle of Washington, Central, central Washington, southeastern Washington.

[Zach Klapman]

You can just name the place Richland.

[Matt Farah]

Richland, Washington. Because everyone knows where Richland, Washington is. It was actually sort of like, sort of like almost an oasis sort of town along the Columbia river surrounded by desert, Right? Like, it was like, actually kind of lush in that one area by the river. And then. And there's some wine and river Boating and water skiing and all that kind of stuff.

[Zach Klapman]

Kind of.

[Matt Farah]

Kind of lovely, actually. And it's. Excuse me, the home of SSC Shelby supercars, unrelated to Carroll Shelby. And you probably know SSC for the reason that they wish you didn't, which is that this is the company that had the fastest car in the World in 2007. Beat the Bugatti Veyron with the ultimate arrow, and then it took 10 years to develop their second car, and then had one of the craziest PR bungles of all time in car history where they had a video that they claimed to say the car went 330 miles an hour. And someone from their company came on our show to talk about it, to promote it. Turned out to not be true. No one really thinks. I don't. I don't. No one really thinks it was intentionally a scam. It was just like bad calibration and then sort of a desire to believe in the instrumentation a little longer than they probably should have.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Nevertheless, an enormous PR bungle that overshadowed the fact that the car really does go like 290 miles an hour.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. They ran 295 in one direction. And what shocked me the most in researching this is that they ran the 282 average like four months after the bungle happened. And maybe I read about it when that was happened, but like the PR damage from the big story overshadowed it forever.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

You know, and that's just. It's just an asterisk for them for a long time.

[Matt Farah]

It sucks. You know, and, and, and Jared Shelby, you know, he really wants this car to go 300 miles an hour. He believes it will go 300 miles an hour. It's. It probably fucking will, to be honest with you. Especially if they had an ERA lesson, it absolutely would go 300 miles an hour. This car, it's more power than a Chiron, it's lighter, and it has a better coefficient of drag for driving in a straight line. And it's already done 295.

[Zach Klapman]

And it was on a. What'd he say? It was like on a three mile Runway.

[Matt Farah]

He did it on a Runway. Yeah. And he ran out of room. He hit the shutdown. So they had to, like, back up and use fucking a few feet of the, like, return road to actually get it. And so if they had a little more room. Look, and you know, Zach and I are not here to apologize, just to give some context to the point that we went to Washington to actually drive this thing on the road. So it's A carbon tub hypercar. It's two and a half million dollars. It's almost entirely built. Well, it is built entirely here in Washington with almost entirely washing sourced source stuff where they, where they can. And I'm pretty sure it's like over 90% American componentry engines made.

[Zach Klapman]

Nelson Racing engine.

[Matt Farah]

Nelson Racing engine, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Carbon. All their carbon stuff is made in the Seattle area. There's a lot of aerospace there. But that was very cool to learn. It's not shipped from Italy. Nothing wrong with that. But like Dallara is. They make carbon fiber for everyone basically for like every car. So that was rad suspension is like Penske branded. I don't know who makes it.

[Matt Farah]

Inboard, pushrod, you know, Penske makes it.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, they manufacture it. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's like Daytona prototype level kind of stuff. The engineering on it, it sort of resembles what like a Koenigsegg CX R kind of. Yeah, it's sort of what those cars looked like and worked like, which makes sense because they started development in this car in 2010 and it took them this long to get, you know, it took them until 2020, from 2010 to 2021 to get a production level car. They've sold a few of them. And so, yeah, it's 3100 pounds wet. It's 1750 horsepower on E85 or 1300 horsepower on 91. It has the seven speed sequential gearbox. That's the same one used in the Pagani Utopia F5, the Venom F5.

[Zach Klapman]

It was also used in the older Koenigsegg CCR or something.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, ccxr.

[Zach Klapman]

Ccxr, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And you know, it's. Well, it's fucking crazy. I mean, it's real crazy.

[Zach Klapman]

It is.

[Matt Farah]

There's not a. So when they, when you have a car like this with such horsepower, the. You can make it so it can creep around and you can make it so it can go really fast. And the really hard part is this sort of in between, you know, it's like 50% throttle up shifts and 50% brake or coasty downshifts. Like that kind of stuff is incredibly challenging to tune. And then to make a 1700 horsepower engine that won't over. I mean it was over 90 degrees when we tested this thing.

[Zach Klapman]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

And there's different kinds of like stress tests. There's like your track day. There's. We, as we were learning, Jared was telling us doing one, you know, 300 mile an hour pull is like 48 seconds on this engine.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, what he's explaining is when they did the run in Nevada, which.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, the Nevada run, excuse me, not the Runway run.

[Zach Klapman]

So that they did a really long buildup which is very much like, like aeroless and is an 11 mile track that Volkswagen uses and no one else can use. So they were doing a similar approach. SSC was like long build up. Get up to like 180 and then roll into it and roll into it. And now with these runways, they have two and a half miles and it's more like a drag race. You just have to get on it. But to your point, that long roll up was. Now they're doing 60 seconds of like, lots of throttle and a lot more heat buildup.

[Matt Farah]

So they had to address those types of cooling issues. So that's one challenge. When we're filming the car, it's actually a different challenge and one that, like, sometimes cars have problems with. Like, it's short bursts of acceleration combined with periods of idling and making U turns and going into, in and out of reverse. If it's hot, the air conditioning might be on, like full crank stopping, starting over and over. It's. It's a different type of harshness on a car and one that like someone who's building a car probably wouldn't take into account.

[Zach Klapman]

You know, it's funny because we've also done that. People might be laughing, like, of course a car can handle turning around and stuff, but you'd be surprised the number of modified cars we've driven.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

With far less horsepower than this. That sometimes struggle with that stuff. Basic things like burst of speed, slow down, burst of speed, slow down, all that stuff. So I just want to provide that.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, it's not entirely out of the ordinary for a car to struggle with that. Particularly something where it's like, this is a very boutique thing. You would be forgiven if it didn't stay cool or the air conditioning didn't work good. The fact is those things did actually work really good.

[Zach Klapman]

Extremely well.

[Matt Farah]

I thought the oil temp sensor was broken. I was like, there's no way the oil is under 100. And they're like, yep, that's right. And I was like, how? He's like, it's hot. Look what we're doing. He's like, it's just an incredibly efficient system. He's like, it's designed to do Runway racing in the middle of the desert. Like, doing this is not a problem.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. He said that it takes an hour of driving to get the oil to 160.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Which is.

[Matt Farah]

That's like my countach. That's like what they told me about my Lamborghini is like, like. Donnie was like, yeah, yeah, you have to drive like. I was like, what is it? You know, what if I need to just, you know, get things moving or whatever? I was like, he's like, yeah, 45 minutes to an hour. I was like, what?

[Zach Klapman]

And for context, I remember this specifically when we had the 911T from Flat 6 Motorsports.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I drove it from my house four miles, three miles to a grocery store. Went in the store. When we came out, the oil was at about 165. And I was like, okay, now it's warmed up a little bit. But it took that long. Sorry. It took that short amount of time to get to that temperature.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, a modern car can. Can do that quickly. I mean, this is a modern car, but like, this is. It just has so much oil and so much cooling capacity that like, you know, whatever. So anyway, when you go full throttle in this car, it is seriously violent.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Among the most violent things I've ever driven. It does have traction, which is pretty amazing. It does, actually. Once you're above second gear, it has boost by gear. But if you're above second gear, it does put the power down like pretty good, actually.

[Zach Klapman]

It is shocking.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. But like fucking. If you. If you roll into third and you do a 3, 4, 5, like you hold the fuck on because what's there is now here and you are approaching it at a speed you didn't expect.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes, very true. And the sound is violent, the shifts are violent. It's a single clutch, seven speed.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it basically. Power shifts when you're slowly cruising around. You can say this at the speed I'm saying it. Paddle, clutch open, clutch closed. That's how long it takes to do a shift. Paddle Clutch open, clutch close. Paddle clutch open, clutch closed. Which, like, that's shitty. That stinks. But when you're fucking on it and you shift within 1500rpm of the red line, which is hard to be precise because it's going so fast.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

It just slams it as hard as it can. And it's something.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, there's a. There's a very small. Not a pitch forward. It's. There's a pause in thrust, of course, because you don't have torque fill. And what does this highlight? The ability of torque fill in a P1 or something. But there's that little pause and then when the clutches slam shut, I mean, they slam shut and all of a sudden all the power comes rushing out again and just hits you in the back.

[Matt Farah]

And in between those two things, anything like that fire comes out.

[Zach Klapman]

A lot of fire comes out. Every shift fire comes out.

[Matt Farah]

It's, it's really, really, really violent. I would say that, that, that is an experts only level car. Yeah, it is. It's not for fucking amateurs. It just, I mean at two and a half million dollars, of course it's not for amateurs but like even by the standards of Pagani, this is, this is like another level of violence now. It's not, I don't want to say it's unrefined but like the gearbox really does make it unrefined. But also if I'm being honest, like the fit and finish, I mean, yeah, it's not Pagani. It's a million dollars less than a Pagani. And all million of those dollars go into build quality. Like it's not this sort of, it's not an ugly car at all.

[Zach Klapman]

I think it's pretty cool.

[Matt Farah]

I mean in fact, I think it's generally an attractive car. But some of the details just are not there for this. For seven figures.

[Zach Klapman]

I agree with you. I agree with you. It's two thirds of the cost of the pagani and 2/3 of the cost of a Chiron. And I think you said it very well. There's a certain amount of money that's required to develop hardware that does this and this is much faster and more powerful than a Pagani. But that's where the money went.

[Matt Farah]

This is literally the Corvette of Paganis. Yeah, like the actual Corvette is now the, it's the Ferrari, the Corvette. Everyone sees what's happening now, right? You've, you took the four, the four XX series and you value engineered it and made it even faster. That's the Corvette model, always has been. This is corvetting a Pagani. It's not a bad thing is where it is. But like where it's. But where, where does that sacrifice come from? Like when we saw the bear tube, the clear coat work on the bear tub was like not fabulous. There was some little pittings and he said it was after it had been polished.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh really?

[Matt Farah]

Like some of the areas where like the corner windows match up like a little bit. I'd be okay with it in a Morgan. I'm not okay with it at $2 million.

[Zach Klapman]

I agree there were places where like two panels of carbon met, you know, there's a small gap and the gap in some places was actually very even. I was impressed. Sorry. If you know, you run your finger along it. The distance between the panels felt even. But if you look from the side, one was stepped up slightly by like half a mil or something, which compared to Koenigsegg, where they match the weave and all that shit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It's just.

[Zach Klapman]

That's where those little touches show up.

[Matt Farah]

And the ui, like, it has these power hydraulic doors, which Jared said that his opinion was that at this level, opening and closing your door is an uncouth gesture. And power is more luxurious. Now, one of the things when you're shooting a car is you're in and out, in and out, in and out. Open the door, close the door open. And if you drive this car once a month. Okay, that might seem luxurious. If you're going in and out of this car all the time.

[Zach Klapman]

That's.

[Matt Farah]

The power doors are far much more trouble than they're worth.

[Zach Klapman]

That's true. And there were a few times where.

[Matt Farah]

They didn't work properly. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

So which also. And then you just. You open the door. Yeah, the button. You open the door, you close the door and then you pull it down. But.

[Matt Farah]

And also there were touchscreen window controls, which is.

[Zach Klapman]

Boy, were there.

[Matt Farah]

Which is no good. I mean, it's very silly because remember this car? 2010. 2010. So like. And, you know, I don't know. I don't remember what the original interior was in 2010, but by 2020, touch screen everything was all the rage. Right. But now. Now. Now this. These people want switches.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, I think a. Yes, 100%. The. The interest has gone back the other way and maybe they could pivot that. The other thing is, as we said before about OEMs, it's probably cheaper and simpler to have the more controls are in that screen. Yeah. Things you have to make costs stay down, etc. But. But the window control. And you know, in my video, there's a lot of. In car missing because I didn't know how to close the windows. That's on me for not asking how. But there it wasn't. There was no like highlighted window thing or whatever you had to like, tap.

[Matt Farah]

It's actually in a submenu.

[Zach Klapman]

It's a submenu. So that's like a bad thing. And the gauges look nice. They're just. They're from Aston Martin. They look pretty good. And the center screen, like, the graphics look nice and they're responsive. But I would like a few more controls. Hard controls.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, no, I didn't actually have any issues with how the screen worked. It actually. It responded it didn't freeze. It was fine. It just. I want. And the knobs that were there, the ones on the steering wheel for the wiper and for the headlights, like, that company can make a nice knob. Those were really nice to use. Like, give me more of those solid clicks. Give me a bunch of them. Yeah, they're all right. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And I think overall the interior looked cool. Like you saw carbon. The seats were pretty comfortable. The door cards are really nice.

[Matt Farah]

Ergonomically, it was actually pretty nice.

[Zach Klapman]

It's simple and they did a lot with what they had. I think they could just do a tiny bit more to make it easier to use. But. So if Pagani is one side of the spectrum where the interior is so complicated, it's almost blinding, you know, Pagani is steampunk. It is very steampunk.

[Matt Farah]

Pagani is an exercise in how can I make this more gauche and ridiculous? Which is cool. Like, I love it. But like, that's what they're doing over there.

[Zach Klapman]

This is a little. This is more to the other side where it's simple. Looks pretty nice. Does look exciting. And you see the carbon, you go, the car's made of this. But it's artistic utilitarian, I'd say.

[Matt Farah]

And beyond the speed, I thought for a non adjustable. The suspension's adjustable, but you need tools. It's not on a button. It's not adaptive.

[Zach Klapman]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

It's height adjustable to clear driveways and shit, which is cool, actually.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, also, like in city mode, it's taller than track mode, so it drops like an inch and a half.

[Matt Farah]

Right. I apologize. It's height adjustable. It's not firmness adjustable. The ride was decent, actually. Very comfortable. Firm, but not bad by any means. I never quite. I thought the brakes were nice. The brakes felt similar to what a McLaren brake pedal feels like. It's a very firm pedal that almost feels manual. Big brakes, dude.

[Zach Klapman]

I don't know if I've seen a carbon rotor that thick.

[Matt Farah]

I think they're the same. What did I just drive that I think had those. I want to say they're the same ones either on maybe the Panamera Turbo S or the Bentley. It might be the Bentley GT Speed, which is the same as the Urus brakes.

[Zach Klapman]

They're fucking huge.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. They're the biggest, thickest brembos that they make. They're monsters. Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, if you have. They had that same Runway when they're stopping from, you know, between 280 and 300, they have 0.7 miles to do that with no chute. So like, yup, big fucking brakes.

[Zach Klapman]

Not a lot of space.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, normally a brake of this size for a car that weighs 3,100 pounds would be like enormously overkill.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, no, no, this is. You need this. I gotta dissipate all the heat.

[Matt Farah]

Both you and I did note that the lack of like an air brake did make the rear end feel a little.

[Zach Klapman]

The dynamics are, I think, where this suffers the most. And I think, you know, we can go back the price. The Bugatti is a million dollars more. It also comes from Volkswagen. It costs way more to build like this. This is being built at a price that can sustain the company. There's not huge investors behind it. Like, they need to make some money on it. Bugatti and VW could have lost money on every Chiron.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, maybe not Chiron, Veyrons.

[Zach Klapman]

They did. Yeah. But it was a display. It was a look what we can do. So I think the dynamics of this thing have two problems. One, the steering ratio is way too quick. It is twitchy and not in a good way. I think the steering rack is 1.25 turns, lock to lock. And Jared did say that on the record setting cars, the top speed cars, they have a slower rack, which makes a lot of sense.

[Matt Farah]

So yeah, this one was called the Striker, which is the one that has an aerodynamic kit and is more set up for handling, but mechanically is the same as the other cars.

[Zach Klapman]

I just thought it was too quick. And the other thing as to your point, is the lack of air brake. When you get off the gas in this car, even at like barely extra legal speeds, I was shocked at the amount of dive in it and then how unsettled it felt like it when you get on the brakes, it would track straight because I think it has a lot of toe in the car, but it was just a lot more pitch forward than I was prepared for. And that's maybe what the air brakes do on McLarens and other cars.

[Matt Farah]

I think on the road it becomes, when the front gets loaded, it becomes much more affected by the camber and ruts in the road, because we were on an open sweepers. And you'll see in the video, there is video, but on a public road that's used by a lot of trucks, actually during commuting hours. So there were some ruts. And so I found that when you stepped on the throttle and it, you know, hunched back, then it was cool. But in that transition from I found I told you twice, I said, get off the throttle, slow and then on the brakes, slow, to slow that transition down, because it does get a little hairy. And the like we've said about McLaren 570s also. That's why those cars help. You know, the later cars all have fixed wings and, like, seven series cars with air brakes and all the. Basically, all the other hypercars have air brakes for that reason. And, you know, hydraulic wings are really expensive, so I understand why you might not do it. And a hydraulic wing won't help you accelerate to 300 miles an hour. But I told this to Jared and to Jason Castriota, and I said it to everybody. Like, I think if I had a full day and a racetrack and one of these and a 750s, I'd be lapping consistently faster all day in the 750s with half the horsepower because of the confidence in the braking and the steering, not because of the power. This would fucking smoke that in a drag race, which I can't believe I'd ever say about a car that will fucking spin the tires in fourth gear. And that's, you know, we're talking about. You're talking about bat shit. And, you know, hold the fuck on, because this is gonna really scare you.

[Zach Klapman]

This feels, in a way, like the American Veyron. Not in terms of, like, interior fit and finish, but the Veyron was a somewhat compromised handling machine. It was a pretty big, pretty soft thing. The Chiron, they fixed that. And that is.

[Matt Farah]

We also only the Puresport, which was the one that was four handling. So they're not gonna all be that good. But what you do get Veyron and Chiron is that feeling of. This is built like a tank, like.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. But also the dynamics impressed me in the sh. That was really incredible.

[Matt Farah]

The Pure Sport, particularly with the. It's got the camber, the lightweight wheels, and it's really set up to go around corners. Like, that thing rips. That's awesome. Yeah, but I. But they're. But you do it a Pure Sport, it's five million bucks, Right. If you can get one.

[Zach Klapman]

One, which you can't, that's where the money goes. Twice as expensive.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. So we keep going around it. Again, it's. It's the. This is the Corvette of Paganis, basically. It's, you know, if the. If the. The Chiron is the Porsche of Paganis, if we're having a new. A new index here. This is the Corvette. Yeah, but it's cool, man. Like, and people. People in the comments on my Instagram were, like, calling it, like, an LS motor And which I think is. Is not really fair to Nelson or SSC. It's a, it's a 5.9 liter billet block. Billet crank, Billet cams, flat plane crank. Flat plane crank with an insane amount of technology in it that can easily make 1300 horsepower. On pump gas.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. On 91 octane.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And you can't sell it in California, but you can sell it in all 49 other states. And it, I mean it's loud, but it has no muffler at all. And it isn't that loud.

[Zach Klapman]

It's not. It's pretty. It's cool.

[Matt Farah]

For a car with no muffler.

[Zach Klapman]

Sounds amazing. It really does sound from outside, it sounds incredible.

[Matt Farah]

And I think there are only tiny little moments. Tiny little moments where it sounds like anything in the LS family. I think most of the time it does not really sound like an LS base motor at all.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. It never to me sounded like, you know, LS Corvette firing up, which so many other cars do.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

It felt very special. I mean the exhaust they build is very. Is beautiful and incredibly like complicated. Like the bends and everything in it are so cool. I think, look, I like their story. I like what they're trying to do. I think. I know they had that big problem, but it seems like Jared's trying to do things the right way. The way he explained how they set up the Guinness record and how like they wanted, you know, multiple types of verification. I think they fucked. I think someone fucked up in 2020.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And as we talk about the video, it is so hard to convince the public like that you have reformed.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach Klapman]

But I think this. It didn't seem like they were trying to do that intentionally, to lie to people. And they're like, shit, we didn't. We're gonna go do it again. Yeah, they want to do it again the right way. They want to get the two way average of 300. It's just about finding, I guess, the place and time.

[Matt Farah]

And it's really expensive to do it. And you know, they've got, they are building some customer cars. What do we saw? Three, Three cars being built while we.

[Zach Klapman]

Were there and one was in there for updates, right?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And one, they're gonna have what, two cars at the Quail. Our buddy Nat Mundy, who runs HK Motor Cars, which is their dealer for the US is gonna have the one car at the entrance to the concourse on car week. So when we go, when you go from like the parking lots and the shuttle bus drop offs and whatever and you go under that main arch to get to the golf course. Like it's right there. It's the first shit you walk by. He also sells those Chimera things which he's got, you know, he has three of them. All we have to do when he opens, you know. So he's opening. It's K, K, K I. Isn't that right? K K I M E R E. I think it's K I, M E R e. Yeah, the O3, the. Oh, he has the 037 and then the 038 is the new one that he just got. But they're opening a showroom like a mile from my parents house.

[Zach Klapman]

HK is nice.

[Matt Farah]

So all we have to do is fucking go to Greenwich for a weekend and fuck around and go play with these things that he's got three of them.

[Zach Klapman]

Them. Let's go make a video.

[Matt Farah]

We can. Yeah, we just like need to do it. We should do it. Maybe you want to go see Rise Against?

[Zach Klapman]

I would do that. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You want to go meet Rise Against?

[Zach Klapman]

I think. Yes.

[Matt Farah]

And Papa Roach. There's also Jones Beach.

[Zach Klapman]

Funny and ironic about going to see Rise against and then also going to drive like a two million dollar car.

[Matt Farah]

I know, it was really fun. The other funny thing was that because it's at Jones beach and you know we have the God Pass, not just because of shout out to Jerry Horton from Papa Roach. Love him. But also from Hannah's cousin who's the general manager of Jones. So they have a dock at Jones Beach.

[Zach Klapman]

Take the boat.

[Matt Farah]

Well, we don't have our boat anymore.

[Zach Klapman]

But I could get a boat paddleboard.

[Matt Farah]

I could get a fucking boat and it would be fun to do the gig. So I thought about if taking a boat to see Rise against would be the bougiest.

[Zach Klapman]

I bet Nat has a boat.

[Matt Farah]

He does, but his boat is small and that would be a long way.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. To get from Greenwich to Jones beach by boat, you have to go to. Pull up a map.

[Zach Klapman]

How many hours is that?

[Matt Farah]

Probably two hours. But it's open ocean because you have to go to the south shore. So just pull up Jones Beach Theater. But if people don't know in New York, the Jones Beach Amphitheater is one of the greatest music venues on the planet. It's like an old school amphitheater. That is where there. Northwell Jones Beach Theater. It's facing the water. Look at that. It's like New York's Red Rocks, basically. And so if you have a boat, you can pull your boat up and Just. And just drop anchor. But also, you can see in this photo, actually, it's right where the mouse is. Yeah. You see the dock?

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So you can. If you have. If you're the artist and your friend of the artist, you can fucking dock. So anyway, we get the vip, Maybe bring a boat.

[Zach Klapman]

Is it quicker to take a boat than drive a car?

[Matt Farah]

Oof. It's like two hours. So go back to the map, and I'll show you where you have. How you have to do it. It's a little crazy. So you have to zoom way out. Further, further, further, further, further. Now go up. So see Stamford there?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Greenwich is to the left of that.

[Zach Klapman]

You got to go around.

[Matt Farah]

No, you. No, no. That would take two days. Okay. But you go into New York City, if you can. You zoom in. You go down the East River. Yep. Down the east river, past Manhattan, under the Verrazano Bridge, head out past JFK Airport, and then you go past Long beach, which is where Hannah, my wife, is from. And then you fucking tuck in right there. It's. I know from Greenwich to, like, midtown Manhattan on the east river is about an hour. So this is probably two and a half hours. And I've never taken a small boat on that open ocean before.

[Zach Klapman]

That would be a long ride back after. After a show. And you're like, no, you stay over. Oh, okay, then stay over on the dock.

[Matt Farah]

And then you go back. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Otherwise you die.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, no. You know I'm not doing that at night, right? No, no.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm just checking.

[Matt Farah]

I could if I had to, but I wouldn't Absolutely not want to. Yeah, that would suck balls. But maybe we could drive a Chimera while we're there.

[Zach Klapman]

That'd be sick. Let's do that.

[Matt Farah]

Taking that to a rise again show would be a little bit weird to wrap this up. Okay.

[Zach Klapman]

Ssc, I think if. If you are a person that collects, you know, that has dozens of cars and you have all the money because that's most of the people that buy these things. I. It is one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had. And the. The speed is insane. And it'd be very fun to own for a while and go to, like, a Runway event or of some kind to just experience that shit. But you have driven a Koenigsegg and the Chiron and this and the Pagani.

[Matt Farah]

I haven't driven a Koenigsegg in the last 10 years. Agera R was the last one I drove, and that was 2014, so it was a Lot like this, actually. I mean, it was a little. The materials and the fit and finish were tighter, but driving it was quite similar to this on the ride. Okay.

[Zach Klapman]

I was actually very curious.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, it was like 1300 horsepower instead of 1700, but with 10 years difference. Like, what's the fucking difference? I don't know. They both went insanely fast, the Koenigsegg. They had me take my hands off the wheel at 200 miles an hour and stand on the brakes, which I would not do in this car. I don't think I would do that. I. I don't. I don't. I wouldn't really feel comfortable with that. The Koenigsegg had a air brake and one of the most sophisticated stability control systems I'd ever seen to that point. I don't think I'd do that in this car. I'm not saying, like, this isn't, like, dangerous dangerous. Like, I don't think it, like, wants to do something bad, but, like, you kind of got to look out a little bit.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. But I. I think that's, you know, the. The Bugatti is like, you can kind of hand it to anybody and if they stay in it too long. Momentum is the thing.

[Matt Farah]

Sure. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

But you can drive around. It feels like an S8 that has, yeah, 1500 horsepower. And I think to some people, that could get boring because some people, like, if you're a race car driver, if you like flying interesting aircraft or stuff, like, people. There are people that want this. There are people that want to drive, you know, a Caterham with a V8 or an aerial atom or something. And that's what this is.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, this is like psycho machine.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

If it is.

[Matt Farah]

If a765LT isn't enough, this is like the next level of really, really insane acceleration. And I haven't driven an F5. I've asked John a few times to try an F5. I've told him I hate his yoke steering wheel. I don't like yoke steering wheels, but, like, I'd love to try an F5 at some point, if I can, of course, if and when, however. But, like, this was. It was at the same time better than I thought, you know, But. But also, like, I could. There. There's. There's areas where they clearly just don't have the resources to take it to that next level. And when you're selling a car for Sal. Seven figures, like, deep in the seven figures, you need a very passionate customer who wants this specific thing. And in some cases, as he said, wouldn't without naming names. Has been disillusioned by other cars that may have had, quote, finer engineering, but ultimately weren't very reliable. He wants his car to be reliable. I think it probably will be. I think his biggest risk for unreliability is the hydraulic door.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Honestly.

[Zach Klapman]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that's. That'd be the. My biggest concern. But, you know, thank you to SSC for having us out. It was. It was really lovely to meet them and. And hang out with them and. And, you know, that. That car. That car worked good all day. It really did. Worked good all day.

[Zach Klapman]

Handled the heat better than we did.

[Matt Farah]

Say, I. I don't know if the. I hope the video shows how fast it is, because it's just. Or show some fire at least.

[Zach Klapman]

It'll definitely show fire. Yeah, we definitely, you know, closed road, professional drivers, all that stuff. But, man, like, I drove back from location with Jared, and he watched me like I was shifting manual. And he goes, okay. He's like, now what you want you to do is roll into it in third, and when it gets to red line, just let. Just stay in it, Let it shift itself. He's like, because it's revving so fast.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, this thing does not feel like the red line mechanically, is 8200. It feels like it'll rev to 10, first of all. And he's like. Like, it's really hard to time that shift to nail it. Otherwise, you know, you hit fuel cut and stuff. And when it shifted itself. Good fucking God. Matt Farah. Like, the thrust is insane. I mean, you did it. The kick is very hard, and it just squats. It sticks. I mean, the roads there are fantastic. And I was extremely awake and focused in that moment. And silent.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And wow.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. I mean, for most people, a McLaren is enough to go, what the fuck? This is what people are buying right now. But if that. Eventually you can get used to that. I think it would be quite difficult to get used to this.

[Zach Klapman]

Remember back in the early days of tuned, we were filming a lot of R35 GTRS, and people go, I got the 800 horsepower kit. And you go, okay. How do you like it? And I remember this gentleman, he'd had it for two months, and he's like, I think I'm gonna get the 1200 horsepower kit. He was already bored of the power because. Because in that car, it was so easy. But also acceleration, your body gets used to it eventually. This is the far step of that if you made a bunch of money. I don't know if you'll. I don't know if you'd get used to this.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it would. Because there's so few places that you can really.

[Zach Klapman]

You have to go to a standing mile event or something.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean you, you can drive this on the street. Like you, you could absolutely drive this on the street. But you know, you can't get. Get near the floorboard for, for very long. The next thing is already here. Whatever. Whatever was there is, is already here. And you're going 150.

[Zach Klapman]

It leaps tens of miles per hour.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Well beyond.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Your other cars.

[Matt Farah]

Very wild. Turns out Nelson racing can build an engine. Yeah, I know. It was cool. It was, it was, it was really wild. The Manx is finished. That looks very exciting to me. Me, I'm going to. I think I'm going to get it on Wednesday or Thursday and take it home, which is crazy. The top came out really good exactly like. Like we thought. And they just sent me the photos. The coolers that Ali got us, he got us these awesome coolers that have like a little vacuum sealer sort of thing on the lid and, and they have this, this handle or a strap, like a shoulder strap on the cooler. And the cooler is. It's aluminum. It's like anodized aluminum. And it has these sort of like ridges in it that really look like the ridges on the inside of the Manx on the ECU and battery cover lid. And so Ellie got us a pair of them. And it's got these shoulder strap where the strap like has these strap locks on it almost like a guitar strap. And we took the strap apart and Brenda made it into tie downs for the cooler.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, cool.

[Matt Farah]

Right. So the cooler's strapped down on either side of it. I don't know. I don't have a photo of it yet, but it's like, like pretty slick. Yeah. So we'll be able. So I can like for the quail, I'm just gonna like load the cooler up. The night.

[Zach Klapman]

It's all drinks, free drinks and food there.

[Matt Farah]

But not as good as what I'll have.

[Zach Klapman]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Be celebrating with some blantons.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, okay.

[Matt Farah]

Or maybe we'll have a little craft cocktail. Maybe we'll have a sell. Maybe that's what we'll do. We could either bring the materials to make a craft cocktail of like a celebratory cocktail or I could bring the materials to make shakerrados.

[Zach Klapman]

Shakerratos.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Zach Klapman]

The coffee line there was large yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Shaker Autos would be good.

[Zach Klapman]

The Koenigsegg had a great coffee stand, which is a weird thing to say, but.

[Matt Farah]

Well, yeah, let's make a Shakerado. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah. Either way. And plus, we can have. When we go down to Big Sur on Thursday, we can have the charcoots.

[Zach Klapman]

But don't we go to a breakfast place?

[Matt Farah]

But we're at down there for a while.

[Zach Klapman]

I'm like, did I forget we go there to a place that makes great eggs?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, we're down there for a while. Hours. You never know. The traffic's bad and who knows?

[Zach Klapman]

That's actually true.

[Matt Farah]

Very, very. It looks fantastic. Yeah, it looks fantastic.

[Zach Klapman]

Gotta bring it to King of Hammers.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah, that'd be cool. And do you want to do.

[Zach Klapman]

Do you want. Can we talk quickly?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

About ZR1.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Nurburgring stuff.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach Klapman]

The reason, I mean, first of all, like, we can celebrate. The Chevy ZR1X did 649 at the ring.

[Matt Farah]

That's crazy.

[Zach Klapman]

Super fast.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Super duper fast.

[Matt Farah]

How does that compare to the fastest Porsche?

[Zach Klapman]

That's where I'm headed.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And I'm not. And all it should be said that the. The Corvette team that did this and they also ran the Z06. They did in a 7 11. Sorry. Okay, so 01X did 659. 01 did 650, 649. And then Z06 did 7 11. They did it with. The engineers were driving.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

They weren't pros. These engineers are.

[Matt Farah]

Are good drivers. Listen, a GM performance chassis engineer is a pro. I don't want to fucking hear that.

[Zach Klapman]

I would say they're Pro Am. They're close because Porsche uses Jorg. Sure, sure.

[Matt Farah]

But the difference between Jorg and a GM chassis engineer is not 20 seconds a lap. It's just not.

[Zach Klapman]

I agree, it is.

[Matt Farah]

Maybe. Maybe a couple. Maybe.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But go on.

[Zach Klapman]

So I. Jesse Wuji, he put up a thing on Instagram and I looked at it and went, it had all the times of recent cars, recent production cars. And what surprised me about it was that the Porsches have run quicker and some of them have the Manti Performance or Man Thigh performance, way faster. All right, that's. Let's just say that's Manthey. Let's give that an asterisk. But when you come up here to.

[Matt Farah]

Like a stock GT2 RS647.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. Or a facelifted GT3 991. And those have half the power of.

[Matt Farah]

The ZR1, that's a 500 horsepower car.

[Zach Klapman]

So that I just. And I saw it and I'm not, I'm really not trying to make. I'm not making fun of Corvette. I saw it and I was surprised and I went, wow. Is that because the Porsche lends itself to the ring much more than a car with 1200 horsepower? It can't be deployed as much.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, look, Jorg doesn't have the fastest GT car lap. Lars Kern has the fastest GT2 RS Mantheye. Lars Kern has quite a few in the top 20 as well. So it's not just Jorg. Right?

[Zach Klapman]

That's very true. But I mean, isn't Lars also.

[Matt Farah]

Lars is a pro also. Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

But either way, like the cars, these are stock Porsches, 911s with half the power that are running quicker times. And I just shot. I saw that and I was like, why?

[Matt Farah]

It's pretty impressive stuff. I'm very impressed.

[Zach Klapman]

I want an engineer to say it.

[Matt Farah]

I'm very impressed.

[Zach Klapman]

Here's why.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it would be pretty wild if it was purely Jord Bergmeister. And if that was the case, I would say I'm incredibly honored to have to like know him as a friend and who have been around a track with him because holy fuck. Can that guy drive? Unquestionably. But I mean, the GM guys developing this car, they're pro level racing drivers at the Nurburgring. I might give them a second or two. Versus, you know, versus. What's really crazy is that the Nurburgring really is a power track. It's a, it's a top speed power track. Right. High speed. Which demonstrates, you know, as demonstrated by how little gain they got from the all wheel drive X.

[Zach Klapman]

Very true.

[Matt Farah]

Doesn't do much.

[Zach Klapman]

Right.

[Matt Farah]

On that track. I bet there'd be a much bigger difference at the Thermal Club pulling out of these hairpins than there are in the Nurburgring.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, but. But to that point, the ZR1 has 1200 horsepower.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. No, it should probably be a lot.

[Zach Klapman]

Faster, so I thought it'd be a lot faster. Now maybe the aero kits on the GT3Rs and the 2Rs are just way more effective than what they put on the ZR1. Maybe I don't have the downforce numbers in front of me, but I just saw that and I was like, oh, that's very curious.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, maybe their cornering speeds are really that much higher, which would be wild considering I've driven a Z06 and the cornering speed on that Was pretty insane.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. It seems amazing.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. But it is funny that with that much extra power, the times are really in the same kind of ballpark. It's not. The rewards aren't that huge. Although what's really surprising is that the Z06 is that far behind a stock GT3. I mean, that's pretty wild. Like, that's 670 horsepower and presumably that's a Z07 package car, you know, ready for the track. That's pretty far behind a GT3.

[Zach Klapman]

I wonder. It'd be cool to see sector times because there are sections of the Nurburgring that really reward power, but there's also a lot of it that's, you know, the downhill, tight stuff. So maybe in those sectors the Porsche is a lot quicker and stickier. And then on the big, big stuff, you know, the Corvette catches up.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Someone out there will make that cool like, 3D graph thing with showing the two cars driving.

[Matt Farah]

It is kind of funny how quickly they. They did beat the gtd, though. That's pretty funny.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. And then Ford, of course, tweeted, they're like, it's on.

[Matt Farah]

Here's one for you. I think. I'm pretty sure that we'll have a ZR1 and a GTD at performance car of the year, so you'll get to see a direct comparison on a smaller track.

[Zach Klapman]

Which track are you guys going?

[Matt Farah]

Thunderhill.

[Zach Klapman]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

Be interesting.

[Matt Farah]

Thunderhill. Cool. Should we go to the people for a few minutes? Let's go to them, the patrons. We love them. [e-mail] the Smoking Tire podcast. That's where you ask us questions for the live show. It's where you consume the live show. It's where you get the show before anybody. Anybody else gets it. The day it's recorded most times. It's where you get the show without ads. It's where you get exclusive access to merch drops and collabs. And it's also where you get to help out your favorite podcast. Let's get to them. Black Sabbath.

[Zach Klapman]

Great name.

[Matt Farah]

That's pretty good. Why do older cars from the 60s and 70s seem to be able to get away with the patina look, while cars from the 90s just seem to look rough? I have an 03 Mustang Cobra with beat ass paint and my friends give me shit when I call it patina. I. That's very funny. I suspect it's because cars in the 60s and 70s are made of metal and your Mustang is made of plastic.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, very possibly. Paint might have been mixed differently yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like the chrome era, you know, Patina ing is a good different thing. When those night curvy 90s cars look beat, they just. They just look tired and shitty.

[Zach Klapman]

I wonder if it's also just. We got used to seeing old muscle car things that had paint coming off, but we still like the car enough so everyone just like, you know, gives it a pass. And it's just become a trend, huh?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. This is funny. The toking sire. I like that. When trying out different modes in press cars, how long do you spend in each mode before you find your first favorite? For instance, I know at least one OEM plays tricks with their sport mode and this is an unproven accusation, but I'd be very interested. I would like to confidentially know person in the DMs or however you want to send us which OEM. This is just so I can try it for myself in their car and.

[Zach Klapman]

See if this is fascinating.

[Matt Farah]

So I know at least one OEM is playing tricks with their sport mode. As soon as you engage it, the damper stiffness goes all the way to max, but only for the first six seconds, after which this damper setting gradually returns to a usable stiffness which the test drivers signed off on. This is to give the impression of a wide adjustability range during a test drive or to show off to your friends for a moment. Besides, despite the stiffness having zero handling benefit, if you give sport mode enough time, it will feel much closer to normal than you think. Think my guess, M5 Touring. This is BMW in the M5 Touring. Because I found in M5 Touring 2.0 that putting the car from comfort into sport makes the ride better in general.

[Zach Klapman]

Interesting.

[Matt Farah]

Don't know why we'll talk next show about M5 touring 2.0, but I will just say that they did find a problem with the other car. It wasn't a catastrophic problem, but there was something not quite right about it. Lick my Aztec says I've got a hundred seventeen thousand mile 2012 R8 V8 manual spider. Fun fact, Audi made less than 100 of these. Those are very rare and actually very cool. Yeah, that's fucking cool. Cool. My mag shocks are starting to leak and I can go coilovers or get remanufactured Audi shocks for shops. From a reputable shop in Poland. Costs are about the same. What do you recommend? I'm leaning towards stock. I would say stock. I think that car handles nicely. I think in terms of you're talking about rarity. Maybe you care about resale value if you Liked how the car rode. Go back to stock, you'll get most of that. You'll get more of your money back from that service than if you did a coilover.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, I agree.

[Matt Farah]

I don't think most R8 buyers eventually. I mean you don't, don't. If you for some reason want an improvement in handling, high quality coilover is cool, fine. But if you are happy with it now. Ghost stock. Yeah, nice cams says when it comes to the M light and half AMG vehicles, referring to like BMW M Sport and like the C43 and all those like 43s and stuff. I'm considering an X3M and GLC63. But it seems like the X3M40 and GLC43 are enough and less harsh. Especially since my wife will be driving a lot. I think you're right. I think for daily driving you would be happier with the M40 than you would with the M. I don't think it would make any difference in the day or daily life at all.

[Zach Klapman]

Still a very, very quick car. Very smooth power band. The ride is going to be much better than the X3M.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Sweden Low. It seems to be a common trope for automotive journalists to bash Detroit as a place to live and also a place to be a car enthusiast. Just wondering why that is. Have you had a bad experience? I think you're misreading what we're bashing. It's a bad place to write about cars because there are no fucking hills and there are no good racetracks and the weather is bad a lot. Like that's why I wouldn't want to live there if my job was to write about cars. I've met so many great people in Detroit. It's a fun place to visit it. It's a relatively affordable place to live a nice lifestyle. There's young people doing cool there. If you like boats. That lake life is sick. I love the lake life there and like I know a lot of people that are very happy to live there. Like it's not a bad place to live for a lot of reasons. But it's a garbage place to make content about about cars because there's nowhere pretty or fun to drive them.

[Zach Klapman]

Sorry, where's the nearest track to Detroit? You have to go up to track. Yeah. Like Road America. Where's Gingerman?

[Matt Farah]

Gingerman's in South Haven. So there's Gingerman, there's Road America. You have Belle Isle once in a while. That's not fully set up. There's a. There's it's called M1 Concourse or something. There's a private track club in Pontiac, but there's just. I mean, it's, it's a flat grid.

[Zach Klapman]

Like, sorry, you have to go to a track. There's no, like.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, someone got defensive when I said this about in the Kamisen show and sent me some photo that was supposed to represent a good driving road. And it was dead, dead straight and had like a mild elevation in it. And I was like, are you trolling or are you actually trying to describe this to me as being a hint hill? Because, like, this is a mild rise.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes. That's not enough.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I love Detroit, though. It's, it's, it's, it's fun for. In its own way. I've not had bad experiences in Detroit, but yeah, the January auto show was dumb as. I think that's, I think that's a big change. Optimus Primus. Would you consider charging for one take style videos to cover the vehicles you're showing for auction? Auction? No, I don't want to do that. Doug owns the auction site, so that's why he does that. I, I'm, I. If they want to give me shares and bring a trailer, let's, let's talk. But I don't think they want to do that. Chris from Colorado, be honest, has the front grill of the M3 and M4 grown on you guys? It has. On me, no.

[Zach Klapman]

I'd say like 5%. Yes. When I look at, I go, oh, it's aggressive. And then if I look at longer, I go, man, there's so many other cars from today that have done a better job.

[Matt Farah]

Looking at Eric's F80, sitting here for a couple weeks, like that has grown on me.

[Zach Klapman]

Yep, that's.

[Matt Farah]

That's where that car was last. Pretty.

[Zach Klapman]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

Misfit Cyclone. Best underrated T top car for the summer. You ever see a Fox body T top very rare?

[Zach Klapman]

No. That's pretty cool.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, they made them for a couple of years and they are very rare and very cool.

[Zach Klapman]

I go like Trans Am or something.

[Matt Farah]

Like the Trans Am is the traditional. Yeah. And I. My rock. If you could swing that, that's all right. What other. What other cars had T tops? I mean, it was mostly those 80s era muscle cars that did a T top. I don't know. Is there a complete list of T tops? I'm sure there is, but I, I don't know a lot of T top cars.

[Zach Klapman]

You're the 10 coolest ever.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, wow. You're 69 vet T top like that's pretty cool actually. Yeah, I would, I would with that, that, that Vet or an early C3. Vet to me is like a car I regularly think about owning. But even just sitting in one for five seconds, I go, Nope, couldn't do it.

[Zach Klapman]

What else?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, four of 70s Thunderbird, Camaro.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Nothing. Firebird. Yeah. Suzuki X90. So that's a full targa roof, not a T, but yeah, Corvette.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean there weren't that many, I guess.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I would say. I, I'd have to say that's not the Mustang to. Yuck. That's terrible.

[Zach Klapman]

One of the ugliest cars ever made.

[Matt Farah]

Be a Ritz El Dorado. Be a Ritz with a T top. What a holy chassis flex. Yeah, that's crazy. All right. What else they got? I would, I would probably have to go Trans Am as well. Is the first gen Audi TT RS any good compared to the new ones? Well, there really aren't any new ones, but you mean first gen compared to second gen. The first gen TTRS is pretty cool because you came in a manual, so that's. The later ones only came in automatic. So if you wanted to get a manual, you had to get that one. We drove a TTRS that was modified by APR that we was like over 600 horsepower and was so fast.

[Zach Klapman]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

And it sounded like a Lamborghini. It was really, really cool. Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

But then we drove the one on drive. You drove, what year was that?

[Matt Farah]

Ttrs.

[Zach Klapman]

Second gen. Second gen. Yeah. That was a very impressive car.

[Matt Farah]

Fast as hell.

[Zach Klapman]

It did really great. It surprised everybody on the racetrack.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. But if you want, you have to do the, the first gen if you want a manual. Okay. I am. Dr. Remulak says I've had three Rolexes current one to GMT and they all run slow, maybe five minutes over a couple of days. Have you ever had that problem? I, I al I. This is going to sound very douchey, but I don't really wear any one watch long enough to notice problems that don't pop up in, in like two days. I, I've, you know, all. Bless you all watches should be like, might be like a few seconds a day, you know, but. And I don't know the exact specs for what Rolexes should be, but I've, I'm sorry, I don't have the answer. No, Michael. No. With car companies fixing things that aren't broken. I'm looking at you. Digital dipstick stick. What feature do you wish caught on that didn't? What feature caught on what didn't catch on. I mean the idea of a clutchless manual lever is awesome. And they, a couple people, different companies tried that and it didn't go anywhere.

[Zach Klapman]

Koenigsegg's magical transmission. That'd be great if that was everywhere.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

What feature? I wish. I, I mean I really like the Ionic 5 and the EV with gears. I think they do a cool job and I think if there's still time, it'd be fun.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, still time on that one. Bub rub and the whistle tips, they go woo woo. I've never heard you mention a Subaru EV a single time on the podcast. Have you driven a Sultera? I have a very good friend that is, that is a very high level executive at a Subaru dealer and got a Solterra as his demo car. And when I tell you the texts that I get about how much he hates this thing.

[Zach Klapman]

Really?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I would not look to Subaru selling a re badged Toyota EV as a win for them. I would not be buying Subarus with those Subarus. The snozberries taste like snozberries. That's, that's a larger question. That's a larger question. I, some of these I are not ones you can just answer on the fly. I don't know what the, what frozen dingleberry metallic says. Do you know of any watchmakers who sell legit modded segments? Seikos. From what I've heard, a lot of the Instagram Seiko mod companies use fake parts. Well, they're using aftermarket parts. I'm not sure. Like, like I, I've had, I've seen, there are Seiko modders who build complete watches from aftermarket parts, if that's what you mean. But like normally you would know what you're getting. Like I have a, I have that watch, that black pearl watch. That's, that's, there's not, it's not based on any Seiko. It has a Seiko movement in it. But like everything, it's a complete aftermarket part thing. But like I don't know if, if, if this, if he's mean. There's some Instagram company that's like selling a watch with a Seiko movement that doesn't have one or is selling a watch that's advertised as having a genuine Seiko case and doesn't have one. Like I, I, I've never seen that. But like, oh, I wouldn't do that. I mean if you want to make sure it's real, buy a Seiko and then buy the parts. That you want modded and then go to a local independent watch store and go put these hands and this bezel and this crystal on this watch and now you know it's real. I mean if that's really a concern. A second Jay Z has hit the Supra.

[Zach Klapman]

That's so fun. Funny.

[Matt Farah]

That's really funny.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Given how bad the M5 Touring's ride is already, how much worse will the M5Cs be? Probably a lot worse. But maybe better.

[Zach Klapman]

Maybe better.

[Matt Farah]

Could be better.

[Zach Klapman]

The M2 it went M2 good soft M2 comp too stiff M2Cs great.

[Matt Farah]

Rye country night school. Shout out to him. Did you see the Seiko Datsun watch collab? I did. Don't care about it. I don't. I. I'm not old enough to give a shit about Datsuns. Tim A. What would you rather have as a luxury winter ski truck? Rivian R1T quad or Porsche Cayenne Turbo?

[Zach Klapman]

Between those two Edward R1T quad. As long as I, you know, don't have to drive too far.

[Matt Farah]

It would. Yeah. I mean it would depend on two things. One, do you. You have a ski home where you can keep that thing pl in, you know. And two, what if it needs something? Where is your house relative to what you'd have to do with a Rivian to get it fixed?

[Zach Klapman]

Sure. I was imagining a vacuum land where I live in the ski town. The drive to the mountain isn't too far charging etc. Like from a pure driving perspective like having the tie in turbo. I don't need the turbo. I could just go Cayenne. That'd be fine with like a lift kit and something. But I think the R1T quad would be also over. You don't need it to either one.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. You don't need the quad. Yeah. As long as you knew how you'd get it serviced and. Or fixed and that didn't. That's what like when I went to the Yellowstone Club. These people are all billionaires. And you know what I just saw? Fucking Tahoes as far as the eye could see. All Tahoe. Tahoes. Everybody's in a Tahoe. Multi billionaires just rolling Tahoes. Sam let me borrow his like old, his. His old Range Rover just because like that's what he has there. Just like like a 10 year old range Rover. And that was the only Range Rover I saw. And I saw like no EVS up there.

[Zach Klapman]

But that's because the nearest dealership is a Chevy.

[Matt Farah]

It's just. Yeah, I Mean, it's just because, like, that's what's easy for them. Like they, you know, know because they're in the middle of nowhere. So like, if your ski house is in the middle of nowhere, that could be problematic. Just get something.

[Zach Klapman]

In that case. I wouldn't have either one of these options because I don't want to find a Porsche shop either.

[Matt Farah]

For sure.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Wynonna's big brown diesel manual wagon beater. Is this just one person coming up with all these Primus names?

[Zach Klapman]

Is it? I think it's the same person.

[Matt Farah]

Is it Les Claypool? Actually, like a fan. That would be awesome. We need to. I mean, here's the thing.

[Zach Klapman]

What car?

[Matt Farah]

Oh, it's a hot car.

[Zach Klapman]

If you drove a car.

[Matt Farah]

I thought this was a real recommendation. What would you have to drive across the country in order to get the most people putting pictures of your car on Instagram? That's the question.

[Zach Klapman]

I think the wiener mobile.

[Matt Farah]

I think too many people have seen wiener mobiles. I think like, what's his. That, that dude, that fucking funny redneck guy. Weston west. The guy, he's like a. He's almost like a. He's almost like a whistling diesel.

[Zach Klapman]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

He's in that kind of a way. But he never pivoted to lighting Ferraris on fire. He stayed straight line redneck. He just did a build where he flipped the body around 180 on a truck and is just driving that bitch around like backwards and getting pulled over and like, that's pretty funny.

[Zach Klapman]

That would be good. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The backwards. A truck that looks like it's going backwards.

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, like what's his face?

[Matt Farah]

The backup pickup. Like the Galpin backup?

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah, imagine that.

[Matt Farah]

But like a streetcar.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. Yeah, that would work.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. German Shepherd Transport E39 any tips for making an Emmanuel E39 530 as enjoyment as enjoyable as possible for mountain roads. I understand the top of the line KW suspension, et cetera would be awesome. But I'm mostly interested in value return. So basically the first thing you should do is make sure that it's as good as it can be. Meaning it's 20 years old. Right. Do you have good bushings?

[Zach Klapman]

Start there?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Before you go modify it with some suspension, you might find that restoring it to 100% stop. New bushings, new shocks, new fucking anything that can wear out. Put it back to stock and you might be like, oh, you know, and have. And have a fabulous handling car.

[Zach Klapman]

I think it'd be very comfortable. I think if I was going to do this and it sounds like you're open to spending a little money. I would do all new bushings, keep them soft, like restore those and then do like an Ohlins road and track suspension kit. Something that's soft but just a more advanced damper than what they had back in the, the day. And I don't think you need a big brake kit. You could do lines and fluid.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean, unless you're driving this like this really hard. I would just. The brakes will be fine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Pads, fluid lines get you there. Yeah. I would just make sure it's as close to, to the rubber and stuff is all. Doing the right thing. Your engine and trans mounts, your suspension mounts, all those connecting bits. Make sure those are all the way they're supposed to be.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Because that, you get a lot of slop in there.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. And that'll change. That could change your alignment mid cornering. That could do so many things you don't want.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Three more and then I have to pee. Chris from Colorado. Thoughts on Glock making watches? Few seem cool. A lot look tacky. You couldn't fucking give me a Glock watch.

[Zach Klapman]

I did not know they did this.

[Matt Farah]

I don't, I mean, they. I don't think you can wear one of these without effectively making like a political statement. I mean, they're using automatic movements. I mean, it just, it just. I don't know, I don't care. I wouldn't, I wouldn't wear this. And I, and actually I really, I really like. As far as firearms go, I really like shooting a Glock. I'm very accurate with a Glock 17 or a Glock 19. And if I was going to buy a handgun, a Glock would be at the top of my list. I don't want this. Just me.

[Zach Klapman]

I think this color is actually. It's not a bad color scheme or bad looking watch, but I just don't want to like wear firearms all the time.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah. No. If you think you want this, what you actually want is a Christopher Ward watch. Christopher. I just saw them at another watch trade show I went to. They're fucking killing it right now. Chris Ward's designs are sick. I really am into a bunch of, of what they're doing. And they have several watches that come in that sort of orange, blue color scheme. That, that's called the Bel Canto. That's a chiming watch. But normally those chiming watches are like $80,000. And yeah, the C12 is pretty cool. Go down. They have.

[Zach Klapman]

And this looks. Oops. Nothing.

[Matt Farah]

These are like like some of those are expensive. Well, the C12s are. But. Yeah, but go down the, the one, the ones with the crazy where you can see the movement on the dial are very expensive. Or the skeleton ones. But the ones that have more normal dials have, have much more normal price points. 1200, 1500.

[Zach Klapman]

I mean these look like fancy watch.

[Matt Farah]

I think the Glock watch is a couple hundred bucks.

[Zach Klapman]

Well, I actually don't know but it's definitely trying to be like, like tactical. Tactical. You know it, it glows at night and that kind of stuff. It's like a Garmin watch or something.

[Matt Farah]

You didn't like pull up the, the, the, the comparison of the Chris Ward with the, the ones go back to dive. Go. Go back to watches and go to like dive watches.

[Zach Klapman]

Okay. Yeah, I think I was in integrated.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. See the Trident. Trident reef there. 850 with the orange and blue. That's kind of what I was talking about.

[Zach Klapman]

Does look very close.

[Matt Farah]

Right. It's got a white, a white sort of running track around the outside. But you kind of get the idea.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So that's what I would, that's what I would get. If you wanted a watch that looked like that, I'm sure they'll sell a lot of those.

[Zach Klapman]

Like I mean hopefully the watch is as reliable as their firearm. That's like.

[Matt Farah]

Well, they're buying their movement from somebody. No one's. That's a solita or some kind of movement. I don't know.

[Zach Klapman]

This is our last page.

[Matt Farah]

To be so bad. Tony Rodriguez Salgado. What would you rather. Okay. For fun. Daily Weekender convertible for 50k new Mustang GT or a 991? 911.

[Zach Klapman]

911.

[Matt Farah]

911. If it was not like a bazillion miles and beat up.

[Zach Klapman]

I just think the Mustang is a great looking car. The coupe, I don't think it looks good top up or down as a convertible. And Sarah Turo'd one when she was shopping for cars. And the fit and finish really starts to fall apart when the, when the top has to go up and down a lot.

[Matt Farah]

That next question doesn't make any sense. But we'll skip it. It doesn't make sense. It's the check engine light anthem. Pretty good. With the Leno law seemingly about to pass, is there anything else you'd like to see? Him or another well loved person of influence put their weight behind in the world of automotive law? From my understanding that law was totally hollowed out and doesn't actually end up.

[Zach Klapman]

Helping really it only helps cars before 1985 or something like that. So it doesn't help.

[Matt Farah]

75 only.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah. And you have to. And you have to run historic plates on it, I believe.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And you probably. Yeah. I. I don't think that's. I mean it's better than nothing but it's definitely not. Not the kind of win I was hoping.

[Zach Klapman]

I would like to have him or other people get back in there and.

[Matt Farah]

Try to get one cars that we like. Yeah. And I would also like to see. Yeah. What else would. I mean I don't know.

[Zach Klapman]

I.

[Matt Farah]

I'd love to fucking not have them. Gut cafe. That's what I'd actually. I'd like. I would like to have fuel economy standards that. That fucking march towards a zero emissions future. Even if it's not realistic to get there in 10 years. That's what I would like to have. And I'll put my fucking weight behind that. That's crazy. Fucking fascists. Hoopty157 says what car item collab would you like to see if the quality of the product was in line with the quality of the car? Example Lexus cooking knives with Japanese steel Car item collab where the quality would have to be there. I'd like to see a Ferrari power drill where the it was powered by a tiny little Ferrari V8.

[Zach Klapman]

That's a good idea. Yeah, that's a fun idea.

[Matt Farah]

That would be really fun.

[Zach Klapman]

You know it would be rad. Probably impossible. Whatever. Dreamland. Like a Damascus steel wheel. Like if it was a two piece and the spokes were like actually hand hammered Damascus steel. Probably take 18 years to make.

[Matt Farah]

I would very much like to rip a Porsche tube. A bong. What like an act like Porsche makes that hookah. The Porsche design hookah.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

They're like you can smoke weed out of but it's not optimized for it for the. That it's optimized for shisha like that. Like you can smoke weed out of it and should in fact. And like why else would you buy a Porsche design bong? But I'd like to see the Germans Re Engineer A:Dot2 Bong Bong:Dot2.

[Zach Klapman]

See what they can really do.

[Matt Farah]

Yes. It's designed for the optimum THC delivery to the dome.

[Zach Klapman]

I feel like we get enough thc. I feel like the weed has enough thc.

[Matt Farah]

No, no, we do. I just want to see what Porsche can do.

[Zach Klapman]

Gotcha. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

They improved the intake of the THC by 27%.

[Zach Klapman]

Maybe they'd get rid of like more of the carbon that you ingest when smoking it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. The smoke is actually cleaners. Enzo air.

[Zach Klapman]

Right. Exactly. Like turbo S. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Last one. Granny shifting. Not double clutching like you should. I think you remember joking a while back that you're now a D list celebrity now that your fame has granted you access to a, B and C list celebrity car enthusiasts. Do you enjoy talking to famous people or to regular people, or is there no generalization that can be made?

[Zach Klapman]

I hate regular people. I can't stand their stories.

[Matt Farah]

I like talking to famous people. As long as there's something to talk about, I don't want it to be an interview, you know, but if you're hanging out, there's a good. There's a buffer. You're in a small group. 3, 4. And stories are flying. And, you know, that's. That's nice. I've been fortunate enough that the famous people that I've met in a lot of cases, like, sort of knew who I was. So I was like, a little pre approved maybe, but, like, no, interesting people are good. You know, sometimes people are famous because they're interesting.

[Zach Klapman]

Exactly.

[Matt Farah]

And sometimes they're famous for a different reason. Sure. Also, you know, the other way. Sometimes people you've never heard of are the most interesting people ever.

[Zach Klapman]

I think some of the. A lot of the interesting people are famous people like that, you know and I know sort of are like, if they're comedians, they're famous for talking.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

So they're good storytellers. And there's like, they love banter. They're like doing bits and joking around and so that makes it interesting. But if someone was like, someone could be the most famous guitar player in the world. And if they are just super focused on that. Right. And like, I'm not a musician, we might not actually have a lot to talk about.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And so there could be this weird. So I don't care that they're famous because there needs to be a vibe and we need to get along well.

[Matt Farah]

And also, like, fame is really relative sometimes. Like, dude, Zach hangs out with these people. Like your. Your Burning man friends.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Who?

[Zach Klapman]

They're nerd famous.

[Matt Farah]

They're nerd famous. But like. But like, the vast majority of the universe probably couldn't pick these people out of a crowd. And. And most people that are in tune with pop culture have also never fucking heard of these people. But you showed me they're on an arena tour right now. They're selling out arenas to play Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. So, like, you know, in the arena, these Are fucking. This is Keith Richards.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But, like, have you ever. But have you hung out with them anywhere but Burning man and mostly invisible, right?

[Zach Klapman]

Oh, like out in public. Yeah, yeah, mostly. We went to dinner. I went to dinner with two of them. Them. And at the restaurant, no one knew who they were except, like. But then one waiter really knew who they were.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach Klapman]

And was very nice and stuff. So it's.

[Matt Farah]

That's basically me. Yeah, yeah, that's basically me. Outside of a car show or anything. Absolutely nobody of consequence whatsoever.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But every once in a while, a valet parker or a waiter is an enormous fan kind of. Right.

[Zach Klapman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

That's a nice level of famous. Pretty much. Sometimes it gets you things.

[Zach Klapman]

And regarding normal people, there was a guy at the Houston show who was like a nuclear engineer in the Navy and then a nuclear engineer, and he downplayed all of it. And his wife goes, he's a nuclear engineer. And I was fascinated because he lived in a submarine and then he built these things and now he's got these cars and he's the only person I've heard ever say that Audis don't require a lot of maintenance. And then I was like, oh, that's because your brain is used to building.

[Matt Farah]

A nuclear reactor by the standards of the Eisenhower.

[Zach Klapman]

He said he had a B5S4 once. And I went, oh, man, they have so many problems. He goes, no, you just have to do the maintenance. And then he described the maintenance. He was not referring to oil changes. He's like, you just change his timing chain a couple times. You do all these things. Because his brain can handle that stuff. So I was fascinated by talking to that guy because I thought his life story was cool.

[Matt Farah]

Sure. And I'm not sure if the question is if we're talking about casual conversation or if we're talking about. On the podcast. On the podcast, the enjoyment is always someone who has something interesting to say, you know, to teach us or whatever. That's not necessarily in line with what is successful for a podcast, but it is. It's. It's definitely novel and fun to sit down with a celebrity that you've seen in something or a lot of things, and to learn that they're actually pretty cool and like a. And mostly a regular person, which happens more often than it doesn't happen a lot of times. In LA, there's people that were like, huge in the 90s, and now they're kind of like, kind of nobody. And you can meet those people and they're the fucking mellowest coolest folks, you know. They're happy you remember them, you know. Anyway, that's our show, folks. Thank you very much. I hope you have enjoyed this hour and 40 minutes of radio. Anything to add, Zach? We'll be back. Next time, we'll Talk about the M5 2 M5 review 2 and this G Wagon thing from Arcade that I'm driving over the weekend. Sort of a resto moddy G Wagon thing from the 80s from, like, Russia or something. Kind of nuts. And yeah, more smoking tire podcast soon. See you guys. Bye.