Cool Cars with Chris: Car Talk, Driving Tips & Auto Life Mar 23, 2026

026 | California Gas Prices Are INSANE… The Secret Loophole Saving Drivers Money

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Concept

Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge is a famous bridge in San Francisco. People sometimes use it as part of their regular routine because it’s such a well-known, scenic route.

Concept

gas prices

They’re talking about how expensive gasoline has gotten. When gas costs more, it can really change your budget for driving.

Term

gallon

Gas is priced by the gallon. When you compare stations, you’re really comparing the cost of one gallon of fuel.

Brand

Costco

Costco is a store that also sells gas. In many areas, their gas is cheaper than other stations nearby.

Brand

Valero

Valero is a gasoline brand/refiner that operates retail stations, and it’s used here as one of the price comparison points. The episode contrasts Valero’s pricing against other nearby chains.

Brand

ARCO

ARCO is a gas station brand. The host checks what they charge for regular versus premium.

Term

premium

Premium gas is a higher-quality type of gasoline (higher octane). It often costs more, so it’s worth checking whether your car actually needs it.

Term

semis

“Semis” are big long-distance trucks. The host is describing how fuel gets delivered to stations using large freight trucks.

Term

tanker full of gas

That means the gas is delivered in bulk using a large tanker truck. It’s how stations get their fuel in the first place.

Company

Saquon Market

The speaker names a specific gas station—Saquon Market—as the one with the lowest price. It’s used as proof of the pricing difference they’re talking about.

Term

Top tier

“Top Tier” gas means the station sells fuel with extra cleaning additives. Those additives help prevent gunk from building up in the engine.

Concept

buying fuel from wrecked cars

The host is talking about the idea that some stations might get fuel from unusual places to keep costs down. The big point is that price doesn’t always tell you everything about where the gas came from.

Concept

convenience pricing

Convenience pricing means you pay more because the station is easy to get to. If it’s the only option nearby, the price can be much higher.

Concept

convenient spot

If a gas station is really convenient—like right off the freeway—people will pay more because they don’t want to detour. That convenience can let the station charge higher prices.

Term

air conditioner to like be recycled

Cars have a setting that either brings in outside air or reuses the air already inside. If you turn on “recirculate,” the car doesn’t keep pulling in whatever smell or pollution is outside. Turning it on at the right time can make the cabin feel better for a while.

Concept

rest stop

A rest stop is a place to pull over and take a break during a long drive. It often has bathrooms and sometimes snacks or gas.

Concept

flood risk

Flood risk means the car might have been in water. Even if it dries, water can cause hidden damage that shows up later, especially in wiring and electronics.

Concept

flooding

Flooding can get water into places it shouldn’t be, like wiring and the inside of the car. That can cause long-term issues and bad smells even after repairs. It’s one of the big risks to watch for when buying used.

Brand

McLaren

McLaren makes high-performance supercars. Seeing McLarens at a show usually means the cars are serious, expensive, and rare.

Brand

Bugatti

Bugatti is a brand that makes some of the most expensive supercars in the world. If you see one at a show, it’s usually a very rare and valuable car.

Term

convertible top down

A convertible top down means the roof is folded away. If it starts raining, the car interior can get wet fast.

Concept

top off

“Top off” means the convertible roof is down or removed, leaving the cabin exposed. During storms, that increases the chance of water intrusion into seats, carpets, and electrical systems.

Concept

enclosed trailers

An enclosed trailer is like a covered box on wheels. It helps keep the car drier while it’s being moved, which matters a lot if it starts raining fast.

Concept

future classic

A “future classic” is a car people believe will be worth more and more interesting in the future. It’s often because it’s rare and people think it’ll be remembered.

Concept

mileage rollbacks

That’s when someone changes the odometer so the car looks like it has less mileage. Less mileage usually means the car costs more, so it’s a scam.

Term

salvage title

A salvage title means the car was badly damaged at some point and an insurance company decided it wasn’t worth fixing. That usually makes the car worth less and can make insurance harder or more expensive. You should be extra careful and check the repair records before buying.

Concept

smog requirements

Smog requirements are the rules your car has to meet for pollution. If it doesn’t pass the emissions test, you may not be able to register or drive it legally.

Concept

California smog rules

California requires cars to meet emissions rules, and those rules can be stricter than in other states. If you move a car into California, you may have to get it checked or made compliant.

Concept

FU money

“FU money” is slang for having so much money that you don’t feel worried about consequences. The speaker is basically saying the person acted like money made them untouchable.

Term

license plate

A license plate is like a car’s ID number. If it’s visible in videos, people may be able to figure out who owns the car or where it is. So creators often hide or blur it for privacy.

Term

seatbelt

A seatbelt is what you buckle in to keep you from flying forward in a crash. It helps protect you by keeping you in your seat.

Concept

don't drink and drive

Driving after drinking alcohol significantly increases reaction time and judgment errors, raising crash risk. Many jurisdictions also have strict legal limits and penalties for impaired driving.

LIVE

Hey, what's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris.

And this is the world famous cool cars with Chris. And on today's fantastic episode, you

know, and I know the gas prices here around the country, well, especially here in California

are crazy high right now. Now some gas stations are crazy high and some gas stations are a

little cheaper, but I just discovered that certain gas stations here in California are

selling gas that is not from California. They found this little loophole. I'll tell you all

about that in this episode. Plus, you know, I was over in Florida maybe a few years ago

and it gets crazy weather in Florida. Like a little rain out of the blue and dry up. Well,

it seems that there was this big event in Florida where all these crazy exotic cars got totally

damaged by a random rainstorm in Florida. We'll be discussing that. And if you have an exotic car

and you're thinking about registering in the state of Montana, the Montana loophole, what does that

even mean? And what does it do? And who is actually cracking down on those who try to pull off this

Montana loophole? I'm sure things are great in Montana, but if you own a supercar here in

California and try to get away with it, well, maybe not more of that on this episode. Let's go.

Hey, what's happening? Welcome back to the world famous cool cars with Chris. I am Chris and I

have courage. Hey, doing anybody. I'm glad to be here as usual. Fresh off watching a little bit

of the F1 movie, but glad to talk some cars for sure. Man, where in the world are you today?

And you're like traveling everywhere. So where is courage tonight? Not too far from where I'm

usually located, but I am in the Bay Area. So in Oakland specifically, I had to come up here. And

they call it NorCal up there. Yeah. We get the NorCal title up here. So, you know, and that's,

that's, we're still allowed to call it that. You know, it's the NorCal, SoCal was born up here.

I definitely, this is a hot take, but I definitely prefer SoCal, but I'm still a NorCal, you know,

guy at heart. And so it's, it's actually pretty cool to be up here and kind of visit some old

stomping grounds kind of here and there. So Oakland is, is okay. If I know where it is on the map,

it's on the east side of the Bay, right? Yeah. So the East Bay is like, you know, kind of another

term for you. Like they Hayward, San Leandro, Oakland, like they kind of get that term East Bay.

So, you know, in terms of San Francisco, like you kind of go a little bit further west to get to that.

And so, yeah, you know, Oakland is kind of like the East Bay area. And you guys take that usually

whenever I used to say that when I was, oh yeah. The bridge that goes over,

does that bridge go over that island out there? Like Treasure Island, what's it called?

We got a lot of, yeah, that's the thing about the Bay is that we got a lot of bridges. So, you

know, they, we got like, you know, the, the marines, you know, got a bridge going to it. We got the

Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge, you know, we got a bridge going from Oakland to Alameda, you know,

bridges are pretty, pretty common kind of in and throughout over here. But, you know, the one that's

closest to Alcatraz and those, I believe, is the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah, the Golden Gate Bridge,

you can see Alcatraz. I walked the Golden Gate Bridge last time, last time, probably the long

time I was in San Francisco, and I think about, and we walked the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked

probably halfway across the bridge, walked back because that's where we're at, where our ride was

at. And so, we could see Alcatraz in the bridge. But ironically though, down the water in this

cold February, people are surfing in the wake that was kind of like making little waves happening

right before like the rocks and stuff. You can see them down by the, like, right underneath the

Golden Gate Bridge when we were there. Yeah. No, that's, how long, what's, how long's the, uh,

the distance? Have you ever looked that up? Yeah, I believe it's a mile or longer than,

it's longer than a mile or a mile itself. Oh, wow. Okay. Do you think two, three, or like,

is it probably within like that? Because I'm curious if that would be like something where

somebody was like, my daily run is like just going, you know, across the Golden Gate Bridge or

something. I'm curious if there's people out there that's like that. I mean, even if it's three miles,

like there's some, there's probably some people out there that like, I'll daily, you know, run the

the Golden Gate Bridge just because it's like part of their routine. I wonder if there's anybody

out there like that. Well, I'm sure there is, man. Like I said, it just, we didn't make it all the way

to the Golden Gate Bridge and get a chance to actually walk on the Golden Gate Bridge.

That's kind of a, you know, I've walked the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

I've done that. That's kind of the same kind of concept. It kind of reminded me of that a little

bit of that too. Although the, the Brooklyn Bridge had its own little walkway kind of elevated

above everything else. The Golden Gate felt like the walkway. It was just a sidewalk next to the

road next to the edge kind of a thing. So, but you're up there in Oakland, California,

up there, man, visiting the family. It sounds like a great time.

Yep. No, it's, it's been enjoyable. The one thing I'll say about it that I've really enjoyed is

today I took my, my kids up cause my wife had a, I gave her a little day to catch her with

her sister and kind of do some things. And we went up to skyline area here in Oakland and

there's, I used to, by elementary school, one of my first elementary schools I went to was kind

of in this area that kind of overlooks, you know, when you go up it, it's called skyline for a reason

because it really is kind of a track to get up to it. But my elementary school was there,

Joaquin Miller shout out there. I went to high school there for one year,

Montero, which they're really next, they're right next door to each other. And then skyline is

really the top of the hill where, you know, that was the high school of the area.

And we drove up there and the view that you see in some of the neighborhoods,

they kind of surround where the school is, is just absolutely spectacular. Like you can see all,

you can see San Francisco in the distance, you see all of Oakland and, and all the other little

cities kind of from, you know, from this huge, you know, hill, you know, just overlooking it all

and that sunset, you know, where you get a little bit of the mist that comes over,

you know, the bay, it was super just majestic. And I, I haven't seen that in person in a long time.

So that's been for sure one of the highlights of being out here is just,

just seeing some of the scenery that I haven't seen for a long time.

That's great. So it's great to go back. Although, although I've never left town,

you know, I've been here my entire life. And so, you know, I mean,

San Diego is not a place you want to leave though. So I don't blame you.

Yeah. That's the thing, you know, like, you know, what's weird is that I remember when I was going

to trucking school, my trucking license, and there were a lot of people that a lot of recruiters

would come in for trucking companies and try to recruit people to drive across country and,

you know, see the world and see this, you know, the country and drive around everywhere.

And I'm like, I think I'm good. I think I'll stay here. I bet it's an easier sell in like

no water, Alabama, you know, or wherever. I mean, no, just a town that'll know where it's

probably an easier sell to get someone to like, Hey, you want to join the Navy and see the world?

Yeah, let's do this. Let's go. Let's go. Get me out of here. Or even truck driving,

like let's travel around and see, see a beach. Oh my gosh. I've never seen a beach before. Let's

go check that out. You know? And so, but being here, like, like, I'm like, I've always stuck

with local driving and that's what I've always done. And it just makes sense to me,

local driving in Southern California and here in of course, San Diego and stuff. So,

but, you know, it's not perfect speaking of driving. There's one thing happening right now

in Southern California and across the country, but specifically here in Southern California,

maybe California in general, it just seems like we are hit with some crazy, crazy gas prices.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we were talking about it before, but it's there.

Oh, that's again, yeah. In terms of averages, I wouldn't be curious to see if it's a lot

different from what's up there, but I think we're talking about this and, you know,

I use premium in all of my cars and I haven't seen a place under $6 for premium gas since I've been

driving around here. So, you know, that definitely is abnormal for, for what has been over the last,

you know, last few years to be totally honest. Did I sit Oakland? Let me think about Oakland

right now on the map here and see if, well, I got San Jose, that's close to Oakland, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's just about an hour, but you, they're probably pretty comparable in terms of

prices. I'm not seeing Oakland as a choice on here. Let's see. So click on, okay. In the,

as I record this, San Jose, the cheapest gas is something called the world. Is it a world,

the gas station world? This, this is world. It's on story road in San Jose and it's $4.59 a gallon.

Now the Costco is $4.79 in the area. Valero is $4.83. You know, the Arco is $4.89. I think if you can

keep your, now let's click on that, let's click on the Arco, for example, click on the Arco. Now

I'll go to the, and their premium is $5.59. So there you go. You know, I mean, you can find premium

under six bucks. So I'm curious though, comparable now, what would be the equivalent in the, in San

Diego right now? Are you seeing some similarities around that? Let me see. Putting you on the spot,

but I know, I know. I'm just trying to use the map area. San Diego, San Diego, of course,

the cheapest in town is at the Sequan casino. And actually at the casino themselves,

they do not have a gas station at site, but it's on the corner from the casino.

There's a new gas station, probably maybe like five years old or so, maybe a little older,

but rarely new, you know, gas station. And they're priced at 4.69 a gallon,

but their premium is priced at 5.09 a gallon. Now a little fun fact I heard about these Indian

casino gas stations. I just found this out yesterday. So hot, hot take. Check this out

because I was kind of curious about it myself. So I'm in the gas business here in San Diego,

right? We see a lot of the standard gas trucks, fill up and deliver. We run into all the different

companies. We know the different companies in town that load and deliver my company and other

companies. So we're kind of aware of the different companies. But when I was going out to Sequan,

do some hot gambling, of course I lost, but I was going to do some hot gambling. I noticed

some deliveries being made at the Sequan gas station by a company I didn't recognize in a truck

I've never seen before. They had these big giant like semis with these over the road

tractor trailers, like the sleeper birth kind, the kind that you do for like long haul truck

driving, like trucks pulling a tanker full of gas with a logo on the truck that I've never seen

before. It was like an arrowhead, like Indian arrowhead, like, like a logo on the truck. And

I'm like, that's kind of odd. I've never seen that before. Well, maybe it makes sense. They

are delivering to an Indian casino gas station. But I'm like, well, where are they getting their

gas? Because I've never seen them like loading, like, you know, at the standard loading facilities

here in San Diego. So I was talking to another driver that actually works out in the desert,

out in El Centro. He comes out to San Diego, like once a day, and I was talking to him out here

about that. And he said, yeah, those, those stations, those deliveries, because they're

Indian reservation, they do not need to buy gas from California refineries because they are on

Indian reservations. They are actually, you know, what do you call it? Like the land isn't a California

land. It's like reservation. It's when you, when you're on the reservation, you're on the reservation.

And it doesn't matter where you are, within California or wherever, you're, you're there

on the reservation. So that's, that was crazy. So the gas they actually are getting, they said

it's from Nevada. It's from errors. I mean, it starts from, yeah, I think it's in Las Vegas.

I think it comes all the way up from Nevada. And I'm like, well, there is a loading facility in,

in Vegas next to the NASCAR track. I've seen it. I don't know if it's the only place in town to load,

load gas out of in Nevada, in Vegas. But of course I've never worked in Vegas. I don't know.

But I've just seen the one loading facility. It was just outside of the race track.

And I'm saying, you're telling me they bring the gas all the way over from there to here.

And, and I guess they do. And I'm like, gosh, that seems like a long haul just for the gas,

but they are selling it for the cheapest place in town right now in San Diego County is at

Saquon Market right now at 479 a gallon as they record this episode, cheapest gas in town.

And that gas is not in California. Yeah. And if we were to propose a little theory here,

which is just a theory, so don't, don't hold me to this anybody, but it seems as though like you,

because what you just outlined in terms of, yeah, like, is it really, you know,

pumping gas in from Nevada seems like a lot of work, but it seems like really, you know,

companies and gas stations that are able to utilize as that loophole are the ones that are

able to save, you know, you at the pump because they don't have to deal with California taxes on

fuel right now, which, you know, to each their own, you know, I know there's a lot of things going

on with, you know, why we have certain taxes and this and that, but it's pretty, you know,

it's pretty interesting to note it. Yeah. Like, you know, you go 10, 15 miles down the road to

another gas station that's, you know, getting California gas and their $5, maybe $6 possibly.

And, you know, these, you know, the, the, the Indian reservations kind of got an end with this,

like Nevada, you know, maybe less tax gas situation. It's pretty interesting. I told

me that it kind of blew my mind. Well, I heard it too. I blew my mind too. I was kind of like,

wow, where did they get these trucks from? Like, where are they getting their gas from? I was kind

of, I knew it came from somewhere far away, but I didn't know, it didn't dawn on me that it came

from out of state. I guess it should have because weight gas usually works. That's, you know, made

it the refinery and piped down to the nearest like holding facility, loading facility. So there's a

loading, there's loading facilities all throughout LA. There's a few in San Diego and then there's

like one out in the desert out by like Glamis somewhere out there. And there's ones out like

up in the Colton areas, big one in Colton. And I'm sure, you know, all around the country,

there's spots like that, but all gets piped to these locations and then get loaded out of there

and then delivered to the station. But the fact that they're bypassing that altogether and like

driving like so far, crossing state lines and the permits and all that stuff, you need to do all

that stuff. It sounds like a logistic nightmare, but if they're getting gas or, you know, super

cheap or whatever, but that's the thing too. Is it like somebody's gas station because the news

reported this the other day about the gas prices and they were saying, you know, tips on places to

buy gas. They said, don't buy gas at like avoid like the name brand places. If you want a deal,

that could be true. Unfortunately though, I've seen some less than ethical things being done

at these like independent gas stations where they can get gas from any place in anywhere,

meaning they can get gas from wrecking yards, suck it out of the car's tanks, and then they

just drop it in the tank and then, you know, sell it to you for whatever. And so it's, yeah,

it may not be as clean or, and I always say top tier, if it's top tier gas, you're probably pretty

good. All the big chains are top tier. I don't even know if this one is top tier. Tell you the

truth. I don't even know, but I used to joke with my buddy of mine. He was a huge car guy too,

but I used to joke with him that I don't ever fill up at, it was like a general term, but I always

said like at the gas and go that you would find on a random corner where it's like not a shell,

Chevron or whatever. And he always kind of pushed back is like, oh, it's all the same stuff and

everything. And I know you actually had a pretty good take on that a while back on one of the

pause that you did on really the, you know, what even top tier gas and like certain detergents and

how all of that really kind of comes together. But I still hold true that I do not go to the

random gas and goes to get gas. Unless you absolutely have to. Unless you have to.

You're in the middle of nowhere and it's doing a gas station around. You got to do what you got to

do. And sure for the most time, they're probably fine. I'm just saying that like, you know,

there's people who buy groceries from the swap meet. I wouldn't.

Hopefully you swap me to not, farmers markets are okay, but swap meets are a little different.

Farmer's markets, I definitely support the junk yard swap beats or yeah, or whatever, you know,

I mean, yeah, like, you know, that kind of stuff. So it's, it's usually when you buy top tiered name

brand gas, you are paying a little more for it, but you are also usually, you know, you're not

getting like garbage and it's, and it's been clean and clean and regulated to the highest

quality standard. And when it comes to top tier, what top tier really means is that

in California, all gas stations have to put like a minimum like detergent amount in the gas.

And all gas stations are required to put at least 10% ethanol in all gasoline in California.

And so when you buy gasoline, it's technically E 10. And so all gas that regardless,

it's just a detergent amount. So the detergents, which cleans like your car, you see commercials

for it a lot. I think Techron's one for Chevron and I think Shell's got something they say,

I think what their detergents called, but they all got some kind of, you know, tagline for the

detergent. Top tier means that they actually add more than the minimum amount of detergent

into their gasoline. So whatever the minimum is, it goes beyond it. Now it's called top tier.

So there's that. But, you know, and also like, you know, the fuel grade and like also like,

it depends on like how their chain of like custody, if like, you know, the, how, how

clean the gas is, you know, getting from the refinery to your car, like the chain of events

that has to take place that happen, you know, and the quality level and the checking and the

rechecking and the grade quality and they got measured the actual, there's a weight of the gas

was like the measure of the weight of it. Something trippy thing. Yeah. It's all the stuff that goes

into it and figure out to make sure that all the quality, the quality of gas stays at the highest

level when it gets to you. That usually happens with the good gas stations versus the not so

good gas stations, but hey, you can do what you want to do, boo, you know,

if you want to go to the gas and goes be my gas, but I mean, sure, whatever. I mean,

but these don't forget these gas stations are also buying gas and reselling it. And if you're

buying any product at all, you have to resell it for a profit. You're going to find the cheapest

place to get your gas so you can sell it for that profit, right? And so if you're an independent

station, you have the flexibility to choose who to get the gas from, right? This is true. And so

because you have the flexibility, hey, someone's got a bunch of wrecked cars. They have a tank full

of that. You want to buy that for a dollar a gallon? Sure. Why not? Or, or my, or, or my side

business is a wrecking, you know, car company. I'm like, I'm just going to get it from there.

Like, yeah. Right. Right. Right. You know, I mean, but I mean, you know, I mean, or, or like I said,

with the Indian casinos, they're getting it from, from, from Nevada because they can,

because they're federal or whatever. So there's lots of different things to be aware of.

User be aware, I guess, make your best decision, get the gas that, that works for you. And I think

most of the time there are people, I've never been to someone like this, but when prices hit real

high like they are right now, there are some people that will drive everywhere in town,

just to find, you know, 10 cents cheaper on this station versus that station. They'll drive all

around town that actually can, you know, you're actually wasting more. You're actually saving.

Yeah. If I got that drive, it's macula to save 10 cents, I guess, or whatever.

You know, even if it is 10 cents cheaper, I'm not driving all the way up there for that. Now,

which within a few miles, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, Chris, what are you doing

up here? I'm just like getting gas. Like it's cheaper over here than in San Diego. Like I was,

I was willing to make that hour drive just to get up here to get some cheap gallons,

getting it up here, just to get the answer what it is. But Costco's a good one. I went to Costco

yesterday and got gas for my truck at Costco and Costco's a pretty good deal. If you have a Costco

membership and the lines are pretty long, but the way they have the system set up, it seems like

it moves through pretty quickly. They go pretty quick. Even yeah, I'll definitely attest to that.

Yeah. They even on days, yeah, where you, there's certain times we just really, you know,

if you want to like not be in those lines, you can kind of avoid it. But even when you are,

like there's, there's definitely a good system to get you in and out pretty quick.

Yeah. And I noticed they didn't have any mid-grade. They only had the premium and the regular at the

Costco. That is true. Yeah. When I went there, which is kind of weird because all other gas stations,

the, the regular and the mid-grade, they don't have a mid-grade tank. It's a regular tank and

a premium tank and they blend it at the pumps. Maybe they don't have their setup that way.

I don't know. But whatever point is, is that, I mean, you can make your own mid-grade, I guess,

splash half and half if you really want to, but that's a place to get gas there at Costco.

And they go through a lot of gas at Costco quite a bit. So, I mean, but on this list here,

it's only given me like a top like 10 or so or 20 or so. And there's not a single name brand

gas station in any of these. They're all the ones you think of in the, in the sub $5 range.

Yeah. Everything's under five bucks for regular and they're all like golden state,

summit gas, sun's auto service. Hey, sun's auto service. And yes, can you know,

they service your car and they sell you gas. Back that out.

That Isabelle roadside, it's four 79 superstar. I mean, you know, none of these say Chevron.

What was it? Saint Isabelle roadside. Yeah. It's, yeah.

Saint is, Saint, you see Isabelle roadside. It's on the highway 79 Saint Isabelle. It's at four

79 a gallon premium. It's five 29 says check that out. So, but yeah, none of these are name

brand gas stations. So like I said, buyer beware, you know, if you care about your car and if you

run a super car, you probably are just getting shell or Chevron, I would think. And most people,

you're just eating the cost. Well, most people like a lot of people just pull into gas stations

based on convenience. If it's the gas station on your way to work, there's a gas station down in

Chula Vista area that I deliver to, and it's an ARCO that can say which one, but as you come from

an area where a bunch of homes were developed, like in the last like 10 years, if you know the area

I'm thinking of, and it's the last gas station for you to get the on ramp to the freeway.

And it is the most expensive gas station in town. It's so crazy because my ex-wife got gas

there. I know a few of those. And she's like, I can't believe it got the gas stations. ARCO,

ARCO is supposed to be cheap. This gas station was like ridiculously overpriced. I said,

which one did you go to? And I said, that one there. I said, that one's always overpriced.

That was, every time I deliver there, I'm like, look at the prices and I'm like,

holy crap, they're so expensive. That's even before the prices jumped up that they were like,

like 70 cents more expensive than any nearest like competitor gas station.

And some stations will do that just because they're convenient.

Doesn't always make them the, you know, the best option, but they're there because they're convenient.

And I get it. You know, you got a, the freeways right there is swing in, swing out. I get it.

I mean, I mean, in a pinch, I'd probably do the same thing too.

I had one of those when I looked, when I used to live up the hill from Mission Bay actually in,

in Claremont. And there was the one where you come down basically when you come down as if

you were going towards like Fiesta Island, if you remember, if you're familiar with that area,

it's the shell before the 7-Eleven. And it's yes. Yeah. I was just there. I was just there.

That one was always super expensive. I have a good attention to the price.

That was the truth. That one. Yeah. Yeah. There was only a few times where I went there, but

I mean, it makes sense because it's like a lot of people were coming down from like Claremont,

Balboa area, and they're getting onto the freeway, most likely going to work. And it's like, well,

I got to grab gas. I'm going to grab gas right here. Or I'm getting off of work and I'm getting

off the freeway and I might as well grab gas before tomorrow. And so, you know, they are definitely,

you know, there was a premium kind of around that, which always put my mind at like,

you know, I get gas prices. Like there's a lot of factors that dictate them, but

there's also factors that, you know, this is the, you know, that are out of maybe the control of us

and just like more in the control of the sellers where it's like, this is a convenient spot.

People are going to pay more for it if I charge this. So therefore I'm going to charge more for

the gas here is theoretically speaking, like, you know, the shell there shouldn't be more expensive

than the shell up the hill. That's, you know, further away from the gas. They're from the on ramp,

but they definitely, you know, the odor of the station knows for sure. So, you know, I always had

that theory. Well, a guy argued with me one time, this is, because gas goes up and down a lot.

One of the last gas, you know, spikes we had, I remember a guy was talking to me at a station,

he said something like, why is the gas cheaper here in like, it was like Chilivista National

City area versus like, you know, like somewhere else, whatever he said, I said, well, do you

realize that like the land you're standing on right now is much cheaper than say La Jolla?

And so I'm sure La Jolla probably charges more for at their station because the,

probably the business, the extra spot of land that business sits on probably has to pay more

for rent and space and land use than, you know, this station here. I'm just thinking,

think of real estate, you know, why is the house cheaper, you know, out in the desert versus La

Jolla or whatever, the same size house? Like why, why does that happen? Because, you know,

things cost more here in the zip code than there, you know? So there's a lot of that stuff too.

And I remember one time that was arguing about gas prices. This is before

everything went digital with like payments and stuff. We had to get checks or cashier's checks

and, and the checks were like $30,000, $40,000. And the guys were arguing about gas prices.

And I said, you think you guys pay a lot for gas? Look at the gas station just paid me for the gas

I just got $40,000, but a whole truckload or whatever. But, but yeah, fun times, man.

Gas prices are crazy. We're not, we're not the only ones in town that are getting hit by this.

I know like Alabama in like parts of Texas, you know, they're seeing high for not high,

high, but high for them. They're seeing high prices too. And I mean cheaper than us, of course,

but I mean higher than a dollar or whatever they weren't used to paying, you know? So,

yeah, but hopefully sometime soon the gas will go down, you know, I don't know. I mean,

I kind of wonder how it's going to work for work though, because with, with gas prices,

when they kind of start to surge up, we get like really busy, it seems like,

because everyone's a stock up before the price goes even higher. They want to fill up, fill up,

fill up. But then I think maybe people are going to find ways to like work remotely and not go to

work and try to like, you know, not drive as much or whatever, just to kind of like as gas is so

expensive. I did see a news report saying that it's possible that less drivers are on the road

when the gas hits, you know, these kinds of prices. But I mean, if you've got to drive,

you've got to drive, you know, if you've got to, if you've got to drive your car, you've got to

drive your car. It's kind of the way it is, but maybe less like fun drives or maybe less like

road trips. Maybe people are staying really close to where they live to do stuff versus

traveling far. I know you drove, you drove up there, right? You didn't fly. You drew,

I was going to say, except for me, you drove though, right?

Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah. Too much going on with the, with flights right now to be thinking about

flying. How far, how many hours or how far to take a get there?

It's so, it's about, it's about seven and a half hours from like, if it was just a straight

shoot, getting the car go about seven and a half hours, we took a stop for about an hour at a cool

little mall outside the grapevine, but it's, it's seven and a half hours essentially.

The one by Magic Round, down the bottom hill there?

On the other, on the opposite side. On the east side of the freeway.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's, no, actually, so that's on, that's on like, say the side of the grapevine

closer to LA is where the one, I know which one you're talking about. The one we stopped at,

it's like Tahone, the outlets at Tahone, which is on, you know, when you, when you get through

the grapevine, say if you're going towards the Bay Area. Yeah. Like on that side. And so

cows and smell, I go to the bottom. I thought you were going down that, down that hill.

Cause the next wife, the family was up there, but it was the funniest thing.

Yeah. I was going to say the funniest thing is on another podcast that I listened to way back.

I, I heard, you know, comment about that where there's a point where if you, if you're driving

on the road before you get there to like Cal city, but you don't, you haven't turned your

air conditioner to like be recycled versus bringing in like the fresh air. Like if you

miss your opportunity to make sure you change your, you know, change to recycle, you're,

there's, you're just in it for like probably a good like five or 10 minutes of just taking

in the smell because, you know, because now since it's in the system, it's going to take

a while for the car to kind of filter it back out. And so, you know, people's, the guys like,

you know, basically his, his thought processes, when you get out of the grapevine, if you're going,

you know, going, I guess we're going north, you, you need to turn it on recycle the moment you

get out of the grapevine. Because if you miss it and you go another 30, 40, 50 miles and you get

into Cal city, it, it's over. Like you're just going to have to deal with that until the car

recycles it out. And I thought that was the funniest thing ever because it's super accurate.

Yeah. Smelly times, man. Okay. So in encourages hot news takes, you got some hot news stories.

So what is happening in the world of cars engine, other than the gas prices being crazy?

How, what else we got going on today? Yeah. So the one thing that's, that's already happened,

I know we talked about that I, you know, wanted to, wanted to get some takes on this,

you know, we, do we know about Florida? Have you ever been to Florida?

I've never been to Florida actually. I've been there a few times and we talk about Florida.

It's very hot and humid, obviously, right? But the roads, it's like all flat. You can't see nothing

because it's where you think you would see a lot because it's all flat, but the freeways

sit like it's so lush, so many trees and like greenery everywhere. So as you're driving on the

freeway, you can't really see far across the horizon, at least from the freeway side, just

because there's like this green, lush stuff everywhere, like trees and stuff. So you can't

see very far. And, you know, oh, also to another side note, I thought it was super cool. The freeways

in Florida, they have like these like gas, gas stations have these gas station centers

in the middle of the freeway. So you have the freeway on the right side on the left.

You merge into the middle section. And the middle section is like this rest stop, gas station,

like mini mall, like a store kind of rest stop kind of thing. But they're always like in the

middle of the freeway. So you like say if you're like, you know, going on, you're on the right

side of the freeway, you know, or whatever, like you're going into the middle of the freeway to go

to these rest stops. And that's because I've seen that. And weird enough, I've seen that in video

games, but video games portrayals of other, you know, other countries like in Japan and different

things like that. But I never, I didn't know that was a thing in Florida actually. That's really

interesting. But they were very clean. The freeway seemed very clean for the most part. The road

seemed very clean-ish. A lot of green water everywhere. There's like puddles everywhere

because it rains a lot. And there's still, there don't have any mountains or anything. So it's

all, everything puddles, right? And every time I see like creeks and puddles everywhere, I'm thinking

like alligators are in those things out this guy. You read my mind. Yeah. Yeah. It's my wife

showed me this. Yeah. Showed me video a couple of weeks ago actually of like, he was some lady

talking about, yeah, you know, you, you ever, you know, if you ever want to wonder like where

alligators are, it's like, yeah, you see, you see water, you see water anywhere, maybe an alligator

in there. Like it doesn't matter if it's like a body of water. And there's a lot of puddles.

Every off ramp, every on ramp and every off ramp has that like incline to get off the freeway,

you know, a little bridge that goes over and stuff. And there's a little puddle of water

everywhere in Florida. I saw water, a little like lakes everywhere and little creeks and puddles

and what make like creek size, like little basins of water all over the place in Florida

when I was down there. It goes down to Miami and the Everglade thing and we did Disney World thing

and which is up north, but, but yeah, I've been to Florida in a rain, it'll be like hot human

rain, like a lot and then disappear and then be hot human again and like cloudy and that kind of

thing down there really money. Yeah. The humidity. Yeah. And this is, yeah, this and now like that

perspective really paints a lot more picture of this too, which funny enough, I haven't been to

Nashville, been to Nashville, Tennessee. And, you know, even there, like it gets really humid

and it'll have situations too where it's like pretty nice outside and all of a sudden you'll

just get rain and it's still hot outside. And so you, you'll get rain and, you know, you'll,

you'll just be like, I don't even think I need to put on a jacket because I'm not cold. Like it

actually kind of feels nice to like kind of be wet by the rain, even though it's, you know, even

not usually like that. You're all sticky and, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting that that's

like, again, we acclimate to wherever we are and wherever we live longterm, but it's just

interesting how different that is, you know, to, to hear and so Cal, like, you know, we, we're

essentially, you know, near a big body of water where, you know, certain parts of us obviously

are like beach towns and, but it's just a totally different climate. It's, it's, it intrigues me for

sure. What could possibly go wrong in the state of Florida with cars? Yeah. Well, you know, the,

one of the biggest things is that people say, you know, this isn't related to this particularly,

but people will say that you shouldn't ever buy cars from Florida, especially if you don't live

in Florida. I mean, you kind of have to, if you live in Florida, but don't buy cars from Florida,

if you're outside of Florida, because of flood risk. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we're at Disney

world and it flooded, we're there at Epcot center and we're, we're going to set a dark ride, which

like an indoor ride. And so you can't see what's going on weather wise until you get out. So we

should get out outside. It's like coming out like buckets, so bad. Like everybody was running the

bathrooms and like hiding. I ran the bathrooms to like a little girl hiding from the rain.

It was coming like buckets, but like literally like the sidewalks were like lakes everywhere.

It was like, that's how bad it was. And then it dried up, but like an hour or two later,

but it was like, it didn't even happen. Right. Well, it's a little bit of water here and there,

but it was like a sidewalks dried up and that kind of stuff, but it was kind of crazy nuts.

It does come in. I mean, everything floods very easily, very quickly. So yeah, buying a car,

it's probably, I mean, I can only imagine that there's probably a lot of like flood damage

to cars in Florida. One other thing that somebody actually just recently too,

this mentioned about like not even just like buying cars from there,

not even like the risk of it potentially have been in the flood at some point,

but somebody actually shared something that didn't hit me until now that was like really

like kind of genius to think about too is that you, because like it's so hot and humid,

you know, people tend to not really like drive around like we do in SoCal, like with our windows

down and you know, taking in the breeze and everything because obviously like the breeze

doesn't feel very good when it's hot and humid. And one thing somebody said is that like, you know,

the interior of cars a lot of times don't really like smell very good and sometimes have like mold

issues within the interior because people don't ever really like roll down their windows and things

like they're, you know, and they're obviously like getting in the car and they're like sweaty and,

you know, been outside and, you know, maybe have odors and whatnot. Maybe they've been smoking in

the car or whatever, but all of that just gets trapped in the car because, you know, again,

people just aren't rolling their windows down and then ventilating the cars out very well.

They're going to change that because over time though, I mean, you're, you're like, I mean,

you got to probably all the components of the air can change, probably, you know, burnt out too.

You got to change the cabin filter. You're probably going through, yeah, compressors and,

yeah, filters pretty, pretty often for sure. Yeah, I just changed mine in my truck yesterday

and my cabin filter in my truck when I was there. I said, change it too. You know,

mine as well. I haven't changed it like forever. And so it's actually something I need to do on

both my car. I need to do it on the, on the, on the, yeah. So I, yeah, I just did that and it,

you know, I mean, it doesn't smell nicer now. I know that's right. After I drove it with the new

filter in there, I'm like, it smells like a fresh new car. It's like a new car, but it has like,

the air conditioning has a kind of a nicer like, like smell to it. Maybe you're

sent to it. It just feels, I mean, it's in my head. I don't know. Maybe I could change the filter.

It's like a top tip. If you want your, like they always say, like, if you want to,

want to feel like you're driving a new car, like get a good car wash and, and change your air filters,

because it'll make you feel like you're driving a brand new car. Like that's a, that's a top tip for

some folks. But yeah, well, especially if you buy a used car, you should probably just get it all done

anyways, you know, and stuff. Cause used cars, like I say, you buy a used car from Florida,

it could be smelling like who knows what and stuff in there and dead alligator in there,

who knows or whatever they got going on. Yeah. Cause they carried off the road, but, but you,

but you asked what, you know, what could possibly go wrong with the, you know, the unpredictability

of weather and, and heavy rainstorms and flooding. And so, you know, there was a big, you know,

I think, I don't think this has been a car show that's been going on for a long time,

but there's a big, you know, kind of concourse style show that was, you know, held in Florida

called moda and, you know, crazy cars, like, you know, all of the insanity from coning seg to

Bugatti, you know, McLaren, Elvis, like the, the one off like ruthless, you know, ruthless cars

that they have, like, you know, this big show around that also kind of a mixture of like some

other classics and things like that too. But it was held there in Florida and, you know, they had

a prediction that there was going to be light rain, you know, throughout the weekend or whenever

it was, but not what they ended up getting. Like what they ended up getting was 10 times

worse than what they were expecting. But, you know, again, it was, it started out great day,

you know, one of the guys that was there said that they had a little bit of light rain,

you know, in the morning, but it was actually pretty refreshing once the sun came out and

everybody's kind of enjoying themselves. But all of a sudden they just kind of, they basically

just had a monsoon come through during the show with all of these cars basically on display,

as if like, you know, as if it was supposed to be a sunny day in California. And you had a

situation basically where, you know, you had multi-million dollar cars in flood path, you know,

there were some cars that, you know, they basically had to like untrench out of the mud to get them

out of the facility. So like a mud slide came through or something or what happened?

No, like it was, it was just such a heavy rainstorm, you know, that, you know, and again,

like a lot of times in these like concourse style car shows, they're out in these like big

grass fields and things like, or golf courses and things like that. So, you know, if you get

enough rain, you know, in these situations and, you know, you're, you're going to start to get mud

kind of piling up and everything. And, you know, there were certain areas that just got flooded

so much that, you know, it was just enough so that the cars started kind of sinking to the mud

and you had to kind of get in and dig them out. You, again, you had multi-million dollar cars that

had water that got up really to their door line, which ultimately that can game over, buddy,

to flood car. Yeah. You know, it was, it was a crazy, and on top of that, just all of the people

that were there, they were, weren't prepared for it at all. They were all dressed up, you know,

and they're in their cool, you know, their clothes and everything, you know, looking snazzy and,

you know, they basically had to all congregate under this main tent. And at a certain point,

they reached capacity and were like, we have to get you guys out of here. Even though it's raining,

it's storming, it's windy, you know, all of the canopies for all the displays are blowing around

outside. We have to get you guys out of this main tent and over to the main hotel that's,

you know, at least like, you know, a half a mile away from here. And so they had to clear people

out to run through the rain to get to this hotel. And then obviously the aftermath was when everybody

came out to see like, you know, some, some of these multimillion dollar cars didn't have their roofs

on. So they, they got rained in, you know, it was the convertible top down in the convertible.

Just think, yeah, if you, you know, you thought like, what would it be like to just go through a

car wash with my roof down? Like they, somebody experienced that, you know, a couple of weeks

ago. And so I just thought it was insane that, you know, again, really, you know, people were

always like, oh man, like the coordinators got fired for that. And it's like, well, unfortunately,

like, you know, that is just Florida weather. Like,

That's the thing I was going to ask you, dude, how do you not know, like, first off,

you would think I would, I mean, I would think knowing that it does rain as often as it does

in Florida, that just by the fear nature of, of the water fall and the way the water kind of

like pulls together and runs, like you have the different run areas where the water comes in and

it runs this one spot. Like I go, let's take a wash, but like an area where it does run.

I don't know what this facility looks like. I don't know what the parking looks like.

I don't know what the cars are parked and adjacent to like the way the water runs and

things like that. But I would think that knowing that and knowing you are in Florida

and it does tend to rain a lot, you know, that's why, that's why it's always so green a lot of

the time. Mary has grass and Florida because there's so much water. So that being said,

I would think that, man, like you wouldn't think that maybe, I guess, I guess because it has so

much rain in so little time. It was, it was like, you know, those arc kind of flooding that you

expected to happen like that, that it probably was a lot for one time. But still, I would think

that while it was happening, you would think, okay, I'm going to cover these cars up or move them,

you know? The thing that really got them to your point is, yeah, like people were actually

trying to cover up the cars and things, but they got really caught off guard by the 40, 50 mile an

hour winds that came along with all of this rain. So, you know, on top of trying to get out of the

rain, everybody's like, you know, basically trying to avoid getting blown away and having all of their

canopies and covers and things blown away on top of that. So, yeah, that was part of it where

there were some people trying to save their cars and get them covered up. But just like,

they realized it was lost cause working against, you know, working with both the water and the

wind on top of that. Wow. Well, I mean, I would think that I would work quickly for even a $20,000

car, let alone a multi-million dollar $1,000 car. I would figure out ways to like, first off,

it was convertible and it had like the top off. I'd be like, okay, put the thing back on immediately.

And I don't even know if I, well, you got to, you got to realize like some of these cars either

were not built with a roof. Like there's some of these like classic, you know, 60, 70s cars like,

or even that. Yeah. Like situations like that where it didn't have a roof or, or some of those,

like those cars that have literally like those like two pay style roofs that you actually have to

like assemble. Like it's, you know, not like a convertible top you flip up or even like a Miata

where you just, you know, you just pull it up with your hand. Like some of these cars have like

assembly roofs where it's almost like you're, you're, you're installing a camp tent on your car

and trying to do that in a windstorm is just not going to happen at all. So, you know, there,

there were probably some that were lucky enough to have like a more modern car that was, you know,

yeah, I'm just going to flip up the hood and get out of here. But I bet you any money, there were

some people that were frantically trying to find an extra instruction manual in their car because

they probably have never put the top on before. I had to get the car here in the first place.

Where'd it come from? The trailer? Oh yeah. That's probably, I would move them back into your,

into your trailer. Now these trailers were enclosed trailers, I'm assuming.

Then I would, I would quickly figure out a way to move them back into the, if the water is coming

and it probably, I know rushes pretty quickly and I get that, but if it's like, if it's at your tire,

probably hitting your rim of your tire, it's not, it's, it's, it's high, but you probably

could move the car and get it into your trailer at that point. I would think, I mean, did they

save any cars at all? Do you know? Some, and there was varying, like, you know, there weren't,

all the cars weren't, you know, kind of subject to the same fate. Ultimately, there were some cars

that probably got like a little bit of, you know, rain on, but they weren't like in the flood zone.

But there were some that, that were, and, and I, you know, that is a good point to bring up,

but I think the issue with that probably would have been this, because they don't,

usually they don't have any of the trailers, the truck trailers around during the show.

And so they, you know, they, either they're not even on site or they're somewhere where they

wouldn't even be able to make it to the car in time. Because, you know, people said that this

really wasn't even that long of a rainstorm. It was probably like a, you know, 20 to 30 minute

timeframe. And, you know, you think like the first, you know, five, 10 minutes is just like

the sheer like surprise this, this is going on and like trying to figure out what you're going to do,

you know, the next 10 minutes is, you know, okay, you know, let's try to make this work.

But, you know, that didn't give people a lot of time to really do a lot.

So it was, and even if a truck did get out there, I bet you any money,

it probably would have got stuck in the mud or something. So it's tough.

Wow. How much, how much money wise, how much on the dollar side are we talking about a loss here?

Oh, I don't even, I don't even know, man. It's like, you know, the, there was a funny comment

about, I did bring up like McLaren, the McLaren Alva, which, you know, I'm sure like, you know,

video would be nice so we could show a picture of this thing. But it was, you know, it's one of

those cars that was built with no roof or no windshield. It was like, you know, it's basically

one of those types of cars that like, you know, these, the car companies build as just like a,

you know, a concept that like, you know, we, if we have no budget, you know, no constraints,

like this is the car that we would build. And usually like it's owned by like these, you know,

wealthy collectors or whatever that never drive the car. And they usually only bring it to like

shows like this. And, you know, one, this, one pod I was listening to was talking about a guy

who had a McLaren Alva. And, you know, that, that car particularly is one that gets talked about

a lot as one of those cars. It was just like a frivolous buy that you just bought it because

McLaren called you up and told you like, Hey, we got this for you. Like, you know, you're going to

love it. Like this is going to be a future classic. You should buy this car. And they were

joking that the guy is probably like, he got into the car. Like he realized like, dude, this thing

is just one of the biggest ways to money that I've, you know, ever spent my money on. And,

and he's just like, you know, this happened. And he was just like, maybe this is my chance to not

be in this car anymore because I haven't insured. I haven't insured for more than what is worth.

And now this happened conveniently. So I can get out of this car now finally without being,

without being the one that has to try and sell it to the next person. And obviously we don't

know whether that's true or not. But there's, there's comments about that where there's certain

cars that are, you know, extremely valuable, but, you know, if they have the opportunity to get out

of it in a situation that it honestly wasn't in their control anyway, it's like, there's some

people that would probably jump at that opportunity. And you know, I was thinking about that when I

tried to sell my house, you know, I couldn't sell the house last year and I was thinking,

please burn this place, the ground, just turn all of the, just turn all of the faucets on or

something like, you know, burn this place to the ground because, you know, I mean, kind of a deal.

Of course we didn't even get out of here. No, just, but there would be a worse situation

because it's bad, you know, don't, don't bring your house down. Unless it's not condo, yeah,

not condo at all, but unless it's a total shack, it's worth like five bucks. Who cares, right?

You know, but like, you know, we're talking multi-million dollar house, you know, at best,

they're going to give us, you know, half of that. And then, and then we sold the rest of the money.

And then of course, you know, it's just a big, you know, who knows what to be, you open a can of

worms. We need to do something like that. And so that would not be good. But anyways,

that sounds like not so fun times in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. And, but here's a big thing I wonder,

to get these cars, even though just they're damaged or whatever, you get a nice detail shop,

do a nice clean job on them. Do you think they're hit the auto trader or the price list?

Yeah. Yeah. That is on a lot of people's minds for sure. I'm like, all of a sudden you see this,

this flood of, of like, a Bugatti for $50,000. What? Yeah. I'm sold. Let's do it.

Let's do this. Or the crazy thing is still like, still asking like millions of dollars for it,

but conveniently like around this time, like, you know, people are going to start asking some

questions for sure. Well, I know you bought your new car. I mean, you got the car fax,

you got, there's so many shady things. Now I heard these, these, a new big one,

you probably heard about too, is the mileage rollbacks or the mileage blocker where they

stopped the mileage from even counting on the car, or there's computer hacking tools where

they plug it into your computer and like, they just type in whatever mileage you want,

they bring or move, say it has 150,000 miles on the car, they can remove the 100 and now

you only has 50,000. You have the car looks in decent shape. Like, how are you going to know?

Like how I wouldn't know, you know, I'm sure there's ways. And I imagine that's probably a big

problem with digital gauges too. We're like, yeah, I was kind of wondering about that. Yeah.

And all cars now have digital gauges. Yeah. So there's got to be ways to like

figure that out and stuff, you know, I know we look at car fax, they'll say like,

on the car fax report, one of the like checking boxes, it'll say like,

odometer has been cleared and approved or whatever is one of the, you know, it's like no,

no, let's be accidents. We'll say like, no, like salvage title, no odometer being messed with.

And I was kind of wondering how they kind of knew that. Like how, how's that? I mean,

unless they went through like a place that looked at it and says, yeah, it looks okay.

Maybe when they plug in there, like computer scanner to the car, read the computer and they

can tell if it's ever been changed or messed with or anything like that. Maybe they can tell

there's a code or something that says something in there. That's as odometer has been altered in

some way. You don't know which way, but it's been altered in some way. And that could be a sign

that, that it could be like they rolled it back or whatever. But I could totally see that happening

for like, for like a cars like this, if they end up, but I wonder though, like out there somewhere,

if some kid is picking up a rare, one of these cars and go into the side show with the thing

that's just doing, you know, burnouts and, you know, you know, running around in circles and

side showing some classic car, you know, or whatever. I think it running kind of a thing,

you know, or whatever. It's kind of a fun thing to see, funny thing. It'd be a fun thing for a

YouTuber to do, you know, like I picked up this McLaren for whatever, you know, and I'm going to

take it. Well, yeah, that's a, that's a, what's the name? Tavaresh, Freddie Tavaresh. That's his thing.

He, he had that whole flood damage YouTube, the YouTube series on this flood damage P1

that, that literally, you know, if we're talking flood, like this thing was,

was inside of a garage and basically the water level pushed it out of the garage

and out into the street, maybe like, you know, two, three hundred feet away from the house that it

was in. And he's been, he's been rebuilding the thing over the last like two years or something

like that, but his, and he's in Florida coincidentally. So, you know, this is his thing,

but yeah, like there's, there's situations where people are capitalizing on, you know,

a situation like that where, you know, I know, I know the history, I know the, I know the situation,

but this is my chance to get this car for cheap. And, you know, I can get it back going and,

you know, a certain extents where you can get that, you know, get that going, but, you know,

with something like a McLaren, you know, especially a P1, you know, there, there were a lot of

snags that he's ran into and still are running into with actually getting that thing properly

working again. But no, there's people out there hunting for a deal on the Craigslist.

I wonder too, if, if I just thought about this too, if you have like a showroom piece or a

dealership or even a cool, something like a place you can put the car, you know, the car's not going

to run, but it's going to look nice like, as like a centerpiece in your lobby or whatever kind of a

thing, you know? Yeah. Something like that, I guess, you know, like a showroom piece or whatever.

You got the expendable in to come for a paperweight for sure.

Right. Well, people put, you know, being money's, money's nothing when you, you know, you know,

I mean, people are putting like, people are putting cars in their like penthouse suites in New York

City on the top floor. Like, you know, you're not driving that thing up down the elevator,

you know what I mean? Like it's not going anywhere. Like lifted with a crane. People do that. There

was a guy in Dubai, I think it was Dubai who did that for his like his house and some top floor

place and like having you a crane and lifted in there and the whole thing.

And so it was inspiration for one of the Fast and the Furious movies, by the way.

Right. Yeah. Right. Exactly. But I think that, that movie, the car actually did run, but I think,

I think to put a car in your actual like house penthouse, I think you got to take all the fluids

out and disconnect batteries. And it's basically just a shell, really, you know, the engine might

be in there, but I don't think it's like nothing's connected or whatever, that kind of thing.

So that was a fun story. So what was the other one you had, the other fun stories with courage

in the car news? What else do you got, buddy? So this is, I'd say it's maybe a little bit of

old news, but it is, it's still current because now there's, there's more remnants of it actually,

you know, being cracked down on now is, is the, the whole registering your car in Montana when

you don't live in Montana. Now, why would someone do that? So the reasoning behind it, and I'll just

solidify this to California, there's other reasons and other places where people are doing it. But

in California, you know, as we talked about, you know, we, we have high tax rates on purchasing

cars, whatever. And, you know, when, you know, the thought process, and there's two actually

facets. One is the tax, you know, pricing and things like that. But the other side of the coin

is a lot of times is that you, when you register the car, you, if it's registered out of state,

you are held to the same stringent smog requirements and things like that with cars.

And so there's two sides of the coin where people decide to do that. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes

they do them for both reasons where they're trying to avoid maybe the small smog requirements and

save money on taxes. But the, the biggest side of it that's really starting to get a lot of

attention is the other side where people are avoiding taxes because they're, you know, they're

registering their cars to say an LLC in Montana. And so, you know, a lot of people have been pushing

back on that portion of it because, you know, the thought process is if you can, you know,

spend money on a three, four, five, $600,000 car, you know, and you're cheating the system now,

you know, on taxes, obviously California is like that. But, you know, you're also kind of drawing

attention now to this whole sort of quote unquote loophole that honestly people really just started

using because, you know, they had a car that was, you know, say an older car that, you know, is not

passing smog or, or, you know, to be honest, they've done like an engine swap or whatever that makes

it so it's not OE parts. And so therefore it doesn't really pass smog for those reasons.

People were doing it more for that, which again, it doesn't make it right, but they're just doing

it because they have a car that they like and they want to be able to drive it. But it turned

into this whole thing of being able to now avoid taxes and quote unquote save money on purchasing

these high end cars. And that's when it really started to get a lot more attention by obviously

the government, you know, the government doesn't like being cheated out of money. And so, you know,

as of late, there's been a lot of crackdown on different states, you know, finding ways to really

find out are these cars actually owned by a, you know, entity in Montana, or is it someone that

lives in the state that they're purchasing it in and just faking it. And so California particularly

is found a way where now they're, they're requiring regardless of where you're saying the car, you

in California, the purchaser has to provide a driver's license associated with who is going to

be, you know, tied to the car. And obviously, if you're going to, you know, you're going to

provide a California driver's license and you're purchasing the car in California,

you're going to pay California tax on it. And to be honest, I don't know why this hasn't been a

requirement all this time. Well, I thought it was when I bought cars and stuff. He had to

get real drivers license and things like that. You buy the car. Now, what if you buy the car in

the Montana, but you live in California? So that, yeah, in that scenario, like you would,

you know, technically speaking, like you would, you would still be read because you're a resident

of California, you would be registering the car to your California address. And therefore,

technically, there's no issue. Okay. The loopholes is not paying the sales tax, right?

That, well, that's the loophole that people are taking. That's the reason.

Do you get to pay California tax or Montana tax? No, you're paying, you're paying, yeah,

you're paying Montana tax. You're right. Yeah, I get, I get you that. Yeah. So you're paying

Montana tax if you were buying it in Montana, but, you know, ultimately now, though, when you go to

that's the two sides of the coin is that, yeah, like you, you do save on the sales tax, but,

you know, buy, say like a California resident, you know, saying that they're, you know,

buying it for Montana purposes. I don't know what matters though. I think if you buy your car,

I think you bought, I think area you live in is a sales tax you pay. I think like,

if you were to order a car on one of those auction sites and you bought your car that was

say in Texas or wherever, right? You had it shipped over here. I think you still pay California.

Well, obviously when you, there's a thing too, like I always kind of wonder about this. If I were

to buy, I've looked at cool cars online across the country. I'm kind of curious, how does it work

when you bring a car that say a Texas car and you bring it into California, California's different

smog rules and Texas and things like that. So how does that work when you bring the car over here?

Yeah, that, that's the other side that kind of benefited them is like, if it's registered in

Montana, then that, that car doesn't, doesn't have to technically speaking, doesn't have to comply

to smog, which again, no car, yeah, all of that. And again, like, you know, for a, say if you're

buying like a modern, you know, sports car, luxury car, you know, you don't, that's not an issue for

you. But, you know, say you bought, you know, a skyline GTR, you know, that is already legal to

import obviously, but you bought it from, you know, somewhere and you registered in Montana and,

you know, it came over here and, and it's in California. You don't have to worry about smog

in the car because your requirement for smog isn't, or your requirement for registration

isn't dependent on California's rules, if that makes sense.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So I heard it's a big no-no these days. I heard, I heard it's up to a felony

if you are doing that. Yeah. A big high-profile situation though. Is it, is it Cletus, Cletus

McFarlane or is it a, what, no, Whistle and Diesel? Yeah, one of the big YouTubers. Yeah,

he was caught lighting his car on fire, some goofy thing like that, which I think it's stupid

anyways, but a lot of, yeah. He's, he's, he's, it's YouTuber. It's like FU money. They call that

FU money. The FU money, it's FU money. It's like, I got so much money. I'm just gonna light on fire.

It's like that scene from, if you're seeing the movie, Wolf of Wall Street, there's a scene in

the beginning of the movie where he's talking to the camera and he's doing a line of coke on off

the table with a hundred dollar bill and he does the line and it takes a hundred dollar bill,

shows the camera, wads it up, toss it in the trash. So it's like, it's like, I got so much money,

I can just like throw it away. And that's basically what he did. So why would he want to save money?

I don't know. Well, that's, and that's the thing. It's like, yeah, you know, you probably had some,

he was probably in his mind. It's like, yeah, I got this money. You know, I got this money that

I can just throw away and do all this stuff because I'm like saving all this money on,

on sales tax and all of this. But at the end of the day, you're not anymore.

So, you know, his, his whole deal was pretty high profile where, you know, he had just,

the really, the issue was, is that he had, you know, a lot of his videos had like the actual

cars license plate and every and all the, yeah, I got to remember, I got to remember every time

I start shooting videos and stuff. I guess I remember I got those cool plates I had made

and a company. I can't remember the name of the company I use, but, but they were a covermyplate.com

sounds familiar. Anyways, let me get a custom plate for your car and you can put it on the

license plate covers right up. It's very easy to do with their magnetic. It works, fits perfectly.

And then you put it on there and then you can do video and shots of your around your car from

the outside. And, you know, it doesn't have your actual plate being shown. Another trick I seen

people do is they do the blurring out or whatever on the frame. If you want to do that, if you want

to get crazy and do that, go right ahead. But I think it's easier to just put something over it.

It just seems to be easier that way. And it's a good note because honestly, I,

to be honest, I should probably do that a bit more. But, you know, I try to make sure that,

you know, I'm not doing anything that's like, you know, I'm not, I'm not street racing. I'm not,

you know, I'm not doing anything that like, you know, is, is that I'm worried about getting,

you know, getting caught for anything. But, but also, you know, there's just that,

you know, that traceability, like, okay. Yeah.

Well, anybody in the content, see your license plate and yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if you, I've heard stories where, especially if you have a girl, if you're a girl

and you're doing like content creation of some kind, try not to like have anything,

any visible markers around your house or outside of your house that people can like

clue into where you live, if possible. I know it's not, it's not always, you know, easily done.

But I try not to shoot any, any video that kind of like, like, here's my house, here's my address,

obviously. Here's where I live, the street I live, obviously. Don't put that in the shot.

And like, if you have any mountains or trees or things that are kind of big objects, people

can recognize and say, Oh yeah, I know what that is. I know what the house is. And then,

because guys are creepy and guys are stalkers and all that kind of crazy stuff. People are,

people are detectives. They'll figure this stuff out, you know, they'll figure out where you live

based on a few things. And, and I think it's wise to not have your plates in the shots. I,

I didn't think about that until, until like, I got to finding problems because it's not super

famous. But if I was super famous, I could see where people are like, what, I put you down and

like, you know, stalkers and the trees and stuff, you know, taking pictures and stuff, whatever.

Trying to get a glimpse, you know, but, but yeah, it's crazy. Or come after you if you were doing

some Montana plate stuff. Oh, I'm sure that is. They don't have an easy way to do it. Yeah. But,

you know, you know, other than this Montana plate thing, like Montana, what, what are they

been to the news for? Nothing. They're like super excited about this news. We're like, Oh my gosh,

you're talking about us. Yeah. For a while, people were saying that is that like, you know,

everybody's all driven about, you know, people doing this in Montana. Montana's like, I don't care.

Like this is actually, this is actually good for us. So, you know,

Have you ever been to Montana? Have you ever been to Montana? I haven't. I've been to Montana.

Yeah. I mean, my grandfather had a cabin out there out there. He built or whatever out in

the middle of nowhere. And it's like, it's like what you imagine Montana is. Montana. It's like

nothing but mountains and grizzly bears and like, you know, country roads as far as you

can see. And it's like, it's, it's not just country living. It's like mountain living.

You know, it's like, it's like mountain living, you know, grizzly grizzly bears are the ones where

you like, if you see one, you're supposed to like, look, look big and like loud, right?

I don't know. You know, that whole, that whole thing where it's like, you know, brown, brown,

brown bears, black bears, brown bears, I don't know, bears everywhere. I don't know. I mean,

it, it snows a lot there. It's, you know, high elevation. It's close to Canada.

It's, you know, I mean, it's, it's the mat. You're in the mountains up there. You know, so

I bet it's beautiful. Like, you know, there's some really beautiful places there, but,

but just not a lot of happenings going on. I mean, you know, I mean, if you're in the hunting,

you know, if you're in a hunting and deer killing and things like that and guns and like,

you know, that kind of stuff, yeah, you probably love it. It's probably your thing.

If you're in a four bind and mountain climate and a mountain, you know, whatever, and like shooting

things and shooting deer, deer hunting is like a big, big deal up there. Like there was a show on

TV. I was watching one time. It was like all about that hunting. I don't know if it was Montana,

where it was at, but it was somewhere up in that whole region where hunting licenses and you're

allowed to hunt some deer and all those different things. And there's so many rules and regulations.

They had the whole crew, like the cops running around and getting all the stuff. It was like a

cop show before like, like hunting or whatever. It's kind of a trip, but it's fascinating. Figure

all that stuff out. But as far as Montana goes, like using this little loophole, no bueno, you

can't do it no more. You do, you get caught, but you know, but you should do is just steal the car,

don't put plates on it and take it to the deer side show. Clay's coast closed. You know, that's

worry about it. And make sure you put cheap gas in there so that you're not spending too much money

on gasoline as well. If you want to get really, really crazy, maybe don't change the oil, just

drain the oil out and see what happens. You know, just see what happens. Solid consumer advice.

Yep. Just, just, just if you're going to go down that route, go full bore and make a,

make a video of it though and post on YouTube. Of course. Oh yeah. Like if you, yeah, you,

you have to be in the content creations phase to even think like that in the first place.

So also make sure you do it in front of your, in front of your address, your house. We know,

we know you live. Make sure you're easily identifiable. Right. And of course say your

full name on the video and everything. Don't use your stage name is your full name in the video

and everything. And you'll be good to go. Montana's gonna love you. That's been fantastic, man.

Well, encourage me. I know it's late and thank you for stopping by in, even though far, far, far away,

million miles away up North, you know, you're like in a different, different part of the world.

You're like, oh, that's how the curve of the earth is where you're at.

Way up there, man. But hey, man, I know you got the YouTube channel. So where everybody,

where can everybody find your amazing YouTube channel?

Yeah. Check out the German dad 22 and on a Instagram and YouTube and, and you'll,

you'll probably start seeing me use some more plate covers on my video content now, but

it's there. If you guys want to check it out, right? Fantastic. And if you love the show,

please leave us a review. You can do that. Any of the cool podcast apps, you know,

which ones are the cool ones, not so much of them, not so cool ones, kind of like those not so

cool gas stations, you know, it is. So you can find it at coolcarswithchris.com. And until next

time, be safe, drive safe, be legal, you know, wear a seatbelt, don't drink and drive, you know,

all the usual stuff, you know, make sure your car makes it back home, you know, safe and park,

safe and sound where it should be. And until next time, we'll see you later.

About this episode

Gas prices in California hit “insane” levels, and Chris digs into a surprising workaround: some Indian reservation stations reportedly source fuel from out of state (like Nevada) to avoid California refinery/tax rules, letting them undercut nearby stations. He also compares fuel quality concepts like “top tier” detergents and warns about sketchy independent sellers. Florida’s car-show disaster becomes the next story—an unexpected monsoon flooded and mud-sank multi-million-dollar exotics. The episode ends with a crackdown on the “Montana loophole” for avoiding California smog and taxes, plus talk of odometer tampering and plate/traceability for creators.

air conditioner to like be recycled ARCO Bugatti California smog rules convenience pricing convenient spot convertible top down Costco don't drink and drive enclosed trailers

Original notes

In this episode of Cool Cars with Chris, Chris and Courage dive into the crazy surge in California gas prices and uncover a surprising loophole that allows some gas stations to sell fuel cheaper than everyone else.

Chris shares insider knowledge from working in the fuel industry and explains how certain reservation gas stations in California are able to bring fuel in from Nevada and Arizona, bypassing some of the regulations that make California gasoline so expensive.

But that’s not the only wild story in this episode.

The guys also break down a shocking story from Florida where a sudden storm flooded a luxury car show, damaging multi-million dollar exotic cars, rare supercars, and collector vehicles worth millions.

From Bugatti and McLaren hypercars to rare collectible vehicles, some of these cars were caught in heavy rain and flooding with no warning.

Could these flood-damaged supercars end up on the used car market?

And finally, the show dives into the controversial Montana supercar registration loophole, where wealthy car owners have been registering their cars in Montana to avoid California sales tax and emissions laws. States are now cracking down hard on this practice, and some drivers could face serious consequences.

If you love cars, supercars, car culture, automotive news, and insider automotive knowledge, this episode is packed with fascinating stories and industry insights.

🔗 Follow Cool Cars with Chris

Stay connected with Cool Cars with Chris for more automotive news, car culture, and supercar content.

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00:00 🚗 Welcome to Cool Cars with Chris
01:38 🎤 Courage Joins the Show (Live from Oakland)
03:40 🌉 Golden Gate Bridge & Bay Area Car Talk
08:07 ⛽ California Gas Prices Are Getting Crazy
10:50 🚚 The Reservation Gas Station Loophole
13:01 💰 Cheap Gas Coming from Nevada & Arizona
16:10 🧪 Top Tier Gas vs Cheap Gas Explained
20:10 🛑 The Risk of Buying Gas at Random Stations
21:50 🛒 Costco Gas — Is It Actually the Best Deal?
24:30 📍 Why Some Gas Stations Charge Way More
31:40 📰 Courage’s Car News Segment Begins
32:00 🌴 Florida Weather & Why It’s So Extreme
36:10 🌧️ Exotic Car Show Disaster in Florida
41:20 💸 Millions of Dollars in Supercars Flooded
46:40 🤯 What Happens to Flooded Exotic Cars?
49:00 🏎️ McLaren Elva & Exotic Collector Cars
51:30 🔎 Could Flooded Supercars Hit the Used Market?
52:10 ⚠️ Used Car Scams & Odometer Rollbacks
56:57 🏔️ The Montana Supercar Registration Loophole
59:07 💰 Avoiding Taxes with Montana LLCs
1:00:17 🚔 California Starts Cracking Down
1:03:05 🔥 YouTubers Getting Caught with Montana Plates
1:04:38 🎥 Protecting Your License Plate in Videos
1:07:00 🐻 What Montana Is Actually Like
1:09:12 🚫 Why the Montana Loophole Is Ending
1:10:17 👋 Final Thoughts & Where to Follow Courage
1:11:23 🏁 Episode Wrap-Up

In this episode of Cool Cars with Chris, we break down the truth behind California gas prices, the surprising gas station loophole saving drivers money, and why some California gas stations are cheaper than others. We also discuss the shocking Florida exotic car show disaster, where a sudden storm flooded million-dollar supercars, exotic cars, and hypercars from brands like Bugatti, McLaren, and Ferrari. Plus, we dive into the controversial Montana supercar registration loophole, how some owners register exotic cars in Montana to avoid California car taxes and emissions laws, and why states are cracking down. If you love supercars, exotic cars, automotive news, car culture, car podcasts, and insider automotive knowledge, this episode covers everything from gas prices and fuel regulations to supercar ownership and car industry news.

#CaliforniaGasPrices #SupercarNews #CarPodcast

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