044 | What Really Counts as a Car Mod? Elantra N Performance, Negative Equity & California Car Culture
Cool Cars with Chris: Car Talk, Driving Tips & Auto Life
044 | What Really Counts as a Car Mod? Elantra N Performance, Negative Equity & California Car CultureCool Cars with Chris: Car Talk, Driving Tips & Auto Life · Jul 20, 2026
The Honda Civic is a regular, everyday car that’s made to be efficient and easy to live with. People sometimes talk about “hot” Civics when they mean the more performance-focused versions or when someone drives it aggressively.
A rear diffuser is a piece you add under the back of the car to help air flow better underneath. Better airflow can make the car feel more planted at speed. Here, the host is talking about the diffuser’s shape and how well it fit during installation.
Fitment is how well an aftermarket part physically matches the car it’s meant for—things like alignment, gaps, and whether mounting points line up. Even if a part is the “right model,” fitment can still be imperfect, requiring extra work to get it to sit correctly. The host says the fitment wasn’t perfect and that they had to do extra steps to make it work.
JB Weld is a strong glue/epoxy that you mix and then apply to stick parts together. People use it on cars when something needs extra help to hold or line up. Here, the host used it to get the diffuser to fit, and they didn’t like how messy it was.
Place
LA
“LA” means Los Angeles. In car culture, it usually means there are lots of car events and people showing up from the surrounding area.
Place
will springs
“Will Springs” is probably a race track in California where people go for car events. The host is saying it’s the kind of outing that takes real commitment to attend.
The “Inland Empire” is a part of Southern California away from the coast. The speaker is saying the car scene there is growing and more people are getting involved.
Underglow is the colored light that shines from underneath your car. People use it to make the car look cooler at night, and it can usually change colors or patterns.
The Elantra N is the sporty performance version of the Hyundai Elantra. Here, they’re discussing adding aftermarket upgrades to it and looking for install videos made specifically for the Elantra N.
An intake is the part that brings air into the engine. People upgrade it because it can help the engine breathe differently, and it’s one of the more common first mods.
A “stick shift” means the car has a manual gearbox. You use a clutch pedal and a shifter to choose gears yourself, instead of the car doing it automatically.
A DCT transmission is an automatic gearbox that shifts very quickly using two clutches. With paddle shifters, you can tell it when to change gears by using the paddles behind the steering wheel.
A dual-clutch transmission is an automatic that shifts quickly by using two clutches at once. It’s designed so the next gear is ready before you need it.
The Nissan GT-R is a very fast sports car designed for performance. People often compare it to other top-tier cars because it’s built to accelerate hard and drive aggressively.
The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car designed to go fast and handle well. It’s a well-known model people use as a benchmark when talking about performance cars.
Term
concept of the visions in 74
A concept car is like a preview of what a company might build someday. The host is saying Hyundai has shown electric “visions” ideas, but they didn’t share much technical information.
Genesis is Hyundai’s luxury-car brand. The point here is that the “fancier, more expensive” cars are expected to come from Genesis rather than regular Hyundai models.
Brand
magma
The host brings up “Magma” as a possible new Hyundai-related brand. They don’t really explain what it would be yet—just that they’ve heard the name.
A freeway is a major highway where you usually can’t turn off directly and traffic moves quickly. It’s the kind of road where speeding is easier to do and easier to notice.
The Challenger is a muscle car, meaning it’s designed to feel powerful and exciting to drive. In the podcast, it’s mentioned along with other very fast versions of cars.
The Ford Explorer is a larger family SUV. It’s the kind of vehicle that can be used for everyday trips, and it’s also been used by police departments in some areas.
The electrical system is basically the car’s power network—how electricity is generated and distributed. Police cars often add extra gear, so they may need upgrades so everything can run reliably.
The alternator is what keeps the car’s battery charged while you drive. If a car has lots of extra lights and electronics (like a police car), it may need a stronger alternator to power everything.
“Fox body” is the nickname for a generation of Ford Mustang. “5.0” usually means it has a 5.0-liter V8 engine, and those cars were common in older police fleets.
“Crown Vic” is short for the Ford Crown Victoria, a large older sedan that a lot of police departments used. Since they were common, people can find them for relatively low money and customize them.
The Mercury Marauder is an older American car from Mercury (Ford’s brand). People like it because it looks cool and can be modified, and in the episode they compare it to the more famous Crown Vic style of car.
A bench seat is one big front seat instead of two separate seats. It’s a classic interior style you often see in older cars.
Term
police car
A “police car” here means a car that was used by police. People sometimes buy them after they’re retired, because they can be cheaper—but they might show more wear from being driven hard and used a lot.
Term
special auctions
Special auctions are organized sales events where vehicles are sold, often in bulk or by specific groups. The host is saying that’s where you’re more likely to find retired fleet cars than on normal listing sites.
Auto Trader is a website/app where people list used cars for sale. The host is saying those specific police-fleet cars aren’t usually showing up there.
The Ford Taurus is a large sedan that was used for everyday transportation. The podcast mentions it being used as a police car, which means it was common and practical for that kind of work.
“Four runners” means the Toyota 4Runner, a rugged SUV that’s known for lasting a long time. The host is saying people are paying big money for them lately.
The Toyota Land Cruiser is a big, tough SUV that’s famous for going off-road. In this segment, the point is that new ones cost a lot, so people often look at older used examples.
The Ford F-150 is a popular full-size pickup truck. It’s the kind of vehicle people use for hauling and general utility. The host is listing what they already had before thinking about an SUV.
A Camaro is a sporty American car made by Chevrolet. A convertible means the roof can open so you can drive with the top down. The host is just saying someone they knew had one before they talked about adding an SUV.
The Infiniti QX80 is Infiniti’s large, body-on-road SUV (full-size luxury SUV) aimed at family comfort and long-distance driving. The host specifically groups it with other late-2010s/early-2020s SUVs and says they depreciate heavily from new, which is a key part of the “what’s worth buying” discussion.
Depreciation is how much a vehicle loses value over time. “Depreciate like rocks” just means it drops in price really fast, so buying one used can be cheaper.
The Range Rover is a luxury SUV made for comfort and also for handling rougher roads. People may talk about them in the used market because they can still feel “new” even after a few years.
Depreciation is how much a car’s value drops as it gets older. If it drops faster than you’re paying down your loan, you can end up owing more than the car is worth.
Negative equity means you still owe more money on your car than it’s worth. If you trade it in anyway, the extra amount usually gets added to your next car loan, so you end up paying interest on that gap.
A car loan is the money you borrow to buy the car, then pay back each month. The problem discussed here is that if you add negative equity to the new loan, your payments can get way bigger.
A license plate bracket is the mounting frame/holder that secures your license plate to the car. Swapping it (for a different style, color, or branding) is a common low-effort cosmetic mod because it changes the car’s appearance.
They use the Nissan Sentra as an example of a common car. If you change how it looks—like adding decals or a different plate setup—that counts as a modification.
A “DMV plate” is your official license plate from the government. The host’s point is that adding it isn’t a car modification—it’s just required paperwork and setup.
Aero parts are add-ons that change how air moves around your car. They’re often things like spoilers or front splitters that can help the car feel more stable, especially when you’re going fast.
A “state ref” is an official inspection process in some states where they check whether your car modifications still meet emissions rules. If your car’s changed a lot, you may need to get it approved before it can be considered legal.
A turbocharger is a device that helps your engine breathe more air. With more air, the engine can make more power—assuming the car is tuned properly to handle it.
A supercharger is another way to make more power by pushing extra air into the engine. It’s usually driven by the engine, so it can boost performance without waiting for exhaust gases like a turbo.
When they say “California,” they mean the state’s stricter rules for emissions and vehicle inspections. Some mods can require extra approval so the car still meets pollution limits.
A tune is a change to the car’s computer settings. If you add mods like a turbo, the tune helps the engine run right instead of running too lean or too aggressive.
VTEC (“V tech”) is Honda’s system that changes how the engine’s valves work. It helps the car feel stronger at higher revs without making it annoying to drive normally.
Here, “exhaust” means the parts that route gases out of the engine. People upgrade it to change how freely the engine can breathe and often to change the sound too.
“Ferrari Luce” sounds like a made-up name in the podcast, used to describe what an AI might create. It doesn’t clearly refer to a specific real Ferrari you could buy.
A smog check is a test California makes you do to prove your car isn’t polluting too much. If you modify your car’s engine or exhaust, it can sometimes fail the test.
The Volkswagen Jetta is a common compact sedan. Chris is basically saying some other VW cars look almost the same up front, but you can tell they’re bigger when you look at them from the side.
The Hyundai Sonata is a bigger Hyundai sedan than the Elantra. Chris is saying you might not notice the size difference from the front, but you can see it clearly from the side.
The Hyundai Elantra is a smaller sedan. Chris is comparing it to a larger Hyundai (the Sonata) to show that size differences are easier to spot from the side than from the front.
The Volkswagen Passat is a bigger, more comfort-focused sedan. Chris says it felt very smooth and cushy, but he wanted something that still had a bit more sporty character.
DSG is Volkswagen’s version of a dual-clutch automatic. It can shift quickly, so the car feels more responsive than many older automatics.
LIVE
All right. Welcome to cool cars with Chris, the coolest podcast, but the coolest cars
in the world, at least in our neighborhood anyways, I got courage. How are you doing
today, buddy? Good, good man. As usual, always good to be on, talking some cars and a good
weekend. And, and this is a nice way to end it off for sure.
It is definitely nice way to end it off. You know, the weather has changed earlier this
week as we record this, it was kind of like drizzly and raining and some rain down here
in San Diego, but this weekend it changed all around. It's back to flip flops and sunshine,
man. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those where it's like, for a while we were having those weekends
where it would just be, it just rain store, like just overcast and you don't really want to get
out and do a lot. Cause it's like, you know, it's just not the weather for it, but this,
this was definitely textbook, you know, SoCal weekend right there. And like the, the mid to
low seventies or so, you know, clear skies. So definitely had to take advantage of this
one for sure. So did you go anywhere? Do you do anything special?
Yeah. Yeah. We did the, the whole beach, the beach trip. We haven't done that in a little while
because I know we were talking about it, but going to the beach, you know, with young kids is
always, you know, just a lot of advanced planning and they get like, like everywhere,
like everywhere should not be trust me. I mean, I, there's where my garage now has got,
you know, I got to sweep it out because all of the toys and stuff we got, you know,
there was sand through there. I will say small shout out plug to a last fit floor liners
cause I definitely put them to the test. They, they hooked me up with a set of those a while back
for the Elantra in and they definitely were full of sand when we got back.
And you can like lift the whole thing out and like shake it off, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I usually just vacuum it cause cause it's really well sealed like on the edges.
So there's no like that you're really getting anything under it. So you just vacuum it out
and just super quick versus before that it was a nightmare. You were, you knew that you
were just going to be finding grains of sand in weird places weeks down the road.
Dude, I remember like my kids were always arguing about taking a shower, you know,
but they have to the beach trip. They are fighting for the shower who's going to do it.
Yeah. Jumping in the shower cause they got sand and stuff, all of them,
especially at the showers at the beach, but those are always crowded and who knows what's
going on over there and stuff. But yeah, I used to always spend the beach in a while.
In fact, I haven't used the pool here now that I lived here. People use it all the time. I've
used the pool either. So it's kind of one of those things where I used to use these things.
She's going to beach a lot and you do a lot of stuff and I don't know. I mean, I haven't been
in a while, probably go the summer. I always go. In fact, I just bought some new beach towels
from Costco, Costco shout out. They got everything, but they had their summer stuff,
you know, out and about. They had a whole beach towel section, nice quality beach towels. Like,
like really the expensive ones, you know, well, not expensive price, but like quality
build quality stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They had those. So I got a bunch of those and yeah. So we were
ready to go man. You know, I'm obviously not going to lie. I'm like kind of itching. My wife
has kind of been, I think for, for a good reason. She started to like, like, or not offer up
door dash or whatever you do, like to get groceries now, because they do it for Costco. So
she started ordering, you know, stuff from Costco through that. And, you know, obviously
it saves us that potential going into Costco and coming out with a whole bunch of stuff you don't
need. But at the same time, like I just kind of miss like going in Costco and just like looking
at random stuff. I went there. I went there with the Z on Saturday parking horrible,
by the way. So I was, I went to the Costco in La Mesa and that one, the parking lot, I don't
know where it is. I hate it. Everybody seems to hate it there. Cause I think the spots are like
narrower and there's not a lot of space for like two cars to get by. Like as they go down the
rows, there is, but not really with got carts and everything. It's kind of crazy. I think the Z
at a Costco for a reason, the reason why is I do not buy everything because I know that I can't
fit in the car. It's like, oh, I drove the truck today. I can get all of this stuff.
That's the thing, you know, like today, later today with the grocery store, I took my truck.
I know I needed to haul some stuff. And so, but usually, um, you know, get the car and I'll take
it just for, cause you only need a few things. I know I could put them in the car. So no big deal.
It's, but I almost caught myself. It's really cool. Like shelves, they've probably been there
before. They have these like cubby shelves, even for garage or a patty or whatever, they kind of
look like cubbies that kind of stack interlock with each other.
Not those like orange bit, like no, no, no, they're not like buckets. They're like
actual like one solid, almost like a trough, almost like a, I guess maybe like a horse trough
kind of thing kind of designed to it. And they kind of interlock and stack on top of each other.
And when they do, they become like, it's like a big tall like, like shelf or whatever,
but they kind of can come off as cubbies anyways. They had those there. Oh, I should get some of
these. And then I'm like, Oh, I have the car. It's not going to fit the car.
And so I, it's like put them back, but, but yeah, I almost attempted to start buying crazy stuff
and walking around the place. But yeah, all the YouTubers, when they get cars,
especially sports cars and stuff back in the day, it used to always be the most popular videos to
just like do like a Costco run and see how many, how much you can store in your, in the back of
your sports car or whatever. But what do you do as a backup plan? Like save, take the car over there.
And it's just me, by the way, I take the car over there and then I buy it like $300 with a crap.
And then it's like leave it or go back, walk over to the exchange place and like have to like
take it all back and get my money back. Cause I'm an idiot and I can't, I never really thought
about that. Actually. I wondered like if anybody really had like a backup plan and that scenario
of like just a buddy, you know, with the call somebody say, Hey, can you please come over
and help me bring your truck over here and help me, you know, halls crap I bought today at Costco.
I think it's funny when you see people, you know, buy a TV set even at Walmart and then try to put
it into a hot civic. It's got to try to backseat even your car, for example, you couldn't put a TV
in your car. Not, not a big one anyways. Not a big one. I just, we just got a 32 inch one for,
it's actually for my parents, my, my, my son. We've been kind of pushing against having,
not to get into this, but pushing against them having a TV in his room, but he's, you know,
he's getting to that point, like just kind of let him have his space here and there. And,
and so, you know, they got, they got one of those and, and we went to go pick it up because Walmart
doesn't do like an in-store pickup. Like you have to, at least up here, you have to do
the curbside. Okay. And so, you know, if you're picking up anything, you gotta wait and they're,
they're pretty good about it, but we were sitting there just kind of waiting and hanging out and
they were super busy and certain point we just got distracted and didn't even like know anything
was going on. And so the guy kind of rolled up to us, I hope they got your delivery. And I was
like, okay, let me start trying to make room for, for the TV. And I realized like 32 inch TV is
really not that big. Like cause I haven't bought a TV in a while. So my computer monitor is almost
that size, you know, so he's like holding it. And I'm like, Oh, well, just go ahead and toss it
back there then. Like I thought I was going to have to do some jigsaw puzzles.
You're waiting for the forklift. You're waiting. Call Johnny the forklift to bring him over here.
You know, like B, B, he's got the forklift on the palette. It's like, it's like sitting right
there. Like, okay, where do you want this? Yeah. That's crazy. Hey, but what is going on
in the car world? Courageous car world. What's going on today, buddy?
Me personally, not a whole lot. I did have an install, another install, which I think is going
to be my last for a while. What do you break, dude? Courage is installing with now bigger turbo
charge. You got, you cut the roof, hood, but a turbo took out the hood. Is it in?
Oh yeah. Do a dump, dump pipe out of the top or something. Yeah. Nothing, nothing insane,
crazy like that. But this was definitely the least smooth of an install that I've had in a while.
I was installing a rear diffuser for, for two reasons. I kind of wanted to change it on the
it has a little mini one and some like, you know, little slits that come down like right over the
exhaust. Like the fins that stick down that what you're trying to do? I'll show you a picture of
it later. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But yeah, it is kind of that design where it sort of extends the fins
a little bit more. And then it has like some overhangs, but it also has these side spats that
go off of the side skirt that comes back behind the rear wheels that I wasn't really like a huge
fan of because I thought was a little overkill. But now that I have them on, like I'm just all
about it. Like it just, it really completes the back of the car. Oh, nice. But the fitment was
not perfect. And I'm going to be doing a video on the channel. So shout out, you know, at some
point. Okay. Nice. Nice. This is the first time where I really had to like do some stuff to just
get this thing to fit properly that I'm not really that happy about. Like, you know, I had to use
JB Weld, which I hate using that stuff, man, because it gets over every gets on everything.
Like I had to like literally scrub my hands because I got, I just for some reason found myself with
like a whole bunch of it, all of my fingers and stuff. So didn't like that. It leaves like that
white residue when it dries. So I got to go over and like try and scrub it off of the little parts
that I miss now. So it all in all, like it wasn't like, it looks good from afar, but there's little
things where like everything else has been a pretty straightforward clean install. So
like I said, you live, you learn, you know, you can't win them all, but it was one of those where
I was like thinking, Oh man, like this is the first one that I'm not like as happy with the end
result as I want it to be. But all in all, it still looks great. It hides my
undergrowth a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't go zoom it in real heavy on the finer details.
Everyone do that right now. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever you see the car out in public,
like go look at that particular part of the car, but other than that, no, it's been good. We,
we, like I said, we packed it deep for the beach yesterday, literally threw everything in there.
And then today I went to a little cars and coffee over at one of the local wineries we have over
here. Oh nice. I was going to go to cars and coffee this morning. Dude, I even said, I thought
about, I was up late last night and I'm like, I'm not feeling it. You know, I think cars and
coffee is for the early risers and I am not an early riser. So it's very, very difficult for me
to get up that early to do something. Anything for that matter, you know? And so I think,
I think next, I'm always like, let me next time or whatever kind of deal, but I was going to go
out this morning and I was like, yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go out there and all this
stuff. And I just didn't make it. You know, I just like, here it is like 88 o'clock,
nine o'clock. And I'm like, I'm over it. You know, I'm not even like walking up yet, you know,
and by the time, you know, it's gotten harder and harder. Like it's, you know, I used to just
be spring change and I'm still kind of like that where I'm, where I'm sort of up in time to do it.
But then I'm just really like, you know, really nilly about getting out the door. And then you
realize like how much times past when, you know, why you're just kind of lollygagging and then
you're almost at that point of like, do I even still go or right? I'm like the king of lollygagging.
Yeah. You know, like that's my thing. You know, like I am such a slow person in the morning,
like just coffee and chill in social media and the laptop and just next thing I know,
it's like, Oh crap, I'm late for work or I'm late for this or late for, you know, whatever it is.
And so that's kind of my thing, especially on the weekends is that I'm just like, I don't want to
do nothing anymore. And I'm just like, I'm kind of over, unless I'm traveling or something like
that. That's, that's a different story, I guess. But I think also too, if I didn't have anybody
go in there with like, I mean, anybody like, I see you and I were going there together,
different story. Cause I think we both be kind of motivating each other to go down there at the
same time. Or if Jacob was wanting to go, if he was here, he wanted to go, took his car or whatever
kind of thing. Or even the Z has not been to a car and coffee yet.
Except for, except for that's right. That's right. You crashed a party for KTM day.
Yeah, I did. I said, look, you guys could have had,
but inspired. But no, I was saying like, I have not taken into a car and coffee,
other than like that, of course. And so I haven't done that. And then we haven't taken
Jacob's car in a while and he's been busy with his new job and different things and stuff. And
the weekends were kind of like a mishmash of doing stuff. And I would like to get back to
doing cars and coffee events. In fact, there was another event that was brought to my attention.
I sent you, sent you about it, um, happening in LA and I'm like, that's another big event.
I love to go. We'll see, you know, like for me, I have to start really being dedicated.
And I have to like start taking, like go into events more seriously than like, maybe I will,
maybe I won't. And like, you know, four hours go by and say, Oh, it's already over.
You know, and then that's my problem. I think is I have to get more like strategic with my time.
My time's kind of been like kind of all over the place a little bit. I think if I had somebody
help me, like motivate me in my corner to like get going at a certain time, I probably won't do it.
You know, that's my problem. You know, so if I had somebody going with me hinted into courage here,
if I was like, yeah, if you had somebody going, going with me to like do an event,
like we did a will springs kind of thing, you know, like, like, if you didn't go to the will
springs, like I, I don't know if I would go, but I'm like, I might, that was a commitment though.
Like, you know, getting, getting out there. It is definitely a commitment, but I think it's also
committing. We have more than one person involved doing it. You know, more than one person, like
tag team, like a part of a team effort versus just, you know, go out there by yourself because
I think you're a little more dedicated, a little more, um, yeah, I guess dedicated to the word for
it. There's more, there's more investment in it. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm definitely
down to be that advocate. I, I will say the, it's, it's, I was talking to somebody about this earlier
that, you know, it's been interesting kind of seeing even like over the last year, how kind of
this inland empire, Temecula, um, you know, even now Menafee, Marietta, some of those, and then like
Escondido, how the car scene has kind of grown a lot more up North a bit more. Whereas like,
I would always be kind of going down to San Diego to like Rancho Santa Fe and, um, you know, I would
make it down to Point Loma and some of those, you know, cars and coffees, but literally like this
last month or so, like there's been so many events like between Escondido, San Marcos, and then here
where I am, uh, and then a little further up North Menafee that I've been really kind of in this area
a lot more. Uh, I'm actually itching to get down more to San Diego now and like do some more of
those kind of more usual cars and coffees, but it's been interesting to see that the shift of
like a lot of different events kind of popping up here. And, you know, for me, like, you know,
it's obviously a lot easier when you just got to travel 20, 30 minutes or something versus
like knowing it's going to take you an hour to get to an event, especially in the morning.
Oh yeah, it's a hike. I mean, I mean, the close to the event I was going to go this morning
wasn't that far, but it's just like, I thought of pulling it off, you know, and getting over there
and all. I had the whole thing mapped out of my head, you know, but I was up late last night,
you know, talking to a girl, you know, it goes, you know, and, and next thing, you know,
you know, it's like two in the morning and I'm like, Oh, well, I guess I'm not going to
spend some good conversation. I guess I'm not going to cars and coffees.
Kind of a thing. So it's like one of those deals where things kind of happen and you kind of like
getting swept away with the conversation or whatever it is, like with podcasting here too.
And before you know it, it's like, Oh, well, I guess not going to work tomorrow morning,
earlier, whatever, something or else I'm going super tired. Red Bull, do your thing, you know?
Yeah. And so, I mean, I know it's hard going to the miscarriage and coffees because I struggle.
I want to go to all these things. And I think maybe for me though, like, I was kind of wondering
this. I think right now it's got to be like the busiest time of my life I've ever had in my life,
like ever, like the busiest time I've ever had. There was time in my life where I wasn't busy at
all. And maybe I'm not busy. I'm just thinking I'm busy. Maybe it's what it is, you know,
horrible time management. I mean, but, but there was a time in my life, I remember where life was
so bored. I would like, you know, go everywhere and do anything and whatever, anytime of the day
and whatever and stuff. Yeah. But, and especially if you have kids too, if you have kids and you
got different things you're doing and you got priorities, they got things they got to do and
schedules to keep and they got all these different events they got to be at on the weekends. It's,
it makes it very hard. It's a lot more logistics. Yeah. Oh, that's the hardest part. I think it's
hard part with all this stuff, whether it's podcasting or with like, you know, going to cars
and coffee, I think, you know, the logistics of it all, especially if you live far away, like you
do, you know, something I've been, you know, really kind of telling myself personally, because I,
I have, you know, in the last like couple of months started to really kind of, you know,
feel that a little bit of like, man, like, you know, this, this is going on this, you know,
but I'd love to be here. I'd love to be there, but you know, there are like, you know, obviously,
you know, parent to young kids, like, you know, that, that obviously is the most important thing
and, you know, doing things, being around for that, you know, things will work, you know,
picking up and like still like kind of having your mind be in a different place, but also
wanting to shift over to something that you enjoy doing. It's, it's sometimes gets a lot harder to
do that, you know, editing content and, you know, doing all that stuff. Like, you know, it definitely
has gotten to that point where you start to kind of take a step back, but something that I just
have been telling myself a lot is just that, you know, we all just kind of go through different
seasons. Like, you know, we're in a seat. Sometimes we're in a season of craziness of just like,
literally just feel knowing we all know that like, it never feels like we have enough hours in the
day, but there's just certain seasons where that's like super evident. Like this is not enough time
to work through everything that you had to work through. And sometimes we do have those where
it's like, you know, a little bit more via flow and a little bit more freedom around it. And,
you know, and ultimately the goal is to potentially create more of that, you know, if you can. But
at the same time, the only way you get there is by having some of those seasons where things are
just kind of crazy kind of haywire. You're, you know, you just feel like you're just go, go, go,
but, you know, but I think that those, those go, go, go time frames are kind of where we
start to build more of ourselves and we get strong. We learn how to manage time a little better.
And, and then we enjoy those times later potentially, but, you know,
Yeah. Well, speaking of cars and coffee, I wonder if a lot of people that go to these things,
oh, regularly, I've been asking you because you go to a lot of these regularly. Are a lot of the
people there like the retirement age or where they don't have much going on?
That's a good question, honestly. And I honestly not, not really. Like it's definitely a pretty
big mix. Like you do get, you know, kind of the older, especially at the, like the classic car,
like a lot of the muscle car, classic car stuff, like, you know, a lot of those guys,
you're retired and, you know, older, you know, older demographic, but you, I think too, you can,
on the younger side, you tend to get, you know, some of the folks that, you know, might, might
work like jobs where they're, you know, up super early in the morning a lot. And so they're already
sort of conditioned, like they might work throughout the week and they're already kind of conditioned
to be. That's probably what it is because, because, because, um, years ago, I used to work
like super early, like in that shift, you know, that super early shift, you know, so like going
through cars and coffee would be like a no thing, no big deal for me. I would have been there like
six in the morning, wide awake, let's go, let's do this. No coffee required.
And, um, now I'm just working the opposite of that. So maybe that's what it is too.
There is nice finding some of those events where they will pop up and they're like a nice little,
like 10 o'clock, maybe 11 o'clock, they'll start, you know, 11 a.m. to one or, you know,
those events that are kind of not super early, but coffee and lunch. Yeah. You can't really be
in cars. And then you have some of the ones that throw, um, last weekend I went to, um,
elite finish where they kind of do this big quarterly thing and they did, they call it golden
hour or sunset or something. Yeah. So they, they do it right around like five o'clock,
I think to seven o'clock. Um, and they actually did it. They, they had two pretty big events
that same day. And so the, the earlier event was like from 11 to one or 11 to two, and then theirs
was from five to seven, but you know, that's, that's obviously kind of nice too, except some people
kind of have like a connotation of like the later, you know, car meat type scene, which,
you know, I, I go to some of those sometimes some of them are definitely, you know, just not my
thing. Are they the takeovers? No, that's, I, I definitely stand, stand hard, hard and fast on
yeah. If any of that stuff's going down, I am not about it, but you know, they tend to still have
like, you know, kind of car meats that'll start like at seven 30 go till nine 30. And you know,
they, they're the ones where you see in like the invite, like, you know, no revving, no, you know,
no, no HWA is over there. Yeah. Yeah. Basically they're like, you know, some of them be like,
hey, we, we, we have police on the premises. So they'll, they'll be, you know, they'll be watching
you to see if you're doing anything. And you know, again, kind of hampers the environment a little
bit, but it's still, it's, it's a cool scene when it does, when it's done right. There's, I've been
to a few, you know, night meats that, you know, great vibe, you know, even have some food vendors
out, you know, nice, you know, now since I have the underglow in the end, obviously it's nice to
take the car out of the way. Would you get it from? It's a, it's a company called hard tuned.
Is it like, is there a switch or is it always on? No, it's a switch. So it, um, I have the switch
in the cabin. So you can turn it, it on to kill switch. Yeah. Uh-huh. I have a controller
and a app that you can change all of the colors. Is there like a pattern? Could you like a pattern
stuff too? Like a, they go around in a circle or flat on? Yeah. Full on. Like, you know, even
light show, it'll, it'll sing to music. You gotta be, now it's your video. You gotta make the whole
light show with music and stuff. Like put a beat to it or whatever and have it going around.
Like listen, it'll, it'll, it has the, the, the switch Christmas lights when they peel,
do the Christmas shows and they do the music and the, and the beats and the, and all that kind
of stuff. If you can do that, like a fourth of July theme one with fireworks behind your car,
like even for AI fireworks, if I can far expand your car, dude, I just gave your whole YouTube
channel. You just gave me the idea. Dude, that is it. Yeah. I'm, I'm for a small plug too. I did
just post up the, the video, the install of that. That was my last video I just put up,
which, you know, I was doing okay-ish, you know, it's, it's a little more like there's
certain people that are super into that. There's certain people that aren't. So, you know, I'm
just basically the, the main reason I wanted to do it is because I didn't see any videos
particularly installing it on the Elantra end. So there were some quirks that I was like,
Oh, it'd be helpful if somebody else is doing it. That's a nice thing to have. We have a car
channel dedicated around a particular car, like your Elantra or my Z. If you, I think,
I think the Elantra ends fairly popular. I think that the obviously the Z is more popular,
popular for like massive people to have them and, and apply searching on that kind of thing.
But I think with the end though, like installing anything, even your intake you did, you know,
like install, install videos on particular cars are probably pretty popular. And the fact,
and also the fact that there is not a lot of, probably a lot of other Elantra end channels
that I know is there, I've no, I'm sure there's some, there's some big ones, like some bigger ones
that have been around and were my go-tos with some of like the early install, like, you know,
parts and stuff like that. But I, you could probably count the ones that, you know, are really
like in sort of like a thousand plus subscriber realm. You can probably count those, you know,
on, on a couple of hands, like, you know, not on one hand, yeah, like for in specific content,
like you got a lot on Instagram, like a lot, you know, a lot of profiles, that kind
of stuff. But in terms of like real, like content creators, it's definitely a small,
a small niche for sure, you know, it contributes to again, just with it being just kind of a,
still like a little bit of a, you know, misunderstood brand. And, you know,
a lot of people still don't really even know like about the, the performance side of that.
They, they did. I didn't. I had no idea because, because I do a guy work had with those, you know,
a launcher ends and I saw him drive it and I heard it had a little bit of exhaust on it,
a little bit of sound like a little, it sounded like a four cylinder, of course.
But it sounded like, like it had, like obviously it was a stock launcher end, you know,
it had the stock wheels and then the wing and the brakes, not kind of stuff. I'm like,
oh, that's cute. That's my first one. He put a nice little exhaust on his little launcher.
How cute. That is so cute. Yeah. That's so cute. You know, of course it's a big guy,
you know, he's a big ball. He's a big guy, you know, but, but I'm like, that's cute. You know,
I can tell you how, and I was like, park next to him one day and I peek in the window and I
noticed they make that a stick shift. Yeah. That's always everybody's reaction. Like,
honestly, I thought, I thought it was a family wagon that had like, like just an appearance
package because I remember, I think it was a Nissan had like an Elantra, like Nismo or some
weird package. It wasn't quite like performance package, but it was like some appearance package.
It had like wheels, a wing, maybe, you know, red trim around some areas and things like that.
And that's when I first saw the Elantra and his launcher and that's the first thing I thought of.
I was like, Oh, that's just cute. It's just an appearance package. How cute. How adorable.
But it wasn't until you met your car, I met you and your car that I had no idea that those things
actually do move and they do have some power and I was quite, quite surprised. And I was the funny
thing about it because it was, that was my exact reaction when I first drove one, when I rented
it off Turo. I think I might have told the story, but somebody, I was going to rent a Golf R for a
while. We were driving through Tahoe to go to Reno and the guy texted me two days before that
he sold that car. And he was like, Oh, you know, I have another, a BMW 328 I like that I also
rent out the most basic of all time and I'm like, you know, I'm going to just try and see if I can
find anything else because I like to find something interesting, something that I wouldn't normally
drop. Of course you get the opportunity. Why not? You know, I would. Yeah. And I started searching
and I found I came across the black DCT, you know, transmission. That's got paddle shifters,
right? But they are very quick. They're, they're dual clutch, just straight dual clutch. Yeah,
wet. They call it wet dual clutch. That's the same kind of clutch that you're using, like a
Lamborghini or GTR or something like that. Or is it different kind? Pretty? Yeah. I mean,
it's pretty similar. Like in shift shift timing is it, it's more popular now and in Hyundai was
kind of one of the earlier ones that started doing that. Even like the, the, the previous,
what do you call them? Alantra GTs, I think, and the Forte GTs had DCTs and I never even knew that.
And so now I kind of see why they started to kind of get a little bit more following even back then.
But, but yeah, I, when I first searched it, I thought the same thing like, Oh yeah, just visual
package. Like, you know, a lot of car brands do that. Like I think didn't tell you to do that for
some of their stuff too. They always had like their like line, you know, the, the, cause even
Hyundai hasn't now, like the inline is sort of more of like, it's still sort of the compact sedan,
but it's got some luxury features. It actually does have a beefier engine than that. Not the
same two liter turbo has a 1.6, but a little more power, slightly, you know, updated exhaust, but,
but the most part, it's still, still they launch it with some like luxury parts to it.
And then they did the end, which was more the performance side, but yeah, it's still so many
people don't really know. And, and, you know, it's always kind of funny when people, you know,
do come up and like, Oh, you know, I love all of the stuff you did, you know, to it when at the
end of the day, like not a lot of that is actually me. Like a lot of, a lot of the wheels are different,
but you know, really like on the outside of the body, you know, a lot of that is stock, you know,
so it's, it's an interesting place right now where, you know, it takes a lot, while for a
brand to really, you know, when they try to make a move and even if they commit to it as strongly
as they have, it still takes a while to change perception after you've kind of had a long history
of not doing anything performance later whatsoever. Even though they did have a run in the past,
long, long time ago with rallying and all of that, it takes a while to kind of change the brand
perception. And honestly, I'm here for it because it seems like they're really supporting it,
moving forward. And, you know, it's just been an all around just great car and I've enjoyed it.
So do you think that they would ever, it put a production Hyundai put in production a world
class like super car, but I wouldn't say like Ferrari brand size. I would say something like
at the Corvette realm. Yeah. Because, because I think they would probably land more in the
Corvette realm versus like the Ferrari realm or Lamborghini realm. I would think that's where
their price point would probably be, whatever Corvette's selling at. So something in like,
you know, a dedicated sports car and like the 60 to 70, maybe a hundred grand, even maybe straight.
Yeah. I mean, they keep, you know, there's always like, they release this concept of
like the, the visions in 74. I don't know if you've ever seen that. Yeah. I think I did see,
was it was electric though? I think so. But they didn't have a lot of details around it. So they,
they have like the flexibility to do some things with it if they really wanted to.
But the thing is, is that the, the Genesis brand is sort of becoming the one where they want to
maybe make a little bit more, they still have the end cars, but they're trying to make that a
lot more of the higher end performance and like ultra luxury side of things. So you think they
they've teased a couple of, yeah, potential projects with that. You know, there's one crazy,
crazy one that I don't even remember the name of it right now, but there was, they,
magma is the brand that they're, they're like spinning off. Yeah. That's,
I hear the word magma. I think of like a truck or like SUV or something like that. Like, like,
like off road, like we're going rock climbing in our magma. Yeah. Now it's, now it's Hyundai in
the brightest orange color that you probably have ever seen. That's their, like their, their color
for a lot of their cars, by the way, you never ever see like bright color, very rarely, maybe
in a cars and coffee and someone's got a bright color. Who knows what, but for the regular population,
like regular cars, you see a lot of gray, white, black, silver, a line of all white cars with
the other day. And it was just like, it was crazy. It was like, wow, really dead. It's like,
you know, just the go to, is this, just get a white car. I kind of like the fact that my color
in my car is not a poppy color. It's like a, what do you call it? Gun metal gray, whatever it's called.
It's like a gray silver ish is that it does kind of blend in. I think when you're kind of like on
the freeway, you got a cool car and you know what the cops really see you, you know, you kind of
really want to find out some of the kind of camouflages you a little bit with the rest of the
crowd. That's probably why a lot of these boring colors are so popular is because they're just like,
you just kind of blend in, you know, and you don't want to be like, like, you know, be popping with
the cops, you know, they're, and they're whatever. In fact, I was flying to work the other day as
flying my truck of all things, not the car of the truck, or I'm flying to work on the freeway,
you know, and I'm probably doing like 80 or so or close to 80, you know, which the truck
does no problem for the most part. And I'm with a few other people and I come around the corner
on the freeway because the freeway is not, it's flat, but there's curves and ups and downs. You
can't quite see over the ridge until you come down to it. It's one of those kind of sections
like that. And then as I come around, there's a high of a troll just like door open, like facing
the cars coming his way, which is, I'm one of them. I'm sure you have the gun out and the radar gun
out and everything. And I'm like, Holy crap, slam my brakes, slam on the brakes. And then a car like
flies by me on my left. He's like at the fast lane. And I'm like, it's because he's like pointing
at both of us with his radar gun. And I'm like, if he's going to get anybody, he's going to get,
he's going to get that one. He's going to get that guy, you know, because he went by, he can see
that he went by me. So you can see he's physically going faster than I am. And so that's my whole
plan. You know, of course I kept, I kept cruising and I look at my river mirror the entire time.
Like, where is he? Where is he? Is he coming? And no, he didn't
say, I didn't come. I didn't get him. He didn't even go out for that guy. I don't know. I don't
know. I was talking about, I kept on going. I didn't see him back there. So I don't know.
I don't know if he didn't go or what he did, but he was like, I'm going to give these guys a pass
today. Like maybe, you know, I don't know. I mean, there's times where I'm flying. I'm always
head on a swivel, man. Everywhere I drive, you know, always looking for officers and the radar
guns and just looking for them everywhere I go. And they make it trickier now with the new camouflage
high oil patrol vehicle. You've seen the new one. Have you seen? Yeah. I've seen some,
some pictures of some like Camaro, but yeah, I know what you're talking about. The one,
yeah, the ones that truly just look like, you know, regular civilian cars, they are the Dodge
Durango's and they completely removed all visible, like no front bumper, like bumper grill, like you
see on a police cruiser, no top roof headlights, no dual colors. It's one single color and the
words high patrol are on the door and they're almost like it written in black on the written
in black on a dark color paint. So dark color paint, like a darker brown or gray with black
lettering. So it's like very blending in, you know, kind of thing until you really look at it.
And so the reason why they do that is so that they can catch speeders and people driving crazy
and that kind of stuff and blend in. Nobody can see him, but, but now I'm going to look
out for Dodge Durango. So any Dodge Durango I see anyone, it was like a Hellcat with a big,
with big, with big, like, um, you know, in the roof, they've got the little vents in the roof
for the, for the air vents and the Ram air intake for the venture supercharger. I see those ones. I
think it's a cop suit too. I'm like, that might be a cop too. The craziest thing is like all of us
have like, you know, we've gotten the, the, the usual suspect in the mind, like usually either the
Ford Explorer or, or a Crown Vic. Yeah. I know the only Crown Vixen were cops. Yeah. Yeah. And,
you know, even now, actually, I saw one yesterday and it, I'm pretty sure he probably got it at an
auction and everything, but it's still, I know, I thought they have the white roof, black, white
roof. Yeah. Still had that. And it still had the mirror that you didn't have. You mean the
side, side lamp? Yeah. I still had that, but you could tell, like just, you know,
straight looking at it, that these guys aren't cops. Like, you know,
Oh yeah, dude, I saw one that was an explorer not that long ago, an explorer like that.
It had the, it was the, obviously painted as a cop car, you know, it might have had the front,
bump the front grill too. I don't know if it did or not, but definitely had the, had the original
paint cop car paint, you know, the black and white paint and all that and like, you know,
that stuff. And I told my son, we were driving, we saw us like that. He says,
I'd be kind of cool to have an old cop car because he says, yeah, because the old cop cars usually,
you know, have modified engines. They usually modify, but I think they modify more in like the
way of like the electrical system, because when you have a police vehicle, you have to do an entire
like reworking, speaking of your under glow lights, they got to do like extra batteries and
alternators and all that kind of stuff to run all the computers, all the lights, all the extra
stuff. Cause those cop cars and also too, they never shut them off too. Like they pulled them
over. They always keep them running. They're like running nonstop. So when, when one guy gets
done with his shift, the next guy comes in and the car is like constantly running,
make stop it for gas, maybe, maybe turn off for gas. I don't know, but they're always running
the cars. So they're probably beat up like beat up, but they do have pretty strict like maintenance
schedules, like similar. So should we, you know, well that should be, yeah, should is a very strong
word. Cause we do still have the 10,000 plus mile, you know, I love the oil videos on the
Instagram with the video, they pull the valve covers off. I love that when they like takes
like a, like a, I don't know, those like plaster, like things you put plaster on the wall with
these scraper things and you like scrape the mud like out of the engine, you know, and they say,
well, what's wrong with this engine? I don't know, you know, have no idea. Like I just heard noises.
Yeah, but those cops, sure. I don't know where you even find this cop cars. I don't know where
you buy them at, you know, I mean, I thought it'd be kind of cool to have one just to have, like,
you know, maybe, you know, or whatever, but I don't know, man. You know, I mean, I mean,
I know the old 5.0s were popular. If you can find one of those, the old Fox body, 5.0,
CHP CHP vehicles. Yeah. If you can find one, I think they made them. I think they did those from
like, was it like late 80s, early 90s, whatever they did those, at least for the cop cars.
Anyways, the question I have, I don't know if for sure or not, but were those automatic or
stick shift, do you think for the cops, for the cops anyways? I would suspect automatics. I'd be
pretty surprised. Yeah. If they, if they had, they had males and they had to, had to do is like
straight rowing gears and, and, and, and try to catch evaders. Like I'll be really impressed,
but yeah, it's kind of thinking the same thing too. That's why a lot of the new cop cars,
like most modern cars, how the shifting consoles, like on, in the middle, you know,
like you're out where your stick shift would be, the cop ones have to have the column shifters
for their gear. Even with the, even with the modern, like the explorers and stuff. Yeah.
They will change over to column shifters because they have to have all their crap on their belt,
the radio, the crap gun, whatever. And so they have to be able to like, I guess,
quickly shifted into park. And that's why I heard on a video or something like that.
And so they, they shift to the park quickly and then get out of the car and do their thing
or whatever kind of stuff. That's why I heard, and I don't know if it's true or not, but that's,
I mean, I never ridden the, I've never ridden the front seat of a cop car.
You've been in the back seat of a cop car many times. He's talking about, you know,
Hey man, this Uber's going in the wrong place. Yeah.
Yeah. Why, why do I have to be in handcuffs in this Uber? This is one summer here for this,
this Uber ride today. Let me tell you, you're going to the wrong place.
Oh man. You guys have any waters back here or anything?
Yeah. No AC. Can I roll a window down? No.
Can I roll a window down please? Give me a, can I just play the siren or something?
Can we, you know, can I shoot people without the window with your gun?
Yeah. Can I stick it up for all that shooting cans or whatever? No, but yeah, go ahead.
No, I was going to say one thing just kind of on, I thought maybe a little segue on,
on the, what we're talking about with, with underrated cars, because I feel like, you know,
some people would throw like those old crown vicks and stuff like that on the list is underrated,
underrated kind of performance like cars. Cause you got those like, you know, beefy V eights and,
you know, you could do something with them. Like I know a guy that actually lives nearby here that
has, that has one of the mercury marauders. That's like the, the, the mercury version of the crown
Vic. Yeah. And that thing is, is really cool. Like all black, but with like period chrome wheels,
I think off of like one of like a Mustang SVT or something like that exhausts obviously. And,
and it's like the meanest looking thing, the meanest sounding thing. And, you know, it still has
like the full bench seat in the front. Oh yeah. Sure. Has a column shifter potentially as well.
But, you know, some people will say like, you know, the fact that you can get like,
you know, probably like an old cop car for dirt cheap that, you know,
I don't know what you're getting at. Cause I don't see them on like Craig's list or not.
Craig, I'm like auto trader or whatever. They have like special auctions and, you know,
stuff. Cause I, I, uh, one of my friends, like way back in the day when I was in high school,
her mom or his mom had a, uh, had a four Taurus, Taurus that they actually used in the police car.
And, uh, and yeah, she said she got it from some auction or something like that. So
I'm pretty sure it's like a specific auction situation where you get something like that.
But, uh, but yeah, like, you know, some, a lot of people are looking for, you know,
kind of now, like everybody knows about the go to cars that, you know, everybody wants to have,
you know, the Mustangs and, you know, the modern Camaro's and, you know, all of those.
And, you know, or even like Toyota's too, like, uh, Toyota Tacomas and like the four runners.
I just saw a post today. I don't know if it's true or not. I saw a post today
that I don't know if it was an auction or what happened. Must have been
that like a nineties for runner just sold for like $52,000.
Yeah. I think I heard about that. Yeah.
Why? Like people are all about those four runners, man. That's it is a,
it is a cult following. If there is one, dude, I love them too. Back in high school,
I want to win so bad. I saw that they're super cool. I like the whole SUV thing.
There wasn't sold on Jeeps, but it's not like, I like more of like a,
like a, like more of an SUV where it's four wheel drive. It's kind of lifted.
You can do, you know, Jeep type stuff, but it's not a Jeep. It's like,
I always love Toyota's too. Back in the day, you know, the Tacomas or the four runners or
whatever they had back then. I loved all that kind of stuff. So, you know, like, yeah, I mean,
I know they're making, they have new ones. You can buy new four runners are available,
new, new land cruisers are available, but they're so expensive now.
So it's $50,000. Yeah. No, you're
for like an old used one. If you're paying 50, I remember there was a video way back where,
not way, but it wasn't really that old of a video, but it was some car chase video
where the guys, like the announcers kind of talking through the broadcasters talking
through the car chase and the guys driving like a, like a, you know, early gin or like the,
I forgot how he called it. They just called it late, like for runner. I think it was like
late nineties, early 2000s. And you could tell the dude was like, emotionally,
like distraught that somebody was like, you know, having a car chase and a for runner,
because there was like multiple times where like, he would like say, oh, you know, look out, like,
you know, make sure you don't make sure he doesn't damage this, this, this late gin for
runner. Like, you know, it's like, this will be just another one that's off to the wayside
this guy destroys this thing.
They'll still sell it for like 30 grand. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Price down a little bit
or whatever kind of a thing. You know, I did see one a long time ago for sale, for sale sign
on. Actually, I think I called the person had one of those like, call me, call me kind of deal
on the back of it. And it was a for runner. I forget what year it was. Maybe like a 92 or
three or something like that. And, and I think they weren't, weren't very much for it, but they had
like so many miles on the thing. It was like 250,000 or 300,000 or some ridiculous amount of
miles on the thing. And I'm like, I don't know. I think it's still one of like three or four grand
for it, you know, but I thought like, I'd be kind of cool to have like as like an extra car. Like,
at that point, I think I didn't have the Z yet. I don't think the first Z maybe I did,
maybe I did the Z. Yeah, I must have, I don't know, but I know that like, I think for our situation,
I think it'd be kind of cool to have like an SUV type of a car. I don't think we had an SUV in the,
in the lineup. Yes, it was. My ex-wife had the Camaro convertible. I had the Z and the F-150.
And so it'd be kind of cool to have like an SUV kind of thing in the lineup. But like, I mean,
you know, it depends how, how, how well it's been treated and how, I mean, we might even kind of
take it on like a road trip, you know, because SUVs should be like road trip kind of cars.
Cause I was looking for, for like a good road trip kind of car, like an SUV kind of car for
like road trips. Cause I think it's, those things work great for road trips. For if you're gonna
tow something and road trip, something, they were pretty good. I think it's what they're really
there for really. And that's why they're probably so popular because like not all SUVs, but most SUVs,
you can, you know, load up the car and maybe tow something small, like a boat or something.
Yeah. For the most part.
Definitely in that, in that realm now, like I said, I'm super sold on, on, you know,
mid like 20, 20, 10s ish to like early 20, 20, 20s, like our Mata's and, and QX 80s. Cause those
things just, they depreciate like rocks in terms of just what, what they cause brand new.
Yeah. He wants to depreciate yourself a Land Rover.
Well, but that's the thing though. Like they depreciate the, the, the infinities that Nissan's
depreciate, but they're still solid cars. Like they rely on land rovers, they depreciate because
that thing is going to like leave you stranded so many places. It's like, there's a different
reason that those things tank and value. But yeah, definitely. They, they, they, yeah. I mean,
I think they lose, I watched a video, lot of videos, Instagram is a guy that was like,
was like talking about, I guess he was trading a car and accepting a trade from somebody. I
forget the whole story, but the point of the story was that it was a Range Rover that was not that
it was really five years old or whatever, but it lost like almost a hundred grand in value
or some ridiculous amount of money. It lost in value, just depreciation. Cause the guy would
lay off them, whatever it was for kind of thing. And it's like, would you buy a car that this and
that old stuff, whatever. And guess the guy was kind of pissed. He had to make the deal
cause he had to get rid of it or who knows what. And speaking of cars, let me
tell you something, man. By the way, anybody listening right now to, to know, I know this
happens, but if it's possible, don't carry any negative equity into your next car loan.
And I hear, I watch these guys. I've got like 50 grand and negative equity rolled into the next car
or whatever. It's like massive amounts of money rolled into the next car just because they want
to get the next car. They want to, they to have a 20, 24. Now they want
to 20, 26. Now they have a 20, 26 and they want to 20, 27. And they keep rolling in the car loan
and rolling it in. And then their payments are just, I just hear about like $70,000 of negative
equity. Who has, who does this for a car that's worth, you know, 30 or 40 at that point, right?
Yeah. Cause they'll run their credit. They'll say like, Oh, you have a 100000 dollars
in car note on a, a Kia.
Like I'll say even possible, you know, like, I don't want to, it just blows my mind. Like,
like, I mean, maybe I come from a different mindset of like, I mean, I don't want to have a car
payment, you know, and I get that, you know, we have to do, do to get a car. I guess
that I get that, but I don't think that you should like go super, super negative debt
just to get the latest and greatest bells and whistles or whatever.
Yeah. I mean, it's spot on. And, you know, again, I'll be transparent. Like, you know, I, the car
payments are still in my life. Like I am now, you know, looking at that, you know, from a
different perspective now, when I have, you know, more of that choice of, you know, just being able
to buy cars outright and just not have to deal with that. But, you know, my, my own mindset
around it is, you know, if you do, if you do plan to own a car for a long time, you know,
and you've, you know, weighed up the opportunity costs and all of that, you know, it, it sometimes
works itself out. Like where, you know, if you, again, if you're, if you're planning to own a
car for 567 years, you know, don't get something still that, you know, has just this
massive monthly payment to keep up with. But, you know, maybe, maybe you don't have to, you know,
straight empty your savings account to buy that car outright and cash because, you know, over time,
you're going to, you're, you know, you, you're going to make the payments, you're going to pay
off the car. And then, you know, you have maybe more of that money to put towards something else,
you know, whether you were saving for a house or same of that sort. But to your point is, yeah,
like if you're, if you get to that point of, you know, oh, well, I only really plan to own this
car for one or two years, but I'm in, I'm already upside down and alone from the start.
Yeah. And then, and now you're going to jump into another one with that already on top of it.
That's where the, you know, that's where the priorities are different where, I mean,
maybe a lease is honestly, but like people kind of look at leases negatively, but if you're really
that kind of person that is like, you kind of have to change your cars, like you change your
shoes or whatever, like, you know, sometimes leasing a car actually kind of makes sense for that.
You know, yeah, you're still, you know, own the car and you know, you're renting a car, but,
you know, it puts you at the end of the day, you'll probably be in a slightly better situation
than that. You know, let me ask you a question on that then. Okay. Let me ask you this. Okay.
I know you, I mean, obviously this is kind of probably like one sided because we both like
cars. So it's kind of probably different, but yeah, if you had a choice, say at least some
Mercedes Benz, some, I don't know which one, but say a Mercedes Benz, the pain was probably like,
for the lease version, it was like 500 bucks a month, right? For the lease on the car.
Oh, you know, you got to get the car back. You know, you're never going to like own the car. You
got to give it back. You know, you're not getting any equity out of the car. You not
be able to turn the car into a trade, nothing like that. You can't sell the car, nothing.
Basically you're renting the car. It's the lease versus you could possibly like,
I don't know, maybe Uber black everywhere you went instead, you know, and not have to worry
about driving, but they missed the thrill of driving. So there's that. Yeah. But you really,
you know, if you, if you really are only in the cars, say for, to be honest, some people are in
the car just cause it's like, Oh, like this, you know, I got to have like the coolest next thing.
Yeah, that's true. You know, really, they aren't like really in the cars. And almost to that point,
I agree. Like, you know, you get to get your Uber black up and, you know, you'll probably
cause it's the same if you have to go like, but I was doing the math on like, like when I was
taking Ubers for a while and, and like I can get used to this, you know, whatever. And like,
it did add up to like a good, healthy car payment and insurance. If you took the car
payment, like 500 bucks and like a insurance or whatever and registration, if you add all that
up and divide it over a year, it's probably just as much, maybe a little bit more, maybe just as
much. In fact, you don't have to drive, no DUIs, no tickets, you don't have to worry about being
distracted at your phone. You can play your phone, take a nap, whatever, you know, like,
like all that kind of stuff, which goes with, with having a driver versus driving yourself.
But I do, I mean, there's a thrill of driving that you do miss out on. If you never drive and
you're just doing Ubers all the time, it's, um, yeah, I mean, don't know. It's just,
it's just like, I just kind of thinking about that. If like the end result is you getting from
destination A to destination B, that's the only result that really is compared to both situations
here. And of course, if you can get everything delivered to, like you said today, like you can,
you know, get food and whatever your groceries and stuff delivered. So there's no real reason
like, like need a car to go run to do things. If that's your thing. So,
and if you like live and work in, you know, pretty, you know, you know, pretty dense part of a city,
like if you're near downtown San Diego and any way, like for example, you know, if you're in
city heights, North Park, you know, it's all fairly close. I think, I think about San Diego,
though, is that like, you feel like you can get anywhere within 20 minutes, no matter what.
Unless you go to North Carolina, different story, but like anything I'd call like in the,
in the box of like San Diego, like you took San Diego, like drew a circle around like the center
section of San Diego, like the whole center section, like anywhere that whole center area
that you can probably get to within 20 minutes. That's kind of what I feel about a lot of that
kind of stuff. But I know that we had a question come in that you had, you have that question
courage from a potential listener here of the show of cool cars with Chris. Thank you so much
for writing in. And if you want to write out, write to us, you always can hit us up on social
media or send a kite or flares or smoke signal, you know, however you do that. You know,
there's so many different ways and reach, reach show, you know, reach this show here,
cool cars with Chris.com, of course, send it there and all the socials, all the great stuff,
leave comments, whatever it is, you know, it is. Yep. Yep. No, absolutely. And I always tell folks,
so, you know, when we get these, we'll give them a shout out. This game from Jonathan.
I'm going to straight Jonathan. This is him. How many jobs are there? Yeah, a lot. Yeah.
So I'm, I'm pulling up the, I pulled up the chat message that I sent to you to, to pull up,
but I'm going to see here because I want to, I want to stay true to my promise about that,
getting them a shout out on here. If I can, if this doesn't fail me doing this, I think it will.
So the Jonathan we're talking about, you know who you are. That's all that matters. You know who
you are. Yes. Yeah. But we're going to leave it at that because Instagram is not playing ball with
me right now. So the old Graham, the Graham is down. The old Graham is not working out,
but I do got the question here. So I appreciate you, Jonathan, for, for asking. And yeah, it was
almost kind of what we were talking about earlier, really with his question was, you know, what do
you, what do we really define as a vehicle mod or a car mod? Oh, perfect. I love this one. I love
this one from the very small or the very big. So yeah, you know, just kind of getting our take
on what we consider mods on cars. Okay. So this might be controversial. Okay. But I'm a hot,
Chris's hot take here on car mods. Yeah. Every single person, I would say every single person
owns any car at any time, puts a car mod on their car. Everybody does this. And it starts with
something simple, like changing the license plate bracket, you know, putting a sticker on the back
window. Though those are the basics of the basics, but that, that in fact is a modification
and it does make it unique. And the reason why people do this because
how many Elantra ends are there? Probably a ton, right? So you want to make yours different than
the next guys. And if you, but no, don't think Elantra, because Elantra ends are pretty unique.
Let's just take a basic car, like say you have a Nissan Sentra, right? A gray Nissan Sentra,
or white, white, white Nissan circuit, right? White Nissan Sentra. Everyone's got a white Nissan
Sentra in the crowd or whatever. So you want to make your Nissan Sentra look different than the
next guys. So what do you do? You change, first thing you do is you probably change the license
plate bracket, put something cool, color, whatever you're into on the back, say you're into whatever
sports team it is, you put that on the back and then, and then maybe you put a sticker of that
sports team on the back window. Now your car is modified. There you go. But he's probably talking
a little more like serious modifications. Like, no, I, I mean, I think that kind of, you know,
gets the, at least from that perspective, because yeah, he, he listed really like from,
you know, either small, too large, like, or very big, like, you know, he, he asked, like,
does a rap, for example, you know, would you, would you consider a rap? Anything that takes,
anything that changes the original stock form of the vehicle, I would say, and I wouldn't mean
stock for me like you took it off the dealer lot today. What do you do? That's different than,
I mean, I'll put the plates on the car because everybody, everybody gets, everybody gets plates
eventually from the, from the DMV. And so as a DMV plate and a modification, not really,
you know, because everybody, everybody has to be on the car for it to be driven.
Right. I mean, but, but your plates are actually a custom, right? So, so that would be a modification.
Yeah. And so our window tent, a big one, people do, you know, I mean, you wouldn't get crazier.
You can do wheels and brakes and you can do, you know, exhaust and you can do,
and then, you know, you can do all that Chris, a good performance mods and yeah,
but I think, I think for the most part, almost everybody does something kind of modification.
I think it comes from, you think about iPhones or Android phones, but I have an iPhone, you have
an iPhone. And what do you do when you buy your iPhone? You get a case and what kind of case do
you buy one that looks cool? It looks different than the next persons or whatever or something like
that. Or even now iPhones do come in different colors, you know, they're not all the same color.
Remember back in the day when phones were all the same color, you got one
and that was it or whatever. And so now they're all different colors. So,
so people do, they choose the orange color, the great color, the whatever color phone,
because we have the phone for a while. So they want to be a little bit unique than the basic
black one that everybody buys. By the way, I think mine's black. We look at it. Yeah. The wine's blue.
It's so funny you mentioned that. I had to even like second guess what color my phone is because
I've had this case on my phone forever and I haven't taken it out. I think I had like the blue
that like that sky blue. That's mine. Mine's like a darker blue or whatever. But, but, but I have
a, I have a clear, clear case on the back, whatever. And I also have a big crack on my screen
that's got a lot bigger now too. So man, I bought a pack of those, I bought a pack of those like
screen protectors on Amazon for like real cheap and I would keep breaking them and
at least a half of a backup. But I think the reason why they're so cheap is because they
break easily. They just break super easily. And so I would have to go buy a new one. The kids would
constantly break in there. It's like, oh, my son broke his back. I don't know how he did this on the
back of the iPhone. It's like glass too or whatever. Oh yeah. You can, yeah, you can still crack that.
He broke that. We had that replaced and I guess he didn't line up cry. I guess he damaged the frame.
So it didn't quite line up right. And the guy said that. And then he broke that one too.
And so, you know, I did now, I just took a bunch of like packing tape, like the clear, like packing
tape and just did a number around this phone on the back of his phone. Like I, you know,
sealed, I did it best I could. And I said, this will have to do until we get you a new phone
because this is going to be it from now on. Like this is a, you know, and long as it works, it works,
but, but his, his, his modded iPhone is more for, yeah, just for his, the longevity of it,
you know, at least in the circumstance, but keep it going kind of thing. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I was going to say, I think, you know, I, I, like I said,
he really wanted to kind of see like where people draw the line with mods. And I, I feel
like I'm maybe a little bit more on, on the camp where, you know, personalizing your car is one
thing in my opinion. Although I feel like, you know, if it's reversible a lot of times, I sort of,
I kind of write that off a little bit. And I, there's, there's stages to that. Cause like,
there's, there's, you can easily reverse even like doing like everything you've done your
car, everything you could reverse, but my car is at, is legitimately modded because of some
of the things that it is, but you can reverse everything. Right. I mean, you can take,
you can take everything you've done your car off.
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, really, I, I do, I do think things that you, you have to
potentially remove something that was a stock item on the car and replacing it with something else.
That usually starts to be kind of my clue, clue in of like a mod where, you know, say, like,
you know, window tint, for example, for me is like, again, you can remove window tint and you're
not removing anything that was already on the car. Oh, it's like replacing the wheels, for example,
you remove the wheels. Yeah. You removed your stock wheels and you put after markets on and I'm
like, okay, that's, that's deviated from the stock equipment that was on the car when you bought
it. And until you go back to the stock wheels, you're, you're modified, you know, and I guess
that's where, you know, and then you get to like actual adding parts. Like I have aero parts that
weren't on the car originally and, you know, now they're extra bits like that are attached to the,
to the, so that's like, you know, literally you're adding something that really the car wasn't,
you know, they can come with it all. And so you're for sure, you know, kind of modding in that
situation. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we all kind of do all of those things
to personalize our cars. And, you know, we're, you know, even, even if it's, you're, you're the,
you're the person with the bumper stickers all on the back of your car.
Oh, the whole back from like, from the top to back, top to bottom, you know, like all little
stickers across the back window. Yeah. And Chris is, and Chris is mine. You, you are modded, man.
Modified. You put another sticker says modify, like right at the back of the whole thing,
modify or whatever, but you don't get state ref for all the stickers.
You know, a cop probably would do that. He said, Bob, we're a sticker if your car for
all the stickers you have on there, get up by the way. And it'll let nonsense. But yeah,
I mean, I think it modifications. goes back to being a personalizing your vehicle,
because even if it's like a bit major mod, like say you wanted to do, I don't know, turbo.
Yeah. So you want to say I wanted to put a turbo or a supercharger on my car, on my Z.
I don't have California. Let me do that or not, but say I did, did that with a tune
and whatever else you want. I want it to do. Yeah. It's modified. And the thing is, is that
it's, I think a lot of people do that because they want to be unique and different in their car
to be better than, than a regular basic standard one. You know, like these would be very popular
with the Honda civics way back in the day. Like the basic Honda civic, you should get the 1.6
liter, whatever it was, basic engine, maybe before V tech came out and they get the exhaust and the
intake and maybe put a turbo on there. If they had them an eBay turbo on there and, you know,
do it in their garage and then, you know, their car is modified, but it's different than your mom's
civic. It is as long as it's not, not confused with, with mom's Honda civic.
Like it's a different, it's a different type of car. It is, it is modified. It's your version.
It's your thing. And I think that it just goes back to your own personality. Like what do you
want from your car? Do you want it to look cool? Or do you want it to, you know, have some performance
or maybe a little bit of both? You know, it's really the sky's the limit, what you want to do.
And I think everybody is definitely a, there's definitely a ceiling for you, but
yeah, car, car, you know, um, yeah, my car is completely, by the way, car, but you're listening
to cars, please stop. Yeah. Oh yeah. By the way, yeah. Actually, this whole portion of the podcast
was AI generated conversations. It's not applicable to any real life scenarios.
Dude, if you ever get arrested for anything, like that video evidence, your first go-moves,
go-to-moves. Yeah. Dude, we're in such an interesting realm where yeah, like there's
a potential that like that can, that can become some court, you know, some, some court loophole.
I'm sort of, I'm sort of realized the AI video stuff that looks good because I think,
I thought that Instagram was supposed to like weed out all the fake, fake AI stuff because
some of the AI stuff looks like it's AI, like the monkey talking and things like that. Like,
obviously it's fake, right? But we see a very beautiful woman who's pretending to be like a
police officer or something like that in her cop car saying a provocative things, looking at the
camera, but the voice that would be illegal to do. And like for a real person, right? But, but,
but like, but like to have like hundreds of thousands of followers and tons of comments
and everyone buying, eating it up. Like it's real. The first couple of times I saw these kind
of videos, I'm thinking like, Oh wow. And then the more I look at it, I'm like, the voice sounds
like it, it doesn't, it sounds too polished, perfect. Like it has that, that AI shine to the
voice. If you know what I mean? Like you've heard a lot of AI voices. They all kind of,
let's say sound the same, but they kind of that same kind of like cadence and rhythm. And it's
kind of that not quite robotic, but just almost robotic, kind of like where they, where they
speak. And it kind of had that kind of start throwing me off. And then I was like, okay,
get out here with that. But, but they look, the videos look so photo real, like they look so
real. There have been certain points, you know, in like, even like this last year of evolution
of AI were, you know, where I think we talked about how like AI has such a problem with like
showing cars driving properly. Like it was like, usually like in any video that was like a car.
Like it's just always like, it was like, that's off. And you just knew it. And like,
even now, like, you know, they've started to really kind of, it started to figure that out.
And yeah, videos with like people, like dialoguing, they've really gotten that down.
Every once in a while, you still have somebody to like, you know, gets out of a car, goes through
something, like goes through a door or something. And they just like go through it. Like they're a
ghost or something. Like you, you get like little stuff like that here and there, but
it is crazy just how, how much it's progressed, you know, even in the last year or so.
And podcasting too. I think that like there's a lot of fit, you know, I can make a fake podcast
instantly, you know, Google notebook, LM, I play, I use it all the time, but I don't make podcasts
out of it. But I could, you drop all your content in there, all your data, whatever it is, websites,
YouTube videos, you drop, drop everything into a thing and it'll make you a podcast
with the same two voices. It makes everybody else's podcast. It does the same thing.
And it's just a bunch of them going back and forth chit chatting about whatever the content is.
And I was playing with one today, you know, and I'm like, listen to it. I'm like,
okay, I mean, it doesn't have that human flair, that human touch that I think we have. And I think
that like the whole like being silly and being able to like laugh at yourself and tell jokes
and kind of like tell stories and kind of like go off script and kind of like bounce around a lot.
AI doesn't do that. At least not yet. Let's say program it, but they don't do that. AI is like,
you know, to the point, narrow focused. This is the script. This is what we're working on.
This all we're going to talk about. Nothing else. And we're here to talk about anything you want.
You know, we can kind of do whatever you want because this show is human. As you can tell,
you know, always human, this show right here. The cool cards are Chris, the human, the human side,
the human side of podcasting, except for the part we were talking about mods. That was,
that was your test of AI though, making our particular vehicles.
You know, I wonder what AI do if they made a car. You know, it's funny. If AI made a car,
they would call it the Luce. Luce, I believe it is. And they'd have Ferrari build it.
This, that yeah, I'm really glad that you threw that in there because that is the only logical
explanation for that thing, man. I just don't get it. But I do get a lot of the Apple cues.
Did you see the video I sent you of like the whole like AI created like video of like
Johnny I've making the car and laughing about it and how saying that's all funny and how,
how the, the owners of Ferrari throwing the fit and like, you know, I'll mad.
Yeah. I don't think I watched it fully, but yeah, no, I get it.
Yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like happen. People are so quick to make content like right
after something that happens. So they're quick to make videos and very quick to make AI like
fake videos right after that happens. And so they make these fake videos that are so hilarious
about things like that. I seen one on today where it was, if you remember the old street
fighter two video game and there was that one where you can like get to the one level where
you can like beat up the car and like next to like the little like doc, it looks like a little
Lexus. Anyways, somebody like put the Luce in there and they're like beating it up with
the Luce version of that car in there. So it's stuff like that. It's, it's so funny how like
social media and like how people like take whatever is popular and just run with it.
Yeah. And I think it's all good. I have a lot. I laugh at that. That's like, that's like the
best use case. That's, that's, that's right. Yeah. That's the social media should be for
and like where AI should be for is that like, it's like making fun of like real world stuff,
but not like be so realistic that you're like, Oh my gosh, this is real. I think that was the
biggest problem with AI with AI started doing all these real videos. Was that like it's too,
too grounded because they're afraid that people would like believe that this like stripper is a
cop and she's like in the car, like saying, talking to the camera while she's working,
quote unquote. Okay. Yeah. Whatever. You know, like, it's like stuff. They kind of posed it a
not real, but you know, we're going to kind of make it real, make it funny. But yeah,
like, I don't know, something of that sort, but yeah, you know, good times. Well, Courage,
I know it's late man and I appreciate you stopping by and appreciate John, appreciate Jonathan
with his question and listening to the show. Shout out to Jonathan for, you know,
want us to talk about modifications to his car. When a car does he have, by the way,
is he have something modified? Yeah, I'm going to double check. And actually his profile is
Jonathan. I won't throw out his last name here, but you know who you are, Jonathan.
Okay. Well, yeah, you know, like, like, does he live in California because he does.
I believe he should know all the, the modifications that we cannot have
here in California. And so that could, now if you could live with the boondocks too,
that's another thing too. If you live out in the sticks or it's like a hack is that if you register
your car in the sticks, like a real small rural town, you don't have to get it smogged. I don't
know if that's true or not. I've never lived in the sticks. I don't know, but I heard that
if you live out in the sticks, register your car in a really small town in the sticks,
it does not require a California like smog checks. That's what I heard. I don't know if it's true
or not. They asked a guy who had a modified Civic wants to ask them same questions. Hey,
how do you get this thing to pass smog? And he says, Oh, I have a peel box out of no central.
I said, I don't know if that's true, but okay. If you say so, buddy.
Yeah. That, that sounds like a, the, like a, this is my story and I'm sticking to it,
like scenario, but yeah. Well, you know, that's, that's where it goes sometimes. So, but any hoot.
Oh, I was going to say real quick, Jonathan looks like, it looks like he has a pretty clean,
if you know the, the V, it was like the, I think mid 2010s, like VW passats. Do you remember those?
They were kind of like the, the Volkswagen, like the, are they bigger than the Jetta?
Like just bigger than the Jetta, like not by much. Like, like you probably have to put them
side by side to really see the difference. But like, if you roll one rolled by and another one
rolled by, you think they're probably the same car. From the front, you would probably think
it was the same car. But then from the side, you'd be, Oh, okay. That's like the bigger one. It's
kind of like the, like the, the Sonata and the, in the Elantra, like you, like, you know, they,
they have different design in the front, but like from like a side view, you really see
the size difference. Funny story, actually, with the Passat real quick, I was going to,
I was actually thinking about buying one of those before I bought the, the M 35 years ago.
I was, I was looking at one of those. It was like a red with like the, the cream interior.
And I actually really liked it. But the thing I didn't like a lot about it was that it was,
it just felt so floaty and like, again, it's, it's really nice. Like, if that's what you're
looking for, for like more like a luxury car, the couch on wheels. Yeah. Like it's, it really
felt like that, which was a little different than what I was kind of looking for. But I'd love
the look of it. Like I, I, I really wanted it. And I, you know, the only reason I really ended
up going with the M was because it kind of towed the line a little bit more of like still luxury,
but had some sportier elements, like some more slightly bolstered seats. The transmission was
like the whole thing. It's like sportier like sedans, like sportier, like family cars. That's
our whole, like that was, these be their whole thing, you know? Yeah. But his facade looks
pretty clean though. So shout out to him. Nice. Do you think it's automatic or just stick?
Probably automatic, but they both swagging those always had like those, uh, those DCTs within
theirs. They're a DSG. So I, it's one of those, like those are actually pretty good shift and
transmissions to be an automatic. So pretty sporty still. Yeah. That's where they go. Even though
I never driven one. I think his wife had the Camaro. It was, it had that, but I, I would play
with it and she like, don't change the thing to put it back and drive and drive it like normal.
Yeah. And I'm like, okay, fine. Whatever. Whatever. V six or V eight. Oh, it was a V six. Come on now.
Total, total chick car convertible. The newer V, the newer V six Camaro's were like a little
bit more. Like they still had some path. They did. had like 350 or 320 horsepower
and over 300 horsepower. I know that. So, so it's very, that's why I compared it to the Z a lot,
you know, um, but, but it was a bigger car though. Way bigger than the Z when the park
stopped by the side of the driveway. It was way longer and bigger. And she thinks she had like
way bigger tire. There's a 20 inch tires and the thing, but there are massive wheels on the thing
too. It was a big car, but you know, it was fun being doing the convertible mode cruising around
that. It was always kind of fun kind of going to the beach on that and that kind of deal. It's
always, it's always a good time. So, but always a good time here on cool cars with Chris, man.
I thank you. Courage for stopping by today. I really appreciate you listening at home.
You know, if you want to follow along, you can go to a cool cars with Chris.com. Hey, Courage,
what is everybody going to find you on your cool YouTube channel? Yeah, feel free. Check out the
driven dad 22 Instagram on YouTube. We'll be doing this more as well. So ask some questions,
either shoot a DM to me or Chris. And we'd love to ask us a question for you guys. So
be sure to send them in. That's it. Fantastic. And until next time, be safe, drive legal. If
you're going to mod your car, just do it somewhere else other in California. If you do do it in
California, make sure you have to get a registration and get a box in the
desert. Like it's like that one town has like one house and like one mailbox. That's your house
for your registration, for your car, for your unmodified wink, wink car, we get you
solid consumer advice. There you go. And until next time, we'll see you guys later.
About this episode
Sand, Costco runs, and late-night car-meet logistics set the tone before the hosts dig into what really counts as a “car mod.” They debate reversible personalization versus true stock replacement, using aero parts, forced induction, and even window tint as examples. The conversation then swings to Elantra N ownership and installs (including JB Weld), plus California car culture—cars-and-coffee timing, underglow at night, and emissions/legal realities. Finally, they warn about negative equity and leasing/ownership tradeoffs.
In this episode of Cool Cars with Chris, Chris and Courage dive into Hyundai Elantra N modifications, Southern California Cars & Coffee culture, underrated performance cars, and the question every enthusiast debates: what really counts as a car mod? From rear diffusers, underglow, wheels, wraps, exhausts, turbos, and tunes to stickers and license plate frames, they break down the line between personalization and true modification. The conversation also covers Hyundai N performance, the possibility of a Genesis or Hyundai sports car, retired police cars, Mercury Marauders, rising Toyota 4Runner values, used SUV depreciation, car loan negative equity, leasing versus financing, California car modification and smog laws, and the growing impact of AI-generated automotive videos, fake podcasts, and online car content.
Follow for More
Love cars, horsepower, road trips and real automotive conversations? Follow Cool Cars with Chris and Courage for new podcast episodes, YouTube videos, car reviews, event coverage and behind-the-scenes content.
00:00 Welcome to Cool Cars with Chris 01:00 Beach Trips, Family Cars and Keeping Sand Out 03:24 The Costco Sports-Car Challenge 07:19 Courage’s Difficult Rear-Diffuser Installation 09:52 Cars & Coffee and the Struggle to Wake Up Early 13:40 The Growing Southern California Car Scene 16:36 Balancing Cars, Content, Work and Family 18:20 Who Actually Goes to Cars & Coffee? 20:05 Night Car Meets, Takeovers and Underglow 22:19 Creating Hyundai Elantra N Modification Videos 24:08 Why the Elantra N Is More Than an Appearance Package 26:19 Discovering the Elantra N Through Turo 28:41 Could Hyundai Build a Corvette Competitor? 30:24 Bright Car Colors Versus Blending In 31:25 Speed Traps and Unmarked Police Vehicles 34:13 Buying Retired Police Cars 38:41 Underrated Performance Cars and the Mercury Marauder 40:22 Why Old Toyota 4Runners Cost So Much 43:23 Choosing a Used SUV for Road Trips 44:07 Depreciated SUVs, Range Rovers and Infiniti QX80s 45:30 The Danger of Rolling Negative Equity Into a Car Loan 46:43 When Financing or Leasing a Car Makes Sense 48:29 Leasing a Mercedes Versus Using Uber Black 51:25 Listener Question: What Counts as a Car Mod? 53:01 Do Stickers and License Plate Frames Count as Mods? 54:28 Wraps, Wheels and Changing a Car From Stock 58:00 Reversible Mods Versus Serious Modifications 1:00:03 Turbos, Tunes and California Modification Laws 1:02:10 AI-Generated Videos Are Getting Harder to Spot 1:04:13 Fake Podcasts and AI-Created Automotive Content 1:06:11 Viral AI Videos and Internet Trends 1:08:04 More Listener Questions and California Smog Rules 1:09:28 Volkswagen Passat, Sport Sedans and DSG Transmissions 1:12:17 Closing and Where to Follow the Show
