194. Crossdressing

194. Crossdressing Car Krush · Jul 8, 2026

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72:21

Car

Volkswagen Cabriolet

A Volkswagen Cabriolet is a Volkswagen convertible. Here it’s brought up because the owner got teased and judged, and the hosts are using the car story to talk about stereotypes.

Car

Scion XV

The Scion XV is a small Scion car. The hosts mention it as part of a joke about a certain look or vibe, not to talk about how it works.

Car

1986 Ford Ranger

The 1986 Ford Ranger is a small Ford pickup truck. The host mentions it had a 4-cylinder engine and a manual 5-speed, and that it lasted a very long time with minimal trouble.

Term

Fuel shutoff is an automatic safety system that stops the engine from getting fuel after a crash. It’s meant to lower the chance of a fire, and in the story it confused the owner because the truck wouldn’t behave normally afterward.

Car

Volkswagen Gti

The Volkswagen Golf is a compact car meant for everyday driving. It’s popular because it’s easy to live with and comes in different versions. In the podcast, it’s likely mentioned to compare how different Golf models feel or perform.

Car

Audi Tt

The Audi TT is a sporty Audi with a recognizable design. In this moment it’s just mentioned in a list of cars, not explained in depth.

Car

Volkswagen GTI

The Volkswagen GTI is a sporty Volkswagen hatchback. The hosts mention it briefly before getting into how the car layout works.

Term

transverse front engine

Transverse front engine means the engine sits sideways at the front of the car. It usually goes with front-wheel drive, and it helps the car fit the drivetrain efficiently.

Term

modular platform

A modular platform means car makers build different cars using shared basic parts and design “building blocks.” That helps them make many models more efficiently while keeping the driving layout similar.

Term

front-wheel drive

Front-wheel drive means the front wheels do the work of both steering and moving the car. It’s a common setup because it’s efficient and space-friendly.

Term

front engine four-wheel drive

Front-engine four-wheel drive means the car has power going to all four wheels, with the engine in the front. It’s often offered as an option for better traction in rain or snow.

Person

Vincent D. Kapter

Vincent D. Kapter is mentioned as an automotive designer/engineer. The story is about how he worked at Packard and then later at GM, helping with things like body design and color choices.

Company

Packard

Packard was a well-known American car company in the past. Here it’s mentioned as the place this designer worked before later joining GM.

Company

GM

GM, or General Motors, is a huge car company. In this story it’s where the designer went to work on things like design and color.

Company

Fisher Body

Fisher Body was a company that made car bodies. The hosts mention it because the designer had to coordinate with them as part of building and styling cars.

Term

badge engineering

Badge engineering is when car companies sell almost the same car using different brand names. They might change the logo and some styling, but the underlying car is basically the same.

Concept

platform thing

A platform is the shared base that multiple cars are built on. If different models share the same platform, they can be cheaper to make and may feel similar underneath.

Term

steering column breaks

The steering column connects your steering wheel to the steering system. If it breaks, you may not be able to steer the car safely.

Car

Citroen 2CV

The Citroën 2CV is a small car that was made for a very long time, from 1948 to 1990. A huge number of them were built, which is why it’s remembered today. The podcast is likely focusing on its long production and how widely it was used.

Car

Chevrolet Nova

The Chevrolet Nova is a well-known older American car line from Chevrolet. Here it’s mentioned as one of several cars that shared a common engineering base.

Car

Chevrolet Chevy II

The Chevrolet Chevy II is an older Chevrolet model. It’s mentioned here as part of the same family of cars that shared a common platform.

Car

Pontiac Ventura

The Pontiac Ventura is an older Pontiac model. In this conversation, it’s listed as one of the cars that shared a common base platform with other GM models.

Car

Buick Apollo

The Buick Apollo is an older Buick model. In this segment, it’s listed as sharing a common platform with several other GM cars.

Car

Mercury Marauder

The Mercury Marauder is a car model from the Mercury brand. It’s being mentioned because it shares a similar basic design platform with other cars from the same time period. That can affect how the cars feel and what parts they use.

Car

GMC Cyclone

The GMC Cyclone is a car model from GMC that’s known for being performance-focused. In the podcast, it’s mentioned because it shares a basic design foundation with other cars from the same era. That can make the cars feel more similar than you’d expect.

Car

Ford Torino

The Ford Torino is an older Ford muscle-era car. In this conversation, it’s listed as sharing a common platform with other similar cars.

Term

shifter

The shifter is what you move to choose the car’s gear. If the labels are wrong or crooked, it can be confusing to tell what gear you’re in.

Term

MLB Evo platform

MLB Evo is a car-company “building system” used to make different models. It lets them share a lot of engineering and parts, even if the cars look and drive differently.

Car

Lamborghini Urus

The Lamborghini Urus is a high-performance SUV from Lamborghini. It’s an example of how car companies can use the same basic engineering “foundation” for different kinds of cars.

Car

Audi A4

The Audi A4 is a mainstream luxury sedan (or wagon/estate in some markets) that’s known for balanced driving dynamics and a strong interior. Here it’s paired with the Lamborghini Urus to illustrate that the same platform architecture can underpin both a sedan and an SUV.

Term

8.8 rear end

The “8.8 rear end” is the rear axle/differential assembly size Ford used on many Mustangs. People like it because it’s durable and there are lots of replacement and upgrade parts.

Term

four bar

“Four bar” means the rear suspension uses four control arms to hold the axle in place. That helps the tires stay better positioned as the car moves.

Car

Ford Mustang

“Fox Body Mustang” is the name enthusiasts use for a specific generation of Ford Mustang. It’s popular because it’s easy to modify, and this episode mentions its rear suspension setup.

Term

independent rear suspension

Independent rear suspension means the left and right rear wheels can react to bumps separately. This usually improves traction and makes the ride feel smoother.

Car

Dodge Viper

The Dodge Viper is a high-performance sports car made by Dodge. People talk about it a lot because it’s fast and has a distinctive look. Sometimes they also compare parts like the taillights to other Chrysler vehicles to see if they look similar.

Car

Plymouth Prowler

The Plymouth Prowler is a weird-looking retro roadster from the late 1990s. The episode discusses how its engineering choices affected how well it held up.

Term

longitudinally

“Longitudinally” means the engine is set up front-to-back in the car. That changes how the powertrain fits and how the car is laid out compared with engines mounted side-to-side.

Term

6061 extruded aluminum

6061 aluminum is a particular type of aluminum alloy used in manufacturing. “Extruded” means it was shaped by forcing it through a mold, and the episode says the Prowler used this kind of structure to test aluminum ideas.

Car

Chrysler Pacifica

The Chrysler Pacifica is a minivan, which is a car built to carry people and gear comfortably. It’s made for everyday family driving, like school runs and road trips. The podcast likely brought it up because of some specific feature or detail about the model.

LIVE

Rose EP53 1: Oh, it's the pileup. Yeah. Pileup.

Rose EP53 1: I think Emily did a phenomenal job editing it. Uh, I hope that the whole thing is not too, uh, self-congratulatory. We wanted to do something funny and, uh, fun, and it was, uh, a little bit of that. But a little bit of history on where Emily's been before I showed up, which is... What is... This microphone, I tell you, it just, it never ends with this equipment here.

But when I was younger, we would listen to Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, uh, This American Life. Th- we would listen on the weekends basically. And, you know, late in the day, I think on, on Sunday, maybe a Saturday, I don't remember what day This American Life plays. But, uh, when I listened, that was always interesting.

Rose EP53 1: with a story about like getting, like, kidnapped

Emily EP53 1: Rose is the reason why we sound pretty decent. I'd say we sound pretty good I feel pretty- For what we're working with

Rose EP53 1: an origin. So Rizzo wrote me and said, "My brother, parentheses not gay, had a Volkswagen Cabriolet and got called gay all the time." Which is funny because Rizzo has on the back of his car a sticker that says, "Sorry, boys, I only look gay."

Rose EP53 1: Scion XV was like non-binary, basketball shorts, plugged ears kind of thing. Yeah. And I feel like I got like the hardcore basketball shorts, plugged ears part right. Right. I mean, Kyle doesn't fit that trope, uh, entirely, but I feel like close-ish. And

Emily EP53 1: Yeah, I think so too. They backed up everything that we said. Yeah. 'Cause we're fucking

Emily EP53 2: Yeah. He said, "My first new car was a 1986 Ford Ranger, four-cylinder, five-speed. It was awesome. Great gas mileage, fun to drive, reliable. Drove it for 200,000 miles, then gave it to my brother, a Ford hater, and he couldn't kill it. It got rear-ended and the fuel shutoff was triggered, but he didn't know that, so he took it to a junkyard.

Rose EP53 2: declaration.

Rose EP53 2: didn't ... no, I did. So the 2200 I even saw in a neighborhood driving around for work the other day. Pretty normal looking truck, I guess you'd say. Like, it is a cool, it is a very small truck. The, uh, 620 looks cool lowered, wide fendered. That's like what I saw photos of with like a big spoiler on it, like for like drifting.

I feel like maybe Dean has showed me that once before, but I wanted to go check it out and see it. Yeah.

Emily EP53 2: Well, today, what do we got going on today, Rose? For our

The room doesn't have a vacuum leak

Emily EP53 2: part of it. Yeah, they could... Half of it. They could go for half of it. Yeah. Half of them can go and half of them has

Emily EP53 2: Yeah, it's very weird. I, uh, don't like getting they/them'd either. It's a touchy, it's a hot topic. It's a touchy

Emily EP53 2: Thank you. I'm right. Well, I

Emily EP53 2: Don't they share a lot of outside sheet metal too, or do they

Rose EP53 2: they did the '33, '34. Then they did the '35, which is kind of its own thing. '36, '37 gets a little mushy in there. '38, '39, '40, mm, gets a little flimsy.

Rose EP53 2: I mean, we, yeah, we've talked about a few of them. Like, we've talked about, like, that ear- that really early one, uh, that, that Chrysler did when he, like, was just became Chrysler. I forget the name of that car, but it was a super basic car.

Rose EP53 2: Audi TT, Atlas, the GTI. Now the GTI is interesting 'cause we just went over the GTO,

Rose EP53 2: Um, if you know the answer, keep it to yourself. Now, this is a modular platform for transverse front engine, so it's a front-wheel drive layout with optional front engine four-wheel drive.

Rose EP53 2: and then bau as in like Bauhaus, baukosten, or modular transversal toolkit, or modular transverse matrix would be like translations from German.

Emily EP53 2: They are really milking

Emily EP53 2: It sure did. And we, well first we gotta go back to, uh, Vincent D., uh, Kap- Kapter. Uh, this guy, after 12 years, uh, as a body designer and engineer with Packard, he went to work with GM in the art and color, and he was a liaison, li- liaison to Fisher Body. This is in the 1930s.

Emily EP53 2: Way back, and he came up with this, A, B, C, D bodies which turned into badge e- engineering- Okay ... which is what this, like, platform thing is. So in the late '70s, um, GM really went haywire with it, and, uh, they had... They started, okay, so in the late '70s is when they really started to do this, um, badge engineering. But in '77 they had 46.4% of the market. By '88 they had 35.8 because people didn't fall for these lookalike cars. Business magazines and TV commercials would make fun of 'em.

Emily EP53 2: It's like one... It's like the same car, and then the headline was, "Will success spoil, uh, General Motors?"

The place. What, what place was that supposed to be?

there's this Lincoln commercial where, uh, this, this woman and this, this man come out of this really fancy restaurant, and they hand the keys to the valet, and they say, uh, "Bring up my Cadillac." And the valet comes back up, and the woman and the man are getting into it, and then a gentleman comes up and says, "Excuse me, that's my Buick."

Emily EP53 2: it is fucking embarrassing ... and mostly they got called out on their sales. I mean, imagine 46.4% of a three, basically a three company, uh, con- like monopoly- Yeah ... this big three. So they own, they have almost half of the market out of three companies, and then they go down to a third.

Emily EP53 2: But every, uh, the other ones are black.

Rose EP53 2: have it? Yeah. It does. But it always gets so dated Oh, sorry. Hits close to home, that one. Excuse you. Well, anyway, I feel like

Emily EP53 2: Oh, okay. And what was that sharing a platform with? Itself. Oh, how does that

Rose EP53 2: lot ... yeah, also s- sips fuel

Rose EP53 2: Uh, my two CV.

Emily EP53 2: It's so rough Fucking god. Yeah, yeah. It's so rough. Yeah. And not in the way that you want it to be rough.

Rose EP53 2: Um, I took Milwaukee and then, uh, cross over Division and then catch Seventh. Oh. And come down Seventh because there's no cameras on Seventh. Grand is also

Rose EP53 2: this guy freaked out on me in traffic the other day.

Rose EP53 2: if he wanted to, I'd try to corner it, but I mean, I was like, "My front end'll blow up," or so, you know, like... Just imagine that's the day that my steering column breaks or what's something, you know, like hard in a turn. Um, and I mean, you know, the van really leans into it. But, um, so the guy gets on the highway, and he gets over in the left lane.

Rose EP53 2: road rage episode? No. I'll flip out. Everybody- Yeah ... everybody just wants to win. They get heated. They just get heated. Everybody just wants to win.

Rose EP53 2: polite." I mean, I just drove normal. I wasn't trying to, like, "Now you're trapped, and I'm gonna drive five miles an..." It's, it's 30. Welcome to Portland. It's 25, 20 mile an hour, 30 mile an hour. It's all slow because speed kills.

Rose EP53 2: 1948, uh, I'm so glad you asked, actually. That was perfect ti- I just don't wanna skip over that. That was perfect timing because from 1948 to 1990, more than 3.8 million 2CVs were produced.

Rose EP53 2: had a lot of time. So, uh, it was also the first ever front-wheel drive car to sell a million

Emily EP53 2: I'm like, am I mixing it up with Patrick Swayze? I don't know

And I could see that working. Or, like, throw some crap in it and it's, work on it here. It's

Rose EP53 2: Oh, it is still F? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I didn't know if it stayed F or not. Uh, now the Nova platform has got a, a number of our favorites, going back to the citation episode, which is the Chevy Nova, the Pontiac Ventura, the Olds Omega, the Buick Apollo, the Pontiac Phoenix, and the Chevy II, 'cause that's what, that's what

Rose EP53 2: Drag the balls off of it. Yeah. You would too if you had a Buick. And they'd say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I, I do. I have an Olds, I mean." Um, Ford Marauder platform, Torino and Mercury Cyclone.

Emily EP53 2: In, um, I think this was around in '88 or '85 when that, the Lincoln commercial was in

Rose EP53 2: That car looks like one of those. It's just like a wedge and then just stops. It was fine. It was a sporty little coupe. I mean, it was a Tudor, you know? And it was like, uh, one of the things I remember about it was that the letters for the shifter were misaligned, and I, like, as a kid, I was like, "How do you know what gear you're in?"

Emily EP53 2: Yeah. Smash it. Crash

Rose EP53 2: here's a very late model one that I thought this, this had what I wanted out of it. This is a big jump in the difference. Like, this is one where the platform makes sense. It's the same platform, but you can buy two very different cars on it. One is the Lambo Urus and the Audi A4 using the MLB Evo platform.

Rose EP53 2: These are two to- Like the Lambo Urus is a, a crossover SUV- It is ... and the Audi is a car.

Rose EP53 2: we gave her BBL, and then we did that weird MAGA thing and made her cheeks really big, and then changed...

Rose EP53 2: Yeah, me too. Uh, now, I also wanted to mention another one of the same family, but had a number of makes under it. A, a good chunky one. 'Cause there's loads of platforms with like two, and you're just like, "Yeah, okay. So what? They made another car out of it.

Rose EP53 2: Yeah. But I, I remember working on a Fox Body Mustang, uh, and it had a I- it's a, it's like a 8.8 rear end and it's four bar. So independent rear suspension on all those cars.

Emily EP53 2: I was about to say that, but I- Oh ... I thought it would, I thought it was two. Yeah. True. No, you're right.

Emily EP53 2: What? I don't know. You just wanted to bring ass into

Rose EP53 2: I, you know, I think that the article I saw that in mentioned the same thing. I think that was in the Jalopnik article, and they were like, "You know this just ruins the car for someone."

Rose EP53 2: And then somebody else said that the Viper taillights are just Chrysler minivan taillights

Rose EP53 2: so Bob Eaton replaces Lee Iacocca, and Bob Lutz is in the design. He's doing the operational side of things, I think, is what the deal is. And they were like, "What can we do, what can we do to..." P- Plymouth is, like, falling on its face, because this is a, this is a Plymouth problem is what the Prowler is all about.

Rose EP53 2: made me, like, before I even looked it up, I was like, "Oh, piece of shit car." Because that, if you remember when we talked about that, I think in the Jeep episode, is that, like, that never worked. Like, that only-

Plus the... They used the... The way that these engines were used was, like, longitudinally. They weren't transverse when they used them in the cars, like, to be front-wheel drive. And in the Prowler, it's just, it's just longitudinal.

Rose EP53 2: complicated. What? Oh, yeah. It, they said it got a lot of wear. It seems like it would. I know. I know. They, yeah, they said it would wear really bad.

And the frame was 6061 extruded aluminum. So the Prowler was, like, their test bed for aluminum, because they really, the, as they said, their, their hand was always on the pump, which sounds, mm pump, huh?

Oh, wow

Rose EP53 2: Right. It was debuted as a concept in '93,

Emily EP53 2: Whoa. They're gonna give it back, huh?

But the story, the way that I read it, um, was that, like, at Chrysler Pacifica, which is, like, their, uh, secret, uh, like, research test bed hangout- Ooh, okay ... uh, that, like,

Rose EP53 2: people hate them, and they're always like, "Oh, it's a boomer car," but, like, to, to me, that car making it through into production

Rose EP53 2: I always like them. I g- like I said, people like to dunk on them. They of course don't like that it's got a V6. Now, when they tested it against the '32 Highboy and the '34 that was Corvette-powered from Boyd by Coningsin, or, sorry, built by Boyds, uh, it did beat the '32, uh, but it couldn't beat the, the Corvette-powered car.

Rose EP53 2: Yeah, it's gay. Exactly

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72:21

Scion XV

Volkswagen GTI

Vincent D. Kapter

Pontiac Ventura

Buick Apollo

About this episode

Original notes