2025 Monterey Car Week Stories

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All right, folks, on this episode of The Podcast, Zach and I are back in studio for the first time in like two weeks because he was out. We've just done car weeks. So we talk about our favorites and least favorites from the quail. I took delivery of my new Myers-Manks. And I go over the first 500 miles of driving. And, man, a whole lot more that we have to catch up onto the cruise show. Let's get right to it. It's The Smoking Tire Podcast.

I came in. I just I didn't want to really answer your question earlier before we sat down. And how was my drive back? Yeah, it was eight hours is how long my drive was. It was an even in a Bentley. That's all that's a long day.

But we're here. And if you can you know, you know that car week was good because listen to my voice. It's fucked up. I was shot when I got home. And up until like a half an hour ago.

I didn't speak to a soul today. So I want to talk about a bunch of things from car week because it was super fun. And I want to put and I have 565 miles on the manks, which is pretty good for less than two weeks. But I want to talk about the manks last because that that little car clearly did, you know, dominate my attention for most of car week in one way or another.

But we did do things. We did see things. We saw cars. We saw people things happened around us and to us. And we made me made shit happen. Got a house for the first time. Never done the house thing. I think I liked it. Yeah, I think I liked the house. The house vibe is is a good vibe.

We really picked the fucking right house to had it had so much room for a trailer. And my trail. Honestly, my trailer parking was pretty fucking impressive. My trailer parking is pretty good. Still got it 20 years later, 20 years after I last towed a car for money. I still got it.

And yeah, Ali and his lady and me and Hannah and Zach and his wife Sarah. It was great. We went to some parties. I went to motorlux, went to the quail. The quail was the big one now. And actually, man, like, I went to the quail and I also went to the concours. And, you know, obviously, the concours is what the week is really about.

But in terms of what gets the the real attention for the week, I got it has to be the quail because it's manufacturers, you know, are doing real reveals there, almost like a like a proper like auto show. Yeah, there's a full on like press junk it. Did you see the schedule.

So they gave us these little little booklet that was attached to your media pass. And you got it. You probably didn't look at it. I've seen it before where it's like 1115. This company's done a reveal than 1125.

It was in 142. You know, just like just like how you and I do when you see the show, you do a lap of it because it's it's it's not in a circle. It's like a it's almost like a big L. But the things are around the perimeter of the big L. The main booths with like cars arranged.

With like individually owned cars that are entered like the concours through in the middle. And you do a lap. But like the the press release thing was set up so that journalists could just go to every 15 minutes the whole way around.

Not and do that. In fact, I went to one reveal. I have to say I happen to walk in right when I walked into the quail, which was early. I like to go early.

Especially because I was showing the car. So I knew I was going to get bogged down talking about that. And I wanted to try to get one lap in like beforehand. I got there because she was coming in like a couple hours later than before it got too crazy. So I got there right like the minute it opened. I was there.

And as I walked in, I saw the Cadillac press launch. Did you see the Cadillac? I believe it's called the elevated velocity concept.

And before you Google image search it, Zach. Okay. When I approached their big stand, it says Cadillac elevated velocity. And I go, well, that's kind of a nice tagline.

Elevated velocity. It's high end speed. Okay. I mean, it's not like it's not great, but like I understand what it means. It's not like super stupid.

And I figure like, you know, surrounded by like hyper cars and shit. They're probably going to have some like, you know, something cool, right? Some fast elevated velocity as it turns out is not a tagline. That's the name of the car that they've got is elevated velocity concept.

So based on just what I've told you crossover picture me picture me that car. Yeah. Did you see it already? I'm hearing elevated into name. So it's probably higher off the ground than a car.

But they're trying to do a play on words where it's elevated above the ground, but also, you know, figuratively, it's elevated above its peers.

Uh, velocity, it's just going to be something that's supposed to be kind of fast and concept. But I think it's going to be like a fast crossover.

So your, your, your train of thought is on the absolute right track. But even on that track, it don't look like you think it's going to. Okay. Now get the image.

You know, seriously pull up the image now because it looks like it looks like if you took, you know, that new $300,000 thing they're doing, imagine you took that and made it into a coupe.

And then just put like, giant fucking enormous wheels and tires and giant fucking enormous gall wing doors on it. And that, and it's, it's apparently some kind of ultra luxury offer.

Like a Martian Rover. Electro. Yes, it is a Martian. It is, but it's a luxurious one. A luxurious fast Martian Rover. It's sort of shooting breakish.

But yes, very, I mean, it looks like it's a foot off the ground. There's a lot of, there's a lot of daylight underneath this car.

Bro, when I, they had it there under a cover and they were doing a reveal. But the way the cover draped, I thought it was going to be like a coupe or something that was on a platform.

And it looks like a coupe that's on a platform, but just it has wheels that, that dangle down to the floor.

Oh, come on. It was, I wish there was a photo of it. You got to get the photo of it on the stand, like not these, not these press photos.

Just do Google images and see if you can find it from, from the launch.

Oh, he's fucking press photos. Come on. That's the, like, that looks like security cam footage. That's not quite it. But either way.

Oh, there, just even the, the profile. Yeah. It's so tall. It's so huge.

So when they pulled this off, I like, I kind of like audibly gasped and walked away. And I was like, I'm done with the reveals now.

So, because so the back of it, the roof line looks like an F type, but only until you get to where the spoiler, the rear spoiler would be, then you've got about two feet of hexagons reaching from that roof line all the way down.

All the way down to the lower splitter where the wheels, you know, the air from the wheels comes out. And that's really tall.

Well, from that rear axle back, it looks like that celestial car, the new one, which I saw, I saw like 10 of them rolling around.

I think they're all manufacturing cars driving people. But this is, it's a lot.

But I mean, the line on the top is not bad looking. It looks like a fairly traditional coupe. Yeah.

But it just, it's lifted. It's like a very strange, very strange short front overhang.

Where are the wheels? When you saw them, are they huge?

The wheels look like 24's. They're huge. They're so big.

Can we talk about it now?

The roof of this car is like six feet tall.

Wow. Yeah. I believe it. There's so much air.

You've got to find a photo of a human next to it. That's what we really need here.

We need, we need scale. In the desert, there is no scale.

All of these, all of these press photos are completely devoid of scale.

There's on the stand. That's what the three days ago car buzzed. Yeah, look at that.

So like, there's a human on the right.

Oh, come on. Please, just there. Look, there's, there's a person.

So it's a really tall.

The, the door sill looks like it's almost knee height.

Yeah, yeah. That's very high.

The front is, it look as a concept.

It's, it's very, you know, future forward, whatever.

But these air intakes on the front are so unattractive.

Well, if that front, you can see how the, the nose could be what future sedans

look like ish on the nose, right?

This part, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, right where this hood crease is, sure, but this, it's a lot.

It's a lot. Really a lot.

You're even parking cones with this.

So we don't need to spend too much more time on it, but that's the opposite.

So anyway, good, how about good things?

Good things from Quail.

The Gordon Murray F1 thing, obviously, holy moly, that's incredible.

It's incredibly sick.

You know, it, it really does look like the F1 in a good way.

And it's, it's pretty much T 50 underneath, although they punched it out

from 40 to 43.

So it'd go faster.

Um, it's just incredibly sick.

Um, it kind of looks like, yeah, I got it's so good.

It's so pretty.

It's going to have headlights.

It has no headlights right now.

Those are, those see the placeholders?

Yes.

They like didn't have time to do headlights, but they showed the show anyway.

I got to say though this, the problem with this car, and it's the only problem,

is it makes it, it reinforces the fact that the T 50 is not, in my opinion,

and a lot of other opinions stunning to look at.

It's a little awkward.

Yeah.

Proportions.

I don't mind how it looks.

I don't mind, but I think it's nice.

But I think the T 50 has things about it that make it a lot more usable,

whereas unless this has like a crazy nose lift system,

like this is a less usable car, they probably wouldn't, you know,

this is a car where someone paid Gordon an extraordinary amount of money

to tailor something to their taste.

Versus Gordon saying, what, what are my values applied to the car?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I agree with that.

In fact, the fact that this is for like essentially one guy,

like, is the biggest problem with it.

Like, it's, you know, for, for GMA, I'm sure it's, it makes total sense

to do something like this.

It's a huge amount of money from one person.

It's probably like, keeps your company running for like, you know,

months, if not most of a year.

And certainly, you know, Gordon was, it was sick.

And so probably this was able, he was able to, to, to ensure that his family is taking care of

if something does happen to him.

He's sick?

Yeah, I was fighting cancer.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

That's why it wasn't at the event.

Yeah.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Yeah, wow.

That's so sad.

Yeah, it's, you know, I'd like, like as cancer can be,

I think it's up, down, up, down.

But either way, that's why he was, that I think is why he was on the show.

Okay.

But, um, and that's not like breaking news, like other, other places.

I've reported that.

But, um, either way, I just like, I, I hope GMA is an incredibly niche outfit

to begin with.

And so, but, but Bugatti is doing these $10 million one of, you know,

having whole cars developed for one person.

More so than the normal tailor made type of stuff, like, like this,

where you wear, it's a, a Sharon or a Torbillon or whatever underneath.

And it's a, but it's a completely different car.

I just like, that's just like not good for cars.

Yeah, I agree.

Like, that's just like, that's bad.

That's like, that's literal gilded era shit.

And we know how that ends.

Like, we see the gilded era cars on Pebble Beach.

Like, on the long and Saturday.

Like, we, like, we know what happened after 1929.

Well, I think it does seem like there are more of the, you know,

back in the day, it was like, oh, only the sultan of Brunei

could order this kind of stuff.

And now, Bugatti will make whatever 10 to 20 special editions,

bull lides or something, because there's more people that have that much money.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I don't know, I mean, this is such, like, I'm torn.

Like, it's such an amazing work of art.

And it's fantastic to see what they did if they kind of, you know,

redesigned the McLaren F1, basically.

And on the one hand, they wouldn't have done it if someone didn't pony up the cash.

On the other hand, the new standard shouldn't be that manufacturers realize

that they can make more money selling fewer cars to fewer people

for enormous amounts of money versus selling more cars

that more people could afford.

I'm not talking about BRZs, but I mean, like, Porsche, for instance,

to realize that moving ultra, ultra upmarket is really the way to go.

Or Lamborghini, or any of these people.

Well, it's hard.

I think there are, there's the, there's the poll in the push, right?

There's the poll of folks got to take one quick break from the action for

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And now back to the show.

Our company is realizing they can do this and they can sell them

to 10 or 20 people.

So that's the pull.

The push is increased income disparity, stagnant wages,

and not trying to become a social like just look at graphs.

And customers can't afford to buy enough cars to keep the companies afloat.

It's gilded, error, share.

We were there 100 years ago.

Sure.

1929, it's 2025.

Wake the fuck up.

100 years.

Our memory is fantastic.

This is like a little different because it's a super-exclusive company already

doing another super-exclusive thing.

Sure.

But, you know, Ferrari does a little bit and it forces their steering.

They're not the only company doing this.

Ferrari has been doing in-house coach building for about 15 years now.

Not to mention what they were doing in the 60s but now.

And Bugatti is doing it.

And I think, you know, we were at the quail.

It's a crazy thing that that type of stuff gets very, very normalized there.

But I don't know, just because we're constantly being asked,

like, what are the affordable sports cars?

What are the affordable sports cars?

And affordable means different things.

But I think it generally means cars like under 100 grand.

For sure.

That's already very, very expensive.

Yes.

Baseline.

Whatever it is.

Like, 75 grand's a lot of money but not if you're buying a 911 turbo.

You know what I mean?

But like, we don't want car makers to realize that they,

because their shareholders want profit.

And if all of a sudden Audi or something,

a more mainstream bring goes, hey, you know, look at this.

These guys are making super luxury cars and they're diverting resources away

from cars for everybody, to cars for just a couple of people.

And yeah, they make more profit.

But they're like the rest of their product like goes down.

Like, that's bad, right?

I think that's bad.

Seems bad.

I think it's bad.

I agree.

I think I would hope that a company like Porsche would be very careful

and hesitant to do that because they do, they put so much work into

like their image and marketing their cars to everybody, basically.

And, you know, the cheap ones are still good.

The expensive ones are good.

And they have their exclusive manufacturer tour side.

But I feel like they are constantly trying to reach out and remind

so many different markets and enthusiasts clubs and stuff that they exist.

That it would be a big mistake for them.

Now, I think so too.

You know, you can get more of a job now.

It was very strong in a publicly traded company.

Yeah, but I think, I guess I just hope that companies can continue to do both.

You know, if someone wants to pay you ten million dollars

to turn a GT4 RS into a GT5 RS, whatever the fuck that would be.

Okay.

But don't stop selling the regular spider, the regular 718 and all those other cars.

Like, keep that going.

Don't, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

So to get a tour beyond allocation, you had to already own a Bugatti.

Sure.

That's eventually someone has someone outside this loop has to buy a Bugatti.

Otherwise, you're just, you're a car company that exists to sell the cars to the same 200 people.

Well, I think, but someone always sells it.

Bugatti and someone buys it.

You had bullying.

Technically, he owns a Bugatti.

He can get on the tour.

I don't know.

I don't know that.

Yeah.

And probably you probably can't if you didn't get it from a dealer or you don't, you know,

if you bought it, if you bought it in auction or something and you have to have a major service history of dealer,

I don't think I don't think fucking use the like ratty ass weird smelling Bugatti's

or what they're talking about.

No, probably not.

But I just think there's enough cars that trade hands that it's probably hard to get in that door

and if you're fortunate enough to have the money to try to get in the door good for you.

But I think there's a way in.

It's just, it's just not easy.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's all, it all feels, it all starts to feel a little grotesque.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Dude, there was like so many Coney Zigs and Bugatti's in shit.

And it's all that like those kids cared about.

Like the people like on the site, like they all were just like the hyper cars, but it was constant.

But when I was a kid, I was the same way because you see a lot of, you see other cars a lot.

And if, but if I saw Ferrari, because back then they used to be a lot more rare,

I'd get more excited than if I saw an M3 or an old thing or whatever.

Yeah.

And I'm not trying to like gatekeep cars.

I just, I don't know, man, the fucking, based on the vibe I got from the whole week,

like the culture surrounding those type of cars right now is like medium toxic.

And sort of like vapid.

It doesn't, I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe it just, I don't know.

Maybe it just seems like, because the, because Cmonorey Carbic is just all fucking traffic.

It's just so much traffic.

You're driving these things that go so fast at a speed that is so fucking slow.

And every chance these fucking guys get are just like neutral.

Like, come on, man, like outdoor dining.

Like, what are we doing?

You know what I'm saying?

And it's just, it's like, bro, the number of seven figure cars I saw that had

fucking Instagram handles on their shit, dude.

Like, this is some trashy ass garbage, dude.

Come on.

Well, yeah, either those folks are trying to make, have attacks right off with like,

oh, this is my business.

It's my media business, which is lame.

Or they're trying to get attention after they already got rich, which I,

which is even labor.

It is labor.

And I'm not surprised by it because we've talked about this before.

Like, they pull students in junior high and like, what do you want to be?

Influencer?

Yeah.

And even before people, I think in the 90s or in before that, a lot of, we all looked up

to movie stars and stuff because you saw them.

Oh, wow, everyone celebrates them.

They're famous.

Wouldn't that be cool?

But it seems so difficult.

You go, all right, I'm going to go get a job as a dentist.

I'm just going to go stay my lane and I'll watch the movies.

But now, it feels accessible.

Like you could go almost get there if you put your Instagram handle on your supercar.

And then you could not only be rich from your law practice or whatever,

your private equity firm that, you know, got the company and then makes the profit.

But you also can be cool at a car show.

And people, everybody wants to be cool.

Everyone in high school, if you weren't cool, you were envious of the people who work

cool because it seemed like they had the secret, like they had the key to life.

Now, you can essentially purchase that.

Well, you definitely can.

But it's, I don't know.

It just, it seems like it.

It's, I'm very like turned off to it, obviously.

Having said that, I'm not saying like car week was bad.

Like car week was really fun.

I saw like a lot of really cool things.

There was, as usual, like crazy rally cars being driven around.

Yes.

Old school, like AMG, like hammers and stuff.

Lots of skylines, you know, skylines of all of a sudden become, like,

rather tasteful, actually.

You know, and classic Ferrari's and stuff made a lot of testorosis.

So a lot of testorosis this year.

Probably, I saw several kuntoshes.

A few different ones, including one that suffered some real damage the day of the tour.

Oh, the black one.

The black one.

Yes.

I think snapped an axel or something, something rather ugly.

White kuntoshes park next to each other.

One was dug in the road.

One was dogs.

Yeah.

I don't know who the other one was.

I wonder if it was James Chen from Axis Wheels.

He's got a white white.

I don't know.

It was funny.

It was funny that on the quail, it's like, well, for the most part, there's a lot of, you know, cars are afraid of individuals.

It's like we chose this because it represents this mark or whatever.

And then there were two white kuntoshes next to each other.

Although to be fair, there were also like nine white GT350 Shelby's.

Well, because of the celebration of Shelby.

Shelby class.

Yeah.

I don't know if there was a kuntosh class, but every year there is like a vintage super car class.

So in that area where those kuntoshes were, is usually always like kuntoshes and diablos and vectors and 90s super.

There was a, there was that white vector.

I just also saw a black vector.

Okay.

Yeah, vector.

If you're rolling, vectors are different story.

Yeah.

You're rolling a vector on car week.

Brave.

Respect.

You brought your own flat toe.

You brought your own flat toe are.

Well, that's the thing.

like, like, if you're rolling a fucking kuntosh, like, you're, like, you're personally rolling the dice a little bit.

Like the fucking, it's you're not just buying in.

You're, like, you have to like be willing to like be a carperson a little bit and like, deal with a heavy clutch and deal with a fucking foggy window.

You know what I mean?

Like, I've done car week a bunch of ways.

I've done it in press cars.

I've done it in the million mile Lexus.

I did it without a car one year.

I flew up, I've done it in my old cars.

Like, doing it in an old, if you're going to do it

in a cool car, like being a fucking car person

and doing it in a car that requires a little something

of you, like a little bit, doesn't need to be

unreliable, but like fucking, you've got to like

commit a little bit, like just rolling up

in your seven figure, whatever and paying the valet

500 to park it up front.

It's like pretty lame to me.

Like, there's just better ways to fucking, to do it.

Well, because I think the, you know, buying a 720s

and paying the valet all the money,

you're doing it the easy way in a couple of ways.

Like, you're buying a cool car, which is cool.

And it's an amazing car.

Like, I don't want to take somebody away

from working hard and entertaining that car.

Seven serious car is excellent.

Actually, the finance example, and maybe it was intentional

because it was the Porsche party, but as we walked up,

there were like five or six GT3 RS's,

waiting to valley their cars.

And look, phenomenal vehicle on the track,

driving slowly in traffic on somewhat bumpy roads.

Like, there's not a worst car out there.

Almost.

Yeah, who fucking said it?

Someone, someone's, I'm not going to credit someone properly.

I think it might have been, I think it might have been Ryan,

actually, who said that the 992.2 or the new GT3 RS

is effectively the new eventador.

Oh, yeah, it was Ryan, right?

Yeah, yeah, which is incredibly astute observation.

It very much is.

They all have fucking straight pipes.

None of which are needed.

And they don't sound good.

They're too loud.

Well, they all sound bad.

Yeah, and they drive them slowly around

with a full downforce deployed.

Yeah, yeah.

And having actually tried that for myself,

it's mid, so maybe they are.

Maybe they are giving something of themselves

because driving one of those is, it does suck

when you're not going fast.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah, that's better than some other ones.

But no, I just, like, I really,

I got such a satisfaction out of driving the manks around.

Like, no windows and doors, you know, like,

you're outside and it's small and fucking loud and weird.

And I think, in my opinion, I think you get

in terms of attention or whatever,

it's nearly one to one with hypercars for 2%,

or whatever one of the costs compared to one of those things.

So I like really, you know, showing it at the quail,

but also just driving it around.

You know, when we got up to, we towed it up

with the Bentley, which worked, you know, brilliantly,

actually Bentley, Bentley V8S could certainly,

certainly tow a featherlight trailer

with a Myers-Manks on it, just fine.

And unloaded it right after the motorlux party

and then the manks was just my car

for the whole rest of car week.

And we had had, so I took delivery of it on Wednesday,

and then we were, I was one week before we left.

So I had a weekend with it on the way home.

I took delivery of it in Costa Mason, drove at home,

50 miles up to 405.

It was running hotter than it was supposed to.

It wasn't terminally hot, but it was a number

that did not make them happy.

So the manks guys were a little red faced and embarrassed

that that was my first drive and they came up here

and they spent the whole day like fiddling with it.

And they discovered there was a Bado 2 sensor

that was causing it to run slightly lean,

which is why it was getting hot.

They fixed that, they checked the tune,

they drove it around for a while,

they also put a bunch of different sensors on it

and they found that the coolant,

the temp display gauge was reading 20 degrees higher

than the actual coolant temperature.

So that's good, that is good.

I mean, it's not good, but like better than the alternative.

So anyway, but I used it, let's see,

they gave it to me with like 150 miles on it,

cause they obviously did some development driving too.

And I've got up to 565 miles

and this is in a little car with no windows

or roof or climate control or radio or anything, really.

It was fucking amazing.

It was dead to nuts reliable, it did not run hot at all.

I do have a list of things, list of notes,

things that needs a little bit of adjusting.

The throttle response, for instance,

is too sensitive at like maintenance throttle.

So if you're just cruising along in like second gear

and it's only at four speeds,

you're in gears a little longer.

If you're just cruising along in second gear

and you hit a bump in your foot, does this,

it then causes that loop.

You got the Jaguar, sports throttle problem.

Yeah, the sport throttle problem.

So they need to like dumb the throttle down a little bit.

It's all motek shit.

And it was great.

We took it on the tour.

Here's the photo of us watching the tour to Eligons

in Big Sur, so we drove it down.

The heated seats, awesome.

They work great, two-mode heated seats.

I only used eight, I filled it up when we,

and I forget how many miles I put on it

before getting to Monterey.

I think it was like, I wanna say I was in like high twos

when I got to Monterey.

I filled it up and now it's at like five, 60

and I only used like eight gallons of gas,

which was pretty good.

Wow.

It's like pretty efficient, actually.

Yeah, the Bentley used a lot more than that.

I filled it up once.

Yeah, oh, you did?

Yeah. Oh, wow, yeah.

Oh, I guess you did.

Yeah, the Bentley uses more.

Although I got 13 and a half to 14 and a half

while towing, which is really not bad.

And then, you know, you guys left on Saturday.

Hand also left on Saturday.

I drove it down to Spikes Podcast down at Pebble.

We did the show and I wanted to show Jerry.

I'm showing him like pictures of it and whatever.

And he's like, oh, that's interesting, okay.

And he basically insinuated.

He's like, yeah, I'd like to have an engine like that.

He goes, he said, he basically said, yeah,

it's suffer through that car to have an engine like that.

And I was like, suffer.

I was like, Jerry, it's a really nice car.

It's like a brand new build.

He's like, well, you know, come on.

It's not like you buy and what I buy.

I was like, are you calling me poor?

Like, and he effectively was.

Now, he was being free.

He was having fun.

I was like, I was like, it's parks right there.

I was like, you're not in that much of a rush.

Like, you need to, so he took him out and he was looking at it.

And okay, cool.

Neat and he likes the seats.

I told him the story, the thing, the Fowdy stage.

Oh, that's cool.

Cool.

But now, now start it.

And I showed him how to start it.

And when he did the crank and the plunge and then the,

and then it fired, he did the face.

The most full of wonder, boyish, you know, the, the, this.

You know, and then I can give it a few revs.

And, and now I show him how to turn it off.

And he, you know, pull out the big plunger knob.

And he's like, that's, that's for God's something.

That's cool.

So I have, I have, I have a sign fell to approval,

which is, which is always fun.

And then the four of us, me, Johnny, um, spike and,

or me, me spike, Paul and Jerry, Johnny had to go somewhere else,

uh, went down to the good intent.

And so we just wandered around looking at, you know, some of the

upcoming lots, watching a few auctions, watching a couple Ferrari

250's drop an absolute douce.

Nobody wants 250's apparently.

Wow.

Yeah, old cars are going cheap and new cars are going real money.

You know, 90 super F50's, et cetera.

Enormous money.

And, you know, every other old fucking car, blue chip,

quote, cars down pretty much.

But, uh, we go to look, Jerry and I are going,

we go to look at this other car.

And we're poking around it.

And it seems, you know, and it's maybe not great.

It's okay.

I don't know, blah, blah, blah.

And, uh, and then we're kind of sitting around and, and,

Paul's like, wouldn't it be, we should buy something?

And I'm like, what?

He's like, I got a paddle.

And I'm like, uh, and no, and, you know, the guys were like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, so let's, let's see what comes up.

And they're looking like, everything seems kind of expensive

coming up.

But then it's like 1950 Rolls-Royne, 50 something Rolls-Royce

comes up and it's like black and gold.

And like a six million dollar Ferrari had just gone

across the block.

And the guys like, open the bidding at 25,000, 25,000

of me, I'll kind of look at each other.

And I'm like, that would be fun to like drive around in next

year and they're getting Paul's like, get it.

And I was like, what do you mean get it?

You say, I'll go half, you get it.

And I'm like, uh, thank God it went for like $90,000

and they would have been too, too much to be a joke.

But like, if this thing was like under 40 grand,

I think we would've had to buy a bite as a joke.

I don't know.

Um, but, uh, it's so unfair.

It was crazy.

They all initiates the idea.

And he's like, yeah, you buy it.

I'll go half.

What is your idea?

I'm good.

I'm good for it.

Yeah.

Uh, but like, you know, they, they leave and I go to leave it.

Uh, Jerry emails me later and says that like my car and the car

that we looked at together were his two favorites.

And oh, by the way, he bought the one we looked at.

I'm not going to say what it is because I don't know if he,

if that he announced that to be public knowledge or whatever.

But, um, but like, he wasn't like, oh, this seems interesting.

I might buy it.

We just looked at it.

I was like, oh, okay.

He clearly went to the airport, got on his plane, pulled up the website,

read something about it and was interested in something in the story and then

just like threw a bit in from his plane.

Wow, which is pretty, very cool.

Yeah.

Uh, so they go, you know, we don't buy a Conex egg.

No, and everyone else has gone.

I went to the Zinger party, 21 singer, Zinger 21C party.

They sent five track records in five days.

Uh, and they were celebrating that I checked out the cars.

They're going to let us have a drive in the 21C.

Uh, the Zinger 21C is incredibly cool.

There were seven of them there.

People are like, people are like, is this a real car?

And I personally saw, I believe seven or eight of them in one place, customer

cars. So I think they've delivered eight, um, and I, and they can,

I apparently do about one every two weeks, which is what they're doing.

Yeah. So, um, it's really cool, really, really cool.

Not 50 state car, legal, two point six, six liter twin turbo V8, the

spoke 750 horsepower and then 550 horsepower e motors, like, yeah, 3,500

pounds, 1500 pounds of downforce, fucking y'all.

It's rad.

I mean, I, I was, I'm kind of one of the skeptics because I work for company.

We filmed their b-roll in like 2018 or something.

So if I'm getting sued right now by Kevin Zinger, I'm sorry, but I was so excited.

And I still am.

When I see their manufacturing, and they had the chassis out on the coil on the

lawn, and I brought Sarah over and I was like, you got to see this stuff.

Like, look at this control arm.

Look at the shape.

The three printed, all the 3D prints up and then what you can't see there is

that some of their pieces are hollow in different spots.

Like, if you imagine, imagine you're breaking, like a geod, uh,

like, sure, like a geod, like imagine if you're baking dough and you start pulling it

apart and they get those little air pockets, but there's like, you know,

tendrils stretching between them or it's like, you know, Venom, they have

that because they know where to put, um, material for strength and where you

don't need it.

And they did it with their brakes.

They did it with their control.

Like, there's so many things in the chassis that are really rad at the way

they're made, but I remember seeing, you know, the cars that were headed up

to Monterey seven years ago.

And then not really hearing anything about them since then.

So that's why I was one of the people going, hey, what's going on with this car,

you know, road and track tested one, I think like a year or two ago, but their

drive speed was limited.

So the Jethro tested one for real.

Oh, okay.

For top gear, like a couple of weeks ago, at the same day as they did one of

these records, sure, a thunder.

Okay.

And they said the, the car that I, that I can drive is a hundred percent

production finished car full power.

Sick.

Yeah.

I think it just, I'm hoping that like so many other people, you know,

when they decide to take on the endeavor of building a car, you realize how

complicated it is, but it doesn't mean your idea is better.

That's going to be a problem.

These are really interesting because of that additive manufacturing stuff.

I mean, they don't, they don't look, it's not like anything else.

It's not just, I mean, just carbon tub is cool.

But like, this is the, if you see the inside of these, like you said, it's like,

that's a, that's a different shit.

Yeah.

Really different.

I mean, I should add for you, well, who don't know, they use the company that

own Zinger is called divergent and they do additive 3D printing with metal.

Yeah.

And they do industrial scale industrial for military applications, like all kinds of

stuff.

Yeah.

But I think I heard between Kevin, this is a Lucas Zinger, the son who's like R age runs

the actual car, the car company, the father runs the 3D printing company.

And they're mostly industrial and military applications.

The car is sort of a halo product that shows off what they can do.

Still, it's still important.

But you know, manufacturing in California.

And the car is not ultra low volume vehicle, so they crash tested it.

They, they pass emissions in California, they pass car, they pass whatever the

2028 cafe standards were that now, as I said in the previous podcast, I have no

fines, but they, they, they, they pass those two.

They, so they say, so when I got in it and started it and rev the engine, you

could just feel like the engine revs real fast, like 911 ST fast.

But there are no vibrations through the chassis when you do that rev.

You know what I mean?

Like this, like this is like F1, but because they're the rotating mass is so small,

rotating mass is so small and the chassis is so rigid and the engine is mounted

in a way where it just does not vibrate.

It's just such a smooth revving engine that it doesn't send any vibrations really

at all into the chassis when it's unloaded anyway.

But like, you know, if you, if you think of a Corvette or some big and big,

you know, it tilts, it tilts and you can feel it, this, there's nothing.

It's really interesting.

It's very, like even the SSC that we drove a couple weeks ago and like the Nelson

racing like that for a quote LS based, and it's not really LS based, but it's LS based

in design, uh, family, you know, the flat plane, the change is placement.

It's not exactly, but, but you, if you rev that, like you could feel it revving this,

like you can't, wow, it's like cool, really cool.

Tiny V8, tiny, really, 2.66, yeah.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Yeah.

The funny thing is if we drive it together, you know, the seating is F fighter bus, baby.

Right.

So we only need comms to discuss super cool.

Yeah.

So the California company shut out to him.

But then, you know, I, I, so I stayed for the concours.

And actually, if you look at my Instagram posts from the concours, my favorite car

ended up winning the best in show.

This, uh, his spano, Suiza, um, had a body made of tulip wood.

What?

Look at the, look at the next, it, what does that even mean?

Literal, the wood of tulip plants, tulip wood.

But like the tulips turn into trees, I guess, all right, somewhere, um, it's a torpedo

back.

It's a speedster front, open fender, um, and then, and the woodwork is almost like

an incredibly fine guitar.

Click to the next photo, the first four photos, it has an alligator or crocodile

interior, and some ridiculous, beautiful chrome gauges.

And there's like 1800 aluminum rivets holding all the wood together.

Click one more, but that's the tight shot of the wood.

Wow.

The wood looks, it looks like it's been hit with precise buck shot.

Yeah.

I, I, this stopped me for about 10 minutes.

And I don't want to say I called it, but I clearly look, I said, this is my

favorite car of the show, that, that, and that ended up winning best in show.

And then the one after that, this was a Launcia concept car.

It was really, really funky.

It was almost like an American car from a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

a motor arm of a future arm of a car from the 50s, but it's a Launcia with wheel

spats over all four wheels.

And if you click to the next photo, Zach, on the other side, they just pop up

like the luggage doors on a Greyhound bus.

So you can get to the wheels.

And then the next photo of this one, the dash, the steering wheel, all the

control knobs, the shifter knob, and all the gauge bezels are loose site.

Well, amazing, very motor, very much so for people listening.

Yeah, it's almost like, it's almost like the car is syncing into the

ground and the wheels have disappeared.

So funky, right?

Yeah.

So some of this stuff, the Virgil Exner stuff, there's a guy with a, the guy

with the blue coat there is, is showing his Ferrari and has his

parrot on his shoulder.

Oh, wow.

It kind of blends in.

It does, but he's sure.

Yeah.

And there was a land, cool Land Rover display, some really historically

significant Land Rovers, the Darian gap, the, what I really liked about

the Land Rover display, and you can see by the yellow flags behind it is, it

was the most downwind section of the entire concourse.

Make of that what you will.

You know, sometimes you just want to be real polite and go downwind.

Maybe it's Farts.

Maybe it's something else.

You think the truck smelled bad?

Huh?

Do you think the trucks smelled bad?

No, but like hypothetically, if a fucking total degenerate wanted to smoke a

fucking joint at the concourse, I'm just saying hypothetically, you would find the

most downwind section of the concourse.

Perhaps one with a cliff behind you, and I'm not saying that I ended up there for

that reason, but I'm saying it would be a good reason to end up there.

Once you got there, discovering an actual camel trophy defender is pretty

rat.

That's pretty funny.

Yeah.

And then the BMW Andy Warhol M1 Pro car in person is the sickest.

Yeah, that was cool.

That's the fucking jam.

This Ferrari Daytona spider in Jewish racing gold had 87 miles on it and was in

the unrestored preservation class.

It's just such a waste of a car.

It really is.

Plus painting it Jewish racing gold.

It's kind of other than then go back, I like the gold.

I, you know what I don't like is that black belt line stripe.

That's a big fucking yuck to me.

Well, that's not rubber.

Is that paint?

No, that's a painted recessed thing.

It's no boy.

No, it's not a good accent.

And it goes all the way around the back too.

No, yeah, that just needs to be painted immediately.

Just body color, regular paint body color.

I mean, an accent spot might be cool, but just asking artists what goes with gold

besides black.

Yeah.

It's not good.

This is this was this was Virgil exner's attempt to revive the Dusenberg brand

on a Stutz Black Hawk in the 70s and the cars weird as fuck.

If you look at the click to the next one, the dashboard, this photo,

you, you might really have to zoom in on your phone.

That vertical center stack is insanity.

And in whatever the, the bezels are made of is this weird gold tiger's eye,

like pearly thing, if you zoom in on it, it looks real crazy.

I don't know if you can hear it does look very nice.

It's much better looking and simpler looking than the exterior.

Yeah, there was a Virgil exner tribute class and this was one of them.

Me and I was walking around with, oh, shit, who was, oh, with my buddy Pete,

you know, Pete Brockman, shout out to him, vintage car dealer.

We, we scammed our way into the Lamborghini booth for a little espresso.

And then we were walking around and that Imperial, we were, I looked at that

and I was like, if this rolls up to your house, your dad is going to die quietly.

Just, he's just going to want, he's just going to be standing and then not be standing and be dead.

That's someone gets out of this car and stabs your father in the neck with a needle

and then just carries them away.

Well, because someone sits in the back and just nods.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

I actually, I saw Pete at Motorlux and I think he was in the middle of like trying to sell a car

because I walked up and said, hi, and he gave me the head nod, handshake, kind of like, hi, hey,

doing and you know, we're talking to a girl and you're 14 and it's like, hey, what's up, dude?

Yeah, get out of here.

So I took, I took, I took his nod and I turned around.

He was doing business, you know, but then we went to the Lamborghini house, like I said,

and I met a fucking cool dude at Lamborghini factory named Nicolò and I learned that they now have a sort of

a process that's kind of like the Ferrari classic K process where they authenticate your car.

And, you know, part of it, you get this beautiful book that really doc, you have to bring your car to a dealer

and they look at everything, all your, you know, serial numbers and make sure your engine,

the gearbox match and this and that and it's a few thousand bucks and you get a letter of authenticity

and the book and whatever.

So I don't know, I might do it when the restoration is actually done.

It seems like maybe having a thing worth doing.

I think so.

Yeah.

This is a real one.

See, right.

See my certificate of authenticity.

But yeah, the Lamborghini house, pretty sweet.

It had pasta makers in there.

Ooh.

Yeah, it was all right.

But did you go there Sunday?

No, it was there.

It was there their house on the lawn at the concourse.

Wow.

Also went to the Rolex breakfast, which was all right.

Met Tom Christensen, the Le Mans driver.

Yes.

Putting it mildly.

Yeah.

Nine times Le Mans champion.

Sorry.

So, you know, and then I went back to the house and I took a nap.

Everyone's gone.

I have the whole house to myself now.

It's a clock locker and Andrew from Acura, you know, invite me to the Acura dinner.

I have nothing else to do so I go.

It's way out at Carmo Valley Ranch.

And I had connected the trailer to the Bentley.

I'm not going to roll out there dragging a trailer.

So I drive the manks out there.

And this is now, you know, 6.30 p.m. than the night of the concourse.

All other exotic cars have gone.

I am the last interesting car driving down.

I saw no other interesting cars.

Wow.

Like hours after the concourse ended.

Wow.

Just gone.

It took me 20 minutes to get from our house to Carmo Valley Ranch.

And there was no other.

That was like an hour drive.

Yeah.

So dinner was good.

Whatever.

Come back.

And oh, by the way, you know, other than whatever it was Saturday night, when I went from the zinger party to the fire pits at Spanish Bay, it was raining.

And I was driving that.

And so are the windshield wipers.

Well, it's funny you mentioned that.

So me and Zach were looking at each other at the table right now.

And if I'm driving the car and looking out the windshield at you and you're forward, you're where I need to look, the windshield wiper is really good right here.

It's basically here.

In front of your shoulder, not your face.

It's in front of my right shoulder.

Okay.

So I have two options.

One is to turn the wiper on.

Oh, boy.

And you can actually see in the photo.

Yeah.

I could literally do this.

So what did I do?

I tried the reach around wipe a few times.

That got very frustrating.

And then eventually I committed to the Ace Ventura.

And I went head out right hand on the wheel.

How fast were you going?

Well, I was going down 17 mile drive at night in the wet.

So second year, you know, 30.

I was not mobbing.

All right.

I was cold.

My head was outside of the vehicle.

Oh, man.

That one was tough.

So on the way.

I go to Carmel Valley Ranch for dinner with Jeff and Andrew Quillen and Acura and some other folks that were there.

Lynn.

And coming back.

Last drive before the car goes on the trailer.

Hit PCH.

Turn right to go back to Monterey our house going up the hill.

About quarter mile up the hill.

The car dies.

My very last drive of the whole trip.

The car has been fucking perfect the entire time.

And it dies.

And before it died.

Just before it died.

Not like seconds before.

But maybe like a minute before it died.

You know, I've got my my flashers high beams are up here.

Normally they do the floor high beam.

But I made it on the trigger.

Right before I went to flash the high beams.

Not to flash somebody.

But to turn the high beams on.

And when I pulled the trigger.

It went from low to high.

And then the lights turned off.

And then I let go of the trigger.

And they went back to the low beams.

And I tried it again a couple times.

Okay.

See the voltage issue.

So the car dies.

Full power.

There's no no power.

No electricity at all.

I and I coasted.

To like it never going uphill.

So I have almost no inertia.

I coasted to like 30 feet below.

There's a side road.

I quickly hop out and like try to push.

Now there's construction.

So there's mad traffic going the other way.

Traffic's flying up the hill.

Almost dead.

Stop.

You're still going uphill.

You try to keep pushing.

I try to push the hill.

And I move.

That's 15-0 pounds.

But yeah.

I can't do it.

So I yank the handbrake.

A guy.

I don't know if he recognizes me.

I think he does.

He goes, hey.

Let me help you.

And runs out of his car.

And we push it with two people.

It's real easy.

We push it.

Like the 50 feet to the side street.

And I'm like, oh, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

And like traffic started to go.

He just like runs, runs back to his car.

And he's gone.

It's Jerry's time, Phil.

Thank you, Eric.

Thank God there was cell service.

Because it's dark.

Really dark out there.

Wherever I am.

It's in those traffic.

But other than that, it's dark.

And I'm on this little side road.

And I go, okay.

I've already hooked up the trailer to the Bentley.

Do I have cell service?

Yes.

Step one.

Get a new bird.

Pick me up.

Go to the house.

So I get a new bird.

It's like 10 minutes or whatever way.

And I go, I don't have power.

And the ramps on to the trailer are kind of steep.

And I go, I don't know how many get this.

There's no winch on the trailer.

So I called Jeff back.

And I go, Jeff.

And he goes, it broke, didn't it?

He's like, it's not even enough time for you to get home yet.

He's like, I knew it.

He's like, I knew something happened.

Second, the phone rang.

And he goes, what do you need?

And I go, well, I'm going to get a new bird.

I'm going to go get the trailer.

And then I come back to Carmel Valley Ranch and get you.

And we can go load it up.

And then I'll drive you back to Carmel.

Now, for people unfamiliar with the geography of this,

each leg of this is about 10 miles.

Okay.

So, like, I, you know, and it's real dark.

So, you know, I then execute this plan.

I'd go to the house.

I'd get the trailer.

I drive all the way back out to Carmel Valley Ranch.

I make, because an empty aluminum trailer is like loud.

And there's all these speed bumps in Carmel Valley Ranch.

I make so much noise coming in this fucking place.

Jeff tells me he can hear me from, like, really far away.

Just go, you know, an empty trailer.

Get Jeff.

We go back.

Fortunately, I didn't, I didn't look too much into the side street.

I just made sure the manks was safe before I abandoned it.

You know, in an Uber to go get the trailer.

So, there's actually a downhill.

And I'm like, oh, so I parked the trailer pointing down.

And then we were able to, and actually a dude in an Eris stops.

And he's a fan.

He recognizes me.

And so, all right, I hop in and steer.

You know, because I got to get some inertia.

But like, it doesn't, it's not a solid piece.

It's too ramps.

So, we got to line it up right.

But also get the inertia of the downhill.

And we do it.

And we actually, it's pitch black.

But Jeff and I get the things strapped up pretty good.

And I run him back to his hotel.

I run back to the house.

I had intended to be in bed at like 9.30.

It's now midnight.

I get the act of the thing.

And I now have to, like, sort of prepare the, the, the manks for transport.

So, I, I called, I woke up Jonathan, the radial guy from manks.

I think it was just a fuse.

There's like a, there's like a main fuse.

Because the only things that worked were, there's no power to anything,

except those high beams.

Funny enough.

Strange.

And the starter motor.

And the starter motor's hot wired directly to the battery for very obvious reasons.

It has to start when everything else is off.

So, that led him to believe that there was a fuse somewhere.

And he was like, he's like, this is going to be a five minute fix.

I just, you, you just can't do it in pitch black on the side of the road right now on a Sunday night.

So, fortunately, Jeff was a fucking rock star, got out of bed.

He mid jerk.

I mean, he was like about to fucking.

Well, now he's edging.

Thanks to you.

He was totally edging.

I massage seated him, you know, in the column down there.

Yeah.

Now he could get back to his hotel, finish, literally.

And, uh, yeah.

So I spent like, you know, half an hour prepping the car for, for trailering at, like, at like midnight.

And, uh, yeah, left it fucking seven o'clock this morning.

How do you prep it?

You have covers on top off.

I had to put the seat covers on, take the top off.

Like, both this, the, the bolt, the top bar together.

Like, just like, I mean, little shit, but it's like by myself in the dark.

Yeah.

Like midnight, midnight after the concours and like all this long day.

That's a very long day.

That was a very, and then this morning it, because that accident then took eight hours to get home.

So it was, but like, you know, I feel like it was, you know, when you, on the race track, it's just one more lap.

And then you, you know, crash or at the ski mountain, it's one more run.

You know, and that's when you have a huge accident or something.

This was one more, you know, I didn't have to attach the trailer to the bed.

I could attach the trailer to the Bentley in two and a half minutes.

I'm really good at that.

I, I wanted to hook the trailer up to the Bentley to prepare.

I'll just drive the bags today.

I could have just driven, been like, ah, weeks over, drive the Bentley to dinner, whatever.

But I wanted to commit whole week with the manks, every drive and the very last one, the very last drive home.

It was like, nope, karma's up.

Well, you know, your durability testing.

So hopefully, hopefully the thing's just like something jiggle loose or whatever.

Yeah, it's something, it's something really stupid.

It's been, I mean, the, so I'm the notes for adjustment.

Yeah, there's the driver's side mirror just needs to be tightened a little bit.

It, it feels like the clutch cable might need to be lubricated.

It's not quite as smooth as it was the first couple of days.

Um, the, uh, uh, oh, the, the skid pan under the engine.

There's a skid plate.

My car does run a couple of degrees hotter than the other car.

And it, it was only doing it for me when they were testing the car.

It wasn't doing it.

And when the boys came up to fiddle with my car, it wasn't doing it.

And then when I'm driving and doing it, we couldn't fucking figure it out.

Eventually, Jonathan calls me, he goes, I've got it.

When we, when we test your car, when we're fiddling with it, we take the skid pan off to check for leaks.

We then put it back on and you're driving it.

Oh, it only happens after I've been driving for like an hour, like 45 minutes an hour.

It literally over time, heat soaks the skid plate and traps heat.

And so they're going to punch louvers in the skid plate and or make some type of a duct.

You know, but that's like a, yeah, who does, you know, I'm maybe someone would have seen that coming.

But like, you know, there's one.

Okay.

Um, but dude, we drove it, we drove it everywhere.

It was awesome.

It, I mean, it's so bright.

Like this sparkle is amazing.

But it's fantastic.

Like people look at your Instagram, seeing that thing, seeing that thing go down high one,

I was behind you for most of it in the Bentley.

It's like, it's, it's such a cute, friendly thing.

And to your point about driving that versus hyper cars,

Sarah, while we were driving was like, what would you bring to Pebble of everything?

And I was like, I'd bring like an electric Volkswagen 21 window bus or something.

Yeah.

Because I think the, I think the move is people start out buying a hyper car thinking like that's the cool thing.

And then you realize you want something small and friendly.

Yeah.

We had the same effect with the Morgan.

No one's threatened by the Morgan.

No one thinks you're a douche driving the Morgan.

Yeah.

It's just like an approachable car that people think is fun.

Pretty interesting fun.

Yeah.

Something that makes people smile.

Not trying to be tacked, cool masculine, whatever.

Something that is like not so clearly ridiculously overqualified for a traffic jam.

Yeah.

We saw, I mean, there were many McLaren driving around, but we saw one.

And it was from like some speed shop.

And they had like, they had their name on the sill.

Oh, the little mall fin.

And they had the little mall fin.

They had, you know, super, it was like they were under breaking and they were going five miles per hour in Carmel.

Like that kind of peacocking is just ridiculous.

Yeah.

No, the, the, the manks is at regular car speeds.

And I'm talking about anything under like 70.

It's more fun than any exotic car.

You, you, you, you fucking, you're, you're doing it.

You're, you feel the rack and pinion steering communicates beautifully.

Yeah.

The ride is really good.

It's really engaging and fun.

It's, you know, it's capable to a point.

But it, it really reminds you about, you know, the purity of, of driving at, at speeds that are, dude, you know, there's that.

So the road, I took this road from our rental house to like pebble.

There's like the back way.

It's like, oh, he, no road.

I took that road every time.

So like doing like 35 bombing down that road in this is like doing 90 up Angeles crest or something, you know.

You're just like ripping through the gears and you're like, you're making a bunch of noise.

You're not really going all that fast.

But like, you're sure feeling it, you know, you're feeling all of it.

And so I really, I really got down with it.

Good.

Whole week.

Slow cars fast.

Yeah.

It's not that fast.

And actually at, at, you know, going down the section of, it's highway one between our house and pebble beach in a car mall, like that sort of hilly, windy, two way road.

Doing that at 60.

Fabulous.

Absolutely fabulous.

Such a fucking nice thing.

A little bit of a rolling roadblock when your friends all drive sports cars and you're going down to Big Sur.

How did it sound being behind it?

Like airplaney or not really?

Yeah.

It's got like a blab, you know, kind of sound to it and it's strange.

In a good way.

Like you've never heard, heard anything like it before.

Yeah.

So that's cool.

Oh, this is funny.

That's, uh...

Yeah, too bad Johnny's take is actually wrong.

Yeah.

And I can fucking prove it.

I haven't been writing.

He fucking, he wrote to me that that was his favorite car he saw that day.

I got fucking the receipts, honeybee.

Yeah.

It's well executed.

I think, I think actually our buddy, Sean, to go back to the shooting break that Sean built.

For me, that is probably, it's a dip previous post.

For me, that is probably the ultimate pebble car.

Car week car for me.

A coach built AMG car with a beautiful...

This is a shooting break built by our friends at CMS Motorsports.

Crazy interior.

Yes.

Great visibility.

So you could see everything.

Uh, looks cool.

The length...

The side rear window is as long...

Yes.

Actually longer than the hood of this car.

Yeah.

Try to think of any vehicle.

I mean, like the rear window on a suburban, the rear side window, this looks longer than that.

And that's probably the biggest piece of glass on sale.

Yeah.

So, the thing looks crazy and really cool.

That, to me, is my perfect pebble car.

Get a good house.

Because this car, you know, you wouldn't have to trailer this up.

Get a great house.

Get a car like this that looks cool.

And it makes people think.

It makes people smile.

People go, what is that?

What am I looking at?

There's Easter eggs in there.

For instance, it kind of looks like this car has a blue tint.

And in fact, it has a window tint.

And in fact, it has fully clear windows.

And a full blue interior that's like insane.

Yeah.

So, that's my idea of like the, probably the perfect pebble car.

But we're going to, I'm going to do a lot more with the manks though.

Like, and do you see Eli's manks?

It's sick.

The green one.

The from auto works.

That one.

I don't think I saw it.

It was nearby.

But it had a Porsche motor and Porsche, like, tail lights and Porsche gauges.

It was pretty slick.

I was into it.

That is a spicy engine, right?

A spicy Porsche engine.

Yeah.

And then there's the Todd Hill one, which is just banana.

The LFG.

Yeah.

Well, that's not even, that's not a manks.

That's not a manks.

That's, that's its own thing.

Yeah.

It's insane.

Yeah.

LFG is a very good name.

It stands for loud, fast, gone, of course.

We can do, yeah.

Look, I mean, this is, so that, this, what's crazy is this thing looks like,

it looks like a plastic concept car.

Yeah.

Many, most, most new cars, especially these boutique cars when they're first shown.

It's like a plastic concept car, right?

Or, you know, something the next step up from a scale clay model, really.

This looks like it's that except that's not, that's actually it.

That's a finished, not, I mean, it's not finished, but it's a fully functional running,

driving, the screens on the dash working as car play.

There's, uh, Richard was showing me videos on his phone of him, like, drifting it the night before,

uh, the party on Wednesday.

Um, these are going to have a choice of engines.

You're going to be able to do, uh, an air-cooled flat six, a, uh, water-cooled flat six.

There's Richard Toddle driving it.

Look, those screen.

Yeah.

Look at the passenger co-driver screen.

Co-driver screen.

There's a bunch of clear box, hand grips.

I mean, if you, if you, if you people go to his Instagram and turn the sound on,

charlie.tuttle, like this thing's hauling ass.

Yeah.

So definitely not a,

like a rally-very car to something.

Yeah.

This is Carmel Valley Road.

He's mopping.

Um, and those doors come off, those glass doors come off entirely.

So you can get an air-cooled engine, a water-cooled engine, or the 911 K engine.

If you buy this car, if anyone out listening buys this car, you have to drive it in the dirt

and play with it.

Yeah.

That's what it's for.

That's what Richard does with his cars.

What they're doing.

Don't just show pony this shit and drive it to cars and coffee.

And registered in Montana.

Like that, this almost, stuff like this, not this car, but like the existence of safari things

that cost a ton of money and don't get driven.

Bathers me almost more than the special edition hypercar stuff.

That, I think this is more offensive to me.

Yeah.

They're doing a back series with these for racing.

Right.

And they're going to run this in Baja on stuff.

Yeah.

It's a class in Baja.

20 cars.

And Tuttle, shout out to him.

Like he organizes rally events.

They organize the snow rally stuff with his cars.

I mean, he is a legit driver person.

I just hope the customers do that too.

Do you know what else he said, my friend?

He said, if we go to England, we can drive this.

We should go to England.

Yeah.

Do you hear that, Doug?

I'm coming to London.

You got to make some rounds in England, you know?

Yeah.

Let's go to a few from the people.

Pebble was awesome.

I have, I had a lot more things on my list.

We'll get to it.

I don't want to talk too much about towing with the Bentley,

because I'm doing a story with it for road and track.

But long story short, towing with the Bentley went great.

Everybody should just tow with Bentley's.

That's the consumer advice of the day.

Totally relatable.

Everyone should tow with Bentley's.

And last thing about Pebble, I got to give a little shout out

to my new friend, Edwin Castro.

You know that name?

He won the power ball.

He won two billion power ball.

And then he just started buying porches.

He's not everything.

He bought a lot of stuff.

I hung out with him at the quail.

I didn't know who he was.

Sat there talking to him.

He was a fan.

Introduced and introduced by Tamarion.

By John.

And, uh, talking to him for a minute.

And then, oh, by the way, this was, oh, cool.

I think, you know, he is fucking one of us.

He's, he's, this guy is down.

He's cool as fuck.

Wait, is he different?

Didn't you meet a guy in a rally that hit one guy?

That's a different guy.

Oh, okay.

That's a different guy.

I don't, I don't even want to say his name,

but that guy won $880 million.

He said he's very nice.

Okay.

At 23 years old.

Edwin Cash was a little older.

I think he's in his mid 30s.

He still won an enormous amount of money.

But, uh, he's, he's got cool taste and stuff.

He is a fan of the show.

And, uh, he lives in LA.

He wants to hang out.

He's, and he's in mellow.

He was really, really fun.

Mr. Cashrow.

When you buy your LFG from Tuddle,

make sure that you drive the shit out of it.

Yeah.

You are the target customer.

That dude was actually, he was pretty cool.

I, I, I hope that I would act like that if I fucking got

two billion in power.

Yeah.

He's doing, he's doing all right.

Nice.

Yeah.

Um, so anyway, pebble, uh, car because it was pretty intense.

It was, there was some highlights.

There was a, I don't want to say low lights,

but there was just the, the transition away from vintage cars

and two hypercars and boutique new sports cars and things

like that is happening pretty rapidly.

The auction prices reflect it.

The kind of stuff you see driving around reflects it.

The cars have gotten much, much newer.

Um, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

It just, it just is what it is.

Um, but, uh, I still like going.

It's still fun.

Getting to show a car is very, very cool.

That's a new, sure.

A new twist on, on a, on a way to do it.

Getting a house is definitely the way to do it.

That's the jam.

Um, but let's do a few questions from the people.

Uh, next, uh, our, our, our next show will have a lot more questions.

But pebble was a big, uh, big week of things.

So obviously we wanted to, uh, cover it.

We'll do a few.

Of course, if you want to ask us questions for the podcast,

if you want to, uh, get the podcast early,

if you want to get the podcast without ads,

if you want to get exclusive early access to, uh,

merch and collabs,

if you want to support your favorite podcasters,

patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast is where you do it.

Uh, and we'll do a few of these questions.

Uh, one from two lane backshot,

daily a cyber truck for a month,

or drive a Model T cross country.

Model T cross country.

That's a story.

Yeah, that's a story.

It's a story.

It's an adventure.

Uh, yeah, that's true.

Dad, we were just talking about this, uh,

with, uh, with spike and, uh,

Jerry at the thing.

They were, he was saying, uh,

that the famous Leno quote that said, like,

you know, if, if, if you, if I,

if you put me in a fucking cryo thing,

and I went to sleep for a hundred years and woke up,

and there was an electric car and a steam car,

you know, I would take the steam car,

because I at least know what,

no, no, I can get somewhere with that.

Um, I don't necessarily agree with it to that degree,

but that, that was the vibe.

But I would rather go Model T cross country,

assuming there was someone with me who knew how to fix it.

Just the tip-tronic, good name.

Given all the free stuff to do for car week,

is attending the quail worth the $1,500 ticket price.

Obviously, that depends on one's financial situation,

but curious if you have any thoughts.

I wouldn't pay $1,500 to go to the quail.

I would not.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't stretch to pay that.

I mean, they're people there that, that's no,

that's no problem for them.

Fine.

But if this is like, oh, you know,

it's this or three tickets to Taylor Swift for three friends.

And because those are expensive.

Yeah.

I think the fact, I saw so many of the cars

that were at quail parked around Carmel,

like the whole Pagani display was literally on a street

we walked past.

Yeah.

You can see a lot of these cars around,

and you can get plenty of value from car week

without having to pay the money to then go stand

around them on a stage.

Yeah.

The quail is cool.

Like, don't get me wrong.

It is.

People ask me about ticket prices all the time

and I'm very spoiled because we get access from work

and we don't have to pay for ticket prices.

Would I pay retail to go something like that?

Probably not.

Probably wouldn't.

That's a crazy amount of money to go to an event.

But we have a friend of ours paid retail,

and he had a great time.

Yeah.

Another friend of mine from college,

his friend paid for his ticket,

and they had a great time.

Yeah.

For the people that can totally afford it,

the quail puts on an amazing event.

The cars are rad.

The food and drink and everything there is like,

I mean, it is a magical bubble land.

Yeah.

You know.

The food is on the level,

the food and drink are on the level of like a medium high end wedding,

which is pretty good for a car show.

Yeah.

And it's all included.

You don't have to spend any money once you're in the door.

Yeah.

And you know, if you're pretty committed,

you could take advantage of that.

I spend most of the time talking to people and not,

I don't think I ate hardly anything.

I ate once.

Yeah.

I didn't mean for anything.

Yeah.

I actually, you know,

that whole week,

because I didn't work out.

We just we walked around a lot,

but I didn't work out.

I only ate two meals a day,

the whole week.

I fully ate 30% less food,

because I wasn't working out,

which is I think how bodies are supposed to work.

Five liter of cola.

A 50 liter of cola.

That's pretty good.

It's great.

What's your best example of don't meet your car heroes?

For me, it was a cobra.

I'm six five with 14 shoes.

Size 14 shoes.

Yeah.

Cobras are for everybody.

That's tough.

I mean,

the obvious one is the DeLorean,

even though the car wasn't that disappointing

and just isn't great for LA.

It's not a hero car,

but I thought the dark horse was going to be amazing.

Because the GT350 was amazing.

The Mach1 was amazing.

The 500 was awesome for what it is.

And I just went,

oh,

it's just more Mustang with more engineering.

Great.

And then it was like the steering was weird,

and it felt too big.

And it was like the screens were bad.

And I just,

it was definitely the lesser Mustang,

even though it cost more than all the ones I mentioned.

I think there's car like,

I think a lot of very pretty GT cars,

like the GT cars and luxury cars

often look cool

and are comfortable

and have nice leather and whatever,

but are not particularly interesting to drive.

A lot of times.

Sometimes they lack a sharpness

that you associate with the brand.

Like the 550 Ferrari.

Yeah.

You think Ferrari,

you think race car,

and then you drive their GT car,

and it's doing its job.

Yeah.

But it will lack some of the things

that you might associate with that brand.

Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Granny shift and not double clutching like you should.

The McLaren S1 at the Quail

reminded me of a previous thought I had.

Why don't manufacturers bring back

classic car designs with modern powertrains?

For example, a G80 M3 with an E46 M3 body.

I mean,

I don't know if old bodies

will meet current regulations for one.

Where the engines might not fit for two.

Packaging is a big thing.

Yeah.

I mean, the BMW told us they couldn't make

the fucking beaver teeth any smaller

because it wouldn't work with the cooling, right?

Yeah.

Well, it certainly won't work

with an E46 nose.

I mean, Ford is like a proved

revology for doing those mustangs.

So it's like there's another company doing it,

but it's got the blessing of Ford.

So that's things.

There's recreations and continuations

of a variety of cars.

It's just not from manufacturers.

If a manufacturer...

I mean, I don't know if it can...

I don't know if a manufacturer

can sell cars in mass

and then also sell one model as ultra-low volume.

Oh, that's a good question.

Your whole...

No, because Morgan said,

yeah, the guy from Morgan,

John from Morgan told me,

your whole company,

if you're ultra-low volume,

which Morgan is considered in the US,

it's like 375 cars

across the entire company in America.

So if you're a company like BMW,

that's a bigger company than that,

you can't build a niche product

like that for ultra-low volume.

Yeah, got it.

So that's why it's third party

because there are restorations

on an individual level.

Yeah.

Last one,

and then it's time I get some dinner.

Ted Striker says,

I've noticed that my hometown

has added a mock eat

of their police force,

which got me thinking,

what cars would make

the best police cars

that aren't widely used?

I mean,

that aren't widely used.

How do we define...

And how do we define best?

I mean,

because these departments,

there's auditions for their cars.

Yeah, they literally...

All the OEMs show up.

They do.

Our car can do this,

and we stand that,

and the maintenance is this,

and they all campaign

to get chosen.

Yeah.

But like, what's...

By the way...

That Cadillac concept.

Quick,

Worst and Show

is goes to the Monterey

SWAT department,

that had a giant lifted

like M-Rap machine

that did nothing

except spend book money

on that machine.

There was one...

My Worst and Show

of the Quail,

aside from the,

yes, SWAT team,

was a Lamborghini

Revuelto that had

the person's Instagram

handle on it

on three different places.

You should not be allowed

to show your car

at the Quail,

if it has an Instagram handle on it.

You shouldn't.

Is that our

generation's version, though,

of putting the poster

in front of your car

that says,

this is my Corvette.

Shouldn't be allowed

to have a Quail either.

Yeah.

That's a real

Baja Cantina vibe.

There's...

I like Baja Cantina,

and you see a bunch

of great shit there.

I like Baja Cantina too.

It's just a shit show.

Yeah, that's true.

But there was like

a Ford GT

and then there's a rad hot rod

and then there's a super old

Ferrari

and everyone's just

in the car.

Yeah.

I mean, it's all right.

That used to be

one of the cool,

free events at Quail.

It was.

It's the kind of is.

It's just like...

You just...

You need to like

park somewhere else or so.

Yeah.

Just getting in and out

of that place.

Yeah, true.

What other car

would be a good...

I mean,

a good police car.

Fucking Prius is, dude.

They should all be

driving Prius.

Every cop should be

driving Prius.

We need to fucking

emasculate.

That's a good idea.

Yeah.

Evie calms them down.

Yeah.

I don't want them

to have fucking

paramilitary shit.

I don't either.

I'm asking you.

Prius is a good idea.

Yeah.

I support that.

Yeah.

And because a lot of

states are banning

police chases now,

you don't need to be able

to hit people.

Yeah.

Kind of works.

That's our show.

Thanks for listening, everybody.

Of course, Patreon.com-slash-the-smong-tire-podcast

is where you get all

of the things.

You can get the show

without ads.

You can get the show ahead of

time.

You get it.

You've heard the thing.

Also, last but not least,

shout out to our friend Larry Chen,

sent us his new book,

Life at Shutter Speed.

It is a beautiful

coffee table book

from Carrera Books.

And it comes in this case.

It is a really nice paper,

really beautiful prints.

There is quite a few,

it even smells like a good book.

There's quite a few photos

of my cars in here.

And, man, there's just

thousands of images

in this book.

And you should check it out

for yourself if there's a car

person in your life

that could use a gift

for their home.

I do recommend that.

Larry will be on the show

in a couple of weeks

to talk about it.

Anything else, Zach?

Nope.

All right.

See you next time.

Bye.

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