#62 - Interesting Words From Dodge CEO, Another New Dark Horse, New Mercedes Models, Listener Emails & More

You know, on most school nights,

I tend to go to sleep at a reasonable time,

but last night was one of those nights.

Reasonable time, meaning like 8.30 or something.

That was, dude, I was gonna say last night,

I was out with the kids, so it was about 8.15 year time.

So I woke up, and as soon as I woke up,

I saw my phone and I laughed and I laughed

and I laughed because of your text messages,

and I'd consider them our boy that we've never met

and haven't spoken, and after this podcast we might not.

But Tim Kaniskes was doing a show, I guess,

it's a pickup truck plus SUV talk channel on YouTube.

I don't know where they were.

Maybe, do you know where they were?

Was it at a convention or car show or what it was?

I actually don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's interesting when you get to these places

where you can just kind of find these little booths

where you have conversations with these powerful people

in the automotive world like Tim.

So maybe we're just not doing our part

of showing up to these conventions.

Yeah, you gotta go to trade shows.

You gotta go to trade shows with a badge, polo shirt.

Dude, I need a clutch culture vest,

you know, like a safety orange or safety yellow vest.

It says, I'm here to do the best interview

you've ever done in your life.

Exactly, so it's just a lot of words to fit on the front

so you might have to put the rest of the paragraph

on the back.

I don't like, need to talk to you.

You wanna talk to me, something like that.

But can you set the landscape,

because there were two separate videos you sent me

and then actually woke up

and I was just telling Nick Ford recorded,

that's what I started seeing

and maybe it was because Nick sent me that,

because it was a long conversation.

I think it was like 15, 20 minutes.

I only saw two or three of the clips,

but we're talking brand new.

Are you gonna share any of the clips?

I do have one of them up

and this is gonna set up perfectly the second part of it,

which is gonna be, well,

let me just not spoil it for people.

I'm sure Nick has plenty of thoughts on these topics.

Yeah, this is a tough day for us

because we've given the guy all kinds of praise.

Back is very, very difficult.

If you look at the data of the trade-ins into our shows,

we call it the truck battleground.

The loyalty of truck buyers from one brand to the other

is 75 to 85%.

When I lose somebody and they go and buy a Ford or whatever,

getting them back is very, very difficult.

Sometimes it's generational.

My grandfather had an XYZ and then my father,

and so of course I'm gonna have one.

So we looked at that and we said,

we've got to absolutely protect this.

And when we launched the warranty,

our competitive trade-ins into our show

almost double of what they were.

Almost double.

There's something there.

I don't know if the business cases

are gonna actually pan out that it still makes sense,

but we're like, it's way too soon to pull the plug.

Let's keep it going for a while.

Let's go ahead and stop this.

What he means by business case

is that they don't have so many trucks break

between 50 and 100,000 miles

that they end up losing money on the warranty.

Right, right.

Okay, this is a guy we've praised as,

I think unequivocally he understands the Ram brand

better than anybody running any company.

Hands down.

Okay.

When you go on platforms and people don't hold you accountable,

it makes you look like you don't know

what you're talking about.

We've said that over and over again,

Jim Farley's had interviews that I go,

if you were just with somebody competent,

you wouldn't have this issue.

You wouldn't have come off the way you did,

like the technicians thing that Jim Farley

was talking about.

When everybody on CNBC is like, yeah, it makes sense, Jim.

Oh, it makes sense.

It makes you as the CEO look foolish.

I don't know how they get into these interviews.

All corporate media teams listen right now.

If you're not gonna have an honest conversation,

don't do it at all.

You guys did a great thing at Ram

because you had to to get people to come buy your stuff.

You had to offer an incredible warranty

because you had 18 years of supply sitting on the lots.

You had to do something.

God damn it.

People didn't trust what you were doing.

This was predicated on Tim Kaniscus earlier

in the interview saying, you know,

none of our problems have been reliability.

Then why did you need to offer the big warranty, big dog?

Yeah.

Why was the stuff sitting on the lot?

Because people didn't trust your brand

and its reliability.

Now guys, so everybody doesn't get up in arms,

I own a Dodge.

I own a Hemi.

I've owned it for a better part of 15 years.

I don't think anybody said that the engines break.

This is another problem with a CEO talking to somebody

that's not holding them accountable in a conversation.

And I don't mean going at him,

but asking questions that gets him to clarify what he means.

Because for anybody that doesn't know,

Dodge has the electrical prowess of a British car company.

They've always struggled with electrical.

My truck from 2005 has electrical problems.

The new TRX was launched, electrical problems.

Most of Dodge or Ram products, electrical problems.

Guess what's in cars more today than ever before?

Electrical components.

So to say you don't have a reliability issue

because our drivetrains are somewhat reliable

going back to these older platforms.

Nobody was questioning that that was in the know.

It was, is my ECU gonna fry itself?

Is my whole car's wiring harness gonna be faulty?

Nobody ever said the engine's gonna blow up.

But you don't just magically put an engine in a car

in this day and age.

How many semiconductors?

How many electrical components?

How many things do we have?

So to say you have 8 billion years of supply on your lots

and you don't have a reliability issue.

Hey man, we pat you on the back when you do great things.

This isn't one of them.

The only issue I ever had with my SRT-4 was it starting.

Meaning the ability for it to start electrically.

There was something, there was a gremlin in there.

I wonder if all those badges was conducting electricity.

No, no, that helped as a matter of fact.

And as a matter of fact, I had my flag ready to go

to put on the shelf back here.

And then I woke up to your videos, I took the flag down.

I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna wait.

I'm gonna wait on that.

You should, you should, half-mast.

That's funny, half-mast.

I have the other video.

Do you wanna play the other video too

to kind of set up that warranty talk?

Oh god, yes.

Just a couple seconds, just a couple seconds.

Just so people kind of get the other part of what,

why are you just talking about this?

Hey, when we told people we worried to them,

all of a sudden they came in.

We made a field floor.

We weren't having some massive quality problem.

We didn't really have quality problem.

What we had was a self-inflicted issue.

And the self-inflicted issue was

when we came meant to launch the new DT truck,

we made a field floor.

We launched a new appearance, a new electrical architecture,

a new infotainment, a new ADAS system, and a new engine.

All at the same time.

Lesson learned, never ever do that.

It was a freaking nightmare.

So many problems.

Why was it a nightmare?

Getting our production capacity back up.

And I started out saying,

that's the only way we make money

is building and shipping cars.

Everybody knows that the domestics

make their profits on the trucks.

Building of trucks, right?

So when your truck production goes down,

all your arm belts are going off.

And you're looking at that going, oh my god,

this is a signal to the industry

that we have a quality problem.

We don't have a quality problem.

We had a problem with what we decided to do.

That's two, one more and you're out.

And do all that at once.

We made it.

Bro.

Okay, so think about what he said here.

We launched, everything he then lists

is some type of electrical component.

ADS system, infotainment.

You do have a quality problem with those things.

That's why it was problematic.

Because you didn't know how to wire a car in 2005.

What do you mean you didn't have a quality problem?

The thing you're the worst at,

you launched three or four new systems

and you're going to tell me,

you know, we just launched and it was a nightmare.

Why was it a nightmare?

Because it didn't work.

If all those systems went off flawlessly,

why would it be a nightmare?

But the warranty though, it doesn't matter at that point,

right?

We were changing the game.

No, and by the way, that's the great move that they made.

The great move that they made is they knew

they had a fatal flaw and they go,

we just got to get customers to believe in us.

For all you Kia and Hyundai guys that think

the 10 years, 100,000 miles is out of the goodness

of their heart, no, it's because they know,

and by the way, a lot of these warranties

when they get extended, they're doing it

so they don't have to do massive recalls

when things start to go wrong.

They just handle them inside the warranty program, right?

They want to shore up what's going on.

So talking out of both sides of your mouth

and having somebody sit there,

and I don't know this gentleman,

this is not a shot at him, at all.

You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth,

have somebody not there getting you to clarify things

and things come across correctly, if that makes sense.

At some point, you got to go,

hey, you just listed off three electrical components

you guys launched, why would it be a nightmare

if they all work?

So I got an email from Carvon,

I've told them a car in the past,

and ever since then, I get an email,

probably three times a day,

every day of the seven days of the week.

By the way, what a turnaround.

Carvon? You seen that stock price?

Yeah, well, so the big push is now officially,

and we talked about it last year a couple of times,

but now it's like new cars, we're selling new cars,

getting to our new car, selling process,

and obviously you got Shaq holding keys

on every page of the Carvon website.

They're doing their thing,

they're turning things in the direction

that's gonna sell more cars,

but talking about the new trucks,

2026 Ram 1500 Lone Star Edition,

53, it's got an MSRP of 63,

so it's 10 grand off already,

get it tomorrow, no friction, no frills,

this is probably gonna sell them more trucks

than they've sold in a long time.

I no doubt about it, they have so much supply,

they are doing everything,

and the CEO is out there saying,

we didn't really have that much of an issue.

I can tell you this, go try, in a busy city,

go try to find a Tacoma, that's what no issues mean.

Now, even if you don't like the new platform,

and you go, well, I have their own set of issues,

the consumer doesn't believe that.

I can tell you what the consumer has thought about,

whether it was Dodge Ram, Ram, Dodge by itself,

whatever words you wanna use, Jeep,

everything in this brand, there's problems.

My whole life, I mean, I'm being honest,

I mean, I'd love to hear people in the comments,

when did you go, Dodge was never a problem,

Ram was never a problem.

Let us know in the comments please,

let us know in the comments.

Yeah, I mean, you've owned them, you never thought that,

because you lived with them and you go,

oh, now my tail light doesn't work,

now this part of the electrical system doesn't work.

I never thought they had a huge reliability issue

in the drivetrain, that's never what anybody ever said to me.

I never experienced that, my truck has what,

265, 270,000 miles on it, I've never said that.

But when you list off three electrical components

that you introduced and it was a nightmare,

but we don't have reliability issues,

well, if the electrical components weren't a nightmare,

how'd you have a nightmare?

Even growing up where I did,

there was a very few amount of old Dodges, right?

It was always Ford GM,

unless it was like the old 24 valve Cummins,

I think is what it was that people were kind of revered,

but other than that, I mean, it had the same sentiment,

even amongst like old country bumpkin farmers,

like I don't, I rather not, if I had the choice,

I'm not gonna pick up the Dodge, that was always-

And I'm not talking about the old, old stuff,

but I think if you get, what would it be,

sub 1995, 2000, the reason is,

is because they had electrical problems

and those guys on those farms

couldn't fix the electrical problem.

As easily, maybe they could, but not as easily, right?

I love what Caniscus does.

He's now stepping into this role

of being overall of North America

and he's stepping into a bigger spotlight

and hey, bud, you're not just launching TRX anymore, right?

You're not just doing the fun stuff.

You saying this stuff as we're sitting here watching you,

you could sell all your cars

and it would take you 10 years to liquidate them

because you got so much supply

and acting as if there wasn't some reliability issue,

but we're gonna give you 10 years, 100,000 miles

to put your mind at ease,

those things just don't go together.

And actually, I think it would have been great

to hear him honestly talk through those questions,

not an attack, questions.

Well, you saw this uptick in traffic to your dealerships

when you put people's mind at ease with the warranty.

If you didn't put people's mind at ease

with a reliability issue,

why would you have offered the 10 year, 100,000 mile?

Just to get his answer back.

Like at some point, the consumer believes you have an issue.

Whether you believe it internally is pretty dangerous

if they actually believe they have no problems internally,

that'd be wild, and they might, I mean.

You're right with what we've seen.

But it's as much praise as we give the guy,

I still love what he's done.

This is the moment that you go,

you guys are talking to the wrong people,

you guys are handling this the wrong way in 2026.

You gotta get in, if you're gonna sit down,

you want a hard hitting, honest conversation

that holds you accountable to actually flush out

what's really going on with your brand,

not just a surface level, say what everybody knows,

or what the customer thinks.

I'll tell you what the customer thinks.

The customer thinks there's reliability problems in RAM.

Yeah, and you know what?

A lot of these conversations have fortunately come off

as these people like Tim or even Farley

is that they're majoring in the miners, right?

They're saying the things that don't really mean a lot,

but they sound real fluffy and sizzly,

and the consumer's not getting the nitty gritty

of what they need to make a big buying decision.

They're just not.

They're majoring in the miners

of things they're gonna see in headlines,

or they're just gonna be talked about on CNBC or whatever.

I mean, while the consumer's still like,

I don't know if I wanna buy this,

I still don't know if I should make this decision.

Yeah, I don't know if I wanna buy it

because I had three friends buy a TRX

and they couldn't turn their radio on.

They're speedometer didn't work.

The windows went down when I moved my CDT.

I mean, I had to reprogram my window switch

like 15 times in three days.

Why we've gotten to this place is because I think

a lot of people haven't seen the media landscape

truly change, especially in the bigger companies,

not just car companies, by the way,

I'm not just picking on them.

And you would think with the election,

a lot of these very powerful people would be like,

oh, that guy went on that really big podcast

with no notes and had a two and three hour conversation.

Maybe that's what we should do.

Maybe that's the actual power.

That's the ticket.

Yeah, but, and again, I'm not political,

so everybody relax in the comments.

But that's what won that election most likely,

is sitting down and having whatever you call

that conversation, if you think there were lies

or truths or whatever, but somebody sat down for hours

and somebody else didn't.

I'll take the arrows, by the way.

How did you not learn something?

How did you not learn something from that?

I'll take the arrows you wanna give Nick on this one.

I'll give me these topics.

Well, don't give them to me,

because I can tell you this.

I'll take the arrows.

I'll take the arrows, don't worry.

I don't trust any of them.

This is random, but I was at a town a couple of days ago

and I was at a gas station and sometimes you just

kind of see somebody by their car, pump a gas, whatever.

And you can just tell like,

this guy likes what he's driving.

I'm just gonna give him props or something, right?

Guy had a tremor, the ones that I like,

the, it was actually a 25,

so it was a little bit newer with a new front grille.

And the guy was wearing the same,

same color boots I had on too.

I was like, this guy's a fucking G, right?

Oh, wow.

Oh yeah.

Oh, yeah, I was like, dude.

Did he have SRT flag too?

He didn't.

Hey, relax, he was driving a Ford.

All right, maybe he has the Viper back in the garage.

You said, hey, we're gonna have to put these

at half-mast on Friday.

I'm gonna.

Next week, this thing's gonna be,

you just watch, just wait.

So I was like, sir, love the truck.

He goes, oh, thanks, man, I just picked up not long ago.

And as soon as the first sentence,

the enthusiasm that comes out,

you're like, he's gonna talk about this for a little while.

So sure enough, we talked about the truck for a while.

And the reason he had picked up a 25

was because his 23, he had left in a field

on a hunting trip for a while

and Rodin's ate all of the wiring.

Oh, that's brutal.

That's such a brutal thing.

Brutal, right?

We just dealt with that in a collection.

No way.

They had a collection that we were brought in on

and I was like, but you got a Rodin problem.

Dude, so, and I didn't know this and maybe you did,

but apparently, I don't know if this is just

a Ford specific thing, but he made it sound like it was.

So again, no shots there.

I'm not sure.

But the wiring and the insulation that Ford had used

in their newer, have used in their newer cars

and trucks specifically, he said, are made out of corn

and that's why it attracts Rodin's.

I have no, if that's true, that's crazy.

That's got, that seems like a Reddit conspiracy.

So I pulled it up.

Many new Ford trucks and other car brands

are using a soy based wiring solution derived from corn

for eco-friendly reasons.

And it goes on to, you know, there's a widespread problem

with Rodin's, you're trying to get this.

Yeah, but can we say something out loud?

Yes, let's.

Rodin's eating away electrical harnesses and stuff.

Going on forever.

Always been a problem.

Yeah, always been a problem, for sure.

Always been a problem.

Now, if, but if any, if truck guys have any excuse

to blame more of this on the environmentalists,

they're going to take it.

You know what?

I'm going to pile on it too, because it's fun.

You putting soy in my truck?

The corn, the corn for the cows.

Why are you putting it in my truck wires?

So, Neelus.

By the way, I'd never heard that.

That's a crazy story.

Neelus to say, he was like, yeah, the EC,

the whole wiring package that needed to be replaced

would have cost me over $10,000.

I believe that.

So, got a new truck.

I said, man, enjoyed.

He goes, yeah, apparently they fixed some of the issues

on the newer ones, but we'll see.

And I was like, all right, well, maybe don't leave it

in the field.

He goes, I'm not.

Yeah, that just won't be going to the field.

I got to get a beater to go to the field.

Yeah, for sure.

So, that was an interesting little tidbit.

And then you call, actually that same day,

that same night, it was a long day.

That was early in the morning and then I got home.

You call me right as I was getting back into the Austin

area, stopped for my last pit stop.

And I pulled on the gas station and you called

and we ended up being on the phone for like 45 minutes.

My trip took an extra hour and I was like,

what, are you all right?

I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm just chatting.

So, I pull up and as soon as I pull up the gas station

or the pump, another vehicle parks next to me,

this beautiful greenish metallic new escalate.

And this thing was huge, right?

And then I just look over and I'm talking to you

and I look back over and as my peripheral,

I see it dropped a significant amount.

It was jacked up and I didn't know that it had

that big of a ride system on these new escalates.

And then also as I'm leaving and we're still on the phone,

this guy in like an older Impala has the window down

and he's literally just like clapping.

He's like to the GTI, I guess,

cause that's what I was like, oh cool,

like a guy in an older Impala appreciates a little Euro car.

And I'm like, what a weird, like fucking 40 minutes

that I just, you know, experienced here on the phone.

Yeah, it's great stuff.

I mean, people thumbing up a GTI is weird.

Yeah, what now?

Hey, come on.

Excuse me, wow.

We're back to our regular time as you haven't told.

Nick's firing on all cylinders over here.

I don't know.

I don't know what's going on.

I had, I had one of these white monsters.

I normally don't drink, so I'm fired up.

Oh, okay.

The kind that make you want to go home and punch

is Theo Vaughn.

Yeah, Theo Vaughn.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

People better watch out.

Dude, yeah.

We need a noon, noon podcast only, no ADMs for Nick.

Or I guess that would be.

Well, here was crazy.

I'd been in the shop, I have a car.

I got to get out of here and I was just, you know,

just jamming out ready to go dude.

What are you jamming out to on a Friday morning?

I got to tell you, I've been on some old hip hop.

Like some real like Wu Tang, Big L.

Oh yeah, that should have been.

Nas from Elmatic.

Don't make you want to knock a wall down.

Yeah, like, you know, that just grimy,

like New York, old hip hop.

Grimy is a good way to put it.

All right.

I've been some Method Man, you know,

some old like big pun, you know, stuff like that.

Just kind of enjoying myself.

Okay. I mean, the whitest guy I know,

but he knows his music.

Or as they say, he knows.

I mean, look, I got, I got red hot chili peppers.

I got two.

I got Wu Tang, you know, so when my,

when my, when my playlist starts skipping around,

I got a good, I got a good variety.

Do you use Spotify or Apple music?

Spotify.

Okay. So do you get the roundups

at the end of the year, right?

Yeah. I, for some reason,

I just like click out of them really quick

so I can get to what I want to listen to.

Oh dude, well at the very end,

it gives it to you in a playlist, right?

I'm sure if you can go find it like.

Yeah. I'd have to go check it out.

Do you do a, what is it? DJX?

DJX.

You ever just hit the DJX on the spot?

Yeah, I did.

And then I was like, why, why does this guy

have to sound like he's from Brooklyn?

Like, can I get somebody?

And the crazy thing is probably like,

why did you just play Taylor Swift?

And I'm like, Rob, it's an algorithm.

It just picks what you like.

Listen, listen, we've been through this with the golfer.

Okay. I just want to watch golf.

It's telling me what I want to watch.

Not that I like it. I'm not telling it this again.

I'm innocent until proven guilty.

That's funny.

But if you're new to the show, everybody,

welcome to the second, third week of 2026.

This is the number one car culture related podcast

on planet earth.

We're talking about car news, trends, market predictions.

More importantly, most of all,

we offer you a good hang every single Monday.

The show is exploding. I don't know if you knew this, right?

Did you know the show is exploding yet, yet again still?

Yeah. So Rob and I have a once we, we,

I don't think people realize Rob and I do other business together.

Yeah.

So yeah, we, we, we, I've been brought up to speed.

It's cool to see, man.

Like I, I, I can't, I can't explain it.

So we just keep our head down and move.

There you go.

We're going to switch back and forth between some stories

of the week and emails. Dude. All right.

Shout out Rob here, Rob Smith.

Low miles, no miles was the subject.

Hey guys, I thought this was kind of neat

to find close to my home.

This guy's in Alabama, by the way.

Long story short, on marketplace,

an 870 mile pickup truck.

And I'm going to pull it up for you to see.

And is it the red one?

Oh, you saw it?

Come on, dog.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Just pull it up.

Don't act like I don't see stuff.

I hope this is not what you're talking about.

Just cause I hate the.

Is it a fire sign?

Hey, wow, dude.

Look at the price on this.

$50,000.

So, tell me, what do you know?

Did you dig into this?

I didn't. I was hoping you would know something about it.

Obviously you do.

This, and I, I'm not saying this for sure.

This has a little bit of a rollback feel.

Got to. It's got to.

Okay. I, I, I don't think I can,

I didn't dive that deep into it,

but I will say this, like, I think at first,

so this is the stuff that he didn't post at first.

So it may have 800 miles on it.

But at first there was only like two or three pictures.

And it looked kind of fishy.

So it looks like he's gone back and done the work

and shown you the frame and shown you the seats

and all that kind of stuff.

So I think that was the original issue with that listing.

But if it has 800 miles on it, 50 grand.

Is it worth 50 grand?

I mean, of course it's worth.

Well, first of all, what's somebody's going to pay?

Yes, we know.

Anybody out there going to pay 50 grand for that thing?

There's, hey, cue the Vince McMahon music.

No chance, no chance.

Wow. Okay.

You must have had monsters over there

because Vince McMahon right off the gate.

I stay on mine.

That's all that's in here, by the way, guys.

It's not water, it's always energy drinks.

Yeah, there we go.

Just trying to explode your heart on a Friday.

Well, you know, we got to go out some way.

So I look at these things

and I just wonder where we're at with some of them.

Not all of them.

Obviously, if this was a low mile Porsche,

we know where we're at.

Sure.

But we have these weird pockets like this exact truck

when you go, is somebody going to pay 50?

I'll tell you what, I'm going to pull this up just again,

just to solidify the story I'm about to tell real quick.

When I was hotshotting parts,

when I had two small trucks,

the Ranger being one of them and how to Sierra,

and I was hotshotting parts all around Houston,

three, 400 plus miles a day,

all the way from Galveston up to Conroe and Huntsville

and everywhere in between,

this was one of the most popular trucks to do that job.

And on top of that, you had young people, old people,

didn't matter.

It was just like a vehicle with a bed to complete a job.

And they were usually just torn to shit

by the end of the year, honestly,

because they put so many miles on it.

To see one in this condition is pretty sweet,

but I mean, again, it's just a single cab truck from O4.

Yeah, there's nothing real special about it.

No.

And this is where you get in.

I mean, didn't we have this conversation

when a dealer overpaid for a Fox body recently

and tried to sell it and had a bunch of no sales

and now that thing's kind of tainted.

Everything sounds good in a vacuum, man.

Everything sounds like it's valuable in a vacuum.

If the vacuum you're living in is,

everything low mileage from the 90s and 2000s

is extremely valuable.

I got news for you, it isn't.

Not everything is valuable.

Now, do I think this guy could get 30?

30 seems, you know, at 28 to 33,

just for the nostalgia and the low mileage,

but you're 17 grand above the high number

or where I would think, but just takes one,

you know, that's the car business.

It just takes one fool and, you know, you're good to go.

Here, let me give everybody some game.

I've mentioned it before.

I don't think I've brought up his website,

but he's in North Texas, J. Anthony, all GMT-800s.

Look, an O3 SS for 17, granted it's got 150,000 miles.

That's 17,000, 16,000, 14,000, 10,000 for an O3

with a 5.3 with only 127,000 miles.

Come on, I mean, when these things are on the market

and people are trying to do honest business,

it's really hard to justify,

although it has under a thousand miles.

I mean, let's be real.

This is the market you wanna be in right here.

This is where you wanna shop.

Yeah, so I think a $20,000 premium sounds right.

I don't think I'm that far off.

Totally, totally.

Yeah, yeah, but you know, I understand.

If you're not really in this thing

and you just hear car prices, truck prices are going crazy,

then it's easy to think the car, truck you have your hands on

is gonna go crazy as well.

It's just kind of easy.

So, and I think as the year goes on,

we'll delve more into who maybe we are as individuals

or maybe more so Nick

because he's much more of an interesting guy than I am

and he's done more, he's done more

and he's fucking obviously got 10 years on me

so we just know there's more life experience there.

But I know there's a fascination in business markets,

that kind of stuff.

When it comes to speculation,

do you ever go into the car market thinking

I'm going to speculate on a certain market of cars?

This is kind of, speculate isn't the right word

of how I have thought about things.

I will see a vehicle

and this is why I've owned so many BMWs.

I sent you a picture of my old Corvette I own.

Oh yeah, dude, how did I not bring that up already?

Hey, with the white, with the red guts.

Fall in.

I just haven't lived, so I have collections I deal with.

They largely aren't speculative.

They're buying things that they like

and some of them like stuff none of you would like

and some of them like cars you would love to own.

I have a really eccentric collection

that there's not a single car I would want to own

and I've said this to the person's favor, good friends.

So this is a running joke if you're listening.

Speculation largely just never works, right?

It has to start with if you guys are out there

and you're thinking about speculating,

you have to buy stuff you like

because what happens if you get stuck with it?

Now you're just miserable.

But what I have done in my career

and it kind of stopped right about 2020

because of the prices and things like that is,

not even low mileage,

a Tahoe that was banged up

that I could put some elbow grease

into the exterior and the interior,

get it to one of my mechanics, have him go through it.

Let's say I bought it for,

I don't just use the round number 10 grand.

I put a thousand bucks liquid into it through a mechanic

and then my elbow grease and my knowledge

of rehabbing the interior and exterior

and I felt that I could sell it for 16.

That wasn't really speculation.

It was understanding that because this vehicle looks trash,

because it looks unkept,

because it's not been gone through by a mechanic,

people are running away from them, right?

So I didn't really do, I just don't think,

and that's the way a lot of people

who are not in this business think

like the smartest people are buying cars

or like they're speculating on the 993 market.

No, they aren't.

They were, by the way,

they would have bought all of them in the year 2001

and kept them until now.

That's not how this all works.

But no, I don't look at any of this as like speculation.

There's institutional knowledge that I had

that I could see a five series BMW

that I realize everyone's scared of,

fix the thing that they're scared of,

rehab the car, get an extra 5,000, 7,000 out of it

when I put a thousand into it.

That's kind of the world that I've lived in.

It's funny, the commenters of the internet

all seem to think, a lot of them,

a big portion that collectors and these YouTubers

that we talked about in recent weeks

are all gonna start some sort of museum

and or big business play with the cars

that they're buying and collecting.

Guys, there's all kinds of information coming out

on all this stuff.

Like you don't have to take Rob's word or my word.

You have no idea how hard that would be.

Just from a paperwork perspective

to get all of that stuff accepted as a reality

and people are talking about, they buy all these cars

and then they borrow heavily against them.

You can ask McLaren how that's worked out

because that's one of their moves.

These guys aren't McLaren, they're Tim in Los Angeles.

Like they're not gonna go to Goldman Sachs and say,

hey, I have this like a 1987 Porsche

that nobody gives a shit about.

Can you lend me 20 grand?

Can I get a securities back loan

on this collection of old cars?

And again, I'm not saying it doesn't exist.

I am saying 99.9% of people are not doing that.

So funny.

It is just so funny sometimes.

You can't even get mad at this point, right?

We're well into the game doing this car content

that you just can't get mad at some of the comments.

No, no, it isn't mad.

I wish if you have questions, guys just ask.

We don't have any problem.

And if we don't know, we'll be like,

hey man, maybe follow this guy.

He kind of is more in that part of the world.

Or people ask me sometime, like I made a funny comment.

I gotta give him credit.

He goes, you must have been living under a rock

if you didn't know trucks were expensive.

I just drove back, nah, man,

I just don't care about overpriced trucks.

I'm not in that market.

He just gave me a laugh face and a thumbs up like,

oh, I get it.

It's like, yeah, man, I'm not in the market

for $125,000 pickup trucks.

So it's not the world I live in.

That phrase right there, asking the right questions.

I've, dude, I've been mulling that over

for weeks now coming into the new year

because a lot of times in cars, finance, business,

whatever, people are scared to ask the question.

So because it seems like I'm asking for help,

which is always like, especially for your dude, I get it.

But just in general, guys, girls, young, old,

asking the right questions kind of goes back

to the top of the show,

the conversations with people like Tim,

you gotta ask the right questions

in order to get answers that mean anything or worth a damn.

You know what I mean?

And it's unfortunate.

I think we're kind of helping people ask the right questions.

You know, we see it through the emails at DMs all day long.

So yeah, I just wanna put that out there.

Like, Nick's still right.

Ask the right question, ask questions in general,

but then work your way towards asking

the right questions that matter.

And matter of fact, I actually see most content creators

who get lots of, like we do,

we get lots of comments at this point.

I see a lot of big content creators in all kinds of spaces

that are not gonna answer very many comments,

but I do see them answer the questions

if they're a good question.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like they'll have a, you know, 2,000 comments

and you only see their name pop up of answering

and you go, oh, because that person,

and he's like, yeah, I'm here.

I got no problem answering that.

But if you just wanna say something crazy off the wall,

they're like, yeah, we're gonna go the next one,

the next one, the next one.

Hide from channel.

Yeah, exactly.

So that Rob's email was actually a two-parter.

Side note, my wife got rid of her Timu Range Rover.

Oh, this must have been an earlier,

maybe a couple of months ago back

that he emailed in about the Timu Range Rover.

Now it has a Bronco on another note.

The dealer that they bought it from,

Intel Scalusa said that they had a F-150 Raptor

and he was talking to the finance guy about a Raptor R.

Long story short, they said that they get them

ever so often and they mark them up 15 to 20K over.

That sounds right.

And then that's still on top of that markup,

some of the cheapest in the country.

He hasn't done the research,

but he also went on to say that they've actually sold some

to Hennessy because of that,

the price is being so reasonable compared to everybody else.

That makes sense.

I would say there are some dealerships

on these special vehicles

that have never participated in marking them up.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter what brand, too.

There's just some dealerships and dealership principles

that are like, we're not gonna charge over sticker.

I'm not saying that's widespread,

but there's a lot of dealership groups

that have taken that line of thinking.

Yeah, we know how much Nick and I both love Mustangs.

Just kidding, that's only me.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a new soon to be released

or deliver this this summer.

Dark Horse SE revealed to send us

their supercharged pony car.

I gotta call it.

I gotta call it some other dark horse.

Gotta call it a pony car.

No, we have the dark horse.

Now we have the SE, SE, which is the supercharged version.

We'll sit right below the GTD, but above the dark horse.

Isn't the dark horse already in a crazy price range?

It is and it also makes north of 500 horsepower

and the GTD, what is it, like 800 or something?

I don't know.

760, something like that.

There's just slots somewhere in the middle.

Hey, we're just like doubling and tripling down

on a platform that needs a complete redesign.

I know, which is why I brought it up.

Like what are we doing guys?

We're just gonna throw supercharger on top of it

and call it a day.

It's probably time to stop the interviews on CNBC

and go back to the drawing board on the Mustang.

God, it's such a problem.

And this is sales numbers, not Nick talking.

Yeah.

It's uninteresting.

It's looked the same for far too long.

It's time, but they're like,

nah, let's add another dark horse

that's gonna be priced too high.

You just, a man of the people speaking the truth,

saying it in plain English.

And yeah, they still don't listen.

And I just, are we all under the impression

they don't need a redesign?

No, and even when they hit this version of it,

it's just, it was so poorly done.

So what is this?

So if you add, if we look at a planning perspective

of a huge corporation, you've now built GTD,

these multiple dark horses,

you can't just up and change the design next year, right?

So is this like locking you into this design

for another what, 24, 36, 48 months?

I imagine, cause you gotta get a Shelby in there too.

Oh God, I forgot about that.

Yeah, right?

If I had to guess.

Well, they already, I mean, they don't already

have a Shelby.

And this is another great thing for your brand

when two guys are like, what do you actually have?

One who's actually still wanting to buy one

and one that can't wait to just make fun

of what's come out from that brand.

I mean, if you guys are Mustang fans out there,

you gotta tell me, it's not time for a redesign?

No, absolutely, absolutely.

I'm not even one, but I'll just pretend

to be one for the show.

Yeah, it needs a redesign, absolutely.

I mean, again, it's a pony car,

but we call it our sports car sometimes

and Corvette has gone through a complete redesign.

It's got all this buzz, it's had buzz

for years and years and years now.

We don't have really anything to rival it,

but we're just gonna stick to our guns

and it's a pony car, but it's our sports car

and it's a pony car, you don't get it.

It's a pony car, it's a sports car.

So it's like, what are we doing here?

You know, over the weekend too, over the past week.

While the sales are falling through the floor.

Historically low, historically low,

but I saw two Ranger Raptors on the road

in the last five days, which I almost never see

and I've seen one up close in a shop.

And although the fit and finish isn't the best

that YouTubers might want you to believe

when they do a review of it, they're still fucking really cool.

Like I really like the Ranger Raptor.

I don't think I've seen very many in person.

Yeah, they're really cool in person.

Boy, you want to talk about a vehicle

I have in my face constantly as Raptor.

Really, what do you mean?

Literally like everywhere, like everywhere

that I frequent, where I drive in this city,

it just seems like I can't drive from here to my house

one time without seeing a Raptor, two Raptors,

five Raptors, and Chevy and Dodge are just like,

oh, well, we don't need to, we don't need to rival that.

That's so crazy.

I mean, you got a 24 here.

CarMax got one for 51,

but you can also just get a 25 for 90.

And my God, half the price?

90. 90.

For a 25 or 51 for a 24.

That doesn't sound right.

I'm looking at it.

Wow, I think Rob's got messed up internet.

Rob got caught up in that Verizon down.

I got stuck in the Starlink universe.

Hey, the craziest part of it,

that Verizon thing was wild this week.

I don't, I don't, I wasn't familiar with it.

Tell me, I'm an AT&T guy.

People's phone just went into SOS mode all day.

Well, that's why you don't use Verizon, you know?

Can you hear me now?

No, I can.

That's why the guy left.

He went to Spine.

I've had Verizon since I was like 17.

That makes sense.

All these damn drop calls every time Nick calls me,

hey, you on the road, I am five minutes later.

Where'd he go?

Yeah, what do you have?

AT&T, I told you.

Yeah, that's.

Number one.

No, it's number one, you know.

Number one.

Oh, gotcha.

The tribalism runs deep in me

if you haven't noticed already.

Isn't self-service like basically city to city,

which one's best?

Absolutely.

Which is what a lot of people don't like to admit.

Like if you happen to live somewhere

where something else dominates that you're not a fan of,

it still dominates.

It's regional.

Yeah, yeah.

Just go back to the singular days, you know?

Dude, look at you, singular.

That's where I got my first phone.

I had one of those.

Hey, I'm still gonna say,

when you could beat people on a Nextel,

those were the days.

Did you ever have a Nextel phone?

No, but my uncles, why was that so cool?

Cause I do like walkie-talkies.

Cause it was just like a walkie-talkie

all over the country.

It was just like you could just buzz your friends.

Do you remember the app that allowed you to do that?

Did you ever use the app?

I forgot what it's called.

Somebody's yelling it in their car right now.

If you remember it.

Yeah, so I never used it

because the button on the side

and then you could like send an alert

that like if they were in a meeting and we go,

wha, wha, wha, it was like, it was great.

Absolute best.

Good times.

It was like BBM, like Blackberry Messenger.

BB what now?

Are you big on that?

BB what?

BBM.

Oh, BBM.

BBM, no.

Blackberry Messenger.

You weren't that guy?

No, I was not that guy.

I didn't know where this was going, Nick.

No, I was not a BBM guy guy.

Remember that Theo Vaughn

when he was talking about being from Nicaragua?

Where my Nicar is at.

Crystal Leo was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So good, classic.

I love when our comments understand our sense of humor

and they add to the things that we said on the show.

So on YouTube, somebody finished the Tim Dillon

on the truck driving in rant.

He's like, statistically, the more you do it,

the better you're gonna be at it.

We don't do all these things just funny.

The one, my favorite rant of all time

is Joey Diaz on ranch dressing.

That's the gold standard.

It's blue cheese with the,

it's blue cheese with the wing and the go fucking mother.

That is classic.

Absolutely.

That's great.

All right, we only talking about this also,

maybe once last year.

How familiar are you

with these dark factories going up around the world?

Dark factories.

Yeah, all right, fantastic.

Not very much.

So I'm just gonna pull it up for you.

Forgot our previous conversation.

So the first dark factory

where robots build the entire car.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yes, set to open in China.

It says or US.

I didn't know US was this, you know.

Well, you have the,

they just did a,

I think they just did like a,

the reason this is getting play is,

didn't Boston Dynamics just do something at a Hyundai plant

where it was like on 60 minutes or something?

Yeah, I read about it, but I didn't see it.

And the things like still shattering

like windshields and stuff.

Yeah, that I do remember seeing.

But is this coming?

2030 seems really soon to be saying we're making cars

beginning to end in dark factories.

Once again, I've also been hearing

about the skateboard electric vehicle

since I was in engineering school.

I've also been hearing this.

I've also been hearing that.

I've been hearing how robots

we're going to take over the earth

since Terminator two came out.

I mean, this is all what we've been hearing.

I'm sure it's going to happen,

but there are things that always get left

out of these conversations,

which is can you maybe have some robots doing some things?

By the way, think about this.

They've been robotically painting cars

at the factory for a very long time.

Paint's never been thinner.

Worse.

More dust nibs, door jams not painted.

I mean, has it really solved the problem?

I mean, it's lowered their quote unquote costs somehow,

but it's not like you guys have gotten any better product.

And just for everybody who doesn't know me,

that's the world that I'm in.

It's never been worse.

There's obviously a quality control issue

at the Cadillac Escalade plant.

Dude, you can find a hundred dust nibs

on a new Escalade when it comes in your shop.

That's probably been robotic for how long.

So it wasn't metallic flakes

that escalated us all at the gas station.

It's actually just dust.

Yeah, just dust nibs.

But this is all coming, right?

But it's all been on the horizon for 30 plus years now, right?

This has all been right around the corner.

Boston Dynamics has been around how long?

Yeah.

I mean, they've been talking about robots and doing robot.

They have to be one of the companies

that just has people bought into what could happen tomorrow,

but it's never tomorrow.

I think it's the name, does it?

Boston Dynamics?

Yeah, it makes you feel like they're real.

And I'm sure that, by the way, if you work there,

I'm sure there's a lot.

We're just having a joke.

The novelty in the name just makes you feel.

I don't need any corporate sabotage coming my way.

Okay, let's relax.

But it's all been right around the corner, right?

That's been 30 years of right around the corner.

Well, you know what else is right around the corner, Nick?

A lot of moves for Mercedes, apparently, this year.

One of your favorite brands.

They have about three big reveals this year.

Are you familiar with any of them

before I show them what they're gonna be?

If they're all electric and you put this in here,

I'm gonna be real pissed at you.

All right, two out of three is not too bad.

By the way, Jamie wouldn't do this.

Jamie would do this.

He'd do it with Geely, too.

He'd be Gleeful.

All right, look, the new S-Class facelift

set to be revealed on January 29th.

A new electric C-Class later this year

and also AMG's first dedicated EV later this year.

I cannot believe they're still releasing two

of their three big announcements as EVs in 2026.

More stars, more lights, more possessed.

What exactly does AMG do?

What would you say you do?

Yeah, when your whole thing has been engine performance,

are you gonna like tighten the screw down

on the electrical motor more than everyone else?

Like, what are you actually gonna be doing?

I have no idea.

We're gonna worry about the driving dynamics.

That'll take like 13 minutes of work.

Man, look at that Geely S-Class.

I know, that's why I said that.

That is gross.

That's, okay, that's the future, everybody.

If you're tuning in on YouTube.

Is that it?

Because what's the one at the top?

This is the S-Class.

This is the S-Class facelift.

By the way, they're doing it at a disservice

because it's gold, but I think the front looks all right.

Hmm, I think you need your eyes checked.

Well, I can't tell with this metallic, you know, gold wrap,

okay?

Kind of looks like flames if you kind of squint.

Yeah.

It's like a hot rod.

Does anybody love more than Mercedes

putting like half their emblem down the side of a car?

Nobody loves it more.

No, they're the global leaders

in putting their random emblems on the side of like,

what is going on with that?

Is that flames?

Dude, I told you, it looks like flames.

Is this like a 1930 Roadster?

What is going on here?

I just don't know how people...

I feel like such a hater right now.

This looks awful, even if it is just for an example.

140 years of innovation.

Well, you should have innovated more on this wrap.

It seems like they said,

chat GPT, can you please make our S-Class as ugly as possible?

Can you design the print file in low quality

so we can print it and nobody knows what the hell it is?

How about a weird thing?

Just gonna throw this out Mercedes.

This is free advice that should probably cost you,

would cost you a lot less than whoever told you to do this.

Do British racing green with a cognac interior

and put that out as your press car.

You're welcome, you're welcome.

Now you're really making dudes pants tight from the front.

Yes.

All right, green.

And I can tell you what it wouldn't have on the side

or the back flames.

Or little stars.

Yeah.

Or half your, half your emblem.

Well, I mean, are you excited for a new S-Class?

A new facelift?

I love, I mean, I love S-Class, but I don't know, man.

I gotta see it in a real color, I guess now, Rob,

because you made me say it's, you're like, it looks like shit.

I mean, you saw it, I saw it.

I'm going off of what I saw.

Yeah, so I gotta see it, man.

So many of these car companies have lost

our ability off a picture to go.

That's gonna look good.

Cause it seems like A,

they're either not doing any photography work

and they're just mocking it up in Adobe Photoshop.

I'm not sure.

So we don't really get to see it all that well.

But I'm always excited for an S-Class.

The other two, again, I'll ask everybody at AMG

if you could tell me what are you doing

to the electric motors that you're gonna

give all this AMG performance that nobody,

by the way, Rivian has an SUV that does 1,100 horsepower.

Like what are you gonna do at AMG?

We got a new electric motor, it's 73,000 horsepower.

So speaking of what we're just talking about,

the Boston Dynamics and these things that, you know,

people, you've been talking about the electric,

or the skateboard and all these things,

how could we forget to mention AI, right?

AI is gonna change the way we drive as well.

And nobody's more bought in on these stories

than Motor Trend.

Love Motor Trend, all right?

So again, loved it since I was a kid.

Let's just read this title real quick

so everybody can have a laugh with this as well.

Here's how automotive cockpit of the future

will use AI to entertain you.

And I love how they use this Tony Stark image,

like you're gonna be driving and creating

like the next Ironman suit while you're going to work.

That's a good call.

Look, it does look like the Terminator 2,

like why are you having to spot the cars

with squares around them in front of you?

Yeah, because it might dart out.

It's gonna predict if this person's old, drunk, sleepy,

that way you know what to do in your car.

They have to be using AI to write these articles, don't they?

Must.

I think sometimes I've seen some of the little ellipses

kind of dash marks that tell you

they just copied and pasted the whole thing.

Yeah, I'm gonna give Motor Trend the benefit of the doubt

that this is just like some aggregation formula

that you guys are using,

because this is really stupid.

So, you know, this is a driving around cars

are about to get really interesting.

If CES 2026 automotive supplier.

By the way, they've been saying that since CES 1998.

Dude, I know, right?

But check this out.

This was actually on a list from last week

that we didn't get to.

And I even took it off because I was like,

whatever, it's gonna be kind of boring.

But since I saw this story, there's a company,

ah, man, I think it's called like, whatever,

we'll just call it Haytech.

And they're the ones that are responsible

for essentially putting the maps

in the integrated navigation systems of cars.

Well, at CES, this reason is that they had this whole thing,

the spiel about how the future of navigation

that's built into the cars is gonna be like

this whole evolution.

And basically when they came down to it,

it sounded like they were describing

a really sophisticated ways, right?

And then I thought, well, GM is taking ways out.

And in my mind immediately goes to, okay,

are they working with manufacturers to make sure

that you use the integrated navigation

so that they can collect data?

Because the quote that the guy also used is,

we're basically driving around sensors.

That's just the phrase that he used.

That's what Tim Kaniska said.

And he says they had no problem with them.

Oh, good.

Imagine where the future is gonna go.

Let's go.

Yeah, look, I think we look at all of this from,

you know, 30,000 foot view, as they say.

And I go, I think any one of us is guessing

at what's really gonna be integrated into these cars.

And I don't know that many people

in the buildings of these car manufacturers

have really any idea what the next 10 or 15 years looks like.

I don't, that's my opinion.

I don't think anybody quite knows

what is gonna be put into a personal vehicle.

At this point in time, I would believe anything.

I'd also say that's never gonna happen on a bunch of stuff.

But we kind of see that there's a lot of car companies

that double and triple down on things that aren't working.

So I wonder how bad this could get.

Not just like this one particular thing we're talking about,

but for everybody that goes, that's not gonna happen.

Guys, they double and triple down on a lot of dumb stuff.

So anything's possible and nothing is possible

all at the same time.

Especially if money's...

Which is like a really weird spot to be.

I know, but especially if money's already been earmarked

for something, they gotta follow through with it.

Well, because there's a hundred jobs.

So whoever's running the finances,

they're like, we're gonna burn this money.

I mean, that's basically what Apple did

with their autonomous program.

They're like, let's just burn 10 billion.

Yeah, basically.

We don't have an entertainment corner this week,

but I mean, Hollywood Studios,

basically the company that Seinfeld was filmed on,

that they just filed bankruptcy.

There was this whole thing that was just kind of unloading

as of like this morning.

Very interesting, by the way, if you guys are into entertainment,

that model, that world is quickly collapsing

all of a sudden into 20 to 60.

Buddy, I thought we were gonna talk about

all those people being arrested for point shaving.

I don't know about this.

Yeah, like 20-some guys got arrested,

basketball players for shaving points,

I think in like the Chinese basketball league

and also in college basketball.

And I'm like, oh dude, we're at the tip of the iceberg.

Living in Las Vegas, I can tell you,

for all of you that are getting sports gambling

in your states, just recently, within the last few years,

boy, are we just at the tip of the iceberg

of how ugly this is gonna get.

Well, the only thing taken over my sports feeds

is the fact that the homebred World Series champion,

Kyle Tucker, is now a fucking Dodger.

He's gonna be the outfielder for the Dodgers, so.

I saw that.

What a bummer, Bregman's going to the Cubs,

so they just kind of hopped teams here.

This is crazy.

What are you gonna do?

I agree, man.

Money speaks, money talks.

The sports world is in one of these weird gambling things

that I don't think they have any idea, like how,

I mean, look, you got the NBA caught up in stuff.

I can't imagine what goes on in the NFL

that hasn't been uncovered, major league baseball.

They've caught pitchers betting on themselves

on first pitch balls and they're, you know.

Wasn't that Glasse?

Wasn't that a Reds guy?

Wasn't that one of your guys?

Hey, watch yourself.

Whoa, what's that?

I don't know if it, look, I don't know.

I thought it was a Cleveland Indian.

Oh, it was, I always get the Cleveland and sorry.

Cleveland Guardians.

Guardians.

Excuse me, excuse me.

Whoa, do I need to bleep that out?

Hey, blue band, take that out, blue band,

take that out of the show.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

We've got another email here from Dallas.

Wanted to give you guys a shout out.

Awesome job and what you've been doing.

Not much of a car guy,

but I was preparing to buy my next ride,

found your page on a random Instagram reel

and thought to myself, let me check out the show.

Fantastic.

That's how most people discover us.

It's through the hundreds of videos

that we put out every single month.

I've listened to two months,

I started listening two months ago

and I finally caught all the way up to the newest release.

It's like a TV show that you've been binging

and now it's come to an end.

Fortunately, I know there's more episodes to come.

Thanks for the insight and analysis.

Looking forward to more in 2026.

P.S. Nick, what up with the Buckeyes

hitting the transfer portal just one year removed

from the Natty?

Wow, this guy really wants to come at the home Buckeyes.

He does, he needs something.

I think it's just the nature of college football now,

don't you?

I mean, it's all, how much money can I make?

It's, can I make more now than in the league

if I even make it to the league?

Yeah, and look, we've had some assistance leave

that were really close to a lot of these kids

that have gone and taken coaching jobs other places.

I think the state of college football and college basketball

and college sports as a whole is in a kind of a sad place.

I'm fine with everybody getting paid.

So that's not what I'm remarking on.

But I think there should be some kind of contract

associated with the money that you take.

Sounds pretty basic to me.

But I think until you do collective bargaining agreements

and unionize, you can't really do that.

I think it's just a complete mess.

I think it's not good for kids long-term.

I think we can now say college football and basketball,

especially, we've all known this for a long time,

but it's definitely not about kids getting an education

and 99% of them aren't going pro.

So I don't know how most,

I would say what I would do with money at 18 years old,

what you would have probably done,

what the majority of people would have done with money.

If we think this is going to last them for a lifetime,

I think we're kind of kidding ourselves.

I'm sure some people will be smart,

but I know I wouldn't have been.

I would have probably blown through that money pretty quick.

So I don't know, man.

The Buckeye program is like any other program right now.

If coaches leave and they take kids with them,

and I think that's what we're kind of going through.

If you guys have ever seen the videos

of what wrestling locker rooms were like in the 80s

with Ultimate Warrior and such,

that's what most people would have done

with that amount of money at any time.

No question, no question.

Look, I think we all have to be honest.

Like I want them to be cut in on the money

because the money's so big now

and these rich guys took advantage for so long.

Cool, man.

But when there's no rules and it's pandemonium,

I don't see how that helps anybody.

Yeah, it's wild, wild times.

We've got one more email here from Luke.

Just wanted to say, first of all, happy new years.

I got two notices from Toyota.

One recall safety related issue frozen backup camera

and one limited service campaign.

Sounds like a recall for a potential corrosion issue

on the vehicle's hybrid battery cable.

Essentially a wire harness that needs to be replaced

or added.

Huge Toyota fan, but I understand

that every manufacturer has issues.

I say this because you all have been really good

about saying the truth about these things.

My buddy, the student, I'd be pissed.

It's a three-year-old Toyota, emphasis on Toyota.

Just figure it's part of the deal.

Thanks for the podcast.

So again, new, old, any manufacturer,

you're gonna get recalls, sometimes multiple recalls

on the car, it just happens.

Yeah, and there's, you know, we had some people

make some comments about Toyota hides recalls

through service bulletins.

Yeah, as I said that.

It's very, very normal for a single car, single SUV,

single truck to have dozens of service bulletins

across all manufacturers.

Recalls get to a serious point.

That's why they're a recall.

Okay, usually something safety related,

meaning the engine can blow up and, you know,

all that, that's all considered kind of

in the safety realm of owning the car.

But there's a lot of people that just say,

well, this company does this

and the reason Ford has recalls is they do it right

and, you know, Toyota does more service bulletins,

Ford does service bulletins too.

Like all of this stuff is one of these things

where when you don't understand how this stuff works,

you think something bad is happening.

And that's not always, they're working in the confines

of how this has all been regulated.

I'm not saying there isn't funny business in the car world.

I'm saying when it comes to recalls and service bulletins,

it's pretty cut and dry.

And we've even having people say,

I don't know why Toyota or these, you know,

company like Toyota would issue a recall

in the engines that are grenade themselves.

It's such a small amount because buddy,

it isn't as small of a amount as you think.

Now it doesn't mean it's 50% of them,

but if you get to 2%, 2.5%,

you're talking about a lot of vehicles.

Things have gotten to the point

where they're so untrustworthy that it's funny

how many people just go to immediately

like nefarious actions are taking place, you know,

in every industry.

Oh, they're hiding their recalls.

It's like they can't legally,

they're not gonna risk coming under the ire

of these huge governments around the world

by hiding in a service bulletin,

which is by the way, public as well.

So it would be hiding in plain sight

to have themselves become and investigated

for doing something wrong.

It's all public knowledge.

All right, we're gonna take a shift here

as we wind down the show and land the plane.

I got two more for you.

Can't wait to get your thought on these.

Rolls Royce, their second EV

will follow the Cullinan's formula.

Are you familiar with this?

Do you see how it looks?

Oh, it's camp.

I can hardly see it.

It's got camo on it.

In the snow too.

I love it when they do that.

Yeah.

It's like if Mark Wahlberg was driving this in Sniper,

this was his Sniper car.

That's a good movie.

I love that movie.

All right.

Okay, so it's an EV Cullinan.

Great.

Also five spokes, best.

They're the best.

Yeah, they look good.

Yeah.

Even though I took a camo.

Okay.

I mean, none of you are excited by this.

No, nobody.

I mean, this does not excite a single human being,

including the people that might buy one.

Yeah.

They might not even.

By the way, as we saw with electric G-wagon,

that none of this excites anybody.

Now I can't wait for the content around this thing

because some media guy or 10 of them

are going to be flown to some location

and they're going to be like,

you won't believe what Rolls Royce did,

what they stuck an electric motor on the Cullinan.

Dual motor.

What do you mean?

Dual motor, 500 plus horsepower, dual motor.

Terrific.

I mean, okay.

I just don't know how these are announcements anymore.

I'm sorry.

I think that's where I fall out.

I just don't see how this is an announcement.

Either there's too many announcements

or there's too many things that aren't really worth

announcing that they have to make into announcements.

Like I said, we have a saying on this show.

That could have been an internal memo.

Yeah, and talk less, speak less.

And talk less.

Unless you're being entertaining, you know,

like we try to be.

One more for you here.

What was the worst selling and looking SUV

in the history of any manufacturer?

Last three years, I'll say the last three years.

Think consumer grade.

Think subcompact.

The Dodge Hornet.

Oh dude, dude, Nick, he just knows ball.

Officially canceled, discontinued,

the Italian Dodge built Hornet SUV is dead.

Due to Trump's tariffs.

By the way, one year ago,

one year ago, right almost this exact time,

I was at Barrett Jackson Scottsdale

and they had a Dodge Hornet test drive.

And they had the shit everywhere,

like, you know, all kinds of media around the event.

Come test drive the Hornet.

Couldn't have been a worst crowd or worst idea to do.

Car and driver, you've done this before.

I've screenshotted old headlines that you changed.

Please be one of the ones you changed.

That's a stupid headline.

Let's be real here.

But yeah.

Yeah, that was canceled because it was terrible.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, beyond terrible for being honest here.

So it was the most affordable vehicle, by the way.

In 2025, starting at only 31.9,

and yet nobody bought it still.

And probably could have walked out the door at 15.9

and nobody wanted them.

It's cheaper than a Nissan Versa.

Jeez.

What a statement and what a fact

that that probably, you know, would have been the case.

But hey, I got to say, I think you had a good episode today.

I think you were on it.

I, why not?

You know what?

I'm going to take the car.

This is what I'm working on in 2026.

Hey, thanks.

Hey, thanks so much.

Thank you.

Hey, thank you.

I'm going to work on that.

Let's take a couple minutes.

It's funny.

Nick's got a lot of stuff coming up with the LX

that's finally going up on YouTube.

So if you're listening to this on a Monday,

keep track of the Hyper Clean Store YouTube channel

because there's going to be a lot of LX content going up

there.

The new shop that we've been talking about is, I mean,

partially or not partially, almost partially.

It's partially.

I got to get, I got to start like getting it cleaned up.

It's, it's been a, I just had a rush of cars, man.

So I got to spend a good week like getting this thing where

I want it.

OK, so we're going to have some LX content.

I have had some DMs.

Does Nick actually drive his M3?

Very rarely.

Will Nick ever sell his M3?

Yes.

Really?

If somebody, if somebody I'm prepared, I'm not looking.

I'm not going to put it out like on cars and bids or

marketplace sale.

Somebody out there that listens to us would like to buy my M3.

The answer is absolutely yes.

I would sell it.

Quickly years and miles just so they know.

Yeah, 2008 six speed manual, 44,000 miles, I believe.

Didn't you buy it with 43?

I bought it with 39.

Wow.

So there you go.

And how many years ago is that?

Probably close to like three now.

Wow.

All right.

Yeah.

Very well taken care of, as you can tell, obviously.

What else?

Was there anything else?

Oh, but before we go, who's going to win the Super Bowl?

Did you watch Texan Steelers?

We already did Sports Corner, but I got to ask.

You don't think the Texans are going to win?

Absolutely.

It's going to be Rams Texans.

Yeah.

Tribalism runs deep.

What the hell do you want me to say?

You know, I don't follow the NFL that much.

I didn't realize you were allowed to carry your quarterback

into the end zone now.

I didn't realize that was a play.

Like the play call is, my running back carries me

into the end zone.

I didn't realize it was so rampant.

Did you see the running back carry Josh Allen

like 11 yards last week?

Is it any worse than the tush push?

Well, that's what it is.

But I cannot believe they haven't banned this play.

Why?

This is, it's so stupid.

It's just a stupid play.

But I think I'm going to go with rooting interest.

I'd like to see Josh Allen get a title.

I wouldn't be mad at that.

I've been following that guy, even though I don't watch

every game, the whole season.

Yeah, I mean, I hardly watch him.

Yeah, that guy's, I've seen some just outside of football stuff.

Seems like a really cool guy.

I've seen him play.

I'm going to be rooting for Josh Allen.

I'd say that's my lean.

Yeah.

Can we stop jumping through tables, though?

Can we stop slipping off of cars and falling on the ground?

Big fan of foolishness.

So no, I don't want that to stop.

Fair enough, actually.

That's a very good way to end the show.

I just want to, I just, I mean, come on.

If everybody knows me, I love foolishness.

There's a video of a person who fell four times off of an SUV,

off of like a Lexus height SUV, trying to jump onto a chair

because it kept slipping on the icy roof.

It just hitting ground, floor, floor.

They climbed on their widow ladder and fell four times

on the ground before hitting their head on the table.

Oh, that's fantastic.

I got to see that video.

I'll find it.

Send that to me.

All right, everybody.

If you want to send an email, KLEPSCULTURE Podcast at gmail.com.

We love to make you guys a part of the show,

and we'll see everybody next week.

Yep.

See you guys.

#62 - Interesting Words From Dodge CEO, Another New Dark Horse, New Mercedes Models, Listener Emails & More

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