#67 - Less Mods Is The New Norm? Hummer vs 5 super cars, V8 Cherokee, Baby G-Wagon, & Much More

That's a great way to start, actually.

I wanted to bring up, we had the longest comment,

which I know you know what you're not talking about,

about full self-driving, the RoboTaxi network,

the whole thing, but you said you had something interesting,

so I want you to go first.

So I want, for anybody that's never driven

behind or realized they were driving behind somebody

who was in full self-driving mode.

So one of the things I noticed in my neighborhood,

have a lot of neighbors that own vehicles

that have full self-driving in the neighborhood I live in.

So we all have that thing in our neighborhood,

that area where you're, maybe there's a stop sign

and you go, everybody slowly runs it,

because you know nothing's coming

because it's just in a place that nothing happens

in your neighborhood.

Right.

So one of the things is I got two guys

that get home about the same time that I do.

So sometimes I'll see them a few,

I mean, it's almost like clockwork.

You know those people you see in your neighborhood all the time.

One of the most annoying things about full self-driving is

they pull up to this part of our neighborhood

that nobody ever, they give you the old California roll

through the stop sign.

Full self-driving comes to complete stop,

sits there for two, three, four seconds,

and then makes the turn.

Boy, you want to talk about making people hot.

Like, I just, if these guys lived near me, they don't.

If I knew them, I'd say, hey bud,

when you turn into the neighborhood,

you got to turn it off.

You got to, we all have,

somebody right now is listening to this

and they're realizing they have these places

in their neighborhood where everybody just casually,

if you have stop signs in your neighborhood,

it's just a stop sign that, you know,

you kind of slow down, you look around,

but you kind of roll through it.

And but with full self-driving involved,

the cars stop, sit there,

and I've seen people honk, like, what are you doing?

But I know what's going on

is that that guy has full self-drive, dude,

you should see, and it does aggravate you.

Oh yeah, because it's more of a suggestion

if you know where you are in the neighborhood,

you know what I mean?

Like, especially if you're at, like, it's a three-way,

because there's nobody one direction,

so you really, there's like,

you're only looking over here and if there's no,

you know what, just kind of roll on through.

That's the kind of thing

where somebody might want to get out of their car

and say, I'm going to pull you

and your self-driving robot out of the car.

So I have another question for you.

I've never even asked this on a podcast.

I'd be interested for everybody in the comments.

Let's say you're up fairly early

or you come home, like, extremely late.

Are you the guy that runs the red light?

I'm not going to lie to you, I can't do it.

You can't do it?

I can't do it.

Wow, it's that pocket constitution.

It is, absolutely.

Dude, that's so funny.

I got DMs about that for a week,

but it really is, I can't do it.

And I'm not even trying to put you on the spot.

Yeah, I do it.

I'm sure you do. 100%.

Like, it's a limited time, right?

Like, you're probably thinking 3 a.m. to 5 a.m.

if you have to leave the house early.

It's not like you're doing it like 6.30 necessarily

where I live where traffic kind of picks up.

I want everybody to make sure

this doesn't get misunderstood.

I'm not running red lights at 10.30 in the morning.

Right.

We're talking about these, like, really late.

You know, let's just say you work a night,

you know, a second shift or a night shift

and you get off at 1.30 in the morning somehow

and you're sitting at one of these long lights

and you go, man, nobody's coming.

Like, I know this neighborhood better

than the light knows the neighborhood.

I'm going.

Famous last word.

Speaking of two, man.

So just this morning, I told them before we hopped on,

was that a body shop?

I'm talking about some projects on the Raptor

and, you know, back to your neighborhood example.

Are you ever on a stretcher road

where you know that somebody just likes to lurk?

And we all know who we're talking about.

Just ready to just write somebody a ticket,

pull them over even if they just give you a warning.

But they're just there.

And on this particular stretch, there's at least two.

At least two.

And this morning was no different, dude.

As I exit, there's one and I'm like, oh, that means

it's for sure going to be another one down to stretch.

So when that happens, now tell me if you do this,

do you ever just say, I'm not going to risk it

because sometimes you'll forget you're putting, you know,

put your foot into the gas.

I'm going to put this bitch on cruise control.

That's what I started to do in these stretches

where I know.

Yeah, I would say I've done that before,

but you know, you're going through a massive change

right now. We need to tell everybody,

you're driving a big boy vehicle now.

Yeah, it's true.

You're driving a big boy vehicle now.

It's got a V8.

Yep.

Let me tell you, your gas bill has gone up significantly.

Sure has.

The receipts are already piling up like this.

Yeah, look, you're in adulthood now.

I know, that's good.

You're in adulthood.

You're not driving a little, you know, mini vehicle

that has 12 gallons.

12 and a half.

Yeah, you know, so I got to imagine.

But yeah, we have a really, really like sinister one.

And I have a very, I want to say this,

support all law enforcement.

Absolutely.

Okay.

I think if you're law enforcement that gives tickets,

not my vibe.

Yeah.

That's the vibe guys.

That's not our vibe.

Yeah, it's not a vibe guy.

No.

We got a place.

So to get to my house, you got to come around a mountain.

And then there's another spot where there's a lot of greenery.

And we have motorcycle cops.

Not every place out there has motorcycle cops, but we do.

The motorcycle cop will bury himself where it's literally

impossible for you to see him.

Now, I think that's dirty.

I agree.

I would look into those cops for stealing money

if I was in the department.

Like if I was in, what do they call it?

Internal investigations.

I'd be like, hey, I heard John sits behind a bush to give tickets.

I'd be like, we're going to look into his personal finances.

I 100% agree.

I'll do, I'll match that because, although I don't have a mountain

going to my house the way Nick just kind of slides that in there.

I will go through the Texas Hill Country often

and there's a lot of high shrubbery that kind of looks like,

hey, you know, tall, tall grass.

And not only the motorcycle cops will do this,

but the full blown F-150s will just pull off

and then be buried in the grass.

Well, you have a whole different thing in Texas.

One of the wildest things for me in Texas,

and I've spent a lot of time in Texas,

love all of our Texans out there.

The amount of different police officers

is one of the most bizarre things to see in person.

And by the way, I've been to countries

where police officers drive Porsches,

which is kind of weird to see, right?

But nothing is as weird as these guys drive this car.

These guys drive this truck.

These guys have this SUV.

These guys are on a motorcycle, all different lines of cops.

So where I grew up, and it's kind of like here in Vegas,

you have the Metro police and then you have highway patrol.

Seems pretty basic to me.

Hey, these guys take care of the highway.

The Metro takes care of all the riffraff,

you know, on the side streets.

Seems simple.

I don't know what system is going on in Texas,

and I don't know who's responsible for what.

I remember asking somebody,

maybe it was even you when I was there,

who has the jurisdiction to pull me over?

And there's really no answer.

It's everyone.

The answer is always everyone.

Might be a constable, might be a local sheriff,

might be a Texas DPS, it could be all of them.

It's the wildest experience

from a police officer perspective in Texas

because I go, who are all these people?

What would you say you do when he pulls you over?

And he's like, actually, I do it all.

It doesn't matter what they do.

Yeah, I'd be like, hey, what do you do?

Are you like FBI?

Are you, what is these words?

What do the words mean on the side?

Because I don't know what you're responsible for.

And I'm not sure they could explain it to you.

No, as a matter of fact,

I saw a video of a cop pulling a kid over on a dirt bike

just literally this morning.

And the kid was like, I got a ditch permit.

And the cop was like,

you can see the look in his face is like, what?

So he was a really nice, the cop was really nice guy,

but at the end of the exchange, the cop was like,

can you explain to me this ditch permit thing?

He's like, cause I really don't know.

He goes, you're free to go now,

but if you don't mind answering this question for me.

And I was like, that's a cool vibe guy right there.

Yeah, yeah.

And so just so everybody doesn't get all offended here,

two of my family members,

one's a retired police officer,

that one's a current police officer, nothing but love.

There's some things that are out of control.

Oh yeah, some of our best friends are in that line of work

and they'll roast themselves more than I could ever roast them.

Well, and if you've ever,

I think one of the most fun thing is to talk

to a funny police officer.

Because the way they talk about things

is like it's out of control.

And by the way, you guys don't know 10% of it.

And so we launched this big like hub of drones here.

And they're like bringing kids out to this substation

where these drones are and like people are clapping.

Wait, say that again, what are they doing?

So we launched a drone program in Vegas.

And look, if you're somebody that knows the details,

understand, I'm real macro on this, okay?

I don't know how everything works.

But they have a drone substation

where these drones come and dock on the top of the substation.

And it's noticeable, they're huge docks

because to keep these things charged

that go all over the city.

And so like kids and parents are visiting it

because it, I mean, it looks like an alien substation

compared to what a normal substation looks like, right?

And these drones take off.

And so the whole idea, let's be clear as surveillance.

I was gonna say, do they tell Timmy,

this is gonna be a personal surveillance robot right here?

But that's not the way it's being sold.

It's like, what'll happen is we'll hear of a crime

and the drone can get there faster than the police officers

to give them the lay of the land.

I'm sure that's all they're gonna use them for.

As we've seen in a multitude of how these things

are never used in a different manner than they're proposed.

That never happens anywhere in the world.

But yeah, it's like a big thing now.

But they're like, there's videos of kids like,

because look man, it's bright lights

and all this kind of stuff going on.

But yeah, we've launched like a full scale drone program here.

Well, because if you know the bases here

are all massive in the drone program, right?

So I gotta imagine it was like,

hey, we have a few extra drones.

Would you guys like to purchase them at a discount

so we can get a little money back to the military?

That's sort of a thing that's been going through my mind is,

I think they probably got access to some drones

right from the base here.

You know what's probably also being tested

on that base in Vegas or anywhere somewhere in Nevada

is there's this technology

where they essentially created the Terminator technology.

You see this robot that goes through bars

and then like reconnects on the other side of it?

Why not?

But did you really see this video?

I gotta send it to you.

It is insane.

We have created the T whatever it is, T-800 or whatever.

Yeah, that knows the T-2000, wasn't it?

Terminator 2.

Not the B-3000, which I have a funny photo to show you

that I listened to and sent it in a second, but they made it.

Legitimately, it can dissolve and break itself,

come back together and keep moving.

So for everybody that doesn't know,

one of the weird things,

I'm sure there's bases all over the country like this,

but it's definitely a very big area known for this

where people drive to a parking lot

and then they get on a flight every day

that is completely blacked out

and they don't know where they're being flown to.

It's like people have those jobs here.

And I'm sure they have them in areas

where you guys live as well,

but yeah, I can only imagine what we don't know about them.

And we did have a former president,

basically tell everybody that aliens were real.

So I'm up for anything at this point.

It's like, let's just get weird.

I mean, we're already down the road.

Let's just get weird.

Could we get weird or faster

because there's too much confusion, you know,

that's just go, what do we know now?

We can't buddy, we're at peak weird.

I mean, if it gets any weirder, the world's gonna blow up.

So, you know, we just gotta have fun,

talk about some cars, talk about, you know,

the things we know about,

talk about your Raptor

and how you got some big boy gas bills,

you know, for the first time in your life.

And here we go.

Yeah, it's been since 2010

that I had a crew caveat, you know, truck.

I will say real quick back to the social thing

before we get onto some car talk.

I've known a couple of people here recently telling me

that they have in an effort

to re completely calibrate their social algorithms,

they have started new accounts.

Like they still have their old accounts

but they went ahead and just signed up

for a whole new Instagram specifically

because that algorithm is pretty aggressive there.

Once you see one thing, you get flooded with that.

They're like, dude, I just want outdoorsy stuff in cars.

And the other guy was like, I just want outdoorsy stuff.

And the other guy was like,

I just literally want to see barn dominiums

and trades kind of stuff.

So they all just started new accounts

and they're like, so far so good.

I'm like, well, don't click on any,

don't get, if it serves you up suggestion,

don't click on it if you don't like it.

Yeah, not a bad idea.

I know, right?

But I will say this,

I'm pretty happy consistently with my algorithms.

So I think some people need to learn some discipline

on the internet.

Heard that at a time or two?

And by the way, I've gotten out of control.

Don't get me wrong, I've gotten into some places

that I didn't want to get to.

Okay, I'm not perfect, but I stay pretty locked.

I stay pretty locked.

But I am also cognizant of it.

It's like, they show me something I don't want to see.

I can't like swipe it fast enough, you know what I mean?

Like, so I do stay cognizant.

And when I slip, I see where you can go.

See where it can go.

The funniest part is when you go to the comments

of those videos and the first one you see is like,

how did I end up in this corner of the internet?

You're like, dude, same here.

Yeah, but if you leave that comment,

you're going to be in that corner for like six months.

So you can't like, one of the best things

about the internet, the comment sections

of some of these videos make me laugh so hard

because people leave the funniest comments.

And it could be about something I don't even really care about,

but I read the comments and dude,

I lived legitimately belly laugh.

Like, I'm just like, this dude right here has talent.

How did he come up with it?

I don't know if he put this into some AI comment thing.

I don't even care.

That's a funny comment.

I'm just glad I read it.

Yeah, dude, so I do try to stay on,

for everybody who wants to know my algorithm,

it's funny and cars.

Yeah.

That's where I want to stick.

Like, it's not comedians necessarily

because I find you and I've been talking about this

and then we'll get to some car talk.

Maybe comedians have been on podcast long enough.

Maybe we've heard enough

because they're losing funny a little bit.

Yeah.

And I'm talking about big names.

I'm not talking about the obscure guys.

Like I'm just going, eh, maybe we could take a break.

Yeah, I could jump on that.

Yeah, maybe, maybe go on summer vacation.

You know, let's treat this like school.

You know, let's, let's, let's take a break somewhere.

So, you know, nine months, take three months off or whatever.

It's something.

It's not bad.

Some of these guys have been at it for a minute.

Oof.

Dude, it's crazy to think about like early 2000s

we're talking here.

I mean, think about how long Bill Burr's been at it.

Yeah.

Joe Rogan.

Those guys were doing podcasts

when they were like recording on a phone.

Nuts.

You know, congratulations to them.

It's all worked out, but maybe, maybe we've heard enough.

Let's take a little break.

Settle down.

We'll pick up the flag from here.

We'll take over.

No worries.

We're back.

All right.

Speaking of, you said B, we were talking about the robots here.

I got a couple of emails, which by the way,

is a great time to mention that our email is

clutchculturepodcast at gmail.com.

So to a citizen's park, whoever Nick replied to,

that it was not clutchculturepod at gmail.com.

I took the screenshot.

I kept my receipts.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

If Nick, you've changed, you've changed since the start.

Here it is.

I said it once on the podcast, and for two weeks,

Nick did not let it go.

Then I said the wrong email on the show.

You think you're the American badass

and not the undertaker?

I get it.

I am the American badass.

You've made a change.

He wrote around his motorcycle with a pocket

constitution in the back of his other pants.

I am the American badass.

Hell yeah.

Oh, good times.

Attitude error for the win.

All right, check it out.

So I did an email from Ben.

I'm going to pull up this picture.

He said, so I was listening to the podcast where you guys

were talking about the B-Series when this literally

pulls up in traffic next to me.

You are not going to believe what pulls up next to him.

Find the window.

Pull it up.

Check this out.

Jamie would have done this quicker.

I have too many things going on.

Oh, like we said, there's not many left in good shape,

and this one doesn't have a passenger door, folks.

That is so funny, and the guy you can see,

I don't know if he's looking over at Ben,

but this is the funniest thing.

This matches the Costco video we got from Missouri Adventures.

This is, this might go down as picture of 2026.

So all I can say is only in Tennessee, he added, wow.

That's incredible.

Would you drive that if that was your truck

and it didn't have the door?

No.

Come on.

You wouldn't drive it either.

You just bought the lowest mileage Raptor Gen 1 you could find,

so don't give me this.

You would drive this around.

I'd take the other door off, and I'd have it matching,

and then I'd drive it for sure.

You'd just be like, I'm turning this baby into a Jeep.

Yeah, yeah, brother.

And then I'd cut the bed.

I saw somebody cutting the bed off of a two-door Tacoma.

And in my mind, how about this?

What do you think of shortening beds in certain vehicles?

For the looks specifically, I guess.

Man, I think if this comes back to this thing that I've,

I was just telling my business partner who Marty, you know,

sort of my thing with everyone's

allowed to do what they want with their vehicle.

Like, that's how you and I feel about the world.

Cheers.

Do whatever you want.

What are the odds that's going to look as good as you

think it's going to look?

In your mind, it's always great.

And even in a rendering, it looks awesome.

And then you do it, and you're like, god damn it.

I didn't account for the reality.

By the way, one of the things that's coming back with the cars

that we love, and I'm guessing most of our audience loves,

that 1990 to 2010 type of run.

OEM, with no nothing being done, is becoming a thing,

I think, that's going to be very sought after in a way

that people are probably going to misunderstand me.

I think people are done even modifying their own stuff

a lot of times.

I don't think that's going to be the new norm.

But I'm hearing a lot more chatter of, hey,

you know what I really enjoy is I got this one car.

I got some of these car guys I'm talking about that are on YouTube

and other places that are talking publicly now, which is awesome.

They're like, I have seven cars, and six of them are modified.

I drive the unmodified car most of the time,

because I actually like that better.

And I'm wondering if I should take these back to stock.

That was not a conversation amongst most of these guys

for what, 30 years?

Mm-hmm.

Feels like 30 years.

This is actually a great topic, dude.

I actually had this in my notes to bring it up to you,

because as I've talked to some of the people about the Raptor,

there are guys that own shops and have been in the business

for a while.

So unless they're doing something specific that

is like for the track, which are some guys that do track specific stuff,

they're not touching their other cars to make them match up

to the track cars, which is not normal.

Yeah.

Like so most shop owners that I know,

they modified everything they've ever owned.

Yeah.

From their daily to their wife's daily, everything.

Just recently, we have heard more people talking.

You talk to more people privately.

You go, hey, is that your new vehicle out there?

What are you going to do to it?

They're like, not doing anything.

I got this and this and this already modified.

Because the one thing we've never said about modifications

out loud is that most of them don't go well.

Yeah, they suck.

Now, the proof of this for all of you people

that are yelling into your stereo, your earbuds right now.

There's a reason why all of these auctions

tell you to put your car back to stock.

Because the vast majority of people

don't like the modifications that you made.

If you made such great modifications

and you said, I did everything top tier seemingly by your logic

that your car would sell for more almost never happens.

Yeah.

Now, the only thing we're seeing in the market right now,

we haven't talked about this, where

this is a little bit of a different time.

I mean, this is unbelievable that this is happening,

is Resto mods never sold for more money.

Resto mods, almost everybody lost money on them.

But you're seeing those 60s and 70s cars that now have

Resto mods done going for big money.

That did not, I mean, that was almost never the case.

It was always frowned upon.

And so somebody asked me recently who's in that market.

He's like, what do you think is happening?

And I said, people are getting older and they want AC.

They want a car that actually has brakes that aren't.

This has been my whole argument against the 60 and 70 muscle

car.

If you're just a innocent bystander,

those cars were never great.

Right.

OK.

They were never great.

Chassis wasn't all that great.

Engine wasn't all that great.

Suspension wasn't all that great.

The braking system wasn't great.

If you liked them, you liked them

because you were nostalgic about that car or whatever,

or you were raised around them.

But just independently, they were never great.

And now it is one of the few places in the car world that's

ever happened where the actual full Resto mods have kind of

caught fire here.

And we saw it at Barrett Jackson and, you know,

car week down in Scottsdale, too.

I mean, it is happening.

I'm trying to find this company who they, is it Revol,

I think it's Revol, are you familiar with Revology by chance?

Yeah.

I like the stuff they do.

Do great stuff.

And there's a couple of their cars that have been going around

the press pool.

And there's what is it?

I think the Boss 429.

I'm trying to find it.

I mean, you're talking three, four hundred thousand,

I think, for these machines.

Yeah.

And the reason that people are buying them

is because they realize the way it was was not good.

And you also have an aging population that says,

hey, I want to kind of take this on a trip.

I want to have AC.

I want to have Bluetooth.

I want to have the creature comforts, right?

But this is a new thing for this era of car for rest of mods

to be this accepted.

I think this will be short-lived, by the way,

because the population that's into these and buying these

are of a certain age.

And when you get to a certain age, certain things happen.

But I think it's cool that they're doing it.

But this is why, for everybody to ask me why I've never

been in the muscle cars, is just the era I grew up in

is not this era, so I'd be number one.

But number two, they just weren't great cars, right?

They just compared to what we have access to from the 90s

to 2010, it's night and day.

I mean, I just got used to a different experience.

If I would have grown up around these cars,

grown up around in this era, I would have loved all of them.

That's how we all are.

But I just think independently, I've always said,

I've driven them, and OK.

I mean, it's not that great.

I stopped the screen share just as I got to the bottom

of the page where the price was.

It is $395,000 for that $429,000.

And you haven't made any changes.

You haven't made any upgrades.

You haven't picked something that maybe you won in the car

they don't have.

Now, I'm not saying that they offer that,

but if they do, your price is going to go up.

So by the way, that's not tax title and everything else.

Yeah, I know, right?

Transportation, the whole thing.

That's a $450,000 day.

So talking about the times where he did grow up,

what was the thing then that when you drove it,

you were kind of wowed by the experience,

whether it was handling, comfort?

I mean, that's kind of why I always went to BMW.

It was just the thing that resonated with me

as this is different than everything else I have driven.

I had a really random experience when I was 16

and barely got my license.

And I worked for a wholesaler of cars.

He let me drive a Jaguar XJ convertible.

I thought it was the great.

I didn't even know they could build a better car

than when I was 16 years old.

I was like, man, this thing's unbelievable.

But I think that's why I've always,

that's why people get into Porsche, right?

Because you kind of get into them and you're like,

this is unlike anything I've really experienced.

So I think whatever cars that was for,

I mean, like you're a VW guy, you know,

VW to you felt like I bet something

that you hadn't experienced until you got into a VW, right?

And I think that's how we all see that.

I mean, there's truck guys and they get into a certain truck

and they go, this feels different

than every other truck I've been in.

I think that's what gets us into something

is sort of like when you got into this thing

in your life that you just go,

whoa, this is different than everything else.

What's funny though is when you bring somebody else along

for that experience, for example,

if you ran the gamut,

if you grew up in the late 90s, early 2000s and whatnot,

and then you've gotten to the Cavaliers and the Neons

or even the top tier ones, like I had SRT4s or Focuses

and then into the STs and all those other subcompact,

kind of small cars in the domestic market

and then you get an Audi or BMW or a Volkswagen

and you feel the refinement, you see it,

you sense it, you touch it

and then you bring somebody along with it to experience it

and they're not wowed by it.

They rather have the roughness of the other.

I'm like, okay, it's just kind of ingrained in you

to either think this is a good feeling,

like there's no way you get into a car that has

adaptive dampers or a suspension

or not think that it's a better ride,

but some people will swear that it just doesn't feel as good,

like that's impossible.

What are you talking about?

Well, and that's what you see a lot with people

that are into the Euro stuff

and then they have some buddies that are into JDM

and they go get into JDM cars and things are rattling

and door panels are rattling and things like,

but the JDM guys, that's what they're into.

And so they get into your car and they're like,

well, this doesn't even feel like an experience.

I mean, it's just a unique thing.

I think that's what always has made this stuff cool to me.

That's why I tell,

if you've never been to a low rider show,

like you need to go to one,

even if you're not into low riders,

cause you go, this is amazing.

It's another level of pressmanship.

You just go, I can't believe everything

that's going on here.

Like one of my favorite car shows I ever went to

was called the Dayton low rider show where I grew up.

And I just couldn't believe it.

It didn't even, you don't have to be into it.

And I think that's what I want people to get from our show

is like, we bust balls about all kinds of stuff.

But if you get to get into a skyline and drive it,

you still got to respect what the car is.

Even if you go, this isn't the refinement that I like, right?

You just go, man, this still has this

and this is still interesting

and it's still, man, I like what they did here.

Like I've been more of a nerd about very random things.

Like I told people, when infotainment started

to become a thing, I was obsessed with infotainment systems.

Like I just was obsessed with them.

And then when Cadillac had the Q system,

it was like my Super Bowl.

I couldn't believe that it existed.

And like every time I got in an Escalade,

which I got into a ton of them with the Q system

because my business, I would sit there

and mess with that thing

just to see how many times that malfunction.

And I would have customers go, what did you touch?

And I'm like, hey man, sorry, I was goofing off.

Like I had these conversations.

Like I get very fixated on very random things

that most people, I understand why they're not into it.

But I guess because I grew up around audio guys

and around, you know, putting this alpine in

and then wiring speakers.

And I was never the technician of it,

but I was around it because of the services

I could provide to these guys for show trucks.

I have just always been fascinated by,

now it's not fascinating

because it's everybody's kind of got their own thing

and infotainment, but when it was getting its run up,

dude, I couldn't get into a car fast enough

and start messing with the infotainment.

I don't do that now because it's just, it's so ubiquitous.

The kid in you comes out, you're just pushing buttons

and you're touching everything.

And I'm telling you, for those of you

that did not experience the Q system in Cadillac,

you cannot believe you would touch something

and that middle console would just flip up randomly

and you thought you were trying to turn the radio.

Like it was unbelievable.

I was fascinated for years around these vehicles

messing with that infotainment system

because it was so bad.

That's what I was gonna say, just surely

because of how bad it was put together.

I have nightmares about it.

Yeah, I remember times where I was at customers homes

very early in the morning dealing with their cars.

And I was just trying to turn off the Q system

because we needed to do stuff.

And somehow you would turn the radio up full blast,

not even touching anything in your ear.

You'd be like, oh my God, I just blew all this.

I mean, it was the most amazing horrible thing

ever put in a car that you could mess with like in seconds.

Like we're not talking about suspension bits.

We're not talking about things that we're talking about.

You could get in this car and if you had two brain cells,

you'd be like, this is the worst thing ever put

on the interior of a car.

And by the way, it's still in them.

You know what I mean?

Like it was still in them.

And then the next year would come and it was still there.

You're like, oh my God, I cannot believe this thing

still exists.

It had a solid decade run, somewhere right there.

Dude, it was, I just became fixated on it, right?

And this is the weird thing that I think

I celebrate about car cars.

So I say, go to a lowrider show.

Cause you'll be like, I can't believe what these guys are.

Like this has never even been in my purview.

I've never even thought about this.

How to show this big?

It's called date and lowrider show.

Wow, I wouldn't have guessed.

Could still be going on.

If you guys are into a date and lowrider.

We need to go see you walk around that show.

I'm telling you dude, it's because,

and this is what I want everybody to get into is like,

we've gotten very segmented into what we like,

which is kind of like why we all stay around.

But the most fun you'll have is like seeing,

if you go to a show with a lot of Corvettes

and you see those billboards that guys,

you know, those, those, those storyboards,

that is still one of the most fascinating

car culture things I've ever seen.

Why?

I don't know.

I just go, I cannot believe this human being did this.

So there's a, there's a creator.

I believe, don't, don't quote me on this.

It's staying, staying something.

He hasn't been saying, but he has other cars as well.

He right now has a really nice,

I think it's a C seven, zero six.

And he went somewhere and he was dressed up

with the new bounces, the denim shorts

and the shirt and the whole thing.

And his buddy was in the top of the parking garage,

filming him and they dared him to go back it up,

pull out the chair, do the whole thing,

pop the hood and the guy has like, you know,

some sort of social anxiety and he's,

all these other old guys were doing the same thing.

And he's like, I can't believe they're out here

all doing this.

You can't, if you've never witnessed it,

which I know most of you have, but if you haven't,

you have got to go and see what happens.

Now, I'm starting to make some jokes with my Porsche buddies.

I don't think we're that far away in the Porsche world

from this.

Yeah.

I think we're there in some areas of the country.

It feels like we're headed, I mean,

if we're not already landed on that planet,

we're pretty close.

Like, I know that they'll,

Porsche guys will take offense to this,

but you're not that far off.

Like you're really not that far off.

And I joke with my Porsche friends all the time

that they're the Corvette guys of the Euro market.

Like that's the joke in my chat constantly.

Well, between you and Doug DiMiro's, you know,

you know, little jokes and jabs,

that might happen a lot faster than people think.

If it's not already happening in some areas,

I mean, I don't get to go to every car show.

So I, but I have just, you know,

when you ask like what experience,

part of the experience I love

are really strange things on cars.

And for a while, it was just how bad infotainment was

because it was just in the infancy.

But for me, BMW is one of those things

that when I got in it at a time in my life,

I just couldn't believe, you know, what I was seeing.

Well, has that changed, you know,

to kind of stay on track on that?

As you got a little bit older,

did any of the other quirks and features to quote Doug,

but just anything about cars or different makers

or even models of cars?

I became very, I did a lot of Ferrari work in my life.

There's just something for me.

And I know people say, well, no, duh,

it doesn't hit everybody like this.

Like something about getting in any Ferrari,

no matter how bad it was.

Even when I got into SF 90

and I saw it was a complete disaster, I just go,

there was always something special about an F430,

they're getting their run now,

but what widely wasn't like loved in the time,

like it's gonna get its run now

cause some of them, you know,

they have gated manuals and different things available.

But Ferrari was always that next step for me

that like impressed me where I just go,

it was the seating position,

it was the smell inside those cars,

it was the way they were designed.

I think it's just something about it.

While I also knew all the flaws.

I mean, one of the biggest,

first big mistake I made in my career,

I burnt the paint off a Testerosa.

I've heard you say that,

and you might have even commented it once or twice,

but I've never heard the full story

of how that is the first car you burned.

So when I was working for this wholesaler,

he bought everything, you know,

it's wherever he can make money, he bought it.

He'd have crappy Renault's, he'd buy a Gremlin,

he'd buy a Ferrari, he'd buy an F1, he'd buy anything, right?

He was just in the resale of getting things through auction.

So at this time, you only had rotary polishers, you know,

you didn't have the options you have today.

And so I'm experienced, but I'm not experienced enough,

but at that time, Testerosa's aren't that valuable.

They weren't that valuable.

So he's like, hey, I worked Saturdays and Sundays there

because I had sports throughout the week.

And he goes, hey, I got some cars here.

He sent, he gives me a call at that time

because you didn't send text.

He gives me a call, he goes,

hey, I need these three cars done, I'm not gonna be there.

I need you to work on these three cars.

He was a really cool guy.

Everyone hated him, cool as hell to me.

So went to federal jail, by the way,

for anybody that's listening to us for the first time.

My first boss did some federal time

for title stuff across state lines.

That's why you were so close to him.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, yeah, you know, he's my kind of guy.

So just kidding, guys, I've never been to federal jail.

That's all, relax, okay?

So anyway, I get there kind of groggy in the morning

and I just wasn't paying attention, you know,

held the polisher on the edge a little too long

and I just start seeing these things I've never seen before.

I go down, he had a paint booth there.

I go down to the guy, he goes,

well, that's gonna be an uncomfortable call

because it's gonna have to be repainted.

And that's my story.

I mean, it was just completely groggy, 16, 17 year old.

You know, we all know at that time

you weren't real big on getting up early in the morning.

And boy, just burnt the paint off the door, basically.

Do you remember the follow-up after that

when that customer actually came to find out what happened?

There was no customer, right?

He was gonna send this through the office.

Gotcha, that's right, that's right.

But I do remember the yelling.

Yeah, I do remember that.

That was an uncomfortable 25 to 30 minutes of my life, yeah.

Dude, speaking of the getting of and groggy-ness,

tell me if you're like this,

I'm really weird about if I have something scheduled

at a shop, any kind of shop,

mechanic, visual doesn't matter.

I'm kind of hesitant to go before 9 a.m.

I like the idea of getting it there early,

maybe even getting them started on early,

but also I'm like, are these guys still tired?

Did they go out last night?

Like what's gonna happen?

That's probably a good rule.

Yeah.

That's probably a good,

I don't schedule a lot of drop-offs before 9 o'clock.

So we have a key drop here.

So if somebody has to get to work,

they just drop the key through the door.

We have a little slot that it just lands into a key drop.

So your key doesn't break, relax.

I have to say that a million times,

so I'll just repeat it here.

Yeah, I'm not,

I think guys work really well post 9 o'clock.

I think before that, you know, you got a lot of family stuff,

you know, good technicians have a family at home,

usually your kids or something like that.

And you go, okay, mornings can get hectic.

You know, let's get these guys get in here comfortable,

get their cup of coffee, a couple cup of coffees down.

Yeah, I can see that.

That's a good rule of thumb.

All right, there you go.

You heard it here first, good rule of thumb.

It looks good when you pull up the map,

and you're like, oh, they opened up at 730.

Wow, it's really early in MOI.

I'm like, that's a little too early to be opening up a shop.

Yeah, cause that means everybody's like moving around at 530,

you know, getting their day going and getting to where,

yeah, it's, it's,

if it's full of like 62 year old technicians,

you're probably good, but that's not most shops.

So yeah, I'd probably say yeah, 9, 930 would be good.

All right, yeah, good.

I'm not the only one.

All right, speaking of BMW, which is your, you know,

kind of your classic experience of what a good car is,

they're launching 30 cars in 30 months.

Ooh, I did see the M2 competition series

was getting all kinds of run, front end looks okay.

They're coming around.

But we're, we're, we're getting there.

Yeah.

And then I saw, I saw BMW, the head of the M program says

we probably won't have the manual much longer.

There you go. CEO says manual is on live support.

What do you do?

Prepare for a flood of gas, plug in hybrids

and electric M models.

I think the numbers are something staggering

inside the M program where a very high number of options

that people go with our manuals still to this day.

Really?

I don't know what the percentages are.

Maybe it's in the article somewhere,

but I did see a percentage that it's still, you know,

pretty high.

We all understand why they're headed this way.

So I think it'd be sort of lying to ourselves that,

you know, younger generations are not driving manual,

but also younger generations largely can't touch M cars

at this price.

So I don't know how long of a runway he's giving.

I would hope this lasts another 10 years in the M program

because just your buyer and who's gonna be buying

over the next 10 years are gonna be of a certain age.

I think it's weird to talk about it at all

if you're the head of the M program.

And I think this is where you and I keep talking

and trying to get our audience to go,

these guys are talking too much.

Why'd you have to say this?

You would think they're talking.

This isn't helping you sell cars.

So why are you talking this way?

Considering the pool of the clientele is also shrinking.

Like there's less people also to talk to

that really care about this stuff.

So when it's important to say it

because the pool is dwindling.

So why say it too much to people that really don't even care?

And why piss off the people that do care?

Yeah.

Right?

If you're better off just coming out the year

that you're getting rid of the manual and go,

no more manuals.

At least you didn't have like five years

of people being pissed off.

That's true.

But this is why I say,

and I'd love to have anybody that's in the media programs

of these car companies come on here.

I don't think you guys,

the question I would ask is,

what is this all doing for you, the company

and the consumer?

Cause it seems like every time some of these guys speak out,

you upset people.

Well, speaking of these CEO types

and heads of the department,

you mentioned Renault a while ago.

How familiar are you with,

what is it, Carlos Ghosn?

Ghosn, he was the CEO of Nissan for a long time.

Oh, when he had to be smuggled out in a piece of luggage?

Uh-huh.

So I didn't know if you already kind of had any insight

on that, but I'm gonna,

because he's back in the news again,

which we might not even bring up why he's back in the news.

I think we could all guess what lists

his name may have come up on,

but that story is pretty fascinating overall.

Now he's kind of like revamped himself.

He's back in the light when it comes to turning businesses

around, cause he was well known for turning around Nissan

and Renault Infiniti back in the,

I think probably late nineties, early 2000s.

He had a lot to say about the merger here recently,

but that, I mean that,

that level of C-suite and just kind of suit and tie

and then what they, he did allegedly, we will say,

kind of gets you thinking that that happens everywhere.

So when bad decisions are made,

it's kind of par for the course.

Like that is what happens up there.

There's a part of all of us that if you get lucky enough

to be around these people,

I think you're gonna run into two types of people,

or I could say that I've run into

that are that level of executive.

They're gonna be the ones that give you

sort of the warm and fuzzies and you go,

yeah, that guy's kind of got life

and the business under control.

Then there's gonna be other ones

that you just get an immediate,

creepy vibe because something doesn't add up.

Now, I'm not talking about certain files

or I'm not referencing, I'm just saying.

The vibe in general.

I have a lot of CEOs, probably three or four of them

are CEOs of publicly traded companies here in Vegas

that we do business with.

Three of them give you really good vibes.

You go, oh yeah, he's, and by the way,

it's kind of proven out because most of the people

have been working for them for 10, 15, 20.

I mean, some of their assistants

have been with them 30 years.

Then you have this other one and you go,

the company has a lot of turnover.

Everybody bitches about working there.

When you talk to them, it doesn't come across right.

And I think those are kind of the two buckets

that I have experienced.

Meaning like that's not everybody's experience.

Somebody could add another bucket,

but I think the bucket comes down to,

I can look at this guy's company

and his assistant's been with them 32 years.

I can look at this guy and go,

everybody flips over in the company in under two years.

Something's not right with this guy.

I think you could, I mean, if you really pay attention,

that's a good skill to have in any circle that you're in,

at any function that you're in.

Test your radar for, is this a good vibes?

Does this guy give you like,

I wanna be around him kind of vibes or not?

Well, I'll ask you this.

I think that's some of the problem with the internet

is that people don't know how to see through.

Like we've talked about it.

I've talked about it a lot on podcasts over the years.

Like if you guys don't know these real estate guys

on social media or scam artists,

like what era are you living in?

Like what era are you living in?

Heads in the sand, yeah.

You know what I mean?

But that's everywhere.

And I think you state it right.

Your radar has gotta be on what isn't adding up here.

And I don't know that everybody looks through that lens.

And it's not a cynical lens.

You don't wanna just be some guy that just hates everybody.

And that's not really what you do with these CEOs.

You just go, eh, I might just handle this guy

a little differently than I handle these other guys.

Let me ask you this.

As somebody who has experience in that world,

can I put you on the spot and say,

what are one of the things in that real estate

influencer world, if you wanna call it that,

that just makes you, I don't know if cringe is the right word,

but you're like, oh, that is just like,

people might not know that that's horseshit.

These guys don't actually own very much real estate.

That's a big one.

Yeah.

That's, I mean, that's the number one thing.

Like we have a ton of them here in Vegas

because the Southwest was huge,

it's huge in the real estate investment market,

just like the Southeast is.

I can tell you, these guys don't have any holdings.

Cause I know the people that have the holdings.

And they're like, yeah, never done business with him.

Like, and you would have to do business with these people.

You know, I don't think all of these guys are bad guys.

I think they're trying to sell information

that doesn't actually transform.

It's like, I always tell people,

Grant Cardone's a perfect example.

He's not in the real estate business.

He's in the money raising business.

He doesn't teach you how to raise money.

He teaches you about the real estate business.

Well, let me give you a secret of the real estate business.

If you have lots of money,

it's not rocket science to buy the best apartment building

in South Beach.

That's not like real estate advice.

Because if you have all the money, you go,

I'm just gonna buy all the Class A real estate

that I can buy.

I mean, it's not rocket science.

So him telling everybody, like, oh, this how you buy,

he's in the money raising business.

So if he doesn't teach you how to raise money,

you can't do what he's doing.

Right?

That's the whole scam right there.

And years ago, for whatever reason,

sometimes you'll hear a subject

and you'll just kind of do a deep dive

just because for whatever reason,

it piqued your interest.

I remember hearing so much about sub two lending

and sub two transactions,

and then it completely disappeared.

Oh, I'll tell you what got real hot.

Section eight.

And I go, boy, they're leaving a lot out of the story.

Yeah.

Boy, they're leaving a lot out of the story.

But their spreadsheets on the internet

look really promising.

Yes, it's, you know, I've always told people,

like if you want the best cash on cash return

in real estate, you own trailer parks.

I've heard that.

You're gonna see people start talking about that now

because they've already exhausted everything else.

You know, so that'll be the next thing.

And then they'll tell you to buy RV parks.

That'll be the next thing that comes.

Just like self storage hit.

You look at self storage now, it's overbuilt.

So they're gonna, they're gonna sucker all these people

into self storage because on the run up,

all, you know, some of these guys made real money,

not the guys telling you how to buy self storage

to people that actually built the shit,

made a lot of money.

But now everybody is still talking about self storage.

It's overbuilt.

I mean, there's no question about it.

In cities like Las Vegas, it's overbuilt.

I've always been interested in the parking business place,

especially for, I should say, truckers.

You haven't grown up in a family with a bunch of truckers.

That was always of the need, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I know people, I have a person I know very well

that owns parking structures in Los Angeles.

His family ate off of that for, I mean, 75 years.

I mean, it's a real business, but it's a business

because they got into it 75 years ago.

Matter of fact, I think the guy that bought the Dodgers

on a credit card once upon a time

was in the parking business.

Really?

I forget the guy's name, somebody will know it.

But yeah, like that was like one of the shadiest purchases

of a major league sports team in America.

Like he literally bought it on like a credit card.

Wow, spring training starts today.

Let's go, way to bring it up, baseball.

Yeah, yeah, spring training, there you go.

Okay, I got this for you.

Have you seen every angle of the new baby G-Class?

No, please pull it up.

And you're gonna love the way that they outfitted it as well.

I can't see it, it's in camo.

Please, let's go, if you're watching on YouTube,

sorry guys, I mean, if you're listening

and not watching on YouTube,

we're gonna go through a couple of slides here

so that Nick can give his first impressions

and then I'll give mine.

Little Jeep Renegade-ish, huh?

Dude, you nailed it.

Is very Jeep Renegade-ish.

And also, Scion had the, I think it was the XB.

Yes.

There was the policy one.

I'm guessing they have the triangular window in the back

because this is gonna have a removable top.

Yeah, I think it kind of gives me cab vibes.

Now that changes the game.

Tell me.

If this is a true cab, I'm gonna automatically be all in.

As people know on this podcast, because I'm a big,

by the way, we couldn't get two matching wheels.

This is the most, that was the most,

dude, I was like, he's not gonna notice it?

I will say this.

Tires and wheels, yeah.

I don't know exactly what we're looking at here

and at what level this is production.

And because it's in the snow with the camo,

we're all having trouble seeing it.

I need to see more.

The first impressions though, come on.

First impressions doesn't impress you very much.

Okay.

Now, if it's a cab, it changes all of it, right?

Because that would be truly unique in this level of car.

But I would say first impressions,

that back wheel storage doesn't even look right.

Right.

I want to see more.

I don't want to jump to,

you're trying to get me to say something.

No, I'm not.

I'm just trying to surly up what you like.

I hope they don't mess this up

because this is obviously something they've needed

for a very long time.

We've all been calling for it.

Let's just hope it doesn't go the route

that it looks like it's going.

Hopefully we get some more refinement.

You're trying to get me to say something,

says the guy who's gone viral more

in automotive fucking YouTube podcasting

in the last 24 months and anyone else like that.

Yeah.

I like it.

You're saying that to the guy that drove up the prices

of Gen 1 Raptors, Rob.

Watch your tone.

100%.

Wait till it's all done with this one.

It's really going to go up.

I'm really going to hate it

because honestly, I can see myself eventually.

Here's what I did actually the other day.

I watched Hovey's old video

when he picked up like his third or fourth one,

that silver one.

Oh yeah.

Did he, was that the one that he got from Border Patrol?

Because that was the best.

No, that was, what was that called?

Wasn't the hoop to you, right?

I don't know, man, but that was the best.

That was the best of Hovey

as a guy, long time lover of Hovey.

Hovey, love all your stuff.

That Border Patrol Gen 1 Raptor was like peak Hovey for me.

It's so funny.

I didn't honestly, Hovey, you know,

if we ever get him on the show,

which I'm sure we will sometime in the future,

I wasn't really watching a lot of his stuff

until the last year that Nick constantly mentioned

how much he was.

It's great.

It really is good.

It really is.

It's fun.

He's a really cut back to the vibe.

He gives off a really good fucking vibe

when you watch his stuff.

But he had picked up, this was probably,

I mean, probably two or three year old video,

I think, a silver four door,

and to which then he, I think later,

he sold it to another YouTube channel,

another duo of guys.

But, you know, you get the, even Vin, Vin had,

he had a same Ruby Red, two door, then got a four door.

I think he has another four door now still.

Yeah, it's up for sale.

It seems like people in that world

always go back and forth between either a two,

a four door, go away, get a newer one,

and then always come back to the older ones.

So I'm not in, as everybody knows,

I'm not into like filmography around,

you know, cars and doing like lots of stuff.

But it seems like to me,

a lot of guys that are into producing videos

really love the Gen 1 Raptor for a lot of reasons

based around like their actual career.

Like they used it to go places and carry equipment

and equipment was easy to set up in the back of it.

So it was like vans, either you had a van

or you kind of, there was guys that ventured into

like Gen 1 Raptor to like go and film stuff.

I always found that very interesting.

Yeah, and they always would put,

a lot of them would put the,

it was the track system in the bed where it's like,

you still have enough, some like probably

about a foot of storage above it to use as a bed.

And then underneath it, you had the drawers

you could pull out, it was super convenient to store stuff.

I think it's all cool, but yeah,

I mean, I saw Vin, Vin's is for sale.

There's one in Austin, I just saw yesterday.

If you guys are listening to this, the day that drops,

it's a flame blue, four door, 14,

it's got like 130,000 miles.

They're asking like 17, eight.

Boy, I might buy that.

I'll send it to you.

Remember, we can't double-dick on the podcast.

Dude, it's not if you get the crew cab, it's okay.

No, don't try to bring me into your world, Rob.

I gotta go back to searching wagons or something, you know?

Somebody sent me an article,

which I didn't have it pull up for the show,

that Volvo, or rather, yeah,

Volvo said wagons are cool again,

but we just did an episode where they talked about

I saw that Audi started to show the RS5.

Is that correct?

Yes, yes, I did have that pulled up.

Dude, I saw somebody did some article,

it says what weighs less than the RS5

and they started Silverado.

They had like all this shit.

I thought it was hilarious.

Okay, so did you see GM's or the GMC channel

or Page's five supercars versus one super truck video?

No, please pull this up.

Yes, okay, now you're probably gonna guess it,

but what do you think it's gonna be?

What, GM?

Yeah.

Oh, my guess is they got a Corvette somewhere.

No, no.

Or are you talking about the truck?

The truck.

It's the GMC.

Is it a souped up GMC Sierra?

Three, two, one.

Oh, my God.

And who was filming?

GMC.

Yeah, we'll watch how you did it.

That is disrespectful to American GM EV technology.

Yeah, that they don't build a single battery.

So we're back in the same place on this podcast.

We've always been, let's all be fair about it.

Let's all be real about it.

EVs are fast.

We've solved it.

It's hard to believe that's what we continue to market,

which kind of also shows me they don't know what to market.

Yeah, there's nothing left to market.

They don't know what to market because I don't think people are buying Hummer EV specifically because it's fast.

I would assume that somebody buying an EV is buying it for, I don't have to go to the gas station.

I don't have this.

I don't have that maintenance of an engine or whatever.

None of the marketing ever surrounds that stuff, which I always for the longest time now have found extremely interesting

that the features I believe most people are buying any EV are largely never talked about in the advertising of said EV.

Did you see two chains with Shannon Sharp about his cyber beast or his cyber.

Oh, he says he can just hop in it.

He's got a charger here and a charger there.

He makes good points.

I mean, for everybody that's an EV fan, the points that you guys need to rest your laurels on is seemingly less maintenance.

I plug it in every night.

Stop trying to sell people on charging outside their home.

It's not effective.

I saw somebody who goes, man, I really love traveling in my cyber truck, but I got to wait at this charger.

I got to the hotel.

I got to wait on this charger for an hour and 15 minutes.

You're out of your mind.

And he even is pretty honest in the video.

He's like, you know, this is the part that sucks.

But if you can charge it home and drive it around town, this would be the argument we've made for slate.

Hey, look, man, if you plug it in at night and you're just going to drive it around town for 20 grand, $25,000, it's a good option.

But it just never is in the marketing that way.

You got to love that two chains clip too, because he's got like half a million.

I don't know how many half million dollar cars in there, right?

But he didn't have the Tesla there, the cyber truck.

And when he's like, yeah, but my daily is a cyber truck.

I got a cyber beast.

And then Shannon's just like, he's trying to, he's like, I ain't about all that.

I ain't about all that.

I like it.

I can get in and go.

I don't have to ever go to a gas station because in Atlanta, that's the most dangerous place you could possibly go.

That was funny.

It was so funny.

And he's right.

I mean, if that's what you want, you want convenience, you don't want to have to go to a gas station.

I mean, he seems to really like it more than all of his other exotics and luxury.

And he's talking about driving around town.

Yeah.

It's great.

And he's got a garage.

I think he said what?

At the studio.

Yeah, multiple.

And at his garage, he's got two, two plugins, you know, set up.

It's a great, great setup.

And I've never debated any of this.

That's what I think AV haters have debated the wrong stuff.

Yeah.

Right.

Guys, if you have a plugin at home to charge your vehicle and you could charge it every night and you're talking about driving your vehicle around town, these are great commuters.

There's no, there's no denying that you trying to deny it doesn't make it true.

They're great commuters.

When you take them on trips and people start to be honest about it, it's not a road trip car.

It's a drive around town car.

But I don't again, none of that ever gets marketed.

It's like, oh, we just built 1100 horsepower Hummer EV.

It's like, is that why, I mean, most people aren't, they're buying EVs or buying them for the reasons we stated.

So I don't understand why that's not in the marketing.

If you had to just guess why you think it's so like seldom described or talked about.

Because they think it's boring.

Yeah.

They think it's boring.

The marketing department thinks it's boring.

They're bored talking about it.

They don't want to do it that way.

They want to do this fun video we just watched.

I get all of it.

We just, I think we are getting to a place where I think a lot of you listening are just tired of being insulted.

Like having your intelligence insulted.

And I feel like a lot of EV talk has insulted people's intelligence.

Great daily commuter cars around town.

The problem is the price point doesn't fit that.

That has been the thing at odds, which is why we talk about slate the way that we do.

If it's $25,000 to get around town, that is good for a lot of people.

That's a good price point.

That's a good vehicle.

That's a good thing for people around town.

If slate then starts to say, hey, which they did in the video with Jay, you know, we made it so it fits all of the chargers out on the road.

That's not the sales point.

Plug this in at your crib, drive it around town, get home, plug it back in.

That's the sales point.

And they're trying to make some other thing the reality.

The infrastructure outside your home is not as convenient as a gas station at this point in 2026.

Stop talking about it.

You know, it should be that it should be that easy.

Like you just subscribed it here in a perfect world.

How about this?

We figure out a way to wire the charger right next to your bed so that at night you take off your Apple Watch plug in your phone to put on your AirPods.

And then you plug that bitch up into the wall.

Everything's plugging in at one time.

Not a bad idea.

Sounds like you better go to the lab on that one.

The lab.

The break in bad lab.

That's a different lab.

That's a more lucrative lab.

Very much so.

Which is why Tesla's getting out of the game.

They're like, let's deal some robots.

They might have better luck with that.

But Scouts, did you hear this?

The brand is reportedly delaying by year the launch of the Scout brand.

I wonder what the real behind the scenes of this is.

Staying technical issues is such a, I mean, for all the time that people have been waiting for this, you're just going to give them technical issues as your reasoning?

My question is, are they retooling and realizing that they need to go to, you know, what they call a generator?

Do they need to go to a more hybrid platform?

I'm sure they're not going to do that right off the gate, but this is kind of crazy because they are locked into Rivian.

So how could you really have technical issues?

You already know how to.

Exactly.

You know, you already know how to do all this.

I think there's something probably to retooling and bringing more hybrid generator type of things up to scale where they need to be.

Somebody had mentioned in that Slate video speaking of with Jay of how wherever Slate is headquartered or at least the, what is it, Warshall factory is?

Like they don't do direct, you can't do direct to consumer.

Like a simple search would kind of walk you through how they could follow the Tesla model to actually sell stuff.

But this commentary was very adamant that it would, they would, you know, lose their fucking license or whatever.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I responded to him and he was, he obviously, he did admit he's like, I didn't know that.

So what Slate is doing right now preliminary is two deals.

They're going to have a distribution network through existing channels.

So they're not technically going to be direct to consumer.

I don't believe now.

I don't know how they sell this publicly, but they're going to have to go through some distribution channel because they don't want to put up dealerships like or service centers like Tesla did.

And I've heard hundreds, like they have hundreds of partnerships potentially service center wise.

I gotta imagine Bezos and his friends knew who to call.

Yeah.

That's what I want to keep reminding people.

Everything sounds good in a vacuum till you realize one of the richest guys in the world is behind this.

They're going to figure out how to get the cars to people.

Then they have a repair company that's separate from Slate.

I think it's called Repair Pal or something like that.

That is going to be servicing the Slate vehicles.

How all that works logistically we'll see, but they're doing all this to keep costs down.

I mean, it's obvious they have one goal is to keep this as affordable as they can.

Will it happen? Will they make money? Will they sell a lot of units?

None of us really know that, but they've certainly put some things in place so they don't have to go spend excess capital on things like building a service center network and things like that.

Because you grew up around Jeeps and that was one of your, if not your first vehicle, right?

Yeah.

And we've talked about the Cherokees and stuff of the past.

Jeep essentially is teasing the V8 Grand Cherokee return, bringing back the 5.7 that seems like Hemi reports the drive.

I think that's a good move, but is it a little too late?

The problem we've discussed with Cherokee is they've gotten priced out of the true middle class family.

Yeah.

And this was the ultimate middle class vehicle at one point in their history, right?

Like this was the quintessential, you saw a lot of them in certain neighborhoods, right?

That just right dab in the middle of middle class, you saw Jeep Cherokee, right?

I think when you start to talk about $75,000, you're probably out of the realm of the average middle class family.

Yeah.

And so Tim Caniscus, I think tried to broach this subject how they have started to reduce pricing,

but I think he thinks a couple grand is what people are talking about when it comes to Cherokee.

It's like, no, it feels like you're 25 grand high, 20 grand high, $15,000 high, whatever number we want to use.

And I just think that's what's going to plague this.

You can always win people back.

I think Jeep right now as a whole Cherokee especially, you're only going to win them back if the price gets in line.

And it's not anywhere near that.

Yeah, no for sure.

They got a long way to go, especially if they ramp up the VA.

Because if you think about it, they could probably in their minds charge more for the VA.

So if you're going to already charge more on your charge at $75,000, what are you going to do?

Charge them $95,000 for the VA version?

Just don't think you're a $95,000 brand.

And all of your sales numbers show that we're right.

It's not really an opinion.

You're struggling with sales because your price points are off.

And they're not only off in Chrysler.

They're off in Jeep.

They're off in Ram.

They're off in Dodge.

They're off.

You guys have a pricing point.

Bro, imagine how pissed people would be if they bought all these V6 variants for $75,000, $85,000.

And then now five or so years later, they come back with V8s and they're charging $55,000.

But you and I know what's going to happen here.

Like you said, it's going to ramp up the price.

Yeah.

And then you're going to get to a point and you go, Jesus, $90,000.

You guys, Wagoneer should have shown you, you guys are nowhere near an $80,000, $90,000 brand.

This is kind of the infinity talk.

Yeah.

You know, 120,000 for your big SUV, your brand isn't in that world.

Maybe once upon a time it was.

I hear you.

Yeah.

But in 2026, you got to find a way to drive the price down very quickly or this isn't going to work.

So I got two more emails, clutch culture podcast at gmail.com.

If as we land the plane rather.

So Brian sent, he comments it on our video on the raptor video of the podcast last week, the long form one about, I don't know if you saw it, his 3PL third party logistics.

I'm assuming he's meaning person that he goes and he's seen where these cars are getting imported and exported and all that jazz.

And it was around the raptor conversation and how many of them are coming back because of certain guidelines that China has.

And they were all low mileage, right?

So I don't want to give too much away and how much he can even say, but he sent an email that he's going to go back to this yard and maybe get some more info if he can.

Because the people that are moving around, we're looking at them like they, these don't drive like low mileage raptors and insinuating that there's a lot of know how of how to roll back some of these mileage redometers, if you know what I'm saying.

I think the interesting, we're not big on car facts telling the whole story.

But I got to imagine these car faxes will be very noticeable of things, everything missing basically.

There'll be import records, you know, that this was imported.

I don't know how much there's some really, really high end people that import cars that are trusted that know where to go get cars.

If you see these incredibly low mileage gen ones start to pop up, I would say do not buy them.

That would be probably the good way of looking at it.

Thanks for the email, Brian.

Please let us know more.

I would love to hear everything that you know about what's happening in China with genuine raptors.

And then lastly, we have an email here from Matt.

Matt said, I was listening to the podcast around the rising van sales.

He said, I grew up in 2008 town and country that so basically it was all about.

Do you remember the OG country?

Come on.

Okay.

Well, hey, I don't know.

You know, the green and gold, the green and gold.

Remember this table in the back?

Yeah, buddy.

That is so cool.

Yep.

So essentially, he doesn't think people appreciate the stow and go system as much as it should have been.

These are essentially work trucks with seats.

He goes, these are real men's cars, by the way.

Look, 21% year over year growth.

I know the thing that Nick probably had a hand in if we're being honest.

I think it's all a cost thing, right?

But I mean, if you go out on the hunt for a Sienna, hard to find.

Yeah.

You know, Odyssey's aren't always the easiest to find what you want because they're so in demand.

I think people just started to buck some of this big SUV pricing.

I mean, that's what really kind of drove people back to these and look, they're good vehicles.

Yeah.

So thanks again, Matt.

He says, love the content through the through year one.

I've been listening since basically the beginning.

Keep it up.

Thank you very much.

And if you guys again want to send an email, it's clutchculturepodcast at gmail.com.

I'm having the windows tinted because 13 days with no tint has...

No, I'm done.

I over it.

I don't like it.

I'm not doing this anymore.

I'm browner than I should be, even though I am brown.

So we're going to...

I'm going to fill some of that.

He's a really cool guy that owns a shop in South of South Austin.

So I'm going to do a video on that.

He actually also runs an audio shop.

So I'm going to talk to him about getting the Sync 3 system in there.

I know you said you'd leave it, but as long as I can get the factory head unit that still looks like it would have came in a genuine wrapper.

That's all right.

To not listen to me as a criminal, but here we are.

Guys, you don't know half of what I got to deal with.

I hear you.

Yeah, you got a tough life.

Tough life.

And then I got, like I said this morning, I went to get some paint quotes.

We are going to introduce, I guess, what do we call it?

A distributor that I helped kind of bring on board for hyper clean products in the Houston area.

So I'm going to be doing videos and content there.

A lot in the works.

I'm going to put this Raptor to work because even if I don't put a ton of miles on it, the next owner, which may or may not come in the future.

I don't know.

I've already been offered somebody.

Hey, whenever you want to sell it, let me know.

I'm like, not going to be anytime soon, but I'll keep it in mind.

Yeah.

So give me your business card.

Yeah.

No, definitely.

I actually took his business card.

Yeah.

But that's it guys.

And then lost it.

No, no, no.

I kept it.

I put it in my wallet.

So I'm like, I actually reached this guy.

But I hope you guys enjoy the show.

We'll see everybody next week.

See you guys.

#67 - Less Mods Is The New Norm? Hummer vs 5 super cars, V8 Cherokee, Baby G-Wagon, & Much More

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