A moped is a low-power, small-displacement motorized vehicle that’s typically regulated differently than motorcycles. The transcript is using “moped” to contrast older rules (where faster two-wheelers were treated more formally) versus today’s more casual scooter culture.
The Cadillac Escalade is a big luxury SUV. The point here is that even in expensive, modern vehicles, people are still distracted—like looking at their phones while driving.
An e-scooter is an electric scooter you ride around town. The key issue being discussed is that riders often look at their phones while they’re moving, which can be dangerous.
The Mustang is a performance car from Ford. The podcast is talking about how some versions can feel quick in short, street-style races. It comes up because Mustangs are commonly used for that kind of comparison.
A three-wheeler is a vehicle that has three wheels instead of four. The podcast is talking about it as something fun and different, like a niche ride style. It’s mentioned because it’s not a typical car.
“Manual” means the driver shifts gears with a clutch and gear lever. The argument is whether car companies should offer that option or treat it like a low-selling feature.
The Corvette is Chevrolet’s famous sports car. The hosts are talking about how Corvette leadership explains decisions, and they think the reasoning is misguided.
GM is a big American car company—General Motors. Here it’s mentioned because people debate whether the government should help companies like GM if they’re in trouble.
A “bailout” is when the government provides financial support to a failing company to prevent collapse. In auto-industry discussions, it often comes up around the idea of protecting jobs and industrial capability, not just the company itself.
Ford is another huge American car company. In this conversation, it’s brought up because people are talking about whether the government should step in financially when companies struggle.
A gear knob is the handle on top of the shifter. Its shape and placement can affect how quickly and confidently you can grab the shifter, especially during aggressive driving or off-road use.
Some cars put small speakers in the headrests. The host doesn’t like them because it can make the sound feel more like it’s in your head than coming from the whole car.
That phrase means the engine is about 1.6 liters total and has four cylinders. In the late 1980s, small four-cylinder engines were a big part of compact racing.
This is a Toyota Land Cruiser from the “100 series” generation, and the speaker is talking about a 2002 version. It’s a rugged, long-lasting SUV that many people buy for reliability and off-road ability.
“Bronze wheels” refers to aftermarket or factory wheel finishes in a bronze/tan metallic color. Wheel color is a common part of visual customization and can strongly affect how a vehicle looks against exterior paint.
A carbon fiber hood is a hood made from a lightweight material called carbon fiber. People care because it can look cool and sometimes saves weight, but not all “carbon fiber” is the real thing.
Lexus is a luxury car brand made by Toyota. They make nicer, more comfortable cars than regular Toyotas, and here they’re being discussed in terms of how they make business choices.
The Lexus LS 400 is a luxury sedan made by Lexus. People talk about it because it’s comfortable and has a reputation for being dependable, especially compared to many other cars from the same time period.
“Luddite” is basically a way of saying someone doesn’t like new technology. They’re saying that’s not really what they mean—they’re just pointing out some older things were better.
A V12 is a very high-end engine with 12 cylinders. It’s usually associated with smooth, effortless power, and the big news here is that Mercedes is keeping it in the U.S. while dropping it in other regions.
Facebook Marketplace is like an online yard-sale section inside Facebook. People post items locally, so you might find good deals—but you still have to be careful and verify what you’re buying.
Cold plunge means getting in very cold water for a short time. People do it to feel better or recover, but the host says doing it too often—especially right after a workout—may not be a great idea.
The Vultra is a specific Beyond Power workout machine. They’re saying it looks really advanced and is designed for structured, tech-guided training.
LIVE
All right, Nick, dude, before anything, clutch.club, everybody, join the Discord, join a newsletter,
join the community at clutch.club. We already got people in there having a good time,
some questions from the Discord actually today, but before anything, I want to give you three
words and I want you to stream of consciousness, monologue the first thing that just comes to
your mind, okay? I got scooters, I got age and society and I'm going to let you just go.
We got a scooter epidemic. I think it's taking hold in a lot of warmer climates first and so
maybe some of you that are in colder climates don't get the year-round investment into these
types of things and I want to be clear, kids having fun on scooters, totally understand it.
I would have been hype with them, I would have loved them, they go like a billion miles an hour,
I would have been in, I was a dirt bike, three-wheeler for all you older people that
went before they got banned by the federal government, four-wheeler, I'm in, okay? I'm in
on kids having fun on a scooter. We've now entered where driving down the road this week
and I look over on a sidewalk and there's a 30-year-old man riding a scooter on the sidewalk.
I'm out, I'm out. What do you mean you're out? I'm out and by the way, no kids around,
if you're a dad or a mom out there, your kid gets, you get your kid a bad-ass scooter,
you're in the neighborhood, you're going to take a spin on it. Sure. I'm all for that.
Your mode of transportation being something that goes 30 miles an hour on a sidewalk and not on a
road after a certain age, we got to talk about it and there's going to be a lot of podcasts
that don't want to hit the hard-hitting issues. We're not one of those podcasts.
That's absolutely true. We hit them all hard. So I just don't know what the hell is going on here.
We have normalized, number one, I don't know where everybody else grew up, but if you had
a scooter capable of going to speed limit, would have been called moped back in the day,
Vespa has a whole business around this. It had a license plate, it had a registration,
and in some cases, if you were a certain age, you had to get a special type of license to drive
a vehicle that could go as fast as something on the road. How did this all get removed when
it was so common? If this could be on the road, you need to have a license of some sort and you
need to have it registered. Instead, we got 30-year-old men on sidewalks going 25 miles an hour where
people are supposed to be walking. Again, it's a sidewalk. Most cities like Vegas now, we're
building all these bike areas on the road and all this kind of stuff. How is this not being
addressed in five minutes of a city council meeting? Oh, and I'm sure Nick has not visited
too many city council meetings, but I'll tell you how, as somebody who has, not a lot gets
done there. There's a whole lot of next session, next week, the second Tuesday of the next month,
because we don't have enough... Well, we do have a suburb here. Dude, cops are just putting a stop
to it and it's a suburb. It's not Las Vegas. It's actually a suburb of Vegas and they've
just had enough. They go, and I think here's where you really get into it. Let's say one of my kids,
very young kids, is on that sidewalk and this guy happens to do something. I will say this now.
This is a wrap. That dude is going to have very little chance of escaping. What's going to happen
to him? It's going to be hospital time. His clutches, Nick's clutches. And just so we're clear,
you and I have the background that can make that happen. Okay? So, and by the way, I've had this
happen at events where my daughters and some kids are acting crazy. I told you about coming out of
jujitsu class to boys and I looked at the dad and I just go, FYI, they knock one of my kids down,
acting like this, it's a wrap for you. Like we're not... And by the way, I got applause for that
because this family was out of control. I got applause from the gym owners because I was finally
the person to speak up. I don't mess around with anybody doing anything that would harm my kids
and we got scooters going 30 miles an hour with adults that know better than to be on scooters
that they really shouldn't be riding on unless they're just playing with their kids on the street
they live on or whatever. It's completely out of control and I think these things have real uses.
In cities like Vegas, man, there's plenty of places, right on the road, man, drive it. I'm all for it.
The technology's there. Get a license plate, get a registration, have some insurance. I'm all good
with it. This is not an anti-scooter thing. It's when do we start drawing the line?
So you guys have what we have like in the Austin area. It's all over big cities but I'll just say
Houston, Austin, I know Austin for sure. The Lime Scooters, they used to be called Lime Bike,
I think now it's just called Lime. And it was called like Bird Scooters. I think Bird was another
different company. We have some of that downtown but I'll tell you where it's ubiquitous. People
just buy them. And so everybody knows like one of the biggest sellers in the U.S. is my next-door
neighbor. I was going to say you have that neighbor, yeah. And he says the same thing. He cannot
believe this has gone on this long. And he has, I mean, dude, he's got e-bikes over here that go
70 miles an hour. Those can't be on the sidewalk though, right? Buddy, but there's no law. Yeah,
that's true. And if somebody goes, well, there's a, it's not being enforced if there is a law.
Yeah. Let's just say this. I don't know every law in the books because I think we've gotten a little
crazy with eight... There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. Okay. But I mean, even he's like,
look, man, people die out here on these e-bikes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They run into cars. They go
into crosswalks. They're just out of control. And I don't want them to go away because I'm not one
of these guys like, let's ban stuff. I'm not a ban guy. What I am though is, but when this goes
sideways in this world, like I just imagine this dude running into one of my kids, his life is never
going to be the same. And it's not going to be because he hit my kid. It's like, it's just not
going to go his way. Like that's not going to happen. Do you have a lot of those one-wheeler
things that people also like ride on the streets? Well, here's the deal. The guy next door. So one
of the guys that works there, they got, he's got a one-wheel. He looks like Barry Bonds when he rides
it. He's got all, he's all padded up. But dude, he rides it right in traffic. Oh, that's nuts.
I mean, he's got the Bluetooth speaker where he's jamming the music. He's doing spins in the
in the middle of the intersection. But if you talk to him, he's like, yeah, man, this could end
my life. I mean, he's very aware of the chances he's taking because obviously they have to teach
people how to ride. And everybody at this company over here is such an expert rider on this stuff.
But like people get on this stuff in our parking lot and just fall down, like hurt themselves,
like they got to sign a waiver. I don't want these things to go away, but we got to start
having this conversation. And I think maybe there's a lot of states that aren't being hit
really hard by this. True. But in warm cities, where you're dealing with this in warm weather,
365 days a year basically, like you can't explain to people how the Woodlands in Houston is out of
control. I mean, it's, it's, it's completely out of control. I witnessed it with my own two eyes.
I'm like, Jesus, I cannot believe what's going on up here. And combine like, combine that with
the amount of people that are just looking down at every light and as they take off at their phone,
come on now. We saw it when we were together actually. Bingo. I mean,
and on top of that, they're looking down in the car. And then the, you see, look at the person
on the scooter also looking down while they're on the scooter, like what? Yeah. Cause it was,
a lot of times they had the phone on a mount on the handle and they're looking down and they're
looking up and they're looking and you just go, where's this all going to end? The faith that
you have in society right now, which let's just, it's honest to be honest, less faith that we should
be having in a lot of different parts of the world right now, especially in our communities
sometimes to just say, I'm going to risk it for the brisket. Look down at my scooter. I'm knowing
that there's a, a new Escalade who the mommy driving it is probably looking down as she's
taking off from this light. Come on. We're going to cross paths eventually. It's, I look over
this week and I see this 30 year old on the sidewalk cruising on a scooter and I just go,
come on, man. I think what got you two was the age and the individual. It's the age. It's the age.
I understand why kids do what kids do because I was a crazy kid. You know, there's a lot of people
that don't want to admit the stuff they did when they were a kid. I'm the exact opposite. I'm like,
yeah, dude, I would have done that. Yeah, there's no, there's no, if I would have had an e-scooter,
there's just no doubt I'm, I'm doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing. I have no regard.
I was, I was one of those guys like, dude, I, I've been in serious accidents on dirt bikes. I,
I, you know, life altering accidents. I get it. I understand the kids part of this. I mean,
in the woodlands is a perfect example. Like if my parents would have given me those scooters,
I would have been no regard for life, you know, on those scooters. Like that's just,
I understand kids being kids. Why are we not making fun of the 20 year old, the 30 year old,
the, come on, man. Those are basically the adults that go to Disney by themselves.
Oh, no question. No question to ride the rides and do vlogs there. I mean, that's, that is the
perfect example of exactly what they are. You're right. You are going to Disney and might even
have, you know, cause a lot of people in Vegas cause you can drive to LA. So you have a yearly
pass type of guy. You're going, you're going during the week, you're going whenever you want.
Yep. Yep. There's actually a, there's actually a channel or a page that I think the guy like,
not that he purposely, but there's a bunch of videos at least that I've seen. Like he's basically
like light to light racing, like a Fox body or like cars on this little one wheeler thing.
And he's beating them. And also I'm like, this is insane for you to just be testing a lot.
These guys do all the repairs so they can trick up anything next door.
That's, dude, that one wheel that the guy's got, I think he says he can get up to like 72 miles
an hour. Yeah. This guy said 90 on the video. The guy next to him was like, man, that thing's
sweet. How fast does it go? It's like, I can probably get it up to 90. It's like 90. Yeah.
I mean, these guys, they fix it. I mean, so if you go in the back of their shop, it is like,
I mean, it looks like an electrical shop. I mean, these guys are doing everything,
coolest neighbors in the world. It's cool to see the stuff in there. So I'm not,
I'm not like one of these, well, it's electric, but I rode dirt bikes. I wrote,
I wrote three wheelers. Come on, man. Like I know what's cool. Some of this shit is really cool.
And some of it isn't that cool, but some of it is really cool. And you go,
dude, you got some of this stuff that's easily, if they make some changes,
going to go a hundred miles an hour. That's insane. And there's no license needed.
There's no regulation of them being held to the same, because again, they don't even carry insurance.
They wreck into your car. You're screwed. You're screwed. And we're just not having any
relevant conversation. And I get probably half of the country is not dealing with this
on a daily basis because of weather. But if you're dealing with it on a daily basis,
and you, you haven't experienced it, it is wild.
All right. You've convinced me. We need some reform on that. I will say,
let's hit property taxes first, Texas. And then we can hit the lime scooters.
Yeah. Texas got a lot on its plate. I mean, for a place that tells everyone,
they got it figured out a lot on their plate. Hey, you know what? When you provide the country
with all of the energy, we can do whatever we want. By the way, I just let you know.
Yeah. I mean, let's just, let's be clear about energy here.
Number one, number one, for me at basin number one.
Cute. I mean, that's a cute story. All guys is cute.
I'm still paying six bucks. Well, you need your special blend from California.
What do you want me to do about it? You said energy. I gave you the energy price.
Number one. Number one. How about you refine it a little better?
Number one. Send it to me. Radio, caca, caca. Number one.
Yeah, podcast. Yeah. Number one, podcaster. Sorry. I love how Texas always says we're
number one in energy as if you did something besides just get it out of the ground. Yeah.
That's a big part of it. God damn it. Have the earth. I mean, wow, you guys work,
you guys worked really hard on that earth. We do have the earth. We do have the earth.
Namaste, sir. You guys did so much development on that earth. I will do my yoga at the Permian
Basin as the oil is coming up and show you I can be one with my spirit and one with the oil.
Maybe you guys could make a better second season of Landman next time. Oh, God, please.
Yes. Actually, as a matter of fact, I was so mad watching it. I told my wife,
I was like, Nick said this sucked and I'm hating to agree that it's the worst only only positive
is a couple of chicks on that show. Yeah. Big positives, by the way, too. Yeah. Big positive.
Moving on to the discord. Actually, I'm moving on just to the show, but I wanted to start off with
funny enough. So shout out to Will in the discord again clutch.club to join surprise. We didn't
get a take on the Corvette Grand Sport to which I said, dude, I got to space out my Corvette talk
with Nick. All right. He said fair enough, but he didn't want to want to get a take on it. And I
do have that pulled up. How much have you seen on the 2027 Grand Sport? I just saw the pictures.
I didn't really it doesn't. We're kind of getting to a point and this would happen if it's another
company or whatever. C8 at this point, they've done a fantastic job with it. All of these little
extra bonuses of, you know, little models and little different. It doesn't it doesn't
really interest me all that much. Although I do like to see a platform, obviously. I agree. Yeah.
Why do you so I'm just curious, because I know you had one, you went through your your Corvette
phase. But is it just like the platform itself, the age you're in, or it's just like the type
of car buyer that might be into a new or old Corvette? Because funny enough, somebody said
in one of our comments, like something, I don't remember what we were talking about,
somehow they brought up Corvettes. And I think you may have said like nobody wants like an older,
you know, clapped out Corvette and the person took such a fence to it.
Yeah, because we were talking about C8 versus something else. That's why oh Mustang. That's
what it was. Yeah, you used Corvettes are great. Yeah, you know, go it's a great experience. I had
a Corvette that I got an insane deal on bailing a guy out of a problem. I enjoyed owning it.
You know, there's Corvette has been done right for a very long time. I mean, it's just it's
always stayed Corvette like what you expect this big C8 change they went through, they pulled it off
in a way I don't think many of us would have said we believe they could do. Yeah, right. And they did.
But I look at this. I mean, it's kind of cool. I mean, obviously, we have this situation where
the head of Corvette comes out and says there's no manual coming to C8, which was highly predictable,
although he gave a really stupid answer as executives tend to do in 2026 and basically
the last decade, saying the C7 manual just didn't sell well. But you guys like money on fire all
the time. Let's not act like every decision is some kind of goddamn profit and loss decision.
Like, come on. I did see that stupid answer. I did see that. And he said it was such conviction
to where he was like, look, as much as we love it, you know, manual, you gotta you gotta enjoy,
you know, a stick, but you voted with your dollars. Like he's telling the press we're
ever asking as if you didn't just take like a $15 billion right down on bad decisions.
Let's stop acting like every decision is some kind of like, and I had a great a guy that you
works at Ford and went back and forth on YouTube and he was a guy with a good perspective.
But he said the same thing. He's like, well, you know, we put our money and the first comment
I said to him as I go, we? Yeah, I said, well, let me ask you a question since it's all about
portfolio management and balancing your money. Where's those billions of dollars you always
write down come into great portfolio management? And it was a lot of crickets at that point.
The head of Corvette, they don't want to build a manual. The part that continually offends me
as a human being is when these car companies act like they don't like money on fire every
month of the year for the last 25, 30, 40, 50 years, you guys like money on fire for dumb
decisions all the time. Throwing a manual in the C8 is not about a profit and loss statement.
It's about it's about the statement of we have the most complete brand
of anybody building a sports platform at this price point. That's why you would build a manual.
Now, if you say you don't want to do that, all good, that's your decision. But to always point
when it when it lets them off the hook, they point to the profit and loss. Well, you know,
nobody bought the C7 when it was manual. We didn't have high sales numbers. But you have shit tons
of platforms that are underwater. Like Ford Lightning didn't sell gangbusters, my guy. So
don't act like you guys make all of these intelligent decisions based around profit
and loss and who's going to buy what? See, that's the thing that gets me the most, dude. And we've
talked about it quite a bit and we will continue to if we keep getting answers like this from the
brass of some of these companies, they're looking at you whether it was a press that asked the
question or the listener and viewer that might just be watching the interview somewhere, they're
looking at you like you are really, really uneducated on everything. They're not some sort of,
you know, holier than thou philanthropic trying to save money. Talk about the most,
I mean, literally reckless individuals when it comes to money and business and a lot of aspects
of how they run an organization. You know what I mean? So I'll give you an example. I know I said
Ford Lightning and we were talking about C8. I believe the biggest write down that happened
last year for an American manufacturer was GM. Yeah. Yeah, I think we talked about it. Yeah.
Right. So the head of Corvette is telling you that the manual was a profit and loss decision
as if that's how they base their decisions. It's so dumb. Your company just wrote off
the biggest amount of money at the end of last year because of all the bad decisions.
Just like you said, they can insult your intelligence because it's been allowed to
happen. Yeah. This is the problem with not having a media for decades holding these people
accountable. If you ever want to know the importance of journalism, it's what this guy said. That's
the importance because had they been held accountable for the last 25, 30, 40 years by
people that are quote unquote supposed to be journalists, he wouldn't be saying stuff like
this. And this happens in every industry. They're undermining your intelligence in every industry.
Yeah. And I get why they're not building it guys. I mean, I get why they're not building it. They
know they're not going to sell a ton of them, but you don't ever build. They don't build everything
to sell a ton of them. If you look at Ford and GTD, they're not building GTD because it's highly
profitable and they're going to sell a bunch of them. They just wanted to do it. They just didn't
want to get left behind. They wanted to show you their chops at building a car like that to go to
the ring and race around. Great reason to build it if you're in a car company. Where was the profit
and loss conversation and that. So we only bring it up when it's convenient to let us off the hook
of something. Yeah. It's only when we're going to take a loss for the general public, but when we
take a loss for ourselves or something that we were going to stab at, we're good. It's all good.
Yeah, we're good. I mean, just think about how many of these companies have dumped money into
Indy car and NASCAR. That's nothing but a loss. It is nothing but a loss. They, but they're doing
it internally. They go, well, that's for branding. The same reason that a C8 Corvette would have
a manual is to use it as a branding thing. So, and by the way, you would spend a lot less money
than dumping money into these motor sports and all this other crap that you do. I'm good with
all of it. I just don't like when the excuse comes up, when the public is clamoring to see you do
something and you go, well, you know, the profit and loss doesn't really support that. It's like,
well, doesn't support 65% of what you're doing. So dumb. And you know what? I believe that the
Grand Sport is going to be replacing the E-Ray, which we were just talking about. I was telling
you how much I love the E-Ray. So at the very least, why don't we do, and you want to really talk
about our rare Corvette in the modern era, make a manual version of something instead of getting
rid of the E-Ray all together, turn that into your manual. Maybe it doesn't happen.
I think there's just an interesting conversation around manuals right now. If all of these executives
are so smart and they tell you they're in tune with everything, I'll take them at their word,
even though we know it's not true. They got to be seeing Ferrari gated manuals and all of these
older manuals going for tons of money. Nobody's saying that it has to be the bedrock of your car
company. But if you're Aston Martin, if you're Maserati, nobody cares about your brand. Would I
be throwing some manuals out there to get some buzz around my brand? I couldn't do it fast enough.
Yeah. I couldn't do it fast enough. And it'd be the same thing I would say about C8. Hey, man,
I am never going to be the idiot that goes, you're going to sell millions of manuals.
No, man, it's kind of to do a flex and say, look at what we're capable of still today of giving you
all of these different experiences. And if you ran a business that didn't light billions of dollars
on fire with bad decisions, I wouldn't be saying this. If I go, hey, look, Ford's just been disciplined
for 50 years. They don't waste money. They do everything by the profit and loss. GM does everything
by the profit and loss. They're just not going to do things that don't make them money. Then you
would have a point. The problem is, every year you light hundreds of millions, and in most cases,
billions of dollars on fire. So the profit and loss, man, that's not a good angle for a company
like that. And then on top of that, I don't know which one's the cherry on top, the profit and loss,
and it's all about the money and what it sells and what doesn't, or the performance. Well,
you know, what we have is just far superior performance wise. Look, bro, everything's fast.
The Prius is pretty fucking fast these days. You know what I mean? Like we get it. It's not the only
reason why you didn't build a manual because it's not faster than your current setup. Yep. And there's
no question. I think it's fun to talk about. I love it. And I think I just can't believe these
people say what they say. So I'm more and more fascinated. As somebody that if I was running
these companies, I'd be like, everybody needs to shut up and we need to go to work.
I don't ever want it to stop. Bro, the irony of a lot of this too is that we're seeing things with
like, let's just use college sports as an example. Just a matter of fact, yesterday I was reading some
stuff on all this whole NIL thing and people getting plucked to do like ESPN broadcasting or ESPN
sidelines or NBC this or whatever. They're only doing it because that individual who may or may
not be a student or is a recent grad or whatever or going into college is really good at doing this.
They can talk to a camera. Ironically, the people that have power and supposedly a lot of money
are terrible at talking to a camera. I want everybody that listens to us to go, yes, man,
profit and loss in business, that sheet, that balance sheet, it matters. These companies
have shown you they don't give a rip about the balance sheet 60 to 70% of the time. So to bring
it up for a reason they don't do something cool is the stupidest reason they could give.
The reason he could have given is what you said. Hey, man, this is a performance platform. We don't
want to build anything that would take away from performance. Now you don't have to agree with that,
but that's the end of the comment. If I put a manual on this, it's going to have less performance
than the stuff we're building. So that's why we're not doing it. Next question. You can all debate
that and say, well, you know, like you said, everything's fast, but at least it's a legitimate
reason to say we're not taking this platform and making it less performance. We think this whole
platform is about performance. That's not what he said in its entirety. He said, and you know,
people didn't buy the C7, but you should have stopped at the performance. Yeah, so I think that's
the funniest part of this. And I hope our listeners find it as interesting as we do because I just
can't believe they say some of the stuff as if they don't like the most, they might be the businesses
that like the most money on fire in the world. Yeah, GM in general or car companies? Because
yeah, car companies in general. Absolutely. Without a doubt. They like money on fire. You know what?
It'll probably happen again in our lifetime, but they know pop attacks, pay will bail them out.
100%. And you know, the bailout thing is an interesting thing that people got very,
very up and on. And sometimes we'll see it in comments or emails. Guys,
Boeing's in the same position, right? Like the US would never let Boeing fail because they need
aerospace being built in the US. What you have to realize is they don't want these manufacturers
to go away because there's a lot of wartime things that go into having these auto manufacturers and
aviation manufacturers that can be switched over in a time of war. I want to throw that out there
because I think a lot of people don't know that. Oh, yeah. I don't think the taxpayer should have
to bail out GM and Ford. There's an understanding, though, that you can't let this capability go
away because of some things that may come down the road. Absolutely. I don't think that's ever been
said enough about why a lot of this stuff kind of happens. Yeah, and that obviously is way more
understandable, or at least it should be. But you almost can't expect the common American to
really know that or really hang their hat on that's one of the reasons because we're inundated with
all the other stuff. There's enough for War II docs. Just go watch Ford versus Ferrari. You get
a little bit of a sneak peek in that. Hey, what's that dude's name? Ed Burns? Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
the PBS guy? Yeah, look, he's got a lot of stuff out there documentary wise. Just get the box set.
You know, just do it over a weekend. You'll kind of get the picture. I think his name isn't his
name, Ed Burns. It's not Ed. It's PBS doc. That guy's really good storyteller. His most recent one
on the Civil War was a little interesting. No, no, that's not the recent. It was the Revolution.
Oh, Revolution, yeah. He's done some really good ones, though. PBS. I thought his name was Ed Burns.
Ken Burns. Ken Burns. Oh, okay, gotcha. Sorry, Ed Burns. You're out there. Ed Burns is dead,
okay. Ken Burns took his place. Yeah, Ken Burns. But I hope that was a good take on the
Grandsport and the Chevy stuff. It's really interesting. I personally, the Grandsport has
always been my favorite platform because you get the best of both worlds. You don't have to go all
the way up to a Z06 or beyond to get the wide body, get the power. Look, C8 has been done very well,
man. It's not, it doesn't seem like the foreseeable future. There's going to be a lot that we disagree
with. It's being done well. They're just kind of releasing so much. It just, for me,
kind of drowns out and just go get the one you like, the one you can afford and kind of move on
with your life. Yeah, or hold off because there'll be a ton of used ones in a year. Oh, yeah. Oh,
yeah. Oh, yeah. The prices are coming down. The price is wrong, bitch. Rest in peace, Bob Barker.
All right, dude. We might actually have an Infinity FX reborn. Oh, I hope you agree.
I haven't seen this. Okay. Introducing the 2027 Infinity QX65. Oh, come on. What? You disagree?
Hold on. I don't disagree with it coming back. Okay. So don't put words in my mind. I meant the
look. Sorry. Let me see. I got to see the tail end of this thing. They give me a decent shot
at maybe I just reacted too quickly. Well, that wouldn't, that would be a first, wouldn't it?
It'd be pretty much every time we're on the show, I think. I got to get a little bit more aggressive,
Rob. Yeah. I got to get more aggressive. I know they won't. This was an all-time SUV platform to
me. Yep. The cool factor. That's a good angle, though, right there. Yeah, that is a good angle.
The black roof pisses me off, though, I will say. The Infinity brand, and I understand why they do
it, it's just this seems too close to the Nissan design. And I think I need some more separation,
don't I? From the brand? I love that they're bringing this platform back. Yeah. I love it. I'm
going to have to see this one. I'm going to have to see this one in person. Look at all that space,
though. Yeah. It was a great platform, man. And I'm glad they're bringing it back. I got to see
this a little bit more in person to see, hey, that gear knob, that shift knob, not the most elegant
feature you've ever seen. No, it's very Ranger-esque, which I hate. I hate when some of the trims of
the modern Ranger have this stupid... I mean, imagine when you're off-road, if you ever take
it off-road, and you really got to shift quickly from whatever drive, and you're like, I'm trying to...
Somebody's screaming, this ain't an off-roader, Rob, you don't know what you're talking about.
Oh, man, I love the internet comments. Very bad, indifferent. I'll ask this question,
how everybody feels about it, because I'm not staunchly one way or the other. The speakers in
the headrest, something you were clamoring for? I think it's the dumbest thing. I've had a few
cars that I've been in, and I go, okay, I mean... I actually don't like it. Here's a hot take for
you. I don't like it, because it takes away from the actual... If you have a good... Usually,
those cars that have the headrest speakers have a good audio system all together. If you were to
turn those off, you would get the whole ambiance in the car. When they're in your ear and you have
everything else to the side of you going, I don't think it tells a thing. If you have somebody
right next to you that maybe you don't want to hear much chatter, it could be a bonus.
Well, you know what, you pick the wrong partner if that's the case. All right, everybody, sorry.
Oh, I'm sorry. You guys are always doing great over at your house. Okay. I mean, Rob is now
going to be a marriage therapist. Come on, dude. Oh, I could be your marriage counselor. I could
be your parent counselor. I could be whatever the hell you want to be. You guys are all just
sun shines and rainbows all the time. Rob is all sun shines and rainbows. If the other person is,
not on me. That's what I'm saying. If they're having a bad day and the speakers are in your
ear, maybe that's a benefit. You just look at them and go, hey, I can't hear you. The speakers are
you know, in my ear. To quote myself, to quote myself, I'm going to kill my vibe. I'll just
go about my day. Go about my day. When you're ready to talk like an adult, come see me.
Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, but QX65. It is a crossover. It is a little bit obviously different-ish
dimensions. QX. Are they calling it QX and not FX? Yeah, they're calling it QX.
Oh, come on. That's what I said. It's like esk. You know, they're,
they should have just honestly, they should have gone back to the FX. We talk about names all the
time. I think anybody that was able to buy cars during a certain time, you can't explain how far
infinity has fallen. I know. Once upon a time, cool coupe, cool cars, good SUVs,
I dare I say in, you know, ahead of their time versus what everybody else was doing.
Especially for the time in the early 2000s. Yeah. I mean, that FX is way ahead of its time.
Let me give you this angle. Tell me what comes to mind. Actually, we're a lot of pictures in here.
That looks a lot better from that angle. Now, does it give you a little bit of Porsche vibes?
A little bit. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. A little bit of a long Porsche vibe.
Yeah. No, I want to see infinity back in that. What is it? 2000 to 2010 vibe? Yeah. Or even 2012.
I think the FX may have died in 2012. But yeah, you know, basically a decade run where they were
doing a lot of things, right? It's the same thing you could say about Acura. I mean,
infinity and Acura, you kind of feel like their teams have to be hanging out.
Like they don't hang out with anybody else except Acura and infinity people.
You are those who hang around. I know you're Honda. I know you're Nissan,
but we're going to go to happy hour together and we're going to talk about how smart we are,
and we're going to give each other. That's where the bad ideas come from.
You're a product of your environment, dude. That's a great point. Yeah. So I want infinity back
because I don't know, man. I mean, you remember like I do that run of just good stuff for what
it was fairly affordable, a little bit nicer than Nissan, totally unique to them. So I'm going to
root any brand on just like I would Acura. You know, I owned a CL type S, you know, Grand Coupe.
I love that car. That was a great car. And I just want to see these brands back,
but you got to stop going to the happy hour together. I mean, you got to get some new friends.
Can you imagine what the Honda happy hour could possibly be like Honda,
a adjacent model like that. Where I grew up is very deep Honda territory. So you better watch
yourself, Rob. Well, since you brought it up, as a matter of fact, this was kind of on the side
note as just a side story, but since we brought up Acura by no real intention, they're celebrating
40 years. So check this out. They are celebrating 40 years with this Integra. So Acura celebrates
turning 40 by building this Rad Integra race car. I like that. That's really cool. This is a really
cool 80s, late 80s, tiny 1.6 liter four cylinder. I mean, Acura was launched March 27 1986. Today
is March 27, 2026. Boy, time flies. Man, that's awesome. Just a different time. Yeah. Just a
different cool factor, a brand that's lost its way. And, you know, I think there's a lot of
younger people probably listening to us. You just never got to experience these brands doing cool
stuff. Yeah. You know, and that sucks. That's why you got to root on that. Like I said, they get
some new friends, they get some new ideas, and they figure this thing out. That's the hardest part
in today's world is making new friends. Nobody leaves home. And if you do, you're triggered by
everything people say. I think they canceled the metaverse. So you're screwed. I did. I told Nick,
I was like, dude, there's no augmented reality future like everybody said that there was. Now
you really can't hang out. Exactly. We go into Minecraft or the other game the kids play. Roblox.
Roblox. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah.
Seems like that might not be the chat room you want to hang out in every other video. Yeah.
By the way, Disabled Chat in your kids games, no matter what game it is,
Xbox, tablet, Disabled Chat, but also every other video is like Roblox just come to take
your kids, which there might be true, obviously, but what a crazy time. Like you can't play a video
game without somebody trying to be a 100% pedo. You just can't, you just can't play,
can't play Madden in peace anymore. Speaking of video games though, Nick,
you're over there in the desert turning into a full-fledged Rocket League center. So for those
who don't know, Vegas has basically Rocket League in real life where you can go into the
desert and play with, again, going back to Honda Civics and you just play soccer with these cars.
Oh yeah. We're back, baby. I really, I want to see you. By the way, the ball says Merica on it.
It does. The ball that you, I mean, one of the things I try to tell people if you don't
understand Vegas and you think about the strip, Vegas really isn't a strip anymore. It's such a
big city, but there is a craziness to the stuff that people will do. Like people just shoot guns
in the desert, like behind people's houses. And by guys, you mean Sean Strickland basically?
Yeah, Sean Strickland. Like one of my buddies, his house backs up to BLM land and he can just
take his nine millimeter, like out his back and just shoot right into the mountain. Like,
and it's in a neighborhood. You know what I mean? It's like, it's technically he lives in a
neighborhood. So yeah, it's a wild place, but that was pretty cool to see that video.
Yeah. I'm going to see if I could pull it up real quick just a little bit.
Las Vegas now has a mother of God. You know what I hate? Not many are going to play it.
TikTok and Instagram will do this thing where sometimes you pull it up on the desktop and
they'll mute the audio for you. And then a week later, they'll do it automatically where they
unmute it for you. I'm like, what are you doing here? Yeah, pick a feature, stick with it.
Jamie doesn't struggle. Oh, well, Jaime has his ups and downs. All right. Jaime has his ups and downs.
We have another little input here from YouTube. Team Small Fry says,
I found a deal on Marketplace after taking Nick's advice on what looks what I can now say is a proud
owner of a 2002 100 series Land Cruiser. I will spend a bit of money to make sure she's up to date
on maintenance, but beyond stoked PS Team LX460 and LC 100 for the win. Yeah, buddy.
So we need to give your tips. See, I'm telling you back to what I'm saying. We need to put all
your tips into a PDF guide, right? If you want a good deal, follow these tips will be only by these
cars that I like. If you buy anything else, I don't agree with it, right? That's I mean, come on.
That's true. Nick's buying guide. Here's the cars. Here's the cars I like.
That's the next buying guide. It's only by these cars. Otherwise,
you're doing it wrong. Remove your email from my newsletter. I don't want to talk to you.
Yeah. I mean, I don't have a lot of buying tips, guys. I bought a lot of cars, but this
shit's pretty simple. Better buy what you like. I'm glad you said that. This shit's pretty simple
because there's this interesting story of a pair of Massachusetts, you know, software developers
that essentially what it says here, they created an, from an open source AI agent,
a way to negotiate purchases by passing the traditional listing site. So I wanted to ask you,
do you really think like, because we between you and I say it's that easy to just go in with what
you know you want to spend, you know, just the simple stuff we've said. Simple stuff.
Would the AI agent really solve that many issues for somebody to work a deal?
There seems to be people that have a real hard time doing things face to face or on the phone.
You don't have that struggle. I don't have that struggle. So for those people, probably,
you know, probably, I mean, there's a lot of people that just can't handle it. I think that's
what the last what 18 months on this podcast has basically proven to you and I is that people are
very, very uneasy about a lot of this stuff. I think we're going to get to a point. I have no
idea when this is going to be, but maybe AI is what ushers it in where essentially you'll have a
software. AI doesn't matter that you use on the consumer side and you send an offer in on a car
and they probably have some type of AI on their side and it sends back whether they accept it
or not. I don't feel like we're that far away from that. I don't know how highly efficient it's going
to be in the next year, two years, five years. I mean, I can't really predict that, but it seems
like we're headed that way. I mean, that's kind of how I do deals now. So I just send the email
or I get on the phone and say, Hey, we'll give you $110,000 for this car, take it or leave it.
And if they say, come get it, I just think there's a lot of people that are uneasy
with the experience of having to talk to somebody about buying a car. And because I don't have that,
I don't think this is no different than what I'm doing now. Maybe AI can speed it up and I can
send 50 of them out at a time around the country. I mean, I could do that. But I think for people
that struggle, this is probably going to be something that gets used and implemented at some
point. So we've talked about Tommy who runs the Delivered channel, which a lot of us have seen
his clips negotiating deals. There's nothing funnier to me than when there's an old schoolhead
kind of salesman who now has found social media and said, you know what, I'm going to start talking
to the camera. Did you pull that video up? I don't have it. I just thought of it since we're talking
about it. But this guy's basically saying like, God damn it. Making me lose my train of thought.
No, but this grandpa is like, you know, he didn't name him, but he's like, you got these people
on the internet that are charging you $1,000 and they're saying they're doing 200 deals,
you know, a month charging you XYZ to get this deal. You need to call us directly. That kind
of thing is just roasting individuals who are making a deal kind of like the AI agent would
for the customer because it's easier for them or whatever. I just find that really entertaining
because and it's always also funny when a really bad salesman exposes themselves without knowing
how what he just said or how he said it because he's hoping the person listening on the other side
doesn't well, he also doesn't understand the math. And this has been a big part of my business for
15 years. If somebody pays you, let's just use a bigger number, five grand and negotiate a deal
on a really expensive car and they save you $40,000. Yeah, was the was that money poorly spent?
Well, you're paying him a thousand bucks. Well, if he gets you $7,000 off the car,
it's a drop in the bucket, right? You just go, yeah, I got six, I'm six thousand to the positive
because I dealt with this guy. I think social media is an interesting place because
and we're very active on social. So this, this isn't like a comment on everybody else.
To your point, when you go on social media and you don't get it, it comes across so much worse
than you think because I just said why these AI things might take off. This salesman's not
understanding that some people are just uncomfortable with it. So they'll pay that guy a thousand bucks
just to not have to deal with the uncomfortable stuff. Then they'll pay a thousand bucks to get
X number of dollars off a car. So is there a reason to pay somebody? My clients would tell you,
yeah, there's a reason to pay theirs is more, we don't want to, you know, we're busy and we don't
want to deal with it. But for the average person, I've said this on this podcast. I think more
than once I'll say it now. If you hire a real estate agent, but you don't hire somebody to
help you negotiate a car deal, it's never made sense to me because actually real estate is highly
regulated. Like you can, you can not use a real estate agent, save that 3%, 5%, whatever it is in
your area, get a real estate attorney for 1500 bucks to look over the paperwork and it's a rat.
Ask me how I know, right? It's not that those people don't have value. It's just that
there is a more efficient way to do it. That doesn't mean everybody has to do it that way.
And that's the misunderstanding of this guy, but he's not doing enough car deals for you to make
this video. 200 car deals in the number of car deals that get done per month across the United
States, it's not even worth talking about. It's like, oh, I mean, okay, you did 200 car, there's
dealerships that do 1000 car deals a month, you know, 1500 car deals a month, what, you know,
more than that. And you look around and you go, but you're just not, you just don't see
what is going on here. Like it's not uncommon for just one dealer to do 500 plus car deals a month.
So why are you worried about a guy that does 200 across the entire United States? It's just,
it's just not something worth even talking about. Yeah, Nick has this famous line from Pines and
Polishing every now and again, where you'll see, you'll say like, I see what you do and it could
be regarded to whatever somebody in business or just a regular person like, I see what you do on
the internet, you know, from time to time and like this guy, probably not selling as many cars
just because you're talking about someone else selling cars on the internet. Yeah. And I think
it's become very apparent that people don't understand that others can see what you're doing
on the internet. And it sounds crazy to say it that way until you realize how many people do
stupid shit on the internet. And we're all a fan of it because a lot of the shit makes us laugh.
So I don't want them to stop doing it. But yeah, it's, it's, I think what that Tommy guy does is
it's a fine business model. And it seems like he helps plenty of people. But I think a lot of us
that are comfortable in the car business, I would say even me, at times I forget how many people are
just uncomfortable dealing with people on this type of level at this type of purchase. And you
got to kind of understand that. Absolutely. I had this video sent to me that said apparently this
guy is responsible for making vans popular, not Nick. That's bull. I was way before.
Okay, let me tell you, I'm so stoked right now. I did the little videos of my van and
yeah, my buddy's chilling at the Chick-fil-A closed at 11 in the handicap. Yes, but no one was there,
but whatever. But it's dirty. But you know what, guys, let me tell you something. I just won.
I won that life. I'm stoked. You know why? Because T-Pain comment on my shit and I am stoked as hell.
Come on, guys. I'm telling you, vans are the way to go. I'm telling you. I love it.
So funny. Did you see the original video at 7-Eleven where Hamon, like three or four other of these
Sienna's are part of that. That is, that looks really good. That looks really good.
Like I just having a conversation with one of the guys on my team that he saw, you know, Sienna
has that real dark green color that you see from time to time. He says something to a significant
other and she kind of bristles. Now, mind you, this guy works on the rare cars that we work on.
And he's been with me over a decade and he's like, you know, she just acts like I don't
know what I'm talking about. I said, bud, story of my life, story of my life, story of my life.
I mean, the van is a thing that was widely accepted at some point in culture and then
just got a bad rap. And I think we're back, Rob. I think we're back. Absolutely. We're healing.
That's how I like to say it. The world's healing. Hey, play that Michael Jackson song. What is it?
We are the world. Absolutely. Right. I'm going to go ahead and play. In case you missed this
video, it went pretty viral like a week or two ago, but I'm going to play it for people that
are watching on YouTube. No audio. Just them. Oh, it was Chick-fil-Ace at 7-Eleven. But yeah,
that's that green, actually. That's the one in the middle. I look so good with the bronze wheels,
too. Right? Love it. Hey, you put some a cognac interior. Shit, that might actually have a
cognac interior. Hey, cognac interior on that green. Boy, you'd be doing something. Okay,
now you look good, man. It looked really good. So question. Okay, we've seen the,
what was the Hellcat version? Look at that. I didn't even notice I was carbon fiber hood on
this one. Hey, I'm going to, the odds that that is really well done carbon fiber are as close to
0% as you can get. Sir, if you see this clip, I want you to let me know if that's real carbon
fiber on that hood. Would you rather have this nice wheels, nice color slammed maybe airbags
or the off-road version? Off-road. Really? Okay. 100%. Safari Sienna would be off the hook.
Okay. Off-road Sienna or a slam Sienna or an off-road Chrysler Pacifica.
I mean, one your engine could blow up the first day you get it. Sienna. Oh, okay.
Wow. The amount of comments we still get every day, but it's still a Chrysler,
but it's still a Chrysler. It's a great point. It is still a Chrysler. Yes. Yes. What is that
thing called? The Grizzly. The Grizzly. Yeah. Yeah. Don't act like you didn't know.
You got that pulled up on a tab 24 seven like, man, what are these going for? Well,
I'm hoping that they, somebody makes an equivalent of a Grizzly that's like,
because I think that did look cool. Like I'm not going to lie. Yeah. I mean, 100% and like a really
well done safari Sienna. Like if you guys keep watching us at the level, we got to build one.
Yeah, I know. Or Nick just has to buy one in. We're not getting that far from like, yeah, like
we need those YouTube numbers to get higher. So please go watch on YouTube because this money
for everybody doesn't know we have other gigs. This is not a source of huge income. Yeah. So
if we just got enough income out of this, I'd look at Rob and go,
I know you want to do a lot of stuff, but we're getting a Sienna and we're going to go ahead
and safari that thing. I mean, why not? Take it to SEMA, have a clutch culture booth where you
just have your minivan. I actually think it'd be above SEMA. You'd be like, SEMA gets kind of
corny at times. We got, we'll make our own car show. I like that. You know, you're in the
best place to do it too. What is it? The anti-SEMA social club or whatever it is?
I'm not anti-SEMA relax. Relax. They've been going for 30 years.
Yeah, just so we're clear. I'm a SEMA member. I did get so kind of on the same subject of
like older cars and cool cars. I got this video. All right. I'm going to play some of the audio
and then I'm going to stop it halfway through because it's got music I can't play on YouTube.
But 78,000 five is the thumbnail here and it's going to tell you something to this in less than
a year. Everybody drives them. I picked up stuff in it, got it washed. I've been parked in electric
only spaces. So why? So, and then he starts showing, plays some music and shows all the
reasons why he sold his $80,000 truck and bought a $2,500 GMC. I see this so much more now.
No, Chevy. Sorry, Chevy, my bad. Yeah, I don't know. Rob, Rob is making a lot of mistakes.
I think this is sort of an interesting, I don't want to say phenomenon, but I think it's becoming
one. I would totally say it's phenomenal, you know, where obviously this is a guy that likes
the Chevy brand and he just gets a new one, gets let down immensely. What the new one,
yeah, what the what he's getting in return and then goes and finds that part of the brand where
he's like, I'm just happier with this. I wonder, this is never going to be the majority or even
the minority of them. I mean, this is the niche of the niche of the market. I think a lot of people
that listen to us are probably in this guy's shoes where they just go, man, I got the new one,
didn't like it. We're hearing this a lot from Tundra right now. Got the new Tundra.
Always, I've had Tundras for a decade. I went back and bought the Tundra that I like the most
because I didn't like the new Tundra. They're not really picking on the Tundra. They're just saying,
I like something better. I liked an experience better. It spoke to me more. That's always going
to be a very small fraction of the market, but it is becoming sort of a phenomenon of people that
support a brand, in this case Chevy in this clip, and then they go back and buy something that they
go, I just like this part of the brand better. I think that's my whole thing with BMW for me.
I could easily go buy a new M2 comp. It just doesn't speak to me.
Yeah, that's true.
So I stay in the BMW pocket that I like to see.
Yeah. And those, man, somebody was commenting too about the M2 comp. I think I forgot what year
it was, but there's that little pocket where it's just like, that's one of my, in my opinion,
like the perfect BMW. Is that M2?
Sure.
Look, you can say this about everything. Audi, when it had the R8, you go, dude, that R8 was
special. I want to go back and experience that, but you could also be somebody who says,
I don't really like anything that Audi is putting out at the moment that it doesn't speak to me.
Right? I mean, this is across all brands, and we are talking a niche of a niche of a buyer.
Right? I think just a lot of us are really trying to find the things that speak to us.
And some people, that could be three years old, you know, a 2023 that they liked better,
or you could be in this guy's position where he's back, you know, 2005 or he's back in 1998.
Or I think it is becoming one of these things that you see for people that want to support
the brand they like, they get the new thing and they're like, ah, this, this isn't the part of
the brand I like. Well, speaking of a niche of a niche of a niche, I wasn't even going to bring
it up, but that reminds me the car cave video that we talked about probably two episodes ago,
there was a clip of it that went out, and that's the sentiment that a lot of people either really
hate, I think we know they really hate it, but it is for a niche of a niche of a niche who's going
to pay $250,000, $300,000 for it instead of buying one on Marketplace for 10 grand and then putting
a quarter of the money on that. Let's say something as an educational point.
Okay, I like it. I like education. When you see a price point of $250,000 to $350,000,
they don't care that they can buy a cheaper one. And they're also not going to build it themselves.
Yeah, so you giving that group of people a tip on how to save money, they don't care.
You're at your depth. Yeah, they can drive the thing off the cliff that day, not miss the money.
You're not flexing by telling people who can afford a $250,000 to $350,000 Land Cruiser,
anything. I don't care what kind of advice you think you're going to give them.
How do I know this? I'm in that market every day. They don't care.
They don't care. They don't care. They don't care about your, my, anybody's opinion on being able
to get something for less money. And this is where whatever stage you are at in life,
from a buying power perspective, you assume everybody else is in that stage.
And if you've never been to that part of the market, you don't really like,
this is why I always tell people you should go to Barrett Jackson in Scottsdale.
Because you will see people pay stuff for a vehicle that you'll go,
then you'll look over and you go, Oh, that guy's got a lot of cheddar. It looks like
I get it. He just wants it. You don't think it's the right one. You don't think it's the right
dollar amount. You don't think this. You don't think that if this guy's got $25 million cash to
play with, he doesn't give a shit. He's earning more interest on that money than what he just spent.
He doesn't care. And we have a really hard time watching an internet clip,
seeing that something's expensive and seeing it from the point of view of,
bud, there's a whole part of the market that ain't trying to do it cheaper.
They're not trying to get into a full build. They want to order it.
Never think about it again. Have it shift to their core. Have it arrive 14 months later or
whenever it arrives, they never even called about it again. They said, here's your 300 grand.
Here's my address. Let me know when it's on the way. You want to know how I know that's what
they do? Because that's the world I'm in. I've had people wait on cars for years and never ask
a single question about them. And if I told you the dollar amount, you'd be like, what do you mean?
He didn't call about it, but not an email, not a text, not a call. Not a WhatsApp. Never thought
about it. Not a telegram. Wired the money in June of 2020. Didn't get the car till June of 2025.
Never brought it up. There's levels to the game. There's levels. And so, oh, you could get this for,
yeah, man, you could. Those people don't care. It's not even a thought. And that is the thing to
really get in your head about the car business. Your position is your position.
That's why people overpay for cars, because they don't understand their position.
When you have all this money at your disposal, which a lot more people than you think have
a type of disposable cash that most people don't understand that that person has,
these things aren't a thought. Speaking of, we've got about two or three more stories here. So,
speaking of a car that's out of most people's price ranges, we did talk about the new LFA
towards the end of the year, beginning of this 2026 year. But I saw pricing that I hadn't seen
before, 2029 Lexus LFA, $550,000. I love the, that's estimated, Rob. That's estimated. It's
estimated. It's going to be closer to 700. You're right. You're right. And we also know that, well,
we don't know performance, but we do know that it's probably going to be full electric. There's
saying it's going to be an electric platform. As you know, the height video, it has
really deep exhaust noise in the video. Yeah, that was all pumped up through the stage.
And I'm like, okay. Yeah, why would you waste any time on that aspect of the video?
You're telling me this is the next generation of you showing off your EV chops. I mean, it looks
good. Yeah, it looks cool. Looks out of a video game. I don't know how interested I am in it. I
guess I'd have to see one in person. I mean, if Lexus wants to give us one, I'd be interested.
I don't know. I don't know. I can just see Nick. This is the new. Yeah. So
don't they have a yolk in this? Yeah. Yep. There it is. That's such a stupid idea.
Again, it's a concept. So I'm sure this goes, I guess we hope it goes away. That is so stupid.
I mean, did you not learn from the Tesla experiment? This is just stupid.
People were really, they're oohing it on about these scroller wheels that you can click in.
It is well done. Yeah, it's well done. This looks like knurling on my barbell right here,
the knurling on the. Yeah, exactly. It's just we all wanted a different LFA. Let's just all say it.
It's, it's, it looks cool. We all wanted the heritage LFA. We're not going to get it. It
doesn't seem and that's never, it just seems like we're down a road, man. But if you have an LFA now,
I mean, the prices will just continue to go up on those things. 100%. And those, those debuted at
like 300. This is going to debut. Couldn't get rid of them over. Yeah. Couldn't get rid of them.
$300,000. This one's going to start at double that and no one's going to want them. So that's,
that's the world we're loving it. Yep. They're making it for three people. But everything's
about the P&L, Rob. Everything's about the P&L. And this is Lexus. So another, again,
another company who you could just look at and say, a little reckless on your decision. So
I don't know what we're doing here. The Japanese don't have it figured out. Why would the Americans
be good stewards of the money? I mean, one, one population is better at math than the other.
And yet here we are. Same outcome. Weird. Absolutely strange. But if, you know, Rob said,
he can tell you how to parent. He can tell you how to do your, your, your relationship. So you
might want to hit up Rob. Well, you know what? If I say it sounds not narcissistic like, but
if someone says it for me, which I can find those people, all I could do is go like this.
Shrug my, yeah, they said it. Not me. Rob doesn't need speakers to drown out his significant
other because he never has any problems. Well, I don't have a lot of them. You know,
usually most problems arise from other people's stupidity around you, not necessarily your own
decisions. That's just my perspective. I think you might need to get some therapy for this.
No, no, no. If this world is one thing, it's over-therapized.
I'm not going to better myself. I'm not going to work on myself. No, listen,
I will work on myself at all times, but I think we're using that term a little too loosely these
days with the amount of therapy and ADHD medicine that everybody needs. But it was actually a funny
video of a kid on a, on an E dirt bike. It was probably like seven or eight. And the, the caption
was like 80 D dirt bike rider or something like that. And then he's mic'd up and he's like going
around on the track and he's like, Oh, I'm hungry. Ooh, I wonder if we have cookies at home.
Ooh, cookies sound good. Yeah. Cookie sound good. And he's like jumping on the ramp
and he makes a noise. He's like, Oh, that sounds like a parrot. Bye, bye. He's like,
in my mind. I was like, I bet this was Nick as a kid. I literally,
Oh buddy, I go back to the Ritalin days, which I don't even think exists anymore. So,
yeah, man, it was, that's why I can understand kids doing dumb stuff. No question. No question.
I was right in the middle seat right there doing dumb stuff.
All right. We got two more things here. We just talked about really expensive cars between the
LFA and that car cave land cruiser. We have from auto blog, the most reliable five cars of all
time that just won't die. I'm sure you could guess some of these, but I'm just going to go
ahead and pull up the list starting at number one, and we'll work our way down. We've probably even
discussed most of these ourselves because we either had one liked them or learned a driving one,
but we got the first generation, or the fourth generation, fifth generation Toyota pickup truck.
For a fact, these won't die. Yeah, no way. I think Whistle and Diesel even did a video of this
years ago where he was trying to, you know, I haven't got, I haven't been deep into the Whistle
and Diesel videos. I have it in modern. I might have the guy, I might have to go watch some of
those. Yeah, the ultra stuff. I mean, like he tore into one of these and it just would not die.
Yeah, that's, that's a good way to start a list. Crown Vic.
I mean, 92 to 2011, what a run that was too, and they just, they won't die.
And you still see people that got them at police auctions out here
in every city around the country. No question. That's another, hey, it's a good start to a list.
It is. Number three, the Mercedes. Yes.
Dude, these, for a fact, the 123, 240d and 300.
They're never, never going to die.
Get a good diesel in there. That thing will cry out.
Yeah, a proper estate car there on the left.
Proper estate car. The color as well. This is the only time I'd appreciate a yellow car.
Yeah. Yeah, good call.
Isn't that Mercedes. Number four, I love the six gen civics. Probably not your style,
but this one right here, this goes hard.
It doesn't go hard, but it won't die. Yes.
It goes so hard. Okay. There'll be no slander of these.
How, what are the odds that those white wheels will be permanently brown in three weeks?
Well, those are probably already like just spray painted for being honest here.
Yeah. Yeah. Just, just throwing that out there.
And number five, probably one of Nick's favorites, the Lexus LS 400.
Dude, I just saw a mint, one of these on the freeway. I tried to get a picture,
but the sun was too, was glaring right. It was a more, it was in the morning and I was right
into the sun. I saw a black one with the gold badges, perfect condition, not an ounce of tint
to be seen. That's crazy.
Unbelievable. It was in mint condition. I tried to snap it. I'll send it to you after the podcast.
I tried to snap a picture and it got it. The car just looks like a shadow because it was
directly into the sunlight and I was on the freeway. This is why you don't drive your scooter
because I'm the guy trying to like get a picture going 75 miles an hour.
Admittedly so. Yep.
Yeah. It looked awesome. Still a car that in person, when it is untouched,
unmodified, still holds up design wise in person, which is pretty wild to think about.
Yeah. And it's really crazy because it looks, I mean, it is a plain Jane car if you ever saw
one, but it's plain Jane in the best of ways from front to back dimensions, the layout,
even the two-tone coloring that they use in it.
I thought it was the coolest thing in the world because I was young when these came out or younger
and they had, I believe they had an ad. They may have put it in print, but they definitely had a
commercial where they had the champagne glass on the engine and when you started it up, nothing
rattled. Yeah. Like it didn't even move. I know it's things to get done after that,
but I thought it was like the coolest thing. I just didn't have any, I didn't have anything to
like compare it to, right? It was just sort of one of those times in my life. I'm like,
I've never seen this, but that always sticks out in my mind about that car. And I think they even
did the quarter test where they put a quarter vertically. Yeah, I think you're right.
I always say it's really, really rare. I think Genesis kind of proves my point on this.
They put so much time, effort and money into doing it right the first time,
it just does not happen very often. Yeah. I think that's what makes it one of the cool cars.
That's a really good point. And when you do that level of work to achieve that level of
refinement so early on, I mean, we're talking 89, right? Yeah, they're going to battle with S-Class.
I mean, they're going right after S-Class with this car at the time, which, you know,
had a stranglehold on that sedan market, that buyer. And very quickly,
just basically said, this is probably better. And that would have told a customer at the time
if they were savvy enough to really examine what they were buying or what they were looking at,
what the rest or what the next couple of decades would look like for a brand like that. When you
take another brand, we'll just use Ford and Example or GM, and you see the lack of refinement
in cars from the 80s. You're like, so, so I, so I have a wild story with LS 400. So I had a family
member that had an LS 400 at the time. So I got to drive it, but I'm like 16, 17. I put that
vehicle in a front yard because it was snowing. Okay. And, and it had all kinds of, I didn't
know what I was doing, put it in a front yard. Luckily nothing happened. Had a step sister,
totaled that car. Well, no, that's a terrible story. I'm just saying that's my LS 400 story.
I mean, how many LS 400 stories you got, Rob? Yeah, I can only tell the story I got.
You're right. Well, I mean, it was terrible that the car got wrecked. I'm not saying it was terrible.
Yeah, it's a terrible, I mean, everybody was fine. Airbags deployed, you know,
you know, some roughed up chin and face lacerations were all good. But when I think back to driving
that car, which I actually got to drive quite a bit, I didn't actually know how good it was.
I think about that. There's not a lot of cars from, from that era that you got to drive and go,
I just didn't recognize how good it was. Most of the time you're like, Hey, this was a cool
experience. Like, but it was just a luxury. It was just a sedan, right? So if you were at a certain age
and you were young enough, you didn't really actually know what you were seeing. You just
knew it was like, this is a cool sedan. Now, I think back to that and I go, you know, it really
didn't get a lot better than this. Right. You're right. I actually only have one and I'm going to
be very transparent here. I'm going to be very vulnerable. I only have one story. And it was
this girl in high school. She was such a bitch that I hated the car because of her.
Yeah, that's, that's, I could see that. Okay, cool. I mean, that's why some guys hate eclipses and
hate, you know, like a Dodge. I never loved the talent. Then you found out Becky drove one and
she dumped them and he's got this weird hang up in his head. It's one of the rare cars in my life.
The LS 400 is a rare car for me that I don't think I even had 10% of the respect in the moment
that I should have. Yeah. Because as we kept developing cars, I go, you know,
we're getting further away from a good thing over there. It's really not better than this.
You know, the LS, the LS 430 did build on the 400. Yeah. And so there's really an argument
that the 430 is probably a better experience. But coming out of the gate like that is just
something you can't put into words to people that first generation luxury of that level.
I'm not sure we've ever seen that. And there's actually like a sea of examples where you could
exactly what we just described is look back and be like, we're actually leaving a really good
thing over here and it's not getting any better. Signed BMW. Yeah, perfect example. All the people
that are into the tech and bought into the EVs or whatever will never understand or appreciate
any conversation like this or clips that are put out of these kind of conversations because
they'll think that, oh, you're just somebody that doesn't want to move into the future. It's like,
no, we just really left behind some good stuff that you guys are just completely ignoring.
And I think people miss that about us. It's like, guys, I understand the evolution of things.
Like we just talked about the new M2 and first thing I said was they've done a great job with it.
It just doesn't speak to me. So I'm not an anti evolution, but your way you put it is probably
correct is that sometimes you think to yourself, we did leave stuff behind. You know, one of the
things we left behind on it with almost every car manufacturer is what it's like to sit in a genuine
leather seat and have a genuine leather interior. Like that is not a thing that when you get into
a lot of these vinyl faux leathers now, if you never experienced real leather, you go, well,
what's the big deal? Well, when it's done right and it was Napa leather and seats were this way,
it was a big difference. Like I know that's a real niche thing to talk about, but we just like
for a variety of reasons, obviously, production cost and durability and
but like get in some of those King ranches, you know, with that aniline leather that was uncoded,
you go, yeah, this is better. And that's what you would kind of say about Lexus. I mean, they had
some of these Napa leather seats and you go, yeah, this is better. Yeah. The only thing I
haven't seen yet in our comment section after, you know, 15 20 million of views across all videos
is the phrase. All right, Luddite, you know, considering some people might think that we
don't like tech that much just because we talk about nostalgic kind of things a lot on this
podcast, but it's not about that at all. It's just that there is despite technology advancement,
some things that were better for the driver, whether you're sitting in it, driving in it,
racing it or whatever. Some of the old stuff actually does live up to modern hype.
Yeah, and not and there's a lot of older cars that I'll be the first to admit were just junk.
Yeah, right. They were just junk. That's okay. But that then you have to say there's
things being built now that are just junk too. You only have a certain level of how many special
cars and trucks can be built at once. And so we tried guys like us probably
are going back to nostalgia. But I think the part of it is like you said,
if you really got to drive an LS 400, it wasn't improved upon all that much.
It almost filled a little too refined for a teenager to be driving.
Oh, I should not have been driving. Yeah. No, no, no, it shouldn't have happened.
You should like that vehicle needed some flags on the front of the car and somebody in the
back seat being driven around. Like coming to America. Exactly what I was talking about.
Dignitaries. Exactly. Some diplomat. It's cool to see they have LS 400 because it does it does
get but I just saw a mint one. I just saw it this week and I'll send you the picture.
How funny. I'm like, oh my god, I wish I could have got a picture of this.
So if we're talking about this list and those five at the top was a Toyota pickup
from the 80s or the LS 400 and he had to pick one of those,
would you go with the LS 400 or the pickup? Yeah, no question. No question. I would still
love that pickup. I mean, I don't want people but LS 400. Yeah, I mean, big sedan,
by the way, you could probably carry just as much stuff in it.
That's true. Probably more of that trunk. Because everybody that never saw that
trunk, you get some stuff in that trunk. You get away with some stuff was what Nick was going to
All right. Last story. We're already across the hour and people love these slightly longer
episodes. So Mercedes explains where the V12 survives and where it's dead. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. So for Americans, luckily enough, we actually, I'll just break the, you know,
break the ice here. Because correct me if I'm wrong, Mercedes sells this V12 to other companies.
Yes. And other markets, right? So the company's biggest engine has gone for Europe and other
markets but not in the US. So the Mercedes will continue to sell or will stop selling the S-Class
V12 engine in Europe and other regions, but it remains in the United States. That's cool.
That's great, right? South Korea and the Middle East are still getting the V12 sedan.
You can guarantee the Middle East is getting the V12. I was just going to say, I'm sure you
have even put that in the article. Yeah, that was a given, right? So just for the Mercedes fans,
something interesting that might leave the door open to some cool things for these bigger body,
big engine cars. I thought it was cool. Yeah. Those wheels. This is only being kept alive because
I think they sell it to multiple different companies. Mercedes is in an interesting place,
probably like most Euro manufacturers, is they're having to navigate European regulation with what,
you know, again, what they're going to sell to the Middle East and what they're going to sell
to Asia and what they're going to sell to the US. I love when you have these sort of heritage
platforms that stay alive, but we're in the final days, whatever that means. If it's, you know,
a year or five years, nobody knows, but it's cool that it's staying around.
Yeah, I was actually just looking up. We hadn't, I personally hadn't seen a lot from
our boy Ben's in bow ties. I wonder how Mercedes sales are doing right now.
Well, I think dealers have come back to earth a lot as you experienced with your buying
recently of the Raptor. It's coming back to earth guys. I don't want anybody to wait around
on new cars thinking they're going to fall 50%. I think some of us do believe that, you know,
out there in the world. I don't believe that that's not going to happen, but we're going to see,
you know, we're going to see a little bit more wheeling and dealing, you know, I'm heavy in
the automotive market, obviously, as my career. We're seeing, we're seeing things lighten up a
little bit and don't come at us with the, you know, special edition of this and that's not,
it's not going to come down. They know that there's a special edition. Like you got to be
realistic, but like on a normal F 150 or a Silverado, we're going to see some budge here.
Absolutely. So to land the plane, last shout out here from the discord again, you can join
it.clutch.club. Odentex in the discord says, after 30 years, I finally got a lift in my shop,
which he showed, I think it was his ridgeline on there. So good for you, man. Hopefully you get
all the projects and tinkering finally done that you've dreamt about. When are you going to get a
lift? Are you going to do it in this? I got a lift. Oh, do you? Yeah, I got a lift here. Oh, badass.
I got a scissor lift. Oh, God. I don't have a four post lift. Yeah, I have a, it's called twin
bush. It's like a German company. It's great. Nice. I think if I'm not mistaken, Odentex found
this off of marketplace. Somebody got it and he was trying to stack cars that it just wouldn't
fit and he ended up getting a really good deal on it. That's one of those things where, I mean,
unless you're really looking for a lift, are you going to marketplace to find your next lift?
I have an interesting relationship with marketplace because I haven't been as deep into
it as some people. I'd say that it's probably a weakness. I should be a little bit more. Yeah,
agreed. Looking for tools, looking for toolboxes, lifts, probably a pretty good place. I just,
I've been looking for one of those echo assault bikes, you know, from Rogue. A lot of kids,
a lot of guys I went to college with are a part of Rogue because it's right near Ohio State's
campus. They started from the ground up with that company. But yeah, I just saw a deal on,
it popped up on my marketplace when I got on Facebook and I'm like, huh.
Marketplace might be the one reason why Facebook survives. I'm just going to throw it out there.
I wonder how Facebook survives at all. And then you see their user account and you're like,
Jesus, a lot of people are using this platform. I don't know why it exists.
I know. It's older people. It's a different, it's a, how do you say this without being super
fucking mean? It's just a different, I don't know, different group of people, but marketplace is for
everybody. So we'll just say it that way. Yeah. So I think it's cool. We got it off marketplace.
Like we took a lift out of a customer's house maybe two, three years ago and
they sold that thing in two seconds. You know, real quick, totally off subject,
but you brought up the Rogue Echo bike. I wanted one of those as well. I'll tell you what,
do not, this is for listeners as well. Don't go shop from assault. I know the assault bikes and
the assault runners are what a lot of people know that, you know, is the cream and the cream along
with Rogue stuff. I ordered one in November, never got it. I finally, I had to dispute it.
I just like two, three weeks ago finally got the money back for it. And then you go to the website.
You know, your boy, you know, your boy has been waiting on his sauna. Oh, that's right.
I'm like a couple of weeks from it. And by the way, it's out of dripping springs.
Oh, really? Okay. Cool. Was it one of the ones that we had talked about? Did you go with another
one? No, no, it was one of the ones we talked about. Yeah, no. So I'm waiting on, got the place
all set up, you know, getting itchy. I'm like, Hey, should I love a good sauna session? One thing
I'm not a believer in is cold plunge. Really? No, science doesn't, it's not, it's not real strong.
That's, it's kind of like a hardo move more than it is, you know, what people think it is. Yeah.
I'm not, I'm not doing that. Well, what about contrast therapy then? Maybe trying it out,
you think going back and forth? No, I've done the cold plunge thing. It's not because I can't
do it or like, you know, some people get real freaked out about cold. In all fairness, it just,
there's a lot of also negative effects of a cold plunge. Yeah, especially if you're doing it right
after a workout, you know, really, yeah, like, and so I think the science kind of, and I'm not
scientist. So if you do it like once or twice a month, I think there's some benefit, but you have
people that are doing it every day. And I don't think there's no way that that's what people,
it's just, it's not on your side, bud. Okay, all right. We got the sauna numbers, like we know,
I've been a sauna fan ever since I started working out. Oh, yeah. So for me, it just makes me feel
better. And dude, I have all of this. What's it called like an HSA? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've had one for
like 17, 18, I never spent the dollar. And so now you can buy a sauna through your HSA if you do
all the doctor paperwork properly and all that kind of stuff, slept on account slept on tax
benefits with an HSA, by the way, if you guys, you know, here's what I got somebody said to me,
or my accountant said to me, he's like, you know, you're not supposed to spend that money.
He's like, you're supposed to let it grow. I said, Hey, bud, by the time I get to the place
at 80 years old, I don't care how much money's in my HSA anymore. I'm trying to I'm trying to
this this year was the first or the end of last year was the first time I ever spent a dime out
of that account. Wow, there's a lot of benefits to it. I mean, it grows, you can take the money.
I mean, there's like a triple tax benefit account for those of you that want to nerd out about it
that maybe kind of overlooked it really good account. Yeah. Yeah. So I like 15 years of putting
money in it. So I finally said, let me get this bad ass to this two person. Dude, from the early
days, like, you know, as a teenager, going finding a lifetime fitness or 24 that had a sauna,
sometimes you had a muscle through unfortunate neighbors building a massive lifetime by my
house right now. Yeah. Yeah, doing a massive lifetime. We'll have what three or four of them in
town if once this one's done. Damn. And here and here we thought when we were in the lockdown
era, people were like, Oh, the commercial gyms are done forever kind of thing. 500 a month, big dog.
Damn. 500 a month. What is this equinox? What's the other one? Is it is it equal? Well, the thing is
they all stole this idea of these types of health clubs from a place in Dallas called the Q Club.
The Q Club had all of the 90s Dallas Cowboys like, you know, as like, I don't know if necessarily
they all invested, but the Q Club is where all the Dallas Cowboys of the 90s hung out back then.
So the Q Club started this type of health club and then lifetime this real estate development
company to, you know, basically took it and ran with it. Wow. Have you ever since we're on the
subject, I know we already landed the plan, but hey, we took off again. Have you ever used
digital resistance? Like, so there's like Beyond Power makes this machine where it's like,
Oh yeah, I've never actually, I never actually used it yet, but it looks cool.
Looks super cool. And then there was the mirror looking one that was popping for a while.
The one that LeBron was, was what was that called? Yeah, anyway, yeah, no, I've Tonal.
Tonal. Yeah, I've heard a lot. I mean, Tonal was one thing, but like the Beyond Power company,
those are some real interesting nerds that love science-based lifting that are like,
the way that they put this thing together, it just looks like it's such a
I told you, dude, I'm off the weights. I'm completely pretty close.
You then you need, then you need to be on, you need, it's called the Vultra by Beyond Power.
Go look it up if you haven't things fucking cool. Yeah, dude, I'm a few shoulder surgeries,
deep. I'm good. Yeah, that's good. Well, going back to kids will be kids. Nick learned some
tough lessons growing up. I'm going to, I'm going to just, you know, stay to the calisthenics,
maybe a kettlebell here and there. Some P90X insanity side stuff. Tony Horton.
Our boy. This is a great long episode, everybody. All right. Clutch.club, if you haven't joined,
there's hundreds and thousands of you that have not joined the discord. What are you doing?
All right. Yeah, it's fun. It is fun. It's taken off. We've got people in there talking about all
kinds of stuff. We've got new channels coming up as often as, you know, people suggest them if
they make sense. We're trying to segment the different talks, so we have different topics
going on. But yeah, great episode. We'll see everybody next week. See you guys.
About this episode
The guys kick things off with a heated, real-world rant about adults riding scooters and one-wheels on sidewalks—arguing for licensing/insurance and basic enforcement rather than banning the tech. They pivot to car culture debates: the “no manual” decision for the C8, why executives’ profit-and-loss excuses feel hypocritical, and what a Grand Sport manual could mean. Other highlights include the reborn Infinity QX65/FX nostalgia, a discussion of reliable “won’t die” classics (LS 400, Crown Vic, etc.), and a Mercedes note on where the V12 still lives. They also cover AI-assisted car buying, plus a few offbeat stories and buying/negotiation philosophy.
If you're a parts manufacturer or supplier that want's to be apart of either the 2003 LX470 or 2014 Gen 1 SVT Raptor, get in touch with us via email at [email protected]
Follow the show on social @ClutchCulturePod on Instagram & TikTok