#73 - Hybrid Broncos, Hyundai’s Boulder Concept, Special Edition Jeeps, Manufactures Future Problems, & Much More

All right, you know what I've realized?

We've curated or created this large batch of car enthusiasts,

but what I've learned is they like to make jokes,

like to be cool, but they also just like to be like adults,

mature, if that makes sense.

When we talk about tuning and doing stuff to cars,

they're all for it, but they're not like,

that's not on the forefront of what they like to do

with their cars.

I actually just like to enjoy driving

and sometimes the most modern stuff,

but really just whatever they enjoy.

They don't, they're not huge tinkers.

And I know it's not everybody,

but I don't know if you've seen this, man.

I feel like they're just not a lot of them

into heavy mod to the moon type stuff.

No, I mean, and that's what we've kind of told people

is what is presented on social media from creators

isn't really what the car enthusiast is doing, right?

It's not really what they're a part of.

They're not, you know, they're not ripping their car down

and putting all these modifications in their garage.

There's a certain segment of it,

but you can go to cars and coffees for what?

Well, over a decade now and see that wasn't true,

which I think is why we're seeing a shift

in so many creators saying, you know, my views are down,

things aren't going as well.

Look, man, I mean, the days of these heavy modified channels,

you know, people started to realize none of it was good.

Like I said, all you got to do is walk SEMA one time

with any kind of keen eye and go,

yeah, this shit on the internet's not real.

Have you ever, when's the last time you missed a SEMA?

Got to be close to like 10 years.

So you've been going consistently for a decade.

Well, I mean, 15 years, I mean,

maybe I missed one or two in there in 15 years.

Now, if you were to explain to the listeners,

because I don't think they know just how close it is

to your shop, how often you do go

and how long you do spend when you're there,

what's in a one sentence elevator pitch,

what could you tell people that you've seen

like the most drastic or the most even interesting change

over the last 10, 15 years?

The fact that the work is still bad.

I mean, that's the most astonishing thing to me.

And then there's going to be people in the comments

that have never been there.

And they see stuff online, they're like, well, it's great.

Or they go in person and you find out when they make a comment

that they don't really have a keen eye to what great is.

Right, so for anybody that's never been around

truly great cars, they don't know what that level looks like.

And a truly great car means top to bottom,

everything is great.

Every little piece is meticulous.

That is .0000001% of modified cars.

Like it's not to throw shade at somebody or to say,

hey, man, if you love your car and you did it,

that's all individual.

But just judging, I always tell people,

if you go to Pebble Beach, you go to Amelia Island,

you go to Car Week in Scottsdale,

the vast majority of stuff you see is not great.

It is cool, it's good, there's a lot of overlooked parts of it.

I tell people this all the time, we got this,

what was supposed to be one of the best vintage Broncos

ever done, and one of my clients bought it.

You could literally take a fingernail

and peel the paint off the hood.

Oh, no way, how much did you pay for it?

I want to say at the time when things were unheard of

in the twos, we were probably in the twos.

Yeah, which was unheard of back then.

I mean, it was a great shop and a famous shop,

and I hear all that stuff all the time.

And for those that don't know, that's my world.

My world is going into somebody's collection

and going, oh no, look what we got here.

I've seen it in Ferrari collections,

I've seen it in classic muscle car collections.

And again, it's not a judgment thing.

They're asking me my opinion and I go,

yeah, you got a problem here.

You know what I've never asked you?

Yeah.

If somebody were to call you in, how often has it been

where you're assessing a collection

that maybe is exchanging just hands

to another collector, for instance,

and you're having to give them the honest truth of like,

bro, this is not worth what you think it's gonna be worth.

So, I mean, almost every one of them.

I mean, almost 100% of the time.

I mean, it's, I would say it is 100% of the time.

So, we do reports on collections.

So, each car gets a report, we go through it.

I mean, we go through, I think of it like a 10X PPI.

I was gonna say, okay, just okay.

Okay.

We give a report on each car.

I've never been in, by the time we get called

into a collection usually,

unless somebody's becoming a new collector

and we're sort of there to be a part of it,

if I'm going into an existing collection,

I don't name the price.

I mean, say it's a $50 million collection.

No, I mean, it's very rare that they have cars

that are in pristine condition.

Do you ever have anybody come back and say,

hey, man, I'm really glad you talked to me

out of something or guided me?

Well, I get, you get one of two people.

It's sort of like what we see in comment sections

on everybody's stuff.

When you say stuff, the problem is,

is you're dealing with a lot of people

that have never seen what the elite level looks like, right?

So if you make a comment on a car that they own,

they're already convinced theirs is in pristine condition.

You guys can all see that, everybody watching us.

I mean, go to a Facebook marketplace, sales post,

go, you know, bring a trailer, cars and bids.

The amount of people that are convinced

that they have something that's pristine

is way out of whack with how many things

are actually pristine.

And this is the collector world,

the average daily driver, all of that.

So yeah, it's, you find out very quickly

after you sort of do a report on people's collections,

how serious they are about getting their collection

to great, and that's even a small number.

I mean, it's a small number that really wanna do

what it takes to get their collection back into shape

and to the pristine condition.

It's just very rare.

And I know a lot of people think

because somebody has a car collection,

that means they're gonna take care of their cars.

And that's the furthest thing from the truth.

They're just able to afford a lot of cars in most cases.

This might be a weird question, it doesn't have an answer,

but in the last 10 or 15 years,

we'll just use like the consistently going to SEMA.

And I would imagine the other big auctions as well.

Have you seen either an increase or decreasing

the amount of people that are actually going out

and trying to gobble up cars and start collections?

No, that's probably gone up a little bit

because we're now seeing it,

people are being presented that this is an asset class.

So it's sort of like this.

I mean, if you go back to 2008, 2009,

the only people that were thinking about investing

in real estate were people that were hardcore

into real estate.

If you fast forward now with eight zillion people

talking on the internet,

everybody thinks they're gonna build

a real estate portfolio.

So it's the same thing with cars now.

And that started, let's say it, during the pandemic.

Everybody's sitting at home.

You have these online auction platforms,

everybody that's creating any type of content like we are

that doesn't have any experience

is starting to call cars an asset class.

When not thinking about,

I told a story on here.

I mean, there's a Ferrari situation we have here

in Las Vegas that it's gonna cost somebody 400 grand

to get the car running.

Like on a classic Ferrari?

Yes.

It's gonna cost 400 grand to get this thing

just running again.

And it's in rough shape after that.

And it's worth a lot of money, quote unquote.

By the time we all get said and done,

him storing it all these years,

him moving it around all these years,

you look at it, man, the money dries up pretty quick, right?

So all of this mythical stuff around cars

being an asset class,

those of us that have been around longer than five minutes,

we go 99% of the stories you guys are hearing

about it being an asset class isn't really true.

And I think there are some YouTubers

who are liquidating their collections

who bought things like SF90

and clipped 400 grand out of their pocket

the minute they bought it.

I mean, they just lost 400 grand, just lit it on fire.

Okay, so now you're 400 grand negative,

you got to put that through the rest of the collection

that you're probably close to break even on.

You're 400 grand in the hole.

And you haven't maintained any,

you haven't sent any to the shop,

you haven't done a PPF,

you haven't had all your collection serviced,

you haven't stored it, which is a big thing

people don't think about,

you haven't insured the cars.

Which- I haven't even driven the cars maybe, right?

Yeah, I mean, which insurance

is going through the roof on these things

because you're doing a lot of stated insurance

through companies like Hagerty.

It can look like a deal if you have three or four cars,

but go to somebody that has 50 cars with real value,

that number's pretty big.

And so all of the sudden,

people with no experience don't understand

the minor things that we're talking about

because they've never been exposed to it.

Just like, I think the last time we talked about SEMA,

we had a couple guys that,

I think it was the first SEMA they went to

and they're like, well, these cars were in great shape.

Oh yeah.

You just don't have the eye.

You don't know what you don't know.

And by the way,

I also wouldn't have known 15, 16, 17 years ago.

So it's not a judgment on my part.

It's that the more you're exposed to elite

and what is actually great

and what is actually in that 1%, 3%,

whatever number you wanna use,

that's when you start to understand

that the perspective is what matters.

And most builders that we've worked with on customs

or refurbishing an exotic or whatever,

when they get called out,

they didn't realize they were doing it wrong.

And that's a fact.

What was the, if you had to just guess,

what was the projected value of this car

that they still had to put 400 plus K into?

Oh, it's every bit of three and a half,

three and a half mil.

But the problem is it's estimates right now,

it's gonna be like a 1.1 or 1.2 million dollar bill

to get it right.

And again, he put over a million to buy in it

and he stored it all these years.

So you're looking at his cost basis

of being somewhere around three to three and a half million

and just to get his three and a half million out.

Now, what people are gonna say is,

well, then he broke even, exactly right.

I don't think that's bad.

But if you broke even after, let's call it 25 years

on the S&P, you would think it's a bad investment.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that is an asset class is not what people think.

Now, we are big fans and let me make this clear.

If you can break even on your car, that's great.

Yes.

That's fantastic.

But that's not an asset class.

Okay, an asset class is something you go,

I'm gonna put my money in here for 25 years,

it's gonna grow and it's gonna grow massively

over what I invested.

So if I put a million dollars into the S&P 25 years ago,

I wouldn't have to worry whether or not

I gained a lot of money.

I mean, you guys can go ahead and plug that into AI

and it'll tell you what a million dollars

would have turned into in the S&P.

You're probably in some insane territory

with the returns we've seen over the last 25 years.

Same thing with real estate if you did it 25 years ago.

So we gotta be careful with the word asset

and the way it's being set around cars

because really good car ownership

is getting free mileage at a break-even point.

Right, and you know what you don't hear a lot?

At least I have it and I watch over the last 10,

12, 13 years a slew of different people.

You don't really hear the term phantom cost in cars,

whether it's a car or a small collection,

like you wouldn't real estate for instance.

Like you just, you don't hear that at all.

No one ever divulges what that could be.

Well, and I'll say this, very rarely have I walked into

detailed balance sheets of collections.

That makes sense.

Let's all be fair about it.

When you start giving them the details,

you start to get a lot of pushback and they go,

well, I didn't realize this and I didn't realize that.

I didn't, I know you did.

You took it into account.

You would have known if you took it into account.

You didn't ever put a spreadsheet together

on this specific car.

And when we do that in people's collection,

first of all, most people are thankful

because now they actually know

what it's costing them to keep their cars.

That may cause some people to dig further in

and go buy more cars because they have that kind of wealth.

Or somebody may say, hey, I need to liquidate some of this.

I didn't realize I was kind of bleeding money

through all of these little different avenues.

Like one of the things that people don't realize is,

you know, if you start up a car and it never really moves,

you're gonna still have to change the oil.

Just because it didn't move doesn't mean

that that oil is healthy in that engine, right?

Like because you have all kinds of moisture buildup

in that oil and you don't get to burn it off

and you don't get it out working through all of it.

So one of the things is,

is that a lot of people that own collections

or just own four or five cars

and some of them don't get driven,

is that you still gotta do oil changes.

You still gotta look through it.

You still gotta realize there's gonna be a cost to all of this.

And it amazes me, it has from the beginning,

how many people just don't realize, like you said,

there's all of these little nickel and dime moments

that the more expensive the car,

they're not nickels and dimes anymore.

Yeah, it compounds quickly.

Like we dealt with a Ferrari,

we've dealt with this a few times.

I mean, we shared it on here,

where somebody just had a transmission go out on a Ferrari

and Ferrari's like, yeah, that's on you.

Like, I don't care what you think.

Get the peace sign and disappear.

I don't think, I don't care what you think

and what you think we should cover, we don't care.

And right there, you could have a $290,000 car

that has a $50,000 transmission bill.

Now, what do you think that balance sheet

on that car looks like?

It's not real healthy, right?

It's, you're in the negative pretty quick.

And that's not a bad thing.

One of the things that I say all of the time,

and I hope we get across here,

guys, there's people that can lose money on cars,

it's never a thought.

And that's a lot of people that I deal with.

It's never a thought, it's never a worry.

They can write the check, they'll never miss the money.

What we see from the average buyer that's become concerning

is how many people buy platforms that they lose,

where they used to lose 10 to 12% a year,

they're losing 30% in the first year.

And now they're losing it on a number

they've never really been in before.

They've bought an $85,000 truck,

they've gone to trade it in, and it's 55 grand.

So you have that, right?

The depreciation set.

So if we were to compare the two,

we have a lot of regular, schmagular,

average enthusiasts alike, like I said,

to buy new cars every once in a while

or just hang on to old stuff, or even buy older stuff,

versus the collectors you're talking about

in the upper echelon of I buy a car

or I collect a bunch of cars.

The depreciation for the average consumer,

we'll just say like ourselves or our listeners,

and then the repair cost,

and then all those little phantom costs,

like there is, I was just thinking about this earlier

this week, like what are the core pillars

of the things that the average consumer

should be worrying about?

Because I came across this randomly delivered,

or I'm not delivered, but it was shown to me

this mechanic, and he was talking about

how he's been observing, he's been a mechanic for years,

he owns a shop somewhere in South Dakota,

North Dakota, something like that.

And the amount of parts that are just not being produced

is the timeline is shrinking.

Like before they used to produce for platforms,

10, 12, 15 plus years, 20 years,

now it's shrinking to like six to seven years.

And then the parts are gone.

So the idea was, if people are buying older cars,

that's great, but when today's current cars

become the older cars, people are gonna be screwed

between tech stacks inside and then all the other components,

dude, people are gonna be screwed.

Well, you're gonna have to,

you could see a real revitalization of quote unquote,

audio shops to go in and rewire infotainment systems,

that could become, I'm not saying it's going to,

but you could see where you have,

I think we did an accurate story or accurate,

like, yeah, we're just not gonna support

the old tech system anymore.

And so like good luck.

Right, right, right.

Well, for those cars to work,

somebody at an audio shop is gonna have to go in

and rewire all of that tech and put a new system in.

So you could see a real revitalization around that

as we probably have to get some ways down the road here.

I think the one you have to be scared about is GM.

Yeah.

You know, GM, if I'm not mistaken, their plan is this,

you're basically gonna get everything for free

for like seven to eight years.

And then at that time,

you're gonna have to pay for navigation,

you're gonna have to pay,

like it's some type of plan like that.

I don't, guys don't quote me on that,

but it's some type of plan of,

you're gonna buy it with their new system

because they're getting rid of Apple CarPlay.

And then there's gonna be some cutoff time

where the subscription thing is going to be a necessity

to keep running that car.

Yeah.

I think we did cover that around like Thanksgiving last year.

But I don't think all the details were out there.

I think it's starting to leak out,

whether that's internal memos

or they've actually made the announcement.

So guys, if they've made the announcement,

I just, you know, I just, let's be clear,

not real worried about GM tech.

It's not like high on my list.

You know, I just think that you're going to see

a lot of things, like you said,

tech stacking is going to have a real effect

at the 10 year, the 15 year,

because now if you go back and you look at my like 2003 LX

or my 2008 BMW, the tech is outdated,

but the tech is not destructive to the car

and the way that it operates.

So if everybody's thinking like,

well, we've had tech for a long time.

Yeah, but we haven't been running sensor systems

through the infotainment, through the entire car,

through the windshield, through the side mirrors,

through that hasn't been as long as you think.

And as they abandon platforms,

they're just not going to invest in them.

So they're going to go, like Acura said,

hey, good luck, we're not doing this anymore.

They're not going to be the last one to do that.

They were just kind of the first one that said,

yeah, we're good.

All right, good luck to you.

If you bought an MDX from these years,

whatever happens, bud, I mean, I hope it works out for you.

And that's in reference to like Acura Honda,

which is like known for reliability, right?

I've been saying some videos

where some of the more domestic brands,

I'll give you an example, Challengers.

The current iteration,

I know they just change your chargers even,

but for the longest time, it had that same style,

the same platform.

And now that they're getting miles put on them

and they're being driven a certain way

that we can all kind of guess,

there's this one notorious thing where it's a sensor

essentially in the transmission

where it won't go in and out of gear

and you got to drop transmission, the whole thing,

but to source the part and then have the labor,

it's thousands of dollars, right?

And there's so many of those on the road.

Yeah, so I have a, and if anybody is in this sector,

I'm pretty interested.

I wonder if or when the government steps in here.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

Like if you guys work in this type of regulatory environment,

I'd love to hear from you because a lot of the rules

of parts and parts availability

has largely been sort of government regulated.

You got to produce parts for 10 years

after the last model year.

And all of that kind of stuff has sort of been

through a regulatory system.

I wonder if this gets to a breaking point.

You know, that's what I really want to talk about.

You know, and when I say I want people to chime in

where the government's going to have to step in and say,

first of all, you guys aren't producing enough parts.

Something's going on here.

And it's just going to have to get to a breaking point.

And I know a lot of us feel like we're there,

but evidently we aren't,

or the government's asleep at the wheel,

which look, that's what 99.9% of everything

in the government, they're asleep at the wheel.

For as long as we can track history.

For as long as the world has existed

and government has existed, they're asleep at the wheel.

So ironically, we want smaller government,

but at the same time, sometimes they need to intervene

somewhere.

Well, they're going to, because you know,

companies get to a point where

they don't have to do anything they don't want to do.

Right, so to be pro-small government,

which I think anybody is,

the problem is for these bigger companies,

you sort of need people to step in

that are bigger than them and more powerful

than them to make a change.

Because Rob and Nick and everybody that listens,

we don't have that kind of power to go,

hey Ford or hey GM, you should do this.

So you got to look at the government as,

it's the only one on the block that's bigger

than these people.

True, but you know what, if you go to Clutch.Clough,

we can make the pool big enough

that we can really make some change.

Yeah, there we go.

Let's go.

All right, this is the one plug for the show.

There's another one actually, Flying Wrenches.

Good old Southern boy, it's got a good channel.

He's a tech, I think used to work for Ford.

And he was showcasing, he was doing some old work

and there's some actual issues with like 21 to 23 F-150s.

There's over 70,000 of these units and need this recall.

And you're seven to 10 months out

because the parts are on backwater.

So a lot of these people still have loans out on these trucks.

They're pretty modern fucking trucks.

They're low mileage trucks.

And you are just shit out of luck.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of that insane Subaru deal

that I did where I found a mistake on a dealer website.

Same thing happened to us.

I mean, a control module goes out

and they're like, look in the back lot.

And I'm like, why are they all here?

They're like, we got no idea when we're getting the part.

So I had to go to a buddies.

We had to get it so it would work.

Get it to a place like CarMax and go,

let's hope it runs while it's here, which it did.

And we got the check and moved on.

So I think the pandemic shifted something

inside these buildings for much longer

than the pandemic went on.

Because one of the things that's been the hidden secret

of the pandemic in the auto business

is they only had a six month interruption.

They didn't have a three and four year interruption.

Now, if we had automotive, quote unquote, journalists,

somebody would have covered this,

but people in the chip space that I have connections to

who are very high up in the chip space,

they're like, it was six months.

It was six months.

They were not down.

They were not highly affected for three and four years.

That's what you were told.

That's what the consumer was told.

That's what all these little phantom articles

that were written and going,

oh, there's fields and fields and fields of cars

with no chips.

They had access to the chips.

They just didn't do it.

Where's that 10 full clutch hat everybody?

Put it on.

Yeah, here's the deal.

It's not 10 foil.

No, no, but no one heard about it.

So when you tell them, they're like, no way,

you're telling me, you're telling me.

It was a six month problem.

And so they got interrupted

because they don't know how to run inventory.

And you look at a company like Ford who struggles

and struggles and struggles with input into their business.

They've struggled with it.

They are the worst car manufacturer with input cost.

I mean, it's been known for decades.

Do you see your boy, Farley got an 11% pay increase?

It was in one of these stories I have up.

I don't know how many will get to him today,

but it was always because of the recall I just mentioned

the axles, all these parts on back order.

And the first comment was, hey,

but we got raises for the leadership, right?

So the funniest thing about his raise

that they released about his raise

was it was all done on these metrics of reliability.

Oh God, okay.

Okay, reliability.

They had the most recalls in the world.

That's insane, bro, come on.

Hey, where's the cameras at everybody?

Where's the, this is a Truman show fucking

type of story.

And I'm not a big like, you gotta reduce pet, you know,

I just don't get into that

because there's so much that people don't know

about contracts and boards.

And so I don't get really deep down

the rabbit hole with people

that just don't have an understanding.

But what an odd time to do this.

Odd time, odd time.

And then put out the metrics that he's supposed to.

Now, for those that don't know,

Jim Farley in particular was put into this job

to basically completely reorganize the company.

And that's not as easy as everybody thinks

because Ford has been largely pretty mismanaged

for decades on end with input into the business

and efficiency and all of these different things.

So I wanna be clear that I'm not sitting here

having this conversation unaware of why Jim Farley,

you know, probably got a raise.

I just think I would have worded it differently.

I probably wouldn't have talked about reliability

of our cars while we're, you know what,

the two or three time leader in recalls globally.

Maybe wait to like let all this, you know,

become public also.

Or just use different talking points.

True, there's that, you know.

You know, say, hey, he really reorganized

this part of the business.

He revitalized these segments.

Like I would have been way more like gray area

about why we gave him a raise

so nobody could put it together.

But no, they just went right into the tornado there

and go, yeah man, I mean,

he's improved our reliability exponentially.

It's like, ah, well, those recalls tell a different story.

That's so funny.

You know what, I'm gonna move this story up

because we're talking about them.

They could have at least led maybe with this

as being one of the reasons, right?

So Ford CEO Jim Farley confirms

that a Bronco hybrid is coming.

So fulfilling on their 2018 promise

that the Blue Oval would basically offer

a hybrid version for every model.

Why not go that route?

You know, people are all about hybrids.

Like make that an umbrella statement for why.

I wanna tell people what they think

is fast in the car business.

That's eight years ago.

Like, I mean, it's not easy to build a car.

We have to say that.

I understand eight years ago,

fulfilling on our promise from 2008.

I mean, it's just ludicrous.

It is so funny.

I just, I don't understand any of that.

I really don't.

By the way, you already had capabilities

of putting hybrids into vehicles long ago.

Yeah.

Why did it take so long to get into a Bronco?

Who knows?

I mean, they were selling well, the pandemic,

you know, boosted sales.

It was a hot platform.

So they just didn't do it.

Why bring up the fact that you guys announced it in 2018?

Look at what we did eight years later.

That is, it's so funny when it's like,

it kind of, it's lost on whoever's writing the story

that it's kind of ludicrous what you're writing.

Like, yeah, shouldn't the first paragraph be like,

I can't believe I'm writing this?

You know what I'm saying?

If you were an honest publication,

you might believe that.

I can't believe I'm having to say this.

Eight years later.

I mean, I don't mean.

Well, I mean, that's also, there's news, that news,

if you're interested in it,

like there's hybrids coming to all of the Blue Oval's models,

if that interests you.

And in the middle of recalls, you're really,

you're really hype about them putting a new platform.

This is sounding a lot like Dodge right now,

for being honest, you're trying to release too many things,

you're electric, you're hybrid now.

Yeah.

Well, they've already written down billions, bud.

They're like, what's the difference?

What's another few billion?

Yeah, yeah.

And then when they scrap Mustang,

they'll have a lot more time to work on other stuff.

Dude, you're going to get a lot of hate for that, boy.

People are not going to like that.

But let me circle back to the top of the show,

what I mentioned, you know, tuning and modifying

and that kind of stuff.

I thought the top of the show was,

I just thought it was going to be something else.

I mean,

I mean, if you'd like to interject.

I thought Hyundai, I thought the Hyundai reveal was,

I mean, that's the story of the week.

It is, but as a BMW guy,

I figured maybe I would just ask you

if you had any input on AC Schnitzer going out of business

and what that means for the BMW and tuner world

and does it matter and the culture of it all.

Because I've been reading a lot about it

and I just find it interesting.

You know, we've been talking about it for a year.

The whole world is kind of reshaping

with the level of demand for even somebody

that's that long standing in the business, right?

The tuning, the aftermarket.

I think people have to come to grips with

a lot of these businesses have been hanging on

for a very long time.

They haven't really been doing well.

They've also, and I'm not saying this one in particular,

they may have taken investments.

They may have had management changes

and massive management changes.

I just think this is going to become the norm.

You and I are really talking to a lot of people

in the off-road world the last year.

You look at a lot of the way people do business

and you go, this isn't going to last.

You know, this company that everybody loves

is probably going to go under at some point.

You don't love feeling that way,

but the automotive business, for everybody that thinks,

everybody in the automotive business

is making all this money off the consumer.

I can promise you, the majority of automotive businesses

don't work.

They don't make a lot of money.

They've never made a lot of money

and you just have a view from the consumer side

and not the other side.

I go, you know, most mechanic shops

are hanging on by a thread.

Most companies like this are hanging on by a thread

and they have been for a long time.

So what is the reasoning?

I would guess, like any failing business,

it comes down to they weren't making a lot of money.

Basically, yeah.

I think there was a couple of posts about it on social,

like different car publications, news publications

and at the very bottom, there was a quote that said,

the last one, let's see, the culture gap.

We have not succeeded in inspiring young customers

to enjoy sporty driving with our brand the same,

to the same extent that we, you know,

enthused their fathers, essentially, like.

Yeah, well, the internet was this wave

in the automotive business

that largely most of the people making parts,

making cars had no voice.

And so it was left up to independent content creators

that largely didn't put the best parts,

didn't put the highest quality stuff

because they couldn't afford it.

Like it's not because they were trying to be, you know,

cheap, they just didn't have the money.

So if you look at some of the most popular build channels,

how many of those men and women have the money

or the skill set to do the highest level builds,

it's not there, right?

The money's not there, the expertise is not there.

And for the men and women that do have that expertise,

their channels grow slowly,

they do more methodical builds,

those builds don't do as well.

Like these people in the automotive business

who own these parts companies,

who own these manufacturers,

they were way behind on getting the story out

on social media.

Yeah, as a matter of fact.

And so the store, and then the story got told

by other people.

Right, as a matter of fact,

that was one of the things that kept coming up

is some of the older, longstanding brands,

especially famous tuners for something like BMW,

they kind of just, they could lean on their experience

or the word of mouth from the father's generation

as they quoted it.

And they didn't have to be out there advertising

because they were the go-to.

But when the younger generation

isn't really being shown that,

you have to show it to them.

Yep, because they only know what they see, right?

And the word of mouth became slower, right?

Because if you were in a BMW club,

which again, used to be a bigger thing,

that's the way you will kind of hung out with other BMW guys

or Ford guys or whatever.

And the internet became that space.

If those companies weren't in that space

or actively doing more and more in that space,

they were just being forgotten

because the word of mouth slowed down.

Speaking of car clubs, I was on the north side of Austin

running an errand for Nick, we'll call it.

And on the way back,

I stopped in a small town in a meat market,

there was a shiny red lightning in the parking lot.

So I stopped, go in, I checked it out,

I'd heard good things about this place,

got some meat there from the butcher,

fresh kind of stuff.

The little lady, the little old lady behind the counter

was her husband's lighting, she was driving it, right?

So she was like, you want to see it?

And I was like, yeah.

So she takes me out there, 275,000 miles,

but it looked brand new, it still looked like pristine.

The old guy just drives it, he's retired,

but she's like, he lets me drive every once in a while

to work because we don't live too far from here.

And she was just going on and on,

she was probably every bit of like 65, 66.

Nothing cooler than seeing a cool truck,

cool car that has miles that's been cared for.

Dude, it was the best.

To me, that is the pinnacle of all of this.

Agreed.

Right?

The pinnacle of all this to me

is not seeing a low mileage example.

It's cool to see those things online.

We even talk about, I remember that low mileage Astro van

and we see all this crazy low mileage suburban's

and you go, that's cool.

What's actually cooler is that if that Astro van

was in pristine condition

and had been driven the entire time.

For sure.

Like for guys like us, and I hope all of you out there,

I love seeing somebody enjoyed the vehicle,

but they also cared for the vehicle.

And so you still have the preservation,

but you know, somebody enjoyed whatever vehicle that is.

Yeah, and then go back to the car club thing.

Like, yeah, she's like, yeah, every once in a while,

they'll take it out to, you know,

go cruising around Central Texas or Austin

and their SVT club and in my mind, I'm like, that's so cool.

They're in their 60s and they're still in like car clubs

where every once in a while they go drive them around.

And she's like, he even turned it on for me.

She popped the hood and everything.

She's like, look how clean it is.

I was like, this is the coolest thing ever.

Yep.

And it will always be the pinnacle of all this.

Somebody having a cool platform.

And by the way, I don't mean cool like,

you know, a Ford Lightning cool.

I don't care what you own.

Like we have a guy in my neighborhood

that has like a 1995 Honda Civic.

Love it.

I think it's like 350 or 375,000 miles.

Looks like the day it came off.

Love it.

And he's like, yeah, man, I just, you know,

it's my weekend car.

I drive it around, I go to this, I go to that.

I've never not driven it since I've owned it.

He's owned it the entire time.

It's not some special Civic.

It's not some, but you go, man, that's kind of what

I think is cool.

Yeah, I agree.

Well, I did have this as a first story,

but we got on some really good convo here for the show.

I did learn from Nick about this

and then all the stories started coming out.

So we have to talk about this

because I think this shows what the future's gonna look like

for a lot of brands.

Hyundai's bolder concept reveal.

The Bro Fender.

The, the Bro Fender.

Why didn't you send that in the text?

That's hilarious.

I mean, the Bro Fenders here.

I mean, does anything say unoriginal design more than this?

I'm trying to find.

And by the way, if you guys haven't seen the 2004 Bronco

concept, boy, this took a lot of inspiration from that.

I mean, this took inspiration from,

you could shoot a dart at an old school.

I mean, and maybe a Ramcharger lights.

We got obviously Bronco looks here.

You got a little bit of Wrangler.

You got Defender.

You got Bronco.

You got, I mean, there is not one of the,

anything about this vehicle that says,

we did this on our own.

I mean, by the way, the interior.

Well, even then,

I don't know who's put this out there.

Somebody sent me a text or something,

maybe a day or two ago that Hyundai brought in,

quote unquote, automotive journalists at some point

to talk to them about a body on frame,

you know, like some type of off-roader.

And this, this is what, by the way,

I'm glad Hyundai's doing this.

Oh yeah.

They're going, they're doing, they're doing their thing,

but buddy, this is in no way anything other than taking

the front end, the side profile and the back end

from like two or three different brands

and sticking it together.

Honestly, this drawing,

I have a Hot Wheels that is exactly like this drawing

right here.

Maybe they got it from Hot Wheels.

They absolutely got this from a Hot Wheel.

Got tow, tow hitch mirror, like tow mirrors as well

on the, on the renderings.

That's kind of, kind of cool.

I think, I think everybody that is kind of,

I don't want to miss the point here is that

Hyundai just keeps throwing its name in the hat

in these places where they know they need to be.

And that needs to be celebrated

because so many car brands don't do this.

You know, like so many car brands just let like forerunner

dominate that market with really no answer to it

for a long period of time.

And some of them still don't have anything that rivals,

you know, and goes after that marketplace.

So you have to, I mean, the suicide doors,

doors is an interesting concept.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't have suicide doors?

I haven't even seen the suicide doors.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I see suicide doors there.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

That's how, that's how you would get to

I was like, is this like an FJ model?

Like where it doesn't even open,

it's more like a grab handle.

And look, there's some FJ in here.

There's a lot in here that looks like they quote,

I think in this type of position,

you call it inspiration.

We took inspiration from a lot of different parts.

A lot of inspo here, a lot of inspo.

I don't think they call it theft in the car business.

Great artist feel after all, you know.

Yeah, I will say this.

This is a, from this photo you have pulled up right now,

this is a well done center console.

I'm actually surprised.

Look at that center, look at that center part

compared to what we see from a lot of brands.

That's a lot cleaner.

It is, I kind of would have liked

that this would have been one screen,

but I do like what like, the whole look is cool.

Okay, here, one to 10, Nick.

Give us the one to 10, how you rate it.

10 being amazing, one being atrocious.

I think this is like a seven or eight.

I'm one, two.

For what we see in modern, that is well done.

They deserve a lot of credit.

If this is how it comes out on the interior,

this is a lot better than almost any other company

in that space.

I mean, so it's clean, it's small,

meaning like the center piece is small.

It's not some big iPad type size thing.

It's kind of thought out.

They do deserve credit for that.

They deserve credit for doing this

because they're a brand really on the rise

and global sales and they just keep reinvesting the money

into these things they don't have.

This is obviously gonna lead to a body on frame truck,

which I think they've already pretty much denounced,

but this means that this is gonna be an easy transition

for them into doing that.

I know they have some things globally

that says that they're already down that road,

but for the US market, this is the right move.

And you might as well just pick the best of all the platforms

and stick them together, I guess.

I mean, it's not a bad strategy if we really...

It's not a bad strategy

because you don't have any inventiveness, but I mean...

I just noticed on the glass,

I mean, obviously there's just a rendering,

but the whole windshield is kind of like BMW-esque.

There's like a heads up display across the entire bottom.

I hope that's not a trend that we just see more and more of.

Yeah, heads up display.

Going like corner to corner is very strange.

Is one of those things that...

Let's hope you can turn it off in every platform if you want.

I know there's people that love heads up display.

I personally don't, to be honest.

It's gotta be done right, man.

It's really hard to get right.

And I think also when I say done right, it's really focused.

It's in a small part of the windshield.

And you have things like speed in your gas gauge

or something like that, oil temp,

whatever is important, but you have like a really small square.

Just concentrated right there.

It just kind of disappears into everything.

And you need it, then you can see it.

But yeah, I'm with you.

I mean, the broad heads up display

is probably not something I'm totally into.

So funny enough, the CX-5 that we have,

I don't mind it.

It's kind of like yours.

It's not intrusive.

It's just right where it needs to be

when you need to look at it.

But it's in the shop getting some schedule maintenance done.

So I got a CX-30.

Bro, this thing has the loudest blinker sound

I've ever heard in my life.

I'm telling you, this is what I tell everybody

about driving my 2003.

When you go from cars that don't have any intrusiveness,

like barely have the seatbelt thing into a modern car,

it's like rattling.

Bro, I had the radio up and I hit the turn signal

and I was like, oh my God, what's breaking?

Like something's falling apart on this car

and I turned the mute down like, it's the, duh, duh.

But it's the loudest, most atrocious sound

I've ever heard in a car.

Like if you ever played sports,

like there was certain bats in baseball

that had a good sound and then bats had a bad sound.

If you played hoops, you had a certain brand of ball

you like better than the other.

I think cars are that way.

It's like, what's this blinker sound?

Like I know I hit the thing,

like I don't need it like chiming in my ear.

I just don't need, that little like click, click, click

that we had for decades worked perfectly.

Don't overthink it.

And what was weird too, there's other little things

that you realize, oh, that's kind of nice.

So instead of the flashing light,

it was almost like a sequential

where like the arrow would kind of light up and go away

and like, that was great.

Had you tied that to a regular sounding blinker,

it would have been out of the ballpark.

Well, so you're getting to drive, what, a 2010?

Is that what your Raptor is?

What is it?

14.

Okay, so yours is a 14.

You're at the end of the life cycle of that.

Yeah.

If you were to get into a 2023 or four Raptor,

I think you'd have the experience like,

what is all this stuff?

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

Right?

And you really, for a lot of people listening to us,

many of you do own some type of older platform usually,

like that's usually like the people

that come and listen to us.

They have something modern, but they got this other.

I'm just a guy that finds it unsettling.

Like I drove my GX460 a lot last weekend,

and I'm like, I'm out.

And it doesn't even have a ton of it.

But I just go, great platform.

I'm glad my family has it.

I just rather be in my 2003.

Really?

Yeah.

What about it specifically you think really

has set you over the edge?

Let me tell you the thing that really is one of those things

that they have a take a break thing that dings at you

when you've changed lanes without your blinker

so many times during the drive.

Okay.

And there's just parts of the drives we all do

where you're not really in traffic,

but you go, I know I turned into this left lane.

I'm gonna get right over to this right lane.

There's nobody around.

I'm not driving like a jackass.

But if you do that a certain amount of times,

and I forget what it is, let's call it three times

or four times or whatever it is,

then this thing comes up and says,

there's a cup of coffee and it says take a break under

and it dings at you.

And the first thing in my head is I'm like, how dare you?

I'll trade you in right now.

I will trade you right now.

If you tell me.

I own the car.

If you tell me how to drive.

I own you.

I own the car.

Oh man, just taking out the weeks struggles on this car.

Like, you know what?

I will sell you today.

Yeah.

Act like I won't put this into a bridge in bank.

Come on.

I will end your life.

Like it's, and I get it.

A lot of that stuff doesn't bother people.

This is kind of the thing that we say

that I get why people like all the tech.

I know there's a lot of us to go.

There's just too much tech.

Well, for the average person, it isn't too much tech.

That's what we have to keep reminding ourselves.

The reason they're tech stacking

is to get people into believing all of this dinging

and binging and all that this is value.

And they wouldn't be doing that

if they didn't have the data saying

there's a large percentage of people that think it's value.

Like how many people do you think

think that blinkers too loud?

Not very many.

Yeah, but I would go the direction of like,

I just don't think enough people pay attention

to enough stuff in general.

But hold on, that's my point.

Yeah, I know.

So something that's bothering you or me

and you go, why is this like this?

You are a tiny percentage of people that buy a car.

And all of our listeners who go,

I want this, you know, raw torn down truck.

Cool, man.

You're like 0.5% of the population

that's gonna buy that thing.

Hey, bro, I'll tell you what.

The rest of the people are gonna be like,

no, I don't want that.

When they pulled around this loner

around from the fucking dealership,

I get in the car and I just go, right?

I'm like, oh, that's cool.

This would be fun, those smaller crossover, whatever.

They had put the floor mat over the pedals.

So as I'm rolling up to a stop sign, I'm freaking out.

And I'm like, oh my God,

and the carpet's on top of the pedals.

So I'm like reaching down

and I just instinctively just rank.

I just yank the mat off

and I just like throw it in the passenger side.

And I'm like, it was on, I was freaking out.

That's Vince McMahon's music.

Yeah, exactly.

I was like, hey, if this goes into an embankment

to quote you, it wouldn't be my fault.

Like, dude, you gave it to me

with a rug on top of the pedals.

Details are not the dealership's forte.

Oh God.

Let's say that.

But yeah, I mean, we got to always say

and remind our crowd, hey man, the things that,

like that thing popping up on my GX,

that doesn't bother 99% of people.

No, how about this one?

How about this one?

A two intrusive lane keep assist.

Oh, I hate it.

Okay, so there's some roads,

depending on what neighborhoods you know you guys live in,

where the roads will eventually like merge

when you get to a stop sign.

Well, as the lines start to disappear

and it starts coming together,

the car just all, especially the Mazda is very safe.

It'll start blinking at you like brake or whatever.

It won't, luckily it won't break for you at that point.

Do you have like the one button

that you can turn lane assist off on the steering wheel?

Yeah, on the, yeah, on the fucking clicker,

what do you call it there?

Okay, so yeah, for, I believe in my GX,

it's just a button right on the steering wheel.

So when I get in, there's like a whole launch sequence

of like turning things off.

And nobody in my family understands that

because they don't do that.

But I just go, yeah, man, I think lane assist,

I'm sure there's somebody

that's gonna give me some safety number.

I see the purpose in it.

I think lane assist is probably more important

on longer drives.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, where, you know, you're kind of,

sometimes you can go in and out,

you can lose some focus.

When you're driving around your city,

and there's been some aggressive ones over the years,

where, I mean, that wheel jerks your hand.

This is very aggressive.

And it becomes unsettling.

It's definitely gotten better.

Those early years of lane assist,

there were several platforms that would just be like,

I mean, you'd have to fight the steering wheel

to get over.

Yeah, I'll tell you what.

So having driven the Raptor for a while,

when I jumped back into the GTI not long ago,

the sequence for me is always turn off auto start stop

because you have to turn it off

every time you get back in the car.

Yeah, I just don't own cars with that.

Dude, I couldn't avoid it.

I love that one and I had to get it right.

And I could, I could obviously program it to-

Yeah, I mean, some of us have standards

and some don't.

Yeah, you could program it out of it,

but I was like, you know, I get to it eventually.

And I was at a light.

I was at a light and you know,

you're like, I'm gonna switch lanes real quick.

I did not realizing because I had the music on

that it had turned off.

So like, there's a split second where it doesn't start on,

right?

So like, yank the wheel and I go and I'm like,

you son of a bitch, start of the shit out of me.

Like, I hate those little intrusive things, but-

The most wild auto start stop ever is the G63 G-Wagon.

It is, it, you think your car died

because it's a loud vehicle, right?

You got side pipes.

I mean, it's meant to be a mean sounding car.

You go to a light, it just shuts off.

You're like, what the hell just happened to my car?

Just die?

Is that a Mercedes thing you think?

Cause like, even the cars, like you feel the whole thing

kind of come to a shut off.

I think it just matters on the engine, right?

If the engine has that kind of bubble to it,

which the G63s have, yeah, man, it's unsettling.

And by the way, everybody at the light, here's it go off.

You know what I mean?

Unless they're really rocking out, they're like,

what, this guy, $250,000 car just died.

They're looking over at you like, what a peasant.

You're like, hey-

Yeah, no, I mean, and I drove a lot.

I've driven a lot of those.

Like that is your launch sequence

and that is definitely hit that button

and turn that shit off.

At that point you're going from 13 miles a gallon

down to 12 and a half.

So, I mean, who cares?

God, good times.

Well, hopefully they've gotten all that stuff

dialed in in the future.

Do you see any of those things like going away?

No, right?

Like they're not going to take these safety features

everywhere.

Well, auto start, stop is going away.

Well, that's true.

And it's cylinder deactivation is another huge one.

Yeah, that stuff's going away.

I just don't think tech's going to go backwards, guys.

Like I think, I think there's a reason

all of these older platforms are catching fire.

A lot of it is nostalgia.

Let's say that's the main driver of this,

is that people just want to own stuff

they couldn't afford back in the day.

The other part of it is kind of what I said,

which is, you know, man, there's a lot of people

that just want to drive down the road

and have a calm, chill experience without all the stuff.

And that is also a percentage of these purchases.

Now, when you're into manuals and things like that,

there's obviously the engaging conversation, whatever.

But there's just a lot of this that you go,

I don't know, man.

I was just happier once upon a time with my commute.

This is not what I want.

We also have to say it's a small percentage of us.

So I don't think tech's going backwards, man.

Do you find yourself saying once upon a time

more often these days as you get older?

Once upon a time, I was-

Yeah, you know, I have this guy that crosses my social media

from time.

He's a great fast food reviewer.

And I've noticed that some of the clips I see now,

he is talking to the younger generation about

you don't really understand what fast food was in the 90s.

You know what I mean?

I think you should have said this to me next time.

Yeah, I got it.

Cause here's the thing.

He's great at talking about the food,

but then he also added this,

like this isn't what fast food used to be.

Like this wasn't, you know,

they weren't trying to lower quality.

They were who they were.

They were, you know-

He has like a little idiom, like some wisdom in there.

Yeah, cause he talks about, cause that's when he was a kid.

He's like, you know, even when I talk to my parents,

they'll say, you know,

some of our memories of going to the Wendy's,

you know, salad bar or whatever,

like Wendy's wasn't trying to cut a corner

and make their stock price go up.

And the way he presents it, I go,

yeah, man, I think that's how we feel about a lot of stuff.

Wow, that's really insightful for a fast food critic.

Dude, it's crazy.

Like, but he still reviews the food, right?

So that's like kind of the interesting thing.

He's way more talented than I am.

Because how he weaves all this together,

I'm just like, you know what?

You know what?

There's nothing more talented than a good weave.

If you can weave your words.

Yeah, I'm like, that guy, that guy's,

and you go, yeah, he's right.

And the most glaring one that he brought up

in one of the videos was like,

that Pizza Hut pan pizza inside the old Pizza Hut?

The personal pan pizzas?

No, no, remember they bring it out on the black skillet?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And you know, you'd be like-

With the red cups.

I mean, it was an experience.

Yeah.

And it wasn't that expensive.

Now you get a Pizza Hut pizza,

you order it to your house for your family.

It costs you $58.

And you go, ah, pizza's not that good.

Bro, you're not lying.

It was like, we did that the other day

after a baseball game.

It was like $44.

Oh yeah, it's, I have a Shake Shack story that-

Please.

It rattled me to the core.

Please, because I have a similar water bridge.

So they built a Shake Shack brand new construction

near my home.

I'm like, I like Shake Shack.

Stop in there.

I got two small kids, a significant other and myself.

It was like $73.

And I'm like, we didn't even get that much food.

You know, it's not like I ate three burgers

and they ate four burgers and there were fries everywhere.

Everyone got a double double.

I just go, all right, man.

I mean, I'm here now.

I guess if I was a little bit more

in a different financial position,

I probably would have just pulled through the drive-thru

and not, not, not paid.

But, and then by the way,

I had to pull into one of those spots

where they had to bring the food.

So I paid $72 and waited longer than normal fast food.

And I go, I just don't know I'm coming back.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel you.

I just don't, I just don't know that I'm coming back.

It's like the guys that bitch about five guys pricing,

but a Whopper meal is like $14 now.

It's like, I don't know, man.

All in, I can get, you know, a meal for 19 bucks

at five guys, I might as well go there.

I don't know where fast food fits in anymore.

I completely agree.

You know, obviously the staple down here is water burger,

but you can't with the same, I got twins.

So two, the spouse, myself,

you can't leave there between less than 55, 60 bucks

at water burger, brother.

And it just doesn't feel right.

No, it feels like I'm being taken advantage of.

And I'm assuming you guys like it.

Of course.

Like I like Shake Shack.

I'm like, I like water burger.

I like Wendy's, $50.

Yeah.

Doesn't feel right.

You just go, well, I could have just sat down somewhere.

Yeah.

It feels so wrong that I much rather pay for someone else

to eat than me spending $50 for myself to eat.

I'm like, this doesn't feel right.

Yeah.

And then you're eating it and you're going $50.

Then you take another bite, you go 50 bucks.

It's just like, it's just in your head.

And it's really not because like you don't have the money

or something.

No, it's just like a pure economics thing.

You go 50 bucks.

And that's kind of what this guy says all the time.

He goes, I don't know, man, this is pretty expensive.

Like, let me tell you about what it was.

I think we're just losing, and this goes back to the car

part thing you talked about with BMW.

It seems like we're finding more and more companies

and fast food would be a place that's like,

that don't know their place in the ecosystem, right?

And I would say the same thing about where

you're going to get with Hyundai as they keep building

these more and more expensive platforms

is that once upon a time, we're all going to talk about

when you bought a Hyundai, it was this, it cost this.

They were at the bottom of the market.

They were an entry point.

We are losing so many of these placeholders

that fast food's an example.

Hey, I wanted to go get some stuff.

There's a dollar menu.

I'll order six sandwiches for the family, a couple fries.

I'm out of there for 12, 13, 15 bucks.

That was the placeholder they were, right?

And that's where when people ask me

why I don't recommend things like Hyundai today,

is I go, well, they're not that far off

from established brands with better reliability

that you are already going to pay the hire.

Where do they fit for me as a purchaser?

That whole concept is so fascinating to me

because I don't know that across the board,

a lot of people know where they fit right now.

Like fast food, treats, like I've seen some places

that are like Italian ice or fro-yos,

they don't last long, even in like booming areas

because at some point it has to make sense.

The math has to math for the establishment

to stay open in these nice business trades.

Dude, I'll tell you a crazy thing.

Have you had this two bears ice cream?

No.

But everybody out there, if you haven't had this ice cream,

because I can't eat ice cream.

What?

Yeah, lactose or what?

Yeah, it's always been a problem.

Something tells me you didn't care this time.

Well, there's two bears ice cream,

but I'm gonna give everybody,

what is it, the pint?

Is that what they're called, pints?

Dude, it's like $9.

Oh, shit, they used to be a gallon.

Well, now that's a gallon price before, wait a minute.

I'll pay $9.

But here's the thing, there's nothing,

they got this vanilla honey one.

But that whole thing, you will look down and go, wow.

What have I done?

That went real fast because it's only like three ingredients.

So it doesn't affect me like some other ice creams,

because let me tell you something,

your boy gets something in front of him,

he likes food-wise, it's a wrap.

It's gone, no sharing, don't ask Friday.

We'll get you one, okay?

I'm real big on, tell me what you want,

I'll spend the money, but if I like this,

it's going down.

We'll get you one, it's hilarious.

But buddy, eight, nine, sometimes it's 10 bucks,

and you go, hey man, this is the world we live in.

And I'm not saying any of this as a complaint.

I think, again, going back to where do you fit in?

Yeah.

And it seems like now everybody wants to fit in

at the top end of the market,

and I don't know how much room is up there.

I got one.

The car business is a real conversation about that.

You're right, and I want to get back to that,

but now I'm stuck on this because you made it sound so good.

There's one 30 miles away, is it worth a 30 mile drive?

No, I wouldn't do 30 miles.

Damn it.

Look, 30 miles in your Volkswagen, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not taking the Raptor

to an ice cream shop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to buy some ice cream.

It's going to cost you $60 to get this ice cream.

If you're in the area, for all of you, it's worth it.

Okay, I'll be in this area again.

It's literally in downtown Austin, I'm not, okay.

Is it out of Sprouts or something?

It's in a really nice strip.

It's literally right off of the river.

So we have this, maybe everybody doesn't have it,

it's a grocery store called Sprouts.

Oh yeah, love Sprouts.

Sprouts actually has some of the best ice cream selection ever.

Two bears, bud.

Is it there?

Oh yeah.

It's in Sprouts, oh, oh, okay.

For us, that's where ours is.

All right, good to know.

I've never, and I've never, look, I'm not,

I haven't been in a grocery store in, I don't know, how long?

So I'm not the best source of, I don't do that.

Sure.

Like I'm not, you know, I've told you,

I go into Costco like twice a year,

I'm like, how the hell do people do this?

Like it's really an unsettling place for a guy

that hasn't been in those places in a long time.

But yeah, Sprouts is where our,

I gotta tell you what, this episode's been so fun

because we've talked a lot about cars,

but also like real life relatable things.

It makes my father visually upset

when I let him know how often I or most families,

my siblings will be at a grocery store.

Makes him visually angry.

Well, I would say I'm more in your father's boat.

I'm more of like, why are there so many charges in a week?

Let's just maybe write the list a little bit more completely

and do it once.

That's also true.

He's like, how do you forget something five times?

I'm like, you know, I wish I could tell you,

it's not me, I don't make the list, by the way.

Yeah, so I think your dad's got a point here, right?

Yeah.

And I think Dave Ramsey has proven to everybody,

maybe those trips are adding up, you know?

Yeah, cause it's never just with the follow-up trip.

Never.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so I would say to bring this back to cars,

one of the things we probably don't voice enough is,

I'm getting confused why everybody thinks they fit

in this small pocket of buyers.

Because I know why they're doing it.

They wanna go for higher margin vehicles.

The problem is that if everybody's in that price point,

then all you have is more and more intense competition.

Can you get, and I guess maybe Slate is trying to do this,

but can you get back to a volume first model?

Well, we've had some interesting conversations

with people, DMI's that work in some of these buildings

that work for some of these companies.

And they obviously say, hey, look,

we're pivoting towards, you know, higher margin business.

Like that, they won't, we'll sell less,

but it's higher margin.

I think a lot of it is just a manufacturing shift

in philosophy.

I think that's kind of what Ford has shown

is they have a real shift in this idea of,

we can't do volume the way we once did.

So we're just gonna kind of start cutting things

that need to be volume related.

And I think that's important to know

is that it's an active decision these companies are making.

And I'm not here to say that they're wrong

because I don't know the ins and outs

of everybody's business.

But making one segment of purchasers

all in one exact price point.

Like basically now from 50 to 80 grand

is where everybody is at.

Right.

I mean, it's just stiff competition there.

So, you know, a 32,000, a 35,000, a 37,000 would go a long way

but there's a reason they're not doing it

and that's chasing higher margin.

Man, it's crazy.

I wonder if I can show you this.

Maybe we'll wrap with this car story

just because we talked about this vehicle.

I can't, I see we're having internet maybe issues.

Can you still hear me?

I can still hear you.

Okay, cool.

It won't let me share, unfortunately,

but the 2027 Ford Expedition,

did you see the 30th anniversary vehicle?

Damn, I can't pull it up for you

because it's, oh, there it goes.

All right.

Yeah.

So we were having, yeah.

Let's get a look.

Let's see if it'll, let's see if it'll stick.

I don't know what's going on.

Yeah.

What's going on here?

Yeah, that's some Vegas internet.

Can you, no.

No.

No, not working.

You can still hear me though, right?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, it won't let me.

Damn, all right.

Okay, well, that might be the last story we share,

but the Expedition, it made such a fucking splash

with the black rear end thing, right?

So there's a 30th anniversary edition

that's gonna have like Mustang inspired paint

and wheels and all kinds of stuff.

And it's gonna be right under $90,000.

And I'm like, what, what?

And it's just got 30th anniversary logos

and some different paint.

Yeah, I just, I think today's topic

that we could put out for the comments is really simple.

Everybody in this higher price point.

What is gonna, what is gonna shake out from this?

Who's gonna be the first company to probably move back

to the downside?

Yeah.

You know, and who's gonna do it the quickest,

which we know nothing in the automotive business

is really all that quick.

I think there comes a point in time

and it's probably gonna be economic situation.

You know, obviously we see the economy

turning a little tougher.

Do you start to see some moves?

But then you look at the Hyundai launch this week

and you're like, they ain't moving back down.

Which is actually, it's fun to see

because that's gonna push people to maybe find their spot.

Are you gonna find your spot in the upper echelon?

Are you like, you know what?

I actually don't wanna throw this many things at the wall.

Like if you take their truck, the Kia truck

or the Kia, you know, boulder,

you see some manufacturers like,

we are not gonna try to compete

throwing this stuff at the wall.

It's too expensive.

There's not enough volume

or there's not enough desire, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, that's the one thing

you have to celebrate about Hyundai with this launch is

they're going for it.

Absolutely.

You know, and for us as consumers

who always say, why aren't people doing X, Y and Z?

We can all make the jokes of they stole the design

from a multitude of platforms,

but the reality is they're going for it.

They're like, hey, we're gonna throw this against the wall.

Maybe some of you buy it.

Maybe some of you don't.

We'll see how this shakes out.

And they deserve a lot of credit for doing that now

for an extended period of time.

I mean, the last decade of this brand as a whole

has been throwing a lot of stuff against the wall

that people told them not to do,

including guys like you and I.

I mean, we'd be like, who's,

but you know, look man,

they're what the third biggest automaker in the world now.

If you ever drove those original Hyundai accents,

you'd never thought they would be here.

Oh dude, those were terrible.

Terrible, terrible.

Those were terrible cars,

but they served the purpose in the marketplace.

They let them, the catapulted them

into the direction they are now.

And they have managed all of this really well.

And all of a sudden you look up and you go,

they're how big?

Yeah, they're big, man.

I had a Jeep store.

You know how Jeep's releasing

a bunch of special editions this year?

Yeah, is it like once a month?

I think it is.

So the Easter one was this Anvil,

like Jeep something Anvil.

And it's a fixed roof.

It looks pretty cool.

You basically have to put what looked like your own iPad

as the infotainment though.

There's no actual like screen or anything.

Was this the one that they brought out

of the shipping container

and it just had some special stickers?

No, that was a different one.

That was actually, that was like the colorful one though,

right?

Yeah, yeah.

It's like another retro one.

But it's funny enough,

I was looking at Slate stuff

and then Gladiator Jeep and all that stuff.

Jeep was the last brand to actually include

crank up windows in their vehicles not too long ago.

Fits the platform.

It fits the platform.

If it fits the platform.

And I would say this,

it's probably time for a company like Jeep

who is struggling to think about the downside price wise.

What are some options we can get to the downside

and not go up to this $60,000, $80,000 range?

How do we get something out into the market

that people like?

This is the important part.

You can't get the 40 grand with a terrible platform

and go, well, we made a $40,000 car and it didn't work.

No, give me a really, really, really good Cherokee,

a really, really good Wrangler at 40 that people would like.

I know it's not gonna have all the bells and whistles

and I know things cost money,

but there's brands that need,

just like we talked about before,

Aston Martin, Maserati,

they should be going all in on manual transmission.

Just to create excitement and getting people to go,

look what they're doing, look what they're,

nobody's looking at your brand.

Jeep, you guys are in a hole.

You gotta get something that goes,

hey, look at this for 40.

Look at this for 42.

I wonder who's gonna be the company that pulls the trigger

because it's gonna be somebody.

Who knows who it's gonna be, but it's gonna be somebody.

Did you see the Pacifica redesign?

Don't tell me they ruined it.

Brother, okay, I think we have a stable internet.

If it crashes, we will come back to you guys,

don't you worry, but I have to show Nick this

and then we're gonna go out on a funny story

that was emailed to us.

So I'm gonna try this one more time.

Damn, why is the internet not stable enough

to share right now?

I don't know.

Can't do it, damn it.

Wait, wait, is it coming to me?

There we go.

Well, that front end does not look better.

It's the first time it's been redesigned since like 16,

I think.

There you go, we have another key on our hands.

Everybody's just trying to be key at EVs.

I don't get this.

This is so bad.

I don't get this at all.

It's cheaper though, it's $1,800,

it starts $1,800 cheaper.

It's a move.

It is a move.

I mean, I know, and here's what everybody's gonna say

when they listen to this.

Well, it needs to be 50%, that's not happening.

Look at that, look at the previous one.

Previous one's way better.

Versus this, month's trust.

Design-wise.

Design-wise, of course.

Well, we imagine it's probably still gonna be the same.

Well, here's the thing we gotta wonder.

Did you fix any of the engine issues?

That would be a nice, that would be,

that may be what you'd wanna lead with, right?

Yeah, no, look at the new fascia, we have a new bumper.

No, it's not it.

We're gonna fail that class.

Straight to jail.

All right, Luke, he sent this in,

so he said, after your scooter rant,

it made him think of this bit, and I wanna pull it up,

and then also maybe get a follow-up,

cause listeners were like,

is the scooter really that bad in Vegas?

So maybe you can tell us, but here, check this out.

The other day I saw a guy,

he was like legit 45 years old going to work on a scooter.

He was on a scooter.

You've probably seen these people.

Suit, helmet, scooter.

Grown man, probably with a family.

Not a Vespa.

Are you guys thinking I'm saying,

I'm not talking about machinery,

I'm talking about a f***ing scooter.

Just doing this, grown man, like this, smiling,

just gliding down the street.

I was like, do you think your wife's not cheating on you?

Hey, the best bit that that guy was ever a part of forever

is tub-aware.

Do you remember that?

When that guy goes, what are you saying?

He goes, tub-aware.

He goes, no, it's pee, my guy.

It's Tupperware.

Was that not Shob?

No, no, that was the stuff.

No, it was the 7-O, but he wasn't.

No, no, it was another guy that was on, I forget.

I think he was like the guy from Impractical Jokers.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, you're right.

He goes, tub-aware.

What are you saying?

Tub-aware.

He goes, no, no, no, no, it's Tupperware.

Funny story.

So I got to podcast with Chrissy D.

A couple of years ago when he was doing shows

at the Houston Improv, I was producing another show

and he was on that show.

He is an electric personality, man.

He is one of my favorite, if you guys remember-

Do you have a doctorate?

He does, he's a PT, a doctorate in physical therapy.

Super smart, super funny, but when you see him

on History Hyenas or that Impractical Jokers show

or his standup, that is him all the time.

He is so electric, he is so funny, man.

He is funny, man.

That tub-aware thing, dude, is it's Tupperware.

I think he was Sal, I think he was Sal Volcano.

I don't know, man, it was hilarious.

Okay, I got to look that one up later and laugh at it.

All right, that was a great show.

Oh, but hold on, you didn't finish the email.

He just said he had to send this to us

and make sure that we watched it.

That was it, he just wanted you to watch it

if you'd never seen it before.

Yeah, but scooters are that bad out here.

Oh, right.

I think areas with better year-round weather

are experiencing something

that you can't explain to other people.

It's everywhere and all I'm saying,

because I got a lot of questions about this,

I'm gonna say, I don't care if they exist, right?

I'm cool with them existing,

but most of them are riding in places

that don't make sense for the speed they go

and then when they get on the road,

there's no insurance license and registration

that everybody else on the road is paying.

That becomes problematic.

And some people said, well, there's laws on the books.

I go, not really.

I mean, sort of, but not really.

There's very few laws specifically targeting

the new technology.

And so there's a lot of loopholes

that have to be tightened up.

Yeah, that is definitely something that local,

obviously just citizens are gonna have to go

to the city councils and whatever.

We talked about it to change it

because you can't expect the federal government

to do something about it.

No, no, no, agree, agree.

Yeah, no, there's no question.

And we also don't want them to do that, right?

Yeah, no, no, let's maybe handle some of the big issues.

We're all federalized out right now for being honest.

We're good with that.

Let me see if we have any more that I wanted to fire at you.

Oh, okay, this will be the last actual car story

before we land the plane.

We talked about the yolks on that

like really sporty, you know, concept, whatever,

from Mercedes-Benz last week.

Did you see what they're doing with the EQS?

No, please tell me it's not getting worse.

Yeah, boy, 2026 Mercedes EQS adopts new steering by wire

and a yolk.

I could not, I thought this was AI.

I was like, holy shit, they're actually doing this

in regular consumer cars.

There also could be 50% of it, could be AI.

Steer by wire on the rabbit layer.

There's just a lot of messing around with things that work.

I'm waiting for one of these people

to put different wheels on it

and say, look, we got these new triangular wheels.

We're gonna promise you it's a better experience.

Triangular, so they're just going on it.

Yeah, I'm saying like, it's just like,

aren't we all prepared for them to just reinvent things

that don't need reinventing?

I don't think the steering wheel needed to be reinvented.

Not a yolk either on something like this.

No, I just don't think it needed to be at all thought about

except for minimizing the amount of buttons

that some of these have.

And they're just like, no, let's rethink the whole thing.

It's like, okay, man.

Maybe like we lost the technology to go to the moon,

we're gonna lose the technology to make circular things

like tires and wheels,

and then later we just have to rediscover it again

and then make it a new in the future.

And there's gonna be somebody on like a Joe Rogan podcast

talking about like, hey, we dug up this back from 1987.

Do you ever with steering wheels are around

and you just put your hands at 10 and two

instead of like a nine and three or whatever?

Yeah, you remember when you could turn your steering wheel

really easily?

Those days are long gone,

but we found the technology again.

Roodle, this is just seems all made up.

All right guys, this was a fantastic show.

Enjoy the rest of your week

and we'll see you guys next week.

All right guys.

#73 - Hybrid Broncos, Hyundai’s Boulder Concept, Special Edition Jeeps, Manufactures Future Problems, & Much More

About this episode

tuning

cars and coffees

Amelia Island

paint peeling off the hood

Facebook Marketplace

SEMA

online auction platforms

depreciation

Apple CarPlay

recall

axles

Ford

Blue Oval

Hyundai

BMW

car clubs

275,000 miles

preservation vs. just low miles

body on frame

Hot Wheels

tow hitch mirror

center console

heads up display

blinker

30th anniversary edition

crank up windows

$1,800 cheaper

new fascia

Vespa

tires and wheels

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