Today, I learned that a Stradale is out of my budget now.
And like last year, I was going to buy a cheap one, cheap, quote unquote,
and stick swap it.
And it's just like that dream is dead for me.
Yeah, it died today.
Who knew that a 360 challenge Stradale would be sitting in the same
place in your mind as an F 50 just poof gone.
One thing though, so right after you texted me this, I was on social media
and I follow some car accounts and I had a dealership
post about some car and they're like, this is one of the best driving
experiences for the money.
Keep out the keep an eye out.
These are so special or they'll say things like, we're never selling this.
And then they sell it six months later.
It's so disingenuous.
It makes me want to vomit because everything is so expensive.
And it feels like they're just like parroting this crap to all
the Uber rich that don't actually care as all of these lovely
enthusiast cars get out of our grasp forever.
It's because like you can talk about a car and like it.
Thousand percent on board.
But it's the some dealers do it all the time and it feels like
they're just trying to pump markets so they can make extra money.
So yeah, my rent for sale is the best marketing ever on a car.
Oh, you know what's not for sale?
The cars in my garage that I paid sales tax on.
I'm a car dealer and I paid sales tax on them.
That's how you know I'm a real car guy.
Playing that card.
The Sheffield brand was recently revived by Jake Turkbus, an owner of
an original Sheffield All Sport Diver he received from his parents
in 1970 when he was just 11, beginning his love of watches.
As an adult, Jay used his extensive expertise in product
development and marketing to revive the brand that started it all.
He set out to develop watches with a high level of quality
and specification at a value price.
His first effort and a successful one on July of 2023 was the debut
of the Sheffield All Sport Diver one.
It had the kind of build and movement that much more expensive watches
use and his debut price of one hundred and eight dollars was equivalent
to the thirteen dollars his parents paid in 1970.
Since that debut, Sheffield has expanded to a wider range
of automatics and chronos, many designed around vintage Sheffield
dials of the sixties.
The Sheffield well of clever and unique design remains his
inspiration as well as maintaining the goal of high quality,
very affordable range of automatic and quartz watches.
Sheffield watches value on merit, not just price.
I love mine.
So get yours at Sheffield watches.com and be sure to
mention you found them on Switchcast.
We got a tip on a cars and bids auction scam, quote
Yes. Right.
And we've heard this story before.
People have issues with bring a trailer, cars and bids.
Mannheim, Meekum, the the scams are rampant in these auction
scenarios, one of which went pretty viral a couple of weeks
ago, which was the guy at Meekum who was on video
bidding on a car and the auctioneer hammered, sold and then
took another bid in the same breath.
It was very strange because I didn't hear him do the
like, you know, going once going twice.
It's like he just had a brain fart for a second went sold.
And it was like, actually, nope, it was a very bizarre video.
Yes. And we'll come back to that actually.
I think that plays into this discussion, but the one that
we got sent was an auction on cars and bids 2015 Dodge
Challenger SRT 392 in a bright green color sublime.
So Doug, that's a play on words, you know, because
it's limes are green.
And most of the buyers are subprime like sublime.
Oh, yeah. Coming to a street.
Take it over near you, Challenger SRT 392.
I did. This is going off topic here. Sorry.
We just started a dealer Facebook group I'm on.
There was a video posted of this Dodge charger that had gone
off the road at triple digit speeds and crashed through a dealer lot.
And he had flipped like two cars in the lot and landed upside down.
And people were like, oh, my gosh, is anybody alive in that?
And the back door was open as if somebody had gotten out.
I was like, nope.
You know, five fellas escaped unharmed from the charger wrecked.
I'm like, typical charger activities.
So yeah, it's it's it's become its own meme.
Anyway, this actually looks like a really nice car.
And it's not to collect people that actually that like these
and pay for them as opposed to stealing them.
There's plenty of car people who own these in love.
We're just having fun here.
So anyway, a dealership was bidding on this car
and per their post on Instagram, which has been removed
and of their own choice. No, no shady crap there.
But anyway, they were bidding on the car.
The next bid was twenty six thousand five hundred one dollars
in terms of the bid increments.
They did a fat finger and typed thirty six thousand five one,
which was well above the reserve and probably above market price
because essentially all the other bidders said, good job, you win.
Everybody's like, we're out.
He immediately commented, this was a mistake.
I meant to bid twenty six thousand five one.
He did not tag cars and bids in his comments,
but they do monitor auctions during the course of the auction
and at the last minute.
But the problem there was the bid was placed
within the final minute of the auction.
And for those of you who don't know how online auctions work,
there's no sniping like there was in the old days of eBay.
The clock resets to two minutes every time you place a bid.
So there's no advantage to waiting until the last minute.
But of course, you only have two minutes
if you're bidding at the last minute.
So he stated it was a mistake.
It was too late.
He tried to, you know, essentially he called the seller of the car
and said this was a mistake.
He offered to make him whole for his seller fee,
but cars and bids does not charge seller fees.
So there's nothing to do there.
And he contacted cars and bids.
Cars and bids response was too bad, so sad.
You read the bidder agreement and key thing to note here as well.
When you bid, not only do you have to type in the number,
but it comes up with a confirmation screen.
And at the top it says here's your bid amount.
Here's the service fee.
There are five percent, four and a half percent, I think it is.
And then at the bottom, you click the button bid this amount.
So he did see the number three times before he confirmed.
So and again, I've made same mistakes.
I'm not crapping on anyone here.
It's just that there's a reason they have these confirmation screens.
Bring a trailer, P car market.
They all do the same thing.
They want to make sure that nobody accidentally does this,
which I do want to put out there because my it maybe some of my
comments later might make it seem like I don't believe this.
This was an honest mistake.
We all make mistakes.
The two and the three are really close together on your keyboard.
Last minutes of the auction, you might be feeling a little stressed.
So like it is an honest mistake, but he saw the number like three times.
Read your screen, bro. OK.
Anyway, continue to.
I bid 240 grand on a car instead of 140 this week.
Well, that's what I'm saying. It happens.
Did you win? No, that's the crazy thing.
That's the crazy thing.
And it was via text.
I bid 240 on a car that had previously sold for 190.
And I thought it was to 90.
And I literally just in my brain saw to 90.
I had bid 140 on it before.
And so I bid 240 thinking it was 140 or whatever.
And they came back to 75.
So even though I bid 100 grand more than I wanted to,
that still didn't get it done because the seller wanted so much money.
And so I went back and I was like, I'll go to 250.
And then I was immediately like, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no.
I meant 150, 140, like going back to the auction.
That's what I had bid previously.
The car is not worth 80 grand more than it had already sold for.
Now. I they were not happy with me, but no.
No deal was made.
Nothing was agreed to.
If I will say this hand on the Bible, if they had come back and said.
Great, you got it.
We got our deal done because this was another dealer
trying to take the car in on trade.
So they're trying to make their deal based on my bid.
If they had said you own the car for 240, we'll bill you out.
I would have said, I'm an idiot.
Here's your 240 grand.
I will have to learn this lesson.
I would have done that, but no deal was made.
So I like it's not binding until it's binding.
However, on cars and bids.
A bid is.
Well, I do appreciate that this the dealer reached out
and to the seller and said, hey, I'll cover your fees.
Like they were pretty stand up about it.
They're like, look, I made a mistake.
You do got to own for own that.
And it seems like for the most part at this point
at the end of the auction, they've owned it.
Sort of.
But they still didn't want to come through with the bid.
Yeah, they only like 50 percent.
That's a tough thing.
And we talked about this at our dealer
because we see this all the time.
We talked about Craig and Landrith, the the dealer
who didn't want to honor their deal
because it was a number they didn't like.
We had something happen today
where somebody signed contracts, gave us a deposit,
and then went, I think I paid too much for the car.
I really don't want it now.
And it's like, but they signed a contract.
Did you keep the deposit?
I wanted to, but we refunded it.
I really that's probably the right thing to do.
Anyway, well, speaking of the right thing to do.
OK, so back to the cars and bids thing.
Now, the accidental buyer in this case did post some
reasonably inflammatory things about cars and bids
right off the cuff in their defense.
They then removed them from their page because they said,
listen, yeah, we screwed up.
We don't think cars and bids handle this the right way.
But we don't want to be defined by this type of reaction.
And I give them credit for that.
That's a mature thing to do.
We all kind of react really strongly.
But I can see their perspective on it because they're going.
We've bought a lot of cars on different auction platforms,
cars and bids, bring a trailer, et cetera.
And we didn't so much as get a phone call to try to work this out
from a relational perspective.
It's an obvious mistake, but you guys are going to keep our
$1,800 fee because we made a mistake.
And so the bidder was not really happy about that.
And and I get that you people want their deposits back.
So I talked to the had a good call with the CEO of cars and bids.
And we got some poll here now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
And, you know, he's that's he's going to defend his his side of things.
And he did admit the one the one thing he did say and we've learned
this lesson too is exactly what the bidder said is they essentially
have a weekly meeting where they go through, Hey, what happened this week?
What issues do we need to deal with?
What can we learn from whatever happened?
Because the car business and the auction landscape is constantly changing.
And in hindsight, he said, and the key takeaway was I wouldn't have
changed my decision or the outcome, but we should have dealt with it quicker
in terms of that customer relation part of things.
But the long and short of it was cars and bids kept the deposit
or kept the buyer fee initially and banned the bidder from the site
because of nonperformance.
And that's standard across the board, bring a trailer, P car market.
Anyone who bids on a car wins it and does not come through is banned
from the site. Same thing with sellers.
If they don't uphold their part of the deal, banned from the site.
I get that. I get that.
The other thing that the CEO said was this was somewhat
of a perfect storm of a situation.
If the accidental bid had come in an hour before the end,
OK, we have time to deal with it and go, let's review it.
Yes, that's definitely a typo.
We can see how that tracks.
Let's just reverse the bid and the auction isn't messed up.
This one came in so late that they didn't have time to do anything.
The reserve was met.
The auction closed and it negated anybody else's bid.
So it essentially ruined this auction for the seller.
And the seller was the one who had the most to lose in all of this.
Not cars and bids, not the bidder.
And according to the CEO of cars and bids,
they did attempt to come to a mutually agreeable middle ground
between the buyer and the seller of, OK, we know you didn't mean to bid 36K.
And that's probably overmarket.
So where can we come to term somewhere in between?
And whether it was the seller or the buyer that
didn't make the deal happen, a deal did not end up happening.
So it goes back to their standard procedure of you didn't own.
You didn't complete the deal.
So your band and we keep your fee.
They did decide after this meeting to refund the seller.
They thought that was the right thing to do in this scenario
because it wasn't accidental bid about the same time
because that wasn't communicated quickly enough to the bidder.
The bidder had filed a charge back,
opened a fraud case with their credit card company
in order to get the money back anyway.
And that does happen.
I talked to P car market about that when we had a
non performing bidder on our car.
And I said, well, you guys don't have any damages here.
You guys collected five thousand dollars and I'm out a car sale.
And now I have to start from scratch.
And every non completed auction, as we've talked about in the past,
is damaging to my next attempt to sell it.
So I said, well, why can't I get some of that money?
And they said, well, we don't always get to keep it.
Some people file charge backs.
We have to fight that, et cetera, et cetera.
And I'm sure there's also another danger of if you start doing that,
then people play the game of like winning their own auctions,
shield bidding and then going, oh, I'll just get my credit card fee back
because they'll give it to the seller.
So I understand why they don't do that.
But I think there's definitely room for improvement in these auction
situations to.
Hold both the bidders and the sellers more accountable.
But the one thing that the CEO said that I agreed with
was that
their goal was to uphold the integrity of the auction platform.
And while the specific outcome may not have been
pleasing to the bidder and probably rightly so,
I can definitely see where they're coming from.
They have to present to everybody on the site
that bids are binding and that sellers are real
because if people like the elections, right,
if people start to believe that bids aren't real,
whether they're shield bids or whatever they are,
then sellers will not want to participate
and other bidders will also not want to participate.
So by this quote unquote heavy handed policy,
they are protecting the integrity of the overall auction
platform for everybody so that people know when a bid comes in,
it's a real bid and this transaction is supposed to happen.
And the auctions work when people trust that this
that everything that's happening is real.
Well, and it's like if you go to any of these in person auctions,
if you sneeze and cover your nose and it counts as a bid,
you've bought the car and that's like a very good point.
You know, I want to like I said before,
eventually I was going to make some comments
and made it seem like I didn't like
understand the plight of the bidder,
but it's like you you had chances to look at your number.
You had two minutes to make the decision.
There was no rush.
There was well, but even that it's like you knew.
I see what you there was a total of two minutes since the previous bid.
You made a mistake and that sucks.
I think you should be thankful that you only made it out
by initially losing that transaction fee or whatever that percent is
that cars and bids takes.
Take that as a lesson and move on if
because you're not going to actually purchase the car.
Like the seller is a real person.
They this auction was entirely screwed up.
And as of recording of this episode,
the car is still for sale on AutoTrader and they still haven't sold it.
It's like everybody is real people here.
Yes. The buyer is a real person, probably of good integrity.
They had good intentions to buy the car.
They made an honest mistake.
Abs 100 bids has to protect their auction platform
at the expense of sometimes the favor of individual customers,
even regular customers.
I've been in that same scenario myself
and I've made the right decision sometimes and the wrong decision sometimes.
Yeah, but you're right.
You go to a wholesale auction like Mannheim, you sneeze,
you make eye contact with the auctioneer.
You made a bid.
Yeah.
And if you don't like it,
they will just say, OK, buy the car or your band.
And like this has happened to people I know where they did not even make the bid.
They didn't intend to make the bid.
There is no mistake.
The auctioneer just pointed to them.
Yep, yep.
And they bought a car and they're like, what do you mean I bought the car?
Well, pay for it or you never come back.
Well, that would be ridiculous.
If you weren't moving, if you weren't doing anything
and for some reason the auctioneer got confused and you've got no recourse,
that's ridiculous. House rules.
House rules. So as much as I think we can
take sides with the bidder here as the victim
and kind of pile on cars and bids and I can in one
in one scenario, I can totally get behind them and go, that's crap.
Like from a relationship perspective, just frigging rerun the auction,
give the guy's money back, whatever.
But from the other side of things, that scenario is so much more transparent
than the in person wholesale auctions that it's still
whatever cars and bids bring a trailer, peak our market and the rest of them
are doing whatever scams, quote unquote, they're accused of whatever
issues they have with their auction platform.
It is so much better than the in person auctions.
So much better.
It's not perfect.
It's not perfect, but yeah.
So I don't know, are we like Judge Judy here, right?
Who are you going to put the gavel down?
Oh, remember who are we deciding in favor of?
I think that from the relationship perspective, cars and bids did the right
thing to refund the fee for the accidental bid.
I think that they had every right to keep that amount of money on principle
to uphold the integrity of the auction site.
And it would have sucked and it would have felt really unfair for the bidder.
But I think that would have made sense.
I think it was an honest mistake, still a mistake.
Yeah. And I asked the CEO, I said.
What would have happened if instead of bidding 36501 when he meant
to bid 26501, he bid 265001?
Like some number that's so crazy that nobody could rationally take that
as a real bid.
He said, well, that's a hypothetical situation.
I'm like, I know that, but I know I like extremes.
But that my wife, who is our quote unquote in-house legal counsel,
she went to a year of law school.
She said there actually is a principle that applies there
in terms of errors where like if you send somebody a contract
that's $5,000 off on a $100,000 car, that can't be necessarily seen
as a number that's so out of the realm of reality that it's an obvious mistake.
So that could be potentially upheld in court.
Like, well, you made the mistake, but it's the guy could have negotiated
5% off, whereas if you miss by 50%, even if you sign a contract,
it's not enforceable because you can show that like this is an obvious mistake.
Gotcha.
And no rational, reasonable person could say that this was a real
transaction or intended to be a real transaction.
So I don't know what the name of that legal principle is, but
I think that could apply here into that question.
To your extreme question or the 36K?
To the extreme question because 36K was more than market value,
but not out of the realm for somebody who might really want the car
and just put down a put in a shut, let's shut this down.
Yeah, like I'm willing to pay this.
I want the car because people do that all the time.
They pay 5, 10 grand more or let's put in percentages, right?
5 to 10% more than quote unquote market value in order to shut it down.
So it's it's possible that they could have said, well,
that's high, but within the realm of reason and they didn't to their credit.
They said, no, that was a mistake.
We believe it was a mistake.
And that's why they decided to refund the guy the money.
So everybody made mistakes here.
Everybody actually, everybody owned up to it.
Yeah, the bidder did cars and bids did not everything was a perfect outcome.
If anything, I think the seller just got kind of screwed.
And that's exactly what cars and bids said as well in the bidder.
They all kind of agreed the seller got screwed.
So maybe they should have donated half of them.
Yeah, but if you're looking for a 2015 Dodge Challenger right now,
it's still an auto trader at a Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaking of out of the realm of reality, right?
Do you think this was an accident?
This wasn't an accident.
What's your opinion?
OK, so on cars and bids, another green car 2014 Porsche Cayenne.
Nothing following that, no GTS, no S, no turbo, Cayenne, but it's a manual.
Six speed manual, make green, great.
Again, it's green metallic, 64,000 miles.
It's hot.
It had previously sold on bring a trailer in 2021 for $51,000.
Cayenne's have gone down in value since then.
I would say that this car sold for one hundred twenty five thousand five
hundred dollars for a eleven year old base.
Cayenne, Doug, what's your take?
I mean, if anyone wanted to say this bid is outside of the realm of reality,
you could say that is it.
But there's two bidders battling till the end.
It I have no proof.
Something smells fishy.
I don't.
This is so outside of the realm of possibility.
And yes, this is blown up on the Internet.
It could just be a couple of rich guys that don't care about 50
or $200,000 and they're like, I just want this thing.
It just feels weird, feels real weird.
Listen, Switchcast drinking game here for every time I've said CEO tonight.
But on my call with the CEO of cars and beds, he said, quote,
it is the wildest auction result I've seen in 11 years of being
into the car business on any platform.
But they maintain that this is a real which I feel like so.
And this is I if I was in cars and bids position.
The only way that I would say it is not is if there was unavoidable
evidence that something was off.
Like they can't really say, well, it's a little weird, but whatever.
Like maybe they've been in contact with the buyer and the seller
and they know for a fact, but like it's all just feels weird.
Just feels weird.
It's it's crazy, but so is $600,000 on a 360 challenge.
Should all I am bringing trailers who call back to the warm-up
lab. Yeah.
OK, well, it's all insane.
Makes me sleepy.
New sub segment here, we're going to try it out.
We'll need your submissions because we know you all hang out at car shows,
but I heard something at a car show recently.
And it is one of my favorite things to do is eavesdrop on people
who have no clue, but they're trying to impress their friends about
how much they know, kind of like what we're doing on the podcast.
You don't know that we're wrong unless you know better.
We don't know we're wrong unless we know better too.
Right. So things overheard at car shows.
My new favorite sub segment was at Canton cars and coffee a few weeks ago
and there's a second gen Dodge Viper there.
And some guy was talking to maybe his dad, a friend, I don't know,
but he said effectively the original Viper is basically a Dodge truck.
They just reused a lot of truck parts they had laying around
in order to save money.
I feel like I've heard this before, actually, it's like, oh, God.
Tell me you don't know how things work without telling me
you don't know how things work.
Holy moly. I also wondered, like, when people say they just
reused a lot of blank that they had laying around, do they think
they just have warehouses full of like window switches and crap
that they just like cobble together and somehow get crash tested?
I mean, Ferrari's done that.
But there's no truck parts on a Dodge Viper.
Isn't the engine or no, they put the engine in a truck.
Well, that's I think that's where yeah, where that comes from.
But it is not a truck engine.
It shares architecture with it and the engine was designed
or engineered by Lamborghini or with help from Lamborghini.
Now, but it came from a truck, Doug.
This is a little red truck engine.
It's the whole thing's a dodge.
It was building a shed in Michigan.
I'm not at the Viper plan on Connor Avenue.
Anyway, if you hear crazy things at car shows, obviously,
we can't police this.
You could just make something up and send it to us.
But if it's good enough and it sounds good, then we'll talk about it.
We'll talk about it.
We'll feature you on the segment.
Switch cars is the enthusiast dealership where we buy, sell
and consign only cars that we like ourselves.
Check out our handpicked inventory online at switchcars.com
and mention switchcast for special pricing.
You can find more information online at switchcars.com
or come visit our showroom in a beautiful
Twinsburg, Ohio, where you can experience the switch cars difference.
Is the grappler the new police solution for car chases?
They've been using spike strips for a long, long, long time.
Do those spike strips used to get me a need for speed all the time.
Yikes. Got to learn where the cops normally place them.
And they ain't going to skirt around.
Yeah, they are far more effective in video games than in real life.
Yes. When all that happens is my car stays the same level
because they didn't model the car falling with its wheels gone.
So it just continues straight with a bunch of sparks.
We've had pit maneuvers, which a lot of departments
are not allowed to do anymore because of liability and lack of training,
which I got to say, I'm personally a fan of pit maneuvers.
When done successfully, they are satisfying to watch and very fun to perform.
But quite dangerous.
I've watched, I don't know, hundreds of videos
where they have gone wrong because they were done wrong,
not because of the pit maneuver itself.
But the grappler is a device that is it's basically a net
that is stored in the front of a police car, one specially equipped
and it's stored in like the ram bar up front.
Yeah. And they deploy it, it shoots out and grabs the rear axle,
rear wheel, whatever it can get its grapples on and
just drags the vehicle.
And so the cop car comes to a stop.
And I guess if the cop car is sufficiently bigger enough,
it can go where it apples.
It ends the chase just like that.
So they all they have to do is get up close to the rear bumper,
which in most police chases, they can do.
It's much harder to actually get in position to do a pit maneuver
because seasoned criminals will know, oh, just dodge right, dodge left.
And then sometimes can't execute a pit maneuver.
But you could do this in traffic.
There's so many more places you can do this that you can't do pit
maneuvers or spike strips.
Well, I think you'd want to be like with a pit maneuver.
You could send a car careening into traffic or pedestrians.
This isn't a Mustang or cars and coffee.
Come on. Correct.
Brings to a meaning to the words dragnet.
Oh, yes. Just thought of that.
So there's a few different stories out there.
We found one on YouTube from, I think last year,
where Tempe police accidentally grappled the wrong car.
But we've seen people cops pit maneuver the wrong car.
There was one where they pit maneuvered an unmarked police officer
that was like on his way to a call. Nice.
And they pit maneuvered him and he flipped on his lights
as he was like facing the cop that pitted him.
He's like, what's the deal, man?
Oh, so good.
So that's not an argument against the grappler
because people can spike the wrong cars.
They can pit the wrong cars.
Heck, cops frigging spike the wrong cars all the time.
Well, they still use spike strips.
They absolutely do.
Oh, I thought they were like outlawed or something.
No, heck, half the ones I use,
they accidentally spike the police officers
that are chasing the perp.
The perp drives around them
and then two cop cars get spiked
because they don't communicate well enough.
Anyway, lots of uncoordinated police chases.
The ones I watch on YouTube, I swear.
It's like seven year olds playing peewee soccer
where it's just swarmed the ball.
It kind of is.
But man, these spike strips look scary.
Yeah. From Fox nine, the grappler was safely deployed
for the first time in Minnesota during
it stopped a fleeing vehicle during a police pursuit.
Egan police successfully used the new tool to end a pursuit
after a driver refused to stop for red light on Friday, August 30th.
The female driver was apprehended after a brief foot chase
and faces multiple charges, including fleeing police.
Note on this one, too, that it was a pickup truck
hauling a U-Haul trailer, which if any of you have ever
been stuck behind people in U-Haul rentals or U-Haul trailers,
I am convinced that it's like
white trash people winning the lottery.
You get a bad driver with a U-Haul trailer
and it just magnifies how terrible people are at driving.
Oh, well, because they're not used to driving with a trailer.
That's a tiny trailer.
It's still something else you got.
Even the rental trucks.
Ethan, our producer, added the small U-Haul rental truck this week.
And I'm like, I'm staying half a mile away from you.
But did you see me back it up into the driveway?
That was money.
That was money.
Was it like a little bit of money or a lot of money?
No, I mean, outside of the tree that Doug had to stand
on top of the U-Haul to move a branch out of the way for.
What?
There's nothing I could do to prevent that.
Oh, anyway, so, OK, but the one that is raising ire
from a lot of people is a Detroit, Michigan police chase.
And this is courtesy of Fox to Detroit police
for tracking a stolen car and Michigan's
or sorry, Livonia police who have the new grappler responded
and deployed the grappler on the freeway near Levan, Michigan.
And it looks like a Chevy Malibu and they
successfully grappled the car, but then the car tried to drive away.
And it's a front wheel drive car.
So they still had power to the drive wheels
because they were not caught up in the net.
And they grappled so hard that the rear axle
just came right off of the car.
Who? Oh, oh, so this was a win for cops.
And they caught a thief.
But the comments, the comments on this are hilarious.
Quote, this seems really dangerous to everyone in the highway.
Would love to know the budget blown on indulging cops, Batman fantasies.
It is kind of like a James Bond or a Batman thing.
We'll get go, go gadget.
Quote, it's not really fair to the owner of the car
that the police destroyed it.
Possibly the car could have been recovered
or the police could have chased until the car ran out of gas.
So I got to be honest, I'm watching the video right now.
And they are like it didn't.
They didn't grapple the rear axle and the rear wheel
and it just pulled the axle off.
They right now the cops are just sitting in the middle of the road
while the person up there goes while the person who stole the car
tries to pull like yank right away from the the grappler device.
So they keep backing up and flooring it and going forward.
And after like the third or fourth time, the rear axle pops off.
Yes. So it's not like there's a problem here
in that people are blaming the police for criminals activity.
It is a stolen car stolen by the criminals.
They have likely already damaged it.
Probably run into and ram the police already.
And then they're saying, oh, well, the police damaged the car.
Just wait for the criminal to run out of gas.
Have you ever watched any police chases?
Now, I will say we're going to talk about grappler versus spike strip versus pit maneuver.
I am not going to cite any studies because I don't need to.
I have watched hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of high speed
police chases and compiled my own data.
Yeah, Doug, this is what I do.
And I can tell you
spike strips do not work.
And they're so cool.
One out of 10 is successful in the hundreds of videos I've watched.
Two out of in getting the perp's car, two out of 10,
at least are successful in spiking the police cars directly behind the perp.
Three out of 10 are successful.
This is certified stamped data here.
Three out of 10 are successful in the police officer who is throwing the spikes
at a moving car that's going a high rate of speed with the death wish.
At putting the officer in harm's way.
And often the car drives directly at the officer.
Spike strips are terrible.
I think they should be completely outlawed because they're just they're not effective.
The risk-reward ratio is not there at all.
It's way better when you're parked on the side of the road,
just waiting for that street racer to come up and you press a button on your
keyboard and one just pops up in the middle of the road.
That's what I'm talking about.
We need that technology.
Oh, my gosh. Another comment, quote, I see the vision.
But like, does this come out of the police department's wallet
or the person who stole the car?
Because I don't think I'd like to get my car back, but have no back wheels.
Bro, you've never had a car stall and have you?
Isn't there some level I don't if my car was stolen
and like really kind of abused, I'm not sure if I'd necessarily want it back.
You don't want it back.
It would feel you don't know what they've done.
You don't know what you will uncover a month or a year from now.
But also somebody has like violated your thing.
People only want their stolen cars back from a sense of being made whole.
You are never made whole. It is never right.
They are always damaged and it costs more to get them back.
Personal experience, then do not get them back.
However, like stop blaming the cops.
The cops. Yeah.
Would you like them to just let the perp go?
Just take the stolen car.
Well, anyway, another quote, so dangerous and so much damage
just to catch someone and provide literally no justice
while endangering everyone around them.
Honey, have you watched police chases like I have?
Those are dangerous.
You think let's go to pit maneuvers honey.
I've seen so many terrible accidents as a result of pit maneuvers.
Not the pit maneuvers are to blame, but cops aren't trained in these.
They're doing them too far forward.
So they're catching the rear wheel and flipping the cop car.
They're doing them into oncoming traffic over and over again.
I've seen this.
They're doing them when traffic is around causing accidents, crazy rollovers.
And, you know, we could say, well, we don't care about the perps,
but human life is human life.
And maybe there's innocent victims in the car
who didn't want to be in the car for these police chases.
That happens often.
There's children in the car sometimes.
Guy goes crazy and is with his baby mama and is,
you know, another dude's baby.
I'm stereotyping here, but like this is the safest way to end a pursuit.
And the quickest, like, to say this is endangering everyone,
like these people, these commenters don't live.
They live in an alternate reality.
Another quote.
What's the point of doing this to a stolen car that belongs to someone else?
There's literally no reason to destroy a car that you're trying to recover.
I got to admit, I was supremely skeptical about this
because it seems really dangerous and like something could go wrong.
But the axle popped off after like three or four tries.
Like, OK, no, that's kind of the fault of the the perp in that scenario.
This might actually be all right.
I was going to try to tell you this sucks, but like.
I think it might actually be better
than just letting the perp go and continue driving like a maniac
and potentially harm somebody else.
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
I the dealers, the dealerships, the and departments are so concerned
about their CYA and rightly so.
That I've seen where a car was driving on to an on ramp
for oncoming traffic on the highway and the cop had an opportunity to pit
them, but he had not gotten authorization to do so yet.
At that point, I'm thinking if I'm the cop, I don't care.
This is about to escalate to an insane level driving into oncoming traffic
on a highway. I don't care if I lose my job.
I'm putting this guy into the ditch.
It doesn't matter how I do it or if I wreck out doing it.
Doesn't matter.
So to me, this grappler thing is.
It's technology that's been around for a while, and I don't know why
it has not become ubiquitous.
It it seems to be so easy to use, so incredibly safe on a relative scale.
When I think that's the relative is important, because there's still a
chance that something could go sideways.
Somebody in oncoming traffic could not notice what's happening
and swerve and do something stupid.
But still in the realm of all of the potential ways to deescalate
a pursuit, this seems to be purely for deescalation instead of an
escalation for the purposes of.
Exactly.
I was slowing people down.
If you spike them, my studies show that they don't slow down.
They keep driving at the same speeds with less traction, which is more dangerous.
Cops in general aren't trained very well at driving and especially
not in high speed pursuits.
So the longer high speed pursuit goes, the more dangerous it is to civilians,
not just because of the perp and their desperation to get away,
but also the cops adrenaline and often they're on, they're in explorers
with snow tires like they're not properly equipped performance vehicles.
They do not have the right equipment to be doing this stuff.
So if you can just bring something to a stop, you hit the nail on the head.
It's deescalation.
I think every friggin department should have this.
I think this is throw your spike strips out, not into the road.
Like, chuck them into the trash, leave them for speed.
Don't have to worry about the liability in the training with pit maneuvers.
They're still cool, but honestly, I think spike strips are still cool.
They're dangerous as all heck, but boy, are they sweet.
It's a strip of spikes dug to pop the tires.
Oh, lame.
That got my Porsche 911 turbo so much in need for speed.
Yeah.
So I'm I'm all about this.
I wanted to fight you, but this is legit.
Okay.
I'm on board.
Let's go to plate to sample our most popular game ever.
Awesome.
Sign up here for those of you watching.
And this is brought to you literally and financially by Solan Spine.
Solanspine.com.
It's not what you think it's not Sol and Spine.
It is Sol and Ohio.
They will get you straightened out if you are not straight crooked.
Whatever is going on in your back shoulders, et cetera.
Knees and toes.
Knees and toes.
Okay.
So let's do plate to sample.
This is the game where we will name a vanity plate.
Ohio has renamed them special plates because, you know, people don't want to be accused of being vain.
But let's be honest.
They are their vanity plates.
And instead of trying to guess what it means because that's usually patently obvious.
We will try to guess the vehicle that it is on.
How well can we identify stereotypes?
I will say last time I think I had an improvement a couple weeks ago.
I was a little rough.
It was embarrassing.
I had to apologize after the podcast.
It almost got fired.
It was a whole thing.
Very bad.
Okay.
Well, Tyler, fire away with your first one.
All right.
For you, Doug, this comes from John Z.
Two Mars.
Two Mars.
Tesla.
Yes.
There it is.
Because they have SpaceX.
Yeah.
Nice.
All right.
Look at that.
Okay.
This one, I apologize, people watching.
We always have photos of the plates.
I did not get photos of these because I was driving, but they were too good.
No.
So these are all lies.
No.
These are made up.
They are real.
I will pull them up on car.
Frack.
Carfax is kicking me out.
I do two factor authentication.
Are you, you Doug?
Yes.
So I will pull it up to prove that they are real and that they correspond to the vehicle.
All right.
Yes.
They are real.
I can't spell them.
All right.
The first one is PRVJET from Ohio.
Private jet.
Private jet.
This is an AMGS class.
What the frick?
What?
How?
What?
Did I get it?
Well, technically, yes.
That is what it comes up on Carfax.
Pack it away, boys.
But it was on a Porsche Panamera.
What?
What?
How did I get?
What?
Carfax 2023 Mercedes-Benz S-Class S500.
Not an AMG, but it might have had the AMG package.
Oh my gosh.
That is scary.
Good.
I got some dusty shoulders over here.
This is kind of weird.
Porsche Panamera.
Private jet.
Oh, amazing.
Yep.
All right.
I got to be honest, Doug.
This next one, I'm going to need you to explain it to me when we're done here because
I don't get it, but I feel like you might have seen this plate at this point.
Okay.
This is Paul P.
Thank you for sending this in.
MS-8, like MS-Space-8.
MS-8?
MS-8.
MS-8.
It might not have an actual meaning, but the car it's on makes me feel like you might know.
JBL MS-8 digital sound processor?
Ah, no.
Is it another EV?
No.
It's a BMW Z-8.
MS-8.
It is black with a red interior.
Fisker designed it, so MS-8.
It might literally mean nothing, but this was on a Z-8.
I was like, Doug might have actually seen this in your sleuthing for one.
It's black, so not your preferred color.
Okay.
All right.
Must mean nothing then.
All right.
All right.
Next one for you, which I saw.
Driving.
I will pull up the car effects to verify.
I don't even think I need to do any more of these today.
The number two, TH-D-R-L-A.
Tooth Drilla.
Oh, so he's a dentist or a G.
This is going to be a Lexus.
No.
Oh.
That's what a dentist drive.
An Audi RS-5.
No, but like...
That kind of vibe.
Great guess.
Wrong manufacturer.
It is a BMW 8 Series M850i.
Okay.
Those are pretty sweet.
They are.
They look good.
They do look good.
I'm not a modern BMW fan, but BMW has knocked it out of the park with the new 8 Series.
For some reason.
Gloria and Coop, whatever.
It's the only one that doesn't have massive kidneys.
Yes.
Like overly massive.
Like they're big, but it's a big car.
Yep.
Next up for you, Doug, coming from Chris S.
Crowds with a little heart on it.
Mustang.
Yeah.
Can you...
Sorry, he sent that one to me too.
I saw it.
I was like, I got to use this at some point.
But I would have got it anyway.
Hard crowds.
Come on.
That's a Mustang.
I didn't know that in Texas you could get a heart like a symbol on your plate.
You can in California too, because I saw an old Alfa Romeo.
Old Alfa Romeo at a car show that had I Heart AAA.
Oh, that's amazing.
It's really good.
Another Ohio plate.
This was a submission.
Not 5-0.
It's a Mustang.
Not GT.
It's like an EcoBoost.
No.
I see what you did there.
Not 5-0.
It's not the 5-liter.
Like a Crown Vic.
Or a Chevy Caprice.
Or a Dodge Charger.
Or a Ford Police Interceptor.
That, yeah, yeah.
Oh, the Taurus one.
Explore.
No, the Explorer Interceptor.
Yeah, yeah.
That's a good plate.
I like that.
That is a good plate.
John A brings you the next one.
I'm bougie.
This has a pink bedazzled plate frame as well.
Because they're very bougie.
A Bentley?
No.
No.
I don't think they're actually bougie.
I really don't know.
I think pink bedazzled.
Jeep?
Jeep Wrangler?
No.
It is a Mercedes entry-level compact SUV.
Oh, you pulled the me.
I did.
This is perfect.
Doug will never guess.
Ah, shoot.
Okay.
All right.
This one comes to you from Chase McIntosh v.
Instagram.
This is a good one.
Massachusetts plate.
K-Truck.
Oh, is this on like a Subaru Sambar or the Honda Acti?
No.
What are the K-Truck options are there?
Is it on a Maverick?
Are they trying to make a joke?
Nope.
Okay.
Well, yes, they are trying to make a joke,
but it's on a Ford Bronco.
Oh, the full-size one.
The fenders on this thing are bigger than an actual K-Truck.
Yes.
Oh my goodness.
All right, Doug, this last one, I need you to prepare yourself.
Okay.
Because I wasn't.
It's I Suck Toes.
So what kind of person would drive?
Is that a Chrysler K car?
No, but that would be good.
Lebaron.
No, no, no.
That would be, it's not that.
It's much more modern.
Do you know why I guess that?
Why?
No.
Isn't that George Costanza's thing?
Oh, I don't actually remember.
He had a Lebaron that was owned by John Voight.
I'm making connections I shouldn't make here,
but okay, I having the faintest idea.
It's a Volkswagen Passat.
What does that have to do with sucking toes?
No, I guess that's just the vehicle of choice
for a potential tow sucker.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
No, no, it's rectangles and squares here.
Just because you drive a Passat doesn't mean
you want to suck toes, but if you want to suck toes,
probably drive a Passat.
All right.
This one comes from Robert on Instagram,
P-R-E-R-N-R pre-runner.
Pre-runner.
So the first thing that comes to mind is something like
a Plymouth that came out before the road runner.
Am I entirely off like it's a pre-road runner,
pre-run, I don't, I'm entirely off base.
I'm taking your car guy card away.
What?
It's a 93 Ford F-150 that's built like a pre-runner.
What is that?
You don't know what a pre-runner is?
No.
Oh my gosh, internet please tell Tyler who I've now
confirmed that I'm keeping his car guy card
that I took away.
I don't, so it's a Baja truck?
Yes.
I mean these things look amazing.
Mm-hmm.
I did not know they were called pre-runners though.
Yeah.
Ooh, this one from Motortrad with a Ranger looks dope.
This looks like a lot of fun.
Is that five or is that four?
That was five.
That was five.
Oh man, but I have one more good one.
I have one more good one.
Somebody bet a t-shirt on this on what you would guess.
Well they said Ethan.
They bet a, what Ethan would guess?
Well I think they might, who's Tyler?
This one is from Brian Kidd.
Ethan, I'll send you the screenshot to put up when he says that.
I don't want to lose this one because I'd have to send a t-shirt to England.
This is a British plate.
Uh, M-I-2-Gay.
Huh.
Hmm.
Ethan, what's your guess?
Yeah, who's Tyler?
Ethan, what's your guess?
I'm asking you, Tyler.
Oh, oh, he doesn't have a mic.
Is that on, hmm, and it's, you said it's a UK plate?
Mm-hmm.
Is it on a, uh, like a twingo?
A what?
A twink, like a Renault twingo or whatever?
No.
Okay.
What is it on?
A Mercedes-C250 Blu-Tec wagon.
Oh.
A respectable car.
A respectable car.
Brian, bet me a t-shirt that you would guess a Tesla.
Oh, well.
But Tesla in, see in the US Tesla drivers don't have that reputation.
Subaru drivers do.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what, and I think that's what screwed me up is I'm like, what is considered that
type of vehicle in the UK?
I don't actually know.
That is a great question.
We don't know.
Maybe they're left-hand drive cars.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Well, that was a, that was a fun game.
I don't know what the score was, but it doesn't matter anyway.
Thank you for joining us for Switchcast with Doug Tabott and Tyler Sanders produced by
Ethan Huffnagle.
Switchcast is an automotive entertainment and opinion show and nothing we say should
be taken very seriously.
We do not give tax, investment, legal, emotional or professional advice, and the only licenses
we hold are driver's licenses.
The opinions expressed on this show are exclusively held by the people pontificating at that moment
and do not reflect the values of our producers or sponsors.
Our theme music is provided by Emily and Ivory.
You can stream their full album on Spotify or SoundCloud.
If you like this show, you can stream it in its entirety on your favorite audio podcast platform.
Check out switchcast.live for more info.
About this episode
SwitchCast dives into the world of automotive auctions, highlighting a dramatic incident involving an accidental bid on a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT 392 that led to a heated discussion about auction integrity and buyer responsibilities. The hosts, Doug and Tyler, also explore the rising prices of cars like the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale and the controversial use of grapplers in police chases. With humor and personal anecdotes, they dissect the complexities of car culture, auction dynamics, and the challenges faced by both buyers and sellers in today's market.
A bidder on Cars and Bids recently "fat-thumbed" it and bid on a vehicle with a number significantly higher than they thought. Cars & Bids, essentially, responded with "too bad, so sad," starting some serious drama in the following weeks.
Let's unpack this a bit more and find out what went wrong and who is in the right here.