An auto show is a big event where car companies display their newest cars and features. People can see the cars up close and learn about what's new in the automotive world.
The Acura NSX is a fast sports car that combines a gasoline engine with electric motors for better performance and efficiency. It's known for being very advanced and fun to drive.
A car show is an event where people show off their cars. There are often prizes for the best cars, and it's a fun way for car lovers to meet and share their passion.
The Honda NSX is a fast sports car made by Honda. It's famous for its sleek design and powerful performance, making it a favorite among car enthusiasts.
The Nissan GT-R is a fast sports car that many people love because of its racing history and powerful performance. It's a popular choice among car fans.
The Nissan Skyline R34 is a famous version of the GT-R that many people admire for its looks and speed. It's well-known in car culture and has appeared in movies and games.
Right-hand drive means that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, which is how cars are set up in some countries where people drive on the left side of the road.
A YouTube channel is a place on the internet where someone can post videos. Many people use it to share their interests, like cars, and connect with others who like the same things.
Pikes Peak is a tall mountain in Colorado where people race cars to the top. It's known for being very difficult because of the steep roads and high elevation.
In a time trial, drivers race to see who can go from one point to another the fastest. Each person races alone, and their times are compared to find out who was the quickest.
The Acura TLX GT is a sportier version of the Acura TLX car, built for racing. It has special features that make it faster and more powerful than regular TLX models.
The Dacia SuperNova is a small, inexpensive car that was made in Romania. It's designed to be simple and affordable, so it's a good option for people who just need a car to get around without spending too much money.
The Honda Civic is a small car that many people like to drive because it's dependable and doesn't use a lot of gas. It's been around for a long time and is popular for its fun style and good performance.
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That was terrible.
This is hard parking brought to you by right on and right Toyota out of Scottsdale, Arizona, Arizona, Arizona.
I'm your host Jay Fitting recording from my home studio here in Gilbert, Arizona.
You know, I think for 2026, I'm going to have to switch this up a little bit.
I shouldn't have to tell you who I am and where I'm recording from.
My show is not that big, so Texas beat Texas A&M.
Those of you who love sports understand that it's kind of a big brother little brother thing.
I won't get too much into it, but it was a big deal for Texas.
Unfortunately, the season didn't go like I wanted it to go.
Also, Michigan could not beat Ohio State this time.
What this really means is Q will be back on the show very soon.
I kind of want to wait until the college football committee selects the playoff teams.
Michigan and Texas are not going to be in the playoffs, unfortunately.
The playoff selection is Sunday, December 8.
Speaking of sports, today we watched the Buffalo Bills on Discord.
On YouTube, I saw the commercial or I guess I saw the commercial on TV for the NFL ticket.
Now just $48 for the rest of the year.
It's like, okay, good.
That's like a handful of games.
It's $12 a weekend.
I guess there's only four weeks left in the NFL season.
And the Buffalo Bills is our team and they were out of market.
I said, babe, we can get the games on YouTube TV.
We can get NFL ticket.
Now you can get NFL ticket.
You don't have to have YouTube TV.
So we signed up for NFL ticket on my YouTube account and the game was blacked out.
So wait a minute.
The Bills versus the Steelers in Pittsburgh and the game is blacked out in Phoenix.
So when I was growing up, blackout meant that your team that you were in the area of,
they didn't sell enough tickets and they want to penalize the local audience for not going to the game.
So the game is blacked out.
Man, blackout is not the same in 2025 as it was in 1994.
So YouTube TV is a freaking, okay.
I guess I can't blame YouTube TV.
The NFL ticket without a YouTube TV subscription is bullshit.
Anyway, I get some thoughts about Thanksgiving coming up after this word from Arcus Foundry.
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So this is the Monday after Thanksgiving.
You know, I usually don't do a Thanksgiving episode and this isn't technically a Thanksgiving episode.
Sure, I can tell you that I marinated the turkey which is different than Brian the turkey this year
and I smoked it and everybody was over here and it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to
but no one actually told me that they didn't really like it as much as last year's turkey
except for I know because I'm the one who cooked it.
But Thanksgiving is, I think the meaning of it has kind of changed.
I'm an 80's slash 90's kid.
When I was in grade school, we said the pledge of allegiance every morning before class,
all the sports, you said all the stuff, right?
And you know, that's just changed.
I don't think anyone does it anymore.
I mean, I haven't been in elementary school in years or middle school or high school, but things are different.
For better or for worse.
One of my old peers, and this is kind of a narrative around Thanksgiving lately,
but one of my old peers that posted on Facebook about if you're celebrating Thanksgiving,
you should be ashamed or something like that, right?
Because the controversy is, you know, when you're little, when you're coming up in school,
they used to teach that Thanksgiving is all about the pilgrims and the Native Americans
and Christopher Columbus landed and started everything.
And since then we've learned that Christopher Columbus maybe wasn't a very good guy,
which if you really think about the history of, the history of civilized man, there's no surprise, right?
Everybody tries to conquer everyone else.
But they told us that when we eventually got to the pilgrims, the pilgrims were suffering
and they made friends with the indigenous people, right?
The Native Americans and the Native Americans taught us how to fish,
taught us how to grow corn with dead fish, taught us how to survive.
And because of that, we get together and we have Thanksgiving
and the pilgrims were celebrating with the Native Americans.
And what we find out as we get older is that's mostly bullshit.
But that doesn't mean you can't celebrate Thanksgiving.
Because I think for most people who are adults now, most of the families out there,
most of you listening or watching this, do you sit down and you,
maybe you say grace, maybe you eat buffet style like we seem to do now.
I don't think we've said grace on Thanksgiving in a few years.
Are you celebrating the pilgrims?
Are you celebrating the early days of America?
And are you thankful because Christopher Columbus discovered America
and the pilgrims and the Native Americans sat down at a table and had this great feast?
Or are you celebrating family?
I mean, friendsgiving is a thing, right?
Are you celebrating family and friends?
And at the end of the day, regardless of how Thanksgiving started,
I mean, Lord, there's so many terms and there's so many things
that have a completely different meaning now than they did when they originally produced or created.
Produced, created.
I think you know where I'm going with that.
Sometimes my words are not so good.
But Thanksgiving is not about that anymore.
Maybe originally it was, but it's about being thankful for what you have now, the people around you now.
You know, I was listening to Wes's episode about Thanksgiving the other day
and he was talking about things in his life, three things that he's thankful for that molded who he is today.
Unfortunately, my name didn't make the list.
Thank you very much, Wes Tanker.
So you're off my list, no Christmas cards for you, no annual gift for you for supporting this show.
No, but all things being said in seriousness, it's about what you are thankful for in your life
or what got you to the place you are now.
No one cares about the pilgrims and the Indians anymore.
This weekend during Thanksgiving, you know, the time that we celebrate family and friends
and things we're thankful for and not really the pilgrims anymore unless you're in fourth grade.
If that's what they're teaching fourth graders, I have no idea because I'm not there.
But I took my car to the auto show in a sense, right?
And this is the Phoenix Auto Show.
Man, auto shows are so different now.
When I was a kid, my dad would take my brother and I to the Dallas Auto Show and it was just this big thing.
That was my first introduction, like real introduction to cars, really honestly.
And then you like cars.
You don't know really the difference between a Porsche and a Lamborghini or a Ferrari.
You just like cars.
I remember getting into a Ford Pro, but it was like 19.
At this point, I think I was in high school.
Yeah, for sure in the 90s.
And it was a cool car, but you get to go to the auto show and it's all the manufacturers.
Like what does Cadillac have out?
What's Ford have out?
What's Chevy have out?
What's Honda have out?
There was no accurate yet.
I guess there was.
It was definitely accurate.
Anyway, so we go to the car show and it was different.
It took up the whole convention center.
And now, at least here in Arizona, this is like my first time going to the car show.
It's small.
I saw a Ravi Tormel in front of the show of We Don't Lift Racing Southwest Speed Festival coming up at the end of January.
By the way, I'll be there.
I'll be on the mic being the commentator, believe it or not.
But he had a booth and so I took my car down there and I left it there and I just picked it up today on Sunday.
And I had friends that were sending me pictures of my car there, which is cool.
The auto show used to be special and I don't know if it's a dying.
One of those things is just kind of dying because you have the big LA auto show, right?
And the Detroit auto show, the Frankfurt auto show and anybody watching or listening to this can kind of identify because I'm sure you've all gone or heard of it.
Actually, if you're in, I'm going to say Grand Rapids, which is very obscure, but I know I have some listeners there and supporters there.
It's like one of the Grand Rapids auto show, right?
I mean, I'm sure you've been at some point.
I don't think I've ever went when I was living there for 15 years, but it was cool to have my NSX there.
I don't know what the future of those are.
People just in the world of social media and constant coverage, constant media coverage, you can go anywhere and see the same content.
So, man, I would hate to be an organizer of an event like that that's probably, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if that went away.
But according to Ravi, it's actually a lot bigger now than it was years, like a few years ago, I guess after COVID, it's obviously destroyed everything.
So we'll see what happens next year.
Maybe I'll go, I mean, I went this year to pick my car up and I was able to walk around and I was there for an hour and a half at the most.
And I was able to see anything and everything I wanted to because it was one of the halls in the Phoenix Convention Center, which is they have a North Hall, South Hall or whatever, East Hall, whatever, multiple buildings.
But it was just in one part, kind of sad.
Also went to Hope for the Homeless, which I've been there before is my third time going to Hope for the Homeless.
So what this is, it's a local monthly car show.
So they have prizes you can win best, whatever.
And I went with a friend of mine, Jim Jangles, which we're trying to get on the show hasn't been on the show yet.
But I met up with him and a few other Hondas took the Z because the NSX was the auto show.
And that was a cool event.
The thing that's good about that event is like I live in a world obviously of imports and imports being not just Japanese cars, European cars, Italian cars.
The American, as we call USDM, United States Domestic Market, the American cars, hot rods, they usually go to things like Hope for the Homeless, which is at a church in Awatuki and Hope for the Homeless is obviously a charity.
And it's a cool event.
It's cool to go and see because you see 90% of USDM vehicles there, at least 90%.
And then a few imports kind of sprinkled in, but it's always a great show.
The reaction to my Honda Z was awesome.
I didn't win anything, but that's okay.
I would have kind of felt bad if I won Best Asian.
It's one of those shows where there's 500 different categories, but one for imports in its Best Asian car.
I think a Toyota Super 1 Best Asian, but mine was so unique, but I haven't washed my car.
I washed my car like once in the almost two years, I guess 18 months, 19 months, 20 months that I've owned the car.
And so I would have kind of felt guilty if I won, but I didn't win.
I also attended on Saturday, I attended the warehouse event.
I talked about it last week at the last episode and that was the Kodar event where they have all the GTRs.
If you haven't, for some reason, listened to our watch last week's episode with Jake Johnson.
That was kind of in the spirit of Kodar.
Unfortunately, he didn't take any of his GTRs to that event, but that event was full of some really, really, really awesome cars.
The premiere showing, of course, being Larry Chin's Immaculate, Immaculate Blue R34.
If you don't know who Larry Chin is, that's okay.
He might one day be a future guest of this podcast.
I did get some one-on-one time with him and then, of course, Rebecca talked me up a little bit because she's awesome.
And I'm going to try to help him get an NSX, a right-hand drive.
He's a big right-hand drive guy, but for those of you, I'll give you a quick overview of Larry Chin.
Larry Chin is, I think, one of the few automotive photographers of the current era that has truly made it.
And what I mean by that is he got really popular with his really unique angles of race cars.
And he's known for having this big hat, this big hat.
And now he's grown his YouTube channel significantly.
He travels around the world and interviews people.
He actually interviewed the great Peter Cunningham that we've talked about on this podcast multiple times.
Years ago, when I was covering Peter at Pikes Peak, I went to Pikes Peak two years in a row with Peter Cunningham, 2017, 2018.
So, 2017, I went out there with a good friend of mine, Jake Cole, who's been on this podcast before, briefly, at the John Vosso's episode.
That was a totally awesome experience, but I was there to do media for Peter.
And I wrote the articles for the club magazine and everything, but so I spent all weekend with them and are all week with them in preparation for the big event.
The big event is you go up the mountain once and you practice for weeks in advance before you get your one shot to go up the mountain.
It's a time trial, essentially.
Those of you who don't know what time trial is, it is basically timing you from point A to point B. That is a time trial.
And so you're competing with a ton of different other vehicles in your class, also overall.
But anyway, long story short, I'm filming Peter with my iPhone as I get this back view of his race car, his TLX GT.
This is Cunningham right across the back bumper.
And I'm filming him as he's getting ready to take off.
And as the light goes green for him to launch, a guy stands up in front of me and blocks my phone.
This skinny dude with this big hat.
I go, ah, Larry Chen just blocked my video.
And I'll never forget, he kind of turned on.
I was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry because he's a really nice guy.
And anyway, so this weekend I was kind of chit-chatting with him, got a photo op with him.
I told him that full circle moment.
I said, hey, 2017, this happened.
And you went to Wisconsin and interviewed Peter at the Real Time Collection Hall, which obviously he remembers that.
And I sent the photo to Peter also.
He said, hi, Larry.
This is a full circle moment.
Here we are standing here.
So I had asked to get my contact info from Rebecca.
I ended up leaving the event early to come home and spend some time with family.
But that Code R event was awesome.
So if you were here in the Arizona area or Phoenix area, actually Arizona is big.
If you're in the Phoenix area and you got an opportunity to see that, good for you.
If you didn't, not good for you.
I am working on planning an event with Rebecca on December 13th.
And I think we're going to get the ball rolling right now.
It's an intersex event.
So we have it in stone on our calendars, but we haven't sent out any communication on it, but that's coming up.
Finally, what's also coming up is this Friday, December 5th, just before FuelFest on December 6th.
You know, I've talked about FuelFest before and that is usually Tyrese Gibson and obviously Cody Walker.
And they put it on and this is their fourth, maybe fifth time in Arizona.
But I'm not going to be able to attend because Supernova, my oldest of my grandchildren, the girls because Zeke is the oldest.
She'll turn three on December 5th.
Obviously that means a party on December 6th.
Hopefully that means a party on December 6th, but that obviously takes priority.
So on December 5th at Strad Pizza, we're going to do the right Honda, right Toyota, toy drive.
No LG reached out to me.
You know Hector, obviously he and his assistant Gina reached out to me this weekend.
It's like, hey, can we do something?
We don't really want to do it at the dealership because we don't really get as much people up there on such late notice on a Friday.
But we'll do whatever Jane would like us to do because everybody loves Jane, which is true.
So then they decided they want to do on Sunday.
They go, hey, maybe we should do it on Sunday after FuelFest because it'll be during the day.
And maybe if you know anybody, then we can maybe set up shop somewhere.
It'll be myself, which I'm talking in in in tents of no LG Hector, Steve Vegas and Caesar Garcia and a couple of the people aren't going to be there.
So I reached out to a good friend or colleague.
I guess he's a good friend.
I've only talked to him a few times.
I've talked to him about him before on the podcast.
Freddie went and asked if we can use Strad Pizza.
So Strad Pizza is interesting because they had that big, huge event and it went viral and there were people standing on buildings and they kind of got in trouble with with Scottsdale.
So they will very selectively allow people to do events at their site, but they don't want to be a co.
They give you the ability to do an event there if you're careful, but they're not going to promote it on social media or anything, which is fine, right?
Long story short, we ended up switching it to Friday.
So Friday from six to nine, it's going to be the right hundred right Toyota toy drive at Strad Pizza.
And it'll be a meet and greet.
So you'll get an awesome chance to meet Hector.
Yes, the three spoon civics Hector, Steve Vegas of my block and SWAT, the TV show and Caesar Garcia, which is, I think he's been in Fast and Furious.
He's in a bunch of movies.
He always plays like kind of this really tough, mean Mexican gangster, but these guys are so freaking nice.
So that's what's coming up this weekend.
So I'll probably be talking about that next week's podcast episode.
You know, I don't, as this, as this year winds down, I'm trying to forecast what I'm going to do for December.
I will probably leave you with some best of episodes at the end of the year.
I need to reorganize my office.
I need to organize my garage and just kind of strategize what 2026 is going to look like.
So that's all I have to say about that.
Well, another month, another closing.
If you like what you heard today or like what you watched today, if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify,
make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button to make sure you go and tell a friend all about it.
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And I will see you guys next week.
Now it's stripping time.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
Shut up!
About this episode
A dive into the changing landscape of auto shows, reflecting on personal experiences and the evolution of these events. The host shares nostalgic memories of attending the Dallas Auto Show and contrasts it with the smaller, less impactful Phoenix Auto Show of today. Discussions also touch on Thanksgiving traditions, the significance of family gatherings, and a full-circle moment with automotive photographer Larry Chen. The episode wraps up with insights on upcoming automotive events and a toy drive, highlighting community engagement in the car culture.
Thanksgiving Real Talk, Auto Shows Are Dying, Larry Chen Full-Circle Moment & December Events | Hard Parking Podcast EP304
Jhae Pfenning is back with a post-Thanksgiving vibe check: why nobody actually celebrates pilgrims anymore, why this year’s smoked turkey was mid (but nobody said it), how auto shows went from epic to “one sad hall,” getting blacked-out trying to watch the Bills in Arizona, and the wild full-circle moment with automotive photographer legend Larry Chen.
Chapters:
00:21 – Intro + Texas beats A&M, Michigan loses again
03:18 – The real meaning of Thanksgiving in 2025
07:08 – Phoenix Auto Show
10:16 – Hope4TheHomeless charity show
12:10 – Larry Chen and the 2017 Pikes Peak photobomb
15:41 – Why I won't be attending FuelFest this year
Main Show Sponsors:
Right Honda: https://righthonda.com/
Right Toyota: https://www.righttoyota.com/
Arcus Foundry: https://arcusfoundry.com
Autocannon Official Gear: https://shop.autocannon.com/
