The Citroën DS is a famous old French car that looks very different from others. It had special technology that made the ride very smooth and was made a long time ago.
The Saab 900 Turbo is a car that uses a turbocharger to make the engine more powerful. It was made by Saab and is known for its unique look and good performance.
A four-cylinder engine is a type of car engine that has four parts where fuel burns to make the car move. It's common in many cars because it uses less fuel and is easier to maintain.
A six-cylinder engine is a car engine with six parts that burn fuel to make the car go. It usually gives more power and smoother driving than smaller engines.
The Lamborghini Countach is a very fast and cool sports car from the past, famous for how it looks and sounds. It was one of the first supercars many people dreamed about.
Hagerty is a company that helps people insure and figure out the value of old and special cars. They make sure these cars are protected.
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Hi. Hello.
Welcome to another episode of The Carmagen Show.
Thank you.
No, you are not welcoming you of The Carmagen Show.
Three cameras were at the people looking at us.
The people are inside the cameras.
They're in the building.
This episode of Carmagen, like all episodes of Carmagen,
is driven by Hagerty.
Hagerty is an insurance company made for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts.
And this episode, like other episodes of The Carmagen Show,
is presented by Jason Camisa and Derek Tam-Scott.
In this episode, we talk about how do we want to characterize this?
Is the enthusiast that you are today recognizable to the enthusiast
that you were at some form, somewhat formative period when you were younger?
How much have your tastes changed?
With and why?
What me do your tastes change?
So we sort of talk a little bit.
We're from this for our own personal experience.
So it'd be interesting to hear what you guys have to say.
Also, because I have a feeling we're speaking for most people.
What we didn't get into, now that I think about it,
because we've definitely already not recorded this episode,
is what changing life situations have done to our taste.
Like, but you don't have kids, I don't have kids.
I have a dog now, so I drive around almost exclusively in a
267,000 mile Mercedes station wagon.
And there you have it, there's the lesson.
Don't buy an animal,
lest you have to drive in a quarter million mile old shit box.
Some people do it without having an animal.
Happily.
All right, I will present you with the clap.
That was a C minus.
You said it.
Right, it's just not that difficult, right?
Can I do a better clap?
Without moving my...
No, I can't, see?
C plus.
Congratulations.
On...
Your advanced age.
Thank you.
I pride myself in being 214 years old
and looking not a day over 106.
Well, you're doing an admirable job of it.
Thank you, it's all the smoking.
Anyway.
Well, okay.
Is that actually how we just started this episode?
Damn it.
I think it is, yeah.
Great.
So in this episode, we are seeking to answer a question
that I posed to you moments ago.
Entire moments ago.
And that question is, is the enthusiast that you are today
recognizable to the enthusiast that you were at
choose age of...
Youngness.
Youngness where you thought your automotive tastes were fully formed.
It's a really interesting question.
I mean, still down it's, are you, you know,
has your automotive taste changed, right?
As presumably as you've learned and experienced more things.
And I think we can, we should start by talking about
where we were then and where we are now.
But then first discuss what we think of young,
what are typically the things that young people are interested in
that we think are for the wrong reasons?
Sure.
Because there's one that just stands out beyond everything else to me.
Let me guess, is it supercars?
That's a really, no, it wasn't, but that's a really great.
Numbers.
It was, it's speed.
Yes.
Yeah. The sort of every 18 year old say,
why didn't you buy the big motor?
Sure. Yeah.
Or just a general fixation on supercars.
This is interesting to me because I deal with this
in my professional context.
This is not professional.
Do you consider this environment for Jesus picking his nose?
Yes. Extremely professional.
In my main squeeze gig or whatever, which is selling cars.
Not squeezing lemons.
Not selling lemons.
Selling lemons.
And getting people to pay more because it's a lemon.
No, I mean, this is the intrinsic value proposition
of an old car is that you pay more for something that's worse.
Don't you think so?
A worse car or worse example of a car?
No, no, no, a worse car.
Yes.
Yes. Because we both agree that good cars make shitty collectibles
and the worst of a, the worst a car isn't providing transportation.
The more interesting it tends to be at driving.
This is a broad trend rather than like, yes,
there are going to be specific examples where you're like,
no, that's just shit.
No matter how you cut it, it's just shit.
Name one so you can piss people off.
I was just kidding.
But if you want to name it, if you want to piss people off,
go right ahead.
I don't know.
I try to be optimistic and find something better.
Like, is there anything that I truly hate?
Probably. I'm sure it exists.
All people, all things.
I meant cars.
Cars that I truly hate.
Yeah, most modern stuff.
Yeah, of course.
That goes without saying.
I meant anything old.
Sorry.
I mean, I could hate your 9-11 in the background just for fun.
I don't actually hate it.
Yeah, but you're hating it for sport and amusement
and because you want an illicit reaction from other people
and all because you actually hate the object itself
and what it can do.
I don't hate them at all.
And how it does things.
Do I hate cars?
I hate inauthenticity.
But that's a whole different episode.
Yes.
And I would say the fastest way to get me to hate something
is for me to want it to do something and it to refuse.
This is a modern car problem.
You don't like recalcitrance.
Yeah, I mean, like asking a simple task
and being unable to achieve it in a modern car
is one of the most frustrating experiences
I think you can possibly have.
I think it is also the overriding experience of modern cars
is they fight you every step along the way.
Is that just because we're dinosaurs
or is that actually true?
No, it's because I think they're...
Look, power train wise,
they're compromises that are built into almost all modern cars
that are there for fuel economy and emissions
or eggs that the car companies really don't have a choice
but to make.
The question is how they get there.
A perfect example recently was I had a Range Rover Sport
as a test car and it was the sixth cylinder.
Not a Range Rover Sport,
the full-size seven passenger,
full big fat Range Rover with the straight six.
And my immediate reaction is this is absolutely
not enough thrust for a car this big
and expensive and luxurious and whatever.
But then I realized that in normal driving...
Didn't you just finish talking about how speed?
Well, but in normal driving,
the powertrain gives you everything it has at all times
and it will bang off under quarter throttle,
bang off 3,500 or 4,000 RPM,
full boost, shift after shift after shift.
And it does it so smoothly
that it goes away into the background.
And then you're never fighting,
like you start to go up a little bit of a grade
in some of these cars,
you're going to have to get three quarters of pedal travel.
And meanwhile, you've slowed down six miles an hour,
the guy behind you wants to kill you
before you get a downshift.
And then you go another millimeter of throttle paddle.
And then it's...
63 gear downshift and 10,000 RPM screaming.
This Range Rover was just perfectly tuned.
So it didn't matter.
It was like...
Shifting, constantly doing everything I asked for it.
And it was brilliant because of it.
That's a rare example when most cars
are sort of had that elastic.
Anyway.
Yes, sure.
Okay. So fixation on speed.
Fixation on speed.
Enthusiasm for supercars.
Yeah. And I think that the origin of this is
when you don't have a driving license
and you don't know what any of these experiences are like,
it's like being crippled.
You only have certain tools at your disposal
in which to judge a car
because the sensation of handling balance
is completely incomprehensible,
I think, if you haven't driven before
or been driven in a spirited way.
And so the entire aspect of tactility
and responsiveness,
and there's this whole set of characteristics
which are really subjective
and difficult to describe in words,
although we have invented words for a lot of them,
you can't appreciate any of that stuff.
And so you're a handicapped
or you're like missing some senses
when it comes to evaluating a car.
And what you have to go on are like,
what other people say or videos and video,
the proliferation of video,
I think it's been really helpful.
And Top Gear did this for an entire generation of people
because the combination of Clarkson's bombast
and the like excellent production values
gets you as close as you can
to experiencing these cars without experiencing them.
And so you have some sensation,
even if you don't know the specifics of like,
is it neutrally balanced front to rear axle?
You at least have a sensation
of whether Jeremy is having fun or not.
And that gives you some like a proxy
for whether it's good to drive
or interesting or scary or fast or whatever.
And what I think Top Gear also did very well
is they had their lap time leaderboard, right?
But also we're always commenting.
Clarkson was always narrating that, the fast lap
and was commenting.
Like I haven't seen that much understated since blah, blah, blah
or giving sort of subjective evaluations
that I think were almost as important as the lap time.
And so that I think helped take the focus off
of just the lap time.
Yes, it was fast, but it was utter shit, right?
You know, he could say something like that.
Or it was like at risk of death.
Right.
Or you know, the stick's gone off again.
It's that miserable, right?
Those are things that I think people,
when they don't have that perspective
of understanding what understeer or oversteer feels like
or how to control it,
they then gravitate towards the easiest to comprehend things
that you don't need perspective for.
And that's the numbers to your point.
You know, zero to 64, sour and looks.
So, yeah, I think the moment,
should we choose a moment of our automotive formation
before or after we had driving licenses?
Oh, I mean, I don't, I was going to say 21.
Because I don't think you're fully formed as an adult
until you're about 50.
But, sure.
But 21 is a better proxy for that.
I think 21 is sort of, you know, you're out of college-ish
or you're finishing college, you're working a bit.
Or maybe it's 25 or I would go older than I think 16.
Because I think your first couple of cars are experienced.
Most people are thrown into them with no choice.
You know, here's your hand me down or this is all I can afford.
And by 21, 22, if you're a real enthusiast,
maybe, maybe if you're lucky,
you're starting to be able to choose for yourself.
So that's what I would.
Okay. So not childhood so much.
Oh, we can do that.
If you prefer.
No, I don't know.
Is this your thought experiment?
I mean, yeah, I mean, as a,
my preferences as a small child were, you know,
I wanted a firetruck, I guess.
And my neighbor had a Rolls-Royce Corniche
and I thought that was very cool as a child,
which is an indication.
Yeah. But also like what children think
Rolls-Royces are cool.
I feel like it's a geriatric choice.
That's an indication that-
You were never actually a child.
Yes, I was just shorter.
Yeah.
The, you know, if I think back, my, I had a neighbor,
this is pre-16, had a neighbor up the street
who always had two alphas in his driveway
and they were constantly being where there were GTVs.
Well, three, there were two GTVs and a spider.
And I didn't know or understand anything about it.
And I was intrigued by this old guy,
who's probably 20, who is constantly working on cars.
And I've realized I've become that guy in the neighborhood,
but they did nothing for me.
I noticed a Volkswagen Beetles
and I noticed there were two Citroën DSs
in within biking distance of my house.
And I would just stop and stare.
And a Pujo 504.
So strangely, there's these French and Italian weird things.
I noticed I wasn't aware of anything else.
Strangely.
Really?
Pre-15, I would say.
15, I moved to Germany.
So then at that point, the Beetle obsession cemented
because at 14 in the US before I moved,
I bought a 72 Super Beetle with my best friend.
And I think that just, I was in love with the shape of the Beetle
and like read everything I could on it.
Interesting.
With no perspective.
That's interesting because it was kind of ubiquitous, right?
I mean, did you play punch buggy as a child?
No, I think that started when I was in high school in Germany.
I came back to the US and I got decked upon a punch buggy.
It was like a rite of passage for five-year-old children, no?
I think it may have been and we weren't cool or like as a family
or it just wasn't, it wasn't, it's not something I'm aware of until
I came back from Germany and I'm not kidding.
I was in the car with my buddy Jason,
the one I bought the Beetle from and he fucking practically knocked me out.
Punch buggy, yo, bam!
And I was like, what the fuck are you doing?
What does this even mean?
I have vivid memories of doing this at age five or four
because I was in, I remember I was in preschool
because it was with my preschool best friend.
Okay, but five years old for you, I was, let's do the math here in high school.
So that was-
Oh, you think it was a cultural phenomenon that,
I assume that punch buggy is a phenomenon emerged
when beetles were ubiquitous in the United States,
which has got to be in the 1960s.
Everyone would have been bloodied, concussed,
and in the emergency room at all times.
They were everywhere.
I know, that's why it was so fun.
Yeah, no, I could be, I wasn't aware of it until,
I would call it 91, 92, which is probably about the same time you were.
It emerged in the 90s?
That's, it entered my consciousness in the 90s.
Me too.
And at that point in the U.S., they were prevalent enough
that you could get punched once an hour at the most in Germany.
Oh, here it was more.
Oh, really?
In the Bay Area.
Well, lots of people drove foreign cars and they were like, yeah.
Well, they all rotted into the ground by the time.
Oh, yes.
I mean, I was in New York.
Okay, yes.
But I mean, I bought, we bought that, Jason and I bought that,
my best friend Jason, I bought that 72 Super Beetle in 90 or 80, 90.
And if I think about it, it was 18 years old,
and I don't even own a car that young anymore.
Like it was so old.
And then in Germany, I bought a 73 two years later,
and it was rotted into the ground.
So I just think there weren't that many,
they were around, but there weren't that many.
They survived here a lot better and much higher numbers, for sure.
So what were you, like what cars did you notice?
Just Cornetias.
No, I mean, I was very fixated by Porsches as a child.
I grew up around them and so they were naturally interesting.
But I mean, anything like I was,
I remember finally being able to nail telling the difference
between the E34 and an E32, seven series versus five series,
because I thought they looked very similar when I was a child.
And like I was elementary school,
so like I was paying attention to that for sure.
And like the cars that we had access to,
I mean, my mom drove an XJ6,
so I was very keyed into Jaguars as well.
I mean, I was, and I read a lot as a child,
like a lot, you know, childhood books and stuff like that.
I could, I would go through road and tracks also
and be able to, like I can't do this anymore,
but I used to be able to identify everything you saw on the road,
no matter how pedestrian it was.
I can't do that anymore.
I just don't get the shit.
I can't, I can almost do it.
I can do it up until about five years ago
when I stopped sort of three years ago,
I stopped really review and cars.
But I don't think I sort of blossomed as a car guy until I was,
I was, I was 11.
And I remember I got my first car and driver
and I was like, this is, I got a car and driver automobile
and motor trend and road track.
I got all four of them through the motor trend out, hated it,
through the automobile out, hated it.
And I think that might have been the first issue
because I was like, where are the specs?
Where's the numbers?
Again, perspective, right?
Through that out.
Road and track, I was like, this is great,
but cause I loved the little performance acceleration graph,
but where the hell are the non sports cars?
And then took car and driver and I'm like,
this is every car on the road.
This is amazing.
But I think my, the cars that I gravitated towards
are the ones that I had most experience with,
which was my parents' cars.
And my mom had a sob 900 turbo,
which then became a Pujo 505.
And my dad had a Land Cruiser.
And so I was like, oh, four wheel drive is cool
because when everyone else was stuck in the snow,
my dad was dragging them up the street with the Land Cruiser.
But I didn't think I have any,
I didn't have any real loves until four or five MI 16 came out.
Wild.
That has to have been influenced by the 505.
It absolutely was.
First of all, there was one car dealership in my town
overseas auto and they,
that's where my mom bought the 505,
but I would walk into the dealership
and they were nice to me as a kid.
And I bought like a Pujo key chain
and a little pin or something.
And then I think that might have been even
before my mom bought the car, bought the Pujo.
And then I just walked in and I saw it on MI 16
and they gave me a poster
and that was like prime billing across from my bed.
But Porsches didn't enter my consciousness at all
until I got a poster at the New York Auto Show
of a 944 S2 cab.
And it was a rear shot of this car.
And they, if you sent away,
they would send it back to you
with your name on the license plate,
with like a sticker basically.
And I had that on the wall and I just thought it was so pretty.
I knew nothing about it.
But yeah, you're right, it's looks and numbers.
Yeah, I was always just very enthusiastic about Porsches.
In fact, my first job, I worked for a car dealer
and the founder of it would recount the story
that happened when I was like eight or nine
because we would go there and you would look around at cars
because they were always selling stuff
and everyone goes there and wanders around and looks at cars.
And he said, there was a 962 there.
And I said, oh, it's a 962.
And he said, how do you know it's not a 956?
And I said, well, because the driver's feet
are behind the front axle lines.
That's how you know it's a 962, not 956.
And I was like eight years old.
So I was apparently the same way that I am now,
but back then.
Deeply damaged, just what you're saying.
Yes, very.
So I don't even know what a 956 or a 962 is.
It's really?
Kind of.
They're Porsche's most successful Le Mans car ever.
I mean, I know that the numbers, I don't know anything.
Yeah, whatever.
Yeah, I was never into racing.
That I will say.
I was not super into it either,
but I was peripherally interested in it, for sure.
But I think you had exposure to it.
Like, I think you were exposed to cars that no one was exposed to.
Right?
I mean, your parents had amazing shit.
And being in the Bay Area, you were exposed to stuff.
I mean, if I think about it,
so we grew up in a sort of nice suburb of New York.
And there were 68 kids in my grade.
So it was a really small school district.
There were two Mercedes.
Catherine's mom had a 124, 300d, 2.6 manual.
Or might have been this 300d manual.
And Ryan's dad had a 300d turbo.
That's it.
Otherwise, it was just a sea of Cutlassierras, Cavaliers,
cadaveliers, as we call them, or crappleiers.
Or like in Pontiac, 6,000s.
Plus, if your parents were cool, maybe a Saab or a Volvo.
Chip's dad had an Audi 5,000.
That was like the coolest thing in the world.
But there was nothing.
Like, I don't know of anyone that had a sports car.
Yeah.
So that's...
Yeah, not one.
No racing cars, no sports cars.
Alex's parents, of course, had the Rover ST1 from the time I was seven.
And then eventually they got an E30 and a E30M3.
But that was like, that was the most exotic it got where I grew up.
A lot of what I learned also was through books and magazines.
My dad, I think most of his cool living occurred before we were born.
And so we got a lot of stories and there was a lot of media to consume.
And I was sort of left alone to do my own devices at home a lot.
And I would usually spend that time looking at books and magazines
that were invariably about cars.
And so that's where I think I learned a lot of the stuff that
I now still carry with me and it stuck.
So...
Okay, let's fast forward to 21-year-old Derek.
What were you interested in?
What did you...
First of all, what did you drive?
At 21, I had an E28 BMW 535 IS manual, which was my first car.
And I still had it at that time.
And I had a 911, which was...
I paid a lot for it.
It was $19,500.
That's a ton of money.
A 21-year-old.
Wow.
Okay.
And that's on the day you turned 21.
Yeah, because I bought the car when I was 20 and a half.
I had had the car for six months on my 21st birthday.
Yeah.
So let's compare notes here for a second.
Because on my 21st birthday, I was at the end of...
Nearing the end of a three-year lease on a 1994 Toyota Corolla DX 5-speed.
What a very different...
Possibly contemporary.
Impossibly unreliable.
49 trips to the dealership later and lemon law and the whole thing.
But I had bought and sold probably at that time 15 Mercedes.
I had...
Those were the only two cars I'd ever transacted at that point.
You know, we haven't published the picture.
Have we published the picture for the two of us and there are Range Rovers?
I think we did for an insert, so we're gonna have to dig these up again.
Because your mom had a...
Green?
Was it green?
Range Rover.
What year was it?
92.
92.
One of the cars that I flipped that I bought and sold right away was a...
I think it was 80...
What was the first year of that car?
86.
I think it was an 87 or 88.
Black.
And we had the same...
What the hell?
We looked at the...
Oh, we both had Christmas trees on the roof of the car.
And I'm there with a buddy of mine making stupid faces of the camera.
So it's a funny insert.
But I...
So I flipped that plus a whole bunch of Mercedes and E30 or two or whatever.
And I just used that to make money to basically put...
To pay the lease on the Corolla.
And on my 21st birthday, I would have also technically owned a Mercedes 6.9
that I bought and couldn't sell.
No one would buy until my dad bought it for me.
And then daily did for eight years or something.
But so I had had a shit ton of exposure to Mercedes.
Yeah, I had none.
Really?
So yes, if we were asking for trends that have changed, I had never touched a Mercedes Benz
other than to ride in like my friend's parents.
Really?
Had them.
I hated them.
When I...
The first time I got into it, it was a 300E probably.
I was a 124.
And I'm like, what a shitty old man car and blah, blah, blah.
And then I floored it.
And I'm like, oh, the engine's kind of nice.
And then this was all because of my friend Mike, the one that I've talked about at Nauseam.
But he was always buying and selling Mercedes and totally in love with Mercedes stuff.
And by the time I was 20, I'd probably experienced every single body style
of Mercedes sold down to the 70s.
And...
Oh, no.
So I did have a Mercedes at this time.
I'm sorry.
You had one and you forgot about it.
It was my mom's.
I made her buy it actually to be completely clear.
116?
Yes.
Okay.
Which she still has.
The Thistle Green Gorgeous 280.
Yes.
Because when I was 18, I did a summer internship working for a dealer in Switzerland.
And we came across this thing and I was like, it's so cool.
I mean, at the dealer that I had worked, they had a close business relationship with a dealer
in Switzerland.
And I was a weird kid, but I had always wanted to go to Switzerland and had never been.
And then they were like, oh, you should go spend the summer working for this dealer in Switzerland.
And I was like, that sounds like the best thing ever.
I love Switzerland and have never been.
And so we came across this.
It was a one owner 280 SE W116, light green metallic with a cream interior.
And this woman and her husband had bought it new and he had died and she was losing her eyesight.
So she was selling it and she cried when we drove it away.
And the guy that I worked for bought it just because I think he was trying to help her out
and whatever.
And then I made my mom buy it because it was so beautiful in terms of condition and the ownership
history and the story and all that stuff.
So, you know, she still has it.
So what I find funny is that we each had 116's on her 21st birthday.
You had the smallest engine.
I had the biggest engine.
You made your mom buy it.
I sold mine to my dad.
Yeah.
But I also made my dad buy a 107, a 380.
It was an 85 380 SE in red with SL in red with gray, which was unusual.
And he lived in France and I shipped it to him and they seized it at the customs
and it sat at the port for six months.
It was a disaster.
But yeah, that's, that's funny.
I made him buy that because it was a known.
So why was I, I don't remember why I was interested in Mercedes at that period.
For me, it was only exposure.
And the more I drove them, the more I liked them.
I didn't, didn't think they were for me, but I loved all of the diesels.
The only ones that I wanted were the diesel ones.
Didn't care about any of the gas ones.
The 6.9 was fun because it was so stupid fast.
But just the sound of a five cylinder diesel especially.
Mercedes, my next-door neighbor had, when I spent a lot of time listening to them for that
reason and they would, their kids were the same age as me and their older kid was the same age as me.
And so I spent a lot of time in 123 diesels and didn't really do much for me.
My dad had basically only one car when I was a kid, which was a 911 and a motorcycle.
And those were the only things my parents were divorced.
And those were the only cars my dad had.
And my mom is, she's Asian.
And she says Asian people fricking just blindly chase status and brands.
And so I will never buy a Mercedes Benz because they always buy a Mercedes Benz
because it has, it has so much prestige and they're just chasing that.
And so she said, I will never own a Mercedes.
They're, they're too severe and they're too Germanic.
And it's, I don't like the image that it conveys because it's what every other Asian person does.
And so we're not going to have a Mercedes.
So she was specifically anti-Mercedes and my dad couldn't be bothered with anything.
That wasn't a sports car.
So I had no exposure to them.
So that interest originated from me, I guess.
And it was something that I introduce.
And now my mom begrudgingly really enjoys the 116.
Good.
But she has never owned another Mercedes besides that.
My mom never owned a Mercedes either.
Well, I gave her a C43 AMG and she loved that car.
Yes. And then what happened?
I took it away from her because she speeds.
Yeah.
It was three instances and I think a week or two where people spotted her.
So it was a blue C43 AMG of which they made 14 in total.
So it was very recognizable.
And one friend said, he was in the city.
And he's like, you're in the city?
And I'm like, no.
He's like, well, your fucking AMG sounds so good.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
He's like, it must have been your mom just blew up this massive hill at, I don't know,
60, 70, 80 miles an hour, like driving like a New York adult, an adult New York cabbie.
And he was like, I just, I'm like, oh, it's Jason.
No, no.
And then the second one was a friend of mine whose wife had a Dodge Charger.
And we've raced together and he's a really fast driver.
He's like, yeah, I was in his wife's Charger.
It was in Ferris Charger and I was sitting in the light and I'm waving to your mom next to me
and honking and she's just singing to music.
And it was two lanes that go into one to merge onto the freeway.
And the light turns green and he's like, she just lit him up and fucking went.
And he's like, that thing's fast.
It's faster than the charger.
So I chased her and he's like, she was just waving through lanes like a motorcycle.
And I was like, oh no.
And he's like, yeah, I was doing 100, couldn't keep up with her.
I kept getting stuck behind people.
And then the third was her best friend came in from New York and they arrive at my house
and they pull in and it's my mom's best friend, Maria, is getting out of the car going.
You know, Janet, when that highway says 101, that's the name of the highway.
It's not the fucking speed limit, you know.
So I had this conversation with my mom about like, I know this feels like a tank
and you feel like invincible.
Well, it's a 25 year old car.
You need to keep it under 100 Kitto.
And she was like, yeah, she's just completely dismissive of me.
And I think two of those instances that happened.
And then the 101 is not the speed limit thing.
And I'm like, we're going to the Volkswagen dealership and we're getting you something
with a lot of airbags and really good stability control and, you know, crash worthiness and AEB.
Because I'm like, at some point you're going to get old here.
And like, you can't be driving that fast.
Yeah, my mom's the same.
She got pulled over going 120 miles an hour on the way to work.
Recently?
This is probably now 10 years ago at this point.
My mom has miraculously, I mean, every time she shows up at my house, I'm like,
how in the fuck did you get here so fast?
And she's like, I don't know.
I don't want to know.
But she'd be here anyway.
Anyway, so, okay, so 21, I was driving a Corolla, which I did not want,
owned a 6.9, which I had technically bought to flip.
But I had just driven an AE86 Corolla, did not want.
I thought it was fun to drift it around in the snow because it was rear drive.
It belonged to a friend's brother.
And all I still wanted was a Nissan Sentra SCR.
That's all I wanted.
And an E30.
So you see that I just wanted a sort of upright, driver-focused, compact sports sedan.
So that hasn't changed?
No, I've never had a SCR.
Yes, but your sort of genre of car is, I don't know, driving driver-oriented, I guess?
Oh, 100%.
I'm trying to think if anything I've owned is something that I would not have wanted
or been interested in at 21.
So if I go down the list of cars that I've had sort of recently or still own,
the E30 is totally on brand, the 2316, totally on brand.
The Scirocco, I had never even sat in, didn't know anything about,
didn't care anything about.
And I had no affinity towards Volkswagen water-cooled products,
other than a Mark III that I had driven that was one of Mike's client's cars.
And I really, really liked the way that Mark III drove.
Hated the engine, hated how slow it was, hated the automatic,
but loved the upright seating position and the fact that you could throw a fridge in the back.
And it was actually fun to drive.
And I kept thinking, why didn't I go to the Volkswagen dealership when my mom made me get
a new car and buy a Golf instead of a Corolla.
But it never occurred to me that a water-cooled VW is water-cooled VW.
And then I bought the Scirocco sight unseen, having never even been in.
How long, how much after this to this year?
22. No, 21, but six months after my 21st birthday.
And just fell in love with the driving experience immediately.
So that sort of, I didn't have that perspective yet.
The Mark III that I own, hello.
That's totally on brand.
The 850, I was in love with that V12 because when I was working with Mike on all these rich
people's cars in Palm Beach, one of his clients had an 88750 IL.
And I just, the starter sound was everything I'd ever wanted to hear in my life.
All of them, I would have loved back then, except for Ferrari, the Honda beat and the Ferrari.
And the beat I've sold.
The SD1 makes sense.
The SD1 makes perfect sense.
I was in love with that from the first time I saw it.
I remember seeing it all over town.
Do I own anything else?
I'm the E-Golf.
Hello, that makes perfect sense.
What other cars do I own?
That's all of them, isn't it?
I think it's all of them.
75, 80, 85.
Yeah, no, that's all of them.
The Honda beat is one of those things that you've, you know, it is a small,
high-reving, talkative, fun little car, but ultimately sold it because it wasn't
a driver's car in the way that like even the Lotus Elise was.
The Elise I sold because it was just too much money and I needed to turn that into a roof and
other household stuff.
But the Ferrari's the one.
I have to say the Ferrari, I have no interest in anything exotic, supercar, Italian,
like any of that shit until you brought this, you're responsible for this.
You brought that to my house for a barbecue and I said to you,
what are you doing with that ugly white Ferrari?
Ugly white thing, because I didn't even know it was a Ferrari.
It's embarrassed to admit to you.
Drove it and bought it.
I mean, you didn't sell it to me for three years,
but in my mind, it was mine from that very first drive.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this is the power of experiencing new things.
And I had this, this is a very juvenile perspective that I held,
but I was basically not interested in anything that wasn't at least six cylinders.
Like I just had this prejudice against four cylinder cars.
And as time has gone by, I've definitely gotten rid of that.
But I used to not, I just wouldn't even consider anything with four cylinders.
You have anything other than your GTI as a four cylinder?
Currently, I guess not.
I've owned some, like the Giulietta, for example, Miata.
But yeah, I guess I haven't owned a lot of four cylinder cars.
They're kind of actually my favorite engine configuration.
Yeah.
I definitely get the appeal in a way now that I didn't as a young person or young enthusiast.
And a lot of it has, there's like this sort of subjective, you know,
this whole genre of like cheap and cheerful cars that are really fun was like something
that I had very little experience with because 9-11s used to be cheap and cheerful,
you know, when you could buy an SC for $11 or $12,000.
And I splurged and got a Carrera 3-2 G50 Coupe for 19 and a half instead.
But when you could, you know, buy 9-11s for numbers that started with 1s,
then there wasn't like a need to do the cheap and cheerful small displacement car thing.
I mean, for you, I think you were a little bit more fortunate than me.
Yes, that's $100.
The Scirocco was $1,500 and I couldn't afford that.
So I put it on my dad's credit card.
Fuck yeah.
We've been through this story before.
Yeah, we've been through it.
He promised me a car he had reneged on.
Right. And the lease was up on the Corolla and I needed to get to work and to college.
And I'm like, you gave me a credit card for an emergency and it's an emergency.
And I'm stupid. I should have brought it.
I'm not stupid.
Changed my life for the better, but I should have in retrospect gone to the BMW dealership
and swiped that card and got an E36M3 brand new.
Which, and I've told him that since and he's laughed about it.
I'm like, you told me it was an emergency and I'm sorry.
And he also promised me if I graduated with honors and I was graduating with highest honors.
Summa come fucking loudly.
That was an E36M3.
I'm much happier with the Scirocco because it did really change my taste in cars.
Taught me that a really, I don't want to say unrefined.
A very vocal and talkative four cylinder is actually more interesting than a straight six
or a V8 or even most 12s.
Yeah.
So that's something I've learned through the course of experiencing stuff,
you know, working around vintage cars and interacting with vintage alphas is like
a great way to learn that firsthand.
So that certainly changed my perspective and the general like
enthusiasm for like cheap and cheerful cars.
Like, and I'm talking about like low displacement, like not really drivable on the street cars.
Like Fiat Pandas and Fiat Cinquecentos and you know, all this stuff.
Yeah. Honda beats anything with like a thousand CCs or less.
That's like barely a car where it's like, why would you ever have any interest, you know,
as a child or a youth, you're like, why would you ever have any interest in anything like that?
And then you experience it firsthand and you're like, I literally,
my face hurts from smiling because this is so amusing,
especially if you experience it with other people.
And so like firsthand experience will definitely teach you that, you know,
for all of this fixation on super cars and all that shit, like you,
it's actually more fun to have.
You can have a lot of fun in a 54 horsepower, 123, 240 diesel speed.
You have a lot of fun in that car or a 34 horsepower Beetle.
Yeah. Or, you know, the early Fiat 500s, like the Topolino ones.
Although the 500 that you and I have both driven was so slow.
I'm not sure you can have a lot of fun.
You can have a lot of fun for five minutes and then you want to.
Yeah. If you're actually trying to go somewhere, it's definitely not ideal.
But 50 horsepower, anything over 40, 50 horsepower, you can really have a lot of fun.
Yeah. If it's a small enough light enough car,
I mean, like I will never forget, we were able to get the Topolino into third gear
inside the building because it's so short gear because that's a little power.
And you're just like, this is far more entertaining than a super car.
Yes. Right. So were you ever into super cars?
Not really. I had a sort of interest in Lamborghinis, I guess,
because my dad had the mirror of which was in boxes.
And it last ran more like a decade before I was born.
And it first, the first time I experienced that car being a car, I was 30, maybe 29.
And so for my entire childhood and much of my adulthood, it was never a car.
But I do remember going to visit it and it was at a shop that specialized in Lamborghinis.
And they had a Countach there that they were working on and I was offered a ride in it,
which I declined because I was scared because I was three and the thing had no engine lid and
had no exhaust system. It was deafening and it was just, it terrified me as a three year old.
So I, that was my early formative Countach experience was like, absolutely not. This is
much too scary. I shunt people. I mean, I was literally, it was, I guess,
maybe I was four. I was four years old. I can't believe you remember that.
I think my first experience and like anything that I would consider a super car
by my standards was I was 16 and I got a ride in a box body Mustang five liter
and that blew my mind. The noise and how fucking fast it was. They were not fast.
I mean, if I look back now, they're six, but I had never experienced anything that quick.
And I was in Germany at the time, you know, where my dad had an Audi 90,
20 valve Quattro, which was fast. And my mom had an Opel Cadet GSI cab, which was also fast.
And, you know, my best friend's mom had an E30 and his dad had an E34 530 I with a V8.
So I thought I had been in something fast and to get in this, it was a crazy Frenchman
that was friends with my parents, friends or something. And I was drooling over in the driveway
and he's like, I'll take you for a drive. And who might never experience being like
pinned down in the seat and going around the corners. It was just wild.
So of course, then I wanted a Mustang five liter and they were at that point,
5,000 bucks. And I had 5,000 bucks saved up. So that was on my list until I got the insurance
quote. Oh yeah, of course, just no way. So what other subsequent experiences have you had that
have been really sort of substantively formative that have changed your trajectory or interests?
You would think that all of the revelations cars that I've done, so I've done 55 now episodes of
spotlight and revelations, right? So there's a lot of cars that I've done deep research on.
The one that probably stands out the most of things, something that really,
I always thought I wanted, but then actually offered the owner to buy was the Cyclone GMC Cyclone.
It's just impossibly little and it's everything I don't like. It's American. I shouldn't say I
don't like American, but I've never had other than like a Mustang 50. I've never had like a
60s American car. I've never had a desired real desire to not true. I looked for a year for a
contour SVT, but typically my taste is not, doesn't really line up with American cars.
And it's American, it's a truck, it's all wheel drive, it's turbo and it's automatic. So it's
kind of like a checklist of everything I don't typically have, but charming as shit. I think
stunningly beautiful, which is a really weird thing to say, but just simplicity of design and
just perfect proportions. I really want one. Don't know what the fuck I would do with it,
but I really want one. That's something I struggle with now actually at this number of
cars. It's like, I want this, but do I want to own it? Or what would I do with if I had it?
And I find myself increasingly asking myself, what would I do with a car if I had it?
In a way that I did not used to do, like the objective used to just be I want to have it.
And now it's when there's like not a clear question or answer to like, what would you do
with this car? I am, I struggled now to want something as much anymore, which is a weird
form of maturing that I don't think I like. How many cars do you have? 10 or 11 or something.
We're on the same. The problem that I have is the daily driver slot is set with this
frigging e-golf that I just can't get rid of because there's nothing close to that. I just,
I really want to replace that and I can't. That's irritating as shit. The other cars,
I have too many lifers, right? And so, I mean, the Scirocco is a lifer, but the Cabrio
Le, the little one, is actually more fun than the Scirocco because I can put the top down and hear
it from the inside and outside. And just, it's different, different, same experience just turned
up a little bit. Those two are lifers. The Ferrari I adore to drive, the 850 is just my only V12,
like, you know, and that's just, it should be a road trip car. Not that I've
go on road trips anymore, really. I have two E30s, one that's too nice to do anything with and
the other one's too ready to do anything with. Except one specific thing, which is exactly what
you use it for. No, but I do, I do sort of occasionally use that for transportation, right?
I mean, it's not, it's perfectly functional. I'm supposed to have put air condition in it this
summer, this winter, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. But once it has AC in it,
it's a perfectly functional road car that I just swap the seats out and brakes and tires on it and
then it's a track car. So everything kind of serves a purpose. And my, my issue is that I have
no more room in my garage or my heart for any more cars. And that's a weird thing. Like the
Rover I still don't have back. That's an entirely different story of what's going on with that,
but it's in transport now. I want that car and I don't have room for it in the garage,
but I have so much room for that car in my heart. Like I just, I know I'll never find another one.
I can't let it go. I can't let it go away. And so I don't know what to do about that because
maybe hopefully I fall out of love with it at some point and I can part with it because I can't
have, I can't take 10 cars with me moving forward because that 10 will become 12 or 15 or 20 or 30
and I just won't drive them. And what's the point? So you are, you basically between the age of 15
and 21 fully developed as an automotive enthusiast and have not covered or discovered any new
corners, not enough to own, maybe appreciation and interest and enthusiasm for.
I'm trying to think of other cars that I want, that I like, that I want that I didn't think I
would want at that point in my life and the Ferrari's kind of it. But what I think I did was hone my
taste. So I had from 18 to 21, I had experience with working with Mike with a lot of cars. And
while the Range Rover that I flipped was really cool and a bunch of his customers had them,
they didn't do anything for me personally. The Rolls Royces didn't do anything for me personally.
The 129s blew my mind, were not, didn't light my hair on, lit my hair on fire in a very rational
logical way and then made me laugh by virtue of how fast they were because these were the early
119 cars and they were stupid fast. All 500 sls. The 600s did nothing for me. The Mercedes V12s
did nothing. 140s did nothing. 126s, I bought one or two of them. I had a 560 and a 280 that I
bought to flip. So, and then there was an E3325i manual convertible that I flipped
from one of his customers. And I thought that was interesting. I loved the engine.
Then there was an E36, kind of didn't do all that much for me. So I had E30M3, I hated.
I just thought it was- Especially in Florida.
It was a Vibramonster and it did nothing on straight roads, right? Why would you have this
over an E30? And if I'm trying to look at what other cars that his clients had that I was in
that weren't Mercedes or BMWs. Cadillac STS. I love that North Star. I love the dash on that car.
I love the smell of that car. It was amazing. An 85 bustleback Seville, white on white on white
on white on white with extra white walls. That was so much fun to bounce down the road in.
And it had an HD4100, which was the high technology 4.1 liter V8 that made no horsepower.
Yeah. I had all this experience with all of these different
Lexuses, Infinities, all of these different luxury cars and none of them did anything for me.
And so what I realized then is if I honed down what I liked, it was cars that were
really talkative and really interactive. And then you go from there to realizing
it's all about revs, vibration, short gearing. So a lot of shifting and a lot of build of revs
and noise. And then you layer handling on top of that. I don't mind front-wheel drive cars,
as long as they're set up properly. But then the ability of sliding stuff around adds a whole
another dimension. I hated everything I ever drove with all the drive, all of them. I hated
everything I ever drove with a turbo, all of them, until many years later, the Cyclone.
So it just refined. I think I had enough experience early on to be like, these are all great.
But actually, I want, if I'm going to spend some time in a car, I need it to either be
uber luxury and just there for the purpose of an isolation tank or experience. And annoyingly,
when I see uber luxury, I mean refinement. I don't need leather and wood and whatever.
The e-golf is that uber refinement thing in cars. Silent. Weird. Very weird that I formed that early.
But I also kind of popped out as an adult. I wouldn't.
I would say that as I continue to experience things, I continue to make discoveries about
things that I do and don't like. I mean, this is the conversation we have about meeting heroes
versus not meeting heroes. We've done fragmented discussion about this. Maybe someday we should
actually do a structured discussion around hero meeting and how that can potentially go.
But I continually experience things where I'm like, oh, this is like an incredible experience
that I'm really glad that I got to own or interact with and would now probably want to own.
205 rally did that for me the first time I ever drove one of those cars. And in Italy,
once I experienced a Fiat 125 special that was set up as a rally car, and it's like all this
shit that we never got in the United States that you experienced for the first time, you're like,
oh, this is such an incredible experience and these cars cost nothing. All these 60s and 70s
Fiat's, there's some really interesting stuff there. So I feel like I'm continually making
discoveries. The first time I experienced a Skyline GTR, an R32, I had a similar experience.
You wanted one? I would maybe own this. I don't know if there's a universe in which
I could see myself owning it, or I like this enough that I would buy one, but then are the
circumstances ever such that I actually do it? I don't know, but it's a car that I left my experience
with it being like, oh, this is super cool. I totally get the appeal. It's kind of BMW in
some respects, which is familiar and enjoyable. One of the trends that has occurred with me
that I was not expecting, that I'm a 21-year-old Derek would not recognize, is my total conversion
from being BMW-oriented to being Mercedes-oriented. I really did not see that coming. I had the 535
IS at that time. I really wanted an E34 M5. There was a whole host of BMW products that I was
pretty keen on. My best friend in college had an E36 M3, and my boss had one before that,
so I had a lot of E36 M3 experience, and I continued to really like that experience.
And I guess what I discovered, there's a substantial portion of BMWs that don't
interest me, and there's a few that really do, but the inverse is true for Mercedes for me,
which is there's a huge number of Mercedes that really interest me, and then there's a few that
don't, up to a certain time. There's a maturity required to really appreciate Mercedes, and I
think that's, it doesn't have to come with age. I think it has to come with experience. It's experience,
yeah, and you, it's not like mental maturity as much as like time interacting with inferior
engineered cars, which is basically, you deal with a bunch of shit, and then you experience a
Mercedes and you're like, oh, okay. Order of Magnus, certainly back in the day. Yes. The thing
for me is that, if I had a commute, and if I wanted a car that just went away and just was the
best, it would be a vintage Mercedes, right? So all of the 140s and everything from that point,
126 on, right? But I don't want an automatic. The problem with me is that I have too much EV
experience, and you can't go back to an automatic. Yes, yes. That's the real issue, but you're right.
That would be, I mean, I have one Mercedes, three BMWs. So clearly the, you know, my ratio is still
skewed BMW, but if I needed an automatic, it wouldn't be a BMW. It would then be a Mercedes.
Yeah, different experience. Yeah. So that like appreciation for those cars, and I think it just
has to do with, like you say, experience, raw seat time, experiencing cars that are not as good,
and then you get in here, like this is just simply the finest engineered, yeah,
like consumer product car that. When you mentioned the R32 immediately popped into my mind,
another car that really changed my outlook on it was a Nissan Z, Datsun Z, a 240. I don't,
I really didn't like the stock 240Z that I drove, but modified three liters, three liter 240s.
Oh my God, they are some of the most exquisite fun. I don't think it did as much for me,
but I approached from the, like, this is like a lot, like a lot. Yeah, I did own one,
and I really enjoyed it, and I would certainly have it again, although not less so now after the
modifications that the, yeah, I just drove it recently because I went to go buy it actually,
and no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, he had, he had changed all the things about it that were made
it charming when I sold it to make it less charming, unfortunately. But that car to me was like,
oh, this is like a bonafide proper vintage sports car experience. And I, when I bought it,
I paid 8,500 bucks for it, I think. And I was like, this is incredible that you can buy something
that is as interesting as these other sports cars, vintage sports cars of this era or the 60s and
70s, basically, that cost order of magnitude or even more expensive. And so I, to me, it wasn't
like a transcendent experience that it was like markedly like super different from other stuff.
It was just that you could experience something that looked and sounded and felt and went and
handled and did all that stuff like that for such reasonable money. And so I was like,
this is making me, it would make me very happy at the time. And, you know, I sold it to buy a house,
so it wasn't that I particularly was done with it or wanted to sell it. It was more that I needed
the money for something else. We have a show concept cooking where we talk about, you know,
cars that punch way above their weight and drive like the, the, the greats. And my, the episode
I want to do first is a Z with any V12 engine Ferrari from the 60s. Yeah. Because to me,
it's the bad experience for certainly a very, you know, this is the question that I ask around
the McLaren F1, for example, which is, what else can you buy that offers 78% of the experience for
a 10th of the money? And that you with the McLaren F1, there's not really an answer, but a 10th of
the money is still a shit. And that's still a million dollars, a fraction of the money, shall we
say before 1% as much money. I don't think for any amount of money, I don't think you can replicate
that. Yeah, I think that's right. There's nothing else. And that's one of the reasons why those cars
are as valuable as they are, which is not true in, for other cars. And I think that there's
definitely cars that are conceptually similar. And the result of this is all the result of
rarity, right? I have no idea how many Zs they made, but it was a shitload. I'm sure it was
hundreds of thousands. And, you know, they made 72,000 E types. They made, you know,
that many. Yeah, including the V12s and all that stuff. And Ferraris, they never made more than
1500 of anything in the carbureted era. And so 28, 29. And they made 4,246. Sorry,
12 cylinders. It was the subtext that I did not say out loud. I was going to say, Derek,
finally got a number wrong. 200 and how many episodes in?
I just didn't say what I was thinking fully. I'm sorry. I'm giving you shit. I tried to,
it didn't work. So yeah, there's, but this is a situation like the Z is a situation where there's
a car that gives you an experience that feels disproportionate for how little it costs. And
a lot of us how many of them they made. So you experience new cars or a car you have never
experienced before. And you realize, oh, there's something really magical about this experience,
or I see why people are really into these things. And this is, you know, all of this is to say that
if you're a one Mark Nellie, or what is the term we use for people who only like one brand of car,
I forget what it is, but there's this whole other like, I just continually, even now,
and of course, like when I will write an auction catalog description, like there was a,
for gooding, I did a Pratt and Miller modified C5 Corvette. They assigned me that. And I was like,
and then like, by the time that I finished writing the description, I was like, oh my God,
this thing is so fucking cool. And like, what an incredible story. And like, blah, blah, blah.
And so just, I don't know if you experienced this as well, where you will do a bunch of research
about something that wasn't that interesting to you. And then you learn its story. And then you're
just like, holy shit, this is so cool. Like, how does not everyone know this? Or like, now you're
like, Oh, there's why that's why there's like, literally hundreds of thousands of people who
aren't me who are super into these. And the fun thing is, it's not worked for any of the super
cars, to be honest, but like things like the R5, Renault R5 Turbo, absolutely worked. I didn't
really know much about it, thought it was a cool shape, fell in love with it, doing the research,
and then fell in love with it more driving it. A lot of times what'll happen is I'll fall in
love with it doing the research, because I realize how cool it is. And then I drive it and it's just
not for me. But, you know, I'm trying to think of what other episodes that I've done where I've
wanted the car, Alpha SZ was another one. I wanted it from a minute I saw it. It's like,
it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. I have to have it. And then I drove it and I wanted it
still. Yes. We looked up, I just looked through the list of the 50 something episodes I've done.
And there were a couple of them in there. Speaking of which, did you see there's a
Clio V6 for sale in the area? Yeah, I have heard that they are death traps.
Bad shit is what I've heard. Yeah, I've heard that they like, but they alternate between
understeer and oversteer in a way that's unpleasant. This is my understanding.
So the seller of this car is a local dealer, Marco Marini. I can say that he lent me the
SZ that I did the revelations on. And Marco, expect a phone call. I have to hear this thing.
I'd be very curious to know whether it's good to drive or just terrifying.
Yeah, I expect it's both. Yeah. And I guess I read, there was one article that really formed
my, formed my opinion and concerned or articulated my concerns with that car,
which is to say, you know, the author's like, normally I really like, you know,
cars that are unhinged and blah, blah, blah. But this I didn't. It was just so unpredictable that
I felt like I couldn't trust or that it wasn't ever going to do what I wanted it to do. And that,
like, it wasn't fun. It was just terrifying. And that has me worried because kind of has me
turned on a little bit. But I understand the point. The thing is though, you got to remember,
there are so many people who are like, normally I like sports cars, but 9-Elevens are widow makers
and they kill people and whatever. So I always approach that. Yeah, but 9-Elevens are not. 9-Elevens
will do exactly what you tell them to do. And my concern is that the Clio V6. Who wrote that
is my question. Yes. And what was their experience? And there was something that they had said in
there that led me to believe that they were cut from similar cloths for me that, that genuinely,
like they would have enjoyed it had it been controllable. But what I left, I left the article
feeling like it was not a controllable car. And that has me less interested if it truly
isn't controllable. I just want to hear it. Yeah. I don't have that motor in the car with you.
Yeah. Fun stuff. But I think the key to forming your taste is experience, right? Yes. I wish
we had more exotic cars here, not exotic in terms of super cars, but in terms of brands,
more French stuff, more Italian stuff. Yes. This is the launcher value proposition. I always come
to launcher. Launcher has a similar relationship. I think that Mercedes does, which is that once
you've experienced everything and then you get in a launcher, like an old launcher, Prefia,
Pre69 launcher, and you experience the difference, you're like, it's like annoyingly beautifully
made and engineered. But it's more character, right? Characterful than the Mercedes way. The
Mercedes way is like so rational, so like just obviously the right thing. And there's like
enough whimsy and weirdness and peculiarity to the way launcher did things coupled with like a
standard of engineering and construction that was very high, that makes them like
the Mercedes for people who want something that's wacky and characterful. And that's why I
always come back to those. I mean, like the cars that I most desperately want to buy right now,
the Stratos, which is not Prefiat and it's shitty, and a Prefiat launcher, which would
probably be an Aurelia or something like that. But I just never tire of interacting with those
cars in the same way that if that 500e, the second 500e I owned, I didn't want to drive it
because it was so nice and low mileage that I was, but the real answer is to buy a high mileage one
that you can use this shit out of. And it's a car you never want tire of interacting with and
never want to get out of. And those experiences are rare. Some are fun to drive for 15 minutes
or an hour, but like wanting to do it forever. I always found the best cars are the ones that you
dread having to get in because you're like, this is going to beat the shit out of me.
But then once you're in and you start, you can't get yourself out. That's, I mean, that's
308 for me. 308? Yeah. I mean, I get tired because I start to worry. What's that smell now?
And what's this? What's that sound? You know, it's all. I mean, the car's been wonderful,
but you know, I'm scared of it. There are two cars that I own that I'm scared of. I'm scared
of 308 and I'm scared of the 850. Yes. Complexity. Complexity. Well, just inexpensive parts, right?
I'm used to, I live in VW land, right? Where, you know, I just picked up used transmission for 500
bucks. I mean, I picked up a whole parts car for the VR6 WAP for 1900 bucks. That's the sort of
playground that I live in. And when you find out that, for example, the AC compressor on the 850
just started to make horrible noises. And so I disconnected it and so it can't make horrible
noises. And I inquired about the part and the last known price was $3,800 before they went
in LA over a decade ago. And that scared me to death. And I'm like, I'm not spending more on
an air conditioning compressor than I've spent on most of my cars. Luckily, there's an aftermarket
solution. It's 280 bucks or 300 bucks or whatever it was. I have one. This will end the episode on
this is this things you learn over time that scare the shit out of you. This was BMW's first,
I believe, serpentine only belt engine. And clearly they were concerned that the AC compressor would
lock up and then throw the belt off of your car. Has a separate helper belt that is specifically
for AC? No, no, that would actually make sense. A lot of car companies did that. There would be,
you know, a CERT belt plus an AC belt just in case. BMW has an optical sensor.
For fuck's sake, I hate this on the piston of the AC compressor. And so and what it's doing is
looking at the actual speed of the compressor internals. And it knows what speed it should be
based on the engine speed. So it compares engine speed and compressor speed. And if they're not
moving in lockstep, it then disables the clutch for the AC compressor so that the AC compressor
can't run and therefore can't lock up and can't throw the belt, thus costing you.
It means that your aftermarket solution needs to have that ability.
Which none of them do. And that's why they're 300 bucks instead of four
gazillion dollars. And you have to pull apart of the footwell and disable this whole, this
watching, overwatching overload system. New cars, man. I know this car is 30 years old.
It's fucking new cars. New fangled bullshit. This is why I'm afraid to buy anything expensive.
Because I'm chicken shit about like, oh my God, a repair could be financially ruinous.
That's the way things are. So the, what is the, as usual, the takeaway here is to go
drive cars and experience. Drive as many as you can as early as you possibly can and make sure
you experience things you never thought you'd be interested in. Have an open mind.
The Scirocco changed the course of my life. It forced me to become a mechanic because I had no
other ability to fix it and it needed it. And it introduced me to a whole bunch of friends,
which put me on different courses, different tracks in life and made me sort of hone my
interest of what other stuff is, is interesting, which then ultimately led me to appreciate
the Ferrari, which is as close to my Scirocco as I think you can get with a Ferrari badge on it,
it's a 7,000 RPM four-cylinder noise. It's a flat plane V8. Two plus two, that doesn't...
With a transverse engine.
With a transverse engine that kind of understeers.
And a transaxle.
But it's experience, experience, experience. The car itself is quite refined. It rides really
well. It steers very nicely, but then the engine is a 10. It's a dominant force in the car and that's
the blueprint of what two of my four favorite cars of all time are. So
who knew I could be a Ferrari douchebag?
Well, welcome.
Thank you. And we all knew you would be a Porsche dickbag.
Yeah. I mean, especially when they were cheaper, it's less of a thing now.
And yet you still have multiples, don't you?
Yeah, through some maneuverings, but it used to be something you could just casually float in
and out of, which is one of my favorite things about old Mercedes is that you can just, why not?
I feel like doing this.
How many R1-29s have you had?
Four.
That's it?
Okay.
It's not as bad as I thought.
Four R1-29s. I don't know how many R1-24s.
Can you do the whole three French toasts?
Three French toasts.
Two riddled up bars or whatever.
But you had a lot of Mercedes.
Yes. They're just too hard to not buy.
That's a sign I have a problem.
But what do you need it for? What are you going to do with it?
Yeah, I'm having that exact problem, but they're cheap enough that it doesn't matter.
Are they?
That's the solution.
This episode is driven by Hagerty, the company that ensures all of Derek's cars, all 600 of them.
Yeah, it's true.
All right. Thank you for joining us this week.
We will potentially see you next, you will see us potentially next week.
Yes, possibly with a Amelia Island recap.
Okay, we'll see.
All right.
About this episode
Jason Camisa and Derek Tam-Scott explore how automotive enthusiasm evolves from youth to adulthood, questioning if the enthusiast you are at 21 matches who you are now. They discuss youthful fixations on speed and supercars, the impact of life changes on car preferences, and the frustrations with modern cars’ compromises. They also reflect on how early experiences, media like Top Gear, and personal growth shape tastes, emphasizing the shift from superficial metrics to appreciating driving dynamics and authenticity.
What makes you the car enthusiast you are today?
It’s an idea we don’t always think deeper than surface level about, but one that is intrinsically associated with our connection to cars and the community that surrounds them.
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Visit http://JasonSentMe.com to get a Hagerty Guaranteed Value (TM) collector-car insurance quote!
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Jason found an instant connection with Volkswagen Beetles, buying his first at age 14. Derek took a liking to all things Porsche early on, being able to explain the difference between a Porsche 962 and 956 to his local specialty dealership at age 8.
(Producer Mike learned how to read at age 3 by observing makes and model names on trunks and tailgates).
Rather than focusing purely on the genesis of our car enthusiasm, today’s episode discusses our most formative years of being a young enthusiast and how those years shape us as adults. From observing neighbors and friends cars, to our first cars, to the driving experiences that set the pace for our automotive enthusiasm for years to come, this episode discusses the cars and life experiences that make us whole.
Needless to say, no one journey is the same…
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