Behind The Scenes With Producer Sean! Top Gear Stories, Future Content And More! THIS CAR POD! EP105

Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of this car pod.

We've got Filippo.

We know Filippo.

I'm Doug, but today we have producer Sean.

I can't believe I agree to this.

Producer Sean sits behind the camera.

He's made it a life goal of his never to be talent.

He's never in front of the camera.

He's never on screen.

He's very nervous and he's here today to walk us through some, some life of producer

Sean background on the cars and bids content sphere.

He's going to tell us all about his bad color G wagon, which is behind me.

This is a big day.

Are you excited?

Look, I've received so many emails in the past few months telling me to do this that

I really had no choice.

Sean, I've been bullied by everybody.

Everybody watching the show by Doug, by Filippo, by Ken and by Nick.

Producer Sean, this is now this is an unusual episode.

We're not going to do the normal format because I'm actually a couple of us are out of town

this week.

And so we're recording this beforehand.

We're not doing the news, et cetera.

That's all back to normal next week.

We figured since we have this special episode, record it early and we have producer Sean.

But this is so rare.

I can't even explain to you how rare it is.

Be careful not to describe him as talented talent, maybe.

I have been working with producer Sean now for many years in on and off in some capacity.

And he's never had him come in front of the camera like this.

Have you ever appeared on camera?

He has.

You can find some clips around on HBO Max or Max, whatever it's called, of like top

gear behind the scenes and some YouTube stick lap videos.

If you really dig deep enough, you can find some some.

There's some clips for Sean, but very rare though.

He told me at the very beginning of this, this was never going to happen.

He would never be in any videos, which is funny because Sean, I feel like is as when

we all hang out and chat about cars like in the evenings and in the weekends, Sean is

right there with all of us.

But we do it on camera then sometimes and Sean is never involved.

I get to keep my hot takes to myself.

Sean, thank God for that.

Liled hot takes.

Hopefully you'll get to hear some of them today because we have specific Sean related

questions coming later that were asked by you guys, our community.

I want to first get started though.

There's a few things, legitimate things to discuss, but I want to get started with a

little bit of an explanation of how, how and why producer Sean exists when two people

really love each other.

Twelve years ago, I moved to Philadelphia.

I was living in Atlanta, which I love, and I moved to Philadelphia, which I hate.

And the only thing that made Philadelphia tenable was some friends that I made there.

These two guys were both friends from that era.

And right here, I had announced to my audience that I would be moving to Philly and a

couple of my audience members reached out to me and said, Hey, you're moving here.

I live here.

And Filippo was one of those people.

This is Filippo's original email to me from July of 2014, where we first met.

And a couple of weeks later, Sean sent me an email also saying that he was a junior

at Drexel and Philly studying film and television, film and TV.

Yeah, it's been a wild ride and somehow it's come very full circle and we're all we're all

here. So Sean, Sean helped me make a lot of the videos that I made when I was in Philly.

In fact, to go to the Sean was like the whole thing behind the creation of my famous

video where I ran over a PT cruiser with my Hummer.

You weren't there for that.

I was not there.

I was not invited.

So Filippo, Filippo and I met.

I don't believe does not remember.

I don't recall this.

We met twice.

I had a lot.

We met twice in Philly.

Filippo has no, no memory of both of these guys were at my wedding.

But independently, they didn't really know each other.

They I don't really remember.

I feel like you came first and then you graduated or something.

Filippo then sort of came on regardless.

They this is from Sean.

It's from back in the day.

And so Sean and I knew each other in 14.

Yeah, we knew each other for a couple of years in Philly.

You helped me make a bunch of my earliest, earliest videos.

The the original G-Wagon that the Mini Cooper.

I mean, it's like first year, first 12 months of videos.

You would like come on me to the shoots and help me make them.

And then Sean graduated and went off to Los Angeles, Los Angeles.

I instead of doing what a lot of people do in college and like study abroad.

I was born, raised in L.A.

And I just wanted to get back to Los Angeles.

And so I went into the TV industry making TV shows and give us some of your credits.

So I mean, Top Gear is the American version.

It is definitely the thing I got into TV to make.

Right.

And it was my it was my dream to to touch that franchise.

So as a actually before I sent that email, there is literally a gig.

The franchise, the franchise with the medicine balls.

Yes, exactly.

That's the BBC corporate office in Los Angeles.

And that's that's the mannequin of the stick that exists there.

And that was yet. No, no, actually, you know, you don't know, we don't know.

Turn them on and he walks out of the walks out of the corporate office.

But before I sent you that email, I had been an intern at the BBC corporate office.

And that that studio at the time was making shows like Dancing with the Stars

and all these bigger, bigger productions.

And as an intern, I was like the only one that cared about cars

and like wanted to work on this Top Gear USA show that was it was on History

Channel at the time.

And that's like how I started.

I still work with people.

Producer Johnny, who's behind the camera as well here.

Yeah, he was there in those early.

Oh, yeah, he was he was he was a coordinator, a production manager on that.

So what was your that was your first gig when you when you got out of school?

Yeah, I was I was like an I was like an audience coordinator for The Late Late Show,

which is like Craig Kilbourne, Craig Ferguson, Ferguson, and there's

actually some tie to this job with that job and some of my roles.

But yeah, I was doing that and an intern at the BBC corporate office.

I was unpaid.

So I wasn't doing so I wasn't allowed to like work and get into the weeds

with the crew because it was like there's a bunch of laws.

Yeah.

But every chance I was like, you know, getting lunch for all the corporate

execs of BBC and every chance I had, I would go and sit in the producer room

with the Top Gear producers and just talk about cars.

And I thought this is the this is the greatest thing ever.

I get to just like have this budget to think up crazy ideas and go go make

a version of Top Gear, right?

A version of Top Gear, which which then you got involved doing.

Yeah, yeah.

So I then graduated.

We did a bunch of stuff in Philly.

The Hummer that Hummer video was like truly my first thing that I produced.

He produced. I mean, you as I recall, you coordinated it all.

You had somehow got us the hookup with that guy, little Chris.

Yeah, my cousin knew this guy named little Chris, who had this this lot

that he was going to be fine with us running over this.

Do you remember we were terrified?

The Hummer was going to roll because there was no second vehicle for it

to climb on the other side.

Yeah, little Chris that morning procured a Saturn Saturn for us that didn't run

and he got it dropped off.

Yeah. And do you remember at some point

we were talking to some of the junkyard guys, asked about little Chris and he

goes, yeah, that is a little Chris.

He was a little guy.

He's like, you should see big.

That's right.

But it was so fun.

Like that whole video, like beyond the crushing, there's a lot of like really

weird beats where we like add wood to the side of this cruiser.

And it was like very fun to just, you know, go around the parking lots,

like trying to think of what we could.

There's there's a moment in that video where you light the passenger seat on fire.

Yes.

And you use we went to the grocery store and bought like barbecue, like charcoal,

lighter fluid and douse the seat in it.

And so I'm filming holding the camcorder with one hand

and holding the fire extinguisher we bought with the other hand.

As I recall, we actually filmed that in the parking lot of the grocery

store, we bought the lighter fluid.

We it was in Northern liberties, right?

Yeah.

It was that one with the two-story parking.

And so we just, do you remember this place?

Of course.

We just, we drove, we drove to the top, like away from the other cars.

We lit the passenger seat on fire.

In the video, you can see that the very final moment of that frame is like the

camera jumping forward because I was like, so ready to put the this.

This was actually even harder than that, though.

Do you remember?

We had to go back to Home Depot a hundred times.

We thought just like nails, we could just with a hammer and nails.

We'll get through.

Nails do not go through a car sheet metal.

We had to find like, we had to spend and then we had to get, we had to like rent

power tools and all this stuff.

And even that was like the sketchiest thing.

Again, behind the Home Depot in the parking lot.

Just when you went off to LA, we kind of, I mean, I, I saw you a couple of times.

We mostly lost touch.

Like I hadn't probably hadn't talked to you since maybe 2018, 2019.

And I knew I was paying attention to your.

I'm just washing a passenger seat on fire.

Let's pause it.

I was paying attention to your, your career, but we, we kind of, you, you came

to my wedding, which was in 17.

And then I knew you were out there doing stuff.

We like filmed a Tester Rosa and a Jacob pickup conversion.

Like, I want to say that was 2018.

Yeah, maybe that was 18.

But then yeah, life got extremely busy making, making car TV shows.

I worked on a show called Wheeler Dealers.

That was a British format where Mike Brewer and at the time and Anne said, we

would buy a car, fix it up and then sell it.

And it was a, you know, it was a big discovery show.

And whenever I'm with Sean and he tells people who worked on Wheeler Dealers,

that's where they get the most excited.

I love Wheeler.

Oh my God, you worked on that.

And Sean was like, run in that show.

I was, I was with Mike and we were buying all the cars, selling all the cars.

And it was very much a reality show.

We, we had to get these cars done and we did a ridiculous number of episodes

in a, in a year.

And it was, it was really fun.

It taught me a lot about the car business as well, where it's like we were

having to buy and sell these cars.

And every episode had to be different.

We couldn't repeat a car, right?

So every year we're doing 27 unique vehicles.

Nobody is better at finding cars online than Sean.

We then, when we, we hired you three and a half years ago, where would we

pluck you from?

So I was at Motor Trend at the time, which Motor Trends had a lot of

significant changes since then.

And it was just kind of, kind of wild timing where I, you know, I had this run

of 10 years producing almost strictly automotive TV.

And I was, I was traveling a lot.

I was working on actually one of the favorite shows I've ever got to work on,

which was Roadworthy Rescues.

Hosts is another YouTuber, vice grip garage.

There's another very like minimal gear kind of guy, like just film it on an

iPhone and, and, and run with it.

And we were, you know, traveling weeks at a time going between LA and Nashville.

And you called and were like, you want to come work at cars and bids and run

this, this content with me.

And I was like, that's, that's a very interesting idea to be so full circles.

I, you know, I drove down here every time I drove down to meet with you guys,

it was pouring, pouring rain.

I was like, this is, this is signed to not do this.

But no, it's, it's been, it's been awesome.

And it's been awesome having you back in our lives.

It's been fun.

And, and it's been so thrilling.

Sean is like reintegrated with, with the friend group that I had here in

San Diego, we're all like car people together.

We go to the cars and coffees and car events and everything.

And it's been so great having you in our lives again.

I could, I can't imagine the world without producer Sean at this point,

both personally and at work.

I'll be honest with you, Claude actually helped us write this ad,

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Tell them that we sent you.

And now producer Sean is embarking on his very next quest, which is the only way

that I was able to convince him to come on this podcast today.

Tell us about Key.

So Key is here.

Key is a new channel from Cars and Beds.

There's a lot of really talented people that work on the content and we're

looking for a place to tell elevated stories.

This is a very much an experimental channel with we have broken air conditioner unit.

Ryan Lopez in front of the camera for these videos.

My dear friend, Joe Berry, who's been a producer on the grand tour, all the real

top gears is the quintessential British car journalist man.

And we're really excited.

It's going to be a channel for beautiful documentaries, good storytelling.

Just the kind of thing that is maybe missing from our current.

Wow.

He opened the library.

There's always been an implication since this was being developed.

There's always been kind of an implication that that my content isn't good enough

for producer Sean, producer Sean, with his television background, feels that what

I do is is sort of at a lower level.

And so Key, that's very false.

That's very false.

But I think there's room for more.

And also sometimes you get invited to some really cool stuff, but you're busy.

You're you're with your family.

And so the idea worked.

I appreciate that.

The idea is that we're going to have a channel that has some momentum that when

there's cool opportunities, we can send Ryan out into the world and get some some

cool videos.

It's the kind of thing that I, as a car enthusiast, as a fan of automotive

content, want to see.

It's something that I think is currently missing from the landscape of YouTube

where we have this opportunity to have some a little bit of budget to make some

really interesting documentary stories, films.

And by the way, Ryan is an excellent host presenter in this show.

He's been absolutely fantastic.

Same with Joe.

I'm totally bought in.

I think that it is really, really good stuff.

I've I've seen a lot more videos than what has gone live right now already.

And I think it's fantastic.

And I'm thrilled that you're able to be able.

I'm thrilled that you're able to make some of these things that sort of speak to

your talents, your crew's talents, your presenter's talents in in a in a pretty

impressive way.

It's super exciting.

So right now we have a JDM documentary that's been live for about a week.

And then this morning, this Friday, Seattle arrive and drive.

It's our Joe Barry going out into Seattle and meeting with local enthusiasts and

really experiencing what it's like to be a car enthusiast in this is this town.

So this is going to be hopefully the first episode in a long series of him

exploring different car communities, different car enthusiasts.

If you if you have a good story to tell, email Sean at.

You're giving it up freely.

Somebody on our team described it as Doug does such an incredible job of going

deep on a specific car.

Like what makes that car interesting?

What makes that car special?

And so many of the documentaries are about what makes this piece of car culture

of car community special to deep dive on that.

And that's really exciting.

And they're just so well done.

And so for anybody who's complained to me about the quality of my production,

which has been the primary complaint for me for 15 years, Sean has finally

arrived to create some some high quality automotive stuff.

And I think there is some some of that missing in the YouTube, especially in

the YouTube in general, in the automotive content world.

You don't see that on TV anymore.

And there were some YouTube shows sort of like that.

They're gone.

It'll be exciting to see all this stuff come out.

And to be clear, Doug's not allowed to stop making car reviews.

They're not going anywhere.

We're not going anywhere.

Sean, it's going to all be great.

We're just piling on more.

It's delightful.

Sean is now running a content empire.

OK, he's got key with beautifully produced car documentaries, doing all sorts

of looks at car culture.

He's got my YouTube channel.

We're still the number one individual car of your on the planet.

And then he's got the cars and bins channel where we play poorly thought out

games you can watch it all.

And make sure you subscribe to the key channel.

Hit the hit that.

What do you what do you say now?

Hit the bell and remember, the only reason you got producer Sean on this

is because of key.

And so Sean is here to promote just like a good guest is always here to promote.

And so in order to support Sean's existence here, you have to subscribe.

You must.

Thank you.

Yeah, well done.

Yeah, that was the first good advertising you've ever done.

Well, I believe deeply in producer Sean and I believe deeply in what he's doing.

And I love this idea and I want to see, you know, Sean, the thing that happens

when you're in this film and TV world is that you have ideas, but you're the guy

who gets lunch and then you have ideas, but you're the guy who does this or that.

And then eventually you get to a point where you can actually unleash your ideas

on the world. And this is the first time Sean's ever been able to really do that

in a in a huge capacity.

And I really wanted to work for him on his on his behalf.

That's very kind.

And it's so, so true.

It's it's the film and TV industry is just climbing and staying connected

with the with friends.

It's so funny how it's full circle.

Yeah, all of this is and how it where it's gone.

Sean has brought some great people to our office to work with us

and he himself is great.

And we're thrilled that he's here.

And we're thrilled to have key key key.

E Y and Ryan will be on the podcast soon to to dive into some of the adventures

he's been on filming this.

But we like key the name key just because it's it's the part of the driving

experience you always have with you.

It's it's in your pocket.

It's tangible.

It's the first thing you pick up to go go for a drive.

It's ironically, of course, Ryan has a Tesla doesn't have a key.

That's true.

He'd like to know that.

Oh, no, he reached for a pocket and didn't come up with an existing drift car.

Those got a hub swap.

OK, key is here.

Sean is here.

Go subscribe to key.

Watch our videos.

You're going to love them.

The first one's out.

There's going to be a lot more coming.

You're absolutely going to love them.

And they are all courtesy of the brilliant baseball cap.

Mine of producers.

Not just going to have living in San Diego buying an LA Dodger top.

OK, I want to discuss other Sean related things.

So let's just start by you.

You guys were participants.

I don't know how much the audience cares about this, but you guys were

participants in like the very earliest days of my YouTube channel.

This is before I was doing car reviews.

This was before I mean, I my channel started in the fall of 13.

And we were putting out these videos, Sean, together, probably the very.

I mean, I did the first year I did it in Atlanta for six months.

But after I moved to Philly, which was basically there, you were involved.

You were involved in this one.

I did that one.

Filippo did.

Did you do it?

An intrusion to the Hummer.

You involved in so many of these.

Do you remember those days?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, the reason I was so fond of your channel was the Ferrari 360.

Oh, yeah, tip frog for mine.

But which one has a Ferrari 360 now?

It's it's it's very full circle that 360 has always been my favorite car.

And so, you know, I was always looking for content about Ferrari 360.

And here is a guy who, like, bought one.

It was doing crazy stuff with it.

And I was ever to spend time with that car because I saw it.

No, it was it was gone before.

Yeah, before we met.

It was like right right after we sold it.

I was so disappointed.

I was like, oh, this guy's got a 360.

No 360.

It's not a Hummer.

Hummer and the L322, which I was very fond of.

Yeah, that's right.

I had that range over.

You know, I hope people get a sense of, like, having

car friends from this car pod, because it's it's very much

like the conversations we have.

But it was really like special in college to meet someone

that was just as much into cars as I was.

And to be clear at the time, I wasn't like Doug Demure.

I was just like just a guy.

I was writing on Jalopnik.

And so if you were reading Jalopnik, you would have known

of me, but that wasn't a big like I was just a guy.

I had maybe a hundred thousand subscribers.

We were just kind of screwing around.

There was no thought that this ever would go anywhere.

Or really, I mean, I don't know.

I wasn't thinking that.

I don't know if you guys were.

We were all just kind of screwing around trying to get a video up every week,

just having fun.

I remember we were like sitting in a park one day and like a reality TV

company had emailed you saying like, should I go do this?

Like this TV show.

And we were like, what is this?

What it was.

And yeah, it was super, super early days of your career.

You must have been around for the skyline.

Yeah, yeah.

When did you leave Philly?

Sixteen or 16, 16, 16.

I was I was so you saw a little bit of Aston Martin, a little bit.

But so Drexel is like a co-op system.

So I was six months in Philly and then I believe my junior year,

six months in L.A. doing my internships.

Was it you who came with me to the brat?

Filippo ended up, I think, doing a lot, doing a lot more.

I'm looking back at these.

You were at the drag strip, right?

No, no, I was not at the drag strip, I was at the race track.

Were you at the drag strip, Sean?

No, I came to the race track.

That one.

Who was in the Marana?

Was that you?

Yeah, yeah.

Filippo was literally literally in that video.

You went to Manhattan with me in a Hummer.

That Hummer was terrible.

Oh, so bad.

That was that was such a bad girl.

Your economy challenge was quite something.

We drove in Princeton, right?

We like trying to hyperbile.

It worked.

Sean, do you remember how well scripted Doug was?

Like, he would have a piece of paper that had every beat he wanted.

Yeah, yeah.

Which, as a result, the videos are a lot shorter.

And the four-minute script is like three pages.

It's like, oh, that's all I'm going to be able to write.

Yeah, the G-Wagon review, I remember,

your script was so incredibly tight for that.

And you had this, like...

And we would mess up lines and like go back and do it again and again.

Yeah, it was incredibly, incredibly scripted.

You were there.

I mean, I consider these sort of the special...

The G-Wagon video is particularly special

if you really think back on the history of the channel,

because it was one of the first, like, true car reviews.

The Yalpa also.

But the G-Wagon and the Yalpa were like some of the very, very, very beginning,

like, real, like, borrow a random car from a dealer kind of stuff.

Yeah, that cool dealer.

He had a bunch of interesting...

Yeah, sell them motors.

Yeah, sell them motors. He sells them on cars and bits sometimes.

That's awesome.

People happen to be my neighbor in Northern Liberties,

and he had a dealer outside of Philly.

And we bumped into each other, and he was like,

hey, if you ever want to shoot a video.

And so we borrowed that ridiculous convertible G-Wagon.

Also a bit of a false circle.

Yeah, yeah.

Mine is sitting over there.

Amazing. It's amazing.

It's also four minutes and 58 seconds.

It's such a short video.

There was no... YouTube didn't really reward you for making longer videos.

There was no advertising, I don't think, in these videos at all.

So it didn't matter to me.

And then at some point, once I started doing actual car reviews, that changed.

Well, what was the first 10-minute-long video?

I remember it at the time.

I remember for a long time thinking that 10 was a barrier I couldn't cross

because the audience was not interested in watching videos that were that long.

I remember thinking that.

Oh, look at that first 10-minute video of the Carrer GT.

Another full circle.

That's crazy.

But I remember when I was editing that video, thinking to myself,

like, this is going to go too long, but it's such a special car,

it's going to be worth it.

It's Carrer GT.

Carrer GT.

There's one right there.

Yeah.

Those were the days.

Those were the early days, the Sean days.

Absolutely wild.

Can't believe I never met.

But we did meet.

We're good friends now, but it still drives me crazy.

Every time we talk about the show.

Sean and I must have lived a mile apart at the most.

And Sean flew back to when my wedding was in D.C. in 17,

and Sean flew back from LA for that.

Yeah, Felipe was at U-Pen.

I was at Drexel.

But they basically share a campus.

They're like right next to each other.

We wouldn't admit to that.

But yeah.

So those were the days.

So that was the early days.

Felipe, do you have any early days memories you want to throw at?

There's so many.

You agree we weren't trying to launch a YouTube channel.

You have always been, I think it doesn't show on camera,

but you've always been like the most planned,

deliberate person I know.

And so I think there was, oh, wow, I'm in that shot.

There was some sense of like, no, this is going to be something.

Well, that was the hope, but I don't know that I've thought.

I do remember through at least this era,

I was thinking more about writing than I was making videos.

I still prefer your writing to your videos.

When I was pulling up the first email that I had sent to you,

the next thread was about cameras.

And even then, you were not interested in spending anything more

for the extra features.

And I was like, so desperately being like,

if you want to shoot a lot of videos, this model is like the one to buy.

And you're like, well, do they really need that?

OK, quite a last question on the old days.

Time for both of you.

What prompted you to write the email to like initially reach out?

It was life changing for all of us.

Yeah, yeah.

But what do you think prompted it?

Interesting.

I mean, I was truly a huge fan of the 360 videos

and thought this is like really cool YouTube.

Again, wasn't this huge, this huge thing I was back then.

Not many people were making videos with exotic cars.

No, I remember one of my hopes with the 360 was that

there weren't a lot of people out there doing this kind of thing.

But I've always, I guess maybe just because of my age,

I've always been a huge fan of automotive YouTube.

Like from early days of like, you know, fast line daily,

I was like super into watching automotive content on YouTube

and your style of just doing crazy,

like top gear style challenges with the 360.

I thought it was like super interesting.

And then I was following your writing and saw that you had moved

to the town I was going to school in.

And at the time, you know, I've been obsessed with cars.

They've been a huge part of my life forever.

But in college, I didn't bring a car to the East Coast.

Yeah. And so I was like, this would be really cool to make make videos

and do this and be connected to the the the car world.

Yeah. Yeah. And looking back, it is unbelievable how full full circle.

Like, you know, 10 years later, right?

Here you are. Yeah.

We're still helping make YouTube videos to start now for a male.

Yeah. With a fire extinguisher.

And you're still ignoring his camera advice.

But what about you?

I it's so auto character for me.

So it makes no sense.

I don't know what happened that day in July of 2014.

I actually were to this day.

I remember reading your email.

I was at Chipotle.

Wow.

We then got dinner sometime like October, November of 2014.

And I was my wife now by the time girlfriend

and I had been dating for like a month or two.

And I was like, I'm going to go get dinner with this random person from the Internet.

And she was very concerned and very confused.

But in the time since your wedding, you were groomsman in my wedding.

Like we had clearly had a place in and we did that I loved.

I still love if it's there.

Is it there? I don't know.

Haven't been here for years.

So it was unusual.

I do remember if you go back to the channel, I made a video announcing

that I was moving to Philadelphia and it probably would have been

a couple of further up here somewhere knowing myself.

It would have come from your writing, not your YouTube.

Oh, yeah, maybe that.

Maybe it was a maybe it was a Ferrari move to Philadelphia.

Yeah, something like that.

But regardless, I made that video and I remember I got flooded

with people who reached out after that.

And you two have stuck.

Our usual friend, Matt Boyer, I'm also still in contact with.

He was also one of the people who reached out in the early days.

But other than that, not a lot of the initial

emailers are still around.

I used to have dinner like three times a week with random Philly people

and and Filippo and and Sean stuck around.

And yet Sean never met.

And Filippo didn't work with us for a long time either.

But eventually we got convinced in both to work with us and to live here,

which we although in my case, it's been six years.

We all now live what within four miles of each other.

Yes, just like back in the day.

Yeah, yeah.

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OK, I have to tell you about a podcast I've genuinely been enjoying lately.

And look, there's no shortage of car content out there,

but this one's a little different.

When's the last time you got to hear the actual CEO of Ford

just have real conversations about cars and life?

That's a rare thing.

And it's called Drive with Jim Farley.

The guests are incredible.

Formula One driver Daniel Ricardo, Circus Hoy,

who is somehow both one of the greatest Olympic cyclists ever and a racing driver.

The conversations go deep.

What drives these people?

What they actually get behind the wheel of?

What success means to them?

It's a kind of car content that doesn't feel like a press release.

It feels like a real conversation between people who genuinely love this stuff.

For a car person, having that kind of access to someone in Jim Farley's position,

somebody actually shaping the future of the industry, it's pretty special.

To listen to Drive with Jim Farley,

just search for Drive with Jim Farley in your podcast app.

That's Drive with Jim Farley.

OK, so those are the early days.

I want to move on to the talk car segment.

We typically talk about cars.

Since Sean is here, I want Sean to talk about his cars

starting with the bad color G wagon.

Well, first of all, how about you just tell us what you have right now

and then we'll get into the bad color G.

So currently, I have a beautiful, gorgeous, immaculate, beautiful, metallic,

mystic red.

Is that a color?

Yeah, I was trying to remember the name of the actual color.

It's a mystic red 2014 G550 Galando wagon.

And the brake lights do work.

This week, after three months of the brake lights,

Nick fixed it, we're good.

Look, Nick asked me to not put in my taillights that I ordered

to do it on his channel for content.

So I risked my life for a couple of days.

That's definitely what happens.

There is a thread in our group that Sean can't quite handle his G-Wag.

I think it's been said on this podcast.

It's the most insane thing.

I've never owned a normal car.

But he hasn't been able to wrap his self around.

The taillights haven't been working for months.

The brakes squeak and he cannot figure out how to stop it squeaking

and just complains to us about it bitterly.

Good news, changing the brake lights, remove the squeak.

The real thing Sean said last week.

Oh, OK.

The squeak is back.

But yeah, the G550, which is sort of my daily.

I don't really have a daily.

So we got the G.

Yeah.

2001 Ferrari 360.

Ferrari 360.

Tipfrog.

Argentine Nurburgring.

Definitely remember the name of that color.

And then a 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV, which is, I want to say I own the oldest car

of the San Diego Cars and Bids employees.

That's an interesting point.

Because my Kuntas is probably next or damn close.

There's not a lot of classics in our group.

I don't know, 1973, 1943, 402, 502.

One interesting thing about Sean, Sean has trouble letting go of things.

And when Sean and I would hang out, after you left Philly and moved to LA,

I remember I visited you in Hermosa Beach and you had up your Cayman.

Yeah.

And he had that Cayman for like eight years.

And finally, when he came to this business,

I had it for another year and a half.

Yeah.

And we convinced him to sell the Cayman,

which he sold on cars and bids and he bought the Ferrari.

I've regretted selling the Cayman.

I love this car.

So this car was actually very much inspired by a Range Rover.

It was a CarMax purchase.

So I did the CarMax MaxCare warranty,

which absolutely paid for itself.

I want to say probably more than the Range Rover.

Yeah.

Maybe not on a dollar level, but like on a percent.

I mean, they put a trans in the car.

I paid $26,000 for the car in 2016 and with 59,000 miles.

Wow.

And during the warranty, I want to say close to $30,000 overseas.

Those are almost exactly the numbers for my Range Rover.

But the difference is you put on 75,000 miles on the car.

I mean, almost 90,000 miles.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

And a lot of that was done after the MaxCare ended,

which mysteriously, the issues just stopped.

Stopped.

Everything worked.

Suddenly things were able to be ignored a little bit more.

Yeah.

No, the Cayman was a great car.

It really did everything I needed it to do.

It was a super light, really engaging sports car

that was actually quite practical.

I lived all over Los Angeles in this thing and street parked it at times.

Daily drove it and put a ton of miles on this thing.

Remember how proud he was of those roof racks?

They were like Porsche-to-equipment roof racks.

I didn't even use them.

I never saw them once being used.

Certainly.

But he rode around with them always proudly on display.

One time he posted on his Instagram a photo of them being used.

Yeah.

I used to sit close as we got to.

I used to sit a couple times.

I loved the Cayman roof racks and I desperately searched for them because they were hard to find.

And when I found them, I was so happy that I decided I was going to leave them on

and just drive proudly with my roof racks for years.

Oh, yeah.

There's a photo.

Yes, you have my Bianchi bike on top.

For the photo.

Sean is a man of accessories.

This is one of the things that I've learned about Sean.

We play tennis and I have no idea what racket I play with.

No idea what my strings are.

And Sean will be like, I just got my strings done.

And I switch from poly synthetic to synthetic flukman bobbin.

And also I'm going to change to this racket, which I saw in a video in Nidol's best friend's

cousin uses this racket.

And I got two of them and one's a little lighter than the other.

And then he can't hit a backhand.

It's like Sean, maybe work on a move away from the accessories and you know.

Look, that's cool.

That's cool.

And this photo is on Angeles Crest Highway where I didn't go slow.

That roof rack held that bike on there.

Okay.

So he didn't take the bike out to go biking.

He took the bike out of the car to take to Angeles Crest.

Obviously.

I just stress test the roof rack and make sure that it could actually withstand.

Proper speed.

That's ridiculous.

So the coolest thing, the coolest car thing you've ever had though is your very first car.

Show us.

Well, before we move on to the first car, I just want to point out that I drove this

colored Cayman, right?

Macadamia Metallic.

Another very divisive color.

You deviated stitching, man.

No.

No, no, no.

But this group doesn't seem to like cool colors on cars.

What is it?

Don't you like that Cayman?

Of course I like the Cayman.

I also like the Chewbacca color.

Doug, you didn't like the brown.

The brown Cayman, no.

I think it's a little bit of a pretender thing.

Like, oh, look at that.

Like, this is all people do at these Porsche events.

They talk about their colors.

But this wasn't PTS.

This was just like a color that they were offering back then.

It's speed yellow, not silver.

It's like, oh, how does it drive?

How does it drive?

I thought it was cool.

It's a good color.

It's cool.

I love the color.

It's nice and cool and all that.

But I think Charn was always a little bit self-congratulatory about having a brown car.

In fact, I drove this car around with this color.

Brown manual.

It must have been real hard.

Anyway, let's talk about that other car.

Let's talk about Charn's first car,

which was of course the most ridiculous.

Pull up this thing.

Charn, tell us about your first car here.

This is an insane story and is absolutely something that I will always just cherish

as being my first car.

It's completely insane.

So this is a 1985 Ferrari 400i.

However, I purchased this car when I was 16.

I just turned 16.

So for those of you who don't know, the 400i has always been kind of the cheapest.

I don't want to say crappiest, but the most affordable.

People know about the Mondial, but say crappiest.

No, I actually kind of like the 400i, to be honest.

And I think it's beautiful.

And of course, it was Enzo's last driver, as we all know.

Yeah.

And it was hated.

Hey, it was hated.

This is 2010, 2009, 2010.

This is the four-seater lineage that predates the FF and the GTC4 Lusso and the 612 and the 456.

That lineage traces back to the 400i.

At the time, there was zero interest in this car.

However, I was a Ferrari obsessed child.

When I was eight years old, I went for a ride in a Ferrari 360 and it changed my life.

It changed the course of my life, right?

And I was dead set on getting a Ferrari.

And it was an insane thing to say at 16.

However, I spent way too much time on my computer looking at.

At the time, the only auction site was eBay, right?

And so I would sort, I would go to eBay Motors and sort by lowest price.

And sure enough, what's there is this Ferrari 400i.

And I haven't got to the good part of the car yet.

It has a Chevrolet LT1 engine swap in it, right?

And so I'm looking at this.

This is the C4 Corvette motor.

More or less.

This is the C4 Corvette motor, right?

The Opta Spark, again, one of the worst Chevrolet Vs of all time.

However, the transmission in these is a GM 3-speed from the factory.

So what a lot of people did in period, this one was a theft recovery car.

And after it was recovered, someone took the Colombo V12 out of it

and most likely put it into one of those P4 recreations.

Because the V12 is pretty close to all the very desirable cars.

It basically runs a similar block as the 365s,

which would have included the Daytona and cars like that.

Yes, yes.

So Sean didn't get that part of the car?

No, no.

The Daytona motor?

That was gone.

Yes.

So I found this and it was, I want to say it was, it was,

the bidding was at like $8,000, right?

At the time, I had like a business converting people's like analog film

into digital files for them.

And it saved up about $10,000 for my first car.

And I went to my parents and I was like, hey guys, look, I really want this car.

And they, they're not car people.

They didn't really understand, but they understood my love of Ferrari.

Like every birthday they would buy, like the knockoff Ferrari, like a soccer ball, you know.

But so they understood how much like this would mean to me as like a first car.

Had no idea how bad of an idea this would be on all levels.

So we bought this car.

It was in St. Louis, Missouri, on eBay.

And I bid, I think the winning bid was like $12,000.

My parents like helped me chip in and pick covered shipping.

And sure enough, off the truck came this Chevrolet powered 1985 Ferrari 400i.

That is beyond the weirdest first car that I could have possibly ended up with.

Every car since that has been more reasonable.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

This is, that's so true.

And no, that can't be true.

It's Sean.

It's, it's quite true.

He had a Mustang after this.

He had a Mustang.

In engine swapped 80s Ferrari.

And so I told my parents like, look, it's a Chevrolet motor.

Like that's the expensive part of Ferraris.

Anything goes wrong.

Yeah.

I can just take it to the Chevrolet dealership, which where were you living?

Davis.

It's in Davis, California.

In your Sacramento.

Davis, California.

And this car unlocked a lot of really crazy experiences that taught me a lot about what

it meant to take care of a car, work on a car, and what the amount of energy and effort it takes

to have something like this at 16.

I mean, I remember taking it to the Chevrolet dealership.

It had a terrible electrical draw.

Like, if you didn't have it on a charger for more than 20 minutes,

it would die.

It'd die.

The first, the first drive I did, which maybe I'll, I'll give sand in our head.

Here's some footage of how I got small Sean in this 400i with my, my mom freaking out and

like, why isn't that turning on?

I'm like, the battery's dead and just stone cold.

What happened when you went to the Chevy dealer?

What did they say?

They were like, you're insane.

However, we have a fleet service center across the street that the manager there can work on

weird stuff.

This guy Brandon, and he ended up helping me with this car for years.

Between classes, I would go to the shop and he would like teach me on some customer cars,

like how to do oil changes.

And I would like do like trade off work, like sweeping the shop and all these like random,

random favors for them, like picking their lunch up.

And then they would like help me handle this, this insane thing.

Do they get the electrical draw salt?

Yeah, yeah, they did.

They did.

And then the LT one had this like crazy like backfiring issue that they helped me fix.

It was so bad.

The exhaust, like it backfired so hard, the exhaust mufflers blew out from the back of it.

The one crux of this car was like the Ferrari, like window regulators.

Yeah.

From that era, they were terrible, so bad and the windows would stick.

And so like that was like the final nails.

Like they couldn't help me with this, this, this window regulator.

I took it to like a specialty shop in Sacramento for, for, you know, luxury cars.

And it was like, the bill was like $2,500.

And my parents were like very unhappy with the situation.

And the car had to go.

And how long did you have it?

I did it for two years.

Two years, two years.

Now the other problem with the car course, a car with a motor swap,

like this, you can't title in California, which Sean didn't know when he bought it.

No.

So what did you, how did you, you drove this to high school?

I did.

And this was the era when paper plates were like a thing in California.

So I just from that, from that Chevy dealership had a, had a, like I just bought this car and

taped up a fake little new registration in the window and drove it, never got pulled over.

But I did that because I took, I took it to the DMV at first to register this car.

And they were like, you have to take it to the, the referee station.

I didn't know what a referee was, which in California is this, there's only,

I think three or four locations and they like really look over the car.

And so they took the car away for like an hour and came back with like the

thickest stack of papers of like, this is everything you have to fix to get this to pass

smog. And it was like everything, everything, like swap the motor, like install all the evap

systems. And, and, and so from that moment on, I drove it.

No dirty.

So what happened to the car?

So I sold it and it was sold to the underbidder on the original auction.

This guy named Otto.

Two years later.

You're kidding.

Yeah.

It's kind of on eBay also.

Yeah.

Put it back up on eBay.

Actually sold it for about what I bought it for plus the window regulator.

So I got out of the car and he still has the car today.

Wow.

With the same LT1.

He's taken such good care of this car.

He's repainted it.

He's done a new, new interior, new suspension.

It's like the, one of the most complete and like clean 400 eyes that probably exists,

but he hasn't changed the LT1, which I think is pretty fun.

Wait, it's going to be every year it gets more expensive for him.

He's, he's now stuck basically.

He's never going to be able to put a V12 back in it.

Why did he put an L-acid in it or something?

Yeah, that's what I wonder.

I wonder if it's something to do with the transmission and having to change that original

transmission, but like you think you put an L-acid into a transport and make it happen.

Yeah.

But it's such a cool thing.

I hope that one day somehow I end up back up with this car.

He's in Florida, right?

Yeah, he's in Miami.

Yeah.

If you see a black 400 eye, ask him to pop the hood.

Those were the early days of Sean.

Then you had a Mustang.

Yeah.

But that 400 eye like was pivotal in getting into TV.

Like in my interview with the BBC people, they're like, why do you want to work here?

I was like, I really want to work on top here.

And they were like, do you have experience with cars?

I said, well, I have a story for you.

My first car was this 400 eye with those engines swapped.

And I think that had a lot to do with getting that first, that first internship get in the

door with this weird car that does lend some credibility.

It's totally insane enough to do that.

To work on with Ant and Mike Brewer, that was the same situation.

Sean had already been down that road.

What happened to Brandon at the Chevy dealer?

Have you ever talked to him?

Yeah.

He recently just messaged me on Facebook.

I was like, what happened to that Ferrari?

Where is that thing?

Did he still have the Chevy dealer in Miami?

No, no, he's not.

He's scuba diving now.

So the tip frog, the 360 you have now, which we call a tip frog.

Yep.

Tiptronic and it looks like a frog.

Yeah.

That's not your first Ferrari.

Insanely.

Tell us about your tip frog experience.

The 360 has been great.

Tip frog, you know, everybody here, mostly, I shouldn't say everybody.

Doug makes it so much fun of the way the 360 looks, despite having launched his career

with the 360.

You don't make fun of the 360 at all.

However, I think there's a lot of similarities in the design of the Carrera GT

to the front of the 360.

I don't think the Carrera GT is an attractive car.

I think that if we call the 360 a tip frog, I think the Carrera GT is the V10 Salamander.

I've never felt the Carrera GT is an attractive car.

I think it's what looks weirdly stretched.

I think the Carrera GT is a precision purpose car that is an amazing,

like unbelievable, like scalpel driving experience, and the design is OK.

The 360, unfortunately, doesn't have some of the driving experience benefits.

I love the driving experience of the cars.

So the 360 was like top of my list of cars I wanted to experience.

I needed to own one for a period of time.

I just I personally love the way the 360 looks.

I love the challenge grill on the back.

And the car, again, I wrote in that kind of snowballed me into being a car person,

was a Argento Nürburgring silver Ferrari 360 with the F1 paddles.

And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever.

And so for a couple years, I was looking for the right one to buy

and just got very lucky finding one locally that was on a classified website and jumped in.

And when I first bought it, the F1 transmission was a problem.

So apparently they got better in 2002.

I bought a 2001 that had the original programming from when the car launched in 1999.

So like leaving a stop sign was like it was super spongy, not like not a good driving experience.

And my friend Eric at Goodkind Designs got me in touch with a transmission tuner who you buy any

of this? I remember this happened. Did you? And so the car so and so anyway, he we swapped in

a Challenge Trudale TCU. So now it has like the latest version of the shifting again,

a super gear gear guy thing. Are you not manual swapping? I am. But I just have to say that like

the TCU from the Challenge Trudale made it infinitely better. Like the downshifts are just

super aggressive and it's very fun. However, the next step for that car is doing the manual

conversion. We're manual. What will we call it? Because we can't call it tip frog anymore.

Formally tip frog. I'm still going to call it a tip frog. Yeah, why not? OE. It was tip right.

And OE it was definitely a frog. I am proud of Sean for driving that car boy like 8000 miles of

this one. I've driven a lot. I drove it to Laguna Seca, did a track day in it, was terrified the

entire time I was going to like take a rock chip to the the front lens. You did a PPF it? I PPF

the headlights. Our friend Kevin said you should PPF the windshield. I said no, I did get a rock

chip on the way up to the track day. I PPF all my windshields now terrified me. It's so many

problems. But it's been great. It's been like very bulletproof. The only issue I've had was

been like self inflicted with like I backed onto like a parking block and bent the oil the oil

fill and there's like a company called Hill. I think Hill Engineering that makes like a stainless

steel piece for that instead of the aluminum one. It was like a hundred bucks and that the 360 has

been the cheapest car for me to own out of any of my cars. All of my cars have required more

maintenance, more service, especially the G wagon. The G has been expensive. Sean, do you want to tell

us the story of purchasing the G wagon, which is one of the most favorite stories? Do we even have

time? Look, I love the hunt. I love hunting for a car. The benefit of Cars and Bids is that we

present all these amazing cars. I spend way too much time looking out on Cars and Bids, but I like

going out and hunting the deep dredges of marketplace for these cars. For just poorly

presented trash. You get so many lins from Sean every day. It's very true. I want to say about a

maybe year and a half ago on this podcast, Doug, you were talking about there was a green G500

that was for sale on the site and you made the point that everybody should buy one of these

early G wagons. They're reliable. They hold their value and they're just cool. Great off-road,

little drivable. Yeah, I believe I was the underbitter on that green G. I was looking for a color.

Anyway, this is a car. It's a pretty cool color. Yeah, no, I disagree, but people might think that.

What color is this? Everest green. Everest green. Wow. Everest green. Make any sense. Anyways,

through the research, I saw that 2013 to 2015 for the first gen or this gen W463 is like the sweet

spot of the years because in 2013 to 2015, with the G550, you got the final iteration of that 5.5

engine with the latest interior updates. You got heated seats, cooled seats. You had an

infotainment system that could be easily swapped for Apple CarPlay. Which Sean did,

Chinese Apple CarPlay, driving around. Whatever background you want. You want flowers. You want

babies. You want babies holding flowers. It's all there. It's awesome and radar cruise control.

What this replaced was a Mercedes W123 300 diesel. I've had two 123s over the years and I love

the feeling of driving an old Mercedes. They're just such tanks. It's such an analog driving

experience and that's actually very usable. But the 300D is pretty slow, especially San Diego.

Like my commute, I have to get right on a highway cold and I was tired of being foot to the floor

every morning. And so I thought, man, if I could find one of these G-wagons, it's like

kind of still falls into that camp of 70s Mercedes with a modern drivetrain. Right. Yeah.

Old school solid. Yeah. Similar feel to this car. Yeah. Well, like a cool driving experience.

And through many, many late nights on Facebook Marketplace, we found this mystic red G550 that

was being sold by someone in the Portland, Oregon area. A very sketchy person in the Portland,

Oregon area who had horrible Walmart aftermarket rims on it. The wheels were a problem. I was

negotiating really hard like Nick Roshan, crazy Nick levels of negotiation with this guy. It was

like a two week thing. And finally he like said yes to my number. It was like Friday at 3pm. I

was like on a zoom with Filippo. It was like, I got to go, like rush to the bank, like try to

like pull out funds to go fly up and buy this car. I get to the airport and he's like, well,

we're actually not sure if we want to sell this car. And I'm like sitting, I'm like sitting,

like on the runway being like, I'm already on a plane coming up there on the way up or

our plane hit a bird. Like we had a bird strike landing. It was like this whole journey to get

up there. And when I got there, it was really cool. It's a really cool car. Like the interior has

like all the carbon fiber trim options. And it's just like a cool, it's a cool spec. It's a cool

thing. And there were two other things that I recall from this, which is number one, at one

point Filippo called to see how things were progressing. And you said Filippo, I can't talk

right now. I'm in the ultimate race. Yep. I was in photoshopped into like a marathon.

And then when you showed up and the guys swore up and down, there was no rust on the car. There's

a little spot of rust on the windshield that Sean lost. I lost mine. I asked for $2,000 off like

on the spot. I was like, and it was already a very good price for the car. Don't tell him that.

He said yes, but I got a cashier's check for the exact amount. So I just was trusting this guy

to like send me after the fact that he did shout out to shout out to him. He did. And I drove,

I drove it straight back down to San Diego and he's been driving a bad color G wagon ever since

we like everybody that sees it likes the car. So that car is a bit uncomfortable to drive around

because it gets a lot of attention. There's not many red G wagons and a lot of people are really

into it. I can't believe it. Like compared to driving the 360 around, I get so many more

compliments and just people asking me like what it is with the G and it's insane. So that's Sean's

bad color G. Most people do like that color, I admit, and some people even have it on one of

their own cars. And guess what? One time, one time Doug said, you know what? I saw you come around

that corner and it looked pretty good. Should we get to some questions? I want to go to the

questions because the questions we had asked you guys to ask questions specifically for Sean and

there are dozens of questions here that are Sean specific. We've covered some of them already.

I can't believe how many questions people have. People have Sean questions for the Sean podcast.

There's Sean sitting in the Suki S2000 up at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles,

which you can also see in the Key Channel video live right now. Oh, how exciting.

So these questions, there's a lot of production related questions and a lot of how you came to

this world questions and we are thrilled that we got so many Sean questions. We're going to start

with Wyatt R, who says, question for Sean, what is the wildest thing that Nick has said or done

that has made you cut a piece of content? And seriously, how many hours of content have you

had to cut because of Nick? We cannot, definitely cannot say the wildest stuff, although I think

we're all thinking about the same thing. There's so many moments. We have the greatest collection

of Nick moments. But yeah, I can't really say those on air. We have, we have advertisers now

and we, there's a certain standard of decorum that we have to maintain or else they'll drop us.

Also, we're not comfortable with some of the things that were said. That is true. There

have definitely been some stuff that Nick has said that has been just absolutely out of them,

out of this world, not accepting. I'll give everybody a Nick action though, which is when

we were filming the $18,000 Desert Series Challenge videos. It was his first time having to like

follow a camera car. Oh my God. Oh my God. So, you know, we have this like big briefing about

like what we're going to do. We're going to drive up this mountain. We all have walkie-talkies to

communicate with each other about what we're going to do. And Nick had no ability to follow

the direction of like following the camera car. And at one point we, we were trying to get a

hold of him on the walkie. He had not turned on his walkie or like forgot about the walkie's existence.

And so I resorted to hand signals out the window and I pointed to a turn up as we wanted,

I think it was Filippo to pass so we can get shots of Filippo's car. So he was behind the

the camera car. Instead of turning out into the turnout, Nick proceeded to try to pass us

in the turnout through the corner. Thinking that it was a point buy. Thinking that it was a point

buy. There was actually a better story that came out of that. After that, there was some harsh words

to Nick at the next meeting like, dude, you have to turn your radio and you have to pay attention.

Like we had gone over step by step everything that needed to happen for that sequence of shots.

We get into our cars and because we hadn't gotten any, any shot footage of Nick's car going,

we were like, Nick, you lead the next section behind the camera car so that we can get shots of

your car. And once again, he, he goes in the wrong direction and gets lost and doesn't do what he's

supposed to. And we have to have another complete stop, another get out of the car and try to talk

to him again. And Nick says, I can't, it's very annoying you guys that you've done this. You've

made me lead. And he was leaning in the sense that he was the first film car, but the camera car was

ahead of him. And getting was like, that'd be like one of the, that'd be like the third car of the

train being like, I can't believe I'm supposed to lead this train. He was so pissed that we made

lead when all he had to do was follow behind the camera car. He couldn't handle it. It was

a little bit absurd things that has ever happened. I have ever been bought up, which we were could

not stop having to say it. It's problematic, honestly. It's a complete idiot. Nick is a treasure.

Next question from A3MailOn. Question for Sean. What's your email? Every week or so on the

pod. I shout out Sean's email address, which is of course, Sean at carsandbids.com. I think a

better question would be what has come from your email being so public? Hundreds of thousands of

people watch his podcast every week. I can't say everything because I also don't want to give anybody

any new ideas of what to do with my email. However, this is Sean's actual work email. Yeah. Yeah.

Some interesting stuff comes through. I've had some chats with some people. If you have something

interesting, shoot me an email. Is it actually fruitful come out of it? A lot of wrong E55

wagons. I've been the recent results of the emails. Nothing of that much substance yet.

Nothing yet. We also haven't asked for a lot yet. Pretty recently, Sean forwarded me an email that

he got that was related to me and relevant to me that he received truly two months prior.

And it was like topical related to something with the truck. He's slow to get through all the

emails. That's what you're saying. Don't be upset. It's a lot of emails. It's a lot of emails. How

many emails is it? Again, I don't necessarily want to say. I don't want to encourage this.

No more emails to Sean at carsandbids.com. That's S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com. If you have something

interesting, I'll have a conversation. Do you ever get like threats? No, no threats. People have

been chill. Everybody's been super chill. We do run a car podcast at the end of the day.

A lot of some weirdly chat J.B.T. like long diatribes that it's like what is what is right.

But the callback to the late late show is at the end of the late late show,

which is a late night talk show, my job was to go through the voicemails that people left for

the show. Because at the end of every episode, they put a phone number on the screen for people

to get tickets to be in the studio audience. And I had to sift through hundreds of calls every day,

often from the same people that called every day that nobody wanted tickets. It was just random

random random calls and the emails somewhat remind me of of the days of the late late show,

having to go through these bulk requests. I thought you had to actually listen to each

one that's before transcription and things like that. Next question from Rose76. Question for

Sean. How the hell did you get your car into a Gracie Abrams music video? That was awesome.

That was awesome. Sean 300 D was in a Gracie Abrams music video. My good friend Dawn, who I

produced Top Gear with Top Gear America. She was she was a co producer with me. She owns co owns a

production company that makes the majority of inerscope record music videos. And so when they

need something car related, often I try to help out. I try to help her out. I got to be a stunt

driver in a Billie Eilish music video. I've done a bunch of like weird music video projects with

Don. And Don called me. It's like, Hey, do you know anybody that has a cool colored vintage car

for a Gracie Abrams music video? And I was like, Do you want to use the Mercedes? And she's like,

Yeah, that'd be great. And so the day was amazing. We, you know, we shot it in one day and I got to

drive for this music video. So it was just a camera guy in your drive, pull up the video,

you're driving. I'm driving. You can you can't play the music, but you can probably show the

show the video to you. Well, this is a commentary video. But it's you never see the third seat.

But we drove around for a few hours with her just singing this this beautiful song in the back

seat. It was like one of the coolest like production days I've got to do. She's she's like

selling out like Wembley Stadium now. Yeah. And this is like one of her hit songs. And so yeah,

it's her brother, her best friend on the back seat. We're just cruising around the streets of

a town and she's just singing the song. I'm sorry. I love you. How many views does this video have now?

42 million. 42 million views. 42 million views. The thing that you will forever be associated with

the got the most views was your car in this room. And you were the driver for all those shots.

So you must have chatted with her and stuff. Yeah, very cool, very cool. Her dad is JJ Abrams,

who I was lucky enough to have dinner with a few years earlier. I forgot to talk about that.

I didn't know. Yeah, it's a super cool, super cool artist. And like what an experience to have this

like they have the playback going. But then she was fully belting the song really in the back

seat of the car with I guess you kind of have to because otherwise it probably looks fake in a

video if you're not actually singing. Yeah. And she was a big fan of the W123. It was very fun.

Next question from BB King 24. Sean, does it annoy you that Doug calls your G-Wagon a bad color G-Wagon

despite his 993 being a similar color? You know, we drove up together to go pick up the 993 in the

bad color G. And I remember when we finally got the 993 out of the dealership and parked in that

mall parking lot and parked them next to each other. I looked at it and I was like, wait,

they're the same color. You know, two things. The color that dark red suits the Porsche better.

It does. I will give it that. As a guy who loves the press color, the G-Wagon is silver.

It just is. When you say G-Wagon, you're talking about a silver car. This is true. Silver is boring

for the most part. But here's something I'm willing to concede. I actually don't think

arena red is that great. I think if it wasn't for the famous ad, kills bugs fast. I don't think

we'd all be so, oh, arena red, arena red, even with the famous ad. And of course, that's probably

one of the most famous Porsche ads ever. It doesn't really sell for a premium. And that's because

it's not the most attractive color. It's interesting because on your car, I actually do like the

arena red. It looks good, but on like 996s and even though I just saw a 991 GT3 and arena red,

it looks bad in almost every other car. And I think the only reason we think it looks good on

the 993 Twin Turbo is because it is such a cultural thing in the car world knowing that color on

that car. Maybe. Maybe it's also such a small car, right? That era just suits that color.

Next question from Ceylon. Felipe, you can take this one, too. Hey, Sean, what are we missing

out on? What content are we missing out on? Because Doug loves the word no. So I very famously say

no to everything now. I like spending time with my family. I like playing tennis here. I film a

lot of content here in the office, too, which is hard to take me away from. What are we missing

out on? What would we be? We don't even know. We don't even know because we'd be in space.

We'd be at the moon. We'd be at the moon. We'd have 43 million views, too.

Felipe is potentially annoyed with me because of this. Felipe managers the money of this business

and he knows we could be making more if I suggest everything. We don't talk about that because

it's too triggering. It is. Definitely. There's some tension for sure. There's the Audi TT thing.

That would have been really cool. Audi invited me to drive that concept car in Germany,

that TT, new TT concept car. I actually seriously considered that, which is very rare. I haven't

gone to Europe for a press launch in many, many years. I considered that one. I said,

Sean, it's going to be like five, six days. I don't want to do it. I'm going to be away from my

family. Sean says, bring your kids. Like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Get my kids on a jet

lag on a flight to Europe with all their stuff so I can turn around two days later and come back

and I had to work one of the days filming this Audi TT video. But that would have been cool.

Would have been cool. There's definitely some stuff that we're missing out on,

but we still have so much good Doug content. You can't really be mad.

It's worth the trade-off. Plus, you say yes sometimes. I can get you to do the Euro car

adventure series. Sean is to this day the only person in our company who can get me to say yes

to stuff that I wouldn't otherwise say yes to. To this day, the only person. There is a limit.

It would only go so far. But when Sean says, will you sign 50 cassettes, I will do it.

Will you go to whatever random company's annual shareholder meeting or whatever it was? Yeah,

okay, fine. Sean's the only one. When our CEO asks, I'm like, no, so Sean's got a special

touch. There's a little special touch there. We pick our battles carefully.

We pick our battles carefully. Sean is a great way of, he tells me about it.

I say no to everything. To the point where he said, the company's going to pay to get you

new iPhone. I was like, no, I still haven't done it. Three, four days later, he'll come back to me

and bring it up again. Three, four days later, bring it up again. You know the strategies.

What if we did it this way? What if we did it that way? And then eventually I say yes.

But still there's a limit, mostly evolving travel. He knows. Next question from stills 400.

Dear Sean, who do you report to? Is Doug your boss? Is there an order chart that you can share?

I've never really understood it myself. In a way, Sean is my boss and in a way, I am his.

I don't really understand how it works. I follow the paperwork that was sent to the DMV

for press photographer plates in which it was signed that I was your boss. So we're just gonna,

we're gonna go with that. We're gonna use that as our official document. Sean is my boss, at least

according to the people in the DMV who came out the press place. But we do have a very cool CEO,

Dan, who I'm trying to figure out how to and when to put him in a video because he actually does

race cars and is like very much a car guy. It's a really cool part about this company. It's like

everybody's so passionate about cars. Right. Yeah. There ain't no suits here. That's right.

Even Ryan Lopez, who drives a Tesla, he also has his SD drift car to balance it out.

He's got the most boring and the most ridiculous of any car on this. I don't think I've ever seen

any of our employees wear a suit. Team members, excuse me, wear a suit. Team members.

One time somebody dressed up and in the place of a suit wore like shorts and a polo shirt instead

of a T-shirt. Oh, how nice. That was our level of formality. We do have a good team and so are

you saying you report to the CEO? I do report to the CEO. Sean's legit. That's where you want to be,

folks. You want to be reporting to the CEO. You don't want to be the CEO. You want to be reporting

to the CEO. It's better. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for letting us know that. This isn't really a great

question, but I wanted to bring it up because it's about your emails from real-ass park owl,

dear Sean. I emailed you several weeks ago informing you that I had recently bought a third gen

forerunner. So this guy just emailed Sean telling him that. That's great. I love that. No purpose

to it. I love that. And Sean responded and said he learned how to drive in one of them.

What are you responding to? That was the first driver drove. It's a third gen forerunner. It's

cool. It's cool. Also, everybody's been in a third gen forerunner. If everybody with third

gen forerunner experience emailed you, your email inbox would be full. This is true. This is true,

but also I'm glad I did because now we know that he is not indeed not the real ass park owl.

He's not the real ass park owl. I have his real name. We know his actual name. So the

ass park owl is still not real. His question is, in likeness, after you learned driving a

third gen forerunner, why did you choose a G-Wag instead of a forerunner? It's actually a great

question because Sean can't handle his G-Wag and he can't get the squeaking to stop. He can't get

the brake lights to work. He can't get the door locks to function. The rust spot is growing.

I have been sending him forerunner listings. Did that pro sell, that green pro? I sent him that one

and I said, Sean, this is the one. This one. That one. It was a one. It was a low-mile car

and it was at local. It was in one of the TRD pro colors. TRD pro colors. I said, Sean, look,

I said, you can't handle your G-Wag. It's not a third gen, but it's the modern equivalent.

I said, Sean, why don't you step up and grab yourself a forerunner? Something you can really

handle. Something that's like you can accept a little. But he didn't do it. What's that?

Look, there will be a time in my life where I have to make reasonable decisions like forerunners.

Yeah. I'm just not there. I like having fun. And also the drivetrain. The drivetrain of specifically

that gen forerunner, my very good friend. The fifth gen. The fifth gen. My good friend and

producer. I've done many projects with David Silberman. We scouted the country for top gear and

our rental was often a fifth gen forerunner. It was like the perfect car to take on these journeys.

And like having cruise control set, going through Utah, there was like a wind, a gust that came,

and the car kicked down gears because the engine couldn't like keep going at the right at the

correct speed. It's a known problem with the four liter resets. I just am not a fan of that

drivetrain. The new forerunner looks really nice. And I have a feeling in a couple years when I'm

done with the G, it'll probably be a toss up between like a Rivian R3X if that comes out

and a forerunner as like the more reasonable car. But until then, no, I'm running over parking

curbs in my G wagon. And that's all he's doing from King Burrito 3. Dear Sean, who is your dream

podcast guest? Sean created this podcast. He produced it. He makes it run. He is constantly

trying to convince us to have guests on it. Well, I refuse because this is not a guest

podcast. That's why you watch. You want to see the news. You don't want to see Jim.

You don't want to see Jim Bob come on here and pronounce his new YouTube channel.

Sean, in your dream world, who is your, who do we have on the putt?

For this car pod, nobody. I fully agree. You have embraced no guests. So I feel like we

should just take a step back and talk about like how we came up with this, this car pod.

You know, I, I moved, moved here and was trying to think of what we could do to make

some new interesting content and started hanging out with you guys and the conversations you were

having right just at dinner around the office. You know, Filippo wasn't in much content before

we started all this, but he was so into the news and like had really good insight into car stories.

Yeah. It just, it needed to be recorded. And so, so we converted there's the live show,

which was covering auctions. We converted that into the version of this podcast, which is,

again, going back to like my top three roots is just trying to embrace this like weekly news,

news element where our audience could come and get what's the current happenings in the

automotive world with the same group of friends that are. And then we chat about our cars and our

car life. And it's a, it's a pretty good situation. It's a great idea. There was a little bit of

selling it. I remember that people, there were some people in other parts of the business

who wanted to really focus more on the auctions, the live auctions, etc, which actually is kind of

a cool format, but we really had this was like what we thought would sell it and when what we

thought would do well. And I'm thrilled that so many people love it and that we are on episode 105.

I know. Two years last week of the podcast. It's really cool. You know, doing a news thing is,

again, an idea that I like raised my hand at Motor Trend many times and said we should be using this

massive office space to do a CNN style news, daily weekly news thing. And it never,

never took off. And so to have it be successful on the Doug channel is so cool.

Very successful. I mean, I think we're number one in car pods. And I think the news is,

when I, when I get feedback from people, the news is the segment that keeps them especially,

I think people like to hear us chat about cars and stuff after the news, but I think the news is

like the most interesting, most exciting piece that gets the most people in. Dream guess, I think

Whistlin Diesel would be pretty fun at the moment. And the current Whistlin would be a good guess.

Like I think I'd be nervous. We need to be meeting your rights. Like it's like,

it's like if Filippo ever met one of his Italian idols, Pavarotti or Michelangelo.

That would be something.

So Whistlin, come on the pod. Pop on the pod. I would make,

we've made it no guest exception for a few people. We had Whovion. We had John Tamarian on,

who was who they named the Lamborghini Temorario for. Right. And so we would do it for the right

person. Right. We had, we had RJ Scrumman on. Like we've done for a few legit people,

but you got to be legit. You can't just be the real ass park owl talking about his third gen

four. You got to be legit. And if you have, if you're having AC issues, all the better.

Do you remember the day that I sold my A class and the guy came to pick it up and I was like,

hey man, you want to be on the pod? This is when we were still doing the pod. He was like, all right.

I liked him a lot.

Toddly sold it. Next, next question from Victory Buns.

Dear Sean, if you weren't producing the cars and bids podcast, what would you be doing professionally?

Let's say I hadn't called you out of Motor Trend. Motor Trend heavily restructured,

reorg their content. Do you think it's still be working there?

Probably not. Probably not. I was just very much specifically working on roadworthy rescues

at the time, which doesn't have any, any more seasons. I was freelancing.

When you're in automotive TV producing, the shows have some have good runs, some have very

short runs. But amazingly, the phone always seems to ring for automotive content. There's,

there's always something, something going on somewhere. And I hope I would be as fortunate

to continue working in cars. It's, it's, it's the coolest. It really is genuinely the coolest to

be able to storytell and do that with the thing that you love. You know, it's,

or when I get home, I go on cars and bids. It's like, right? That's what we all do.

Right. Right. 100%.

There's our Sean podcast. Sean, do you have anything you want to add?

We never got to Alfa Romeo's, which I think is a real, real shame. Is I have someone,

someone did ask, Dear Sean, can you please, please explain why Doug should be into old

Alphas like yours? Now, I'm not an old Alpha enthusiast. However, me and you did recently

drive this Alfa Romeo TZ, tubularis agano. Yeah. We got this TZ1 in the office, and it was one of

the greatest automotive experiences of my entire life. So now I am into old Alfa. So special.

So I didn't get into this because we had so much else to cover, but I have a 1974 Alpha

Romeo GTV that was a massive, massive, not this car, not this car. This is the car that's in the

office. This is a TZ. But my GTV was super ratty and I fixed it up and it's, it's, it's beautiful.

It's a very fun car, but I've kind of been on the fence of selling it. I think you will sell it.

It may, it might be on Doug's schedule to review. However, however, both Doug and I's life changed.

That was with this Alfa Romeo TZ. It's, it is like the lightest, most eager, athletic, fun old

school. It's a four cylinder, but it sounds like it's qualifying for Le Mans. The steering is

direct, the shifter and clutch feel modern. It was so good. So Sean no longer has to convince me

on old Alphas. Yeah. I then got home and got in my GTV and it felt like a marshmallow. I thought

it was like, it's like hardcore, super like a revvy thing. And that is just on a whole nother

level. Well, believe it or not, this is going to be on cars and bids. We're actually auctioning this

car. This car is going to be sold on cars and bids. I got a review coming with it. It's got a huge

reserve. It's a, it's a big special car, special, valuable car. We'll cover more of that later.

But I'm glad you got to sneak in Alphas, which I'm obsessed with old cars, old cars, me and you,

Felipe will never know the joy. I don't know, 1973, 43, 45. Oh, that's true. Oh,

you're now the old truck is up there. Thank you. Finally recognition. I appreciate you working

in Alphas and I appreciate you coming on the pod. Subscribe to key, send Sean an email,

tell him if you liked his appearance on the pod. I hope you enjoyed it because it's never

happening again. It's wonderful. You'll never see me again. Never be in front of the camera again,

ever as long as he lives. This was the end of Sean, undoubtedly the most time you've ever

spent any content of anything you've ever done. Amazing to see Sean. Sean, thank you for joining

us on our special podcast. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Bye.

Behind The Scenes With Producer Sean! Top Gear Stories, Future Content And More! THIS CAR POD! EP105

About this episode

Top Gear USA

passenger seat on fire

fire extinguisher

Wheeler Dealers

Cars and Bids

cars and coffees

Claude

Warby Parker

YouTube

JDM documentary

car reviews

Jalopnik

drag strip

borrow a random car from a dealer

Ford

G-Wag

trans

roof racks

speed yellow

Ferrari FF

eBay

Ferrari 400i

electrical draw

V12

engines swapped

Porsche Carrera GT

TCU

PPF

rock chip

heated seats

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