Bugatti is sold out until 2029, Amazon Autos, Interesting Insights From Rivian CEO & More

Hey, you know, I'm probably more of the techie guy than you are.

Welcome to the show, everybody.

By the way, we're going to get right into a very serious topics today.

I have lost a- Let's get it hyped up.

Yeah, let's get it hyped up.

I've lost no AirPods, no Apple Watches, no phones,

but I know people that do frequently.

And I'm not saying you're that person, but if you had to choose between all

of the technology that we've gotten with AirPods, Bose,

all of the beats by Dre, everything, and then you revert back to,

or if you revert back to the older stuff, isn't the older stuff sometimes better?

Yeah, I mean, I got to tell you.

So as you know, and I'll show on camera, I mean, just here.

Yeah.

Now, one, I got three different AirPods.

And so about three weeks ago,

I had a really important phone call, but I wasn't in my office.

And I was in between like things I had to do, right?

You've been in those positions.

I have shit to do, but I got it.

So anyway, I have this like epiphany moment.

And I.

An hour and a half meeting that I knew I had,

I had to sit there with my phone to my ear

because the AirPods that I was around were not charged.

And I'm like, it's probably happened to all of you out there.

OK, this is first world problems.

I understand I'm not trying to act like it's, you know, you know,

no drinking water or something like that.

Like I'm not I'm pretty aware that this is a first world problem.

So I just kind of said, I go, I'm going to go

in order just to old school.

And for those of you who don't watch on YouTube, go watch on YouTube.

I went back to the old.

I can't believe you did that, you know, and I got to tell you,

I've been doing it exclusively, except for when you and I talk on here.

I'm doing a podcast with somebody.

Yeah, that's the only time I go wireless,

which I don't even really need to do.

I could just plug the wire into here and be fine.

I just like, you know, I have more head movement than most people

and I don't want it like clanking on my desk, but I'm off the AirPods.

And I got like a thousand pairs of them.

And I just go, I'm just tired of like always having to worry to charge them.

Always are they charged?

Or, you know, you know, at times I get to wiggle them in there

because they're not charging the same.

I just go, you know what, let me get some wire.

I can't believe how happy I am.

I can't believe you're saying this.

I really can't believe this is coming out of your mouth

because that's one of the things I mean, you're always on the go.

Either if you're working on a car, you're around a car,

you're on location somewhere.

Obviously you're on calls and your car all the time.

I never would have thought that a wired connection would be

what you would want to revert back to.

Because sometimes it doesn't, doesn't the wire get caught up

like you're in the car, you're working around the car?

Look, I've got, I've gotten the wire caught up.

I've had to, you know, I've had to adjust my movements.

Like still if I'm working on a car, I do wear AirPods.

Obviously it's just because you move around so much,

I just want to listen to music or a podcast or whatever.

But just my everyday phone calls,

things that I have to handle, meetings that I have to be in,

it's all wired now.

Like even I was on a meeting with you yesterday on some things

and I was in my car, that was wired.

Sounded very good.

Yeah, I wired, you know, through, gotta get used to it.

Look, for those of you who haven't been on wired,

you can get it caught on some things on your desk

and you can definitely have some moments.

But I just, you know, I don't know how everybody else

feels, they probably have stuff this has happened to.

You know, I see all these people wearing wearables

and they got whoops straps on.

And I mean, have we just gotten crazy?

Well, dude, this is segueing perfectly into one of the topics

we had on today's agenda anyway.

But I will say, I was late to the AirPods game.

Like I always have them on me now obviously,

but I was wired for the longest time.

And the first wireless I went into was the Bose,

like you would wrap around your neck.

Dude, I had two fucking AirPods hanging on my chest.

Like I had, you know, earpieces in it all times

for years, for years and years.

And then finally I just broke down

and got the AirPods because my wife was raving about them.

And it was a game changer.

When people describe like advancements in technology,

they always go back to the AirPods

and I never really got it.

Didn't really think it was for me.

My wife was like, they look like jizz

from like the Ben Stiller movie

where it's like hanging outside of his head.

And I'm like, you know what, they really do.

She's like, I can't get them in black.

I was like, no, they don't make them in black.

But anyway, now I have them.

But I mean, I agree with you.

The wired connection was always a solid audio

and microphone.

Well, and the other thing is as your AirPods age,

they go in and out while you're talking to people.

Yeah.

For the person on the other end,

I've had none of those complaints in three weeks.

Like, you know, will I stay this way forever?

I don't really know.

But I know that I got so frustrated.

I'm like, I mean, and by the way,

it costs like 18 bucks for the highest quality one of these.

What's it, what are AirPods now?

A couple hundred bucks?

Yeah.

If you want some decent ones, they're like 150.

Yeah.

I mean, this is $20.

Even that's expensive.

I mean, I guess, you know, inflation and all that.

But I figured that was at least $7 at this point.

Like, where at the price?

Yeah, I'm sure you could find one.

I mean, I got it like the Apple one, you know?

So it's just look at it and I go,

I don't know how long I'm going to be here.

You know, this is one of those things.

You buy a car, you're not sure about it.

You're like, I don't know how much I'm going to love this thing.

But this is one of those ones.

I'm like, I'm good with it right now.

I got so pissed off that day that I literally got off the call.

I had something else to do.

I got off the call.

Through the AirPods.

100%.

Through against the wall.

And every time they fall, they always go shit.

They ever go everywhere.

Like, they just felt like, I can never find it.

Nothing goes everywhere.

Like two AirPods they dropped or thrown or whatever.

Dude, this happened yesterday and I literally fell

and it even sounded like it hit that hard as it went like that.

And it took me 15 minutes to find the left AirPods.

I'm like, there's no way it went this far.

I was so annoyed.

100%.

But you know, let's get into some car talk

and car information here.

I got so many things going on in the car world

that I wanted to talk to you about this week.

But at the top of the list this week was Bugatti.

Are you a Bugatti fan?

Yeah, I mean, obviously fan is one of those things

where you go.

I mean, the Chiron was probably a big moment

for a lot of us, right?

I mean, that was kind of like, I don't know, mainstream.

More mainstream than the Bugatti brand normally.

Chiron, Veyron, those were sort of like,

Bugatti's always been around, right?

But for the mainstream, because when they hit

and the more visibility, you look at the visibility

of Bugatti's now through social media.

I think Bugatti has done a pretty good job

of staying true to themselves,

which I think I kind of respect.

Yeah, I mean, talk about like a unique bespoke

kind of a brand, right?

So Bugatti has sold out until 2029

when it comes to this Tipuron.

Well, I guess it would be pronounced.

Torbillon.

Torbillon, because it's a French word,

but you know, I'm Mexican,

so it always comes out like a Spanish word.

But regardless, so this 1800 horsepower car

is gonna keep the company busy until 2029.

So apparently they're already sold out.

If you want one too late, you can't even get one anymore.

I think it's gonna be limited to 500,

but I got another screen here

that I'm gonna pull up for you with images of it.

Have you, I've never driven one.

Have you driven any of the past?

I haven't like driven it, driving it.

Oh no, yeah.

I've had some Chiron's that we've taken care of

that I've gotten to sort of move around and,

you know, that kind of, but drive it, drive it.

No, I have.

What an absolute, crazy machine, right?

I'm sure, like here's some images

if you guys are watching on YouTube.

Pronounce the word again for me, Nick,

because you're so, so much as a vaunt

when it comes to these words.

Isn't it Torbillon?

I believe it is.

I'm gonna go with Torbillon.

We're not, I'm not, I'm not great.

Look, I got images.

This thing looks awesome.

The thing looks awesome, dude.

Absolutely incredible.

There's something about it, like the appeal of it.

Look, they have stayed true, right?

This is kind of the thing that we want

from a builder like this is that

the back ends a little McLaren-ish for me.

Yeah, you're right.

I would still love to see, you know,

that they're sort of old styling,

but they have to update it and it looks great.

They kept the front end, you know,

exactly how they should.

And look, one of the things you have to say

about a company like Bugatti is, you know,

Ferrari's not the Ferrari of old.

Lambo's not the Lambo of old for obvious reasons.

I'm not banging on them.

They've made good business decisions to grow their brand

and those types of things.

But Bugatti's one of those ones that they just go,

sort of like Rolls-Royce to me.

Rolls-Royce just kind of stays

in the pocket of Rolls-Royce, right?

You know, Bugatti stays in the pocket of Bugatti.

And that's a lot harder than people think

because Bugatti has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger,

you know, a bigger profile.

It's easy to go chase.

Let's go do this, let's go do that.

They've just sort of stayed in the pocket

and that's to be celebrated, I think.

Yeah, one of the interesting things about the article,

this was through Motor One.

They sat down with them, had a, you know,

had a conversation with them,

either them or Carbo's are coming into the two

and they were describing how easy it is

for a company like this to plan for the future,

like plan what's next when you already have

this much room of runway with cars you put together,

produce and manufacture, whatever.

That way for, you know, three, four, five years

in the future, you've had so much time

to like actually get your footing

about whatever's next and they're never like guessing,

they're never like running against the clock.

They have so much runway

and I thought that was fascinating.

Well, I think, if anybody, I want to give a shout out.

There was a really good interview coming out

of Monterey Car Week with the Rivian CEO,

believe on DeMiro's podcast.

Which again, we like to give a shout out

when people do great things.

I thought it was a good interview with that group.

And he was talking about how like,

they're having to call other car companies

and go, hey, what are you doing

with your wire harnesses with all these tariff things?

Right, like, and he made a good point.

He goes, I don't think people realize

that it's more collaborative for our car companies

during this uncertain time to like figure out

what we're doing.

And he had some pretty interesting points

and I know people always ask us about tariffs

and I'm not going to sit here

and act like we're tariff experts

around the globe and the impact.

But the funny part he said is he goes,

I don't think we're going to change much manufacturing

from Canada and Mexico.

Like we're not going to eliminate those suppliers.

But there are suppliers from any country but there

that we're going to really look at,

what do we have to do to bring it on shore,

bring it into Mexico or bring it into Canada

or bring it onto the shores near us.

And I thought that was interesting

because he was really well spoken about the challenges

but also calming down like, hey, yes,

we're having to watch it every day

and it's been in flux for a long time now

it seems like for a business.

He goes, but you're not just going to rip stuff

out of Mexico because what you think is

after this term is up for this presidency

that that stuff can normalize again.

So us just pulling it out for all the people

that keep believing all of this stuff

is going to come on shore of America.

He kind of painted a different picture.

He painted a picture of sort of if it's in

the North America world between these three countries

that there really is not an issue, right?

Like they're just going to accept it,

they're going to absorb it, they're going to pass it on

but they are going to look at how do we

really not do business with China.

And he made it pretty clear.

He thinks that the days that there's going

to be contentious with China for the foreseeable future

no matter who's in office.

And I think it was interesting for him to say that on record.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm going to go listen to that.

And it's funny that you bring this up, man.

We're always in sync, ladies and gentlemen.

Nick and I are always in sync.

So there was a comment left yesterday,

one of the shorts from the video.

There was a show that was a couple of weeks ago,

but like I say, the reels are about a week apart

from when episodes launch.

And it was about tariffs.

It was about Toyota in particular, I believe,

and the tariffs and the Japan deal and whatever.

And look, shorts are meant to spark curiosity,

interest, go listen to the full thing.

The problem with today's world is that

once you're invested in a short,

so that's 30 seconds all the way up to 90 seconds of me on,

you get invested in what was said

in that little bitty window.

So I love politics.

People know this.

People that know me know I love politics.

So it's because tariffs are a political conversation piece.

So this person, it's one of these big channels

that I'd actually been consuming for a long time.

And they're like, the one and a half,

two million type of subscribers

commented something about, what a stupid video.

That's not a tariffs work, right?

And I read it and I gave the same context to myself.

I'm like, hey, it was 50 seconds, the show's an hour.

And we've broken down tariffs

I know, I know.

mostly on this podcast.

And again, for all of you listening in audio form

or you're watching the long form on YouTube,

you're consuming podcasts the correct way.

Yes.

Right?

It doesn't matter whose it is.

Doesn't matter if it's ours or anybody's.

Shorts are meant to get us out into the ether

so you come listen to the full episode.

It's a pretty basic economic plan.

I mean, it's not,

there's not really much more to it, right?

It's like Walmart wants you to walk through the door

and buy stuff.

That's pretty much their business model, right?

The business model of a short for long form content

is that you go consume the long form YouTube video

of somebody building the whole car, right?

They may show you replacing the brakes, you know,

but they want you to go watch the full build video.

It's not really rocket science, but it is to people.

And if you're telling me,

these people have a million and a half

to two million followers and they left a comment.

It shows you how not common sense some of the world is.

That person is very well aware of what a short is.

And they still get worked up of like,

that's not how tariffs work.

Guys, I realized that it's not directly on MSRP.

We're in the middle of a conversation

and I'm giving simplistic math for people

to understand what could happen.

And oh, by the way, I had to say this to somebody recently

and I'll say it to everyone listening.

You're going to be closer to the way that I described it

than further away from that.

Well, that was exactly my point, man,

because everybody likes to cite the studies

and the data that's coming in.

Most everybody is absorbing a large chunk of these tariffs

to which I said, hey, we've said that before too.

They're got some Mercedes.

We've talked about Mercedes.

You know, extensively some of these brands

will absorb a lot of it.

Find me the data that says Toyota and Lexus

is going to absorb the majority of anything

that they incurred.

They've already posted one of the biggest losses

for a quarter, I believe, not too long ago.

So how long is that going to continue?

I don't know.

I said, but check out that.

I said, hey.

And then let me say this.

Absorbing things in the short term

doesn't mean you're going to do it forever.

Yeah, of course.

This is what people need to understand.

The reason a lot of companies,

not just car companies, are absorbing now

is because they think it could end, right?

And they go, we don't want to make a drastic decision

to our business model if this tariff is going to end.

The more that it gets set in stone and it's a year in,

that's when you're going to see

exactly how they feel about absorbing cost.

So the ignorance about tariffs,

and again, I will state this,

I am not a tariff expert, but think of it logically.

If I absorb something for six months,

and I watch that six months and I go,

oh, this is here to stay, am I more or less likely

to absorb it for the next two to three years?

All I'm saying.

All I was saying.

Okay, it's not difficult to understand.

Absorbing something for a quarter, for two quarters

is much different than saying

they're going to do it for the next 12 quarters.

That doesn't, those things don't correlate.

So again, let's talk about tariffs in the car business.

It's becoming very clear in the economy

that the tariff impact has really not hit the economy yet.

Every smart economist that you should trust

that I should trust is saying,

wait till the second half of this year,

then we're going to see the data start rolling in,

then we can really see the impact of all of this.

So even people that live and die by these numbers,

and our experts in that field go,

we don't really know yet.

We got to let the tariffs really hit,

really set into the economy,

then we got to see what happens.

So for all the channels out there,

for all the listeners out there,

we aren't tariff experts, but I can tell you,

absorbing something short-term

to see what happens is a business move.

Then when you see what happens,

you make a more long-term decision

for the next 24, 36 and beyond.

So that is what I think is probably most likely to happen.

Yeah, I don't think they could argue with the video as well

that we put out where we just said,

look, a lot of these numbers are lagging.

All these indicate forever, forever.

And just so we're clear,

lagging more today than they were five years ago,

which is insanity.

Pick a statistic over the last decade or two decades,

and you wouldn't have known it then,

it was way later that we found out

all of these numbers were lagging.

So now more than ever

with all the confusion of the flu years and whatnot.

Dude, back to the phrase from last week,

everybody's so bent out of shape about everything.

Like, look, we all want everybody to be on the same page.

We want the information to be accurate.

We want everything that everybody's paying for

to be fair and whatnot, but like simmer down,

simmer down now, as they used to say.

Yeah, and I think it's just one of these things,

like, and I'm not a political guy,

but politicizing the world as we have

has been so destructive.

So much.

To just people shooting the shit

and having a conversation and entering

into some common sense, wait and see moments.

If you run a business,

and I run a business that we had to have these conversations,

whether that's shipping things overseas or whatever,

I got news for everybody.

If anybody tells you they haven't figured out,

you and I have people that we know

are global operation heads of massive corporations.

They don't have it figured out.

They're meeting every day about it.

The Rivian CEO's like, yeah, we have a whole panel.

We watch it day to day.

That's their whole job.

So Rivian doesn't have it figured out,

but Billy Bob on the internet has it figured out.

I mean, that's just not,

that's not really how the world works.

You start talking to some real decision makers

and they go, we gotta see, man.

Like it's fluctuating day to day for us.

And you go, okay, then that's the conversation.

The conversation is let's talk about what could happen

because that's interesting conversation,

but let's talk it with the caveat of

we don't even really know the impact of all of this stuff.

And I'm really looking at probably summer of next year

before we really know what these car companies

are willing to absorb, not absorb,

what they're willing to do, not do,

what they're willing to bring on shore

and not bring on shore.

Because again, if you guys think all these factories

are coming to the US in five minutes,

I got news for you, that ain't happening.

Yeah, RIP Billy Bob.

Yeah, maybe our kids might see that.

Some of that come to fruition,

but let's be real guys, like everybody relax a bit.

Let's revert back, cleanse the paddle a little bit.

We're talking about Bugatti and the,

I actually got the pronunciation Torbillon.

You gotta put the YH on there, right?

Like the Yawging and the Yawning,

Mr. Ron Burgundy style, otherwise.

Everybody knows, don't take my pronunciation.

People will get mad if we don't say it right.

We learned that with Jaguar, Jaguar, you know.

And then we learned it with, what is it, Taycon.

We've gotten a lot, yes.

People, they shoot arrows.

If you don't get the name right, I'm like, bro, look.

Just so we're clear, back to the revian CEO,

he calls it Taycan as well.

Fantastic.

He seems like a smart guy.

Case in point, shut your face,

little trolls on the internet.

Look, listen, fun fact.

Well, I mean, I got some fun facts.

I wanted to start doing this periodically

with some of these stories of like fun facts

of the cars or the brand.

We were talking about wearables

and I'm so glad I can bring it back full circle.

Nick has roasted me, I don't know,

a dozen times about my Apple Watch

and how it's not.

Gentleman doesn't wear enough.

Gentleman needs a timepiece.

Okay, so in that world, what are your thoughts on,

because, what is it, is it Jacob and Co?

They collaborated on the watch, right,

to go along with the car.

In that world, what are your thoughts

on those kind of watches?

You know what, it's tough for me

because there's probably a lot of watch aficionados.

I'm sort of an amateur in this world,

not anywhere near where some of you are, I'm sure.

I'm sure there's a lot of great collaborations

going back the last 50 to 100 years.

But how I view things like that is just,

I'm not super into it.

I don't really get excited when they're like,

hey, there's this Porsche Watch coming out

with this new Porsche or there's this new Bugatti Watch

that you get when you purchase a Bugatti.

That's just not my enjoyment of the watch world.

Mine's sort of like, what war was this worn in?

I got the old Apollo 11.

Watch on today, that kind of stuff interests me.

And the other thing is, I don't really like watches

like you have pulled up here

for everybody not watching on YouTube.

We got like, that stuff just doesn't really interest me

and I really don't like big bulky watches like that.

So I would even be less interested.

Look, listen, are you gonna buy two GT3s

or this one watch?

Like, what are you?

And look, there's some watches, let me be clear,

and for all you guys that are into watches,

there's some watches that are really great investments.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

That, you know, like Rolex is sort of like the gold standard.

If you buy the right Rolex, you're not gonna,

you might even at some points outpace the S&P,

probably not the entire time you own the watch.

So like, but I understand that part of it.

It's just not my thing.

Like, those kind of watches don't excite me.

Now, I have some customers of mine

that show me some really cool stuff

that are in that price point and I go,

man, that's really cool.

But it's just not what I enjoy personally.

So fun fact about Bugatti 2, established in 1909,

I didn't realize it went that far back.

They're Type 35 produced from 1924 to 1930,

dominated the Grand Prix Racing

with over a thousand race wins.

Like, that's nuts.

That's nuts.

So this collab, also I forgot because, you know,

I got out of the watch world and jewelry in general.

Like, I don't know if you were a big jewelry guy

going out, but like, I kind of was.

And long story short, not anymore.

But Jacob and Co, not really his name.

If you wanna go find out more about him, you should.

But like, he's the original guy that was like,

notorious B.I.G., that's the guy that really,

or that brand pushed like, fine jewelry

or like jewelry into the music scene, into modern culture.

Yeah, I mean, I just, how do you like Metallica and jewelry?

Do you go with the guy Fieri, like, you know,

Silver with the Knuckles?

100%.

Yup, not the Knuckles, hey, take it easy, take it easy.

Necklaces, yes, because I'm Mexican,

it's like a part of our culture.

Once you're born, your mother puts like a gold bracelet

on your neck.

What did I notice about a lot of my Mexican buddies?

Tell me.

We lean on the culture when it's convenient.

Yeah, what are you talking about?

And then we don't lean on the culture when it isn't.

Of course.

I've noticed, is that your,

do you guys learn that in school?

It's like, hey, you know, when it comes up

and you can lean on it, let's make sure

we lean on it.

Why do you think my English is this good?

I know when I need to lean to which side

of which culture, my man.

I hear you, man, I hear you, look.

So for everybody, this is all jokes.

You gotta say that on the internet now.

It's just two guys having some jokes.

That's all take a breath.

Good observation.

Nick is very accurate about that too.

That is spot on.

All right.

We're gonna shift back into cars here.

So we've talked about Amazon being able to sell cars early

on, I think earlier this year is when it really started

to peak, you know, like February.

Was it at Hyundai?

It was exactly.

Correct.

It was exclusively Hyundai.

But now you're gonna be able to buy certified pre-owned

and used cars from both Hertz dealer,

Hertz and dealerships on Amazon.

Now, let that stew for a second

because when I started reading about this,

the first thing that came into mind is

once Amazon has a foundation to sell used cars,

certified pre-owned cars with Hertz and dealerships,

imagine how easy it's gonna be when Slate

and anything that they wanna sell of their own

is gonna be, you know, to roll out to the masses.

That's a good point.

It's a good point.

Again, let's go back to the, you know,

I don't wanna keep harping on,

but the Rivian CEO, a very little nugget

in his interview was they're gonna start selling

their used stuff at a pretty high level.

I don't know how quickly they'll roll that out,

but he kind of made the point as a purely EV manufacturer,

if they can bring the car back in,

update all the software,

and then get it back on the market.

And the other thing is that I think he was hinting at

and maybe even said it in his own way

that I found interesting is

he also knows how much money's in it.

Oh, yeah.

So one of the things that I think

really, really irks these newcomers,

like Rivian or Tesla or whatever,

is when they see anybody making money off what they're doing

because they're in that direct-to-consumer model.

So you could tell it irked him that guys

that were reselling Rivians early on

were making more money on Rivian cars than Rivian

because Rivian was losing money on every car.

Guys were buying the car, selling them on cars and bids

and bring a trailer for more money than they paid.

You gotta imagine that guy was sitting up at night

like, oh, what the fuck.

Fuming.

Yeah, so what this means is,

and I don't know how easy this will be to perform,

but I mean, these are smart people, right?

They'll figure it out.

You have to assume in some level.

And so you look at this and you go,

what are we really seeing?

Well, what we're seeing is that all of you

are clamoring about going direct-to-consumer

and these guys are over here going, well, wait a minute,

this secondary used market is where it's at.

That's where we can go capture a lot of money.

Then he made a really good point.

He goes, if we keep them healthy on the secondary market,

the more used stuff we have on there,

the more people know about our brand.

So he doesn't want his cars to die.

And let's remember, in the EV space,

Rivian's probably doing the best with depreciation.

And he talked about how they monitor very closely

the depreciation of their vehicles.

They think it's a part of them succeeding as a brand.

This is Tesla's issue, not caring.

This is going to be BYD's issue of not caring

if they ever got to the States.

Let's just use a hypothetical.

The depreciation curve keeps people

from believing in your brand.

So let's think about the strong brand Toyota's built.

They've really built it off the depreciation

in the used market.

Not really the strong sales market on their new cars,

although that's a big part of it.

Everybody believes in it because of the depreciation curve.

So look at a CEO of Rivian go,

yeah, we're going to figure out a way

to get ourselves into this used sales market

on our own stuff.

And that is the next frontier for a company like Rivian

that I think is really, really interesting.

And now you see Amazon jumping into that, right?

They find selling a new car for top dollars

probably pretty hard.

But if I can get some depreciation,

make it seem like a good deal,

but make you feel comfortable

that it's a used car that's certified

and is still protected,

that may be an easier sell

for some of these companies like Amazon

or Rivian directly or whatever.

I think it's an interesting next little move

that's going to happen here.

What's so interesting,

and this is like well beyond the flu years.

I mean, when I was younger, in my early 20s,

over 10, 12 years ago, thinking to myself,

like man, it's really interesting how,

and it's not all cars, but some cars you can sell,

we'll just use an example,

I don't know, like early days like a ZR1,

or even now, like you can sell a ZR1,

let's go back five, 10 years ago

for $90,000, $100,000, five, six,

half a dozen, a dozen times over,

the same car sells for $100,000.

Yeah, I mean, the more common one that we've seen

that everybody's more mainstream

is look what happened to a CT5V Blackway.

That's what I was thinking of,

I couldn't think of the name.

It's like a bunch of people just bought them,

drove them for a couple years,

sold it for about even,

maybe even right at even.

That's exactly the game plan.

And again, if companies like Rivian or anybody,

I mean, if Toyota thinks this way,

Ford thinks this way,

if they control the depreciation curve

by instilling more confidence in their used stuff,

that's the benefit of that brand,

the people that buy that brand,

you become more trusted because of it.

That is a severely long-term play.

Like the fact that Rivian's talking about that,

and we've said, I've said this about Rivian,

design is right, they stay in their pocket,

they know what they're trying to do,

you listen to them, you know that they're focused,

and he's a car enthusiast.

Like this is a guy that,

I think he used to rebuild Porsches, right?

So this isn't like some Joe Schmoe

that doesn't care about the car world.

And he starts to talk about

controlling their depreciation curve.

You go, hey man, that is when EVs become

really, really powerful is when you go,

you're not gonna lose all your money.

Yeah, and it's like selling anything, right?

Whether it's cars or a trinket,

depending on what market you're in,

if you can sell one thing, great, you have a business.

If you can sell one thing to a person

and keep selling to that person,

and that person brings somebody in because it's so good,

and then you start integrating upward,

and your brand expands,

and it has a whole different meaning than

anything you can compare it to.

I know we're talking about Rivian,

but if you do compare it to, you know,

Nissan's electric fleet or whatever,

it's like, man, what a crazy stark contrast there is

in people's perception.

You compare it to what Porsches

done over the last 10 to 15 years.

Yeah.

I mean, he said that Rivian

has the highest rebuyers, you know,

the repurchasing of Rivian is pretty high.

I believe it, yeah.

And you go, high quality, from all accounts,

from many people that write into us,

and my experience with the brand

with some of my customers, if they have a problem,

they fix it really fast.

They send people out to you.

They're not really doing the dealership model.

They're doing the service at your door type of model.

I don't know how long that'll last as they grow.

It is scalable.

I mean, as long as you can put the truck on the road,

you know, and the technician can come out.

It's not like you're changing a bunch of fluids

in someone's driveway.

You know what I mean?

So, I mean, seemingly they can scale that.

I don't know to what point that they'll want to do that.

They may want a central location a little bit more,

like in major cities or places

where their vehicles are really selling in high volume.

But I think this is the exact thing

that we don't talk about is the bedrock

of the car business is the resale, right?

Bringing it back in, reselling it.

Bringing it back in again, reselling it.

Bring it back in, reselling it.

And that's all been done through auto auctions

and smaller regional dealerships.

Most of your big dealerships are dumping

excess inventory into the auction world,

which is now the secondary market, right?

If you just follow the line here.

If car companies like Rivian,

who are already direct to consumer,

find a way to control their secondary market.

That's a pretty big move for the future

of the car business.

And look, it's a real nerdy part, right?

This isn't something that's like the most fun

to talk about and this and that.

But I mean-

Unless you're in the business.

Yeah, the fact that they're actually talking about this

and they're going to implement it.

Like he talked about it like,

yeah, we're gonna figure this baby out.

Like we're not gonna keep letting people

make money off of us.

And I've said this to people,

and this is my personal opinion.

The previous decade or two,

it wasn't about what you owned.

It was just a lot of middlemen

taking their piece of things in all of the economy.

I think the next 10 years is gonna be about

what the hell do you own?

Yeah.

What do you control?

And we got away from that.

That's why the American economy is the way it is

at this point in time, meaning how it functions.

There's a lot of middlemen,

a lot of service businesses, this and that.

And everybody wanted to outsource, outsource, outsource.

Now companies are starting to realize,

oh, wait a minute, the things we outsourced

were the profit centers

that we could have been running this entire time

and now we're gonna own it.

And by the way, that's a broad economy perspective

that I think your guy out there,

we get a lot of business questions for some reason.

I get a lot of DMs.

I think what you own is going to rule the day

for the next 10 to 20 years.

Yeah, I think everything,

whether it's business or a work conversation

with somebody, a leadership, whatever,

has to start with what's the objective?

And if you have the clearer your path

to the objective,

the better you can lay out your road to get there.

If it's just make stuff and sell stuff,

dude, I mean, you're miles away

from wherever most objectives tend to be,

which is be around for a long time.

Well, the thing about this,

make stuff was outsourced too.

Right, yeah, yeah.

So now just making and selling stuff,

you're ahead of majority of the economy

because the majority of the economy

is just bringing things in, playing the middleman.

So the car business has the same exact thing

as these car companies are now,

Rivian is involved.

I made the joke about Scout and Rivian.

Well, it turns out,

I mean, Rivian's involved in the project.

I mean, so Rivian,

so Rivian cuts this deal with the Volkswagen Auto Group,

the Volkswagen Auto Group helps Rivian,

Rivian helps the Volkswagen Auto Group.

As these companies get smarter,

which again, we're a long way for most of these companies

operating on the level that they need to today

in the quick turn economy.

But the better and better they get at it,

the more and more the old guard is retiring

and the new guard is looking at today and going,

I got 25 years left in my career.

I can't screw this up.

We need to get up to date.

We need to do more.

We need to do this.

You're going to see this change really fast.

And obviously tariffs have speeded, sped that up.

I mean, people are now like, what do we control?

And instantaneously in the last six months,

most of my conversations with people

are we don't control enough.

We gotta start controlling.

I mean, you're talking about people

who had no problem outsourcing their supply chain,

now talking about gobbling up companies

in their supply chain,

which basically kind of went away.

It used to be called vertically integration,

vertical integration.

That was a big term 20 years ago.

That term kind of petered off.

And now everybody's back to,

oh, we really should have, we really should have.

How can AI help us vertically integrate?

That's the conversation these days.

How do I vertically integrate this $27 billion business?

Let me just say, everybody listening now,

you're so lucky to be this early into the podcast.

And I don't want to pat ourselves in the back too much,

but here's why.

And I've said it before kind of loosely,

but when creators or shows rely on the show

to make their living,

it tends to be molded a certain way.

When you are making a living outside of a show

and then you create the show,

you don't necessarily need a bullshit with your audience

because that's not what's making your living.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

You get to be a little bit more blunt,

a little bit more direct, a little bit more not,

we see this a lot.

If we were to interview the Rivian CEO,

which again, I want to say,

those guys did an excellent job.

They really did.

We would have pushed him on more things

because I'm not reliant

and sitting at the Rivian booth during Monterey Carley.

Right.

You know, I'm not reliant on that.

Yeah.

And those guys are in some ways, right?

But they did a great job.

But I would have pushed him more on,

hey man, what are you guys looking to really control?

Because if you're going to keep outsourcing

these things and you don't know

the next president coming in,

you don't know the next global pandemic,

you don't know this, you don't know that,

I hear what you're saying,

but walk me through why we're not trying to bring things

closer to your factory to make your ability

to make cars quicker, faster, cheaper.

It's under your control.

I would just, not that I have the answer,

I would love to hear the answers to those questions though.

I really would because I think

that would help the consumer.

I think the consumer, he made a great point

of why they don't do a lot of things in cars, okay?

That many of us don't think about.

He's like, look, you do realize

you have to worry about projectiles in a car accident.

So all these people want to do

these crazy things inside of cars.

He goes, they get flushed out

because it'll become a projectile during an accident

and you just can't do it, right?

Like how many of us ever think about that?

Right.

We just don't, right?

And I think that's what's interesting

about these guys getting into an hour-long conversation.

Any of these CEOs, I would love to have Jim Farley

on here and go, okay, man, Model T moment, come on.

You know, dude, what we need to do in the future

is like as the show continues to grow

and it gets like this massive size,

but we're not at a booth

with these manufacturers or CEOs or whatever.

You just walk around with your DJI mic too, right?

And you're like, hey, can I ask you a question?

I'll come around on the other side,

kind of like I'm listening into the conversation.

Be like, hey, do you have another mic?

I'd love to just join in on this conversation.

No, we just have a podcast

without them knowing it's a podcast.

Yeah, but I actually think,

and I would be curious what our audience thinks.

I think these more candid conversations

makes their company stronger.

I agree, back to the authenticity.

I think PR people, and there's a lot of them

that have reached out to us and talked to us

and I understand their point of view,

don't realize something,

that the consumer is ripe for you to tell the truth.

And because you have all of this knowledge

that none of us have, right?

We don't know what you're dealing with

with government regulation to the T,

but when you tell people,

hey, I know you guys want this feature,

we want it too, it can't happen.

It cannot happen because of this, this, and this

in the regulatory system.

All of the sudden you take those conspiracy theories

out of the air and go, here's the truth.

But if it's always a sound bite,

if it's always a keynote speaking event

or something like that, nobody gets to hear

your side of the story.

And I think your side of the story as car manufacturers

is really goddamn it.

Power.

So if you get three tough questions,

but you get 10 questions that are easy for you to answer,

the return that you get is infinite in today's world.

I just don't think they see the world that way.

And I understand why they don't, by the way.

They don't want to get into a gotcha moment

or whatever, but I don't think most people like us

want to get someone in a gotcha moment.

It's like, dude, I'm just curious how the shit works.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, to put a bow in the original topic here,

which was Amazon, so the Amazon Autos

was previously limited to Hyundai, which we mentioned,

but now the spokesperson confirmed

that participating dealers can now list non-Honday inventory,

and originally it was gonna be limited to California.

Like most things are, they were gonna be limited

to the LA kind of area,

but they're gonna roll out Hertz vehicles

in Dallas, Houston, LA, Seattle

with plans to expand to 45 cities nationwide.

So really interesting.

I'll say this, our crowd be very cautious

buying any Hertz vehicles.

Yeah, please, we kind of talked about it

like a week or two ago.

Yeah, yeah, just be cautious.

Look, some deals are worth taking the risk.

I get it.

Other ones, just be cautious.

All right, let's have some, you know,

I don't want to be too rude and call it foolishness,

but we're gonna have a foolish conversation here.

Nick, all right, top three small pickup trucks

on the market today that you would consider

decent picks for a small pickup truck.

So not obviously a huge F-150,

but like three, give me three small-ish sized ones

that you would consider pretty good.

Yeah, I mean, I think you gotta go Ranger.

Okay.

Maverick.

All right.

Frontier.

Oh, what?

Frontier slept on.

We did not plan this, guys.

All right, so the 2026 Nissan Frontier

gets jazzed up with a new fill-in-the-blank partner

that's providing parts in a package for this truck.

Who is one of the most unsuspecting partners

that the Nissan Frontier could partner up with

for a performance vehicle on the Frontier?

Hennessey.

No, but that would have been pretty cool.

Kind of close, in that world.

It's in that world.

Well, I'll give you one more guess

and then I'll pull it up.

Just give me another, come on, yeah.

I know you'll get it.

They didn't do something with like Fox Racing again,

did they?

No, but it's honestly kind of close.

We have a Roush Frontier.

Oh, I did not see that coming.

You're exactly right, I did not see it coming.

The Frontier Pro FXR, you would think

this is a Ford product, is coming out later this summer.

That looks good.

It looks really good.

I mean, they have some really good suspension bits

and off-road, look at this.

This looks like what Chevy should have made.

Once again, I'm gonna say this.

No one really has their own design language anymore

on the truck side of things.

There's a Colorado, right?

That just looks like a Ranger at this point.

Yeah, it looks a little Ranger-esque,

but by the way, it looks great.

Yeah.

Okay, it looks great.

They did a great job.

And again, I think we all should root Nissan on.

We don't need Nissan to go bankrupt and be gone.

That gives us less choices.

We just need them to build better stuff.

This is a start, but I've always felt

that the Frontier was slept on.

That's one of those trucks I've just always felt like

did a pretty good job.

Agreed.

I think it got a little bit, how do you say it,

overshadowed by people not believing

in the Titan long-term.

And so the Frontier was like,

wow, it's just a baby Titan,

so I don't want anything to do with it.

The Frontier has done pretty well for a long time.

Not perfect, I'm not sitting here saying it's like,

you know, as dependable as a Tacoma

and all that kind of stuff,

but it's always been at a fair price point.

You know, it's always been,

but there's a lot of people

that just won't look at a Nissan.

And I understand that,

but Frontier has always been kind of slept on.

So we're going to get the R-Badging,

Fenders, Tailgate, new suspension bits,

tires, lift, you know, the whole thing,

all provided by Roush.

And it's something that you can't get

through the dealership.

Usually when there's partnerships like this,

you can get the parts at the dealership.

This is something you have to get through Roush,

you know, if it's not already on the vehicle

when you buy it.

Now, what do you think it's going to run?

It's later this summer, it's going to launch that.

To add the package?

No, no, just the package,

with it already on the package.

So Frontier, Pro FX, R.

52.

Wow, 47.9.

Hey, look at me.

Pretty good.

Hey, look at Nissan coming up five grand short.

Dude, yeah.

It's good for them.

Yeah, I think that's a cool package.

I think you can put tax title and everything, I'm right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let's just go ahead and check that out for now.

My bad, I didn't say you're right.

Fault me for not saying TTNL included.

Nick would have been spot on, you're absolutely right.

Yeah, no, what a good price point.

Again, I want people to understand,

you're talking about a special edition of the vehicle.

The reason I say that's a good price point,

because it is a special edition.

Should the Frontier be $47,000?

We can still have this debate.

The answer is no.

But if I can get a normal Frontier for 35, 36,

that's a pretty good price point, right?

I mean, for what it is,

if you can get it pretty well equipped at 35, 36.

These special editions,

just like we've seen in the TRD Pro world

or any kind of this world,

it just is what it is now, man.

I mean, there's a 10 to $15,000 swing

on a $35,000 car, right, or truck.

So, I mean, 35 to 50 being your top-end one,

that's probably the new normal,

that's probably exactly where Frontier is at.

Yeah, and if you, I mean, honestly, $43.95,

so $4,395 is what the kit kind of cost.

When you look at it and you read about the bits,

it's kind of pretty reasonable.

Yeah, in today's world, I mean, some $50,000.

And what's Ranger Raptor going for, do you know?

I can pull it up.

Let's see, you wanna take a guess.

Ranger Raptor, like the newest Ranger Raptor,

what do you think it's going for?

That would be like 53, I think.

57.5.

Damn.

Dude, do you know on that?

I'm just gonna go ahead and get a Gen 1 Raptor,

I'm not playing with that.

I didn't think it was that hot.

Well, I guess it's not surprising actually, yeah.

2025 MSRP is, yeah, roughly, roughly, they say.

It's not quite exact yet, so it's gonna be more like 67.

It depends on that week of sales,

like what kind of deal you're gonna get on it.

Yeah, no, that's a high number.

So yeah, I mean, the frontier becomes

really, really appealing, because again, guys,

think of our rule we've shared.

When your car's under $100,000,

$10,000 difference is a lot bigger than you think.

It can do a huge.

Those $10,000 jumps become very, very costly

and the financing in your resale and everything,

you really need to look at those

five $10,000 jumps as big deals.

So if we're talking about, I really could get a Roush

Frontier for 47, and I'm roughly up at 60, 61,

you know, on a Ranger Raptor,

you should be looking at the Nissan.

Absolutely, actually what you should be looking at

is used Raptors.

Yeah, I know, I was gonna say, let's be real,

that's the real answer right there.

All right, we're gonna swing back over to the EV side.

2026 BMW iX3, a luxurious electric SUV.

I love how Garg Evert love you.

Worth waiting for, they end almost every article

with this vehicle is worth waiting for.

But I gotta show it, no it isn't.

I gotta show you this and this,

I had to pull it up for one reason only

and I'll get into it in a second.

It has one of the craziest features that legit piss me off.

But hey, your favorite, it's in camo.

Oh, it's camo.

It's camo, it's your favorite.

I can't tell what car it is.

You can't tell what it is.

There's only two shots.

Just where everybody out there was saying

they were cool with the camo and the LFR,

they pulled that camo off pretty quick

at Monterey car week, huh?

Yeah, they did.

I mean, come on.

It looks good without the camo, imagine that.

Yeah, I mean, whoa, you really tricked us

that you had a car coming out, okay.

Look, so you're again, the bigger of the two of us,

fans of BMW, but this is gonna be a whole new architecture,

a whole new thing for their EVs,

they're gonna be able to use it in their hybrids,

EVs, gasoline cars.

But it kinda just noted one little thing, Nick,

that is in this picture right here.

That is good. Oh my God.

Dude, look, there's no gauge cluster.

Look what they've done.

They've put a two inch all the way across the windshield

screen from side to side at the bottom of the-

This is an, if that interior is on that car,

that's an abomination.

What an atrocity.

Now, I'm gonna try, can I switch over to the big one?

Please tell me that.

Give me a second.

I mean, are they saying this is like the pre-production

model?

This is what we are to expect on this car.

Oh my God, you guys gotta go watch it.

I'm gonna pull up a bigger angle of it right here.

Is this should be it?

Dude?

Oh.

What is up with that two toned interior?

Yeah, honestly, I was so pissed at the screen

non-gauge cluster dash here that I didn't even realize.

Look, it's kind of like corduroy-ish too.

Like, and it's got a stupid little steering wheel.

This is just crazy.

I mean, so for everybody out there

that may be more into the tech side of things,

I wanna ask this question.

So I have this massive screen going across the windshield

for those of you not watching.

It's basically, like you said, a couple inches tall,

but it's the whole top of the dash.

Essentially, where my 2003 LX has my night vision.

That's right, folks, night vision.

Night vision?

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah.

Hey, don't laugh.

I mean, there's deer that pops out in front of me

while I'm on the Las Vegas Strip.

My God.

I got it in night vision.

Oh, totally, a ton of deer out there.

Yeah, huge deer population on the Strip.

But then I have this huge screen down by me as well.

It's worse than the Volkswagen one from the Golf R.

This one, actually, it's like the screen

from back in the day, it goes and then it pops up too.

So it's away from the dash and it's elevated a half away.

Another six inches above the dash.

I'll just ask people.

I can't believe this.

If they could reduce your cost 10 grand on the vehicle

and you just had the simple screen in front of you

and you could cut out the atrocity by the windshield,

I just think 99% of buyers would be like,

you mean it's 10 grand off?

I just gotta show it again.

Now, here's the deal.

If I open this door and I don't wanna get too graphic

with people, if I open this door and I saw this interior,

I would immediately vomit on the interior.

So they got bigger issues than just the screens.

This two-tone interior is, this is not my BMW.

You keep saying I'm a fan of BMW.

We gotta make sure we understand that.

This is not my BMW.

This is nothing.

Look at the thickness on the top portion of the seat

is about the thickness of an 80s restroom rug

from back in the day.

It's a carpeted rug.

Yeah, you remember those like seat covers

that were on the top of the toilet,

you know, that were like fuzzy.

That's what the shit looks like.

Boom, that's exactly it.

Let me also make another point.

Can you pull that back up for the people

that are watching on you?

Absolutely.

You're being told all of these safety features built in,

all of these things are what's running the cost up

for these car companies.

Why would I make it harder to see out of the windshield

if I cared about safety?

This is where the whole argument,

and again, this is where we talk about

if CEOs really came on a podcast to talk openly,

I'd go, hey, we're looking at this.

First of all, whoever designed this interior

should be fired immediately, Mr. CEO.

Secondly, you're telling me it's all about safety

and you're giving me less visibility

out of the most important part of the car.

I don't see where the argument is there.

I mean, I'm looking at this and I'm going,

that windshield looks kind of smallish.

As it is, right?

As it is.

Yeah.

Now again, a photo is a photo and I might get in it

and they go, hey, there's a bunch of green house

coming through, you don't understand.

Cool, I'd love to hear that.

But putting something that visually catches your eye

through the windshield, like heads up display is enough,

man, all I need is a heads up display,

or in my case, night vision,

in case the deer runs across, right?

They'd know you drove the Batmobile, but okay.

Yeah, I'm just, no, I was 2003.

I mean, my tech is high level, you know, Rob?

For everybody out there, we're just having a joke,

you know, gotta say that now.

But when you look at this,

I just don't know how you rectify,

we're doing all of this tech to make things safer,

but we're gonna make it harder for you

to see out of the windshield.

And when you look out of the windshield,

you might actually be more distracted.

I cannot wait to see what this looks like

in full production.

And if it's anywhere near this,

I'm just, I thought this was satirical.

Like I thought some kid, you know,

designed like a futuristic car to.

It doesn't make me the AI and say,

hey, make me the ugliest.

Exactly.

Because you're on BMW, you ever could?

Google VO3 or VO4, whatever they're on,

please make me the most dangerous interior

with a screen on the windshield itself.

Not a heads up display.

Yeah, I'd be interested to people that listen,

do you think just because you make an EV in your brand

that you have to abandon everything

that makes you your brand on the interior of the car,

I never thought that's what you had to do.

No, but it seems like every brand car or not

tends to go down that road at one point.

I don't know if we want to get into Cracker Barrel

because it's not very car related,

but you know, people are up in arms about the crack.

Hold on, somebody just told me this.

What the hell is going on at Cracker Barrel?

Well, they're good.

They're stocks plunging at a five year

fucking rate in the last four days,

you know, our last five days.

They, I'm going to say this exactly the way

it was sent to me.

And we're all, we all get jokes here,

but they're like, dude,

did you see the logo for Cracker Barrel?

I was like, no.

They took away the Cracker and the barrel.

I was like, oh my God, that's weird.

I mean, look, it's just another Mexican American

making fun of people.

I don't know, I don't know what you're doing here, Rob.

I mean, you just, you know what?

It offends me.

I'm going to pull the Shane Gillis

where he tells the jokes like, oh, like, oh,

who's going to get it off of it first, oh.

Yeah.

Is that all he did was change the logo

or are they like changing the stores?

No, they're changing the stores, everything, dude.

So.

Oh, that's a bad move.

I know.

Cracker Barrel is literally packed everywhere out here.

I know.

You don't have many of them.

They're always packed.

So yeah, the CEO, I guess on her, if it's new CEO,

whatever, she wasn't like on the morning show

talking about how we're going to keep.

I already got it.

I know, dude, exactly on the morning show.

Gotcha.

Michael Strayhan's like, really?

Oh, no way, right?

We're keeping a lot of the feel.

I can't get his teeth fixed.

I'm not really, you know,

they don't really need to hear your thoughts

on CEOs of Cracker Barrel.

Dude, all I got to say is again,

if you guys want to go watch some of the videos

of this whole debacle go, it's hilarious.

I think the first couple of photos

of what the new concept's going to look like

versus the old concept,

they try to keep it somewhat similar

with some of the aesthetic,

but I mean, it's a whole new thing.

They're packed, though.

What do you need to mess with being packed?

It's crazy.

Being crowded is the whole goal.

Yeah.

You're already crowded.

Now, many of you guys may live in places

that have like 15 or 20 or 30 Cracker Barrels,

maybe they're seeing,

but I'm telling you what,

out here next to this huge, like,

you know, we have something out here

called the Silverton Casino,

and they have like one of the biggest

Bass Pro Shops you've ever seen in your life,

and they have this boat thing,

and then there's a Cracker Barrel.

Buddy, when you're driving on the freeway,

you can see the Cracker Barrel.

The line's always out the door.

I mean, it doesn't matter when you,

it doesn't matter when you go buy the thing.

Like, I don't know what it's like

in the rest of the country.

I mean, people can probably inform me,

I'm not a big Cracker Barrel expert,

but I'm just saying like,

do you really need to just make some good food?

This is what we say in the car business all the time.

Just make good stuff.

Dude, that's all you got.

Your logo becomes irrelevant if your shit's good.

Listen, I get sent some really conspiratorial stuff

and somebody was like, well, it's official.

And this is, trust me, this is probably not true,

but it might be their goal was

to decolonize Cracker Barrel.

I was like, dude, if this is true,

I swear I'm gonna freak out.

So that's what I've been saying.

Here we are, BMW not doing interior as well,

and Cracker Barrel ending, it's right.

I did not have either one of those on my Bingo car for 2025,

but again, here we are.

What a ride, what a whirlwind it has been this week.

Speaking of, you did bring up the LFR.

I think in the video that we posted

probably about two weeks ago,

you said let's hope that they keep it true

right to the original, to the LFA

with the drive chain and all that.

It's officially gonna be a V8 hybrid,

which I think you said in the video,

let's hope they don't make it a hybrid,

but of course, I think we knew that, we knew that.

So here's just the shot that we have

on the front page of Car and Driver this week,

which it looks good, we saw it in real person

and it's cool, but.

Look, man, I mean, they did a good job of LC 500.

Doesn't matter whether you like the car

or you like the brand, LC 500 was done well.

LFA, I get it, some of you guys may like it,

may not like the design of it.

I like the design of it,

especially if you see it in person enough.

The design's great.

I mean, in this part of the Lexus brand,

they tend to do very well.

I mean, the ISF and all those types of car,

I mean, they've always done this part of the market

pretty well on a design.

Now we all gotta say, what's it gonna sound like?

What's it gonna drive like?

Who's it really going after?

And I wanna prepare people, have a lot of people that go,

if it's not 100 grand, they're not gonna sell it.

It's like, guys, when they do these types of projects,

it doesn't matter the car company.

This isn't a car company that's heavily invested

in sports cars, meaning like,

that's not where their money comes from.

A lot of this is looked at internally

as a special project, as a sort of halo effect of,

we have this cool thing.

I mean, they're not building an LC 500

because they're making eight billion of them a year.

They just wanna have it.

They wanna be like, hey, we still have this.

We're still in this world.

And now it's all about how they integrate

the hybrid system because as we've seen,

that can go great and that can go poorly.

And there seems to be very little in between.

So I think you have to give them the benefit of the doubt

because they've done this well before

and LC 500 has still done extremely well.

Again, regardless, if you've never driven one,

it's a good experience.

It's a nice interior.

It's a hell of a sound coming out of there.

You're talking about, it has heritage

of just a good sports car.

The question I have is,

are they using this for anything other than just saying,

we're here, we're still in the mix,

but that's about it.

And that feels like probably what this is.

Yeah, because some people in the comments

of some of the articles, we're making good points

where they haven't done something like this

in a long time, like a decade plus.

And then when you have things like the GTD

and what Corvette's doing,

you clearly aren't gonna be competing with them

if we're being honest, right?

With the car and the price.

So again, like you just said,

is it just to be in the mix?

To be like, hey, don't forget about us.

We're still doing this every once in a while.

Yeah, I mean, you look at it.

I mean, Acura did NSX.

Lexus could have seen it and said,

hey, it's kind of time for us to do,

let's get back to that LFA.

Some of this stuff, I wonder,

I don't wonder, I think.

Sometimes it's just a pet project.

Yes, good point.

Hey, we wanna do it.

We got the money.

We'll sell them and it'll kind of provide

this little cool halo on part of our brand

and we're still around and we're flexing our muscle

a little bit that we can still do this.

And, you know, there's a lot of ego involved

in running a business, right?

I mean, so the car companies are no different.

I mean, GTD is obviously a complete reaction to C8.

Yes.

And they just wanted to say, hey,

we can flex our muscles too.

They didn't really care that they were $100,000 more.

They just wanted to show that

they could flex their muscles a little bit.

Hey, if you're new to the show,

you know, we used to do this little segment

where we would go to low miles,

no miles on Instagram,

which has grown tremendously over the last six months

we've been doing this show.

Good for them.

I had something sent to me and I wanted to show you

because we haven't done one of these in a long time

and I'm not gonna play the audio

because there's music playing behind it,

but I'll just play the video.

Look at this, an 86 Ford AeroStar, 39,000 original miles.

Yeah, buddy.

Bro, look at this interior as the video's going.

Look at that gauge cluster.

Yeah, night rider style.

Look how clean.

By the way, if you guys were around

during the AeroStar time

and you had one in your family or whatever,

you definitely slammed your hand in that sliding door.

Somewhere.

Back, oh, I know that I did.

I was young when my family had an AeroStar, 100%.

Cause here's the thing, once that thing got running downhill

Oh, there's no stopping it.

Anything stopping it.

That's so funny.

So 39,000 original miles, it's for sale for 11,995.

You can get a lot worse car for 11,9.

No question.

We say this all the time.

When people are like,

hey, you can't get a good car under 20.

No, you can't get a new car for under 20.

I mean, we showed an Astro van

at one point that was like what, 35,000, 40,000 miles

and it was like 12 grand.

Yeah, if that.

It's like, no offense.

I mean, you can get a lot worse.

Now, I can't say what the person that sent it to me

said they would do with this van.

So I want you guys to send us an email,

clutchculturepodcast at gmail.com

to let me know what would you do with this van.

Well, thinking of your background,

are we talking low rider?

Hey, no, it wasn't low rider.

No, it wasn't low rider.

Much more dudes in the garage

talking about this kind of stuff.

So hey, if you want to send us your,

actually, you know what?

Send this to your friend

and see what they would do with it

and then tell us what they say.

Shagging wagon.

Dude, but in much different words.

100%.

In much different words.

I'm guessing that was two Bs

that everybody knows one time.

Good times.

All right, I gotta get,

let's get to a listener question actually.

And if there's time,

we'll get back to one more article.

But I'm gonna read this

exactly the way it was written to us.

So Evan wrote in and said,

first off, all caps.

I fucking love this podcast.

Thank you, Evan.

Thank you very much.

He says thank you.

I have a question.

I hope you could talk about it on the podcast.

What's the best way to keep a black SUV clean

under the following conditions?

Parked outside.

Hard water.

Addressed with the...

Hard water addresses with the ceramic coat.

Maybe I read that wrong.

Sorry, maybe you wrote that wrong.

He's got three black vehicles.

I had a black third gen TRD Tacoma recently totaled.

Now black Land Cruiser 250.

Wife has a black four runner all parked outside

in the driveway.

Thanks, keep doing the good work.

Dude, this stops you.

You have a black car.

You love black cars.

It stops me from getting a black car.

Like the maintenance of keeping it clean.

It's a,

I don't think the vast majority of people

should own a black car.

I agree.

I think it doesn't hide anything,

and if you're not meticulous,

I mean, I got to do a lot of work on my BMW

to get it to my standard just on a black vehicle

that I just haven't pulled it in the shop to do.

There's a very simple answer,

and it's more of a modern answer

that maybe some people have heard of

that obviously are really into detailing your own car,

but many people don't know about it.

It's called rinseless and waterless washes.

You know, essentially what I would do here,

since you have hard water,

it's probably really not worth you

getting a huge RO or DINI system installed,

which I have, you know,

I have spot free water in my shop and things like that,

and it's a heavy cost,

and so I wouldn't go that route,

but you can grab a few gallons of distilled water,

just have it delivered, you know, whatever.

Put a gallon in a bucket,

put some rinseless and waterless solution

in a bottle and in a bucket,

and wash your cars right there in the driveway.

You can go to our,

you can go to hyper clean store.

We show you how to rinse this in waterless wash,

but for many of you,

you're in an apartment,

you're in a condo,

you know, you live in a place like Philly or New York

or downtown LA,

and you're battling this stuff

or you're living somewhere where you go,

dude, my water's so hard

any time I go to wash the car.

Get some distilled water.

I think it's like what, 80 cents a gallon

or something like that at the store.

Can I have them delivered off Amazon, I'm sure.

Put it in a bucket, clean bucket,

couple towels.

We show you how to do it.

Go the rinseless and waterless route.

On our site, it's called Eco One.

If you guys wanna check it out.

But that's a,

I mean, that's actually how we care for car collections.

Okay, cause most car collections,

the cars aren't being moved, right?

So you have to find a way to actually wash the car

in place while not making a mess in somebody's,

you know, $10 million garage, right?

Like you gotta be real cautious about that.

So we actually use, for any of you that know,

we use a keg sprayer and we wet the car down lightly

with this solution and then we use towels

and things like that to not scratch the vehicle

and keep them looking good.

Very viable, very modern-ish technology.

It's been around a long time,

but I think the average consumer doesn't know it's there.

You don't need traditional soap

as not the only way to wash a car, okay?

There is, there are new solutions

for people right in this world.

You can do it right in your driveway.

You'll be fine.

Look, man, the more you work in direct sunlight,

the more it's gonna be a headache for you.

So, you know, if you can pull it into a shaded spot

on your street or you got something like,

hey, the sun goes down at this time

and, you know, my driveway is completely,

or the sun moves and my driveway is completely shaded,

just wait for some shade.

If you can't, you can't.

You can still do it in the sun,

but I want everybody to know,

like it can become troublesome

and any type of washing of your car sucks in the sun

compared to if there's a little bit of shade.

I just got a red, white and blue,

like legit United States flag canopy

so that I can get the GTI under it

and do some washing myself

because it's so much sun out here in Central Texas.

And yeah, it's a great way to go.

Otherwise, you have to wait, like Nick said,

till the end of the day,

and sometimes you don't have that time

when the sun's down,

so you got to try to get it in where it fits in.

Yeah, and look, don't be scared to do it in the sun.

I'm not saying you can't.

I'm just saying you just,

you'll have to do less at a time, work quicker.

Yeah, work quicker.

All very doable.

I mean, look, we're in Vegas.

If we have to pull cars out,

we do it in the sun all the day,

but we also have a process that's 20 years old.

Yeah, I mean, I can't quite do Nick's process yet.

I'm familiar with it,

but the speed at which you can move around a vehicle,

especially like those Raptors or whatever,

I'm like, Jesus Christ,

like that takes some of,

like you got to know which step you're about to go,

like two steps ahead in order to get it done.

Anything you guys do out there for a living,

if I went and tried to do it, I'd be a mess.

That's all, it's just time.

That's the route for you, man.

It'll change your life.

Thanks, Evan, for writing it in again.

If you guys want to write in,

it's a cultural podcast at gmail.com.

The last thing I had sent to me,

I was gonna mention earlier

when we were talking about Amazon

and the used cars and certified pre-owned.

So somebody sent me a video.

It was a lady walking around her driveway

and the captioning is just,

I hated my brand new Telluride so much

that I traded it in just four weeks or four days later.

And then the pants to her walking around a brand new

Traverse, which in my opinion,

that's a bad upgrade, quote unquote.

How much do you think?

It's more of a lateral move.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so.

But how much do you think somebody like that loses

on a brand new car going from new car to new car

in four weeks or four days it may have been?

10.

Dang.

And those Tellurides as it is have ruined a lot of people

in the last couple of years.

Yeah, we talked about it.

I mean, there's people that paid 80 grand

for a Telluride when then to trade it in

and it was worth 43.

I mean, those are real stories that took place.

I mean, that's not a joke.

That's not a hyperbole.

That's not any of that.

Like that actually happened.

I would say you're probably somewhere

five to $10,000, I mean, realistically.

And again, for anybody that bought a Telluride

or a Palisade, I put these in the same category,

which is those companies did an excellent job

cashing in on the mid-sized SUV

and upping their game from a design perspective.

I don't think they upgraded everything though.

So you still get the Hyundai experience,

the Kia experience, it just looks nicer.

And I've shared this before.

I mean, I know somebody with a Palisade

who was ecstatic about it when they bought it

and they should be.

And I hear the same story.

Doesn't matter if it's this person

or five other people as the interior is falling apart.

And I go, yeah, I mean, that's who that brand is.

And they can fix that.

Don't get me wrong, you can fix that.

But I haven't seen the necessary investment and quality

to fix what those cars age like.

Now, obviously this woman didn't get to the aging part.

She goes, I bought this car now.

Had she gone on a thorough test drive

of that Kia Telluride, probably wouldn't have purchased it.

That's what I was waiting for.

I was gonna say, I bet you this lady did not test drive it,

just made her husband go like,

I like the way that looks, sign the papers, let's go.

Yeah, all my friend has one, it looks really good.

I mean, that's a majority of the market now

and people don't believe me.

But we've had, what's his name?

Ben's in bow ties talking about

how people aren't test driving cars.

He's on the dealership lot every day, we aren't.

But it's what I see.

I mean, it's what I see in the limited people.

I go, guys, go test drive that thing

before we put an offer in.

It's so crazy.

And it doesn't matter, by the way,

this spans all wealth classes.

You're seeing people that this is a massive

financial decision for, and you're seeing people that

it's not even a financial decision.

All of them, for some reason,

are alienating driving the car before they buy it.

Dude, we're gonna wrap up after this, everybody.

I had a, so we had a get together over the weekend,

brother-in-law, one of the brother-in-law.

I've said brother-in-law a couple of times,

I have a few of them, right?

So one of them, I just found out over the weekend,

has never test driven any of the cars he's purchased.

And his justification is that he typically buys

like lesser expensive kind of dailies.

And then if it's just kind of something

that appeals to him, he just buys it.

And some of the times he has not liked

the way these cars drives,

but still refuses to test drive the cars.

It blew my mind, made me kind of mad,

and I kind of wanted to tell him to leave.

Yeah, yeah, what's the argument?

There is none, retarded.

I don't care if you listen to this, you're retarded.

I'd tell him in his face, like, what do you,

I couldn't, and when I asked him, like,

What's the argument?

There was no justification, rationalization.

It was just like, I just don't wanna go test drive,

I'm just not gonna do it.

Yeah, no, so this is a real thing.

There are people that just like feel

like they can't be bothered.

That's, that was, it was very much that.

I mean, you kind of deserve what's coming to you.

Yeah, pretty much, right?

You know what I mean?

Like that's what I say to people,

like I'd say that to anybody listening to this.

Like if you tell me you're not worth,

it's not worth you taking 15 minutes

and test driving the car.

And then you tell me about your bad experience

at the dealership, it's like, brother, I,

sorry man, I can't be on your side.

The nonchalantness of it was just mind blowing to me

because we know how important that is

in any car buying process,

whether you're spending 10 or 70,

like you gotta test drive the car.

Yeah, and you'll hear cracks and creaks

and things when you test drive.

If you, by the way, I don't know

if I told anybody this, maybe I need to be more specific.

Do not turn the radio on while you're driving the car.

Okay, you can turn, you can test the stereo system

sitting in the parking lot.

Yeah.

But you're really doing the test drive to go,

okay, what's it feel like?

Do I like the ride?

You're also listening.

Yeah, how many rattles does it have already?

Yeah, like, and again, I, you know,

I don't know how people are with sounds in their car.

I'm sure I'm a little bit OCD about this,

but you know, I have two jump seats

on the back of the Lexus when, you know,

you gotta tie them up to the handle to keep them.

I hear anything in my car.

I'm like, what's that?

Dude, I'm the same way.

What's going on?

I'm the same way.

Now, I think I'm a little scarred

from the BMW bings and dings.

Yeah.

You know, oh, that now like I hear anything.

I'm like, is my car overheating?

What's going on?

I'm looking at the gauges.

I mean, I'm probably scarred a little bit

from some of the cars I've purchased,

but guys, I can't say this enough.

Whether you think I'm an idiot or not,

or you think I'm smart or not, just test drive the car.

Dude, real quick, that reminded me.

I got the low windshield wiper sound on the other day.

I legit, my heart stopped.

I think I blacked out for half a second and came back.

I thought I had my first dash light.

I was like, no.

Yeah, I was just wondering if you've ever owned a car

that you loved and you got the dings on that car,

you've never recovered from it.

No.

Never.

Like I had a BMW severely overheat

and I thought it would crack the,

I couldn't like get off to get this thing to like safety

where I wouldn't get clipped by a hundred cars real quick.

And I'm like, oh my God, I just,

it's gonna crack the block.

Oh, I've got a room and I'm ever sent.

I'll never recover from that.

I will be 80 years old, hopefully,

like worried about every sound, every ding.

It doesn't matter how new the car is.

It doesn't matter how nice the car is.

Doesn't matter how much I know there's not a problem.

I hear anything and I'm like, what's going on?

Well, look, you know what?

Lucky for you, when you're 80,

your BMWs will all have screens

at the bottom of the windshield

and they'll just drive themselves,

maybe even fly or hover themselves to safety

and that's the world we're gonna live in.

Yeah, and I can jump potholes like BYD, you know what I mean?

Like we'll be good.

You do it twice is gonna void your warranty,

kind of like the GTRs.

Like if you use the nitrous, I think it was.

I could void the warranty or the old like saline focus

that Ford made, like you can't use this

to void your warranty.

All right, everybody.

We gave you a little bit longer

extra episode this week.

Follow us everywhere at ClutchCulturePod

on the socials and Nick is at HyperClean Store,

of course, I'm at RobGTV.

Nick, we'll see everybody next week.

See you guys.

Bugatti is sold out until 2029, Amazon Autos, Interesting Insights From Rivian CEO & More

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