Christmas special too: we meet Goodwood's Duke of Richmond

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Hello, welcome to the AutoCart Podcast, my week in cars with Pryor here.

Properly there. Hello, Steven.

Hello, mate. How was Christmas?

Oh, very nice, mate. Yeah, very good. Thank you. Very good. Still going on, in fact.

I'm not one of these people who starts Christmas in September, so I like to think that it goes on as long as it goes on.

So well into the first week of January, I'm happy. I am still.

When people say, you know that bit between Christmas and New Year, and I say no, that's Christmas.

Yeah. That bit, that's Christmas.

Well said.

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This week, we have a very special guest on our second of our two Christmas specials because we are talking to the Duke of Richmond very soon.

In the meantime, I think Steve and I, you do, we do probably have a bit of time for a bit of chat about our respective auto car columns because there is a magazine on sale now, a new one.

The second of the two Christmas double issues has just gone off sale and the last issue of December has just gone on sale.

That's got some new cars content, I think.

Yeah, I think there's also, isn't that the, that is the Jag issue because we, because we did the doubles.

We haven't, we've well and truly gone big on the new Jaguar drive story, but we haven't published it until now.

Yes, it hasn't appeared in print yet. Yeah, because the last, the last double had the Rotest yearbook and stuff like that in it.

I didn't mention that on the last pod. That was silly, wasn't it? Never mind. Never mind. I mean, can't be perfect, mate.

Well, no, well, very far from it all the time, but you think one of the things to do in this podcast would be buy a magazine, would be to say buy a magazine.

There's one on sale now, but the last Christmas double, if you nip to the shops today, you might still find the last Christmas double in it.

We kind of hope so, don't we? Well, we don't hope so because we hope they're sold out.

But yeah, the second of the Christmas doubles had the Rotest yearbook in it, which is the interesting, the big, the big feature stuff that runs all the way through the middle of that magazine.

So yes, we tend to run two Christmas doubles. I'm telling you now that they've gone, they've both gone off sale.

The first one is the Christmas road test and all that malarkey. The second one has the Rotest yearbook and now we're onto new cars.

So we're looking the 31st of December is very much a forward looking.

But we always take a punt, don't we, that in December the motor industry will not launch something absolutely earthquake shattering.

And of course, Jaguar chose to do it the sort of second week or whatever it was of December to do it.

So there was a lot of people running around in small circles.

Indeed. Yeah, I have a bit of a hay market, but all because publisher Christmas party issue that in the previous years, quite often I've said, yes, all right, I'll come to the Christmas party.

And then some job comes in and they go, actually, could you go and drive this somewhere?

And I have to say, all right, I'm not coming to the Christmas party and somebody gets somebody who organizes Christmas parties.

Well, that's annoying. And you go, yeah, but I couldn't help it.

No, no, of course not. This year it was not too, thankfully, it was not too fraught, I think.

Excellent.

What shall we talk first? Should we talk a little bit of your column before we start with the Duke of Richmond?

Yeah, the thing that intrigued me was in a column that you write for the very end of the year, I'm still rattling on about the last Grand Prix because it was so close to the end of the year.

And the thing that I know it was great that Lando won the championship and he deserved it and so on and Max Verstappen showed that he's a fantastic opponent for anybody.

But the thing that I was amused by was David Coulthard, at least on the Channel 4 telecast that I watched, David Coulthard got taken for a drive around the track by Verstappen in a Mustang dark horse.

And this, of course, was a bit of a puff for Ford because they're about to be engine providers for Red Bull in the future.

But Coulthard was sitting there and Verstappen appeared to be putting no effort whatsoever into it, but the outside pictures showed you the car and all sorts of strange angles.

And Coulthard was having, I felt quite cheered because he didn't really enjoy it. The loads are enough, the braking was heavy enough, the cornering loads were enough to make him quite uncomfortable.

And I thought, crucky, if a bloke that won 13 Grand Prix can feel like that, I don't feel too bad about it because more than five laps in a McLaren with somebody else driving, I find it difficult.

Yeah, I don't love it, I must say. I mean, I enjoy watching somebody punt a car around and seeing how skillful they are, but I don't always love the physical experience of it.

It's great to watch him in action, but it has to end for me. But I must say the views of Verstappen handling the car, terrific.

And that was a dark horse, not a GTD or anything else?

No, I think it was a dark horse. But GTD is a car you've been in.

Yes, indeed. Yeah, there isn't a video going up in the next day or two about that, actually.

So by the time you listen to this podcast listener, it may well be up, but at least that's the plan. We're recording this a few days in advance.

But yeah, that's the plan. It's the GTD Road Drive, which is a largely Ford slash Multimatic joint venture.

Effectively, the car, the body in white disappears from the production line of the Mustang gets taken up to Multimatic's place in Canada, and the car is pretty much built there.

Actually, last time, I think I said that it has Multimatic's DSSV Dynamic Spool Valve dampers.

And I got a little note from one of the Multimatic engineers who wrote to me and said, actually, it has the ASV dampers.

Which is adaptive spool valve dampers, which are better than DSSVs.

And I sort of went back and checked my notes and thankfully, the official press release that I read did say DSSV.

But actually, at some point further down the development cycle, I think they fitted these ASV dampers, which are even cleverer because they're electronically actuate.

They complicated things to get.

Don't you have to admire these blokes? You know, a guy like that gets out in a car, ridiculous speed, chucks it at a corner, and he sits there analyzing whether the ASSV is better than the DSSV.

And these days, they go on doing it, don't they?

Yeah, just carry on, don't they?

I can remember times past when, you know, cars, you could do lurid cornering shots, but couldn't do them for very long.

I remember doing some cornering shots in a Rolls Royce many years ago.

And we did about five or six runs through this corner on a taxiway in Bedfordshire that we used to use.

And after four or five, the state of the tires was sat at wall.

We wanted to do was drive it back to crew today.

You are.

It says the keys.

Excellent.

Steve and I will talk, I think, a little bit more about our respective columns in a moment.

But first, let's head down to Goodwood House, where Steve and I met with the Duke of Richmond a couple of weeks ago for the second of our Christmas special interviews.

I'm delighted to say we are joined by his grace, the Duke of Richmond. Welcome to the podcast.

Pleasure. Great to be here.

Steve, lead us in.

Well, your grace, every year you present us with a serious challenge this year because there are three events in the calendar.

And most of us spend our time trying to fit the rest of our year around these things.

Are you aware of that, that these events now take such world prominence?

And is that what you had in mind?

Well, it certainly isn't what I had in mind.

It's very nice for you to say so.

Obviously, we're thrilled by, we've been thrilled with the response, I guess, from that first, you know, crazy first little speed in 93 when suddenly 25,000 people tried to get in and we thought only 2,000 were coming.

And it's just, you know, we wondered whether Goodwood still meant anything to anyone in terms of cars.

And, you know, it was an extraordinary weekend.

And I guess it's been a, you know, it's been a bit of a ride, a bit of a ride ever since.

And we're thrilled that people feel so passionately about it and enjoy it.

Is there still a matter of, they're all very well attended, aren't they?

Do you have to hold people back or is it, what's the state of things?

Are they full these days, these meetings?

Yeah, they sell out.

I mean, that's taken some, some have taken longer than others to do that.

First speed and revival, revival was pretty quick.

But, you know, we had some difficult years at Revival.

We wanted to forget these things at the beginning.

You know, we had some very difficult years.

We had 9-11 very early on.

We had the fuel strike where we thought no one was going to come.

It was amazing.

We thought no one would come.

And then we suddenly thought, oh my God, actually no cars.

There could be no competitors, let alone spectators.

Competitors can't get here.

And I think only one person didn't make it.

It was amazing.

People were literally, people coming from sort of, you know, Denmark and Holland and things.

They were buying, they were buying trucks.

They were literally buying a truck.

They had a full tank of fuel and stinking the car in the truck.

And, you know, people were incredible.

And we ran everything on Avgas that year as well.

I mean, everything went like, like, like stink.

It was good.

Yeah, lots of octane.

Yeah, great.

Well, you have that over the road, don't you, I suppose?

Exactly.

So we had all our Avgas, our own Avgas.

Exactly.

So we ran everything on, because you couldn't get the fuel.

Yeah.

So they were all running on.

Well, let's move down them.

The first one is going to be the members meeting on the 18th and 19th of April.

The things that we understand about it are that there's going to be a big concentration on the James Hunt and James Hunt era.

But you just mentioned, before we started talking, that there's going to be a lot of Barry Sheen stuff too.

Could you tell us a little bit about that?

You obviously knew Barry very well.

We knew Barry very well, yeah.

And he became a great friend because of Revival.

And he was obviously racing here every year for quite a while.

Then at the end, he wasn't going to come.

And that was obviously all very...

That was when he was ill, you mean?

When he was very ill, yeah.

That was all very, you know, very difficult.

And he wasn't in great shape.

Then suddenly I can remember, I literally got a call one lunchtime from Barry and saying,

he's going to come.

I'm coming.

I'm going to do it again.

It's my last one.

Ride again.

And he came and he rode that last time.

It was very, very...

It was so emotional.

Everyone rode with him.

And, you know, they let him win.

And it was a great thing.

And he was at the cricket and everything beforehand.

It was a very emotional year.

And so we thought we'd do...

Barry and James obviously always did so much stuff together.

Yes.

We thought, and members of me, it'd be fun to have that whole sort of playboy party scene

going on at the same time.

So watch out for that.

That'll excite some of your modern visitors, I would think.

James Hunt, you didn't know him so well.

I didn't really know him, no.

I mean, no.

I knew Alexander Heskis a little bit later, but no, I never knew James.

But presumably there'll be James Hunt cars here.

And I imagine his son will be around.

Absolutely.

It was the fifth anniversary of his 76 World Championship, obviously,

so the boys are all here.

No, all the cars will be here.

It'll be a big deal.

And of course, it also goes into festival speed

with the rivals theme for festival speed as well.

So the whole Hunt louder moment, that's a big part of that.

It will be.

I slightly wonder whether there's a role for Simon Taylor,

who was the commenter, the BBC commentator,

who was sitting in the press box and took a gigantic risk

by calling Hunt as the world champion that year

without really knowing that he did it.

I wonder if he's going to come and do it again or something.

That'd be good, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it's a very good idea.

He's in the movie.

Simon Taylor, even now, a few years ago, was in the movie.

One of the themes at Goodwood these days is sustainable fuels.

Can you talk about that a bit?

Because there must be a big demand for sustainable fuels, surely.

Where do you get it from?

Who's your favourite?

Do you have a number of partners or one?

Well, you can choose your supplier, I think.

It's something that we felt we were in a position to mandate.

We felt we should do that.

We felt it was the right thing to do.

We're amazed, actually, that nobody else has done it.

F1's about to go sustainable next year, but nobody else has done it.

We're a bit surprised with that because it doesn't seem to be much of a problem.

It's a bit more expensive and the cars quite easily move on to it.

I think some people have stayed on it because much of the cars set up on it,

they've kept it for other races and things, but it hasn't proved to be a challenge.

Will you have a tank or a tank or something here on-site?

So everybody refills at the same spot, in effect.

Very interesting.

Some of the cars have to be set up.

Some of the fuels, it's slightly different from some cars, depending on what they need,

but they all run.

Obviously, you need to make sure everyone's got a run on it, really.

Otherwise, you've got somebody on Avgas.

When it comes to the themes that you run at the events, how do you come up with them?

What is the team like here?

No, exactly. It's a good question.

We've done this for quite a while now.

It started off with two of us coming up with them, Rob and me.

And then now, obviously, there's the whole internal team.

But that's not massively big, is it?

That's not massively big.

You run it on quite as tight.

We also have a broader group, Doug Nye and others, who sit with us a few times a year.

We all meet with quite a lot of people, and we'll discuss all the content broadly,

go through the plans we've got, make sure they think that works,

and get a feel for what we're going to be celebrating,

and then the theme will come out of that.

Then we try and pull the theme out of that.

I've seen this ordained motorsport name quite a bit now.

Who are they? Where are they based, and what do they do?

Well, they're based in Rhode Island.

It's owned by something called Nick Shawsh, who's a very big collector,

a good guy we know very well.

They approached us saying they'd really like to get involved with Goobard,

and they wanted to have this special event here,

where they brought a lot of people over from the States, special cars,

and they drove around, and then we said,

well, why don't we make that part of members' meeting?

Members' meetings are very different, at least for the members.

It's not set up in the same way as the others.

There's not lots of hospitality and stuff.

It's meant to be a real down-to-earth thing.

Nick and his team really love that idea,

and they've got very involved in it, and it's great.

My son, Charlie, has been quite a few times.

They've had a very successful concourse.

They won an event of the year.

They won an event of the year this year in the States,

and I think Jay Leno goes a lot, and I know lots of people have been.

It's a great thing. He's got a great museum there.

He very kindly lent us the proscar this year for the McLaren,

that Alad drove. One of the cars he drove was Nick's car.

So he's got some epic cars there.

Yeah, yeah. One of the things I was wondering was whether you...

Because Goodwood, the various Goodwoods,

not so much the members, but the various Goodwoods,

have been embraced by, strongly, by people in the US, people in Germany.

Do you feel a responsibility for Cater for them,

or is it the reason they're coming,

is because this is a sort of classic British event?

Do you think about them, or do you just do your best?

We don't really think about them at all.

That's not true, actually, in a way that we've thought about them.

In a way, we've thought about them a lot,

and we haven't thought about them at all in a fun way.

But we all love American cars.

You do, don't you?

And we love German cars.

So we're just trying to drive great content.

Yeah, and also, from the beginning, and it was a good decision,

so from the very beginning, we really wanted to embrace America,

and we wanted to see those cars.

So the weird thing was that since I was about six,

I remember drawing cars and dreaming about cars,

and I went to school boarding.

I can remember trying to dream that I was here with my grandfather

at those Easter Monday meetings,

and trying to dream about the cars I kind of loved.

And as I got old, as well, I guess the passion continued to develop.

My grandfather would send me all the books,

the automobile book and things like that.

It had a big impact.

You showed me this book.

Yeah, I've still got it.

It had a huge impact, and I used to copy them and draw the things.

And what's been quite weird, Steve,

is that so many of those cars, well, all those cars have been here.

So at the beginning, I was just going,

well, have one, have one.

What about an auto union?

There weren't any auto unions in the world then.

I remember talking to Doug for hours about this guy in East Germany

who had one hidden away called Mr. Karassik,

and how we were going to get it.

And these things became huge challenges.

So to get the car here was like a huge thing.

And when we got it, when we finally, you know, it would be a big moment.

And so we've been so lucky to have all those cars here.

And so what was your question again?

Well, I was just talking about international connections.

Oh, no, so sorry.

No, no, of course.

I was absolutely saying I went off on a whole thing there.

But so at the very beginning, to pull those, to try and get those

great American cars, the great Indy cars,

other things which all seen pictures of,

we'd never, ever, we'd never, ever actually seen them or heard them,

became a big thing.

And also the good decision was that we realized

that if we were going to get cars from America,

we'd have to, you know, pay for the whole thing and make it work.

So, you know, we don't pay anyone to come to Festival Speed.

We can't.

It would be crazy.

But the one thing we do do is we ship cars from America.

And we were super lucky at the beginning because Lufthansa Cargo,

I met at the horse racing, a guy from Lufthansa,

and somehow the whole thing.

And they did quite a hospitality race course.

And the girl who ran it here at Goodwood,

had got to know the head of Lufthansa Cargo a bit.

I think that's how it worked.

And I got to know him really well.

He became super supportive.

And honestly, pre-911, you know, they were amazing.

They'd fly, they flew all the cars over,

and they flew all the owners over at first class.

Wow.

Amazing.

And that's what we had to do at the early days,

especially with big American collectors,

to say, look, they'd find every reason.

If it was challenging, it wasn't going to happen.

So you'd have to say, look, we're shipping the car.

It's all insured.

You're coming first class.

You're looked after while you're here.

All hotels are paid.

It's all done.

And then so they came.

And that was a big, that was a good decision.

Like no entry fees, actually.

Like all that.

It was a good decision because people just felt this was a different thing.

Yeah.

A different thing.

Is there still an element where you come across a car that you'd like it,

but you don't know where it is,

and you don't know who's got it,

and somebody still has to go out and find it,

or largely have those days gone?

Well, the team are pretty impressive here.

I've got to tell you, when I asked them where something is,

they normally know where it is, or who's got one,

or who's got this, you know.

An absolute driving force at the festival has always been,

we want the best car.

And sometimes in numbers too, don't you?

It's a choice.

We don't want to take the second best one, and that might,

and I really believe that, you know,

a lot of people obviously won't be able to tell,

they don't know which is why one's necessarily the one.

But I think if there are enough of those here,

or at the same time,

that has a whole kind of feeling about it,

you know, everyone goes, wow, that's, you know.

So it sets a sort of, you know,

it gives us a free song to the whole thing,

where, you know, we're just trying to have the best cars in the world here.

And going back to my previous thing around,

you know, trying to dream about all these cars and things,

I mean, the weird thing is actually,

there have been probably more,

there have been more great cars in the world

in the last 30 years out there,

or over a period of 30 years,

for sure, than anywhere else in the world.

Out there being on the front lawn.

Well, just out there.

Just out, because the fact that we celebrate

the whole history of the automobile,

and we celebrate every genre of racing,

you know, from F1 to Paris-Dakar to Indy,

and that's everything.

And then we've got all the road cars there as well,

and everything.

It has to, there can't be anywhere else, does it,

that broadly anyway.

So, and there aren't many cars we haven't had.

I'm going to say, yeah,

well, I mean, you've had land speed record cars on the long plus,

Indy cars, is there anything that you haven't had here,

that you would love to?

There's a Dilla Hay in that book.

There's a gorgeous Dilla Hay in that book,

which we know, we know, I don't know where it is.

So that, we miss, we'd like that.

I remember when we got the W165 Mercedes,

that was a very big moment,

because they rebuilt, you know, the Tripoli car.

They rebuilt that.

It hadn't ever run since it won the race,

and Mercedes rebuilt it, and then it came straight here.

You know, so things like that.

There's a lot to say about it all nowadays,

but those were big, mate.

Those were really big, big exciting moments

for us today, the Chaperrill Gym Hall.

I mean, I went out of the dining,

our dining window opens up,

so you can walk straight outside,

and I walked out first morning, first speed,

this would have been a Friday morning, years and years ago,

you know, course to eight or something,

and I just walked across the lawn,

and this guy just knocked me flat,

just ran straight into me,

and he's like, why?

And he's like, oh, I'm so sorry, man.

I've come all the way from Chicago,

I've come to see the Chaperrills,

and it was like, God, that's amazing.

We shipped them all the way from America,

and they were in America to see them,

for years and years.

So to have Gym Hall here, that was a super highlight,

and I've driven most of these cars,

which is also quite bizarre.

Well, that was what I was going to say,

given that when the Alto Union shows up here,

presumably if you can cheeky go in it,

do you get a little drive?

Well, I don't always, I don't ask,

but I have been very lucky,

I don't drive so much now,

but I have, when I think of the cars I've driven,

I've driven 917 Porsches,

9.083 lots of times, I love 91730,

that was pretty airy, I've driven Chaperrills,

I think you know better than me, Steve,

how many people in the world have driven a Chaperrill?

I mean, the only hatch for each,

Phil Hill, whatever it ever,

he gave me the...

Donahue or someone, yeah.

Exactly, he gave me the Roadrunner,

so if you're a Chaperrill driver,

you had a little Roadrunner thing,

a little gold Roadrunner.

I got Jim's hat in my...

I got Richard Petty's hat and Jim's hat,

actually, both in my office, yeah.

Amazing.

I'm interested in the super touring shootout,

which is going to be both a parade and a race, isn't it?

There's going to be a...

Yeah, it's going to be the clock.

So the old heroes will be in the cars,

you know, waving to the crowd,

but I presume current racers will race the cars.

Be in there too.

I guess it'll be a pretty exciting head-to-head, I think.

Yeah, me too.

I can't wait to see an Alpha-155 racing car again.

Just move on to the Fessel Speed,

which is on the 9th and 12th...

9th of the 12th of July, 23rd year.

What a long time.

33rd, yeah.

33rd, yeah, sorry.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

My arithmetic's gone wrong, yeah.

Wow.

I know, I can remember 10 of them.

Do you think about that?

I mean, it takes over your life, presumably.

How's it done?

Yeah, I'm afraid you're right, yeah.

I mean, it's a full-on thing.

What about the...

What time have you...

How much time in your life have you got for the racing

and the pause racing and the golf

and all the other stuff that goes on here?

Well, I'm very involved with all of it,

but we've obviously got a great team, great people.

I mean, I'm definitely most involved.

I mean, the Fessel Speed is still the monster in a way.

Yeah.

So that's still the one that takes up

probably the most time for everybody,

but the revival a lot.

I mean, the car stuff takes up a lot of time

and there's a lot of relationships around it.

You've got 130 relationships around it.

And the horse racing too.

I mean, it's all...

The whole place, the brand, the whole feel of it,

all of it is really important to us.

And we want to try and do things really well

and we want it to be a great experience.

Yeah, I can remember you...

I've interviewed you at times in the past.

The thing that's always impressed me about you

is that you tend to conclude with some sort of a statement

about wanting to send people home happy.

Absolutely.

It seems to be a big driver for you.

Well, you know, it really is.

It's, you know, without wishing to sound sort of silly about it,

but it is, you know, walking around, it's very levelling

and it means a lot.

And if people just come up and say,

look, this has been my best day.

Yeah.

You know, and they're a member of the public who has bought a ticket,

that's rewarding.

And that's what we're trying to do.

And I say that to everybody here, you know,

we're trying to give everybody here, you know, 250,000 people or something,

that moment, that special experience,

whether they're, you know, a driver or team owner,

or wherever they are, or whether, you know,

they're someone who bought a ticket

and they're the most important.

And I think that was a big, you know,

and it's, if you like, I guess the lucky sort of thinking behind

First of Speed was that no one had ever thought about the fan before,

actually, no one ever thought about the guy just wanted to see great cars

and hang out amongst them and talk to the owners and the drivers.

It was always, you know, if you wanted to see some great racing cars,

you're probably going to have to go to an owner's club meeting somewhere.

And it's amazing, you look back, you go to a, you know,

it has to be an owner's club meeting or something,

and there'll be a few hundred people there.

And we were, and suddenly here, there were 200,000 people, you know.

And they had some great cars at those meetings,

but they weren't, they weren't, they were only,

obviously because they were clubs, they were set up for the owner's experience

and the driver's experience, not the, you know, the customer's,

not the fan's experience.

So that was a good, that was a, you know, a change,

a different way of looking at it.

You're, the central theme of the festival this year

is epic racing duels, quite poignant of the hunt versus louder things,

because neither of them is with us anymore.

Absolutely.

So how will you go about that?

Just have lots of cars and memorabilia and...

Well, all the right cars, hopefully.

Yeah.

And all the right as, and, you know, family members and others.

As well taken by representing those.

I would, I would put in a representation for our former MD, Simon Taylor,

who was the BBC commentator that...

Yeah.

That called the result before he really knew that it was true,

that Hunt was going to be the world champion.

Yeah.

And he took a flyer and he was right, luckily.

Absolutely.

And obviously Ford versus Ferrari, but...

So lots of GT football.

Yeah, we just heard yesterday they're coming.

So it's got the three coming, yeah.

Yeah, they're full into racing now, aren't they?

Do you think Jim Farley will come back and have a quick pedal up the hill?

Jim, I think we'll be back at some point in the year.

Jim Farley being the boss up Ford.

Exactly.

When it comes to the racing,

we mentioned the super touring stuff earlier,

and you, at both the circuit events,

the racing's pretty competitive.

Do you have to advise the drivers that it is a spectacle,

not their career that rests on it?

Because it's a circuit that is beautiful and looks in period

and doesn't have 300 metres of gravel or runoff,

like some of the modern circuits do.

How do you...

Absolutely, we treat it in a very particular way,

and we take all that very, very seriously,

and we only race five days a year.

That's all we're allowed to do.

So we're not running any championships,

as I keep reminding everybody, or anything like that.

We're just running our event,

and we need it to be run in a way that's sympathetic to what we're trying to do.

So we've got to have people who've got to behave

in a way that respects the place,

and they just don't go that extra...

I mean, it's super competitive, you're right,

and it's a really fast circuit,

and it's epic to watch,

and we have some absolutely fantastic drivers,

and it's exciting we're getting more and more world champions,

more and more indie drivers, or all those guys from the States.

They love it, and that's terrific.

We've got even more coming next year.

But they get a very serious talking to it,

and they get banned very quickly.

I guess they must have to spend some time learning it,

because even when we've been here in road cars,

it's a significant challenge.

It's not easy, but it's so interesting.

You get the good guys, they just learn it,

and look at Jensen's performance at Revival this year.

Incredible.

Must be good fun watching, you know, being so close to that,

and watching who's good and who isn't, or who's good.

What's so interesting is that the guys were that good,

just getting anything really, and they...

Yeah.

Christians and Jensen this year,

I mean, just straight in the C-type, you know,

it's great to see,

and we're obviously very keen that those great drivers

should be here, and they seem to love it, so it's great.

Talking about the monument on the lawn,

which is I always enjoy,

I got to know Jerry Judah a few years ago.

Is he still involved this year?

He is involved.

Yeah.

Tell us about the...

I mean, you're obviously not going to say who's the...

We may be going to tell us what the theme is,

but I doubt it.

But have you decided yet?

Yeah, we're working on it, we're working on it.

These things always run a bit later than you hope,

but no, we're...

Where are you up to? Does a design exist yet?

Yeah.

That's good.

So there'll be a model in his studio somewhere in...

In his head, anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it tends to get constructed into a nearby dockyard,

usually.

So there's an absolutely fantastic metal fabricating company,

fortunately very close by called Little Hampton Welding,

and they do lots of the great foster buildings

and all sorts of things.

So really, really good.

And they've done it for years.

They didn't do it at the beginning with me and Jerry.

Jerry found them and they did all the...

It's a hell of a thing.

I mean, you see them fabricating it in their yard,

and then it comes up in bits,

and luckily it's...

What is it, 15 miles away or so?

It's not too far.

But it's a big old...

It's an amazing thing.

Yeah.

And then it all comes down and...

What's under the front lawn?

There must be sort of 30 feet of concrete under there,

isn't there?

I know Jerry's going to come along one day and dig it all up

and get rid of it.

There's a lot of...

Yeah, there's a lot under there,

which we could probably do without.

So we try and design it so we use foundations that exist

so we're not putting any more into them.

I see.

Yeah.

Into the ground.

That's very interesting.

Just talking revival briefly,

there's not as much detail, obviously,

as the ones that are closer.

The one thing that took my eye

is the fact that, I believe,

there's going to be a parade of 300 vespers, I'm told.

Absolutely.

We're rather like the splits.

We started doing this every year now.

It's just sort of developing into a bit of a thing.

You know, we had the old Volkswagen Type 2 split brief.

That was good, wasn't it?

It was good.

We had like 350 of them.

I was like, oh, yeah, it was crazy.

Then we did the 500s.

Yeah.

We've done all sorts of things.

So we just thought, why not?

Vespers would be fun.

Yeah.

So there's going to be a whole of the Dolce Vita Italian theme

to a lot of it this time,

just like there was a rather American,

sort of, Haydashbury thing this year.

And you also usually do some sort of ex-army vehicle,

service army vehicles, you know, at the pole.

They always look good, don't they?

Fantastic.

We've had such big parades, you know,

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of vehicles on the track.

Very compromise.

We did a V-Day, obviously, celebration this year.

Yeah.

With all the kids and everybody on the track

and with all the vehicles.

It looked amazing.

No, I think it's, you know, it's a,

I think we're in a perfect position

to just remind people a bit about all of that.

Yeah.

Well, especially kids, you see.

An S truck.

It seems to me.

Because lots of people wouldn't know anything

about World War II history,

but they're there with their old people

and they suddenly pick something up, don't they?

They're loving Spitfires.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

No, they do.

And it's a great opportunity.

I think it's a great, you know, something we can do.

Yeah.

We can do well then, really bring it to life.

Are you aware of the way you've changed the market

in various things?

I mean, Spitfires, they've never been more Spitfires

because quite a lot of the owners

have some hope of displaying here.

And, you know, cars like Capri, Rover, SD1,

Dolomite, they've all acquired an extra value

because of you, haven't they?

Well, we've certainly played a bit of a part, I guess.

When I look back, Steve, those early festival speeds

and the values of the cars that were,

and then what's happened to them in the last 30 years,

it's extraordinary, isn't it?

I mean, I think GT40s, when we introduced the GT40 race

at revival and things, they weren't,

you could buy one for quite a reasonable amount.

We should have gone and bought them all.

We were very, very slow on the uptake.

Do you do that?

Do you have some cars?

I've just got some.

Yeah, I've got a few fairly odd collections.

Give us a flavour.

What have I got?

I've got some quite weird American stuff.

I've done Bonneville a couple of times.

Say, we saw a very nice little,

well, it wasn't actually very nice,

I thought it was that complete heat.

But anyway, we love the look of it.

Little Model A Ford running around on the salt.

My daughter, she was, this was like 15 years ago or something.

She came running back to me and said,

Dad, it's got a for sale sign in it.

Why didn't I buy it?

So, of course, in a mad moment, I bought the thing,

shipped it back, and it literally was held together

with a few rubber bands and some string.

So, big rebuild.

So, it was a complete rebuild.

So, yeah, very good guy, Jimmy locally.

He's looked after all my American cars.

He did a complete, Jimmy Hibber did a complete,

absolute rebuild of it.

It's a lovely thing now.

It's beautiful.

You've probably seen it around, it turns out.

Yes, is this the pickup?

Yeah, yeah, fun thing.

Yeah, the chop-top.

The children, you saw jumping in the back of it.

So, I quite like the eccentric things.

I've got a very nice Lancia, really,

and my grandfather was a big Lancia fan.

And then there's the car.

He drove his Lancia down to Monaco, actually,

and then New Velary drove him around Monaco,

which must have been quite a treat.

He said he never changed my...

What, in his own car?

He drove around his own car.

He said he never touched the clutch.

Never changed gear, never bothered with the left-hand pedal at all.

Amazing.

Yeah, what else have I got?

I've got a very nice AC, little 1934.

Is this the car your grandfather designed?

My grandfather designed.

Grandfather designed.

You've probably seen that.

It's a lovely-looking thing.

Yeah, I've seen it outside the house a few times.

So, he...

Yeah, those very nice 1930s sort of British sports cars.

He was very responsible for that.

That's a double-scuttle...

Double-scuttle dash, the slab tank on the back.

That whole pre-war British sports car look was very much him.

So, I was very pleased to get that.

I got his old R5 BMW bike as well,

which John 30s found for me, which was amazing.

I've got lots of pictures of him riding it.

My grandfather riding it.

And to get that back was a really nice thing.

There's this slightly off the point,

but I've always wanted to ask you this.

In the Aero Club, there's a collection of photographs

of an aircraft outside the house.

And it looks like it might be Ali at Verdon Row,

but it might not be.

Do you know what that is?

There's an aeroplane literally in front of the house.

Seems to have landed on...

Yeah, my grandfather landed...

There's quite a lot of pictures of his planes out here.

Oh, okay.

And his cars.

But he did them...

So, there's a closed cockpit.

That's the one, exactly.

And if you go into the kennels,

and there's display cabinets in the kennels,

there's a little model of it.

He was a very good model maker too.

And that plane, he made it into a production aircraft.

And before the war, they were going to put it into production.

Him and Edward Horden was a good friend.

It was called the Horden Richmond Aircraft Factory.

And it was a sort of very, very, very inexpensive, slow,

but clever light.

Capable.

Well, Josh, he loves...

He's an engineer.

He loved clever, small, light things.

And that aircraft was a pretty smart thing.

And I've got pictures of it flying.

I've got a film of it actually flying around.

Wow.

Well, look, you're under the whip, I think.

But it's a couple to end off.

One is, which one of these three events do you love the most?

Well, I'm not sure whether love or hate.

Which one is it?

Love or hate the most?

I'm not sure.

Well, the Fespi's been very good to us.

I mean, the Fespi got it all going in a way.

But the revival is probably...

It's a bit easier for us, the revival.

It's not right here.

The Fespi does completely...

It's a three-month building and out, so it takes over.

Yes.

And revivals down the road.

And revival is very creative.

We do lots of crazy things.

I mean, who else would have a pirate ship as the entrance to the driver's club?

We can do lots of...

That was extraordinary.

We can do lots of cool things.

So I think the revival is...

In their own way, they're all...

I guess members means a bit more than afterthought.

It's a bit more of a combination.

It enables us to do things we can't do at revival.

So we can run cars we wouldn't run.

And we can do things like...

I mean, who would have thought a single F1 car going around the track would be that good?

God, it sounds so good.

I mean, doesn't it?

When we had the McLaren, the MP4-4 going around it was...

It was...

Really stop the traffic.

It really does.

So we're doing things at that which we wouldn't otherwise obviously do.

So I think they're all great in their way.

But I guess the first speed is the big brute and the revival is the sort of rather lovely younger sister, maybe.

Got it.

And last thing, would there ever be room for a fourth event of some kind?

Of course, Steve.

I don't think there is really.

I think we'd have to...

We can't run any more noisy days on the circuit.

So we've got five, but that's not going to change.

And we'd have to be something here.

That would be very difficult because it shuts everything down too long.

So I think we do good woof now.

Yes, of course you do.

The 16,000 dogs in one place.

That's pretty crazy.

Fastest dog.

That's...

We took a lot of the...

We took a lot of the sort of...

If you like, the sort of event...

That's the themes of the event from Festival Speed Finance.

So we have featured marks.

We have a different dog this year.

Oh, I see.

So it'll be a sort of cock-a-poo.

A Labrador or something like that.

This year it's Rescue Dogs, actually.

It's a featured dog.

But it's a very fun thing.

And again, it's a bit like Revival for Dogs or Festival Speed for Dogs in a way.

The fastest dog competition is so popular,

I wouldn't believe that people are cute, but...

I mean, we've got three lanes.

DHL.

It's a DHL fastest dog.

And it's classic.

And we have dog astronomy, Pilates with the odd dog.

We have Ministry of Hound, as we call it.

Ministry of Sound.

Ministry of Sound do dancing with the odd dog.

I mean, it just goes on forever.

So that's something.

So that's in front of the kennel.

So that we can do.

But honestly, with those...

With the motorsport events, 20 days, a horse-race thing.

And good woof, I think we're done.

There's no more time.

Great.

Well...

Duke of Richmond, thank you very much for joining us.

Pleasure.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Welcome back.

And our great thanks to the Duke of Richmond for his...

Yeah, it was very nice of him to meet us so quickly.

Yeah.

Because of the way things work, we only got the idea a few days before sitting down with

him.

And he found some time straight away, didn't he?

He did.

Yeah, he did.

Really good of him.

But he's...

He is...

The thing that's great about that, man, is he is a proper car enthusiast, isn't he?

And as the interview goes on and on, I think you just...

He gets more and more keen on the whole subject.

I love that.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, I love...

Yes.

It's something that is run by somebody who clearly loves what they do.

And that really...

Yeah.

You don't mind going.

You don't mind paying to go when that is the case.

Yeah.

Wait, I'll say, oh, it's in a few days' time.

It's the first Bista scramble of the year, isn't it?

It will be, yeah.

You can go down on your bicycle.

Well, I might do.

I did cycle to the station the other day, actually.

Really?

I left my bicycle there overnight.

Because I was going out...

Still there when you came back?

Yeah, still there when I came back.

But actually, I didn't need to...

Because I thought I'll cycle down so I don't have to leave a car there overnight.

Yeah.

It's about five miles, I suppose.

Oh, God.

And then, because I was going out, I thought, well, I can have a drink.

And then when I come back, I'll get a taxi home and I'll pop down the next day and pick up.

But actually, I went out, stayed largely sober, got back at about half past one

because the train before the one I wanted was rammed.

And then I thought, actually, if I'd had a car here, I could have driven home

because I didn't drink anyway.

But then I had to go back the next day and pick up the bicycle,

but it was still there.

I was very pleased to find it.

There is no point in making plans in life, is there?

Sometimes not, mate.

No, sometimes not.

But I've still got my...

I did cycle 65 miles on that bike earlier in the year.

Fantastic.

So a quick trip to the station doesn't feel quite so long these days after that.

Shall we talk a bit more column stuff?

Because we alluded to it last week, week before.

The Ford Fiesta is going to be back.

Are they going to call it Fiesta?

Are they not?

What is it underneath?

Well, having gone on about how the Ford Fiesta was just spread a rumor

that the Ford Fiesta was going to be a Polo re-bodied

and being completely wrong about that,

I think I should possibly shut up about whether or not it's going to be called the Fiesta.

But lots of people will be astonished if they didn't use the name of Fiesta

because it has such power in the dealerships.

It has...

The name of Fiesta has tremendous power.

And Ford have track record, as we know,

of recycling their names, Explorer, Mustang, Mackie, Capri, of course.

The car I've got outside is the fourth iteration they're of.

So I reckon they'd need shooting if they didn't use Capri again.

But it's going to be a Renault 5.

Oh, interesting.

And that seems a great decision to me

because the car's pretty well proven in three, four iterations, isn't it?

It's a micro, it's a Renault 4, it's an Alpine, and it's a Renault 5.

And they're all good.

They're all quite variable.

And I would trust Ford to do their own steering applications and so on

to judge by the Capri that I have, which is actually a VW ID4.

Well, yeah, I was going to come onto that in a second.

Because Ford clearly has this link with Volkswagen

because it uses the ID3 platform for some of its cars.

And also the Transit Van and the Volkswagen Van are the same underneath.

The logical thing would have been to think that the Polo ID Polo, are they going to call it,

would be the obvious thing to put a fiesta on, but clearly not the case.

No, it must be a better deal or something.

Great deal for Renault, isn't it?

All those components being used so many times for the micro as well.

So if economies of scale are still as powerful as we've always been told they are.

Well, there must be, mustn't they?

Yeah, it must be a really...

And given that it's made in France, it must help.

Because France won't be the cheapest place in the world to make a car.

No.

So the fiesta, it will be built in the same factory as the five, etc.

Are they all built in the same factory, all of those cars?

I don't know enough about it, I'm really sorry that I don't.

But I think the aim will be to do a hell of a lot of them in the same place.

Yeah.

Is there any concern, I don't know if concern is the right word or not,

about Ford's commitment to engineering cars in Europe,

if it is effectively using other people's platforms for all of its passenger cars?

A lot of it is passenger cars.

Well, they say not, and they say as they would, that,

yeah, we're doing a hell of a lot and it will be a Ford, don't doubt it.

But I guess their priority is just to fill a hole, isn't it?

Because they must be feeling right down in their soul.

I'm sure they're not going to tell you and me,

but they must feel completely stupid about having led the market with a car

and ended it too soon.

Yeah.

So surely the priority is just to do something credible and get a car on the market.

But it's going to have to be very firmly a Ford, isn't it?

It really is.

Yeah, I think so.

It's got to give you a compelling reason to buy one, isn't it?

Yeah.

But the case is that Ford's passenger cars in Europe

haven't necessarily made them much money over the past few years.

But the commercial vehicles where they are, they were by distance, weren't they?

The biggest light commercial vehicle.

I think still are.

Still are, yeah.

And that does make them a lot of money.

But if they didn't have the passenger car operation,

the commercial vehicle operation wouldn't be so profitable and successful.

No, it wouldn't look as much.

Because, as we say, the economies of scale make it make sense.

But they do need a more robust, I think was the phrase, passenger car line up in Europe.

Yeah.

And the new guy whose name escapes me, but they have a new chief, don't they?

Ford of Europe chief.

And one of his jobs was going to be to somehow find a way of both making the EVs they make

already to the Mach-E, the Capri and the Explorer.

Both make them more profitable and make them more affordable.

How the hell do you do that?

Yeah.

I don't envy them, mate.

No.

I don't envy them at all.

Big job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You wonder also what all these machinations, all these legislative machinations will be

because Europeans are still in the throws of deciding when the cutoff date for total conversion

to EVs is going to be, because it might go out to 2040, at least for hybrids.

That will put some sort of pressure on the UK government, although they're saying they're

sticking to 2030.

And that's the end of the debate.

But anything could happen with the UK government, couldn't it?

Yes.

Yes, it could.

Yeah, it could.

Changes of heart are not unknown.

No.

Well said.

That was a very apolitical reply.

Well, I try, mate.

Yeah, I try.

Well, this is an apolitical podcast.

Indeed it is.

I insult everybody.

It's a really cool measure.

I have written about that at some point.

I can't remember somebody complained about something I'd said.

And I said I was, you know, I said I wasn't discriminatory.

I would insult everybody equally.

Yeah.

I can't remember what I had.

I always remember the old Aussie, the old Aussie cricketers, cricket enthusiasts saying,

they used to say, I'm completely ambivalent about the outcome.

I don't care who beats England.

I'm aware time is dragging on a bit.

We could talk my column very quickly.

Let's go.

Well, it's only quick.

It's only quick.

But I wrote, because some people, when you, when people, some people get a bit sniffy about

about card owners buying something on the drip or the never, never or whatever they want

to call it.

Yeah, it's not a full commitment.

It's not a full commitment.

You never own the car.

Why on earth would you do that?

And it's a boring icono box that nobody cares about.

And, you know, you'll just give it back in three years time and you'll never own it.

And, you know, you pay all that money.

And they can be a bit sniffy about it, can't they?

And I, and I, as an enthusiast, it's not how I like to buy and own a car either.

But also, but also, I just a bit embarrassed about this state of everything that I've got.

The A2 is the Audi A2.

I've owned an Audi A2, which is largely fine.

As we, as we speak, I've just had to order a new windscreen miper arm because.

Oh, so your jury rigged.

Oh, yes.

So I talked about, yeah, I talked about it a couple of weeks ago.

Didn't I?

My little fix.

It didn't, it didn't withstand.

No, where we got to was that if it was going to work, you were going to leave it.

I was going to leave it.

Well, it worked.

It worked, but it's not, it, it, no, it doesn't work for long enough.

It's the short of it.

It's not, it's not an amazing fix.

So, but there is a bloke on a member of the A2 owners club who sells refurbished wiper

arms and brackets with 3D printed bits and they work better than you.

Wow.

And you write to him.

He sends you a new one.

You take off the old one and send it back to him.

And it works on an exchange basis that you give him a few quid and he gives you a new wiper.

I wonder what the market is in those.

Well, they all go.

So anybody who's got an A2 will be looking after this sort of time.

I would think at trying to get some kind of replacement.

Somebody else said, oh, I just bent the arms and that seems to be fine, which I suppose

would work, but they are a kind of U shaped arm.

So they're not that easy to bend.

And I didn't really want to bend my instead because it just broke and for, for frankly,

for not much more than 50 pounds, a brand new wiper arm.

I thought it was all right.

Anyway, there's bits of it that don't work.

It's fine.

As a defender, there's bits of that that don't, that always don't work.

Nothing ever, nothing ever that serious.

I love your tale about every time you pass a garage, there's a kind of.

I was just kidding.

I was joking.

Yes, there is a, I got told about a, somebody does say that about a shop that I know that

I better not name because they'd be quite cross, but somebody says that when the door

goes and the little instead of there being a bell inside the door, actually the cash register

goes ding, ding, ding, ding rather than that.

But I won't say what that, that's not related to cars.

Yeah.

So it's 800 quid.

I joke every time it drives past the garage.

But last time, last time it was too grand, but.

Is that stable?

Those things are all right.

Yeah.

But still needs an exhaust, I think.

But it's 20 years old and there's 240,000 miles on it.

So of course it's doing well.

It does.

It's fine.

It doesn't, people joke about reliability of Land Rovers and things, but I think 243,000

miles in 20 years with the amount of work it has had on it, which is not loads is not

that good.

Also the thing that bounce that car is it, where were we the other day you turned up in

it.

I've forgotten where we were now.

Yeah.

But you just drove us in it.

It still looks really good.

It was at Goodwood.

It looked nice.

It looked great.

Yeah.

It didn't look immaculato, but it looked fine.

Very far from it.

Very, but it looked fit, didn't it?

Yeah.

I think if I cleaned and polished it, it would look pretty good.

And you can take it anywhere, which is important.

You know, it's the sort of car you can, you can take to the horse yard, take to a horseyard

because it is full of horse food.

Yeah.

As you saw.

But you can also take it to Glenbourne.

Well, nobody bats an eyelid either way.

So, and then I've got the imp, which is not really, actually, I've got an exhaust on order.

I've seen a mine isn't.

Is that an exhaust?

An exhaust that works with a BMW engine?

That's the one that works for the BMW engine swap.

So I've got the engine.

I've got the gearbox with its transfer case.

I've got a wiring loom.

There's loads of other ancillaries that still need like radiators for the front and hoses

all the way through and extending the wiring loom to fit and loads to make loads do.

I don't know when I'll do it.

But yeah, but I've got an exhaust.

I've seen the first of the batches of exhausts that are being made.

It does look really nice.

I've got to say.

And I've got a bike.

I've got one bike that works and one bike that doesn't.

So basically out of six vehicles, but the combined three work out of six combined,

they cost less than a new Dacia.

Yeah.

Every weekend I don't work on them.

I feel a bit guilty.

Every time I'm driving one of the old cars, I do think because of that.

If you don't fix that windscreen wiper thing, you can apparently go over a big pothole.

The wiper will jump and crack the entire windscreen.

What?

Yeah.

Well, I don't want that at all.

And I'm always just a bit concerned about, you know, any car with Audi's got 170,000,

60,000 miles on.

Yeah.

Defender's got nearly a quarter of a million.

I mean, something bad could go bang at any moment.

Really?

It sounds quite stressful.

Whereas somebody who says, well, I'm just going to buy a new car on trade in, trade in

what I've got and just start paying a monthly sum of 250 pounds.

I've got a car that works all the time.

It meets every low emission zone going.

It's got all of the latest tech.

There might be an insurance deal attached.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And then I'll just keep paying.

I know exactly how much I'm going to pay every month.

Yeah.

And then if anything goes wrong, not my problem.

But maybe that's a sort of bottom line car and you have one of them.

But that frees you to have the funny old stuff.

But I get it.

And so I will never be sniffy about people who just buy it because they don't care.

Like, you know, they're not in for wine.

They wouldn't be interested in having an Audi A2 already.

And also they are able to keep, you know, say they're in the market for an ID3.

They are able to keep 35 grand in a mattress instead of let help spending it.

And just go, well, they just go, well, you know, in my monthly budget, this is what my bills cost.

Yeah.

One of those is a PCP or a lease deal or whatever it might be.

Just get your haircut less.

Yeah.

And that's it.

Slightly less shiny suits.

Yeah.

And they always just know exactly what it's going to cost them every month.

And then at the end of three years, will they just try something else?

That's it.

I get it.

I'm not going to be sniffy about it.

No.

No, no.

I've thought about it a few times.

I've just never done it.

Oh, sorry.

We did once buy an air class on a PCP, but I don't remember it as a particularly satisfying

experience somehow.

But the car was a bit funny for us.

Should have bought something different.

Did you not love it?

It was okay.

Yeah.

But my problem is cars like that I tend to run out of love for a month after a while.

Which sort of?

It was just an A140.

One of the earlier?

Yeah.

The clever package.

Clever one.

It was an admirable car.

But when you walked out of the house and there were other options, you didn't really get

in it much.

And I like to have the ones that you use, you know, where you walk out of the house and

you think, oh, I'll take that Duster.

Why not?

I wonder how you'd feel about it if it was outside today.

Well, yeah, if it was worth, you know, 1500 quid, I probably think it was really good.

Yeah.

Because it was durable car and roomy and everything good about it.

But didn't just didn't like enough use.

Okay.

Because I use the A2 all the time.

Yes.

But something about the A2 is an inspired little car.

And you look at the styling and you think, how would you do better than that?

Yeah.

In, you know, in an aluminium car that size, that's an Audi.

Yeah.

Damn difficult.

Still waiting for something terminal to go wrong.

But if it does now, mate, I've had a good run out of it.

Yeah.

But it's going to confound you.

You see, it'll be around in another hundred.

Well, I hope so.

Yeah, I hope so.

I need to know what I need to do to keep it going.

But you're going to give it a chance to do a hundred.

Yeah, okay.

I'm just going to keep it going for as long as it'll go, I think, really.

I don't see any reason to change it.

No.

I just don't.

I mean, and then, and I need to service it and stuff.

There is a video listener that brings us just about to the end of this week's pod.

There is, I'm hoping we're still in the throes of editing some stuff and it's all fitting

around Christmas and editing and everything else.

But should be a video on the AutoCar YouTube of the A2 trying to do a hundred miles to

the gallon.

I think we've already given away the answer, haven't we?

Yeah.

It did it.

It did it, basically.

But if you want to see it do a hundred miles.

But there's a bit of jeopardy, isn't there?

There is.

Yeah.

Because it was by no means clear when I was on the A34 behind a van thinking, is this

going to do this?

And the trip computer reading, that's the 93, 94 to the gallon thinking this is not going

to work.

But it does.

There's a Mustang GTD video at some point.

I want to see the tire smoke.

It's all on the road, that vid.

Oh, okay.

So, you know, I have to be a very well-behaved, sensible person.

But there's some keenish driving.

There's some nice, some great roads.

Yeah, these are canyon roads or desert roads.

Yeah, so a bit of both.

Yeah.

What did I, did I tell you?

It was the rim of the world scenic byway.

Did I tell you that?

You did.

Did I say that on this pod?

What a fantastic.

I was just telling you.

I think you might have mentioned it.

Yeah.

And then there's, I also go to a road called, weirdly, some of the roads that we shot on

are not necessarily the roads that I, the in car piece to camera road is different from

some of the outside roads.

Because photographers were around different days.

Yeah.

Basically, it's a long story.

Also went to a road called Box Canyon, which is amazingly cool.

Love it.

And then to the Salton Sea, which is, was a manmade lake.

And then because it had no natural outlet, it got overly saline and basically all the

fish and wildlife in it died.

And it was going to be an inland sea, an inland resort.

But because it started to go awry and smell, it's just these weird abandoned.

If you've ever played, I know you haven't, Steve, but Grand Theft Auto, the latest one,

one of the, one of the characters houses is based on this area.

It's a sort of real desolate, lots of sort of prefab homes and caravans.

And these are all abandoned.

Well, there's, there are a few people who do live there.

Yeah.

Some are abandoned completely.

Some of, some of, some of them are still lived in.

There's quite a, there's loads of barhar bugs out there.

Loads of beetle barhar bugs in people's front yards and stuff like that.

So it's quite a, it's quite an atmospheric place to go.

The feature is in this episode of AutoCon Magazine out on December the 31st.

It's an eight page feature.

Pictures are fantastic.

Copy is average.

It is.

I recommend it to you.

And that magazine is out now.

We need a story about your barhar bug.

We need it.

Yeah, I know.

We need you to get the spanners out.

I know.

We just need a proper pictorial spread.

I'd love that.

Because I do think they're special.

I think they're special.

What on earth else looks like that?

Just great.

Yeah.

It was.

I'd like to know who designed it.

It must have been, you know, there must be some.

Who lifted a beetle in the first place.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

And that lovely front panel where the, with the two lights in it.

Yeah.

And obviously there's lights on the roof and stuff.

A spider face is gone.

Yeah.

It's great.

I really like that.

The color I've painted it 10, 12 years ago does make it look a bit like a licorice

or sort.

I'm thinking I might paint it again because I enjoy that.

But it deserves a.

Yeah.

What deserves to be running mate is the short of it.

It deserves to have all of the stuff taken off the roof and out of the inside and to

be given some CLC.

But having said that, you know, knowing what, what the temperature is in my garage, you

know, I don't know whether I would quite the courage to get out there at the moment.

Well, I don't.

Yeah.

I do feel the cold.

I don't love it this time of year.

But anyway, I will sort it.

I'm not a big one for New Year's resolutions, but getting that car going properly is one

of them.

I'll tell you what, it would be, would be, I'd love to see it run.

I haven't run it for a while.

I mean, it runs rough.

Yeah.

You mentioned it was a throttle cable is snapped as well.

So I need to sort that, which is, which is because you kind of have to thread it through

the cowling for the fan because it goes along the floor and it goes through the bulkhead

at the back.

And then you have to sort of thread it through, you know, that big shroud that has to go through

that.

And of course, at every single point, it can get held up and sort of hook up on something.

So it's days of work.

It's not the work of the moment.

Anyway, our thanks to Anderson, Anderson dash EV.com.

If you go there, you can find out about all of their excellent designer charges.

Got loads of different designs, more than most charges.

Yeah, loads of textures too.

Yeah, loads of textures, loads of services.

Yeah, some designed by Ian Callum and retractable cables or not retractable cables as you like.

But basically they've got a concierge service who will talk you through all of that and

help you out with it and also help you decide which tariff to go on.

They're based in the UK.

They are designed here.

They are made here.

They look after you from here and they'll do the lot and they're very well rated.

Never serve in your warranty.

Anderson dash EV.com.

Also in the meantime, you can visit us at themagazineshop.com to get access to auto car in print

or digitally and access to the full 130, nearly 131 year old car.

Steve, thanks man.

See you soon.

See you next week.

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