Classic Auto Mall - #220 - Stewart Howden with Guests Spike Feresten + Keith Martin
Classic Auto Mall SHOW
Classic Auto Mall - #220 - Stewart Howden with Guests Spike Feresten + Keith Martin
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Car
Chrysler Daytonas
The Chrysler Daytona is a sporty car from the 1980s that is known for its cool shape and speed. It was designed to be fast and stylish, making it stand out from other cars. It's mentioned because people enjoy talking about interesting cars from that time.
Brand
Volvo
Volvo is a car brand from Sweden that makes safe and reliable cars, like sedans and SUVs.
Brand
Saab
Saab was another car brand from Sweden that made unique cars, often with turbo engines. They are no longer in business.
Concept
muscle cars
Muscle cars are powerful American cars that were really popular in the 1960s and 70s, known for their big engines and sporty looks.
Car
Chevrolet Novas
The Chevy Nova is a small car made by Chevrolet that was popular in the 1960s and 70s. It's often bought for low prices and modified by car lovers.
Car
Ford Mustangs
The Ford Mustang is a famous American car that is known for being fast and stylish. It has been popular since the 1960s and comes in many different versions.
Brand
Triumph
Triumph is a British car brand that made various types of cars, including sports cars. They are known for their classic designs and enjoyable driving experience.
Brand
MG
MG is a British car brand that makes small sports cars. They are known for being fun to drive and have a long history in car making.
Car
Volkswagen Rabbit
The Volkswagen Rabbit is a small car made by Volkswagen. It was popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s for being affordable and easy to drive.
Car
Ford Gt
The Ford GT40 is a famous sports car that was built by Ford in the 1960s. It was designed to race and is known for its speed and unique shape.
Car
Ferrari 275
The Ferrari 275 is a vintage sports car made by Ferrari in the 1960s. It's famous for its beautiful looks and strong performance, making it very popular among car collectors.
Car
Ferrari Dino
The Ferrari Dino is a type of sports car made by Ferrari, named after the founder's son. It was produced in the late 1960s and 1970s and is known for its unique engine and design.
Car
Porsche 356
The Porsche 356 is an early sports car made by Porsche, produced from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. It's known for being light and fun to drive, and it helped establish Porsche's reputation.
Car
Porsche 914
The Porsche 914 is a sports car made by Porsche between 1969 and 1976. It has a distinctive design and is known for being fun to drive and relatively affordable compared to other Porsches.
Car
Maserati Biturbo
The Maserati Biturbo is a car made by Maserati in the 1980s and 1990s. It has a turbocharged engine, which means it uses a special technology to boost its power, but it often had problems that made it less reliable.
Car
Trans Am
The Trans Am is a type of car made by Pontiac that is known for being fast and sporty. It was popular in the past and is often seen as a classic American muscle car.
Term
SD-455
The SD-455 is a powerful engine that was available in some Pontiac cars. It's known for being very strong and fast, which makes it popular among car fans.
Term
Pace Car
A Pace Car is a car that leads other cars in a race to set the speed. The Trans Am was used as a Pace Car in famous races like the Indianapolis 500.
Car
Mercury Cougar
The Cougar XR7 is a type of convertible car made by Mercury. It's known for being stylish and fun to drive, especially in sunny weather.
Car
Porsche 930 Turbo
The Porsche 930 Turbo is a special version of the Porsche 911 sports car that has a turbocharger, giving it more power. It's famous for its unique look and performance.
Car
Porsche 550
The Porsche 550 is an old sports car from the 1950s that was very light and fast. It's famous for racing and has a cool design.
Car
Chrysler LeBaron
The Chrysler LeBaron is a type of car that Chrysler made from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. It was available as a convertible and was known for being stylish and budget-friendly.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
Car
Chevrolet Chevelle
The Chevrolet Chevelle is an older American car that was famous for being fast and looking good, especially in the muscle car era.
Car
Rivian SUV
Rivian is a company that makes electric vehicles, including SUVs. Their cars are built for outdoor adventures and are environmentally friendly.
Car
Bentley convertible
A Bentley convertible is a fancy car that you can drive with the top down. It's known for being very luxurious and expensive.
Car
Subaru
Subaru is a car brand that makes vehicles known for being reliable and good for driving in different weather conditions.
Brand
Lamborghini
Lamborghini is a brand that makes very fast and expensive sports cars. They are famous for their unique looks and powerful engines.
Term
average new car price
The average new car price is how much most people spend when buying a new car. It's usually between $30,000 and $50,000 these days.
Car
Land Defenders
The Land Rover Defender is a tough, off-road vehicle that many people love for its classic look. It's often customized to make it better for driving and off-roading.
Car
Mercedes-Benz G-Class
The G-Wagon is a fancy SUV made by Mercedes-Benz. It's known for being tough and stylish, and many people love it for both driving on roads and off-road adventures.
Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that has been around for a long time, known for being fast and stylish. It's popular because it combines luxury with the ability to drive it every day. The new version, the 911 ST, is a recent model that shows how Porsche keeps improving their cars.
Car
BMW M2
Car
BMW New Bmw
The BMW M2 CS is a sportier version of the M2 car, made to be faster and more fun to drive. It has special features that make it better for performance driving.
Car
Mercedes-Benz SL
The Mercedes-Benz SL is a fancy sports car that has been around since the 1950s, known for being stylish and fast. The 420 SL from the 1980s is especially liked for its comfort and classic look. It's mentioned because many people enjoy driving and collecting luxury cars.
Car
Mercedes 420 SL
The Mercedes 420 SL is a stylish convertible car that was made in the late '80s and early '90s. It's known for being comfortable and powerful, making it a popular choice for driving enthusiasts.
Car
Ford Granadas
The Ford Granada is a car that Ford made in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a family car that was comfortable and had a lot of space inside.
Car
Chevrolet Impala
The Chevrolet Impala is a big car that many people in America have loved since it first came out in 1958. It's known for being comfortable and having a lot of space inside, making it a great choice for families. It's mentioned because it has a special place in many people's hearts.
Car
Porsche 935S
The Porsche 935 is a famous race car that was really successful in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It's known for being very fast and well-engineered, showing how good Porsche is at making racing cars. The newer version mentioned shows that Porsche still cares about racing today.
Car
Ford Gtd Mustang
The Ford Mustang GTD is a new version of the classic Mustang sports car, made to be very fast and full of modern technology. It shows how Ford is keeping the Mustang popular while making it better. The mention of the GTD shows that people are excited about new high-performance cars.
Car
Acura CL
The Acura CL is a luxury two-door car made between 1996 and 2003 that is known for being comfortable and stylish. It offers a nice driving experience while still being sporty. The mention of the CL shows that it's a good choice for people who want a nice car without going overboard.
Car
BMW 525
The BMW 5 Series is a luxury car that has been around since 1972, known for being comfortable and fun to drive. The 1979 version is special because it has a classic look and great handling, making it popular among fans of older luxury cars. It's mentioned because the 5 Series is still a well-loved car today.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a well-known American sports car that is loved for being fast and good-looking. The 2003 model is special because it has a strong engine and a sleek design, making it a great choice for collectors. A Corvette with very few miles on it is considered rare and valuable.
Car
Chevrolet C10
The Chevrolet C10 is a classic pickup truck that many people love for its strength and usefulness. The 1966 version is especially popular because it has a powerful engine and a cool design. It's mentioned because vintage trucks are becoming more popular with car lovers.
Car
Shelby Cobra
The Shelby Cobra is a famous sports car from the 1960s that is loved for being fast and lightweight. It combines British style with a powerful American engine, making it very special. A Cobra with a known history is important for collectors because it shows the car's background.
Car
Ford Model
The Ford Model T is one of the first cars that many people could afford, changing how people traveled. Made between 1908 and 1927, it was built using a new method that made cars cheaper and faster to produce. The 1927 Model T Coupe is a classic car that many collectors admire today.
Car
Jeep Grand
Car
Jeep Grand Wagoneer
The Jeep Grand Wagoneer is a large SUV that is famous for being tough and comfortable. The 1991 version is especially liked for its wooden sides and roomy interior, making it a great family vehicle. It's mentioned because many people love the classic look and feel of older SUVs.
Car
Chevrolet Monte
The Chevrolet Monte Carlo is a mid-size car that many people liked from 1970 to 2007 for its sporty look and feel. The 1973 version is especially admired for its classic design and is popular among collectors. It's mentioned because it reminds people of the cool cars from that era.
LIVE
This is the Classic Automall Show.
Broadcast from the studios inside the Classic Automall in
Morgantown, Pennsylvania, just one hour west of Philadelphia at
Pennsylvania Turnpike Exit 298, featuring nearly 1,000
classic vintage and barred-fine vehicles for sale under one
climate-controlled roof. Now, here's your host,
Classic Automall president and the man with all the toys,
Stuart Howden.
And welcome show number 220.
Before our holiday break, we're going to take next week.
We're not doing a show 221.
All right, no problem.
Because we don't have time to edit it because all the stuff
we've got to fix.
We've got enough in the can that people can go back and listen
to some cool classic episodes.
Ah, there we go.
There we go.
We're 220 episodes, so we've got plenty to choose from.
Before we get to our guest, JR, how many cars in
inventory were you right this moment?
9.57.
Ooh.
I forget what it was last week, but I'm going to say 9.40.
9.47.
You win again.
Oh, I swear I didn't cheat.
Well, it was only printed right here.
Oh, there it is.
Yeah.
Oh, as he said, coyly.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
So anyway, let's get to our guest.
Good morning.
Good morning, Spike Farristan, calling us from the west coast
on this bright, beautiful, gosh, it's early out there.
Sorry about that, man.
It's not early for me.
Oh, you're an early riser, huh?
Everybody's up early and fighting in the morning.
I like to get up and watch.
That's the best fighting, isn't it?
It's the morning fighting.
Oh.
How many kids?
Two kids you have?
Yeah.
How old are they?
They're teenagers.
Oh, man.
See, our youngest...
White facts like a teenager too, so I've got three of them.
Our youngest is now like 32, so we're hopeful.
There you go.
My wife still goes around Christmas time.
Now, why are we going to get the kids for Christmas?
I go, nothing.
They're going to get us something.
You're one of those 980 cars.
Well, hardly any of them are into cars.
One of our sons works here, and the rest of them are like,
okay, I'll take a gray one.
That's their whole reference for it, is the color of the car.
But thanks for being on the show today.
We met in Newport briefly, and I begged you to be on the show,
so thanks for...
You were very nice.
You asked very politely, and I said yes.
Yes, you did.
You said...
My mom lives in Pennsylvania, to be honest.
That's why I said yes.
Mom's going to be proud of you, because...
Now, is mom the one who was into watches, right?
Timex was her brand that...
My mom?
Yeah.
You said something about she bought a Timex at Kmart,
I think I read somewhere.
Yeah, that's the very definition of not into watches.
Now, I want to know something.
The EX and Rolex and the EX and Timex,
and they're both five letters, so I'm wondering,
you know, is there some kind of weird connection
that we don't know about?
Never really thought of it.
I never did either.
I just thought of it the other day.
I don't think there's any real connection to those companies.
Though, I have a great deal of respect for Timex.
I really do like that company, and I like...
No joke, I like what they're designing right now.
Some of them are both recent designs.
Anybody can design something that you want to wear
that doesn't cost you a lot of money,
you know, has my vote.
I love stuff like that, and they launch this,
like, Q-series, I think they called it.
I saw that.
The Timex Q.
Yeah, based on like 60s and 70s Daytonas,
and they're great, and they're like a little over 100 bucks,
and, you know, you can wear something stylish
on your wrist and not break the bank.
Yeah, I love that.
Remember the old brand Clause-Cobay,
and they used to advertise in Road and Track
and Car and Driver, and it was like $675,
but on your wrist, $175 was their tagline?
Oh, there you go.
And they had a little Daytona cues on them,
and they were like $1.50, so, you know, for those...
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's what, you know,
that's what we're doing at Sheffield Watches right now.
You know, the guy who was that company bought that brand,
because his dad bought him this affordable dive watch
when he was 13.
Right.
And I think it was just, you know, 25 bucks,
and now he's selling them really nicely designed
kind of dive watches that are all very high quality,
without the boxes and the papers that in...
Sure.
Without the big profit margin, you know,
and he's selling them for $110,
and he and I design watches that we try to keep under $300.
Sure.
That are watches that I wear on my wrist.
I'm wearing one right now.
Yeah.
This is our first Swiss movement one
that's not for sale yet.
Right.
But it's based on my love of kind of Hoyer's
60s and 70s racing watches.
Yeah, I love those.
And, you know, Jay's a Porsche guy.
I'm a Porsche guy with both watch guys.
I have so much fun working with him and his company
and making stuff.
Well, you know, not many people get the chance
to do that to kind of create your own watch,
so that's really, really, really cool.
Yeah.
Well, I like, I mean, I'm a writer,
and I've learned finally that I like to...
I guess I'm a creator.
You know when your kids go to school early on?
They didn't do this when we were kids.
But now they look at kids and they go,
we can tell you what type of kids they are.
And you end up learning something about yourself
as a parent.
You go, there's this type of kid.
Right.
And then there's the creative.
And they don't think I go, oh, yeah, that's what I've been.
And I go, how are they the happiest?
Because I'm really...
Whenever you're making things and you're creating things
and you're doing things, you're going to be happiest.
Sure.
That really kind of helped me focus in on so much stuff.
Kids are way more aware these days than we were.
Way more aware.
They get stuff like that.
And I didn't pick up on any of that until I was much later in life.
Yeah.
Smarter and more capable.
Well, yeah.
My kids are always smarter than me.
That's sad.
I try to fool them.
They seem fine, actually.
I'm pretty excited about this generation.
Yeah, me too.
I think they're going to do just fine.
They're smart.
They're, you know, a lot of good things.
So you've got a lot on your plate.
Do you have any design and watches?
You host the Spikes Car Radio on YouTube.
Finally, I found a name for what we do and you do,
and it's called Video Podcast.
So we were trying to figure out what to call ourselves.
You know, we're not a podcast because we do it on YouTube.
But we are a podcast because we are on those channels.
But what do we call it?
Is it a show?
Is it...
And I guess now Netflix is starting to run podcasts on their site
and their video podcast.
So that came up with that.
Now, that's what we call ourselves.
This show is the one where I made movies.
We call them shows.
Right.
You make TV shows, shows.
We make a YouTube.
We call them shows.
Shows just...
Just call them shows.
Yeah, no.
They're little shows.
They cover a little bit of everything, you know,
so it's the fun thing to do.
So you were born in the Northeast up in Massachusetts,
which is not really a car country like people would expect.
But is it?
Maybe was there more cars out there?
Oh, it totally is.
Really?
I mean, yeah, growing up, it's just different kinds of cars.
Right.
Volvos and sobs.
They were still that same obsession.
Like, my friends were obsessed with kind of old muscle cars,
old American muscle cars.
And, you know, we're buying, you know, Chevy Novas and things
at about five or six hundred bucks and jacking them up this way
and pointing them down that way.
And, you know, there was no attention to the engineering
of a suspension so that the car could handle.
So there was lots of crashing.
It was all about kind of making something look cool
and put some cool wheels on it and driving them.
But, you know, I it's just that there weren't the types
of cars that you see now in California and the kind of cars
that I'm into.
But I still am very fond of like old Mustangs and things,
you know, because it does remind me of my hometown and that
stuff that we used to like.
Well, that's our bread and butter here.
But I get you, you know, that we didn't know
what handling was back then.
We knew what straight line performance was,
but we we didn't know a Porsche.
We didn't know, you know, an MG or a Triumph or any of those cars
that were, you know, had great suspensions on them.
And we we didn't think we just put air shocks in the back and see
how high we could get the back end up, which yeah, a good stereo.
And I had to have a great the Alpine cassette deck that pulled it
out of your hand and put it in.
And then the ADS box speakers.
Oh, man, if you had those and you were really something,
although I don't think girls really dug it.
So it's just a guy thing, just a guy thing.
So and then you your career path started to go towards music.
You went to the Berkley College of Music in Boston, right?
And yeah, what were you?
What was the end goal there?
Were you like Van Halen or was that what was I thought I was the next Jimi Hendrix?
So did you play music your whole life growing up?
Or is this a late later in life?
No, I was a Stratocaster player in high school and I played shows at the school
and was quite good at it and quite popular.
You know, before the Internet, you could kind of own a town, right?
And be the Justin Bieber of your small town.
And I was that.
You know, the cool thing was is then back then you could do a song and claim it
as an original and nobody knew the difference.
You know, they did all I did.
Well, they knew I played a lot of Almond Brothers and a lot of Rolling Stones
and Zeppelin and, you know, I loved it and it was really great.
I just thought, naturally, I'll just go to music college and then a rock star.
I love that.
So we had a band.
It was an air guitar band we had back in the day in Tennessee.
So yeah, we were hillbillies from Tennessee.
We didn't know any better.
My dad, my dad used to always say, you know, if you spent the time that you rehearsed
in the air guitar band actually learning to play a guitar, you might have been something, you know.
Well, thanks.
But some of the graduates that went to, yeah, some of the graduates that went to the
Berkeley College of Music, I mean, Levon Helm, Trey Parker from South Park,
John Mayer, Al Demiola, Donald Fagan from Steely.
I mean, my goodness, the roster was cool.
So did you get to meet anybody back in the day when you were there?
Not a single one of them.
No.
In fact, the most successful people were the ones like me that dropped out.
Pat Metini.
It's like, you would hear those stories.
You would go, oh, look, look at, you know, Al Demiola.
And then you'd look closely at, you know, and they were there for two years and then
they left and did stuff.
So, you know, I look back at that.
I mean, I don't really regret it because it kind of slingshot me into entertainment,
but it wasn't the right choice.
So I have a son that's studying, you know, he's looking at colleges right now and
applying and I'm just laughing, just going, all the attention that we're giving him
and the talking and the coordinating is I go, none of that happened when I was a kid.
Not at all.
They were just, they were like, are you going to go to college?
And I went, what's college?
I had no idea.
I play a guitar, I'll go to this music school.
Yeah, which makes sense, which I guess is, you know, not a lot of musicians actually
went the path of a music school.
They just kind of started playing and figured it out, right?
That shows you how demented I was.
Yes.
And did you immediately, did you go to New York immediately after that?
Was that the plan or what was the plan after?
No, you know, I very quickly realized I had made a mistake and was too afraid to tell
my parents about it and just started watching a lot of TV and David Letterman had created
a show.
Right.
And then I kind of just shifted from Jimi Hendrix to David Letterman and I went, I really
like what's going on in this studio and I would just kill to be an intern on this show.
Why don't I see if I can chart a path from here to there and weirdly did.
Wow.
How cool is that?
You know, and Letterman's sense of humor is so great.
But if you, if you're a writer for Letterman, I mean, is he, this will sound maybe, I don't
know, simplistic, but is he easy to write for if you understand what he's looking for?
Well, anybody like that you're writing for like that, that has a very distinct voice
and you're writing all day.
Very quick, you know, if you know how to write or you're a good fit for that writing staff,
that framework just pops into your head and, you know, before long, you're just talking
like David and you're saying phrases in his cadence and well, I don't know about that.
And so you're just plugging in the jokes.
It's kind of hard to say, but I do know we would have these like 13 week cycles and by
the 12th and 13 week in a row, you felt the most tired you've ever felt.
But you were getting, I was getting the most stuff on the air.
You'd have a week off, you'd rest, you'd come back and you felt ready to attack and
you'd be getting the least amount of stuff on the air.
It was really weird.
Yeah.
And then, you know, Rob Burnett, who is the head writer at that point, used to say, you
know, because we talk about this very question you just asked, we go, what are we doing?
You know, we're writing all morning, right through the day, pages and pages of jokes
and maybe one or two per page gets in.
And he said, you know, writing for Dave was like, if all of comedy is a football field,
writing for Dave is, is, is taking one square inch of that football field and mining it
straight down to China.
And that was the best analogy I'd heard for writing for that show.
That was light bulb.
I mean, my goodness, that really was just a grind.
It was a real grind and staying in a right, right in the zone in the right pocket to make
sure you got stuff on the air that Dave would pick to make sure you keep your job.
Sure. And was the outlet after that cars?
I mean, was the release valve is to go out and drive whatever you had cool.
And I know Dave was a car guy and is a car.
He was. But no, this is kind of how we get to here.
And this point is people like Dave and Seinfeld.
Dave. And I still don't recall what it was or who told him what.
But Dave heard that I was a car guy.
Right.
I just like cars.
I didn't really know much about it.
And he called me up and he goes, Hey, you know,
this is how desperate we all were before the Internet.
Right. No one even talks about or remembers it.
But before there was an Internet, if you like cars, it was weird, right?
You were the weird guy and no other car guy knew that there were all these other
car guys in the world.
There weren't really cars in coffee, coffee events.
Right. It's just this weird obsession you had by yourself.
So Dave, like, hey, you like cars.
He goes, you read auto week.
And I go, yeah, a little bit.
He goes, you know, and look at this ad for a ground effects Volkswagen rabbit.
You should buy that.
And I went, cool.
Or, you know, the next week goes, look at this.
I got this model of a Ford GT 40.
Do you want it? And I'm like, sure. Yeah, I love that.
So it was that fun kind of, you know, but again, he knew way more.
He was collecting Ferraris and he, you know, buying Ferraris.
Look at this yellow 275.
I just thought I'd never even heard of this.
Right. He let me drive cars from his collection in Santa Monica
when we were out for the Emmys. Oh, wow.
You know, and I drove a Dino, which I didn't even know existed.
Right. And suddenly I'm in one in Santa Monica flying down the street.
Three fifty six is nine fourteen six and eighty nine nine eleven.
And he was the one who said, you're a Porsche guy, you know,
at the time I had a Maserati by turbo and he's like, that's a piece of shit.
You're nine. Get a nice early nine eleven.
And I did. And he was right.
And I've been driving those cars ever since.
Great cars to drive. But I love the by turbo.
Did it have the cushy seat like the Quattroport real cushy?
Yeah, those by turbos, they were they were troublesome.
I don't work right. They're horrible.
But I mean, I was an eighty seven.
I remember looking at one a few weeks ago and I still got I would buy that again.
I don't know what it is to it.
It's like I got a dumb Cartier.
But there's just something about it that said like exotic car
to this kind of small town, Massachusetts guy.
It was just like, oh, this Italian. Yeah, how fancy.
Yeah, well, they're terrible. Yeah.
And to your point, I mean, you know, I didn't know when I bought
my first car was a Trans Am.
But I didn't know anything about I did, too.
But I didn't know the right one to buy because of their like you said,
no internet or anything. So I had a seventy five Trans Am four hundred
automatic. Did I know that there was an SD four fifty five built in seventy four
with a four speed that would have been way cooler? No, I had no idea.
I just like that one.
I like that one right there with a bird on it.
And of course, we just didn't know these things.
And so the guys that knew were the really cool kids in the neighborhood.
Yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I saw the Pacecar version of that.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that's right.
Well, what's happening here?
I never heard Pacecar before.
I go, you're telling me this.
I thought in my teenage brain, that car was the Pacecar, right?
Right. It had to be like it. How did you get it?
You're an EMT. You're an ambulance guy.
And there was other car guys on the staff there.
We had one of your co-workers.
I don't know. Tom Young, who works on Ferraris now,
who was a sound engineer for Letterman back in the in the.
I believe I'm not sure what the era was that he was on.
But he was he's a Ferrari guy and works on Ferraris.
And it was audio engineer for.
I mean, it's it's funny.
Like you said, no one who the car guys are.
They used to be the nerd guys. Now it's like everybody's in the cars.
It's hard. Now we're powerful.
Yeah, all I have to do is tell somebody way more of them than we thought.
When I say to a guy, you know, what do you do for a living?
Classic cars. Oh, wow. Oh, how could I go?
Well, you know, it's still a regular job.
You know, I still have to be the boss and yell at people
and tell people, you know, do this and do that.
I don't yell at people.
I heard laughing in the background, by the way.
I'm making notes of that, guys.
But, you know, it's it's fun to be in the car business
and have fun with cars.
And I know that you you love it and have become as knee deep
in it as you possibly can be, right?
Yeah, it appears that way.
Well, I mean, I went from Letterman to Seinfeld
and I still remember Jerry pulling on to the studio a lot
on my first day and seeing my junkers, seventy four nine eleven and going,
who drove that? Not as a compliment.
That's the right car, the wrong example.
And the new kid spike, he goes, he comes in and he goes,
man, I can't believe you like Porsches.
I go, I love them. You guys, you got to get rid of that one.
Yeah, that's the wrong one.
I went, what? Yeah, got to get rid of it.
Yeah, you thought this was the cool one, right?
Yeah, and then he and I were often running because he just like you lived
in those offices like they were dorms seven days a week.
And then when you had a break, it was the same thing.
We're going through Hemings.
We're running through Auto Week.
We're looking for cars.
There's great stuff still for sale.
He has an unlimited budget.
So he's like, I'm going to get this thing called a seventy three nine eleven
RS and here's why I'm like, wow.
Yeah, never even dream about it.
Yeah, he's he's he's he's talking to the president of Porsche
because you should get one of these new nine nine three C2S.
This is the last you want me to see if you can get paint to sample
from Dr. Wiedekin.
You had to write the president of the company.
I'm like, that sounds like a good idea.
Let's do it.
Yeah, as the bank account just goes,
while he was then, you know, then Seinfeld's doing pretty well.
Right. He's like, I'm going to pay you this.
And I'm like, wow, let's buy some cars.
I have no kids and no life.
It's just a small rent check.
And did a lot of people realize that Seinfeld was filmed on the west coast?
It wasn't filmed in New York.
I think a lot of people were confused.
I never realized that until you need to be until the studio city in the valley.
But there were B camera B roll shots that were shot in New York.
Right. So let's say we wanted Kramer running through Times Square.
We had a Kramer on standby that we would shoot from behind.
Who would run through Times Square and chase him with a camera?
There was a mix, but the New York street itself was built in studio city.
Isn't that crazy? Yeah, I think the same.
By the way, same lot as Gilligan's Islands Lagoon,
which was there when I first arrived.
How cool was that?
That, you know, from a from a guy who grew up in the 60s, man,
that would have been the coolest thing ever.
First place I went. First day I went to that lot.
I just moved to California from New York and I knew it was there.
And I said, take me there in the golf cart and we went there and sat silent.
That's the dumb crap that I like.
And when I first visited LA, my brother lived here before me.
This was years before I came to live here.
He picked me up at the airport and we drove right to Paradise Cove,
where the Rockford Files trailer.
That's a true car guy.
That is a true car guy right there.
Yeah, I was super excited.
I go, I don't want to see that.
I don't care about the Hollywood side.
Yeah, I forget that.
Take me to the locations because this is this is the reason I had come to LA.
I had seen this road, Pacific Coast Highway,
and I'd seen these movies and Rockford Files.
And, you know, I just wanted this lifestyle.
I wanted a dog. I wanted a car.
I wanted to be in the sun and the convertible.
Yeah. And I bought a Cougar XR7 convertible.
Nice. And there we go. I was off and running.
You know, it was, it would Seinfeld have been more car-centric.
Had it been, you know, set in the California environment.
I mean, I know there was a lot of car things that happened on the show,
but I mean, would it have been more prevalent in if the setting was LA?
No, no, not at all.
That show is all about just comedy.
Well, I mean, but the but some of the stuff in there was really cool,
like the Skip Barber magnet sticker on the refrigerator that was car related,
which was so cool.
And then the Seinfeld poster, the 1989 Porsche 930
turbo that had the the license plate said Seinfeld on it.
You could order those from Porsche.
Yeah, yeah, I have there's also a poster of a 550 coming over a hill
that that's frame that was on the show that's in my son's room right now.
Oh, how cool was that?
Yeah, he was watched.
He saw somehow some clip on YouTube and he went, Hey, I've got the same poster.
I go, No, that is the poster.
I took it that night.
But, you know, that character was Seinfeld.
So he was kind of putting his personality on the supermarket.
Or he this is how he would have decorated his apartment had that been his real
apartment. Sure. That's the only metric there.
But the rest of it was just played for laughs.
So I don't know that aside from the 73 RS making an appearance
on New York Street in the middle of winter in the episode, The Rye.
I don't know that there were any other big car moments.
Yeah, I mean, I think the one with John Voight's car or the
ass man plate that Kramer had on.
But I mean, John Voight's car is Tom Gamble.
Right. That's that.
So he's he's definitely not a car guy.
Right. He's just this Chrysler.
You know, John Voight LeBaron somehow entered the right year's room.
You know, it's I love that that shows a great show.
And it's it's so fun to watch.
And it's still relevant today.
And it was so structured.
You know, it's interesting that Larry David, who, you know, created that made
that so structured, yet Kirby enthusiasm was exact opposite of that.
It was just not structured.
And they just gave you a little outline and said here, just talk about this for a while.
It's the exact same.
Really? The structures are there.
Really? Well, when Larry and Jerry created the show,
I mean, and I think you can kind of see it now, because they both done things
outside of the show.
They were their deaths would be like this facing each other.
You'd come in, the guys would be there.
You'd pitch them like this and, you know, sweat and the rest of it.
But they had this balance, you know, Jerry, Jerry's comedy
and Larry's comedy balanced out in the show.
And that's what you get now when you see an episode of Seinfeld, right?
Jerry loves to write everything down.
Every word of his act is written down in yellow pads and loves to play with the words,
rearrange the words and extract the most amount of laughs per line without any excess.
Trim the fat off the stake right now.
So it's just like Larry likes to not do that.
Right. And I'm kind of like,
I think I'm a little more like Larry than Jerry.
And that writing is a very slow thing sometimes.
And it's very hard for me to do by myself when I'm not not in a room.
But the inherent structure is identical.
Right. Seinfeld and Kerr. Wow.
So, you know, when I went in, I pitched an episode, hey, we're going to there's a soup guy.
We call him the soup Nazi. Great. Go do that story.
I outline that story on a board, dry erase board, bring them in, talk them through it.
Beat by beat, middle, beginning, middle, end, right?
Then they say there on Seinfeld, go ahead, go and write it.
Oh, gotcha. And Kerr, they say, great, you're done.
But take the structure.
We're going to talk about the scenes and kind of work them out on the floor and then go with them.
Sure. Do you see what I'm saying?
Yeah, absolutely.
They eliminate the writing step because they're not shooting in front of a live audience.
They don't have to perform a play or have everything dialed in and they don't have
to get everything done in three or four hours on a Thursday and Thursday night.
Sure. They're going to shoot it.
They're going to shoot it quickly over the course of a couple of days
so they can work the scene out like you and I would. Sure.
And do you, I mean, what sticks with you now with Spikes Car Radio,
your show that's on YouTube and podcast and all that good stuff?
Do you do you adhere to any structure or you just like me, you just wing it?
No, you didn't just wing it.
You Googled me, didn't you? Of course I did.
You're going through my Wikipedia page right now.
So you've done some prep for the interview, which is that's good.
It's good that you did that.
Well, I have been writing every episode of my show.
I can't unless I have someone like Jerry.
That'll be the easiest show for me to write.
But I go through every single episode and outline every single break
to try to keep the conversation going.
Right. I don't keep it that strict
because I want it to be relaxed and fun and a spontaneous conversation.
But I learned from working in late night, which I thought, you know,
when I heard when I first saw David Letterman,
I thought that guy was improvising the show. Right. Right.
You know, and then I saw exactly how much work it takes.
And it's my show is exactly the same.
You know, it's not doesn't take as much work as a Letterman episode,
but it takes an amount of work to make sure it stays interesting for the audience.
Right. I mean, at the end of the day, you're hoping to get viewers
and make it all work and make it worth your while as well, too.
I mean, it's not cheap to do this.
It's, you know, yeah, you can have a camera in your, you know,
your mom's basement and have a show.
But to make it somewhat more viable,
you have to do a little more than that.
Well, yeah. And we're talking about you're talking about cars.
So there's lots of stats. Right.
And, you know, you've got to you've got a world of guys who are doing car shows
and you have to be kind of you have to be different.
You know, you have to find your little zone of what you do well and and communicate that.
So, you know, I love it. It's so fun.
Do you record once a week?
It's like work. Yeah.
Once a week. Is it once a week you record?
Yeah, for now, we're once a week.
And you anticipate doing more or less?
We're talking about doing kind of the 1230 version of the Jay Leno garage show.
Oh, nice. Right.
Jay is kind of the king of the of YouTube as far as like a car show.
We want to do one that's a little more reverent,
that that doesn't step on his toes.
That's kind of our thing that that, you know,
is our is our version of kind of cars and comedy.
So we're talking about that.
Well, I think that, you know, having fun with it is most important to me.
I wanted something that I could do that I could kind of break away from the
business side of what I do and just enjoy myself.
And that's part of what we do here, because people, you know,
you're selling classic cars. We're not splitting atoms here.
We're just selling a guy a Mustang or a Camaro or a Chevelle or whatever.
And it's we want to make it enjoyable and we don't want to feel like they're
coming to a used car lot where the guy's like, hey,
I can get you the rust proofing on that thing for nine ninety five.
Can I, you know, try not to be that way for sure.
Yeah. So your collection of cars that yours and your co-host or co
guy, Zuckerman, are those mostly your cars that are in the years
and his cars that are in the background of the show?
No, that's Zuckerman's hangar.
That is his his place where he keeps his cars.
You know, I called him and I just said, look,
if we shoot it, mine, it's going to be a little too cold.
My hair does not have heat, so but we wanted to have, you know,
the bar top and we want to look over our shoulders and see
any of the cars that we bring into the studio, any of the press cars,
any cars for our collection.
So we decided to shoot at his place.
All right.
But there are, you know, usually what we're doing.
Johnny and I are usually driving press cars all year long, you know,
every week, manufacturers, it's a great gig.
I was going to say, what a great gig.
Yeah. Today, Rivian's dropping off their new SUV that's coming in about an hour.
And what I do is I drive them as is kind of me.
So what does that mean?
That means, you know, I'll end up taking my wife out to dinner at it.
I'll end up running the kids around for errands.
I'll end up going to meetings in it.
I'll end up playing tennis in it.
I'll just use it for a week.
And what I like to do is kind of communicate
regardless of price and prestige.
Hey, here's what it's really like, what it was like for me to drive this thing.
Right. Here's what people said, or here's, you know,
someone flipped me off in traffic because they thought I was that guy.
Someone let me in. Right.
You drive a Bentley convertible, you get a lot of metal fingers,
for some reason, with the convertible.
They're like, well, you drive a Subaru and it doesn't matter
if you just cut someone off.
They go, I love you, man, they love you, right?
I'm the same guy.
So, you know, or, you know, I'll, you know,
people know now that these aren't my cars, so they'll make a comment.
Like, yeah, I like that, but I hate the color. Right.
Well, they're not offending you. Yeah.
Yeah, without offending me, that's definitely not you.
You know, you wouldn't drive a Lamborghini.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm not that guy, but it's a great car.
So I try to, because these are such big purchases these days for people,
you know, you know, the average new cars, what, $30,000, $50,000 now?
Yeah, $40,000 or something, I think.
Right, you want to say, look, you know, let's not make mistakes here.
And this is what I kind of learned in my short time with it.
And hopefully that helps you.
Yeah, we, the press car gig seems like the greatest gig ever.
I've always thought that that would be so cool that they just send you a car.
Is it once a week you get a car or even more often sometimes?
No, yeah, sometimes you'll get, I try to sequence the men,
but I've made mistakes where I'll get two or three at once.
And I don't really like that.
And, you know, occasionally you get into trouble with them.
Like, I don't know, you probably didn't see the show a few weeks ago
where I had this Maibach convertible, you know,
this beautiful Maibach badge to $300,000.
And I'm driving in Santa Monica on a beautiful morning, 70 degrees,
eight in the morning, the top is down, we're moving at 20 miles an hour.
And the truck in front of me hits a tree branch
bigger than me, like a big ass branch way across four lanes,
knocks it down and it falls.
Luckily, I'm not tailgating the guy, falls right in front of my buck.
And I laugh.
It hits the Subaru next to me.
This woman's car is destroyed.
He weirdly backs out of it and then continues on her way to shop.
I do, I have to do a U-turn because all the lanes are now blocked.
And then I realized, God, I almost just died.
Had I been closer, there was no tie at the top down.
And that thing was, you know, as big as a tree.
You couldn't have wrapped your arms around it going across the lanes.
I was like, wow, but thank God, the car's OK.
Coming back two hours later, I have to stop because they're clearing it.
And a guy rear ends me.
Oh, my God, same spot.
This is the same one.
No, no, no, no, no, no, that can't possibly be right.
And then you're like, oh, oh, Mercedes, hey, you got to call them.
You got to look.
I, you know, so that's the only downside is, you know,
and I like, you know, I treat these cars like they're my own
and I don't test them on a track and wreck them.
But you live in a city and things happen occasionally.
Absolutely. You feel that stress when you're in something that costs
five hundred thousand or, you know, whatever the number is,
two million dollar car in a couple of weeks.
I saw that.
Well, you know, and test drive, regular test drives suck
because you go out and drive a car around for like 15 minutes.
You have no reference of your normal lifestyle.
Does it fit in my garage?
Does it do this?
Can I get through the local drive through?
Can I get through my bank thing?
Can my kids going to be able to get in and out of it?
All that stuff that you don't do when you test drive a car
that you get to do when you have a car for a week.
Maybe that's the new thing that manufacturers should do.
They give you a car for a week.
And if you like it, you pay us.
If you don't like it, you send it back.
Yeah. Well, definitely for a couple of days.
I don't know. A quick drive.
You learn so much about a car in that first five minutes of the drive.
Like I can tell a lot of the very first moment I get into it.
So I wouldn't say it's all a waste of time.
Sure. Well, you know, there's like a disconnect,
especially when people are buying these old defenders
like Land Rover Defenders, they look so cool.
And there's so many companies that are modifying them.
And then they spend 100 grand on them, they get in them
and they're just like, oh, God, it's like, crap, I can't drive this.
We're even an old series, too.
You know, it looks so cool.
That guy getting a pumpkin and Thanksgiving.
You drive, you're like, God, it's drives like a tractor.
I can't drive this.
My wife wanted a G-Wagon.
I said, just go drive this one we've got for sale here.
You can tell me how much you want it when you get back.
She goes, I really don't want that.
Yes. Yeah. That's good.
So that's what I mean.
That drive, that drive is valuable, even if it is only for five minutes.
How do you find time to drive your own cars
when you've got a press car to drive and you've got beautiful new 911 ST?
You don't, you don't have time.
Yeah, I don't, which is which is fine.
You know, either I'll just stop the press car flow and they stop naturally.
I think this time of year.
Like I think the press car fleet tends to get smaller.
Though I am getting the new BMW M2 CS next.
And maybe after that, I think I'm done.
And then you drive your cars then.
Well, that's true.
And you got good weather year round pretty much where you are.
Year round. Yeah, it's great.
And we I'm going to drive.
I'm going to go drive this old Mercedes 420 SL today, which is going to be nice.
Oh, nice. Nice.
Do and the whole hangar thing.
You guys are like, are the airports going to want their hangars back
at some point in time? Are they going to say?
It sounds like it.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
That's the, you know, that's developers trying to close an airport
so they can build. Right, right.
It's ridiculous. Yeah.
But it's unclear whether that's going to happen or not.
Right. So you love the 911 ST.
I what's the color of yours?
It's some kind of chalky blue. Pure blue.
No, sure. Blue. Sure. Blue.
Nice. They make.
We were trying to get paint to sample on it.
But, you know, at the end of the day, it's sure.
Pure blue is a new color. It was just for the ST.
And it was just an easier decision.
Like I like first year colors.
Right. Yeah.
So and I've learned at this point that color,
the color fascination kind of wears off after a couple of weeks.
And then you just have the car.
So as long as you're close, you'll be happy.
Yeah. Yeah. That car is outstanding.
So yeah, I should drive that car.
Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.
And then call me and let me know how great it is.
Because I've got a lowly old 997, a 2006 911S 6 speed in navy blue.
You know, it's just a it's just a car,
but it's the most fun car to drive.
What's the Porsche color, though?
It can't be Navy. No, it's I don't know.
It's not going to go. No, no, I got too many cars.
My guys all make fun of me.
They're like, are you ever going to drive this car or that car?
And it's like, you know, it's sometimes it's difficult.
You know, the cars buried, there's the batteries dead.
You can't find your this, you can't find your that.
You know, the path of least resistance sometimes is the rusty old suburban.
Correct. And something that's a little easier.
No, this is something we talk about on the show.
You know, it's, you know, and we're, you know, there's I think it was Dave
that really first said, you know, I know you probably won't relate to this,
but it's kind of hard keeping a collection of cars going.
And I was like, what is this guy talking about?
But now I kind of know, you know, everything's got to be plugged in on
chargers, you know, and a battery tender.
And, you know, you have these waves of everything goes wrong and you're just like,
oh, God, you know, you're constantly curating, you know, and that's, you know,
we just talk about that because that's our lives.
And we know that there are other people out there in our audience
who are in this situation and want to talk about it.
And we also know there are people who kind of can't relate to that.
Or, you know, I've always found the car hobby to be aspirational, you know,
and, and, you know, I worked hard to kind of get where I was at
and where I'm at right now.
And when I was young and in Massachusetts, we didn't have cars like that.
Sure. My mom was a nurse.
My dad was a salesman.
And we drove Ford Granada's.
And we're proud of it.
You know, I think we had an old, yeah, no, in a Chevy, a Chevy Impala.
Oh, yeah.
Paint came off.
So, you know, that's where I started with cars.
Well, the quality of the paint jobs weren't quite what they are today.
Yeah. And now, you know, I'm into it.
So, you know, I'm just trying to communicate my life as accurately as I can.
Yeah. Well, you've driven a lot of cool things.
Well, I don't know.
Have you driven one of the new 935s?
I say new 2019, the 935s that they came out with that were
like the Moby Dick race cars from the 70s that they redid and they had.
I know the car. Yeah. Oh, my God.
They have driven.
I think that's a GT2 RS underneath.
I think so, too. I think it is, too.
Yeah, we had those.
And that GTD Mustang you had in not too long ago on your show was an amazing car.
Did you get to Jay Leno's?
Yeah. Oh, that thing is crazy.
Yeah. He loves that car.
He really loves that car.
I love that, that he, you know, he could have anything in the world
and loves a 300, 600, whatever,
I mean, a thousand dollar Mustang that's going to be.
I mean, I imagine if you just loves tweaking Porsche's nose,
that's why he brought it over.
It's way better than your GT3 RS.
They're like, OK, yeah, for you.
Yeah, for you, maybe not for me.
So for us, how do you know,
9 59 Porsches were the coolest car in my era of growing up in the Porsche world.
Is that still, is that car good to drive?
Or is it not as much fun as you would think?
Well, Jerry loves his a lot.
You know, I found them a little disappointing
because they were at the time the height of technology at 85.
Yeah. 80. Yeah.
85 or 86. The most tech.
Everything Porsche knows in 1985 is put into that.
It's a technologically advanced thing that when I drove it,
I thought, wow, this is really primitive based on the technologically
advanced GT3 RS I just drove.
And and, you know, I said to Jerry,
I go, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't really like driving.
I love the story and I think it's really cool.
But sure, because it's trying so hard
to be technologically advanced in its in its way,
it feels primitive when compared.
And I think that will change the older that car gets.
And I'll probably start appreciating it more. Sure.
It's just like currently it's not, to me, it's just two in the middle.
Right. Well, I have a CL 55 Mercedes.
It's got stickmen for a navigation.
You know, I mean, it's old school technology that that that
that has changed so drastically, even just it changes every year drastically.
So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It's interesting. That's I mean, this is what's fascinating about the car hobby.
Like, you know, we're we don't care what a car costs.
We're not going to give it a pass, right?
Just because it's five million dollars.
Yeah, right, right. It doesn't.
It doesn't win. And I just got to deliver.
What is it like to drive?
That's all that matters.
So, like, here's our favorite car right now.
Zuckerman and I own this 1979 BMW 525.
Oh, we did not pay a lot of money.
Sure, they're not expensive.
A little four speed.
It was a Euro car and it deliver.
It kind of takes you out of the game in California here, right?
In that it's not the fastest thing on the road.
But it never fails when you're having a stressful day
to deliver the most relaxing cruise that brings you down like a valley.
And he and I both experienced this and I go,
I can't believe what a winner this is.
And we've got some big metal. Oh, sure.
To choose from. Absolutely.
And here's this little car.
That's funny.
My boys love this car, too.
That is just the number one right now.
It's the number one.
And, you know, that's what we tell people to look for.
Look for these cars.
Forget about money. Right.
And forget about prestige, really.
Look for machines that deliver that experience if you're a driver.
Because that's the whole game.
Yeah, that's the greatest advice I've heard.
My producer just handed me a note.
My Porsche is Midnight Blue Metallic, by the way.
Midnight Blue Metallic. There you go.
So very nice color.
What a shameful thing to not know.
Yes.
So anyway, we really appreciate, you know,
I appreciate you getting up,
although you say you're an early riser, so I appreciate that.
And we certainly enjoyed having you on the show.
And hopefully the next time we're out in California,
we'll get to say hello to you in person.
Yeah, it was nice to meet you in Newport.
Hopefully we'll be back there.
I will. We love it going there every year.
So we'll hope to see you there as well, too.
We appreciate you again being on and hope to see you soon.
All right. Take care.
Good to see you.
All right. Bye-bye.
No matter what you think is a classic car,
you'll probably find one in classic Auto Mall.
How about a two-owner 2003 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe
with 5,105 actual miles?
Like trucks, maybe a 66 Chevrolet C-10 step side
with a 350 V8 and a TCI 700 R4 automatic transmission
or a 1984 Chevy C-10 shortbed,
chopped, shaved, louvered, and a nearly new 355 V8.
How about true classics like a 1926 Pontiac Series 627-665?
It's the first year Pontiac with multiple AACA awards.
And let's not forget Mustangs like a 67 hardtop,
three owners and a fully known history
or a 1998 Mustang Cobra convertible
with 38,209 actual miles, one of just 343 built.
So whatever floats your boat or opens your garage
with over 1,000 constantly changing vehicles,
you'll probably find it at ClassicAutomall.com.
And we're back with the Classic Auto Mall show
from the Classic Auto Mall studio
in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
Great guest, Spike Feriston,
who's got an amazing collection and got a great gig.
And it's like he said, he gets to hang out with Leno
and Letterman and Seinfeld and those guys.
I was going to say, funny guy, but I think we know that
because he wrote for the Letterman and Seinfeld
and everybody else.
But just because you're an employee of someone
doesn't always mean that you're a buddy of theirs, too, as well.
So he's got the double FECTA as they call it.
Thanks to cars.
Thanks to cars.
I mean, it's like he said, Letterman came to him and said,
hey, so where did we sell cars this week?
Where?
Did you ask?
Did you ask that?
I think you did.
How about Missoula, Montana?
How about Buckhannon, West Virginia,
Dauphin, Pennsylvania, Gloucester City, New Jersey,
Waukegan, Illinois, Milford, Delaware, Westchester,
Pennsylvania, Upper Marlboro, Maryland,
Agdee, France, Pottstown, Pennsylvania,
Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, Edgewater, Florida,
New Iberia, Louisiana, Noxville, Virginia,
Washington, Utah, another Agdee, France,
Douglasville, probably the same guy or his buddy.
Douglasville, Pennsylvania, Weatherford, Texas,
Morgantown, West Virginia, the villages, Florida,
Rackmount, Virginia, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates,
Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, Great Meadow, Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Exton, Pennsylvania,
Rising Sun, Maryland, twice, Spokane, Washington,
Staten Island, New York, Jonestown, Pennsylvania,
Annapolis, Maryland, Bardot, Pennsylvania,
Boston, Massachusetts, Czech Republic,
Wilmington, Delaware, San Diego, California.
That's two weeks of sales.
Wow, holy cow.
Was that a little applause there for...
Yeah, sure.
How about that?
Thank you.
Here you go.
So what are we talking about now?
Oh, we're talking about inventory.
A new inventory.
All right, let's do it.
Yeah, we got the, how about the 1927 Ford Model T Coupe?
Yes.
Which one?
The basic transportation, the black over gray.
Ah, yeah.
29,000 actual miles.
How cool is that?
Well-preserved example, this is an honest antique car.
If you want an antique car, if that's what your goal is
to get an antique car to drive in a parade
or to have in your collection, then the Model T is it.
This is a post child for antique car.
Yep.
So you got to get one.
Next on the list is the 1940 Packard 110 Coupe.
This thing is really cool.
The pack.
The primer black over beige, 500 cubic inch Cadillac V8.
Sure, why not?
Turbo-hydro-matic 400 transmission, 10-bolt posi-axle,
Mustang 2 front end.
I don't know why this is so popular front end.
There's always the most in there.
I think it's just because it's easy to,
it's all complete, it's all...
It's inexpensive, smaller.
Smaller, readily available.
Next on the list is the 1963 Chevrolet Nova SS Tribute,
bright red over black, 350 cubic inch V8,
power-glad automatic, 10-bolt axle,
power four-wheel disc brakes.
So this is like a kind of rest-o-moddish car, if you will.
I love this one.
The 1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer, black over beige, over wood,
over beige, 5.9 liter Magnum V8.
And it's got a MSDEFI on it,
which makes it a little more drivable
and a little more usable, if you will.
Dana 44 axles in final year for the Grand Wagoneer,
which is always mistakenly said
that they only made 1,452 of those, and that's incorrect.
They made the thousands.
Yeah, everybody always had that in their head
for some reason, so.
Another Model T, how about the 1926 Ford Model T Roadster,
primer black over black with a 307 cubic inch four barrel V8.
This is all a Henry Steel rat rod.
It's a pretty cool car.
And then last but not least, the 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo
Landau, antique white and darker at 58,000 actual miles
with known history since new.
Correct 350 cubic inch two barrel V8,
and nicely well preserved survivor.
Now, if you wanted to put a four barrel on that one,
you'd have to change the intake, man.
You'd have to take the intake, yeah.
And that would, you'd get more, maybe more power from that one.
A little bit, it depends.
I think there's a, there's a, there's a fine line.
You can't push too much fuel into an engine
without it being able to handle and bog it down.
Did you hear the story of the Mercedes G-Wagen
that sold at auction in Germany?
No.
The guy bought it, paid pretty good money
because it was really nice.
Was driving it, didn't want to stop, wouldn't stop.
Had a lot of problem with it.
Fella was so unsafe he had it towed,
took it to the garage, they took the wheels off.
The brakes, brake pads were painted red
with a marker written on them, Brembo, they were wood.
Oh my God.
Nice, because wood brakes are what you want.
They're good with that friction.
So now they're searching the seller at the auction
and how this happened.
It sounds like a lawsuit.
Yeah, it sounds like a lawsuit, just a fixin' to happen.
So when we return, we'll continue our show
and we'll have a conversation with our buddy Keith Martin,
Sportscar Market Magazine.
We'll be back in just a couple of minutes.
Here's a special offer from Sportscar Market Magazine.
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by going to sportscarmarket.com
slash test drive at the number six.
That's sportscarmarket.com slash test drive six.
If you're a buyer, a seller, or just general classic car
enthusiast, publisher Keith Martin says,
we've been around almost 40 years.
It's the Wall Street Journal of the collector car world.
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This is the Classic Automall Show.
If you have questions or comments,
write podcast at classicautomall.com.
And we're back with the Classic Automall Show
from the Classic Automall Studio in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
Joining us via Zoom, our friend Keith Martin,
publisher of Sportscar Market Magazine.
Good morning, afternoon, evening, Keith.
Good morning, and Keith is excited to be here today.
I can tell, you're raring to go.
It's hard not to love to have a conversation
talking about cars, right?
That's what we all do.
I was on a family vacation with my son a couple months ago
and he said, Dad, do you ever talk about anything but cars?
I said, no.
And I said, well, like what?
For instance, like what's there?
What else is there?
That's the great thing about cars is you could talk for,
that's the problem with having a show,
is that defining it down to 30 or 40 minutes of talking about
because you could just keep going on and on for hours
and hours and hours.
You could keep going on and on, but you know what?
You'd watch your readers, your listeners.
Yeah.
And the decline would be from like your 2 million now
down to your sister.
Yeah, your sister because she has to.
You know, it's watching these guys
who do these three hour long podcast.
I mean, even if it's an interesting guest at about two hours,
I'm like, holy crap, this is two hours.
I don't have another hour and a half.
Those are my workout podcasts.
Yeah, that's a good.
You know, I'm at the gym and I'm just listening to those
because I have to be doing two things at once.
I can't stop everything else in my life and just listen to those.
Yeah.
How dare I watch a television show
without my computer or my phone doing 18 other things.
Yeah.
Where are those subtitles?
Yeah, that would be helpful.
I'm going to get one of those old fashioned television
that has subtitles on it.
So I want to I want to riff sideways on McCons for a minute.
OK, I like I thought I like McCons.
Maybe you're going to tell me different.
Well, they're the best Hyundai SUV you've ever been.
But I had a friend
blown me a McCon GTS, which is the SuperZoot one.
Right.
And I put 2000 miles on a rally.
And it was it was a wonderful car.
It's not a Porsche. Right.
It's not really an SUV. Right.
It's really it's it's just a really wonderful car.
And so this guy was emailing me that he finally found his perfect Porsche
with the I think he said PCC BS breaks or something like that.
And I said, why I don't know what those are.
And he said, those are carbon fiber brakes.
I said, oh, for the Hamilton's out there.
Yeah.
And who need carbon fiber brakes on their Porsche SUV.
Yeah, because they're only five thousand dollars a rotor.
So, you know, there's I just I love those cars.
And we'll talk Porsches in a minute.
But I just find the whole Porsche SUV thing.
I mean, Porsche, first of all, was brave enough to do that way before Ferrari.
Way before all those guys are worrying about it.
This then Porsche just launched.
Yeah, they just did it and said, OK, we're going to do it.
Yeah. But but I it's it's not a sports car.
No, it's not.
And it tries to be a sports car.
And when you make a GTS version of whatever the heck it is,
then that's saying this is what we want you to think is a sports car.
And it's not. It's a good car. It's like good food.
There's, you know, there's fine dining, which is, you know,
wonderful in this and great.
And then there's just good old food, you know, a good grilled cheese
sandwich and tomato soup. Yeah, nothing wrong with it.
But just not the same.
You we got to give Porsche credit for being probably the best
marketed car on the planet. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. Because I mean, you see them everywhere.
I mean, SUV and especially in, you know, more exclusive neighborhoods
and things like that, you see lots of Kynes and lots of McCanns
and lots of Pan Americas and, you know, all the different versions
of cars that aren't really cars. Yeah, no, I agree.
So let's talk my Porsche.
Yes, the Sporto hits the road.
A long I've had that car for three years.
And you know what I've often thought with with the ticket?
When you take a 50 year old car and you bring it back to life,
it's never just, oh, it needs points and plugs.
No, never, never, never, never, because the car is if you had gone
to Porsche in 1975 and said, 50 years from now, what kind of problems
do you think I'll be having?
They'll say that car doesn't exist.
It's dust by the end.
So I've had, I really believe when you bring a 50 year old car back to life,
it's no different than breaking a horse. Exactly.
Yeah, there's lots of work involved.
And there's lots of trick.
Take it, fix the things that are on your list, drive it some more,
find the new things, take it back, have the new things fixed, take it back.
I mean, you have to wrestle the car to the ground.
Yeah, you really do.
And pin its head and make sure its shoulders don't come off the mat.
You know, and you know what you, you know what you do?
You threaten them with your credit card.
It's got to be like a platinum American Express card to really,
to really be effective, though.
You you sit down or I'm spending 10 more grand.
But, you know, that's that's food for thought for anybody who buys an old car.
We try to tell our customers, look, there are going to be things that are going to
go, you know, if you drive out of here and drive 50 miles down the road
and the fuel pump goes out, I couldn't have known that ahead of time.
You couldn't have known that ahead of time.
It just happens.
It's going to happen.
And things happen to these old cars.
And you have to be prepared to say, I'm going to make a commitment
not only to buy the car, but also to spend money going forward.
Yeah, I had we were coming home in the rain and my nine seventy five nine
eleven and the right windshield wiper came loose.
Well, that's lovely.
And really good, good timing, right?
Never happens on a dry day.
Of course, you'd never know.
It's just because you'd never turn your wipers on on a dry day.
I'm on the freeway with one windshield wiper flopping.
And I'm thinking cutting across the freeway to get onto the shoulder
is probably more dangerous than just with these with these old cars
with their little dim lights.
Oh, yeah, you just can't see.
But but let me say with this with this car after three years,
I think we've got it nailed.
You got it dialed in.
When we drove it to the coast the other day,
it was the best driving Porsche experience I have ever had in my life.
And that's saying a lot because you've driven a lot of Porsches.
I've driven a lot of Porsche.
You know, it's you know, it's a two point seven motor.
It's a sport automatic.
Everything is the linkages are fixed.
The suspension is fixed.
It's got new pistons and liners.
I mean, it just it just was just unbelievably good.
You know, and to drive a car like that to get that enjoyment,
you kind of forget not completely,
but you kind of forget all the checks that you wrote to get there instantly.
Yeah, because it's it was all worthwhile.
You you you tamed it and showed it what you could do.
It's like when you make up with your girlfriend, right?
Right, exactly.
So is it going on the market today or tomorrow?
Well, it might stay in the key market.
Wow, you know, I've been moaning and whining about a nine nine six
because of the power steering and the you know, but but but they they are good cars.
Nine nine six, but they don't have the live wire throttle response.
That air cooled sound like the front end.
I mean, this this seventy seventy four seventy five seventy six
are kind of regarded as the last of the light kind of true Porsches.
The SC was three hundred pounds heavier.
Right. They're all I've owned many of them.
They're all good, but they become more car and less Porsche. Right.
Yeah. And is that because of the in fixing the things that are, you know,
that have to be well or making the things that Porsche fixed over the years,
I guess, better and better and better isn't always better.
No, it's two things going on.
First, there's smog and safety regulations. Right.
Porsche goes water cooled and then we have impact and we have air.
I mean, many things are happening that the the two seven that I have
weighs two thousand five hundred pounds.
That's the exact same weight as a Carrera RS. Wow. Wow.
It's, you know, as Colin Chapman always said, add some lightness. Right.
Exactly. I mean, this I'm such a big fanatic about the weight of car.
My SL 55.
I don't know whether it would four and a half thousand or five thousand pounds.
It had 500 horsepower, unbelievable car, but it's still two tons of weight.
Yeah, it's big and it's bulky.
And, you know, even race cars or Formula One cars are getting bigger and bulkier.
You know, it seems like everything and I'm sure it's a safety thing.
I'm sure it's, you know, you get that much power going on in a car.
And it weighs, I mean, can you imagine that engine in your from your SL 55
in that two point seven Porsche? Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I understand.
But the question, the other question is how fast we've talked about this before.
Sure. How fast do you need to go?
I don't know. I can't.
I that C that S 65 coupe I had V 12 twin turbo.
I don't think I ever, ever put the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
I really don't think I did. And I'm not, you know, I'll drive it.
I don't get out there. I'm not. I wasn't baby in it.
I just couldn't imagine going any faster.
I was in a let's see, four GT 40.
I was the first person to test one.
I was reviewing it for the New York Times.
That was from Eastern Oregon.
And I hit 160.
And I had my attorney was with me, John Dranius, and he was there.
And he said what he would do if we got stopped is he would tell the officer
that I was legally blind, couldn't give me the directions
and that I couldn't read the speedometer.
And you couldn't feel how fast you were going, right? Exactly.
So how can I be guilty?
Oh, yes. 160.
And I remember stop and I just stopped and I pulled over to the side of the road.
And I thought, this is an open road.
There could be a cow here.
There could be some car coming the other way.
There could be a tumbleweed.
Well, how stupid am I to myself and somebody else at risk
by putting this kind of speed on a highway?
Yeah, I mean, it's listen, I'm not for regulations to make cars
governed or anything like that.
I think that, you know, that's the freedom of choice of having these things.
But but unless you're on a track, it's I mean, even a bird.
I mean, even on a track, you can have problems.
But at least you're in a controlled environment, not in a random environment
like driving down the highway at 160, which was hopefully more than seven years ago.
Yeah. Well, you know, the problem now that you post a picture,
the police can look at the data on the picture and see when it was
and where it was and how fast you were going.
There's a YouTuber who blew up a Ferrari apparently not too long ago.
And apparently the IRS is coming after him because he didn't pay taxes on it.
And they saw it on YouTube and somebody looked it up and, low and behold,
I guess he's going to jail. So.
OK. All righty then.
So anyway, great to have you as always and hope everything's going well
in the magazine world.
And we're still counting down to the 40th anniversary of your fine publication.
We are. We're having our 38th birthday party on December 5th,
where we bring the whole staff in.
How how great.
How just hard to believe that it's been that long.
So we've had we've had some people with a 15 and 20 years.
Right. Right.
Well, continued success, Keith.
And we will catch it.
Oh, we won't no show next week.
Right. So no show next week.
And then we'll see you the week after, I think, is December the third.
Steve, the producer is like, I don't know.
What do I have? I don't know.
I'll just I'll just talk.
Just wait till you hear from us.
OK. Keith Martin, everybody.
Thanks for joining us.
We'll catch you next time on the Classic Automall Show.
We'll see you next time.
The Classic Automall Show with their host, Stuart Howden,
executive producer, Steve Sefair,
produced and engineered by yours truly, J.R. Russ,
video editor, Randy Lambie, available on ClassicAutomall.com,
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Music courtesy of the Pat Traverse Band for tour dates,
contact and stuff.
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About this episode
Stewart Howden hosts a lively discussion with guests Spike Feresten and Keith Martin, diving into the world of classic cars and the intricacies of car ownership. Spike shares his journey from music to comedy, intertwining his passion for cars with anecdotes from his time with legends like Letterman and Seinfeld. The trio discusses the challenges of maintaining vintage vehicles, the evolution of Porsche, and the unique experiences that come with driving classic cars. With humor and insight, they explore the joys and pitfalls of car culture, making for an engaging conversation.
Acura CL
BMW 5 Series
BMW M2
BMW New Class
Chevrolet C10
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Chevelle
Chevrolet Corvette
Chevrolet Impala
Chevrolet Monte Carlo
Chevrolet Nova
Chrysler Daytona
Chrysler LeBaron
Ferrari 275 GTB
Ferrari Dino 206 GT
Ford Granada
Ford GT
Ford Model T
Ford Mustang
Ford Mustang GTD
Jeep Grand Cherokee
Jeep Grand Wagoneer
Maserati Biturbo
Mercedes-Benz 420 SEL
Mercedes-Benz G-Class
Mercedes-Benz SL
Mercury Cougar
Pontiac Trans Am
Porsche 356
Porsche 550 Spyder
Porsche 911
Porsche 914
Porsche 935
Shelby Cobra
Volkswagen Rabbit
Original notes
Show #220 airdate 11-19-25 Stewart welcomes Spike Feresten. Video Podcaster, Comedy Writer and Car Guy. The two discuss his show @SpikesCarRadio, career writing comedy material for #DavidLetterman and @JerrySeinfeld, his music background, Classic Carcollection and involvement with https://sheffieldwatches.com/ and his very cool SCR CHRONO VK watch line. Plus Keith Martin of Sports Car Market Magazine brings his podcast to life talking about his "Sporto" and the Porsche Macan. @JustinBieber @JohnMayer #TreyParker @SouthPark @Porsche https://college.berklee.edu
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Recorded in our Showcase Studio just inside the entrance of the Classic Auto Mall in Morgantown, PA, Host Stewart Howden, Classic Auto Mall President and Classic Car Specialist Steve Saffier talk about this unique and amazing place often with amazing guests.
YES...Classic Auto Mall is a REAL former shopping mall that covers almost EIGHT football fields with an average of nearly ONE THOUSAND classic vehicles under one, climate controlled roof and they're all FOR SALE!
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