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Welcome back to the Intercooler podcast, everybody.

The podcast powered by car finance specialist JBR Capital with Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel.

Andrew, lots of different things that we want to talk about today.

Later on, we are going to talk to Darren from JBR Capital.

They've published their luxury car report, which has some interesting insights into

the buying habits of people in the SUV and supercar and actually EV space as well.

There's plenty that we want to get through this week.

I just want to touch on Bentley.

Oh, yeah.

Yes, because it was quite recently they revealed their latest car.

And it's a very, very interesting car, isn't it?

It's not an SUV.

It's not an EV.

It's actually, I mean, the most focused, the most sporting car Bentley has produced in

the modern era ever.

I wouldn't say ever, but it's close to it.

I mean, we need to drive it first, don't we?

Before we can make drivers like that.

It's to me, it is interesting for so many.

So this is the new Bentley.

Don't say Continental Super Sports, which is a Continental GT with the hybrid system

removed, with the four wheel drive system removed.

I think half a ton of mass taken out of it.

I know that the target for this car, which they have delivered, is that it should weigh

less than two tons.

There was a time, wasn't there, when a two ton car was really heavy.

But actually, this is going to be within a small, certainly double digit number of kilos

of the weight of an M3 Touring.

Yeah, I thought you might mention that car.

So two tons, it sounds a lot.

But these days, it's actually not.

And clever chassis engineers can make a two ton car handle and behave properly, can't

they?

And one of the things that interests me most about it is they've taken weights out of

both ends of the car.

Because obviously, they've taken the hybrid system away.

So that huge battery in the boot, or underneath the boot floor, has gone.

But also, they're taking the front drive shafts away.

So I think actually, I think the weight distribution has changed very little.

And this is the most overtly.

I mean, they don't wheel out that Super Sports name for anything.

I mean, it first appeared on a three litre Bentley 100 years ago, I think, 1925, maybe

26, something like that.

And this was the first Bentley that was meant to do 100 miles an hour.

It became known as the 100 mile an hour three litre.

And this is only the, well, there have been three since, haven't there?

OK, go on then.

Well, in each of the generations, there's been a Super Sports, hasn't it?

And there was the GT3R, wasn't there?

Yes, there was, yeah.

But this is by far the most extreme.

It is, it is.

And I think as interesting as what it is, is why it is.

Why have they decided to do this car and do it now?

And I think the answer, I think there are two answers to that question.

One is the new boss man, Frank Vallessa, ex-Mr. 911, ex-head of Porsche Motorsport.

You know, you will never in your entire life meet a more car guy guy than Frank.

And I think this speaks volumes about his approach.

But also, I think strategically, you know, we know that Bentley in 27 is going to launch

its first full EV.

And I think they need that kind of car to be able to say to people who worry about,

you know, Bentley going down this more mainstream electric route.

Don't worry, guys.

We still get it.

We still understand.

We still know what a Bentley is meant to be.

And it's not like it's one or the other.

We can still do both.

And I think you often get this.

You know, I never thought it was a coincidence that Porsche did the GT3 at the same time it

was doing the Cayenne way back.

I think they often feel the need to send out.

I think that's what it is.

I think it is a signal.

I think it is a signal to everyone saying we haven't forgotten where we came from.

You know, you have to remember that Bentleys were racing before Bentleys were customer

cars.

And all that early history, everything that put them on the map.

And the reason we revere them today is because they were quite successful at racing cars 100

years ago.

And OK, this isn't Bentley going racing again.

And we've discussed on this podcast many, many times how much we wish they would go

racing again.

And that certainly in my mind hasn't changed.

But the idea of a completely well, it won't be completely stripped out because it's a

Bentley.

So it'll still be leather lined and have air conditioning.

I'm sure it'll still be a reasonably comfortable thing to go about the place in.

But a two seat purely sporting Bentley where the idea is not let's see how much power we

can give it, but let's see how focused we can make this car while still at the same

time keeping it a Bentley.

And we know there are some quite trick materials used in its construction.

We know it still has, I think it's 641 horsepower, which strikes me as being adequate.

657 I'm seeing.

657, OK.

Twin turbo V8, yeah.

Yeah, so it's the same.

It's the same engine.

That's the hybrid system.

And I just think it's really, excuse me, I think it's really refreshing.

I've got to say in this day and age, but in an era where more appears to equate to

well, quality and quantity gets conflated, doesn't it?

And the answer to so many questions always, I'll just put more power in it.

That means more weight.

As long as we have more power than weight, the car will go fast and that'll be fine.

And this is Bentley.

Not a company which you would regard as being particularly weight sensitive.

Going enough and just saying, well, actually, we can go the other way.

It'll have less power than a normal continental GT.

Let alone a continental speed.

But my goodness, you'll have more fun driving it.

It does sound that way, doesn't it?

It looks really exciting.

I think it's expensive, isn't it?

340, 340 something thousand pounds.

They're only going to make 500, 100 of them.

I don't know.

It'd be interesting to see.

I imagine they'll disappear because 500 is not a large number.

I think they will go.

If you consider how many, how many F80s are Ferrari making?

More than that.

Yeah, yeah, they are.

And they want 3 million for those.

So, OK, I'm not saying that in any way this Bentley is a car for the F80.

It's not.

But I think I think that there is an authenticity about this car.

I think that there is a pent up demand for that kind of car.

I think it looks really cool, too.

And I think that they'll do really well with it.

And hopefully they do really well with it.

They'll do another.

So I spent a few days in another Bentley, a Flying Spur.

So the latest Flying Spur with the hybrid powertrain.

Was it a speed or was it not a speed?

It was a speed, yeah.

And it's so interesting, that car, because it replaces the W12 engine

that we have spoken about before quite a lot.

And one of the ways it replaces that is by adding a huge hybrid component.

So there's a huge battery underneath the boot floor,

as you just mentioned, about the Supersports.

And that takes up a massive amount of the boot.

And so I borrowed that car to go away with my young family to Cornwall for three nights.

I honestly thought we were going to have to take something else.

The boot is small.

It is small.

Maybe Bentley Spur drivers don't go touring in their cars and whatever.

I don't know.

But honestly, we almost had to take something else because the boot was groaning.

And I know a two, almost three-year-old and a four-month-old require quite a lot of stuff.

That is clobber-heavy.

They don't travel light.

That's probably the most clobber-heavy a four-person family could ever be, isn't it, at those ages?

But the boot is small.

And I suppose ultimately it's because...

Do you think the platform just wasn't designed from the outset to have such a big hybrid component?

I don't know the answer to that question.

But I suspect...

Well, the platform's quite old, isn't it?

The platform is, what, 2017?

It first turned up.

Well, it first became a Bentley then.

It was a Panamera before that.

So probably not.

So I'm sure there was basically nothing...

Or certainly not a hybrid of that size.

That's what I mean, yeah.

So clearly there's nothing more that they could do over in crew.

But that will be a factor for a lot of buyers.

If you look at this new generation of really affordable EVs,

things like the Renault Twingo and that sort of thing,

the battery in those pure EVs is probably smaller than the hybrid battery in this Bentley.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure it is.

Of course, what that big battery and the electric motor do give you is effortless,

wafty torque, which is what you want in that kind of car and what you got from the W12.

And so actually, you've driven it.

It remains a lovely car.

It is a gorgeous thing to smoke around in.

I just wanted to talk briefly about V8 versus W12,

because we've said so many times that the V8 is a preferable engine.

But it depends on the application, doesn't it?

And...

I'm not sure that does.

OK, for me, the W12 is gone now.

So this is a totally a moot point.

But I preferred the W12 in a luxury car application.

I preferred the V8 in a sporting car application.

OK, well, that's fair enough.

I mean, we know someone who has a W12 Continental GT Speed, an original car.

I think it's a 2008 car.

Yeah.

And his point is, it doesn't really matter in terms of, you know, power or sound or that.

So the thing is, the W12 is special because you don't get it in anything else.

And that V8 is in absolutely bloody everything.

It's in Audis, it's in Porsches, it's in Bentleys.

You know, there is nothing special or exclusive.

I think there's probably a better word about that V8.

Whereas the W12, if you're in a car that's got a W12 in it, unless it's a very old Audi,

it is that you are driving a Bentley and it is a USP of the Bentley.

And it is special as a result.

I understand that point of view.

I'd rather a V8.

Would you?

You still would.

Yeah, I'd take the W12 in a luxury car.

As I say, I like the muted soundtrack.

When you put your foot down in this new Flying Spur Speed, the hybrid one,

you do get a very V80 growl.

And to me, it's not right for that kind of car.

Happy with that.

And the other thing that we've always talked about with this hybrid

is when you're talking about a car that is that heavy,

the additional mass is actually, in terms of percentage terms,

it's not so important apart from where it is.

And you notice it particularly in the Continental GT,

which has become properly balanced for the first time in that car's 20-something year history.

And actually, it's a very, very rare example of weight actually helping a car.

Because of where it is.

And it's a much more neutral, better balanced car as a result of it.

Let's move away from Bentleys.

You've been spending some time with a Porsche 911,

which rather undersells it, doesn't it?

I always seem to be spending time with a Porsche 911.

Lucky old me.

We have a new series, which is going on the Intercooler website and app.

It'll be an occasional series, but we're going to do a few of these.

And it's going to be called A Month in the Life of.

This is actually something

which we started doing back in my autocar days in the early 1990s.

So I'm not saying it's new.

But the idea for it originally was,

a long-term test car where you have a car for maybe six months is great.

And you and I both run them.

And I think that they provide unique insights.

But it is very limiting in terms of the number of cars you can use.

Because if you've got one car for six months, that's two cars a year.

Whereas we also know that if a car just comes in for evaluation,

it's with you for a very short period of time, a number of days.

You may only get out to drive it once or twice on really decent roads.

And what you get then is just a pure driving assessment.

And so between those two poles lies this sort of middle ground.

Whereas if you have a car for a month, you can really get under the skin of it.

You can also get through quite a few different cars over the course of a year.

And so the first one, the first subject of this,

and there are other cars booked and coming,

which we will subject to the same treatment,

is a 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 RS.

And that's the other thing with this month in the life of tests,

is that they do enable us to go and use older cars

in a way that simply wouldn't be possible over a longer term.

Because no manufacturer would part for those cars for that period of time.

And so I have been living with a Gin 2 997 GT3 RS for a month.

And I'd love to tell you what a burden it was,

but I don't think anyone would take me seriously.

It's been an unending delight.

And this is Hebe, isn't it?

They call this car Hebe because the registration plate ends H-B-Y.

Correct.

Someone did point out on the story, the first part of the registration plate is R-O-1-0.

So it should be called Rolo, really.

I prefer Hebe.

Yeah, this is the car that Porsche couldn't bear to have off their press fleet.

When it came out, sometimes you get this very occasionally,

a car will come along and it'll just connect with,

not just motoring journalists who drive it,

but the people who read the stories that they write.

And this car became a bit of a legend.

And Porsche just never got around to selling it.

And I don't know of any other car.

There are obviously cars that get bought and get put on historic fleets,

but they don't tend to spend their life as press cars first.

Hebe wasn't bought to go on Porsche's historic fleet.

Hebe was bought, Hebe was built to be a press car,

went through the normal life of a press car 15 years ago,

and just never left the fleet.

So it's not something that you could only maybe go and drive

on a very rare and special occasion,

high days, holidays, very short list of people who'd be allowed to do it.

If you're a journalist and if you have a good idea, you can borrow Hebe.

So I did.

Yeah, I've driven Hebe a few times,

spent a good amount of time driving that car.

It's one of the all-time greats.

It's stunning.

Do you think there is something peculiar about that car?

Because I do.

I don't know what it is,

but it just seems to me,

and I've driven and been incredibly lucky.

I've driven a few GT3 RSs of that era.

And there is, I don't know whether it's because it's done a load of miles.

It's done like 35,000 miles,

which is quite a few more than most cars like that get driven.

And there is a sort of, the engine is so loose and free,

and there just seems to be something about it,

an edge, a character.

And I may be sort of anthropomorphizing it here,

and I apologize if I do,

but I sort of lose sleep the night before I drive Hebe

in a way that I wouldn't do if there was any other GT3 RS parked outside.

Really?

Yeah.

I just love that.

I love that particular car.

It is not to me just another GT3 RS.

It would be interesting to do the back-to-back with another 997.2 3.8 litre GT3 RS

that's been looked after,

and just see if there is something fundamentally different about Hebe.

But I mean, the car in general, it looks like a road racer.

You know, it looks like it's going to crash and bounce along the road

with really stiff suspension.

It's the complete opposite of that.

It's lovely and supple.

It's a GT3 RS, and in our mind these days, doesn't it?

I mean, that is, that's track car, isn't it?

That's, you know, huge amounts of downforce.

That is a car that spends its life on a track,

but acknowledges that it needs to be driven on a road to get there.

Hebe's the reverse.

Hebe's a road car.

Great on a track, and I've done plenty of laps in it on track.

But it's so compliant.

You could daily drive Hebe.

Yeah.

You absolutely could.

In fact, that was kind of my original plan with it,

but inevitably, in the way these things work,

got on the way and all sorts of other cars had to be driving,

so it didn't quite happen that way.

But it's, we took it to the last Bicester scramble.

Yeah.

In October, and because if you've got a,

if you're an exhibitor, you need to,

you need to get there quite early.

And I don't live very near Bicester,

and I needed to be at Bicester by seven o'clock on a Sunday morning.

So I woke up really very early indeed,

and got into Hebe and England to myself.

Mm, that's great.

I'll never forget it.

It's just one of those drives,

I kind of thought it was going to be that way,

because I thought about the elements.

I knew the weather was going to be great.

I knew the car was going to be great.

I knew the roads were going to be empty,

and I knew the roads that I was going to be on.

I just thought something's going to need to go badly wrong

for this not to be an epic drive.

And it's the kind of drive that you can do all too rarely,

unless you're really good at getting up in the morning

and setting alarm clocks,

where all the sort of components are right.

And you're not, the interesting thing about drives like that

is you're not door handling it.

You're not screaming around the place, waking everybody up.

Being antisocial to the few road users that are out there.

You're just enjoying the freedom of the road, uninhibited.

And it's a wonderful experience.

And you can be sitting there just driving quickly,

really enjoying the car, putting it through its paces,

but not in any way stressing yourself or the machinery.

And to me, that's what road driving should be.

And I absolutely loved it.

And that car, it's just so well judged.

It's positioning, the way it balances,

you know, response and handling on the one hand,

and also just enough comfort and refinement

for it not to be wearing or painful on journeys like that.

It just gets it right.

It has hit a sweet spot.

And I'm not sure there are many other cars since then

which have managed to find that place again.

That exact pivot, the balance between

what you need a road car to do

and how you want a road car to be.

I was on Evo magazine for issue 250.

And to celebrate that benchmark, we got together,

I can't remember how many it was, maybe 20 or so,

of the greatest cars.

I presume it was, you know, the greatest cars launched

during the time Evo had been on sale.

And Hebe, it was Hebe specifically, won that test.

So, yeah, I mean-

That's an accolade, isn't it?

It is, absolutely.

Out of the 250, out of the 20 best, out of the 250, yeah.

But it was the one.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

If you drive it, you spend any time in it.

It makes absolute sense.

Okay, so we agree on that.

We're not going to agree on this, are we?

We're not.

So this came up in discussion between us a few days ago.

And we thought, hang on, let's not do this now.

Let's wait till the microphones are on.

You have something fairly profound to say about Max Verstappen.

Yes.

And I think the first thing I want to say is that

I will defend to the death your right to be wrong about this.

Go on then.

I think, look, I'm not making a judgment about Max the human being here.

And I often go on this podcast going on about how important it is to me

that a driver conducts himself or herself as well out of the car as in it.

And I still hold true to all that.

But I'm just talking about pure driving ability.

I think he's the best I've seen.

I don't buy this goat business.

I don't believe you can compare Max Verstappen to one man well-founded.

I just don't think that.

It is a nonsense, isn't it?

I think it is a complete nonsense.

So I'm not even going to go down that road.

But of the drivers I've seen, and I've seen Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna

and Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, there is something about Max.

You see, we spend all this time, don't we,

trying to understand why Max's teammates are absolutely nowhere.

He's up one end of the grid.

They're all down the other, one after the other.

And we go, oh, yeah, well, there's something very peculiar about the car

that only Max can get the most of.

And it's a strange anomaly.

And if you put them in a Mercedes or a Ferrari, they'd all be much closer together.

The more I look at it, the more I see him drive, the more I do.

I see things like what he did in Brazil, where he went from the pit lane to third.

Honestly, I think he's just better than them.

I think he is just wildly better than anybody else out there.

And I think what we are seeing is a talent of a kind I have not seen

in all the years that I've followed motor racing.

And I like Max.

I'm a big Max fan.

But I'm not an Uber fan.

I'm not blind to him.

I say we're going to do a podcast about another driver next week

who I have very different feelings about.

I don't feel the same way about Max.

He's not my hero.

But I think he is.

So what I'm saying is I am looking at this as objectively as I can

and just trying to be rational about it.

And I just think I've never seen anything like it.

And if you'd...

I mean, I clearly...

I presume you're going to come back to me with Lewis, which I completely understand.

And statistically speaking, Lewis is still the most successful Formula One driver.

You can certainly say that because the statistics back it up.

But Lewis has never done to his teammates what Max has done to his teammates.

And given that's the only comparison that you can have,

the only true measure because they're using the same machinery,

that suggests to me,

I'm not even saying that I'm 100% certain about this,

but the evidence that I have seen,

because, you know, the likes of Yuki Tsunoda, Sergio Perez,

they're not idiots.

OK, they may not be D1 drivers, but they're not tuggers.

And they have been destroyed by Max Verstappen.

Ergo, he's the greatest I've seen.

I'm actually not really going to disagree with you that strongly.

I wasn't going to make the Lewis point at all.

I think Max is a phenomenon.

I think his talent is outrageous.

I agree with all of that.

That's obvious.

No one can deny that.

There is just one word of caution that I would raise at this point about Max's talent,

about his career, about what we've seen from him.

I want to see him do it in another team.

He's only won with one team.

We do know that over time,

that team has really configured itself around Max,

as it would do.

It's the right thing to do.

In the same way that Mercedes did around Lewis.

Yeah.

And Ferrari did around...

Michael.

Michael Schumacher.

It happens and it's always going to happen around these great drivers.

What is the scale of that advantage, having a team around you?

Is it a 5% advantage?

Is it a 50% advantage?

And so for me to sit here and say,

actually, Max is the greatest I've seen.

I want to see him do it in another team.

And I want to see him do it up against another great driver,

by which I mean a George Russell, a Charles Leclerc, a driver of that caliber.

So does it...

Because Lewis has gone to Ferrari and struggled in a team that is not one of his own creation,

does that lessen your admiration for Lewis?

Because he could clearly do it in a McLaren and he could clearly do it in a Mercedes,

but he's not so far being able to do it in a Ferrari.

So does it by the same measure mean that

Lewis has only ever been able to do it in a team that's been built around him?

Well, I mean, McLaren wasn't built around him.

No.

And he went into that team alongside the double world champion.

Yeah, and beat him.

And beat him and should have won the championship.

Yeah.

I just...

I know how it sounds to sit here and say,

well, I'm not sure about Max, he hasn't done this.

I'm not one of those guys who's going to try and diminish his talent or his achievements.

He's sensational.

But I do think the all-time greats generally have done it in more than one team.

And I think that is a particular challenge.

I mean, which of the greats has not done it in more than one team?

Well, Ayrton Senna, because he died early.

He died young.

Jim Clark, he died young.

But you talk about Fangio, Jackie Stewart,

Niki Lauda, Alan Pross, Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton.

They did it with multiple teams.

It's a really interesting point.

It's a really...

Okay, so my contention is that the Red Bull is not that great a car.

I can remember talking...

I just don't know what to make of the Red Bull.

I can remember talking to Mark Webber about this at Goodwood last year.

I've mentioned this on the podcast before.

And he was saying that Checo's performance in the car is where the car is.

Yeah.

That Checo is the true indication of that car's relative position,

given its capabilities on that grid.

And that it is Max who is the outlier.

When...

Someone like that says to you, you'd be an idiot not to take it seriously.

You weren't.

Checo at the Mexican Grand Prix a few weeks ago.

I think it's to Karun.

He was talking to Karun Chandhok because he's back on the grid next year with Cadillac.

And he said that it doesn't matter who you put in that team,

Charles, Lewis, anyone.

They will not beat Max because it is Max's team.

That was Checo's view.

And that's why I just want to see what Max does in another environment.

Yeah, but I guess the point I would make is you could say very much the same about Lewis

at Mercedes or Michael at Ferrari particularly.

Or I guess Ayrton at McLaren.

But their teammates haven't been made to look like absolute tuggers

in the way that Checo and Tsunoda and others have.

But it's to do with the quality of those teammates.

Perez is probably the best teammate that Max had,

apart from Ricciardo years and years back.

Do you think that Perez is on the same sort of level as Bottas?

We're going to find out next season, aren't we?

Because their teammates at Cadillac.

Yeah, but the point being is that, you know,

Lewis was clearly a better, more successful driver than Bottas.

But it wasn't like Lewis was on pole and Bottas was struggling to get out of Q3,

which is what we're seeing with Red Bull at the moment.

It's night and day.

The curious thing about Checo is that for a while he was competitive with Max.

But during the latter half of his final season, he was really poor in that Red Bull.

And I don't particularly know why.

And I'd love to hear it from him one day.

But I just wanted to make one other point.

The start of the 2023 season.

This was the year that Max dominated like no one else has ever done so.

If it wasn't for the Singapore Grand Prix,

which his car, he weirdly off the pace that weekend.

If it wasn't for that one race, he would have won something like 17 in a row.

Which is just lunacy.

But right at the start of the 2023 season, as I understand it,

there was something about the Red Bull that wasn't quite to his liking.

And in the first four races, he and Checo won two apiece.

And then the car evolved and developed.

And that's when Max went on his extraordinary run.

Yeah.

And Checo just disappeared.

Yeah.

Just fell off.

But at the start of the season, he was capable of matching, even beating Max.

Well, I completely take your point.

We need to see Max in another car.

I wonder if we will.

So much rides on next year, doesn't it?

Yeah, I think it does.

I don't know if he's going to be racing in F1 for another 12, 13 seasons.

I think he probably wants to go and do other stuff.

I think he'll be in F1.

I think when he says, oh, I want to go off and do other stuff.

I want to go and do Le Mans and that sort of thing.

I believe he is completely sincere in saying that.

But it's one thing to say it.

And it's another thing to, you know, how many wins has he got now?

68?

Yeah, I think so.

So he's within a couple of seasons.

A couple of, I get, really good seasons.

But nevertheless, you know, he is only, what, he's 27?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

So by the time he reaches, well, let's say he's in his prime now.

And his prime is going to last at least another five years.

While he is still in his prime, while he is still as good as it gets,

he could walk straight past Lewis's total.

Yeah, you need the car.

You need the car for a long period of time.

Exactly.

You do.

Yeah.

But the thing is, is that he will, he'll know the answer to that question by this time next year.

And if the answer isn't Red Bull, he'll just go to wherever it is.

And there's not a contract on the Formula One grid that

whichever team it is that has it wouldn't break to get Max in the team.

So he'll go, okay, fine.

It needs to be a Mercedes, or it needs to be a Ferrari, or it needs to be someone else.

Yeah, McLaren, whoever.

I mean, it's, yeah, I don't actually disagree with you that much.

He is outrageously talented, and he's one of the all-time greats.

That's just the one question mark for me over him at the moment.

And I'm well aware that he does not give a damn what I think.

So one more thing that we want to do this week.

We're going to bring in Darren, founder of JBR Capital, our car finance partner.

Absolutely.

And hear about the findings of their latest luxury car report.

Now, for the final part of this week's episode, we are joined by Darren, founder of JBR Capital.

As you all know, our car finance partner.

Darren, thanks for jumping on.

We last saw you a few weeks ago, didn't we, in London,

where Andrew and I hosted a live podcast with Dario Franchitti at your event

in that swanky, really impressive,

they call it the treehouse, don't they, in the office building?

Yeah, it's the treehouse.

In London.

Fortunately, there's no treehouses to climb up into, but it's still very swanky.

It is.

So it was great to catch up there.

Things have changed for JBR.

Leeds School and JBR Capital have been working together for a while now,

but things have really changed for you guys over the last year or so.

Indeed, they have, and for the better.

So for anyone who hasn't quite realized,

JBR Capital was acquired by Shawbrook Bank in October of last year.

You may have heard of Shawbrook in the news recently.

They recently completed an IPO, so that's all very exciting news,

which has raised additional capital for the bank and for future investment.

And we're certainly hoping to get our hands on some of that cash,

which would be very nice.

But actually, what Shawbrook has brought us is a lot of financial stability.

We no longer have to worry at all about how we fund our loans and our customers,

and it really is foot to the floor in first year, second year, third year.

And with going up the gears over the last year,

we've managed to get our origination back,

that's the number of loans we've written,

back to the record levels of where we were prior to the acquisition within 12 months.

So hopefully this year, we will close at around 300 million of loans,

which is pretty much the most JBR has ever done,

and year one of being acquired by the bank.

So that's something I'm particularly proud of,

how we've managed to integrate JBR into the bank and get all the tangible benefits.

And obviously, it's not really about us, it's about our customers and our clients,

who are funding their passion through us.

And we're living that dream vicariously,

because I don't have any of those amazing cars myself.

So I have to enjoy it through our customers.

But there are some pretty significant changes there.

And one thing we were talking earlier about is

just the depth and breadth of the types of vehicles and the loan sizes

that JBR can now facilitate for our clients.

So our lending starts at £25,000, which is at the modest end,

but still a lot of enthusiasts at that end of the market are enjoying very nice cars.

But now we can do loans up to pretty much any loan size.

Previously, we were capped at an equivalent of £1,000,

a customer exposure of £2,000,000 per customer or per vehicle.

We've now removed that and we'll consider some pretty sizable loans,

which is really good news for our collectors who have significant cars.

We're looking at loans at £5,000,000, £10,000,000, that kind of level.

So some pretty serious stuff going on at JBR,

but we're trying to find a better word.

Yeah, well, it's all great news for you guys and for your customers as well.

But we wanted to get you on because one of the things that JBR does

that actually sets it apart from other car finance companies

is publish a luxury car report.

You clearly have a huge amount of data and a huge number of insights

into the market and the cars that people buy and the buyers themselves.

And the point of the luxury car report is to share those insights, isn't it?

And if people want to go and find it,

they can head to JBR Capital's website and find the luxury car report there.

If you search JBR Capital luxury car report, you'll find it.

But I thought we could briefly discuss some of the more interesting findings, Darren.

So what leaps out at you?

I mean, what are the sort of core insights from this year's report?

Well, we haven't done one for a while,

so it's great to produce the luxury car report

and get that piece of work and the data out there

for everyone to see and enjoy in the same way as we do.

And you are correct.

We write a phenomenal amount of transactions

and therefore we accumulate data on our customers

and on the vehicles that they are most interested in.

And some pretty interesting changes from the previous luxury car report

that we did well over a year ago.

That could be a bit longer.

For instance, the average car price is now £127,000.

And just remember, this is our data.

This is what we're seeing from our customers and the cars that we are funding.

So average car price is about £127,000,

which is pretty tasty in the average price going up.

Sorry, Darren, what had it been when you last did this report?

It was slightly lower than that.

It was about £100,000, £110,000.

OK, that's significant.

So prices continuing to rise.

Does that reflect what's going on in the new car market,

or is this mostly on used cars?

Well, the majority of the cars that we are funding are used cars.

So I think that's more reflective of what's going on in used cars.

But the used car market is a reflection of the new car market.

So it's obviously stepped down.

But I think if we just...

That was the first thing that struck out to me.

And the other thing that kind of cater-called with me

was actually the average length of time

that someone is keeping their car before settling their finance and moving on,

which has dropped down to around 13 months.

Typically, in JBR, we always thought that the replacement cycle was around 22 months.

But it seems to be that it's getting shorter and shorter and shorter.

What do you put that down to?

We've got a lot of customers that are funding more than one car.

So we've got customers that will fund five cars, 10 cars.

And customers seem to have got themselves into this shorter replacement cycle

whilst they're chasing the next thrill.

And they're habitual upgraders.

And they see it almost as some kind of lifestyle currency.

Younger buyers are showing a stronger upgrade frequency.

There's higher residual values in the market generally at the moment,

which makes it kind of easier on the pocket and more affordable.

Also, I think social media has a lot to do with it.

There's a lot of image-driven identity and the fear of missing out on the next best car.

I don't think I've ever seen social media at such a peak that is today.

You can't go on Instagram without seeing a huge amount of

customer-driven content on their cars and obviously the big influencer scene.

So I think people are just getting into that kind of dopamine effect

and changing their cars significantly more frequently than before.

And that's the kind of thing that JBL Capital can facilitate.

That doesn't mean to say that we don't have lots of customers who have a car

and they keep it the three years or the four years.

But I think it did surprise me that it's come down to 13 months.

That is a very short period of time.

Is that the shortest it's ever been in all your years in the business?

It's the shortest I've ever seen.

Yeah, that's for sure.

And that's even beyond JBL.

So I've been in this industry 25 years and that did surprise me.

But what it does mean is that finance companies do really need to start

understanding the psychology of customers and understanding their buying habits

and their traits in order to retain loyalty and get customers to stay with us.

So we've got to work harder and harder to offer a service and benefits

that customers like in order to retain them within the JBL Capital brand.

And just to sort of wrap up on the luxury car report,

which marks, which brands appear right at the top of your lending book?

I'm going to take a wild guess.

Is it Porsche?

Oh, how did you guess?

I mean, what possibly made you think it could be something to do with the fact

that in the luxury car market and how we define it,

it's the brand that produces the most cars per year,

well over 300,000 cars worldwide produced.

So no surprise that Porsche is very in the top space.

And actually, we've, it's actually the Porsche 911.

We haven't, later on the report, we split out the different variants of the 911.

But in terms of the top cars finance, it's the 911 is number one.

Then followed by the Range Rover Sport, which is proved very, very popular,

followed by the Lamborghini Urus in third place.

And actually, one of the trends that we are seeing is the change in the buying habits.

So when we produced the last report and during the early 2020s onwards,

as you all know, there's been a huge trend of buying luxury SUVs.

And Lamborghini Urus was possibly the darling.

And I think previously, it would have been in the number one spot.

But what we're seeing is a renaissance in the supercar market.

So the supercar market share rose to 43%

and has overtaken the SUVs for the first time in our data since 2021.

Wonderful news.

Yeah.

Well done, everyone.

That's good to hear.

Yeah.

So that's the kind of trends that we're seeing.

The other trend I think I would quickly highlight is actually the democratization,

as I call it, of luxury.

We're seeing 66% of our customers are earning around,

sorry, between 50 to 150k, which seems to be in the lower earning brackets

compared to what we've seen before,

which seems to suggest that the luxury car finance is no longer

the preserve of the ultra-wealthy.

And it's the aspirational middle who are fueling the growth in purchases,

not the super-wealthy and the ultra-high net worth individuals.

Don't tell me, are electric vehicles,

have they become a significant presence in your activities

or are they still very much?

So I probably shouldn't mention that.

Actually, I would say I could write an article on

why electric has stalled in the luxury market,

because after years of all the EV hype,

what we're seeing in the data are affluent buyers

are returning to the internal combustion engine,

which I think says a lot about the emotion,

the experience and the practicality of the types of cars.

And petrol in particular has rebounded from a 74% share in 2023 to 85% in 2025.

Goodness.

Whereas EV, what we're seeing is less than 3% of all cars that we fund.

So not much excitement in the EV market.

With those 3%, would they primarily be Taycans, presumably?

Taycan, Spectre, things like that.

And some of the Audi e-tron, Mercedes, EQV type things.

But that is filtering through from manufacturers.

As you know, we've seen manufacturers delaying their full EV rollouts,

Bentley, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, et cetera,

and focusing on producing petrol internal combustion engines.

So clients are really viewing petrol cars as collectible investments.

And they're really focusing on buying those low production of the special cars,

particularly in Ferrari, actually.

And buying those up for collections to keep for the future.

Not much interest in EV in our world as yet.

And that, again, did surprise me.

But if you look what's going on out there with manufacturers,

they're seeing it as well.

I think a lot of it is not just whether they realize these things suit them or don't,

I think a lot of people are just scared, particularly about residuals

and the whole shape of that going forward.

Well, and so they should be.

Because we've all seen what's happened to the residuals,

to Teslas in particular, and other brands.

Taycan take an absolute bath.

So whilst I think affluent buyers will still have an EV like a Taycan,

or tooting around, going to town, short journeys,

it's really the supercar, petrol, low production numbers,

collectible items that people are interested in right now.

So thanks to the Luxury Car Report, we know supercars are back.

We know petrol is back.

That sounds like good news to me.

EVs are out.

So well done, everybody.

EVs are out.

SUVs are still popular.

But less popular.

I mean, that could be...

That's an interesting trend.

We're moving in the right direction.

Let's keep it up, everybody.

So we will write a little bit more about the Luxury Car Report

on our app and website.

And for those who want to read the whole thing,

you can download it from JBR Capital's website.

So Darren, thank you for coming on and telling us a little bit about that.

Some really good insights in there.

To everyone watching, everyone listening, thank you so much.

Please just remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel

or follow the show on whichever podcast app you're using.

In return, we'll be back again next week.

And Darren, once more, thanks for coming on.

Confirmed! Enthusiasts are returning to sports cars and petrol power #291

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