Deep Dive Into Modern Day Car Culture, Wild Foxbody Auction, E-Ray vs Sterrato, & More

Nick, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Are you in the holiday spirit?

Yeah, man.

I mean, we got kid-made ornaments and everything going around

right now.

Really?

Kid-made ornaments?

Did you sit down and make some yourself?

We're at the Gingerbread House age.

Yeah, man, it's awesome.

I'm in.

It's so cool.

I love it.

The Acasco, as a matter of fact, got to bring it up

in the first five minutes of the show.

They have a charcuterie kit where

you can do gingerbread house competitions with your kids.

You can buy the full kit of Acasco.

Buy a charcuterie kit for the adults.

I'm just saying, in case you're interested in that.

I am not interested in walking in Costco.

I mean, for necessities, you got to do what you got to do.

Never for pleasure.

To go there and goof off, I'm out.

Wow.

Yeah, well, we need to have a little discussion here.

Do we?

Since you brought up Costco, I did.

Want everybody who's defending their Costco

purchases of gas to understand that top tier also

has rankings of what actually

is the top of the top tier.

So they've been leaving out a little bit of information.

Well, it's sort of like this.

You work at a company.

You have executives.

Some executives make more money than other executives.

Very true.

But they're all executives.

So there's a lot of people that are in top tier gas.

But there's top tier of the top tier.

And there's the bottom of the bottom tier, right?

Like the bottom of the top tier.

Right, yeah.

You got this hierarchy that let's be clear.

Let's all say it out loud.

There's a top of the top tier and a bottom of the top tier.

Costco ranks at the bottom of the top tier.

It's top tier, but it's not the top of the top tier.

So it's the best of the worst, but not the best of the best.

OK, all right.

So when I was on a short bus, I was the dumbest

of the short bus, not the smartest of the short bus.

But somebody is smartest on that.

OK, OK.

We all need to understand there's levels in life.

And it's OK, you guys want to defend your Costco purchases.

I understand it.

They've brainwashed you, OK?

They brainwashed you into buying 50 pounds of mayonnaise

and thinking it's a deal when you throw out

seven of the 10 pounds you bought.

I got it.

I will take the best of the worst and my 5% back

and get a 10-pound bull tube.

You ever bought a bull tube?

You ever gone up to the meat counter

and been like, just go like this?

A little weird, but you're like, they'll know what you mean.

And they'll bring over a bull.

No, no, no.

Hold on.

I will never do that.

You will do that tomorrow.

No, no.

When you realize you can get $95.5 for the best

price in the entire city, and all you got to do

is go up to the meat counter and just tell me guy, what say?

And you'll know exactly what you're talking about.

Bull tube.

Which makes it even worse.

Bull tube.

Which makes it even worse.

I'm going to say this out loud.

I support American ranchers actually

buy my beef from somebody out of Texas.

There you go.

I'm not going to pay the big corporation.

I'm going to go right to the hardworking men and women.

You guys want to be part of the economic disaster of Costco?

You do your thing.

Whoa, whoa, wait a turn it around on me there.

OK.

I am for the American rancher.

You are for the big corporation.

Wow, wait a turn that around on me.

You're not wrong.

Axel, hey, I got to sell something here.

I do both.

By the way, duck eggs with a little bit of grass

fed beef from the farmer's market.

There's no better meal in the world.

Yeah, but you're talking about a beef tube, dude.

I know you've done that more than 100 times.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's like every other week.

You got to get it on me.

Yeah, so we're not the same, Rob.

But I get a box you to the house.

I support the people putting in the work.

I have a waggle box sent to my house.

I don't want to hear it.

Yeah, no, we're not doing this.

You lose.

I win.

Top tier of top tier is where I go because I care

about my cars and it is what it is.

We're not all built the same.

Final point, let us know in the comments.

Have you purchased a bulltube

and have you made this gesture at the meat counter?

I just want to know.

If I'm the only one, I'm going to stop doing it.

But if more people say, yeah, I've done the same thing.

Don't do that again.

Don't do that gesture again.

I can tell you that.

Fair enough, fair enough.

OK, look, man.

So we've got two episodes left to the year, right?

This is the second to the last.

And what I want to do is spend a little bit of time

on this episode.

And I'm going to work through this thesis of what Nick

and I have been seeing for the last year, which

is the first year of the show.

This is, I believe, 58, 60 episodes,

deep or so of the first run since we started

around December of last year.

And then if you guys have something to chime in on

that you want to add to this conversation of this thesis,

I don't know what it's called yet,

but it's something about car culture and the media gap

of sorts that we're seeing, comment, or rather not comment,

email us, clutchculturepodcast, at gmail.com.

And we'll include it in next week's final show of the year.

But I got a couple of bullet points here

that I wanted to run by Nick.

And we're seeing it constantly in the comments.

We're seeing it constantly in other people's shows

where sometimes they're being subtle about the things,

as they say, about what they're doing maybe on their channels

or in their businesses or what they're doing in the market

with their own cars, buying and selling,

collecting all this stuff.

So I want to start with this.

I think that there's like aspirational car culture

kind of broke financially over the last 10 years.

And we can go back to the pandemic days,

but even before that, things were just different online.

And they used to be like a grind by a cool car.

And then there was a build it over time slowly,

which is kind of what you've been doing with your LX here.

And most like most importantly,

the affordability of the car just completely skyrocketed.

And the wages of most people that are enthusiasts

didn't keep up with that gap.

Yeah, we have a, I'd say most people probably

are gonna leave in the comments or send an email in.

There's a lot of defeated people in car culture right now

that we see all across the internet,

where they go, I can't buy anything, I can't do this,

I can't do that.

We just had a wagon conversation

and we got a whole host of DMs and comments about,

I can't buy a wagon.

I think some of this is self-inflicted by the enthusiast.

Guys, the highest grade of car is now very expensive.

So if you want to buy a wagon right off the lot,

they're really expensive.

I mean, RS6 or M5 Touring or E63

or whatever, all of that stuff is expensive, right?

We can all say that stuff's expensive.

But if you say I have 50, 60, 70,000 to spend,

not 140,000 to spend,

we have to stop tricking ourselves

that you can't go find a good example.

Because you can, you have to accept mileage.

So for whatever reason,

one of the weirdest things that's happened

in car culture for me in the last year became apparent,

but maybe I was just insulated from it before that,

is now for whatever reason, guys are acting like,

because they're creators that they follow

or whatever buying these low mileage examples,

that that's what they have to buy.

And if they can't buy that,

then it's not worth doing anything.

And this whole sit-it-out culture

that's built around car culture now,

I think it's damaging car culture in a massive way.

That would be probably the top of my list

of the misunderstandings of guys,

I bought an LX that's 22 years old

with 130,000 miles on it.

Now, I could have waited and found one

with 50,000 miles on it, doubled or quadrupled my price,

but I didn't need to do that.

I can find something that I'm willing to spend on

and still get pretty reasonable mileage,

something I'm accepting of.

Yes, I'm gonna have to fix a few things.

So I think one of the things we've discussed

periodically in the last year is this idea

that guys are waiting for prices to fall

on the rarest low mileage things.

And if they can't buy those,

then they don't wanna buy anything

and then they just wanna complain.

And I think that's a huge negative for car culture.

I completely agree.

And then so to add to that,

aspirational car culture bullet point,

we have car-inflated prices,

which I mentioned already,

which I don't think anybody saw,

like just how crazy things we're gonna get

during the flu years, obviously,

but the recovery of that or the reversal of that

pretty much kinda non-existent for the most part.

People are still feeling the same squeeze that they did,

trying to buy a car then,

trying to buy a car now,

which was almost five years ago.

Yeah, I mean, we talk a lot about new cars

because I think everyone's interested in the topic.

You and I don't really live in new car culture.

That's not our daily exchanges.

That's not the things that we send texts about.

I would assume most of you are the same, you know,

but it's like around all of this conversation,

we have this weird thing

where something in the last five years

that has happened is we've become fixated

on really expensive new cars.

And we think that that is car culture.

When car culture's always been

buying something from the past,

five years old, 10 years old, 30 years old,

and driving it and improving it

and all those types of things.

And I think one of the things

that I would get across to anybody is

stop with the revisionist history

of how things used to be

because people bought beaters in the year 2000.

I mean, they bought beaters and they fixed them up.

They didn't go to the Lamborghini lot

and buy a new Lamborghini

if they didn't have Lamborghini money.

So because the internet wasn't around then,

you didn't look at all of these channels and say,

these guys have all of these bad ass cars,

again, largely most of them rented, leased,

written off as a business expense,

all of that's being, you know,

I don't want to say lied about,

but hidden from you, the viewer,

that they don't really own these cars.

Some of those people do.

Very large percentage of them don't,

which is fine, by the way, it's a business.

But I think we've confused the car enthusiast of all ages

that the internet car culture is something different

than business for the majority of these channels.

You know, I was looking at what,

do you know where the, and I'm sure you do,

but what the top end of car financing

is reaching these days

as far as what lenders are allowing?

Oh, it's, yeah.

I mean, I gotta imagine it's tightening,

but also if you have the credit,

what's the old Cedric the entertainer?

If you got credit, you can get it.

Dude, some of these lenders,

they're kind of usually pushing you towards 84,

but some are topping up at 104 to 144 months.

That's unbelievable.

Bro, I had no idea.

I don't think I'd heard over a hundred months.

I never, to be fair with everybody, I never heard.

I thought 84 was sort of the cap out that we had seen.

Now, understand guys, leasing terms

and different things like that

in the highest end part of the market

is a much different thing

than what's happening at your local Toyota

or Chevy or Ford dealership.

So when you start talking about some of the leases

that are done on Lamborghini or Ferrari or whatever,

it's always been different than the average car buyer.

It's always been different.

It's never been the same one-to-one type of thing.

So I think we have, and this leads me to my next point,

and we can stop at point two if it's enough,

but there's like two classes I think that we're kind of seeing

and this goes back to a conversation over the phone

about just like people in the comment section again

and the know-it-alls

and all the things we've kind of talked about

throughout the year,

but you have the spectator enthusiasm,

which is those that are watching, not owning,

which are commenting, not buying,

and which are consuming content like sports and fashion

is the bullet point I have.

And then you got the group,

so this group loves car content,

hates car prices, has strong opinions,

and has little intent to purchase,

which we see that all the time.

And then you have the high-income

or the high-leverage donors,

which you actually just described perfectly,

business owners, sponsored creators,

allocations and press cars, ride-offs, loans, access.

Overall, just being in these groups

that they're not really buying

and they're not even representative of that culture,

but they have access to it.

Yeah, I mean, when we look at,

especially when you talk about high-end cars,

Porsche, Ferrari, Lambo, McLaren,

probably less than 1% of anybody on the internet

is ever gonna own one of those.

Yeah.

Yet everybody has an opinion.

They've never spent significant time around any of them,

except for out of cars and coffee.

They've never driven them.

They've never seen people live with them.

They've never looked at the repair costs,

except what they're being told

by some creator that owns one.

You don't even know if that's accurate most of the time,

but there's all kinds of opinion on who Ferrari guy is

when you've never hung out with them,

who Lambo guy is, you've never been around them,

Porsche's this, you've never owned them.

That is a huge part of car culture now,

is that a lot of us,

and again, I think this is one of those things

that would be age-dependent,

a lot of us had the,

we didn't make a lot of comments

about things we weren't around.

So like, you weren't hanging out with your buddies

and everybody had trucks

and you guys were talking about the Ferrari market

in the year 2005.

That wasn't really happening.

Now, if three of your buddies worked at a Ferrari dealership

and two of your buddies worked at a Porsche dealership

and you guys were all sitting having a beer,

there would be a discussion about what was going on,

but there had to be real life substance

to the conversation.

There had to be some type of experience.

Now, and I don't think this is necessarily always a bad thing,

but I think on the internet, it becomes a bad thing.

A bunch of people are just taking other people's word

for stuff they've never been around.

That's what happens a lot in the EV market.

It happens a lot in the truck market.

It happens a lot in new car market.

It happens infinitely worse

in the high-end part of the market

where 99% of people aren't around these cars

on a daily basis, dealing with them,

dealing with the owners, seeing what it costs to own,

seeing what kind of maintenance issues come up.

That's why when the Koenigsegg stuff broke

with the Hamilton collection,

you saw all of these comments with people

that just have no idea how that market works,

which is fine, that makes it fun,

but that's why we kind of said a year ago,

we need to get back to busting balls and having jokes

and stop acting like we know what we're talking about

when we don't.

Like if you want to go, I went to a car show

and these Ferrari guys were douches,

like that's where it needs to stop.

Not that you know every Ferrari owner

or you know every Lambo owner and they act this way

and people that are trying to flex by those cars

and people that aren't by the Porsche,

it's like, what are you talking about?

Yeah, or the fact that the ownership of XYZ car

makes you like a tougher guy,

it makes you a real man talk guy.

Yeah, well, just like we talked

about the off-road part of SEMA,

you know, oh America, all these flags

and shit under windows and all the shit's made in China.

Like come on guys, like stop with the tactical gear

like you're pro America saving the world

and doing, it's like the shit's made in China, dude,

like relax.

So the next bullet point, and so I got a couple

of videos that were not sent to me

but showed to me in my algorithm.

By the way, you know you can really kind of alter

your Instagram algorithm and your Reels tab these days?

In the top right corner, this for listeners as well,

there's a little, there's two lines

that I think hearts, have you seen,

have you noticed that button?

I just noticed it today.

If you go to your, to the search for the Reels tab

where you're watching Reels, top right corner,

you'll see the two lines with hearts,

you click it, it'll say, it'll describe to you

one paragraph, what your algorithm is right now.

Basically, hey, so lately as of the last couple of while

you've been into XYZ, there's two sections below that,

like tags essentially of what you're being shown,

you can remove the ones you don't want

and then below that, things you don't want to be shown.

So I was like, you know what,

can you stop showing me these thirst traps?

I wanna look at cars.

And I want some.

It turns out what you like, it shows you.

No, I said, I don't want thirst traps.

And you know what, like, you try to frame it

or phrase it in other ways and it'll say that phrase,

or that content's not.

Rob, you're lying.

It'll say that content's not supported

and I'm like, that's not true,

but it accepted thirst trap, which I'm like,

how did you accept that, but nothing would do.

I know why, if you stay on it long enough, Rob,

it knows, suck knows.

I like golf.

I don't necessarily like melons hitting golf balls, right?

Just let me play golf.

I love it, dude, that's awesome.

Yeah, well, by the way, a little tip for you guys.

I don't know if it's a new thing

or if it's rolling out slowly

or if you know what I'm talking about,

but alter your algorithm to feel like it.

I just wanna get back to Eastern Block, guys,

putting screens on dashes.

Oh yeah, that's the best car content out there.

The nonsensical stuff that doesn't go too extreme.

So all that to say, cops in law enforcement

are really cracking down on YouTubers,

dude, I don't know if you saw this,

but some people have gotten busted here recently

for their wild antics on the road.

And every state, essentially, across the country

is doubling down on figuring out

how to get these people off the streets.

It's not just the takeover culture,

but all of the, what was once a real underground scene

of I'm gonna go do a couple of midnight runs

in Mexico kind of thing.

You're getting too blatant, especially in New York.

Like, New York is crazy with what people do

on bikes and cars and having police chasing them

or whatever.

Again, I think the theme early in this episode

is stop revising history.

We've been through this before.

I mean, when Fast and Furious dropped,

we told you guys, I was there, you were there.

Street racing went up exponentially.

It got more irresponsible.

Everything can be tracked back to something, right?

This behavior doesn't come out of nowhere.

It doesn't, somebody just wasn't in their living room

in New York and thought this up.

They saw something on the internet.

They thought they could piggyback on it, so they did it.

We're starting to see, and we had an episode,

two, three episodes ago, where we talked about this whole

cry for let's stop the takeover culture,

largely from people that were responsible

for making people believe that was part of the culture.

Now, they can say, we blocked roads, we did this,

we did everything right, and I'm sure you did.

But you also didn't really tell people

how to get the permits, how to do this right.

You gate kept all that, and because you wanted

to keep doing it, and you wanted to have a leg up,

which makes all kinds of sense in the world,

but you never went out and told people

how to do it correctly.

You just showed all kinds of crazy behavior

on the internet, then crazy behavior

begets more crazy behavior.

And that was our whole point, and largely now,

I was sent some clips from an automotive podcast

from some of you guys, everyone's changing their tunes

since our episode dropped.

Oh, weird, strange.

It's weird, right?

Like, it's like, oh yeah, maybe we didn't like,

actually tell everybody what was going on.

And maybe we were the bedrock of that crazy behavior.

And again, you can do everything right,

which I believe they did, in a lot of cases.

But if you don't tell people how to do things correctly,

they don't know.

They're not working with major car manufacturers.

You know, Timmy down the street,

who's got a JDM build, doesn't know to call the city

and get permits because you never told them.

Now, you guys can sit here and say,

well, that's not their job.

Well, they wouldn't have known that either

if they didn't work with Mazda and Subaru and Toyota.

Like, that's how they learned.

They learned from working with major manufacturers,

which is awesome, but you never shared it.

You never told people the right way to do things.

You never tried to build the right culture.

You gate kept it so you could make these videos,

keep everyone else out.

Which again, is business 101.

I'm not banging on it,

but we gotta stop with all of this.

Like, yeah, man, cops are in a tough spot.

And it's being talked about in a lot of cities

and locales and states.

And a lot of things are being blocked

from being done because of stupid behavior.

But don't be dad, get off my lawn

and act like we haven't been through this in society before.

All right, final thing here on my little thesis here,

we'll move on to other topics.

But in 20, so 10 years ago, we'll say,

what did work, and just kind of looking through

some of the stats of our current automotive culture online,

15 to 30 K enthusiast cars,

which we don't really see a ton of.

We see a resurgence of it as of late,

but over the last 10 years,

it kind of just got crazier, more extreme,

more expensive, more, not luscious.

I'm still thinking of the blonde swing

in the fucking golf club.

The page spear neck.

Yeah.

Lavish.

Affordable mods, DIY builds, every man,

relatability, right?

And what, instead, what the algorithm pushes

is extreme, you know, culture, dangerous,

on the edge kind of friends like behavior

and more spending and nostalgia content.

It's just, here's a perfect example.

When I see, there's a guy that just

rebuilt like a Frankenstein eclipse.

Have you seen it?

It's a GSX, silver GSX.

I think you might have even been featured on one

of the big YouTube channels here recently,

but I think his name's like Mitsubishi Mic

or something like that.

And it's got like parts of Evo's and Mitsubishi,

other cars or whatever.

Long story short, I see the car,

and in my mind, the nostalgia that it hits me

is like, man, it looks great.

I think that looks better than any of the Ferrari

Nick has mentioned on the show, you know?

That's ridiculous.

The wild thought that I like,

this looks better than Vin's 388.

Like, I think it does.

Like, it's just, it's a great looking car.

Well, Vin has a 360.

Or a 360.

Sorry, I posted a clip about us talking about a 388.

My bad.

Yeah, a 488.

Did I say 488?

Yeah, Rob, let's all stop.

Let's regroup.

Let's relax.

Let's say we got to get-

It's been a week.

I realized that you're thinking about the Costco,

going to the butcher.

We've had a lot to talk about here.

So, I think, and I'd love to hear everybody's opinion.

I do think we're seeing a resurgence of,

let's get back to normalcy.

Because one of the main reasons,

let's kind of let everybody behind the scenes.

It can't continue,

because people can't afford what was going on, okay?

This isn't done because people feel

that that's the cooler con.

They can't afford it anymore.

They can't afford these crazy builds

and on crazy platforms.

And there's a very tiny percent of creator

that has the money coming in

that can offset what all of this costs.

So, we are going to see some normalcy,

but I want to say that's always been there.

The $15,000 to $30,000 car has always been there.

And I wish we would have highlighted it more

over the last decade,

because I do think a lot of you

are sitting on the sidelines angry

that you can't buy this thing.

But throughout history,

none of us could buy those things

that you're sitting on the sideline now bitching about.

It's just that people didn't bitch about it on the internet.

They just went and bought what they could get.

And that's the culture that needs to come back.

And I know a lot of you operate that way now,

but there's also a huge percentage of people

that are very angry online

because they can't buy a GT3.

Well, guess what?

A small percentage could buy GT3s 20 years ago as well.

That hasn't really changed.

We've just been made to believe that it's changed.

And that's sort of the Psyop that's gone on here

in this whole world of cars.

Guys, everybody's bought a high mileage car.

If somebody is really into cars,

they bought what they could afford at the time.

And for most people at 22 years old,

it was a high mileage XYZ.

That's what it was.

That's what it was 20 years ago.

That's what it is today.

All right, I'm gonna shift into this.

Sorry, I'm still thinking about this Ferrari comparison

to Mitsubishi.

I don't know, man.

You're still doing your Costco order.

No, listen, it looks great.

The Eclipse is like awesome.

They should have kept it and it should come back

as a matter of fact.

But no, talk about nostalgia at low mile.

There's this video.

Did you see the Fox body story

from bring a trailer earlier this week?

No, but there was this Dodge live-in van

that was like 15 grand on low miles, no miles

that I sent around to everybody last night.

I didn't see that.

I definitely didn't get that one.

15 grand, I was like, hmm, I kind of like it.

Getting ideas?

I can kind of make this happen.

I like it.

Where would I store this?

You know when you go down that road, you go,

if I bought this, where would I put it?

Where can I find a room for this?

Check this out.

Someone's worst nightmare came true yesterday,

but it could have been a whole lot worse.

Last week, I told you about a dealer

who stepped up and paid crazy money

for a low mile Mustang.

He had bought it from another dealer

who had the car advertised for $149,000.

He had probably paid a little less,

but maybe not a lot less.

His auction got off to a great start,

hitting $70,000 on the first day.

Seven days later, reserve not met at 72.5,

and that's where he got lucky.

A good number of auctions on BAT run at no reserve,

so at least he had some protection in place.

But as a dealer, I can tell you what happens next.

Anyone that was seriously interested in this car

already kind of knows what the dealer had paid.

And the 72.5 price result sets what we call an anchor.

At this point, it doesn't really even matter

what he had paid because the buyer is going to argue

that this auction result proves

what the true market value is.

The dealer's challenge now is to try to convince

the buyer to pay more, but how much more?

Who's working who here?

When this happens, it's usually the dealer

who has to cut his losses

or hopefully even try to break even.

I've been there.

It's not fun.

Dude.

Let's say he paid $130,000.

Yeah.

Let's cut off $20,000 from the $150,000.

This happens a lot throughout history with collector cars.

If you've gone to things like Barrett Jackson,

I've said this all the time,

you can see people with all the receipts

where they tell you what they've paid to build the car.

Very rarely do they ever hammer for more.

There are people that lose lots and lots and lots

and lots and lots of money on this kind of buy.

And you can sit there and think that that doesn't happen.

It's always happened.

It's going to continue to happen.

And if you really pay attention to being in the house

during an auction and seeing the paperwork on cars,

a lot of cars that go across auction blocks,

online or whatever, people lost money.

I know we concentrate on these things

that people made money on.

Largely, this is a losing proposition.

And it's definitely a losing proposition

during heightened prices, okay?

If you catch the sweet spot,

you bought something in 2018, you sold it in 2023.

Yeah, man, you probably got the sweet spot.

But think about how timing would affect that.

Let's say I buy in 2023, I sell in 2025,

I most likely lost money.

So just that change in years, I lost money.

And people go, well, you know, I would,

no, you had a chance to buy it in 2018, you didn't do it.

That's why nobody really makes money.

I'm glad to hear some big car collectors

on other car podcasts really start to say out loud.

And these guys own the rarest of the rare.

They own low mileage, everything.

And they're like, I'll never break even, okay?

There are guys on the internet

that want to make you believe

that their car collection made money, okay?

If you've been in the world long enough,

if you've seen things like this Fox body,

I'm here to tell you almost every car collection

in the world over the long term loses money.

Yeah, because maintenance, keeping them up,

storing them, all of that kind of stuff.

We have just been conditioned

because everybody has this thing, it's just human nature,

recency bias of what took place from 2019 to 2023.

And you saw all these crazy results

for people that bought cars in 2017, 2018, 2019,

flip them in 2022, 2023.

You get in your head that that's normal.

Yeah.

Just like flipping a house, right?

So if you flip the house from 2000 to 2007,

you're like, wow, this housing market, man, I'm killing it.

If you held all those houses and tried to sell them

in 2009, you go, wow, the housing market sucks.

14 months difference.

I mean, we're seeing that now with the housing market,

funny enough, because you don't see as much content

about that online, Airbnb's, that whole buying

and flipping, that market's completely done.

It's done because it didn't make sense, right?

Very low risk, everybody making money.

That shit doesn't keep up forever.

Now again, if you're living in a world

where you're gonna have the small mind to go,

I'm looking at one result or five results

or I'm cherry picking results

or like what we saw happen with Ferraris

at Monterey car week and go, well, look at that.

Okay, but not everybody is selling those Ferraris

at that auction in that moment.

Okay, you gotta remember,

people are transacting Ferraris

all the way up to that moment, after that moment,

and there's no way to predict what's gonna happen

before or after, it was one isolated moment.

Now, there are cars that we believe,

you know, Carrera GT and things like that,

that you go, they've probably reached a point

where they're just gonna keep going up

because there's that rare of a car,

but that isn't the market.

It's never been the market.

The market is everything else.

Hicking out F40 and going, look,

look, that keeps, how many people own them?

Yeah.

Not many, right?

They're not that many.

And it's a special platform

from a special car manufacturer at a special time

and now investors are involved

in the millions upon millions of dollars.

That doesn't mean that your Chevelle

or Foxbody or whatever is gonna have the same thing.

You always gotta come back to the American hustle.

And that's what I think has made everybody kind of crazy

is like, guys, somebody sent me a DM on Bronco Raptor.

It's like, look, man, Bronco Raptor's probably

a pretty decent buy today.

Yeah.

You know, it's normalized.

It's not the perfect price.

I'm not saying I wish it wasn't $15,000 less

or whatever we wanna talk about,

but yeah, man, it had a crazy moment in time,

but supply was low, demand was high,

but it was isolated.

It was isolated.

At least this Foxbody is a notchback

and not the hatch.

I mean, that warrants for a little bit more money,

but even then, I think the sticker price on this,

it may have been in the description.

It would have been something crazy,

like 15 or 20 grand, I mean, crazy.

And you hope people, it's like, great, man,

this is an extremely low mileage one.

They really did it to collect it.

It looks like they did everything right,

but there's still gonna be a ceiling sometime

and the ceiling's set by the economic situation.

And the economic situation around the globe

is not the way it was in 2022, 2023.

That's not the reality.

You know what car we didn't give a lot of attention to

this year, and it may because it was still a semi-recent

and just didn't get a lot of other coverage in the media,

at least not the one that I was watching,

is the Corvette E-Ray.

Do you have any thoughts on the E-Ray?

I just had a customer in my office.

No way, dude, life's not real, we don't plan this.

And here's the thing, it was just yesterday,

stopping by the Merry Christmas

and I've been doing business with him for 12, 13 years.

And he was talking about trading in a C8,

I get the E-Ray, and he started talking very common sense.

And he's just like,

I just don't think I need the extra power,

I don't really know if I'm getting a lot.

I'm getting a little bit older.

And we had an interesting conversation we can share here.

I wasn't planning on it,

but since it came up in this weird moment,

is he's really been looking at older cars.

And when I heard him talk,

and I've known him a very long time,

I mean, we're friends at this point,

and I said, you have to make a decision

at this point in your life.

He's getting ready to shut it down,

start to travel more, has made a lot of money,

really just an all-around guy built from the ground up,

has made lots of money, all that kind of stuff.

Just the kind of guy you like talking to,

you know what I mean?

And I go, look, man, I've known you for 12 years

and you've been talking about this older car thing.

I said, when you're talking about sports cars

or older cars or whatever, you gotta remember

you're talking about do you want something easier?

Do you want something with a little bit of work behind it?

If you have a C8 Corvette and you wanna go by a 1980 Porsche

Turbo, whatever it is, okay?

I'm just using something.

You're trading, being able to get in that C8,

push a button and go for something

that you might turn the key and go,

this doesn't sound right, shut it down

and you're back in your Escalade going

to wherever you were gonna go.

And so do you want effort and the experience of effort

and having to put work into something

or do you wanna press the button and go enjoy yourself?

And it really truly was kind of a light bulb moment

for him where he's like, I never thought about it

like that.

I said, it's just a matter of where you are in life.

You can have the same discussion at 30 years old.

Do I really wanna fight something

and deal with the headaches

and deal with having to go through the car,

have it up on a lift for a month?

I'm not saying that's what's gonna happen,

but if that were to happen,

is that the kind of experience you want

to be able to drive the car

you wanna drive in that moment?

And he really quickly said, he's like, yeah,

maybe I should just look at newer sports cars.

And I'm like, he goes, I don't really wanna deal

with a bunch of headaches.

And I said, and it's not to say you will,

I'm not saying you will,

but if that happens,

you're signing up for it, buying older vehicles.

And that's the way I guess I can simply put

what I've watched in the collection world

with the customers I have.

Some people just collect cars

that aren't gonna be a headache.

And some people collect cars

that it's nothing but a headache.

But they signed up for it and they enjoy it

and they go, oh, this one's now right.

We did all this,

but you gotta make that distinction.

But if your budget is low,

let me tell you what you're signing up for, headache.

Yeah, lots and lots of headaches.

And by the way, not negative.

It's just the nature of where your budget is in that moment.

So don't sit on the sidelines

because you can't buy the perfect car

or the perfect truck or whatever.

Just know what you're getting yourself into and move on.

Yeah, going back to the driver experience, right?

That's a part of the experience.

That's part of the budget

and experience that you wanna take on.

You gotta know that if you're gonna buy that Subaru,

you might have a couple of things come up.

That WRX might need a little bit of transmission work,

might need a little bit of this or that.

And that's just kind of part of the experience.

But wait, did he have an e-ray

or was he looking to get an e-ray?

No, no, he has a stingray now.

And he goes, I keep looking at e-rays

when I'm at home at night, I can get this extra.

And he's like, I just don't know that it's worth it

because my car is just enjoyable

and he has a lake house in California.

He's like, it handles well.

It drives as fast as I need.

And I go, well, it sounds like you don't need an e-ray.

Yeah, right.

Well, let me show you the e-ray

that I just fell in love with.

And all of a sudden, this is on the list of like,

hey, this might be the next five to 10-year goal here

for whatever weird reason.

I want to get your honest thoughts on the car though.

All right, don't hold back.

I'm sure you won't.

That's not better than a Lamborghini Strato.

I can tell you that, that headline's incorrect.

Rage bait, rage bait.

Rage bait, I knew it.

I took the words out of your freaking mouth.

All right, let me turn down the freaking board.

Give me a second.

Better than a Lamborghini Strato.

Let's be real, I'm just kidding.

However, I did kind of do a Lamborghini Strato

on a budget.

This is a Corvette e-ray, which is all wheel drive.

V8 ProCharge rear wheel drive with electric motors

in the front, making it all a wheel drive.

I did have Lamborghini Strato replica wheels

made by Forge Light, and I did wrap those wheels

with the OEM Lamborghini Strato Bridgestone All-Train tires

because I figured if they could do it, why can't I?

The only thing that makes this better

than a Lamborghini Strato is the price point.

Otherwise, I'd much rather have a Strato,

but for now, I'll deal with my ProCharge e-ray.

Mike, dude, how good does that look?

How good is this?

What's his name?

That is Corey Paragon.

Bravo, my friend.

Yeah, bravo.

Great beard, great car, great garage.

I'm going to tell you why it's bravo.

You told the truth.

Yeah.

Everyone would rather have a Strato.

Yeah.

Bravo.

The rage bait got everybody in.

The part everybody's going to miss

is they're going to read that headline.

That's what they're going to say to their friends.

Like, oh, the e-ray is better than the Strato,

but if you listen to the guy's content,

if you settle down and watch it.

I told you, we bought, in the middle of summer,

we bought two Strato's for a customer of mine.

And fantastic, I mean, what a cool experience.

It's a cool car, probably one of those cars

that might hold its value because it's kind of different

than a lot of stuff Lamborghini builds.

I'm not sure about that,

but I think it is unique enough in a lot of ways.

It'll probably be a pretty stable market.

I really like what he did with that e-ray, though.

E-ray?

Dude.

That looks awesome.

I mean, I wish I could scrub,

but you can't do it on Instagram.

You're stupid, they took it away.

I mean, the color, some people made a good point.

They're like, man, those tires,

you got to lift it a little bit.

And in my mind, I'm like, you do,

but also that looks so good at that level.

It looks so good.

That kind of speaks to us, right?

This was just done correctly.

Exactly.

Correctly.

I mean, he even got the luggage right.

He got, I mean, everything about it is correct.

And that's really cool.

Even the wing.

I'm a fan of the big wing on this.

It all looks so good put together.

And when you get up close, I mean, those tires,

you just, they wrap those wheels perfectly.

It is so nice.

So I didn't know this,

and guys, I'm not the biggest wheel head out here.

Can you just go to like forge line and say,

make these or is that because he's a creator?

I wasn't saying with enough money, you can.

Well, yeah, I mean, obviously that, I mean,

but I'm, I just wondered like,

is that an option on their website?

Like, hey, can you copy these for me?

And they just give you a price?

I'm here.

I'm actually moving it closer.

Look, I mean, that's such a good replica wheel.

Boom, boom.

You and I talked about that creator.

Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah.

That looks great.

We were talking about that creator who's like,

pissing off all the wheel companies.

You and I were talking about it on the phone the other day.

He's like, this is where they get it.

This is where they,

I don't know what his skin in the game is,

but it is funny ass content.

It is very good.

He knows rage, again, going back to rage baiting,

but it's not even rage baiting

because it's just facts that people don't like to hear.

We got a rage bait.

I usually never see that, that term in our content

unless you really just did not watch the video.

And it was about like, oh, the gap of Kia's EV

or Kia's pricing going from like 40 to like 80.

And then somehow you mentioned Porsches in there,

but you never said 9-11.

She's a Porsche.

I think we're talking about Taycans, obviously,

because you know what the cheapest Taycan right now

is in the country?

Take a stab at it.

51.

39.

Whoa, seriously?

39 with 60,000 miles, I believe, yeah.

Man, if you got bumper to bumper coverage

for like three or four years on that,

that would be an unbelievable buy.

$39,000?

I can't get a Gull 4 for that price.

That's crazy.

That is crazy.

I would have never thought they've reached 30.

I mean, we have to talk about it.

We're real close for Cybertruck being,

have you seen Cybertruck is?

I think 56 is like the average price, I think.

I mean, we're not far from $35,000 Cybertrucks,

and boy, are those gonna be everywhere.

Yeah, it's gonna be the next Nissan for sure.

It's gonna be the next,

I mean, you can think of a lot of platforms, Hummers.

Oh yeah, the modern H2 is a good one.

I've heard that.

Yeah, I mean, if there's a lot of things,

like we're not far from Cybertruck

really being problematic out on the roads

with people paying $35,000,

just wheeling those things at full blast.

Oh, I actually had an article

since we were talking about it right now,

the E-Ray, the 2026 E-Ray.

Here's kind of, I mean, it just looks great.

Obviously it looks like a C8.

2026, car and driver games at a 10 out of 10,

starting at 110.

Whoa, 128 all in.

That's not bad if you think about what you get.

No, I mean, you get a lot.

C8 is a platform that Chevy should be celebrated for.

I don't care what your opinion is about it,

what you get for the price it is.

Again, we all can bitch about price

on everything in the world.

You do get a lot, you're right.

But there's something about seeing Corvette

and $128,000 that's pretty rough.

And it's a good, look, it's a great platform.

I don't want this being taken out of context.

No, you're absolutely right.

Oh, funny, I actually did have this.

So somebody sent me a video because, you know,

we've made a bunch of funny videos about Nissan's

and the typical Nissan we see on the road

and those drivers or whatever.

So there was a lawyer breaking down

why Nissan became the greatest subprime lender

and he made a really good explanation of it.

And then, so as I watched that,

then I thought to myself of our previous conversations

and the acquisitions and the mergers

and all that stuff with Nissan.

I'm like, man, they really did do this to themselves.

Like they really doubled down on all of the financing arms

that could have been worst case scenario

for most people and they were like,

no, no, no, we want that, give us that.

We'll do that.

I think they really, it looked like

from a corporate perspective thought,

this is where we'll get everybody.

We'll go gobble up all these people

that people don't want to lend to,

which is a little bit what Toyota does at times too,

except Toyota just better globally

and better at everything than Nissan at this point.

You look at it from a very, you know,

30,000 foot view looking down.

Nissan just made every wrong call you could make.

I mean, they just made every wrong call.

Confusion in the brand, they torched Infinity

in a very short period of time, you know,

10, 15 years ago, Infinity was something.

That's not a long period of time in history.

Yep.

You know, I mean, think about their cars

and their coupes and, you know,

go back to the FX,

which you and I have talked about on this podcast,

you know, go back to QX 56,

which was everywhere for a large SUV.

Where all of this led to was wrong decision

after wrong decision after wrong decision.

Yeah.

And they just doubled and tripled down

on every bad decision.

And we all kind of say the canary in the coal mine is

when you cancel XTERRA five minutes

before the overland market takes off,

it kind of, you know, I mean, you know,

Toyota canceled the FJ, it was a stupid decision,

but they always had forerunner,

they always had Tacoma,

they always had these other things

that kind of gobble up and Nissan just said,

nah, we don't want a part of that.

Yeah, they had a farm system, right?

They had a bench they could go to.

Nissan did not.

So someone sent me another video,

we just mentioned Kia and, you know,

again, we're going to talk about EVs

or where it's applicable, where it makes sense.

It's not going to be the only thing we talk about ever,

but you have a lot of experience with car auctions

and what the auction like experiences like

for new and used cars.

So it was a video of an IONIQ 9,

which is one of their larger SUV type cars

at an auction, brand new.

And the individual that sent it was like,

wouldn't they be better off giving the consumer

just a good deal on the car?

And I don't think a lot of people realize

just how common you see new cars at auction,

especially EVs these days.

So the bedrock of the car business is the auction market,

okay, because that allows people

to unload inventory rapidly.

So they're getting a cash influx, you know, let's say,

very consistently that you don't see.

Like most people don't realize this.

If you live in a city like Las Vegas,

CarMax runs an auction out of the back

of usually one of the CarMax's in the city.

Like here, it would be out East here

at the CarMax in Henderson.

They can change from time to time,

but they run their own auction,

their own dealer auction.

You have a dealer license,

you go in the back of CarMax,

the things that aren't what they call frontline ready

or not gonna ever be frontline ready,

they'll go ahead and auction off.

They still buy the cars,

they just don't put them for sale through CarMax.

Then you have Mannheim and Odessa

and all of these other things that take place

that allows, and that's where I got my start

in this business for everybody doesn't know,

as I started work with a wholesaler.

And so this guy had a dealer license,

didn't sell any cars to the general public.

Zero cars.

He ended up selling cars later in his business,

like just things that he knew he could sell

and he had a pulse on the market.

But his whole business when I worked for him

was just wholesale.

So he'd buy stuff from the auction,

he'd fix engine problems,

he'd fix cosmetic problems, whatever,

and then he would ship those cars

to another auction in another state.

So he'd buy stuff at the Ohio Auto Auction on Monday.

If it could be turned around in a day,

by Thursday he'd have it at the Pennsylvania auction.

I mean, this guy was moving thousands of cars

amongst, along many different states every week.

And so he's providing this liquidity

and also inventory to other used car dealers

to maybe even some new car dealers

that are building their used car department.

And so the auctions are this place

that dealers can dump inventory into selling to other dealers

that gives them quick cash

because I do see people's point of,

why don't they just give the deal to the consumer?

Well, if they send it to the auction on Tuesday,

they know most likely it's gonna sell on Tuesday.

If they keep it and try to give you a deal,

it might take them another 60 days for somebody to buy it.

So that really isn't the option

that everybody thinks of it.

And on top of that comps,

if you have to really work a deal,

then you have to reprice the entire market in that area.

Exactly right, great point.

So the auction market is this sort of market

that's blocked from public view.

But I mean, you go up north,

there's a huge Mannheim auction

in the north part of Vegas, right by the Speedway.

You look at the Speedway and you look over here

and there's thousands upon thousands upon thousands

of cars in this Mannheim parking lot,

getting ready to run through walks.

You know what I mean?

People are walking the parking lot,

go do that when it's 110 out.

Now think what it's like on the black,

there's not a shade to be found.

It's just black top.

And you gotta plug things in

and you gotta do your research.

So the dealers really use these markets

as sort of a cash place,

a place to move cash quickly

so they don't have to worry about selling it to you.

And like you said, they don't really want

to reset the market either.

So there is this thing about auctions

that people get very confused about

because they don't think about the cash

constantly needing to move through your business

to stay alive.

So imagine by the way, that guy in today's world

with all these EVs, like how much inventory

would be coming in and out of his place,

people moving EVs?

Oh, it's gotta be crazy.

I mean, it would be,

I've talked to a lot of wholesalers

and I still know a lot of guys in that world.

I knew somebody down in Phoenix as an example

that very early on did nothing but EVs

and still does that today.

And that's like his specialty

as he understands that market.

But he understands what he needs to buy them for

and what he can get them on a lot

and sell them quickly for.

I think that's a pretty rare breed right now

that's willing to take the amount of risk it needs

to really get deep in that EV wholesale market.

It's certainly happening, right?

I'm not sitting here saying it isn't.

But wholesalers like things they can fix,

like things that they can provide value on.

EVs is one of those things that's probably a lot,

very, very low margin and very tough

if something goes wrong.

So I guess imagine, this is what I was gonna ask you too,

if they're flooring the cars,

seven, eight, nine percent or whatever,

it takes a hundred days, a hundred plus days to sell.

They're like, we're going straight to auction

because if we sit on it longer,

we're just gonna eat more money slower.

Yeah, so for everybody that doesn't know,

you got two kinds of dealers in the world.

You got the ballers that own everything.

They own everything on there a lot.

That's pretty rare, okay?

That would be like really, really high level buy here,

pay here guys that have made a lot of money.

They can outlay a lot of money

because they've been doing it so long

and they own their inventory.

That's becoming pretty rare.

That used to be more prevalent,

but as flooring companies,

and for everybody that doesn't know what a flooring company is,

they basically front the money for the purchase.

Some people have 30 day terms on their flooring.

Some people have 45, 60, nine,

depends on how big you are,

how much money you move, what you negotiated.

But the way that they operate,

essentially as dealers now is,

they never really outlay the money for the car.

They just pay an interest rate

on the money that they owe the flooring company.

So the flooring company is basically just like a loan shark.

They're just a hard money lender at this point.

If anybody's ever been in real estate,

like there's real hard money lenders on flips

and apartment rehabs and things like that,

it's the same thing.

They're gonna charge you five, six, seven, 10,

whatever the interest rate at the time needs to be.

But it's a real scary game

because one of the things people don't realize

is the car, as much as people hate on dealers,

you don't realize how little money

they make on some of these cars.

And if you take enough of those and you lose on them,

you don't have the margin on the other ones to make up.

You see a lot of we need to sell our dealership right now.

The documentary in the future is gonna be wild

about the EV.

You know what's gonna be called?

It's gonna be called inevitable

and it's just gonna be a downward arrow.

All these people that lost money

on these flooring opportunities with EVs,

it's gonna be pretty crazy.

Absolutely, no question.

What a wild time.

Okay, so yeah, anyway, to answer that listener's question,

we basically just described all the reasons

why you're not gonna get a deal,

especially on an EV,

like we just didn't move this thing,

get it off our books, get it out of our lot,

move on to the next thing.

Yeah, it's really about flipping cash fast.

I mean, you need cash infusion,

no matter how big you think a dealership group is

or dealership is or how well you think it's run,

these auctions provide pure liquidity pretty quickly.

I'm gonna curve ball here.

Nick and I always talk about like other things

to add to the show periodically,

maybe like newer segments or just things that we're,

we're probably gonna talk about on a phone

throughout the week anyway.

And I wanna ask you because you brought up

your streaming hurdles not long ago.

Was it YouTube TV?

Yeah, YouTube TV, I had a problem randomly.

Right, with like sports I think

because it was NFL thing.

Yeah, it was just like a random thing.

Like it's worked well for a decade

and then all of a sudden I was like,

what is going on here?

And then we started seeing like

the Netflix Paramount thing

and we started seeing all these different bidding wars

for, you know, networks, entertainment.

Hey, we're big fans of Netflix.

If you're looking for an automotive podcast

for these new Netflix deals that are going out,

we are definitely for sale.

100%.

Write the check, we'll make it happen.

Let us know.

Yeah, it'll be more entertaining than those things.

ClutchCulture at gmail.com.

Yeah, ClutchCulture podcast at gmail.com.

Oh yeah, sorry.

Hey, Netflix executives, just get with Rob.

Yes, please.

Get with rob.com.

Well, that should be the RL.

What is your opinion on,

we'll call it's entertainment corner.

What's your opinion on Apple as a streaming service?

So I have Apple TV.

We have, you know, we have the 4K box.

That's my hub.

Same.

The remote needs work.

I use my phone more than the remote, personally.

Yeah, I don't, I should probably do that.

Yeah, that's probably what I should do, but I don't.

Okay.

Like you're doing it the hard way.

I think there is so much content

on all of these platforms.

I just think I don't know really what's going on

and what I should be watching.

Yeah, and I think that's why we're seeing

some of this, you know, monopolizing

some people might say or this consolidation of network.

So funny enough, for years we've heard

about Apple acquiring Disney.

Well, now it's like back in the news big time

because of what we're seeing with Netflix and other things.

And this guy saw this video,

made such a great point of like how Apple,

like I didn't know this, but like over the last 10 years,

I think like 10 years ago,

Apple was valued at like, we'll call it 3 billion.

Disney was like, we'll just for round numbers,

200 billion and 100 million or 100 billion.

And 10 years later, Disney is still valid

at the exact same 200 billion.

Apple is worth 3 trillion.

Yeah, I mean, they could essentially just like

shake some of the office chairs

and come up with the money.

Yeah, some questions in the office.

Yeah, like, hey, look,

oh, we found another few billion here.

Yeah, exactly.

I think I feel the same way as many people is,

I have heard some astronomical numbers

from friends of mine of what it costs

to go to a Disney park with their family.

I mean, 10, 15, $20,000 type numbers.

I don't think that's sustainable.

I mean, call me crazy.

I think they also have this very creepy vibe

of like Disney adults that have kind of taken over

the narrative around Disney

and Disney hasn't like tried to put a stop to,

I guess they can't, but as a parent of young kids,

it feels creepy.

Yes.

I think Disney made a lot of very bad decisions

in leadership.

And I think some of it was sabotaged by old leadership.

If you read the stuff that kind of went on

with people that left the company and then came back,

I don't really know much about the entertainment space

and how everybody makes money

and how all these big companies view things.

But I think Amazon's always had

the most healthy thing publicly.

We basically only do videos,

so you use Prime more and don't cancel it.

That seems like they have the best hook.

It's like, yeah, you pay us for Prime,

you get some free shipping on some toothpaste,

but we're just gonna make sure you don't cancel Prime.

I think they have the most healthy relationship

with all of this.

And then they get in bed with NFL,

they get in bed with MLS,

they get in bed with Euro, soccer,

Apple TV, I kind of go there.

I think one of the best shows I saw this year

was on Apple TV.

What was the John Hamm show, like Friends and Neighbors?

Oh, is that where that video that's going around is from?

Where the guy was like a real rich dude,

then he started robbing his neighbors?

No, I didn't hear that.

That sounds great.

Yeah, you got a lot.

It was a good show.

Love John Hamm.

Yeah, John Hamm's great.

I look at a lot of this probably like you guys do,

which is, I don't know where this is gonna shake out,

but the shit's getting expensive.

Yeah, all your friends and neighbors.

Oh, great.

All right, adding this to the list for sure.

Yeah, it's a good one.

You'll like it.

Olivia Munn, all right, yeah.

No, you're absolutely right, too.

And so what the guy was saying, too,

is Apple will have the ability

to utilize all of this Disney IP, right?

All this catalog of a hundred years of content

where when you go to Disney,

you actually use Disney as an example,

everything will be on your iPhone, right?

So you'll be able to map out on your iPhone, everything.

Your hotel key, pay for everything on your iPhone.

Like it's all gonna be integrated.

It makes so much sense.

I was like, man, like if this doesn't happen,

I'd be surprised.

Yeah, but you gotta stop the creepiness.

You gotta stop the creepiness.

Let me get, hey, Tim Cook,

let me give you the piece of advice.

You gotta stop the adult creepiness.

I'm with you, dude.

I'm with you.

Like what are they calling them?

There's a name for these people.

I mean.

Disney adults.

Disney adults is not, that's not harsh enough.

I just call them creepy.

Okay, well, yeah, dang.

Usually I'm quicker finding a name for this.

Creepy is fine.

It really does the job.

Especially when they're like, they're actually R.A.

Like, well, you're an elder millennial.

We've established just, I'm a prime millennial aged here.

And it's people R.A.s.

Like they're in their 30s and somehow scrounges that money.

With no kids, just them adults going and hopping

on all the rides, eating all the food,

crying in front of Mickey,

who's really just the Mexican guy inside the suit,

sweating in the suit, he's like, what's going on?

Oh, why does Mickey not speak English?

Signora, por favor, calese.

Por favor, calese.

Estás estimando la mano.

You know, it's like, why are you squeezing me so hard?

Brutal.

You have, we'll end with this.

You have a video, we're gonna be releasing some content,

new content in the shop with the new colors

and the whole vibe going on in January,

where you're basically gonna be like

winterizing the LX before we get into the Christmas

like week and as we go into New Year's.

What's somebody, something that somebody can do

because here in Texas, dude,

it's gonna be 75 on Christmas.

So we're not really gonna have a cold Christmas.

We usually sometimes do.

What about, I don't know about you.

Are you gonna be super cold next week?

No, I think we're in the 60s.

Yeah, same, right?

So, but there's areas obviously getting slammed.

What can somebody do to like quickly winterize

their windows or their car in a way

that's just quick, efficient thing?

Yeah, so if you guys have never put glass coating

on your, anybody can do it.

A glass coating helps a lot of things.

You know, as you guys get rain and sleet and ice

and all that kind of stuff that helps visibility.

I think the number one thing going into wintertime,

and again, some of you've already been hit

by winter weather, but get it in your garage.

If you get a sunny day, which I know some people got,

who did already get snow, they got a sunny day,

get it washed off, get it prepped,

get some type of protection on your paint.

Clean out the rust bits you can see,

the door jams and things like that.

That stuff goes a long way.

And for everybody that thinks I grew up in warm weather,

I grew up in Ohio.

I grew up with snow and sleet and all that kind of stuff.

I saw the rust.

I was in the rust belt.

You know, the thing is, is that when you let things

settle in places that you know can start to deteriorate

where, you know, things like that, you know,

it's gonna be problematic.

So wipe out your door jams with something

like a waterless wash like Eco-1, coat your glass,

make sure you put some type of protection on your paint

anytime you can before the winter hits.

If you already have a coating on your car,

you're good to go.

You're gonna get through winter just fine.

But yeah, man, it's these little things

of just staying on top of it

because we all know winter's not perfect.

You know, you need to, just like we talked about

buying the perfect car is not really how everybody

should try to experience car culture

because it's not possible for 99% of them.

You're not always gonna have the perfect thing,

be able to care for your car perfectly when it's snowing

and it's ugly weather, but you can always do something.

Now, do people, do you recommend them polishing?

Is polishing a must step or just suggest,

like highly suggestive?

It depends on what you're doing.

You know, if you wanna do a longer term coating,

a quick polish is something I would recommend,

but we have a product called Stack at HyperClean.

You don't need to, it's very light coating,

last about a year, get you through,

you know, go ahead and just get the car cleaned up,

use a little bit of our white product

which is just a prep product

and get something on the car.

What about the glass itself?

What about polishing a must or also the same thing?

It's not a must, it's not a must.

It's just if you have it, you have the time,

you have the machinery, do it.

If not, just go ahead and prep it,

quick clay bar, use our white product again,

go ahead and get it on the car.

The waiting for perfect is what keeps people

from getting stuff done

and the detailing PPF type culture that's out there,

I get it, but having done this for so long,

I'm gonna tell you, doing something

is better than waiting for the perfect time to come

because you might miss the whole winter

and now you got, oh, this kinda looks worse now,

I can't fix this, now I'm seeing rust

where I didn't see it prior,

it's like just do something, man.

All right, you got a couple of things to do, people.

You gotta leave us a comment

or leave us a review as well on the podcast,

ClutchCulture Podcast at gmail.com.

Let us know what you think is missing

in the gap of the last 10 years

and where you think car culture's going,

where the disconnect is happening

between these big channels and creators.

You gotta go, take care of your winterizing process

at hypercleanstore.com and you gotta go to Costco

to get a bull tube and you gotta do this

and you gotta let me know if you did it.

You gotta let me know if you did it.

I really wanna know in the comments, please.

Nick, have a great week, we'll see you next week.

You too, bro.

Deep Dive Into Modern Day Car Culture, Wild Foxbody Auction, E-Ray vs Sterrato, & More

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