Drive Thru News #69 - From Le Mans to Lemons-ade
BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show
Drive Thru News #69 - From Le Mans to Lemons-ade
BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show · Jun 30, 2026
Annotations will appear as you listen
0:00
105:49
Topic
24 Hours of Le Mans
A famous day-long race in France where sports cars drive at high speeds for 24 hours straight. The team that covers the greatest distance wins, making it a massive test of how tough and reliable the cars are.
Car
Ferrari 499P
Ferrari's top-tier hybrid race car built specifically to win the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race. It uses a powerful V6 engine combined with electric power to go incredibly fast while saving fuel.
Car
Porsche 963
A high-tech hybrid race car built by Porsche to compete in the world's biggest endurance races. It combines a loud V8 engine with electric hybrid technology to race for hours on end.
Car
Ford Mustang
Car
Toyota Camry
Term
Balance of Performance (BOP)
A set of rules used in racing to make sure one car model doesn't easily dominate all the others. Officials will intentionally add weight or restrict engine power on faster cars to keep the races close and exciting.
Car
Porsche 911
Term
Limp Mode
A self-defense mode your car goes into when its computer senses a major mechanical or electrical problem. It limits your speed and power so you don't blow up the engine, but still lets you slowly drive to a safe spot or mechanic.
Part
ECU
The brain of your car's engine. It is a small computer that constantly monitors sensors to decide exactly how much fuel and air the engine needs to run smoothly and efficiently.
Car
Volkswagen Gti
Car
Audi TT
A stylish, compact two-door sports car made by Audi that is famous for its rounded, futuristic design. It was discontinued recently after a successful 25-year run.
Car
Porsche Boxster
Car
Audi Quattro
Car
Porsche Panamera
Car
Audi RS3
An incredibly fast, high-performance version of Audi's smallest sedan. It is famous among car enthusiasts for using a rare five-cylinder engine that makes a unique growling sound.
Car
Volkswagen Jetta
Car
Volkswagen Golf R
The ultimate, fastest version of the Volkswagen Golf hatchback. It has more power than the famous GTI and comes with all-wheel drive to help grip the road in all weather conditions.
Car
Nissan R32
Car
Chrysler Voyager
Car
Mazda Miatas
Car
Fiat Multipla
Car
Nissan Leaf
Car
Jeep Cherokee
Car
Polestar 2
Car
Fisker Oceans
Car
Bmw News
Car
BMW M3
Car
BMW M2
Car
Subaru WRX
Car
Mazda 3
Car
Toyota GR Corolla
A wild, rally-inspired version of the sensible Toyota Corolla hatchback. It features a highly tuned three-cylinder engine and a special all-wheel-drive system designed for high-speed cornering and gravel sliding.
Car
Honda Element
A very boxy, quirky SUV made by Honda that is loved by campers and dog owners. It has suicide doors, no carpet on the floor (making it easy to sweep out), and seats that can fold completely flat or be removed entirely.
Car
Ferrari Luche
Car
Telo MT1
A new, tiny electric pickup truck designed to be as short as a small hatchback but still have a usable truck bed. It uses clever design tricks to maximize interior space without being a giant, heavy vehicle.
Term
Money Shift
An accidental mistake in a manual transmission car where the driver shifts into a gear that is way too low (like going from 5th to 2nd instead of 4th). This forces the engine to spin way too fast, instantly destroying it and costing a lot of 'money' to fix.
Car
Honda S2000
Car
Toyota Supra
Car
Chevrolet Camaro ZL1
The absolute fastest, most powerful version of the modern Chevy Camaro. It features a supercharged V8 engine and high-tech suspension designed to dominate both drag strips and twisty race tracks.
Car
Buick Regal
Car
Ford Taurus
Car
Dodge Challenger
Car
Nissan 350Z
A popular two-seater sports car made by Nissan in the 2000s. It is famous for its rear-wheel-drive layout, sporty handling, and a loud, distinct-sounding V6 engine.
Car
Porsche Cayenne
LIVE
Welcome to Brake Fixes Drive-Thru News, your monthly recap for everything fast, fascinating, and usually four-wheel.
We're serving up a fresh batch of automotive headlines, motorsports madness, and car-adjacent curiosities, all with zero wait time and maximum flavor.
From Formula One drama to concept car debuts with garage-built legends to the quirkiest stories rolling out of the state of Florida, we've got your fix.
So grab your coffee, buckle up, and let's cruise through the latest in the world of wheels with a side of entertainment and just a dash of tire smoke.
Ayatollah, rock and rollah.
Is that how this month goes?
Sure.
Are you working on your new number one hit single?
I recognize.
Yeah.
I make those songs up for my girls. They don't like them very much. And then they're like, Dad, where did you come up with, where, what is this song? And I'm like, I made it up.
I'm an aspiring artist. What are you talking about?
Yes.
I'll have that audio recording somewhere.
Yeah. Adam is always telling me to stop singing or stop dancing. And I said, I can't. I got the music in me.
They're going to remember all these shenanigans that we did when we were considered old to them. When they look back, they'd be like, your dad, you know, your dad was pretty, he was a fun guy.
And then they start doing the stuff that you did because it imprinted on them, right? And they don't even know why they did it.
Exactly. Just wait till each school drop off. And I'm dropping them off in a blueish-purple beetle.
You know what? And what's going to happen is one of your sons later is going to be like, my dad had a bug. I've always wanted a bug. I'm going to get one, blah, blah, blah.
And that Mark IV bug to him is going to be a classic, just like your grandfather's bug is a classic to you. See, that's how it works.
Exactly.
That's generational automotive enthusiasm right there.
I thought you were going to say generational autism.
Well, you know, some of that goes with a hobby too. But in all seriousness, well, maybe not because if we don't laugh, we'll probably cry because the month of June should be a celebrated month.
The month of June is amazing. Did you know that today, the day that we're recording this episode is the exact six year anniversary of our very first episode?
Really?
Yes.
I did not.
Today is the day. So there we go. Happy birthday to us.
Okay.
But June is also the month where we celebrate the high holy holiday of motorsport, the 24 hours of Le Mans. Did you watch the race?
I ask you this every year. Did you watch the race?
Who are you asking?
Both of you. Did you watch the race?
I watched what I could having two children climb and jump all over me. I had it basically, it was on my computer screen for the entire 24 hours.
I got to watch probably about an hour of it.
Which of the boring hours did you watch?
I got to watch the start in a couple of the first laps and I did watch some at night and then I watched the ending.
And then I got to see Toyota win.
You did the Formula One thing then. You watched the beginning, you watched the end, you skipped it, you napped through everything in the middle.
Yep. So I missed if there was any drama about Ferrari or...
No.
I think when I started, wasn't, Cadillac wasn't winning. Was BMW winning the hypercar?
Cadillac was in the front row and so was BMW.
And Cadillac's reign at the front was very short lived.
Toyota qualified like 14th and 15th. They were way back.
Like you're talking Genesis is in front of them.
Like everybody's in front of them.
We're like, man, this new car is terrible.
And then we have a Cinderella story at the end. No spoilers if you haven't seen it.
Because somebody's going to go back and watch it two weeks later?
No, of course not. Forget it.
You can watch the highlight reel in about 20 minutes.
How about you? How did you watch the race, Tanya?
Who did I say you had that streaming?
Was it Hobo Max?
Maybe that's what it was.
It was on, yeah, I think it was supposed to be on Max.
It was on Max.
So I tuned in and out throughout the day.
I went to bed like a normal human being because I'm old.
That's all of this.
And then the next day I tuned in and in and out and then I caught the last hour, basically.
And what did you think of the race?
I mean, I don't think I watched enough of it to see excitement.
I heard when I came back in, even the announcers like the next day were commenting that like
the first race was so exciting until like sometime in the middle of the night or something like that.
Because it's a Toyota and it's reliable.
Because the first 12 hours were super boring and subject to basically perfect driving conditions
and pit rotations.
So wherever you started the race was basically where you were for the first 12 hours.
It was incredibly boring for the first half.
And then we got a little sprinkle of rain mid morning kind of as the sun was coming.
And then it was like, okay, so that kind of made things different and interesting.
A couple of cars broke or behind the wall came back out.
A bunch of cars were laps and laps down and that's the typical race.
But it was just there was something about this year's Le Mans that was just like, oh, hmm.
It just, I don't know.
For some reason, it just felt like any other year.
Boring.
Well, and that's the weird part because GTP was packed full of brands.
Just packed three Ferraris, two Toyota's, two Hyundai's, the Aston's, the BMW.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
And it's like, how is this?
Is it because Porsche wasn't there?
Is that what makes it that much more interesting?
I will say, unless you're in the know, there was very little marketing and pomp and circumstance
leading up to the race.
I mean, the only reason I knew the race was happening is because I actively sought out,
okay, when is Le Mans?
When am I going to watch?
How am I going to watch it?
There was very little online about it until race day.
And even then there was, there's just not a lot of coverage.
This is a sign, as you know, the race was super boring.
They gave LMP two tons of TV coverage this time around.
Maybe they listened to our show.
Maybe that's because we've been complaining that LMP two doesn't get enough TV coverage.
And then I was shocked by how many times they would actually stay on the LMP two cars
and we'd watch them go around and battle it out, which was kind of exciting.
But that speaks volumes to Le Mans fans, right?
You know, it was funny to me as I was watching the LMP two cars and I was like,
why does LMP two exist?
Are they just trying to fill the field?
Are there not enough hypercar manufacturers to want to do this?
So they have to fill it with the Dolores.
They pay for the race.
That's what LMP two does.
I don't know.
They was did did feel a little bit less, a little blasey.
And it was, I guess, the first year to see not Dunlop.
Right.
We talked about that.
It's very strange.
No Porsche, no Dunlop.
It just felt off and to make matters worse.
This is the first Le Mans in a long time that wasn't on Father's Day.
Yes, correct.
That had trickle down effects because we went as a family to Simione for the museum
overnight camp out thing, you know, the viewing party and all that kind of stuff,
which I will say, Mad Props of Simione Foundation Museum.
They stepped up their game.
I wrote a whole article about it.
It's on the website.
All the TVs were like everywhere instead of relegated into one corner.
They had a family fun zone.
They had simulators.
The ACO had its own lounge at the museum.
All this kind of really cool stuff.
But attendance was less than half of what it was last year.
And, you know, we were just chit chatting and speculating about it.
And I ran into some guests of the show and other people that we know from the
Society of Autonomous Historians, we're sitting there talking.
People just couldn't put their finger on it.
The race was kind of meh attendance was down.
And I said, I think it's because it's not on Father's Day because Father's Day,
you get that hall pass.
What does Grandpa want to do?
What does Dad want to do?
You know, we're going to go to the museum.
We're going to watch the race.
We're going to buckle down and watch Le Mans.
It's always been on Father's Day.
And to shift it up to the same weekend as the Spanish GP, which we're going to
talk about maybe some speculation as to why they did that.
In the other episode, it just was everything was off.
It's like that weekend when the time changes and you just kind of feel meh for
like three days.
It was like the same thing.
It just it was wrong.
They need to go back to the way it was.
I think any year Toyota wins.
It's kind of a boring race.
But you got to hand it to them.
Either they were sandbagging like crazy, but to come from the back of the
GTP pack basically and end up winning it.
I mean, that's a hell of a feat because there weren't a lot of GTP cars, LMP
one, whatever you want to call them that were out.
The Peugeots were still there.
The Ferraris were all still there.
Couple of the Cadillacs BMW basically stayed in second place for the entire
race made no sense.
It was like, okay, I mean, they did lead for the first while in the first half,
but eventually they gave up the goat on that too.
But still, it was just where the hell Toyota come from?
It's very bizarre.
And I got to go there.
We got to take a bite out of this 900 pound elephant in the conversation of
Le Mans.
Did I or did I not say last year Ferrari needed to stop?
You might have.
It was embarrassing.
I don't think it was embarrassing because, okay, they started somewhere.
They got all the way to the bottom and they came back up to the top.
So I mean, that's good.
I mean, they didn't even podium.
They didn't even podium.
I mean, considering how terrible they were doing at one point to almost be
close is not bad.
They switched teams.
Did the Formula One guys go to Le Mans this year and Le Mans went to Formula
One? Is that is that what's going on?
Possible because didn't they say last year that they were going to try and get
help from Le Mans team for Ferrari?
Right.
Maybe they were all at the Spanish GP trying to help them and not in France.
That would make a lot of sense to the results of the Spanish GP then.
Well, we're going to talk about that too.
But it was just, it was so disappointing.
And now if Ford comes in next year with their car name yet to be determined,
let's call it the GT 2027, Ferrari needs to stop.
They either need to redesign the car because that chassis is already old at
this point or they need to stop.
They need to get out just like Porsche did because it just doesn't.
It doesn't make sense.
Abandon everything.
But who knows?
Maybe it's one of these off years where they are doing that next year.
They're going to have a new car.
Yeah.
How how embarrassing would it be to not be there the same year Ford comes back
given the history between Ford and Ferrari in 1967, 66, all those 68,
all those years where they were doing those battles.
It was Ford and Ferrari neck and neck going at it, you know, as dramatized
in the movies, etc.
But if they just kind of show up and throw up like a seventh plate finish
and Ford ends up like on the podium, that's not Ford versus Ferrari.
That's Ford versus Toyota.
It's still better for them to show up than to not show up because then you'd
be saying, oh, they couldn't even get their act together and get a car to
Le Mans or they chickened out and they saw Ford was coming and they backpedaled
and decided they didn't want any piece of that.
You know how the Ford fanatics are.
That's true.
And Porsche lost three years in a row.
So and then they stopped.
I kind of looked at it the other way and said, for I won three years in a row,
they should have stopped.
Do we see the 499P for two more years?
But stop and then what?
That's it.
They're done.
They never run in Le Mans again.
Porsche will come back with something, but it's not going to be the 963.
I mean, I'd be curious what the development plan and the strategic plan
was when they put the car together.
I mean, did they, I mean, we obviously weren't in those meetings.
Could they possibly have said, I'm speaking about Porsche.
Okay, we're going to do this for three years and then we're going to back out
and do something else.
If they were just executing on the plan that they originally created,
so be it.
Then the results are the results.
Yeah, could be the same with Ferrari.
I mean, Ferrari probably said, you know, when lose draw, we're going to do
this for five years.
And then after that, we're going to go back to the drawing board.
We're going to focus on something else.
We're going to focus on fixing the entire EV debacle that happened.
And then we're going to come back.
We're going to talk about that too.
My God, which I just, I just saw the CMO for Ferrari was fired.
Because of that launch.
Well, let's put a pin in that and come back to it.
So let's kind of go down the rungs a little bit.
So, you know, we know what happened in GTP LMP to if you can tell them apart.
That's great.
There was some good racing going on.
P2, I will say.
Let's talk about GT three for just a second.
Did anybody else see what I saw happening in GT three?
I saw Corvette one Corvette one, but who is in second place and who is
leading for most of the time was Lexus.
Wasn't it in their like 10 year old car?
Yes.
I thought asked and came in second.
No, Lexus came in second and Lexus was leading for a really long time in GT
three, which beg the question because I asked some other people.
I was like, do you think they BOP everybody else to the slowness of the Lexus?
Because the Lexus has always been reliable, but it's never been fast compared
to the Corvettes or the Mustangs or the Porsche's or the Fright.
Like they're always sort of just there to Tonya's point that chassis is
old, that car is old, that layout is old, all of its old.
And here they are leading GT three at Le Mans.
You don't want to tell me that they basically put potatoes up everybody's
exhaust pipes and restricted them.
So the Lexus stood a chance.
You know, apparently that's only the third time that Lexus has showed up.
Yeah.
Once they got the rules right where they could cross the IMSA cars to Le
Mans a couple of years ago, that was 2024, the Lexus showed up and it's been
there, but you forget about it because just like when it runs at Daytona,
you just sort of forget about it unless all the other GT three cars break.
The Lexus is always in the lowest class.
It's always in the GTD class.
It's never in the GT pro or whatever, at least on the on the IMSA side.
According to the interwebs, oh boy, they had consistent pace, consistently
avoiding unforced errors, mechanical issues and capitalizing on track restarts.
The Lexus stayed at the front of the highly competitive GT pack for 24 hours.
Their fuel efficiency.
The team's calculated fuel strategy allowed them to stretch their stints, giving
them the edge to stay out on track longer while preserving both tires and engine.
They're still out there with a Camry.
So basically it's Toyota being Toyota.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Reliable, not the fastest, but fast enough and dependable.
Run forever, reliable, independent.
I mean, it's the Toyota motto.
Yeah, it was just shocking.
But as we know, and having talked to Mark Raffoff and other people that are in
the know and write the rules, especially Mark, the BOP exists.
And if Toyota lobbied, you know, maybe it was a thing like if we can lobby the Lexus,
then if Toyota ends up winning, maybe they were sandbagging again, conspiracy
theories, put your tin foil hats on, then it's a double win for Toyota, right?
It's a win at the top and it's a win in GT3 for the brand.
So who knows, right?
So they don't do that.
No, there's no politics in racing whatsoever.
No, no, no.
There's no sort of like BOP in the upper classes.
I mean, definitely not in a prototype two because they're all the exact same car.
They're spec cars.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But but in the hypercar class, the top class, they don't do a BOP.
It's basically rum with your brung, right?
Kind of.
They build within the parameters that they have.
Correct.
There's a limit that they build to but GT3 because the cars are so disparate.
Yeah.
9-11 is not the same shape as a Lambo is not the same shape as the Lexus.
So they have to figure out how to make them all equal, hence the balance of
performance.
And then what ends up happening there is and Mark came on and talked about this
on a evening with a legend episode, the manufacturers literally lobby to figure
out the BOP and in the end, they sort of squeak ahead or behind.
And then it's all the typical racing stuff.
Cheat until you get caught.
And then it's not cheating anymore.
It becomes a rule, right?
It's all that kind of stuff that's been going on forever.
But there is a lot of lobbying and a lot of politics in the GT classes for sure.
Right.
But in the hypercar class is basically rum with your brung and that's where all
the innovation and technology and that's where you see all the diverse engines
to where the magma is running like a six cylinder and the Valkyrie's got a 12 and
the Toyota's got a four wheel drive hybrid and it's all this mixed match of stuff.
I think we determined the magma was running a small V8.
That's right.
I had also heard rumor in testing when they were testing the chassis, they were
running the rally four cylinder in it.
Yeah.
Testing all kinds of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I was impressed with them.
We'll talk about this later, but BOP is kind of what they're doing in F1 right
now, like allowing teams to do either one upgrade or two upgrades.
But we'll get into that.
Well, overall, Lamar has come and gone.
I worshiped at the altar like I do every year.
You know, now I just got to wait for petite and then we start all over again
with Daytona and Seabring and just keep going down the line.
But there's the other side of this that everybody's been anxiously waiting for.
June was going to be an extremely busy month.
We were going to go from lemons to Lamar.
I think we got to make some lemonade out of this lemon that we have.
That work out as planned.
No, it did not.
We got to fill our audience and normally we would do this as the GTM track
side report.
You got to make it to the track to make it a track side.
Hey now.
Hey now.
The starting line is half the battle.
It's like G.I. Joe with this thing.
Okay.
And it's funny because it's sad Dave Lowe from Enduro verse called me the
other day and you know, he's like, how'd you guys do?
How did it go?
And I'm like, Dave, I got bad news for you.
We never made it to the start line.
He's like, what happened?
So here's the deal as Tanya knows Memorial Day weekend.
We are wrapping the car up like literally put stickers on it.
Getting it all done, trying to get it ready, going through all the final
tech stuff, just making sure this is done and we got to go move the car out of
the garage and rained over the weekend as fine stayed in the garage.
Like whatever, it's all clear now.
We're going to take it outside.
We're going to park it.
It's going to be ready to go racing.
No problem.
What I go like 50 yards from the house.
I stopped to take a picture of it with the stickers on it so I could send it
to our sponsors and say, Hey, look, we put your stickers on the car.
I just let it sit there and idle.
I put it in reverse to back it into its spot and it went into lip mode and now
Oh, I don't know.
A month later, it's still in lip mode.
It will not come out of limbo.
So to make a very long and sad and expensive story short, I got to give
mad props to the guys over at benchmark motors.
I threw my hands in the air after doing a bunch of diagnosis, asking
everything under the sun to include chat GPT, like what the hell's wrong
with this car, changing parts.
Yeah, replacing all sorts of parts, throttle body, pedal assembly, pig
tails on the wiring harness, like all sorts of stuff that is, you know,
indicative of the issue that we were getting with it.
And apparently these are known problems with the Ford Focus and we're like,
okay, fine, whatever.
Well, did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in so many times?
Let me try rebooting it.
Yeah.
Well, that too.
Oddly enough, in a fly by wire system, the car runs better right now
with the throttle body disconnected than it does with the electrical system
intact.
So we can move it around a little bit.
Again, sob story, shout out to benchmark.
We took it over there and I said, look guys, we're running out of time.
We have a week to go.
I needed legitimate diagnostic tool to figure out what the heck is going on
with this.
I've maxed out everything I have, all the research I've done.
Can one of your mechanics look at it?
They said, sure, bring it in.
No problem.
And I said, here's what we've done.
This, this, this granted, they're going to do their
due diligence.
They're not going to trust everybody.
So they went through and retested everything that we did and they got to
the point where they're like, look, man, there's a problem with the computer
itself, the ECU.
And I'm like, oh God, this is going to be painful.
And to make matters worse on the Ford, the ECU is hidden in the fender liner
behind the driver's side front wheel, which in my opinion,
is like the dumbest place in the planet to put it.
I sort of scratched my head because I'm used to the Volkswagen's and I'm
like, I know where things belong.
I'm going to say it that way and they don't belong there.
So again, researching the reddits and the forums and talking to chat,
GPT and Copilot and whatever.
And it's like, oh yeah, you know, they get wet there and then the wires like go
bad and stuff happens and shorts out the computer and okay, fine.
Our cars got high mileage.
It's in really decent shape.
It doesn't have any rust or anything like that.
So we ended up ordering a new ECU, which costs a fortune from Ford because we
have to get it coded at a dealership.
And then there was a big old goat rodeo between Benchmark and the local Ford
dealership saying, well, it's a race car and they're like, no, it's not.
These guys have been really good about not touching any of the electronics.
It's actually just a bone stock Ford focus.
Hook your OBD thing to it, reprogram the ECU, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Again, a bunch of rigmarole coming down to the last day before the morning of
we're supposed to be at tech and the car is still not running.
So I go over there Friday morning and they're like, look, man, they tried to
program the new ECU, the ECU doesn't want to talk to the throttle body, which
means that the programming is technically incomplete, but that stage of the
programming you could do yourself, you know, blah, all this
back and forth.
Let's try a couple other things.
So I brought them the original throttle body, all these other parts and they're
messing around.
I'm like, guys, I don't want you to spend any more time on it because the more
time you're spending on it, the more aggravated I'm getting and the more
expensive it is, right?
Because they're not going to do it for free.
Although they've been keeping in touch with us.
Like one of the head guys there just reached out to me the other day is like,
what's going on?
Did you guys get the car running?
It's been a month basically.
And I said, look, this is where we're at after a couple failed attempts.
We finally got a brand new from Ford engine wiring harness.
We're going to replace all the electronics on the engine side and move the
ECU.
We're going to relocate it since the battery is out of the way.
We're going to move the ECU into a better location, not where it can get
wet and hope to God that that solves the problem.
Because if it doesn't, the next move is a Molotov cocktail.
What are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
I've researched other options to people like, oh, yeah, yeah, program the fuel
injection, put a hall tech on there.
By the way, hall tech doesn't support that motor.
Yeah.
Mo tech, Mo tech's $15,000 because it's a direct injection engine because
it's modern.
That's out of the lemon's budget folks.
There's a carburetor option.
There's even another option.
I talked to these guys in England.
They're like, we'll sell you a computer.
It'll run the motor, but it doesn't interface with any of the other electronics
in the car.
So you're on the hook to figure out how to make like the tachometer work and
how to make all the other stuff work that Ford will basically neuter the car.
Right?
Like if you don't hit the clutch and turn the car on, they're like, yeah,
none of that stuff works.
You got to figure out how to bridge it.
I'm like, who invented this system?
This is ridiculous.
Plug and play.
We're going to put that in air quotes, right?
I'm like, oh my God.
That's that British electronics.
I will say to make this a little bit more palatable for us.
If anybody at Benchmark is listening, we are accepting sponsorships.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're accepting.
So if anybody wants to help sponsor this, I mean, we could start to go
fund me if we have to.
Dude, we're going to have to because I'm going to have to sell a kidney.
It's a point.
This thing, we're just hemorrhaging money on it at this point and it's
been the stupidest stuff.
And this is just like ridiculous.
And you know, it's funny.
I was talking to Greg Stanley recently.
He came on the show and we did an interview and he quoted Jay Leno.
It's so true what Jay has said.
He's like mechanical things break and they can either be remade,
remanufactured or repaired, but electronics degrade.
And that's why there's not going to be classic cars of this era because
50 years from now, when all the electronics rot out, there's not going to be
a classic car Tesla that everybody's going to go get.
No, that and that's just it.
Once all the wires corrode inside of that loom and nobody makes the loom anymore.
Are you going to sit there in your garage and take it apart and make a new loom
that's only going to last 10 years?
And then the car is going to be a brick again.
I mean, we're going to have a bunch of museum pieces.
So what you're saying is we should start collecting Mark 4 looms now.
I am already working on that.
That is the next thing, right?
Because Mountain Mandan came to the table and says, I got this shot in
Pennsylvania, little $200,000 machine.
They'll hook up the car and they'll tell you down to the inch where the break
is in the wires, which apparently this is also an issue with the Ford.
The way they split the wires rather than what the Germans do, which is
we're going to home run a wire to its location, but we're going to
make it two inches too short.
So there's no slack.
If you ever have to go mess with it, it is like exactly exact to save money.
What Ford did is they said, hey, look, we're going to put a branch here
and then we're going to put some chewing gum and some bailing wire and a wire
nut from like your home, you know, electric system.
And that's how we're going to hold it together and that's going to rot
and then fall apart.
If you look at the schematic, there's like 10 of these branches
where they soldered wires together in like a Y shape.
And apparently any one of those can go bad.
And then suddenly the whole system is a cascading failure rather than haul
the car all the way to this place, you know, a couple of hours away or
whatever to deal with it.
I'm just going to hand the loom to Dan and say, take it to the shop.
And if they can fix it, then we have a backup using the original
that's repaired that way.
It took us weeks to find one because a lot of people were saying it's
no longer available.
You can't get a wiring harness for it.
And to make matters worse, the highest percentage of focuses sold are
not manual transmissions and the wiring loom is different.
So even if you tried to find one in the junkyard, you're taking a risk,
but you're not going to find one we've looked.
There just, there aren't any out there.
Sponkers.
So I put my hands together and pray to our benevolent motor sport
overlords in the name of the duct tape, the WD-40 and the night eyes
that we make it to some point in October.
That is the plan at this point.
We have no other recourse across our fingers.
And if we don't blow up the motor, hopefully maybe we can do road Atlanta
after that, but our season is not even started yet and it's halfway over.
If there are any listeners out there with a rental car for us to borrow a spare
track car, we might, we might need your contact information.
Former guest mic car, if you're listening, I know you got like 15 of them,
dude, come on now.
I did listen to, I say listen because I didn't really watch it glanced.
I did listen to a video and somebody doing this quote repair.
Uh-huh.
Taking the harness out and putting a new one in.
It does not seem famous last words that complicated.
The loom isn't that big.
The Volkswagen loom is actually bigger and I've done that one.
I was very surprised.
I was like, wow, and it's all just laying on top of everything.
Yeah, that's what it looks like.
Apparently, like there's a couple that run down in the front, but then like,
it's all just like laying on top.
And I'm like, okay, this isn't that bad then maybe.
The loom sits on top of the engine for the most part.
It's like right there in front of your face.
So other than pulling it out of the fender well and sealing that hole,
because we have to seal the hole coming through the firewall,
which should be a lot easier because the battery is not there anymore.
Correct.
And the plan is also to relocate the computer, right?
The ECU.
Correct.
Put it right on the hood.
So you just bypass all the extra bullshit right there.
So it just hits it immediately.
Well, I'm going to move it probably where the battery used to be
because there's a big open space there now.
We can put it in a box or, you know, get a box for it or some waterproof it
or something like that.
My other plan is actually to make sure that when we relocated the battery
that I rerun a brand new ground from that location back to the battery
just to make sure that we didn't break a loop in the circuit somewhere.
I've got cable on the way.
I have cable.
You have 12 feet of battery cable?
Probably.
Oh, I ordered it.
So yeah, cause we bought all that stuff to do the battery and outie.
And we never did it.
Oh, shoot.
Okay.
Well, I ordered it today.
So it's no big deal.
But yeah, only because our local battery place had a fire incident.
Not too long ago.
And that's a real shame because they've been an awesome sponsor of the years
just getting us everything we ever needed for the race cars.
It's like they're rebuilding.
So yeah, hopefully they bounce back because that's a tremendous fire.
When a battery place goes up in flames, that's a hard fire to control.
Almost like a Tesla.
Yeah, it's been a really weird month.
Unfortunately, we're going to make lemonade out of these lemons.
We're going to keep going.
We're past the point in overturn.
Nobody wants the car.
It doesn't run.
That's the age old story.
Whether it's a classic car or race car or even the lemons car, if it doesn't
run, nobody's going to buy it from you.
You know what I mean?
So it's not like we can get out from underneath of it and it would be
disappointing to go through all of 2026 and not turn a lap in this car.
Turn them all sell.
I will tell.
We should probably just take it to a DE to shake out the leg.
Shake it, shake out the leg.
Oh, God.
Don't.
You want to see me go zero to 7000 RPM?
Let's keep going, Rand.
And then as you say, my boy, the escalated my voice.
What's this about?
Uh, Volkswagen Audi news.
Yeah, let's let's switch gears, shall we?
Ha, Volkswagen Audi news.
We know that it's a bridge over troubled waters at Volkswagen, but I don't
understand the hokey pokey.
We literally had episodes where we said goodbye to cars like the
two door GTI, we said goodbye to the Passat, we said goodbye to the T T.
They said no more.
It's not going to happen.
We're only going to sell e-golfs and ID buzzes and ID fours and all
this other stuff.
And now they're talking about a successor to the T T and this particular
test mule is built on top of the Boxster.
It's terrible.
I mean, it looks like a Porsche.
Who cares?
Why are we calling this a TT?
It's also mid engine bingo.
That's not TT either.
Bingo.
So that's what's interesting about this is the new TT going to be the
budget Boxster, because if it is, this actually goes back to the concept
R that they had in 2003, which was a Boxster with a VR six engine instead
of the Porsche flat six with the EOS nose and its own unique rear
end or whatever.
So this is not a new idea from Volkswagen.
They're going back 20 plus years and rehashing this.
But what it does is it sort of ushers in the idea that if we're going to
build the TT with this mid-engine platform, supposedly with Quattro,
right?
Cause they always do a Quattro.
They don't do front wheel drive or rear wheel drive only outies really
anymore.
Does this mean its big brother is coming back to and that's the R eight.
Cause as you guys know, the R eight and the TT and the later generations,
they look very, very similar.
Well, I think the answer to that question is look at Lamborghini.
Is there a new Lamborghini coming?
Well, there's always a new Lamborghini coming unless Volkswagen decides
to sell that company too, along with Bugatti and Rimmak and everything
else.
They've been scuttling over the last couple of months.
I guess Bugatti didn't sell enough baby twos.
Well, I mean, what else do they sell?
I tell you, what do you think about this TT other than you
don't like it?
Ugly.
I mean, I hope it doesn't look like this.
It looks like a Porsche, right?
Is it going to look like this thing?
Whatever they're calling this thing now, the new Velary or Concept C or
whatever it is.
I mean, I hope not either because that looks like a cartoon drawing.
They bought in Batman.
They made series original.
So is this going to be Mininjan?
Who knows?
You see how they parked the Mark one next to the T T has become something
like the Beatles, its own iconic design.
Love it or leave it.
The TT is a particular shape because it was the carbon gear or whatever.
Yeah, carbon was his own particular shape.
And it's just a weird hodgepodge that Porsche thing to make it look like
a Porsche is stupid.
It's badge engineering again.
If you're not going to pull the thread and keep it looking like a TT,
I don't know what we're doing.
It'd be like saying, oh, we're making a new Beetle and it's a fucking
four door sedan.
They call that the Panamera and then be like, ooh, the new Beetle.
Be like, no, that has nothing to do with the Beetle.
It'll be the Beetle Clubman.
Yeah, exactly.
What Audi should do is they should take the RS3 chassis and put a
redesigned TT body on it and then boom, you're done.
But the problem with the Jetta is that it's not sporty enough.
The chassis, you're telling me an RS3 is not sporty?
Not if you're targeting that particular market.
If you want something to go into that convertible market into that sport
coupe market or whatever, a sedan chassis is not going to do it
because the RS3 at the end of the day is a Jetta.
I mean, the older Jetta, but still it's a Jetta with all the drive
and a lot of horsepower.
Let's get real.
And not only that, if they're going to do what they said they're going to
do, which has come out with the new ultimate Golf R with the RS3 engine
in it, why would you build something inferior to the GTI?
It has to be drastically different than the GTI.
So for my money, a rear wheel drive mid-engine TT, Boxster, whatever you
want to call it, kind of makes sense.
As long as it doesn't look like a Porsche.
Well, that's just it.
If it ends up looking like this concept car that we've seen renderings of looks
aside, if it's pinned on top of a Boxster chassis, at least you kind of know
what you're getting.
Yeah.
It's the interior that kills me, though.
This interior is God awful.
Like, what is this?
It's very utilitarian.
I mean, there's Spartan and then there's this dentist office that I'm
looking at here.
I mean, this is.
Yeah.
Where do you shift the gears?
You don't shift the gears because it doesn't have any.
I bet you this thing will be electrical too.
I don't even want to know the TT.
E.B.
The TT.
E.B.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
Well, Tanya, you brought us this next article again, some more Volkswagen
hokey pokey.
Well, this article annoys me tremendously.
Oh, do tell for various reasons.
Basically, they're saying the base golf hatchback is going to come back to
the US soon because Volkswagen is moving golf production to Mexico.
And if the tariffs are lowered, the base model could soon be important in
the United States.
So first of all, they're like contradicting themselves in this article
that it's moving to Mexico, but then it really depends if the tariffs get
lifted, whether or not we get it in North America.
And then there's the while the golf has been built in Wolfsburg, Germany for
more than 50 years, production of the hatchback will shift entirely to
Puebla, Mexico in 2027.
Excuse me.
Golfs have always been also made in Mexico.
And Brazil.
Yes.
Only the special golfs were made in Wolfsburg and the last golf to be made
in Wolfsburg was the original R32.
The person writing this article is clueless for one and two.
I just maybe they're moving more production there because they're going
to sell them there, but I don't know how they win if the whole tariff thing
isn't right.
Then what can of worms opens up because there's supposed to be everything
made in America.
How is that going to work?
Who's going to shine a favorable light on Volkswagen for doing this?
I want to know what motor it's going to be in and I want to know about these
lies on the price under $30,000.
Apparently there's a Jetta that's 25 and a Tauce under 30 also.
There's no way that Jetta is 25 grand.
Who's selling a car for 25,000 right now that isn't used?
I don't know.
Probably Kia.
Well, that's not true.
We do know who's selling car for $25,000 right now, but we'll get to that
later.
Lord slate.
All right.
Did you guys watch this video?
Look at this.
Think I'm on the post of that.
I watch this.
This is the most bonkers thing I've ever seen.
I don't know what the point of this is other than it's an engineering
feat.
I mean, I feel like I could watch that all day just going back and forth
and back and forth.
I mean, it looks like somebody's like Lego Technic said this is the most
important sentence in the whole thing.
If you didn't read the article, this is the only part that matters.
The reason this weird scaffolding where the wheels can move back and forth
on this Audi is to help get it unstuck.
What?
Pardon my idiocy, but we just made this a eight front wheel drive.
So it's less capable and you're telling me with all this stuff as soon as
that gets stuck in the mud that the front wheels are going to pull it out
by jerking these wheels back and forth.
Are you kidding me?
The front's still going to sit and spin regardless of what these rear
Lego Technic wheels are doing back here.
I mean, I'm not a scientist, but like I don't understand what that's
doing because the other big deal of this car is that apparently it runs on
compressed air.
Where's your compressed air take?
I don't get any of this, which apparently that is stroking
the air tank.
What?
Oh my God.
So they're like pistons now.
So terrible.
I mean, how far do you go five miles with this thing?
Like the first turn you take in this.
I don't even know how this thing.
This must be someone's capstone project at school or something.
It has to be.
It has to be.
Where they found a totally blown car that they got for like 200 bucks
and they said, hold my beer.
I've got our senior project.
Well, I can tell you it's overseas because this Jetta
station wagon has European bumpers on it.
That's how I know the Euro license plate holders probably.
Again, I'm more interested in this 25 year old station wagon in
the background of this picture than I am of this entire piece of junk
that I'm looking at here.
Science fair project.
So, you know, we've talked a lot about Audi wasting their time
on doing things like this TT and doing things like bringing back
the golf, etc.
But I brought this up on discord the other day.
I found out what they've really been wasting their time on and
I want to talk about this again.
The new Audi's have projector turn signals where it shows the
arrows on the ground.
Why nobody uses turn signals?
No way.
That's the first thing I thought too.
I mean, BMW will never have this option and the door that opens
itself.
I mean, this is just ridiculous stuff that nobody needs.
Right.
I mean, this is like Bentley Rolls Royce level kind of automation
stuff.
But here's the thing.
Aren't we always taught at least in racing, we're always taught
to look up look ahead, be situationally aware.
Why would I want to divert my eyes to the ground to be able to
see your turn signal?
Who does this benefit?
Because I mean, if you have your nose and Instagram while
you're driving like everybody else, I see other beltway.
They're not going to see this either.
So I'm wondering I'm opposed the question to Brad.
Do we think this system is actually for autonomous self
driving mode 38 where the cars flash each other and indicate
that they're going to change lanes?
Is that what this is for?
This is the thing that gets you to the next thing.
The next thing is the cars are going to announce.
Oh, God turning left moving left moving left.
Flashers flashers.
Please mind the gap.
Low moving car slow moving car, but they're going to talk to
each other in binary.
Awful.
We're all going to drive down the road and it's just going
to sound like we're all trying to log on to AOL online.
Well, I got a shout out to Chrissy Crutchfield, one of our
GTMers.
She was on the show many times in the early seasons.
She found how Volkswagen is going to solve all their financial
woes.
They're going to sell everything.
Nope, they're going to sell everything at Costco.
You can now buy VWs through Costco.
I mean, you can already buy a lot of cars at Costco and
allegedly it can often be cheaper than going to the dealer.
They have a whole dealer discount dealer partnership network.
Mm hmm.
This isn't like anything new to Costco, but I suppose it's new
that now Volkswagen is in their lineup.
Actually, let's let's see Costco autos.
I bet you can buy a Mercedes at Costco.
And that begs the question.
Do the Germans now feel like they are debasing themselves by
having to sell their cars through a discount bulk store like
Costco?
Okay, it's not like it's nothing, but so limited time special
deal right now on an Atlas, Atlas Crossboard, a T1.
Now till August 31st, 2026, if you're looking $1,000 incentive,
if you're a gold star or business member, 1250, if you're
an executive member.
There's also a limited time special in the Chrysler Pacifica
Chrysler Voyager.
You can buy Volvo's through Costco.
Are we sure about that?
We're going to talk about a Volvo subsidiary here shortly.
We might not be able to buy Volvo's from anywhere soon.
We'll leave that dormant for the time being.
Let's stop talking about Volkswagen because one of the
greats now has a blemish on its report card.
There's been some ugly concepts in the past.
There's been some weird designs.
There's been Pininfarina pushing the envelope of what they
could do with bright red sheet metal.
But now the Pininfarina is gone.
Ferrari has lost their freaking minds.
I would never say Ferrari.
I wouldn't say Apple either.
And I know Johnny I was involved in the design.
What is this?
I don't even know who to say automaker that belongs to.
It's better looking in blue than it is in that God awful
yellow.
Have you seen the people on Instagram that are redesigning
it making it lower a little bit longer changing the dimensions
a little bit basically creating a whole new car.
Yeah, their cars look significantly better.
Yeah, you know what Ferrari actually is putting out and why
is it a million dollars?
$640,000.
Oh, somebody said to me jokingly, but I don't think they
were wrong.
This is Ferrari's checkbox.
There was a rule somewhere that said they have to build some
sort of EV so they built this.
Did they have to make it look like ass?
Yes, because they don't actually want to sell them.
So then they can say our EV program was a failure and we're
going to destroy all these like GM did with the EV one back
in the 90s and then nobody will ever talk about it again
except when they're laughing about them because they're
terrible because who's going to buy this?
How many Teslas can you buy for $650,000?
More than you should.
I like how Teslas have become the Miata's like how many Miata's
can you buy for $640,000?
I mean, I'd rather drive a 30 year old Miata than drive this.
I'm not trying to throw stones or throw shade at the Miata
because I like them, but this is horrendous.
This even starts to make the Fiat Multipla look good.
Wouldn't that kind of backfire because if you're a collector
and you have inside information and you know that Ferrari
only built this because they don't want to sell it and they
want to kill the program as quickly as possible.
As collectors, you're going to want to get one of these to
say that you have one of the only Ferrari EVs ever made
before the program is killed.
There's going to be some plot that buys that.
Yeah, it's going to be some YouTuber or whatever.
It'll be Whistle and Diesel or somebody, you know, because
they want to blight it on fire or something like that.
That for sure.
But $640,000 is a huge pill to swallow even for a footballer,
even for a YouTuber.
Ain't no footballer going to fit in that.
Yeah, but smart collectors, they're not going to spend
nearly three quarters of a million dollars on something
that looks like that.
It's terrible.
They'll end up in a museum somewhere to say, look, look at
this concept car that we built that never went anywhere.
You know, you read these press releases on the Ferrari website,
a new chapter for the Maramelo mark.
I was like, oh my God, what chat?
Gbt wrote this.
I was like, this is terrible.
All this like pomp and circumstance about this car.
It's just heinous.
And at the same time, the market responds and the Ferrari
stocks take a hit.
They just plummet because people are like, what the hell are
you doing?
And the whole month social media was just exploding about
how terrible this car is.
And my favorite one because I was following the Italian social
media as well.
And they had Montezemolo on there.
Who's the former CEO of Ferrari.
And he goes, it was so great translated to English.
It's so ugly.
Even the Chinese won't copy it.
Dang.
I mean, that's savage and he's not wrong.
It's terrible.
This was my favorite part of the month.
Did you guys see this when it came out where Nissan was trolling
Ferrari by showing pictures of like the leaf?
I did see that, but the Mazda doubles down.
What's that?
Oh, yeah.
Mazda apparently did the same thing with their car.
They had another one that they showed and they were pestering
Ferrari about their car as well.
But it does look very Japanese.
I will give it that.
It looks like something that belongs in a video game.
So another quote I read was cyberpunk.
Yeah, multi-plus.
I was like that.
That's not wrong either.
There's not one redeeming thing.
I don't even like the wheels.
Like there's nothing I like about this.
Okay.
If you had built this out of Legos and put it at Legoland,
I would have been okay with it.
Then it's acceptable.
It looks like a Playmobil.
Yes, Fisher Price.
This would have been perfect.
Well, since we're still talking roughly about Stilentus, Chrysler
is going to save itself by rebadging some fiat.
Look at this thing.
The Chrysler Aero and the Aero Cross will be rebadged versions
of Fiat's latest SUV, which is called the Grizzly.
But the Grizzly was supposed to be one of the pandas, I thought.
And this sort of looks like the successor to the little Jeep Cherokee as well.
I mean, they're all very, very similar.
Paulidae.
Chrysler though?
Chrysler Aero and Chrysler Aero Cross, which is probably the all-wheel drive version.
Oh no, I'm sorry.
One is a lift back and one is a hatchback.
There's the difference.
The gold one's the lift back, right?
Yeah.
Look, they even say fastback on there.
It's got that Colorado shape to it.
It looks like the Polestar 2 or whatever.
It's not great, but it's not terrible either.
I mean, it looks better than the Luce.
I mean, I'll give it that.
The colors are fucking heinous.
The wheels are awful.
These could be improved with better colors.
I don't hate them for Fiat.
I think they're just like stupid with a Chrysler badge.
100%.
Why are the gas doors getting so big?
You notice that?
Are these electric or actual gas?
It says right here, expected to utilize Stalantus's familiar turbocharged 1.2
liter three cylinder engine.
Right above that, they'll be able to choose between gasoline, mild hybrid and
full electric powertrains.
So that's why it's got the big flapper.
It's like with the charging port there.
But they look awful because they're so big now.
Like we were at a point where they were trying to make the gas doors as small
as they possibly could.
And now we've gone the other way.
They've supersized them, but they're claiming sub $30,000.
Would you buy this for less than 30 grand, Brad?
I wouldn't buy that for $20.
With a 1.2 liter motor, it's going to go zero to 60 in 25 days.
You say that, but all those Ford Bronco sports that are out there have three
cylinder turbo engines in them.
I've never seen one moving particularly fast.
That's because they blend in with all the other high top SUVs that are out there.
Let's see what else we got here in the news.
So this actually dovetails with a later issue too, technically.
So political world turmoil issues.
I did not know this.
Because Mercedes-Benz is technically has Chinese shareholder.
Oh, come on.
And we do not want Chinese in the US.
Basically, this new bill in the auto market industry would make it that Mercedes-Benz
wouldn't be able to be sold here anymore.
Okay.
How many lobbyists from GM are on this particular bill to try to get more people
to buy Cadillacs instead of Benz's?
I don't know.
I'm just going to throw it out there.
Wild.
I mean, I did not realize that Mercedes-Benz's largest individual shareholder is a
Chinese owned automaker.
So that was news.
But also it would be wild to suddenly be like Mercedes aren't sold into US anymore.
I mean, Volkswagen's won't be sold in the US anymore either because nobody wants them.
So, you know, it doesn't matter if they get Chinese funding or not.
I don't think I've heard that a large the Chinese stakeholder is in Volkswagen.
But okay, because the Volkswagen's are being made in Mexico now.
So whatever happened to if you want somebody to buy your car, you actually just make a better car.
Nope.
Can't do that because all the cars look the same now.
You can still make a better car.
No.
It's not.
Toyota has been making better cars for decades now.
But they're boring.
You see, they're still better cars.
They still outsell anything General Motors ever sold.
That's true.
They are like their number three largest company or they number one again.
I don't know if they're number one.
They're definitely on the podium.
That's for sure.
Always quality over quantity for me.
Yeah.
Reliability, dependability.
That is Toyota's middle name for sure.
This dovetails with a later article.
Which I think makes sense to talk about now, even though it's E.E.
Is the Polestar for the same reason because Polestar is owned by a Chinese group.
They too are now being shut out of the US market.
So what does that mean for Volvo?
The parent designer of Polestar before they split them up because the Polestar name even comes from Volvo.
Remember, they had the Polestar series cars.
They were all blue.
They were the hot Volvos and everything.
And then they spun up this company.
Volvo's owned by Gili Gili Gili.
What was that movie?
Gili.
Jenny from the block was it Jela?
Eddie Ray.
So this is the weird thing and I don't know the reason yet, but apparently we're allowing Volvo to stay.
Lobbyists.
Which doesn't make any sense.
Because they aren't direct competitors to Cadillac.
No, they aren't direct competitors or they are competing against Tesla.
There you go.
So Elon's got his lobbyists trying to get all the competition out of the way.
I mean, I doubt they're selling as many Polstars as a Tesla, but I haven't seen one in forever.
They sell about as many of these as they sell Fisker Oceans.
I haven't read enough into this new legislation or bill that they're trying to pass that would make all this happen.
I don't know why we would exempt Volvo of the same Gili as Polestar.
And if that's the case, if they're successful in pushing Polestar out, it's only a matter of time before the other shoe falls and then Volvo will be no more.
But it could also be that Volvo's dealer network is mature enough now, robust enough that maybe the US can't get rid of them versus maybe there's a couple pop up Polstars here and there.
Instead of too big to fail, too big deport.
Yeah, pretty much.
The problem part of it, too, is there's software in the cars and that's also a reason to create this ban.
Again, I haven't read deep enough into it, but it's like if you've got software still being put in these cars, it's originating out of China and that's part of the reason to have this bill or whatever.
Then I don't understand, still don't understand how Volvo gets away with it.
I don't know.
Maybe there's more Bosch stuff in a Volvo than there is in a Polestar.
Unless they're changing the stuff in the Volvo, it makes it compliant.
Look at it this way.
The tin foil paranoia hat says, you park a G. Lee car in a garage somewhere in the district of Columbia.
I'm sure it's designed to do nefarious spy versus spy type of things.
That's what that car is doing all day long is sitting there pinging and trying to capture packets in the air from the White House wireless system or something.
Like this is the kind of stuff I deal with on the regular.
So it's probably not far from the truth.
That's what it.
So here we go.
The rule.
So the rules included a ban on most Chinese developed and maintained software that took effect in March 26 for the 2027 model year and covered companies with significant Chinese ownership.
Lawmakers have proposed making the rules even tougher.
Given our ownership, Volvo car USA was required to follow a process with the U.S. Department of Commerce to obtain a specific authorization for the continued import and sale of connected cars in the U.S.
The company said with this specific authorization Volvo cars can continue its growth plans in the United States.
Like that doesn't tell me anything.
No, what it says is Volvo is now TAA compliant.
That's what they are.
I guess this is courtesy of CNBC.
Volvo filed the correct paperwork.
Basically, and Polestar didn't.
But they only did it for Volvo because I think they were planning on shutting down Polestar anyway.
So instead of saying we're pulling out because we're not selling enough Polestar's they're using this as kind of a scapegoat.
They will we were not allowed to sell them in the U.S. anymore.
So the end of this article says that Polestar continues to work with the U.S. authorities to meet the requirements of the announced regulations.
Trying to get their authority to operate.
No, I get it.
I get it.
It's all very doDS at the end of the day.
Who knows?
Maybe Polestar will be able to continue once they meet whatever the requirements are.
Nobody's buying their cars.
Nobody's going to buy them then either.
So as we wrap out this segment that took a left turn at Albuquerque somewhere, but we're still in lower Saxony.
I want to talk about the hottest piece of BMW news that was all over the month of June.
This is the only thing there was to talk about.
Right here.
How many ways can you say the same thing over and again?
Well, you also miss that the new M3 is going to be an EV.
No, I didn't miss that.
I just choose to ignore the fact that that car even exists because it's terrible.
No, the M2 is really the M3, right?
The M3, I don't know what that is now.
We talked about it before.
It's big.
It's huge.
It's the size of a five series.
Bob, the M2 sort of eclipsed the M3 in terms of like, I can get it with two doors and I can take to the track tomorrow and go have fun.
And now it's like the first ever all wheel drive M2 has a button that makes it rear wheel drive and you know, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
And I'm like, what?
That sounds really complicated.
I don't want any of that.
None of it.
All right.
Well, let's talk about domestics before we talk about Japanese cars.
A little note here from General Motors.
Yes, which follows on to another note that we had in a previous drive through about, I think it was Volkswagen.
Yep.
Getting into the munitions business as a way to help them sell their cost car.
Getting into the munitions business as a way to help them sell their cost car.
It was recently announced from Lockheed that they have a collaboration to strengthen America's manufacturing defense industrial base and working under a memorandum of understanding Lockheed Martin and GM defense will explore opportunities to accelerate the delivery of critical
capabilities and innovation by combining Lockheed Martin defense production expertise with General Motors advanced industrial capabilities and high rate commercial manufacturing engineering courtesy of Lockheed Martin's web page.
It comes as no surprise that General Motors is involved with the DoD DoW, whichever acronym you want to use these days because they've been supplying hummers to the military for how long.
Well, that's the thing.
Here's what I just learned with this article that I had no appreciation for because why would I care?
GM defense, the subsidiary of the parent company General Motors, has been around since 1914.
Yep.
So this really isn't news.
I don't even know why this is newsworthy.
It's old news.
This is something they've already been doing for over a hundred years then.
Yep.
Now, maybe specifically munitions has been focused on.
But supporting military vehicles and software and things like that.
They must be have been doing with the hummers for the last hundred years.
To that end, there's a difference between building the thing that carries the things that go boom and building the things that go boom.
Right.
Apparently now they're going to add the thing that goes boom.
All right.
Let's play a little factor crap.
Factor crap.
The Subaru headline here is Subaru is building three new manuals and one of them is a hatchback.
I believe that is fact.
Is that before or after they settle the massive class action lawsuit they have against them right now?
Or is this a result of the class action lawsuit so they can try to make up lost ground for making nothing but cars that look like refrigerators with plastic cladding on them?
Dude, that last forester looks like an industrial oven.
Tell me I'm wrong.
No, they're pretty ugly.
And whatever that WRX thing is really heinous looking, whatever their latest one is or sedan, whatever one it is, it's really ugly.
I don't know.
I mean, it's coming from a reputable source more or less.
So it's a tease.
So who knows what is actually going to happen.
I think that market is past.
I think Subaru has changed their brand to align itself with REI and Cliff bars.
No, they're more, I think they're more LL being.
But no Eddie Bauer.
That's Ford.
We can't have an Eddie Bauer edition.
So Eddie Bauer is gone.
Oh, that's right.
That's sad.
Imagine an Eddie Bauer edition Bronco today.
Those were cool.
Brett's like, no.
Despite the fact that the images of these cars under these covers are fake, they're AI generated and one of them supposed to look like a BRZ.
We don't have to assume they said it.
Okay, fine.
And then WRX hatchback and WRX sedan, those are the obvious choices.
I mean, they said it would be a WRX STI, a Breezy and an Impressa hatchback.
Again, Brad, would you buy any of those cars?
If it was a BRZ STI, maybe.
Which will never exist.
Well, there you go.
I think you have your answer.
I don't want a Subaru, but if you told me I had to buy a Subaru, I would probably go for the Impressa hatchback.
But I would want it to be the STI to Brett's point.
So if it wasn't, then probably the Breezy.
Okay, okay.
Let's make it equal.
Well, STI versions.
STI hatchback, Golf R, and I'll give you the five cylinder turbo or a Mazda 3 speed.
Why'd you leave off the GR Corolla?
All right, we'll add the GR.
That's fair.
That's fair.
Of the four, these are the four hot hatches we have to choose from in the United States, assuming that this Impressa comes back.
Which one would you buy?
What's the price point?
It doesn't matter because the price point, as we know, is all over the map.
You might as well just throw darts at a sandbox.
It makes no difference.
Well, at that point, I would buy whatever fits my price point.
So if I can't afford a $75,000 Golf R with the RS3 motor.
Yeah, yeah, there we go.
There it is.
Then I'm not buying a $75,000 Golf R with the RS3 motor.
I mean, my bank account has already dictated to me what I'm going to be able to buy.
But a GR Corolla at the $40,000 mark is much more palatable and much more friendlier to my finances.
So I would probably end up with the GR Corolla.
No, no.
You see, now you're just falling into the Toyota thing.
Dependability, reliability.
I'm going to go with that.
They're not that dependable and they're not that reliable.
Those GR Corollas as we've come to find out.
So let's stop thinking with our brains and start thinking with our hearts.
Brad, what makes you go boom, boom, boom?
The Golf R with the RS3 motor.
Tanya's like Mazda 3 speed with a power pack is faster than the Golf R.
So that's what you'd pick, right?
Well, we haven't seen how fast a Golf R with an RS3 motor is.
How fast is an RS3?
Because it's never going to happen.
How fast is an RS3?
An RS3 is pretty wickedly fast.
I read some articles, though, if you hop up a Mazda 3 turbo, they're faster than the Volkswagen's are.
I don't doubt that, but you had me at five cylinder.
Yes.
See.
Okay.
So if we took the five cylinder off the table and said, Golf Fahrenheit Edition, the top of the line, regular GTI.
Then you can buy two Mazdas.
I'd get a GR Corolla.
Okay.
That's fair.
So no love for the Subaru from anybody, basically, like nah, STI, I'm over it.
Here's the reality.
You'd blow it up.
That's it.
That's all you have to say.
You'd blow it up.
Boom.
How many people do we know that have Subarus that are tracking them that are still on their original motors?
I'll wait.
That's a gnaw, dog.
No, there's none.
Zero.
Exactly.
Exactly.
How many Mark IV Volkswagen's are still on their original motors?
That's true.
There's a lot of them.
I think pretty much all of them.
There's a lot of them.
Yeah.
To that end, you don't even have to be tracking your Subaru.
The Subarus are sort of like Volvos in the sense that if you leave them the way they came from the factory, they'll probably run forever.
But the minute you go to go touch them, the tolerances are such that they're grenades.
That's it.
Boom.
Drop in the comments what motor you're on.
You're Subaru.
Jesus.
I don't think anybody's going to answer one.
All right.
So switching gears.
This is your favorite.
I put this especially for you because wasn't there a whole what should I buy episode where this was the answer?
This was the answer.
And I just saw one of these today as a matter of fact.
I have a feeling when nuclear holocaust comes, there will be two things on this planet.
Cockroaches and Honda elements.
They will just outlive everything.
They don't die.
The Japanese fiat panda.
Dude, you know, and when you sent this, I was like, this is the right time for Honda to reintroduce the element.
It really makes sense.
They had a good thing going and then they got rid of it and people are nostalgic for them and the people that still have them, their elements are getting old enough that they're probably in a position to consider.
I would get another one.
So now they can do like a tech refresh and they can get a new Honda element.
God, I kind of want one now.
I mean, they're not the prettiest thing on the planet.
Better than an Aztec.
Better than that Ferrari.
Better than a Luche.
Everything's better than the Luche.
Good.
Look, that is now the lowest of the low.
I got to put the Luche on the uncool wall.
I mean, it nominated itself.
It's like, this thing is fugly.
End of story.
People have spoken so.
How can a car manufacturer make arguably the best looking car in the world next to the worst looking car?
You know, if you think about it from an art class perspective, what do they call that?
The dichotomy, the imbalance between the perfect and the imperfect.
It's a showcase in the ability for them to perfect ugly and perfect beauty all in the same design.
They were able to do it.
Do you have it up?
I do.
I want you.
I want you to take picture of the Luche, put it in the co-pilot and say redesign this car as if Pen and Farina designed it.
Yeah.
And I'd be really curious to see what it comes back with.
But let's see.
Okay.
Here's co-pilot.
Please redesign the Ferrari Luche into a car that people actually want.
I feel like that's a dangerous.
It would be funny if it just showed like look at this.
These are so much better.
Look at this.
These are so cool.
Oh, that is sick.
What is this?
That's like the redesign of a 575.
That looks amazing.
But it's got to have four doors.
No, it doesn't have to have any of that stuff.
I love how it gives me a picture of a Porsche.
Yeah, it's not actually redesigning anything.
No, I'd have to feed it some pictures, but whatever that is, that's hot.
All right.
Enough of that.
Let's talk about EVs and concept cars.
It's here, people.
You can put your order in.
No.
You can put your order in for the Slate truck.
In time for Prime Day?
Which is funny because this article is showing them at 27 to 30,000.
However, the big hoopla that's been being said is that they're starting at 24,595
or something like that.
And the news keeps talking about how it's starting there.
But the thing we haven't been told yet is what the destination fee is going to be.
20000 dollars.
Yeah, exactly.
Here it is.
24,950.
I had my numbers at the end mixed up, but a here to four unknown destination
price with an estimated 60 mile an hour time of eight seconds.
So is Amazon is Amazon going to buy all of these cars that they're making so
that they can use them as delivery vehicles?
Oh, yeah.
They're going to get high on their own supply.
Man, the EV range sucks, though.
200 miles.
I mean, I guess it's good for an around town runabout.
If you're doing like little deliveries and here and there and just go.
Yeah.
If I if I owned a delivery, like if I was a florist and I delivered
flowers or some shit, I'd have a couple of these.
Do you see it's got roll up windows?
Yes, it's very basic and it's like all I think plastic.
Probably I don't know which one propylene ethylene something like it's all plastic
basically.
So is Tanya putting in her order for one?
I was going to say like this is right up Tanya's alley.
This is her kind of thing.
If Lex Luthor wasn't in the front seat here in this picture, I would have told
you that these pictures are actually a one 18th scale model car because
it looks super chintzy.
It looks really plastic-y.
But once I saw, you know, Mr.
Clean up here, this is only quote up my alley because it is basic AF.
And it's cheap.
It would be perfect to throw bags in the back of and like drive to the dump.
And bags of what, Tanya?
Bags of yard waste, but you could also buy bags of mulch from the store.
That's what that's what I was getting to her.
Notice the build quality here.
I just want to point this out.
Hey, it's these friends with Elon probably so you get what you pay for.
They say that.
Are they using parts that they get from resellers in China that they use on
their platform?
This is all Timo Alibaba.
I mean, there's nothing.
This thing is like bay.
Well, if it's all plastic, does it melt in the sun?
Does it like start to warp some sort of composite material?
I mean, no, I mean, that's not fair to say because, you know, there's lots of
plastic on cars, on all cars.
I haven't seen a rivet on a car in like 70 years.
What is this?
That's fine.
You can't take that off.
You can drill that out.
Well, they're all customizable because you can convert that.
Remember, you can get the cab on the back that turns into an SUV.
This is hot garbage.
Look at this interior stuff.
It's not great.
This is so bad.
The gapping is.
Might be intentional.
Now, it might be the glove box.
I don't know.
Come on.
Look at this.
That's pretty bad.
They could have at least touched that up.
AI.
This is so bad.
It's so great.
I love this gray.
I don't know why I like this gray so much.
You know what?
This is still better looking than a cyber dumpster.
It's better looking than the luchae.
At least it's proportioned.
That is so that one's cool.
Oh, the Range Rover looking one.
Yeah.
Yeah, I kind of like that too.
It needs wheels, though.
These wheels are garbage.
They're steel wheels, baby.
Cut down on cost.
Why can't I have these Jeep wheels on there?
Sure, you can.
This is this is all a cart, buddy.
You can buy mix and match all the parts and pieces.
This is all the pickup truck that they're just adding body
panels on.
This is like a budget Rivian.
Look at this thing.
That's there it is.
There's the winner number 77 racing slate.
Look at that.
That is awesome.
That's the Baja Edition right there.
Wow.
Is it is it too late?
That's a choice to scrap the Ford and get this for lemons.
This would be hilarious for lemons.
The problem is we would run for about 20 minutes and then
we would spend the rest of the seven hours and 10 minutes
charging charging the batteries.
Yeah.
Well, since we're talking about EVs and concepts, Tanya,
you brought another one to the table.
What is this?
Can you imagine Toyota is filing a patent that simulates
an engine stall in an electric vehicle?
What?
Why?
This is another article where I'm like questioning sanity.
If the driver operates the vehicle in a quote unfavorable
way, such as selecting the wrong gear at the incorrect engine
speed, the car stops the motor and applies the brakes simulating
a stall.
This also recreates the harsh jerky motion drivers experience
in a conventional vehicle.
I'm sorry.
You don't stall a car once you're already moving.
Right.
You can't stall by going from second to third or third to
second or fourth to fifth.
It does not work that way.
Yeah, it's only when you take off.
It's only on takeoff.
So to say that selecting the wrong gear at the incorrect engine
speed, you're going to suddenly have the brakes slammed on you.
It's going to be like that race at Suzuka with Colopinto
where it drops anchor in front of everybody and suddenly
everybody on the beltway is going every which direction
because your Toyota decided to shut itself off.
Because what you're really trying to simulate there is a
money shift and that isn't going to slam the brakes on in your
car.
That's just going to go pop and then you're going to keep
rolling and catch fire.
So this is just wild like really?
Why do you need to simulate that?
We could just drive a GR Corolla and do it for real.
I mean, what's the hell is the point of this?
Maybe this is the next transmission for the GR Corolla.
Oh my God.
Don't solve the motor problems they have.
Invent this garbage.
Also for stalling, I mean, you can you can stall out in any gear.
It's not just when you're starting.
It's if the RPMs go low enough.
I have never.
No, outside of first gear takeoff.
Have to know but theoretically theoretically.
Yes, the reason you stall is because the RPMs go low enough.
Yes, this is true.
Only time that would happen.
You're coming to a stop.
If you have a carbureted motor and you don't have the
butterflies set right for idle or on a fuel injected car and the idle
speed motor isn't working because it's always going to catch itself.
No, you could do what he's saying.
And the only way to do what he's saying is you are coming to a stop
and you do not take it out of gear or downshift through the gears.
I guarantee you get in your way.
Yeah, yes.
You get up to fifth gear and you just let it coast down.
You don't shift.
You don't do anything.
Your RPMs are going to go low enough that you're going to stall them
on the stall the motor.
That's impractical driving.
Nobody drives.
Well, of course it is.
I'm just saying to say and only do it at start is incorrect.
Theoretically, technically.
Yes.
All right.
Yes.
Well, I don't want Mark Hewitt to say.
No, my crutch feel the same instead.
Well, technically.
Well, Volkswagen's don't stall.
Volkswagen's are the greatest cars ever.
And Hoover's are the best vacuums too.
I mean, what?
It's like.
You can stall your Hoover.
You could actually too much.
Stop vlogging.
Yeah.
Too much sucking too much.
Well, no lost and found.
We already nominated the luchae for the cool wall.
We don't have any Tesla news.
I don't even look it up.
We're going to jump to lower expectations.
What we call seriously what could go wrong.
And this one is a seriously what could go wrong.
California proposal aims to regulate aftermarket tires aren't
all tires aftermarket because car manufacturers aren't making
tires.
I think what they're trying to say here is you will only be
able to buy the tires that the manufacturer contracted with
the tire manufacturer to put on your car when you bought them
from the dealership.
So for instance, Porsche for years has come with Michelin's
and Mercedes has come with Continental's from the factory.
If this rule passes, whatever tire your car is supposed to
have, you only have one channel in which to buy it.
It's not forcing you to buy the same tire, but it's forcing
you to buy an equivalent tire.
Yeah, but they're going to limit what's considered equivalent.
The way I skim this article, you're buying all seasons.
You're not buying a summer ultra high performance, low
tread wear that you're changing them more often.
You're not buying that track tire disguised as a street tire.
Right.
That's the crux of it because if you look at an all season,
an all season, honestly, what's going to be the difference
between a Michelin and this and that and the other one that
all turds in every condition.
They're all going to last long.
And I think that's the crux of this is don't go get stickies
and ride around them on the street because they're not going
to last long.
According to the bullet points of this probably AI generated
article, California's proposed replacement tire efficiency
program would set standards requiring all aftermarket tires
to be at least as efficient as the tires that were sold on
the car when they were new.
And you got all seasons.
The second bullet point says while the proposed regulations
could improve fuel economy figures, they could also impact
the lifespan of the replacement tires.
Okay.
The only thing that affects the fuel efficiency when you switch
tires is the overall diameter of the tire.
If you go to a taller tire, it makes your gearing longer.
If you go to a shorter tire, it makes your year shorter.
That's going to impact your fuel economy.
If the overall diameter of the tire is the same, the rolling
resistance really doesn't matter.
The tire is the tire.
The motor and the transmission are going to operate at the
same speed that they were operating at with the factory
tires.
I mean, next they're going to tell you that you can only use
factory crap brake pads too, because it's illegal to make
your stopping more efficient because that is less efficient
for fuel economy.
If you have better brakes, that's going to be the next thing.
This is all to make sure that we put the collector car and
enthusiasts and motorsport communities under the thumb of
the government.
Tire shops in Nevada and Oregon and Washington state and all
surrounding states of California are about to get a bump in
business.
How do we do an economy of scale here?
Because if I'm driving around in an old car, which they already
want to try to ban, what's the efficiency of the tires back
then?
I might as well get sticky tires because the tires back then
were garbage.
They don't make tires that bad today.
So where do you draw the line?
Where is the statute of limitations here?
Where's the cutoff to say all cars after 2020 abide by this
rule?
Because it doesn't make sense to impose it on a 1965 Ford Mustang
convertible.
When the tires back then you could get bias plies or you
could get potentially radials.
They don't make those kind of tires anymore.
If you got an old Packard, what tire are you going to put on
there?
This is ridiculous.
I don't know what to say.
This is right up there with the CEO Ford basically saying we
make the cars overly complicated on purpose so that people
can't fix them.
Like that's their way around the right to work thing.
Is there like intentionally making the cars harder to work
on?
So you have to take it to the dealership.
Let's go back to simple stuff.
Stop cutting corners, build cars that are reliable that can
be fixed because at the end of the day when a car breaks,
it breaks not when you're 10 feet from the dealership and
you can just push it in there and you know, whatever.
It always breaks in the worst of places at the most
inopportune time in the worst conditions.
And it's like, why can't I do like an old Land Rover and fix
it with a broken spoon and a screwdriver?
I got to be a space shuttle scientist now, but it's like
every time you turn around every consumable piece of the
car is suddenly going to be government regulated.
It's insane.
You're taking all the fun away.
Cars are fun.
Am I wrong?
No, but says no, but says no.
You're not wrong.
They're not supposed to be fun though.
Just like music and dancing is not supposed to be fun.
America was built on driving freedom.
I'm telling you just getting away from this because it's
just raising my blood pressure.
Don't say try not to get on my soapbox.
The good thing we live on the East Coast.
You know, as well as I do that California is the head
of the snake.
If it gets approved in California, it's five years and
then we're going to see it over here.
It's just a matter of time.
Anyway, I have a recommendation for this month's book club.
Shout out to guest of the show friend and
Arget Singer Symposium presenter many times over Preston
Lerner has a new book, the deadliest decade.
It is now officially available.
You can actually hear part of the book in an excerpt from
a symposium presentation he did in the past.
Preston was on the show back in the winter along with Matt
Stone talking about their careers and their past and
working together and Motor Trend and things like that.
He alluded to his book coming out on that episode.
It's finally out.
You can buy it now on Octane Press 3995 and that's all
about the deadliest decade of Formula one.
So very cool.
I have to order my copy still and it's going to be on my
list of books to read for my summer reading.
I don't want to put my official break fix recommended
read on it, but knowing Preston, this is a recommended
read.
I don't even have to read it yet and having heard the
excerpts already.
I know it's going to be good.
So if you're a Formula one fan, definitely check out Preston's
new book and just as a final reminder for the summer, if
you happen to be in the Midwest and the surrounding Illinois,
Indiana, Michigan or Ohio areas and you want to make a run
up to one of the coolest concours in the Midwest.
Come join us July 10th through the 12th in South Bend, Indiana
for the Concours of Culp's your home where we will also be
presenting Automotive History Live.
It's an automotive history conference.
William, John Summers and I will be presenting on the Bianco
Speciale.
You'll be able to meet Don from garage style and a bunch of
other personalities from the NPN will all be there in
South Bend in person.
So if you can make it great tickets are still on sale.
You can go to count cores at Culp's your home dot com and
if you can't make it all the way out and you're interested in
the topics which are posted on the concours website under
Automotive History Live.
You can watch the live stream on our twitch twitch dot TV
Grand Touring Motorsports.
So this is the last time we'll talk about this because we're
going to go live here in about a week or two.
So you'll be able to catch up on all that and there will be
a introductory episode to our new series Automotive History
Live named after the symposia at the Studebaker Museum.
So watch out for that.
Andy Beckman comes on tells us all about the history of the
museum and South Bend and why they started the conference
and all that kind of stuff and that's going to lead the way
for some really great presentations throughout the
year.
So we're kicking off a whole new series as part of the
motoring podcast network.
So look forward to that.
Don't forget if you're looking for that extra special
Automobili at a complete your garage office den or man cave
be sure to check out garage magazine.com for a list of
upcoming auctions and events along with a curated list of
items going up for sale all over the country because after
all what doesn't belong in your garage.
You know what belongs in our garage for our is luches.
Well that but Tanya always finds the coolest stuff.
Take my money.
It's almost the right color.
I know need like two of them so that I can do the
rallied out version if you look at the pictures because it
comes with like the lights and whatnot to put on the front
the stickies and then the regular version without that.
I'm going to buy two so you might as well just buy two as
well.
It's coming soon.
No date yet but Mattel Brick Shop is launching the 84 Audi
Sport Quattro sets.
I'm just going to say why can't Lego do cool stuff like this.
It's a lot nicer than that wagon.
That is and you know what as we've said in the past when we
talk about them on the Christmas episode they're really
taking a bite out of Lego Speed Champion series and
unfortunately Lego I feel like they're just they're mailing
it in with those speed champions.
Yeah they're all in on the F1 right now and that's just the
same design with different colors.
Yeah and then the other cars look kind of weird like my
daughter got the hot pink Honda S2000 from Fast and the
Furious and she loves it.
She asked for it for you know like a year and then we finally
got it for her you know one of those birthday Christmas gift
type of deals and it's just like she put it together and it's
cool but it doesn't even go together that nicely.
I asked her at one point I was like is this you or did they
purposely make it look like it got into an accident.
Literally look like it was in a wreck.
So she's like no dad just the front end they made these pieces
move and it yeah it kind of looks like it's smashed and I'm
like that looks weird.
These are really nice they're very detailed you actually
presented us with more than one quote unquote extra value me
I mean look at this Supra compared the Lego one is super
chunky and blocky and just let me see if I can find it Lego
Fast and Furious.
Let's compare these two so you guys can see them.
Look at this thing and then look at that.
Yeah.
Come on Lego stop mailing it in.
I don't know if the problem is brick shop Mattel has no reason
to sit here and try to make small pieces of stuff like they
make one big hood piece right so they could form it exactly
as it needs to be as opposed to be like let me try to reuse
15 pieces to get the shape.
Yeah but the problem with Lego is if you've built any of the
modern sets today they make all these very special one off
pieces that you can't reuse for anything but you can't do
this I don't get it.
I don't know and then finally I'll come on even Lego could do
this.
Where am I baby 83 Chetan.
That's actually kind of cool.
It's missing something.
What rust fire.
I was going to say leaking fuel and fire.
It's still one of my favorite videos when we went off-roading
why did I have to be his copilot God that's pretty cool.
I like that too.
Good.
Yeah.
You're always the master of these extra value meals.
You know I am at a whole new low this whole month has been
blah like we've talked about you got to lift my spirits Tonya
list is up where we belong.
We got to go down south and talk about elevators.
Yeah.
Well this first one actually technically is south of the
Mason Dixon mine and this one hits real close to home start
with a B.
So apparently a family gifted their college son an $80,000
ZL1 Camaro blah edition.
It was stolen.
It was retrieved ended up at whatever dealer only to be
stolen a second time.
You lost me at I gave my kid an $80,000 ZL1.
I don't know who these people are.
Can I be adopted by these people?
I want an $80,000 ZL1.
Well he apparently was getting his third degree at the
University of Maryland.
Wow.
Okay well he deserves it.
I mean I don't know if that means he deserves an $80,000
Supercharged V8 ZL1 Camaro or not.
But he's in automotive engineering.
So yes he does.
Maybe he does but I don't think they found it for a third
time yet even though the guy the dealer said I watched it
being stolen.
I thought it was just a tech taking the car into the garage
for inspection.
Oh come on.
I think after the first time like Lojak should have been
installed on this car like for real.
So I don't think they got it directly back when it was found
and so when they went to go get it it was gone again.
And Brad remind me this is a leftover because they don't
even make Camaros anymore right?
They're gone.
Right.
It's still a pretty car though.
Oh boy.
So we're still in Maryland apparently.
Wacky Maryland people.
So there's an Instagram video someone caught in good old
gondolk Maryland and if you don't know where that is it's
right outside Balmer.
This is amazing.
This dude is in a motorized wheelchair zoom in down the
streets and this thing is past.
This thing is fuck wild.
It could be the video but he looks like he's hauling.
He's rolling.
He's booking down the road.
Why is he not in the bike lane?
It's not a bike.
It's got four wheels.
That has bicycle wheels at least three pops out.
Also what are these wheelchair wheels that can go that fast?
Dude there's a Porsche right there.
You think he was like brah.
Let's go.
But if you look at it it's a scooter.
Yeah.
He's actually on a scooter and though he attached the wheels
for stability.
I don't know what that is.
That's awesome is what that is.
It's illegal is what it is.
Yeah.
The next article would be Baltimore Dunn-Dawkeman arrested
on his motorized wheelchair evading arrest.
They've never thought I would end up in a chase in a swamp.
He would have been naked.
You started naked.
Probably beer in his hand with a white claw in his hand
because that's another.
It was not.
It would have been a riding lawnmower in Florida though.
You know as well as I do.
They're not going to mess around.
They just get on their stable or their Torah or whatever
they're going to go.
It would have been a riding alligator.
What are you talking about?
Apparently big brothers got some new tech for us.
Already existing license plate cameras are not only going to
be able to track and read your license plate but apparently
they'll have the added benefit of now being able to track any
sort of electronic devices on you such as phones wearables
infotainment systems or even your pets depending on what
sort of electronic tracking devices you have on them.
Oh, how nice.
I like this.
This is wonderful.
Please.
I need one of those Faraday cages to put my phone in while
in the car.
This is the police state that we are turning into now.
California is going to buy the version that can read the type
of tires you have and then you only use tickets for having
the wrong kinds of tires.
No, but look at the table of track devices, vehicle components,
tire pressure sensors.
Yep.
Which means they're also tracking your easy pass when you're
not on the easy pass.
Yeah.
When you're on a toll road.
Yep.
And asset tags.
So does that considered like air tags?
Yep.
Yes, this is wild.
Wild.
This is some Skynet stuff right here.
This is craziness.
Like how is it going to filter all that?
Because I bet any given person's car literally has all of
these in them at once because you probably have a wireless
headphones in your backpack or your purse.
You've got a phone.
You've got at least one wearable watch or fitness tracker.
You got tire pressure sensors.
You got other sensors.
You got an infotainment system.
You probably have a computer, maybe a tablet, laptop, whatever
because you're coming from work, blah, blah, blah.
Key cards, your badge for work.
Like, oh my God, like.
Which means they're going to know where you
work.
So this is going to be a huge security risk.
They already know that because your phone, especially if you
have an Android reports where you are all the time anyway.
Have you ever noticed like Google Maps?
It'll assume where you're going now.
It's like, oh, it seems like you're on the road to work.
By the way, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Do you want to stop and get a cup of coffee and like, what the
turn this shit off?
So they already know the problem is the
municipalities won't be able to afford it long term because the
data center charges that it's going to cost to run this stuff
is going to be astronomical at the end of the day.
So I don't see it going for too long.
Oh, well, well, then that's where you're wrong because how
do you make money off people's data?
You sell it to the Chinese.
Yeah, I know.
There you go.
So they're just going to sell it to the highest bidder and it's
going to be like Minority Report.
They're going to sell it to Bezos so then you can get Amazon
Yes.
Requests or ideas in your Facebook feed.
So they're going to sell it to whatever that dude's name is.
Yeah, we're going to start getting targeted advertisements.
Did you know that the batteries in your tire pressure monitoring
system are going low?
You should replace them now.
Here's the set I can add to your Amazon a car right away.
So Tesla was doing that remember where they were trying to
determine that your tires needed to be changed and they would
automatically order you new tires for your car and like send
them out.
They were already messing with that like five years ago or
so.
I do it with dog food.
I don't need to do it with car parts.
Yeah, well, you know the comfort work.
You know which car isn't going to have this problem.
Mark for Volkswagen.
No, 65 Buick.
You won't have any of these problems drive something like
that.
You can maintain it with a screwdriver and a wooden spoon
and you'll be fine.
You can even rob the sack of suds.
Buy old cars.
That's all I'm saying.
If you don't like the police state that's coming by old cars
because you know what's going to happen next.
All this data is going to end up in the laptop on the cops.
You know, passenger seat boom.
So they're not going to need to chase anymore.
They just meet the person at their house.
I don't even know why we need license plates to be honest
with you.
Who cares if you have all this other day the license plate
on the car is irrelevant because the car eventually just
transmitted its own VIN number.
So what's the license plate for?
Who gives tax?
Tax.
Yeah, it's BS pay for those stupid metal plates that are
ugly as sin.
All right.
What do we got next?
Now we're going to Florida.
Oh boy.
And we haven't had a good chase in a while.
I don't think we've ever had one involving an RV.
Wait, what?
This guy Bob been weaved trying to evade the police while
driving an RV.
No, come on.
That's the allegation.
Oh, there's no video though.
No video.
Unfortunately, it's very disappointing, but he racked
up about eight charges.
Oh my God.
Oh, look at this.
Driving while licensed revoked fleeing to elude lights
and sirens reckless driving DUI leaving a scene of his
accident with injuries resisting law enforcement officer
without violence possession of drug paraphernalia possession
of controlled substance.
Glorious.
So another person trying to evade police.
So this one didn't make much sense.
The video is hilarious a little bit because a wanted man
leads deputy on chase around the car.
No, come on.
Bring around the rosy ring around the rosy.
What do they call that?
Is the Chinese fire drill?
The best part was he wasn't even driving the car.
The lady driving the car.
They got pulled over in his Camry because of an expired
tag.
And then I guess the cop asked what the dude's name was in
the passenger seat.
You said none.
Yeah.
Well, when he looked up the name, that's what his computer
said because this guy didn't exist.
So then he found out the real name and his dude was an eight
time convicted felon with multiple arrest warrants.
Oh, wow.
He tried to run around the car.
I just want to start playing like the Benny Hill music
be like.
Is it just running around the car?
I mean, this is ridiculous.
And then he just takes off into the swamp.
It's just on the body cam footage on this is amazing.
God, look at this.
You fast runner though.
He didn't trip.
He would have kept going.
Oh, no, he tackled them.
That's what happened.
So was he faster than the interceptor?
No, because he got pulled over, but like he's pretty quick
here.
Look at this.
Sir, what's your name?
Dragon dragon.
What dragon D's nuts, bitch.
Come get him.
I think he trip.
I think he tripped before he got tackled.
Oh, yeah, he did.
He definitely did.
He definitely did.
You see him trip and then the cop just like jumps on him.
Oh, wow.
That's wild.
All right.
Before you dive into this next one, I want you to guess the
vehicle vehicles.
They only said what one of them was the vehicles involved.
85 year old.
85 year old Florida man accused of hitting triple digits in
street race.
Oh, hell yeah.
So there's two people involved in this.
We only know what one of the cars is for sure on any given
flea market Tuesday, I would say it's like a Buick Regal and
an old Cadillac de Vil or something like that, right?
With a North Star in it.
Chevy Lumina and Ford Taurus.
I'm going to go out on a limb without looking at the article
and say that it's Florida.
This guy's he must have bought a pony car.
It's one of those deals where it's like not only did he buy
a challenger.
He bought a challenger demon 170 or something like something
just outrageously stupid.
I'll give you a hint because we don't know what his car is,
but the person he was racing was 57 years old and we know what
their car was in an ultima had a pair of new balance.
Yes, he did.
Oh, he's in a Corvette, man.
There's video and there's photos.
I'm getting arrested because they caught whatever he's driving.
They caught him.
They didn't catch the guy in the Corvette or they caught him
later.
I think this is a Z.
He's in a Z.
He's in a Z convertible.
That is a 350 Z door handle right there.
Look at that.
That's what that is.
He's in a 350 Z Cabriolet and he's got the slope nose with
the lights.
They just called it a gray sports car.
I called it.
It's a Nissan.
It's always a Nissan.
Whenever people are in trouble, getting arrested, it's a Nissan.
And he said I was out having a ride in my favorite car.
He's driving the Nissan fast.
I'm trying to see if they can show from behind here.
So who's he catching up to?
Wow.
One 10 and one 25.
A five don't mean you can't still go.
Does that say extra on the side?
Definitely a Z.
You can see the wheel as you watch the video just for split
second.
That's a Z wheel.
That's a Z door handle.
It's a convertible.
Boom.
Nissan for the win.
Boom.
And this Florida man wasn't even in Florida.
He was in Brad's backyard.
They identified the Corvette.
The question is who won?
Well, not the guy.
Well, they both got a right caught.
So neither.
I'm going to guess the Corvette technically won because he got arrested later.
That's true.
Granted, the speed limit was a little slow, but say they were doing that on a 65
mile an hour road.
Let's just be nice about the speed limit.
I still reckon it's driving.
Okay.
Actually, it was in Virginia.
Well, I mean, they would melt your license and throw you in jail.
But I see this guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a ball cap
on and he's driving a quote gray sports car and he's doing a buck 10.
I would have shaken his hand.
I said, God bless you, sir.
Enjoy the rest of your life.
What little is left of it?
I mean, come on, really?
When was the last time you saw an 85 year old go 110 mile an hour?
When's the last time you saw an 85 year old go 85 into a flea market or leaving
the flea market?
Well, you knew there weren't any Mustangs involved because there were no casualties.
Yeah, 100%.
See, it's nice, clean street racing.
That's nice clean fun.
Yes.
Why we got to take this away from this 85 year old man?
That's good stuff right there.
Well, let's quickly go behind the pit wall and talk about those sports news.
I only have one bit of news because we already talked about Lamar and all that
stuff and I'm sure other racing was happening.
Oh, yeah, formula one.
We'll talk about that on the other episode.
You skipped Indy car.
Wait, there's Indy car stuff.
They were a road America this weekend.
Okay.
That's all.
Thank you.
Indy car was a road America.
I enjoyed your Ted talk.
It was great.
The next race is in mid Ohio on July 5th.
I still don't get Indy cars in mid Ohio.
It just seems too small.
But I just want to point out we just recorded our final evening with a legend.
That's right.
Our very last one after 30 of them or our very last one that was with Nick
bull, an LMP two driver.
He was really cool.
Great interview.
Talked a lot about what it's like to be a long time LMP two driver, three
attempts at Lamar and no, he did not meet Jackie Chan, Brad, even though
he drove for Jackie Chan DC racing.
So that being said, it's not the end of evening with a legend.
It's just a metamorphosis for evening with the legend.
So start in July 1st.
We are changing the format and David Coert, who was originally on the
calendar for July is going to join us in July.
The new format is going to be called voices of endurance.
And the idea is that we kind of rung out the wash rag on Lamar.
There's not much more water.
We can squeeze out of that thing.
I mean, how many more times can you tell the same story?
I hate to say.
So what we decided to do was under the sponsorship of Enduroverse, we're going
to change the format to voices of endurance and we're going to expand to
not just drivers, but we're going to try to talk to engineers and technicians
and folks behind the scenes at organizations like IMSA, bring back folks from
SRO, you know, do some stuff with the ACO as well.
But we want to expand the breadth of endurance racing and talk about famous
races like the 24 hours of Daytona or maybe, you know, six hours of Sebring
or I don't know, Spa, the Nurburgring and Fuji, just endurance racing around
the world.
We want to expand that whole idea.
So starting in July, we're going to be switching formats and it is still a
series where you can be part of the audience and you'll be able to register
on the Motoring Podcast Network site, just go to voices of endurance sign up
and you'll be able to sit in on the audience and get your questions answered
by a living legend or somebody that's in the industry, somebody that's part of
sports car and endurance racing.
So we're excited to be updating the format after three years of evening with a
legend and being able to continue that journey and getting more and more folks
on the show.
So really, really looking forward to that and hoping you can join us in the
future.
That being said, our MotorSports news is brought to you in part by Enduroverse
powered by HyperDev, America's premier endurance racing community.
So check it out online and become a member at Enduroverse.com.
All right, what's left?
A couple announcements.
We don't have any.
Well, Brad, that pretty much wraps up this drive through our episode.
So we don't have a track side report because we're sad and broken and we're
on the track because we're on the track side.
But we're here all night.
Try to feel.
Well, if you're not quite ready to hit the track or your car is not quite
ready to hit the track, don't forget that you can find tons of upcoming local
shows and events at the ultimate reference for car enthusiasts.
CollectorCarGuide.net.
If you're hearing us for the first time, be sure to jump back into our podcast
catalog and check out other programs we offer like the Ferrari Marketplace,
the Motoring Historian, Voices of Endurance, the Racers Roundtable, Formula
Fanatics, Brake Fix and of course the drive through.
And if for whatever reason you enjoy our various podcasts, there's a great way
for you to support our creators on the NPN.
There's tons of extras and bonuses to explore on our updated Patreon page.
You can learn more about our bonus and behind the scenes content, get early
access to upcoming episodes or support our 24 hours of lemons team when you
consider becoming a Brake Fix VIP by visiting patreon.com.
slash GT Motorsports.
As always, we'd like to thank our co-host and executive producer Tanya and to
all the fans, friends and family who support Grand Tony Motorsports as well
as the Motoring Podcast Network.
Without you, none of this would be possible.
Otro.
Our neighbor really these days.
Like what is this rumbling for the last like 45 seconds and it's never mind.
You said lemons team.
There has to be a better word for that.
Lemons.
Wait, lemons don't have pits unfortunately.
Lemon seeds.
Our 24 hours of lemon seeds.
I'm hemorrhaging lemon juice.
That's what I'm doing right now.
I don't want to hear about you lemon juicy.
All over the place.
I need a cleanse.
A juice cleanse.
You know, they use lemons and cayenne pepper.
It's perfect.
We put that in the gas tank.
Maybe you'll probably run better.
That's not the problem.
Lemon juice injected.
The drive through is our monthly news episode and is sponsored in part by
organizations like collector car guide.net, project motoring, garage style
magazine, the exotic car marketplace and many others.
If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive through look no
further than www.motoringpodcast.net.
Click about and then advertising.
Thank you again to everyone that supports the motoring podcast network.
Grand Touring Motorsports, our podcast break fix and all the other services
we provide.
About this episode
Celebrate six years of the podcast with a deep dive into the highs and lows of the latest 24 Hours of Le Mans. The hosts debate whether this year’s race felt unusually lackluster, dissecting Toyota's surprising comeback victory from the back of the grid and Ferrari's disappointing performance. They also explore how shifting the race away from its traditional Father's Day weekend impacted fan engagement and attendance at viewing parties, while questioning the future of the GTP class and the historical weight of a potential Ford versus Ferrari rematch.
Audi Quattro
Audi RS 3
Audi TT
BMW M2
BMW M3
BMW New Class
Buick Regal
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Corvette
Chrysler Pacifica
Chrysler Voyager
Dodge Challenger
Ferrari 499P
Ferrari Luce
Fiat Multipla
Fisker Ocean
Ford Bronco Sport
Ford Mustang
Ford Taurus
Honda Element
Honda S2000
Jeep Cherokee
Land Rover Range Rover
Mazda MX-5 / Miata
Mazda RX-3
Nissan 350Z
Nissan Leaf
Nissan Skyline
Polestar 2
Porsche 911
Porsche Boxster
Porsche Cayenne
Porsche Panamera
Slate Truck
Subaru WRX
Telo MT1
Toyota Camry
Toyota GR Corolla
Toyota Supra
Volkswagen Beetle
Volkswagen e-Golf
Volkswagen Golf
Volkswagen Jetta
Volkswagen Passat
Original notes
Drive Thru News Episode #69 marks Break/Fix's six-year anniversary and recaps June’s automotive news, led by a 24 Hours of Le Mans discussion: Toyota’s comeback win, a generally "meh" race, more LMP2 coverage, Corvette’s GT3 win, and a surprising Lexus run amid BOP and marketing criticisms, plus a Simeone Museum viewing-party report with lower attendance due to the race not falling on Father’s Day. The hosts then explain why their Lemons effort never reached the starting line after their Ford Focus entered limp mode, leading to extensive troubleshooting, ECU replacement/programming issues, and plans to replace the engine wiring harness and relocate the ECU. Other topics include rumored Audi TT revival on a Boxster platform, possible US return of the base Golf via Mexico, unusual Audi tech, VW sales via Costco, harsh reactions to Ferrari’s new Luce EV design, Chrysler-Fiat rebadges, Chinese-ownership restrictions affecting Polestar/Volvo, defense-industry tie-ins, Subaru manual rumors, the Slate truck, Toyota’s EV "stall" patent, California tire regulation, book and event plugs, and quirky crime stories.
===== (Oo---x---oO) =====00:00:00 Dad Jams and Car Culture 00:02:28 Le Mans 2026 00:07:23 Simeone Viewing Party 00:09:25 Ferrari Frustrations 00:12:52 GT3 Surprise Lexus Run & BOP Politics Explained 00:17:29 Lemons Plans #EpicFail 00:29:59 Volkswagen Audi Rumor Mill - Is the TT Coming Back? 00:34:46 Golf Returns with Tariff Drama 00:36:37 Bonkers Audi Contraption and Projector Turn Signal Debate 00:40:37 Volkswagen Goes Costco 00:42:12 Ferrari Luce EV Design Roast 00:46:45 Chrysler Rebadged Fiats in 2027 00:48:59 Chinese Ownership Car Bans 00:55:04 BMW ///M2 News Spiral 00:56:17 GM Teams With Lockheed 00:58:17 Subaru Manual Rumors 01:03:41 Honda Element Nostalgia 01:06:31 Slate Truck EV Breakdown 01:10:53 Toyota's "EV Stall" Patent 01:14:14 Aftermarket Tire Crackdown 01:19:16 Book Club Pick: Preston Lerner 01:20:22 Concours at Copshaholm Event Plug 01:22:40 Mattel Brick Shop vs Lego 01:25:59 The Florida "Chase Files" 01:39:41 Motorsports Updates 01:42:35 Wrap Up and Sponsors
====================
The Motoring Podcast Network : Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory #gtmbreakfix - motoringpodcast.net
- More Information: Visit Our Website
- Become a VIP at: Patreon
- Online Magazine: Gran Touring
- Follow us on Social: Instagram
BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show
Motoring Podcast Network
0:00
105:49