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89:40
Company
Ossipic Automotive
The Kansas City repair shop where the hosts' project cars are being fixed. It doubles as an informal car museum worth visiting.
Company
Zip Corvette Parts
A mail-order company that sells replacement parts specifically for Corvettes. The host ordered the heater part from them that kicks off the episode's first story.
Term
firewall
The firewall is the wall between the engine area and the inside of the car. Parts like heater lines often have to pass through it, so getting the angle right matters.
Term
heater core
The heater core is the part that makes your car’s cabin heat work. It uses hot coolant from the engine, and if it breaks you may not get heat (and sometimes you’ll notice coolant where it shouldn’t be).
Car
Jaguar XJ8
The Jaguar XJ8 is a fancy Jaguar sedan. It’s known for having a strong V8 engine and a classic, comfortable “grand touring” feel.
Brand
Austin-Healey
Austin-Healey is a classic British sports car brand from the 1950s and 60s. Their small open-top two-seaters are prized by collectors because they're fun to drive and look great.
Car
Porsche 930
This is a Porsche 911 Turbo from the older era. It has a turbocharged engine and a very recognizable, classic look.
Car
1965 Chevrolet Corvette coupe
A very collectible mid-1960s Corvette. The hosts' mechanic supposedly has one parked in his garage that hasn't moved in decades.
Car
Ford GT40
This is a copy of the famous Ford GT40 race car. It’s made to look like the original, and many replicas are built with modern parts.
Company
Car Curious
The website and app the guest built. While you listen to a car podcast, it shows photos and explanations of the cars being discussed, and lets you search for every show that mentioned a specific car.
Car
BMW 330i ZHP (E46)
ZHP is a BMW package that adds performance-focused upgrades to a 330i. It’s meant to feel more like a sportier “driver’s” version, but it’s still not the same as a full M3.
Car
BMW M3
The BMW M3 is a sporty, higher-performance BMW version of the 3 Series. It’s made to feel quicker and handle more aggressively than the regular model. In the podcast, it’s mentioned as a reference point for performance in the E46-era BMW world.
Company
Cars & Bids
A website where enthusiast cars are auctioned online, started by YouTuber Doug DeMuro. The guest bought his BMW there.
Term
chassis codes
Letter-and-number nicknames car fans use for specific generations of a model, like 'E46' for a certain era of BMW. They're confusing at first but you hear them constantly on car podcasts.
Concept
cash for clunkers
“Cash for clunkers” was a U.S. program that gave people money to trade in an older, less efficient car for a newer one. The goal was cleaner air and better fuel economy.
Car
Ford Explorer
The Ford Explorer is a popular SUV model from Ford. “First generation” means the earliest version of that SUV, from decades ago, and it’s rarer today because many were scrapped.
Car
Geo Tracker
A little open-top SUV from the early 1990s sold under GM's budget Geo brand. Like the Samurai, survivors are now worth real money.
Car
Suzuki Samurai
The Suzuki Samurai is a small SUV from Suzuki that’s known for being tough and good off-road. The host is using it as an example of an older, inexpensive car you don’t see as often anymore.
Car
1991 Geo Storm
Geo Storm was a small car sold by Geo (a GM brand) in the early 1990s. The speaker is saying they bought one used in 1994 and it had low miles for what they paid.
Car
Honda CRX
The Honda CRX is a small Honda hatchback that a lot of car fans liked because it was light and fun to drive. The host is saying that many of them got abused or heavily modified, so finding one that’s still clean and original is hard.
Car
Chevrolet Chevette
A very basic small Chevrolet from the late 1970s, often used as shorthand for a cheap, no-frills car. The hosts say the guest's first car looked like one.
Car
Honda Civic
The Honda Civic is a small everyday car. It’s usually chosen because it’s practical and easy to live with. In the podcast, it’s brought up because the speaker is talking about their experience with a particular Civic.
Car
1984 Chevy Celebrity Wagon
This is a Chevrolet station wagon from 1984. Station wagons are basically family cars with extra cargo space, and the host is saying this one was especially roomy and easy to load.
Concept
shaggin' wagon
A joke term from the 1970s for a van or station wagon with carpet in the back, implying it was used for more than hauling cargo.
Car
1974 Chevrolet Vega station wagon
The station wagon version of a small 1970s Chevrolet. Mentioned only as a quick family joke.
Car
1985 Nissan Sentra
The guest's second car, a basic small Nissan sedan from the mid-1980s. Slightly better than his first car, but still slow.
Topic
how Car Curious works
The segment where the guest explains step by step how his app listens to podcasts, figures out which cars are mentioned, finds photos of them, and shows them to you at the right moment.
Topic
AI transcription challenges
The guest explains why computers struggle to correctly hear and identify car names in recorded speech, and what he built to work around it.
Car
Nissan 300ZX
The Nissan 300 ZX is a sports car made by Nissan. It’s a two-door coupe designed to be fun to drive. The podcast mentions it while talking about a Nissan sports car that people know.
Brand
To All the Cars I've Loved Before
Another car podcast, where guests share stories about the cars from their lives. The guest is friends with its host.
Brand
Everyday Driver
A popular podcast where two friends discuss which cars are best to actually own and drive daily.
Term
digital dash
A "digital dash" is a dashboard where the speedometer and gauges are shown on electronic displays instead of physical needles. In 1980s cars like the Nissan 300ZX, it looked like a video game and felt very high-tech for the time.
Concept
cars and coffee
Casual weekend morning gatherings where people bring their cars to a parking lot, drink coffee, and chat. It's the easiest way to meet other car people.
Company
Vintage Chevrolet Club of America
A club for people who own and love old Chevrolets. The guest mentions meeting lifelong friends who bonded through it.
Topic
podcast monetization debate
A long discussion about how the guest's platform — and podcasts in general — can make money without annoying listeners with irrelevant ads.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette ZR1
The fastest, most expensive version of the Chevrolet Corvette. The guest mentions it as the kind of dream car people research on his platform.
Company
Bring a Trailer
The most popular website for auctioning collector cars online. Many people browse it daily just for fun, like a car magazine.
Topic
most-mentioned cars on Car Curious
The segment where the guest reveals which cars get talked about most across all the car podcasts his platform tracks.
Car
Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang is one of the most famous American cars ever made, in production since 1964. The hosts are looking at Car Curious's own statistics, and the Mustang turns out to be the single most talked-about car across all the shows on the platform.
Car
Porsche 911
Porsche's most famous sports car, with its engine in the back, made in similar form for over 60 years. It's the third most-discussed car on the guest's platform.
Car
Chrysler Cordoba
The Cordoba was a big, cushy two-door Chrysler from the 1970s, famous mostly for its TV commercials where actor Ricardo Montalbán praised its "fine Corinthian leather" seats. The hosts are teasing each other about it as a cheap-and-cheerful classic.
Car
Dodge Magnum
The Dodge Magnum is a name Dodge has used on two very different cars: a big two-door from the late 1970s and a muscular station wagon from the mid-2000s. Here it comes up while the hosts joke about classic Chrysler-family cars, so they probably mean the older one.
Term
Corinthian leather
A fancy-sounding name Chrysler made up in the 1970s to describe the seats in one of its cars. It didn't mean anything special, but the TV ads made it unforgettable.
Car
Ford F150
The Ford F-150 is a very popular full-size pickup truck. It’s known for being able to tow and haul, and it comes in lots of different versions.
Car
Dodge Charger
The Dodge Charger is a famous American car known for strong engines and a sporty, muscle-car reputation. People often talk about it when they’re discussing performance versions.
Brand
Mopar
Mopar is a nickname people use for Chrysler’s performance and parts world—especially for Dodge and other related brands. It’s basically shorthand for “the official/serious performance stuff.”
Company
Classic.com
A website that collects sale prices of classic cars so you can see what they're really worth.
Company
Sports Car Market
A magazine that reports on classic car auctions and what cars sell for. The host writes for them.
Company
Hagerty
A company best known for insuring classic cars that also publishes widely-used price guides for collector vehicles.
Company
Gateway Classic Cars
A big company with showrooms around the country that sells classic cars on behalf of their owners.
Company
The MB Market
A website that auctions only Mercedes-Benz cars, for fans of that specific brand.
Brand
Cars Yeah
A car podcast that ran for thousands of episodes, interviewing people from every corner of the car world.
Topic
audio vs. video podcasting
The hosts ask whether they should put their show on YouTube, and the guest explains the tradeoffs between audio-only and video podcasts.
Car
1935 Auburn Boattail Speedster
A gorgeous, rare American sports car from the 1930s with a rear end shaped like a boat's hull. Used as an example of an obscure car the app could show you a photo of.
Term
blow by
“Blow-by” is combustion gases leaking past the piston rings into the crankcase. It’s a sign of engine wear or ring sealing issues, and it can lead to oil contamination and reduced engine efficiency.
Term
Bondo
Bondo is a type of car body filler used to patch dents and smooth out damaged metal. They’re saying they still have some left from a previous project.
Car
1978 Mazda GLC
The GLC was a small, inexpensive Mazda hatchback from around 1977 to 1985. The name literally stood for "Great Little Car." It was basic transportation — the kind of car a lot of people had in high school.
Part
cassette adapter
A fake cassette tape with a cable (or Bluetooth) that lets you play your phone or CD player through an old car's tape deck.
Term
stock head unit
The stock head unit is the original factory stereo in the car. They’re saying Bluetooth was added to the factory stereo instead of swapping it out.
Company
Becker Auto Sound
Becker Auto Sound is a company that upgrades car stereos. In this case, they helped add Bluetooth to the original Mercedes stereo so you can play music from your phone.
Car
Mercedes-Benz S600 (W140)
The host's V12 Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan from the 1990s (internally called the W140). He describes how good music sounds inside it and how he added Bluetooth without replacing the original stereo.
Brand
Plymouth
An old American car brand from the Chrysler family that was shut down in 2001. The hosts search for it on the guest's website live on air.
Car
Porsche Cayenne
The Porsche Cayenne is an SUV made by Porsche — sporty to drive but with family-car space. The hosts mention it while trying out the Car Curious app's search, which finds their own earlier episodes that talked about the Cayenne.
Brand
Cragar
A famous brand of shiny chrome wheels people put on muscle cars and hot rods in the 1970s. Saying a car 'has Cragars' instantly dates its style.
Term
land yacht
A joking name for the enormous, floaty American cars of the 1960s and 70s — so big and smooth they feel like driving a boat.
Car
1958 Ford Thunderbird
“T-Bird” is short for the Ford Thunderbird, an older Ford model people like for its classic style. The host is basically saying it could be a good project, but it might need some work to be great.
Car
1973 Chevrolet Vega
This is a 1973 Chevrolet Vega, a compact car from the early 1970s. People talk about it today because it’s a recognizable old model with a strong “love it or hate it” reputation, and it can be really interesting when it’s restored or customized.
Term
T-tops
Two glass or metal roof panels you can lift out of a car, leaving a bar down the middle. They were hugely popular on sporty cars in the 1970s and 80s.
LIVE
You're gonna love this.
Driven Radio Show.
Quiet, numbsclaws, I'm broadcasting.
Hey, all you gearheads and carpeans,
welcome to Driven Radio Show,
your weekly automotive happy hour.
I am Brett Hatfield here with my co-host
and engineer extraordinaire, Mr. Mark Groves.
That's me.
And we are coming to you from Driven Radio Studios
where it's a stinkin' hot.
I didn't even set foot outside today.
Dude, it's not the heat's much, it's the humidity.
Oh, I'm sure it is.
I stayed my butt in my office.
Today, you even wasn't, quote-unquote, that hot.
It was what, the upper 80s?
But, you know, when it's 200% humidity,
you're sweating before you open the door.
It is the setting for one.
Mark, no likey.
Although it is nice to have a vehicle
that has air conditioning now.
Yes, it is.
That makes the ride to work a lot better.
Speaking of vehicles, I'm gonna pick the scab.
No, I have nothing new.
No.
Nothing new, no movement, no anything.
And plus, I'm so damned lazy and I'm so annoyed.
I still haven't found a lawyer.
Well, and I get that, you're a PO'd about it,
you don't even wanna look at it.
Oh, there's a party.
I cannot tell you how glad,
and this really sounds bad,
how glad Darryl is taking his time
about doing anything on it.
Because he's waiting for parts to come in
and stuff to be shipped, et cetera, et cetera.
So, it's sitting in his garage.
And I'm so glad it's not in mine.
Because every time I looked at it, I'd be pissed off.
Well, it's sitting down there in good company.
Yeah, the vet's still there?
Oh, Darryl, Darryl Ossipic of Ossipic Automotive, thank you.
913-883-136-13, you can send your complaints
to 5920 Merriam Lane.
He's got the daycare for broken toys.
Yeah, it is the island of misfit cars.
Oh my God, yeah.
Nobody wants to be a misfit car.
Anyway, I put one dollar in front of the other.
That's right.
It's a path all the way to our individual homes.
I got him a heater core to put in that car.
Rhonda and I were driving in a couple of weeks ago,
and we're not even two miles from the house,
and a drop of antifreeze drops on her foot.
And she said, look at that.
And I said, look at what?
And she held her foot up and I said, was that really hot?
And she said, well, it was warm.
That's not supposed to happen.
Well, that's not supposed to be there.
And I can smell it.
Let's go home and swap cars.
The sweet, sweet smell of oh, shit.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I ordered a heater core from Zip Parts.
Zip Corvette Parts, I love them.
I've done tens of thousands of dollars of business with them.
Because remember, at one time,
I thought I was a Corvette dealer.
Yeah, remember that?
Yeah, it should be a case study
and how to throw your money out in the street.
You know, if you're a dealer,
you're not supposed to be taking it.
That's what I've heard on the street.
Just saying, just put that out there.
Yeah, and I took it.
Yes, you did.
Yes, yes, I certainly did.
In a way that even my dad, who's on lots of businesses
and had some of them not go as so well, looked at me.
He said, really, that much?
Kid, really?
No, well, this is coming out of your inheritance anyway,
because I was going to the bank of dad.
Yeah, and then the bank of dad said,
no, it's coming out of your house.
Ruttroll, anyway, anyway, long story, short too late.
I got a heater core from Zip Parts and got it to Darrell.
And he said that the angle that it goes
through the firewall is a little odd
and he was trying to put it in.
And it wasn't soldered very well.
And the fitting just snapped right off that sucker.
Oh, God.
So he ordered a replacement.
And that one came and he said,
it looked like somebody threw a brick at it.
And so we're on third heater core, fourth,
if you include the one that was in the car.
Jamie, Christmas.
And that's why my car isn't here.
You don't need a heater core.
No, heater core, heater core.
I had a GeoStorm, a 91 GeoStorm that I drove the wheels off of.
It became a human target.
Wasn't that thing the color of an eggplant or something?
No, it was black.
Oh, okay.
But it...
Blackish.
It spit the heater core blue out
just before winter in Dallas.
And I thought I could make it through.
Let me tell you, when you're driving down the highway
in Dallas, because there's no such thing as a speed limit,
it's a speed suggestion.
No, no, if you're doing 85 in Dallas,
school buses will pass you.
You're not wrong.
I'm driving along and there's sleep.
You know, you don't get snow.
You got sleep.
And I'm having to reach out of my window and scrape stuff,
because I don't know.
And I'm doing it with a credit card, because I can't see.
And you snapped the credit card.
Oh, no.
No, I took real good care of that credit card, not the car.
It was the only one I had.
Not wrong.
Once I got up here, we replaced the heater core,
but it was nasty and it had leaked enough
when I finally figured out, oh, that's why we were wrong.
The inside of that car smelled like an old gym locker.
Yeah, and it was never going to smell any different.
Oh, no, no, no.
Not never.
No, no.
Not never.
Yeah, when I finally traded that thing in,
you know, the salesman kind of laughed.
He's like, sure.
Yeah, I'd have been ridden hard and put up with.
Oh, it still runs well.
Lucky you, Tiger.
I will give it the, what is it, the benefit of the doubt,
because that car tried to keep going.
It just ended up getting hit too often by other people.
Oh, God.
And when I couldn't open the door anymore
and every time I got in, it smelled like the bottom
of your gym bag when you were in junior high.
No, no.
I was like, it's time.
It's definitely time.
Well, the island of misfit cars.
And I can tell you where it is.
5920 Merriam Lane in Merriam, Kansas.
66203.
They're a lot of pick and move.
I'll see you in a moment.
I'll see you in a minute.
Funny, you know, our two cars are down there.
Darrell has bought a couple of cars that I've brought him.
One of them is an old Jaguar.
If my mom's been sitting on a lift down there
for probably 10 years, I asked him the other day
what it would take to get going.
He says, well, I don't know.
Probably have to scrape out the gas tank.
You think?
Yeah.
He does have kind of a car museum down there.
Just for the record is the 2000, 2001 Jaguar XJ8.
I've seen it.
See, that's that really pretty kind of silver blue.
Yeah, yeah, that's the one.
I want his Austin Healy.
That that was one.
Oh, well, yeah, I don't blame you.
Got a stew to bake her.
His brother, I think, is the president of the Kansas City
Austin Healing Club.
Oh, or maybe it's the Kansas City British Car Club.
But Darrell's brother, Mike, is involved with that stuff.
And what is this?
Is that a cigar boat?
The big, huge boat.
He's got that skater.
It's a pickle fork.
And it's got what is it, dual 3D threes in it?
No, no, no, they're bigger than that.
I think they're dual, like speed masters.
They're Chrysler's from what I remember him telling me.
But are they?
Because I'm pretty sure they're big, big ass Chrysler's.
Yeah, well, I think they're good for six or 700 horsepower.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yes, that thing's very fast when he does finally get it out on the walk.
You know what, folks, if you're in the Kansas City area,
stop by the Osipic Museum.
Just just go raid Osipic automotive.
There is such a that thing's a half a weird car show down there, too.
And he's got motorcycles and his giant boat and all kinds of really cool stuff.
Give him a call because, you know, it's just Darrell and another guy
trying to run that thing.
So he has time to answer the phone.
I what's hard to imagine.
And I swear to God, I'll shut up about this.
But Darrell is just the kind of quiet guy, super like bone dry sense of humor.
Yeah.
And, you know, he'll are you watching the camera?
Poor Ryan fell asleep about 10 minutes ago.
He'll flip out little things and you're like, oh, wait, five minutes later,
that's strong. And yeah, he just kind of.
But I'm trying to imagine him behind the wheel of that boat.
Oh, he's got a vicious, sharp sense of humor.
You just don't. He's so unassuming, you don't think that it's coming.
I just seen him, you know, doing 90 across, you know, Lake of the Ozarks going,
well, that was kind of fast.
Yeah. Well, except he's looking for a buck 40.
Yeah, shooting up a fan tale, three stories high.
How about that?
That boat just doesn't go.
You look at him and you think there's no way.
There's no way.
And then I've never verified it with my own eyeballs,
but apparently he's got a Porsche 930 and a 65 vet coupe in his garage at home
that haven't moves since Christ was a mess cook.
And if you look around that garage, there's a couple of Corvettes out behind
the shop. There's a couple of Corvettes in the shop.
Daryl has lots of interesting stuff.
He's a collector.
He. Well, I think collectors real polite.
Yes, I do.
In order.
I didn't say Daryl. Love you.
Oh, OK. And he also has a really vicious GT 40 replica
that pushes over 500 horse.
And you don't realize how small those are until you get next one.
When Ronda had her 92 Corvette, I parked it next to that GT 40
and it made the Corvette look fat and stupid.
Nice. Careful with the Dr. Pepper.
Don't blow that one out your nose.
Just take over, babies.
Do you love you?
Well, do you think we ought to get to our guest?
Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea.
We should have should have had him call in 15 minutes later.
Oh, shit.
Ryan. Yeah, Ryan is our special guest this week
is Ryan Williams, our curious Ryan is a software engineer
who came to the car world recently as a distraction from raising a family
and building software after becoming hooked on cars and car podcasts.
Ryan, as is his want, went to his computer and dove into researching cars.
Soon he built Car Curious, an automotive podcast player and discovery
platform that makes his shows visual and searchable.
Ryan, welcome to Driven Radio.
Hey, Brett, great to be here.
Well, and I want to say, I mean, just to the car museum,
aren't all of us car people like aspiring to have some whatever car museum?
Is that like a thing I'm learning about?
How do you know?
Shana, I don't know what you're talking about.
How'd you find this guy?
I wish I could relate.
Looks like a warehouse that needs to be cleaned out.
Hey, Ryan, when did you first become interested in cars?
And what no pun intended, but what drove this?
Yeah, I mean, it's been an interesting time for sure over the last year.
You know, I've always been like a big car fan, like most most guys,
most people I think, and always kind of had fun, you know,
whether it was car shopping or like trying to figure out what the next car
we're going to be over the years.
But with never would never truly call myself a bunch of a car enthusiast.
I got much most mostly like family hollers,
sedans that kind of, you know, slowly got into some, you know,
a little more powerful, luxurious,
like whether it's Audi and Acura still like on the family spectrum.
But, you know, it just it just came up last year.
I was like, oh, I need to get off the computer, right?
Like, I need an offline hobby.
You know, I've been doing this for 25 years,
whether it's building software or working on products on my own.
And as Dr. Phil says, how's that working for you?
And, you know, it's been a great new kind of interest hobby
obsession for me, you know, just well, I meant I meant more getting away
from the computer sounds like the other direction, didn't it?
Yeah, well, you know, there were a few months there where where I was staying off.
But yeah, it kind of drew me back in.
And, you know, it's an interesting time, of course, in software world,
for other reasons we'll get into.
But I was like, yeah, I mean, I need I need something, right?
And cars are a very hands on thing.
They're a very interesting thing that it's something like it's pretty approachable.
And, you know, I did a little bit with my dad when I was a teenager,
not much like changing, basically changing oil, like getting under there a lot.
But like of little, but like this can't be that hard, right?
And like speaking of the discussion earlier about like not touching the car mark,
like, you know, I've had my like, quote unquote, enthusiast car for 67 months.
And, you know, I lifted around.
What's your enthusiast car?
What'd you get?
So I got a 2004 BMW E46.
It's a 330 I the ZHP.
So it's a little bit like between a 330 and an M3.
OK. In the in the E46 BMW world.
OK. And I got it got in on cars and dids.
I wasn't planning speaking of the option seats.
I was not planning on buying that car.
But did you make Dr. Miro call? Nobody beat me.
No, no, they don't answer my call.
Oh, man. Do you have his?
Now, I went through the list and I was looking at everything,
but I didn't memorize everything.
Do you have Doug Show as part of Car Curious?
This car, yeah, his podcast.
And it's an interesting, yeah, it's a definitely an interesting face in the car
podcast, because there's a lot of people that will like do the YouTube podcast,
right? And that's their primary medium.
But they'll also syndicate to, you know, audio because, you know, why not?
You know, you already got the show.
And then the audio only is, you know, a very another strong segment as well.
But, yeah, it's interesting to talk.
Well, we can get into some of that as well.
Like, well, and some of these things break out and everything.
I was going to say, aside from our social media posts,
you're responsible for the first video version or any kind of video element
to driven radio show.
So that's really cool.
We're with with the demo.
Yeah, we do appreciate that.
That's very cool.
So. Oh, right, right. Yeah.
Was the only impetus for building car curious, just trying to find a hobby?
Or I mean, how did you even envision
taking all the the mentions in different car podcasts
and adding a visual element to them?
And really, this is where the video part becomes interesting, too,
because I do I don't personally like listening to podcasts on YouTube.
I'm not going to sit at a computer or hold my screen up my phone up.
So I had been a big podcast fan forever,
whether it's like doing walks or exercising, doing chores.
And so as I became more interested in cars, I was like,
oh, I want to check out, you know, what what in the world of car podcasts there are.
So found a few to listen to.
But yeah, we just like just like you guys are talking about at the beginning
of the show with all the mentions of like the different car models
and the different code, the Chassis codes, the model codes, the car parts,
you know, the the the heater core, like things like that.
But I'm just like, what are these guys talking about?
You're not allowed to talk to me about here.
Sorry, we we will we will leave that unspoken.
It's OK in geostorms.
And like, I know what a geostorm looks like.
Maybe somebody younger doesn't know what a geostorm looks like.
And so hand with reason.
The thousands of cars that are out there and all the different terms and concepts.
It's like, it's, you know, as much as I've I'm aware of cars, you know,
from the first few years of my life, like I realize there's so much I don't know.
Right. And so it's like, I just want a quick way to understand what they're talking about.
So I don't have to go like pause and Google or remember to Google that later
or do something and do something else to figure out, you know, what they're talking about.
You know, that is a good question.
When is the last time you saw a geostorm on the road?
I haven't I haven't seen in years.
Really long.
Well, you know, if if you're old enough to remember cash for clunkers.
Yeah. And I think that was one that during
W's administration was longer.
I think that was the first one, not the first. Oh, that might be the first Obama administration.
Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, just so many cheap cars, so many old old cars sent to the crusher
are just gone and you never ever see them anymore.
When's the last time you saw like a first generation Ford Explorer?
Yeah, it that when I saw that happening when I saw them taking, you know,
perfectly decent cars and then pouring goop into the oil.
It just so the engine torqued broke my heart.
I'm like, why? Why are you doing?
Why? Because now we poor people can't afford the fricking cars.
Or those are those who would buy God awful cars.
Yeah.
Isn't isn't that what really like launched the used car market into the status?
Yeah, it made all the used cars so much more expensive because now there's
there's no cheap secondhand cars.
They're just aren't.
Now, some of them are coming around and usually they've just been beat to death.
But man, stuff like Geo Storms, Geo trackers, first gen Ford Explorers.
You know, I've seen trackers fricking trackers
getting some premium cash for them now.
Or that Suzuki.
What was that little four or five?
Yeah, the Jimmy, the Jimmy.
Well, it's the Samurai.
Yeah, the Suzuki Samurai.
The last time you saw one of those.
Yeah, I saw one of those like a couple of weeks ago.
Yes. No kidding.
Wow. In the wild. Yes. Yes.
I see them on Facebook every once in a while.
But when you're talking eight or nine grand for that piece of crap.
No.
I'm not sure they were eight or nine grand new.
They might not have been.
I don't think they were.
Geo Storm I bought in 94.
It was a 91 Geo Storm and it was 7200 dollars at the time.
And it had 37000 miles on it.
That was a low mile car. Yeah. Yeah.
And you got it for under 10 G's.
Dude, and you know what I passed up was an 84 Porsche year.
But the 84 Porsche, it had like 68000 miles on it.
And it was, you know, poop brown with a less poopy brown interior.
And I'm like, I could do this or that or this or that.
So I got the car.
But that I put a 198000 or I put a 160
some thousand miles on that storm.
And it was a little five speed. Oh, my Lord.
Yeah. And I took home an eight foot ladder from Home Depot in a Geo Storm.
I think I I'm not saying I can beat you, but I think I can get close.
A an eight foot by ten foot
area rug, they still call me Oriental rugs.
Or is that a no, no, no.
No, just area, area rug.
I think you're safe. OK, area rug roll.
Eight foot area rug. Is that what you'll say?
You don't want to stop it.
You have a new area rug.
Anyway, rolled up with shrink wrap around it
and stuck in the passenger foot well and over the back of the 60 Corvette.
Oh, my God.
OK, Ryan, what's the smallest piece of crap car you've ever driven?
Oh, I can go better.
Well, you're smaller.
I bought a Honda CRX brand new.
Yeah, but that was a piece of crap.
I saw one of those pretty much went for like $80,000 or something.
Yeah. Yeah.
If you find one nice, it's worth its weight in gold.
Those things, so many of them just got driven into the ground.
And the rest of them went to the import tuner crowd and they all, you know,
just built the snot out of them.
You can't find just a clean, original, untouched CRX.
They aren't out there anymore.
Then, yeah, those were hot when I was growing up.
No, I was friends.
I love the ones I grew jealous.
Well, what was your moped, Ryan?
I think that you actually enjoyed driving, but you didn't want anybody to see.
Oh, I know.
What was it, Ryan?
I don't know.
I don't I don't know if I enjoy driving.
So my first one was the 78 mobs of GLC.
Oh, living yellow.
That's horrible to drive, horrible to be seen in.
Oh, that's that's not that bad.
I'm looking it up real fast.
It could have been much worse.
Oh, that's sexy.
Yeah. Wow.
It's like a two door chivette.
You know how long Ryan's going to spend on this show when we get done?
Wow. OK. OK.
OK, so where's that?
Yeah, we're going to be.
We're going to be going through all of ours.
Are you sticking with the storm?
Is that the one I did by a 2001 Honda Civic?
That was just a tin can piece of crap that I got a good mileage on.
It did. You know, yeah, I'm going to go.
I'm going to stick with the storm. OK.
I thought of my piece of crap and also I think qualifies on the guilty pleasure scale of
this ain't that bad to drive, but man, I don't want anybody to see me in it.
1984 Chevy Celebrity Wagon.
Oh, wow.
And that was right after Marissa was born.
So I kind of needed a station wagon.
Yeah. And you were looking for some good birth control. You found it.
Yeah. Well, that's better than birth control glasses in the military, man.
Ain't nobody touching you.
You did you pull that one up?
Yeah, that's a looker.
Yeah, it was a medium brown metallic with a rust colored interior.
On top of that, I was I was working a kind of a loose property manager job at the time.
And if you folded down the back seat,
that sucker was flat from the tailgate to the front seats.
You could almost haul plywood flat in it.
No, it had a ton of room.
If you were 17, you drop a piece of carpet back there and make it your shagging wagon.
Yeah, but I wasn't 17. I was 20.
My brother did it with the 74 Vegas station wagon.
So you were much more mature.
Yes. What was your other one, Ryan?
You said you had another one.
Oh, and then it was the 85 Nissan Centra.
That one wasn't hauling anything either,
but it had like 10 more horsepower than the GLC and well, that's still manual.
So again, not awful.
And they made some cool looking Centras.
I'm just going to assume yours wasn't.
Oh, was it the two door, the sexy two door or the family four?
Did you say 1985?
85 Yeah, I'm thinking it was the two door.
Oh, it was. It was like a light blue.
It wasn't it wasn't embarrassing.
Like I could actually look at you driving it, but it wasn't going very fast.
Tell us about car curious.
Tell us what it is, what it does, how do you do it?
Do you all about it?
Do you have to physically sit and listen to all the podcasts?
Not exactly. You know,
it's how could you a combination of things?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, there's almost 270 shows on the platform right now.
Oh, my God, you're tracking almost 300 shows.
Yeah, that are active, right?
There's more than 300, but, you know, some people, I guess,
give up on the idea that they're going to be a car podcaster.
So now there's like 270, right?
So so like any other podcast player,
users can come on, find the show, subscribe to it, follow it.
What we would I do in the background?
You know, just making sure that as new shows are published, I can get that
downloaded into the system.
Sometimes the shows are come with transcripts already.
But if they don't, then I have a transcription process
that will download the audio and run it through a transcriber.
Sometimes on my own laptop, but I've got like cloud resources
that all run the transcription as well.
So once we have that text, then the fun part begins with like, OK,
now we're going to start to identify all the things that they're talking about.
And my original hypothesis was AI is great.
Yeah, it's going to be able to do this, you know, it's just going to be magical.
Right. Take care of everything.
May I interject?
Doesn't work like that. No.
Well, first of all, like transcription is not always perfect,
so things don't come through cleanly.
And then it just most AI models are not up to date
or have as much detail on all the different car models that they need.
So I soon came up with I need a car database
started capturing all all the various car models
throughout the generations of the years that I could.
And then so as as the text comes in now,
I have what I call a fuzzy matcher that will take all all of the text
and run it through the database to figure out which cars are coming up from there.
Once once I have a car identified, then I can go out to like various photo resources.
Wikipedia has like a Wikipedia, Wikipedia Commons,
which is the number one resource right now that I can use
with attribution and give credit, of course.
But as as we go forward, I'd love to be able to like, you know,
work with you all on the podcaster side to get photos
that you know represent those cars better, as well as users and contributing
like the stories we're telling about our cars.
I'd love to be able to engage users of the site
to be able to contribute the cars that represent that one themselves.
So so once we have that the data identified,
then it becomes a matter of syncing to the player.
So the other challenge with it is, you know,
various shows have different types of ad layers.
And there are multiple like layers on top of the audio, right?
That that interject ads at various points in the show.
And it's not always the same time, right?
So that's one of the more recent challenges is like making sure that that when
so the player is showing the photo of the car as it's being discussed,
that it's not like two minutes apart, right?
So we don't want to have that drift and like have that context be aligned.
But just to kind of go back a step once.
Yeah, once all of the text is transcribed and we have the cars kind of identified,
then it becomes a player experience.
So right now, the player experiences on the web.
There's two different ways to do it, one with the kind of the traditional
audio just playing and then it will scroll down the page
on the cars and then a more immersive player as well.
That will kind of just keep one stage present as the discussion goes on.
And then I am working on the mobile app as well, because I'm sure like I just said,
I'm not going to listen to a podcast on my computer on YouTube.
The probably, you know, don't want to listen to car curious podcasts on the web.
So I myself need the mobile app.
And that's that's what I'm working on finishing up now.
So that be able to to bring it with us when we're on walks or doing chores.
And if we see a car that's being mentioned,
don't want a quick glance at it, but just a quick look at the phone.
And then you get get get that kind of hit of what you're looking for.
Here's the first problem you're going to run into.
And I'm not talking to Ryan.
I'm talking to everybody listening.
You are going to get sucked into this and spend so much time
looking at all the annotations and all the little notes and all the little stuff
because there's so much information there.
So that's the first problem you're going to have.
Hopefully, right?
Secondly, Ryan.
Holy Jesus, what a bunch of work you've created for yourself.
And you said you were doing this to get away from your computer.
Indeed, indeed.
But it's a whole different way of using your computer, though.
You know, instead of just writing code for somebody else,
you're writing code about something that you're interested in, you know, and that.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, go ahead, sir.
Oh, like blog writing.
If you're writing about something you're really interested in,
like I could kick out 3000 plus words in pretty much a heartbeat
when writing about coffee.
Yes, we had a client at the police.
They work who and it's it's still a client, but it's also a partnership.
But we had a client who made gourmet coffees
and they did those barrel aged coffees, et cetera.
And I learned so much about coffee before even starting writing these.
And with back then, you know, AI was verboten.
So we we did it all came out of us.
We writers.
So, you know, I was writing lots of stuff about that.
Now, it was a little harder to write about Botox.
Well, ask him about all the other stuff he's written about.
I now know about GLP ones and GIPs.
So if you want to talk about terzepatitis or some aglutide,
it just give me a call and we can even amazing drugs.
And I can discuss up to a point, vagina plastic.
So, you know, let's let's just dig in.
However, you know, with with what you're doing,
when it's something that you really like, it's easier.
I would say it's easier to do.
Now, is it or am I talking straight out of my ass for what you're doing?
Oh, it absolutely is.
I mean, you know, any kind of creative endeavor,
like you you want to be able to scratch that itch.
And for me, that's always been like creating something.
That's why I got into, you know, web development and software
is to be able to see the kind of fruits of your labor
still visibly on screen, right?
And it's like, oh, I did that, right?
And I just like creates that kind of dopamine
hit in that loop that keeps you coming back.
But what's changed in the last year, you know,
a year and a half with AI is like all of these things that would have been
I would have never attempted this, right?
Because like you said, it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of technology that's even maybe beyond what I could have
what I had experienced in expertise in.
But now we have like these, you know, genies that can kind of help us do things
that we wouldn't have attempted before.
So it can be a useful tool, you know, up to a point.
I can really be helpful unless you're trying to replace yourself with it.
And then it gets kind of tricksy.
When when people go on to car car curious,
this I am actually very curious about this.
If I'm trying to find, you know, a podcast that I would like,
maybe in a specific genre or specific car types.
How do I find that?
How how can a person go on and find the things they really want to listen to?
Yeah, great question.
That's the other the other half of it.
We talked a little bit about how the player experience.
But now that we have all of these annotations,
like a couple of interesting things happen.
It's like the first is like, if you're a car, a fan of a specific,
you know, car brand, car model, you can go and search for that
and find all the different shows that have been discussing, you know, that car.
So whether it's, you know, the E46, you can find all of those
or whatever the Corvettes and all the different generations.
Now I'm sunk.
And yeah, so that that becomes one of the more interesting things.
And like, there is a little bit of like, if you go on to the slash podcast page,
there is a breakdown by genre and you can search by.
Is there one is there one like by goofy bastard sidekick?
Yes, is that one of one of the keywords that you can put in there
to be able to find which one was that that's front and center on that's important.
It is now because it's in the transfer.
Trans-settin son of a gun.
See, you're going to ring first for that.
See what you did now.
See, see, see, look at that.
And now I got to rub your nose on it.
OK, smart guy.
And you said you've only been doing this for six months
and you're tracking almost 300 shows.
Wow.
Yep. Yeah, I started and I like late, late 20, 25 last year,
you know, and searching like Apple podcast, Spotify,
you know, came up with, you know, 100, 150 pretty quickly.
But there was just so many more that I keep finding like every week
that, you know, I keep finding more and more.
Well, you found us, you can quit.
You may want to after this one.
Oh, crap.
I'm never talking to those guys again.
I am not curious anymore.
Yeah, those stupid goobers.
Maybe it is incredible, like it's but it's just this whole,
you know, whole world that's very it's unbounded, right?
Like there's so many aspects to our, you know, car ownership,
car enthusiasm that like you can find like your interest in your niche.
And it's just like in this modern media space, right?
Like this is this is what makes it great.
Like anybody that, you know, has that expertise or experience
can start a podcast and and develop that audience.
And I just love to love to see that grow and listen to those different voices.
You say you keep finding more shows.
First of all, do you have any idea how many car podcasts there are?
There's got to be a ton.
That's yeah, I probably thousands or tens of thousands.
I mean, everybody thinks they know something or want to know something
and they want to talk.
And the second question is, do you have some sort of?
Some sort of process that the shows go through
in order to qualify for you to track them?
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is like,
you know, is in some of the other like directories, right?
So as I find it, I'll see like what's the presence in Apple podcasts?
What's the presence on Spotify?
What's like the social media presence?
Like it doesn't have a YouTube channel associated with it.
And once it kind of kind of meets those poor criteria,
you know, all at it.
And, you know, one interesting thing maybe maybe not is like
I'm not exactly like asking all of them if they want to be on the platform.
But, you know, every podcast is a very open standard.
Like if you publish your RSS feed of your podcast,
then it's going to be a podcast player domain.
Yeah, so that's that's.
But I think, you know, as the network affects kick in,
hopefully, you know, we kind of I come back to the idea of, you know,
rising tide lifts all boats, you know, we can, you know, shine a light
on on the whole segment of automotive podcasting
and then really steer people to where they're interested
and help everybody kind of grow, grow their audience from there as well.
I love that concept that is just fantastic.
And, you know, we've talked about this a bit.
We're really grateful.
I'm kind of curious how the hell we made it in.
No, I mean, you guys have been doing this.
You have, what, 300 and what were you telling me, like 380 shows, right?
Something like that.
Yeah, we're we're north of 300.
I don't know if I screwed up the counter or not, but I know it's a lot.
It's a lot. Yeah, it's yeah.
And it's a whole bunch.
And that's the big that's the biggest thing.
I mean, I was I was doing a call with some people in the in the podcast
in this podcast very meta, right, podcast industry podcast.
The other day and just talking about like, well, the biggest challenge,
you know, with the automotive podcasters I talked to is like, you know,
how do they grow their audience and just that consistency is always,
I think the key that that we really see come back to to being,
you know, a great podcast and you guys definitely had that track record.
So it's awesome to see. Wow, thank you.
That's a magnificent compliment.
We very much appreciate it.
Do you have an idea?
We we've had some trouble
accurately tracking how many listeners or downloads we have
in an average week or month.
Do you have an idea of how many listeners or downloads you get?
Yes, it's you'll kind of focus on the player experience
and user experience at the moment.
So you don't have to give me a number.
I just want to know if you know how to track the sucker.
Asking for a friend a little bit.
Yeah, I have. That's actually like to know.
Yeah, the players, you know,
the players with more users definitely are a lot better able to do that.
I think even better than like some of the publishers, right?
Like because they can track that user interaction
a lot more than just the download versus the play.
Right. And like, you know, it's a it's a very difficult space to be in
also because there's like so many different publishers and like me.
Yeah, you know, the industry is still trying to come together
on what like some common, you know, ways of measurement are.
So, you know, it's something I'm going to definitely be working on
as as the platform grows, but still early days for that.
Well, I think this is absolutely fantastic.
And even more so as a service to the people who are making the podcasts.
It's it's probably a bigger
favor to them than it is to the people who are listening.
It seems like a nice aggregator to be able to be found, you know,
oh, God, to be able to go to a place and go
because there's so many places.
Hey, top 10 car podcast, top 20 car get blah, blah, blah.
And by whose metric.
Yeah, by whose metric and who paid you to do this.
Yep. Oh, yeah.
Whereas with with what's going on with car curious,
they able to get on and do some searches and find some stuff
and then go on my discovery and then, you know, save the ones I want.
Yeah. I mean, just the other day, I was like talking to, you know,
another guy and we were talking about the Nissan 300Z.
No, no, no, car curious.
Go ahead and name drop.
We like it. Yeah, bring it on. Who was it?
So I was talking to my friend, Doug, who runs to all
out to all the cars I've loved before is another automotive podcast.
Nice. I've never heard of that one.
I got to look that up. That's cool.
Yeah, definitely look them up.
Doug Kay runs that one and we were talking about the 300V
and I plugged it into car curious and like you guys were like right there.
I'm like, oh, I'm going to talk to those guys in here.
And so your show and his show and there was like every day driver
were like the three that were talking about the 300Z and I'm like, oh, that's cool.
I think your last guest was just talking about that last week.
Yeah, he said that was the car that he got to ride in in high school
that seemed like an exotic to him.
That's right. Yeah.
On his sports trips or whatever.
Yeah. Well, and he said it, you know, it had the digital dash,
so it had the the good light show and all that stuff going on.
So really, really cool.
Like late 80s, 300Z before they did the
the more rounded version that came out in 1990.
And I love those the 90 and later.
Aside from getting AI to recognize some of the crap we say,
you know, figuring out engines and models and things like that.
And what were some of the other hurdles
was setting this up with with starting car curious?
And again, you said you were trying to get away from your computer.
And I'm betting you haven't come close.
Not not not too much, no.
But I will say, I mean, I think what's been really cool about this last year
and like, you know, getting into car podcast, getting in the car curious is like
now that I have an interest in cars, like I'm going to like cars and coffee
and going to car shows, I'm going on drives with the car.
And so, you know, whereas like, you know, my weekend mornings before or like
before everybody was up, I was like, you know, on the computer and like now I'm
like, oh, there's a car event to go to, you know, today.
And and that's been super cool to keep that draw away.
Ryan puts on pants and leaves the house.
That's weird. Yeah.
Yeah, I got I got a board up a white board up in my office.
This is days since pants on it.
I'm right there with you.
That's how I was for a long time.
So. So what was the question?
I forgot I doubted I was asking you what some of the other hurdles
aside from getting a I to recognize the words that are said and things like that.
And I ran it.
I ran into that early because when I cover car auctions,
I will go to them and I take a little mini digital voice recorder.
And when I'm evaluating the car, I walk around the car and I just
kind of speak into the recorder.
Take verbal notes.
Yeah. And I'll listen to it later when I get home.
Well, I've tried for a long time to find something that would translate
voice to text.
And man, nothing gets it.
Nothing. Nothing understands how to translate
car speak and the text and it immediately steers off the road,
crashes and goes wrong.
So I'm curious, aside from I can appreciate
where you're coming with the AI and it doesn't understand everything.
But aside from the AI, what other issues or hurdles did you have
setting this up, getting it working?
Yeah, it's a couple of things.
We're just like, you know, number one is like I could do the basics
of like getting the web app and the database.
I got was kind of my expertise from my background.
But to really deliver like a podcast player experience,
the mobile has been my biggest challenge because that's a new new
technology for me again, like my my AI gene is helping me, of course.
And I think it's coming up pretty well, but it's a very
ongoing process, right?
So that's one challenge.
I think, you know, marketing, getting people interested.
This is not like the biggest addressable market, I would say.
And, you know, the industry speak.
So finding finding those people that are truly passionate.
And I think this is an interesting thing.
So I'm super grateful that we were able to connect and figure this out as well.
So I don't know, there's there's lots of people out there that really are.
Well, it is like, and that's like, I think just in my bubble before,
like maybe cars weren't interesting to people in my circles so much.
But now that I'm in the car circles, it's amazing to see
like how vast and how large, you know, those are, right?
So in all those different segments around the country,
you know, around the world, right?
So well, sometimes you got to turn the rocks over to find us, but we're out there.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I'm just amazed at how many, like just in Portland,
like how many events are constantly coming up.
And like I was at my my wife's grandpa's 103rd birthday this week.
Shout out, shout out to him.
Like just incredible.
But one of the guys I was talking to there would have been they'd been friends
for 30 years from, you know, the vintage Chevrolet Club of America.
And it was just like all these connections that are made
like via the car connections are awesome to see.
One of the things you'll find as you go, and I'm sure it's this way in the tech
world also is there is no way to know it all.
There is no way that is not possible.
And what you will find is the more, you know,
the more you figure out how much you'll never know.
The more you find, it's a great point.
I mean, to to your question about the challenges is like every week, every day
as these transcripts come in, there's new cars that the system doesn't understand.
And it's like so.
So now I have to like constantly be auditing and figuring out, OK,
and then go research that car a little bit or have, you know,
a research that car a little bit and then add it to the system so that it can go back
and recognize it and pass episodes and then upcoming episodes as well.
So now you're doing all this work.
How do you monetize it?
I mean, that's the million dollar question.
Yeah, obviously.
Shut up, Mark.
You're dirty.
Oh, my. Oh, you jerk.
And Mark's asking for a friend.
I mean, you're putting this is sounds like a hell of a lot of effort.
And I know there's got to be a goal at the end.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think.
Yeah, what he said.
Right. So I know you guys are probably going back to the start of the episode.
I mean, people buy cars, right?
And I think there's a couple of interesting things, you know, as the platform grows,
is like instead of just doing more traditional generic advertising,
we can be very targeted, you know, to try to find like whether it's automotive sales
and lead gen, whether it's like understanding like what those all annotations are.
And, you know, having sponsorship for a specific annotation across, you know,
a show, you know, the mobile player, you know, whether that could be like a paid app
or, you know, a subscription out of there, you know, still something open.
So I'm still exploring a couple of things.
I think the key the key thing will be, you know, how much going back to that rise
and tide to the segment is how much automotive podcasters take to the platform.
Because I think, you know, if we were able to pull together,
there's a network story there that you can go to some of the bigger players
and like even like think about like, you know, revenue share or whatever it is,
like to kind of like have everybody like, you know,
get the benefits of that that kind of vertical podcast network, right?
Now that I really like what you're saying leading into this in that it sounds like,
and correct me if I'm wrong, you'll want to pick advertisers based on their value
to the community listening, not just to the value of, well, hey,
we've got a million dollars to spend, but we want to talk to car people about ED.
I get so pissed off when I'm listening and I'll do respect.
I'm not going to say who if there's a couple of car videos, etc.
Listening one today and they'll do an endorsement and oh, hey,
before we talk about this really cool car that hooked you in,
I want to talk about how I clean my frickin stove and I'm like, I don't care.
I don't care about your toothbrush.
I don't give a shit and pardon me if I'm a little passionate about this
because I think this is also what killed radio
because the corporate overlords got into it and what they have done
is taken all these radio stations out of the room, you just walk away.
I'm on fire now, baby.
But they took radio and then they turned it into a,
you know, we're going to just sell you the audience and they didn't give a crap
about the listeners.
So you take like, we had eight radio stations when I first started
and then we ended up with 15 markets.
I was doing the part of radio.
Everybody hates the commercials for 75 radio stations.
And they had no problem in taking like a just kick ass rock and roll station.
And then for that station, they would play commercials that were,
hey, everybody, do you want to come this and that?
And it didn't match the audience.
And I so think that your commercials should be done in a way that
it draws the audience and we want to listen to that commercial.
Even if it's a pretty dumb commercial, if it's entertaining,
you know, you've got two things either be wickedly interesting
in what you're talking about or be freaking entertaining
in the way that you talk about it.
But you got to pull those two in.
Now, do you think that's going to be monetizable,
especially in the world of kind of the open?
We just want your numbers and you take whatever we give you advertisers.
That's the struggle, right?
I think everybody is so passionate about wanting to do,
you know, and I've been wanting to do this,
like they love being able to, you know, deliver a car podcast or,
you know, a web app.
And so they will oftentimes take, you know,
something that they probably don't feel great about taking,
but they want to like have some way to keep this sustainable, right?
So finding alternatives so that people don't have to face that choice
would be, you know, incredible.
And I think we would all like to see, you know,
better ads or more relevant ads and more interesting ones,
you know, a huge industry, of course, and positively evolving.
But, you know, even in the small like for car carriers,
like, you know, one of the things I've just experimented with was like,
personally, it's like, when I became interested in a specific car,
you know, whether it was the E46, whether it's, you know,
not that, you know, I'm going to own one anytime soon,
and whether it's like a, you know, a ZR1 Corvette or a Porsche 911,
it's like, but if you have like, oh, I want to find one of these
and just like take that experience from interest to kind of search and purchase,
right? And then you've got a pipeline there that you can kind of help people,
you know, find that specific car.
It's why, like, you know, bring your trailer and cars and bids or,
you know, they're entertainment platforms as much as auction platforms, right?
And it's like going to look at the cars and,
and so they probably even are leaving money on the table on the advertising space and
to, to, to be able to build that platform. But it's interesting. Yeah.
All, all the ways that this is unfolding in the automotive world.
You know, that entire rant, the entire time, and just let you go.
And I'm so disappointed because not once did you bring up vagina plastic.
That was, that was in my previous career radio.
I don't think I ever wrote a 60 second ad about vagina plastic.
Oh, thank God.
You know, I did about, what is it? I did about ED. I wrote stuff about,
what are the things where they, the stomach bands they do on your internal things?
The belly bands.
They do it on your stomach because, you know, dudes like me overeat.
So I written about a bunch of things that had a lot of fun doing it.
I resemble that remark.
But it would, it would be nice if, if broadcasters would pay attention to their audiences again.
And then shape their, their advertising around it so that when you hit that,
you know, two to three minutes of commercials or in, in,
public or in broadcast radio, the six minutes of commercials,
you at least gave listeners something more that's fun to listen to instead of making them
endure it until you get back to the programming.
Yeah. And the other thing that I've, and you and I have talked about this a lot, almost every week.
The other thing that I've really become fond of is we're not just presenting facts about stuff.
Yeah.
You know, you're not just reading a statistic sheet or you're not just getting that.
We like talking to people and find out where they're coming from and why they decided to do
the things they do and everything else.
The people part of the people.
Yeah. And I, I really like it.
You know, I tell everybody, if the car world had a break room, it would be this show.
And I, honest to God, mean that I like the fact that it's light.
It's not horribly serious and it's not just heavy duty stuff.
You know, I, I like that we keep it light and we get to have good conversations with people who
are passionate about what they're doing.
And this is, this is something that, honest to God, you dreamed up.
I don't know if I, I don't know of any other website that's doing what you're doing.
Yeah.
And I, and really, like you said, the stories, like are the, the whole reason, right?
Yeah.
That I wanted to provide a way to, like, tell the story in a different way and bring it to life.
And, you know, we'll see to what extent we can accomplish that.
But that's kind of the whole idea is storytelling.
Well, then you're giving us attention.
Tell me more about me.
Tell me more about me.
Tell me more about you.
Let's talk about me.
There is a great question here, by the way, Brett, that I am actually very curious about.
What?
You're curious.
And it's, which cars get the most play?
Oh, yeah.
So what are some of the highest ranking cars, Ryan, that you've seen come through where you get
bigger numbers of listeners?
Again, asking for a friend.
From now on, we're just doing this.
So here's a question.
What do you think is your most mentioned car?
By far, Corvette.
What's number two, though?
Whining about Mopar.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Corvettes and Mopar.
Absolutely.
If it's got a trunk that looks like an aircraft carrier.
What's the story on that?
Oh, I love big, stupid old cars.
The bigger, the better.
Well, no, no.
I screwed myself on it because I bought a house with a garage that's too small.
Didn't realize until after it bought the house.
So I had to get rid of the first classic car I bought.
And then I bought another one that's a POS.
But hey, and hopefully going to be better after.
Yeah, but that car wasn't your fault.
That guy was a flat liar.
Yeah, there was that.
So we'll see what that ends up with.
But yeah, I love the big, fat, ugly, wonderful vehicles.
And Brett has taste.
So that's kind of where we're at.
Well, here we are.
And I will say this for Mark.
He has helped me to see other things and accept them.
In a different light.
Yeah. Well, he's dragged me down.
So yeah, there's other like hot dogs when you need to stay.
I like hot dogs, man.
Hell yeah.
I especially a cheesy dog.
Ooh, baby.
So what are the ones on car curious that are ranked?
Yeah, site wide.
Um, so number one is drumroll Mustang number two.
Oh, that makes sense.
Okay.
For that.
Well, we're never talking about Mustangs again.
Right.
Yeah, I can't speak that word.
And then Portion 9-11.
Number three.
That's not surprising.
Oh, wow.
Well, 9-11 has been around since 63.
God, you people with your long time.
With your egalitarian taste.
You got to come slumming with a Cordova.
What's wrong with you?
I'm fine.
I'm pulling up my ears here.
I'm fine.
I'm sure a Dodge Magnum is showing up on it somewhere.
Yeah.
And and while you're looking up stuff,
make sure you look up Mercado Montabon.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
Fine Corinthian leather.
That'll jack with your.
Is that an actual thing?
How do you spell that?
Ricardo.
Ricardo Montubon.
M-O-N-T-A-L-B-A-N.
Ricardo Montabon.
He was also the main host or the lead character
on Fantasy Island.
Fantasy Island with Tattoo and with.
Hang on.
That's what's a really good.
Irving Vileshes.
Yeah, Irving Vileshes.
Thank you.
So yeah, that'll jack with your AI.
I have a dad.
Yeah, there you go.
Now we're just going to start bringing up crap
to see if he can find it.
But exactly.
Yeah.
When they, when Chrysler was making the Cordoba,
the big advertising hook on it was fine Corinthian leather.
Yeah.
And Ricardo Montabon would sit and every stinking at
a couple of times easy.
Go look that up and prepare to, you know,
get out your platform shoes and your disco ball.
It was part if the most interesting man in the world
was a car salesman.
Oh, I know that.
Yeah, he would have been Ricardo Montabon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he was gone.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, man.
Get your nerd on there.
That was horrible.
And by the way, that was a strap on chest
that he was wearing.
Yeah.
And that whole time.
Drag out all your Star Trek stuff.
Yeah, that wasn't his chest.
For the real nerds.
Of course it wasn't his chest.
Oh, by the way, I'm looking while we're waiting
for Ryan to hit us up with that fourth best
so we can get the top five and then do our next shows.
Okay.
And then, yeah, Dodge Charger and Ford F-150.
Yeah.
And run back to top fives.
Mopar, number four.
Well, it's funny enough with the chargers
of going back to the AI.
Well.
That's also one of the things that is most
misinterpreted as a car.
So because people are talking about,
I don't know, their EV chargers and their phone chargers.
So that became a thing.
Man, that'd be such a pain in the butt.
Now, that is some great SEO tactic.
Okay.
That's all that is is they're trying to build that up.
Somebody said charger.
It must be talking about a Dodge Charger.
Let's say charger 11 more times.
So now the whole system has to figure out,
are they talking about Dodge in that sentence
or in that, you know, surrounding text
before actually counts as a Dodge Charger?
Now, are you training it?
Are you talking with the AI system
to be able to get it to be able to figure that out
and then remember it?
Yeah.
So that's kind of where the database comes in
is like it's got a whole alias kind of thing
that it builds out.
So as I've hear like new terms coming in,
but either the transcription is misheard
or the AI has misattributed,
then I put that in the first layer.
So there's a first pass over all the text.
That's the fuzzy matcher,
and that has all of the different ways
that it can be misinterpreted or misattributed in.
And that's constantly being updated, you know,
as more either incorrect or otherwise wrong.
So just doing one of your shows
is raising the general temperature of the planet
by a degree and you see the 800 million gallons of water
and their data center.
They're going, holy shit, what's a charger?
That's awesome.
Well, hopefully, yeah, it makes it does it once, right?
And then we can do it on all the subsequent times
without having to read.
You know, Ryan's sitting there going,
would you shut up?
Just stop it.
Stop it.
Stop.
What the hell's wrong with you?
I'm going to be up all night with this.
Damn it.
I know.
You're going to go into the other room
after you're done with this.
Have a drink and just your hands are going to shake.
I mean, AI, it's definitely not going back
in the bottle is my thing, but I'm not a maximalist.
I'm not an anti-AI.
I'm somewhere like I'm trying to figure out
where it can be useful, right?
We're going to finish this interview,
and Ryan's going to walk in the other room
and look at his wife and say, oh, I'm so happy.
I interviewed with those jack legs.
So I'm wondering if car curious would ever track car auctions.
Every car model has a page on car curious, right?
And there's a lot of interesting things that come from that,
like aside from who's talking about it in the podcast space,
going back to that, oh, I want one of these.
Like you could have kind of a, I could envision something there.
It's like seeing, you know, where all the availability is.
However, I know there are many people kind of doing that already,
whether it's classic.com and there's some.
There's a bunch in your city.
Yeah, I work for them.
Yeah, sports car market.
And I know there's like that new bit better AI,
again, another AI thing like Johnny Lieberman say,
I don't know if you've seen this, but they'll like let you put in
an auction URL and give you kind of a target price.
Well, so I think, I think it's like,
how does that become like useful in the experience of learning about,
you know, cars, I think it's going to be where it fits, right?
So.
Well, there's already a couple of apps that track a lot of stuff.
One of them is HammerBid and another one is Hagerty.
They track a lot of stuff almost in real time.
But I'm curious if there would ever be an offshoot of car curious that would
find that useful or good Lord, I'm trying to wrap my head around what you're doing now.
It seems absolutely incredible.
Yeah, I think we'll have to talk about like what that would look like
and how it could be useful and definitely up for talking more about it.
Well, I'm sure there's some guys in town with you
that would be happy to give you all kinds of suggestions.
I saw him on Facebook post in a group that I'm in,
and I'm like, I need to go talk to Keith, right?
I'm like, I'm going to like drop Red's name and see if I can grab coffee with him.
Ryan, have you thought about doing your own podcast, talking about car trends,
and the fact that you are sitting here measuring trending subject matter and this and that?
Yeah, that's a very good point.
That might be where your advertising comes in and the first version of money making is to be able to
talk. You know what? I'm still talking and I asked you a question about 10 minutes ago.
So have you ever thought about doing your own?
Snap out.
Yeah, I'm a little, but I'm like the introvert's introvert,
like talking for me, especially on whether it's podcasts or video.
Well, I'll bet when you talk on a really cool technical side
and being able to create, you're creating this vehicle, which is so cool for all these
podcasters. Thank you very much. And then, how can you parlay that into the more commercial
world? You've got gateway classic cars. You've got, oh my God, so many classic car sellers.
Just here in Kansas City, there's like eight or 10 that are just directly classic car focused.
That's all the online stuff. You've got cars and bids and bring a trailer and
the MB market. And you might do like a B2B podcast that talks with those about how they
can increase this, that and the other and use, of course, your tools. Is that part of the plan?
Can we pile on you some more? Can I give you some more work?
Yeah, find me some investors or something and I have more time. And I think I was
absolutely love to do that. But yeah, I think once I get this player experience with the mobile
app, I think I have a little more time and space to explore. I think it's important to explore that
specifically because I want to understand what you all go through and producing a podcast as well
as if we're doing a player. I think that makes a ton of sense though.
I will say it gets easier with time. It becomes, I don't want to say habitual,
but you find a rhythm, routine and it helps a lot. Also, man, and some of the audience
knows this, one of the more invaluable things is asking people in advance, what do you want to talk
about? You know, it's your show. Let's make sure and I do that. You don't want all that on your
shoulder. Yeah, exactly. Well, no, one of the reasons I do that is because we've had guests
in the past who may have had more sensitive topics with things they're going through or
things that are involved in at the time. And the last thing I want to do is pick the scab. I'll do
it to Mark. I don't want to know fear there. I piss him off. So what?
He'll yell at me and I'll yell back and that'll be that. We're all finished and that's it,
but you can't do that with everybody. I can do it with Mark because we've known each other so
long. Yeah. And, you know, we both have this never say die attitude, which is why the show
marches on. We won't quit. But asking people what they want to talk about has helped me avoid
really sensitive situations and, you know, some guests in the past we've had who've been
on the verge of lawsuits for things. And, you know, the last thing you want to say,
hey, how did that turn out? What about this? Yeah. I'm getting divorced over that,
you bastard. It just gets real quiet. Yeah. Yeah. So does anybody ever just hang up or like,
no, I haven't had that happen. No, but I've had more than one occasion where I had to tiptoe
around a topic. And that's when I send out the email for the guest. And I say, what would you
like to talk about? What would you not like to talk about? And, you know, when I ask for information,
there's a very pointed reason for that. And it's not so I can get you to write the show for me.
It's so we cover what you'll want to cover and we stay the hell away from what you don't.
Yeah. It's a matter of respect. And it's part of prep. And it also makes it easier for me to edit.
And that's really the most important thing. Yeah. I don't have to wear out my fingers
on that keyboard going, oh, that's got to go. That's
We aim to make your job easy. Thank you. Thank you very much.
That's what I live to do. Make your job easy. But no, that's absolutely why I did that and
why I continue to do it is I want to make sure that when we have people on, I'm not crossing
any boundaries. I should not. So again, finding that finding that rhythm and then having some kind
of a, you know, when, jeez, I'm not going to think of his name, Mark. The guy that talked about the
stuff. Yeah, the guy that talked about the stuff. Him. The guy who did cars. Yeah. And I'm, I'm
having a senior moment. I'm forgetting his name. He had a very... I don't think he's doing it anymore,
right? No, no. He handed the reins. He sold it. He handed the reins off to a gal who's doing a really
great job with it. But he used to have a very, very specific questionnaire that he sent out
before the show. Oh, yeah. Cars, yeah, I remember. Yeah. Cars, yeah. Yeah. Mark Green.
Mark Green. Why couldn't I... I can't believe I remember it because I can't remember crap these
days. I had Mark G in my head and I couldn't come up with Mark Green. Mark, I'm so very sorry.
We love you, Mark. But... 2,500 episodes. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty incredible. And he was
pushing three or four of them a week. You know, the man was a machine and he had a real specific,
like I said, questionnaire sent out. But he also prefaced it with a phone call. And when he called,
Mark and I talked for like two hours before we did the recording. We were just shooting the
breeze about car stuff. Just car guys talking about stuff. And he talked about his 930. It was
like one of two that were painted that orange color, that orange crush. And we talked about
people he'd interviewed and, you know, places we'd been and car stuff we'd been to and all
kinds of stuff. And it turned out we'd covered a lot of the same ground. But it was a great
conversation. There's that pre-show interview and that conversation. What are you going to talk
about? What do you want to cover? And I tell people, this is your show. Let's make sure we
talk about the stuff you want to. Although your last question. Yeah, you're screwed on the last
question. Everybody gets it. Oh, we don't get to talk about YouTube. No, we're not hopping to the
last question. We're not on YouTube yet, but that is the eventual goal. We want to terrify children
too. And we've touched on this a bit. But what do you think about audio versus video for podcast
platforms? And should we build a YouTube channel? Or are we better off doing what we're doing?
So I think what I've experienced and seen is like they both do what they're good at, right? And so,
yes, is the answer to both probably. And what I've seen work well. But interestingly enough,
on the video side, I think there's also a chance to do something a little bit different than just
the straight content. Some of the behind-the-scenes stuff, just what you're talking about, getting
some of that makes it a more personal experience for viewers and translates across all of your shows,
whether it's video or audio. I think it's hard because video is such a short attention span
these days, too. So like doing the full episode on YouTube is different than doing all the short
clips and whatnot. So I think it's not just like go on YouTube, right? It's like, is it long form?
Is it short term? Is it that form? And how do you slice up your clips and keep, whether
and again, going back to like, I see a lot of automotive podcasters starting on YouTube,
and they'll like pull up a car on, you know, a computer in the studio or whatever and pop
about it, right? And that's that was also one of the things I kept hearing people talk about in
the audience. Like, I can't see the car you're showing me on YouTube, like I want to see the car.
And that's kind of why that kept coming up. But again, I'm not going to go watch, you know, a 45
minute hour video on YouTube, necessarily, just just to see you pull that up on the computer. So
so, you know, I think they serve different purposes, but they do provide another channel.
Well, that's one of the things I love about your idea for your hybrid phone app is to be able,
you know, you can be listening to it, and you're like, wait a minute, what kind of car
they talk about? And if you can look on that app and see a 19, you know, 35 Botel Auburn
show up on there, it's like, Oh, my God, you that I think is fantastic. Because quite honestly,
like, if we were recording this zoom podcast, and you're watching three heads,
that's a lot of melons. And just, you know, for an hour and 15 hour and 30 minutes,
especially in this room, there's some eggs in this room. But, you know, if you've if you're
able to do that and have it easily done, the the computer is doing the work for you.
I think that's brilliant. Oh, and I guess one other stat I just saw like two weeks ago,
like 61%. And I'll have to find the source. I think this is coming from some industry
consortium. 61% of podcasts are discovered on YouTube or social media, right? So that's where
yeah, like, okay, the discovery engine, right? It's not just like the ongoing. It's like, how do
people find you? And that's kind of why it's important to be there. I guess 60% of the time it
works 100% of the time. What is it? Truth and lies with statistics, right? How did I know that was
coming? Alrighty, well, what are your hopes for the future of car curious? I mean, we talked about
kind of like where it's going with the mobile platform and, you know, just seeing how we can
connect with the rest of the industry and kind of understand those trends, understand.
I wanted to pull up shy of saying, where do you see yourself in five years?
Right. Well, where do you see yourself in five years?
Where do you see yourself in three and a half?
In a nice car, you know, maybe maybe that's where this can lead someday.
But I know where you can buy a 58-Tabert. Pretty cheap.
Oh, it's mint. It's so mint.
So we can do a road trip to get it, you know, we can do all the car experiences and then like,
figure out how to get it home. Yeah, how to weld it. Yeah, how to tow it. How to get rid of that blow
by. So much to learn, right? Yeah, so it'll be exciting. You'll have content for years.
You know, I'm starting to think that this you were destined to have this car,
so you could finally learn how to weld. Yeah, you know, I've thought about,
I still got that body putty left over from the Dodge. I have not broke open my Bondo.
Did you buy it in a wheelbarrow? Yeah, it's gonna take a minute.
I'm gonna look like a finger painting, but yeah, we'll see what happens.
There's a fabulous dirty joke that goes with that, but I can't tell on this show.
Negatory. All righty, Ryan, here it comes. What's the dumbest thing you've ever done in a car?
I was saving it. I didn't want to jump in when you were talking about your central experience.
Not that it's exactly the same, but it's somewhat like in that ballpark. So with,
with the GLC, you know, there was maybe once upon a time in high school where
somebody's and I were out for whatever reason. I don't know why we had open, not open, but like,
not sealed bottles of alcohol. Like we weren't drinking them in the car.
You heard Zima's, didn't you? This was like, this was like some kind of like schnapps or...
I want to see what the EAI is going to do with Zima.
I know, right? We'll, we'll be looked at. Well, we'll find some photos for that. In any case,
like we were, so I think you had some guests from Eugene about this. It says anything to
do with them, but I grew up outside of Eugene. We were in Eugene, Oregon, like trying to cruise
around or whatever, you know, being high schoolers. At some point in time, you know, there were
some girls that pulled off alongside that they didn't show much interest and like moved along
or whatever. And then at some point later, you know, the lights, the lights are flashing,
you know, in, in the rear end here. So those girls call the cops on you. Well, maybe.
So there's lights in the rear view. Because, because that guy or those, those officers,
like they had a hunch, right? Something was up, even though like, like I hadn't been drinking,
didn't smell it or whatever, but like they just kept digging and wouldn't
let us go until we admitted it or whatever. Like, what do you have in the car? And so ended up with
some kind of, you know, MIT or open container ticket. But the funny thing was like it was dumb,
of course. Like I was kind of like the anti-drinker, you know, in high school. And so, and then it was
like the big joke that, you know, I had the MIT or the open container or whatever. The stupidest
thing you did was it, you know, let somebody have some booze in your car, got it? Yeah, exactly,
exactly. And paid the price for it. But, you know, it didn't. So that was a, it could,
not a good time, but yeah, certainly good lesson learned about the responsibility as a teenager
in a car. Nice. I would love to say that I have no parallel experience for that.
It would be a lie.
Yeah, I'm not bringing all those up. That's all, that's a lot of...
I got to know what was your cruise and music in your GLC? What was the...
I want to say that was like the smash and pumpkin there, right? So...
Okay, yeah.
All right. Not bad. Not bad. That's pretty good. It's not...
And the cranberries when you were feeling emotional.
A girl jam. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
There might have been a cranberry CD in there. You know, that was the CD club.
But it wasn't like a CD player, right? It was the portable CD player, like with the
really like chocolate cassette adapter. Yes. Yes. Had one of those in a sob, no less.
I still have one of those cassette adapters because I bought a couple off of eBay. I had a,
wow, I can't even remember what the crappy car was that I had those playing in. It might have been
via Geostore. You know, I have a cassette adapter that is a Bluetooth receiver.
Nice. In my truck. Wow.
Really? Wow.
Yeah, because I've been too cheap to put a really good stereo in there yet.
That's fair.
So I've got one for the truck for the big... Even in my old...
Yeah, even in my old four, I've only got a CD player, but I don't have CDs anymore.
And it's like the old head unit, right? So it's like, I just got the radio.
I have hundreds. What would you like?
In the Mercedes, I found a company called Becker Auto Sound that added Bluetooth to the stock head
unit. So all that Bose crap didn't have to be converted.
You're talking the big Mercedes, right?
Yeah, yeah.
The 600, okay.
Yeah. And there's stuff I listen to in there just because it sounds good in the car. It's not
because I necessarily like the music, but there's stuff that sounds so incredible in that car.
You're like, oh, I'm playing that again.
You need to have a lot of Boss Gags and a lot of Steely Dan, because that would just...
No, I'm telling you the two best things to listen to in that car.
Right of the Valkyries. They're starving from appropriate.
No, Pink Floyd Pulse.
Oh, wow.
The openings to both shine on your crazy diamond and money in that car, because it's a giant
concert and it moves all around the car. It's really cool.
And then Art of Noise, Below the Waste from 1989.
Oh my God, Art of Noise.
Yeah.
That was unexpected.
First two tracks. Well, you know my musical taste though.
First two tracks on that Dan Dare and Yebo are both incredible inside that car.
Just incredible. And not music I really craved to hear aside from the fact that the stereo
in that car, and you've heard that thing, oh man, it's so good. It's stinking good.
Alrighty. Well, we've tread on his interview quite enough.
We've been speaking with Ryan Williams of Car Curious.
Ryan, please tell us where we can find you online and on social media.
Absolutely. So getcarcurious.com is the website and at getcarcurious on Instagram.
You can find me at RyanWI on Twitter. I don't call it the new thing yet.
So Twitter is still what I call it.
Well, yeah, that's what happens when you get stuff ingrained in you.
Ryan, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you so much for putting up with us.
And thank you so very much for including Driven Radio Show in your endeavors.
We very much appreciate it.
Absolutely. Great suit.
This is an excellent time and appreciate getting to know you guys and hope to talk more.
And we're sorry we chewed your ears off, but there you go.
Not at all. No, this is awesome.
This is all Mark's fault.
Thrown under a bus.
It's still a car story next week.
Absolutely.
Ryan, thank you so much.
Have a great night.
Good Lord. It's amazing, but it looks like it would be a ton of work.
Now, what's interesting, I'm on carcurious.com right now,
so I looked up Plymouth and it came up with 41 results.
No kidding.
There's 41 different shows that apparently mention Plymouth in them.
Oh, you must be thrilled. Did you put in Mopar yet?
Oh, no, I didn't. Let me go ahead and try Mopar.
You put in Mopar and I'll put in Corvette.
There you go.
Let's see what we get.
Oh, only 35 for Mopar.
46 for Corvette.
Nice. Nice. Okay.
They say it's a mid-size performer.
Nobody is not Thunderbird.
Oh, yeah, let's do that.
Minus six.
Kidding, 33.
Let's say...
Craggers.
Cayenne.
Two for Craggers.
Both are ours.
No kidding.
Show number 332 and show number 337.
Okay, where's that list we had a minute ago?
I need, by the way, I'm sure he's going to listen to the show.
Ryan, you need to add some more key phrases for your searches.
Craggers.
Craggers, you need to add Haikarati.
H-A-I-Karati.
Yep, barbecue.
Velour.
Velour. Oh, hell yeah.
Shagon wagon.
Crab box.
Crab box.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Crab box is a big one.
Land barge.
Oh, land yacht.
Land yacht, too.
Land yacht, absolutely.
See, we're going to help this guy grow this thing.
Oh, and while we're at it, Vega.
Yeah.
You know that wagon's still on Facebook?
Are you serious?
Yeah, I am.
I saved it.
I think the one guy, Larry, I think he sold his Vega.
I swear to you.
The one with the dragon?
No, that's the one I'm talking about.
Oh, shit, are you serious?
Yeah, hang on a sec.
I'll send it to you.
No way.
Yeah, absolutely.
Larry's still trying to sell that?
That surprises me.
I think so.
Hang on.
I got to go back.
He was a nice guy.
I did stay friends with him on Facebook.
He posed some interesting stuff.
Well, he talked to us for a while.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's a unique character.
Yeah.
With a really cool car.
Yeah, I still like that stupid Vega.
That thing is so funny.
I wonder if you'd trade it for a Harley?
No, for a T-Bird.
Well, tell him the T-Bird's got potential.
It just needs a little love.
And don't low ball me.
I know what I got.
I know what I got.
It comes up as still available.
Oh, my God.
Yes, send me that link again.
I haven't had that link in forever in a day.
Here is the link and all of its glory.
Oh, I'm so excited.
Oh, there it is.
Wow.
You know.
Yeah, he wants twice what I would ask for mine.
So we'll see.
Yeah, but I look at this thing and it makes me want to buy a lottery ticket.
Oh, OK, gang.
It is.
You need to look up 1973 Chevrolet Vega in Pueblo, Colorado.
Listed two years ago.
Oh, man, that thing is awesome.
We had him on the show.
Is that a different?
That's a different seller.
No.
Bruce Placentia.
I thought that was Larry.
Am I on drugs?
Is it?
I don't I don't know.
But man, I'm looking at that paint down the side of that thing.
Yeah, I still love it with the claws and the flames and the scales.
And yeah, that thing's awesome.
It is ridiculous and I just adore it.
You know what this would be perfect for?
Is if somebody had a Game of Thrones watch.
It's it's Daenerys.
Daenerys Vega.
Yeah.
Vega Targaryen.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
Remember, we talked to him and he put the tea tops in that thing,
and that's not a car that ever came with tea tops.
That's extraordinary.
That is that's definitely worth consideration.
And that interior, that blue velour, man.
And he put blue velour around the rule bars.
You know, consistency is a key factor in success.
So he did it all the way through, man.
That's absolutely amazing.
Okay.
So add Vega there, Ryan.
You need to have that in there.
We'll be the only show that mentions
Vega, Dragon covered Vegas.
We're going to own all of the niche market on carcurious.com.
Okay.
We're going to have to start making a list and just throwing out five weirdo terms
at the end of every show.
You know, really sucks is that's actually kind of how you do it.
You it's it's a jack ball SEO.
Yep.
It absolutely is.
White hat.
It's still, you know,
we're not doing anything dirty.
And the weird thing is you and I are both writing for people
who demand that we do SEO stuff.
And good Lord, man.
We're with the top five.
It was Mustang.
Mustang.
Mustang first.
Corvette.
Oh, not Charger.
Cordoba.
Cordoba.
Yeah, definitely Cordoba.
There we are.
See?
Cordoba, Ricardo Montabon, and Urve Villaches.
And I want to see you spell Urve Villaches.
We just shot the number one with a bullet.
Urve Villaches was mentioned a half dozen times by this jackass.
Nice.
I love it.
Oh, man.
I really enjoyed doing this show.
It's just my favorite thing because we're so this is ridiculous.
Again, if the car world had a break room.
This is it.
It's this is it, baby.
Thank you so much for spending time with Driven Radio.
We were really questioning your sanity.
We love what we do and we wouldn't be able to do it without the support of our listeners.
You can find us online at drivenradioshow.com.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Driven Radio Show and on LinkedIn as Driven
Radio Show podcast.
If you have a story you would like to tell or someone you would like us to interview,
just like Ryan Williams contacting us about Car Curious,
please contact me at Brett.
That's B R E T T at drivenradioshow.com.
I am Brett Hatfield for the Estimable Mark L Groves.
Yeah.
Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time on Driven Radio.
About this episode
Brett and Mark kick things off with sweaty studio talk, then dive into the chaos of heater-core replacements and the “island of misfit cars” at Darryl Ossipic’s shop in Merriam, Kansas. The conversation turns to Ryan Williams of Car Curious, a software engineer who rekindled his interest in cars as an offline hobby and built a visual, searchable podcast player/discovery platform. They discuss how he researches, what hooked him, and how software can make car audio easier to explore—while the hosts trade stories about rare finds and long-running projects.
AI transcription challenges
Austin Healey
Becker Auto Sound
blow by
bondo
Bring a Trailer
Car Curious
cars and coffee
Cars & Bids
Cars Yeah
Auburn Speedster
BMW 3 Series
BMW M3
Chevrolet Celebrity
Chevrolet Chevette
Chevrolet Corvette
Chevrolet Vega
Chrysler Cordoba
Dodge Charger
Dodge Magnum
Ford Explorer
Ford F-150
Ford GT40
Ford Mustang
Ford Thunderbird
Geo Storm
Geo Tracker
Honda Civic
Honda CRX
Jaguar XJ
Mazda GLC
Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Nissan 300 ZX
Nissan Sentra
Porsche 911
Porsche Cayenne
Suzuki Samurai
Original notes
Brett and Mark welcome Ryan Williams of Car Curious to discuss how he came up with the idea, how AI scours hundreds of car podcasts for information, AI’s inability to understand car-related terms, crapbox cars, which cars get the most attention on Car Curious, and predictions for the future of car podcasts. This and more on Driven Radio Show!
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