Driving The Colorado Grand w/ Tazio Ottis — Carmudgeon Show w/ Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 208

What is that?

That's a Tatio Otis.

What is a Tatio Otis?

He's my business partner.

Does he speak English?

We don't speak English.

What does he speak?

Carburetor, Weber, French.

Weber? Weber is Italian, I thought.

No, Weber and French.

Weber, comma, French.

Bonjour!

And welcome to this wonderful edition of the Carburetor.

Can we do another intro in French?

We did this again already.

I'd like for you to do one in Weber.

Okay.

I don't speak Weber.

It's just going to be a bunch of explosions.

Tatio Otis, my business partner,

professional mechanic, racing driver,

and most importantly,

rally attendee with me.

Most importantly, he's a fan of the shitbox.

Yeah, that's implicit.

In rally attendee,

he's motoring shitbox.

So we will,

on this episode of the Car Margin Show,

discuss two rallies that we did,

which were very similar.

And by very similar, I mean...

Not at all.

Not at all similar.

Similar in that you took old cars on roads.

Yeah, I guess that's about where things end,

in terms of similarity.

That will be the Colorado Grand,

a very premium event,

and I don't even know if we have a name for it,

but it was the $2,000 shitbox rally.

The first ever annual OTS rally.

So we'll talk about those events,

and I will...

I'm going to play with the battery tender bobblehead

while you clap.

I'm going to do the clap,

and we're going to get the jingle.

That one was genuinely good.

That one was actually like a solid B+.

Thank you.

It's your presence. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for helping him clap.

You need to talk.

Okay, on to the jingle.

Derek, are you doing homework?

Always.

Don't let me interrupt you.

No, no, please.

What are we looking at here?

We're talking about the battery tender charge and start.

Oh, unless you're from Michigan.

In which case it's...

It's a charge and start.

Oh yes, of course.

Are they from Michigan? I don't think so.

No, but they are, I think.

Listeners are from...

Can you say charge?

Charge and start.

If you can say that, you can work for Stalantis.

You can work for Chrysler because you have the tap shift

and the tiger shark and the big stab buyers.

That's how Detroit people talk.

So the name charge and start

implies that it both charges and starts.

So it's an all-in-one...

Charge and start.

If you're in Detroit or Upper Midwest generally.

I do believe this is an industry first,

the first jumper box that also...

Tends your battery?

Tends your...

Did you say battery or bowery?

Battery.

Your T's were...

I'm from California.

In general, American people say water

instead of water.

We don't pronounce the T's.

We pronounce D's.

That's an American thing generally.

When British people are making fun of American accents,

they say we say D's instead of T's.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

We're talking about the battery tender.

Unless you're from Philly in which case you say water.

Sure, that's also true.

And I think they do that in Australia also.

Australia?

Welcome to the accent episode of the...

No.

The idea with this charge and start

being that it's two devices in one

and everyone needs a jump starter with them at all times.

It is a good idea.

It's a really good idea,

especially with the shit boxes that we drive.

That's absolutely true.

Don't forget to get

20% off now at batterytender.com

with a coupon code Hagerty20.

All right.

As you can see, this episode is sponsored by

Battery Tender.

They can see that.

They can potentially see it too if they're watching.

They should also be able to see that there's an intruder.

Yes.

We will have already introduced him.

Yes, Tazio Otis.

Tazio Otis.

Tazio Otis Racing.

Taz Otis.

Yes, all of these are acceptable to me,

but probably not to him.

So Taz is my business partner.

Why don't you start Taz and introduce yourself?

Tell us just, I don't know, a couple minutes

about your automotive history,

where you're coming to the land of cars from.

Sure.

My dad's Patrick Otis.

He started for our restoration shop

well before I was born.

And I ultimately was born into that

whole entire world.

When I was six,

he would give me a carburetor to put together

and take apart and put together

until it was time to go home after school.

So I got used to doing that type of stuff

and then I really fell in love with what cars were

and what you could do with them.

I started racing

go-karts when I was 12.

I continued that into

racing prototypes in IMSA

and some touring car stuff.

And I still play with shipboxes

today with you.

Yes, we do.

What I love the most is that you just said

shipboxes when you're also working on Ferrari's.

But the first time I met you,

actually, this is many, many, many years ago

at this point, I pulled into a gas station

New Year's Eve at New Year's Day

at like seven in the morning or something

and there was a red, correct me if I'm wrong,

red Chevy Turbo Sprint.

Yeah, lost my mind.

And I'm like, what moron is out

on New Year's morning

and we were going in the same rally as it turns out.

Yeah, it's a bummer because

I feel like there's a lot of these cars that I have regrets

that I got rid of and that's certainly one of them.

We just did a shipbox rally

this past weekend and that car would have been so ideal for it.

Shipboxes is the way to go.

I mean, you know, your family

is all about the Ferrari and I love that you have it.

Did your dad like want to disown you

when you pulled up with that thing?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a regular occurrence though.

I just drove an MG midget

that I got for $1,800 into the shop

and I don't think he talked to me for the day.

I love that.

Snow's son of mine is going to drive this.

Yeah, but he has certainly

some of the shared characteristics of you and I

which is interest in driving

whatever it is

to whatever it can do.

And beyond.

So we intended for this episode

to be about the Colorado Grand

because we just did it together

and that's the car that we did it in

which is, we'll talk about it in a minute

but we also just did a shipbox rally

so we'll maybe talk about that also

to see the full spectrum.

Right, it was because the opposite financial.

Definitely.

Yes, one rally probably

should have paid us to do it

and then the other one we paid to do

a non-trivial amount

because, you know, you stay in nice hotels

and they feed you and all that.

Not familiar with that concept.

That was not what happened on our rally.

So, yeah, we did the Colorado Grand

is a thousand mile event

that happens in Colorado

that's the name

limited to cars 1960 and earlier

and we did it in this

1956 Alfa Romeo Giulietta

Sprint

which has basically

built.

So you tell us the story.

I think your dad found this car.

Yeah, this car was

regular at the All Italian Car Show

in Alameda that just happened yesterday.

A guy named Earl

had it. He was

I think a welding teacher perhaps

for years. He had this

and a little

SZ as well

and they stayed in a hangar and Heyward

and my dad followed the car

bugged him all the time if he'd ever sell it

and eventually he bought it new.

He was

he wasn't the first owner but he was the first registered owner.

So technically

he was the first real owner.

I think another guy maybe through a dealer had it

for a couple years or so and then he was the first registered owner.

So that made

my dad the second registered owner.

So you've had it

for I think we did the math

it was like eight years or something like that.

And what did

what has happened to it since you bought it?

I should probably back up my first real car

that I bought

got for free

when I was 14 was a regular Sprint

it was a dark blue regular Sprint

that rolled over on the California Miele

and I resuscitated it.

92? Yeah, 92 before I was born

and I resuscitated it

I found a topic and all their shop that I welded on

painted it

realized I didn't want to do body work for the rest of my life

and

ultimately I sold it for a Formula Mazda

and that was one of those cars that I regret selling to this day.

So when we got this car

I ultimately went on a journey to do

everything that I'd ever wanted to do to that car

which is a very long list

and I don't know if I should bore the

podcast with it.

Engine, I mean

Hot engine, big bore kit

pitatory cams from Megacycle right down the street from here

I did a two liter rear end in it

welded the axle tubes to still do the drum brakes

did three shoe brakes up front

Five speed

Five speed, light and GTA

gear set

How big is the motor now? 1500

Big block

Because normally they're 1300

Yeah, fully adjustable conies

that you can't tell by the shock bodies

because it's all internal

custom spring rates

front and back, it's got a whole bunch of

Giulietta, lightweight, it's in bobs on it

Yeah, everyone

who knows those cars freaks out about the bumpers

because they're the raw aluminum bumpers that were for the

lightweight

and they are real

One of our friends has a real lightweight

and he was going to throw those bumpers away because he got reproduction ones

that were newer and shinier

Yeah, so we grabbed those

That's cool

Yeah, that's probably the

the whole thing is pretty hard to reproduce but that's one of the

more special parts of the car

the lightweight bumpers

So we did the

Cal Mille in the car

We shipped the car to Denver, we did the Cal Mille

in April in the car, April May

I guess

and then Colorado Grand

So this is the year of the high

high dollar rallies

for us for this car

now that we can afford to do it after starting our business

because we don't know, we've started the business

not even two years

There is nothing actually

You better do it quick before the IRS finds out

that you're trying to write that off

There's lots of photos with us in our

OTS swag

Back off IRS

And the organizers of the grand

So there's a bunch of things about the grand that are really cool

and we both had a really great time

on the event

and I think one of the defining characteristics

of the event that distinguishes

at least from Cal Mille

which is the only other high dollar event that we've done

is there's a sort of orientation

towards community that the event

has which I was

not expecting and so it's like it's heavily

for good reason obviously

they

sponsor the Colorado

Highway Patrol

and so you get a motorcycle

escort of

CHP, they are also called CHP

Colorado Highway Patrol

and so there's the guys out who are with you

running the entire event in motorcycles

providing an escort

which is kind of neat because the event

it's a charity event and so they raise all this money

and a lot of it goes to Colorado Highway Patrol

but they also

give money to

various local small towns and communities

and so there's always

a coffee stop in the morning and in the afternoon

and the coffee stop is always in some community

where they have given a bunch of money

and so you'll stop at like

a health center or a college

or something where they have contributed

over the course the event's been running since 1989

so it's almost 40 years

at this point

they've contributed millions of dollars of charity

to these various small towns

this one was like the only health clinic

within 60 miles of this

is here and they paid

for a substantial portion of it or whatever

so the

and the other thing that they do

which I think is quite neat

is that they issue a

Colorado registration license plates

that are good for the duration of the event

which means that

a bunch of people who have cars that aren't street registered

can bring their car

on the event and so all these like

kind of race cars are just there

with like a license plate on it and

it says Colorado Grand on the plate

he had one made for us that says

OTS on it which we were

delighted by if you were

friendly with the organizer he would get

something suitable for your license plate

that was you know appropriate

so our business name was on it

so like you know some people got their last name

on their plates or something like that

so normally it's just a number which is cool because you're running around

with a license plate that says like 71

it's like a two digit license plate

so that community

orientation was kind of neat

and that was really smart

yes yeah definitely

although it didn't stop tasks from getting speaking tickets

yeah I think you get a false sense of security

in the event because you know

day one you're introduced all the motors

which is what they call the CHP

and they tell you that they're going to protect you

but don't be stupid

but you have to be nearby for them to protect you

and local cops

don't realize that you're being protected

as nice as they might be

yeah we were running well ahead of

the first escort and that was the problem

that's the whole point of an escort

they go first

he didn't want to get stuck in traffic

look so we learned this lesson in the Kalimile

where if you start like middle of the pack

you're just going to be stuck behind

things going 20 miles an hour

under the speed limit

yeah there's 70, 80, 100 year old cars

yeah so there's these group of people

with 70, 80, 100 year old drivers

having a great time and experience with their cars

and using them which I think is fantastic

but you know if you want to be out there hauling ass

he drives the way that we do

on our rallies

but most of the people on these events don't do that

because the cars are old

and the drivers are usually older also

and they're just not doing things

the way you and I do

or has obviously

but if you jump out in that front pack

typically there's like the five guys in the front

that kind of leave a little bit early

and are hustling

and so you want to get out with that pack

but as we soon learned

that

gives out speeding tickets

big one or moderate one

moderate

if you pay early enough

it's a point reduction which is nice

so anyway that was a learning opportunity

what other notes about the Colorado Grand

the types of roads are very different

and the cars

we can talk about I guess both of those

so how many days is it?

it's four driving days

so two hundred ish

two to three hundred miles a day

some of these old cars

I'm guessing that car is bullet proof

and you don't even think twice about

we weren't without incidents

there was intervention a little bit

yeah we heard

so Colorado the Grand

is different from California

because California's roads are very tight

there's roads that we are very familiar with

very technical which suit that car

the Colorado Grand starts at

eighty one fifty feet

and you go up to twelve thousand

at times

so

they jetted the car down before it left

and had to do some fettling

but there's not much air up there

so you're not making much power

there were times where you were continuously

wide open throttle for four or five minutes

like matted

for four or five continuous minutes

in fourth gear

at five six thousand rpm

just flat

just going up some hill

for those of us who drive slow ship boxes

that's not all that uncommon

so

the roads are fast

and it favors a car with horsepower

and cubes and torque

and this car doesn't have that much of

any of those things especially at eleven thousand feet

I think that's the reason there's the escort

and all that as well because you have cars

like

there was three Jaguar D types

right

there was some heavy hitters

but some high horsepower stuff there too

for the period

and those things on those roads

are capable of doing one hundred and forty miles an hour

cruising

all day long

we were not

the cars are really extraordinary too

maybe even a notch

above the Calmiles cars

not maybe honestly definitely

a step

so we saw the six 250 SWBs

the

three D types

there was a 250 Testerosa

there was a 500 TRC

a thousand miles on a 250 TR

and all these cars

it rained pretty much every single day

and those are not coupes

and they don't have an emergency roof

they don't have side curtains

they don't have a windshield

there's no wipers

and these guys are in there with their goggles

and leather helmets

or maybe sometimes helmets

and it's pouring rain

it's the same kind of shit that the guys

who raced the cars at the mall in period

were doing

it's pretty wild to see those cars out there

getting used like that

and for perspective for those who don't know

what a 250 Testerosa is worth

I don't know

it's between twenty five

and fifty million dollars

so these guys are driving

a thousand miles in the rain

very quickly

in a car that's worth as much as my neighborhood

and the neighborhood

next to it and the rest of the county

and like history too right

I think that specific car won Nürburgring

the thousand kilometers in Nürburgring

it also won SeaBring

it was driven by von Neumann

and it was unrestored

so it was kind of scruffy

that's cool

kind of a little bit rough looking

but very very honest and very real

and so the cars are heavy

I mean there was probably

I think registered there were seventeen

three hundred SLs

yeah

that's like the uniform

I mean the three hundred SL makes sense

because it's got fuel injection

and it's got cubes and power

they actually work at eleven thousand feet

they're cruising along

they were from airplane engines

so they were designed specifically

to accommodate altitude

that's so crazy

yeah lots of three hundred SLs

that was the uniform cars

three hundred SL because it's good

but still a seven figure car

and then obviously less expensive stuff

like our car

and Porsche 356's

and some Jag XK's also

those are the sort of like entry point cars

because they all cost under a hundred thousand dollars

which is inexpensive

for this event

but really heavy

and there were two Ferrari 410's

of the 35 that were made

like it's just

it's really wild to see all these cars

getting actually used

I think we made point to go walk

through the garage every single night

at least once yeah

just to see them all

and they get progressively dirtier

and you know

some have mechanical issues of course

and like the

Cal Mille there is

an entourage of mechanics

and tow trucks and stuff like that

which they're happy to help

and a lot of cars fail to proceed

I was going to say what was the

finish percentage

I don't know it seemed

there's 130 cars

big event a lot of cars

yeah huge

I would say at least 75% of the cars

finished yeah I think over a hundred

for sure yeah and

you know the event is sponsored by

Mercedes-Benz and so

they provide loaner cars

if your car fails to proceed

and then hopefully the mechanic team

can get it running again by lunch

or dinner or overnight

or whatever the circumstances maybe

I think there was 21 new cars

like new entrance

new first timers

but if you think about that that's 110

literally regulars that are going on this

yeah and it's a tight knit community

but I think that they also know how to prepare

their cars and know what the event's about

for the most part yeah there's a couple of

clueless people who will say well every time

I go to cars and coffee it works fine so it's probably

okay good luck with that and then

you know they're doing a four day long rolling restoration

which is

you know not the mechanics preference

obviously

but yeah so I think there was a concerted effort

this year to introduce you know I have

younger people attending the event they're worried

about the long-term viability

for of this event generally

which is reasonable for

you know something where the newest cars

are 65 years old so I mean

it's good to be prepared for that

but there was a lot of people who

you know were there and they would say

I specifically bought

a car of this vintage so that I could

do this event like it's such a cool event

and it requires you have an old

car and so and I think it's doing a

meaningful part of keeping

the interest in cars of this era

live which I'm obviously super keen about

cool

what else to note

very fast roads incredible scenery

you know it's I in

I honestly did enjoy it more than the Cal

Melee despite liking the roads less

and despite not being in the

right car which is a

high horsepower car there's just something

about it that feels very

epic I guess

like hardcore yeah hardcore

I mean I think you really feel like you're going

somewhere you really feel like you're on a mission

every single day feels like a big day

there's something that we were talking about

compared to the Cal Melee the Cal Melee

you could shortcut each day

let's say you just want to do the morning it would be some

figure eight where you do the loop and then

you go to the spa and hang out and have

a cocktail and this you really

had to like all the checkpoints and

waypoints were at the extremity of the loop

yeah let's go far away from where

you started so you had to have to do the

day in order to fully experience it

and I think that was really rewarding

yeah because I think we were one of the

few that did every single possible mile

on the Cal Melee and everyone did the

whole event here and I think you saw

that in the cars that people brought like Charlie

Nierberg brought his 300 SL

on

the Cal Melee and then he brought his D-Type

on the Colorado Grand

yeah

so it's more

it's a little more hardcore it's not quite

as polished or plush but it's still

very nice event but it's like the

difference between like you know five

stars and four and a half stars and

technically I think the places we stayed were probably still

five stars but it just

there was less of the sort of

like image and

and yeah felt a little

bit less high

end but still high end

and I certainly didn't miss

that and it was cool to see

so much of Colorado because I hadn't really driven around

in the Rockies at all so that was

there may be some novelty there

also for me did it start and end

in Veil

so you started 8,000 feet

and then I think we had nights

in Steamboat which are

at a mere 6,000 feet but you go over a bunch

of 11 plus thousand

foot mountain passes

I told you in the route book I can't remember the number but I told

you how many times we went over 11,000 feet

in the final day that's crazy

there's a lot of up there

but yeah

really really incredible event highly

recommend you get also three more years of eligibility

California Mila is 57

and Colorado Grand is 1960

and so it introduces

a tranche of cars that

you wouldn't see which was cool so that's why

all the SWB's were there and that's not an eligible car

on the Cal Mila

so highly recommend

the event

the car did great

aside from I think

we went into Wyoming

which was also very high speed

and we kept hearing

this was day two some

popping sounds and we looked at each other

what was that sound

I don't know

so day two came and went

and then day three partway through we were like

the starter doesn't sound like it's

cranking quite as enthusiastically

and I think also in part of day two

we started running out of fuel

like long periods of wide open

throttle like into the minutes

the car would start to run out of fuel

we just thought that was a float bowl problem

we didn't realize at that point

or that like the stress testing that we had done

we'd never spent four minutes at continuous

wide open throttle

because you can't really do that

around here

but at 11,000 feet you can

it was climbing or that's

just like

there was a couple of roads where it was just straight

for as long as you could see

and you're just out there

and that car does what 100

I think we didn't go

quicker than 100 very often

and

obviously the higher you are the lower that speed is

really should even out

shouldn't actually be changed

but you have less horsepower

but you also have a less wind drag

the only thing that doesn't change is

rolling resistance which is a small portion

I think you can get there it just takes a lot longer

exactly

I guess we didn't have long enough pieces of road

to accomplish that

in any case you know you see a

slight incline coming and you charge the hill

to try and build speed before you get up it

and hopefully that you can make to the top

of the rise while still in fifth gear

today was the first time that I drove that car

again since the Colorado Grand

and I was shocked at how much power it has

Sea level does that

okay so what was the

the pop and what was the running out of fuel

they were all the same yeah

yeah when we got to lunch on

day three the car wouldn't start

because the battery had depleted

because

the voltage regulator had exploded

which was the pop which was the

pop and it wasn't

there wasn't enough electricity on board

to power the fuel pump which was why we were running

out of fuel wow okay

and no charge light on it I guess

we had it we had it on the beginning

of day one and then it went away and we never saw it again

I think maybe it that was a pop too

I think the way the voltage regulator

blew up eventually

sent no return signal

anymore to that would be the Italian way

to wire it well if the whole system

goes away there's no warning light telling you

that the entire system is

yes there's not enough electricity to light up

the dynamo light

so we

just gave the battery to the mechanics

team and they gave us a new battery

and that got us through the rest of the day

and then we the whole day

we just swapped the battery at the end of every day

a whole day

actually one day and a half

and the wipers were going and everything

so clearly

the generator was actually working

because I disconnected the generator

so it wouldn't backfeed

I can't

it's got to have the most efficient

spark plugs

that's amazing

so we could make it through an entire day

on a fully charged battery

you tried that in a modern car

and you have

like running

three minutes four minutes before it'll start

cutting systems

there's not many systems in that car

we had to have the wipers because it was

wipers use a lot

I am shocked

I mean they're probably

horribly inefficient but still like six watts

that's amazing

wow

so you've never fixed it

until you got home

yeah I think it's only fixed just now

wow

and what else

the elevation in Colorado

is really wild because you're just driving up I-70

which goes to the Eisenhower Tunnel

which is at 11,158 feet

which is the highest vehicle tunnel

I think in the United States

and you're like driving along

and through these towns at 9, 10,000 feet

and like

I kept having my mind blown

because in California

Lake Tahoe level is 6,200 feet

and you know the

settlements kind of go up to maybe 7,000 feet

and you think of that as high

and just to drive by like a fucking

Taco Bell at 9,000 feet

you're like what is this place that I'm in

how do they cook, how do they stand up

how does the water boil

and so I was like I wonder what the tallest

highest Taco Bell in the world is

and I looked it up and I turned out the route went through it

so I made us take a photo in front of the highest Taco Bell

That is the one photo I saw that you posted

so like you can see how much time I spent on Instagram

right, like I saw it I was like why are you

why highest Taco Bell

I mean highest elevation

not highest Taco Bell I'm sure that there are other Taco Bells

that are higher than that

everyone at the Taco Bell is high

yeah so that was pretty cool

and the towns

that we would stop in for lunch were like sort of

you got a sense of place there

the locals would be there and serving you food

and they'd be like thank you so much for coming

and they'd tell you about the place that you were in

and serve you food that was sort of representative of the place

and you got more, I got a very strong sense of place

unlike Taco Bell

I got a strong sense of place on this event

which I thought was really

quite neat

that was the Colorado Grand

I want to go

yeah you should do it, I recommend that

everyone do this if you can find a way

if you can afford it that's I think

I'm not going to ask you what it costs don't tell me

I'm just going to fantasize about doing it

it costs two thirds as much as

the Cal Mille

so I only have to have mortgage two thirds of my house

I'm kidding

and buy a car that's eligible

yeah I was going to say do you have something that

and I think it keeps the market

and going

it keeps the market in interest of

these cars alive

I think that these cars of this era would be much less

interesting because there's plenty of guys

which I was pleased to see who were in their 40s

and maybe even 30s there

and

they buy cars of this era

so they can do this activity

which is I think critical to their

continued interest and it

introduces people to a new frontier of car

use

that I think is important to do

so I

certainly recommend it unreservedly

there are somewhat picky about cars as well though

they would like a sporting car

they want a sporting car

like I asked them when

I was talking to the organizer before the event

I said do you want the alpha or the jag and he said

definitely the alpha

and I was like oh okay

oh it's got four doors

yeah but it's probably way faster

it's definitely torqueier

and quicker and faster

yes

the sporting saloon is not enough

more help in the chassis department

I think now that we've proven that we aren't jackasses

I hope

then they will maybe have us back

with

a less appropriate car

maybe you won't get such a big speeding ticket this time

maybe we'll get a bigger one

because the jag has more oomph

and more pre-war cars also

God that's a big commitment

yeah

that's super cool though

in the fucking rain

they were like five or six pre-war

bentleys

and they like to be tough

they don't want to take their top up

they don't want to take the time to do that

they want to just power through

I don't know how much I want to do this event

they're like oh you put your roof up

what are you going soft

fuck had its raining

they don't look kindly on that

the bentley people

the things are like steam locomotives

they're hardcore

that's so cool

but the leather will get wet

and

yeah

if not for that then for what

I get

I think that's very cool

it is, it's incredibly cool to see these cars

because we always carp about how the cars get

squirreled away and hidden and all that stuff

there's just nowhere else that you can see the cars

getting used especially

hard like that

I think that's the appeal of some of the good wood stuff

you can see these cars really getting driven in anger

we don't have anything like that

I think this is the closest thing we genuinely have

in the states to that

we're just not spectatable

that's the only issue right?

yeah, you gotta go stand on the side of the road

or know where the route's going

there were lookie-loos coming through the parking garage

and just looking at the cars

they're interested and obviously very respectful

but just wandering through

cars were in a parking garage

every night, they never spent the night outside

why live empty?

they could get wet

Derek?

missed on them or something

but nobody obviously was giving a shit

that's so cool

yeah, I think

I don't think I've ever done a motoring event

that I've enjoyed more than that

even more so than

our shitbox rallies and we'll get to your shitbox

rather than you guys do

clearly very different

they're very different

maybe I like our rallies more

because it's a small group and our friends

and so it's less of a like

doing this activity

and more hanging out with friends

it's just us and we of course enjoy

hanging out with each other but it's not the same thing as if you have

the whole family together

so we're finding ways to bring more cars

next year if they'll have us

and bring the whole company if we can

our rallies and the hangout time

at the house afterwards where you're just hanging out

the house is obviously

really enjoyable

obviously I stay at five star hotels

all the time

but you know what I do prefer is cooking

and there's something really nice

about the way we do our rallies

we're just all in one Airbnb

and now you know what I'm talking about

because we did our company OTS one

for the first time last weekend

we got back yesterday

so these are two in a row

I love how you bookended the financial spectrum

of the automotive world

that wasn't my idea

that was Taz's idea

just from hearing about all of our

shipbox rallies all the time?

I just said I want to do a rally as a company

and Taz is like that's not hard enough

he says the mechanic right

you do realize you're going to be fixing everything that's broken

surprisingly everyone's stuff

held together

with some intervention

some intervention

it was a little touch and go with Robert's car

going into the rally

but I think once it got there

hold on isn't this the same Robert

who's blown up every unblowable engine

yeah he blew up his Miata

and he blew up his M20 engine

he's got a knack for blowing up

and that's why he now thinks he's unstoppable

oh Jesus Christ

so what cars were there?

so the premise was

I think that was your idea right?

we should put a cost cap

and everyone has to bring something

so the cost target was $2,000

because it wasn't hard enough

just to try and do

600, 800 miles or whatever

of hard motoring in the weekend

so you said $2,000

and Taz wouldn't reveal

what the car was until

right when we started basically

what yours was?

everyone knew what mine was because I already had it

did you fucking cheat it?

well it's not my fault I was the only one of us who had

some $2,000 car already

that's not entirely true

Calvin had

a $700 Miata which we were

going to try and he paid $700 for this thing

that

it looks like it fell down a flight of stairs

so I thought okay he'll bring

the Miata

but he didn't bring the Miata

he actually blew the budget

but it was a pre-existing car because he

rode the train like an hour to go get the Miata

and he realized he didn't have the key to the Miata

and so he said

rather than take the train home an hour

and get the key to the Miata

I'll just bring the other car

which is a 1976

Datsun 280Z

which is not

the one you want 76 because

it has to be smogged it's the first year

fuel injection and the last year the four speed

so it's just the worst of all worlds

which is part of why he did blow the budget

by paying $3,200 for the car

but he owned it already

it was more appropriate than the Miata because

it was certainly less of a sure thing because

he bought the car and it hadn't been on the road since

1991

2 I think

well the sticker was 92 so my assumption was

that sticker was applied in 91

but anyway

35 of almost years

since the car had run

he bought it in college and spent all of college

fixing it

so it's not like he just got the car

no no he's had it for a while

and at the end of

college he finally got the car running

and then he left

and so the car had never left campus

while he's owned it

because he went through every system

and it, fuel injection

radiator

brakes

the transmission came out

I think the engine never came out

but basically everything you need to do to get a car on the road

that's been off the road for 30 plus years

so this was really its virgin voice

he said he'd never driven the car

off of the college campus

oh my god

just getting it to the shop

getting it to the shop was like 40 miles

or whatever it was

first freeway experience

that's courageous

so that was that car

I had my $1,300 salvage

C280

which we bought as a rallycross car

18 months ago maybe 2 years ago

and vetted quite well

yeah it's gone all over the place

on snow tires

the car's lifted and on snow tires

and I don't think we've done any maintenance

besides changing fluids

to it

thought it was really really slow

and we did like a timed 0-60

and then we changed the air filter

and then the 0-60 improved by 1 second

oh my god

the hell was in the filter

well off the off-roading detritus

but yeah the Mercedes was fine

and then Taz bought

where did you find this thing

Facebook marketplace

where I spend most of my evenings

what is it

it's a 72

MG midget

oh okay that's the midget

super happy car now

wasn't when I got it

I went up to Vacaville

it was in a barn for many years

with spiders?

yeah lots of spiders, Faith was really upset about all the spiders

yeah he brought his fiance

and you're still engaged

still engaged, happier than ever

even though she didn't drive it the whole time

which she was upset about

she should have

but I bought the car

on the premise that I only needed a clutch slave

and I got into my house

and I did all this at my house

because I couldn't possibly bring it to the shop

because then they would see it

well this owned by his father

and also the other rally attendees

would see it

so it ended up being like asked

to work on that car in my garage

because it ended up needing the engine

and transmission to come out

it had no second gear, third and fourth were questionable

I had to find a couple transmissions

to blow apart for spare parts

how much did you pay for those?

zero, they were free

it was within budget

how much did you pay?

for the car, 1850

and I lauded myself

like I painted the engine to make it look like it was freshly rebuilt

that was like

$17 can of green paint

for moss motors

so I lauded certain things into the budget

to get it up to $2,000

he took the budget similar

seriously unlike some other attendees

I mean safety equipment

I think didn't count similar to Lemons

so I had retires, no worries

brake stuff, no worries

but performance gains had to be within that cap

so the

clutch slave was not just a clutch slave?

no, the release bearing

had imploded

and so when I took the motor off

there was just pieces

of bearing all throughout

the bell housing

so it needed a clutch

and then you rebuilt the transmission

yeah, it needed that too

well, how long of a kind of rebuilt?

yeah, it pops out a third

but

if you can drive one handed it works well

but at the time, I mean it's pretty good most of the time

yeah, it stays in second mostly

third it will not stay in unless you hold it

oh really? unless you're full throttle

if you're full throttle it stays

what was your runway

for how long did you have to do this?

I had like two months

I bought it right before car week

that's not a long time

it ended up consuming my life

because the transmission

is apart on the bench

and he has cars going to Pebble Beach

that he has to show them

to the judges at Pebble Beach

and he's got an MG transmission blown apart

I'm more surprised that I'm still engaged

from getting the car prepared

not the rally itself

because there was many nights I'd come home

and work on that thing until

I don't know, midnight or so

one of my friends came over

and we didn't have a cherry picker at the house

so we pulled the engine out ourselves

just muscled it out the front of the thing

which you can do with a 1.2 thing

yeah, it's a big block, 1275cc

it's iron, isn't it?

it's heavy

but I think lighter than that thing

what else did you do to that car? brakes?

I think that was a lot of work to do in two months

yeah

I just did general service stuff

okay, so we have

the Datsun, the Mercedes

MG Midget

which has a beautiful British Leyland badge on it

so you know it's going to be good

we've talked about Leyland before

garbage cars

and we had two British Leyland cars

attend the event because the fourth rally

attendee, our third founder of the business

Robert brought a Triumph Spitfire

and

what day of the week did he buy that car on?

was it a Wednesday, I think?

the event started on a Friday

and he bought the car a week

and two days before the event started

it was a whole week plus two days

I figured, no, it was just two days

two days prior

so the Triumph Spitfire

is a lovely

77, so also smog

requiring

1500cc

and it's choked down for smog

so it's got a single carburetor

a single Stromberg carburetor

and

all fresh emissions equipment but nothing else

about the car was fresh

someone spent a huge amount of time

trying to get the car to smog because it had license plates on it

brand new

catalytic converter

brand new smog pump

brand new charcoal canister

evap canister was new

everything else about the car

if he had bought it more than 10 days in advance

I suspect but

if you wanted to register in California

somehow somebody smogged the car

and it was registered in California previously

a remarkable achievement

for sure

a lot of the car is remarkable

there are no boots left

on any of the tie rod ends

the steering rack boots are

the left one is made of duct tape

the right one is

so deteriorated

that you can see the part of the rack

that comes out of the end that's supposed to be covered

by it

it'll just wear faster it's fine

what else did we have

with that car

it had a pretty significant shake

due to some driveline

really an aggressive driveline jutter

for sure

it was factory wasn't it

they all come from factory that way

my British Leyland product definitely has that

so I was thinking the Rover SD1

I was looking for Rover SD1s actually

if I had been able to find Rover SD1

in time for the event

once I knew that they both had British Leyland products

I was madly

scrambling looking at every British Leyland product

I could possibly find

no one ever

that was an entirely new sentence

and Taz actually did find

a Jag XJ6

in LA

for what was it?

3500

it had the Union Jack graphics on it

but the person said it had passed smog

and that it had a clean title

and was functional and if it had been

local I would have gone and looked at it

which means I probably would have bought it

so the triumph what did we do to the triumph

coolant flush

yeah we did coolant flush

not a rust came out of the radiator

the oil

looks like shit

the brake fluid also looked like shit

a lot of suspended particulates

in both the coolant and the brake fluid

when you say like shit

you mean like actually like brown and chunky

or like

you don't mean poor quality

you mean actually like feces

it looked like fecal matter

the U-joint

Robert and I did one of the U-joints

it had like a half inch of play

so when you were driving it

it dunked the whole entire time

so we did do that

which I think was wise

otherwise it would have cracked in half

our target departure time

was noon

and at 11.45 the car was on the lift still

getting a fuel line replaced

because there were like visible cracks

in the fuel line

by the tank

so it was pretty touching

you were trying to make it not spit fire

yes

it was quite literally

over the muffler I think

you could have ended this

this whole misery so much earlier

had you just left that fuel line

yes that is all true

but then where was the fun in that

on video

I do not advocate torching your cars

it would have done it itself

that is true

so that was all the prep

so where did you go

so we went north on 101

just transit we decided to make day 0

or day 1 a transit day

just to get to the house

I think Google Maps says it is 2 hours

and 130 miles

or something like that

which it was not

it was by far the hardest day

everything

the Mercedes I am guessing never did you

well

you know the Mercedes was tough

because there was a pretty annoying rattle

from the sunroof

that was really

pretty difficult

to live with

the other problem was that day 1 was quite warm

which taxed all of the cars

and the air conditioning

in the Mercedes was not working properly

so

the third

one of my 3 co-owners

in this car also

co-owned the SD1 with us

and he is inclined to perform

engineering at times

and to get the AC running

the compressor would periodically just switch off

and it would never stay running for more than a minute

at a time so the air conditioning wasn't cold

and so he had the bright idea

of running power

hard wiring power to it

which he

pulled off of the left front

side marker light

so it only has AC when the lights are on?

yes

so it was easy for people to tell

whether I had the AC on because the parking lights would be on

also the windows are closed and you're comfortable

so that was a fun feature

but at least I had AC

and then somehow in the course of doing this

I'm not sure why this was introduced

but if you turn the car off

with the AC

with the parking lights on

it would stay running and you could pull the key out of the ignition

and then you'd have to turn the parking lights

off for the engine to turn off

what?

backfeed bullshit is go wow

I don't know so you have to use both

ignition switches if the AC has been running

in order to turn the engine off

the Mercedes was otherwise faultless

one of the

actually the air conditioning

indicator flew off

so I lost my air conditioning

partway through the event

the air conditioning indicator

the parking light flew off

thus resulting in no air conditioning

customer states

the turn signal has departed

therefore I have no AC

so the Mercedes was otherwise faultless

I'm guessing no one else had air conditioning

definitely not

which was

but the cars were generating enough heat on their own

I think it was very taxing day zero because it was like

80 degrees 90 degrees

it was 95 at some parts

I wouldn't know my temperature gauge says it's

136 degrees always

not in the car

not if the headlights are on in the car

it was quite hot and there was a gradual climb

most of the day you were constantly

doing this uphill battle

which

hurt every single car

minus the Mercedes

this is the trick you always just

any cheap car economy challenge

you just buy a Mercedes

it was $1,300

with a salvage title and it works

perfectly for the air conditioning

which

I think quite literally all of us thought that

we weren't going to make it past day one

I think there was one point where we thought

we were going to get to the house

we did stop a number of times

so we stopped for lunch

and we came back from eating

and there were puddles of coolant under both of the British Leyland cars

that's normal

it was like the size of the front end of the car

yeah it was like half the size of the car

and so thus began some concern

but it was ultimately nothing

I know that my car

certainly

developed a crack in its overflow tank

which made it a zero pressure system

so

we got to a really cool crystal

rock shop

like a rock store

where I also noticed that

my temp gauge was pegging

at 230

so we pulled off there to look at some rocks

and once it cooled down I found out that

I had a crack and that I had no coolant

in my system

so I think went through a lot of water

went through a lot of water to get it to an Apple store

or buy some JB Weld to resolve that issue

but I think Robert's car also

in high temp like that climbing hill

is pressurizing the cooling system

and also expelling water in a different way

therefore head gasket

for those who are not mechanically inclined

yeah but at 50 horsepower

and like on a cool day I don't think there's enough

low by

yeah actually have it be an issue

plus he could have

if he was nice siphoned off some of that

excess cooling system pressure with a small hose

over to your car

and pressurize your cooling system thus raising the boiling

point and solving your issue but he's

holding hands and our cars could be as well

next to each other

45 miles an hour on the highway

and then

you had a number of other issues on day

one with your car as well

yeah

you had a

the car

started running quite poorly

and so we pulled over on the side of 101

and

it was only doing it under load

and so you thought it was an ignition issue

so we did a roadside coil

which didn't fix the problem

you had one with you clearly

he had a spare coil

yeah

and then it turned out that it was actually running out of fuel

because

the rust from the fuel tank

had occluded the fuel filter

there's a little one of those clear jobs

that you can blow through and keep going

well you couldn't blow through it because it was so occluded

okay let me just remove the filter then

no problem

I think

the total filter

number I went through was six

on the rally

think of how much rust you removed from your tank it's halfway fixed

yeah yeah no keep going

another rally it'll be all done

so

was that the extent of the issues I guess

for my car it also was consuming

I burned up axle seals

on the final day

so it was leaking differential

we did the section of road that you and I particularly enjoy

that ends right at the coast after

a long extended section of

ass hauling

we did it downhill

and Taz gets out of the car

and he's like great piece of road

man this car really loves to be sideways

and I was like what

isn't it rated at 65 horsepower

and then I looked at the rear tires

and there's grease all along the sidewall

it's got the tire shine in a radial pattern

because the axle seals had failed

and there was just

gear oil all over the tires

and that's why he had rear

nobody could keep up

actually

when we were really moving along

of course nobody could keep up the road is greased

he's literally doing an oil slick

yeah

that's probably true

so

for most of the time actually everyone was able to

maintain pace

on snow tires the Mercedes has very little grip

perfect

but a huge amount of control

it is amazing

I made Taz drive it up on our hill climb

that we always do

the non-center line bumpy one

and well you can share your impressions

yeah I mean you can just have that thing

completely

coming around at a low speed

and it's a riot

people sleep on Mercedes chassis tuning

but they were

every Mercedes I've ever hustled on a back road

especially the shittier the tires the more assy they are

they're really really really good

it was one moment where I was just feeding it

and seeing what it wanted to do

and it resulted in a little bit of a tank slapper

coming back around

but it was a riot it was super fun

and like all this is happening at

35 miles an hour

nothing can possibly go wrong

almost

you say that

it's very good at four wheel drifts

it's quite neutral but you can provoke it

with weight transfer which you saw me

doing you both observed that I sort of

flick the cars in which I do to upset them

to try and get them

a little out of shape for amusement

lift turns tab

exactly

and the tires were

very loud and the grip was so little

interestingly on a good road

as long as the horsepower wasn't a factor

the MG was almost exactly the same

speed as the Mercedes

the tires were the great

equalizer because on grippy tires

the Mercedes would have

it would have been boring

so I was glad to have the snow tires

the tires chunk apart in the heat

they definitely

they look pretty good to me

they definitely didn't sound good

on the highway on the way back

yeah

they aren't as round as they once were

but they look okay

yes I think that's right

I still have yet to see this car in person

I'm hearing about this for like two years now

but it's really good

it's pretty funny

especially when you consider the price

so yeah that was

day two by comparison

was like the actual driving day

did we have any

incidents on day two? just some fuel filter

replacements? yeah fuel filter

and cooling periods

for both my car and Robert's

to let them cool off

but the JB weld repair held

there was definitely night

wrenching

and because his axle seals failed

and he was lubricating his tires

he added

diff oil

my car was consuming a quart

of oil every

130 miles

that's substantial

yes and we have no cat

what year was your car? 72

72 yeah no cat so who cares

that's fine

I think everyone behind us was getting a little

they're all dead now

between the oil slick and the smoke screen

malaria has been eradicated

because there are no insects left

all the mosquitoes are dead

the goal is to win the rally right

however you

tackle it

so was there a timed portion of this

a race? no

there was a drag race

there was a drag race in a 35 zone

and no laws were broken

let me guess Mercedes one

no there was just a two car drag

and we haven't talked at all about the Datsun

because nothing went wrong with it

it had a long brake pedal

it had a very long soft brake pedal

despite all the brake components

that's astonishing

for zero shakedown

the house we stayed at was at

a two or three mile

long washboard

unpaved road

and the cover of the

MAF has a barn door

which I was surprised by

EFI in 1976

it looks like a

Bosch

metronic looking barn door thing

that had to be one of the very first cars to

hold on

there was something else recently that I saw

super early

DJed is technically EFI

but it doesn't have a barn door

since this means L

which is

I thought Rover was one of the first in 1980

so that's

he said it was a Bosch system

I didn't confirm it was Bosch

but it was a barn door that looks like a metronic barn door

when I did a Z episode

now I'm thinking

I think that car might have been one of the first ever

to use that system

in any case there's a plastic cover

that falls off

and apparently you lose throttle control

when that happens the car was just idling

and it was unresponsive to the throttle pedal

oh normally it's just a plastic cover

you pull it off and you can

clean the contacts

but

anyway the car had no throttle after that

and then we taped it back on

and the car ran beautifully for the remainder of the two days

fuck weirdness

vacuum

that's bizarre whatever

so that was the only issue with the Datsun

and it was just shaken apart by the unpaved road

that we were on

that road was impressive

it was quite long and it was quite steep

and the poor

rear wheel drive cars

my car had to be throttled the whole way up

he's like in a cloud of dust

my car had

oh shucks I feel so bad for you

you have to drift the whole way out of the airbnb

my car did this on several occasions where

if you needed to get over

a bumpy section of road or dirt

it would start to kind of pogo

and you would feel like you're on a dirt bike

where you're making it over

and you kind of get these moments of

free spinning

traction searching

it's hilarious fun

but I could tell that the car

wasn't thrilled

the Mercedes loved it

how lifted is that

it's probably an inch and a half

two inches lifted and they were off-road

to begin with yes and it has the snow

tires but I you know

when we were leaving

when we wouldn't be having to go back

I was kind of power sliding up the hill

I didn't do it on the first day because I didn't

we'd have to go back but you know

when you're leaving the house for the last day

so I had a great time

cool

the cars all made it

some intervention required

it was an adventure

more of an adventure than our rallies

are a different adventure

different kind of adventure

less motoring

less motor

probably less pace too

much less pace

but more limit

I definitely haven't spent as much time

being sideways

or in four-wheel drifts

on our other rallies

as I did this one because the Mercedes

race prepped Porsche

no I mean the other Mercedes

you didn't do the large barge when I was in the R129

but that car

had much more grip

so it was not as much sideways

so when this episode goes live

but this week the R129 revelations episode

will have done gone live

and the driving sequence at the end

I did all three cars

so this was, if you guys haven't seen the episode yet

I have a 300 SL

so the five-speed

dog leg, six-cylinder R129

plus a 500, your 500

plus a 600 V12

and I beat the shit out of all the cars on the way up the hill

because they're all owned by friends

and so I don't have to explain

and the Mercedes-Benzes

and the 300 was the most fun

I think mostly because the tires just never shut up

you just hear this

terrifying

the entire way up the hill

sounded like a whale being

tortured

being tased in the balls

yeah fun

fun times to beat

it's a good activity yeah

what was your impression of it

you've attended your first Derrick rally

yeah I really liked it

she complained about the route he gets very upset about that

the route was good

it was a lot of transit

but we needed it to be

I thought the route was actually very good

damn it

but I was really happy

I mean that car

really appreciated his route

so I said something other

you wouldn't be honest

we cut out some of the more

I would have loved cars that were more durable

so we could do more of the roads

that I wanted to do

but I'd say tax the cars

as much as was appropriate or feasible

and I was hugely impressed

especially by the Triumph because the Triumph got almost no prep

I mean you are a professional

and spent two months

prepping your car

the Triumph we changed the fluids

and you did a U-joint

and a fuel line

and it was 25, that was $2,500

that car

did knock the cap

there was that one cap

at the end of day one

the Triumph started running like shit

and we pulled

the spark plugs out

actually what we did is

we started sequentially pulling off spark plug leaks

so I was like this thing doesn't sound like it's running on four cylinders

and so I said

sequentially pull the spark plug leads off

and see where that makes a difference

and

it's a single carburetor

with a shared intake manifold

but there's two branches

one that goes to the front cylinders

and one that goes to the back cylinders

and we pull off the front two plugs

and the car definitely runs shittier

and you pull off the back two spark plug leads

and it still sounds like shit

and the rear plugs looked

no all the plugs looked pretty decent actually

we pulled all the plugs out they all looked decent

but we noticed that it only started running like shit

when you pulled the rear leads

or it made no difference when you pulled the rear two cylinders leads off

and so I don't know

how long did you guys spend

probably like

I felt bad because I left Robert

to his own ways with the car for a little bit

and Robert struggles to eat an apple sometimes

you know he's going to hear this right

sorry he's not here

no but eventually

I wandered out there and we were looking through

and it became apparent that

there was like some vacuum leak or something

so

ultimately there was just this nipple

that was just too

atmosphere

on the back end of the manifold

that was just completely unplugged

kind of sucking in air

yeah there's supposed to be like a little cap over it

which is covering this hole that

it's emitting you know unmixed

unfuelled air

and there's this

pretty terrific sucking noise of the air being drawn

into that hole

so anyway I put my thumb over it

and then the car started running perfectly

and I consulted

old pictures and there was a rubber cap on there

then obviously he had

departed

I was lucky he didn't pop the motor running that lean

yeah he

this must have happened right as we were getting

off the exit to our house

yeah right and he had to climb

a pretty substantial several mile

hill

full throttle there's no vacuum

I think it was getting

unmeasured air in

for sure but at least it will get air in

you have to get a running start to make it up one

of the hill

I was like where is everybody

and then turned around and went back and the car

perched on the side of a very steep hill

running like shit

there's this poor sweet old lady on FaceTime

watering her plants

he was revving

the car right in front of

there is video

of this and we listened to the video after the fact

and we were like what does this sound like

and eventually I was like it sounds like an airplane

because it's a wide open throttle going by

and the revs aren't climbing because it doesn't have enough

power up the hill for the revs to climb

so it just sounds like an airplane because it goes by

continuous same RPM

full load 2500 RPM

yeah

and so it was a little bit

sad but anyway

we fixed it

with a

in the course of driving up the hill

a screw popped out of his dashboard

and ended up in the foot well

so he took that screw

and put painters tape around it

and then put it into the hole

and turned it in and then the car ran fine

for the rest of the event

fixed with higher quality materials than British Leyland

would have built the car initially

we wanted to use JB Weld

and I was like let's do something reversible

you need that port

it was factory capped for some reason

for a vacuum

gauge

was there an optional vacuum gauge for it

diagnostic

probably

yeah there was some adventure

but yeah we got there

anyway I don't know what the point of all that was

but we had a great time

sounds like fun

wasn't any less fun than doing it in real cars

maybe

it was more fun in some respect

and I only would have liked

us to be more confident the cars were going to make it

so we could have done more miles

so are you guys all keeping the cars or are they

I mean I know you're keeping yours

I'm keeping mine

I think the Johnson will stay forever

because it's sentimental

I like my car

I have dreams and aspirations for it

did your father know that it exists yet?

no he does know that it exists

because he's upset about it

but he doesn't know he thinks that it's getting sold

he tuts disapprovingly

it does need maybe a little more compression

the triumph is available

well look

it's vetted now

yeah I mean I said this

and I genuinely mean it

I think he added real value to the car

I think that a lot of freshly restored spitfires

like the most beautiful

restored spitfire went on Bring a Trailer

and reserved R&M'd for $5100

and the guy was asking 30 grand

for it on Facebook and then it's now 15 grand

and it's beautiful

you look at like the firewall

under the brake master cylinder

and it's all like pristine and gorgeous

and totally unrecognizable compared to the brown car

oh it's also shit brown

I should add that the spitfire is shit brown

well it also needs a diff though

yeah it maybe needs a diff

but it did survive just because it's making noise

or yeah it makes quite a bit of ruckus

but yeah I think it adds value to say that this car

just did I mean by my math

at 524 miles is what we did

and he was hustling it

yeah he was keeping up just fine

I think there was specially given the amount

of rubber left in the suspension bushings

which I would say is probably slim to none

it's not without needs

I'm amazed that the engine survived

with the history he has

of blowing up unkillable engines

well yeah and he ran it super lean for a while

ran it super hot for a while

and it still hasn't let go yet

so you know I don't know

it was an impressive feat

I like it

I think we should do another rally

a shipbox rally but everything has to be carburated

that's a great equalizer

I mean fuel injection is cheating

the morning first start

of the morning was always this like

the injected cars would just start up

and drive away and there would like I don't know

I think your car on average probably took

5

sort of attempts where it would run

yeah I think like one of the few things

I didn't have time to really get to

was besides the carburetor

and filter was the rest of the fuel system

so I had their original SU

fuel pump in it which wasn't very

active and the tank was obviously

shit so

it needed some coaxing

yeah and then the

none of these cars would ever start and stay running

on the first, second, third, fourth

or fifth attempts

none of the

car so all the injected cars would just

start on the first turn of the key

of course

yeah we take that for so granted

carburetor cars didn't work when they were new

yeah

and that was one of the conversations that we had

was I can't believe that just regular citizens

who just

wanted to not walk would have to deal with

shit like this in the 1970s

and before

I mean I was there in the very late

70s and early 80s

my dad had an 81

Land Cruiser

82

83, 4, whatever

why can't I think of it right now?

our Saab was an 81, what do you think it was?

a carburetor Land Cruiser and I would have to go out

and start it in the morning and keep it running

so that he could drive me to school

if it really snowed a lot that was the only time

my parents would drive us to school

and even that it was a Toyota

but if you didn't choke it and you weren't

tickle it just right

then you flooded it and then yeah

yeah

that was my mom

in 2000s

this is even crazier, my mom lived on Aruba

little tiny island

and in

2000

she bought four

she opened a car rental business

and one of their first purchases was four Toyota

Tercels and it looked just like

the US market Tercels except

if you'd get in it they had no

heater core because it never gets cold

on the island so the AC switch was

just cold to not cold

there was no red it was just

blue to white

and they had no rear defrosters and stuff like that

and I remember going to the dealership with her

I just happened to be there

to pick up these cars and she needed four people

four people to drive four cars home

and I just remember starting it

and they were

and they were carbureted

in 2000 they were new

brand new and I'm like

she's like yeah choke it Jason

oh my god

yeah

that was the end of the carburetor

and so they started but they just did long cranks

and I think they had

I think it was that sort of you tap the pedal

a little bit to set the choke and then tap it again

to undo it but yeah

we're spoiled

well that sounds like fun

it was great fun both the

uber rich version and then the uber poor version

they're different fun I don't know

what is your impression about the two

events compared to each other

it's interesting because obviously

the crux of it is that you want

good motoring right yes

that's what you want and I think both provided

that for me certainly

there was that one stretch on day

three two or three at the Colorado Grand

that I won't forget

probably was my

favorite moment of that whole entire

oh the morning yeah the morning

morning from steamboat was

yeah really fast sweeping section

we got it out wide open

almost yeah

really fantastic

but you know there was also

the

motoring day that we had in the mg midget

where that thing was like yod out the whole entire time

that car like

it was so shitty in every single way and had such

a little grip that you could be coming around a corner

having the thing sideways like just have this

really beautiful moment of being off throttle

where the car is rotating you just

swap on the throttle it spits

out some garbage maybe like

an attempt at a flame and then

chunk of dust

yeah but you just do that on a repeat

for what felt like endless miles

and you know that was also

equally as rewarding

it is I would say for me at least

it's gratifying to

you know obviously we interact with pretty heavy hardware

professionally

and to still get this much

joy out of something that

you know

costs about as much as a cell phone

or a computer

is pretty wild

I like Taz's agnosticness

you know obviously he deals with very important

significant multi-million dollar cars but

he is

at his core a fan of the shipbox

cool

absolutely cool all right well hopefully

we do another rally soon and we have more

to talk about and we can rub it in

our audience's faces that we're doing

everyone should do this

we say this every time we talk about rallying

but everyone should do this activity

if you're a car enthusiast you should do this

and you should do it in something that

you should move to somewhere where there are great roads

or do the thing that people from the Midwest

where they're like I drove the tale of the dragon

and I drove there 14 hours to get there

and had one good road

and it was the best day ever

or you could

you know we can just do that anytime we like

but we're spoiled

although you guys

did go all the way to Colorado for good road

and that was 14 hours

that's where the event was

same basic idea

not because we needed to

join us again next week

thank you for joining us for this episode

thank you for joining us

see if that thing starts

get the fuck out of here for the next episode

next episode is going to start with us pushing that thing

I'm totally kidding

listen to all the things we've said

does it speak English?

and it's not a Leyland product that's important

maybe jealous though

yeah that it didn't get to go this weekend

we can bring in another one

it's on a shipbox

very cool

alright thank you for joining us

see you soon

Driving The Colorado Grand w/ Tazio Ottis — Carmudgeon Show w/ Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 208

About this episode

Chevy Turbo Sprint

Formula Mazda

Ferrari 500 TRC

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from The Carmudgeon Show