Ep. 296: Did US Truck Manufacturers Take Their Eye Off The Ball?

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and the spacious Grand Highlander with All-Wheel Drive to keep you and your safe.

Hey, you bring the action, we'll bring the traction. Toyota, let's go places. Based

on manufacturer's websites as of 10-20-25. On this episode of TfL Talking Trucks,

I have a special guest, Roman. You are my special guest. Sorry, I got a little confused.

No, no, because he's usually on TfL Car Chat. This is TfL Talking Trucks, my friend.

That's right. Today we're going to be talking about did the American truck manufacturers,

and actually the Japanese as well, take their eye off the ball, Andre.

Yeah, did they drop the ball? Yeah, completely. I think we can make an argument that somehow

the most profitable, the most American of vehicles has gotten lost in the shuffle with

electrification and with terrorists and with COVID and with all this other stuff,

and so we're going to be talking about what the heck happened to truck innovation

and why are we... Why do we see the return of an old Hemi?

I think we're in the slump, but it's not just bad news. I think we could play,

or at least I can play a little bit of devil's advocate maybe. We could talk about some news.

We're also live on Patreon. Patreon.com slash TfL Car is our only Patreon page for all of our

channels, so you can interact with us. You can ask us questions. We already have three questions

on this particular episode that we can get to. So yeah, so we can chat about the future of

pickup trucks, the present of pickup trucks, and some good and bad.

And the past, is this like Christmas Carol Andre? Is that what we're doing?

The ghost of pickup truck past, current, and future. Hey, where's Case, by the way? Why am I here?

Well, you're here because Case is reviewing a motorcycle right now.

He's riding Harley's Lucky Man, so you're stuck with me today.

American Thunder, right? Yes, Thunder. So before we get into the pickup trucks,

I see that you have your Buhanka sitting here in front of us.

It's a model. It's an RC model of a Russian van.

So what's going on with your Buhanka? Where are you at with that thing?

So if you also know, Case and I kind of had a little race, right? We both wanted to V8 swap

our project vehicles. He was working on the Land Rover Discovery. I was working on a Russian

UAZ 4x4 van. Case is already driving his Land Rover. My Buhanka loaf is at the mechanics.

Because the transmission exploded. Oh gee. So we swapped a 700 R4, which is a four-speed

automatic transmission behind the LS Chevy V8 in my van. And I lost two top gears,

just kind of went out. And I know really good transmission mechanic in Greeley.

So Ruben at Colorado Transmissions. I know Ruben. Yeah, Ruben is a cool dude.

He's good, but he's not quick Godrej. He's not the fastest. No, you may have that

Buhanka there for a while. But I think Ruben has an eye for he wants to do something. No, no,

no. He has an eye for perfection. He has an eye for specialty great craftsmanship.

But this is just like an old transmission you slammed into this thing.

No, no. He's like a wizard. He can fix a transmission in about 30 minutes,

but he wants to do something else. He wants to give me a 4L60 upgraded computer controlled

with tow-hole mode for off-roading. He has dreams beyond anybody. I have an experience

with the wizard. I'm not talking about a car wizard. Long before the car wizard in Hoovie,

I used to live in Prague when it went from communist to capitalist. I had a buddy who

loved Audis, and when the country was from communist to capitalism, what happened was

that there were a lot of, I'm using air quotes here, wizards who would buy crash cars in Germany,

specifically German cars, and then in the back of a shed, fix them up, repair them. So my buddy

comes to me and this is a Czech guy and he's like, you can't believe this. I got my dream car,

which at that time was an Audi S8, you know, the big sedan. And I'm like, where'd you

get that? And I'm looking at the car. It's an amazing car. Black, beautiful. He's like,

oh, I got it out of Germany. One of my wizards took this thing and completely rebuilt it.

Nice. That's awesome. Amazing. And I was like, okay, I hope he is a real wizard.

So fast forward to like two months later and I meet my friend again,

and he's all full-on and he's all like bummed out. And I'm like, dude, what's going on? And

he's like, you know that Audi I had from Germany? Well, I was driving it in the middle

of Prague down a hill next to a tram because they have trams that run alongside the traffic.

Yeah. And he was just a little bit ahead of the tram and all of a sudden his left wheel collapsed,

turning the entire car in front of the tram and then the tram just t-boned him.

Like in the movie. He was fine. Yeah. He was only doing like 15 miles an hour. So

it was not a horrible accident, but it was enough to prove that some of these wizards,

you know, had been absent during the part of their training when they were, you know,

getting the how to rebuild the car from scratch. I don't see how this story is relevant.

Well, every time I hear a wizard, I worry that the reputation may precede the actual.

Okay. But I've seen his transmission work and he's an amazing dude.

All right. We shall see. I'm holding my breath for you. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yes. But we will update you on Andre's because this is a long story. I mean,

you've had this thing, what, five years now? Probably four, fourish. Yeah, almost five.

And I haven't enjoyed it as much as I need to. What's your final goal with it? What do you

plan to do? I want to live in the van down by the river. Okay. You want to live out of this

thing? Well, yeah, but my wife is not keen on my idea. Yeah. I mean, I have a bed in there.

You know, it's really now going to be reliable, reliable Chevrolet that can take you from here

to there. And so I want to live in the van down by the river. So when you when she kicks you out

under the couch, you'll have a further place you can migrate to. Yes. You have a running

functional. Actually, you want to take an adventure? Do you want to take? I do. Yeah.

Our friend David, his dream, because he also built a project truck,

his dream is to meet me in Moab and, you know, traverse some terrain with our off-road Chevrolet.

He built an off-road record kind of in the in the way that Matt had done so.

Right. From Matt's off-road recovery. You may you may be lucky to have a record.

So you could pull me out. Exactly. All right. Let's talk about main subject. Let's talk

about the topics. Andre and I were doing an hike yesterday. We're driving back from

hiking to the new expedition. Yeah, expedition tremor. And we started chatting about, you know,

the fact that, let's say, American trucks have not necessarily had a lot of innovation. So when

we first started this 15 years ago, there was so much innovation in the truck world.

Yeah. That was the birth of the Raptor. Yes. SVT Raptor. Remember this? You and Nathan went

and you drove it. Crazy things happened after that. Yeah. Crazy things. Multiple engines were

introduced. Multiple engines were, you know, discontinued. In 2015, Ford switched to aluminum

bodies. Exactly. Which was when I was thinking about it back then, 10 years ago, you know,

it's the most popular vehicle, right? The F-series. And to switch it to aluminum,

you know, you have to, you know, completely, you know, suppliers, all this stuff has to happen

to make a million vehicles out of different material. Yeah. And then of course, heavy duty

trucks went from these ungamely, working vehicles to most luxurious, comfortable

horsepower went through the roof. If you think about towing went through the roof. Towing went

through the roof. I mean, I remember when, you know, you could not tow more than 15,000

pounds and now it's 30,000 pounds. 40,000 pounds. 40,000 pounds. There was just so much innovation,

especially in the off-road world, where like you said, the Raptor, the Hummer EV.

ZR2. ZR2, the Ranger Raptor. CRD Pro. Yeah, it was just a renaissance of both fuel economy,

powertrains, materials. There's not a part of the truck that you can think of that wasn't

changed or somehow improved or made much more efficient over the last 15 years. And that seems

to have kind of come to a grinding halt over the last. A slowdown. Yeah, over the last several

years. So we were just kind of discussing and looking at different ways that manufacturers have

kind of taken their eye off the ball. And I think we're going to try to give you some ideas,

at least things that we've noticed that I think hold up that thesis and prove that somehow

the manufacturers have forgotten that they're now truck companies. And I said it, right?

Well, because their profits are coming from pickup trucks. Let's talk about the domestics

before we get these specifics. First and foremost, Ford. Ford builds now one car. One.

What is it? The Mustang, right? That's all. And somehow, you know, they're building a GTD version

of it as well. But they only build one car. The rest is basically either trucks, crossover SUV or

truck. Yeah, so they're no longer a car company in the traditional definition of what a car is

Ford or sedan. And I think GM is similar. Yeah, very, very similar. Yeah, so GM just

discontinued the Malibu this year. Oh, no. Yeah, gone. And so now if you take the Corvette

out of it, and both the Mustang and Corvette are kind of their own thing, you know what I mean?

They're high performance, sporty cars, special vehicles, right? But GM is in the same boat. They

only build trucks, crossovers and SUVs. Yes, exactly. And then you look at Ram.

Ram is a truck company, you know, period. Period. I mean, they have commercial fans

and pickup trucks. And then the rest of Stalantis is a brand's, you know, Chrysler has

one vehicle, the Pacifica. So you can kind of like, okay, kind of a car. Dodge has one vehicle.

Well, too, there's the Hornet, I forgot. But it's easy to forget. And then of course, Jeep is

Jeep is SUV is all SUVs and truck based trucks. Yes. Or anyway, so these are essentially

truck companies. And yet when you look at the innovation that's happening with

the traditional type of trucks, I'm talking about, you know, beds. And what we think of

as traditionally trucks, there's not much happening. In fact, we've taken a huge step

backwards in some ways by and I know people have screamed and have stomped their feet and

have wanted the Hemi back. But there's a whole generation of engines that the Hemi is part

of that are that have gone away. And there's a good reason that they got that they went

away, right? What's the reason? Because they're, they're thirsty, and they're not fuel

efficient. And they're kind of old tech. Yeah. Well, so the 57 Hemi, I was just looking

this up, right? They had something called the Magnum generation of V8s. Remember,

we even own the 2001 Magnum 5.9 liter, you know, Nathan drove it. I remember it.

In 2003, four, the 57 V8 Hemi came out. It had the new brand, Hemi brand,

there was a commercial that thing got a Hemi, right? So but that was 22 years ago. Yeah,

and it came out when the Toyota V8 came out for the Tundra that you have, right? That's that same

generation. The Titan also had a very similar V8. And the reason that both the Toyota V8 and

the Titan V8 went away is because they were just thirsty. Well, and not that powerful compared

to a little bit of devil's advocate here. Okay. General Motors has just invested

that they announced $888 million in V8 engines. But they announced it like 15 years ago. So

inherently a V8 engine is not a terrible thing. No, in fact, all of us love the sounds it makes

and a lot of different things about it. So if you make it in a smart way, German manufacturers

still use a lot of V8 engines, right? So if you make it in a very smart way, it could be very

fun, very powerful, also relatively efficient, maybe not the most efficient thing out there,

but it could still be very, very good. But they announced that like three years ago, right?

I know. Where is the GM? We need to go manufacturer by manufacturer, my friend.

Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, let's not skip around. We have a whole

order. I prepared notes, Roman. All right. All right. I'm going to shut up and you go.

I've prepared notes and go down this order and then we won't be so disjointed.

Okay. Let's take a look at Ford. Okay. Okay. So Ford, you know, there's this war.

Who sells more pickup trucks? Is it Ford or General Motors? Data says General Motors,

if you combine GMC and Silverado sell more together, but Ford brand, the F series sells

more than Silverado brand or the Sierra brand. And so, Cole, I did a little image of a concept

truck. So let's bring it up. This is my AI rendering of a Lobo from the future. Do you

like it? Well, it looks electric because it has no grill on it.

Well, it might be electric, but all I asked AI to do is I said, take the current Lobo,

which is an F-150 street truck, street performance vehicle, and create the next

concept vehicle out of it. And for some reason, they turned into an electric truck.

The AI is kind of AI is very problematic because you and I often look up specs,

data about certain vehicles and Google wants to bring you an AI answer first.

And it's wrong. And it's in 90% of the time, it's wrong because trucks are more complicated than

just one trim, right? There is multiple engines. There's multiple configurations.

You have to be very specialized in how you present that information. That's why

TFL truck is there. So we should be getting ready for a new F series, F-150 specifically.

Traditionally, Ford has rolled out every six years and we are now about to hit six years.

So let's look at a little bit of the past. The ghost of truck past. So 2015,

huge generation change for the F-150. Then six years go by 2021, another big update.

That's the truck I used to own, the F-150 hybrid power boost that had a new styling,

new interior. They introduced new powertrain updates. So that was a big generation of change.

We're not talking about facelifts, we're talking about entire generations.

Yeah. And how you define that is a little bit also soft.

Usually chassis.

Yeah. Because they made the new frame, I believe this was in 2015, and that frame mostly survives.

I mean, once you make something really, really good, why change it, right?

That's how Toyota would probably think.

Dear winter, Toyota can't get enough of you. Because Toyota's got 25 vehicles with available

all-wheel drive and four-wheel drive. And that's more than any other auto brand.

From the versatile RAV4 to the Svelte Crown, the sleek Camry all-wheel drive,

the Corolla Hybrid all-wheel drive, the Rugged Tacoma, the Tenacious Tundra,

and the spacious Grand Highlander with all-wheel drive to keep you and your safe.

Hey, you bring the action, we'll bring the traction. Toyota, let's go places.

Based on manufacturer's websites, has a 10, 20, 25.

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If you made a great Tundra, keep it for 20 years.

You know, why change it?

But if we have the same logic, then 2027 should have a new F-150, right?

That means we would see prototypes.

Usually by now, we would be looking at prototypes

or we'd be getting some hint of what's coming, and it's been crickets from Ford.

As far as the next F-150, right?

So Andre and I are guessing at this that is that the next F-150 might be delayed.

But this is a bad thing.

Yeah, it's a bad thing because competition makes the breed better,

and when you start delaying things and you start kind of getting off that cycle that you were on,

that means that your resources are being drawn elsewhere, and you're not putting the

same amount of money and time and energy and people power into the next generation.

So I don't think it's a great thing.

We could be wrong.

But here's what's worse.

Yeah.

Here's something way worse.

We've seen recalls and not just, you know, minor recalls like, oops, I misprinted a sticker.

We're seeing powertrain failure recalls.

We've seen, you know, transmission related stuff, brake related stuff.

Cole, if you go to NHTSA, for example, and Ford of this year specifically has been quite

uh, not good related to this.

This is, is this a Ford or is this Chevy?

Yeah, so this is Ford.

Rear hub axle bolt may break.

Instrument panel display failure.

Loss of power.

Damage wire harness.

And these, a lot of these recalls are affecting many thousands of vehicles.

Sometimes, sometimes hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

So even if you have a truck that's been around for a while, like since 2021, essentially,

you would think that every year they would improve it and that the number of recalls would come down.

Now, you know, to be fair, this could be because the modern pickup truck is a much more sophisticated,

complicated and there could be, there could be supplier problems, you know, issues with tariffs

because they have to shuffle around constantly, which is insanely difficult, I'm assuming.

But nonetheless, you buy a pickup truck because you want a working machine and luxury machine

that you can depend on.

Yeah, so the question is, why are we seeing so many recalls?

If, you know, we're getting toward the end of the product cycle for the current generation.

Exactly, it should be going down, not up.

And especially in this political climate where it seems like government is becoming less

intrusive in all kinds of ways in the auto industry except for tariffs, of course,

but I'm talking about like emissions.

I'm talking about much of what the manufacturer has to do in order to comply with all

the government regulations, a lot of that's being lifted.

And yet we're seeing historically high recalls on Ford vehicles.

Why is that?

I know our supposition could be that, you know, Ford has been busy working on electric

trucks, Ford has been busy working on electric cars.

And somehow, you know, the bread and butter of the company has not gotten the

attention that we think it may have or it should be getting.

And I could be wrong about that.

That's just that we're looking from the outside in.

There may be other internal factors that were.

Well, they just announced the Model T moment.

Yes, that was not a Model T moment.

That was anything but a Model T moment.

That's what they called it.

That was even a Model A moment.

You know what that was?

What?

That was more of like a LTD moment.

Remember the LTD back in the 70s?

Oh, geez.

Maybe that was like that was an LTD moment.

Well, they didn't show a vehicle.

No.

There was no concept.

No.

There's nothing to rally behind.

They announced a new production method.

They announced a price of a potential new electric truck.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that went over like a lead balloon.

Most people were not impressed by that.

And especially given the fact that, you know,

we're certainly seeing a moment in time

when the pendulum has swung away from electric vehicles,

both politically and kind of culturally.

And so it just felt like they were kind of death

to what was happening culturally.

And to call a Model T moment, you know,

it's like with the Noia Clasa,

BMW just introduced a new.

So the Noia Clasa, new class of car,

the original one, it's really the Noia Clasa,

the new new class.

Yeah.

That saved BMW.

That was the introduction of the modern BMW back then.

You're talking about in history.

Yeah, back in the,

back in, I think it was the late 50s,

the early 60s when they stopped building

those Lysedas and actually started building a family sedan.

And that moment in time created what is the modern BMW.

And so with BMW's Noia class of the new one,

it feels like that this is BMW kind of saying,

hey, we're going to show you the next generation of BMWs.

And this is what's electrified.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's got better batteries, more range, yada, yada, yada.

But with Ford's Model T moment, like I said,

it didn't feel like there was anything that.

I want to see the truck.

How do you have a Model T without a Model T?

How do you have a Model T moment without a Model T?

There you go.

Well, you know what it was?

What?

Maybe it was their Edsel moment.

Edsel?

Edsel, that might be about.

It's a wake-up call?

No, Edsel is a wake-up call.

Edsel was a huge flop that Ford,

so that was.

No, well, didn't Edsel convince Henry Ford

to stop building the Model T and actually innovate?

No, I'm talking about the Model Edsel, the car.

Okay, okay.

You know, that one looked like it was sucking a lemon.

That was.

I remember.

That was supposed to be like the next design wave of Ford's,

and it just went over really poorly in the Edsel.

Sucking a lemon.

Yeah, it's got this mouth.

Yeah, it looks like that here.

Yeah, like a fish.

Yeah, it looks like a fish.

Yeah, that's the Edsel.

Yeah.

For all of you guys who are listening to this,

if you want to watch this,

head on over to TNP Talk and you could see me do a fish.

If you want to see Roman make a fish face,

you got to join us.

There it is.

You could see it on our screen.

You see what I mean?

An actual Edsel.

Well, actually that's a custom Edsel.

But anyway, that's an Edsel car.

Anyways, but Ford is not alone.

GM is helping out Ford with huge recalls.

I'm being sarcastic, I'm sorry.

But 6.2 liter V8.

It's been around for many, many, many years.

They recalled upwards of almost 600,000, 6.2 engines

because many of them were failing early on.

597,571 of them were recalled from 2021 to 2024.

And this is once again, at the end of the life cycle

of that engine, they're recalling so many engines.

Yeah, I mean, we could go into all of the problems

GM is having, but obviously their V8s have issues

with cylinder deactivation

or have had historical issues with cylinder deactivation.

Well, yeah, but these ones are like shaving,

the bearings are like shaving themselves

and the engine is failing.

So, as you guys know, GM does two V8s, not just one.

They do a 6.2 and a 5.3,

but both of them are pretty long in the tooth, Andre.

Yeah, and that's why they announced the new engine

that's coming, but we still haven't seen it.

The new L-Solo Block.

Heavy-duty GM trucks, 300,000 plus were recalled

because of transmission issues.

And that was through 2022.

But you and I have received many emails and messages

and just outreach from owners

of newer heavy-duty GM trucks that are failing.

Yeah, I think, so if you get on the forums

or if you watch TikTok, there are people out there

who'll point their finger and will say,

this is exactly what's happening.

I know exactly what's wrong with the transmission

or I know exactly what's wrong with the engines.

But the problem is, you know who knows

what's exactly wrong with the transmission?

GM knows what's exactly and Ford knows.

And a lot of times they're not saying Andre.

So the process is not clear.

It's very opaque.

And for, I'm sure, legal reasons and financial reasons,

the manufacturers oftentimes aren't that forthcoming

when they have these, let's say, massive problems.

Tundra had a similar issue.

100,000 engines were recalled

because they were shaving themselves

initially they didn't say that.

Initially they said it was some other reason for it.

It took a while.

And Tundra is probably the most transparent

of the car companies when it comes to this.

But the problem is when you're not transparent,

then you end up with a lot of different theories,

a lot of different people out there

who are basically creating clicks for themselves

by guessing or maybe even purposefully

lying about what's really going on.

And so we try to be very fair

and we try to be very thorough.

And oftentimes when we get emails from you guys

or there's a lot of buzz on the internet

about what's going on,

then we contact the manufacturer.

But very rarely do we get anything more than,

it is GMs or Fords or Toyota's highest priority

to make sure that our customers are taken care of.

It's a very standard message.

Yeah, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But never like, this is what's happening.

This is how many engines, this is the problem.

Every so often Toyota will do that.

Remember when we had our issue with the Tacoma,

we actually got a lot of help from Toyota.

Yeah, especially their engineering team.

Yeah, yeah.

But more often than not, that's not the case.

Yeah, but I want to give 4GM and even the RAM.

Were you still on the RAM comments?

And I don't know how many recall notices

we received in the mail.

I would say it could be double digits.

So RAM is not immune to this either.

But I want to give them credit because, for example,

recently Ford Ranger was recalled.

And Ford was very proactive.

They saw the complaints, they went to investigate,

and they recalled 100,000 Rangers, which is a lot of vehicles.

So they are being forthcoming, at least in the way of recall

and actually addressing some of these problems.

Like I said, it's hard to say whether this is because

there's so much new technology in trucks,

stuff that never used to be in trucks,

and now is commonplace in trucks, everything from like...

Radar systems.

Every RAM 1500 now has a radar.

Yeah, I was thinking about super crews or blue crews, right?

These are very complicated systems where you have basically

autonomy in the case of GM that allows you to tow.

I mean this is a lot of electronics.

And so I don't know how much of these recalls

are due to nuts and bolts issues where there was cost cutting

and a transmission that should have had...

I'll give you an example of that.

Two examples that are very similar.

We have that Cadillac with that North Star.

Yes.

And I was doing a little bit of research,

and of course the North Star is known for blowing head gaskets.

And what had happened was the GM didn't drill

the bolt far enough into the block,

and so eventually over time it would loosen,

and then of course if you loosen the head from the block,

the gasket will fail.

And it took GM I think seven years to fix that,

even though I think they knew about the issue long before them,

but it took them a long time

before they actually did something about it.

And that could be cost cutting.

I don't know, this is a long time ago now.

Well, we didn't work a GM.

No, we don't know.

And we don't work a GM right now.

Or remember when we had that excursion with the 10 cylinder board?

It would pop its spark plugs.

It was like popcorn there.

And the reason for that was that they didn't seem problem, right?

They didn't thread the spark plug far enough into the block,

eventually over time it would just pop out.

So these are kind of nuts and bolts issues,

which are understandable.

So I don't know if majority of those recalls are because of that,

or because there's so much new tech,

or because there's so much social media now

that when any one person has a problem,

they can amplify that depending on the size of the audience.

To make it seem like it's a lot of people having the problem,

or it's just hard to tell.

It's very opaque at this moment in time.

Yeah, but what's not opaque is when you go to a government site

that has manufacturer numbers and manufacturer confirms

that a certain number of trucks has been recalled.

That's real.

And those numbers are huge.

Okay, enough about GM.

But to be fair, some of those recalls,

especially with the major manufacturers,

are also fixed over the air.

Yes, they can be.

They can be fixed over there.

That's happening more and more.

Tesla, of course, pioneered that,

but we're seeing that more and more now.

Like the latest Ford F-150 Super Duty screen going black.

Recall, it's over in the air, pretty quick update.

But here's the thing that I also wonder about.

We just were driving that expedition.

And Ford had done what GM has done,

and that is they have removed the little switch

that controls the lights.

Yes, it's now a digital button.

It's now a digital button

that's way in the corner of the screen.

That to me seems like you're asking for trouble.

Because if you can't turn your lights on at night...

And your screen is malfunctioning.

You've just basically bricked that truck.

So why did they take the light switch

and put it into the screen?

I have no idea.

Same thing with when they do the little motorized vents.

You're just adding complexity

for the sake of adding complexity,

creating what I would call a future recall.

Another one of those...

This is very common now

when you have door handles that automatically retract.

We have the Tesla Model S from 2014.

It's got... I was just driving it today

because we have to get a check.

Well, Hyundai like Ionic 9, for example.

Oh, several other vehicles.

Yeah, I mean, you're just...

You're basically creating recalls when you do that.

For the future.

At some point, those door handles are going to fail.

And when the driver's side door handle fails,

you just break the vehicle.

Unless you like crawling in through the passenger side,

which is not a lot of fun.

And so that's what I'm talking about

when I say technology.

Is it this new technology?

And why, why, why, why are they going down that road

when they probably know

that they're creating issues for themselves?

Why not just keep stuff that works?

The new Expedition, otherwise.

I keep picking on that,

but we were driving yesterday.

You know, they created something

that to me is just asking for trouble.

And that is once upon a time

when first Tesla modernized this,

you had little rotary switches on the steering wheel.

Yeah.

That allowed you to change the rear-view mirrors,

allowed you to change the steering wheel up and down.

And then Rivian copied that.

And I always hated it

because it was always very unintuitive.

You basically had to learn

how to use those switches to control multiple functions.

It's much easier if you have a little switch

on the side of the steering wheel

and you push it in and the steering wheel goes in.

You push it up and the steering wheel goes up.

Very logical, intuitive.

These things are not.

And now Ford has gone the next step

in the new Expedition.

They have created a haptic version of that.

So no longer do you have

an actual switch on the steering wheel.

You just have a haptic touch control.

And I remember when I got in the vehicle

and I tried to adjust the steering wheel,

I couldn't figure out how to do it.

And I'm going to pride myself

on being an automotive journalist.

And I literally sat there just like for 15 minutes,

like wondering how I do this.

And you had to come in and show me.

Yeah, I was wondering why you were sitting

in the parking lot.

He said, why didn't I go get lunch?

Why was I just staring dumbly forward?

I think you had an identity crisis or something.

What that looked like.

My dog just died.

But I helped you out.

You did help.

I got you.

You did help me out.

You got to show me where the lights are.

And if this is my job and I can't figure it out,

doesn't somebody at one of these manufacturers

like stick a person in there and say,

here, adjust the steering wheel.

And see if you can.

Tell me how to do it.

See if you can figure it out in 15 minutes.

And maybe if they can't, maybe that's not a good idea.

So I just feel like these are things that are just

going to get, you know, because the little switch,

and let's face it, switches are expensive.

Manufacturers or the engineers call them mushrooms,

right?

Because whatever is on top is much smaller

than what's behind it.

So it's certainly a lot cheaper if you get rid of that switch.

But in the long run, is it cheaper?

Well, that's the question.

Yeah, that's a good question.

And I'm sure because to create a separate switch

to control the steering wheel height,

you know, special switch for volume,

special switch for another function,

when you can combine all those functions

into one switch room.

Or one haptic, whatever.

Or one haptic thing.

I'm sure it's way cheaper because you're shrinking down

the number of suppliers that you have to work with

to create each different switch.

And if it's, you know, so there could be good things

about it, but there could also be very bad things

about it in the future.

Now, we've been kind of ranting about new technology,

but we'll get back to this main thesis here.

Did they drop the ball?

Which is, but before we do that,

why don't we tell them what we figured out yesterday?

And this is happening more and more.

I just saw a TikTok with somebody who was saying,

nobody's talking about this.

So gosh darn it, let's talk about this.

What is it?

So when we got that expedition, we got a Mineroni.

Yes.

And the destination and delivery fee was $2,195.

And for some reason, I'm sure it has to do with law

back in the ancient days.

You break out the destination delivery

from the actual cost of the vehicle.

It should be part of that.

Let's think, right?

It's like, because it's non-negotiable.

Yeah, it's like if you were to go to the store

and you bought, let's say an apple,

and then you had to add another 30 cents onto it

because it was delivered to the store.

I know it's delivered to the store

because it just went to the store.

It's the cost of doing business, right?

And so it was $2,195 on the Mineroni.

But because we're thorough, because you're thorough,

we went and configured the vehicle online.

Yes.

And what did we discover?

$2,595 destination charge, which is $400 more

than already arguably pretty high charge.

So now almost $2,600 for delivery.

Yeah, so in the last several weeks, Ford up that price.

And this is also for F-150s, by the way.

Yes.

Not just expeditions.

And what's happening is manufacturers

are kind of sneaking in the cost or the added cost.

I'm going to say I'm going to go political of the tariffs

by not doing it the straightforward way

and saying we're going to have to raise prices like Ford did

with the Maverick $2,000.

They don't want to say that.

So what they're doing is they're raising the destination fee

because it hasn't changed $400 to stick a expedition

on a truck and ship it to Colorado

or wherever you happen to live.

But the price hasn't gone up.

It's just a way of increasing the cost of the vehicle

without making it seem like you're increasing

the cost of the vehicle.

But now, if it's almost three grand,

that's a significant portion of your price.

And a lot of people, when you're walking into a dealership,

let's say you're looking at a $45,000 pickup truck

and you have to figure $2,600 additional,

you have to remember that there's a destination charge.

That's a big deal.

And I know it's kind of silly.

Cole, go and configure a BMW 3 Series,

which is actually built in Munich.

So find like a BMW 3 Series

and let's see how much the destination is

to actually ship the vehicle from Munich.

Not the SUVs.

Those are built in Spartanburg.

But let's see how much it would cost

to ship a 3 Series from Munich to your local dealership.

So let's see.

Yeah, one of these.

Yeah, just pick one of those.

These are all built in Munich.

And summary.

Let's go to the summary.

Yeah, you don't have to, if you can get there.

We're doing it live.

Yeah, we're doing it live.

So they want live demonstration.

Here's zip code.

We need to get to the page

where it shows you how much you're going to pay.

Can you find it?

You got to put the zip code in, of course you do.

All right.

There you go.

Four vehicles.

Maybe you can click the question mark.

View details.

Are they even going to show it to you?

This is fascinating.

I'm going to guess it's going to be half

of what Ford is charging for.

The expedition.

You want to just Google?

Just Google it.

It's going to be, I think BMW is at like $1300.

Three series destination charge.

$1175.

That was a year ago.

Okay, so it's probably $1300.

That's why I picked BMW

because I was just looking at BMW sticker.

Yeah, so that's almost half.

That's almost half of what?

The ship, the three series.

Okay, arguably a three series is a little smaller

and lighter.

But it's coming across the ocean.

It's on a boat.

It's not coming from Michigan.

I'm just trying to prove that it's just BS

and that the manufacturers are just

using this as a way to increase the cost of the vehicle

without making it seem like they're increasing

the cost of the vehicle.

And I think that's, I'm going to say it, Andre.

I think it's a little sleazy.

I'm going to use that word.

I know it's a strong word,

but it's a little disingenuous.

If you want to increase,

just increase the cost of the vehicle.

And explain it.

I explain it.

Say, you know what, we have to charge,

we have to pay more for steel or aluminum

or whatever have you.

And here it is.

Here it is.

Me transparent.

Transparency is always good.

And because the problem is,

it makes your customer seem like,

makes your customer,

it makes me feel like I'm an idiot.

Like, oh, look at that.

You had to pay $2,600 to ship it.

As opposed to, you know,

you just decided to increase the cost of the vehicle

because your prices went up.

All right, enough of me ranting.

But I've seen that as a trend right now

and it's a trend I don't like in the business.

So I want to kind of point it out to you guys.

Let's look at Ram a little closer.

Yes, let's look at Ram.

Ram over the last couple years,

not current Ram.

I'm talking about a couple years ago,

with previous management.

Really, I would say, took their eye off the ball.

Really.

So they were working.

They created a new iteration.

I would call it a facelift of the 2025 Ram 1500.

But they got rid of the Hemi when they did that.

They added a really interesting engine.

The three-liter twin-turbo hurricane

is actually very smooth, incredibly powerful,

relatively efficient engine.

But it didn't seem like they were listening

to their customers.

And also, they have an aging heavy-duty truck

that they recently updated also.

But somehow, they had all this time, right?

They knew what Ford was doing with the Super Duty.

They knew what GM was doing with their heavy-duty trucks.

With the Duramax.

But the comments came out better,

more power, different transmission,

but still not any quicker than the others.

Not really more efficient than the others.

And you're being nice.

It was slower and less efficient than the competitors.

And the past, what would have happened was,

there was this stair step.

But it was probably unsustainable,

where Ford would come out with a Super Duty.

And then two days later,

Duramax would be just a little bit more powerful,

just a little bit more efficient,

and then Ford would do it.

But with the new Cummins, at least in our testing,

it's actually not, there's no measurable criteria

where it's better than a Super Duty Power Stroke.

Unless two years down the line,

it's going to be super durable.

Zero recalls.

It could be that.

Right.

In two years from now,

the Cummins might be the most durable.

And the ZF transmission could have zero recalls.

It's going to be amazing.

But we don't know this yet.

So it's, once again, disappointing, I would say.

Disappointing.

And maybe, I don't want to be unfair to Ram.

Maybe they would say that they're providing

the best amount of power, efficiency, durability.

That you actually need.

At some point, it's like I said,

it's unsustainable, right?

You don't need to tow 50,000 pounds with a 2500.

Well, maybe you do.

No.

Diesel.

But you would think that when they do their commercials,

you know what I mean?

You'd think that they would have the announcer say,

the most powerful truck in class,

which is what Ford and Chevy and Ram were saying

for a long time, or GM.

And now it's none of that.

And I don't know why that is.

I was expecting at least one bright point.

Yeah, one number.

One number.

We have the most torque, or the most horsepower,

or the most towing, or the most cylinders.

You go to a 10 cylinder.

Bring back the V Viber engine.

Exactly.

Bring back the Viber.

And so that's why we're saying it kind of feels weird

that there's not as much innovation there as possible.

Before we go to Toyota and Nissan a little bit,

can we answer a couple questions from our Patreon supporters

because you guys is the reason why we're doing this.

So for example, Theodore asked,

what days will TFL be present at the 2025 Land Rover rally in Moab?

Yeah, so Kase and Tommy are both going.

Okay.

Because they both, you know, we're big Land Rover freaks here.

In Kase, Ella swapped his disco, or LR3.

And Tommy loves his LR3, and so they're both going to go.

I think they're going Tuesday,

and they're going to be there Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

I think those three days.

Or maybe Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Do you remember what dates they are?

I don't remember, but I'll show you.

Yeah, so probably drive off September.

Yeah, they're going to do a trail ride.

So they'll be out there with you guys.

They're super excited on cases, especially excited

because he just got his, you know, Ella swap.

He has a Corvette power in his Land Rover.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's amazing.

So that's the answer for you.

Now, Sean is asking, getting into a new car, a rental,

for instance, is so frustrating nowadays

when you have all these settings and controls,

you can't figure out.

Thank you, Sean.

You just made our point.

Okay, thank you, Sean.

Don is asking, I'm paraphrasing here.

What can you speak to what happened to all the previous TFL hosts

that are no longer with us?

Sure.

Well, that's a little bit more complex.

Yeah, so I'll quickly go through this.

I don't want to bore people if you don't care.

But our man, Alex, who is a big Philadelphia fan.

Yeah, Eagles.

Yeah, he got a job working for a local golf slash barbecue company.

They build barbecues and then they do a lot of golfing.

So he's doing a lot of golfing slash barbecue videos as really fun videos.

Really fun videos.

So he's loving his life.

So congratulations.

And then going back, who else?

Who else to ask about?

Well, we had Charlotte.

Remember, she's a chemistry expert.

Yeah, she got, I mean, she was into chemistry.

She was never Tommy's girlfriend.

She had a serious boyfriend.

Or has.

That was a rumor.

Yeah, she's, she's working at one of the local water district municipalities,

making sure that the water is clean.

So her passion was chemistry and water, not automotive necessarily.

So she's doing, she's doing what she studied in college.

What's up with Emmy?

Emmy Hall.

Emmy is at Edmunds, I believe.

Last time I checked.

Well, I think she's more of a freelance.

So she does stories for many different outlets.

And she's about to race in the 10th annual rebel rally.

Yeah.

Which is coming up with Emmy.

Yeah.

Which is coming up soon.

She got a great opportunity to go work at CNET when that was still a thing.

Rocho, right?

They did this car thing called CNET's Roadshow.

And so she came to me and she said, hey, I got this great opportunity.

I said, how much are they paying you?

This would have been a job in San Francisco.

And I said, you go girl, you fly.

I can't match that.

And so she moved to San Francisco.

And then of course, CNET went down the drain.

At least Rocho did not see that itself.

It was CBS at that time.

And now she's, I think, stringing for a bunch of different publications,

but mainly Edmunds.

So she's doing great.

Love watching her reviews.

Yeah.

Enjoy it.

Of course, there's also Brian and Mike, Mikey.

I mean, well, Nathan is still working with us.

Yeah, Nathan is in California.

Nathan, his wife got a great job back in California,

where he's from originally in the LA area.

So he took that opportunity to move back to LA.

And he's still freelancing for us.

So you'll see him.

Actually did a video first last week.

Yes.

And we'll do another one coming up soon.

Don Megahan is also asking, when are we super charging our F-150 tremor?

Not quite yet.

We want to supercharge it, but the problem is,

once we supercharge it, we can't use it to compare it to other trucks.

So we just, for instance, took, and this video is coming up very soon,

the F-150 tremor, and compared it to the new Hemi Warlock.

Exactly.

And if we had supercharged it, it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

Yeah, we took both off-road.

We actually recently published the drag race between the two.

Once again, if we supercharged it.

Or even lifting a truck, right?

Let's say we put a lift kit on the tremor,

made it taller, put bigger tires on it.

It's no longer the way it came from the factory.

Yeah, the first comment would be like, that's not fair,

and we'd have to agree.

So I think if we supercharge it, we'll probably hold off till next year.

But that's the plan.

We'll see, you know, things are changing day by day,

but I would love to, personally, I would love to supercharge it yesterday.

It's also not cheap.

It's like 11,000.

It's a lot of money, Andre.

It's a lot of money that we could spend, you know.

We could buy another used truck for that much money.

It's a lot of bagels we could buy.

And a lot of donuts.

A lot of donuts, yeah.

So I think those are all the questions we have so far.

Okay.

Toyota, gosh.

So remember when the 2022 came out,

you and I were in Texas at the event, right?

And then somebody said, oopsie, Toyota forgot tow hooks.

Yeah, I think that was Tim.

Tim was all, Tim ran up the mountain with that banner in his arm.

And rightly so.

Rightly so.

Front recovery points were missing.

Okay.

Toyota had an explanation, of course, right?

So pedestrian safety, you know, some crash protection, et cetera, et cetera.

Also those little veins that come down for better aero.

Yeah, deployable chin.

There's a lot of different things happening.

Okay.

So for 2026, which is four years from when the truck was introduced, right?

Toyota has re-engineered that whole front end.

No, they did not re-engineer any of the front end.

They also promised us a trail hunter because they initially, you know,

had this concept of a Tundra trail hunter and then they unveiled the Tacoma trail hunter

and then the Forerunner trail hunter.

But for some reason, we still don't have a Tundra trail hunter anything.

Well, you know, I'm sure it's coming for 2026, right?

No.

For 2026, TRD Pro gets those red isodynamic hammock seats from Tacoma.

I have read a lot of her comments here.

I've never seen anybody ask for isodynamic seats in a Tundra.

But now the Tundra is getting it.

It makes sense because at least there'll be room in the second row.

It's a bigger cab.

So I guess it's not something that people have been like, you know.

What I'm getting at is the Tundra sales, at least as of July, have been sliding down.

They're losing some sales compared to previous year.

And to add a few color options and a couple of small options and maybe a seat

to their new Tundra for 2026, I don't think it's quite enough to propel it.

But you know why that is, Andre?

Their team has been feverishly, feverishly working around the clock

to build a competitor to the Maverick.

What?

Yeah, the new stout is coming out any day now.

How long has the Maverick been out?

How many years?

Four years.

And the only competitor in that segment, right?

So four segments of truck compact, midsize, full size, heavy duty.

Only competitor is, of course, the Santa Cruz, which is more of a lifestyle vehicle

less of a trucky truck, but none of the manufacturers.

And I'm including Tura in this.

And Nissan.

And Nissan, because Tura, of course, is the most logical one, I think,

because this is kind of their foretake.

Small vehicles and hybrids.

Given that Tacoma is the most popular midsize truck.

It's their bread and butter.

And yet, no stout.

And then, you know, the announcement recently was that they're working on it.

Yeah, they kind of, not completely, but sort of in a way, said it's coming.

And that they have not had the resources.

And I'm like, guys, Maverick isn't selling 10,000 trucks a year.

It's not selling 50,000 trucks a year.

160,000 trucks a year.

You just handed that over to Ford, like here, Ford, take that entire market.

And in the past, dude, if, you know, if, if there had been...

If a Ford sneezed a Maverick.

If a Ford sneezed, Jim would hand him a hanky.

Here you go.

They said, we got you.

We got you because we have a little truck of our own.

And now we have four years of an unanswered hot market segment.

And, you know, it's not like Tura doesn't have the Hilux, which is actually smaller

than people think the Hilux and Tacoma are the same.

They're very different.

And in fact, the Hilux is, I went to Europe, I sat in the Hilux.

It's a pretty small little truck.

Probably big for European standards, but pretty small for Tacoma and America standards.

They're not identical.

They're not...

So you could have, you could have pretty quickly taken the Hilux and turned it into...

Well, isn't there like a baby Hilux in like Asian markets?

Which is like shrunken down further.

There's a baby ram, right?

There's a baby ram running around Mexico right now.

And yet there's no baby ram in America.

Oh, come on.

So I'm just a little confounded why this is a segment that has been completely dominated

by Ford and nobody has...

Here's another...

Let's talk about Nissan.

Well, sadly, Titan has discontinued.

Yes.

You know, I've shed tears about that long ago.

Unless you live in Nashville, where they're everywhere.

But Cole, producer Cole, can you Google please Nissan Surf Out concept?

Okay, Surf Out.

Okay.

So this is 2021, Rumen.

Nissan showed this concept.

It wasn't...

I didn't see it in the metal, but I think it did exist.

There's multiple images of it.

It's like this compact two-door with like a removable center section like the midgate.

You could fall down.

You could extend the seats into the bed.

This is basically the slate truck before the slate even came out.

The slate even ever existed as a concept.

Why didn't they just build this?

This is 2021.

You know what it looks like a little bit?

And you'll check, right?

The Skoda Funster.

You don't know what that is.

Google it, guys.

Yeah.

The Funster is the coolest little pickup truck you've ever seen.

It has a see-through front grille.

How cool is that?

No, you're barking up the wrong tree.

What?

You're barking up the wrong tree.

I appreciate it, but you're too...

What tree am I barking at?

You're barking up the pickup tree.

What should have happened with Nissan is they should have never killed the Exterra.

A truck base.

Oh, wow.

Toyota has sold over a million, over a million forerunners in the time that Nissan has pulled the Exterra.

That is unthinkable.

Right.

They have the front here, which is what the Exterra was based on.

Yes.

Just like Toyota.

And the forerunner.

And yet, Nissan just completely walked away right when overlanding and off-roading took off like a rocket ship.

I mean, I was listening to Doug's podcast, and he's probably right about this.

It's probably one of the worst automotive decisions in recent times.

And I've been talking about this forever.

And yet, somehow, nobody at Nissan figured out that they should be taking the front here

and turning it into an Exterra.

Because the brand was strong, certainly the timing was incredible, and people wanted,

and people still want something to compete.

Lifestyle SUV, truck base.

The problem with the forerunner is it's expensive.

And Nissan builds more affordable, more approachable vehicles.

Just look at the front here.

Yes.

It's more affordable.

Exactly.

And you couldn't have done the same thing with the Exterra.

And you'd be selling easily 100,000 a year at this point.

Easily, I think, under K.

And yet, they've finally woken up to it, and now they're like,

well, we're going to bring the Exterra back.

I'm like, but I don't know if it's going to come back in the right way.

Too little, too late.

This is off subject, Roman.

You're barking up the wrong tree because we're talking about trucks.

We're not talking about SUVs.

Yeah, but it's a truck-based SUV.

I think I'm solid.

On the right tree?

Yeah.

Okay, so anyway, I think Nissan, I mean, Titan is dead.

For 2026, they introduced a new color for the frontier, really a new color.

What about a powertrain option?

What about the V6 in the frontier is great, but what about a hybrid?

What about giving people some choice, expending their passabilities instead of not?

Oh, we have another question, I think, here.

Maybe it's a little bit off subject.

Well, we'll get to it in a second.

Let me kind of explain how I know that the manufacturers have taken their eye off the ball.

And the reason I know that is because now, before, you weren't seeing truck competitors come up,

at least when we started this, right?

You weren't seeing companies starting to seriously compete in the truck world.

And now you're seeing Slade come in.

You're seeing, I said, Tello or Tilo come in.

Tello, yeah.

Obviously, you saw Workhorse, which Scout.

You got Scout coming in.

So there are people seeing opportunities here.

Well, unfortunately, a lot of those companies went belly up.

They did go belly up.

Bowlinger.

But you never saw this before because I think it was such a competitive and such a

highly intense market that people were afraid to step into it.

And now you're seeing a lot of that come to fruition.

I don't know.

Will the Slade, will Scout make it?

I don't know.

But the fact is because.

Well, Rivians made it.

Rivians made it, yeah.

Because the manufacturers have not seriously competed,

you're seeing competitors come into the space.

Now let's talk about Ford for a second.

And let's talk about the new, the latest announcement, which is the SXT.

STX.

Sorry, STX.

Yeah.

So Ford has taken.

It's a TFL truck.com, by the way.

Yeah.

Ford has taken the Lightning, which is now four years old, I think,

we're coming up on four years old.

Yeah.

Lightning STX.

And instead of actually, you know, seriously refreshing it,

they rebranded the vehicle as an STX by giving it,

as far as I can tell, a different color,

a little bit of a slight update to the front.

Well, they're graphics.

They're graphics.

And there's a tire.

Tire.

Good year wrangler.

And wheel.

And Raptor sidesteps.

Yes.

That's it.

That's what they've done.

This is the update to the Ford Lightning.

And this is four years after it was introduced.

Yeah, exactly.

The Lightning came out about four years ago.

How do we know this?

Because we owned one.

We were one of the first to go to Michigan

and then actually pick one up.

And you drove it to the North Pole.

Yes, I did.

Almost.

I drove it as far north as you could possibly drive it.

And yet this is the update to it.

This is not going to call it their Model T moment.

Model T pickup moment.

But let me ask you, Andrei, where is the faster charging?

It's not on this truck.

Where's the longer range?

Not on this truck.

More power?

Yeah.

Where is the front blocker?

No, it's not there.

It's not there.

Where is the Lightning tremor?

Yeah.

Where is the Lightning tremor?

How about the Lightning tremor?

So GM introduced Silverado EV Trail Boss.

Yes.

And Sierra EV 84.

Those are off-road, a little bit more focused.

Okay, maybe not completely off-road, fully.

Yeah.

When I tested them, when me and you tested them,

we weren't there.

They're heavy.

They're better than before,

but they're still very, very heavy

and not super, super capable.

But there was still no answer from Ford.

Well, there's the STX now.

Okay.

So first of all, I'm finding the STX name interesting

because it used to mean affordability.

Yeah.

Right?

That was an entry level.

There was an entry level XL,

and then the STX gave you a little bit more,

you know, maybe monochromatic look,

a couple of different options.

We had the STX Ranger.

Yes.

That was it.

Yeah.

Monochromatic look, a little bit better,

you know, a little bit more premium,

but still very basic, very affordable.

The new Lightning STX will start at around $63,000,

which is less than many other electrified pickup trucks.

But still, I guess the STX name is working for them.

It's good that it's working for them.

But still, it's kind of a strange thing.

Yeah.

And then let's talk about RAM.

So of course, RAM has gotten the message loud and clear

with the EPA now, you know, not on duty,

so to speak, in terms of like emissions

or at least the way it used to be.

And so they've decided to bring back the Hemi.

We're going to be Hemi-ing everything.

We're going to be super-charging everything.

And eventually, they're bringing back the TRX.

We believe this is not official, but it seems like...

They said the V8-powered TRX is coming.

Yes.

But what does that mean?

But the part that is a little disappointing is

they took these off-the-shelf parts

and they stuck them back in the truck.

And of course, they had to re-engineer it

for the 1500 because it was a different truck.

Different architecture.

But they didn't give you 50 more horsepower or two more MPG.

It's just the same old Hemi from back.

And the same old E-torque, too.

And the same...

Which wasn't the great E-torque to begin with.

That was like a band that they...

Remember when Ford came out with the EcoBoost?

PowerBoost, hybrid?

Yeah, which was actually a really clever engineering exercise.

With 7.2 kilowatt of export power and actually lots of power.

Yeah, like RAM took the Hemi and slapped down this

like belt with an electric motor.

And called it done.

That was it.

E-torque.

It wasn't even...

Like the motor wasn't even sandwiched in between the transmission,

which a lot of companies have been doing.

It was just stuck on the side of it.

And this is what they brought back.

And I know you guys love Hemi's.

And there's this like...

It's probably the best marketing engine in the history of trucks.

And it's the best sounding V8 arguably ever.

But you guys have so many great engineers.

Like give it a little bit more compression.

Give it a little bit more horsepower.

Give it a little bit more fuel efficiency.

Give me something to get excited about.

And the same problem with the...

I think...

I'm afraid of the TRX coming back.

It might be the same horsepower.

Yeah, what if the TRX came back, which is okay.

I would be glad.

But what if it was the same horsepower?

No innovation.

I was at our local dealer and I said this to him.

And they said that at least once a week,

they have somebody coming in asking for the TRX.

A new one?

Yeah.

And so I think there is a market for it.

But in a very competitive market,

you would think that they would do something

to make it different, unusual or more something.

You know what this is going to piss off?

Is the true enthusiast...

Tim, who bought an RHO?

No.

Well, it will piss him off too.

But it will piss off more the person who paid $118,000

for the TRX last call edition,

which was the last edition of the TRX ever.

And that's...

Those are the people who are going to be pissed off.

Hey, I have a trivia question.

I'm going to ask you guys.

And see if you can answer this.

I made this up myself.

I didn't find this anywhere.

This is a Roman trivia question at the end.

Love for you guys to answer this.

There are at least two iconic versions,

not this car, but iconic versions of a car

that were created by the engineers

without the approval, consent, or even support

of the management team.

In other words, there was a car.

These are cars.

Well, one isn't the car.

One's something else.

But I'm not going to...

If I say what it is, it'll give it away.

But let's just call them cars right now.

They're not trucks.

So there's manufacturers building a car.

And there's an independent skunk work team

that's not sanctioned by the manufacturer.

Just a bunch of engineers who, in their spare time,

who over the weekend,

get together and create a better version of that.

And that better version has gone on to sell hundreds of thousands

and become iconic,

more so even than the original version of the car.

So there are two examples of that.

I think I know one.

But I don't know if I know two.

In other words, these are unsanctioned.

And in fact, in one case,

the company didn't even want to do this.

They were like, no, we're not doing this.

We can't sell it.

And then it became a huge success.

So you've got to name both of them.

Name the two examples of that.

Should we wait?

Yeah, put it in the comments below.

And then I'll give you the answer.

And then you can, if you remember this,

with when case is back,

you can give these guys the answer.

Oh, so you don't want me to guess now?

You go, I guess.

Well, I mean, I'd like their viewers to guess.

OK.

Yeah.

So comment your answers to this question.

Yes.

And when case is back next week,

we're going to reconvene.

And there might be more than two.

And this is over like the last, let's say, 40 years.

40?

Yeah, 30, 40 years.

OK.

And what I'll do is if somebody gets both of them right,

I will send you a sticker.

And I'll send you a TFL challenge coin.

Yeah, we'll send you a TFL challenge coin.

How cool is that?

Actually, we do have TFL challenge coin.

Actually, we should do more with those.

Yeah, we'll send you a coin and a sticker,

but you've got to get both right.

And maybe there's more.

So I could, but I'm thinking of two.

I'll give you, I'll make it a little bit more specific

so that you can kind of make sure that one is an American company

and one is a German company.

So there's an example of an American company

where this happened and there's an example of a German company.

There you go.

So I think we're reaching the end of our podcast

because, well, I actually wanted to say one more thing.

Yes.

Remember, there was something called,

about 10 or 15 years ago,

something called the Silverado SS.

I remember.

Yes, it had a six liter V8.

It had oval drive.

It had a, you know, a throaty V8 powertrain.

It was a street truck.

It was really, really cool.

Where is it?

Why doesn't it exist now?

And also, you know, Ford F-150 Lobo.

You know, we can pull up my concept drawing again.

Lobo is coming.

You know, it's being sold right now.

It says Fobol.

Oh, that's AI.

I'm sorry.

It's actually a bad idea.

Maybe we'll give that one to you for free for the Fobol.

That wasn't that purpose.

I did not create that on purpose.

That was AI initiative.

But where is the Silverado SS?

I don't know.

What would that stand for?

Fear of what?

So fear of better options.

Yeah, fear of better option.

Yeah, Fomo is a Fobol.

I don't know, dude.

I just, it came and went.

It was a flash in the pan.

Okay.

So there was another question you want to answer before we go.

Oh, people, Alan wants to know,

can I get some TFL merch looking for a cap?

Yeah, there you go.

Right there.

We do have caps.

So it's called tflstuff.com.

So we have several versions.

So you can get some t-shirts, some shirts, some mugs.

My favorite is really Karma is a Hitch.

Karma is a Hitch.

That's one of my favorites.

And don't we have also motorcycle stuff called

if you click next or something like that?

I don't think we have motorcycle stuff.

Well, no, no.

We had like an image with the handlebar.

Case used to usually wears it.

Of like a skeleton.

Yeah, we got a new, we were using spring

and they weren't fulfilling orders very well,

at least as we could tell.

And so we actually went to a different vendor.

Oh, there.

Yeah.

Yeah, tfl, a little motorcycle guy, baby bike.

Yeah.

That's a pretty cool one.

So yeah, I love that.

So tflstuff.com.

tflstuff.com.

And as always guys, thank you for watching.

Sorry if this has been too much of a kind of a

A rant.

A me ranting and bitching.

It seems to be what I do best nowadays

as I'm getting older.

You turn 60 and it just, there's a gene that just

like activates.

You're all of a sudden like, get off my lawn kids.

So that gene seems to have been activated in me.

But I think it was fun and I think it was true.

Yeah, but please manufacturers don't,

maybe they didn't take,

maybe they don't think they took their eye off the ball.

Maybe they still think the eye is on the ball.

But from our standpoint, please do more cool stuff.

I haven't seen like, remember Kent used to call it

magic spring dust where like,

Ford would say, oh, now the new F 350 toes.

Well, Rem just sprinkled some dust on their heavy duty truck.

Remember they added payload to it.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

It happens sometimes.

It happens, yeah.

But it was just basically all of a sudden

with no engineering changes and no production changes,

the truck got more capable.

Yeah.

It happened still, but there could be more of it.

It was just a sign of how competitive the segments were

and how competitive these manufacturers took it

that they would not leave anything unanswered.

Yeah.

So let's continue to be competitive.

Yeah, it was more fun.

Let's continue.

All right.

As always, this is Roman.

And Andre.

Saying thanks for watching.

Thank you very much to our patrons.

If you want to help support the team,

head on over to patreon.com.tfl.

Car.

Car, yeah.

And thanks for being a guest.

Yeah, yeah.

Next time you're back to regular scheduled programming,

you can have a younger, less grumpy presenter.

Case could be grumpy sometimes, actually.

Yeah, he's not grumpy.

And also, Carish.

Please listen and watch Carish, our other podcast,

which is really, really fun.

I'll be on tomorrow if you're watching this on Tuesday.

Yeah.

All right.

See you next time.

Ciao.

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Ep. 296: Did US Truck Manufacturers Take Their Eye Off The Ball?

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