Ep 32: We answer all your questions (Part 1) - Do we ever get backlash from manufacturers? Will EVs put Jim out of work?
The ReDriven Podcast
Ep 32: We answer all your questions (Part 1) - Do we ever get backlash from manufacturers? Will EVs put Jim out of work?The ReDriven Podcast · Sep 3, 2025
Audi is a car brand from Germany that makes luxury cars. They are known for their stylish designs and technology, like all-wheel drive, which helps with traction on the road.
A turbo diesel is a type of engine that runs on diesel fuel and has a turbocharger, which helps it use fuel more efficiently and produce more power. It's often used in trucks and SUVs.
Fuel economy is a measure of how much fuel a car uses to travel a certain distance. Better fuel economy means you can drive further without spending as much on gas.
The Toyota Land Cruiser 100 Series is a large SUV that's built to handle tough terrains. It can come with either a petrol or diesel engine, which affects its performance and fuel efficiency.
The Ford Ranger 3.2 is a type of pickup truck that some people find doesn't perform well or have issues, which is why the speaker wouldn't want to own one.
The Chevrolet Captiva is a type of family car called an SUV, which means it's bigger and has more space than a regular car. It's designed to be comfortable for families and can hold a lot of stuff, making it a good choice for road trips or daily use. People talk about it because it's practical and has been popular for many years.
Car
Holden Captiva
The Holden Captiva is an SUV that many people think isn't very good, which is why the speaker mentions it negatively.
The BMW E90 is a model of the 3 Series, which is a popular line of compact executive cars. It's known for being fun to drive but can have some problems that might make it a less desirable choice for some owners.
The Peugeot 206 GTI 180 is a sportier version of the regular Peugeot 206. It's designed to be fun to drive and has a more powerful engine than the standard model.
The Commodore Ute is a type of vehicle that has a car front and a truck bed in the back. It's great for carrying things while still being fun to drive.
The Honda Integra DC2 Type R is a special version of the Honda Integra that is known for being fast and fun to drive. It's a popular choice among car fans.
The Porsche 911 ST is a special version of the 911 sports car that is lighter and more powerful, making it very desirable among car enthusiasts. Because it's rare, it can be very expensive.
The Ford Escort is a small car that Ford made for many years. It's known for being budget-friendly and easy to drive.
LIVE
What is the one car that you've featured
that you would not own under any circumstances?
The car itself is okay.
It was just really badly neglected.
So I'm kind of a little bit scared.
Yeah, mine was just a bad car.
They're just a bad car.
Chances are, if they're not liking what we're saying,
they probably shouldn't have that car on their lot.
G'day guys and welcome back to the Redriven podcast.
And look, from time to time,
we put the call out to our audience
to ask us their burning questions.
We get everything from what car should they buy
through to questions about the industry,
about Redriven, or even about ourselves.
And thanks to the enormous number of responses
that we had back,
we've actually had to break this into two parts.
So this is part one.
Make sure you also check out part two.
Now, if you're new to Redriven,
we take you through all the good and the bad
in the world of used cars.
It's hosted by me, Adam Morris.
You're also gonna hear from Jim Hull,
who's our resident mechanic,
who's been doing his thing for over 30 years.
You can also catch us over on YouTube,
where we have hundreds of used car reviews
talking about what goes wrong, what goes right,
and we work out whether you should buy them or not.
Now, this podcast is the audio version
of some of our longer chats,
where Jim and I sit down to unpack
interesting stuff about the car world.
And you can also find the full video versions
over on YouTube,
if you'd rather watch and listen to us at the same time.
Anyway, sit back, relax,
and let's get into this episode.
Welcome to our question and answers.
Yeah, this is becoming a bit of a bi-annual event,
and again, we were blown away at how many questions came in,
so obviously, we can't answer all of them
because we'd be here for days,
but we've trawled through the hundreds that came in,
and we think these are the best questions
that are gonna interest all of you the most,
so shall we get into this?
Okay, CarlaJo1 asks,
how much blowback do you get from dealers and manufacturers?
Great question, CarlaJo1.
Okay, we, a lot.
From manufacturers, we haven't had anyone like email us
going, you guys are assholes, we hope you die,
but we have heard from contacts within the industry
that we're pretty much blacklisted by some car brands.
They're not likely to hand over many brand new cars
for long-term tests, put it that way.
Although, I'll elaborate on this more in a second,
I've been offered an Audi press car
coming up for a thing I have to do,
and I think it's fantastic that,
even though we rag on Audi a lot,
they're still willing to go,
oh, would you like a car?
So, well done, Audi.
So brave.
So brave.
As far as dealers go, yeah, we've had discussions
with a few dealers in regards to lending as cars,
and it never went ahead because they wanted us to say
nothing but nice things about the cars,
and as you know, that's not how we roll.
So, we have to give a massive shout out to Sean
at SP Motors, Justin at Colton Classic,
the boys at Go Garage, for lending as cars.
Actually, really anyone through the cars for sale community,
any of the dealers that are with cars for sale,
they've always lent us cars and allow us to say
whatever we want about it.
We have no control.
There's a couple other dealers coming up as well
that we're negotiating with at the moment.
And chances are, if they're not liking what we're saying,
they probably shouldn't have that car on their lot.
Exactly.
Or yeah, just especially if it's the manufacturers,
if you don't like us saying bad things about your cars,
make better cars.
This question's from Stein.
Stein with a one.
Is a petrol or a turbo diesel 4x4 cheaper to own long term?
My feeling is that though petrol fuel economy is much worse,
servicing costs will be cheaper in the long run.
And diesel's more expensive here in Australia at the moment,
so that's kind of offsets the fuel thing.
Yeah, and I think it also comes down to your driving habits
and style and where you're driving, how often you're driving.
Bit of a how long is a piece of string?
Yeah, look, they've both got their pros and cons.
It's really hard to sort of pin that down.
If you're looking after a diesel properly,
you should be doing a fuel filter every second service.
It might be a little bit more expensive to service
in the short term.
Would be definitely more expensive to repair should it break.
But if you're looking after it, fingers crossed it won't break.
But overall petrol is cheaper to repair,
cheaper to replace if the engine has a catastrophic value.
Typically a petrol is cheaper there, but yeah.
And even moving further into,
depending on how long you're going to keep it for,
you can even start taking into account the resale value.
So diesel's not going anywhere, petrol's not going anywhere.
But yeah, it really depends on how long.
If you're keeping this thing for 25 years,
maybe a diesel works out OK, but I don't know.
It also depends on what type of car it is.
If it was a 100 series Landcruiser, I'd probably go petrol V8.
Over the diesel, but other cars, I'd probably sway towards a diesel.
Yeah, it's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question at one,
unfortunately. Yeah.
This one's from River Sticks with an X.
Great usernames this time round.
Will there be a behind the scenes video of everyone involved in redriven?
This is going to be disappointing.
There's four of us, the two of us on camera, Cal, that is our editor.
And Sam, who's the genius behind the camera most of the time.
And Sam and I.
Let's face it, Sam's got the biggest brain here.
Sam, by far, has the biggest brain.
It's his birthday today.
Happy birthday, Sam.
That's it. There's no one else.
I feel like we're getting this impression
that people think redriven is this huge, this massive machine
with dozens of people.
There's no research team.
There's no PR team.
No, no, there's four of us.
That is it.
We will definitely do a bit of behind the scenes,
like workshop tour and how everything comes together.
There's other other questions coming up that I suppose will expand
on how we go about researching that there's only four of us.
But as for a behind the scenes video, we could do that.
Yeah, we should do that.
We have a second channel.
There's a lot of questions that are going to be coming up
and we really should start using the second channel.
We'll put a link down below.
And we're going to start putting behind the scenes things in that
and a few other bits and pieces.
Next question from Jason Wong, 1579.
That makes him I'm 46, because I was born in 1979.
He is old.
He's hundreds of years old.
Yeah, it's great skincare routines like a greater guy that was born in 1579.
There's so tech savvy that you can write a question.
That's lovely.
OK, which brands do you think will go bust and disappear
or will at least disappear from the Australian market?
Which brands would you like to see come here?
Yeah, great question, mate.
With this influx of Chinese manufacturers coming in
and how cheap these cars are getting and honestly, how good many of them are,
I think we're going to see a lot of car brands vanish.
And there's already a few on the ropes, like Nissan's not doing so.
Nissan's not doing good.
I think Mitsubishi.
I think anything in that budget element of new car space,
because if you go, well, Suzuki, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Citroen's already gone, Renault.
For the same money, you get a Chinese car that comes with a stack more features
and technology and looks and amazing driving experience,
bigger warranties, all that sort of stuff.
Yeah, I'm concerned about any of those.
In the Australian market, this might be part of another question later.
Australians don't particularly warm that well to new brands.
So it might not be a case of new brands coming from wherever,
pushing our familiar brands out.
It'd be interesting to see how well some of these new manufacturers are received,
especially in Australia.
Australia are renowned for being late adopters to really anything.
So brands that we'd like to see come here, I think we've got enough brands.
I think I don't know what the grand total is by the end of this year.
It's huge.
I know there's 12 manufacturers coming from China in the next in 2024.
No, none of them really have got anything different or special.
No, prices and options are all pretty impressive,
but they're still really not that different.
So I'm not particularly looking forward to anyone brand because of that.
Let's show me show me something good and unique.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think we discussed this in another video recently.
I don't know how these all these Chinese brands are going to differentiate
themselves in the marketplace.
Exactly. I can't imagine they're all going to last.
But yeah. Meestar 1508.
What is the one car that you featured that you would not own under any circumstances?
It's one. Yeah, it's a few, isn't it?
OK, yeah, go.
I'm going to say sorry for all the owners out there.
I'm not sorry. I wouldn't own a Ranger 3.2 Ranger.
Yeah. No, no, thank you.
Holden Captiva. I mean, obviously.
And a cruise. The cruise is pretty bad as well.
I think the cruise has a couple of redeeming qualities about it.
It's not bad to drive.
What? No, no, it's still probably the second worst car in the world.
But as a Captiva is easily the worst.
There's no way in hell.
Cruise parts are pretty cheap.
I would never own a Captiva.
I couldn't do that to my my emotional state.
This question is from this Count Slappy 5085 or is it Vi Count Slappy?
I just love it. No matter what it is.
I like the slappy part.
The slappy bit's great.
What were your best and worst cars that you've owned?
Great question.
Do you want to go first?
The worst one I've owned was an E90.
It was probably BMW, as you don't know.
I saw the car years ago and it was really in great condition.
A really good thing.
And it was offered to me really cheaply and I agreed to buy it.
And then it had been a couple of years since I'd seen it by the time I got it.
And I'd agreed to buy it was just terrible.
I still bought it. It was very cheap.
But it had more things wrong with it than you can possibly imagine.
It was just the worst decision I've ever made.
Mine, I had a Peugeot 206 GTI 180.
If anyone in the Peugeot community or French car community
is trying to convince you that they're a good car, they're lying.
That's a shit car.
It was terrible in every way.
I wanted a Renault Clio, but they didn't have any at the time.
So I'm like, oh, well, this would be pretty much the same.
No, it's not.
Driving position is horrible.
Terrible dynamics, not that fast, not very practical,
pretty inefficient for fuel, considering the size and what kind of car it was.
I should point out that BMW was the car itself is OK.
It was just really badly neglected.
So I'm kind of a little bit scared.
Yeah, mine was just a bad car. They're just a bad car.
Best car in the world.
Yeah, you go first.
One of the best cars I've ever owned is my G.I.
Yaris. It's just a great car. Fantastic car.
I need to really expand on that.
The other best car I've ever owned, very long time ago,
I had a Commodore Yute V8 with a manual and I was young.
And for the time in my life and that car, that's a cool car anyway, still a cool car.
It was just the best car, good times.
And thankfully, it was much more difficult to lose your license back then.
But they have very fond memories of that car.
Yeah, my best.
I had a very, very rare Honda Integra DC2 type R, which was a great car.
But I can't believe I'm saying this.
I think my current car is the best car I've ever owned.
I've got to mark seven Ford Fiesta ST.
It's the second one I've owned.
I've never done that. I've never made a rule.
I never own the same car twice.
But yeah, I went back to this one.
We'll explain later. There's a question coming up of why.
But the more I drive it, the more I'm like, this is a cracking good car.
And I get to drive some amazing stuff.
I drove a 911 ST not long ago.
It's like $800,000.
Jump back in the Fiesta and I'm like, I think I like the Fiesta.
Well, they didn't. The ST was wild.
But I don't know. It's such a good car.
And the more you've got to learn it and the more I'm learning it,
the more I'm like, this is so good.
Yeah, mine's Fiesta ST. There you go.
Torben 2758 would love to know.
Do you guys get recognized in public?
And if so, what's the funniest fan interaction you've had?
Yeah, it's amazingly like it's daily now.
Pretty much any time we leave, where we live or work,
yeah, someone will come up and say, which is the most flattering.
Yeah, as blown away every day when it happens,
as always, the first time it happened, which I vividly remember.
And it's just an absolute honor.
And I kind of get weird about it.
Like, it means so, so much.
Yeah, one of my favorite parts of that is on the occasions
when I'm out with my kids and my kids are very YouTube savvy.
And, you know, it's kind of cool for them
because they're a little bit proud of their old man.
And, you know, and really, there's not many people on the earth
I need or like to impress other than those two.
And, yeah, it's pretty cool.
As far as the funniest interaction,
Barrisfield BP service station was on the way to a gig.
Elaborate on another question, dying to do a wee race into the toilets.
And as I walked in, there was a guy there finishing up
and he was like, you had him from re-tripping.
Hey, man, he's like, oh, man, can I get a selfie?
And I was literally like at the urinal.
I'm like, can I do a wee first?
And then maybe I meet you outside and say, oh, yeah, no, no problems.
No worries at all.
So, yeah, that was hilarious to do a selfie while doing a wee.
Also, if anyone out there spots us, come and say, OK, yeah, we'd love to.
Again, we love chatting to anyone that watches the videos.
And if it wasn't for you guys watching, we couldn't do this.
So, yeah, the big things goes to you.
I think it's kind of funny that when you're out
and you definitely see someone who definitely recognizes that,
sometimes they don't approach, whatever,
but they give you the look like they know you.
And sometimes I feel like, oh, I can't remember who you are.
But then I realize maybe they recognize me from YouTube or whatever.
It's a little bit awkward, but also kind of funny.
I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honoured.
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This question is from Twisted Donuts, which is definitely one of our...
Look, one of our best commenters. No, no, no. Not one of our.
The best? The best. Yeah, for sure.
We love this guy.
He's been a supporter and a fan from day one.
We've all chatted to him on the phone, sweet guy.
Yeah, have so much time and respect for Twisted Donuts.
So he gets asked three questions because he's he's he's O.G.
Halsey. Me.
Also, mate, you're the only person that calls Jim Halsey, by the way, which I love.
I call him Twisty.
That's great.
I hope we get to meet him in person one day and you've got to call him Twisty.
Halsey, what are the what are the top three cars that you dread working on
and the top three cars you love working on?
OK, I'll group them sort of by brand.
The ones I dread are any Merc that's ten years old, any Audi that's ten years old.
And, you know, old cars, I love old cars, but they suck to work on.
Getting parts and trying to find a gasket kit for a AZ1 Aster.
Yeah, that's fun.
Yeah, any cars like that that are rare and difficult and time consuming
and hard to get parts for sort of groups them all together like that.
Best Toyota Corollas because they don't ever break.
They're easy to work on.
I don't tend to get emotionally attached to vehicles.
Like I don't enjoy working on a car because it is a certain make or model.
Yeah, we've kind of been doing it for too long for that.
The ones that don't break.
Do you love working on the escort, which is this?
Everyone that's that's the escort.
That's Jim's race car.
I love the idea of working on it, but the reality is I'm so time poor.
Everything I do on it is a rush job and it's a little bit frustrating.
Very rarely do I get the chance just to work in a relaxed environment,
maybe even have a cold one while I'm doing it.
You know, that rarely happens.
So but overarchingly, yes, I do kind of enjoy.
About this episode
Listeners get a chance to hear the hosts tackle a variety of audience questions, ranging from industry insights to personal car experiences. They discuss the backlash from manufacturers, the pros and cons of petrol versus diesel 4x4s, and share their worst and best car ownership stories. With humor and candidness, Adam and Jim explore the dynamics of the automotive market, including the impact of new Chinese brands and the future of familiar names. The episode is filled with engaging anecdotes and practical advice for car enthusiasts.
From time to time, we get our audience to send us their burning question about cars, the industry and ReDriven in general. Do we get backlash from car makers? What cars do we drive? Will EVs put Jim out of work? What have been our favourite videos to film? And so much more.
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