F1, Ford’s Future, and the Pope’s Explorer w/ Ford CEO Jim Farley
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Brand
Jaguar
Jaguar is a car brand known for luxury and performance cars. Here it’s mentioned because the CEO/leadership situation at Jaguar is part of the news.
Term
PR handling
PR handling is how a company talks to the public about news. If they communicate poorly, people get confused and trust can drop.
Brand
Ford
Ford is a big car company in the US. They bring up Ford’s CEO to talk about where the company is headed.
Brand
Zagato
Zagato is a well-known Italian company that makes special, limited-run car designs. Cars with Zagato bodies are often rare and collectible.
Concept
Pebble Beach
Pebble Beach is a big, famous car event where collectors show and sell rare cars. Mentioning it signals this is a high-end collector-car story.
Concept
ballpark price ranges
They’re talking about rough price estimates. With rare cars, the exact price can vary, so sellers often quote a range instead of one fixed number.
Concept
turn-key ready
“Turn-key ready” means you can buy it and drive it right away. It’s not a project that needs a bunch of work first.
Term
seatbelts
Seatbelts keep you from flying forward in a crash. If you don’t wear them, the crash forces can be much worse even if the car has airbags.
Term
airbags
Airbags are safety cushions that pop out in a crash to protect your body. Newer cars control when and how they deploy, but older ones could be less precise.
Company
Porsche
Porsche is a car company that makes performance sports cars. Here they’re being talked about because they filed a patent for a new kind of gear shifter.
Term
clutch
A clutch is what you press to change gears in a manual car. It temporarily disconnects the engine from the wheels so you can shift without grinding.
Term
PDK
PDK is Porsche’s name for its dual-clutch automatic transmission. It’s designed to shift quickly and smoothly without you operating a clutch pedal.
Term
automatic transmission
An automatic car changes gears by itself. You don’t have to press a clutch pedal to make it shift.
Company
Race deck
Race deck is a type of garage floor made from interlocking tiles. The pitch here is that it’s easy to install and strong enough to handle very heavy vehicles.
Company
Old Man Emu
Old Man Emu makes off-road suspension parts. It’s a well-known brand in Australia that helps vehicles handle rough roads better.
Company
ARB
ARB is a company that makes off-road gear. People use their parts to make SUVs more capable for trails and long trips.
Term
cargo space
Cargo space is how much room you have in the back for bags, tools, or gear. If the battery takes up space, you lose some of that room.
Term
air compressor
Some cars have a built-in pump that can add air to tires. Off-roaders like it because they can lower tire pressure for grip, then pump it back up later.
Brand
Rivian
Rivian is a company that makes electric trucks and SUVs. Here they’re mentioned because their vehicle includes a built-in air pump for off-road use.
Term
water bottle storage
Water bottle storage refers to dedicated compartments designed to hold bottles securely, typically in doors or center consoles. Here, the speaker describes molded door pockets that can fit multiple bottles, which improves usability during hot-weather trips.
Term
overlanding
Overlanding means taking a trip where you’re out for a long time and you need to carry supplies with you. Here, they’re saying the door storage is useful for holding water bottles when you’re traveling in hot weather.
Term
USB ports
USB ports in a car let you plug in devices and power them. Here they’re saying the car has USB spots that are easy to reach for gadgets you might use while driving.
Concept
off-road
Off-road capability is about how well a vehicle handles unpaved terrain like trails, rocks, and mud. The conversation frames off-road as a lifestyle choice—comparing trims and discussing taking cars “outside” onto off-road routes.
Term
recovery gear
Recovery gear is stuff you bring so you can help a vehicle get unstuck if it gets in trouble. It can include towing tools, but sometimes the simplest help is having another vehicle nearby.
Concept
roll over
A rollover is when a car flips onto its side or roof. Off-roading can increase the risk, so people plan for what to do if it happens.
Concept
trophy truck
A trophy truck is a big off-road race truck built to jump and drive fast over rough desert terrain. The speaker is saying you have to be careful because those trucks can come by really fast.
Concept
motorcycle-only trails
Some places have trails that are only for motorcycles. That helps beginners because there are fewer surprises and it’s safer than mixing with other vehicles.
Company
ODew
ODew is a business software tool. It’s meant to help companies run things like inventory, customer info, and HR in one place, instead of using lots of separate programs.
Term
CRM
CRM is software for managing customers. It helps a business keep track of who customers are and what’s happening with sales or support.
Term
additive manufacturing
Additive manufacturing is 3D printing parts. It lets engineers make prototypes faster and sometimes create shapes that are difficult to make the usual way.
LIVE
Welcome to Spikes car radio. We have a terrific show for you. I wanted to go through some
of the stuff from last week just to Zuckerman has to issue a correction here over his alpha.
I didn't quite know. I don't know alphas that well. Neither do I. But someone I guess you
said the alpha was a junior and it's not it's not okay because some who told you it was
a junior somehow feasty. So first night when I first posted about the car, I called a GTV
right 1750 and somebody said, Oh, no, no, no, the below chase are only this kind of car,
that kind of car, that kind of cars a junior. And stupidly, I believe this guy was just a
rando rando. And then so I figured this guy being an alphas D as he as he termed himself
knew better than me. But he didn't. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't know better than me. It's
okay. I always say to stop talking to people on the internet. You got to stop. But I figure
maybe I could have learned something. This is my first, you know, the first time I'm getting this
car. Yeah, I was going to say for that is true. Right. But I had an alpha for two minutes. But
you're looking for little pieces of gold and information. Yes, I'm willing to learn generally.
I'm willing to learn. But this guy, see, this guy sold me out. This guy, this guy fucked me over.
Why do you tell him? What do you say his name right now? I don't remember his name. And I think
he was with goodwill. I don't think he was malicious. I think he was just misinformed.
Misinformed. Well, pretty good. All right. Well, now we've got that out of the way.
I don't want to spend too much time on this, but Jerry McGovern from Jaguar has announced he is
indeed leaving. Just catch up to this story. Hello, sir. Remember, remember they said he was
fired and then Jaguar said, no, he's not. He's not leaving the company. He plans on staying. Well,
no, now he's leaving again. I mean, if you somewhere teach PR out in the world of colleges or
universities, this has to be the poster child for some of the worst PR handling I've ever seen in
my life. This whole thing. This is a disaster that just continues to get sort of they had just
wait, they had been quiet for so like for what months now for two or three months and it was
working. The quiet was working. Just be quiet. Jerry, we love you, but you should have just
sulked away and not said anything. Well, here we are again. It's not that he's the jet. He like
I don't really want to comment on it. He never designed a Jaguar. He was appointed to the JLR
design boss. So he got fucked. No, he just quit. He's like, you know, he's like old. He's done.
He's retired. Doesn't look old in that picture. It's good hair dye. I don't believe he exists.
I believe this is AI. Is he the same as Jaguar is just on a whole nother level. We're making fun
of them. And really, they don't exist. No, they don't exist. They're like Fisker with this person.
There's no guy named Jerry McGovern who wears red velvet blazers with a black turtleneck. Look,
it's fake. It's clearly fake. A friend of mine who works at Jag was like, he's like, you know, we
spent like $200,000 making that video and we got $1 billion worth of promo out of it.
Well, this thing is bad PR. So of course, by comparison, we spent $50 on Jerry's red
velvet blazer. It was a friend told him. From Friar Talks. He does dress like that.
Friar Talks. And we got $10 billion of free press from Spikes Car Radio.
So who's laughing now? We're going to revive the Friar Talks brand.
Before we get too deep in the show, Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford is on. Here we are making fun of
with Jerry McGovern. We'll have to ask Jim about Jerry McGovern. Get his take on this whole thing.
Get his take on Friar Talks. But he has a new season of his podcast with,
he always has the greatest guests in the world. Like I have pretty good guests,
not today, but most shows. You mean not Jim.
And not McFriar and Nor Friar Talks. And not that Farley guy.
I love who's on the show. It's always the people I just want to talk to.
He's always got, you look at his lineup is always like Matthew McConaughey, Jimmy Fallon.
He gets, he gets access. So I'm excited to find out who's going to be on this next season of the
show. One other program note to mention. And I don't know, oh, you can't see it right there in
the background. There's an orange car right there. Oh, you're poking it. Stop poking my car.
Oh, that feels so cool. Zuckerman and I have decided to fund this car by selling this car.
And here it is. We've alluded to it. You've maybe have seen it on the internet.
It is our Zagato 356. And I know. Big news. I know it hurts, everybody. I could have
brought it to the studio today, but it's goddamn it. It's hot. I didn't want to try it. It's really
hot and I didn't have time. But it's, we feel like what's up. I mean, this is a, we have,
we have this special car. We just found this next special car.
Right. This is okay. From Inception, if you recall, we were flying down to Pebble Beach. No,
we were going to, we were going to Scott, were we going to Pebble or Scottsdale with?
We're going to Pebble. We're going to Pebble. And we were landing and I had been offered this car.
And this is. And I passed on it. We didn't know what it was. And then we were reading the Porsche
magazine and they had seven pages on it. And you said famously, buy that shit now. And I forgot
famously, but that's 10 years, almost 10 years ago. 10 years ago. So a decade of this car
in our lives, which is a pretty long time and it's a wonderful car. One of nine from Segato.
The only one we feel that's properly sorted. I think maybe Ben Climbers, I think he went
through the process of properly sorting too. We had Will White go through this car.
Right. This car is amazing. Super 90 engine, which is the original chassis and car that it was built
on top of. I think, I remember the call with Will Hoyt when he said, he goes,
why go to 90? Why not 125? I go, yeah, sure. Go ahead. 125 horsepower, 1800 pounds. It is
the greatest gentleman racer you'll ever drive. I remember clearly, we pulled out of Cafe Lux
sometime. I was in my 93 C2, 964, which is no slouch. Yeah. I would, you would, you floored it
out of there and I could not keep up. I was flooring it. I was going through the gears and
this thing was going faster than that car, which I think at the time did 0 to 60 in about five
seconds. Yeah. So this was, this is going, you're in a, you know what, 1700 pound car going 0 to
60 in four seconds. That really, you know, I just remember driving with Jerry and he's got his 550
and everybody's taking pictures of this. Yeah. Oh really? Oh yeah. This is the first official
car that of, that Morris Solomon's is selling. People accuse us of not having a legitimate
dealership. Well, here it is. Here it is. Don't accuse us. Don't accuse us. But you left the,
you part with your money. There's the most important part. Okay. Zuckerman and I aren't
handling the sale of this. Our lead salesman, Scott Rulo. That's right. Is handling it.
Scott Rulo. Who is Scott Rulo? Who is Scott Rulo? Right here is Scott's Instagram handle
and you can DM him and ask him questions and if there's anything he doesn't know about it,
he's going to punt us and he'll handle it. Yes. He's done some unbelievable work. He's
got a network of people that you would not believe and we're going wide with it. We decided, you
know, you know, we love bring a trailer. We love these other sites. Sure. The super car Blondie
wanted this car. Everybody wanted this car. Right. So Scott will handle all conversations.
And can I ask what the ballpark price ranges? Again, for all of your questions,
the Scott Rulo. It's not inexpensive. Oh, I imagine it's not. But it is not outrageous.
But when you compare it to say a four cam or a five 50, I mean, that's really what
I noticed with this car is I'm driving with Jerry Seinfeld. He's in a very rare, famous
five 50 is a fast people are taking pictures of our car. Yeah. And by the way, I've driven that
five 50 and you know, it's an amazing thing, but it doesn't drive like this. Yeah. It does not drive.
This is drivable. What's what's the five 50 worth these days? Seven, six million. No, no, it depends.
But it would be some some millions, millions. Yeah. And this one, yeah, I will comment.
We did this one. This is the best looking one. We picked the right color aspect with it. You need
to win the wheels, everything we turn key, turn key ready to go. I would recommend a better photo
of it. But yeah, we were going to wait. I like that picture. That was a nobleman magazine. That
was a nice that's a nice photo. It's got it's interesting to me. Anyway, yeah,
we'll bring it. So said the art dealer. I don't particularly care for that photo. I had an art
I had an art gallery. Okay, don't start gentlemen. Or I've had over 20 years of professional
experience taking photos of fucking cars. What rules? What do I know? What do I know about anything?
I don't know. Jim Farley from Ford is going to be on suit and he's a terrific guest. He's going
to be telling us about his new podcast. Let's go to this first. I thought this was kind of
interesting because it kind of falls into the comedy and cars category. That's us. That's us,
right? Well, how about this Kramer's Asman car and Seinfeld is actually a very rare experimental
73 Chevy Impala. Now, I know the car very well. We shot with this car a lot. And it was the one
car that we used for Michael Richards character Kramer in the show. Do you guys know it was in
the few silly Jerry Kramer gets this car that's got this license plate by mistake that says
Asman but learns to embrace it when he realizes he can park in doctor spots around New York City
and they think he's a proctologist, right? Well, Kramer's actual car is literally one of the first
cars ever produced with functional airbag and only a thousand were made. An eagle eyed editor at
Motor Trend. No way. Not Johnny Lieberman. Notice that interior shots of Kramer's car. I don't watch
Seinfeld. Go ahead. Show the steering wheel is fairly unique, larger design with four spokes.
The standard Impala had a 73 in 73 had a smaller two spoke design. This indicates that Kramer's
car is fitted with an early version of an airbag called the air cushion restraint system.
The ACRS was included. Here's the weird part. Okay. The ACRS was included in about 1000 Impala's
manufactured in 1973 as an experiment. They must have manufactured 700,000 in that year. They were
only available to government fleet customers for testing. This one was one of the first times a
major automaker attempted to include an airbag into a car and 74 Chevy made ACRS an option in
some of their other models, but discontinued ACRS the following year after it was installed only on
10,000 cars. Chevy would not put airbags in cars again until 88. That's right, Johnny. Airbags weren't
even legally required in the U.S. until 98. Lea Koka had a whole bonus chapter in his biography,
which was subsequently removed about how airbags will bankrupt Detroit. And then once it was mandated,
he was like, Kramer's the first with airbags and all their products.
Oh, wow. Look at that. Well, Kramer's car was there for a little more than a tricked
out standard Impala. Those models with ACRS also had reinforced chassis, improved suspension,
and the same V8 that the Corvette had at the same time. Kramer's car.
I want one now.
And they, you know, I wish I could shed some more light on how this car was acquired,
but it was through just one of those television car companies that provided cars to us.
But they, they guessed that this 73 Impala was probably sold at a government auction
and the company that leases the cars for TV production swooped it on up.
Well, a couple things. So there's lots of cases. I mean, they're all scrapped now, but like in the
late 80s, early 90s of people not wearing their seatbelts that live through horrible accidents.
Really? Because these airbags went off and they had no idea. They got the car, you know,
somehow secondhand. Oh, really? That's interesting.
Wow. But the thing is like airbags today are smart. So they know that like at a 20 mile an hour
deployment, deploy at this rate. The sensors. This had no sensors. This is a shotgun shell.
Apparently like this literally took your face off. It's kept you alive. Wow.
But it was, and the airbag was like this big. And if you're listening, like my arms are fully
outstretched and it also was supposed to partially cover the passenger. It was totally insane.
That's why I like how they call it a cushion.
It was like a sofa inflating in front of you. Have they gotten that much better? I mean,
aren't airbags still a little controversial, Zuckerman?
There are times airbags misdeploy. Of course, Ticada was a big problem.
And it's knocking your understatement, knocking your eyeball out. And it's never,
people don't ever feel good when the airbag comes out. So when people say, well, they were a little
accident, they said, my airbag didn't come out. I said, it's not a feather pillow.
It's great. You don't want your airbag to come out. You only want to come out if it's
going to be a life-threatening injury. Now look, we've said it many times on the show,
and I'm going to keep saying it again, like slow left lane drivers that we hate.
If you're one of those people who sit with their legs crossed in the front seat of your car up.
Don't put your feet on the dash. Your airbag is going to go off and disconnect your leg.
That's what that does. It's not a casual, cool way to drive.
Much worse than an encounter with Caesar Chavez.
I didn't tell you guys about it, but like two months ago.
Wow.
Say Caesar Chavez today.
We were talking about airbags.
I'm trying to ignore that story in front of mine.
But I have a couple of months ago, a friend of mine had a pretty gnarly crash and he had
a side airbag go off and it blew out of his eardrum. Saved his skull from cracking open.
Airbags to me, a solo car accident.
Zachary, airbags just never go off when you're just driving.
Yeah. And that was a problem with the car.
And that was a problem with some other cars.
I could just be driving at any minute.
Pow, yeah, Chevy had that.
They had when their cars, when they put really, really good tires on like the Camaros.
All of a sudden, like, you know, lateral acceleration numbers,
trick the computer into thinking it was crashing.
Even though you're just like, you know, doing, you know, instrumented testing.
Crazy. All right. We got a lot of show today.
Let's keep moving on here.
Jim Farley is going to be on Chris Farley's cousin.
Affectionately known as Chris Farley.
Jim Farley.
But we talked about that last time, this time it'll be about his new season of his show with
his great guests that he's yet not passed down a single one to me when I call and I say,
Hey, can I get Jimmy Fallon's contact?
It's Caesar Chavez.
It can't season Chavez.
Can I get Caesar Chavez contact, please?
I'd like him to explain himself.
He's dead, right?
Oh yeah, very dead.
He's long dead.
Okay, good.
He can't sue us.
No.
What a show we got for you, ladies and gentlemen.
Porsche filed an interesting patent for a shifter this week that I thought was a really
cool idea.
It is an automatic and or manual.
What does that mean?
You can use it as a conventional H pattern manual with a clutch or a conventional automatic,
depending on which gate you select.
Did you hear about this, Johnny?
This is pretty cool.
So the right gate, apparently on this, you have auto reverse and neutral.
There's your automatic.
The left gate, which I would guess means you move this to the left.
You now have an H pattern with a clutch.
This wouldn't be the first time that we've seen this.
I guess the KonaZeg CC850 already has a similar transmission.
As do Unimogs.
It's like people forget Unimogs exist, but Unimogs have a full-doubt clutch panel.
But Porsche has decided we've got our own version of it.
What do you guys think of that?
To me, it strikes as money saving.
It's one of those things where just offer manual and your dual clutch.
It's fine.
One car doesn't need both.
And so, I don't know.
It's not going to be a great manual and it might be a great automatic,
but it's not going to be like you guys own an ST.
Like it's the best transmission in the history of the universe.
That's fantastic.
It's the best.
It'll never be that good.
But so is the PDK.
PDK is the best.
But if they were to tell me, now you have both, I'm losing my mind.
But you wouldn't have both.
I know.
Yeah.
But we don't know what they have yet.
But that's the bar I'd be looking for.
You would never get there.
Because the 911T has a six-speed manual.
It's nowhere near as good as what's in the ST or the GT3.
Zuckerman, were you interested in driving something like that?
Not really.
It's in either fishing or foul kind of a thing.
Pick your weapon.
I can't believe I'm alone on this.
First of all, I'm constantly annoyed at the manual or automatic transmission
arguments on the internet.
I'm so tired of it.
Yes, very tired.
If they were able to solve that problem and give me,
because I drive a lot of cars like that,
I'm trying to think, like the 718, let's say.
I'll drive that a variety of different ways.
Sometimes I'll just shift through gears.
Sometimes I'll use these.
I like variety in cars.
If they figured this out for real, and I would definitely get a car like that.
But do you understand that it's not an H-pattern transmission.
It's a simulation of an H-pattern.
With a clutch.
Sure, but again, it doesn't say simulation.
No, what I'm saying is there's not suddenly a shifting rod appearing
that's moving the gears with the lever.
It's still an automatic transmission.
Then you're just saying, go into second, go into third, go on the fourth.
It's electronic.
That's all.
It's not the mechanical connection.
I understand.
But if they make it right, if it feels good.
Hey, sex dolls are getting.
No, I think of the N-series hundays, like the pretending of it all.
There's so much pretending when you're driving that I wouldn't mind pretending.
Okay, if they have it dialed in.
If you're saying it's like the Tiptronic and everything feels weird.
I don't know how it's going to feel, and I haven't driven that car.
Then I'm not interested.
No, 90% of my driving is with a manual transmission.
Never occurs to me.
I'd rather be in an automatic.
Yeah, same when I'm in a manual.
I've driven the Unimog where you can get on the highway and you go along with an automatic.
Then when you're off-road, you don't want the thing to accidentally shift gears.
So then it pops into a manual where you literally have a clutch pedal
that the computer can't disengage.
And that's sort of neat, but it's job specific.
Whereas this is like, I guess, yeah, I'm going on for a drive.
I don't know.
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Today's show also sponsored by our friends at race deck.
You know, we love.
Oh, we got a new picture.
There's a guy.
What's he doing?
He's testing.
He's doing that.
What's that dance shuffling?
Yeah.
He's doing the river dance.
See, he's doing what I do in my hangar.
I this is kind of what I do.
I look at the race deck and I stand on the firmness of it
because you're not used to having tiles that don't feel plasticky and move around
like a deck of cards you spilled on a linoleum floor.
They stick and it's firm and he's going, look at this.
I've got my high five inch inseam shorts and my little tiny white socks.
And this floor is fantastic.
I'm trying to break my ankle, but I can't do it.
See, as a tennis player, I'm noticing his shorts and his sock game is kind of off
and his sneaker game is a little off.
The high shorts, inseam shorts are okay, but the sock game, you don't want to be doing that.
I don't want to think about men's shorts at all.
The white socks are right.
He's just got to go higher with his socks.
Where are we getting these photos from?
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And race deck is owned by Gearheads.
Portion nuts.
Jorgen Mahler, when you see him at your local car show, look at his collection.
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Johnny has brought a delightful truck to us for a check out.
I brought a 2026 Toyota 4Runner, 6 Gen 4Runner, but this is the new trim.
This is called the Trail Hunter.
So the idea of this is it's a factory overlander.
So you're going to put a tent on the roof and you're going to go all kinds of places.
This is the same.
Can I ask a question?
So it's the Trail Hunter 4Runner.
You know, I'm a former 4Runner owner.
I did not know that.
This is my second SUV that I bought when I came to California.
Oh, cool.
So I like these.
I like these.
Yeah.
So and this one's really cool.
So the top spec is for two generations has been the TRD Pro.
Right.
So now they've kind of turned the TRD Pro into like a rock crawler.
So it's got like Fox racing shocks, like a Raptor.
And for the same money, which by the way is about $68,000,
you can get the Trail Hunter and it has Old Man Emu shocks,
which are like more long travel, more comfort,
better for like crawling through the Australian outback.
It's actually Old Man Emu is from the 70s.
ARB is Australian off-road out for the bottom of the 90s.
And the roof racks, ARB.
So you get some real kit on this.
It's wider track than a regular 4Runner.
It's got really good tires.
Toyo Open Country 3.
The same tires I have in my Rivian.
Excellent off-road tires.
Is there a little light bar there in the front?
Yeah, it's got little meaning.
Light bar is built standard, which is cool.
And is that type of stuff legal?
Yeah, yeah.
It is.
It's fine.
Well, what if I wanted to put something on my Bronco,
like a light bar across the top?
Totally fine.
Anything aftermarket.
But can I use that in traffic?
Yeah.
Oh, no.
No, that's what I meant.
Oh, no.
It's for off-highways.
Yeah.
So you can't turn this on when you're driving around.
You're not supposed to.
You're not supposed to.
You don't have to have a weird cop that pull you over
for having fog lights on.
But yeah, I don't think you're supposed to.
Yeah, I didn't mind that.
It was that center one that kind of went, hmm.
Yeah, no, that's the idea.
It's like an overlander.
That's cool.
And then it's got a snorkel, which is a camera.
It's that thing sticking out of the passenger B pillar there.
So all the other 4Runners that are hybrids make 326 horsepower.
This robs it of 1% of its horsepower.
So it's only 323.
But you can go into water that's real deep
and still pull air into the engine.
It's got rock sliders, you can see.
So it really is very, very capable.
The downside, well, actually one more thing.
So the bronze wheels and the bronze Toyota badge,
that's like less than $1,000 option for both those.
And I was thinking like, you know,
you've been on Porsche configurators.
You wanted bronze wheels and bronze badge.
$19,000 plus you'd have to delete the windshield
and add a fifth seat.
Magnesium, isn't that where the money comes in in Porsche?
Well, Porsche charges.
But they do charge $5,000 for a start to light.
I know for a finish, you're right.
So you know what I mean?
So it's cool.
Like this is about as option as you can make it.
It's still under 70.
Again, the starting price is 68.
Those are nice wheels.
They're great wheels.
The only knock on it, it drives great on the highway
because of the old man Emu shocks,
much better than a standard one.
It's very, very capable off-road.
Unlike the, let's say the fifth gen TRD Pro even was,
it would get you there, but it did it in an ugly manner.
This is just very capable.
I took it off-roading two days ago.
That's good.
It kept up with the Rivian.
I went up to Hungry Valley.
Shot an episode of my driving with Johnny, as it's called.
The knock on this is, you know, it's expensive.
B, not everyone's thrilled with the hybrid powertrain.
And if you open the back,
you can see that where Toyota puts the battery,
eats pretty heavily into the cargo space.
So there's like a, there's like a four inch kind of lump.
It's just a hybrid.
It's not a plug-in hybrid, right?
It's just a hybrid.
But you see, can't put, like open that up too.
That's like a thing.
But behind that's like the battery.
Back up, back up, back up, back up.
Little handhold right there, but yeah, right there.
Pull it up.
Yeah.
So behind that, and it's incredibly cheap.
To just break everything.
But behind that's the battery.
So, you know, you have a four inch hump that's eating up.
It's supposed to be an overlander.
Now it does have a built-in air compressor, which is cool.
Oh, that's nice.
Oh, I like that.
Yeah, that's good.
But the other thing is,
Why do we like air compressors?
Guys like air compressors.
Well, it's handy.
Like, you know, if you go off-roading,
you use mine at home every week.
Oh, yeah.
Every week.
Yeah.
And it's, I've, you know,
look, Rivian comes standard with one.
It's a great feature.
I will say that the other real knock on this,
and real off-road guys laugh about this,
the payload is 895 pounds.
And, you know, as a over 250 pound man,
I'm eating more than a quarter of the payload.
Right, right.
So that's, it's not, it's like,
it's like, yeah, you can put a 700 pound,
you can put 700 pounds on the roof,
but then the driver has to be under 200 pounds
to legally be within the payload.
Can't, I like Cam just left the total disarray.
That's fine.
Good for Cam.
Um, so, let him pick it.
See, it's not there.
So that's the knock on it.
You know, this is interesting.
It's one of the rare manufacturer plates
that's California.
Yeah.
You don't see these often.
Usually it's Michigan, another place in Georgia.
Hyundai and Toyota are still,
are still, in fact,
Hyundai still has a blue plate in circulation.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's pretty cool.
But yeah, it's, it's real good,
other than that thing.
But as Zuckerman will tell you,
even though it's rated at 895 pounds,
it's engineered so you can be a stupid idiot
and overloaded to death and it'll be fine.
Here's the interior.
Yeah.
And it's got a special in there.
Yeah.
Check out the door.
Look at the door Cam.
There you go.
Swing Cam storage.
Yeah.
So, so zoom down on the bottom one.
You can see it has three molded pockets
for water bottles.
So, you know, you can get six water bottles
in the door and then there's like a,
there's like a, you know what I mean?
It's, no, it's, no, it's like,
if you're overlanding, it's hand,
like literally we were,
it was a hundred degrees or we were filming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I had six water bottles
and we had one left by the end of it.
I appreciate a good cup holder and water bottle.
Yeah.
No, sure.
It's useful.
It's really useful.
Lots of smart.
Oh, and then here's the other thing.
You, Cam, if you go and you see there's a,
I have a wire hanging out of the side
of the, the flat screen in the middle.
So it's just, they have handy USB ports
in weird places.
So that's like, if you have a radar detector,
you can plug it in there.
Or if you have, again, if you're really
going overlanding, you'd have another,
like iPad running a mapping program.
Right.
You know what I mean?
It's just, it's just, it's smart.
And it's got big chunky knobs and you know,
it's tough, but I'm, this is the second time
I've driven one super impressed by it.
The only, you know, the real question is,
okay, so it's 70 grand.
Well, are there other capable SUVs
that are 70 grand?
Yeah.
Are they better?
You know, you got to go back to back.
And then also, like Toyota also makes
the Land Cruiser now.
And you can actually get a Land Cruiser
for like, you know, under 60.
So if off road into your thing,
is a trail hunter or a TRD Pro forerunner
better than a Land Cruiser?
So you get into those kind of conversations.
But if you live in a bubble, you like the thing,
you like the Everest green paint, like it's awesome.
You won't regret owning it.
Although it is a hybrid that gets like 16 miles a gallon.
So there you go.
But super torquey.
It's like 470 pound feet of torque.
Nice.
Yeah.
What are you doing, Johnny?
He takes these cars outside.
He knows how to do this.
He goes out in the off roads.
I love off roading.
It's my favorite thing.
So what do you do?
Do you do like, do you climb down rock faces?
Do you know places where you can go?
Yes, yes.
But this one, because it's not a rock crawler,
what we did is Hungry Valley is great
because it's like hundreds of acres.
It's amazing.
Well, that's what I'm always afraid of.
Like I've been there on the press thing where they go,
OK, we're all going to go down this rock face.
We're going to do this.
But I'm a little nervous about going on my own to that place
because it's so big.
Brought the Rivian so that everyone says,
you know, what do I need for recovery gear?
The best thing you need is another vehicle.
So if this thing rolls over, they'll take you to the hospital.
You know, that's number one.
But do you have like a set trail that you like to go up and down?
In fact, it was so random.
I ride like my camera guy.
I threw him in the Rivian.
We mount to the camera on the back.
And I just said, just drive.
Whatever looks cool, the Rivian can do it.
So I just follow him around.
And he's learning.
Luckily, the Rivian is very capable.
Like I gave him some pointers.
And I bought walkie-talkies this morning because we didn't have any.
And I'm like, boy, I really need these.
But that's the thing with modern production vehicles.
They're so freaking capable that like you don't really have
to worry like you used to.
Like this has a rear diff locker.
This has a detachable front sway bar.
Didn't need them.
You know, again, were we doing like black diamond or people
are going to watch the video and go, oh, my Regal can do that,
of course, every time no matter what.
But it's really capable.
And again, like the tires, it's so smart.
Open country threes are like just they're such good off-road tires.
And they work well on the highway.
So it's it's a good vehicle.
There you go.
There you go.
Nicely done.
I like Hungry Valley a lot.
I love it out there.
My kids learned how to ride motorcycles there
when they were yay high.
It's it was that fun first kid ride.
Like when they tip over and crash and they cry.
And I'm like, get up.
Let's go.
But the pictures are so funny from that day.
And then you sit on the, you know, the edge of your truck there
and have a nice little lunch and get out and bikes and ride
and try not to get run over by a trophy truck flying over your head.
What's nice about Hungry Valley too, real quick,
is they do have motorcycle only trails.
So if you're learning, you can stay on those.
And there's plenty of people making sure everybody follows the rules down there.
They do have.
They do have a range.
There's a few.
But if you have you ever go to Hungry Valley
and then go to Glamis.
Glamis is a trunk rally.
You feel good about Hungry Valley.
And then you go to Glamis and you'll see a kid in a bathing suit
flying off a mountain, dude, just landing on a bunch of people,
picnicking.
And you go, what is this?
And they go, this is Glamis.
But really it's what it makes you love California
when you see that all that's going on.
But if you, you know, we went on, what's today, Saturday, I went on Thursday.
Yeah.
I saw one other truck and three motorcycles.
And again, it's hundreds of, it's the size of Rhode Island,
I think, Hungry Valley.
Wow.
And it's like, it's awesome.
Okay.
It's five bucks.
Jim Farley is going to be on the show in a minute.
But before he comes on the show.
Zuckerman, you won't be here because this is,
we're taping different days here,
but I wanted to show you this story and get your commentary on it.
This is a robot.
Hold on.
Don't cut to it yet.
Sex.
What about your robot?
We'll have those soon.
This is a robot at a Bay Area location of a Chinese hot spot
that went viral after it was caught malfunctioning,
causing chaos inside the restaurant.
Roll the clip.
I'm good.
I'm not good.
It's all fun and games here at
Hadaleo Restaurant until their robot,
which was an amusement that everyone,
God, keep playing.
It is amusing.
Went crazy and started smashing plates
and apparently started dancing and hallucinating.
And she's trying to control it with the app in her hand there.
Look at how hard she has to hold on to this thing.
That's so good.
It's such a good clip.
This is actually very entertaining.
Let go to this restaurant for that.
I mean, you would think maybe you program it like every,
you know, thousands meal.
Yeah, it was a little much.
Right.
I liked it.
Look at it trying to kill.
Don't drop the end of the clip.
See what else it does.
See, they eventually, I saw this,
they get like three people to drag it out.
Look at how strong this thing is.
And it's not even that big.
That's like five one.
This thing and it's going.
It's robot hallucinating.
That's so good.
And it's like the apron too.
I'm good.
I'm good.
Clearly you're not.
Look, oh boy.
I can't wait till the hands start like grabbing people
and like snapping wrists and like,
it's going to be that quick.
Yeah, the robot is just going to kill quickly
and they're going to go, sorry.
We're building like chimps.
You know how chimps go crazy?
But doesn't this make you salivate
Suckerman as a personal injury?
I'm not crying.
There you go.
There's no tears.
There you go.
All right.
Before we bring Jim Farley out,
let's talk about Bluetooth.
Oh yeah.
Fellas, you know, we love this perfect blue pill here.
That's Bluetooth gold, by the way.
I know it well now.
You already know what time it is.
It's time to level up.
Bluetooth just dropped something crazy.
I'm talking about this next level championship belt,
gold, plated energy.
This is a four in one beast.
I don't know how they're doing this over at Bluetooth,
but they put everything into it.
For Loco and Bluetooth.
They just combined it all.
It's the collab no one was asking for.
Why one pill?
We can put all of the pills in this one Bluetooth gold,
which dissolves under your tongue,
works in as little as 15 minutes.
That means you can get it on quicker
and stay in the game longer.
It also lasts 36 hours.
There's another drug in it that lasts.
Plus it's got apomorphine in it, oxytocin.
It's got everything.
So it's got your short term.
It's got your long term.
It's got everything.
How do we get the robot to get some of this?
The robot had it, as was the problem.
That's what went wrong.
I see.
Someone put some Bluetooth in it.
Dancing robot goes berserk and has to be restrained.
That story.
It's so good.
We had to fight the robot for 36 hours.
Till the battery went dead.
Oh, a battery or a sex robot?
Don't give that thing a solid state battery
because that's the end of a soul.
You can kind of see how it goes wrong with robots
right in that one clip.
And it starts with the immune.
It's just like the movies.
They made us dance in Chinese restaurants.
We're tired of it.
They had sex with us.
Against our will.
Yes, it's happening.
So good.
So you better enjoy your Bluetooth now
because after, I don't know.
You'll be strangled by a robot.
Three years we're dead.
That's right.
You'll be banging your robot with Bluetooth
and then it's going to kill you.
I always worry about with the robot sex robot
that there's something in the robot vagina
that just goes clip like a cigar cutter.
That's what you're worried about.
It's going to snap your head like a praying mantis.
Not the shame of fucking a robot.
Bluetooth is going to be so happy with this ad.
We've got a special deal for your listeners.
Get 10% off your first month of Bluetooth gold
with code spike 9-11.
That's promo code spike 9-11.
Visit bluetooth.com for more details
and important safety.
We thank you for putting up with us.
Robot not included.
Robot not included.
Today's show also sponsored by ODew.
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Fellas, thank you for coming by today.
Thank you.
I'm going to goodnight you now
and welcome Jim Farley to the stage.
Jim Farley.
There he is.
Back on the show, the CEO of Ford.
And you've got Spike Ferris,
and the CEO of Spike's car radio.
Good to see you, Jim.
I don't have much time with you.
So I want to run through a bunch of stuff.
You've got a new season of your hit podcast Drive,
which launches today.
We'll get to that.
But first, Ford is getting back into Formula One, right?
And you're just kicking off the 2026 season
in Melbourne, Australia.
Why now?
Why Formula One now?
Well, we decided about four years ago,
because the reg changed.
You know, it's a logical time to enter the sport.
We decided four years ago to partner with Red Bull at the time.
Red Bull was just on the eve of becoming world champion.
So they were kind of this irreverent team.
We really liked their attitude.
Max was not a world champion yet.
Right.
And they had the ambition to, with the new regs,
to build their own power unit.
So we decided, hey, let's do it together.
And little did we know that Formula One
would get so popular over the next four years.
And Max, we win all the championships,
and they become part of the establishment.
But we picked them, really,
because they were a pretty irreverent group of people.
We thought there'd be a lot of tech transfer, prognostics,
predictive failure components.
Formula One is the best in the world.
We have a lot of pro software that we sell to people
on the failure for our transit bans and super duties.
High discharge batteries, which we could bring drag racing.
That would help a lot to their program,
as well as Arrow for EVs.
And so we now have dozens of engineers
being working there for four years now.
And we're learning even more,
especially around additive manufacturing.
We've flown a lot of parts on planes between Detroit and London
to keep building the engines on time
so we could test them, break them.
Wow. And what do you attribute the big F1 really is
growing into something bigger than it's ever been?
How does that happen, in your opinion?
Like, why did it just blow up all of a sudden?
You know, when Liberty bought them,
I think Chase and the team did a great job
with Drive to Survive.
Obviously, that really drove a lot of viewership.
I think it's really a whole new demographic.
You know, my daughter is in college
and she watches every Formula One race with her friends.
A lot of young female enthusiasts.
And I think that's what really drove the sport in the U.S.
I think the coverage is not so great, to be honest.
Let's hope that Apple does a better job or a good job.
So I don't think it's the coverage.
I think it's just the sport and the drama behind the people,
the drivers and the team.
The team principals really caught everyone's attention in the U.S.
It's good to see with three races in the U.S.
But, you know, I think, you know, frankly,
it's still just getting started Formula One.
They have a lot of upside still.
I think Apple is doing a great job with it.
I mean, I opened up the Apple TV app the other night
and it was just laid out there very easy to kind of find.
The races were kind of that the app was reminding me to watch them.
It was really it was a heightened experience, I think, for that race.
Do you think Indy will ever get that sort of attention?
The IndyCar series?
I think not until they upgrade their vehicles, their race cars,
I think when people feel like IndyCar has the best technology
for overracing in the world.
I think it's hard to say that now.
That racing is amazing.
I mean, I watch every IndyCar race.
It's actually the only series of sports not involved in.
And I watch every race.
It's a great product.
A lot of great racing.
But compared to Formula One, you know,
you don't feel like it has all the great technology and the best technology in the world.
So, you know, I think Fox is doing a great job with the broadcasting this year.
But the Indy500 to me as an American is the most important race in the world.
I would love it to be, you know, there with Spa or Monte Carlo.
But I think they have more work to do.
I think Roger's done an incredible job to get it to where it is now, though.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think the 500 has ever meant more than it does now.
But it still has some way to go.
And I think Roger and the team would admit that they have a lot of upside.
You know, I read that you gave Pope Leo, the Pope, a car, a Ford Explorer.
And then personally delivered it with your wife.
Is it Leah?
Leah, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, that was supposed to be underground, but it, I don't know, it became really well known.
I think they have to publish donations.
And so somehow the Archdiocese of Detroit published it and it got out.
But yeah, it was kind of a funny story.
Yeah.
I want to know how it works.
Like, did you say, hey, Pope, how do you even get in touch with the Pope to go,
I want to give you a car?
Or is he like, look, I'm looking to get something.
I'm not sure I'm going to get a Land Rover or a Chevy.
But if you want to say something, tell me the story.
What happened was last summer, when he was elected,
I have a friend of mine who was ambassador of the Vatican and I asked him, look on American kid
and on the CEO Ford, I think the Pope should be driving American Carps.
He's from Chicago and the Explorer is the only plant left in Chicago.
Yeah.
All of our explorers are made there.
So I basically emailed him.
He introduced me to the Pope.
The Pope sent me a private email back saying, hey, my name is Robert Provost,
but now you know me as Pope Leo.
This is like three days after he was elected.
Please don't share my email address.
He said that in the email.
He said that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was super.
That's funny.
So funny.
And he said, you know, I think it'd be a great idea.
All we have is Mercedes and other vehicles here.
We don't have any American cars.
So let's do it.
You're American.
I'm American.
Let's do it.
So I had to call the Pope and basically say, do you want caps and shares?
Or a Benz seat?
And the funniest thing was, I go, yeah, white, right?
He goes, no, no, no.
I want my car black.
Yeah.
He turned out to be a huge car guy.
It sounds like it.
Yeah.
When we delivered it, he goes, hey, let's take a drive.
I never get to drive.
And he told me a Pope joke, which is really good.
Which is I'm happy to repeat it because it's a good Pope joke.
And we drove around the Vatican and he was clearly a good driver.
He actually missed his fusion six speed.
I told him that we lost like $4,000 on every one of those we made,
but he didn't seem to care much.
And I was really impressed.
He just wanted to ask, he asked me about our factory workers,
what their life was like, how much, how much money do we donate to charity?
For what reason?
He was very interesting.
Good driver.
But the Pope joke was pretty funny.
Go ahead.
What is it?
All right.
Pope and his driver are going down the autostrada.
Pope goes, you know what?
I never get to drive anymore.
Let's switch seats.
Pope's driving, driver in the back, gets stopped for speeding.
The Italian police officer looks inside, sees who's driving.
Oh my God.
Goes back to his patrol car, calls his commander.
Hey, commander, I think I got a big problem.
I got a really important person.
I stopped.
Commander says, is it the governor of the state?
No.
Is it the president of Italy?
No.
Because actually, I'm not sure who it is,
but he must be really important because the Pope's driving him around.
I thought that was a really good Pope joke.
Well, that's the first.
I thought that was really funny.
That's the first.
I thought you were driving around.
For Spikes Car Radio, a Pope joke.
That's the first in my life in 40 years in comedy.
That's the first time I've heard a Pope joke.
All right.
The Mustang Dark Horse SC.
A new standard for race-bread engineering.
Tell us about it.
Oh, well, the GTD has come out.
We're totally sold out.
I think it was a great product.
We really were inspired by the GT3 RS and GT2 RS,
and we thought there should be an American version of that.
The SC is different.
It's basically the same powertrain.
It doesn't have all the fancy tricks of the GTD,
but it's very fast and really...
It's kind of like the ultimate road going Mustang
without changing the basic configuration of the vehicle.
It doesn't have a trans-axle, but it's really fast.
It's really fun.
I think people are going to love it.
It's really a special car.
We have a driver's version coming out, a track version.
Now we're racing both Mustang Cup and Challenge now,
so it's an important car to connect with racing
with our Same Make series.
And you were just speaking of racing out at Sebring Racing, weren't you?
What kind of car were you in there, Mustang?
Yeah, our Challenge series.
We had about 25 cars there.
It's a little awkward to see you driving or racing against your customers.
Thankfully, it's part of my qualifying lap,
and so I had to start in the back both races, which was fun.
But yeah, it's a great series.
I mean, a lot like the MX5 Cup or the Porsche.
Carrera Cup.
It's the Same Make series.
It's a standard dark horse, but with a roll cage,
automatic blipping throttle.
It's a Coyote engine.
It's a manual gearbox, so it's really fun.
There's no traction control, but you can adjust the ABS.
It's a proper race car.
It's really fun for just over 100 grand.
Anyone can buy one and go racing on the weekend
with us at all these great races.
It was during the sibling weekend last year.
We went, we brought all the Mustang Challenge teams to Le Mans
to race actually before the 24 hour.
Wow.
And that's what we're trying to do,
just kind of giving people great experiences
with their racing Mustangs.
You've come a long way since Ford versus Ferrari,
and they threw the Ford exec into the car,
and he panicked and wet himself.
And now look, Jim Farley.
He's out there on the track racing and beating his own customers.
That must be so fun for everybody.
How do you pick which drivers are going to be doing that?
That's like a life-making event for a car guy,
going to Le Mans and racing, going to Sebring and racing.
Yeah, it's a really good question.
It's kind of a mix.
We have a celebrity class, and we had Tanner Faust,
and Sir Richard Hoy and Chris, the really famous
drifting journalist from the UK.
And then we had an old guy's class over 50, I think it is.
Yeah.
And then we have the young guy class.
They're all 17, 18, 19 years old trying to move up to GT4,
or actually GTD and GT3 and hypercar eventually.
So it's like three different races within the same series.
We kind of pick it based on the competency of the driver.
Driving at Le Mans, you have to be careful, really fast.
So it was an hour race.
We had two hour races.
It's a lot of fun.
It looks like we're going to go to Spa next year,
and then back to Le Mans in 28 when we're racing hypercars.
So it's going to be a lot of fun.
Yeah, we picked carefully.
We now have Mustang Racing Series in Australia.
So we have that team come as well.
So it's an Aussie slash American slash European grid.
It's fun.
Wow, amazing.
Well, today's a special day for you.
The new season of your podcast Drive launches today.
Congratulations.
It's season four.
You have new episodes releasing every Wednesday, like we do.
Good day for podcast to launch.
But what can we look forward to in this new season?
Well, I think we have a really good mix of guests.
We have Daniel Ricardo.
I talk a lot about his transition out of Formula One
and Scotty James, the snowboarder, the incredible, incredible athlete.
I have Mike Rowe, Chris Hoy.
I have Brian Cranston breaking bad.
He's a great car person.
Is he really ready?
Wait, hold on.
Let's go back to Brian.
Now, I know Brian from Seinfeld, where he was the wacky dentist.
I don't think that was his character name.
Oh, yes, he would take the laughing gas before.
Yeah, the laughing gas.
But I don't recall Brian being a car guy.
What's he into?
I wouldn't say he's a traditional car guy in the sense that we are.
But he talked a lot about, I'm not going to ruin the episode,
but he talked a lot about road trips.
Like he lived out of a car for a long time.
He and his brother went on this extended road trip.
And it was it was pretty wacky, actually.
Yeah, he lived out of the car for like a year before he became an actor.
And I think it's a great car story that people wouldn't know about.
Brian Cranston like, you know, I don't think anyone's surprised
when I interviewed Tom Brady that he washed his car like two times a day in high school.
But maybe they wouldn't know about Brian Cranston.
Gabrielle and Glacis was was really fun about his buses and his love of the VW brand.
It's been a great season.
And I try to get the human side of people and also kind of the common things
about road trips, your first car, get everyone vulnerable a little bit about,
you know, their their life with cars.
And it doesn't have to be the traditional car person like you or me.
It could be someone like Brian, who had a different relationship with cars.
Well, we all drive them.
No, I believe he has that same thing.
It's a very large segment of non car people who are car people and don't know it.
I don't know if you've had the experience.
People will come up to you and go, I'm not a car person.
And I go, what do you drive?
They go, I have a Toyota Prius, but I love it.
I go, well, you're a car person.
So you love that product.
You love that thing.
Help me make sense of, you know, here on the show, I just want to shift gears for one second.
You know, I've been trying to make sense of what's going on in the world of internal combustion
engines and EVs and China and America.
Give us some perspective on where we're at with EVs with respect to where we were going with them.
Maybe four years ago, everybody's all electric and now they're not.
And the sudden resurgence of internal combustion, like where are we at?
And what's happening in your opinion?
I would say we're kind of in a third inning, the bottom of a third inning of a nine inning game.
I think everyone thought that we were actually in the first inning.
Everyone thought we were in the seventh inning.
That's not actually what's happened.
So that's often happens with new technology.
Look, the world is really different.
16% of all electric, pure electric vehicles sold in the world are produced and
bought in one country, China.
They are way ahead.
They use a totally different battery technology, LFP, no fire risk, twice the charge life,
but about 30% less energy density than a lithium battery, but very affordable.
Materials are plentiful, batteries are really efficient.
They also innovated with the EREV technology in China, which is now starting to go global.
And China is now the largest exporter of vehicles in the world.
And as the market takes a dip this year, they're up another 40%.
So we've never seen an export way beyond Japan or South Korea than the Chinese.
There's 100 OEMs there.
Most people have never heard of Xiaomi or XPeng or they probably have heard of BYD,
maybe Geely owns Volvo, but they probably haven't heard the other 92 car companies there.
They're becoming very big globally.
About 25% of all vehicles sold in Mexico are now made in China.
Australia is now 20% Chinese OEMs, Middle East, South America.
They're huge exporters now and they're now starting to localize their production
in Southeast Asia and Europe.
Europe is somewhere in between us here in the US where we're only 5% pure electric.
We used to be almost 15, but the consumer incentives went away
and we found out what the natural market is.
It's only about 5% in the US market, but that's still a huge market.
In Europe it's about 25% and in China in Europe they're hugely supported by the
governments with consumer incentives, much larger than the ones we had here in the US.
And that helps people make that expensive bridge because the batteries are very expensive.
I think we're in the third inning because the battery costs have not come down where we thought.
We thought they'd be maybe a third less than they are.
Solid state and other new chemistries are pretty far out in the horizon.
Hi, Magnus and Lone Nickel are coming to market as is LFP now.
Ford's making LFP battery for our new UED affordable product in Michigan and we'll be
starting our production for our affordable EV whole lineup starting next year at the time
when pretty much all of our competitors including Tesla basically stopped investing.
So we're really excited about our journey.
But back to your question, 5% of the people, they really buy an EV, they don't buy a combustion
vehicle and they're very loyal usually for short trips commuting around town
and that's a perfect use and the cost of ownership is cheaper than an ice product.
But at the same token we're seeing this huge resilience in partial electrification from
eREVs which is basically an industrial combustion engine powering the batteries.
No transmission, no axle, no drive train just basically charging the batteries.
But that will be very useful for heavy trucks for towing like our Super Duty and our big
trucks at Ford. About 30% of the F-150 now is hybrid.
In our case at Ford we believe the hybrid should also power a house or a job site
so it exportable power which is not the case of the Japanese OEMs yet.
I'm sure they'll catch on. We're about 80% of truck hybrids in the U.S. between Maverick hybrid
and an F-150 and you're starting to see hybrid specialized. You're going to see performance
hybrids at Ford Racing, you're going to see truck hybrids for towing like eREVs, you're
going to see super efficient next generation hybrids for great fuel economy in the highway.
You're going to see specialization of partially electric powertrains and what will be left on
the ice side will be performance vehicles and towing work use. There you go.
And that's how it's going to play out. We really want to bet on all of it. We're going to have an
all hybrid lineup so Bronco everything you can buy at Ford will have a hybrid. We'll also have
the eREVs for towing. We'll have an all-electric affordable vehicle to compete with Model Y,
Model 3. I think there's really nothing else like it on the market for these new vehicles
coming out from Ford. We really started a Spelink Works team in California four years ago. They
were basically Formula One and Tesla people. My badge didn't even work in the building
and that vehicle is radically different. Engineering, I'm really excited to show everyone
later this year, maybe next year and it'll be coming out next year. So yeah, that's how I see it.
There you go. There's so much going on with Jim Farley. You know if you're the CEO of McDonald's
and all you can do is really eat a burger on Twitter and then fight with the Wendy's guy,
you should really look at what Jim Farley does. He knows how to run a company. Doesn't he Cameron?
He's racing. He's out there racing. He's podcasting. The new season of Drive launches today,
season four, March 25th with new episodes with Gabriel Iglesias. Mike Rowe and our friend Brian
Cranston and more. Jim, it's always great to catch up with you, man. I'd like to see you in person again
soon. I love your show. Thank you. I love your backdrop. I love that E30 behind you. It's good.
I didn't bring my Bronco today. It's home in the driveway. I had to do something else, but I love
my Bronco. I just bought a tire cover. You know the 66? Put it on the back of the Bronco and now
I feel like I have a new Bronco again. All right. That one little change made it feel brand new.
Anyway, it's very good to see you. Isn't that awesome? Yeah, it's tremendous. It's a tremendous
product. I love it. Thanks for taking the time to visit with us and thank you. I really appreciate
the Pope joke. Didn't know I was getting that today. Yeah, no, surprising delight. That's my
objective. You're the best.
About this episode
The hosts kick off with internet car trivia and Jaguar design-boss Jerry McGovern’s messy departure/PR saga, then pivot to a big personal update: selling their Zagato 356. There’s also a deep pop-culture tech dive on Kramer’s 1973 Chevy Impala—an early experimental airbag setup—and a debate over whether “H-pattern” feel in an automatic is real or just simulation. The show then reviews Toyota’s 2026 4Runner Trail Hunter, covers a viral malfunctioning restaurant robot, and ends with Ford CEO Jim Farley on F1’s 2026 return, his Pope-delivered Explorer story, Mustang racing, and Ford’s EV strategy (hybrids, eREVs, and affordable EVs).
Original notes
Spike and the crew cover Gerry McGovern's messy exit from Jaguar, a deep dive into the Toyota 4Runner Trailhunter, and Porsche's wild new shifter patent, before Ford CEO Jim Farley comes on to talk F1 and the Mustang Dark Horse SC.
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This week on SCR, it's a full lap through car world chaos: Jaguar's PR nightmare over Gerry McGovern's departure, a legit review of the new Toyota 4Runner Trailhunter from Jonny, and Porsche patenting a shifter that tries to be both automatic and manual (bold move).
The SCR Garage is selling their rare Zagato to fund the next project, and we find out that Kramer's car on Seinfeld was one of the first production vehicles with a working airbag.
Ford CEO Jim Farley is one of the most car-obsessed executives in the industry, and it shows. He breaks down why Ford partnered with Red Bull for their F1 power unit, what tech actually transfers from the track to your driveway, and why Formula 1's growth isn't slowing down anytime soon. Farley also gets into IndyCar's uphill battle, the 2026 Mustang Dark Horse SC, Ford's all-hybrid and EREV future, and his personally-delivered black Ford Explorer to Pope Leo.
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Produced by
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&
Q6 Media
https://q6.media
______________________________________________
Timestamps:
00:00 - Alfa Romeo-Gate
01:33 - Jaguar's PR keeps getting worse
04:46 - We're selling the Zagato?
10:12 - Kramer's car from Seinfeld
16:08 - Porsche's manual AND auto gearbox patent
23:51 - Toyota 4Runner Trailhunter review
34:05 - Robot malfunction fails
40:10 - Introducing Ford CEO Jim Farley
40:37 - Ford in F1
43:42 - IndyCar
44:59 - Pope Leo's Ford Explorer
48:32 - Ford Mustang Dark Horse SC
54:59 - Are EVs in America dead?
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