Gordon Murray Saved Car Week - Does It Matter? — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Cammisa & DTS — Ep. 203
The Carmudgeon Show
Gordon Murray Saved Car Week - Does It Matter? — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Cammisa & DTS — Ep. 203
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Car
Mercury Monterey
Car
Jaguar Mark
The Jaguar Mark I is a classic car from the 1950s known for its stylish look and smooth driving experience. It's a favorite among collectors and car lovers.
Car
BMW E30
The E30 is a classic BMW model from the 1980s and early 1990s, known for being fun to drive and stylish. Many people love this car for its sporty feel and reliability.
Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that many people recognize. It's known for its unique shape and powerful performance, making it a favorite among car enthusiasts.
Car
Ford Pinto
The Ford Pinto is a small car from the 70s that was cheap to buy but had some safety problems that people talked about a lot. It’s often mentioned when discussing how car safety has improved over the years.
Concept
Monterey car week
Monterey car week is a big event in California where people show off their fancy and classic cars. It's a fun time for car lovers to come together and see amazing vehicles.
Car
Porsche
Porsche is a famous car brand from Germany that makes fast and stylish cars. They are well-known for their sports cars like the 911.
Car
Porsche Gt3S
The Porsche 911 GT3 is a super sporty version of the regular Porsche 911. It's built for speed and great handling, making it popular with people who love to drive fast on tracks.
Part
S58 engine
The S58 is a powerful engine used in some BMW sports cars. Some people think it doesn't sound as good as older engines, which can be disappointing for fans.
Part
S55 engine
The S55 is another powerful engine from BMW, used in older M3 and M4 models. It performs well and can be modified for even more power.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and stylish sports car made in America. It's famous for its powerful engine and is often seen racing or doing cool tricks like donuts.
Concept
restomod
A restomod is an old car that has been updated with new parts to make it better to drive while keeping its classic look. It's like giving a vintage car a modern makeover.
Car
Chevrolet Impala
The Chevy Impala is a large car made by Chevrolet that is known for being comfortable and having a lot of space inside. It's often used by families and has a classic American design.
Car
R8
The Audi R8 is a fast sports car made by Audi. It's known for its stylish look and powerful engines, and it's a popular choice among car enthusiasts who love speed and performance.
Term
twin turbo
Twin turbo means the engine has two turbochargers that help it produce more power. This makes the car faster and improves how it performs when driving.
Company
DDE
DDE is a company that makes videos about fancy cars and car culture. They are known for their exciting content featuring exotic vehicles.
Car
Acura Tlx
The Acura TLX is a luxury car made by Acura, which is Honda's premium brand. It's known for being comfortable and having good technology features.
Concept
LA Auto Show
The LA Auto Show is a big car event in Los Angeles where car companies display their latest models and technologies. It's a place for people to see new cars and learn about what's coming to the market.
Concept
Detroit Auto Show
The Detroit Auto Show is a major car event in Detroit where car companies show off their new cars and technologies. It's important for the auto industry and attracts many visitors.
Concept
OEMs
OEM means Original Equipment Manufacturer. In cars, it refers to the companies that make the cars and their parts. They are the original makers of the vehicles you see on the road.
Car
Acura RLX
The Acura RLX is a larger luxury car from Acura. It focuses on providing a comfortable ride and has many high-tech features.
Car
Mercedes-Benz 190
The Mercedes-Benz 190 is a small luxury car made by the German company Mercedes-Benz. It was built in the 1980s and 1990s and is appreciated for its durability and comfort.
Concept
Radwood
Radwood is a car event that focuses on cars from the 1980s and 1990s. People show off their classic cars from that time, and it's a fun gathering for car lovers.
Car
Ferrari 275 Ferrari
The Ferrari 275 GTB is a famous sports car made by Ferrari in the 1960s. It has a powerful engine and is known for its beautiful design, making it very popular among car enthusiasts.
Car
Ferrari Daytona Spider
The Ferrari Daytona Spider is a famous sports car from the 1970s. It's known for being fast and stylish, making it very desirable among car collectors.
Car
Ferrari Daytona
The Ferrari Daytona SP3 is a super fancy and powerful car made by Ferrari that looks really cool. It’s special because it celebrates Ferrari's history in racing and is very rare.
Car
Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1
The Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1 is a sports car created by a famous car designer, Gordon Murray. It's designed to be very fast and light, focusing on performance and handling.
Company
Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
Gordon Murray Special Vehicles is a company that makes very fast and unique cars. It's run by a famous car designer named Gordon Murray, who is known for creating some of the best sports cars.
Brand
GMA
GMA is a car company started by Gordon Murray, who is famous for making really fast and light sports cars. They focus on using new technologies to improve performance.
Concept
Le Mans
Le Mans is a famous car race that lasts for 24 hours. Cars compete to see who can go the farthest in that time, making it a test of speed and endurance.
Car
Gordon T50
The Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 is a new super-fast car made by a famous car designer. It’s really light and built to give drivers an amazing experience when they drive it.
Term
homologated
Homologated means that a car has been officially approved to be sold or raced according to specific rules. This is important for cars that compete in races.
Concept
hypercar
A hypercar is an extremely fast and expensive car that has the latest technology and performance features. It's considered one of the best types of cars in the world.
Term
lighting
Lighting in cars includes the headlights and taillights. Good lighting is important for safety and style, but it can be very costly to design and produce.
Term
headlights
Headlights are the lights at the front of a car that help you see when it's dark. They are very important for driving safely at night.
Term
tail lights
Tail lights are the lights at the back of a car that let other drivers know when you're stopping or turning. They help keep everyone safe on the road.
Term
carbon fiber
Carbon fiber is a special material that is very strong but also very light. It's used in cars to make parts that help them go faster and use less fuel.
Car
Mclaren F1
The McLaren F1 is a super-fast car from the 90s that was really special because of its unique design and speed. It had three seats and was once the fastest car you could buy.
Car
Audi Quattro
The Audi Quattro is a cool car from the 80s that could drive really well in different weather because it had all-wheel drive. It was important for racing and changed how cars are made today.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro is a cool American car that looks tough and goes really fast. It’s known for its powerful engine and is often compared to another famous car called the Mustang.
Car
Porsche 959
The Porsche 959 is a super fancy car from the 80s that was really advanced for its time. It could drive on different types of roads and was built for racing, which made it very special.
Car
Toyota 2000 Gt
The Toyota 2000GT is a really pretty sports car from the late 60s that many people admire. It was advanced for its time and is considered a classic in car history.
Car
Jaguar Etypes
The Jaguar E-Type is a really beautiful sports car from the 60s and 70s that many people still love today. It’s famous for its looks and how well it drives.
Car
BMW M3
The BMW M3 is a sporty version of a regular BMW car that’s made for people who love to drive fast. It’s known for being fun to drive and can handle well on both roads and tracks.
LIVE
Jason, it's sleeping. I did pull ten hours last night. Ten hours and eleven minutes of sleeping. Wow. It's always like the fourth night after I get back that my body is like, oh, now. Because I slept, I probably averaged four hours of sleep a night during car week. Car week. Okay, so I know about it because of the thumbnail. Yeah, but if you're, yes, or the title. Yeah, so this is the car margin show. I am Derek Tam, hyphen Scott.
This is Jason Camisa, and this episode is about Monterey Car Week. 2025. 2025, our discussion of it. Yeah. Yes. What car did you drive down in this year? 1957 Jaguar Mark I. And did it break? No, it was faultless. Damn it. Did a beautiful job. I had two cars that were, that were both also mechanically-ish faultless. Three decades newer. They are. No, no, no, no. Hold on. Three and three and a half.
Yeah, my Mercedes-Cosworth and my E30 wagon. The Mercedes is cranky at the moment. So we'll have both cars were hit with stuff on the road. The Mercedes got back into the front bumper and also then hit on the side. Somebody walked by and scraped a fender flare. Just kind of one of those was like annoying. It's on nothing stuff like that. You know, the scratches will buff out and whatever else. And they were both on Fredestine tires.
Was your car in Fredestine? It was a fully-fretestine car week force. Which means that this episode of the podcast probably is, isn't it? Sponsored by the by Fredestine.
By the folks of Fredestine. I don't think I realize that. But yeah. Yeah. I did the whole car week. I will say I sat in traffic a lot as we do normal.
I did take one wrong turn. So you have to one of the one of the inside tips for a car week is you just have to use ways because you just never know what fuckery has unfolded somewhere and caused a 17 hour traffic backup on one of the main arteries.
And so I was using ways to get through the through this Pebble Beach thing trying to get over to the Haggerty House actually. And I took a wrong turn and it was like the detour. I think I started with like six minutes left to my destination.
It went to 16. But I saw the map and it was like spaghetti. Yeah. And I'm like, well, I've never been on this side of a week. So I'm just going to go for it. And what I realized is I was on a sort of edge road with no houses on it.
And it was twisty and curvy. And there was no one. And that 15 minute quote unquote detour wound up actually only costs six minutes one.
And I did probably we can bleep this out. Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. No, I was it was a really brisk run between probably 30 and 50 miles an hour the whole way.
Maybe slower in some of the corners. But it renewed my face and faith in my wagon. Like I didn't know that I had lost faith in the wagon. But the Beatrice, my shitboxy 30 got the really good suspension stuff. So got the big big stab bars and the
camera plates and the heavy duty suspension and the E30 wagon went back to just lowering springs and fixed negative camera plates. But the rest of the stuff is just kind of off the shelf. And that car is a monster on a back road. And those tires are as we've said many times. Perfect. I once from pluses on all of my cars can have them. They're not gripping off that I didn't that I was able to
actually kick the tail out and I was making a quick but you turn and right in front of a cop. He gave me quite the stern looking at and I just went. Sorry, like I was just embarrassed. Like I was just one of these like really tight you turns. And I kicked it just sideways enough that I could get like 90 degrees of steering.
And I took off and he just pulled up next to me. I'm like, sorry. And he laughed.
I'm like what the police did to many of the people who were purposefully acting like dick bags. And so we'll talk more about them. Okay.
Then a clap and the jingle.
Oh, I thought you meant we had to perform the jingle. I never mean that.
Oh fuck are we recording? Look at that. Oops. Or don't look at that if you're just listening.
Well, they could they could look at something else. Probably be more pleasant than we're looking at.
My car is sad talking to you talking about us. Not my car is not my car. It was sad because you said that nobody wanted to look at it.
What? That's not what I said. You have misinterpreted. What I said was that is the car that should be in the background because it was the car that was conspicuously absent.
Not it. But the air cooled 911 was conspicuously absent from Monterey car week this year. I saw some. But yes, not as many as in years past.
It used to be that I call the portion 911 the Pebble Beach Pinto because everyone used it as their basic transportation.
Yeah. And they're gone. Yeah. I don't exist anymore. All old cars are gone. It has was probably one of the most salient. It felt like there was a big step this year compared to years past.
It wasn't like a gradual change. It was like a huge step function change. Like we noticed a reduction in years past.
But I don't think I've never ever noticed a more substantial decrease in the number of old cars present at car week.
Then between last year and this I would say the Pebble Beach car week is dead replaced by Monterey car week without question to me.
This was the year where we've where we rounded the bend. And this is no longer about Pebble Beach. This is no longer about old cars.
This is a car festival with a very heavy emphasis on exotics. Yeah. And it's been a long time coming. But the transformation is definitely complete.
Yeah. In priority. I mean, there's still a lot of old cars there, but like sitting in traffic, what I noticed is if there was a Porsche, it was driven by someone who was over the age of 183 years old and was doing it at least 41 miles an hour less than the speed limit and couldn't figure out where the fuck they were in an old Porsche.
No, in any Porsche, including GT3s, hot boy GT3s, okay, the exceptions there were hot. Porsche's which I'll lump into the other big bucket of new arrivals which are dick bags and exotic cars getting arrested crashing into each other, getting doing 146 miles an hour and on a small road in the case of that D90.
And being chased down the street by youths with cameras.
Yeah, the car spotters were out in full force. But the to me, the most offensive part of car week was all of the M3s.
Did you notice him three? Yeah, there were a lot of M3s, three series generally.
Everyone with a crackle tune and anti lag for a 7,000 mile radius was there doing anti lag fuckery. Yes, definitely noticed that.
And I'm sorry, but that fucking S58 engine might and the S55, they might make power. But in the context of old cars, they sound like shit.
And so you every where you went, you're just a fucking terrible noise. Yeah, it was that was a shame.
Yes, things have changed for sure.
And then I watched Luca Betty do donuts in a camera, which was kind of cool in a sanctioned event like the rest.
Which is what that car was designed to do and it does it very well.
So he had the unfortunate timing of going right after some like 10,000, it sounded like 10,000 RPM Corvette doing like two minutes straight of donuts at it's 40 billion.
So what was this event? You went to some kind of trash festival or something?
I call it the fire festival. It was it was officially called the Monterey Motorsports Festival. And it was if I'm being nice, discordant, if I'm being honest, it was schizophrenic.
But if I'm being objective, it was actually quite fun. It was the most diverse event I've ever been to a car week. It was on the fairgrounds.
The sort of prime billing reason I went was the slate truck was supposed to be there for five hours. And I wanted to check out the slate truck.
It was apparently there for five minutes with flashers on the street and then fucked off. So I didn't get to see it.
What was there, however, was like a section of million dollar restomans right next to a section of like JDM stuff next to a section of not physically next to each other.
But there was like a whole section of like American there was a Chevy Impala section. There was a sort of motor sports low rider, low rider section, motor sports.
And then like a modern German stuff section with like an E30 and an R8 and sort of like totally random shit.
And then there was an amusement park and I I mean it's literally there was roller coaster and other stuff.
Then there was the sort of like a word stage and on that stage was some guy with an Italian accent like the honor of my lifetime is to meet Luca the nobody nobody.
And like let's give a round of applause to some magnificent man in his career and silence because no one knew the fuck he was talking about.
And there were a bunch of like four GTDs there and there was a 1600 horsepower twin turbo for RF 12 drift car next to it.
It made no sense and then the main stage was the journey cover band with the Filipino guy who sounds just like Steve what's his name.
You probably don't know journey is.
Journey it's a musical band sure yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Come on.
Sure. I've heard of them.
Okay. Good.
Steve Perry's sort of passed away and the guy that replaced him sounds just like him.
And so they were playing to a bunch of 12 year olds who were like we don't know who this is I think my parents listen to this music.
At the same time as the 12 year olds were gathering for some like cracked out EDM like DJ who's playing all night.
And while all of these disparate things are happening there's the doughnut island they called it which to to get to you have to walk past a DDE stage.
DDE is daily driven exotics.
These are the guys who sadly get arrested a lot and do a lot of bad things.
But they were there with like sad.
It's sad for car week when everyone's getting arrested and what happens is it's just all the good stuff is going to get shut down because no one can behave.
So that's why it's sad.
But I mean they drew a big crowd and everyone's happy to see them and they have cool cars and and whatnot.
Nothing against them.
But you walk past them and you get to this basically was a burnout box like a doughnut box.
And there were bleachers that fit about a quarter as many people were supposed to be there in a PA system that didn't work and kept cutting out to the point where you couldn't hear what was going on.
But there were some epic doughnuts that happened finally after the crowd refused to chant DDE.
So he was like, come on, DDE.
And all everyone finally after like 30 second time they were trying to rile everyone up because the cars just weren't appearing.
The crowd started chanting, bring the cars.
It was a mongolian clusterfuck to use a term that I heard once and cracked me up.
I have, that is not car week.
You would have left in 30 seconds.
I would have not attended, which is what I did.
I'm going back next year.
I had fun.
I mean, it was just, it was hilariously schizophrenic.
Okay.
But it was fun.
And then you know, that is the complete opposite of the quail or Pebble Beach.
Pebble Beach.
So something for everyone, but there were a lot of cars that were too new to celebrate.
I would say in an event that was historically about old cars.
Well, the event has evolved.
I mean, there's more manufacturer debuts and OEMs are present.
To be centered around, when I was a kid, it was centered around the historic races, auctions,
and of course, Pebble Beach before the quail was invented, which was 2004 or something like that.
Yeah.
It's not that anymore.
Yeah.
And it's, look, having a week long festival of cars is amazing.
Yeah.
I chose not to do anything with new car OEMs, and I have sort of gradually diminished that.
80% because I don't want to and 20% out of protest because I just don't think this is replacing the car.
Didn't you attend a press launch?
I didn't, I did a preview of a car.
I think you can, you might be able to guess why I did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, because it was, but look, I didn't go, we'll talk about that in a second, but I didn't go to the Acura TLX concept debut.
The quail has turned, has replaced the LA Auto Show.
So I got media credentials and it's like, right, 810, 810 am, we have the Acura press conference.
And then 825, every 15 or 25 minutes, there's, it's like several or several minutes apart.
Yeah.
I didn't look at the schedule because I'm not there to go and see new car debuts.
I'm going, I'm there to see the old cars and people that work in the industry.
But it's 100% replaced LA Auto Show and Detroit Auto Show in New York.
Yeah, for new car debuts from a variety of OEMs.
Some may have which do not have any sporting intent.
Or should never be like the Acura fucking TLX should, or RLX, whatever it was, it was an SUV.
The event is called the quail comma, a motor sports gathering.
Yes.
And the only sport anyone is playing that is running their kids to school.
And that's not actually a sport.
Yeah.
Have you ever wrestled a toddler just kidding?
I mean, that could be a lot of work.
It could be sport.
It could be sport.
Getting them into the car.
No, I just, that was actually, that's not a motor sport.
I failed, but that was a George Carlin reference.
When he talked about sports, he's like, not everything is a sport.
And he goes, like, hour long routine.
You guys should all look it up.
It's amazing.
But he was like, running is in a sport because everyone can do it.
My mom runs to the store.
Do you think she qualifies for an Olympic medal?
No.
Swimming is in a sport.
Swimming is the way to keep from drowning.
He just kind of goes through and dissect all sports.
Anyway, but I had two cars there this year as we discussed on a previous podcast
from that we did live at the MotorLux.
My E30 and the 236 in both of which sustained a little bit of damage.
But that's what happens when you're on the road.
But I got two new girls for the Mercedes.
So the Mercedes got hit with something on the way down.
And just chipped off a piece of the plastic grill.
And our buddy Adiz, who is the most generous cool guy in the world
who makes us these carmage and just stuff, just showed up with a replacement grill here for me.
So I hold him big time.
And then because car week, I had posted something on Instagram and a friend of mine was like,
Hey, there's a guy here who says he's got a brand new, like old stock grill with the chrome
and everything in the trunk of his 190.
Are you interested?
Yeah.
Ran across the field like a lunatic and bought a perfect new old stock grill for the car.
What field was this?
This was at Radwood.
I missed Radwood this year.
It was awesome.
What day of the week was that?
Where am I?
I think it was Friday night.
It was at the night of the quinoa.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So I missed a lot of stuff this year.
I was, this year felt a little different for us because we did a lot of commerce.
And so, you know, what this event does is it gets a lot of people together who are in industry.
And so, you know, you do try to attend the events and then you run into people.
And eventually that will lead it to sort of business discussions and get transactions done.
So I would, you know, in the space of a week.
Of course there's auctions also.
We did more transaction value than we did in our entire first year of business in business.
So it was, I felt like I was working more this year and didn't get to do some of the stuff
that would be nice to do, like, that's for fun.
But also, if you say, well, this is the fundamental reason we are here is to pay for our rental house.
So we have to do some business and the quail tickets and all the other expenses associated with attending.
So it, you know, it became more of a business week for me.
It was fine.
I'm happy to have that.
It's good to have the chance to do the transactions.
I miss when it was fun for me.
It's 100% work for me.
Or near is makes no difference.
Sounded like your donut island wasn't entirely work.
I went there to check out the slate truck.
Did you do work while you were there?
I Instagram the shit out of it.
I mean, that's work, right?
It's social media's work.
I would have much rather just hang out with my friends and, you know, done sort of went here and went there.
Non-authorized donuts.
No.
Yes.
No.
No, the whole week is 100% work event for me.
I mean, because I can't go, I literally cannot go five minutes without running into someone from the industry who might know and have a conversation.
I did spend time with a bunch of executives from different car companies and, you know, just a bit of FaceTime goes a long way to setting plans for what we can do in this coming year with drag race episodes and icons.
Yeah.
But yeah, I would say exactly analogous for those of us who are in trade because, you know, you see these people a couple of times of year and some of them you've done transactions within the past others.
You are doing your first transactions and sort of getting everybody together in the same place is extremely valuable for that.
It's huge.
How all of us did not wind up with like the plague, which I just got a news update that is going around.
I mean, how many people are at this peninsula?
A million?
Mostly outdoors events.
Thank God.
Yeah.
Although there were a couple of late nights in bars.
Oh, I didn't do any of that.
Oh, my God.
I don't have drinks to do any of that.
I don't drink.
But even every next morning, every morning was like the one morning I went to bed after two and left my hotel room at 4.45 200 dawn patrol.
Yeah.
To see the car truck.
And that was just, you know, yeah, I mean, if you're doing couple things or like you have a car on the tour.
My business partner, it has wanted to, he was driving at 275 Ferrari 275 GTB in the tour.
And he wanted to win and I was like, it's not a race.
And he's like, you don't understand.
Have to win it.
Win the tour.
He wanted to be at the front of the pack because he didn't want to get stuck behind some 1908 steam car that, you know, has an over pressure warning on the boiler and grenades or gets stuck going uphill or whatever.
Only to be met with the back of a CHP motorcycle escort, which was going 10 miles an hour under the speed limit at all times.
So he was very frustrated.
But anyway, he got up at zero dark 30 in order to do that.
So I mean, it's not what I would do.
You just kind of deal with it and hang out in traffic.
You know, the tour is a thing that's Thursday morning where all the cars that are going to be on the lawn Sunday go and not all of them.
They are all invited and requested and desired to go.
And it's whatever it is, 40 or 60 or 80 miles that you do.
And you get credit for doing it and then it features, it figures into your judging scores or your judging outcomes into some extent.
Not very much.
It's a tie breaker more than anything if I understand right?
Yes, I think that's right.
I mean, the car that won the preservation class did not do the tour because it had 87 miles on the odometer,
which feels like cheating in the preservation class.
What kind of car was it?
Ferrari Daytona Spider.
There were three preservation classes.
This is the latest of the preservation classes.
But that was a car that our shop had done the preservation that's the abandoned class.
Somebody bought this drove it home from the dealership and died.
And it took 50 years for the family to sort it out.
That's why I liked the 275 that we had better because it had been to...
I'd been in France and it was owned by a sort of famous actor and the guy when it was two days old, it would have been originally silver.
And he said, I don't like this color.
I had it repainted when it was two days old and it was still wearing the paint from when it was repainted when it was two days old.
It just had a really interesting story.
And I think preservation cars need to be...
I mean, all those cars that win awards should be about the story to some extent.
And I think that's a much more interesting story than, oh, we put it in the basement of a hotel for 50 years and then pulled it out and cleaned it up and got it running.
Yeah, not okay.
What's also lacking a little bit from Pebble itself is a sense of humor, maybe except for our friend Tom Hale.
Yeah, he has a sense of humor, for sure.
So Tom Hale had the car that Isabella Duncan, what the hold on, what's her name?
Is it Dora?
Is it Dora Duncan died in.
She was wearing a scarf.
That got tangled in the spinner of the wire wheel and that strangled her.
Decapitated?
Perhaps, yeah.
I think it might have been.
And so he showed that car, not that exact car, but that exact model.
An animal car.
And had a sticker made that's its scarves.
Yes, no scarves.
And I mean, if those who know, I heard a lot of judges come over and just burst out laughing.
Yes.
We need a little bit more whimsy at this event.
Yeah.
It would be my kind of...
Yeah.
That's Pebble.
What else?
I did not go to the racetrack at all.
We both went to Quail.
We did.
I mean, we...
I went to Concordal Lemons.
That was fun.
I didn't do that.
That was another thing I wasn't able to do for...
That's another nice...
Business obligation.
Trashy.
Yeah.
Trashy recipe.
There's certainly something for everyone.
Okay.
So there's one thing that was not for everyone that we both attended.
Which was the media preview.
Almost no one.
Exactly.
The preview of the Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1.
Yeah.
So they were two cars coming out of GMSV Gordon Murray Special Vehicles.
We only saw the one.
We only saw one.
Yes.
It was so achingly beautiful and arresting that you didn't even see the other car that they released at S1.
I saw it.
I saw the other car and I think it was a mistake for GMA to roll out both.
Because the blue car...
So the blue car was called...
So let's start with this company, GMA, or the division called GMSV, which is Gordon Murray Special Vehicles,
which is to do sort of spoke cars, I guess.
So the first one is called the Le Mans.
It has code name T56.
And this was commissioned by an English dealer named Joe McCarrie.
And this is center cedar.
So it is, I would say, an evolution of the T50 rather than being sort of more T33 adjacent,
which is a two-seat car.
That is a production car that will be homologated for your consumption.
Anyway, it's a re-styled and dramatically upgraded.
And they're making 24 of them because of the 24 hours of Le Mans.
And it's a modern hypercar shape that is, I think, more conventional supercar looking,
maybe a little bit less...
The T50 has a certain understatedness to it and maybe not conventionally beautiful aesthetics.
And this was like a more conventional looking supercar.
But no less unbeautiful, I would say.
I mean, I didn't mind.
It's aesthetics, but it was perhaps because it was parked next to the...
I took it exceptionally immediately.
Just one of the most expensive things when you engineer a car is actually the lighting.
And it's a very strange thing, but lighting costs a fortune.
And neither the headlights nor the tail lights fit within the design,
or fit within even the openings of where they were created.
And so on the front of the car, the headlight shape was sort of like amoeba-like.
But it was put in a...
I think it was carbon fiber, a sort of black trim around it.
I think to mask the fact that the headlight didn't work with the shape of the car.
And that was such a turn-off.
I mean, the eyes are the breasts of the face of the car or something.
I don't know if it's a joke.
To me, the headlights are really, really important.
I mean, they really are the eyes of the face of the car.
And right off the bat, something wrong.
It's a round tail light in a double-tiered drop sort of shaped opening.
Didn't fit.
Wasn't even centered in the opening.
It was not a...
I mean, this was to be fair, a show model.
It didn't even have an interior one.
Imagine hopes, presumes, that...
Show models all about the way it styled.
Sure.
I think.
Now, with that said, the other car had a lighting issue also that we'll get to.
But I just thought, OK, the car is fine.
It's an inoffensive.
But right off the bat, I sort of looked at it.
I did a quick glance and then saw the gold car.
And it was just game over for the Le Mans car.
Game over.
So this is, first of all, in my favorite color.
Yeah, Jewish racing gold.
Jewish racing gold.
That was the presentation color of this car.
I don't think GMA called it that, but that is the official name.
So they'll have to get on board with that.
I don't believe that the McLaren F1 was a particularly beautiful car.
Gasp.
I thought you were going to get it.
No, it was designed to be timeless and sort of clean and unadorned and sort of very functional
and achieve the performance goals designed by Peter Stevens.
It's not unpleasant looking.
No, it's not arrestingly gorgeous the way that some other cars are.
Sexless.
It's how it describes it.
Right.
It's an exotic car that is designed by an engineer is how it looks.
Right.
It's just not this S1.
Takes the styling cues of McLaren F1 and just drapes it with a sex appeal.
Sex.
Kurt sex.
I couldn't stop staring at it.
And I walked right over to the designer.
And this was the first thing I saw basically for the week.
And I'm like, congratulations, you have one car week.
And he was like, what?
It's over.
Like, it's over for everyone else.
You've taken a timeless, beautiful design and you've, I don't want to say copied.
He didn't copy it.
You've taken all of everything that made that design great.
I find it all refined evolved and added sex with a coke bottle shape to it.
And I think a lot of it didn't show up in the photos.
Because there was a lot of sort of online discourse about the car just being a copy of an F1.
Absolutely not.
You know, when you see all in sort of video here over what we talk,
when you see the detail work of the tail lights, for example, like on surface,
what the tail lights on, it looks like a McLaren F1 shaped tail light.
But there's three dimensionality to everything in this car that doesn't
necessarily translate it first glance in photos.
It is spectacular.
Yeah.
It really is quite a stunning thing.
So the origin of this, so 24 of the other cars, this car they're making five of.
Plus I think GMAs may be keeping a six prototype.
It was a customer commission.
And so the person who bought the first T50 or placed the first T50 deposit
before even seeing a picture of it and has bought one of every GMA product commissioned this project.
And it was created in concert with Gordon Murray who was in hospital for some time with cancer
and was working on this car sort of feverishly in his hospital bed,
doing hand sketches, like hundreds of pages of hand sketches,
which apparently the owners of this car will receive copies of all of these sketches.
So intimately involved, you know, Gordon Murray,
which I think is an incredibly important part of the car's appeal,
which is, and it's technically revamped as well as aesthetically.
You know, it's probably if you had to say the architectures derived from something,
you would say T50, but it sounds like they've done enough sort of re-engineering and substantive changes.
I mean, they had to change the chassis.
They designed bespoke lighting to return to your, or their comments about.
Although the front light is not done yet.
Yes, the front lighting is not done yet.
It has covers concealing where it will have its actual lights.
Which need to stay.
You actually, I love them.
And actually what I told the designer was like,
you might be done, but I'm sorry, you're going to have to change something right now.
That needs to be a pop-up light.
And if that's not legal for homologation, then throw a fucking sealed beam in there.
If you have to or an old age four light and something,
and give the customer a pop-up in with the car,
put it in the trunk that they can install.
Because I think that the detailing around that light,
even as it was, was perfect.
Yeah.
I thought it looked a little bit faceless without eyes.
No, I thought it was squinty.
I thought it was like squinty and sultry looking.
I loved it.
Absolutely.
So it was commissioned by this customer who wanted, you know,
Gordon Murray was his hero, is his hero,
and he wanted always to do a project with him.
And so he brought his own designer.
And that's why the car looks so divergent
from the other GMA products.
It's because it was designed by a different person.
And the person who designed his name is Florian Flattau.
And he designed sort of a retro Audi Quattro concept
and worked at Singer for a long time,
and also did the Tut Hill GT1 that debuted I think last year at Quail.
So obviously it will develop sense of the past.
From all that work looks to the past
and acknowledges vintage cars in a way that we always wish
would happen whether it's the retro Hyundai 80s concept things
that they have done, or any number of places where people often conceptualize
this type of stuff, but rarely makes it into production.
So anyway, he was the designer who styled the car
and the guy who commissioned the whole project.
And they were up late nights and doing all of the ridiculous iteration.
That is involved very quickly.
They did, but I think they put in a lot of hours into a very short window
to get the car to the state.
But it is truly stunning.
The engine also is different instead of 3.9 litres is 4.3.
And so I think it's going to be sort of just T50,
but just more in every respect.
700 PS.
Here's the thing.
There's a point at which when you look so good,
it doesn't matter anything else.
And that would be a terrible shame if the car didn't drive well.
I think the car is right there where it looks so good, it doesn't matter.
But I have still not driven a T50,
but I did get that right along with Dariel Francki driving it.
And I will say the right along in the T50 was far more interesting
than any other car I've driven this year,
like any other new car that I've driven this year.
And I've done some pretty terrible things to some pretty cool cars.
And just sitting in a passenger,
one of the passenger seats in that car was more of an experience.
So knowing that the basis of this car is, aside from its looks,
that it is intended to that car seat.
Knowing that we're just going to be listening to that car's worth V12.
And yes, it's manual.
And it will be lightweight.
They apparently revised the shift linkage in a way
that improves the shift quality.
I mean, they just went every single aspect.
They said, what can we do?
What would you do, Gordon Murray?
If you had more time to just make this the best you could
or just keep exceeding the sort of marks that you've already said.
I think it's a really important point that you made,
which is that Gordon's involved in this.
Because I think a lot of the discourse is,
well, the F1 design, it's not they, it's Gordon.
Right? Gordon working with a bunch of people
was able to look back in his own past and make a car
that's better than his own masterpiece.
And that's so important.
Yeah.
I mean, a critical part of the buying decision for sure
for one of those cars is that involvement.
Not that many people have the option.
I mean, they're building five of them.
And the guy who commissioned it is keeping two or three of them
and selling two or three of them.
So very short list of people who will actually have the chance
to buy one.
Lucky as people on planet earth.
I don't often want double-digit million-dollar cars.
Or think that they're worth it.
I mean, it's so such a stupid thing to say.
It's worth it.
But I don't understand, for example,
rationally, why a lot of people spend the money they do
on things like Paganis, right?
And this is no shade to them.
It's just not like, oh, how many millions of dollars?
This is one where I say, yes, and by the way,
I'm going to park it next to my McLaren F1
because they just need to be there as a set.
And five, well, that costs you $60 million for the two.
I don't even know what it would cost for the two cars.
Sure, makes perfect sense to me.
I mean, it depends on how much money you have
and how you value those dollars.
And this was also part of the calculus.
If you're buying one of those cars, you say,
you have something that looks like this
and was designed by this person
and does all this stuff.
Everyone who has a McLaren F1
is going to have some interest in this.
Not everyone, but I think the majority of people
who own a McLaren F1 are going to have interest in this car.
And if they're making available two
or three of them to the market,
I think that it's going to be a sensible thing to buy.
In terms of protecting your investment.
At whatever price that is.
I mean, it's corollary for me.
Somebody comes out with a new Volkswagen Shorok
of 16 valve in my Jewish racing gold color
and makes it more stunning to look at.
Far more stunning, right?
I mean, it makes it even more stunning
because we can't be not nice in my car.
And faster and revs higher
and has modern technology.
And you have the men designed by the same people.
Right, saying, well, the air conditioning,
aircon was shit in the first one.
So I'm from Gordon does not speak this way.
But aircon is, hold on, it's German.
So aircon was terrible.
And also we make it really blowing ice-cold in your Gucci
and make the car better in every,
apps of fucking loot.
It doesn't matter what it costs.
Yeah.
And this is just one of those moments where
that thing is gorgeous.
And it's so hard to nail this concept
and many people have tried to revisit
the lights have just covered brightness here.
You have the, I have a remote.
Is it the remote?
Yeah, it's not a great success.
Yeah, so I mean,
it's a not relevant car in some senses
but also maybe the coolest car ever.
It might be the coolest car ever
and it was an instant win.
I mean, I know there is no winner for car week technically
but they're technically now is.
Which is not a contest.
Like I'm with apologies
to every other car that debuted this week
and there were some amazing things.
And that totem alpha GTA was back
and I can't look directly on it without frothing.
Really?
That car doesn't do that much for me.
Oh God.
I mean, I think it's...
Knowing it's a Turbo V6, I could...
The proportions don't...
See, this was the thing about the GMA car.
The proportions somehow just work.
You know, oftentimes when you take vintage design language
and apply it to a modern car
the proportions get lost in translation
and the totem is one of those cars for me
where you lose the integrity of the original design
and it looks like a caricature.
And there was nothing caricature at all
about the GMA car.
No, the fair point.
Okay, then find Camaro.
Sure, okay.
Yes.
Did you look closely at the new Camaro?
No.
I don't know if anybody cares about this.
It's four-wheel drive,
whereas the previous ones were rear-wheel drive.
And so they have encased the drive shaft
that takes drive to the front axle
in a sort of cage
and then a clear lose sight cover
and then they painted a stripe around it
so that you can see when it's spinning.
And it has adjustable torque bias.
There's a lever next to the shifter
that allows you to just determine
how much torque you're sending to the front axle.
So you can in real time watch
the drive shaft pass by your legs
through the floor or in the car.
It's really cool.
It's really cool.
It's really cool.
It's really cool.
And it's got a red sort of spiral pattern on it.
It's incredibly cool.
So that was a big highlight for me.
But yes, that's probably the other modern car,
which is not a modern car
because it's built out of a vintage launcher,
but restomod thing that really...
I mean, I'm going to say restomod
is the restomod
is the second place winner for car week at this point.
Yeah, and this is a concept
that is increasingly popular.
People ask us oftentimes
what do we think about restomods?
And I think what I'm learning
and this is me as a geriatric
who's finally picked up
the gotten with the program,
which is that a lot of people
like certain characteristics
or components of the old car experience,
but very few people who are now the bulk of car buyers
are actually want an old car.
And so what a restomod does
is allows you to have some of the aesthetic
or the vibes or the unique identity of an old car
without actually having to deal with an old car
because objectively,
the old car experience
can be quite unpleasant.
Carbreated cars where there are mechanical issues
or stinkiness.
And like, I have a client who is a chimera
who complains about the exhaust fumes
because it's uncatalyzed.
And he's got a collection of cars,
but he, you know, the chimera's stinkiness
is an annoyance.
And it's like,
if you were someone who's collecting mirrors
and stuff like that,
you'd just be like,
oh, this is an integral part of the experience.
I just have to deal with it.
So it's interesting to see as sort of...
Not on it.
Yes, we'll just call Luca Bettie right now
and ask him to fit a cabinet.
I mean, a cat as a cat as a cat.
Okay.
I mean, I don't know how long it'll last
before it melts down
if the thing runs crazy rich or whatever,
but he can catalyze it.
An interesting thought.
So all this to say
that restomans are interesting
because people want modern brakes
and ABS and carplay and aircon
and all that stuff,
but they like the aesthetic
or the vibes or the texture of an old car
and so restomans are designed to provide that experience.
So, you know,
the purists among us
won't necessarily appeal,
but there's a huge...
And the singer is a...
Just a shining example of this
and they were fairly early on it.
But, you know,
I have both expressed sort of previous
sort of underwhelmingment with singers
because they don't have any old car character,
but they promise it based on how they look
and that is a minus to us,
but it is a plus to the people who buy them.
Well, it's also...
It's certainly a plus to people who buy them
to look at them
because they're stunning.
Or to daily it.
I mean, that's kind of the...
Do people daily those cars?
I think some people do.
Yeah.
If you've got this insane collection
with a billion dollars of cars
or whatever the number is
and you just want to get around
in something that's no pain
and it's like driving a Porsche,
but more interesting and more beautiful
and aesthetic on a daily basis.
I could absolutely see
driving a singer on a daily basis.
So, I see singers
are still old cars.
Right?
I mean, they're...
Yeah, but then you drive it
and it doesn't feel like one to me.
Oh, fair point.
But it still is going to have old car issues
where something like that totem
is a new car underneath.
Yeah.
I mean, you'll have issues
with the stuff that's bespoke.
It's a small volume.
No, the bespoke stuff is fine.
It's like the stock helmet.
The windshields and shit like that.
Okay, so, anyway, that was our discussion of GMA.
GMA is on top of the world.
Yeah.
I think that...
That car in particular.
Other GMA products to me,
I would say you buy them,
and they're inoffensive looking
and you buy them in spite of how they look,
but it's not one of the top
main value propositions
that the car presents to you
is the looks and that...
Same as McLaren F1 was, right?
Yeah.
And obviously, this car turns that on its head.
Yeah.
So, a huge fan.
Yeah.
Make a T-50 should have looked like that.
Yeah.
I mean, imagine.
Sure.
Yeah.
Just imagine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not a supercar guy.
I'm not a hypercar guy.
These cars are meaningless to me
and that one I just could not stop looking at.
Yeah.
That was great.
And then you wound up driving
shocker and air-cooled Porsche I think.
Not Porsche.
Hmm.
Not a Porsche.
Yeah.
So the new roof tribute is what they call this car.
And it looks like the SCR and CTR,
which is to say that
this is another sort of past-aware design thing,
and I'm a big fan of it because, of course,
roof started in the 70s modifying Porsche's
and then they've started modifying them so much
that they just botched body shells from Porsche
because they were throwing away so much of the rest of the car.
They said, we don't need to buy the whole car
and take it apart to build it.
So, you know, this is the origin of the original yellowbird,
the CTR which was, you know, the fastest car in the world,
despite looking like a 9-11 more or less,
which is pretty cool.
A narrow one, no less.
And so they have a deep history of taking
Porsche's or Porsche body shells
and making cars out of them.
And then, you know, maybe in the 2000s,
they started doing dedicated cars that didn't really look like
the Porsche design language,
but there was this mid-engine car that they made
that, you know, the back of it was very definitely not
like any Porsche.
And then this sort of CTR,
the new CTR SCR tribute line is a car
that recalls vintage 9-11s,
aesthetically 80s, 90s, 9-11s,
very much the original yellowbird
and they're available with a whole bunch
of different powertrains.
And the car that I drove is noteworthy
because it's air cooled and all the other ones
that they have made have been liquid cooled.
We should also say one that the SCR does not share
or does not have a Porsche part on it.
It is a carbon fiber on a cock.
It is a bespoke carbon fiber chassis
with pushrod suspension.
I mean, there is under the skin,
there is, I don't think there are any Porsche components.
A Porsche, a seasoned Porsche expert will go
walk around that car and find a number of things
that are actually Porsche parts,
mostly like trim and switches,
the windshield washer, nozzles,
the trunk latch mechanism,
the door latch mechanisms,
which I particularly appreciated
because old 9-11s have the most wonderful door shut noise
and because they used old 9-11 door latches,
it sounds like an old 9-11 when you close the door,
which I really, really like.
And people just sort of look at it and think,
oh, it's like a singer where it's just a cut-up car.
No, it's carbon.
Yeah.
And it's longer, wider, taller.
I mean, it's a much bigger car than the air-cooled cars.
Yes.
The cockpit dimensions, I think, are basically the same,
but the radiuses of the doors are larger,
so that the doors are effectively scaled up
in terms of the sort of curvature
that between the windows and the side of the door skin.
I mean, the whole car is just kind of scaled up aesthetically.
But there are, you know, there's some 9-9-7 parts
that are recognizable inside of it.
There's like windows switches,
the HVAC is clearly 9-64, 9-93, late career 3-2.
There's just a bunch of stuff in there and peripheral stuff.
But yes, the underlying engineering is it's a bespoke,
entirely engineered by roof car.
So they're finally out on their own,
which, you know, maybe it's now been 15 or 20 years
since they started doing this,
that in some respects, you know,
we talked about this when we did the dedicated SCR episode.
I think that was two years ago now,
walking up to this car, you think it's a Porsche,
and you have 9-11 expectations,
and then like the more you interact with it,
the more you realize that there's very little 9-11 characteristics,
but you also, it's a mind-fuck,
the whole car's a mind-fuck because parts of it
are just screaming that it's a Porsche to you,
and then other parts of it are very definitely not a Porsche.
And so the SCR is an actually aspirated car that revs very high,
that is, you know, like a GT3 engine,
but just more so,
and then there's a turbocharged...
Based on, loosely based on the original architecture of the Messger,
but it's its own engine done by Roof.
Yes, correct.
And then there's a turbocharged version of it,
which is now a full-on, conceptually,
redo of the original yellowbird,
which has just got Lord knows how many outrageous horsepower,
and just huge piles of it,
and probably the car goes 275 million miles an hour and all that stuff.
And then this car that I drove
is the new air-cooled car that they call the tribute.
It is 3.6 liters, it is twin turbocharged,
it is air-cooled, the cooling fan,
and shroud as far as I can tell,
are Porsche parts,
like everything about,
when you open the engine compartment,
it aesthetically feels like the rest of the car,
like you're looking at an old Porsche,
and so that was incredibly cool.
This is their own engine, right?
This is their own engine.
Double overhead cam.
Yes, it's double overhead cam.
It's three valves per cylinder as well.
And so, you know, people don't often think about this
because we glorify and pedestalize air-cooled Porsche's so much,
but all of those air-cooled engines,
including in the latest 993 turbo,
are single overhead cam with rockers,
actuating the valves,
and they're two valves per cylinder.
There was never a four valve per cylinder
or more than two valve per cylinder
or dual overhead cam air-cooled Porsche engine.
95 Carrera.
What?
Flight 6.
Flight 6.
Yes, sorry, in a 911.
So, for road cart and fully air-cooled.
So we're setting aside 959,
which was basically an air-cooled block
and crankcase with water-cool heads.
So they've done three valves per cylinder
in order to have the thermal capacity
for the exhaust side,
but obviously you get a bit of flow on the intake.
It's...
And use the fact that it's a double overhead cam
allows them to do...
Variable valve timing on the intake side.
Correct.
From engines and power.
Which is really nice.
It's incredibly flexible and very little lag.
I was shocked.
I mean, I guess I've buried the lead,
but I got to drive it with all of this roof,
so that was an incredibly cool experience.
And, you know, he said,
I never would like to do this in a car with sporting intent,
especially a turbocharged one,
but he said, put it in the sixth gear
and it's 1,600 RPM or something like that.
It's a seven-speed manual.
He said, put it in sixth or seventh gear
and just put your foot down.
And the sort of flexibility and response was really shocking
for that few RPM.
And this is the benefit of the modern characteristics
which we could never put in, you know,
in the 90s, never ended up in an aircooled 911.
And so obviously the thing moves like I'll get out in power.
In terms of power, it makes more than that.
Then the naturally aspirated liquid cooled car,
but not as much, obviously,
because you don't have the ability to reject all the heat
as the water-cooled turbocharged car,
but I mean, it was fast as I'll get out.
It certainly felt, you know, like,
993 GT2 plus levels of thrust.
I mean, the thing is just outrageously snappy.
And totally refined,
and it's a beautiful place to be in as it was green on green,
which is, you know, lovely, of course.
And, you know, sitting beside Alois
was a little like overwhelming and stressful.
Is this the first time you're driven with it?
Yeah, last time I drove the car, I wasn't.
Or the last time I drove a roof,
the SCR was not with him.
Was he videoing you?
No, but he did say,
the first time I didn't really notice this,
but then the second time he said it,
I was like, oh yeah, he did say that before,
and you know, he meant it.
He said you were making love to the car
or something like that.
And I was like, he's a really great pastor.
He's so proud of his car.
Yeah.
That I started laughing when I floored the SCR,
and he pulled out his phone
and then proceeded to basically record the whole thing,
but not in like a creepy way.
It was he was laughing out loud.
He was so happy that I was happy
that in driving his creation,
it was the most endearing thing.
Yeah.
I mean, because to put all this effort
into making something yourself,
and you know, it's like,
this is true design in cars generally.
And to be in a position like this
or, you know, with Gordon Murray,
where you have this single vision
individual who's like a brilliant visionary type person
gets rendered in the metal or the carbon or whatever,
is increasingly rare,
which is why so many modern cars suck so much
because you need entire committees of people
who have to be palatable to corporate,
to come up with ideas that test well
with large numbers of masses who are undifferentiated
and don't know what they want and all that stuff.
And so when you get a distilled vision
of someone really brilliant like that,
it's a true car guy like to be actually represented
and for them to have labored over it for thousands of hours
and then to share it with someone appreciative is,
you know, I'm sure that's what motivates
like world class chefs and all of that stuff as well.
And so that was a really neat experience again.
Lights have turned themselves back up to 100%.
It's your hold on, I'll put them back on 100.
That is your portion in the background
is looking very pretty.
Yes.
So now I'm going to turn the lights off to yell at it.
You can sit in the dark you little bastard.
So yeah, it's an incredibly compelling car
the character of the air.
I mean, it's very refined.
And so it doesn't feel like an old air cooled car that much
because it's so contemporary and it's execution
and it doesn't really have lag and it's variable valve timing
and all that stuff.
The noise and the texture does feel air cooled
because you know, one of the reasons
why air cooled cars were phased out by Porsche
was one that the ability to reject, you know,
that quantity of heat generated by that much power,
especially in a boosted application,
is a struggle.
And that's why this engine makes us power
than the liquid cooled one.
But the other reason was noise, drive by noise
because you basically have this fan
which is pushing air around the cylinders
which are all separated from each other
so that you can get air flowing between them.
And so the sort of the noise is more textured
and more sort of old carry
but the character in terms of interacting
with it, it feels very modern and refined
and flexible and just, you know, impressive ability
to manage lag as well.
How's it going in it, Rob?
Six, you know, seven something.
It's not, it's like a, you know, it's typical
for these twin turbocharged applications.
They don't go as high as the naturally aspirated ones.
So it was really a treat to drive that car.
You know, it certainly is fast enough.
I mean, unless you're trying to set land speed records,
I don't think there's any reason to buy
the turbocharged liquid cooled one which is the CTR.
You know, I'd be very interested
to experience a really high-revenue
naturally aspirated version of this engine.
And of course, he was coy about this
but I indicated that I would be really keen
to experience that and I'm hopeful
that it could be possible
because that would be pretty darn mega.
I mean, it's kind of like with the cosworth singer thing
that they're doing, they're high-reving
the air cool motor as well.
So it's neat to see these sort of infinitesimally small
segments of the market of very passionate people who, you know, again,
like the vibes of an old car or various characteristics of an old car
but get to have this sort of really modern high-performance experience.
It was just brilliant as an experience,
which I really know.
Yeah.
At least I was supposed to drive it.
At least I was driven the SCR.
I've driven the SCR and we had just a scheduling conflict
which prevented me from driving this car.
But I'm glad you did because you have a far more experience
with air cooled cars than I do.
I mean, it doesn't feel like an old car
but it feels far more interesting than almost any new car
I could possibly fathom.
chassis felt similar to SCR.
It has that same sort of carbon-ness
and this sort of like the combination of sort of the noises
and rigidity of a carbon car which are pretty unique,
very sort of pleasant and usable car.
It's a very easy to use.
It's a very dailyable car.
I mean, I was doing a hill start.
So I was doing a hill start in this thing from a dead stop
and I was reached for the handbrake
and I wasn't using it and I said,
I didn't say anything but I live in San Francisco.
I do hill starts all the time for a living
and the handbrake was unnecessary
but I could tell he wanted me to use it
but I didn't need it because I live in San Francisco
and do hill starts for living basically
and can take our old cars.
But all that to say, it's a very flexible,
dailyable, pleasant, sort of usable,
beautiful way to do any motoring task basically.
Okay.
As opposed to everyone.
Yeah.
You should, although I don't think I want a turbo
more than I want in SCR.
Yes.
And that's why I immediately thought about the naturally aspirated version
of this car.
Yeah, there should be no impediment.
Okay.
It's down from four valves to three, but it's still twin cam.
So I'm sure the valve train can be adapted to rev even higher
and it'll still reject less heat.
So I'm all for it.
Yes.
It'll heat the same glass for sure.
Do you drive anything really interesting?
I don't think I drove anything.
I had a lot of Toyota 2000 GT time
which I enjoyed because we showed one of those at the quail
and I was surprised to see that car win its class.
Thank you.
The class is post-force sports cars, 1961 to 1975.
And that's a pretty meaty class in terms of competition
because that's where you get all your big vintage frories,
like 275s and e-types and mirrors would be in that same class.
And so to see a two liter 150 horsepower Toyota
when the class was so significant.
Yeah.
And so I was pleased to see that the car was acknowledged, recognized.
And the other thing about that car was just sort of driving places
in it, you know, transiting it to and from the quail and wherever else,
was that it seemed to be understood by a new generation of people
what it was and recognized.
Which, you know, I don't know that there's a whole lot of other cars
from the late 1960s that I could have driven around in, probably Mira,
not with standing, that would have attracted as much attention
as it did from young people in addition to old people.
But a lot of?
Probably.
And it's also the origin of JDM functionally.
And so I think that combination probably made it relevant
to a group of people that normally I don't see chasing after 1960s cars.
So that was sort of heartening to see.
And I didn't see any other Toyota 2,000 GTs down there being driven
or circulated.
I didn't see any other old cars.
There were no cars.
There was a traffic jam.
Yeah, it was a pleasant experience to get to interact with one
of those cars.
It feels very expensive, much more expensive than to interact with than a Z
or an E type.
Well, yeah.
Double or heavy.
Or two different types of wood in the interior, chrome, bezels and everything.
And like the shift linkage in the character, the motor and just the whole
feel of the car is very expensive, which is.
That engine is quite flexible.
That makes power everywhere.
Yeah, but it revs high also.
Yes.
I think it's seven, seven or eight.
And pretty sure it's seven.
Yeah.
So it was really a pleasure to get to interact.
It was one of my hero cars always has been and I driven one once before 10
years ago, but not any distance.
So this was really nice to get to experience that car.
I did one.
We did a revelations on that car and then the hill climate was not.
It was not geared properly for that road.
But when getting it out on the road, they are magnificent.
And I did have the pleasure of drag racing a 2000 GT and a fair lady Z432.
Both two liter straight, 7,000 RPM straight sixes from back in the day.
And the 2000 GT was actually quicker than really.
Yeah.
It was 150 horsepower.
Yes, that's right.
So was the, so was the Z432.
But with twice as many valves.
Twice as many valves.
But the Z432 made all of its power from 5,500 to 7,500 RPM.
And the 2000 just jumped off the line right away and it would take full throttle.
And it was just carbureted better.
And so they were, once you were moving, they were about the same speed.
And it was possibly the best sounding drag race I've ever.
It was a stoplight drag.
It was amazing.
Both engines sound amazing.
But that GT is a hell of a car.
Yeah.
I mean, I would, if they cost the same, I would certainly choose it over any type.
And they don't cost the same.
And I would maybe still choose it.
But really, like an all-time, probably top 10 car for me.
Really?
I think so.
I loved it.
It's not necessarily for me, but it's, yeah, everybody.
And we had the Silly Ferrari, one-off Ferrari with no windshield or doors.
That thing was so, that looked 15.
When was that done?
93.
Okay.
Because I'm going to say it looked mid 90s, but it's, but it's a 328 underneath.
Yes.
328.
Okay.
So, yeah.
I'm like, wait, this car looks 10, 15 years newer than a 328, which came out in 1993.
It was a one-off show car built by Buck Calean Villa, who now does restorations for old Ferrari's.
That's who Ferrari uses to do their old car restorations.
Frankfurt 93, Geneva 94.
So, one-off show car hadn't been seen much in public in the United States in the last decade or so.
Has it been in the US since?
It's been in the US for seven or eight years, and it spent a lot of time.
It was in the US earlier in its life, like 20 or 30 years ago.
That's cool.
So, that was a fun thing to turn up with as well.
So, we had a grand old time with all of our activities, despite the shift maybe away from vintage car culture.
Well, I will say about the shift from old car culture, is that the events that were there for the old cars were just as good as they've always been.
So, I think the quail, even though it was dominated by the sponsors and the new cars and became an auto show,
the cars that were in the sort of center of the field were still great.
And the event was great.
Motorlux was, I mean, it's a haggity property, so I probably shouldn't say anything bad about it.
And probably should say nice stuff about it was fucking awesome.
It was just the greatest mix of cars.
You know, the Sako section, Porsche section, just sort of everything all over the place.
And with jets, you're like banging your head on the wing of a private jet.
And to go look at a insert name of whatever amazingness.
That was a hell of a way to kick off the show.
Kick off the week.
And sort of, you know, all Radwood was great for that crowd.
Concorde Lemons was great for that crowd.
So, every one of the events was unchanged in its greatness.
It was the differences you no longer are sitting in a traffic jam that smells so bad that the insects are falling dead out of the trees.
Of the trees from the fumes.
Yeah, I miss that.
Because the sort of magic of spotting things, and there's this whole spotting culture,
and they are now oriented towards supercars.
But the experience of just driving somewhere to go do something
because the events are all geographically spread out.
And then Lord knows what comes around a corner,
whether it's a Mira or some pre-war nonsense or some vintage launcher or whatever.
It's just that discovery of the unexpected is like this really high emotional point
and not getting to have many of those was a bummer for me.
I mean, 100%.
I never worry about my old cars there,
because I thought if I get hit by someone in a parking lot,
it'll be a door ding that I got from any type.
Or something like it's somehow just hits differently if it's some really amazing old thing
that we're all in this together.
And it will be driven by someone who tried,
but ultimately accidents happen and they smack into you or something.
This year that just wasn't the case.
Even on the main drag in Monterey,
I went up over to a Porsche event really quickly
and then came walking back to meet some friends
that were on the main drag and the cops had shut it completely down
because it turned into a sideshow.
And it was bikes doing burnouts, cars doing burnouts.
Every M3 in the fucking peninsula was doing a rolling burnout down that street.
And my car was on the side of the road there
and it used to be that I would park and not worry about anything.
And this time it's like, well, I'm going to get hit by somebody
who's trying to do a burnout in something modern and they don't know how to drive.
That was a bit different.
And so next year that'll factor into what car I take.
It used to be like, oh, the Ferrari is the oldest car that I own.
That's probably the one that should go.
And my plan was to bring that next year.
But now I'm like, I'm going to be in a carburetid old cranky car.
I still do it.
I brought the mirror last year.
I was driving around on my Jag, which is from 1957.
My business partner, Taz, was driving his 1956 Alfa Romeo.
I mean, we're doing the do.
I would do it.
We're doing the thing.
But it just, you know, nobody else is.
But like, nobody else is.
First time I pull out a traffic and I have to do an incredibly slow one-to-three shift
because the transmission's too cold to get it into second.
And the car's cranky and it's cold.
I'm going to have some dick bag in a, you know, six-month-old BMW.
Not understand why I'm not going.
And that's just, it just changes your stress level.
And the, I mean, the only thing I can hope is that the cops come out even more than they did this year.
And there were cops everywhere.
And people, I know people like I pulled over three, four, five times.
And I'm like, goodly.
Yeah. And they're on the wrong cars.
You know, they're in exotics and they're in supercars.
They're like, hey, what are you doing driving through Carmel?
Like, Carmel as a city has made it really clear they don't want car week there.
And they started now.
There's a new car show there that's sort of started.
But it's older stuff.
And all the supercars flying down these little tiny neighborhood streets
making all kinds of noise with, I'm all for noise,
with the crackle tunes and the pop tunes.
And so you're scaring this shit out of people.
No one can sleep.
It's just obnoxious.
So fine.
Keep getting pulled over.
You know, you're never going to get pulled over.
We were talking about Ferrari 330 GTC, right?
Did that come up with, were you there?
I certainly brought it up repeatedly.
It was an example over the week.
They were like second place Pebble Beach Pinto, right?
It was everyone drove of Ferrari 330 because they're comfortable, reliable.
They start other than having a huge turning radius.
They're a nice car to bring down for car week.
I didn't say a single one.
And so, you know, no one's going to get angry.
When you fly by at 28 miles an hour in a 25 zone in a 330,
even though it's not a quiet car.
But when you're doing 60 in your eventador
at Red Line in first gear and then you lift off
and it sends 16 fireballs out the exhaust,
are you going to piss the locals off?
And guess who's, who they're going to call it?
It's not Ghostbusters.
Not Ghostbusters, indeed.
Okay.
Yeah, fun week.
I mean, I, I, it's still very much worth attending
if you've never been.
It is a, I think, singular event,
which is to say there's nothing like it on the planet.
I would agree.
Scottsdale doesn't come close.
Amelia's one hundredth the size.
Yeah.
And the desk is one thousandth the size.
You know what it reminded me of is more like
half of it reminded me of the old like
Waterfest slash H2O International crowd,
which was, you know,
there were Volkswagen events back in the East Coast
where everyone behaved badly.
And they got shut down too.
I mean, but we would do these holdback burnouts.
And it was just, I'm so shit.
And I am not above that at all,
even at my advanced age of 29 or however old I am now.
And, but there's a time and place for it.
And most of the places and times that I saw
that kind of stuff were not appropriate.
So, yeah.
But whatever, I'll be back next year.
Mm-hmm.
In some crappy old car that
I will always do that.
Good.
As long as it's legal.
Alrighty.
Thank you for joining us.
Come back to the next car.
Until the next car.
Imagination.
Are we partially
co-muginated?
That's the oil.
Yes.
It's, uh, that's why it's bad for your heart.
You should stop carmuginating now.
Yes.
Exactly.
Alright.
About this episode
Monterey Car Week 2025 brought a mix of nostalgia and modernity, with hosts Derek Tam-Scott and Jason Camisa discussing their experiences and observations. They drove a variety of cars, including a 1957 Jaguar Mark I and a Mercedes-Cosworth, while noting a significant decline in classic cars compared to previous years. The episode highlights the transformation of the event towards exotics and modern vehicles, with discussions on notable debuts like the Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1 and the air-cooled tribute from Roof. The hosts reflect on the changing culture of car week, the impact of new cars, and the importance of preserving the spirit of classic automotive events.
Original notes
There is technically no overall winner of Monterey Car Week. But unofficially, it's safe to say - the GMSV S1 LM takes that title.
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The Carmudgeon Show Sponsor, Vredestein Tires:https://www.vredestein.com/
===
Monterey Car Week was more than three weeks ago now, yet we're still having withdrawals. This week, Jason and Derek dive deeper into their individual experiences at the world's most anticipated automotive event of the year, how the event has evolved with new audiences and activities, and how we might expect the event to change next year given these changes. From The Quail, to Concours D'Lemons, to Motorlux, to drifting at Monterey Motorsports Fest, Car Week always has something for everyone.
Amongst those highlights, Jason and Derek discuss their exclusive peak around the new Gordon Murray Special Vehicles concept cars: the S1 LM and the Le Mans GTR. Both cars pay tribute to the McLaren F1 in very different ways, but match in their bespoke 4.3L NA V12 powerplants.
Derek also discusses his time driving the new RUF Tribute with Alois Ruf himself in the passenger seat. Yet another restomod phenomenon, the new RUF shares very few parts with a Porsche 911 - Jason and Derek discuss this latest evolution and how it compares to the SCR that they've both driven at previous car weeks.
All this and more, on this week's episode of The Carmudgeon Show.
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