GrandSport Returns, Stunting Your Driving Growth, Bucketing Car Enthusiasts | Episode 1,039
Everyday Driver Car Debate
GrandSport Returns, Stunting Your Driving Growth, Bucketing Car Enthusiasts | Episode 1,039
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Brand
Porsche
Porsche is a German car company that makes sports cars. People talk about it a lot because their cars are built for performance and driving feel.
Brand
Volvo
Volvo is a car brand from Sweden. It’s especially known for safety features and practical everyday cars.
Brand
Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce is a luxury car brand known for very high-end, comfortable cars. It’s the kind of brand people associate with top-tier refinement.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
That’s a specific version of the Chevrolet Corvette. “C8” is the generation, and “Grand Sport” is the more performance-oriented trim. The 2027 model is the newest year they’re talking about.
Term
carbon fiber splitter
A splitter is a front aero piece that helps the car stay planted. It works by directing air so the car gets more grip, especially at speed.
Term
engine cover
An engine cover is the panel you can see on top of the engine. It’s often styled to look good, and sometimes it also helps with how the engine bay is arranged.
Term
GM
GM is General Motors, the company that makes the Corvette. They’re talking about GM’s history with engine problems and what that means for future Corvette engines.
Term
power plant
“Power plant” just means the car’s main mechanical setup for making power—mostly the engine. They’re saying different engines make the Corvette feel different.
Term
manual transmission
A manual transmission means you shift gears yourself using a clutch pedal and a stick. They’re hoping the next Corvette can be had with that more engaging setup.
Concept
swan song of the generation
It means “the last big thing” before the car gets replaced. Manufacturers often release a special version near the end of a model’s life to keep people interested.
Brand
Honda
Honda is referenced here as the technology and tooling provider (or non-provider) in the Sony Honda Mobility arrangement. The key point is that the speakers claim Honda won’t supply what the joint project needs, affecting the EV’s viability.
Term
EVs
EVs are cars that run on electricity instead of gasoline. The hosts are discussing whether people are actually buying them and what that means for future models.
Company
AC Schnitzer
AC Schnitzer is a German company that makes aftermarket upgrades for BMWs. They supply performance parts, and the hosts are talking about their situation and how it affects BMW tuning.
Car
Dodge Durango
The Dodge Durango is a big family SUV. Here, they’re saying Dodge is putting a stronger V8 back into it, so it’ll feel more powerful than typical family SUVs.
Company
Sentient Performance
They’re a company that does “tuning,” which usually means tweaking a car’s settings—often through software—to make it drive or perform better.
Brand
Ferrari
Ferrari is a famous Italian sports car company. They make very expensive cars, and people really want them, so they can charge a lot for features.
Concept
Nürburgring
The Nürburgring is a legendary race track in Germany. It’s also surrounded by a whole car community—people travel there just to drive, watch, and talk cars.
Company
Powerstop brakes
Powerstop makes aftermarket brake parts. They sell kits that usually include rotors and pads so your car can stop better and often stay cleaner than the original parts.
Part
brake kits
A brake kit is a set of brake parts sold together, usually rotors and pads. It’s a convenient way to upgrade your brakes without guessing what fits.
Concept
brake finder
A brake finder is an online tool that matches your vehicle (year/make/model) to the correct brake kit components. It helps reduce fitment mistakes and ensures you get parts intended for your specific application.
Concept
Portland International Raceway
Portland International Raceway is a race track in the Portland area. The hosts are saying the event is happening there on April 4th.
Concept
Ridge Motorsports Park
Ridge Motorsports Park is a race track in Washington. They’re saying the next weekend’s event is there in Shelton.
Concept
coaching
Coaching means an experienced person helps you drive better on the track. They’ll point out things like where to brake and how to take corners.
Concept
track day
A track day is when you drive your car on a real race track, but in a controlled, non-racing event. It’s a great way to learn how your car behaves at speed with safety rules in place.
Term
commute
A commute is your everyday drive to work. When people choose a car for commuting, they usually care most about things like comfort, easy driving, and not spending too much on fuel.
Concept
reliability
Reliability means how often the car needs repairs and how dependable it is day to day. They’re worried that a more “performance” brand might be less trouble-free than their current car.
Car
Honda Civic
They’re using the Honda Civic as the “reliable one” in the comparison. The point is that it’s likely to keep working with fewer surprises than some sportier cars.
Concept
commuting
Commuting just means your regular daily drive, like to work. If you drive a lot every day, you usually want a car that’s comfortable, reliable, and not expensive to run.
Term
turbo
A turbo is a device that helps the engine make more power. It uses the car’s exhaust to “boost” airflow into the engine.
Term
EV
EV means electric vehicle. Instead of gas, it runs on electricity stored in a battery, which usually gives quick acceleration.
Term
convertible
A convertible is a car where the roof can be lowered or removed. The big difference is you get more open-air driving, plus more wind and noise.
LIVE
K-Pop Demon Hunter's Haja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's.
They're calling this a battle for the fans.
What do you say to that, Rumi?
It's not a battle.
So glad the Haja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
It is an honor to share.
No, it's our honor.
It is our larger honor.
No, really.
Stop.
You can really feel the respect in this battle.
Pick a meal to pick a side.
Hey, participating McDonald's while supplies last.
Hi again, everybody.
We're back.
Happy Tuesday and a little bit of housekeeping up front.
Yes, yes.
We are going to talk about Porsche to the end on peak, but not today.
Not today.
We're not going to do a topic today.
We're going to start spacing out the topic Tuesdays a little further, but we do have
Porsche through Volvo to cover, which is Porsche Ram Rivian Rolls Royce Saab.
Special request from somebody on YouTube.
I forget your YouTube name, but yeah, thank you.
Special request.
It wasn't Daniel.
It wasn't my brother-in-law either.
Toyota Volkswagen and Volvo.
That is coming probably next week, but we realized we couldn't do it this week because there
is so much car news to cover.
There's a ton.
There's so much car news.
And we haven't gotten to car conclusions in a long time, so we're doing all.
Two car debates, two car conclusions, and you guys have buried us with questions, so
there's a lot to cover.
We're going to dive right in.
Interesting.
We actually have Corvette news and Mustang news, but you have the Corvette.
Well, I wore my special Corvette t-shirt because we got the Corvette shirt and swapping over
here to the 2027 C8 Corvette Grand Sport and Grand Sport X announced the e-ray is dead
because the Grand Sport X takes its place.
And no one bought the e-ray because it had E in the name.
Yeah.
I think E should be left to Audi and BMW.
I mean, Audi's taken all the e-tron, BMW's taken all the i, whatever, and just leave
that to the internet.
Can you imagine if Harley-Davidson tried to sell the e-Harley?
It would also, your target audience is not going to buy e anything, but moving on, yes.
It's got a brand new engine, everyone.
It's got the LS6 6.7 liter V8 making 535 horsepower and 520 pound feet of torque, but it's also
that engine is now going in the base stingray.
The Grand Sport also has that, but it's got a lot of cool aero updates.
The magnetic ride control is standard with touring suspension and a new braking package
is now offered.
You get two packages to opt into Z52 sport performance package with stiffer suspension,
summer tires, high performance brakes from the Z06.
And you can also go with the Z52 track performance package with carbon ceramic J57 brakes and
the sport cup to our tires with track focused chassis tuning.
Plus you get Z06 aero.
So a lot of the aero upgrades from the Z06 with a carbon fiber splitter, dive planes,
rockers, wing, underbody strikes.
And now moving to the GSX, that is the electric motor from the ZR1X in the front axle now
making 721 total horsepower with the e-ray.
Yeah, keep going.
So at least it's the X and yeah, the e-ray has gone away.
Although we did have a, I saw a question somewhere on a forum like, what does that do to
the e-ray prices?
They'll keep dropping a little bit, but it doesn't mean like suddenly e-rays are going
to be like $30,000.
That's not what that means.
Yeah, true.
Probably true.
Yeah.
So the GSX has the front axle electric motor here.
Compact battery pack from the ZR1X standard magnetic ride.
And it also offers electric only stealth mode through 50 miles an hour and shuttle mode
for non street use up to 23 miles an hour.
I don't understand what that means, by the way.
Sure.
What non street use are you using all electric?
I don't understand.
You're a gravel driveway.
Okay.
Sure.
Sure.
I'll go with that.
The paddock.
I'll go with that.
Yep.
There you go.
The paddock.
The paddock.
Excellent.
So here it is.
And you know what?
It looks fantastic.
I'm so glad they've done the Grand Sport.
Everybody's been ready for the Grand Sport.
Yeah.
There's no manual.
No manuals indicated.
I think that was more internet talk than actual Corvette was sort of like, uh-huh.
They've talked to the track people.
I still think it happens.
It'll be C9.
It'll be C9.
I think so.
I don't think they were ever going to come up.
Now, do you have any interior pictures?
Because...
No interior pictures, but I do have one of the very cool engine cover here.
It does look great.
It does look really great.
Here's...
Here's...
I have two big headline thoughts here.
First off, awesome.
Yeah.
Because the Grand Sport, and this appears to be in the Grand Sport tradition of the one
that you really should probably buy, like the spec you want.
This is the C9 one.
It takes the good things from the Z06.
It always has.
This is what the...
If you watch our American original film, this is what happens with the Grand Sport.
It takes the good stuff from the Z06 of that era, and it makes it a little more easy going
and not the engine is crazy, and it becomes, kind of for every generation, the perfect
all-rounder.
But then why does the Stingray still exist?
The Stingray and the E-ray should go away.
Just the Grand Sport?
Sure.
Z06, Z01, Z01, X.
Sure, but it's always been...
You could get the base model.
You could get the Grand Sport whatever, and it's always at the end of the life cycle.
But the big observation I have it is, am I correct?
Or have we had a situation where in one generation of the Corvette, there have been four different
power plants?
In one generation, there was the base power plant, the Z06 power plant, the ZR1 power
plant, and now a new one for the Grand Sport.
Okay, that's a good point.
I'm trying to think of another car.
And I'm not talking like a three series.
That's too easy.
I'm not talking like a three series where they just make a chassis and they put lots
of engines in it.
I'm talking about one generation of a performance car with four different engines in one generation.
That's insane.
That's madness.
I mean, this engine sounds great, and GM has had so many problems with their 6.2, they
need a new engine to put in a lot of their product.
Let's make it bigger.
Yeah, exactly.
Everything about this announcement I'm excited about, but I'm just sitting back and going,
how enormous is the blank check at GM for the Corvette product that this is now engine
four, power plant variation four in one generation.
They must be doing very well with the Corvette and every time we're just, what a great car.
It makes me want one again.
It looks great.
Honestly.
I agree.
I want the Grand Sport.
The Z06 is cool and we've driven it and we love it a lot.
You're right.
Totally different power plant.
Yes.
It makes the car feel very different and I'm imagining this will be kind of even more
of the hot rodder kind of muscle car kind of feel, but still very sports car like.
I think this is the right direction.
It'll be the improved version of the base car that we had, which is, I mean, that with
a little bit more is fantastic.
And then imagine this refined base engine now, 6.7 with a manual transmission for the
C9.
Let's hope so.
Which can't come soon enough.
This is already six years old.
I know.
Six years for the C8.
The Grand Sport is always the swan song of the generation.
It comes out in the last couple of years of the generation, which means there's a C9
percolating somewhere.
No, there is.
Yeah.
And if you've seen the interior pictures, they dropped the wall that was very controversial
and they made a flat center console.
It's just a grab handle now for the passenger to.
But the center console is now lower and flatter, which does create space because you know they're
going to use this chassis as the bones for the C9.
Of course.
It creates space and then theoretically put in a manual.
And there was some online pictures of a manual and somebody from GM said, no, no, no, that's
an internet AI creation, which sounds to me like cover speak for it's coming, but just
not yet.
The photo got leaked and that's AI.
Yeah.
It's just not yet.
But the sad thing is we can say it's AI and doesn't matter how convincing it is now.
We can all be like, yeah, I guess it could be.
I'm very encouraged by this.
I want to drive the Grand Sport because that's yeah, more power and zero six gubbins on it.
Yes.
It's always the best out.
It always is a greatest hit.
Yes.
So it's really cool.
Yes.
We like that.
Moving on to some other news from the Sony Honda mobility project that I know you cared
about.
Yes.
They have announced they are killing their only EV, the Afila one and all subsequent
Afila vehicles because they reassess their electrification strategy.
Honda won't give them the tech and the tools that dastardly Honda.
They just won't give us anything that we want.
And the funniest part of this marketing brief was no viable path forward.
Now from here on out, it's Paul editorializing.
It's because the car breaks.
No new ground is unexciting, uninspiring.
It looks boring.
The name sucks.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Yes.
From the very beginning.
We were not a feeling it.
We made many, many jokes and they were very easy.
The biggest thing here is this is all marketing press release speak for people don't buy
EVs.
So we're not going to make one anymore.
I mean, it's really what it is with a starting price of $89,000.
You too can choose a lucid air purer to start with instead of much better, much better.
This is too expensive.
Yeah.
Uninteresting.
The styling is boring.
And here it's the lifestyle with the family.
We'll imagine any car truck or SUV right here.
You can do all of that.
Yes.
With any car truck.
This is not unique.
Plus it had like maybe just over 300 miles of range.
So it was just like everything else.
Loose it all the way.
No new ground.
Except I saw you could play Astro Bot on the giant screen in there.
Because that's what we care about.
Maybe that was the unique differentiator.
But otherwise, this car is dead and we can move on.
That era is behind us.
Everyone move on.
Good news.
That's behind us.
I'm not surprised.
The marketing spin is so much fun.
Oh, it's crazy.
It's so much fun to read.
We re-evaluated our electrification strategy.
Which is just...
Which was what?
Well, but all that means is, oh look, no one's buying EVs.
What are we doing?
That's what that really means.
What are we doing here?
What is this anyway?
All right.
So other bits of news.
I'm going to now jump in here with AC Schnitzer.
I am showing a picture of the massively tuned AC Schnitzer promo car that our friends at
RSR have right now.
They took the current generation M2 and they put all of the parts on it.
And this thing got faster and more focused and crazy.
There you go.
The boffins.
The boffins.
They're not boffins when they're German.
But anyway, it doesn't matter.
The point is, this is all the parts from AC Schnitzer.
And this car, everyone we know that drove it, came away wowed by this M2.
You had it in Portugal, didn't you?
I had the F87 before this.
Okay, got it.
Yeah.
Generation before, which was not Schnitzer tuned.
It was an RSR build.
Still brilliant.
But everybody we know that drove this came away amazed by this version of this.
And I'm showing it because this company is now dead, or at least will be dead by the
end of the calendar year.
And it's fascinating how everything we're talking about news wise is not only just news,
but it's all affected, I feel like, by market forces and market changes.
And in this case, this is fascinating.
They said there were two major reasons why they're no longer going to continue.
The first one is, the regulations for German parts to be approved are so stringent.
And they were always passing them, but they were so stringent that it was creating a scenario
where their parts are getting to market for BMW products eight to nine months after the
competition, which means there's no market.
By the time you've already made a buying decision, everybody's already decided how they're going
to tune their car and you weren't even considering because you didn't have anything yet.
That's part of it.
And also, because power is the easiest thing to get anymore.
All cars are powerful.
Buy a used EV and blow away everything at the stoplight.
This generation isn't interested in tuning cars.
They've already said that.
They said like the way they stated it in their press release was the current generation is
not as interested as their parents were fascinating.
So this is this company's dying entirely due to market forces.
On the flip side, due to market forces, Dodge is putting a 392 back in the Durango.
This was dead, by the way.
This was dead, dead, dead.
Get your last flat line for a while.
They're bringing it back with a starting price of $50,000 on this, which means loaded out.
It'll be 60 with a 392 V8 in it, which is the personality that you want.
And frankly, as old and that's not even fair as dinosaur like as this chassis is.
This is very old.
Okay.
This is 15, 20 years old as far as development is concerned.
But there's nothing else like it on the market.
And for 60 grand loaded, 50 grand to start.
I don't think they're going to be able to make these fast enough.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
People want this $60,000 for this.
I think of the other SUVs we've had come through recently for $60,000.
This is more interesting than most of them.
If you're a person that wants any personality in your seven seater, walk right over to Dodge.
I can't believe they've brought this back as part of Dodge's massive pivot for oops.
Let's not go EVs anymore.
As part of that massive pivot, they are doing what Dodge has always done.
Huge engines, people like in old chassis that are tuned.
Well, guess what?
The band's getting back together.
Here we are, the Durango.
Well, shoot, for future tuning companies, it's no longer for electric cars.
It's not even going to be a teenager coding in their mother's basement.
It's going to be called sentient tuning.
It's AI that comes up with the tuning program and you just swipe your credit card
and they email you the code and whatever it is, email you.
It's just, it's currently downloading in the garage.
As soon as it got confirmed, it's now downloading in the garage.
Yes.
You can, well, by the time you go out for Starbucks in 10 minutes, it'll be ready to go.
Yes, for sure.
New tuning company is called Sentient Performance, everyone.
Nice.
They just think of it.
They, you didn't.
The tagline is, tagline is whatever you can think of.
That's the tagline.
Sentient Performance is the new tuning company.
So, because they could have tuned that i3, the new BMW i3.
Can you imagine a Schnitzer tune, one of those, but I don't know, man.
It's not physical.
It would just, they wouldn't need the coders so that have AI do it, but then AI
will already bypass them.
So they're going to be shot down anyway.
Two quick notes where the same thing happened.
I just got to kind of cleanse our palate for a second.
Here's, here's a, I'm going to create a part of this podcast that probably
will never come again, but what I'm calling it is things CEOs say, okay.
Because here's what was said this week.
That's good across all industries, by the way.
I don't care if it's cars or things CEOs say this past week or so, the CEO
Volkswagen and the CEO of Ferrari, said the things you're not supposed to say.
Did you see this?
The CEO of Volkswagen was quoted as saying, he doesn't understand why you'd
put touch sensitive sliders in a car.
Now this is the company that put touch sensitive temperature sliders in a car.
And he said, I don't know why he would do this.
Now he wasn't around when they put him in there, but he's sure around to get him
out.
So I thought that was funny.
The other one was the Ferrari CEO.
Ferrari has never been accused of not figuring out how to extract dollars.
Okay.
They know how to do it.
And this stuff is very expensive and obviously very sought after, but he
admitted in an interview that touch screen controls are 50% cheaper to
create than buttons and knobs.
Things you shouldn't say as a CEO, but at the same time, this, exactly.
This is what we've been arguing since Elon Musk has been trying to sell.
Oh no, the single screen and the minimalism.
That's luxurious.
No, it's cheaper.
It's cheaper.
That's how you pulled it off.
And now all of these cars have gone to that because they were all chasing the
money and we've all gone, what is this thing?
And they're wanting it back.
And here he is at Ferrari.
Well, let's be honest, they're going to make money no matter what.
They're fine.
It's true.
But he acknowledged that they're pivoting because their audience doesn't want
touch screen, even though they're making this new, what Luca Lucy, whatever it is.
Anyway, in spite of that, yeah, whatever, I'm sure we'll mispronounce it to our
graves, but moving on, but he said touch screen controls are 50% cheaper.
Now I'm not sure you should have said that on the record, but in my new
category that I am calling things CEOs say, I love it.
That is part of them.
Now I'm going to come back to photos.
I still can't believe those guys said that.
But anyway, I'm going to come back to photos here real quick.
I'm going to go fully into rumor mill.
I have no confirmation from anything I'm about to say the rumor mill.
By the way, I want to know who this geek is that I'm about to quote, misquote.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
We've been to the ring many times.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a thing.
It's a culture.
If you get, if you get, honestly, if you get in within, I'm going to say 20
kilometers.
Ooh, look at me.
If you get in with 20 kilometers, maybe 50 kilometers of Nürburgr.
Yeah.
All they care about is cars.
Yeah.
I have never been to another place on the planet like this.
This is an entire town infrastructure.
Everything is just about, if you don't like cars, you moved.
Okay.
There is, there, you are not welcome.
Why do you live here?
It is all cars.
All those people still do, but you know, maybe they're into cars.
There are apparently, now, now we know you've all seen YouTube videos, many,
many, many YouTube videos from the same places, the same cutouts.
You've seen all the YouTube crash videos.
But the point is there are spotters watching the ring at all times that are
unpaid spotters that are just excited.
Okay.
Great.
One of these spotters has been watching a new variant of the Mustang GTD do
lapse, slightly different arrow.
Apparently a US versus a European version, just doing laps, doing laps.
So apparently this spotter has video and rudimentary.
They've done their own timing to suggest that this GTD has not only beat the
Corvette, but is the fastest production car behind the AMG one.
They think it ran low six forties.
For reference, the Corvette ran like six 47, 649, I think, depending on the
variant.
Okay.
They think this is running low six forties.
Now we know, we know, uh, Ford said that the race was on and they were going to
keep competing games on.
Yeah.
But I say this, look, I am, I'm a fully acknowledging this is in rumor mill right
now, but it's being reported a lot of places by the Tuesday, this comes out.
There might be confirmation or no words might have come out with true information,
but at the time we're recording this, it is only rumor mill and the suggestion is
that the GTD is back with a new variant that has beat almost everybody, but
certainly beat the Corvette because they want the American ring record.
So that's going on out there.
We took the passenger seat out at like the ride up and seriously, we're good.
Other rumors that are very interesting that I'm very curious about, but it could
almost have been in things.
CEOs say the next Miata.
Well, this has been quoted as I'm showing all the generations right now,
like four generations so far.
Now one of the interesting things about the ND, the fourth gen is it did what no
other car on the planet seems to want to do.
And that is from one generation to the other, it got smaller and lighter.
I think Mazda might be the only one in history to have done that.
We like the, the C generation, the third generation very much because we both fit.
And we like the fourth, but the fourth is definitely smaller and lighter.
Okay, it's about 2,400 to 2,500 pounds, depending upon your variation.
Okay.
The CEO of Mazda has said the next one, which would be, I guess the N.E.
I guess we follow the naming convention.
It's supposedly not going to be hybridized in any way, shape, or form.
And will not be over 2,200 pounds, which is 2 to 300 pounds lighter than the ND.
I hope this rumors true.
I totally agree.
That, that's huge.
It would put it within 200 pounds of my lease.
Things CEOs say.
Yes, it is.
Fantastic news.
Enthusiasts everywhere rejoicing, but that keeps with the Mazda through line.
Just like, I hope so.
I hope no EVs.
They're not even investigating EV technology to try to make it because it
would go against the grain of what the Miata is.
Well, I think what it suggests right now is unless they have some special, I
mean, and I've said no hybrids, but the problem is if you're chasing weight, you
can't also chase batteries.
That's the problem.
So if you're doing, if you're saying 2,200 pounds is the max and that's lighter
than the current Gen, how are you doing that?
Because of modern safety standards.
I mean, look, I love my lease.
It is 1950, just under 2,000 pounds without a driver.
But let's be honest, it passes no modern crash standards.
Okay.
This little thing needs to.
So that is in both the future cars, rumors and things CEO say, I hit all the
boxes on the last one, but there's where we are.
I love it.
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Stop the podcast.
Kicking off April announcements, we've got a lot of cool events starting up for
hooked on driving in April, 2026.
We'll just touch on the first two Saturday, April 4th, the Pacific Northwest
region is running at Portland International Raceway.
A few track cars are available as well.
And then again, Pacific Northwest region running Friday, April 10th and
Saturday, April 11th at Ridge Motorsports Park out in Shelton, Washington.
So April 4th, they're running at Portland and then the following weekend, they're
out in Shelton at Ridge.
We really are busy.
They're very busy and both days they have made a few track cars available for
rental.
I know if you're in that area, they would love to have you and great coaching
and a great community, great atmosphere there as well.
And every other region has an event in April.
So be ready because they're all coming.
Yeah.
Also in May, Saturday, Sunday, May 30th and May 31st.
That is the weekend right after Memorial Day weekend circuit of the
Americas in Austin, Texas on my top five list as well.
It's way up there.
It's a great track.
Really cool.
Yeah.
We've got a ton of people registered.
We would love to have you come out if you're still in the fence.
Come on, because we don't know what's going to happen with Kota.
You've all heard the rumors.
We have two.
We're still not sure, but this is a great chance to get on Kota.
This is your year.
Come to Kota.
You can also register at hooked on driving.com.
Our pilgrimage trip does still have, I think, that lingering single space available.
We would love to have you join us.
That is going to be August 2nd through the night.
And that is Belgium and Germany.
That is spa two days and the ring for an actual track day plus tourist days.
Intersperser.
There's going to be awesome.
And I have to make an announcement, a admission of shock and endorsement.
All these nine of things at once.
I want to thank all of you that are patrons on patreon.com because we,
we definitely benefit any, any, any creator that you support on Patreon.
I guarantee you that is life's blood to them because it's become harder and
harder with YouTube and other things to just survive.
So you guys are very helpful to us and we thank you.
There's benefits for all of our patrons, including our discord.
And we are changing those benefits actually in the coming month.
But thank you to all of you that are patrons.
One of the benefits that our patrons get is early access to sign up for our
adventures, right?
And we always get great activity from that.
It's always very cool.
Many of you are very excited and you want to come, et cetera.
But this is a first.
This is a first.
I would love to tell you those of you that are not patrons that are listening
right now, are Utah adventure is live.
It's happening in September, but it's sold out through our patrons in an hour.
I'm shocked.
I don't, I can't believe that happened.
I was away from my phone.
I was away from my phone.
I was working out.
I was away from my friends at the rock gym.
I picked up my phone and I was like, what has just happened?
And thank you to all of you who were watching the discord.
Thank you.
All of our patrons who have signed up and are coming with us on this Utah adventure.
And of course, yeah, we'd love to have all of you watching and listening on one
of our adventures at some point, but patrons do get first access.
And that's exactly what happened.
I was astonished way faster than I ever thought.
I thought it'd take a weekend or a day or two or every year.
Sign ups, but every year prior, there have been three or four spots left
because the patrons fill it out and then we released it to the public like now.
And there's always a few spaces left.
It filled with almost double the capacity for waitlist.
By the time it was three hours up and the first hour it was like sold out.
I mean, thank you.
And I, we'd love to have you with us.
Also, just a random update just to think about this.
We try to do, give you the overview, one adventure close to us, one adventure in
the U S away from us and a European adventure every year.
So that is all three for this year.
I am wearing the commemorative shirt of our bear tooth past trip, which is not
happening this year.
We will swap that for Utah next year.
We're going to start rotating them out because both of those trips leave from
our backyard here.
This Utah trip has been expanded with a combination of our Utah drive days last
year and our normal Utah trips.
It's expanded by a day or so.
It's going to be literally all our greatest hits road that you have seen us
film on and I'm very excited about everybody coming.
And apparently people are excited too.
So thank you for that.
It's really awesome.
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Boy, do we have a great car debate.
Number one from Chris who is in the Maryland and DC area.
He is fighting the midlife practicality versus desire.
What a great email here.
Got it.
He's writing to request our recommendation on what would fulfill both his
desire in the practicality of his real life because he's pulled in two
directions right now.
Financially, he could probably afford to buy just about any car between
$35,000 and $60,000 new that is such a wide swath.
Thank you for giving me a lot of money to work with Chris.
And it's great news.
You didn't add those two numbers, by the way, did you?
Oh, that's a good idea.
Cause that would have been, that would make sense to me.
Your budget's $95,000.
Sorry.
I didn't mean to give you the idea, but I kind of figured you do that.
Yeah, exactly.
Chris drives 35 miles each way for his daily commuter Monday through Friday.
And he's currently got a 2025 Honda Civic hatchback sport hybrid.
He says it's enjoyable.
It's fine.
It just lacks something extra special.
Of course, it's also gray.
That's why it's lacking something special.
His wife has a brand new Toyota Grand Highliner Platinum max.
Okay.
And that's great for being the family hauler.
The great time, he said zero to 60 time is great for something so big and heavy.
So it's faster than he expected.
A lot of power.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
It's packed with everything great about Toyota SUV.
She's happy with it.
She loves it.
And Chris thought he would be happy with the Honda Civic to commute in, but it's
left him yearning for something with just a little bit more fun, possibly
something that leans less practical.
Maybe it's a midlife crisis thing.
Maybe he's getting to a financial place where he can make the whimsical odd
decision, maybe, but he acknowledges here.
He's perfectly aware of the fact that the Honda, again, this is the hatchback
sport hybrid.
It's perfect for his commute.
If we made a list of what does the car need to do to be good for a commute?
It does all of it.
I mean, sure.
Yes.
It's gray.
He knows intellectually, he absolutely knows this is the perfect car for what I
need.
He just doesn't like it.
And he's feeling that.
Well, you're listening to this podcast.
He's feeling that reason to drive something fun.
And he has had to contend with this is a new term.
You've heard of the minister of finance.
No, no, no.
In his household, it is the vice admiral high priestess of finance.
That's where we are.
So she has a firm grasp on the finances of the household.
She's also listening now.
So hello, Chris's wife.
But anyway, she wouldn't be thrilled to see him change vehicles after only a year
of ownership, but he could do it because the reality is he's put 17,000, almost 18,000
miles on the Honda in a single year.
So he's driving like crazy.
He does have kids and a dog.
So as a result, it's been helpful to have a hatch, but not completely necessary.
Because again, they do have the big Toyota.
The Toyota also does minor towing of 1500 pound a line pop up camper.
So it really can do all of the life stuff.
So we are replacing his commuter wife works from home.
So the Toyota gets driven really for family stuff only.
Chris has been looking at alphas, BMWs, minis, Miata's things in the wheelhouse
of the everyday driver's show.
We've mentioned at least all of those.
Yes, please.
He's looking at sedans or hatches or small crossovers.
He's looked at a few Volvos.
He would say he's likely most waffling between the alphas, the BMWs and the minis.
He's looking at buying used just to lessen the blow of a quick switch.
Every time Chris thinks he sees a crossover that would work, he thinks maybe it's not fun enough.
Every time he thinks he found a great alpha, he wonder, he wonders if it
will be as reliable as what he drives now.
Hard to say.
Maybe.
Yeah.
I mean, obviously Honda Civic is probably just going to keep running in spite of you,
a performance car.
I don't care the brand alpha or whatever is going to need some care.
He says the itch won't go away.
He wants to make a change soon because this paragraph, Chris, I love that you wrote this.
You get to a point in life sometimes where the daily grind and practicality of life
makes you say to yourself, yes, I'm doing everything right, but I want to do something fun.
But fun doesn't mean wrong.
True, true, true.
We associate I want fun and so that's wrong because I'm doing everything right.
He's driving 70 miles a day working 7 a.m. to 3 30 p.m.
Going home repeating.
He provides a good life for his family, but he wants a little something extra special
that makes it more personally worth it all to him.
I mean, you spend a lot of time in that car.
This was really the impetus for the show.
I remember when I was used to drive commuting on the 405 in that first 300 ZX,
that was not turbo and automatic.
And I still loved whatever driving and I kept looking around all the people that
were hating themselves in a car that they hated.
I mean, this is the reality.
He's been a lot of time in that car and you're weighing and you even brought it up.
Paul, you're weighing Chris the difference between responsible and enjoyable.
They can be intertwined.
You can be responsible in being joy and enjoying yourself.
But the problem is very often what happens is as we lean into being responsible,
we get way down the road and realize I'm having no fun at all.
So we're trying to bring the fun back.
I love this, Chris.
This is good stuff.
Says this is the age in life for future planning, stability and practicality rule.
But there has to be something he had ad that wouldn't crush him financially.
Just a little bit more fun and reliable.
And now he says, maybe I'll stick with the $35,000 40 limit.
He dangles 60.
Yeah, he gave you 60.
He took it right away.
Man, he thinks that's healthy enough to switch over to achieve what he's aiming for.
He's still commuting a lot in the Maryland, D.C.
Area automatic needs to stay, understand.
But besides that, he's open options.
He'd like to buy something with similar mileage as his current vehicle and stay
2023 or newer 2023 model, you're newer with about 20,000 miles.
Is this a bad idea?
No, he says the dad in him is saying yes, but the human side of him says, he needs
to do this for himself.
I am fully in agreement and both can be true.
True.
Like I say to a lot of things, yes, both can be true.
It's not, I'm doing the practicality thing and anything fun, anything resembling
fun is wrong.
If the food tastes good, that means it's unhealthy spit it out.
It's bad for you.
It's not just.
We've all seen that.
Health food and then I can't have the burger and fries.
Can't eat it.
He says he's five foot nine, 200 pounds built like a wrestler.
So he's supposed to theorize this amniotic could probably work, but he's
leaning slightly more practical.
The Julius and the Stelvios are gorgeous.
I love it.
Chris sends us a bit of car history, including an 86 Volvo station wagon with
the turbo, you had a black O eight Honda element EX element.
I know.
First year in the military.
Use 2007 red Volkswagen Jetta sedan, a fun car drove it into the ground because
that's what you do with him.
Well, so he's got a Volkswagen history, big Volkswagen history for sure.
Yeah.
Take one with electrical problems because the fuse panel melted.
Yeah.
Bummer.
He traded it in on a mini Cooper country S all four white with black hood
stripes.
So you've had the mini before country.
Yeah, yeah, cool.
Look at that.
He drove it to a hundred thousand miles, had an engine coolant leak issue.
So he couldn't solve it.
So he traded it in Volkswagen Atlas.
This wife couldn't drive too big.
And then he traded Allison on a cross track and then now the cross tech to the
Honda, I think it's amazing that she didn't like the Atlas and she now drives
the big grand Highlander because it strikes me.
I mean, the Atlas is big, but Grand Highlander is every bit as big as the
Atlas.
That surprises me.
But yeah, cross track to Honda and you're, you're bored.
I hate to say it, but you're bored.
You're bored.
So, all right, we got to see if we can solve this.
Let's do it.
Well, Chris, I noticed that you had mini history and because you had that
engine coolant leak, it seems like you weren't done with many.
Okay.
Seems like you like those.
But here is the Cooper JCW GP.
You remember this car when it came out in 2020, it was $52,000.
But Chris, this has a 302 horsepower turbo engine with an eight-speed
automatic transmission.
The problem is they are not common.
You're going to have to dig.
None might be for sale.
Can he get them for 40?
I'm hoping he dangled 60.
You stayed with 60.
I get it.
You can find that now.
True.
And even if you go down a step to just the John Cooper works mini.
Now I liked them all the way up to the model year 2003.
I think it was the F 56 or the R 56 version.
R 56.
So you mean the model, the first generation ended after oh six.
That was the R 53.
And then I started that was the 50, 20, 23 was 50, 20, 23.
Yes, 20, 23.
And I don't remember what it was, but I know where, where I know what you,
the recent generation is the one that you liked.
Yeah.
Cause I liked it up to 23, but then this is a 2024, which I can't say I loved.
It's a slight variation.
I don't love the ones now.
I don't love this one.
But if you want to go to 2024, you could just find a John Cooper works and
they are right within your budget.
Still lots of power, still finding with automatic.
Like I said, you're not done with many.
So I highly encourage you to go find a mini because I want you to think, Oh yeah.
I'm on my way to work.
I can't wait to drive.
I can't wait to grab the keys and I'm out the door and, you know, kiss everybody.
Goodbye.
And you're on your way down.
What?
Here's the thing with the, the GP version.
When they first were selling, I remember we saw it on a show with the fender,
with the fender, funky fender first was selling this.
I remember thinking way too expensive and I love minis.
I mean, that's been documented.
I remember thinking way too expensive for a mini and who's going to buy these.
And the reality, here's what's crazy.
I have only ever seen two in the wild.
And I'm thrilled to say this.
They were both at different hooked on driving track days.
Oh, it's the only time I've ever seen them.
I'm like, well, okay, so you are clearly the target audience.
I'm glad it showed up, but they're hard to find the GP is a different
beast. They're hard to find.
You might not warm to that idea, but I'm just thinking if we're going to go
mini, let's do really find the ultimate one.
But again, if you want to back that off to just the janky, regular old John Cooper
works, I highly recommend that too.
But you already took it to 100,000 miles.
So I say, yes, go after the mini.
I thought, okay, it's slightly BMW without being a BMW.
What else is BMW without being BMW?
It is the Toyota Supra, the GR Supra.
But wait, I know you dangled 60.
60 is the three liter.
True.
In line six brand new one.
Yeah.
But what if you went and looked at 2021's with the two liter four to save
money because you're commuting.
Again, it's not like I need all the power.
It's a little bit lighter in the front end, which means the handling is actually
a little bit more delicate.
There's a little more information there.
And it's still all of the 2021 two liter turbos that I found were in the
40,000 ish range.
All right.
They were all right in the sweet spot of your budget.
I mean, the budget you pulled me back to the revised the be careful Paul budget.
That's right.
So yeah, 40 to 42,000 with about 20,000 miles on them.
I love this next car for you, Chris.
And that is a pretty new G.R.
Corolla, like 20, 25.
And the reason I'm suggesting that is because you can get the automatic and
get this with the automatic, the G.R.
Corolla core and premium with the automatic and from seven to 15,000 miles
are all about $40,000 on auto tempest.
Awesome.
Yeah, that's great.
That's fantastic.
I enjoyed shopping for this.
Yeah, so the automatic G.R.
Corolla, I think you'd love it like, oh, wait, I'm on my way to work.
I can't wait to jump in my G.R.
Corolla and just listen to the pops and bangs and all the snorty three cylinder
goodness.
And then last car on my list is the 2024 Hyundai Elantra N with dual clutch.
Those start at just under 30, but then I realized weight with your budget.
You could pretty much just go get a new Hyundai Elantra N, but if you don't want
to, you know, depreciation, you don't want to deal with that.
You could just go look for a little bit, save some money.
And all of these would be a joy to drive.
I think you would love it.
And I think it would put that spark back in your commute.
I really do.
Well, again, you and I never talk about what we're going to cover, but we
sometimes align a lot and that'll be true here.
But I want to, Chris, I want to talk about your situation for just a second
because it reminded me of our friend Shane in the DC area, who also has a commute.
And he has told us, and your commute hopefully isn't as bad, but he has told
us that he spends most of his commute at about walking pace.
And for a while, he had a pretty high performance car and he realized that he
just rarely enjoyed it because it needed so much room to run.
You've said you're doing a 35 mile one way commute.
Again, 70 miles in the car a day.
You go early.
I noticed you leave at seven in the morning and you're back at 330.
You're clearly trying to avoid traffic.
That's, that's ahead of the traffic on both cycles, even though I'm sure there's
still plenty because that area's got tons of traffic.
I'm worried about you getting a car more high performance than you can enjoy.
That's my concern.
Sure.
I don't know your commute well enough, but I think that is a concern here.
So I am going to talk through some, get a beast that wants to be let off the
chain and you can't just commuting and, but I, but I am going to start with
the obvious one because Chris, you did already mention it.
So I do have to go there.
You keep mentioning how intrigued you are by the Alpha Julia.
I'm tasking you with driving one.
You need to go drive one because my question for you is.
The, and the one you want, I'm actually showing you a photo of it in green here
and it's spectacular is the quadrifoglio with the, the nice clover leaf on the side.
It is on my personal shortlist.
I don't need a sedan, but I would buy one of these.
I love it.
And in your budget, they're already down in the forties for the quadrifoglio.
It's amazing.
Quads are 40 in the forties.
Chris has 60.
So, and exactly right.
It doesn't want to tell us, but it does have 60 anyway.
So quadrifoglio is the one you want except for commuting.
I think you might be in a situation where you don't like it enough on the commute.
So I want you to drive, hopefully a quadrifoglio and a base engine and then
really have a conversation about, do you like this car enough to sit still in it?
Do you like this car enough to just hang out at it?
You, you talk two or three times and email about how gorgeous they are, how
much they intrigue you.
So I think you absolutely must drive one.
And I actually wonder if one of the sporty setup models of the base engine
might be perfect because there's not so much power that you've got to ring it out.
You don't need that kind of power, but it still got great chassis dynamics.
It still looks really great.
It's a cool place to be.
And it's a nice size dad car.
And it's gorgeous.
So, yeah, you, you must drive one of those.
You have Volkswagen history.
So I have to say, look at both Golf R and GTI.
You have multiple Volkswagen's that you've owned.
These two modern Volkswagen's are excellent.
I don't know that you need to go as high as the Golf R, but you could.
GTI or Golf R, I would recommend driving them both and see which ones you might
like better for the commute.
I think you could probably just go GTI and be very, very happy.
Yeah.
GTI with the DSG, get it with the money you've got very, very easily.
There's something that Shane had mentioned with the high-performance sports car he had.
It was an Audi RS3.
He loved it, but then he kind of downgraded to the GTI and it was more of a knock
around car.
He didn't worry about scrapes and dings and thrashing a wheel, a
carbon wheel, whatever.
And I'm wondering if the same thing for Chris, very possibly, you're less worried
about it and so you tend to just kind of thrash it and drive it a little bit more
and just enjoy, save a little bit of money.
Along these lines, again, you and I are so aligned on this, Paul, I just kept
thinking about what you need, Chris, is a car that in that little squirt of acceleration
that you get, you never got that fast, but it was still fun.
The whole zip chassis just feels like fun and interesting.
And you brought up many and many is a good one there, except the problem is all
the new minis are ugly and big.
So I stayed away from many.
I like where you were, but I stayed away from many because you're talking about
something fairly new and the minis getting worse, getting worse, terrible, worse
and bigger, but so I want you to have a, I mean, the alpha again, drive it to
see, but I kind of think that the place for you to be is a small chassis that is
set up in such a way that even going slowly, it feels like, like it's just
excited, it just wants to do something.
So the GTI might work, but the Elantra in is way up here.
It's way, way, way up here.
And this is the bigger car, but it's still got that feeling that zip, that
swirl, like little lightly, just scrabbling and having fun.
I mean, this is a great car for that.
This also has really good back seats.
There's no hatch, but there's a decent sized trunk has some scaffolding in it.
If you drop the seats, but anyway, it's a performance car.
This car would feel fun all the time.
This DCT, it's just got personality.
And then following the small hatchback personality route, my wild card actually
is the GR Corolla because here's the thing.
This is the least usable of the cars I'm listing.
That's why it's my wild card.
It's snorty.
It's stiffly sprung.
It so suggests it wants to run around fast at all times.
The back seat is smaller than the rest of these we're talking about, but you
have small kids.
Yeah.
The hatch is okay.
I don't know how big your dog is.
So this is the least usable, but probably the best personality of this group.
They've got the giant Grand Highlander for when they do all the kids and the
dog and all that stuff.
I think this would feel fun all the time.
And then if you have an opportunity to ring it out, it would be really surprising
to you.
So I say, check this out.
GR Corolla, I mean, my wild card, because I know this is the most focused of the
group is, but it changes everything.
It's like the best commuter.
It could be.
It could be really cool.
I'm very curious about, you know, what are the streets you're dealing with?
What is the commuter dealing with?
But I want you to have something just this snorty.
It could be really fun.
Chris, thank you for writing.
Really appreciate it.
Everyday driver TV, edgymail.com, topic Tuesdays, card debates, card inclusions.
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Drew has a great email writing to us from Northern Indiana.
Drew, thank you for writing after 12 years.
His wife finally indicated she might be ready to move on from her F 30 three
series BMW.
Her car history is limited.
Includes her 2013 328 I X drive 2008 Mercedes C 300 Sport 04 Audi A4
Quattro.
Wow, all this stuff from Germany.
Try them all.
Yep.
And a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix, which is interesting to see in that lineup.
God about that car.
It's like the car after the Beretta, like the, you know what, look, that bigger,
better brother of the Beretta in certain trims.
I remember driving that hard on a California back road.
In some trims, it drove far better than you would expect.
But when you started zero, big front wheel drive, big front wheel drive
decently tuned chassis, but it's not, it's not the German stuff above it.
I get it.
Yeah.
Drew and his wife live in Northern Indiana.
His wife experiences anxiety about driving in the winter without all wheel
drive, even though her daily commute is only three quarters of a mile.
Okay.
She's expressed interest into possibly getting into a CUV or SUV and Drew
suspects that's because they're 50 years old now.
Man, that's super old.
Getting in and out of a vehicle is starting to become a factor.
Since she drives so little, her 13 year old BMW has fewer than 80,000 miles.
Drew doesn't really want to spend a ton of money on a new car and feels
comfortable right about $30,000.
He's noticed a lot of off lease EVs that seem very inexpensive compared to their
MSRP that sentence may be go down a giant rabbit hole.
I've been talking about it.
I cannot wait to share my findings.
It's amazing what's coming inexpensive compared to their MSRP.
And we're talking less than four years old, sometimes newer than that.
There, that's the thing.
It's, it's two to four years old because they've all had leases of that
long that were killer leases and they're coming off lease.
And there is no, I've been, I've been talking about this.
There is no second buyer.
There's deals coming.
Maybe Drew's wife is the second buyer.
Yeah, maybe.
Drew indicates the EV market is a blind spot for him.
No problem.
Are there standouts he should focus on in that market or should he stick with gas?
I'll admit, I just stayed EVs on this.
I have one gas, three good recommendations, but I just stayed on EVs because I think
for her usage, especially three quarters of mile, the car hasn't warmed up yet.
That's true.
The catalog of converters not even just, but yeah, it doesn't matter.
Just get an EV and call it a day.
But yeah, where'd you go?
Let's jump right in with the first EV I want to educate you about.
Drew is the GV 60 from Genesis.
This is the luxury version of the Ioniq five and Kia GT six GT six.
That's right.
All of these Chris are 32 to $33,000 with 20 to 40,000 miles on them on auto tempest.
Okay.
So here is the rear shot of that.
I really liked the styling on this.
I really thought it was excellent when it came out.
It has lasted for me.
It stood the test of time, even though it's only four years old at this point,
three or four years old.
These are all kind of cheap.
These were 60 plus thousand dollars when they were introduced on the market.
So you're saving half price.
They've got boost mode, boost mode right on the steering wheel at 60 something
thousand dollars.
This is one of the rare EVs that we drove that we were like, this still feels
expensive, but it also kind of feels worth it.
Now you're getting a half price.
Yeah, that's amazing.
By the way, Chris, I am not chasing range for your wife because I could suggest
a Tesla or something like that.
And she's got a three quarter of a mile commute and maybe some other driving
around town, but okay, all of these are all wheel drive.
They're not the highest range ever, but they're great alts and they all drive
well enough to really consider.
So starting off with that GV 60, moving on to the 2022 BMW I for Grand
Coupe, E drive 40.
These are about 28 to 32 thousand dollars with 20 to 40 thousand miles.
You can get the Grand Coupe, you can get the sedan.
I think this was the Grand Coupe.
It was sort of like an extended hatchback.
You're going to have to deal with the Beaver Tief.
Do you like it?
Do you not?
But these were expensive.
And if she already likes BMW and that feel, it's going to be an EV with a lot
of power, fairly decent range.
It's not going to be amazing, but that's not what she needs.
Plenty for it.
And it's going to feel that luxury feel that sort of BMW thing that she's
used to the German car feel that she's used to this has it.
Absolutely.
You would, I think you would really be intrigued by this car.
When we drove this particular car, we found it to be wicked on acceleration.
It's incredibly fast.
There's so much performance here.
I know that's not what she needs, but there's a ton of performance, a ton of
luxury, and these were very expensive brand new.
So those are also should be on your list.
Moving on to, you're not going to believe this.
Wait, wait, you're not going to believe this.
Okay, go on, go on, go on.
Chris, I'm about to save you $90,000.
The 2022 Audi e-tron GT premium plus with 23,000 miles is $32,990.
You are.
I mean, I knew they were down there, but you're kidding me.
Going to find you the listing here.
I'm, I'm astonished by that.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, cause these were, I mean, these were $100,000 before you even tried.
Here's the listing 2022 e-tron GT premium plus with 23,000 miles for 32,9.
It's a brand new car.
And that is a superb car for the money.
Superb.
This is the better looking Taycan.
It drives the same all wheel drive.
Drew, you're going to want to steal this car.
This, yes.
These were $120,000 when they were new.
Everyone we had was like that 32,933.
I'll bet you they take 32 and say, have a nice day and you've saved
yourself $90,000 in four years of depreciation.
I mean, I don't need one, but don't I?
Don't I shouldn't I get one?
You've got to be kidding.
This is what you should get.
Wow.
The e-tron GT premium plus.
Yeah.
And she's had Audi.
She likes German cars for sure.
All wheel drive.
It's 51 plus 100 pounds.
So it's a heavy EV.
It's a big heavy EV.
Of course it is.
Yeah, they're all this heavy with all of these drew the architecture varies.
And this was still in, I think, experimental phase for a lot of car companies.
So the platform architecture that they're built on will vary.
And so your charging speeds will vary.
But for you, for your wife, most people will park them in the garage.
You'll probably have it on a, probably a level two charger.
And a lot of these claim about 10 hours to do a full charge, but with short
errands during the day, she'll just come on, you know, come home in the evening,
plug it in, you'll never think about it.
It'll, you'll never really have to look for a charger.
You'll just.
I agree.
Low, low amount of driving.
So I want you to, to think of that, but then I was already way down deep.
And I was like, they're this cheap.
I can't believe that.
That is quite a find.
Well, if these are that cheap, how much are Lucid's from that same era?
Oh, wow.
2024 Lucid air pure.
Oh my gosh.
Now this is 35,000.
That's $36,000 for a 2024 Lucid air pure, which means it's the rear wheel drive.
It's 500 pounds lighter than that Audi.
So it's not all wheel drive.
You're going to have to step up to the touring.
So you have those two.
I accept the e-tron.
The Lucid's intriguing that they're far down with the e-tron is phenomenal.
It's phenomenal.
So the tourings with all wheel drive, those are about $45,000, which is still a
gigantic bargain, but these were 76 to $80,000 brand new rear wheel drive.
Only again, tons of luxury.
The range on this, Chris, is 394 miles.
You might have to charge once every six months for the amount of driving.
It's certainly going to be some time later this week.
Yes.
So I say this as just an outlier again, rear wheel drive, it's lighter.
It, I mean, interesting choice, but that e-tron, these are a lot less.
So then I went looking at tycons.
All right.
If e-trons are that low, the cheapest tycon I found was $38,000, which is the
Porsche tax.
That's just the Porsche badge.
And it had 40 to 50,000 miles on or something and then got more expensive.
Well, a year plus ago, Matt Farah bought one for, I think the cheapest one in the
country was like 60.
So that shows you how much they've dropped just in a year that they've getting
down that much lower.
That's really incredible.
Absolutely.
The play here is the e-tron GT.
Look at this.
I think you've done very well there for $33,000 car for that money.
So much car.
I mean, the, I liked the interior better.
I liked everything about it better than the tycon was just, and it's cheaper.
That's crazy.
I love this.
All right.
I, yeah, I think you've outdone me, but Bravo.
So I've got one gas choice on here and that is a used, slightly used 2025 Volvo
XC 60.
If she is looking for an SUV, this is the gas powered B five core, but these were
pretty expensive new.
And this is only $34,000.
So again, all of these are just outside your budget with the exception of the
Lucid Air Pure.
They're all, all wheel drive.
You've got driving homework.
If you're interested in EVs, at least you need to drive that Audi e-tron.
And if you decide, you know what, I want something luxurious and the seats are
great and they're just going to run and be great.
Fine.
Go get the Volvo XC 60, but I think it's at least worth investigating for all
three of those EV choices and just think they're going to come down further.
So you can get great deals, but also in your ownership, they will continue to
plummet.
Yes, that's not a big deal.
You've got a great deal and just it is what it is.
Well, she keeps cars a long time.
So in that regard, it might be really the right call here.
I'm going to seem really anticlimactic.
I'm sorry, Drew, after Paul, but because I'm going to recover some things that
he's already covered.
I do think EV is the answer for you guys.
I'm starting with the, the GB 60 as well.
You and I literally, I'm starting to wonder if you and I somehow did talk
because there's a lot of overlap in this episode.
Anyway, the way your wife uses her car, why not EV?
I literally can't come up with a single reason why not.
Agreed.
She doesn't drive very much.
She drives so, so few, so short distance, three quarters of a mile for her commute.
A car in the summertime didn't get warmed up.
Drew, I mean, that's seriously forget the winter.
Yeah.
So anyway, so, and you, and you've talked about maybe SUVs for a little bit,
a higher ride height.
I have two SUVs and a car for you here, but I'm starting here with the GB 60,
which is a lot of luxury and everything you said about before, they're half price
now, I found multiple in your budget of the low 30.
So that's really good.
However, I cannot forget the Mustang Mach-E.
There are so many of those out here.
They're available to you as a cheap car.
And as for all of the controversy of the Mustang name, this just works.
It just works.
And we drove the GT and I liked the GT less.
I thought it was worse because the way you want to use this as a commute vehicle
and the GT took all of that heavy weight and put it stiffly sprung.
And it was like, what are we doing?
And then your wife can say, I got a Mustang, everyone.
Sure.
Exactly.
The, look, the door handles are goofy.
All right.
They're goofy.
But you're going to get used to it.
They're worse for the rear seats, but otherwise they're fine.
But everything about this just works.
And because they made a lot of these and invest a lot of infrastructure, that
means they're down there and they're cheap.
So you could get a color, but it's an SUV.
It's got a lot of storage.
I'm a big fan of the Mustang Mach-E for you guys.
But I really do think the answer until you brought up the e-tron and you totally
scooped me, but I think the answer is the BMW i4.
Oh, do you?
Okay.
Because she already likes German cars.
These were like 70 plus everyone we drove 70, 80 grand.
These were expensive and they're now down right in your budget.
And it doesn't feel like a Spartan EV.
It feels like a BMW that's modern that happens to be electric, which is my favorite
kind of electric cars when it's just, we're not advertising.
I mean, like that's my only concern with the new class BMWs as they went super
Spartan on the interior.
This just feels like BMW interior of the time.
You're absolutely right on that.
It feels just like BMW.
It could have a gas engine.
It could have an electric.
It doesn't matter if she's just going to feel like she got a more modern version.
Frankly, better version of her current car in many ways.
This is not an SUV, but it is a fairly large car as far as height off the road is concerned.
Tons of power, good luxury.
I don't like the beaver teeth, but the rest of this car is brilliant.
I actually wonder if this is the answer.
You could get the 50 or the 40.
They're both very fast.
The 40 was wickedly fast.
They're both very good.
Yeah, I think the answer is pure EV.
And if you don't find the crazy one off e-tron that Paul pulled off, which is the
answer, that is the answer, figure out how to climb in and out of that thing.
Cause that's awesome.
Yeah, the deal on that is crazy.
What's that going to be in 10 years?
Anyway, separate thing.
EVs drew an investigative and I think you'd really like it for you and your wife.
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A couple of car conclusions for you.
Thanks for being with us and sending in your car conclusions and your car
debates. We have so many thank you guys for consistently sending them.
We're going to get through more of them going forward and we're very excited
about it and these conclusions are fun.
This is an atypical conclusion.
This is like a conclusion that asks a question.
Jake's writing in and he said he's appreciating the fact that we entertained
his once terrible idea of a Julia with a Toyota motor, but he works in a car
adjacent field. He doesn't exactly go into what it is, but as he's worked in
this field for a while, something he always does with his employees is he
keeps track of his employees favorite three car dream garage in a binder.
So that means at some point when you get hired and you work for Jake, he asks
you this question, what's your three car dream garage?
And he does this so that when you have birthdays or whatever, a little he can
buy you the perfect hot wheels or the little trinket that relates to that.
It's a great idea.
That's a cool three car garage, but he gets teased because among all of his
employees who are picking vintage Ferraris and our 34 Skylines and crazy
Viper ACRs and, you know, Pagani's and crazy and all the kind of stuff.
He always says he wants a DC two era Acura Integra.
And his employees make fun of him like what like aim higher.
The reasoning he always says this is he wants to have a vehicle in which he
could claim through time and skills that he's achieved as close to 100% of
its mechanical capability as reasonably possible.
Okay.
Even if we consider unlimited budget and track time as part of this dream garage
scenario to try to achieve that with something like a GT3 RS or a zero one
would take a lifetime.
Jake thinks the point of a car needing you resonates quite well.
I agree.
He'd rather drive a GTI or a type R expertly than a super car to a mediocre level.
That's fascinating.
That's pretty cool.
Jake, I extracting all of it.
I like this a lot.
I really do like this a lot, but I'm going to give you one addendum.
And it's something that Paul has said about many of the cars he's owned,
including your GT four is that you feel like when you have a car beyond your
capabilities, it asks more of you and pulls more out of you.
Yeah.
And, and I want to, you're, you're quoting me.
I want a car that needs me very much, but I would like a car that feels like I,
I can learn to it versus learn beyond it.
All right.
And I'll give you an example.
An 86, I love the 86, but anytime I've had an 86, I'm aware of the fact that I
know how to extract all of that car.
And I've bought one now and that was my only car.
Boring is the wrong word.
Boring is not, yeah, I'm not going to be bored, but, but I'm, that I have,
I have stunted my own growth a bit.
Okay.
I'm going to have a great time.
I'm going to have a phenomenal time, but I have stunted my own growth a bit.
I think you need to aim for things like a super or a Cayman.
You don't need to go hyper car, but I, I think super super or Cayman,
that level of car, so below a hundred thousand dollars designed to be an everyday
car, a little bit, but it's still a high performance car.
Because what I think you'll find is, and I realize this is all dream scenario,
but just go with me.
I think something that's a little bit beyond you.
Cause what I'm hearing with the Integra is that you already feel like
you could achieve it.
Like if I had an Integra, I could ring it out.
It probably has.
Yep.
So if you had a super or a Cayman, I don't want you day one to be like, oh yeah,
I could do this.
I want day one to be like, okay, there's a little bit of work to do because then
you're going to have a higher capability across the board.
So I think I agree with your hyper car assessment because I agree with you.
GT three RS's and crazy things like a ZR one.
Most people are never going to achieve a master driver's capability in that
car in spite of how good they are, but a super or a Cayman really rung out.
That would be great.
Eric in Ohio writes to us with two questions, two questions, these with
context, yes, he writes to us as a casual, slowly turning enthusiast, but
what is an enthusiast?
He asks, these are outside of the other questions.
Is there more than one kind?
How many can you bucket us?
So we now have to classify people.
We're not, we're not doing that.
That's not what this podcast is about.
We're all car lovers here.
We all have the disease.
All are welcome.
There will be no classifications.
Context number one, Eric is in his mid 40s.
He's been a car admirer for life.
Posters on the wall, ogled friends, cars, followed favorite brands stat trends
for three decades, but only recently decided to branch way from a myriad of
safe, safe, capable enough Hondas for most of his life.
He's owned civics and C.R.V.s and pilots and a passport and an Odyssey and all of them.
Surprised and element was it in there?
Yeah.
Well, you know, in the last three years, he had an awakening on a lark.
He leased a 2021 Ram 1500 Hemi e-torque in patriot pearl blue.
It had fireworks at a bald eagle of the hood.
Beautiful, powerful truck.
Alas, water intrusion with no fix in sight.
So we dumped it and slunk back to purchase the 2022 passport.
Great cars, a Swiss army knife of retro fun.
Felt like his 2008 pilot.
All right.
All right.
I mean, just because you had one bad experience doesn't mean you have to slink
back doesn't mean that all be bad either.
Yes.
He's had more motorcycles than cars.
He loves a good bike, but he says he no longer cares to tempt fate with the
text distracted drivers.
And he also convinces his wife to let him investigate trading into the, uh,
trading the bikes for a used Miata has to be manual, like his first civic
hatch and he test drove on and decided it was too small.
Just immediately went, no, no, no, no, no.
So what did he do as a person?
Listen to this podcast.
He bought himself a GR 86 in terino blue.
Of course you did.
Bravo.
He said amazing car.
Did we peer pressure him to buy it?
Maybe a little, but he does not regret it.
He loved it.
I say loved in the past tense because he considers it the gateway drug that
lasts only five months with two young kids getting bigger.
He was like, hmm, okay, this is not going to be a long-term play, but, but it,
this is what really convinced you that you had the car disease and great choice.
By the way, yeah, we are perfectly happy to have influenced you here.
Well, he says, could he use, could he use the equity in trade, the
GR 86 then as a legit singular daily driver to stop juggling cars.
His wife now has the passport and he is now the proud new owner of a 2025
Acura Integra Type S in liquid carbon metallic.
He couldn't be happier.
He plans to track this at a mid Ohio HPD E in June.
I'm excited for you, but he's got winter tires on it and sent us photos
driving his fun car in the winter on winter tires.
This is the sweet spot.
He said he is now a convert.
He said he was always a, you got to have all wheel drive in Ohio and he is
transitioned completely because of this car into who cares, just have the right
tires for the job.
Thanks to us.
He said he had no idea how great it could be.
He has blizzaks on this and it is so capable.
And of course it is winter tires on that chassis is going to be amazing.
Awesome.
Question number two, does a car's weight capacity matter?
Are they stress tested much higher?
And if so, what is the upper threshold, the absolute top end threshold?
Okay.
Because he read that the Integra Type S has a weight capacity of 680 pounds
and his young family of four weighs 730 pounds.
So he's asking, they grow big in this house.
Are we breaking the poor car?
Okay, got it.
I understand.
I think he'll be just fine.
I think it'll be fine.
Suspension is going to take a beating, but you know what, you're going to be.
You're going to be one of those families.
When you get out of the car, the car sits lighter.
We've all done, hey, you and I have done it with a couple of other friends.
You get out of the car and you watch the car go like, that definitely is a thing.
For sure.
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Haven't done a, did you see this section in a while?
And I actually don't have a photo for this, but I did want to talk very briefly
about a movie that just came out that I did see.
It's one of the movies I've been most excited about for this calendar year.
And it's Project Hail Mary.
Okay.
Now they're actually, I'm sitting there watching trailers in front of it with
my son and realized there's a lot of movies I'm excited about this year.
But the reason I'm bringing it up is because this converges so many things for
me, good filmmaking from an excellent novel.
Project Hail Mary is the third novel from Andy Weir.
Andy Weir wrote the Martian and then he wrote an Artemis, which is about the moon.
And then this was Project Hail Mary.
And Project Hail Mary was my favorite of his three novels.
And then Bravo on that.
And then he, Paul found a photo photo.
You did.
Good job.
Then he wrote this novel.
And honestly, in the past three or four, maybe five years of consistently reading,
listening to novels, this is one of my all time favorites in that time period.
It's a superb novel.
If you want to read the novel, I highly recommend you do it because it's even
more in depth, obviously, than the movie.
But the movie was excellent.
Really?
My wife saw it with a bunch of her girlfriends.
She was kind of like, you said it was going to be good.
I'll kind of go.
And she was like, that was great.
And they all enjoyed it.
And then I went with my son and he, we had a great evening.
Really good.
So if you look.
It's not perfect.
No movie is perfect.
We could pick it apart if you wanted, but this is just one of those.
Just sit there in a big theater and enjoy space and drama and humor and Ryan
Gosling spends probably three quarters of this movie by himself on screen.
No kidding.
Which is very impressive.
It's just, it's solid.
You have any interest?
This is 100% an endorsement and also read the novel.
So project Hail Mary is my, did you see this?
Because frankly, you should always got checkered flags on his shirt.
So he must be in a racing of some kind.
Well, there you go.
Yeah.
Love it.
Yeah.
It was very fun.
Staying in the film area, I will jump to questions.
I'm going to jump here to one from Daniel and I'm going to be careful here
because I'm probably going to get myself astray.
But he said that recently his partner showed in the movie centers and he
thought it was so good.
By the way, I thought centers was awesome.
If you haven't seen it, you should see centers.
That's great.
What is the film style called where they use a specific style or of
color filtering?
Are there any notable movies that are shot similarly?
Or is it via post production editing?
Uh, Daniel, the answer here is every movie picks a color palette.
And while traditionally you picked a color palette that you only
created on set with lighting.
Now, so much manipulation is done in post that it's hard to know the line
between what was real and practical on set and what was done in post production.
I'll give you an example of one you probably haven't realized, but if you
watch any Avengers movie, all those movies are heavily desaturated.
All of the colors are much more muted.
And if you watch it, you don't even realize it anymore because that's
just the world that we're in, but there have been and you can look them up.
There have been some places where they have a before and after of some
of the Avengers movies where they show you the frame as captured and then
they show you the frame as released and the colors on the frame as captured
are much more normal and vibrant, but they've desaturated it and created
a different thing with the contrast that is the look of those films.
So every filmmaker picks one.
And one I can think of a while back, Guillermo del Toro, who's still a
working filmmaker, did Blade two with Wesley Snipes while I was working at
New Line.
Okay.
Okay.
You may have seen, there's a lot of pictures from space and stuff talking
about how most of the major metropolitan areas in the world, LA very famously
have gone from a yellow sodium light to a white LED light, saved a bunch
of electricity costs and now cities look very different at night, much cleaner
light Guillermo del Toro, yes, was obsessed with sodium vapor.
That was these very yellow lights and he chose for Blade two that
everywhere he could, he was going to pick a sodium vapor light.
So that whole color palette of that film, this was early 2000s was entirely
it kind of a yellow cast.
So he was doing it in camera and then he was, he was accentuating it in post.
All of that to say that centers has a looking through ice tea kind of feel
about it.
It's kind of the feel.
It's kind of feels like an older film.
It's very well done.
And that is a choice somewhat in the lighting, but I guarantee you with post
production.
Interesting.
Got questions on Facebook.
Anthony Zurg asks if we've gone backwards in engines.
He's not talking about the good ones.
Obviously there's amazing engineering going on out there.
He's talking about entry level engines.
He rented an eclipse cross.
I'm so sorry.
Yeah.
1.5 liter turbo CVT.
He says, just, just don't rent one of these.
Don't buy, don't rent.
He said work rented it for him.
So that made it even worse.
Oh yeah.
He was given to it.
He's like, what are we doing here?
He gets it.
It's an entry level car with a base engine, but it's horrific.
He's all for reducing emissions, finding better solutions.
And every car doesn't need to be a sports car, but this felt a good step behind.
You say, say a naturally aspirated 1.8 liter Corolla of 15 years ago.
These very small engines have nothing at all into the turbo kicks in and then
they're just a great deal of buzzing and moaning without much anything else happening.
Have we gone backwards in base level engines or is he turning into a grumpy
old man looking at the past with rose colored glasses?
I think the CVT was the biggest part of your problem.
They don't pair well.
They don't pair well with anything really.
They don't, they don't go with anything and they ruin what could be a great engine.
It doesn't extract the power at the right places.
It moans and whines.
So much of what you were hearing was probably the CVT, not the engine.
Although it very much depends.
We've got some great 1.5s from Honda that are lots of power, tiny displacement,
great little engine.
Yeah.
Key is making some great ones.
They're putting them in their K4, little tiny things, getting a lot of power.
Well, the tiny little engine that's in the GR Corolla, I mean, it's possible to
have some good ones.
It's not across the board.
Yeah.
But for Mitsubishi, I feel like it's a, it's almost like an MBA exercise,
like a training class.
Like here's how we put together cars and here's how we sell cars, everybody.
And it doesn't matter.
We just take the parts without being an enthusiast and you just put it together
and try to sell cars and we name it something.
And it's really feels like very much a marketing exercise.
So in that sense, I think the engine wasn't really thought through.
I think Nissan's products with their engines and CVT pairings haven't been
very well thought through.
It's been a business exercise.
We've got all these or standardization.
And let's just put that same thing and everything.
And, you know, we've been through the, the two liter four era.
Well, but keep in mind, there are other things at play here as well, Anthony.
And all, all everything that's being said is, is true here, but the other
things you have to think, think are almost all of these manufacturers are
fighting against miles per gallon.
Yeah.
And these tiny little engines off turbo.
When you test them, get incredible miles per gallon.
Cause it's a tiny, tiny little engine and you create turbo for real usage.
I remember when they, when Ford first released their turbo sixes and talked
about great gas mileage, most people got the same gas mileage as the old V eight
because they put their foot in it to get the power that they wanted.
Then the engine suddenly burned lots of gas, but for testing on these
little engines, they get great gas mileage when they're not on turbo.
And that is to meet regulations.
Eco mode.
Yes.
That is the reason this exists.
That it used to be, you had bigger fours or big V sixes as base motors.
And those have gone away due mostly to being regulated out of existence because
the other thing going on in Europe and elsewhere is that engines above two
liters get taxed more.
Yeah.
So manufacturers have gone, how do we get, this is why we end up with things
like two liter turbo engines, the big seven cedars.
It's what are we doing?
That's not the right engine, but it makes sense for that kind of regulation.
So that's a factor as well.
Over on Instagram, Mr.
Miata asks if Vredestein wind track pro plus Excel as a year round tire on a
GTI, I don't think so because that's going to winter, not a full winter.
I think you'd be much happier with the quad track pro on that GTI for a year
round.
They're because that's the whole season.
That means, pardon me, the all weather, all weather, that my wife runs on her
Cayenne and they've been phenomenal.
They're fantastic.
Yeah.
Look at the quad track pro for that.
Damn it.
Patton on Instagram asks for the biggest Paul limiter car conclusion that
we've ever had.
He saw somebody on discord test drive a GR 86 and then bought an M four CS.
That's gotten a lot of conversation.
Throw that point home that sometimes people just say, screw the budget.
Yeah, they do.
And if you've got the biggest financial swing, I, yeah, right to us.
We want to know.
Well, he's wondering if you could remember the one that when the conclusion came
back, what is the biggest one?
I do remember a guy, and I don't know if this is the biggest, but do remember a
guy that was shopping at 30,000 and ended up buying a brand new GT 350, which was
twice that.
I do remember that happening.
It was a 20 or $30,000 swing.
I think nobody's ever like tripled.
Yeah, we'd love to hear.
I'm, I'm waiting here.
The good car conclusions.
Well, it's like when you go to Costco and you ask, what's the biggest order that
somebody's ever bought here?
Like how much money you've had cash years like 19,000 or we didn't spend that
much, but my wife helps do food for my son's high school mountain bike team,
which is a huge team.
Okay.
And when we do food for the mountain biking, it's also families and parents
that come.
Everybody flies to Mexico for free with one credit card.
No, no, no, no.
So it's like, so it's like 400 people for lunch.
Okay.
All right.
Going to Costco's an adventure with her.
We get a couple of the big flats and looks that you get when you've got two
overloaded flats rolling through Costco.
You're like the bell of the ball all of a sudden.
Anyways, that's a whole thing.
Do you run a restaurant?
Yeah, seriously.
What are we buying for?
Moving on, uh, Jared Rose says he's looking to buy a car out of state at a
dealership and once they see his driver's license, they're going to realize he's
out of state and he feels like he'll lose his negotiating power.
Any tips for buying out of state?
Jared, I don't know that when they find out you're out of state, it's going to
matter.
Here's the question.
You're having a con, it sounds like you're having a conversation with them
and trying to reach a deal before they even know where you are.
So what's it matter if they, here's the thing, if, if you settle on an approximate
price and now they find out you're out of state and the price goes up, then
that's the end of that phone call.
Because the other thing about it is because you're shopping out of state,
that shows you're willing to go where the best deal is.
And they, there's your negotiating power.
They have the opportunity to be across the country and be the best deal and
sell that car.
Yes, they lose it for maintenance, but that, the reality is you can get that car
off their lot if they will give you a good deal.
You are clearly willing to call from out of state, to fly from out of state, if
they will give you a deal, that is the only negotiating power you have.
But I can't think it's going to be a downside.
Can you think of it from being out of state?
I don't think so.
No, I don't think so.
Moving on to a question, Optigoen asks if we had the opportunity to add
something to the Subaru lineup using the current parts bin.
What would you do about taking that flat four and keep the Toyota
relationship going under Fuji Heavy Industries and make a new MR2 and put
that flat four engine.
So it's like the Cayman fighter, MR2, a rear wheel drive, two wheel drive,
mid-engine Subaru, somebody's head would explode at that dealer.
I don't know where the adopted dog or the beanies go in that.
There's no way to put a canoe on it.
That's way out of the product line.
I do like it though.
I do like that idea.
Okay.
If it's not that, then how about a real brat and bring the real brat back and
do you turn the WRX into a brat with the WRX styling?
Make it ugly.
Like make it ugly.
Well, you could do the, um, you could do the cross track or the cross track.
That'd be fine.
Just make it like, man is that thing.
I have to turn away with a pickup bed.
I totally want it.
Okay.
All right.
I get it.
I get it.
Uh, Bradley J 1983 says, we always say we're not that into a convertible
open top.
And he says, why is that?
I feel like it increases connection with the road.
Brad, I'm going to stop you there.
I don't agree with you.
I don't think it increases connection to the road at all.
It increases connection to the environment immensely.
Yes.
But I would actually even argue, which is the reason we have people drive windows
up at hooked on driving by taking away wind buffeting and either the, the sun is
beating down on you or the rain is happening or the wind or whatever.
Taking that away actually allows you to focus on, I can hear the tires.
I can hear exactly what the engine's doing.
I can hear my instructor in the right seat because there's no buffeting.
I can, somebody besides you can absolutely hear them.
I can hear so much more because I've taken that wind buffeting out of the
equation.
So I think open top doesn't help road connection, but it helps
environmental connection a lot.
But now let me explain further why I don't like convertibles that much.
On the right time, on the right day, my lease with the top down is magical.
And I'm not a convertible guy from 6 30 to 7 15.
You're hitting it every evening in the summer.
It's up until August 23rd.
It's evenings because here's my problem with convertibles.
What happens with convertibles is people, we've all done it.
We've all done it.
You, you fly somewhere and you rent a convertible and it's noon and you throw
the top down at five minutes later, you realize everybody is sunburned and sweaty.
And this is no fun at all.
You're sitting stopped in traffic going, my God, it's hot here.
That's happened to all of us, but, but we all think I have a convertible.
I should must put the top down right now and never take it and put it up.
And I have seen you, you're probably in a Miata.
I know a guy that used to commute in, uh, SLC this way where you're, you're
just, you have a Miata and you're going to, you've never put the top up rain,
shine, snow, you'll put on the goggles and the scarf and the hat and it's a
thing and that's fine.
You want to experience the outdoors that much.
I love a convertible early mornings or afternoons sunrise to sunset to two hours
or so around sunrise or sunset when the weather is just a tiny bit chilly, not
cold, just got a little bit, just like sixties, like low sixties brilliant.
But the problem is most convertible experiences are not that.
Also, I don't want to sit in traffic.
I want to be moving.
It's the noise for me too.
I mean, yes, we could talk about chassis flex, chromedomia, sure, all of those
things, but it's just the tire noise from running on the highway.
You're just like, ah, I want to be, I mean, well, it just gets draining.
One of my all time favorites when we shot on the Pacific coast highway years
ago, we shot a C seven zero six carbon edition.
It was the end of our shoot day.
It was 30 minutes before the sun was setting.
That's when the top of perfect.
And I drove that car with the top off from where we were on big sir back to karma
where we were staying while the sunset.
Yeah, it was like 65 degrees.
Temperatures, right?
Not too loud.
There was no traffic.
Yep.
Brilliant.
Honestly, in that time, not going convertible would have been completely wrong.
But so much of the time, you just can't nail that moment.
So let me put it this way.
If life were always Instagram, I'd always drive a convertible.
It's a good t-shirt.
I guess I like that.
So I guess coming to this podcast in the future are things CEOs say.
Am I be our new category?
I like that.
We can find because they all do.
They all just the car CEOs say something where we just can't believe it.
I'm also considering I mentioned this to you and that is people finding their old
car again.
Yeah, I'm kind of noodling this other idea.
And that is you found your old car thinking you would buy it again.
And it's either a horrible surprise or it's a good surprise.
And you bought it again.
We don't get too many stories like that, but we would love to include that.
If you, it's like an nostalgia corner.
Yeah.
And you weren't done with it.
And you had to sell for, and it, it's still nice.
And the owners throughout its life, it's still good and worth owning again.
And you bought it back.
So you're talking about specific same car, like same thing, the same
Vin, oh wow, that car.
And it went out of your life and you bought it back, or maybe you did the entire
search and you discovered your old car and it was a heap and it was scrap metal
and, or it's a pain car or fasted and furious did and something terrible.
We could probably also, I'm just thinking a lot.
We could probably also expand it to you bought the car for nostalgia reasons.
You've never, you know, it's not your exact same one, but you bought it.
Me buying another 300 ZX, you and I, you bought it for nostalgia reasons.
Are you glad or not?
Did you, like with me and the 300 ZX, now I remember why I sold it.
Me and the 300 ZX actually did better than my first one.
But that's not always the case.
Tert twins, yes, yes, yes.
So those stories would be great.
That's a, that's a variation on the car conclusion.
Very specific, but I like it.
Okay.
All of that plus the topic Tuesdays, the car conclusions and the great
car debates, looking forward to reading and until next time, cheers everyone.
About this episode
Corvette fans get the headline: the 2027 C8 Grand Sport and Grand Sport X replace the E-Ray, bringing a new 6.7L LS6 V8 (535 hp) plus major aero and braking options, while the GSX adds a front electric motor for 721 total hp and EV-only stealth up to 50 mph. The hosts debate why the Stingray still exists and note GM’s wild “four powerplants in one generation” situation. Elsewhere: Sony/Honda kills its only EV, AC Schnitzer exits due to regulations and market shifts, and Dodge revives the Durango 392. Big listener Q&A covers buying fun commuter cars and bargain EVs, plus track-event updates.
Original notes
The Corvette GrandSport designation has returned, now applied to the C8 generation! The guys discuss the new 6.7L V8 engine, plus news from around the industry. They debate fun yet responsible cars for Chris in Maryland, who is fighting the mid-life practicality vs. desire. Then, Drew is shopping for his wife (who doesn’t drive much), and is intrigued by all these EVs coming off lease. Should he investigate further? Social media questions ask if we’ve gone backwards with base-level small engines, what kind of car should Subaru build next, and if convertibles increase a driver’s connection with the road, why don’t the guys like them very much?
Audio-only MP3 is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and 10 other platforms.
Look for us on Tuesdays if you’d like to watch us debate, disagree and then go drive again!
00:00 - Intro
00:51 - C8 Corvette Grand Sport + Grand Sport X Announced!
07:17 - The Sony/Honda AFEELA EV Is Dead.
09:13 - AC Schnitzer Is Dead Too. Bummer.
11:20 - Dodge Putting The 392 Back In The Durango!
13:34 - Things CEOs Say!!
15:51 - Is A Mustang Nearly The Fastest Production Car Around The ‘Ring?
18:11 - The Next MX-5 - Will Be Super Lightweight?
20:52 - EDD & HOD Events Nationwide
25:07 - Car Debate #1: The Difference Between Responsible And Enjoyable
43:20 - Car Debate #2: What’s The Deal With All These Used EVs?
56:26 - Car Conclusion #1: Stunting Your Driving Growth?
1:00:29 - Car Conclusion #2: Can You ‘Bucket’ Car Enthusiasts?
1:04:29 - Did You See This? Project Hail Mary
1:06:19 - Audience Questions On Social Media
Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and subscribe to our two YouTube channels. Write to us your Topic Tuesdays, Car Conclusions and those great Car Debates at [email protected] or everydaydriver.com
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