How the car media landscape is changing, with Mike Fernie #305

Welcome back to the intercooler podcast, everybody, the podcast powered by car finance specialist

JBR Capital. We have a guest in the studio today, Mike Ferney. Hello Mike.

Hello, thank you for having me. If now if you've watched any car YouTube in the last couple of

years, you've seen Mike. You fronted a very, very big channel for a long time, the Drive

Tribe channel, Mike, but now you're doing your own stuff. Yes. How's your own channel going?

Really well. If you told me after three months that I'd be hitting the stats that I'm hitting,

I would have grabbed your hand. So yeah, I'm very, very happy going towards 150,000 subscribers.

The videos are all doing over 100,000. I'm really happy.

That's quite impressive. It shows. It's happened multiple times in the last couple of years.

You'll get guys fronting big channels. They go out on their own and because the audience

follows them, like you've done, they very, very quickly grow a big audience and the

videos start doing really well straight away. Absolutely. There's been loads of really solid

templates from other guys, Alex Kirsten being one of them, James Pumphrey is the big one from

Donut recently. Yeah, these guys are absolutely nailing it. So it's been really nice to be able

to sit back and look exactly what they've done and then kind of apply that to myself.

Yeah. It's been really scary, but yeah, it's definitely been worth it so far.

Well, good for you. There's lots that we want to talk about. You are a big engine guy. Andrew's an

engine guy. So we'll get stuck into the geekier side of that.

Engine stories. Yeah. We want to talk about some of the things that you've been up to recently.

I think a little bit of car media from your point of view because we're very much on the

sort of journalist side, Andrew. You're perhaps closer to the YouTube,

there I say, the influencer side. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I started very much journalist.

I interned at Auto Express and I guess the bore kind of top gear generation side of things,

car throttle as well. In the same summer I did Auto Express and car throttle.

And I actually got the job. My first ever job from university was going to be, well,

this is the thing. I got the job as content editor at Evo, but then when the email came through,

it said, oh, we're moving you to Auto Express, which I remember, it seems like a bit of a

dickish thing to say, but I remember thinking, oh God, what's happened there? I wouldn't have

been happy. Well, the thing is, you're suddenly a professional motoring journalist, so you know,

shouldn't complain, but at the same time I was like, ah, but then it was just, okay, how do I

just shift over as soon as possible? Because Evo was like the place.

When the source, this is a long, long time ago, so I'm not talking about anybody who's still there,

but when the high ups at Haymarket wanted, if there was somebody at Auto Car who wasn't

perhaps pulling their weight and they wanted to perhaps suggest that they might seek employment

elsewhere, they just put them on what car? Right. Is that the naughty step? Well, it's not the

naughty step, but I mean, I don't derive what car at all. But if you were, if you came into

the entire business because you wanted to be part of the enthusiast media and you end up on a consumer

product, it's just a completely different world. And you're probably not doing much skidding about

or writing, you're certainly not writing sort of colourful, there I was doing this features,

you're just, you know, if you're lucky doing road tests and, you know, offering consumer advice.

And that tended to get rid of them quite quickly. Yes. Well, I remember who got the Evo job,

it was Jordan Katzianis who nipped in and got the Evo one. I was like, damn it. But two weeks from

starting at Auto Express, I never actually worked a day because I got a DM from this thing called

Drive Tribe and said, oh, do you want to come and work here? Startup salary, Clark's Hampton May,

and it was like, okay, although it seemed like the right thing to do to go into that kind of old

school, but like very established magazine. I thought, no, let's have a go at this. So

that was two weeks away from being a kind of magazine journalist, but quickly switched.

And how long were you on Drive Tribe before you saw the light and decided to

go on? I think it's eight and a half years getting on for nine. So I was the longest standing

member at that point because Drive Tribe churned through a lot. Well, they fired all their journalists,

didn't they? Apart from you, clearly. They did. Well, I remember, I remember when I first joined

there and, you know, being a big fan of all the big magazines and all the big establishments,

the amount of anger towards the place I was now working on Twitter, all the people I loved reading

were like hammering into Drive Tribe. I was like, why are you all being so mean? But yes,

very disruptive, I guess. Which is what these things always are, I guess, when they come along.

I don't think anybody saw that coming. Certainly none of the journalists who ended up out on their

ears. What was the big anger before the firings? What was the main anger from your guy's perspective

towards this thing that came along? I don't think there was any. I thought, when it first came along,

I thought it was a really enterprising, interesting thing to do. I only got changed off when,

you know, all my mates ended up who had gone into it and very much in good faith,

ended up out on their ears. Yes. And again, they were in a worse position than I was,

but I remember joining up and I was buzzing, being a big evil kid, I was buzzing to see that

Hedry and Jethro and some of the other guys from Car Magazine were all there. And I walked through

the door and I think it was five days before they all got the heave, which was just absolutely.

I thought it was immensely cynical because I don't know whether this is true, but it certainly,

to me, gave the impression that they kind of planned it to be like that all along and they

wanted these big names to kind of build the brand. And once they'd done that, they felt they didn't

need them anymore. I don't know if that's actually was the thinking, but that was certainly

what people were talking about at the time. Yeah, I think when I first came in, the content

budget was enormous. Like absolutely ridiculous. You could tell the stuff that they were doing.

I was on Eva at the time working with some of those guys up until then. And immediately,

they were doing things that we just couldn't do. Were you sort of happy for them to make that move,

or were you all in the evil of us thinking, Oh God, I think we were those guys, we were in.

No, I don't think so. We were intrigued. We could see it was a big opportunity or it looked that

way. I'm pretty sure I did a bit of fishing to see if that was interesting. You're probably quite

glad you didn't. Yeah, I am. So it was a big exciting thing. And of course, all the established

players would have been a bit concerned because of the, well, you assume there's a load of financial

clout, but also the three old dudes behind it. It's going to have a huge amount of reach and

credibility straight away. Yeah, but there was a lot of like disconnect there as well,

because people would come into thinking this is Clark's Hampton May. Then they'd come onto the

platform and it would be, you know, cracking writers, Casual Bovington, Vicky Parrot,

Lewis Kingston, you know, so great names on there. But to the Clark's Hampton May audience,

they're thinking, well, pure these people, they seem to be running the show, but that's not Jeremy.

People thought they were tuning into Top Gear online, didn't they? Yeah, it was the Grand Tour

was happening and this was their internet side of it. But it was all, yes, just a bit muddled.

The whole experiment, until Richard came and cleared everything out and just made it his,

the whole experiment was where is the $100 million idea? So it was just try this, try that,

like every, well, a lot of London startups are throw cash at it. If it works, fantastic. If it

doesn't, onto the next, never mind, write that. There's no compassion is there? It's a volatile

world and it can be a brutal world. And if it's not working, if you're burning through cash,

they are just going to cut. And that's what frustrated me. They'd always be a gelotnik

article at the end of every financial year about how much drive tribe had then spent. And it was

like, well, that's the point. Like we're not there to make money yet. It's just like absolutely

floor the cash at any idea that seems like it could be good and see what happens. The number

at the end, I think was 21 or 22 million was throwing different ideas at drive tribe and

none of them stuck. That's what we burn through most weeks. That's just catering. But then Richard

narrowed it down. Drive tribe was going to go under. But then he looked at the spreadsheet.

There was a green line that was the YouTube channel and social media platforms. And he said,

well, can we just not get rid of everything else and bring it down to that, which is what we did.

So it went from a team of 60 to a team of four. And then we built it back up. Well,

it was a great springboard for you and your career and your own channel now.

As I said, you're much closer to the YouTube world than we are. We have a channel and we

work hard with a lot of our videos. But it's not our main thing. And so I'm just interested to

get your perspective on the state of car YouTube these days and what's coming,

what's changing. And also, how much capacity is left out there? Eventually is all the audience

going to get hoovered up by these big creators, these big channels? Or do you think there's so

much so many people out there? And also, could you tell us what really works so we can go do it?

Yeah, exactly. That's why you're here, Mike. Well, well, first things first, if you're going to do

YouTube channel, it should be your absolute number one priority, which I guess for you guys

immediately like just isn't your business plan. So I would question the whole being on YouTube at

all. Yeah, interesting. If you're going to do it, like it should be basically your full time job and

floor it. Otherwise, you're just going to be disappointed with how it goes. Yes. In terms

of the capacity on YouTube, I think it's only getting started. I like YouTube recently, I think

in the last year and a half, surpassed Netflix as the most streamed thing at dinner time. So people

are getting their dinner sitting down on the sofa, switching on their telly and they're not

putting on Drive to Survive or something on a Grand Tour on Amazon. They are putting on

YouTube. That's the new prime time television, essentially. So that's, it was pretty nuts when

that I remember seeing it, like the bars of all the different streaming platforms and there's

Netflix now, sorry, YouTube now at number one. And what are those car enthusiasts who the people

who, you know, were watching car programs and Drive to Survive? What sort of things are they

looking at on YouTube? It totally depends. Like the bit of YouTube I'm in, it's very much entertainment

and educational side of things. Like people want to come and learn something, going like,

I almost cannot go nerdy enough with a video because people just soak that up. I know people

that sit and take notes on my videos because they want to like absorb it as much as possible.

But then you've got other people like, for example, Otto Alex. So Alex Kirsten came from

Car Throttle. He's very much trying to, and is doing a very good job of filling out that

top gear chasm right now. So that pure entertainment mucking about with shipbox cars and going on

these adventures, road trips. He's nailing that. So there's all these different categories.

And I think like what I would kind of term as like old school car journalism, it does definitely

exist. Like you've got like the top gear channel still going and they will get half million views

on a car review just from the sheer access they're getting. I just watched Jethro, was it T-50S?

Yeah. It's just driven around. I'm like, Jesus Christ, the access those guys are getting. It's

been unbelievable. So their titles and thumbnails are still punchy enough. What you cannot do now

is what you could do in 2012 on 2015 Honda Civic Review. That used to work. Like Auto Car would

be able to put out a YouTube video with that's the title and people would lock into it. It's so

much more demanding and so much more competitive now that your title and thumbnail have to be

absolutely spot on. You should not pick up a camera and film anything until you've got a

title and thumbnail where you look at those two things and think that can get half million views.

It might not. And then you fill out the video after. Now that could be seen as quite horrible

in terms of creative instead of just go and tell a nice story and then title and thumbnail it later.

But you're just teeing yourself up for YouTube failure by doing that. You might get lucky

and your title and thumbnail from a random still from the video like this for example would work.

But the chances are there's a bit more science to it now in terms of getting people to click.

You've got about half a second maybe about a second to attract someone's eyes their thumb

scrolling on the on their phone. And if you've if you don't capture them that whole 20 minute

video and how many days of editing and filming you've done is completely down the pan. So are you

almost getting the tails away of the dog so you're thinking of a title and a thumbnail and then

you're going to go and create the video around it rather than figure the video and then thinking

awarding what are we going to call it how are we going to illustrate it. Absolutely it's that way

it's not even an argument on YouTube that is the way around it is. You can get lucky

and stumble upon a way to market the video that will work. But right now it's

you might get lucky once but you're not gonna get lucky over and over. Yeah like I can think of

loads of things I'm interested in and oh that would make a great video but it's like well would it

because unless you can narrow it down then watch it six words below this thumbnail and then a

cracking and then a cracking thumbnail there's no point. I would love to do a video on a Jaguar XJ13

there's no chance I can get a title and thumbnail that will make my demographic of audience click

on that which is sad but it's because it's outside your democracy your their sphere of interest or

yeah they'd much rather watch a video I did recently about why the the 1.9 pd golf engine

is like the greatest diesel engine ever because they can afford a 1.9 pd golf their mates had them

when they were 17 you know they'll get stuck writing. Can you ask Dan what pd stands for

because I know. Pump juicer. You looked at your screen there. Well it's not on there I did want

to talk about that video because this demonstrates exactly the kind of stuff you do in the kind of

audience that you're producing videos for because I mean it's baffling to me that

quite a long video 40 minute video yeah about this 1.9 litre diesel engine bought an engine for

70 quid off eBay yeah and when I checked last week 330,000 views in three weeks yeah so that I think

that's like I'm sitting here thinking I really want to see that video right well there you go so

it's kind of like strange to me I just want to work out why I want to see it I'm sure it's brilliant

really presented and everything but why am I interested in the inner workings of a one point

litre pump juice I'm quite happy that I'm one just naturally into engines because they're by far

unless you've got some crazy aero they're by far the most interesting part of any car yeah so although

it might seem a niche within the car world it's actually not it's kind of the main bit of every

car so if the engine story or the the technology behind it is interesting enough to me it's actually

quite simple to then come up with a title and thumbnail that can focus right in on why an

engine is good but also the best ones are why engines crap they're the ones that do it's weird

the negative bias yeah I'll give this one um probably the biggest one is the well latest one

the ingenium I've done a video on Landau's ingenium that the amount of people in the comments that

I just they've gone through evokes discovery sports f-paces all that stuff and it's just

been an absolute catastrophe there's a twin turbo ingenium I didn't know it existed but there's

a four cylinder twin turbo that's in the discovery fives that is not a case of if it will go 40 000

miles on the dot those things crack their cylinder liners every every single time so that's not even

the classic ingenium which is all about um oil dilution basically because I've all got dpf's now

to clean a dpf it calls upon extra fuel to flush out the dpf yeah but when you're going on short

journeys it doesn't get a chance so it's it's spraying all this fuel just not got anywhere

to go so it seeps down into the sump past the piston rings into the sump and dilutes your oil

then your oils less lubricating and then you have big issues everywhere

so that's that's that's been a good one there you go that's that's how you do youtube andry

yeah yeah so what was the title for the 1.9 liter vw diesel engine okay I can quickly get it up

no I'm just trying to think of how you you know in your one second attention span how you

attract someone to that uh why this Volkswagen diesel is the greatest European engine ever

there you go do you but do you believe that that's actually true but that's been a b tested against

a few a few yeah so the thing is it doesn't really matter you you don't have to stand by

your title or thumbnail um yeah it's all about what works isn't it yeah it's all and also about

like what the internet and almost like the sort of piston head forum thinks if you tap into there

that's almost the gauge it's like is that what their opinion is and is that what they are into

and if you crack that that's when it kind of goes nuts um so I've done videos in the past about

Ford's EcoBoost along the same lines absolute disaster um but then I'm trying to be a bit

more positive because I'm just waiting for a cease and desist from JLR or for such someone um but

no that I really like that I can buy an engine for 70 quid on ebay and people are that interested

in it you don't need to buy a car that's way too complicated just get this thing you can shove in

your boot and go strip it down it's quite a business model um so what are the the engine

stories that you're desperate to tell um I really like though I've told it a while ago but I could

probably redo it the four cylinder and the Jaguar CX-75 you can trace that to the Aston Martin

Valkyrie and the T-50 V-12s wow why cause I've been in trouble telling this one but I've already

told this usually fine but yes uh Bruce Woods I had a chat with him and he basically said the

combustion system engines used to be built from the bottom up bottom up so like for DFE it's like

right okay we want to create this like the horsepower it's like okay we'll make a crank that can do that

and then make con rods that can do that pistons that can do that and then add engine block around

well nowadays because of emissions and trying to be as efficient as possible it's all about

combustion system so it's get the chemistry right up the top and then build the engine around that

chemistry and the chemistry within the Jaguar CX-75's four cylinder that nuts 10,000 rpm Williams

was it a 1.6 wasn't it 1.6 twin charged so turbo and supercharged the efficiency of combustion

within its cylinders was so good that Cosworth just like shelled that a bit and thought that's

good we'll use that at some point Jags got rid of it but we'll keep close tabs on that you then

fast forward to the Aston Martin Valkyrie where you know the the stats that Aston wants to hit

are sent to Cosworth and they think ah okay go into the cupboard and the mule engine for the

Valkyrie is a four cylinder Jags CX-75 motor with one cylinder blanked off so if you look at the

press shots of this mule engine there's a bit of blue roll stuffed in the exhaust port the fourth

exhaust port and so they fundamentally took that CX-75 engine trimmed it down to three cylinders and

then times it by four quadrupled it and you you know it's much more complicated than that but

that's where it started manufacturers would often I don't know they still do it actually but they

would often make single cylinder engines a sort of proof of concept wouldn't they just to make

sure that the they had the correct to design combustion chamber I mean the one I can remember

for some reason I don't know why but when Dan Gurney was doing his V12 Eagle engine for the Formula

1 car in the late 60s they started off with a single cylinder engine on the bench and they

looked at that and they measured it and that's what they're doing and thought yep that'll do

yes and they turn it into a V12 that's my my second biggest video on YouTube is Cosworth's

single cylinder F1 engine so when they were making the three liter for the Jags in the late 90s

there's a single cylinder 19,000 rpm wow and it's about this size yeah it's absolutely that's

and they got out the cupboard and we had to look at this thing and yeah the racket that a single

cylinder about nearly 20,000 rpm would make but yes to save r&d costs you build one but with

everything on it you know all the valves cylinder head and then you just multiply it up I'd love

that and Cosworth must be full of it if you had to guess what power would that single piston

engine make you can effectively just divide it up so that it's about an 800-900 horsepower v10

so 80-90 horsepower from a single cylinder 19 that engine that engine would hit 20 wouldn't it

yes but probably not for very long no and I think I think possibly only on a bench

but I went to I went to that that I went to that engine's debut I was at Melbourne in 2000

when Jaguar first you lucky I'm a massive Jaguar F1 fighter I know they were crap

I've actually got a bit of Johnny Herbert's car because he pinned it I think in practice or

quality and they were picking up the bits and I thought I'll just give them to the journals

and they are one of the prettiest of all so I've got a bit of r1 framed on the wall of my office

so being a journalist at that time then what was their genuine fever behind that Jack war

are they going to be the UK's Ferrari because I would you know what I'd love to write a book

about Jaguar F1 because I reckon the story is really pretty cool I think well certainly for me

I kind of thought well we've been here before here's something you know they've never been

involved in this before at this level before I mean I can remember I can't remember because

I was old enough but you know the stories of it's very similar to what happened with BRM when that

came and came along after the war they had enormous amounts of money they produced this

v16 one and a half liter engine it was you know the numbers were so far beyond what anybody else

was doing and we all just thought well they all just thought this is going to be you know Britain's

engineering lead and the rest of the world is going to kind of like flail along in our wakes

and of course it was a total disaster but Stuart Grand Prix had been pretty good yeah like they'd

had some wins yeah they had a win didn't they one of Rubens won at Monaco didn't they I think

so is that purely Ford just bundling in and ruining what was actually quite a solid little team

yeah well I think possibly I mean I can remember getting off the plane in Melbourne and literally

the jetway that I walked along to get into the terminal building just have jaguar formula one

branding all I mean they did they branded the entire city you couldn't move without seeing

I wish I was more alive during this time I would have absolutely loved it and you know I think I

remember thinking to myself either this is going to be completely brilliant or you know they what

they were doing was they were in marketing terms writing this enormous check which the team then

had to deliver on or else they were just going to look silly and sadly that's what happened

and Irvine did Irvine nearly win the 99 championship against Hackadon it was either 98 or 99 he was

like two points off yeah and because Michael had broken his leg yes yes and Michael didn't

exactly rush out of his way to help and you know I think some people think that maybe if he had if

he'd been you know the supportive number two which probably didn't sit very naturally with Michael

then maybe Eddie could but yes he was certainly in the frame and to go from there to the complete

you know disaster that was jaguar in 2000 well again I so I went to the same school as Dario

Franckitti so he's always been a bit of a payroll for me and I remember you've both been on this

podcast he put a tweet out about because he tested the R2 or 3 I want to say because Jackie

Stewart got him yeah he spoke about it when we had him and he said it was catastrophically bad

like one of the worst race cars he's absolutely gutted as a kid that leaping cat on the air box

was it could have been great couldn't it the coolest thing ever it could have been great

well now they're world champions so it's all good well eventually slightly different branding it's

the Red Bull team now yeah but I mean there are still some people who were around at the time

yeah but I've got a whole load of memorabilia and books and stuff from from the type press

packs from the R2 and stuff all my all my attic I'd love to write a book about that story at some

point you're a big Jaguar guy generally aren't you yeah yeah a big type why um I think it's because

the first corgi I ever got when I was three years old was an xk120 and just kind of built from there

I'd I'd be out in my dad's Rover 600 and I'd be asking if every car going past was a Jaguar

just in case it was you know I was convinced that my granddad's Mondeo 2 liter was a Jaguar

I was just absolutely obsessed with it so just went from there I got again built my models had a

little mark 2 and and then yeah f1 came along and I was like oh my gosh that's a Jaguar that's nuts

and Eddie Irvine with like the Jaguar print helmet oh it's just so cool and yeah to this day I'm

actually after an xjr 5 liter right now I want that as a daily so talk to me about the the straight

six Jaguar engine that made its debut in 1948 I think yes in the xjr I think there's an argument

given that that engine won them all five times given that it powered limousines

horses sports cars saloons tanks tanks tanks yes it must is is that not the most versatile

engine and also it had a lifespan of it started in the 1940s and it ended in the 2000s

it's it's up there it's the most versatile engine there has ever been small block

I know everybody always says small when you say anything about engines big LS more modern like

yeah it's up against the okay no it's definitely but it's up there okay but no small block Chevy

ever won a I'd better say never won a major motor race

uh someone will definitely comment whether it has or not has a small ever won a Daytona a

Sebring a Le Mans certainly hasn't won a Formula 1 race no no shall I ask my friend Claude it's

hard not to be biased in British but that if xk engine yes did do a Formula 1 race

in what in a Ferrari what there's a bloke I think his name is Clemente beyond Eddie right

I can't remember where you look at that you'd find it in a heartbeat there was one race

that a bloke and I think he was called Clemente beyond Eddie did in a Ferrari powered by a

straight six Jaguar engine wow there you go I'd loved I'm trying to do a video about the four

cylinder xk as well because there was a prototype on that in the museum yeah it didn't work very

well did it no um but I again the negative slant rather that you'll get more views doing a video

about the crap four cylinder than the world beating six cylinder and you go and please don't

because we got we haven't got enough time but you could probably tell me why that engine which

which won Le Mans five times and then had to be sleeved down to three litres because they

changed the rigs at 58 and just pick it just blew up it was a disaster yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

you too so um when I say you're a big Jaguar guy do I need to caveat that you're a big

since you're an engine guy as well you're a big pre-2026 Jaguar guy or

do you still have an affection for the brand generally I still have an affection for the

brand absolutely um actually you know I guess it's it's stuff you're growing up I love an S-type

I love an X-type I love an X-type that's not a phrase you hear very often well my my first

ever project car on YouTube was a Mondeo ST200 so I've got an affinity with the X-type I like

that it's a Mondeo underneath other people hate it for you think that's a good thing yeah but

that's that's another great story the Ford Duratec V6 oh my god the amount of things that has done

you know going starting with the Mark 1 Mondeo but then Jagd then add a bit of variable valve

timing but then Aston come along and he did an engine so you know by and large it's essentially

two Duratec's put together they're still using it aren't they yeah absolutely not you can

ask them Martin will hate you for saying that that's it you can have a family tree that starts

with Mark 1 Mondeo and ends with the Vulcan at the end of it like it's absolutely nuts I love that

stuff um but yes in terms of body Jaguar I'm very excited to see how the new car goes you guys have

been in it um I have been in it I'm going to drive it quite soon but I don't know when they're

going to let me write about that okay yeah so I've been in it and I will within a fortnight

probably by the time this goes out I will have driven it okay is that is that a prototype drive

yeah it's a prototype drive yeah okay yes I'm quite excited I think um you know I don't know

what they're going to price it but I feel like that people are saying 150 grand is that about

probably I feel like it's got enough hype around it that people with that sort of money will actually

give out go um and then we'll see what happens yes same same same to me this this has to be the

last throw of the dice as well which is unless unless some random maybe the Chinese come along

and and buy it over or something I'm not sure but um that's not gone brilliantly for Lotus is it

no oh my god yeah some of the stories about yeah SUV but I'm right what's the saloon one called

oh there's the electric no Amaya I've I was told by someone that they've sold 40 of those

full stop okay we need to be careful what we say we don't know if that's true we have absolutely no

idea how many of those cars have been sold but not many yes you you think yes yeah not like

absolutely catastrophe well and the electric hypercar hasn't gone well for them that's that's

pretty well known isn't it yeah that is that that is very well known but like I've not seen anywhere

on instagram a public avaya anyway no but it's like it's like it's like the pinniforina Batista

isn't it I mean I've not seen anybody say that they've actually got one of those I mean I know

that they have delivered some cars what number that is I don't know but it's clearly not very high

at all yeah that's pretty rough let's get back to engines and exciting stuff yeah

other than EVs right you started it you brought it I know I um you you told us before we came on

that you have just done a bit of filming with a Mercedes yes and I tell us which one it is and

tell us why it's significant I want to talk all about that car so everyone thinks it's the CLK GTR

but it's not it's the CLR and it's the car that took off at 1999 Le Mans so those crazy pictures

and footage you see online is it Peter Dunbrek and was Weber in the other one yeah but it flew

three times yes twice with Weber everybody remembers the Dunbrek one because the the video was footage

yeah was utterly extraordinary but they're marked flee twice in it and what I find baffling is

Mercedes essentially didn't believe Mark the first time they were like what do you want about that

can't have happened and then he flips it again and they're like okay okay we've leave you this time

because there was photograph it's incredible that he got in it again yeah not so they just

repaired the car that's racing guys but I think the first time he did a full like 360 flip so he

kind of semi landed it again right which is what the GT1 Porsche does it rode Atlanta yeah amazing

yeah again he almost lands it back on its wheels um so I think that happened to Weber first time

and therefore it was just like body work repairs to get it back on but the second one was tub damage

and then Dunbrek's I mean the fact you see him just spear off into the trees I mean that bit of track

is just dense forest and he just disappears into it the fact he lands in a clearing oh which they'd

only cleared very recently so Dunbrek I mean it's probably quite hard to recollect but he says he

reckons he clipped one tree just clips it and lands in a clearing when you look at the footage he's

off into the forest oh my god so gee and they put some winglets on it hadn't they yes which they

thought canards was going to stop it flying yes and they stiffened the rear suspension

basically the actually the video will be out by the time this comes out okay it should be

about tomorrow from day of filming but um yeah basically there's a whole load of engineering

factors but then a whole load of other circuit so you need three things a the car had to have a

fundamental Florence design be it had to be going over Browver Hill and see it had to be following

something really big at the same time when you put those three factors together it would fly

yeah so they made the car really pitch sensitive to trying up their top speed to beat the Toyotas

so when most of the the prototypes at the time had a slightly negative pitch angle like F1 cars

do these days but like really shallow like minus two degrees um Merck put it to like minus 0.5 degrees

or completely zero completely flat yeah um they had some underbody error going on so they thought

that'll be fine that'll create the downforce but we'll have a nice top speed but in doing so

the overhangs of the clr were 10 centimeters longer than any other prototype in the field

um to create more underbody downforce have bigger diffusers but that then meant that if you get any

airflow underneath the front of the car you've got a much bigger paddle essentially under the front

than any of the other prototypes so when you're coming over a hill cresting over hills so the car

is going light anyway and the pitch angle is changing upwards um and you're following a what

was he following was he following a viper or something the dumb break crash is the toyota

oh okay gt1 uh yeah so your airflow is being disturbed you're then getting a positive pitch

angle on someone from Durham University is an actual full report on the car and basically

when it reached plus 2.5 degrees of pitch it had enough torque underneath the car through that big

paddle to then and that stage it becomes an inevitability yes but it's also clearly something

within those regulations because the v12 lmr bmw flips the gt1 Porsche flips agro atlanta so different

races but same thing coming over a crest following a car so fundamentally within those lm gtp

regulations for moving on from gt1 there was clearly aerodynamic instability but yes bursadies

has hid that car for like 25 years well just to go back to when it actually happened weren't

bursadies told not to run that car again well i mean there there there are um yeah i think again

you need to be a bit careful about what you said but certainly people spoke about them bringing

it because obviously adrian newie was yes mclaren bursadies was doing mclaren bursadies at the time

so they rang him so the story goes um and he said i don't think in the time that you have

you can analyze what's really going on here and i think the only thing you can do is withdraw from

the race as i understand lie me yeah so there was three cars entered two crashed and i filmed with

the one that didn't crash um but i've also heard that by enclosed doors mursadies have rebuilt

the two crash clrs and they're at hwa or amg somewhere in some cellar there's two of the

crash so i would love to go and film with them and see the repairs that they've done but yeah i

can't believe this third clrs even made out into the public like they they completely shut up shop

like they've never been back since as a manufacturer um and the fact that this has made it into a

private collection that we then went and filmed with was nuts wow it's a great looking car isn't

it it looks so extreme so low profile like the clk gtr looks like a bit of a chunk compared to the clr

but yeah you always see in the comments whenever there's a video of a clk gtr i feel quite bad for

that car because i was like oh you know it's airplane and there's that and the other one

wrong wrong car yeah um was the clk gtr a good car yeah very successful yeah that's a big time yeah

it basically shut down gt one because it was too good everyone else buggered off cracking machine

wow blimey um so you are a real engine fetishist i think we've made that quite clear on this one

what do you own a special engine do you the kind of guy who has to have an interesting

special engine at home because you love them so much uh no i'd like to but um i've got my mondale

so i've got my geertek v6 uh huh well okay that's what that qualifies i am actually a big fan of the

rover k series i know it gets a lot of crap but i actually think it's a great engine it is right

it is a great engine yeah um i'd love to own a k series k3m at some point that would be cool

there's that and does your love of the k series include um extend to kv6's and things like that

so i own i own an mg zr 160 so the vvc yeah forced onto k series k series and i've got an mg zs 180

which is the kv6 yeah there are my kind of two cars at home okay um so i'm an mg rover guy um

again because i kind of grew up through that era i would love to have been on the press were you on

the press launch of the zr and the zs and the zt and all that stuff i was no i wasn't in fact the

only one of those i was on was the launch didn't have an engine on it so i think possibly the

funniest press launch i ever went on was at mallory park with antony reed with the zt 260 cool so

the one with the Mustang engine yes and it was wet oh and it's just one of the funniest things

i've ever done but it's completely irrelevant to this conversation because it's what it was the

175 which didn't have a k series in it well it's it's 25 years of mg rover this year um so i gather

the initial press launch of the mg z cars was it uh what's the fancy hotel in cardiff um the one

down in the bay the the golf hotel oh and they're the motorway to Celtic manner yeah that's new port

yeah but yeah the one on the hill yeah so the um the mg owners club are doing a huge event up in

Celtic manner to redo and i've got the press car trophy yellow zr 160 so i gather my my car is going

like involved in like the reveal i love those cars when i was well when they were new i was yeah

in my teens cars uh zr was a cracking car yeah great chassis i uh rover chassis were great yeah

when i was 15 or 16 maybe i did a week's work experience at mg rover um because i thought i

wanted to be a car designer at that point cool i couldn't draw i don't know why i wanted to

be a car designer and so i managed to wangle a week's work experience there but i got shuffled

into the engineering department which was enough to put me off ever wanting to work um it just wasn't

you know i got sat down in front of a computer terminal and given some CAD instructions and i

just looked at it and i thought i don't know what this is yeah i don't know what i'm doing if your

brain isn't shooting to that kind of stuff just wasn't right for me but it's cool to see you know

they call it the track the production line um and yeah it was interesting to sort of go behind the

scenes but it certainly put me off wanting to work for mg rover do you guys mind if i

throw some questions you're with go on because i'm i'm a genuine i'm an intercoolerist if that is

that's what they're called an intercooler area i don't know and basically the two of you so like

i i really got into it like top gear got me going but then when i realized there was more to it and

there was magazine stalls with evo motorsports auto car all that stuff it was like wait a minute

there's so much more to this so especially at university so that was 2012 to 2017

to me that is the heyday of evo okay that's i feel like that there was an especially an

evil car of the year for you i think it was the first time you were given the yeah the writing

job on it yeah i want to say 2015 i think it was uh maybe 16 no fifth hmm blimey i think it's 15

there's also a clip of you catching an m4 gts it's it's not a catch it's a very very lucky i just

honestly there was no skill there but you're right that was on the north coast 500 um with an

unbelievable lineup of cars that yeah it was 2015 across the bridge yeah the kyloski bridge amazing

like that knowing an evil car of the year was coming not only in the magazine but knowing

there would be a hour long video go and i remember yeah there's one where you've got your notepad out

and you're going round all the different so can you just just for i know the audience spiked up

feel that excited by this but what is an evil car of the year week like um it's great it really is

great i you know it's not one of those things where actually it's disappointing um you're there for a

few days you all have a few beers each evening and you're staying in a hotel but is it also quite

serious the the in the morning right you you're going from the hotel to the shoot location and

that's a fast drive that everything's cold everyone's cold everyone's a bit sleepy it's still a fast

drive so when you're when you're the youngster on that are you do you feel under quite a lot of

pressure because you've got Dickie Meaden right behind you massive flashing and that pressure

doesn't come from them by the way it's all internal it's all pressure that you put on yourself and if

if you do decide to be a grown-up and not drive like an idiot across the countryside no one's

going to think anything of you but it's in your head no i promise that's that's no no there's no

there's none of that pressure andrew's smiling there's none i feel like there's some pressure

well oh there's definitely pressure i mean all i would say is that i was never sensible enough

to just do do the sensible thing and and go slowly what nor was i um so i don't know how

how they would have regarded me if i'd just gone okay how would okay how would i if i was sort of

leading a group test and there was somebody there um who either couldn't or chose not to keep up um

if you're setting a fast but safe pace which is what we do and what we try to do um because

safety clearly is always the priority and there's somebody there who for whatever reason isn't

maintaining that pace then i don't judge them for their decision to do that but i might wonder

whether they were in quite the right line of business that's interesting because there are

there are people on those tests who will not maintain that pace because you've got 15 people

there may well maybe 10 people but okay but yeah but if they are but you haven't got 15 road

testers there that's that's the point you got the frankities on one of them that must have been

absolutely that was that was the one i wrote yes with that big chevy zed it was at the zed

0 1 zed r1 yeah uh zed on one yeah yeah that was scary that car oh the kamaro yeah the kamaro

yeah i enjoyed that yeah well the problem was we realized after the test that the tire pressures

were all over the place and so this thing was dragging us all over the road we all hated it

do you have mechanical support i feel when you've got that amount of cars having someone there to

do that kind of stuff no no there's none but the so during the working day everyone works hard

there's a lot of hanging around and is it 7 am you're in the cars yeah and there's there's a lot

of low speed photography during the working day that bit's not glamorous and you're having a

sandwich at a soggy hit lay by on a hillside sure the sun goes down you're an hour from the hotel

that drive is nuts mental i mean you you do try as andrew said safety is important you're not

just you're not just driving like a rat like it's around nine tenths a tenth in your pocket

but honestly that the drive back to the hotel is is is exciting okay um and you sort of get to your

wired gagging for a beer yes they are amazing weeks and how much pressure is it when you're

the one writing it is that like numerous levels above just being one of the gang i didn't feel

pressure i didn't feel pressure um it's a it's a big responsibility and you feel i was excited i was

really excited um and your job when you're writing it is to make sure that you're sort of milling

around everyone and listening to what they're saying and asking them because you want as much

input as you can get to make your story a fair reflection of everything that's going on um but

it's a it's a great privilege to write something like that cool cool and then andrew hello i i saw

you in my younger years as essentially the guy that when a race car needed driven by a journalist

yeah you would be the man that was that was my and to an extent remains my very lucky fortune

Porsche 917 yeah was it 1730 i've driven both right sure speed eight yeah xjr9 yeah i in my head

you were also one of the guys there was a select few that got to have a go because there's this

thing where i gather when manufacturers come to the end of a racing series a campaign yeah and they've

got chassis that are going to go into a museum they'll ring up certain people sometimes and i so

there was people that got to have a go in the 919 Porsche no i couldn't get in it

okay sorry physically right so but but you were phoned up for that no i wasn't because they knew

i'd never get it oh you right okay it's all right there is no so i think the usual suspects it was

i think it was at harris and well that's it there's a great gesture no i never did because

you know there was never even a conversation about it because there was no chance on earth

i'd ever physically fit in the thing because as if to be it was you dickie be doing chris harris

um ollie marriage from top gear yeah and then there's a couple of guys that have broken into it

recently james denison and james taylor from evil yeah are now the sort of up and coming

race car journalists i joined james i mean i went and drove um the rsr 19 Porsche right um

you know so the the mid-engine 911 um you know the ultimate 911 racing car uh with a few of

those sort of subjects and james taylor was one of them and he was the only person that Porsche

were quite interested in right we all went out and you know went around and they never give you

any kind of limitations they never sort of say oh you know you can't do more than this number of

revs or that speed or keep up so you just you just you drive them as fast as you possibly can

and we all went out and did what we did and everyone was fine but with james it was something

they definitely noticed him in the way they didn't notice any other rest of us he's he

was quite well radical didn't he yeah he won a championship and you know he was um i think he

won a genetic championship as well so you know he's um but how do you get into that position is it

you get your race license and then you just put yourself about a bit at places like goodwood

being like oh like i can drive that if you need i mean i was very lucky um when i was the road to

sort of a water car in the 90s um the odd thing would come up yeah and because it was kind of like

you know my department so that's how i drove um a McLaren F1 GTR in nice in 95 just before it went

to the moor despite the fact the only thing i'd ever done um in racing terms was i think i'd

won a race in a 1.4 litre catering at the time jeez so so the odd thing came along then but really

now what did it for me was i became in 96 i became the editor of motorsport now and if you're the

editor of motorsport and you decide that you really must have a track test in every issue

then you could just bring up people and go kind of drive your 917 please and um and sometimes

they say yes are they genuinely quite open or do you get more nos than yeses it depends oh no

actually i was amazing um not because nothing to do with me is because they wanted their car

in motorsport um i think they just wanted the kick of seeing it there and i think they probably

thought it wouldn't do its value or its history any harm at all so the overwhelming majority of

people said yes even when i said and you had to say whatever happens when i'm in the car

regardless of whether it's my fault or not we cannot be liable so we're in the car at your

invitation and therefore at your risk entirely and they all still said yes and i think if you do

that for a bit you know the most important thing is not how fast you drive it but just don't crash it

and park it before you've had your fill and that's the other thing you're exactly right down so you

know there is always in those tests as long as it's going well sometimes i drive a jack i always

get in trouble when i say this because the jaguar xj 15 mob just pile in on me and they'll probably

do it again after saying this one i'm not sure i really get i drove a jaguar xj 15 and i think it's

the only racing car i brought back to the picture i just didn't want to drive it anymore i've heard

they're bad uh well i don't i can't i can't speak for them all this one truly was sketchy yes sketchy

properly sketchy um but in all the other ones you get i mean the most recently i drove um a 300 slr

um out the Mercedes test track in stuttgart and you just get to a point where you're you've kind

of done the job you went there to do you've got your story and then you say to yourself well why

am i still driving this car why am i still exposing it and me to that risk well clearly the answer

that is because you're having a great time it's not a good enough answer it's not a good enough

reason to still be out there so you've got to bring it in got to park it but to build that trust over

the years and knowing that when something like kubu comes along your phone's probably going to ring

saying do you want to go up in the hill in this like that must be pretty body i've been very lucky

and my my first ever video on youtube was an engineering breakdown of the xj r9 uh and i know

it's been brought up a few times but you the wall i guess yes amazing you've driven that at lamont

you drove that round was it the bugatti circuit right yes and you span it nearly into the wall

i never thought i was going to hit the wall i spun it in the direction of the wall

and i can remember i i've said about talked about this on the podcast before um in in relation to

the real problem with driving those cars and the prospect of damaging them it's not the cost of

repairing them it is the damage to the history of that car because it was the lamont whenever it was

the lamont winner and it had every panel on it then was had been on it when it won the more

okay and you crunch the rear wing and destroy that and they can put another identical one but

it's not the rear wing that won the more and quite often in these situations are they put on

wet or do you feel slick no in that i would in that case from memory i had the choice and i

definitely put it on wet um because you get you don't get an awful lot of time um certainly you

know things like when i did the there was a nine six two because a group c demo um at goodwood not

that long ago um and i was driving the nine six two c at the one of them 187 and they often

posture off of me the choice you want to go on slicks who do you want to go on wet so it was

wet absolutely because we've got like three or four laps um and you need something you can get

some temperature into um so yeah in those sorts of circumstances and i think the i think i dread the

jaguar on wets for the same reason okay and how was speed eight versus something like a group

c car was it way more drivable yeah i mean the speed at the speed eight is just actually it was

well it depends on the group c car i mean a nine six two is an immensely drivable car

yes and actually r9 is not right so there's way more high strong there's a reason that um

Porsche designed that car the way that it was because it they wanted to sell them to customers

yes so it's really synchro it isn't it but yeah but it's also it's just uh it's just it's fully

synchroed um but it's not intimidating and it doesn't have a massive weight in the back swinging

around and um we are slightly off topic here aren't we Ben it's fine um and yeah i mean it's just a

much easier car to drive you can get into a nine six two and drive it confidently pretty much

immediately in the jaguar you are i drove a xj r8 quite recently at Thruxton it's a scary place to

drive one of those um and yeah they're dog boxes so yeah but it's not really that um it's that they

you've got to be very i mean you can spin a monetary and you can spin on one exit

and you can spin them on the brakes and you can spin them on the power um and that's you know

that's why they needed professional drivers and that's why they were only ever raced by

professional drivers but even i was listening to your last podcast with um john watson yeah he's

chatting about jackie steward bidding and xj r8 yeah absolutely so yes exactly so um and and

but the but the Bentley was very much the the Bentley was just like a really sophisticated

nine six two right okay okay yeah so the Bentley was immensely quick um but completely

calm i think the earlier ones um which i haven't driven i haven't driven a sort of a 2001 or 2002

car i've only driven the lamoor winner um i think those earlier cars were much more difficult to

drive okay i've had a go in a nine six two but the slate the clutch slave cylinder went so i had to

just crunch it into third yeah slip the hell out of the clutch and they just go down the runway

full pelt in the same year and scream it was absolutely insane but yes i there i remember

going into it saying oh everyone says how drivable a nine six two is and then this damn thing yeah

not so not so um we're we're timing out oh we're sorry we've run out of time i'm glad you've learned

as much from us as we have from you today absolutely well no genuinely i'm a big intercom

especially like with my niche like the david twig stuff is absolutely top notch yeah i'm working

my way through all of his stuff it's absolutely fantastic but i like what you do how do people

find you on youtube uh yeah mic ferney um can't go wrong really the the video latest one should be

out so that's some f er n i f er yeah f er n i e um yeah and yeah cool pretty simple yeah check out

mic's channel um thanks for coming in really good i'm gonna be checking it out i want to know about

this i'm sure who's 1.9 absolutely clear 40 minutes and you can you can learn everything

you need to know um to all of you watching on youtube uh please subscribe to this channel if

you're just listening as an audio podcast just follow the show on whichever app you use uh and

in return we'll be back again next week

How the car media landscape is changing, with Mike Fernie #305

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