Ioniq 6 N Review; 1000 Miles in a 918; How TST Works
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Car
Porsche 918 Spyder
The Porsche 918 is a high-performance sports car that uses both gas and electric power. It's known for being very fast and advanced in technology.
Car
Hyundai Ioniq
Car
Hyundai Ioniq 6N
The Hyundai Ioniq 6 is a new electric car from Hyundai. It's designed to be eco-friendly and has modern features for a comfortable driving experience.
Concept
pre-production cars
Pre-production cars are special versions of cars made before they are officially sold. They are usually used for testing or events and can't be bought by regular customers.
Car
Ford Mustang
The RTR Mustang is a special version of the Ford Mustang that has been upgraded for better performance and style. It's designed to stand out and drive better than regular Mustangs.
Term
supercar
Supercars are very fast and expensive cars that are built for performance. They often have powerful engines and are made to be exciting to drive.
Term
$2 million car
A $2 million car is an extremely expensive vehicle, usually a luxury or exotic car that has special features and high performance.
Car
Porsche
Porsche is a famous car brand from Germany that makes fast and luxury cars. They are known for their quality and performance.
Car
Porsche 911 Turbo S
The Porsche 911 Turbo S is a very fast sports car that is part of the 911 family. It has a powerful engine and is designed for high performance, making it one of the best cars in its class.
Car
Volvo EX90
The Volvo EX90 is a new electric SUV from Volvo, a car company known for its focus on safety and comfort. This model is part of their effort to make more eco-friendly cars.
Term
out of warranty
'Out of warranty' means that the car's guarantee has ended, so if something breaks, you have to pay for the repairs yourself.
Term
0 to 60
0 to 60 time is how long it takes a car to go from a complete stop to 60 miles per hour. It's a way to measure how fast a car can speed up.
Term
sunk cost fallacy
The sunk cost fallacy happens when people keep spending money or time on something just because they already spent a lot on it, even if it's not a good choice anymore. For example, a car owner might ignore problems because they feel they have already invested too much in it.
Term
muscle cars
Muscle cars are fast cars that usually have big engines. They were very popular in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s and are known for their strong performance and sporty look.
Concept
Holy Trinity
The 'Holy Trinity' is a term used to describe three of the most amazing supercars that came out around the same time: the Porsche 918, Ferrari LaFerrari, and McLaren P1. They are known for being very fast and having advanced technology.
Car
McLaren 720S
The McLaren 720S is a very fast sports car that can go from 0 to 60 mph in just a few seconds, making it one of the top cars for speed lovers.
Car
Porsche Boxster
Term
RPM
RPM means how many times the engine's parts spin in one minute. Higher numbers usually mean the car can go faster, but it can also wear out the engine quicker.
Term
PDK
PDK is a type of transmission used in some Porsche cars that helps change gears very quickly. This makes the car feel faster and smoother when driving.
Term
electric steering
Electric steering is a system that helps you steer the car using electric motors instead of traditional hydraulic fluid, making it easier to turn the wheel.
Car
Acura NSX
Term
horsepower
Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful an engine is. More horsepower usually means the car can go faster and accelerate quicker.
Term
V8 engine
A V8 engine is a type of car engine with eight cylinders that are arranged in a V shape. This design helps the engine produce a lot of power and makes a loud, powerful sound.
Term
sport mode
Sport mode is a setting in cars that makes them drive faster and more responsively. It changes how the car accelerates and shifts gears to give a sportier feel.
Term
gearbox program
The gearbox program is like the brain of the car's transmission, deciding when to change gears to make driving smoother or faster depending on the situation.
Term
torque fill
Torque fill helps keep the car moving smoothly when the transmission changes gears, so you don't feel a sudden loss of power while driving.
Term
Cup 2 tires
Cup 2 tires are special tires made for sports cars that help them grip the road really well, especially when driving fast. However, they might not work as well in the rain.
Term
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a way for your phone to connect to your car without any wires, letting you make calls and listen to music easily.
Term
check engine light
The check engine light is a warning light on your dashboard that tells you something might be wrong with your car's engine. It can mean anything from a loose gas cap to a more serious engine problem, so it's good to check it out.
Car
Porsche Panamera
The Porsche Panamera is a type of car made by Porsche that looks like a fancy four-door sedan. It's designed to be fast and comfortable, making it good for both driving and everyday use.
Term
nose lift
Nose lift is a system that raises the front of a car to help it clear bumps or curbs. It makes driving a sports car easier in everyday situations.
Car
Ferrari F40
Car
Mercedes-Benz G-Class
The G-Class is a fancy SUV made by Mercedes-Benz. It's known for being tough and stylish, and many people like to show it off.
Car
Hyundai NEXO
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
Car
Hyundai Ionic 5
Car
Tesla Model Y
Car
Willys Jeep
Car
Jeep Cherokee
Car
BMW E63
Car
Porsche Macan
Car
Audi SQ5
Car
Dodge Vipers
Car
Alfa Romeo GTV
Car
Lucid Air GT
The Lucid Air GT is a fancy electric car known for being very high-tech and having a long driving range. It's one of the newer electric cars on the market.
Car
Subaru BRZ
Car
Cadillac STS
Car
Ford Fiesta Sts
Car
BMW E36S
Car
Lexus Is 500
Car
Mclaren Artura
Car
BMW Z3
LIVE
What's up everybody? Welcome to the Smoke and Tire podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by
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All right folks, on this episode of the podcast I went to the Smoky Mountains and spent a week
with a Porsche 918 and lived to come back and talk about it here. Zach went to South Korea
and spent five days with the new Hyundai Ioniq 6N and is talking about it. Plus we get into a
little bit of the mechanics of automotive journalism and helping you guys understand how we make the
content we make and a lot of great questions from our patrons over at patreon.com slash the
Smoking Tire podcast. Thank you to all of them for helping us out and getting your questions in
for the show. It's the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go.
Let the man turn the knobs. Let him cook. Sometimes you have to press play and then dance
around like this for three hours for 400 dollars. And do the heart. You got to do the
heart hands. Right. And just like, I love this check. Right. But don't do them. My heart goes out
to you. No, no, no, no, no. Well, I guess you can sort of, I mean, people are fine with it. Right.
They'll give you a trillion dollars. No, they won't. I'll talk about why I don't think Elon Musk
is going to get it. JJ, sound is very low. So JJ, you're listening. We're on a new board.
So I'm going to turn it up a little bit. But let me know when it sounds good because we've got
a lot of control here now. We're going to turn it up one, one notch per minute until your
eardrums explode. Turn it up a little bit. That now it's landing where it should on the iPad.
But tell me if it sounds scratchy or strange. Okay. I love, I love real time testing shit.
That's the only thing we can do. Right. It's the show then. This is it, right? We're going to
fucking do the show. A bunch of things to talk about today. I just got back from eight and a half
days on the road. Why I added the half. I don't really know. That first time that extra half is
important. Dude, the first flight home from Atlanta, 6am, 6 40 out of Atlanta. I fucking landed
like 8 20am had a whole day like Hannah. I got home and Hannah was like just waking up. It was
and I'd been up for eight hours. It was weird. Whoa. Yeah, you got up at I got up in the equivalent
of like 1am California time. And then I got home, flew home, worked out, got lunch, and then had to
go speak at the Grand Seiko annual club thing with Joe Kirk, drank some like whiskey, but all like
not like a lot of whiskey, but there was a tasting of Yamazaki. So I tried some of that. But I had to
drive the Manx to Hollywood and back and then and then go straight to a birthday party. So I'm
like, I get to this birthday party like 7pm. And I'm essentially like tripping. Yeah. You gave
yourself international jet lag. Yeah. And I'm at this party. I'm trying to like be fun and whatever,
you know, be a good husband and be a good neighbor and friend. Fortunately, the party was a neighbor.
She was across the street from my house. But at like 8 40, I was like, I'm sorry, my brain
is non existent now. And I went home and I was asleep within like six minutes and I slept for
13 hours. Wow. Yeah. That's is that a record for you? Yeah, it's up there, man. I was fucking
dunza. But yeah, I was I was on this road and track experiences, Blue Ridge 500 in the Portia
918, which was a very, very cool experience. And, you know, I had never really driven a 918. So it
was a very unique opportunity to not just like have a go, but but literally like, like live out
of it for for five days, which is really crazy. But also you learn so much. And this car in
particular is very special because it's one of the four pre production cars. It can basically
never be sold to the public. Portia's only option is to either keep it around and use it for,
you know, random appearances and stuff like that, or to crush it. So it's either priceless or
worthless, which is a very funny thing way to think about a car, especially a car that,
you know, were it a kind of like fair market value situation, it would be a very, very expensive car.
You know, these are now regularly selling with numbers that begin with a two. And if it's a
so, of course, everyone is like, is it worth it? Is it worth it worth it? It's like, what I don't
even, what does that even mean? Those are these aren't even real numbers anymore. I feel like even
at any price point, you know, I just drove the RTR Mustang the last week. And I know that the
question will be like, is it worth it? It's such a subjective question. It's like, what is your
financial situation? And and the things keep changing so much, like the dollars lost so much
value in the last three years, things like 40%. I think it's like, we're 60 cents on the dollar.
So if the Mustang was 60 grand, it's a good Mustang. It's a hundred. It's like, well,
that's a lot for a Mustang. But but it's like the math is insane. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So
and and and I want to talk about so so forgetting the the the money aspect of it for a moment and
the collectability, you know, I want to talk about it as a car, because it's really interesting.
It's really, really interesting. But first, a lot of people sent me this Reddit thread
that was apparently on top of the cars subreddit all weekend. And I'm not on Reddit anymore.
But it talked about us and me. And it's and it it it's essentially a post about how can
automotive journalists be objective when they're being given all these things of value flights
to international destinations, luxury hotels, sure, things like that. But it's framed in a way
that is it's an incorrect premise. And I just want to without being mad about the existence of it,
because a lot of people in the comments, which I did read some,
were like, hey, man, like, here's why this goes this way, including I think I forget if it was
Jack or Mark from Savage Geese. But one of the people from Savage Geese wrote a very lengthy
explanation of effectively, you know, how you can still be mostly objective while going on a press
launch, you know, and there there is a way to do it as best you can. Right. But this this the post,
which was from a user called cooking boy says I was listening to the smoking tire podcast recently,
actually a big fan. So maybe they'll listen to this one too. Right. And mention he mentioned
that Portia gave him a 918 spider on loan for a 1000 mile road trip free of charge with everything
paid. Well, that's not an accurate description of how that works. I got the car as a press car from
Portia. Ever I don't know what everything paid is meant to accuse, but Portia doesn't give you
money. They don't give you a gas card, right? They don't give you like they give you a car.
That's what they always give you. So they didn't buy my flight. Like I was on a trip for a road
and track magazine, which is a magazine that borrows cars for manufacturers all the time. And
you know, borrowing a car, this happens to be an expensive car, but it's no different than
borrowing any other car. Same agreement, same whatever. Right. And I think everybody I thought
everybody understood that. But but here, this says as someone who has dabbled into supercar
ownership, I can estimate the cost for a regular Joe like me to put 1000 miles on a $2 million
car. So he's putting he's putting a comparative value on me driving this car on a road trip,
like a per mile value to him having a similar experience by effectively renting one,
which I understand the position. But in order to write about cars, you have to drive cars like
I don't understand how I would do it any other way. And then it says the next the next one says,
and his math is that that I'm getting effectively a 50 to $100,000 gift from Portia by being able
to put this. Now, I could see how somebody would see it that way if the only way you can drive a
car like this is with money. Sure. I found another way to drive a car like this. But the fact is,
there is no way I could generate that type of value from driving this car. I don't you know
what I mean? Like we get paid in seat time. I think what he's almost describing is like
a Schmi example where if you have to own the car and then it's yours and then when you whatever
content you make is based on that. But you know, that's that's you're going to lose money on that
as well. So next sentence, obviously, Matt isn't doing a review of a 12 years old 918. Also,
factually incorrect. We are about to talk about it for 20 minutes on this podcast,
which absolutely is a review. I am literally writing a review of it for road and track.
That's another thing. So I'm creating two different pieces of content for two different
media outlets about this drive. So that's not a that isn't a gift. That's a that's a
providing of a thing for me to generate content about. Now, yes, again, it's a fucking expensive
car. If you have to go out and earn the money to buy one or pay some insane amount of money to
rent one like, yeah, it is. I don't but I don't have a way to do that. And then and then they
go on about the 9 11 Turbo S launch or flown to Spain, wind and dine. How can you be objective
about that to fly to that destination? That's effectively $20,000 a person. And and we've
talked about this a lot. They're mean, yes, objectively, you are flown somewhere pretty,
put in a nice hotel and given a scenic environment in order to drive this car.
But that's way cheaper for the manufacturer than sending cars all over the world. You're also
interacting with the engineers who built the car. You can learn a lot more about it.
And so you you land, you fly in, you know, you land. It's like 4 p.m. You go to dinner, you go
to bed the next day, 6 a.m. Work all day until right before dinner, shower, dinner. Yes, there is
wine. Go to bed 5 a.m. the next morning. You know, you're you're back on a plane to go home.
And and it's it is nice to be in a hotel that isn't crappy. It's nice to eat a meal that isn't
crappy. You know, a glass of wine at the end of a nice day is an all right thing. And I mean,
and in the in the in the videos at the bottom of all the YouTube videos, we say, you know,
Porsche or whoever provided airfare, hotels, the racetrack, meals, etc. It's in every video,
every single one, exactly what was I mean, it's not an itemized receipt, but the obvious items.
And like, I think there's a lot of people who have been doing this a long time who go on press
launches and then offer fair criticisms of the car. You and I went on the Volvo EX90 press launch
and essentially tore that car to shreds. Yeah. The Turbo S launch. I said quite a few things
about the car that were negative. It's crazy, fucking expensive. It's not much better than the
GTS. For most things, you genuinely can't feel the difference a lot of the time. It's so heavy,
the convertibles over 4,000 pounds. There and it's going to be a God help you if you own one
out of warranty. Like, sure. I think those are pretty fair criticisms of a car. We had the dark
course. I remember criticizing the steering on that a lot in the RTR has the same problem.
And like, so, you know, and then another misunderstanding, I understand it's part of
the job, but this would never fly in any other industry. Folks, we got to take a quick break for
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code tire and now back to the show. I understand it's part of the job, but this would never fly
in any other industry. Imagine anytime a company launches a new video game, they fly journalists
and imagine anytime blah, blah, blah. By the way, this exact thing happens in almost every industry.
And a lot of times they pay people directly. Yes, true. It happens a lot more egregiously. I
know people who write about watches. They fly somewhere ridiculous. They put on the watch
and then they just get drunk with the watch on. They don't really do like I know someone who's a
bourbon reviewer and they skip with the fucking pretence. It's let's get there. Let's get shitty.
Well, and there's there are people that get there are people that get free trips and stuff
for all kinds of products, hotels, restaurants, gun YouTubers get sent guns for free or get
brought on trips like any type of product. Now what I think a lot of companies have realized
what car companies long ago realized, which is if you get like a quote review for it,
it's cheaper than advertising. And now in the last 15 years with influence or culture,
it's far more effective. And some people don't just get the free thing, they get paid to say the
thing. Yeah. And it happens in the car world and often is not disclosed, especially if they don't
live in the United States and legally required to. It happens in a lot of a lot of products,
video games, computers, all kinds of stuff. People get kickbacks of all kinds. So I think that is
it's it's your that that exists in the world more than this person might realize, unfortunately.
And also, you know, basically, it's it's how can I last bit?
You know, I said to credit, I'm sure we people like us and Savage each how to be
effective. But how are you objectively critical when they routine you routinely give you
experiences you'd otherwise never be able to afford? And and they then say I which is why I
only start asking actual owners of their cars for their experiences before making purchases.
It is it is useful to speak to owners of cars about their experience. However, there is a ton
of sunk cost fallacy in people who buy cars. There is people want to not seem stupid. And a lot
of times they'll tell you that their car is, you know, better is great is great and better than
it is. And it's perfect. And they're, you know, and that's not true. Conversely, a lot of times
people really want a bitch about something. And their car could be a complete piece of shit. And
it really wasn't. And so lastly, I can only think of people with fuck you money like Chris
Harris or Whovies garage or Top Gear, who have been able to bluntly criticize OEMs in their cars.
Chris was on the Turbo S launch, by the way, with me, same wine and dine motherfucker. And he went
through two sets of tires that he didn't have to pay for. And I didn't do it. And I'm not this
absolutely not a criticism on Chris. I just like and I don't want to I don't want to do this. I'm
not just trying to like read the comments and be mad. But like this person is a fan. They listen to
the show and their misconception of how it works. So if that's a person who's a listener,
and it seems very well meaning, but is misinformed about what's what's going on. And like,
if after this explanation, that's still not good enough for you, like all you got is consumer
reports, bro. They buy the cars, but like, but they're not buying Turbo S's like they're not
buying. They also because I we have a consumer reports login thing. And I was looking at the
other day. And one of the interesting stats was on the reliability predictable predicted
reliability survey, the Rivian scored last, but it was first in customer satisfaction.
Right. So that car is known for having problems. Yet just to your point, the owners are like,
no, it's not that bad. Yeah. But all these things are going wrong with it. Yes. But it's number
one. Sorry, it was number one in would buy again. And so that is a great example of the the sunk
cost fallacy type of thing. So I understand this person's point like, and trust me, the automakers
know what they're doing. They're definitely trying to give you lots of like, good feelings. And
here's everything's really nice. And there are people out there who will say nothing but nice
things in reviews over and over and over again, so that they can go on every trip. Yeah. But what
we do and we have to do is you have to separate yourself from the environment you're put in,
and you just look at the car, you drive the car, and you you, you know, review it objectively,
and you point out the things that are wrong, and you point out the things that are good.
And I also like it feels like it's it feel it hurts a little bit, because like,
yeah, the hotel in Spain was nice. It wasn't the nicest place I've ever been. Yeah, the racetrack
is nice. Yes, food is nice. Yes, those things are nice. And yes, there is a quantifiable value
to them. Portia has a number where we're spending whatever it is 20k a journalist to do this.
Man, like, I wrote an article, I did I shot the podcast with all those other guys who were there.
We made a fucking super produced video out of that. I wrote a script. I had like,
we put a lot into that, you know what I mean? And like, I have I have this pulled up,
I'm going to show this to the fucking camera. This is the revenue from that from that video,
$811. So so that's a that's 30 hours of flying. Okay. And and and and a full a full workday. Now,
look, it yes, is driving a 911 turbo for work like fun. But like, don't you fucking think that
doesn't work when I have to make sure all the shots and all the fucking audio and all that's
going like no help like I was like, that's fun. But it's it's better than a lot of people's work
days. But believe you me, that's a you have one chance to get all this situation, right?
$811. Like, what do we talk like so how on fucking God's green earth, God, I don't even believe in
is am I supposed to drive this car when this is the earning potential of a piece of content?
Right. So if you rented a new turbo s, if that was even possible,
it would probably cost more than that money, more than that. So like,
there is literally like, you have to be on the first batch of people to drive this stuff if you
want any kind of traction at all. Right. If the content is to have any any real value, it needs
to be first. And if you need to be first, the only way to do it is to get there. So you have to be
invited to begin with and like, look, yeah, being invited feels nice, but but you have to be invited.
You then have to have outlets for the content, you know, and then but but if you really do have
to pay your own way. And there are folks who like Daniel, because of the Wall Street Journal,
Hannah Elliott, because of Bloomberg. Sometimes you do work for outlets that can and do afford
that. But there is no fucking chance that I can get to drive this car if I have to fund it.
Right. And to clarify that really quick, what the Wall Street Journal would do is they would
send Dan on the same trip as the journalist, but they Wall Street Journal would pay for the airfare
of the hotel, etc. Yes, they would basically reimburse. I don't know if they'd reimburse
portion, whatever it was, they wouldn't take the money for the thing. And like,
that's the ideal. It really is. That is the ideal. But like,
it's just not possible. Like, there is no other option. So we do the best we can.
And I didn't mean for this to be 30 minutes of content on a guy's Reddit post, but a lot of
people, you know, sent it to me. It's it's it's worth not arguing with the person or if with
their opinions, but at least making sure that they understand what the what the reality is of
the situation. Absolutely. Because I'm sure, you know, this is like the for every phone call that
goes to a senator's office, there's probably 50,000 angry tweets. And then for each tweet,
there's a grumble at supermarket or whatever. So like this probably represents the thoughts of a
lot of people that wonder how the system works or discuss how the system works. And so I think
it's a good thing to cover. Yeah. And when you're talking about like, how are you objective? Like,
I mean, these are humans with feelings and opinions, and they're writing about how these
cars make them feel. Unless you're putting every single car through, you know, car like car and
driver does numbers tests, like that's about as close to objective as you get. They're consistent
with their testing. And they put the car on a scale and like numbers numbers are objective. But
a person telling you what a car is like to drive, that's not ever going to be totally objective.
People bring all their baggage from very true forever. Well, and to be fair, like car and
driver does the number stuff to separate them from other magazines that are more like subjective
in how car feels. But RT, sorry, not RT car and driver also will have those lines in their articles
and stuff about like, but how did the car feel to us? What did we like about it? So again,
it's subjective. And depending on the size of the person, they have different opinions on the seats
or what kind of like I grew up with muscle cars, I tend to be more into them than you. And that's
just because of what cars we were around, we were seven years old. Like so everyone's bringing
all of that stuff to the table. I think if you really have people that are that are career at,
you know, at this point, if they've been doing it for 1520 years, these kind of folks, or the
level of thoroughness that the savage geese guys go to with their with their testing and their
nuance or Kyle with his EV stuff. I think, man, everyone's doing the best they can. No, no one's
getting super rich. We're not choosing where those destinations are. I you and I would so much
rather have a turbo s delivered to our front door for even one day, sure, then have to
fucking fly across the world to do it, even though the pictures look nice. You know, the headline,
I went to Spain to drive a turbo s is a fucking real headline. But in terms of a business choice,
dude, I'd rather have the car for a day. COVID was the fucking shit for us. One thing, one good
thing about COVID, the manufacturers had to suck it up and deliver the cars because they couldn't
have the fucking events. Yeah. Man, were we killing it? We got like two day loans. Oh, it's fabulous.
How do you want to do? It was that's preferred actually. You know, I just got stamps in my
passport for places I can barely remember. Well, then you also like you can kind of live with
the car for a day or two. Instead of sometimes these events, your drive time might be it could be
eight hours, which mostly road, or it could be one. Yeah, could be one hour. Dude, that's the other
thing. I mean, that and then I hate those for so many reasons. OEMs have their reasons for doing it,
maybe some good, some bad, but you just don't get to learn enough about the car. Yeah. And
that makes it really tough. Well, that's why having a 918 for a week puts me in incredible
position. Right. I learned a lot about this car. I have to say in 2013, when it was the Holy Trinity,
I thought this was the least interesting of the three. So did I. The Ferrari was the pretty one,
the McLaren was the crazy one. Also pretty in my opinion. And this one was the nerdy one.
Let me just say that time has been incredibly kind to the 918. You could fundamentally update
the center touchscreen garbage piece of shit, take off the steering wheel and put on the current
and updated E motors in the in the axles. And you could just sell this car as is right now,
like the rest of it, just leave it to sell it the same. It does not feel like a 15 year old car at all.
You know, I only got to drive one of like five minutes back in the day. So I really,
it's as basically it's like I'd never driven it. Fuck in Porsche with a carbon tub to work with.
Fuck in hell. That's this car rides better all the time than my spider. Every this ride is adaptive
suspension. I forget it has adaptive shocks, but it's also double wishbone and it's and it's got
and in the rear is cantilevered. Also, I believe and and it's the ride is so beautiful.
It's almost as good as a 720 like right up there with a 720. But driving in 1000 miles,
there is literally no comfort or ride quality downgrade from like a Boxster like I fit. I'm in
the right driving position. My new balances fit the 2013 buckets. I would you'd like I'd like
those to be updated to the current buckets. And I did have to use the Tempur pedic pillow
starting on day three. On day five, bro, I drove this car for 10 hours. Well, I drove,
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tire. And now back to the show. Fucking hell, dude. This V eight naturally aspirated fucking
smoke stacks right behind your head. And at idle, it's just that beautiful sound of engineering
where you just had that wine of cam gears and stuff, you know, and then when you when you start to
lug it a little bit like you're loafing along at like 2000 RPM and you just like tip into the pedal
and like load it. But at low RPM, you get this growl like resting like you just woke a fucking
tiger and it's looking at you like you have 10 seconds to get the fuck out of here before I eat
you that like, you know, that like low tie. It makes that and then it turns into swarm of bees
as you bring up the revs. And then after about five, the bees start attacking the tiger.
And then after fucking seven, the bees and the tiger are having like a full on brawl with each
other. It's bananas how this car sounds. And the fact that there's no turbos, and the exhaust is
like seven inches long and just goes so red. I mean, that sound is like, God, do you never get
tired of that? That's that is just unbelievable. And the PDK, you know, the PDK with an E motor,
it's as smooth as you just say, I mean, indiscernible how it shifts from a car that's now,
you know what I mean? It's like, it shifts just like today's PDK.
With the front axle motors, it's got so it has hydraulic steering has an old hydraulic steering
like an old GT3 RS. It's sort of a similar system to that. So the steering feels a lot heavier
than today's cars. But you do get used to it. The feeling is really good. I feel like if they
did the car today, they would do electric steering and it would be better. It would be a little
lighter. And it would be a little sharper. The ratio isn't quite as fast as I expected. But
like still with the magic E motor shit at the front of the torque vectoring, this is like,
does it have the magic steering like NSX does? Yeah, better. Wow. It's better than NSX. Yeah.
But it's like, it's, it's the very definition of like driving a roller coaster that's just on a
fucking, if you have the stability control on, it is just on a rail. And if you turn the stability
control off, you can oversteer out of every corner, which I only tried once. I'm just not brave enough
to do it more than that. There's no, no normal situation. Do you ever need to put the shocks
in sport or the traction control in anything but regular? Yeah, of course. Unless you're at a track
in your, in your Harris, and you want to go for it. It's so fast. Yeah. It's so fucking fast. Like
the numbers aren't impressive in 2025. It's like 887 horsepower. But like, you know, with the E
motors and like the way that it delivers that power along with this just ball, you know, the
engines like based on the spider RS, the Le Mans car, and it's just, it sounds like Le Mans.
It sounds amazing. It sounds crazy. What's incredible is it weighs according to Google,
like 3,800 pounds. So it weighs what a new Corvette weighs. This has a hybrid system,
three electric motors. Yeah. And you can, you know, it's because of the tub, you can hear
the bushings, you can hear stuff happening. So it's not like refined like a Boxster would be.
It's definitely. No, it's a raw, it's a more like raw symphony happening inside. You hear a lot
of, and like the sound because I drove one years ago for filming, and like there's like a sound
that resonates when you, you know, in the open cockpit and the V8 bounces around the carbon
stuff a little bit. Yeah. But you can cruise down the highway, no problem. And if I actually,
after a while, when I would get stuck in traffic, I would put it into electric mode. I net hybrid
mode sticks. The engine sounds too good to be kicking on and off all the time. So you essentially
have E mode for creeping around parking lots and or sitting in traffic or sport mode, which is
engine on. And because there isn't like a, because you're not using that hybrid mode,
to keep the engine on, you put it in sport mode, which also activates a sport gearbox program,
which really, you know, I shift myself in any of the twisties, but on the highway,
the gearbox program is really good. And with the torque fill and the choice of gear,
I actually found myself leaving it in automatic on the highway almost the entire time. I thought
it did a really good job giving me the amount of power and gear I needed for highway driving,
although on the fucking dragon, it was just you got to go, you know, obviously manual, but
and it had even though it had cup twos, I drove it in the rain twice. It was fine.
Uh, there was some funny quirks to it because as a prototype, uh, I had to get all these USB A
cables for my phone and it, my phone had no idea what this car was. Like the Bluetooth did work,
but it kept getting like error pop up messages on my phone. And then when I would turn the car off
and like walk away with my phone, it would, my phone wouldn't make any sounds. I had to read,
my phone still thought it was connected to the car, even though the car was like long gone.
So that, that was a little wonky. Um, and it had a, uh, it did have a check engine light,
but I was told over and over that it doesn't mean anything. Uh, it's just a mixture of prototype
and production parts as the car has been like service throughout its life. The, some of the
handmade parts were replaced with, with production parts, but it didn't seem to affect how it drove
at all. Um, and, uh, it's, you know, the thing, it's, it's scruffy. It's got like 13,000 miles on
it. So it's rock chips and shit, which is just, it's just the best. Like I left it parked outside
and you treat it like a car. And so that's really, it is, it's really like it's so usable as a car.
It's such a Porsche in the way that like it has to pass the same like shit as like a Panamera or
whatever. Like, um, the, the driving position and the ergonomics are like normal, not like weird and
shitty. So that I, so that I could sit in it for like almost 40 hours and not have a problem.
You know what I mean? Uh, the, the windshield wiper and the HVAC and all that stuff like works
perfectly. Uh, the ride is great. If you're just cruising, the fuel economy isn't even all that bad.
It's, it's very refined and it nose lift works. Like, like after like two days, it really just
became a car, which is both good and bad, you know. But I think that's going to happen with,
you know, good McLarens when you're on it really hard, but are exciting. But now with the new ones
where they move the nose lift, where once everything's really easy to access and it becomes more
livable, it's, which is what everyone has asked for. But then we get there and we go, oh,
it's just a car now. And you go, well, which one do you want?
Well, it just made it, because it was such a good car, it made me sad that so few get driven.
Like to do a thousand miles on it is probably the most any 918 was driven this year. You know,
and like it's more than a lot of them will go ever. And it just made me like sad that Porsche
put so much energy into making this car work so well. And, and still like
not driving it is such a good investment that for so many people that are that earn enough money to
buy one of those things. Capitalism will beat car enthusiasm every time. Yeah, it's too profitable
to not drive it. And that's such a fucking bummer. Because if you could get one that had miles on
it or if you could have bought one new, you could have fucking basically daily this thing for like
a decade for free. And like, that's what like car enthusiasm is like really about. Like,
I just feel like there's certain cars like if you bought a Zinger 21c, I get it if you only
want to drive that a couple of times a month, it's comfortable and everything. But like, you know,
it's a one-seater essentially. Yeah. This you could just use as your car and you'd be the king
of the universe if you did that. The other thing is that these cars exist and are good because car
enthusiasts exist. You know, these happen because the car enthusiasts work at Porsche, they work in
the factories, they go, how do we make these things better, faster, you know, stronger, all that stuff.
Like, the pun is not intended, but it's happening. Like, that is driven by the excitement and passion
people have for cars. But then they get bought by people who just see it as a stock that they can
invest in or a thing that they can just sit on. And it's like, this wouldn't exist if it weren't
for this group of people who like to drive the thing that you now just keep in a garage. Yeah.
And like, to be fair, like, I think someone who buys one and doesn't drive it can still be an
enthusiast. They can. It's just, you know, it's just sad because if you earned enough money to buy
one in the first place, you could probably earn that much money again, just doing what you're
doing. And that car could be a thing that gives you feelings instead of a thing that is earning
a profit for you. Not everything needs to earn a profit for you. Like, my dream
is to depreciate a Ferrari F40 more than anybody ever has. Like, and to do that,
it means I have to make a lot of money and be comfortable putting this Ferrari F40 into my
entertainment fund. Like, the money you pull out of your pocket in Vegas for one night and you go,
200 bucks is my, and if it's gone, it's gone. Like, that's, one day, maybe one day,
that's like, that's the dream. That's the dream board is like, Ferrari F40 used as a car until
it's fundamentally worthless. I think, you know, one of the problems, and it's a fundamental
problem for our society, we're very aware of is that there are a lot of people at that income
level on the top that can't see a number go down because it hurts them in their soul. And I think
it's probably something innate to our DNA. Like, I have this and now it's quote, going away. You
know, the value is diminishing. It's like, you know, sand being blown away by the wind. And if
they could tap into those feelings of enjoyment and just accept that that's okay sometimes,
we'd probably be way better off in so many areas. And it's a human, it's a human thing.
Cars to save society. It is, it's a human thing. And every once in a while, I think you get a
really rich person that does kind of get it and treats the car like a car, you know, but it's
just so often that when you have a society that's like so capitalist, the car is capital.
And you want line to go up, you want to be a savvy investor.
Well, the people at the, at the, the people have enough money to buy these cars, they live that
way. So of course, it's going to be more prevalent.
Yeah, you don't want to think about it as I drove 20,000 miles for free or I drove 20,000 miles
and it only cost me this much to have this experience or, you know, I drove 20,000 miles and
and it was expensive. But man, was it fun, you know,
you know, it's funny just realized because it probably, I was just imagining like,
but they lose a lot of money on their least G wagons.
There's that. Or when they go on a ski trip, when they, and I'm just going to blanket statement,
like when rich dudes go on hunting trips that are very expensive, like they're not getting
that money back, but they're doing it for the experience, right? So what if you drove here in
918 enough miles to reduce the value by 20 grand, which is the same as you going to Africa and
shooting something expensive. And those experiences you're going to have are going to happen every
day cooking boy says it's $50,000 to go to go a thousand miles, right? So yeah, it's, you know,
and granted this car, the car I drove is like I said, it's unsellable. So the only value it can
deliver anymore, it cannot deliver monetary value to anybody. It can't, it can't be stripped for
parts and it can't be sold for profit. So what's left? All that's left is, is joy and education.
You know, and it's, it's very cool that I have developed a reputation within the people who
are in charge of delegating who gets to drive this shit of just being someone who doesn't break stuff
is being, and will be honest and respectful and, and, and will give praise, where do and criticism
where do? And they, they thought that it was not cool that we had not had a chance as the smoking
tire to talk about this car yet. Rodentrack reviewed the fucking car. I didn't need to do it for
Rodentrack. Dan's thought it would be, my boss thought it would be cool to do a retrospective on
it. And I compared it with a brand new Turbo S E hybrid Panamera that I drove just before it. We
talked about on last show. And dude, you can draw, I mean, this is not to Zach, this is going to be
very obvious, but anyone else, you can draw a dead straight line from this car to Lamborghini's
entire lineup right now. You know, to go from this to 10 years now, we've got the, the, the
Temorario, which has the same technology for, you know, adjusted for inflation. That's probably
25% of the price. I think the Temorario is objectively faster than the 918.
Surely. Yeah. New technology. Yeah. Of course. And, and I think I, I happen to think this technology
paired with weight reduction methods can really be something amazing because it allows you to
use very exotic, weird, interesting engines that otherwise don't need to be as practical.
If they have to rev the 10 to make power, we got e-motors, baby. Right. If I want to do a fucking
2.0-liter 16-cylinder that sounds like a fucking hornet's nest you just shot a flamethrower at,
you know, but it makes no torque. I got fucking e-motors. You know, I want to make it do a motor
that runs to 12 or whatever, like e-motor, e-motor, e-motor, like you can now put a weird-ass high
revving stupid impractical engine in a car. That could be a cool way to make a performance hybrid
because around town you want torque. Yeah. You need torque. So you could have the e-motor
doing most of the lifting there. And as you get up in the canyons, you get up into the
screaming six grand territory, six and above. Well, this is the new Bugatti Torbjorn, the 16-cylinder
naturally aspirated engine paired with three, three e-motors. Like that's what we're doing now.
And so as long as those cars don't get super, super heavy, I mean, the 918 at least proves it's
possible to have one that starts with three. I believe the Temerario's weight starts with a three.
You may want to look, I don't know if anyone's put one on a scale yet, but maybe I forget the
quoted weight. But these performance hybrids could be sort of the thing that keeps crazy,
naturally aspirated, super high-revving, you know, motorsport-grade engines.
I mean, alternatively what? Everyone's using four-liter twin-turbo V8. Like, okay, that's fine,
but like, you know, like, give me some weird shit. Like, this is how we're going to do that.
Like that, think about that, like, Lanzante, the TAG turbos. Oh, yeah. You know, they're putting
these old F1 engines and they're doing something to make them run. Like the Mercedes-1, the AMG-1,
sorry, like that was a tiny thing that revs to the moon, but they need electric help as well.
Well, if you, I mean, think about the Vannin shadow hybrid drive thing paired with the Lanzante,
I mean, that might make it way more drivable, but you could still have this crazy engine.
So, I am writing about the 918 for Road and Track and if there are questions in the thing about it.
Now, you know, and to answer the worth it thing, it's just, it's like, what, what, what percentage
of your net worth is it? And like, but how about this? Is it worth it? Yes, if you buy one with
some miles on it and put more, like, do not spend up for one of these that you can't drive. Spend,
because there, none of them are like shit boxes. Buy one with fucking 10,000 miles if one exists
and a few rock chips and put a set of tires on it and go. I would add that cars like this are
worth it because you can use it as a car. So, it's not super compromised. I mean, there are
compromises, yes, but like in the supercar realm, it's not, you know, you don't get in and you go,
why is the steering wheel four inches to the right? Why can't I fit in this thing? Why is it
uncomfortable and it rides like garbage? You can do a lot of stuff with it, which I think makes it
more worth it than some of its competition. My, my roller board, Carl Friedrich roller board bag
and my backpack fit in the front together, which I thought, you know, I thought for sure I'm going
to have to wear a specially narrow pair of shoes. I'm going to have to bring either a duffel bag
or a smaller suitcase. I thought my backpack was going to have to ride shotgun the whole time.
You know, no, no, no, no. It was like, it was only marginally less practical than a 911.
Do you know, are they having any of the long, the battery issues that the P1 is having?
Nope. Wow. They haven't, they're coming out with an updated chemistry for people who want it,
that will supposedly give the car 30 to 40 percent more electric only range. Wow.
And it will also output more electrons to the motors. I don't know when that's coming. I don't
know how much it is. They just said it was something that they're, they're working on for these cars.
And, but no, for real, like, you could, you could change two or three things and just make this
now and it would feel like a brand new car. And in fact, they fucking should. I mean, they,
they really just should. They should do a successor to this. I mean, if now, if they've got access to
rematches, electric motor technology and, you know, with the stuff that they're doing now,
I think they could build a fucking bad motherfucker of a car. Sure. It would be a real good time.
Yeah, they haven't had a, I mean, they haven't needed a Halo car because like all the GT line
has just sold so well. But I mean, Porsche's overall business right now, based on that report from a
week ago, like they're having some trouble not moving normal cars. Yeah. No, they are having
trouble. The normal cars are really very expensive for people right now. Yeah. The problem is,
you know, Halo cars are usually in a time of plenty for a company because they divert the
resources to that. So, yeah. No, there's no indication that a replacement. Yeah, it would be.
And I just, this is where this hybrid supercar technology started really. And it's good to
go back there because when the high, when this car came out, you go, man, I don't know if that's
gonna age well. And this car is now 12 years old. And yes, actually, the only things about it that
haven't aged well are the same shit from 2012 regular Porsches that haven't aged well. Phone
connectivity, crappy haptic stuff, like everything else about this car has aged really, really well.
Having to release the electronic parking brake every time, like, you know,
having to turn a key while also having that razor shifter, the shader shifter, and in a way,
like, guys, fuck it. Intersections of technology. Yeah, like, I need, just give me a start button
and have the fucking things, you know what I mean? Like, it was kind of funny, the mishmash of
different, different stuff. But the way the top fits in the frunk is really innovative and cool.
It was great. It's a gorgeous car. I mean, the profile of it is just timeless. I think it's
fantastic. And it was, it was a real contrast between people who lost their mind when they
saw it and people that just either didn't know or didn't notice at all. I mean, a lot of people
walked right by it and just know, not a Porsche. Yeah, okay. And just, you know, maybe because
of the color, maybe, I mean, it's not, it's not that like flashy, flashy, you know, there's,
there's no big, when the wing is down, when it's parked, you know. Well, if you look at the front
of it most, I mean, you can trick yourself into going, oh, Boxster came in. Yeah, yeah. It's
different for sure, but it's not crazy different. But if you don't know cars, it doesn't immediately
stand out as that's a seven-figure car. Whereas the LaFrarre, I mean, one has a Ferrari badge,
but also it looks more like a seven-figure car and the P1 as well, especially from like the back.
But this is, I mean, God, if anyone out there, if you're listening to this and you own one of these,
fucking drive it. It's, it's such, it would be such a tragic thing to not use it as a car.
It's so great as a car. And I want you to, you want to talk about Hyundai?
Let's talk about Hyundai. Let's talk about Hyundai.
The embargo is off and then we can go to the people.
Let's go, let's talk about regular people cars for a minute. These are not regular people cars,
but I get it. And I get it. It's not, it's not relatable, but I had, I had to do it.
Signs. Yeah, of course. I mean, that's part of the reason we sought out this job as children
was like to drive the cool stuff. So, you know, why wouldn't you do it?
Yeah. So, speaking of which, Roof Rodeo video is up on the channel now. It's up today. So,
go check that out. Also, not particularly relatable, but the video is fun.
It is. There's some, there's some car to car we did when you were driving and I was looking
the rear of the mirror and I was like, okay, we got the shot. Like we got enough drift,
we got enough street drift. Of course, but like we got enough.
The road actually was closed. Got enough tarmac drifting shots where I was
starting to get nervous producer brain. Yeah, the road actually was closed.
But you did a very good job. And when I watched the footage, like you stayed in the line, like
there was not a lot of room, but that car is not that big incredibly because it's based on an
older car. And I was like, oh, you're right there next to yellow and right there next to
guard rail. I was right there next to guard rail. I know.
There was, I was a very close, close, close bumper tag thing. I did not tag, but I was,
it was interesting. It was interesting. It wasn't feet because there wasn't feet to be had.
Yeah, that was exciting. Yeah, go watch that video. But Zach went to Korea to drive some Korean
cars or a Korean car. Yeah, I went to South Korea last week as we talked about on the show to drive
two cars. One was the Hyundai Nexo, which hydrogen car. You can't be objective though,
because they flew you there. I'll be objective about the Nexo. You can't
refuel it anywhere outside of California. And the infrastructure here for hydrogen is terrible.
And I don't recommend anyone get a hydrogen car unless you have the most specific route and an
amazingly steel because it's too compromised in too many ways. And if you want to know
everything I feel about those, go watch my Nexo review from a few years ago.
So, but the big story, you know, the reason they think they primarily invited us,
the smoking tire, is Ionic 6N. Performance EV. We drove the Ionic 5N, which we liked,
loved it, had some amazing new technology that's shifting most notable. This has all of that stuff
and more and they have also refined how the shifting works, how the sound works, etc.
So, it was very impressive. Generally, weighs like 4,800 pounds.
Yep. That's heavy for a smaller sedan. I know, but it's an EV. It's kind of the same as the 5N,
right? It is. It's like the same size. It's buried in my notes. It's basically the same size as the
5N. It looks smaller. The roof is shorter, slightly, but otherwise it's basically the same
size. This thing plays visual tricks on you. Some angles, it looks good. I think the front
end refresh on the 6 is good. I did not like the front end of the old one at all. The lights and
everything were terrible. The back end from the rear three-quarters still looks strange to me.
It looks like a CLS that got rear-ended. And what's weird about this car and the reason the
proportions are this way is because you have a lot of headroom. Like, it's a very bubbly canopy,
but the front and rear droop so much to make it slippery. So, you've got this almost like,
it looks like an animated movie where the cars for some reason always had like big canopy
because they want the characters of the movie to be seen. Yeah, like the Jetsons. The Jetsons,
but they want the front ends to be small and cute and whatever and friendly, I guess, or you know,
like Pixar movies do that. So, this reminds me of that a little bit. Again, 600 horsepower. It's
very quick. They did a lot to this thing besides the 6N to differentiate it. It's got reinforcements
all throughout the chassis. It's got new suspension. It's got new pickup points, bushings. I think
sacks dampers. They're adaptive, but they're retuned. The batteries have been upgraded a little
bit. It's got better thermal management. And, you know, there's a lot done to this thing. Brakes,
lighter wheels. You can get aero packages for it. One of the aero packages that they're working on
has like a full swan neck wing. I mean, I was looking at it and I went, I remember when Conexec
came out with this, and it blew my mind. And race cars had it for sure, but it was like this new
tech of, oh, it's supported from the top. And now I'm looking at a Hyundai that's like, yeah,
you can get that at the dealership. That's crazy. So, that was all pretty wild. So, I got to drive it
on the street and the track. On the street, I would say the car is stiff. It is a performance car.
The 5 is stiff, too. It's probably very similar to that. The damping is great. We had a lot of
even in the middle of the farmland for some reason. But one and done. You go over the bump,
it soaks it up well. At higher speeds, it does a really good job of that. But if you're going over
chattery stuff, like we have here up in like Angeles Crest or Ensignal or any of the cracked
roads, like you're going to feel that stuff through the, you know, pretty stiff chassis.
Yeah. The 5M was like that, too. There wasn't really a way around. It was so heavy that like,
you have to make it stiff to turn like what you do. Exactly. Yeah. It's the price you pay, I guess.
Fast, obviously. 0 to 60 is like, I think, 3.5 seconds. It's almost a full second quicker than
the regular 6N. Top speed is like 146, I think. Top speed doesn't really matter, but it's just
limited to whatever it's limited to. The big thing with this is the shifting technology,
the way the sound is paired to the shifting, and then, of course, all of the different drift
optimization modes. So I'll try to keep it concise. And to the person who unread it,
some of the things I don't like about this car, despite the trip, are a bunch of the
end features that they were very proud of having put in this car. So shifting, it's timed better
with what you're doing and how you're driving, and the sound is timed much better. So I think
before, the sound was fun, but it sounded, and it was pretty accurate to what the quote revs were
showing, but it didn't have as much of a build through the rev range in terms of the sound.
Now it's really good. It sounds like a gas car. It sounds like a gas car, and it revs like that,
and it's really timed perfectly with what it's doing. It sounded like an Elantra N before.
Does it still sound like an Elantra N? It's a little better, but it's still very much like
a two-liter turbo. And then they have the space sounds, and the one that sounds like a circular
saw, which I really find grating and I don't like. But I was impressed with the upshift,
downshift. It does sound like a circular saw. That's pretty fun. They have one that's called,
like, I don't remember the names, but one's like very future spaceship-y, and it's fun,
and I bet your kids will love it. And then there's one that I don't think anyone will enjoy,
because it just sounds like you're walking through a Home Depot and someone's demonstrating
something, and you're like, what? A circular saw is good. Can I get a key made? It's like,
in a minute, you know, yeah. It's called, We're Here to Help. Yeah. Oh, so one of the things
with the shifting is they made the gears, air quotes, shorter. So they showed a graph. They put
a tightest, shortest, final drop. It's got a close ratio gearbox now. So I think from zero to 100,
you now shift four times instead of three. I believe that was four, three instead of two.
One of the three 73 at the rear instead of the three 55. And I gotta tell you,
that's helpful because we got to do, like, a drift skid pad thing around a cone and then try to
connect it to figure eight on a mixed wet dry surface, which was super hard in this car.
Mixed wet dry figure eight. Mixed wet dry figure eight in an electric car.
In an electric all-wheel drive car. That's really hard. And like, I'm, and I found out,
I found out later, like, I'm not great at EV drifting. I have almost no experience in it.
Well, not since 2016. But I've done, like, three drift schools that had a lot of figure eight in
circle. And I went, all right, like, I know how this works. And man, when you have, like,
first I tried it with, without the gears. So it was like unlimited wheel speed. Really challenging.
Yeah. And another thing they've added, so we'll talk about drift optimization, is they took notes
from you and, like, Camisa and some other people. With the five end, even when you said
full traction off full rear wheel drive, it wasn't. Yeah. There was still stuff going on to, like,
help you a little bit. Yeah. And so when I first went out there doing the circle, it was in this,
like, 90% rear 10% front setting. And I did not like it. Yeah. Because the front, I'd start the
swing and it would come around. And then the front would, like, fight me and pull outward a little
bit. Pull out, yeah. And I went, like, what's going on? And the drift instructor said, all right,
let's go full rear. Night and day. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah. That's what I wanted
with the drift car. However, there's a problem with that. And I didn't notice it on the skid pad,
but I noticed it when I was trying to drift on the track is that the steering weight changes
drastically when you go to full drift rear mode. Sure. It gets, they made it, they programmed it
to be very light. So in normal sport mode, the steering, I think, is actually a little too heavy.
It's trying to do that illusion of feel that, like, Camaro did. But when you go to drift mode,
it was, like, super light. And they, the end guys said, oh, we did this to make it easier to,
like, like a rear wheel drive car or flicking to make it easier to, like, flick, which I understand.
But what I didn't like is I had gotten used to this certain weight, you know, this weight of X
for a 20 minute lap session. And then I switched to drift mode. And I think I broke the thing.
And now my, my, my brain has this predictability of how much input my hands have to give to steer
the car. And that math has changed. So I didn't like that. Well, because, like, with the Mach-E,
remember, like, we liked the rear wheel drive ones better than the front wheel drive, because if
there's no front motor, the steering was just better. You just, like, actually felt more.
But I think with the rally, with the rally, it was so good at they fixed, they've, they, the
programming in that car was excellent. And the steering didn't get really wonky. So in this,
if I had a big note for steering, it's just make it consistent. And I would make the sport steering
lighter. And I would make the drift steering the same. Because I didn't like that at all.
Drifting without gears is like, is so difficult. Once I switched to the gears mode, fine, circle,
just all day, like, because I was able to limit my wheel speed. So it was really helpful for that.
So that was one of the things. They've added something called N pedal, which is,
it helps you, like, turn in a little bit. It's almost like, I think they said, in normal pedal mode,
lifting with full regen is like 0.3 Gs. And now it's 0.6. And it will also
grab the inside front wheel to help the car turn. But when we're driving fast on the track,
like, I was using the actual brake pedal so much that I didn't really notice it that much. It was
only when I went out with, with June Park, no, sorry, with the engineer who designed it. And
he drove and he's like, here's N pedal on, here's N pedal off, just lifting off the off of the gas
pedal. Like, then I felt it. But during driving. But like, when you were trying to drive fast,
it made no difference. It didn't. I, you know, maybe it was working in the background, but
so it did. I thought it did. So they, the only time I ever noticed it, I did not notice it on
the track. I noticed it a lot when going, like when doing like a descending canyon road, where
there's a lot of like off camber downhill stuff, like in, I mean, to be very specific, it was going
down the backside of Laurel's great. Any downhill fast canyon, it really cranked up the regen and
it helped to rotate the car into the corner. Having said that, I didn't love it. And I liked the
regular, you know, max, max regen, right. And then combined with the manual gears, I liked a lot
better. But yeah, that was in the five. And then the pedal thing, they, you can use it with the
drift optimizer to like initiate. It basically just helps you tuck the nose. But I did, I just
feel like between the gears and the regular brake pedal and the brakes were pretty good. And the
brake pedal feel was pretty good. Have they changed or simplified the menus at all? No. And that's
because the five van is like, I get lost in that motherfucker. I should say the brake pedal does,
you need way more pedal travel than you should. That's another complaint because the throttle is
very reactive. The steering ratio is good. So your brain goes, all right, these, these two controls,
I get this reaction with this much input and with the pedal, it's like, I need two X input. So that
was just a little bit too weird. The menus are insane. And like, you can literally get lost.
I did. I had the car for two days. I got to do this drag race with June Park, head of the
end division. It was like, we're in a meeting talking about how the quarter mile time will be
the same, whether you're in shifting mode or not shifting mode. And I go, oh, let's, let's
probably like do a drag race. And he's like, okay. So we did that. But at the end of that
drag race session, we're both going to take the drive, drive the race track back. And he starts
to put his car in drift mode. And I'm like, hell yeah, I'm going to go tandem drift with June Park
right now. And I couldn't figure out how to get the thing back in. And I had it like set in drift
mode, but not over here. And there's just, there's too many things. And I know that if you own the
car, he's like fucking deke hang it and you're like, you're traction controls on 100%. He's
swinging out right away. And then I just went, I'm just going to chase him. And that was super fun.
And I'm watching him initiate and, you know, and also watching him make, you know, try and
loop once. And he's just laughing his head off. Oh, he did it. Yeah, he looped it once, which
made me feel good because I'll tell a story in a second. But the menus are just,
it's like, I know there's people out there that who want to build their own computer
or tweak every little thing. And if you like that, sure, this is the car for you. And the car has
this technology to allow us to control all these things because it's not an ice car. But it's just
so much. And I just, it needs, it needs shortcut buttons of these options. You know, like,
yeah, I mean, and there were a lot of things like, like you want to turn on drift mode,
but you have to go turn traction control off first in this other menu. I get it. But
you should say like, do you also want to do that? Like in a configurator where it's like,
you can't get, you know, brown seats unless you get the tan headliner. Do you want to switch to
tan headliner? Yes. Yes, it should be exactly like that. This requires this. But instead of just saying,
you know, hey, you didn't go take this box, I go, I don't know what the box is.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, can you just, can you show me what the box is?
Yeah, I could have a shortcut to the box.
Yeah. So that was, so, but the weight balance is great. It's like 4951.
Yeah, that's perfect for doing slides.
It was, it's really good. It was a ton of fun on the track. It's very neutral, like oversteer,
understeer, you can manage it really well. I like the gears. I thought they were a ton of fun.
It helped me for braking zones and stuff like that because I haven't driven a fast EV on the
track for a long time. What track were you on? Oh, yeah. We were at the old F1 circuit in south
of South Korea. Really? Was it cool? Was it a cool track?
We ran, well, it was weird. We ran next to it. So they had two tracks. So we were at the F1 track.
But not on the F1 track. We were on it. We were on a very good track that was like nine corners,
maybe 12 corners. And near us, at lunch one day, we hear something being tested like,
and we went, what the fuck is that? And we never got to go over there. It was like someone testing
a, like a GP2 car. Sure. So we were on the auxiliary track, but it was, it was just a nice
flowy thing that had some good corners and stuff. At least tell me I was at the dinner.
At one point they were like, do you want to go see this wall where there's some paintings
of like Schumacher and some other guys on it? And, you know, some of the guys in the group were
like, yeah. And I went, yeah. It's all right. The guys aren't standing there. Yeah, yeah.
These are like artist rendering of them. And if it's not really good, I don't know how good it is.
I haven't seen it, but then I'll be even more disappointed with this walk. So I think overall,
I think it gives me hope like the Ionic 5 did of like, you can add fun to these cars. Yeah.
And I do credit Hyundai for doing that. I think pretty damn well. And there are definitely
some negatives to this car, which I've already spoken about. It's going to be like 70 grand,
probably. Fuck out of here. It's going to be expensive. It's like limited run in the United
States. I don't know how many, how many there are, but I just think that like in the early EV days,
we thought they're all going to suck and be boring in this thing. I mean, they've been doing this
end division EV thing for only a couple of years and they've come super far. Yeah. And it's a really,
it's a good time. There are some negatives about it, but otherwise it's a comfortable car.
The interior looks great. You got heated cooled seats, manual seats, but like every other gizmo
you could want. Yeah, yeah, manual heated and cooled is an interesting combo. The seats fit nice.
Seating position is great. You know, it's impressive. I think it's a, the design of it is
subjectively odd in my opinion. You know, it's like a fucking, it's like a powerhouse gaming PC
where like, where like, yeah, it can do anything you want, but also trying to figure out how to
make it do any of those things is not as intuitive as it should be. I think it's well put. If people
who are like, oh, you have this computer, you know, you can overclock it with this program,
and I go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just want it to work. No, I have an iPhone. It's like
eye racing. I'm more of a Forza horizon type of person. So it's just a little bit too much
customization, but the platform is fundamentally really fun. And I think it's a good evolution.
The funny story I'll tell, and then we can go to questions is, so I did like three orientation
laps, maybe four with this engineer. And my cameras are mounted. So we trade and he hops out. And
I'm like, all right, I'm going to go do my in car. So I do like, I think three laps, four laps.
I'm out there for a while. They didn't tell me when to come in. I went, all right, you're gonna
have to flag me. And there's a section of this track that's like a high speed right hand sweeper,
slightly downhill, to a left hand sweeper, pretty like, I don't know, 90 miles an hour or something
like that. Like it's Sonoma, the downhill S is it Sonoma kind of thing? Longer than that. Okay.
And only only one right, then one left. Okay. And I'm turning right. And I'm literally say I go,
this car's really fun. It's super balanced. Little lift off the throttle,
tucks the nose, back comes around. And as I say, I swear to God, I guess I'll put it to keep in
the video. As I say, the back comes around, the back comes around. And I am suddenly a 90 degree
to direction of track passenger just and I'm just going, what, what happened? Because I didn't,
feel it happening. And later I thought I was talking to one of the guys in the group who's
very good driver, he's like, well, the EV is like, you heat the tires up really quick. And I hadn't
driven a 48. How many laps do you think you did before you spot it seven, eight? That's a bunch.
Yeah, you get you get the tires and kind of cooking. And, and I probably did something a
little different on this turn that I had. But the moment the irony of saying it and proving myself
that's the Instagram clip for sure. It was a real embarrassing. And it dude, I was like, man,
I felt so many things in that moment. And I went, I, they didn't flag me and I do a couple more
laps. I get my in car done a little slower. And then I go in and I parked the car and Hyundai,
Derek's probably listening right now and going, what, I get out of the car and I walk up to Gabe
from Edmunds, who's a good, very good driver, a cool guy. And he looks at me and I'm like,
what's going on? And he just, I get closer and he goes, nobody saw.
I go, what? And he goes, he's like, you were through those trees. Nobody noticed. He's like,
I noticed, but you did it in the perfect spot. That's all right. You know, this is how we learn.
Yeah. Did you do the wheels exit the tarmac? No. All right. That's okay. If you stay on,
you stay on tarmac, you're fine. I mean, the back wheels are on the rumble strip, but that's
tarmac. That's okay. That's still tarmac. That's still tarmac. Yeah. And if the car comes back,
like full of grass or something, you know, that's, that's. And the reason I felt really
bad for so many reasons about myself and everything, but when I did that lap with Jun at the end,
and he looped it twice, I went, you know what, I feel that bad anymore. It's fine if you don't hit
something. Yeah, it's just I'm learning. I'm learning. That's how we learned. I went for it.
But dammit, it's so funny. And I was so charged with adrenaline when it happened. I forgot that
the line preceding it was the back comes around. So when I watched the footage. Oh, it's great.
That's the Instagram clip for sure. Yeah. All right. Cool. So six and man, 70 Gs though. Boy,
have to try one for us. It's tough because it's probably going to be more expensive than any
Model Y performance. Yeah. And I think you drove the three performance. Yeah. We had really good
things to say about it. The three performance was good. I like the five end better. So yeah,
I mean, I don't know. I don't love how the six end looks. I think the five end looks nice.
The five end, but they played this trick here too. Like the five end is big in person. It's back
a couple in this picture. It's back a few feet, which makes it look like a small hatchback, which
we've said. And then when we get in it, we go, Whoa, this thing is like a lower Jeep Cherokee.
Yeah, I know. It's like a lowered Q five. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yay. Korea stuff. Let's go to
the Patreon. Of course, if you want to ask us questions for the show, get the live stream,
get the show early, get extra show, get ad free show, get all of the things. Patreon.com
slash the smoking tire podcast is where you do it. And let's go to them. Can you zoom in a little
bit because my glasses as the wrong focal length flat fat six says I bought my dream car at 911
Carrera. I love it, but I feel like it's trying to kill me. I've had some quick sporty cars before,
but I've never had a car that gets sideways so suddenly and regularly.
Tires are good. Do you think I just need to get used to it or avoid lift off oversteer?
I mean, I don't know what year your car is, but like something is wrong. Like you're,
you're a Carrera at this point should not be a car that is trying to kill you,
especially on modern tires. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that means
just talking about like an 85 Carrera or, you know, that's a different, those do require
a little bit of different driving technique. But like sideways suddenly and regularly,
that's something that sounds that that sounds like that should not be happening.
Yeah, that you should probably have your suspension looked at. You should look at
your tires to make sure they're good. I mean, suspension, I say that if a bushing is gone
and suddenly the geometry of your car is changing under load, you know, you getting
towed out in the back like that's dangerous. You should fix that. But if, if, oh, you said
your tires are good, but if your suspension is fine, are you driving weirdly?
I mean, suddenly, we get sideways so suddenly that that's not a word that should be happening there.
I mean, and even so, unless you're talking about a really old car,
you got to, you have to be over driving the shit out of one of these things. If you're talking about
you get sideways suddenly, I would maybe consider your technique is not, not right.
If this person came out of a fast front wheel drive car and they're used to going into corners,
especially it's a modern car, like too hot, you can lift off the throttle, just full light switch,
and it tucks a little bit better and it, the car saves you and now you've got something where
the weight's different. You might have to reevaluate your method.
Yeah. I'm going to say your technique is all wrong or something on your car is broken.
Ride the Ford Lightning. What company would benefit the most if we elect a Democratic
president in 2028 and which would be the biggest loser? Stellantis would be the biggest loser.
They need those Hellcats back in production. The Hellcat division would, yeah. Yeah. They need
them shits back in production. What company would benefit the most? I think it would be anyone
like Rivian. Rivian. Rivian and Lucid. People selling almost exclusively luxury EVs.
Yeah. And people, yeah. And Porsche, you know, also who's getting hammered on their luxury EVs
right now, you know, they invested a lot in the EV production only for, you know, to have those,
the regulations not really go their way. Actually, I think the point, the broader point is that any
company that makes cars out of the United States would benefit because the tariffs might dissolve
because right now Porsche for is one example of a company that's getting hammered on tariffs.
Yeah. Piggly wiggly deluxe. Okay. I know nothing about watches. A friend of mine found a clean
Seamaster Aqua Terra for $1,000 on Facebook Marketplace. On eBay, they seem to go for five times
that price. Thoughts. Fake or stolen. Those are your two options. There's no such thing as a deal
that could. Doesn't exist. Fake or stolen. Temple of the Dodge. I thought that was doge for a second.
Temple of the Dodge. Tall guy with a bad back. What are some sporty cars with great seats?
9-11s. Mercedes E63. Oh, yeah. Will have great seats.
I think Acura seats are great. Well, Acura seats are contoured well, but they're narrowish.
Yeah. I think the Integra Type S has very good seats with lumbar support. Yeah, that's key.
What else has really good seats? What am I driven this year?
What do we drive ahead? Oh, no, that was the total. The Golf R. The GTI and Golf R have nice seats.
Those are good. You like those. But with a bad back also, and every bad back is bad in a different
way, you may want to consider a sporty crossover because your doctor might tell you this, that you
really don't want to have your feet going out so much as down. You want like a sporty crossover,
like a Macan or SQ5 or something like that. You may have a better position, not just with your
back, but with your lower body. For instance, I should really be driving more of a crossover.
It's better for my back, but I don't want to. I would add seats that have a longer thigh or
an extendable thigh is really important because it'll hold you in the seat better so you don't
slide down. Something that not adjustable lumbar is great, but if you have adjustable side bolsters,
you can lift your torso up more so there's less pressure on the lower part of your spine.
D-Shit the Aston says, what cars are great in spite of themselves? For example,
fifth-gen Vipers are fast despite bad welds build quality and construction. I mean,
basically all Vipers. All Vipers fall under that. A lot of Lotuses. Lotuses. They're
tinny and uncomfortable, but they're awesome.
You use German cars?
My Kuntas has certainly has some build quality issues from the factory.
C63 AMG's. Hard to work on.
Anything Italian from the late 70s?
Pretty much all the fun shit that's not from Japan.
Hoop D157, what has been the most random yet satisfying customer car to come on one of the
road and track experiences with us. One person brought an Alpha GT-V, an old one,
which was very cool of them. This most recent one, first electric car,
someone brought a Lucid. And they were only mildly inconvenienced.
Which Lucid did they bring?
It was an Air GT, Air Grand Touring.
I think that has a range is like 480 or something.
It's a long range, but they got a little hosed because one of our hotels had chargers,
but they were broken, which it was the one that was in the middle of nowhere.
It was a Topoko Lodge, which is on Tail of the Dragon.
They were just able to get into somewhere that had another charger.
Other than that, I was impressed though. That was cool.
Rand, I don't know if there's been...
The cars themselves are not that weird. I mean, it's a lot of 911s and boxers and Corvettes,
and there's always a Ferrari or two. There's always a McLaren or two.
There's been an M car here and there. There's been a Cadillac V car here and there.
There's not a lot of super oddball wild card stuff. I think if you're going to do a long road
trip with your partner and some luggage, there's really a handful of cars that are very good at
that. I think because of the track, because there's a track day, most people are not bringing
their vintage cars. Once in a while, someone does, but the track is usually if someone's got
multiple cars and they go, I got a new Carrera S or a 1983 911 SC, a thousand miles in a track
day, it's going to be the new car. We can talk about this on a later show,
but I drove Marco's Slant Nose over the weekend. The yellow one that he bought from my old client.
Yeah. Cool, fun, fast. We'll get into it later. One thing I noticed is that I was like,
this is loud on the highway just because there's less sound deadening and the science of NVH
was what it was. So a thousand miles in an old 911, a little noisy. Yeah, it's a lot.
Listen and sometimes watch said, you've driven a bunch of Safari cars. Are they more fun in
urban settings compared to regular street cars? I love the idea of a supercharged lifted
beater BRZ, but for obvious reasons, I can't test drive one. Yes. Do it. Off-road sports cars
are more fun in urban settings than regular sports cars. Every time, no notes. And people
will smile at it all the time. And like it's, you're driving a clown, not a clown car, but like
it's an interesting experiment that people will like. Yeah. It's like a hot, like driving a hot
wheels. Yeah. Yeah. Plymouth Jewish Space Laser. When modifying a car, adding horsepower and torque,
at what level of increase can you really feel it seat of the pants? I'm getting a tune on my
SLK 55 that's supposed to be good for 30 or 40 horsepower. I didn't know Marjorie Taylor Greene
had an SLK 55. You should be able to feel 30 or 40 horsepower. You should. I think once you're into
like the 250 and up arena percent, like 10% increase you notice. Yeah. Below that you don't,
but you'll feel it. It's more about percentages than it is about actual number of horsepower. If
you've got a 700 horsepower car and you increase it by 40 and you've got a 100 horsepower car and
you increase it by 40, you have a really big difference. So if you can increase your horsepower
by 10%, I think you would start to feel that. Especially, you know, the difference is a lot
of times if that comes with a sound increase, if you have put an exhaust on a car, it might only
give you five horsepower, but it's loud and so you feel, you know, feels different. So
Rolex cave dweller, what cars age well with higher miles and what other cars wear quickly and age
poorly with miles? Hmm. Well, age, aging well, does that just mean they stay intact and remain
liable? What cars hold together? So I think it's a lot of like Japanese cars. Yeah. You can get a
car with, the Lexus is a good example, but hundreds of thousands of miles and when you go
over a bump, you don't hear that many, there's not that many secondary sounds. Whereas other cars,
you go over a small bump, even at 80,000 miles and you feel like the doors are falling off. Yeah.
Like Fiesta STs, you know, were great when they were new, but they did not last to 100,000 miles.
There's a lot of cars that really start to fall apart above 50,000 or 60,000 miles.
Minis. Yes. Because they're stiff and they're complicated, a lot of plastic. Yeah.
Yeah. A lot of the Japanese stuff really holds from that period of time or early 2000s really
holds up well, but also like Ferraris. High-mile Ferraris are like usually pretty good mechanically
if they've been kept well and driven a lot, like they're really nice with high miles.
E36s with miles are terrible. Yeah. I wouldn't want any Audi with over 50,000 miles on it ever.
Carl's Mazda Ball Soup. Nice. That's good. We need to make Carl's Mazda Ball Soup soon.
It's getting to be winter, it's soup time. Am I still playing guitar and how do I like the PRS?
Well, two separate questions. Yes, I play guitar still, but I sold the PRS back to
Anthony at the Sloan School of Music, who I bought it from. I traded it for a Mike McCready
special edition Fender Strat that has the, it's called a Relic, which is like fake aging,
but it's fake age to be exactly like Mike McCready's guitar and it sounds like it and I like it a lot.
Nice. Okay.
I will answer this. Eddie Vedder's enunciation teacher. I would do Eddie Vedder's speech therapist.
I think that would be a good twist to that, but yeah. Why has WCCS been successful,
but Haggerty's facility nearby didn't last a few reasons. One, I was here first and I offered a
better service and a better product at a lower price than they did. I own my buildings and this
business is a very much a hands-on business. You need to be an owner operator. You need to have
hands on the operations. You need to know your customers and it's not a business that's going
to work. If you're renting a building and you don't own it and if your corporate headquarters is in
Michigan and you're operating a brick and mortar business in California, that's not how this business
works and they were trying to make it like a lounge, like a club, like a social club and like,
if you don't have food and beverage, just stop your stupid fucking social club dreams. It is going
to suck. I run a parking garage, not a social club. It's a fancy parking garage. It will have your
car ready for you to go do something fun, bring it back dirty and you don't have to think about it
again until you want to drive again. Not, I have a nice living room where you can come hang out with
your friends. That's worse than the living room you probably have at home and it doesn't have food
and beverage. You have to bring your own lunch. It's like having a city park, but it's inside
with cars. It's like, oh, bring a blanket in your computer and your lunch and drinks and water.
It's fun. Yeah. Cars and coffee without the fucking coffee sucks balls. You've got to have
the coffee. You're going to fucking have breakfast with your friends and the cars are just there at
a certain point. That's why. That's why the shop in Seattle and Texas and why the motoring club
are successful because they're fucking restaurants that happen to have some car storage and some
social element to it, but they're restaurants. So anyway,
stew dog went to intersect Austin and met West from notice. There you go.
Fucking around with some micro brand watches.
Oh, West gave me a hint of the color for the final. By the way, stew dog was the one who called me
out for doing the extra one and he's less annoyed by it now having talked to West about what the
next color will be. So maybe we can maybe we convert a customer. Maybe if we go from annoyed
to less annoyed to, right? Oh, I'd like to have that actually. Ultima SVJ. I have a newly
acquired Lexus IS 500. That's sort of like an Ultima SVJ. And I love it. I've signed up for
a track day at Chuck Walla, which I hope to use to explore how the car behaves with traction control
off. I have moderate track experience, but I'm considering canceling because the Lexus doesn't
have the brakes and cooling to stand up to track work. Do I sandbag a little at the track and
take the day or cancel and save my road car for GT use? I think that your car will absolutely
survive a track day at Chuck Wall. I think the worst possible case scenario is you have to do
brake pads and fluid when you're done. It may be tires. Having said that, Chuck Walla is a great
track for this car. It is so easy on brakes and tires. There are only two high speed braking
zones, the front straight and the back straight, and both of them are followed by long sustained
periods of third and fourth gear open sweep or cornering. So your brakes get hot twice,
but fully get to cool down before getting hot again. That's really easy on brakes.
If you really care, do pads and fluid ahead of time. Cooling, that engine will stand up to track
work. Just watch the temp gauge. It's got one, but it's an Lexus engine. And naturally aspirated V8
in a sedan with a nice front end opening designed by Lexus. You're not overheating
that engine on the track. Just, I would pull up whatever gauges you need to pull up to watch
your temps. And maybe you want to proactively do pads and fluid if you can. But I think you could
also just show up at the track with your car and have a really nice day. And you could learn what,
oh, your pads go first. Oh, your fluid goes, you can learn. I think you drive like eight tenths,
and especially if you're, I don't know what your track experience is, but like moderately.
Then you're driving eight tenths anyway. Yeah. And if you want to practice a little
oversteer, make sure that's okay with the track event, but there's some good places to do that
out there and some bad places to do it. So be careful. Yeah. Kim Jong Vroom. That's great.
That's fucking awesome. As someone who's had the opportunity to try the new 4GT and the Ferrari
296, both V6s, which would you prefer when it comes to performance and body control?
And do you think the production run Ferrari has made the 4GT less special?
296 all day. I'd probably rather have a 296, but I'd probably rather have...
If it was just about driving dynamics, I'd rather have the Artura than both.
Hmm. I actually think the Artura is a little nicer to drive.
Well, no, I think the 296 is a little more special to drive. The Artura is nicer to use,
and I don't think the current 4G, the newer 4GT, for me has remained all that special.
I agree. When I see them, I still think, I'm like, wow, that's one of the best things ever,
but then you get inside and you go, oh, it's like, it's a little underwhelming inside.
And then we drove it. I've only driven it briefly. It was at the track in Miami.
But okay, I got the idea, and it didn't give me anything I don't get from a 296,
and it's a lot more expensive.
Yeah. In 2017, the 4GT was the jam, and I could get over the sound of the engine,
which wasn't that great. Other cars have since done that same formula better.
The cars are both faster and more exciting.
And 296, also a V6 turbo, sounds way better.
Yeah. The 296 is pretty rad. I like the Artura a lot as well. I know not everybody does.
NK, debating between a new Turbo S and a new GT3 with the right mods, can the Turbo S come
close to the GT3's on-track mountain road performance and feel in terms of handling?
No. You cannot hide 600 extra pounds. There's just no way to do it.
So don't bother. The Turbo S has unbelievable body control. I would not dare fuck with what
they have done there. The body control from that shock with the 400-volt system is as good
I am convinced as it can be.
Right. Don't pull it out and put in some expensive coilovers.
Even if they're installed by Joey Sealy.
No. Don't leave it. That's a touring car that can also dance. It's heavy. It's always going to
be heavy. What can you do? If you're only driving in the summer, you could use some tires. Maybe
you get some lightweight wheels. The wheels that are on it are not anything special. So you get
some lightweight wheels. You save some unsprung weight. That can help. Maybe you get an aligned
for more performance driving. But no, you cannot hide 500 pounds in this car anywhere.
And I think the weight will contribute so much. They use the word feel. So on-road performance,
you shouldn't be driving so fast where someone in a GT3 is leaving you by a second and you're like,
I'm trying to chase them.
On the road, the rules of good judgment and morality matter more than the car.
Either of these is way too much car for road.
And they will be equal in speed. If you adhere to the morality and rules of the road,
I think feel it's the weight thing. So it's never going to break or turn quite as eagerly
or as willingly as the GT3 wheel just because of physics.
You having said that, I mean, if you're going to go on a road trip, the turbo.
If you're going to drive it in four seasons, the turbo, if you care more about acceleration,
the GT3 will feel slow compared to like legitimately slow.
Because of torque.
Because of torque.
And then.
Now we have fucking hybrid torque on top. I mean, the GT3 is probably a second and a half slower
to 60 than the turbo. So the way the turbo comes out of corners is really impressive.
And the GT3, if you're not up in the revs, it ain't shit.
You know, if you're driving hairpins, you might be thinking about downshifting to first.
So anyway, they're just they're just different cars.
And yeah, Christian says, will the Aventador SVJ be a multimillion dollar car in 15 plus years?
Maybe the problem is, I really don't know how many of them they made.
And there it seems like there's too many.
When I go to car shows, I think there are too many.
Do you have an official production number?
Aventador SVJ?
I was looking up what they're selling for right now.
So on on bring a trailer this year, we got one for 1.3 sold for 1.3 sold for 1.3.
Okay, well, gray with numbers on it.
And then earlier this year, one was sold for 800.
Yeah.
So so maybe it's miles, no miles.
Maybe.
Or maybe it's yeah, could be a variety of things.
I mean, they're all the same kind of thing.
You could drive one of those for free because they were like 750 new.
So multimillion, I don't know, man.
I don't know.
I don't that's a that's a weird financial prediction.
And it's not like, you know, it's not like there's stick SVJs, right?
And the Rovuelto really is people might want the non hybrid might be like last before the
hybrid or whatever, you know, total produced SVJ Lamborghini registry says 900.
So and that might be coups.
Yeah, I think there's kind of a lot of them compared to like relative for how expensive
they are and how rare they seem.
Like I think there's a disproportionate amount of them.
There was a lot of profit in those for Lambo at a time when they really wanted to
fucking do a lot of profit.
It's interesting.
They, you know, they made 918 portion 19s.
So about the same number as SVJ coups.
But the 19 is also so unique to the Porsche lineup, whereas the event or SVJ, it's like
the nicest one of those, but then the next version of Rovuelto.
It's got a lot of the same things, but improvements.
So it's just seven Mary 335 I pretty good.
Okay, 10 years with my company, I recently became CFO to celebrate.
I want to buy a watch.
What do you recommend for a chronograph in the 8 to 12 K price range?
Okay, a few options.
I recommend Omega Speedmaster, one of the higher end Speedmaster professionals.
You could do either like the dark side of the moon and the ceramic or the gray side of the moon,
or you could do the white ceramic dial Speedmaster.
Those are pretty cool.
The Tudor Black Bay chronograph is a pretty cool watch.
Grand Seiko has quite a few chronographs.
Their new, their new movement is called the tentograph.
And that's a very cool thing.
If you want something that's a little more what you call a lecturer's watch,
you'd have to tell people why it's different.
If you like the idea of the Rolex Daytona,
check out the Zenith Chronomaster Sport, I believe it's called.
It basically looks sort of like a Rolex Daytona, but is a little different and very cool looking.
IWC pilot watch chronographs, there's a bunch of options there.
I'm sure there's a lot I am not thinking of right now,
but there's like six different options for you.
Last one, and then we are going to wrap this show for today and pick it back up on Wednesday.
Larry Kassil has whimsical analogies.
In an episode of zip tie tuning, is that a show?
I don't know.
A window sticker was shown for a base 1997 BMW Z3 of $44,000, which is around 91K adjusted for inflation.
Hot take considering performance and build quality carves have become a bargain.
This car must have been a turd even back then.
According to the sources attached, 1997 car loan interest rates were as high as 9%,
which is higher than they've been for 20 years.
Thoughts.
I remember when the Z3 came out and it was launched in James Bond GoldenEye.
It was the Bond car and it was kind of a turd.
I remember this, the four cylinder Z3 was really expensive for the time and it was really slow.
I don't think they put a big price premium on the M when that came out,
because I don't think the price went up.
And I think the prices leveled off a little.
Like time went on and the car didn't get more expensive, I think.
But yeah, I mean cars, that car notwithstanding, in a lot of cases you do get more money.
For like, you get more value in a car than you've ever gotten before.
The problem is wages have not caught up.
So I just looked up $1 in 1997 is $2 today.
And that's slightly different.
Like that's our purchasing power.
But wages have not kept up with that.
For a lot of people, cars feel more expensive than they've ever been,
even though the actual value delivered per dollar
is higher if you can afford to pay that dollar in the first place.
Yeah, I think you're right and that sucks.
That's our show.
Thank you, everybody for tuning in.
We will see you next time.
Zach and I are going to record one from a car.
We have to go on a little drive and we're going to be in a car talking,
but we'll get to the rest of these questions then.
We appreciate the Patreon.
Of course, more than anything,
they're going to keep us afloat over at patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast.
So please join up and get one of the extra levels of benefit if you can.
And we'll see you next time.
Bye.
About this episode
A deep dive into the experiences of driving the Porsche 918 and Hyundai Ioniq 6 N, exploring their performance, handling, and unique features. The hosts share personal anecdotes from their trips, including the challenges of automotive journalism and the nuances of driving high-performance cars. They discuss the balance between luxury and practicality in supercars and the impact of modern technology on driving dynamics. The episode also touches on listener questions about car ownership, modifications, and the automotive market.
0 to 60
Bluetooth
check engine light
Cup 2 tires
electric steering
gearbox program
Holy Trinity
horsepower
muscle car
nose lift
Acura NSX
Alfa Romeo GTV
Audi SQ5
BMW 3 Series
BMW 6 Series
BMW Z3
Cadillac STS
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Corvette
Dodge Viper
Ferrari F40
Ford Fiesta
Ford Mustang
Hyundai Elantra
Hyundai Ioniq 5
Hyundai Ioniq 6
Hyundai NEXO
Jeep Cherokee
Lamborghini Aventador
Lexus IS
Lucid Air
McLaren 720S
McLaren Artura
Mercedes-Benz CLS
Mercedes-Benz G-Class
Porsche 911
Porsche 918 Spyder
Porsche Boxster
Porsche Macan
Porsche Panamera
Subaru BRZ
Tesla Model Y
Volkswagen Golf
Volvo EX90
Original notes
We're back in the studio! Matt Farah drove 1000 miles in a hypercar prototype that might be his favorite; Zack Klapman tested the new Hyundai Ioniq 6 N on the road and track (and has quite a story about it); plus we answer Patreon questions including:
- Why is my Porsche trying to kill me?
- Which car company would benefit the most from an election?
- Is this watch too good to be true?
- Sports cars for tall people
- Which cars do we want despite them being bad at some things?
- Are lifted sports cars more fun even on asphalt?
- Can you really feel a tune?
- Cars that get better with mileage; cars that don't
- Why is WCCS successful?
- Should I track my new Lexus IS500?
- Ford GT or Ferrari 296?
- Can a new Porsche Turbo ever be as fast as a GT3?
- Will the Aventador SVJ be worth millions one day?
- And more!
Recorded November 10, 2025
Show Notes:
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The Smoking Tire
Zack Klapman, Matt Farah
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108:29