Magnus Walker on EVs, Porsches, and the Future of Driving

Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motortrend.

Hi there, and welcome to The Inevitable.

This is the Motortrend podcast, the Motortrend podcast about the future of mobility, the

future of cars, where we're going, how we're going to get there.

And today, it's really kind of none of those things, it's maybe about the future of the

past.

I'm not even sure how to introduce this one, but what I can tell you is I'm Johnny Lieberman,

and this guy over here, as always, is Ed Lowe, and he's got something to tell you.

Hi, the Inevitable podcast is sponsored by nobody, so we're looking for a sponsor.

If you want to throw down, just, you know, hit us up, edward.loh at Hearst.com.

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for you.

Today's guest is a guy you've talked about having on here for a long time.

I was under the impression that he didn't want to show up because he doesn't like talking

about EVs, but maybe it turns out it's not the case.

It is the man, the myth, the legend, the one and only, L.A.'s own, Magnus Walker.

The man, the myth, the beard, we should say.

Yeah, that makes me jealous.

The beard even longer than yours.

Much longer.

He's got a good beard.

Fashion sense, you know, way better than yours.

Thank you.

He is, you'll know who he is.

He's known throughout all of Cardom as the guy who tunes, has a very exceptional collection

of vintage Porsches, but also some British cars that he'll talk about.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, like people have been into Magnus's cars, like, you know,

the legendary one is his 277.

And I remember this is going back like more than 10 years, but a wealthy friend of mine

was like, hey, I hear you're going to that party tonight.

Yeah, Magnus is going to be there.

Yeah, could you just tell him I'll give him a check?

It was a ridiculous amount.

It was like three quarters of a million dollars, you know?

And I was like, hey, Magnus, you know, like my idiot rich friend wants to buy your car

for seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.

I'm in the middle of it.

And he was magnus is very cool.

No, mate, not for sale.

And so he's been this legend in the Porsche community.

But as you're going to see, he's really branching out and he's really becoming,

I don't know, like a consultant.

I don't know what the exact term is, but he's he's really got his fingers

in many automotive and non-automotive theme pies, fashion theme pies as well.

Right. So it's got a cool story.

I've read his backstory.

We actually didn't talk about it.

So I can just give you a quick summary as I as I know.

And you can correct me. Yeah.

He came to LA, you'll tell by his accent where he's from.

We want to Sheffield Sheffield.

And he said he's he's got a real rock and roll kind of aesthetic

because he comes from that era.

In fact, my understanding is he was buying t-shirts

because I go to thrift stores on like the east side of LA

and then selling them on the west side of LA and a huge markup

and then got into making rock star clothing like leather pants.

Yeah, yeah, in particular for very famous rock stars.

And from that managed to acquire some wealth.

Had a manufacturing facility in downtown also about a warehouse

was running the warehouse out for movies and TV commercials.

Made a ton of money. Still is still is.

And all along.

Sort of satisfying this insatiable desire for Porsches.

Yeah, buying them, buying them on the low end.

He was probably one of the first guys to identify the air cool.

He always tells me what he paid for a car versus what they're worth.

Now it's it's wild. Yeah.

And then really bringing that punk rock,

that rock and roll aesthetic to the Porsche community.

So that's kind of what Magnus is known for. Is that fair, fair?

Super fair. Yeah, look, I've the guy still has sewing machines.

I've been there when he wants to mock something up and he'll,

you know, start pumping the sewing machine and he'll sew in front of me.

And yeah, just just a good dude.

And and he's just, you know, he's I think it's always cool

when someone's able to like turn their passion into a livelihood.

And he's done that, you know, and he's got, you know,

more hot wheels that are Magnus Walker themed than like, you know,

than anyone else has their own hot wheels and his shoes are, you know,

a collab with Nike.

And he's always just like just kind of fingers in stuff on stuff.

And yeah, just a good dude.

And finally, on the podcast.

So without further ado, Magnus Walker.

Magnus. Long time. Long time coming.

Well, I was actually here yesterday, but that's a whole other story.

That is a whole other story.

But I heard, did I hear correctly that initially,

and this is our third or fourth year now, 118 episodes or so in,

you were like, and I don't really want to talk about EVs.

Was that accurate?

Does that come from you?

Yes and no.

I declined to be on the show, but it wasn't lie.

I don't want to talk about it.

It was because of you, Ed.

Yeah, I'm like, I don't want to hang out with Ed.

Johnny's show, different stories.

Completely, that's probably a better reason.

No, no, it was never.

I don't want to talk about EVs.

I'm not actually anti-EV.

You know, EVs serve a purpose.

You know, if we're going to talk about EVs, you know, they serve a purpose.

It's not like I'm anti-EV.

I've driven a lot of them and I've got a lot of stories about them.

Good and bad.

But no, I'm here and happy to be here.

OK, great.

I just said, it's not a gotcha show.

And of course, it's gotcha.

That's it, that's it.

Well, I was going to also apologize on camera because I don't know if you would call.

You probably didn't even open it.

During the pandemic, one of the things I did was I started watching the Great

British Bake Off, so I was baking a bunch of cakes.

Also, I started to make some jams and preserves.

And we came and do a whole bunch of citrus.

So I took a crack at marmalade and I made some.

Terrible marmalade.

And I sent it to you and to Hannah.

It was a little jar.

I sent it to my friends in New York.

And it's like totally not when you look at it, this is not marmalade

because it was it was a cloudy, you know, marmalade.

It's supposed to be like clear sort of.

Yeah, I don't know you recall.

Like you won't you won't offend me if you threw it in the trash.

But I want to apologize for that.

That's funny because during the pandemic, early on, you started making, you know,

you have a seamstress background.

I mean, COVID was a strange time.

You became a baker, I recall.

I traded you cheese bread for some handmade mass.

Face mask. Yeah.

And during COVID, while she was making the marmalade,

I also had my little spontaneous outlaw cooking show, which is great.

Well, I would do like really basic British things like beans on toast.

OK. Veggie curry.

You did four minute eggs.

Yeah, four minute eggs.

And I bought the stupid things.

And my wife's like, why did you buy this?

I go, I was I'm going to use it once and then I never had an egg

time when I was doing that.

And then I did like how to brew the perfect pot of tea.

OK, well, yeah, COVID was sort of weirdly, strangely creative times.

I think for a lot of us, myself included.

Yes. Well, I wanted to get that off my chest.

Well, thanks for the marmalade.

I mean, hopefully you haven't been carrying that around for the past,

you know, mentally for the past four or five years, so it's the first thing I wanted to say.

Today is a very cleansing day.

So I appreciate the marmalade and the cheese bread.

Well, yeah, hey, the cheese bread.

So, you know, I this the show is ostensibly about the future of filling the blank.

So I've been thinking about what we're going to have magnets on.

We can talk about a lot of things.

We can talk a lot.

We can talk about. Beards.

Cool. Beards. I can't.

Cool collector cars, the vibe within the sort of the car culture space.

Like you're so involved with all these different things.

I did want to touch on because you just said it like you do have some interesting

experience with like EVs.

You know, you're known as as the Porsche guy.

What have what has been your you said I have some good and some bad stories?

You have any any ones in particular stand out?

Well, it's interesting, you know, you label me the Porsche guy, which is true.

I am and, you know, we talk about EVs.

You can't talk about where Porsche is, you know, right now in the world.

And a lot of that is based upon, you know, going or quote unquote,

going to be going all electric.

And it seems to have really bitten them in the butt, whether it's, you know,

taking production away from what is really profitable, the 9-11 and moving

that capacity over to a production line for the Taycan and investing

a lot of money into a Taycan production, which no one really seems to want

along with an electric Macan and Macan back.

They're walking the 718, but the electric Cayenne's coming.

The three row EVs coming.

They're still kind of a mess.

They're still plowing forward in some regards with EVs.

Yeah, I mean, it's one of these things where, you know, I guess it maybe goes

back to diesel gate and then all of a sudden, you know, we've got a make up

for that. So now we're going to be the poster child for a manufacturer

going all electric by a certain time and just assuming that the customer

was going to consume what they are going to force feed them.

Hey, you've got to be driving electric.

And obviously that didn't pan out the way they thought it was going to pan out.

You know, for me, I'm not anti-electric.

I think it all depends where you're going to me.

He's driving in this commuting, right?

Sure. So if you're going from downtown LA to Santa Monica,

and it's 18 miles in room bumper to bumper traffic, as we were talking

about earlier on, trying to get to a game and it's 90 minutes to go 16 miles

or whatever it may be.

That to me is commuting and an EV vehicle is great at that.

Might as well be autonomous at that point.

But if you want to do what Hannah and I did a couple of weeks ago,

where we drove 1,061 miles from LA to Denver in 14 hours,

and that's five states, four tanks of gas over the Rockies,

kind of tricky to do that in an EV.

I think it's possible.

It's possible.

I mean, Porsche set the record for that.

I was just going to ask this question.

Hang on, but to Maggie's point, like it's definitely easier.

There's less thought involved as a driver.

You know there's gas stations.

Yeah. And so for me, the EV thing is always like you sort of

restricted to being tethered to a charging station,

which aren't always where you want them to be.

You know, there's scenarios where, for example, this is from experience.

You know, you have to find the EV charging station.

Then possibly you have to download an app, right?

Then you've got to set up an account possibly.

Then you've got to hope that that charges a rapid charger.

And then you've got to hope that, you know, you can spend the time

waiting for it to charge.

So in our experience, this has happened where we've gone through that scenario

and then the fast charger doesn't work.

So then you're in the regular charger, which takes all night to charge.

And then you've got to pay an overnight parking fee to charge someone else's car.

So those are the negatives.

It's like when the Taycan first came out, I was at that launch at Niagara Falls.

And it was great, right?

They had the launch and they opened the current Niagara Falls in the background.

And then a couple of months later, I get a press car.

I'm sure you guys all got it.

I ran into you. I remember this very well.

Right. So they drop off the press car at my downtown LA place.

And this is 2018, maybe 2019, I guess 2019.

And they tell me it's got 92 miles.

It's got a hundred and ninety two miles of range.

And I go, I'm just going to newcoms and back.

I do this all the time.

It's like 46 miles round trip, 92 miles, 92 percent of charges, what it was.

So they tell me there's a charging station around the corner from me,

which there is next to Earth Cafe.

And I'm thinking, I'm not going to need to charge this car.

I can already see in your eyes, you know where this story is going

because you've heard it a million times, but this is my experience.

So they drop it off with 92 percent of battery capacity.

By the time I get 18 miles from my warehouse

to the base of this road that we all love, I'm still at like 88 percent.

I haven't lost much charge.

But by the time I go 18 miles up to our favorite place at 5600 feet,

when I get there, you've got to remember, this is a heavy car going uphill.

I'm not really touching the brakes much and maybe carrying speed.

And you get there and I'm under 50 percent of battery capacity.

And I've got 18 miles and my goal was to go all the way to Rightwood.

And I know there's not a charging station at Rightwood.

Well, there wasn't seven years ago.

So I might have made it to Rightwood, but how am I getting back?

Yeah, so obviously you would pick up some miles and let me back.

You do it.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, Tycon, they don't do region.

They just coast when they go downhill.

So, you know, that was like first experience,

which was sure the car was fast, but all of a sudden you're concerned.

You have the Audi e-tron, same type of thing.

That was infamous.

Are we going to make it back to downtown?

We got to downtown with 12 miles of range.

And then the scenario was what I just told you.

I'm going to download the app, slow charger, wait overnight, pay overnight.

Those are the negatives.

The positive was perhaps, you know, the Fiat 500 electric car

because my other beef with electric cars is they're all extremely big,

extremely wide, extremely heavy.

But yet to me, the streets are narrower, more congested, less easy to get around.

But the positive is recently I drove the Automobilia Pinaforena Batista

and I took it again on our favorite road.

And I have a certain speed, which was my top speed on that certain road.

And I'm pretty comfortable on that road.

And in the Automobilia Batista, it was like 15, 20 miles an hour faster

than anything else had gone in on that road.

And it was the ability to put the power down.

It's like you hear this 2000 horsepower all electric hypercar.

Right. With five different modes.

And it's intimidating to begin with these guys 2000 horsepower.

Right. You got to ease into this thing.

But it was the ability to put that power down in a short amount of road

where you would go pretty quickly in a short distance because it's all instant.

And I ended up collaborating with Automobilia Pinaforena

on this all electric one of one Batista.

And to me, it was like, how did I end up in this position?

Because I remember when that car debuted at the Geneva Auto Show in 2018.

In my warehouse, there's a life size resin wind tunnel replica model

of that exact car. And there's only two of them in the world.

And I've got one of them. It's been there for two years.

But at this time, it's like, for me, this was the greatest opportunity

to collaborate with one of the world's leading automotive design houses,

Pinaforena, right? Right.

But yet at the time when no one's interested in electric hypercar.

Yeah. No one's really interested in electric Taycan.

Why are people not making smaller, more compact, more user friendly electric car?

But I would also argue, why aren't they interested?

Like I like just to fast forward a few years from your initial

Taycan experience like yesterday, I had the new RS e-tron GT.

And we went up, you know, and just crashed.

But then we went for us to Nine Mile, blasted all the way to Newcombe,

made it to my house and I only charged it to like, I think 90 percent of my house.

I got back to my house after doing all that with 52 percent of the battery left.

And we were making a video.

So I would say that was great.

Yeah, we were hauling in this thing.

They've come a long way in six years.

Yeah. Well, not to discount.

We're saying, yes, we should have a rain just like any car.

If you want a small car, get a small car.

I want a big car.

But like I just like, you know, driving, I've driven.

I drove that same yellow Pinaforena Batista you drove.

Yeah. It's amazing.

Like I was blown away by it.

I couldn't believe how much fun I had driving it.

And then this, but the Z-tron, it was 912 horsepower.

It, I think we got it.

Motortrain got it to a quarter mile in 9.9 seconds, which, you know, 911 Turbo S is 10 to it.

And it's a nice family four door that is calm around that.

Like, why aren't people interested in that is my question.

And, you know, and we've had Kyle on here, Kyle Conner.

And he's been telling me, I don't do the the.

Cross country drives.

Kyle, this guy goes all the place.

And he's been telling me like it's way better in the last five, six years.

The and, and, but he's a guy.

He's going to, he's going to have all the accounts set up.

He's evaluating the trip, planning in the car, the charging that whole thing.

So I get the concerns.

You said something super interesting, though, that, you know, you are known

not just as a Porsche guy.

You're, you're, you're kind of this, like to say, like the car companies,

the shiny bombs, as Angus would call them, the stiffs that are

deathly afraid that they're going to get it wrong.

They want to talk to a guy like you who, because you're so, you're so

connected with the culture and not just the cars, but fashion that you.

This is, there's, there's a reason why Pinafina asked you to collaborate.

So this is a longer question.

You know, the.

The Chinese have come out with some ridiculously fast cars, the fastest

lap around the Nurburgring is from some Xiaomi Su seven ultra, right?

And then another car is one 308 miles an hour.

Yeah.

There, the BYD built the car, the Yang, the Yang Wang, the Yang Wang, right?

Sounds like a jewelry store.

So it sounds like a piercing at a certain point.

Taking in a different direction right now to say, you know, these cars are incredible.

They're fast.

I've driven a few of them.

I don't know if you have, but.

And here's a, here's the fourth part of this question.

I chatted recently with Jim Farley.

Great guy.

See you afford true car guy.

Right.

And I asked him point blank, do brands matter?

Do brands matter in China?

Because like their technology, you could say some are argue it's, it's at parody

for sure or surpassed a lot of what we've done in the West, particularly on the

EV front, but they have no story to tell.

This is a, this is a country of, these are like generation 1.5 new drivers.

They're coming.

The Xiaomi comes from a, it's a mobile phone maker that's making this thing.

Like, and yet they're, and now I know, and it's a really difficult story to tell

because China is also subsidizing and the consumers are highly incentivized to

buy electric vehicles by Chinese electric vehicles and the price

service is way off.

But let me ask you who has, I think a strong sense of style and branding and

knows how to create really cool, you know, vehicles off of very well known brands.

Do brands matter?

Does, does the West have a hope with the, the legacy of automotive or is China

just going to eat everybody's lunch because the tech is, is so much

brands matter in stories, man.

I mean, these things are becoming appliances.

So it's interesting you talk about a cell phone provider or manufacturers is

providing this, right?

I mean, for me, what I like about electric cars actually is, they're

actually quiet.

The older I get, the more concerned I'm with noise because my hearing's going

in tinnitus and buzzing ears.

And my pet peeve is usually BMW, Mercedes owners with loud Acropovich

exhaust making all types of noise, but they're doing 30 miles an hour.

So in a way, the electric car, to me, I no longer antiquate speed with noise.

Yeah, throaty V8s and, you know, like high revving things and turbos, you

know, spooling and popping and whistling sound great.

And it's an emotional connection that covers all the sensors that electric

cars don't have, but speed is speed.

You just got to recalibrate your brain to not necessarily associating speed

with sound.

So that's what I'm going to talk about with, with these electric cars being

fast to me.

There's a different type of emotion where you're hearing, you know,

suspension squeak, tire squeak, not necessarily like is ringing because,

you know, you spent 18 hours like 120 decibel type thing.

So that's one thing.

I mean, stories and brands matter.

You know, Jim Follies is a great guy, right?

Talented race car driver seems extremely passionate about competing in motor

sports. Ironically, he was just racing at Watkins Glen with my buddy

Camming Room and the Ford GTD last weekend and the Gunna Coda and the

racing together. And I've met Jim Folly a couple of times and he's just

an engaging guy that's really passionate.

He listened to him talk about motor sports and heritage and wanting to

go conquer off road and do some sort of Dakar type of thing.

And actually, actually putting his money where his mouth is, it seems by

competing.

On the other hand, you've got my favorite team, Porsche, who's really driven

by marketing, right?

So one of my beefs there is, you know, they'll do certain things like

they're doing this clean synthetic fuel, right?

And then they bring out this Dakar 992 and they tie into the heritage of it,

but they don't actually compete in that car.

You know, it's like the real proof of the pudding would have been to do

what Ford did, where Ford also had a synthetic fuel.

And I think they raced it in a truck on the Baja 1000 here.

Porsche is not doing that because they seem to be driven by marketing.

They're going to talk about the 40 year heritage to the Dakar and show

photos of Jackie X in the desert on the sea, and they're going to have

the Oriental carpet out and they're creating this story.

But the real win would have been to do the Dakar, maybe, you know,

the Edith car that set the altitude record.

And that's a whole nother story.

And actually, let's build a car and go compete in the Dakar

along with other manufacturers.

Put that, you know, the volcano crawler, as I call it, put that in production.

Well, it is a crazy thing.

I got to drive the quote unquote volcano, whatever you call it, Edith, right?

And we all heard that story of the world's highest altitude.

And I just assumed they drove 3,000 miles across Chile.

I didn't realize they probably drove 20 miles from the base camp

that was already seven eighths up the hill.

And then that hill was the proving ground for every other manufacturer,

Land Rover, G-Wagon.

But the marketing makes you think, oh, they've driven all across Chile

and conquered this thing.

It was like less than seven miles.

To your point, if they made the Edith the Dakar and actually ran it

on the synthetic fuel that the building or manufacturing in Chile

and did the Dakar and competed in an actual competition.

But part of my beef there is they create these events

where they're not competing against anyone physically wheel to wheel.

We set our own record, set our own record.

It's like the fastest indoor round around a whatever stadium

or the fastest someone's ever gone on an aircraft landing strip on water.

Right. But they're not competing wheel to wheel.

Right. Ford is competing wheel to wheel.

Right. Jim Fowler is actually racing and giving feedback.

And you look at what Ford is doing and factoring people like Von Getten,

who are doing rock crawling out at King of Hammers and drifting.

And obviously, Porsche is doing extremely well in motorsports.

Don't get me wrong.

Well, first of all, I like that we pivoted into the whipping,

the making Porsche the whipping boy for some of it's very deserved.

Like right now I see on social, you know, they pulled out a WEC.

And that is that is they're getting heat for that.

Of course. But, you know, the same week, they're announcing,

hey, we're doing a collaboration with Smeg, right?

And we're doing a fridge and a toaster in in the livery of Dick Atwood's

1970 Le Mans winning car.

I go, it's great.

But that was 55 years ago.

Can you guys do something a little bit better than pull out this livery,

whether it's martini or whatever?

So that to me is trading on heritage and history, which should be great.

But you just kind of watering down the brand by, OK, we've got a cappuccino maker

that's eight grand and the best we can do is a martini livery.

And now I don't know what a Smeg fridge and toaster cost,

but you're going to put it on a race livery from 1970 Le Mans.

I go, this is marketing that's sort of done to me from a.

I've been into Porsche for 45 years.

I've owned them for thirty three years.

I've owned a lot front and mid and rear.

I'm running on a boy with a list.

It's just kind of irritating that.

What is it? I love it.

Too much of a marketing thing.

What you're saying, I'm telling you, I know a lot of people

they don't have a collection quite like yours, but they have, you know,

tens of Porsches and they're saying the same thing to me.

They're annoyed.

They don't like how the price just keeps like skyrocketing.

Well, for basically a refreshed version of what they already own.

Friend of mine who has, you know, nine Porsches.

He's now a BMW guy, got an M five, got an I seven.

He's like, these are the greatest vehicles.

He's like, if you like heavy vehicles, whatever.

I mean, but, you know, he there he said he took his wife

and another couple to Santa Barbara for the weekend on the I seven.

Didn't have to charge it, got back fine.

M five. That's his like daily commuter.

He loves it. And, you know, I took an M five up to Monterey.

I also happen to take a Panamera, you know, Turbo S E hybrid.

M five is a better road trip car.

It was just it was just a better road trip car.

Well, same power bag.

I'll bring back to Porsche and just defend them a little bit on this WC thing.

Because I get it. Racing is expensive.

Porsche. Yeah, but they make their bones by race.

Porsche did 100 percent.

Let's talk about Formula E if you want.

Well, because they stayed in for that.

That's what they.

He is my thing with Formula E.

When Porsche last won at Le Mans was 2017.

I was there too.

And that was their last win.

So Porsche hadn't been in that endurance arena.

They returned in 2014, right?

2014, they don't win.

15, 16, 17.

Hattrick, three in a row were done.

We've got the most wins at Le Mans were done in 2017.

Then we go over to Formula E, right?

And now I'm not anti Formula E.

I've I went to a Formula E race in Long Beach in 2017

when they had two cars because the battery

tape didn't run long enough and they'd come in and swap cars.

So I've been on a Formula E now for almost eight, nine, ten years.

Right. So I'm not anti.

I attended a Formula E race in Mexico City,

which is one of the greatest events I was supposed to go.

The fires happened.

Well, Hannah and I met at a Formula

E race in Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2017.

That's right. We met at a Formula E race.

So I've got ties to Formula E.

So Porsche bales out of 24 weight, whatever it was called back there.

I'm we're going to go to Formula E and they're still in it seven, eight,

nine years later and they're doing a lot better than they were.

But for the first five, six years, they didn't win anything.

But you look at Formula E, it's shared chassis, shared battery pack.

Porsche is providing certain things, right?

But it's it's almost a semi-spec series.

Right. Yeah. And they're not actually

win, they're not actually doing spectacular in that in that series.

And I don't think it's really helped anything regarding a

consu... Formula E races are fun, because they're short, but it's not a race.

And the it is a race, but no one cares because no,

there's no hero and villain in Formula E.

There's no Ford versus Ferrari.

There's no Schumacher, no Vettel, no Verstappen, no Hamilton.

Yeah, there's no drama and everything looks the same.

So the problem with Formula E is, is that right there?

No one really cares.

People attend those events, but they don't know who's racing.

They don't know who's winning. They don't care.

Right. So it hasn't done anything for Porsche.

I don't think to increase sales in EVs by being in Formula E.

Then they come back to WC, right?

They return to Le Mans.

But who's won Le Mans the last three times? Ferrari.

Yeah. So how, you know,

Porsche is a motorsports engineering brand that's built on,

you know, technology and advancement.

And my big peeve is going to come back to the naturally aspirated GT3,

GT3 RS, every variation of it, ST this and whatever it is that.

And they've obviously maxed out the internal combustion capacity

of that four liter to meet today's emissions, right?

Yeah. So to make it win, they win GT3.

They win on the track with those cars.

Got it. But I'm bringing it to the street now.

So these street cars really are too much of a race car for the street

and to make them go faster in real in real world track environments,

big wings, big diffusers, lower gearing.

To me, this is making the cars actually slow,

a louder, wider, less user friendly on the street.

And no one's really driving them because you've got to.

It's my ultimate pet peeve.

You got an allocation for one that you didn't some paint to sample color

that you don't want to drive because you don't want to devalue.

You don't want to put miles on it.

So I'm going to stop that round there and tell you on a more positive note.

Today, I drove my 2014 991 Turbo S that as of right now

has two hundred thousand one hundred and ninety four miles on it

as it sits outside in that car park.

Yeah. And it's 11 years old.

Do you? I drove it real quick.

I drove it when I had two thousand miles ago and I had one hundred and ninety

nine thousand. Yeah. Now it's over two hundred thousand.

Yeah. Are you.

So yeah, I'm rambling.

I don't ever answer your question.

No, it's it's great. This is this.

It's all good stuff.

Do you have a problem with the skyrocketing prices of the nine eleven

in particular? I mean, five years ago, you could buy you could buy nine eleven

under one hundred thousand dollars.

Now, it's I think the lowest one thirty is one twenty.

I think it's one twenty for a career. Maybe.

But I mean, like, like, you know, I've had GTS is over two hundred grand.

I mean, Porsche, to answer your question, yes, I do.

But I'm going to back it up.

I've never owned a new car.

I've never. I've never owned a new Porsche.

And I've always bought whatever it is, but mostly Porsche's

before they became over sort of trendy.

I bought what I liked and what I wanted to experience.

And I was a goal orientated collector.

So whether it was short wheel based cars, early three liter turbos,

whatever it may have been, I got into them when they were affordable.

So that's the question is, you know, Porsche will say we're building

the true enthusiast driving car that stripped out bare bones, whatever.

Just put a number on the back of it or a letter out of the alphabet.

A to Z, right? These fifty seven varieties of nine eleven.

It might as well be a Heinz ketchup thing.

And they may be cars for the enthusiast stripped down,

but the enthusiasts cannot afford them. Right.

So, yeah, I'm not a fan of that unaffordable price point.

I'm just not.

But I've never bought a new anything, let alone a new Porsche.

The industry loves it because every other car manufacturer

is trying to figure out how they can get the margin that Porsche.

Sure. But I mean, I would say I pay attention to who is buying GT threes.

And what everyone's doing and it breaks my heart is no wing.

They want the touring.

They want the back seat and they want the comfort seats.

And then they're and then somebody figured out if you put like, I forget,

if you take off the Dunlaps or the Cup twos and you put on, I don't know,

a Pirelli, it's quieter.

So like they want the GT three for the flex, but they don't want a GT three.

They don't actually want a race car.

They want a turbo.

They should get a turbo.

Well, they have a turbo, but they want a GT three.

Here's the thing. It's like the ST, right?

I don't even know what those things are valued at today.

But, you know, I've driven one.

The gears are short, light and fly wheel, smaller clutch diameter,

it's clanky, it's shuddery.

It's actually louder than a GT Threes, because it took out the sound insulation.

The gear ratios are too short, because third feels like second.

And it's like to make power, to make not even power, to make speed and velocity.

You have to rev the crap out of them, right?

Which is really doesn't matter if it revs to 9000 RPM,

because who gets to spend much?

You're lucky if you ever get to 9000 on the street.

It's rare.

And it's a street car, not a track car, right?

So you're not spending much time at that RPM

unless you're on the crest or something like that.

So back to, yes, the Swiss Army knife of all 9-Eleven's really is a turbo,

Turbo S. It's practically when I bought that car that's outside,

I bought it with 161,000 miles on it.

One owner car, mature owner, not modified.

It wasn't like four bros thrashing the shit out of it, trying to make a thousand horsepower.

But when I first got it, I didn't love it.

I didn't look over my shoulder and look at it.

And I didn't even modify it to begin with.

And it really was an appliance, you know, and I bought it for pennies on the dollar.

But when I did my first long road trip, which was L.A. to Moab, Utah, in a day.

And I didn't get out with my ears buzzing and ringing in my back dinning.

And I realized that was when I realized it was the Swiss Army knife of 9-Eleven's.

You're commuting at 10 miles an hour in bumper to bumper traffic.

It's great.

You know, you want to go faster.

Be favorite road.

It's as fast as anything else.

Yeah, or you can do a thousand miles in a day or faster.

Probably faster.

I mean, I mean, there's things I don't like about it,

like Centrelock wheels are a real pain on a street car.

If you ever get a puncture, which happens all the time here,

it still shares the same plasticky switch gear that you might get in a base boxer,

which nothing against the base box.

But Turbo S is top of the line, right?

Yeah, if that was an Aston or any other car,

it'd be something bespoke out of turn, whatever aluminum or walnut.

It feel a bit more special.

I think that's a problem with high end porches.

Like I remember, you know, we had the Cayenne Turbo GT, which is, you know,

buck 90, $200,000 car, and it's the same interior as a base Cayenne.

And it visually looks about the same.

Yeah. I mean, so it's like, you got to be a real

Porsche fan of a real fast SUV.

Who's who's buying the $200,000

Cayenne? I think I think that is a problem.

I think they kind of solved it now because everything now is a screen.

But I remember in that is backlash against that.

No, but in the era of of your Porsche

and for probably 10 years afterwards, I just remember how

they really made a good job of making you feel poor,

like you didn't spend enough money because if you didn't spec it all the way out,

right, you'd have you'd have all the blank.

Yeah. I mean, Porsche, I mean, it's been like that.

It's like when the turbo came out for the US market in 76,

it only came with a driver's side mirror.

Right. Passenger side mirror was an option was an option. Right.

So I mean,

Porsche seems the most celebrity orientated brand.

Well, we're going to get celebrities from all genres,

whether it's a tennis player, a DJ, a pop singer, an actor.

They just love celebrities to endorse product.

And maybe the kind of I get in a way, I get it, you know,

they need a new audience.

So but I don't see any other brand doing it.

Porsche wants to kind of does.

I don't think to the same level.

Well, what they what they were Mercedes is able to do.

And they're it took them a while.

But they were wise about it.

They have Mercedes Benz, but then they have Mercedes AMG.

Yeah, and my book and they have Mercedes my book right now.

And so you can, you know, you can go crazy in that direction.

Whereas Porsches are still a Porsche.

Yeah, there's two GT cars.

You know, there's the right three in the RS.

But there's a very low volume, relatively speaking.

So they, you know, like when they do the Dua Lipa tie up with the 911,

doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Now, if they made like a, you know, making this up, yeah.

Porsche, my book, you know, they had a Porsche luxury house,

which would make sense for the Cayenne. Right.

You know, I mean, kind of like what Rolls Royce did. Yeah.

I don't see any of these celebrity endorsements

and whatever you're going to call them.

Ambassador ships really helping because the company is in a worse position

than it's ever been with the stock where it's at.

You know, they just got rid of Ollie Bloom would be in there for 10 years.

But this new guy, and it was there before I, I mean,

it's kind of strange waters over there.

And it makes, yeah, I'm still a fan of the brand.

Don't get me wrong.

But hey, so let's, so let's, we'll just ask one more.

We'll quit slagging on directly and just ask.

Because you are an Uber collector.

What is there such a thing as

an undervalued or stealth buy for any Porsche?

I think like the 1968.

1968. Yeah. Interesting.

1968 is the best of the four bank, you know,

you start with the unloved front engine.

Vassica called, you know, a water called Transaxle cars,

which we know debuted in 76 with the 924 entry level, affordable.

Porsche VW Audi, right?

And that evolved into the 944.

But the 968, three liter, four cylinder, most sophisticated.

You don't have to rev the nuts off it.

The quality, the fit and finish is actually better

because it's sharing parts, ironically, with the 993.

So to me, the hidden gem.

Five years ago, I would have said 996, right?

But that ship's already sailed.

996 was the bargain first water cooled undervalued,

especially a turbo, something like that.

What about what about first generation Cayman?

The Cayman, Cayman S. Are you are you a Cayman guy?

Yes, I am. I've never owned one,

but I would say two of my top ten all time drives have been in in Cayans.

Actually is is where I'm going to go with this.

Cayman is on my list.

I want a Cayman R or Cayman S.

And I think they do represent good value.

But a Cayan, you know, I drove across Australian one.

I've driven in a spirited drive from Bogota to Medellin

in Columbia, room one, the Trans-Siberia or something more so.

Well, if you could get one of those, those are now pretty collectible.

But you know, you can get a genuine Cayan, I think for 10 grand, right?

But the problem is, you know, that that's some real labor

when when something goes wrong. Yeah, I was talking to someone who's

I'm like, you know, how is it to they made a Trans-Siberia clone?

And he's like, it took about 24 hours to do the door panels.

I'm like, what? You wouldn't believe because it's it's from that Piek era

where everything was overbuilt and it was, you know, shared with the the the the

Torag Torag. That's only two thousand.

You know, they're building the Veyron, they're building the Peyton,

they're building the Torag Cayan.

They go must be incredible off-road for nobody need that.

But they made an incredible off-roader, you know, so just super overbuilt.

I agree. That's what people forget.

A lot of those those Gen one SUVs, the luxury SUVs, they were like

like the Infinity QX four wasn't it's insane off-road.

It's got like at least double lockers.

Yeah, that was a pathfinder.

Yeah. The the OG Mercedes ML also really, really good off-road.

Yeah, they didn't know.

Like maybe the first one who said we're going to build an SUV for the street.

Right. Mercedes was first, you know, with actually Lexus was first.

Right. All right. But, you know, they said it's got to be super off-road capable

for no reason. No one's going off-road.

But to answer your question, yes.

Gen one Cayman, Cayman S.

For me, I always wanted a Cayman R.

I kind of miss that boat because they've gone.

I'd say no one's asking me.

But I'd say the 987 Boxster Boxster S.

To me, that is such a like 20 years old now, such a honey of a car.

I just like a roof on my head because, you know, the beard's blowing around

in the wind and it's getting in my eye.

So Gen one Cayman or Cayman or even less

a gnome is nine six eight. Yeah.

OK. So let's go back to the branding question.

So you've done you've done collabs.

If a Chinese car company said, we got to get this guy Magnus,

we need to endorse our

our our awesome electric crossover, our Yang Wang, our Yang Wang, whatever.

How does that conversation go?

Is there a universe where you'd say why?

Yes, yes, I do.

Or what would you need to hear?

Or how many dollar signs would they need to throw?

I mean, like what what what is it?

And I assume you get approached all the time.

Yeah, I mean, how does how does how does that how does that work for you?

Never say never.

I mean, I've been approached a lot in the past two, three years.

You know, I did that collaboration with TWA on the Supercat.

We should actually talk about that.

We'll talk about that.

So we'll come back to that.

So I thought it was three years ago, it's still happening.

So in that three year period, I've been approached by a lot of

mostly vintage electric car conversion companies, whether they're doing Broncos

or VW buses, or hey, we want to put our foot in the Porsche world

by having an electric SC or whatever it may be.

And we'd love to pick your brain on on concepts and collaborations

and design and stuff like that.

You know, the current one, Monday morning, I'm actually meeting

someone who wants to talk about a vintage electric Rolls Royce.

Now we're talking, you know, because you know, we're talking.

Hannah and I are in our vintage Rolls Royce era, 60s, 70s and 80s

because he's represent how many do you have now?

We've got four and the next one's going to be a Bentley.

But, you know, next rolls will be a Bentley.

Of course. But they're just so affordable.

You pick them up all day long in the teens for running, driving cars.

So to answer your question, I'm all about doing cool shit with cool people.

It doesn't matter where they're based in the world,

but it has to be something that I'm connected to emotionally

and I'm passionate about it.

Like the Jag was something I actually wanted to do myself.

Pininfarina was like, how can you, you know, when that happened,

it was a pinch you moment. You don't say no.

You know, I mean, there's certain things like in the past couple of weeks,

I've started doing my getting re re sort of creative by putting tape on a car.

Like there's lots of ways to sort of come up with concepts, right?

Whether it's AI and you just do it in chat, GPT and 10 seconds later it's done

or whether you're doing renderings on a computer, Photoshop, Illustrator,

whatever it may be. I'm a quick sketch, doodle, 30 second guy.

And I love to put paper tape visually on a car because an hour later,

you're like, wow, it's actually here in life size form.

So just me going through that process for my own personal,

I guess out of boredom, re inspired me to sort of create

because sometimes I'm like creative and sometimes I'm not.

So I just like doing cool stuff.

Recently I saw what Deis had done with BMW group on that mini

that they debuted in the Munich Auto show.

I'm like, wow, this is riding my ballpark.

You know, I visited many BMW.

So many people have come to the warehouse from A to Z, literally,

whether it is Audi all the way through to whoever's on the Z end of the thing.

And the most recent one, believe it or not, was Tesla.

You know, Tesla brought 12 of their design students down.

And this all happened organically when we happened to go to the Tesla Diner.

And I'm not necessarily a Tesla fan, but yet never say never.

Right. So we actually went and had a burger at the Tesla Diner.

And how was the burger? Burger was good.

OK, I was Franz Von Holston there who came up to me and got it.

So we didn't have to wait in line.

Franz was there.

Franz was happy to be there.

It was like the first week that it opened up.

So Franz was on this podcast.

He's our second highest by views.

Oh, really? First is Jay Leno by a huge margin.

Magnus will be in France.

Yeah, OK. Maybe I'm on the podium.

That's us and good, good company.

But no, so Franz came up to me at the Tesla Diner and said, you know,

do you want a tour?

And there was a line of 200 people in line.

And we were at the back of the line because, you know, we just turned up.

Hannah and I and I go, sure.

So he showed us around with whoever the star chef is over there doing the grilled cheese

and gave us the tour of the place and hung out and had a conversation.

And he's got a pair of the nikes and, you know, it was one of those moments

just like how I met Dave Deegan at Pininfarina.

He was when my Nike shoe and I met him the year before a quail.

So all these things happen extremely organically.

I don't have a manager, PR person, agent calendar.

It's just, yeah, I don't have a calendar.

You know, I turn up for things 24 hours early.

So, you know, that's how I am.

So these things happen organically.

OK, so how did you are happen?

Because that to me is I explain explain that car.

But yeah, explain the T.W.R.

Super cat for everybody.

I was there. Yeah, I was there.

Let me explain it to you.

And then I'll tell you how the story went.

Yeah. So T.W.R. stands for Tom

Walkinshaw Racing for those that don't know Tom Walkinshaw

British born racer became an engineering motorsports team owner

raised in the 70s and 80s.

One up bath those British touring car champion in the greatest videos

of all time is the the T.W.R.

Bathurst just insane.

And so the T.W.R.

Bathurst is a Jag XJS. So cool.

But T.W.R. also developed and raced

stuff for Volvo of Alpha and numerous others.

But the real claim to fame is they are, I guess,

what AMG is to Mercedes. Right.

So Jag approached T.W.R.

to help develop the XJ220, the XJR, the XJ15 and Jag's

last win at Le Mans in 1988 was really a T.W.R.

Silk car, silk car, that was T.W.R.

So British motorsports engineering firm.

After that, T.W.R.

ended up owning the Arrows F1 team.

So it's everything from British touring car

to Bathurst, the wins at Le Mans to owning an F1 team.

Unfortunately, Tom Walkinshaw passed in the early 2000s.

Company goes Dorman, his son Ferguson over the past

five, six years, he's tinkering in his in his garage,

modifying all types of cars, not just Jags.

So how I got involved is, ironically, I've always been a Jag guy.

I've owned all three generations of E-types, XJ6s.

I did this thing for how you to call the next big thing,

where I actually featured the Jag XJS.

I remember that one.

You know, it was a car I'd always liked.

And around that time, well, even earlier than that, in 2018,

I was talking to Ian Callum, another Geneva Auto show thing.

And at the time, Jagger just in Callum,

had done his Hot Rod XJ6 coupe and Jag heritage at the 2018

Geneva Auto show was debuting Nicole McBain's, the drummer for

my and Maiden's custom XJ6 guy.

And I said, hey, I've got this idea.

I really want to do an outlaw Hot Rod British

touring car, DTM wide-bodied Hot Rod XJS.

Because no one had really messed with the XJS.

And they liked the idea, but Ian then left Jag.

And it just never went anywhere.

And the XJS, you know, is a car that obviously could never

live up to the success of the E-type that came before it.

Yeah. But in reality, they sold more

XJSs than they did E-types.

But it was plagued with problems.

It was in production from 75 all the way through, I think 96.

It was a 21 year run.

The E-type only went from 61 to 75, 14 years.

So I had this idea, like I just mentioned, and in 2022,

almost this time, three years ago, I got a call, ironically,

from a former Porsche employee marketing guy called Lee Newton,

who had relocated back to England.

He was no longer with Porsche and he said, I've got this crazy idea.

I'm collaborating and I'm working with TDRA as a consultant

on this Hot Rod XJS project.

And we want to know, would you like to be involved

as a design consultant?

And I go, you must be a mind reader.

He goes, well, I go, I've wanted to do something like this

for the past six years.

Right. I go, sure, I'd love to be involved.

That's crazy. I didn't know that well.

That was how that story went.

So I was involved from the they'd been working on this project

probably for a year before that.

They brought me in and then I brought Kaisal and Kaisal Salim

to be the chief head designer.

And then we were off to the races.

We debuted the car almost a year ago at my place in downtown LA.

We were both there.

Yeah, you were there.

And then we took it to F1 in Vegas and we took it to the LA Auto Show.

Then it did the rounds.

But the greatest thing about that car was it was a Goodwood Festival of Speed

this summer.

It was two tenths of a second outside of the top 10 in 11th place

with a sub 56 second run.

It was one of the crowd favorites, even Goodwood itself,

the motorsports feed on social media was saying this was their favorite car.

The way it sounded, the way it looked.

It was awesome. I started with the hills several times.

And by the way, that top 10, like there was, you know, an F1 car.

Right. It was number one.

That insane Subaru Project Midnight with Scott F1 driver.

Right. It was number two.

Like being close to the top 10 in a XJS.

It's very strange.

So what it is, is I guess you'd call it a rest on mod.

It's a V12 Supercharged, 660 horsepower, six speed, manual, two wheel drive,

carbon fiber, wide bodied XJS.

Don't call it a Jag.

It's a TWR Supercar.

So the fact that those guys had done a lot of

shakedown development testing of that car.

So the and that's why they were confident to send it up the hill.

A lot of people do Goodwood and they'll do parade laps up the hill, right?

But he won't compete for a time.

Right. So the fact that this new start up company, right,

with a new car in essence, was doing a time that was extremely competitive.

So the goal there is to make an 88 of them,

which is in reference to the win outright with Jagged Lamont and 88

with the silk car.

I'm still involved as a design consultant.

That car is going to come back here.

So guys like you can drive it and Leno can get in it.

And I'm still involved in that project.

So I'm a Porsche guy, but I've owned lots of different cars.

You know, I think you all share the love of automotive, right?

Whether it's the build, the drive, the community.

That's probably the story I tell about you the most,

because I don't know if you remember, but I was in the Ferrari 296

and I whipped it up the hill to Newcombe's and you're just standing there.

You happen to literally, there's Magnus standing in front of Newcombe's

like for some reason and I get out.

Well, this was on a Tuesday when Norm was in.

Yeah. And I go, Magnus, enough with the F in Porsches.

And you look at me and you go, I'm a Ferrari owner.

I got a Ferrari. That's true.

At that time, I think I had that 308 GTB for the Bertone, the Numpen.

The Numpen, if I read it well.

So thank you for telling the story on the TBR Supercat.

I was there at the reveal and you and Kaisal Kaisal did all of the exterior design.

It was a collaborative thing.

Kaisal was lead designer.

There were certain things I fought for.

Lou was on the bonnet, the channeled hood on the rear duct tail part of it.

But, you know, he's lead designer.

It was a group involvement.

But yeah, he's really the guy behind.

And were you involved in real quick?

Because I love the interior of that car.

And thank you.

I think, you know, I was like the first or second person to sit in it.

Which is really cool.

How much involvement in the interior did you have?

I spec that car, dude.

So that color combo, the Cricut Bowl, Augsblood interior, you know,

a lot of people like this thing should be British racing green.

And yes, it looks it.

There's not a color that the Supercat doesn't look good.

And Kaisal has done a lot of renderings.

And we've yet to find a color that that silhouette does not look good.

Yes, I saw the pink one that looked good.

All right, well, I'm going to I'm just going to lob a small,

very small hand grenade into this conversation, because I was there with

there were a lot of people there.

It was at your place.

You it was a masterfully done event.

And then I saw it because it went to the LA auto show shortly after

Sasha's slept in his car and was there was a corner where I think these

all road stage. Yes. Right at the front.

Yes. Where we closed it out over Thanksgiving Day.

Exactly. So I saw I saw multiple points after its debut.

And I heard from some car design people

that they were not digging the design as much.

And I think they were mostly annoyed that Kaisal is not one of them.

He's not like an art center guy.

Or I don't know if you heard any of that.

Sure. Sure. I mean, you know, you hear it all the good, the bad, the ugly.

But again, you see that thing in motion.

I will say like I was like, it's cool.

Glad my friend Magnus did this.

Right. Cool. Good.

You know, hope you got some money out of it.

Fun. I didn't think much of the car.

Then Jethro drove it.

Yeah. He's like, you won't believe how good it is.

And Jethro and I tend to be like really locked in when the way we feel about cars.

We just have the same opinions.

And then I saw it at Goodwood and I was like, oh, I got I called you.

I was like, I got to drive this thing.

When is it coming back to LA?

So it's coming back early next year.

My point was it looked good in motion.

And I think seeing a car in a stand and seeing a car in sunlight is a big difference.

And it looked really good to answer a question on the on the specific question

of our center design students feedback, good, bad or ugly.

Some of these were actual design or working design.

Sure. So student.

It doesn't matter. I mean, they're all one big club.

We all have opinions, right? Right.

You know, we all have personal taste.

You know, that car is not for everyone's taste level.

You know, some people think it's too this, too that, too wide.

You know, it's it's not form and function.

It's not a smooth silhouette, whatever it may be.

You know, that's that's what we agreed upon.

That's what we're all happy with.

And obviously, you know, there's going to be people that are for it and people that are against it.

I mean, if it's polarizing to me, it's actually a good thing.

If everybody liked it, you'd have a problem.

Yeah, you'd have a problem.

You'd have something that's bland, like an appliance, right?

So it doesn't bother me.

I'm not offended by it.

You know, it is what it is.

Well, in that vein, let me just shift to another story.

Because you mentioned one of our favorite designers, Ian Callum,

who's also been on the show. Yeah.

Where did he rank in the in the top 119?

Honestly, Carter's. I don't think he was on the show, by the way.

Yeah, he went.

He went now. No, I wasn't.

But no, I was with Ian and you and Nico at the bar in Geneva.

That was a fun night.

He's a great guy.

I really, really like Ian's coolest.

One of the coolest things I ever did was I took a press drive with Jag and all eight

generations of the XJ from the factory in England.

Took the long way around to the Paris auto show overnight on the ferry.

Drove through Le Mans.

And believe it or not, eight generations of Jag, not one of them broke down,

which is kind of unbelievable.

And Ian was on that drive.

And, you know, I joke, you're either British or you want to be, you know,

and it's just something he's just and he's Scottish, I think.

But, you know, yeah, same thing.

Well, Google AI says we said we had him.

You guys don't know.

So he's inventing an interview on it.

Anyway, well, hang on.

So that's the question.

So this is the question because it's it's a funny one and shoot, I just lost it.

OK, so comedy show now.

Hell yeah, brother.

Hell yeah, brother. OK.

So you recognize.

We'll put this on screen for folks.

You this new S class.

Did you say you see that you saw this class?

It's just this concept.

It's a vision.

Vision Mercedes Benz.

It's called the vision.

You saw it came out about two weeks ago or something.

It's like if Darth Vader drove a vision.

Yeah, I don't know if you can see the comment that Ian wrote just below this.

This is this was on this is on that threads,

which is like the Facebook's version of Twitter.

What's he's coming?

If you can't design dot dot dot just shout louder.

Oh, there you go.

So shout it out loud and proud.

His beef, I think, is I don't know.

It's kind of a retro.

Yeah, and it just has a big grill on the front.

It's a great I agree with him.

Oh, I totally disagree.

However, I like that night in Geneva.

Back in Geneva.

It's an evening.

So I was with McLaren and they had launched the Senate.

That was the day when they launched the Senate and we're all I have a photo of you

in the car, the Geneva auto show.

Yes, but we're all well.

Ian and me.

I won't tell you anyone else.

I don't think he'd mind.

We've had quite a bit to drink at this point and I was I was sitting there

this screen McLaren like what it just looks terrible.

It's like such an ugly car.

And so one of the peer guys is trying to explain to me why it's so beautiful

and the form and function, what are all the normal nonsense.

And I had the car on my phone and Ian comes over, sits next to me, grabs my

phone and just starts staring at him and goes, it didn't have to look like this.

You chose to make it look like this.

Stop saying it had to.

And there were McLaren was bummed out because who's going to argue with, you

know, Ian Cowan's design, but it was a that was a night.

That was a that was a good night.

That's the fun part of this job.

Good. Yeah, good time.

And hanging out with Nico is like, you know, well, the coolest.

I look this will put it on screen, but this vision concept.

It's I, I, I submit that it's the kind of vehicle.

If you go back a hundred years, the manufacturers were making

right before the Great Depression.

Absolutely.

Which is not a great depression.

Beautiful cars.

Those cars, you know, I mean, to me, one of my favorite cars is that

round door Rolls Royce at the Pete's and Scott 34, 36.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's the one for driving.

Yeah, but I mean that that look, yeah, they're grandiose.

We have a we have a very healthy oligarch class in this world now.

They need 20 foot long, you know, stately vehicles.

We have Rolls Royce.

If they've got people spending 20, 30 million dollars on these custom bespoke,

you know, yeah, I love that.

I mean, the name is terrible, the vision iconic quest or whatever.

It's not a good name.

Mercedes does a lot with that vision.

Well, vision vision has always been one of their concepts.

The original vision sounds better in German.

Sounds better in German.

Looks great in black.

It's it's a sinister and it's and you look sinister to it.

Yeah, it looks it looks like the Autobahn courier from 1938, you know,

the 540 K, the best looking one of all time.

That grill is just it's it's what a Mercedes should look like.

Because remember this current generation of Mercedes was sort of designed

like around the financial crisis.

And so they were like they were sort of especially with the S class.

They said, ah, you know, like people don't have money.

Like we should we should kind of hide the fact that they're expensive.

And this is a very German thing.

It's very German.

This is now like, well, screw that.

And that's the face of, you know, Mercedes coming up.

It's going to. So I was wrong.

We had we had him.

Spoken to whatever throttle.

Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Different show, a different show.

I was I was there. I interviewed.

That was a great interview.

Yes, by the way, that was like 12 years ago.

It was a man.

I'm old. Time flies are not fun.

So. So what are you working on?

What's what's the next big project?

And is there anything you want to disclose?

This will be on a couple of weeks.

And can I have your watch?

Yes.

Sure, you can have my watch.

You know, kidding, kidding, kidding.

There you go. Catch it.

There you go.

I was just in New York,

actually with Uncle Phil doing some modeling.

Yeah, I just returned from a Texas road trip.

Road trip down to Texas.

Oh, this is Mr. Enthusiast.

What I don't know what's called, I'd say it's the Phil's watch.

The company is called Toledano Chan.

That's the B1.

Now, what I love about that watch is most people do a watch collab

and they're taking an existing watch and just changing the color

of something and putting some decals on it.

Right. Phil actually took inspiration

from a brutalist Marcel Brewer building.

They met Brewer in New York,

poured concrete building and designed that whole thing.

The case, the strap.

Does this look like the window, right?

Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly where the inspiration came

from the Marcel Brewer poured concrete building on Madison Avenue.

So, you know, he designed the whole thing.

It wasn't just like, let's let's color a dial of some sort.

Wait, is it upside down or is it? No, wait.

No, it's Johnny's actually got it right.

It's a left winder. Yeah, a left winder.

So what's next, you know, so I would wear it.

You just slip it on the way it is. This way.

Isn't it isn't the window facing the wrong way?

Let me see the way the wind is going up.

Yeah, no, that's great. That's right.

Yeah, you got it. I love that watch.

Actually, he's the is a meteorite dial recently.

Yeah, I mean, he's on a roll.

He's on a roll with all types of things.

I don't want to.

I'm just going to.

So 20 question, what's next for me?

Hannah and I are working on a coffee table book,

which is, believe it or not, a Porsche book.

It's my my own personal 20 cards that I've built, modified and restored.

We should probably pause.

And even though it's at the end of the podcast and now to Hannah.

Hannah, you're better half.

My better half, Hannah, as we said earlier,

we met at the Formula E race in Red Oak, Brooklyn in 2017.

She writes for Bloomberg Business Week, Luxury Goods Rider.

Yes, you've likely seen some of her coverage, her posts.

She is all over automotive in a different way than most.

And kind of a big podcast for these days, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Hannah's got a podcast called Hot Pursuit with Matt Miller,

who's a Bloomberg financial bro.

So she's got a weekly podcast.

She's often on Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV.

She cannot come on this podcast

because Bloomberg does not allow people to come.

Even the Wall Street Journal allowed Sean to come on, which was.

Yeah, what's up with Bloomberg, is it?

Bloomberg operates by a different set of standards.

Apparently.

We just put it that way.

Much higher.

Yeah.

Different set of standards.

So yeah, Hannah, my who's my wife and I are working on a book

that's coming out where it's my 20 Porsches.

So we're collaborating together.

I'm telling the story.

She's riding it and got a bunch of great photos from people like Larry Chan.

So the goal here is to show the cars

that I built front engine, mid engine, rear engine in motion.

So none of this is shot in a studio.

It's Ocean Doesn't Mountain daytime nighttime.

20 chapters, 20 cars, 20 stories.

Who's the imprint?

Do we know yet?

Yes, Artisan books.

OK, so it was an interesting process.

We actually got in a in a bidding war

and we actually took the second highest bid ironically.

So it's never about money with me.

It was about the deciding factor was the book size.

And, you know, Artisan was more willing to work around the book

size that I really wanted.

It's not oversized because the problem with oversized books

is it's too heavy.

You don't want to read.

You look at them once and that's it.

They're sort of like the magic size

and like everything in, you know, size matters.

And in the end, it was like an inch.

That was it.

That was the deciding factor was an extra inch.

But it just felt like it meant to be

where I didn't want to compromise on this thing

where I wished it later on when it was too late.

I wish there had been the extra inch.

So we ended up going with Artisan and it's

it's something we're working on together, which is great.

Is it where are you in the production?

Are you almost done?

We're going to deliver it January 1st.

So, you know, it's 20 chapters.

We're sort of two thirds of the way through.

You know, I'm putting photos together now.

So I'm working on that.

And then on available sometime.

It's actually not coming out till 2027, believe it or not.

OK. And then before then, I'm working on a piece

filmed for Goodyear on the Iraq race series.

So Monterey, I shot this whole thing with Ray Everham.

Oh, because of my buddy Ray.

Yeah, I see that.

You were with Ray.

I wore the hat in honor.

Yeah, you were there.

Yeah, I'm judged with Ray.

It was super fun.

So I'm a great guy.

Oh, he's so down to earth.

It's unbelievable.

Amazing.

Like he's I don't know.

You think of a NASCAR crew chief and I think

a stereotype pops in your head.

He ain't it.

No, no, he's so knowledgeable.

So down to earth.

I never met him until that one misty morning

on a Friday of Monterey's Starix.

And so I'm putting this film together for Goodyear

and telling the story because from a Porsche point of view,

you just think 74 Iraq.

This is sort of a Holy Grail car.

But you know, the seven generations of the Iraq race

series, you know, three Chevys, two Dodge and one Pontiac.

And the Porsche ironically was only one year.

It was only three races.

So there was a lot of history after that and all these.

The concept was great.

Right. Put everyone together from different racing

fields, NASCAR, motorsports, you know, F1 and put them

in the same car and see who's the best.

Can you beat that guy?

Can Dale Earnhardt beat Derek Bell, right?

Yeah, you know, and everyone's got interesting stories

back to heritage and telling stories.

You know, there's a lot involved in motorsports,

which I'm passionate about.

So I'm super excited to be doing this thing with Goodyear

on the Iraq race.

When does that come out?

It's actually coming out later on in November.

So in the next three to four weeks.

And how are we going to watch it?

You're going to watch it like you watch everything on your

phone, on YouTube.

I say you're going to watch it.

Amen. 2.85 billion YouTube users.

So I'll tell you what's the show.

YouTube, your channel, whose channel?

It'll be mine and Goodyear's.

OK. So, you know.

And you're going to Charlotte in April for a foray's event?

Oh, yeah. Yes.

It's not on the calendar.

So of course, I remind you.

Don't ask me that.

But yeah, I'm going to.

So he's taking me out there.

A super cool guy, John and I were just at the ordering

concourse, so by the way, good time, good time.

Right. I'm not sure when this is coming out.

But next week, I'm off to the Las Vegas Concourse at the

win, I'll see you there, which is building to become, I think,

a rival to the quail, you know, because to pebble.

Well, rival.

Yeah, maybe. For real?

Dude, you got to go.

Sure.

Of course you can.

48 Veyrons there.

The win is flying in that they made 500 Veyrons.

They're going to 48.

That's 10 percent.

OK, this will be the last thing we talk about because we're

already over.

Are we still talking?

Yes.

You still recording between.

So if we agree that Monterey car week, Pebble Beach, in

particular, in the quail, those are at the top of that type of

event, you got this, Audrey, you got the win.

And then you got this thing.

You went to the Hampton that what's going to the bridge.

Have you been to the bridge?

Never been to the bridge.

I like bridges, though.

The bridges, the bridges, like it's for it's for smart

nerds and Amelia.

We're how do you wear the now it's the Amelia.

Where do you also?

I got the call yesterday.

I'm coming to Mota, Mota, Miami, Mota, Miami.

Don't forget, Mota, Miami.

Mota is great.

All right.

Well, then I want to ask you guys to rank them, but but for real,

like this win is going to is knocking on the door of the quail.

No, but well, it's just it's just different in the next two years.

I think it's knocking on the door of the quail.

The one thing that the Las Vegas Concord is hosted at the

win has over everything is Las Vegas.

You're in Vegas.

Vegas knows how to do hospitality at any price point from low to high.

You know, so when you're in Vegas, whether you're a car guy or not,

there's what there's shopping at all levels.

There's accommodation.

You can stay at Circus Circus if you want across the road from the wind.

It's still crazy expensive, though.

That this Vegas, everything is food, eating is okay, but they can't

control, you know, inflation.

I mean, you know, my point is I think I think there's a level of high

and there's a level of low.

You can still go to Dennis on the strip if you want to go to Dennis, right?

You don't have to eat expensive restaurants.

So there's a lot of variety.

But ultimately Vegas does hospitality like no one else.

You know, by that, I mean it's like, like, for example, the win,

you don't even if you're at the hotel, you don't even have to leave.

So it's not like Monterey Car Week, which is great, but logistically is a nightmare.

And Vegas is not like that.

And even even Audrain, which was which was great, though.

They're getting around was was the thing.

They want you on these weird shuttles that don't really show up at the right time.

And ironically, events about cars are really hard to get around in a car.

Except for the wind.

Well, you can't get around and you can take a cab.

But yeah. All right.

But no, they've done a good job.

It was. Well, you sound like a busy guy.

A lot going on.

So thank you for taking the time.

My pleasure.

I'll probably be here tomorrow as well, right?

Let's not wait a hundred and eighteen episodes.

Don't text me yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Yeah, I mean, after the story here is I texted Johnny on Wednesday

and I said, I'll see you tomorrow.

Because in my mind, I'd been traveling in Texas.

In my mind, we were doing this yesterday, which was Thursday.

So I texted Johnny on a Wednesday and said, I'll see you tomorrow.

And he went, yeah, I'll be there. Yeah.

Which was so I turned up yesterday.

And I'm like, where is everyone?

But I was in the just the depths of jet lag.

And I'm like, yes, I know I'm seeing Magnus.

I just I don't know.

That's his fault. Don't blame me.

Oh, no, I'm not blaming you.

I'm not even blaming him, because if I'd really backtracked

through the text, I would have seen that the day was the 24th.

Because remember, I said, let's do Monday the 20th.

And now I'm coming back. Let's do the 24th.

Anyway, happy to be here.

It was my fault. You did text me.

I thought that was a joke.

I thought you actually read recorded of the podcast.

No, no, no, no, no.

I mean, I will say this was a lot of fun.

It was worth waiting for.

Thank you to you both for inviting me back.

Thanks again for the marmalade and the cheese bread.

Thank you.

Magnus Walker on EVs, Porsches, and the Future of Driving

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